An Amish Family Christmas

by Murray Pura

  My love, Mama

  The tears were sparks on her face, burning against her skin.

  She got up from the bed, put the rose back inside the pages of the book, tucked the book back under the pillow, and left the room, closing the door softly. Standing in the hall, she heard the sound of an axe from outside the house. She went to a small window and looked out and saw Micah in a toque and parka chopping firewood, snow whirling around him.

  How cold you must be. Cold and alone.

  Naomi made up her mind, wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand, and marched to a nearby closet. Broom and dustpan in hand, she opened Micah’s bedroom door. She was surprised to find his bed neatly made, all the items to be repaired arranged from small to large against the far wall, and everything exactly as it should be in every part of the room. It even looked as if the hardwood floor had been swept.

  “Well, twice can’t hurt, soldier,” she muttered and set about sweeping the room and under the bed and wiping a cloth over everything. She left the door open so she could hear the sound of the axe. As she listened, she prayed for Micah as her mother had wanted her to.

  Rrrrrrrrrrrrmmmmmmm.

  “What is that?”

  For a moment she thought it was a motorcycle. Then she thought it was a chainsaw and groaned. Oh, Micah, don’t make matters worse by using power tools.

  She went out into the hall and glanced out the window, half expecting to see her husband using a gas generator to run a saw. Micah had laid aside his axe, but not in order to wield a power tool. He was listening to a boy who was straddling a red motorbike. She couldn’t see who the boy was because he had his back to her.

  Doesn’t he know it is forbidden to speak with Micah?

  Micah folded his arms over his chest, nodded his head once or twice, and smiled, but he didn’t respond in any other way.

  Thank goodness you have kept your head. The boy cannot go home and tell his parents that Micah Bachman talked to him.

  Naomi closed the door to Micah’s room, returned the broom and dustpan to the hall closet, opened the door to Luke’s bedroom a crack and found he was still napping, and then came quickly down the stairs to where Rebecca was sewing.

  “There’s a boy on a motorbike talking to Micah,” she said. “Can you believe that?”

  “Oh, it’s Minister Yoder’s son, Timothy.” Rebecca glanced up, her face sharp. “Micah isn’t holding a conversation with him, I hope.”

  “No, no, just listening.”

  “Well, that boy likes to hear his own voice, so it doesn’t matter if Micah responds or not.”

  “But since when can Minister Yoder’s son do this? A motorbike? Talking to a person who’s banned from the church? It’s not his rumspringa, not so soon.”

  “It is his rumspringa. For more than a week now. Your mind has been elsewhere.”

  “So the minister buys his son a motorbike?”

  Rebecca lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “If he promises to drive it around here, he gets the bike. That’s the minister’s way of having his son where he can keep his eyes on him.”

  “So rumspringa and motorbikes are okay, but healing wounded soldiers in Afghanistan is a sin?”

  “The minister’s boy has not taken his vows. He hasn’t broken faith with the Amish people. Micah did take his vows. He did break faith with the Amish people. That’s how they see it.”

  “And the people are all right with this noisy bike?”

  Rebecca shrugged again. “They were all right a few years ago when Bishop Fischer let his boy drive that old blue pickup for six months. The church considers it better than wild parties and looks the other way.”

  “And how do we know there aren’t wild parties too?”

  “There’s no gossip about such parties. Not yet. The church is willing to put up with the bike.”

  Timothy roared past the house, and they watched him spray snow and dirt on his way to the main road.

  A minute later Micah came into the house, stamping his boots, removing them, and hanging up his coat. He was holding a slender package under one arm as he looked toward Naomi. She dropped her eyes, and he went up the stairs to his room.

  “Did you read your mother’s book?” asked Rebecca.

  “Ja.”

  “And so?”

  “And so she wants me to pray for him and believe the best of him and support him as a wife should support a husband even though there is a bann.”

  “But she didn’t know Micah would come home.”

  “She was certain God would bring him back. And she was certain he would come to me and want our marriage to continue. She was insistent I be close to him once more regardless of what he had done or what punishment the church inflicted on him.”

  Rebecca gave a little smile. “Such a good woman, your mother.”

  “Ja.” Naomi picked up her sewing and put it down again. “But I still don’t see how this will work. It’s too hard to be apart from him. It’s too hard to see him and not be able to hold him. My mother wished me to love him from afar. Ja, when he was in Afghanistan and now when he’s only a few feet away and might as well still be in Afghanistan.”

  “Something will work out.”

  “I don’t see how.”

  “It is not up to you to see how. Only to walk by faith and not by sight.” Rebecca took Naomi’s hand. “Let me pray for you.”

  Rebecca prayed a long time. They heard Micah come down the staircase and go back outside while their heads were bent. After the prayer they got up and saw a rocking chair in the kitchen.

  Naomi’s fingers went to her mouth. “That’s my mother’s. It broke a week before her death. The left rocker had split.”

  They got up and examined it.

  “It has a new rocker now.” Rebecca bent down. “You would hardly know it’s new. The stain matches the rest of the chair perfectly.”

  “He does very good work.”

  Rebecca stood up and smiled. “You should sit and rock.”

  “No.” Naomi shook her head. “I’m not sitting in that chair.”

  “Why not?”

  “No.” Naomi went to the icebox. “It’s time to start supper.”

  They cooked a pot of cabbage soup and took a bowl of it up to Luke. Working together, they managed to get him into his chair, but half the soup was wasted as they tried to feed it to him. When they came back down, Micah was serving himself from the pot. He barely glanced at the two of them as he walked into the parlor and shut the door. Rebecca and Naomi sat down at the kitchen table, prayed, and began to eat. Neither of them spoke.

  “We’re as silent as Luke and Micah,” murmured Rebecca.

  “We’ve said everything there is to say for the day.”

  “Soon it will be one great big quiet house.”

  “That’s not so bad sometimes, is it?” asked Naomi.

  “No, not so bad. Sometimes.”

  That night Naomi lay in her bed in the dark and thought about Micah lying in his bed in the dark at the end of the hall. She prayed for him. She prayed for Luke. She prayed for Rebecca. Then she came back and prayed for Micah again.

  What will you do for him, Lord? What will you do for our marriage? And how long will you take to do it?

  God seemed as silent to her as the house. She rolled over on her side and tried to sleep.

  Seven

  Three letters arrived the day before Thanksgiving. One was an early Christmas card. All were addressed to her. All three had something to say about her husband, Sergeant Micah Bachman, medic, United States Army. She read each one, startled at the information they contained, and at first she had no thought of sharing any of them.

  What is this you’re bringing into my life now, Lord? What prayer do these cards and letters answer?

  Micah stayed with Luke during the Thanksgiving worship held at Bishop Fischer’s home. It was followed by a meal, so Naomi and Rebecca were gone for several hours. Once they returned, Micah smiled, put on his coat and hat, and left in silence. Na
omi watched him drive a buggy out to the main road and head in the direction of Lancaster. Four hours later he returned with the same sort of smile and silence in which he had left.

  “I can’t get used to this,” Naomi told Rebecca. “All this quiet.”

  “The whole year he was gone you couldn’t talk to him.”

  “So now I’m to be thankful for another such year?”

  Rebecca put a hand on Naomi’s shoulder. “Take it to God.”

  “Where else should I take it?” She folded her arms over her chest. “I told you. It was easier when he was away. Out of sight, out of mind, as the Englisch say. But now I see him every day and I can’t speak a word, I can’t hold him, I can’t lie with him as God ordained a woman should lie with her husband. It’s cruel.”

  “In time this will be resolved.”

  “Whose time? Mine? God’s? If it were in my time it would have been settled weeks ago. The leadership knew they could not in good faith refute Micah’s arguments for following Christ’s leading to the battlefield. No, not when he went there to save human life. So they ran and crouched behind the Ordnung. If it is to be in God’s time, it could be a thousand years from today.”

  “It won’t be a thousand years, Naomi.”

  “It could be never.”

  The week after Thanksgiving, there were three more cards and two letters. Rebecca saw them but said nothing. One card brought Naomi to tears as she sat reading it at the kitchen table. Unable to keep her emotions in check, she turned in her chair and practically cried out to her friend, “Oh, Rebecca, come here. Please, come and sit with me. I must read you this note from a woman in Ohio.”

  Rebecca left off kneading the dough for the week’s bread, wiped her hands on a towel, and came to the table, taking a seat across from Naomi, who kept brushing at her eyes with one hand. In the other she held a Christmas card of baby Jesus in a manger.

  “This woman’s husband was in Afghanistan. He was out in front of his platoon and was shot by the enemy. The whole platoon was caught in an ambush. They couldn’t go forward or backward. Only crouch down and shoot back. No one was able to go to rescue her wounded husband. The shooting was too great. No one would go to her husband. Only Micah.”

  She tried to read the card but was unable to speak. Rebecca reached over and gently took it from her fingers.

  As the company medic, your husband had already accepted the fact that he must go wherever the wounded were. He understood that often enough it would be where enemy fire was heaviest and the risk of being shot the greatest. So he went after my Sam when no one else would or could. Sam tells me bullets were kicking up sand and stone all around him. The next thing he knew he was being dragged behind a rock at least a hundred feet away. He has no idea why he did not get hit again or why your husband did not get killed. Sgt. Micah Bachman got Sam’s bleeding under control, gave him morphine, prayed with him, and once air support had cleared the enemy out, carried Sam to safety. We have a Christmas this year with Sam surrounded by his children because your husband risked his life to save him. Greater love hath no man than this. How privileged you are to have Micah Bachman as your husband. From the bottom of my heart, from all his sons and daughters, thank you and God bless you both.

  Rebecca closed the card and laid it on the table. “I see,” was all she was able to get out. She bowed her head, and Naomi could see the struggle in her face. Eyes damp, she finally looked up again. “I wonder that the card came to you and not to him or to both of you.”

  “A woman explained that in a letter last week. Micah had said that while he was in the field any letters or notes should be addressed to his wife in Pennsylvania. I suppose that was in case he should...” She couldn’t finish.

  Rebecca took Naomi by the hand. “God is good. Ja, Micah has returned to us. And his good works for these men—his good works for God—have not been forgotten by these people. They thought to write.”

  Naomi nodded.

  “Why now, though? Why all at once?” Rebecca asked.

  “A number were readdressed. Despite what Micah told people, some went to his unit. Then, of course, it’s Thanksgiving and Christmas, isn’t it? The Englisch set great store by Thanksgiving and Christmas.”

  “How many of these do you have now?”

  “I don’t know. Eight or nine, I think. Each one I open blesses me. And each one stings.”

  Rebecca reached over and put her hand on Naomi’s arm. “Perhaps there won’t be any more. Maybe this is all there is.”

  “Maybe.”

  But the letters and cards continued to come. Two or three a week. Naomi read each one and then shared with Rebecca, who took to reading them out loud when Micah was in the house. He might be eating alone in the parlor. Or upstairs with Luke, the bedroom door open. Or just coming in the door from tending to the cattle. But she read them with the intent he hear each and every word. Sometimes, if he was nearby, he might stand and listen. Other times he quietly walked away or closed the parlor or bedroom door.

  One day a letter came that changed everything for Naomi. In it a young soldier’s mother talked about her son’s death in battle. How Micah had done everything in his power to save his life. How other soldiers in the unit had told her he wept when her son died in his arms and how he had insisted on carrying her boy’s body back behind their lines, half a mile in the desert heat. As if that weren’t enough, two months later Micah had run through a hail of bullets and rocket fire to save her nephew from a burning helicopter—her nephew and seven others, including three women soldiers. Two other medics had worked with him, one of whom had been killed rescuing the pilot. Her nephew was joining them for Christmas in Texas. She had put off writing long enough, she said. The enduring image she had was of her young son, in his death, being held and carried in the arms of Naomi’s husband with as much love and strength as if he were the boy’s own father. Micah’s battledress had been soaked in blood, the other men had told her. But he would not take it off.

  I thank God that someone loved my son as much in death as I loved him in life. I thank God that when he died, the Lord made sure someone would be there who would treat him with gentleness and respect. I thank God that is the manner in which my son left the earth, in a brave man’s arms.

  Her cheeks wet, Naomi went to the parlor where Micah sat eating soup alone and in silence. She read the letter out loud. Then she stared at him.

  “Is it true, Micah Bachman?”

  Rebecca came into the parlor. “Hush, Naomi. You are breaking the Ordnung.”

  “I don’t care. He must answer me this question.”

  “If they find out they will place you under the bann as well.”

  “How will they find out? Will you tell them?”

  “Of course not.”

  “It’s understood I may speak with him if it’s an emergency.”

  Rebecca glanced from Naomi’s face to the letter in her hand. “This is not an emergency.”

  “Oh, ja, it is.” She didn’t take her eyes off Micah. “Did you not hear me read it, Rebecca?”

  “I was feeding Luke.”

  Naomi handed her the sheet of paper, still staring at her husband. She waited until Rebecca had finished. Her friend drew in a deep breath and placed a hand over her heart.

  “My brother,” was all she said.

  Naomi’s eyes were black flames. “I’m not leaving this room until you answer me, Sergeant Micah Bachman. Is this letter true? Does she exaggerate or is what she tells me exactly what happened?”

  Micah looked back at her, silent. Finally he nodded.

  Naomi went on. “And where is the uniform you wore that day? Do you still have it?”

  Micah nodded again.

  “Tell me the truth—did you ever wash it? Did you ever wash out that young boy’s blood?”

  He hesitated, not responding for several long seconds. Then he shook his head.

  Naomi flew from the room and snatched her winter coat off a peg by the front door.

 
“Where are you going?” asked Rebecca, running after her. “Don’t do anything rash.”

  Naomi wrapped a black scarf about her neck with swift movements. “I’m going to Bishop Fischer.”

  “Bishop Fischer? What’s your business with him?”

  Naomi took the letter from Rebecca’s hand. “This letter is my business.” She gazed almost wildly at her friend and then shifted her eyes to a cupboard over one of the counters. She marched across the kitchen and took down a packet of letters tied with a red ribbon. “And these as well.”

  Micah had already used Maria and the buggy that morning and had not yet unharnessed the mare. Naomi sprang into the driver’s seat and snapped the reins. Maria pulled out of the farmyard at a fast trot. Rebecca stood at the window and watched Naomi drive onto the main road.

  She was at the bishop’s house in ten minutes.

  “Naomi,” the bishop greeted her as he opened the door. “Good day. What brings you out on such a frosty morning?”

  Naomi’s smile was short and sweet. “Good day, Bishop Fischer. I’m sorry to come by just before lunch.”

  “No, no, Mary tells me it will be another forty-five minutes. Come, come, let me help you with your coat.”

  Naomi didn’t remove her coat. “I need you to read these.” She thrust the packet of letters at him. “It’s important.”

  “Why, what’s in them?”

  “I can’t explain.”

  He took the packet. “Now? You wish me to look at them here and now?”

  “Please. You need only read a few.”

  He looked at the dark fire in her eyes. “Very well, very well. Have a seat.”

  She sat in the offered seat as he untied the ribbon and put it in his pocket and then slipped on his reading glasses. He opened a Christmas card and read it quickly. His face gave no sign of how it affected him. He opened a second card. Again his features remained just as they had been when he first took the packet from her. Selecting a letter, he took it from its envelope and unfolded it. As he read he suddenly lowered himself into a chair, his eyes still on the words handwritten across the paper. Then he folded it back up and returned it to its envelope and opened another card, one with a Thanksgiving pumpkin on it. Finishing it, he tapped the card against his knee and looked up at her, glasses still on his face.