When the English Fall
David Williams
Memo
DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY
JOINT EMCOM REGIONAL HEADQUARTERS
U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE, CARLISLE BARRACKS
REPLY TO THE ATTENTION OF: COL. T. MARKER, FACULTY INSTRUCTOR
TO: Dr. J. Ernestine, Dept. Sociology, U. Penn.
SUBJECT: Diaries Per agreed-upon material-handling protocols established at the Joint EmCom/War College/U. Penn. meeting, enclosed with this memo are a set of five leather-bound notebooks, handwritten, retrieved from an abandoned Old Order farmhouse (PA Agricultural Reclamation Zone 7). These fit the criteria for original textual documentation, per your request to EmCom and the outputs of the aforementioned meeting with Joint EmCom and War College representatives.
The point of contact for this action is the undersigned, at secmail [email protected].
Terrence E. Marker
Col., Joint EmCom
Faculty Instructor, U.S. Army War College [attached note]
Jeanine:
Hey, it was great seeing you, and maybe when I’m up your way later in the summer I’ll bring by that bottle of scotch we talked about. Glenmorangie, eighteen years old. Not much of that around anymore. I’ve been saving it. Special occasion, which I’m sure it’ll be.
The diaries are, well, I’ve read them. They appear to be exactly what you told me you’re looking for. The right timing, both pre-and post-event. Some odd details. See what you think.
Look forward to seeing you again. —Terry
September 2
I hold her, tight in my arms, and she screams.
It is the morning, it is dawn, and the red sun fills the bedroom with late summer heat, and as she strains I hold her tighter, and still she screams. Her eyes are wide and unseeing, and her arms lash out, a dress on a clothesline before a storm.
I feel her body, my little bird, my little Sadie, her back pressed to my chest, taut as bent wood. I feel my arms, tired from the holding. My ears ring. And still she writhes and bucks, her head casting back and forth.
This is a long one, the worst seizure in weeks. I do not know how long it has been, but it was night when the cries began, and now day has come.
Hannah was with us, for a while, but now it is morning, and there is much to be done. Jacob is helping Hannah, I am sure. The tasks of the day play across my thoughts. The horses. Preparing the field. That unfinished chair. But I cannot focus, not even enough to pray.
There are words in her screaming, and names. Some I understand, though I do not know why she calls them out.
“Danny, oh God, Danny, oh God, oh God.”
I do not know a Danny.
Her voice rasps, flayed and weakened, but still she cries out. “Doe Wah Jew Say Oh! Doe Wah Jew Say Oh Han Nan Neem!” Not English, not Deitsch. Words with no meaning, just sounds.
And always, always, she screams that they are falling. “They fall! They fall!” And about the beautiful wings. And about the angels. It is beautiful and horrible, whatever it is she sees with those unseeing eyes.
Her voice stills, and she pants, breath rapid, in and out, in and out.
And then, just as sudden as the first cry in the night, she shudders.
Then her voice, familiar, like sand, like dust.
“Dadi?”
She turns, and her eyes are tired. “Oh, Dadi.”
That was how today began. And then the labors of the day came, and I am so tired now that I can barely write. But I write just the same.
September 3
I should not be writing this tonight. That thought is in my head right now.
I should pray. I should sleep. I especially should sleep. I should not write, for it is wasteful and prideful. Or so whispers my uncle’s voice, from long ago. So chides my father. His voice is stronger.
But still, I write.
It is a prideful thing, that I sit here in the faint light alone. So the echoes of my past tell me. Around me, the house is asleep, as I should be. I like the sound of it, this sleeping house. It is not empty, because even though I can barely hear it, the softness of breathing fills the house like goose feathers.
Jacob barely stirs, strong boy that he is becoming. Sadie, oh, Sadie. She sleeps well, soft and safe tonight so far, thanks be to God. I pray, O God, that she will sleep tonight.
I say that I must stay awake until my heart is stilled, and I say that I must stay awake to listen for Sadie. But Hannah knows. She knows that I need to write.
Hannah is so kind, to understand. I should be in our bed with her, and I will be. But soon.
Today was good, a blessing, like every day is a blessing. I suppose that is why I still write here, to remember the blessings. And all things are blessings, even the hard things.
Memory is why I began to write. It was why I wrote as a boy, to remember my dreams and the hopes I had. I read back those old books now, written in secret. I am still that boy, I think.
But I needed to write, too, all those years ago when I was out in the World, out among the English.
I wanted to remember, to remember what I thought and felt and knew. It was so different, amazing and terrible, and I wanted to remember. Others left with me, when the time came for our running around. Some came back. But others didn’t return, not to the hard coldness of the community where we had grown up.
Atlee fell into drinking, and then he was gone. Martha, with her laugh, with that twinkle in her eye. That twinkle was gone when I last saw her, and her laugh was hard like brass. So many terrible things in the world.
And Simon. Simon had never liked the Order, never been at ease with the life of the plain. I should not miss him, but I do miss him, his mischief, his joyous playfulness like a young goat. He chose rightly. He was at home in the world.
I was not. Though I could not stay in the Order that my father had taught me, neither was the world for me. The world made me sick.
Not with hate. Not sick with hate. Just sick. It was wildness, churning chaos. It upset my soul, making me dizzy like a little boy spinning circles in the field. The spinning is fun at first, but then you cannot stop, because if you stop, you fall and your stomach turns inside out.
I haven’t ever liked that. And I like spirit sickness least of all.
She stirs now. A little cry. O Lord. Now more. I must stop.
September 4
Mike came by today with an order. We have not had an order in a while, because the English are struggling, so Mike says. So this is good. He is a funny one, Mike is, so talkative. Big and loud. So large, his truck barely holds him.
I do not ask him any questions, not about the world, but he always talks to me about the world anyway. I try not to listen, but Gracious Lord, does that man talk. He is so angry about the president and the government and the Congress, and he uses words he knows I would rather not hear.