by Murray Pura
There were nineteen letters. After they were done Lyyndaya lay down in the dark alone while her mother and father and Ruth went downstairs to eat supper with the rest of the family. For the longest time she could not close her eyes or sleep. The window faced east, and she watched a small moon rise and scatter drops of silver on the walls and across her bed. She thought of Naomi in the Bible telling others to call her by the name Mara, because God had made her life bitter, but she realized she didn’t feel that way. Millions had lost their sons and husbands and fiancés to the war. Millions had lost their families to the Spanish flu. She was just one among many who were grieving. The letters had filled her to the brim with his love for her. Thank God she had known him, thank God he had written, thank God he had said the things he had said.
Before the moon slipped out of the window frame she prayed a prayer of thanks, despite the ache that went through her whole being. She committed Jude’s soul into the hands of the loving and merciful God. Softly, under her breath, she sang a hymn the English liked, one the Lapp Amish never sang at church, the one called “Amazing Grace.” The non-German words sounded strange on her tongue, but the thoughts the writer expressed, and the melody, comforted her. When there were only stars in the window she finally closed her eyes and slept, the letters carefully folded under her pillow.
TWENTY-THREE
May I see your health certificate, please?”
Lyyndaya presented the conductor with the document Dr. Morgan had signed. He nodded and stepped aside to let her board the train. Behind her, a woman protested.
“What’s this? The Spanish flu ended months ago.”
“No, ma’am,” responded the conductor. “We have another outbreak this January and it’s particularly bad in Philadelphia.”
“How can that be?”
“I expect it’s the soldiers returning home now the war’s over. A lot of them could be bringing it with them from Europe. May I see your certificate?”
The woman grew more indignant. She put her hands on her hips and her face reddened in anger. “I need no certificate! My husband has been home for well over a week now, thank you very much. He has no symptoms and neither do I!”
“That’s wonderful. Now if you’ll get a licensed physician to attest to that in writing and fill out one of those medical slips—”
“I’ll do no such thing. Anyone can see I’m fit as a horse. You let me on board, sir. I have important business in Philadelphia.”
“Sorry, ma’am. It wouldn’t be fair to the other travelers. You could be fit at the depot here and be dead on us by lunch.”
The woman’s voice rose. “I have no intention of dropping dead on anyone by lunch. I have too much to do. If you won’t let me on board I’ll find a police officer or introduce you to my attorney, Mr. Eldon Snikkitt…”
Lyyndaya found a seat and settled in. She watched two men shovel snow off the platform, their breath coming in puffs of white. Near them a man and wife and four children were making no effort to board. They must have been waiting for the train that went to Pittsburgh or some other connection. All of them wore white medical masks over their noses and mouths.
I don’t think it will help. But you might as well try.
Ever since the news about Jude, she had been spending each week volunteering at one of the large hospitals in Philadelphia, with the blessing of the Amish leadership. Every Monday she took the train into the city and on Friday night she returned to her family in Paradise. Now and then the influenza reasserted itself in Lancaster County, but the cases were infrequent and Dr. Morgan didn’t require her assistance. In fact, Ruth was working closely with the doctor now and that was the only nursing help he seemed to need.
Philadelphia was another story. One outbreak of the flu would scarcely die out before another would take its place. The conductor may have been right. Since soldiers had begun returning to Pennsylvania in late November and December, Lyyndaya had noticed a surge in the number of cases. There had been weeks when there were so many dead that volunteers had been forced to stack them like logs in the hallway outside of the hospital’s morgue. There was nowhere to put them but in the ground, and she had been witness to more than one mass burial. Many times she had said to herself, This is what I read in the newspapers about the war. These are the deaths beyond counting in the trenches.
The whistle blew. The woman who had argued with the conductor had not made it on board. Lyyndaya glanced back through the window and saw that she had managed to find a policeman, but the officer, who was wearing one of the medical masks, was leading her away rather than insisting she be allowed to board. They pulled out of the station and were soon lumbering through the January countryside of snow and brown grass. Lyyndaya closed her eyes and leaned her head for a moment against the ice-cold of her window.
Everything is stiff and dead. Just like me.
Near the end of December an army car had brought a box of Jude’s personal items to his father—a Bible, pens and paper, socks and shoes and clothing, a spare uniform, a toothbrush, the wooden model of the Flyer. Mr. Whetstone had found the letters his son had received from Lynndaya and had passed them on to her, along with a leather flying jacket. She never wore the jacket, but she kept it in the closet in her room. Around the same time a letter had come from an Amish woman who lived at Bird-in-Hand. She told Lyyndaya that Jude had written her a nice note after locating her brother Matt at an aerodrome in France. She knew Lyyndaya couldn’t receive letters from Jude, just as she couldn’t receive them from Matt, but she wanted to tell her that Jude had sounded cheerful and had lifted a stone from her heart with his good news about her brother who, thank God, had survived the war.
A final letter from Jude had shown up at the post office January fourth. Edward, who had taken every opportunity to remind her about his prophetic abilities since the war had ended on November eleventh, handed it to her in silence. Lyyndaya asked Ruth to sit with her while she read it through, something that was far from easy. The letter was short and had been written the day his plane went down. The ending broke her heart.
You know, I really do love you. Whenever you get this, whenever you read this, please take it to heart as one of the truest things I have ever said. You mean the world to me. Now I am heading into the sky and wish you were in that crazy small cockpit with me. Christ bless you forever, Lyyndy.
In Philadelphia, a horse-drawn cab took her to the home of Mrs. Henrietta Thorndike, who billeted several of the young women from out of town who were volunteering at the hospital during the crisis. A wealthy widow whose husband had invested in the Pennsylvania railroads but had died in the summer during the first flu outbreak, Mrs. Thorndike wouldn’t accept any payment for food or rent. It was her way, she told Lyyndaya, of helping others work against the disease that had taken her husband’s life.
“It’s my Christian duty,” she said. “You, an Amish woman, must appreciate that.”
“Of course I do,” Lyyndaya had replied. “I suppose, Mrs. Thorndike, you could say the same thing about me.”
The older woman’s eyes softened. “Did you lose someone to this pestilence, my dear?”
“I—lost someone I cared about very much—to the war.” Lyyndaya still found it difficult to talk about. “Perhaps, like you, I wish to save as many lives as I can. Whether they are civilians or soldiers. There has already been enough death.”
Several times over the fall and winter Mrs. Thorndike had sat down and patiently drawn out of Lyyndaya the story of herself and Jude. The shunning had angered her, Jude’s self-sacrifice in France for the life of one of his pilots had caused her to weep, a China teacup trembling in her fingers. Now and then both women would, by common consent, agree to pray together. Lyyndaya admitted to herself that their moments of prayer were one of the few things that gave her any lasting comfort.
“I am a good Episcopalian,” Mrs. Thorndike had pointed out, “and you have been raised Amish in Lancaster County. But our Lord God takes no note of such things when it c
omes to prayer and worship. We are the same in his eyes. And he treats us the same.”
At the Thorndike house Lyyndaya changed into her work clothing—a dark dress and apron that wouldn’t show the blood, a black prayer covering, her most comfortable shoes. Then a cab took her to the hospital. Sometimes she shared the ride with one or more of the other young women staying at Mrs. Thorndike’s. They were never charged cab fee from the train station or to and from the hospital. One young cabbie with a small black mustache spoke for his fellows—“We knows what you’re doin’ for our people and we thank you for it. One day it could be one of us or one of our own loved ones we’re countin’ on you to save. This we’re doin’ for you here is a small thing, a very small thing.”
Mondays were difficult. Patients Lyyndaya had been caring for and had left regaining their health on a Friday were often dead and buried by the time she returned. This Monday was no different. Old faces had vanished and new ones had taken their place. Shar Hayden, one of the young women who boarded at Mrs. Thorndike’s, handed her a basin of cool water and a stack of clean cloths as she appeared at her usual ward.
“Here, Fritzie,” she greeted Lyyndaya. “There are some new soldier boys at the end of the hall. You like soldier boys, don’t you? So this is right up your alley.”
Lyyndaya had long ago learned to ignore Shar’s jibes at her German accent. “Who are they?”
“I don’t know.” She tugged a folded sheet of paper from a dress pocket. “Timmy Cameron. Ross Campbell. Jules Witsun. Sam Irving. Sorry. None of your German boys to fuss over.”
“Do they have battle wounds?”
“I really don’t know. Maybe the Kaiser missed these ones. Dr. Levy thought they might be exhibiting some symptoms. The last room. All crammed in together.”
“But the last room is so tiny!”
Shar shrugged and hurried off. “All crammed in together. No mattresses. Guess they aren’t war heroes.”
“Every man who suffered through that terrible war in Europe is a hero,” Lyyndaya said to Shar’s retreating back.
“Especially the Huns?”
Lyyndaya made her way in the opposite direction, passing nurses and orderlies and two men in masks who were carrying a dead soldier, still in uniform, out a side door. A gust of January air made her take in her breath sharply. She glanced through the doorway and saw a pile of bodies that had been stacked in the snow. One of the men coming back in saw the look on her face and snapped, “It’s as good as a morgue. Don’t worry, they don’t feel anything.”
Lyyndaya prayed for the man, who looked exhausted and ill himself, then went to the end of the hall to what had once been a storage room for buckets and mops and such. The four men were shoulder to shoulder, head to head, each with only a woolen blanket beneath them and the cold bare floor, and another on top. A couple of them looked up when she opened the door. One man grinned.
“Hey, boys. Wake up. This nurse is pretty. Not like the other.”
Another man craned his neck. “Yeah, but she looks religious.”
“She ain’t religious. You ain’t religious, are you, honey?”
Lyyndaya smiled and knelt by him. “I’m a Christian. Just like you. Yes?”
The man stared at her as she felt his forehead. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“You’re pretty warm. Sam?”
“Ross.”
“I’m Sam,” said the man lying next to Ross.
Lyyndaya began to wipe Ross’s face and neck. “How does that feel?”
“Very nice.” Ross had suddenly become polite.
“All of you could use shaves.”
“It was such a shambles crossing the Channel,” grumbled Ross, “and no better when we got back to England. I started getting the aches and chills and my unit embarked for the States while I was laid up. Lost my shaving kit. The four of us here are some of the odds and ends that got packed into the same steamer. I kept telling them I was better, but they drove me here anyway. Under guard.”
“Where’s home, Ross?”
“Idaho.”
“Well, you’ll need to be fit for a long train ride like that. Better let us keep an eye on you for a few days.”
“In a few days we’ll probably be dead. There’re more sick people in Philadelphia than there were in the trenches. Excuse me for saying so, but this hospital of yours is like a graveyard.”
“That’s why you are isolated here in one of our finest rooms. To keep the germs far away.” She wrung out her cloth and turned to the other man. “How about you, Sam? Any aches? Trouble breathing? Do you have a cough?”
“You sound like a doctor.”
She laughed. “Oh, I can’t help that. I spend so much time with them.” She felt the side of his face. “You don’t seem to have a fever.”
“I’m okay. Like Ross says, I was feelin’ real lousy in France so they left me behind. That was weeks ago. If I’d had the flu I’d be dead by now, wouldn’t I?”
Lyyndaya didn’t answer him. “What about the other two?”
“Don’t know them,” said Ross.
Lyyndaya glanced over at the sleeping men. Their backs were to her. She shook her head. “I can’t stand the sight of your beards. Heaven knows what is living in them. Will you let me take them off?”
“Fine with me,” said Ross. “I haven’t had a woman shave my face in my entire life.”
Lyyndaya patted him on the arm and stood up. “So then this will be a late Christmas present. Let me fetch a razor and some shaving soap.”
How strange that an Amish woman should be in this setting. But you would have me here, wouldn’t you, Lord? I do this for you, I do it for these poor men and for their families who wait for them at home—I do it for you, Jude, for you were one of them, you suffered, and you tried to give lives back, not take them away.
She returned bearing a mug, a cake of soap, scissors, and a brush in one hand, and a razor in the other. When she walked in, one of the men who had been sleeping was up on his feet facing her. It was heartbreaking to see him like that, so thin, barely standing really, almost ready to fall over, hair straggling over his face and in his eyes.
“Oh,” she said. “I don’t think you’re quite well enough to be up and around.”
But the man remained on his feet and didn’t speak. Lyyndaya looked for help from the others.
“Why is he on his feet? He could hurt himself.”
Ross was propped up on an elbow. “I don’t know. He stood up right after you left the room. Then he started using your name. I guess it’s your name.”
She was startled. “How could he know my name?”
Ross shrugged. “He keeps saying something. Maybe it’s another word. Maybe it’s another person. Maybe he’s got the fever.”
“Len—Lin—La,” tried Sam. “Something like that.”
For the first time Lyyndaya looked closely at the man standing in front of her. Past the bushy beard and long hair his eyes pulled her in. The mug dropped from her fingers and broke.
“No!” she said.
The man tried to take a step, but almost collapsed. He steadied himself. He didn’t take his eyes off her.
“Lyyn…daya,” he said in a voice hardly stronger than a whisper.
“Oh, mein Gott!” she cried out. “Oh, mein Gott in Himmel!”
Everything else tumbled from her hands. She rushed to the man and held him tightly in her arms so he couldn’t fall. Her hands were pushing the beard back from his face and brushing the hair out of his eyes in a frantic way, as if both were on fire. Then she began to cry and laugh and kiss his cheeks, his eyebrows, his forehead, holding him with so much strength she thought she might be hurting him, but she couldn’t hold back, couldn’t stop herself, all the time calling out to God in Pennsylvania Dutch.
The other three men looked at one another. Finally Ross shook his head and raised his eyebrows.
“I guess one of us should have tried to stand up,” he said.
TWENTY-FOUR
T
ake me home, he had said to her. Take me home to my father, to my people. After three more days under observation he was declared symptom-free and safe to travel by one of the doctors. Lyyndaya shaved off his beard, cut his hair, and had one of the orderlies give him a thorough bath. Then she dressed him in new clothes, plain clothes, which she had purchased at one of the downtown shops. She had health certificates for both of them and white masks she insisted they wear.
“I feel like a train robber,” he mumbled.
“There is nothing on a train to Lancaster County to steal,” she said with a smile, her arm through his.
“You’re not acting very Amish.”
“Why? Because I’m touching you?” She hugged him until his back popped. “I’m never going to let you go again. God does not often give a person miracles like this more than once in a lifetime.”
More than once before he was released from the hospital she had told him, I do not understand, I do not understand.
And every time he had patiently told her his story again, sometimes adding new details or dropping old ones.
“I got out of the wreckage. No matter what they tell you, the German soldiers did not shoot at me. I know some of them saw me climb free and crawl away and yet they didn’t raise their rifles. My head was throbbing and my mouth was full of blood and I was disoriented. Which way was east? Which west? I was certain I was making my way toward the Allied lines, but I kept running into heavier and heavier concentrations of German troops. Finally I was worn out, and I found an abandoned trench, where I kept out of sight. There were dead men near me, and I slept among them so I would look dead too. But few troops were near as night fell and I doubt anyone looked while I slept.
“The next day I didn’t move. But that night I crawled toward a cluster of farmhouses and hid in a barn. The owners found me, but you must have been praying a great deal. This family had no love for the Kaiser and his army. They fed me, cleaned my wounds, put me in a spare bed, and it was there I remained until the Armistice. Of course everything on the German side of the lines was in chaos by then. Soldiers were even more trigger-happy. So I stayed put another week and then said goodbye—not easily done, they had saved my life—and made my way back the few miles to the lines. I wanted to get to my aerodrome, but the French picked me up and took me to Toul. I wound up all the way north at the Marne and Chateau Thierry. They dropped me off with the Americans there.