The Wings of Morning (11 page)

“I walked here.”

“In this heat? Did no one want to lend you the buggy?”

“It was my choice.”

“Sit down, please.”

Lyyndaya sat with him on the wooden bench under the shade tree. She was glad to be away from the heat of the forge and was sure Jude felt the same way. He downed one glass of lemonade, then another, and another. Finally, with the fourth glass, he began to sip. She had drunk about half her glass.

“Do you want more, Lyyndy?”

She shook her head. “Thank you, not yet.”

Jude leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “Your father would also have told you he was gone so long because Bishop Zook asked him to meet with my father and himself in our parlor. Just after the officers and the sheriff left.”

“Yes. He said the three of them had decided they must send several men from the colony to the governor to protest this idea that some of our people might not be exempted from military service on religious grounds. Perhaps the pastors would go as well as the bishop. Even bishops from some of the other settlements might make the trip.”

“Are you worried, Lyyndy?”

“Of course I’m worried. This is because you fly so well. The British officer is behind this. He’s trying to force our government into making you a pilot for their war in France. Why, it was only a few Sundays ago Bishop Zook prayed for some of the Amish and Old Order Mennonites east of us. They have been persecuted by the communities near to them for not sending their young men to fight and not supporting the war by purchasing war bonds.”

“I remember, Lyyndy.”

“Even the U.S. Army was making life difficult for them. Six Amish men were forced into uniform and made to carry rifles and drill with a battalion—”

“And Hosea stood up and said we should not only pray for the Amish and Mennonites but for those who persecuted them as well, including the army.”

She nodded. “I did pray in that manner. But even with the prayers I’m still worried and my spirit is troubled. The army could persecute you for refusing to fight.”

“Well, you know, I’m not so worried.”

“Why not?”

Jude stood up and stretched and looked down at her. “This is a good country. America has always been kind to the Amish. We have many freedoms. Our nation will not hurt us.”

He poured himself more lemonade and gestured with the pitcher. She nodded and he filled her glass. Then he began to pace.

“Still, I don’t know what a few of the officers may try to do in secret. It’s important to me that my father be safe. The whole colony, all our people, all the Amish and Mennonite people who have chosen to follow Jesus Christ without taking up the sword. So even though I believe our country will protect us, there may be schemes hatched in the shadows that Washington and the president will not know about.”

Lyyndaya saw a glint of uncertainty in his brown eyes. She was holding her fresh glass of lemonade in both hands in her lap, untouched. “I can pray for you.”

“Yes? You would like to do that? Here? Now?”

“Yes.”

“I must ask this one thing if you pray.”

“What is that?”

“I would like it if you hold my hand as you do so.”

Lyyndaya smiled up at him. “Really, I’m not afraid to do that. But only while we pray.”

“Of course.”

He sat beside her and bowed his head. She rested her right hand lightly on his left. The skin was surprisingly soft at the back of his hand, but she also felt the roughness and strength of fingers that were curled into a loose fist. She put all this from her mind and began to speak to God in High German as she’d been taught since she was a girl. The war concerned her, flying freely in a tall blue sky being turned from a joy into a curse. Freedoms lost concerned her, freedoms that had always been part of the promise of America, freedom that would be dishonored if their faith in Christ was now ignored or trampled on.

Oh, Lord, help us, oh, Lord, do not desert us, do not desert this country, help us bring peace and forgiveness into this clash of nations, not more violence and harshness. Tell us what to do, tell us what to say, and when it comes time to decide may our decisions be your decisions, may they be the right decisions, the ones that make life abundant on this earth. We would not be a plague to this nation that has blessed us so much, we would not be locusts that devour. We would be light as Jesus is light, strength as Jesus is strength, love as God is love
.

Im Namen des Vaters, des Sohnes, und des Heiligen Geistes
.

Amen
.

She gave Jude’s fingers a squeeze and then removed her hand.

“
Danke
,” he said.

“
Bitte
.”

He leaned forward, his hands knotted together, his arms resting on his knees. “So now tell me something. Why have your father and mother let you come to see me?”

“I’m not sure. Papa knows the people like you and he doesn’t want the church to think he’s against you.”

“Isn’t he?”

“Oh, I don’t know, it is all mixed up with the flying.” Lyyndaya put her head back and looked up at the leaves of the tree they were sitting under. “But the moment I told him you had stood up to the British officer when it came to the war, that you had made your case for not bearing arms, for peace, something lit up in his face. He decided then and there to come to you to have our horseshoes done. After he returned with the news you might not be exempted from military service, I think he felt a great deal of sympathy for you. He insisted I visit. You must understand he lost his grandfather in the war to save the Union, and not just his grandfather, but many other family members as well.”

“I see. Then does this mean—” He looked at her, but did not finish his sentence.

He had such a hopeful puppy-dog look in his face that Lyyndaya realized he truly did care for her. She felt warmth inside her as well as a sudden ache to gather him into her arms and kiss the top of his head and his beautiful brown hair. Instead, she only smiled sadly.

“Courting remains out of the question. Papa made that very clear. But we are permitted to visit each other at our homes and at worship gatherings. And we can walk together anytime we like—so long as we keep walking and do not hide away somewhere.”

“Walking? Is that why you came here on foot?”

Lyyndaya felt the blood come to her face. “Maybe.”

He got to his feet. “Then let’s walk.”

“Walk to where?”

“Philadelphia. New York. Los Angeles in California. What do I care where we go so long as it’s you I am walking with?”

He extended his hand and helped her up from the bench.

“Well,” she said with a sly smile, “what will Emma Zook think?”

“Probably the same thing David Hostetler will think, and Jacob Beiler, Jonathan Harshberger, Samuel Miller, Hosea Zook—”

She laughed and slapped him lightly on the shoulder as they walked slowly out to the road. “All those boys never come to the house.”

“They will now, if we’re seen together.”

“Why is that?”

“They all thought the two of us had no chance. Now they’ll be worried. So they will begin to pester you, bringing flowers and chocolates like the English do.”

“Stop, Jude—no Amish boy is going to do that to win a proper Amish girl.”

“And you are the proper Amish girl?”

“Yes.”

“I do not think of you that way.”

“No?” Lyyndaya looked at him as they went along the dirt road under the July sun. “How do you think of me then?”

“As Barrel Roll Kurtz. That is my new nickname for you.”

He anticipated another swat from her hand and ran ahead, laughing. “Catch me if you can.”

“It’s not seemly,” she called after him.

“Is it that…or is it that my Lyyndy Lyyndy Lou has become old and fat?”

Lyyndaya drew a sharp breath and said, “So that’s what you think?” She began to run and caught him almost immediately and gave him a firm slap on the back. “Who is old and fat now, Jude Whetstone? You’re it!”

The two laughed and took delight in playing again as they had done as children. A teasing game of “chase,” then a run to the small grove of willow trees…and back again.

It was summer and it was the perfect time to be in love.

I
t became, Lyyndaya thought as the days rolled on in sunshine and in thunder, raindrops dripping from barns and oak trees, sun ripening the green tobacco leaves and the golden corn, the perfect summer of long walks with Jude, visits after church, long talks at picnics and in each other’s homes. They were able to spend so much time together that she found she didn’t mind it when on occasion she saw him with Emma Zook or Katie Fisher because she had seen, again and again, the way his brown eyes softened and warmed when he looked at her.

“I think he just might love me,” she said to Ruth one August evening while they were brushing out each other’s hair and watching the sun set from their window like the ball of a brass bedpost.

Ruth snorted. “I do not think it. I know it.”

“Truly?”

“How can you ask? You’re a woman just as I am, aren’t you? If I can feel it from the other side of the room, how can you not feel it when you are two feet away from him at the kitchen table?”

“I don’t know—what if I’m simply imagining it?”

“Do you never look into his eyes?”

“Of course I look at his eyes.”

“Or are you always staring down oh-so-modestly at the salt and pepper shakers?”

“I look at his eyes!”

“And you read nothing there?”

Lyyndaya stopped pulling the brush down the gleaming length of her sister’s dark hair. “What if I read what I want to read? The way some people go to the Holy Bible and tell us it says what they want it to say when it doesn’t say anything like that at all?”

Ruth glanced back at her. “Are you finished?”

“With your hair or my questions?”

“I think with both.” She turned around and took the brush from Lyyndaya’s hands. “Honestly, Lyyndy, if you can’t tell that man is crazy about you, I worry about your eyesight—and your intuition.”

“Why? I’m just trying to approach this with humility.”

“Humility is one thing. Discernment is something else. Turn around.” She began to brush Lyyndaya’s long blonde hair. “You need both. Don’t deny the one to exalt the other. What good is a humble farmer who can’t plow a straight furrow or a humble milkmaid who keeps missing the pail?”

“Then I shall exercise both,” Lyyndaya said. “I shall not miss the pail!”

It was the very next morning that the two sisters found themselves walking in the direction of the Whetstone house. It had been days since Lyyndaya had heard from Jude—she knew he was busy at the smithy—but there was something more. She just felt it. Something was amiss, and she and Ruth would simply take a walk past Jude’s house and see what, if anything, might come of it.

As they approached the house, Ruth was the first to speak. “Isn’t that the Zooks’ buggy in the drive?”

Lyyndaya squinted. “Yes, I think so.”

“Emma is visiting, trying to undo Jude’s affection for you,” said Ruth.

“No, I don’t think so,” said Lyyndaya. “Besides, let her try if she must. What will be, will be. I can only stand in front of Jude as who I am—Lyyndaya Kurtz. I don’t have Emma Zook’s eyes. My skin is not the color of cream. I’m not so tall and slender. My father is not the bishop.”

As they walked closer to the house strong male voices came to them from inside. Then they noticed the army truck parked on the other side of the house and a cluster of soldiers at the bottom of the front steps.

Before they could speak, Emma Zook came running down the drive—her cheeks shone with her crying. She seized onto Lyyndaya’s hands and sobbed, “Please, Lyyndy, you care for him as much as I do. Can you not help? Didn’t your father work for the government in Philadelphia before he joined the Amish people?”