When the English Fall Read online

  “There has been something strange,” he told me. “Something has happened.” I told him that yes, I knew, the lights in the sky and that plane. It was a tragedy. But he shook his head, and cleared his throat.

  “Dadi told me to ride, to tell you and everyone. Our neighbors the Wilsons, they say that they have no power. And Mr. Wilson’s generator won’t start, and their trucks won’t start, and their car won’t start. The radio, it doesn’t work, and their cell phones don’t work. Some of them turn on. But nobody hears anything.

  “And our generator is dead, too, when my mami tried to use it for the washing this morning.”

  “Does he hear from anyone else?” I asked.

  “No,” said Jim. “No word from nobody. Man from Lancaster was supposed to talk with my dad, but he never showed. I just came from Mr. Fisher,” he said. “He tells me that his neighbor’s wife came by, scared and on foot, saying that her husband was hurt bad. Not sure why or how. But they couldn’t call for help. Couldn’t call an ambulance. Car won’t start. Truck wouldn’t start. Van wouldn’t start. Mr. Fisher was with her, just about to ride over to see if he could help, maybe take them into town.”

  “Does anyone know anything more?” I asked.

  “No sir,” he said. “But there are almost no cars on the road. Pretty much nobody. The roads are so quiet, it’s like everything has come to a stop. Almost the only folks moving are plain folk. Just buggies. Only seen two trucks and two cars. Strangest thing.”

  That was strange.

  “Gotta go,” shouted Jim, and he leapt up onto the mare and rode off in the direction of the Sorensons’. Again he was riding faster than he should, but he was excited. I’m not so old that I’ve forgotten what it was to be excited.

  I went and talked to Hannah, told her I was going to go over to the Sorensons’, and that I’d be back by lunch.

  BEFORE I WENT, I went behind the house, to where we keep our small store of fuel and the little Honda generator that Hannah uses to power the washer. That is all we use it for. Even that would not have been permitted in my father’s house, but here, few see the spiritual need for washing by hand. Perhaps it is that they actually listen to their wives here. It is simple enough to be independent, or so Bishop Beiler used to say. I turned the key. Nothing. I pulled the cord to start it. Nothing.

  Hannah will not be pleased to hear this.

  I WAS NOT THE only one at the Sorensons’. Jim was still there when I arrived, and his father, and the oldest Fisher boy. Deacon Sorenson and Isaak Stolfutz were talking in earnest, the younger folk listening intently.

  The word was the same from every family. The English neighbors, none of them had power. Most were farm folk, and most had generators and emergency power and solar and wind turbines for when the power went out.

  Almost none of it was working. Some was. But most was not. Among the plain folk, the Michaelsons, who had permission from the deacons and Bishop Schrock to put in a solar array last year, reported it was useless, shorted out completely.

  The oldest Fisher boy told what he’d learned from his dadi, who’d gone to see the Johansons. Mr. Johanson was hurt bad, been working with some power equipment in their barn, got a bad shock. Burned his hand, knocked him clean across the room, or so the Fisher boy said.

  They’d bandaged it, and put on salve, and then Joseph took him in the buggy and rode to Doctor Michaels’s house.

  And from none of them came any word of the outside.

  I asked Deacon Sorenson what he thought had happened. He thought for a moment, then another moment more.

  “I suppose your Sadie knows,” he said, and he smiled, faintly. “But I do not.” The smile lingered on his face, an echo, meaningless.

  THE REST OF THE day was spent in the workshop. Not much was new to learn, although the young men rode about quickly on their horses, telling what could be told. The fire still burned to the south, smoke still rising far off in a tall, faint column. By late afternoon, another fire was burning, a little closer, to the south – southwest.

  Dinner was early, a good meal. We talked about what we had seen, and we prayed. What else was there for us to do?

  As night fell, it fell darker and darker. The lights in the farms of the plain folk could be seen, but the roads were almost empty, and the skies were empty, and the glow from Lancaster in the south was gone. In the direction of the city, here and there, a point of light, and in many other places, what seemed like distant candlelight. The same to the west, to Ephrata, and even the faint lights of Lititz to the east were out. It was dark. So very dark. The light of the English no longer filled the skies.

  There, in the deep black ink, were only stars. I watched for a while, because the skies were so different. Every constellation stood bright. Stars I had not seen, cannot remember seeing, were there and bright. The Milky Way was clear and visible. Amazing.

  Up high, a plane, just one, lights blinking, was flying very very high and very fast. It was the first I’d seen. It moved southward, and I watched until it passed to the far horizon.

  Then, with the cool coming, I came in to bed.

  September 24

  The morning was as it always was, except in the south that fire still burned. It is a little warmer again today but still feels like autumn. After the morning in the field, I went to my shop, and there Jacob and I worked for a while. But there was no word from Mike.

  Joseph Fisher came by midmorning, and we talked. He had gone to his neighbor’s home the day before, and then taken the ride to town, taken Mr. Johanson to Dr. Michaels to have his hand looked at. The burn was very bad, and they were afraid of infection, and he had no feeling in his hand.

  The roads were empty, except for plain folk and some on bicycles. So many cars were abandoned, some just left by the roadside, many just in the middle of the road.

  Dr. Michaels was at home, and he was able to treat Mr. Johanson, rebandaging his hand and providing some antibiotics. He was usually at the community hospital in Ephrata on Thursdays, but as he told Joseph, nothing at the hospital was working. None of his equipment. None of the machines. The generators that provided them with emergency electricity did not work, and the ambulances did not work. Though Dr. Michaels could not start his truck to drive to town, he had ridden his bicycle those miles to the east in the morning. And then he had ridden back.

  Everything in town was a mess, and nothing was working, but Dr. Michaels did not say much more than that, and Joseph did not ask. Dr. Michaels did not know much. He returned with Mr. Johanson to his home, with medicine for the burn and for the pain.

  Joseph thought it was all very strange and terrible, and he asked about the lights in the sky and what they might have meant. “I have never seen their like,” he said. “What did you think of them?”

  I did not share what Sadie had been saying, as I knew that tales move from ear to ear even among the plain folk.

  I told him that God would provide for his people, but that I also knew that sometimes there were times of terrible hardship. I said I did not know exactly what it meant.

  “Do you think they were angels?” he asked, and his earnest look was very clear. He had heard the talk.

  I told him no, that I did not. They were something, I said. And all things are from God. But I did not think they were angels. They had the beauty of angels, I said. But they were more like the sunrise. Or a storm. They were not living as angels live.

  I said there was a word for it, but that I couldn’t remember it. But I knew it was something I had seen.

  “Yes, I think so, too,” he said. “Like a storm, whatever that was.”

  We sat and talked for a while longer, and then he returned home.

  IT IS LATE AGAIN, and I am awake, and the sky is dark. All sleep, but I do not. The night is not as cool as I thought it might be, as if summer pushes to return.

  In the far distance, there is a light near Lancaster. But it is the light of a large fire, fierce and flickering. I watch for a while, as I write this.
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br />   September 25

  Busy morning, it has been.

  The morning filled with the gift of work, as always, and we prepared to go to the Michaelsons’ to help harvest, Jacob and I. We will go soon. Hannah busied herself with the remainder of the apples from our harvest, and with canning the beans and the peas that Sadie and Jacob harvested in the cool of the morning after milking and feeding was done.

  Sadie seems so calm now, so at ease within herself. Quieter, perhaps. But not unhappy, and strangely focused. But I was distracted. I cannot help but look to the south. The smoke rises now from several places. It has not stopped.

  And the skies are still quiet. This morning another airplane flew by and then another, very small and high and fast, but those are the only ones I have seen today. Friday is always a busy day for the English in the skies, and yet the lines of cloud that crisscross the heavens are gone. Contrails, I believe they are called.

  I am wondering, this Friday, about Mike. He was to come and talk with me this morning, but he did not.

  I must be off. Much still to do today. But I wonder at how Mike is.

  THE MICHAELSON FARM IS a bustling one, such a large family can care for much land. Eight children, all as able and capable as their parents. And today many gathered to help them prepare the oats for harvest. Jacob accompanied me, this for the first time. We and the Fishers and the Sorenson boys and the four oldest Michaelson boys. Also there were the three Schrock boys . . . men now, really . . . and both Beiler boys. We gathered behind Jon Michaelson’s grain binder, and as his team drew it on, we gathered the bundles and shocked them.

  As we shocked, we talked. The last few days had been harder for many of us. The Schrocks’ dairy cows could not be milked except by hand, because the milking machine had failed. Neighbors are helping, but all are finding more time must be taken for everything. Less can be done. It is nothing we cannot bear.

  There was much talk about how the threshing of the oats might be accomplished. There are two threshers, both old Deeres. Neither is yet working, but Young Jon Michaelson believes he can have the older one running soon. Some rewiring, something to do with shorts and failed circuits, and he was sure of it.

  All talked about what they had heard from those of the English around us. The lights were aurora, they were saying, the Northern Lights. I think now I remember seeing a picture of them in a book once, very long ago. Not angels, as angelic as they seemed.

  But such lights never come so far south, never in the memory of any who live here. And they are never as bright.

  It was a storm, the rumor goes, but not an earthly one. It was a storm in the heavens, a storm from the sun. And though one would not know it from here, because today has been like almost any other day among the simple folk, the English are struggling. Many are our friends, our neighbors.

  And the storm did not just hit the English we know. It is not just the English around us. The news was that this was not just us, and not just Pennsylvania.

  It is all of the English. Everywhere. It is the whole world.

  This was enough to keep us all in silence for a while.

  There was not much to know, except that everywhere, almost nothing was working. Nothing was moving. Some with working radios would pick up occasional sounds, but they learned nothing. And the satellites that carry so much of what people hear were now dead rocks in the heavens.

  The cards and computers that make business possible among the English? None of them were working. None of them. It was, Willis Schrock said, a very hard thing. He’d gone to talk with some of his friends, other farmers. So few kept things on paper now. So many businesses, so many banks, and it was as if everything had been forgotten. The records and the copies of records were just gone.

  “How can you even know what it is that you have? How can you even know what belongs to who?” He scratched at his beard, which made him for a moment look just like his father. “I do not even know how they will work.”

  And I had not been thinking it, until Abram Beiler said it. “Those who farm will struggle,” he said, “but . . .”

  And he paused. He was a bright man, like his father had been before he passed. “I do not know how the English will cope,” he said. “How will they eat, if they cannot move their crops and food? I have seen so little moving. I have seen only two cars, and a truck. And some planes. There are stories that the army is moving, that more of their things work. But even the rails aren’t working.”

  “There are so many in the cities. So many. You remember, Jacob,” he said to me directly. “You remember what it was like.”

  I nodded in agreement, and he went on. “And they live as if today is the only day, and know nothing except the ways of their busyness. And now? Now what will they do? Food for today, and for tomorrow, but the winter comes.”

  “But perhaps they can fix the things,” said Young Jon. Always hopeful, he was. “I can fix the thresher. I know I can,” he said. “I can see where it is shorted out. It will be better once I get the replacement part. It has only been three days. A lot of people are more careful now, with all the storms and weather.”

  “That is my prayer,” said Abram. “But it makes me think of my father, as the cancer spread. It was not one thing, as he died. It was everything. It was everywhere in him, and when everywhere is broken, the body cannot mend. If there is no place that has strength, then death comes quickly.”

  “I hope that it is not like that,” said Abram. And then there was silence again.

  Sometimes we sing and laugh as we work, but talk and singing and laughter felt very far away.

  We worked the shocks, in the hot sun, so hot for a late September Friday, and though some hearts were heavy, we were grateful to the Lord for the gift of his creation.

  When we got home, I could hear, far away, the sounds of vehicles moving, many of them, off to the west. Maybe thirty or forty vehicles, moving south.

  HANNAH HAD FINISHED PREPARING our meal when we returned home, and the kitchen was hot with the rich smell of stew and vegetables. I asked after Sadie, who was not in the kitchen helping as she has been more and more of late.

  “In the garden,” said Hannah. “She’s in the garden, talking with Liza Schrock and Rachel Fisher.”

  Woman talk, I was tempted to think, but I know that it was more than that. Liza is as kind as Ellis is hard, and Rachel Fisher is gifted like no other I know in the graces of prayer. My heart stirred for a moment to worry, because both have been a strength to Hannah and Sadie when Sadie’s illness has taken her. They have been in our house in some very hard times.

  I paused for a moment.

  “Is she all right?” I asked. “Is there . . .” and words stumbled in my mouth.

  But Hannah smiled, her lips pursed as they do when she is thinking many things all at once.

  “No, no, she has been busy about her chores today. She seems well. They are talking and praying. There has been much talk, you know there has, in the last few days, with all of this going on.”

  Yes, I know, I said, because I had heard some of it, some about our Sadie, when we were out in the fields. Even among the menfolk, there was talk, although just a little. The stories about her strange brokenness have a way of being told and retold.

  I know there is talk, I said.

  “Well, Lizabet and Rachel just wanted to talk with her, is all,” said Hannah, as she sliced up a zucchini.

  Well, I said, that’s good.

  Hannah made a little nod, and went about her preparations, and I felt perhaps I should attend to other things.

  Jacob was out feeding and grooming the horses, as was his task each evening, and so I walked to the barn to check on a board I’d seen was loose.

  It was near where the women were talking, but not too near, and I looked across and saw them sitting in a tight little triangle in the grass, their dresses bundled about them like nests. Lizabet and Rachel looked intent, as Sadie was speaking softly to them both. I saw that they were hand in hand, and thoug
h they were talking, it did seem like they may have been in prayer.

  Or in and out of talk and prayer and back into talk. Time with Lizabet could be like that, I remember.

  Sadie looked up, and waved, her hand a little bird fluttering. Dadi, she mouthed, and smiled, and I saw for a moment her mother’s face in her.

  I waved back but walked on. Best to leave them to talking, I thought.

  September 26

  It was a hotter morning today, and the sun rose into a reddish, bloody haze. So much smoke around, from the fires. And it has not rained, and there is no word about rain. But then there is no word about much of anything.

  I was on my way to the field to see how the oats were coming when I heard him coming. It was a motorbike, old and small and loud. It racketed past, bearing a middle-aged man. I did not know him. He did not stop. He seemed very intent on something, but I do not know what.

  Hannah and Sadie hitched up Nettie this morning and took the buggy, filled with washing, over to the Stolfutz house. Their generator will still start, which is good.

  I surveyed the oats, and they are still weeks from shocking. They stood below my shoulder, as I brushed through them. Leaves still mostly green. I took a kernel between my fingers, and the oat milk mingled with the dirt under my nails. Still time needed yet. They went in the earth just a little later than the Michaelsons’, but this acre is a little slower. Not as rich. We will need help for the harvest, for Jacob and I could not do this alone, but it will come.

  As I stood there in the field, I heard a rumbling and thundering. Not rain, but a group of helicopters, five of them, very large and very low. They came from the northwest. Maybe coming from Fort Indiantown Gap. I think there are soldiers there. I think I remember someone telling me that once.

  They passed over, very low, and the air shook around me. The oats trembled as they rested softly against my hand. The helicopters moved to the south, toward the smoke.