It was a hotter morning today, and the sun rose into a reddish, bloody haze. So much smoke around, from the fires. And it has not rained, and there is no word about rain. But then there is no word about much of anything.
I was on my way to the field to see how the oats were coming when I heard him coming. It was a motorbike, old and small and loud. It racketed past, bearing a middle-aged man. I did not know him. He did not stop. He seemed very intent on something, but I do not know what.
Hannah and Sadie hitched up Nettie this morning and took the buggy, filled with washing, over to the Stolfutz house. Their generator will still start, which is good.
I surveyed the oats, and they are still weeks from shocking. They stood below my shoulder, as I brushed through them. Leaves still mostly green. I took a kernel between my fingers, and the oat milk mingled with the dirt under my nails. Still time needed yet. They went in the earth just a little later than the Michaelsons’, but this acre is a little slower. Not as rich. We will need help for the harvest, for Jacob and I could not do this alone, but it will come.
As I stood there in the field, I heard a rumbling and thundering. Not rain, but a group of helicopters, five of them, very large and very low. They came from the northwest. Maybe coming from Fort Indiantown Gap. I think there are soldiers there. I think I remember someone telling me that once.
They passed over, very low, and the air shook around me. The oats trembled as they rested softly against my hand. The helicopters moved to the south, toward the smoke.
I am wondering more about Mike today. All day long I expected to see him, but I did not.
AFTER DINNER, AND AFTER Jacob and I had finished our work, I went to the porch for a while to sit and pray. Hannah and Sadie had returned with the washing in the early afternoon, and after it was hung to dry, they busied themselves in the kitchen, talking earnestly about something I could not hear.
My prayers were selfish, out there on the porch, but we must pray when our hearts are struggling. Soldiers in Lancaster. I cannot remember such a thing, not in any of the stories from my father, or for generations.
I will admit that my soul was troubled. I wish that it was not so, because I know that God’s purpose for all of us is good, and that God’s Providence is all around us, even in the recent hard years.
But when the skies bear machines of war, and there are stories that sound like times of trial from the past, I confess that I am not at ease. I think of what I know of war, from stories I have heard. I think of what I know from times of famine and hardship, from the struggles that even we simple folk have had to endure, from the times of flight and martyrdom, and I wonder about our own strength.
The feel of this is so very terrible, Lord, and so very different from what I would have thought. Lord, give me the strength for whatever I must bear, I prayed, and other things like that.
This is where my soul was, as I sat on the bench on the porch, the strong, strange heat of a late September day still heavy in the air.
And then Sadie nestled next to me on the bench, settling in like a falling leaf.
She was quiet and still next to me, asking nothing, but her head rested soft on my shoulder.
I opened my eyes and turned to her. We did not speak for a moment.
“I’m not afraid, Dadi,” she said.
“Oh,” I said. “You are not?”
“No,” she said, looking at me as she can sometimes. It is as if you are made of glass, when she looks at you that way. Like she is seeing something through you. “No, I am not.”
She rested her forehead against my shoulder again, and pressed it against the fabric of my shirt. A little tremble went through her, like a shudder on a cold morning, though the air was still hot.
“But if you are, it’s all right.” And she whispered into the blue fold of my shirt, “It’s going to be so hard.”
September 28
Sabbath worship was good yesterday. I felt it strengthen me, and was very thankful for the blessings of God’s mercy in this strange time.
Such a busy day today. Still so hot, so hot for so late in September.
Isaak Stolfutz came by in the early evening, after dinner, as the heat of the day still hung in the air. He is a short man, lean and hard, with short legs and long arms. God made the Stolfutzes for farming, he likes to say. We talked a little about oats, and about the harvest. But mostly, we talked about what he was hearing from his neighbors.
The Smiths were on about one hundred and forty acres, a family of five. Bill and Donna, hardworking people, they are. I see them now and again, and they’re loud and boisterous and friendly. Bill is from Alabama or Arkansas originally, I think. Someplace like that, and you can’t miss that whenever he speaks. They moved up here to be near to Donna’s parents when they got older, and their farm shares a fence or two with Isaak.
He was speaking with Bill this morning, but most of what he hears are only rumors. They had some power, their smallest generator worked, but they were being careful with gas. No power in most of the gas stations made getting fuel very difficult. Their refrigerator had failed, and so they had eaten from it for a few days. In their basement, a chest freezer held much of the beef they had kept for themselves after slaughtering a steer. They were carefully keeping it frozen, running it on that little generator for a few hours at a time, and thankful to God that it remains working. So many do not even have that.
But the corn could not be harvested, because the harvesters were dead things. And the Smiths’ fields, always so carefully maintained, would soon show signs of being untended.
And then there were the things they had gotten from the Giant in Lititz. Bill had ridden there on his bicycle, and said the store was struggling. Cash only, no checks, no credit, but that was all right with Bill, because they always kept a reserve of money for emergencies. Much of what he got were frozen foods, good for a few more days. The manager at the Giant was practically giving it away, because it would soon spoil. Most of the meat had been a few days without refrigeration, and so much of it had already gone bad.
The shelves were pretty much emptied, but there were still some things left.
Bill had also gotten as many canned items as he could, to supplement what he and Donna always kept around. They had much they canned and preserved themselves, a full and stocked larder. With the cattle, and their gardens, and the chickens, they were fine. But their hired hands were having trouble getting there, and work was being left undone.
“Bill is a thoughtful and resourceful man,” said Isaak. “I haven’t known him to be frightened easily. But he is worried about the harvest, and worried about what he hears on the radio.” Isaak paused.
I asked what that was.