Gladden the Heart

by Olivia Newport

  “You know the bishop may still not agree that the reasons are petty,” Niklaus said.

  “I suppose not,” Adam said, his eyes fixed on the light above. “But I am not proposing to plight my troth to the bishop.”

  “That might be an unsubmissive position to hold.”

  “Said the kettle to the pot.”

  Niklaus laughed.

  “‘And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor,” Adam said, “and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.’”

  “That is a truth each man must find for himself.”

  “I am here!” Susanna’s voice rang through the night.

  The two men looked up. Susanna bounced close to the edge, but there she was, in the light of the lantern. There could not be much oil left in it after all this time, but they still had Adam’s.

  Adam caught the rope when it swung back down. “You should go next.”

  “We promised Susanna it would be you.” Niklaus took the rope from Adam’s hands and started to tie the light to it.”

  “I will not take the light.” Adam poked his finger into Niklaus’s knot and undid it. “If you remain here alone, the light must be yours.” Niklaus held the light while Adam secured himself and called up to Patsy. If Niklaus knew his nephew, Adam had packed extra oil to see them through the night.

  Safe. Everyone was safe. Her father and Noah and Susanna and Adam and Niklaus. They were scratched up, disheveled, and smudged. Their clothes were beyond mending and could go to the rag piles once they got home. The cobbler would be glad for the leather repair work on their boots.

  But they were safe.

  Noah, limp, was still unconscious and tied into a saddle with his head resting against the horse’s long neck and his hands secured underneath. While Adam refilled the canisters of the lanterns with enough fuel to get them down the mountain, Patsy rounded Noah’s horse to stand beside Susanna.

  “I think he should be awake by now,” Patsy said softly.

  Susanna nodded.

  “Should we be worried?”

  “Niklaus said the wound was on his shoulder, not his head,” Susanna said.

  “That doesn’t mean he didn’t hit his head on the way down,” Patsy said. “I’ve been doing the arithmetic all afternoon and evening. It comes out the same every time. We don’t know when he began preaching, but we have a good idea when he stopped. Even allowing for one of the longer recovery naps we’ve seen him take on the davenport …”

  “I know. He should be awake—and he might be at any moment. We must make sure that one of us rides beside him all the way down.”

  “It should be you,” Patsy said. “Since Phoebe is not here, the first face he sees should be yours.”

  Niklaus approached. “Charles wonders if we should wait for daylight. The later it gets, the harder it is to argue with his point.”

  “No,” Susanna said. “Absolutely not.”

  “We would go at first light,” Niklaus said. “And we call this a mountain, but folks out in Colorado Territory would laugh at us for getting so worked up over a hill. At dawn we would all be safely home in no time.”

  “I’ll deal with my father,” Patsy said. “Mama is used to having him gone, and as long as she knows I am with him, she won’t worry for me. But Phoebe will be out of her mind. Making her wait for dawn would be a great unkindness.”

  “She might already be alone,” Susanna said. “The men who offered to help never made it all the way up here. How do we know the women did not go home when it was suppertime?”

  “I do not suppose we do,” Niklaus said.

  “Phoebe will be frantic,” Susanna said. “I will not have any part in multiplying her distress.”

  Nicklaus nodded. “Shem knows every inch of mountain even in the dark.”

  “And Patsy has been all over it with Galahad,” Susanna said.

  “Then the two of them shall lead,” Niklaus said.

  “Me? Lead with your bishop?” Patsy said. “He will have none of it.”

  “You handle your father,” Niklaus said. “I will handle Shem.”

  Moments later the entourage began the descent, Patsy and Shem at the head, Susanna and Adam riding on either side of the horse bearing the sleeping Noah whenever the width of the path allowed it, and Niklaus in the rear. One light beamed in the front and one in the back. They would go as slowly as necessary, but Patsy would feel relief when at last the stars began to fade.

  CHAPTER 42

  Mrs. Krabill and Mrs. Lantz had indeed remained at Phoebe’s side, though Susanna could well imagine there had been moments when Phoebe wished they felt less inclination to chatter as much as was their nature. Normally Phoebe enjoyed long stretches of peace and quiet, even in the middle of a quilting bee. But under the circumstances, with her vulnerable husband lost in a mountainous void, Susanna hoped Phoebe had appreciated companionship in a vigil of brooding hours.

  Every candle in the house was burning when Susanna rode side by side with Noah onto the Kauffman farm, and within seconds the front door was thrown open and the three women charged out in welcome. Phoebe held a candle over her husband and then up in Susanna’s face.

  “He is alive,” Susanna said, “and as far as we can tell breathing well.”

  “Just asleep?”

  “We hope so.”

  “Help me get him down.”

  Adam was already on the other side of the horse, pulling just the right length of rope to swiftly undo one knot after another before receiving Noah into his arms.

  “Straight to bed?” Adam asked.

  Phoebe shook her head. “The davenport. If he is just sleeping after preaching, that is where he will expect to find himself when he wakes.”

  They carried him inside, where Phoebe warmed water and sponged him off and satisfied herself that the bleeding from his shoulder had been stemmed. The other men saw to the horses before coming in through the kitchen.

  Charles was the first to emerge into the front room. “Your friends have the stove fired up and eggs and flour and sausage everywhere.”

  Susanna laughed. “Give them a few minutes. They will have enough to feed four times more people than are here.”

  “I should see what they need,” Phoebe said “A pot or something.”

  “You stay put,” Patsy said. “Noah will wake soon. He’ll want to see your face.”

  “He will not remember any of this night.” Phoebe sighed.

  “But none of us will forget,” Patsy said. “I will check to see if the kitchen crew will allow me to join them.”

  In the chair pulled close to the davenport across from the fire, Susanna allowed her head to loll back, tracking the comings and goings from the kitchen through slits in her eyes.

  Charles pulled a hardback chair from the table and sat with a view of Noah. Susanna could not discern what he might be thinking.

  Shem was next to come out of the kitchen, pausing to speak to Patsy before following the tip of her finger. Patsy directed Shem to Charles. Shem went to the dining table and, with a glance toward the davenport and mindful of any noise that might disturb Noah, gently pulled out a chair.

  With all the empty seats in the room, Shem sought the one beside Charles. Even after all that happened on Jacks Mountain that night, this one gesture was enough to make Susanna’s eyes flip open wide. Surely Shem did not think this the time or place to confront Charles. Susanna edged forward in her chair. But Shem simply angled his head toward Charles and murmured peaceably.

  This was as it should be. Friends gathered in a time of need.

  “Mrs. Krabill stuck her head out the kitchen door. “All is ready. Come and eat.”

  Having been shooed out of the kitchen, Patsy gasped at what she saw at the table. It would have made more sense for her father to sit next to Niklaus. Or Adam. Or Susanna. Or Patsy herself. Sitting beside the bishop would only stir embers that had cooled during the night. With a glance across the table toward wide-eyed Susanna
, Patsy took a place on the other side of her father. If he got out of hand with his erudite yet pointed comments toward the Amish bishop, Patsy would reach under the table and pinch his knee. This was an Amish home. Noah’s home. They were there because of a harrowing night and being fed by the kindness of Amish women who had every reason to be home with own families at this hour—hours and hours ago.

  The women came out of the kitchen with platters of food, arranged them on the table, and then stood back ready to serve as the ravenous rescuers, who had not eaten since breakfast, gathered around the table. Patsy took her cue from the Amish, awaiting the silent prayer with which they began every meal, waiting for Shem to raise his head and say, “Aemen.”

  Charles cut his fried ham into polite-sized bites and swallowed one. “Certainly we have seen God at work this night.”

  No one could argue with that simple statement.

  Charles pulled open a steaming biscuit and slathered it with butter. “Might I inquire if you have a secret ingredient for such a delicious concoction?”

  The women beamed.

  So far so good. Patsy ate with a fork in one hand, leaving the other idle—yet available to pinch her father’s knee if necessary—in her lap.

  “I wonder if I might say something to Shem,” Charles said, “something that might edify others of you as well.”

  Patsy crept to the edge of her chair. Papa, this is not the time.

  “I want to say I’m sorry,” Charles said. “With my sincerest, deepest apologies.”

  Forks clinked to plates and stilled.

  Charles pushed food around on his plate, not taking any bites.

  “I was raised by my grandmother,” he said, “and she made sure I was in church every time the doors were open.”

  Grandma Pat. Patsy had never met her great-grandmother, who died before her parents married, but she bore her name, Patricia Louise Baxton.

  “She read her Bible faithfully,” Charles said, “and I learned my letters at her knees by sounding out her favorite verses.” He paused to chuckle. “Of course, I had heard her recite them so many times that the process was to my benefit and she thought me an exceptionally bright child.”

  Laughter erupted. Patsy glanced around the table, uncertain.

  Shem had turned in his chair to listen attentively, and others around the table found the story captivating as well.

  “My grandmother believed,” Charles said. “I had no doubt as to the state of her soul, though some in many groups believe we will only be sure on Judgment Day.”

  Even Patsy was hearing a chapter of the story her father had never told before.

  “But you see,” Charles said, “I had fallen in with some friends who were Methodist youth, and I had my heart strangely warmed. I knew I had been saved and that I would give my life to God’s work, just as John Wesley had done after his heart was strangely warmed. My grandmother could never sort out what that meant, or what it said about the state of my own soul in all those years she was hiding God’s Word in my heart. And all I could talk about was how she needed to have her heart strangely warmed, too, because I knew the joy that awaited her once she did. She took it to mean I did not believe her to be saved, and she took offense.”

  More tears filled Patsy’s eyes than they could contain.

  “My new minister said that if you have good news, of course you want to share it, but to Grandma Pat my news was not good news. I tried to work it into conversation at least once a day, and that was my downfall. Eventually she calmly and firmly suggested I look for other accommodations.”

  Niklaus caught Charles’s eye. “That is why you were in the lumber camp where I met you,” Niklaus said.

  Charles nodded. “I learned a few things about hard work and a tamed tongue. And here we are. At the table with your bishop, to whom I owe an apology.”

  Patsy held her breath.

  “I have always wondered,” Charles said, “if there might have been a third way I could have taken with my grandmother—something other than right or wrong, some middle ground of understanding each other. But she passed suddenly before I mustered the courage to try.”

  Patsy’s sleeve was grimy from a night on the ridge and on horseback, but it was the nearest thing she had to dab at her eyes.

  Charles held out his hand to Shem. “I would like to think that the lesson I learned too late so long ago will not be a complete waste. Will you forgive me?”

  As famished as he was, Niklaus had set down his fork at the beginning of Charles’s story, even if it was loaded with potatoes crisped to golden perfection and even if they were quickly losing their steam.

  How could he have been ignorant of the circumstances that brought Charles to that lumber camp a quarter of a century ago? Men came for all sorts of reasons. Saving the family farm. Sending a younger brother to college. Running from trouble with the law by venturing into territory where few cared about real names or details of the past as long as a man gave an honest day’s work. Even Niklaus, who had left behind his young bride, had hoped to make a modest but rapid fortune that would secure his own future on the very farm where he had raised his children. No one would have supposed that Charles’s grandmother had thrown him out because of his religious conversion and he had nowhere else to go.

  But if she had not thrown Charles out and he had not labored in that lumber camp, Niklaus would not have met him, and his own life in the Lord would not be what it was.

  Charles’s face was white with the truth he had told.

  “Papa,” Patsy said, “I never knew.”

  Charles cleared his throat. “I always thought that once I had a wife and child, Grandma Pat would want to know you both, and that would smooth things over. I guess I waited too long.”

  “Shem?” Niklaus said, his question laden with every plea their decades of friendship entitled him to ask, despite the crooked path they had taken lately. Making their own crooked places straight was yet to come. For now it was Charles whom Niklaus ached for. Niklaus had known Shem long enough to read his every expression. The bishop looked dubious but was beginning to bend.

  The stirring behind Niklaus turned everyone’s heads.

  “Noah!” Phoebe cried.

  Niklaus scraped back his chair.

  Noah threw off his quilt. “Have I missed supper again?”

  “Stay right there.” Phoebe scurried to her husband. “You are wounded.”

  “Wounded?” But Noah’s wince testified that he had discovered the gash at the back of his shoulder. He was quiet for a moment. “This did not happen preaching in the window, did it?”

  Phoebe shook her head.

  “The bishop?” Noah said.

  “Of course not.” Niklaus was on the davenport now, looking to Phoebe for some clue as to what they should tell Noah. They would tell him the truth, of course. But how quickly?

  “You truly remember nothing of this day?” Shem crossed the room slowly.

  “I remember that Phoebe went to take some eggs to Mrs. Swigert, and Susanna had deliveries. I was quite insistent there was no need for them to watch my every move. Then I realized I lacked long nails for hooks in the barn and thought Niklaus might have some. Since it was a nice day, and his farm is so close, I decided to walk over and ask.”

  Niklaus and Adam exchanged glances.

  “You never made it,” Niklaus said.

  “You must have fallen under,” Charles said, standing at the table, “and wandered.”

  Noah peered again at the bishop. “Quite a ways, I gather.”

  “The bishop helped us find you,” Niklaus said.

  “I repent,” Shem said.

  Noah drew back. “Of finding me?”

  “Of ever doubting you. Of shouting at you. Of the needle. Of speaking of you in a malicious manner. Of all of it. Please forgive me.”

  “Well,” Noah said, “since I do not specifically have personal memory of these events and only secondhand knowledge, then I do not find it reasonable to hold a grudge.
I surely know our Lord would not.”

  CHAPTER 43

  The Amish wives were the first to go. Susanna had expected they would leave to care for their own households as soon as they were certain Phoebe would not be left on her own, but instead they had left the returning entourage to recount their feats and perils and disappeared into the kitchen to rustle up a middle-of-the-night meal. Afterward, though, Patsy and Susanna assured them they could look after the cleaning up, and the two women hitched up the wagon they had come in half a day ago and journeyed toward home and a few hours of sleep before their own boppli clamored for breakfast.

  Shem was next. His wife knew that occasionally he was up late ministering to a family in their congregation in a turmoil, but her habit was to wait for him. It was two in the morning. It was time she heard the night’s story—not only Noah’s but his own.

  Charles fretted that Mercy might be worried—more for Patsy than for Charles. She was used to his absence, but she was unaccustomed to their daughter gallivanting at night, and there had been no time to explain the circumstances.

  One by one, Susanna watched them leave. In another three hours, Phoebe would have been up for twenty-four hours straight. Susanna would have to make sure Phoebe got some rest.

  “No need to make Deborah worry longer than she has to.” Niklaus made his usual effort to be sure his hat was on straight, but as usual it cocked to the left. That he still had possession of his hat after the night’s ropes and knots and horses and lanterns and rocks astounded Susanna, but there it was.

  Niklaus glanced at Adam. “Ready?”

  “I will be right behind you,” Adam said. “I will bring the extra horse, if you like.”

  Niklaus glanced from Adam to Susanna. She almost blushed, but Niklaus was on Adam’s side, no matter what.

  “I thought we might have one last look at the barn animals,” Adam said.

  We.

  Why was that such a delicious word when it came from Adam’s mouth?

  “Do as you please,” Phoebe said, straightening the quilt on the back of the davenport. “Noah and I are going to bed.”