Amish Country Arson (18 page)

“
How do you know it was a
woman that invented aprons?” Hal asked.

Margaret surmised, “It had to be. Men do not
worry about covering their clothes to keep clean, and they have a
handkerchief to wipe their face.”

Noah helped Daniel feed the cane slowly on
one side of the crusher. The rollers in the mill crushed the stalks
and shredded the canes dry of the juice which ran out of the cane
into the first pan in the mill.

The vat was divided into four pans so
several batches could be cooked at one time, facilitating a
continuous cooking process. So for the next eight to twelve hours,
the juice cooked at a slow boil. The women stirred with
long-handled tools shaped like a hoe and called a skimmer.

By the time, the boys had enough cane
shredded for another batch to fill the catch pan, the first batch
had thickened a little and changed to a greenish amber. Margaret
lifted the gate and moved the juice into the third pan. That batch
was cooked until it lost all the green color. By that time, the
syrup was darker and thicker. Margaret opened the gate to let the
syrup into the fourth pan. The sorghum cooked until it was mahogany
color and quite thick. The first batch took eight hours, and each
batch was an hour behind that one.

Martha ran a skimmer over the top of the
syrup in the pans and remove the impurities. Hal watched her lift
the scum out with her hoe into a pail. “Why are you doing that?

“
The whole time the juice
is cooking, until the last pan or two, it must be skimmed. This
involves running this skimmer across the top of the cooking juice
to remove the skim that forms which is the impurities cooking out
of the juice,” Martha said.

“
I see. This is such a hot
job so when one of you are ready to get away and cool off let me
spell you,” Hal said. “In the mean time, I'm going after more
wood.”

When the first batch of juice reached the
last pan, Margaret said, “Hal, the sorghum must be watched
carefully so it is removed at just the right time. This is the part
that takes practice and know-how. Remove it too soon and it will
not be done. Wait to long and it will be too thick and have a
strong, bitter taste.”

“
Until I get the hang of
this, you better be the one to watch the last pan. I'd hate to ruin
the molasses now we have our taste buds set for it,” Hal told
Margaret. “Why don't you go take a break? Eat lunch and cool off
before you take over. I think I can watch the molasses boil down
long enough for you to take a break without ruining the batch
before you come back.”

Margaret laughed. “That sounds like a gute
idea to me. You will do fine. Martha, you want to come with me.
Roseanna can skim until we get back.”

Martha wiped her flushed face on her apron.
“Jah, I could use a time to sit and cool down.”

“
Redbird and Beth are
hungry and thirsty by now. You can give them each half a sandwich
if they want it,” Hal said.

When Margaret and Martha came back, Margaret
chuckled. “The girls are rutsching around. You might be glad to
have them take another nap.”

Hal rolled her eyes. “If only we were so
lucky.”

“
I have them piling the
leaves that fell on the quilt by colors. They seemed to like that,
but little ones that age do not stick with anything for very long,”
Martha said sagely.

Hal brought two more glasses from the buggy
and filled them from the cooler. She handed one glass to Roseanna
and reached under the dish towel to get a sandwich out of the pan.
Redbird and Beth watched her take a bite from her sandwich. “You
two still hungry? You want to split a sandwich.”

The girls nodded no, but they held out their
glasses. While they sipped water, the girls put leaves scattered on
the quilt in the piles Martha started for them.

“
What are you girls doing?”
Roseanna asked.

Beth pointed to her pile, picked up another
leaf and put on her stack. She looked at Roseanna for approval.

“
Very gute, Beth. Such a
neat pile.”

“
What are you doing,
Redbird?” Hal asked.

Redbird stared at a red oak leaf in her
hand. She raised her pensive face so she could see passed her
bonnet bill with a sad face. “Leave?”

“
Nah, it is a leaf,” Hal
said slowly.

Redbird nodded no. “Mammi and dawdi
leave?”

“
Jah, they went home. We
will miss them, ain't so?” Hal said.

Both girls puckered up. Hal held out her
arms and let them sit in her lap while she hugged them. After a few
minutes, Hal pointed to the birds overhead. The girls chattered
about the birds flying from tree to tree, and all the pretty leaf
piles they had made.

Finally, Hal said, “How about taking a nap?
We will go home soon after you wake up?”

The sound of wagon wheels made the girls
straighten up and watch. They pointed at Noah and Daniel coming
back.

“
Your brothers need to eat.
I expect they're hungry.” When Noah stopped the wagon by the
crushing machine, Hal said, “You two come eat and get a cold drink
of water. It is hot work you've done. You can shred that load after
you rest.”

Hal and Roseanna rose from the blanket and
let the boys sit down. “As long as you're here, the girls won't go
to sleep. Will you lay them down and cover them up for a nap when
you're done eating?”

“
Sure enough,” Noah
said.

As the women walked away, Hal heard Daniel
say, “What have you girls been doing?”

“
Leaf,” Beth's shy voice
said.

“
Leave us,” complained
Redbird.

“
Nah, Redbird, that is a
leaf,” Noah corrected.

“
Nah, Mammi and Dawdi
leave,” Redbird said grumpily.

“
Jah, they did. We miss
them,” Noah said. He stuck his hand in the dish pan and pulled out
two sandwiches. “Have a sandwich, Daniel.”

That afternoon while the women
cooked Luke Yoder, Samuel Nisely and Rudy Briskey's sorghum canes,
Hal listened to the other women reminisce about past experiences at
the sorghum mills.

Margaret stirred the darkening
molasses with a paddle as she talked. “I remember helping my mother
in Pennsylvania when I was young. The smell of this wood smoke all
around us takes me back to those times. Mama would give me a cane
stick to dip into the rich, sweet sorghum as it cooked. After
warning me not to burn my mouth of course. I have seldom tasted
such delicious sorghum as that first time.”

Hal leaned down and added sticks to
the fire. “We need to treat the boys and the little girls with a
sweet treat like that. It will bring back memories to them some day
of this time we spent together at Sugar Camp.”

Martha gazed into her compartment
as she pushed and pulled on her skimmer. “My dawdi used to hand out
little pieces of canes and let us children dip them into the hot
molasses, too. Poor dawdi used to love working in his sorghum mill.
He died doing what he loved.”

“How did that happen?” Roseanna
asked, dumping the skim on her hoe in a pail.

“Dawdi fainted after stirring the
pans all day. He died of heat stroke a few days later, brought on
by working in the sorghum mill.”

“How sad. I am so sorry that
happened,” Roseanna said. “I remember my mama used to make biscuits
for us to break into pieces and dunk in a bowl of
molasses.”

Martha dumped the skim off her shovel. “I
remember we used each run we called the pans for some different
recipe. First run for lite syrup to put on pancakes. Next run was
thicker for using in shoo fly pie. Last run Black Strap molasses
was in cookies and gingerbread.”

When the last of the sorghum was
entirely cooked in the last pan, Margaret raised the little gate at
the end of all the pan. Hal went out to the pile of shredded cane
and hunted up several ends. She dipped the pieces of cane in the
molasses and blew on two of them until they cooled.

Hal carried the dripping cane
strips to the quilt. The girls were still napping. She put the cane
treats in their drinking glasses for later. She handed Daniel and
Noah the remaining two.

By the time she came back to the
mill, the syrup had filled a barrel, and it was replace by another.
And so on until the entire pan was empty.

Noah and Daniel watched the last batch run
into a barrel. That was a very enticing spot for kids of any age.
Daniel reached down with a couple of fingers and swiped along the
top edge of the barrel. His fingers darkened with licking good
syrup. Since Daniel got away with sticking his fingers in the
sorghum drips, Noah did the same thing.

Hal spotted the boys with their fingers in
their mouths and grinned. “At your age, you boys should have
something better to do than suck your fingers.”

“
Ach, Mama Hal,” Daniel
said, his face flushing with embarrassment.

When the day was over, the barrels were
hauled away. The women cleaned out the brick fireplace. They
polished and oiled the pans then placed them up side down on top of
the fireplace for the winter.

Noah and Daniel carried out all the hot
ashes and coals from the brick foundation under the pan. They
scattered the coals in the grove.

With everyone busy during the clean
up, no one noticed the barefoot little girls wander toward the
grove. They wanted to go into the trees to get a closer look at the
pretty birds.

Daniel carried the last bucket of
coals out of the sorghum mill. He looked toward the grove and saw
the girls disappear in the trees. He took off in a run. “Come back,
Redbird! Beth, come back here! Mama Hal, come quick.”

“
Was ist letz?” Hal asked
as she ran after Daniel.

“
The girls are in the grove
with the live coals,” Daniel yelled over his shoulder.

Before they reached the grove, Redbird
screamed in pain. By the time Hal and Daniel got to her and Beth,
Beth was backing up as Redbird hopped on one foot and cried, “It
hurt! It hurt!”

Hal grabbed Redbird and carried her
out into the sunlight while Daniel rescued Beth.

By that time, the other women and Noah
came to meet them. Hal explained what had happened to Redbird and
lifted her right foot to look at the bottom of it. Red welts and
water blisters had formed already.

“
We need a pan of cool
water to place her foot in to take away some of the heat,” Hal
said. “Can someone get that for me? Redbird isn't going to let go
of my neck long enough to put her down.”

Margaret grabbed a pan and raced to
the creek for the water. The other women packed the lunch supplies
in the buggy. Noah and Daniel mounted the horse and trotted for
home.

After Redbird had soaked her foot a
few minutes, she was calmer. Hal inspected the burn
area.

“
Is it bad?” Roseanna
asked.

“
She'll have a scar sure enough,” Hal
said. Margaret, will you drive home while I hold on to Redbird? I
want to keep her foot in the water a little longer.”

After supper, Noah and Daniel went coon
hunting for real this time. The boys took Biscuit hunting to get
the dog used to trailing for them, before they went out with
friends to hunt. The little girls were upstairs in bed. Hopefully,
Redbird wouldn't be in too much pain to keep her from sleeping
through the night.

Hal decided to work on the mending to keep
her mind off the fact she missed her parents and aunt. She sat down
on the couch and pulled a pair of Daniel's trousers out of the
mending basket. She put a patch over a split knee.

John rocked as he read the Wickenburg Daily
newspaper. He folded the newspaper and laid it on his legs.

Hal looked up as the paper rattled. “Any
noteworthy news in the Wickenburg Daily.”

“
An article on the fires around here.
Phil King has been working hard to earn his wages for the newspaper
again. He interviewed farmers and even went to Yoder Store to catch
customers for their opinion of the fires. I am surprised he has not
used this for an excuse to come here to get your ideas,” John said
dryly.

Hal snorted. “Phil knows better than to
bother me.”

“
Sure enough. Maybe he is afraid of you
and your skillet,” John said, grinning.

Hal folded Daniel's trousers and laid them on
the couch. She reached in the basket for a shirt of Noah's that
needed a button. “If fear is what keeps him from pestering me, I
will go with that. Mind reading me the article he wrote? I'd like
to hear what he said.”

“
Jah, I can.” John unfolded the
newspaper. “The story made front page news with a picture of the
schoolhouse foundation. It says,
The Amish, devout
pacifists, were profoundly shaken by the violence that took place
in their community recently. But there are no doubt going to be
further shocks to come with a torching madman on the loose. Crime
is so rare here that members of the Christian sect consider the
fires a test of faith. All the while, the Amish have simply turned
the other cheek to the arson destruction aimed at them.

“
The Amish around here are a quiet,
withdrawn community of hard workers. This inferno of destruction
has caused them a great deal of income loss and worry for the
safety of their families and neighbors,” says Malcolm Yoder, owner
of Yoder Country Store, in the country south of Wickenburg. He's
one of the few outspoken members of the community that didn't mind
talking to this reporter.