Eyes turned to me, with more interest than when I was trying to preach. I had even fewer words. What did I know?
Asa saw that I had no idea what they were talking about, and in mercy spoke up. “Liza has told me, too. About what your Sadie says will be next, when the women have gathered to talk. That we go west, to Ohio, or perhaps beyond, all together with all that we can carry. That we leave this behind. That we leave the safety of Pharaoh and his chariots, and go to where the land is empty and we do not need the blood of others shed so that we might live.”
There was murmuring, quietly, among those gathered.
“I have been thinking the same thing. As have others, in other settlements around this district.”
There was a faint smile on his face, so rare for Asa. “Not that your young one is telling us what to do. Just seeing what may be.”
Joseph looked at me, and asked me what I thought.
I said I was not sure, but that here in this place, the cost was too high. I said I did not know where we could go. I was silent, and thought, for a moment, of my father and my uncle, farther from the great cities. But I could not imagine turning to such a harsh place for solace. Those there would not be welcoming.
It was Asa who spoke up next, about his nephews in Ohio. And farther yet, of a new settlement in Nebraska. Much land. Good land, abandoned by the English, left to the great machines and robotic harvesters run by the big businesses.
Levi Stolfutz, Isaak’s brother, spoke up. He did not often speak, but he was a thoughtful man. “We could reach Ohio in two weeks, which we could make with supplies at hand. And my uncle is there, too, Asa. The community is large. It would be hard, the journey. And they might not be ready. But if we do not leave now, winter will be upon us, and the time to act will have passed.”
There was much talking, and back and forth, as others worried about the dangers of the journey, and the even greater peril—to our souls—if we stayed. Then, there was quiet as we thought and prayed.
Asa said that we should pray some more with our families, but that all should gather at his farm again on Tuesday.
And now I am too tired to write more. Even the gunshots—one there, another, then another—even they cannot keep me awake any longer.
November 3
It feels very strange, to think that we may be leaving all of this. But when I spoke with Hannah and Sadie and Jacob together on Sunday on the ride back home, it seemed very clear that this was the will of God.
Then when I woke on Monday, it felt much less clear.
To leave this behind, this place and this good sturdy house? With just two weeks of food, traveling across a land torn by famine and war? What sort of father would do that to his children? Perhaps I should speak against it.
I remember, again, that feeling. Looking into the cold empty eyes, and the raised barrel of that gun. Knowing that I would die, in that moment. It was not that knowledge, I think, that tightens the band around my heart.
It was Hannah, and Sadie, and Jacob. It was that I did not want what was coming for them, though I know it was not humble. I did not want them to fear, so I felt fear for them. I see that, out there, casting us again in the face of guns and the starving, wandering, desperate English.
I know that fear should not rule me. I know I should be open, to what it is that God is asking us to be. That we should submit ourselves. I know this. But I still do not want harm to come to my Hannah, to good-hearted Jacob, to my strange, bright Sadie.
And should we leave? Should we flee? I think of the old story of the Dutch Anabaptist Dirk Willems, fleeing his captors across the frozen ice. When his jailer broke through the ice, and cried out in the frozen water, did he leave him behind? No. He returned to help him, even though it meant his death.
But then I remember our own exodus to this country, to a place where we could live in peace, troubling no one. Which is God’s path? To which should we give ourselves?
My heart is troubled, and again, I feel that tightness and uncertainty. I do not like this feeling.
I spoke this to Hannah, shared it with her in the late morning, when Shauna was out harvesting greens, and Mike and the boys were over helping some men from a neighboring farm get another combine running. I do not yet wish them to know that this journey is being planned.
“Oh, Jay,” she said. “It frightens me, too. For Sadie and Jacob, and for all of us. But I think it is what is meant to be.”
And then she rested her hand on my shoulder, and folded in close, as she does sometimes when I need persuading.
“You are a good man, Jay. Go talk with Sadie. Go talk with her. Ask her.”
And so I did.
She was done with her morning chores, and was out by the graves of the boy and the man. She had brought the pants Jacob had torn through the other day, and my socks that needed darning. She was stitching them, quietly, by herself. Her sewing bag was by her side, as cluttered as always. She heard me coming, and glanced up, but went back to her needlework.
I sat beside her, and my knees cracked as I did.
“What is it, Dadi?” she asked. Her little smile, delicate as a flower on her slender face.
I told her what the men had said, what was being discussed. I told them they had talked about her, and she laughed.
“About me?”
I said yes, and she laughed again. It was a woman’s laugh, like her mother’s, but bright and young still. I saw her, now not a girl, not a child. It is hard to see who a person is, through all of those memories of who they were.
I told her what I was thinking, and I asked her what she thought was God’s will in all of this. It was hard getting out the words, to ask my little bird such a thing. What father asks his child for advice?
But she was more than a child, now.
She looked away, her eyes soft and distant. “Some things God wills, and we cannot change. We cannot change the tides. Or a storm, on the earth, or on the sun. Or that I was born a girl. Or that you are my dadi. We are so small, and those things will happen whether we will it or not.
“But there are other things.” She gave a little laugh. “Is it God’s will that we leave?” Her eyes fluttered, then closed, and she spoke, almost to herself. “God knows what it would be for us to stay. And God knows what it would be for us to go. If we stay? It would be like Derek, with that pistol of yours. We would live. Some of us. But it would be terrible. And the blood shed by the English would stain our hands.”
Her hands busied with the sewing as she spoke, carefully, slowly. And then she paused, and her face turned up to me. “And if we go? Then the story of our journey will be told and remembered. Of our setting aside what we have, and not resting in the shadow of the sword. It will be harder. Some of us will not live. More, I think. But it would let us live our plain way, and be a witness.”
Her eyes fixed on mine. They were as deep as the sky. “Which is God’s will? Both. Neither. And the many ways between. There are so many ways in between.”