Whispers of a New Dawn Read Free Page B

beauty, the Pennsylvania land.”
    Becky smiled. “I know.”
    “There will be many people at the station. Do you think you have all their names straight?”
    “I know all your sisters and brothers—my aunts and uncles. Don’t ask me to remember all their kids. You Amish grow families like you grow cornfields—they stretch to the horizon.”
    “ You Amish . You’re Amish too, Becky.”
    “No, I’m not. I’ve never been baptized like you and Dad. Nevertaken any oaths.” She looked into her mother’s clear green eyes. “Why don’t they shun you?”
    “Shh. There was enough of that when your father and I were young. The bishop and the people have made a kind of exception for us—an Ausnahme —so that we can come and go and still visit with them even if right now we are not truly one with them.”
    “ Right now? How can we ever be one with them, Mother? We could never fly again.”
    “Yes, we could fly. The Ordnung of our community allows its members to travel short distances by air for business or family matters or medical care.”
    “No. I want to fly. I don’t want someone to fly for me.”
    “Shh. There’s no need to argue. No one is asking you to take the baptismal vows.” Her mother looked out the window and smiled. “There they are. Bishop Zook is in his seventies and still straight and tall as the center beam in a barn.”
    Becky had no intention of smiling but couldn’t stop herself as she saw the bishop in his black clothing and white beard towering over the others. “The gentle giant. I remember his piggyback rides.”
    Jude leaned over both of them as he peered out the window. “I think he could still do it. Though you and he did not call them piggyback rides, did you?”
    Becky’s smile grew, bringing all the color out in her eyes. “No. They were plane rides. I don’t think Pastor Miller approved.”
    “Oh, well, that’s Miller’s way. But he’s mellowed some since 1918.”
    Becky glanced up at her father. “He must have been a horror twenty years ago.”
    Jude shrugged. “A tough cud to chew. Eventually it goes down.”
    But Pastor Miller was as cheerful as Bishop Zook, both of them laughing and shaking hands and hugging with the vigor of twenty-year-olds. Beside Pastor Miller stood his son Joshua, taller than his father, covered in freckles, a big grin opening up his face. Becky knew who he was—the infant whose life her father and mother had saved by flying him to Harrisburg when he was dying of the Spanish flu. Pastor Miller had refused to allow the flight up until the last minute.Now he had one hand on his son’s shoulder, and his pride and joy were obvious.
    “We must all get along to the picnic. Ja , we celebrate your homecoming with a picnic. The children are like balloons full of air they are so excited.” Pastor Miller patted his son’s back. “A blacksmith. Our new blacksmith.”
    Faces flowed past Becky’s eyes. Grandfather and Grandmother Kurtz—her mother’s parents. And there, too, her mother’s sisters and brothers all grown up, with families of their own—Aunt Sarah, Uncle Daniel, Uncle Harley, and Uncle Luke. Pastor King and Pastor Stoltzfus, both old and stiff, but with plenty of light in their eyes and lots of goodwill in their greetings. Then there was her favorite, Auntie Ruth, her mother’s older sister. Her raven hair was streaked with white and silver and her blue eyes were pale, but her arms around Becky were as strong as they had ever been.
    Becky kissed her aunt’s cheek. “Auntie Ruth. It’s so good to see you again.”
    “And you. So tall. As beautiful as your mother.”
    Ruth had been widowed after only one year. No child had been conceived before her husband was killed by a kick from a Percheron he was struggling to harness. Ruth had never remarried and had returned to the Kurtz household to help her mother raise her brothers and Sarah. Now she did most of the housework though Grandmother Kurtz still had her hand in with the baking