Abby Finds Her Calling (25 page)

F
resh snow had fallen late Saturday night, after James and his family had returned home from their Thanksgiving visit at Iva and Dan’s, so the ride out to Mervin Mast’s for the Sunday preaching service took a little longer. From Nissley’s Ridge, the view of all the farmsteads beneath their fresh blankets of white ordinarily took James’s breath away. Last time he’d been here was on his wedding day, when he’d been searching for his bride. A lot had happened these past seven weeks, and he’d made his peace. With most of it, anyway.

James felt edgy, though. He hadn’t seen Zanna since before the meeting at Sam’s place and he’d tried to put her out of his thoughts ever since he’d heard Jonny Ropp’s phone message. There would be no avoiding her today, however: she’d be seated up front, awaiting reconciliation with the members after the preaching. She’d still be having Jonny Ropp’s baby, but her sin with that man would be forgiven—erased as surely as he had deleted Jonny’s message on the machine four days ago.

How many times had she checked the phone after he’d hit the
ERASE
button? Did she figure Jonny was ignoring her message?
Did she call him back? Why couldn’t he get that whole thing off his mind? Only one way to quit stewing about it…

James stopped the carriage near Mervin’s big white house and hopped out to assist his parents. While Emma escorted them inside, he parked the carriage and let his bay into the barnyard with the rest of the horses. While erasing a phone message was a minor offense, he’d decided to confess to Vernon or Paul, and follow their counsel about whether he should admit his misdeed to Zanna.

As James approached the house, however, he saw that Sam and Abby were speaking with the bishop in low, earnest voices. Vernon Gingerich’s round face was creased with concern as Abby related her story, while Sam nodded beside her. He saw no sign of Zanna.

Has she decided against coming back?
James scanned the crowd of women in their black bonnets and coats filing inside to get warm. He returned Mamm’s little wave, noting how much shorter she looked these days, standing beside his sister.

“… just thought you should be aware of the situation out there,” Abby was saying. Vapors of her breath encircled her rosy cheeks before vanishing into the cold air. “Rudy’s as angry a man as I’ve ever seen, and it’s not just his interfering with today’s meeting I’m concerned about. Adah and the girls won’t tell you about his temper, on account of he’ll get back at them. It seems like a powder-keg situation.”

James raised his eyebrows. While Rudy Ropp had never been a cheerful sort, he seemed stable… usually worn to a frazzle, but keeping his dairy afloat and his family fed. The economy had been rough of late—for English as well as Amish—yet he sensed Abby’s concerns had nothing to do with the Ropps’ financial situation.

Vernon nodded and thanked the Lambrights for keeping him informed. He gazed around, gave James a quick wave, and then went inside to shake the hands of all who’d come to worship today.

James sighed. He’d have to wait until after the meeting to speak with the bishop or Preacher Paul. He gazed at the line of bearded,
black-clad men filing into the Masts’ front room… waved at Leon Mast, Mervin’s son, who worked for him in the carriage shop. Then, when James didn’t spot his father, he followed a hunch. Sure enough, a lone figure ambled through the snow toward the pasture fence where the horses stood shoulder to shoulder, snorting and shifting to stay warm.

“Dat!” he called out. “We can’t be dilly-dallying. The singing’s about to start.”

His father kept walking, as though he hadn’t heard.
Or he’s strolling down his own little memory lane. Time to be getting him checked again.

As James ran out to fetch him, a rapid-fire
clip-clop! clip-clop!
came down the snow-packed lane behind him. When he got his father turned toward the house again, he saw Adah, Becky, and Maggie Ropp scrambling toward the kitchen. Their expressions mirrored what he’d overheard moments ago: a sense of agitation that didn’t come from being a few moments late for church. As Rudy raced the carriage toward the corral, James yanked his father off the driveway for fear they’d be hit.

And what sort of bee is up Rudy’s bonnet, that he’s driving so reckless?

“Watch out, there!” Dat hollered, scowling at the carriage behind them. “What’s the world comin’ to when a fella nearly gets run over goin’ into church?”

“I don’t have an answer to that,” James murmured, hurrying him along. “Let’s get our trousers brushed off and take our seats, so Mamm won’t think we’re playing hooky.”

A boyish grin lit his father’s face. “Used to do that now and again, when I was a scholar in the lower grades,” he admitted in a conspiratorial whisper. “Your mother took it upon herself to be sure the teacher knew it, too.”

James grinned in spite of his mood. How amazing, that his father so vividly recalled details from seventy years ago but probably couldn’t say what he’d eaten for breakfast. As they entered the
crowded room, which had been expanded by removing the partitions to the bedrooms and kitchen, James pointed his dat toward the waiting ministers. They all shook hands before taking the last spaces on the back bench. He nodded across the crowd at Emma, who’d been watching for them to come in.

And then he saw Zanna. Seated in front of the other women, with her head lowered and her hand over her face as was the custom for one under the ban, she still made his heartbeat skitter. Her belly was bigger… and he had mixed, wistful feelings about that.

His musings were cut short when Rudy Ropp slammed the door and squeezed in beside him as the hymn leader sang the first note. The dairy farmer’s breathing was labored after rushing in from the corral. Rudy focused on the page of the
Ausbund
James held for the three of them, but he didn’t sing. Several minutes later, as Abe Nissley read the Scripture and began the first sermon, Rudy shifted like a restless child. James felt anything but worshipful, caught between a fidgeting Ropp and his dat, who needed elbowing now and again so he wouldn’t doze off.

Rather than settling as the service stretched into its second and third hour, the man on his left raked his beard or sighed loudly or shifted. James considered what Abby had been saying to Vernon, about how things were not ideal at the Ropp place: a powder-keg situation, she’d called it. And, indeed, Rudy’s fuse seemed to grow shorter as the service lengthened. It was as though someone were winding a spring inside him tighter and tighter with each verse of the final hymn, until—when Bishop Gingerich called Zanna to come forward for her confession—Rudy popped up like a jack-in-the-box.

“This is wrong, I tell you!” he blurted. “What we did, agreeing to let that—that Jezebel—remain amongst us while she’s carrying a baby, goes against all the Ordnung says. We must get back to the Old Ways.”

“Brother Ropp, you’ve spoken out of turn,” Vernon replied firmly.
“You were here when we voted on Suzanna’s shunning six weeks ago and you made no complaint.”

James closed his eyes; Zanna’s expression was too much to bear. It was difficult enough for her to kneel before this gathering of members once again, to confess her sin and await a unanimous acceptance, let alone endure another outburst of name-calling.

“My wife spoke up, however,” Rudy pointed out, “concerning the influence that Zanna’s example—and the man who shared her sin—would have on our own two daughters. Yet no one stood by Adah to support her plea, not even after Zanna accused our son Jonny of being the father. I don’t believe a word of
that
, either,” he exclaimed vehemently. “You took her at her word without a shred of proof.”

Rudy sucked in a breath and continued his tirade before anyone could interrupt him. “But I can tell you that Zanna came to our place Thanksgiving with a rug. Said she’d made it,” he added with a sneer. “Treating it like a peace offering, she was, yet expectin’ to be paid for it—and leadin’ Adah into temptation by handing it directly to her. And Zanna was still under the ban, no less.”

Vernon pressed his lips into a thin line, a sign he was searching for the best way to regain control of this meeting. Paul Bontrager rose from his place on the preachers’ bench and gazed sternly at Rudy.

“Brother Ropp, you had a chance to discuss these matters with the bishop when he went to your place earlier in the week,” the preacher pointed out. “Vernon told me you all but chased him out of your barn. Not very neighborly. Nor proper.”

The folks in the crowded room looked at one another in dismay. James sensed that many of the oldest members probably shared Rudy’s misgivings, but in the interest of encouraging Zanna to remain a faithful member of the church, they had set aside their objections.

“I was trying to get my cows milked,” Rudy protested. “He came at the busiest part of my day—and he didn’t offer to help, neither.”

“All that aside, Brother Ropp, let’s show some respect for the
man who’s taking responsibility for your soul,” Abe Nissley remarked. He, too, had stood up and the three preachers made a formidable sight in their black vests and stern expressions. “If you want to abide by the Old Ways, you’ll be apologizing right now to Bishop Gingerich—both for your behavior last week and for this disruption of a Members’ Meeting.”

Rudy drew himself up in a huff, looking ready to spout off again, but the bishop beat him to it.

“I heard a different version of Zanna’s Thanksgiving visit, Brother Ropp.”

The house got quiet. Vernon’s eloquent voice carried easily over the crowd. “I understand your wife ordered a rag rug several weeks ago, and Abby Lambright invited her sister to make it because folks insisted that Zanna remain out of the public eye. Abby saw this as a good way to mend some fences.”

“Who’re you going to believe, Bishop? Abby Lambright, who took Zanna into her house so she wouldn’t be so
embarrassed
by folks like Adah, who call this situation as disgraceful as it is?” Rudy demanded. “Or will you stand with the man who kept a more Christian home by making his sons clear out when they refused to join the church?”

James let out an exasperated breath. “Rudy, sit down, man,” he insisted in a hoarse whisper. “Kids born Amish are family—children to be loved—even if they go their own way.”

Rudy turned on him like a cornered animal. “And who are you to talk, James Graber? You who condoned the behavior of the woman who ran out on you, by voting she could stay here amongst us and raise that baby?” he challenged. Then he pointed toward Zanna, who was still kneeling. “What kind of man would tolerate such a betrayal?”

Several folks sucked in their breath while kapps bobbed across the room. James felt the heat rise into his cheeks, but he held his tongue.

His dat, however, popped up off the bench. “You’ve got no call to speak to my James in that tone. It’s that kind of meanness that made your own boys leave home, and you can’t tell none of us any different.”

Bishop Gingerich was making his way between the men’s benches, in an unprecedented trip away from the preachers’ position. His face looked tight with the effort to remain patient. “The Old Ways tell us how a Members’ Meeting is to be conducted, as well, Brother Ropp,” he said in a deceptively calm voice. “You are clearly out of order. You will sit down now. We shall proceed with Zanna Lambright’s confession and the vote, and then we shall address
your
concerns. Following procedure is part and parcel of the Old Order, is it not?”

Rudy Ropp’s breathing became more pronounced. His tall, bulky body shook and his cheeks became the color of raw beefsteak. “If that’s the way it’s to be,” he rasped, “then I can’t belong to this church—nor this community—anymore! It’s like in the Gospel of Matthew when Jesus called the Pharisees hypocrites for shutting the kingdom of heaven—not going in themselves, nor letting anybody else in, either.”

Rudy’s hand swooped down to grab his black hat and then he strode toward the door. He pivoted to scan the crowd. “Come along, Adah! Girls!” he commanded. “We’ve got nothing in common with these folks anymore.”

Adah’s face paled. She stood up among the women, looking unsure of what to do and very frightened. “Rudy, the bishop said you can have your say after—”

“Are you going to stand by me? Or will you betray me the same way Zanna Lambright treated the man she was promised to?”

The room got deathly still. Nobody breathed, watching the emotions play on poor Adah’s face… and feeling Becky and Maggie’s terror when they slowly rose, back among the younger women. The Old Order taught that obedience to God and the church came before allegiance to family, so Rudy Ropp’s demand was no small matter.

James recalled the way Adah had disrupted the meeting six
weeks ago, when Zanna had made her confession and admitted who had fathered her child. He had resented the way their outspoken neighbor had humiliated Zanna, yet now he felt compelled to offer poor Adah and her girls a place to stay until this matter got sorted out. It made better sense now, what he’d heard Abby telling the bishop before church. And it was a situation unlike any he’d ever seen in the peaceful town of Cedar Creek.

With a whimper, Adah hung her head. But she stepped carefully toward the aisle, around the other women’s knees and feet, as though she dared not defy the man who had so blatantly challenged her. Maggie and Becky followed, too shaken to do otherwise.

“Let’s offer up a prayer,” Vernon said as the doors closed behind the Ropp family. “Lord God, we ask Your presence with a troubled family, just as we require Your assistance to know how we, as Your church, should deal with this situation. We trust You to guide us in the way we should go.”

After this rare prayer spoken aloud, the bishop’s footsteps were the only sound as he returned to his usual position. He paused in front of Zanna, as though composing his thoughts, while everyone else watched. And waited.

James held his breath. After two outbursts during meetings—both on account of Zanna and her decision to keep her baby—would Bishop Gingerich insist that she leave Cedar Creek? Four months remained before she delivered, and if her presence sparked such unheard-of controversy, Vernon might decide to remove the source of their troubles. James placed his elbows on his knees and put his head down. He wasn’t praying, exactly, just putting his thoughts into more meaningful order.