Книга - Between You and Me

Between You and Me
Susan Wiggs


‘Love, loss, passion and everything in between… I love Susan Wiggs' novels so much.’ JENNY COLGANThe most important thing to Caleb Stoltz is family and the close community of friends and relatives in the village of Middle Grove. When his brother’s sudden death leaves him responsible for his niece and nephew, he is determined to raise them in the family traditions his parents embraced. But when further tragedy strikes, Caleb must look beyond the boundaries of Middle Grove.A world away from Caleb’s life is Dr Reese Powell, a brilliant doctor dedicated to her medical career. Forever working to live up to the expectations of her parents, a fateful accident brings her and Caleb together.Reese and Caleb embark on a journey into a life where everything they know will be challenged, forcing them to reconsider what love, community and family really mean. But will they be able to recognise what their hearts truly want?























Copyright (#u3920f48e-859a-5e05-95ab-2b736602a1e0)


Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

Copyright © Susan Wiggs 2018

Cover photograph © Anne Krämer/Arcangel Images

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018

Susan Wiggs asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008151355

Ebook Edition © September 2018 ISBN: 9780008151362

Version: 2018-06-28




Dedication (#u3920f48e-859a-5e05-95ab-2b736602a1e0)


To my beloved daughter, Elizabeth, who must never outgrow fairy tales—I dedicate this book to you for reasons so profound we’ll just keep everything between you and me.


Contents

Cover (#uf8cc40db-e839-5fbb-b9f4-8d5999b50c69)

Title Page (#u9f83c474-8336-5911-a783-f4b7e62940c2)

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Part One: Harvest

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Part Two: The Match

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Keep Reading … (#u002b2194-f040-5b0d-8a42-582b63b9c32a)

About the Author

Also by Susan Wiggs

About the Publisher




Prologue (#u3920f48e-859a-5e05-95ab-2b736602a1e0)


On the day you were born, when you were only a few hours in this world, I tucked you into an old apple crate and left you behind like a piece of my beating heart, like an offering to a god I didn’t believe in but didn’t dare not believe in. Some might say you were a human sacrifice, but in that moment, I felt as though I was the sacrifice, not you.

Because in that moment, something inside me died.

Though I was too young to know anything, I truly imagined I was leaving you to a better life … I didn’t want to walk away, but I was scared of what would happen if I didn’t.

After all we’d been through that year, I was self-aware enough to realize my youth and ignorance would be a danger to you, yet smart enough to figure out what to do. I didn’t know anything about the modern world, about the city, about the law, about the inexorable ties that bind the heart. All I knew was that you’d be better off with a different future. With some other family to guide you. With some other life, far from Middle Grove.

By that time, I understood very well what happens at a hospital. They save people. They saved me. So I took you to a place where I knew you’d be saved.

Of course, that’s not how the papers reported it. The news media focused on the most sensational aspect of the case—an abandoned baby, a mysterious puzzle to be solved, a terrible family secret hidden by a distrustful, closed community that walled itself off from the rest of the world.

But the papers got it wrong.





ONE (#u3920f48e-859a-5e05-95ab-2b736602a1e0)

Harvest (#u3920f48e-859a-5e05-95ab-2b736602a1e0)










AUGUST


Difficulty is a miracle in its first stage.

—AMISH PROVERB




1 (#u3920f48e-859a-5e05-95ab-2b736602a1e0)


The silver flash of a jet plane glinted in the morning sky. Caleb Stoltz tipped back his brimmed hat and watched it soar high overhead. Against the flawless summer blue, the plane glittered like a rare jewel—precious and out of reach.

“Hey, look, Uncle Caleb. Plane tracks,” said Jonah, pointing out the twin white plumes that bisected the sky in the flight path of the jet.

Caleb grinned at his nephew and handed him a galvanized milk pail, half-filled from the milk house. “They’re called contrails. Don’t slosh it,” he cautioned. “I’ll be in to breakfast shortly.”

Lugging the pail, the boy headed for the white clapboard house, his dusty bare feet leaving shallow impressions in the dry earth. Jonah’s skinny legs, browned by a summer of swimming at Crystal Falls up the creek a ways, protruded comically from his tattered black trousers, which only a short while ago had fit him. Now eleven, the kid was growing like the corn in high summer. Caleb would have to get Hannah to sew him a new pair of pants before school started in a few weeks. If not for the way the kids were growing, he would have no notion of the passage of time.

On a farm, the seasons were important, not the years.

Caleb washed down the milking shed, the stream of water hissing on the concrete and misting his work boots. He turned off the hose, reeled it in, and left the shed, glancing up at the puffy trail of clouds dissipating in the sky. The jet was long gone, off to New York or Bangkok or some other place Caleb had no hope of ever seeing. He studied the flight path and then wondered why it was called a path when there was no visible roadway, nothing to mark its way but invisible air. It was only after the jet had passed that its route could be seen.

If Rebecca were with him, she would quirk her brow and scold him for idle thoughts. Then he would challenge her to offer proof that any thought could be idle, and her quirked brow would knit in incomprehension. “I swear, Caleb Stoltz,” she would say, and then she’d change the subject. That was her way.

Ah, Rebecca. She was going to be the most difficult part of his day. The problem had been weighing on his mind for far too long. Time to stop putting off the inevitable. They were supposed to have an understanding. She believed that one of these days, she would get her clock from him, the traditional gift of engagement, and she’d present Caleb with an embroidered cloth to symbolize her acceptance. Baptism, marriage, and a family wouldn’t be far behind. Though she wasn’t keen to raise Caleb’s niece and nephew and take care of his father, she was willing to do her duty.

Caleb needed to acknowledge the truth his gut had been telling him since the day the church elders had presented him with the notion that he and Rebecca Zook should marry. And that truth was going to make for a hard conversation. He had a fine, warm affection for Rebecca, but it was not the deep love that would bind a man and woman for life. He wasn’t even sure that sort of love existed.

It wouldn’t be fair to string her along.

Standing in the yard, he surveyed the farm for a few moments, taking in the sweep of the broad valley that ran down from the Pocono hills. The fields were an abundant patchwork of corn, wheat, alfalfa, and sorghum, spread out over rolling landscape as far as the eye could see. In the distance, Eli Kemp and his sons were cradling wheat. Their scythes swung in tandem to the rhythm of a hymn they were singing, the sound traveling across the valley in the quiet of the morning. They moved along the rows like a line of industrious soldier ants, the forked cradles felling the stalks neatly to one side. Eli’s wife trailed behind, bundling sheaves.

That was Middle Grove, Caleb thought. Faith, work, and family, stitched together by the common thread of devotion. Other farmers in the district might breathe the sweet air and offer up a silent prayer. Thank you for this day, O Lord. But not Caleb. Not in a long, long time.

From the neighboring farm, the roar of a hydraulic engine broke the stillness of the morning, its mechanical cough obliterating the Kemps’ singing. The Haubers were getting ready to fill silo today. The diesel-powered shredder would be used to chop the corn for blowing into the silo.

Caleb would be going over to help after he spoke with Rebecca. In the meantime, he stayed busy. He liked being busy. It kept him from thinking too hard about things. The sun was out, there were chores to do, and the work went fast when neighbors pitched in together.

Taking off his hat, he wiped the sweat from his brow and headed inside. Despite all the open windows, the kitchen was stifling hot. The old iron stove door yawned open with a metallic protest as his niece, Hannah, added fuel to boil the coffee. Smoke and the reek of burned toast layered the room in a misty gray haze.

“Hannah burned the toast again,” Jonah announced, unnecessarily.

His sister, who was sixteen and as incomprehensible as an alien life-form in a science fiction novel, planted her fists on her hips. “I wouldn’t have burned a thing if you hadn’t spilled the milk.” She glared accusingly at a blue-white puddle on the scuffed linoleum floor.

“Well, I wouldn’t have spilled it if you hadn’t called me a brutz baby.”

“You are one,” she retorted. “Always pouting.”

“Huh. You’re gonna get married and have a real baby and then you’ll know what it’s like.”

“Hey, hey.” Caleb held up a hand for silence. “It’s not even seven o’clock and you two are squabbling already.”

“But she called me a—”

“Enough, Jonah.” Caleb didn’t raise his voice, but the sharpness of his tone cut through the boy’s sass. The brother and sister bickered a lot, but a deep bond held them close. Orphaned by a horrendous disaster, they shared a sense of vulnerability that made them cling together, closer than most siblings. “Did you get something to eat?”

“He made grape slush out of his cornflakes again,” Hannah said. “It’s disgusting.” Jonah’s strange habit of putting grape jelly on his cereal never failed to gross her out.

“It’s better than burnt—” Catching Caleb’s warning look, Jonah snapped his mouth shut.

“Go on over to the Haubers’,” Caleb said. “Tell them I’ll be along shortly.”

“Okay.” Jonah jammed on his hat and headed for the door.

“Be sure you watch yourself around the machinery, you hear?” Caleb cautioned, thinking of the shredder’s sharp blades and the powerful auger at the bottom of the silo.

“Don’t worry, I’ve been helping out since I was knee-high to a grasshopper,” Jonah said with a cocky grin, the one that never failed to chase away Caleb’s annoyance. “Oh! Almost forgot my lucky penny.” He scampered to his room and returned with the token. It was a coin flattened in a penny press machine at the old water-powered sawmill over in Blakeslee, a souvenir of Jonah’s only trip away from Middle Grove. He tucked the coin into his pocket, then yanked open the screen door.

“See you at lunchtime,” Caleb said.

“All right.”

“And don’t slam—”

The door banged shut.

“—the door,” Caleb finished, shaking his head.

Hannah was still mopping up the milk while Caleb washed at the kitchen sink. Through the window above the basin, he could see Jonah racing like a jackrabbit across the field to the silo. Jubilee, the collie mix that followed the kid everywhere, loped along at his side. With a sudden leap, Jonah launched himself into the air, then planted his hands on the ground as his legs and bare feet flew overhead in an exuberant handspring. This was the boy’s special skill, his lithe young body’s expression of pure joy, perhaps his way of embracing the perfect summer morning.

In the kitchen, an awkward silence hung as thick as the smoke. Lately, Caleb didn’t know what to say to his sullen niece. She had been so young when he’d left Middle Grove under a glowering shadow of disapproval from the elders. He’d had every intention of finding a life away from the community. But he had returned, reeled back in by a hideous tragedy. By that time, Hannah had turned into a skinny, nervous twelve-year-old, haunted by nightmares of her murdered parents.

Now his niece was a stranger, the lone girl in a household of men, with no woman’s hand to guide her. Just Caleb, who was ridiculously ill-equipped to deal with her, and his father, Asa, a man who clung with iron fists to the old ways. Already, some of Hannah’s friends were getting baptized and promised to young men. He could scarcely imagine his little niece as a wife and mother.

He finished scrubbing his hands and dried them, then fixed up a tray with his father’s breakfast and left it on the table as usual. Asa always got up early to read Die Botschaft in the quiet of the toolshed adjacent to the house. Caleb opened a cupboard and took a wad of cash from the coffee can, folding the bills into his wallet. After chores, and after his talk with Rebecca, he planned to go up to Grantham Farm to bring home a new horse. Baudouin, the sturdy Belgian, was old. He’d given his all and had earned a fine retirement in the pasture, and now Caleb needed a replacement. He ran a yoke of draft horses to make extra money to keep up with the bills on the farm. His team was in demand, especially in winter, when cars got stuck and fallen trees needed to be dragged out of the way. It was remarkable how much hauling English folks needed.

Glancing out the window again, he saw Jonah scrambling like a monkey up the conveyor belt to feed the bound corn shocks into the grinder. The kid loved high places and always volunteered for them. Caleb had always liked that chore too. The world looked entirely different when viewed from the high opening of the silo. He used to imagine the tower scene from Lord of the Rings, a forbidden novel that had once earned him a caning from his father when he’d been caught reading it. While feeding the stalks to the shredder, Caleb used to pretend that the mouthful of whirring, glistening blades belonged to a fierce dragon guarding the tower.

“Sorry about the toast, Uncle Caleb,” Hannah spoke up, taking the charred remains out of the wire rack.

“Not a problem.” To lighten the moment, he grabbed a piece and took a huge bite, closing his eyes and pretending to savor it. “Ah,” he said. “Ambrosia.”

She laughed a little. “Oh, Uncle Caleb. Don’t be silly.”

He choked down the rest of the toast and grinned, showing his charcoal teeth. “Who’s being silly?”

“What’s ambrosia, anyway? You’re always using big words, for sure.”

“It’s what the gods of Greek myth ate,” he said. “So I reckon it means something good enough to feed to the gods.”

She gasped at the mention of Greek gods—another forbidden topic—then whisked the toast crumbs from the counter. “You’re so smart.”

“Knowing the meaning of a word doesn’t make me smart.”

“Sure it does. I heard Rebecca say you went away and came back smarter, and that’s why you still haven’t joined the order—’cause your head’s all full of prideful English nonsense.”

“Rebecca likes to hear herself talk.” At the mention of her name, Caleb felt a trickle of sweat slide down his neck. Rebecca’s notion that his time away had made him proud was yet another reason they weren’t a good match. Getting an education didn’t make a man proud. Instead, it was humbling.

In his time away, Caleb had done the unthinkable. Against all Amish principles, he had attended college classes. The traditional eighth-grade education had left a thirst in his soul, and he’d sought out books and knowledge the way a man seeks cold lemonade on a hot August day. He used to ride his bike thirteen miles each way to take classes at the community college, soaking up lessons in history, philosophy, logic, calculus, and the kind of science that had nothing to do with crop yields or tending livestock. It was humbling to discover how much he didn’t know about the world, how much he had yet to learn. He had just been starting out when he’d had to come back. These days, he imagined the world he’d discovered beyond Middle Grove shimmering like a chimera on the horizon, out of reach, yet tauntingly real.

Hannah finished tidying the kitchen in her negligent, haphazard way. When Caleb’s father came in, he’d likely point out the crumbs on the floor and the dish towels left out on the counter. He’d probably also scowl at his breakfast tray and remark that a proper Amish family broke bread together around the table, their scrubbed faces lit by the inspiration of silent prayer before they dived into hotcakes with berry preserves and thick slices of salty ham.

But they weren’t like other families. Caleb could only do so much.

“Uncle Caleb?”

At the tentative note in Hannah’s voice, he turned to her. To his surprise, her cheeks shone a dull red against the loose strings of her black kapp.

“What is it, liebchen?” He used the old endearment, hoping the familiar word would sound soothing to her ears.

“There’s, um, a singing Sunday night at the great hall,” she said. “I was wondering, um, could I go?”

“I reckon you could do that,” he said. The singings took place on a church Sunday after services. The adults would leave for the evening so the kids could gather around the table and sing—not the slow morning chants meant for devotion, but the faster ones, meant to get the kids talking. And “talking” actually meant sizing each other up, because the goal was to get the young folk started with their courtships. It seemed contrived, but no more so than a high school dance in the outside world.

“All righty, then,” Hannah said, all fluttering hands and darting eyes.

“Anything else?” he asked.

“Can I get a ride home in Aaron Graber’s buggy?” she asked, all in a rush.

Caleb felt an unpleasant thud of surprise in his gut. Aaron Graber, he thought. More like Aaron Grabber. Caleb wasn’t so sure he liked the idea of little Hannah running around with a boy, particularly that one, who looked at girls the way a fox eyes a hen.

A distant, frenzied barking sounded through the window, but Caleb gave his full attention to his niece. This was kind of a big deal. She wanted to go courting. His little Hannah, courting. It seemed like only yesterday he was showing her how to get a hit in slow-pitch softball and making her giggle at his stupid jokes. Where was that Hannah now?

“Well,” he said, “I don’t think—”

“Please, Uncle Caleb,” she said. “He asked me special.”

Before he could reply, the kitchen door slapped open with a violent bang. Levi Hauber’s face was the color of old snow, and his shoulders shook visibly. Even before he spoke, the sheer horror in his eyes froze Caleb’s blood.

“Come quick,” Levi said. “It’s Jonah. There’s been an accident.”




2 (#u3920f48e-859a-5e05-95ab-2b736602a1e0)


“Oh, fuck me sideways,” muttered Reese Powell as her work phone buzzed rudely against her side like a small electric shock. God. She’d just closed her eyes for a much-needed nap. Checking the screen, she saw that it was a summons from Mel, her supervising resident, in the ER. With brisk, mechanical movements, she put on her short white lab coat, looped a stethoscope around her neck, and headed out of the break room.

The long, gleaming corridor was littered with equipment and gurneys, the occasional patient slumped in a wheelchair, a rolling biohazard bin or two. Nurses and orderlies swished past, hurrying to their next call.

Reese blinked away the last of the foiled nap and took a deep breath. I will do right by my patients. This was her mantra, the one she’d adopted as a fourth-year medical student. I will do right by my patients. She had spent three years studying, cramming her head full of knowledge, memorizing, observing, but this year, the year she would earn the title of doctor, she set one simple, powerful task for herself: do the right thing.

One of the things she liked about working in the ER was the element of surprise. You never knew what was coming through the door next. Her parents had been appalled when she’d informed them of her interest in the ER. They had been pushing her toward pediatric surgery, and they expected her to explore something closer to that field. But for once, she had dared to inch a little to the left of their proposed path. She wanted more experience in emergency medicine. And Mercy Heights had a level-one trauma center, the best in Philadelphia.

Patients, family members, and personnel were clustered around the admittance center, the nucleus of the ER. As she scanned the area for Mel, a nurse stuck her head out of an exam room.

“Oh, good, you’re here,” she said. “We need someone who speaks Spanish. We’ve got a one-woman shitstorm.”

Reese hurried into the small room. “What have you got—oh.” For a second, she just stood there, trying to take in the scene. The patient was a young dark-haired woman in a stained dress, crouched on the bed, her posture defensive and her eyes cloudy with fear and distrust. Someone was asking her what she took, when she took it, but she recoiled from the questions.

“They found her wandering on the street,” said the nurse. “All we know so far is that she’s pregnant. And probably altered. She told the EMTs she was intoxicated. We’re trying to find out what she took.”

A security guard stood ready, restraints in hand. Mel shook his head. Reese knew he feared things would escalate if they tried to restrain her.

“This is not a place of healing,” the woman said in rapid-fire Spanish. “This is a place of death, a place of eternal curses.” Then she lapsed into a muttered prayer.

Reese’s Spanish kicked in. She spoke the colloquial version she’d learned from Juanita, her childhood nanny. Growing up, she’d spent more time with Juanita than she had with her busy, ubersuccessful parents. Putting on a warm, professional smile, she slowly walked toward the woman. “Hola, señora,” she said softly. “¿Qué pasa?”

At the sound of her native tongue, the woman stopped speaking and glared at Reese. “I’m Reese Powell,” Reese continued in Spanish, never losing eye contact. “My colleagues and I would like to examine you, and make sure you’re all right.”

“Get away from me. These are bad people.”

“We want to help you,” Reese said. “Do you understand English?”

“No. No English.”

“Please, may I ask you some questions?”

“My secrets are mine to keep.”

“Sometimes it is best to share a secret. Is this your first baby?”

“Yes.” The woman unfurled a little, dropping her arms from her drawn-up knees.

“What is your name, ma’am?”

“My name is Lena Garza.”

“How old are you, Lena?”

She hesitated. “Nineteen.”

“Ask her what she took,” someone said. “We heard her say she’s intoxicated.”

Reese studied the drawn, olive-toned face. The girl looked older than nineteen, her deep brown eyes haunted and scared.

“You were wandering around in traffic,” Reese said, rapidly translating for one of the EMTs. “Why were you doing that? Did you take something?” She had been taught to practice empathy—direct eye contact, a physical touch—and at first, reaching out to a stranger in this way had felt strange to her. Now that she’d been at it for a while, the gestures felt natural. It was gratifying to see the woman relax slightly, taking a deep breath before she spoke.

Lena Garza twisted the band of silver she wore on her forefinger. “Estoy intoxicada.”

“Ask her what—”

“Wait,” Reese said. “Intoxicada just means that she ingested something. Could be food, a drug, anything that makes a person sick.” She turned to Lena. “Can you tell me what you took?”

“My mother told me I will burn in hell,” she whispered. “I am not married. That is why I took the herbs.”

Reese’s heart skipped a beat. “She took something,” she told Mel in English. “What did you take, Lena?”

The girl reached into the pocket of her faded dress and drew out a crinkly cellophane bag. “She said this would cause my period to start.”

Reese grabbed the bag and showed it to Mel. “Angelica. Said to have abortifacient properties.”

Mel sniffed the yellowish-brown herb. “Also called dong quai. When did she take it? Was it within the last four hours? How much did she take?”

Reese asked the patient.

“I don’t remember. I will burn in hell,” she moaned.

“Only if you die,” Reese said in Spanish. “And we are not going to let that happen, not today.”

Mel said, “We’re going to need a gastric lavage, stat.”

While the techs prepared the lavage tray and measured activated charcoal into a beaker, Reese coaxed a bit more information from the patient—When did she have her last period? Had she seen a doctor? Where did she live?

Reese reported the answers, then convinced the woman to lie back and be connected to monitors. “I’m going to have a listen to your baby, all right?” She gently lifted the dress and slid the gel-slicked Doppler wand over Lena’s flat belly, trying to detect heart sounds.

“Ay!” the patient yelled. “That is cold. You torture me.”

“I’m sorry,” Reese said. “We need you to be still and be quiet. We’re trying to hear your baby’s heart sounds … There it is,” she said as the Doppler emitted a rhythmic wow-wow-wow. “That’s the sound of your baby’s heart.”

Lena went limp on the table and laid her forearm over her eyes. “Yes,” she said. “I hear it. I can hear it. My mother says it’s a sin to have a baby before I’m married.”

Reese let the moment stretch out a few seconds longer. Then she said, “Mothers aren’t always right about everything.” She offered a brief conspiratorial smile. “Mine thinks she is, though. Let us take care of you, and when you’re feeling better, someone will talk to you about your options.”

She explained the lavage process and convinced the girl to cooperate by swallowing the gastric tube. The girl gagged and fought, but Reese kept up a soothing patter, the way Juanita used to when Reese was small and scared of the dark.

A short time later, Lena’s eyes were closed, and her hands lay slack on the sheeting. Mel gestured, and Reese followed him out to the corridor. “You did a good job in there,” he said. “She’ll be ready to turf out before you know it.”

Reese thought about the disturbed young woman, her frightened eyes and the strange, deep knowing that lived in her like an old, old soul. “Before you turf her, let’s get someone to talk to her about her choices. I’ll be the interpreter.”

“That’s a great idea,” Mel said. “I’ll call social services and OB/GYN.”

Moments like this gave Reese a feeling of satisfaction. An overachieving fourth-year at the end of a long rat race, she was full of plans, but full of questions, too. Her parents had their own plan for her—acceptance into an elite residency program, a path to join their carefully built practice. But sometimes, the wall of her armor cracked open to reveal a glimpse of something else—another dream, maybe. A different dream, not her parents’ goals.

At the end of the hallway, the double doors burst open and Jack Tillis, the chief of trauma, swept through. His lab coat wafted open like a set of wings. He was surrounded by his team of devoted acolytes—the residents, nurses, support staff, and technicians who made up the trauma team.

“What’ve you got?” Mel asked, perking up.

“Just had a red phone pre-alert. Major trauma, coming in by life flight,” another resident said. “ETA twenty minutes.”

Reese exchanged a glance with Mel. She felt a twist of anticipation in her gut. “Can I help?”

The resident nodded. “You don’t want to miss this one. Some kid had his arm ripped off in a farming accident.”

The helicopter descended from the sky like a huge metallic insect, its giant rotors beating the cornstalks flat against the dusty field. Kneeling on ground soaked by his nephew’s blood, Caleb instinctively leaned forward over the boy’s body, which lay on the rescue workers’ shiny yellow board. The shadows of his neighbors and the rescue workers fell over him, blocking out the morning sun. Above the violent rhythm of the chopper blades, he could hear crackling radios and shouts, but all his attention stayed focused on Jonah.

Only a short time earlier, Jonah had been racing across the field to help fill silo, something he had done dozens of times before. Now he lay broken and bleeding, his left arm and his boyish face slashed by the vicious metal teeth of the shredder. And despite the injuries, Jonah was sweetly, horrifyingly conscious.

White-faced, blue-lipped, his eyes dull with shock as his life drained away, the boy tried to speak through chattering teeth. “Cold,” he kept saying. “I’m ssso … cold.”

“I’m here, little man,” Caleb said, his voice a rasp of panic. “I’ll keep you warm.”

The rescue workers had immobilized the arm with an air bladder and enclosed his neck in a stiff collar. They covered him with every blanket they had, but it wasn’t enough to keep Jonah from shivering like a leaf in the wind. Then they prepared to load the stretcher into the helicopter.

“You cannot take him in that … that thing.” Caleb’s father stepped forward, thumping his hickory cane on the ground. “I won’t allow it.”

From the moment the county rescue crew had declared that Jonah’s only hope of survival was to be airlifted to a trauma center in Philadelphia, there had been a division in the community. Dr. Mose Shrock, who supervised the emergency services of the local hospital, had been contacted by phone. He’d confirmed the rescuers’ plan, and Caleb had approved the transport without hesitation.

Now his face felt carved in stone as he glared at his father. “They’re taking him,” he said simply. “I’ ll allow it.”

“Sir, you’ll have to step aside,” a man shouted, jostling in front of Asa. “We’re going to load him hot, while the chopper’s still going.”

“These people will take care of you,” Caleb said to his nephew, climbing to his feet. “I love you, Jonah, don’t ever forget I love you.”

“Uncle Caleb, don’t leave me.”

Despite the noise of the beating rotors, Caleb heard his nephew’s faint plea, piercing his heart.

The nurses and paramedics of the life flight lifted the board as the pilot did a walk around the helicopter, checking the landing area. Jonah was lost amid a pile of blankets and gear. His blood stained the ground everywhere.

“I’m going with him,” Caleb said loudly. “I have to go with him.”

A nurse in a utility vest looked at him, then over at Jonah.

“Please,” Caleb said. “He’s just a little boy.”

“It’s the pilot’s call. I’ll see what she says about the fly-along.”

Caleb turned and found himself face-to-face with his father. Asa held his hat clapped on his head to keep it from being blown away by the rotors. His straight-cut coat and broadfall trousers flapped in the wind. He stood flanked by the neighbors, forming a somber wall of fear and disapproval.

The last thing on Caleb’s mind was Amish Ordnung. Clearly it was uppermost in the minds of his father and the elders.

“If it’s God’s will that the boy is to survive,” Asa stated, “then he will do so without being lifted into the sky.”

Caleb didn’t trust God’s will, and he hadn’t in a long time. But he didn’t argue with his father. He hadn’t done that in a long time either.

Hannah rushed to his side. Her face was pale gray and awash with tears. “You have to go, Uncle Caleb. You have to.”

Alma Troyer stepped forward, her mouth set in a firm line. She cut a quick glance from Asa to Hannah. “You go, Caleb. I’ll keep Hannah with me while you’re away.”

The flight nurse touched his arm. “You’re in. The pilot said you can come.”

Caleb nodded and turned to his father. “I’ll call.” The Amish families shared a phone box in the middle of the village, its use limited to necessary business and emergencies. Without waiting for a reply, he turned on his heel and followed one of the EMS technicians to the chopper.

In a tangle of tubes and monitors, Jonah was being loaded into the side bay of the shiny blue helicopter. “Whoa, you’re a tall one. Keep your head low,” a technician cautioned Caleb, pointing upward. “Stay to the front and left of the chopper.”

Hardwired to her radio equipment, the pilot glanced at Caleb. “You’re a big fella,” she yelled. “What do you weigh?”

Caleb never weighed himself. “Two hundred pounds,” he estimated, aware of the broad blade swinging overhead. He was nineteen hands tall, judging by the draft horses he worked with. Well over six feet. He was definitely at risk of having his head lopped off by the rotating blade.

“Our weight limit’s two-twenty,” the pilot said. “Let’s do it.”

The technician kept his hand on Caleb’s shoulder and guided him aboard. Someone tossed his hat to him. They showed him where to sit and how to strap himself in. In the cramped space, he was close enough to Jonah to reach the boy, but he couldn’t figure out a place to touch. He rested his hand somewhere—the kid’s foot. Even through layers of thermal blankets, it was cold as ice.

“Jonah,” he said, “I’m with you. Hear me? I’m coming with you.”

He was given a set of headphones with spongy earpieces. Radios crackled and screeched. Monitoring equipment beeped, straps and clamps were locked into place. A mask was put over Jonah’s nose and mouth, and one of the workers squeezed an air bag at regular intervals. In minutes, the doors were pulled shut. The pilot rattled off a series of orders, simultaneously checking things in the cockpit and snapping a series of switches and levers. With a roar of increasing power, the chopper lifted straight off the ground.

Caleb’s stomach dropped, and the breath left his lungs. Through a rounded glass opening, he saw the people gathered near the landing site. Neighbors and friends, his father still holding his hat to his head, growing smaller and smaller as the copter ascended into the sky. They looked like a black-and-gray cloud against the golden fields. Hannah lay crumpled on the ground, her skirts surrounding her like an inkblot. Someone should go to her, put a hand on her shoulder to reassure the girl. But no one did.

The helicopter passed the silo in the blink of an eye, but in one glimpse Caleb could see the conveyor slanting up to the opening, the shredding machine positioned at the top. And on the ground, on the green-and-brown earth where the farm had stood for generations, he saw the livid stain of his nephew’s blood, oddly in the shape of a broken star.

The helicopter nurse was yelling information into a radio, most of which Caleb barely understood. Jonah’s BP and respiration, absent pulses distal to the injury site, other things spoken in code so rapidly he couldn’t follow. He did catch one word, though, loud and clear.

Incomplete transhumeral amputation.

Amputation.

The helicopter lurched and careened to one side. Caleb pressed his hand against the hull to steady himself, and his stomach roiled. Another feeling pushed through his terror for Jonah, a feeling so powerful that it made him ashamed. Because in the middle of this devastating trauma, he felt an undeniable thrill. He was up in the air, hovering above the earth, flying.

All his life he had tried to imagine what it was like to fly, and now he was doing it. So far, the experience was more amazing and more terrible than he’d ever thought it would be. The land lay in squares made of different hues of green and yellow and brown, stitched together by pathways and irrigation ditches. Shady Creek was a slick silver ribbon fringed by bunches of trees. There were toy houses connected by walkways and white picket fences, a skinny single-lane road with a canvas-topped buggy creeping along behind a horse. Caleb could tell it was the Zooks’ Shire, even from the sky. He knew practically every horse in Middle Grove.

The chopper moved so fast that the view changed every few seconds, sweeping over the Poconos. The nurse finished punching buttons on some piece of equipment. “Sir,” she said to Caleb, “I need to ask you some questions about your son.” Her voice sounded tinny and distant through the headphones.

No time to explain that Jonah wasn’t his son.

“Yeah, sure.” At her prompting, he reported Jonah’s name, his age, the fact that he didn’t suffer from any allergies Caleb knew of. She wanted to understand the nature of the accident and he did his best to explain how the equipment worked, how the blades shredded the corn and blew it into the silo, how sometimes a piece got fouled up and needed an extra push with the next stalk in line. From the look on the woman’s face, he could tell his explanation was as incomprehensible to her as her medical jargon was to him. Another thing he could see on her face was the real question, the one she would not ask.

How could you let a child work around such dangerous equipment?

Caleb couldn’t even answer that for himself. It was the way things had always been done on the farm. From the time they learned to walk, kids helped out. The tiniest ones fed chickens and ducks, weeded the garden, picked tomatoes and beans. When a boy got older, he helped with plow and harrow, the hay baler, sheaves, fetching and carrying from the milk house, anything that needed doing. It was the Amish way. And the Amish way was to never question tradition.

He tried to check on his nephew, but there was little of Jonah to see amid the tangle of tubes and wires and the guy squeezing the big plastic bulb into the boy’s nose and mouth. The chopper veered again, and the landscape quickly changed. Philadelphia was a bristling maze of steel and concrete giants arranged along the wide river and other waterways. The city had its own kind of strange beauty, made up of crazy angles and busy roads. Atop one of the buildings, a series of markings seemed to pull the chopper from the sky like a magnet.

“They’re going to do a hot unload,” the nurse explained. “They’ll get him out even before the chopper stops. You just wait until it stops, and the pilot will tell you when it’s safe to get out.”

“Got it.” Caleb was startled when he looked down and saw that his hat was still clutched in his bloody hand.

His other hand lay on the blanket covering Jonah’s bony bare foot. Please, Jonah, he said without speaking. Don’t die on me.

The Amish never prayed aloud except at meeting. They were a people of long, meditative silences that made folks think they were slow-witted. Caleb begged, with wordless contemplation, for mercy for his nephew.

He’s only a little boy. He sings to the ducks when he feeds them in the morning. He sleeps with his dog at the foot of his bed. Every time he smiles, the sun comes out. His laughter reminds me that life is beautiful. I can’t lose him. I can’t. Not my Jonah-boy.

Caleb was praying for the first time in years. But for him, prayer had always been like shouting down a well. Your own words were echoed back at you. Only the truly faithful believed someone was actually there on the other end, listening.





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