She scooped the limp calf up and draped her over her neck before she began to crawl. With her eyes scrunched shut against the sweltering temperature, she felt for the cool mud that ringed the barn.
Any minute now. We will be out of here…any minute now.
Pat after searching pat, only hot ground and embers continued to meet her palms.
Just a little further.
When she thought sure she’d found the way out, her head hit a wall.
She struggled to orientate herself.
I came out of the stall and turned. I should be outside by now— She ceased the thought. Unless I turned the wrong way.
A shroud of hopelessness cloaked her. Buttermilk made no sound.
I’m in the back of the barn, not the front.
Paralyzed by fear, the world lurched to a sickening standstill and everything stopped. Everything but the burning.
***
Rebekah thought she was dreaming when she heard Joseph bring Butter, her wayward milk cow, back to her family homestead. When his voice rose to an hysterical level, her eyelids fluttered.
“Where is she, Samuel? Where is Rebekah?”
Her Pa, though, didn’t answer. Somewhere in her sleep-heavy mind, she heard him crying. Jeremiah too. The words “certain death” and “the barn caved in…we can’t get in,” left an ominous feeling cloaking her bones.
The crackle and sizzle of their warm, safe barn being reduced to charred ash and timber was like a lullaby until a creeping flame licked the bottom of her bare foot. Her eyes flew open and any sense of dreamlike peace was replaced with heavy smoke and hot air. The scream that tore from her throat may well have left a blood trail in its wake.
“Rebekah, keep yelling!”
Something grabbed her dress. “Pull her!”
The something yanked her from the barn into the rain that had changed from a pounding torrent to a soft drizzle.
“She’s smoldering—roll her in the mud!” Jeremiah’s young voice was panicked.
The sudden coolness was a welcome relief. Maybe this wasn’t a dream after all.
Her brother spoke the words that bumbled against each other in her foggy mind. “The calf—she went in after the calf. Is it breathing?”
“Buttermilk.” The syllables tangled together on her tongue, or so she thought. Apparently, they came out as a scream.
Joseph’s voice was in her ear, soft as clover. “Hush up now. I’m here, Rebekah. Everything will be okay. I’ll make it okay.” His voice was far away again. “Jeremiah, cake your sister in this mud. Get her cooled down. Samuel, hand me the calf.”
Woozy, Rebekah tried to make sense of what was going on around her. It appeared that Joseph’s mouth was over Buttermilk’s, but that didn’t make sense. Then, it looked like her Pa pumped his hands on the baby calf’s middle. That didn’t make sense, either. The only thing in the world that was right in that moment was the feeling of the chilled muck on her skin.
Immediately before everything went black, Rebekah thought she heard Joseph’s voice in her ear again. He whispered something about Buttermilk being all right thanks to her.
***
“Buttermilk?” Rebekah’s voice was lost to the roar of the inferno as she crawled through sagging timbers and shooting flames. The calf was nowhere to be found. Her eyes burned, her skin burned, and even her lungs burned. An ominous snap forced her to look up as the entire roof of the barn crashed down in a splintery ball of fire. She opened her mouth to scream, but the scalding air and smoke filled it first.
“That was a close call.”
Rebekah tried to force her eyes to focus, but they wouldn’t comply. Her world swam around her as she tried to find Buttermilk. Gingerly, she flexed her fingers. Instead of brushing against charred and burning wood, they met the cool underside of her childhood quilt
I’m not in the barn anymore. I’m in my own bed.
Rebekah’s muscles relaxed and ached in unison as she stretched her arms and legs.
“You had a nightmare. I thought it best to wake you.” Joseph’s smiling voice was an audible beacon from the hellish dream that had almost been her reality.
Someone had moved a chair into her room for him, because the only piece of furniture she possessed that was all her own, besides her bed, was her dresser. Her plain, perfect little dresser.
Rebekah rubbed her gritty eyes. Everything was fuzzy around the edges when she opened them, which gave her entire room a dreamlike appearance. Then, Joseph came into focus. With one long leg propped up on the other, he would have looked as though he was simply enjoying a rest on the porch had it not been for the dark shadows beneath his bloodshot eyes and deep creases in his brow. She drank the sight of him in.
This is the stuff dreams are made of.
“What happened? All I remember is…” Her crackly words trailed off as she tried to disentangle truth from fiction. “All I remember is…mud.”
Joseph laced his fingers behind his head and leaned back. His lips spread into a tilted grin. “There was lots of mud there at the end. It seems you got lost in your own barn. Luckily, you were squalling so loud I was able to find you and pull you out.”
“Pull me out?”
Elnora waddled in with a tray. “Ah, look who is awake.” Her words were breathy, and her hands shook. “Joseph kicked down part of the barn wall to get to you.”
Rebekah’s brows knitted together above her eyes as she looked at her mother. She rubbed them again.
