The Wings of Morning

by Murray Pura

  “But you were my inspiration, Jude. Now let me pray for us and then we had better get going lest Papa’s worry brings him out looking for me.”

  When they arrived at the Kurtz home, Jude pulled the buggy to a halt. Lyyndaya turned and kissed Jude one more time on the cheek.

  “How long will you be in Philadelphia?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure. A week. Maybe a bit longer.”

  “It is not just about mustering out or deciding whether or not to be a flight instructor, is it?”

  “You’ve always read my mind. No, they have medals to give out, honors to bestow.”

  “I suspected as much. They told us you would be receiving the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Congressional Medal of Honor.”

  “The DFC, yes, not the Medal of Honor anymore. If I’d died they would have still given it to me. Not that it matters, Lyyndy, because honestly it doesn’t. What gives me joy is thinking of my men. I’m not sure how many of them made it through, but I have a sense that most of them did—Billy Skipp, Zed, Tex. The officers didn’t know much about my squadron, but God does.”

  She brushed one or two stray hairs away from his eyes. “When you come back, you ask me what you want to ask me. Once you do that, I will tell you what I want to tell you. Please don’t stay away too long.”

  “I won’t,” he said.

  The first week Jude was gone Lyyndaya was so full of hopes and dreams that the days she spent with her family in Paradise rushed past. She had decided to wait for him to return before making any further plans for volunteering at the hospital in Philadelphia.

  The second week, with no word from Jude, the days seemed to drag on as if she were pulling a heavy weight, especially as the deadline for the final decision about the Meidung loomed closer. She prayed, read the Bible and her great-grandmother’s red book, and spoke with Ruth about everything. Yet still the week felt gloomy and ominous.

  “Nothing will change,” Ruth said to her. “You know that. I think this is the reason you feel so much dread.”

  “Perhaps the leadership will extend the deadline.”

  “With Pastor Miller circling like a red-tailed hawk? In any case, an extension would change nothing. Your young man is set in his ways. And we Amish have been set in ours for hundreds of years.”

  The two sisters were sitting on the edges of their beds. Lyyndaya ran her hands back through her hair and knocked the kapp from her head. When she bent over to pick it up Ruth interjected, “Why bother? In a day or two you won’t be needing it anymore.”

  Lyyndaya looked at her in surprise. “Why do you say that?”

  Ruth shrugged. “Because you’ll go with him.”

  Her eyes glistened with tears and Ruth reached over and took her hand. “I can’t blame you, Lyyndy. Not at all. Of course it hurts me. But the manner in which God gave him back to you is a miracle. I would never turn my back on such a miracle. You must be his companion, you must be his wife. And I must get used to being without you. But perhaps not forever. I pray not forever.”

  Lyyndaya continued to hold the prayer covering in her hands, her eyes still glistening. “It’s so hard to decide, so hard to understand. But when he came back from the dead, when he stood before me in the hospital room like that, just as if he had dropped from the sky…”

  Her sister took her into her arms, her own eyes shining now. “Hush, hush, we all understand. It’s your destiny. God will work everything out in time, you’ll see.”

  “But there’s Mama to think about—Papa—Sarah and Luke are getting so tall—even Harley and Daniel are growing up so fast—”

  “Shh. You mustn’t go on as if you’ll never see us again. Where is it written we may not look you in the face? Oh, so we can’t eat together or hug each other, but where does the Ordnung command us to never look one another in the eyes and say I love you? And how long can the shunning last? Is it supposed to go on forever? Is that what Paul had in mind in Corinthians? Is that what Jesus would have us do? Never forgive? Never begin anew? ‘If ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.’”

  The night before the final day of the two-week period, Jude had still not arrived, and Lyyndaya tossed and turned in her bed while Ruth slept. She had been hoping she could leave with him while she still had the freedom to talk to others and say goodbye properly, but if the shunning took force first—and the shunning would be directed toward the two of them, not just Jude—how would she be able to take leave of her family?

  The grandfather clock struck one, a sound she normally never heard. Doubts rose in her mind, the same doubts that had been picking at her all week with their sharp black beaks—what if all this time she had been simply imagining the hand of God in their relationship, what if his return was simply a coincidence, a marvel, but didn’t mean they were supposed to be husband and wife? What if she wasn’t meant to leave the Amish church, but remain in Paradise and marry someone who wouldn’t desert the faith of her father and mother and family?

  She didn’t hear the clock sound two, for by then her body and mind had simply given in to exhaustion and she was deep in a murky and troubled sleep.

  Until a hand shook her shoulder far from gently and she sat bolt upright, confused about where she was, blackness all around her.

  “Lyyndy! Lyyndy!”

  The voice was a harsh whisper.

  “Who is it? What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Dr. Morgan needs both of us. There has been an outbreak. Several families—the Kauffmans, the Fishers, even Pastor Miller’s children.”

  She finally was able to focus on Ruth’s face. “Is Jude all right?” she asked.

  “This has nothing to do with Jude. Quickly, sister, they need us.”

  “Where is Dr. Morgan?”

  “Waiting in the kitchen with Papa. He will take us to the homes that are hardest hit. No more talk. We must get dressed as swiftly as we can.”

  “How fast is it moving?” asked Lyyndaya as she threw back the covers and jumped to her feet.

  Ruth’s face was a pale white in the early morning darkness.

  “Sam Miller has already died,” she said.

  TWENTY-SIX

  The only one of Jacob and Rachel Miller’s children who had not contracted the illness was the eighteen-month-old. That was typical, it seemed to Lyyndaya. Mostly it ignored the very young and the very old and struck the healthiest persons—in their teens, twenties, and thirties.

  While neighbors brought extra kettles so Rachel could heat and reheat water and keep a kettle in each room so there was steam to loosen congestion, Lyyndaya prepared mustard poultices for Jonathan and Paul, who were thirteen and fourteen, and the Millers’ one girl, Naomi, who had just turned seventeen.

  After the poultices had been placed on their chests, she went to the kitchen to chop up garlic and red onions while Pastor Miller brewed tea nearby and Mrs. Miller rushed up the staircase with a steaming cast-iron kettle for her daughter’s room. Samuel Miller lay silently in his bedroom with his hands crossed on his chest and a clean white cloth tied under his jaw so that his mouth would remain tightly closed. Lyyndaya offered a prayer for poor Emma Zook at her loss in Samuel’s death.

  The clock in the parlor had only struck noon when Mrs. Miller began to cry out that the baby, Joshua Caleb, was turning blue. Dr. Morgan had just come through the door on his circuit between the houses and he examined the boy without removing his hat or coat. He instructed the Millers to place a kettle in the child’s room and told Lyyndaya he required a mustard plaster as soon as possible. Then he pulled her aside once the parents had rushed downstairs and said the flu rarely affected infants or toddlers, but when it did, death occurred within hours, just as it did in the worst adult cases.

  “What can we do for him?” asked Lyyndaya, feeling a tightness in her chest.

  “We can do nothing. There is a physician in Harrisburg who has had some success with babies and newborns who have contracted the Spanish flu, but it
would be impossible to get Joshua to him in time.” Dr. Morgan consulted a pocket watch. “No, it’s pointless to even mention it to Rachel and Jacob. There isn’t another train west for three or four hours. We can’t get him to Harrisburg. If the poor boy is still alive an hour from now that will be a miracle in itself.”

  He left her with Joshua, who was squirming and crying and struggling to breathe. Lyyndaya stood over his crib in an agony she had never experienced with any of the other flu victims she had nursed. Oh God, will you let this pestilence take away the infants now too? Will you take away our colony’s offspring? Can you not help us? Can you not help this family?

  She came down the staircase at the same time Mrs. Miller was running up with a kettle trailing white steam.

  In the kitchen Pastor Miller and Dr. Morgan appeared to have stopped in their tracks to listen to something. She picked up a tin of mustard powder and began making the poultice for Joshua and when she dropped a large spoon with a clang the doctor frowned and asked her to be quiet. Hurt, she snapped back, “What is the problem? How can I work without making a sound?”

  “Do you hear that?” Dr. Morgan asked.

  “Hear what?”

  He took her by the arm. “A plane has landed. It can only be Jude Whetstone. He has put down east of here, in a field by your house or his father’s.” Then he looked at Pastor Miller. “Jacob, there’s a physician in Harrisburg who may be able to save Joshua’s life. He’s a specialist with infants who have this disease. We can do nothing for him here. His case is as grave as Samuel’s. Jude’s aeroplane may be able to get him to the city in time to save him.”

  Pastor Miller’s face lost what little color it had left. “Jude Whetstone? Take my child in his aeroplane? Never. If we must get to Harrisburg we will board a train.”

  “There’s no time for that! There will be no train for hours.”

  “Then we will pray.”

  Dr. Morgan narrowed his eyes. “Jacob Miller, God has heard your prayers and placed Jude here at the right time! Now if you choose to spurn God’s answer to your prayers out of anger, who will you blame for the loss of your baby?”

  Mrs. Miller ran into the kitchen. “Jacob, have you taken leave of your senses? An aeroplane can get to Harrisburg in minutes. This stubbornness is because of your hatred for Lyyndaya’s young man and nothing more.”

  “I do not hate him.”

  She turned to Lyyndaya. “Please. I will bundle him up. Jude’s plane will have two places to sit, ja? You can hold him while Jude flies?

  “No.” Pastor Miller stood in front of his wife. “No.”

  Mrs. Miller pleaded. “He could live, Jacob, he could live!”

  “No.”

  She put her head against his chest and began to cry. “We have lost Samuel this very day. We could lose Naomi and Jonathan and Paul. What if we lose our baby too? Then there is no one, no one.” She looked up into her husband’s stern face. “When I put the kettle in his room just now…he was not moving…and the color of the blue in his face… had deepened…”

  Dr. Morgan was already heading up the staircase.

  Fresh pain and dismay filled Pastor Miller’s eyes.

  Amidst her sobs, he gently removed his wife’s hands and rushed up to the baby’s room. Lyyndaya took the woman into her arms and let her weep.

  Only minutes later, Pastor Miller came down with Joshua wrapped in blankets and a woolen hat and a sheepskin, the doctor trailing him. Mrs. Miller cried out to God, looked over how the baby was bundled up, then took him from her husband and gave the child to Lyyndaya.

  “Please,” she said. “Hurry!”

  Lyyndaya took Joshua and cradled him. Then she looked at Pastor Miller. He lifted one hand as if in a blessing. “Go with God.”

  Dr. Morgan raced his carriage out to the road. It was a clear day, and mild, the middle of February. He stood up and looked toward the east. Then he sat back down and called out to his horses. They broke into a gallop.

  “Where is the plane?” asked Lyyndaya.

  “I can’t see it. But we must go by the Whetstones on the way to your house in any case.”

  The carriage bounced along the frozen road. The aeroplane wasn’t at the Whetstone house or in any of the nearby fields, so they thundered past.

  “How is the baby?” asked the doctor.

  “He is breathing.”

  When they were two or three hundred yards from her home Lyyndaya saw the aircraft. It was in the same field of stubble where Jude had first landed in the summer of 1917, and it was a Curtiss Jenny with stars on its wings.

  The horses pounded up the Kurtzes’ lane to the house and the door swung open before they had pulled to a stop. Jude stepped out in his leather flying suit, followed by Lyyndaya’s father in his black hat and jacket.

  “What is it?” called Jude from the porch. “What’s going on?”

  “Do you have fuel to get to Harrisburg?” shouted Dr. Morgan.

  “Harrisburg? That’s less than fifty miles by air. I have more than enough.”

  “We have a sick baby. There is a doctor there who may be able to save him. Can you fly him to the city with Lyyndaya holding him?”

  Jude came down the steps quickly. “Who is it?”

  “Joshua Miller.”

  “Joshua? He’s not even two.” Jude came up to the buggy and looked at the child in Lyyndaya’s arms. Jude touched his hand where it poked out from under the sheepskin. “He’s so young. The oxygen gets thinner the higher we go. And the air gets colder.” He hesitated, looking at Lyyndaya. “We will have to fly very close to the ground. Take off a few rooftops. Frighten a few cows. People with telephones will be calling in complaints to the police from now until we land.” Then he smiled, and said, “Let’s go.”

  Dr. Morgan held little Joshua while Lyyndaya pulled on a flying suit Jude had brought that covered her from foot to neck. Once she had put on a leather helmet and goggles, climbed into the front cockpit, and tightened her harness, she took the baby again. Jude got into the pilot’s seat, behind her.

  “Keep Josh as warm as you can,” he said. “Keep him close to your heart.”

  She put the child inside her flying suit and let his head peep out at her throat, sheepskin all around him like a shield.

  Lyyndaya’s father placed a hand on her arm. “God bless you in this, daughter. I will speak quickly. I have just received a letter from my friend Nicholas in Washington, the one in the War Department. They have taken a particular interest in Jude’s case because he is a war hero. Several generals have looked into the matter of his enlistment. They do not want anything to cloud his name or record.”

  “But what can they do to sway people like Pastor Miller?”

  “These generals will be able to tell us whether Jude was coerced or enlisted willingly. From what Nicholas writes in his letter it looks very favorable for Jude. So I have asked them to come to the spring communion service. Bishop Zook has promised me the entire issue surrounding Jude will be settled there once and for all. A delegation from Washington bearing proof that Jude was forced to fight would make all the difference.”

  “Will they come, Papa?”

  “It is my hope.”

  “What does Jude say about all this?”

  Mr. Kurtz patted his daughter’s arm and smiled. “What do you think? He says nothing.”

  Lyyndaya twisted her head around to look at Jude. He was busy checking the gauges on his instrument panel. Feeling her eyes on him he glanced up.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Papa was talking to me about Washington sending a delegation to clear your name.”

  He went back to his instrument panel. “I know. He told me.”

  “And you still have nothing to say about all that?”

  He played with a dial. “No, my love. I don’t.”

  Dr. Morgan suddenly stepped over and handed Jude a slip of paper. “The man you want is Leif Peterson, Dr. Leif Peterson. He is at the large hospital in downtown Harrisburg. I wi
ll get a telegram to him immediately so he knows to expect you. Godspeed, my boy.”

  Jude pulled his goggles down over his eyes. Around his throat was his white silk scarf from the war.

  “Can you spin the prop?” he asked Lyyndy’s father.

  “Ja. I will try my best.”

  When Jude gave him the signal, Mr. Kurtz yanked down sharply on the propeller blade, but the engine didn’t catch. He did it again and still there was nothing. A third time brought a look of fierce determination to his face and he swung down with all his might. The engine sputtered, coughed, and roared. Jude gave him a thumbs-up and started forward, turning into the wind. In moments they were lifting off the ground and swiftly climbing to five hundred feet, where he leveled out.

  “We’ll see how far we can get at this altitude!” he shouted to Lyyndaya. “How is the baby?”

  “Breathing!”

  “You keep breathing too and we’ll be all right! This is a JN-4H! It has a more powerful engine, a Hispano-Suiza 8! We can go like the wind—up to ninety-three miles an hour! Our last Jenny could only do seventy-three!”

  “How did you get it?”

  “It was a gift! The army is selling them off to civilians!”

  “A gift? From who?”

  But the shriek of engine and airstream combined to deafen his reply. They were streaking over brown and white farm fields and she could see horses running away from them and one vaulting a fence. People came out of their homes and pointed as they roared overhead. Cattle were running too, and crows scattered at their approach. Roads, carts, barns, cars, and smoke from chimneys flashed past. Always there were men and women and children darting out to look at a plane that was flying lower than any aircraft they’d seen over their houses and yards before.

  The plane whistles like Jude whistles.

  Joshua was warm when she put her face against his. Fever or not, she was glad. If he had felt like ice she would have been more worried than she already was. He wasn’t crying, but neither was he sleeping. His lovely brown eyes were open and he was taking everything in. The boy’s breathing was still troubled yet he seemed to be in less distress than he had been on the ground.