Hidden Mercies
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To Jacob “Wingman” Miller
IT specialist
Thank you, Son, for your limitless patience.
Deep gratitude to:
Dr. Elton Lehman: 1998 Country Doctor of the Year, who led the Amish community in building the Holmes County, Mt. Eaton Care Center—a freestanding birthing center for Amish and Mennonite women. Thank you for taking the time to talk with me about your work.
Katie Weaver: Lancaster County–trained Amish midwife. Your forty years of service to your people is an inspiration. As you said, “Childbirth is a holy thing.”
Ivan Weaver: For supporting your wife’s ministry, and for taking the time to teach us about your faith.
Mabel and Effie Miller, Old Order Amish sisters: For allowing me to share your poetry with my Amy.
Stephanie Miller and Marybeth Coriell, labor and delivery nurses: For taking the time to brainstorm, share your medical knowledge, and proofread.
Sandra L. Hess: For the in-depth information about your work as a certified professional midwife.
Lisa Morrison: For your prayers and allowing me to borrow your brilliant, eccentric horse, Copycat, for a few pages.
Tim Finley: For sharing your expertise about horses.
Jack Davis, Colonel United States Marine Corps, retired: For looking out for my two civilian kids when they were living in Hiroshima, patiently answering my questions, and for a lifetime of service to our country.
Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions: according to your mercy, remember thou me for thy goodness’ sake, Oh Lord.
—
PSALMS
25:7 (
KJV
)
I
n the seventeen years Claire Keim had been on this earth, she had seen only one movie—a horror film. It gave her nightmares for weeks. Her
Rumspringa,
her “running around” time, began and ended in one miserable night spent at the movie theater in the company of
Englisch
friends.
Yes, Claire had only seen one horror film—but at the moment, she felt like she was living in one.
“Where
is
that boy?” Aunt Beulah, hard of hearing and apparently under the impression that she was whispering to Claire’s mother, was shouting the very question that was on everyone’s mind.
Where on earth was her groom?
Enough food had been prepared to feed upward of three hundred people. Chickens, butchered at her uncle’s farm, had been cooked to tender goodness. At the moment, carefully made stuffing baked in the ovens. Vats of potatoes boiled on the stoves, ready to be mashed by the dozens of women who, in order to finish preparing the food, would voluntarily miss the wedding that was to start in—Claire glanced at her mother’s kitchen clock—that was scheduled to start right now!
She gazed out the living room window, willing Matthew to hurry up. From her vantage point, she could see the sea of
black buggies that flooded her father’s hay field. Two white sixteen-passenger vans, noticeably out of place, sat among them, hired to bring relatives all the way from upper New York State.
All of these people sacrificing time and money to get here now milled around the Keim farm. Some, ignorant of the fact that the groom had not yet arrived, were already seating themselves on the benches in the barn. From the window, she could see them through the maw of her father’s dark red barn, men and women demurely facing one another. Waiting.
Her parents, not wealthy by any means, had sold some of the timber from the back of their farm in order to pay for this wedding. It was a sacrifice worth making, her mother said.
It
was
a sacrifice worth making. That is, assuming the groom ever showed up!
She intended to be a
gute Frau,
a good and obedient wife, but before the day was over, Matthew would be hearing her thoughts on being left to worry about whether or not he would come to his own wedding!
A clear, early-morning October sun broke through the fog, promising a lovely day. The threat of rain that had kept her awake all night had lifted.
She did not think she needed all that teaching in order to become a faithful wife to Matthew. A life without him was unimaginable. Even when they were apart, she spent every waking minute thinking about him. She knew they were going to have a wonderful future together. How could she not have a wonderful future with Matthew as a husband?
To an outsider, she would have looked like any other Amish girl; but this morning, she felt like a princess. Her dress was brand-new, handmade for this occasion by her grandmother, who had insisted on sewing it for her in spite of arthritic hands.
“Has that oldest boy of Jeremiah’s run off?” Aunt Beulah shouted into her mother’s ear, and thereby to everyone else sitting in the living room lined with older women. “What did he do, head back West? I told you those two were too young to get married.”
Claire’s face grew hot. The wall clock, which struck a chime every fifteen minutes, announced to everyone in the room that Matthew was now a full fifteen minutes late to his own
Hochzeit
.
This was unheard of. He should have been here before dawn helping her father, brothers, and uncles set up the church benches in the barn and taking care of any other last-minute things that needed to be done.
Matthew’s father, a widower, was the most punctual man in their church, but he was not yet here, either. Nor was Matthew’s brother, Tobias, or his little sister, Faye. It was not like Matthew’s family to be late. Their buggy was always the first to show up on Sunday mornings.
“I’m going to saddle Pansy and ride over to their house to see what’s holding them.” Claire’s older brother, Eli, patted her on the shoulder. “Someone should make certain they have not been in an accident.”
“Thank you.” Claire gave her brother’s hand a squeeze. “I will pray that nothing bad has happened.”
Claire dutifully did pray that everyone in Matthew’s family was safe and sound, but in her heart she was beginning to wonder, along with Aunt Beulah, if Matthew had run off.
They had not gone together all that long. Their Swartzentruber church did not approve of long courtships, and with good reason—too much temptation. Could it be that Matthew had changed his mind? Could it possibly be that he had gone back West, to that ranch he had worked at last year? Sometimes his voice held a note of longing when he spoke of the
great open spaces he had seen in Montana. Had she made a mistake in trusting him?
There had never been, in the collective knowledge of the people of their church, a groom who was late for his own wedding. She knew that to be a fact because Beulah, not only the deafest but also the oldest woman in their church, had just now trumpeted that particular piece of information to her mother.
The kitchen clock struck nine o’clock. The comfortable chatter that usually swirled around a bride died out. People were silent now, as the awful realization that something had gone terribly wrong settled over everyone. Claire saw one of her uncles take out his pocket watch and check the time.
Claire’s twin sister, Rose, put her arm around her waist. “Henry is not here either,” Rose said. “I’m worried about him as well.”
Until this moment, Claire had not noticed that Henry, the boy who was courting Rose, had not arrived. He was supposed to stand up with them as a witness to her and Matthew’s wedding.
Not for the first time, Claire wished their people were allowed to have a telephone shanty near their home. The liberal Old Order Amish thought nothing of having a telephone at the end of their driveway. Not her people, though. The Swartzentrubers would have excommunicated any member who attempted such a thing.
She stiffened. A lone rider, bent low, galloped toward her house. It was Matthew! He had come!
She ran out into the yard to greet him, overjoyed. Perhaps the ministers could shorten their sermons a bit so that everyone’s dinner would not be late. She would soon be a married woman after all!
But it was not Matthew. It was Benjamin, a young neighbor of the Troyers, who leaped off the slavering horse.
“There’s been an accident,” he said. “The state patrol was just at the Troyer house. Jeremiah and Faye have gone to the hospital. Tobias and Henry are injured, and Matthew is”—he gulped for breath and her heart stopped—“Matthew is . . . gone.”
“Matthew is gone? Where did he go?”
“He’s . . . gone.” Ben fidgeted, looking around at the crowd forming around them. “He was racing a new horse of Henry’s and now he’s dead. I don’t know anything else.”
“How badly hurt is my Henry?” Rose asked.
“I don’t know. All they said was that it was bad.”
Rose burst into tears.
Claire stared at her sister, wondering why she was crying. Certainly Rose knew that this was nothing more than a bad wedding joke. Matthew’s friends loved playing pranks. No doubt they had “kidnapped” Matthew early this morning just to tease her. She smiled, relieved to have a reasonable explanation for Matthew’s absence. In fact, if she knew Henry, he was probably at the bottom of this. Sometimes Henry took things a little too far. “Ben, go tell Henry and the others that this isn’t funny,” she said. “And tell him it’s time to bring Matthew back. The bishop isn’t going to be happy about this, and neither are my parents.”
Ben looked at her and she saw real pity in his eyes. Oh, he was a good pretender, he was!
There was a long, long silence among the people grouped around her. She kept waiting for Ben to burst into laughter and for Matthew and Henry to come walking around the corner of the barn, but not one person moved. They all seemed to be waiting for something. Even Rose had quit crying and was now looking at her, puzzled.
Claire glanced around at her friends. She realized that she was the only one smiling. A knot began to form in the pit of her stomach.
“Henry!” she yelled. “You stop this right now! You bring Matthew out from wherever you’re hiding him. I have worked too hard on this wedding for you to spoil it with your tricks!”
Once again there was nothing but silence. Many of her friends were staring at the ground. News had somehow traveled all the way up to the women preparing food, and they had stopped their work beneath the kitchen canopy. Everything seemed frozen in time.
“It is not a joke, Claire,” Ben said. “With all my heart, I wish it was.”