“The Constitution says the Amish don’t have to fight if they sincerely object to killing other men,” Reuben said, trying to redirect the conversation.
“Reuben, wake up for Pete’s sake! The Constitution won’t be worth the paper it’s written on if Hitler or Tojo have their way in this world. The Amish will be the first to go if we lose a war and some dictator comes in here and wants everyone to join his jackbooted thug army. The Constitution won’t save the Amish then. Only the blood of the men who fight and die will save them.”
“The Amish won’t fight,” said Reuben.
“Well, if they won’t fight, I suppose that’s their right, but I’m not asking them, I’m asking you,” Bobby said as he lit another Camel. “Since they won’t fight, maybe the Amish should stop condemning the Englisch to hell since the English are good enough to fight in their defense. In the meantime, if you’re really out of the club, what are you going to do if war comes?”
“I don’t know,” Reuben said. “All my life I’ve been taught that violence is wrong and that no matter what happens, we’re not to lift a hand in wrath or anger. My family has a book full of the stories of martyrs who stood by as Catholic or Protestant soldiers killed their wives and children. They take it as a point of pride. Well, I don’t take pride in it. If someone hurt Jerusha, I would kill that person. And I wouldn’t make it an easy death. He would suffer before he died. It doesn’t make me proud to say that, but I do know that some things are so precious they are worth killing or dying for. For me, that would be Jerusha. As far as what you’re asking me, I just don’t know what I’d do.”
Bobby knew when to quit. His question had bothered Reuben more than he had expected. He took another puff on his Camel and smiled. “Let’s drop it. What’ll we do for dinner?”
Reuben looked at Bobby with an expression mingled with shame, hurt, and anger. “You don’t have to patronize me, Bobby,” said Reuben quietly. “I get the point. You think the Amish are cowards, and I think most of them are sincere believers in the way Jesus taught His disciples to live. As for me, you’re right. What I’ll do if America goes to war will be something I work out for myself, without hiding behind my Amish upbringing.”
Well Reuben, you sure didn’t have much time to make that decision, did you? We had that discussion in November. Three weeks later the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
A Quilt for...
ON FRIDAY MORNING, Jerusha awakened in the back of Henry’s car, covered by spread-out newspapers and the thin blanket. She lay there a long time, drifting in and out of sleep. Finally she roused herself and looked at Reuben’s old watch. It was almost noon. She had tried to sleep during the night and early morning to conserve her strength but had awakened several times when she got too cold, and when that happened she started the car and let the heater run for ten minutes or so until she warmed up.
She was thankful she had put some sandwiches and fruit in her bag when she left home. More than ever she realized she must eat to keep up her strength. But the longer this dragged on, the more she realized how dangerous her situation was. Something had happened to Henry; that was for sure. He had been gone almost twenty-four hours. If help didn’t come soon, she would surely die.
As these morbid thoughts played out in her mind, she heard the sound of a motor coming down the road. From the chug-chug-chug, she recognized Bobby Halverson’s snowplow. She tried to open the car door, but the snow had piled against it, and it wouldn’t budge. She became frantic as the sound of the tractor came closer and closer.
“Bobby, Bobby!” she began screaming, “I’m in the car, I’m in here!” She leaned over the seat and pressed on the horn frantically, but the drifted snow muted the sound.
Jerusha tried kicking the door but then realized that she didn’t dare break the window. So she put her shoulder against the door and her feet against the hump in the middle of the floor and pushed with all her strength. At last she felt the snow starting to give and the door begin to open. Jerusha pushed it open wide enough to carefully squeeze through. As she made the last push through and dug her way out of the snow, she could hear the retreat of Bobby’s tractor. He hadn’t seen her—the car was too far down in the ditch and was hidden by a snowdrift.
Jerusha made her way up the bank of the ditch and tried to run up the road after Bobby, but she slid and slipped and fell on the icy pavement.
“Bobby! Bobby, stop! Don’t leave me,” she screamed as she stumbled after the slowly disappearing plow, but the wind was so strong that it caught her voice and carried it away like drifting autumn leaves. Soon the tractor was out of sight in the windblown snow, and the chug-chug-chug slowly faded until Jerusha could no longer hear it. She collapsed to her knees on the road and wept.
“Bobby,” she whispered, “please don’t leave me here...”
Then the wind began to blow even more powerfully, and Jerusha knew she had to get back into the car or die on the road. For just a moment the thought crossed her mind that to be dead would mean that she would be with Jenna and that this constant sorrow would be done. But then an even stronger instinct asserted itself, and she stood and made her way back to the car. She crawled into the backseat and pulled the door shut.
This was God’s fault again. He could have caused Bobby to see her, to hear her...but He hadn’t. Was it because I loved Reuben even though he was shunned? Was it because I disobeyed my father and snuck out to see Reuben, because I let him kiss me? What was it? Tell me, tell me...
“Tell me!” she screamed aloud. “Why are You doing this to me?”
Jerusha pounded the seat with her hands and screamed out her rage and pain and agony. At last, worn out and exhausted, she lay back, closed her eyes, and drifted off into blessed sleep.
But even in her slumber she couldn’t escape this trial. Strange dreams filled Jerusha’s sleep. She was with her grandmother. Even though her grandmother was lying still and cold in the pine box in a bare room, her eyes were open and she was speaking to Jerusha.
“Never hurry, always pay attention, do the work as unto the Lord,” she heard her grandmother say. “You have been given a way to give back to the Lord as He has given to you. It is a special gift not everyone is given. But to whom much is given, much is required. That is why we put a small mistake in the quilt before we finish. It is so that we do not make God angry with us for being too proud.”
And then she felt her grandmother’s hands on hers, guiding the stitches, showing the way to sew in the imperfection. But she fought against the hands and pulled away. Other voices that sounded like the women of the village began to echo in her dream. “You didn’t put the mistake in your quilt, and that’s why God is mad at you...”
Then it was her grandmother again. “You’re too proud, Jerusha. This gift is not for you, but for those you can bless with your quilts. It is God working through you to touch others, and not to be held for yourself. You can’t use this gift to bring attention or recognition to yourself. You must always stay true to our faith and our ways and not be tricked by the devil and the world.”
Jerusha heard herself as a child reply to her grandmother, “I will always stay true to our family and our ways. I swear it.”
And then she heard herself again, but older this time and filled with bitterness. “I’ll take this quilt to the Dalton Fair and win the prize. I’ll leave Apple Creek and leave this religion and leave this God who has turned His back on me. I’ll make a new life among the Englisch, and I’ll never come back.”
And then she was sitting at the quilting frame, sewing the Rose of Sharon. Tiny, tiny stitches, her hand going in and out as the pattern developed before her eyes exactly as she had seen it. The beautiful silken material shimmered in the lamplight—first red, then purple, then with golden highlights, then red again like a kaleidoscope, ever changing. When she pushed the needle through for the last stitch, she pricked herself, and a bright red drop of blood fell on the rose in the heart of the quilt. And then the
red rose began to bleed drops of blood. She watched, mesmerized, as the blood began to flow down the quilt. She tried to clean it off, but her hands became red with blood, and then she was holding her little girl in her arms as Jenna coughed and coughed until she spit up blood.
Like the blood of Christ, or a rose...
Then she was holding the quilt again and Jenna was gone, and Jerusha looked everywhere for her little girl but couldn’t find her, and the blood still covered her hands. She rubbed her hands frantically on the quilt, but the blood wouldn’t come off, and it was Jenna’s blood and her blood and the blood of Christ all mixed together. Anger and grief welled up in her heart.
“I didn’t kill Jenna! I didn’t! Her blood is not on my hands! Why are You showing me this? You killed her, it was You! It was—”
And then she heard her grandmother’s voice again. “Jerusha! Jerusha! You must wake up, girl. There is someone who needs you, someone needs your help.”
In a half-waking state Jerusha answered back. “But, Grandmother, I can’t help anyone. I’m the one who needs help. Someone needs to save me.”
Her grandmother’s voice came again. “Jerusha, kumme with me, kumme now.”
Jerusha jerked awake. The dream had been so real.
And then the strangest feeling came over Jerusha. It was a feeling of absolute certainty that God was speaking to her right now, right this moment, and she must trust Him and follow Him.
“But how can I follow You when I don’t trust You anymore?”
And then she could hear her grandmother’s voice quoting a scripture. “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Jerusha, kumme!”
Jerusha opened the door and struggled out into the snow. The wind was howling, and she could barely see. She buttoned her coat tight around her and then grabbed the blanket off the backseat and pulled it over her head and shoulders. Slowly she began to push through the snowdrifts. When she got into the woods the wind wasn’t so intense, but it was still freezing cold. The snow was deep, but as she went forward there seemed to be a path through the woods. She struggled ahead, feeling drawn—and yet not exactly that. Why was she doing this? It had been a dream...hadn’t it? And yet she felt compelled to struggle ahead up over a little rise and down into a large clearing in the trees. Suddenly she realized where she was.
This is Jepsons’ Pond. I came here with Reuben the day before he left...
In the blowing snow she could see something ahead that looked like an upside-down car. About half its length stuck out onto the ice from the shore. She looked up and could see where the car had torn its way through the trees and come to rest on the edge of the pond.
The county highway must be just over that rise. Someone crashed off the road and came through the trees up there and slid down to the pond! Maybe there’s someone inside…
Jerusha walked toward the car, carefully stepping out onto the surface of the pond. She had skated here as a child, and she knew that with the temperature this low, it would likely be solid all the way across.
The front of the car was out on the ice, and its trunk pointed up the bank. As Jerusha carefully stepped around to the driver’s side, she saw a large fracture in the ice running out from under the hood. The roof of the car had settled into the crack about six inches. The windows of the car were covered with snow and ice, so she picked up a piece of metal lying near the car and began to scrape the ice and then brush it off with her hands. Finally, she had cleared off enough to see in. She could see that some water had leaked into the car and frozen in a pool on the roof below the upside-down dashboard. As she peered in she saw something that looked like a small foot sticking out from under a seat cushion. She struggled around to the other side of the car and scraped the window off so she could make it out. Suddenly her dream of two nights ago returned to her like a knife to her heart. She had dreamed of Jenna, lost somewhere in the dark. Jenna was staring out from behind some kind of a window, her little hands pushing against the glass and her eyes wet with tears, crying out.
“Mama...Mama, come find me. Mama, where are you?”
Jerusha fell to her knees and looked in the window. There inside the car, almost completely covered by a seat cushion and old clothing, was a child—a little girl. Her face was toward the window. As Jerusha stared in amazement, the little girl’s eyes opened. She looked straight at Jerusha and her mouth moved. Jerusha could tell what she was saying, and her heart jumped in her chest.
“Mama...Mama, come find me. Help me, Mama!”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Hard Choices
BOBBY HALVERSON SAT in Betty’s kitchen eating Thanksgiving leftovers. He was thinking about Reuben and the war and the strange twist of fate that had brought them together. The entwining of their lives stretched out behind, and he wondered again at the journey they had shared together.
If I hadn’t been in the bar that night in Wooster, and if you hadn’t stood up to Clancy, I wouldn’t have met you, and we never would have become friends—and then I couldn’t have challenged you about fighting for your country. If I hadn’t been in your life, you might have decided to join the church and marry Jerusha way back then, and everything would have been different—and I might not be alive today. Isn’t it strange how our whole life can swing on one little moment or one decision? I remember the day you made your choice, and I remember how pleased I was when you told me what you decided. What did I know about anything? What happened after that was so hard on you. You never asked for trouble, but it always seemed to find you. There was always trouble, and you always seemed to get the brunt of it. Maybe it would have been better if you had gone down another road...
Three weeks after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Bobby sat with Reuben at the little chrome dinette set in the kitchen of their apartment. They had finished dinner, and Bobby was drinking a beer. Reuben sat across from him with his own beer, looking morosely down at the tabletop.
“I’m going down tomorrow to enlist,” Bobby said, getting right to the point. “I went over to the Marine Corps recruiting office in Akron yesterday, and they seem to think that I’m a suitable candidate for grunthood, so I’m going in for a physical and then it’s off to Parris Island. You’re welcome to stay here while I’m gone. I’ve already talked to the landlady, and she’s fine with that.”
“Bobby, I—”
“Don’t try to make me change my mind,” Bobby cut in. “I’ve made it up and nobody’s gonna change it. Pearl Harbor decided it for me. The Japanese have underestimated the will and anger of the American people. The guy at the recruiting station told me that hundreds of men have come in to—”
“Bobby, will you just shut up and listen for a moment?” Reuben took a deep breath and then began to talk quickly and earnestly.
“I’ve been thinking long and hard about what you said a few weeks ago. I still feel that killing other men isn’t a good thing, and I think if everybody really did what Jesus says in the Bible, there would be no killing in the world, and everybody would get along or at least just leave each other alone.
“But I’ve come to see that in every group of human beings there will always be someone who tries to get it over on everyone else. And there are all kinds of ways that we do it to each other, from talking behind people’s backs to crushing another country with an army. I think people are just born that way. As long as there are men like Hitler and Tojo, there will be wars because tyrants think they should be in control of everyone else and they’ll do whatever it takes to achieve that.
“I know there are bad men in America too, but for the most part, this is a free nation with lots of room for everybody. And you were right—it stays that way because some men and women are brave enough and care enough to willingly lay down their lives so their neighbors can stay free. I said that I believe there are some things worth dying for, and I was talking about Jerusha. But your questions made me see things in a different light. It occurred to me that if the Germans or the Japanese got
their hands on America, they would take away our rights. Then there would probably be no Reuben and Jerusha in that sort of future. So I had to make a decision.
“It was a hard choice because it went against everything I’ve ever known. I don’t know if Jerusha will ever understand, but like you, I’ve decided to go and fight those who want to destroy our country. In fact, I beat you to the punch. I’ve already signed up. I’ve been accepted for the Marine Corps, so if you’re going to sign up, it looks like we’ll both be headed for Parris Island. I’m hoping that if I make it back alive, I can make Jerusha see why I did this.”
Bobby hardly knew what to say. “Well, my friend, that’s the longest speech I ever heard out of you.” He leaned forward to take Reuben’s hand in a grip of friendship. “I don’t know what’s ahead for us, but I’ll do my best to make sure you make it back to that gal of yours.”
That was the day your troubles really started. The war did something to you. It wounded you inside, and later you made choices that hurt Jerusha and Jenna. I wish I had kept my mouth shut and just let you stay in Apple Creek.
A sadness filled Bobby’s heart as he thought about the tragedy that had broken Reuben and Jerusha’s lives.
Why am I still alive, living my comfortable life in Apple Creek? I should have died in that trench on that God-forsaken island. But I’m here and Jenna is gone, Reuben is gone, and now Jerusha is gone. Why couldn’t You let them be, God, and cause me trouble instead? Shoot, I don’t even believe in You, except maybe as a big troublemaker in the sky. I guess I’m a perfect candidate for tragedy. So why not me? Why them?
From the front room came the sound of a knock on the door. Betty went to see who it was. Bobby heard voices, and then Betty came rushing into the kitchen.
A Quilt for Jenna Page 9
