Hidden Mercies

by Serena B. Miller

  The compound had erupted with more explosions. AK-47s were rat-a-tatting all around them. Tom could hear grenades and suicide bombers detonating. George was right—he needed to get himself to the bunker. He was a pilot, not a ground pounder. Those Nepalese guards were in charge of protecting the compound and they were a lot better trained at hand-to-hand combat than he.

  The problem was, where was Vicki? The girl was a civilian. She was not combat trained. Even worse, the bakery where she had gone was near the front of the compound—next door to the main explosion.

  “We have to find Vicki!” Tom yelled.

  “Right. Let me lead,” George responded. “I have more ground combat experience.”

  Ducking low, they headed directly toward the bakery. Tom kept scanning the personnel scurrying past him—hoping he’d see her.

  “Here!” A German policeman tossed both of them AK-47s from an armload he was handing out.

  They passed several bunkers where office workers, technicians, and experts in everything from carpentry to proper waste management were sheltering. Even though none of these people was military, all the bunkers had guns pointing outward, ready to be the last line of defense if the guarded perimeter did not hold.

  As they passed each one, Tom shouted for Vicki, hoping she’d made it to safety. Each bunker led them closer and closer to the intense fighting at the front gate.

  They reached the bakery. Its sides were riddled with bullet holes.

  He made a run for it, dove headfirst through the bakery door, and hugged the floor. George slammed the door behind them for the little protection it afforded.

  He saw a stainless steel work table topped with a chocolate cake that had been blown to bits. Vicki was lying, motionless, in her festive orange slacks and pink blouse on a floor littered with cake. He checked for a pulse. It was weak, but it was there.

  Tom did not know how long the fighting continued. He remembered only pieces of what happened later.

  He had a memory of running with her in his arms, carrying her to the safety of the nearest bunker. He saw a Taliban fighter step around a wall. He was wearing a suicide vest and the stupid grin from the drugs they had to take in order to have the courage to go through with their grisly task. George, still leading, was slightly ahead of him.

  Later, he had a vague recollection of two German medics working over him. He tried to crawl to Vicki’s body, but the medics held him down. One punched a shot of something into his arm. Slowly, his will to fight faded.

  When he awoke, he was being flown to the States. George, they told him, was wounded but stable. Vicki had not survived.

  All because of his birthday cake.

  The damage to his body was great. The damage to his soul was greater. The black hole in his heart grew until he did not know if he could bear it. He cursed the Taliban for being so brutal, God for allowing this terrible thing to happen, and himself for allowing that sweet girl to bake a birthday cake in the midst of a war zone. For three days, the hospital staff quietly placed him on suicide watch.

  • • •

  “How is he?” the pregnant woman asked. “Did he sleep?”

  “Yes, but it was restless,” the man said. “I would not have wanted to be inside his mind tonight. I do not think it would be a good place to be.”

  “There are probably wounds within him that we cannot see, Levi.”

  “I think his fever may have broken,” the man said. “He began to sweat a few minutes ago.”

  “Open, please.” She stuck a thermometer in his mouth.

  “Yes, it has begun to go down,” she said a few moments later. “When he fully awakens, if he’s strong enough, it would be a good idea for him to take a shower while I change those sweaty sheets. Will you help him, Levi?”

  “For a man who saved my wife’s life,” the man said, “I would do much.”

  Levi had to help prop him up while the shower washed the dried sweat from his body. The clean sheets felt fresh against his skin. He was as weak as a kitten, but he thought the worst might be over. How grateful he was for the kindness of his nephew and his wife, as well as Elizabeth, who would come in from time to time and put a hand on his forehead, a gesture he remembered his mother doing when he was a small child.

  His sleep, when it came this time, was healing. For once, there were no nightmares. The movie forever reeling through his subconscious had finally shut off. For now.

  • • •

  As Claire sorted laundry in the dim early-morning light, she was deeply troubled in her soul. The man who had passed out in her front room yesterday was not a man easily forgotten.

  She’d seen the haunted look of near-desperation in his eyes when he’d fully awakened, and yet he had tried his best to refuse help. Had Levi and Grace not insisted, he would have tried to drive himself to the hotel in his feverish state. Lord only knows what might have happened to him.

  The long scars along his left jawline and beneath his eye spoke of some serious reconstructive surgery. The scarring on his hands had been extensive—as though he’d thrown up his hands to protect his face.

  He had lived in such an alien world to her, a world entirely different from the one in which she lived, and yet the man had not seemed foreign to her at all. There had been a strange, visceral feeling of recognition that she could not explain.

  This could not be. Her circle of Englisch acquaintances was very small. Grace and Elizabeth at the farm next door. A few tourists who dropped by to purchase something from Amy’s little store. The Englisch driver, Annette, whom she hired from time to time to drive her to clients homes too far away to be reached by buggy. A few salesclerks at the Englisch stores where she shopped. Nowhere had she ever met anyone remotely like this Tom Miller.

  She had never experienced this kind of familiarity before, but she sorted through the Englisch people she had known, trying to figure out why Tom seemed known to her, and she got so lost in her head that she tossed a pair of Jesse’s denims onto a pile of whites and had to grab them back out. This would never do. She had too many responsibilities to allow herself to be so distracted as to nearly ruin an entire load of clothes.

  After starting the motor of her old Maytag wringer washer, she left the first load agitating, grabbed a notebook and pen, and sat on the back porch steps to start making a list of all the projects she needed to finish before the Sunday she was to host church. That ought to make her stop thinking about Levi and Grace’s wounded soldier.

  chapter SIX

  Tom sat in the swing on the back porch of Levi and Grace’s home. It was his third day here. That first bad night, he had been barely conscious. The next morning and all day yesterday, he had been conscious but too weak to be on his own. This morning, he had regained enough strength to go back to the hotel. It was four-thirty in the morning, too early for the rest of the family to be up, too early to leave without saying good-bye, too early to simply drive away.

  He had awakened at four and had taken Grace up on her invitation to make himself at home, by fixing a pot of coffee for himself and Levi, who would awaken at five.

  He had also taken the liberty of scrambling some eggs and making toast for both himself and his nephew. Levi had done this for himself yesterday, but this morning, Tom had felt well enough to take over the job.

  In the three days he had been here, he had decided that Levi, like Matthew, worked way too hard. He had also come to the conclusion that his brother’s son was a good man. He was glad to know this because, to his utter surprise and shock, Tom had become a wealthy man a year earlier—a wealthy man with no heir.

  For the past twelve months, his bank statements had shown that he had more money than he could, in all good conscience, spend. At least not with his Spartan tastes. And it hadn’t happened on a soldier’s pay. A buddy of his had a computer geek for a little brother. The kid had a crazy idea about some sort of business he wanted to start that was connected to computers. Tom didn’t know much about computers at the time, but he pooled so
me savings, along with four other unmarried Marines, to help the kid get his business off the ground.

  Not one of them expected anything to come of it. From the beginning, he figured he was throwing away his hard-earned money. He, like the others, had just wanted to encourage the kid.

  Three years later, the company took off like a rocket.

  When the money started coming in, the other four men got out of the service as fast as possible. He didn’t know what to do with himself if he wasn’t flying, so he stayed, changed nothing, and the money had grown. Unlike the other four soldiers, he had no wife or children to spend it on.

  He had pondered the possibility of buying a big house or a fancy car or a nice suit, or going on a long trip—but nothing he could think of had excited him all that much.

  While lying in the hospital, it bothered him that if he died, the government would decide what to do with the money. He preferred making that decision himself. So far, the top contender was Levi.

  He also liked what he saw of Grace. Like Levi, she also worked too hard. She would awaken at seven, have a carton of yogurt, and spend a full day in the ER at Pomerene Hospital.

  Grace’s grandmother, Elizabeth, would get up any old time she felt like it and eat anything from chocolate cake to leftover spaghetti for breakfast if she felt so inclined. He had seen her do this.

  He would move on soon, but not quite yet. Being here and getting to know his nephew felt like a gift from God. It had been a long, long time since he’d had family in his life. Now that he was close to his father’s farm, he kept thinking about going to see him. It would not be an easy meeting. First he wanted to grow a little stronger.

  For many years, he had not been what most people would consider a religious man. He had most definitely avoided serious commitment to any established church, but he still believed in God, and believed that sometimes God intervened in people’s lives.

  He had seen hundreds of military nurses come and go on various bases, in various countries over the years, so it wasn’t too great a coincidence to find one married to his nephew—but still—he wondered if God had chosen to bring this about. If so, he was grateful. Claire had come by only twice, once with some homemade tomato soup, the next day with a rhubarb pie. She seemed in a hurry and didn’t stay long. Not long enough to have a private conversation with her.

  Elizabeth came out onto the back porch in her robe and slippers. “You’re up early. Mind if I join you?”

  “Not at all.”

  He liked Grace’s grandmother. The old woman had wandered in and out of his room that first nightmarish night, and her presence had comforted him. Levi and Grace had felt alien, but as Elizabeth had clucked and worried over him, she had gotten mixed together in his mind with his own mother. When he had come fully awake, he’d been surprised to discover Elizabeth wearing a bright pink jogging suit and orange Crocs instead of an Amish dress and prayer Kapp.

  “I see you set breakfast out for Levi.” She sank down onto the wicker chair beside the swing. “You’ll spoil the boy. Grace had just about gotten him trained to fix it for himself.”

  “I’m sure she needs her sleep,” he said.

  “It hasn’t been an easy pregnancy.” Elizabeth took a sip of coffee and made a face. “Is this some kind of special Marine coffee?”

  “Is it too strong?”

  “Too strong?” She opened her eyes wide and batted them a couple times. “Maybe a tad. I’m definitely awake now!”

  He made a stab at conversation. “What are your plans for the day?”

  “Plans?” Elizabeth contemplated. “Well . . . this morning I’m going to paint the upstairs bedroom and tear down that derelict corncrib out back. Then I think I’ll do a few calisthenics and have lunch. After lunch, I plan to climb Mt. Everest, compete in a bathing beauty pageant, and run for Congress. What are your plans?”

  Elizabeth was so deadpan as she said this, at first he’d thought that she was experiencing a little dementia, but eventually realized that her off-the-wall comments were part of Elizabeth’s supersharp intellect.

  “What am I doing?” He tried to answer along the same vein. “I thought I’d see if I could write another War and Peace this afternoon.”

  Elizabeth gave this comment consideration. “Your delivery is getting better, but you could stand to be more imaginative.”

  “Writing War and Peace isn’t a good choice?”

  “Too predictable and no real humor. Me entering a bathing beauty contest—now, that’s funny.”

  “You’re entering a bathing beauty contest?” Levi came out onto the porch with a plate of scrambled eggs in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. He sounded confused. “What is a bathing beauty contest and why would you want to enter it?”

  “For the scholarship, of course.” She winked at Tom. “And world peace.”

  Levi shook his head and started shoveling food into his mouth. “I don’t understand half of what you say, Elizabeth.”

  “I’m yanking your chain, Levi,” Elizabeth said. “My real plans for the day are to finish the crossword puzzle I started last night, take a walk, nap, write a letter, take another nap, and finish a good book I started yesterday. Age has its rewards. What about you, Tom?”

  “Now that my fever is gone, I thought I might walk to Amy’s little store. I think I can manage a quarter mile, and if I remember right, I think there was some homemade fudge.”

  “That’s one of Maddy’s contributions,” Elizabeth said. “Amy will probably try to sell you one of her poems, too.”

  “Amy writes poetry?”

  “Reams of it. If you make a fuss over it, she’ll be your BFF.”

  “BFF?”

  “Best Friend Forever,” Elizabeth said. “You need to keep up, Tom.”

  He thought this over. “I guess I could use a friend.”

  “Most of us can,” Elizabeth agreed. “I think walking down to Amy’s store would do you some good. She’ll love the company, and whatever you buy will provide a small blessing to that family’s bank account.”

  “They seemed to have quite a variety of signs out front.”

  “You can say that again. It started out with a few of Levi’s baskets. Then Claire’s nieces came to live with her, and it kind of mushroomed from there.”

  Levi, who had steadily been plowing his way through his plate of food, spoke up. “Amy wanted a way to sell her little cards, so I put a sign up for her. We didn’t think there would be many people stopping, but tourists have caught on to the fact that buying some of the things they see advertised at private homes will give them a glimpse of Amish life they wouldn’t get otherwise.”

  Elizabeth nodded. “That’s true. Then, once they saw that people would stop for Amy’s greeting cards, the children coaxed Levi into installing some shelves in a corner of the front room. Then they all got into act. That cluster of handmade signs at the end of the driveway represents quite a mixture of talents.”

  “It is good for children to work,” Levi said as he drained the last dregs of his coffee cup. “Albert keeps chickens and sells fresh eggs. Maam taught Jesse how to forage for sassafras in the woods, and how to dry and package the root chips for a medicinal tea. Albert helps me with the beehives, and I let him sell whatever honey we can’t use. Maddy keeps a supply of her homemade fudge ready, and sells quart jars of any extra produce she and Maam can. Maam taught Sarah how to make little pot holders, so now even Sarah is part of things.”

  “It sounds like a busy house.”

  Elizabeth broke in. “Oh, I just remembered. Maddy has recently started making those intricate prayer Kapps that all the Amish women wear. The mother of one of her girlfriends taught her how. She really has a knack.”

  “Daniel helps out, too,” Levi said.

  “I didn’t know that,” Elizabeth said. “What can a two-year-old contribute to the store?”

  “Daniel’s job is to be Amy’s legs,” Levi said. “He runs to get whatever item she needs. He takes great pride in i
t and she pays him a few cents each week. Maam gave him a jelly jar to keep his earnings in. It is good for the children to help out now that Abraham is gone.”

  That last sentence knocked the entire pleasant conversation completely out of Tom’s head.

  Abraham was gone? Claire’s husband was dead? This fact had not come up even once in the past two days. He fought not to let it show how shaken he felt by this news.

  “I’d better go. I’ll be in the back field, and I’ll have my cell phone on me if anyone needs me for anything,” Levi called as he went out the door.

  “Thank you, Levi,” she said. “You are a very good boy.”

  Tom saw Elizabeth’s eyes watch Levi as he left. She had a worried look on her face.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked.

  She turned her attention back to him. “Have you ever been married, Tom?”

  “No.”

  “Then you have no way of knowing that in a new marriage there is almost always some little thing wrong.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Levi and Grace had to jump a lot of hurdles to be together. They were in love almost from the moment they met. He didn’t know it, and she didn’t know it, but I could see it and it scared me. It was not possible for two people to come from two such different cultures and not have problems. He was Swartzentruber Amish. You can’t find a stricter, or a more isolated sect among the Amish. And there was poor Grace, coming home to take care of me after my heart attack two years ago, never knowing that she was going to discover the man of her dreams living next door.”

  “What did they do?”

  “Levi eventually decided to leave the church and they got married and lived happily ever after. At least that’s the way it would be if it were in one of those romance novels Grace likes to read. Happily ever after.” She snapped her fingers. “Just like that. Overcome the obstacles, get married, and life is rosy forever and ever. Those two didn’t have a clue how hard it was going to be for them to carve out a marriage together.”

  “And they’ve been living here with you the whole time.”