Paradise Valley (14 page)
Their church district had voted just last year to allow a wringer-type washing machine to be hooked up by belt and pulley to a small, separate rope-start motor, and Caleb Bender had been among the first to rig such a contraption on his back porch. To ease his wife’s workload, he would do whatever was allowed.
The morning sun was peeking through the treetops when Emma went out to pour the first pot of hot water into the washing machine. A minute later she came storming back into the kitchen, where Rachel was helping her mother clean up from breakfast.
“Where is Harvey?” Emma demanded, hands on hips, head forward.
Mamm looked over her shoulder, drying a bowl with a dish towel. She was having one of her good days, not coughing too much. “I think he’s in the barn. Why?”
“Because somebody has taken the motor and I can’t wash clothes! I have a lot to do today. I’m not about to rub my fingers raw on a washboard, and anyways I don’t have time for foolishness.”
“The motor with the little pulley?” Mamm asked. “The one for the washing machine?”
“Jah, Mamm, that’s the only motor we have.”
Rachel bit her lip to keep from laughing out loud. Wiping her hands on a towel, she said, “I’ll go and see if I can find out what became of the motor, Emma. You should maybe calm down a little bit before you get your blood pressure up.” She winked at Emma on the way out.
Rachel found Harvey rummaging around in the tack room and stuck her head in the door.
“You might want to saddle a horse and make a run for it,” she said. “Your newlywed sister is on the warpath.”
When he looked up from the workbench there was not a trace of innocence in his devilish smile. “Why? I haven’t done anything.”
Neither of them heard Emma coming until she shoved her way past Rachel and barged into the tack room holding a piece of board like a baseball bat, threatening Harvey with it.
“Give me that motor or
say your prayers
,” Emma hissed.
Harvey threw his arms up in front of his face. He and Rachel were both laughing.
“You can’t hit me with that board, Emma – it has a nail in it.”
She lowered the board to look at the end of it. She’d picked it up from a scrap pile by the barn door where the boys had torn down an old shed last week, and it did, in fact, have a rusty nail sticking out of it.
“Good!” she said, cocking the board as if she would really swing it, though she too was biting back laughter.
“But I’ll get lockjaw,” Harvey said, “and then I won’t be able to tell you where I hid the motor.”
Emma’s face teetered between rage and laughter, but before she could say anything else, Harvey got off the stool and hugged her. Chuckling, he kissed her cheek and said, “It’s up in the mow. I’ll go get it and put it back for you.”
The board with the rusty nail was still cocked in her hands when Harvey went out the door. Lowering it, she looked at Rachel and both of them burst out laughing.
“I know what you’re going to say,” Emma said. “He wouldn’t work so hard to drive me crazy if he didn’t love me.”
Rachel shrugged. “It’s true.”
“I know that,” Emma said. “We are blessed to have such a family.”
By late afternoon the newlyweds had dressed and packed, loaded their freshly cleaned clothes into a buggy and headed out to visit each other’s kin. Watching their buggy rattle down the driveway and out into the road, a quiet new melancholy descended upon Rachel.
Emma was gone.
Yes, she would return, but in many ways she would not. She was Levi’s wife now. Emma would never again be quite the sister she was before, and the thought left Rachel with a lingering ache. Life was changing entirely too fast. Dat had always said,
“If you don’t like the way things are, just wait,”
but Rachel had always taken him to mean that familiar things would change the way leaves change from one season to the next, not that she would have to abandon everything familiar and move clear to Mexico.
Even after a celebration –
especially
after the noise and clamor of a celebration – the odd quiet that fell in Emma’s absence was palpable. Until now the impending trip had been an abstract, a storm on the horizon, but Emma’s sudden marriage rumbled through Rachel like echoes of distant thunder. Soon now she would be leaving her home. This was the only home Rachel had ever known, and she might never see it again.
Soon now.
Rachel was walking home from the store one afternoon, full of ominous, brooding thoughts, and was half a mile past the school when she heard a wagon coming up from behind, matched horses clopping happily along. As the wagon drew near, the clip-clop of hooves slowed and a familiar voice called out to her.
She turned to see Jake hauling back on the reins and bringing a pair of dapple Percherons to a shuddering stop. Beside him on the wagon seat was his brother William with his lunch pail on his lap. Her own two younger sisters waved to her from the back of the wagon.
“Would you like a ride?” Jake asked. His wide-brimmed hat was pushed back on his head and his sleeves were rolled up for work, the muscles in his forearms straining against the reins. “I was on my way back from town and thought I’d pick up the young ones from school,” he explained as she put her parcels into the back and climbed up onto the seat.
She settled on the bench next to William, but Jake gave him a look, whereupon William rolled his eyes, climbed over the seat and sat down with an audible huff in the back of the wagon with the girls.
Jake glanced over his shoulder, laughing gently as he snapped the reins, nudging the horses into action. “Thanks, little brother. Someday I’ll return the favor.”
Rachel stayed where she was, sitting primly on the other end of the seat from Jake with her hands in her lap. After all, they were in an open wagon in broad daylight, and her sisters were right there in the wagon.
“I love this time of year,” Jake said, watching a four-horse team plow a field as he passed. Along the road little blades of green appeared, daffodils and jonquils raising their dainty heads to see if spring had arrived.
“I love the smell of fresh-turned earth, the warm sun on the back of my neck. Look at those birds.”
A pair of red-tailed hawks wheeled and hovered in the sky above the farmer and his plow, waiting to pounce on displaced field mice.
“This is the best time of the year,” Jake said quietly. “The time of beginnings.”
“Or endings,” Rachel muttered, even now besieged by an uncharacteristic melancholy. “It’s the worst time to think of leaving, when home shines its brightest.”
“Cheer up,” he said with a warm smile. “Think about something else.”
“It’s hard to do that when everything reminds me all the time. Every day, Andy is bringing his tools to the house and plowing our fields –
his
fields now. There’s sadness in Dat’s eyes, just watching. Mamm is already packing, my sisters are making canvas tents for us to live in until we get a house, and Dat spends his days sorting his tools, choosing what to take and what to leave behind.”
“You mean there’s not enough room on the train?”
“Oh no, there’s room on the train, but when we get there we have to cross the mountains. We can only carry what fits on our wagons. It could be worse, though. Dat got a letter from that Mr. Harris the other day, saying a German neighbor is going to come guide us over the mountains, and he’s bringing an extra wagon. Now we can take Mamm’s mattress and the washing machine at least, so we won’t have to use a scrubbing board.” She sighed heavily. “I’m already homesick and we haven’t even left yet.”
Reaching across the seat and lifting her downcast face with a gentle finger, Jake said, “Everything will be fine, Rachel. You’ll see. Your dat is a good man, a
strong
man. He’ll take care of his family.”
She nodded. “Jah, he always has. It’s just hard for me because I’m only a girl.” Her thoughts had plagued her for a long time, and now they surrounded her. “A girl has no say over her own life, that’s all.”
His brow furrowed as he listened, but he said nothing. He waited.
“Like school,” she said. “Men in the government – men I don’t even know – decided I should go to school every day, and so I go, like it or not. Because of this, my father decides we should move to Mexico, and so I’ll go, like it or not. One day I’ll get married, and then my husband will decide everything for me, like it or not. A girl has no more say-so than a dandelion seed. It’s just not fair, that’s all.”
Jake pondered this for a long time with a wry smile, then said quietly, “Whether it’s fair or not depends a lot on the man you marry. My dat decides things in our house, but never without taking my mamm’s feelings into account. Dat says a man who is strong in his heart is gentle in his hands.”
She read between the lines, heard the promise in Jake’s words, and it brought her great comfort. Riding on the bench seat next to Jake in the fine spring weather, with the smell of freshly plowed earth in the air and a cool breeze blowing across the country road, the melancholy melted away and before she knew it Rachel was smiling.
Jake was right. The right man could make all the difference. Emma had been distraught about everything until she married Levi, but she seemed happy enough now, as if she knew things would be all right so long as Levi was there. Even Mamm didn’t seem terribly upset by the idea of leaving the house where all of her children were born. She had her quiet regrets, but even though she did not possess Emma’s boundless energy and inherent courage, Mamm managed to take everything in stride – so long as Dat was there. Looking back over the frequent misfortunes of farm and family that Rachel had seen in her short life, she saw that the women remained unshaken so long as the men were there, standing between them and total disaster.
She had seen it in her mamm’s eyes the year of the drought, when they lost the corn crop. Mamm watched the men huddle and squat, plucking straws from the ground and chewing the ends as they talked in the shade, figuring out what they would do, and as she watched her husband’s face, the worry left her and a look of relief came into her eyes. Rachel had seen it plain as day. Mamm trusted Gott, but she also trusted Dat.
There was a kind of comfort in knowing that someone else was in control so long as it was someone faithful, someone who cared for his wife as Gott cared for His children. Someone strong enough to be gentle with his wife. Someone who not only would
allow
his wife to be everything Gott intended her to be, but
wanted
it so. She had seen the other kind too, in the downcast eyes of women whose husbands ruled with an iron hand that squeezed the dreams out of them. If the right man could complete a woman, the wrong one could crush her. The choosing, as Jake himself had said, was everything.
Rachel stole glimpses of Jake’s face now, and saw the same thing Mamm had seen in her father – the peace and patience of a self-aware man, confident that he could deal with whatever came. And as she looked at his gentle face, the face of a friend, she heard again the words he had said to her that first night.
“I would do a great many things for you.”
She slid a hand across very slowly and gripped the front edge of the seat halfway between them. A moment later his fingers came to rest on top of hers. For now, it would have to do. For now, it was all she needed.
Caleb rented the railcars and paid for them in advance. The railway agent went with him and marked the cars, sitting among a string of others on a siding in Fredericksburg. It took three days to get everything packed up, hauled into town and loaded on the cars.
It was a week of long and tearful goodbyes, as one by one Martha and Caleb Bender’s brothers and sisters dropped by the house with their surrey-loads of children and grandchildren.
The Sunday before they were to leave they attended gma – church services – in Abe Byler’s barn loft. A soft rain fell during the service, and though they were all thankful for the spring rains, the steel gray sky only added to the already somber mood. Even the youth singing that night, usually upbeat, fell victim to the overcast. The Benders would be pulling out the next morning. They had lived in Salt Creek Township as far back as anyone could remember, and their departure would rip a gaping hole in the fabric of the community. What was worse, everyone suspected the rift would grow larger over the next year or two as more families migrated south.
The rain stopped in late afternoon, and after the singing Jake and Rachel slipped away behind the buggy shed. They didn’t talk much; anything worth saying had already been said, so they just held each other. Rachel made him promise to write, and then he left her with a kiss that she would long remember.
They left home on a cool, breezy morning under a bluebird sky, the previous day’s rain having washed the air and fed the newly awakened earth to bursting. Everywhere the world was drunk with sunlight and succulence, shouting out that rare spring green that makes new grass and budding leaves seem lit from within. Beside the house, the kitchen garden had exploded into bloom overnight, and along the front fence a garish army of tulips stood at starched attention, beaming.
The day was bright and perfect – cruelly so, for it broke Rachel’s heart. It nearly killed them all to leave on such a day.
No one came to see them off. Their church friends had all said their goodbyes the day before, and today they would all be busy with washing and farming. Jake would be working somewhere on his father’s place. Rachel could only cling to the hope that she would get a glimpse of him one last time as her family paraded past the Weaver place. On a morning like this, she knew for a fact that everywhere they looked as their odd caravan wormed its way down country roads toward Fredericksburg, Amishmen would be out in the fields working.
