by Lois Richer
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Amish Christmas Memories
by Vannetta Chapman
Chapter One
Caleb Wittmer glanced up from the fence he was mending. Something had caught his eye—a bright blue against the snow-covered fields that stretched in every direction. There it was again, to the north and west, coming along the dirt road.
He stepped closer to the fence. His horse moved with him, nudged his hand.
“Hold on, Stormy.” Caleb squinted his eyes and peered toward the northwest, and then he knew what he was seeing—he just couldn’t make sense of it. Why would a woman be walking on a cold December morning with no coat on?
Goose bumps peppered the skin at the back of his neck. As he watched, the woman wandered to the right of the road and then back to the left.
Something wasn’t right.
He murmured for the gelding to stay, climbed the fence and strode toward her. He’d covered only half of the distance when he noticed that she was wearing Amish clothing, though not their traditional style or color. She was a stranger, then, from a different community. But what was she doing out in the cold with no coat? More disturbing than that, she wore no covering on her head. All Amish women covered their hair when outside—Swiss, Old Order, New Order. It was one of the many things they had in common. The coverings might be styled differently, but always a woman’s head was covered.
He was within thirty feet when he noticed that her long hair was a golden brown, wavy and thick, and unbraided.
At twenty feet he could see the confused look on her face and that she was holding a book.
At ten feet she tumbled to the ground.
Caleb broke into a sprint, covering the last distance in seconds. The mysterious woman was lying in the snow, her eyes closed. Dark brown lashes brushed against skin that still held a slight tan from winter. Freckles dotted the tops of her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. A small book had fallen out of her hands. Her hair was splayed around her head like a cloak she’d thrown on the ground, and a pale blue scarf was wrapped around her neck—but no coat.
Where was the woman’s coat?
He shook her gently, but there was no response.
Looking up, he saw Stormy waiting for him at the property line. He’d never be able to take her that way, unless he was willing to dump her over the fence. He couldn’t begin to guess why she had fainted, but throwing her over barbed wire and onto the ground wouldn’t be helpful.
No, he’d have to go the long way, by the road.
Caleb shook her shoulders one more time, but still there was no response. He clutched her hand. Her fingers were like slivers of ice. How long had she been outside? Why was she wandering down their road?
Scooping her up, he turned toward the house.
She weighed little more than a large sack of feed, which he’d been lifting since he was a teenager. Carrying her was not a problem, but now his heart was racing and his breath came out in quick gasps. What if he was too late? What if she was dying?
He strode toward his parents’ house, pulling her body closer to his, willing his heat to warm her, whispering for Gotte’s help.
Stormy kept pace on his side of the fence.
The farmhouse seemed to taunt him, as it receded in the distance, but, of course, that was impossible. It was only that he was scared now, worried that he should have seen her sooner, that he might be too late.
Snow began to fall in earnest, but he barely noticed. Tucking his chin to keep the snow out of his eyes, he increased his pace.
* * *
“She just collapsed?” His mother had taken the sight of him carrying a nearly frozen woman into their home in stride. She’d told him to place her on the couch as she’d grabbed a blanket.
“Ya. She teetered back and forth across the road and then fell into the snow as I was watching.”
“No idea who she is?”
“Obviously she’s not from here.”
Ida nodded. Her dress was of a bright blue fabric, while their community still wore only muted blues and greens, blacks and browns. They were a conservative Amish community, a mixture of Swiss and Pennsylvania Dutch, which was why they lived in the southwestern part of Indiana. They weren’t a tourist destination like Shipshewana. And unlike some more liberal Amish communities, they didn’t abide solar panels and cell phones and Englisch clothing. Not that the woman’s dress was Englisch. It was obviously plain in style, but that color...
He didn’t normally notice the color of a girl’s dress, but in this case...well, the blue fabric seemed obscenely bright. She remained unconscious, though she seemed to be breathing. Caleb pulled off his knit cap, shrugged out of his coat and tugged off his gloves. Squatting in front of the couch, he watched his mother as she attempted to revive the woman.
She murmured slightly, tossing her head left and right. Almost of its own volition, his hand reached out and touched her face. Her skin felt like satin.
Still she didn’t wake.
“She had nothing with her?”
“Nein.”
“No purse or coat or—”
Caleb jumped up, snapping his fingers. “A book. She was holding a book when I first saw her.”
“You best go and get it. Perhaps her name is written inside. Maybe there’s someone we can contact.”
Caleb snagged his coat from the floor where he’d dropped it and hurried back outside. Fat snowflakes were still falling. It looked as if the current snowfall was going to be a significant accumulation for only the third of December. Already the front path was completely obscured, any trace of his previous trek across the yard erased. At this rate they would have a Christmas to remember. It was unusual, as most of their snow usually came in January.
He jogged back the half mile, passing the place where he had been mending the fence. His tools were still there. He’d need to return them to the barn, but that wasn’t an emergency. The woman? She was. He slowed when he reached the tall pine tree and scanned the ground. Nothing, not even his footprints from earlier.
He’d forgotten his hat and the snow was cold and heavy on his head. He shook the snow off his head, wiped his eyes and walked up and down the fence line—a hundred feet in both directions. There was nothing, but he was sure that she had been holding a book of some sort. He closed his eyes, saw it fall from her hand as she dropped to the ground. She’d wandered off the east side of the road, closer to the fence.
This was not the way his Monday was supposed to go. He didn’t mind helping a neighbor, or a stranger, but he’d had an entire list of chores to complete. Farm life, his life, worked better when he stayed focused on the things he’d committed to doing. When women entered his life, trouble often followed. He pushed that thought away as soon as it formed. This wasn’t about him. He needed to find the book. He hadn’t opened his eyes that
morning knowing he would save a stranger from freezing to death, but now that he had there was nothing left to do but see this thing through.
They’d find out who she was and where she belonged.
They’d return her, and he could get on with his life.
But first he needed to find the book.
He turned east, walked back and forth between the road and the fence, making a zigzag type of pattern. Then just when he was beginning to think he’d imagined the entire thing, that he’d return home and find there was no mysterious woman on their couch, he spied it—a lump of snow where there should have been flat ground.
He dropped to his knees and brushed the snow away.
The book had a green-and-gold cover with a photograph of a snowy path going through the woods, and beneath that the words The Road Not Taken and Other Poems. Had he read something like that in school? He was twenty-five now and that had been many years ago. He shook his head, picked up the book and hurried back home.
* * *
When he walked back into the living room, his father was there, and his mother was placing a cup of hot tea into the woman’s hands. She was sitting up now, looking around with a dazed sort of expression.
“I think this is yours.” Caleb placed the book on the couch beside her.
“Danki.”
That one word confirmed what he’d suspected earlier. She wasn’t from their part of the state. The Daviess County Amish had a distinctive Southern twang. This woman didn’t.
Caleb’s father sat in the reading chair. His mother perched on the edge of the rocker. Caleb folded his arms and stood behind them both. Across from them, the woman stared at the tea, then raised her eyes first to his mamm, then his dat, and finally settled her gaze on him.
“What happened? Where am I?”
“You don’t know?” Caleb glanced at his parents, who seemed content to let him carry the conversation. “You were walking down the road, and then you collapsed.”
“Why would I do such a thing?”
Caleb shrugged. “What’s your name?”
The woman’s eyes widened and her hand shook so that she could barely hold the mug of tea without spilling it. She set it carefully on the coffee table. “I don’t—I don’t know my name.”
“My name is John Wittmer,” Caleb’s father said. “This my fraa, Ida, and you’ve met Caleb.”
“How can you not know your own name?” Caleb asked. “Do you know where you live?”
“Nein.”
“What were you doing out there?”
“Out where?”
“Where’s your coat and your kapp?”
“Caleb, now’s not the time to interrogate the poor girl.” Ida stood and moved beside her on the couch. She picked up the small book of poetry. “You were carrying this, when Caleb found you. Do you remember it?”
“I don’t. This was mine?”
“Found it in the snow,” Caleb said. “Right beside where you collapsed.”
“So it must be mine.”
“Perhaps there’s something written on the inside.” Ida tapped the cover. “Maybe you should look.”
Caleb noticed that the woman’s hands trembled as she opened the cover and stared down at the first page. With one finger, she traced the handwriting there.
“Rachel. I think my name is Rachel.”
* * *
Rachel let her fingers brush over the word again and again. Rachel. Yes, that was her name. She was sure of it. She remembered writing it in the front of the book—she’d used a pen that her mamm had given her. She could almost picture herself, somewhere else. She could almost see her mother.
“My mamm gave me the pen and the book...for my birthday, I think. I wrote my name—wrote it right here.”
“Your mamm. So you remember her?”
“Praise be to Gotte,” John said, a smile spreading across his face.
“Is there someone we can call? If you remember the name of your bishop...” Caleb had sat down in the rocker his mother had vacated and was staring at her intensely.
They all were.
She closed her eyes, hoping to feel the memory again. She tried to see the room or the house or the people, but the image had receded as quickly as it had come, leaving her with a pulsing headache.
She struggled to keep the feelings of panic at bay. Her heart was hammering, and her hands were shaking, and she could barely make sense of the questions they were pelting at her.
Who were these people?
Where was she?
Who was she?
She needed to remember what had happened.
She needed to go home.
Instead she dropped the book into Ida’s lap and covered her face with her hands. “I think—I think I’m going to be sick.”
She bounded off the couch and dashed to the kitchen, making it to the sink just in time to lose whatever she’d eaten. Unfortunately, the sink had been full of breakfast dishes. She turned on the tap and attempted to rinse off a plate, but her hands were shaking so badly that she kept knocking it against the side of the sink.
“I’ll take care of that.” Ida’s hands slid over hers, taking the plate and setting it back into the sink. She pulled a clean dish towel from a drawer and handed it to her. “Come and sit down.”
She sank into a chair at the table and pressed her fingertips to her forehead. If only the pounding would stop, she could think.
“We best take her to town,” John said.
“I’ll get the buggy.” Caleb brushed past her.
She remembered being in his arms, the way he’d pulled her close to his body, the way he’d petitioned Gotte to help them. Or had she dreamed that? But then he turned, and his blue eyes met hers, and she knew she hadn’t imagined it. She could smell the snow on his coat, remember the rough texture of the fabric, hear the concern in his voice.
“We best wrap her in a blanket,” Ida said. “And bring the book. There might be other clues in it.”
And then they were bundling her up and helping her into the buggy. The ride passed in a blur of unrecognizable farms and stores and hillsides. The only thing familiar was the clip-clop of the horse’s hooves and the feel of the small heater blowing from the front of the buggy.
Had she been in a buggy just like it before?
Caleb directed the horse under a covered drop-off area, next to a door marked Emergency.
“I don’t think—”
“That it’s an emergency? Ya, it is.” He helped her from the buggy. Ida had rushed in ahead of them, and John said he’d park the buggy and meet them inside.
The next few hours passed in a flurry of hospital forms and medical personnel and tests. Finally, the doctor who had first examined her walked into the room, computer tablet in hand. She was a young woman, probably in her thirties, with dark black hair, glasses and a quick smile. Something about her manner put Rachel at ease, though another part of her dreaded hearing what the woman was about to say.
John had left to find them coffee and a snack, but Ida and Caleb both stood when the doctor walked into the room.
“Thank you all for your patience.” She motioned for them to sit back down. “I know the barrage of tests we put a patient through can be trying, but trust me when I say that it’s important for us to collect as much information as we can.”
She turned toward Rachel.
“Hi, Rachel. Do you remember me?”
“Ya. You’re Dr. Gold.”
“Great. Can you tell me what day it is?”
Her eyes darted to the whiteboard that listed the name of her nurse and orderly. “December third.”
“Very good.” Dr. Gold laughed. “We know you can read.”
The doctor placed her tablet on the table next to Rachel’s bed. “Mind if I check that bump on your head one more time?�
�
Rachel leaned forward and jerked only slightly when the doctor gently probed the back of her head.
“Still tender.”
“Ya.”
“Still no memory of what happened before Caleb found you?”
“Nein.”
“And you can’t remember how you got this bump?”
“The first thing I remember is...is Caleb carrying me to his house.”
The doctor plumped the pillows behind her, waited until Rachel had sat back and then shone the penlight in her eyes again.
“I’m sorry. I know this is uncomfortable.”
“It’s just the headache...”
Dr. Gold nodded in sympathy and then clicked off the light. “Rachel, you have a slight concussion, which is why you’re experiencing a sensitivity to light, a blinding headache and nausea.”
She remembered vomiting in Ida’s sink and grimaced.
“How long will that last?”
“In most cases, symptoms improve in seven to ten days.”
“That’s gut.”
“But the actual healing of your brain could take months.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Most often a concussion occurs when you’ve sustained a blow to the head. In this case, you have a sizable knot at the back of your head and toward the top. Can you remember anything at all that led up to your accident?”
Rachel shook her head and spikes of pain brought tears to her eyes.
“I’m not surprised. You have what we call retrograde amnesia caused by a concussion. Often in such a situation, patients have problems remembering events leading up to an accident.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“Retrograde amnesia or a concussion?”
“Both.”
Dr. Gold smiled and patted her hand. “Concussions happen all too often. The brain itself is rather like Jell-O. When a concussion occurs, your brain slides back and forth and bumps up against the walls of your skull. Basically the brain is bruised, and like all bruises it takes time to heal.”
“What would cause such a thing?” Caleb asked. His expression had turned rather fierce. “Does it mean that someone hit her?”
