That conversation happened well before we came, and a big part of it was where such a thing would go. It ended up on the Schrock farm. Some of the people who just cannot help but gossip do whisper about that, that it had to do with his pride and wanting to control it. Hannah has told me that some of the women say this. But I have talked with others. Bishop Schrock did not want it, and Mrs. Schrock did not want it, and for exactly that reason. But they had the space for it, and they are close to the center of all, and so that was that. It was how it needed to be.
It was a reminder, a reminder of just how reliant we had become on the English. We have cured and dried the pork and the beef. Salt and spices we had, and plenty of them. We had enough to share, as it was an old habit of mine going back to my father’s house and the Order of my childhood.
There, refrigeration was forbidden. It was hochmut, prideful and arrogant. It would come up sometimes, but that Order was totally unyielding. What is pride is pride, as my father would say. And so for meat, things were different. It was put into soups that were canned. It was pickled. The taste of pickled pork still lingers in my mouth, and I will say that I never liked it very much.
But it was also saved by drying, and that I know as well as I know the feel of wood. There is something about jerky in particular that I have always loved. I love the chew of it, the rich salt of its flavor. It is so practical, so lasting, so good in its very simple way. There are few things more demut than a nice hunk of dried beef. That, I remember my father saying, too.
So we have dried meat, not just for ourselves, but enough to sell as we need to. The taste for jerky is another thing we share with the English, and for those that come to wander and wonder at simple folk, it’s one of those things that they love to buy and take home. We sell it at our little stand, but it also has sold well enough in some stores in town, along with Hannah’s preserves. It has been good for us in these years.
I do it differently from my father. Among that fellowship, the method was traditional. The long thin strips would hang on frames and trellises. I always thought they looked like meat socks hung out to dry. That was how it had always been done, and it did work, mostly. Sometimes birds would eat them, and sometimes the drying would not happen swiftly enough, and some of the meat would spoil.
But here, and with the permission of Bishop Schrock and consent of the others, I have used another method.
Between the house and the field are my drying houses, three of them, built with my own hands. Funny little things they are, wooden cubes, looking a little like open chicken coops. Instead of chicken wire, they have large windows. I used glass windows, cast off from a nearby construction project. From the bottoms of the “coop” windows, three ramps of black-painted corrugated tin run from three of the four sides, facing south, west, and east.
The black-painted panels concentrate the heat of the sun, collecting it and increasing both the heat and the dryness inside the chamber. The concentrated hot air flows through the central chamber, and then up through a chicken-wire vent at the top. The meat—spiced by hand and cured for twelve hours—goes onto trays. It takes two full days, at most.
It is funny how you learn of these things. I did not learn it from my father, though he taught me to dry and prepare meat. It was in a conversation with a Baptist, years ago, which turned to our love of jerky. He shared with me what he had seen in Africa, how they dealt with their meat, and I confess that I had not heard of it. I should have, I think, but sometimes things that you should know dance just out of reach for many years.
These last few days, I have given out much salt and spices and advice to our neighbors. This is a good thing.
And it is also good, I think, to look into our larder, dry and cool. It is full of cuts and strips of beef and pork, all hanging like decorations, dried and ready to eat. It looks for all the world like a harvest of flesh, I thought, and though that was good to see, I found myself shivering when I thought those words.
But this will be food for my family for winter, when winter finally comes. And for some reason, I thought to something I had heard the day before. Of the refrigerators and the freezers at the Giant, of how they had tried to give away meat that could not be sold or kept. Of how much of that meat had spoiled, simply gone to rot. Hundreds of pounds of it, all of that effort, all of that work. It was such a terrible waste.
I am glad, now, for the hardness of my uncle and my father’s uncompromising spirit. It does not happen often, I will admit. But sometimes I am glad.
IT WAS JUST A little after noon and the sun was high when Young Jon Michaelson came by, riding his mare. The heat was in the air, so Hannah offered him some lemonade, which he took gladly.
He was there bearing news. The shots we had heard were from the Smith farm. Bill Smith had woken to the sound of his dog barking. He had taken his shotgun to go investigate, and had startled three men breaking into their barn.
Two of the men just ran when they heard him, but the third man had a gun, and before he started running, he fired. Bill had fired back across the yard, and they had exchanged a volley. “No one was hit,” said Jon, “but there are bullet holes in the front of the Smith house. And a window was shattered.”
I asked if the police knew, and Jon said that one of the English neighbors of the Smiths had ridden his bicycle to tell them.
“But they are saying that there is not much the police can do now for anybody, because there’s no way to know what is happening soon enough. Most of the men on the farms now say that they are keeping watch together. Many are talking about forming a watch group.”
What sort of group, I asked him.
“I saw the signs posted, as I was riding yesterday, and even more signs today. Asking for people to meet at the Stauffers tomorrow afternoon. Come and bring your guns, it said. Rally to protect your families, it said. The signs were all made by hand, but they all say the same thing. And I’ve heard my neighbors talking about it, too. They’re talking about how important it is to be ready and organized to protect themselves if people come to take things. There just aren’t enough Guardsmen, and the police can’t be called in an emergency. I saw some of the guys I know from the area on the road yesterday, and they were all carrying their guns. I think every one of them is going to the Stauffers. It seems to be something that so many of our neighbors are doing.”
I said that did not seem like a good thing to me, and he agreed.
“It feels like a nest of fire ants around here lately,” he said. “All stirred up and angry about everything, ready to sting anything that comes close.”
I agreed again.