Hong Kong Amish: The Ranchers Series, #2

By Murray Pura

I am Solina Cheng.

 

I led protests against the Chinese crackdown in Hong Kong. The police wanted me in a maximum security prison. They began to hunt me down. I was granted refugee status in the United States. My sponsors were an Amish church. I knew nothing about the Amish. The only connection I found between me and them is that I was a refugee and so were they. They'd fled religious persecution in Europe back in the 1700s and I'd fled the persecution of my humanity and my liberty in the 2020s.

 

Other than that? Was the US State Department kidding me? No electricity? No cars? No planes? No TV? No electric guitars or amplifiers? No jeans or miniskirts? Really? So, they'd fled from a 1700s Europe but never left that 1700s Europe behind? I rolled my eyes about a dozen plus one times for no one's benefit but my own. And maybe God's.

 

They put me on a plane in NYC. They put me on a bus after I landed. I wanted bright lights, big city, like I was used to. I wanted LA or San Francisco or Seattle.

 

When the bus stopped, and I woke up, I saw mountains.

 

Tall and capped in white with flanks of indigo and the purest mauve. They looked like cutouts, their edges and definition were so sharp. I did not think about picking up what little bit of luggage I had. Just stared at mountain, after mountain, after mountain. Then I saw the dark brown horse.

 

I didn't even like horses but it was beautiful. I saw the buggy it was harnessed to. I saw the tall man in his weird clothes from a hundred years before. More than a hundred years. I knew who he was from my books. Fiction and nonfiction. The Amish Man. With his long black beard, wide-brimmed hat and black suspenders over a light blue shirt. Right next to him in a long dark dress with a black Kapp on her head? The Amish Woman.

 

The Amish Man lifted his hand in greeting. "Miss Solina Cheng? I am Bishop Miller. This is my wife, Mrs. Miller. Welcome to Idaho."

They were so ready to embrace me.

 

I didn't think I'd ever be able to embrace them or their ways.

 

Not if I was there all year. Not if I was there till Christmas.

• Language: English
• Publisher: MillerWords, LLC
• Release date: Nov 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393356479

Murray Pura

Murray Pura’s novel The Sunflower Season won Best Contemporary Romance (Word Awards, Toronto, 2022) while previously, The White Birds of Morning was Historical Novel of the Year (Word Awards, Toronto, 2012). Far on the Ringing Plains won the Hemingway Award for WW2 Fiction (2022) and its sequel, The Scepter and the Isle, was shortlisted for the same award (both with Patrick Craig). Murray has been a finalist for the Dartmouth Book Award, The John Spencer Hill Literary Award, and the Kobzar Literary Award. He lives in southwestern Alberta.

Book preview

Dedication

To Emma Doede

the amazing reader

of the stories I write

this one’s for you

Chapter One

The Very First Part

IT WAS FALLING STRAIGHT down

Like rain without a wind.

Straight into my hands.

I had taken my mittens off, beautiful mittens of the purest wool knit in the loveliest pattern, so I could feel the rain that wasn’t rain come to rest on my skin.

The rain that wasn’t rain was cold. Sharp. Like needles poking my skin. Part of me enjoyed that sensation even though another part recoiled. We are all people of many parts. Shakespeare said it and we live what he said.

I removed the woolen beanie from my head. It was also hand knit (but not by me). Pretty cool, pretty cute, actually. One reason I agreed to wear it. It augmented my looks. There are only three reasons to wear anything: you have to wear something, it makes you feel comfortable, it makes you look amazing. It’s best if you can nail all three with one pair of jeans, one pair of boots, or one beanie.

So, the beanie I stuffed in my pants pocket. Baggy pants I was not crazy about. But the fall of the fall of what wasn’t rain came down upon my head and my thought about the baggy pants was fragmentary.

Soon my hair was damp. Cold and damp. Cold and damp and wonderful. Because white snow had never landed on my head before in my lifetime. It had never fallen on my open hands. It had never fallen before my eyes. No snow of any color had done those things. No snow had ever existed until now.

It fell like ashes after a fire.

It fell like feathers after a swarm of pigeons have swept past overhead, swinging and swirling and bending between tall city buildings.

It floated. Spun. Fluttered. But eventually it reached me. It reached past me to the ground. Long before it had come to me it had come to the mountaintops I could still see through the clouds and the white falling. The peaks were no longer gray, or blue, or purple, depending on how far away you were or what sort of visual clarity the day might have. The color was white. White as snow. And the flanks of the mountains didn’t have color at all.

It is straight from a heaven I have never seen 12

A heaven they swear is there 7

Though all any of us have ever seen 10

Is the snow 3

Hmm. So much for my haiku. Whether it’s in Japanese, or Cantonese, or English or Low German it can only have seventeen syllables. This one had, as you can see, practically two haikus rolled into one. Rolled like sushi.

My twerpy humor. Let me try again.

(Though I think my first one, even if it bends the rules, is semi profound. And why can’t we bend the rules of poetry now and then? Or even break them up like when we share pizza? He did, e e cummings did, right up until he died in New Hampshire in September just before his sixty-eighth leaf fall, which would have been followed by his sixty-eighth snow fall. If the best can bend their poems then the least should be allowed to try.)

fall upon me 4

what never was 4

touch my hands and my head 6

and make me someone 5 (4)

who never existed 6

Rules bent! Eighteen! Or ...

fall upon me 4

what never was 4

make me someone 4

that I never knew 5

Rules followed! Seventeen!

Or I could end it this way ...

make me someone 4

who you never knew 5

You tell me. Which poem is better?

Or throw all three out? (Maybe four if you switch out endings.)

Mr. Frost said he never did exercises when he sat down to write a poem. But that every now and then he wrote a poem that failed and he called those exercises.

I don’t mind exercises. I do them with my body. Why shouldn’t I do them with my mind or my soul? If you believe in a soul. Some don’t. It’s hard not to believe in your body though.

Or a poem.

There they are right in front of your eyes.

If you believe in your eyes.

I didn’t learn all that in America.

I read it in Hong Kong.

I learned it in Hong Kong.

I am Solina Cheng.

Yesterday I was in Hong Kong. Today I am in Idaho. Tomorrow I will be riding an Appaloosa at the foot of what they call the Bitterroots. The Appie is a special horse bred by the Nez Perce who have always called Idaho home.

Unlike me. I never called Idaho home. I never wanted to call Idaho home. Until the day before yesterday. It might have been two days.

We all have a story. I suppose we all have many stories. This is one of mine. Or maybe it’s better to say these are many of mine rolled up into one Navajo saddle blanket.

Now I’m sounding like an American cowgirl. I was never an American cowgirl till yesterday or the day before. I was always a city girl. A big city girl. A bright lights big city eight million people girl.

(Eight million is only a slight exaggeration. You will find I thrive on slight exaggerations. People usually don’t get away with huge exaggerations but almost always get away with slight ones. And, like using Snapseed, slight exaggerations enhance the story and brighten the images that form in peoples’ minds.)

I ought to be telling this in Cantonese. English is my second language. Even though it has been my second language almost as long as Cantonese has been my first. I grew up with code-switching, mixing my Cantonese and English whenever I spoke. But you are English. Or German. So, I’m going with English. And I’ll toss in a smack of Pennsylvania Dutch now and then.

To begin.

Born to a wealthy family in Hong Kong on April 14, 1999. Just after British rule ended. The Handover