She had not understood the magnitude of what he was doing or what it meant to him. She did not understand that in many ways he was giving up hope as he threw those books onto the fire. But she had seemed to grieve a little with him anyway. She, too, saw no sense in what he had to do.
Watching her drive away, he realized for the first time that there had always been inside of him, growing stronger ever since Bishop Weaver had been put in as their leader, a small seed of rebellion that from time to time whispered from the depths of his soul that he might choose a different life from the one he was living.
It had not been a strong stirring—not enough to make him truly consider leaving the church—it had only been a thought now and then that would flit through his mind. He didn’t have to do this. He could make a change.
He knew that this was one of the reasons he had held on to those books. Deep down he had harbored the notion that someday he could leave if he wanted to—and he would not be completely ignorant if he did.
He would never leave, of course. He could never bring himself to give up his family—and he would have to give up his family if he left the church. His mother would have to shun him just as she had shunned her sister and brother-in-law, as would all the other church members. Many of whom were close kin.
But sometimes he allowed himself to imagine his life as it could be if he were not Swartzentruber.
He stirred the ashes until he was certain that no one could determine what had been burned there. Then he wearily climbed the steps to his room above the workshop and fell into bed.
He knew he reeked of smoke. Many an Old Order Amish man would be standing beneath a warm shower right now, soaping the grime of the day off himself, before putting his clean body between clean sheets. An Englischman would think nothing of it at all.
But for Levi to even take a shallow bath in the family’s tin tub would involve at least an hour of drawing water from the well and heating it on the stove. And he would be questioned by everyone in his house while doing so because it would be perceived as odd behavior unless it was in preparation for a wedding, a funeral, or a Sunday.
When he did justify taking the time to prepare a bath, he would be expected to share it with the rest of the family—the littlest ones going first, then his mother, and lastly himself.
He loved his mother and his family. He loved the rich earth beneath his feet, and he even enjoyed pitting himself against the weather and insects and all the things that could go wrong in farming—just for the pleasure of harvesting crops that he had planted with his own hands.
He also enjoyed watching a basket grow into something beautiful beneath his hands. He loved the carpentry work he sometimes got to do. But most importantly, he loved the Lord—or at least he tried very hard to. Unfortunately, in his mind, God looked a whole lot like Bishop Weaver.
It was hard to pray to a God who resembled the bishop, but he tried to pray every day anyway.
He knew that if he were a better Amish man he would not be struggling with these thoughts. He would accept his role and his place in life without question. He would find some nice Amish girl and settle down to produce children with her. There were many wonderful Amish women, not at all like Zillah. And yet so far, he had seen no one with whom he was willing to spend the rest of his life. He sometimes wondered why he had never seriously courted anyone, but deep in his heart he knew the answer.
Marriage with an Amish woman would mean that he could never allow himself to even think about leading a different life. He could never pull someone he loved away from the only church she had ever known.
He had often thought about the possibility of following his aunt and uncle in their decision to join the Old Order church. He would be allowed so much more freedom then. In his eyes, the Old Order Amish were quite a modern bunch.
If he and his family were Old Order, he would be allowed to put in a bathroom for his mother. He could use battery-operated flashlights. He could even purchase those amazing Coleman lamps that could illuminate an entire room. The light those things gave out—how bright they were—almost like daylight!
If he were Old Order Amish he could install reflective devices on his buggy that would make traveling much safer for his brothers and sister. If he were Old Order Amish he would be allowed to have a windshield on his buggy to cut the bitter cold in the winter, and he could even install battery-controlled flashing lights for more visibility. If he were Old Order Amish he would be allowed to use a generator that could power tools to make woodworking go so much faster, and he could even use a gasoline-powered weed whacker to make his farm look less overgrown. Oh, and a chainsaw for cutting firewood for the stove—what a luxury that would be!
But having these luxuries would mean he would be banned by all Swartzentrubers. They would tell him that he was going to hell, and for all he knew, they might be right.
Hell was a terrible thing. He clasped his hands beneath his head and stared at the ceiling as he imagined the great abyss that had been described to him during the three- to four-hour-long Sunday services. Hell was for eternity. Hell was a burning lake of fire. Hell was eternal darkness. And no matter how good he was, no matter how hard he tried, no matter how passionate his love for God and Jesus and his fellow man, he could never be sure that he wasn’t going there. That was up to God himself.
Those religious people who claimed to know they were going to heaven were an arrogant bunch. Every Swartzentruber man knew that you worked hard, you prayed, and you followed the Ordnung to the letter. And if you were very, very lucky, when you died, if you had been good enough, you might go to heaven.
But until then, no one could be certain of their fate.
It was a puzzle, and one that he did not have the knowledge to solve. All he knew was that his best chance of escaping the fires of hell was to be the best Swartzentruber man he could be. For as long as he could stand it. And hopefully that would be enough.
He felt a great weariness descend as he imagined the next fifty or sixty years of his life.
As Grace pulled into her driveway, she saw a flash of something light-colored fleeing into the woods behind the house. She tensed, then forced herself to relax as she realized it was probably nothing more than one of the many white-tailed deer that frequented this area. Deer were thick around here, and they frequently fed at night. Unfortunately, the leftover hair-trigger sensibilities she had developed while dodging bullets in Afghanistan had caused her to be spooked more than once since she had come home by a deer bursting out of a thicket and running into the woods.
The first time it had happened, she and her grandmother were taking a slow stroll around the yard so Elizabeth could get some exercise. Grace had been so startled she had hit the ground, only to glance up and find her grandmother leaning on her cane and watching her with concern. “It’s a deer,” Elizabeth had said. “It won’t hurt you.”
Only last night the deer had decimated her grandmother’s lilac bushes. Apparently lilacs were quite the deer delicacy.
Still, she hadn’t seen whatever it was fleeing into the woods just now all that clearly.
For a moment, her instincts told her to call Sheriff Newsome—but the problem was, she no longer trusted her instincts. It seemed unfair to bother him with something that was probably nothing more than a frightened doe, combined with her own ongoing struggle with battle fatigue. The strange scene of an Amish man conducting a late-night book burning had not done her nerves a bit of good, either.
Yes, it must definitely have been a deer.
She shook off her concern and went inside to check on Grandma, whom she found sleeping with the archaeology book facedown on her stomach. Grace gently lifted it off, hoping not to awaken her. She didn’t succeed. Grandma’s eyes flew open.
“Is everything all right at the Shetlers’?”
“I suppose.”
Grandma pushed herself up until she was propped up against the headboard. She patted the bed. “Come here and tell me.”
Gra
ce sat down and described what she had found, recounting most of the conversation she’d had with Levi. “He told me to go home. The last thing he said as I was leaving was that we could not be friends. It really wasn’t necessary for him to say that. It was rude when I was only there to help.”
“What I’m hearing troubles me,” Elizabeth said.
“Why?”
“I know Levi well, and it is not like him to say something like that.”
“That’s what I’m saying. It wasn’t necessary.”
“He must be starting to care for you in ways that he shouldn’t. He was warning you, for both your sakes, to stay out of his life.”
“You’re kidding.”
“It would be a tragedy, Grace, for him as well as for you if he and you were to begin to care for each other. Levi is wise enough to see that and to stop things before they go any further.”
“I’ve never so much as flirted with him, Grandma. What would give him the idea that I—?”
“If you had flirted, he would have dismissed you and never thought of you again. Unfortunately, instead of a flirt, you came into his life as the fine, strong woman you are. The very kind of woman Levi could fall in love with. How do you feel about him?”
Grace shrugged. “He’s Amish.”
“And beneath those Amish clothes and that Amish hat, he is one of the finest men I have ever known. You cannot imagine how true he would be to the woman he chose. He would take care of her with the last breath in his body. I’m warning you, Grace, once Levi falls in love, it will be a terrible thing if it is with someone he cannot love for the rest of his life.”
Grace was too stirred up to sleep. Grandma’s warning had upset her. Why did everything have to be so complicated? Why couldn’t she just have a normal, friendly relationship with Levi and his family without all this dark, brooding emotion swirling about her?
She changed into pajamas, went back downstairs, and checked in the refrigerator for a snack. She ended up with yogurt. Then she went into the living room and sat down on the couch, hoping to veg out for a few minutes and not think about anything important.
She clicked on the television, turning the volume down low so it wouldn’t disturb Grandma or Becky, and thumbed through the few channels they could get with only an antenna. Either it was not a priority to the cable companies to come out this far, or Grandma simply thought four channels were enough—Grace didn’t know.
She turned the volume down even further and sat staring at a talk show host, barely noticing what was happening on the screen. Nothing she saw could erase the image that was emblazoned on her mind of Levi burning his books.
She had been around men all her life. She had eaten with them, joked with them, fought beside them, and dated some of them. But Levi affected her in a way she couldn’t define and after what Grandma had just said, it made her extremely uneasy.
She finished her snack and turned off the TV.
This thing with Levi was messing with her head.
Then she heard her grandmother’s quiet, soft voice once again praying aloud.
It hit Grace how often she relied on her own brain and knowledge and strength to figure things out, and how infrequently she relied on talking to God. She realized how often she had comforted herself with the knowledge that her grandmother was praying daily for her. Hearing Elizabeth’s voice talking things over with God while she wished for cable television shamed her. It occurred to her that there was absolutely nothing she could do with her time right now that would be more productive or make more sense than to go upstairs and have a long talk with God.
When she got to her bedroom, she knelt on the wooden floor beside her bed. It had been way too long between prayers. The most she had said to God recently were what she thought of as her “over-the-shoulder” prayers—brief flashes of supplication for herself or her family. Those prayers, she knew, were important, but they just didn’t carry the emotional satisfaction of a real conversation.
“I’m so sorry, Father.” She sighed. “I can’t help but wonder why You put up with me, why You keep caring about me when I don’t even bother to say good morning to You most of the time. But thank You so much for always being there, ready to listen.”
It struck her that her knees were really beginning to hurt her as she knelt upon the hard oak floor. She decided that if her grandmother could pray lying on her back in bed, perhaps it would be okay if she just eased up off her knees and sat on the edge of the bed.
“It’s like this, Father. I feel pulled toward Levi in a powerful way, but I don’t know why. Besides that, I’m not in real good shape emotionally, and I don’t trust my feelings.”
She realized that her back was growing uncomfortable with nothing to support it. She scooted over until she could rest her back against the headboard. That was definitely better.
“I’m grateful to be home, Lord, but I can’t seem to hear a jet flying low overhead without ducking and taking cover. Sometimes when I fall asleep, I have nightmares. I haven’t even told Grandma about them because I don’t want her to worry, but I suppose You wouldn’t mind if I talked about it with You. I mean—You were there, too. You know what it was like, and no one else around here does. No one else I can talk to about it.”
She picked up a pillow and hugged it to her chest.
“Do You remember that night when my friend Derek, the rest of the Dustoff crew, and I flew straight into that valley to pull out those four soldiers? I forget the name of the valley, but I remember those men and how badly they were wounded, and how all of us who went to extract them were disobeying direct orders and didn’t care. None of us could bear listening for one more second to the sound of the captain’s voice on the ground begging us to come get his wounded men. Frankly, Lord, I didn’t care if that coward of a commander we had did keep telling us we weren’t allowed to go out because the conditions on the ground were ‘too hot’ for us to fly into. I had to go get those soldiers. I just had to, and so did Derek and the rest of the crew.”
A hot tear streaked down her cheek. She wiped it away.
“Do You remember how easy that decision was for all of us? We didn’t walk out to the copter, debating whether or not we should disobey orders. We ran! There were soldiers in trouble calling out for us!
“Derek landed us smack in the middle of all that mess, and we got those men out even though the copter took heavy damage. I remember how we landed at Bagram Air Base with smoke pouring out of the engine and hydraulic fluids leaking. Half the base were cheering us because they had heard what that commander had said—and they knew we had made the right decision, even though if the base had been thirty seconds further, we would have had to crash-land ‘outside the wire.’ But with Derek’s nerve and skill, and Your answering our crew’s prayers, we made it in. And we saved those soldiers’ lives.”
Another hot tear slipped down her cheek, and she wiped it away. Its very presence irritated her. She was not a crier.
“That’s who I am, Father, and that’s what I do. I’m the one who goes in, even if there’s heavy fire, to save lives. Here in Ohio—even though I know that’s where I belong for now—I’m just not sure of who I am.”
She laughed a little. “But there’s one thing I’m absolutely certain of. I definitely don’t have the makings to become an Amish man’s wife, and Grandma seems to think that’s where I’m headed if I don’t forget about Levi real soon.”
She slipped into a cross-legged position. “So what am I supposed to do? I can’t just ignore the guy—I’m treating his mother. But I know Grandma’s right. That is not a man to trifle with. He’s too serious, and he’s too decent.”
She placed the pillow beneath her head and stretched herself full out upon the bed. The longer she talked, the more a tightly wound spring inside of her seemed to uncoil.
“I know Grandma has been praying for me to meet a good man. And frankly, I find it very strange that I spent all that time over in Afghanistan with men who were my age practically coming
out my ears—and the only thing I felt toward any of them was friendship. Now I show up here in Holmes County, where the median age of men appears to be about sixty, and I find myself unable to think about anything else except a noncommunicative Swartzentruber who burns books and wears his hair down around his ears.” She crossed her hands behind her head. “Unless You have a really good plan up Your sleeve, Lord, none of this makes sense to me.”
She closed her eyes. “Of course, not a whole lot You do does make sense to me. I guess that’s why You’re God and I’m not. I’m really glad I’m not. I much prefer Your being in charge.”
It seemed as if she had closed her eyes for only an instant, but she awoke two hours later feeling more refreshed and at peace than she had felt in ages.
The first thing she did was check on Elizabeth, who was sleeping peacefully. Then she went back upstairs.
It seemed a shame not to use the extra energy the nap had given her in a productive way. She decided she would at least make a stab at sorting out a few things in the extra bedroom her grandmother used for storage.
As she considered the best way to start, she noticed, at the top of the stairs, that a small painting that had been propped up on a shelf was gone. It had been nearly hidden by a silk flower arrangement, but it had caught her eye as one of the few decorations her grandmother had that she really liked.
Perhaps Becky had liked it, too, and had taken it into her room.
Grace opened the door to the storage room and discovered it wasn’t quite as junky as she remembered. Perhaps Becky had moved things around, but it seemed slightly emptier than the last time she had been in there. Elizabeth had not been in there because she was not allowed to climb steps yet.
One thing she could pinpoint that was missing was an ornate gilded mirror that had hung on one of the walls.
She walked over to the wall and checked. Sure enough, the wallpaper where it had hung was a brighter color—she wasn’t just imagining things. Evidently, Becky was redecorating her room and had decided to go shopping in the storage room. Fair enough. Becky was the one who had lived with these things most of her life, not her.
An Uncommon Grace Page 14
