The Sacrifice

by Beverly Lewis

  “There’s some left for dinner today,” Lydiann told him. “Now, how ’bout that?”

  To this Abe went running outside, hollering the happy news to Dat. Leah stood at the back door and watched him go, glad all the talk of Friday the thirteenth was past for now.

  “Hose off your feet; it’s time to go,” Leah called to Abe. She didn’t want Abe dragging mud into the clean clinic when the children arrived for their checkups. Dr. Schwartz had said there was no sense waiting till closer to the start of the school to have their appointments— “Things get hectic then,” he’d told her two weeks ago. Besides that, with news of several youngsters in the area having contracted the dreaded polio, Dr. Schwartz had urged her to bring Abe and Lydiann in for their first dose of the new vaccine. Although it was still midsummer, they would get their clean bill of health from a medical doctor, as well as prevention against the contagious disease, before Dat got any more ideas about calling for the powwow doctor.

  The horse hitched up to the carriage easily, and in no time at all they were headed down the one-mile stretch to the clinic. “I wonder how much I weigh this year,” Abe said, sitting to the left of Leah in the front seat.

  Leah waited for Lydiann to say something either funny or snooty, but she was silent in the second seat. Glad for the peace, Leah focused on the steady rhythm of the clip-clopping of the horse.

  Soon Lydiann began to hum rather forcefully “Jesus Loves Me,” the song Mary Ruth had often sung to the children.

  “For the Bible tells me so . . .” Abe joined in, his voice cracking.

  When they came to the part, “Little ones to Him belong . . . they are weak . . .” Leah winced, recalling how tiny Sadie’s baby had been at his birth. She hummed along with the children, hoping to dispel her momentary gloom.

  Arriving well before the appointment, Leah noticed another horse and buggy waiting ahead of them in the lane. Not knowing who was parked there, she decided, since it was so pretty out, she and the children would just sit in the carriage till closer to time to go inside.

  Promptly, though, Abe jumped down from the carriage and moseyed over to the other gray buggy. Relaxing in the front seat, she decided not to hinder him from being sociable, since it came so naturally to him. She closed her eyes for a moment.

  Next thing she knew, Lydiann had climbed out and run over to join Abe. With both children standing there chattering away, she reluctantly got out and tied the horse to the post, then walked slowly to the other buggy.

  “Mamma, this here’s Mandie and Jake Mast,” Lydiann said quickly when she saw her coming.

  “Well, hullo . . . children.” She was flabbergasted to see Fannie’s twins sitting there by themselves.

  Mandie explained. “Our mamma’s inside . . . has a nasty flu.”

  “Jah, she’s been terrible sick.” Jake nodded his head as he spoke.

  Mandie’s blond hair was pure contrast to Jake’s dark head and eyes. “We’re goin’ straight home once Mamma gets herself some medicine,” she said.

  “She needs to feel better and right quick,” Jake added.

  They don’t know of their parents’ stand against us Ebersols, thought Leah, finding it rather curious to be here talking so freely with Jonas’s baby sister and brother. She savored the special moment; these twins would have been her brother- and sister-in-law had she and Jonas married.

  “What’s your name?” Mandie asked her, blue eyes twinkling.

  “I’m Cousin Leah,” she said, not revealing her last name. “And this is Lydiann and Abe.”

  “Abe already told us his name.” Jake smiled broadly, showing his white teeth. A wider grin she’d never seen.

  “Leah’s a right perty name,” Mandie said. “And . . . you’re our cousin?”

  She straightened, repeating that she was indeed. They’ve never heard tell of their eldest brother’s first love.

  Suddenly Jake jumped down out of the carriage. “Let’s see how tall I am next to you, Lydiann.”

  “Jake, what on earth are ya doin’?” Mandie scowled from the carriage. “She’s a girl, for pity’s sake.”

  “She’s our cousin, for pity’s sake!” Jake hollered over his shoulder.

  “No need to yell, children,” Leah found herself chiding them, watching in disbelief as Jake and Lydiann simultaneously turned themselves around and stood back to back, head to head.

  “I’m taller, ain’t so, Mamma?” asked Lydiann, staring straight ahead, holding still as could be.

  Observing the childish scene play out before her eyes, she was intent on the irony of the unexpected meeting—Cousin Fannie inside paying a visit to the doctor for a summer flu; the twins out here. “Well, it’s hard to say, really . . . but jah, I s’pose you are. But only by a hair.”

  To this Lydiann giggled. Jake, on the other hand, looked terribly concerned, if not upset.

  “See, Jake? I am taller than you!” Lydiann said a bit too gleefully.

  “That can’t be,” Jake insisted, his hands on his slender hips.

  “Come along, now,” Leah said, turning to go while Abe and Lydiann said good-bye to their newfound cousins.

  “Won’tcha come to Grasshopper Level ’n’ visit us?” Jake asked.

  “That’d be fun,” Lydiann said, waving.

  “See ya later!” called Mandie.

  Obviously Abe and Lydiann were quite taken with the cute twins. When at last they joined Leah, they hurried up the long walk toward the clinic.

  Glancing over her shoulder at Cousin Fannie’s youngsters, Leah had mixed feelings about the encounter. For as obstinate as the Masts were toward the Ebersols, there was little or no hope they would ever see hide nor hair of Jake and Mandie again.

  Chapter Thirty

  Leah quickened her pace to keep up with Lydiann and Abe, delighting in their chatter as the three of them walked down the road to the schoolhouse this second week of school. Abe was in second grade this year, looking splendid in his lavender shirt, black broadfall trousers, and suspenders. Today, for a nice change, he wore his straw hat firmly on his head. Lydiann was pretty as a picture in her green dress and crisp black apron, her small hair bun hidden beneath her white prayer veiling.

  Leah had been mighty busy sewing several new sets of clothes for each child during the final weeks of August, and she had volunteered to help clean up the schoolhouse with other parents in preparation for the start of school, as well.

  “Won’tcha come back for our school picnic today?” Lydiann asked her.

  “Please, Mamma,” Abe begged, hopping up and down.

  “Do ya really want me to?” she said, knowing full well the answer.

  “ ’Course we do!” Abe shouted.

  “The pupils from the school over on Esbenshade Road are joinin’ us today, too,” Lydiann said.

  “A wunderbaar Picknick!” said Abe.

  In her busyness, she’d completely forgotten the combined school event. Mandie and Jake Mast attended the other school that served the conservative Mennonite and Amish children in the Grasshopper Level area. What fun it would be for Lydiann and Abe to see their Mast cousins again. “Sure, I’ll return at eleven-thirty with the horse and buggy,” she said.

  “Will ya stay for story time after lunch recess?” Abe asked, swinging his lunch pail.

  “We’ll see.” She wanted them to enjoy their classmates, feel at liberty to make friends, not be too dependent on her.

  “Aw, won’tcha, Mamma?” she whined.

  “None of the other mothers stay, do they?”

  Abe shook his head. “But you ain’t like them,” he said. “You’re younger than most.”

  “Pertier too.” Lydiann reached for her hand and held it tight.

  Quickly Leah directed their attention to the various trees, different kinds of birds, and other familiar landmarks along the road. It was a good long walk, but it was a fine way to extend her day with them. They never seemed to tire of her presence, as if they required her more than some children needed their m
ammas.

  Back home again, Leah canned seven quarts of peaches, then made up a large batch of catsup, with help from Lizzie. While making a sandwich to take back with her to the children’s school, a decisive knock came at the back door. The smithy had “sorrowful news to bear” of Preacher Yoder’s passing. “Happened just hours ago.” Their longtime minister had died of a heart attack.

  “We’re in need of a new preacher,” Aunt Lizzie said as the two women watched smithy Peachey scurry out to the barn to tell the news to Abram and Gid.

  “I ’spect we’ll be having an ordination service ’fore too long,” Leah said.

  “We best start prayin’ for God’s will in the selection of a new minister,” Aunt Lizzie said reverently.

  “Does Dat ever pray thataway?” asked Leah.

  “What do ya mean?”

  “Does Dat beseech the Lord God heavenly Father for divine will in all things the way you do?” The way Mamma always did, she thought.

  Aunt Lizzie’s face brightened at Leah’s question. “I believe the Lord is definitely at work in Abram’s heart,” she replied softly, yet confidently. “You wait ’n’ see. He’ll come round to the saving grace.”

  Lizzie’s remarks wondered Leah. “I hope you’re right ’bout that,” she found herself saying. “Maybe then there won’t be so much talk of hex doctors anymore.”

  “Oh jah . . . all that white witchcraft talk will fly out the window. You’ll see.”

  Lizzie’s words went round and round in Leah’s head. Even as she hitched up the horse and headed back to the little one-room school for lunch, the words “you’ll see” continued to echo in her brain.

  Actually, she was glad for a reason to be gone over the noon hour, what with plans for the minister’s wake no doubt taking shape. Lizzie’s far better at such things, she thought as she rode down Georgetown Road.

  When she arrived, the school yard was bustling with children, girls eating their sack lunches on the grass, boys eating theirs on the merry-go-round.

  Lydiann looked awful sad when Leah found her. “Our Mast cousins didn’t come,” she said. “All the other pupils did . . .’cept not them.”

  They must’ve told their mamma about meeting Lydiann and Abe, Leah decided. Cousin Fannie’s shunning the youngest Ebersols through her twins!

  Leah had to offer some sort of explanation to distract poor Lydiann, though in all truth, a mere girl didn’t need to know such spiteful things. “Maybe Jake and Mandie are under the weather,” she offered as a possible excuse.

  “That can’t be it,” Lydiann piped up. “The teacher said their mamma kept them home today.”

  On purpose . . . in case they might have themselves another good time with Abe and Lydiann, thought Leah. Will this never end? She was tempted to ride over to the Masts’ orchard house and storm up to the back door to give Cousin Fannie a good tongue-lashing. It was one thing to punish the Ebersol grown-ups, but this!

  Following the news of Preacher Yoder’s death, Lizzie promptly hurried across the field to visit Miriam Peachey. They spent a few minutes at the kitchen table making a list of food items necessary for supplying the grieving family; then she and Miriam said good-bye and Lizzie ambled back to the house to prepare roast-beef sandwiches for her father and Abram.

  At the noon meal she was mindful to stay out of their table conversation as the two men discussed the Yoder family wake and the subsequent funeral and burial services.

  When they were finished eating, Abram bowed his head for the silent prayer; then she cleared the table and washed and dried the dishes. That done, she swept the kitchen floor, and then the back porch and sidewalk. All the while, she contemplated her earlier exchange with Leah. Was it possible Abram would indeed embrace the Lord as Savior? Lizzie had seen strong indications he was softening, little cracks of light slowly penetrating his gritty soul.

  Privately she continued to share with him what she’d learned over the years through time spent on her knees in prayer and by reading Scripture. Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. Tenaciously she clung to this passage in Romans whenever Abram became resistant. Yet she felt sure the frequency and the fervency of her witness was getting through to him, touching the deep of his heart.

  “Mamma? Are you upset?” Abe asked hours after the picnic, sitting next to Leah in the front seat of the carriage as she drove them home.

  Leah hadn’t realized it, but here she was groaning, disturbing the children.

  She gathered her wits. “I’m all right.”

  Lydiann began to rehash the day. “S’posin’ I should be upset, too, since our own cousins didn’t come to the picnic.”

  Abe shook his little head. “When will we see them again, Mamma?”

  Before Leah could answer, Lydiann suggested they invite Jake and Mandie to Abe’s birthday, “come December.”

  Abe’s eyes shone. “Jah, and maybe Christmas dinner, too!”

  Late that night, Leah was too fidgety to sleep. So . . . the Mast twins had told their mother of meeting Cousin Leah. Oh, to have been a fly on the backseat of the buggy!

  She struggled to put into practice what the Scriptures taught about forgiveness, for the Masts surely needed to be forgiven, didn’t they?

  Sitting up in bed, she stared into the darkness of her room. She wished she could be at peace with all men—and women—including kinfolk like Peter and Fannie and their children.

  Dear Lord, drive my anger far from me, she prayed.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The letter from Sadie to the bishop was a single page long, and Abram’s first reaction was to walk away and ignore it.

  Bishop Bontrager, large man that he was, stood near the hay baler in Abram’s own barn, blocking the setting sun’s horizontal rays from coming through the door. “Go ahead, Abram, have a look-see.” The bishop pushed the letter into his hands, apparently eager to hear what Abram made of it.

  Fairly torn, Abram felt pressured to read his longlost daughter’s letter. At the same time he was curious to know why she’d written in the first place. Walking toward the doorway, he held the page up to the last vestiges of daylight.

  Friday, September 14, 1956

  Dear Bishop Bontrager,

  Greetings from Nappanee, Indiana, where I have been living for eight years.

  I am writing to ask your kind permission to return to my family. This would be ever so helpful to me, even necessary at this distressing time. You see, I am a widow as of two weeks ago, due to a silobuilding accident in Goshen.

  Since I am under the Bann in my home church, I thought it best to contact you directly. I hope you might pave the way for this request. It has been a long time since my baptism and my leaving, and since then I have been a God-fearing woman and made my peace with the Lord God and with a church here in Nappanee, as well as the Millersburg, Ohio, district, where first I confessed my sins privately to the ministers.

  Will you allow me to make things right with this letter? I want to return home to look into the faces of my dear father, mother, and sisters with the shunning lifted from me.

  Respectfully,

  Sadie (Ebersol)

  Abram scarcely knew what to say. Sadie wanted to come home, wanted to repent. “So much she doesn’t know ’bout us,” he said. “She has no knowledge of Ida’s passing . . . is unaware of her little brother.”

  My firstborn . . . a young widow, he thought, pained.

  Before Abram was fully ready to relinquish the letter, the bishop reached for it and quickly stuffed it back into the envelope. “I have half a mind to say she ought not return. Simply puttin’ words on a page is not enough for me to give a shunned woman the go-ahead to come home.”

  Abram’s heart sank. “Then, ya must not believe she’s sincere?”

  “Sincerely wrong, she is. Your eldest ain’t above the Ordnung, though she might think so. If she wants to live with you and Leah and the rest of the family, she’ll have to offer a kneeling repentance before the entire membership
. Nothin’ less.” The bishop tapped the envelope on the palm of his callused hand. “If she should be stupid enough to make an attempt at returning without takin’ the proper steps, you and Leah will be shunned, too.”

  Caught coming and going, Abram thought, realizing he was contemplating the same things Ida used to say—and Lizzie would now. It made little sense to slap the Bann on a family just because they had a shunned relative, and one obviously in need. But he kept his opinion to himself, not wanting to jeopardize an opportunity to see his daughter and possibly young grandchildren. What an awful long time had passed since Sadie had left home, and now she was living in Indiana. Evidently Jonas couldn’t make it as a carpenter in Ohio. Abram wasn’t too surprised at that; not with the bishops out there and here frowning hard on young men who thumbed their noses at farming. Seems mighty English to do otherwise, he thought.

  But now Jonas had been killed building a silo. Such risky, even dangerous work—anybody knew that. Especially for a scrawny carpenter!

  Poor Sadie lived with the same familiar pain of loss as he did. The realization swept over him, and he felt sorry for his ambivalent feelings toward his own flesh and blood . . . even after all these years of her absence and her defiant refusal to make recompense here at home, where it most mattered.

  “Will ya write and remind her of what she must do?” he asked the bishop.

  The burly man leaned on the baler and looked him straight in the face. “I’m sure you miss her and I can’t blame ya for it. I’ll write her what’s expected. If she’s yielded and agreeable, I’ll let you know.”

  Stunned at the change in the bishop’s attitude, Abram nodded. “I’ll wait to hear from you. Denki!”

  The older man headed out toward the sinking sun. Then, almost as if he’d forgotten to say what was still on his mind, he turned and asked, “How will this affect Leah, do ya think? And your young children, too?”

  Abram inhaled sharply. “Once you hear back from my eldest, I’ll speak with Leah, break it to her . . . somehow. Then she and I will decide what to tell Lydiann and Abe.”