Whispers of a New Dawn

by Murray Pura

  Becky gave the old man a strong hug that startled him. “Thank you so much, Mr. Parker. It was a dream to be up in the air again. And to have Moses along. A dream. I’m so grateful.”

  Moses shook his hand. “I can’t thank you enough. Your loan of the aircraft has changed my life completely.”

  Henry Parker smiled. “You’re welcome. She’s never been put to better use than she was this morning.”

  “Let me give the propeller the spin, Henry.” Bishop Zook handed his hat to Moses. “Whenever you’re ready.”

  “I keep my gear under the pilot’s seat.” He pulled out his jacket and helmet and began to tug them on. Then he climbed on board and adjusted his goggles. “Any time now, Bishop Zook.”

  The bishop smiled, spat on his hands, and gripped a propeller blade firmly. He threw down on it with all his might, and the engine sputtered, made a choking sound while he stood back with a worried look on his face, then rumbled and roared. Henry Parker tossed him a salute and steered the Jenny into the wind. He lifted into the air, circled once, and headed north to his farmhouse and the landing strip. Hands on his hips, Bishop Zook watched him go.

  “If I could make horses fly,” he murmured. He looked at Moses and Becky. “Well, shall we head over to your horse and carriage?”

  The three of them climbed into the buggy and headed off to where Moses had parked. Moses and Becky sat holding hands in the back. She leaned forward.

  “Bishop Zook.”

  “Mm?”

  “I hope there will not be a great deal of trouble for Moses over this.”

  “The flying? There will be some mutters and scowls. But it will all pass like a sun shower the moment I announce you are going to take instruction for baptism and are leaving planes behind for good. Once it’s made clear Moses intends to marry you when the baptism is over, and that you have every intention of being a good Amish bride, it will be as if the flight this morning never happened.” He smiled back at them. “Except in your own hearts.”

  When they reached Moses’ buggy, where Milly patiently cropped grass in the ditch, the bishop handed Becky a packet of letters once she had climbed down. “These came for your family just yesterday.”

  Becky turned them over in her hand. “Who are they from?”

  “I don’t know. Two of them have come a long way. First to Africa, then the Caribbean, finally to Paradise.”

  Becky examined the postmarks. “Why, those two are from the Hawaiian Islands. We don’t know anyone there.”

  He shrugged. “Someone knows you. One has an army seal on the envelope.” He squinted up at the sun. “You get started. I will show up fifteen minutes after you arrive at the Kurtz home. Is that enough time?”

  “Yes,” responded Becky. “I think so.”

  Once they were seated side by side Moses flicked the reins and Milly started along the road into Paradise. Becky leaned her head on his shoulder and squeezed his hand.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll sit up straight once we come into town.”

  “Why should I be worried? I like your head where it is. It can stay on my shoulder right through the Amish farms.”

  “My brave man.”

  “Maybe not so brave. I get tight in my chest and throat when I think of talking to your parents.”

  “No, no, they’re not that bad.”

  Moses moaned. “They’re not bad. I am. What am I going to tell them?”

  “That you love me and want me as your wife.…or is it frau?”

  “That’s it? That will be enough?”

  “Tell them we had a plane ride.”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “They had one, you know. Before they were engaged.”

  “How did that turn out?”

  “Oh, Mom’s parents wouldn’t let her see Dad ever again.”

  “What?” Moses stared at her. “You tell me that now?”

  “Relax. They’re married, aren’t they?” She kissed him on the cheek. “It will all work out.” She sat up and dug around in the pockets of her flight jacket. “Excuse me while I pin my hair back up. And we should take these jackets off.”

  Moses shrugged the leather jacket off his shoulders and arms and turned around to throw it into the backseat. He saw the letters his grandfather had given her and the US Army insignia on one of the envelopes.

  “So why is the army writing your father? I thought that was over with a long time ago.”

  “It is over with. I have no idea. Maybe they owe him money.”

  “You think so?”

  “No.” She put a final pin in her hair and posed. “There. What do you think?”

  He glanced at her. “I think a woman’s crowning glory is her hair blowing in the wind. But I’ll take it short too.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll have it halfway down my back for our wedding night.”

  Blood rushed into Moses’ face. “Ja? And when will that be?”

  “Christmas. I’ll be your Christmas present. How’s that?”

  “But your baptism—” he began.

  She tightened her lips. “I’m not waiting until 1942 just because they think they can only baptize people in the spring and marry them in the fall. I’ll be baptized and Amish from the tips of my toes to the top of my head before we celebrate Thanksgiving. Just watch me.”

  SIX

  Who is Ram Peterson?”

  “A fellow I flew with during the war. We were in the same squadron in France.”

  Becky scanned the letter in her hand. “Why on earth does he call himself Flapjack?”

  Jude sipped at his mug of coffee. “That was the nickname we gave him.”

  “Did he like pancakes or something?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What was your nickname?”

  Jude glanced across the breakfast table at Lyyndaya. Grandfather and Grandmother Kurtz and Aunt Ruth looked at her too. She smiled and dropped her eyes. Becky glanced up and saw the silent communication between her parents.

  “What?” she asked. She looked at her father again. “Is it some big family secret?”

  “My nickname was Lover Boy.”

  Becky stared at him and then burst into laughter. “Are you serious? Why?”

  “Because of your mother. It was the letters back and forth that started it. Even after I couldn’t get her letters anymore I kept re-reading the old ones.”

  Becky looked over at Lyyndaya. “Mom.”

  Lyyndaya shook her head. “Never mind. We were young and foolish.”

  “You were young maybe, but it doesn’t sound foolish. It’s sweet.”

  “Thank you.”

  Becky looked back at the letter. “So he wants you to come and help his company in Hawaii give flight instruction to army pilots?”

  Jude nodded. “Apparently the military doesn’t have enough instructors to make their pilots as combat-ready as they’d like them to be. Of course Flapjack trains civilians as well.”

  “Why do they suddenly need pilots in Hawaii to be combat-ready? We’re not in the war. And Germany is so far away.”

  “It’s not the Germans they’re worried about in Hawaii, Beck. It’s the Japanese.”

  “I heard America was working out some sort of peace settlement with them.”

  “Maybe.” Jude rubbed his hands over his eyes. “We started cutting oil and steel and iron exports to Japan last summer. Our way of protesting what they have done in China.” He paused. “And because of the way they are trying to expand throughout the entire Pacific region. But just the other week we upped the ante and imposed a full embargo on Japan—no oil, not so much as a drop. And we froze all their assets in the United States.”

  “What does all that mean?”

  “Japan is a small island country. They don’t have much in the way of oil to run their factories or their ships or their military. They don’t have resources like iron ore to mine. So they have to get it somewhere else. If they can’t import it from us, where are they going to go? And what are they prepared to do
to ensure they can get the oil and iron and steel they want?” Jude looked down at the second letter from Hawaii, the one that bore the army insignia. “So things are getting tense. Japan wants to grow and we’re saying no. Japan wants to do whatever it wants to do in places like Manchuria and China and we’re saying no to that too.”

  “But still. There are the peace negotiations.”

  “Right now, yes.” Jude tapped the letter in front of him. “This note is from another old buddy from the war—Billy Skipp. He was quite the daredevil pilot. Stayed in the military, and now he’s a big-time officer in the US Army Air Forces, the USAAF. They just formed it in June.”

  “I haven’t read it. What is he writing you about?”

  “Same thing. He says he asked Flapjack to track us down and get us to come to Hawaii and help pilots hone their flying skills. Especially the kind needed for air combat—dives, spins, barrel rolls—”

  Becky interrupted. “Barnstorming!”

  “Yes. Stunt flying. So he’s basically backing up Flapjack and asking your mother and me to come to the island of Oahu. That’s where Flapjack’s flight school is and that’s where the military is based. The Pacific fleet has its anchorage on Oahu at Pearl Harbor.”

  “Flapjack doesn’t mention me.”

  “But Billy does. And he mentions Nate. Up until we went to Africa we used to see the guys from the squadron every year at our reunions. And lots of them came to our air shows. Don’t you remember?”

  Becky shrugged. “No. Not really.”

  “We had big picnics. You met their kids.”

  “Sort of.”

  “Anyway, Billy asks about bringing you and Nate along. They do have female flight instructors.”

  “But I want to stay here. I want to get married to Moses.”

  “I know that.”

  “You’re not going, are you?” Becky looked from her father to her mother. “Aren’t you going to stay here with me and the rest of the family?”

  Jude stared into his empty coffee mug. “They need us over there, honey.”

  “I need you over here. What about me?”

  “Beck. You have your Aunt Ruth, your grandparents, Moses’ mother and father, and more Yoders than you could ever run out of in a lifetime.”

  Becky stared. “Are you serious? None of that’s the same as having your father and mother close by. We’ve always been together. Right through all the barnstorming years and the missions in Kenya and on Turks and Caicos. You can’t be thinking of running off and leaving me behind!”

  Lyyndaya was near enough to reach over the table and hold her daughter’s hand. “We only got the letters yesterday. Your father and I are praying about everything. No one is talking about running off and abandoning you. But you are a woman now and making your own decisions about your life. Sometimes our paths will run parallel to each other. Sometimes they will diverge.”

  “This is all happening too fast.” Becky wiped at the corner of her eye with a finger. “Everything is happening too fast.”

  Ruth was beside her and leaned over to give Becky a hug. “You will always have family here. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Neither are we.” Grandmother Kurtz smiled. “Certainly not to Hawaii. Pennsylvania is beautiful enough for us. You’ll never be a lonely bride, my dear Rebecca.”

  “No one is talking about rushing off anywhere.” Lyyndaya squeezed Becky’s hand. “These people in Hawaii are good friends, that’s all. We went through life and death with them. They deserve our prayers if nothing else.”

  “Okay. I know.” Becky swiped at both eyes. “It’s just that so much is going on. So many big changes.”

  “Yes. It’s true. So we should pray a bit more.” Grandfather Kurtz had his large black German Bible open by his teacup. “We are told that if we fix our minds on the Lord Jesus Christ—I think of nailing a board securely in place or having the bit firmly and safely in the horse’s mouth—he will keep us in perfect peace, nicht wahr? So let us do that now.”

  He began to pray in High German. Becky bowed her head and was annoyed with herself when tears fell into her lap and onto her folded hands.

  It’s a time for happiness. Stop it, Becky Whetstone. You wanted to fall in love and now you have. You wanted to marry the man you fell in love with and now you are.

  She understood certain phrases Grandpa Kurtz used. She recognized when Moses came into the prayer and also Nate. And her. Just as at other times when she had sat quietly and listened to prayers in languages she did not know, Becky felt calmness and strength work its way through her. When amen was pronounced she lifted her head—I love you, she mouthed at Lyyndaya. Lyyndaya responded with the lip movements for I love you too.

  Aunt Ruth got to her feet, went to the stove, and returned with the large coffeepot. “Who will have another?”

  Jude held out his mug. “Might as well. The bishop and pastors are late.”

  Ruth poured. “It’s just as well. God’s timing is better than ours. We had much to talk about.”

  “And we’re still not finished.” Grandmother chuckled. “But when are we ever finished in this family? And when is God ever finished with us?”

  “Amen.” Ruth went back to get the teapot for Grandfather Kurtz and placed it by his elbow. “There, Papa. You can drink all you like.”

  “If I drink all I like I will be in the washroom the whole time the bishop is here.”

  Each of them heard the whinnying as their horses in the paddock by the stables called out to horses arriving in the farmyard. Ruth glanced out the window and then returned to putting oatmeal and chocolate chip cookies on a plate. “They have all come in one buggy.”

  Grandfather Kurtz sipped his tea. “They have been meeting at Bishop Zook’s before coming here.” He winced. “A man could start a fire with this tea.”

  Ruth wiped her hands on a towel. “I thought you liked it hot.”

  “Hot, sure, but I don’t drink tea with the devil.” He got up. “I will get the door.”

  The bishop and pastors came in, put their straw hats on hooks, and were welcomed to the table, where they each took a seat. Coffee was poured, the teapot passed around, and the plate of cookies placed in the center of the table. Greetings were warm, but Becky felt the men brought a weight into the room as well as good cheer. Bishop Zook spied a newspaper her father had left by the sink.

  “I have not looked at the news in days,” he said. “But I like to pray about the world.”

  “The Germans are surrounding Kiev. I think the Russian resistance in the Ukraine is about finished. In the north they are moving on Leningrad and Moscow.”

  The bishop shook his head. “How soon will they be at Leningrad?”

  “What is it now? Almost the end of August? A week. Ten days. Moscow in another month.”

  “Ach. Es ist schwer—it is grievous.” The bishop was going to lift his cup of coffee then placed it down again. “Twenty years ago there was another war with Germany.”

  “But America is not in this one.”

  “I pray it may remain that way.” He stared at Jude.

  “I am not going in again, Bishop Zook. Even if something happens and the United States gets involved.”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “Like you, I pray. And I pray also there may be no persecution if America does take up arms.”

  “Amen.” The bishop drank his coffee and looked at pastors Stoltzfus, Miller, and King. Then he nodded at Jude. “That is how this strange arrangement began. You went to war. You were shunned. Once the reason you went to war was understood, that you were trying to protect the Amish in Paradise from further persecution, the ban was lifted—and a great deal of tolerance was extended toward you and Lyyndaya. For years you were permitted to return and visit your father, Adam, and Lyyndaya was allowed to join you and spend time with her father and mother. You worshipped with us, broke bread with us. Even though all the time you were flying your Curtiss Jenny and performing air-shows. Even when you went to Af
rica and the Caribbean the door was always open here, although you no longer embraced the Amish way or the Ordnung.”

  “We know this.” Jude folded his hands on the table. “We have always expressed our gratitude.”

  “But have never returned to us to stay. Or live as Plain people once again.”

  “No.”

  The bishop drummed his fingers. “As bishop I have the final say in these matters. All the ministers discuss it with me and pray, but it is for me to say what will or will not be under the Lord and under the Ordnung. For years, decades, we have the four of us agreed to let things remain as they were, to permit you to come and go freely. Eyebrows have been raised among the other Amish in Lancaster County. Bishops from other communities have expressed concern. Three years ago when you came to visit us after leaving Africa and were on your way to the Caribbean, I thought to say something, to tell you that you must decide if you would take up your baptismal vows again and live as God has called the Amish to live. Ja, that you must decide, and if you could not decide, to understand that you could not return. It was the pastors here who asked me to wait. Ja, ein wenig länger warten—wait a little bit longer. Pastor Miller was most persuasive and most passionate. So we have waited. I have waited.”

  He looked at Becky. “But now your daughter wants to take instruction. She wants to be baptized. She wants to marry my grandson, a fine boy. So I put this now to you, Jude, and to you, Lyyndaya. Rebecca Whetstone wishes to become Amish—what will you do? Werden Sie jetzt als Amisch mit ihr zurückkehren? Will you return to being Amish with her?”

  Jude did not reply but looked down at his hands. Finally Lyyndaya spoke up. “We are praying about this very thing—should we be elsewhere or should we be here with Rebecca and my family and our people?”

  Pastor Stoltzfus cleared his throat. “And you have no clear sign from God on this?”

  “Not yet. We continue in prayer.”

  Pastor Miller rubbed his thick gray beard. “We would like to have you return and live among us. Very much.”

  “Danke.”

  “It has been so very long.”