The Face of Heaven (5 page)

The leader gripped his rifle more tightly. “Am I gonna have more trouble from you?”

“No, you’re not,” Sheriff Jackson finally spoke up, “because you’re not going to be here. You’ve got what’s yours. Now get out and get back to Virginia.”

“These people broke the law, sheriff. Not Virginia law.
Federal
law.”

“Get going and get across the state line before the folk in Elizabethtown wake up. A lot of them might take exception to slave hunters roaming about in their midst. They have more guns than you do and they won’t treat you as gently as these Amish folk have.”

“Is that a fact?” The leader nodded to himself. “I guess it’s gettin’ close to the time Virginia joins in with Mississippi and Texas and Alabama and has its own country. Yes, I reckon it’s long past time.” He bent his head. “Thank you kindly for your hospitality. Come and visit the Hargrove Plantation sometime and we’ll see if we can’t do you one better.”

He left, and Lyndel followed Nathaniel and Levi and the pastors
out onto the porch. The wagon of slave hunters was already moving down the lane to the main road. Moses and Charlie sat in the middle, flames from the torches lighting their faces. Moses had an expression like stone. Charlie was broken, his cheeks wet, holding a hand to his side. In a few minutes the wagon was no more than half a dozen torches floating in the darkness.

“We failed them,” said Nathaniel in a quiet voice. “We had them under our protection and we let the slave hunters drag them away.”

Sheriff Jackson stepped out onto the porch. “It was the law, Mr. King.”

“God’s law or man’s law?”

“Washington’s law. The Supreme Court’s law.”

“Then perhaps it is time we change the law.”

“Oh? And how do you plan on doing that, young man?”

But Nathaniel was staring at the pastors. “You are the leaders of the church. Men chosen by God. Yet you did nothing. Nothing.”

Samuel Eby bristled. “We are people of peace, not confrontation.”

“You could not even attempt to block their path? To hold the bedroom door shut?”

“That is not our way. You yourself overstepped your bounds and your calling as an Amish man.”

“Did I?” Nathaniel looked around him and his eyes rested on Lyndel. “Did I, Miss Keim?” He stared at Levi. “Did I, Levi Keim?” Then his eyes fell on Abraham Yoder. “Did I overstep my bounds, Pastor Yoder?”

No one responded. Nathaniel walked slowly down the porch steps to the ground and made his way to his carriage. He climbed painfully into the driver’s seat in a way that made Lyndel want to rush out and help him but she knew he wouldn’t want that. He glanced over at them as he flicked the reins in his hands. “We are not much like Jesus in the end, are we? He cleared the temple. He made a whip. We are not able to even clear the temple of Lancaster County of these men-stealers. Because of our weakness, men like Moses and Charlie pay with their freedom and their blood.”

His carriage began to roll out of the yard. Lyndel realized that now
was the time to tell him what she thought of the words he had said at the table and the stand he had made at the staircase. Tomorrow would not do and a week from now would be too late. Perhaps it wouldn’t matter to him, but it mattered to her. Surprising herself as well as the others she lifted the hem of her dress and flew down the steps and across the yard to the carriage. Nathaniel saw her running and reined back.

“Lyndel,” he said, “what are you doing?”

She rested her hand on the side of the driver’s seat. “I just wanted you to know I heard what you said at the meeting. Everything you said was right. Yes, it was right. And what you tried to do at the staircase was also right.”

His face was like granite from his anger at the Amish leaders and the slave hunters. Yet as he listened to her a small smile broke through. “How do you know what I said at the meeting?”

“I was sitting on the staircase.”

His smile grew. “Were you? With your father’s permission?”

She smiled back. “My mother’s anyway.”

He looked away. “Well, what I said didn’t seem to make much of a difference.”

“It did to me.”

He glanced back at her. “
Ja
?” Then he stared ahead. “I always come to the Keim house to call on Levi. How about if I come tomorrow to call on you instead?”

She was startled and didn’t know what to say.

“Or is that too much too quickly?” he asked.

Lyndel made up her mind in an instant and put a hand on his arm. “For the first time in our lives—yes, come and call on me.”

“Well. It was not a very good evening. But this was the best part of it.” He flicked the reins. “Do you know what I feel like doing, Lyndel Keim?”

The wagon was moving forward at a walking pace and she kept up with it, her hand still on his arm. “What’s that?”

“Giving chase to the slave hunters. Running them off the road. Scaring them into the woods. Rescuing Moses and Charlie and driving
like a crazy man for the Canadian border in New York.” Suddenly, despite the grimness that hadn’t left his face since the arrival of the slave hunters from Virginia, he gave a sharp laugh. “I reckon I don’t sound very Amish, do I?”

“It sounds like a good plan,” she responded. “But you’d need help.”

“Yes. I would. But except for you and Levi and Abraham Yoder, and perhaps your father, I’m not likely to get it in time, am I?” He glanced away from the lane and at her. “What will happen to Moses and Charlie, Lyndel?”

She shook her head.

“Here’s the road. We’re picking up speed now—take care. I hope to see you tomorrow, Lyndel Keim.”

“I’ll look forward to that, Nathaniel King.”

His buggy turned onto the wide roadway and moved off toward his family’s farm. She stood for a while under the stars and as she watched him go, she obeyed a desire to pray for him.
Lord Jesus, have mercy on Nathaniel King…and on us. Have mercy on our country.

That night sleep was slow to come. Two of her younger sisters were in bed with her, constantly tossing and turning in their anxiety. The other sister slept with their mother. When Lyndel did find a moment’s rest, her dreams were torn by flame and gunfire and leering slave hunters and rope. Moses and Charlie were running but they never got away—men on horses always rode them down. She kept telling the men from the plantation to set them at liberty: “America is the land of the free!” But the leader of the slave hunters was there to tell her over and over again, “America is a slave nation, Miss Lyndel. It has been from the beginning and it always will be.”

The next morning as she and Levi entered the house after milking the cows, they sat down to a subdued breakfast. Her father read from the Bible and prayed and her sisters helped their mother wash up but few words were spoken.

After eating, Lyndel made her way silently back to the barn and led
the herd out to pasture. She lingered to watch a number of the cows head toward the creek that ran through the trees a hundred yards away. The sun had been behind a cloud bank, as if reflecting the Keim family’s melancholy mood, but now began to slowly slip free of the gray. Sunlight brought the green of the April grass alive. She closed her eyes a moment and turned her face upward to the sun. How long the winter had been and how unpleasant the evening and night. The warmth felt good inside her and out.

Lord, be with us. There is so much about my world I don’t understand anymore.

Cows bawling made her open her eyes quickly and look toward the trees. Had one of the new calves become stuck in the mud of the creek bank? The bawling grew louder and the cows began trotting out between the tree trunks and branches. Lyndel walked swiftly toward them. They passed by her as she stepped in among the trees, under the spread of green leaves yellowed by the morning light. She saw the creek, brown with soil and silt, but none of the herd was there. Glancing to her left and right, she walked farther into the cluster of birches and aspens. Still nothing. So she headed into the sugar maples about a hundred feet away looking for a calf or milk cow in distress or the sign of a predator like a wild dog or coyote. But there was no sound and nothing at all was moving.

Heading closer to the creek she paused to squint up and down the bank in the flood of fresh sunlight that made the dark water gleam. Picking up a small flat stone she flung it sideways. It skipped three times and sank in the middle of the creek.
You’ll be sitting there at the bottom a long time,
she thought and turned to start back to the farm.

But then as she glanced off the right, she gasped. She looked closer, then turned away, nausea rising.
It can’t be!

But it was. It was the body of Charlie hanging from one of the sugar maples.

Forcing herself closer, hoping against hope, she wrapped her arms around his legs, instinctively trying to push him upward and take the weight of his body off his neck, but she could only do it for a few seconds at a time. His face was no longer Charlie’s, yet she knew it was the
man she had cared for. The word
RUNAWAY
was printed clumsily on a sign around his neck.

Softly she spoke. “Charlie…”

She called his name again and again, but he receded from her sight as if he were at the end of a long hallway with walls painted a bright white. Finally she sank to her knees in the long grass, sobbing, her cheeks burning.

Then at once she felt a storm of strength emerge within her and she got up and began to run.

Crossing the pasture as fast as she could she saw her father and brother standing in front of the barn. Shouting out their names, she kept racing for the gate. They looked up and began running to meet her. Her father was through the gate and caught his daughter as she fell into his arms.

“What is it? What is it?” he demanded, his face full of fear.

“Papa…Papa…Charlie is hanging…he is hanging…” Lyndel could hardly catch her breath and pointed to the maple trees. Her father placed her in her brother’s arms and set out for the sugar maples, his long legs eating up the distance in what seemed like only a few moments. Levi held her to his chest.

“It’s all right,” he soothed.

“It’s not all right,” she gasped. “He’s not alive, I know he’s not alive.”

“You can’t be sure. Do you want me to walk you down there?”

“I don’t ever want to go down to that creek again for the rest of my life.”

“Hey!” It was Nathaniel’s voice. They turned to look. He was just driving into their farmyard in his buggy. “Anybody home?”

Levi waved with one hand, holding on to Lyndel with the other. “Over here!”

Nathaniel laughed and headed toward them. In one hand Lyndel could see he was holding a bunch of snapdragons of all colors mixed in with several branches of white and gray pussy willows. She watched him walk up to the gate and saw his boyish excitement at coming to pay a call on his friend’s sister. How good it was to see his smile, a smile for her and because of her, so that even in her sadness she felt a short,
sharp surge of joy as he unlatched the gate, grinning and green-eyed handsome.

But it couldn’t last. No, she knew somehow that everything was going to change forever when he found out what had happened to Charlie. She couldn’t guess what that change would mean for him… and possibly for her with this new fondness that seemed to be springing up between them…or even if it might bring about its sudden end. So she savored the last few seconds of his burst of playfulness as he walked up to her and Levi across the grass and then she prepared to let her happiness go.

He took off his broad-brimmed black hat with one swipe of his hand and bowed. Then he extended the snapdragons and pussy willows. “Miss Keim, if I may, I have come to pay you a visit long overdue.”

She had told herself not to smile but she couldn’t help but respond to his enthusiasm and energy with anything less. She took the bouquet from his hand and pressed it to her face. “Thank you, Nathaniel.”

“My pleasure.”

“Nathaniel—”

He heard the catch in her voice and immediately his smile faded. “What’s wrong? I thought you wanted me to come.”

“It’s not that.”

“Then what?”

“Nathaniel, please go across the pasture to the sugar maples. My father is there. He needs your help.”

“Of course. Is something wrong?”