Wonderful Lonesome (29 page)

For as far back as she could remember, humming an
Ausbund
tune had soothed Abbie’s mind. She used to hum as she walked to the rural school where she studied in the early grades when she was nervous the
English
teacher might not understand her words through the thick Pennsylvania Dutch accent. She hummed when one of the farm animals was giving birth or gasping in the moments before death. She hummed as she concentrated on making bread that would meet her mother’s standard.

And she hummed now as she prepared to clean Martin Samuels’s house. It was his regular day. Abbie could hardly tell him that because he had stolen Willem’s coal she would no longer bring him bread or sweep his floor. For nearly a week now she had hummed her way through disappointment at what he had done and the tension brooding in every conversation she overheard between men. The women were not any less suspicious. Abbie was nearly as disappointed in the shroud of distrust that fell over the families as she was in Martin. If she raised the question of forgiveness, someone was sure to point out that the widower Samuels had yet to express any convincing remorse.

Abbie had not spoken to Willem since he stepped past her with clear intent to converse with Jake Heatwole about the events rattling the Amish settlement. She should not have been surprised, but his wordless steps had settled into place the wall rising, brick by brick, between them for weeks. And that was perhaps the greatest disappointment. When she left this week’s bread, she did not allow herself to look around and wonder if he might spot her and offer a greeting.

Out of courtesy, she knocked, but as usual did not wait for a response. The only time she had found Martin in his house on one of her weekly visits was when he was ill. That was more than a year and a half ago. Abbie set her bucket of brushes and sponges in the middle of his sitting room and inspected her surroundings. She could see straight through to his lean-to kitchen and the crusted dishes stacked to one side of the washtub. The disarray was notably worse than usual, which Abbie credited to the turmoil in his spirit. There was no point in taking his bread loaves into the kitchen until she had cleared a place to put them. Instead she set them on the small desk that had been in his wife’s family for sixty years before her death. Abbie nudged aside a spread of paper. Once she had emptied her arms, she attempted to stack them with better order.

Abbie’s eyes fell on an open letter, and the words sprang up before she could chastise herself for reading sentences not meant for her. Blinking, she picked up the two sheets of paper filled with tiny script. The more she read, the more tightly she held a hand over her mouth. She nearly tripped over her bucket in her haste to reach her buggy and turn the horse toward home.

“So it’s true?” Abbie’s jaw dropped as she stared at her father in the sitting room where he sat with the family Bible open in his lap. Since there was no harvest, he had taken to filling hours he used to spend on farm work by reading the German tome.

Ananias tipped his face forward so he could look at her over the tops of his round reading glasses. “Yes, what you read is true. But you should not have been reading Martin’s papers.”

“I told you, I didn’t mean to. I was so shocked that I couldn’t stop.”

“That is a failure of your self-control, Abigail. What you have learned was not supposed to go beyond a private council meeting with the bishop.”

Abbie flopped into a chair across from Ananias. “But that meeting was fifteen months ago. Were you really never going to tell anyone what happened there?”

Ananias nodded. “That was our intent.”

“But
Daed
, don’t you see? If this has been dividing us all this time, how could we ever hope for a successful settlement?” Abbie quelled the urge to stand up and stomp around the room.

“We believed it was our only hope for what we all wanted.”

Abbie reached up with both hands and pulled on the strings of her prayer
kapp
. “But how could that be? If the visiting bishop would not even stay to give us communion because of your argument, how could you hope to heal such a deep spiritual divide by ignoring it?”

“
Argument
is an indelicate word, Abigail.”

She put her head back on the top of the chair and stared at the ceiling. How could her
daed
remain unflustered? Abbie calmed her breath and returned her gaze to her father.

“The bishop you met with must have talked to other bishops in Kansas and Nebraska. There must be a reason they stopped visiting.”

“I have no way to know what the bishops say to each other.”

“Please talk to me,
Daed
. I want to understand.”

“You already understand the essence. The council was not of one mind about whether there is true salvation outside the Amish church.”

“That question has always been part of our history. I suspect that if you convened a meeting of all the Amish bishops and ministers, they would not all agree either.”

“And you would be right.” Ananias smoothed a hand across the open Bible in his lap. “But each district must decide what it will teach. Because we have families here who came from several different districts, the disparity of thought is more pronounced than it might be elsewhere.”

The back door swung open and Levi charged into the house. “Aren’t we going to have lunch?”

“In a little while,” Abbie said.

“
Daed
, Reuben wants to know if you are going to dig coal this afternoon.”

“I have not decided,” Ananias said.

“If you do, can I go with you?” Levi draped himself across an end of the sofa.

“It’s dangerous for a little boy,” Ananias said.

“But I’m not so little anymore. I want to!”

Abbie rolled her eyes. “Levi, please,
Daed
and I are talking.”

“When are you going to be finished talking?”

“Levi!” Abbie stood up, pulled the boy to his feet, and pointed him back out the door with a firm shove.

When Levi was gone, her father raised an eyebrow. “Might you have been harsh?”

“I’m sorry. I’ll apologize to Levi later for my impatience.” Abbie sat down again and smoothed her skirt. “I wanted to be sure we finish our conversation.”

“There is not much more to say.”

“Why don’t the bishops visit anymore, even just a few times a year?”

“Part of the reason bishops visited was to decide whether they would want to move here. They have seen for themselves what a challenge it would be, even apart from the spiritual question.”

Abbie could not dispute this observation. Even bishops had to be able to support their families. She shifted in her chair. “And what do you think on the spiritual question?”

“Abigail.”

“Tell me,
Daed
.”

“I am not interested in stirring up conflict.”

“The conflict is already there,
Daed
. It runs under everything that happens. If we could only worship together, so many things could be better.”

Ananias closed the Bible and stacked his hands on top of it.

“
Daed
, please. I am not asking out of disrespect or lack of submission, only lack of understanding.”

He stood up and put the Bible on its carved stand. “My conscience tells me that I must interpret the Word of God to mean that there is no salvation outside the church.”

“Outside the Amish church. Is that what you mean?”

He nodded.

Abbie sank against the back of her chair, her shoulders sagging. “So the Chupps?”

“If they have left the church, I believe they have turned their backs on the Lord’s gift of salvation.”

Abbie crossed her ankles and quickly uncrossed them. She could not think what to do with her feet or her hands or her face. If her father was right, Willem was in grave danger.
“Come with me,”
he had said to her on the day of their doomed picnic. She did not want him to go to the Mennonites at all, and she could not imagine going with him. As badly as he wanted his farm to succeed, even more Abbie wanted their church to succeed. But questioning Willem’s salvation—or even Jake’s?

“Abigail?”

She snapped her head up and found her father’s gray eyes peering at her.

“Have I answered all your questions?”

“Yes,
Daed
.”

“And do you now understand why I hesitated to do so?”

She nodded.

“You must not speak of this to anyone.”

“But
Daed
—”

“Not anyone.”

Every sway and bump in the road seemed to punch Ruthanna in the back and steal her breath. Frightened beyond imagination, she had left Eber alone in the bed clutching his stomach. All day long she had tried to ease his pain and usher in a period of rest. It had been bad enough when he was feverish and exhausted. Watching his pain contort him sliced through her. Finally she knew she did not want to be alone when the end came, and if she did not get help, the end would come soon. It had taken her a long time to climb into the buggy unassisted. Now she was driving so fast, with both hands clenched around the reins, that she could not even raise a palm to wipe away the tears that blurred her vision. She rumbled into the Weaver yard and screamed the names of every member of the family.

Abigail rushed toward the buggy. “Are you in labor?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Eber?”

Ruthanna nodded.

Abbie spun around in a circle, her gaze sweeping the property.

“Is your
mamm
here?” Panic struck Ruthanna. Esther was Eber’s best hope for relief.

“She’s here somewhere.”

“Please, Abbie, you have to find her.”

Ananias emerged from the house with Levi on his heels.

“We need
Mamm
,” Abbie said. “Right now.”

“She walked over to visit with Mary Miller,” Ananias said.

Ruthanna did not recognize the sound that pulled at her depths.

Abbie climbed into the wagon. “It’s Eber.”

“I will go for the doctor myself.” Ananias slapped the haunch of Ruthanna’s horse, then pivoted and started for the Weaver buggy.

Ruthanna surrendered the reins to Abbie, closed her eyes, and trusted that the Holy Ghost would translate her fear into prayer.

W ith Ruthanna leaning against her for the short distance between where she parked the buggy and the door to the Gingerich house, Abbie focused through the quiver in her knees and her stampeding heart.

Ruthanna groaned and put her open hand against her back.

“Do you feel all right?” Abbie asked.

“Eber is what matters now.” Ruthanna turned the doorknob, and they stepped inside the house before she paused to catch her breath. “He’s in the bedroom.”

Abbie rolled in her bottom lip and bit gently, going ahead of Ruthanna toward the bedroom. The stench made her turn her head before she got there. She indulged the rise of bile from her own stomach for only a second before swallowing it and forcing firm steps. Eber lay tangled in sweat-drenched bedding with one arm draped around a smell metal pail. Abbie did not have to look to know its contents were viscous green fluid and blood. She paced around the bed in the cramped room, picking up a towel from the dresser on her way and used it to wipe Eber’s pallid face. The bed creaked as Ruthanna lowered herself onto the other side and took Eber’s head in her lap.