A Prayer for the Night (25 page)

Daniel nodded, swung past him with the pail, and didn’t reply.

So, Albert took his coat and hat off the wall hook and went back outside. He saw a lantern glowing orange in the barn and decided to try to explain his alarm to the
Big Daddy.
Standing outside the milking stall, Albert called out,
“Benny is net u mova, Vater. Her liechusht stille.”
—Benny is not moving, Father. He lies still.

For his troubles, all Albert got was, “Albert, tell your sisters to get out here. This milk’s going to curdle in the pails.”

So, young Albert Erb shrugged his little shoulders, crossed the gravel driveway, and took the sidewalk over to the family’s grocery store. Going in at the back, he felt his way down a dark aisle between tall shelves, bent over beside his uncle Benny, and shook his shoulders. Then he pushed on Benny’s chest, and nothing happened. Albert sighed, got up on his feet, left the store, and walked back to the big house as the sun streaked a faint line of rose over the horizon. There had been that English aroma again, he realized. He wondered what that meant.

When he took his place at the breakfast table, Albert said to his sister Ella, older than he by two years,
“Benny vil net schwetze.”
—Benny won’t talk.

Ella laughed and parroted,
“Benny vil net schwetze. Benny vil net schwetze.”

With an indignant scowl, Albert stood on his chair and stomped his boots on the wooden seat. When his mother turned to reprimand him, he flapped his arms up and down at his sides and shouted,
“Benny kan net hicha!”
—Benny can’t hear!—determined to make his point.

Before his mother could scold him, Albert’s father came into the kitchen with a basket of brown eggs and asked, “Has anyone seen Benny this morning?”

Thus Albert concluded that no one had heard him. Or worse, that no one believed him. He knew he wasn’t allowed to be a chatterbox. Didn’t Uncle Enos call Benny a chatterbox all the time?

Really, Albert wasn’t supposed to talk to grown-ups at all, unless one spoke to him first. Children were meant to be seen, not heard. How many times had they told him that! So this might get him in trouble with the whole family. Maybe I’ll take a ribbing from the other kids for this, Albert worried. Maybe I’ll have to work all day like the grown-ups. Even though I am only four years old. It might be the last thing I’m allowed to say the whole rest of the day. But it didn’t matter. Even in the dark, Albert could tell that there was something dreadfully wrong with his Uncle Benny.

Standing on his chair, with his fists planted on his hip bones, using all the resolve he could muster, little Albert Erb announced, in his very loudest, sternest voice: “
Benny ist im schloffa in die stahe! Al set net das Oatmeal um zie Kopf hawe.”—
Benny’s sleeping in the store! He’s not supposed to have oatmeal on his head like that.