Mary's Home

by Jerry S. Eicher

  “Ah…you don’t know what you’re missing,” Josiah told him. “But that leaves more for me, I guess.”

  “Daett likes shoofly pie.” Gerald held open the front door. “I guess he remembers Lancaster better than I do.”

  Josiah laughed. “Can’t live without shoofly pie. Or marry a frau who doesn’t know how to make shoofly pies.”

  Gerald joined in Josiah’s laugher. “I’ll be sure to check out her pecan pie-making abilities when I find the perfect girl.”

  “Oh, she’ll know how to make pecan pie if she’s perfect,” Josiah assured him. “Otherwise she wouldn’t be perfect for you.”

  “Now that’s a thought.” Gerald closed the door behind him. “What’s in your bag, Mary? Any dating lessons for me in there?”

  Josiah chuckled but didn’t answer while Mary made a beeline for the kitchen. Josiah must be teasing about matching a woman with a man’s pie tastes. Surely he wouldn’t have rejected her if her shoofly making abilities had been horrible. Mary pushed the thought away as Gerald’s footsteps faded up the stairs. She should have invited Gerald to sit at the table and eat a piece of pie with them, but she wanted every moment possible alone with Josiah. He would leave the house tonight and travel back tomorrow by the Greyhound bus to Lancaster. Many weeks would pass before his return.

  A soft touch on Mary’s shoulder turned her around, and she melted into Josiah’s arms. She had not dared before, but neither had he offered her the opportunity. He held her close while she tried to breathe evenly. Had their relationship progressed to a proposal yet? Perhaps tonight?

  She pulled away to slide pieces of shoofly pie onto plates. He bent low to take a deep breath over them. “Perfect as always,” he said. “And so are you.”

  Mary ducked her head. She should change the subject. “Where is the package?” she asked. “I should take a better look at your gifts now that we are inside in the light.”

  He pulled her close again. “You can look later. I want to be with you right now.”

  “And eat shoofly?” she teased.

  He grinned. “Yah. A man must eat.” He let go to admire the pieces of shoofly pie. “How many can I have?”

  “The whole pie if you wish.”

  “I might just take you up on the offer.”

  Mary filled glasses of milk, and Josiah picked up their plates to lead the way back to the living room. He seated himself on the couch and motioned for her to sit beside him. She handed him a glass of milk, and his fingers lingered on hers. A smile spread across his whole face. “You have no idea how many times I think about this moment when I am away from you. Always it seems so far in the future, and yet now here we are, you and I, alone and enjoying each other’s company. Do you know how much these visits mean to me, Mary?”

  She seated herself and didn’t answer.

  He continued undeterred. “I have never spent much time planning my life. Did you know that?”

  He glanced at her, and she forced a smile. “I never thought about the question.”

  “I don’t,” he stated. “I just live life as it’s given to me. Never did I imagine I would find you here in the valley when I visited almost a year ago, or think I would spend my time writing letters to a girl. Letter writing certainly wasn’t in my plans…not that I had any, but just saying. Now I’m enjoying myself immensely. Well, certain moments at least. I doubt if any man is happy writing letters for very long.” He gave a little laugh.

  Mary clasped and unclasped her hands. “You could write less, Josiah. I’m not trying to be a burden, although I would miss your letters. You bless and inspire me. I doubt if you know how much.”

  His smile didn’t dim. “I’m just rambling, sweetheart. I like what life has given me, and I thank the Lord often for the gift I found in the valley. You are a precious girl, Mary. Any man in the community would count himself blessed to call you his beloved.”

  Mary tried to breathe. Tears swam in her eyes, and she guessed her face must be burning brighter than the noonday sun.

  “I have wanted to ask you for some time, Mary.” He set down his pie to take her hand. “I even thought to write you the question, but that would have spoiled so much—this moment, this preciousness, this sweetness in your presence. Letters just don’t carry all of that, so I waited until I could make the trip again.”

  “Yah?” Mary managed.

  He touched her cheek with his hand. “I said that in a rambling way, because that’s how I found you, Mary. I don’t regret one second or one turn in the road. You are very dear to me. Would you marry me, sweetheart?”

  The room spun in circles, and then Josiah’s blue eyes finally filled Mary’s vision.

  “Would you?” He moved closer.

  “Yah,” she whispered. “Oh, Josiah, you don’t know how I have longed for this time to come.”

  “Really?” A pleased look filled his face. “I do love you, Mary.”

  “And I adore you, Josiah. I love you with my whole heart, with everything in me. Perhaps too much even, but how can I ever love you enough? I comfort myself with that thought. Oh, Josiah! To be your frau! That would be such an honor, such a privilege, such—”

  His face came closer, and he gathered her in his arms. “Hush, sweetheart. Soon you will be my frau,” he whispered into her ear. Then his lips found hers, and she clung to him.

  “Ah…what a girl. Your kisses are much better than I imagined.”

  She reached for him again, and he didn’t resist as she snuggled against his chest. “I will miss you, Josiah, so much more now that we are promised to each other.”

  He grinned. “Maybe we should begin to plan our wedding next year.”

  “Next year!” Mary gulped. “I was hoping that…” She hadn’t known Josiah would propose tonight, but he had to know how much she had longed for this hour to arrive.

  “I have to save up for a farm,” he said. He reached for his piece of shoofly pie. “That’s what Daett told me. I don’t plan things, but Daett’s the businessman, and if I want his help I’d best listen. Surely we can wait until next year’s wedding season? Maybe the first Thursday in November?”

  Mary gathered herself together. “Yah, of course we can wait. You are worth the wait, Josiah. So…whatever you say. I know you’re right.”

  He swallowed his bite of shoofly pie before he answered. “I love you, Mary. So very, very much. You are so sweet.”

  FIVE

  With a blast of black smoke from its rusted muffler, the blue-and-white striped bus maneuvered around a pile of garbage in the street. Willard Gabert paused at the corner near a tumbledown shanty and squinted his eyes in the late afternoon sun. In front of him a boy, scrawny and thin, stumbled into the refuse with a sharp twist and a somersault. The boy must have been ejected from the bus, and not from the passenger door.

  Willard moved closer. Another homeless child has landed in Nairobi, he thought to himself. Nairobi was considered the land of Eden in the disenfranchised countryside. It was a mistaken view, but one held by many. “Death trap” was a more apt description for the city.

  Willard knelt beside the child and took his hand. There was a pulse. Willard was not a medical doctor, but he knew to do that much. He had come to Kenya a year ago as a minister of souls, even while his own bled. The pain subsided at moments like this, when he saw the reason he had come, when he touched the pain of others whose injuries were deeper than his own agony.

  He had come from America, a society Kenya sought to emulate. Many people came to Nairobi with dreams that usually went unfulfilled. At worst, lives were destroyed.

  “Hello,” Willard called to the fallen child. “Can you speak English?”

  There was no answer. He should carry the child to the mission center some ten blocks away. In America you would dial 911 and wait until help arrived, but here, Willard was the help—a disturbing thought when prayer and a heart to serve were usually the best things he had to offer. Tambala, the nurse and midwife he had hired, would do what she could fo
r the boy, but funds were limited at present.

  Carlene’s father, Alfred, was the senior pastor at Lighthouse Baptist Church back in New York. The man had connections everywhere, but his planned funding of the mission had dried up with the cancellation of his daughter’s marriage. Willard was on his own except for his grandmother’s prayers. The Lord seemed distant at times, but Grandma had a warmth and faith that reached all the way across the Atlantic.

  “Be strong and of good courage, Willard,” her email had declared last week, echoing the familiar words of his youth. Grandma had learned to use email in her old age, mostly to communicate with him. She had other grandchildren, but her mastery of the web’s secrets had coincided with his departure for Kenya. She had begun her effort soon after Carlene had rejected Willard. Grandma had known that he would answer the call of missions, even with a broken heart.

  “The Lord will give you healing, son,” she had told him. “Just follow Him when the storm blows its hardest. The waves cannot overflow His love for you.”

  He had gulped down the pain, smiled, and continued with his plans, but the void had remained. He and Carlene had dreamed together and looked into the future. Carlene’s father had a heart for missions, a passion perhaps greater than Willard’s own. Together they would have gone far. Alone, Willard placed one foot in front of the other and hoped he would have the strength to finish each day.

  Before him in the dirt of the street, the child had begun to stir. “Hello?” Willard said. “How badly does it hurt?”

  A soft groan was the only answer. Willard moved the boy’s arm slightly higher. No protest came. He did the same with the other arm, and both legs. The boy let out another groan, but apparently he felt no sharp pains. Likely just bruises that made his whole body ache.

  Willard understood. Perhaps soon his own pain would lessen and eventually disappear. But how could he forget Carlene? He guessed she was engaged again. No one had told him as much, but the silence spoke clearly enough—and he knew her well. She would not be single for long. Not such a woman. A treasure had slipped from his hand to another’s and left him destitute.

  Carlene should be here with her arms around him, her face upturned and smiling brightly. The woman was lovely beyond belief. She likely now smiled into the face of another, a man more worthy than Willard. Perhaps a business executive, someone on the upward climb of the corporate ladder.

  Willard placed his arm under the child and gently lifted him. The boy’s dust-encrusted head rested softly against his shoulder. Willard closed his eyes and pressed onward. He stumbled over the garbage in the street and caught himself with only a slight jolt to the injured child. Carlene had been spared the slums, the despair that rose from the streets, the hopelessness that haunted many faces. He would have brought her here, where she would have suffered with him. Maybe the Lord had been right to spare Carlene from their work. Willard was destined to walk alone, and somehow his heart would adjust.

  He navigated the turn of the street and avoided a head-on collision with an old man, whose burlap bag dangled over his shoulder.

  “Excuse me,” Willard muttered, but the courtesy was not expected.

  The man barely paused in his shuffle down the street. A block later Willard heard a muffled cry behind him, and he turned, the boy still cradled in his arms. Three young boys had assaulted the old man and thrown him to the street. The gang was in the process of shaking the bag’s contents into the surrounding garbage, and two of the boys were on their knees, rifling through the debris. They came up with something and held the object aloft. With cries of delight, they vanished into a side street.

  Willard retraced his steps and laid down the injured boy. The old man was already on his knees.

  Willard held out his hand. “Are you okay?”

  A grunt was the only answer. The old man surveyed the strewn contents for a second before bending over to pick up the bag. He resumed his shuffle down the street, hopelessness written large on his face. What had been in the bag? Perhaps a half-eaten piece of beef scavenged from a restaurant downtown, or nothing more than a head of rotten lettuce that would stave off hunger for a few hours. Healthy boys had attacked him—the ones who kept the gang going before succumbing to the terror of the streets. Eventually, those boys might find themselves addicted to sniffing poisonous glue bottles, or worse. The cruelty of the slums in particular drove most to seek relief from a life they could not change.

  Willard gathered the abandoned boy in his arms again. What was the use? He struggled against impossible odds. He sought to reach human varmints, the hated of the hated, but no one encouraged Willard’s effort. Who was to blame for the city’s problems? Everyone and no one at the same time. America’s opulence, Africa’s poverty, the missionaries’ intentions… Maybe this whole mess should be left alone? That would leave Kenya to its own devices, and America to its abundance. Yet he had come, and he would stay. Not because he had failed back home, but because his heart called him. He would do what could be done or die trying.

  The mission was located in a calmer district, in an area of town that would provide safety and quiet to the children and the missionaries. It took a bit of time for Willard to make the trek as he gently carried the injured boy. He turned the last corner and approached the double doors of the mission that opened directly into the street. These buildings had been here when he arrived, a month before the last missionaries departed. Rose and Donald Petersheim, a young American couple, had finished their two years of service. Rose and Donald had not asked for a detailed explanation when Willard had shown up alone, without Carlene. Their smiles were compassionate.

  Can you stay another year? he had almost asked, but the sadness in their eyes restrained him. They appeared weary and broken, casualties of the city’s corruption.

  Willard crossed the front lawn and entered the double doors of the mission, calling out, “Tambala. Can you come?” He deposited the boy on the low table in the living room and was propping up the boy’s head with a blanket when the elderly woman entered.

  “Willard!” she scolded. “You are ruining my best blanket.”

  “Can you see to the boy? See what is wrong with him?”

  Tambala continued her scolding even as she obeyed. “You cannot save the whole city, Willard. This one is almost dead. Why didn’t you leave him where you found him? They are best dead anyway! Don’t you know that by now?”

  Willard ignored her words. “How badly is he hurt?”

  “Nothing broken,” Tambala confirmed. “He may have internal injuries. How was he injured? Beaten up by the others?”

  “He let go from the bus chassis, I guess,” Willard responded. “I didn’t see the whole incident, but he came out from under the vehicle.”

  Tambala clucked her tongue. “Then he was half dead already. They ride those buses in from hundreds of miles out. You know that. And you can’t make him stay here.”

  “We can try.” Willard forced a smile. “Kindness and godly teaching can change anyone if they will open their hearts and believe.”

  Tambala snorted in disgust. “Our whole country rattles on and on about faith. Believe in American values, believe in prosperity, believe the Lord, and He will bless you. What a lie this is. We die and we live for reasons we cannot understand. That’s the truth, Willard.”

  He closed his eyes and rested his hands on the table. He missed Carlene the most in moments like these. He missed her support, her words of faith in the darkest hours, when evil appeared triumphant.

  “I will clean him the best I can,” Willard said. “We will see where we go from there.”

  “I know you barely have the funds to keep this place open,” Tambala continued. “You need to think about yourself.”

  Willard reached for the boy again, but she shooed him away. “I will clean him.” Her face softened. “You do enough.”

  He gave in, his body weary. Was his faith failing him? With faith a man could outlast any storm. How Tambala knew about the mission’s financial
condition, he wasn’t sure. Maybe such things were obvious from his efforts to live on a tight budget. Then again, didn’t all missionaries live on lean budgets? He would have to return stateside eventually to build up his base of support. He should have done more fund-raising before making the trip over, but there hadn’t been the time. Plus, his heart had failed him. That was his problem—his heart. With a broken heart, a man died, even if he had the faith to move mountains.

  Willard filled a bowl of water and followed Tambala into the bedroom, where she laid the boy on the floor. The simplest accommodation in this house was luxurious compared to life on the street.

  She glanced at the bowl of water and stood to retrieve two washcloths. “You can help,” she told him, handing him a cloth.

  Willard knelt and began to wash the child’s callused feet. Broken skin ran along his soles, and crusted blood filled the wounds. Willard wet his cloth and dripped the water over the foot before touching the skin. Several burns the size of quarters appeared beneath the dirt. The boy must have touched the bus’s muffler on the long ride into town. Many of them died on the trip, so this was a lucky one.

  Tears filled Willard’s eyes as he cleaned between the boy’s toes. How different the standards were in Kenya. He had come to another world, but love worked here the same as it did at home. Was not his mission called Agape Outreach? He had to believe that much.

  SIX

  Betsy awakened early on Monday morning, with the stillness of the spring night heavy on the old house. Beyond the dark blue drapes, faint streaks of light painted the sky. Dawn must be an hour or so away. She felt something wasn’t right in the house, but what was new about that feeling? Most things about Amish life were troublesome to her. Betsy sighed and sat up in bed. For once she was right and wouldn’t have to wait for some future event to prove her point. Josiah had left early last evening after bringing Mary home from the hymn singing. She hadn’t attended, mostly because she had stayed out late on Saturday night and needed to catch up on her sleep. That had become her pattern of late. Mary moved toward her anticipated wedding date, while Betsy drifted ever closer to jumping the fence. She’d have to wait for her twenty-first birthday to make the final choice. So dictated Amish tradition, and she would give Mamm and Daett that much respect. Her leaving would bring enough sorrow to their hearts without an open display of rebellion.