Wonderful Lonesome

by Newport, Olivia

  Abbie turned the old yard chair around and indicated that Ruthanna should sit. “I know Eber hasn’t been up to digging.”

  “I have enough to cook with, and the nights aren’t cold yet.” Ruthanna tried to get comfortable in the chair, a task growing in difficulty with every inch of her waistline.

  Abbie stood behind Ruthanna and began to rub her shoulders. “I’ll talk to Daed and my bruder. They can make sure you have what you need.”

  “Rudy has already offered.”

  Abbie pressed into her shoulder, and Ruthanna gave a sigh of bliss. “You have strong fingers. Eber cannot even rub my sore feet these days.”

  “He seems quite ill again, Ruthanna.”

  Ruthanna forced herself to breathe. “He is.”

  “I can take a buggy to Limon and get the doctor.”

  “He was here three days ago. He never has anything new to say. It might be an ulcer, and Eber needs to rest, or it might be something worse. The pain in his stomach comes and goes.”

  “Maybe we can get a doctor to come from Colorado Springs, or take Eber there. They will have a hospital. The trains go every day.”

  “He won’t go. He says that if it is God’s will for him to die, then he will go to his Savior gladly.”

  Abbie’s hands ceased their comforting motion as she swung around to crouch in front of Ruthanna and look her in the face. “Did he really say such a thing?”

  Ruthanna nodded.

  “But our people have no objection to medical care. Where did he get such a notion?”

  “Gottes wille.”

  “Both of you should go to Colorado Springs and stay. Eber could see a specialist, and you could have the baby there.”

  “The child is not due for more than a month. We have no money. Where would we stay? How would we buy food? Who would look after our animals?”

  “You know that the men would look after the farm. We could take up a collection for your other needs. That is our way.”

  Ruthanna shook her head slowly. “Abbie, no one has any cash to speak of. Everyone gets by with trading. Besides, Eber will not agree.”

  “This is no time for him to be proud. You should at least talk to him. We’ll figure out a way.”

  Ruthanna changed the subject. “Rudy said the Nissleys want to have a meeting about what happened with the coal. Do you plan to go?”

  Abbie lifted her shoulders and let them drop slowly as she stood up. “I suppose. It’s tomorrow. Pray for us all.”

  “If it is true, then Martin is accountable to all of us.” Adam Nissley opened his blue eyes wide, creating ridges in his forehead. “Even without a minister, we all know that what he did was wrong.”

  Abbie stood in the back of the crowded room. Not many of the other women were present, but no one had told her she could not be present. Millie Nissley poured coffee and handed cups around the ragged circle in her sitting room. Abbie watched as Willem took his cup and characteristically blew across the surface of the hot liquid before sipping. She wished she had thought to bring a coffee cake or rolls to share, though it hardly felt like a casual social occasion. Men either sat stiffly in their chairs or leaned forward on their knees.

  Other than Eber, the one man missing was Martin Samuels, and Abbie wondered whether he had declined to attend or they had intentionally left him out. It seemed to her that he ought to have the opportunity to speak to his own people in a matter that so obviously concerned him.

  “It is true,” Willem said softly.

  “Is he willing to confess?” Adam said.

  “You will have to ask him that question.” Willem sipped his coffee.

  Abbie crossed her arms and clasped her elbows. Despite his rush to justice on the day Rudy discovered the coal, Willem had mustered surprising calm. But Abbie saw the way his fingers wrapped around his coffee cup, indignation swelling in his clenched joints. What was happening to him? He never used to let troubles disturb him to this extent.

  Albert Miller spoke up. “I would never have imagined Martin was capable of this. If we cannot trust each other, then who can we trust?”

  “We will all have to look out for each other,” Moses Troyer said, “to make sure this does not happen again. If any of us sees another falling into sin, let him speak up.”

  Abbie swallowed her thought. The point of trust was not checking up on each other. Whether or not they all trusted one another, they could trust God to care for them. Willem had been offended, but he had not truly suffered. She watched his face now, but he simply caught Millie Nissley’s eye and she brought the coffeepot to refill his cup.

  When the knock on the door disrupted the tone in the room and all heads turned, Abbie was closest to the door.

  She pulled it open to find Jake Heatwole standing on the other side.

  Willem immediately stood. Color rose through Abbie’s cheeks as she tensed every muscle in her face. Willem forced himself to look away from her and meet Jake’s eyes.

  “I don’t mean to barge in,” Jake said, “but I heard about the disappointment you have all endured in the last couple of days.”

  Willem nodded. Jake was not so distanced from the Amish that he did not understand that what wounded one of them wounded all of them.

  Adam Nissley rose. “This is a private meeting, Mr. Heatwole.”

  Willem resisted the urge to sigh audibly. If the Amish families would listen to Jake’s kindness, they would see that he meant no harm.

  “I only wanted to see if there might be something I could do to help.” Jake glanced around the room, unperturbed.

  “I think we have the matter well in hand.” Eli Yoder held his stiff-seated pose. “We will decide for ourselves what is fair.”

  “I did not suppose you required any assistance with that determination.” Jake had not stepped any farther into the room than Abbie initially allowed. “You are all people of conscience. I suspect even Martin Samuels’s transgression is a lapse due to more general difficulties.”

  “Are you excusing him, then?” Eli Yoder shuffled his feet slightly.

  “Not at all,” Jake said. “In fact, I make no judgment about the matter at all. I merely came to minister if there might be any need that I might fill.”

  No one spoke. Abbie still stood at the door, one hand grasping the thick panel of wood.

  “Would you like some kaffi?” Millie asked.

  Willem heard the reluctance in her voice and saw the relief in her face when Jake shook his head.

  “I will not intrude further,” Jake said. “But if you don’t mind, Mr. Nissley, I would like to remain outside for a few minutes. Then if anyone feels the need to talk, I will not be far away.”

  Adam pressed his lips together, but he nodded. Jake stepped outside the door, and Abbie closed it behind him and leaned against it.

  Willem swallowed his second cup of coffee in one gulp. “Thank you, Mrs. Nissley, for your kind refreshment.” He nodded at the men around the room and the women on the periphery. Abbie’s eyes widened, but he knew she would not speak or try to stop him in a room full of people. Willem brushed a hand against hers on his way out.

  Jake stood a few yards from the house stroking the slender nose of his horse. “Hello, Willem.”

  Willem patted the horse’s rump. “Forgiveness has a hard edge, Jake. I need prayer if I am going to face Martin Samuels with love in my heart once again.”

  The house quieted soon after sunset. Hours later, Abbie turned up the wick in the oil lamp that illumined her quilt square. Triangles of blue and green and purple and brown and crimson and black and white blurred together in her wearied eyes. The trunk of this family’s tree—the Yutzys, in Abbie’s mind—was stitched with precision, and she had started adding colors alternating with white to form the leaves of the tree. After the meeting earlier in the day, Abbie was more determined than ever to finish the quilt before further division could set in among the Amish families. Six of twelve blocks were finished, and she would not let up on the impeccable quality she
chased. She had ripped out entire rows already, and she would do it again if she had to. The finished quilt must be a testament of enduring beauty, because it would represent the growth and spread of the settlement.

  Abbie murmured prayers for every household in the settlement, even the long-gone Chupps, whenever she stitched. Twice she had stayed up all night, only realizing dawn would soon invade the sky when her mother shuffled into the kitchen to light the stove and start breakfast. She knew the names of every child in the settlement, though their precise ages often escaped her and she would have to calculate based on what she knew about the rest of the family. She knew whose wheat had suffered most in the June hailstorm and whose vegetables had flourished most in the July heat. She knew who might yet eke out a bit of cash from a second planting and who had given up trying. And she prayed for them all.

  For Eber in his prolonged illness, that he might yet find hope.

  For Willem in his temptation to leave the church.

  For Rudy in his fragile dreams.

  For Ruthanna and her tension-filled muscles.

  For her parents and Daniel, Reuben, and Levi.

  For Little Abe’s safety and his parents’ nerves.

  For Martin Samuels and the stress that would make him do the unthinkable.

  For all of them. Every leaf of every tree of life in her quilt and the prosperous future her heart ached for.

  For as far back as she could remember, humming an Ausbund tune had soothed Abbie’s mind. She used to hum as she walked to the rural school where she studied in the early grades when she was nervous the English teacher might not understand her words through the thick Pennsylvania Dutch accent. She hummed when one of the farm animals was giving birth or gasping in the moments before death. She hummed as she concentrated on making bread that would meet her mother’s standard.

  And she hummed now as she prepared to clean Martin Samuels’s house. It was his regular day. Abbie could hardly tell him that because he had stolen Willem’s coal she would no longer bring him bread or sweep his floor. For nearly a week now she had hummed her way through disappointment at what he had done and the tension brooding in every conversation she overheard between men. The women were not any less suspicious. Abbie was nearly as disappointed in the shroud of distrust that fell over the families as she was in Martin. If she raised the question of forgiveness, someone was sure to point out that the widower Samuels had yet to express any convincing remorse.

  Abbie had not spoken to Willem since he stepped past her with clear intent to converse with Jake Heatwole about the events rattling the Amish settlement. She should not have been surprised, but his wordless steps had settled into place the wall rising, brick by brick, between them for weeks. And that was perhaps the greatest disappointment. When she left this week’s bread, she did not allow herself to look around and wonder if he might spot her and offer a greeting.

  Out of courtesy, she knocked, but as usual did not wait for a response. The only time she had found Martin in his house on one of her weekly visits was when he was ill. That was more than a year and a half ago. Abbie set her bucket of brushes and sponges in the middle of his sitting room and inspected her surroundings. She could see straight through to his lean-to kitchen and the crusted dishes stacked to one side of the washtub. The disarray was notably worse than usual, which Abbie credited to the turmoil in his spirit. There was no point in taking his bread loaves into the kitchen until she had cleared a place to put them. Instead she set them on the small desk that had been in his wife’s family for sixty years before her death. Abbie nudged aside a spread of paper. Once she had emptied her arms, she attempted to stack them with better order.

  Abbie’s eyes fell on an open letter, and the words sprang up before she could chastise herself for reading sentences not meant for her. Blinking, she picked up the two sheets of paper filled with tiny script. The more she read, the more tightly she held a hand over her mouth. She nearly tripped over her bucket in her haste to reach her buggy and turn the horse toward home.

  “So it’s true?” Abbie’s jaw dropped as she stared at her father in the sitting room where he sat with the family Bible open in his lap. Since there was no harvest, he had taken to filling hours he used to spend on farm work by reading the German tome.

  Ananias tipped his face forward so he could look at her over the tops of his round reading glasses. “Yes, what you read is true. But you should not have been reading Martin’s papers.”

  “I told you, I didn’t mean to. I was so shocked that I couldn’t stop.”

  “That is a failure of your self-control, Abigail. What you have learned was not supposed to go beyond a private council meeting with the bishop.”

  Abbie flopped into a chair across from Ananias. “But that meeting was fifteen months ago. Were you really never going to tell anyone what happened there?”

  Ananias nodded. “That was our intent.”

  “But Daed, don’t you see? If this has been dividing us all this time, how could we ever hope for a successful settlement?” Abbie quelled the urge to stand up and stomp around the room.

  “We believed it was our only hope for what we all wanted.”

  Abbie reached up with both hands and pulled on the strings of her prayer kapp. “But how could that be? If the visiting bishop would not even stay to give us communion because of your argument, how could you hope to heal such a deep spiritual divide by ignoring it?”

  “Argument is an indelicate word, Abigail.”

  She put her head back on the top of the chair and stared at the ceiling. How could her daed remain unflustered? Abbie calmed her breath and returned her gaze to her father.

  “The bishop you met with must have talked to other bishops in Kansas and Nebraska. There must be a reason they stopped visiting.”

  “I have no way to know what the bishops say to each other.”

  “Please talk to me, Daed. I want to understand.”

  “You already understand the essence. The council was not of one mind about whether there is true salvation outside the Amish church.”

  “That question has always been part of our history. I suspect that if you convened a meeting of all the Amish bishops and ministers, they would not all agree either.”

  “And you would be right.” Ananias smoothed a hand across the open Bible in his lap. “But each district must decide what it will teach. Because we have families here who came from several different districts, the disparity of thought is more pronounced than it might be elsewhere.”

  The back door swung open and Levi charged into the house. “Aren’t we going to have lunch?”

  “In a little while,” Abbie said.

  “Daed, Reuben wants to know if you are going to dig coal this afternoon.”

  “I have not decided,” Ananias said.

  “If you do, can I go with you?” Levi draped himself across an end of the sofa.

  “It’s dangerous for a little boy,” Ananias said.

  “But I’m not so little anymore. I want to!”

  Abbie rolled her eyes. “Levi, please, Daed and I are talking.”

  “When are you going to be finished talking?”

  “Levi!” Abbie stood up, pulled the boy to his feet, and pointed him back out the door with a firm shove.

  When Levi was gone, her father raised an eyebrow. “Might you have been harsh?”

  “I’m sorry. I’ll apologize to Levi later for my impatience.” Abbie sat down again and smoothed her skirt. “I wanted to be sure we finish our conversation.”

  “There is not much more to say.”

  “Why don’t the bishops visit anymore, even just a few times a year?”

  “Part of the reason bishops visited was to decide whether they would want to move here. They have seen for themselves what a challenge it would be, even apart from the spiritual question.”

  Abbie could not dispute this observation. Even bishops had to be able to support their families. She shifted in her chair. “And what do you think on th
e spiritual question?”

  “Abigail.”

  “Tell me, Daed.”

  “I am not interested in stirring up conflict.”

  “The conflict is already there, Daed. It runs under everything that happens. If we could only worship together, so many things could be better.”

  Ananias closed the Bible and stacked his hands on top of it.

  “Daed, please. I am not asking out of disrespect or lack of submission, only lack of understanding.”

  He stood up and put the Bible on its carved stand. “My conscience tells me that I must interpret the Word of God to mean that there is no salvation outside the church.”

  “Outside the Amish church. Is that what you mean?”

  He nodded.

  Abbie sank against the back of her chair, her shoulders sagging. “So the Chupps?”

  “If they have left the church, I believe they have turned their backs on the Lord’s gift of salvation.”

  Abbie crossed her ankles and quickly uncrossed them. She could not think what to do with her feet or her hands or her face. If her father was right, Willem was in grave danger. “Come with me,” he had said to her on the day of their doomed picnic. She did not want him to go to the Mennonites at all, and she could not imagine going with him. As badly as he wanted his farm to succeed, even more Abbie wanted their church to succeed. But questioning Willem’s salvation—or even Jake’s?

  “Abigail?”

  She snapped her head up and found her father’s gray eyes peering at her.

  “Have I answered all your questions?”

  “Yes, Daed.”

  “And do you now understand why I hesitated to do so?”

  She nodded.

  “You must not speak of this to anyone.”

  “But Daed—”

  “Not anyone.”

  Every sway and bump in the road seemed to punch Ruthanna in the back and steal her breath. Frightened beyond imagination, she had left Eber alone in the bed clutching his stomach. All day long she had tried to ease his pain and usher in a period of rest. It had been bad enough when he was feverish and exhausted. Watching his pain contort him sliced through her. Finally she knew she did not want to be alone when the end came, and if she did not get help, the end would come soon. It had taken her a long time to climb into the buggy unassisted. Now she was driving so fast, with both hands clenched around the reins, that she could not even raise a palm to wipe away the tears that blurred her vision. She rumbled into the Weaver yard and screamed the names of every member of the family.