Beacon of Light, page 3
“Well?” he asked finally.
“Well, what?”
“You can go.”
“I don’t have anywhere to go.”
“I figured.”
“You don’t know anything.”
“Do you?”
“Oh, shut up.”
“Didn’t mean to upset you. Look, this is an opportunity. Seems to me you could use a good opportunity right about now.”
“I told you, I don’t trust you.”
“Do you trust anyone?”
“Yes. My sister. I can’t give up on finding her. I would give my life to know where she is and whether she’s all right.”
“And that’s a good thing, of course.”
“I know.”
“But your chances are slim, at best. You disappeared out of her life first, or am I wrong about that?”
Who was this man? He acted as if he knew everything, and Oba hated that. But something kept him from getting up and walking away. To place his future in this man’s hands was risky, but so was everything else. He had no plan, no idea of what he would do next. To call on God to guide him was laughable. Oba doubted God’s very existence, let alone His concern about his welfare.
So that was how he found himself sleeping in a dingy motel by the side of a humming highway, headlights crisscrossing the dark paneled walls, neon signs blinking through the window where the drapes did not quite meet. He was repulsed by the heavy snoring from the bed, disgusted by the odor of wet woolen socks and unwashed feet. Jonas hadn’t showered or brushed his teeth, hadn’t as much as opened the dirty leather pouch that must surely contain some clean change of clothing.
After he’d agreed to spend the night, they had barely spoken, for which Oba was grateful. And now Oba lay wide awake, mulling his past, his present, and what was to come. He remembered snow and cold weather from his early childhood in Ohio. He could feel the wet snowflakes on his cold face, smell the scent of sodden mittens brought to his face, his tongue stuck in a pile of soft snow. He remembered wet, cold feet, his mother clucking as she pulled off damp socks, draping them across the wooden rack by the kitchen range. In his memories, May was by his side, her cheeks like polished apples. He could feel his mother’s soft hands, the swish of her skirt as she turned to shake the grate, his father’s booming laugh as he viewed the rows of cold discolored toes. Piggies, he called them.
Mam would fry sausages in the cast iron pan, turning them expertly as they sizzled and sputtered, becoming brown and crispy, served with buttermilk pancakes and real Ohio maple syrup. They spent glorious moments of lingering around the table, his mother’s tinkling laugh flavoring everything with love and security.
Then he thought of the awful day when he had to look in the plain wooden casket, her face white and still, her laugh silenced forever by the churning muddy water that had gushed down her throat and into her lungs, snuffing out the sound of her talking, her singing and breathing. His father’s casket was beside her, his face the same waxen stillness, as cold as ice.
A deep pain brought a shudder to his inert form, the remembering as cold and cruel as the torrent of cold water that had taken his parents’ lives.
Was he merely punishing himself by this relentless pursuit of May? Among thousands, millions of people, where could she possibly have gone? To remain among the Amish was one thing, but to leave the community and disappear among the mainstream of society quite another.
And especially if she did not want to be found.
She might as well be dead, just like their parents. Perhaps this Jonas knew what he was talking about. Maybe he needed an adventure to make himself feel alive again. But the thing was, he wasn’t brave or courageous, and had absolutely no pioneer spirit. He’d never gone hunting, never shot a squirrel or a deer, the way Leonard Yoder’s boys bragged about. Melvin Amstutz would never allow him to have a gun, or to spend hours in the woods hunting. He’d never even been allowed to go fishing on the river, like Arpachshad. Idle time was the devil’s time, Melvin had said.
And so his thoughts ran wild, from one picture to another, a string of flashbacks like a disjointed reel that kept jerking back to May.
Sweet May.
All he could hope for was that she was safe, with someone she loved and who loved her.
He began to cry, soft hiccups and tears that ran unchecked into his pillow. He hated himself for the tears, hated his own weakness, his own inability to forget the past, to let go of May and the searing hurt of his parents’ drowning.
So if he followed this Jonas Bell, would he become a real man, and not some sniveling schoolboy who wept into his pillow at night, hating Melvin but unable to do anything about it? Would the cold and the hardship of a life in the wilderness cleanse his cluttered thoughts?
As the night wore on, he became more convinced there was something in believing Jonas had been in that restaurant for a reason. Perhaps it was meant to be. But he’d have to have a talk with him about bossing him around. That simply wasn’t going to work.
There was no light in the window except for the street light and the blinking neon ones that surrounded the area when he heard Jonas roll out of bed, cough, wheeze, snort, every imaginable sound coming from his throat. Muttering to himself, he got into his clothes without turning on the bedside lamp, then let himself quietly through the door, closing it behind him. Oba was given a merciful hour of early morning sleep before he was awakened by heavy boots kicking at the door.
“Open up, kid!”
Wide awake, he leaped to his feet, feeling wildly for his jeans.
“Come on!”
Another round of kicks.
Someone banged on the wall, yelled at them to shut up or they’d shut everyone up themselves. When Oba finally located his jeans, he wasted no time getting into them and fumbling at the door latch.
Jonas stood in the cold, holding two large paper cups, his eyebrows drawn over the blue eyes.
“What took you so long?”
“I had to find my pants.”
“Puh. If that’s how you’re going to be, you’re in for a surprise. God made us all, so there ain’t nothing to be ashamed of. Once we get to the wilds, you’ll forget about all that. It ain’t important.”
Oba took a long swallow of the bracing coffee, gave him a look that promised nothing. He thought of Tom Lyons in California, his gentle good manners and meticulous hygiene. He wished he was there now, in the balmy weather and beautiful home with good meals. He had left all that for May’s sake, and now here he was, with no future, being drawn into a situation that was clearly dangerous, possibly even fatal.
And so his thoughts roiled between sips of lukewarm coffee that left a bilious taste in his mouth, an irritation at the nerve of this Jonas Bell to seek him out when he hadn’t asked for it.
“I take it you aren’t much of a morning person.”
Oba turned, grunted, set his coffee on the bedside table to reach for his shirt, forgot his bare back that presented itself to Jonas Bell.
And Jonas saw. He saw the raised white welts, a testament to this boy’s harsh past, but he had the wisdom to keep his mouth shut. Surely the young man had suffered more than he would admit, and there was no use pressing for details.
“I’m leaving this morning. Driving to the nearest supply store to get my finances in order. If you came to a decision, you’re welcome aboard. If you didn’t, then I’ll leave you here.”
And suddenly, Oba knew he couldn’t deal with being left alone. He had no plan, nowhere to go, and not enough money to reach California and Tom Lyons, where he knew he would always be a square peg in a round hole. He would never quite fit into the family, the expectations they would require of him, the college education, the far flung quest to be a pharmacist. He could not imagine spending his life behind the counter of a small town pharmacy, just as he couldn’t imagine being good enough to find a girl who loved him the way he was. Maybe he didn’t even deserve to be a happily married man, a normal person who was capable of raising his own children, to belong to a community of caring people who accepted him in spite of his fractured past.
He picked up his coffee, took a long swallow, could hardly keep a grimace from forming. He didn’t want to admit that this man had won.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, you’ll have to know in a few minutes. I have to go.”
“If I decide to stay, will you go alone?”
“Yes.”
Part of him wanted Jonas Bell to leave, to get out of his sight and his mind. He wished he’d never met the guy.
“I tell you what,” said Jonas. “Come with me, give it at least a few weeks, and if you don’t like it I’ll fly you back out of there and you can be on your way to wherever you’re going again.”
Oba stared straight ahead for a moment and then nodded his head, unwilling to agree out loud. He gathered his belongings and took a place in the passenger seat of the old station wagon. He watched Jonas turn the key, heard the snort from the cold engine, and for the first time in a long while felt a small rush of excitement.
CHAPTER 3
MAY ENTERED HER LIFE AT “S’ALSA” ABE’S, THE S’ALSA standing for salt, meaning somewhere there had been a joke or an incident about salt, so this was how he stood apart from the rest of the Abraham Weavers scattered throughout Ohio. To be named by a name from the Bible was a longstanding tradition, one that was upheld by most conservative members of the Old Order Amish, so it was not unusual to find three or four Abe Weavers in a few square miles.
Betty was soft and round, like her name, which was derived from Betsey, which in turn had come from Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist in the Bible. Betty conjured up warmth and coziness in her name alone. May remembered her mother baking a concoction of spices, apples, and oatmeal she called “Apple Brown Betty,” a sweet, warm dessert that tasted of baked apples and brown sugar and was eaten with cold milk. When May called Betty by name, she felt all the warmth and comfort of that dessert.
The house was not a large one, covered in wooden siding with the paint peeling from the haphazard application of the now dried lumber. There were two windows on either side of the square dwelling, a front porch, and a back porch that led to the large white barn, where a menagerie of animals were housed in separate parts. A low henhouse, a pigsty, and a few lean-tos that sagged against various sheds completed the homestead. This was life on a farm in the mid-1940s. They had a small herd of cows was sufficient to make a living, a few baby pigs to take to market in a crate on the back of the springwagon, brown eggs to sell to the housewives scattered along rural roads.
May was accustomed to hard work, had managed a house well, so nothing could take away from her enthusiasm to the do the best she knew how. She cleaned the whole house, a deep cleaning that changed the colors of the painted walls, especially in the kitchen where the enormous range burned year round, the smell of woodsmoke a sign of a warm house and a good cook. Betty urged her to take it easy, to slow down, but May was so determined to show her appreciation, she kept going in spite of a puzzling fatigue that constantly threatened to send her to the old hickory rocker.
In the evening, when the boys had finished their chores, the house turned into a wild kind of bedlam, children racing, yelling, crying, clattering toys and dishes until May thought she must surely go mad. Abe was an easygoing, laconic kind of husband and father, who could sit back with a newspaper and have children climbing all over him and never bat an eye. Betty could be stirring a pot on the stove, with one-year-old Becky tugging at her skirts and the baby pounding graham crackers into sawdust while screaming as if a monster was peering from the window, and go right on stirring as if nothing was out of the ordinary.
May learned to take care of the things she could, such as rescuing the baby when the squalls became unbearable, wiping up ignored spills, or separating two children who were beating each other up while both parents were engrossed in a conversation.
The weariness worsened, followed by a rush to the outhouse first thing in the morning. Finding it occupied, her stomach heaved its bitter contents into a lilac bush on the south side, before Abe greeted her with an embarrassed good morning while still buttoning his coat.
She was hungry, but the rolled oats and ponhaus turned her stomach. She cleaned plates and stacked them on the countertop, swallowed back the bile that threatened to send her back to the outhouse, felt the kitchen tilt crazily as waves of nausea threatened her stability.
If Abe told Betty about her sickness, Betty kept it to herself, but May thought Abe was a gentle, shy sort of fellow, one easily embarrassed being caught in the outhouse, so he might not have mentioned it.
After a month of hiding the weariness and fatigue, the nausea that sent her silently scuttling to the backyard, she felt no better, but was determined to keep her secret, determined not to bother the young family with her own silly health condition. She decided it was all in her head, probably a result of all she’d been through these past months. Sometimes it didn’t hit you until you’d started to settle down.
One afternoon she found Betty watching her swab wearily at the kitchen linoleum. May stopped when her name was called.
“Yes?”
“Is something wrong, May?”
“No, just been a bit tired.”
“Are you throwing up?”
“No.”
Instantly, she regretted the lie, noticed the cunning look in Betty’s face.
“But I’ve seen you.”
“Only sometimes.”
Betty narrowed her eyes. “May, is there a chance . . . ?”
“Of what?”
Betty could not bring herself to say the word, seeing the lack of comprehension in May’s eyes. She realized May truly didn’t know, didn’t suspect anything at all. And yet Betty knew she had all the symptoms, had seen the growth that lifted the pleated apron.
“May, listen to me.”
Emmie howled from her high chair, so Betty immediately went to her, grabbed a washcloth, and roughly wiped her face and hands before hauling her off to the rocking chair and opening her dress to allow the baby to feed.
May followed her to the remaining rocking chair, perched on the edge of it, and clasped her hands, still as innocent as when the conversation began.
“Did you tell me the truth about leaving Melvin and Gertie’s farm?”
“Yes.”
“Were you married to someone?”
Betty watched the light change in the beautiful brown eyes, watched them darken, the heavy lids lower themselves as a brilliant color suffused the pale, thin face. Slowly, the bright blond hair with the white covering wagged back and forth in denial.
“No,” she whispered hoarsely.
“But were you with someone?”
Her lips were frozen, her mouth gone dry. For a second, Betty thought May might flee like a frightened bird, but she remained seated while the blush turned into a pale face, as still as a wax figure.
“May, I’ll make this easier. Are you positive you aren’t . . . aren’t in the family way?” The last words were spoken in a conspiratorial whisper, her eyes going to the children playing on the floor.
“What do you mean?”
Clearly, May did not understand.
“That you might be expecting?”
May’s eyes opened wide in disbelief as she struggled to understand. Then her hands fluttered to her stomach and stayed, her expression turning from understanding to shame, from shame to a fleeting hope.
“Is that why I seem to . . . why I grow? I can’t tell you how much I wondered, but I have no knowledge.”
“May, I want to hear the truth about your life. If you want to remain in this home, you must speak the truth. Do you realize your shame here among the Amish if you were unmarried?”
May looked around wildly, a rush of understanding and feeling washing over her. She pulled herself together quickly, the new knowledge that she was a mother seeming to mature her in an instant. A mother! She had new responsibility, new purpose. She would do anything for this child growing inside her.
“I’ll go, Betty. I won’t tarnish your name.”
She would go. She would live in the caves of the earth, exist on wild game and herbs from the forest if it meant having Clinton’s child. She would shoulder any shame, be forsaken by her remaining kinfolk, gladly carry ridicule for the rest of her days. Joy filled the empty places now, delight enveloped her entire being as she thought of bearing a child who resembled him.
Oh, that God had shined His mercy on her by allowing this!
“Tell me,” Betty urged as she watched the transformation.
So May began, and the afternoon sun slanted toward the west before Betty sank back with an audible sigh, then rubbed Emmie’s back absentmindedly as she tried to comprehend it all.
But not once had May allowed even a suggestion of Melvin’s behavior to come to the surface. That was the only remaining thing not one person would ever know. She would go to her grave with it, and believe God would mete the vengeance, bring swift justice.
There was no other way for her.
“So this Clinton Brown is a negro?”
“Yes. He’s . . . was lighter than some.”
“How could you, May? It isn’t normal. I don’t believe it’s legal. How could you go against God and the law like that?”
May bit down hard on her lower lip, reined in the hot words of denial.
“Betty, you don’t understand . . .” She stopped herself before she revealed something she’d regret. Betty couldn’t know the evil she had escaped when she left with Clinton. She would never know the sound of approaching footsteps or the shadowy dark figure at her door.
“Clinton Brown was a good man. He could no more help being born colored than you or I could choose to be white. In Arkansas, the people of color are everywhere. If Melvin or Gertie were half as kindhearted as the sharecroppers who break their backs picking cotton for their financial gain, I would likely still be there.” She hadn’t meant to say that last part, but Betty hardly seemed to notice.
“But, May, that still doesn’t make it right. This child will be born in sin. You were not married . . . and him as black as midnight.”
