Fire in the Night (9 page)

“Well, Sarah, you know I’ll always tell you the same thing. This time is no different. Pray, pray, pray. Always. You will discern God’s will for your life once you have given up your own will, and I’m afraid Matthew is simply that. Your own will—wanting something you can’t have. You know how much human nature tends to run along those lines. Just like Aesop’s fables. Remember the story of the fox who wanted the grapes that were out of his reach?”

“And when he finally acquired them, they were sour, and he wondered why he’d wanted them in the first place,” Sarah finished for her mother, nodding good-naturedly.

Jim, the driver, was gruff and short with them on the way home. He required a twenty-dollar payment, saying he had insurance to pay, and he sure wasn’t making any money hauling people to the Laundromat.

Mam handed over the twenty-dollar bill, but her eyes sparkled too brightly, and she slammed the front door with plenty of muscle behind it.

Sarah ducked her head and splashed through the rain with the hampers of laundry, happy to put it all away in the drawers and closets, thankful to have clean, dry clothes, for now.

Surely the rain would stop soon. She paused by the window of her room and saw the muddy churning waters of the lower Pequea Creek had risen way beyond its banks. She shivered, a foreboding clutching her reason.

The new barn was stately, built solidly in the old pattern. The exterior’s new ribbed metal siding was white, the color of the old barn. New cupolas proudly straddled the peak of the roof, the weather vanes turning as the wind changed direction, guarding the Beiler farm with their resilience. Look at us, they seemed to say. We’re new and better, here for the next hundred years.

Sarah smiled and was glad.

The old stones and timbers were gone, but good had come of it as well, Dat said. The new barn was better. The ventilation design, the materials—everything was better, especially the diesel and the air system. It was the sadness of lost history that kept him humble, the ruined painstaking work of his forefathers.

He said the Amish church had seen changes in the past two hundred years, and they weren’t all bad, same as the new barn. Some things were good, like milkers and bulk tanks and pneumatics, battery lamps and fiberglass carriages and nylon harnesses that were lighter and more durable. Better.

And still it rained, day and night.

Dat slogged through the mud to accomplish even the smallest task. Mud was everywhere from the way things had been churned up around the barn by the dozers and lifts and other equipment. Dat said if it continued raining, the roads would be closed due to the high water. He hoped no one would try to cross the creek where it overflowed; that was downright dangerous.

Priscilla stood by the window in Levi’s room, chewing alternately on the inside of each cheek. Or she chewed the nails of her right hand, her eyebrows rising taut above her large, anxious eyes, watching the green maple leaves dripping water.

Levi sat at his card table, laying out the football cards, the sequence in his head followed to perfection. He looked up, considering his sister.

“Go away, Priscilla. You bother me.”

“Hush, Levi.”

“I mean it.”

Dat looked up from the German
Schrift
(scripture) he was reading. His glasses were perched on his nose, allowing him to peer over them, and he smiled. This would be interesting, he thought.

Priscilla didn’t answer. She just reached out to ruffle a few cards.

Instantly, Levi’s hand came up, his eyebrows came down, his shoulders straightened, and his voice burst out in one big bellow.

“
Ich tzell dich schimacka!
(I will smack you!)”

Calmly, Priscilla bent over to retrieve the stack of football cards, holding them at arm’s length, a smile teasing him.

“Give them.”

“Say, ‘Please.’”

“No.”

Priscilla walked away, holding the cards, still teasing.

Levi didn’t feel like getting out of his chair, so he yelled at the top of his lungs for help from Dat.

Dat looked up.

“What, Levi?”

“Priscilla has my cards!”

“She does? Well, I guess you’ll have to come get them.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Why not?”

“I’m tired.”

Dat thought he heard the wail of sirens in the distance. On a night like this? Surely a fire would not survive this deluge.

When Levi continued his howling, Dat hushed him and curtly told Priscilla to give him his cards. Then he told everyone to listen. He thought he’d heard sirens.

The cards forgotten, Priscilla stood, a statue of fright, the color draining from her face, remembering the fire. She moved slowly, as if in a trance, and placed the cards on Levi’s table, never hearing his resounding “
Denke
(Thank you).”

In her mind, the barn would soon be burning.

Dat saw Priscilla’s fear, slowly laid his German Bible aside, and went to her. Gripping her arms, he looked into her terror-stricken eyes and gave her a small shake.

“Priscilla!” His voice was kind but firm.

As if roused from a faint, she blinked, looked at Dat, then fell against him. As she sobbed out her pain and anguish, his arms came around her, his head laid on her hair. He sent a prayer to the Father to protect his vulnerable daughter.

Mam came, lifted a hand, and caressed her back, saying the siren was likely only the medic for someone who needed assistance because of the high water.

After she cried, Priscilla could always pull herself together and talk about her fear. Tonight her words came fast and low. She said she missed Dutch so much, she hardly knew what to do. Would she be allowed to get a job somewhere—to save up money for a new horse? She knew it was too much to ask.

“See, Dutch was important to me in a way that even people aren’t. With a pet, like dogs and cats and ducks and chickens, it’s different. They need you. People don’t really, because they have other people.”

Dat listened and nodded, deeply moved.

Then the high insistent wailing grew closer and much more resounding.

Sarah was reading the cousin circle letter, one that circulated among her cousins and kept them all in touch with the news in each other’s lives. She heard the sounds around her in an absentminded way as she sat away from the others. But when the siren’s wails became louder, she laid the circle letter aside, rose to her feet, and asked hurriedly if there was another fire.

“It’s only the twelve o’clock
pife
(whistle)!” Levi shouted.

Dat said, no, it was after suppertime.

The light was gray, the day heading into evening. The chores were done and the dishes washed. It was the time of day when every member of the family wound down and relaxed.

Mervin and Suzie were playing shuffleboard in the basement, obviously having heard nothing as the game continued with the sound of the thumps from below.

Everyone was ill at ease. Dat put his Bible away, and Mam gripped the countertop as she watched the dreary evening through the kitchen window, wondering, hoping.

Sarah merely paced, slowly moving from window to window, stopping to pick up a magazine, dusting a bookshelf with the hem of her bib apron, filling Levi’s water pitcher for the night—anything to keep from holding still. The wailing, that rising and falling sound, always meant something was wrong—a person was hurt or a building was burning. Or now, with the rain and the creeks overflowing their banks, was someone injured, lost, or worst of all, drowned in the brown roiling, rushing water? At times like this, Sarah wished for a telephone in the house.

Mam was listening by Priscilla’s side again, and Dat joined her, concern mapping out the love he so plainly felt for his troubled daughter.

The sirens came to an abrupt stop. Should they sigh with relief or hold their breaths for the bad news that might follow?

“We didn’t used to be like this,” Sarah said suddenly.

“What do you mean?” Mam asked.

“Well, look at us! Priscilla crying, Dat too nervous to study, me unable to hold still. We’re just a family of nervous wrecks.”

Dat nodded soberly. “With good reason, Sarah. We’ve just come through a terrifying night, followed by unanswered questions in the weeks that have followed. Now when a vehicle pulls up to the barn, I’m instantly on edge, wondering if the driver will bring harm. I’m suspicious, always alert to unexpected danger. Before the barn burned, it never crossed my mind to be afraid. We have lost an innocence.”

Mam nodded, her agreement evident in her eyes.

“Are you alright, Priscilla?” she asked, her arm sliding across her younger daughter’s shoulders.

“Not as okay as I will be a year from now,” she answered, wisely recognizing her own ability to rise above the frightening circumstances that had assailed her life.

Sarah hoped she was right.

Chapter 7

I
N THE MORNING,
low clouds hung like dreary curtains, hiding any chance of happy sunshine. The Beiler family woke and went about the morning chores, slogging through the slippery mud and rivulets of water, carrying feed and water to the calves, feeding the rowdy heifers that bounced around stiff-legged, splattering mud and water as they vied for dominance.

In the new cow stable, the cows had created a wet path from the wide, rolling door to their separate stalls, their hides slick from the night’s rain, their legs caked with the slop from the barnyard.

It was Sarah’s turn to milk, so she moved among the cows changing the heavy milkers, listening to the rhythmic chukka-chukka sound from the compressed air pulling the milk from the cows’ udders.

Everything was so new, yet so much the same. The windows tilted open to allow the misty air to circulate. The firm contours of the new cement permitted the brand new feed cart to be pushed around with ease.

Not everything was finished. Some doorways still didn’t have their wooden doors. Some of those that had doors needed a doorknob here or a few hinges there. But all in all, it was overwhelming that, even with the amount of labor involved, so much had been accomplished in such a short time.

Dat lifted an especially heavy milker from one of his best milk cows, his eyes wide with surprise, his muscles bulging against his shirt sleeves. He looked at Sarah and said, “Well, goodness! Looks as if the cows are feeling right at home again. She’s really producing.”

And then, because David Beiler was a man filled with gratitude in all things, his eyes watered and ran over behind his glasses. His mouth wobbled just enough for Sarah to see he was filled with emotion. And she was glad.

In all things, Dat would say, good can come of tragedy, to those that love God. Loving God was elusive, since you couldn’t see Him. You could love God best by loving other people, and this was the one virtue Dat stressed, his family being recipients of his own love and forbearance to his fellow man.

If you point a finger in accusation, three more on your own hand point straight back at you, he’d say.

No question, God sent disappointments and setbacks to each person, and of all the undeserving people in the world, Dat was the one. But Sarah also knew that His ways are not our ways; His thoughts are not our thoughts.

As he poured the good, rich milk into the gleaming new Sputnik, a stainless steel vat on wheels, he blinked back tears at this undeserved blessing. David Beiler knew his view of God and the church had been illuminated by a higher and better light.

Surely, God had dug, mulched, and applied fertilizer so his fruits would multiply. This barn fire had been painful, indeed. But hadn’t He designed the agony that separates the dross from the gold?

The family sat at the breakfast table. The propane gas lamp, hissing softly, cast a cozy light into every corner of the kitchen in spite of the low-hanging clouds outside. The rain had stopped for now, but as the water drained from hills and slopes, the creeks and rivers continued to rise, filling them with a brown, butterscotch color, swirling and churning, murky and threatening.

Mam brought a platter of fried eggs and set it between her plate and her husband’s. She sighed and looked to Dat. He nodded, and they all bowed their heads for the silent prayer, Levi’s loud whispers rising and falling as he thanked God for what he was about to receive.

They lifted their heads after Dat. Some reached for their glasses of orange juice, and a few began buttering toast as they passed the egg plate from one to the other. They spooned stewed saltine crackers, slathered with generous portions of homemade ketchup, onto their plates alongside small sections of rich sausage. It was a bountiful breakfast for a hungry family that had already done a few hours of work.

Mam’s eyes twinkled as she set a cake pan in the middle of the table, waiting for the praise that would surely come.

“Overnight French toast!” Levi yelled, his eyes alight with anticipation.

“Yum!” Mervin shouted simultaneously.

Levi turned to his youngest brother, lifted a heavy hand, and cocked his head to one side like an overgrown bird. Mervin caught his eye, grinned, and slammed Levi’s hand with one of his own in a cracking high five. Levi laughed out loud. His day was starting out right.