Hidden Mercies

by Serena B. Miller

  “Don’t you have any livestock left?”

  “I butchered the chickens, one by one. We’ve eaten the pork from our pigs—even though it was the wrong time of year to butcher. Henry has crops in the field, but it will be many weeks before harvest.”

  “The church has not helped you?”

  “Henry will not ask.” Rose lifted her chin. “And I will not dishonor my husband by going behind his back. The children have been living on leftovers that I have taken home from the restaurant, but on the days I’m unable to work, they have nothing.”

  Claire looked at her sister’s emaciated body. “You’ve been going without food, too.”

  “My children’s need is greater than mine.”

  Claire’s mind flew to the four hundred dollars she’d so carefully tucked beneath the braided wool rug in her bedroom. She had vowed not to touch it until she’d saved enough for a horse. But now the need for a new horse, as great as it was, paled in comparison to what was going on in Rose’s home.

  “Stay right here,” Claire said. “I’ll be right back.”

  She flew to her bedroom, extracted the money from beneath her rug, emptied her purse of every dime, put it all into a ziplock bag, and ran back to the porch.

  “Where are you going, Mommi?” Sarah asked. “Why are you and Rose staying out on the porch?”

  “Don’t worry, little one,” Claire said. “Just some grown-up talk.”

  “Is Rose going to have a baby?” Sarah asked.

  The question brought Claire up short until she realized that sometimes when women clients came to her home, she would tell Sarah to go outside and play so that she could have grown-up talk.

  “Not that I know of,” she said as she hurried outside.

  “Sarah wants to know if you’re pregnant,” she asked.

  “No chance of that,” Rose said.

  “Really?”

  “Henry has been a little . . . distracted for the past several months.”

  “What do you think is going on with him?”

  “I do not know,” Rose said. “He will not talk to me anymore. Not about finances, not about the farm, not about where he goes. He used to leave only on Saturday. Now he is gone for two or three days a week. He gets angry if I ask him where he is gone to all that time. It’s like I am living with a stranger.”

  “How is he able to farm if he’s gone so much?”

  “He isn’t. The children and I are keeping the livestock fed. We never know when he will be home and when he will be gone. Even when he is with us, it is as though he is someplace else in his head. It is to the point that it is easier around our home when he is gone. He left early today. He might not come home until tomorrow or the day after. That happens sometimes.”

  “You know the leaders of our church will have to get involved if things don’t change soon.”

  “I know,” Rose said. “But I can’t face going to them yet, and I’m praying hard that whatever is eating at Henry will go away.”

  Claire decided that even though there was nothing she could do about Henry, she could help feed her sister and her sister’s children.

  “I still have jars of vegetable soup in my cellar yet, and much applesauce and other things. Come help me fill your buggy. Oh, and here’s money for groceries.” She handed Rose the ziplock bag.

  Rose stared at the bag for a long time without reaching for it.

  “You would do it for me, and you know it,” Claire said.

  “I would,” Rose said. “I would not have to think about it for a second.”

  “Nor do I.”

  “But I have a husband and you do not.”

  “True—but from where I stand, your Henry is not much use to you these days.”

  Rose took the money and tucked it into her pocketbook. Then they carried some of Claire’s surplus of canned goods up from the cellar to the buggy. It wasn’t until Rose drove out of sight that Claire realized her sister had deliberately left the basket of lovely dinnerware behind.

  Somehow, the joy had gone out of cleaning her house today. Having things in perfect order for church no longer seemed all that important.

  • • •

  Tom watched the pitiful little scene unfolding below him. Neither Claire nor Rose seemed to be aware that their voices were carrying. They were so engrossed in their own drama, they weren’t aware that he was sitting on the small landing outside Levi’s apartment.

  He had been tempted to run in and add whatever cash he had in his billfold to what Claire gave her sister, but he doubted it would be welcome, especially considering how hard it had been for Rose even to confide in her sister.

  He and Rose’s husband had not seen each other since they were boys. Henry wouldn’t recognize him as anyone connected to the family. There was a chance he could help Rose find out where Henry had been going.

  He had been needing a project to keep him occupied—one that did not require physical strength. This was a good one. At that moment, he vowed to find out where it was that Henry was going. One thing he remembered about his people was that auctions were an Amish man’s favorite form of entertainment. It was rare for an Amish farmer to miss out on a good local auction. He decided he would go to every auction he could find, hoping to run into him and hopefully strike up a friendship. Henry had never been a complicated man. The same topics he’d enjoyed as a young man—baseball, good food, pretty women, favorite beers, and fine horseflesh—were probably still topics he would enjoy discussing. An Englisch man with a decent knowledge of any one of these things could probably easily win Henry’s friendship—and it could possibly result in some confidences being shared. He hoped so and would do his best. He didn’t have much use for a man whose wife had to beg to feed her children.

  chapter FIFTEEN

  “You are Englisch,” Claire said when she showed up on his doorstep on Monday afternoon with a basket over her arm.

  That was an odd statement, coming from her.

  “I am.”

  She seemed nervous. “Would you be willing to do a small favor for me?”

  “Of course,” he said.

  “At church yesterday, I heard that our neighbor, Jeremiah Troyer, is ill. I am worried about him. He is my Levi’s grandfather and he lives alone on the other side of our . . .”

  “I know who Jeremiah Troyer is.”

  “Oh, good. I have made him a basket of food, but he will not take it from my hand or Levi’s.”

  “Why won’t he?” Tom knew the answer, but he wanted to hear what she would say.

  “It is hard to explain, but I will try. When my son was banned from our Swartzentruber church, I was expected to ban Levi from my life, also. I could not do that. Especially since he was innocent of the thing of which he was accused. Instead, I accepted the sting of the Meidung of my own church and joined with the Old Order Amish so that I could freely fellowship with him. It was not an easy change, and I gave up many friendships, but it was the right thing to do. Now I am banned from ministering to my neighbor unless it is a true emergency. I know it is a hard thing for you to understand, but it is our way.”

  If you only knew, Tom thought, if only you knew how well I understand. He decided to play along. “Why would he take it from my hand and not yours?”

  “Because you are Englisch and you do not count.”

  Oh, the bluntness of the Amish. He almost laughed. Of course he didn’t count. He was Englisch!

  She seemed blissfully ignorant of how rude her comment sounded. “The food will need to be taken to his springhouse. Jeremiah has no other refrigeration, and this chicken and dumplings will not keep for long without it.”

  “I understand. I’ll do it.”

  She looked at him with those innocent blue eyes that he remembered so well. “Thank you.”

  “One question, Claire. If Jeremiah has shunned you, why do you feel the need to care for him?”

  “Even after Matthew died, Jeremiah was kind to me for a very long time, and he liked my chicken and
dumplings so much,” Grace said. “This is my way of letting him know that I care for him still, even if I am not allowed to set foot over his doorstep.”

  It was not hard for Tom to imagine his father being kind to Claire. Jeremiah had always had more patience with his daughter, Faye, than with his two boys.

  “I’ll be happy to take it.”

  After she left, Tom tried to convince himself that he didn’t care one way or the other. He meant nothing to Jeremiah, and Jeremiah meant nothing to him.

  It didn’t work. His pulse was pounding as he carried the basket of food to the car.

  Tom had many good memories of being a boy on his father’s farm. Eating his mother’s baked oatmeal each morning in a kitchen kept warm with a woodstove. Arm wrestling with his brother, Matthew, for the last piece—and Matthew letting him win. His little sister’s face shining from their mother’s washcloth, her brown hair tightly braided and held with many hairpins, all covered by a minuscule prayer Kapp. He missed many things from his former life. Not all of it had been bad. Only those last few days.

  Going to his father’s home now was like picking up crumbs from the kitchen floor when one craved a full meal. His father would be as polite to him as he would be to any stranger. That was the most he could expect. His father had made it clear that he had no son named Tobias. There would be no Prodigal Son ending to this story. There would be no loving father waiting and watching, running to greet him with gladness in his heart.

  The only way he would ever receive a prodigal welcome was if he came home willing to blindly accept a culture and rigid belief system that he knew he would not be able to tolerate.

  And yet he could not turn down Claire’s request. It was such a simple thing she had asked of him. Drop off a basket of food for a neighbor who wasn’t feeling well. She had no idea how complicated this small task felt to him.

  His father was plowing with a two-horse team when Tom arrived.

  As he approached the fence, he held up Claire’s basket for Jeremiah to see. His father tied the reins to the plow handle and walked over the raised furrows to where Tom stood. “What is that?”

  “Supper.”

  “Supper? Why are you bringing me supper? Aren’t you that Miller boy that was here a few days ago asking about my Matthew?”

  “Yes. I’m renting an apartment from Claire Shetler. She asked me to bring this over to you. She is under the impression that you are ill, and that you need nourishment.”

  “One visit to the doctor and a few heart pills, and everyone starts talking,” Jeremiah grumbled into his beard.

  “I’ll let Claire know you’re feeling better.”

  Jeremiah spat a stream of dark red tobacco juice at a weed near the fence. “How do you come to be renting from Claire?”

  Tom had almost forgotten the Swartzentruber affection for tobacco. His father’s ability to nail any target at which he aimed had fascinated him as a child. No longer. He wondered if that lifelong habit had anything to do with his father’s need for heart medication.

  “I ran into Grace and Levi the other day. She and I discovered we used to work together in Afghanistan. I was looking for a place to rent, and they recommended Levi’s old apartment.”

  “In what way did you work together?”

  “She was a medevac nurse. Most of the helicopters she flew on were unarmed, but the enemy fired on them anyway. I flew a Cobra gunship alongside of them when they had dangerous extractions.”

  Jeremiah’s face never changed expressions. “War is a bad business.”

  “I could not agree with you more.”

  A wind had kicked up, and the leaves on the tree above them began to rustle.

  “Looks like we’re in for some rain. This is good. The crops have been thirsty,” Jeremiah said. “Are you in a hurry?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Come inside.” Jeremiah nodded toward the horizon where rain clouds were scudding toward them. “We will katsche und schmatze. Talk and eat. Claire always did make too much.”

  There was a hint of kindness in Jeremiah’s voice, and it reminded him of the father he had once known, before his mom passed.

  There had been a time when Jeremiah had been a man much given to hospitality, who had delighted in having a table filled with relatives and friends. Tom remembered sitting on his father’s knee as a child, leaning against his strong chest, basking in his embrace, falling asleep, while the adults’ laughter and voices swirled around him, flavoring his small world with a feeling of contentment and safety.

  What would it be like to enter that door again?

  “I would like that.”

  He knew he would end this charade soon and tell his father who he was, but, as with Claire—not yet. For now, he wanted a chance to pretend, just for a few minutes, that he was truly welcome at his father’s table.

  Soon, Tom was standing in his mother’s kitchen, trying to fully absorb the fact that he was here, in his childhood home, and his father was heating up Claire’s chicken and dumplings for their dinner.

  • • •

  It was hard trying to pretend to be a stranger in a house where he knew every nook and cranny right down to the spot in the kitchen, next to the table, that still had a squeak in the floorboard.

  “Been meaning to fix that,” his father said, as he placed two bowls on the table.

  Tom was tempted to smile at that comment. His father was a hardworking man, but he had been meaning to fix that squeak for the past thirty years.

  The house that had once been filled with voices was now painfully quiet. The giant table that could seat a family of twenty had only two places set at right angles to each other at the far end.

  After they had a silent prayer, he lifted his head to find his father looking straight at him.

  “Do they hurt?”

  “What? These?” Tom instinctively touched his face. “Yes, but they’re getting better.”

  “I have a salve that might help.”

  This felt so familiar. The Amish had salves and potions for everything.

  His father rose from the table and left the room. He came back in a few minutes with a large white bucket with a yellow label.

  “This is B and W salve,” Jeremiah said. “Betcha never saw it before. I use it for my livestock.”

  No surprise there either. He remembered once when his daed dosed himself with antibiotics he’d purchased for his cows, trying to rid himself of a bad case of bronchitis.

  The Amish were so vested in alternative medicine that they would probably choose a chiropractor over going to a hospital even if they were in the middle of a massive heart attack.

  His father went to the cupboard and pulled out a clean jelly jar, which he filled half full of a substance the color of beeswax with the consistency of axle grease.

  “There. Take that home with you and use it.” Jeremiah sat the jelly jar in front of him. “It cleared up a bad place on one of my cows last week when she cut herself on an old nail.”

  “What is in it?”

  “Honey mostly, and a few healing herbs. Supposed to be for burns and wounds. That’s the reason for the B and W name on the label. Some Amish man developed it after his child got burned. A lot of our people swear by it. Says it helps take away scarring, too. Some soak burdock leaf in sterile water and use it as a bandage over it. Burdock is supposed to be healing, too—but I never set much stock in it.”

  Tom had trouble visualizing himself walking around with a wet burdock leaf on his face, but he would definitely try the salve, even if he already had been cared for by the finest surgeons at the Army’s disposal. He knew there was no way this little jar was going to make the scars disappear, but he would use it anyway—just because his father had cared enough to give it to him.

  “That’s kind of you,” he said. “I’ll try it tonight.”

  “Might help.” Jeremiah shrugged. “Might not. Probably won’t hurt. If you like it, you can come by and get more. Most of us with livestock keep a bucke
t of it around. Cheaper that way, instead of buying it in the little bitty jars they sell at the whole foods place in Mt. Hope. Sometimes it saves us the cost of a vet bill.”

  Jeremiah ladled chicken and dumplings into Tom’s bowl and then his own. Aromatic steam rose from the homemade wooden bowls.

  Tom tasted it and discovered that Claire had seriously undersalted it. Probably in case Jeremiah had to be on a salt-restrictive diet.

  Fortunately, he didn’t have to be quite that careful yet. He reached for a jar of salt sitting on the table, took a pinch, sprinkled it over his food, and tasted it. Perfect.

  He ventured a question. “Do you happen to know a Henry Miller?”

  “I do, why do you ask?”

  “Claire is concerned for her sister. From what I gather, Henry has been neglectful of his family of late.”

  “I have heard that an Englisch driver picks him up on Tuesdays right outside Lehman’s Hardware and takes him to where no one knows.”

  “You’ve given me some valuable information, thank you.”

  “So you fly the helicopters, huh.” Jeremiah was obviously finished with the subject of Henry. His father had never been a gossip. “Why?”

  “The mechanics of flight have always interested me.”

  This was a true statement, and the explanation he always gave.

  What he never told anyone was that he simply loved to fly. Being in the sky brought him a rush of freedom he never experienced on land. There was a purity in being so high in the air that buildings and traffic and people disappeared and it was just he and his machine waltzing with the clouds or following mountain streams through canyons. Even the unforgiving valleys of Afghanistan held a rugged beauty from the air. On foot, however, the poverty was so great, he often had to deliberately switch off any human feelings of compassion in order to function.

  The rain that Jeremiah had predicted began to beat against the tin roof of the farmhouse as his father gazed off into the distance. “My youngest boy was interested in flight. He would lie on his back as a child and look up into the sky for hours, watching barn swallows swoop and soar, hoping for an airplane to fly by.”