An Amish Christmas Promise

Now he was on a bus on a late October day because he needed time away, time with peace and quiet, to figure out the answer to one vital question: Should he remain in their Amish community, or was the future he wanted beyond a plain life?

Today Michael was in Vermont, on his way to Evergreen Corners. The small village was at the epicenter of powerful flash floods that had accompanied Hurricane Kevin when the massive storm stalled over the eastern slopes of the Green Mountains last week.

The bus hit another pothole in the dirt on what once had been a paved road. He was shocked to discover the other lane had been washed away. The road, a major north–south conduit in the state, was barely wider than the bus’s wheels. He didn’t see any cars anywhere, just a couple of trucks with what looked like a town seal on their doors. They were parked near a building where all the windows and doors were missing.

His stomach tightened. Had those vehicles been commandeered as ambulances? Were the people working there looking for victims?

The stories coming out of Vermont had warned that the situation was dismal. Whole sections of towns like Evergreen Corners had been washed away by torrents surging along what had been babbling brooks. People left with no place to live, all their possessions gone or covered with thick mud. Trees torn from the banks. Rocks—both giant boulders and tons of gravel—swept beneath bridges and damming the streams, forcing the water even higher.

Michael could see the road—or what there was left of it—followed a twisting stream between two steep mountains. The job of rebuilding was going to be bigger than he’d imagined when he’d stepped forward to offer his skills as a carpenter.

How much could he and the other fifteen volunteers on the bus do in the next three months? Where did they begin?

And what had made him think he’d find a chance to think about the future here?

God, I trust You know where I should be. Help me see.

The bus jerked to a stop, and the driver opened the door. “Here we are!”

A pungent odor oozed into the bus. It was a disgusting mix of mud and gasoline and the fuel oil that had been washed out of household storage tanks. Michael gasped, choking on the reek.

When a mask was held out to him, he took it from his friend, Benjamin Kuhns, who was sitting beside him, but didn’t put it on. Like Michael, Benjamin had volunteered when a representative of Amish Helping Hands had come two days ago to Harmony Creek Hollow. Amish Helping Hands worked with other plain organizations to help after natural disasters. Benjamin announcing that he wanted to come, too, had been a surprise, because he’d been focused for the past year on working with his older brother, Menno, in getting their sawmill running. Business had been growing well, and Michael wondered if Benjamin was seeking something to help him grasp onto his future, too.

“Watch where you step,” shouted the bus driver before he went out.

Michael stood and grabbed his small bag off the shelf over his head, stuffing the mask into a pocket. He noticed a few people on the bus had donned theirs.

His larger bag, where he’d packed the tools he expected he’d need, was stored under the bus. Nobody spoke as they filed out, and he knew he wasn’t the only person overwhelmed by the destruction.

As his feet touched the muddy ground, he heard, “Look out!”

He wasn’t sure whether to duck, jump aside or climb back on the bus. Looking around, he saw a slender blonde barreling toward him, arms outstretched.

Squawking was the only warning he got before a small brown chicken ran into him, bounced backward, turned and kept weaving through the crowd of volunteers moving to get their luggage from beneath the bus. The chicken let out another terrified screech before vanishing through a forest of legs and duffels.

The woman halted before she ran into him, too. Putting out her hands, she stopped two kinder from colliding with him. The force of their forward motion drove her a step closer, and he dropped his bag to the ground and caught her by the shoulders before she tumbled over the toes of his weather-beaten work boots. He was astounded that though her dress was a plain style, the fabric was a bright pink-and-green plaid.

“Are you okay?” Michael asked.

She nodded and looked at him with earth-brown eyes that seemed the perfect complement to her pale hair. She was so short her head hardly reached his shoulder. Her features were delicate. Thanking him, she turned to the kinder.

He hadn’t expected the simple act of gazing into her pretty eyes to hit him like the recoil of a mishandled nail gun. Was she plain, or dressed simply because she was cleaning up the mess left by the flood?

He glanced at the kinder who’d been chasing her and the chicken. The boy appeared to be around six or seven years old. He had light brown hair, freckles and blue-gray eyes. Along with jeans and sneakers, he wore a T-shirt stained with what looked like peanut butter and jelly. Beside him, and wearing almost identical clothing, though without the stains, the little girl had hair the same soft honey-blond as the woman’s. Like the boy, she had freckles, but her eyes were dark. When she grinned at him, she revealed she’d lost her two front teeth.

He couldn’t keep from smiling. The kind was adorable, and he could imagine how she’d be twisting boys’ hearts around her finger in a few years.

Just as Adah Burcky had with every guy who’d glanced her way. What a dummkopf he’d been to think he was the sole recipient of her kisses and flirtatious glances! He could hear her laugh when she’d walked away with another man. There had been a hint of triumph in it, as if she took delight in keeping track of the hearts she broke...including his.

What had brought Adah to mind? He’d come to Evergreen Corners to decide what he wanted to do with his future, not to focus on the past. For too long, he’d been drifting, following his twin brother to their new home, a place where he wasn’t sure he belonged. Was his life among the plain folk, or was the route God had mapped for him meant to take him somewhere else? He had three months to figure that out.

“She’s getting away,” the boy insisted in an ever-louder voice, breaking into Michael’s thoughts. “We’ve got to catch her before she gets hit by a car.”

“There aren’t a lot of cars on the road,” the woman replied, ruffling his hair in an attempt to calm him.

“But there are buses.” The boy flung out a hand toward the one that had brought Michael to Evergreen Corners. “See?”

Michael wasn’t the only one trying to stifle a grin as the woman said, “We’ll pray she’ll be fine, Kevin. Place her in God’s hands and trust He knows what’s best.”

Though he thought the boy would protest, the kind nodded. “Like you placed us in God’s hands when the brook rose.”

She nodded, but her serene facade splintered for a second. By the time she’d turned to Michael, it was again in place, and he wondered if he’d imagined the shadows in her eyes.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “We’ve been chasing Henrietta for the past fifteen minutes.” She gave him a wry smile. “Not an original name for a chicken, but the kids chose our flock’s names.”

“She went that way.” He pointed down the hill where a shallow brook rippled in the late-afternoon sunshine.

“She’s headed toward our place, so maybe she’ll turn up in what’s left of our yard if she gets hungry enough.” She wiped her forearm against her forehead and readjusted the black kerchief she wore over her honey-blond hair that was, he noticed for the first time, pulled into a tight bun at her nape.

“So your house is okay?” Michael asked.

She bit her lip before standing straighter. “No. Our house is gone.”

He was shocked that anyone who’d lost their home could smile as she had. Could he have faced the situation with such aplomb and the gut spirits she did? That was a question he hoped he’d never have to answer.

Carolyn Wiebe knew she’d astounded the handsome dark-haired man who’d stepped off the bus. What had he expected her to do? Rage against the whims of nature? The storm that decimated everything she’d worked for during the past four years had been a mindless beast whose winds tore up the valley before sending water barreling down it. Be angry at God? How could she, when He’d spared their lives and everyone else’s in Evergreen Corners? That hadn’t been the situation in other towns, or so rumor whispered. No one could be sure of anything, but she’d heard of five deaths. People swept away as she and her children could have been. She’d made a promise to look after them forever, and she wasn’t going to let a tempest change that.

Scanning the group from the bus, she dared to take a deep breath. She didn’t see any sign of Leland Reber. There were other brown-haired men, but not the formerly plain man who’d married her late sister and had two youngsters with her. Though she hadn’t seen his photo in over four years, she was sure she’d recognize him whether he dressed like her Englisch neighbors or in plain clothing. He had a square jaw with a cleft in his chin, which her sister Regina had found appealing...until the beatings started within weeks of their marriage.

For four years, Carolyn had managed to push Leland out of her mind while she focused on raising the children her sister had entrusted to her, children who called her Mommy. Then a neighbor had told her about hearing how Carolyn and the kids had been shown on national television news when reporters had appeared the day after the flood. If so, Leland, who’d embraced an Englisch life, most especially television and alcohol, could have learned where they were.

Carolyn’s first thought had been to flee as they had when she’d left her beloved plain community in Indiana. She realized doing that was impossible when the roads were open only to authorized vehicles. Her car had been swept away in the flood and hadn’t been found so she couldn’t take Kevin and Rose Anne anywhere.

Her one consolation was Leland should have as much trouble getting to Evergreen Corners. The one way he could gain entry was to pretend to volunteer and get a ride with one of the disaster services. So she asked about vehicles bringing volunteers into Evergreen Corners, and she’d devised an excuse to be nearby when the newcomers had stepped off the bus. Today, Henrietta had provided her with one. She couldn’t chance Leland sneaking into town and finding her and his son and daughter.

“Do you know where we’re supposed to go, Mrs.—?” asked the man who’d been accosted by Henrietta.

He wasn’t classically handsome. His straight nose was prominent, but his other features, especially his kind eyes, drew her attention away from it. Sharp cheekbones and a firm jaw suggested he wasn’t someone to dismiss. In the sunlight that had shone every day after the hurricane, red accents glistened in the brown hair beneath his straw hat. The breadth of the black strap on his hat as well as his accent told her that he must be from Pennsylvania.

She warned herself to be cautious. Though Leland wasn’t plain, he had many friends who were. Could he have sent one to look for her?

Stop being paranoid, she scolded herself. She wasn’t worried for herself, but for her niece and nephew.

“I’m Carolyn Wiebe.” She spoke the name without hesitation. She’d given it to herself after leaving Indiana, and she didn’t correct his assumption she was married. Even in her thoughts, she sometimes forgot her real name was Cora Hilty. She was glad neither of the children recalled the surname they’d been given at birth. “This is Rose Anne, and that is Kevin.”

“Kevin? Like Hurricane Kevin?”

“Appropriate for a five-year-old boy, don’t you think?” She laughed at the surprise on the man’s face. She didn’t want to tell him that, with her emotions so raw, she had two choices: laugh or cry. During the day, she laughed. At night when everyone else was asleep, she gave in to tears at the thought of how the flood had taken her home and livelihood. With her kitchen gone, she could no longer bake pies and cookies for the diner in town as well as a trio of tourist farms not far out of town.