A Wedding Quilt for Ella (Little Valley 1)

by Jerry S. Eicher

  “What was Eli doin’ around the bull?” Monroe asked as they ran back. “He knows better than that.”

  “I don’t know,” Noah said. “It doesn’t matter now. Let’s just get him into the house.”

  Ella stepped away from Eli when they brought the gate over. Eli’s breath now came in ragged gasps. With Noah at his shoulders and Monroe at his feet, they lifted. Ella went on her knees in the dirt and lifted from the side. His body settled on the metal rails, and Eli groaned deeply.

  Noah and Monroe lifted together, one on each end, while Ella ran ahead to open the barnyard gate. The strange litter crossed the front yard to the house. Clara had come out of the barn to clutch Ella’s arm as she shut the gate and followed behind.

  At the house, Mamm came down the front steps two at a time. Dora slowly came out behind her but stopped at the top of the steps as if frozen. Behind her all three younger girls looked on with wide eyes.

  Wordlessly Mamm knelt beside the gate as Noah and Monroe lowered it to the ground.

  “The bull got to him,” Noah said, his voice hoarse.

  Mamm cradled Eli’s head in her hands. “You must take him to the clinic, to Dr. Mast’s. He will know what to do,” she said, looking up at Noah’s face.

  He nodded. “We will hitch up the flatbed wagon.”

  “Please,” Lizzie pled, “can you call the ambulance, yah? He may die before you drive him down.”

  “I will not have that Englisha machine with its lights and noise on our place,” Noah said. “It does not befit our people even in this hour of trouble.”

  “He’s your son,” Mamm said, and Ella saw the pain on her mom’s face.

  Her dad seemed to ponder this, his hands by his side, his face suddenly much older than it had been this morning.

  “I just thought of something. Alex Adams will drive him. He has a pickup,” Noah said, his face showing his relief.

  “Ask him quickly, then,” Mamm said, looking down at Eli’s still form. “He still breathes but not by much.”

  Noah answered by sprinting across the yard but slowing to a walk at the road. When he arrived on the porch of their only non-Amish neighbors, he knocked rapidly on the door. Mr. Adams appeared, and after a brief exchange, the two men moved rapidly to the garage. The sound of a truck motor quickly turned into the crunch of gravel as Mr. Adams drove across the road and backed up carefully to the metal gate.

  “Blankets!” Mr. Adams said loudly before he was even out of the pickup door. “Lots of them, ladies! Quick about it!”

  Dora and Ella made a dash for the house. Mamm stayed where she was, her hands cradled under Eli’s head.

  “What shall we use?” Dora asked. “Blankets from the cedar chest, perhaps?”

  “Yah,” Ella said as an idea rushed into her mind. “Get those, but I’ll be gettin’ something heavier.”

  As Dora went for the bedroom and the cedar chest, Ella took the basement stairs. Once down, she removed the quilt from the frame without any hesitation. Dora was already outside and had handed the blankets into the outstretched hands of Noah and Mr. Adams when Ella arrived back in the yard.

  She stood ready to offer her quilt, but Dora still held one in her hands. Noah jumped down from the pickup bed, motioning for Monroe to help with the lift. With Mr. Adam’s aid, the three picked Eli off the gate and set him onto the pickup bed. Dora held out her last blanket, and Noah covered Eli with it.

  “Your quilt,” her mom said. “He’ll be needin’ more warmth.”

  Ella held out the quilt, and her mom’s eyes widened as she unfolded it.

  “It’s your wedding quilt.”

  “Use it,” Ella whispered.

  Her mom hesitated and then nodded. She tucked the quilt snugly around the blankets and under Eli and stepped back. Noah jumped in the back of the pickup truck.

  “Monroe can ride in front,” he said. “He’d best go along with me. We might need help to get Eli out of the truck at the clinic.”

  The pickup lurched onto the blacktop and accelerated down the road. Noah clutched the metal side of the truck with one hand, and his beard whipped backwards straight off his shoulders. He held on to his hat with the other hand.

  Ella stepped over to her mom’s side. Dora came up and placed her arms around both of them. The two sisters helped Mamm walk to the porch, and Clara followed close behind. When they reached the top step, Mamm sat down and sobbed into her hands with great gasps.

  “Maybe he’ll be okay,” Ella said. But her mom hadn’t seen the worst—the bull standing over Eli, Eli’s blood mixed with the barnyard mud, and the hopelessness in Eli’s eyes before he passed out.

  “Da Hah has seen fit to visit us with much sorrow,” her mom said. “I don’t think I can lose my son yet.”

  Ella didn’t know what to say, and Dora remained silent too. It’s just as well, Ella thought, because Dora might foolishly mention the tale about three deaths in a row.

  “Dr. Mast from the clinic is good. He’ll be knowing what to do,” Ella said. Beside her Dora cleared her throat, but Ella silenced her with a quick glance.

  “Tell me what happened,” Mamm said, her sobs subsiding.

  “Clara and I were milkin’,” Ella said. “We heard this hollering and the bull bellowing in the barnyard. When we went to look, Eli had already climbed the fence but couldn’t get down. The bull must have run into him once already.”

  “Did you see that?” Mamm asked.

  “No,” Ella said.

  “Go on,” her mom said.

  “Daett tried to get Eli away from the bull but was chased himself. I thought that bull was going to catch Daett, but he got over the fence just in time. Then the bull went back to Eli. It hit the fence and knocked Eli off. When he fell to the ground…the bull gored him.”

  Ella was silent again.

  “How did you get the bull off Eli?” her mom finally asked.

  “Daett got a gate and chased it back to its pen,” Ella said, leaving her own part in the rescue out.

  “Ella helped too,” Clara said, but added nothing more when Ella shook her head at her.

  “I’ve always been tellin’ Noah to watch those new bulls,” Mamm said. “He tries to be careful—I know he does, but…”

  “Maybe Eli forgot we had a new bull,” Ella said. “I didn’t hear anyone say why he was in the barnyard with it. Maybe he took a shortcut across it. He was late to help us with choring.”

  “It could have been anything,” Mamm said. “These things happen all the time. I had hoped they wouldn’t happen to us.”

  “The milkin’!” Dora said, remembering. “It’s not done.”

  “Oh, my.” Mamm stood up. “Yah, those poor cows. The milking has to be done now…and the little girls.” She glanced up at the three girls on the porch. “They saw all of this, and they are much too small. They should have been taken inside.”

  “They’ll be okay, and you’re not goin’ out to the barn,” Ella said, her voice firm. “We’ll take care of the chores.”

  “I don’t think I could if I wanted to,” her mom said with a sigh and sat down on the porch steps again.

  “Don’t worry ‘bout supper either,” Ella told her. “No one’s hungry anyway.”

  Clara and Dora nodded in agreement.

  “We’ll see ’bout that,” Mamm said, “but the milkin’ has to be done right away.”

  Ella squeezed her mom’s shoulder, leaving her on the porch steps, and led the way back to the barn. Inside, the cows greeted her with what sounded like both irate and discouraged moos.

  Immediately Ella and Dora got busy by grabbing their stools and locating their buckets.

  Ella turned and said to Clara, “You’ll have to help until we’re done. These cows are in pain.”

  “Like we aren’t,” Dora said. “Eli. He’s dead. As sure as anything, he is. It’s comin’ like everyone knew it was comin’. They talked ’bout it last night at the singing. These things always come in threes and don’t stop until they’r
e done. Just who would have thought it would be us? We already had one tragedy. Doesn’t Da Hah know better than that? Loadin’ people down with more than they can bear? This will give Mamm more than she can bear. And you too, Ella. You already lost your beloved, and now your oldest brother will be gone. I don’t understand any of this, I do declare. It makes no sense at all.”

  “Maybe he’ll be makin’ it,” Ella said, daring to hope. “We don’t know how badly Eli is injured.”

  Dora set her stool down on the concrete barn floor and turned back to face Ella. “You saw him, Ella. There was blood all over him. He even had blood coming out of his ears. That’s a sure sign he won’t make it. But I guess it doesn’t matter what you and I think. Things are out of our hands and even out of Dr. Mast’s hands—out of everyone’s hands in fact. You can’t change what is to be. Don’t you see that, Ella?”

  A picture of her wedding quilt on top of Eli’s broken body rose in Ella’s mind. She stopped, unable to move for a long minute. Did that perhaps doom Eli? Did it send him to the same fate as Aden? Did I condemn my own brother when I only meant to help him?

  “It’s a foregone conclusion,” Dora said. “We’ll be burying him in a few days. I just know this. I now know we have lost our brother.”

  “I don’t want to lose my brother,” Clara said, protesting from beside her cow.

  “Aden’s family wasn’t given much choice,” Dora said. “Why do you think we should be given one?”

  “He doesn’t even have a girlfriend,” Clara said. “He won’t have anyone but us to mourn him.”

  “Then we’ll have to do more than our share,” Dora said. “Mamm will do more than her part, and Daett too. I know I’ll be mournin’ my share.”

  Ella rallied herself from under the cloud of despair tearing at her own heart. “Perhaps Da Hah will spare us,” she said, surprised at her own words.

  “I wouldn’t depend on it,” Dora said, standing to dump her first bucket of milk into the strainer.

  “My hands ache,” Clara said.

  “They’re going to be burnin’ by the time you’re done tonight,” Dora said. “Just take a break once in a while. It’s all you can do, and we do need your help.”

  Silence settled on the barn, broken only by the moo of uncomfortable cows and the steady spit of milk streaming into the bottom of the buckets.

  Twenty-two

  Mr. Adams’ pickup truck pulled into the yard, bouncing to a stop by the front door. Mamm was already at the door when Monroe climbed out. She told the three smaller girls to stay inside as she rushed onto the porch and down the steps. Mr. Adams climbed out of the truck when he saw her approach.

  “Your son has been taken to Tri-County by ambulance,” he said when she stopped in front of him.

  “He’s alive, then?”

  “He was when he left the clinic. Dr. Mast accompanied the ambulance, and he’s in good hands, ma’am.”

  “With Dr. Mast, yah, he is. Where was he hurt?”

  Mr. Adams shook his head. “It was all kind of a rush around there, and I didn’t hear anything.”

  Mamm glanced at Monroe, and he shook his head.

  The barn door opened, and Ella looked out. She thought she had heard a vehicle pull in.

  “Monroe’s back,” she announced, turning to her sisters.

  Dora stood up quickly and emptied her bucket into the strainer. “Be back in a moment, miss cow,” she muttered. “Got to see whether my brother is alive.”

  Clara had just started to work on a fresh bucket, so she had little milk to dump into the strainer. When she stood up, the cow brought her tail around with a solid thump and caught her across the face. She stumbled into the aisle and lost her hold on the milk bucket. It clattered to the ground, and the milk flew against the wall. Clara shrieked and wanted to cry, but Ella took her hand and said, “Come. There’s more important things than spilled milk right now. We’ll clean it up later.”

  “The milk,” Clara said, “it spilled!”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Ella whispered, hurrying out.

  Halfway across the yard, Dora had waited for them. Together they walked quickly toward the house.

  “Good evening,” Mr. Adams said, smiling as they approached. “Your brother has been taken to the hospital.”

  “So he’s not dead?” Clara asked.

  “No,” Mr. Adams said. “We’ll hope for the best. He’s quite injured, I’m sure. You don’t get mauled by a bull without injuries. But Dr. Mast is doing what he can.”

  “We thank you very much for your help,” Mamm said. “It means so much to us.”

  “I’m more than glad I could help,” he said, “and if you need transportation to the hospital tomorrow, I think I can offer my wife’s services. I myself won’t be home during the daytime.”

  “That would be too much,” Mamm said, her voice catching. “We don’t want to impose even more on you and your wife.”

  Mr. Adams smiled. “Until your son is well, consider us available to transport you to the hospital.”

  “You’re too kind,” Mamm said.

  “Not at all, Mrs. Yoder. We will pray God brings a swift healing for your son.”

  “If it is His will,” Mamm said.

  “Then we will pray that it be His will,” Mr. Adams said firmly.

  “Thank you,” Mamm whispered.

  By the look on her mom’s face, Ella knew her mother hoped this man’s great boldness in asking the Almighty to make up His mind would not end up as an offense.

  “Let us know,” Mr. Adams said, getting back into his pickup.

  They watched him drive out the driveway.

  “Oh, the poor cows,” Ella said, remembering their duties again. “We’re still not done.”

  “I’ll help,” Monroe offered. “I’ll finish my silage afterwards.”

  “I think I’ll be makin’ supper,” Mamm said. “I feel like I can breathe again.”

  “The worst may still not be over,” Dora said. “There could still be bad news to come. We should keep our hope in check.”

  “You had to say that,” Ella said, giving Dora a sharp look.

  “I’m sorry,” Dora said at once. “I guess I can’t help myself.”

  “Perhaps the news will continue to be good,” Mamm replied hopefully “There has been one good sign already. Mr. Adams was home tonight, and so he was able to drive Eli to the clinic. Yah, perhaps Da Hah will continue to help us out.”

  Ella remembered her quilt and wondered if it had helped or made things worse. Surely it isn’t a sign that makes Eli’s chances even worse. I shouldn’t think about such things. Surely a quilt doesn’t make a difference one way or the other.

  “Let’s go finish the chores,” Monroe said. “It’s late enough already.”

  “Clara can stay with me,” Mamm said. “I need help with supper, and you’re almost done, aren’t you?”

  “Three cows, I think,” Ella said. “We can handle those. Her hands hurt by now, anyway.”

  Clara nodded, and they left for the barn. When Ella got done with two cows, she checked the ones Clara had done. One still needed finishing. When she finished that cow, she stepped back as Dora released the long line of cows. They moved out to the barnyard, pushing and shoving as usual against those who paused.

  With the last one outside, Ella went to check on Monroe. Normally she wouldn’t have concerned herself because Monroe was well able to take care of himself, but the earlier events had inspired fear.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, hollering up the silage chute.

  A fork load of silage thundered down, and she had to step out of the way.

  She hollered up again. This time Monroe stuck his head out of the opening, halfway up.

  “Something wrong?” he asked.

  “Just checkin’ on you. Are you okay?”

  “I’ll be right in,” he said. “Just got a little more to pitch down, and then I’ll have to spread it out.”

  “Want me to help you?”
<
br />   He grinned. “Guess it would be nice—it’s kind of late. The fork’s over there in the corner.”

  She knew what to do and went to look for the fork. The pile of silage Monroe threw down would need to be distributed along the wooden feed bins where the cows would have access later.

  With her fork in hand, she got to work and had several loads drug to the other end by the time Monroe came down. He helped, and the job was finished quickly. Monroe went to open the gate for the cows and let the now subdued bull out of its pen. A few cows came in immediately, which alerted the others. By the time they left the barn, the whole herd was in line and scooping up the silage in great gulps.

  The table was set and ready when they arrived inside. Monroe let Ella wash at the basin first while he waited. By the time Monroe was done, the others had seated themselves. Without Noah present, they bowed their heads in silence.

  Ella didn’t feel hungry and noticed her mom didn’t have much on her plate either. Monroe and Clara seemed to have their full appetite, though. They took seconds of most everything. Since it was the family custom, she waited at the table until everyone was done and then stood to help clear the dishes.

  “I’m going down to call at the phone shack,” Mamm said. “Maybe the hospital will have news.”

  “I’ll drive you,” Monroe said as he stood, his plate finished and scraped clean.

  “You don’t have to,” Mamm said. “It might do me good to walk down.”

  “It’s too far,” Monroe said, his voice firm, “especially after dark.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Lizzie said, giving in. “I hope I can find out something from Noah.”

  “He’ll have good news,” Ella said, uncertain where her hopefulness came from.

  A few minutes later, Mamm and Monroe left, the noise of the buggy wheels rattling in the driveway. Dora, who still sat at the table, sighed and got up to help.

  Clara, sitting at her place at the table, asked, “What do you want me to do?”

  “Dry dishes,” Ella said. “Ruth can help. Ada and Martha, you two stay in the living room and out of the way. I’ll start to wash, and Dora can clear the table.”