Jakob Miller woke before dawn and lay still for several minutes, listening to the house.
The ticking of the clock in the parlor — the same one his grandfather had brought from Bern seventy years ago. Rachel's breathing beside him, deep and even. The snuffling of four-year-old Daniel through the thin elm partition Jakob had planed with his own hands five years ago, when his firstborn arrived. The creak of a floorboard under the cat's weight. The distant crow of the Stoltzfus rooster — their rooster always crowed first in the valley.
In three hours they would leave this place. And not one of these sounds would ever repeat.
The decision had been made in February, when the ground still lay under snow and it seemed nothing could change. Bishop Beiler had gathered fifteen families in the schoolhouse and spoken for two hours. Land in Lancaster County was growing expensive. English factories were encroaching on the community's borders. Beiler's son had traveled to Ohio in the fall and brought news: in Holmes County, four hundred acres of black earth were for sale. Forest, streams, hills. Not a single Englishman within ten miles.
The price — four dollars an acre.
In Lancaster, such land cost thirty.
"Who will go?" asked Beiler.
Seven families raised their hands. Jakob raised his last. Rachel, sitting in the women's row, did not turn her head, but he saw how white her knuckles had gone on her lap.
The morning was cold — April's last frosts had silvered the grass and left white streaks on the windowpanes. Jakob dressed in the dark: shirt, vest, broad-brimmed hat. Broadfall trousers, suspenders, heavy boots he had oiled the night before with three coats of lard. Footwear was everything. Beiler had said: four hundred miles on foot, six to seven weeks. Whoever wore through their feet in the first week would become a burden to all.
He went down the stairs, trying not to creak. Passed the clock — 4:47. Stepped onto the porch.
The yard was ready. The wagon stood by the barn, loaded since evening. One horse — Gretchen, a sturdy nine-year-old Percheron mare — was harnessed and chewing oats from a feedbag. The second — Hans, a young gelding — stood tied to the wagon's tailgate. Under the canvas: tools, seeds, a hundred-pound sack of flour, a barrel of salt pork, a crate of apple butter and jam jars, a cast-iron kettle, two featherbeds, four blankets, a Bible in German, and thirty-seven dollars in cash — all that remained from the farm sale after paying for the Ohio land.
Thirty-seven dollars for a family of four. For half a year, until the first harvest.
Jakob stroked Gretchen's neck. The mare snorted and nudged his palm with her soft lips, searching for sugar.
"No sugar until autumn," he told her in German. "Get used to it."
Rachel came out with the children at six. Daniel — four years old, sturdy, quiet, with his father's square jaw — walked on his own, clutching his mother's skirt. Anna — eighteen months, red-haired, green-eyed, with a temperament that promised future trouble — sat on Rachel's hip, wrapped in a shawl.
Rachel was pale. She did not cry — Amish women don't cry in front of others — but Jakob saw the swollen eyelids and knew she hadn't slept.
"Ready?" he asked.
"Ja," she answered.
That was all. No farewell to the house, no last glance at the garden she had planted for six years. She handed him Anna, climbed into the wagon, took the child back, settled Daniel beside her.
"Auf geht's," she said. Let's go.
By seven the column had assembled at the Stoltzfus crossroads. Seven wagons, fourteen horses, three cows on tethers, a flock of twelve sheep driven by the Stoltzfus dog — black with a white chest, named Brut. Twenty-three adults, sixteen children, one infant.
Bishop Beiler stood on a stone by the roadside — lean, erect, sixty-two years old, beard to his belt, eyes the color of winter sky. He waited for silence and spoke:
"We are not leaving something. We are going toward something. God has given us land in the west. The road will be hard. Mountains, rivers, rain. Some of us will want to turn back. We will not turn back. We are a community. When one grows tired, others will carry his things. When one falls ill, others will be beside him. When one loses hope, others will remind him why we are going."
He removed his hat.
"Let us pray."
Thirty-nine people bowed their heads. Wind stirred bonnet strings, ruffled beards, carried the smell of wet earth and manure — the smell of the home they were leaving.
The prayer was short. Beiler put on his hat.
"Forward."
Gretchen jerked, the wagon creaked, the wheels turned in the mud. Jakob walked alongside, holding the reins. He did not look back.
Rachel looked back. Once. And turned away forever.