A Quilt for Jenna

by Patrick E. Craig

  I sure didn’t think it would take this long or that the storm would get so bad. Maybe I should have walked back to the county highway and waited for a car to pass.

  Soon Henry had to force his way through drifts as the road was completely covered with snow. His eyes began playing tricks on him. Everything was so white, Henry realized he couldn’t tell where he was going. He tried to see through the whiteout to find some familiar landmark but to no avail.

  Suddenly he slipped and felt himself sliding into a shallow ditch. He clambered out the other side onto what looked like a lane lined with trees. He could see the branches of the closest trees on either side of him waving wildly in the wind. He began to walk slowly down the lane.

  In a few minutes a wooden post with a mailbox on it appeared out of the storm, and he saw the name Knepp on the side.

  Mark Knepp’s place! I must have walked straight across the meadow without even realizing I was off the pavement.

  Mark Knepp was an old widower. He had a phone and could call for help. That was Henry’s only hope. He was losing feeling in his hands and feet.

  He stumbled to where he thought the Knepp driveway should be. If I remember, the mailbox was out on the lane, and the driveway to the house was down a ways on the right side.

  Henry looked for a light or a shed or anything that would tell him he was close to the house. He stumbled along, panic rising in his chest.

  Just then he saw something out of the corner of his eye. It was a tree limb, torn loose by the wind and falling directly at him. Before he could duck, the limb struck him squarely on the side of his head. Henry crumpled into the snow like a polled ox and slipped into darkness as the snow piled up around him.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Summer Dreams

  JERUSHA WAS WORRIED. Henry had been gone a long time, and it was beginning to get dark. The wind was piling snow up against the doors of the car. Jerusha rummaged around in her bag to find the old watch Reuben had given her. She pulled it out and opened the case. In the dim light she could see it was 4:30.

  Jerusha tried to wrap the blanket tighter around her. It was an old blanket that said U-Haul on it in big letters, and it was speckled with large grease spots, but Jerusha folded it and pushed it down under both sides of her. That seemed to keep the cold out a little better. Then she saw a pile of old newspapers on the floorboard behind the front seat. She’d heard of homeless men covering themselves with newspaper when they slept on park benches, so she unfolded several of the papers and spread them over her. As she settled down on the backseat she felt herself begin to warm against the cold.

  Jerusha picked up the box that held her quilt and started to put it on the front seat of the car. Then she paused and opened the box. The quilt lay folded and wrapped in tissue paper. Carefully she pulled it open a little so she could look at it again. Even in the dim light she could see her craftsmanship in every stitch, the beauty of the design, and the shimmer of the silken rose. Her grandmother’s words came back to her.

  “Every trial we have in our life is a fire that burns away the things of this world and purifies our faith, so that when Jesus returns He will find a faithful people who have placed all their trust in Him and worship nothing but Him.”

  Is this the trial You have for me? If it is, why is it so long? Grandmother... Jenna...Reuben...and now I’m trapped in this car—

  The thought hit her like a sledgehammer.

  I might die here! Is that what You are going to burn away with my trials? My life? Does my life mean nothing to You?

  Sobered, she closed the box and set it on the front seat. She put her bag under her head as a pillow and stretched out on the backseat. With a little bit of shuffling and spreading the layers of paper, she found that she was fairly comfortable. She closed her eyes and tried to rest, but thoughts of Reuben and Jenna began to flood her mind. She saw her little girl snuggled in Reuben’s arms as the family sat in front of a fire on a long winter night. Memories of spring days came to her, the three of them sitting together, listening in wonder to the songs of the birds in the trees and drinking in the lushness of the earth waking from a long winter’s sleep. Reuben’s eyes, bold and stern yet with that secret smile always hidden behind them, and Jenna’s little voice whispering those precious words, “I love you, Mama...” All these things haunted Jerusha as she lay in the back of the car.

  Why do You take away the people I love most?

  A knot began to form in her stomach, a pain that began to swell and throb and overwhelm her. The feeling became so powerful that Jerusha wanted to scream. But then, when she was just about to lose control, she felt something rising up in her heart. It was the melody to her beloved Loblied. Without even thinking she took a deep breath and began to sing softly, “Loben wir ihn von ganzem Herzen! Denn er allein ist würdig.” A deep peace began to steal over her as she sang the hymn for the first time in almost a year. “Let us praise Him with all our hearts! For He alone is worthy.”

  Even as she sang she fought against Him. No! I don’t want to praise You anymore.

  And then her eyes filled with tears.

  The summer of 1941 had been a dark time for Jerusha. Her father had firmly refused to let Reuben come to the house. Jerusha wanted to honor her father, but the day she had confessed her feelings to Reuben, she had crossed a line. She knew without question that her love and her life belonged to Reuben forever.

  She drifted through the days, trying to focus on her work, but even quilting couldn’t hold her attention, and after a while she would sigh and set the work aside. Reuben filled her thoughts and her moments. He was a part of her now. She saw his face in shadowed clouds and heard his voice speaking to her. Once when she was in town she started after a man, thinking it was Reuben. The man had looked at her when he saw her following him and smiled invitingly, but he wasn’t Reuben, so she had turned and walked quickly away, red faced and shamed at her boldness. She started a dozen letters to him but tore up each one because the words seemed so small compared to the enormity of her feelings.

  Then had come the day when Reuben asked her to make a decision. He had waited for her as she walked along the path into town. She had gasped at first, he had approached so quietly. He stood beside her, staring at her with those deep blue eyes, her emotions raging like a storm, her face turning bright red.

  “I can still make you blush, eh, Miss Hershberger?” he said, and his eyes smiled at her.

  “Reuben, you mustn’t do this,” she said softly. “My daed...”

  “Jerusha, don’t worry about your daed right now,” he said as he took her hand. “I just want to see you for a moment. I want to tell you that nothing has changed for me. All I think about is finding a way for us to be together.”

  “There is a way, Reuben. If you’ll just get baptized and join the church, my father would welcome you into our family.”

  “I can’t join the church just because I’m in love with you,” Reuben said. “If I join the church, it will be because I want God and His ways more than anything, because I’m in love with Him even more than I am with you. And the truth is I want you and I want other things more than I want Him.”

  “What do you want so badly that it could keep you from loving Him?” Jerusha asked.

  “There are so many things to do—places to see, music to hear, books to read...” Reuben’s face became animated as he talked.

  He took both her hands in his. “I want to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and devour the paintings with my eyes. I want to ride through the Rocky Mountains in the back of a pickup truck. I want to see whales swimming along the coast of California. Jerusha, I want to get out of Apple Creek, and I want you to come with me.”

  “Leave Apple Creek! But Reuben, this is my life, this is all I know. My family has lived here almost a hundred years. I don’t want the things you want. I want normal things, things that will keep us here at home, where we can be happy and content with our way of life. I want you to marry me and be
a farmer like our people have always been. I want the simple ways. I want an Amish husband. I want—”

  “Jerusha, do you love me?” he broke in.

  “More than anything, but—”

  “If you loved me more than anything, you could leave this place and come with me,” he said, his voice rising with emotion.

  “Reuben, why would you ask me to do something you know I can’t do? You’re asking me to disobey my father and leave the only home I’ve ever known. Is this any way to build a new life? I would be bitter because I would always feel that you manipulated me into coming with you, and I would regret hurting my father and my people so deeply. Surely you wouldn’t want me to do that.”

  As she looked at Reuben she felt something slipping away from her, and she wanted to reach out and clutch at it, but she couldn’t see it or feel it, and a nameless dread filled her heart.

  “Jerusha, I’m leaving Apple Creek. Will you come with me or not?”

  “Please, Reuben,” she begged him, “don’t ask me to go away from everything I know. What would we do for money? Where would we live?”

  “I have some money, I have a car, and I have a job offer in Colorado,” he answered. “I told the man I would be bringing my wife, and that’s all right with him. We would have a place to stay on a ranch, and I would work with his horses. The pay is good. I could save up my money, and then we could go out to California.”

  “A car! But cars are forbidden! And how did you get a job offer so far away?”

  “I have friends.”

  Jerusha looked at Reuben. His face was red, and he was breathing hard, and his hands held hers with a steel grip. Something in him suddenly frightened her, something she was just now seeing for the first time. It wasn’t bad, but it was unknown. All her life she had lived in the safety of her family, her work, and her faith. But this man had stolen her heart, and now he wanted to pull her out of the shelter of her life and push her into a place she had never wanted. It was as though she had come to a crossroads with a sign that said, “Beyond this place there be dragons,” and this man wanted her to walk with him into this fearsome and mysterious new land.

  She tore away from him and stood trembling, staring at his face. Then she turned and ran back to her home and her family and safety. Reuben looked after her, and then he turned and walked away.

  The little girl was cold, very cold. Her only waking thoughts were of her mama.

  “Mama, come find me...I’m so cold,” she would murmur and then sink back into a dream-filled sleep.

  She had been in the car for a night and another whole day. It was the end of the second day of the storm, and as she lay quiet she thought she heard a soft voice speak to her.

  “Don’t be afraid, little one, I’m here.”

  “Are you my mama in heaven?” asked the little girl.

  “No, my child, I’m not your mama, but I have been sent to help you.”

  “Will I go to see my mama?” asked the little girl.

  “Not now,” said the gentle voice. “You must lay still. I will stay with you and keep you warm...”

  The gentle voice faded away, and then the little girl felt the strangest sensation, as though she were being covered by thick, warm feathers.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Heart of the Beast

  MARK KNEPP GOT UP FROM HIS CHAIR and walked slowly to the pile of wood by the heavy cast-iron stove. The old white and black coonhound lying on a rug by the fire didn’t stir as Mark grabbed several more pieces of wood. The stove was already glowing red from the fire inside, but it wasn’t keeping the chill out of the house. He opened the fire door and put in the freshly split oak. Then he went into the bedroom and rummaged in the closet until he found the wool pullover sweater hanging in the back. He put it on over his Pendleton shirt and returned to his living room. He sat down in the overstuffed chair in front of the stove and scooted it closer to the heat. An old orange tabby cat walked out of the mudroom and jumped up onto Mark’s lap. It circled a couple of times and lay down, snuggling against the wool sweater.

  “Yes sir, Tiger, it’s cold as anything out there,” Mark said as he rubbed behind its ears. “This is a humdinger for sure.”

  At first this storm had seemed to Mark like a normal November snowfall, but during the night the temperature had dropped significantly, and the wind and snow picked up. By Thanksgiving morning the snow was coming down thick and wet, and soon the fields and trees around Mark’s place were heaped with white.

  “We may be in for the long haul. What was that poem we used to read in school?” Mark searched his memory until a few stanzas came back to him.

  A chill no coat, however stout,

  Of homespun stuff could quite shut out,

  A hard, dull bitterness of cold,

  That checked, mid-vein, the circling race

  Of life-blood in the sharpened face,

  The coming of the snow-storm told.

  Mark smiled. “Right! John Greenleaf Whittier! I may not be getting any younger, but there’s still life in the old noggin.”

  Mark laughed at his own statement while the cat yawned and stretched and dug its claws into the sweater. The old pot-bellied stove, satisfied for the moment with the new wood, soon warmed the room enough that, while not toasty, it was at least comfortable. Outside, the snow drifted up against the house, and the wind blew mournfully around the eaves.

  Mark had gone out earlier that morning and dug a path through the snow to the old shed he called a barn. Inside the door he picked up a short pitchfork and went back to the hay pile. His dog, Smitty, lay curled up in the alfalfa. When the dog saw him he jumped up and barked excitedly.

  “So that’s where you spent the night,” Mark said as the dog pushed against him, biting gently at his hand.

  Mark pulled a forkful of hay out of the pile and walked over to the sheep pen. The ancient ram glared at him and stamped its foot as Mark filled the feeder with hay and then poured in some grain. The two ewes pushed against each other as they gobbled the fodder.

  “A little late for breakfast, eh, old boy,” Mark said as he scattered some grain on the floor for the chickens.

  The rooster had led its harem to the barn door when Mark came in, but it turned back when it saw the snow outside and began to scratch at the grain, making gentle clucking sounds to prompt the hens to eat. Mark finished his chores and headed back to the house. Smitty followed him and whined at the back door to be let in.

  “Don’t blame you, Smitty,” he said. “It’s cold out here.”

  Now, with his chores finished, the old man sat by the fire with the cat asleep on his lap and Smitty stretched out by the stove, offering up an occasional twitch and a whimper in his sleep.

  It was Thanksgiving Day, but Mark wasn’t celebrating. When Millie died two years earlier, he lost much of his zest for living. Since then, holidays came and went pretty much the same as other days. He had been married to Millie for fifty-six years, and now, without his wife around, he could feel his own life winding down. He had settled into a day-to-day routine while the sun rose and set without him paying much attention.

  Until Millie passed, Mark had thought of himself as a devout Christian. He went to church with Millie every Sunday, tithed, supported missions, and did everything expected of him. But now that Millie was gone, it just seemed more like a social club than something that was of comfort to him in his grief. After a while, Mark realized he was just waiting for his own time to go. He was looking forward to seeing his beloved wife in heaven, so church just didn’t seem so important anymore. He stopped attending regularly, which he knew would not make Millie happy, but somehow he just didn’t have the juice to get up and around on Sunday mornings.

  Soon the old man fell asleep, and the hours passed. He woke up around two that afternoon and stretched himself. He picked the cat up from off his lap and set him down beside the chair. The cat complained loudly.

  Mark went over to the cupboard to see what he could find to eat. He
rummaged around until he found some Ritz crackers and a jar of peanut butter. He went to the refrigerator for some milk and poured it into a pan on the stove. Then he rustled around in the cupboard until he found the plastic jar of chocolate syrup, squeezed some into the milk, and turned the burner on.

  After it had warmed up, he poured the milk into a cup, turned on the radio on the kitchen counter, and set his snack on the reading table next to his chair. Then he put some more wood on the fire and settled back.

  The radio was playing Glenn Miller—“Moonlight Serenade” or something like that—and Mark started eating his crackers and drinking his milk. The warm milk and the music soothed him, and soon he moved back to his overstuffed chair and fell asleep.

  When Mark awoke it was already dark outside. He turned on the lamp next to his chair and sat for a minute, letting his eyes adjust to the dim light. Suddenly he heard a loud crash outside. The dog and cat both jerked awake and stared at the door.

  “That sounded like a tree going over,” Mark said. “Come on, boy, let’s go see.”

  Smitty jumped to his feet and went to the door and whined. Mark went to the back porch and got a flashlight off the shelf. He slipped on his galoshes and put on the old army parka that was hanging on a hook by the door. He went to the front door, and when he opened it the cold wind and snow blew into the room.

  “C’mon, Smitty, let’s check it out,” he called to the dog.

  As he shined the flashlight around, Mark soon saw the cause of the noise. The big laurel tree out on the lane had blown over and was partially blocking the driveway. Mark pulled the face flap of the parka over his mouth, and he and Smitty walked down the driveway toward the tree. Suddenly Mark stumbled over something and sprawled headlong into the snow. The flashlight flew out of his hand and hit the ground hard, but the light stayed on.