The Healing

by Linda Byler

  There. She thought so. Her sixteen-quart Farberware kettle had “P.K.” in lavender paint. Aha. She’d told Priscilla King she had the wrong kettle at Amos Beiler’s wedding in March, but you couldn’t tell that headstrong woman anything. She had sailed out the door with her chin in the air with her kettles, obviously. Well, today she would find out she was wrong.

  “What, John?”

  “My shirt collar is too tight.”

  “Well, it can’t be helped. No time to fix it. Hurry. You have to be there by seven. Driver’s coming at six thirty.”

  “I can’t close this collar. I’ll croak.”

  “No, you won’t.”

  From the stairway. “Mam, I don’t have one pair of socks. Sunday ones.”

  “Wear someone else’s.”

  “You put them in the wrong drawer.”

  “Mam, have you seen my vest?”

  “In your closet. Look. I just washed it.”

  John opened the first button on his new white shirt and never closed it all day, which was frowned upon by most of the older generation. Well, there was nothing he could do about it.

  A group of five young men were on hand to help each team unhitch, the horses led away and stabled, fed and watered. This was their duty, to see that each horse was comfortable. Many guests arrived in fifteen-passenger vans from outlying communities, but they stabled more than fifty horses.

  For their efforts, they held special privileges. For one thing, they were allowed to have the mid-forenoon schtick, or snack. They piled small plates high with the seasoned chicken filling called “roasht,” eaten with pepper slaw, a cup of coffee or hot chocolate, and all the wedding cookies or doughnuts they could hold. The relatives and church members of the bridge were all busily engaged with cooking jobs, the making of the roasht, the slaw, the mashed potatoes, so they, too, could help themselves to this delicious mid-forenoon snack.

  Everyone was in high spirits, jostling, joking, smiling, anticipating the festivities, a day of renewing old acquaintances, making new friends. The air was permeated with good wishes, a wedding being a reason for rejoicing, reminding the old of a sweet love past, the young of their own rosy future.

  John stayed in the background, conscious of his open shirt collar. Sure enough, his father caught his eye, pointed to his own closed collar, his eyebrows raised.

  “Close your shirt.”

  “Tight,” John mouthed.

  A wave of Dat’s hand. Whatever.

  John closed the button, tried to stretch the collar by yanking, two fingers inserted into the side. No difference.

  They were ushered in to take their place on the wooden bench, amid hundreds of people. John was the oldest, and the tallest, by far.

  Nothing to do about that, so he kept his eyes averted, sat down as fast as he could, feeling like an elephant.

  He couldn’t help but be drawn into the ceremony, a visiting bishop speaking plainly about marriage, God’s will for a man and wife to live together in harmony.

  He didn’t make it sound impossible, but rather a joy to give your whole life for someone else, whatever that meant.

  When the time came for the young couple to be married, the bishop announced their names and they rose, joined hands, and pronounced their solemn vows.

  John wondered just how nervous the bridegroom would actually be. Suddenly he was extremely relieved that he was only fifteen and had no worries about a girlfriend and most certainly not a wife. His life stretched ahead of him in one long sunshiny trail, and he figured he could look forward to his years of being with the youth, that time of rumschpringa when weekends would be spent with his buddies.

  He had so much fun at the wedding, he forgot about the hair, the thick lenses in his glasses, or the fact that his Sunday trousers were snug.

  He ate so much delicious food, watched the “youngie” go to the table, which meant a group of young men were situated in one corner of the shop, the girls in the other, until one by one, the brave young men stepped forward to claim one of the young ladies to accompany him to the long wedding table stretched out along three walls. There, they were served a delicious snack while they sang German wedding hymns from the “Auskund.”

  The hosla watched with fascination, secretly nervous for those poor young men, knowing their time would come when this frightening feat would have to be performed by every one of them.

  “What if you reached for a girl’s hand and she pulled back?” asked Daniel Lapp, the hosla next in age to John.

  “Like, what if she thinks you’re gross?”

  Laughter all around.

  “They wouldn’t ever do that,” Mark Glick announced, too loudly.

  “Shh. Someone will hear you.”

  More nervous giggles. John thought some of the girls looked as if they could easily fall down in a faint, their faces the color of chalk.

  Poor things. Whoever invented this tradition had no mercy.

  The following morning, his throat hurt and his shoulder felt as if it was on fire. In fact, he hurt all over.

  Mom put a hand to his forehead, drew back in alarm.

  “Why, John, you’re so hot. And this is early in the morning.”

  She drew back, searched his face.

  “You must have the flu. The wedding was too much for you. You weren’t doing things you weren’t supposed to, were you? Like smoking cigarettes?”

  John was too miserable to answer, so he didn’t.

  “John? John?”

  “Let me alone, Mam. I don’t feel well.”

  “Of course not. Here, I’ll just put a sheet on the couch. Bring your pillow down. I’ll get quilts. You want Tylenol?”

  Why did her questions slam into his head like a baseball bat? He lowered his eyebrows, shook his head, as if to ward off those verbal blows. He didn’t know if he wanted Tylenol or not, the decision was too hard to make, like deciding if he wanted to climb a fifty-foot pole or slide off a barn roof.

  He rolled on the couch, covered with two quilts. Chills raced across his body, his teeth chattered, his throat was on fire. To move his hands was a monumental task. His shoulder felt as if it was football-sized, and throbbing with fiery jolts of pain.

  Of course, the brothers eyed his dark head sticking out of the quilts and pillows, teased and tsk-tsked, saying Baby John couldn’t take being hosla at a wedding. It was good-natured, without malice, but the teasing voices still scraped and banged into John’s world of pain.

  After a few days, his symptoms did not dissipate, but kept him in clutches of fever and misery. Mam doused him with every vile concoction she could bring out of storage—bitters and tinctures, pills and drinks—but nothing seemed to touch this stubborn bug.

  So it was off to the family doctor in town.

  Weak and shaking, alternately chilled and flaming with an inner heat, John sat in the van, wondering if he could stay upright as the driver took the corners at a fast clip. When he slowed at an intersection, he leaned forward so far he had to grab hold of the seat. His hands felt as if there were no ligaments, muscle, or skin covering the skeletal bones, the vinyl seat cover searing the fingers. He lifted his hands to his face, to check if there was the necessary cover on his bones.

  Mam turned to see him lift his hands. He lowered them quickly.

  Dr. Stephens clucked, looking at his chart.

  “Temperature of 104 degrees. Heart rate low.”

  He prodded and poked, checked his throat, did a strep test, pronounced him sick with a virus, but gave him a bottle of amoxicillin to be sure they’d knock out infection in the throat, even though it showed negative for strep.

  He patted John’s thigh kindly, told him to get better, he was a tough young man. John nodded through the ever-increasing fog that seemed to be settling over his perception of ordinary conversation.

  After a few days the antibiotics made a difference, so Mam said that’s what it was, negative test or not, he had strep throat. By now, John was immensely relieved to be better, stronger, ab
le to function at a normal level.

  In the middle of Christmas preparations, he did not want to ruin everything for Mam, who loved the hustle of shopping, cookie baking, names exchanged, family get togethers, a time of escalated cheer in the Stoltzfus household.

  John felt well enough to keep his aches to himself as he moved from barn to house, helped with chores. Jobs his father asked him to do were accomplished with only a minor bout of weakness.

  John’s flu forgotten, Mam plowed full steam ahead, into December, sewing Sunday trousers for Abner, who was dating now, going to John King’s every weekend, so he needed to look his best. Not that his best was all that good, but she had to do what she could, as far as his appearance.

  She mentioned his old black sneakers from Walmart, which set him off. “Nothing wrong with these. What do you mean?”

  Mam decided she needed to have a spiritual talk with her oldest son, so sat him down one evening and proceeded to ask if he had prayed about this before he asked Ruthie.

  “Well, duh, Mam. Of course. You must think I’m not much.”

  “No. Oh no, Abner. I just want to make sure you are seeking God’s will, and not placing your own ahead of His. I mean, perhaps, uh . . . , you know, God’s will for you may not be Ruthie in the end, but rather someone like uh, you know.”

  She couldn’t bring herself to say Martha.

  “I mean, Ruthie is, of course, a very nice girl, and I wish you God’s blessing, but when, uh . . ., dating begins, there is always a chance it may you know, fall apart, end in heartache. Not that I believe it will. Oh no. I have faith that God’s will for you is Ruthie, it’s just that, well, I want you to be happy.”

  She was so ill at ease by now that every word was only serving to sink her farther into the quagmire of speech. She stopped, took a large sip of cold coffee, and choked, spraying it all over her dress front and tabletop.

  Abner sighed, his indignation turned to pity.

  He watched as she hurried to the sink for a clean dishrag, mopped the front of her dress, then made a few swift circles with the cloth on the table cover.

  “Mam, calm down, OK? I know you mean well, but looks aren’t everything. I know you think I’m homely. . . .”

  Mam lifted a hand. “Never, Abner. That’s not true.”

  Abner ignored this.

  “There’s much more to dating than appearances.”

  Mam nodded vigorously, so hard, in fact, that Abner thought perhaps she may have given herself a sizable migraine, after that overdone display of agreement.

  “If we are truly for one another, she will come to love me in spite of my physical appearance, and you know that. There’s a much deeper level of love, the personality, the attitude, everything.”

  Abner was telling his mother what she had meant to tell him, but the words had come out wrong. Or something.

  Abner laughed, then looked at his mother with kindness.

  “I know what you really want to say is Ruthie is too good for me. I’m old, nothing much to look at, and you’re afraid it will end badly. You know what she told me last Sunday night? She said I was so easy to be with, so comfortable with who I am, and that was attractive to her. Think about it, Mam. My sneakers have nothing to do with it.”

  Mam stood up, pushed her chair into place, gathered up the coffee cups, clearly flustered, said, “Oh well,” and went to the counter to begin washing dishes as fast as possible.

  John observed, overheard, pitied his mother with an almost physical sympathy. The thing was, she meant well. She cared fiercely about her boys, every one of them. She suffered when they suffered, and after all those years of wanting Malinda, his yearning unfulfilled, she assumed this would be no different.

  He watched her broad back and capable arms at the kitchen sink, suds up to her elbows, efficiently upending a Princess House pan, reaching under the drainboard for a container of Bar Keepers Friend to begin the rigorous process of keeping her pans gleaming, the pride of her kitchen.

  Then she was off to the bulk food store, Abner to the harness shop, leaving John alone on a Saturday with nothing much to occupy his thoughts.

  He went to the pantry, found oatmeal cookies. He pinched one between his thumb and forefinger. It was hard as a rock. There was an apple pie that looked as if it had been on the pantry shelf for a week. Some stale pretzels.

  He opened the refrigerator door, found a package of cheese. Sniffed. As he thought. Swiss. He replaced it, found a roll of homemade Lebanon bologna, sliced a few thick slices, fried them in butter, placed them on a potato roll with pickles, mustard, and mayonnaise, poured a glass of milk, and squirted a liberal amount of Hershey’s syrup into it.

  The perfect snack.

  Halfway through his sandwich, shooting pain roiled through his stomach. He placed both arms across his front, leaned forward, and squeezed his eyes shut. The pain roared through his intestines. He broke out in a cold sweat, replaced the chocolate syrup, carried the half-eaten snack to the sink and collapsed on the couch.

  Eventually, the pains subsided, and he fell asleep. His mother awoke him, coming through the door with plastic bags stretched to the limit with heavy ten-pound bags of brown sugar, flour, oatmeal, confectioners’ sugar.

  Her trips to the bulk food store meant some serious lifting, hauling all those bags up the porch steps and into the kitchen. John got up immediately, felt light-headed and dizzy, but the worst of the stomach pains were gone.

  He helped carry boxes of Ritz crackers, molasses, honey, olive oil, salt, Jell-O, cornstarch, coconut. There was no end to Mam’s stocking up.

  The next morning, as he sat up in bed, the bedroom swam crazily, then disappeared altogether, as if a wave had washed everything from his sight. He concentrated, panicked, willed the room back into focus.

  His heart raced, a crippling fear of the unknown smacked into his senses, a sensation that he was losing his mind.

  For a few minutes, he lay down on his back as his bed seemed to rise and fall, tilt left, then right. He felt nauseous, his breath coming in short, hard gasps, as if his life depended on gathering the next inhale of oxygen.

  What is happening? Why am I like this?

  He felt a deep sense of shame. His first lucid thought was that he needed to keep this to himself. No one had to know that he was not quite right. He’d beat this by himself, whatever it was. He was a strong, healthy young man, and these puzzling symptoms were nothing he couldn’t handle.

  He sat up again, but felt as if someone had punched him in the stomach. Taking a deep breath, he steadied himself, swallowed the lump that rose unbidden, blinked back unwanted tears, made his way to the dresser for a pair of clean broadfall trousers.

  Opening the door of his closet turned his arm muscles to water. He kept going. He got his shirt off the hanger, poked his arms into the sleeves. His fingers trembled as he closed the buttons. Twice, he tried to attach the tabs of his suspenders to the buttons in the back of his trousers, but each time his arms gave way. Gritting his teeth, grunting to breathe, he accomplished this impossibility. Socks in hand, he went to the bathroom to brush his teeth and wash his face, only to find a white ghost with scraggly brown hair staring back at him from the gold-framed mirror.

  Well, he had passed out, so that explained the color. Or lack of it. He made his way down the stairs, unsure what was expected of him. To tell his mother he didn’t feel well would bring an avalanche of questions, in which he would be buried. At the moment, it simply did not feel possible to get into his heavy sweatshirt and get himself to the barn.

  But he did do it. Weak, cold perspiration beading his forehead, he shivered his way to the calves, hung on to the frame of the vinyl calf hutch with one hand, the bottle with the other. He wished he had a portion of the strength in the calves’ butting attempts to get the bottle to release more warm calf starter.

  Somehow, by grim determination, he set one foot in front of the other, doggedly doing his expected chores. In the light of the battery lamp hanging in the mil
khouse, his face appeared ashen, a thin line of sweat beads on his upper lip, dark circles beneath his wide-open eyes.

  His father came in to check the agitator on the tank, turned to notice John’s wild-eyed expression, the grim mouth a ghostly slash of endurance.

  “You all right, John?”

  “Yeah.” Nodding.

  Dat touched his shoulder, turned him to scrutinize the drawn features.

  “You sure? You don’t look good.”

  “I’m all right.”

  “Guess you are. You did have the flu.”

  And left him.

  John signed with relief. If he could keep his weakness and fear from his parents, he’d be OK. As soon as Mam found anything wrong with him, she’d blabber it all over the neighborhood, people would look on him with pity, and he’d be Elmer’s John, the sick one. He has some disease, but no one knows what it is, they would whisper.

  I’ll soon be sixteen, ready to enter the years of rumschpringa. I can’t be sick. I won’t be. I’ll pull myself up.

  His appetite suddenly gone, he slid his two fried eggs around on his plate, chopped them up with his fork, pretended to put them in his mouth.

  No one noticed. Mam was preoccupied and Dat was hurrying through breakfast to get back to the heifer going through a difficult birth. The boys were in various stages of undress, searching for shoes, suspenders, or both.

  John sat on the old navy blue recliner, tipped it back, crossed his legs and closed his eyes. Every bone in his body cried out in protest. A deep sigh, a mental attempt to relax, let the pain go, and he sank down, down into the heavenly folds of the old blue recliner.