Amish Homecoming

by Jo Ann Brown

  She looked down at her clasped hands. “We make plans, but our plans must change when God has other plans for us.”

  “You make it sound as if God makes our choices and we have no free will to choose.”

  “We do have free will,” she argued, astonished at his words. Had his faith suffered as much as her heart? “God allows us to make choices. But, like the loving daed He is, He wants to help us avoid the many potholes in the paths we walk. He may not hold our hands, but He’s there if there’s a rough patch we need help getting across.”

  “Even one that lasts for ten years?”

  She nodded. “But that’s in the past now.”

  “I don’t want to be lost in the past any longer.” His arm curved around her waist.

  “Me, either.” Her hands slid up to his shoulders as he brought her against his firm chest.

  “Maybe last time it was an accident that I kissed you, but...” He lowered his mouth toward hers.

  She held her breath, eager for another kiss like the one she’d dreamed about often. Then his lips found hers, and she lost herself, enthralled, in the moment that was even more glorious than she could have guessed. The last time they had kissed, they had been kinder. This time, they weren’t.

  And this time, she was kissing him back. How could she have thought that stolen kiss was perfection? It faded to nothing more than a pleasant memory as she savored kissing him.

  He raised his mouth far enough so he could murmur, “As I was saying, the last time was an accident, but this time I definitely kissed you on purpose.”

  “I like on-purpose kisses.” Happiness bubbled out of her in a giggle.

  When he laughed, too, joy washed through her. This was what had been missing in her life. The sound of her laughter and his woven together into a single melody. Once it had been as familiar as her own heartbeat. When she lost it, she lost a part of herself that left her drifting aimlessly through the years.

  “I’ll have to remember that.” He gave her another kiss before he released her, his fingers lingering at her side as if he could not bear to let her go.

  She understood that too well, because she already missed his arms around her. When she picked up the pail, her knees were unsteady. She took his hand as they walked back to the buggy. She had no idea how fleeting this happiness might be, because nothing had changed with Mandy’s yearning to go back to the city, so she must enjoy every happy moment while she could.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Mandy? Where are you?” Leah called as she walked toward the barn that was a silhouette in the light from the setting sun.

  When Ezra had dropped her off at the end of the lane after their ride, knowing that it was expected they would be discreet—in spite of his brothers’ matchmaking—and not be seen in the courting buggy by her parents, she had decided to plant the daffodils right away as a surprise to Mamm. She knew Mandy would be eager to help, but where was her niece? She hoped the little girl hadn’t gone across the field to Ezra’s house again. It would soon be too late for Mandy to be out by herself.

  At a sharp bark, she saw Shep come out of the house. Mandy was following at her top speed, but the little dog was leaving her farther behind with every step.

  Leah stared as Shep rose to his hind legs, twirling about, his little paws bouncing in front of him. He dropped to the ground, barked again and repeated his dance.

  The pail dropped from Leah’s suddenly nerveless fingers. As Mandy reached her, she grasped her niece by the shoulders.

  “Where’s Daed?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Shep—”

  “I see him! We’ve got to find Daed. If—”

  A scream came from the house.

  Leah leaped over the pail as she raced to the back door. As she tore it open, Mamm cried out again from the front room.

  One look was all Leah needed. Daed was face down on the floor, blood oozing beneath his head, his right arm twitching as if touched by an electric wire.

  Whirling to Mandy who’d followed her in, she ordered, “Go to the barn and call 911 and have them send an ambulance right away. Can you do that?”

  Her niece nodded, but kept staring at her unmoving grossdawdi.

  “Go!” Leah grabbed her arm. “Tell them to come as fast as they can.”

  “Is he going to die?” Terror filled the little girl’s voice, and Leah doubted her niece had heard a word that she’d said.

  “Not if we get him help soon.” Looking at Mamm, she said, “I’ll call 911.”

  Unsure if Mamm had heard her, either, Leah ran outside with Shep at her heels. He kept barking, but didn’t do his warning motions as she sped into the dusk-filled barn. She grabbed the flashlight that Daed kept on a shelf by the door.

  For a second, her composure threatened to shatter as she wondered when or if Daed would ever use a flashlight again. It seemed impossible that less than an hour ago, she’d been in Ezra’s arms, believing that everything was finally going in the right direction.

  Pushing any thoughts but making the call from her mind, Leah yanked an inner door open and sprayed light across the small room. Seeing the phone and its answering machine on a table under a dusty window, she shut the door so Shep’s barking wouldn’t drown out her voice. She picked up the phone and set the flashlight down as she listened for a dial tone, then called 911.

  A woman answered almost at once, and Leah rapidly told her what they needed and their address. She answered the woman’s questions about her daed’s condition, realizing how little she knew other than that he was senseless on the floor and that his right arm had been jerking about.

  As soon as the woman said the ambulance was on its way, Leah thanked her and hung up. She reached for the flashlight, then froze as her eyes were caught by a familiar phone number on a yellowed pad of paper by the phone. It was the number for the phone they’d had in Johnny’s apartment in Philadelphia. Written in Daed’s scrawling handwriting.

  He had found their number and written it down. Why? Was he planning to call them? As old and brittle as the paper looked and as faded as the ink was, he must have jotted it down a long time ago. Yet, he’d never thrown it away. Why hadn’t he called? Just once?

  Blinking back tears, she reached for the latch. She had to return to the house. As she ran, she prayed God wouldn’t take Daed today for many reasons.

  Including him explaining why he’d written down their phone number and kept it.

  * * *

  The ambulance arrived within minutes, though it seemed like hours while Leah knelt by her unconscious daed’s side and kept up a steady patter to calm Mamm and Mandy. Two young men came in, pulling a gurney stacked with equipment. She recognized them from the mud sale. That day, they’d been among the firefighters helping the kinder try on their heavy coats and helmets. Today, they were a blessing.

  With a terse greeting, they motioned for Leah to move aside. She stood and watched as they opened up bags with their gear. Because she’d spent a lot of time at the hospital with Johnny, she knew what the equipment did. She answered the EMTs’ questions and explained to her mamm what they were doing.

  She drew Mandy close and felt the little girl shiver as if she were sick. Mandy’s face was nearly as gray as Daed’s, and she choked back a soft cry of dismay when the emergency workers opened Daed’s shirt and placed on his chest and arms the small squares holding the electrodes that they hooked up to a portable machine with a readout on the front. Like Leah, the little girl was too familiar with equipment like an electrocardiogram.

  “Shep needs you,” she whispered to her niece. She hoped that the dog would distract Mandy at least a little bit from what was happening.

  Mandy scooped up the dog, which was panting with its tongue drooping out of one side of its mouth. Shep expected to be praised for doing what he’d been train
ed to do, and the little girl complied, burying her face in his black fur and telling him what a wunderbaar dog he was.

  The EMTs completed their examination quickly and with a minimum of conversation. One pulled out a cell phone. He pushed a single button. As soon as someone answered, he told the person that the unit was going to be transporting one man to the local hospital and listed the symptoms and test results they had.

  Mandy moaned at the mention of a hospital and turned her face against Leah’s side.

  “It’s gut that they’re taking him where he can get the very best care,” Leah said, stroking her hair. Mandy’s kapp had fallen off at some point and lay, abandoned, beneath a chair that someone had moved aside.

  “But the doctors at the hospital didn’t save Daddy.”

  “I know.” What else could she say? She was thankful that God had spared Mandy from being home the day Johnny died. In fact, neither of them had been in the apartment. It was a school day, and Leah had been grocery shopping, so her brother had died alone. She prayed again, as she had often, that her brother had let go of his anger and forgiven Daed and himself, allowing God into his heart before he breathed his last.

  Leah was jerked back to the present when Mamm asked if she could ride to the hospital with Daed. The EMTs agreed, telling her that she must get in as soon as they had her husband on the gurney and loaded into the ambulance. They didn’t want to delay getting Daed to the emergency room.

  “I need my bonnet,” Mamm said, looking dazed and uncertain.

  Leah ran into the kitchen and snatched her mamm’s bonnet off the peg by the back door. Knowing that it would take at least a minute or two for the EMTs to load Daed into the ambulance, she put some cookies and lemonade in the cooler that Mandy carried to school. Daed loved snickerdoodles, and having them might offer him—and Mamm—some comfort at the impersonal hospital.

  Rushing back into the front room, she handed the bonnet and the cooler to her mamm. Mamm nodded her thanks but said nothing as she followed Daed’s gurney out of the house. Leah and Mandy went, too, but only as far as the porch.

  Daed and the gurney were put quickly into the ambulance; then one EMT helped Mamm in, as well. In the moment before the doors were closed, Leah saw Mamm sit on an empty gurney beside the one where Daed was lying, motionless.

  Mandy began crying, and Leah pulled her niece into her arms. During her short life, the poor kind had seen too much suffering. Mandy flinched when the ambulance driver switched on the emergency lights as the vehicle turned tightly in the yard and headed to the main road. She pressed her face to Leah’s apron and moaned when the siren blasted at the same moment the ambulance reached the end of the lane.

  Stroking her niece’s hair, Leah watched the flashing lights and listened to the strident siren until both vanished. It was quick, because the vehicle was traveling fast. How long would it take for the ambulance to reach the hospital? It would be more than two hours by buggy.

  “Let’s go inside,” Leah said.

  “How will we know if Grossdawdi is okay?” Mandy asked.

  “We can call.”

  Despair filled Mandy’s voice. “My cell doesn’t have any power. I used it to call Isabella when nobody was around. If I’d known we’d need it, I wouldn’t have used it. I’m sorry, Aunt Leah.”

  “You don’t need to apologize. And don’t worry. We’ve got a telephone in the barn. That’s where I went to call 911.” She thought again about the phone number on the pad, then pushed it out of her mind. Ezra had been right earlier when he said it was time to stop being lost in the past.

  “Where is it? I haven’t seen it,” she said, confirming Leah’s hunch that Mandy had been so focused on her grossdawdi that she’d heard nothing Leah had said earlier.

  “It’s in a small room to the right of the stalls.” Putting her hands on the little girl’s shoulders, she turned her to look at the old barn, which was almost invisible in the thickening twilight. “See the wires coming from the road to the far corner of the barn? They are telephone lines.”

  “Why is there a phone in the barn? I didn’t think Amish used phones.”

  “We don’t use them in the house because we don’t want our homes connected to the wider world. Grossdawdi had a phone installed in the barn in case he had to call the veterinarian if one of the cows got sick.”

  “What if you or Daddy or Aenti Martha got sick?”

  She chuckled, amazed that she could when she’d just watched Daed leaving in an ambulance. “Mamm took care of us, except when your other aunt, Aenti Irene, broke her leg. Aenti Irene was taken to the clinic in the village.” She looked up at the distant rumble of thunder. “Let’s get inside before the storm comes.”

  “But don’t we need to go to the barn and wait for the telephone to ring?”

  “There is an answering machine, and...” She looked past her niece when she heard her name shouted.

  Ezra ran along the farm lane. He didn’t slow until he came up on the porch.

  “I saw the ambulance,” he said, panting from the run. “Who are they taking to the hospital?”

  “Daed,” she answered. “Mamm is riding with them.”

  “Gut. Abram will want her there with him. I’m glad I called for Gerry’s van before I came over here. He said he’d be here in a few minutes.”

  “You called him already?” The retired Englischer made his van available for trips that were too long for buggies.

  “When the ambulance’s lights and sirens came on, I knew someone was going to the hospital and that whoever was here would want to get there as soon as possible.” Ezra looked over his shoulder as the sound of a powerful engine came from the far end of the farm lane. A long, white van turned in and drove toward the house. “There’s Gerry now. Are you ready to go?”

  “I will be in a minute.” She didn’t pause to thank him for his kindness. Instead, she rushed inside and called to Mandy to come with her. “Get your kapp. It’s under the chair. I’ll get our coats. We might be there late, and it’s cold at night.”

  “No.” Mandy halted in the middle of the front room and shook her head vehemently. “I’m not going.”

  “But I thought you’d want to see Grossdawdi—”

  “No! Not if he’s going to die like Daddy did.”

  He won’t, Leah wanted to say. He won’t be alone as Johnny was. She couldn’t say that, not when the little girl was distraught already.

  “Mandy—”

  “Can you promise me that he won’t die at the hospital?”

  “No.” She hated having to say that and almost cried when the little girl’s face crumpled completely. Squatting, she looked directly into her niece’s eyes. “Mandy, the number of our days is in God’s hands. We must trust Him.”

  “But I love Grossdawdi.”

  “And he loves you, too. God knows that, but He sees far beyond what we can. We have to believe that He wants only gut things for us.”

  “I’m scared.”

  “I know.” She hugged her niece tightly so Mandy couldn’t see her fear.

  * * *

  Ezra sat on the middle seat of the van and stared out the windshield at the lights of the passing cars. Gerry, his gray hair gleaming a sickish green in the lights from the dash, had turned on the radio to listen to the Phillies game. Though he usually followed the team, baseball was the last thing on Ezra’s mind.

  Beside him, Leah sat, her eyes aimed straight ahead, too. They’d left Mandy with Mamm and Esther, who promised to bring Deborah over to the house to keep Mandy company. Since they’d come back to the van, Leah hadn’t spoken.

  “Wie bischt?” he asked, speaking in Deitsch to keep their conversation private. He had no doubts that Gerry, after over five years of driving plain folks around, understood some of their language. He also knew that the driver wouldn’t repeat a
nything he might understand.

  “I am...” she replied in the same language. “I honestly don’t know how I am. I’m scared. I’m hopeful. I’m grateful. I’m terrified.”

  He put his arm around her shoulders and slid her closer on the smooth seat. He was offering Leah comfort and companionship as she faced the unknown future. Under the circumstances, nobody would chide him for such behavior, even if Gerry mentioned it, which the Englischer wouldn’t.

  “I know,” he said softly against the stiff material of her bonnet.

  She didn’t look at him. “And I feel sorry for Mandy. She’s lost too much already, and she’s just a little girl.”

  “Having someone you love become ill isn’t easy at any age.” He sighed. “When Daed died, I had to be strong for Mamm. Not that my brothers and sisters aren’t strong, too, but the farm became my responsibility, along with making sure Mamm and my unmarried siblings were well taken care of.”

  “They have been blessed to have you.” Finally she turned her head toward him, but he couldn’t see her features in the dark van.

  No problem. He could recreate every inch of her pretty face in his mind. After many years of practice, a time stretching back to before she left Paradise Springs, it was easy. He guessed her eyes were filled equally with worry and a determination to do everything possible to help her daed.

  With a start, he realized he hadn’t asked what had happened to Abram. He had been too focused on getting Leah to the hospital to be there for her parents.

  “He falls down,” Leah replied to his question. “I think he feels faint, but he refuses to talk about it.”

  “This has happened before?”

  “Ja. At least twice since I got home. He suddenly collapses with no warning signs whatsoever.”

  He’d never imagined Abram, his strong and always reserved neighbor, being anything but as steady and unmoving as a stony ridge. Abruptly many things became clear. No wonder Leah had been hesitant, when Mandy was in school or with friends, to go even as far as the Stoltzfus Family Shops. She hadn’t been trying to avoid him—she had wanted to remain at the farm in case her daed needed someone to call 911.