The Wings of Morning

by Murray Pura

  As they sat down in silence, Jude retuned to the Squadron Bible he had read from at breakfast. This time he chose another Psalm—the ninety-first. The men looked up at Jude as the words came out slowly, but powerfully.

  “‘He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust…’”

  When he finished, he sat down with the other men.

  Sharples said, “Whetstone, would you say a few words at the service they’ll have for the boy?”

  Jude found himself swiping at the corner of his eye as he said, “I’d be honored.”

  Sharples made sure everyone stayed put for an hour, talking, having coffee, just being together.

  They waited until an army vehicle brought Billy Skipp in, and after they had welcomed the young man, seen for themselves that his wounds were superficial, and fed him until he protested he could take no more, each of the pilots quietly went off to their private rooms one after another.

  Tuesday, July 9, 1918

  Dear Lyyndy,

  I shouldn’t even be writing. I’m sick to my stomach. We’re supposed to harden ourselves to these things, but I doubt I will ever be able to do that. I need to talk to someone about what happened today, and even though you may never hold this page in your hand, it helps just to think about you, to imagine you sitting here and listening to me.

  We lost two men today. I suppose I shouldn’t put it like that. One of them will be all right. In fact, they picked him up in an army truck and he’s in his own bed tonight—though he’ll likely be sent home. But there was another casualty and he is not back in his room like Billy. A young boy from Nebraska named Jack. He was killed when his plane exploded on the ground.

  It happened so fast. A German came out of the sun above and behind me and went at our planes while they were still rising to my altitude of nineteen thousand feet. For him, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. In seconds he had put scores of bullets into all five of them, even Sharples and Flapjack had holes in their wings and fuselage. But Billy Skipp and Jack Zatt, the young boy, got the worst of it, and they caught fire and crashed. Billy got out of his wreck. The French finally pulled young Jack from his plane, stone dead. We will be holding a military funeral for him tomorrow.

  Sometimes I feel nothing writing you about this. Then suddenly, like now, I feel like breaking down and weeping. I could do nothing to help my friends, do you understand? I was helpless. By the time I reacted, the German had done most of his damage. Do you see what a fool I’ve been? Dashing about the sky thinking I could rescue everyone, that I could create a war in which no one on either side ever got killed? No wonder my commander was disgusted with me. What a fairy tale! Where did I think I was? The July picnic in Paradise? I am in a war zone, Lyyndy, I have placed myself in a war zone, and now people are dying and falling from the sky like leaves.

  There is something else I wanted to tell you. I am ashamed to mention it, but I feel I must. I suppose you will think the less of me for it. There is a scalding hot anger within me. Prayer has not yet put it out. Or reading God’s Word. I doubt sleep will either, or a meal, for I have no appetite for food or rest. This rage is directed toward the pilot who killed Jack. I know his name, because Sharples and Zed recognized the aircraft. Blue Number 9. He is a German ace with something like sixty or sixty-five kills, Captain Heinrich Schleiermacher, and he is flying one of the new Fokker D.VIIs.

  I cannot get him out of my head, Lyyndy. How would you counsel me if you were here? What words would you pray over me? What would you tell me to do? For the first time, I want to find someone, use my guns, and shoot him to the ground. I don’t know how to get rid of the feeling. It’s three in the morning and I’ve been sitting here in my room going over those twenty or thirty seconds of his attack again and again. To tell you the truth, right now I believe the only thing that will give me peace is to see this Schleiermacher crashed and burning and never crawling free of his wreckage. Then something inside of me would be satisfied. I wish I could say otherwise. But this minute, this hour, God help me, I can’t.

  EIGHTEEN

  The Millers had cleaned out their barn, and Lyyndaya sat on one of the benches set up for Sunday morning worship. Her mother was on one side of her, Ruth on the other. The fresh straw Pastor Miller and his son Samuel had spread over the barn floor smelled sweet, but it tickled Lyyndaya’s nose so that she sneezed several times in a row, quite loudly, drawing attention from others seated and waiting for the service to begin.

  “Here’s a handkerchief,” her mother said. “Cover your mouth.”

  “It’s just the hay, Mama, I’ll be all right.”

  “Maybe so, but next time sneeze into the handkerchief. People will feel better if you do.”

  Lyyndaya took the pale blue handkerchief and, sure enough, there was one more sneeze in her and she quickly put the cloth to her mouth and nose.

  She felt annoyed at the look others gave her. She wanted to stand up and say, Listen, it is the fresh straw, all right? It’s the dust, I do not have the flu that’s going around, I do not have the sickness. But then she calmed herself. Philadelphia and other cities had a growing number of influenza victims. There seemed to be no cure, and many people who contracted the disease passed away swiftly, gasping for breath and drowning as their lungs filled with fluid. It was a horrible death. How then could she blame her Amish neighbors for looking concerned when she sneezed again and again, almost uncontrollably? No one wanted the flu bug to find its way into Paradise.

  For an instant she remembered her fear of Jude being killed in combat and thought, But that is a better death than those who collapse on the streets of Philadelphia and suffocate. Then she chided herself—You would not think so if you were the mother of a son shot down in flames. You would not think it was a better way to die if an army person came to your door and told you Jude’s plane had crashed and he was buried in a graveyard in France.

  The pastors had picked straws to see who would preach that Sunday and Lyyndaya inwardly groaned when she saw it was Pastor Miller and Pastor King, the two men most angry at Jude. Just as she feared, Pastor Miller began a long sermon in High German based on the verse found in Isaiah and Micah about beating swords into plowshares. He went on for ninety minutes.

  All she could think of was that he was using the message to point the finger at Jude. When he sat down, a man started singing a hymn and the rest joined in, including herself, each of them taking different parts, some low, some high.

  After several hymns had been sung, Pastor King stood in front of them and read from the Bible. It was the words of Jesus about loving enemies and offering them the other cheek. Again, Lyyndaya couldn’t help but feel the sermon was less about forgiveness and more about Pastor King’s inability to forgive Jude.

  After the church noonday meal together, Lyyndaya and her family returned home.

  “Can we take a walk?” Lyyndaya asked Ruth before they went in.

  Ruth agreed and they took a path through the fields, opening and closing gates behind them as they went.

  Once they were on their way, Lyyndy said, “Ruth, is it just me or were the sermons today aimed against Jude? Condemning him?”

  Ruthie waited before answering. Finally she said, “It’s natural that you would think so. That you would feel it so more than the rest of us. It’s been weeks since those two chose the short straws. We’ve heard from the bishop and the other pastor more than enough. It was past time for King and Miller to speak.”

  Lyyndaya grew exasperated. “That’s not what I am asking you.”

  Her sister stopped and looked at her as they came into the shade of a cluster of large beech trees. “All right. Yes. I think Jude was on their minds. I think he’s on everyone’s mind.”

  “Did you find them harsh?”

  “Harsh? Not especially. They were only trying to reinforce the truth that the decision Jude made was wrong.”
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  Lyyndaya sat down on a large rock. “If I felt they were condemning him, how did his poor father feel?”

  “‘Condemning’ is perhaps too strong a word.”

  Lyyndaya looked up. “And what word would you use to describe messages about peace and forgiveness that offer no peace or forgiveness for Jude?”

  Ruth sighed and sat beside Lyyndaya on the rock. She took one of her sister’s hands in both of hers. “An Amish boy fighting in such a terrible war makes no sense to our people. It frightens them—suppose their boys go off and enlist too? They thought they knew Jude, and now they feel as if perhaps they didn’t know him at all.”

  “Papa thinks there’s more to the story than we are being told.”

  “Yes, you both go on about that.”

  Lyyndaya pulled away her hand. “So you think he is dyed black through and through just as everyone else does?”

  “No human is dyed black through and through, Lyyndy. I just think that it has been almost a year now since you have seen him—a year!—and that he may be a different person than the one you knew last summer and last October. I change, you change—why wouldn’t he change?”

  “He flies a plane, Ruth, but he doesn’t kill anyone. The Lapp Amish should be proud of that.”

  “Lyyndy, the Lapp Amish are never going to be proud of one of their own while he’s a soldier—never. It doesn’t matter what he does or doesn’t do.”

  “The newspapers—”

  Ruth interrupted. “The newpapers! Yes, all right, the newspapers of Philadelphia and Boston and Chicago and Detroit are proud of him. I suppose America is proud of him. The gallant young knight of the air! But the Amish will never feel that way.”

  Lyyndaya stood up. “Americans are proud of him because he wins without shedding blood. They know there’s plenty of it already soaking into the ground. They know there will be more. It’s a blessing for them to see an American boy fighting and overcoming the Germans without adding another measure of destruction and death to an awful war.”

  “Lyyndy—”

  “At least he’s doing something to speed the conflict to its end. We who point fingers, what do we do? Are we rescuing lives as he does? How many of us are doctors and nurses and bringing the wounded back to life? What do we do to help anyone get through this war except go on our merry way plowing our fields and filling our bellies with Sunday lunches?”

  “Lyyndy! The Amish pray!”

  “Well, Jude Whetstone prays too—and then he does something! He does more than this entire colony does. Papa showed me a clipping where they said Jude was second in command of his squadron and that he felt a personal responsibility to get every one of his pilots back home safely to America. And he has been doing it! How many Americans have the Amish saved lately?”

  Ruth got to her feet. “I can’t listen to this. You’re not sleeping well. You’re not eating well. And now you’re not thinking well. Your words are wild and—and—ungodly, not the language of a Christian. It’s one thing to say them to me. I can forgive you easily enough and forget I ever heard them. But if you talk like this where others hear you—well, beware, my sister, or you may be the next one in the church to be placed under the Meidung. Then what will we do? Please, think about your family a little bit, not just Jude. Think about Mama and Papa. And about me too. What will I do if I can’t speak or sit at a table with my sister? What will happen to the two of us?”

  Lyyndaya stretched out her hands. “I’m sorry,” she began, but Ruth waved her away, tears in the corners of her eyes.

  The two young women stood and headed back along the path to their house, stumbling every third or fourth step. Lyyndaya thought more about what she had said. Yes, she had been forceful. Perhaps too much so. But that was how she felt. Why shouldn’t Amish be using their skills with teams of horses and driving ambulances at the front? Why shouldn’t they train as nurses and physicians and bring healing to the badly wounded? What right did they have to sit back so smugly in Pennsylvania and say they were untainted, while all the time men were dying?

  “Ruth, you go on,” Lyyndaya said. “I want to be alone for a while. I’ll take the path by the railroad home.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  The path she took would come out on a road that wound around back to Paradise. It was longer and would give her more time alone. Back at the house, Mama would go on about all the handsome young men swarming about Emma Zook at church, how lovely all the boys who had come back from the terrible army camp had turned out, that Jude could have been one of them if he hadn’t taken it into his head to run off and join the war just so he could fly a plane. And how Lyyndaya could have a dozen young men at her feet, even steal a few from Emma Zook, if only she would let it be known she was available and had chosen to turn her back on Jude and what he had done, like everyone else had.

  No, she was not ready to listen to that again. She would, however, listen to her father. He had objected to Jude when he first began to fly and now it seemed he went out of his way to show kindness to her and Jude’s father.

  Oh, there is a restlessness in me, Lord. I know it could just be from my own heart and, yes, my own sin, but what if it is not? What if it is from you? How do I know you are not telling me to do something, to try to make a difference when this world is at war? I’m sorry I hurt my sister, but I’m not sorry I said what I said. Why aren’t the Lapp Amish driving ambulances on the front? Why aren’t they putting bandages on wounds? At least Jude is trying to bring some boys back to their mothers. Who are the Amish bringing back to their mothers and fathers and families?

  A whistle blew and brought her out of her prayer. The man driving the locomotive that was hauling freight through the summer fields was sitting on the edge of the open window and waving, a red bandana tied around his throat.

  She smiled and waved back. Mr. Clements—“Cannonball” everyone called him—was in his seventies, but looked no older than fifty. On the few trips she had taken to Philadelphia he had twice been the engineer. One time he had sat and spoken with her at a stop where the locomotive needed to take on water. Mr. Clements had delighted her with the story of how he had driven his first steam engine back in 1869 when he was twenty-three, and supplied her with tales of the Old West and running locomotives through places like Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, and even Dodge City, Kansas.

  She watched now as the train steamed east for Philadelphia and then New York. As she stood still in the August sun, new ideas tumbled into her head just as bright orange butterflies tumbled past to touch down on purple, pink, and crimson flowers. A light breeze brought smoke and cinders her way, but it didn’t bother her. In her mind, she was on the train traveling toward the Atlantic.

  All right, my dear Jude, I am going to do as you are doing. Save lives from death. We will both be in it together, you on your side of the ocean, I on mine.

  She reached the road and began to march along it with the fast stride of someone who has made up their mind about a matter and is determined to do something about it.

  As she walked along lost in her plans, a buggy came along at a good clip, stirring dust and causing birds hunting insects in the ditches to rise in clusters of grey and brown. As it came alongside her the driver reined in the horse.

  “Why, Miss Kurtz,” Pastor Stoltzfus greeted her, actually raising his straw hat from his head, something Lyyndaya had seen few Amish men do. She felt she ought to curtsy in response, as an old-fashioned English girl might, but only inclined her head.

  “Good afternoon, Pastor.”

  “It’s a hot time of the day to be walking.”

  “I was out in the fields and under some shade trees most of the time.”

  “Perhaps you have had your full measure of steps for the day.”

  She laughed. “Perhaps.”

  “May I drop you off anywhere, hm?”

  “Well—” Lyyndaya hesitated. “I thought I might stop by Bishop Zook’s.”

  “I must
go past there.” He extended a hand. “Climb up.”

  Lyyndaya knew the Zook farm was not on Pastor Stoltzfus’s way, but she stepped up into the seat beside him just the same.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “I am happy to rescue you.”

  After a few minutes of quiet, the horse trotting at a steady pace, the pastor asked, “You are going to see Emma, maybe? I know it is none of my business.”

  “Actually, I want to speak with the bishop.”

  “Ja?”

  Lyyndaya smiled at his gentle prodding. “You are one of the pastors. It will come before you soon enough. I would like permission to travel to Philadelphia and offer my services as a volunteer with one of the hospitals to aid those stricken with the influenza. What would you say to that?”

  Pastor Stoltzfus gave a low whistle.

  When he didn’t immediately respond, Lyyndaya decided to practice the short version of her speech on him. “Think how hard the doctors and nurses are working during this influenza epidemic. They must be run off their feet. And think how the poor people are suffering—men and women and children. What would Jesus have us do, Pastor Stoltzfus? Watch from a safe distance? Or express the love of God in real, practical ways? How do you read the Scriptures on this?”

  They traveled another minute before he cleared his throat. “The people will say, How do we know she does not bring this terrible disease to us?”

  “I’ve thought of that. They require people to have certificates of good health from a physician before they can travel on passenger trains now. I could not move back and forth between Philadelphia without such a piece of paper. Dr. Morgan in Paradise could provide it. Wouldn’t that be sufficient to guarantee my good health?”