by BJ Hoff
Susan searched her daughter’s dark eyes. “Thinking about Captain Gant, were you?”
A faint blush stained Rachel’s face. “No, I—”
She stopped, quickly glancing away. Rachel never could lie.
Susan patted her hand. “It’s all right, Rachel. I know this has been a very hard thing for you.” She paused. “It will take time, daughter, but eventually the pain will erase. You will heal.”
Still not looking at her, Rachel said, “I’m sorry, Mamma. I didn’t realize my feelings showed so much.”
Susan cupped her daughter’s chin and gently turned her around to face her. “Your feelings don’t show to everyone, Rachel. But is there really a need for you and I to pretend?”
Rachel squeezed her eyes shut a moment. When she opened them, the tears that glistened there tore at Susan’s heart.
“It hurts so much, Mamma,” she said, her voice choked. “I love Jeremiah. Really, I do.”
“I know you do.” Susan hated this helplessness, this awful frustration of not being able to console her own daughter. “I’m so sorry, mei liewi Rachel. I wish it could have worked out differently for you and the captain.”
Even as she watched, Rachel’s expression seemed to clear. She straightened and reached out to touch her mother’s cheek lightly. “I don’t want to take away from your happiness, Mamma. I’ll be all right. Really, I will.”
“You’re taking nothing away from me,” Susan said, forcing a note of firmness into her tone.
Now Rachel smiled, this time a more natural smile. “I hope you know how happy I am for you, Mamma. Truly, I am. You and Dr. Sebastian are so right for each other. And we need to be making plans for your wedding soon. November isn’t all that far away, you know.”
At the thought of just how close her wedding day actually was, Susan felt jittery inside. “There’s plenty of time,” she said, unwilling to let her nervousness show. “After all, David still has to say his vows and join church.”
“Are you working on your wedding dress?”
Suddenly Susan felt like a girl again. She nodded. “I’ve started it. Oh, Rachel, I’m going to need your help so much to get everything ready, but I don’t want to make things any harder for you.”
Rachel took her by both shoulders. “Please don’t you think that way, Mamma! Not for a minute. Your happiness doesn’t hurt me—it helps me! I love seeing you so happy, and to think it’s all because of a man the entire community loves and respects. Dr. Sebastian is a wonderful person. You be happy, Mamma. You deserve it!”
Susan put a finger to her lips. “No, Rachel. No one deserves the blessings we receive from God’s hand. Who can say why He chooses to grant us any happiness at all, sinners that we are?”
Rachel’s scrutiny somehow made her uncomfortable. “Do you really believe that, Mamma?”
“Why, of course I believe it!” Susan stopped. “Don’t you?”
Rachel dropped her hands away, but her gaze still searched Susan’s face. “What about His grace, Mamma? What if the Lord God blesses us simply because He wants to? Not because we deserve it or because we’ve earned it but just because He loves us.”
“We’re not worthy of such love, daughter,” Susan said sternly.
Rachel sat motionless. She didn’t look at her mother, but sat staring at the kitchen window as if looking for an answer there.
“You and Eli,” Susan went on, “you let Phoebe and Malachi’s beliefs about such things influence you.”
Rachel met her gaze directly. “It’s not just Phoebe and Malachi, Mamma. Others among the People have been studying the Bible as well. Eli and I weren’t the only ones with questions.”
Uneasiness stirred in Susan. She wasn’t comfortable with this talk about questions. She knew about Phoebe and Malachi’s Bible studies in their home, knew that there were those in the community who questioned some of the old ways and teachings.
True, she’d had her own questions at times, though she tried not to dwell on them. And when David asked her about some of the things he was learning in his instructions for turning Amish, even as she gave him the traditional answers—the approved answers—once in a while, she was hard-pressed not to ask herself how a thing could be so. If it was so.
“It’s best not to ask too many questions,” she said now. “With some things, faith is the only answer.”
Rachel studied her. “But that’s the point, Mamma. The Bible seems to teach that there are some things that can be known only by faith. Yet it seems that in some matters, Bishop Graber teaches us that faith isn’t enough.”
Susan found it difficult to meet her daughter’s gaze. “That’s not so, Rachel. Faith is always the most important part of our beliefs—”
“No, Mamma. Not always. What about the assurance of our salvation? The bishop says we can’t be sure, that we can have only the hope of salvation, depending on how we live. That doesn’t sound to me like faith.”
Susan got up and began collecting the cookies to put in a tin. “We’ve talked about this before, Rachel, and I’m not going to go into it again. It’s unsinnich, senseless, this questioning of what we already know to be true.”
Rachel, too, stood and began to help put the cookies away. “All right, Mamma. I didn’t mean to upset you. But do you really think it’s so wrong to have questions about God’s will for us? Don’t you think He would want us to understand His teachings?”
“Not if we’re so foolish as to doubt what we already know is true,” Susan said, her tone sharper than she’d intended. Even so, though Rachel was a woman grown, she was still her daughter, and if Susan could help it, she’d not have her led away from their beliefs. “It’s not wise to get involved in these Bible studies at home, Rachel, when there’s no preacher or deacon to guide what’s taught. Malachi is a good man, but he’s not equipped to teach. You need to listen to the bishop and our deacon.”
“You mean Samuel?”
Rachel’s tone was laced with contempt, and Susan knew why. Over these past months, Samuel Beiler had made no secret of the fact that he meant to wed Rachel, and he had pressed his suit long and hard. Too hard, to Susan’s way of thinking. He had actually managed to turn Rachel away rather than attract her. Of course now, with her heart still soft for Jeremiah Gant, neither Samuel nor any other man had a chance to win her daughter’s affection.
There were things about Samuel Beiler that Susan didn’t appreciate any more than Rachel did. He was known to be stubborn—unyielding and even headstrong. He was several years older than Rachel, but for that matter, so was Gant. In his favor Samuel was a deacon, a hard worker—steady and well-intentioned. He would no doubt make a good husband, but Rachel had never given him a chance.
Perhaps in time Samuel could help her forget Jeremiah Gant. If that were possible, Susan could easily overlook the few things about the man that bothered her and simply wish him well in winning her daughter.
“You could do worse than Samuel, daughter,” was all she said.
Rachel turned from the counter to look at her. “Please, Mamma—don’t start about Samuel again.”
Susan sighed but said nothing else. She knew from experience that trying to persuade Rachel to listen to reason about Samuel Beiler only seemed to make her more resistant to him.
If there was to be any change in her daughter’s attitude toward Samuel, it would have to happen within Rachel’s own heart, not from another’s counsel.
Later that night Susan lay abed, sleepless and unsettled. Fannie had been asleep for hours, so the house was totally quiet except for the few creaks and groans that had grown comfortably familiar after years of living there.
She had become used to a quiet house at night. They went to bed early, she and Fannie, and with Gideon and Rachel now gone, there was little to disturb the silence. Even so, she seldom slept deeply. Most nights she tended to wake several times. She would get up and go to check on Fannie or go to the kitchen for a drink of water. Sometimes she would pull up her rocking chair by the bedroom window and
sit looking out on the field between her house and Rachel’s, if there was enough moonlight to allow a view.
Sometimes she thought she might be more suited to sleeping through the day and doing her chores at night. She smiled at the thought. No doubt such an idea would scandalize her neighbors.
So restless she was that at last she got up and went to the window to look out. There was nothing to see except an occasional glimpse of the moon through the thick clouds scudding across the night sky. She stood there thinking of Rachel, so sad and so withdrawn again; of Gideon, her prodigal, gone away from his home and family except for the times he came back to help with the more strenuous farm chores; and of her sweet youngest daughter, Fannie, who these days seemed to be more herself than she’d been ever since that awful attack last winter, when some Englisch boys had taunted her and knocked her down into the snow. Thanks to Captain Gant, she’d been rescued in time and finally recovered not only her health but her lively spirits, though it had taken months.
Susan couldn’t bear to think of what might have happened to the child had Jeremiah Gant not seen her lying in a snow drift and gone to fetch her, despite his own recent leg injury that made it difficult for him to walk. She would be forever grateful to the former riverboat captain who surely had saved her sweet daughter’s life.
If only he could have helped her other daughter build a new life as well. A new life with him…
She shook off the thought. No sense thinking such things now. The bishop had said no to Gant and Rachel, and that was that. Their love simply wasn’t meant to be. Somehow the two of them must get on without each other.
Though Rachel would hate knowing it, Susan still couldn’t dismiss an uneasy sense of guilt when she thought of her own happiness as her wedding to David approached. It seemed so unfair that she, a middle-aged widow and mother, should be granted a new love, a new life, when her young daughter continued to live with a broken heart.
She caught herself then, recognizing that her mind had taken a treacherous path. It was almost as if she were questioning the Lord God with these forbidden thoughts of what was fair and what wasn’t.
She closed her eyes in a prayer for forgiveness, then turned and went back to bed before her mind could wander any farther down that troublesome path.
7
NIGHT SOUNDS
The silence of the night
mocks my fainting heart…
ANONYMOUS
Something jolted Susan from a fitful sleep. She sat up and listened.
Outside something cracked. Then again.
A strong wind had blown up in the night, and at first she thought she’d merely heard tree branches snapping. But then came the jangle of a harness and a shout.
Footsteps pounded the ground. The sound of running.
Another shout.
A horse whinnied and snorted.
She ran to the window, pulling on her night robe as she went.
A thick, oppressive darkness hung so heavy over the meadow she could see nothing for a moment. She’d left the window cracked but now tugged it all the way up and stuck her head out to look.
Nothing but blackness.
She hurried across the room to light a lantern, then ran out into the hall, stopping only long enough to look into Fannie’s room. The child stirred but didn’t wake.
Susan ran down the steps, her heart pounding, her hands shaking as she unlocked the door. Time was when the Amish didn’t lock their doors. But no longer, not with everything that had happened over the past couple of years.
Stepping out into the night, she held the lantern high. The night air, dank and raw, slapped her skin.
She lifted the lantern even higher.
The barn doors stood open, the darkness within vast and gaping as if frozen in shock.
The horses!
Barefoot, she stumbled as she ran, stubbing her toe on a rock. Pain shot up her foot, but she kept on running until she reached the barn.
Her bare feet smacked the planked floor as she came to a halt just inside and stood listening. Cold and utter silence greeted her. The quiet chilled her more than the cold. Her hands shook as she lifted the lantern, swinging it first to the left, then to the right.
The two buggies—the small one and the larger, sturdier one that her husband, Amos, had favored—sat parked side by side looking eerily abandoned and useless.
Smoke, the sleek black buggy horse, and the older Rosie were both gone. Missing too was Cecil, the honey-colored Percheron Amos had brought home some years before he died. Susan counted on the big, powerful draft horse for all the heaviest farm work.
She called their names almost like a plea. The sound of her trembling voice unnerved her, and she called out again, this time more forcefully.
The dark, empty silence of the barn mocked her.
She tried to take in the reality of the missing horses, tried to quiet the thunderous pounding of her heart, tried to think what to do. The lantern dangling from her hand flickered crazily, creating shadows that seemed to move and lick the walls, then rush toward her.
Something nagged at the fringes of her mind. She lifted the lantern a little higher and swept its beam around the barn.
The cats. The little black and white spotted female and the all-black male—neither was anywhere in sight. The two always came running when someone entered the barn. She called for them, but she knew that they too had gone missing.
Shock threatened to paralyze her as the enormity of her loss began to settle in. Tears burned her eyes, not only for the horses now but for the barn cats as well.
Contrary to Amos’s warnings about treating animals like pets, she had always harbored an affection for the horses, especially the dependable, sturdy Cecil, whose massive size belied his gentle nature. And Fannie loved the cats, was always begging to bring them inside, though she knew Susan wouldn’t allow it.
It suddenly struck her then that she couldn’t just stand here doing nothing. They were her responsibility, after all. They hadn’t run away of their own accord, this much she knew. She had to find them.
She would find them.
She whipped around, then took off running to the house and began to tug on the bell rope that would summon help.
8
A CALL FOR HELP
Whatever the wealth of our treasure-trove,
The best we shall find is a friend.
JOHN J. MOMENT
The clanging of a bell dragged David Sebastian from a deep sleep. He’d gone to bed early, already trying to accustom himself to Amish ways—one being their early-to-bed, early-to-rise routine. With his approaching conversion to the Amish church and his marriage to Susan, he wanted to be reasonably well-settled into all the Plain People’s ways.
At first he thought he’d been dreaming, for the sound seemed a great distance off. He turned on his side, intending to go back to sleep, but when the ringing didn’t go away, he sat up.
Years of being awakened in the middle of the night rendered him instantly alert. Four gongs, a pause, then two more. Four again and another two.
Susan!
That was the help signal Amos had set up when he’d first hung the bell at the back of their house. Susan would never ring that bell in the night unless she was in need of help.
He fumbled for his glasses and lit the lantern, throwing on his clothes over his nightwear before rushing from the bedroom. At the front door, he grabbed his medical case.
Susan’s house was just up the road. He hurriedly hitched the bay to the buggy and drove off at breakneck speed, praying all the way that the Lord would keep Susan and Fannie safe until he and others arrived to help.
The first to respond to the bell was Fannie. She came charging into the yard, barefoot and in her nightdress, even while Susan was still yanking the bell rope.
“Mamma! Why are you ringing the bell?”
Susan continued to pull the rope, saying, “You need your coat, Fannie. Go back inside and get it. I’ll explain later.”
She had thrown a coat over her night clothes, but like Fannie she arrived with bare feet. Of course, most Amish women didn’t bother with shoes in warm weather, but the nights were too cool now to go without them.
“Inside, both of you,” Susan scolded, dropping the bell rope, taking each of her daughters by the hand and coaxing them indoors. “And Rachel, we’d best get our clothes on. Malachi and the boys will be here any moment now, I’m sure. We need to be dressed.”
“But what is it?” Rachel pressed as soon as they stepped into the kitchen. “What’s happened?”
Inside Susan did her best to keep her voice calm as she explained. “It’s the horses. Someone let them out of the barn. They’re gone. And—” she glanced at Fannie. “The barn cats. They’re missing too.”
Fannie went pale, a stricken look crossing her features. Rachel reached to put an arm around her little sister, her gaze locking with Susan’s.
“Rachel, hurry and get some clothes on now,” Susan said. “You have dresses here, and if you want shoes, you can wear mine. Fannie, you might just as well get dressed too. There won’t be any more sleep for us this night.”
Even as she spoke, footsteps came pounding up onto the porch. “That’ll be Malachi and his boys,” she said. “Run on now, while I tell them what’s happened.”
But when Susan opened the door, she found not Malachi Esch but Samuel Beiler and two of his sons.
Embarrassed to be caught in nightclothes, she pulled her robe more tightly around her.
“Susan—what’s happened here?” Samuel spoke sharply in the language of the People, his stern features and gruff voice declaring him ready to take charge. His eyes, however, roamed the room behind Susan, no doubt looking for Rachel.
Susan fought to collect herself as she answered him. “Samuel, it’s good of you to come.”
She waited as he and his boys came inside, disliking herself for wishing it was Malachi Esch who stood in her hallway. Samuel Beiler was a good man, a man who could be depended on in an emergency. She should be ashamed of herself for not feeling more gratitude and warmth toward him.