by Risner, Fay
Jim chuckled. “Maybe that is the miracle.”
“I am not talking about the fire,” Stella said, ignoring Hal Lapp's English father. “The miracle is how calm you are, John Lapp, when a calamity like this happens. This sort of thing always happens when she's around.” Stella nodded at Hal accusingly.
“I figure I might as well accept what happens. No need to question what has occurred that I can not change. It is God's will,” John said flatly.
“Amen,” Stella Strutt said. “Come on, Moses. Time to go. We have inhaled enough smoke. Enough smoke for sure.”
Tootie watched the sassy woman leave. “I'm glad she's gone.” Her bottom lip jutted out in a pout.
“Now what, Aunt Tootie?” Hal said in her ear.
Tootie whispered, “I was just thinking you don't have to worry about smelling nice anymore. We both smell like chimney swifts.”
Emma patted Adam on the arm. “You are all right?” He had a save me look on his face. “We need to get out of here for a few minutes while the smoke clears. Come for a walk with me before I help with supper.”
Once they were out in the fresh air, they both took a deep breath.
“Sorry I did not get home sooner. The school house needed more attention than I thought it would. Gute thing Mammi Nora went along to help me,” Emma said. “Did you have a gute visit with, Aendi Tootie and Hallie?”
Adam gave her a nonplused squint and wrote, “Are you kidding?”
“Well, I mean other than you having to save the house from burning down,” Emma said offhandedly.
Adam grinned. He held up two fingers and put one down.
“Oh, let me guess which one you did not have such a gute visit with. Aendi Tootie?”
Adam nodded agreement.
“Figures. We all have to endure her. Since you will be part of this family you might as well get used to her,” Emma said matter of factly.
Adam wrote on his notepad, “That is what Hal told me.”
“I have been thinking about our future. Maybe we should decide soon about the wedding,” Emma blurted out.
Adam wrote, “You suddenly in a rush before I meet any more of Hal's relatives and change my mind?”
Emma laughed and slapped his arm. “Jah, that is the reason.” She turned serious. “What I wanted to say was I turn eighteen in September. I should take the lessons so I can join the church. After that we can set a wedding date.”
Adam clapped his hands.
“Not so fast. I would like to teach school one more year,” Emma said, watching him for a reaction. “I did not think I would ever say this, but I really enjoyed teaching last year.”
Adam wrote, “You can teach after we are married if you want to do it.”
“Really? You would not mind,” Emma squealed.
Adam shook his head no.
“That is why I love you, Adam Keim,” Emma said, giving him a big hug. “Now I should go help cook supper, before we have a repeat disaster. I don't know how I can ever leave Hallie alone in the kitchen. I am gone a day and look what happened.” She gave Adam a quick kiss. “Maybe later we can talk about setting the wedding date.”
“You worry too much,” Adam wrote. “Hal managed while you were at school all day.”
“That is true,” Emma agreed.
“It was the combination of Hal and her aunt that was the problem. Aendi Tootie will go home soon,” Adam assured her.
“Maybe that was it,” Emma agreed.
Adam pointed toward the noisy barn. The frustrated Holstein cows, bawling in the confines of the barnyard, competed with the loud hum of the generator that ran the milking machine. The unmilked cows walked straddled legged to line up at the door, wanting relief from udders swollen with gallons of fresh milk.
Emma said, “Milk time. I know. Go!” Adam rushed toward the barn as she yelled after him, “But before you eat supper with me remember to wash your face.”
Supper was what it was after all the excitement. The women set all the bowls on the table. John asked that they bow their heads for a silent prayer. Hal feared what John was going to pray for he didn't want to say out loud. Maybe he was asking God to send her relatives home soon. He finished out loud with, “Amen.”
Everyone started passing the bowls and filling their plates. When the greens bowl came to Tootie, she was still out of sorts. She whispered to Nora, “What is this?”
“Greens. They're good for you,” Nora declared quietly. “You know like turnip leaves, spinach and polk. Try a spoonful. You can learn to like it. It will grow on you.”
“I prefer that eating weeds grows on you want to eat it. I'll pass,” sniffed Tootie as she handed the bowl on.
Chapter 12
The women were washing smoke off the kitchen walls the next afternoon when the living room door burst open. That startled all of them. They hadn’t heard a buggy drive in. Hal's first thought was Peter Rogies was back.
An ashen faced, Jane Bontrager burst into the kitchen. She spoke frantically in Pennsylvania Dutch to Hal and Emma. Emma’s hands flew up to cover her cheeks. The looks on the women's faces were enough to tell Nora and Tootie something was very wrong.
“What did she say?” Nora asked Hal as Emma put her arms around Jane to hug her.
Hal explained, “There had been an accident in a nearby field. Something has happened to young Johnnie Mast. He’s just ten years old. Something to do with a team of horses. The boy is hurt bad. Jane said it was a horrible sight. Eldon sent her to tell me to come. Mom and Aunt Tootie, you stay with Redbird and Beth while Emma and I go.” Hal said to Emma. “We can take the car. Just let me get my nursing bag. You go to the barn and tell the men what has happened. We need your father’s help. Dad and the boys can finish milking.”
Emma raced to the barn, yelled at her father and rushed to the car. Hal came out the clinic door, carrying her cell phone and the neon green bag with the words Life Is A Blast across the front. The words were faded now from the bag's use but still a part of Nurse Hal's identity. She called for the ambulance as she raced to the car. With John and Emma in the back seat, Hal drove passed Eldon Bontrager’s farm and turned at the intersection to Butcher Ben and Edna Mast’s farm.
As they neared the farm buildings, Emma cried, “Pull in. I see the team with farmers around them.”
Hal stopped the car behind a row of buggies by the yard fence. Several farmers milled about with Butcher Ben Mast in the middle of them. The team had been unhooked from the harrow, a wicked looking contraption with curved tines designed to tear through the earth. The men frantically tugged at the harrow, unhooking sections. As Hal and Emma approached, the men lifted a section and flipped it back to free the boy.
Wailing sirens in the distance told Hal the ambulance was on the way. Emergency help would get there none too soon to suit her. Every minute counted if the boy was to live.
Johnnie Mast was sprawled on the ground, covered with dirt from sliding along the field under the harrow. He was flat on his back. His clothes were torn and tattered. His face was dirt caked. His nostrils and mouth clogged with dirt. His eyes were open, staring into space. He didn’t move at all. He looked dead. Hal knelt beside him and hooked her finger in his nose and mouth to clear the dirt away. She wrapped her hand around his wrist and in a minute said over her shoulder, “He has a faint pulse.”
Hovering close by, Emma’s eyes filled with tears. She was this little boy's teacher.
The ambulance wheeled in and braked beside the crowd. EMT medics came running full speed from their vehicles with bags and equipment. The Amish men, who had lifted the harrow off Johnnie, quietly stood nearby, waiting to see what would happen next. Some of them had their heads bent in prayer.
Hal and Emma got out of the way. One of the medics nodded at Hal. “How is the boy, Nurse Hal?”
“Daryl, I cleaned the dirt out of his airways as best as I could with my finger. He has a faint pulse.”
Another medic, Steve, knelt by the boy. He felt for a pulse and sl
iced the tattered clothes from Johnnie's body so they could see the wounds. Daryl asked for the boy’s name.
His father, Butcher Ben, said, “Johnnie.”
Steve called firmly and sharply, “Johnnie, can you hear me?”
The boy was unconscious. The sorrowful and sickened faces of the farmers gathered nearby told Hal they were sure the boy was dead or would be soon.
Johnnie's mother, Edna Mast, came through the squeaking house yard gate. She took the time to say to her other children to stay in the yard out of the way. She wasn't running, just walking fast. A robust, buxom youngish woman, her face and arms dark from endless hours of toiling in the sun. Barefoot, in a blue dress and a white apron, she approached and introduced herself to the EMTs. The medics shifted slightly to make room for her. She leaned over the crumpled, broken body of her son to called his name and speak to him in Pennsylvania Dutch. “Johnnie, can you hear me? Johnnie, these men are here to help you. Johnnie, please open your eyes.”
Hal marveled at how calm Edna was. She didn't show hysteria or tears. It was as if she'd prepared herself long ago for such tragic moments as this. Hadn't Margaret Yoder told Aunt Tootie when the Amish worked with horses as much as they did accidents were bound to happen? Hal knew exactly what would be said by Edna and Butcher Ben whether Johnnie survived or died. It was God’s will.
Edna crouched down briefly and wanted to brush her hand on her son's face, but she thought better of that and pulled back so as not to interfere with the medics. She called his name again. Still no response or movement.
The head medic, Daryl, spoke in curt commands. He told a third medic, Ivan, to call for a helicopter. Two-way radios blared. Hal knew how good the medics were, completely focused and professionally efficient. She'd worked with them before.
Ivan brought a small stretcher and blankets. They slid the stretcher under the boy and continued working feverishly while they waited for the helicopter.
Edna paced with her hands tightly gripped together to keep them from noticeably trembling. She stopped again a few feet from her son. This time she crouched by him with her hand resting on her knee. She called to him. When the boy didn't respond, she kept trying again, and again. “Johnnie! Johnnie!”
More sirens screamed. Wickenburg firemen arrived and cordoned off the area. Hal and Emma moved out of the way and stood by Samuel Nisely, one of the men who helped lift the harrow off the boy.
Hal asked, “Samuel, do you know what happened?”
Samuel quietly murmured his story. “Jah, I was working in my field that adjoined the Mast farm. I saw Johnnie driving the team, standing on the evener. The last time I looked, I didn't see Johnnie on the evener. He wasn't on the ground behind the harrow. All I saw was just the horses plodding across the field toward the gate hole. I recht away knew what happened and rushed out to stop them. By the time I got to the team, they had walked through the gate hole and stopped by the barn. The horses hadn’t run away. They didn’t realize Johnnie wasn’t driving them.
Somehow, Johnnie bounced off the evener and got caught in the harrow’s teeth. The horses dragged him probably an eighth of a mile. When I got to Johnnie his left leg was bent backward and snapped in two. Luke Yoder was going by so I ran out to the road. I told him to get some men to help get the harrow apart and to send someone to get you.”
With sirens ringing across the land, farmers stopped what they were doing. They were directed to where the action was by the strobe lights and fire trucks parked on the road at the Mast farm The farmers came to see if they needed to help. The small crowd was cordoned across the road a good hundred feet away.
Hal marveled at Edna and Butcher Ben's composure as they watched the medics work. Their calmness came from the depths of their quiet strength and faith in God. They were from generations of tough independent people born to the land, stoic forthright people who tilled the soil and lived fruitful lives of quiet simplicity. They accepted adversity, affliction and tragedy without question as God's will. They died as they had lived, close to the earth that had sustained them.
While Edna stayed close to Johnnie, Butcher Ben stood silently watching with his oldest son, Eli Mast and Eli's wife, Mary, by his side. Butcher Ben didn't call his son’s name as his wife did. From some deep untaught prompting, the two of them knew the boy might hear his mother’s voice when all others were lost to him.
Time seemed frozen, but minutes did pass. There was no doubt in everyone’s mind that the boy was dead except for his mother. She hadn't given up hope yet. Edna Mast bent slightly forward, and calmly called her son repeatedly. She spoke cheerfully and forcefully, as if rousing him out of bed at sunrise. “Johnnie, Johnnie, speak to me! Johnnie, these men are here to help you. Johnnie, do you want to go on a helicopter ride? The helicopter is coming! Please, Johnnie, wake up!”
Her voice was the only sound, except for the curt, intense voices of the medics, and the occasional jolting blare of the two-way radios. “The helicopter is about to land, Mrs. Mast,” EMT Daryl, warned, wanting her to know her time with her son was about up.
Edna nodded she understood and continued to call her son. Somewhere, from the subconscious reaches to where his soul had slipped, the boy heard the echoes of his mother’s voice. He stirred faintly. She had called him back.
He had been totally unresponsive. It was probably about thirty minutes, from the time the men reached him and freed him from the harrow’s teeth, but it felt like an eternity to all those watching the scene unfold.
The medics realized Johnnie was stirring before anyone else as they knelt beside him. They continued working feverishly to strap him onto the stretcher, placed an oxygen mask on his face and attached tubes.
Johnnie suddenly emitted a piercing wail of pain and terror. He was awake, and feeling the excruciating pain from his shattered leg and other injuries. His mother crouched down and spoke to him to comfort him.
The throb of the helicopter warbled in everyone ears as it flew from the east, and circled the field. It swooped down and landed, directed by the firefighters who had pushed all the neighbors back some more. The door opened. Two medical personnel leaped out before the propeller blades stopped. They bent low as they braced themselves in the swift air currant and raced to the boy.
As the men transported him to the chopper, Hal and Emma spoke to Edna and Mary Mast while John talked to Butcher Ben and Eli. Emma talked to the other Mast children. After a few words of comfort, the Lapps left as all the others had. Neighbors had done all they could. As Hal, Emma and John got in the car, the chopper lifted off, made a wide circle over them and aimed east toward the Wickenburg hospital.
Chapter 13
On Wednesday evening, John and Jim hitched up their buggies and loaded the family to go to Peter Rogies's birthday party. Tootie stepped up into John's buggy. She sat down in back by Daniel and smoothed out her dark blue dress. It was tempting to take a deep breath to see if she could smell roses, but she resisted. The last thing she wanted to do was call attention to herself. She just hoped she hadn't applied one squirt too many.
Emma smiled approvingly. “Aendi Tootie, that is a pretty fer gute dress.”
“Thank you, Dear,” Tootie said, pleased that the girl noticed.
Jim invited Noah to ride with him as he tried out his sorrel horse one more time. If all went well tonight, he wanted to somehow or other manage to convince Nora to ride with him again.
Adam and Emma took up the rear of the possession in Adam's buggy. Adam wrote on his notepad. “Tell me about what happened at the Mast farm. He settled back in the seat and tilted his head toward her to give her his undivided attention.
Emma said tearfully, “I could hardly stand seeing how torn up and broken that poor boy was. I pray that he lives so I can teach him another year.”
Adam patted her hand.
Emma took a deep breath and filled him in about Johnnie's accident.
The Rogies family, Cooner Jonah, Anna and their five children, came out on the porch and waited f
or the Lapp family to get out of the buggies. “Wilcom,” Jonah called.
As the women went up the porch steps to greet Anna and her four daughters, Cooner Jonah and his son, David, came down to get a closer look at Jim's courting buggy. “You got yourself quite a buggy there,” Jonah offered.
“Thanks, I'm sure enjoying it,” Jim said, handing the lines to Noah so he could park the buggy behind John's buggy.
“Looks familiar,” Cooner Jonah commented.
“Enos Yutzy's son, Eli, owned the buggy,” John supplied.
“Sad thing that,” Cooner Jonah said. He held his hand out to shake Adam's hand. “Wilcom, Adam. Glad you could come.”
Jim said to John, “My sorrel did all right following you.”
“I noticed that,” John replied. “That is gute.”
The night air had a spring freshness to it. The peepers were in full voice, and the bull frogs croaked on the pond bank in the Rogies pasture.
The boys took off for the old brooder house where David kept his coon dog and his father's old red hound, Mose. They conjured up stories about what was in store for them in the late fall when they took their hounds hunting.
“A pleasant evening for a birthday gathering,” John said, sitting down in a chair on the porch.
“Jah, that it is,” Cooner Jonah agreed as he lit the lanterns attached to the porch posts.
Jim and Adam nodded as they sat down.
The men waited while the women cranked the ice cream maker and cut the cake. As the women chit chatted, men crossed their legs, placed their crossed arms over their laps and stared out into the darkness.
John said, “You hear what happened to Johnnie Mast this afternoon?”
“Nah,” Cooner Jonah said.
So between John and Jim they filled Cooner Jonah in on the accident. Cooner Jonah said, “So that is why the helicopter flew over. We must pray for Johnnie to be well soon.”
“It will take a lot of praying from the looks of those wounds,” Jim said.