Brightest and Best

by Newport, Olivia

  When Gideon began writing to the college, he had hoped for any teacher who might come to a classroom where all of the students were Amish. Only later, within the confines of the small cell he shared with the other men, had his thoughts turned in another direction.

  When the church gathered next and the worship service ended, Jed Hilty would rise and invite the entire congregation to his youngest daughter’s wedding. How could Gideon speak aloud the thought that pressed more firmly into his mind each day?

  He did not want to break Ella’s heart.

  Leaning against the wall, James watched heads angling toward each other and listened to the buzz that rose.

  It was an enthusiastic buzz, the sort of sound that filled a space with hope. And after the last few weeks, the people in this room deserved hope.

  “I know some of you are uncomfortable with me,” Lindy said. “You may even wonder why I am here. I chose not to be baptized into the Amish church. I moved to town. I drive an automobile. I have a telephone. But a teacher from the teachers college would do all those things as well. The difference is that I understand you. I know you. I know what is in your hearts for your children. You may see the differences between us, but I see the ways our hearts are still one.”

  It was a speech that made James’s chest swell. This was his niece generously offering to set aside the quiet, orderly life she had made for herself to serve the community that had raised her.

  But it would not do.

  “Well,” Isaiah Borntrager said, “we ought to carefully consider this matter. Mr. Eggar has assured us that he will help us see this through. Surely he will uncover some provision in the law that would work in our favor.”

  Mrs. Hershberger spoke up. “It does seem the next best thing to having one of our own members teach.”

  “And it might go well for her because she is not Amish,” Aaron King said. “Mr. Brownley might be more willing to come to an agreement with a teacher who is not Amish, but Lindy would not teach what we do not wish our children to learn.”

  “I promise to work closely with the parents,” Lindy said.

  James caught Gideon’s eye. Gideon’s nod was so slight that no one else would have discerned it, but James did.

  “Might I speak?” James pushed his weight off the wall and turned his face toward his niece. “Lindy, you are offering a sacrifice that tells me once again what I have always known. Your spirit is right with God, and you love His people.”

  “Onkel James,” Lindy said. “I want to do this.”

  “I believe your heart. But in my judgment, if we are going to demonstrate that we are capable of educating the children of our own community, we must have an Amish teacher from the start.”

  “I am Amish,” Lindy said, “in language and culture and history—all the ways that will matter in the classroom.”

  James said nothing. Telling his niece that she lacked one qualification, the most essential one in his mind, did not come easily.

  “A member of the church,” Isaiah said. “That’s what you mean.”

  James met Lindy’s eye and nodded.

  “I don’t see a problem,” Isaiah said. “Lindy did not break her baptismal vows. She never made them. She can still be baptized and join the church.”

  Still James said nothing.

  “I have a strong faith,” Lindy said quietly.

  “Then you will have no trouble with the baptismal vows,” Isaiah said.

  “If Lindy wants to join the church,” James said, “of course we will welcome her. But it’s a serious decision. We cannot ask her to stand among us now and make such a promise.”

  Lindy sat down.

  “I’m tired of fighting,” John Hershberger said. “If we can have our own school and an understanding teacher, that’s enough for me. In my mind, she doesn’t have to be a church member.”

  “We cannot keep having the same discussion—dispute—with Mr. Brownley on this matter,” James said. “It is imperative that we prove once and for all that we can teach our own children. Then let him test them and see how well they have done. We must be above reproach. If we have an Amish teacher and the children do well, the matter will be settled.”

  “Teachers get married,” Cristof Byler said. “That’s what started us down this road in the first place. We’ll just end up back here.”

  “Right now all we need is the first Amish teacher,” James said. “That will give us time to prepare other young women who might feel the call to serve God and the church this way.”

  The heads turning toward Ella did not escape James’s notice.

  The door opened and cold air gusted the length of the structure.

  “Tobias,” Gideon said.

  James lurched two steps away from the wall.

  “You said to come if Aunti Miriam …”

  CHAPTER 43

  They kept vigil. James and Gideon and Ella.

  Miriam had appeared well enough on Wednesday morning, other than the fatigue that had been growing for months, but was stricken suddenly in the afternoon, moments before Tobias turned up at the schoolhouse. The ache in her legs had made her surrender to the comfortable chair in the corner of Gideon’s kitchen. James had found her there when he rushed home from the schoolhouse meeting. She made a pretense of irritation that Tobias had raced off needlessly, but her protest was insincere when James half carried her to her own bed in the dawdihaus. Still, if Miriam had a choice in the matter, she would not have sent for the English doctor. But James insisted, and Gideon rode into town and the doctor arrived.

  Unquestionably, it was influenza.

  Even robust young men were felled within hours by the virulent strain that had circled the globe in the waning months of the world war. In fact, the doctor reported, the young experienced more severe symptoms than the elderly. The important point to remember, the doctor emphasized, was that most people made a full recovery.

  Lindy had recovered.

  A week after her illness, Mrs. Byler was still weak but recovering.

  In the throes of watching his wife’s suffering, James prayed for God’s mercy. Most people did not give him the reassurance he sought. The medicines the doctor left seemed to bring no benefit.

  No Thanksgiving turkey baked in the oven on Thursday. Miriam’s fever raged. Her arms ached, she said. Her head ached. Her legs ached. No, she did not want to eat. She wanted another quilt. She wanted no quilt at all.

  On Friday, Gideon encouraged the children to eat the food Rachel carried over, but the adults had no appetite. Miriam coughed most of the day. When she spoke, raspy, it was to complain how sore her throat was.

  James left Miriam’s bedside only when he had to and only for a few minutes at a time. Gideon tended to the animals. Ella kept Gertie occupied and periodically set out cold food for the children. James, Gideon, and Ella rotated through the bedroom of the dawdihaus determined that Miriam would not spend a moment alone, even when she slept. When she woke, and was not thrashing against the pain of her ailment, they coaxed water, tea, or a bit of bread into her.

  James sat alone with Miriam in the abating shadows of Saturday morning, his elbows propped on his knees and his head hanging between his hands.

  Had he brought this home after visiting Lindy in town or going to the meeting with the school board? Had someone coughed on him in the mercantile, and he carried the disease home to Miriam while his own body fought it off? Had Miriam been too close to Mrs. Byler, who had succumbed last weekend but was improving?

  Gottes wille.

  He prayed to accept God’s will. But he prayed for God’s will to deliver his beloved.

  Gertie whined about not being allowed to see Miriam, but somber Savilla understood the gravity. If Gertie turned up at the dawdihaus door, Savilla would be right behind her to tug her back to the main house. Ella scrubbed everything she could think to clean in both structures.

  James had always worried what would happen to Miriam if God should call him home. Somehow he had never imagined
that Miriam would be the first to see the Savior’s face.

  Gideon slipped into the room. James looked up.

  “She seems to be resting better,” Gideon whispered.

  “In and out,” James said. “I persuaded her to sip some tea before she fell asleep again.”

  Her breathing was too shallow. James’s hand on her cheek told him her temperature was climbing again.

  “Maybe you should have something as well,” Gideon said. “Mrs. Borntrager brought food.”

  James shook his head. He would not leave. Not now.

  A gasp from the bed startled them both. Almost immediately, Miriam exhaled heavily. James knocked over the chair in his rush to get three inches closer to Miriam. Her eyes fluttered but did not open. James waited for her to take another breath.

  “Miriam,” he said, jiggling her arm.

  She moaned, but she opened her mouth and inhaled.

  The door opened. James did not take his eyes off Miriam. In his peripheral vision he saw Gideon reach for Ella’s hand.

  Miriam’s chest fell slowly. James inhaled in harmony and held his breath, waiting for Miriam to release hers.

  No rush of air came, no leaking breath, no rise of the rib cage. Finally James could hold his breath no longer and emptied his lungs against his will.

  This time when he jiggled Miriam’s arm, she did not moan.

  Outside, the sun broke the horizon.

  Gideon’s tears burned the backs of his eyes. They had burned this way five years ago, when it was Betsy’s eyes that fluttered but did not open, Betsy’s chest that fell but did not rise.

  Grief blurred memory then as it did now.

  Had it been fair to send a boy not quite fourteen years old to tell the nearest neighbor? Ella had offered to go, but Gideon wanted her near. Tobias had done the job well, and the news spread across the Amish farms rapidly enough that church members streamed to the Wittmer farm in a steady flow throughout the day. They came first to the main house. Ella somehow enticed them to remain there, with only a few at a time walking to the dawdihaus to see James.

  Some were relieved by the separation, lest they unwittingly take the influenza home from the dawdihaus to their own households. They preferred instead to express their condolences to Gideon. James made brief polite appearances at the main house between his long stretches of vigil beside Miriam. Ella and Rachel had bathed and dressed Miriam in her blue wedding dress and prepared her for the viewing. Gideon had seen for himself how most of the people who ventured to the dawdihaus to pay their respects chose to do so from a distance.

  How many tens of millions had the influenza taken as it circled the globe? Why, in God’s will, should Miriam, on a remote farm near a small town in eastern Ohio, be one of them?

  Four men organized a crew to dig Miriam’s grave not too far from where Betsy was laid to her final rest, and Chester Mast and his sons were building the pine casket.

  The details had to be looked after. Later, James would be grateful that church members executed the traditions swiftly and capably, just as Gideon had been five years ago.

  Unabashedly, after Ella pulled the sheet over Miriam’s face, the two men embraced. Grief had brought them together when Betsy died and Miriam insisted she and James must help Gideon with his young family. Now grief bound them once again in the vacuum where Miriam’s voice belonged.

  The touch at Gideon’s elbow made him jump, but it was Ella. Was it only eight hours ago that they had together witnessed a soul leave this world while they gripped the flesh-and-blood future they dreamed of together? Ella’s face was drawn with exhaustion, emotion, efficiency. Gideon conjured a wan smile.

  “Look.” Ella tilted her head across the room.

  Rachel, Lindy, and David were huddled in a triune embrace.

  “Have they …?” Gideon asked.

  “Life is precious,” Ella said. “Why should we waste any of it separated from people we love?”

  “I’m happy for them,” Gideon said. Even James would give thanks if reconciliation came out of this day that had wrenched his life inside out. Gideon had a vague awareness that he had not seen any of his own children in some time. He said, “Where are my girls?”

  “Savilla has the Hershberger girls upstairs,” Ella said. “I’ll look for Gertie.”

  She started to move away but paused as the front door opened for the umpteenth time that day. Margaret Simpson stepped tentatively into the front room.

  Margaret felt out of her element. She knew nothing about Amish traditions upon the death of a loved one, and the extent of her relationship with Miriam Lehman was the conversation they had at the Wittmer door last summer when Margaret had called and Gideon was not home. But in recent weeks Lindy had progressed from being a neighbor Margaret waved at to a friend she cared for, and Miriam was Lindy’s aunt and Gertie’s great-aunt. And Margaret felt some affinity for Gideon and the battle he led for the education of the Amish children.

  Lindy crossed the room toward her and said, “I didn’t know you’d come.”

  “It seemed only right,” Margaret said.

  After Lindy stopped long enough that morning to give Margaret the news before heading out to the Wittmer farm, Margaret reasoned that grief was grief. She did not have to be closely connected to Miriam to know that many others would feel the weight of a boulder on their chests today—and probably for weeks or months to come. In a black skirt and shirtwaist, at least Margaret did not introduce thoughtless color into a somber occasion. The men were in black suits and white shirts, and the women in black dresses and black aprons.

  “You know a few people,” Lindy said. “The mothers you drove out to the children’s home will never forget your generosity.”

  Margaret spied Mrs. Borntrager standing next to the fireplace and Mrs. Byler firmly holding the hand of her young son. Hans shyly waved at Margaret, and she gave him a smile.

  “I’ll bring you something to eat,” Lindy said.

  “I don’t need anything,” Margaret said.

  “There’s plenty. Everybody shows up with food. In this way the English and the Amish are not so different.”

  And in which category did Lindy put herself? Her faith had been formed in the Amish church, yet she had not joined. And would not. If Lindy had decided that her offer to teach was a good enough reason to join the church after all these years, Margaret would have heard by now.

  Margaret didn’t see James, but Gideon appeared purely stricken. Perhaps by the time she reached him, the words she ought to speak would come to her.

  “Margaret,” Lindy said, her eyes filling, “it really was kind of you to come.”

  Margaret ran her tongue across her teeth behind her lips. “Is there something special I should say?”

  “Speak your heart,” Lindy said. “I’ll be back with something to refresh you.”

  Margaret reminded herself that she was the same woman who stood up to Superintendent Brownley, the same woman who drove mothers desperate to see their children across the county, the same woman who said good-bye to a man she might have loved for a long time to come—because she had done what she thought was right for the people in this room.

  Gideon never seemed to be left alone for more than a moment at a time. Margaret made her way through the crowd in his front room, listening to snippets of conversation. Most of it was in Pennsylvania Dutch. Occasionally an English phrase fell on her ears as someone slipped back and forth between the two languages. But Margaret did not need to understand the language the mourners spoke to understand the language of their hearts.

  Words of hope.

  Words of love.

  Words of loss.

  Words of tenderness and compassion and care and encouragement.

  Why would anyone want to interfere with creating this sense of belonging for another generation? If she never did any other good thing with her life, if she never found another teaching position, if she never loved another man, Margaret would always know she had done the right thing f
or the families in this room.

  Ella first looked upstairs, supposing Gertie would want to be with Savilla and the other girls. But Gertie was not among the growing assembly in the girls’ bedroom. Savilla’s eyes bore a stunned stare. Ella had seen Savilla go upstairs with two Hershberger sisters, but now there were eight girls. Several of them, too young to discern what Savilla might be feeling on this day, giggled about something or other.

  Rescue me, Savilla’s eyes pleaded from the center of her bed.

  Ella stepped into the room. “Savilla, would you help me find your sister?”

  The nine-year-old swiftly unfolded her feet and took Ella’s hand.

  “It’s a hard day,” Ella whispered in the hall. “They don’t know.”

  Savilla nodded, sedate. “I didn’t get to say good-bye.”

  “I know. It was too dangerous.”

  “I don’t care if I might get influenza,” Savilla said. “You and Daed might get sick, and you were there.”

  Ella squeezed Savilla’s hand. How could she explain that parents sometimes took risks themselves that they would not allow for their children? How could she explain that she and Gideon couldn’t leave James alone? How could she explain that it might have frightened Savilla if she had seen Miriam at the height of her illness?

  They started down the back stairs.

  “I think I know where Gertie is,” Savilla said.

  “Let’s go there together, then.”

  Savilla led the way through the kitchen and out the back door. On the final day of November, as the sun arranged its setting glory, the air was cold. As they passed the hooks on the back porch, Ella snatched a couple of shawls.

  “She goes to the loft,” Savilla said. “Aunti Miriam always told her not to go up there by herself.”

  Ella swallowed. Gideon would not approve of his rambunctious six-year-old climbing the ladder on her own. Even Ella didn’t like to make the ascent.

  Savilla was right, though. As soon as they entered the barn, Ella caught sight of Gertie’s prayer kapp, a bright spot against the yellow and brown hues of the hay loft.