The National Guard trucks came in the morning on Tuesday, eight of them, all in a line at the Schrock Farm.
The trucks were a strange and motley collection. All had that drab hardness of military vehicles, blunt and crude and purposeful. Most seemed to have been built for carrying men or supplies, but they felt irregular. I have watched columns of soldiers drive past, in their vehicles, all identical, as identical as their uniforms. It always feels very orderly, every soldier and every vehicle sharing the same appearance. It is, I think, what makes a soldier feel like he belongs to something. It is like the reason that we dress as we do, although it is such a terribly different order than our own.
But all of the vehicles today seemed different. I do not know anything about the ways of war, nor do I know trucks. I did notice, though, that the trucks that came seemed to be of all different sorts and sizes. They did not match.
One was the most different, with many wheels and a large and wicked gun mounted in a turret on the top. It did not seem like it was made to carry food. But it still ran, and so they were filling it up inside with everything that the community had gathered. It seemed strange to see it there, looking so fierce and terrible. And there we were, filling it up with jam and green beans and canned corn.
There were a dozen Guardsmen, most young, a few older. They helped load, working quietly and efficiently alongside us, their squad leader giving commands. Most of them worked with us. Two, though, remained on watch. They kept their rifles in their arms, which seemed peculiar to me.
As the work continued, Bishop Schrock took the squad leader aside and they talked. It was interesting to see his face. Something was upsetting him. It was not an easy conversation, whatever was being said. But they had moved away, many yards away, and they were not talking loudly, so I could not hear what they said.
I remained busy with those around me as we helped load the trucks. One man, his name was Jorge, was young and broad-shouldered, and had a serious manner about him. He had a wife and a daughter, and he told me their names, but I’m not sure I remember them well enough to write them down. He told me what he had been hearing and seeing. It was exactly what had been talked about at the Michaelsons’ the other day.
Much was rumor, but he mostly knew what could be heard through National Guard talking. In the first few days, things had been calm for a while, but then there had been a panic in Philadelphia. Something had happened. I noticed that he did not say what.
“I totally get it, man,” he said. “It’s seriously scary.” And he talked for a while about how much he understood why people were upset.
If you assume you can just go buy something, why would you have enough in your larder to keep you for a winter? Or even for a week?
And then suddenly you couldn’t buy anything, and your credit card didn’t work, and your debit card didn’t work, and you couldn’t go to the bank because the computers at the bank didn’t work.
“People are freaked out when they don’t know what’s going on,” he said. “And nobody knows what’s going on. What are we even supposed to do? I can’t work, ’cause my store can’t sell anything. Who’s going to buy a cell phone these days? And how would I even get paid?”
I asked him what he had seen, and he told me he didn’t want to say. Then he thought for a few seconds.
“It’s like the world just came to an end,” he said, and paused. “Only we’re all still here.”
He talked more, about what his pastor said. I think he was Pentecostal. For years, there had been talk of the end of things. And about the Rapture, and about how the time was at hand. He seemed very upset when he talked about it, but it was an upset that went down deep.
I told him that I understood, but I think perhaps I do not. There are so many things I rely on, so many things that are just part of me, that I know are there and will be there. Hannah by my side. Sadie and her . . . specialness. Jacob. I take for granted that they are there, as I would the air in my lungs or the ground under my feet.
I assume the earth will yield, that what we plant will grow. There is always sweat, and the work is often not easy. But it will grow.
I assume the wood that I work will yield to my hand, to the craft that my father taught me. I assume that craft has worth, that it is vocation, and that it is useful and good.
And it is so with our little community. I assume that brothers will be there to help with the harvest, just as I know I will be there for them. I assume that sisters will be there to help prepare the house and to work side by side. It is how God made us, every one, to be a strength to one another.
Our community is, to me, what all the English had built was to him.
But now, for him, all of that is gone.
I DID NOT GO with the Guardsmen. Others did. Willis and Jon and Abram. They were to return by nightfall, but the days are shorter now.
They came back an hour after dark, a single truck returning with them in the dark of early evening. Funny, even a single truck is so easy to notice. A lonely patch of light, out in the nothingness.
I watched the lights of the truck, heard the faint hum of the engine as it moved through the quietness of our community. A mile or two away, they must have been. I knew I would talk with Abram the next day, as he came to help in our fields.
WEDNESDAY I HAD MUCH to do. It was a busy day, but by afternoon, most of the fieldwork was done. We do not have much land, after all, and the help others can provide makes light work of it.
Abram stayed after, and we sat on the porch. He and I talked about what he had encountered in Lancaster the day before.
Abram had ridden with the others in the lead truck. As they’d ridden along, he had talked with the squad leader, a staff sergeant. Sergeant Williams was a brick of a man, squat and solid and matter-of-fact.
It was a talk about money, at first.
There was just no way for the National Guard to pay us for the food and supplies we were giving. Orders were to provide supplies to Lancaster, at a couple of key locations. Our farms, and those few others that were still functioning, were where the supplies would be requisitioned.
But without any way to get money into a bank, or any way to use cash? What did it mean, to get paid?
“I’d thought about that,” said Abram. “We’re providing food, and it’s an emergency. How can we think about money when there are those who are going hungry?”