Tomorrow's Dream (5 page)

Kenneth clung desperately to the hope enclosed within the first two words.
Not yet
. “How long will we have to wait?”

The dark eyes lifted to Kenneth's and gave him another deep inspection. “If your baby were to survive another ninety days, I would say that it would be worth contacting Dallas.”

There he stopped. The silence hung so heavy that Kenneth felt his own lungs were being robbed of air. Finally he managed, “What are you saying?”

Dr. Hearly leaned across the table, closing the space between them. “Mr. Adams, your son's heart is working impossibly hard. A newborn baby simply cannot cope with this strain.”

He waited through another long moment, then continued. “It is so hard to know what is correct for a situation like this. But I can see what you must be going through right now, and your wife . . .” He paused and looked at the files as if searching for the next words. “I heard what Dr. Pearce and Dr. Saunders think about the situation before I did my own examination. That is why I decided to speak with you as I have.

“Mr. Adams, all three of us believe your baby's life is unsustainable.”

“No,” Kenneth moaned. “It can't be. . . .”

“We are doing everything in our power to keep your baby alive,” the doctor continued. His voice had the soft, deep rumble of a coming storm. “But his shunt is so large, this defect to his heart so severe, that your baby is not able to help us win.”

Abigail recovered enough to whisper, “How long?”

Dr. Hearly's gaze did not waver from Kenneth's face. “You must prepare your wife for the worst, Mr. Adams. Do so without delay.”

7 
 

Joel was as happy as
he had been in months.

He had always loved trains. As a boy, he watched them thunder by and yearned for faraway places. Now he loved being able to sit back and watch from inside as the world whipped away beyond the window.

He felt Ruthie squeeze his hand and looked into his beloved wife's face. She had returned to her traditional Mennonite dress for their visit home to the farm, putting aside the denim skirt and simple blouses she wore around the mission. Joel had repeatedly told her that she was welcome to wear her Mennonite bonnet and attire, but she explained it could alienate some of the young people who drifted into their mission hall. He had finally stopped bringing up the subject, recognizing the truth in her observation.

But he was very glad to see Ruthie now back in the dress of her heritage. He loved her for who she was, and he loved the family and the tradition which had shaped her. Now that she did not wear Mennonite clothing all the time, seeing her in it brought back many wonderful memories.

Joel's own childhood with Martha and Harry had not been happy. His father had been critically injured in the war and given up for dead. His mother, faced with raising a child alone and without support, had chosen to give up her newborn girl for adoption. Then when his father had finally come home, the joy of their reunion had been darkened by the loss of their daughter. The wounds left on their spirits refused to heal. Joel had been born and raised in a house filled with silent shadows of a past he did not understand. It was the Miller family's arrival in the neighborhood that had begun the transformation, introducing Joel to both a happy family and, eventually, helping to unite his own family in faith.

“You look so happy,” Ruthie said, sharing a smile. Her dress now included the starched little cap of a married matron instead of the maiden's scarf.

“I am.” He hesitated, not wanting to taint the day but needing to share it all with her. “But I'm also feeling guilty.”

“It's only natural.” She reached over and laced her other hand into his. “Still, it is not wrong for us to be happy, even when Kyle and Kenneth are suffering.”

Joel glanced back out the window, feeling all the conflicting emotions fading with the distance. Not even the very difficult telephone conversation he had with his sister before leaving for the station could keep up with him and the quietly rattling train. “I don't know how we're going to tell them our own news.”

She did not ask what he was speaking about. Instead, she lifted his hand with both of hers and held it firmly to her middle. “We will just let God show us the way, my Joel.”

A couple passing down the train's central aisle stared at Ruthie in her homespun black dress and long-sleeved blouse and sturdy shoes and little white cap. Joel pulled Ruth's hands back to the central armrest and wished he had his wife's ability to ignore the stares of strangers. “You're losing your accent. You don't say Choel anymore,” he commented with a teasing smile.

She laughed. “Give me three minutes with my family, and you will have all the accent you ever want to hear.”

Upon their arrival at Lansdale, Pennsylvania, Joel was glad Simon was there to greet them. He was feeling very weary and weak. He tried to hide it from everyone, but he knew Ruthie had noticed what he himself had seen in the train station's mirror—his tightened features, the furrows across his forehead, the sunken eyes. He knew too that his lips were compressing with the effort of holding back the pain in his chest.

Simon embraced his brother-in-law, gave him one long look, and declared, “To home a taxi we must take.”

“Simon, no, it is too much.” Ruthie looked genuinely alarmed. Farm income had steadily declined over the previous few years, and finances around the Miller household were extremely tight. They were being forced to draw from savings just to put food on the table. “We do not have—”

“It is not too much, and I will pay,” Simon announced proudly.

“With what?”

“I will explain soon, sister. But say nothing of this to Papa. Not yet. It is not yet the time for talking of this secret.” He gave her a mysterious grin as he hefted Joel's suitcase.

Ruthie glanced at her husband, then decided to accept. “Let us go, my husband. We can talk of new mysteries when you are rested.”

Joel found himself too tired from the journey to resist. The thought of having to wait for a bus, sit through the jouncing series of starts and stops, then walk the long drive up to the farm seemed impossible just then. He said to Simon, “Your accent is stronger since the last time I saw you.”

“Yah, hear it every day more myself, I do.” He led them over to the Lansdale taxi rank. The driver was a grizzled old man who had long since become accustomed to Mennonite dress. In fact, his only lingering glance was cast at Joel. Simon told the man, “Please can you take us down the Highway Fourteen to where the road ends?”

“Down past the church,” the man confirmed, waiting until the three of them had climbed inside. He ground the gears. “Know just where you mean.”

Joel sank gratefully into the ancient padding, leaned his head against the window, and closed his eyes. He listened as brother and sister began chatting away in Old German, the soft voices melding and drifting and finally carrying him away into dreams.

Joel awoke to the rare sounds of birdsong. It was so different from the traffic noise that filled every room in their tiny apartment above the mission. He lay in the bed and tried to remember how he had gotten there. A vague memory surfaced of being roused from his sleep in the back of the taxi, and people whispering hellos and guiding him up the stairs and into bed, everybody making a game of his inability to respond.

He rolled over in bed and saw he was alone. A glance out the window told him it was the hour before dawn. The sky was palest blue with hints of coming gold, a farmyard sunrise. He heard a rooster crow and the cows give their lowing call to be milked. A bucket rattled as someone walked whistling across the yard below his window. Joel rolled from his bed and reached for his clothes.

When he appeared on the porch, Mr. Miller was seated in the high-backed chair Joel had made for him the previous summer. The big man's beard was graying fast, and the stump of his leg was propped on a padded stool. The only time he used the stool was when the leg was feeling poorly. Which was more and more often these days.

Mr. Miller's diabetes had brought his family from their farm to the Washington area, and thus into Joel's life, in order to receive treatment for his ailment. It was this illness that had cost him the lower half of his left leg. After the Millers returned to Lansdale, he had thrown himself back into farm work, bravely enduring the awkwardness and pain of a prosthesis. Only in the past year, however, had he finally accepted the family's insistence that he slow down. He refused to discuss his health or even say how he was feeling. But in the early morning light, Joel could see the weary lines etched like ever-deepening furrows that spread out from his eyes and mouth.

But the smile was still fresh and from the heart, and the eyes twinkled in welcome. “So, Choel, you have slept away the trip, yah?” He watched his son-in-law pull over a chair and demanded, “How is the heart?”

“About the same.”

“A doctor you have seen?”

“Last week.” There was no space for masking news. Not with this good, simple man. “He says he can't explain how I've lasted as long as I have.” Joel waved as Simon came around the side of the barn, carrying two full pails. Already the pigs anticipated Simon's arrival and had set up a high-pitched squeal. “Joseph, how is the farm?”

“The farm is in God's hands,” the big man replied firmly.

“In his last letter, Simon mentioned possibly selling some land.”

“Simon is a good boy. But he clings to his worries. The land, it is my family's for five generations. We do not sell. God, He will show us a way.” Joseph Miller studied his work-worn hands before asking, “And your sister Kyle, she has news of her own?”

“They saw another specialist. Kenneth didn't tell me much, only that the news wasn't good.”

Joseph Miller nodded slowly, his eyes both bright and troubled. “Hard it is to see young ones suffer, as both of you are, I have asked God, take the burden from you, and give it to me, why not? A good life have I had. The years ahead I would give to you if I could.”

Joel felt a lump grow in his throat at all the words contained. “Thank you, Joseph.”

“I remember another porch, another time.” He looked fondly at his companion. “I remember a young boy who came and prayed with me. I remember thinking, yah, here is one with a heart the angels love.”

Joel watched his wife scurry across the yard, cradling newly gathered eggs in her apron. As she climbed the stairs she gave them a from-the-heart smile before entering the house.

“I remember how this young man said no to a woman who loved him,” Joseph continued quietly. “Not because he did not love her. No. Because he loved her too much. I remember how he tried to keep his pain and his future to himself. I remember how he gave his days to his Lord. Yah, all this do I remember, that and more.” The long gray beard slowly rose and fell. “Right there before my eyes, I saw a wonder. Yah, a miracle. I saw the Lord at work in a man.”

Joel looked at the older man and saw the wisdom in his eyes. “I'm scared of the future, Joseph. Terrified.”

“Yah, hard it is to face what we know is coming.” He gave a gentle emphasis to the word
we
. “And know I do what you wish to hear. You say with your eyes, ‘Tell me all will be fine. Tell me I will grow to see sons of my own. Tell me this wonderful wife, we will share many years together.' ”

A breath of morning wind skirted the house and found them there on the corner of the porch. It ruffled Joseph's beard, making it seem as though the man was laughing silently. Or crying. Or both.

“Choel, I love you as my own. If I could give you all the years left, I would do it. Right here and now.” He held out two scarred, strong hands. “But the Lord, He has not given me this power. So only can I tell you, trust in Him. Remember the goal, my friend. Offer this is all I can for you now.”

“Tell me again.” He swallowed with difficulty. “I forget sometimes.”

“Ah, now you choke with old Choseph. Forget that you never will. The Lord, He has written it upon your heart.” The kindly eyes inspected him. “No, the forgetful mind, it comes with age. You can help me remember, yah?”

He managed a little smile. “Maybe so.”

“Very well, then.” Joseph leaned forward until the tip of his beard brushed against the leg propped on the stool. “When we stand before the Lord—help me here. What is it we hope and pray to hear?”

Joel whispered, “ ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant.' ”

“Ach, yah. That it is.” He leaned farther still, closing the distance between them, until his gaze filled Joel's vision, and all Joel could hear were the softly murmured words, “Well done.”