by Murray Pura
The others laughed.
Jude felt the heat in his face. “Well, I’m telling you the truth. No one is talking about marriage yet. I like the wisdom in her letters.”
The man stared at Jude in mock disbelief, his mouth open in an exaggerated way, his eyes popping. “You like her wisdom? Are you kidding me?”
“Look, she is a friend, nothing more than that.”
“Nothing more, huh? Say, you got a funny accent. Where you from? Berlin?”
“Knock it off,” growled an older and muscular man with a thick black mustache. “He’s an American. That’s all that matters. Where’s home, kid?”
“Pennsylvania,” Jude responded, as if he were speaking with one of the Amish elders.
“A good place. The North won the war in Pennsylvania. You ever been down to Gettysburg?”
“Once when I was seven or eight.”
“I got to get to it after this French fracas. Granddaddy fought there. Lost a lung, but he never regretted the wound. Said the United States was made there more than it was made at Lexington or Concord.”
As rough as the ride was, as the day dragged on and night fell, each of them dropped off. Jude thought he never slept, but over and over again he kept jerking awake and snapping his head up, Lyyndaya’s letter still clutched in his fingers as if it were diamonds or gold. Once he sat straight quickly and stared about him in a bewildered way, his mind racing. The older man with the thick mustache grunted.
“That got your attention. See out the back?”
Jude saw only blackness. Then it lit up as if it was on fire. After several moments it went dark. Then flared up again. A loud grumbling reached his ears.
“Looks like a lightning storm is coming this way,” he said.
The older man grunted again. “There’s a storm all right, but it’s not coming to us, we’re going to it. An artillery barrage, kid. Ours, theirs, who knows? But I been watching us get closer and closer. That’s to the west and north of us, that’s why we can see it even though we’re looking out the back of the truck. We must be right on top of the lines by now.”
“What time is it?” someone asked.
“Three,” answered another voice.
The next flash made the backs of Jude’s hands yellow. The pages of Lyyndaya’s letter were sharp and clear.
“You could read by that,” said the man with the mustache. “Why don’t you give us something, kid? Nothing that’s personal, keep that to yourself. Just something to cheer a fellow up that’s a long way from home.”
The flashes were getting stronger and brighter and the roar of the explosions coming to their ears sooner. Jude glanced at the men around him in the glare and all of them were looking at him with faces that were tired, lonely and, meeting his gaze, hopeful. Then it went black.
“All right,” he said.
The next burst of light lasted fifteen or twenty seconds. His eyes fell on the page in his hand, the ink smeared by the Channel spray from the day before.
“This is what I pray,” he read out loud, “that you may be safe, that you may be well, that no harm may come to you or those you call your friends, that the war may end soon, that by this Christmas of 1918 you will be home among those who love you and standing at the table, carving the roast goose, laughing and thanking God for every breath you take.”
FOURTEEN
Lyyndaya heard Bishop Zook’s voice calling to his horse—“whoa”—and came down the stairs to open the door with her mother and father. The April sun was setting in purples and reds behind him.
“Guten Abend,” the bishop said. “I’m sorry it’s so late. May I come in?”
“Ja, ja,” Lyyndaya’s father said. “Come.”
They all took seats around the kitchen table as Mama brought coffee with milk and sugar and placed it by the bishop’s hand.
“Danke,” the large man said with a nod. “So is Ruth here as well?”
“I have put her to bed early with a fever,” replied her mother. “She has not been well since breakfast.”
“I’m sorry to hear it. I will pray for her before I leave.” He sipped at his coffee and his eyes fell on Lyyndaya. “But Lyyndy is here. That is good.” He looked at her father. “The Holsteins are fine?”
“Ja.”
Then he met her mother’s eyes. “And the other children? The boys? The girl?”
Her nodded. “Gute, danke. Luke is in the barn rubbing down the horses. I can fetch him.”
The bishop lifted a hand. “Luke need not be here.” He took more of his coffee then set the cup down and looked around at them, his eyes sad but firm.
Lyyndaya knew what was coming.
“Sometimes we make such an announcement at the church gathering,” he began. “This time I felt it best to speak with each family in turn. I have been to see Mr. Whetstone. Next, after him, I knew I must come here.” He looked down at his coffee cup a moment. “The English do not understand these things. Our neighbors think us harsh and cruel when we pronounce the Meidung. Yet they quarrel and have lawsuits and will break off friendships, even with family members, for a lifetime. They have their own Meidungs, hm? Only they turn a cold shoulder, as they say, for years even, without ever giving the person who has been cut off an opportunity to say they are sorry, to come back. Sometimes, even if these persons say they are sorry, they still are not permitted to a return to a church or a business or even their family.”
He lifted his eyes to Lyyndaya. “It is not that way with us. We ask a person to repent. If they do, if they stop the wrongful behavior, that is enough. So far as the east is from the west, so far is the taint of sin removed from them by the cross of Jesus Christ. For us, and for God, it is as if it has never been. We bring it up no more and do not permit it to be held against them in the church or among the Lapp Amish. This the English rarely do.”
He quietly asked for a refill of his cup. Once Lyyndaya’s mother had poured the coffee and returned to her seat, he resumed his talk.
“I promised the leadership we would deal with this after Easter. Well, Easter, as you know, was at the end of March and more than two weeks have gone by. Who knows? I thought. Perhaps Jude would send us a letter. Perhaps he would show up at the door. Maybe we would hear he has been arrested by the army for refusing to fly an aeroplane and shoot down other men. But there has been nothing. When I made inquiries as to his whereabouts, military officials told me he had left England and been assigned to an aerodrome in eastern France, right at the front. ‘What sort of squadron,’ I asked. ‘Reconnaissance?’” He shook his head. “They stared at me as if I had grown a horse’s head and said, ‘Of course it is a fighter squadron, sir. A pursuit squadron. Americans are anxious to see their boys perform well in aerial combat like the great French and British and German aces.’” The bishop lifted his cup to his lips and drank. “Even our good Canadian neighbors have many men who fly and kill. So of course we cannot be seen as second-best.”
“Jude is to be shunned,” Lyyndaya blurted, suddenly tired of the long buildup to the inevitable.
The bishop nodded.
“But what if he repents?” she asked, almost desperately. “What if he returns from the war and says he is sorry?”
“I have told you. We welcome him back. He is forgiven as we are all forgiven in Christ.”
“What about Pastor Miller? Or Pastor King? They are very angry with Jude. What if they do not forgive?”
“They must forgive. Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”
“But if they do not—”
“Hush, daughter,” soothed her mother, putting a hand over her daughter’s. “They are good Christian men. They know what it means to live the life of following Jesus.”
Bishop Zook nodded. “Ja, they know. But there is something I must explain. You came here after the Spanish–American war. It was in 1898. Lyyndaya, you were not even born. Twenty years have gone by. Yet the Kings and Millers cannot forget they lost family in that terrible war. America brags abou
t her great victories. The Millers and Kings lost sons and brothers. They have nothing to brag about.”
Lyyndaya’s father sat up. “I knew nothing of this.”
“It is not spoken about. As I say, it has been twenty years.”
“But were these family members not part of the Amish faith?”
“Some were—but they left us and chose to fight. Others had struck out on their own. A few were living in Philadelphia. A few in Pittsburgh. One of Pastor King’s brothers was in Florida, very close to Cuba. Patriotic fervor was running very high at the time. As it is now.”
“So they—” Lyyndaya began and stopped.
“The pain is always with the Kings and Millers,” the bishop said to her.
Her father cleared his throat. “Do you not think it strange, Bishop Zook, that Jude Whetstone should do this? Enlist? Go to war?”
The bishop’s eyes seemed to droop. “I do.”
“Does it not sometimes occur to you that we do not know the whole story?”
The bishop shrugged. “I have spoken with my son. And not just my son, but all the other young men. It is the same. They believe the harsh treatment altered his thinking. Hardened him. So that suddenly he felt the way to follow God was to fight for America’s freedom. Though what a European war has to do with our country’s liberty has never been satisfactorily explained to me.”
“Don’t you—sometimes wonder—if there is something we do not know?” pressed Lyyndaya’s father hesitantly.
The bishop sat back in his chair and hooked his thumbs in the suspenders under his dark jacket. He glanced up at the ceiling. “Ja, ja,” he seemed to say to himself. “But what?”
No one spoke.
Finally he rose to his feet. “I must go to other families yet this evening. The rest I must visit tomorrow. Let me pray for all of this and for Ruth’s illness.”
He stood with his head bowed for several minutes without speaking out loud. Lyyndaya could clearly hear the clicking of their grandfather clock as if it were three times louder than normal. She struggled to pray, but her thoughts were confused. She imagined she saw her last letter to Jude stuffed in a mailbag on a steamer heading to England. The steamer was torpedoed and the bag sank to the bottom of the sea, her letter lost forever, Jude never knowing she had written a final time, never knowing how she felt, and he himself was in an aeroplane that was burning and falling to the ground.
She gasped and jerked in her chair, and this time both her father and mother placed their hands gently on her shoulders. Now Bishop Zook began to pray in High German and after a few minutes it calmed her and filled her mind with an image of Jude flying and smiling and waving at her, the clouds tinged rose and copper. She was grateful when he closed his prayer with, Let him give no harm, let him receive no harm, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
At the door the bishop held her hand briefly. “You are no happier with this than my daughter Emma. But then who takes pleasure in the shunning? It is only a means to something better, like an ill-tasting medicine. I pray he will return to us, just as the prodigal did, and that all shall be well once more. Meanwhile, I want you to know what I told my daughter and Master Whetstone’s father—I have instructed the postmaster to collect all letters that come from young Jude and keep them in a safe place. He said he would use a special drawer he can lock. When Jude returns to us and if he confesses and repents, the letters will go to those they belong to. Nothing will be lost, my dear. Gute Nacht. Gottes Segen.”
When the door closed, her father said, “Have courage, my daughter. Pray to our God day and night. We will see him back at Paradise before the year is out.”
“Ach, Amos,” moaned Lyyndaya’s mother, “how can you say that? How can you get the girl’s hopes up? Jude back by Christmas? Repentant? Received back into the church? In hardly more than six months? You must have the faith that moves mountains.”
Lyyndaya had already turned toward the stairs, her hand on the bannister. “I’m going to pray alone. Is that all right?”
“But I have made a bed up for you in the spare room,” her mother said. “You must not catch Ruth’s illness.”
“Did you place my Bible or red book there?”
“Nein, nein. Very well, fetch them from your room, but please do not wake Ruth. She needs her sleep.”
“What if she is awake?”
“Then say good night and God bless. I do not want you upsetting her with talk of the shunning. She can hear about it in the morning.”
But Ruth was standing in her white nightgown at the head of the stairs. “Mother, the shunning hardly comes as a surprise. I want to speak with Lyyndy about it.”
“What are you doing out of bed?” Mama said. “Please, back under the covers, Ruth. You are sick enough as it is.”
“I want Lyyndy to come to my room.”
“Ja, ja, just get back into bed. I will bring you up some hot tea with lemon and honey.”
In their room Ruth sat up under her covers and Lyyndy perched on the edge of her own bed.
“You’re not even crying.” Ruth said gently. “Is it because you’ve already shed your tears over this?”
“I’ve cried many times,” Lyyndaya said. “Ja, I knew it was coming. We all did. So I suppose I’ve run out of tears. For now. But there will be fresh ones.”
“Was the bishop kind?”
“Ja. He says all Jude’s letters will be saved at the post office until he returns to us. Nevertheless, I fret.”
“That he will not confess and repent?”
“No, I don’t worry about that. I have no idea why he’s done what he’s done, but somehow I believe when he returns he’ll have no trouble telling the people he’s sorry. I fret that he may not get my last letter—”
“Why shouldn’t he? You mailed it a week ago.”
“Well,” Lyyndaya sighed, “I keep thinking about those U-boats—”
“Oh!” Ruth flung her head back onto her pillow. “Those U-boats of yours are everywhere. I expect to see one coming along the road in the morning pulled by a team of draft horses.”
“A lot of ships do go down, Ruth.”
“And a lot of ships make it to England and France. If the mail gets past the German submarines will it be worth it?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean—did you write him a good letter, knowing it might be your last for months or—” She did not finish her sentence and wished she had not started it.
But Lyyndaya wasn’t listening. She was thinking to herself, practically rereading the letter in her mind. Out loud, she said, “There will have to be two boats, one to get it from New York to England and another to get it from England to France. He will be at his aerodrome near the front lines when he receives it. I put my heart and soul into that letter. Perhaps I said too much, perhaps I said it too strongly. But what was I to do? What if I can’t write him or see him for another six months? A year? How can I be cautious when so much is at stake? And what if…if he is…” She stopped.
“Let’s think the best and hope for the best,” urged Ruth softly. “To live in any other manner makes a person go through their days like a ghost.”
Her sister clasped her hands together tightly. “I know you’re right, but—”
“No, Lyyndaya, we must not walk there. That part of the garden is verboten to everyone but the Chief Gardener himself. So you must tell me this—will the letter drive him crazy so that he can’t think straight?”
Lyyndaya felt her face redden. “What do you mean?”
Ruth laughed. “My proper Amish sister. Did you say things that will make his heart beat faster?”
Lyyndaya grabbed her pillow without thinking and threw it at her sister’s head.
Ruth gave a mock cry as the pillow struck. “How can you be so mean to your dear sister? Don’t you realize how sick I am?”
“Oh, ja, you are sick.”
“So you just talked to him about the weather, is that it? Jude, the crops are planted, the rain
is wet, when the sun comes out it makes the soil warm, we are sure the barley will grow, and the cows, well, the cows—”
Lyyndaya pounced on her sister’s bed. “I have the cure for your fever. I discovered it in an old Amish book last week. First you tickle the ribs, ja? Then you twist the arm. Like this.”
Ruth shrieked at her sister’s attack and then began to giggle. “Which of them will cure me?”
“Both, of course! You must have both together to get the cure.”
Ruth shrieked again and began to fight back, wrestling with her younger sister. “And where did the good Amish book get this idea from?”
Lyyndaya pinned Ruth’s arms with one of her own and began to tickle again. “The Bible.”
“Ruthie! Lyyndy! What is this?” Their mother was in the doorway holding a cup of tea. “Stop this nonsense. You are not children anymore. Lyyndy, I must ask you to leave your sister alone. She has to get her sleep. Get your book and Bible and go.”
“Oh, Mama—” began Ruth, but was cut off.
“Never mind this ‘Oh, Mama.’ Back under the covers. And you, Lyyndy, quickly, schnell, schnell.”
Ruth and Lyyndaya smirked at one another as their mother marched in with the tea, set it down, and began to straighten Ruth’s blankets, tucking the quilt up around her ears. Lyyndaya hurried out the door with her Bible, red book, and nightgown, managing a small wave to her sister while their mother’s back was turned.
The spare bedroom was cold, so she got under her covers as soon as she had put on her gown and brushed out her hair. In the red book, her great-grandmother was writing about Isaiah chapter seven and verse nine—If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established. Great-grandmother said it was not only a matter of believing in God himself, but believing in his promises despite difficult circumstances. It was also about believing in what God was performing in your life, even if he appeared to be going about it in a roundabout way.
Lyyndaya wondered how this might apply to her and Jude. She couldn’t write him anymore. He might write her, but after months went by with no letters from Pennsylvania he would stop. What then? Would he have a French girlfriend like she had heard other American pilots did? Someone in Paris he went to visit when he was on leave? That didn’t sound like Jude. But then, the Jude she had known before he was taken to the military camp with the others would not have signed up to fight in the United States Army either.