Paradise Valley (9 page)

Marlon Harris was a tall Texan, the biggest man in the room. He wore a strange-looking tan suit with wide lapels trimmed in a darker brown, a string tie with a clasp made of silver inlaid with turquoise and coral, and a hat with a flat brim and slightly rounded dome. Apart from the buckskin color and the narrow band proudly displaying the name Stetson, his hat looked an awful lot like something an Old Order Amishman would wear. Smiling, Marlon Harris seemed right at home, and indeed came across as the kind of man who would be right at home virtually anywhere.

After the introductions were done, Caleb quieted the crowd as best he could, and began. Uncomfortable as he was with speaking before such a crowd, his discomfort was doubled by having to do it in English for the benefit of his two guests.

“Brethren, what we come here to talk about today is our problem with the schools. I don’t like it, and I don’t think anybody likes it much that our
kinder
are made to go to the consolidated school every day, mix all the time with Englisher children, and learn things we don’t want them to learn. So last week when I found out about this land in Mexico” – he held up the brochure, though most had already seen it – “I’m thinking mebbe it is an answer to prayer. But I don’t know nearly so much about it as Mr. Harris here, who is from Texas and has been to see the land with his own eyes, so I’ll chust let him talk.”

“Well now,” Marlon Harris said, rising to his impressive height, his booming voice a little overwhelming in the crowded living room. “Gentlemen, Avery here has told me all about your troubles with the schools in Ohio, and I’ve got good news for you. The government in Mexico couldn’t care less where your young’uns go to school. Or even
if
they go. In Mexico you can do whatever you like. You can run your
own
schools for all they care.”

He rubbed his hands together, smiling a little too broadly. He had their attention now. “So let me tell you about this parcel of land for sale in Paradise Valley. I’ve seen it myself, and boys, it’s a peach. We’re talking about five thousand acres of rich black dirt at six thousand feet in the temperate belt of the lovely state of Nuevo León, the jewel of Mexico. You can grow wheat year-round on this place. The whole thing is flat as a cow pond and hardly a tree or a rock in sight – ready to plow, and so soft you could turn it with a boat paddle. And it’s yours for a mere ten dollars an acre.”

He spread his hands and looked around the room. “Questions?”

Caleb Bender looked around the room too, at the faces. Marlon Harris smelled of tobacco and cologne, and his flashy style made him look like a huckster, an outsider trying to sell them a bill of goods. Too many of them were already looking at him a little sideways, their arms crossed on their chests.

At first no one even ventured a question, but then a man from down near Maysville, sitting in the back, raised his hand and cleared his throat.

“Everybody knows Mexico is a hot, dry place, full of rocks and snakes. You can’t grow nothing but cactus. Why would a farmer want to go there?”

Harris put on the patient smile of a schoolteacher, shaking his head. “Now, I’m gonna tell you the truth – yeah,
some
of Mexico is like that, in fact a good bit of it, especially in the low country, but we’re talkin’ about a mountain valley, high up in the Sierra Madre Orientals. Just wait till you see it! I’m telling you it’s an oasis, fellas, cool and green year-round.”

There were skeptical glances. Jonas Weaver raised a hand.

“How far is the closest produce market?”

“Great question! Paradise Valley is about fifty miles from Saltillo, where they’ve got a real nice market. Now, I know that’s a long way in a wagon, but the
good
news is, they’re already drawing up plans to extend the rail line down from Saltillo to where it’ll run within a few miles of Paradise Valley. You can see it for yourself on the map in the brochure. The dotted line represents the proposed route for the new rail line. When that goes in, why, the market will only be an hour away by rail. You’ll be able to haul your goods to Saltillo and be back home the same night.”

Harris seemed to be gaining a little ground until a cabinetmaker from up around Wooster raised his hand.

“What about the war?” he asked.

Marlon Harris threw his head back and laughed. “Where you been, boy? Why, the revolution’s been pretty much over for two years now! Things are calm as can be.”

Even Caleb raised an eyebrow, and the cabinetmaker persisted.

“Mr. Harris, I’d like to know how a revolution could be ‘pretty much’ over. Is there war or not?”

“Well, truth is, the war ended a while back, but some of the revolutionaries didn’t go home. The thing is, Pancho Villa’s army in the north was made up mostly of rabble from the border towns – brigands and thieves even
before
the revolution – and some of them enjoyed the looting and pillaging so much they kept on doing it after the fighting was over. So now they’ve got a slight problem with little groups of bandits roaming around, but the new government is working on it. From what I hear, it’s quieted down a lot just in the last year or so.”

This was news to Caleb. He’d heard rumors, but nothing this concrete. There were skeptical glances, and some of the men began to whisper among themselves in Dutch. Fortunately, the rest of their questions were all about the land itself. It was, after all, a roomful of farmers. In the end, Paradise Valley sounded almost too good to be true, aside from the rainfall issue, which they all assumed could be remedied with irrigation.

The serious questions came only after Harris and Fiedler left. Although in general the Amishmen didn’t trust the big Texan, what they gleaned from his answers was that this was indeed a decent and potentially productive tract of farmland in a place where they could raise their families without interference.

“We’d have to learn a new language,” one of them said.

Caleb shrugged. “We already have Dutch, High German and English,” he argued. “One more language shouldn’t be so hard.”

“What about the church?” another wanted to know. This was the big question and everybody knew it. For an Amish settlement to last, they would need a minister to lead church services on Sunday. More important, unless a bishop was willing to make the yearly pilgrimage to the colony, they wouldn’t be able to baptize anyone, no marriages would take place, and they couldn’t hold communion.

Caleb deferred to his minister, who had remained silent through the whole meeting up to now. Half of these men were members of his church.

“If enough of you decide to do this,” the minister said, “and you go down there and build homes in this Paradise Valley, and you’re able to thrive there, then jah, I’m thinking we could find a minister who would agree to come and live. I wouldn’t make a promise, but I might even do it myself. Mebbe we would have a selection and draw lots to find a
new
minister. Now, I can’t speak for the bishop, but as long as his health is good, I don’t see any reason why he wouldn’t be able to make a trip down there for a visit once a year.”

This was a great relief to Caleb, a major hurdle overcome. His people would never move to a place that had no hope of a church structure. The church was at the center of their lives.

“Fifty thousand dollars is a lot of money,” John Hershberger said, ever the pragmatist.

Caleb nodded. “Jah, it is, but they said they would sell us as much or as little as we want of the land. Our farms here are worth a good bit more than ten dollars an acre, and the agent said they will give us time to find people who want to go in with us.”

“Well, I think mebbe that will be the real problem,” John said. “Finding people. I don’t care what that Harris fella says, none of us has ever
seen
this place. Not even you, Caleb.”

Caleb nodded solemnly. “That’s the plain truth. Only a mighty foolish man would spend all he had on a piece of land without first looking it over.” He’d seen this one coming, and there was only one answer to it. “One of us will have to go and make a start in this Paradise Valley so we can know what it’s really like down there. That’s the only way.”

It would be hard. Pulling up stakes and leaving behind everything familiar, breaking ground in a new country without the help of neighbors, learning a new language, building a home, digging a well, feeding livestock, putting up barns and fences, all while planting crops to fend off next year’s hunger – it would be a massive undertaking. But it was, in Caleb’s mind, exactly the same price paid by the Amish pioneers who had first come to America in search of religious freedom. They had borne it stoically, in the sure knowledge they were doing the right thing. That was all that mattered. The man who accepted such a calling would need all the courage and conviction of his forefathers and, like them, the help of a benevolent Gott. He would have to be a man of vision, entirely convinced of the ultimate rightness of the task.

And it wouldn’t hurt anything if it was a man whose wife needed a dry climate to survive.

Caleb Bender took a deep breath and looked John Hershberger in the eye.

“And that man ought to be me.”

Chapter 9

Dat told the family about it over dinner, while they were all gathered around the long pine-plank table in the kitchen. They were moving to Mexico, and they would have to move quickly to take advantage of the rainy season. They would leave in two months.

The news hit Rachel like a thunderbolt.

Jake!

Her first thoughts were all about her secret boyfriend. She’d stolen enough time with him to know already, Jake Weaver was
the one
. Some things a girl just
knew
, right from the first moment. She knew in her heart, without the slightest doubt, she wanted to spend her life with Jake, but she was quickly learning that such knowledge could be a curse. She wasn’t even old enough to date, and now her father was going to haul the family to Mexico, a thousand miles away.

In two months!

Right after she reached courting age.

Rachel was quiet all through supper, and said very little while she helped clean up the kitchen afterward. When the dishes had all been washed, dried and put away, she went quietly to the back door, put on her heavy coat and slipped outside into the cold and dark. She didn’t even take a lantern.

It turned out she didn’t need one. A full moon hanging above the barn was so bright it cast shadows at the feet of trees and fences. The night sky was achingly clear, a billion polished stars winking at her as if all were right in the universe. The wind had quieted. The night was eerily still, and very cold. Rachel shrugged deeper into her coat, buried her fists in her pockets and angled across the yard toward the back lane. She had to be alone, to think. Her father’s news had left her reeling.

She walked past the barn and the smokehouse, on out the lane along the pasture fence all the way to the back of the Bender property. There she came upon an old familiar stump where she had often gone to play with her sisters and cousins – back when she was just a child. For a while she sat on the stump thinking of Mexico, and Jake. No matter how mature Jake was, she didn’t really believe any boy would wait for a girl so far away. Not for long, anyway, and she didn’t know how long it would be.

In the end, thinking about these things only made her feel worse, so when the cold began to creep into her bones she got up and trudged back down the lane toward home.

As she passed the barn lot she heard a noise and stopped. It came from behind the smokehouse, across the lane from the barn. At first she only heard a little whisper of a sound, like a sniff, but as she drew nearer and walked softer she could hear it more clearly. Someone was crying. Rachel tiptoed to the corner of the smokehouse and peeked around behind it.

Emma sat huddled against the wall, her face in her hands, weeping softly. In the shadows, wearing a dark coat and wool scarf, she was hard to see at first, but the moonlight lit her face when she looked up and saw Rachel peeking around the corner at her.

Rachel rushed to her sister’s side, knelt down with her and threw her arms around her shoulders.

“What’s wrong, Emma? What is it? Why are you crying?”

Emma’s eyes were red and swollen. Tears covered her cheeks. She buried her face in Rachel’s shoulder and wept anew, as if someone had died.

The sight of Emma crying shocked Rachel out of herself and filled her with compassion. Emma had always been the strong one, not given to tears or self-pity of any kind. Rachel had not seen her sister like this since her favorite colt died. Emma wept so fiercely she could not speak, so Rachel held her. She just held her, locking her arms about her sister and crooning to her that whatever the problem was it would be all right, that everything would be all right, that there was no storm they could not weather together. For the first few moments Rachel’s mind raced, until she realized that her father’s news must have hit Emma even harder than it had hit her. Emma was twenty and unmarried. If Levi didn’t offer marriage, and quickly, the move to Mexico meant leaving him behind.

After a few minutes Emma cried herself out. The wave passed and she raised her head, dabbing tears from her face with a handkerchief.

“Rachel, you just don’t know,” she rasped, hoarse from crying, locking onto her sister’s eyes in the moonlight, shaking her head slowly. “My whole world is about to end.” Emma’s voice grew smaller at the last, like a little girl. Her fingers covered her mouth and her face contorted again, fighting back another wave of crying.