A Wedding Quilt for Ella (17 page)

The bull bellowed and started in their direction.

Clara screamed, pulled Ella sideways, and slammed the upper door shut.

“You can’t do that,” Ella said. “We have to see, and we have to help somehow.”

“We can’t help. It’s comin’ here,” Clara said, her eyes wide.

Ella pulled the door open a crack and peeked out. “The bull has gone back,” she whispered and then swung the upper door open all the way.

Noah had already climbed down the side of the fence and approached Eli’s perch from the back.

“Climb down!” she yelled in Eli’s direction.

He shook his head. Clutching at his chest, he said, “I’m hurt bad.”

The bull approached again, bellowed, and rammed the post with its head. The board held, but Ella saw Eli lose his grip. His feet slipped, and he slid downward. He hung on to the top board for a moment by his fingertips and then dropped to the ground.

The bull bellowed and slammed its head into Eli’s back. Ella screamed, ‘No!” as her hand found the latch to the lower door. It swung open with the force of her body’s forward propulsion.

She raced across the barnyard. Her dad’s voice reached her faintly through the pounding in her head. “Don’t, Ella! You be stayin’ back! Listen to me!”

The bull raised its head at her approach and then leaped back, its legs scraping across Eli’s body. Ella never stopped or slowed down till she knelt down beside Eli. Her hand brushed his brow with never a glance back at the bull.

The bellow of the bull filled the barnyard as it lowered its head. Ella finally looked up but didn’t move away from Eli. She stood instead and yelled at the top of her voice. “You rotten, mean thing! Get away from here!”

The bull seemed momentarily stunned, shook its head, and then stomped the ground. Little chunks of dirt flew into the air. Then it bellowed again and seemed to gather its rage.

Ella held her ground over Eli, trembling. She raised her arms and yelled again, “Get away from here, you ugly, wicked thing!”

The bull stood its ground, shaking its head. It would soon smash its head right into her chest, and she would surely be joining Aden, who had already crossed over to the other side. Her time had come.

For a moment, Ella felt the joy of the coming reunion with her beloved. She would leap into his arms and never let him go. She would kiss him until she had no strength left. Death was a friend. Ella could laugh in the bull’s face as it rolled its eyes. At least she could save Eli by diverting the bull away from him. Ella stepped toward the bull, moving further down the fence line.

The bull shook its head again as Ella walked straight at it. To her astonishment it leaped aside. The bull remained too close to Eli, and so she repeated the walk, and again the bull backed down.

She stared at the bull, and it seemed to do the same. Wasn’t it going to run at her? It jerked its black head around and looked to the side. She paused, also hearing the sound, and then turned to look. Her dad came at a run, his face taut, his eyes wild. He carried a short gate with him.

Without a word, he rushed up and placed the gate between Ella and the bull. His whole body shook as he pulled in great gulps of air. “Get out of here,” he shouted. “Run, Ella!”

“I’m not going,” she said through clenched teeth.

The bull seemed to ponder the situation and must have decided it had been bested. The bull bellowed softly and walked off. Noah followed, his gate in front of him, until the bull had been driven from the barnyard into the stall at the other end. With a click of the latch Noah fastened the gate.

When he came back, Ella had already returned to kneel beside Eli. There was blood on his chest and hands, and blood came out of his ears.

“Does he breathe?” Noah asked, kneeling beside her.

“Yah,” she said.

“Da Hah sie lob,”
he said. “Let’s be gettin’ him to the house.”

Twenty-one

“I
don’t think he should be moved,” Ella said, her mind racing. “The
Englisha
always say not to move them. It could injure him even more.”

“We can’t leave him here, lying in the dirt,” Noah said. “He has to be taken to the house. Then someone can go for the doctor.”

“Is Eli dead?” Clara’s voice asked from somewhere inside the barn.

Ella looked up, shook her head, and turned her attention back to her brother.

Noah looked around. Arriving at a decision, he said, “We will lift him onto the gate with Monroe’s help. Monroe! We need your help.”

“He wasn’t in for milk’n yet,” Ella said. “It was just Clara and me.”

“Then he’s up in the silo.” Noah turned, ran in that direction, and hollered loudly up the outside chute, “Monroe! We need you now!”

A muffled cry answered him, and Noah motioned up the chute with his hand. Monroe’s legs soon appeared, followed by a hurried descent.

“What’s wrong?” Monroe asked.

“The bull got to Eli,” Noah said, “and we need your help carrying him to the house.”

“What was Eli doin’ around the bull?” Monroe asked as they ran back. “He knows better than that.”

“I don’t know,” Noah said. “It doesn’t matter now. Let’s just get him into the house.”

Ella stepped away from Eli when they brought the gate over. Eli’s breath now came in ragged gasps. With Noah at his shoulders and Monroe at his feet, they lifted. Ella went on her knees in the dirt and lifted from the side. His body settled on the metal rails, and Eli groaned deeply.

Noah and Monroe lifted together, one on each end, while Ella ran ahead to open the barnyard gate. The strange litter crossed the front yard to the house. Clara had come out of the barn to clutch Ella’s arm as she shut the gate and followed behind.

At the house, Mamm came down the front steps two at a time. Dora slowly came out behind her but stopped at the top of the steps as if frozen. Behind her all three younger girls looked on with wide eyes.

Wordlessly Mamm knelt beside the gate as Noah and Monroe lowered it to the ground.

“The bull got to him,” Noah said, his voice hoarse.

Mamm cradled Eli’s head in her hands. “You must take him to the clinic, to Dr. Mast’s. He will know what to do,” she said, looking up at Noah’s face.

He nodded. “We will hitch up the flatbed wagon.”

“Please,” Lizzie pled, “can you call the ambulance, yah? He may die before you drive him down.”

“I will not have that
Englisha
machine with its lights and noise on our place,” Noah said. “It does not befit our people even in this hour of trouble.”

“He’s your son,” Mamm said, and Ella saw the pain on her mom’s face.

Her dad seemed to ponder this, his hands by his side, his face suddenly much older than it had been this morning.

“I just thought of something. Alex Adams will drive him. He has a pickup,” Noah said, his face showing his relief.

“Ask him quickly, then,” Mamm said, looking down at Eli’s still form. “He still breathes but not by much.”

Noah answered by sprinting across the yard but slowing to a walk at the road. When he arrived on the porch of their only non-Amish neighbors, he knocked rapidly on the door. Mr. Adams appeared, and after a brief exchange, the two men moved rapidly to the garage. The sound of a truck motor quickly turned into the crunch of gravel as Mr. Adams drove across the road and backed up carefully to the metal gate.

“Blankets!” Mr. Adams said loudly before he was even out of the pickup door. “Lots of them, ladies! Quick about it!”

Dora and Ella made a dash for the house. Mamm stayed where she was, her hands cradled under Eli’s head.

“What shall we use?” Dora asked. “Blankets from the cedar chest, perhaps?”

“Yah,” Ella said as an idea rushed into her mind. “Get those, but I’ll be gettin’ something heavier.”

As Dora went for the bedroom and the cedar chest, Ella took the basement stairs. Once down, she removed the quilt from the frame without any hesitation. Dora was already outside and had handed the blankets into the outstretched hands of Noah and Mr. Adams when Ella arrived back in the yard.

She stood ready to offer her quilt, but Dora still held one in her hands. Noah jumped down from the pickup bed, motioning for Monroe to help with the lift. With Mr. Adam’s aid, the three picked Eli off the gate and set him onto the pickup bed. Dora held out her last blanket, and Noah covered Eli with it.

“Your quilt,” her mom said. “He’ll be needin’ more warmth.”

Ella held out the quilt, and her mom’s eyes widened as she unfolded it.

“It’s your wedding quilt.”

“Use it,” Ella whispered.

Her mom hesitated and then nodded. She tucked the quilt snugly around the blankets and under Eli and stepped back. Noah jumped in the back of the pickup truck.

“Monroe can ride in front,” he said. “He’d best go along with me. We might need help to get Eli out of the truck at the clinic.”

The pickup lurched onto the blacktop and accelerated down the road. Noah clutched the metal side of the truck with one hand, and his beard whipped backwards straight off his shoulders. He held on to his hat with the other hand.

Ella stepped over to her mom’s side. Dora came up and placed her arms around both of them. The two sisters helped Mamm walk to the porch, and Clara followed close behind. When they reached the top step, Mamm sat down and sobbed into her hands with great gasps.

“Maybe he’ll be okay,” Ella said. But her mom hadn’t seen the worst—the bull standing over Eli, Eli’s blood mixed with the barnyard mud, and the hopelessness in Eli’s eyes before he passed out.

“Da Hah
has seen fit to visit us with much sorrow,” her mom said. “I don’t think I can lose my son yet.”

Ella didn’t know what to say, and Dora remained silent too.
It’s just as well,
Ella thought,
because Dora might foolishly mention the tale about three deaths in a row.

“Dr. Mast from the clinic is good. He’ll be knowing what to do,” Ella said. Beside her Dora cleared her throat, but Ella silenced her with a quick glance.

“Tell me what happened,” Mamm said, her sobs subsiding.

“Clara and I were milkin’,” Ella said. “We heard this hollering and the bull bellowing in the barnyard. When we went to look, Eli had already climbed the fence but couldn’t get down. The bull must have run into him once already.”

“Did you see that?” Mamm asked.

“No,” Ella said.

“Go on,” her mom said.

“Daett tried to get Eli away from the bull but was chased himself. I thought that bull was going to catch Daett, but he got over the fence just in time. Then the bull went back to Eli. It hit the fence and knocked Eli off. When he fell to the ground…the bull gored him.”

Ella was silent again.

“How did you get the bull off Eli?” her mom finally asked.

“Daett got a gate and chased it back to its pen,” Ella said, leaving her own part in the rescue out.

“Ella helped too,” Clara said, but added nothing more when Ella shook her head at her.

“I’ve always been tellin’ Noah to watch those new bulls,” Mamm said. “He tries to be careful—I know he does, but…”

“Maybe Eli forgot we had a new bull,” Ella said. “I didn’t hear anyone say why he was in the barnyard with it. Maybe he took a shortcut across it. He was late to help us with choring.”

“It could have been anything,” Mamm said. “These things happen all the time. I had hoped they wouldn’t happen to us.”

“The milkin’!” Dora said, remembering. “It’s not done.”

“Oh, my.” Mamm stood up. “Yah, those poor cows. The milking has to be done now…and the little girls.” She glanced up at the three girls on the porch. “They saw all of this, and they are much too small. They should have been taken inside.”

“They’ll be okay, and you’re not goin’ out to the barn,” Ella said, her voice firm. “We’ll take care of the chores.”

“I don’t think I could if I wanted to,” her mom said with a sigh and sat down on the porch steps again.

“Don’t worry ‘bout supper either,” Ella told her. “No one’s hungry anyway.”

Clara and Dora nodded in agreement.

“We’ll see ’bout that,” Mamm said, “but the milkin’ has to be done right away.”

Ella squeezed her mom’s shoulder, leaving her on the porch steps, and led the way back to the barn. Inside, the cows greeted her with what sounded like both irate and discouraged moos.

Immediately Ella and Dora got busy by grabbing their stools and locating their buckets.

Ella turned and said to Clara, “You’ll have to help until we’re done. These cows are in pain.”

“Like we aren’t,” Dora said. “Eli. He’s dead. As sure as anything, he is. It’s comin’ like everyone knew it was comin’. They talked ’bout it last night at the singing. These things always come in threes and don’t stop until they’re done. Just who would have thought it would be us? We already had one tragedy. Doesn’t
Da Hah
know better than that? Loadin’ people down with more than they can bear? This will give Mamm more than she can bear. And you too, Ella. You already lost your beloved, and now your oldest brother will be gone. I don’t understand any of this, I do declare. It makes no sense at all.”