In the garden, Sadie was watering and putting in the broccoli seedlings, now that we are hoping that the temperature is finally cool enough. We have had such trouble with our fall crops these last years, with the warmth, but if we stagger them and are careful, they will still yield.
When the morning chores were done, we settled in the kitchen to eat breakfast, as always, together as a family. The kitchen was so warm, and where that warmth was unwelcoming in the height of the summer, it felt wonderful this morning. Few things are more like home than a kitchen in winter, as my mami used to say.
Later in the morning, I heard from Young Jon about the gunshots last night, as he rode by with news. He does that more and more now, and it is good that he does. We need to hear what is happening, and his telling is the best way.
He had talked to Joseph Fisher, and Joseph had told him that the shots had come from the Johanson place. Mr. Johanson had been drinking, drinking all day, and there had been fighting and shouting from the house in the afternoon. Then Mrs. Johanson had gone with the children. They had walked, leaving the house on foot to go to a friend’s house a few miles away, Jon was not sure who. And they were carrying a bunch of things with them, and she was pulling a child’s wagon filled with food and supplies.
The house was silent after the fighting, but when the aurora came, he went outside with his rifle. The Johansons always had many guns, Joseph had told me, and the worse things got with the family business, the more guns he seemed to have. A couple were for hunting, but most were not.
Then he was shouting, shouting drunken curses at the sky, and firing his rifle over and over again at the heavens. He screamed and screamed, Jon said, and for ten minutes he howled terrible things at the sky.
It was very frightening for the Fishers next door, said Jon, because you do not know where the bullets will go when a drunken man is firing wildly.
And this time, there were no police to call. There was no way to call anyone else.
The Fishers stayed inside their house during the shooting, and moved to the rooms downstairs and on the other side of the house. When the gunfire stopped, and stayed stopped for a while, Joseph went out to see what was going on. He looked around for a while, in the fields. He went to the house. It had been open. There were many things smashed, and there were a few bullet holes. But he couldn’t find Mr. Johanson.
In the morning, he went to talk with other English neighbors. The last Jon heard, there was talk of a search party to look for the elder Johanson.
“Are you going to have supplies ready for the Guard tomorrow?” asked Jon. It was Tuesday again, and the Guard was going to try to bring more food from our community and others to supplement the other materials they were bringing in.
I told him that I would be ready, and that we would set aside some of the meat, and some of the fall peas and lettuce from the garden. And then, as I was about to say that we could give away some of the strawberry and blackberry preserves, and our raspberry jam, the words stilled themselves before they reached my tongue. Though we had much more of them than we could ever use, I could not say this, not yet. Those preserves were the things that we had planned on selling. Or, rather, these were the things that Hannah was planning on selling. We would need to talk, Hannah and I.
So I did not speak.
It is one of the things that I have learned, over the years with Hannah. A wife makes a far better helpmate if you remember to ask her before doing something.
And then Jon was off, shouting farewell as he rode off toward other farms.
HANNAH AND I TALKED for a while after dinner tonight. It began with conversation about the larder, about how prepared we were to face the winter. We had talked a little bit about it yesterday, for a moment or two, but as the day wound down today and the dishes were done, she settled in reading. I wrote in my journal, and read a little bit myself, but finally moved to sit nearer to her. I told her about what Young Jon had said, about how I might want to go to Lancaster with the men in the truck tomorrow.
“It would be good to see with my own eyes how the town is doing,” I said, and she nodded.
Then I asked about the preserves. “I know you were going to sell them,” I said. “And I know there are no clients for a while for my woodwork, we may need the money. But we have so much, and there is such a need.”
She looked down for a moment, as she does whenever she is thinking.
“I think we need to give some,” she said. “But we do not know how long this will last. We need to think about how we might be called upon to give again, how there will be needs beyond our own that we must be prepared to meet as the days grow shorter.”
She smiled a little, and cocked her head in a way that always makes me want to be nearer to her. “You know how I get when we’re not prepared for guests who are coming to visit. We must have a little extra, and work just a little harder.”
I nodded, and agreed. A wise wife is such a blessing.
October 6
Cold again this morning. Couldn’t have been more than forty-five degrees when I woke in the darkness. I worked the morning, and then as I was getting ready to ride to the Schrocks’, I saw Isaak arriving with his wagon. By his side was Bill Smith, who’d ridden along. To talk with me, apparently.
Bill was a big man, with hands like hams and a ruddy face. His face is big and flat, and set into it is a smile filled with big teeth. He smiles a great deal. He was even smiling as he told me about how things are hard. He was one of the fortunate few who had some equipment still working, a generator and a couple of freezers. But they were running low on fuel. He had a tank he kept on the farm for fuel, and that would last for a while, but the military had been requisitioning gas, and what little could be had was at outrageous prices. So he could see that his stocked freezer full of meat wasn’t going to be good for much longer. He’d heard from Isaak what we’d done with our meat, and remembered buying some of our jerky at the roadside stand, and wanted to see if he could buy or barter for some of the salts and spices we had.
I asked him if he’d ever cured meat before, and he grinned and said that he had. And that he loved our jerky. With his big teeth, I can see how he would like jerky.
We talked for a while. Money right now is not very helpful. So he would bring us apples from his orchard, a couple of bushels. I think that would be fine, but I went back in to the kitchen to talk with Hannah about it.
She was fine with it, too, and so I came back out and we shook hands on it.
He seems like the kind of man whose handshake matters.