Huckleberry Hill (18 page)

“Oh!” Dawdi yelled, and it sounded as if he were doing a wild dance in the stall. Mammi jumped out of her skin, and Moses sat straight up only to groan and sink back to his pillow as the pain shot up his leg.

To Moses’s great relief, Mammi stepped around instead of over him to get to the stall where Dawdi made such a fuss. “Felty, what in the world are you doing?”

“Step back, Annie. Stay back.” The stall door swung open slowly, and Dawdi stepped out with a chocolate brown and white snake dangling from his rake. A big chocolate brown and white snake. Had to be at least three feet long. And it was alive. Its tail made a sickening hiss.

Mammi plastered herself against the door of the opposite stall where Dawdi’s horse squealed out a warning. Red stayed put but shuffled his feet and whinnied nervously.

“Kill it, Felty,” Mammi said.

To Moses’s great distress, Dawdi slowly walked toward him, keeping his eye firmly on the snake entangled in his rake. Moses held his breath and prayed desperately that the snake would not escape and use him to soften its landing.

Without looking down, Dawdi tiptoed carefully over Moses, who thought he would die of a heart attack, and plodded cautiously to the door.

“Dawdi, what are you doing?” Moses said through clenched teeth. It was a miracle he could speak at all.

“I ain’t never seen a massasauga this far north. They’re endangered.”

“Now, Felty,” Mammi said. “What do you think you are going to do with it?”

“Open the door for me, Banannie.”

“I’m not coming near that thing.”

Without taking his gaze from the hissing head of the frightening snake, Dawdi reached out slowly and opened the door. “I’m going to hike over to the rocky side and release him.”

“Dawdi, this is reckless. You could get bitten.”

Dawdi shook his head slightly. “I know how to handle a snake.”

“That’s a two-mile walk, Felty,” Mammi scolded, propping her hands on her hips. “What am I to do if you fall over, break a hip, and get bitten by a snake?”

“I won’t be long.”

“What about Moses?”

“Take care, Moses. We’ll come see you in the hospital.”

Dawdi didn’t shut the door as he concentrated on his balancing act and disappeared from Moses’s sight.

Moses furrowed his brow. “Maybe you should send Rachel to follow him.”

Mammi waved away his concerns. “Oh, Felty will be all right. I can’t imagine he’d do better with Rachel chasing after him.” She grunted and with some effort, knelt down next to Moses. “How is the pain?”

“Pretty bad.”

“Don’t you worry. Lia is bound to be back before your horse tramples you or you bleed to death.”

Moses forced a smile and squeezed Mammi’s hand. Dear Mammi.

He felt worse already.

 

 

Lia ran down the lane as fast as her feet would take her without losing control and falling on her face. She’d never seen anything as gruesome as Moses’s leg before. She had to go faster. Moses might lose too much blood or go into shock before an ambulance could reach him.

A steep shortcut through the trees and bushes would get her there faster. She hopped off the lane and dodged low branches and fallen logs as she made a beeline for the main road. As she plowed through the underbrush, she felt like a clumsy cow trampling wildflowers and ripping leaves off bushes.

A thick root protruding from the ground proved to be her downfall. She caught her toe and went tumbling like a sack of flour. Her right forearm took the brunt of the fall as it slid into a very sharp rock. She yelled out, more in frustration than pain, although the pain was real enough. She did not have time to fall. Moses needed her.

Only after she stood and brushed the dried leaves off her dress did she take a second to examine her stinging forearm. A nasty gash, three inches long, traveled up the back of her arm. Blood already soaked her sleeve. Lia groaned. She’d seen enough blood that week to last a lifetime. The cut was deep but not unmanageable, and she would probably need a tetanus shot.

Cradling her arm in her other hand, she continued her trek through the trees to the road, saying a silent prayer for haste. She ignored the pain, didn’t have time to give it any attention. She had to get to a phone.

Once she reached the paved country road, she ran in the direction of the Van deGraffs’ with all her might. It was still a four-mile journey. She wished she could have brought a horse. Soon every muscle ached and her lungs burned painfully, not to mention how badly her arm throbbed.

She heard the rumble of a car behind her. A car! Surely the driver would have a cell phone. It would save her at least three miles and several minutes. She turned and frantically waved her injured arm at a gigantic white motor home lumbering up the road. The driver slowed his vehicle and finally stopped a hundred feet past her.

A woman with disorderly gray curls and round glasses much like Anna’s stuck her head out the window and beamed at Lia. “Look, David, a real Amish person. She’s hurt.”

Lia tried to catch her breath.

A thin man with a full head of salt-and-pepper gray hair joined the woman at the window. “Come on, honey. We’ve got a first aid kit in the back.”

“Do you have a cell phone?” Lia panted. “Someone up the hill is hurt worse, and I need to call an ambulance.”

“Oh my,” said the woman, gesturing to the man. “Yes, we have one.”

The man disappeared, Lia hoped, so he could retrieve a cell phone.

“You poor girl. Come in and we’ll get you fixed up.”

“After we call an ambulance,” Lia said.

The woman looked over her right shoulder to check on the man’s progress. “Our son gave us the phone to use on the trip in case we had trouble, but I don’t know the phone number for the police in this area. I’m Colleen, by the way. And that is my husband, David.”

“I’m Lia.”

Lia heard the side door close, and David hobbled around the back of the motor home supported by a cane, the sturdy kind with four little legs each covered with a rubber tip. The rumble of the engine died, and Colleen soon followed David onto the road.

David held a thin, black phone in his fist. “Here it is. We couldn’t get any bars a few miles back.”

“Thank you. Thank you so very much.” Lia tried to decipher how to use the phone, a newfangled contraption, Felty would say. Rachel had a cell phone two years ago before she got baptized, but this one was completely foreign to Lia. It had no buttons to push. “Do you know how to dial?”

David took the phone and squinted at the screen. “I can usually figure it out. My son calls this a smartphone, but it seems pretty dumb to me.”

Colleen put her hands on her hips and leaned in to get a better look at the phone. “I don’t need any of the fancy gadgets, I just want to be able to call my kids once in a while.”

David touched the screen a few times and it lit up like a television set. “Do I dial nine-one-one?”

“Jah, that’s right.”

He dialed slowly, even though it was only three numbers, and Lia tried not to lose her patience. These nice people had saved her a good thirty minutes of running.

Lia heard a faint voice on the other end of the line, and David’s face lit up. “Hello, yes, this is David Tolley. I am calling from northern Wisconsin. Can you connect me to northern Wisconsin? Oh, I am already there?” He covered the receiver with his palm. “They already know where I am. This
is
a smartphone.” He listened to the voice on the other end. “Hello. This is David Tolley. We are out here near—” He put his hand over the receiver end of the phone. “Where are we?”

“West of Bonduel,” Lia said.

“Tell them we just left Shawano,” Colleen added in a hushed whisper.

“We are west of Bonduel and someone is seriously injured.” He nodded at Lia to get confirmation that whatever the injury, it was serious. “Yes, I’m not sure how serious. Uh . . . yes . . . we are on a road with lots of trees.”

“Outside of Shawano,” Colleen prompted.

“We left Shawano about ten, fifteen minutes ago.”

With concern for Moses increasing every second, Lia tapped David’s elbow. “Would you like me to tell them how to get here?”

David pulled the phone from his ear. “What . . . oh, you want to give them directions?” He went back to the phone. “Okay, this young lady is going to give you directions.”

He handed the phone to Lia, who quickly described Moses’s injuries and relayed directions to the dispatcher. Unsure of how to hang up, she gave the phone back to David. “They’re coming,” she said, considerably reassured, but still worried for Moses. He must certainly be in agony. At least Felty and Anna were looking after him.

David slipped the phone into his pocket and gave Lia a fatherly smile. “Now, why don’t you come in our motor home, and we’ll clean up that cut?”

Lia refused to waste a minute of time on herself. “Thank you kindly, but I must get back up the hill to see how Moses is doing.”

“Moses? Is he the one who’s injured?” Colleen asked.

“He broke his leg, and the bone is sticking through the skin.”

David winced. “Ouch. Is he up there?” He pointed to the Helmuths’ house, which could be seen on the hill through the trees.

“Yes, I ran down to call an ambulance. Thank you again. I would still be running if you had not stopped, but I must go back now and tend to him.”

“That’s a long walk.”

Colleen jangled her keys. “At least let us drive you up the hill. Is there a road?”

“Yes, it’s fairly wide. But I do not want to impose.”

“Are you kidding?” Colleen said. “We came all the way out here to see Amish people. It’s a thrill to be talking to one.”

Lia couldn’t resist such enthusiasm. She cracked a smile.

“We’ll take that as a yes,” David said. “Climb in.”

David took Colleen’s hand, and Lia ambled behind, matching their slow pace. Perhaps it would have been faster to run back up the hill.

Lia had never been inside a motor home before. It was as cozy as a real house with a kitchen table and cupboards and even a fridge.

“This pulls out into a bed,” David said, motioning to different parts of his house on wheels. “And the bathroom is at the back.”

“The bathroom? You can carry your bathroom right along with you?”

“Yep. The lap of luxury.”

Colleen slid into the driver’s seat and revved up the engine. David sat on the bench across from Lia at the table. Lia’s heart pounded as she looked out the window—as big as the one in Anna’s kitchen. The motor home leaned and creaked as Colleen stepped on the gas. It almost felt like being on the lake in a wobbly canoe.

Lia had thought that Moses had a hard time turning his buggy around that day when they got stuck on the trail into the thick woods, but his difficulty paled in comparison to what Colleen had to go through to turn her motor home and maneuver it up the lane. Turning the huge vehicle completely around took backing up and pulling forward seven times and then Colleen had to slow to one mile an hour to pass over the dip where the pavement ended and the lane up Huckleberry Hill began.

They were finally bouncing up the hill with Lia holding her breath the whole way. She was terrified the huge vehicle would tip over any minute with all the pitching back and forth it did on the uneven lane. She almost asked Colleen to stop and let her get out so she wouldn’t die, but David and Colleen seemed unconcerned about the rough ride, so she laced her fingers tightly together, clenched her teeth, and pretended to enjoy the trip.

Lia saw the chickens scatter and heard Sparky bark as the rolling house pulled to the top of the hill. Would Colleen be able to turn this thing around to get back down? They might be stuck up there for a long time.

David pointed toward the house. “Park off to the side so the ambulance has room.”

“David’s a dentist,” Colleen said as she brought the vehicle to a stop. “He might be able to help.”

Lia jumped from the bench as soon as the motor home jerked to a stop. “Jah, come, if you like. I appreciate the ride so much.” She popped open the door and was running as soon as she met the ground.

The barn door stood open, and someone had managed to get Red into the stall. Pasty and sweating, Moses lay with his eyes closed and a grimace on his lips. Even with pain etched across his features, he was still as handsome as ever. Lia sighed inwardly and concentrated on his injury. His leg looked ghastly but the bleeding had stopped. A bright green afghan rested over him, and Anna had found him a pillow. Oh, dear. The pillow off Rachel’s bed. She would be extremely annoyed that it had spent the afternoon on the floor of the barn. Anna sat on the ground next to Moses—an amazing feat for someone her age—holding his hand.

“How is he?” Lia whispered, in case he was asleep.

Moses quirked the corners of his lips upward and spoke without opening his eyes. “I’ve been better.”

Anna tried to get to her feet by rocking side to side and propping her hands on the floor. She finally gave up and reached out to Lia. Lia clasped her hands tightly and pulled Anna to her feet. “I’m too old to sit on the floor. It used to be my favorite spot when my children were little. But I was a lot younger then.” She brushed the errant pieces of straw from her dress. “You are back long before I thought you would be.”

David and Colleen shuffled tentatively into the barn, letting their eyes adjust to the dimness.

“These people let me use their cell phone. The ambulance is on its way.”

Moses turned his head as best he could to see the Tolleys. He gave them a weak smile of acknowledgment.

Still stiff from sitting on the floor, Anna hobbled to David and Colleen. “We are so grateful for your kindness.”

Colleen beamed as if she were meeting a celebrity. “We should be thanking you. I am fascinated with the Amish. I never thought I’d get to meet you this close.”