Martin Greenberg - Visions of Liberty

The misshapen weeds seemed to erupt in fierce protest when I emptied the bucket. Tiny weasel-shaped creatures with scaly skin chittered at me and scampered off.

My house lay close inside a cluster of farms and roads. Just beyond them lay an unfamiliar forest full of alien species creeping in and mixing with our own. I knew the weeds in my own garden. But behind the scraggly dandelions and patchy grass, spirals of unearthly flowers moved in and out of the shadows to the rhythm of the wind.

Instead of going back inside, I sat on the porch swing and shivered. The fourth moon—the largest of the quartet—edged over the hills and made silhouettes of the neighbor’s barn.

I’d never lost so many lives in such a short time, and I was getting sick of funerals.

It didn’t make any sense. I was free to try to convince them to let me save them. They were free to die unnecessarily. And there was no one, no higher authority I could appeal to. Except God.

And unlike me, they talked to Him every day, welcomed Him into their houses and the lives. They knew

He was on their side.

I sighed and went back into the house.

Mark hadn’t died doing anything glamorous like beating back the wild forest of a new planet. He’d been milling grain, and had fallen between the giant wheels. The hardwood cogs chewed him up, spit him out, and left him for me and God—and God washed His hands of the matter.

At the Yoders’ I pulled on Zeke’s reins. He snorted and plodded to a nonchalant stop just short of the weathered post I usually tied him to. One of the little Yoders, Joshua, walked down to greet me.

“Gutenmorning,” he said, mixing his German and English with a smile.

“Good morning, Joshua,” I replied. I clambered out of my buggy, then reached back in to retrieve my black bag. Of all my visits, I looked forward to seeing the Yoders the most.

Joshua eyed Zeke with a critical eye.

“Your horse is getting old. How much longer will he be pulling you around? My dad could sell you a good one, with straight legs and a strong back and the look of eagles.”

A fast talking six-year-old, this Joshua. Somehow I knew he wouldn’t spend the rest of his life on New Pennsylvania.

Unless he contracted a serious disease. Or broke a leg. Or…

“No thank you,” I said. “I think old Zeke will hold out just fine for me.” In response Zeke broke wind and swished his tail.

Joshua giggled and ran back toward the house, his bare feet kicking up small puffs of dirt.

Joshua’s mother came out to the porch. The hem of her black dress scraped the dirty wooden floor planks, and her white blouse had blue stains all over it. Several strands of honey-brown hair had escaped the edges of her bonnet. She brushed at them.

“Dr. Hostetler,” she greeted me. “Good morning.”

“Good morning, Mrs. Yoder.” I walked onto their porch. Several giggling kids ran out the door past me. I looked around, but didn’t see Rebecca anywhere.

“I’ll tell Ben and Esther you’re here,” she said. “Please, come in.”

I stepped in. The house smelled of food. Fresh-baked bread sat on the counter by the large iron range, and it appeared that Mrs. Yoder was taking advantage of the hot stove to put a cake in as well.

David Yoder, his full beard as dark as the unkempt hair crammed into his straw hat, shook my hand.

“You ministered to Suderman’s son,” he said. “God bless him, that was a fine boy. A tragedy.”

The tragedy was that none of you would let me bring my skills to bear on him.

Mrs. Yoder took a stick and stirred the coal bin under the range. She opened the oven for a quick peek and waved her hand over it. “We’ll have to pray for Betty,” she said.

That brought back the image of Betty Suderman sitting in her buggy outside my house, waiting for the news of her son’s death. I forced it back into my subconcious when I saw Ben and Esther coming down the stairs. Ben’s beard had just started growing in, a sign that he was no longer a bachelor. Esther unconsciously held her arms protectively over her stomach.

I shook Ben’s hand while Esther smiled nervously at me.

“Let’s see what we have here,” I said. I undid the clasp on my little black bag and opened it up. The look on Esther’s face said that Pandora’s box had nothing on my medical bag.

There is nothing so amazing as hearing the heartbeat of a tiny human being inside of its mother’s womb. But amazing as the experience was, I had another sobering thought: here was another little person who had better never come down with a disease, or undergo a crippling accident.

I took the stethoscope away from Esther’s belly.

“Everything seems okay,” I said. I smiled reassuringly. Although, without any scans, I couldn’t be absolutely certain. A sonogram to look at the baby would have been nice; DNA tests to make sure to make sure everything was okay after the birth would have been even better. There was no law prohibiting it; just a belief that was a thousand times stronger than any law.

Esther coughed. She stood up with her proud husband, linking her arm through his. They walked back up the creaky steps.

“Asa and I’ll be out in the field after lunch,” David Yoder said to his son’s back.

“I’ll be there,” replied Ben.

David winked at me. “There’ll be a raising happening soon enough for the two of them. Will you join?”

It would be another chance to see Rebecca. I tried to hide my enthusiasm. “We’ll see what my schedule is like,” I said. “But, yes, I would like to join.”

David looked around. “We’re almost ready to bring in this year’s wheat. Weather’s been good. Real good. The strange seasons throw you off a bit, but I think I’ve got it figured this year. There’ll be threshing soon, eh?”

He could have used any of a dozen instruments to predict the weather to a fraction of a degree, the rainfall to a tenth of a centimeter. No law against it. Just a moral repugnance to anything that would make his life easier. We’d argued it many times. I’d never come close to winning.

David kept trying to rope me into coming over to lend an able hand. And in truth I wanted to go. The women would cook blackberry and grape pies. There would be freshly churned butter and baked bread. Washing off a day’s worth of hard sweat from forking wheat into the wheels of the thresher, joking with all the other men, eating that special food—it was an appealing picture. It was almost my only pleasure on this world, other than being in Rebecca’s company.

Despite my privileged place in the community as a doctor, it was their nature to be wary of me. I had a very advanced education, which didn’t sit too well with them, and technology was a very important part of my job (or at least it should have been)—but it was that very technology that was viewed as dangerous to the health of the community. No one ever told me I couldn’t use it. I had the freedom to offer it to them; they had the freedom to refuse it. We were both batting a thousand: I always offered, they always refused.

Girls passed by us with white tablecloths, utensils, plates of bread, and half-moon pies. Someone brought out a tureen of bean soup. I pulled my watch out. “Brother Yoder,” I said. “I’m falling behind already, I have to go.”

David frowned. “You’ll miss church tonight?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“I don’t know if that’s good,” he said.

“I have to see the Andersons’ son and tend to him. They say he’s had a cold for a few days, but it could be worse.”

“There should always be time for God,” David told me.

“A long time ago God spoke to me,” I lied, trying to hide my irritation, “and charged me with curing the sick.”