As we shocked, we talked. The last few days had been harder for many of us. The Schrocks’ dairy cows could not be milked except by hand, because the milking machine had failed. Neighbors are helping, but all are finding more time must be taken for everything. Less can be done. It is nothing we cannot bear.
There was much talk about how the threshing of the oats might be accomplished. There are two threshers, both old Deeres. Neither is yet working, but Young Jon Michaelson believes he can have the older one running soon. Some rewiring, something to do with shorts and failed circuits, and he was sure of it.
All talked about what they had heard from those of the English around us. The lights were aurora, they were saying, the Northern Lights. I think now I remember seeing a picture of them in a book once, very long ago. Not angels, as angelic as they seemed.
But such lights never come so far south, never in the memory of any who live here. And they are never as bright.
It was a storm, the rumor goes, but not an earthly one. It was a storm in the heavens, a storm from the sun. And though one would not know it from here, because today has been like almost any other day among the simple folk, the English are struggling. Many are our friends, our neighbors.
And the storm did not just hit the English we know. It is not just the English around us. The news was that this was not just us, and not just Pennsylvania.
It is all of the English. Everywhere. It is the whole world.
This was enough to keep us all in silence for a while.
There was not much to know, except that everywhere, almost nothing was working. Nothing was moving. Some with working radios would pick up occasional sounds, but they learned nothing. And the satellites that carry so much of what people hear were now dead rocks in the heavens.
The cards and computers that make business possible among the English? None of them were working. None of them. It was, Willis Schrock said, a very hard thing. He’d gone to talk with some of his friends, other farmers. So few kept things on paper now. So many businesses, so many banks, and it was as if everything had been forgotten. The records and the copies of records were just gone.
“How can you even know what it is that you have? How can you even know what belongs to who?” He scratched at his beard, which made him for a moment look just like his father. “I do not even know how they will work.”
And I had not been thinking it, until Abram Beiler said it. “Those who farm will struggle,” he said, “but . . .”
And he paused. He was a bright man, like his father had been before he passed. “I do not know how the English will cope,” he said. “How will they eat, if they cannot move their crops and food? I have seen so little moving. I have seen only two cars, and a truck. And some planes. There are stories that the army is moving, that more of their things work. But even the rails aren’t working.”
“There are so many in the cities. So many. You remember, Jacob,” he said to me directly. “You remember what it was like.”
I nodded in agreement, and he went on. “And they live as if today is the only day, and know nothing except the ways of their busyness. And now? Now what will they do? Food for today, and for tomorrow, but the winter comes.”
“But perhaps they can fix the things,” said Young Jon. Always hopeful, he was. “I can fix the thresher. I know I can,” he said. “I can see where it is shorted out. It will be better once I get the replacement part. It has only been three days. A lot of people are more careful now, with all the storms and weather.”
“That is my prayer,” said Abram. “But it makes me think of my father, as the cancer spread. It was not one thing, as he died. It was everything. It was everywhere in him, and when everywhere is broken, the body cannot mend. If there is no place that has strength, then death comes quickly.”
“I hope that it is not like that,” said Abram. And then there was silence again.
Sometimes we sing and laugh as we work, but talk and singing and laughter felt very far away.
We worked the shocks, in the hot sun, so hot for a late September Friday, and though some hearts were heavy, we were grateful to the Lord for the gift of his creation.
When we got home, I could hear, far away, the sounds of vehicles moving, many of them, off to the west. Maybe thirty or forty vehicles, moving south.
HANNAH HAD FINISHED PREPARING our meal when we returned home, and the kitchen was hot with the rich smell of stew and vegetables. I asked after Sadie, who was not in the kitchen helping as she has been more and more of late.
“In the garden,” said Hannah. “She’s in the garden, talking with Liza Schrock and Rachel Fisher.”
Woman talk, I was tempted to think, but I know that it was more than that. Liza is as kind as Ellis is hard, and Rachel Fisher is gifted like no other I know in the graces of prayer. My heart stirred for a moment to worry, because both have been a strength to Hannah and Sadie when Sadie’s illness has taken her. They have been in our house in some very hard times.
I paused for a moment.
“Is she all right?” I asked. “Is there . . .” and words stumbled in my mouth.
But Hannah smiled, her lips pursed as they do when she is thinking many things all at once.
“No, no, she has been busy about her chores today. She seems well. They are talking and praying. There has been much talk, you know there has, in the last few days, with all of this going on.”
Yes, I know, I said, because I had heard some of it, some about our Sadie, when we were out in the fields. Even among the menfolk, there was talk, although just a little. The stories about her strange brokenness have a way of being told and retold.
I know there is talk, I said.
“Well, Lizabet and Rachel just wanted to talk with her, is all,” said Hannah, as she sliced up a zucchini.
Well, I said, that’s good.
Hannah made a little nod, and went about her preparations, and I felt perhaps I should attend to other things.
Jacob was out feeding and grooming the horses, as was his task each evening, and so I walked to the barn to check on a board I’d seen was loose.
It was near where the women were talking, but not too near, and I looked across and saw them sitting in a tight little triangle in the grass, their dresses bundled about them like nests. Lizabet and Rachel looked intent, as Sadie was speaking softly to them both. I saw that they were hand in hand, and though they were talking, it did seem like they may have been in prayer.
Or in and out of talk and prayer and back into talk. Time with Lizabet could be like that, I remember.
Sadie looked up, and waved, her hand a little bird fluttering. Dadi, she mouthed, and smiled, and I saw for a moment her mother’s face in her.
I waved back but walked on. Best to leave them to talking, I thought.
September 26