Gladden the Heart

by Olivia Newport

  “The Bible is a story of mercy and judgment,” Noah said, his voice lower and fuller than Susanna had ever heard it. “This truth runs through the Holy Scriptures, and we must choose which side we are on. Will we know our own sin and therefore God’s mercy, or will we deny our sin and know only His judgment?”

  The listeners sobered.

  Susanna leaned forward and whispered in Phoebe’s hear. “God has anointed Noah. Perfect love casts out fear. He will have no need to fear preaching after such a wonderful beginning.”

  “Noah,” Shem said, “I demand you speak to me.”

  Air rushed out of Phoebe and her face clouded.

  CHAPTER 5

  Even the children stilled at the sight of Cousin Noah preaching. He was the man who offered sweet treats, spoke kindly, and sewed leather around balls of string for them to play with. He wasn’t wearing a frock coat, such as the ones the ministers wore when they preached, so the sermonic words coming from Noah’s mouth made the children tilt their heads and examine him curiously.

  “We see God’s mercy and judgment right at the beginning of the Bible, in the book of Genesis, and we trace it through Holy Writ until the great white throne of Revelation,” Noah said. “It is not God’s desire that we should fall into the lake of fire. It is God’s desire that we hear His voice and answer Him when He calls us each by name. Do you hear Him calling you by name?”

  “Noah, what are you doing?” Mr. Zimmerman said. “We have benches to load. You always want to help.”

  Noah preached on.

  “Noah, the bishop pronounced the benediction hours ago.”

  Noah preached on.

  “Brother Noah, let us worship in reasonable order.”

  Noah preached on.

  Susanna turned toward the tug on her elbow. Timothy had edged his way in.

  “What is he doing?” Timothy asked.

  “I do not know any more than you do,” Susanna said.

  “You were with him when it started.”

  “When I left him, he was ill,” Susanna said. “He said nothing to me about this. In fact, he spoke only of admiration of the way others have the gift to preach while he does not.”

  “His eyes do not look right.”

  Susanna concurred. Noah’s eyes moved from person to person but with a glaze that resisted focus. When he looked at her, she did not feel seen.

  Noah preached.

  Babies cried, mothers soothed them, fathers readied the wagons, and Noah preached.

  Women gathered their things, and Noah preached.

  Younger adults, some married and some hoping to be, debated their walk in the woods, and Noah preached.

  Phoebe took her place beside him, trying to still his gesturing hands, and Noah preached.

  Susanna and Adam exchanged glances every half minute, and Noah preached.

  The bishop demanded that he stop, and Noah preached.

  One hour. Another half hour. Two hours.

  Phoebe’s face wrenched in distress, and Susanna believed that if Phoebe could have made Noah stop, she would have. But he responded to no touch, no word, no expression, no urging.

  Susanna inched closer as others inched away and the afternoon wore on.

  “What should we do?” Adam said at the two-hour mark.

  “There is nothing to be done,” Phoebe said.

  They spoke from either side of Noah, but he did not hear them.

  Families with long drives ahead of them rolled their wagons off the Satzler farm. Young men gave up on snatching a few minutes with one of the young women.

  “We are going now.” Susanna’s mother was suddenly at her side. “The children are tired, and the animals will need tending. And Philip is starting to look sickly.”

  “I cannot go now!” Susanna said. It flabbergasted her that her mother would suggest departure for any of the Hooleys.

  “You must,” her mother said. “Walking home from one of the nearer farms is reasonable, but this is too far for you to walk, and I do not think your friends will go on an outing after such excitement.”

  Adam, still at Noah’s side, spoke. “With your permission, Mrs. Hooley, I will see that Susanna gets home.”

  Susanna stifled the urge to clasp him around the neck. “Please, Mamm? Noah is your cousin, too. Let me help care for him.”

  Her mother looked from Adam to Susanna and back again before finally nodding. “I will tell your daed, but please try not to be late. The sooner we all get back to a normal routine, the better.”

  “Not a minute later than necessary,” Susanna said. “I promise. Danki.”

  Niklaus, Bishop Hertzberger, and Yohan Maist, the three ministers of the district, conferred. But when they lined themselves up before Noah like a wall, he merely stepped to one side and shifted to prayer.

  “Catch him,” Phoebe said suddenly, perspiration dripping from her face after so long in the sun at her husband’s side amid the debate about his well-being.

  “What do you mean?” Adam said.

  Susanna stepped closer, listening to Noah speak the Lord’s Prayer. Lead us not into temptation.

  “Catch him,” Phoebe said. “Now.”

  And Noah slumped against Adam.

  “Cousin Noah!” Susanna pressed in.

  “Adam, will you help me with my wagon?” Phoebe said.

  “Of course.”

  “We can make him comfortable in the bed of hay.”

  “But he is unconscious again,” Susanna said. “He is most certainly unwell.” If they had waited so long to take him home, should they not allow a few more moments for his recovery?

  “I want to get him home,” Phoebe said. “Now that he stopped preaching, the ministers will be full of questions I do not wish to answer. I do not want Noah to wake with their faces staring down at him. He will be mortified, and I will not put him through that.”

  “We only want to help,” Susanna said. Though the bishop had spoken roughly, trying to startle Noah, even the ministers only wanted to help.

  “Then please bring my wagon and help me lift him.”

  “I will go now for your team,” Adam said.

  Susanna knelt and received Noah’s lolling head into her lap. “Your onkel is coming,” she said to Adam.

  “Good,” Adam said. “I will ask him to keep the others away. You and I can follow Phoebe and make sure Noah is all right before I take you home.”

  She wanted to throw her arms around him and kiss him. At the soonest opportunity, she would.

  Susanna pulled her cart onto the Kauffman farm at midafternoon on Monday. All day she had ached to know how Cousin Noah was. Phoebe put him straight to bed the day before and shooed off Adam and Susanna with assurances that Noah would be fine with a good night’s sleep.

  What could they do to help care for Noah?

  Was Phoebe sure he would be all right when he had not yet come to consciousness?

  What about something to drink? Should they not try to get Noah to swallow some liquid?

  And supper? Susanna could put something in the oven.

  These questions and more bubbled out of Susanna, but Phoebe’s only response had been patiently making sure of her husband’s comfort as he slumbered, until Susanna could no longer resist Phoebe’s encouragement that she and Adam should go on home to their waiting families.

  Susanna barely slept. During the early morning hours, something had come to her: Phoebe had been distressed but not surprised at Noah’s behavior. What could that mean?

  Susanna was up before first light to dispatch her chores with the animals, mix up three batches of dye, and color two dress-lengths in a dye bath and hang the fabric from the line to dry. Only then, and with a promise to her mother to be home for supper and evening devotions with the family, was she free to drive her cart over to the Kauffmans’. It was too late to walk and still keep her promise.

  The fragrance of bread wafted from Phoebe’s summer kitchen, and the ring of a hammer from behind the barn witnessed to Noah’s l
abors. The cows were in the pasture and the chickens pecked the ground as they always did. Smoke swirled from the outdoor oven.

  All the usual activities of farm life, Amish or not.

  Perfectly normal.

  Susanna exhaled relief. Phoebe had been right. Noah was fine after a night’s rest. Leaving the cart in front of the house, Susanna circled to the back on foot.

  Phoebe gently removed a loaf of bread from its pan and lined it up beside five others cooling on the covered wooden table. She looked up.

  “Susanna.”

  “I came to see how Noah is—and you,” Susanna said.

  “As you can see, we are quite well.” Phoebe smiled. “I have a loaf cool enough to slice. Can I tempt you? Butter and honey, perhaps?”

  Susanna’s mouth salivated in immediate response. “No need to trouble yourself.”

  “’Tis no trouble.” Phoebe picked up a knife and deftly sliced into the loaf. “I suppose you will want to see for yourself that Noah is well.”

  “If you say he is well, that is enough,” Susanna said.

  Dubious, Phoebe shook her head. “You are too fond of him to settle for that.”

  “Well, he is my favorite cousin. He always has been. He was nearly a man and I was not yet old enough for school, but Noah looked out for me.”

  Phoebe nudged a bowl of butter toward Susanna and handed her a table knife. “I will fetch him.”

  While she waited, Susanna bit into the bread. Every Amish girl in the district learned to bake bread competently before her twelfth birthday. Susanna herself made the Hooley household bread many times when her mother was busy with the younger children or looking after a cow threatening to go dry, and no one in the family detected the difference between the loaves Susanna and her mother baked. But the sensation on her tongue now was a rare indulgence. There was no point in asking Phoebe what made her bread taste like it was sent from heaven. She would only shrug and say it was just bread.

  Phoebe returned with Noah, handed him a slice, and said, “Shall we go sit in the house? I have a jug of milk calling for someone to drink it.”

  Susanna helped Phoebe gather the loaves and take them into the house to finish cooling.

  “As you can see,” Noah said once they were comfortable in the Kauffman front room, “I have fully recovered from my malady.”

  “I am so glad. You gave everyone such a fright.”

  “Did I? I do not recall.”

  “I suppose not. You were quite unwell.”

  “I am sure it was not as bad as that.”

  Susanna’s stomach lurched. “It was, indeed.” People often did not remember details of an illness, but surely Phoebe would have told Noah how ill he had been only the day before if for no other reason than to encourage him to rest today as well.

  Noah glanced at Phoebe. “Then I shall take care not to frighten you again,” he said.

  “I am not concerned for myself but only for you,” Susanna said.

  Noah spread his hands wide. “I am quite well.”

  “I did not know you could preach.”

  “I do not preach.” He glanced again at his wife.

  “But you did—and very well,” Susanna said. “I would sit through an all-day service if it meant hearing you give the sermon.”

  Noah readjusted himself in the chair. “If I muttered something that would pass in your mind for spiritual wisdom, you flatter me. Be careful, lest you tempt me to pride.”

  “But Cousin Noah—”

  Phoebe stood up. “I hope you will greet your mother for us. We are always glad to see any of the Hooleys. A morning visit would be nice.”

  Phoebe’s abruptness, however kind, flustered Susanna.

  “Of course,” she said, standing as well.

  “I may have had too much sun again today,” Noah said. “I feel in need of a rest after all.”

  “Then you shall have one,” Susanna said.

  Noah leaned back in the high-back overstuffed chair and closed his eyes. Within seconds he was asleep.

  “I will go,” Susanna said softly, never imagining that Noah could drop off so quickly. When he slumped to the left, his head weighting forward, she startled. He began to tremble.

  “Phoebe, what is wrong with Noah?”

  “Noah is fine.”

  “I do not agree.”

  Noah bolted out of his chair. “The mercy of God is wide and deep, and He invites us to step into the river of His love and be washed clean.”

  “Phoebe,” Susanna said.

  “He is fine.”

  Noah stared out the window, shutters flung open, as if preaching to the chickens and cows. “If you have any doubt of the love of God, this is the day to set your heart at ease. For God is love. We love one another because God first loved us. His way is the way of love.”

  “He is preaching,” Susanna said. “No one else is even here.”

  Phoebe said nothing.

  “This is what happened yesterday,” Susanna said, “and you knew exactly what to do for him.”

  Distressed but not surprised.

  Noah reached to pick up his German Bible from the table beside his chair and turned again toward the window.

  “There is no greater message in the Holy Scriptures, which God Himself has written for us, than that we are His beloved. Let your heart hear the beating of God’s heart for you.”

  Phoebe shuffled toward her husband. “I see his true heart, a heart after God, when these times come.”

  “This has happened before,” Susanna said. “How often?”

  Phoebe hesitated. “At first only once a year or so. He would wake in the night, come out here to the window, and begin. I would only wake when I heard his voice or got cold from the draft in the middle of winter.”

  “And then?” Susanna spoke over Noah, her attention pulled to his words even as she asked the question.

  “Then it was more often. Now it is quite often.”

  “Why would he not want the ministers to know he has such a gift? Or the congregation? Surely they would vote to make him a minister as well.”

  Phoebe shook her head. “He only knows that he preaches because I have told him so.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “He has no memory of yesterday,” Phoebe said. “And tomorrow he will have no memory of today.”

  “You might be well familiar with John 3:16,” Noah said. “Are you also familiar with the other many, many, many verses that lead you into the deep well of God’s love?”

  “How has no one discovered this before?” Susanna asked.

  “It used to happen during the night,” Phoebe said, “and then in the evenings after supper.”

  “And all our people are scattered on their own farms and stay in their own homes in the evenings.” The Zugs were the Kauffmans’ nearest neighbors, but they were still a couple of miles away.

  Phoebe nodded. “Now it has begun happening in the afternoons but never as early as yesterday. If I had thought there was any risk, we would have come straight home after the service finished.”

  “How long will he preach?” Susanna said. “As long as yesterday?”

  “Most likely. Once it begins, there is no interrupting. You saw for yourself. You can trust me when I say that I have tried many times to no avail.”

  “Yesterday you knew when he was nearly finished.”

  “He always concludes with the Lord’s Prayer.” Phoebe moved a loose rug away from the path Noah had begun to pace as he preached.

  Susanna sighed. “Bishop Hertzberger was unhappy.”

  “Shem has been a faithful minister for us, but he does have particular views.” Phoebe pulled a small table closer to the wall. “I try to keep him away from anything he might trip over. He does not even see the furniture. I suppose if he is going to do this every day, I will have to find a way to arrange the furniture more permanently. I was hoping not to have to explain to him why I am moving things around after so many years with an arrangement that has suit
ed us well.”

  “The whole congregation saw it happen yesterday,” Susanna said. “There will be questions.”

  Phoebe picked up the glasses the three of them had drunk milk from only a few minutes earlier. “It would not be an untruth to say he is unwell and needs rest. We did go to an English doctor once, when we visited Noah’s brother in Somerset County, and that was the only advice he had for us. Rest and close observation to be sure he does not choke during a seizure.”

  The medical opinion did not strike Susanna as particularly helpful.

  “I thought about it a great deal last night,” Phoebe said. “We will stay home from church for the next couple of services. That will give us six weeks to see what might change. It might all subside, or at least rotate back to the evenings.”

  “I want to help,” Susanna said.

  “You must not tell anyone what I have confided.” Phoebe’s tone sharpened. “You must promise me. Even my own sister does not know. If the preaching ceases, there is no reason to concern anyone—or to make Noah feel more badly than he does that he cannot recall any of this.”

  Susanna watched Noah, still preaching out the open window. She would do nothing to intentionally bring harm to him.

  “If no one else sees it and has reason to mention it to Noah, he does not even have to know it happens. Let us allow him that happiness.”

  Susanna nodded.

  “Not even Adam,” Phoebe said. “No one.”

  Susanna nodded.

  “Your mamm will want you home for supper.”

  “I cannot leave now.”

  “You must. If you want to help Noah, do not raise questions for anyone.”

  Susanna swallowed and nodded one last time.

  If he had not noticed the loose fence railing when he did, Adam would not have been up along the road when Susanna drove by. It did not seem like she was driving, though, but rather trusting the mare to find the way from the Kauffman farm—the only point beyond his uncle’s farm that she could have taken the cart—past the Zug land, through the Baxton property, and home to the Hooleys’.