Love Letters From the Grave(3)

‘By the time everyone leaves tomorrow, Jacob and Sarah will have a home ready for occupancy and a farmstead ready for farming. Can you imagine?’

Luther shook his head, hardly able to take it in himself even though it was all transpiring before his eyes.

But surely he should be able to imagine that. ‘Well, won’t you get that, too, if your family is Amish?’

The young man turned to me with a frown. ‘My family isn’t Amish,’ he said. ‘They’re African-Americans from North Carolina.’

‘But you said—?

Suddenly his head jerked upwards. ‘Oh, my aunt and uncle are coming.’

It was the Golden Pond couple, striding across the field toward us as quickly as the woman’s long dress would allow.

‘So who are they?’ I asked, thoroughly confused by now.

‘Those are my great-aunt and uncle, Molly and Charlie,’ he said with a little twitch of his mouth.

He was enjoying this now, keeping me on the ropes.

I looked at them again, holding hands and laughing as Molly trod on the trailing hem of her skirt.

‘Wait. That old Amish couple, who think a horse-drawn buggy is a Ferrari and have obviously been married forever, are your great-somethings?’

Luther shrugged. ‘It’s complicated,’ he said with a mighty twinkle in his eye.

He knew exactly what he was doing. “It’s complicated” was music to a journalist’s ears. “It’s complicated” meant there was a story here. A big, complex, interlaced story that was just the kind of fish I wanted to land.

‘And they haven’t been married forever,’ added Luther mischievously. ‘They only met when they were nearly forty years old, and both in happy marriages.’

Pulling the face of youth which suggested that forty was ancient, Luther clambered up into the buggy and reached for the reins. ‘You’re even wrong about the buggy,’ he said in an infuriating drawl, like a child harboring an outrageous secret. ‘They know all about fast vehicles. All about them. Do you like to drive fast, Brendon? I sure did.’

He was reeling me in, landing me right at his feet on the floor of an Amish buggy.

‘You’d better tell me this story,’ I told him. ‘Otherwise my boss won’t need to worry about me getting shot, because I’m going to die of plain old curiosity.’

At least he had the humility to laugh at my perplexed expression. I sighed, and handed him my card.

‘Start talking,’ I told him. ‘And soon.’

‘I’ve got all weekend,’ he said, nodding across to the barn-raising, ‘if you have the time to spare.’

And suddenly the blank wooden walls of my lake-side cabin seemed a whole lot more interesting.





Chapter 1




* * *



Charlie Boy



* * *





They used to tell me I was building a dream,

And so I followed the mob.

When there was earth to plow or guns to bear

I was always there, right on the job.



Brother, Can You Spare a Dime, Al Jolson



The Great Depression, they were calling it. What was so great about it, Charlie had no idea.

But then, he knew they weren’t suffering so badly, out in the countryside with all the home-grown produce and stock they had to hand. In the city, he’d heard Mr Edmundson saying in church the previous week, there was all sorts of lawlessness, what with people starving and all, unable to find work or even a crust to eat.

They had plenty of crusts here on the farm. Which was a very good job, because there were a lot of mouths to feed. And sometimes Charlie felt like it was his personal responsibility to feed every single one of them.

Like all the other farming folk in the area, children provided much of the labor required by their farming operation. At the age of three, Charlie had joined his three older brothers in routinely doing chores - helping his mother around the house and his father around the farm. By the time he was six, he had a four-year old sister who was given the responsibility of assisting their mother with chores inside the house, while he and his next oldest brother did most of their mother's outside chores - cutting and stacking firewood; managing the goat herd of twelve or so animals to keep the very large lawn "mowed" by rotating the stakes; milking the goats and the milk cows; feeding the chickens, ducks and rabbits, and watering the livestock.

No sooner had he mastered all that, than he’d reached the age and size that meant he was expected to take care of the farm's horses and mules. Along with learning to work the draft animals, he was also taught how to operate, maintain and use the farm's gasoline-engine-powered machinery and vehicles. He turned over his previous chores of maintaining the goat herd and cows to his next youngest brother. By this time his parents had nine children - seven boys and two girls.

And then they moved another family in.

Walter and Jewel and their four children took up residence in an old house on the farm, Walter working hard to keep the farm’s buildings in good repair and Jewel pitching in with the house-keeping. They were good friends from the church, and mostly good to have around.

The not-so-good part was Walter and Jewel’s son, Wendell. There weren’t many who believed that Wendell was good to have around.