Hidden Mercies (22 page)

He arose promptly at 4 a.m. every morning, and after eating a quick breakfast, he would join his father and attempt, once again, to force his fingers to squeeze hard enough to extract milk from the most patient cow in his father’s small herd. Yesterday morning, he had gotten almost a half bucket before his fingers would not grasp anymore. So there was improvement.

Tom knew he was little help to Jeremiah. His fingers were so stiff and sore, his hands so slow, that more than once a cow turned her head and looked at him, still chewing her cud, as though to say, “You about done, there, fella?”

His hands burned from the stretching he was doing. He hoped it was the right thing to do. Milking had not exactly been on the list the physical therapist had given him.

As he milked, he thought how odd it felt to pretend to be an outsider around people he knew so well that he could have recited their birthdays and food preferences.

His father had a strong dislike of cabbage. It was almost
unthinkable with his Germanic background, and something his father tried to hide.

Claire never met a vegetable she didn’t like, but her meat had to be cooked so thoroughly, it was almost a family joke.

“Better burn Claire’s a little more,” her brother, Eli, used to say when someone was grilling hamburgers at church outings.

Tom was also working on stamina. After the milking was finished, he had started taking a long walk. He would go as far as he could, then he would rest on whatever was available, a fallen tree, a rock, whatever—until he regained some strength—and then walk back.

This morning was no exception. He was feeling stronger and thought maybe he could go a full mile before having to take a rest. After he had showered the smell of cow off, he planned to go into town and rent a post office box. He wasn’t expecting a lot of mail, but it would give the military a place to forward something if it did show up.

He was on his way back when he saw a freshly painted sign at the end of Claire’s driveway that had not been there earlier when he passed. It was advertising home-canned tomato juice, sauerkraut, peaches, and baked goods.

For some reason, home-canned tomato juice sounded wonderful—yet another thing he had not had in longer than he could remember. He had seen the little store in Claire’s front room the one time he had been inside. Evidently the girls had decided to expand their little business.

Suddenly, a quart of tomato juice sounded like the only thing in the world he wanted. It almost amounted to a craving. His desire to have an excuse to see Claire had nothing to do with it whatsoever.

Except she was outside working in her flower garden, and
it was a lovely spring day, and he was tired of having only Jeremiah and a cow to talk to.

“Good morning,” he said.

She glanced up, and it was as though the sun had suddenly broken through the clouds. Her smile was so ravishing, he forgot to breathe for a moment. “Good morning!”

It took him a moment to compose himself. “I saw the sign. That’s new, isn’t it?”

“Maddy put it up a little while ago. It appears that we are going to have a bumper peach crop this year, so we are selling last summer’s bounty.”

“Do you mind if I go in and purchase something?”

“More fudge?” she teased.

“I’ll try not to forget to buy some this time.”

She sat back on the grass and looked up at him with a mischievous grin. “Elizabeth says for me to remind you of her great sweet tooth every time you come to purchase something from the store.”

“Elizabeth has a strange sense of humor.”

He went inside, purchased a quart jar of tomato juice and a small packet of fudge from Maddy, who was busy rolling out piecrust. Then he went back out to the porch and sat down on the steps near where Claire was working.

“Do you mind if I drink this here?” he asked. “Before I head home?”

Claire looked at the mason jar. “I would not mind having that jar back.”

“Of course.” He shook up the contents of the jar, twisted off the canning ring, and pried off the lid with his thumbnails. Then he began to drink the salty red juice.

It filled something deep within him, as though his body had been crying out for it all along. Half the jar was gone before he took a breath.

Claire had stopped weeding and now sat back on her haunches, looking at him curiously. “You like it that well?”

He wiped his mouth. “I like it—but it feels more like my body is craving it.”

“Juice is healing,” Claire said. “The garden gives us many of the medicines we need.”

“The way this is tasting to me right now, I think I might end up buying your whole supply.”

“Well, at least you won’t have far to come!”

“That’s true.” He rummaged in his pocket and brought out four folded, crisp hundred-dollar bills and started to hand them to her. “I almost forgot. I picked this up from the bank yesterday. It’s for next week.”

“Thank you.” Claire took the money and tucked it away in a pocket. “Have you given any thought as to how much longer you will be staying with us?”

“I have been giving it a great deal of thought.”

The longer he stayed here in the Mt. Hope area, the more he wanted to stay. This had not been his intent. He had planned to see his father, apologize to Claire, meet Levi—and then get the heck out of this place that held such painful memories. Instead, he had found himself being embraced by these decent people living ordinary, decent lives. It was exactly what he had fought for—that they might have that right.

Now, instead of aching to leave, he found that he had been drawn into the rhythm of their lives.

He didn’t want to lose the ability to walk over to his father’s. He didn’t want to forfeit the hours he spent with Levi, teaching and being taught by him. He didn’t want to walk away from the valiant and troubled Grace, or the eccentric wisdom of Elizabeth.

He especially didn’t want to walk away from Claire and her houseful of children. Only yesterday he had helped Albert
repair a chicken fence after a rooster had escaped, had helped extricate Amy when one of her wheels got caught by a crack in the porch floor, and had talked Jesse out of jumping off the barn roof with a makeshift parachute made from a bedsheet. He’d also seen Maddy sneaking out of the house again and was debating whether or not to talk to Claire about it.

In so many ways, he wanted to stay, but he couldn’t imagine retiring at such a young age. Strength was slowly coming back to his hands. If he worked hard at it, he might be able to achieve the level of expertise he’d had before the explosion. He wasn’t there yet, but if he could get another month of sick leave, he thought he might be able to become fully functional as a pilot again.

“My thirty-day sick leave will be up shortly,” he said. “I’m going to contact Marine headquarters and start the paperwork for another month. If you don’t mind, I’d like to rent that apartment for a few weeks longer.”

At that moment, both heard something buzz. She jumped, startled. A vision of a rattlesnake flashed through his mind.

“Oh!” she said. “It is my pager. I am not used to it yet. This must be one of my mothers.”

She checked the number and frowned.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

“I do not know,” she said. “I hope not.”

Brushing her hands off, she ran to her telephone shanty at the end of the driveway.

He drained the jar of tomato juice and set it beside the front door. It was time to leave, but she seemed worried, and he was a little hesitant to leave until he found out if everything was okay.

He walked toward the phone shanty as he headed back home, hoping he could find out if anything was the matter before he actually left.

When he got to the phone shanty, he saw that she was frantically dialing a number. She listened for the length of several rings, then hung up.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

“One of my clients has gone into labor. It is sooner than we expected. She has many small children, and her husband is not at home. The oldest daughter was the one who called, and she is only ten.”

“You need to get to her.”

“Yes, but she lives too far away to take the buggy, and my driver is not answering her phone.” She picked up the receiver and began to push in numbers again.

“Who are you calling now?”

“There is another driver I know, but she lives further away.”

“Let me take you.”

She stopped in mid-dial. “What?”

“I have a car and nothing to do today. Let me take you.”

“Oh, yes, please!” She made her decision in an instant. “Go get the car while I grab my bag.”

“Maddy!” she shouted as she headed for the house. “Start gathering my things!”

It took him less than three minutes to get to his car, back it out of his driveway, and pull up to her house—but she had already changed into a light blue dress and a white apron, and was standing on the porch holding what looked to be an oversized diaper bag.

Maddy must have had everything ready before Claire even made it through the door. The girl might be sneaking around at night, but at least she was competent when it came to helping Claire.

He got out and opened the passenger door for her. In spite of her hurry, she looked at him, head cocked, then ignored the open door and got into the backseat instead.

Midwife on a journey of mercy or not, she obviously didn’t want to be seen driving around the countryside while sitting in the front seat of a strange
Englisch
man’s car.

“Tell me where we’re going,” he said.

She gave him directions and he drove as fast as he considered safe on a road where any curve might have a slow-moving buggy hidden behind it.

“Why didn’t she call an ambulance if she thought she was in labor?”

“They have eight children under the age of ten.” She met his eyes in the rearview mirror. “The father has been ill and unable to work until this past week. The cost of a hospital stay is not something they need to be burdened with.” She looked away. “They will have enough trouble coming up with the money to pay me—and I will care for them whether they can pay me or not.”

He was not surprised, but he was impressed. “They are lucky to have such an understanding midwife.”

“Luck has nothing to do with it,” she said. “This is my ministry, the holy work God gave me. If I never got paid a penny, I would still help these women. Making a living for my family is a side benefit, not my sole goal.”

“I stand corrected,” he said. “So how did you get into this? How did you get the training for this skill?”

“My grandmother was a midwife. She was trained in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in the old ways.”

“What are the old ways?”

“Roots and herbs. Tinctures to make a pregnancy safer or labor easier. Preparations to help a woman hold on to a baby that is trying to come too early or to hurry a baby that wants to come too late.”

He had known her grandmother, a woman he remembered as having swollen knuckles and legs that did not work
well. She had used a special cane to get around, and he had a vague memory of her coming to their home when his little sister, Faye, was born.

“So your grandmother taught you how to be a midwife?”

“Yes. Levi’s father was killed before he was born. I was quite young, but my grandmother was wise enough to see that I needed a profession if I was to raise my child, and I wanted to learn from her. After she passed on, I inherited her practice. I used the old ways, but I tried to incorporate the best of the new ways, too.”

“Like what?”

“Some babies need a whiff of oxygen when they first come into the world. I always carry a small tank with me. I do a lot more than simply show up at a mother’s home when she’s ready to have a baby. I make certain there are monthly checkups. I monitor her blood pressure and girth. I talk to her about nutrition and make sure she’s eating the things she needs to build a healthy baby. I do everything in my power to discover potential problems long before they get out of hand, and if I have the slightest hint that there might be problems serious enough that they need to be taken care of by a hospital, I make certain that she gets the kind of medical help I cannot provide.”

“How many babies have you delivered?”

“Three hundred and forty-four,” she said.

“You keep track that closely?”

“Of course. Every life is precious. I record names and dates and weight and height in a notebook, and sometimes, late at night after all the chores are done, I pray over those names, for those babies to grow strong in body and in the Lord.”

“Have you ever lost one?”

“By the grace of God, I never have—and I hope I never will.”

Within minutes they had traveled a distance that would have taken more than an hour in a horse and buggy. He pulled into a rutted driveway and had barely come to a full stop before Claire had gathered her things and was opening the door.

“The oldest child is the one who called me,” Claire said. “The father was not home when she called. Perhaps you could help keep the children out of the room?”

“Of course.”

The bareness of this Amish home was even more severe than most he had been inside—bare of everything except children. Several were playing with a small kitten. Two were rolling empty thread spools back and forth. A worried-looking girl, about ten years old, had let them in. She was carrying a baby boy on her hip. The baby looked to be about a year old and too heavy for such a skinny little girl to be toting around.

“
Daed
is gone.” She seemed overwhelmed with relief that Claire had arrived. “Grandma is real sick.
Maam
had written your number on the phone shanty wall.” She nodded toward the stove. “I put some water on to heat while I waited for you to come.”

“You did so well, little one.” Claire hurried into the mother’s bedroom.

As the door closed, Tom glanced down and saw several pairs of little eyes looking up at him. Only the oldest girl spoke.

“Who are you?”

“I’m a neighbor of Claire’s.”

“Annette is always her driver.” The little girl hitched the big baby a little higher on her hip.

“Annette was gone.”