Abby Finds Her Calling (31 page)

The milking barn looked shabby. A thicket of dead weeds poked up through the snow along the fencerows. And still those cows stood there, some of them beginning to bawl. They stomped the frozen ground, their breath escaping in clouds of vapor.

“That was the main reason Mamm got me a job at the Fishers’ factory with her, maintaining their cheesemaking equipment,” Jonny went on. The van was moving very slowly along the part of the lane that cut behind the outbuildings. “I was about fourteen then. That
mechanical stuff came easy for me, and so did running the cash register and waiting on customers. And once Gideon hooked up with a well-off Mennonite family in Bloomingdale, working in their commercial poultry operation, Dat just snapped,” he said, emphasizing the words with a click of his fingers. “He disowned us—for leaving the faith and our family to make our fortunes, he said. But Mamm was always proud of us.”

Zanna smiled. Adah Ropp had never lacked for good things to say about her boys, even after they had left home. She let Jonny talk without interrupting him because his voice soothed her… and recalling his past was his way of coping with the present devastation. It also kept him from asking what she’d been up to these past five months.

“Gideon and I have been buying cheese from Mamm at Fisher’s every now and again, but she doesn’t let on at home about our visits.” Jonny stopped the van on the road between the Ropp farm and Mervin Mast’s place, and they saw the fire’s devastation from another angle: heavy tire tracks and blackened timbers covered with ice. In her mind, Zanna heard the sirens again and saw the flashing lights of the fire trucks that had arrived too late.

Jonny turned the van around and drove slowly back toward the milking barn. He frowned at the dashboard clock. “If the cows are still waiting to be milked at nine thirty, where’s Dat?” he asked. “He’s up before the sun.”

Zanna sat straighter, picking up on Jonny’s concern. She’d been so engrossed in his nostalgic chatter, she hadn’t thought about why the milking hadn’t been done. “Even if he’d burrowed into the hay to keep warm last night, all that bawling would have wakened him by now.”

As he sped up the van, Jonny focused on the barn. He scowled when Shep and the two beagles rushed right at them this time, barking and circling the van so it was hard to see where they were. Their ruckus sounded even more urgent than the lowing of the cattle.

Jonny stopped the van beside the milking barn. “Why aren’t you mutts milkin’ those cows?” he teased as he stepped outside. He sounded worried, though, and when Shep headed back around the side of the barn, looking over his furry shoulder at them, Zanna got a nasty knot in her stomach. She eased out of the van, relieved when Jonny came around to grab her hand. Together they hurried cautiously over the snowy ground while the beagles raced ahead of them.

“Dat?” Jonny called out. When he opened the barn door, it sounded way too quiet inside. No gas lanterns were lit. No milking apparatus stood at the ready for the morning’s work. Zanna shivered, pulling her coat closer around her. Why weren’t the heaters on? The dogs had slipped inside through the door flap in the back wall, which allowed them to sleep in the barn and also to rush outside whenever they heard a suspicious noise. They sniffed her anxiously and nosed at Jonny.

“Dat? Dat, are you in here?” Jonny hollered. His gaze darted around the metal tanks and the rows of stanchions where cows should have been fed and milked hours ago. Shep barked insistently and retreated to a back corner as fast as his old legs would carry him. Jonny and Zanna followed.

“Dat!” Jonny cried.

Rudy Ropp lay sprawled on the barn floor. Suddenly wishing she had paid more attention when Barbara had demonstrated resuscitation techniques, Zanna knelt beside the pale, grizzled man. She strained to hear his faint, irregular breathing despite the bawling of the cattle. When Jonny grabbed his father’s shoulders, she took hold of his hands. “I don’t think you’re supposed to move somebody who’s unconscious.”

“We can’t get him to the van anyway. He’s bigger than we are and… dead weight.” Jonny grimaced at the way that phrase had come out. He grabbed his cell phone and jabbed 9-1-1, then waited breathlessly for what seemed like forever.

“Not many cell towers out here,” he mumbled. “Might mean we don’t have enough signal to— Jah! Send an ambulance to the Rudy Ropp place on Route E!” he said in a nervous rush of words. “I found my Dat passed out cold in his barn. No idea how long he’s been this way, or… Jah, thanks.”

Once Jonny received assurance that help was on the way, his shoulders relaxed but his expression remained grim. “If Mamm’s at your house, what’s the best way to reach her? I hate to leave you here while I run back for her—”

“Best thing is to call the phone shanty and hope somebody’s close. Or we can follow the ambulance through town and pick her up.” As Jonny punched numbers on his cell phone again, she peeled off her coat and laid it over Rudy. It didn’t cover nearly enough of the tall, burly man, but it was better than nothing in this cold, drafty barn.

Jonny immediately shrugged out of his jacket and handed it to her. Zanna caught the warm scent of his cologne in the leather even as she prayed that someone in the phone shanty would pick up.

“Come on, now—please, God, let somebody answer!” Jonny whispered as he paced in a tight circle. “Surely somebody hears the phone ringin’ and ringin’—jah?” he rasped. “Jah, this is Jonny Ropp and—Graber, is that you?”

Thank goodness James had answered. Sometimes an older fellow knew more about what to do in an emergency.

“James, I’ve called the ambulance,” Jonny was saying. “Dat’s collapsed on the barn floor—will you let Mamm know?” Jonny closed his eyes, as though he was grateful for a calm, familiar voice asking reasonable questions. “He’s breathing, jah. No sign of blood but he’s a mighty funny color… okay, so you’ll let her and the girls know to be ready when I swing by for them? Denki, James. I owe you one, big-time. Jah, Zanna’s fine. Mighty glad she was along when I found Dat this way.”

Something warm inside Zanna fluttered, but as he ended the
call, she kept her focus on his dat. She placed her hand on Rudy’s neck to reassure herself there was still a pulse, faint and erratic but definitely there.

“Gut thing I learned how to drive,” Jonny remarked in a nervous voice. When he exhaled, his breath rose in wisps of vapor. “You know, as many times as I’ve taken folks to hospitals, I… I’ve never been farther than the front desk.”

“Not what you bargained for when you came to Cedar Creek this morning.” Zanna forced a smile, wishing she could wipe the worry from Jonny’s handsome face.

“I’ve never seen anybody lying so… still,” he finished in a barely audible whisper. He looked like a scared little boy, at a loss for what to do next.

Zanna stood up and took his hands, looking up into his eyes and hoping she sounded encouraging. “But you’re handling things just fine, Jonny, and we got here in time to call for help. I’m thinking God had a hand in that.”

As a siren sounded in the distance, he wrapped his arms around her. Zanna reminded herself that he was shivering with cold and fear; she told herself not to get her hopes up about this young man getting attached to her in a permanent, romantic way.

“If something happens to Dat,” Jonny said in a faltering voice, “what will become of Mamm and the girls? Especially now that the house and all their clothes and food and furniture are gone? How will the herd get milked, and the milk get delivered?”

Jonny released her to grab his phone again. He closed his eyes with the effort of remembering. “Sure hope I’ve got this right. It’s been a long while since I called Mervin.” He punched the numbers and waited, sighing impatiently when the phone in the Masts’ shanty kicked into message mode. “Mervin, it’s Jonny Ropp, and I’m headed to the hospital with Dat. If you could see that his cows get milked, I’d appreciate it. Oh, here’s the ambulance! Thanks, Mervin.”

Zanna waited beside Rudy as Jonny and the three barking dogs
went outside to signal the driver. Moments later, the paramedics came in. She got out of their way and stood to one side with Jonny. He answered as best he could when the paramedics asked him questions and watched as they checked Rudy’s vital signs and hooked up an IV. She’d never seen Jonny looking so helpless. After the EMT fellows quickly carried his father out on a stretcher, he grabbed for her hands.

“I—I’ve not thought much about the end of Dat’s life, but I never saw it happening like
this
,” he said, shaking his head. He looked at her as though holding her gaze might keep him grounded and rational. “Maybe if I wouldn’t have left home… Zanna, how’d you handle it when your dat got sick?”

“Jonny,” she said, grasping his hands more firmly, “you
don’t
handle it by blaming yourself or assuming he’s not going to make it. You take a lot of deep breaths, and you say a lot of prayers, and then you keep doing the next thing that has to be done.”

She smiled up at him, hoping she sounded braver and stronger than she felt. “By now, James has told your mamm and your sisters what’s happened and that you’re coming to pick them up. You’re in the driver’s seat, Jonny, because none of the rest of us can be, jah?”

He blinked, then seemed to gather himself together again even though his smile looked uncertain. “Jah, you’re right, Zanna. We’d better get going.”

Zanna sat in the hard plastic hospital chair that afternoon, wishing she were invisible. When she’d arrived with Mamm, Adah, and the girls this morning, they’d gone through the usual exclaiming and explaining. In a tearful reunion, Adah had hugged her Jonny for dear life. Rudy had regained consciousness and was stable, but waiting for the results of many tests had worn them thin. Stress and exhaustion had silenced them as the last rays of afternoon sun slanted through the windows.

Zanna felt as frayed as a worn-out dishrag. Rather than make eye
contact with any of them—because the subject of her and Jonny
would
come up—she studied the dust on the fake plant beside her chair. When James Graber had appeared around two o’clock and then pulled up a chair beside Adah for an update on Rudy’s condition, all the air had seemed to leave the already stuffy room.

Could there be a more unbearable situation? Because the waiting area was so crowded, Zanna sat beside Jonny, while Mamm, James, and Adah faced them from across a coffee table strewn with old magazines. Becky and Maggie shared an issue of
People
, but their peeks over the top only made Zanna feel more like screaming. And all the time her baby—Jonny’s baby—kept kicking and fussing inside her, with Jonny none the wiser.

“I’m thinking a cup of tea might perk us up, Adah,” her mother said. “And the walk to the cafeteria would be gut for us, too. You girls want to come along?”

Maggie and Becky hopped to their feet, eager for a change of scene. The four females weren’t out of sight before James rose, as well. “I need to let Amos Coblentz know I’m not in my shop, in case Noah figures to start working on those wagons.”

Jonny smiled tiredly. He’d been very quiet since they had arrived—nervous about being in a hospital and what the doctors might be doing to his dat. As James’s footsteps faded down the hall, Zanna felt as if someone had grabbed the waistband of her apron and was pulling it tighter and tighter.

“Awful nice of you to come along, Zanna,” Jonny said. “I don’t know what I’d have done without you, back at the barn.”

His voice held a hint of that sweet-talking he was so good at, but she told herself not to fall for it. If there was to be any release of the tension in this airless waiting room, she had to find a way to tell Jonny he was the father of her child.

“I remember how awful it was to bring my dat here, first of the year,” she murmured, wiping away sudden tears. “He passed here, you know—not that your dat will do the same,” she added quickly.
“If you hadn’t called the ambulance, he would have been gone by the time Adah took out that casserole she was making him. And finding him
that
way would have been even more horrible.”

“I still feel pretty low. As I watched him lying there on the barn floor, I kept thinking about all the times I couldn’t wait to have that man out of my life.”

It was the most somber she’d ever seen him: Jonny Ropp slumped in his chair without any hint of the daredevil who’d roared along the road on his motorcycle. “Well, we’ve all noticed lately how upset he gets, over the least little thing,” she said softly. “Your mamm told us he’d get up at all hours of the night to roam the house, then be dozing off at dinner, or while she was talking to him.”

“Guys have a way of tuning out the wife’s voice, you know.”

It was meant to be funny, but Zanna stiffened. Was telling him about this baby a waste of her time? She shifted in her hard seat, wishing she’d gone for tea with the others.

But you’ve got to talk. It’s now or never—no matter how distracted he is by his father. Jonny might not come back once Rudy’s up and around.

Zanna drew in a deep breath. “Jonny, I’ve got to tell you—”

“So, Zanna, if you’re not married, how is it you’re—”

His gaze locked onto hers. Jonny was asking a sincere question, puzzled rather than poking fun at her. The baby kicked, telling her to get on with it. Zanna’s throat felt so tight she could hardly breathe. “I was—engaged. To James. Before July.”

Jonny’s jaw dropped. “You were going to marry James Graber?”

“This past October, jah.”

“And he backed out on you, after he got you—” He stared at her belly. “So how are you still living in Cedar Creek, right across the road from him? And you’ve been talking to him today as though everything is fine between you.”

Zanna’s face prickled with heat, but she made herself look him in the eye. “I was with
you
in July, Jonny,” she reminded him. “So I was the one who backed out on James, the morning of our wedding day.”

Jonny’s eyes widened. He leaned closer, as though he didn’t quite believe her. “And he’s still speaking to you? And Sam lets you stay at home, when everybody can see you’re—”

“James and Sam are special men,” she murmured. Why on earth wasn’t Jonny making the obvious connection? Zanna closed her eyes and willed herself to tell the rest of the story. “The baby’s yours, Jonny. So I couldn’t marry James and pretend—”