The Face of Heaven by Murray Pura Read Free Book Online Page A

men and they promptly returned to the Keim house.
    A large meal had been prepared by the women of the Amish church and for an hour or two, Amish and non-Amish sat side by side, talked, ate, and listened to one another, some sitting at tables in the house, some at tables in the barn. Lyndel was in the parlor with her mother and sisters, while Nathaniel was with her brother and father and the pastors in the kitchen. Talk of children and weather and crops mingled with discussions about President Lincoln, the secession of the Southern states, and what might happen next. Only a few tables away Joshua Yoder, Abraham Yoder’s son, held a newspaper clipping in his hand while he spoke rapidly to the men sitting beside him about the enshrinement of slavery in the Confederate Constitution.
    “Listen to what they’ve voted on and agreed to since early March,” he said. “This is from Article Four, Section Three, and Clause Three: The Confederate States may acquire new territory…In all such territory the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress and by the Territorial government; and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories shall have the right to take to such Territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States. You see? They will pound their podiums and say they’re fighting for freedom and states’ rights and a fully independent nation, and so they are—freedom to take away other men’s freedom, the right to enslave human beings made in the image of God and to fight for a slave nation fully independent of any sense of right or wrong when it comes to the lives and souls of African men and women and children. Why, they even invoke the favor and guidance of Almighty God to help them establish justice, tranquility, and liberty—for themselves, of course, not for anyone else, certainly not for anyone like the man they lynched out in the Keim pasture yesterday.”
    Lyndel closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead with her thumband fingers as Joshua went on. She hated the violence of the word lynched but she couldn’t argue that Joshua wasn’t right in using it—Charlie had been lynched, not just hung, and he had been murdered, he had not simply lain down and died.
    She stood up and told her mother she wanted to take a quick walk outside. Putting a cape over her shoulders she went through the doorway into the farmyard. The rain-washed air and the scent of green growing things overcame the painful images in her mind and the dark feelings in her heart for a few minutes.
    Lord, what will become of our nation, the nation you gave us to reside in? Shall we truly split into two countries living side by side? What can prevent us from becoming ill-tempered and feuding neighbors with no love between us?
     
    Avoiding the route to the pasture, she skirted the barn and the people seated inside and opened a gate to one of the hay fields. The hay was short and she wandered across the large field, not choosing any particular direction, sometimes glancing up into the soft rainfall, other times keeping her eyes on the ground just ahead of the toes of her boots. She found the creek and a grove of birch, but this was far from the place where Charlie had been, so she didn’t turn away, but walked on, watching the brown water that now moved swiftly between the banks, swollen with fresh rain. A long time she stood and prayed and thought, not hearing the person approaching behind her through the wet hay. When a hand gently touched her arm she leaped ahead and almost stumbled into the water, except the hand suddenly gripped her tightly and held her back.
    “I’m so sorry—it wasn’t my intention to startle you.”
    Nathaniel looked so awkward and embarrassed, his eyes and mouth drooping, his face reddening, that Lyndel found she could only glare at him for a few moments.
    “You scared me half to