The Face of Heaven (8 page)

Lyndel pulled her head away from the glass. “Thank you, Becky, but this is not something mother’s medicines can fix.”

“Can Nathaniel help?” Becky smiled a quick little smile. “I know he’s coming again tonight.”

“Oh, Becky, it doesn’t take a great talent to figure that out. He has dropped by almost every evening for the past two weeks.”

“And not to see Levi either.”

“No? He and Levi went out in the wagon two nights ago.”

“Once. You have been out in the buggy four times with Nathaniel.”

Lyndel reached down and messed her sister’s hair. “Who’s counting?”

“
I’m
counting.”

“So who taught you to count? Stop going to school.”

The first time Nathaniel had come to call, the day after the funeral and their walk in the hayfield, he had indeed brought her the roses she’d asked for, holding them behind his back. She had protested she had just been teasing him and hadn’t really wanted expensive flowers—the Amish community would look down on such an extravagant gift. Then he had brought them out from hiding and she saw they were young wild roses, very pink, very small, half of the bouquet still buds.

“They are not so much, I guess,” he’d told her.

But Lyndel had been as ecstatic as a ten-year-old girl with a sweetheart, even rushing the flowers to her mother who was working in the kitchen. “Mama, look, Nathaniel has brought me wild roses.”

Her mother had smiled broadly. “Where does a young man find roses so early in April?”

Nathaniel was in the doorway, feeling oddly out of place for the
first time at the Keim house. “Mrs. Keim, ma’am, there is an ash heap behind our barn and I have often seen them growing there spring after spring. I just had no good reason to pick any until today.”

“So my daughter is a good reason?”

He laughed. “It suddenly occurred to me over the past couple of days that, yes, she is a very good reason. I’m just sorry it took me so many years to finally figure it out.”

Lyndel and Nathaniel had not talked much about what was happening in America, preferring to discuss their feelings for one another, feelings that seemed to have just dropped down out of heaven, and childhood memories of playing together with Levi and other Amish boys and girls. But the political events had continued to intrude on them all the same. Her father fretted that war might come, a war that would ravage the land and kill thousands, perhaps tens of thousands. Often he asked Lyndel to excuse Nathaniel so he could join Levi and himself at the kitchen table and talk about what the Amish must do and also to pray. She would wait in her room, choosing not to hide on the landing and listen in. Her father always sent Becky to knock on her door when they were done. Then she would come down and Nathaniel would be standing on the porch, smiling when she stepped outside and joined him.

“What do you find to talk about night after night?” she asked.

“It is the same thing. Good reasons or not, slavery or not, the breakup of the nation or not, the Amish do not bear arms.”

“Don’t you agree?”

“Sure, I agree. It is not
gut
to see people die, is it? Remember when Old Man Zedekiah fell off the roof of his barn? Or Matthew Yoder drowned and we saw them pull his body out of the river? Who in their right mind wants war and death?”

“But?” For she already knew him well enough to know he was holding something back.

He hesitated. Then blurted, “There is the way Charlie was killed and the reason he was killed. How long does that go on?”

“So long as God lets it go on.”

“
Ja
? Or does he want us to do something about it? Does God come in a mist and plant our corn for us? Harvest our wheat while we watch? Hitch our horses to our wagons and plows and carriages? So why do we think he will stop evil without our hands and feet and hearts?”

The day Joshua Yoder roared into the yard with his newspapers like a nineteenth-century Paul Revere, as Papa grumbled later, Nathaniel also arrived in a hurry and asked, in a tight voice, if Lyndel could go for a drive with him. They hadn’t even turned onto the main road, a soft blue and red sky spread in the west before them, when he said to her in an agitated voice, “My brother Corinth has run off to Harrisburg to join the army.”

This, of course, explained Nathaniel’s mood to Lyndel in an instant—or, at least, most of it. “What? Isn’t this the second time?”

“Right. He tried to do it last year when South Carolina and Mississippi seceded.”

“Are you going to go and look for him?”

“Papa and my other brother, Simon, they left on the train this morning. Papa hopes to find him before the community finds out. But I think that’s a futile wish. He went with another boy from Elizabethtown and that boy’s parents have been telling everyone who will listen that it’s not their son’s fault, that Corinth was the bad egg. I’m sure your father will find out before the morning milking.”

“How old is Corinth?”

“Sixteen.”

“But looks nineteen.”

“Yes, so who knows if he even is in Harrisburg anymore? They’re forming militias everywhere. He could be in Pittsburgh or Philadelphia, someplace he thinks it will be harder for us to locate him. I wish I knew his reasons for doing this.”

“Maybe they are the same as your reasons.”

“Me?” Nathaniel glanced over at her. “I don’t want to join the army.”

Lyndel raised her eyebrows and made what Nathaniel was already calling her
pixie face
. “Perhaps not. But you want to end slavery.”

Nathaniel snorted. “I doubt Corinth’s ambitions are so lofty. My
sense of it is he wants to wear a uniform and have girls toss flowers at him as he marches down the street with his regiment. Then he wants to lick the South single-handed and become a hero. After that, he will return to Elizabethtown with fame and fortune.”

“Well, he is a handsome boy—all the girls think so. And he is always respectful and has a big heart. I can well imagine the girls of Pennsylvania would toss flowers his way. But surely they won’t sign him up.”

“Of course they’ll sign him up. The president wants every able body he can get. Tall and strong and quick as he is, they’ll slap him in a uniform and ship him off for training overnight.”

“Will you be going to help your father and brother?”

“On Saturday,
ja.
But Simon has to return first. We won’t leave Mama without a man around the house.”

“Other families would lend her a hand.”

“Of course. But we don’t want anyone to know.” He shook his head. “So what does it matter? Your father will know by morning milking, I reckon.”

The sunset had deepened its colors and added purple. Nathaniel pulled the buggy over to the side of the road.

“Look at that. Enough talk about armies and soldiers and rumors of war. Do you see that bit of cloud on our left?”

“No.”

“That one. It’s the same blazing color as your hair.”

She laughed. “Oh, it is not, Nathaniel. You exaggerate. Besides, what do you know about my hair? It is always up and the
kapp
covers most of it.”

“I see plenty. Besides, your
kapp
has blown off on more than one occasion.”

She looked at him in astonishment. “What? You have been keeping track?”

“Last fall. At the October bonfire. Off it went in a stiff breeze that I thanked God for. And some of your pins came loose too, remember?”

“I remember. I’m just surprised you do.”

“I guess my wheels were starting to turn by then. Strands of your hair were moving in the wind just like fire. The same color as the maple
leaves. Yes, that may have been when all this started. Who knows? Hey, a star there.”

“And do you wish on stars?”

“Sometimes.” He leaned back, still gazing at the evening sky. “Do you mind if I put my arm around your shoulders?”

“I don’t mind. But our friends and neighbors passing by might mind. Are we courting?”

Nathaniel looked at her in surprise. “Courting? Why, things have happened so quickly, who has had the time to think about courting? Is that what you want?”

She patted his knee with her hand. “It’s not necessarily what I want. But you asked to put your arm around me. Our church will permit that if we are courting. Not before.”

Nathaniel let out a lungful of air. “Rules, rules.”

“And with my father being the bishop, that makes it even more important that we abide by the
Ordnung.
”

“Well, to tell you the truth, it’s been so interesting getting to know Tomatoes that I hadn’t really given courting much thought.”

“Nor have I. And we certainly don’t have to be in a rush about it. Unless of course you absolutely
must
have that arm around my shoulders.”

“So—would you like it there?”

She smiled. “Sure. Why not? But you will have to talk to my father first. Then, if the leadership approves, we are an official couple on our way to the altar.”

“Oh, boy. That’s a lot to think about.”

“It is. So I suggest we don’t think about it. Not yet. As you say, things have happened very quickly. We have some time, don’t we? Or are you racing off to that woman on the other side of the Ohio tomorrow morning?”

They both laughed. He turned in his seat to get a better look at her. She saw his hand lift to touch her face and she moved aside, shaking her head gently. He rolled his eyes.

“Why did I have to fall for the bishop’s daughter?”

“You can change your mind. Indiana waits.”

“Indiana. I scarcely think about Indiana anymore. But I think a lot about Lyndel Keim. I don’t know if I’ll ever go west now.”

“If you do, we could write letters. Wouldn’t that be fun? And you wouldn’t have to stay away for a long time, would you? Just a month or two?”

The sunset colored her face and made her skin glow—red hair gleamed a coppery gold, eyes were a brilliant blue as if, Nathaniel thought to himself, they were a couple of stars from a spring constellation. The impulse to take her into his arms was so strong he looked away and flicked the traces. The buggy moved out into the road and he turned it around and headed back toward the Keim farm.

Lyndel made her pixie face. “Did I say something wrong?”

“You look too good.”

“I look too good?”

“Either I go to Indiana so you don’t drive me crazy every day or I go to your father and say I would like to court you.”

“But we both agreed it was too soon to think about courting and marriage.”

“We did. So I must go to Indiana instead.”

He saw the sly grin she flashed as she said, “Come, Nathaniel, I can’t be that irresistible. Think back to March. You scarcely looked at me twice.”

“March? March seems like ten years ago.” He glanced at her as they drove. “It won’t work for me to stay, Lyndel. Not unless you change your looks completely.”

“And would that help you?”

“It would.”

“And it is something you want? For me to change my looks completely?”

“No.”

“Then where are we?”

“On the road to your house. And a nighttime of dreaming about your face and your hair and your eyes.”

Softly she said in response, “I dream about you too, green-eyed
Amish boy.” Then she leaned her head against his shoulder and reached out to take his hand tightly in hers.

“Hey,” he said.

“You don’t mind, do you?” she responded.

“Of course I don’t mind. But you said things like this were not permitted. Especially for the bishop’s daughter.”

“Tonight the bishop’s daughter doesn’t care.”

And she did dream. But most of it wasn’t the dreams of the night, but the dreams that came to her by day: of marrying him, holding him, kissing him, running her hands over his back and through his beautiful brown hair. Yet she found she couldn’t say the romantic things to him that he said to her and this troubled her. Yes, his words against slavery had excited her and she’d told him so. His attempt to bar the slave hunters from reaching Moses and Charlie had made her proud of him and she’d run across the yard to his carriage to tell him how she felt.