DC03 - Though Mountains Fall (41 page)

Rachel marked a spot at the highest point of the graveyard and pried off the turf with her shovel, setting it aside, then started digging the hole. Mose couldn’t stand it. He begged for the shovel until she finally paused. Every time she looked at Levi she heard Emma’s voice echoing in her head.

“Levi’s not going to understand. Rachel . . . help
him.”

“Here.” Rachel handed Mose the shovel, which was taller than the boy. “Dig me a nice deep hole, this big around, okay?”

He grinned from ear to ear and rolled up his shirtsleeves, just the way his dat always did. Mose wasn’t heavy enough to sink the shovel all the way but he chipped away at it, undaunted, a little man.

She opened the gate in the picket fence and walked quietly over to Levi. His eyes were red, his face wet, and when he finally saw her coming he turned away at first.

But then he spun around to face her, wiping a shirtsleeve across his eyes, angry and defiant.

“I don’t
care
. I won’t hide
anything
anymore,” he hissed, knifing a hand sideways, palm down. “No more secrets. Gott is not mocked. I sowed deceit, and look what I have reaped!” He choked on tears, even as he raged.

Rachel moved a step closer and reached out to touch him, but he jerked his arm away. Her heart broke for him, and tears left tracks in her own dirt-stained face.

Gently, with utmost compassion, she said, “Levi, Emma would not want you to feel this way. She never once blamed
Gott for any of it—she always just said she was not good at having babies. Emma would never have blamed anyone, least of all Gott. Levi, this is the darkest day of my life—and yours—and I don’t see how any of us can live without her. But it was an accident. An awful, unbearable, tragic accident,
not
the hand of Gott. Emma was heaven-bound and she knew it.”

“She couldn’t know that,” he seethed. “She could hope, but she couldn’t know, and neither can you. That’s just arrogant.” Then his voice softened, staring at the grave, and he said mournfully, “You don’t understand. We sinned, me and Emma . . . and we hid it.”

“I know. I’ve known about it from the very beginning. There are few secrets between sisters.”

A hard glare. “Well, it was a secret from the
church
. We never repented, and where there is no repentance, there is no forgiveness.”

“Emma repented in her heart, and before Gott.”

“But not before the church! And just like
you
, Emma thought that didn’t matter.” He jabbed a forefinger at her, and his voice rose in anger. “You’re
wrong
!” he cried. “
Emma
was wrong! Adam and Eve sinned and hid it, and they were cast out. David sinned and hid it, and Gott took his son. Ananias sinned, and when he tried to hide it from the church he fell dead on the spot. If you sin and hide it, you
pay
! She was wrong, Rachel!”

He waved his arms, shouting now. “Emma was wrong about everything,
all
of it. We should have obeyed the church when they banned Miriam, but we didn’t. We did things we never should have done.”

Rachel shook her head, her eyes pleading. “You helped Miriam and Domingo out of
love
, Levi. How is that wrong?”

“It was disobedient. It was
willful
!” He screamed this last in rage, but then he broke down and crumpled to his knees. “And
now I have paid with my Emma’s life. I wish Gott would have taken
me
, but that’s not punishment enough. I will live with this grief for the rest of my days.”

He wiped his eyes on his sleeve again, and quieted. She thought maybe he had gotten it all out, but in a moment he stood up and turned on her with a new and frightening fire in his eyes.

“I will tell you this,” he rasped, shaking a finger, “and it is a promise before you and Gott both. I will
never again
defy Gott’s church! Sin will
never again
hide in my house! I will root it out.”

His head tilted back, and his red eyes looked up to the heavens. “Hear me, Gott . . . as I have heard you. No sin will go unconfessed, no sinner unrepentant in Levi Mullet’s house. Never again!”

Without another word he clapped his hat on his head and stalked away, leaving Rachel stunned. He vaulted over the little picket fence and broke into a run, toward home.

She wanted desperately to run after him, to plead and beg and argue—for Emma—but she couldn’t abandon Mose. A breeze tugged at the stray tufts of red hair escaping from her kapp as she looked down at Emma’s grave.

“Levi will take this
mighty hard . . . help him.”

Emma’s words rang in her head. She had failed. Standing there, filthy and sweaty and bedraggled at the foot of Emma’s grave, she felt as small and helpless as a child. Once again she had failed Emma.

But she had seen the iron resolve in Levi’s eyes and knew. He was a man; he needed to be alone. Maybe in a few days, or months, or years, his anger would fade. Maybe in time he would begin to see the light—
Gott’s
light—reflected from Emma’s life. Heavyhearted, Rachel turned about and trudged back up the hill.

Mose had stopped his digging. Now he was sitting spraddle-legged on top of the dirt pile, waiting patiently for her to return,
playing in the dirt. She watched him scoop a handful and hold out his little fist, letting the dirt sift through his fingers and fall next to his left knee, play-talking to himself as he did it. As Rachel came through the gate he scooped dirt with his other fist, held it out and let it rain down beside his right knee.

“And some for you,” he said cheerfully.

Good
, she thought. Either he hadn’t heard his father or didn’t understand. Either way, he seemed perfectly at peace, unperturbed by the storm around him.

Children
, she thought, shaking her head.
They are the most amazing creatures
.

She picked up the shovel and went back to work.

Chapter 34

I
n the late afternoon, after being cooped up with the baby all day, Miriam laid him down and pressed a hand against the small of her aching back. “I need to get out for a bit and stretch my legs,” she told him, smiling. Wiggling his hands and feet, he smiled back. There had been no word from Rachel or Emma in almost two weeks, so she left the infant with Kyra and walked briskly to the little adobe post office on the main street at the other end of San Rafael.

They were about to close up for the day, but the postman handed her a letter and then locked the door behind her. She turned toward home, her attention on the envelope in her hands—a letter from Rachel—but before she could open it she heard the distant sound of heavy hooves in the dirt street and glanced over her shoulder.

What she saw was impossible, like something out of a dream—a pair of Belgian draft horses pulling a farm wagon. Her heart stuttered, her fingers flew to cover her mouth and she took an involuntary step backward, for she knew the horses,
the shape of the wagon. Even at a distance she knew the silhouette of the solitary driver, the cut of his hat and the slope of his shoulders.

Dat.

He was the very last person on earth she expected to see in San Rafael, well over a thousand miles from Salt Creek Township, unannounced.

She waited, hardly daring to breathe, clutching the envelope too tightly in her hands.

When he came abreast of her he pulled up on the reins and the horses came to a shuddering stop. In that moment, when she first looked into his eyes, she knew something had changed.

There was a palpable sadness in him, but something else, too. He looked at her in a way she hadn’t seen since she married Domingo. The anger was gone, and he looked at her as if she was his daughter.

He patted the seat beside him, and she climbed up.

“That letter,” he said, nodding at the unopened envelope in her hands. “Is that Rachel’s handwriting?”

She glanced down at it. “Jah.”

“Don’t open it yet. Better you hear it from me.” He took a deep breath and hung his head. “I have terrible news.”

———

Miriam wept bitterly, sitting beside her father, his arm around her, consoling. In a little while, when she could speak, she looked up at him with swollen eyes.

“You came all this way just to tell me this?” she asked.

He thought for a second and said, “No, not
just
to tell you, but partly because of it. In a way it was Emma who sent me here. She was the one who opened my eyes. We have her to thank when we see her again.”

We
, he said, as if he thought Miriam might still one day find herself in heaven. Emma had indeed wrought a miracle.

“You’ve changed,” she said.

He nodded. Then, as if he needed someplace to focus his attention while he talked, he clucked at the horses and tugged on the reins. They surged ahead at a slow walk.

“You are my daughter, Miriam, and I love you as I love all my children. I think maybe only a powerful love can fire so great an anger, so great a disappointment. But anger is sin, and disappointment is only selfish.

“I am bound by the rules of the church to uphold the ban against you—I made a vow, and I will not break it. But I am also bound by love, as Emma was.

“The church says I cannot eat your food, or accept a gift from you, or give one, or do business with you. Simple rules, really. But Gott has taught me that I cannot be whole myself unless I forgive, so in my heart I forgive you, Miriam. Completely and forever. You are my child.”

The wagon rattled slowly on. Only now, when he had said his piece, did he turn his face to her. It was a sad smile, but a smile nonetheless.

The shadows were stretching across the main street, though it was still daylight. Daylight or not, public place or not, Miriam leaned close, kissed her father gently on the cheek and wrapped her arms around him.

A few minutes later he started to pull in beside her little house when she stopped him.

“Go on up to Kyra’s barn,” she said. “You can put the horses away there while I go in and break the news to Kyra and her mother.”

“Kyra and her mother,” he repeated softly, a note of concern in his voice. “What about Domingo?”

“Oh jah, I forgot to tell you! He came home safe and sound . . . almost. He was wounded—
again
—but not too bad this time. He’s out limping around in the bean field.”

Caleb unhitched the team and put them away, pitching a little hay in their stalls and making sure they had food and water. Then he gave them a quick brushing, for they had put in a long hard day without complaint. When he turned to go, Domingo was standing in the doorway of the barn, backlit by the setting sun.

Neither man moved. Domingo just stood there with his hands at his sides, his eyes full of suspicion, watching. He nodded slowly.

“Señor Bender.”

“So the war is over?”

A shrug. “For me.”

“It’s good to see you again. I was afraid I would not.”

Domingo’s head tilted. “Afraid? The last time we met it sounded like you would be
happy
for me to die in battle so you could have your daughter back.”

Caleb’s eyes wandered. “The last time we met that might have been true, but I am not the same man I was then. Riding down here alone on the train I have had plenty of time to think about these things—about the laws of Gott and the laws of man, whether it’s right for a girl to follow her heart or for a man to take up arms to defend those he loves. Mexico is a different world, with different rules—a world where, as you said, a man must fight or die—and in this world I have only seen you act with honor and courage. You have always treated me with respect and done what you believed was right. Countless times I used you and your guns to protect my family, and several times you
have risked your life to save my daughters from a terrible fate, so how is it right for me to judge you now? Judgment is for Gott alone. It is not my place. I was wrong and I ask your forgiveness.”

Domingo still had not moved. He stood ten feet away, staring. “You would ask forgiveness from the man who took your daughter from you?”