Paradise Valley Page 6

  Then he put his hat back on his head and turned to his right where he saw his reflection in the glass case covering a bulletin board. It was just a cork board with pieces of paper pinned to it announcing horses and mules for sale, offering the services of cobblers and tinkers and well diggers. But there in the middle of his face, as his eyes refocused to see the board behind the glass, was a folded piece of paper bearing a bold one-word headline that caught his eye and would, he knew instantly, alter the course of his life.

  MEXICO.

  Underneath that, in smaller letters, were the words LAND FOR SALE.

  It was an answer, a sign – he recognized that still small voice, the incendiary subtlety. A little shiver ran through him.

  Caleb swung the glass door open by its wooden knob, and his hand shook as he reached in and pulled the tack from the pamphlet. He didn’t wait for Irvin. Holding the paper close to his face with both hands he hurried outside into the bright sunlight so he could read the small print without his glasses. The front page said:

  Paradise Valley – five thousand acres of prime, flat, fertile farmland nestled in the Sierra Madre of northeastern Mexico, only a hundred miles from the American border.

  Five thousand acres. Enough for many Amish farms. Before now, he had not thought in terms of a whole group of Amish migrating to another place, but if there was plenty of land, why not? There were lots of others who felt the same way he did.

  And then another thought struck him, and it brought a tear to his eye.

  Martha.

  Mexico was a dry place! In Mexico, his Martha might be able to get better!

  This was too good to be true, too perfect. Opening the pamphlet he read the finer print on the inside, skipping and scanning in a feverish search for hard facts.

  Ten dollars an acre, it said. Cheap. There had to be a catch. Probably desert land, where they would all starve.

  Green pasture. Elevation six thousand feet, spring-like weather year round, long planting season. Warm days, cool nights.

  Green pasture. Caleb looked up with a kind of wonder in his eyes, and his lips worked silently over words from the HeiligeSchrift, words in High German so ingrained he could not remember a time when he didn’t know them.

  “Er weidet mich auf einer grünen Aue.”

  He maketh me to lie down in a green pasture.

  Flipping over to the back of the brochure, his forefinger traced a line to the bottom, where he found what he was looking for.

  Laredo Land Brokers, Ltd.

  Laredo, Texas

  Local agent: Avery Fiedler

  Morgan-Fiedler Real Estate

  109 Main St.

  Kidron, Ohio

  Less than two blocks away. Caleb headed down Main Street with a fire in his heart and a purpose in his stride, the pamphlet clenched tight in his fist. Only when he laid his hand on the doorknob of the Morgan-Fiedler Real Estate offices did he look back up the street and remember that in his haste he had simply walked off and left his friend in the hardware store.

  Avery Fiedler was not what Caleb expected in a real-estate agent, a man who sat behind a desk and made his living by selling other people’s homes. He was a tidy, clean-shaven little man in a three-piece wool suit, but despite his prim appearance and his office job, Fiedler gave a firm handshake. The office was neat and clean too, the desktop clear but for a blotter and inkstand. The walls were mostly covered with maps of the surrounding countryside dotted with stickpins, marking, Caleb assumed, the properties Morgan-Fiedler represented.

  “What can I do for you?” Avery asked. He asked this quietly, sincerely, without the proud, brassy tone Caleb had come to expect from salesmen.

  Caleb held out the brochure. “Can you tell me about this?”

  Avery took the pamphlet from his hand and opened it.

  “I sure can. A Mr. Marlon Harris, from Laredo, came by here on his way to Canada last week and left this with me. I figured the best thing to do was post it at the hardware store where some Amish farmer might see it.” He smiled at Caleb, and it seemed a very genuine smile. “It appears I was right.”

  “This Paradise Valley,” Caleb said, “have you seen it?”

  “Oh no, I haven’t been to Mexico, but Mr. Harris said he went down there and looked it over. He had nothing but good things to say about it. There’s a road right down the middle of the property, longways. Lots of road frontage on both sides. Perfect climate. Even though it’s south of the border, it’s not too hot because it’s so high up, but not too high to grow crops. Mountains on three sides and good black dirt, he said. Volcanic origin, if I understood him right. He said you could grow just about anything there if you knew how to irrigate. If there’s a drawback to the place, I guess that would be it – there’s not much surface water. No creeks or rivers on the land at all.”

  “How much rain do they get?”

  “Enough, I suppose. All I know is it’s not desert. From what I understand the really arid country is in the lowlands, not the mountains. Right now this parcel belongs to some Mexican cattle baron who used to use it for pasture, and Mr. Harris said it was greener than anything around Laredo. Big ranch called Hacienda El Prado.”

  “Why would this Harris fella come all the way to Ohio to try and sell a piece of Mexico when he lives right there in Texas?”

  “What he told me, Mr. Bender, is he figured it might be a hard sell because, well, you know . . . it’s in Mexico.” He said this with raised eyebrows and a little shrug. Something in his eyes led Caleb to wonder if maybe there was something he wasn’t saying.

  “Besides, everybody wants electric lights these days, and this place is out in the middle of nowhere in the mountains where, who knows, they might never get electricity. But Marlon Harris, being an enterprising young man, knew this wouldn’t be a concern for the Amish. Since he was heading to Canada anyway, and his train would be passing through Amish country, he figured it wouldn’t do any harm to put the word out.”

  Fiedler’s explanation seemed sensible enough, but the land itself still sounded too good to be true.

  “If the land is so gut, why would they sell it so cheap?”

  Fiedler took a deep breath, blew it out through puffed cheeks. “That I honestly don’t know, friend, but I try not to look a gift horse in the mouth. Maybe the owner is in some financial difficulty, who knows? But if it’s anywhere near as fine a parcel as Marlon Harris claims, then I’d say their loss is your gain.”

  Caleb stood there thinking, holding the brochure open in his rough hands, studying it. There was even a crude map on the inside.

  “What about schools?” he asked.

  Fiedler scratched his head, winced. “I wouldn’t know much about that,” he said, “but I suspect they’re not going to be anywhere near as good as what we’ve got in the States. Our neighbors to the south are a little behind us in some ways. For all I know they may not even have a school system.”

  “You don’t say.” A little smile relaxed Caleb’s face, studying the brochure.

  “Oh, wait . . .” Avery Fiedler said, and the light of recognition came into his eyes. “I read about the problems between the Amish and the school system. It was in the papers. Some of your people were arrested, weren’t they?”

  Caleb nodded. “I was one.”

  “Ahhh. Now I see. So you’re wanting to know if there’s any chance you might run into the same problems in Mexico. To be honest, Mr. Bender, I don’t know what their laws are in that regard. But Marlon Harris can answer your questions a lot better than I can. If you’re seriously interested, I might be able to arrange a meeting next week. When his train comes back through I can probably hold him here if you want to talk to him.”

  Caleb nodded firmly. “Yes. If you could do that, I would like it very much.”

  Chapter 8

  Caleb Bender stopped off at four different farms on his way home from Kidron that Thursday afternoon, showing them the brochure and spreading the news of his discovery. He could hardly contain his ex
citement. The prospect of good, rich, cheap land in Mexico, where the government would not force its schools on Amish children, kindled a fire in him.

  He said nothing to his neighbors about the other reason for his excitement – his wife, Martha. Caleb tended to keep such thoughts private, for he had been taught from birth that whether one lived or died was entirely in the hands of Gott. But Caleb adored his wife. He was terrified of losing her and he thought, just maybe, the brochure was Gott’s way of telling him how to save her.

  The meeting with the land agent from Texas was only a little more than a week away, but all he had to do was put out the word on Sunday and let the Amish grapevine do its work. The news spread like a prairie fire.

  The following Saturday afternoon a line of buggies stretched down Caleb’s back lot well past the barn. Chairs and benches from every part of the house were packed into the living room, and there was a great scraping of wooden chairs as Amishmen filed in and found seats. Precisely at one o’clock, as promised, Avery Fiedler’s automobile pulled into the Benders’ driveway and the two real-estate agents made their way into the crowded house.

  Marlon Harris was a tall Texan, the biggest man in the room. He wore a strange-looking tan suit with wide lapels trimmed in a darker brown, a string tie with a clasp made of silver inlaid with turquoise and coral, and a hat with a flat brim and slightly rounded dome. Apart from the buckskin color and the narrow band proudly displaying the name Stetson, his hat looked an awful lot like something an Old Order Amishman would wear. Smiling, Marlon Harris seemed right at home, and indeed came across as the kind of man who would be right at home virtually anywhere.

  After the introductions were done, Caleb quieted the crowd as best he could, and began. Uncomfortable as he was with speaking before such a crowd, his discomfort was doubled by having to do it in English for the benefit of his two guests.

  “Brethren, what we come here to talk about today is our problem with the schools. I don’t like it, and I don’t think anybody likes it much that our kinder are made to go to the consolidated school every day, mix all the time with Englisher children, and learn things we don’t want them to learn. So last week when I found out about this land in Mexico” – he held up the brochure, though most had already seen it – “I’m thinking mebbe it is an answer to prayer. But I don’t know nearly so much about it as Mr. Harris here, who is from Texas and has been to see the land with his own eyes, so I’ll chust let him talk.”

  “Well now,” Marlon Harris said, rising to his impressive height, his booming voice a little overwhelming in the crowded living room. “Gentlemen, Avery here has told me all about your troubles with the schools in Ohio, and I’ve got good news for you. The government in Mexico couldn’t care less where your young’uns go to school. Or even if they go. In Mexico you can do whatever you like. You can run your own schools for all they care.”

  He rubbed his hands together, smiling a little too broadly. He had their attention now. “So let me tell you about this parcel of land for sale in Paradise Valley. I’ve seen it myself, and boys, it’s a peach. We’re talking about five thousand acres of rich black dirt at six thousand feet in the temperate belt of the lovely state of Nuevo León, the jewel of Mexico. You can grow wheat year-round on this place. The whole thing is flat as a cow pond and hardly a tree or a rock in sight – ready to plow, and so soft you could turn it with a boat paddle. And it’s yours for a mere ten dollars an acre.”

  He spread his hands and looked around the room. “Questions?”

  Caleb Bender looked around the room too, at the faces. Marlon Harris smelled of tobacco and cologne, and his flashy style made him look like a huckster, an outsider trying to sell them a bill of goods. Too many of them were already looking at him a little sideways, their arms crossed on their chests.

  At first no one even ventured a question, but then a man from down near Maysville, sitting in the back, raised his hand and cleared his throat.

  “Everybody knows Mexico is a hot, dry place, full of rocks and snakes. You can’t grow nothing but cactus. Why would a farmer want to go there?”

  Harris put on the patient smile of a schoolteacher, shaking his head. “Now, I’m gonna tell you the truth – yeah, some of Mexico is like that, in fact a good bit of it, especially in the low country, but we’re talkin’ about a mountain valley, high up in the Sierra Madre Orientals. Just wait till you see it! I’m telling you it’s an oasis, fellas, cool and green year-round.”

  There were skeptical glances. Jonas Weaver raised a hand.

  “How far is the closest produce market?”

  “Great question! Paradise Valley is about fifty miles from Saltillo, where they’ve got a real nice market. Now, I know that’s a long way in a wagon, but the good news is, they’re already drawing up plans to extend the rail line down from Saltillo to where it’ll run within a few miles of Paradise Valley. You can see it for yourself on the map in the brochure. The dotted line represents the proposed route for the new rail line. When that goes in, why, the market will only be an hour away by rail. You’ll be able to haul your goods to Saltillo and be back home the same night.”

  Harris seemed to be gaining a little ground until a cabinetmaker from up around Wooster raised his hand.

  “What about the war?” he asked.

  Marlon Harris threw his head back and laughed. “Where you been, boy? Why, the revolution’s been pretty much over for two years now! Things are calm as can be.”

  Even Caleb raised an eyebrow, and the cabinetmaker persisted.

  “Mr. Harris, I’d like to know how a revolution could be ‘pretty much’ over. Is there war or not?”

  “Well, truth is, the war ended a while back, but some of the revolutionaries didn’t go home. The thing is, Pancho Villa’s army in the north was made up mostly of rabble from the border towns – brigands and thieves even before the revolution – and some of them enjoyed the looting and pillaging so much they kept on doing it after the fighting was over. So now they’ve got a slight problem with little groups of bandits roaming around, but the new government is working on it. From what I hear, it’s quieted down a lot just in the last year or so.”

  This was news to Caleb. He’d heard rumors, but nothing this concrete. There were skeptical glances, and some of the men began to whisper among themselves in Dutch. Fortunately, the rest of their questions were all about the land itself. It was, after all, a roomful of farmers. In the end, Paradise Valley sounded almost too good to be true, aside from the rainfall issue, which they all assumed could be remedied with irrigation.

  The serious questions came only after Harris and Fiedler left. Although in general the Amishmen didn’t trust the big Texan, what they gleaned from his answers was that this was indeed a decent and potentially productive tract of farmland in a place where they could raise their families without interference.

  “We’d have to learn a new language,” one of them said.

  Caleb shrugged. “We already have Dutch, High German and English,” he argued. “One more language shouldn’t be so hard.”

  “What about the church?” another wanted to know. This was the big question and everybody knew it. For an Amish settlement to last, they would need a minister to lead church services on Sunday. More important, unless a bishop was willing to make the yearly pilgrimage to the colony, they wouldn’t be able to baptize anyone, no marriages would take place, and they couldn’t hold communion.

  Caleb deferred to his minister, who had remained silent through the whole meeting up to now. Half of these men were members of his church.

  “If enough of you decide to do this,” the minister said, “and you go down there and build homes in this Paradise Valley, and you’re able to thrive there, then jah, I’m thinking we could find a minister who would agree to come and live. I wouldn’t make a promise, but I might even do it myself. Mebbe we would have a selection and draw lots to find a new minister. Now, I can’t speak for the bishop, but as long as his health is good, I don’t see any reason
why he wouldn’t be able to make a trip down there for a visit once a year.”

  This was a great relief to Caleb, a major hurdle overcome. His people would never move to a place that had no hope of a church structure. The church was at the center of their lives.

  “Fifty thousand dollars is a lot of money,” John Hershberger said, ever the pragmatist.

  Caleb nodded. “Jah, it is, but they said they would sell us as much or as little as we want of the land. Our farms here are worth a good bit more than ten dollars an acre, and the agent said they will give us time to find people who want to go in with us.”

  “Well, I think mebbe that will be the real problem,” John said. “Finding people. I don’t care what that Harris fella says, none of us has ever seen this place. Not even you, Caleb.”

  Caleb nodded solemnly. “That’s the plain truth. Only a mighty foolish man would spend all he had on a piece of land without first looking it over.” He’d seen this one coming, and there was only one answer to it. “One of us will have to go and make a start in this Paradise Valley so we can know what it’s really like down there. That’s the only way.”

  It would be hard. Pulling up stakes and leaving behind everything familiar, breaking ground in a new country without the help of neighbors, learning a new language, building a home, digging a well, feeding livestock, putting up barns and fences, all while planting crops to fend off next year’s hunger – it would be a massive undertaking. But it was, in Caleb’s mind, exactly the same price paid by the Amish pioneers who had first come to America in search of religious freedom. They had borne it stoically, in the sure knowledge they were doing the right thing. That was all that mattered. The man who accepted such a calling would need all the courage and conviction of his forefathers and, like them, the help of a benevolent Gott. He would have to be a man of vision, entirely convinced of the ultimate rightness of the task.