Pennsylvania Omnibus (34 page)

The shed was no motel, but it
was plenty fine according to the standards of the TRACE soldiers. It was
certainly better than they could expect most anywhere they’d be billeted
outside the Amish Zone. Many times in the past, through their battles and
travels, the team had slept in caves, or dens of rocks. They’d often stretched
themselves out on the frozen ground of New Pennsylvania for a shivery night of
very little sleep. No, for them, Matthias’s shed would do just fine for the
week, and they were glad to have it.

Being dead, the Yoders could no
longer be relied upon to bring meals, so a committee of the Amish had created a
rotating meal-assignment list that would spread the responsibility of feeding
the inhabitants of Matthias’s farm until it came time for them all to leave.
These arrangements were a matter of course for the Amish, and were never seen
as a burden. Jed remembered that his family back in the old world was
constantly preparing food to be delivered somewhere, for some charitable reason
or another. Among the Amish, a person’s sense of self-worth and personal value
was intricately tied to the communal idea of helping others. Independence and
individuality were never considered positive things to be sought after.
Dependence on one another, and losing oneself in the body of the brethren, were
the foundations of the community. To
not
have that extra work to do
would have been quite troubling for the plain people.

Jed gave his little bedroom
over to Dawn, and the four other men bedded down on fleeces and blankets in the
tiny kitchen. They all slept well after the ordeal of the previous day. Just
before bed, Dawn had pressed a small bottle of white pills into Jed’s hand.
“Q,” she’d said. “In case you need it.”

On Sunday morning, Jed awoke
early and cleaned up his area, stowing his fleece and blanket out of the way so
that the kitchen could be used. He wanted to be up early enough to show the
soldiers who’d slept out in the barn how to perform many of the daily farm
tasks. Since they’d be there for a week, and since Matthias wouldn’t be able to
work, the soldiers were expected to pitch in. It was the Amish way.

Jed stepped out into the cool
morning air and inhaled deeply. The scents of manured fields and fresh hay, and
the pungent aroma of damp grass made him feel almost like he was at home.
Almost. There were lingering doubts in him that threw everything just a little
off kilter. It isn’t natural for a human to
not
be grounded in “place”
and “time.” To be cast adrift unsettles the soul, and until a new place becomes
home, it remains foreign. Jed felt unmoored from the foundations of his life,
and even his Amishness wasn’t quite the anchor that it had always been for
him.

He wasn’t excited about waking
the soldiers in the milking shed at 4:30 a.m. either, but it needed to be done,
and the cows certainly wouldn’t milk themselves. They were used to being milked
at this hour, which meant that their udders would be full and giving the
animals a feeling of urgency. The cows knew when it was almost time to let down
their milk, and Jed had seen Zoe so eager to be milked at milking time that her
teats were literally leaking the fluid when he’d gone in to start the
process.

He pulled open the shed door,
expecting to be an irritant to the soldiers, only to be pleasantly surprised by
what he saw. Several lanterns were already burning in the small shed, and their
yellow-orange light flickered and cast long shadows against the walls. It seems
Jed wouldn’t have to wake the men after all. Apparently, Eagles had already—to
his own evident joy and amusement—rudely woken the other men, and he was now
showing the sleepy team how to milk the cows. The soldiers were all crowded
around a stall while the burly wild man tried to explain the process of milking
in his broken English.

“Eeguls juicing cow!” he said
to Jed as soon as he noticed him watching from the doorway. He had a huge smile
on his face. It was evident that the salvager was very pleased with himself for
recognizing the need, and for taking on the task.

Jed had never seen Eagles
without a big chunk of uncured
tobac
in his mouth, so he was a little
surprised that greenish goo didn’t fly from the man’s lips as he spoke. In
fact, the man wasn’t chewing the green tobacco at all.

“Squeezing teat down. Topping
to bottom. Ziiiip! Juicing!” Eagles repeated the feat again and again, and then
added his other hand. “Ziiip! Ziip! Bothing hands now playing musics!”

“I’ll never figure that out,”
Ducky said with a sleepy scowl.

“Little man figuring out!”
Eagles shouted angrily. “Little man eating not if not juicing cow!” The big man
pointed around the barn randomly and said, “Farm!” Then he pointed at the cow
and said, “Cow!” Then he pointed at the teats and said, “Juice!” Then he
pointed at his mouth and said, “And eating only then!” To conclude his
filibuster, he pointed at Ducky. “Juicing cow no? Eating no!”

“Somebody give this man some
tobacco,” Pook said, shaking his head.
“He’s a little cranky in the morning.”

“Not cranking, dummy! Shutting
the Pook!” Eagles snapped. His right hand continued the milking, but his free
hand began to strike out, flailing at the soldiers wildly, and he succeeded in
knocking Billy off the neighboring stool. Eagles stopped milking then and stood
up, glaring at Pook. “You!” He narrowed his eyes in a threatening way, pointing
at the rebel leader.

Pook looked around. “Me?”

“You!”

“Me what?”

“Juicing cow.”

“Wait.
I’m
juicing the
cow?”

Eagles nodded. “Now!”

Pook grinned. “You’re kidding
me, right?”

Eagles glared at Pook, but
didn’t say a word.

Pook shook his head. “I’m an
officer now. I’m not milking any cow.”

The wild man snarled and then
nodded again. He shrugged, and then hauled back and punched Ducky right in the
face. The little man flew backward and landed on his rump, skidding up against
the wall of the shed.

“Whoa!” Pook yelled, and pulled
his weapon, pointing it at Eagles. “What did you do that for?”

Ducky, now propped up against
the far wall, shook his head and rubbed his jaw. He tried to clear his vision,
and a few of the other soldiers ran to help him up.

“Pook juicing cow!” Eagles
demanded.

Pook was pointing the weapon at
Eagles and trying to figure out what had just happened. He backed up slowly and
then reached over to steady Ducky. “Why did you punch
him
and not
me?
”

Eagles made another fist, and
then reached behind him with his other hand and snatched Billy up from the
stool. “Being Pook is boss!”

Ducky looked up at Pook while
still rubbing his jaw. “I think he’s saying that if you don’t get milking, he’s
going to kick all of our butts.”

“What the—?” Pook said.

Eagles tightened his fist and
looked at Billy.

“Okay! Okay!” Pook said.
“Sheesh! Unbelievable.”

“Juicing, now!” Eagles said.

“Juicing now,” Pook said. He
exhaled deeply and sat down on the stool and took the teats in his hands.

Eagles looked around and
smiled. He smacked his hand together like he was done with his work, and winked
at Jed. “Timing for tobac!” he said as he walked out of the shed.

Jed watched as the wild
salvager skipped across the dirt drive on his way to the small house. As Eagles
walked, he tossed up a piece of metal that glinted in the moonlight, commanding
Jed’s attention. Eagles caught the piece of metal deftly and then tossed it up
again. Just then, Ducky walked up next to Jed, still working his jaw back and
forth and stretching his neck.

“Hmmm…” Ducky said to Jed. “I
wonder if Eagles got that okcillium lighter back somehow. I thought he’d lost
it in the firefight with Transport in No Man’s Land, when you and Dawn were
first captured.”

MONDAY

A dozen Amish men arrived at
Matthias’s farm just as the pink-orange glow of sunrise began to paint the
eastern sky. They brought two large wagons, filled with tons of lumber and
building supplies for the new barn. Heavy beams cut from ancient trees,
rough-cut studs, and one inch-thick siding boards were strapped on with heavy
hand-made ropes.

Pook’s team worked alongside
the Amish men, unloading all of the materials. Then two of the Amish craftsmen
began leveling and laying out the foundation and base of the banked barn, while
another team began cutting and notching the heavy beams like puzzle pieces,
according to plans they stored only in their heads. By noon, the Amish artisans
were teaching Pook and his team how to lay concrete block. Although the barn
would be built on Saturday, this prep team was sent to make sure that things
went smoothly on barn-raising day.

Jed and Dawn took the
opportunity to spend some time together, so in minutes they were walking along
the tree-lined roads of the Amish Zone, stopping every once in a while to study
neighboring farms and structures. As they walked, Dawn briefed Jed on what had
happened to her after she’d been captured by the Yoders.

“They had been working for
Transport, but Amos turned them,” Dawn said. “Or the other way around—I’m not
sure. Anyway, they were double agents. And maybe we’ll never really learn where
their real allegiances lay.”

Jed reached up and touched the
back of Dawn’s kapp. “They removed your BICE? Is it healing up all right? Do
you have any pain?”

“I’ve had a BICE removed
before, remember?” Dawn said. “I’ll be all right. It
is
kind of hard to
get used to not having Internet access, but I think I kind of like it.”

Jed just nodded. He wasn’t sure
he wanted to be without the chip just yet. Certainly in the long run he wanted
to be done with it all, but having the chip gave him a strange and even eerie
sense of comfort. It was a very non-Amish feeling, but however paradoxical it
was, the feeling was there nonetheless.

“Being here,” Dawn said,
“walking these lanes and being with you... Well, it shows me that I’d like to
live here when this is all over,” Dawn said.

Jed blushed and put his hands
into the pockets of his broadfall pants. “I’d like for you to live here,
too.”

Dawn took his elbow and pulled
him to a stop, turning toward him. “So, do you think we could get married? You
and I? And live with the Amish here in this community?”

Jed blushed. He didn’t know
what to say. He studied Dawn’s face to see if she was serious about what she
was saying. It was different to actually be talking to her face to face,
without the subconscious knowledge that what he was looking at was actually
just her avatar. “I don’t know,” he said. He turned and began walking again, so
Dawn followed him. “The elders have made it pretty clear that they don’t want
me here.”

“Once this is all over,” Dawn
said, “they’ll know you didn’t participate in any violence. They’ll know you
were just trying to survive in a peaceful way, Jed.”

“
I
don’t even know if
that’s true,” Jed said. “I don’t know myself well enough to know if I’m the
peaceful kind.”

Dawn put her hand on his back.
“You are, Jed.”

“I don’t know,” Jed repeated.
“Maybe I’m more like my brother.”

“I know you both,” Dawn said.
“And I love your brother. He’s been like a father to me. But you and he are
nothing alike, Jed.”

“He brought me here.  He
planned all of this so that I’d join in the fight with him,” Jed said.

Dawn pursed her lips. “I don’t
think so. He brought you here, for sure. And there’s no doubt that he’s been
using you to help the resistance. That part is also true. But he hasn’t asked
you to fight.”

Jed didn’t say anything for a
while after that. They walked on, and after a short spell he took her hand and
squeezed it. “I would very much like to marry you, Dawn. Wherever we end up.”
He smiled at her. “I’ll be Amish wherever I am, I know that. And I hope you
know that too.”

They walked up to a large
clearing that looked very familiar to Jed. There were a few low rises that
seemed out of place, but if he didn’t know better, he’d have said that this
land could have been the location of his family’s farm.

“I brought you here on
purpose,” Dawn said. “I thought you would recognize it.” She put her hands
behind her back as they walked. “I thought you might be ready to see it.”

Jed didn’t speak as he looked
around. He wasn’t sure what he thought about seeing the place.

“I was raised Amish,” Dawn
said.

Jed’s attention was on the
land—he was trying to compare it with his memories of his old farm—but when he
realized that Dawn was being serious, he turned to her. “You were raised
Amish?” Jed asked. “What happened?”

“My father left the Amish when
I was ten years old. After my mother died.” Dawn looked down at the ground and
shuffled her feet. “He wasn’t excommunicated or anything. He just said he
couldn’t stand to see the Amish life continue without her. Like it sullied his
memory of her or something. It never did make sense to me.”

Jed didn’t know what to say to
that.

“You don’t have to say
anything,” Dawn said, as if she’d read his mind. “It’s just something that
happened. I guess that’s why I married so young, and married a former Amish
boy.”

“Ben Beachy?” Jed said.

“Yeah. Ben.”

“He died?”

“Yes. In this war.” Dawn walked
up the long, weed-strewn drive that led onto the empty property. “He was Pook’s
best friend. Billy is Ben’s younger brother. The three of them were
inseparable.”