An Uncommon Grace Read Free Page A

mother’s singing or his stepfather calling out to her for some small thing. No teasing. No laughter. Absolute silence except for the clock and the creaking of his own work boots as he walked across the wooden floor.
    He hurried into the front room, the feeling of sick dread thickening with every step. Everything looked exactly the same as when he left this morning—except for the pile of old clothes in the corner. For a moment, he thought it was nothing more than misplaced laundry. Then his brain processed the fact that it was his stepfather’s crumpled body.
    He crossed the front room in three long strides and knelt at Daed ’s side. There was no pulse in his wrist or his neck. Abraham Shetler’s life had drained out into a pool of blood, saturating the rag rug that Maam had painstakingly made one winter.
    Levi’s own pulse hammered in his ears as he took the stairs two at a time to the bedrooms.
    He found his mother lying on her right side in the hall, directly outside the doorway of her bedroom. One arm was outstretched and her eyes were closed. Her choring kerchief had come undone and her blond hair spilled out. Blood saturated the front of her dark green dress. She was curled up as much as her pregnancy allowed. Somehow she had managed to ball up her work apron and press it against her right side before losing consciousness.
    He fell to his knees and placed his fingers against her neck. Unlike his stepfather, she still lived. He pulled the stained apron away and saw a bullet wound in her right side, almost grazing her rounded belly. To his eyes, the bullet wound seemed much too small to have caused so much blood.
    She was only a few weeks away from giving birth. His mind recoiled from the possibilities of what the bullet might have done to the unborn babe. What kind of person shot a woman heavy with child?
    “The children”—his mother opened her eyes at his touch—“are hiding in barn.” She began to cry softly. “Thank Gott you are here!”
    His gentle mother was a noted healer in their tight-knit society—a woman who had absorbed as much knowledge as possible with the eighth-grade education their faith allowed. He had often helped her tend her medicinal herb garden while she patiently taught him the healing properties of each plant.
    One thing he knew—no plant or herb could treat a bullet wound. He had to get her to the hospital as fast as possible. She needed an ambulance. Now.
    Resentment flared within him over the fact that, unlike the Old Order Amish, his Swartzentruber Amish church did not allow them to keep a phone of any kind—not even a telephone shanty at the end of their driveway for emergencies.
    He had no way to call for help.
    His mind went into overdrive, evaluating his options. By the time he could harness and hitch the driving horse to the buggy, then carry his wounded mother out, load up the children, and drive the ten miles per hour the horses could sustain all the way to Pomerene Hospital—nine miles away in Millersburg—it would be too late. Suddenly her belly tightened, her body convulsed, and she cried out—much as she had cried out when his little brothers and sister had been born here in this house.
    She could not be in labor. Not now. It was too early.
    “Hold on, Maam. ” He pressed her work apron tightly against the bullet wound and raced back down the stairs. Heplunged through the door, leaped upon his startled horse, and galloped to the barn.
    “Are you all right?” Levi called up to the hayloft as he paused at the giant doors of the barn.
    “ Jah ,” he heard a small voice responding.
    “Stay where you are. I am going for help.” He wheeled his horse around.
    “But, Levi . . .” Albert’s frightened face appeared above him. “Can we come down now?”
    “Do not step foot out of this hayloft until I return. Verschtehsht du ?” He looked Albert straight in the eyes. “Do you understand?”
    The little boy nodded.
    Thanking God for the obedience his good