When the English Fall Read online

  I am wondering more about Mike today. All day long I expected to see him, but I did not.

  AFTER DINNER, AND AFTER Jacob and I had finished our work, I went to the porch for a while to sit and pray. Hannah and Sadie had returned with the washing in the early afternoon, and after it was hung to dry, they busied themselves in the kitchen, talking earnestly about something I could not hear.

  My prayers were selfish, out there on the porch, but we must pray when our hearts are struggling. Soldiers in Lancaster. I cannot remember such a thing, not in any of the stories from my father, or for generations.

  I will admit that my soul was troubled. I wish that it was not so, because I know that God’s purpose for all of us is good, and that God’s Providence is all around us, even in the recent hard years.

  But when the skies bear machines of war, and there are stories that sound like times of trial from the past, I confess that I am not at ease. I think of what I know of war, from stories I have heard. I think of what I know from times of famine and hardship, from the struggles that even we simple folk have had to endure, from the times of flight and martyrdom, and I wonder about our own strength.

  The feel of this is so very terrible, Lord, and so very different from what I would have thought. Lord, give me the strength for whatever I must bear, I prayed, and other things like that.

  This is where my soul was, as I sat on the bench on the porch, the strong, strange heat of a late September day still heavy in the air.

  And then Sadie nestled next to me on the bench, settling in like a falling leaf.

  She was quiet and still next to me, asking nothing, but her head rested soft on my shoulder.

  I opened my eyes and turned to her. We did not speak for a moment.

  “I’m not afraid, Dadi,” she said.

  “Oh,” I said. “You are not?”

  “No,” she said, looking at me as she can sometimes. It is as if you are made of glass, when she looks at you that way. Like she is seeing something through you. “No, I am not.”

  She rested her forehead against my shoulder again, and pressed it against the fabric of my shirt. A little tremble went through her, like a shudder on a cold morning, though the air was still hot.

  “But if you are, it’s all right.” And she whispered into the blue fold of my shirt, “It’s going to be so hard.”

  September 28

  Sabbath worship was good yesterday. I felt it strengthen me, and was very thankful for the blessings of God’s mercy in this strange time.

  Such a busy day today. Still so hot, so hot for so late in September.

  Isaak Stolfutz came by in the early evening, after dinner, as the heat of the day still hung in the air. He is a short man, lean and hard, with short legs and long arms. God made the Stolfutzes for farming, he likes to say. We talked a little about oats, and about the harvest. But mostly, we talked about what he was hearing from his neighbors.

  The Smiths were on about one hundred and forty acres, a family of five. Bill and Donna, hardworking people, they are. I see them now and again, and they’re loud and boisterous and friendly. Bill is from Alabama or Arkansas originally, I think. Someplace like that, and you can’t miss that whenever he speaks. They moved up here to be near to Donna’s parents when they got older, and their farm shares a fence or two with Isaak.

  He was speaking with Bill this morning, but most of what he hears are only rumors. They had some power, their smallest generator worked, but they were being careful with gas. No power in most of the gas stations made getting fuel very difficult. Their refrigerator had failed, and so they had eaten from it for a few days. In their basement, a chest freezer held much of the beef they had kept for themselves after slaughtering a steer. They were carefully keeping it frozen, running it on that little generator for a few hours at a time, and thankful to God that it remains working. So many do not even have that.

  But the corn could not be harvested, because the harvesters were dead things. And the Smiths’ fields, always so carefully maintained, would soon show signs of being untended.

  And then there were the things they had gotten from the Giant in Lititz. Bill had ridden there on his bicycle, and said the store was struggling. Cash only, no checks, no credit, but that was all right with Bill, because they always kept a reserve of money for emergencies. Much of what he got were frozen foods, good for a few more days. The manager at the Giant was practically giving it away, because it would soon spoil. Most of the meat had been a few days without refrigeration, and so much of it had already gone bad.

  The shelves were pretty much emptied, but there were still some things left.

  Bill had also gotten as many canned items as he could, to supplement what he and Donna always kept around. They had much they canned and preserved themselves, a full and stocked larder. With the cattle, and their gardens, and the chickens, they were fine. But their hired hands were having trouble getting there, and work was being left undone.

  “Bill is a thoughtful and resourceful man,” said Isaak. “I haven’t known him to be frightened easily. But he is worried about the harvest, and worried about what he hears on the radio.” Isaak paused.

  I asked what that was.

  Isaak cleared his throat. “He hears that tens of thousands are dead, fallen from the skies. That ships at sea have foundered, tens of thousands more assumed lost. And crashes. And fires. And the hospitals can do much less now, so many more die. The army is moving to maintain order in the cities, but that already in some places things are bad.” He paused.

  “But even the radio station doesn’t seem to know much. Mostly rumors and stories they have heard.” Isaak paused again, and seemed to fold up a little bit.

  I thought about this. “And in Lancaster? What does he hear?” I asked.

  He told me that the National Guard is there now. Hundreds of soldiers, a company of soldiers, they say, supporting the police. A state of emergency has been declared, and the soldiers are driving around in their four-wheel drives with big speakers. Apparently there is martial law, but no one knows exactly what that means, other than that there are soldiers with guns everywhere.

  Everyone in Lancaster seems to be doing all right so far. But the world is not just Lancaster. There are larger cities, places where there are no fields and farms nearby, and where there is more violence. Pittsburgh, apparently, is bad. And other farther places, things were beginning to get bad. The biggest cities, like New York and Washington and Baltimore and Los Angeles. Rumors of violence. But just rumors. “Who knows anything anymore,” Isaak said. “It all feels like gossip, like none of it is real.”

  IN THE HOUSE, MIKE is sleeping.

  He arrived on a bicycle in the late afternoon, when Jacob and I were not there, but were working with the men to bale hay at the Schrock farm. It was not a long wait, but when we returned, Mike was out on the porch, his face still red, his heavy body still wet with sweat.

  Hannah had gotten him lemonade, a pitcher of it, and he had drunk much of it. He was exhausted, because from his house, the ride is about eighteen miles. Not that far, perhaps, but though Mike is a big man, and he may have been very strong as a young man, there is so much flesh on him now.

  We have talked about this, his weight and his smoking, his need to get more exercise, but he had always just laughed at me and told me he’d rather drive.

  As I saw him there, red as a pickled beet and spent, I chose not to mention those conversations.

  He didn’t come about the work. He had heard nothing, nothing since that night. No one had heard much of anything.

  We sat for a while, and we talked.

  “I’m scared, Jacob,” he said, as he talked through what he was seeing in the town. “Everywhere soldiers, and the big stores are pretty empty now, the Stauffers, the Giant, and the Turkey Hills are closed, and nobody knows anything. Nothing. Nobody working, and everyone is milling around.” As people talked, the rumors would spread, and then no one would really know what was going on, but everyone would
be upset.

  “There’s talk about food maybe coming in, but no trucks, no nothing. Even the Central Market, well, you know,” he said. “We don’t even have that produce coming in from all of the farms around here. Figured some would come this last Tuesday. With nothing working, folks went there on Tuesday hoping for something, but there wasn’t anything to have.”

  He said something like that, but he was tired and agitated, so he forgot himself as he sometimes did. There were a few words added in that I am glad the children did not hear.

  I reminded him, softly, and he was apologetic.

  IN THE NIGHT, IN the night as I write this, I can hear trucks. They are a long way away, but they are out there moving. My prayers today are for Mike, and for our broken world.

  October 1

  Warm today, still very warm. But the heat has changed again, and everything is moist and wet. The sky was gray and fat and thick with rain clouds that race across the sky, and the wind howled through the trees. It felt very violent, a day stumbling around like a drunken, angry man.

  It is growing darker in the morning, as the days begin to shorten. I feel the darkness more, though my day begins as it always does. Prayer, and then out to the barn, to the feeding and the blessing of work for the day. But I look around, and the glow that once rose from the south is still gone.

  I remember that I did not like it, that in my morning prayers I would often ask the Good Lord to still my fears about it. There, or so my heart was moved sometimes, was the light of human sin. Bright and gaudy and wasteful, like the distant sound of overloud music.

  I have not felt that way these last few days. I see darkness where once there was life and light, and my heart hurts. That darkness means that things are hard, and they do not seem to be getting better. It reminds me of the many thousands who are dead. It means people are still in darkness, and that they are growing more and more afraid and angry. And the English are people. They are God’s children. They are my brothers and sisters. I think of Mike.

  Mike went back home. He left early on Monday, said he had things to do, and the kids were with Shauna but he still wanted to be around.

  Hannah made him some sandwiches, and gave him some water to fill his plastic bottles. Then he went off on that bicycle of his again, huffing and puffing. I could tell he was still tired from the ride here, but I could not help but think that maybe riding the bicycle was better for him that sitting in that truck all day long.

  I think it must have been a difficult few days out in the world. Not for us. For us, life is much the same. But we are not the only people. I know that wherever Mike is, things are not easy. And there are many people like him.

  I had picked beans for much of Monday, with Hannah by my side. They were a late crop, but the crops seem later and later every year with all of this warmth. Most of ours had already been canned and set aside by now, but there were still many vines yielding well, and we picked several bushels. We had the beans that normally we would sell, and we also had several crates of the strawberry jam that we had planned on selling at market over the fall. There was also a box of jerky and dried pork strips, all prepared before the storm to go downtown for sale.

  That would have been some of our income for the fall, or we had planned it to be. But we do not know now what will be coming in the next weeks and months, and we know that we are in an emergency. The deacons had talked through it, and the word to all of us was that we would help as we can, with what food we can spare and with our skills.

  That is as it should be.

  I loaded the food on the wagon, and hitched up Pearl. Nettie doesn’t like the wagon, and Pearl was always the bigger and stronger of the two. We took them over to where we had been asked by the Guard to bring them. The word of what was needed had come to Bishop Schrock, and then Jon and others had ridden it around the settlement. There were dozens of wagons there, and many menfolk. It was a little like a barn raising, in that way, but it didn’t have quite the same feeling. There was a tension in the air, almost like the shimmer of the light on that terrible night.

  I think it was seeing the trucks that made us feel differently.

  The National Guard trucks came in the morning on Tuesday, eight of them, all in a line at the Schrock Farm.

  The trucks were a strange and motley collection. All had that drab hardness of military vehicles, blunt and crude and purposeful. Most seemed to have been built for carrying men or supplies, but they felt irregular. I have watched columns of soldiers drive past, in their vehicles, all identical, as identical as their uniforms. It always feels very orderly, every soldier and every vehicle sharing the same appearance. It is, I think, what makes a soldier feel like he belongs to something. It is like the reason that we dress as we do, although it is such a terribly different order than our own.

  But all of the vehicles today seemed different. I do not know anything about the ways of war, nor do I know trucks. I did notice, though, that the trucks that came seemed to be of all different sorts and sizes. They did not match.

  One was the most different, with many wheels and a large and wicked gun mounted in a turret on the top. It did not seem like it was made to carry food. But it still ran, and so they were filling it up inside with everything that the community had gathered. It seemed strange to see it there, looking so fierce and terrible. And there we were, filling it up with jam and green beans and canned corn.

  There were a dozen Guardsmen, most young, a few older. They helped load, working quietly and efficiently alongside us, their squad leader giving commands. Most of them worked with us. Two, though, remained on watch. They kept their rifles in their arms, which seemed peculiar to me.

  As the work continued, Bishop Schrock took the squad leader aside and they talked. It was interesting to see his face. Something was upsetting him. It was not an easy conversation, whatever was being said. But they had moved away, many yards away, and they were not talking loudly, so I could not hear what they said.

  I remained busy with those around me as we helped load the trucks. One man, his name was Jorge, was young and broad-shouldered, and had a serious manner about him. He had a wife and a daughter, and he told me their names, but I’m not sure I remember them well enough to write them down. He told me what he had been hearing and seeing. It was exactly what had been talked about at the Michaelsons’ the other day.

  Much was rumor, but he mostly knew what could be heard through National Guard talking. In the first few days, things had been calm for a while, but then there had been a panic in Philadelphia. Something had happened. I noticed that he did not say what.

  “I totally get it, man,” he said. “It’s seriously scary.” And he talked for a while about how much he understood why people were upset.

  If you assume you can just go buy something, why would you have enough in your larder to keep you for a winter? Or even for a week?

  And then suddenly you couldn’t buy anything, and your credit card didn’t work, and your debit card didn’t work, and you couldn’t go to the bank because the computers at the bank didn’t work.

  “People are freaked out when they don’t know what’s going on,” he said. “And nobody knows what’s going on. What are we even supposed to do? I can’t work, ’cause my store can’t sell anything. Who’s going to buy a cell phone these days? And how would I even get paid?”

  I asked him what he had seen, and he told me he didn’t want to say. Then he thought for a few seconds.

  “It’s like the world just came to an end,” he said, and paused. “Only we’re all still here.”

  He talked more, about what his pastor said. I think he was Pentecostal. For years, there had been talk of the end of things. And about the Rapture, and about how the time was at hand. He seemed very upset when he talked about it, but it was an upset that went down deep.

  I told him that I understood, but I think perhaps I do not. There are so many things I rely on, so many things that are just part of me, that I know are there and will be there. Han
nah by my side. Sadie and her . . . specialness. Jacob. I take for granted that they are there, as I would the air in my lungs or the ground under my feet.

  I assume the earth will yield, that what we plant will grow. There is always sweat, and the work is often not easy. But it will grow.

  I assume the wood that I work will yield to my hand, to the craft that my father taught me. I assume that craft has worth, that it is vocation, and that it is useful and good.

  And it is so with our little community. I assume that brothers will be there to help with the harvest, just as I know I will be there for them. I assume that sisters will be there to help prepare the house and to work side by side. It is how God made us, every one, to be a strength to one another.

  Our community is, to me, what all the English had built was to him.

  But now, for him, all of that is gone.

  I DID NOT GO with the Guardsmen. Others did. Willis and Jon and Abram. They were to return by nightfall, but the days are shorter now.

  They came back an hour after dark, a single truck returning with them in the dark of early evening. Funny, even a single truck is so easy to notice. A lonely patch of light, out in the nothingness.

  I watched the lights of the truck, heard the faint hum of the engine as it moved through the quietness of our community. A mile or two away, they must have been. I knew I would talk with Abram the next day, as he came to help in our fields.

  WEDNESDAY I HAD MUCH to do. It was a busy day, but by afternoon, most of the fieldwork was done. We do not have much land, after all, and the help others can provide makes light work of it.

  Abram stayed after, and we sat on the porch. He and I talked about what he had encountered in Lancaster the day before.

  Abram had ridden with the others in the lead truck. As they’d ridden along, he had talked with the squad leader, a staff sergeant. Sergeant Williams was a brick of a man, squat and solid and matter-of-fact.

  It was a talk about money, at first.

  There was just no way for the National Guard to pay us for the food and supplies we were giving. Orders were to provide supplies to Lancaster, at a couple of key locations. Our farms, and those few others that were still functioning, were where the supplies would be requisitioned.