The Face of Heaven Read Online Free PDF Page B

was also right.”
    His face was like granite from his anger at the Amish leaders and the slave hunters. Yet as he listened to her a small smile broke through. “How do you know what I said at the meeting?”
    “I was sitting on the staircase.”
    His smile grew. “Were you? With your father’s permission?”
    She smiled back. “My mother’s anyway.”
    He looked away. “Well, what I said didn’t seem to make much of a difference.”
    “It did to me.”
    He glanced back at her. “ Ja ?” Then he stared ahead. “I always come to the Keim house to call on Levi. How about if I come tomorrow to call on you instead?”
    She was startled and didn’t know what to say.
    “Or is that too much too quickly?” he asked.
    Lyndel made up her mind in an instant and put a hand on his arm. “For the first time in our lives—yes, come and call on me.”
    “Well. It was not a very good evening. But this was the best part of it.” He flicked the reins. “Do you know what I feel like doing, Lyndel Keim?”
    The wagon was moving forward at a walking pace and she kept up with it, her hand still on his arm. “What’s that?”
    “Giving chase to the slave hunters. Running them off the road. Scaring them into the woods. Rescuing Moses and Charlie and drivinglike a crazy man for the Canadian border in New York.” Suddenly, despite the grimness that hadn’t left his face since the arrival of the slave hunters from Virginia, he gave a sharp laugh. “I reckon I don’t sound very Amish, do I?”
    “It sounds like a good plan,” she responded. “But you’d need help.”
    “Yes. I would. But except for you and Levi and Abraham Yoder, and perhaps your father, I’m not likely to get it in time, am I?” He glanced away from the lane and at her. “What will happen to Moses and Charlie, Lyndel?”
    She shook her head.
    “Here’s the road. We’re picking up speed now—take care. I hope to see you tomorrow, Lyndel Keim.”
    “I’ll look forward to that, Nathaniel King.”
    His buggy turned onto the wide roadway and moved off toward his family’s farm. She stood for a while under the stars and as she watched him go, she obeyed a desire to pray for him. Lord Jesus, have mercy on Nathaniel King…and on us. Have mercy on our country.
     
    That night sleep was slow to come. Two of her younger sisters were in bed with her, constantly tossing and turning in their anxiety. The other sister slept with their mother. When Lyndel did find a moment’s rest, her dreams were torn by flame and gunfire and leering slave hunters and rope. Moses and Charlie were running but they never got away—men on horses always rode them down. She kept telling the men from the plantation to set them at liberty: “America is the land of the free!” But the leader of the slave hunters was there to tell her over and over again, “America is a slave nation, Miss Lyndel. It has been from the beginning and it always will be.”
     
    The next morning as she and Levi entered the house after milking the cows, they sat down to a subdued breakfast. Her father read from the Bible and prayed and her sisters helped their mother wash up but few words were spoken.
    After eating, Lyndel made her way silently back to the barn and ledthe herd out to pasture. She lingered to watch a number of the cows head toward the creek that ran through the trees a hundred yards away. The sun had been behind a cloud bank, as if reflecting the Keim family’s melancholy mood, but now began to slowly slip free of the gray. Sunlight brought the green of the April grass alive. She closed her eyes a moment and turned her face upward to the sun. How long the winter had been and how unpleasant the evening and night. The warmth felt good inside her and out.
    Lord, be with us. There is so much about my world I don’t understand anymore.
    Cows bawling made her open her eyes quickly and look toward the trees. Had one of the new calves become stuck in the mud of the creek bank? The bawling grew