The Thorn (40 page)

"I'll run for help." Rose dashed out the back door and lifted her skirt as she ran as hard as she'd ever run through the bishop's pasture, then into Dat's own immense field, her lungs burning. Oh, dear Lord in heaven!

Never once did she slow her pace till she reached the old phone shanty. "Someone's terribly hurt," Rose told the operator, then gave the location of the bishop's house. "Please send help right away!"

After calling for help, Rose ran all the way back to the bishop's house. She found Nick still standing in the kitchen, leaning hard against the far wall, his shoulders hunched forward, eyes glassy. He glimpsed at her, but she looked away. For the minutes that followed, they watched together in somber silence as the bishop made repeated efforts to keep Christian alive.

0 Lord, please let him live....

But despite the attempts, by the time the ambulance arrived, Christian had drawn his final breath. Rose wept quietly as men wearing white rushed into the house and began yet another fruitless attempt to revive Christian. She bowed her head, shielding her view.

Despite the activity in the room, she heard the bishop and Nick talking in the corner. Nick was describing Christian's fall, saying he'd cracked his head on a boulder deep in the ravine. She wondered, from the bishop's skeptical tone, if the minister thought Nick was lying. And the bishop continued to ask Nick pointed questions even as his son was being wheeled out on a covered gurney.

Suddenly Nick moved away from the man of God and plodded off toward the barn. In disbelief, Rose watched him go, struck by how exposed he looked without his thick black mane.

Shaken, she returned to the house to sit with Barbara and Verna, who were huddled near the woodstove in the kitchen. Anna and Susannah had gone upstairs to be with the children, and she could hear their soft footsteps just overhead. Oh, how she wished Mammi Sylvia would come to comfort the bishop's wife - the woman's constant weeping ripped at Rose's heart. She was relieved when her father and grandfather arrived to inquire about all the commotion, what with the siren swelling up and down Salem Road.

Not long after, Mammi Sylvia arrived in time to help Rose and Verna get Barbara upstairs to bed. Then, kneeling on either side of her, the women prayed for God's presence to be near, especially to the mourning mother. Fill the room and our hearts with your sweet solace, 0 Lord, Rose prayed silently. She did not know what else to pray at such a dreadful time.

Her grandmother reached for the Bible on the nightstand and began to read softly from the ninety-fifth psalm, still on her knees. it `O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the Lord our maker. For he is our God; and we are the people of his pasture.... ' "

Rose waited till Barbara's heartbreaking cries had faded to soft whimpering, like an inconsolable child's, before slipping out of the room to the stairs. In a state of shock, Rose stepped out the back door, wondering, How can it be - Christian is dead?

She couldn't help but remember her brief conversation with him just yesterday. "Soon, very soon," he'd said with such urgency. What had he wanted to tell her? And why, oh why, had she dismissed him so quickly?

Trudging back home, Rose was sick with worry for Nick. What would become of him now? The words of King David's psalm plagued her. Mammi had stopped reading just short of the plea for people not to harden their hearts - as in the day of temptation in the wilderness. . . . Many times Dat had read the entire psalm for evening worship: It is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my ways.

Family worship that night was a somber scene - Mamm looked terribly forlorn as Dat read the Bible, his face serious and drawn. Rose's grandparents joined them, as well, and nary a one of them spoke once Dat offered the evening prayers. Afterward, Rose hurried to her room, tears falling uncontrollably as she wept for Christian ... for Nick. For all of them.

Though she tried, it was impossible to erase the image of Christian's broken body upon Barbara's long table as he lay there, bleeding. Or Nick's strange demeanor - his unevenly chopped hair, his face wracked by shame. She suspected Christian of forcibly cutting off the ponytail, inciting Nick's long-simmering rage. With all of her heart, she hoped what followed had been an accident and nothing worse. Yet ... the two had been enemies from the very first day of Nick's arrival.

When Rose lay down to sleep that night, her dreams were shrouded in darkness.

The next day, Nick was gone. "Disappeared in the night," Dat told Rose, his face as grim as ever she'd seen it. "Left his Amish clothing behind ..."

"Will the police find him and arrest him?" she asked.

Dat shook his head solemnly. "According to the bishop, they already talked with him last night - and several neighbors, too. But no one saw or heard anything unusual, so in the end, they believed Nick was tellin' the truth."

Rose felt her breath escape her. "Do you believe he's innocent?"

Her father hesitated. "We might never know for sure, Rosie. But it's not our place to judge. Nick's soul is in God's hands now."

She trembled at the thought.

The rest of the day, she felt as heavy as a bale of hay. Rose slogged through her chores, keenly aware of Nick's absence. The hours passed in a haze of grief. Surely Christian's untimely death had been an accident, just as Nick claimed.

Still, as much as she cared for him, the rumors were spreading. Soon there were more than a few fingers pointing at the boy who'd never embraced their culture - his hasty disappearance seen as the most damaging proof of all.

All the years of their friendship ... had Rose ever really known him? To think she'd come that close to Nick's beloved "edge," and nearly fallen into the chasm, right along with him.

Following Christian's funeral Wednesday morning, Rose and Hen walked to the burial service in the fenced Amish cemetery. The bishop and his wife were surrounded by their married daughters and sons-in-law, all ashen with sorrow.

The hole that had been dug for the newly built coffin was filled halfway with dirt before the men removed their hats and the preacher read a hymn from the old hymnal. Afterward, the grave was filled with the remaining soil. Christian's mother nearly fainted when it was time to take leave of the mounded earth, and Verna's husband, Levi, quickly steadied her and helped her back to the gray carriage.

So this is grief. Rose could not imagine what Bishop Aaron and his family were experiencing. My own anguish is nothing compared to theirs, she thought as clusters of families slowly returned to their buggies. Several headed up the road, back toward their homes, while the bishop and his extended family walked silently to their own farmhouse for a private meal.

"The bishop lost two sons in the space of one day," Hen whispered to her as they walked toward home together. "His only sons ...

"One from this life, the other to the world," Rose managed to say, feeling awfully conflicted. In the short span since Christian's passing, she'd had plenty of time to think. And to reconsider, too. She missed the Nick she knew, but she was also relieved he was gone from their midst. Wasn't it best? After all, he'd rejected everything that was good and noble ... each of the valuable life lessons he'd learned from the bishop. He rejected God, Rose realized anew. And at what cost?

Even so, despite Nick's stubbornness, part of her wanted to believe the Scripture he'd heard had not fallen on unfertile soil. Or deaf ears. She prayed that Nick might one day understand fully the reason he'd been handpicked to be brought up as an Amish Christian. Surely there was still hope for him.

As they walked, Rose glanced at Hen. The Lord seemed to be calling her sister to return to Him. Hen gave her a sad little smile and reached for her hand. Rose was glad for her sister's comforting touch at such an unspeakable time. Thankful, too, she hadn't had that final conversation with Nick, as she'd originally hoped. Best to just push that out of my mind, she thought, wondering how Nick could possibly find any happiness now ... wherever he ended up living.

Rose sighed. Truth be told, there were moments she wished she'd never known him. And yet, how could she forget him? Indeed, she must continually remember him in her daily prayers.

She thought back to the afternoon in the ravine and shuddered. Nick had given her the freedom to choose - nearly impossible as that choice had been. Despite that, perhaps the time Nick had spent amongst them could be deemed providential, just as his leaving was, as well.

Solomon could envision a hot meal and an invigorating shower. This final October day had seemed longer than most as he had finished up baling corn fodder. Still, there was another good hour or so before supper.

He wandered outside and across the long expanse of pastureland to look in on his bishop neighbor, mighty worried for him. Since Christian's death, the bishop's ruddy face had turned as withered as some of the shriveled grapes that still clung to the vine. The poor man was carrying the deepest kind of grief a soul could bear.

A father shouldn't outlive his son, thought Sol as he pushed open the bishop's barn door. He was surprised to hear Rose Ann's voice. Moseying over the cement floor, toward the stable area, he could see her tending to Nick's favorite horse, Pepper. She was currying him nice and slow, making long, steady strokes - talking to him all the while, though Sol could make out but a few words.