by Murray Pura
Softly she spoke. “Charlie…”
She called his name again and again, but he receded from her sight as if he were at the end of a long hallway with walls painted a bright white. Finally she sank to her knees in the long grass, sobbing, her cheeks burning.
Then at once she felt a storm of strength emerge within her and she got up and began to run.
Crossing the pasture as fast as she could she saw her father and brother standing in front of the barn. Shouting out their names, she kept racing for the gate. They looked up and began running to meet her. Her father was through the gate and caught his daughter as she fell into his arms.
“What is it? What is it?” he demanded, his face full of fear.
“Papa…Papa…Charlie is hanging…he is hanging…” Lyndel could hardly catch her breath and pointed to the maple trees. Her father placed her in her brother’s arms and set out for the sugar maples, his long legs eating up the distance in what seemed like only a few moments. Levi held her to his chest.
“It’s all right,” he soothed.
“It’s not all right,” she gasped. “He’s not alive, I know he’s not alive.”
“You can’t be sure. Do you want me to walk you down there?”
“I don’t ever want to go down to that creek again for the rest of my life.”
“Hey!” It was Nathaniel’s voice. They turned to look. He was just driving into their farmyard in his buggy. “Anybody home?”
Levi waved with one hand, holding on to Lyndel with the other. “Over here!”
Nathaniel laughed and headed toward them. In one hand Lyndel could see he was holding a bunch of snapdragons of all colors mixed in with several branches of white and gray pussy willows. She watched him walk up to the gate and saw his boyish excitement at coming to pay a call on his friend’s sister. How good it was to see his smile, a smile for her and because of her, so that even in her sadness she felt a short, sharp surge of joy as he unlatched the gate, grinning and green-eyed handsome.
But it couldn’t last. No, she knew somehow that everything was going to change forever when he found out what had happened to Charlie. She couldn’t guess what that change would mean for him… and possibly for her with this new fondness that seemed to be springing up between them…or even if it might bring about its sudden end. So she savored the last few seconds of his burst of playfulness as he walked up to her and Levi across the grass and then she prepared to let her happiness go.
He took off his broad-brimmed black hat with one swipe of his hand and bowed. Then he extended the snapdragons and pussy willows. “Miss Keim, if I may, I have come to pay you a visit long overdue.”
She had told herself not to smile but she couldn’t help but respond to his enthusiasm and energy with anything less. She took the bouquet from his hand and pressed it to her face. “Thank you, Nathaniel.”
“My pleasure.”
“Nathaniel—”
He heard the catch in her voice and immediately his smile faded. “What’s wrong? I thought you wanted me to come.”
“It’s not that.”
“Then what?”
“Nathaniel, please go across the pasture to the sugar maples. My father is there. He needs your help.”
“Of course. Is something wrong?”
“He is—he is bringing Charlie Preston down from a tree.”
“What?”
“They…hung him…Nathaniel…”
So the change came to his face and soul just as she knew it would. He stared at her for several moments, looked at Levi for several more, then began to walk quickly and in a straight line for the trees. She sank her head into her brother’s shoulder.
“His eyes changed, Levi.”
“Of course they’ve changed. He will feel responsible. He will wish he had done more. That he had chased after them like he wanted to.”
“The boy who climbed out of the buggy, the boy who came to see me is gone. He’s gone, Levi.”
Her brother did not respond.
Five minutes later they watched their father and Nathaniel coming across the field carrying Charlie’s body between them. Nathaniel had his back to them holding the shoulders, while their father had the feet. Nathaniel had taken off his shirt and placed it on Charlie, running the dead man’s arms through the sleeves and buttoning it, so that the shirt, too large, fell all the way to his knees and covered most of his body in white.
They took him to a room at the back of the house where firewood was stored out of the rain, a room cool and rich with the smell of earth and trees. It had been Lyndel’s favorite room to hide in when she was a girl, and because Levi knew this she was always the first one he caught among their friends and neighbors. Now they gently laid Charlie on a long table and folded his arms on his chest over Nathaniel’s shirt. There was a minute of silent prayer before they left. Constantly running her fingers over her eyes to clear them Lyndel caught glimpses of her father, her brother, and Nathaniel and realized she wasn’t the only one struggling with the pain of this death. Yet she felt something else thrusting itself up through her shock and anguish that surprised her with its strength and heat.
I said I would protect him. We all said we would protect him.
“I betrayed him!” she blurted.
Her father snapped his head around to stare at her. “What do you mean?”
“I promised him. From the very beginning I promised Charlie I wouldn’t let anyone hurt him.”
“My daughter—”
“You promised too! You stood there at the barn door and said I could trust you. But you told the others. And one of the others told the sheriff.”
“Of course you can trust me.”
Lyndel could feel the blood in her face as she curled her hands into fists. “You gave him up to the slave drivers without a fight.”
Her father’s face turned white. “We are a people of peace. It’s not our way to resort to guns or violence. I have an oath to fulfill as an Amish bishop.”
“What about your oath to me? Does it mean more to you to be a bishop than to be a faithful father?”
“My Lyndel, I love you—”
“You said I could trust you. You said we would protect him. We failed him! And in failing him, we have failed God!”
Her father took Lyndel’s hand and looked into her face.
“Listen to me. It will be an Amish funeral. I will discuss this with the leadership. We will lay his body to rest tomorrow. I must let Sheriff Jackson know what has happened here, of course.”
“Oh, the good sheriff.”
“Lyndel, please—”
“Our people will only argue he was not Amish.”
“He took sanctuary with us. He trusted us as he trusted God. He will be buried as one of us. You must remember who you are and what you believe. You must calm yourself.”
“I can’t. We betrayed Charlie.”
“We have a righteous Judge in heaven who will protect Charlie Preston’s soul from all harm and calamity. He is safe with Jesus. I ask you again to calm yourself and to remember what you believe. If you cannot trust me today you can certainly trust God.”
“It will take some time, Papa, for me to forgive myself, to forgive all of us.”
“Yes. Time. Prayer. In Christ you will find what you need.” He put his arms around her briefly. “I’m sorry you saw what you saw. I wish it had been otherwise. I’m sorry you feel I failed you.” He stepped back and wiped his face with a large white handkerchief.
“Bishop Keim.” Nathaniel’s face was white and blank as a field of snow. “I apologize. But I need to be on my way and I wish to speak with you before I leave.”
“Ja, What is it? Do you need to borrow one of my son’s shirts?”
“Thank you. I always keep a spare one under my seat in case the one I’m wearing gets dirty. What I wanted to say—do you recall how I asked in December if I could visit the families in Indiana who left to settle with the Amish there and help them out?”
“Of c
ourse I remember your request.”
“Perhaps now would be a good time for me to pay our people that visit.”
Bishop Keim looked at him a long time and then nodded. “You may be right. I will discuss it with the pastors tonight when I call them together about the funeral. If you would be so kind as to ask your parents for their approval and blessing.”
“Yes, I will.”
Nathaniel began to walk toward his carriage and his horse. Lyndel, feeling completely depleted, watched him go. Well, that is it, Lord. He has come and gone. But thank you for his walk from the carriage to the pasture gate just the same. I saw his eyes then and his eyes were for me.
Nathaniel rubbed Good Boy between his ears and spoke to him for a few moments. Then he pulled a white shirt from under the seat of the buggy, tugged it on, and began to climb up. Suddenly he stopped and looked at Lyndel. Despite the weight she knew he carried over Charlie’s hanging, a bit of life returned to his eyes for a moment.
“Weren’t we supposed to have a visit today?”
“Yes. But the day has changed.”
“It has changed but I still would like to have that visit. What about the day after tomorrow?”
“The day after Charlie’s funeral?”
He nodded. “I think—Charlie Preston would smile and whisper it was a good thing.”
“That would suit me, Nathaniel King.”
“God willing, I’ll be here.” He finished climbing up into the buggy and took hold of Good Boy’s traces. “I have something important to ask you.”
Lyndel narrowed her eyes. “Important?”
“Get up there, Boy. Yes, very important.”
“Are you serious?”
“I am.”
“And you are just going to drive off?”
“I am.”
The King buggy rattled toward the road. Lyndel’s father looked at her. “Is there something between the two of you I have missed?”
“I’m not sure, Papa.”
“There is nothing?”
“I didn’t say there was nothing. I said I’m not sure.”
“Well,” said Levi, “I have this for you anyway, whether you’re sure or not sure.”
He held out a jar that had collected some rainwater.
“What on earth is that for?” she asked him.
“It’s for your snapdragons and pussy willows.” He placed the glass jar in her hand. “If they last a little bit longer, perhaps God will grant that whatever you and Nathaniel feel or don’t feel for each other may last a little bit longer as well.”
4
A light rain was falling the next day, April 4th, a Thursday. The showers and clouds suited the Amish community’s mood, thought Lyndel. The Keim house was full of church families dressed in solid black. Charlie’s body was washed and dressed and laid out in a special room just off the parlor. He still wore Nathaniel’s white shirt, and his pants were a dark pair that belonged to her brother. The collar of the shirt was up in order to hide some of the marks of the rope on his neck. Lyndel was grateful the swelling in his face had gone down so that he looked once again like the young cheerful man who had asked her to read the Bible in the lamplight.
People filed into the room to pay their respects and found a seat. Lyndel sat back in a nearby chair to watch others walk slowly past. Nathaniel and Levi entered the room together. Levi rested his hand on one of Charlie’s, stood there a long minute, then moved on. Nathaniel was struggling, the veins on his neck suddenly standing out as he stood over the young man’s body. Lyndel saw him slip a small piece of paper under Charlie’s hands. Then he whispered something in Charlie’s ear. His face set and resolute he walked out of the room without looking at Lyndel.
It was a hard thing, this funeral, such as it was. It should never have been happening. Charlie should have been alive. But he wasn’t. It was at least some minor solace that at last night’s discussion about the service, not a single man had argued against a funeral service for Charlie Preston, not even Samuel Eby or Solomon Miller.
So Lyndel wasn’t surprised that as the service began, it was Solomon who gave the first funeral sermon, followed by Samuel. She also wasn’t surprised that the words the two ministers spoke weren’t the words they had used in the debate about slavery on Tuesday night. Lyndel felt that much of what they said and the Bible texts they used could have come from Abraham Yoder’s lips, or Levi’s or even Nathaniel’s. Samuel preached for half an hour, Solomon for another three-quarters of an hour. By the time they had finished and her father was praying, she glanced over to see that Nathaniel had reentered the room some time during the preaching. She noticed that the hard lines on his face had relaxed.
When they left the house Charlie’s body was placed in the same sort of carved pine coffin that all Amish were buried in. The three pastors held one side of the coffin on their shoulders while Bishop Keim, Levi, and Nathaniel took the other side. They placed it in a carriage in which the six of them sat together as the bishop drove. All the other Amish carriages fell in behind. Normally, Lyndel knew, this would be the extent of the procession to the graveyard. But word about what had happened at the Keim farm on Tuesday and Wednesday had spread through Elizabethtown, and many Pennsylvanians were waiting quietly outside the house as the Amish emerged with Charlie’s coffin. Once the last Amish buggy had joined the long line winding its way along the main road, the residents and farmers of Elizabethtown fell in behind. Even Sheriff Jackson was there.
The six men carried the coffin to the opening in the ground and lowered it with thick ropes. Bishop Keim prayed and opened the Amish hymnbook called the Ausbund. He read a hymn hundreds of years old about suffering for Christ and enduring the hatred, scorn, and violence of the world.
“If we suffer with him,” the bishop finished, looking out over the faces of women, men, and children, “we shall also reign with him. Amen.”
Amen, the people responded, even those churchgoers who were not Amish or didn’t belong to any church at all. Then the bishop and pastors, along with Levi and Nathaniel, took up shovels and slowly covered Charlie’s coffin with earth, filling the grave completely. Lyndel wanted to ask Nathaniel what he had written on the piece of paper he had buried with Charlie and what he had whispered in the dead man’s ear, but once the task was completed, Nathaniel got into the buggy with the other five men and they promptly returned to the Keim house.
A large meal had been prepared by the women of the Amish church and for an hour or two, Amish and non-Amish sat side by side, talked, ate, and listened to one another, some sitting at tables in the house, some at tables in the barn. Lyndel was in the parlor with her mother and sisters, while Nathaniel was with her brother and father and the pastors in the kitchen. Talk of children and weather and crops mingled with discussions about President Lincoln, the secession of the Southern states, and what might happen next. Only a few tables away Joshua Yoder, Abraham Yoder’s son, held a newspaper clipping in his hand while he spoke rapidly to the men sitting beside him about the enshrinement of slavery in the Confederate Constitution.
“Listen to what they’ve voted on and agreed to since early March,” he said. “This is from Article Four, Section Three, and Clause Three: The Confederate States may acquire new territory…In all such territory the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress and by the Territorial government; and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories shall have the right to take to such Territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States. You see? They will pound their podiums and say they’re fighting for freedom and states’ rights and a fully independent nation, and so they are—freedom to take away other men’s freedom, the right to enslave human beings made in the image of God and to fight for a slave nation fully independent of any sense of right or wrong when it comes to the lives and souls of African men and women and children. Why, they even invoke the favor and
guidance of Almighty God to help them establish justice, tranquility, and liberty—for themselves, of course, not for anyone else, certainly not for anyone like the man they lynched out in the Keim pasture yesterday.”
Lyndel closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead with her thumb and fingers as Joshua went on. She hated the violence of the word lynched but she couldn’t argue that Joshua wasn’t right in using it—Charlie had been lynched, not just hung, and he had been murdered, he had not simply lain down and died.
She stood up and told her mother she wanted to take a quick walk outside. Putting a cape over her shoulders she went through the doorway into the farmyard. The rain-washed air and the scent of green growing things overcame the painful images in her mind and the dark feelings in her heart for a few minutes.
Lord, what will become of our nation, the nation you gave us to reside in? Shall we truly split into two countries living side by side? What can prevent us from becoming ill-tempered and feuding neighbors with no love between us?
Avoiding the route to the pasture, she skirted the barn and the people seated inside and opened a gate to one of the hay fields. The hay was short and she wandered across the large field, not choosing any particular direction, sometimes glancing up into the soft rainfall, other times keeping her eyes on the ground just ahead of the toes of her boots. She found the creek and a grove of birch, but this was far from the place where Charlie had been, so she didn’t turn away, but walked on, watching the brown water that now moved swiftly between the banks, swollen with fresh rain. A long time she stood and prayed and thought, not hearing the person approaching behind her through the wet hay. When a hand gently touched her arm she leaped ahead and almost stumbled into the water, except the hand suddenly gripped her tightly and held her back.
“I’m so sorry—it wasn’t my intention to startle you.”