Whispers of a New Dawn (10 page)

“
Ja
? And how far did you get?”

Becky glared at her aunt a moment longer. “Fine!” She sat back down and went at her cow as if the milk would only come out if there were a fistfight. She worked in silence, her movements short and sharp, while Ruth and Moses talked and laughed as he got the hang of milking. Then all three of them worked alone in different stalls as sunlight began to make its way into the barn.

“Rebecca.”

She didn’t look up when Moses spoke. “What?”

“Your aunt has gone in to help with the breakfast.”

“Good.”

“So we’re alone again.”

“Alone again with seven more cows to milk.”

Moses touched her shoulder. “Are you angry?”

“What could I possibly have to be angry about?”

“Do you want to know what I said?”

“I don’t care anymore.”

“Shall I tell you rather than make you wait?”

Becky picked up her stool and bucket and began to make her way to another cow. “It doesn’t matter to me one way or the other.”

Moses gently took her by the arms. “Hey.”

“Let go of me.” She tried to squirm out of his grasp.

“Hey. Do you remember who I am? The Amish man who can’t stop kissing you?”

“Moses. I don’t have time for—”

“
Ich kann ohne dich nicht leben
—I can’t live without you.”

“What?”

“You heard me.” Moses kissed each of her eyes. “I’d sooner give up my air or my arms.”

“Don’t talk crazy.”

“I mean it.
Ich schatze dich
—I cherish you.”

She sank against him. “How am I supposed to stay in a sulk when you say such things?”

“Does this mean I can have another milking kiss?”

“You can have a dozen.”

The first kiss seemed to last forever. Becky felt light-headed and considered sitting back down on her stool. But she wanted the other kisses, and she knew they would both be called in for breakfast very soon. So she let him take her whole weight as they started the second kiss.

“This is like flying for me,” he murmured after the second one.

“Me too.”

They both heard the car in the middle of the third kiss and broke apart to ask the same question.
Who is driving a motorcar to the door at six in the morning?

They came out of the barn together as car doors slammed. Two men in suits and hats left the black car with whitewalls in the farmyard and walked up the steps to the porch. Jude was standing in the doorway.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” he greeted them. “How can I help you?”

The taller man in a gray suit and hat and with an equally gray face showed him a badge. “Good morning. We’re looking for Mr. and Mrs. Jude and Lyyndaya Whetstone.”

“I am Jude Whetstone.”

“Agent Hal Nordstrom, FBI. This is Agent Bill Jenkins. May we come in?”

“Why…of course…but what is this about?”

“We have some important information about a member of your family.”

Becky felt a coldness sweep through her. As her father and the two agents went into the house she started up the steps. Moses did not join her. She looked back.

“Aren’t you coming?”

“No. This is something serious. And it is something for your family. Not something for me. Whatever it is, you can tell me about it later.”

“Moses. You worked. You deserve to eat.”

“I’m fine. I have more than enough in me. I had the milking kiss, after all. Many of them.” He waved his hand and climbed into his buggy. “God bless you in this. Whatever it may be.”

She blew him a kiss as he drove out of the yard. Then she entered the house and saw the men sitting at the kitchen table, their hats off. Everyone else was at the table with them—her mother and father, Aunt Ruth, her grandparents. The two men turned to look at her as she walked in.

“This is Rebecca.” Lyyndaya pulled back a chair for her. “Our daughter.”

The men nodded.

Becky looked at her mother as she sat next to her.
What is it?
her eyes asked.

Lyyndaya didn’t smile. “They have found your brother. He is alive.”

“Alive?” Becky felt like clapping her hands despite the heavy mood in the kitchen. “Where is he? When can we see him? Thank God!”

Her mother put a hand on her arm. “Yes. We do thank God. But Nate is not well. The men are explaining matters to us.”

Becky looked at the FBI agents. “He’s ill? How ill?”

“Very.” The agent named Nordstrom folded his hands in front of him near a cup of coffee. “The American public knows very little about what the Japanese army did in China and Nanking. There were reports in the
New York Times
and a few other papers but nothing extensive. And right now, because we have entered into serious and delicate peace negotiations with Tokyo, I am directed to advise you that under no circumstances can the details I am about to reveal to you leave this house.”

Grandfather Kurtz nodded. “Very well.”

“The Japanese do not make war as we do. Or even as the Germans do. It has something to do with their warrior’s code of
bushido
. They treat prisoners with contempt and consider them cowards. They will work them to death or just kill them. Nor do they have any respect for the civilian population. In Nanking, to the best of our estimates, they killed at least 200,000, probably more. Infants, mothers who were with child, elderly men and women, it made no difference. Foreigners were generally left alone. There was a safety zone where citizens of other countries took shelter. A number of Chinese were in there with them. Most of the time the Japanese did not touch anyone in the zone. But other times they entered it at will and carried off hundreds of Chinese, raping some, torturing others, executing them all. Our intelligence services intercepted secret telegrams. Information came to us from contacts on the ground in China. The list of atrocities is endless. Your son tried to stop the murders.”

Nordstrom looked into his coffee cup. It was full, steam still rose from it, but he didn’t bring it to his mouth. “He wasn’t the only one. Many did what they could. From what we can gather the Japanese had no regard for anyone of Chinese extraction. Chinese citizens were shot,
bayoneted, burned to death after being drenched in gasoline, buried alive in holes in the ground where they suffocated, tied to landmines and blown apart. Your son rescued many from this fate—perhaps hundreds—hiding them in basements and attics in the safety zone. But one day he stopped a Japanese soldier from bayoneting a newborn still attached to his murdered mother by the umbilical cord. The soldier was injured, and your son was beaten and dragged off to where they kept the Chinese prisoners of war—though the Japanese did not want to call them that. They planned to do as they wished with them and didn’t want to be bound by any code of conduct regarding prisoners of war.

“From that point it became difficult for anyone in the safety zone to find out what had become of Nate Whetstone. Many Chinese POWs were machine-gunned and bayoneted and thrown into the Yangtze River. It was only a few months ago that we found out Nate was alive—he had escaped the Japanese in 1938 and was with Chinese guerrillas in the countryside.”

Into the quiet, Lyyndaya spoke. “When—may we see him?”

“At any moment.” Nordstrom checked his wristwatch. “I asked our fellow agents to bring him here from the hotel in Lancaster at seven o’clock.”

Lyyndaya put her hand to her mouth. “I can’t believe it.”

Nordstrom fixed his eyes on her. “To us he is a hero, Mrs. Whetstone, an American hero. But we can’t say anything about it. Not now. Not yet. Nevertheless, the day will come when the world will know. For now, it is enough that you know. And we know.” He looked out a window at the sun pouring over the sky and the fields. Then back at Jude and Lyyndaya and Becky. “This was all a preamble to help you understand his condition. He was starved and tortured along with the other POWs in Nanking. He was wounded several times in the years he fought alongside the guerrillas. Food was scarce, water was rarely clean, medical care was nonexistent. He’s skin and bones, Mrs. Whetstone.

“We got him out of China after he was almost killed in an ambush. He’s been in a naval hospital for several weeks. All that can be done for him by our doctors and nurses has been done. Now he needs good
food and rest and—” The agent looked at his coffee cup again, his voice tightening. “He needs home. He needs all the love a home can give him. All the love Bill or I here or any of us would give to our own kids. I’d take Nate in myself and get Nancy to fatten him up. We’d treat him like the hero he is, I swear it. But he needs his own family. He needs you.”

“How did you manage to find him and get him out?” asked Jude.

“I’m not at liberty to say. We brought out a number of American nationals along with your son.”

Gravel and stones popped under car tires in the farmyard. Everyone got to their feet and began to move toward the door.

“What shall we tell our neighbors, Agent Nordstrom?” asked Lyyndaya.

“What they already know. He was a missionary in China. He was caught up in the Japanese attack on Nanking three years ago.”

“But they will see him, how he looks—”

“He was a prisoner in a Japanese camp. He escaped and American officials overseas were able to get him back to the States. That is the story. They do not need more than that.”

Three men in blue suits and hats were standing in front of the house. One of them opened their car door and another bent down to help a man climb out. The man stood up shakily as he pushed down on two canes. His arms and legs looked like sticks and the white shirt and pants in which he was dressed hung from his frame. One of the suited men went to take his arm as he moved forward but the thin man shook his head.

“Nate…” The word came out of Lyyndaya’s mouth in a sudden rush of air.

His hair was gone. Everything about him was impossibly thin, including a face that was sharp as an axe blade. But Becky knew the eyes, and those eyes gleamed when they spotted her and her mother and father. She ran down the porch steps and threw her arms around him. He dropped one of his canes so he could hold her.

“Nate.” She could feel the water and heat on her face. “We never stopped praying or believing. Never. Oh, God, thank you.”

“Baby girl.” His voice was rough. “I didn’t think you would.”

Lyyndaya had her arms about her son’s back and was crying into his shoulder. Jude ran a hand over Nate’s head and kissed him on the cheek.

“We missed you so much,” Jude said. “Everything that was difficult an hour ago is nothing now that you’re back.”

Nate dropped his other cane and let his father and mother and sister take his weight as he sagged against them. “God knows I feel the same way.”

E
IGHT

I
was finally able to introduce myself to your brother at the worship service.”

“Yes. I saw that. He hasn’t wanted to venture out much yet. It’s taken these three weeks to get him to go out of the house. It was the lure of the worship service that did it.”

“He was very friendly. He seemed to know everything about me.”

“Well. He is my older brother, remember. Once he knew I had a man in my life he peppered me with questions.”

Moses brought Becky’s hand to his lips. “I don’t mind. I have nothing to hide.”

“No? Be grateful I didn’t tell him about the five-minute kisses. Brothers don’t like things like that.”

“
Danke
for sparing me. Whatever your mother is feeding him has made him fill out a lot. He looks utterly different from the first time I saw him.”

“It’s Grandmother. She’s on him twenty-four hours a day with something else she’s baked or fried or stirred in a pot on the stove. Poor Nate will never be skinny again.”

They sat in Moses’ buggy and watched the evening sun set in greens and purples. He had one arm around her waist and between them was a large paper bag of popcorn. Now and then he placed popcorn in her mouth or she placed it in his. Their fingers and lips shone with melted butter.

“Are we going to kiss?” Moses asked.

“When it gets darker. The term they use now in New York and Philadelphia is
necking
, by the way.”

“What? Why necking?”

“Because we twist our necks around when we do it, I guess.” Becky pushed three pieces of popcorn into his mouth. “We’re going to taste like butter and salt.”

“I like that.”

“Yes?”

“What other flavors do you come in?”

Becky leaned her head against his shoulder and closed her eyes. “Oh. Lots. If I’ve had a cup of coffee, if I’ve had a glass of milk, if I’ve eaten an orange or a bowl of ice cream, if someone’s given me a chocolate bar—”

“I’d like to try all of those kisses. Especially chocolate.”

“No chocolate kisses unless I get my favorite candy bar.”

“And which one is that?”

“Baby Ruth.”

“Ah.” Moses kissed her forehead. “Sure. I know that one. Named after the famous baseball player. The big hitter.”