“A veeg?” I asked.
“She doesn’t . . . eat . . . um . . .” And he seemed to be struggling with something.
“Are you sure you don’t want it?” I asked.
He took the jerky, and thanked me.
He asked if there was work, if he could do anything else for food. I told him I did not have need, but that maybe others might. He seemed resigned. I rode on, and when I glanced back for a moment, he was just standing where we had spoken.
THE NEWS, WITH THE cold, grows worse. I heard it from Asa, as we sat out on his porch. The cities, they are emptying. There are too many people, too many hungry and without light for too long, and the efforts to rebuild are too slow. Though there are curfews and many soldiers, and some food coming in from the mostly lost harvest, there is still so much violence. And hunger.
From Philadelphia to the east, from Baltimore in the south, the people are coming.
Asa told me of roads filled with the starving and those who prey on the starving, leaving the cities where there was not enough, leaving and just walking. He told me also of deaths and gunfire, everywhere.
“I was talking to the Guard yesterday. They have set out barricades, Jacob,” Asa said. “It’s not just the sheriffs and the police. Not just the state Guard. But our neighbors. They want to turn them back, these people, these hungry people. It is like trying to stop the flow of a river, or to catch every falling leaf before it touches the ground.”
I thought of Sadie, then, and the leaf crumbling in her hand.
I asked if he had heard the shooting last night, and he said he had, but that he didn’t know what exactly had happened.
I told him about the man I passed on the road. Asa nodded.
“There were two families that came to our door yesterday, and we fed them what we could. They made their way past the roadblocks during the night, I think. So hungry. Hollow eyes. Overnight, a half-dozen or so more tents, out on the edge of the wheat field. They came to my door, begged for anything we could give them.
“And in the eastern and northern districts, I hear there are even more tents. They come by the hundreds. There are more, so many more. Maybe thousands. They are still coming, even though they are cold and there is danger, they are coming.”
“What can we do?” I asked.
“I don’t know, Jacob. I . . .”
He paused, his lips pursing, tight. “I know how to run a good farm. I know how to serve God, and how to submit to God’s will. I try to be a good husband. But I am not sure what we are meant to do. We are safe here, I know that.” He said it strangely, spitting it out.
Safe? I was surprised. What about Isaak? What about . . .
“We are safe. There is what is left of the police, though more and more go to protect their families, because there is no pay. The sheriff came by, after the shooting at your home. He has almost no one still with him. He has vehicles, but what use are they? Unless you are military, it is too hard to get fuel, too hard to get around, and the police fear for their own families when they are away. So there are the militias now. They will . . . protect us.” But he did not say it like a celebration. The words held no reassurance. His lips pursed tighter still, and his eyes dropped from mine. “Is that what we are meant to be, Jacob? Safe? Safe behind the guns of our neighbors?”
Again, he paused. “Jonas would have known what to do. What was it he said? About the sword?”
“It has no handle,” I replied.
Asa nodded, still with his eyes down. “I think it cuts us, even if it is not our hand that wields it.”
SADIE CAME INTO BED with us tonight. The work of the day was done, and Mike and his family had settled into the daadi haus for the evening.
The door opened, as I read and as Hannah knitted. It was like when she was a little girl, her small face around the side of the door.
“What’s the matter?” Hannah asked.
“I can’t sleep,” she said. “I feel . . .” and she stopped talking. Her eyes were bright, and she seemed nervous. But she was not upset in that way she used to be.
Hannah welcomed her over, and she curled up by her side, nestling in like a kitten. I remember, as a boy, wanting that comfort on the nights when the storms rose. My father made it clear that it was not right for a boy to do so, and that waking them would bring the belt.
I am glad our bed is different.
Sadie closed her eyes, and there were more gunshots, closer still than last night. Ten or fifteen, and then silence. Hannah looked at me, quiet. But Sadie did not stir.
Now, they both sleep.
And I sit here, and I watch them. So soft, so quiet.
Safe.
October 31
I did not have time to write yesterday.
It was a warmer day, much warmer, almost hot.
Jon came, riding, with the news of the bodies. His face was grim, and he did not seem to wish to linger. There were five of them, strung from the branches of an old oak near the Sorenson place. They had been shot in the night, then their bodies hung.
“They caught them stealing food,” Jon said. Some of the people from the road, trying to steal from a barn. It was full of the feed-corn that had been harvested for the cattle and the pigs with a harvester that’s been gotten running. One of the militias caught them, they thought. Then left the bodies out as a warning.
And the tents that had been out on the edge of the Schrocks’ wheat field had been smashed. All cut up, things tossed out all around. There was no sign of the families Asa had spoken of.
No one was talking about it. No one knew anything.
Jon told me that a couple of men were going to go cut down the bodies at noon. It was not good to have them there, where children and others could see them, and where the crows could peck at them. He said that he was going to go, too. He looked less young when he said that, less like the boy who rode so excited to share the news. As he spoke, I could see that his had become a man’s face.
He rode off, to tell others. I went in and told Hannah, and said I would go help bury these men. She said it was the right thing to do. I also talked to Mike about the farm work today, asked if he and his boys could tend to what needed tending. He said that he could.
So later that morning, I went.
Jon was there, and his father, and Joseph Fisher. Joseph had brought ladders. I had a shovel. There were several of the English around, too, five or six men I did not recognize. They were carrying long guns. There were no police.
The dead were on two of the middle branches, hung up by ropes, six or seven feet in the air. Four were men. One was not yet a man, though he was tall for his age.
Two had signs, handwritten on cardboard, tied around their necks, just as that first hung body. LOOTER, one of the signs said. THEIF, said another. It was not spelled correctly.
I did not know four of them.
But the one with the sign that said THEIF I knew. It was Doug. From Philly.