Paradise Valley (6 page)

The whole family shared in the humiliation, but no one spoke. No one moved. Caleb’s heart burned within him and he was filled with a desire to lift his baby daughters off their feet in a great roaring bear hug right there in front of everybody, but he didn’t do it. It would not have been proper, and it was not what they expected of him. As Rachel passed he couldn’t stop his hand from reaching out to her, and her shoulder just brushed under his fingertips. She didn’t look up, even then, but kept walking quickly, resolutely. As the car backed out, Caleb and his family fell in step behind the girls.

As soon as they were inside, the three girls asked to go up to the room they shared. Mamm went with them, and ten minutes later Rachel came back down the stairs looking like herself. Gone were the green dress and the downcast gaze, and her hair was once again neatly pinned under her prayer kapp. Smiling contentedly, she carried three Englisher dresses bundled in her arms, and when she got to the bottom of the stairs she turned left instead of right. Without a word, she passed through the kitchen on the way to the back door, lifting a box of kitchen matches from a drawer on her way out.

Chuckling softly, Caleb followed her. He picked up a can of kerosene from the back porch and fell in behind his beautiful red-haired daughter as she marched straight to the burn pile down behind the barn.

Chapter 5

The next morning Rachel and her family huddled together under a pile of buggy robes in the surrey while Caleb drove to the home of Uri Mullet up near Apple Creek. The horse’s breath chuffed little clouds on the frosty air as it trotted, head high, glad to be running on such a morning. Mamm was not with them. Unable to breathe lying down, she had sat up all night next to the stove in her rocker. Dat told her to stay home and rest rather than make the drive on such a frosty morning in an open buggy. He was uncharacteristically silent while he drove, his face lined with worry.

After two weeks in the children’s home, Rachel’s first morning at church felt almost as good as her first day back home. All the familiar things – the pile of black hats on the mud room table, the backless benches, the dark curtains tied back to let in clean winter sunlight, the singing, the old bishop’s singsong preaching, and especially the faces of all the people she loved – all of it felt as fine and warm as home itself.

Jake Weaver was there, sitting across from her – and so was his hair, she noted with a twinge of selfish pride. The other boys had not been so lucky, but it was only hair – it would grow back. No one blamed them for what had happened.

She hadn’t seen Jake since that first day at the children’s home, nor had she bumped into him before the service began, but he was here now, sitting alongside his father and brothers. The mere sight of him filled her with joy. Once, before the minister got warmed up, she caught Jake sneaking a glance in her direction. She averted her eyes quickly, but she knew. He was looking for her. She sat a little straighter, held her head a little higher and took pains not to let her gaze linger on him. Until she turned sixteen, even such innocent flirtation would meet with dire disapproval. Besides, even now she suffered the natural insecurities of a fifteen-year-old girl, and Jake had really said nothing of his feelings. How could she be sure that Jake’s gentle caress that day in the barn hadn’t merely been brotherly consolation over her father’s arrest?

After the service Rachel and her family went outside to wait for a bit while the Mullets and their kin prepared lunch. She lined up at the privy with the rest of the women. The men, in order not to make the line at the outhouse uncomfortably long for the women, gravitated to the barn to use the unoccupied stalls.

Rachel kept an eye on the group of men going in and out of the barn, but she didn’t see Jake. He must have stayed behind with some of the men and older boys who remained in the house to help set up tables.

A short while later everyone went back inside for lunch. Each of the long tables held three big bowls of
bohnesuppe
– it was called bean soup, though it consisted of mostly bread and milk – enough so that everyone could reach one of the hot bowls without having to pass them around. There were loaves of fresh homemade bread and newly churned butter, and for dessert what the children called “moon pies” – half-moon-shaped fruit pies, usually filled with apple snitz.

For Rachel and the others who had been the last two weeks in the children’s home eating strange food, it was wonderful. To be back among family, breaking bread in a warm Amish home with so many who had shared so much, Ida Mullet’s weak bean soup was a feast for which Rachel was truly grateful. School or no school, life was good.

After lunch she went outside with a dozen girls and wandered down to the other side of the kitchen garden to catch up on the latest gossip. Lovina Hershberger was there, along with the others who had been imprisoned with Rachel and her sisters in the children’s home. Lovina had always been like a sister to Rachel and Emma, and on this day the girls who had been in the children’s home were the center of attention. Everyone peppered them with questions, endlessly curious about life in that awful place.

“Did they beat you?” a little girl asked. There were several smaller children with them, including a toddler or two. The older girls were expected to help tend the little ones.

“Every day, twice,” Lovina said, her eyes twinkling with mischief. She leaned close to the little girl and added in a whisper, “With barbed wire.” Then she burst into hysterical laughter.

Rachel wagged her head. “No they didn’t. You shouldn’t scare the poor child like that, Lovina. Really, it wasn’t that bad. Most of them were nice. We had warm beds to sleep in, and a hot bath on Saturday.”

Still chuckling, Lovina said, “The worst of it is now we have to go to school every day.”

“I won’t,” a six-year-old said, stamping a foot. “I’ll run and hide in the loft.”

“No you won’t,” Rachel warned. “Our fathers gave their word. They made a promise. Would you make a liar of them? Besides, if you don’t go to school, the attendance officer will know and then they’ll come and put your dat in jail.”

Tears welled up in the little girl’s eyes. “But
why
?” she whined. “Why must we do this?”

“Because they don’t understand,” Lovina answered patiently. “You know what they said? One of the women in the children’s home told me we had to go to school because it was cruel of our parents to make us work on the farm.”

They all laughed at that. Home was home. They had seen enough of the world to know they were far more likely to encounter cruelty in the consolidated school.

“Cruel?” the little girl giggled, her eyes wide in disbelief. “How could anyone think that?”

“I don’t know,” Rachel said. “I think they only know how to look at us the same way they look at each other. My dat says a prideful man thinks everyone is vain, and a deceiver thinks everyone is a liar. Anyway, most Englishers are in such a hurry they don’t want to take the trouble to understand someone who is different from them. They don’t think the way we do, that’s all.”

Caleb Bender stayed at his table when lunch was over, as did most of the men. The women chatted happily, busy with cleaning up, hustling dishes to the kitchen and wiping the tables clean.

The minister sat down next to Caleb and asked after Martha. “I noticed she is not here this morning,” he said. “Has she gotten worse?”

“Jah,” Caleb said. “I even took her to the doctor once, but he didn’t give us much hope. There was nothing he could do. He said she needs to go and live someplace where the air is dry and warm, like Arizona.”

The minister nodded gravely.

What Caleb did not say,
would
not say, was that the doctor had told him she would die if he did not do this. Though the doctor would never understand it, Caleb knew that moving to a place with no Amish community was not an option. He could only pray that Gott would not allow her to die, but when she left the bed in the night to sit upright by the stove, the doctor’s words tormented him.

Caleb twisted his water glass on the table, staring at it. “What will we do now?” he asked, mostly to change the subject. “About the schools, I mean.”

“We will trust Gott,” the minister said firmly. This was always his first answer.

“Always,” Caleb agreed. “Still, there are choices we must make. Will we be content to send our children to the consolidated school forever? I think it would be the end of us.”

Eli Stoltzfus, the man whose daughter hid in Lancaster, rolled his eyes. “
Neh
. I say we ignore them and do as we have always done. In time the government will get busy with something else and forget us. They always do.”

Caleb shook his head. “No, they won’t forget. We have already seen what comes of that thinking. Anyway, we made a promise. Now we must keep it.”

“Then you have no choice but to honor your word,” the bishop agreed, one fist stroking his long white beard as if he were milking it. “But just because we have no choice does not mean we become complacent. For now, we must pray and ask Gott to show us a way. We must think of our children, the future of our people and our way of life. If we bring them up in the way they should go, when they are old they will not depart from it. But if we let them be raised by the world, why it’s only a matter of time until they leave us and go their own way. No matter how we love them, most of them will jump the fence. Caleb is right. If we let this go on, in twenty years there won’t be any more Amish.”

“It won’t last forever,” John Hershberger said. “Things will change, you’ll see. We just have to endure for a time.”

Caleb Bender shook his head sadly. “For how long a time, John? I say only until we can find a way to change things. This is a new problem, one we have not dealt with before, at least not in this way. We have to learn to think in new ways, to see a new path. We have to think bigger and wider and be willing to pay any price to save our children. We can even leave here if we have to, and start another settlement someplace where the law is not against us.”

“Oh, I could never do that,” Jonas Weaver said. “My grandparents were born here and they are buried here, along with my first wife and two of my children.” He wagged his head, deeply aggrieved. “It is too much of a price to pay, Caleb.”

Caleb laid a hand on Jonas’s forearm and replied gently, “What price would you put on living as Gott would have us live? What is heaven worth?”

The bishop and the minister nodded somberly. The results of such decisions could be the difference between heaven and hell for many.

One of the men who was young and sometimes a little hasty said, “Mebbe we could get our people to vote, this once, to elect public officials who think as we do and who will change things for us.”

Caleb had heard this argument before. Some of the more liberal sects did not prohibit voting, but this branch of the Old Order Amish was firmly against it.

The bishop leveled a hard gaze on the young man, and for a moment Caleb thought there would be a tongue-lashing, but the bishop was old enough to be patient with the young.

“Would we try to rule as the greedy do?” he asked. “Will we try to grab power over other people’s possessions? What fellowship has righteousness with unrighteousness, and what communion hath light with darkness? On the day we do such as that we become like everyone else, and the battle is already lost.”

“There has to be a way,” Caleb Bender said, shaking his head. “Mebbe Gott will show us.”