“I’d hit bottom and decided I couldn’t take any more. I was actually about to kill myself, but he stepped in.”
Bobby looked at Reuben. “Wow—I had no idea things had gotten that tough for you.”
“It wasn’t that long ago. It was getting close to the anniversary of Jenna’s death, and I felt like I couldn’t go on. Lowell saved me, and then he helped me come to grips with my issues about God. I found out I had built my relationship with God on a faulty foundation. I was trying to keep the rules so I could be holy and be safe from a horrible world. I didn’t know that God isn’t too concerned that we belong to a certain church.
“Every one of us has the potential for truly horrible behavior no matter what our religious background. It’s only when we let Him live His life through us that we have any real chance to live in a way that pleases Him. Keeping rules didn’t earn me points with God. I had to find refuge in God, not my religion or my hideout. When I did, I saw that everything that happens in my life can work together for good. That helped me to come to grips with my past.”
“Well, I’m happy for you,” Bobby said. “But if you have a closer relationship with God...I mean, why have all these bad things happened to you?”
“Like I said, all things can work together for good. We don’t know the end of this story yet. Yes, we lost Jenna, and that was the most horrible thing I’ve ever experienced, even worse than the Battle of the Ridge. But I’m not the only person who’s ever lost a child. God never promised that bad things wouldn’t happen in our lives, but He did promise that He would see us through them and that if we trust Him, He would bring good out of the most terrible things.
“The point of the gospel is that God lost a child too, but that wasn’t the end of the story. Christ’s death turned out to have a very good ending in bringing man back to God. I don’t know how my story will end. I don’t know if Jerusha will take me back or if she’ll even talk to me. But I do know that I let her down terribly, and I have to somehow show her that I still love her and that no matter what, I will always be there for her.”
“Well, I sure wish I could say that I had your faith that we’ll find Jerusha,” Bobby said, “but I’ve been out here for three days, and I’m pretty much at the end of my rope.”
“Funny you should use that expression,” Reuben said. “Out in Colorado, I literally came to the end of my rope, but God sent Lowell to intervene in the nick of time, and now here I am, and that helps me see that God is at work in all of this. So until I see her body with my own eyes, I’m believing that Jerusha is alive and that we’re going to find her.”
Reuben’s declaration left Bobby without anything to say for a moment. Then he replied. “Okay, Reuben, I’m with you. We’ll look until we find her, and I can tell you that I hope as much as you do that she’s alive.”
Just then they reached another cross street. The sign was still up.
“This is the old Township Highway,” Reuben said. “The turnoff to the Jepson place is off Kohler Road. The Jepsons owned that whole piece between Kohler and Kidron. The pond is just off this highway, and the road up to the old cabin turns off Kohler, goes by the pond, and then heads north and comes around behind the house. Kohler is about a mile ahead, but it’s not a well-used road and it’s not marked. We’ll have to keep our eyes peeled.”
The tractor crawled on up the road, and both men were silent as they watched for the Kohler Road turnoff. After about twenty minutes, Reuben pointed to their left and shouted, “Right there, Bobby! That’s Kohler.”
Bobby pulled the plow up to the intersection of the two roads. There had been no traffic up Kohler, and the snow was deep and unmarked. Trees lined both sides of the road, and the passage looked difficult.
“Can she make it, Bobby?”
“We’ll make it or die trying.” Bobby put the tractor into its lowest gear and started forward up the road, plowing as he went. The old diesel chugged steadily, but Reuben could feel the tires slipping from side to side. They went up the road about fifty yards, and then Reuben pointed to a break in the trees.
“That’s the way in, Bobby,” he said. “The old driveway cuts around a small hill and back to the pond and then turns north to the cabin.”
“Hold on, Reuben,” Bobby said. “There’s tough going ahead.”
Bobby turned the tractor toward the break in the trees and started forward. He could see that the bank sloped up to the left and the road wound around to the right along the bottom of the hill. Soon they came to what looked like a meadow on the right side of the plow.
“Stay left against the hill, Bobby,” Reuben said. “That’s not a meadow, that’s the pond.”
As more of the pond came into view, they could see a dark object on the far shore. “What’s that?” asked Reuben.
“Looks like a car that flipped,” Bobby said. “Look up the slope behind it. Some small trees are knocked down. Looks like it didn’t happen too long ago. Someone who was going pretty fast came off the highway and got all the way over the rise and down to the pond before they stopped. We should probably check it on the way back, see if anybody’s in there.”
Bobby continued around the hill, and then Reuben pointed ahead.
“It’s pretty overgrown with gorse, but you can break your way through to the meadow.”
Bobby put the plow straight into the thicket that blocked the road and crushed his way through. He reached forward and patted the dashboard of the tractor. “Atta girl.”
Reuben was watching through the snow when he signaled to Bobby. “There’s a big tree down up there. I don’t think you should go around it because that’s a big swampy meadow out there that the creek runs through. It might be deep mud under the snow. We can leave the tractor here and go on foot. It’s only about a hundred yards to the cabin.”
“Okay, but I hope she doesn’t stall while we’re in there,” Bobby said. “I haven’t been able to charge the battery today, and the charge might be too low to warm the glow plugs if we have to restart the engine.
Bobby set the engine on high idle, and the two men clambered out of the cab. The freezing wind hit them like a sledgehammer, and the snow stung their faces like a million tiny shocks of electricity. Bobby and Reuben worked their way around the tree and started in the direction Reuben indicated. The visibility was down to fifty feet, and the temperature was around zero. The two men struggled through the deep drifts with Reuben leading the way. After a few minutes Reuben pointed ahead. There in the distance was a dark shape against the snow.
“There’s the cabin,” Reuben shouted.
They pushed ahead through the snow and reached the front porch of the cabin, which was filled with snow up to the windows. The glass had been broken out years before, and someone had nailed up plywood to cover the holes, but there were some small windows above the door that still had glass in them. Reuben pointed to the side of the cabin, and Bobby followed him around. There was a small shed attached to the house by a roofed walkway. Reuben went up to the back door and pushed on it. It swung open, and the men went inside. As their eyes adjusted to the dim light, they looked around the room but couldn’t see anyone. Except for what looked like a pile of old rags by the stove, the cabin was empty.
CHAPTER FORTY
...But Now I’m Found
A SMALL AMOUNT OF LIGHT SHONE into the room through the two small windows above the door of the cabin, but most of the room was in shadows. Bobby and Reuben strained their eyes looking into the room, but seeing no one, Reuben’s shoulders slumped.
“I was sure she was here.”
“We’ll keep looking. There are still some places she might be.” Bobby feigned enthusiasm, but inside his hope was draining away.
The two stood silently for a moment.
“Well, we might as well go, we’re wasting daylight,” Bobby said.
Reuben turned to go with Bobby just behind him. Just as they got to the door. Reuben heard a tiny sound.
“Mama.”
“Did yo
u hear that?” he asked.
“Hear what?” Bobby asked. “All I can hear is the wind.”
“No, I heard a voice, a little girl’s voice, like Jenna’s.”
“Reuben...You know that Jenna...”
Then Reuben heard it again, just a little louder.
“Mama.”
“Whoa! I heard it too!” Bobby cried. “What...”
Reuben turned back into the room and peered into the darkness. And then he stepped over to the stove and looked more closely at the pile of rags.
“Over here, Bobby,” he cried as he knelt down beside the stove. The pile of rags next to the stove had a shape, long and narrow. Bobby stood beside him while Reuben reached down and pulled the top layer of the cloth aside. What they had thought was a pile of rags was a large piece of material wrapped around something. As his eyes adjusted to the light, Reuben could see the material was actually a torn and muddied quilt with someone inside it. Reuben slowly pulled the cloth away from the face of the person in the quilt. There was Jerusha lying in the quilt with her arms wrapped tightly around a tiny girl.
“Jerusha!” Reuben cried. He knelt down beside the still figures and gathered his wife and the little girl into his arms.
Bobby felt for a pulse in Jerusha’s wrist. “She’s alive!”
“What about the little girl?”
Bobby felt for a pulse. He couldn’t find one in her wrist, but when he checked her jugular he found a faint beat there. “She’s alive too! They’re both alive!”
“But barely,” Reuben said. “We’ve got to get them to a hospital.”
“A hospital?”
“I know...I wouldn’t have said that before. But we need to take Jerusha and this child where they will get the best care and the most attention. And for now, that’s a hospital.”
“Okay, I’m with you. I should bring the tractor up here to the cabin so we don’t have to carry them through the snow and wind. Is it swampy everywhere around the house?”
“The big tree fell right across the old driveway,” Reuben answered. “If you stay to the left and push the tree aside with the plow, you can probably avoid the swampy ground. Do you need me to come with you?”
“No, you stay here with them. Do you have anything you can use to start a fire?”
“No, I didn’t figure on staying when we found her.”
“Okay, I’m going to bring the tractor up. It’ll take me a few minutes.”
Bobby hurried out the door. The wind had picked up again, and visibility was down to a few feet.
Bobby made his way through the drifts the way they had come, following their tracks through the howling wind. As he got closer to where they left the tractor, he strained his eyes through the white.
It’s right up here, but I don’t hear anything.
Suddenly the tractor appeared out of the snow right in front of him. It stood silent and dark. The old diesel had stalled.
Reuben held Jerusha tightly in his arms and kissed her softly on the forehead. Jerusha groaned and mumbled some indistinct words.
“Reuben? Where are you? I’m so cold...”
“I’m here, my darling, I’m here,” he whispered. Tears ran down his face as he pulled his wife and the little girl close to him and tried to warm them with his own body.
Just then the door burst open, and Bobby stood there, shaking with cold.
“The tractor died,” he cried. “I tried to start it, but there wasn’t enough charge on the battery to warm up the glow plugs. I brought a couple of self-starting flares from the toolbox. Maybe we can at least get a fire going.”
“Go look out in the shed and see if there’s any wood there,” Reuben said. “I’ll pull a couple of these wall boards off.”
Bobby hurried out to the shed while Reuben laid Jerusha and the little girl down. He went to a place on the wall where some of the boards had already been pulled off and pulled on a board. It didn’t budge. Reuben looked around the room and saw the rickety table next to the stove. Reuben grabbed it and broke it apart. He used one of the legs as a lever behind the wallboard and pulled on it with all his strength. The board creaked as the old nails gave way and then pulled loose. Reuben leaned it against the wall and stepped on it with his boot. It broke into two pieces. He did it again and in a few seconds had a pile of pieces that would fit into the stove. Just then Bobby came back from the shed with an arm full of scraps and small pieces of pine.
“This was all that was left,” he said. “Jerusha must have gotten a fire going and used whatever was here to stay warm.”
“Put it in the stove and use one of your flares to get it going,” said Reuben. “I’ll break up this table and some more boards.”
Bobby put the wood into the stove and pulled out one of the flares while Reuben pulled more boards off the wall and broke them up. Bobby opened the flare and struck the igniter on the cap. It burst into flame and lit the room with an eerie red glow that reminded Bobby of the night on the ridge. He glanced at Reuben but didn’t see any anxiety on his face, only a grim determination.
“Yes, Bobby, it’s like the battle on the ridge, and we will win this one too! Now get that fire going!”
Bobby stuck the flare into the stove under the pile of wood. Soon they heard the crackle of the pine pieces catching on fire. Reuben shoved some more pieces of broken board into the stove. Soon the fire was roaring, and the sides of the stove began to glow red. Reuben gently laid Jerusha and the little girl close to the stove.
“This is good for now,” Bobby said, “but we’ve got to get them out of here. Maybe I could walk back to the road and flag down some help.”
“The road’s too far,” Reuben said, “And you might wait for hours for someone to come by. No, we’ve got to find another way to get out of here.”
“If I had another battery I could pair it up with the one on the tractor and maybe get enough juice to warm up the glow plugs.”
“Where would we get that?” asked Reuben.
“What about that car we saw back at the pond?” Bobby asked. “I bet there’s a battery in there, and I’ve got jumper cables in the tractor. If I could get the other battery back here and warm it by the fire, I could couple it to the battery in the tractor. There might be enough charge between them to do the trick.”
Bobby saw the doubt on Reuben’s face.
“Come on, old friend. Time for a little faith.”
Reuben rose to his feet. “Okay, but I’ll go for it. I know the way. I’ve spent a lot of time at the pond. I’ll get the battery and be back in half an hour. You stay here and keep the fire going. Did you bring any tools?”
“There’s a toolbox behind the seat in the tractor. It has pliers and screwdrivers in it.”
The two men looked at each other and then grasped each other’s hand.
“Be careful, buddy,” said Bobby. “God go with you.”
“No atheists in foxholes,” Reuben said as he smiled at his friend. And then he turned and was out the door and gone into the storm.
Reuben pulled his coat tight around him and stepped off the porch into the snow. He followed their tracks south back toward the tractor. Several times he lost his footing and plunged ahead into the snow but quickly got to his feet and pushed on.
When he got to the tractor, he climbed into the cab and looked for the toolbox. He opened it and pulled out a sturdy set of pliers and a couple of screwdrivers. Jumping down off the tractor, he headed back toward the pond, leaning forward into the wind and trudging ahead until he reached the place where Bobby had crashed through the thicket of gorse. He picked his way carefully through the sharp branches.
About ten minutes later, he came to the place where the road ran around the hill. The pond was just ahead. He moved to the right and carefully skirted the flat surface of the pond. He had to push through some thick growth at the edge of the pond, and once he had to backtrack and go up into the woods to get around a fallen tree.
Finally he came to the wrecked car on the far side
of the pond. He glanced inside, but it was empty. Most of the front of the car had slid onto the ice. Reuben carefully stepped onto the ice and slowly inched around to the front of the car. The front end was smashed but not totally wrecked. The ice was badly fractured in a zigzag pattern coming out from under the hood.
He went back around behind the car to the driver’s side and tried to open the door. It was jammed, so he kicked out the window. He stooped down, reached in, and pulled the hood latch. He heard it click but the hood didn’t drop. He pulled it again but still nothing happened. He pulled the larger of the screwdrivers out of his pocket and went around to the front of the car. The hood had dropped down a little but he could see that the wreck had bent the release, and the hood was jammed. Carefully he inserted the screwdriver and began to pry the hood open. He worked his way along the edge until he hit an obstruction.
He peered into the engine compartment through the crack in the hood and saw that the battery had come out of its holder and was lying on the inside of the hood. He worked his way back, straightening the front of the hood with the screwdriver as he went until he came to where the latch held the hood closed. He stuck the screwdriver in and jammed it into the latch. He wiggled it back and forth until he felt the latch start to release. Suddenly the hood latch gave way and the hood fell open as far as it could before hitting the ice. The heavy battery, still attached to one of the cables, fell out of the car and hit the ice, right on a fracture.
There was an ominous cracking sound, and then a hole opened right beneath Reuben’s feet. He turned to run, but before he could move, the ice gave way and he slipped into the icy water. As he went down he twisted his upper body and grabbed at the bumper of the car with all his strength. The car rocked down and then back up, pulling him partway out of the water.
Reuben tried to get his leg onto the ice, but the edge broke, and his leg fell back in. The car dipped down again, and he went into the water up to his waist. He could feel the cold begin to penetrate his body as he hung halfway in and halfway out of the pond.
A Quilt for Jenna Page 23