Between You and Me

by Susan Wiggs

  “The shredder?” Jonah frowned slightly. “I know how to work it. I know how to work all the equipment. You taught me yourself.”

  The trusting expression on his face pierced Caleb’s heart. “Something got fouled up in the blades.”

  “It happens,” Jonah said. “And I know how to fix it, too. I grab a longer stalk and push it real hard—” He stopped abruptly. His frown deepened and then softened. He shut his eyes. His lower lip trembled. “Uncle Caleb?”

  Caleb would have given his own life to avoid speaking the next words. “A terrible thing happened, Jonah. You got hurt bad, liebling. Real bad.”

  The boy’s eyes opened very slowly, as if he knew somehow what he was about to face. With an even slower motion, he lifted his right hand from beneath the blue blanket. Blood had dried in the seams of the short, stubby fingernails. He opened and closed his hand.

  Caleb took hold of it, cradled it between both of his big hands, and carried it to his lips. “I’m so sorry, Jonah. I’m so, so awfully sorry.” He felt resistance as the boy tried to free his hand from Caleb’s grip. And with shattering clarity, Caleb knew why.

  He felt an urgent need to intervene before Jonah discovered the unthinkable all on his own. “Jonah, son, look at me.”

  The serious blue eyes settled on Caleb’s face. There was bewilderment in those eyes, and a sense of betrayal. Jonah was a child; he’d given a child’s trust to those charged with looking after him, and he’d been betrayed.

  “Your other arm’s gone, son,” Caleb said quietly. “It got cut off.”

  They both fell silent. Caleb imagined the realization sinking like poison into the boy’s mind. Jonah didn’t move. He didn’t blink. He didn’t speak a word for several agonized moments while he looked at his bandaged stump, wrapped in layer after layer of cream-colored gauze. There was a cap or spigot of some sort protruding from the bandage.

  “Gone?” he asked, his voice cracking.

  “It got all mangled in the shredder. There was so much damage that it couldn’t be fixed. They had to cut it off in order to save your life.”

  “Gone?” Jonah said again. “It’s my arm. How can it be gone?”

  “It’s a lot to take in, I know,” Caleb said. “I’m still . . . I can hardly believe it myself, except that I was there. The emergency workers saved your life. They came out right away, did what they could to stop the bleeding, and then they called a rescue helicopter. Life flight.” It had all happened just twenty-four hours ago, yet it seemed as though a lifetime had passed. “They brought us here to the hospital in the helicopter,” Caleb added. “You and me both.”

  “We flew.”

  “Yeah, we flew. Right up into the sky, like a bird or a dragonfly.”

  “Isn’t that against Ordnung?”

  Caleb pushed up one side of his mouth, an attempt at a smile. “Just like your daddy, you are,” he said. “To tell you the truth, I was more worried about you bleeding to death than I was about church rules.”

  Jonah flinched and pulled his gaze away from the terrible, bandaged limb. His face was a picture of dull, uncomprehending shock. He had that look you might see on the face of a mother who’d just lost a child. Miriam Hauber had worn that look long after she’d lost a baby just hours after its birth. That same dazed, hollow nothingness, as if the world had suddenly become a place he didn’t recognize.

  “Then what happened?” asked Jonah.

  “Everything went real fast,” Caleb said. “I’m not even sure I remember everything right myself. They took you off the chopper while the blades were still going around, and they rushed you down to the emergency ward. Then it was like flies at a picnic, and you were the main dish. I had no idea such a crowd of folks could swarm all over a little old tadpole like you. They hung blood, and put in lines, and yelled stuff at each other, stuff I couldn’t begin to understand. Everyone worked real hard to save your life, Jonah. What happened was, the folks in the trauma center, the doctors and nurses and interns and so forth, they got you stabilized. What that means is they made sure your heart was okay and your blood pressure, and your breathing, so they could take you up to surgery.” It felt strange, speaking of such unfamiliar things, but Caleb saw no point in hiding anything from Jonah.

  Jonah looked at the ceiling. “Where is surgery?”

  “It’s . . . it’s a place where they took you to do an operation to save your life.”

  “Is it where they cut off my arm?”

  Caleb pinched the bridge of his nose, surprised to feel the throb of a headache. He didn’t often get headaches. “Yes, son. Yes.”

  Jonah turned his attention back to the bandaged arm. “Were you there?” he asked. “I mean, when they were cutting off my arm, were you with me?”

  “What? No.”

  “I wonder if they used a saw, like Eli Kemp when he’s doing the butchering.”

  Good Lord almighty. “I was in a waiting room, thinking about you the whole time. When the operation was done, they put you here in this place called the surgical intensive care unit. Hospital folks have been checking on you all night long. I reckon the doctors will be real pleased to see that you’re awake and talking.”

  Caleb left a gap of silence for Jonah. Sometimes silence was needed, not more talking. Caleb had learned this when, in a single terrible moment, he became responsible for Jonah and Hannah.

  Yesterday, though, when they’d rushed the boy off to surgery, he had been grateful for talk. He remembered pacing the waiting area of the emergency room, wondering what was going to happen next and not knowing whom to ask. That was when Reese Powell had approached him. Caleb could not remember what had been going through his head when she’d arrived. But he remembered turning to her, and feeling a small but noticeable measure of relief when she offered a change of clothes and then helped him navigate his way through the labyrinthine hallways of the hospital.

  He wasn’t sure why she had taken an interest in him. Everyone else in the emergency room seemed to race from crisis to crisis, darting and feinting through an obstacle course of equipment, coworkers, frightened patients, and families.

  Reese had looked very young to Caleb, though she projected an air of confidence. She was different from anyone he’d ever met, man or woman, in a way that tempted him to stare, like he’d stared at Niagara Falls or a shooting star. Her short hair was as black and shiny as the wing of a raven, framing a face he could look at all the livelong day. Of course, he had no call to be noticing the beauty of a woman, especially at a time like this, but noticing her like that wouldn’t change what had happened, no matter who was bleeding on the operating table.

  When she’d started talking to him he had realized the source of that beauty was something simple yet powerful—compassion, combined with a fierce and earnest intelligence. She had this way of looking at him as if she knew how scared he was for Jonah and how much he needed to understand what was happening to his nephew. As she’d explained the terrible injury, Caleb had sensed the smallest glimmer of hope. He knew a medical student was only at the beginning of the practice of doctoring, like an apprentice carpenter learning from a master craftsman. Yet there were things that she knew, things he couldn’t even imagine. Things about the human body and the way it worked or failed to work. Through yesterday’s endless hours, Reese Powell had seemed absolutely determined to stick with him, answering not only the questions he asked but also those he didn’t even know how to.

  All this seemed to be a lot to notice about a woman he’d only just met. But Caleb was like that sometimes. He’d meet someone and see exactly what that person was like based on a few minutes’ conversation.

  It hardly mattered now. He probably wouldn’t see her again. She was one of the many strangers passing through. Yet for some reason, his thoughts kept drifting back to Reese Powell. In addition to her fierce, intimidating intelligence, he also sensed something sterile and lonely about her. When they’d gone to the cafeteria, she hadn’t talked to anyone along the way. It was probably
out of character for her to take the time to help him through his first night in the city.

  Jonah gazed at him in silence, and Caleb felt guilty for dwelling on his encounter with a woman. Jonah’s face took on a soft, sleepy look, his eyes half-lidded. “Where’s Hannah?” he asked softly.

  Caleb pictured Jonah’s sister, crumpled in a tragic heap as the helicopter bore her brother away. “Back home in Middle Grove. I left word with Alma at the phone box that you were going to be all right. And you are, little man, I swear.”

  “How can I be all right if my arm’s gone?” Jonah’s voice was the tiniest whisper.

  “Because you’re Jonah. My best good boy. And I swear by all that I am that we’ll get through this.”

  His throat felt thick with the lie. There was no getting through a loss like this.

  “Hannah knows about my arm? Did you tell Alma to tell her?”

  “I told Alma you’re going to be all right,” said Caleb. “She’ll let Hannah know.” He had not said anything about the arm, only that Jonah was going to get better. Given what Hannah and her brother had already lost, he owed her the full story, but not until he could see her, hold her hand, and reassure her.

  “You’re wearing funny clothes,” Jonah said.

  Caleb looked down at the borrowed shirt and trousers. “A lady named Reese loaned these to me.” He didn’t want to explain that his other clothes were covered in Jonah’s blood. “They’re called scrubs, which is curious, since they don’t seem to be used for scrubbing anything.”

  Jonah nodded, then yawned. His eyes fluttered shut.

  “You rest now,” Caleb said, gently stroking his brow. “You rest as long as you like.”

  Caleb, too, shut his eyes, but he didn’t sleep. Instead, his mind wandered back over time, touching on moments forever enshrined in memory.

  When he was a boy about Jonah’s age, Caleb used to loiter around the village phone box, hoping against hope to hear the phone ring and his mother’s voice on the other end. Hoping she would explain why she had walked away from him and his older brother, John, never to return.

  Of course, it never rang. Caleb had tried to find her name in the phone book, a slender paperbound directory with scenic pictures of the Poconos on the cover. He remembered sitting on the floor of the small shelter and methodically reading every name in the book, searching for Jenny Stoltz or Jenny Fisher, her maiden name. Finally, John had come along and explained that the book only listed folks who had their own telephones.

  “Mem could be a million miles away,” John had explained. He was seven years older than Caleb, and he knew things. “You won’t find her name in any book around here.”

  Some time afterward, Caleb recalled, John had made the big leap, determined to end his life by jumping off the hanging bridge at Stony Gorge. Until that day, no one had understood the terrible demons that haunted John, tormenting him to the point where he wanted to end his life. Caleb hadn’t grasped the connection between their mother’s absence and John’s desperation.

  But that day, a miracle had occurred. Despite falling a hundred feet, John had not died. He’d walked away with nothing but bruises and scratches and a broken arm. Folks who witnessed the incident talked about it in hushed and reverent tones.

  John himself had been transformed by the fall. A man reborn, no longer an angry rebel, John declared that it was the hand of God above that had saved him. In the time it took for him to fling himself off the swinging bridge, his life had been remade and given back to him. In gratitude, he declared that he was going to spend the rest of his days serving God. And he set himself to the task with a devotion that was almost fanatical. He had returned to the community, accepted baptism with a humble heart, married Naomi, and set himself on a new path.

  After the kids came along, everyone seemed to feel the bad times were finally behind them. Caleb still thought about his mother, but time dulled the gnawing ache of missing her. He admired the way his brother had put his life back together after that desperate day at Stony Gorge.

  Yet Caleb often found himself wondering about the world. He used to daydream about the jet planes soaring overhead or the cars roaring down the highway. In defiance of his father’s edicts, he borrowed books from the county library and read novels about imaginary worlds and far-off places, and people grappling with matters he could only imagine. When he turned sixteen, he knew he needed to go out into the world. His father had forbidden it, of course, but Caleb had been determined.

  The thing about being Amish was that kids were not only allowed but encouraged to experience life beyond the confines of the community. There was even a name for it—rumspringa. Running around. Most youngsters came running back to embrace baptism and Plain life. Folks thought Caleb would spend his rumspringa the way most kids did—riding around in cars, smoking tobacco and weed, listening to loud music, going to shopping malls and movies.

  Caleb had known he would be one of the small percentage of Amish kids who left for good. He knew he’d never join the church, never marry an Amish girl, never raise a family the way his brother was doing. He was forever yearning, one foot out the door, poised for flight. He wanted to see the ocean one day. Wanted to fly in a plane. To learn the calculus and study science and literature and things of that nature. He wanted to experience the world in all its messy, confusing glory.

  Most of all, he wanted distance from his father.

  Instead of partying, Caleb spent his time at the library. He learned to use books and computers as sophisticated information systems to find out all he could about anything imaginable.

  That was how he’d eventually found his mother. A grueling bus ride had taken him to central Florida, where the air was so hot and muggy he could scarcely breathe. The town was nowhere near the ocean or the Gulf of Mexico, but hunched at the side of a highway that bisected the long, narrow state. His search ended at a street lined with modest houses surrounded by scrubby grass and trees decked with little orange bittersweet fruit called calamondin. He still remembered the expression on her face when she had opened the front door. Complete and utter shock had drained her cheeks of color, then blossomed into wonder.

  “John?”

  “Caleb,” he said. For the love of God, she couldn’t tell her sons apart.

  “Who is it, Mom?” called a voice. A young girl came to the door. She stopped and stared at Caleb. Although he wore English clothes, she stared as if he were an alien from outer space.

  Mem leaned her back against the doorframe and tipped back her head, looking up at the sky and then closing her eyes.

  He’d scarcely remembered her face. There were no photographs of her. He used to try drawing the image he had of her in his mind, but the picture never turned out. Now he saw Hannah in the curve of her cheek and in the wavy blond hair. He saw Jonah in the bright blue eyes and the busy hands.

  She mouthed some words, but no sound came out. Her legs seemed to give out and she slid down to the mat, hugging her knees up to her chest. A dry sob heaved from a place deep inside her, and then the floodgates opened.

  He remembered this from his childhood. Mem used to cry a lot. The girl—Caleb later learned her name was Nancy—backed away, her eyes round with fright. “Mom,” she said. “Mommy, what’s the matter?”

  “You’d best pull yourself together, Mem,” Caleb said in Deitsch.

  Maybe the sound of the old dialect caught her attention. She took in a deep breath and picked herself back up. Caleb pushed open the door. “Let’s go inside.”

  He entered the strange house. It had a vinyl floor and shabby furniture, and it smelled of something damp, like mildew. The girl called Nancy sat on a barstool in the corner, and Mem took a seat at the end of the sofa. Caleb stood in the doorway, waiting. He crossed his arms over his chest. “We woke up one morning and you were gone,” he said.

  A long silence stretched out. Cool air blew from a vent in the ceiling, a magic wind that turned the hot day cold.

  “Nancy, honey, you run along a
nd play outside,” Mem said. “I need to speak with Caleb for a bit.”

  The girl’s chin tilted up slightly. “I want to stay.”

  Mem regarded her steadily. “Run along,” she repeated. “I’ll speak with you later.”

  Nancy hesitated for a beat. Then she climbed off the stool and left. The snap of a screen door punctuated her exit.

  Finally, Mem began to talk, and she seemed to talk for hours. “I couldn’t stay. I was drowning—or choking. That’s how it felt, day and night. I couldn’t breathe, living in fear of what Asa would do to me next. I was so young and naive, I didn’t even know what to call the things he did to me.”

  Caleb hadn’t known what to say to that. He hadn’t been quite certain of what she meant, although knowing his father’s temper, he had an idea.

  “I ran away in the night with nothing,” Mem continued. “Asa had hurt me bad. I thought I might die, but I didn’t. I survived and went off on my own for the first time in my life, and it was awful. But not as awful as staying. At first, I lost the will to live. Wandered out onto a busy highway without a thought for what might happen to me. I was lost. So very lost.” She turned her face to the window and stared outside. “I made a lot of stupid mistakes, but I made my way, bit by bit. Found work here in Florida and started over.”

  “It never occurred to you to take care of your own kids?” Caleb asked. “Did you think it was all right to leave us with the same man you ran away from because you were so scared of him?”

  She studied him with pale, tear-filled eyes. “There was no way Asa would have let me take you, and staying was impossible. I didn’t have a penny to my name. I knew nothing but Plain ways, and I’d never set foot outside the community. I could only hope you and John would be all right.” She stared at him, her eyes swimming with pain. “Did he . . . did your father . . . ?”

  “You mean, did he beat me? Yah, sure, until John got big enough to stand up to him.”

  Their father didn’t seem to have the first idea about how to raise two boys. He’d always been strict and stern, with a fearsome temper, but Caleb had no memory of the terrible things Mem had suffered. However, he had witnessed his father’s fierce outbursts. John bore the brunt of the beatings. Yes, they were beatings, not spankings—with a belt, a shovel, a hacksaw, or any other weapon their father might grab. Caleb used to cower, shivering, under the cellar stairs when his father laid into John. At night, he’d hear his brother sniffing, trying not to make a sound as he wept, because if their father caught wind of crying, the beatings would start again.