Arms of Love (8 page)

L
ena winced as Isaac flung the last shovelful of dirt onto the dark mound.

He wiped his sweating brow and exhaled as he rested a foot on the shovel.

“That’s done, then,” he said. “Now we can get on with the service. Adam might have at least stayed for the burial.”

But Lena closed her eyes against his casual words. She knew Isaac was practical and stalwart in his faith. Perhaps she should have more of his attitude in approaching life . . . and death. It was the Lord’s will, and her mother had taught her much about acceptance in faith. But the fact that Adam had dug the grave with little remark and Isaac fretted over filling it in made a pitiful comparison.

She thrust aside the unworthy thought. Isaac’s strength lay in his mind and not in his body—not that Adam himself didn’t possess keen intelligence. Nee, she must learn to accept Isaac as her future brotherin-law. She sighed between her teeth, not wanting to dwell on thoughts of Adam at the moment of her mother’s burial.

Isaac began to speak in High German, in sober tones. Lena bowed her head and stretched out her cold hands to encircle John and Abigail. Ruth Stone was inside the house, rocking the babies. Isaac’s voice wore on until he concluded with an Amish proverb that set Lena’s teeth on edge: “Blessed are the laps that are full of
kinner
. Blessed was Mary Yoder.”

The idle and irreverent thought that her mother’s lap was now full of dirt skimmed Lena’s consciousness, to be banished with haste. She nodded her thanks to Isaac, who clearly expected some word for the service performed. She moved forward to press his arm.

“
Danki
, Isaac. That was beautiful.”

He nodded. “
Mamm
, if you could see to the
kinner
, I would have a word with Lena alone.”

Lena heard his words through a sudden, swamping tunnel of dismay. She knew he meant to offer spiritual counsel, but somehow, on the heels of the burial, she could not think of such a thing. Yet she was used to pleasing others, keeping peace. She stifled a sigh as Ellen stepped forward and led Abigail and John back inside the house.

“Shall we walk a bit?” Isaac asked.

Lena nodded, trying to concentrate on the sodden landscape, the lichen on a rotting log, the post at the end of the fence that needed straightening. There was still, after her father’s twenty years of work, a fair meeting of forest and apple farm, a need to hold back the trees and wildlife that encroached like an inexorable tide. She became aware that Isaac had repeated himself, and she murmured an apology.

“I said,” he went on stiffly, “that I am here to offer you counsel and compassion, should you so desire. I know that my brother is not always of a heavenly bent of mind, so I thought that I would seek to give what I can.”

She stopped, her leather shoe catching in some bracken, and for a moment she could hear Adam, his voice hoarse with emotion, praying aloud for her safety and a good night’s sleep, as he was often wont to do. How unfair was it that his own brother did not see this side of him?

“Isaac, I thank you for the offer of your counsel, but I have no need of it at present. I must do as my
hartz
convicts and trust
Derr Herr
to help us manage. He will provide for us—as will Adam.” She focused on believing the words she spoke, offering both petition and praise to the Lord through the silence in her heart.

Isaac snorted. “Does it not occur to you, Lena, that it is I, through the Lord, of course, who am your provision of spiritual refuge?”

“
Nee
,” she said. “Forgive me, Isaac, but I don’t understand.”

He frowned. “Your mother is gone, your father imprisoned. The bishop is far afield. Surely you see your need for spiritual counsel.”

She laid a soft hand on his arm. “Again, Isaac, please forgive me. But my spirit is too distraught within me to speak of such things at this moment.” She went on gently. “And Adam is my spiritual bedrock, Isaac.”

“Your thoughts are not clear,” he said, clasping his hands behind his back and nodding in understanding. “I will press my offer at a later date.”

“And my reply will be the same.”

Isaac smiled. “You are stubborn, like my brother. But you will be my sister-in-law. My offer stands should you ever desire my help.”

“Of course,” she breathed, feeling a wave of relief and thinking that time might ease his rather pompous overture. But he was right in saying that her thoughts were not clear at the moment. How could they be?

Isaac offered a stiff arm to her and escorted her to the house. A few minutes later, she saw him and his mother off with a brisk wave as they departed in their heavy Conestoga wagon, the only sure means of travel in the mud and ruts of spring. Lena wished she had as sure a means of navigation for her own mind and heart over the days to come.

Adam’s heart sank as Joseph Wyse drove off without a backward glance. Surely his father had considered the long miles back on foot and the fact that his gun was gone with his horse. And no gun meant no protection from the wild animals that still prowled the land.

Adam stood in the street until the last turn of the wagon wheels disappeared in solemn revolution over an empty rise in the road ahead, then put one foot in front of the other. It was always the same . . . some hope for peace between them, then a cruel twist of happenings and the returning flood of fear. What was he to do? He’d prayed, tried to speak of it, begged, and always, his father was the same—boiling with provocation and challenge.

He wondered why his father seemed to garner such hate toward him and why he, in turn, would give anything for a scrap of praise from the man despite his harsh ways. Adam had been seventeen the last time his father whipped him. He no longer remembered the infraction, but he knew Joseph had had a hard time stopping with that particular beating. Adam’s back had taken weeks to heal, and even now, the whitened scars on his shoulders could still ache with residual pain.

Actually, Adam preferred the whippings to the subtle cruelties his father had progressed to—like leaving him the long, empty walk or mocking him for the affection he’d held for a dog that had died the year before. And then there was Lena . . . He shuddered when he thought of the power his father held over him in knowing his love for the girl. It was a vulnerability, like an open wound, but he was too transparent in his affections to hide anything from the cold gray eyes that seemed to study him with the targeted precision of a long rifle. And now, with the promise he had made to Mary Yoder, his father would gain even more power over him, unless . . . unless he did something different.

He listened to the sound of his own footsteps as he jumped from rock to rock to avoid the mud. Then he thought of Tim, and his eyes stung. He told himself that he was foolish to cry over a horse when the country was at war. He was grateful that Lena was not present to see his pain, as she had been that cold winter day when he was seventeen . . . The memory of that time flooded back as he walked.

“Rebellion . . . in all its forms . . . will cease from this house!”

The hiss of the lash punctuated his father’s words as Adam clung to the thick wooden post where he was bound. He tried to let the wood absorb some of the force from his father’s arm and concentrated on the count . . .
Sixteen strokes. Four more to go
.

Out of habit, he was careful to make no sound, knowing that it would just provoke his father and make his mother feel worse. He wondered dizzily what would happen if his father ever forgot to stop, and he tried to concentrate on the blinding white of the snow across the open yard.

“Tend your brother.”

Adam heard the whip drop to the ground and exhaled, though the breath cost him. He felt his hands cut loose, and he pressed against the post, trying to force himself to stand. He could not steady his legs and waited until the blessed feel of icy water hit his back.

“Why do you persist with
Fater
, Adam?” Isaac caught him around the waist and turned him with gentle hands.

“Cannot—help myself.” He tried to smile, his eyes closed for a moment against the swamping intensity of the pain.

“I don’t know why you stay. Though I—I’d miss you if you weren’t here.”

“
Danki
. But I have my reasons. Is
Mamm
gone?”

Isaac nodded. “
Ya
. Lean against me if you can.”

Joseph Wyse was precise with the whip, so accurate that he could take the head off a dandelion at twenty paces. He confined lashings to the shoulders and upper back, not letting the beatings maim but rather linger long with burning pain. He always saw fit to have the family present when Adam was disciplined, but he refused to allow Ellen to tend the boy’s wounds. It was either Isaac or the hired girl, Betty, who saw to him.

Adam much preferred his older brother’s clumsy hands to Betty’s deliberate touch. The girl always wanted to steal a kiss after she dressed his wounds with bear’s grease. His head usually throbbed with her ministrations, which were simply a veiled excuse for getting near him.

They’d reached one of the smaller barns, and Isaac stopped to let him rest, though the cold made Adam’s teeth chatter in his painful, shirtless state. Suddenly their mother called from the wide back porch.

“Isaac! Your
fater
wants you . . . now.”

Adam heard the worry in her tone and knew it wasn’t for her elder son, but because she longed to tend to him.

“I’ll open the door for you and send Betty. I tell you, there are times when
Fater
does this that I would take hold of him and—” Isaac eased his supporting arm away and handed Adam his shirt.

“
Ach
, well,
gut
on that . . . ,” Adam muttered, forcing himself to concentrate on standing. He leaned against the open barn door and watched Isaac amble away.

It wasn’t like Isaac to show such emotion. His older brother moved with confidence around their father, never the receiver of the lash, perhaps because of his studious and holy bent of mind. Isaac was also endlessly obedient, not raising so much as a dark eyebrow in question of Joseph Wyse’s whims—until a moment ago.

Adam’s temperament was different, despite his desire for his father’s approval. He was impulsive and quick-tempered at times, so it was inevitable that trouble oft befell him. But he was no coward, seeking escape from the discipline his father saw fit to bestow upon him. Joseph Wyse was a respected leader among the local Amish; how he treated his second son was apparently of little consequence to that position.

Adam limped into the barn, not having the strength to swing the door closed behind him.
Betty will see to it
. He breathed in the mixed smells of hay and cows. His father kept only a few
milch
cows for the family’s needs; horses were what made and maintained the Wyse home and hearth.