Whispers of a New Dawn (12 page)

“Sounds like a picnic. Am I invited?”

“Sure. If you help me with this crazy big watermelon.” She was trying to keep it from rolling off the counter. “I can never cut the slices evenly.”

Nate got up and came over, holding his coffee mug. “Aren’t you going to wait until you serve it?”

“It’s always so hectic. I like to have a couple of dozen slices ready. I’ll pack the whole thing in ice.”

“All right. Anything to get to one of your picnics. Where’s the knife?”

She put a long knife in his hand. “Hey. Some of your hair is coming back.”

“I’m surprised too. The doctors said it wouldn’t. But they didn’t know I had a grandmother who loves to make up poultices.”

“Did she put something on your head?”

Nate began to cut into the melon. “It was our secret. We never told anyone. I slept with all these strange mixtures on my scalp the first two weeks. She kept them in place with cloths and string.”

“Oh, my. I would have paid to see that.”

“You could never have paid me enough to let you look.”

“Just think what I could have done with a camera.”

“Uh-uh, sis. No cameras among the Amish.”

Hoofbeats sounded in the yard. Becky saw Ruth and Lyyndaya appear in the window with another load of washing to hang up and watched them turn in surprise and call out to the rider. She couldn’t hear the response. Feet thudded up the porch steps and the door flew open.

“Excuse me. I’m sorry.” It was Joshua Miller, his face flushed. “Please come, Rebecca. There’s been an accident.”

“What’s happened?” Becky felt her body go rigid. “Is it my father? Uncle Luke?”

“It’s Moses. A gust of wind took him off the roof. We’ve sent for the ambulance. No one wants to move him. He’s badly hurt.” He looked at Nate. “I’ve come by horseback to get her more quickly. Can she follow me by buggy?”

“Yes.” Nate squeezed her shoulder. “I’ll get Katie harnessed.”

Both her brother and Joshua seemed strange to her. “I…I’m not sure what to do.”

“Come with me and get in the buggy,” Nate said. “I’ll drive.”

“You can’t.”

“I can.” Nate looked at Joshua. “Thank you. I’ll just harness the mare.”

“Your mother and your sister are doing that,” Joshua responded.

Nate put his arm around Becky and took her out onto the porch. Lyyndaya and Aunt Ruth were talking rapidly to each other in Pennsylvania Dutch as they got the mare harnessed to the buggy. Nate walked Becky down the steps. The two women threw their arms around her and held her tight.

“
Es wird in Ordnung sein
,” said her mother, rubbing her back. “It will be all right.”

“
Gott ist gut
.” Ruth kissed her. “We will pray together on the way.”

Nate slowly climbed into the driver’s seat. His mother was about to say something but he shook his head and held up a hand. He grasped the reins. “Get in. Quick.”

Ruth helped Becky up but Lyyndaya held back. “Grandmother and Grandfather are in the orchard. They won’t know where everyone has gone.”

Joshua was mounted on his large black gelding. “I’ll tell them. You must go ahead. Please.”

Nate snapped the reins and called out, and Katie set off at a brisk pace down the lane to the main road. They turned right to the Yoder homestead, wheels and hooves kicking up dust. Nate kept calling,
Hey, hey
, and flicking the reins. Becky hardly heard him or felt the motion
of the buggy. Her mother and her aunt were squeezing her hands and praying at the same time in German. She understood most of the words but they didn’t stay with her. In her mind Moses was sitting up against the barn with his arm in a sling, taking some water from her father, smiling, waiting for her, not as badly off as Joshua had made it sound. But when they arrived she saw a ring of men and women around a body on the ground, and the body had a sheet over it up to the neck. She ran across the farmyard. His tanned face was as white as limestone.

“Moses!”

His eyes opened as she smoothed back his hair. Blood swiftly covered her fingers.

“Hey.” She could hardly hear him. “I’m…sorry…Rebecca…I think I did not…did not tie off the rope…properly…it did not hold me when I fell…”

“Shh. Shh.” She ran her hands over his cheeks. “They’ve called for an ambulance. It will be here soon.”

“But not soon enough…I was only waiting for you, that’s all—”

“Hush. Don’t say that. You’ll be fine. You have to be fine. For me. I need you. Moses. Listen to me.”

“I’m so sorry—”

“Moses!” In a flash, as if someone had snuffed out a candle flame with a quick pinch of their fingers, the light left his eyes. “Moses!” She threw her body over his, lifting his head and kissing his lips and face. “Moses! I love you! Don’t…”

Blood was on her hands and mouth and cheeks. It trickled down her face as her father gently pulled her away. She buried herself in his arms.

“Oh, Daddy! What has God done? What’s happened?”

“I am here for you. Always. I am here.”

“I loved him! I loved him!”

Hands touched her back. She made out a few of the faces. One was Bishop Zook, tears sliding into his white beard. Another was Pastor Miller, his dark eyes darker than she had ever seen them. Another
was Moses’ mother, Emma. She felt Emma’s kiss on her head. Then watched as her own mother took Emma in her arms.

The grief was the sharpest pain Becky had ever known. It cut into her chest and stomach and throat and raked her arms. Deep cries came from far inside, cries she had never heard come from her body before. She thought she sounded like a creature caught in a trap or sinking into a slough, its hope gone, desperate. She didn’t want to eat, she didn’t want to drink, didn’t care if she took another breath. Sleep didn’t come and she didn’t care that it wouldn’t come.

She had never seen a dead room but the Yoder house had one. Moses’ body was washed and dressed in clean black pants and a clean white shirt and laid in a simple wooden coffin Bishop Zook had built for his grandson the very afternoon of the accident. The next day people filed past him in silence. Becky wanted to go to him, but part of her couldn’t move. Her mother and Aunt Ruth and Emma helped her, walked over with her. No makeup was used as the English would have done. It was his face, his eyebrows, his perfect features. “How sweet you are,” she whispered over and over again, “how sweet you are, my darling.”

Bishop Zook wept as he spoke a message in the house about his grandson and the love of God. “No matter how we may hurt today, no matter how we may grieve, God is in this, he is not far away, he has his hands on this, he has Moses in his arms.
Die Liebe Gottes ist nicht aufzuhalten
.”

The love of God is unstoppable
.

A long dark line of buggies wound its way to the graveside. The sun was hot and clear.
It is not right
, she thought,
that he should be dead on a day as beautiful as this, that we should be putting him in the ground on a day like this, that we should be covering him in earth when he loved the air and the sky so much
. Nate kept his arm around her the entire time. She couldn’t stand on her own. He seemed to know that and she was grateful for his strength.

“Thank you, Nate,” she murmured. “Thank you.”

“Shh,” he said in his quiet voice. “God knew I needed to be here
and that’s why I’m no longer in China. It’s a small thing for me to do for you.”

“It’s not a small thing…”

“Shh. All right. I love you. We’ll get through this.”

“I don’t see how. I feel like going down into the grave with him.”

“We’ll make it.”

“Even if we do make it, I’ll never be the same again.”

“Shh.”

“I won’t.”

One week later she tried to return to the classes. Everyone was gentle, everyone spoke quietly as they read verses from the Bible to her about the Amish way. Pastor King began to lecture about how becoming Amish was more important than anyone or anything, that everything else that happened in life was as dross compared to worshipping God as an Amish man or woman should, that nothing—not even grief or sorrow or loss—must blind her for a moment to the path he had laid out for her among the Amish people.

“No one must take the place of God. No one must be higher than him in our thoughts. No matter who on earth we love, it must be God whom we love more.” He nodded at Becky as she sat silently in her chair. “Sometimes those we care for are taken away because we put them in the place where only God is supposed to be. In order to bless us more richly, he removes those we love too much so that he can love us more. No one can be where he should be in our heart.”

Becky squeezed her hands tightly together. “What?”

Bishop Zook stood up and motioned for Pastor King to take his seat. “It is perhaps too strongly put. Remember this is a difficult time for the child.”

“The Lord gives, the Lord takes away,” rumbled Pastor King. “Often enough we are the reason he must take away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Becky got to her feet. “I must go. I’m sorry. I’m not well.”

Pastor King folded his arms over his chest.

“I understand,” Bishop Zook said. “These are rough waters for us all. Let me drive you home.”

“Thank you. My brother is outside. He has been waiting.”

“Let me bless you.” He bowed his head and prayed briefly in German. Then he looked up. “We will see you here Thursday night?”

Becky didn’t respond. She left the Zook house and climbed into the buggy beside Nate. The sun had set and a cool wind moved over the fields.

“How was it?” he asked as he urged Katie forward.

She didn’t answer.

“You look as if you’re carved out of stone.”

“Maybe I am.”

“Hungry?”

She shook her head. “I don’t care if I ever eat again.”

He clicked his tongue at Katie. “Is your next class Thursday?”

Becky stared straight ahead.

Nate tried again. “Are you going to the Thursday class?”

“I’m not going to another Amish class for the rest of my life.”

He was silent a few moments as the horse’s hooves clacked against the roadway. “Why?”

“King.”

“What happened?”

“He said Moses had been taken because I made him more important than God.” She put a hand to her eyes and bent her head. Nate saw the tears drop onto her dress. “I am not Amish. I can never be Amish. Not without Moses. This has been a great mistake.” She jerked her head up. “Oh, my God, you know how much I loved him. But not more than you. Not more than you.”

Bishop Zook came over to the Kurtz house that Sunday evening after the singing, parking his buggy in the yard. His visit was expected. Coffee and cookies were set before him but he didn’t lift the cup or take anything from the plate. He folded his hands on the table.

“I received your note Thursday morning,” he said to Becky. “
Danke
.”

“
Bitte
.”

“It is his way. The more so as he grows older. There is truth in what Pastor King says, but the way in which he delivers it is not always in the best spirit.”

Becky didn’t reply.

Her father leaned forward. “Do you agree with Pastor King?”

“I am not God. Who knows why he permits what he permits? It’s a mystery we can never solve on this side. We must trust him. Regardless of the circumstances we find ourselves in.”

Lyyndaya ran her fingers up and down the sides of her glass of water. “Do you truly believe God took Moses away from us because my daughter loved him too much?”

“Me personally? Not so much. But others do. As I said, who knows why he permits what he permits? Even if Pastor King is harsh, one must look past the wrapping on the parcel and concentrate on what is inside.”

No one responded to this.

Bishop Zook looked about the table and nodded his head. “So what have you been thinking? In Becky’s note she said she would not proceed with the baptismal instruction this fall. Are you all in agreement with this?”

“I cannot stay here!” blurted Becky. “It’s not just the death of Moses. It’s what you people think of me.”

“No one thinks the worst of you, Rebecca—”

“Of course you do. The whole community does. Rebecca Whetstone loved Moses Yoder more than she loved God. It was the only reason she wanted to become Amish. To punish her, God took Moses away so that Rebecca Whetstone would set her heart in the right place.” Tears began to make their way down her face as she pleaded with the bishop. “Yes, I loved your grandson. Yes, I wanted to be Amish with him by my side. But marriage to Moses was not the only reason I wished to take my vows. I love the simple ways here. I love the green roll of the land, the horses, the children. I love the people and their faith. I love the gentleness and grace.” She wiped at her eyes with her hand. “Now I see a hardness. A judgment. I hear words being spoken behind my back. I hear you tell me Pastor King might be right—that
I am such a wicked person God had to remove Moses Yoder to set me straight.”