The Wings of Morning (23 page)

“Why didn’t you finish that German off?” asked Sharples, taking a chair next to Jude in the mess.

“Which one?” Jude asked.

“The one that almost got me.”

“I took off his rudder and he headed for home. I had to choose between helping out you and Billy or chasing him toward Pont-à-Moussan. It was an easy choice to make, sir.”

“But you’re the only one of us who didn’t get a German.”

“I have no regrets, sir. I’m glad you’re sitting here now and that Billy is plunked down over there stuffing himself with T-bones.”

Sharples clapped him on the shoulder. “You’re too good for this war, kid.”

Alone in his room, Jude sat on the edge of the bed and looked at his hands, the hands with which he flew. He had enlisted to save lives, the lives of his friends and Amish brothers at the army base in Pennsylvania. He didn’t blame Hosea for choosing not to make that clear to the Lapp Amish of Paradise—the one-star general had been serious about further arrests and detentions, perhaps even dire consequences for the church, if it ever got out that Jude had been coerced into flying for the U.S. army. It was a time of war. It didn’t pay to tweak Uncle Sam’s nose when his blood was up and he was in a fighting mood. No, he had done what he felt he had to do to save the other men.

The result, though, was that he was now in combat and doing what he had to do to save both Germans and Americans. But he wondered how long he could get away with it. Suppose the bursts of Vickers machine-gun fire that had ripped up one Pfalz’s rudder and torn the covering off another’s wing…suppose those bullets had happened to strike differently…what if both planes had simply blown apart instead? Jude let out a breath and rubbed both hands over his face. It made him sick to think about it.

There was that verse he had read in the Bible the other day, a verse people in Paradise quoted all the time. Jude closed his eyes and it came to mind—
And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose
. He knew he loved God. God had mattered to him long before the Whetstones became Amish. It was the last part of the verse that troubled him. How could he believe he was one of
the called
according to God’s purpose? How could he claim this verse as his own, sitting in his room in France, his pursuit aircraft perched on the grass not two hundred yards away and ready to take to the skies in the morning to hunt and kill Germans? It was against everything he believed in as an Amish man. He had only wanted to turn and tumble and twist in the air far above the earth. He had only wanted to fly into sunrises and sunsets. And it had led to this. The army had noticed him and cornered him, and it had led to this.

Perhaps it was my pride. Wanting to be so good as an aviator. Wanting to show off to Lyyndaya last summer. Wanting to outsmart the pilots that jumped me at the July picnic. Suppose I had let them win? Suppose I had deliberately flown poorly and let them trounce me? Then they would have flown away happy and left me alone. They would have considered me a mediocre pilot and left me to myself. The army would never have come to call or schemed how to pressure me into enlisting. My Amish friends would never have been put in harm’s way. I would never have had to intervene to save them by giving the army what it wanted. My pride has been my undoing
.

Jude groaned and lay back on his bed. He felt trapped.
God, I am so sorry
, he prayed.
I don’t know how to do anything that is not my best, whether I’m at the forge or at the controls of a Curtiss Jenny or a Nieuport 28. I don’t know how to be less of what I am, less of what has been created in me. I’m sorry I’m not more humble. I’m sorry I didn’t perform more poorly when the occasion warranted it. Yet here I am, Lord—here I am in the middle of this terrible war. What shall I do? Is it possible, is it in any way possible, that in my small life, here and now, blemished and sinful though I might be, you can make all things work together for good? Can you? Will you?

L
yyndaya stepped down from the buggy and walked into the post office. She could never avert her eyes from newspaper headlines these days and now she noticed one in a rack that said
Doughboys Push Germans Back at Chateau Thierry and Belleau Wood
. Nearby was an article in smaller print about a flu outbreak in Kansas that she promptly ignored upon reading a line of type with the words
American Aero Squadrons Score Victories
. She waited a few minutes for another woman to finish her business and then approached the window with, “Good morning, Edward,” handing him an envelope and some coins.

“Tuesday, June eleventh, and here you are, just like a grandfather clock,” announced the clerk, taking the envelope and money.

“I hope not like a grandfather clock, Edward.”

“Well, they don’t make princess clocks, do they?”

She lowered her eyes. “You are quite gallant today. What’s the occasion?”

“Our boys are putting a licking on the Huns land, sea, and air. You’ll see. With our army over there it’ll all be done within a matter of months. Which means you’ll see your beau again before you know it.”

Lyyndaya considered the thin, balding man’s cheerful face. “Are you going to make a prediction, Edward?”

“Sure. Why not? It’s the eleventh today, right? Three, four—” He paused to count on his fingers. Then looked up. “All done by October. Or maybe November or December. On the eleventh. Not the tenth or twelfth. Right on the eleventh.”

“Surely you can’t be that precise, Edward.”

“Care to make a wager?”

Lyyndaya smiled and shook her head. “You’re well aware of the answer to that. Only God knows the future, Edward. If he has imparted that information to you we shall soon find out. Please recall that those who got their predictions wrong in biblical times were stoned to death as false prophets.”

“Ha!” Edward drew back in mock terror. “I’ll be sure to wear a suit of armor. But, somehow, I believe my hunch is right. Home for Christmas!”

Lyyndaya was turning to leave, when she paused and looked back at the clerk. “Edward, would there be anything wrong with you telling me if I have any letters from Jude?”

“Not as far as I know. You’ve got two. One from May and one from a week ago.”

Edward watched her eyes turn a brilliant green and thought, not for the first time, what a fine-looking woman Lyyndaya Kurtz was.

“Thank you,” she said.

To keep her in the post office a little longer, Edward blurted, “Miss Zook had two from Jude Whetstone as well, but she told me to throw them out.”

Lyyndaya stopped and returned to the clerk’s wicket, her eyes large. “What did you say?”

“I didn’t want to do it, but she insisted. Had me show them to her and then had me rip them up right in front of her eyes.”

“Why?”

“She didn’t say why. Had me hand over the letters to him she’d posted with us as well. Six or seven of them. Took them all and walked out.”

“And when was this?”

“Last Friday.”

Lyyndaya went out the door quickly and into her buggy, snapping the traces and putting Trillium into a fast trot.
What was Emma doing? What sort of thoughts could be running through her head to make her destroy Jude’s letters?
When she pulled up in front of the Zook home she saw Emma in a sunbonnet working at a large flowerbed of roses. Once she had climbed down and walked over, Emma looked up, read her face, and tugged off her white gardening gloves.

“Hello, sister,” Emma greeted her, but she didn’t smile and her green eyes were a dark jade.

Lyyndaya didn’t waste any time with the usual pleasantries. “They told me at the post office you had destroyed the letters Jude sent you.”

Emma met her eyes. “Edward or Henry Jacobs had no business saying so. But it doesn’t matter. I would have told you.”

“They also said you asked for the return of the letters you’ve written, the ones they have been setting aside since April.”

“Yes.” Her face was defiant.

“Why, Emma? Why are you turning your back on Jude right now, when he needs our friendship the most?”

Emma’s eyes softened slightly. “Come, Lyyndy, walk with me a few minutes.”

They had scarcely started down the lane to the road before Emma began to talk nonstop, like a green summer stream spilling over its banks. “It’s like a game, you know, Lyyndy, just as we played games when we were children. Jude writes us letters, but we never see them. We mail him letters back, but they never leave Paradise. In our hearts we say, ah, he will read them someday, and after he does, he shall choose one of us for a bride. But it’s a game. He will never read them, never see them, never know about them unless we get a chance to tell him we wrote them and he goes to the post office to pick them up. And if, God forbid, he doesn’t come back from Europe, it will have made no difference at all.”

“But, Emma,” Lyyndaya protested, “when you write them, you think about him, don’t you? And once you are thinking about him, do you also not start praying for him? This is what happens with me.”

“Oh, I suppose, but mostly it’s all a fantasy, Lyyndy. Something that goes on in our heads. He doesn’t hear us, we don’t hear him. He’s been gone now for how long? If you count the army camp as well as England and France? Eight, nine months? And how much longer will it go on? Another year? Two? What if he never comes home? Or what if he comes home and never confesses and repents?”

“Of course he will confess and repent!”

“Then why did he enlist in the first place? He could be here right now, walking beside us, teasing us, choosing me or choosing you to be his bride. But no—he chooses his aeroplanes and the war over us. What makes you think he will come back and repent? Why, he may even decide not to return at all. If the war ended next week he might not show up here. Why wouldn’t he stay in the army and keep flying their planes for them? He has already done it once and turned his back on you and me and on his faith, on his father, on the church. What makes you think he will give up flying just to be back in Paradise? He didn’t care about us in 1917. Why should he care about us in 1918 or 19 or 20?”

“I believe there’s more to the story than what we know. Something else happened to make him enlist and go overseas. He didn’t leave us on purpose.”

Emma stopped and looked at her in exasperation. “You’re always saying that. Your father is always saying that. My papa tells me it’s just wishful thinking. No one twisted Jude’s arm, he says. No one put a bayonet in his back. You simply won’t accept that he up and did this of his own free will. Instead, you insist that we believe in his innocence and goodness despite the fact he is now flying planes in a war and shooting at other men.”

“We don’t know that,” Lyyndaya shot back.

“Of course we know it. Remember how he defeated three or four planes here last summer, right over the Stoltzfus hay field? Do you imagine they have him peeling potatoes in an army kitchen in Paris? A newsman came to Papa last week, yes, a reporter from a big New York paper, can you imagine? He told Papa that Jude Whetstone was showing up in military dispatches more and more often. Why? Because he’s rescuing other pilots by chasing Germans all over the sky, shooting their wings off, knocking their planes to the ground. Yes, that is what he said. Papa didn’t have much to tell him, only that Jude had always been a good boy and had embraced the teachings of the Amish faith. He said to the reporter he didn’t understand why Jude had decided to fight in the war. ‘Oh, but it is an important war for America,’ this man tells Papa. Papa says to him, ‘I do not see that America is threatened or less free that we should fight in a war thousands of miles away.’”

They were standing by the side of the road in the bright June light. Emma’s eyes had grown darker and darker as they talked. Now she took one of Lyyndaya’s hands in her own. “I’m sorry, Lyyndy. I can no longer pretend to understand Jude. I can’t understand why he left us to kill people. Even if he came back tomorrow I could not…marry such a person. If you wish to keep waiting and hoping, if you believe there is some great secret that will be revealed one day and absolve him of his sins—well, I can’t stop you, can I, sister? But I myself, I must move on. I have invited other men to visit me, men from Intercourse and Bird-in-Hand, even from here in Paradise. No need to give you a list of names. You shall find out soon enough when the tongues start to wag.” She leaned over and kissed Lyyndaya on the cheek. “It’s not as if I’ll stop praying for him. And I do wish he would come home and say he’s been wrong to do what he’s done. But even if he did, that wouldn’t be enough for me. I want a man, a true Amish man, who is more…pure.”

They walked back to the Zook house in silence. Lyyndaya climbed into the buggy and clicked her tongue, and Trillium began to walk. When she glanced back from the road Emma’s tall frame was bent over among the red and pink roses once more. Her heart heavy as rock, Lyyndaya let Trillium take her time, in no hurry to get home and start on laundry or baking. Emma’s words had put darkness and a doubt into her. She noticed that though there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, in herself they covered her mind and her soul.