DC03 - Though Mountains Fall (12 page)

“Only for the pain,” he said with a wink.

Domingo cut a striking figure in his wedding clothes, and his pride in his new bride showed in every glance. Dancing close to him at one point, she asked, “Are all Mexican weddings like this?”

“No, usually there is more, but we had to leave out the parts involving the family of the bride.” Then, when he saw the sadness in her eyes, he drew her close, kissed her neck and whispered, “It’s all right, Cualnezqui. Your new family loves you just as much.”

The Zapara women had laid out a huge feast on tables in the backyard, and as the sun went down the wedding party dined by torch and candlelight on fire-roasted beef and all kinds of Mexican delicacies.

It was a raucous, joyful celebration unlike anything she had ever known, and it all flew past her in a colorful blur, like one great long dance. More than once the Amish part of her felt a twinge of guilt at the worldliness of it all, but then at least a dozen times she caught herself thinking,
If only Rachel could see this, she would
love it.

Long after dark it was Kyra who sang the
entrega
to the newlyweds, and it was over.

The guests all said their goodbyes and departed.

Miriam took her husband’s arm, and he walked her to their new home.

Her new life.

After evening prayers everyone wandered off to bed except Dat. Rachel paused at the foot of the stairs when she saw him set the lantern on the kitchen table. He took paper and envelopes down from a cabinet, along with the little hinged box containing fountain pen and inkhorn, then sat himself down and put his face in his hands.

When he looked up and saw her watching him, she thought surely he would order her up to her room, but he didn’t. There was deep regret in his eyes as he motioned to her and said softly, “Come. Sit.”

She sat across from him at the table, eyes downcast, unable to face him.

“I want you to know I have forgiven you,” he said. “All day I have been thinking about what I must say to the bishop, and
I have learned how hard the truth can be. I don’t blame you anymore.”

He stared at the blank paper in front of him. “I only wish I didn’t have to do this thing. Jake Weaver saved your life, and Domingo’s. It grieves me to know that a man died by his hand, but I know Jake. I know he would never kill anyone on purpose. It could only be an accident. Anyway, if Jake didn’t do what he did none of you would be here, and now he is to be punished for it.”

Dat gave no hint that he wouldn’t write the letter, only that he regretted it. The first and most important thing was that Jake’s soul was in peril, and the only path to safety was through repentance.

Clinging to a fragile hope, she looked up at him. “Tell me what you really think, Dat. Will the bishop come here?”

Her father knew her too well. She saw his face soften as he read the hope in her eyes like an open book.

But he shook his head sadly. “No, child. I know Bishop Schwartz. He’s too old and frail, and anyway he’ll want to confer with his ministers and the other bishops on such an unusual matter. He’ll never come to Mexico. Jake will have to go to him.”

She lowered her gaze. “That’s a pity. If the bishop would just come for a visit, there are those of us who would like to be baptized and join the church.”

Her father leaned back from the table, his eyes widening. “You have decided, then?”

A nod. “Jah, I am ready. My course will not change.”

He studied her for a minute, then reached across the table, lifted her chin with a forefinger and looked into her eyes. “I must know one thing, Rachel, and I want you to tell me the truth. This is not the time for secrets.”

“I will.”

“Are you only wanting to be baptized so that you can be married?”

The question itself was out of bounds, but these were extreme circumstances. Her father was taking her to a whole new level of trust. Her gaze was steady, her voice firm.

“I’m nineteen years old, Dat. I was barely sixteen when we moved to Mexico, and I have never complained, though it was not my choice to come. If there was a bishop here I would have joined the church already. Do I want to marry Jake? Jah, I do. It is time. It is right. But do I want to be baptized
only
so I can marry? No, that’s not the truth. I want this life, and all that comes with it. I want to marry in the faith.”

The words hit him like a thunderbolt. Rachel would never dream of trying to intentionally manipulate her father, but it occurred to her now that this was Miriam’s wedding day, and she could not have chosen a better time to say the words
marry in the faith
.

He rested his chin in his palm and sat thinking for several minutes. She waited in silence.

“There are problems,” he finally said. “You will have to go through instruction classes.”

This was routine and she already knew it. Joining the church was a serious matter. All applicants were required to take classes outlining the beliefs and practices of the Amish, the Confession of Faith. There would be nine classes, held during the Sunday service every other week.

“That’s more than four months before you could be baptized,” her father said. “Even if the bishop did come to Mexico, he would never stay that long.”

She still said nothing, and they stared at each other across the table for a moment—long enough for her father to catch up with her thoughts.

A sad smile crept onto his face and he shook a forefinger at her. “You want to go to Ohio with Jake, don’t you? But even if you go back and stay long enough to finish the classes, you still won’t be able to get married—”

“Because my family won’t be there,” she said. “That’s true, and I’ve already thought about it. I wouldn’t want to be married without my family. What would be the point of having a ceremony at all if not for them? But I
could
be baptized, and then I will be ready if the day ever comes that me and Jake and my family and a bishop are all in the same country at the same time.”

The rare hint of sarcasm brought a smile to his face. “All right then. But we will wait for the bishop’s letter.
If
he says Jake must go to Ohio, then I will think about it.”

Rachel was stunned speechless. Never in a million years could she have seen this coming. Clutching at the neckline of her dress she rose from the chair, turned her back to her father and started across the room on uncertain feet.

“You’re welcome,” her father’s voice said from behind her.

She stopped and looked back, making no effort to hide the tears of joy. “Thank you, Dat,” she whispered. “Thank you.”

Nothing was the same for Rachel now that Miriam was gone. Leah moved into the vacant spot in the bed, balancing things out a bit. Now Ada, the oldest, and Barbara, the youngest, slept in one bed while the middle two girls slept in the other. Rachel loved her younger sister, but Leah was a flighty seventeen-year-old who liked to talk, and as Dat often said, people who talked all the time very seldom said anything.

Rachel crawled into bed and lay awake for a long time, thinking, her mind running through endless possibilities. She
was bursting to talk about it, but Miriam was gone and this was not something she could discuss with Leah.

On Monday morning, though she had barely slept, she got up an hour before daylight to do chores and again felt Miriam’s absence. Leah helped with the milking, but she was not Miriam. Sometimes chattering took the place of working.

When the chores were done Rachel went to the kitchen to help Mamm put breakfast on the table. Mamm was nearly as absent as Miriam and kept forgetting where she put things. If Leah talked too much, Mamm made up for it by not talking at all, staring out the back window for minutes at a time while the biscuits burned. When the family sat down to eat, Mamm took one look around the table and her sagging face melted even further.

Since the carnage in the hacienda village, she had spoken very little, eaten almost nothing and never smiled. The color was gone from her cheeks, and she always looked as if she was about to cry.

Not so many years ago, when all her children were still living and at home, there had been thirteen faces around Mamm’s table—a thriving, happy, noisy clan—and she was the center of her children’s lives. She had always laughed so easily, Rachel recalled, constantly entertained by her hearty brood. Now there were only five children left at home. During breakfast Mamm tilted her head and stared at the empty chairs as if they spoke to her.

When the breakfast dishes were all washed and dried and put away Rachel helped her mother haul out the laundry and set up the washing machine on the back porch. A bone of contention with some of the Amish, the wringer machine was driven by a pulley, powered by a separate little gasoline engine that some said was “worldly.” Dat disagreed, and until a bishop told him otherwise he would let her use it.

Mamm fed Caleb’s and Harvey’s work pants through the wringer in dark silence. The only time she said anything at all was when Rachel was helping hang dresses on the line and she rambled morosely about how there wasn’t nearly so much to wash as there once had been.

Even Levi noticed it. Since Emma’s kitchen was still a wreck, he and Emma came over for supper that evening, and after dinner Levi and Caleb walked outside in the gathering dusk and leaned on the corral fence to talk. Rachel was taking clothes off the line right next to them and overheard part of the conversation.

“Mamm’s not right,” Levi said. “She didn’t hardly eat a bite of supper.”

Caleb put a foot up on the rail. “She’ll be fine. She’ll eat when she’s hungry.”

“I can’t blame her for being upset, I guess, after all that’s happened lately. Dead bandits in the streets, a man hung, my barn burned.”

Caleb picked at his teeth with a bit of straw as he watched a colt prance in the corral. “Jah, those things were bad, but not so bad as seeing Miriam in her Mexican wedding dress. That hit her mighty hard.”

“It’s a terrible shame,” Levi said quietly, staring at the ground as if he couldn’t bear to intrude on his father-in-law by looking at him just now. “That Miriam was a fine girl.”

Rachel dropped the last dress into the basket, picked it up and headed silently for the house, but she’d been wounded by that one word, uncontested by her father.

Was
. As if Miriam were dead.

Chapter 10

O
n Wednesday afternoon Caleb brought the harrow up to the barn and was putting away the draft horses when he heard hoofbeats. Four soldiers on horseback escorted a wagon into the backyard and hailed him as he came out of the barn.

Captain Soto dismounted, shook hands and greeted him like an old friend.

“
Buenos días
, Señor Bender. I trust everyone is well?”

Caleb nodded, a little suspiciously. The knot in the pit of his stomach was the same one he always got when bandits came around. “Sí,” he said, rather tersely. “What can we do for you?”

Might as well get to the point. He was not inclined to engage in small talk with this man.

Smiling, the captain waved vaguely toward the wagon. “We are trying to get settled into our new headquarters, my amigo, and things are going very well except that we have found some necessary items in short supply, so we have come to purchase what we need from the local campesinos. What better way to establish a bond between my men and the people we have come to serve, no?”