Rebekah's Quilt (8 page)

She let the corners of her mouth flicker upward into a smile. “I suppose I should practice my stitching, if I have to lie here.”

He plopped the bag at the foot of her bed and helped himself to a pinch of ham. “I still can’t believe you ran into a burning barn after a calf.”

“You would have done the same thing.” Ever unable to take a compliment, she bit her tongue the moment she said it.

“I would have, had I been around.” Eyeing her, he continued. “Rebekah don’t bite your tongue. You can speak your mind around me, I ain’t made of glass.” He grinned that dazzling grin again, the one that seemed to light up wherever he happened to be. “It’s just me, your old friend Joseph.” He screwed up his face and stuck out his tongue.

With a giggle, she brought her hand up as a makeshift shield against his silly antics. Her fingers brushed against a lock of her hair. Her smile faded slowly as she realized what had happened. “Oh.” Rebekah fingered the fried ends. The more she felt, the worse off her hair seemed to have fared the fire. “Oh Joseph, it must be hideous.” A crushing wave of embarrassment threatened to drown her.

He shook his head.

“What you did took courage.” He spoke those simple words easily. “You saved a life by almost giving yours. Anyway,” he plucked up her white covering from where it had fallen on the floor, “Nobody will know about your hair except you, me, and your folks.”

“Courage,” she whispered to herself, trying out the word.

“Yep.” He stood up and sauntered to the window.

She watched how his lanky frame moved with such natural ease, like river water flowing over rocks and pebbles. In the soft, muted light of this early morn, he looked especially handsome. He crossed his arms and stared out the window, watching the sun rise in the misty morning sky.

“Not many grown men would have been able to do what you did.” Turning, he stared at her, his face serious. “Especially for a baby calf.”

“I thank God that sweet baby survived.”

Joseph’s eyes sparkled. “You want to see her?”

She nodded. Ignoring the bone-deep weariness that weighed her down like an anvil, she started to get out of bed.

Joseph waved both hands at her as he skipped sideways toward the door. “No, no, you stay there. I’ll be right back!”

Secretly glad at not having to get up and walk about, Rebekah sank back into her pillow and quilt, allowing her aching muscles to relax again.

I’ll leave my quilting ‘till later.
The comfortable sounds of her brothers moving up and down the stairs had a lullaby effect, making her dizzy with exhaustion.

Joseph clomped in a moment later with Buttermilk nestled safely in his strong arms. This handsome man stood holding one of God’s most innocent creatures as though he would protect her from the world, should he have to. The sight was so moving that tears sprang up in her still-dry eyes, stinging them.

“B-b-b-l-l-l-e-e-e-h-h,” Buttermilk bleated.

A smile flicked the ends of her mouth upward. “She still doesn’t moo.”

Joseph’s voice was a whisper. “I told you she was alright.”

“I believed” Rebekah began. But when she looked at Joseph, his eyes were on Buttermilk, not her. He gently bounced the baby cow in his arms, reminiscent of how a young mother bounces a newborn babe. A scarlet heat crept up her neck.

Without warning, Rebekah’s mind switched gears. “I will miss Bible study at the Yoder’s today.” She had been looking forward to the impromptu gathering that had been planned the night before. “Their little puppy gets fluffier all the time.”

Buttermilk bleated again.

“Uh-oh, I believe she needs to be outside.” Joseph made it to the stairs in three long strides. “Rebekah, I’ll be downstairs helping your Pa with breakfast for the young ‘uns. He looked like he was having a hard time when I passed him a minute ago.”

“Thank you for taking care of me.” Her whisper hung in the empty room. Already gone, Joseph didn’t hear.

The gentle sounds of everyone going about their business in her childhood home rocked her, in her half-sleep state, much like a favorite rocking chair. She tried to pick out the sounds and guess who would be making them as sleep tugged at her eyelids.

There’s Jeremiah, he’s bringing in the milk,
she thought.
That was Thomas, he just ran into the doorframe.
Her heart was light as bits of laughter from her Pa and Joseph floated up the stairs, and sleep found her, snug, warm, and safe, in her bed.

Rebekah woke with a start after closing her eyes for what felt like mere minutes. The sun though, told a different story. It appeared to be mid-afternoon and if she had been well, Rebekah would have already been up to her elbows in dough for dinner preparations.

A rogue noise sounded from outside. It wasn’t one of the comfortable sounds to which she had grown accustomed,  it was a chattering pair of voices that didn’t belong outside her window. The weighted curtain of sleep vanished quickly as the voices carried on, growing louder as the heaviness left her ears.

“Joseph?” she wondered aloud. “Is that Joseph’s voice?” It was. But who was he talking to?

The song of a cardinal drowned out the other voice with its
purty, purty, purty … whoit whoit whoit whoit!

Rebekah rose and flung her legs over the side of her bed. As her feet touched the floor, the memory of her stubbed baby toe flashed to the front of her mind with white-hot precision. Tears sprang to her eyes and her stomach churned. Hiking up her gown, Rebekah found that her tiny toe had taken on a hue of greenish black. A purple bruise mottled the entire side of her right foot, clean up to her ankle.

Pushing herself up using her dresser as leverage, she peered out the window. Down below stood Joseph, arms crossed as usual, with his trademark stem poking out from between his teeth. When he threw back his head to laugh, Rebekah saw to whom the other voice belonged.

It was Katie Knepp.

CHAPTER FIVE

Rebekah limped across her bedroom floor to the simple doorway. A jagged ache gnawed at her heart, blocking out the pain in her discolored foot.

“Why would Katie be here?” An unfamiliar feeling twanged in her gut. “Why is Joseph talking to her like a beau?”

Rebekah maneuvered herself out her room and to the stairs with more than a little difficulty. Standing with her hand on the banister, her stomach lurched as she looked down the steep staircase. “Well, here goes.”

Placing her good foot down first, she leaned on the banister and hopped down the first step.
Whew
,
that wasn’t so bad. Only twelve more to go.
Trying to be as quiet as possible, Rebekah leaned on the bannister and hopped down the rest of the wooden stairs. A thin film of sweat covered her face like a veil as she neared the floor.

Almost there, she whispered. As she stepped off the last step, her hands fluttered to her head to straighten her covering. Instead, her fingers brushed her singed mane. “My covering!”

A brief moment of panic brought on with the prospect of ascending and descending the stairs again was interrupted by a thundering of feet. Thomas skipped by, heart and eyes obviously set on the partially opened front door. Rebekah could see Joseph’s back come in and out of the space as the door swayed in the breeze.

“Thomas!” She swiped at the beads of perspiration that dotted her forehead. “Help!”

Stopping just before reaching the door, her youngest brother turned to face her. A hunk of bread, swiped from the kitchen no doubt, protruded from his mouth.

“Hi, Th-ithy,” he mumbled through the crumbs.

“Thomas, come here please.”

Shrugging his tiny shoulders, he ambled over.

He swallowed the swiped snack. “Hi Sissy,” he said more clearly, “Please don’t tell ’bout the bread. I was hungry.”

She ruffled his hair.

“Can you run upstairs for your favorite sister and bring my covering down? It’s in my room.”

He wrinkled his nose. “You’re my
only
sister!”

Thomas looked first at her, then to the door before allowing his big blue eyes to light back on Rebekah.

“Guess we do need to cover that hair up. I’ll be right back.” Thomas started up the stairs, slow as molasses in January. After a minute, he’d only ascended three steps.

Ever gentle, Rebekah whispered again. “Thomas?”

“Yea, Sissy?”

“Could you please go quickly? For me?”

A gap-toothed grin befell his freckled face. He scratched his nose. “Sure can.”

With that, Thomas disappeared up the stairs just as the front door creaked a tell-tale creak. Someone was coming inside. “Oh no.”

Rebekah glanced about for a suitable hiding place, just big enough for a twenty-year-old girl. In her haste, she hadn’t even bothered to dress and still wore her nightgown.

Her thoughts were coming in quick spurts.
Maybe whoever it is won’t see me if I don’t move
. She sat down on the bottom step and hugged her knees to her chest.

Joseph held open the door and Katie walked in. The pair sat down on the seat made for three, leaving the space between them open. Their backs were to Rebekah.

A hot knot formed in her throat.

“So sad about their barn. I heard that you went in and saved their new calf.” Katie’s sing-song voice trilled in the still air. Rebekah closed her eyes.

“Well you’re half right.” Pushing himself up, Joseph stood and crossed his arms. The arm crossing was a sure sign he was either completely comfortable, or completely nervous. Rebekah guessed it was the latter.

“It is unfortunate about the barn, but it wasn’t me who went in for all the animals.” He turned to face Katie and in doing so, faced Rebekah, too. “It was Rebekah.”

“Here you go, Sissy!” Thomas screeched, flying down the stairs. In his haste, he tripped. Turning and reaching at the same time, Rebekah made an expert save. With a light pat to her littlest brother, she sat him down.

With butterflies flitting wildly in her stomach, she glanced at Joseph to see if he’d witnessed the display.

He stared back, grinning.

She shoved her headpiece down over her sizzled locks. “Thank you, Thomas,” she whispered.

“You’re welcome, Sissy,” he yelled, dashing passed Joseph and Katie without so much as a glance in their direction. Rebekah guessed his five-year-old heart and mind were already out the door, off the porch, and playing in the surrounding woods.

Katie turned just as Rebekah finished straightening the gauzy white covering. She smoothed at her nightgown.

“There’s she is now,” Joseph announced, stepping to her side. “Rebekah, come sit with Katie and me.”

Joseph took her hand, guiding her, as she tried to hide her limp in the short walk from the stairs to the sitting room.

Ever gracious, Rebekah spoke first.

“Katie, thank you for my pouch of quilting squares.” Both her voice and her heart were genuine, despite their mutual object of affection. “Did you piece them together yourself?”

Katie nodded. “I did. ’Fraid I’m not much of a quilter, so they’re a little uneven. Nothing like your Ma’s.”

Rebekah shifted her weight on the seat. “My squares aren’t anything like Ma’s, either.” She turned her attention to Joseph. “How was breakfast?”

“Well, everyone was fed. If there were any complaints, I didn’t hear them.” He brushed the end of his nose with his thumb. “But then again, I made it a point not to listen.”

Katie giggled.

“I’m surprised to find you two here.” Rebekah didn’t mean for her voice to come out as harsh as it did. “What I mean is,” she sputtered to clarify, “I thought everyone was going to gather at the Yoder’s today.”

Joseph extended his hand to her. “There was a change of plans.”

She accepted it, stood up, and hobbled toward the door. Needles of pain pricked her foot. Quieting the yell that threatened to erupt from her throat, she squeezed Joseph’s hand.

He pushed open the door, revealing the busy scurrying of all the Gasthof Village families.

Mr. Yoder and Mr. Knepp were pushing up the new wooden frame of their barn as Mr. Raber, and Mr. Odon steadied them from the top. They called out orders and requests in German, giving the clearing around their house the old-world feel that Rebekah had only knew from her mother’s stories.

Her Pa, Joseph’s Pa, and Simon Wagler were unloading goods from the row of parked wagons. There were piles of hay, animal feed, and tack scattered about, but with an orderly look.

Tears welled in her eyes. “Everyone came here,” she managed. “Instead of going to services?” Her hand fluttered to her chest, grasping at her housedress.

Joseph’s voice was soft and warm. “Sometimes the best way to love God is through action, not through talking.”

“Anyway, where else would we go?” Joseph’s tender voice was a whisper through her covering.

Katie coughed.

Turning back to the sitting room, Joseph’s shoe bumped her tender toe.

Stars filled her vision and doubled her over.

Worried creases pinched his inky eyebrows together. “What’s this?” His sapphire-blue eyes searched her face with such scrutiny; an overwhelming sense of self-consciousness forced her to hug her arms to her chest.