Thomas Hart Benton, A Drink of Water
The twins, Daniel and Nancy, not quite 20, were responsible for getting the younger children to church. Daniel rigged up the wagon and Nancy made sure her siblings were dressed suitably – warm enough for the ride and respectfully enough for the service. With the horses clopping along the snowy path, the Deardorffs passed a few Methodist and Catholic steeples on the way to their spare Dunker Church. Benjamin Franklin, now almost nine, wondered why they couldn’t just worship with their neighbors, closer to the farm.
Their mother stayed behind in bed in their silent house. When Lucinda would finally rise, long after dawn and the ringing of the Methodist bells, she would dress from head to toe in black. It had been three months to the day when her husband Isaac had succumbed.
Isaac Deardorff had been just fine, gathering in the last of the corn, turning the soil beneath the Harvest Moon. But then he took ill. At first, she thought it was a virus or influenza but then Isaac wasn’t able to leave his bed and the doctor was called. The door to their room closed.
Benjamin had hovered outside. He heard the doctor mumble and his father moan. His mother took to sleeping in the children’s room, alongside his baby sister. Isaac Deardorff was dead before All Hollows’ Eve. Typhoid fever, they said. His clothes, sheets, and covers were burned in an open fire in a clearing steps away from their house. Benjamin never saw his father again once that door closed.
***
As the family walked into the sanctuary, unburdening themselves of coats and mufflers, Nancy reminded her younger siblings, as she did every Sunday, to say a prayer for their father. Daniel and Nancy, the two oldest, the only ones to have been baptized, had begun acting like substitute parents. With Isaac gone, their mother had become erratic, overwhelmed, unable to manage. Daniel had been walking the fields, spending time with his grandfather, learning about the requirements of the farm. Nancy would put meals on the table and get the children off to school.
Pastor Müeller, fit and balding, strode to his usual place in the front of the simple altar. “My Brothers and Sisters, the Lord God loves you and welcomes you into his home.”
“We are redeemed by God’s love,” the congregation said as one.
The liturgy was the usual litany of offerings, hymns, and reflections. Benjamin paid scant attention until the pastor said, “We look forward to the day when allGod’s children can live lives of freedom and love.” Benjamin stared deeply into the pastor’s face. His brother George had told him that Pastor Müeller and his wife were station masters on the Underground Railroad. Benjamin had trouble imagining this peaceable man in the dead of night darting about with a pack of negroes, their ebony skin glistening beneath a solitary torch. Or lying to the slave catchers in town. People can surprise you, he supposed.
Concluding the service, the pastor said, “May we all walk out into the light of God’s love.” Strange words to usher out a congregation into the gray chill of winter, Benjamin thought.
In the back of the church, Pastor Mueller offered pleasantries to the congregants as they made their way out the door. He stopped Daniel, “Please remember me to your mother.” Turning to Nancy and clasping her hands, he said, “You, my child, are living the message of Timothy. The godliness you have shown to your mother in her time of need is pleasing to the Lord.” The pastor then stepped back and said to the entire family. “Let you mother know that her brethren continue to hold in her in our thoughts and we look forward to her return to this tabernacle of believers.”
Riding back in the wagon, Benjamin, upfront, sitting between Daniel and Nancy, was the first to see the black crape. “Why is the bunting back up?”
Once again there was a half-moon of black fabric hanging on the front door. Nancy shot Daniel a quick glance. “You know Mother hasn’t been well.”
Nancy and Daniel had taken to saying such things to explain their mother’s behavior. Yes, she sobbed uncontrollably and unpredictably, but it was more than that. Daniel had found her hiding in the corner of the barn in her nightclothes. One night, well past dark, brother George came upon her wandering down the road near town.
Settling the horses on the road, Daniel said, “Best let us talk to her. George, mind the others.” Daniel jumped from the carriage and helped Nancy down to the ground. They scurried towards the house.
“I’m cold!” young Albert whined. “Me too,” Malinda echoed.
“Come now, come now,” George repeated, over and over.
It seemed like an eternity that they sat there in the gray, damp cold before Daniel and Nancy reappeared, walking slowly towards them, their heads down.
Daniel, his eyes rimmed with tears, spoke. “Grandfather’s dead.”
This made no sense. Peter Deardorff was the strongest man they knew. Up before dawn with the cows, working on the farm’s accounting by candlelight late in the evening.
Not only had Peter Deardorff been the heart of their world, he was the center of bigger universe of for nearly a score of Deardorff and Mathew cousins. Peter and his wife Hannah had moved with their four children from Ohio to Illinois. Then, Peter buried John, Eleanor, George, and, finally, Isaac. He stepped in and managed the affairs that were beyond the ken of the grieving widows. He and Hannah had taken relations into their home. Benjamin thought that his grandfather, who had been ramrod straight, had become a little stooped after the death of his father. At the dinner table, he would watch him massage his temples. In the end, maybe it was all too much.
The older children were crying. Albert and Malinda were crying because the older children were crying.
Benjamin asked, “What kind of God takes away a father and grandfather, one right after the other?”
No one answered.
Benjamin looked again at the house. His mother, dressed from head to toe in black, was now visible in the doorway. He scanned the faces of his brothers and sisters, wide-eyed and silent. He wondered, “What happens to my family now?”
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