Allen Kim Lang Blind Man's Lantern 
 
 
 Transcriber's note Pg 1 
 This etext was produced from Analog December 1962. 
 Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the 
 U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. 
 
 
 
 Blind Man's Lantern Pg 2 
 _Walking home in the dark from an evening spent in mischief, a 
      young man spied coming toward him down the road a person with 
      a lamp. When the wayfarers drew abreast, the play-boy saw that 
      the other traveler was the Blind Man from his village. "Blind 
      Man," the youngster shouted across the road, "what a fool you 
      be! Why, old No-Eyes, do you bear a lantern, you whose midnight 
      is no darker than his noonday?" The Blind Man lifted his lamp. 
      "It is not as a light for myself that I carry this, Boy," he 
      said, "it is to warn off you fools with eyes."_ 
   
      --_Hausa proverb_ 
   
   
   
 The Captain shook hands with the black-hatted Amishman while the woman 
 stood aside, not concerning herself with men's business. "It's been a 
 pleasure to have you and _Fraa_ Stoltzfoos aboard, Aaron," the Captain 
 said. "Ship's stores are yours, my friend; if there's anything you need, 
 take it and welcome. You're a long way from the corner grocery." 
   
 "My Martha and I have all that's needful," Aaron Stoltzfoos said. "We 
 have our plow, our seed, our land. Captain, please tell your men, who 
 treated us strangers as honored guests, we thank them from our hearts. 
 We'll not soon forget their kindness." 
   
 "I'll tell them," the Captain promised. Stoltzfoos hoisted himself to 
 the wagon seat and reached a hand down to boost his wife up beside him. 
 Martha Stoltzfoos sat, blushing a bit for having displayed an accidental 
 inch of black stocking before the ship's officers. She smoothed down her 
 black skirts and apron, patted the candle-snuffer _Kapp_ into place over 
 her prayer-covering, and tucked the wool cape around her arms and 
 shoulders. The world outside, her husband said, was a cold one. 
   
 Now in the Stoltzfoos wagon was the final lot of homestead goods with 
 which these two Amishers would battle the world of Murna. There was the 
 plow and bags of seed, two crates of nervous chickens; a huge, round 
 tabletop; an alcohol-burning laboratory incubator, bottles of 
 agar-powder, and a pressure cooker that could can vegetables as readily 
 as it could autoclave culture-media. There was a microscope designed to 
 work by lamplight, as the worldly vanity of electric light would ill 
 suit an Old Order bacteriologist like Martha Stoltzfoos. Walled in by 
 all this gear was another passenger due to debark on Murna, snuffling 
 and grunting with impatience. "_Sei schtill_, Wutzchen," Stoltzfoos 
 crooned. "You'll be in your home pen soon enough." 
   
 The Captain raised his hand. The Engineer punched a button to tongue the 
 landing ramp out to Murnan earth. Cold air rammed in from the outside 
 winter. The four horses stomped their hoofs on the floor-plates, their 
 breath spikes of steam. Wutzchen squealed dismay as the chill hit his 
 nose. 
   
 
 
 
 Blind Man's Lantern Pg 3 
 "We're _reddi far geh_, Captain," Stoltzfoos said. "My woman and I 
 invite you and your men to feast at our table when you're back in these 
 parts, five years hence. We'll stuff you fat as sausages with onion 
 soup and Pannhaas, Knepp and Ebbelkuche, shoo-fly pie and _scharifer_ 
 cider, if the folk here grow apples fit for squeezing." 
   
 "You'll have to set up planks outdoors to feed the lot I'll be bringing, 
 Aaron," the Captain said. "Come five-years' springtime, when I bring 
 your Amish neighbors out, I'll not forget to have in my pockets a toot 
 of candy for the little Stoltzes I'll expect to see underfoot." Martha, 
 whose English was rusty, blushed none the less. Aaron grinned as he 
 slapped the reins over the rumps of his team. "Giddap!" The cart rumbled 
 across the deck and down the ramp, onto the soil of Murna. Yonnie, the 
 Ayrshire bull, tossed his head and sat as the rope tightened on his 
 noseband. He skidded stubbornly down the ramp till he felt cold earth 
 against his rear. Accepting fate, Yonnie scrambled up and plodded after 
 the wagon. As the Stoltzfooses and the last of their off-worldly goods 
 topped a hillock, they both turned to wave at the ship's officers. Then, 
 veiled by the dusty fall of snow, they disappeared. 
   
        *       *       *       *       * 
   
 "I don't envy them," the Engineer said, staring out into the wintery 
 world. 
   
 "Hymie, were you born in a barn?" the Exec bellowed. 
   
 "Sorry, sir." The Engineer raised the landing ramp. Heaters hummed to 
 thaw the hold's air. "I was thinking about how alone those two folks are 
 now." 
   
 "Hardly alone," the Captain said. "There are four million Murnans, 
 friendly people who consider a white skin no more than a personal 
 idiosyncrasy. Aaron's what his folks call a _Chentelmaan_, too. He'll 
 get along." 
   
 "Chentelmaan-schmentelmaan," the Engineer said. "Why'd he come half 
 across Creation to scratch out a living with a horse-drawn plow?" 
   
 "He came out here for dirt," the Captain said. "Soil is more than 
 seed-bed to the Amish. It feeds the Old Order they're born to. Aaron 
 and Martha Stoltzfoos would rather have built their barns beside the 
 Susquehanna, but all the land there's taken. Aaron could have taken a 
 job in Lancaster, too; he could have shaved off his beard, bought a 
 Chevie and moved to the suburbs, and settled down to read an 
 English-language Bible in a steepled church. Instead, he signed a 
 homestead-contract for a hundred acres eighty light-years from home; and 
 set out to plow the land like his grandpop did. He'll sweat hard for his 
 piece of Murna, but the Amish always pay well for their land." 
   
 "And what do we, the government, I mean, get from the deal?" the Exec 
 wanted to know. "This wagon of ours doesn't run on hay, like Aaron's 
 does." 
   
 
 
 
 Blind Man's Lantern Pg 4 
 "Cultures skid backwards when they're transplanted," the Captain said. 
 "Murnan culture was lifted from Kano, a modern city by the standards of 
 the time; but, without tools and with a population too small to support 
 technology, the West African apostates from Islam who landed here four 
 hundred years ago slid back to the ways of their grandparents. We want 
 them to get up to date again. We want Murna to become a market. That's 
 Aaron's job. Our Amishman has got to start this planet back toward the 
 machine age." 
   
 "Seems an odd job to give a fellow who won't drive a car or read by 
 electric light," the Engineer observed. 
   
 "Not so odd," the Captain said. "The Amish pretty much invented American 
 agriculture, you know. They've developed the finest low-energy farming 
 there is. Clover-growing, crop-rotation, using animal manures, those are 
 their inventions. Aaron, by his example, will teach the natives here 
 Pennsylvania farming. Before you can say Tom Malthus, there'll be steel 
 cities in this wilderness, filled with citizens eager to open charge 
 accounts for low-gravs and stereo sets." 
   
 "You expect our bearded friend to reap quite a harvest, Captain," the 
 Engineer said. "I just hope the natives here let him plant the seed." 
   
 "Did you get along with him, Hymie?" 
   
 "Sure," the Engineer said. "Aaron even made our smiths, those human 
 sharks bound for Qureysh, act friendly. For all his strange ways, he's a 
 nice guy." 
   
 "Nice guy, hell," the Captain said. "He's a genius. That 
 seventeenth-century un-scientist has more feeling for folkways in his 
 calloused left hand than you'd find in all the Colonial Survey. How do 
 you suppose the Old Order maintains itself in Pennsylvania, a tiny 
 Deitsch-speaking enclave surrounded by calico suburbs and ten-lane 
 highways? They mind their business and leave the neighbors to theirs. 
 The Amish have never been missionaries--they learned in 1600 that 
 missionaries are resented, and either slaughtered or absorbed." 
   
 "Sometimes digestively," the Engineer remarked. 
   
 "Since the Thirty Years' War, back when 'Hamlet' was opening in London, 
 these people have been breeding a man who can fit one special niche in 
 society. The failures were killed in the early days, or later went gay 
 and took the trappings of the majority. The successes stayed on the 
 farm, respected and left alone. Aaron has flirted with our century; he 
 and his wife learned some very un-Amish skills at the Homestead School. 
 The skill that makes Aaron worth his fare out here, though, is an Amish 
 skill, and the rarest one of all. He knows the Right Way to Live, and 
 lives it; but he knows, too, that your Truth-of-the Universe is 
 something different. And right, for you. He's quite a man, our Aaron 
 Stoltzfoos. That's why we dropped him here." 
   
 "Better him than me," the Engineer said. 
   
 "Precisely," the Captain said. He turned to the Exec. "As soon as we've 
 lifted, ask Colonel Harris to call on me in my cabin, Gene. Our Marines 
 had better fresh-up their swordsmanship and cavalry tactics if they're 
 to help our Inad Tuaregs establish that foundry on Qureysh." 
   
 
 
 
 Blind Man's Lantern Pg 5 
 "It sometimes seems you're more Ship's Anthropologist than Captain," the 
 Engineer remarked. 
   
 "I'm an anthro-apologist, Hymie, like Mr. Kipling," the Captain said. 
 "_There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays. 
 And--every--single--one--of--them--is--right!_" Bells rang, and the ship 
 surged. "Aaron and Martha, God keep you," the Captain said. 
   
        *       *       *       *       * 
   
 "Whoa!" Aaron shouted. He peered back toward the ship, floating up into 
 grayness, the cavitation of her wake stirring the snow into patterns 
 like fine-veined marble. "_Gott saygen eich_," he said, a prayer for his 
 departing friends. 
   
 His wife shivered. "It's cold enough to freeze the horns off a 
 mooley-cow," she said. She glanced about at the snow-drifted little 
 trees and clutched her black cloak tighter. "I'm feared, Stoltz. There's 
 naught about us now but snow and black heathen." 
   
 "It's fear that is the heathen," Aaron said. "_By the word of the Lord 
 were the heavens made; and the host of them by the breath of His 
 mouth._" He kissed her. "I welcome you to our new homeland, wife," he 
 said. 
   
 Behind them Wutzchen--"piglet"--grunted. Martha smiled back at the giant 
 porker, perched amongst the cases and bags and household goods like the 
 victim of some bawdy chiavari. "I've never heard a pig mutter so," she 
 said. 
   
 "If he knew that his business here was to flatter the local lady-pigs 
 with farrow, Wutzchen would hop out and run," Aaron said. 
   
 "_Dummel dich_, Stoltz," Martha said. "I've got to make your supper yet, 
 and we don't have so much as a stove lit in our tent." 
   
 Stoltzfoos slapped the team back into motion. "What we need for our 
 journey home are a few of the _altie lieder_," he said, reaching back in 
 the wagon for his scarred guitar. He strummed and hummed, then began 
 singing in his clear baritone: "_In da guut alt Suumer-zeit_ ... 
   
 "... _In da guut alt Suumer-zeit_," Martha's voice joined him. As they 
 jolted along the path through the pine trees, heading toward 
 Datura-village, near which their homestead stood, they sang the other 
 homey songs to the music of the old guitar. "_Drawk Mich Zrick zu Alt 
 Virginye_," nostalgic for the black-garbed Plain-Folk left at home. Then 
 Aaron's fingers danced a livelier tune on the strings: "_Ich fang 'n 
 neie Fashun aw_," he crowed, and Martha joined in: 
   
 "A new fashion I'll begin," they sang, 
   
 "The hay I'll cut in the winter; 
   
 "When the sun-heat beats, I'll loaf in the shade. 
   
 "And feast on cherry-pie. 
   
 
 
 
 Blind Man's Lantern Pg 6 
 "I'll get us a white, smearkase cow, 
   
 "And a yard full of guinea-hen geese; 
   
 "A red-beet tree as high as the moon, 
   
 "And a patent-leather fence. 
   
 "The chickens I'll keep in the kitchen," they sang; whereupon Martha 
 broke down laughing. 
   
 "It's a new world, and for now a cold world; but it's God's world, with 
 home just up ahead," Aaron shouted. He pulled the wagon up next to the 
 arctic tent that was to be their temporary farmhouse, beside the wagon 
 loads of provision he'd brought before. He jumped down and swung Martha 
 to earth. "Light the stove, woman; make your little kitchen bright, 
 while I make our beasts feel welcome." 
   
 The Amishwoman pushed aside the entrance flap of the tent. Enclosed was 
 a circle some twelve feet wide. The floor was bare earth. Once warmed by 
 the pump-up "naptha" lantern and the gasoline hotplate, it would become 
 a bog. Martha went out to the wagon to get a hatchet and set out for the 
 nearby spinny of pines to trim off some twigs. Old Order manner forbid 
 decorative floor-coverings as improper worldly show; but a springy 
 carpet of pine-twigs could be considered as no more than a wooden floor, 
 keeping two Plain Folk from sinking to their knees in mud. 
   
 The pots were soon boiling atop the two-burner stove, steaming the 
 tent's air with onion-tangy _tzvivvele Supp_ and the savory pork-smell 
 of _Schnitz un Knepp_, a cannibal odor that disturbed not a bit 
 Wutzchen, snoring behind the cookstove. Chickens, penned beneath the 
 bed, chuckled in their bedtime caucus. The cow stood cheek-by-jowl with 
 Yonnie, warming him with platonic graciousness as they shared the hay 
 Aaron had spread before them. Martha stirred her soup. "When the bishop 
 married me to you," she told Aaron, "he said naught of my having to 
 sleep with a pig." 
   
 "Ah, but I thought you knew that to be the purpose of Christian 
 marriage, woman," Aaron said, standing close. 
   
 "It's Wutz I mean," she said. "Truly, I mind not a bit living as in one 
 of those automobile-wagons, since it's with you, and only for a little 
 while." 
   
 "I'll hire a crew of our neighbors to help with the barn tomorrow," 
 Aaron said. "That done, you'll have but one pig to sleep with." 
   
 After grace, they sat on cases of tobacco to eat their meal from a table 
 of feed sacks covered with oilcloth. "The man in the ship's little 
 kitchen let me make and freeze pies, Stoltz," Martha said. "He said we'd 
 have a deepfreeze big as all outdoors, without electric, so use it. Eat 
 till it's all, _Maan_; there's more back." 
   
 Yonnie bumped against Aaron's eating-elbow. "No man and his wife have 
 eaten in such a zoo since Noah and his wife left the ark," Aaron said. 
 He cut a slice of Schnitz-pie and palmed it against the bull's big snout 
 to be snuffled up. "He likes your cooking," he said. 
   
 
 
 
 Blind Man's Lantern Pg 7 
 "So wash his face," Martha told him. 
   
      *       *       *       *       * 
   
 Outside the tent there was a clatter of horse-iron on frozen ground. 
 "What the die-hinker is that?" Aaron demanded. He stood and picked up 
 the naphtha lantern. 
   
 Outside, Aaron saw a tall black stranger, astride a horse as pale as the 
 little Murnan moons that lighted him. "_Rankeshi dade!_" the visitor 
 bellowed. 
   
 "May your life be a long one!" Aaron Stoltzfoos repeated in Hausa. 
 Observing that his caller was brandishing a clenched fist, the Amishman 
 observed the same ambiguous courtesy. "If you will enter, O Welcome 
 Stranger, my house will be honored." 
 "Mother bless thee, Bearded One," the Murnan said. He dismounted, 
 tossing his reins to one of the four retainers who remained on 
 horseback. He entered the tent after Aaron; and stared about him at the 
 animals, letting his dark eyes flick across Martha's unveiled face. At 
 the Amishman's invitation, the visitor sat himself on a tobacco case, 
 revealing as he crossed his legs elaborately embroidered trousers and 
 boot tops worked with designs that would dazzle a Texan. Martha bustled 
 about hiding the remains of their meal. 
   
 The Murnan's outer dress was a woolen _riga_, the neckless gown of his 
 West-African forefathers, with a blanket draped about his shoulders, 
 exactly as those ancestors had worn one in the season of the cold wind 
 called harmattan. Aaron introduced himself as Haruna, the Hausa version 
 of his name; and the guest made himself known as Sarki--Chief--of the 
 village of Datura. His given name was Kazunzumi. Wutzchen snuffled in 
 his sleep. The Sarki glanced at the huge pig and smiled. Aaron relaxed a 
 bit. The Islamic interdict on swine had been shed by the Murnans when 
 they'd become apostates, just as Colonial Survey had guessed. 
   
 Stoltzfoos' Hausa, learned at the Homestead School at Georgetown 
 University, proved adequate to its first challenge in the field, though 
 he discovered, with every experimenter in a new language, that his most 
 useful phrase was _magana sanoo-sanoo_: "please speak slowly." Aaron let 
 the Chief commence the desultory conversation that would precede talk of 
 consequence. Martha, ignored by the men, sat on the edge of the bed, 
 reading the big German-language Bible. Aaron and Kazunzumi sang on in 
 the heathen tongue about weather, beasts, and field-crops. 
   
 The Sarki leaned forward to examine Aaron's beard and shaven upper lip, 
 once; and smiled. The Murnan does not wear such. He looked at Martha 
 more casually now, seeing that the husband was not disgraced by his 
 wife's naked face; and remarked on the whiteness of her skin in the same 
 tones he'd mentioned Wutzchen's remarkable girth. 
   
 Aaron asked when the snows would cease, when the earth would thaw. The 
 Sarki told him, and said that the land here was as rich as manure. 
   
 
 
 
 Blind Man's Lantern Pg 8 
 Gradually the talk worked round to problems involving carpenters, nails, 
 lumber, hinges--and money. Aaron was pleased to discover that the 
 natives thought nothing of digging a cellar and raising a barn in 
 midwinter, and that workers could be easily hired. 
   
 Suddenly Sarki Kazunzumi stood and slapped his palms together. The tent 
 flap was shoved open. Bowed servants, who'd shivered outside for over an 
 hour, placed their master's presents on the sack table, on the twig 
 floor, even beside Martha on the bed. There were iron knives, a roast 
 kid, a basket of peanuts, a sack of roasted coffee beans, a string of 
 dried fruit, and a tiny earthware flask of perfume. There was even a 
 woolen riga for Aaron, black, suggesting that the Survey had said a bit 
 to the natives about Amish custom; and there were bolts of 
 bright-patterned cloth too worldly for aught but quilts and 
 infant-dresses, brightening Martha's eyes. 
   
 Aaron stood to accept the guest gifts with elaborate thanks. Sarki 
 Kazunzumi as elaborately bemeaned his offerings. "Musa the carpenter 
 will appear on tomorrow's tomorrow," he said. "You will, the Mother 
 willing, visit me in Datura tomorrow. We will together purchase lumber 
 worthy of my friend-neighbor's barn-making. May the Mother give you 
 strength to farm, Haruna! May the Mother grant you the light of 
 understanding!" 
   
 "_Sannu, sannu!_" Stoltzfoos responded. He stood at the door of his 
 tent, holding his lantern high to watch the Sarki and his servants ride 
 off into the darkness. 
   
        *       *       *       *       * 
   
 "_Er iss en groesie Fisch, nee?_" Martha asked. 
   
 "The biggest fish in these parts," Aaron agreed. "Did you understand our 
 talk?" 
   
 "The heathen speech is hard for me to learn, Stoltz," Martha admitted, 
 speaking in the dialect they'd both been reared to. "While you had only 
 the alien speech to study, I spent my time learning to grow the buglets 
 and tell the various sorts apart. Besides, _unser guutie Deitschie 
 Schproech, asz unser Erlayser schwetzt, iss guut genunk fa mier_." (Our 
 honest German tongue, that our Saviour spoke, is good enough for me). 
   
 Aaron laughed. "So _altfashuned_ a _Maedel_ I married," he said. "Woman, 
 you must learn the Hausa, too. We must be friends to these _Schwotzers_, 
 as we were friends with the English-speakers back in the United 
 Schtayts." He pushed aside the bolt of Murnan cloth to sit beside his 
 wife, and leafed through the pages of their _Familien-Bibel_, pages 
 lovingly worn by his father's fingers, and his grandfather's. "Listen," 
 he commanded: 
   
 "_For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks 
 of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills; 
 a land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; 
 a land of oil olive, and honey; a land wherein thou shalt eat bread 
 without scarceness, thou shalt not lack any thing in it; a land whose 
 stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass. When thou 
 hast eaten and art full, then thou shalt bless the Lord they God for the 
 good land which He hath given thee._" Aaron closed the big book 
 reverently. "Awmen," he said. 
   
 
 
 
 Blind Man's Lantern Pg 9 
 "Awmen," the woman echoed. "Aaron, with you beside me, I am not 
 fretful." 
   
 "And with the Lord above us, I fear not in a strange land," Aaron said. 
 He bent to scrape a handful of earth from beneath Martha's pine-twig 
 carpet. "_Guuter Gruundt_," he said. "This will grow tall corn. Tobacco, 
 too; the folk here relish our leaf. There will be deep grasses for the 
 beasts when the snow melts. We will prosper here, wife." 
   
 The next morning was cold, but the snowfall had ceased for a spell. The 
 Stoltzfooses had risen well before the dawn; Martha to feed herself, her 
 husband, and the chickens; Aaron to ready the horse and wagon for a trip 
 into Datura. He counted out the hoard of golden cowries he'd been loaned 
 as grubstake, did some arithmetic, and allowed his wife to pour him a 
 second cup of coffee for the road. "You may expect the Sarki's wives to 
 visit while I'm gone," he remarked. 
   
 "I'd be scared half to death!" Martha Stoltzfoos said. Her hands went to 
 the back of her head, behind the lace prayer covering. "My hair's all 
 strooby, this place is untidy as an auction yard; besides, how can I 
 talk with those dark and heathen women? Them all decked out in golden 
 bangles and silken clothes, most likely, like the bad lady of Babylon? 
 Aaron Stoltz, I would admire a pretty to ride into town with you." 
   
 "Haggling for hired-help is man's _Bissiniss_." he said. "When 
 Kazunzumi's women come, feed them pie and peaches from the can. You'll 
 find a way to talk, or women are not sisters. I'll be back home in time 
 for evening chores." 
   
        *       *       *       *       * 
   
 Bumping along the trail into Datura, Aaron Stoltzfoos studied the land. 
 A world that could allow so much well-drained black soil to go unfarmed 
 was fortunate indeed, he mused. He thought of his father's farm, which 
 would be his elder brother's, squeezed between railroad tracks and a 
 three-lane highway, pressed from the west by an Armstrong Cork plant, 
 the very cornstalks humming in harmony with the electric lines strung 
 across the fields. This land was what the old folks had sought in 
 America so long ago: a wilderness ripe for the plow. 
   
 The wagon rumbled along the hoof-pocked frozen clay. Aaron analyzed the 
 contours of the hills for watershed and signs of erosion. He studied the 
 patterns of the barren winter fields, fall-plowed and showing here and 
 there the stubble of a crop he didn't recognize. When the clouds scudded 
 for a moment off the sun, he grinned up, and looked back blinded to the 
 road. Good tilth and friendship were promised here, gifts to balance 
 loneliness. Five years from spring, other Amish folk would come to 
 homestead--what a barn-raising they'd have! For now, though, he and 
 Martha, come from a society so close-knit that each had always known the 
 yield-per-acre of their remotest cousin-german, were in a land as 
 strange as the New York City Aaron, stopping in for a phone-call to the 
 vet had once glimpsed on the screen of a gay-German neighbor's 
 stereo-set. 
   
 
 
 
 Blind Man's Lantern Pg 10 
 Datura looked to Aaron like a city from the Bible, giving it a certain 
 vicarious familiarity. The great wall was a block of sunbaked mud, fifty 
 feet tall at the battlements, forty feet thick at its base; with bright, 
 meaningless flags spotted on either side of the entrance tower. The 
 cowhide-shielded gate was open. Birds popped out of mud nests glued to 
 the mud wall and chattered at Aaron. Small boys wearing too little to be 
 warm appeared at the opening like flies at a hog-slaughtering to add to 
 the din, buzzing and hopping about and waving their arms as they called 
 companions to view the black-bearded stranger. 
   
 Aaron whoaed his horse and took a handful of _anenes_, copper 
 tenth-penny bits, to rattle between his hands. "_Zonang!_" he shouted: 
 "Come here! Is there a boy amongst you brave enough to ride with an 
 off-worlder to the Sarki's house, pointing him the way?" 
   
 One of the boys laughed at Aaron's slow, careful Hausa. "Let Black-Hat's 
 whiskers point him the way!" the boy yelled. 
   
 "_Uwaka! Ubaka!_" Damning both parents of the rude one, another 
 youngster trotted up to Aaron's wagon and raised a skinny brown fist in 
 greeting. "Sir Off-Worlder, I who am named Waziri, Musa-the-Carpenter's 
 son, would be honored to direct you to the house of Sarki Kazunzumi." 
   
 "The honor, young man, is mine," Stoltzfoos assured the lad, raising his 
 own fist gravely. "My name is Haruna, son of Levi," he said, reaching 
 down to hoist the boy up beside him on the wagon's seat. "Your friends 
 have ill manners." He giddapped the horse. 
   
 "Buzzard-heads!" Waziri shouted back at his whilom companions. 
   
 "Peace, Waziri!" Aaron protested. "You'll frighten my poor horse into 
 conniptions. Do you work for your father, the carpenter?" 
   
 "_To_, honorable Haruna," the boy said. "Yes." The empty wagon thumped 
 over the wheel-cut streets like a wooden drum. "By the Mother, sir, I 
 have great knowledge of planing and joining; of all the various sorts of 
 wood, and the curing of them; all the tools my father uses are as 
 familiar to me as my own left hand." 
   
 "Carpentry is a skillful trade," Aaron said. "Myself, I am but a 
 farmer." 
   
 "By Mother's light! So am I!" Waziri said, dazzled by this coincidence. 
 "I can cultivate a field free of all its noxious weeds and touch never a 
 food-plant. I can steer a plow straight as a snapped chalk-string, grade 
 seed with a sure eye; I can spread manure--" 
   
 "I'm sure you can, Waziri," Aaron said. "I need a man of just those rare 
 qualifications to work for me. Know you such a paragon?" 
   
 "Mother's name! Myself, your Honor!" 
   
 Aaron Stoltzfoos shook the hand of his hired man, an alien convention 
 that much impressed Waziri. The boy was to draw three hundred anenes a 
 day, some thirty-five cents, well above the local minimum-wage 
 conventions; and he would get his bed and meals. Aaron's confidence that 
 the boastful lad would make a farmer was bolstered by Waziri's loud 
 calculations: "Three hundred coppers a day make, in ten day's work, a 
 bronze cowrie; ten big bronzes make a silver cowrie, the price of an 
 acre of land. Haruna, will you teach me your off-world farming? Will you 
 allow me to buy land that neighbors yours?" 
   
 
 
 
 Blind Man's Lantern Pg 11 
 "_Sei schtill, Buu_," Aaron said, laughing. "Before you reap your first 
 crop, you must find me the Sarki." 
   
 "We are here, Master Haruna." 
   
        *       *       *       *       * 
   
 The Sarki's house was no larger than its neighbors, Moorish-styled and 
 domed-roofed like the others; but it wore on its streetside walls 
 designs cut into the stucco, scrolls and arabesques. Just above the 
 doorway, which opened spang onto the broadway of Datura, a grinning 
 face peered down upon the visitors, its eyes ruby-colored glass. 
   
 Waziri pounded the door for Aaron, and stepped aside to let his new 
 employer do the speaking. They were admitted to the house by a thin, old 
 man wearing a pink turban. As they followed this butler down a hallway, 
 Aaron and Waziri heard the shrieks and giggles of feminine consternation 
 that told of women being herded into the zenana. The Amishman glimpsed 
 one of the ladies, perhaps Sarki Kazunzumi's most junior wife, dashing 
 toward the female sanctuary. Her eyes were lozenges of antimony; her 
 hands, dipped in henna, seemed clad in pale kid gloves. Aaron, recalling 
 pointers on Murnan etiquette he'd received at Georgetown, elaborately 
 did not see the lady. He removed his hat as the turbaned butler bowed 
 him to a plush-covered sofa. Waziri was cuffed to a mat beside the door. 
   
 "_Rankeshi dade!_" the Sarki said. "May the Mother bring you the light 
 of understanding." 
   
 "Light and long life, O Sarki," Stoltzfoos said, standing up. 
   
 "Will the guest who honors my roof-cup taste coffee with his fortunate 
 host?" the Sarki asked. 
   
 "The lucky guest will be ever the Sarki's servant if your Honor allows 
 him to share his pleasure with his fellow-farmer and employee, Waziri 
 the son of Musa," Aaron said. 
   
 "You'd better have hired mice to guard your stored grain, O Haruna; and 
 blowflies to curry your cattle, than to have engaged the son of Musa as 
 a farmer," Kazunzumi growled. "Waziri has little light of understanding. 
 He will try to win from the soil what only honest sweat and Mother's 
 grace can cause to grow. This boy will gray your beard, Haruna." 
   
 "Perhaps the sun that warms the soil will light his brains to 
 understanding," Aaron suggested. 
   
 "Better that your hand should leave the plowhandle from time to time to 
 warm his lazy fundament," the Sarki said. 
   
 "Just so, O Sarki," the Amishman said. "If Waziri does not serve me 
 well, I have an enormous boar who will, if kept long enough from 
 wholesomer food, rid me of a lazy farm-hand." Waziri grinned at all the 
 attention he was getting from the two most important men in town, and 
 sat expectantly as the turbaned elder brought in coffee. 
   
 
 
 
 Blind Man's Lantern Pg 12 
 Stoltzfoos watched the Sarki, and aped his actions. Water was served 
 with the coffee; this was to rinse the mouth that the beverage could be 
 tasted with fresh taste buds. The coffee was brown as floodwater silt, 
 heavy with sugar, and very hot; and the cups had no handles. "You are 
 the first European I have seen for many years, friend Haruna," the Sarki 
 said. "It is five years gone that the white off-worlders came, and with 
 a black man as their voice purchased with silver the land you now 
 farm." 
   
 "They bought well," Aaron said; "the seller sold justly. When the fist 
 of winter loosens, the soil will prove as rich as butter." 
   
 "When the first green breaks through, and you may break the soil without 
 offense, you will do well," Kazunzumi said. "You are a man who loves the 
 land." 
   
 "My fathers have flourished with the soil for twenty generations," the 
 Amishman said. "I pray another twenty may live to inherit my good 
 fortune." 
   
 "Haruna," the Sarki said, "I see that you are a man of the book, that 
 volume of which Mother in her grace turns over a fresh page each spring. 
 Though your skin is as pale as the flesh of my palm, though you have but 
 one wife, though you speak throat-deep and strangely, yet you and I are 
 more alike than different. The Mother has given you light, Haruna, her 
 greatest gift." 
   
 "I thank the Sarki for his words," Aaron said. "Sir, my good and only 
 wife--I am a poor man, and bound by another law than that of the 
 fortunate Kazunzumi--adds her thanks to mine for the rich gifts the 
 Chief of Datura presented us, his servants. In simple thanks, I have 
 some poor things to tender our benefactor." 
   
 Waziri, perceiving the tenor of Aaron's talk, sprang to his feet and 
 hastened out to the wagon for the bundles he'd seen under the seat. He 
 returned, staggering under a seventy-pound bale of long-leaf tobacco, 
 product of Aaron's father's farm. He went back for a bolt of scarlet 
 silk for the Sarki's paramount wife, and strings of candy for the great 
 man's children. He puffed in with one last brown-wrapped parcel, which 
 he unpacked to display a leather saddle. This confection was embossed 
 with a hundred intricate designs, rich with silver; un-Amish as a 
 Christmas tree. Judging from the Sarki's dazzled thanks, the saddle was 
 just the thing for a Murnan Chief. 
   
 As soon as Kazunzumi had delivered his pyrotechnic speech of thanks, and 
 had directed that Aaron's gifts be placed on a velvet-draped dais at the 
 end of the room, a roast kid was brought in. Waziri, half drunk with the 
 elegance of it all, fell to like any other adolescent boy, and was soon 
 grease to the armpits. Aaron, more careful, referred his actions to the 
 Sarki's. The bread must be broken, not cut; and it was eaten with the 
 right hand only, the left lying in the lap as though broken. Belching 
 seemed to be _de rigueur_ as a tribute to the cuisine, so Aaron belched 
 his stomach flat. 
   
 
 
 
 Blind Man's Lantern Pg 13 
 Business could now be discussed. Aaron, having no pencil, traced with a 
 greasy finger on the tile floor the outlines of the barn and farmhouse 
 he envisaged. The Sarki from time to time demanded of young Waziri such 
 facts as a carpenter's son might be expected to know, and added 
 lumber-prices in his head as Aaron's bank-barn and two-story farmhouse 
 took form in his imagination. Finally he told the Amishman what the two 
 buildings would cost. Better pleased by this figure than he'd expected 
 to be, Aaron initiated the long-drawn ceremony required to discharge 
 himself from Kazunzumi's hospitality. 
 As the Stoltzfoos wagon jolted out the gate of Datura, bearing the cot 
 and clothes trunk of Waziri together with the owner of those chattels, 
 the boys who'd jeered before now stared with respect. The black-hatted 
 _Turawa_ had been to visit the Sarki; this established him as no safe 
 man to mock. Waziri gave his late playmates no notice beyond sitting 
 rather straighter on the wagon seat than was comfortable. 
   
        *       *       *       *       * 
   
 There was light enough left when they got back to the farm for Aaron and 
 Waziri to pace out the dimensions of the barn and house. The bank-barn 
 would go up first, of course. No Christian owner of beasts could consent 
 to being well-housed while his animals steamed and shivered in a 
 cloth-sided tent. Waziri pounded stakes into the frozen ground to mark 
 the corners of the barn. Aaron pointed out the drainage-line that would 
 have to be ditched, and explained how the removed earth would be packed, 
 with the clay dug for the cellar, into a ramp leading to the barn's 
 second story in the back. Come next fall, the hayladder could be pulled 
 right up that driveway to be unloaded above the stalls. Aaron took the 
 boy to the frozen-solid creek to show him where a wheel could be placed 
 to lift water to a spillway for the upper fields. He introduced his new 
 helper to Wutzchen, and was pleased to hear Waziri speak wistfully of 
 pork chops. Waziri didn't want to meet Martha yet, though. As a proper 
 Murnan boy, he was not eager to be introduced to the boss' barefaced 
 wife, though she bribed him with a fat wedge of applecake. 
   
 When Waziri set out with the lantern to tend to the final outdoor 
 chores, Aaron inquired of his wife's day. The Sarki's Paramount Wife, 
 with two servants, had indeed visited, bringing more gifts of food and 
 clothing. Somehow the four of them had managed to breach the 
 Hausa-_Pennsylfawnisch Deitsch_ curtain. "What in the world did 
 you talk about?" Aaron asked. 
   
 "First, not knowing what to say, I showed the ladies a drop of vinegar 
 under the microscope," Martha said. "They screamed when they saw all the 
 wriggly worms, and I was put to it to keep them from bundling back home. 
 Then we talked about you, Stoltz, and about the farm; and when would I 
 be giving you _Kinner_ to help with all the work," she said. Martha 
 fiddled with the cloak she was sewing for her husband. "It was largely 
 their heathen speech we used, so I understood only what they pointed at; 
 but they ate hearty of anything without vinegar in it, and I laughed 
 with them like with friends at a quilting-bee. My, Stoltz! Those 
 _Nay-yer_ women are lovely, all jeweled like queens, even the servant 
 girls; even though they have no proper understanding of Christian 
 behavior." 
   
 
 
 
 Blind Man's Lantern Pg 14 
 "Did they make you feel welcome, then?" Aaron asked. 
   
 "_Ach, ja!_ They pitied me, I thought," Martha said. "They said you must 
 be poor, to have but one wife to comfort you; but they said that if the 
 crops be good, you can earn a second woman by next winter. _Chuudes 
 Paste!_" 
   
 "I hope you told the Sarki's woman we've been married only since 
 haying-time," Aaron said, "and it's a bit previous for you to be giving 
 me little farmhands." 
   
 "I did that," Martha said. "I told them, too, that by the time the oak 
 leaves are the size of squirrel's ears--if this place has oaks, indeed, 
 or squirrels--we'd have a youngling squalling in our house, loud as any 
 of the Sarki's." 
   
 Waziri, crouched near the tent to pick up such talk as might pass inside 
 concerning himself, was at first dismayed by Aaron's whoops of joy. Then 
 Martha joined her husband in happy laughter. Since her tiny-garments 
 line had been delivered in Low Dutch, the young Murnan chose to believe 
 that the enthusiastic sounds he heard within the tent reflected joy at 
 his employment. 
   
        *       *       *      *       * 
   
 It was cold the week the barn was raised, and the mattocks had heavy 
 work gouging out frozen earth to be heaped into the bank leading up the 
 back. The Murnan laborers seemed to think midwinter as appropriate as 
 any other time for building; they said the Mother slept, and would not 
 be disturbed. Martha served coffee and buttermilk-pop at break-time, and 
 presided over noontime feasts, served in several sittings, in the tent. 
 Before the workers left in the evening, Aaron would give each a drink 
 out back, scharifer cider, feeling that they'd steamed hard enough to 
 earn a sip of something volatile. There are matters, he mused, in which 
 common sense can blink at a bishop; as in secretly trimming one's beard 
 a bit, for example, to keep it out of one's soup; or plucking a guitar 
 to raise the spirits. 
   
 When the fortnight's cold work was done, the Stoltzfoos Farm was like 
 nothing seen before on Murna. The bank-barn was forty feet high. On its 
 lee side, Aaron had nailed thin, horizontal strips of wood about a foot 
 apart, hoping to encourage the mud-daubing birds he'd seen on the wall 
 at Datura to plaster their nests onto his barn, and shop for insects in 
 his fields. Lacking concrete, he'd constructed a roofless stone hut 
 abutting the barn to serve as his manure shed. The farmhouse itself was 
 a bit gay, having an inside toilet to cheat the Murnan winters and a 
 sunporch for Martha's bacteriological equipment. As the nearest Amish 
 _Volle Diener_--Congregational Bishop--was eighty light-years off, and 
 as the circumstances were unusual, Aaron felt that he and Martha were 
 safe from the shunning--_Meidung_--that was the Old Order's manner of 
 punishing Amischers guilty of "going gay" by breaking the church rules 
 against worldly show. 
   
 A third outbuilding puzzled the Murnan carpenters even more than the 
 two-storied wooden house and the enormous barn. This shed had hinged 
 sidings that could be propped out to let breezes sweep through the 
 building.   
 
 
 
 Blind Man's Lantern Pg 15 
 Aaron explained to Musa the function of this tobacco shed, 
 where he would hang his lathes of long-leafed tobacco to cure from 
 August through November. The tobacco seedlings were already sprouting in 
 Mason jars on the sunporch window-sills. The bank-barn's basement was 
 also dedicated to tobacco. Here, in midwinter, Aaron and Martha and 
 Waziri would strip, size, and grade the dry leaves for sale in Datura. 
 Tobacco had always been a prime cash-crop for Levi, Aaron's father. 
 After testing the bitter native leaf, Aaron knew that his Pennsylvania 
 Type 41 would sell better here than anything else he could grow. 
   
 Martha Stoltzfoos was as busy in her new farmhouse as Aaron and Waziri 
 were in the barn. Her kitchen stove burned all day. Nothing ever seen in 
 Lancaster County, this stove was built of fireclay and brick; but the 
 food it heated was honest Deitsch. There were pickled eggs and red 
 beets, ginger tomatoes canned back home, spiced peaches, pickled pears, 
 mustard pickles and chowchow, pickled red cabbage, Schnitz un Knepp, 
 shoo-fly pie, vanilla pie, rhubarb sauce, Cheddar cheeses the size of 
 Waziri's head, haystacks of sauerkraut, slices off the great slab of 
 home-preserved chipped beef, milk by the gallon, stewed chicken, popcorn 
 soup, rashers of bacon, rivers of coffee. In the evenings, protecting 
 her fingers from the sin of idleness, Martha quilted and cross-stitched 
 by lamplight. Already her parlor wall boasted a framed motto that 
 reduced to half a dozen German words, the Amish philosophy of life: 
 "What One Likes Doing is No Work." 
   
 For all the chill of the late-winter winds, Aaron kept himself and his 
 young helper in a sweat. Martha's cooking and the heavy work were 
 slabbing muscle onto Waziri's lean, brown frame. Aaron's farming 
 methods, so much different to Murnan routines, puzzled and intrigued the 
 boy. Aaron was equally bemused by the local taboos. Why, for example, 
 did all the politer Murnans eat with the right hand only? Why did the 
 women veil themselves in his presence? And what was this Mother-goddess 
 worship that seemed to require no more of its adherents than the 
 inclusion of their deity's name in every curse, formal and profane? 
 "Think what you please, but not too loud," Aaron cautioned himself, and 
 carefully commenced to copy those Murnan speech-forms, gestures, and 
 attitudes that did not conflict with his own deep convictions. 
   
 But the soil was his employment, not socializing. Aaron wormed his 
 swine, inspected his horse-powered plow and harrow, gazed at the sun, 
 palpated the soil, and prayed for an early spring to a God who 
 understood German. Each day, to keep mold from strangling the moist 
 morsels, he shook the jars of tobacco seed, whose hair-fine sprouts were 
 just splitting the hulls. 
   
 The rations packaged in Pennsylvania were shrinking. The Stoltzfoos 
 stake of silver and gold cowries was wasting away. Each night, bruised 
 with fatigue, Aaron brought his little household into the parlor while 
 he read from the Book that had bound his folk to the soil. Waziri bowed, 
 honoring his master's God in his master's manner, but understood nothing 
 of the hard High German: "_For the Lord God will help me: therefore 
 shall I not be confounded: therefore have I set my face like a flint, 
 and I know I shall not be ashamed. Awmen._" 
   
 "Awmen," said Martha. 
   
 "Awmen," said Waziri, fisting his hand in respect to his friend's 
 bearded God.  
 
 
 
 Blind Man's Lantern Pg 16 
 The Murnan neighbors, to whom late winter was the slackest season in the 
 farm-year, visited often to observe and comment on the off-worlder's 
 work. Aaron Stoltzfoos privately regarded the endless conversations as 
 too much of a good thing; but he realized that his answering the 
 Murnan's questions helped work off the obligation he owed the government 
 for the eighty light-years' transportation it had given him, the 
 opportunity he'd been given to earn this hundred acres with five years' 
 work, and the interest-free loans that had put up his barn and 
 farmhouse. 
   
 With Waziri hovering near, Aaron's proud lieutenant, the neighbors would 
 stuff their pipes with native tobacco, a leaf that would have gagged one 
 of Sir Walter Raleigh's Indian friends, while the Amishman lit a stogie 
 in self-defense. Why, the neighbor farmers demanded, did Aaron propose 
 to dust his bean-seeds with a powder that looked like soot? Martha's 
 microscope, a wonder, introduced the Murnans to bacteria; and Aaron 
 tediously translated his knowledge of the nitrogen-fixing symbiotes into 
 Hausa. But there were other questions. What was the purpose of the brush 
 stacked on top of the smooth-raked beds where Aaron proposed to plant 
 his tobacco-seedlings? He explained that fire, second best to steaming, 
 would kill the weed-seeds in the soil, and give the tobacco uncrowded 
 beds to prosper in. 
   
 Those needles with which he punctured the flanks of his swine and 
 cattle: what devils did they exorcise? Back to the microscope for an 
 explanation of the disease-process, a sophistication the Murnans had 
 lost in the years since they'd left Kano. What were the bits of blue and 
 pink paper Aaron pressed into mudballs picked up in the various 
 precincts of his property? Why did those slips oftentime change color, 
 from blue to pink, or pink-to-blue? What was in those sacks of stuff--no 
 dung of animals, but a sort of flour--that he intended to work into his 
 soil? Aaron answered each question as best he could, Waziri 
 supplying--and often inventing--Hausa words for concepts like 
 phosphorous, ascarid worms, and litmus. 
   
 Aaron had as much to learn from his brown-skinned neighbors as he had to 
 teach them. He was persuaded to lay in a supply of seed-yams, 
 guaranteeing a crop that would bring bronze cowries next fall in Datura, 
 the price of next year's oil and cloth and tools. The peanut, a legume 
 Aaron had no experience of beyond purchasing an occasional tooth-ful at 
 the grocery-store, won half a dozen acres from Korean lespedeza, the 
 crop he'd at first selected as his soil-improver there. He got 
 acquainted with a plant no Amishman before him had ever sown, a 
 crabgrass called fonio, a staple cereal and source of beer-malt on 
 Murna, imported with the first Nigerian colonists. 
   
 Aaron refused to plant any lalle, the henna-shrub from which the Murnans 
 made the dye to stain their women's hands, feeling that it would be 
 improper for him to contribute to such a vanity. Bulrush millet, another 
 native crop, was ill suited to Aaron's well-drained fields. He planned 
 to grow corn, though, the stuff his people called _Welschkarn_--alien 
 corn. Though American enough, maize had been a foreigner to the first 
 Amish farmers, and still carried history in its name. This crop was 
 chiefly for Wutzchen, whose bloodlines, Aaron was confident, would lead 
 to a crop of pork of a quality these heretics from Islam had never 
 tasted before.  
 
 
 
 Blind Man's Lantern Pg 17 
 Work wasn't everything. One Sunday, after he and Martha had sung 
 together from the _Ausbund_, and Aaron had read from the _Schrift_ and 
 the _Martyr's Mirror_, there was time to play. 
   
 Sarki Kazunzumi and several other gentlemen who enjoyed City Hall or 
 Chamber of Commerce standing in Datura had come to visit the 
 Stoltzfooses after lunch; as had Musa the carpenter and his older son, 
 Dauda, Waziri's brother. Also on the premises were about a dozen of the 
 local farmers and craftsmen, inspecting the curious architecture the 
 off-worlder had introduced to their planet. Aaron, observing that the 
 two classes of his guests were maintaining a polite fiction, each that 
 the other was not present, had an idea. He'd seen Murnans in town at the 
 midwinter festival, their status-consciousness forgotten in mutual 
 quaffs of fonio-beer or barley-brandy, betting together at horse-races 
 and wheels-of-fortune. "My friends," the Amishman addressed the Murnans 
 gathered in his barn, inspecting Wutzchen, "let's play a game of ball." 
   
 Kazunzumi looked interested. As the local Chief of State, the Sarki's 
 approval guaranteed the enthusiasm of all the lesser ranks. 
   
 Aaron explained the game he had in mind. It wasn't baseball, an 
 "English" sport foreign to Amishmen, who can get through their teens 
 without having heard of either Comiskey Park or the World Series. Their 
 game, _Mosch Balle_, fits a barnyard better. 
   
 In lieu of the regulation softball used in the game of Corner Ball, 
 Martha had stitched together a sort of large beanbag. The playing-field 
 Aaron set up with the help of his visitors was a square some twelve 
 yards on a side, fence-rails being propped up to mark its boundaries and 
 fresh straw forked onto it six inches deep as footing. 
   
 Aaron's eight-man team was chosen from the working-stiffs. The opposing 
 eight were the Brass. To start the game, four of the proletarians stood 
 at the corners of the square; and two men of Kazunzumi's team waited 
 warily within. 
   
 Aaron commenced to explain the game. To say that the object of _Mosch 
 Balle_ is for a member of the outer, offensive, team to strike an inner, 
 defensive man with the ball is inadequate; such an explanation is as 
 lacking as to explain baseball as the pitcher's effort to throw a ball 
 so well that it's hittable, and so very well that it yet goes unhit. 
 Both games have their finer points. 
   
 "Now," Aaron told his guests on the field, "we four on the corners will 
 toss the ball back and forth amongst ourselves, shouting _Hah_,_Oh_,_Tay_, 
 with each pitch. Whoever has the ball on _Tay_ has to fling it at one of 
 the two men inside the square. If he misses, he's Out; and one of the 
 other men on our team takes his place. If he hits his target-man, the 
 target's Out, and will be replaced by another man from the Sarki's team. 
 The team with the last man left on the straw wins the first half. _Des 
 iss der Weeg wie mir's diehne_, O.K.?" 
   
 
 
 
 Blind Man's Lantern Pg 18 
 "_Afuwo!_" the Sarki yelled, a woman's call, grinning, crouched to 
 spring aside. "Hah!" Aaron shouted, and tossed the ball to Waziri's 
 older brother, Dauda. "Oh!" Dauda yelled, and threw the ball to the 
 shoemaker. "Tay!" the cobbler exulted, and slammed the ball at the 
 lower-ranking of the two men within the square, the village banker. The 
 shoemaker missed, and was retired. 
   
 The Daturans were soon stripped down to trousers and boots, their black 
 torsos steaming in the cold air. Aaron removed his shirt--but not his 
 hat--and so far forgot his Hausa in the excitement that he not only 
 rooted for his teammates in _Pennsylfawnisch Deitsch_, but even 
 punctuated several clumsy plays with raw _Fadomm_'s. 
   
 Aaron's skill won the first half for his team. Blooded, the Chamber of 
 Commerce Eight fought through to win the second half. A tie. The 
 play-off saw the Working-Man's League pummeled to a standstill by the 
 C-of-C, who took the laurels with a final slam that knocked Waziri into 
 the straw, protesting that it was an accident. 
   
 Sweating, laughing, social status for the moment forgotten, the teams 
 and their mobs of fans surged into the farmhouse to demand of Martha 
 wedges of raisin pie and big cups of strong coffee. As the guests put 
 their rigas and their white caps back on, and assumed therewith their 
 game-discarded rank of class, they assured Aaron that the afternoon at 
 the ball game had been a large success. 
   
        *       *       *       *       * 
   
 The next day was crisp and cold. With nothing more to be done till the 
 soil thawed, Aaron took Waziri down to the creek to investigate his 
 project of irrigating the hilltop acres. The flow of water was so feeble 
 that the little stream was ice to its channel. "Do you have hereabouts a 
 digger-of-waterholes?" Aaron asked the boy. Waziri nodded, and supplied 
 the Hausa phrase for this skill. "Good. _Wonn's Gottes wille iss_, I 
 will find a spot for them to dig, smelling out the water as can my 
 cousin Blue Ball Benjamin Blank," Aaron said. "Go get from the barn the 
 pliers, the hand-tool that pinches." 
   
 Waziri trotted off and brought back the pliers. "What are you up to, 
 Haruna-boss?" he asked. Aaron was holding the bulldog pliers out before 
 him, one handle in each hand, parallel to the ground. 
   
 "I am smelling for the well-place," the Amishman said, pacing 
 deliberately across the field. The boy scampered along beside him. "We 
 will need at least one well to be safe from August draught. Cousin 
 Benjamin found the wet depths in this fashion; perhaps it will work for 
 me." Aaron walked, arms outstretched, for half an hour before his face 
 grew taut. He slowed his walking and began to work toward the center of 
 a spiral. Waziri could see the sweat springing up on the young farmer's 
 brow and fingers, despite the cold breeze that blew. The bulldog pliers 
 trembled as though responding to the throbbing of an engine. Suddenly, 
 as though about to be jerked from Aaron's hands, the pliers tugged 
 downward so forceably that he had to lift his elbows and flex his wrists 
 to hold onto them. "Put a little pile of stones here, Waziri," he said. 
 "We'll have the diggers visit as soon as the ground thaws." 
   
 
 
 
 Blind Man's Lantern Pg 19 
 Waziri shook his head. "Haruna, they will not touch soft earth until the 
 first grass sprouts," he said. 
   
 "Time enough," Aaron said. He looked up to satisfy himself that his 
 prospective well-site was high enough to avoid drainage from his 
 pig-yard, then left the Murnan boy to pile up a cairn for the diggers. 
 It would be good to have a windmill within ear-shot of the house, he 
 mused; its squeaking would ease Martha with a homey sound. 
 Alone for a few minutes, Aaron retired to the workshop in the cellar of 
 the barn. He planed and sanded boards of a native lumber very like to 
 tulipwood. Into the headboard of the cradle he was making, he 
 keyhole-sawed the same sort of broad Dutch heart that had marked his own 
 cradle, and the cradles of all his family back to the days in the 
 Rhineland, before they'd been driven to America. 
   
 Martha Stoltzfoos was speaking Hausa better than she'd spoken English 
 since grade-school days, and she kept busy in the little bacteriological 
 laboratory on her sunporch, keeping fresh the skills she'd learned at 
 Georgetown and might some day need in earnest; but she still grew 
 homesick as her child-coming day drew nearer. It was wrong, she told 
 Aaron, for an Amishwoman to have heathen midwives at her lying-in. For 
 all their kindness, the Murnan women could never be as reassuring as the 
 prayer-covered, black-aproned matrons who'd have attended Martha back 
 home. "Ach, Stoltz," she told her husband, "if only a few other of 
 _unser sart Leit_ could have come here with us." 
   
 "Don't worry, Love," Aaron said. "I've eased calves and colts enough 
 into the world; man-children can't come so different." 
   
 "You talk like a man," Martha accused him. "I wish my Mem was just down 
 the road a piece, ready to come a-running when my time came," she said. 
 She put one hand on her apron. "_Chuudes Paste!_ The little rascal is 
 wild as a colt, indeed. Feel him, Stoltz!" 
   
 Aaron dutifully placed his hand to sense the child's quickening. "He'll 
 be of help on the farm, so strong as he is," he remarked. Then, tugging 
 his hat down tight, Aaron went outdoors, bashful before this mystery. 
   
 The little creek had thawed, and the light of the sun on a man's face 
 almost gave back the heat the air extorted. Waziri had gone to town 
 today for some sort of Murnan spring-festival, eager to celebrate his 
 hard-earned wealth on his first day off in months. The place seemed 
 deserted, Aaron felt, without the boy; without the visitors he'd played 
 ball and talked crops with, striding up in their scarlet-trimmed rigas 
 to gossip with their friend Haruna. 
   
 Between the roadway and the house, Aaron knelt to rake up with his 
 fingers a handful of the new-thawed soil. He squeezed it. The clod in 
 his hand broke apart of its own weight: it was not too wet to work. 
 Festival-day though it was to his _Schwotzer_ neighbors, he was eager to 
 spear this virgin soil with his plow blade. 
   
 
 
 
 Blind Man's Lantern Pg 20 
 Aaron strode back to the barn. He hitched Rosina--the dappled mare, 
 named "Raisin" for her spots--to the plow and slapped her into motion. 
 Sleek with her winter's idleness, Rosina was at first unenthusiastic 
 about the plow; but the spring sun and honest exercise warmed her 
 quickly. Within half an hour she was earning her keep. Though Aaron was 
 plowing shallow, the compact soil broke hard. Rosina leaned into the 
 traces, leaving hoofprints three inches deep. No gasoline tractor, Aaron 
 mused, could ever pull itself through soil so rich and damp. 
 _Geilsgrefte_, horsepower, was best exerted by a horse, he thought. 
   
 The brown earth-smells were good. Aaron kicked apart the larger clods, 
 fat with a planet-life of weather and rich decay. This land would take a 
 good deal of disking to get it into shape. His neighbors, who'd done 
 their heavy plowing just after last fall's first frost, were already 
 well ahead of him. He stabled Rosina at sundown, and went in to sneak a 
 well-earned glass of hard cider past Martha's teetotaling eye. 
   
        *       *       *       *       * 
   
 Musa the carpenter brought his son home well after dark. Waziri had had 
 adventures, the old man said; dancing, gambling on the Fool's Wheel, 
 sampling fonio-beer, celebrating his own young life's springtime with 
 the earth's. Both the old man and the boy were barefoot, Aaron noticed; 
 but said nothing: perhaps shoelessness was part of their 
 spring-festival. 
   
 Waziri a bit _geschwepst_ with the beer, tottered off to bed. "Thanks to 
 you, friend Haruna, that boy became a man today," the carpenter said. He 
 accepted a glass of Aaron's cider. "Today Waziri's wallet jingled with 
 bronze and copper earned by his own sweat, a manful sound to a lad of 
 fifteen summers. I ask pardon for having returned your laborer in so 
 damaged a condition, brother Haruna; but you may be consoled with the 
 thought that the Mother's festival comes but once in the twelve-month." 
   
 "No harm was done, brother Musa," Aaron said, offering his visitor 
 tobacco. "In my own youth, I sometimes danced with beer-light feet to 
 the music of worldly guitars; and yet I reached a man's estate." 
   
 Offered a refill for his pipe, Musa raised a hand in polite refusal. 
 "Tomorrow's sun will not wait on our conversation, and much must be 
 done, in the manner of racers waiting the signal, before the first blade 
 breaks the soil," he said. "Good night, brother Haruna; and may Mother 
 grant you light!" 
   
 "Mother keep you, brother Musa," Aaron murmured the heathen phrase 
 without embarrassment. "I'll guide your feet to your wagon, if I may." 
   
 Aaron, carrying the naphtha lantern, led the way across the strip of 
 new-plowed soil. Set by frost into plastic mounds and ridges, the earth 
 bent beneath his shoes and the carpenter's bare feet. Aaron swung Musa's 
 picket-iron, the little anchor to which his horse was tethered, into the 
 wagon, noticing that it had been curiously padded with layers of quilted 
 cloth. "May you journey home in good health, brother Musa," he said. 
   
 "_Uwaka!_" Musa shouted, staring at the plow-cuts. 
   
 
 
 
 Blind Man's Lantern Pg 21 
 Aaron Stoltzfoos dropped the lantern to his side, amazed that the 
 dignified old man could be guilty of such an obscenity. Perhaps he'd 
 misheard. "Haruna, you have damned yourself!" Musa bellowed. "Cursed be 
 this farm! Cursed be thy farming! May thy seedlings rot, may thy corn 
 sprout worms for tassles, may your cattle stink and make early bones!" 
   
 "Brother Musa!" Aaron said. 
   
 "I am no sib to you, O Bearded One," Musa said. "Nor will I help you 
 carry the curse you have brought upon yourself by today's ill-doing." He 
 darted back to the farmhouse, where he ordered half-wakened Waziri to 
 pad barefoot after him to the wagon, rubbing his eyes. "Come, son," Musa 
 said. "We must flee these ill-omened fields." Without another word to 
 his host, the carpenter hoisted his boy into the wagon, mounted, and set 
 off into the night. The hoofs of his horse padded softly against the 
 dirt road, unshod. 
   
 Martha met the bewildered Aaron at the door, wakened by Musa's shouting. 
 "_Wass gibt_, Stoltz?" she asked. "What for was all the carry-on?" 
   
 Aaron tugged at his beard. "I don't know, woman," he admitted. "Musa the 
 carpenter took one look at the plowing I did today, then cursed me as 
 though he'd caught me spitting in his well. He got Waziri up from bed 
 and took him home." He took his wife's hand. "I'm sorry he woke you up, 
 Liebchen." 
   
 "It was not so much the angry carpenter who waked me as the little jack 
 rabbit you're father to," Martha said. "As you say, a _Bun_ who can kick 
 so hard, and barefoot, too, will be a strong one once he's born." 
   
 Aaron was staring out the window onto the dark road. "_Farwas hot Musa 
 sell gehuh?_" he asked himself. "What for did Musa do such a thing? He 
 knows that our ways are different to his. If I did aught wrong, Musa 
 must know it was done not for want to harm. I will go to the village 
 tomorrow; Musa must forgive me and explain." 
   
 "He will, Stoltz." Martha said. "_Kuum, schloef._ You'll be getting up 
 early." 
   
 "How can I sleep, not knowing how I have hurt my friend?" Aaron asked. 
   
 "You must," Martha urged him. "Let your cares rest for the night, 
 Aaron." 
   
 In the morning, Stoltzfoos prepared for his trip into Datura by donning 
 his Sunday-best. He clipped a black patent-leather bow tie, a wedding 
 gift, onto his white shirt: and fastened up his best broadfall trousers 
 with his dress suspenders. Over this, Aaron put his _Mutzi_, the tailed 
 frock coat that fastened with hooks-and-eyes. When he'd exchanged his 
 broad-brimmed black felt working-hat for another just the same, but 
 unsweated, Aaron was dressed as he'd be on his way to a House-Amish 
 Sunday meeting back home. "I expect no trouble here, Martha," he said, 
 tucking a box of stogies under his arm as a little guest-gift for the 
 old carpenter. 
   
 "Hurry home, Stoltz; I feel wonderful busy about the middle," Martha 
 said. There was a noise out on the road. "Listen!" she said. "Go look 
 the window out, now; someone is coming the yard in!" 
   
 
 
 
 Blind Man's Lantern Pg 22 
 Aaron hastened to lift the green roller-blind over the parlor window. 
 "Ach; it is the _groesie Fisch_, Sarki Kazunzumi, with half the folk 
 from town," he said. "Stay here, woman. I will out and talk with them." 
   
 The Sarki sat astride his white pony, staring as Aaron approached him. 
 Behind their chief, on lesser beasts, sat Kazunzumi's retainers, each 
 with a bundle in his arms. "Welcome, O Sarki!" Aaron said, raising his 
 fist. 
   
 Kazunzumi did not return the Amishman's salute. "I return your gifts, 
 Lightless One," he announced. "They are tainted with your blasphemy." He 
 nodded, and his servants dismounted to stack at the side of the road 
 Aaron's guest-gifts of months before. The bale of tobacco was set down, 
 the bolt of scarlet silk, the chains of candy, the silver-filigreed 
 saddle. "Now that I owe you naught, Bearded One, we have no further 
 business with one another." He reined his horse around. "I go in 
 sadness, Haruna," he said. 
   
 "What did I do, Kazunzumi?" Aaron asked. "What am I to make of your 
 displeasure?" 
   
 "You have failed us, who was my friend," the Sarki said. "You will leave 
 this place, taking your woman and your beasts and your sharp-shod 
 horses." 
   
 "Sir, where am I to go?" 
   
 "Whence came you, Haruna?" the Sarki asked. "Return to your own 
 black-garbed folk, and injure the Mother no longer with your lack of 
 understanding." 
   
 "Sarki Kazunzumi, I know not how I erred," Stoltzfoos said. "As for 
 returning to my own country, that I cannot. The off-world vessel that 
 brought us here is star-far away; and it will not return until we are 
 all five summers older. My Martha is besides with child, and cannot 
 safely travel. My land is ripe for seeding. How can I go now?" 
   
 "There is wilderness to the south, where no son of the Mother lives," 
 the Sarki said. "Go there. I care not for heathen who are out of my 
 sight." 
   
 "Sir, show us mercy," Aaron said. 
   
 Kazunzumi danced his shoeless horse around to face Aaron. "Haruna, who 
 was my friend, whom I thought to stand with me in Mother's light, I 
 would be merciful; but I cannot be weak. It is not me whom you must 
 beseech, but the Mother who feeds us all. Make amends to Her, then Sarki 
 Kazunzumi will give his ear to your pleas. Without amends, Haruna, you 
 must go from here within the week." Kazunzumi waved his arm and galloped 
 off toward Datura. His servants followed quickly. On the roadside lay 
 the gifts, dusted from the dirt raised by the horses. 
   
 
 
 
 Blind Man's Lantern Pg 23 
 The Amishman turned toward the house. Martha's face was at the parlor 
 window, quizzical under her prayer-covering, impatient to hear what had 
 happened. Aaron plodded back to the house with the evil news, stumbling 
 over a clod of earth in the new-turned furrows near the road. Martha met 
 him at the door. "_Waas will er?_" she demanded. 
   
 "He says we must leave our farm." 
   
 "Why for?" she asked. 
   
 "Somehow, I have offended their _fadommt_ Mum-god," Aaron said. "The 
 Sarki has granted us a week to make ready to go into the wilderness." He 
 sat on a coffee-colored kitchen chair, his head bowed and his big hands 
 limp between his knees. 
   
 "Stoltz, where can we go?" Martha asked. "We have no _Freindschaft_, no 
 kin, in all this place." 
   
 Aaron tightened his hands into fists. "We will not go!" he vowed. "I 
 will find a way for us to stay." He broke open the box of cigars that 
 had been meant as a gift for Musa and clamped one of the black stogies 
 between his teeth. "What is their _heidisch_ secret?" he demanded. "What 
 does the Mother want of me?" 
   
 "Aaron Stoltz," Martha said vigorously, "I'll have no man of mine 
 offering dignity to a heathen god. The _Schrift_ orders us to cut down 
 the groves of the alien gods, to smash their false images; not to bow 
 before them. Will you make a golden calf here, as did your namesake 
 Aaron of Egypt, for whose sin the Children of Israel were plagued?" 
   
 "Woman, I'll not have you preach to me like a servant of the Book," 
 Aaron said. "It is not for you to cite Scripture." He stared through the 
 window. "What does the Mother want of me?" 
   
 "As you shout, do not forget that I am a mother, too," Martha said. She 
 dabbed a finger at her eye. 
   
 "_Fagep mir_, Liebling," Aaron said. He walked behind the chair where 
 his wife sat. Tenderly, he kneaded the muscles at the back of her neck. 
 "I am trying to get inside Musa's head, and Kazunzumi's; I am trying to 
 see their world through their eyes. It is not an easy thing to do, 
 Martha. Though I lived for a spell among the 'English,' my head is still 
 House-Amish; a fat, Dutch cheese." 
   
 "It is a good head," Martha said, relaxing under his massage, "and if 
 there be cheese-heads hereabouts, it's these blackfolk that wear them, 
 and not my man." 
   
 "If I knew what the die-hinker our neighbors mean by their Mother-talk, 
 it might be I could see myself through Murnan eyes, as I can hear a bit 
 with Hausa ears," Aaron said. "_Iss sell nix so_, Martha?" 
   
 "We should have stood at home, and thought with our own good heads," she 
 said. 
   
 "Let me think," Aaron said. "If I were to strike you, wife," he mused, 
 "it could do you great hurt, and harm our unborn child, _Nee?_" 
   
 "Aaron!" Martha scooted out from under her husbands kneading hands. 
   
 
 
 
 Blind Man's Lantern Pg 24 
 "_Druuvel dich net!_" he said. "I am only thinking. These blackfolk now, 
 these neighbors who were before last night our friends, speak of Light 
 as our bishop at home speaks of Grace. To have it is to have all, to be 
 one with the congregation. If I can find this Light, we and the Sarki 
 and his people can again be friends." Aaron sat down. "I must learn what 
 I have done wrong," he said. 
   
        *       *       *       *       * 
   
 "Other than drink a glass of cider now and then, and make worldly music 
 with a guitar, you've done no wrong," Martha said stubbornly. "You're a 
 good man." 
   
 "In the Old Order, I am a good man, so long as no _Diener_ makes trouble 
 over a bit of singing or cider," Aaron said. "As a guest on Murna, I 
 have done some deed that has hurt this Mother-god, whom our neighbors 
 hold dear." 
   
 "Heathenish superstition!" 
   
 "Martha, love, I am older than you, and a man," Aaron said. "Give me 
 room to think! If the goddess-Mother is heathen as Baal, it matters not; 
 these folk who worship her hold our future in their hands. Besides, we 
 owe them the courtesy not to dance in their churches nor to laugh at 
 their prayers; even the 'English' have more grace than that." Aaron 
 pondered. "Something in the springtime is the Murnan Mother's gift, her 
 greatest gift. What?" 
   
 "Blaspheme not," Martha said. "Remember Him who _causeth the grass to 
 grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring 
 forth food out of the earth_." 
   
 "Wife, is the True God less, if these people call Him Mother?" Aaron 
 demanded. 
   
 "We are too far from home," the woman sighed. "Such heavy talk is 
 wearisome; it is for bishops to discourse so, not ordinary folk like 
 us." 
   
 "If I can't find the light," Aaron said, "this farm we live on, and 
 hoped to leave to our children, isn't worth the water in a dish of 
 soup." He slapped his hands together and stood to pace. "Martha, hear me 
 out," he said. "If a woman be with child, and a man takes her with lust 
 and against her will, is not that man accursed?" 
   
 "Aaron!" she said. "_Haagott_, such wicked talk you make!" 
   
 "Seen with Murnan eyes, have I not done just such a cursed thing?" Aaron 
 demanded. "The Mother-god of this world is _mit Kinndt_, fat with the 
 bounty of springtime. So tender is the swollen belly of the earth that 
 the people here, simple folk with no more subtle God, strip the iron 
 from the hoofs of their horses not to bruise her. They bare their feet 
 in her honor, treat her with the tenderness I treat my beloved Martha. 
 And to this Goddess, swollen earth, I took the plow! Martha, we are 
 fortunate indeed that our neighbors are gentle people, or I would be 
 hanged now, or stoned to death like the wicked in the old days. _Ich hot 
 iere Gotterin awgepockt_: I raped their Goddess!" 
   
 
 
 
 Blind Man's Lantern Pg 25 
 Martha burst into tears. When Aaron stepped forward to comfort her, she 
 struck his chest with her balled fists. "Stoltz, I wed you despite your 
 beer-drinking from cans at the Singing, though you play a worldly guitar 
 and sing the English songs, though people told me you drove your gay 
 Uncle Amos' black-bumpered Ford before you membered to the district; 
 still, house-Amish pure Old Order though my people are, I married you, 
 from love and youngness and girlish ignorance. But I do not care, even 
 in this wilderness you've brought us to in that big English ship, to 
 hear such vileness spoke out boldly. Leave me alone." 
   
 "I'll not." 
   
 "You'd best," she said. "I'm sore offended in the lad I'm wifed to." 
   
 "Love, _Ich bin sorry_," Aaron said. "The Book, though, says just what 
 our neighbors told me: Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set 
 you free. I have found the truth, the truth of our dark-skinned friends. 
 I did not want to wound the ears of _da Oppel fuun mein Awk_, 
 apple-of-mine-eye sweet Martha; but I must speak out the truth." 
   
 "It is not good enough," Martha sobbed, "that you accept this 
 brown-skinned, jewel-bedizzened woman-god; but you must make love to 
 her; and I, wed to you by the Book, nine months gone with _Kinndt_, am 
 to make no fuss." 
   
 "I loved the Mother-god with the plow, and accidentally," Aaron 
 bellowed. "_Haagott!_ woman; have you no funny?" 
   
 "I will birth our child in my lap from laughing," Martha said, weeping. 
 "Aaron, do what you will. I can hardly walk home to my Mem to bear a son 
 in my girlhood bedroom. We are like _Awduum uuu Ayf_, like you said; but 
 the serpent in this Eden pleases me not." 
   
 "When I spoke of colts, and the borning of them," Aaron said, "I forgot 
 me that mares are more sensible than human women. Martha, _liebe_ 
 Martha, you wed a man when you married me. All your vapors are naught 
 against my having seen the light. If to stay here, on this land already 
 watered with my hard sweat, I had to slaughter cattle in sacrifice to 
 the Mother, I'd pick up the knife gladly, and feel it no blasphemy 
 against our God." 
   
 "Aaron Stoltz," Martha said, "I forbid you to lend honor to this god!" 
   
 Aaron sat. He unlaced his shoes and tugged them off. "Woman," he asked 
 softly, "you forbid me? Martha, for all the love I bear you, there is 
 one rule of our folk that's as holy as worship; and that's that the man 
 is master in his house." He pulled off his black stockings and stood, 
 barefoot, with callouses won on the black earth of his father's farm; 
 dressed otherwise meetly as a deacon. "I will walk to Datura on my naked 
 feet to show our friends I know my wrong-doing, that I have hurt the 
 belly of the pregnant earth. I will tell Sarki Kazunzumi that I have 
 seen his light; that my horses will be unshod as I am, that the Mother 
 will not feel my plow again until the grasses spring, when her time will 
 be accomplished." 
   
 
 
 
 Blind Man's Lantern Pg 26 
 Martha crossed her hands about her middle. "Ach, Stoltz," she said. "Our 
 _Buu iss reddi far geh_, I think. Today will be his birthday. Don't let 
 your tenderness to the earth keep you from walking swiftly to Datura; 
 and when you return, come in a wagon with the Sarki's ladies, who 
 understand midwifery. I think they will find work here." 
   
 "I will hurry, Mother," Aaron promised.  
 
 
 Publication Date: January 10th 2015 https://www.bookrix.com/-mk496e398f1e345