Hope deferred, p.22
Hope Deferred, page 22
There was nothing to do but get back in the vehicle and turn around, sliding across deep gullies already carved out by the onslaught. Watson shifted gears, turned the steering wheel one way and then another, peering through the driving rain till they reached the portico at the big yellow house.
“This whole vehicle smells like a wet dog,” Matt growled, disappointed at missing out on the excitement of a house on fire.
“Well, git. Git out.”
Lots of jostling, shoving, with Matt being deposited unceremoniously on the rough flagstone. They all laughed at the ensuing yelp of outrage, then sobered when there was a hysterical screech followed by a pounding on the door, and fruitless yanking of the handle.
“Open up. Guys, I’m serious!”
They complied, all eyes following Matt’s shaking finger to the drowned, bleeding figure huddled in the corner of the carport.
“Oh man. Don’t they ever quit?”
“This one’s in bad shape.”
Eyes wide in their sockets, a ghostly face streaked by rivulets of blood that had been washed away, fresh blood following the rivulet before.
His mouth worked. He grimaced. He waved a hand as if to keep them with him. A hoarse croak escaped his throat.
By now, everyone was out of the Land Rover, staring openmouthed.
“Help.”
A gulping, swallowing sound. Another frantic fluttering of the hand.
“Good Lord!” Watson breathed.
“Help me. My . . .”
A hand fluttered to the forehead, before the apparition keeled over in a dead faint, a soaked, filthy pile of torn clothing and matted hair.
“Heave-ho!” Watson shouted, and each son came to the rescue, supporting an arm or a leg and shuffling into the side entrance before depositing him on the cold ceramic tile floor.
“Get Mom.”
“Blankets.”
Blankets, a heating pad, whiskey, smelling salts, everything was done calmly and in order. This one had a serious head wound. The way that blood was pumping there wouldn’t be much time. They couldn’t take the Cessna up in this.
Lightning crackled, lit the windows in bluish white triangles, before the entire house was shaken in the teeth of the rumbling thunder.
Sal was quick, efficient, raising his body to a forty-five-degree angle, applying red pepper flakes, a tourniquet. Her hands examined the battered body, finding more cuts and alarming bruises, but nothing too serious.
He moaned, opened his eyes, stared without focus. He turned his head from side to side, grimacing in pain.
“Poor bugger.”
“Definitely a blow-in.”
“Green as fish gills.”
“Hand o’ God he’s alive, boys. Now shut up. Give him some space.”
Sal sat by his bed in the upstairs guest room, waking him every hour. She could only guess at his head injuries, but figured a concussion was the least of his problems, so she’d keep him from a prolonged sleep.
By morning, she’d found out his name was Dave Stoltzfus from Pennsylvania, and he’d gotten caught when a gully washer emptied into the Adelaide River and spewed him onto its banks like Jonah of old, half-drowned and clobbered on the head.
She fed him broth, which he heaved up in one roaring sound, then let him sleep. He’d be all right, she reasoned, and went off to her own bed for a few hours of much-needed rest before making breakfast for the crew.
Dave slept fitfully, waking to bouts of pain so intense he squeezed his eyes shut as tears seeped out from beneath the lashes. He dreamt of voids, black holes with no beginning and no end, of being hurled through outer space, his clothes snagged on five-pointed stars. He saw Anna in a white dress, followed by the black-haired girl in vivid shades of red. He saw the sun turn orange, then red, and back to orange before it bled all over his pillow.
He woke, felt the pillowcase. His fingers came away sticky with his own blood.
For a week, he laid in bed, visited only by Sal or Watson. The boys had no interest in another drifter, and the parents said he was far too young and too handsome for the likes of Ammie.
Flirty, she was, so there was no taking chances.
He drank sips of greasy beef broth that strengthened his spirits. He learned to enjoy the hard Irish soda bread, black and dense and life-giving. He also learned of his first serious mistakes: that he didn’t purchase a cell phone with an Australian carrier, and that he failed to stay with his vehicle no matter what. A vehicle will be spotted long before a human alone. And one should never prepare for one destination before changing your mind and heading in another direction. Likely he’d have made it to Alice Springs. And his water and petrol supply should have been doubled.
Dave could only nod, feeling pangs of real humiliation almost like sorrow. He never smiled or laughed, the remembering of his ordeal too raw to allow any real emotion. He thanked Watson and Sal over and over but declined to tell them of any plans.
On the seventh day, he shaved, showered, brushed his teeth, and got dressed in a clean set of Matt’s clothes, his ankles stretched out of the too-short jeans, the T-shirt straining at the seams. He was gaunt, hollow-eyed, and bruised, but as tall and as handsome as he’d ever been, albeit with a new light of self-discovery and a calm reassurance of his future.
He was going home.
Ammie fell in love immediately. She followed him from paddock to paddock, describing every aspect of the lonely life on the station in the Australian outback. Her brown eyes were liquid with worship. She begged him to stay. The four brothers were impressed with his strength once he was fully healed, and they offered him the best horse if he’d try his hand at ranching.
The brown land erupted in a verdant display of wildflowers and grasses so heavy they hung in clumps like small bowing children. The humidity lifted, leaving clear, gorgeous skies and crisp nights.
Dave learned to know the workings of this immense operation. He recognized the people for what they were, hardworking Catholics who were as embedded in their own faith and traditions as the Amish.
But all he really wanted now was to board a plane and return home, the place where he truly belonged.
He used the landline and called his parents’ number, leaving a message at the sound of the beep. He choked up when he heard the recording: “You have reached Eli and Rachel Stoltzfus. Leave a message.” No “thank you,” no “have a nice day,” only the necessary information.
“Mam, it’s me, Dave. I’m in Australia, somewhere in the Top End, a place they call the Kimberly. I’m at a cattle station with the Watson Kel family. I’m coming home soon. Call this number so we can talk.”
Rachel was irritated that evening. Irked at the eyeglass place in town, she went to check her messages. Surely they’d be calling about whether she still had a warranty on that cracked lens.
What was wrong with those people?
It was not over a year since she had those eyeglasses. She had the receipt to prove it, so they could just go pounding around all they wanted on those computer keys. She had the paper receipt with the date on it.
When Dave’s voice came through the receiver, she threw it down and shrieked like a much younger woman, bent to retrieve it and began weeping with abandon.
She clenched her skirts in one hand and ran the whole way to the barn to find Eli, gasped and clutched at her dress front, wept and talked and carried on until her husband feared heart failure from stress and excitement.
They returned to the phone shanty in the backyard together, Eli blinking back the tears of joy, watched his wife dial the international digits with shaking hands, before hearing the “Hello?”
It was an Australian accent, and for a moment they felt disappointment sweeping in, but then the phone was quickly handed off to their beloved son.
“Oh my, David. Is that you?”
More weeping followed by loud honking noises from the folds of Rachel’s handkerchief. She pocketed it, blinked, and composed herself before listening closely.
“Are you coming home, then? When? Oh, when, David? A couple weeks? You feel you owe it to them? David, you don’t owe those people anything. They just did for you what anyone else would do.”
She listened, shook her head, then handed the receiver to Eli, listening to his gravelly voice as he spoke kindly, encouraging him to come home as soon as he felt the time was right.
Yes, yes, he understood. Of course he owed them. Sure. Sure. And hung up with a smile for Rachel.
“He’ll be home. Just give him time.”
A full year passed before they heard from him again. It was a year of anxious messages he never returned. A year of aging, withering beneath the weight of having a son who lived as an Englisha in Australia.
A year of changes and hard work, building the Daudy house and having a son take over the farm. Rachel lost weight and part of her mind, she told her friend Malinda, building that house and watching her overeager daughter-in-law hire someone to rip out perfectly good kitchen cabinets and replace them with white ones. White. She would regret that yet. Those kids, yes, she was so upset she called her grandchildren “kids,” would have fingerprints and knicks in that paint before a year was over.
But she never said a word to anyone else. She kept the peace and appreciated her daudy house, with its small space and plenty of time to call a driver and run to Walmart.
Eli got a job at the cabinet shop on Appleway Road.
She packed his lunch every morning with all kinds of small Tupperware containers filled with fruit and pudding, egg salad for his sandwich, and seven-day sweet pickles to go along with it. His favorite pretzels too. Utz thins.
They planted trees, hired a landscaper to put in a small yard, at a schrecklich price. Rachel lamented every cent they gave that man, saying her poor mother would have a fit if she was alive. But Eli scoffed at her frugality and said he wasn’t going to break his back raking that stubbly soil. Why not let the landscaper putter around in his tractor?
Rachel had an awful time of adjusting to the little house. The big farmhouse was still hers, in her own mind, and drew her like a magnet. She honestly tried to stay in her own house, but found herself at the daughter-in-law’s door quite frequently. When Daniel came to her door and spoke hesitantly, asking her to please stop going to the house quite as much, she was devastated but put on a brave front and didn’t set foot on that porch for ten days. Well, ten and a half if you counted that last Thursday forenoon.
It was so true what her mother said. Children walk all over your heart when they’re older. They sure did. Here was David on the other side of the world, and she guaranteed the longer he stayed there, the harder it would be to come home. If he didn’t call soon, she was simply going to sit in the middle of her kitchen and have a nervous breakdown. She simply had too much time on her hands.
She hardly had a garden. That little postage-stamp-sized one hardly contained enough vegetables to feed a few rabbits, but then, they didn’t need very many canned goods, either. You could only eat so many pickles and red beets when you were in your sixties. Peaches and pears sat on the can shelves and turned brown on top. Eli wouldn’t eat them, anyway.
Oh, she wished David would come home to eat up all those peaches and pears.
CHAPTER 20
IN JUNE, WHEN THE YELLOW PEACE LILIES BLOOMED AND THE PINK CLIMBING rose blossomed on the south side of the house, Leon asked Anna to marry him. He got down on one knee and won her heart with his earnest expression, his dark good looks, and his kindness.
She said yes.
They planned a lovely wedding for the last week in October, after council meeting and communion. As was the tradition, four hundred and fifty guests were invited on the most lavish invitations her mother could find. In silver, white, and gray. Her colors were coordinated by her mother as well, the silver for the little sisters and the nieces on his side, gray for the bridal table waters, and the bride would wear navy blue with the traditional white cape and apron. There would be silver and white on her eck with a few understated touches of navy blue.
The food would be amazing. Nothing was too lavish for Anna and Leon, the pride and joy of her parents’ hearts. Approval was the driving force behind all the generosity, the eagerness to comply with all Anna’s wishes, and the need to have Leon included and welcomed in the family.
A fine Christian son-in-law. What more could they ask for?
Caught up in the whirl of wedding plans and dreams, Anna was fulfilled, her life finally free of indecision and anxiety. She no longer thought of Dave and could barely remember his face. Instead, the face of her beloved Leon meant more to her than all the love she had ever felt for her former boyfriend.
Leon was a paid counselor now, working full-time at the Homestead, a facility for troubled teenaged boys. His dream became a reality then, and he rented the small house close to Millerstown, planning to carry his beautiful bride across the threshold, embarking on a journey of love and devotion that would last for the remainder of his life.
He didn’t have much, but they didn’t need much. Love would provide for all their needs.
Only sometimes, when a sleepless night kept her from her much-needed rest, the questions without answers cavorted through her head like mischievous elves bringing a sense of something gone awry, some Y in her path she had never fully understood. Why did God do the things he did? Why had he allowed Dave to be so headstrong? And why had he allowed him into her life from a very young age, allowed the adoration to rise and grow in her heart, only to have him torn away?
She always consoled herself with the fact that God had provided Leon, in spite of having taken David away, which was His kindness and mercy.
She would always fall asleep with the consolation that David would never return, and if he did, he was nothing to her. She never thought of him at all, ever.
October was a whirl of activity, writing and rewriting wedding lists. They tilled the garden and sowed tillage radishes. They trimmed and mulched hedges and shrubs, and planted white chrysanthemums in pots on the patio and in flower beds. They gave a fresh coat of white paint to everything that appeared even slightly worn. They fertilized the lawn and mowed, clipped, and trimmed it until it looked like a green carpet.
They prepared an immense new shop a few months before the wedding, large enough to easily accommodate the four hundred and fifty guests. Relatives came to help. Leon presented Anna with a clock, the traditional engagement gift. She accepted it with a bright smile, hung it on the wall in her beautiful room, and never admitted that it looked cheap and shabby and out of place. Her mother positioned wall sconces on either side, so that helped.
For Leon did not have a hefty bank account, nor did he make wages that were considered substantial, so Anna was given a lecture by both of her parents and presented with a booklet on finances and the virtues of saving money for the husband’s benefit. Of which her mother knew or practiced nothing. But still.
Anna had known from the day she met him that he had no idea about expensive things, name brands, the class in which the upper circle moved and lived. She would embark on this new journey, learn how to save, to be content with what he provided, and never complain, the way the booklet described.
They were married on a bright October day, with the sky dotted with white clouds like clumps of cotton balls, a fair breeze, and the sun’s warmth so that guests could sit in clusters beneath the stately oaks.
Leon’s father attended, calmed by his antianxiety and depression medication, his mother serene and appreciative of her new daughter-in-law.
Eli and Rachel Stoltzfus were among the guests as well, Rachel cooked the creamed celery with Eno’s sie Leah, who used far too much vinegar, in her opinion, but then, if she said anything she’d be shunned for the rest of the day, so she kept her mouth shut. That’s how Leah was. Had always been. She knew best in everything, from quilts to shoe measurement, paying hundreds of unnecessary dollars for those stupid arch supports she wore, claiming her back went out if she didn’t wear them.
In Rachel’s opinion, her back was always out, as was her head.
But they’d been friends forever, sitting beside each other in church for more than thirty years, their children attending the same school. So why ruin a good friendship trying to change the amount of vinegar in cooked celery? Some things just weren’t worth it.
Rachel was happy for Anna that day, she really was. She looked radiant, as always, and her darkly handsome groom was a perfect match.
Yes, God smiled down on this couple indeed, so she sat on the bench with the other church ladies and sang her heart out on the old German wedding songs, a boon to her spirits.
She tried not to think of David, far away in Australia, the ungehorsam, the rebel, the shame of their existence. How would she feel if her David was the one who stood beside Anna? Tall and so handsome.
That Leon was all right, she supposed, but what was up with his crooked haircut on the day of his wedding? But she brought her thoughts back into the harness of her Christian upbringing, jabbed an elbow into her friend Leah’s side, turned her head, and raised an eyebrow. Leah was singing so loudly it rang in Rachel’s ears like an annoying bullhorn, so she leaned back and watched as she poked a finger along a German line of words.
Rachel sat back, sang heartily in tune with everyone else, stopping only to help herself to yet another handful of the homemade sour cream and onion potato chips. She should actually be eating celery dipped in salt, but there was no flavor at all in a stalk of celery except for the salt, and it was bad news for heavy women.
She wiggled her toes inside her serviceable black shoes and felt her toes swelling at the thought of salt. The celery looked nice, though.
After lunch they cleaned the tables, washed the dishes with soapy water, dried and put them back on the tables with vases of celery, including the leafy tops set every few yards along the lengths.
