The Christmas Cradle

by Charlotte Hubbard

  Lena’s heart was racing as she made her way through the last few rows of people. All she could hear was her thundering pulse as she held her mother’s gaze. When she’d reached the outer edge of the crowd, Lena stopped and stared, willing herself not to bawl like a baby. “Mamm, I—I wasn’t sure when I’d ever see you again, and here you are in Willow Ridge!”

  In the blink of an eye her mother was grabbing her, holding her close, exclaiming over Isaiah—all at once. “When I got Miriam’s Christmas card, saying you and Josiah were taking your instruction to join the church,” her mother blurted out, “and when she told me about little Isaiah being born such a perfect baby, well—I couldn’t stay away! I told your dat I’d drive all the way here by myself if he insisted on being a stubborn old stick in the mud!”

  Lena blinked back tears and hugged her mother again. Then she looked at her father, who stood behind Mamm, trying to keep a straight, stoic expression on his face. Was it her imagination, or did Dat seem older and more pinched? “I’m glad you came along,” she told him. “I know I disobeyed you and disappointed you—”

  “Shh!” said the woman behind Lena.

  Josiah leaned closer, his voice low. “Shall we go to the house where we can talk?” he suggested. “It’s right this way.”

  Lena was as grateful for Josiah’s suggestion as she was for the few minutes it took to skirt the edge of the crowd and cut through to the back door of Ben and Miriam’s house. She waved at Officer McClatchey and Sheriff Banks, who were gazing raptly at the costumed Wise Men as they began to sing “We Three Kings.” Her parents raised their eyebrows when Josiah pulled a key from his coat pocket.

  “We’ve had some unfortunate incidents lately,” he explained as they entered the house, “so folks have been encouraged to lock their doors. Ben and Miriam live here, but they’re at the hospital—”

  “Miriam’s having her baby,” Lena jumped in, “and I hope everything’s all right. She was in a bad way when the ambulance took her to the hospital early this morning.”

  Mamm’s brow furrowed. “I was hoping to meet Miriam and Ben, to thank them for taking care of you,” she murmured. She gazed around the kitchen, where Lena had left a lamp burning. “Standing here, I can feel the love in this home. After I read Miriam’s card— and listened to her phone messages again and again,” she admitted, “I couldn’t ignore her point. Jesus was born to save us from our sins, and we in turn must forgive each other the way God has forgiven us.”

  Lena held her breath. While her parents faithfully followed Old Order ways, neither of them was inclined toward discussing their Christian beliefs on an everyday basis. Whatever Miriam had written and said to them had moved them deeply. And isn’t it just like Miriam to contact them on my behalf without making a big deal of it?

  Josiah smiled cautiously. “You have a lot to forgive, considering everything I’ve done these past several months,” he said. “I hope you’ll accept my apologies for interfering with your family, but I—I really do love your Lena and our boy, and we plan to marry on January first. I’ve bought us a farm outside of town. Savilla and I are doing well enough with our cooking at the Sweet Seasons Café across the road to support our family, too.”

  When her mother reached for Isaiah, Lena handed him over. He would be the glue that cemented their new relationship with her parents, just as Miriam had predicted. What a lovely sight it was, watching her mother nuzzle Isaiah’s downy hair and hold him close. “I’ve started up a baking business, too,” Lena said. “Miriam’s been such a help to us, and Ben is a rock of faith. Wonderful examples they are, of how loving Christian couples should live their lives.”

  When an uncomfortable expression crossed her father’s face, Josiah cleared his throat. “Want to go across the street and help me take the meat off my grills, Emory? I’ve been roasting turkeys, pork loins, and briskets for the whole Hooley family as my Christmas gift to them. It’s time I took everything out of the cookers.”

  When her dat smiled, Lena’s heart thrummed with sweet relief. While the pageant and the carols had filled her with a wondrous renewal of faith and love, it was a sign of her father’s forgiveness that he would even consider helping Josiah.

  “You fellows run along,” Mamm said as she headed for the front room. “Isaiah, his mamm, and I have some catching up to do.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Josiah inhaled the brisk night air and sent up thanks to God that this day was ending so much better than it had begun. Lena’s dat had never been a man inclined toward chitchat, but he seemed genuinely pleased to be here in Willow Ridge with his daughter, and sincerely interested in seeing the grills and hearing about the new restaurant venture and the farm.

  “So you found a place near here?” he asked as they made their way around the edge of the crowd. “How’re land prices compared to up our way?”

  Josiah waved again at Officer McClatchey and Sheriff Banks, who were still caught up in the children’s pageant. When he saw Bishop Tom standing near the two lawmen, he decided a detour was in order. “It would’ve been about an even trade, moneywise until you consider that we’ll have a much smaller acreage than my mammi’s now, but a much newer house,” he replied. “This is Bishop Tom Hostetler, who’s to marry Lena and me—and his wife Nazareth, along with her sister Jerusalem and Bishop Vernon Gingerich. Tom, we’ve had quite a nice surprise!” he exclaimed. “Lena’s parents have come, and this is her dat, Emory Esh.”

  Tom’s face lit up, and as the crowd began singing “Joy to the World” with loud exuberance, both bishops reached for Emory’s hand. “Oh, but it’s gut that you folks have made it down to see the kids!” Tom said beneath the singing. “They’ve come a long way in a short time, and we’re mighty pleased that they’re makin’ Willow Ridge their new home.”

  Emory smiled wryly. “Jah, I’ve noticed a few improvements,” he said as he glanced at Josiah. “And you know how it is when the women keep insisting it’s time for a change of attitude—and time to meet the grandchild.”

  Vernon’s eyes twinkled as he laughed. “Were it not for Mary and the baby Jesus, where would any of us be?” he reminded them. “The hand that rocks the cradle has ruled the world for centuries, and I don’t see that changing.”

  “Have you heard any word about Miriam?” Josiah asked beneath the voices around them, raised in song.

  Tom shook his head. “All we can believe is that she’s gettin’ the best of care, and that she’s in God’s hands. I figure to head to the hospital after the crowd’s cleared out.”

  Josiah nodded. “Give her and Ben our best. Emory and I are going over to take Christmas dinner out of the cookers now, so—”

  A loud kaboom made everyone in the crowd suck in their breath and stop singing. Across the road, a huge fireball flared up behind the Sweet Seasons, so bright that Josiah couldn’t look directly at it. Folks in the crowd cried out, and parents grabbed their children.

  “What in the—fire!” Josiah cried out. “One of the grill’s propane tanks must’ve exploded, or—”

  He started to run toward the road, but Bishop Tom and Officer McClatchey both grabbed him. “You don’t want to go anywhere near there, son,” the lawman insisted as he pulled out his cell phone. “If the gas appliances in the café’s kitchen catch fire, you’ll be blown to Kingdom Come. Yeah—” he said into his phone. “We’ve got an explosion and fire in Willow Ridge at the Sweet Seasons Café—natural gas and propane involved,” he added urgently. “Send the fire crew and an ambulance and some deputies for backup. Clyde Banks and I are already here.”

  When Sheriff Banks saw how folks in the crowd were heading toward the cars parked along the side of the road, he hurried in their direction. “Stay right here, folks!” he hollered. “Take cover in the house and the barn!”

  Bishop Tom jogged over to where the kids were huddling with Teacher Alberta and their parents. “Let’s get in the house,” he insisted as he opened the back door. “Nice and calm now, so nobody gets hurt. M
ight be best if local folks go on upstairs to make room for everybody who’s here.”

  “Walk through the kitchen and into the front room,” Vernon reassured the frightened English guests. “We often seat a couple hundred folks here on Sunday, so there’s plenty of space for everyone.”

  Josiah stared in horrified fascination at the blaze but then steered Lena’s dat ahead of him as folks filed inside. He found Lena and her mamm in the front room, huddled with Isaiah between them. Savilla stood nearby, staring out the picture window in disbelief.

  “What happened?” Lena rasped. “We heard a boom and—my first thought was that you and Dat were over there and—oh, but I’m glad you’re here with us, Josiah!”

  As Lena grabbed him so tightly that he gasped, Josiah held her close and let her cry against his chest. People were crowding into the front room, murmuring fearfully, some of them going upstairs with their wide-eyed costumed children. As he watched the fire raging across the road, a horrible idea occurred to him: Had he and Emory gone right over to check his cookers instead of stopping to talk with Bishop Tom, they would have been blown to bits.

  For a moment, Josiah couldn’t think or breathe.

  But what caused this? I checked the propane tanks and all the grills an hour before the pageant, he fretted as several sirens blared in the distance.

  Bishop Tom’s voice rose above the others as he called in from the doorway. “The sheriff wants us to get away from the windows,” he explained. “We’ve got almost everybody inside now, so let’s stay safe. A prayer for our lawmen and firefighters would be a gut idea, too.”

  Seeing how crowded the front room and the kitchen were, Josiah motioned Savilla and Lena’s family down the hall toward the dawdi haus. As they entered the rooms where his sister and Lena had once stayed, he heard the kitchen door close on the other side of the wall. Everyone was inside now.

  The sirens blared and came to a stop in front of the Hooley house. When another explosion rattled the windows, everyone grimaced and got quiet.

  “Sounds like Miriam’s gas appliances just went up,” Josiah murmured. His throat was so tight and dry he could hardly speak as he slung his arms around Lena and his sister. “I can’t think much will be left standing now.”

  A few moments later, Bishop Tom, Nazareth, Jerusalem, and Bishop Vernon joined them in the dawdi haus sitting room. Tom removed his black hat, shaking his head sadly. “This is gonna be a hard piece of news to break to Miriam, when she’s already had such a rough day.”

  “Maybe it would be best to keep this under your hat until you see how she and Ben and the baby are doing,” Savilla suggested. “They’ll have all kinds of questions about what triggered the explosions, and until we know—”

  “Unfortunately, I have an idea who might be behind it,” Tom muttered. “And I hate jumpin’ to that conclusion as much as I detest the devastation we’ve all witnessed on this holiest of nights. At least nobody at the live Nativity was hurt.”

  “It’s another blessing that the pageant was still in progress so people weren’t on the road, getting into their vehicles,” Vernon murmured.

  After they stood in silence for a few moments, Josiah let out a long sigh. “It’s a pretty sure thing that Ben’s smithy—and the apartment upstairs, where Rebecca lives—have been destroyed along with the café,” he murmured. “Not to mention the Schrocks’ quilt shop and all their inventory, and the equipment and furniture in the Sweet Seasons.”

  “And Christmas dinner,” Lena joined in sadly. She eased away from Josiah to take Isaiah from her mamm. The baby was getting fussy, as though he, too, sensed something too horrible for words had just happened.

  In his mind’s eye, Josiah once again saw the ball of flame billowing up from behind the café, and it didn’t take much to imagine a bigger, hotter inferno engulfing the nearby buildings. The other folks in the dawdi haus settled into chairs or perched on the beds. Too nervous to sit, Josiah peered down the hallway. Some of the people in the front room were cross-legged on the floor, while others had scooted the chairs away from the glass to sit in them. A few whispered to each other, but most of the crowd waited in apprehensive silence—until someone upstairs cried out, “Who’s that on the stretcher? They found somebody over there!”

  Unable to endure another moment inside, Josiah slipped out the back door of the dawdi haus. He shook his head as he recalled that Lena had seen a face peering through the nearby window not long ago. Had a propane tank on one of his grills malfunctioned, or had Hiram Knepp tampered with it? Had Knepp somehow gotten over the enclosure’s walls—or had he broken into the Sweet Seasons and accessed the cookers through the kitchen? When Josiah stepped around the end of the house, he saw two huge fire engines pumping white foam over the Sweet Seasons building, while safety-suited firefighters aimed other streams of foam at the area behind it.

  Josiah nipped his lip. The paramedics loaded a stretcher into one of the ambulances, and then the vehicle took off down the county highway with its lights pulsing and its siren slicing through the night. About ten minutes later, the flames were extinguished. The entire area appeared to be coated with steaming white shaving cream.

  Ben’s smithy was an empty shell. The building that had housed the quilt shop and the café had burned to the ground. Only the forge and odd remnants of the stoves and fridges stuck up out of the foam-coated ashes.

  In a matter of minutes, Ben and Miriam Hooley, Naomi Brenneman, and the three Schrock sisters had lost their places of business—and Josiah’s future had gone up in smoke, as well. A sob tore at his throat as he wondered how he would support Lena, his sister, and his son, and how he’d make the monthly loan payment on the farm he’d just bought.

  It was conceivable that the Eshes might take Lena and Isaiah back to Bloomfield once they found out that Josiah’s own stubborn foolishness had been at the heart of this catastrophe. If only he hadn’t agreed to cook for Hiram before he’d visited Higher Ground in person. If only he’d taken Ben’s advice and come to terms with Knepp about staying in Willow Ridge.

  If only you hadn’t spent most of your life believing you were right and everyone else was following stupid rules that didn’t apply to you.

  With a heavy heart and slumped shoulders, Josiah turned away from the scene across the road. Bishop Tom’s black and white cow, the sheep, and the miniature pony were watching him from between the rails of their pens. He noticed that the floodlight from the live Nativity was still pointed upward.

  The star balloon drifted on its long ribbon, shimmering serenely in the night sky.

  Josiah kicked the hay bale where Rachel had sat with Amelia an hour earlier. The whole Christmas story suddenly seemed as fake and meaningless as these props from the kids’ pageant. What did it matter that God’s Son had been born centuries ago? Evil and meanness still ran rampant in the world, and from what Josiah could tell, God wasn’t doing a thing about it. If He rewarded the righteous and the pure, why had Miriam Hooley suffered such agony this morning? And why had she lost the restaurant she’d poured her heart and soul into? Why had Hiram Knepp been allowed to torment so many people who’d not gone along with his wishes?

  Josiah shivered with cold, but he wasn’t ready to go inside. He wasn’t sure he could face Lena and her family—and when he glanced toward the devastation again, he saw Officer McClatchey and Sheriff Banks coming up the Hooleys’ lane. Even in the darkness, their expressions were grim.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “Ben, congratulations! You’ve got a baby girl!”

  Ben stopped staring into the worst cup of coffee he’d ever tried to drink. He’d been so absorbed in his worrisome thoughts about losing Miriam that he’d lost track of the time and the senseless blather playing on the TV. He raised his head and gazed blankly at the man who was approaching him in blue scrubs and odd plastic slippers that matched the puffy shower cap on his head.

  Andy Leitner removed his hat, his smile fading. “Are you all right, Ben?” he murmured. “I thought yo
u’d be a little more excited about the birth of your—”

  “Is Miriam alive?” Ben rasped. “If she didn’t make it through the delivery, I don’t know how I can possibly go on—”

  “Did you hear me?” Andy insisted in a low voice. He grasped Ben’s shoulders and gazed directly into his eyes. “You have a perfect baby girl. Miriam’s all sewn up and she’ll be fine. After we got her stabilized, she gave the delivery everything she had, but we finally did a C-section. As the hours went by, her blood pressure and sugar weren’t cooperating and she was losing her strength.” Andy smiled kindly. “I sent nurses out here a couple of times to keep you informed, but I guess you were so preoccupied you didn’t grasp what they were saying.”

  Light began to dawn in Ben’s frightened mind. He exhaled, allowing himself to believe that his wife had survived—and that she’d borne him a daughter. “Don’t mind me,” he said, shaking his head to clear it. “I was all alone out here, and I’ve never been in a hospital before, and—and I guess I lost my faith for a bit.” He glanced at the clock on the wall. “It’s only eight o’clock? Seems like I’ve been goin’ through my own little hell for a lot longer than that today.”

  Andy’s eyebrows rose. “You’ve never been in a hospital?”

  “Nope. And I thank God I’ve had no reason to be.” Ben sucked in a long breath as happier thoughts began to dance in his mind. “It’s a girl? And she’s healthy?”

  “She’s a beauty,” Andy replied with a grin. “Ten pounds, three ounces. Strong set of lungs on her, too.”

  Ben let out a nervous but ecstatic laugh. “Ten pounds? No wonder Miriam felt bigger than a barn this past month. I—can I see them?”