Fire in the Night

by Linda Byler

  “Mervin! Suzie!”

  They were wet, their shoes sucking the mud, their throats dry with apprehension, and still they called. Finally they stopped and looked at each other.

  “We need help,” Dat said calmly.

  They cried together but differently now, a sort of acceptance settling itself over the hysteria, quenching it. Their heads bent, they walked back to the house. Dat moved to the phone shanty like an old man, bearing the weight of his missing children.

  The medics were the first to arrive in their red and white vehicle equipped to save people’s lives and a driver and an assistant blessed with helpful knowledge to relieve the pain of people in accidents, old people in cardiac arrest, or stroke victims. In this situation, they could only wait and talk into squawking devices or cell phones.

  Many vehicles followed. Large green SUVs with blue lights rotating on their roofs, fire trucks, black and white police cars. Again.

  Amish folks arrived, on scooters, walking, with umbrellas. Elam Stoltzfus and Omar Zook from across the pasture. Hannah came, sloshing through the rain, her flowered umbrella a bright spot of color in the gray evening.

  Someone started the Lister diesel, its slow chugging a comfort of normalcy. Men were milking, doing Dat’s chores, as others formed an organized search party.

  The light was gray as the storm wore itself out in small showers and slivers of light to the west. It seemed the world had been scrubbed and tossed about, then righted and patted dry, as if the countryside had emerged from a huge washer.

  Sarah stood with Priscilla, numbly watching the scene with eyes that were still clouded with refusal to believe. They couldn’t have been swept away. That creek was not high enough. Suzie could swim. She was quite good at diving and swimming at their cousins’ pond. She would have made her way safely across, even if the creek was rising fast.

  All that evening they searched. So many men. Why couldn’t they find anything? At least a fishing pole, a tackle box.

  Panic became a constant foe, successfully fought back only to advance again with reinforcements of alarm, trepidation, and horror.

  It was the failure to know for sure, the overwhelming doubt, that was hardest.

  Hannah, her daughters, Matthew and Rose, women from neighboring homes and businesses—all came and went, their voices reassuring the family with genuine kindness.

  Mam remained in her hickory rocker by the stove, a figure bent with restrained panic, her eyes wild, showing white. The frightened look stung Sarah’s heart.

  In the gloom, they sat. Mam’s lips moved as she prayed. Someone wiped a furtive tear.

  Hannah brought her forest green container of coffee. Sylvia Esh contributed a stack of Styrofoam cups, a tall plastic container of creamer, a glass sugar shaker, and some plastic spoons. An English woman dressed in a pants suit brought a large white cardboard box containing doughnuts from the bakery in Bird-In-Hand. Hannah promptly opened the lid, chose a custard-filled one, cupped her hand underneath it, and turned her back to take the first bite.

  She should turn her back, Sarah thought. Then because she was guilty of spiteful feelings, she began to weep softly, wiping her nose furtively when no one was looking.

  Priscilla glanced at her sister, bowed her head, and wept quietly with her.

  Outside the commotion heightened with those milling about on the porch, an increased flurry of activity, and Mam shot out of the hickory rocker, her mouth open as if to cry out, but no sound emerged. The hand she lifted to her mouth was shaking so badly she could not keep it there, so she clenched both hands at her waist, the nails digging into each palm.

  What was it?

  Sarah got up and moved stiffly to the screen door. In the near darkness, a great shout went up, an exultation of humankind, a victory over fear and anxiety.

  A burly fireman, his brown canvas raincoat dripping, his large face wreathed in smiles, carried a form wrapped in an orange blanket.

  Suzie!

  Sarah rushed to her, clawed at the blanket, and found a white-faced, wild-eyed Suzie, her hair matted to her head with silt and mud and water.

  Mam grabbed Sarah by the sleeve, pushed her aside, and murmured incoherently as she tore the child from the fireman’s arms with a wild possessiveness. She sat down on the porch chair and let the blanket fall away, touching Suzie’s face and dirty hair as she checked for injuries.

  “Suzie. Oh Suzie,” she said over and over.

  Dat and Priscilla and Sarah crowded around, reached out, touching, reassuring, as Suzie burrowed her head into the rough, orange blanket against her mother’s shoulder. She cried and cried, then said she was thirsty.

  Thirsty! And all this water.

  Only forty-five minutes later, they found little Mervin’s lifeless form washed up against the large culvert that went beneath Abbot Road, about a mile downstream.

  He had been carried to an eddy, where dead leaves and stalks swirled and caught against the side of the large, concrete culvert that was normally more than sufficient to let the meandering little stream run through.

  With Suzie on her mother’s lap, sipping hot mint tea with sugar, and the women crowding around the scene of deliverance, the arrival of Mervin’s body was a hard blow of cruelty.

  Another fireman, another orange blanket. But this time, no cry of victory, no shouting, only a solemn handing of the small still form to his father, who lowered his face, his straw hat hiding it, the only sound a paroxysm of loss and love for his small young son.

  Mam bore it stoically, although her tears would not stop flowing all through the evening.

  Dat carried Mervin in and laid him tenderly on the kitchen sofa. Slowly, reverently, they folded the blanket away, revealing the face of their beloved Mervin, his features perfect, showing no signs of suffering or struggle. Sarah gazed on the sweet face of her brother, so angelic in death. She cried as if her heart would break.

  Why? Always the questioning, the constant chipping away of faith.

  When Suzie was strong enough, she began to talk. She and Mervin had told Levi but left quickly, knowing it was soon chore time. They’d only wanted to catch a few of the fallfish that swam in small creeks in spring.

  They had waded to the other side, then decided to follow the bend in the creek. They probably went farther than they thought, catching fish. When the storm came, they were scared. Afraid Dat would be angry, they had waited too long. They hid beneath some trees, then panicked, and tried to cross. A wall of water caught them, tumbling them about.

  She did have Mervin’s hand. When she realized the situation was dire and the brown water had much more power than she expected, she struggled to save herself and her brother. When she crashed into an overhanging tree and Mervin was whirled away, she figured she’d probably drown, even though she so badly wanted to live.

  She had caught the low branch of the tree, but she didn’t know she’d have to cling to it as long as she did. The water rose fast. She had to continually creep her hands up the branch to keep her head from going under.

  She knew Mervin had been torn from her grasp, but hope kept her outlook bright. She talked to herself, telling herself to hang on, another five minutes, then another, and when the huge spotlight shone on her face, she thought she yelled. But in reality, she could only make weak mewling sounds, like a kitten. Her hands were scratched and broken open, her fingers stiff with cold and fatigue, but she was alive.

  The coroner came, a small portly man who gravely performed his duty, nodded, and left.

  They took Mervin away, still in the orange blanket, wearing his black trousers and gray suspenders over the blue shirt with two buttons missing. Dat and Mam felt him all over, as if to remember every inch of him. They kissed his beautiful, cold face.

  “Goodbye, Mervin,” they said and then turned away to hide their faces, their shoulders shaking with the force of their sobs.

  Quietly, Hannah produced a box of Kleenex from the light stand, letting her hand rest on Mam’s shoulder.

/>   The boys came again from Dauphin County with their wives and children, crying, hugging, saying, “Thy will be done.”

  They sat around the kitchen table and talked, while Mam, seemingly stabilized by these motherly duties, helped organize blankets and air mattresses, extra pillows.

  Suzie had a hot bath, shampooed her hair, and reappeared, dressed in a clean flannel nightgown, her eyes still wide with fright. They plied her with chicken corn soup and a toasted cheese sandwich.

  Hot chocolate? Shoofly pie? No, she could not eat.

  Finally, she asked if God could forgive her for letting Mervin drown in that awful brown water. Everyone shook with sobs.

  Mam gathered her up in her arms and held her as if she would never let her go. Dat hovered over her and said she was not responsible, little Mervin’s time to go had come, all designed by the Master’s hand.

  She cried then, in great, shuddering sobs, a tremendous healing balm for a young child of ten.

  “Well,” Dat said, blowing his nose. “Well, there’s no use asking why these things happen. It seems harsh, one chastening gone and another bitter one arriving so soon after. But we want to accept, examine our hearts, and repent of any wrongdoing. Hopefully, from this we will learn lessons, have our views and values widened, and our spiritual needs fulfilled. In all things, there is a purpose, and we don’t question.”

  Sarah listened, frustrated. We don’t question? How could he say that?

  Dat was a good, kind person, and so was Mam. They lived righteously and worked diligently at home and in the church, striving to secure the love that binds. And this was their reward?

  Nothing went right, not one thing. How could God look down from his throne and call this fair? He must be strict, she thought. And besides, she prayed and prayed and prayed for Matthew, and He never answered her. Her yearning heart was now filled with grief.

  Chapter 10

  IN THE MANNER OF THE Amish, the help began to arrive immediately the next morning. Neighbors came to do chores at five o’clock, just as Dat was holding a lighter to the propane lamp.

  It was Elam, wishing him a good morning, inquiring about his night’s sleep. Yes, he’d slept, Dat assured him but didn’t elaborate about the long sleepless hours when his heart had cried out with the voice of Job. “For the thing I greatly feared has come upon me…. I have no rest, for trouble comes.”

  Oh, he could exhort, lift up the weak, talk of reason and reward. But in the still of the night, he’d wrestled with his own personal angel. Where have I failed that all this trouble comes upon me? he silently asked. Where have I gone wrong? Perhaps I am puffed up, self-righteous. I have not given to the poor as I should have.

  “Those poor Daveys,” they all said. “And him a minister, yet. You’d think he’d have enough on his mind, gel?”

  Hannah was in charge, producing a breakfast casserole made with eggs, bread, cheese, and ham. She’d added parsley, peppers, and onion.

  The men cleaned the barn and prepared the machine shed for funeral services, moving equipment and power washing. Dat and Mam sat with the fore-gayer (managers), the three couples from their church district who were chosen to organize everything over the next few days.

  Elam and Hannah, of course. John and Sylvia Esh, and Reuben and Bena King. They were all in their forties or fifties and had experience with funerals. They would do well, Dat knew.

  They sat together at the kitchen table and made a list of those they would “give word” to come to the funeral. Who would carry the coffin?

  Grandfather Beiler arrived, leaning heavily on his walker, his knees wobbling as he let go of it to place a kind hand on his grieving son’s back. He knew well the throes of grief, having lost Suvilla two years prior.

  Grandfather Kings, Mam’s parents, arrived, white-haired, thin, and capable for their age. Mommy King went to her daughter, her arms embracing the grieving form. They stood weeping, the one a solace to the other, as mothers tend to be.

  Levi sat in his chair and told their neighbor, Elam, that Mervin had drowned in all that water. He told him people drown when they breathe water instead of air. It rained too much, but not quite as much as Noah’s flood.

  Elam nodded and gave Levi a York peppermint patty. Levi asked if that was all he had; he wasn’t so schlim (fond) of peppermint patties.

  In the new part of the basement, the women cleaned and scoured, washed windows and arranged long tables. The men set up gas stoves, and other women arrived bearing boxes of food. The fire company donated the sliced roast beef, the meat traditionally served on the day of a funeral. Dat said it was too much, and Mam shook her head and said that was for sure, but they wiped their eyes.

  Aunt Rebecca sewed new black dresses for Suzie and Priscilla in one day. Mam said she was so talented on the sewing machine.

  They all had to wear black now for a year, whenever they put on their Sunday best. It was a sign of mourning, of respect and tradition, and it was taken seriously. They did it gladly.

  Aunt Rebecca sewed the black dresses, capes, and aprons with the summer’s heat in mind. She chose the fabric wisely, using lightweight rippled fabric that had a bit of body. Priscilla was very happy to wear the dress, as Aunt Rebecca was a bit fancier than Mam.

  Sarah had two black dresses, one almost new, so she wore it on the first day of preparation. Since there was not much for her to do, she wandered to the basement, eager to see who was causing all the friendly chatter, the sounds of much needed fellowship.

  Hannah grabbed her in a firm hug, shed a few tears with her, and asked how she was doing.

  “Okay, I guess. As okay as I can be,” she answered.

  Sylvia and Bena gripped her hands, patted her shoulders in the motherly fashion of older women, and then began asking questions, their eyes friendly, without guile, bright with curiosity.

  Sarah related the drowning in Suzie’s words, while they clucked and sympathized.

  “I never saw anything like that storm!”

  “I hope I never have to experience one like it again!”

  “It wasn’t chide (right).”

  A large woman Sarah did not know brought two cake pans covered with aluminum foil. Hannah reached for the cakes, thanked her, and then wrinkled her nose in distaste when she saw all the horsehair clinging to the aluminum foil.

  “You almost have to put your food in a plastic garbage bag. You know, the kind you pull shut. These hairs get into everything. Especially in spring, like now,” Sylvia complained.

  Bending her head, Sarah huffed, breathing out sharply, trying to rid the aluminum foil of the offending hair.

  “Ick,” Sylvia said.

  “A little horse hair won’t hurt you,” Bena laughed.

  “Amish people grow up on it!” Sarah said, smiling widely.

  The women planned lunch, preparing a kettle of chicken corn soup with homemade noodles that Bena had brought and canned chicken pieces from Omar sei Ruth.

  Someone had brought ground beef; another had brought sausages. There was plenty of bread and applesauce and pickles, so that was what they prepared for the family, the relatives, and the many people who came to help.

  In the late afternoon, the men from the funeral home brought the small, embalmed body back to the house. Tears flowed afresh as they prepared the little body for burial. They sewed a white shirt, vest, and trousers, a sort of half garment, draped over the body, appearing neat and very, very white. Mervin’s blond hair was so clean, his skin so perfect, his eyes small half-moons of dark lashes laid permanently on his cheeks.

  Sarah choked, thinking of the hateful, clawing flood waters reaching up and over his sweet face, squeezing the warm loving life completely away from him at such a tender age.

  How could God allow it? She cried silently with Priscilla.

  She couldn’t bear to watch Mam lovingly dress her small son one last time, caressing the sweet face before tearing herself away and slumping against Dat, her grief almost more than she could bear.

 
; The vanloads of people arrived then as the viewing was being held that evening. Relatives and friends, both English and Amish, came to grieve with David Beilers.

  Da Davey und die Malinda. Sie hen so feel kott. (Davey and Malinda. They had so much.)

  Parents brought Mervin’s little classmates, all dressed in black except for the light blues and greens of the boys’ shirts. Their faces paled with various stages of anxiety, wondering if Mervin would look different when he was dead. They peered into the plain wooden coffin set on wooden trestles in the emptied bedroom and were too scared to cry, except for the older girls, who sobbed quietly into their handkerchiefs.

  And except little Alan. He and Mervin weren’t just friends. They were real buddies. They scootered to school together, traded half their lunches with each other, and shared every bit of accumulated wisdom they had learned in each of their six years. They both thought the teacher was fat and grouchy, but they weren’t allowed to talk about it at home, so they talked plenty to each other.

  Children were supposed to respect the teacher, whatever that meant. They just knew that it was no fun to color the best you could and then still get scolded for going out of the lines when you barely did ever. Or have your ear pulled if you got out of line at singing class, which wasn’t one bit your own fault either, the way Mandy pulled the songbook in her own direction.

  Poor little Alan stood there in his lime-green shirt and black vest and trousers and his black Sunday shoes and blinked his eyes rapidly. And then because Mervin really was dead, he turned his face into his father’s side and cried and hiccupped with pain. His mother handed him a Kleenex and patted his thin, heaving shoulders. Death was very real, then, for six-year-old Alan.

  Sarah sat with the family, shook hands solemnly with countless well-wishers. She held the grandchildren, helped her sisters-in-law with their rowdy little ones and crying babies, and shook yet more hands as the rooms became steadily warmer.

  She was tired, her eyes red with fatigue and emotion, and she thought the night would never end.