The Face of Heaven (7 page)

Lyndel closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead with her thumb
and fingers as Joshua went on. She hated the violence of the word
lynched
but she couldn’t argue that Joshua wasn’t right in using it—Charlie had been lynched, not just hung, and he had been murdered, he had not simply lain down and died.

She stood up and told her mother she wanted to take a quick walk outside. Putting a cape over her shoulders she went through the doorway into the farmyard. The rain-washed air and the scent of green growing things overcame the painful images in her mind and the dark feelings in her heart for a few minutes.

Lord, what will become of our nation, the nation you gave us to reside in? Shall we truly split into two countries living side by side? What can prevent us from becoming ill-tempered and feuding neighbors with no love between us?

Avoiding the route to the pasture, she skirted the barn and the people seated inside and opened a gate to one of the hay fields. The hay was short and she wandered across the large field, not choosing any particular direction, sometimes glancing up into the soft rainfall, other times keeping her eyes on the ground just ahead of the toes of her boots. She found the creek and a grove of birch, but this was far from the place where Charlie had been, so she didn’t turn away, but walked on, watching the brown water that now moved swiftly between the banks, swollen with fresh rain. A long time she stood and prayed and thought, not hearing the person approaching behind her through the wet hay. When a hand gently touched her arm she leaped ahead and almost stumbled into the water, except the hand suddenly gripped her tightly and held her back.

“I’m so sorry—it wasn’t my intention to startle you.”

Nathaniel looked so awkward and embarrassed, his eyes and mouth drooping, his face reddening, that Lyndel found she could only glare at him for a few moments.

“You scared me half to death,” she said, her eyes and lips narrow.

“I wanted…to surprise you.”

“Well, Nathaniel King, you certainly succeeded at that.”

He released his grip on her arm and stood back. “You were having
time alone and with God, it seems. I should go. Once again, I’m sorry. I will be by tomorrow evening if you still wish it.”

Lyndel regained her composure, turned her glare into a small smile, and said, “You may come for supper.”

When he nodded and smiled, then turned to go, Lyndel said, “You don’t need to go. Stay, please…for a while. I’ve had quite enough time alone praying prayers and thinking thoughts. Some human company would be welcome.”

“Are you sure? It was not my intention to intrude—”

“You’re not intruding. Stop being a gentleman, please, Nathaniel, and go back to being my brother’s best friend—and my new friend.”

A small smile went over his face. “All right.
Gut
. How are you, despite everything—despite today being the day of the funeral?”

She paused, then said, “On the one hand, Charlie is with the Jesus whose words he loved to hear me read. On the other hand, I can’t help but feel he left us too soon. And then there is Moses Gunnison—I can’t stop thinking about him and wondering how he’s faring on that Virginia plantation.”

“I know.”

“And you, Nathaniel, how is it with you today?”

He shrugged and put his hands in his pockets. His eyes were dark under the broad brim of his hat, raindrops falling from its edge. “Would you mind walking with me? We can follow the creek for a while, perhaps for miles.”

“Miles?” She smiled at him, the rain beading on her face. “Do you have a lot to say?”

“Depends.”

They began to make their way side by side, she with her hands folded under her apron, he with his still in his pockets. For a long minute nothing was said and there was just the sound of their boots in the mud and wet grass of the field. She glanced up at him.

“Are you waiting for me?” she asked.

He shook his head, suddenly gray and somber as the weather. “I’m not sure how to begin. I wonder what you will think of me.”

“Well, once you start we can find out. Is this the big important thing you wanted to tell me?”

“
Ja, ja,
I guess it is.” He puffed his cheeks with a breath and then blew it out rapidly.

“If it’s that difficult to get out perhaps you can tell me something else in the meantime.”

“Tell you what?”

“You whispered in Charlie’s ear. You put a slip of paper in his coffin.”

He glanced at her. “So closely you were watching?”

“Indeed I was.”

“I told him…that where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty—from the Bible—and on the paper I wrote some of the words from a song the slaves sing while they work.”

“And what were the words?”

Nathaniel cleared his throat. “Some of these mornings, bright and fair, I thank God I’m free at last. Going to meet King Jesus in the air, I thank God I’m free at last. Free at last, free at last, I thank God I’m free at last.”

Lyndel gazed at him, her mouth partly open. “You astonish me, Nathaniel King. Where on earth did you learn that? It’s beautiful.”

“I…I just thought…I could picture Charlie singing it while he was in the fields—”

“What a—different sort of man you are. I never guessed it.” She smiled. “But it is a good different, Nathaniel King.”

He shrugged. “I suppose the leadership think of me as something of a wild young colt, what with my talk of clearing temples and making whips.”

“Well, it’s in the Bible, Nathaniel, so they can’t say too much, except perhaps that clearing the temple was the task Jesus was called to perform as the Son of God, not you.”

“Your father told me over the meal that I was free to leave for Indiana, so they can’t be too badly disposed toward me.”

“Put your fears aside. I’m sure the pastors have a high opinion of you. My father does too. I hope telling you this doesn’t swell your
head.” Her eyes smiled along with her lips. “It must be very exciting for you. When do you plan to leave?”

“My father asked me to stay on until the seeding of the barley, oats, and wheat is completed, so I’ll be here at least another three weeks, perhaps as long as a month.”

“Oh, will that have you champing at the bit?”

“Four months ago, three months ago, even a few days ago, yes. Now I’m content to leave when my timing is God’s timing. You know, I thought it would be a good idea to see how another Amish community lived out its faith, one that was far away from Lancaster County, and to find out if I feel the same way about my beliefs in Indiana as I do in Pennsylvania. In addition, I thought I might…meet someone…”

He paused and Lyndel felt a sharp pang run through her. The sensation was annoying and she frowned. What did it matter to her if Nathaniel King found an Amish woman to marry in Indiana? Up until a day or two ago the only thing the two of them had had in common was her brother Levi. Nathaniel caught her frown and wished he could retract his words.

“I’m sorry,” he said and watched her blue eyes darken to black in response.

“What on earth do you have to be sorry about?” she snapped.

“I didn’t mean you to think I’ve never noticed you.”

She stopped walking. “Really, Nathaniel, what
are
you talking about? Notice me in what way? Haven’t I always simply been your friend’s sister?”

“That’s true, but—”

“So why should I care if you run off to find yourself a bride west of the Ohio River?”

Her vehemence startled herself as well as Nathaniel. Confused at the strength of the reaction storming up inside her at his words, she stood and watched while he started and stopped a sentence three or four times, the words always dying on his lips. Abruptly she turned around and began striding back the way they had come.

“This whole thing is ridiculous!” she called back over her shoulder. “Talking to each other at all was a mistake! Please don’t come calling
tomorrow evening! You stay Levi’s dearest friend and I’ll stay his sister and that’s the best we can hope for!”

“It’s just that I never knew how to tell my best friend’s sister how beautiful she was!” Nathaniel blurted as she strode away. “How do you do that with someone you’ve always teased and called ‘Tomatoes’?”

Lyndel stopped and turned around, her mouth open. “What?”

Nathaniel’s face was flushed again. “How do you…how do you tell someone who was always the red-haired nuisance that she is a woman now—and a remarkably beautiful woman at that?”

Lyndel felt the blood come into her own face.

“I can’t even tell you when it started—this change in how I thought of you—but on Tuesday, when I saw Lyndel Keim take charge of the situation surrounding Charlie and Moses, when I saw the risks she took—” Nathaniel shrugged and smiled in a weak, lopsided way. “Was there ever anything on God’s green earth more beautiful than you with your eyes ablaze? And not just your eyes—your whole face and body were on fire. How do you talk to someone nicknamed ‘Tomatoes’ about things like that?”

Lyndel felt like ice, then flame, then ice again. Her mind had stopped. Nothing came to her so she continued to stare at him and dared not speak. He bent down, picked some hay, and rolled it around in his fingers.

“So I thought the hanging, the funeral, the pain, that it would cool everything down and put all my feelings in their proper place.” He kept looking at the stalks of hay in his fingers. “But it’s just getting worse. So maybe now I’m running to Indiana to get away from this…sudden beauty…who is my closest friend’s sister. At the same time, I want to call on her. What do you think I should do, Lyndel Keim? What would you do if you were in my shoes?”

Lyndel found that she was finally able to focus her thoughts. This involved stepping toward him and placing her hand on his arm. It also involved smiling at him with all the richness and depth that was inside her and, at that moment, burning through her blood.

“Well, if she’s truly that beautiful,” she told him in a quiet voice, “then I would throw all caution to the wind and I would call. Yes,
Nathaniel King, if I were in your shoes, that’s what I would do. And this time, considering the strength of your feelings, you might contemplate bringing roses instead of snapdragons, lovely as snapdragons are. The only flower I can think of that goes with the sorts of things you are saying to a woman are roses, whether that woman is Amish or not.”

5

“B
ishop Keim! Bishop Keim! They have shelled Fort Sumter and the commander of the fort has surrendered!”

Lyndel was up in her room letting her sister Becky comb out her long red hair when Joshua Yoder drove up to their barn shouting and calling her father’s name. She and Becky ran to the window and looked down as their father came quickly from behind the house where he had been piling firewood.

“What is this hollering about, Mr. Yoder?” he demanded. “Calm yourself.”

It seemed to Lyndel that Joshua practically stood to attention before her father. “The South bombarded the fort in Charleston Harbor, sir. It surrendered last Saturday on the 13th. President Lincoln called for 75,000 troops to put down the rebellion, and when Virginia got word of it their government took a vote and they seceded from the Union yesterday.”

“I knew about the surrender, young man—may God help us—everyone knew about it by Monday. But I have not heard about the call to arms or Virginia’s secession.”

“We’ve been too busy with spring planting and our own affairs but all Elizabethtown is buzzing. I have papers here from Boston and Philadelphia and, look, the
Daily Dispatch
from Richmond for Wednesday the 17th. They say more states will be joining the Confederacy.”

Lyndel watched her father take the papers from Joshua’s hands. A coldness came into her arms and chest. She had hoped the fort’s
surrender would be the end of it, that people would realize things had gotten out of hand and wiser men would put a stop to further violence. But now the president was calling up militia. Why would he do that unless he expected a battle? She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the windowpane.

“What’s the matter, Lyndy?” asked Becky. “Do you feel sick?”

“Yes, I do a little.”

“Do you want me to get Mama?”