JENNY WAS WATCHING FROM THE LOBBY of the library as the young man in the blue van drove past. For some strange reason she wanted to run out and stop him. Her meeting with Johnny Hershberger had been strange and disconcerting. He had made her feel uncomfortable and nice at the same time. She remembered looking into his eyes and starting to lose herself in them. She still felt the touch of his hand on hers, so she shoved the offending member into her pocket and tried to scrub the memory off against the wool lining.
“What’s going on?” she asked out loud. “I’m having crazy dreams, I’m remembering weird things from my childhood, I’m telling everything about my life to complete strangers…”
A library patron, hurrying past, gave Jenny a very strange glance.
…and now I’m talking to myself!
She stopped her thoughts and took a breath. She felt as if her life were spiraling out of control, and she realized that it might be a good idea to pray. But the idea made her uncomfortable when she remembered that she hadn’t prayed in a week, so she quickly bowed her head and whispered. “Lord, I’m feeling a little verblüfft, and I need Your help, I guess. Can You give me some help here please? Amen.”
Jenny looked up and looked around. No one had noticed her praying, but it hadn’t been much of a prayer anyway. She glanced back out the glass door. The blue van was no longer in sight, and she didn’t know which way it had gone.
She turned and walked toward the little desk that Mrs. Blake had given her in the back of the building. She decided to bury herself in her work all day and not think of the things that were troubling her anymore. She came to her desk, pulled off her coat, and hung it on the rack beside her cabinet. She pulled out her chair, sat down, and attacked the stack of historical material on her desk. But even as she worked, two images kept coming to her mind. One was a pair of sea-blue eyes that drew her deep into their unknown depths, and the other was a woman’s face.
The woman’s words echoed in Jenny’s head. “Jenny, come find me. I’m lost, so lost.”
Later that afternoon, Jenny was still sitting at her desk. She had tried to work on a project with a fast-approaching deadline but hadn’t been able to make any headway. Her thoughts kept drifting back to the dying woman. Jenny remembered her face being beautiful. She had long black hair, and her eyes were deep and dark, almost black.
Maybe that wasn’t my mother. My eyes are violet, not dark.
As Jenny tried to recall everything she could about the woman, the words kept coming back to her. “Jenny, come find me. I’m lost, so lost,” she whispered to herself.
Jenny wondered what that meant. Why was she lost? Where was she lost from? Then Jenny remembered something Papa said about the car where Mama found her. The car was from New York, and the police found a man in the pond with the sunken car. She thought about the man and wondered if he was her real father. Jenny didn’t like the thought. The man had tried to hurt her. She decided to look through the old newspaper files at the library for stories that could tell her more about the dead man.
Jenny put her unfinished project back in the file folder and then carried it with her up to the front desk. Mrs. Blake was checking in returned books. She was an older lady with white hair and pointy Harlequin glasses that hung on a chain around her neck when she wasn’t putting them on her nose to peer at the paperwork in front of her. Jenny waited while Mrs. Blake finished checking in a copy of Swiss Family Robinson. Mrs. Blake looked up from her work and noticed Jenny standing there.
“Hi, sweetie. Do you need something?”
“Mrs. Blake, is anyone using the microfiche this morning? I need to do some research on my project, and I have to check the old newspaper and magazine files.”
Jenny felt a small check in her heart. Great—now she was lying to her friend. Maybe Papa was right. Maybe the whole pursuit of her past would only bring heartache. She felt a surge of guilt about lying to her papa and to Mrs. Blake, and she wondered where else her newly acquired sin would take her.
The librarian smiled and said, “No one’s using it right now, honey. You can have it until someone comes in and asks for it.”
Jenny’s need to know about the dead man in the car that night overpowered the quiet voice in her spirit, and she took the key to the microfiche room from Mrs. Blake’s hand and headed down the hall. In the room she placed her folder by the reader and then went over to the wall of filing cabinets where the film was kept.
Now how did that all go? The big storm was in the fall of 1950. The police located the car in the pond the next spring, and while they were removing it, they found the man’s body.
She decided to look through the files for articles from early 1951 in the Daily Record, Wooster’s local paper. She pulled all the film for the months she wanted and then sat down at the reader and began to work. It took her about an hour, but at last she found an article in the April 4 edition of the paper.
Local Police Locate Dead Body in Jepson’s Pond
BY BOB SCHUMANN
The Wayne County Sheriff’s Department discovered a dead man in Jepson’s Pond near Dalton. The body was in a severe state of decomposition. Police were unable to take any fingerprints, and no means of identification was found, so the identity of the man remains a mystery.
The body was located while officers were removing a sunken car from the pond. According to sources in the department, the car had been in the pond since the Thanksgiving Day storm. Local resident and war hero, Bobby Halverson, reported the sunken car in November, but authorities had to wait until the ice melted this month before they could send divers to investigate. While searching the pond for the car, the divers came upon the remains of the dead man.
Halverson told this reporter that he and Reuben Springer, a member of the Apple Creek Amish community, found the car on the ice while searching for Springer’s wife, Jerusha, who was lost in the storm, but that they did not know about the man in the pond.
The car slid into the pond when the ice broke as the two men were retrieving a battery from the vehicle during their successful rescue of Mrs. Springer.
In an unusual addendum to the story, it was also learned by this reporter that Mrs. Springer found a small child in the car two days earlier. She took the little girl to the abandoned cabin near the pond during the height of the storm and kept her alive while awaiting rescue. The identity of the child was unknown, and it remains to be seen whether the man found in the pond was any relation to the little girl or if there was even any connection between the man and the car.
In the meantime, the child was first given to the State Child Welfare Agency and then, following the Springers’ application, placed in foster care in the Springer home. Mr. Springer is also well known in the area as a winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor on Guadalcanal during the Pacific campaign before returning to the Amish faith after the war.
Mrs. Springer is an Amish quilter of some renown in Wayne County.
Jenny read on. There were a few more details about the make of the car, and then she saw that the reporter had put in the license plate number—SN12-66. Jenny looked to see if there were any follow-up articles and found one written a month later.
Dead Man’s Identity Remains a Mystery
BY BOB SCHUMANN
An investigation concerning the identity of the dead man found in Jepson’s Pond in April has proved fruitless. Police investigators working out of the Wayne County Sheriff’s Department have been unable to find any clues concerning the man or what he was doing when he drowned in the pond.
The officers believe the man was probably driving the car and was involved in an accident that caused the car to slide off the road and onto the frozen pond. Skid marks, broken trees, and pieces of the car led from Highway 30 to the pond.
When they traced the license plate, officers discovered that the car was reported stolen in New York, and efforts beyond that have reached a dead end. Police also discovered empty liquor bottles and unknown substances sealed in plastic bags in the car. It is believed that the substances were illegal drugs.
Meanwhile, the girl who was found in the car by Mrs. Reuben Springer remains in foster care at the Springer home. The girl’s name is Jenny, and the Springers report that she is doing very well. The Springers have applied to the courts to adopt the child, and local agencies support their application. Mrs. Springer says they are only waiting for any relatives to come forward and claim the child, but at this point, none are forthcoming.
Jenny leaned back in the chair and took a deep breath. A terrible fear that the man might be her father crept into her heart. She had always been afraid that she was a bad seed, that there was something in her that would cause her to disgrace her mama and papa. Jenny went back to the first article. The license plate was the only clue that showed promise. No identification, no fingerprints…it all seemed hopeless to Jenny. Suddenly the words of the woman in her dream came back to her so strongly she could hardly breathe.
Jenny, come find me. I’m lost, so lost.
Jenny put her face in her hands and quietly wept. After a few minutes, she sat up and wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her dress. Jenny could feel a resolve building in her heart.
“I’m going to find my real mother. I just have to,” she said out loud. “But where do I start?”
Then she had an idea. Maybe Uncle Bobby could help her! He was the sheriff. He could reopen the investigation and maybe find out where the car was stolen and who owned it. Maybe the real owner of the car would know something. Another thought came to her, and she jotted down a note to call Mr. Schumann, the man who wrote the articles, to see if he had discovered anything else.
Jenny realized she had to solve this mystery, or her life would never be right. Regardless of what her papa had said to her, she knew she had to do this. If she didn’t, she would struggle with the questions her whole life. She had to find out who she was.
Jenny checked her purse. She had a few dollars and some change. Quickly she packed up the microfilm and replaced it in the file. She went to the front desk and told Mrs. Blake she was taking a break. Then she took her notes and left. A row of phone booths stood along the curb in front of the library, and she went into one. She thought about calling Uncle Bobby but remembered he was having lunch with her papa. So she picked up the phone book hanging on a chain from the wall and looked up the number of the Daily Record. She dialed it, and a woman’s voice answered.
“The Daily Record, how may I assist you?” the woman asked.
“Hello. Does Mr. Bob Schumann still write for the paper?” Jenny asked.
“Mr. Schumann retired a few years ago, but he drops by from time to time. He’s what we call our editor emeritus. And you’re in luck because he happens to be here today. Let me connect you.”
After a moment’s silence, a gruff voice said, “Bob Schumann here.”
Jenny hesitated. She knew that if she started down this path, she would have to go wherever it took her, and a momentary fear of the future and what might happen to her family choked her up.
“Hello, Bob Schumann here,” the man said again.
Jenny took a deep breath and plunged ahead. “Mr. Schumann, my name is Jenny Springer. My parents are Reuben and Jerusha Springer. Fifteen years ago you wrote an article about a dead man who was found in Jepson’s Pond and a little girl who had been rescued from the car the man was driving. I’m that little girl.”
“Well, for goodness sake,” Schumann said, his voice softening. “That was a long time ago. Quite an interesting story. Say, how did you know the man was driving the car? There were so few clues as to his identity, the police could never even definitely connect him with the car.”
“I remember that night,” answered Jenny. “The man was driving the car, and he wrecked it when he tried to reach back and grab me. Then when he tried to get me out of the car, he fell through the ice.”
“You say you remember?” Schumann asked. “You were only four years old. How can you remember that far back?”
“Mr. Schumann, I don’t know how I remember, but all I know is that over the past few days, the details have become more and more clear in my mind,” Jenny said. “But the man is not the issue. Somewhere to be found in this whole mystery is the identity of my birth mother. It has become very important to me that I find out who she is and why I was alone with that man in the car that night. I don’t know if he was my father—he might have been—but I do know that my mother was associated with him somehow and that she was very, very sad about something in her life. And I can’t rest until I find out what it was that caused her so much pain.”
“What did you say your name was?” Schumann said.
“I’m Jenny, Jenny Springer. You wrote about me being placed with my mama and papa—Reuben and Jerusha Springer—and about my adoption.”
“Oh yes, Jenny. Did they adopt you?”
“Yes they did, and they have been wonderful parents. But now I need to know more.”
“Yes,” Mr. Schumann said. “That story always bothered me. There was never a conclusion to it, and I like to have conclusions to my stories. It was maybe the one story of my career that I never got the answer to my questions. Jenny, we need to talk.”
“I’m working at the library today,” Jenny said. “We could meet now, if you’re available…in the microfiche room?”
“I’ll be over in fifteen minutes.”