by Murray Pura
“Why, it could be to return here.” Mr. Thornberry fished a wide-brimmed white hat out of one of his bags and planted it on his bare head as sweat rolled down his pink cheeks. “Think of how welcome this climate will be when winter bears down with frost and snow and wind on Philadelphia.”
Jude smiled. “No doubt about that. Five years in British East Africa—Kenya—and three here have softened us up quite a bit. If God opens the door, we’ll run back to Turks and Caicos in a heartbeat.”
Lyyndaya shrugged. “Or maybe we’ll stay in Pennsylvania and give up flying. We could wind up threshing grain for the Lord and cutting hay and milking cows instead of climbing through the skies.”
Everyone saw the quick flash of green fire that swept through Becky’s eyes. “Not me,” she said.
There was a long moment when no one spoke and Becky stood with what looked like flames flickering about her blond head as she removed her leather helmet. Then Mr. Thornberry smiled and laughed and said the new pilot would be with them in what he called a fortnight.
“Two weeks?” Jude frowned, creases cutting into his handsome face. “Why doesn’t he let us pick him up in our plane?”
“Ah, well.” Mr. Thornberry seemed embarrassed by the conversation he had started in hope of easing the awkwardness of the moment. “He’s one of those types who isn’t comfortable unless he’s at the controls.”
Becky’s eyes ignited again. “You mean he doesn’t trust women pilots?”
Mr. Thornberry swiped at his forehead with his handkerchief. “Ah…Denton…doesn’t trust anyone—he might fly with your father—or he might not. In any case, he’ll wait until you three return with it to Miami and then fly it back here himself.” He squinted up at the sun. “I’m fairly cooking. Can we get under some shade, perhaps? Is there a glass of water or a large cup of tea to be had?”
“Of course, yes, forgive us.” John picked up two of the Thornberrys’ suitcases. “Your house is only a short walk. It’s under the palms and very cool and the trade winds blow right through your windows. Come. Come.”
Other men picked up the rest of the luggage and Lyyndaya accompanied Mrs. Thornberry off the runway and down a sandy path that ran through the trees. Jude remained behind with his daughter who, despite the heat, continued to stand by the Leopard Moth in a heavy leather flight jacket that was several sizes too big for her.
“You know,” he began quietly, “you didn’t need to make a scene over it.”
The green cat eyes blazed. “Over what?”
“Going back to Pennsylvania. This guy Denton refusing to fly with a woman at the controls.”
“I love Pennsylvania and I love our family there. I don’t mind that they use candles and oil lamps or don’t have cars or phones and it doesn’t matter to me if they want to spend the rest of their lives riding horses and baking bread in woodstoves. But their God says don’t fly, and my God says soar.”
“We have the same God, Becky, you know that. They just feel called to a different life in order to honor him.”
“Well, so do I.”
“All right. All right. No one is trying to clip your wings.”
Becky folded her arms over her chest. “Mother sounds like she’s going to give it a try.”
“Oh, she just misses living close to her family, her sisters and brothers. You know that.”
“I love them all. Especially Auntie Ruth and Bishop Zook. I take them as they are and accept the life they wish to live. I need them to treat me the same way.”
“They do. You know they do.”
“If Mom wants to park her plane and put on a prayer kapp in her old age—”
“Old age?” Jude protested. “She’s barely forty!”
“—that’s up to her. But I’m nineteen and if you try to ground me—”
“No one is going to try to ground you, Beck.”
“—I’ll just make my own way through this world without anyone’s help. I know God wants me up there. It’s like that poem you read to me when I got my pilot’s license. A lonely impulse of delight drove to this tumult in the clouds. It delights God that I fly. I know it does.”
Jude gathered her into his arms and kissed the top of her head. “All right. All right. Shh.”
“And I don’t need a man either. Especially a man who doesn’t think a woman can fly a plane straight and level. Or who doesn’t believe any woman—or any man—should fly a plane at all. So don’t try to be a matchmaker when we get to Lancaster County.”
“What are you thinking? That your mother and I are hatching a scheme to get you married off this summer?”
“Who knows? I hear you whispering and my name sounds the same in whispers or out loud.”
“Oh, Beck. Hooking you up to an Amish farm boy would be like putting a modern engine in an old Fokker triplane. Why, the stress on the wing struts would tear the plane apart.”
“Yes.” Becky’s arms were still folded and the tip of her nose a burning red. “Exactly.”
“Enough. Peace. We’ll help the Thornberrys learn the ropes this week, okay?”
“I know that.”
“Then we’ll visit with Aunt Ruth and Bishop Zook and Pastor Miller and all the rest. For a month or two. Also okay?”
“A month or two? Oh, I guess.”
“All the time we’ll be praying, thinking, wondering.”
“Yeah, yeah, okay. But I already know where God wants me to be and what he wants me to do.”
Jude smiled. “Which is?”
“He wants me to be a pilot and he wants me up with the angels and the wild birds. I fly for God. I fly for the people he asks us to help. And I fly for me. That’s it.”
“A nice neat package.”
“It is.”
“Air delivery.”
“Yes.”
“Hey. Remember we love you.” Jude tilted up his daughter’s face with its fiery emerald eyes. “When Nate felt he ought to go to China we had big misgivings. But we let him go because he was a man and capable of making his own decisions. I want so badly to see him again and hug him. The same goes for you, Beck. If you believe God wants you in the air then stay in the air. Mom and I won’t stand in your way. We may talk things over with you, argue a bit, make sure you know what’s on our minds. But in the end it’s up to you. You’re nineteen now. An adult.”
Becky’s eyes glistened. “Thanks, Dad.” She put her arms around him and hugged his body as tightly as she could. “You’ll see Nate again.”
“I know I will.”
“I mean here. Not just there. Here. On this earth. You’ll see him. I believe that.”
Jude hugged his daughter back and closed his eyes, holding her. “I’d do anything to make that happen, Beck. Anything God asked.”
TWO
Paradise!”
Becky opened her eyes. She had been half asleep, daydreaming about Turks and Caicos, the jade waters, her mother piloting the Leopard Moth to Miami, the president and vice-president of the mission board meeting the three of them there and taking charge of the plane, the long train trip up the eastern seaboard, miles of cities and towns, miles of cars, miles of flat fields. The monotony had made her doze. Now she saw tall green hayfields drenched in heat, men with straw hats and women with white prayer kapps driving teams of horses, a blacksmith shop with all its doors and windows wide open as the forge glared orange, a horse and buggy rolling along a dirt road by the track, a man with a long beard and hat and dark suspenders crossed over the back of his white shirt leaning on a shovel in a field and gazing at the locomotive as it steamed past.
Her mother put a hand on Becky’s arm. “It has its own beauty, the Pennsylvania land.”
Becky smiled. “I know.”
“There will be many people at the station. Do you think you have all their names straight?”
“I know all your sisters and brothers—my aunts and uncles. Don’t ask me to remember all their kids. You Amish grow families like you grow cornfields—they stretch to the horizon.�
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“You Amish. You’re Amish too, Becky.”
“No, I’m not. I’ve never been baptized like you and Dad. Never taken any oaths.” She looked into her mother’s clear green eyes. “Why don’t they shun you?”
“Shh. There was enough of that when your father and I were young. The bishop and the people have made a kind of exception for us—an Ausnahme—so that we can come and go and still visit with them even if right now we are not truly one with them.”
“Right now? How can we ever be one with them, Mother? We could never fly again.”
“Yes, we could fly. The Ordnung of our community allows its members to travel short distances by air for business or family matters or medical care.”
“No. I want to fly. I don’t want someone to fly for me.”
“Shh. There’s no need to argue. No one is asking you to take the baptismal vows.” Her mother looked out the window and smiled. “There they are. Bishop Zook is in his seventies and still straight and tall as the center beam in a barn.”
Becky had no intention of smiling but couldn’t stop herself as she saw the bishop in his black clothing and white beard towering over the others. “The gentle giant. I remember his piggyback rides.”
Jude leaned over both of them as he peered out the window. “I think he could still do it. Though you and he did not call them piggyback rides, did you?”
Becky’s smile grew, bringing all the color out in her eyes. “No. They were plane rides. I don’t think Pastor Miller approved.”
“Oh, well, that’s Miller’s way. But he’s mellowed some since 1918.”
Becky glanced up at her father. “He must have been a horror twenty years ago.”
Jude shrugged. “A tough cud to chew. Eventually it goes down.”
But Pastor Miller was as cheerful as Bishop Zook, both of them laughing and shaking hands and hugging with the vigor of twenty-year-olds. Beside Pastor Miller stood his son Joshua, taller than his father, covered in freckles, a big grin opening up his face. Becky knew who he was—the infant whose life her father and mother had saved by flying him to Harrisburg when he was dying of the Spanish flu. Pastor Miller had refused to allow the flight up until the last minute. Now he had one hand on his son’s shoulder, and his pride and joy were obvious.
“We must all get along to the picnic. Ja, we celebrate your homecoming with a picnic. The children are like balloons full of air they are so excited.” Pastor Miller patted his son’s back. “A blacksmith. Our new blacksmith.”
Faces flowed past Becky’s eyes. Grandfather and Grandmother Kurtz—her mother’s parents. And there, too, her mother’s sisters and brothers all grown up, with families of their own—Aunt Sarah, Uncle Daniel, Uncle Harley, and Uncle Luke. Pastor King and Pastor Stoltzfus, both old and stiff, but with plenty of light in their eyes and lots of goodwill in their greetings. Then there was her favorite, Auntie Ruth, her mother’s older sister. Her raven hair was streaked with white and silver and her blue eyes were pale, but her arms around Becky were as strong as they had ever been.
Becky kissed her aunt’s cheek. “Auntie Ruth. It’s so good to see you again.”
“And you. So tall. As beautiful as your mother.”
Ruth had been widowed after only one year. No child had been conceived before her husband was killed by a kick from a Percheron he was struggling to harness. Ruth had never remarried and had returned to the Kurtz household to help her mother raise her brothers and Sarah. Now she did most of the housework though Grandmother Kurtz still had her hand in with the baking and sewing.
“Am I staying in the same room as you?” Becky asked.
“Is that what you want?”
“If I’m not an intrusion. We could talk so much more easily.” Becky suddenly began to speak rapidly. “But perhaps you’re not comfortable with that—you must guard your privacy—we don’t have—”
“Hush.” Ruth hugged her again. “Of course we will room together, my dear. There are always two beds and I’ve made up the extra one with fresh linen and feather pillows and placed a new candle on your table. You see, I’m all ready for you. If you hadn’t asked, I would have insisted.”
Becky laughed. “Great. Being with you makes all the difference in the world.”
“The world is a large place and I have seen so little of it. But you’ve been to Africa and the Caribbean and know much more about it than I, so I will take your word for it. If God has arranged that I make all the difference in the world to you—Lobe den Herrn.”
“Yes, praise the Lord.” Becky kissed her aunt’s cheek again. “You are His gift to me.”
Everyone climbed into the buggies that had been parked at the train station and they soon arrived at the Stoltzfus field, where the Lapp Amish had already gathered. Blue and yellow and white balloons were in the air, blowing across the freshly cut grass, and children were running after them and squealing. Becky and Jude and Lyyndaya went through dozens of introductions and Becky’s head spun hearing the same names used over and over again—Yoder, Miller, Stoltzfus, King, Yoder, Yoder, Stoltzfus, Harshberger, Harshberger, Miller, Zook, Zook, Beiler, Beiler. She finally disentangled herself from the well-wishers and almost staggered toward the long tables that were laden with pies and pitchers of lemonade. A young man in a white shirt and dark pants with suspenders stood sipping from a glass as she came up.
“May I have a drink?” Becky asked an older woman behind the tables.
“Ja. Natürlich.”
The young man smiled at her. “A lot of hands to shake and faces to remember, ja?”
Becky laughed. “I’ve forgotten them all already.”
“Oh, if you stick around long enough your brain will do the work for you. You won’t have to think about it.” He held out his hand. “So here is someone else to remember. I’m Moses Yoder. As if you needed another Yoder.”
Becky took his hand. “Hello, Moses. I’m Becky Whetstone.”
He nodded and continued to sip from his glass. “I know. We’ve been expecting you.”
“Yes, this is quite a welcome. Which Yoders do you belong to?”
“My mother is an old friend of your mother’s. She’s the bishop’s daughter Emma. Do you know who I mean?”
Becky took a glass of pink lemonade the woman offered her, said thank you, and glanced at the far end of the line of tables. “Isn’t that your mother there? Handing out slices of pie?”
“Sure. That’s her. How could you remember? It’s been years.”
“Oh, she’s very tall and very attractive. She has those dark green eyes. And the dark skin. I wouldn’t forget her.” Smiling at Moses she realized he had the same height, the same color of eyes and skin, and the same kind of beauty, only it was more rugged and masculine. Suddenly embarrassed, she dropped her eyes. “Well, nice meeting you, Moses.”
“Where are you going? Not back to your parents?”
“I…no, not my parents…” She fumbled with her words. “I’m…I’m heading over—”
“Listen. I’m in charge of organizing some races for the children. I’m starting with sacks, potato sacks. Would you help me, Rebecca?” When she hesitated he said, “They’ve left me all alone with this.”
She smiled and finished her lemonade and set the empty glass down on the table. “Of course I’ll help. Let’s go.”
After the sack race was the three-legged race, and after that was the wheelbarrow race. Then the children insisted some of the adults race and Becky won the sack race, was linked with her Aunt Ruth in the three-legged race, and teamed up with her mother to lose the wheelbarrow race four times. Before she could make her way back to the tables to get another glass of lemonade Moses asked her to help with the big scavenger hunt, which ranged from one farm to another and included children, teenagers, and parents. Becky, tanned face warm with the heat of the afternoon, strands of her blond hair loose and damp and dangling down her cheeks, became the heroine of many Yoders and Millers and Zooks and Harshbergers when she became the only one to find
a four-leaf clover as well as the empty casing of an old shotgun cartridge. When the hunt was over she collapsed under an oak tree with Moses and the children and said she could hardly breathe.
“No more running, no more.” Two girls were in her lap. “Ice cream for everyone.”
“Not yet.” Moses looked over at the tables where his mother was busy. “Food first. Fried chicken. Potato salad. Sausage. Fruit.”
“Fine. Good. Everyone go get a plate of food.”
A little boy stared at her and said something in Pennsylvania Dutch.
Becky raised an eyebrow. “What is that?”
Moses took off his straw hat and wiped his forehead with his arm. “He says how do they know you’ll be here when they come back with their food?”
“Why didn’t he ask me in English?”
“He’s more comfortable with the Amish tongue.”
Becky reached over and mussed the boy’s blond hair. “Go get your food. I’m too tired to move. I’ll still be under this tree at midnight. What is your name?”
His smile was a sudden flash of white. “Eli.”
“Well, Eli, go and get a plateful of food. All of you can do that. Surely you must all be famished.”
The fifteen or so children ran in a mob toward the food lines, where their parents were waiting for them. Becky leaned her head back against the tree trunk. She closed her eyes.
“What an afternoon.” Her eyes remained shut. “Do they always have this much energy?”
“They’re excited because you’re here. And because you’re kind to them.” He paused. “You would make a good mother.”
Becky opened one eye. “Mother? Are you kidding me? I’m only nineteen.”
“Many of our women are married well before nineteen.”
“Are they? Bully for them. I’m not against marriage but I think I’d like to fall in love first.”
“Oh. You never have?”
“No.”
“Not even a little bit? A crush?”
