Gladden the Heart

by Olivia Newport

  Truth. Just not all of it.

  Shem waited.

  Adam moved the hammer to the other hand, still not finding anything requiring to be tapped or banged.

  “Adam,” Shem said. “You are a thoughtful young man, and I feel I have come to know you better in these weeks of working together.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You must feel free to be candid with me.”

  Adam studied the toe of his boot. “Charles Baxton invited Noah to preach with him at a revival meeting.”

  The rush of words brought instant relief, though Adam would have preferred that his uncle speak them.

  The bishop paced across the room. “Did he encourage you to go?”

  “He invited me,” Adam said. The two words did not mean the same thing.

  “But you declined.”

  “I did not feel right about it.”

  Shem nodded. “You have chosen wisely.”

  Adam was less sure than the bishop’s words sounded.

  “We have lost enough of our people to the Methodists and Baptists already,” Shem said. “When I meet with the ministers of neighboring districts, they say the same thing. It consumes considerable portions of our conversations. Your onkel should not be encouraging this.”

  “His concern was for Noah,” Adam said. While he wished the entire trip had not come to pass, he could not fault his uncle—or Susanna—for caring for Noah.

  “You must speak up when you are with the young people,” Shem said. “I can preach in church, but I am not so foolish to think that they listen to every word. You are one of them. They would listen to you.”

  “Yes, sir.” Adam could think of nothing else to say, and he doubted he had any significant influence among his peers.

  “This revival business is going to split the church,” Shem said, “if we cannot find a way to be of one mind in honoring our own traditions.”

  Shem reached for a large, flat limestone and heaved it up to set at an awkward angle on top of the arrangement Adam had crafted so carefully.

  Adam winced when Shem did not pull his fingers out quickly enough. In all the hours they had worked side by side, Adam never before saw Shem make such a rudimentary mistake—or any mistake at all in craftsmanship.

  Susanna raised her face to the sun. Charles had kept his word and brought the group to a stop by two o’clock. If Noah were to “fall under the Holy Ghost,” as Charles called it, he should not be in a situation where he might try to stand up, pace, and preach from a moving wagon. They would camp here for a few nights, Susanna and Patsy sleeping on hay in the wagon and the men on the ground nearby. Along with the team pulling the wagon, Charles had brought along a saddle horse, and he was off on the stallion now to let the closest families know that tomorrow afternoon and the day after that, open-air revival meetings would be held in the clearing. Niklaus and Noah had arranged the camp and now leaned against the wide trunk of a white oak tree.

  “He seems fine.” Patsy joined Susanna sitting on the open end of the wagon and dangling her legs.

  “He does,” Susanna said, “but that does not mean it will not happen.” It could happen anytime after three and before supper with only a few seconds of Noah sensing that he did not feel well. Even if he felt a warning, he might not have time to mention it to anyone. He often fell under within seconds.

  “If it does, he will be safe,” Patsy said. “That’s why we are here.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you hope nothing will happen?” Patsy said.

  Susanna tilted her head. “I do not know what to think.”

  Noah was eager to cook beans over the fire to feed the group their supper, claiming to have stowed among his personal belongings the seasoning that would bring perfection to their taste. Onions, they guessed. Brown sugar? Molasses? Noah answered their speculations only with a wry smile. And falling under—maybe she would call it simply that—exhausted Noah. Would it not be better if he enjoyed his day, ate a hearty meal that gave him pleasure, and rested well tonight? Tomorrow would be the day that mattered. Even then, though, Susanna was unsure what to hope for. If Noah did not preach, Charles might let go of his notion and take Noah home. If Noah did preach, what would happen next?

  “Whatever happens,” Patsy said, “it will be God’s will. Isn’t that what you always say?”

  Gottes wille. It was not Susanna who said it but the Scriptures. Even Bishop Hertzberger would concede that if an event happened, it must be God’s will. Clinging to the teaching of Amish preachers for more than a century and a half was all that comforted Susanna’s nerves now. Perhaps this truly was God’s will. But sin that transgressed the teaching of the church was not God’s will, and everyone from her own mother to the bishop had opinions about whether Noah’s actions were willful.

  Noah’s voice rippled with laughter from the tree, a sweetness more delectable than every kind of pie that might enter the imagination.

  “Noah is thoughtful and kind and generous and faithful,”

  Susanna said. “Is that not enough for a life that pleases God?”

  The women were silent for a few minutes, listening again as Niklaus’s deeper laughter harmonized with Noah’s. The joke, whatever it was, surely began with Noah. This was the Noah Susanna wanted people to know.

  “Do you hope he will preach?” Susanna asked Niklaus the next morning.

  The question surprised him. They were side by side on the wagon’s bench perusing a crude map Charles had drawn to identify pockets of farms or trading posts or small towns where the congregation he hoped to assemble later that day might draw from. Neither he nor Susanna had wanted to leave Noah, but Charles pressed the matter. He wanted time to help Noah understand how the meetings would be run, where the congregation would gather, where Noah could stand while awaiting the moment when he might fall under the Holy Ghost, how Charles would proceed if Noah did not. And, Charles said, if Noah did preach and there were no people, they would have brought Noah all this way for nothing. In the end, Susanna conceded that nothing was likely to happen to Noah in the morning hours, and Niklaus said that if he were to take the wagon out, he would appreciate her company.

  “He did not preach yesterday,” Niklaus said. “I am sure you know what to expect more than I.”

  “There is no pattern.” Susanna squinted at the map. “Have we not spoken to enough people already? They will come or they will not come.”

  “Gottes wille.” To himself, Niklaus admitted some curiosity about the ministerial life of his old friend. Otherwise he would not have consented to be the messenger for a revival meeting for which he had little personal leanings.

  Susanna sighed and pointed to the left. “There. But after this stop, I want to go back to Noah.”

  “I agree.” Niklaus glanced at Susanna sideways. “And perhaps we can find another topic of conversation to pass the time.”

  “Anything,” Susanna said.

  “Adam,” Niklaus said. He turned his head in time to see her blush. “Harvest will be here before you know it. I have you to myself. The others will not hear anything you say in confidence.”

  Susanna turned her head away. “Perhaps not this topic of conversation.”

  “Then we will return to Gottes wille,” Niklaus said. “I find myself wondering if the reason Adam came to Kish Valley was not to learn to be a farmer or a carpenter but because it was Gottes wille for him to become a husband. Yours.”

  Susanna’s blush now rounded to the back of her neck. Niklaus smiled.

  CHAPTER 15

  Susanna had never heard Charles preach before. The crowd that gathered on short notice impressed her. Though not large, it was far from paltry. Patsy had told her that when Charles preached on his circuit during the summer, he usually preached early in the morning before the farmers began their labors and the relentless sun began its path. All that was rearranged for Noah. If he was to preach at all, it must be in the afternoon. The Baxton family had handwritten a stack of announcements that now
peppered the countryside, beckoning listeners to a brand-new messenger of God. And people had come, exchanging their plows and the baking and the wash on the line for wagons and benches to hear both the Reverend Charles Baxton, Methodist minister, and Noah Kauffman, Amish farmer.

  The hymns were unknown to Susanna, their liveliness reminding her of what she had heard during the revival tent meeting with the New York preacher. A man with a lovely tenor voice offered another hymn as a solo. Charles prayed—for a long time—and finally began to preach. His theme, he said, was living the full Christian life.

  Susanna turned her head to smile at Noah, who sat in the only plain wooden chair Charles had packed in the wagon. On the other side of Noah, Patsy stood sentry. They knew their duties, amended for this unusual circumstance. They stood off to the side, in the shade, where Charles could see them easily and where there would be little impediment to guiding Noah to the makeshift pulpit swiftly. Charles would be watching as he preached. If Noah began to fall under, Patsy would raise her hand and signal, and the two friends would wait for Noah to sink into unconsciousness, stiffen, and rise with the words of God in his mouth.

  “God reaches out to the repentant sinner,” Charles proclaimed. “We are wretches, but He is grace. This we know to be true because it is written in God’s Word and we experience it every day. Is not the sun and rain that bring the harvest a sign of the grace of God? Is not the sweet fellowship we know with each other the grace of God? The justifying grace and the pardoning love of God speak afresh to our hearts that God’s mercies are new every morning.”

  “Has your father prepared an entire sermon?” Susanna whispered to Patsy.

  “He speaks what God lays on his heart,” Patsy said.

  Between them Noah nodded, still sitting erect and showing no sign of feeling ill.

  Charles preached on. “If you have not experienced the new birth that brings you to God’s pardoning love, let this be the day.”

  He glanced at Patsy, who shrugged.

  “After we are born again—a wondrous gift that comes to us in a splendid moment like no other we will ever recall—God’s grace draws us into the fullness of the Christian life. Jesus came that we might have life and have it abundantly. This is God’s love for you, made possible by Christ’s sacrifice.”

  Charles glanced again toward Noah, who now leaned forward in his chair. But it was only genuine interest in Charles’s words, Susanna knew, rather than a sign of falling under.

  “John Wesley, the esteemed founder of my own Methodist tradition, described the Christian life as a heart habitually filled with the love of God and the love of neighbor, as Jesus himself said that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.”

  Another glance. Another shrug.

  “Let the mind of Christ dwell in you. Then you will know this fullness of the Christian life to which He calls you and for which He gave his life. New life makes all this possible. If you do not yet know what it is to be born again, let this be the day.”

  Charles was beginning to repeat himself. Perhaps he always did so when he preached. Susanna could not be sure. But she could be certain that he was looking toward Noah more frequently and using the gesture to create pauses in which he gathered his thoughts.

  He would just have to finish his sermon and give a benediction. He should never have even hinted at a guest preacher.

  “Don’t stop, Papa,” Patsy murmured.

  He’d only been preaching a few minutes. Yesterday he had seen for himself that Noah might be well and whole for an entire day with no sign of falling under. The people had come to hear a sermon, and her father would give them one, but Patsy suspected he would soon shift to a melding of sermons he had given before. Calling people to new birth was a favorite topic. Nothing gave him more pleasure than witnessing the moment of conversion, the moment a new soul entered the kingdom of heaven.

  “Through the power of the Holy Ghost, we increase in our knowledge of God and in our love for God and neighbor,” Charles said. “The joy of the gospel fills us to overflowing. Do you not want this great joy? It is God’s gift offered to you. You must but accept it with a repentant heart and it shall be yours.”

  Another glance. Patsy shifted her gaze to Noah, whose eyes remained fixed on her father. Open and fixed, not glazed or closing.

  If Noah did not preach, at least he would be edified by the sermon her father preached. Patsy returned her own gaze to her father.

  It was Susanna’s movement, not Noah’s, that caught in her peripheral vision a few seconds later. Susanna’s hand moved to Noah’s shoulder.

  “Is this it?” Patsy said, her hand moving to Noah’s elbow. “Noah?”

  “I am still here,” he said.

  He twitched, but it could have been nerves. The stress of seeing the audience gathered and primed yet wondering what would happen next was enough to make them all twitch.

  “Susanna?” Patsy said softly.

  “I am not certain,” Susanna said. “But I think so.”

  Noah leaned back slightly in the chair—or perhaps Patsy only imagined he had. The angle of his head shifted. She was certain of that. In an instant, color fled his face, leaving only a white clamminess.

  Susanna nodded.

  Patsy raised her hand to signal her father.

  Noah slumped in their arms.

  Charles made a smooth transition. “I have great delight in the Lord that today a man who lives the fullness of the Christian life has accompanied me on this journey to meet with you. Though I am a Methodist and he is Amish, we find ourselves of one heart in the joy of the Lord.”

  Charles swung one arm open wide, directing the gaze of his open-air congregation to Noah.

  “Are we sure he’s ready?” Patsy whispered.

  “Do not let go yet,” Susanna said.

  With the dozens of gazes on them, Patsy kept one hand under Noah’s elbow and the other behind his shoulder, her fingers hungering for the stiffening that would return his form and open his eyes.

  “Mr. Noah Kauffman is here to share the Word of God with you,” Charles said. “I know you will find great blessing as he brings to you a message from the heart of God.”

  Noah’s knees bent at right angles as his weight shifted into his heels and he unfolded himself from the chair.

  Niklaus bolted toward them from the edge of the crowd.

  “Is he all right?” he said.

  “He will be,” Susanna said.

  Noah claimed his full height now.

  “Where is his Bible?” Susanna said. “He will want it.”

  Patsy scooped up the black-bound volume from the ground at Noah’s feet. Susanna took it and placed it in Noah’s hands.

  “What happens now?” Niklaus asked.

  “Now Noah will preach,” Susanna said. “I will go stand with him.”

  “I’ll go, if you like,” Patsy said.

  Susanna shook her head. “I will go first. But stay close.”

  “How many times have you witnessed this?” Niklaus asked Patsy as Susanna gently guided Noah.

  “Quite a few,” she said. “But you have seen it as well, haven’t you?”

  “I only saw him preaching after church on the day this all began,” Niklaus said. “I would not have known the signs.”

  Susanna kept a hand on Noah’s elbow, but Noah chose his own path.

  “Where is he going?” Niklaus asked.

  “He might be looking for the window at home.” Patsy could only speculate. “Or he might be starting to pace. He sometimes walks around as he preaches.”

  Niklaus glanced around the clearing. While the trunks had been felled and removed long ago, enough stumps remained, spreading old roots like giant spider legs, to prove a hazard to a careless step.

  “Susanna will stay right with him,” Patsy said. “And when she tires, I will take a turn.”

  “Might I also?” Niklaus said.

  Patsy inspect
ed his face.

  “He is my friend, after all,” Niklaus said.

  Patsy nodded. “He will likely preach longer than the congregation can stay.”

  “Will he not know to stop?”

  She shook her head.

  “Then I shall be ready to assist.”

  Noah held his Bible open in front of him, Susanna still at his elbow, and began to speak.

  He spoke of God’s love, of human failings, of faithfulness, of repentance, of redemption, of new life, of serving Christ with love toward one another, of unceasing prayer, of God’s gracious gift of salvation.

  “I don’t see much difference,” Patsy said.

  “Between what?” Niklaus said.

  “Between the way my father preaches and the way Noah preaches.”

  Niklaus could not disagree. What the daughter of a Methodist minister could not know was that Noah’s sermons were not what she would encounter if she visited an Amish church service. His bright tone. His lively eyes. His plain speaking from the heart. His words of joyful Christian living. His appeal for repentance because of the gracious welcome awaiting the sinner in the arms of God. His assurance of the reward of repentance and faith.

  It was indeed in the manner of Charles Baxton but not at all in the manner of Shem Hertzberger or Niklaus himself.

  Noah pivoted, fixed his gaze on Niklaus, and grinned. Niklaus waved.

  “He will not remember,” Patsy said quickly. “He looks at you and makes you feel that if you were the only sinner on earth, Christ would have died for you anyway. But he does not see, and he does not remember.”

  Niklaus crossed his arms over his chest. Noah’s words resumed, with a lengthy quotation from the book of Romans without referring to the Bible in his hands. Niklaus found no fault in Noah’s words. But the mystery of falling under the Holy Ghost and knowing nothing of what happened but what others told him—Niklaus found no sense in that.

  CHAPTER 16

  Uncle Niklaus had been home for two days. That meant Susanna was as well. Tomorrow was a church Sunday, but Adam did not want to wait that long to see Susanna and perhaps not have a moment to pull her away on their own. The Kauffman farm was just the next farm over. She could have been anywhere for the early part of the day—chores on the Hooley farm, walking and collecting items for dyes, delivering dyes or cloth. But now, in midafternoon, he was most likely to find her at the Kauffmans’. Noah’s condition, willful or not, was changing his bond with Susanna. The pleasure in happening upon each other was lost in her efforts to be where Noah needed her. Her mind was in a place that had not existed a few weeks ago. Bracing himself for what he would encounter at the Kauffmans’, Adam chose to walk rather than take a horse.