Paradise Valley (35 page)

She spent Christmas Day with her family, quietly, in prayer, Bible reading, and fasting. Mamm had decorated the mantel and the doorways with pine boughs, and Rachel and her sisters had even made tallow candles for the windows. In the evening they lit the candles and sang Christmas songs, and Rachel would have thought the occasion as beautiful and serene as any in memory had it not been for the thin blanket of homesickness that accumulated on her like snowfall.

The next morning the family exchanged small gifts, mostly handmade items and tools, useful things. They had drawn names, so each person received only one gift, with the exception of the three new babies. Everyone wanted to spoil them, so Emma and Mary were still opening presents long after everyone else had finished. The very last gift in the pile was a small package wrapped in plain brown paper and tied with baling twine. The name
Amos
was scrawled on it in a crude hand.

When Mary peeled away the paper to reveal a shiny new harmonica she paused and just sat there cradling it in her hands, staring at it. Aaron bit his lip, trying in vain to hold back an eager pride. His hand made a little pushing motion toward Amos, who appeared to be clapping his little hands while he rested with his twin sister in the wood box at Mary’s feet.

Mary clearly didn’t know what to do, for the harmonica was a musical instrument and such things were forbidden. Speechless and flustered she looked to her father, who sat off to the side in a kitchen chair with his arms folded across his chest, watching. Everyone’s eyes turned to Dat, waiting for his verdict.

Dat contemplated the thing for a moment, his long beard moving slightly as his chin worked. In the silence Rachel heard the faint moan of a harmonica floating over distant fields, mingling with the silver laughter of a lost brother, and it brought a tear to her eye. Dat must have heard it too, for his eyes grew soft. Apparently, his son’s illicit harmonica had not escaped his attention after all.

“Well, aren’t you gonna give it to him?” Dat said gruffly, and Mary smiled.

She tried to give it to Little Amos, but the month-old infant’s hands were too small and weak yet to hold a harmonica.

“It’s all right, Little Amos,” Aaron whispered, lowering himself to sit cross-legged next to the wood box and taking the harmonica from his sister. “You’ll grow into it.”

Leaning close so that the baby fastened his eyes on the shiny instrument, Aaron coaxed the tiniest note through the harmonica. Little Amos’s fingers clenched, his arms shook, his feet pedaled, his face crinkled into a smile, and his uncle Aaron shuddered from head to toe with pure joy.

Schulman and his wife joined them for the midday feast, a lavish affair almost as grand as Thanksgiving had been. The menu included smoked ham and venison, for the boys had gone hunting on the ridge Christmas Eve and brought down a deer. And the menu included sauerkraut. They would be eating a lot of sauerkraut this winter.

After too much lunch Schulman unbuttoned the top button of his pants and insisted on going for a walk. Caleb went with him, and as they were passing the corral Schulman stopped to stare at the pinto pony trotting around the fence line next to Caleb’s standard-bred buggy horse.

“Caleb, is this the same pinto that bandit traded you a couple months ago?”

“Oh, jah,” Caleb said. “Miriam took a liking to him and made a pet of him. He turned out to be a sturdy little saddle horse after all, and sometimes they use him to pull the hack. Still a little rough with a buggy, though.”

The pinto ran alongside the taller standard-bred, precisely matching his speed if not his aristocratic gait. The horse’s ribs no longer stuck out. He held his head high, prancing, his brushed coat sleek and shiny in the slanting winter sunlight.

Schulman shook his head, leaning his forearms on the fence. “If I’d been there, I would have shot that bandit, Caleb. I’d have shot all of them.”

Caleb studied his friend’s face for a moment, the hard eyes, the set jaw. Ernst Schulman’s wagon never left home without a lever-action rifle and a side arm on board, and he meant what he said.

“You would kill four men? For a
horse
, yet?”

Schulman nodded. “Vermin,” he said. “No great loss to the world.”

Caleb shook his head. “Ernst, these men were not meant to be as they are. Look at this horse,” he said, watching the pinto prance. “Why, we could have shot him three months ago and you would have said the same – ‘no great loss to the world.’ But look at the difference when we treat him with respect for just a little while.”

“Jah,” Schulman said, “but horses have more sense than men. Men are stubborn.”

The real highlight of the day was the Christmas program put on by Miriam’s school children that afternoon. All of her students came, and the Mexican kids brought their families with them to watch. Domingo brought half of them from San Rafael, and his sister Kyra came with him to watch her two little sons perform. She immediately sought out Miriam.

Rachel watched from a distance as her sister shared laughter and secrets with her beautiful Mexican friend, and it struck her that Kyra looked more like Miriam than her own sisters. It warmed her heart to see that Miriam had found such a friend.

The kids had been practicing for weeks. With their families present, plus the Schulmans, it was a packed house – standing room only. It was a rare treat for Amish kids to participate in such a public performance, and they reveled in the attention.

Rachel laughed until she cried as the children put on their Christmas play, wearing grown-up robes that piled around their ankles and hats that kept falling into their eyes, muffing the lines of kings and shepherds alike. But they finally got the Christ child born, and then they sang songs of the season and recited poems they had written themselves, little arms miming trees and ocean waves. Afterward, as darkness fell and Mamm lit the candles in the windows, a houseful of people from three different countries sang Christmas songs, a cappella, in Spanish.

And it was beautiful. Rachel particularly loved listening to Schulman. He had a rich baritone voice, and his eyes reflected the genuine pleasure he found in the rare opportunity to sing among a group.

Before the guests left for home Caleb read the Christmas story from a Spanish Bible, said a prayer of thanks for the year behind them and hope for the year to come, then sent them on their way with his blessings – and a good many leftovers. When Schulman got back to his wagon he found that someone had loaded a barrel of sauerkraut onto it.

Laughing, he clapped Caleb on the back and said cheerfully, “Jah, Herr Bender, I will be more than happy to help you dispose of your cabbage!”

As the Schulmans disappeared into the night, Miriam came outside wrapping a shawl about her shoulders, looking for Domingo. She spotted him helping his sister and the others climb into his rickety oxcart. Clutching a big book against her chest Miriam started toward the wagon, but halfway there she slowed and stopped, mesmerized by what she saw.

Two of the adults held lanterns aloft, and Kyra’s youngest boy flashed through the pool of light as Domingo tossed him into his mother’s arms. For a split second the lanterns illuminated both their faces – the dark-eyed child giggling hysterically in mid-flight, and the strong, graceful man whose eyes laughed with him. The sight, fleeting though it was, stirred something deep within her, something profoundly akin to a memory, and it seemed to her that the earth trembled. She waited till the last of the children were on board before she composed herself and called to him from the darkness.

“Domingo, could I see you for a moment, please?”

He had already braced a leg to climb up, but when she called to him he turned and came to her.

“Sí ? What is it?” He stopped two feet away, but she couldn’t see his face. Silhouetted against the lanterns with his wide-brimmed hat, it struck her that he could almost have been mistaken for an Amishman.

“I wanted . . .” She found herself suddenly flustered for no apparent reason, and words tripped over themselves in unwarranted embarrassment. “I wanted to thank you for helping us with the school.”

“It is my pleasure.”

“I have a gift for you,” she said, hastily unfolding her arms to show him the book. “A woman from the village came to me with this. She could not read, and she wouldn’t say where the book came from, so I can only guess that it was looted from someone’s hacienda by one of the men in her family. I traded a shawl for it.”

She held the heavy book out to him, but he made no move to take it.

“I have nothing to give you in return,” he said quietly.

Miriam shook her head and shoved the book closer. “Owe me if you must, but take the book. I have watched you in the class. I didn’t want to say anything in front of the children, but – ”

“I know,” he said. “You have pretended not to notice. It was kind of you to say nothing.”

“It’s perfectly all right, Domingo, but learning to sound out words is only the beginning. Now you must read and read until the words come easily. This book will help.”

His hands came up slowly and embraced the book with a kind of reverence. Turning a little to one side to catch the light from the lanterns, Domingo muttered along with his forefinger as it traced slowly over the gilded title.

“
Don . . . Quijote de la . . . Mancha
. What is it about?”

Miriam shrugged. “I’m not sure. I haven’t had time to read more than a few pages, and what is said about it in the front, but I think it’s a story about a crazy man. Anyway, it doesn’t really matter. What’s important is that you get plenty of practice reading. Practice, practice, practice, and before you know it, you will read as fast as you can speak.”

Domingo hefted the book in his hands. “There should be enough words in here to last a lifetime, and if I can’t read it, I can use it as a club.”

Miriam snickered. Her fingers covered her mouth and she suddenly found herself trying to remember a time when any Amish boy she’d dated made her laugh.

“Muchas gracias,” he said, running his fingers over the cover of the book. “In my whole life, no one has ever given me such a great gift.”

Something in the reverence with which he said this struck her as so solemn and so deeply personal it pierced her like a sword. Was he that poor? Her gaze dropped to the book in his hands, mostly because she could not bear it.

“It is only a book,” she muttered.

The tilt of his hat told her he had raised his face to look at her, though she could not see his eyes. His hand rose up until his fingertips lightly brushed her cheek, and his voice came softly from the darkness.