Reuben looked at Lowell. “I’ve never really known God, have I?”
“No, son, it seems not,” Lowell said. “But that’s easily remedied.”
“How?” asked Reuben.
“Well, boy, you just climb down off your high horse, ask Him to forgive you of your sins, and then ask Him to come and live with you and be the one who makes all the decisions for your life. He said, ‘Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and you shall find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’ You can’t do it by yourself, Reuben, you need Him, and you need Him bad. Trust Him with your life. But this time, get to know Him as God, not as a set of rules. Oh, I know the Amish are good folks, but without a relationship with Christ, it doesn’t matter how many rules you make up, you can never keep them. You need Christ living in you. Like Jesus said to Nicodemus, ‘You must be born again.’”
And so Reuben prayed with Lowell, and as he did, he began to find the peace he had been seeking all his life. He began to understand the depth of his wife’s pain and his failure to care for her in her deepest need.
“Jerusha has been alone with no one to help her,” Reuben said quietly. “What should I do?”
“Well, son, I think it’s time that you get back into that old Ford and point it east.”
And so on Thanksgiving Day, November 23, 1950, a year after his daughter’s death, Reuben climbed into his truck, waved goodbye to Lowell and Manuel, and headed for Ohio. The truck hummed beneath his feet, and his thoughts turned to Apple Creek.
If I drive straight through, I can make it home by Sunday...
Dim light came faintly through the window into the room. The first faint hint of Sunday morning woke Jerusha to another day. She had held the little girl close, the two of them wrapped in Jenna’s tattered quilt, all through the long night. She checked the little girl’s pulse. It was still beating faintly.
Her hope of rescue for them both was fading. Surely if help was coming, it would have come by now. This God she was so angry at only two days ago was once again going to fail to rescue her at her darkest hour. Still, somehow she had worked through the idea that God had failed her. Now it was her own failures that seemed the hardest to bear.
Pride, ambition, anger, faithlessness, fear, selfishness...the things that had slowly but surely drawn Jerusha away from her first love became clear to her, and she cried out to the Lord to forgive her and restore her. And then she prayed for her husband.
“Lord, please bring Reuben home. I need him. I was wrong to treat him the way I did, especially when he needed my love and my forgiveness so much. I do forgive him. If You will bring him back, I will be a good wife to him. I need You, and I need Reuben.”
A scripture came to her from the book of Job: “Though he slay me, I will hope in him.”
“Ja, Lord, no matter what happens now I will always love You and praise You for all You have given me.”
And as Jerusha prayed, her beloved Loblied came to her lips.
Lässt loben Ihn mit allen unseren Herzen! Weil Er allein würdig ist!
The Fifth Day
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1950
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
To Seek and Save the Lost
BOBBY HALVERSON DROVE SLOWLY down the county highway toward Apple Creek. It was Sunday morning, and the sun was just coming up. The snow had drifted all along the road, in some places up to thirty feet high. The wind was still blowing at a steady thirty-five miles an hour, but the temperature had risen a few degrees to slightly above zero. A few Ohio National Guard Jeeps followed Bobby’s plow, bringing food and medical supplies to folks the storm had isolated.
After three days of searching in vain for Jerusha, Bobby had come to the grim conclusion that Jerusha was no longer alive. She couldn’t be. No one could survive this storm out in the open. She must have gotten hypothermia, gone into shock, and wandered away from the car.
As the grim thoughts pushed into his mind, the little caravan crept into Apple Creek. Bobby swung out of line and headed toward the Springer home. Maybe she was there by some miracle.
Bobby pulled up in front of the Springer house. He left his tractor running and made his way through the drifts of snow. He clambered up on the porch and stopped there. In the snow leading up to the front door were boot tracks. Whoever had come up on the porch had gone inside and had not come out. Probably just Hank checking the house out again.
Bobby walked along the porch to the window. The tracks led up from the side of the house…and then he saw an old Ford pickup pulled up in the yard.
That truck doesn’t belong to anyone I know.
Bobby brushed the snow off the window and looked in. In the dim light he could see a dark figure seated in one of the chairs facing the fireplace. There was a fitful blaze burning on the hearth, and the flickering light cast the figure’s shadow on the wall. Bobby went back to the front door, cautiously opened it, and peered in.
“Hello in there,” he said. “What are you doing in this house?”
There was no answer, so Bobby went inside and walked slowly toward the fireplace. He could see that the person in the chair was a man by the breadth of his shoulders. The man had on a long mackinaw and a Western hat, so Bobby couldn’t see his face.
“I asked you what you are doing in this house,” said Bobby. “If you are trying to get out of the cold, I can take you over to the armory, but you sure don’t belong here.”
The man stirred in his chair and looked up.
“Hello, Bobby,” said a quiet voice.
Bobby found himself staring into a very familiar pair of violet eyes. “Reuben! For goodness sake, man, you’re alive! I thought I’d never see you again.”
Reuben reached out his hand, and Bobby grasped it firmly. The two men stayed that way for a moment, and then Bobby pulled Reuben up and embraced him. Reuben hesitated but then returned the hug. Bobby pulled back and looked at his friend. His face was tanned, and he had put on some weight. He wasn’t wearing a beard, but he was unshaven and looked tired.
“Well, wherever you have been, it looks like you’ve been doing all right,” Bobby said. “You’ve put on a little weight, and you look fit.”
“Yeah, well, that happens,” he said, then added, “Bobby, where’s Jerusha?”
Bobby looked away. “Jerusha’s missing.”
“Missing! What happened?”
“Henry was driving her up to Dalton for the quilt fair, but he hit a stray cow in the storm, and they skidded off the road. Henry left her in the car and went to get help. He got hurt, and by the time I was able to get to his car, it was empty. Jerusha was gone. I thought maybe she either tried to walk out or someone found her, so I’ve been looking for her for three days. But...well, no one has seen her. I’m afraid...”
“Don’t say it, Bobby.” Reuben put his head down and stood quietly for a moment. Then he looked up at Bobby. “She’s not dead. If she were dead I would know it in my spirit. No, Jerusha is alive somewhere, and we’ve got to find her.”
“I’ve been out on the road since Thursday. I’ve tried the hospital, her friends, even the jail and the armory, but no one has seen her. She’s just vanished. I just don’t know what else to do...” Bobby sank into a chair and put his face in his hands and began to weep.
“Come on,” Reuben said, putting his hand gently on Bobby’s shoulder. “It’s time for a little faith.”
The light from the fire lit Reuben’s face, and Bobby could see a change there. It was somehow unexpectedly peaceful. The anxiety and fear that had held Reuben prisoner for so long were gone. Something was different about him...and then Bobby realized what it was. The smile was back—there, behind his eyes. The old Reuben was back.
“What...what happened to you, Reuben?” Bobby asked. “You’ve changed somehow.”
“We’ll talk about that later,” Reuben said. He reached down and grasped Bobby’s hand and gripped it again.
“First, I want to thank you
for being such a true friend. I know you’ve done everything you can to help Jerusha, and I’ll never forget that. But you’ve got to pull yourself together and help me for just a little while longer. Can you do that?”
Bobby wiped his face with his sleeve and nodded.
“Now give me some details,” Reuben said. “Where did you find Henry’s car?”
“Over on Kidron Road, about two miles from Mark Knepp’s place. When I got back there after Henry told me where to look, the car was empty. I’ve gone up and down the road a dozen times. I’ve stopped at every farmhouse between here and Dalton. No one has seen her. She’s just vanished.”
“Two miles from the Knepps’ place?”
Bobby nodded.
“South of there?”
Bobby nodded again. “Not far from the county highway to Apple Creek.”
“The Jepsons’ cabin,” Reuben said quietly.
“What?”
“The Jepsons’ cabin. It’s off in the woods over there by the old pond. It’s been empty for years. It’s where I took Jerusha the night before I left for basic training. It’s only about a half a mile from where you say the car was. Jerusha’s smart. She knew she had to get out of the storm, and she may have gone there when it got too cold in the car. It would have been the closest shelter. Did you look there?”
“I haven’t been out there in years—since I was a kid. I thought it had fallen down by now.”
“No,” Reuben said. “Jepson may have been a bad farmer, but he was a good carpenter. That old house was built to last. Will your plow get us in there?”
“I think so. The snow is piled up really high in places, but I’m pretty sure we can push her through. You can show me where the old road goes in. It’ll be tough going. The storm has let up a little since yesterday, but it’s still pretty fierce. You’ll need some warmer clothes.”
“I hope Jerusha didn’t throw away my things,” said Reuben with a wry smile. “I wouldn’t blame her. I left a lot behind when I took off.”
Reuben went into the back of the house and searched through the closets. Soon he reappeared wearing warmer clothing.
“Let’s go find her, Bobby,” Reuben said quietly.
The two men went out to the tractor and climbed up in the cab. Bobby turned the plow around and headed east.
The fire had been out for a long time, and Jerusha was too weak from hunger and thirst to get up. She felt as if she were inside a freezer, and she knew she and the girl were becoming hypothermic. Her skin was turning blue, and her hands and feet were numb. Outside, the wind howled around the eaves of the house, and snow had piled up almost to the windows. During the night she had heard a sharp crack and a huge crash. The heavy snow and high winds were taking their toll on the trees.
Are we going to die here, Lord? If we are, I think I’m ready. I still don’t understand Your ways, but I accept Your will.
Jerusha felt herself beginning to lose consciousness. And in that moment, she remembered a scripture that had been one of her grandmother’s favorites. “You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that you should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever you shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you.”
She remembered her grandmother’s words to her when she was learning to quilt. “The first thing that needs to be done before any quilt is made is to decide which kind of design we will use. We must know in our heart what the quilt will look like when it is finished…If the design is not pleasing to the eye from the start, that’s wasted time, and to waste time is to try God’s patience.”
You’ve had a design for my life since before I was born, haven’t You? And I was getting in the way of that design with my pride and my lack of faith. I have not loved You with all my heart and trusted You in all my ways. How I have wasted Your time and how I must have tried Your patience.
Again, her grandmother’s words came to her. “If the design is to be even and pleasing to the eye, each individual piece of fabric must be stitched just right in order for it to fit together properly.”
You ordered everything in my life, every individual piece, didn’t You? Jenna was one of those pieces, and Reuben too. I never realized how perfectly it all worked together. In my pride I haven’t let You be the one who puts everything together. I have not let You be God. And if I am to die here, it’s part of Your perfect plan, isn’t it?
Once more her grandmother’s gentle voice came to her.
“Never hurry, always pay attention, and do the work as unto the Lord. You have been given a way to give back to the Lord, as He has given to you. This is a special gift not everyone is given. But to whom much is given, much is required...That’s why we put a small mistake in the quilt before we finish. It’s so that we do not make God angry with us for being too proud.”
You gave me this gift as a way to glorify You, and I used it to glorify myself. I was using it to escape from You. Lord, if I am meant to live, I will use my gift to bless others. If I am meant to die, I will die in peace, knowing that I have at last come to understand in some small way Your plan for my life.
Jerusha’s eyes closed. The light in the room began to fade, and the darkness closed in around her. She pulled the little girl as close to her as she could and smiled.
I will see You soon, my precious girl, and I’m bringing you a sister.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
I Once Was Lost...
BOBBY DROVE OUT County Highway 188 toward Kidron Road. The wind had picked up again, and the snow was blowing hard across their path. Visibility was down to about a hundred feet, so they moved slowly, looking for markers. The roar of the wind was relentless, and the two men had to speak up to hear each other.
“There’s County Road 142,” Bobby said as they passed a crossroad where several trucks with flashing lights were parked by a barricade. “The wind blew down some power lines up the road. The power company wants to get in there, but it’s just too dangerous to try to put them back up.”
“It’s the same west of town,” Reuben said. “I had to backtrack at least three times to get home.”
“I wondered,” Bobby said. “You must have driven like a crazy man.”
“Let’s just say I was determined to get here as fast as I could.”
They rumbled on, heading east. Soon they came to another cross street. They couldn’t see a sign, but they were both sure it was Carr Road.
“Let me get out and check,” Reuben said. “I don’t want us to get lost in this whiteout.”
Reuben jumped out of the cab and made his way to the corner of the road. A broken-off wooden sign pole was lying in the ditch with a sign that said Carr Road on it. Reuben hurried back to the tractor. “That’s Carr Road. One more mile to Township Highway 179, and then one more mile after that to the turnoff to the Jepsons’ place.”
Bobby nodded and put the tractor in gear. The trees along the road opened up somewhat in the next stretch, which made the going much more difficult. The wind had come sweeping through this open area and piled the snow up all along the road. Several times Bobby had to clear big drifts out of their way. Finally they came to a massive drift that had piled up across the entire road.
“How are we going to get around this one?” Reuben asked.
“We’re going to have to back up and go right at it,” Bobby said. “Hang on! I’m going to hit it at an angle and see if I can blow the pile off to the side.”
Bobby backed up about fifty feet. Then he put the tractor in gear and revved it up. He angled into the drift and hit it at full speed. The plow blade threw most of the snow to the side of the road, and the tractor bumped and swayed up over the rest of the pile and back down the other side. Reuben hung on to the side of the cab and let out a laugh. “It’s like a carnival ride. Been a long time since I was on one of those.”
“Good to see you laugh again, my friend,” Bobby said as they continued down the road.
“It also reminds me of the morn
ing you and me and Sarge were on the troop transport about to land on Guadalcanal,” Reuben said. “You looked at me and said ‘Stay close,’ and then you went over the side. I was scared stiff, and the last thing I wanted to do was follow you into that little boat, but I couldn’t just stand there and watch you be the hero. So over I went. Bobby Halverson, no fear; Reuben Springer, shaking in his boots.”
“These snowdrifts are nothing compared to that,” Bobby said. “The truth is I was scared to death too. If I hadn’t gone over the side, I probably would have crawled back to my bunk and hidden under the covers. I was no hero. I just didn’t see any other way than to go straight at it.”
The two men drove on down the road in silence. Then Bobby spoke. “So you can talk about it now. That’s good.”
Reuben paused for a minute and then answered. “It still bothers me to think about what happened on that island. But I’m not afraid to talk about it anymore. I had some help out in Colorado from a good man I worked for. He was a World War I vet, and he had a son who got killed at the Tenaru River. Turns out his son was Dick Jackson, the corporal who kept the Japanese from getting across that sandbar at Tenaru. The War Department didn’t give Lowell, the old man, too many details about the battle and about how Dick died, so I was able to help the old man out. A few weeks later he returned the favor.”
“I remember Dick Jackson. It’s pretty amazing that you should end up at his dad’s place. What happened?”
A Quilt for Jenna Page 22
