The Wings of Morning (18 page)

“Ha. Well, two German girls did.”

Lyyndaya had spread out her own two pages in her lap. Where Emma’s letter had dozens of small rectangular cuts that had eliminated words, phrases, or sometimes whole sentences, she saw only three or four in hers. As they began to read, often speaking lines out loud to each other, it became clear why, at least to Lyyndaya. Emma was constantly being told about units of the American Expeditionary Force that Jude had spent time with, where and when he had met other Americans from Pennsylvania and what units they belonged to, the sorts of planes he had been able to train on, and all kinds of information about the soldiers and sailors and aviators where they were training in Britain. To Lyyndaya, he went on and on about what he was thinking and feeling, only mentioning aeroplanes or when they might be sent over the Channel to France in a few places. She had no intention of reading his long intimate meanderings to Emma, who was more than pleased that her entire first page was taken up with his apologies for not writing sooner and for not discussing joining the Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps, with her.

“So he
is
thinking reconnaissance,” Emma breezed, “and look, his postmark is for early January—he wasn’t so late writing to me, after all. It’s just the steamer that was late. And he tells me he misses me and fresh strawberries.”

“That’s wonderful,” said Lyyndaya. And it
was
wonderful because while he had kept his letter to Emma light and charming, the letter he had written to her almost smoldered in her hands.
I can’t stop thinking about you. I dream about us flying together again and again. Now and then we get a sunrise green as jade here and whenever we do it is as if my plane takes me into the color of your eyes
.

She noticed where his thumb or finger had smudged the ink and left a print. In another place there was a dark ring from a cup of tea or coffee. She longed to get home and read his words over and over again while she lay in her bed, her covers snugged up to her chin. Or to pick up a pen of her own and respond.

“I want to write him now, tonight—no, this minute,” laughed Emma. “Is it possible to ride in a buggy and use a pen?”

“Come on, Oak,” called Lyyndaya taking up the traces, “let’s go home and get some oats. Or ink.”

“Of course my father will want to know everything.”

“What will you tell him?”

“That Jude will be flying reconnaissance and not fighting.”

“We don’t know that for sure.”

“Close enough.”

“Pastor Miller won’t give up.”

Emma’s face grew stony. “That man. God forgive him. No, he won’t. Let us write and post our letters to Jude quickly before we’re told that is no longer permitted.”

Lyyndaya didn’t find the privacy she craved for hours, not until the house was asleep, including Ruth in the bed beside her. Then, her candle still lit—something that did not bother her sister, who loved to fall asleep to firelight or candlelight—she read the letter three more times as she sat up in bed. She pressed her hands, one after the other, onto the ink smear of his fingerprint, then brought the hands to her lips and gently kissed them.
How foolish I am
, she thought,
but God must be relieved to have a silly girl’s foolishness to gaze down upon now and then
.

From under her bed she brought out a small oak lap desk fashioned in the shape of a heart. Inside were pen, paper, envelopes, and a bottle of ink. There was a round hole to secure the bottle on the lid of the small desk.

Dear Jude
, she began to write, then thought better of it and placed the sheet of paper on the floor to clear away later. She began again.
My dear Jude
. She paused. Then decided to push on. He was her dear Jude even though Emma thought he was her dear Jude too. But suppose Emma began her letter
My dearest Jude
? Or
My one and only Jude
? Lyyndaya decided to lay this sheet of paper on the wooden floor as well. She penned,
My dearest Jude
, hesitated, thought about
My dearest and truest Jude
, heard the clock downstairs strike twelve and forced herself to press on.

But there were greater obstacles ahead. He had mentioned her eyes. Should she mention his?
Your warm brown eyes are like the spring earth
. Or was that forward on her part? Too much, too soon?
Is your hair still the thick curly mop I liked to pull on when I was ten?
She laid this sheet on the floor and started once more.
I miss you. I also long to fly again with you over Lancaster County and count the toy horses
. She made up her mind to keep this phrase.
It sounds like you have gained your weight and your strength back. Have you been eating well? Peas? Corn? Beef? How about sleep—are you getting enough of it?
No, no, she sounded like an Amish mother nagging her boy at the kitchen table:
Eat, eat, grow big and strong as a horse
. This sheet of paper joined the others on the floor.
My friend Jude, I miss you too. I wish you were here—everyone goes to Intercourse to get their smithing work done now
. What a stupid sentence! Her letter was getting worse instead of better! Onto the floor it went.

The clock struck one.
Dear dear Jude
. No. She let the paper drop. Her pen needed to be cleaned. Once that was done she tried again.
I remember resting my hand on yours when I prayed that day. I always think of it. I am glad you asked me to pray
. She was going to let this one fall onto the pile too, but another part of her argued that she had not made this up, it was true, why not say it and let Jude decide how to respond? After all, what sweet delicacies was Emma Zook cooking up? So she kept it in and continued to fill the page with her smooth looping cursive. Now and then another sheet made its way to the floor.

When Ruth awoke at half past four for the milking, she placed her feet on a carpet of white paper. She picked up a few of the sheets, looked at Lyyndaya sleeping with the lap desk still on her bed, read the half-finished sentences, and began to giggle like a twelve-year-old, quickly covering her mouth with her hand.

Oh, sister, you are smitten
.

Lyyndaya mailed the letter in town after finishing her morning chores. Somehow completing four pages and handing them to the postal clerk in Paradise gave her an extra boost of energy that compensated for her lack of sleep. She was able to clean up alongside her mother in the kitchen following lunch and smile at various barbed comments about Jude instead of snapping back in response. Surprisingly, it was her father, sitting and drinking a second cup of coffee at the table, who kept sticking up for Jude and coming up with reasons why he might have felt it was important to enlist in the Aviation Section of the Signal Corps.

“You astonish me, Amos,” said Lyyndaya’s mother, turning from the sink with her arms up to their elbows in soapsuds. “You’re the one who has been against Jude and his flying all along.”

He ran his fingers through his beard. “I’m not thinking so much about the flying, but about the boy himself. Our young men went through terrible persecution at that army base. How can I blame him for seeking a way out? Even a way out that offends the Amish faith?”

“The others saw no need to join the army as a means out of the camp,” she retorted, still staring at him while she was scrubbing a pot.

“Yes, and that’s what bothers me. He joins the army. The others are released. This happens at the same time. Why didn’t he just leave with his friends?”

“He didn’t want to come back,” she said sourly. “Flying was more important to him than the Amish way, more important to him than following Christ.”

“That’s just it.” Lyyndaya’s father rapped his knuckles on the table. “That’s not the way he acted here.
Ja
, I was annoyed with the flying. But he respected our wishes with regard to our daughter, he made no fuss, he did not complain, he followed the
Ordnung
, remained true to the Amish faith. The horseshoes he crafted for me were impeccable, the finest I have ever seen—
ach
, I hate to put them on my horses’ feet.”

“So what are you saying, Amos?”

“That I’m not content with the explanation young Hosea Zook has given us. Jude up and enlists even though they are being released? He doesn’t want to come back to Paradise? He doesn’t want to see our daughter even though he could be killed in Europe? He expressed no desire to go and fight while he lived among us. In fact, he defended our position on war. And when did he ever speak to us of winning medals or shooting down planes or killing other men? Did he ever speak like that around you, Lyyndy?”

Lyyndaya, still surprised by her father’s vehement defense of Jude, shook her head. “No, Papa. He had no interest in going to war, no desire for any sort of—military glory.”

Her mother handed Lynndaya another pot to dry. “They say the cruelty in the camp broke him. Changed him.”

Father raised his dark eyebrows. “Only
he
is broken? No one else? Yet he is one of the strongest of the bunch?”

“Not everything in this life makes sense.”

“
Ja
, and this makes no sense at all.” He stood up from the table. “I think there is a connection between our young men’s release and Jude’s enlistment. I don’t know what it is. But there is something there.”

Mother kept her back to him as she drained the sink and wiped her hands on a cloth. “Hosea Zook says not, Father.”

He grunted. “Hosea may have his reasons.”

“So? You are saying he is lying? That all of them are lying? That crazy Jude Whetstone had a gun held to his head and had to say yes to the American army?”

“I’m saying I do not know. I will pray, I will read the Holy Word, I will think. I may talk to some of my old colleagues in Philadelphia. But I tell you what it is, Rebecca. I do not like to see a man bullied. And this young man, this Jude Whetstone, no matter what you think, he has been bullied.”

When her father left the kitchen, Lyyndaya’s mother sighed and opened a container of flour.

“Do you want some help with the bread, Mama?” Lyyndaya asked.

“I have no idea what’s come over your father.” Her mother was looking out a window at the gray skies and the falling snow. “I have no idea what he thinks he knows that no one else knows.” She stared at her daughter with tired, dark eyes. “The shunning will come. He cannot stop it. This will hurt you and I’m sorry for that. But remember, my dear, your boy brought this on himself. He has wings and propellers on the brain. He forgets about everything else.”

She reached over and stroked Lyyndaya’s cheek. “You must stop thinking about him. Yes, it is hard to do. But he is bad for our family, bad for the Lapp Amish. He brings us only trouble. Write a goodbye letter. Be gracious, be kind, but be firm. End it before the shunning prevents you from saying farewell in a decent, God-fearing manner.” She turned back to the small bin of flour. “I am baking alone today. Go and do what needs to be done.”

Lyyndaya walked slowly up the stairs to her room. Ruth was not there. She sat on her bed and tried to think clearly, tried to pray. Across the hall she could hear the children laughing and a door slamming. Outside, Papa was calling Trillium with his distinctive whistle. He would never tell her to write the letter her mother wanted her to mail before the
Meidung
was put into force. But perhaps her mother was right. Perhaps it was better to say some last words to Jude than to be left unable to say anything at all.

She pulled the lap desk out from under her bed and lifted the lid. Inside were the sheets of paper, the ink, the pen, the envelopes. She picked the pen up, dipped it into the ink, pressed the back of her hand against her eyes, and began to move the nib across a clean piece of paper.

M
ail call!”

Jude had been lying on the bunk in his room with his hands folded under his head, alternately thinking of Paradise, Emma Zook, Lyyndaya Kurtz, and flying, when he heard the voice in the hallway. He got up quickly just before there was a knock on his door. Opening it, he saw Mitch Jones grinning at him and holding out a handful of envelopes.

“You lucked out today, Whetstone. A pile of letters, and I’m pretty certain I can smell perfume.”

Several other fliers had come out into the hall when Mitch had shouted and they began to give Jude a hard time, one whistling, another chanting, “Hubba hubba,” still another crying, “Oh, please, Mr. Aviator, won’t you make an honest woman out of me?” Jude laughed, waved, and vanished back into his room.

He sat on the edge of his bed and went through the stack he’d been given: one from his father, one from Bishop Zook, three from Emma, one from someone named Deborah King and, at the bottom, a letter from Lyyndaya. He read his father’s first.