His head lolled, his eyes were open, his thin face distended. His feet were bare and blackening, the hiking boots gone.
“We should cut these bodies down,” I said.
“Aye,” said Joseph Fisher, and he pulled his stepladder from the wagon. I took it, and moved to begin with the man whose name I knew.
There was a shifting among the English men, and one stepped forward. “The bodies oughta stay up. Can’t have no thieves takin’ what little we got.” He shifted the rifle in his arms, but he did not raise it.
I felt my heart race, but I do not think I showed it.
I set the ladder up, and with the help of both Jons I began to take the body of Doug from Philly down. I cut away the rope with my knife, and took the weight as we eased him down. He was rigid, the hardness of death set in, but also light, much lighter than I would have thought for a man of his height. A bag of bones, with no meat. I had not known, under all of those clothes, that he was so thin. How hungry he must have been.
As we worked, Joseph was talking to the men, quietly. They were not happy, but seemed to hear when Joseph said that the bodies would be bad for the children to see.
We buried them, the boy and the three men and Doug from Philly, right there under the oak tree. The ground was softer than it had been before, more eager to take the bodies.
AGAIN, ALL ARE ASLEEP, but I am not. I need sleep, but though I read and I pray, I feel too awake. My mind paces the floor.
There are shots now and again, bursts here and there, far away, and I cannot sleep. I think of this man in his hunger, shot like a rabbit raiding a garden. For what, Lord? For stealing corn intended for pigs and for cattle, like the hungry prodigal helpless in a strange land.
I can hear his voice.
I read back to what I wrote earlier today, and I can hear his voice as I read the words. And I can see the sign, hung around his neck. Not even the right spelling, for this man who has been killed, like a sign above a cross that reads IMRI. I can see him, feel his weight, smell the early rot of him.
Just as I see the man fall, and hear the ragged breath of the boy, and taste the scent of his blood in the air. Those words, and the reflection on those words, like shouting in an empty grain silo. I read back, and back, through the days, and suddenly these pages feel like a terrible burden.
I feel angry at them, and my hand shakes again as I write. I feel an urge to tear out the pages. How silly, to be angry at a book. But I am.
I am angry at the memory it holds, like a band of steel around my chest. A band of words and thoughts, and my soul feels scattered.
And tomorrow is Sunday. I have to preach tomorrow, over at the Schrocks’.
It has begun to rain outside, hard and heavy, clattering against the window.
I try to think about what I might say, as I look at scripture, but my thoughts are as scattered as the rain.
O, Lord.
November 1
It is late again, and I am very tired.
We woke, and brought the food that had been prepared for the meal. Mike and Shauna and the boys woke, too, as they have been doing, and ate a simple meal with us before we left for worship. They promised to tend to some things when we were away.
The ride to the Schrocks’ was difficult. All night, it had rained, and a half-mile from their farm, the road had been washed out. Like a bite taken out of the side of an apple, the damage had begun during the big storm, and with every rain, it failed further, and now there was barely room to pass with a buggy. We slowed, and I had everyone get out, and I walked Nettie past it.
Worship was what it was. The old songs, just so. The voices raised, honest and simple. I spoke about the prodigal, about times of hardship in a strange land, about the need to accept what must come, just as the prodigal accepted whatever came to him.
All sat in silence, and their eyes watched me, and now and again there would be a murmur. There sat Hannah and Sadie and Jacob. There sat everyone I know, all listening and still but for the rustling of their movement and the occasional cough.
I talked and I talked, until the words felt like they were done, and then I stopped. It was not like writing, not like thinking about what words might be best. I felt a blur, like I was floating. The Lord will do with the words what He will. I am not sure I even remember what I said. Out the words tumbled, one after another, forgotten the moment their sound had left the air.
I wish all forgetting came as easily.
But then we sang, and we sang some more, the old songs from the Ausbund. “Live Peaceably, Said Christ the Lord,” we sang, and I felt the roots of that music set my soul more at rest.
After, there was food and there was visiting, but there was something else. Asa asked for the menfolk to gather, and to talk about what must happen next. Word had come to him, he said, from last night. Fifteen dead in Lancaster, at least, in an attack on an army supply convoy. Another dozen on the road from Philly, some refugees, and five men from Lititz who were on the barricade. To the south of Lancaster, a growing city of tents and makeshift shelters, with hundreds and hundreds, many armed. And the word from those around? The militias were meeting, planning. Growing more angry, and more anxious.
There was concern in other districts, especially those more reliant on businesses with English clients, where there were fewer farms and fewer gardens. Most districts had food enough, but many could see that even what they had would not carry through the winter.
And he spoke more, about what he was hearing from the colonel of the National Guard. About the conditions in the cities. What food was available. What fuel was available. How many millions must be fed, and how the numbers were not matching. There would be starvation and famine. It could not be avoided. It would be a terrible, violent winter.
In New Wilmington, the word came that the Plain folk had been overrun, their homes and barns looted. Three wagons bearing two families had arrived at a distant relative’s house in a northern district two nights ago, and bore the ill tidings. Many were dead, even though they had offered no resistance.
There were more stories, none of them good.
Asa talked about all of this simply, as if he were sharing details of a new collection for a family in need, or about a barn raising.
“We all knew this would be a time of hardship, and of trouble. We knew it would be hard as winter approached. But to lose a family, and to have blood spilled on our soil? To ‘protect us’? And it will happen again, more and more. To know that we cannot feed those who are hungry? What do we think is the Lord’s will in this?”
There was silence for a few moments.
Then Joseph spoke up. “You know what Jacob’s Sadie has been saying. My wife tells me, what the women are talking about.”