Stones in the Road - Softcover

Moore, E.B.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0451469992 ISBN 13: 9780451469991

Publisher: Berkley, 2015

Synopsis

A young Amish boy ventures from Pennsylvania to California in this richly imagined historical novel from the author of An Unseemly Wife.

1867. Growing up among the Pennsylvania Amish, eleven-year-old Joshua knows that his father is a respected church deacon who has the ear of God. But he’s also seen his father’s weakness for drink, and borne the brunt of his violent rages. In the aftermath of a disastrous fire, Joshua fears his father’s reprimand enough to run away from home. Having never experienced the ways of the English, Joshua now embarks on a decade-long journey to California, where he’s heard it’s always summer.

His mother, Miriam, is forced to take on the unusual role of head of the family when her husband is unable to recover physically, emotionally, or spiritually from the fire. As mother and son each find themselves in uncharted territory, they must draw on strength and forgiveness from within. Urged by everyone to accept her son’s death, Miriam never gives up hope of seeing Joshua again. But even as her prayers are answered so many years later, Joshua’s reunion will require him to face his father once again...

READERS GUIDE INCLUDED
 

About this title

About the Author:

E. B. Moore is a poet, novelist, and retired sculptor. Her published works include the novel An Unseemly Wife and a book of poetry, New Eden: A Legacy. Her work has appeared in literary journals including The Drum and Inkwell. 

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

PART I

The Road

CHAPTER 1

The Graveyard

Joshua urges his horse through the iron gate. Hoping to find his father’s headstone, he dismounts at one slab not yet covered with lichen and reads the name. It’s not Father’s. He reads it again. Hand to his beard, he compresses his lips. The name is his own.

He never imagined this welcome, or the chiseled inscription: Beloved Boy, 1872. The year he ran from Father and the farm.

Beyond disquiet, he lingers on the hill overlooking his family’s stone house and white barn, the rebuilt woodshed, all at peace as it should be, no hint of demolishing flames. Only birdsong greets him, and air fresh with the tang of falling leaves.

Quiet surrounds him, the shouting over long ago.

He lets himself revel in the spread of quilted fields, this Amish land woven into the chambers of his heart along with Mama and his sisters. They draw him, but he stays in the graveyard. His horse crops the grass.

A runaway no more, after ten years and six thousand miles, he has returned ragged in brown castoffs, his beard matted. He shakes off hesitation.

Gathering the reins, he girds himself against Father, the Deacon of their Plain Fold, the one who propelled him, eleven and alone, into the arms of English.

In their Gomorrahs Joshua resisted what frightened him most: the advent of hate. Yet try as he might, he fell from grace, another man’s blood on his hands.

At twenty-one, he has come to reclaim the boy he once was. He wants to earn the Plain jacket, pants, and hat, black as Mama’s blackberry jam. He wants his family. But first comes Father. Face-to-face.

CHAPTER 2

Where the Road Began

Tucked in his narrow bed, Joshua listened to Father slam through the kitchen. Father, back from prayer in the barn, head full of God; on his breath the liquid of visions, the smell sharp as a snake’s tongue.

As if in the room, Joshua saw him, smelled him, coming through the dark. Father but not Father, shoulders hunched, wet hair streaming into his collar, dripping off his square beard. His boots squelched with rain, and he kicked the logs stacked for the morning fire. Joshua heard them roll onto the hearth, and, clang, the iron fork fell on stone. A great clomping followed. Father kicked at the oak table. Its legs chattered along wide-board floors. He tripped into the parlor, shoved a straight chair, and lurched to the steps. Stomp on the first—stomp, the second—his knee hit the third. Slap, slap, his hands on the sixth, the seventh, he dog-paddled to the landing.

Joshua knew the sounds. He’d seen Father, how he would slide his bulk up the wall, shoulder first, legs wobbly, pushing himself up the last steps to the hall.

“Isaac.” Father’s voice hoarse. “Where are you?” More and more nights, he wasn’t himself, and Father called Joshua Isaac, though he’d been Joshua all his eleven years.

Pulling a patchwork quilt over his head, Joshua prayed, Please, please, let me be but a mote in his eye, ever hopeful that this time Father would stagger past the door. But he paused. His boots regrouped at the top step.

Silence. Then, along the wall, Father’s hand slid toward the bedroom. Joshua peered from under the quilt. Father pushed the door and pawed the opening. A waft of manure filled the room, and big as a tree, he toppled onto the bedside.

He sank to his knees. “God.” Father struck the mattress, his left fist a finger’s width from Joshua’s head, his breath a slap. The bed shook. Joshua inched to the farthest edge, belly to his backbone, eyes squinched.

Father wept. “Dear God . . .”

And it seemed God answered, as He would, Father being Deacon.

“Yes,” Father said. He and God agreed. They were as one, and Joshua less than crumbs under their table. He knew because Father had told him often enough. Crumbs. Though he strove to be the whole loaf Father wanted, a slice would have done.

Breathing heavily, Father gripped Joshua’s shoulder, raised one knee, and, dragging his boot beneath him, heaved to his feet. He yanked Joshua’s arm, the shoulder fit to pop, and hauled him off the bed, his legs tangled in the quilt.

At the end of the hall, Father took the steps two at a time, Joshua’s bare feet bumping the treads, down, down, through parlor and kitchen, his knees cracking against chair legs, the table leg, and out the door into the blowing rain.

Father had him by the hair, head pressed against Father’s jacket sharp with sweat and the stench of wet wool. Joshua’s nightshirt clinging like a second skin, they splashed across the dooryard.

Wild with what might come, he drove his heels into the mud, plowing crooked furrows. “Oh please,” he whispered.

Father wrenched him toward the woodshed. Joshua yowled. Luke yowled in return, the black dog latched in the toolshed.

Luke, Joshua’s confidant, a ready ear those nights after Father beat him in the woodshed. “Why does he hate me?” he’d ask as he curled on the dog’s bed, and the dog would lick his face.

Luke whined and scratched against his confinement, until Father, dragging Joshua, slammed the woodshed door, the world shut out.

One-handed, Father pushed aside the chopping block, an oak stump with the hatchet whacked in the end-grain. Blood and feathers marked the morning slaughter.

The speckled rooster had run headless circles, unaware the worst was over. Now gutted and plucked, he hung in the rafters by yellow feet, the shed smelling of blood.

Father lit a candle on the stump next to the hatchet. With a black boot, he kicked the floorboards free of kindling, and knelt, saintly in the candle’s radiance. From nowhere, he held a quart jar brimming with clear liquid. “Communion cider,” he always called it. “Pray with me, boy.”

Hard fingers dug into Joshua’s elbow, hauling him to his knees, and Father lifted the jar to his lips. He took a long swallow. Another, and he grimaced, lips off his teeth.

The liquid didn’t look like cider. Didn’t smell like the cider Joshua and his sisters tapped from the barrel outside the pressroom. Only Father went inside to the press; his job alone, the making of cider.

“Lord forgive this boy,” Father said.

And Lord only knew, Joshua wanted forgiveness. He needed forgiveness for reading books beyond the Bible, for woolgathering when he should have been working.

But the other faults? Soggy fields, seed rot, rain—? If those powers were his, surely he could loosen Father’s grip, rise, take up his fright, and walk from the woodshed.

Looking like Sunday, Father intoned a prayer, the man upstanding as a white board fence, hair trim at the earlobes, his marriage beard square, upper lip razored smooth—all according to the Ordnung. He kept to the Plain rules.

His fingers bit the back of Joshua’s neck, while the other hand held fervently to the half-empty jar, and through the window, distant as someone else’s life, the house stood outlined in the dark: the steep slate, high chimneys, Joshua’s bedroom dormer, his sisters’ dormer. If he listened intently, he might hear their sleep and Mama’s.

On the first floor, no lamp on the table, no square of window glowed orange. There’d be no light or way to bed for him.

Father’s grip loosened as his prayers droned, “. . . for I am Yours unto the flesh of my flesh, my Isaac, should You ask.”

Isaac again. But would God stay Father’s hand as He’d stayed Old Testament Abraham’s? That son saved before the knife descended.

As Father’s grip eased, Joshua shifted sideways. But a quick twist of his ear brought him to his back on the floor, the jar by his head.

Father patted the floorboards beyond the candle’s glow. His hand came up empty, the usual apple switch not found, and this fault was Joshua’s. He’d burned the switch that morning.

Father searched with the other arm. “God bless it.” And for a moment Joshua seemed forgotten in the candle’s flicker. The blade of the hatchet glinted.

Joshua spidered backward, arms cocked, palms down, feet under his rump. One outflung foot caught the jar. The remaining liquid ran rat-quick under the dry woodpile.

Father bellowed. He lunged for the jar and missed as an unsplit log rolled beneath his foot. He landed hip first, his face so close, Joshua could have kissed his cheek.

Father had him by the shirt; in the pit of his eye, no hint of reprieve. Joshua saw only his own reflection: the open mouth, panicked eyes. Even God Himself couldn’t stay this Abraham’s hand.

Joshua closed his fists in Father’s long beard and pushed. Straining against Father’s chin, his arms shook, but Father’s grip wouldn’t loosen.

Letting go, Joshua flung his arms above his head, fingers locked together. He wrenched side to side, frantic to break Father’s grip, and oh God, his locked fists slammed Father’s face.

Together they jolted against the chopping block. The block wobbled.

Above their heads, the candle toppled and rolled onto the blotchy floor. A whoosh of blue flame leapt around them, yet Father’s grip fiercened. Joshua’s shirt tore.

The flames leapt up their clothes. A hand passed Joshua’s lips, and he turned badger. All tongue and teeth, he bit. In the Devil’s own rage, Father lifted Joshua out of the flames and threw him through the window, shoulder first, head bent, shattering mullions and glass. He landed in a sea of mud.

Searching for breath, he curled on his side. The dark house shimmered.

He wiped his eyes. The woodshed wall sheeted with flame, and from the door came a separate conflagration like a burning bush. Dear God. And there in the midst of the burning, what did Joshua see? Father? God the Father?

The apparition fell, groveling in the wet. Just a man, he beat at his clothes, splashing until the flames snuffed, and he lay quiet in the roar of the woodshed.

A bell rang, a rapid clang-clang, clang-clang. Someone—it had to be Mama—whipped the rope, the clapper slung rim to rim.

Locked safe in the toolshed, Luke yowled high, keening among the shouts of the faithful as they ran over the fields and down the lane, buckets clunking. Fast they came, rousted from bed, running in answer to the iron bell, the insistent clangor sounding fire.

Father stirred. He rose to hands and knees, hair plastered to his head. Smoke billowed, and he pointed a shaky finger. “You!” Father reared, hands reaching.

Joshua’s head filled with its own clangor. Run, run, and, jumping to his feet, he ran behind the barn, flying across the harrowed fields, hedgerow to hedgerow.

He hadn’t meant to hit Father. He hadn’t meant the candle to fall. Yet who would believe him over the word of their Deacon?

Out of the fields and into dark woods, he entered the slap of branches, his chest filled with a white fire at every breath, his legs weak as a new lamb’s.

“Oh, Mama.” Eyes and nose leaking, he stumbled through windfallen limbs.

Father thundered in Joshua’s ears, long after the voice faded—He’ll find you.

The moon slid from banked clouds. And there they were waiting, tall shadows by a road cutting the woods, as if Father’s Flock knew right where he hid.

CHAPTER 3

Miriam

Peace without end, a blessing Miriam had been too blind to fully savor. It came unquestioned with her Plain faith. Until contentment ended, she’d never thought to look for hints of ruin.

That spring, rain had lashed the windows and soaked the farm’s hundred acres. In occasional sun, the big chestnut spread shade between house and barn, the massive trunk at the center of their circling lane. Lush oaks edged the narrow way, but the once slow creek crowned, overflowing its banks. Mosquitoes whined in the lowlands as seedlings drowned, a time so wet, Noah would have risen, taken up adze and mallet, and built himself an ark.

Of the Old Order, she’d lived Plain in black. Along with Abraham and the littles, she’d bent her back to the land. Pledged never to raise a hand against another, they dwelt in post and beam, fieldstone and mortar, keeping separate as the Ordnung demanded. Separate and safe in Abraham’s Flock, the outside world a mystery best left to itself.

·   ·   ·

Joshua’s last morning, Miriam had slaughtered a rooster for supper and they all—Adah, strong at thirteen, Emma, Mary, and little Rebecca—spent the day in the side field, mud to their ankles, draining puddles of standing water. Abraham, Miriam, and Joshua dug trenches, and the girls swept brown water into the hedgerow, their black clothes spattered with mud.

By evening, quivering with exhaustion, they rinsed off at the pump. They ate pickled pig feet and yesterday’s corn mush, no time or inclination for more. They could cook the rooster another day.

Miriam tucked in the littles, hung damp clothes and her white prayer cap on a hook. She changed to a white nightdress, then unwound her lifelong hair, plaited it in a single braid, and fell into bed. Sleep swamped her before Abraham finished bedding animals in the barn.

Raccoons screeched through her dreams. Wind knocked at a loose door. She tossed under the spring quilt and, with a jolt, woke from her dead sleep. It felt like all the mud she’d moved that day now thickened her legs. She sat up and sniffed. “Smoke.”

They hadn’t cooked, so— She reached for Abraham’s shoulder. “I smell—” Her hand fell on the cold sheet.

She swung her feet to the floor, and a flicker of yellow launched her to the window. The woodshed.

She jammed her feet into boots, not bothering with laces. He should have woken me.

“Joshua,” she shouted as she ran downstairs, white nightdress rippling at her legs. “Fire! Everyone up.”

Out the door, she dashed to the iron bell, rain in her eyes. She hauled on the wet rope, and the night filled with clang. Flames rose over the woodshed roof; the barn would be next.

“Abraham!” At the pump? No. “Joshua!” Where were they? She’d work the pump herself, but the bell—she had to keep the neighbors coming. “Joshua?” she shouted into the rain. Her braid slapped across her back. Loose strands stuck to her face.

“Mama.” Adah joined her on the pull. “I’ll do it.”

“Me too.” Little Rebecca tugged at the knotted end. Mary and Emma, like their sisters in braids and white nightdresses, crowded ready.

Miriam fled across the dooryard. “Faster,” she shouted at Adah. And the rain came faster.

Mud beneath her boots, Miriam slid to a stop at the trough as her closest neighbor thundered in on his horse, a bucket in each hand, reins flapping.

“Whoa, boy.” Before the horse stopped, Zeke swung a leg over the animal’s neck and slid to the ground. Together, he and Miriam scooped the buckets full and ran, water sloshing their legs. At the shed, they flung what was left at the flames.

Behind them more neighbors flooded in. On horseback, they came shouting. They came in carts, on foot across the fields, down the road, buckets clanking. “Here,” one called, “line up.”

“You pump,” another yelled above the din, and grabbed Miriam’s bucket. She work...

About this edition

• Publisher: Berkley
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0451469992
• ISBN 13: 9780451469991
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384