Wonderful Lonesome

by Newport, Olivia

  Abbie squeezed her hand. Many Amish women her age had several children of their own, but Abbie had never before been present at a birth. It was wonderful and terrible at the same time. Her mother seemed to know just what to do. Abbie tried to imagine what it would be like when she had a child. Would her mother be able to remain calm when her own daughter travailed?

  “Abbie,” Esther said, “we are going to need string and a clean pair of scissors or a knife.”

  Abbie looked around.

  “In the basket on the top shelf.” Ruthanna’s voice was flat but her instructions accurate.

  Abbie could see the basket now, the one Ruthanna had used as she worked on her baby’s quilt. When she pulled it off the shelf, Abbie could see the small quilt neatly folded in the flat woven bottom.

  “The cradle,” Ruthanna croaked. “It’s still in the barn, but I think Eber finished it.”

  “There’s plenty of time for that.” Esther pushed Ruthanna’s knees apart. “When the next contraction begins, you can bear down.”

  The water had barely reached boiling when Eber and Ruthanna’s daughter slid into the world. Esther laid the baby on a clean towel and then tied off the cord and cut it. Just as the child let out her first wail, Esther turned her toward Ruthanna and Abbie.

  Abbie gasped. “She is beautiful, Ruthanna. So beautiful!”

  Esther wrapped the baby in the towel and handed the bundle to Abbie. “Don’t spend too much time admiring her. She’ll want her mother soon enough.”

  Ruthanna smiled through the streaks of grimy tears on her face. “And her mother wants her.”

  Marveling, Abbie released the baby into Ruthanna’s waiting arms and then settled in again as together they counted fingers and toes.

  “She’s perfect. Her father would have—” Ruthanna’s voice broke.

  Abbie leaned her head against Ruthanna’s. She had no words for the moment.

  “Poor Willem,” Ruthanna said, “waiting outside all this time. You’d better go tell him.”

  Abbie wiped her eyes with the back of one hand and nodded.

  Outside, a moment later, she stopped to gaze at Willem in the fractured instant before he sensed her presence. This was the man she had imagined having children with. The thought that they might have no future triggered tears.

  Willem spotted her from where he sat on the ground with his elbows propped on his knees and his head hanging between his dangling hands. He jumped to his feet. “The baby?”

  “A girl. They’re both fine.”

  A grin cracked Willem’s face. “A girl. I hope she is as lovely as her mother.”

  “Every bit.” Abbie’s throat was too thick to say more.

  Willem opened his arms, and Abbie went into them for the second time that day. She breathed in the sweaty scent of a man unafraid of hard work—and a man whose salvation her own father would question if he knew what Willem contemplated. Abbie banished the thought.

  “I guess my daed could not find the doctor,” Abbie said. “He never came.”

  Willem kissed the top of her head. “Rudy was here. He went for an undertaker.”

  The weather was not cold and dreary, as Ruthanna had supposed it would be. She had not imagined the day she buried her husband could be warm, sunny, and inviting. It was the sort of day that beckoned giggles and bare feet in a creek, picking wild sunflowers and naming clouds.

  Those were the wishes of girlhood, not the order of a funeral.

  Standing behind her home, Ruthanna pulled the baby’s quilt away from her face and stroked a silken cheek. She had barely discovered how to feed the child comfortably, much less face the fatherless years that stretched ahead. Someday this innocent little girl would hear the story of her father’s death on the day of her birth. Ruthanna would avoid the topic for as many years as she could. No child should have to learn to mingle grief with rejoicing, missing a man she never knew simply because of a coincidence of dates.

  Not coincidence, Ruthanna reminded herself. Gottes wille. Was not everything that happened God’s will and meant to teach her something? Ruthanna could not see the lesson in tragedy. She saw no hope in devastation, no justice for a little girl with no daed.

  The back door opened. Abbie’s face looked as drawn and pale as Ruthanna supposed her own was.

  “Is it time?” Ruthanna asked.

  “The first buggies are here.”

  Ruthanna adjusted her daughter’s slight weight in her arms and followed Abbie into the house, where Abbie and Esther had prepared the humble home for the service. The undertaker’s black wagon had come early in the morning to return Eber to his bedroom, this time embalmed and laid in an unlined coffin on a wide plank balanced over a bench. The crisp white sheet would come off soon. All other furniture in the room had been removed to the barn, save one chair for Ruthanna. Esther had insisted it was too soon to expect Ruthanna to stand to greet the Amish families who would come to see Eber. Dark cloths covered the windows, casting the room into unfamiliar midday gray shadows.

  “Do you want to see him before the others come in?” Abbie asked.

  Ruthanna nodded, the knot in her throat too big for speech.

  Abbie stepped quietly across the room, which now felt cavernous to Ruthanna, to lift the sheet and gently fold it into a tight, small rectangle.

  Ruthanna’s heart pounded. Eber lay in the same unadorned white shirt and dark trousers that had been his wedding suit, with his arms folded across his chest. The undertaker had made Eber look healthier than he had been in the last few weeks, the fullness of his cheeks unlike the gaunt outline Ruthanna had become accustomed to.

  Oh Eber.

  They all came, even Widower Samuels. Tears burned behind Abbie’s eyes.

  Her memory of the last time the Amish had gathered for a worship service had grown fuzzy around the edges, and she could not be sure every family had been there. As desperately as she wanted them to be a church together, she hated the occasion that summoned them on this day. A few English families arrived as well, tentative about the procedure but earnest in their intention. They understood few truths about the Amish, but they understood loss. Of this Abbie had no doubt.

  Abbie rotated between greeting people at the door, checking to see if Ruthanna needed anything, and helping her mother organize the steadily widening array of food the visitors carried in. Her father and brothers had gathered every bench and stool from the surrounding farms, and still children would have to sit on the floor and some of the men stand. The Gingerich home simply was not spacious enough to bring comfort to a gathering fraught with distress. No one’s home would have been. They had all built quickly, eager to have shelter and begin farming and expecting to expand soon.

  But soon had not come for any of them. While they might have held a Sunday service in a barn, tradition demanded Eber be laid out in his home with his wife and daughter beside him. From the kitchen, where she found space on the crowded counter for yet another plate of food, Abbie could look into the bedroom and see Ruthanna cradling her four-day-old daughter. Families entered for the viewing. Some murmured to Ruthanna words that Abbie could not hear but could suppose.

  “It’s God’s will.”

  “You must trust.”

  “We will pray for you.”

  Abbie believed those affirmations, yet they sounded hollow even in her own mind on this day. She picked up an empty milking stool, before someone else would discover its unoccupied state, and carried it into the bedroom to sit beside Ruthanna. In a moment, Jake Heatwole would come through the front door. Abbie had seen him trot his horse into the yard.

  Jake.

  When Willem suggested asking him to lead the service, even Abbie could not dispute the wisdom. The Ordway settlement was a day and a half of travel in each direction, and no one could be sure a minister would come. Even if one had, he would have been a stranger. Jake knew Eber, and Ruthanna trusted him.

  If her father was right, though, and the latent fissure under the Amish settlement was
a pressured crack about the salvation of a man like Jake Heatwole, Abbie could not help wondering what this moment of trying to do right by Eber would mean.

  She put out her arms and offered to take the baby, but Ruthanna only ran a single finger down the tiny curve of the infant’s nose.

  Life unto death. This was the theme of Jake’s sermon, as well it should be. Willem listened to Jake’s voice rise and fall, rise and fall, in somber waves expounding the truth of John 5. The Father has given the Son authority to judge, and all people should be ready for the moment of their deaths. Jake believed that Eber had been ready. When the Book of Life was opened at the Great White Throne of Revelation 20, Eber Gingerich’s name would appear on its pages.

  As Willem had expected he would, Jake stood in the crowded house for nearly an hour and preached with an open Bible. He paused several times to look over the heads of the assembly and into the bedroom where Ruthanna and Abbie sat. Willem was sure they heard Jake’s words, including the kind comfort he offered the grieving widow at regular intervals. With his back to the bedroom, Willem could not see Ruthanna’s face. But he had seen it before the service. He had seen it many times over the last four days and could not imagine that it had gained any cheer or color.

  Jake was right. Eber had been ready. Though the bishops might say that no one could be certain of another’s salvation at the time of death, Willem had no doubt about Eber. He had not been a perfect man. No man was. But his heart belonged to the Lord.

  Jake closed his Bible and let silence shroud the room before intoning, “Eber Gingerich was twenty-seven years old.”

  The English would have read a long eulogy, but the Amish congregation recognized this simple statement as their cue to kneel for Jake’s prayer. Shuffling boots and scraping benches filled the room for a few minutes. It was not easy for Willem to unfold his lanky form and find space for his knees on the floor, but Jake waited until everyone had settled. His prayer was brief, sincere, comforting. At his “Amen” the congregation once against shifted, this time to stand for the benediction. Willem used the opportunity to look over the heads of his fellow settlers into the bedroom in time to see Ruthanna shudder.

  The moment the last nail went into the coffin, obscuring Eber’s face until eternity, had nearly undone Rudy. A shriek had escaped Ruthanna’s control. But now Rudy gripped his corner of the coffin and nodded to Willem and the two other pallbearers that he was ready. With the ponderous dignity the task evoked, they carried the coffin to Willem’s open wagon and set it in the empty bed. Reuben, Daniel, and Levi Weaver had hitched all the horses and turned the buggies around while everyone else attending the funeral shared a meal and said their final farewells to Eber. Now it was time for the entire community to process and lay him to rest. The spot Ruthanna picked out was beyond the horse pasture, closer to the bedraggled wheat field than the house, because she believed Eber would want to be there. Rudy had helped to dig the grave yesterday, mourning with each slam of the shovel into the earth. Eventually, he supposed, there would be a flat stone bearing Eber’s name.

  The pallbearers released their hold on the coffin almost simultaneously. Rudy could feel the tremor of regret in the movement of their hands. Regret that they had not realized sooner how serious Eber’s illness was. Regret that his life had ended too soon. Regret that they did not know the words to speak to his widow.

  Rudy got in his own buggy and waited for his turn to click his tongue and lift his reins to put his horse into motion. Mourners passed the field where Eber’s animals grazed and the field he would never harvest and tied their horses to the fence he had built.

  Abbie sat stiffly on the edge of her bed that night and watched Ruthanna sleep. She lay in the bed with her eyes closed, anyway. Abbie was not sure for a long time that Ruthanna truly was sleeping.

  After Eber’s death and the baby’s birth, Abbie had spent two days and nights at Ruthanna’s home. She cleaned up after the undertaker came for his sober task and nourished and cared for Ruthanna’s physical needs. On the day before the funeral, Ruthanna moved to the Weavers’ house. Abbie was more than glad to share the bed in her narrow room. Eber’s cradle sat on the floor beside the bed. The baby was snuggled in a cotton sack that tied at the neck. Abbie had found it among the baby things Mary Miller had given Ruthanna.

  Abbie had stroked Ruthanna’s back until her friend stopped fidgeting and breathed in a deep, regular rhythm, perhaps for the first time in weeks. Now she slowly lifted her hand but was afraid that getting in the bed would wake Ruthanna, and Abbie was not willing to take that risk. If she had to, she would sit up all night.

  The baby whimpered. Abbie knew she had been fed and changed only an hour ago. At the second whimper, Abbie eased off the bed, bent over, picked up the child, and slipped out of the room.

  She inhaled the infant’s sweetness and prayed for her mother.

  I could come with you,” Ruthanna said a week later.

  Abbie set a basket of food in the Weaver buggy. “You would get some notion in your head about helping.”

  “It’s my farm. I should help.”

  “You have other things on your mind.” Abbie laid a hand on the baby’s head as she slept in her mother’s arms.

  Ruthanna blew out her breath. “Going to talk to the banker in Limon last Friday did not help matters.”

  “This is a new day, a new week. God will make His provision clear.”

  Ruthanna looked less sure than Abbie’s words sounded.

  “In the meantime,” Abbie said, “I’m just taking lunch to Willem and Rudy. I hope to bring you word that the barn has been mucked.”

  Abbie kissed her friend’s cheek and the baby’s head before getting in the buggy. She had been going to the Gingerich farm every day since the funeral to check. Reuben’s offer to bring the animals to the Weaver farm so it would be easier to care for them met with Ruthanna’s resistance. It was too much trouble, she said, when she would be going home any day now.

  At Ruthanna’s farm, Abbie saw Willem’s stallion and Rudy’s gelding grazing aimlessly alongside Ruthanna’s two horses. She tied her horse to the fence, leaving it hitched, and retrieved a quilt and the lunch basket of salt pork, cheese, bread, and apple cake. As she crossed the yard toward the barn, Willem emerged with a wheelbarrow. He grinned, and she could not help but smile back.

  “Rudy,” Willem called over his shoulder, “Abbie is here.”

  Rudy emerged wiping his hands on a rag.

  “I hope you’re both hungry,” Abbie said.

  Rudy’s blue eyes greeted her gaze. “Just give us a moment to clean up.”

  Willem followed Rudy to the well, where they dumped water into their hands and rubbed them together. When she saw them splashing their faces and drinking from cupped hands, Abbie looked around for a patch of shade against the side of the barn and spread the quilt. Ruthanna’s house had been put to right after the funeral and scrubbed clean. Abbie thought she ought to find it just that way when she was ready to come home. Surely Willem and Rudy would continue to help with chores until Ruthanna could pay for some help.

  The men returned and dropped onto the quilt. Abbie unpacked the basket.

  “We heard about what happened in Limon on Friday,” Willem said.

  “Something will work out,” Abbie said. It seemed to her that the banker’s conversation with Ruthanna should have been confidential.

  “It sounds as if Ruthanna had no idea how much debt Eber took on to keep the place running.” Rudy wrapped a chunk of pork in a soft slice of bread.

  “They lived so frugally,” Abbie said. “I can’t imagine where the money went.”

  “Buying hay because they couldn’t grow it. Lumber for fence posts. Turning the shack that was on the land into something they could live in. Building a decent barn.” Willem ticked off his points on his fingers.

  Abbie sighed. “I know. But so much money! No wonder Eber would never agree to a hired hand even when he was so ill.”

  “Ruthanna will hav
e some decisions to make,” Rudy said.

  “She can sell some of the land.” Abbie poured water from a jug into a tin cup and sipped it. “She does not have to farm. There are other ways to make a living.”

  A strange horse trotted into the yard with an English astride. “Ruthanna Gingerich?”

  “She’s not here.” Abbie untucked her legs and stood up. “She’s staying at my family’s home right now. Can I help you?”

  He pulled an envelope out of a saddlebag. “She got a telegram. Will you sign for it and take it to her?”

  Ruthanna lifted her squirming daughter from the cradle, carried her down to the Weaver kitchen, and took her place at the table. She held the baby upright over her shoulder during the silent prayer before the evening meal. Every day she learned something new about what would soothe the child or what the pitch of her cry might mean, and today’s lesson in mothering had been the discovery that her baby would rather be upright and patted on the back than cradled in the arms and swayed. Ruthanna closed her eyes for a moment in a posture of gratitude she did not feel. But perhaps if she cultivated her habit of giving thanks she might one day feel grateful again.

  Ananias intoned, “Amen,” and the family began to pass serving dishes. Beside Levi, Esther closely supervised his portions, insisting that he should put more on his plate than the skinny boy was inclined to do. No matter how many times his family assured him they were not going to starve, Levi tried to conserve food. Abbie had expressed exasperation about this to Ruthanna more than once.

  With her free hand, Ruthanna took a bowl of green beans from Daniel and set it next to her plate so she could use the spoon to serve herself. Esther had wrung the neck of a chicken a few hours ago, and Ruthanna took a thigh from the platter and put it next to the beans.

  Around her the clatter of passing dishes morphed into the scrape of forks against plates, but Ruthanna did not eat. She patted her baby’s back and jiggled her gently.