The Keeper

by Suzanne Woods Fisher

  He shook his head and let out a long sigh. Where were those thoughts coming from? He hadn’t felt this way last year, had he? Or the year before that?

  Before Julia interrupted him, his thoughts had been traveling to another Thanksgiving, years ago, when his mother burned the turkey. And then he remembered the year when his youngest sister had tripped over a dog bone as she was bringing the turkey to the table and sent it flying into his father’s lap. Oh, the surprised look on his father’s face! The memory made him laugh out loud. But, as always, a sharp tug of pain swept in right behind it. He swallowed hard, banishing the images of the past as he tried to concentrate on feeding the sheep.

  When memories of those days popped up in his mind, the images were still as crisp as a new dollar bill. Why were those thoughts hitting him so squarely in the jaw this year? Was it part of turning twenty-five? Feeling older?

  He drew in a long breath, inhaling the woodsy scent laced with a clover hay fragrance. He leaned against the wagon and pulled out of his pocket an envelope. He reread the letter that he had picked up this morning at the post office.

  Dear Roman,

  Suffice it to say, I am someone who has made mistakes, and in buying the property, I am trying to remedy them. You may think I intend to raze the farm and build homes, or condominiums, or a strip center of shops, or an industrial park. Although that would be most lucrative, that’s not what I will do. You have my promise. I want to keep the farm as it is.

  Don’t be a fool, Rome. Take the money.

  R.W.

  16

  Julia awoke in the morning thinking of that kiss with Rome. The question she’d been trying to avoid asking felt like a fist in her stomach. How could she have let him kiss her like that? Then she remembered the way it felt—natural and wonderful. Yet what had she been thinking? Maybe there was something wrong with her.

  Julia had no illusions about why Rome had kissed her. By acting immune to his charms, she’d turned herself into a challenge—a challenge he’d forget about the instant one of the local beauties caught his eye.

  Yes, the kiss was quite . . . memorable. The only other man she had kissed was Paul, and his kisses were rather staid and formal. Avuncular, almost.

  Rome’s kiss wasn’t like a relative’s kiss, not at all. That kiss with Rome . . . she couldn’t bear to think of it, of what he made her feel.

  She could never deny that Rome was an attractive man, because he was. She also could not deny that he could be a caring, giving man—if he ever truly learned to love someone other than his bees.

  Besides, her heart belonged to Paul. Was it wrong to let Rome kiss her? A twinge of guilt washed over her, but she decided to dismiss it. And she didn’t kiss Rome—he kissed her! She was only indulging him. Just a whim. Flushing it out of her system. She had to forget what had happened and keep her wits about her. It would never happen again. Never. It was a terrific mistake. Never again!

  Determined not to spend any more time analyzing that kiss, she jumped out of bed. Today was a new day. No ruthless man with dark eyes, no kiss she couldn’t explain.

  Amos smelled something delicious waft up the stairs and into his room. Fern’s rich coffee, fried eggs, home fries seasoned only as she could do. Amos savored the savory smells. They were downright intoxicating. When had he last felt like he had an appetite? He couldn’t remember.

  Was that bacon? Better still, could it be scrapple? Menno must have asked her to cook for him. Fern indulged him. Just the thought of a bite of fried scrapple, slathered in ketchup, filled him with a spurt of energy to go downstairs. He slipped his feet onto the floor and pulled himself to a standing position. There. Step one.

  Slowly, he tiptoed to the top of the stairs and waited until he heard Fern go out the kitchen door to hang a load of laundry. He was glad he hadn’t gotten around to oiling that rusty hinge, after all. He went down the stairs, into the kitchen, and looked for the crispiest piece of scrapple there was, cooling on a paper towel. He slathered it with ketchup and was just about to take a bite when he saw Fern heading in from the yard. He scurried to the stairs and tried to get to his room as fast as he could, which wasn’t too swift.

  Back in his room, he sat on the bed trying to catch his breath and suddenly felt an enormous pressure on his chest, like it did when he and Menno used to wrestle and Menno would sit on him. He was faintly aware that the muscles in his left arm were beginning to constrict. His hand couldn’t hold on to the scrapple and it fell to the floor, ketchup side down. Blast! He had worked hard for that scrapple.

  Amos bent down to pick it up. That’s when the room started to spin.

  Julia laid the table with silverware. Fern was frying scrapple and two eggs apiece for all of them, like it was Christmas morning.

  Uncle Hank burst into the kitchen and sat down at the table. “I came for your coffee, Fern!”

  Fern raised an eyebrow and brought him a cup.

  He took a long sip and smacked his lips. “That coffee is so rich and sturdy it could float a nail!”

  Julia sized up Uncle Hank. His hair and beard were trimmed and his clothes looked clean. He was transformed! Menno stood by the kitchen stove with a mug of tea in his hand, giving Fern suggestions about how to make bread toasted just the way he liked it—nearly burnt but not quite. That was the longest speech that Julia ever heard come out of her brother’s mouth. What was happening to him? To Uncle Hank? Even M.K. was chirpier than usual this morning. They all seemed changed, overnight. It was Fern’s doings.

  Fern sent M.K. upstairs to tell her father to stop ringing that bell incessantly because breakfast was on its way. M.K. was no sooner there than she was back again. She shot into the kitchen like a pack of hounds was on her tail. Her mouth was stretched in a wordless scream, and she was gray-faced.

  She grabbed the edge of the table, then fetched up a breath and howled out, “Come quick! It’s Dad! He’s dead!”

  On the way to the hospital in the ambulance, Amos heard the medic declare, in a voice that sounded distant, that he could not find a pulse. Why was he saying that? Amos wondered.

  In the emergency room he heard a nurse say, “No pulse, no pressure.” Twice, she said it. He also remembered being told, by a calm, soothing, yet authoritative voice, that it wasn’t time yet for him to die.

  Later, when he woke up in the intensive care room, Amos was told what had happened. He had collapsed, right on the bedroom floor, a bell in one hand, a piece of scrapple in the other. Caught red-handed!

  All that Amos remembered was feeling pressure in his chest, a squeezing, as though his heart were a balloon about to burst. The E.R. doctor was able to revive him, but just barely, he was sternly told. “Next time, you won’t be so lucky,” the doctor warned. “Your heart is at war with itself. Your final defense is a transplant . . . or it is a war you will lose, Amos Lapp.”

  The doctor looked like a boy himself.

  Amos asked the doctor if he had been the one who told him in the emergency room that he was not going to die. The doctor looked baffled. He replied that he hadn’t, nor did he recall anyone else in the room saying such a thing.

  Then the doctor gave a broad grin. “Aren’t you Amish the God-fearing type? Maybe it was an angel with a message from God.” He leaned in close to Amos. “Maybe God is trying to tell you: AMOS LAPP! Get. Your. Name. On. The. Transplant. List.”

  Amos scowled. He knew the doctor was being facetious—but, he decided, strangely enough, he might be on to something. It wasn’t a human-sounding voice. It was too deep, too melodious, too beautiful. Suddenly, Amos had no reservations or doubts about its claim. He believed that voice was from God. Maybe an angel, a messenger, but definitely sent from God.

  Julia had told Rome once that he had a smile for every occasion, and he reluctantly realized . . . she was right. He was giving the nurse at the Intensive Care Unit his “Aw, shucks. You-don’t-mind-doing-a-little-favor-for-me, do-you?” treatment.

  “Ordinarily, only family members are allowed i
n,” the nurse said. She batted her eyes at him with such alarming speed that Rome was afraid she’d blind herself. “But seeing as how all of you Amish folk seem to be related to each other, I’ll just say you’re a cousin if anyone asks.” She gave him a wink.

  “Well, thank you, Miss . . . ,” Rome cast a quick glance at her nameplate, “Miss Chelsea.”

  The nurse led him to Amos’s room. “Just fifteen minutes, though. Okay, honey?”

  He smiled again and the nurse smiled back at him, touching the curls on the back of her neck. The smile slipped off his face as the nurse disappeared around the corner, her white rubber shoes making a squeaky sound as she walked down the hall. He felt a twinge of remorse—the first time he could ever remember such a feeling. Julia had him pegged. He was a flirt. A shameless flirt.

  Rome pushed the door to Amos’s room and gasped when he saw him, lying in the hospital bed with tubes attached to his nose, one to his arm, blinking machines that let out beeps every few seconds. He saw Amos’s beloved Bible grasped in his hands and forced a smile. “Have time for a visit?”

  Amos looked over at him. “Well, well, the Bee Man. I can’t think of anybody I’d rather see right now.” His voice was weak and raspy, but he managed a thin smile.

  Rome sat down on a chair across from Amos and stretched out his long legs. “Amos, I only have fifteen minutes and there’s something I need to tell you.”

  “Shoot.”

  “I spoke to the heart transplant coordinator over at Hershey Medical about what needs to happen to get a person on the list.”

  Amos stilled and looked away.

  “Not that I would interfere in any way—”

  “What would you call it then?” Amos asked gruffly.

  Rome put up a hand. He wished he weren’t sitting below Amos on the chair, like a child. “Hear me out. Julia has told me why you won’t consider a transplant.”

  Amos’s gaze shifted to the window.

  Rome drew in a long breath. “You’ve always been willing to give someone a chance. Would you at least listen to what I have to say on the subject?”

  Amos turned back to Rome. “Speak your piece.”

  “Julia said you didn’t feel you could accept the heart of another person, knowing he had sacrificed his life for you. But Amos, I think you’ve got it all wrong. There are parallels between the gift of a donor and that of Christ’s gift of eternal life. Your new heart will be given unconditionally, with no strings attached, and without compensation. Free, but it comes at a high price. It requires a great loss be inflicted on the donor. Like Christ’s sacrifice for us.”

  Rome reached over and took Amos’s Bible out of his hands. He turned it to Ezekiel 36:26 and read aloud: “‘A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh.’ That verse is for you, Amos. God is in the business of giving out new hearts. New life.” He paused to see how Amos was responding, but Amos had closed his eyes. He waited a moment and then, discouraged, decided Amos had fallen asleep. He left the Bible open to Ezekiel and placed it next to Amos on the bed.

  Amos opened his eyes. “Rome, you can tell that boy doctor to put me on the list.” Then he closed his eyes again.

  Rome heard a sniffling sound and looked up. At the door was Julia. He walked over to her, and for an instant they were looking straight at each other, everything between them falling away. He reached up and touched one large hand lightly against her cheek. She pressed it with her own hand, tears in her eyes.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  Amos was discharged by the end of that week, sent home with a beeper that had to be with him at all times. “When a compatible heart is harvested, the transplant coordinator will beep you. You get to Hershey Medical immediately!” the doctor had told him. “Whatever you need to do—taxi, racehorse, or call 911. You just get yourself in there, Amos Lapp.”

  Harvested. The very word made Amos shudder. It wasn’t a crop; it was a human being. A heart.

  Still, he felt a confidence that proceeding forward to have a heart transplant was the right thing to do, a conviction that God was guiding him in this direction.

  For now, though, he would have to wait. For someone to die so that he could live.

  “We need to get prepared,” Rome told Julia on the evening after Amos was discharged from the hospital. “To think of some ways to raise money for the heart transplant. Maybe get some folks to help us have a fundraising auction.”

  It amazed Julia to hear Rome use the pronoun “we.” She didn’t think it was a part of his vocabulary. I, me, myself, mine. But never “we.” Was it possible Roman Troyer was starting to grow attached to people? To care about them? “Do you really think it will happen soon?”

  “When the multitudes needed to be fed, Jesus gave them food. When the disciples needed to pay their taxes, he provided a coin. When the time is right for Amos to get a heart, God will provide.” Rome pulled out a pen and started jotting things down on a sheet of scrap paper. “So let’s do our part and get ready, so we’re prepared when God brings your father that heart.”

  “Julia can quilt,” Fern said quietly.

  Julia stared at Fern.

  “You could make another quilt like that one you made last year that went for such a big pile of cash,” Fern said.

  “Dad loved that quilt best,” M.K. volunteered after slipping into the room.

  “How did you know about that quilt?” Julia asked Fern.

  “Hank wrote about it in the Budget,” Fern said. “Fetched big bucks, he said. People called it a Julia Lapp original.”

  Uncle Hank! Julia’s mouth set in a firm line. He hadn’t mentioned to them that he wrote about the quilt in his weekly letter. Talk about stoking Edith Fisher’s fire.

  “You can make another one,” Fern said. “Just like that one.”

  Julia shook her head. “I can’t.”

  “Why not?” Rome asked. “I haven’t seen you design a quilt all summer. What’s made you stop?”

  M.K. sidled up next to Rome. “On account of Edith Fisher,” she whispered.

  “Mary Kate!” Julia said. “That’s family business!”

  “Rome’s practically family,” M.K. said. “So is Fern.” She turned to Rome. “Edith Fisher told folks that Julia was becoming prideful after her quilt brought in so much money. And then just after that, Paul postponed the engagement for the first time. So Julia stopped making quilt tops.”

  Fern huffed. “Edith Fisher has an opinion about every subject and gives it unsolicited.”

  The conversation about raising money started M.K. brainstorming dozens of ways to raise cash—most of them had to do with other people: Fern could whip up doughnuts and sell them at the fork in the road where construction workers gathered to be picked up by their crew each morning. Menno could double his birdhouse output and sell them door-to-door. M.K. even offered to stay home with Amos during church in the morning to think up more ideas, but Fern waved her off like she would a pesky fly.

  “You need church more than most,” Fern told M.K.

  Julia moved toward the open door that led from the kitchen to the side porch. It was dark and quiet outside, and she could smell jasmine in the night breeze. She loved it all so much. The trees and brooks, the sights and smells. Best of all, she loved watching the moon cast its shadow over the farm.

  Rome joined her. They stood silently for a long while, listening to the rustle of the wind as it made the dried corn tassles dance in the fields. Even under her father’s efficient management, Windmill Farm hadn’t looked this good. The fences that stretched around the paddocks had been repaired and whitewashed. The broken arm of the windmill had been fixed. Everything about the farm looked well tended and prosperous. It was because of Rome. There wasn’t anything he couldn’t do. He had taken Menno alongside him and worked steadily through Julia’s expansive to-do list.

  “Fern’s right,” he said. “You sh
ouldn’t let someone else steal your joy in making something you’re good at.”

  “Edith Fisher had a point,” Julia said. “I was proud, after winning that ribbon and raising so much money. I love quilt making, but it can become an idol to me. It was best to put it aside for a season.”

  Rome looked at her in surprise. “But the quilt was auctioned away for a good purpose.”

  She gave a half shrug. “Even something we love to do can become an idol. I was neglecting my friends and family just so I could create a quilt. I was always preoccupied, thinking about designing my next quilt top. When Dad took sick and needed so much of my attention, it made me realize how selfish I had become.”

  “You could never be selfish,” he said softly.

  Julia saw in Rome’s eyes something new, something of joy, even hope. Just a flicker. And then it was gone.

  After Rome left to go to his cottage, Julia turned off the gas lamps in the living room to get ready to go upstairs to bed. She turned in a slow circle, taking in every inch of this oh-so-familiar room until she faced the trunk that butted against the wall, holding her mother’s quilts.

  She set the lamp on the bookshelf and knelt on the floor to open the trunk. The soothing smell of cedar chips drifted up as she pushed the lid against the wall. The tissue paper that wrapped the quilts crackled as Julia lifted one, then another. There was a small blue-and-white Nine-Patch crib quilt that had covered each of Maggie Lapp’s babies. Below it was a Log Cabin pattern, made of cobalt and yellow, one her mother had made for Menno when he turned ten. Her hand brushed the vibrant colors, neatly stitched with the three-strand thread that her mother had insisted on. She had said the thread reminded her of the Holy Trinity, holding the world together, just the way thread held a quilt together. It was the last quilt her mother had made. Would Menno remember?