The other girls, they have come by less and less over the last year, since she had worsened. She does not run with the gang, laughing and playing and talking, because they did not know how to be with her. And when she told Fannie Hostetler about her nose, before she even broke it?
Fannie took it as spoken from jealousy, or spite. How else was she to understand it? So the circle closed, and Sadie was outside of it. Until the fall from the horse. Then they were not angry. There was fear, I think.
But Rachel was always there for her, even when Sadie herself was not really there, though it was sometimes hard. I could see it with my own eyes, how she was the only one remaining, but it was also in being with her and listening even when what was said was strange and hard. Hannah told me so.
But the clusters of girls who would move in clouds, passing by on their skates? She was not part of that. She was too intense.
So it is good to see her with Rachel.
The tree damage to the house was almost invisible, and the new coat of paint, purchased before all of this began, makes the house look perhaps even better than it did before the tree fell.
The remnants of the tree now sit neatly stacked, standing off a ways from the house, several cords’ worth. It was a big and healthy tree, and when that wood has cured, it will be good for a few winters of heat from their woodburning stove.
The boys had cut most of it, over these last few days, splitting and sawing and preparing it, dragging the leafy branches off to a nearby stand of trees.
“Good work for boys,” Joseph had said. “Keeps them busy and out of mischief.”
But then our talk turned, as it does so much these days, to what we were hearing from the outside. I shared with him what I had heard in my conversations with Young Jon Michaelson, and he listened patiently, nodding in agreement. When I had told him all of what I had heard, he said, “Yes, that’s what Young Jon told me, too.”
As hard as the story was, I laughed a little bit. “And you didn’t think to stop me?”
“No,” he said. “Because the story as you tell it is just a little bit different. And I like to hear that.”
He told me, then, other stories he had heard. Joseph is a listener, and I know he made his way to some of the English stores just to hear what was going on. “I was told that there are fires in Boston, fires that have been burning for a week in some of the big buildings there. They cannot put them out, and the rains haven’t been enough to extinguish them, and they are spreading.”
“What else have you heard?” I asked.
“That they are going to begin to close the roads, to make it so that only the army can travel, and that they are impounding fuel. One man at the Giant . . . Don Samuels, I think his name is . . . was shouting to anyone who would listen that the army was going to take all of the guns so that no one could fight them. He was also yelling about how the Sun storm was really just a secret weapon to give the government an excuse to take away guns.”
“Really?” I asked. “Was anyone listening to him?”
“Some were listening politely, and a couple intently, but most of the people were trying to ignore him.”
“Is that what they’re calling it now?” I asked. “Sun storm?”
Joseph thought for a minute. “I’ve heard that. And some are calling it the Big Carrington, I think because some guy called Carrington had seen a storm like that before. And I remember hearing it called Lucifer’s Night, because of the lights. And the Second Flood. Because it wasn’t a flood of water, but of heaven. A lot of people seem to think that it was God’s judgment on man. But most just call it the Blackout.”
I asked him what he thought.
He shook his head. “I don’t know. It doesn’t fit with anything that I read about in the Bible, not if I’m honest with myself. A lot of people are trying to make it that way, make it fit with something in Revelation, but it doesn’t feel right to me.”
I told him I felt the same way. Sometimes, a storm is just a storm.
Then we talked about the Johansons. As bad as it was before with them, it is ten times worse with them now. They were struggling. He could not easily work with his hand so badly burned, and he was not taking it well. Another neighbor said he is drinking even more, and they are fighting all of the time. He hears them screaming at each other, even across the fields, and Joseph is worried.
“I don’t even know if they have enough food,” said Joseph.
I AM AWAKE AGAIN, and it is deep in the night. I woke up, because Sadie woke me. “Dadi,” she whispered in my ear. “Come and see, Dadi.” Her eyes, bright and intent, watching my face. Her head moving slightly, changing perspective, as she does when she pays attention to you. Like a little bird, I always thought, or maybe the way that a praying mantis bobs and shifts to see.
I took care not to wake Hannah, and we went downstairs. Sadie is so quiet as she walks, as if her feet barely touch the earth. We stepped out of the house, and in the clear night sky the heavens were gently dancing with faint light.
My heart leapt to my throat for a moment.
But Sadie seemed unmoved, except for a little smile. “It isn’t anything, Dadi,” she said. “They are far away this time. I love the way they move and dance. So beautiful, aren’t they?”
I agreed, because they were very beautiful, as they had been the first time we had seen them. We watched for a while. There was no electric smell in the air, and my hair did not rise in hackles as it had before. This was not the same, and I thanked Jesus for it.
The air was cool, almost with a bite in it, the coldest it had been in a while. The sky billowed, sheets of light hung on the sharpness of a crescent moon. I told Sadie that they were called aurora, as I had told her before, but she was lost in the sight. I do not know if she heard me.
And as we stood there and watched, there were gunshots again from far away. One gun, very faint, crack crack crack crack. And a pause, and again it sounded, crack crack crack crack. And again, crack crack crack crack. Sadie noticed, but she just watched the skies, and smiled.
But as beautiful as the sky was, it was hard to hear that sound. I prayed that it did not mean anyone was being hurt.
The sound of shots continued, a faint tapping on the door of the night. After a while, Sadie and I went inside, because it was getting too cold.
October 5
The morning was sharply colder than yesterday, perhaps forty degrees, and I wore my jacket and my coveralls as I tended to the horses. Jacob was out with the chickens, and I watched him struggling with his old coat from last year as he worked. The sleeves were halfway up his arms, and it was too tight for him to do much in it. Not that he noticed or complained.
“I think you’ll need a new coat soon,” I said to him. He just grinned back. I wondered if Hannah had enough fabric.