by Murray Pura
“So, so, so,” he said, “I have come here in the hopes that someone will introduce me to the bride and groom. The doctor made a point of telling me that Gettysburg has a pair and that they are both dressed very plain.”
Chapter 32
Four days later Zeph hobbled on board a train bound for York, Lancaster, and Philadelphia, one arm in a sling, a leg in a leather brace, and a wooden crutch to lean on. Augustine helped him to his seat while Aunt Rosa stayed by Lynndae, who was making sure the pine coffin that contained her brother’s body was securely stored in a freight car. Sheriff Friesen had returned to Lancaster the morning after his visit to Gettysburg, but Sheriff Levy promised to provide an escort in his stead. He saw Aunt Rosa and Lynndae safely to their seats with the men before settling back with his 1873 Winchester and a dime western with the title The Blazing Guns of Texas, A Kid Comanche Adventure.
At the Yoder house, Levy enjoyed three bowls of sauerkraut soup and several thick slices of smoked ham before heading back on an evening train with connections to Gettysburg and Baltimore. As he left the house to ride to the station in the Yoder’s buggy, he touched the brim of his hat to Lynndae.
“I hope you will fare well,” he said, “and that your marriage will be everything a young woman like you dreams of.” “Thank you, Sheriff. I’m grateful for all your help.” Zeph was placed back in his old room at the Yoders’, and Lynndae was set up in the room Katie had grown up in. For the first few days, Zeph slept off and on around the clock as his body worked to heal itself. Rebecca and Lynndae cooked pots of chicken and beef broth and fussed at him to eat bowl after bowl from morning to night. Lynndae often sat at his bedside and read James Fenimore Cooper out loud.
“Where’d you get those books?” he asked. “Were they in your three months’ of luggage along with everything else?”
She smiled. “If I’d known when I packed that I was traveling with the Yale professor of early American literature, yes, I would have found room for some of the Leatherstocking Tales. As it is, now that I know you better than I did in Iron Springs, way back when I thought you were just a cowboy with sweet eyes—”
“I am a cowboy.”
“—I took the liberty of borrowing these from the Lancaster Library. Do you know who started the library in Lancaster? William Penn’s daughter-in-law, Juliana. She gave books and money. They showed me her Bible while I was there. Two volumes. I opened the first one, and where do you suppose I found myself?”
“The wedding feast in Cana?” Lynndae gently hit him with the book in her hand, The Last of the Mohicans. “You think you’re funny? I was in the Old Testament. The book of Ruth.”
“So?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, I thought you were a literary scholar.”
“I am. Jude’s the Bible scholar.”
“Don’t you remember Ruth’s words? ‘Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.’”
“I have heard that.”
“I want to use those words in my wedding vows.”
“I’ve no objection, as long as the words are spoken to me.”
Lynndae found the Cooper book useful for another swat at Zeph’s healthy arm.
The Tuesday after their return to Bird in Hand, while Zeph slept, Lynndae sat in a rocker in a corner of his bedroom writing a letter with a steel nib pen and using a lap desk to support the sheets of paper, ink bottle, and blotter. That morning she had joined the other Amish families who had gone into town for the funeral of the deputy who had been slain defending their families and homes. After lunch back at the Yoder house, Augustine had lingered, and now he tapped gently on the open bedroom door. She glanced up and smiled. He gestured with his hand for her to come with him.
He sat at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and asked quietly if she wanted one. She shook her head and took a seat. Rebecca had cleared up the lunch dishes with Lynndae and then disappeared upstairs. Augustine ran his fingers through his beard.
“He is getting stronger.”
“Oh, yes. We are going to start taking walks this evening. It is warming up now that we are into March.” “It may rain. Keep his hat on.” “Of course.”
Augustine played with his coffee cup. Looking into it as if he might find the words he needed there, he cleared his throat and said, “So, we have met, the pastors, and we talked about your brother and his burial.”
Lynndae sat up. “Please don’t trouble yourselves. I accept the restrictions for Amish burial that my brother’s life have placed upon you. Mother was buried in the Lancaster cemetery. I intend to place him beside her as soon as Z is strong enough to join me at a graveside ceremony.”
Augustine held up a hand. “We wish him to be buried here at Bird in Hand at our cemetery in the fields. It is also our wish to have your mother’s remains returned so that she may rest beside him. Your brother Ricky’s as well, if you would permit it.”
Lynndae was astounded. She sat and stared at Augustine, who looked up at her and nodded. “Yes, it is not just the wish of the pastors and the bishop, but of all the people. We believe Seraphim truly repented, just as you described it, and that he is with the Lord. The excommunication has already been lifted from your family. Let mother and son be at peace, together again with their friends and neighbors.”
Lynndae looked down at the tabletop. “I do not know what to say. I had not expected such an offer of—of—”
“My son David works well with wood, it flows in his hands. He will complete the coffin for Seraphim tonight, your mother’s tomorrow. We will lay them by your grandparents. I would pray at the graveside, if that is agreeable to you.”
“Oh, yes, oh, yes, Mister Yoder.” Her eyes glistened. “I had not expected this.”
“It is not simply our will, Miss Raber. It is the Lord’s will.” He stood. “Trouble yourself with nothing. I will go into town now and make the necessary arrangements for your mother’s remains. Seraphim we will lay out in our doed-kammer, our dead room. The men will dig the necessary graves.”
“When shall we do the funeral, Mister Yoder?”
“Is Friday too soon?”
“No, no, that is just fine.”
“You will tell me, who you would like for pallbearers? We will need four carrying each of the coffins.” “Yes. I will make a list for you.” “Gute.”
On Thursday evening men and women, dressed completely in black, walked or drove their buggies to the Yoder home. They sat on chairs and benches that had been brought to the house for that purpose. People spoke in hushed voices. Lynndae went from family to family, thanking them, asking if they wished to see the body of her brother.
Zeph sat in a chair in the dead room by Seraphim’s body. Seraphim was in a coffin with a lid that had been left open to show the upper part of his body. When people arrived in the room in the company of Lynndae, Zeph nodded gently and pulled a sheet back from Seraphim’s face and chest. His blond hair had been neatly combed and his body was dressed in a white shirt, vest, and pants. No cosmetics had been applied by the mortician, that was the Amish way, but Lynndae had requested the long sideburns be shaved off. The long scar was visible on her brother’s pale cheeks, but Zeph considered that it did not look so long or so vicious as he had imagined. It seemed to him to be as thin as a faint line from a graphite pencil.
None of the neighbors had seen Seraphim since he was thirteen. Many wept silently. One older man gripped Seraphim’s hand and said something in Pennsylvania Dutch, his tears dropping onto the corpse’s cheeks, so that Seraphim, too, appeared to be crying.
The next morning began with a silver rain that washed over the fields and the remnants of snow. A number of women arrived early to help Rebecca cook food. They tried to chase Lynndae away, but she insisted on working alongside them. It was better for her to do something with her hands than to just sit and wait, she told them.
The carv
ed coffins containing Lynndae’s mother and her brother were placed side by side in the dead room. Augustine stood in the room and began to preach while the others sat without. He did not speak about Seraphim or his mother. He spoke about Christ, about His resurrection from the dead, about the resurrection of those who believe. “‘Verily, verily, I say unto you,’” he quoted from the Gospel of John, without looking at his Bible, “‘He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.’”
It was all in the Amish tongue, but Zeph found himself experiencing a touch from God much the same way he had experienced it during the worship service almost two weeks before. So many things had happened since then. Yet God remained the same God. Zeph closed his eyes while Augustine preached.
Jesu Christi am kreuz.
A long line of buggies followed the two horses pulling the hearse from the Yoder house to the cemetery out in an open field. At first the rain rushed against them. But once they had reached the graveyard and were hitching their horses and buggies in the large fenced area set aside for that purpose, the clouds became silent, simply sitting over them, brooding and watching.
The four pastors carried Seraphim’s coffin from the hearse—Augustine, Moses Beachey, David Lapp, and Malachi Kauffman. Lynndae’s mother was lifted out by Bishop Schrock, Augustine’s sons Daniel and David, and Aunt Rosa’s husband, Aaron Christner. The graves were open. The men lowered the coffins with ropes. Augustine prayed. Then he opened the thick book, the Ausbund, and read a hymn while the people listened, heads bowed, and the pastors and bishop took shovels and covered the coffins with earth.
The headstones were the same as all the others in the cemetery, curved stone two feet high, set to face the gate, beautifully hewn. The name Angel Raber was on one and his mother’s name, Sarah Raber, on the other. Once the graves were filled, Augustine invited everyone to recite the Lord’s Prayer silently in their hearts.
Zeph waited, leaning on his crutch. People began walking back to their carriages, and a scattered line of buggies formed on the road, most of them heading back to the Yoder home for the meal. It was clear Lynndae wanted to be alone for a few minutes, so Augustine and Rebecca and Zeph held back. Zeph moved awkwardly among the rows, seeing the same names over and over again—Smucker, Zook, Glick, Riehl, Esh.
He gazed out over the broad fields of brown grass. They worked the land, and then they rested in the land. From the earth they were created, and to the earth they returned. There was a goodness to the pattern. So many men’s bones were never gathered into one place and never remembered, left scattered among stones at a mining site or washed by cold waters to oblivion in some lonely mountain place.
“Hello,” said Lynndae, taking hold of his good arm.
“How are you?” he asked, looking at her face.
“It is a sad day and a glorious day at the same time. My emotions are up and down and all over the place.”
“But you are glad your mother and brother are resting here together?”
“Oh, very glad. I never imagined it. I never prayed for it. It seemed to me to be an impossibility beyond even the grace of God.”
Zeph looked around him. “All the farms seem to fit into the folds of the land as if a master joiner and carpenter had put everything together. Even the graveyard seems right, though I’ve never been one for such places.”
“There is a peace here.”
“In this one. I’ve seen plenty of bone orchards that made a man restless, as if none of the spirits were content.”
“I suppose some of the boot hills are like that.”
“All of the boot hills are like that. The graves of the murdered and the hanged.”
“I thank God that Angel can lie here and not in some hole in a prison yard or out under a desert sun that has no pity.”
“Yes. This is a good land. It hasn’t got mountains and panthers, but a man could settle in and do some solid living here all the same.”
“Is that something you’re thinking about, Z?”
“I like it here. But I miss the Sweet Blue and the Two Back Valley.”
“Well, me, too. I see the good in both Lancaster and Iron Springs. But sometimes missing the Sweet Blue can be almost painful.”
“I know it.”
Zeph continued to lurch on his crutch among the headstones. “Yoder, Mullet, Beachey. Anyone that’s anyone is buried here.”
“You, too, someday, if you live right.”
“Well, you’ll pardon me if I don’t seem eager to rush on in, Miss Raber.”
“I’d like to have you above ground a few more years myself, mister.”
Zeph stopped. “I didn’t know King was an Amish name.” “One of the finest and oldest.”
“So William King, the attorney in Iron Springs, is Amish?”
“Well, I don’t think he follows the Ordnung. But he has Amish roots. There’s Kings he’s related to in Lancaster County.”
“Would they have known your family? Would they have known your father and brothers and Seraph?”
“The Kings? Of course. Some of them were very close to us before the excommunication.”
Zeph had a flash of memory. Billy King had the two packhorses that had been unloaded of their baggage. He raised his hat. “God bless you, folks, God bless you, Cody, Cheyenne. I pray time flows like a fast river for us all while we’re apart.”
“Seen enough, Z?” asked Lynndae. “The Yoders have the carriage ready.”
“Yes, I’m done.”
Zeph began to move toward the Yoders with Lynndae beside him.
“How’s your leg holding up?” she asked.
“Give me a month, Miss Raber. I’ll be right as rain, and you’ll have a brand new name.”
She laughed. “I’ve had so many, Zeph. I don’t mind another.”
Chapter 33
Iswore I would never come back here. Now I find it almost impossible to leave.
Lynndae sat by the train window, looking down at the families she had just finished saying good-bye to. Zeph was doing a final round of handshakes, including Samuel, tall and thin, and giving Bess a kiss on the cheek. Sheriff Friesen stood among the Amish in his three-piece houndstooth suit. His wife, May, was by his side, and she was no elf either, easily past his shoulder in height. Long brown hair framed her weather-tanned face. Her strong hand took Zeph’s. Lynndae could just make out their voices through the open window.
May said, “My husband will be bored now. Nothing but horses, milk cows, and me.”
Zeph laughed. “Time for that second honeymoon. Make sure you join us in the Rockies this summer for our wedding. That’ll liven things up.”
Then he was being embraced by Augustine and his toothpick. Lynndae could hear Augustine perfectly.
“We are sorry to see you go, Zephaniah. You two belong with our people.”
“Pray for us,” Zeph responded. “You never know what will happen.”
The whistle blew twice. Zeph climbed on board and sat opposite Lynndae. The train began to move. Aunt Rosa, Bess, and Samuel waved. Lynndae and Zeph waved back. They rolled west for Harrisburg.
The fields were dark with plowing. Horses and cattle walked back and forth on the green pastureland. Swallows swooped and darted in the blue sky. Amish children in a wagon bouncing along a country lane looked at the string of passenger cars solemnly. A man stood waiting for the train to pass with a long fishing pole in his hand and a wicker creel slung over his shoulder.
“Heaven,” murmured Lynndae. She felt empty inside.
Zeph nodded. “It’s fine country.”
She turned on him. “Is that all you can say? It’s a fine country?”
“And it’s full of good people.”
“If you think it’s fine country and full of good people then why are we leaving?”
“Well, where we’re heading is fine country and full of good people, too.”
“Things could hav
e changed in our absence.”
“Not that much.”
“Yes, that much.”
“I need a nap. That farewell supper kept us up late, and before we knew it the sun was shining in the windows and the train was heading in from Philadelphia.” He settled back in his seat, pulled his hat down over his eyes, and folded his arms over his chest.
Another sentence was on the tip of Lynndae’s tongue, but she held it back.
Fine, she thought, sleep then. It must be awfully nice to just trim your wick like that and shut everything down.
The train carried them through western Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana before they made a change in Chicago.
Then they rattled and swayed on tracks that ran through Illinois and Iowa to Nebraska. In Omaha they booked passage on the Union Pacific to Ogden and had a three-hour stopover. Zeph touched the brim of his piker hat and vanished up a nearby street. “Meet you back here in an hour.”
Lynndae protested. “Don’t you want me to go with you?”
“No.”
What was the matter with Z? In an unsettled mood, Lynndae wandered among the shops close to the station, but very little caught her fancy. She was in between two worlds and felt adrift. If only the train for Utah could have departed sooner. Restless, she paced back and forth on the station platform until she saw a man approaching with Zeph’s carpetbag in his hand.
“Hello,” the man greeted her.
Lynndae stared. “Zephaniah Truett Parker. What have you done with yourself?”
“Shave and a haircut, two bits. My Levi Strauss pants, my boots, my hat. We’ve crossed the Missouri, my lady. We’re back in the West.”
“I hardly recognized you.”
“Weather’s warm, so I don’t need a coat.”
“You haven’t looked like this since—”
Zeph interrupted. “Now, this is a chit for a dress shop just two blocks thataway—”
But she wasn’t listening. “—Eagle Rock or Ogden, I can’t remember which—”
