Wonderful Lonesome (24 page)

Ruthanna stepped into the stall and ran her finger over the simple curved piece of each end of the cradle, then the spindles in the sides notched delicately at the centers. She pushed it gently side to side and was pleased with the way it glided.

“Thank you, Eber,” she said softly. It was an exquisite gift, and Ruthanna hoped their child would one day feel as grateful as she did for the care Eber had taken.

“I told you I would have it finished before it was too late.” Eber draped an arm across Ruthanna’s shoulders. Though heat and dehydration would make him sleepy, she was now sure that he also had a fever.

“We still have a few weeks,” she reminded him. “You don’t have to make yourself ill to meet the deadline.”

Abbie ignored the howling coyotes that evening. With a lantern on the table in front of her, she spread open the issue of the
Sugarcreek Budget
that she had already read three times. Beneath it were three earlier issues. As hard as she had tried to write something cheerful and encouraging to send to the
Budget
, she had instead laid her attempts in the belly of the stove and listened to them crackle into flame. If she could not be cheerful and honest at the same time, she would rather be silent. However, someone else might have written.

Most of the time the Weavers scanned the stories in the
Budget
looking for news of someone they knew. This time Abbie intended to read enough of each story to be sure she was not missing some reference to the struggling settlement, whether a comment by someone who lived within miles of the Weaver farm or someone remarking from afar on the conditions in Colorado. Two years ago a woman from Oklahoma had visited and then reported that Colorado was all right for a man who had money to spend, but a poor man had no business there. For weeks after that, a flurry of articles crisscrossed the country venturing opinions about the suitability of settlers for the demanding life on the plain.

Though she wished the woman from Oklahoma had kept her opinion to herself, Abbie understood what she meant. A settler who had sufficient money could do well carving out a life in Colorado and enjoy the beauty the state had to offer. Without money, though, the task had proven more complex than any of them expected. Most of the settlers had to just do the best they could to feed and shelter their families. Whether any of them would succeed over time remained to be seen.

Willem certainly intended to. But his terms of success would hardly attract future settlers.

Rudy aspired to a sweetness of life that was as brittle as old thread.

Abbie pored over the articles, one issue after the other. For the first time she felt the irritation of trivialities and understated criticism that wove through the articles, and the whole business struck her as an indirect way to communicate. The settlers around Limon did not have that luxury.

Abbie did not leave the farm the next day. Tuesday was a baking day, and while the loaves rose through two yeasty cycles before going in the oven in twin sets, she cleaned the Weaver home. Her mother sat for much of the day in the shade cast by one side of the house or another, repositioning two chairs with the movement of the sun so she could listen to Levi read painstakingly from the family’s German Bible and recite multiplication tables. Abbie took them plates of boiled eggs and cold ham at lunchtime and the first slices of fresh bread and milk for midafternoon refreshment. Levi had been grateful for both interruptions. He was a cooperative student even in midsummer, but Abbie knew he was not reading as well as many children his age. Esther Weaver was on her own to teach him.

Abbie had heard talk of the Amish families beginning their own school, even if it convened in someone’s barn and the mothers rotated teaching duties. With the Chupps gone, though, Abbie supposed the energy for undertaking would dissipate. After all, the Chupps had five of the nine school-age children who would have attended. The remaining families, like hers, had only one child each between the ages of six and fourteen.

On the other hand, Abbie mused, an organized Amish school could be an attraction to families with young children. Occasionally she did Levi’s lessons with him and surprised herself with her patience. Late in the afternoon, the baking finished, Abbie pondered this question as she swept a coating of flour blown astray from the mismatched pieces of linoleum that constituted the kitchen floor.

Soon it would be time to get supper on the stove. Abbie made sure that the doors at both the front and rear of the house were open to catch the breeze that the unobstructed plain often birthed in the late afternoons, just when the family was most weary from the heat. She stood for a moment looking toward Pikes Peak rising from the seemingly endless plain. It was miles and miles away. Still it dominated the view. Abbie hoped she would remember to come out later and watch the sun set behind the mountain. She knew better than to hope Willem would ride over to share this simple pleasure as he had so many times in the past.

But someone was riding in. Abbie squinted into the glaring late afternoon light to see Mary Miller urging her horse to pull the buggy faster. Mary was calling something, but Abbie could not hear her words over the clatter of the hurtling rig.

Finally Mary pulled on the reins, breathless.

“Little Abe is missing.”

The instant pressure in Abbie’s chest seized air from her lungs.

“Did you hear me?” Mary shrieked.

Abbie gulped, Little Abe’s sweet face rising in her mind. “How long?”

Esther and Levi appeared from around the corner of the house.

“I don’t even know!” Mary covered her eyes. Her shoulders rose and fell three times before she could continue. “He went down for a nap, and I sat outside to work on my mending. Then I went out to the garden to see if there was anything worth picking and started clearing weeds. When I realized how long I had been out there, I figured I should wake him up or he would never go to sleep tonight. But he was gone!”

“Ananias!” Esther hollered for her husband.

“Albert went into town and isn’t back yet,” Mary said. “I’ve looked and looked around the house and barn. I can’t think where Little Abe could have gotten to.”

Esther tapped Levi in the center of the back. “Find your
daed
and tell Reuben to bring the horses.”

Levi lit off through the dust.

“Someone should be at the house to wait for Albert.” Abbie started to hoist herself onto the buggy bench. “I’m going to take you home. We are going to turn over every stone and board of your place, and we are going to find Little Abe.”

Esther nodded. “My husband and sons will not be far behind.”

“What will I say to Albert?” Mary moaned. “How does a wife tell her husband that she has lost their child?”

“We’re not going to worry about that.” Abbie took the reins out of Mary’s hands, which had gone limp. “When do you expect Albert home?”

“He’s over working on Mr. Nissley’s land. He said he would be home for supper.”

“Then he’ll be home soon, and you know he would move a mountain to find that boy.”

Mary’s tears gushed unrestrained now.

Abbie glanced over and saw her father, Reuben, and Daniel marching toward them in stride with each other. By God’s grace they had all been together and not off in the far corner of the farm. She clicked her tongue and got the horse moving, leaving it to her mother to explain the urgency of her summons. Forcing herself to breathe as she drove, Abbie did a mental inventory of all the places a small boy might get lost on a three hundred-acre farm. But he was barely less than two years old, and she did not think he could have gotten far.

Unless he had never fallen asleep for his nap at all.

At the Miller farm, Abbie jumped out of the buggy and fell to her knees at the base of the house, looking for any space into which a small child might squirm.

“I already looked there.” Mary hovered behind Abbie.

“He can’t have gotten far.”

“That’s what I thought.” Mary’s tone rose in panic. “Don’t you think I looked everywhere around the house and barn before I went for help?”

“The henhouse?”

“Nothing but hens.”

Abbie sucked in her breath. “The outhouse?”

“We keep it latched way above his reach.”

“But you looked?”

“Yes, I looked.”

Abbie scrambled around the perimeter of the house and saw no sign of Little Abe’s tiny footprints. She sat on her haunches and squeezed her head between her hands and closed her eyes, trying to picture where he would go. She did not know the Miller farm nearly as well as Mary did herself, but perhaps in her panic the child’s mother had overlooked something obvious.

Esther arrived with Ananias and Reuben just as Abbie got to her feet.

“I left Levi with Daniel,” Esther said. “Having him here would be a distraction we don’t need. He’s frightened as it is.”

Abbie squeezed Mary’s hand. “You stay here with my
mamm
. You won’t be alone when Albert gets here.”

“I want to keep looking.” Mary lurched toward the Weaver buggy.

“You can hardly stand up,” Abbie said. “You did the right thing to come and get us. Stay here and pray.”

Esther took Mary’s elbow and steered her back toward the door to the house. “Reuben,” she said, “take one of the horses and ride for Willem as fast as you can. Then come right back.”

Abbie marched toward Mary’s buggy. “We can each take a direction. I am going north.”

“Make sure there’s a lantern in that buggy,” Esther cautioned.

Mary gave a cry and balked in her progress toward the door. “It won’t be dark for hours!”

Esther put her arm across Mary’s back. “We will pray.”

Abbie covered her mouth with her hand at the thought that they might not find the little boy well before dark. Surely they would find him playing in the dirt or he would look up and realize he could not see his mother and his cry would give him away. Convinced they would be passing him around a crowded room well before dark, nevertheless Abbie rummaged under the buggy bench to make sure there was a working lantern before she seated herself and picked up the reins.

The longer Abbie searched, the more her chest clamped down on her breath. If anyone else had found Little Abe, someone would have ridden to the north acres to let her know. By now, well past suppertime, surely Albert had come home to find his wife a frantic puddle of anxiety and disbelief, and he would have taken his other horse out. Reuben would have returned from Willem’s farm hours ago, and the two of them must be searching.