A Simple Hope: A Lancaster Crossroads Novel (2 page)

She slid out of bed, pulled the quilt over her shoulders, and padded barefoot to the window seat Dat had built. Outside, sunshine shot over the green and purple hills in the distance. The morning air was cold, but the sun promised warmth to the day—Gott’s promise of springtime and light and hope. Rachel thought of the colors in the paint kit her Englisher friend Haley had given her and wished she had time to paint right now. How she would enjoy mixing colors to come up with spring-field green, daffodil yellow, crocus purple, and the rich blots of pink and purple and orange and red that made up a sunrise. Upstairs in her old room, among the many unfinished canvases, was a new painting she had just finished for James. It was different from her usual style, but she thought it might spark some joy in his heart.

And James was so very much in need of joy.

She kneeled beside the window seat and clasped her hands together for a silent prayer.
Dear Gott, please heal James. Teach him to walk again. Please, don’t let my selfish dreams get in his way
.

Long before the terrible accident, Rachel had thought of marrying James, and their relationship had been moving in that direction. But Rachel had secretly dreamed of a life away from the work of a farm or orchard. Her paintings sold well at the Country Store
in Halfway, so well that she had been invited to sell them in a gallery in Philadelphia. In the back of her mind, she had always wanted to leave farm life behind and live in a small house in town. With her love of peace and quiet and her yearning to paint all day and all night, Rachel longed to break free of the bonds of milking cows twice a day, tending the chickens, and weeding the family vegetable garden.

Plenty of Amish had moved away from tending the land. Her cousin Market Joe traveled to Philadelphia six days a week to run the family cheese shop in the city’s market. James’s cousin Elsie Lapp ran their family’s store in Halfway. Why couldn’t she be among those who left the farm behind for a job or craft? She knew the bishop would allow it. The only fly in the ointment had been James. He loved working the orchard, a life of sunshine, he said. Before the accident, he would not have considered living in town.

And now? She wasn’t sure what James was planning for the future. The James she loved, the man in her dream, was so hard to reach these days. And how she missed him! Without his sure, steady footing, she felt unsure and scared, like a seed blowing in the wind with no say in its direction, no idea where she might land.

Dear Gott, please bring James back to me
.

“Rachel?” Molly’s voice chirped from the bed. “Are you praying for James?”

“Ya, always.”

“Me, too. Every morning and every night, and sometimes in between, I pray for Gott to heal his legs so that he can walk again. Bethany says I shouldn’t tell Gott what to do, but Bishop Sam says we can pray for anything. Bishop says that Gott always listens, but He doesn’t always give us the answer we want.”

“I’ve heard Bishop Samuel say that, too.” Rachel turned back toward the bed, where her little sister was sitting up, twisting one of her long braids around one hand. Sprigs of Molly’s golden hair had
worked loose along her hairline, and the fluffy hair and shiny eyes made her resemble a baby chick.

“Thank you for praying, Molly,” Rachel said. “Right now, I think James needs every prayer he can get.”

“Do his legs hurt him really bad?” the younger girl asked.

“I don’t think it’s pain that’s the problem.” Although James had not offered to discuss his medical condition with Rachel, from what she’d overheard during her visits, it was the lack of sensation in James’s legs that left him unable to walk. A few times a week, therapists visited the Lapp house to help James through exercises so that his muscles wouldn’t weaken and atrophy. The doctors were still not sure about his future—whether or not he would walk again. No, pain wasn’t what was bothering James. It was fear that he wouldn’t recover.

Pulling the blanket up on her shoulders, Rachel went over to the double bed and sat down facing Molly. “You have a big heart,
Liebe
.” Too big to take on worries about James.

“I pray for everyone who was in that van,” Molly said. “It must have been a terrible thing, being in a crash. Ben says two cars can crack each other in half, just like eggshells.”

“Don’t let Ben scare you. He’s full of stories these days, and he wasn’t there.” At eighteen, their brother Ben was feeling his oats, as Dat said. Although rumspringa was meant to be a time for parents to look the other way while their teenaged son or daughter found a mate in the Amish community, some young people pushed the walls out way too far. Rachel had heard talk of Ben learning to drive a car and racing motorbikes. But mostly, he seemed to collect tidbits of Englisher culture, gobbling up stories about the Englisher world as if they were candy.

“Are you still scared to ride in a car?” Molly asked.

“A little,” Rachel admitted. “But I don’t get that tight feeling inside anymore. The meetings with Dylan have helped me a lot.”

Dylan Monroe was an Englisher counselor who had offered free sessions to help the passengers deal with the aftermath of their accident. Post-traumatic stress, he called it.

“You’re so brave.”

“Not really.” As Rachel smoothed back her sister’s hair, she thought of the story shared by Ruben Zook, one of the other passengers. The notion of angels had come up when the group members were questioning why they were spared while Tom Lapp was taken by Gott, and James was seriously injured. “Ruben says that we had angels with us that afternoon. Gott’s angels, watching over us.”

Molly flung her arms around Rachel and hugged her close. “I love that story. Sometimes when I can’t sleep at night, I pretend that an angel just slipped into bed beside me. And that helps me sleep.”

“That’s a wonderful good way to doze off.” Looking down at Molly’s honey-blond head, Rachel thanked Gott for her sisters. She closed her eyes, surrendering to a yawn.

“Tired?” Molly asked.

“Ya, but now it’s time to get up.”

“Time to greet the day!” Molly pushed back the covers and popped out of bed with her usual enthusiasm, bright as a daisy. “Bethany?” She leaned over her sleeping sister. “Don’t you want to check the stand before school? I wonder if anyone bought any flowers.”

“Mmm.” Bethany rolled over onto her belly.

“Most likely, you didn’t get a lot of customers overnight,” Rachel said, amused by her younger sister’s interest in the roadside stand the girls managed. “But you can check.”

“I’m so glad you moved back down with us.” Molly’s eyes shone brightly as she looked up at Rachel. “I missed you.”

Rachel smiled. “I’m glad, too.”

Molly prodded Bethany, whose face was pressed into her pillow. “Now it’s really time to get up, sleepyhead.”

“I’m up,” Bethany groaned. “How could I sleep with you two yakking?”

“Rise and shine,” Rachel said as she began to pin her long blond hair back. “It’s the early bird that gets the worm.”

“I want to sleep.” Bethany rolled over and groaned again. “I don’t need any worms.”

Chuckling softly, Rachel was glad to be back down here sharing a room with her sisters. Gott did work in wondrous ways.

M
orning was a good time for James Lapp. Actually, it was the last hour of darkness that he enjoyed, when sleep held the rest of the house, still and silent but for the creaking of floorboards under his chair. Waking fresh from sleep, moving quietly from bed to chair, he thanked Gott for the promise of another day and wheeled himself into the bathroom. There was a certain satisfaction in ticking off the grooming chores he’d been taught to manage in occupational therapy. This was something he could do completely on his own.

Because he could no longer reach the bathroom shelves, the Englisher medical folk had given him a vinyl bag that attached to his wheelchair to hold his razor, shaving cream, toothbrush, and toothpaste. With the bars that Dat and brother Peter had installed in the washroom, James could use the toilet and maneuver himself onto the shower seat in the tub. These things took longer now that his legs would not bear the weight of his body, but still, James could manage, and without help from anyone.

That was what mattered to James—getting washed and dressed on his own. Although he lived in a supportive community, James was not one to wait around for a helping hand or lap up pity. In the orchard and in life, his father had taught him to do his part and do it well. Ya, there were many chores that he couldn’t do while he was healing from the back injury. But James wasn’t going to let his rehabilitation become an extra chore for family members like his mamm and his sister Verena.

Having spent his youth climbing trees, James had good power in his arms. He was grateful for that. Since the accident his upper body had grown even stronger with the necessity of having to lift and lever his body from one chair to another. By the light of a single kerosene lamp, he washed up and brushed his teeth. He shaved off the stubble on his chin and jaw, checking his face in the small mirror. Not long ago, he had looked forward to the day when he would let his beard grow. Growing a beard was but one small joy of marriage, a rite of passage in the Amish community. He had planned to marry Rachel King next wedding season, in the fall. Their friends and family had expected it.

Now he couldn’t count on marriage or even Rachel’s love. Now, when he tried to see ahead down the path to the future, his sights were set on walking—nothing else. When doctors had told him that his spinal cord had not been completely severed, that he had a chance of walking again, James had snatched at that hope as if it were the first ripe pear on a tree.

At the hospital and rehab center, there had been many tests and continuing physical therapy. Dat had taken James to a local chiropractor who many believed had healing power, and Mamm had purchased a few healing elixirs advertised in
The Budget
, the Amish newspaper. A couple of pills or one spoonful a day promised to temper all ills, and Mamm was convinced that the bottle of thick brown liquid James had consumed was responsible for the sensations
in his legs. There were two surgeries and medications and talk of medical trials. James did everything the doctors asked, holding so tightly to hope that the notion of walking was beginning to seem as sure and rock-solid as the ground beneath him. As long as they kept saying that it was possible, that he might regain the use of his legs, James would keep digging deep inside himself for more strength, pushing and dragging and pulling himself up until that glimmer of chance burst into a roaring fire.

Back in his room, James glanced at the Bible on the edge of the bed. He almost stopped to read it over again, but he knew the section that was marked almost by heart. Mark 2:11 told about how Jesus met a man who couldn’t walk. And he told the man, “Arise, and take up thy bed, and go thy way into thine house.” And the man got up and picked up his mat, and all those who doubted Gott believed in the Almighty’s power.

Ya, James knew that Bible story by heart. He had mentioned it to his dat, wanting to remind Jimmy that miracles could happen, but his father had told him not to brag about his Bible knowledge.
Hochmut
, or pride, was a sin. Most Amish didn’t spend a lot of time reading from the Bible, but every man wanted to have a few Bible stories in his toolbox.

James carefully strapped each foot into black shoes with Velcro straps—shoes designed for wheelchair patients. He frowned, thinking of his dat’s crisp remarks when the shoes had arrived a few weeks ago.

“I don’t know why you’re bothering with shoes at all.” Dat had made his disapproval plain when one of the nurses, Haley Donovan, had held up the shoes that she’d ordered for James.

“These are lightweight, and easy to get on and off,” Haley had said. “And besides that, they’ll keep your feet warm and dry when you’re out on the farm, taking care of the trees.”

“But James isn’t going to go out in the orchard in a wheelchair,”
Jimmy had told the therapist. “His brothers and I will tend to those chores.” Dat had become a naysayer lately. Whenever James talked about the future, of getting better and walking again, his father grew agitated, as if James were breaking the Ordnung, going against the ways of the Amish.

“They go on a lot faster than my boots,” James had said, pressing the Velcro tab into place.

“Seems like a waste,” Dat had said, shaking his head. “For the amount of time you’re going to be outside, a pair of thick socks would do just fine.”

Despite Dat’s displeasure, when Haley had looked to James for a decision, he had told her the shoes would serve him well outside, and they had. With the spring showers they’d had in the last two weeks, the shoes had proven their worth—especially when James had no choice but to direct his all-terrain wheelchair through mud and puddles of water. A few times his pants had gotten splattered and soaked, but his feet had stayed dry.

James pulled his jacket on, then wheeled down the hall. The kitchen sat cold but expectant. In a few minutes, the gas flame would be lit for coffee and the house would begin to stir. James would have liked a cup of coffee to ease into the day, but this was his time in the orchard—his chance before everyone else began their day.