Centennial (44 page)

So on the first of February, Levi quietly slipped out to where Fordney had his gunsmith’s shop. An automatic bell jangled as he opened the door and a pleasant woman in black dress and white apron but without white cap appeared: “Mr. Fordney? He’s workin’ in back. I’m Mrs. Tripple.”

“Came to see about a gun,” Levi said, almost aggressively.

Mrs. Tripple was accustomed to country lads who took the offensive in such matters, and she said easily, “You wait chust there. I’ll call the mister.”

In a moment Fordney appeared, a brawny man with great square shoulders and features to match. “Now what is it?”

“I want a good rifle.”

“How much you prepared to pay?”

“I could go as high as twelve dollars ... but only for a good one.”

“For twelve you get a good one.” Brushing aside two rifles that lay on his workbench, he said, “Those two, five dollars each, but you wouldn’t like ’em.”

Levi hefted one, found it balanced too heavily toward the stock, and said, “That one I wouldn’t like.”

“You noticed?” Fordney laughed. “A little wood heavy. Now, I have a fine rifle over here, but it’s eighteen.”

“Too much,” Levi said. In the rack he noticed an older gun with a most handsome curly-maple stock, well worked with brass fittings. Fifty-five inches long and with an octagonal bluish barrel and a ramrod of well-used hickory, it was a fine weapon, almost the epitome of a Lancaster rifle. Unfortunately, it still carried the old flintlock mechanism. “Can I see that one?”

“That’s a very special gun,” Fordney said. “Would it cost too much?”

“No. I could let you have that’n for twelve dollars. But it’s flintlock, as you can see. Made it for a man nineteen years ago.”

Fordney pulled the rifle down and showed Levi the date etched into the top of the barrel: “M. Fordney. 1825.” Levi took the gun, fitted it to his shoulder, and said, “I never felt a better.”

Fordney watched him handle the piece and liked the way he used it. “Aren’t you the young Zendt fellow?” Levi blushed. “The one they been shunnin’?” He called Mrs. Tripple and told her, “This here’s young Zendt. The colt that acted up with the Stoltzfus girl.”

“She needed some acting up with,” Mrs. Tripple said, returning to her kitchen.

“So the rifle’s yours for twelve dollars.”

“I don’t know how to work a flintlock.”

“Hold your horses. I’ll change the flintlock to percussion.”

“You will!” Levi’s voice proved the delight he felt at the prospect of getting such a gun. He put it to his shoulder again and asked, “Is this gun as good as it feels?”

“One of the best I ever made. Man used it six years, then traded it back to me for a percussion. Stupid ass. I told him I could switch it to percussion, but he said, ‘I don’t want nothin’ that’s been altered.’ So now you get a bargain.”

He told Levi to come back later, but the young man replied, “I’m not doin’ anything,” and Fordney, realizing that he had nowhere to go, said, “You can watch,” and he rummaged among his boxes to find the bits of gear that would be required to switch the old flintlock over to a new percussion-cap mechanism. Placing each item on the bench before him, he took the beautiful gun he had made so long ago and began disassembling it.

He unscrewed the frizzen spring and removed the frizzen altogether. He dispensed with the flash pan, too, and the hammer that had held the flint. Then with a hard black gum mixed with metal filings, he packed the screw holes and sanded them over. With a file he enlarged, ever so gently, the touch hole and rammed in a graver which would thread it. Into this hole he screwed the drum, adjusting the nipple so that the hammer would strike properly.

Testing the new mechanism many times to see that all parts functioned, he then grabbed a handful of percussion caps—little forms of powder that looked like a man’s top hat—and motioned Levi to follow him outdoors. They went to a field, where Fordney swabbed the bluish barrel, poured in the right amount of powder, pushed down the greased patch to form a bind, inserted the ball and then placed the percussion cap on the nipple. Handing the gun to Levi, he said, “Hit the tree over there,” and Levi placed the stock against his shoulder, felt the sleek brass inlays and sighted along the barrel. Squeezing the trigger with gentle, even pressure, he heard the hammer trip, caught a glimpse of it descending on the percussion cap, saw the momentary flash and felt the powder inside the barrel explode, sending the bullet in a revolving motion straight and true to the limb he had aimed at.

Fordney said, “The Fenstermacher boy, that’s the preacher’s son, he told me he could load and fire a gun like that three times in two minutes. I didn’t believe him, but he could.”

Levi fired two more shots and then Fordney tried his hand. It was a good gun, subtly balanced, beautifully crosshatched at the wrist. In some respects it was better now than when it had first been sold, for the curly maple was seasoned and the barrel had nested with no chance of gaps.

Fordney handed the gun formally to Levi and said, “None better. Oh, I have some for twenty or twenty-five, but only because the brassware comes from Germany. This one, all Lancaster.”

As they walked back to the shop Fordney said, “I’d ask you if you wanted to work with me, seein’ as how you like guns, but I suppose you’ll be headin’ west.” Levi felt it prudent to say nothing, and Fordney added, “I should have gone west ... years ago.”

Levi smuggled his rifle home and hid it behind the sausage machine. He now had a good Conestoga, four excellent gray horses and two of Mahlon’s he intended to borrow. He had a vague plan of hooking up with the next caravan of people moving west. He would tolerate Lancaster and Lampeter no more. Even if they relaxed the shunning, which they probably would in the spring, he would not live down his disgrace.

He went about his work as industriously as ever, grinding the pork, mixing it with herbs and cramming it into the holder on the sausage machine. When it was filled to the top, he attached one end of a cleaned hog’s gut to the spout on the machine, then by cranking a large wheel which operated a screw, he applied pressure on the ground meat and slowly it forced its way into the farthest knotted end of the intestine. When the skin was filled to bursting, he took the open end off the machine and tied it in a tight knot, giving him eight to ten feet of the best sausage. Later, when it had set, the length would be cut to selling size.

He made his scrapple with added care, as if he were just learning the trade, cooking the pig scraps and the cornmeal for hours, spicing them just right and pouring the hot liquid into small deep pans, where a good inch of yellow pork fat would gather on top, airproofing the scrapple so that it could be kept for three months.

He was a good butcher, and he assumed that when he got to Oregon he would continue making scrapple and sausage and souse. There won’t be many out there can make any better, he thought.

Each Tuesday and Friday he walked the long distance into Lancaster to clean up the market and drive the scraps out to the orphanage, and on the fourth week after shunning started, he asked Elly, “Why did they shun you?”

“I have no parents. They called me a bastard.”

“That’s not your fault.”

“They let on as if it was.”

“How’d you get here?”

“They found me on the church step.”

He said no more that day, but when the other Zendts were in church, he walked down to the grove of trees and sat for a long time in silence. He straddled the trunk of a fallen oak and looked carefully at each part of the handsome farm his family had accumulated, one building at a time, one field patiently after another. There was no better farm in Lancaster County and he knew it, but it had grown sour—it had grown so terribly sour.

He covered his square, beard-trimmed face in his hands. He was not a man to allow tears, but he did sigh deeply and mutter, “I will stand no more. On Tuesday morning I will leave this place.”

At the big Sunday dinner he ate as if he had been starving for a week, taking big helpings of everything and ending with two kinds of pie, shoo-fly, whose sticky bottom he loved, and cherry, the best of all. He was congenial to everyone, and on Monday he volunteered to help his mother make cup cheese, a fact which startled her; when he got to Oregon he wanted to know how it was made.

He noted carefully as she took a couple of gallons of milk and cream that she had allowed to sour and put it on the stove to heat. “Don’t boil it ... ever,” she warned. “Just hot enough to ouch your finger.”

He was disappointed when all she did was strain off excess water and place the curds in a bag. “What happens next?” he asked.

“Oh, tomorrow you can help me again. I crumble the curds and rub in this much soda, and we’ll put it in a crock. It’ll sour and smell and become runny. Then it’s ripe, so you set the crock in hot water till it’s warm again, and you stir in some salt and a little water with a squirt of vinegar in it.” She hefted the dripping bag onto a peg over the sink and said, “Tomorrow you can help me finish.”

Tomorrow he would not be here.

On Tuesday at three in the morning he helped load the Zendt wagons with the last batch of souse and scrapple and sausage he would make. He watched his four brothers drive off to town, and as soon as they were gone he went inside and kissed his mother goodbye. She guessed that he might be running away; his interest in cup cheese had been so unusual that she had tried to fathom why. She knew. She asked, “Where you goin’?” He replied with another kiss and went out to get his gun and his two horses. He also took the two belonging to Mahlon, plus whatever harness was needed.

He drove the four horses down to the White Swan and hitched them to the Conestoga. He left Hell Street in darkness, driving over to Hollinger to pick up the two horses boarding there. “That’s a fine team of six,” the farmer said approvingly. “Almost looks as if you’d matched ’em.” As Levi harnessed them to the Conestoga, completing his team, the farmer asked, “You’re the Zendt boy. Ain’t they shunnin’ you?”

“No more,” Levi said.

By back roads he drove past Lancaster and out to the orphanage. Pulling up outside the gate and hitching his lead horse to a tree, he started toward the house, but remembered his valuable gun lying unprotected in the wagon. Grabbing it, he went inside and bellowed, “Elly! Elly Zahm! Come down here!”

It was barely dawn but the work girl was up and busy at her chores. She appeared with her arms wet and her skirt tied behind her knees. Her scrawny face was red and her hair unkempt. As soon as she looked at Levi she knew that some powerful thing was afoot, and she was in no way perturbed when he said, “Get your things. We’re goin’ west.”

It took her three seconds—one, two, three—to know that her destiny required her to join this man, and his gun and his wagon, and his waiting horses. She had no conception of what was being asked of her, but she knew that there could be no viable alternative. She dashed inside the orphanage and grabbed the few things that belonged to her.

A girl shouted, “He’s taking Elly Zahm ... with a gun.”

The mistress, not yet dressed, hurried to the front door in her gown, and with one glance, apprehended what was happening. “Elly!” she screamed. “Come back here.”

“I am never coming back,” the thin girl said stubbornly.

“That man’s a monster.”

“I’m going,” Elly cried, clutching her good dress in her arms as she hurried toward the Conestoga.

“Shall I fetch the police?” one of the girls shouted.

“No!” the mistress snapped. “He’d kill us all. Let her go. She’s nothing but a whore. Just like her mother before her.”

And that would have been the benediction with which Elly left the orphanage had not a tall, lively girl, blond and quite pretty, broken from the crowd of watchers, running to Elly and thrusting into her hand a small bag of carefully saved coins.

“Laura Lou Booker,” the mistress screamed, “come back here! You’re as bad as she is!”

Ignoring the command, the tall girl clasped Elly, kissing her fervently on the cheek. “You’re escaping for all of us,” she whispered, and when Elly tried to return the precious money, Laura Lou kissed her again, whispering, “Remember what we said. A wife must have a little money of her own.”

Clutching the few dollars, Elly Zahm, sixteen years old, walked resolutely through the gates of the orphanage and climbed into the Conestoga. Levi Zendt, his Melchior Fordney rifle in his left hand, called to his six horses and headed out of Lancaster for the last time.

It was only twelve miles to Columbia, where the famous bridge waited to lift them across the mighty Susquehanna, but because the six grays were new to the wagon and to each other, the going was slow. They did not reach the river till nightfall, and when they did the tollgate was closed. This required that they sleep on the eastern bank, and as the stars appeared, Elly faced the first crisis of her long trip west.

“We cannot share the wagon till we’ve been married,” she said. “I’ll sleep under that tree.” Taking a blanket, she prepared to do so.

This Levi would not permit, for he realized that as a gentleman he must allow her to have the wagon, but she had a practical mind and said, “You must guard the wagon. Our things are there.” And she slept beside the Susquehanna.

In the morning Levi asked, “Would you like it if we found a preacher on the other side?”

“Very much,” she said. “I want no bastards.”

Levi hitched up the horses and got the Conestoga into line for the crossing. The man in the wagon ahead turned out to be a German on his way to Illinois, and as they waited he came back to talk with the runaways. “In our schoolbooks in Germany we had pictures of this bridge,” he said, pointing to the engineering marvel. “Longest bridge of its kind in the world.”