Chapter 25
Moses watched as Miri’s buggy disappeared up the Weavers’ drive. Daet came up next to Moses, and they stared down the drive together. Daet was two inches taller than him, and broader too. Standing with Daet, he always felt his father’s authority.
“You should be going with her to help out,” Daet said.
“I thought you just said I should let her do the work herself,” he countered irritably. He still wasn’t comfortable with what his father had said, and Miri hadn’t wanted his help this afternoon anyway.
“You have to read the moment,” Daet said.
Moses turned away, anger bubbling up inside of him. “Daet, are you really asking me to manipulate a woman into relinquishing land that was legally willed to her?” Moses asked. “Are you really asking that?”
“Sometimes wrongs need to be set right,” his father replied.
“Gott protects the widows and the orphans, Daet,” Moses said. That was repeated in Scripture often enough, and those who took advantage of them would be subject to Gott’s wrath.
“She is neither widow nor orphan.”
“But she is vulnerable, and you’ve told me yourself that pushing a woman into anything is not only inappropriate, but a futile effort!”
His father’s face colored, and he looked away.
“This is wrong, Daet. It’s wrong, plain and simple.”
His father was silent. The family was angry, yah, but this anger was pushing them into dangerous territory. This loss wasn’t bringing out the best in the Yoder family.
“Dawdie made a painful choice,” Moses went on, “but he made it. What if he’d left the farm to some terribly distant cousin? Would it be any different?”
“We found a list in your grandfather’s Bible of the family members who have owned this land over the generations,” Daet said.
“Benuel told me.”
“Sohn, I know I sound like a brute right now,” Daet said, meeting his gaze.
“But something is wrong here. I can feel it. My father told me multiple times he wanted to leave that farm to you or your brother. He was leaning more heavily toward you, if I must be entirely honest. You wanted to farm, and Benuel wanted to try more progressive ideas.”
“We would have done something together with the land,” Moses said.
“I know, but your grandfather believed in keeping that land in the family. And suddenly he changed his mind when he was most vulnerable—tired, sick, and dying,” Daet said.
“I should have kept a better watch over him. I know that now. But I grew up on that farm, sohn. I slept in the little bedroom on the second floor with one of my cousins, who was living with us. My mamm gave birth to my sisters in that master bedroom over the kitchen. I worked that land with my daet, and I put my own heart into that soil and into our herd. Knowing that my sohns would build their lives there meant that this legacy was coming down to you. It’s not just land—it’s my own personal history. ”
Moses felt a lump close his throat, and he swallowed against it. He hadn’t thought about his father’s loss in this situation. Moses wasn’t the only one losing something. It wasn’t only his grief that mattered.
“I’m sorry, Daet.”
“I’m just saying it doesn’t feel right to me,” Daet said.
They turned together back toward the church gathering.
People sat in groups, eating and chatting.
A few women stood under some shade trees, singing a hymn in harmony.
He spotted Tabitha holding Rose’s baby while Rose ate a piece of bread in big hungry bites.
Jonas was standing off with some men and happened to look up and see Moses.
He gave him a nod. This was their community, and even if they struggled, they had the support of the people they lived and worshiped with.
“Daet, even if Dawdie wasn’t in his right mind, the bishop thinks he was. Miri owns that land. All that is left to us now is how we face it.”
Even if it hurt. Even if felt wrong, or if a family had to pull their hearts out of that land by the roots. His father was silent for a moment, his brow furrowed.
“You’re right,” Daet said.
“Yah?” Moses asked uncertainly.
“I’ve been forgetting that our truest inheritance is in heaven.”
“Yah.” Moses eyed his father uncertainly. Was he really going to change his mind on this?
“There is one other option,” Daet said quietly.
“What’s that?” Moses asked.
“You could marry her.”
“What?” Moses blinked. “I’m not marrying a woman for land, Daet! That’s manipulation of a different sort.”
His father patted his shoulder reassuringly.
“Trying to get her to give up the farm is manipulation. I will admit to that,” Daet said.
“And as you said, it’s not likely to work.
But in my day, and in the generations before mine, people got married for practical reasons all the time and were very happy together.
Your great-grandparents both lost their spouses in a Spanish flu epidemic one winter, and by spring, they were married.
She needed a husband to care for her, and he needed a wife to take care of the baby.
They went on to have thirteen children together. ”
“Gott provided,” Moses replied. He’d heard the story countless times, and the moral had always been that even in the hardest times, Gott provided and put the lonely into families.
“And Gott may very well be providing, Moses.”
It still felt manipulative, though. Moses would not pursue a woman’s heart in order to get her land. That was crass, indeed.
“Daet, I will not try to get her to marry me so that I can get my grandfather’s farm. I won’t do it.”
“I’m not asking you to manipulate a woman into matrimony for land,” his father said, casting him a frustrated look.
“I’m suggesting you keep your mind and heart open.
Gott has worked in mysterious ways to bring people together.
Isaac and Rebekka—an arranged marriage that fathered a nation—comes to mind.
Ruth and Boaz—part of Jesus’s own lineage—when a needy woman caught a wealthy man’s eye.
Convenient? Oh yes. People may have even whispered about a little gold digging on her part.
But a union blessed by Gott and intended by Gott. ”
Daet held his gaze for a moment, then patted Moses’s shoulder affectionately.
“You’re a good man, sohn,” Daet said. “A very good man.”
And then he walked away, leaving Moses standing there feeling conflicted. He obviously wasn’t going to try to manipulate Miri into anything—not into signing over the farm and certainly not into marrying him. How could he ask Gott to bless him if he was taking advantage of someone?
He looked over his shoulder again toward the empty drive.
Maybe Gott was helping him along that path to full forgiveness, because he truly did want to help make Miri’s life easier. And wasn’t that what both preachers spoke on today—forgiving? A community’s solidarity depended upon it. They could not allow ill will and grudges to wedge them apart.
And as Moses scanned the mingling groups of familiar faces, he paused at a circle of older ladies sitting in lawn chairs in the shade of some apple trees.
One of the women, Sarah Mae, was a widow and a grandmother and great-grandmother to a large number here in Shepherd’s Hill.
And Sarah Mae was looking at him thoughtfully, seemingly unaware that she was staring.
She was about Dawdie’s age, wasn’t she? Somewhere close.
Maybe the older generation knew things that the younger ones didn’t. But if there had been secrets, would she share now?
Moses lifted his hand in a feeble wave, and Sarah Mae smiled and gave him a nod.
Maybe it was time to ask a few questions to the people who had known his grandfather the longest.
———
Sarah Mae’s hands were crepey skin over blue veins and dark patches—age seeming to have softened her and bruised her in equal measure.
Her knuckles were knobby, and her fingers were bent, but her gaze was bright and direct, and she leaned forward a little bit as Moses sat down in an empty lawn chair opposite her.
“How are you holding up, Moses?” Sarah Mae asked. “Your family has been on my prayer list ever since your grandfather passed.”
“Danke,” he said. “I’m doing all right.”
“It wasn’t a shock, I know,” Sarah Mae said. “My husband lingered before he passed as well, and it wasn’t a surprise that he died, but the empty spot left behind is a little hard to get used to, isn’t it?”
“That’s exactly how it feels,” he said. Funny how an old lady could so fully understand exactly how he felt. Both of his grandmothers had died, but maybe this was what it would feel like to have a grandmother in his life still. There was wisdom there that he could better appreciate now.
“Your grandfather was a good man,” Sarah Mae said. “You were blessed to have had him to look up to.”
“I agree.” Moses paused. “He was very plainspoken too. Most of the time.”
“Tom was more than plainspoken.” She chuckled. “Your grandmother made him more polite, though.” Sarah Mae settled back into her chair. “We were all so grateful when he came back and married Loretta.”
“Came back?” he asked. “Where did he go?”
“Tom never told you the stories from his rumspringa?” The old woman’s eyebrows went up, and she made a tutting sound. “Tom, Tom, Tom . . .”
“He never told us anything about that. I only know that he met our grandmother at a hymn sing, and he married her a few months later.” Moses leaned his elbows onto his knees. “What happened during his rumspringa?”
“Well, if he didn’t tell you, he probably didn’t want you to know about it,” she replied.
“All the same, we should know the whole story, shouldn’t we?”
She met his gaze consideringly for a moment, then angled her head to one side in acceptance. “Tom left the community for five years—that’s what happened,” Sarah Mae said. “He went Englisch and worked on a road crew. He almost married an Englischer woman.”
“What?” Moses shook his head. “He never said a word of that to us.”
“I suppose he didn’t want to give you boys any ideas,” Sarah Mae replied. “But in his day, Tom was quite rebellious.”
“What happened to the woman he almost married?” he asked.
“Who knows? He didn’t marry her, and that ended that, I suppose.”
“I can’t believe he didn’t tell us,” Moses said. “He kept giving me advice on who to court and what to look for in a wife. He never once mentioned he’d almost married an Englischer.”
“All I know about that is her family didn’t approve, and her father told him he was to keep clear of her. Maybe that was what broke them up for good. I really don’t know because I only heard about it from others. You know how stories fly around.”
“But he met my grandmother at a hymn sing,” he said feebly.
“Yah, after he came back. And he saw what he really needed in a wife—faith in Gott and a heart of gold. I remember how Loretta used to look at him. He was her whole world, and that’s not easy to find, I’ll tell you that.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Of course, dear,” Sarah Mae replied.
“Why did he leave the farm to Miri?”
Sarah Mae spread her hands. “I can’t say. I don’t know.”
“If you could guess?” he prodded. “You already know more about my grandfather’s history than I do.”
“Well, Miri does look an awful lot like Adelheide,” Sarah Mae said.
“Who?”
“Her grandmother. Miri is the spitting image of her.”
“Oh. And that would matter because . . . ?”
“Because Adelheide brought him home,” Sarah Mae replied. “After five years away, she marched out there to Dillsburg and brought him back.”
“How?”
“No idea,” Sarah Mae said. “Shortly after that, he met your grandmother, and the rest is the history that brought about you.”
So Dawdie had known Miri’s grandmother rather well, it would seem. And there was a whole part of his life that they’d never heard about.
“Is that connected to the will, do you think?” he asked.
“Moses, dear, I don’t rightfully know,” Sarah Mae said. “But it might be. If it were my family, that’s where I’d start digging.”