Rebekah nodded slowly. “But…”
“Then,” Joseph continued, “we will carry out our customs, just as we always have. We will make the coffin, then, three days later—” He stopped talking and shifted his glance to Rebekah.
She stared at him with wide eyes. “I know all that, Joseph.” She shook her head and turned back to face the house. “What I mean is, how can we live in a world where he no longer is?”
Tears began to well in her eyes afresh as the first droplets of rain from this new storm began to fall. A brand of fear she had not known in quite some time clenched her stomach. “What if it was you?”
Joseph ignored her heartfelt question and stared pointedly ahead of them. “Look there.”
Rebekah sniffled and followed Joseph’s gaze. “Is that Thomas, leading Pepper?”
“Mm-hmm,” Joseph said. “How did our horse get out of the corral?”
A flash of lightning cut their conversation short.
“Come on!” Joseph grabbed Rebekah’s hand with one hand and shielded Dawson with the other as he hurried his little family across the remainder of the yard and into the house. “We have another gully washer headed this way!”
“Thomas, hurry into the house!” Rebekah called as they dashed past. “The storm is coming!”
“I think the storm is already here,” he called as he pushed shut the corral gate. Once Pepper was locked inside, he chased after them.
Once inside, Joseph took Dawson out of his bopplin sling and tucked him into the nest of quilts in the corner that were reserved just for him as Rebekah waited at the door for Thomas. A sudden gust of wind yanked the screen door out of her hand, and it smashed backward against the house.
“Ouch!” she cried as she shielded her eyes against the sudden onslaught of rain. It was no ordinary rain, either. This rain swept over them and pelted in sideways, hitting and stinging like sharp thorns.
Thomas, holding his little hat down on his head with one hand, shielded his face with the other. “Wait for me, Schweister, I am coming!”
With a leap, he made it onto the porch to the tune of another clap of thunder.
Joseph had appeared behind Rebekah. “I will get the door.”
Once his family was safely inside, Joseph reached to pull shut the splintered screen but stopped short. “Well, would you look at that,” he mused from just inside the door. “Rebekah, have you ever seen the sky turn that color before?”
Rebekah turned and looked over her shoulder. The sky, which had moments before been deep blue in parts and ominously dark gray in others, had transformed into an eerie green and the clouds moved quickly. Too quickly. Before she could answer Joseph, balls of ice began to hammer down on their roof.
In their yard, ice balls the size of small eggs bounced when they hit the ground. In seemingly no time at all, the ground was mostly covered with the glistening white balls.
Joseph and Rebekah shared a look.
This is bad. This is very bad.
The bopplin, who had been safely deposited into his nest of quilts, began to squeal his terrified squeal. Rebekah rushed over and picked him up. “Hush little bopplin. Mater is here. All is well. It is just a storm.”
Still, Dawson refused to be coddled.
Sitting on the living room couch as the storm hammered down on their roof, Rebekah shielded herself and her bopplin beneath a quilt and began to nurse him. She was concentrating so hard on her motherly task and, between the howling wind and pounding ice, she mostly ignored the few snippets of conversation that passed between Thomas and Joseph.
Joseph’s normally calm voice was just under a yell. Even almost yelling, it was hard to hear him over the din of the weather outside. “Did you lock the corral gate?”
Thomas’s voice was more confused. “Yes, I am certain I did.”
“Then why is the gate open?”
Thomas replied, but it went unheard.
“That is right,” Joseph exclaimed. “I forgot Rebekah fell into it and knocked it off.”
Finally, the bopplin quieted enough to suckle and Rebekah dared a peek out from under her quilted cave.
Thomas and Joseph stood together with their backs to her, studying the weather through the front windows. From what she could see, the hail had eased up, but the thick rain gave the appearance of viewing the world through a gauzy veil.
“Pepper!” Thomas shouted. “She is out again!”
Before Rebekah could say anything, her husband bent to Thomas’s level. “Take care of Rebekah and the bopplin for me. There looks to be a lull in the storm. I will be right back.”
Sure enough, the wind and the rain had momentarily stopped, giving way to an uneasy silence. The same kind of silence that comes right before a catastrophe, like the silence that stilled all sound before lightning struck her childhood barn and almost took her life. Or during the snowfall that trapped both her and Joseph in the riverside cave along with her Englischer brother, Peter, when he first came to their Amish home, bound and determined to take Rebekah back to civilized folk. She was still grateful that Peter had consented to stay on with the Wagler family and adopt the Amish way of life himself.
Rebekah wished he was here now. Something about his presence made her feel comfortable and safe. But he was not here. He was off in Amarillo, Texas with his own wife, Katie, and their new bopplin Ruth.
Rebekah watched as her mann dashed out the door and into the yard in pursuit of their terrified horse.
No sooner had Joseph left the door than a roar sounded across the Indiana prairie. Thomas flung his hands over his ears and began to cry. Dawson released his latch and began to cry, as well.
“What in the world…” Rebekah quickly adjusted her dress to make herself presentable. Faster than she thought possible, she managed to get up, still draped in a quilt, with her infant sohn clutched to her chest. Once she made it to the window, she saw it. Against the greenish backdrop of sky, a black tongue snaked down from the clouds above, like an angry, twisting funnel.
“What is it, Sissy?” Thomas’s face, dirty and streaked with tears, searched hers for any semblance of hope or calm.
There was no time to fake tranquility. She clutched Dawson in one arm and grabbed Thomas’s hand in the other. “It is a twister, come on!”
“Where are we going?” Thomas’s voice rose quickly to a shriek. “What about Joseph? Sissy!”
Baby Dawson began to screech again, too.
“We have to take cover, now!”
Behind them, with a roar that rivaled the loudest trains in New York City, the glass in their windows burst from their panes into slivers, like seeds from a dandelion’s puff.
Once in the kitchen, Rebekah pushed her brother against the innermost wall. “Get down, Thomas,” she bellowed. Even as she shouted, she could barely hear her own voice.
With Thomas safely between her and the wall, she curled her body around his, shielding tiny Dawson between them. “Fater God, please help us, your humble and undeserving children. It is our hour of need, and we are helpless without You.”
Rebekah was not sure if she said the prayer, thought it, or perhaps even yelled it, but it was there, nonetheless.
As she prayed, the deafening commotion grew louder and louder still. Then without warning, it was gone.
Rebekah peeled herself away from the boys slowly, ever wary for any bleeding or other signs of injury. “Thomas?”
Limp, Thomas said nothing.
