Jacob's Return

by Annette Blair

  “Of course. He’s a good man, my Ruben.”

  Rachel squeezed her sister’s shoulder when she passed by her chair in her trek around the kitchen. “I’m happy for you.”

  “I wish I could be happy for you.”

  “You should be. I have many blessings. And Simon is … has tried to change.”

  Esther nodded. “Listen to those men. Too much dandelion wine, I think.”

  “You’ll have to drive home. Oh, no. I need Ruben to drive Hannah.”

  “Make some coffee,” Esther said as she patted little Daniel’s back, and he blew a bubble while closing his heavy eyes.”

  “I don’t think I can manage it, Es.”

  “Go put those babies to bed, then. I’ll make sure Jacob gets the notion to follow so he can do the work. A cup of strong coffee and Ruben’ll be fine once the cold air hits him.”

  “Thanks, Es.”

  “What are sisters for? I’ll come back with Hannah.”

  “Then don’t leave.”

  “But how—”

  “I’ll tell Jacob once I’m upstairs and he’ll send Simon. Pop will probably stay, but we’ll say I’m too taken with labor to be moved, if he asks. Maybe he won’t.”

  “You know Pop.”

  “Ya,” Rachel said. “He’ll ask.”

  When Rachel came to the best room from the kitchen, she found Emma sleeping in Ruben’s arms and Aaron in his father’s. Simon was nowhere to be found. Her father and Levi were playing checkers. “You all calmed down fast.”

  “Simon told us to quiet down so the twins could sleep, then he slammed out of here,” Ruben said.

  “Bring the twins, you two,” Rachel said to Jacob and Ruben. “I need to put them to bed.

  “I’ll put ‘em down, Rache,” Jacob said. “You don’t need to go climbing those stairs.”

  Standing behind her father, Esther rolled her eyes at Rachel. When Jacob caught the by-play he looked from one to the other. Esther made a go-along motion with her hand giving him the idea he should be quiet and do it.

  Ruben and Jacob looked at each other and shrugged. Their manner suggested that going along was better than arguing. Rachel marveled how so much could be expressed with shrugs and rolled eyes.

  Each holding a sleeping three-year-old, Ruben and Jacob followed her to the stairs.

  Jacob knew something was wrong as soon as Rachel began to climb with that slow, determined pace. He turned to Ruben. “Take Aaron.”

  Stepping up beside Rachel, he took her arm. And as if she’d been waiting to let go, she faltered. Certain no one was at the bottom of the stairs watching, Jacob lifted her into his arms and carried her to her room.

  When he put her down, his arms were wet. “I think your water broke, Rache,” he said somewhat shocked, then he saw her abdomen become high and round. When he placed his hand over it, it was hard.

  Rachel moaned and Ruben began to sweat.

  “Put them to bed, Ruben. Their night clothes are hanging on the peg near their cribs.”

  Like a man in a trance, Ruben nodded and left.

  Jacob removed Rachel’s kapp, then took the pins from her hair. When another pain took her so fast, he too began to sweat. This baby seemed to be coming awfully fast. He slipped the pins from her clothes very carefully and removed her apron. Then he opened her dress and prepared to free her from the sleeve.

  Feeling a hand on his arm, he looked up.

  “I’ll do it,” Esther said.

  “But I—”

  “I understand, I do, but it would be better if I undressed her, in case somebody—”

  “Yes,” Jacob said. “Of course, Es. You’re right. I’ll wait outside.”

  “Don’t act like a man suffering the fires of hell, Jacob. Everyone will see, and Simon won’t understand.”

  Jacob nodded and went to his room. Ruben was putting Daniel in one of the cribs.

  “Esther said put the twins together in one and Daniel in the other. Is that all right?”

  Jacob smiled. “Lots of nights, one climbs in with the other anyway. Emma and Aaron will be fine.”

  “Will you?” Ruben asked.

  “I guess.”

  “Simon gone for Hannah Bieler?”

  Jacob ran his hand through his hair. “I forgot the midwife. I’d best go.”

  “Shouldn’t Simon?”

  “Es said I can’t stay around here like a man crazed.” He sighed and punched a pillow. “She’s right. And if I heard Rache suffer, Ruben, you know how I would be.”

  Ruben slapped him on the back. “I’ll come with you. Screaming won’t be too good for me either. If I have to be around another birthing, it’ll take me another two months to go near Es.”

  Jacob stopped. “You didn’t go near Es for two months?

  “Shut up, Yacob!”

  “But I saw you kissing her.”

  “Yes, and that’s about all I did for a while. You need details, nosy man?”

  “Jacob!” Rachel screamed.

  Jacob moved to respond to her call, but Ruben grabbed his arm. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Jacob was grateful Ruben propelled him forward, because, for the life of him, he could not leave on his own.

  Simon, Levi and the Bishop stood at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Rachel’s in labor,” Ruben said. “We’re going for the midwife.”

  “Jacob, I need you,” Rachel called again and Ruben did not know who was more upset by it, Rachel’s father … or her husband … or the man whose arm muscles under his hand screamed to be let free, so he could go to his love.

  In Levi’s eyes, there was only sadness.

  * * * *

  Hannah Bieler was not at home and the English Doctor had permanently relocated to Philadelphia.

  It took them more than a half-hour just to discover where Hannah was. After several calls on neighbors they discovered she was at her sister’s in Strasburg, nursing a sick nephew. When they got there, she said if she left, her nephew might die.

  It was two more hours before they arrived back at the Sauder house.

  Inside, Ruben was struck by the quiet.

  Jacob, ahead of him, stopped at the threshold of the best room.

  Ruben, coming up behind, gazed about, the buzzing in his head threatening to fell him.

  Levi sat alone, elbows on knees, face in his hands.

  “Datt?”

  When Levi looked up, there was deep sorrow in his look. “You’re too late.”

  Chapter 18

  A scream tore from Jacob as he raced up the stairs. At the threshold of Rachel’s room, he stopped, stunned.

  On her bed, Rachel lay unmoving. Beside it, Bishop Zook gave the Amish blessing for the dead. Esther was standing with her back against the wall, eyes closed, face wet with tears.

  Simon rose from his kneeling position at the foot of Rachel’s bed, his face hard with hate. “An eye for an eye,” he said for Jacob’s ears alone, before he left the room, the Bishop behind him.

  Jacob dropped to his knees and placed Rachel’s cool, limp hand against his cheek. “God no,” he begged. “No! Please!”

  Through a haze, Jacob imagined that Rachel’s fingers moved at his shout, and a palsy overtook him, salty tears wetting his lips, regret swamping him and threatening to drown him.

  The imagined movement came again. Longer. Stronger.

  Jacob shot to his feet, bent close and touched Rachel’s cold cheek. He gazed in anguish at her perfectly serene face … and she opened her eyes.

  Jacob’s breath caught. Mighty sobs, with no beginning nor end, broke from him.

  Rachel held his hand in a weak grip.

  With another sob, Jacob touched his cheek to hers. “I thought that … that you did not ...” He took a breath, shuddered, raised his head. “The blessing for the dead, your Pop was giving.”

  “Not for me,” she said, large tears shivering down her cheeks. “For them.”

  Jacob spied the cradle he’d not seen in his anguish, whe
re two tiny, bloody little girls lay. Despite the cowl of birth, they were very red. He knelt beside the daughters he would never know, lifting, one in each hand, bringing them against his heart.

  He heard a whimper so soft, it might have been a mouse, felt a ripple so slight, it might have been his imagination. But the sound came again, the merest cry, weak, thready, the movement, weaker still.

  “They’re alive! Alive and freezing to death! What the hell’s the matter with you Esther?”

  Esther rushed from the room.

  Remorse stabbed Jacob, but he could not spare the time for concern. “We’ve got to warm them. Datt, Datt, come up here!”

  His call made the babe who squealed cry in earnest. “Good,” he said to Rachel who was watching with wide, round eyes. “Crying will warm her. I haven’t lost my mind,” he said, answering her look.

  Once he’d wrapped each babe mummy-like in the blankets set aside for this purpose, Jacob lay them side by side and wrapped them together in another, until just their faces showed.

  He pulled Rachel’s blanket down and tucked the twin girls against her. He was about to tell her to put her arms around them to warm them with her body, but he did not need to.

  Her sorrow turned to joy as Rachel cradled her babies and crooned to them. As if no one else existed for her, she fussed and tucked, whispered love, kissed tiny foreheads, and prayed aloud. After some time, her pleas sent to He who watched over them all, she looked at him. “Thank you.”

  And Jacob thought, ‘for what?’ For giving her a few minutes of her children’s lives? She deserved more than that. She deserved better than to be branded a sinner by her husband. Jacob closed his eyes. Rachel deserved more than to be seduced and brought down by him, the man who professed to love her.

  From her, he deserved no thanks. From above, he deserved no forgiveness. He cleared his throat. “In a minute, I’ll carry you down to the best room where it’s warmer.”

  His father entered with hers, the Bishop clearly surprised she held the babies.

  “Bishop Zook, go into the room two doors down, if you please, and take the bed apart. Bring it downstairs and set it up near the big fireplace.”

  “This is not the time for crying,” he said to calm his own father. “This is the time for doing. How did you and Mom warm me and Anna when we were born? You saved two tiny babies who should have died.” Jacob looked beyond the ceiling toward the heavens. “Help us save two more, Lord.”

  “Amen,” said the Bishop from the next room.

  Rachel echoed her father and hope shone in her eyes.

  “We wrapped you in raw sheep’s wool and put you in a bureau drawer by the fire,” Levi said. “Your mama fed you every half hour even if you only got a drop. When her milk dried up, we used a lambing bottle.” His brows furrowed. “I have the bottles, but we have no sheep for wool.”

  Jacob shook his head and went to the top of the stairs. “Ruben!”

  Ruben stepped into range at the bottom, his face ashen.

  “Nobody’s dead, Ruben.”

  “I know, Es told me. But....”

  “And nobody’s going to die. I need you to go to Atlee’s. Shear some of his sheep if you have to. I need their wool to wrap the babies in.”

  Ruben did not move.

  “Dammit! Now, Ruben! Es, bring up all the quilt batting you can find.”

  “Surely, the blankets are enough,” Levi said.

  “They need layers to keep in their body’s warmth. I learned that in North Dakota from an Australian sheep farmer. I helped him rescue some calves in a blizzard. Unusual man. Smart, though.”

  With Esther’s help, he swathed the babies in quilt stuffing, individually, then side by side again, and handed them back to their waiting mother. “They’re pinker than they were before, Rache. That’s a good sign,” Jacob said.

  “Thank you for saving them.”

  He scoffed, embarrassed, guilt-ridden.

  “Bed’s all set,” Bishop Zook said.

  “All made up? Fire roaring? Extra blankets?”

  “Fire going, bed made up. I’ll get the extra blankets.” He left again.

  Jacob lifted Rachel, bedding and all and saw the bloody linens she lay on. “Ach, Rache, nobody even cleaned you up.” The clean blanket over her had been hiding the mess. He put her back down, took the babies and handed them to his father. Take them down by the fire, hold them against you, and pray. Send Esther back up.”

  “Esther delivered the afterbirth, at least? Jacob asked when his father left. He peeled away the blanket, then the sheet, still red with blood.

  Rachel floated in a different world. She nodded in response to Jacob’s question, then looked down at herself, her nightgown bunched at her waist, her body exposed, bloody. Great gasping sobs overtook her.

  “Ach,” Jacob said to cover his concern at the blood flowing from her. “A flood from both ends.”

  Her smile was not for his forced jest, but because he could look at her, soiled with blood, and show only love.

  “Better for you to smile than cry,” he said. “No more tears now to spoil the day such beautiful babies were born.”

  Esther stepped into the room just as Jacob placed padding between Rachel’s legs and Rachel marveled that her sister did not so much as blink at finding him tending her so intimately.

  “Es, I’m sorry I yelled,” Jacob said.

  Esther nodded. “You had a right to be angry. I was not thinking straight.”

  “Neither me.”

  As they worked efficiently side-by-side tending her, Rachel wondered if she would ever recover from the embarrassment of being unable to tend herself.

  “Let’s get this gown off her,” Esther said. “Then you can raise her so I can remove the soiled linen and replace it with fresh.”

  Lifting her in his arms, while Esther replaced the linen, Jacob took a minute to press a kiss to her forehead. Rachel closed her eyes and accepted the words he did not speak, that he loved her and their daughters. The moment brought forth the dread buried deep in her heart. “I’m frightened,” she said. “That we do not deserve them and God knows it.”

  “Me too, Mudpie.”

  Esther’s gaze shot to their faces, her shock turning quickly to understanding, but she revealed no judgment. “Jacob, your Datt said you and Anna were smaller. Did you know?”

  “Oh, Es. Were they?” Rachel asked, her heart near-bursting with hope. Smaller babies than hers had survived. Their own father, even. Had he passed his strength to his daughters?

  Rachel closed her eyes to ask the impossible of the only one capable of granting it.

  Jacob lay her back down. Together he and Es finished washing her then they put her in a clean, soft nightgown.

  “Clean feels good.”

  Esther tucked the quilt around her.

  “Warm and clean feels better.”

  Jacob carried her downstairs to the big bed by the fire. Being in Jacob’s arms feels best.

  When he settled her in the bed downstairs, and took his arms from around her, it was all she could do not to cry out, the pain of separation so keen.

  He took the twins from Levi and tucked them into her arms under her blanket.

  Levi sniffed. “I go to my house and sleep now. Too much for an old man, all this excitement,” he said gruffly.

  “’Night, Datt.”

  Upstairs, Daniel began to cry. Esther excused herself. “Middle of the night feeding,” she said. “Best get there before he wakes Emma and Aaron.”

  “Lord, yes,” Jacob said. “A tornado couldn’t wake them, but Daniel probably could.”

  Once they heard Esther moving around upstairs, Jacob sat on the bed facing her and his daughters, the look in his eyes speaking of crippling fear and growing hope, of lifetime vows unspoken … yet no less binding.

  He took them all into his arms and buried his face in her hair. “This is where the three of you belong,” he said.

  After a while, she felt him calm and he began to pray
in German. They spoke the words together.

  And peacefulness washed over her.

  As if peace came to Jacob at the same moment, he sat back and nodded, then he examined the tiny faces. “Have you seen their eyes?”

  “Not yet. You?”

  He shook his head. Like her, he was probably thinking it might never happen.

  He put his finger toward one tiny mouth, prodding it.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I want to see if they can suckle. If they can, they’ve got a fighting chance.”

  “But she isn’t, Jacob.”

  He did not look away fast enough for her to miss the pain in his eyes. “Well, she’s not the hungry one. Let’s see if this little one … yes! Look at her go. Oh, oh, she’s gonna cry ‘cause there’s nothing there for her. Your turn, Mudpie.”

  “How can I with them bound together?”

  Jacob moved the babes about in their cocoon a bit, then angled the hungry babe toward her, while holding the other.

  Rachel blushed exposing her breast.

  Jacob chuckled. “After everything, you can blush with me?”

  “I blush for my stupidity. I don’t even know how to nurse her.”

  “If we’re lucky she’ll show you how.” He nudged the baby’s mouth toward Rachel’s nipple. “Come on Squeaky. Time for breakfast.”

  “Ouch!”

  “Guess she knows how. Smart girl.”

  But her nursing did not last long before she drifted to sleep. Rachel feared the baby might still be hungry. “Maybe she’s not strong enough to nurse.”

  “She’s small, she doesn’t need much. Even a drop or two is good for the first time. It’s all right, Rache. They’re going to make it, I know it. Let’s see if lazy Anna here is hungry now.”

  “Oh, Jacob, Anna is a good name. Let’s call her that, for your sister.”

  “Guess that’s who I was thinking of when I said it. She reminds me of Anna, the quiet one. But I think our girls are identical, Mudpie. See each dimple and single arched brow—”

  “Like yours,” Rachel said.

  “Like mine,” Jacob agreed, looking embarrassed.

  “If this is Anna, then what shall we name her sister?”

  “Squeaky?” Jacob joked.

  “I think Anna and Squeaky sounds funny.”