Paradise Valley (15 page)

Jonas Weaver stopped his team and stood up on the back of his harrow waving and shouting.

A quarter mile farther along, there he was.

Jake. She would have known the shape of him from any distance, and there he was, standing on the back of a steel-wheeled planter holding the reins of two draft horses. When he saw them Jake took his hat off and waved it wildly over his head, a huge grin on his face.

The whole family – strung out along the road in two surreys, a hay wagon, a produce wagon and a hack – waved and shouted to him as they passed. All except Rachel. She knew his eyes were on her alone as she sat beside Harvey in the hack. Very slowly, hoping none of her family would notice or know what she was doing, she raised the fingertips of her right hand to her lips and held them there for one brief second. He saw. She knew that he saw because after he put his hat back on, his own fingers paused at his lips. It was such a fleeting gesture that she was sure no one else could have noticed it, a secret message passing just between the two of them in the middle of a crowd.

Rachel watched him as long as she could, wondering if this would be the last she would ever see of him, and then she turned and faced the road ahead hoping Harvey would not see the tears in her eyes, for she could not take his teasing just now.

But Harvey surprised her. As far as she could tell he never took his eyes off the wagon ahead, but his hand came up and gently squeezed her shoulder. Today, even Harvey’s heart was soft. Rachel wiped the tears away and clutched her arms against her stomach trying to quell the terrible ache.

At the railway station the men loaded the surreys into a cattle car and put up the horses while the women arranged things in the boxcars that would be their home for the next several days. An hour later the big door rumbled shut. Couplings clanked and cars lurched as the train hooked them up. The engine chugged and strained and grumbled, belching clouds of smoke, and slowly they began to pull away. Mary and Ezra’s little boys stood with their fingers hooked in the boards, tiny Amishmen in their wide-brimmed hats, suspenders and dark coats, hair down over their ears, peeking through the cracks as Fredericksburg slid past and the train gained momentum. Mamm was busy holding Ada, who had sunk into despair, crying even before they boarded the train. By the time the train got under way, Ada had curled into a fetal ball on top of the bedding at the front of the boxcar, and all Mamm could do was to lie up against her and wrap her arms about her, whispering over and over, “Shhhh, little one. Gott knows. Shhhh.”

Harvey and Aaron and the two youngest girls rode in the cattle car with the livestock for now, watching over the animals.

In late morning they rumbled through the outskirts of Columbus, the first real city Rachel had ever seen. She couldn’t believe so many people could live so close together, and she scarcely believed there could exist a city even larger until she saw Cincinnati. In the early afternoon they passed over the wide river, through Louisville and on down into the rugged hills of Kentucky. In the open country between cities the whole earth was bursting with buds and blooms, promising a bountiful year.

While the train took on water at a whistle-stop in the hills, Rachel carried lunch back to her brothers and sisters in the cattle car – cold sweet potatoes and leftover roast chicken. She stayed there with them because she could see so much better from the slatted sides of the cattle car. Harvey was his usual exuberant self, endlessly optimistic and unfazed by the trials that lay ahead. The younger girls were flush with excitement – too young to see it as anything but a grand adventure. Aaron said nothing, watching through the slats, his eyes drinking in the sights. When Rachel took him his lunch he stayed where he was, refusing to sit down even to eat.

Rachel understood. The others ignored him, figuring Aaron stayed at his post looking out through the slats because he didn’t want to miss anything, but Rachel looked in his eyes and she knew. Every mile carried him farther away from Amos. She didn’t say anything; there was nothing to say. Aaron understood that his twin brother was gone and that Gott had allowed it, but leaving Amos’s body so far behind and going so very far away felt a little like a betrayal nonetheless. She stood beside him for a long time holding on to the slats and looking out just as he was doing, her forearm barely touching his. But touching.

A hundred times since leaving home Jake’s face had come to Rachel and twisted a knot in her heart, but it occurred to her after a while that when she touched the edge of Aaron’s pain it helped her forget about her own hurts and desires.

As the steam engine struggled up a grade in western Tennessee, trailing a plume of smoke, an endless mist of deep pink blooms lined the forests overhanging the tracks.

“Redbuds,” Aaron said. “I never seen so many in my life.”

“Everywhere I look, I see new things,” Rachel said quietly, the passing wind ruffling her skirts.

Aaron nodded, and said with an oddly regretful smile, “This is a truly beautiful country.”

The next time the train stopped, Rachel went back to the boxcar where her mother and sisters stayed most of the time. Miriam was there, sitting in a corner watching through a crack as the green hills rolled past. Rachel sat on a nail keg beside her, not saying anything at first, just watching through the same crack. But Miriam barely acknowledged her, and after a while Rachel began to sense a melancholy even deeper than Aaron’s. She touched her sister’s knee.

“Miriam, are you all right?”

Miriam nodded and forced a small smile, but she didn’t look at Rachel. The train rocked gently, wheels clacking rhythmically as the daylight faded and a sifting rain obscured the landscape. Ada, who had finally stopped crying for a little while, sat holding a skein of yarn while her mother knitted. She was humming a simple children’s song, and even then the worry never left her puffy eyes. Mary napped beside her boys. Emma and Levi were sitting in the far corner of the car where a small table and chairs had been arranged, studying a book of Spanish phrases together. Rachel looked again at the suppressed sorrow in Miriam’s eyes. Gently, she touched her sister’s shoulder.

“Talk to me, sister. What’s wrong?”

And then she waited. She knew her sister well. Miriam was quiet and studious, but underneath she was fiercely independent, scrupulously honest, and too smart for her own good, which went a long way toward explaining why she didn’t have a boyfriend. Rachel knew Miriam would eventually say what was on her mind, but she would always choose to think first, to arrange her thoughts and understand them clearly before she put words to them. In a moment Miriam turned to look at her, and there were lines of silver in the bottoms of her eyes.

“Mary has Ezra,” she said softly. She turned away to look outside again, but she kept talking and Rachel knew she had looked away because she didn’t want the tears to come. “Lizzie has Andy. Now Emma has Levi, and even you have someone, Rachel. Though you can’t speak of it, and you won’t be with him for a while, you have him yet. At least you have hope.” Now she turned again to look Rachel in the face, and a tear trickled down her cheek. “What hope do I have?”

She had never come right out and said this before, though even Rachel knew she had to be thinking it. Miriam was almost eighteen. She’d been eligible for nearly two years. A few boys had tried to court her, but Miriam had dismissed each of them in turn, saying only that they “played games” and their interest in her was for all the wrong reasons. After a while the others shied away, somehow intimidated. And that was
at home
, where there were lots of boys. Now she was moving off to another country, where the only Amish people within a thousand miles would be the ones in her family.

“They will come,” Rachel said gently. “In a year or so there will be lots of others. You’ll see. Oh, Miriam, we’ll have a
fine
community in Mexico! Why, they’ll be standing in line to court a beautiful girl like you.”

Miriam looked down at her lap and a tear clung to her nose. “I’m not beautiful.”

Rachel stared at her in disbelief. She had always envied Miriam’s dark complexion, her coal black eyes and natural plum lips, her silky raven hair. Especially the hair. Rachel, with her mop of red, had always loved her sister’s hair, though no one else ever saw it let loose outside her kapp. And then she remembered what Jake had said that night, walking in the moonlight, about seeing her own red hair flashing in the sun like spun copper. What it proved to her was that, like Miriam, her image of herself was shockingly different from the way others saw her.

“Miriam,” she said, putting an arm about her sister, “Gott made someone for each of us, didn’t He?”

A sniff, a shrug.

“Well, I believe it,” Rachel said. “The man Gott made for you has a heart that will search and will not be satisfied until he finds you. Only you. When he sees you he will know. You will take his breath away, and he will say he has never seen a sunset more beautiful.”

Miriam didn’t answer for a long time. Finally she said, “Those are pretty words. I would love to meet that one, but no boy has ever taken the trouble to know me.”

“He will,” Rachel said.

But Miriam only sighed and kept staring out the crack, watching the world grow dark.

Rachel found a private corner that night and did some crying of her own. Her heart ached for Miriam, and trembled in fear for Emma. She cried for Aaron, for poor confused Ada, and lastly for herself. Already she missed Jake and feared she would never see him again. In the wee hours, somewhere near Memphis, the train car finally rocked her to sleep.

When she awoke the train was sitting still, taking on water and switching cars in the humid low-country air of New Orleans. Everyone did their chores, and after breakfast Harvey and Aaron found a pumping station where they refilled the water barrels before the train got under way again, heading west.

In the afternoon the lowering sun swept ever more to the right as the train curved southward. Just after sunset the steam engine hissed and slowed and lumbered into the freight yard at Laredo, an expansive flat on the edge of town with cattle pens all around it, packed with hordes of longhorn steers that made a great lowing racket through the night.

Caleb paced and fumed for two days while they were stuck on a siding in hot, dusty Laredo. It took one day for the Mexican customs officials to show up and inspect their livestock and passports, and another to come back with official papers saying the Benders would be allowed to pass into Mexico.

Still, there was a promising sign. Mamm’s cough had worsened almost immediately as they were leaving Ohio in the drafty train car, and she had to sit upright all night in the humid air of New Orleans to relieve the pressure in her chest. By the time they reached Laredo her eyes had sunk into her face and she was weak, barely able to stand. But in the dry air of south Texas, parked on a siding in Laredo, for the first time in a week she slept soundly and awoke feeling a little better. Maybe the doctor was right.

The morning they left, an American customs agent showed up and reinforced Caleb’s nagging sense of foreboding. The agent, making his rounds in a dark blue uniform, came to check their papers and peek into the cars. His great big handlebar mustache reminded Caleb of the policeman who had escorted him to jail – was it only three months ago? The agent carried under his arm a black leather book where he wrote their names and whatever else he thought was important.

“That’s some fine draft horses you got there,” he said, eyeing Caleb’s Belgians, absently twisting the end of his mustache around a finger. “Looks like you’re planning on farming.”

Caleb nodded. “Jah. That’s about all we know how to do.”

“Got folks down there?”

“No. It’s chust us, yet.”

The agent bit his lip, frowning. “Mind if I ask whereabouts you plan to settle?”

“Paradise Valley,” Caleb said with a touch of pride.

The agent squinted. “Never heard of it. What’s it close to?”

“Agua Nueva.”

A blank stare. “Don’t know that one, either.”

“Well, there’s another town – Saltillo.”

“Ah! Now, Saltillo I’ve heard of. Decent little place from what I hear. Not as rough as the border towns, but it’s still Mexico. South of the border, things can get a little scrappy sometimes.” He eyed Caleb and his family closely, and a worried look came into his eyes. “How you fixed for firearms?” he asked, his gaze sweeping at waist level across the men in the group.