by Murray Pura
She dropped her eyes from his intense gaze and mumbled, “Not right away.”
“I wanted to thank you for letting me know about the aeroplanes. I saw you pointing.”
She looked up in surprise. “You couldn’t have possibly seen me.”
“I saw you all right.”
“How could you know it was me amongst the scores of people?”
“Well, not all of them wear a navy-blue dress. Not all of them have blonde hair and such beautiful green eyes.”
“Oh—” She couldn’t stop herself from laughing and giving him a shove. “As if you have eyes that could see all that from so far up.”
“Then how did I know, Lyyndaya?”
“From what I’ve heard, I would have thought you’d be looking for Emma Zook.”
“Is that what you really think?” He took the risk of tipping up her chin with his finger so her eyes were looking directly into his. She didn’t push away his hand or glance in a different direction. “Because I gave her a strawberry? Because my father and I had supper at her house?”
“Twice, I heard,” added Lyyndaya.
“Because she was helping people get into the aeroplane today?”
“You didn’t look like you were suffering.” She gently moved his hand aside.
Jude nodded. “Yes, she is tenacious. I admit she has caused me some confusion.”
“Oh, has she?”
“So have you.”
“I?” Lyyndaya pointed to herself. “Little short me? From a million miles away?”
“Yes, little blonde green-eyed you. Do you think you are so easily forgotten?”
She shrugged. “I suppose you don’t have much choice. My parents won’t permit us to see one another. So what are you waiting around for? Go put Emma Zook in your buggy and court her. She’s dying to be courted.”
“And you? Do you wish to be courted?” Jude asked. He reached out to touch her face, but she shook her head and stepped back.
“It doesn’t matter what I wish. You’re not the one who can court me. So you should move on to the next in line.”
“The next in line? Are you and Emma my customers then? Am I to make each of you a set of horseshoes for your feet? A bit for each of your mouths?”
Lyyndaya laughed and pushed on his chest. “Stop it. I shouldn’t be laughing. I shouldn’t be enjoying your company.”
“Why not?”
“My mother and father—we have no future—”
“Is that really what you think?”
“Yes…but…I…” She stopped and looked helplessly at him.
“Is this what God tells you?”
“I don’t know what God tells me.”
“You don’t? Are you sure?”
She felt heat in her face and looked toward the people picnicking in the meadow. “My parents will notice us.”
“Very well. Then I am telling you about the fuel. What the British pilot would call petrol.”
Lyyndaya stared at him, confused, her eyebrows coming together. “What?”
“You see the wagon by the side of the fence? The fuel drums on it? My two mechanics eating the sandwiches and drinking the lemonade Mrs. Kauffman brought them?”
“Yes.”
“They came on the train with the fuel, and Bishop Zook’s son Hosea brought the men and the drums to the field with his wagon. I am going to go over to them now and ask them to top up the British officer’s tank. And mine. After all, the King’s boy has to have his moment in the sky, doesn’t he? And little John Zook, the reader of entire libraries.”
Lyyndaya smiled. “Shall I call it—‘petrol’?”
“Yes. Why not? And if your parents ask, we were talking about aeroplanes and fuel drums—and horseshoes—among other things.”
She inclined her head. “So we were.”
Jude began to walk toward the mechanics. “The truth is, I miss you, Lyyndy,” he said.
Later in the afternoon, with Lt. Cook gone and Jude taking Peter King up to five thousand feet and down again, Lyyndaya wondered if Jude had really meant that, or whether he’d said it just to make her feel good. After all, hadn’t he confessed that he was confused about both Emma and herself? How did he really know what he felt about either of them? If she could see him every day, talk with him, listen to his words, watch his actions, then she might see the truth and, if he honestly felt something for her, she might become convinced of it. Since that was not possible, she would always be in doubt and never have a sense of security about their relationship, whatever that relationship might be. She prayed, but prayer didn’t make anything clearer in her mind about the two of them. Lyyndaya only knew she must obey her parents and could only hope that something might happen one day to change their minds about Jude.
But at breakfast the next morning Lyyndaya’s father began to grumble about what had happened with the planes the day before.
“Flying with those planes over the heads of our children and livestock, diving, rolling, so dangerous, he does not even think about what he is doing—”
Lyyndaya couldn’t stop herself from bursting out, “Papa, that’s not true. As soon as those planes came after him he flew as fast as he could away from us because he didn’t want anyone to be endangered.”
Her father shook his head and put a fork and knife to his eggs. “All part of the act, Daughter.”
“No, Papa, it was not. He didn’t know those planes were coming. He didn’t even know who they were. He was as surprised as anyone else.”
Her father kept shaking his head. “This is what you want to believe because you still harbor feelings for that boy.”
“When they landed he marched right over to the British officer and demanded to know what the man thought he was doing by flying over the heads of the crowd. I have not seen him angry like that before. I thought he might…but he reined in his temper.”
Her father leaned back again in his chair. “So—how do you know this happened? This anger?”
Lyyndaya didn’t look away from his hard gaze. “Many people ran up to the aeroplanes when they landed in the Stoltzfus field. I was close enough to hear what was going on. Jude had words for him.”
Her father shrugged and twisted his mouth. “Words.”
Lyyndaya pushed aside her plate of toast, reached out across the tabletop, and gripped both her father’s hands. Everyone at the table, including her father, was surprised.
“Papa, when the officer asked Jude if he would fly for the army when he was of age, what do you think he said? He said, no, he would not fight, he would not use a plane to kill. ‘We are Amish,’ he said. ‘We do not bear arms against our fellow man.’”
Her father narrowed his eyes. “He said this?”
Lyyndaya’s green eyes were burning in her face. “Yes. And more, Papa. He told the officer our people had come to this land to find a place to worship God in peace, just as the Pilgrims had come on their ship from Britain to find the same sort of freedom. He said our people did not come here so they could go back to Europe and slaughter others in a war.”
She released her grip.
Amos Kurtz sat still. Then he looked at his wife. “Well, Mother. If our daughter heard all this, so did others. It is Thursday. No doubt we will hear more about it long before we meet for worship on Sunday.” He turned to his oldest son. “Luke, hitch up Trillium. Bring the old shoes from the Percherons. Jude made them anyhow. Let us see what he can do for us today.” He smiled at Lyyndaya. “My girl, I told you I did not think he was a wicked boy. Just someone who thought he was more bird than man. Now that he is more of a man again, well, let us see what we can do to help him keep his feet on the ground.”
Lyyndaya felt like she was flying inside while she stood on the porch watching Luke and her father pull out of the yard in the carriage and head for the Whetstone house. Ruth caught her mood perfectly, coming up and linking her arm through her younger sister’s and asking, “Are you coming down for a landing anytime soon, Lyyndy?”
Lyyndaya laughed
and hugged Ruth. “It is too good to be true. Papa is going to give his work to Jude. Oh, I pray something wonderful will come out of this.”
“So do I. And while we’re praying, Mama wants us to help with the baking for the Sunday meeting. You and I have the bread to take care of. Come. It will help the time pass quickly. Before we know it there will be Trillium stepping smartly up to the barn.”
The sisters went to the kitchen and set to work on the dough. Lyyndaya thought she would hear the buggy turning into the drive in an hour, but after two hours her father and brother had still not returned.
“What can have happened?” she asked Ruth as they pulled a half-dozen loaves from the oven, their faces red in the heat.
“They are talking.”
“Is it a good thing that they talk this long?”
“It can’t be a fight. No one could argue with Papa for two hours. He would just walk out.”
Another hour went by, and they were cooling loaves by the open window and putting more bread in the oven, when they both heard the crack of a horse’s hooves on stones. They quickly closed the door on the bread and raced to the door. Mama was already at the buggy and her hand was on her husband’s arm as he spoke. Her forehead was creased and her lips tight. Lyyndaya felt a coldness rush through her. Her father looked up at her and shook his head.
“My daughter,” he said, “the news is not good.”
EIGHT
Lyyndaya walked as quickly as she could along the dirt road, the sun and her stride bringing a fine film of sweat out upon her arms and hands. Father had said she could take the buggy to the Whetstone home, but she found she needed to work off the strain and restlessness she felt. Letting a horse pull her would not do that. It wasn’t so far to Jude’s smithy anyway, two miles at most. The Kauffmans drove past in a large wagon loaded to the brim with children and offered her a ride, but she forced a smile of thanks and waved them on.
When she reached the Whetstones’ she went immediately around back without once slackening her pace.
He may not even be at the smithy. If it were me I’d be out somewhere by myself, praying and trying to think everything through.
But Jude was at the forge in a work shirt and suspenders, banging at a glowing orange-black horseshoe with one hand while pinning it to a huge anvil with a long pair of tongs. He did not look up as she stood in front of him. Only when he put the shoe over the coals again and pumped the bellows with his free hand did he finally look up and realize Lyyndaya was there. He stopped hammering.
“I’m just making your shoes,” he said.
“Not my shoes.”
He smiled. “But how is it you’re here? What will your father say?”
“It was my father who suggested I come.”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“What has he told you?”
“That the army arrived here at your house while you were discussing the shoes for our Percherons. They will be extending the ages for those that can be drafted into the military—as young as eighteen and as old as forty-five. You will have to register. And there is no guarantee you’ll be exempted on religious grounds if your number is chosen.”
“One minute.” Jude worked on the large horseshoe a bit longer and then thrust it into the water. After that he laid it on a cooling rack. He wore a heavy leather apron that he began to unknot from behind his back. Hanging it up on a peg he went to a washbasin and soaped his face and hands and arms vigorously. Then he rinsed himself and rubbed himself with a clean blue towel. He turned back to Lyyndaya and said, “Come sit with me on the bench under the tree. Father set out a pitcher of lemonade and glasses about fifteen minutes ago. The ice has not altogether melted. You look like you could use a drink as much as me.”
“I walked here.”
“In this heat? Did no one want to lend you the buggy?”
“It was my choice.”
“Sit down, please.”
Lyyndaya sat with him on the wooden bench under the shade tree. She was glad to be away from the heat of the forge and was sure Jude felt the same way. He downed one glass of lemonade, then another, and another. Finally, with the fourth glass, he began to sip. She had drunk about half her glass.
“Do you want more, Lyyndy?”
She shook her head. “Thank you, not yet.”
Jude leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “Your father would also have told you he was gone so long because Bishop Zook asked him to meet with my father and himself in our parlor. Just after the officers and the sheriff left.”
“Yes. He said the three of them had decided they must send several men from the colony to the governor to protest this idea that some of our people might not be exempted from military service on religious grounds. Perhaps the pastors would go as well as the bishop. Even bishops from some of the other settlements might make the trip.”
“Are you worried, Lyyndy?”
“Of course I’m worried. This is because you fly so well. The British officer is behind this. He’s trying to force our government into making you a pilot for their war in France. Why, it was only a few Sundays ago Bishop Zook prayed for some of the Amish and Old Order Mennonites east of us. They have been persecuted by the communities near to them for not sending their young men to fight and not supporting the war by purchasing war bonds.”
“I remember, Lyyndy.”
“Even the U.S. Army was making life difficult for them. Six Amish men were forced into uniform and made to carry rifles and drill with a battalion—”
“And Hosea stood up and said we should not only pray for the Amish and Mennonites but for those who persecuted them as well, including the army.”
She nodded. “I did pray in that manner. But even with the prayers I’m still worried and my spirit is troubled. The army could persecute you for refusing to fight.”
“Well, you know, I’m not so worried.”
“Why not?”
Jude stood up and stretched and looked down at her. “This is a good country. America has always been kind to the Amish. We have many freedoms. Our nation will not hurt us.”
He poured himself more lemonade and gestured with the pitcher. She nodded and he filled her glass. Then he began to pace.
“Still, I don’t know what a few of the officers may try to do in secret. It’s important to me that my father be safe. The whole colony, all our people, all the Amish and Mennonite people who have chosen to follow Jesus Christ without taking up the sword. So even though I believe our country will protect us, there may be schemes hatched in the shadows that Washington and the president will not know about.”
Lyyndaya saw a glint of uncertainty in his brown eyes. She was holding her fresh glass of lemonade in both hands in her lap, untouched. “I can pray for you.”
“Yes? You would like to do that? Here? Now?”
“Yes.”
“I must ask this one thing if you pray.”
“What is that?”
“I would like it if you hold my hand as you do so.”
Lyyndaya smiled up at him. “Really, I’m not afraid to do that. But only while we pray.”
“Of course.”
He sat beside her and bowed his head. She rested her right hand lightly on his left. The skin was surprisingly soft at the back of his hand, but she also felt the roughness and strength of fingers that were curled into a loose fist. She put all this from her mind and began to speak to God in High German as she’d been taught since she was a girl. The war concerned her, flying freely in a tall blue sky being turned from a joy into a curse. Freedoms lost concerned her, freedoms that had always been part of the promise of America, freedom that would be dishonored if their faith in Christ was now ignored or trampled on.
Oh, Lord, help us, oh, Lord, do not desert us, do not desert this country, help us bring peace and forgiveness into this clash of nations, not more violence and harshness. Tell us what to do, tell us what to say, and when it comes time to decide may our decisions be your decisio
ns, may they be the right decisions, the ones that make life abundant on this earth. We would not be a plague to this nation that has blessed us so much, we would not be locusts that devour. We would be light as Jesus is light, strength as Jesus is strength, love as God is love.
Im Namen des Vaters, des Sohnes, und des Heiligen Geistes.
Amen.
She gave Jude’s fingers a squeeze and then removed her hand.
“Danke,” he said.
“Bitte.”
He leaned forward, his hands knotted together, his arms resting on his knees. “So now tell me something. Why have your father and mother let you come to see me?”
“I’m not sure. Papa knows the people like you and he doesn’t want the church to think he’s against you.”
“Isn’t he?”
“Oh, I don’t know, it is all mixed up with the flying.” Lyyndaya put her head back and looked up at the leaves of the tree they were sitting under. “But the moment I told him you had stood up to the British officer when it came to the war, that you had made your case for not bearing arms, for peace, something lit up in his face. He decided then and there to come to you to have our horseshoes done. After he returned with the news you might not be exempted from military service, I think he felt a great deal of sympathy for you. He insisted I visit. You must understand he lost his grandfather in the war to save the Union, and not just his grandfather, but many other family members as well.”
“I see. Then does this mean—” He looked at her, but did not finish his sentence.
He had such a hopeful puppy-dog look in his face that Lyyndaya realized he truly did care for her. She felt warmth inside her as well as a sudden ache to gather him into her arms and kiss the top of his head and his beautiful brown hair. Instead, she only smiled sadly.
“Courting remains out of the question. Papa made that very clear. But we are permitted to visit each other at our homes and at worship gatherings. And we can walk together anytime we like—so long as we keep walking and do not hide away somewhere.”
“Walking? Is that why you came here on foot?”
Lyyndaya felt the blood come to her face. “Maybe.”