“Did you go to see Moses again?” Alma asked in Deitsch when Rachel got out of the Jeep. “Are they feeding my boy enough? Is he well?” she worried aloud, not really seeming to expect an answer. “I talked with the bishop. He says he will go to the prison to pray with Moses if they will let him in.” She looked up at Rachel earnestly through eyeglasses that needed a good cleaning. “Do you think they will? I don’t see why not. My son should have that right.” The older woman was again dressed for outside work. She wore a man’s heavy coat, muck boots, and a navy wool scarf.
“I’ve stopped a couple of times, but you haven’t been home,” Rachel told her, tugging on an old denim jacket she’d borrowed from her parents’ laundry room months ago. “To tell you what’s going on with Moses. Did Mary Rose mention it?”
“Come in.” Alma motioned toward the barn. “We were just milking the cows when I heard your motorcar.”
Rachel spotted Mary Rose at the clothesline across the yard, taking down a load of wash. She waved to her before she followed Alma into the old stone barn. Although it was still light outside, the stable had only a few narrow slits for windows, and it took a moment for Rachel’s eyes to adjust to the semidarkness.
“The wind is sharp,” Alma said. “No need for you to catch an ague.”
Rachel offered a tight-lipped smile, taking in the sights and sounds of the barn. A person could learn a lot about someone else from the way they kept their animals.
There were five tie stalls and a larger box stall with several half-grown calves. She counted three cows and a driving horse, all munching hay and grain from their individual mangers. The stable was as clean and orderly as Alma’s kitchen. There was an underlying scent of animals and dung, but the primary smells were sweet clover hay, molasses, and grain. Above her head, a low wide-plank ceiling told her that there was a substantial loft.
“I wanted to tell you that the attorney I spoke with will take Moses’s case. He’s still saying he did it, but at least he’s agreed to let the lawyer help him. She’ll make sure that Moses’s rights are upheld.” Rachel spotted Lemuel in a corner stall, seated on a low stool, milking a black-and-white cow. A lantern hung from an overhead beam, casting a pale light and even more shadows.
“I don’t care what it costs,” Alma said, breaking open a bale of hay. “We’ll sell land if we have to.” She walked down a passageway in front of the stalls and dropped sections of hay into each cow’s manger. “That crazy Englisher on the mountain is always offering to buy our pastures. They’re just growing up in brush anyway. More rock than soil.” She took a breath. “My Moses didn’t do this terrible thing, and they have to let him go. I don’t understand why they would put him in prison. You only put bad people in prison. People who do the bad things.”
Alma’s words reminded Rachel of how naïve the Amish in Stone Mill could be. They really did hold themselves apart from the world. “Let’s wait and see how much her fees will be before you start thinking about selling land. It’s too soon for that.”
Rachel glanced at the waiting cows. She could tell that there were still two to be milked by their full bags. She had been raised on a farm much like this one, and she’d always found well-tended barns to be comforting places. “Would you like help?” she asked. “I’ve been milking since I was six years old. At home, I mean. When I lived with my mam and dat.”
“Would you?” Alma asked. “The three are a lot for Lemuel and he still has the sheep and hogs to feed. My hands are near crippled from arthritis.” She raised her hands, covered in knit half-gloves. “My fingers are so stiff, I can barely pull a teat anymore.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Rachel started rolling up the sleeves on her coat. It was warm enough in the barn that she might end up having to take it off. “Have you talked to your doctor about it?”
Alma scoffed. “I don’t hold with doctors and their drugstore medicines. I drink ginseng tea and I can a lot of cherries. Salome says cherries and tea help with the pain. She knows a lot about the old cures.”
“Salome? Ya, the midwife.” Rachel nodded. “I know her.”
Salome Plank was an Amish lay-midwife who many of her people consulted for simple ailments. Salome was up in years, but she’d delivered many of the babies in this valley for generations and she knew a great deal about the properties of herbs and folk medicine such as using cobwebs to stop a wound from bleeding.
“She’s a wise woman,” Alma said. “She brought all three of my children into the world and one who never drew breath, God rest his soul. Born too soon, he was. Just a scrap of a baby. Not as big as a man’s hand.”
“Is there another milking bucket?” Rachel asked, looking around.
“I’ll fetch it for you.” Alma headed out of the barn and Rachel followed her.
In the barnyard, Alma walked a few feet away to where several milk buckets stood stacked. Rachel remained near the barn door. She watched Mary Rose take down one of the last sheets from the line, struggling with it in the wind.
