The Sacrifice

by Beverly Lewis

  Heart pounding, she stood up for a better look and saw the splintered remains of what looked to be a pony cart. On the east side of the road, a farmhouse stood way back snuggled against tall trees. She wasn’t so sure in the dark, but she thought this might be the homestead of Deacon Stoltzfus and his large family.

  She did think it peculiar that, by now, none of the family had come running down the lane to offer assistance. Then it dawned on her that maybe—hopefully not—one of their children had been riding in the crumpled pony cart, in which case the deacon and probably his wife and some of the youngest children would have gone along in the ambulance, leaving the oldest girls to look after the rest. The older boys, Leroy, Gideon, Ezra, and Elias, most likely were out riding around with their girlfriends, unaware of the dreadful accident.

  A lump caught in her throat. Dear God, please help whoever was hurt here tonight, she prayed.

  The distinctive ripeness of late autumn closed in around her, and when a sudden wind came up, Leah felt its eerie chill and drew her shawl near. Oh, she wished Gid would hurry back and tell her what on earth had happened.

  “The pony and cart shot out from the lane onto the road, you say?” the police officer quizzed Robert.

  Pointing to the concealed treed lane, Robert explained, “Over there, leading down from the farmhouse. The cart appeared out of nowhere, right in front of me . . . before I could ever stop.” He felt sick with the memory of the youth lying unconscious in the road, broken and bleeding. “My car hit it broadside.”

  The policeman filled out an accident report, scrutinizing Robert’s driver’s license, then inquired about his father. “Is Doc Schwartz your old man?”

  “That’s right.”

  The policeman looked him over. “Say . . . aren’t you the son who fought in the war?”

  He felt his shoulders tense. “I . . . well, sir, God must have been watching out for me overseas.” That’s all he could say about the past when the present— and possibly the future—was staring him hard in the face.

  Returning his attention to the accident report, the officer added, “The lad’s Old Order Amish, so I doubt there will be charges filed against you, although it’s clear you weren’t in the wrong. If this goes the way most accidents do involving them, you’ll never hear boo from anybody. The Amish practice nonresistance.”

  Nonresistance . . .

  Robert swallowed hard, hoping the boy would survive the accident for both the boy’s sake and his family’s. He had certainly put into practice every first-aid technique he’d ever learned from his father in tending to him—his body crushed and bleeding—trying his best to save the kid’s life.

  “You were driving the speed limit or less?” he was asked.

  “Yes, sir.” He waited as the policeman finished filling out the accident report, feeling a desperate coldness steal over him. Robert shuddered in the darkness as the reality of what had happened here sunk in. “Can someone please phone me later? I’d like to know the boy’s name and where I might visit him,” he said.

  A visit to the hospital was the least he could do; he wished he could do more. No doubt there would already be Amish friends and relatives gathering at the hospital, as was their custom. They would not want the boy and his family to suffer through the dark night alone.

  “Someone from the station will be in touch with you, Mr. Schwartz.” The policeman’s voice startled him. “Take care, son.”

  “Why . . . thank you,” he heard himself say. Robert’s words, though sincere, sounded hollow and distant even to his own ears.

  Due to the lateness of the hour and the heavy cloud cover, the road leading home was even darker now as Robert headed down the final stretch. His memory haunted him as he replayed the accident scene again and again. The shattered pony cart, the moaning boy lying in the road, the mournful neigh of the wounded horse . . .

  “O Lord in heaven . . . please let the boy survive. Please, let him live,” Robert implored. He slowed the car to a near crawl as he rounded the bend and saw the yard light on at his parents’ house. How can I begin to tell my family what has happened this night . . . what I have done?

  “It was a terrible mess up there,” Gid told Leah when he returned at last, somewhat out of breath. “If somebody didn’t die in that wreck, I’d be mighty surprised.” “Anyone we know?” She was unnerved.

  Gid seemed dazed as he took the reins from her, sitting there for the longest time without speaking.

  And then finally he did. “Himmel, this slaughter on the roads—cars and carriages—just keeps . . . happening.”

  His voice faltered.

  Leah was shaking. What if one of her own kin was in such an accident? The People reckoned tragedies as being God’s sovereign will, yet she shuddered to think of losing a sister to death.

  “The pony cart belonged to young Elias Stoltzfus,” Gid said at last. “He was severely injured tonight . . . if not mortally.”

  Leah gasped. Not Mary Ruth’s beau! Suddenly she was panic-stricken at the thought of her own sister.

  Was she riding along with Elias tonight? she wondered.

  Was she?

  “Was there anyone else in the cart?” Leah managed to ask.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you certain it was Elias who was hit?”

  Gid nodded slowly, his expression sad.

  If the boy did not survive, many of the People would gather as a compassionate community for the wake at the Stoltzfus house, offering to help in any way possible. Leah determined that if the worst were to be, she would volunteer to help with the milking and whatnot. Anything to assist and by so doing lessen the immediate pain of loss.

  Leah arrived home, where she was relieved to learn Mary Ruth was safe. Hours later she witnessed firsthand how much Mary Ruth cared for Elias—the whole family did. When they saw the tall figure of Leroy, the oldest Stoltzfus boy, on the back step, face drawn, eyes red . . . coming to deliver the death message, Mary Ruth burst out sobbing and fled from the kitchen.

  Her heartrending cries were heard all through the house, and the pitiful sound struck Leah at the core of her very heart, for she knew too well something of the sting of Mary Ruth’s loss.

  Leah, Hannah, and Mamma offered their sympathy as best they could, but Mary Ruth would not be comforted. Her weeping continued as Leah sat on the side of the twins’ bed, stroking Mary Ruth’s hair while Hannah lay next to her twin, her slender arm wrapped around her. Mamma, after a time, kissed each of them good night, then slipped off to her own room, sniffling every bit as much as Leah recalled her doing the weeks following Sadie’s shunning.

  Miserable and helpless to know what to say or do, Leah decided now was a good time to pray—not the familiar rote prayers of their childhood, but one that came directly from her heart. The kind she knew Mamma and Aunt Lizzie often prayed, and the kind of earnest prayer she herself had offered in the woods, following her heartbreak over Jonas.

  Sitting in the darkness, she silently pleaded for divine comfort for her grief-stricken younger sister, as well as the brokenhearted Stoltzfus family.

  Chapter Eleven

  Restless and unable to sleep, Mary Ruth tiptoed down the stairs after midnight, leaving the warmth of her bed to hurry outdoors. The night was as still as the animals resting in the stable area of the barn. Deftly she reached for the sides of the old wooden ladder and climbed to the hayloft without making a sound, wanting to sit alone in the midst of the baled hay.

  She anguished at the memory of her last conversation with Elias in the barnyard following Preaching service yesterday. He had asked her to go “on a lark, for some fun before going to the singing.” Ezra, it seemed, had gotten first dibs on the courting buggy and was planning to spend time with Hannah again, just the two of them. So Elias had wanted to use his pony cart.

  If Ezra had included Elias and me, she thought, my dear beau might still be alive!

  Now in spite of Elias’s fondness for her and hers for him, he was gone fore
ver, soon to be buried in the People’s cemetery not so far away. Her own beloved.

  Too exhausted to ponder further what might’ve happened if things had been much different this night, she pulled the long black shawl about her and wrapped her arms around her knees. Sassy, the new pup—short for Sassafras—soon found her. The droopy-eyed pet comforted Mary Ruth by licking her salty cheeks, remaining by her side as she wept till close to dawn.

  Hannah stared at the new handkerchief she had quickly made for Elias’s grieving mother. Somehow, she hoped to find a way to slip it to the poor woman, though seeing the crowd of mourners gathered at the Stoltzfus house, she didn’t know how or when that might be possible.

  Just now, though, standing in the backyard with the other women of her family, waiting to enter the farmhouse, Hannah couldn’t shake the fear of death knocking on her own door, coming too soon, before she was ready for it. She’d long struggled this way. Like Elias had been, she felt she was much too young to die, though if such a thing should happen, even prematurely, the People believed it was the divine order of things. Hannah had been taught this from her childhood, and being a baptized church member now, having made her kneeling vow back in September with Ezra, she felt she, too, must embrace the Lord God’s supreme plan for each of His children. Yet she still battled the horror of death—when it was to come and how it might happen . . . and, most of all, how difficult it might be to get to the other side. She felt her neck grow exceedingly warm with the worry.

  Just what did the Lord God heavenly Father want with young Elias up in heaven when there was so much left for him to do down here? She guessed there must be some mighty important work waiting for him in Glory Land—maybe something that required lots of time. Jah, maybe that’s why he was taken so early.

  Robert was reduced to sitting in the backseat, a passenger in his father’s car as he and his parents traveled down the road to the Amish funeral on Tuesday morning. Not able to sleep or eat since the accident, he had thought of staying home and would have preferred to, but his mother had slipped into his room after breakfast and attempted to console him, reminding him the mishap was simply not his fault. “Any driver might have hit the boy. It was impossible for you to see him,” she’d insisted. Then she had encouraged Robert to “come along with us, in spite of the accident. Share your sadness with the Amish community. The entire Stoltzfus family will be there, I am sure.”

  And they were, all thirteen of them—eleven remaining sad-faced children, some teenagers, and their somber parents. Robert had gone immediately with his father to the hospital, following the accident, but he had not had the chance to see Elias. Sadly the young man had been pronounced dead on arrival, and Robert could merely offer his condolences to the solemn parents. How very taxing that had been. He instantly deemed himself a murderer, however unintentional the act. Most difficult for Robert was knowing full well that if he had never gone to the Quarryville church meeting and had driven straight home from college in Harrisonburg, Virginia, he might have been home this morning reading or watching television, and young Elias would have been alive.

  How does this nightmarish thing fit into God’s plan? he agonized. What exactly would the dynamic Mennonite preacher have to say about the circumstances Robert so unpredictably found himself in? The policeman at the collision scene had been correct in his assessment; no charges had been discussed with Robert nor filed. He had been driving well under the speed limit, so there was no question of a reckless driving charge. He felt he should be somewhat relieved, but he was nothing of the kind. A sense of despondency encompassed him, and he was miserable with the knowledge that, however blameless, he was responsible for snuffing out a young life.

  Staring out the car window, he was aware of the blur that became one Amish farmhouse, then pastureland, cornfields, and another farmhouse, and so on, one after another. He had survived the horrors of war on foreign soil only to come home and accidentally kill an innocent civilian.

  Stunned with grief and struggling to sit through the long funeral in the house of worship—house of sorrow, Mary Ruth thought—she attempted to keep her hands folded, yet every so often she noticed she had been unconsciously wringing her handkerchief. At one point Hannah leaned close to her and whispered, “I believe that’s the driver of the automobile.”

  She sighed ever so deeply, her breath coming in ragged gasps as she fought tears and looked over at the man Hannah assumed to be Robert Schwartz. The mere thought of a car plowing into Elias’s vulnerable pony cart made her wince; it was next to impossible for a person to survive such an impact. She battled the urge to despise the Englisher. Who does he think he is, coming to the funeral?

  Somehow, as the service progressed, she was able to deny her tears, having spent all day yesterday and Sunday night, too, wearing herself out in distress over her beau. Through sheer will, she had managed to go with Leah and Aunt Lizzie to the Stoltzfus farm early yesterday morning to help with some of the cooking, cleaning, and tending to the small children, just as other church members had.

  Presently she was in desperate straits, trying hard to listen to the first sermon, thirty minutes long and given in Pennsylvania Dutch, followed by Scriptures read in High German, which she did not understand. Who of the People did? Most of the old-timers perhaps, but none of the youth.

  She was suddenly stirred, then and there, wishing she might comprehend the words Preacher Yoder read from the Old German Biewel—wanting to know what was being said at her beau’s funeral, for pity’s sake!

  During the second sermon, she noticed Robert Schwartz sitting tall and stately, yet weeping silent tears that coursed down his solemn face. Strangely, he made no attempt to brush them away. Mary Ruth found this curious, never having seen a grown man shed tears in public, let alone at a large gathering. She felt compelled to glance his way every so often but only with her eyes, never moving her head.

  Goodness knows what he must be feeling, she thought, but her heart was bound up with fond memories of dear Elias, as well as her own great sadness. How could she ever forget how he’d made it a point to put off joining church to run around a bit longer? What did this mean for his everlasting soul?

  The People were admonished to live righteous lives, as one never knew when his or her “day of reckoning” might come. The second minister spoke on this subject for nearly an hour, urging young people to think carefully about joining church. “Do not put off the Holy Ordinance. It has the power to seal your eternal fate.”

  Mary Ruth felt a quiver run up her spine as the minister continued preaching. She wondered, just then, if what had befallen Elias was connected in any way to his decision to postpone church membership “till another year,” as he’d said. But no, she couldn’t allow herself to be that superstitious.

  She did wonder if Elias had died in his sins. Since he was not baptized at the time of the accident, were the ministers right? Was her beloved standing outside the gates of Glory?

  During the brief obituary reading in German by Preacher Yoder, Mary Ruth considered the idea of wearing her black mourning garment for a full year, as if she were Elias’s widow-bride. She knew Mamma would not approve, but at this moment of determined loyalty to her beau, she didn’t rightly care what anyone thought.

  While the coffin was being moved outside so the People could view the body, Leah noticed Dr. Schwartz and his wife, Lorraine, walking toward their car. It seemed they were scarcely able to put one foot in front of the other, so downtrodden they and their son Robert looked. She had recognized him from seeing his pictures several places in the Schwartz house, as well as on the wall of the clinic waiting room.

  Watching them cross the yard together, arm in arm, she felt a deep measure of sympathy and wondered if Dr. Schwartz would say something to her about this awful sad day come Friday, when she was scheduled to do some cleaning at the clinic. She wouldn’t be so rude as to bring up the topic of Elias’s death herself. Still, she wondered how the Schwartz family would manage to cope.

&nb
sp; When she turned back toward the house, she noticed Mary Ruth hovering near the coffin, now situated on the front porch for the final viewing before burial. She wondered if her sister was out of her mind with grief, as sometimes happened to couples if one or the other was taken early. Then she knew for sure Mary Ruth was suffering unspeakably, for her sister leaned down and touched Elias’s face—her last chance to see him ever so close. But when she bent lower and kissed him, Leah cried. She’s saying farewell, she thought, wishing she, too, might have had that opportunity, though keenly aware how tragically different a situation this was.

  Later, in the Graabhof, her father stood next to Smithy Peachey, black felt hat in his rough hands, as they glanced now and then at the coffin-shaped hole in the earth. Small grave markers were scattered here and there in unpredictable rows within a makeshift fence. For a moment the wire barrier made her feel captive to the People, and she thought of Sadie and her endless shunning.

  Leah’s gaze drifted to the brethren—the ministers and grown men, farmers all—who set forth the unwritten guidelines for living. The Ordnung rules our very lives, she thought, missing her elder sister anew. The faces of the men looked pale in spite of their ruddy, sunburned complexions, she noticed, and women and girls dabbed handkerchiefs at their eyes, trying not to call attention to themselves. Yet how could they stop their tears when the deacon’s red-haired young son— once spirited and smiling—lay lifeless in a simple walnut box?

  Four pallbearers used shovels to fill the grave once the coffin had been lowered into the previously dug tomb by the use of long straps. Deacon Stoltzfus stood near his remaining sons, their jaws clenched, lower lips quivering uncontrollably; Ezra, especially, looked ashen faced. Elias’s mother, grandmothers, aunts, and many sisters clustered together, some of them holding hands and crying, but none of them wept aloud. It was not the People’s way to wail and mourn conspicuously, and Leah was glad for that. The sadness she felt for these dear ones spilled over into her own spirit, and she hung her head as if in prayer.