I rose with Hannah and Jacob. Milked the cows, then set out feed for the rest of the cattle, and fed and watered the horses, while Jacob collected eggs. One of the hens has not laid for several weeks. I think I must slaughter it. It is a shame, she is not old, but there are two dozen others. So we will have chicken.
It is so hot today. It has been difficult to work, and Hannah has been careful in the kitchen. But we do what we can, as we can.
I feel so thankful, for the blessings of God and the goodness of His Providence. Sadie is quiet and more at peace, and today when I came in for dinner, she smiled at me as she had as a little girl. I have said a special prayer for the doctor, and his kindness.
I was reminded, in a flash of remembering, of a time when she was a girl. It was a particular moment. I do not know why I remember it. It was after the harvest, just a few years ago, and we had walked to the edge of a field, then down a hillside.
Eleven she was, I think.
We sat together, father and daughter, quiet but for the apples she had brought for us, which we ate. Down the hillside was a road, a great serpent of highway, on which passed many cars. We watched them, she and I, for a while.
And then she asked about the cars, and the people.
“There are so many, Dadi,” she said. “Are there little girls like me in the cars?” I said yes. “What are they like?” I said they are English. They are the world. They are so busy, they have no time to see God or each other.
She looked sad. “I think God loves them,” she said. “Even if they don’t know it.”
I agreed. God loves all of his children, I said. But we must learn how to love him back.
She got up.
“It makes me so sad,” she said. And then she walked up the hill, her skirt brushing across the long grass.
Such a kind-hearted girl, my gentle, strange Sadie was. Is. She must still be, under the cries and the darkness. I say a prayer, that her kindness is not broken, too. The window is open, and outside it smells like rain. And the horizon is alight with lightning.
September 11
Today there was much work, but not on the furniture or in the fields.
The storms came deep in the night last night, scouring. Terrible storms, as bad as the spring. The winds beat the house like fists. Tonight as I write, the lights in the city are still out, and the sky is dark, but among us, that means nothing. But there was so much broken, so much. Shingles down. A barn damaged. The Fishers got the worst of it, had to shelter in their cellar.
Jacob came with me out to the Fishers’ farm. So many trees fallen. So much broken, like a great hand had swept across the land. It was a very familiar scene.
Is it right for me to be proud of Jacob? I feel pride in my heart for the strength of this boy, almost a man, and how eager his heart was to labor by my side.
He and I and all of us worked for much of the day, because so much was broken. That old oak had rested the Fisher home in shade for a hundred years, and still it was shattered, one large branch crashed through the roof, the trunk falling away by God’s grace. Some of the men gathered with bucksaws, others with two-man saws. We worked together, and that great old trunk came apart, piece by piece.
It was such an old thing, that oak, but still so very alive. There was no rot in it. It was a healthy, strong, living tree. And yet it was time for it to die. By midwinter, perhaps, the wood will be cured enough for firewood.
Jacob and I, once we’d pulled that tree from the roof, joined the Stolfutzes in replacing the damaged soffits and joists. I had brought wood, and others had brought new subroofing and shingles. So many hands at work, Isaak and his sons, now almost men. Joseph and his boys, so diligent in their youth.
It was hard work, and the storms had not brought cool with them, but more heat. We drank the water, and took breaks in the shade, and we sweated. Jacob worked as hard as any of us, and I had to remind him sometimes to stop and come out of the sun. He has such a precise hand, and attends to the work before him.
By late afternoon, the roof was repaired, and we returned home.
Sadie was calm today. It was a good day for her. She spoke evenly, and did not seem angry, and had helped Hannah with preparation for the dinner. Truly, the Lord does answer our prayers. We must just be patient.
September 12
It is so hot. It gets so hot. More rain again today, not fierce, but the heat hangs in the wet air.
Mike stopped by again today, to check in on the order. The client is impatient, he says, although it has only been a week. The client was angry because he couldn’t reach Mike yesterday, and only got through on his cell phone this morning. But there was no power in the town, so nothing was working. He could not get gas, and there were lines, and people were not getting along. Mike is angry, because he is tired and has not slept well. The power comes on and off, and his house does not cool with air-conditioned air, because the compressor blew.
Mike wishes the client would understand that things take time and are more difficult. The client should know this. Mike was hot and angry, and was not sympathetic, and said so in his profane way.
He knows this will take time, but it is hard for the client to understand. I wish I could talk with them, but they are far away, near Washington, DC, and do not wish to come here. Mike told them they could, but they do not want to, because they are too busy.
Mike says the impatience is because of the internet, because everyone now wants everything the moment they want it. I remember this from when I was jumping around in the world. I remember how people would walk around not even seeing each other, eyes down into their rectangles of light. No one was where they were.
So busy, the English are, and there was so much in my time there that was terrible. I was at a party those years ago when I went running around, I remember, with a friend, and one of his friends asked to show me something, and I said sure, and we sat at the computer and he showed me. It took me a moment, and then I had to look away. It was pornography, something strange, something even most English found horrible, and they laughed as I recoiled. They knew it would horrify me. It was funny for them, I think. It was not as things ever would or could be with Hannah.
And yet this is how the English live now. Whatever they want is there, even their most terrible darkness. So different from when the Order stepped away. There was a time when we were almost alike. All rode on horseback. Oil lit all homes, be they English or of the Order. We all worked the land. But now?
Now the English have their wild magics, so different it becomes hard to understand.
Such a wild terrible mess, the world is now. I am glad that I am not in it.
I WRITE AGAIN TONIGHT, because I cannot sleep. It is so hot, the blasting sun of day hanging in the wet air. We can none of us sleep, except for Sadie, who has taken her medicine. Hannah and Jacob moved out to the root cellar, and set down one of our mattresses in the cool of the earth. I carried Sadie, who nestled light in my arms, half asleep. They rest down there, all three of them. It is cooler there, resting in the earth.