by Emma Miller
“We weren’t doing anything wrong,” she protested. “And if you doubt me, don’t forget, Caleb is a preacher. He wouldn’t—”
“I trust you,” Anna said quietly. She leaned close and kissed Rebecca’s cheek. “I know you’re a good girl.” She motioned toward the cellar doorway. “And Caleb seems decent, but he’s a man first, a preacher second.”
“We were just talking.” She pushed down a small tremor of guilt. She and Caleb had been just talking. It was unfair of Anna to assume that anything else had taken place between them. Back stiff with indignation, she walked quickly toward the back porch. “You’re beginning to sound like Aunt Martha.”
Anna caught up with her and took her arm. “I’m not accusing you of anything, Rebecca. I’m just warning you to be careful. Talk all you like where people can see you or when you have Amelia as chaperone. And if he wants to ask you to walk out with him—”
“He doesn’t,” Rebecca insisted, shaking off her sister’s hand. “He wouldn’t. It’s not like that. Caleb asked me about the article I wrote for The Budget, the one about his barn raising. Innocent enough conversation.”
Anna crossed her arms over her plump figure. “Just so you keep it that way.”
The hasty reply on the end of Rebecca’s tongue was cut off by a scream from the barnyard. She ran into the barnyard, vaguely aware of Anna and Caleb pounding after her. Pray God none of the children are hurt! she thought.
But the figure at the back gate was a white-faced and breathless Dorcas. “You have to come!” her cousin shrieked. “Dat... My dat is...” Her words were lost in a sobbing wail.
Rebecca reached Dorcas first and grabbed her by the upper arms. Her cousin was several years older than her, but the whole family knew that she was high-strung and useless in an emergency. “What’s wrong?” Rebecca demanded. “I can’t help if I don’t know what’s happened.”
Dorcas fell forward and began to wail into Rebecca’s ear. “The cow. She...” Another sob. “His leg... Kicked. He’s hurt.”
Caleb came to a halt beside them.
“Mam’s not home. You have to come,” Dorcas exclaimed.
Caleb’s voice was calm and steady. “How serious is his injury? Dorcas, isn’t it?”
Dorcas nodded. “I don’t know, Preacher. He can’t get up.”
“Is he conscious?” Caleb asked. “Breathing all right? Awake and talking?”
“Ya, he told me to run here and get someone. I think he’s hurt bad.”
“Dorcas, you have to calm down,” Anna told her, out of breath from running. “You’ll be of no use to your father in this state.”
Rebecca stepped back, passing Dorcas into her sister’s embrace. “Maybe we should call an ambulance?” she told Caleb.
“Ne, ne.” Dorcas’s hands flew into the air, fluttering like a startled bird. “No ambulance. No doctor. Mam would never agree to such an expense.”
“I’ll go and see how bad the injury is,” Caleb said. “If he needs medical help—”
“Ne!” Dorcas shook her head and began to cry again, this time on Anna’s shoulder. “Ne,” she repeated. “Not without my mother’s say-so. I couldn’t.”
Caleb looked at Rebecca. “You stay here with Dorcas. My buggy and horse are still hitched up. I’ll drive over to see for myself.”
“He’s in the barn,” Dorcas managed, still in Anna’s arms. “The Holstein heifer... She kicked him.”
“I’m coming with you,” Rebecca told Caleb. “Do you want to come, Dorcas?”
Her cousin shook her head, working her hands together. “I couldn’t. It’s too awful. I’ll wait here.”
Rebecca laid a hand on Caleb’s arm. “I can show you a shortcut through the orchard. It’s faster than going by the road.” She glanced back at the house. “Anna and my sisters will look after Amelia. She’ll be fine with them.” She caught Dorcas’s hand and gave it a squeeze before hurrying after Caleb.
Rebecca scrambled up into Caleb’s buggy at the hitching post. He unsnapped the rope, gathered his reins and got in. In less than five minutes, Rebecca was guiding him along the back lane to the woods road that led to her uncle’s farm.
Caleb drove the horse at a sharp trot. Leaves crackled under the buggy wheels and the horse’s hooves thudded softly on the packed dirt. Rebecca clung to the edges of the seat, and her heart raced. Please God, let Uncle Reuben be all right, she prayed silently. She hoped that Dorcas was just being Dorcas, overreacting to a minor incident, but there was no way to tell.
“Money is tight for everyone, but more so for Aunt Martha and Uncle Reuben,” Rebecca explained. “That’s why Dorcas didn’t want us to call an ambulance. But knowing her, it wouldn’t be reasonable to call without seeing for ourselves first.” She glanced into Caleb’s face. “Sometimes Dorcas exaggerates.”
“Not about something as serious as this, I would hope.” His hands were firm on the reins, his back straight.
It was clear to Rebecca that he wasn’t a man who jumped to conclusions or made hasty decisions. She was glad that Caleb had been at the Yoder farm when Dorcas had come. It made her feel that whatever they found at her uncle’s, they would be able to deal with the situation together.
“There’s a gate around the bend, just ahead,” she told Caleb. “This is where Uncle Reuben’s property line starts. I’ll get down and open it.” He nodded and she went on. “The pasture is low-lying, but if you stay on the trail you won’t get stuck.”
Once they were through the gate and Rebecca had closed it to keep the cows in, it was only a short distance to her aunt and uncle’s barnyard, where the buildings were in various states of disrepair.
Though he had never said so, Rebecca knew her father had always thought that his sister’s husband had inherited a good farm but hadn’t put in the work that was needed to maintain it. Both of Martha and Reuben’s sons had married young and moved to Kentucky, leaving their parents with only a daughter to help out. Uncle Reuben had always held out hope that Dorcas would find a hardworking husband to take the place in hand, but so far, that hadn’t happened.
Rebecca felt a twinge of guilt that she would have such uncharitable thoughts about her uncle at such a time, but at least she hadn’t expressed them to Caleb. Truthfully, she was embarrassed by the peeling paint, loose shingles and sagging doors that caused her aunt and cousin so much unhappiness. Had Uncle Reuben been ill or handicapped, his church members would have gladly come to his aid, but her uncle was as healthy as a horse. And no farmer who rose at nine and left the fields at three could expect the results of others who were more industrious.
As one of two preachers in the congregation, Uncle Reuben commanded the respect of his flock because of his position. But Rebecca had often felt that Aunt Martha’s criticism of her Yoder sister-in-law, Hannah, and nieces was as much envy as an honest wish to see them live a proper Amish life. If Uncle Reuben was a better provider, maybe her aunt would be a happier person and Dorcas might have found a husband, instead of remaining single.
When they reached the main barn, Rebecca and Caleb climbed out of the buggy and she led the way inside. They had to thread through an assortment of broken tools, a buggy chassis with a rotting cover and missing wheels, bales of old, mouse-infested hay and a rusty, horse-drawn cultivator that hadn’t seen a field since Rebecca was a toddler. Pigeons flew from the overhead beams and chickens scattered. A one-eared tomcat hissed at them and Rebecca cautioned Caleb not to trip over a bucket of sour milk.
“Uncle Reuben?” she called. The shed where he kept the heifers leaned at the back of the barn, but reaching it by way of the paddock would have meant walking through a morass of cow manure. This path was strewn with obstacles, but high and dry.
“Reuben!” Caleb added his strong voice to her plea. “Are you there, Reuben?”
“Here!” came a pain-filled plea. “I�
��m here.”
Rebecca ducked beneath a leaning beam and through a low doorway cut in the barn’s back wall. Her uncle lay sprawled on the dirt floor in a pile of odorous straw. The culprit, a black-and-white heifer with small, mean eyes, stood in the far corner of the shed, chewing her cud.
“Uncle Reuben!” Rebecca cried, running to kneel by his side. One leg lay at an unnatural angle. A tear in the fabric of his trousers revealed an ominous glimpse of white that Rebecca feared was a broken bone protruding through the flesh. “Oh, Uncle Reuben.” She glanced back at Caleb.
He stared down at her uncle’s leg. “You need to get to the hospital, Reuben.” He crouched down and took the injured man’s wrist. After a moment, he asked, “Anything else hurt but the leg?”
“That’s enough, wouldn’t you say?” Uncle Reuben snapped.
Caleb released his wrist, glanced at Rebecca, and nodding reassuringly. “Good, strong, steady pulse. Any bleeding?”
“Some. Nothing a vet can’t deal with,” Uncle Reuben said. “You’d be doing me a favor to call one of the Hartmans. Set this and slap some plaster on it, it’ll heal well enough.” His talk was bold, but Rebecca could see the pasty hue of his face and the fear in his eyes.
“You don’t need a veterinarian, Reuben. You need a doctor,” Caleb pronounced. “And a hospital. Likely, you’ll need surgery on that leg. I’m going to go down to the chair shop and call for an ambulance.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” her uncle said. “I’ve no money for—”
“No need for you to worry yourself about money right now,” Caleb assured him, getting to his feet. “And no need to take chances with your leg or your life.”
“I told you, I’m not paying for any English ambulance or any of their fancy doctors,” Uncle Reuben insisted.
“We’ll worry about the doctor bills when they come in,” Caleb said. “Your neighbors will help, as I’m sure you’ve helped others in your community. As for the ambulance, I think you need one and I intend to see it comes for you.”
“You’ll ruin me! Do you know what they charge to carry you ten miles?”
“Ease your heart, Reuben.” He rested his hands on his hips. “I’m making the decision, and I’ll bear the cost of the transportation myself.”
Chapter Nine
By nine o’clock Saturday morning, Caleb, Samuel, Eli, Charley, Roland and a half dozen other men and teenage boys were hard at work in Reuben’s cornfield. A field that should have been cut a month ago. Teams were cutting the drying stalks with corn knives, a sharp-bladed tool much like a machete, and stacking them in teepee-shaped structures. The English used massive machines to harvest their fields, but in Seven Poplars, the Amish still practiced the old ways whenever possible. If the crop was to be saved, it would be due to the work of Reuben’s friends and neighbors, because it would be a long time before he would be physically fit enough to do manual labor again.
As Caleb had suspected, Reuben’s leg had been badly broken. Once Rebecca’s uncle had reached the hospital by ambulance, he’d been examined and rushed up to surgery. Reuben was still hospitalized, but was hoping to be discharged later that day. Calling the ambulance had been the right decision. According to the EMTs who responded, any attempt to transport Reuben by buggy could have resulted in the loss of his leg or worse.
When one of the congregation became ill or injured, it was the custom of neighbors and relatives to come to his or her aid. It wasn’t considered charity; it was what was expected. To do otherwise would be unthinkable in the plain community. For the next weeks, perhaps months, volunteers would tend to Reuben’s livestock daily, milk the cows twice a day, finish bringing in his harvest, cut firewood and ready the farm for winter.
Caleb had spent most of Wednesday night at the hospital with Reuben and had taken off work Thursday and Friday to look after the details of seeing that his family and farm were taken care of. Somehow, because Caleb had been the first of the elders in the church to respond, it fell to him to organize assistance for Reuben’s family. He’d made a schedule of regular volunteers, plus arranged for backup when the regulars couldn’t be there.
Paying for the ambulance as he’d promised would cut deeply into Caleb’s savings, but he had given his word. It was the right thing to do for Reuben and his family, who were—from all appearances—in reduced financial circumstances. Fortunately, Caleb had some money left over after the purchase of his farm and the expense of moving, money that had come from an unexpected inheritance. A childless uncle had died in Wisconsin, leaving his entire estate to him, making the move to Delaware possible. Helping Reuben’s family seemed little enough to ask, considering the gift he had received.
Caleb fell into a steady rhythm—swing and chop, step, swing and chop, step, moving down the row. Behind him, another man gathered armfuls of corn stalks and tied them together for stacking. Cutting corn was strenuous, but Caleb didn’t mind. Since he was a boy, he’d worked long, hard hours in the fields. The repetitive motion taxed the muscles, but left a man’s thoughts free to roam where they would. Today, however, that might not have been a good thing.
Somehow, Caleb couldn’t keep his gaze from lingering on Rebecca Yoder as she strode gracefully from one laborer to another, carrying a ladle and a bucket of cool water flavored with slices of lemon. How fine she looked this morning in her robin’s-egg-blue dress, dark sweater and crisp white apron and kapp. Modest black stockings flashed below the hem of her full skirt as she stepped lightly over the raised rows of cut stalks, and her laughter rang merrily in the brisk fall air.
Rebecca said something to her foster brother Irwin, and Caleb heard him chuckle. As she walked away, Irwin tossed a ball of fodder at her back, and Rebecca whirled around and threw a nubbin of corncob at him. The missile struck the brim of Irwin’s felt hat and knocked it off. He yelped and made an exaggerated show of retrieving it.
“Watch yourself, Irwin,” Eli teased good-naturedly. “Next, you’ll be getting a dipper of ice water down the back of your shirt.”
“Ya,” Charley agreed. His wife, Miriam, approached and he quit cutting corn to lean close and speak to her. Whatever he said must have been funny because Miriam chuckled and pushed him playfully away. Then Charley began cutting again and Miriam tied the stalks into sheaves behind him.
I miss that, Caleb thought wistfully—having a wife to share private moments and jests. Charley and Miriam were obviously a good match, despite Miriam’s unusual practice of working alongside the men. The couple were strong supporters of the Gleaners, the young people’s group, and they often chaperoned or hosted youth singings. They also had strong family values. The two were about to embark on a journey to Brazil to spend time with Miriam’s sister, Leah. Leah’s husband was a Mennonite, currently serving as a missionary for his church.
It wasn’t envy Caleb felt toward Charley, more a yearning for the family happiness he had. Maybe it was time I started to look for another wife. He would always hold a special place in his heart for Dinah, but a man wasn’t meant to live without a partner. Once a suitable period of mourning had passed, Amish communities expected a man of his age to remarry or he was considered as going against the Ordnung.
“Thirsty?” Rebecca held up her ladle and favored him with a big smile. A drop of water clung to the rim of the utensil, sparkling in the sunshine. “Would you like a drink of water?”
Startled, Caleb missed the cornstalk he’d been about to slice off and dug into the dirt with the tip of his blade. “Ne... I mean, ya, I would.” He’d been watching Charley and Miriam and hadn’t noticed Rebecca coming up behind him.
Amusement lit her vivid blue eyes. “It’s a simple question, Caleb. Are you thirsty or not?”
“I was thinking of something else,” he said. The words came out more harshly than intended, and he reached for the ladle. She handed it to him, but when he brought it to his lips, he
found it empty except for a slice of lemon.
Smothering a giggle, she pursed her lips and offered the bucket. He frowned and then scooped up some water and drank. Without saying anything more, he helped himself to a second dipperful. His face felt hot, but the water was marvelously cool in his throat, and by the time he’d swallowed the last drop, he’d regained his composure. “What did you say to Irwin to set him off?” he ventured, trying to think of something, anything, other than how her rosy lips curved into such a sweet smile.
“I asked him if he knew how to catch a blue hen.”
Caleb waited, the back of his neck feeling overly warm, obviously the result of the bright sunshine. There were at least a dozen workers in the field, but it seemed as if he and Rebecca were all alone. He was acutely aware of just how vibrant and attractive a young woman Rebecca was.
She chuckled. “How else? A blue chicken net.”
“A joke.” Not smiling, he handed back the ladle.
She chuckled and shrugged. “Guilty.”
He’d noticed that she sometimes told funny stories to the children and women at church Sunday meals. And more than once, he’d caught sight of Rebecca using her handkerchief to make a hand puppet to amuse Amelia during service. Come to think of it, Amelia had been regaling him with rhymes, word teasers and silly jokes in the evenings. He didn’t have to look far to see where they’d come from. “You like to make people laugh?”
She rested the dipper in the bucket and used her free hand to tuck a stray lock of bright auburn hair behind her ear. Golden freckles sprinkled her nose and cheeks, freckles that made her look younger than her actual years. “Chores go easier with a light heart,” she replied.
A light heart... Caleb suddenly felt as if it was hard to breathe. He cleared his throat and stepped away from her, rubbing his free hand against his pant leg.
It was a mistake to be drawn in by Rebecca’s winsome ways and easy laughter. She wasn’t the woman for him. She was too young...too pretty...too sprightly. A woman like Rebecca would never want a man like him. Certainly not with his scars...or his past. He’d not been able to save Dinah. Surely that made him unworthy of a woman like Rebecca.