A Quilt for Jenna (38 page)

“These snowdrifts are nothing compared to that,” Bobby said. “The truth is I was scared to death too. If I hadn't gone over the side, I probably would have crawled back to my bunk and hidden under the covers. I was no hero. I just didn't see any other way than to go straight at it.”

The two men drove on down the road in silence. Then Bobby spoke. “So you can talk about it now. That's good.”

Reuben paused for a minute and then answered. “It still bothers me to think about what happened on that island. But I'm not afraid to talk about it anymore. I had some help out in Colorado from a good man I worked for. He was a World War I vet, and he had a son who got killed at the Tenaru River. Turns out his son was Dick Jackson, the corporal who kept the Japanese from getting across that sandbar at Tenaru. The War Department didn't give Lowell, the old man, too many details about the battle and about how Dick died, so I was able to help the old man out. A few weeks later he returned the favor.”

“I remember Dick Jackson. It's pretty amazing that you should end up at his dad's place. What happened?”

“I'd hit bottom and decided I couldn't take any more. I was actually about to kill myself, but he stepped in.”

Bobby looked at Reuben. “Wow—I had no idea things had gotten that tough for you.”

“It wasn't that long ago. It was getting close to the anniversary of Jenna's death, and I felt like I couldn't go on. Lowell saved me, and then he helped me come to grips with my issues about God. I found out I had built my relationship with God on a faulty foundation. I was trying to keep the rules so I could be holy and be safe from a horrible world. I didn't know that God isn't too concerned that we belong to a certain church.

“Every one of us has the potential for truly horrible behavior no matter what our religious background. It's only when we let Him live His life through us that we have any real chance to live in a way that pleases Him. Keeping rules didn't earn me points with God. I had to find refuge in God, not my religion or my hideout. When I did, I saw that everything that happens in my life can work together for good. That helped me to come to grips with my past.”

“Well, I'm happy for you,” Bobby said. “But if you have a closer relationship with God...I mean, why have all these bad things happened to you?”

“Like I said, all things can work together for good. We don't know the end of this story yet. Yes, we lost Jenna, and that was the most horrible thing I've ever experienced, even worse than the Battle of the Ridge. But I'm not the only person who's ever lost a child. God never promised that bad things wouldn't happen in our lives, but He did promise that He would see us through them and that if we trust Him, He would bring good out of the most terrible things.

“The point of the gospel is that God lost a child too, but that wasn't the end of the story. Christ's death turned out to have a very good ending in bringing man back to God. I don't know how my story will end. I don't know if Jerusha will take me back or if she'll even talk to me. But I do know that I let her down terribly, and I have to somehow show her that I still love her and that no matter what, I will always be there for her.”

“Well, I sure wish I could say that I had your faith that we'll find Jerusha,” Bobby said, “but I've been out here for three days, and I'm pretty much at the end of my rope.”

“Funny you should use that expression,” Reuben said. “Out in Colorado, I literally came to the end of my rope, but God sent Lowell to intervene in the nick of time, and now here I am, and that helps me see that God is at work in all of this. So until I see her body with my own eyes, I'm believing that Jerusha is alive and that we're going to find her.”

Reuben's declaration left Bobby without anything to say for a moment. Then he replied. “Okay, Reuben, I'm with you. We'll look until we find her, and I can tell you that I hope as much as you do that she's alive.”

Just then they reached another cross street. The sign was still up.

“This is the old Township Highway,” Reuben said. “The turnoff to the Jepson place is off Kohler Road. The Jepsons owned that whole piece between Kohler and Kidron. The pond is just off this highway, and the road up to the old cabin turns off Kohler, goes by the pond, and then heads north and comes around behind the house. Kohler is about a mile ahead, but it's not a well-used road and it's not marked. We'll have to keep our eyes peeled.”

The tractor crawled on up the road, and both men were silent as they watched for the Kohler Road turnoff. After about twenty minutes, Reuben pointed to their left and shouted, “Right there, Bobby! That's Kohler.”

Bobby pulled the plow up to the intersection of the two roads. There had been no traffic up Kohler, and the snow was deep and unmarked. Trees lined both sides of the road, and the passage looked difficult.

“Can she make it, Bobby?”

“We'll make it or die trying.” Bobby put the tractor into its lowest gear and started forward up the road, plowing as he went. The old diesel chugged steadily, but Reuben could feel the tires slipping from side to side. They went up the road about fifty yards, and then Reuben pointed to a break in the trees.

“That's the way in, Bobby,” he said. “The old driveway cuts around a small hill and back to the pond and then turns north to the cabin.”

“Hold on, Reuben,” Bobby said. “There's tough going ahead.”

Bobby turned the tractor toward the break in the trees and started forward. He could see that the bank sloped up to the left and the road wound around to the right along the bottom of the hill. Soon they came to what looked like a meadow on the right side of the plow.

“Stay left against the hill, Bobby,” Reuben said. “That's not a meadow, that's the pond.”

As more of the pond came into view, they could see a dark object on the far shore. “What's that?” asked Reuben.

“Looks like a car that flipped,” Bobby said. “Look up the slope behind it. Some small trees are knocked down. Looks like it didn't happen too long ago. Someone who was going pretty fast came off the highway and got all the way over the rise and down to the pond before they stopped. We should probably check it on the way back, see if anybody's in there.”

Bobby continued around the hill, and then Reuben pointed ahead.

“It's pretty overgrown with gorse, but you can break your way through to the meadow.”

Bobby put the plow straight into the thicket that blocked the road and crushed his way through. He reached forward and patted the dashboard of the tractor. “Atta girl.”

Reuben was watching through the snow when he signaled to Bobby. “There's a big tree down up there. I don't think you should go around it because that's a big swampy meadow out there that the creek runs through. It might be deep mud under the snow. We can leave the tractor here and go on foot. It's only about a hundred yards to the cabin.”

“Okay, but I hope she doesn't stall while we're in there,” Bobby said. “I haven't been able to charge the battery today, and the charge might be too low to warm the glow plugs if we have to restart the engine.

Bobby set the engine on high idle, and the two men clambered out of the cab. The freezing wind hit them like a sledgehammer, and the snow stung their faces like a million tiny shocks of electricity. Bobby and Reuben worked their way around the tree and started in the direction Reuben indicated. The visibility was down to fifty feet, and the temperature was around zero. The two men struggled through the deep drifts with Reuben leading the way. After a few minutes Reuben pointed ahead. There in the distance was a dark shape against the snow.

“There's the cabin,” Reuben shouted.

They pushed ahead through the snow and reached the front porch of the cabin, which was filled with snow up to the windows. The glass had been broken out years before, and someone had nailed up plywood to cover the holes, but there were some small windows above the door that still had glass in them. Reuben pointed to the side of the cabin, and Bobby followed him around. There was a small shed attached to the house by a roofed walkway. Reuben went up to the back door and pushed on it. It swung open, and the men went inside. As their eyes adjusted to the dim light, they looked around the room but couldn't see anyone. Except for what looked like a pile of old rags by the stove, the cabin was empty.

C
HAPTER
F
ORTY

...But Now I'm Found

A
SMALL AMOUNT OF LIGHT SHONE
into the room through the two small windows above the door of the cabin, but most of the room was in shadows. Bobby and Reuben strained their eyes looking into the room, but seeing no one, Reuben's shoulders slumped.

“I was sure she was here.”

“We'll keep looking. There are still some places she might be.” Bobby feigned enthusiasm, but inside his hope was draining away.

The two stood silently for a moment.

“Well, we might as well go, we're wasting daylight,” Bobby said.

Reuben turned to go with Bobby just behind him. Just as they got to the door. Reuben heard a tiny sound.

“Mama.”

“Did you hear that?” he asked.

“Hear what?” Bobby asked. “All I can hear is the wind.”

“No, I heard a voice, a little girl's voice, like Jenna's.”

“Reuben...You know that Jenna...”

Then Reuben heard it again, just a little louder.

“Mama.”

“Whoa! I heard it too!” Bobby cried. “What...”

Reuben turned back into the room and peered into the darkness. And then he stepped over to the stove and looked more closely at the pile of rags.

“Over here, Bobby,” he cried as he knelt down beside the stove. The pile of rags next to the stove had a shape, long and narrow. Bobby stood beside him while Reuben reached down and pulled the top layer of the cloth aside. What they had thought was a pile of rags was a large piece of material wrapped around something. As his eyes adjusted to the light, Reuben could see the material was actually a torn and muddied quilt with someone inside it. Reuben slowly pulled the cloth away from the face of the person in the quilt. There was Jerusha lying in the quilt with her arms wrapped tightly around a tiny girl.

“Jerusha!” Reuben cried. He knelt down beside the still figures and gathered his wife and the little girl into his arms.

Bobby felt for a pulse in Jerusha's wrist. “She's alive!”

“What about the little girl?”

Bobby felt for a pulse. He couldn't find one in her wrist, but when he checked her jugular he found a faint beat there. “She's alive too! They're both alive!”

“But barely,” Reuben said. “We've got to get them to a hospital.”

“A hospital?”

“I know...I wouldn't have said that before. But we need to take Jerusha and this child where they will get the best care and the most attention. And for now, that's a hospital.”

“Okay, I'm with you. I should bring the tractor up here to the cabin so we don't have to carry them through the snow and wind. Is it swampy everywhere around the house?”

“The big tree fell right across the old driveway,” Reuben answered. “If you stay to the left and push the tree aside with the plow, you can probably avoid the swampy ground. Do you need me to come with you?”

“No, you stay here with them. Do you have anything you can use to start a fire?”

“No, I didn't figure on staying when we found her.”

“Okay, I'm going to bring the tractor up. It'll take me a few minutes.”

Bobby hurried out the door. The wind had picked up again, and visibility was down to a few feet.

Bobby made his way through the drifts the way they had come, following their tracks through the howling wind. As he got closer to where they left the tractor, he strained his eyes through the white.

It's right up here, but I don't hear anything.

Suddenly the tractor appeared out of the snow right in front of him. It stood silent and dark. The old diesel had stalled.