When Sunday morning worship was over, Ruby helped the other women of the church set out the cold foods for the fellowship meal. Cold meat, cottage cheese, tomatoes, and loaves of sliced bread were all available for folks to eat. Feeding so many people would have been a lot of work, except that many women and girls pitched in, including Roseanna.
Ruby watched her carry a bowl of cottage cheese to one of the tables. Roseanna often reminded her of herself at that age. Different from the other girls and not knowing why. At the same time, Ruby had never formed any close friendships. She chewed her lower lip. She didn’t want that same future for Lovinia’s daughter.
“I appreciate your help,” Ruby said, pulling the girl aside for a moment, “but the other girls your age are playing. Are you sure you don’t want to join them?”
Roseanna moved closer to her, whispering into her ear. “I can play with them later. Mamm used to help with the meal after church, and I can too, can’t I?”
“For sure you can.” Ruby gave her a quick hug. “If your mamm was here, she would be pleased.”
Roseanna grinned and went back to the kitchen for another dish. Ruby followed her, then stood back as Margaretta Stuckey came out the door with a plate of sliced tomatoes in one hand and a plate of cold meat in the other. Katie, Margaretta’s daughter and Jonas’s intended bride, was right behind her.
She stopped when she saw Ruby. Her eyes were rimmed with red. “Ruby, can I talk to you after the meal?”
“What’s wrong?”
Katie stepped closer to her. “I received a letter from Jonas yesterday, and I’m so worried about him. You know I can’t talk to Mama about it, and I don’t want to worry Lydia.”
“For sure.” Ruby patted her arm. “We can go for a walk together.”
Katie nodded her thanks as she went on.
An hour later, the meal was done, the dishes clean, and Ruby looked around for the children. Roseanna and Sophia were playing with the other girls, and Ezra was with Gideon, his head on his father’s shoulder. Daniel was asleep in Mamm’s lap, so she went to find Katie.
“We can walk along the road, if you’d like,” Ruby said.
“I don’t care where we go, as long as we’re alone.” Katie reached into the waistband of her apron, pulled out a folded letter, and handed it to Ruby. “I want you to read this and tell me if I should be as worried about Jonas as I am.”
“Are you sure you want me to read this? After all, Jonas might be my brother, but he’s your beau.” Ruby smiled, trying to lighten the mood, but it didn’t help.
“We can sit on that log there,” Katie said, walking toward a log at the end of the Lehmans’ farm lane.
Ruby opened the letter.
July 7, 1863, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
My dearest Katie,
As you can see by the line above, I am not in Washington City at the moment. There was a large battle here in Pennsylvania during the first three days of July. On July fourth, the Confederate army left Gettysburg, and by all reports is heading south to cross the Potomac. But the battle was horrible. Many men died, perhaps thousands, and even more are wounded. I have come from Washington with many other doctors and even some women to tend to the wounded. We have set up a field hospital that many are calling Camp Letterman after the medical officer in charge.
The first thing I want to assure you of is that I am safe and well, but my heart is breaking. Death is everywhere. My first impression when I stepped off the train was the horrible, awful odor of decaying flesh. The dead, both human and horses, lie everywhere on the battlefield that stretches over a large area—thousands of acres in my estimation. The July sun has bloated the corpses, and the blood lies in pools on the soaked ground. The flies are terrible, and we have to wear a handkerchief over our faces to keep from breathing them in.
The wounded are to be pitied above all. The medical officers think that all have been brought in from the battlefields, but I can tell from the way they speak about it in hushed tones that they are not sure. No one can bear to think of a man left out there to die, helpless and alone. The wounded that have been found are housed everywhere that a space can be made for them. On my first evening here after getting off the train, I was sent to a church where the wounded were lying on boards laid across the tops of the high-backed pews. I aided the ones I could, but I quickly ran out of supplies, so all we could do—the two female nurses and myself—was to offer a drink of water to the men. When we ran out of water, I went to find some more, but every stream, every spring, stinks of blood and decay. Every mud puddle is reddish brown with filth. But it is the only water we have, and I must offer it to the men to relieve their suffering.
I spent that night writing letters. Every soldier who was conscious was aware he would most likely die soon, so I wrote countless letters to wives, families, and sweethearts. I prayed with many of the men and tried to give them what comfort I could.
The next day I went to Camp Letterman, where I’ve been ever since. The doctors require my assistance at the many amputations they perform, and I am loath to say I have nearly become immune to the pain of the patients. I tell them, and myself, that this trial will be over soon, and then they will be able to get well and go home. But those men and I both know that it is more likely they will die and never see their earthly home again.
But oh, Katie, when will this suffering be over? How much more loss of life and destruction of souls can we bear?
It seems like it has been months since I have seen the blue sky or breathed clean air.
I am sorry that I cannot be more encouraging in this letter. I hope I will be able to send you a happier one in the future. We don’t know what will happen in the next few weeks. Will Lee, the Confederate general, try again to reach Washington City? I pray that he will surrender. The Union forces had a decisive victory here at Gettysburg, the officers say, and it should be the end of the war.
I don’t think it will be, though. Some days I feel as if this war will never end.
Always keep me in your prayers as I keep you in mine,
Jonas
Ruby slowly folded the letter and gave it back to Katie. She thought of Jonas the last time he had come home, last winter while he was on a short leave from the army. He had been smiling, and seemed healthy, but his eyes were shadowed, as if he had seen things he didn’t want to remember. Gideon’s eyes . . . Ruby’s heart wrenched. Gideon’s eyes were the same, especially after he heard about the raiders who were in Ohio. What had he experienced during the time he had been forced to haul supplies for the army?
“What do you think?” Katie held the letter close to her. “He sounds so sad. Do you think he will be all right?”
Ruby forced herself to smile. “For sure he will be. Remember, he isn’t near the fighting anymore. He has his work to do, and then he will return home.”
Katie shook her head. “I don’t mean that. I know he will probably be safe.” She drew a deep breath that shuddered at the end. “I mean in his mind. He has seen and experienced so many terrible things.” She locked eyes with Ruby. “I can’t imagine being so used to a person’s screams of pain that he feels he is immune to them. What kind of horror has he seen that an amputation seems like a good thing?”
Ruby couldn’t answer, but she took Katie’s hand in her own and squeezed it. She had no other comfort to give.
As he often did on a Sunday afternoon, Gideon found himself talking with Levi. The younger man was serious and determined to learn as much as he could about the history, theology, and doctrine of the church. His thirst for knowledge far outweighed many ministers Gideon had known.
“So, when Menno Simons wrote that true evangelical faith is of such a nature it cannot lie dormant, what did he mean?” Levi leaned against the fence along the pasture next to the Lehmans’ barn, the home where the Sunday meeting was held this week.
“I think he meant that our faith must be active. It isn’t something we hold inside ourselves, to satisfy ourselves and no one else. Remember the last part of that sentence? He wrote that faith ‘spreads itself out in all kinds of righteousness and fruits of love.’”
“Therefore,” Levi went on, his face flushed as it always was when he spoke of what he had been reading, “we should do what he lists next. Die to flesh and blood, destroy all lusts and forbidden desires—”
“Wait a minute.” Gideon interrupted him with a restraining hand on his arm. “What did Simons say? Do we do those things?”
Levi pondered the question, his pale eyebrows meeting in a pucker between his eyes. “You’re right. We don’t do those things. Our faith does.”
“Menno Simons didn’t give us a list to follow, things we must do, but he wrote examples of what a living, nondormant faith does. It clothes the naked, feeds the hungry, comforts the sorrowful, and all the other things he wrote. There is quite a number of them, if I remember right.”
Levi nodded. “Seventeen.”
“You counted them?”
The younger man grinned. “For sure, I did. Didn’t you?” His brow puckered again. “But how do we know if it is faith doing those things or if it is our own selves? It seems like it should be the same, either way.”
“Who gives us our faith?”
“The Lord God does.”
“So, it isn’t something we do ourselves, is it? If our faith came from ourselves, it would be weak and fallible just as we are.” Gideon thought for a moment, the threat of the coming raiders on his mind. “If you were faced with an enemy determined to harm you, but your faith was grounded in yourself, how long would you be able to endure?”
“You mean like the martyrs? The ones who were burned at the stake?”
Gideon nodded. “How long would you last before you denied your Lord to save your body?”
“They wouldn’t even light the fire before I gave up.” Levi shook his head. “But I see what you’re saying. When we have faith”—he glanced at Gideon—“faith given by God, then he is the one who is working in us to keep our faith strong.”
Gideon looked out over the pasture at the mares grazing in the lush grass while their foals sprawled near them. Where was his faith when he was in Virginia? Where was his faith when the captain ordered him to fire? He didn’t . . . he couldn’t fire the gun in his hands, but was that the Lord who restrained him? Or was it only fear that froze his muscles?
“Gideon?”
He looked at the young man. “I’m sorry. My mind drifted somewhere else. What were you saying?”
“I said, is it all right if I ask you a question?”
When Gideon nodded, Levi looked across the pasture.
“If a man and a woman . . . well . . . um . . .” He rubbed his nose and started again. “If a couple who isn’t married act like they are . . . I mean . . . when they are alone . . . Well, is it a sin?”
Gideon looked closer at him. “Are we talking about you or someone else?”
The poor boy turned so red he was nearly purple. “Someone else. You can’t think that I . . .” Even his ears were pink. “I don’t even know a girl. I mean, not one I want to marry. I was wondering, that’s all.”
“Isn’t this something you should ask your father?”
“I . . . I can’t. He . . . he wouldn’t understand.”
“All right. Yes. If a couple is intimate before they marry, then it is a sin.”
“Intimate?”
Gideon nodded toward the stallion in the next pasture that had stretched his head over the fence toward the mares, and Levi’s eyebrows rose in understanding.
“For sure, ja. A sin.” The young man sighed and wiped his sweating face with a cloth. “But if they get married later, does that make it all right?”
“They should still confess their sin before the church.”
Gideon glanced at his friend again, remembering the expression on Levi’s mother’s face two weeks ago when he had been talking with Ruby. She couldn’t think that he and Ruby were acting in a sinful manner, could she?
Levi wiped his face again. “What if, well, the couple was expecting . . . ” He gestured toward the foals in the pasture. “Would that child be sinful too?”
Shaking his head, Gideon relaxed. Levi wasn’t talking about him. “The sin belongs to the parents, not the child. But our gracious and merciful God offers forgiveness to all who come to him in repentance.” He turned around, leaning back against the fence and watching the crowd of children playing in the shade of an elm tree. “Is this someone you know, Levi? If it is someone in the church, you should go to them and remind them of their need to confess.”
“I can’t do that.” Levi kicked at the fence post.
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.” Levi balled his fists on the top fence rail and rested his chin on them while he watched the horses. “When I read the Bible or Menno Simons’s writings or the Confession, it seems so simple. But when I think about facing the person, it’s like I’ve turned to ice. I can’t do it.”
“Bringing up someone’s sin is hard.”
“But if I’m ever called to be a minister, I’ll have to do that, won’t I?” He looked at Gideon. “Did you ever have to confront someone like that?”
Gideon pushed at the memories that flooded into his mind. The regret of remaining silent when he should have spoken. Remaining frozen like ice when he should have acted.
He shook his head. “No one in the church. But my daed did, long ago. I remember that it was very difficult, and he spent many sleepless nights praying.” Gideon saw himself, a little boy, creeping to the edge of the loft. The image of the man kneeling beside his chair night after night was the only clear memory he had of his father. “But the labor was worthwhile, because the man confessed his sin and was welcomed back into the church.”
Levi was silent for a few minutes. Gideon watched Ezra running through the yard, being chased by another little boy. It was good to see his children happy. They felt secure and loved in this place. They didn’t feel the shadow of the war that haunted him.
“I heard something,” Levi said, interrupting Gideon’s thoughts. “I think you should know. Someone thinks you and Ruby might be acting inappropriately.”
“I don’t know where someone would get that idea. My wife—” Gideon broke off. Sometimes the grief stayed in the background, but other times it came upon him like the rush of a stream over a waterfall. “My wife has only recently passed away.” He cleared his throat. “I wouldn’t . . . couldn’t think of doing anything like that with Ruby.”
But then the memory of how Ruby’s freckles had stood out against her pale skin struck him. He wouldn’t remember that if he felt no attraction toward the woman.
Then he remembered Salome, Levi’s mother, again. She kept looking his way today, just as she had during the last church Sunday. Is that where this rumor had started?
“I didn’t think so,” Levi continued. “But you never know what people will believe.” He paused, drumming his fingers on the top board of the fence. “Father announced that there will be an election for a new minister in two weeks.”
“I was in the meeting this morning, remember?” Gideon smiled, but his stomach was churning. He wasn’t ready to think about an election.
“I know you don’t want me to, but I’m going to nominate you.”
“You’re supposed to pray about it first.” Gideon’s mouth was dry. “Make sure your choice is God’s choice.”
“I’ve been praying about it, and there are only two names I can consider.” Levi clapped him on the shoulder. “Your name is the one I’m going to nominate, no matter what you say. I thought you’d want to know.”
Before Gideon could protest, Levi went back to the house where the women had set out plates of cookies. Gideon stayed where he was, watching the folks in the yard.
The children were getting tired, so they should start toward home soon. Roseanna ran to where Ruby sat with another young woman Gideon didn’t know. Ruby bent her head toward Roseanna, listening to her. Paying close attention. Any other adult would brush the child aside. Roseanna must have asked about him, because Ruby turned toward him and waved along with his daughter. He waved back, then Ruby and Roseanna went back to their conversation and Gideon turned to watch the horses again.
He missed Lovinia. He missed talking with her, spending quiet evenings by her side, planning for the future with her. He missed sharing his life with her. She would know what to do about his calling to be a minister, and she had always helped him when he had a tough decision to make. She would know what to say to Levi about the coming nomination.
God was right when he created men and women to join their lives together. Was this loneliness what Lovinia foresaw when she told him to marry Ruby? He sighed, pulling one hand over his face. Someday the loneliness might be enough to make him want to take that step.
Ruby was at Gideon’s cabin early the next morning. The sky was gray with hanging clouds promising a cool, damp day. In the distance, she heard thunder rumble softly. Perhaps they would get some rain.
Gideon had already gone to the barn by the time she got there, so she crept up the stairs to the loft where she had slept with her sisters when she was a young girl. The room didn’t seem as large as it had when she was a child, but then everything seemed smaller than it had then. Gideon had built a large bed and placed it on one side of the room, and on Saturday Ruby had stuffed a ticking full of fresh straw. All three of the older children were sound asleep on the soft mattress, Ezra lying sideways above his sisters’ heads. Daniel’s cot was next to the bed and he was awake, lying on his back, the toes of one foot grasped in his hands.
When he saw her, he grinned and sat up.
“How are you this morning, little one?” Ruby asked in a soft voice.
He pulled himself to his feet, reaching for her. She left the other children sleeping while she took him downstairs to change him into dry clothes, then poured some milk into his cup.
By the time Daniel had finished his milk, Gideon came in from his chores. He gave her a quick nod, then went straight to the sink to wash up.
“We need to set up a washing bench outside for you,” Ruby said.
Gideon didn’t answer as she put Daniel on the floor and gave him a wooden spoon to play with. Then she searched through the cupboards until she found the supplies they had purchased in Millersburg on Thursday. This would be the children’s first breakfast in their new home, although Gideon had been living here since they had finished renovating the house last week.
“I hope oat porridge sounds good for breakfast,” Ruby said. “I brought cream from home to have with it.”
Gideon still didn’t answer, and Ruby glanced toward him to find that he was staring at her. He had filled a cup with water from the pump and was drinking it.
Ruby started a fire in the stove. “I know oat porridge isn’t a very big breakfast, but I thought I would also fry some of the bacon we bought in town. Should I also cook some eggs to go with it?”
When she looked at him again, he was still staring at her, a frown on his face.
“What is wrong?”
His eyes widened. “Nothing is wrong.”
“Why were you staring at me?”
“Was I?” He rubbed his beard and finished his water. “I didn’t mean to. I was thinking of something else. Did you know your daed planned to give me a cow?”
Ruby put some larger pieces of wood on the fire. “He never told me anything about it. Which cow is it?”
“The younger one. Bett. He said we had more need of a milk cow than the two of them.”
We. The word started a warm feeling that Ruby quickly squelched. He meant the children. His family. The word had nothing to do with her.
“That sounds like Daed. He is always giving away things he doesn’t think he and Mamm need anymore.”
Gideon sat at the table and pulled Daniel onto his lap. “He said he’d bring her over later today, so this afternoon we’ll have our own milk.”
“That’s good.” Ruby’s thoughts went to the tasks she would need to add to her work. Straining the milk, making butter, making cheese. She smiled, thinking of how much fun it would be to do the chores along with Roseanna and Sophia. “Do you want me to milk her, or will you?”
“I’ll do it. I only have the horses to care for.” He frowned again.
“Now what are you thinking about?” Ruby put a pot of water on the stove to heat and poured in the oats she had set out to soak last night after putting the children to bed.
“There are things whirling around in my mind.” He glanced at her. “Do you mind if I talk to you about them? That’s one thing I miss—”
He shut his eyes, and Ruby waited. She knew the pain of missing Lovinia.
When he opened his eyes again, she said, “I know how valuable it can be to talk about things that are going through your mind, and I’m a good listener.”
Gideon tapped the table with one finger until Daniel grabbed it and stuck it in his mouth. He smiled at his son, then looked at Ruby.
“I’m not sure about the condition of the roof.” He looked up toward the ceiling. “It seems to be solid, but with rain coming, I’m not sure if we’ll stay dry.”
“I’ll keep a watch out for leaks and let you know.”
“I’ll still want to replace the roof before winter. Does your daed have a shingle cutter?”
“I think so. You’ll have to ask him.”
Gideon tapped the table again and sighed. “Another thing. The election for a new minister will be in two weeks. I understand that the church recently lost one?”
Ruby nodded as she stirred the grain. “Since our bishop moved away, Amos has been the only preacher.”
“Abraham asked if he could tell the others that I was already a minister and suggested that I could serve as one here.”
“That is a good idea. I’m sure you were a wonderful minister in your church in Maryland.”
Gideon shook his head. “I wasn’t. My flock is scattered, and I’m no longer a minister. I’m not certain I could ever be one again.”
“You must be. You are thoughtful and kind. People listen to you and want to confide in you.” She pressed her lips together before she said too much, then changed the direction of her thoughts. “God doesn’t withdraw his calling so easily.”
“That’s the same thing Abraham said.”
Ruby put more wood on the fire. The heat was beginning to warm the top of the stove, but it would be several minutes before she would be able to start cooking the bacon, so she sat at the table with Gideon. “Daed is usually right.”
He didn’t look at her.
“What else?” she asked.
“I can’t stop thinking about Morgan’s Raiders coming this way.”
“We don’t know they’re headed toward us. We only heard that they are in Ohio.”
Gideon rubbed at a rough place on the table. Daniel bounced on his knee, but he didn’t seem to notice. “You never know which way they’ll go. If they come here—”
Ruby leaned toward him. “You don’t know that they will. That trouble is for tomorrow. We only need to worry about today.”
“But we need to be prepared. We need to find a place in the woods for you and the children to hide, and we need to be able to hide the stock too. The grain in the fields . . . well, they’ll probably just trample it.” His eyes glimmered in the light from the lamp in the center of the table as he looked at Ruby. “I know what these soldiers are capable of. We need to be ready for them.”
“Have you talked to Daed about this? Or anyone else?”
“You know they wouldn’t understand the need, just like you. You’ve never lived through it, so you don’t know the devastation they leave behind and the violence they’re capable of.”
Gideon was right, she had never experienced what he described. But soldiers had passed near them before, volunteers on their way east to join the army. They had left the farms alone as they passed by. Then she remembered Jonas’s letter and his description of the aftermath of the battle in Pennsylvania. Maybe Gideon was right to be concerned.
Daniel wiggled in Gideon’s lap and he turned the baby toward him, making faces to keep the little one amused. Ruby let concerns about the war slide away as the bacon started sizzling. She rose to stir the oatmeal. It wasn’t beginning to steam yet, so she moved the bacon to a cooler part of the stove to continue cooking slowly.
When she turned back to the table, Gideon was staring at her.
“What are you thinking about now?”
She pumped water into the coffeepot and poured grounds in. After setting it on the stove, she sat in her chair again, taking Daniel as he reached for her.
Gideon tapped the table again with his finger, frowning as he watched it. “Has Salome Beiler said anything to you about me?”
“Salome rarely speaks to me. I don’t think she considers me a good example of an Amish woman. Why?”
“I have noticed her watching me. Watching us when we were standing together a couple weeks ago. She didn’t look happy.”
Ruby sighed, then went to the stove with Daniel on her hip. The oatmeal was steaming, and she stirred it before turning back to Gideon. “Salome has appointed herself to be the overseer of the women in the church since her husband is the minister. In all the years I’ve known her, she has never approved of me.”
Ruby turned the bacon. Salome’s disapproval had heightened when Ruby was a young woman. Could she know about Ned Hamlin? She hitched Daniel higher on her hip. No one knew about him except for Elizabeth, and her sister would never confide in Salome.
“So I should ignore her.” Gideon leaned back in his chair.
“If she has a concern about you, she’ll take it to Amos first. If he thinks there’s something to complain about, he’ll let you know.” Ruby turned to Gideon. “Breakfast is almost ready. Would you hold Daniel while I call the children?”
“I’ll get the children. The smell of the bacon frying is making me hungry, and you still have eggs to cook.” He took Daniel from her, then caught her elbow before she could turn back to the stove. “I appreciate you taking the time to talk with me. It helps me clear my thoughts.”
His eyes were soft in the lamplight and the pressure of his hand was warm and safe. Not the adrenaline-pulsing rush she had felt during her one week with Ned, but comforting, asking for more. Asking for . . . love?
He squeezed her arm gently, then went up the stairs. Ruby rubbed her elbow, now rapidly cooling. She must have only been imagining it. She didn’t deserve anyone’s love. She didn’t.