Paradise Valley (22 page)

As soon as the well was finished the whole family moved their tents from the stable to their land. By keeping all the farm implements at the homestead instead of hauling them back and forth they gained nearly two hours of work time each day.

The weather had warmed to what passed for summer in the mountains, but still the temperatures seldom climbed into the eighties.

Late one Saturday afternoon Dat took a walk down through the field to see how the sweet corn was coming, taking his time for once, admiring the deep green stalks higher than his head. Emma and Rachel walked with him, a rare moment of calm.

“Gott is good,” he said, reaching out to rub the tassels between his callused fingers. “The earth here is very fertile, and Danny Chupp’s seed grew as quick as he said it would. This field is almost ready for harvest.” Then he glanced at Emma’s swollen belly and smiled. “Emma, I guess mebbe you’ll be bringing in a crop of your own soon.”

Emma blushed, and only Rachel knew why. Her time was closer than it should have been, and Emma couldn’t help being a little afraid of what her father would think if she delivered a baby in early fall when she’d only gotten married in March. Even a man could count. She changed the subject.

“Your big well has done mighty gut too, Dat. No more rain than we get, I don’t know where we’d be without that well.”

He nodded, stroked his graying beard. Rachel watched her dat’s eyes, and she could see how proud he was. Things had gone well. The Benders had gained a foothold in a new land in a remarkably short period of time.

“In a couple weeks the corn will be ready to pick and we can take a load to sell in Saltillo.” Dat looked up the hill at the half-finished adobe walls rising from the knoll. “We can buy tin for the roof and some glass for the windows while we’re there – plus the windmill. Emma, I’m thinking I’ll need you to go with me so you can sell corn in the market while I go to buy what we need.”

Emma glanced at Rachel, and a sly smile turned up the corners of her mouth.

“Dat, I don’t know if it would be so good for me to go bumping all the way to Saltillo in that old wagon.” Emma patted her belly, flashing her eyes at her father. “Maybe you should take Rachel and Miriam instead.”

Dat stared at her from under his hat. Rachel saw the tiny smile in both their eyes and understood. Emma wasn’t worried at all about riding in a wagon to Saltillo – she would ride bareback to Boston if she had a mind to, and Dat knew it. But she also knew how monotonous it must be making bricks all day, so she was suggesting to her father that he give Rachel a little break. All this passed between them in one silent glance.

“Jah, well, Rachel, you have been working mighty hard, so mebbe Emma’s right. You need a little rest, and a chance to see some of the country.”

A shiver of excitement went through Rachel. She actually clapped her hands in delight. “Can Miriam go, too?”

He nodded. Lifting one of Rachel’s hands, he ran a thumb over the calluses, and a little sadness came into his eyes. “I’m sorry you and Miriam have to do men’s work,” he said. “Things will be better when the others come, but for now we’re on our own here and we have to make do with what we got. Soon our friends will be here, and everything will be better.”

Rachel squeezed his hands in hers. “It’s all right, Dat, we don’t mind. Me and Miriam are happy to do whatever is needed, and think how proud we’ll be when the house is done! Anyway, the work is making us very strong.”

Emma laughed that golden laugh of hers. Pregnancy had filled her with joy, once she got over being sick in the mornings, and heightened her natural glow. “Jah, pretty soon the two of them will be wrestling with the boys in the haymow!” she teased.

Dat pointed a warning finger at his silly daughters, but there was laughter in his eyes. And pride. He walked away shaking his head, chuckling.

“Emma, I hope your little one can hold off for a while,” Rachel said, once her father was out of hearing. “I mean no offense, but you really have gotten big.”

“Ach, this is nothing,” Emma said, walking aimlessly through the corn, dragging a hand across the stalks. “Have you looked at Mary lately?” Her eyes bulged and her cheeks puffed out as her hands mimed a belly the size of a washtub. “I’m wondering if it’s twins this time, she’s so huge.”

“Oh, I hope so!” Rachel cried, giggling. “The more the merrier. When is her bundle supposed to arrive?”

“She says December, but I’m not so sure the
buppela
will wait that long.” Her smile faded, and Rachel saw the lines of concern crease her forehead.

“What’s the matter, Emma? What are you thinking?”

“Oh, nothing. It’s just I hope nothing goes wrong.”

“What do you mean? Are you talking about your baby or Mary’s?”

“Both,” Emma said. “Now that my time is getting close it worries me. And Mary, too. As big as she is it
could
be twins, and there is no doctor here.”

“Jah,” Rachel said, “but there was never a doctor at home, either. The closest one was in Kidron.” A grasshopper buzzed into her hair, and she bent over suddenly, snatching her kapp off and raking frantically at her hair until it came out.

“But at least there
was
a doctor in Kidron,” Emma said. “If something wasn’t right, we could send for him anyway. The doctor in Agua Nueva is a day’s ride away, and the one in Saltillo even farther. Rachel, do you realize that until the others come, we don’t even have a midwife here?”

Rachel honestly hadn’t thought about it, though she didn’t have as much invested as Emma did.

“Well, it doesn’t seem like such a great worry to me,” Rachel said, trying to cram her unruly hair back into her kapp while Emma waited. “I helped lots of cows and horses have babies, and it always goes good. There’s never any problems.”

“Cows and horses are one thing,” Emma said, worry carved plainly on her face. “Women are another. Lots of things can go wrong. Sometimes the baby is breech, or the cord gets tangled. Mary lost both of her last two babies, so I know she’s worried. Things just happen.”

They walked on between the cornstalks in silence for a minute, and then, out of the blue, Emma turned to Rachel and said, “I want you to be my midwife.”

“What?”

“When I have my baby,” Emma said. “I want you to be my midwife.”

“
Me?
” Rachel’s mouth hung open. “But, Emma, I’m only sixteen. I’m not even married! I’ve never even been in the
room
with a woman having a baby. I don’t know anything about it!”

“I still want you there.” Emma’s eyes were determined, smug. She’d made up her mind.

“But what about Mamm?”

“She’ll be there too, but you know how she is – Mamm is steady as a mule until something goes wrong, then she gets all flustered and befuddled. You’re just the opposite. You always worry and fret like a little girl, but when things go crazy you keep your head. Rachel, there’s nobody in the world I trust more than you. Not even Levi. I want you there.”

Rachel looked long into her sister’s face, astonished, but Emma’s eyes attested to the truth of what she had just said.

“Then I will be there,” Rachel said. “With Gott’s help, I will be there for you.”

“And you can be there for Mary, too.”

“But – ”

“No
buts
. I have a very good feeling about this, Rachel. Something tells me you’ll be a fine midwife.”

There was no arguing with Emma once her mind was made up. Rachel nodded numbly. “Okay.”

The round trip to Saltillo would take three days. It was still dark when Caleb hitched the Belgians and headed north in the wagon with a huge mound of sweet corn in the back and his two daughters beside him on the bench seat. All the money Caleb had left in the world was sewn into a hidden pocket under the waistline of his handmade trousers, and he wasn’t sure it was enough.

At six thousand feet the mornings were chilly, even in late summer. Miriam and Rachel wrapped themselves in blankets, waiting for the day to warm. The sun was just cracking the eastern horizon when they stopped to pick up Domingo, who waited for them by the road outside the village of San Rafael.

The girls climbed into the back and sat on the food box in front of the pile of corn to let Domingo sit up front with Caleb. A short while later, as they rumbled slowly past the farm of Ernst Schulman, Domingo kept his eyes straight ahead. He never even glanced to the left.

A mile or two down the road, with Schulman’s farm gone from sight, Caleb turned to Domingo and asked, in High German, “Why do you hate that man?”

Domingo didn’t say anything for a long time, and Caleb waited. Finally, keeping his eyes on the road ahead, Domingo said quietly, “
Ich hasse ihn nicht
.”
I don’t hate him
. “Hate, among the Nahua people, is reserved for a respected enemy. Herr Schulman I do not respect.”

Caleb pondered this. “Why? He seems like a decent man to me.”

“He is a fool,” Domingo said. “Herr Schulman knows everything about a man by his clothes, or the color of his skin. It’s easy. A European like himself is best. An American like you is only a little lower, and a haciendado, with all his land and money, is a little lower than an American because a haciendado is still, after all, only a Mexican. But even the half-breed mestizo is better than a Chichimeca. To him, we are cattle, not men.” He glanced at Caleb. “He told you about the whip?”

“Jah,” Caleb said, his eyes on the road. “He told me you took it away and threatened him with it.”

Domingo nodded. “
Es ist wahr
.”
It is true
. “The man Schulman found sleeping and beat with the whip had walked all night to another village to get medicine for a sick child, then went to Schulman’s farm to work. He fell asleep when he stopped to eat at midday, and I let him lay for a few minutes.”

“Maybe Herr Schulman didn’t know about this.”

Domingo shook his head bitterly. “It would make no difference. To him, this was not a man, it was a burro. If a peon doesn’t do what you want, you run him off and get another. Peons are cheap.”

An old man passed them as he spoke, going the other way in a tiny wooden-wheeled cart pulled by an ox. The Mexican lifted his hat and flashed a toothless grin as he passed. Caleb nodded. “Buenos días.”

“The man who just passed us,” Domingo said, “his name is Pablo Garcia. He has raised five children on tortillas and beans. He owns nothing, though he has worked hard all his life. His three grown sons all died fighting in the revolution.”

Caleb nodded, waiting, assuming this was leading someplace.

“Pablo Garcia has worked for Schulman longer than I have, yet Schulman does not know about the five children, the lost sons. Schulman does not even know his last name. He only calls him Pablo, even though the man is old enough to be his father.”

“Why are you telling me these things, Domingo?”

“Because you asked me about Schulman.”

“Yes, but why are you telling
me
? You wouldn’t even
speak
to Schulman. Why me?”

Domingo looked Caleb in the eye and said, “Because you are not arrogant. Schulman came here to escape the storm he knew was coming in his own ‘civilized’ country, but he’s just another rich European, like the haciendados. My people lived here for thousands of years before the Spaniards came and took everything. Now they call a man a thief if he steals a chicken to feed his children. Schulman
scoffs
at men like Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata, calls them petty thieves, but he forgets that at the same time, in the Great War in his own ‘civilized’ country, people slaughtered each other by the millions in the trenches. To someone whose family has known nothing but hunger for generations, these
petty thieves
were heroes who rose up against the tyranny of the haciendados.”

Caleb was a little surprised at the vehemence of Domingo’s tirade. He had never heard the young man speak this way before.

Miriam and Rachel were apparently listening as well, because they had turned and stood up on the box behind Caleb. Now Miriam asked a question.

“So you think Pancho Villa is a hero?”

Domingo glanced over his shoulder and shrugged. “To the common people he is a legend. Pancho Villa was a peon once, working on a hacienda. When he was only a boy the master of the hacienda raped his sister, so Pancho killed the haciendado and fled to the hills, where he became a very successful bandit. In the revolution he raised an army and fought against the oppression of the rich men who own grand haciendas, drive around in automobiles and rule over their little kingdoms. He became a great general, and then, because he had learned to read and write, he became governor of a province and grew very rich. Now Pancho Villa owns a hacienda, drives an automobile and rules over his own little kingdom, but to the people he is still a hero. I only hope he has not forgotten what it was like to work fourteen hours in the sun to bring food to a fat man and then go to bed with an empty belly. Pancho Villa is a complicated man.”