The Face of Heaven by Murray Pura Read Free Book Online

suited the Amish community’s mood, thought Lyndel. The Keim house was full of church families dressed in solid black. Charlie’s body was washed and dressed and laid out in a special room just off the parlor. He still wore Nathaniel’s white shirt, and his pants were a dark pair that belonged to her brother. The collar of the shirt was up in order to hide some of the marks of the rope on his neck. Lyndel was grateful the swelling in his face had gone down so that he looked once again like the young cheerful man who had asked her to read the Bible in the lamplight.
    People filed into the room to pay their respects and found a seat. Lyndel sat back in a nearby chair to watch others walk slowly past. Nathaniel and Levi entered the room together. Levi rested his hand on one of Charlie’s, stood there a long minute, then moved on. Nathaniel was struggling, the veins on his neck suddenly standing out as he stood over the young man’s body. Lyndel saw him slip a small piece of paper under Charlie’s hands. Then he whispered something in Charlie’s ear. His face set and resolute he walked out of the room without looking at Lyndel.
    It was a hard thing, this funeral, such as it was. It should never have been happening. Charlie should have been alive. But he wasn’t. It was at least some minor solace that at last night’s discussion about the service, not a single man had argued against a funeral service for Charlie Preston, not even Samuel Eby or Solomon Miller.
    So Lyndel wasn’t surprised that as the service began, it was Solomon who gave the first funeral sermon, followed by Samuel. She also wasn’t surprised that the words the two ministers spoke weren’t the words they had used in the debate about slavery on Tuesday night. Lyndel felt that much of what they said and the Bible texts they used could have come from Abraham Yoder’s lips, or Levi’s or even Nathaniel’s. Samuel preached for half an hour, Solomon for another three-quarters of an hour. By the time they had finished and her father was praying, she glanced over to see that Nathaniel had reentered the room some time during the preaching. She noticed that the hard lines on his face had relaxed.
    When they left the house Charlie’s body was placed in the same sort of carved pine coffin that all Amish were buried in. The three pastors held one side of the coffin on their shoulders while Bishop Keim, Levi, and Nathaniel took the other side. They placed it in a carriage in which the six of them sat together as the bishop drove. All the other Amish carriages fell in behind. Normally, Lyndel knew, this would be the extent of the procession to the graveyard. But word about what had happened at the Keim farm on Tuesday and Wednesday had spread through Elizabethtown, and many Pennsylvanians were waiting quietly outside the house as the Amish emerged with Charlie’s coffin. Once the last Amish buggy had joined the long line winding its way along the main road, the residents and farmers of Elizabethtown fell in behind. Even Sheriff Jackson was there.
    The six men carried the coffin to the opening in the ground and lowered it with thick ropes. Bishop Keim prayed and opened the Amish hymnbook called the Ausbund. He read a hymn hundreds of years old about suffering for Christ and enduring the hatred, scorn, and violence of the world.
    “If we suffer with him,” the bishop finished, looking out over the faces of women, men, and children, “we shall also reign with him. Amen.”
    Amen, the people responded, even those churchgoers who were not Amish or didn’t belong to any church at all. Then the bishop and pastors, along with Levi and Nathaniel, took up shovels and slowlycovered Charlie’s coffin with earth, filling the grave completely. Lyndel wanted to ask Nathaniel what he had written on the piece of paper he had buried with Charlie and what he had whispered in the dead man’s ear, but once the task was completed, Nathaniel got into the buggy with the other five