A Plain Leaving Read online

  I continued on to my aunt’s front door and reached it just as she met me. Once we were inside, I reached for the basket. “I’ll fold them,” I said.

  She handed over the clean laundry. “I’ll start the kettle and then help.”

  The basket was filled with towels and sheets. Perhaps they’d been used to care for Dat on his last day. I buried my nose in the towel on top of the pile, hoping I could catch a scent of Dat, but it smelled of bleach mixed with fresh air and a hint of woodsmoke. I placed the laundry on Aenti Suz’s little table and started with the towels, quickly folding them in thirds as Mamm had taught all of us to do.

  Aenti Suz’s house was just a bedroom, bathroom, living room, and kitchen. Dat had built it for his parents, with lots of natural light. Windows looked out onto both the backyard of the big house and the field.

  The enclosed back porch of the big house was visible too. Original logs, painted white, from the cabin built by Walter Bachmann made up the lower, outer wall of the porch. The top part was glass during the winter and screens during the summer. I’d heard the story that the entire space of the porch was the cabin the first American Bachmann family lived in during their first winter in Pennsylvania, where they’d sought refuge after they’d fled religious persecution in Switzerland in 1752.

  There had been one girl and three boys who lived to adulthood. We were descendants of one of those boys. That was as much as I knew about the family. But perhaps now that I’d left the Amish, I had no more right to those stories than to my old bed.

  After Aenti Suz started the kettle to boil, she joined me and together we started on the sheets. “I’m so relieved Leisel called you,” Aenti said. “I would have if I had your number.”

  I nodded. I believed her.

  “It’s what your father wanted, what he requested. But I think Leisel would have figured out a way to reach you regardless.”

  “I hope so,” I answered. Clearly Mamm, Marie, and Arden wouldn’t have.

  We finished folding the sheets just as the kettle began to whistle. Aenti Suz stepped back into her tiny kitchen, as I stacked everything back in the basket.

  Aenti Suz directed me to her couch as she put a tray with the teapot and cups on the side table. There was also a platter of homemade bread, apple slices, and cheese slices. I hadn’t had lunch and realized how hungry I was.

  As I took a piece of bread, I asked Aenti Suz to give me more details about Dat’s illness, saying Leisel had simply said he’d had lung cancer.

  “Jah,” she said. “It went very quickly. He agreed to one round of chemotherapy but the trips into town and the effects of the drugs took their toll. After his first scans showed no progress, he said he was done with all of that.”

  “Was he in a lot of pain, at the end?” I asked.

  I could tell by the look in Aenti’s eyes that he was. “He never complained,” she answered. “And Leisel cared for him so well. That girl has a gift. She got it from Gus.”

  I nodded. Dat did have a gift of healing, and I saw the same in my sister, since she was a young girl. She cared for kittens, chicks, puppies, fledglings, and even baby mice as a child. By the time I was thirteen, I was working with Dat in the fields. By the time she was thirteen, she was assisting Dat with his herbs and supplements. Marie was happy to help Mamm run the house, freeing Leisel and me up, mostly, for what we truly loved to do, although we certainly helped with the inside chores too.

  “He told me one day when I was sitting with him, toward the end, that he’d visited you several times. I guessed you were in Harrisburg.”

  I nodded, taking the last bite of the piece of bread.

  “I’m so glad he went to see you.” Aenti Suz smiled, but it was soon replaced with a sad expression. “And then I was in the room when he told Leisel to call you.”

  I smiled a little. “So he died in his room?”

  Aenti shook her head. “No, in his study. In a hospital bed. Once he couldn’t climb the stairs anymore, that was the best place for him.”

  “Oh,” I answered, realizing just how much his body had failed him at the end. “Did he ever tell Mamm he visited me?”

  “I don’t know,” Aenti Suz answered as she poured the tea.

  He certainly hadn’t told Arden. Speaking of my brother, I asked Aenti Suz if she knew what he planned to do with the land now that Dat was gone.

  She frowned a little and shook her head. “I’d be the last person he’d confide in as far as that goes.”

  I nodded, knowing she was right, and retrieved my purse from the table, taking the address book out of it. “I called Amos,” I said. “He’s coming.”

  Aenti put her hand to her throat but didn’t say anything.

  I held up the little book. “I found his number in here.”

  “Oh?”

  “There all sorts of people listed in this book. People I’ve never heard of.”

  “Patients?” Aenti handed me a mug of tea as I sat down.

  “Some, probably,” I answered. “But also people from around the world. South America. Haiti. Those places make sense. But there are even names of people from Vietnam.”

  “Really?” Aenti took a sip of her tea and then continued to hold the mug close to her mouth.

  She’d never been good at being deceitful. Perhaps my confused expression encouraged her to say more. “Your father was a very complex man.”

  I knew that.

  “And reserved.”

  I nodded. I knew that too—even with his children. Maybe especially with us children. He loved us. He was interested in us. But he was never authoritarian, like many Amish parents. He was authoritative, allowing us to make our own decisions. He didn’t demand we overly share about our own lives—and apparently he hadn’t overly shared about his own either.

  Bishop Jacobs, on the other hand, was authoritarian. I’d learned about different leadership styles in a human development class I’d taken.

  Aenti Suz put her mug back on the table. “I take it your Dat never told you he spent a year in Vietnam working in a Mennonite clinic.”

  I shook my head, baffled.

  “He probably felt as if it would be bragging to mention it.”

  “Of course I knew about his trip to Haiti, and a trip to South America, before I was born. Right?”

  She nodded.

  “He worked in Vietnam for a whole year? Had he not joined the church?”

  “That’s right,” Aenti said. “In fact, he considered becoming Mennonite for several years.”

  “But he changed his mind by the time he got home?”

  “Jah. He joined the church and then married Missy after he returned. Our parents gave him the farm, and Arden and Amos were born a year later.”

  “Did the twins know about his time in Vietnam?”

  “Probably,” Aenti Suz answered. “He wasn’t able to write most of his friends in Vietnam, after the war, until the country opened up again in the nineties. When that happened, I think your Mamm didn’t want him talking about it, even though he was getting letters on a fairly regular basis. ”

  “Why?”

  “Perhaps she thought it prideful.”

  That was understandable. She most likely believed his stories would be a bad influence on us girls, too, that they might somehow lead us astray.

  “Where in the world would he get the idea to go to Vietnam?” I asked.

  Aenti Suz picked up her mug again. “There’s actually a long history of that sort of thing in the Bachmann family during wartime,” she said.

  “What?” I’d never heard any stories about relatives going off to serve during war. We were pacifists. We believed in nonresistance.

  “Your great-grandfather worked as a medic in World War II.”

  “Was he forced to?”

  “Jah,” she answered. “And your Dat would have been drafted if he didn’t go to Vietnam—or he could have joined the church to get a deferment.”

  My eyes watered at the thought of Dat being drafted. Wha
t all had been kept from me?

  “Another great-great-aunt, all the way back to the Civil War, worked as a nurse, including at Gettysburg.”

  I shook my head. “How do you know all of this?”

  “Stories have been passed down through the years. My great-aunt told me.”

  “Was anyone going to tell me?”

  Aenti Suz smiled a little. “Jah, first chance I had. Which means today.”

  I nodded. It wasn’t as if Mamm could get mad at her for telling me about the adventures of my ancestors. Nothing more could inspire me to leave—I already had.

  “But the stories go back much further, back to the first Bachmann daughter born in America, way back in 1756, and what her life was like during the Revolutionary War, along with her brother Zachary’s.”

  I let out a low whistle. “You know a story from that far back?”

  Aenti Suz nodded. “It was passed down through the generations, as a cautionary tale.”

  “Cautionary?”

  Aenti Suz smiled wryly.

  “What are you up to?” I asked, puzzled. “And what was your great-aunt trying to prevent in telling you?”

  “That,” Aenti Suz said, “is another story. The one I’m telling is about Ruby Bachmann. She was the first girl to grow up on this farm. And just like you, her father died and she had to make a decision about going or staying.”

  “But I already made my decision,” I answered.

  My aunt cocked her head. “Really?”

  I nodded.

  “Then what was that look that passed between you and Silas in the house earlier?”

  “When?”

  Her brown eyes sparkled. “When Arden was trying to force you to leave,” she said. “When Silas stepped to your side. You can’t fool me. You might have left three years ago—but your heart stayed.”

  I shook my head. “I’ve been dating an Englisch man. We’ve been together for a while now. He’ll be here for Dat’s service.”

  With eyebrows tilted upward, Aenti Suz’s mouth formed an O, but no words came out.

  “I’m serious,” I said.

  “So am I,” she answered.

  I may have rolled my eyes. I drained my mug of tea and said, hoping to distract her from any more talk about Silas, “Tell me about Ruby Bachmann.”

  “Do we have time?” Aenti Suz asked.

  “Jah,” I answered. It was still a couple of hours before it would be time to start the chores. I planned to corner Arden and ask about his plans for the farm at some point. But right now, there was no better place to pass the time than with Aenti Suz, safe inside her little house.

  4

  Ruby Bachmann

  OCTOBER 1777

  Ruby stood facing Paul Lantz just past the back door of her family’s cabin. “Can’t you stay and wait for me?” The early October breeze rustled through the leaves of the trees beyond the barn as she reached for his hand. They’d had a seemingly endless run of good weather. Hopefully it would last a few weeks longer. Ruby turned her head up, meeting Paul’s blue eyes. “The rebels are on the run.”

  The British had captured Philadelphia, the seat of the Continental Congress, a few weeks before. For a night, nearby Lancaster had been the new capitol, but then it moved on another twenty-five miles or so to York. Ruby hoped it wouldn’t be long until the war was over.

  Paul shook his head and his straw hat wobbled a little. “Hans has a good plan. It’s our best option.”

  Hans, Ruby’s oldest brother, was leading a migration of Plain folk to Canada, over the border with New York, claiming there was land up north for all of them without the problems in the colonies. There was no reason to risk their lives, he’d said, and all they held dear.

  They’d all planned to go together a month ago, but Mamm had been ill and weak. Hans had waited, hoping she’d get better, but now they were running out of time. If they didn’t leave soon, they wouldn’t have time to build cabins on the new land before the snow began to fall.

  Paul’s father had died two years before, but his mother was traveling with him. She’d been waiting on the bench of his wagon since they arrived, ready to be on her way. Although Ruby had known her for years, she didn’t have a close relationship with the woman. That would have to change once Paul and Ruby married. If only the group wasn’t leaving until spring. That would give Mamm time to heal and Paul and Ruby a chance to marry.

  Ruby had begged Hans to wait, too, using the same argument she’d just tried on Paul. But he’d told her no, saying again that he’d pledged his allegiance to George II alongside their father when they’d set foot on the docks of Philadelphia back in 1752. Twenty-five years later, his allegiance was just as strong to George III. Paul shared the same loyalty as Hans. They didn’t want to risk staying, just in case the Patriots—or “rebel rousers,” as Hans called them—won.

  Ruby tightened her grip on Paul’s hand. “Don’t you think the British will win? And life will go on the way it was before?” She loved the Lancaster County countryside and her family farm in particular. It was the only home she’d ever known.

  Paul leaned closer. “They’ll most likely win, but in the meantime we could be conscripted to fight for the rebels or forced to pay someone else to fight for us. We’ve gone over this a hundred times.”

  They had. As the only sister with three brothers, it was expected Ruby would stay behind to care for their ailing mother. Her youngest brother, Zachary, would also stay, while Daniel, who already had a wife and young children, would go with Hans and his family. Zachary had taken over the Bachmann farm when their father died the year before, because both Daniel and Hans already had property of their own, which they’d sold to have money to purchase land in Canada. Hans planned for Ruby, Mamm, and Zachary to join the larger group when they could.

  She wasn’t sure if Zachary was as loyal to Britain as Hans. In fact, from comments he’d made, she’d suspected that he sympathized with the rebels. She also knew he’d been courting a girl named Lettie Yoder who lived in another Amish settlement, closer to the town of Lancaster. Zachary ventured over every couple of weeks, and one time Lettie had come to a harvest party at the Bachmann farm. Time would tell what Zachary’s choice would be—although she doubted in the end that he’d stand up to Hans’s plan. However, she knew for sure what her plan was. It was already set in stone. If she wanted to marry Paul, she’d have to follow him to Canada.

  “Get word to me when you’re ready to leave,” Paul said. “In the meantime, I’ll build a cabin and barn. Everything will be ready when you arrive. We’ll marry then.”

  Ruby nodded. It was a plan they’d discussed before. Ruby wouldn’t leave her Mamm behind, no matter how much she cared for Paul. In God’s time, they’d be together again.

  But that didn’t mean she wasn’t distraught at telling him good-bye. Or leaving Lancaster sometime soon. If only there weren’t a war going on. If only Paul weren’t eager to follow Hans. When Ruby had asked Paul the day before if he felt led by God to go, he’d smiled slightly and said, “I’ve aligned myself with your family. That’s where my future is. We must band together to survive.”

  The back door opened, and Zach stepped out onto the porch. “Mamm needs you,” he said to Ruby. “She wants to get dressed.”

  Ruby had been up since hours before dawn, doing the chores, mixing up bread dough, and then fixing breakfast for the crowd that had gathered. She hoped she’d have a few more minutes with Paul before he left.

  She hurried through the kitchen and the common room. Zachary and Hans stood with their arms crossed, facing each other. Neither spoke. She guessed they’d been arguing before Mamm’s call for help interrupted them. There had been tension between the two for months, ever since Hans had decided to move to Canada and mandated that everyone follow him.

  As she reached the back of the house, her brothers’ voices rose in volume with each word. “Dat would be disgusted with you,” Hans said. “You know what life was like in Switzerland for our parents and gra
ndparents. Britain gave us freedom to worship. We can’t turn our backs on that.”

  Zach answered, “The rebels offer the same, minus the taxes.”

  Ruby knew taxes had been high for years to pay for the war with the French and the Indians, even though it had ended fourteen years ago. Now Britain needed to pay for a new war. No one she knew liked financially supporting violence, and many of their non-Plain neighbors agreed with Zach about the rebels. However, their Plain congregation agreed with Hans and sided with Britain, although their minister, Nathaniel Fischer, wasn’t leaving, at least not yet. Regardless, most of the rest of the congregation was going with Hans.

  “Maybe you need to come with me now,” Hans said to Zach. “So I can keep an eye on you. Dat would agree. . . .”

  “What are they fighting about now?” Mamm asked as Ruby entered the back room.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Ruby pulled the quilt back from Mamm’s chin. “Those two can argue about anything.”

  Mamm frowned a little. She loved all of her children, and it pained her when the boys argued. Through the years, Mamm had lost four children. Two baby boys during their first years of life. A girl to disease when she was seven. And her oldest boy to a wagon accident when he was eleven. Mamm knew the heartache of loss, from her children to her husband. Just the other day, she’d reminded Ruby to hold those she loved close.

  Ruby took her mother’s aged hands and pulled her to a sitting position and then patted her wrinkled cheek in a loving gesture. It was easy to hold Mamm close. She was kind and caring to all.

  Mamm had experienced some sort of incident two months before, after Dat had passed away, right after Hans made the decision to move. Since then Mamm had difficulty walking and her right side was especially weak. With help she could take small steps, but she needed assistance with almost everything—from getting out of bed to getting dressed, and sometimes even eating. She definitely needed to be stronger before she could travel.

  “What time does Hans plan to leave?”

  “Within the hour.”

  “Will you help me dress?”

  “Of course.” Ruby gathered her mother’s petticoat, dress, and Kapp from the pegs on the wall. Hans’s and Zach’s voices rose and fell as she helped her Mamm, but she couldn’t make out any more of what they were saying. There was no way Hans could force Zachary to leave with him, not with such short notice. Besides, who would watch over her and Mamm? Two women couldn’t live alone in such uncertain times. And someone had to run the farm.