Whispers of a New Dawn Read Free Page A

her plane and put on a prayer kapp in her old age—”
    “Old age?” Jude protested. “She’s barely forty!”
    “—that’s up to her. But I’m nineteen and if you try to ground me—”
    “No one is going to try to ground you, Beck.”
    “—I’ll just make my own way through this world without anyone’s help. I know God wants me up there. It’s like that poem you read to me when I got my pilot’s license. A lonely impulse of delight drove to this tumult in the clouds . It delights God that I fly. I know it does.”
    Jude gathered her into his arms and kissed the top of her head. “All right. All right. Shh.”
    “And I don’t need a man either. Especially a man who doesn’t think a woman can fly a plane straight and level. Or who doesn’t believe any woman—or any man—should fly a plane at all. So don’t try to be a matchmaker when we get to Lancaster County.”
    “What are you thinking? That your mother and I are hatching a scheme to get you married off this summer?”
    “Who knows? I hear you whispering and my name sounds the same in whispers or out loud.”
    “Oh, Beck. Hooking you up to an Amish farm boy would be like putting a modern engine in an old Fokker triplane. Why, the stress on the wing struts would tear the plane apart.”
    “Yes.” Becky’s arms were still folded and the tip of her nose a burning red. “Exactly.”
    “Enough. Peace. We’ll help the Thornberrys learn the ropes this week, okay?”
    “I know that.”
    “Then we’ll visit with Aunt Ruth and Bishop Zook and Pastor Miller and all the rest. For a month or two. Also okay?”
    “A month or two? Oh, I guess.”
    “All the time we’ll be praying, thinking, wondering.”
    “Yeah, yeah, okay. But I already know where God wants me to be and what he wants me to do.”
    Jude smiled. “Which is?”
    “He wants me to be a pilot and he wants me up with the angels and the wild birds. I fly for God. I fly for the people he asks us to help. And I fly for me. That’s it.”
    “A nice neat package.”
    “It is.”
    “Air delivery.”
    “Yes.”
    “Hey. Remember we love you.” Jude tilted up his daughter’s face with its fiery emerald eyes. “When Nate felt he ought to go to China we had big misgivings. But we let him go because he was a man and capable of making his own decisions. I want so badly to see him again and hug him. The same goes for you, Beck. If you believe God wants you inthe air then stay in the air. Mom and I won’t stand in your way. We may talk things over with you, argue a bit, make sure you know what’s on our minds. But in the end it’s up to you. You’re nineteen now. An adult.”
    Becky’s eyes glistened. “Thanks, Dad.” She put her arms around him and hugged his body as tightly as she could. “You’ll see Nate again.”
    “I know I will.”
    “I mean here. Not just there. Here. On this earth. You’ll see him. I believe that.”
    Jude hugged his daughter back and closed his eyes, holding her. “I’d do anything to make that happen, Beck. Anything God asked.”

T WO
    P aradise!”
    Becky opened her eyes. She had been half asleep, daydreaming about Turks and Caicos, the jade waters, her mother piloting the Leopard Moth to Miami, the president and vice-president of the mission board meeting the three of them there and taking charge of the plane, the long train trip up the eastern seaboard, miles of cities and towns, miles of cars, miles of flat fields. The monotony had made her doze. Now she saw tall green hayfields drenched in heat, men with straw hats and women with white prayer kapps driving teams of horses, a blacksmith shop with all its doors and windows wide open as the forge glared orange, a horse and buggy rolling along a dirt road by the track, a man with a long beard and hat and dark suspenders crossed over the back of his white shirt leaning on a shovel in a field and gazing at the locomotive as it steamed past.
    Her mother put a hand on Becky’s arm. “It has its own