A Wedding for Julia

by Vannetta Chapman

  “You passed out when Frances tried to change the wrapping around your arm.” Sharon looked as if she were going to cry. “I think…she said maybe you’ve lost too much blood. Please don’t move.”

  Julia lay back, more because of the panic on Sharon’s face than because of the dizziness that she was sure would pass if she sat up for a moment.

  “You did lose a lot of blood, Julia, but your pulse is steady.” Jeanette raised the jackets someone had covered her with and checked her left arm. “It seems to have stopped bleeding for now, but if you start moving around again—”

  Nodding, Julia waved her right hand toward Tim.

  “He’s bundling up because the blizzard seems to have stopped.” Jeanette hesitated as if she wasn’t sure how much she should reveal. “The other men are donating what clothes they can spare. Together they have spent the last hour building a ladder of sorts—a way for him to climb out the window.”

  “But the branches—”

  “He’ll push his way through. Julia, we can’t stay here another day, and it could be some time before anyone finds us. It was right to shelter here through the night, but now it’s time to go for help.”

  “Tell her.” Sharon sat back and pressed her fingers to her lips.

  Jeanette looked unsure, but after helping Julia to swallow more water, she moved closer and lowered her voice. “The phones are still out, but I was able to catch one news report on my 4G network. It only worked for a moment, and then it went out again.”

  “What…what did it say?”

  “This area took a direct hit. Emergency personnel and first responders have been conducting search and rescue missions. They are not going well. The blizzard conditions have persisted, and everything is moving at a snail’s pace. They’re saying this is the worst storm since nineteen eleven.”

  Julia closed her eyes, unable to stop the tears coursing down her cheeks.

  Where was Caleb? Why hadn’t she told him how much she loved him before he left? Why had she been so stubborn and so cold to him the last night they were together?

  Her regrets piled on top of her questions. How many of their freinden had perished? And would Tim be able to find help?

  She wasn’t surprised when she heard her mother, her voice as calm and gentle as always. She wasn’t even baffled by Ada’s words. If anything, her mother had always been consistent. But for some reason, this morning her mother’s greeting had a different effect on her. Instead of hearing an old woman clinging to words from their Bible, she heard Ada—the one person in her life she knew best, speaking from the very depths of her soul.

  This time the age-old words from the Psalms worked their way straight to Julia’s heart, past the places that were broken, through the secret chambers where her fears lived, and into the very center of her being. They soothed the ache in her soul.

  “I will lift up my eyes to the hills…”

  Julia opened her eyes and glanced to the windows that were nearly covered with snow.

  “From whence comes my help?”

  At this very moment first responders were traipsing through debris and wreckage and snow. But who sent them? Who would guide them to her, to this basement, to this roomful of people? Who would keep Tim safe as he sought a way out of the wreckage? Who would care for Caleb and Aaron and all the others at the cabins?

  “My help comes from the Lord.” Ada’s voice was a caress, more welcome than the cloth on Julia’s brow. “From the Lord.”

  The truth filled her with peace, and the peace was followed by a new courage.

  God had brought Caleb to her in the first place. He had kept Ada alive when she might have passed long ago. He had joined Sharon to their family to remind them what second chances were about and to unite them in a special way.

  Their help always came from God, even when it came through the hands of men and women.

  “Let me speak with him.” Julia coughed and wondered if they were all going to be sick with pneumonia. Yet pneumonia could be cured. They had survived the worst.

  A look passed between Jeanette and Sharon. Julia had one terrible moment when she was sure they meant to keep Tim away from her. Perhaps they were afraid she would try to talk him out of what he meant to do. But then Sharon rose and hurried across the room.

  In a moment she returned, and Tim knelt by her side. Bandit woke, shook himself, and pushed himself into the middle of their small circle. Tim was wearing a black leather jacket. Sticking out from under that she could see someone’s Green Bay Packers athletic jersey—the hoodie portion was up and over Tim’s ears. A woman’s flowery silk scarf was wrapped around his neck.

  Staring into his eyes, Julia knew he understood the risk he was taking. All of the layers combined weren’t heavy enough to protect him against the cold outside.

  “I’ll be back soon, and I’ll bring help.”

  She wanted to reach up and touch his face, which was filled with such concern. Suddenly she was too tired. She wasn’t sure she could even tell him what had been so important.

  What had been so important? My help comes from the Lord.

  The window. The snow.

  “Snowshoes. Cabinet next to the washer.” She attempted to reach out and point to where they were stored. There were two pairs. If the strings weren’t rotten, they would help him through the drifts.

  She tried to point to the area, but she couldn’t lift her arm. It was too heavy. She had to struggle to keep her eyes open. It felt as if two strong hands were pushing down on her, urging her to sleep, to rest. Had Tim found them? Would they work?

  Her eyes closed and she was down by the creek, watching the fish and laughing with Caleb.

  When she opened them again, Tim was standing on the top of the shelves, half out of a window. A cold wind was blowing in, and he’d nearly caught the pack he’d made out of assorted items on the window latch. Reaching back, he freed himself, and that was when she saw the handle of the snowshoes attached to the pack.

  He’d found them.

  As he disappeared into the branches and snow and then pushed the window shut behind him, it occurred to Julia that he had rather large feet. She had never noticed his feet before.

  Unable to hold her eyes open a moment longer, she allowed herself to drift until once more she was beside Pebble Creek. The day was warm—hot, almost—and she was so sleepy that she longed to lie down in the grass. Caleb laughed, took her hand, and assured her that a short nap would be fine.

  “I’ll sit beside you.”

  “Until I wake?”

  “Yes, dear. Until you wake.”

  “But I wanted to talk to you. I need to tell you so many things.”

  He kissed her. “I know what’s in your heart, Julia. Words are gut, but they can wait. For now you should rest.”

  “You won’t leave?”

  “I’ll never leave you again. Now sleep, and when you open your eyes, we’ll speak as long as you like.”

  He smiled then, and she knew all was well between them. So she allowed herself to relax and to give up her burdens, with her hand safely tucked in his.

  Caleb wanted to leave alone at first light, but Brenda wasn’t having it.

  “People might be hurt out there,” she said obstinately.

  “People are hurt in here.”

  “And I’ve done what I can. I’m going with you, Caleb. We can stand here and argue, or we can start moving before that door freezes shut again.” She stared at him with her dark brown eyes, and Caleb knew he was wasting time.

  He should have guessed that Englisch women were as stubborn as Amish women. Tim had hinted as much.

  They had decided to leave the horses, at least until they could determine how deep the drifts were. Their first goal was to construct a safe path from the barn to the office, if it was possible to do so. At least the office had a woodstove, as did each of the cabins.

  “All right. We’ll go together, but we tie one end of the rope to the door. You keep your hand on it at all times. I’
ll have the other end and go in front. You give it a good hard yank if you’re having trouble.”

  “Agreed.”

  Scrounging through the supplies usually kept in the barn, they had found gloves, and two of the women had scarves they had wound around their necks. Coats weren’t a problem because a couple of work coats were always in the back to be used when mucking out stalls or caring for the animals. They had been extra covering for the children on top of the blankets, and though he wasn’t happy about taking them, there was nothing he could do about that.

  One woman looked up at him with fear and hope in her eyes. “Thank you for trying to find us a way out of here.”

  Studying Dr. Stiles as they waited for Rupert and Eddie to open the door, Caleb realized they weren’t dressed for subzero weather, but they had done the best they could. At least none of their skin was directly exposed. They would be all right long enough to assess the situation.

  The path the men had been shoveling all night was long and narrow. He had the sensation of being underwater, what with the pale and cloudy sky above and the white drifts of snow on all sides. Caleb’s boots made no sound against the snow, though he did hear the door slam shut behind them.

  Holding a long pole in his left hand and the coil of rope slung over his right shoulder, he allowed it to unwind as he walked up and out of the ramp where they normally steered the wagons to offload hay and feed. He’d cautioned Brenda to keep a few feet behind him, thinking it might be safer if he fell into a hole or came upon something that perhaps she shouldn’t see.

  But she was a doctor, wasn’t she? What would he see that she wouldn’t be prepared for?

  Caleb thought he’d steeled his mind and his heart against whatever had happened the afternoon before. After all, he’d almost been crushed by the front half of the barn as it collapsed. He wouldn’t have been surprised if all of the cabins had been demolished. He had read news reports of what tornadoes could do and had even seen photographs in Englisch newspapers.

  Yet none of that prepared him for the sight that met his eyes when he walked around the corner of the barn. Reading something and experiencing it was not the same.

  He stood in the aftermath of such destruction and felt his world tilt. His legs refused to move. His mind stalled as he looked out on a scene that made no sense at all.

  Mouth open, the rope dangling from his right hand, he might not have moved except that Brenda bumped into the back of him.

  “Definitely an F4,” she whispered.

  Half of the shop was gone. They could see into it, giving Caleb the absurd impression that someone had taken a chainsaw and cut the building in two. Its contents were strewn across the grounds as if a child had decided to play with all of the items and left before putting them away. One of the rockers was in a tree, a quilt was hanging from the chimney of cabin three, and a child’s toy sat on top of the remaining half of the roof.

  Some of the shelves in the shop had items still in perfect arrangement—untouched, unscathed.

  The office had taken a direct hit. The porch where they had first sheltered was gone. There was nothing left at all. It had been sheared off at the wall. The doors and windows were blown out.

  “You can see the path it took.” Brenda pointed past the shed, the office and toward the cabins. “Barn, store, office—”

  “Cabins.” Caleb counted and then counted again. “Two are missing.”

  “You mean—”

  “Two of the cabins. Numbers five and six. They’re just…gone. And number four is—it’s been moved.” He pointed to the blank slab where the cabin had been. Shuffling forward, he spied the small building down by the creek, looking as if it had always been there.

  He turned in a circle, and that was when he actually focused on the front of the barn. Being inside it, he hadn’t realized the full force of the destruction. The structure had collapsed like a house of cards, blown over on itself.

  Caleb shook his head. The barn structure looked less safe than it had seemed while they were in it. And he could see that as the snow was building up on top of the wreckage, the weight was pushing down on what remained of the roof.

  They needed to get everyone out of there. They needed to move them before the rest of the barn collapsed.

  Chapter 38

  Brenda shuffled closer to his side. “I’m no farmer, but it doesn’t look as if that roof can support any additional weight. Do you think it’s going to snow more?”

  “Could.” Caleb glanced up. The last thing he wanted to do was move the group currently inside the barn out to the cabins. He was having trouble focusing on any one problem. If Aaron’s property looked like this, what did his own house look like, his and Julia’s home? “Stay here.”

  Moving forward, he tested the snow with the pole he’d brought from the barn, jamming it into the drifts until he found a solid path to cabin one. There was enough rope to tie it around the corner post of the porch. Miraculously, the entire structure was unscathed.

  By the time he made it back to Brenda, he noticed she was shivering. “Go into the cabin.”

  “I’m f-fine—”

  “Please go into the cabin and check each person as they arrive. I’ll send Reuben and Eddie out first—one for the middle of the line and one for the end.”

  “We can’t fit everyone in this cabin, Caleb.”

  “True. But once a clear path is worn from the barn to here, I’ll tie the rope to the next cabin. We have enough buildings still standing to shelter everyone. These cabins have woodstoves.”

  She was too cold to argue. Caleb realized with a start that he couldn’t feel his own toes. What was the temperature? Zero? Below zero?

  He’d made it halfway to the barn when he heard her call out to him. He turned back and saw that Brenda was waving her arms wildly and pointing toward the road.

  Traveling slowly down it, with bright emergency lights on the front, was a snowmobile.

  Caleb released the rope he’d been holding on to and ran toward the road, toward help, waving his arms and shouting. His feet sank into the snow and the wind tore at his face, but he kept running. At first he was sure whoever was driving, covered in snow gear and a helmet, wouldn’t hear him. But then the snowmobile slowed and turned into the parking area.

  Caleb stopped running, bent over with his hands on his knees, and pulled in deep breaths. Each one felt like a knife carving into his lungs. The snowmobile pulled to a stop beside him. Jack Tate removed his helmet and goggles and dropped them in the snow.

  “Are you okay, Caleb? Here, put on my coat.”

  Before Caleb could stop him, the man had shrugged out of his coat and wrapped it around his shoulders. On second look, Jack had warmer clothes on under his coat than Caleb had been wearing.

  Of all the people who could have shown up, Officer Tate was a true godsend. When Caleb had first arrived he’d heard the stories of how Jack understood and worked with the Amish community. He’d helped to find Grace, Gabe’s daughter, when she was lost in a blizzard. And he’d dealt compassionately with Jerry Beiler when he’d been caught breaking into Aaron’s cabins the year before. No doubt many emergency personnel had been sent out at first light, but Caleb breathed a prayer of thanksgiving that Jack Tate was the first face he’d seen.

  He didn’t realize until that moment exactly how frightening the last eighteen hours had been. Looking into the eyes of someone he knew, someone who understood what Pebble Creek and its people meant, he allowed himself to voice those fears.

  “Everyone’s…they’re in the barn. Aaron’s hurt, and Darby’s fever went up during the night. She’s young, and the doc says she’ll need to go to the hospital. We have to move them out, and I need…I need to get to Julia.” The last six words were ripped from his heart.

  Jack held up his hand as he spoke into his phone. Why was his phone working? Come to think of it, the phone he was holding was slightly larger and bulkier than the others Caleb had seen. Clicking off, Jack replaced the phone on his utilit
y belt and started explaining as they hurried toward the barn.

  “It’s a satellite phone. They issued them to all the local police departments a few years ago. When the area cell towers are down, these still work. I called our location in to the dispatcher, who will pass it on to first responders. We’ve been out since first light—”

  He stopped talking as Caleb entered the snow passage.

  “Are you sure this won’t cave in on top of us?”

  “I’m sure it’s the only way in, and we have to get everyone who’s in there out.” Knowing Jack would follow him, Caleb strode forward, pausing to bang twice on the bay doors. He would have tried to open it from the outside, but he doubted he had the strength. It was easier for Rupert and Eddie to push the door open from their side.

  When the door had been opened only a few inches, Pumpkin dashed out and raced through the snow. Caleb knew the cat would seek the warmth of one of the cabins.

  There was a lot of talk and commotion as the people he’d spent the last night with, surely the worst night of his life, realized they were rescued. Caleb wished he could share in their jubilation. He was relieved that Jack was here, and with his help the job of transferring everyone to the cabins was soon underway.

  He stopped him once as they were moving the second group and snow had begun to fall again.

  “My place. Do you know—”

  Jack shook his head. “If I hear anything, I’ll come and tell you. They are checking each property, Caleb. Someone will be there soon. And the minute we finish with these transfers I’ll take you over myself.”

  Three first responders drove up on snowmobiles as they were moving the last of the guests. One was a paramedic.

  Brenda had hurried back to the barn, intent on seeing to the little girl’s transfer as well as Aaron’s.

  “Her fever is still up.” The young man kneeling by Darby frowned as he relayed her information into his phone.