Paradise Valley by Dale Cramer Read Free Book Online Page A

“You know what they said? One of the women in the children’s home told me we had to go to school because it was cruel of our parents to make us work on the farm.”
    They all laughed at that. Home was home. They had seen enough of the world to know they were far more likely to encounter cruelty in the consolidated school.
    “Cruel?” the little girl giggled, her eyes wide in disbelief. “How could anyone think that?”
    “I don’t know,” Rachel said. “I think they only know how to look at us the same way they look at each other. My dat says a prideful man thinks everyone is vain, and a deceiver thinks everyone is a liar. Anyway, most Englishers are in such a hurry they don’t want to take the trouble to understand someone who is different from them. They don’t think the way we do, that’s all.”

    Caleb Bender stayed at his table when lunch was over, as did most of the men. The women chatted happily, busy with cleaning up, hustling dishes to the kitchen and wiping the tables clean.
    The minister sat down next to Caleb and asked after Martha. “I noticed she is not here this morning,” he said. “Has she gotten worse?”
    “Jah,” Caleb said. “I even took her to the doctor once, but he didn’t give us much hope. There was nothing he could do. He said she needs to go and live someplace where the air is dry and warm, like Arizona.”
    The minister nodded gravely.
    What Caleb did not say, would not say, was that the doctor had told him she would die if he did not do this. Though the doctor would never understand it, Caleb knew that moving to a place with no Amish community was not an option. He could only pray that Gott would not allow her to die, but when she left the bed in the night to sit upright by the stove, the doctor’s words tormented him.
    Caleb twisted his water glass on the table, staring at it. “What will we do now?” he asked, mostly to change the subject. “About the schools, I mean.”
    “We will trust Gott,” the minister said firmly. This was always his first answer.
    “Always,” Caleb agreed. “Still, there are choices we must make. Will we be content to send our children to the consolidated school forever? I think it would be the end of us.”
    Eli Stoltzfus, the man whose daughter hid in Lancaster, rolled his eyes. “ Neh . I say we ignore them and do as we have always done. In time the government will get busy with something else and forget us. They always do.”
    Caleb shook his head. “No, they won’t forget. We have already seen what comes of that thinking. Anyway, we made a promise. Now we must keep it.”
    “Then you have no choice but to honor your word,” the bishop agreed, one fist stroking his long white beard as if he were milking it. “But just because we have no choice does not mean we become complacent. For now, we must pray and ask Gott to show us a way. We must think of our children, the future of our people and our way of life. If we bring them up in the way they should go, when they are old they will not depart from it. But if we let them be raised by the world, why it’s only a matter of time until they leave us and go their own way. No matter how we love them, most of them will jump the fence. Caleb is right. If we let this go on, in twenty years there won’t be any more Amish.”
    “It won’t last forever,” John Hershberger said. “Things will change, you’ll see. We just have to endure for a time.”
    Caleb Bender shook his head sadly. “For how long a time, John? I say only until we can find a way to change things. This is a new problem, one we have not dealt with before, at least not in this way. We have to learn to think in new ways, to see a new path. We have to think bigger and wider and be willing to pay any price to save our children. We can even leave here if we have to, and start another settlement someplace where the law is not against us.”
    “Oh, I could never do that,” Jonas Weaver said. “My grandparents were born here