Isaak cleared his throat. “He hears that tens of thousands are dead, fallen from the skies. That ships at sea have foundered, tens of thousands more assumed lost. And crashes. And fires. And the hospitals can do much less now, so many more die. The army is moving to maintain order in the cities, but that already in some places things are bad.” He paused.
“But even the radio station doesn’t seem to know much. Mostly rumors and stories they have heard.” Isaak paused again, and seemed to fold up a little bit.
I thought about this. “And in Lancaster? What does he hear?” I asked.
He told me that the National Guard is there now. Hundreds of soldiers, a company of soldiers, they say, supporting the police. A state of emergency has been declared, and the soldiers are driving around in their four-wheel drives with big speakers. Apparently there is martial law, but no one knows exactly what that means, other than that there are soldiers with guns everywhere.
Everyone in Lancaster seems to be doing all right so far. But the world is not just Lancaster. There are larger cities, places where there are no fields and farms nearby, and where there is more violence. Pittsburgh, apparently, is bad. And other farther places, things were beginning to get bad. The biggest cities, like New York and Washington and Baltimore and Los Angeles. Rumors of violence. But just rumors. “Who knows anything anymore,” Isaak said. “It all feels like gossip, like none of it is real.”
IN THE HOUSE, MIKE is sleeping.
He arrived on a bicycle in the late afternoon, when Jacob and I were not there, but were working with the men to bale hay at the Schrock farm. It was not a long wait, but when we returned, Mike was out on the porch, his face still red, his heavy body still wet with sweat.
Hannah had gotten him lemonade, a pitcher of it, and he had drunk much of it. He was exhausted, because from his house, the ride is about eighteen miles. Not that far, perhaps, but though Mike is a big man, and he may have been very strong as a young man, there is so much flesh on him now.
We have talked about this, his weight and his smoking, his need to get more exercise, but he had always just laughed at me and told me he’d rather drive.
As I saw him there, red as a pickled beet and spent, I chose not to mention those conversations.
He didn’t come about the work. He had heard nothing, nothing since that night. No one had heard much of anything.
We sat for a while, and we talked.
“I’m scared, Jacob,” he said, as he talked through what he was seeing in the town. “Everywhere soldiers, and the big stores are pretty empty now, the Stauffers, the Giant, and the Turkey Hills are closed, and nobody knows anything. Nothing. Nobody working, and everyone is milling around.” As people talked, the rumors would spread, and then no one would really know what was going on, but everyone would be upset.
“There’s talk about food maybe coming in, but no trucks, no nothing. Even the Central Market, well, you know,” he said. “We don’t even have that produce coming in from all of the farms around here. Figured some would come this last Tuesday. With nothing working, folks went there on Tuesday hoping for something, but there wasn’t anything to have.”
He said something like that, but he was tired and agitated, so he forgot himself as he sometimes did. There were a few words added in that I am glad the children did not hear.
I reminded him, softly, and he was apologetic.
IN THE NIGHT, IN the night as I write this, I can hear trucks. They are a long way away, but they are out there moving. My prayers today are for Mike, and for our broken world.
October 1
Warm today, still very warm. But the heat has changed again, and everything is moist and wet. The sky was gray and fat and thick with rain clouds that race across the sky, and the wind howled through the trees. It felt very violent, a day stumbling around like a drunken, angry man.
It is growing darker in the morning, as the days begin to shorten. I feel the darkness more, though my day begins as it always does. Prayer, and then out to the barn, to the feeding and the blessing of work for the day. But I look around, and the glow that once rose from the south is still gone.
I remember that I did not like it, that in my morning prayers I would often ask the Good Lord to still my fears about it. There, or so my heart was moved sometimes, was the light of human sin. Bright and gaudy and wasteful, like the distant sound of overloud music.
I have not felt that way these last few days. I see darkness where once there was life and light, and my heart hurts. That darkness means that things are hard, and they do not seem to be getting better. It reminds me of the many thousands who are dead. It means people are still in darkness, and that they are growing more and more afraid and angry. And the English are people. They are God’s children. They are my brothers and sisters. I think of Mike.
Mike went back home. He left early on Monday, said he had things to do, and the kids were with Shauna but he still wanted to be around.
Hannah made him some sandwiches, and gave him some water to fill his plastic bottles. Then he went off on that bicycle of his again, huffing and puffing. I could tell he was still tired from the ride here, but I could not help but think that maybe riding the bicycle was better for him that sitting in that truck all day long.
I think it must have been a difficult few days out in the world. Not for us. For us, life is much the same. But we are not the only people. I know that wherever Mike is, things are not easy. And there are many people like him.
I had picked beans for much of Monday, with Hannah by my side. They were a late crop, but the crops seem later and later every year with all of this warmth. Most of ours had already been canned and set aside by now, but there were still many vines yielding well, and we picked several bushels. We had the beans that normally we would sell, and we also had several crates of the strawberry jam that we had planned on selling at market over the fall. There was also a box of jerky and dried pork strips, all prepared before the storm to go downtown for sale.
That would have been some of our income for the fall, or we had planned it to be. But we do not know now what will be coming in the next weeks and months, and we know that we are in an emergency. The deacons had talked through it, and the word to all of us was that we would help as we can, with what food we can spare and with our skills.
That is as it should be.
I loaded the food on the wagon, and hitched up Pearl. Nettie doesn’t like the wagon, and Pearl was always the bigger and stronger of the two. We took them over to where we had been asked by the Guard to bring them. The word of what was needed had come to Bishop Schrock, and then Jon and others had ridden it around the settlement. There were dozens of wagons there, and many menfolk. It was a little like a barn raising, in that way, but it didn’t have quite the same feeling. There was a tension in the air, almost like the shimmer of the light on that terrible night.
I think it was seeing the trucks that made us feel differently.