The Waiting Page 19

  “His nightmares are getting worse, according to Matthew.”

  “Those are called flashbacks and they’re to be expected.” The doctor put his pen back in his coat pocket. “You’ve got to give us time.” He turned to go but then spun around. “Look, Mr. Zook, your brother is psychologically damaged. He may never get well. You need to keep your expectations in line with reality.”

  “I do, I do.” Cal patted the doctor on the back. “I call it faith.”

  Later that day, when Bud dropped Jorie off at Stoney Creek, Marge and Atlee met her at the door.

  “How did Ben seem to you?” Marge asked, concerned.

  “He didn’t seem to recognize me, if that’s what you meant.” Jorie hung her bonnet on the peg. “But he looked better than I expected.” She sat in a chair. “It was his eyes that worried me the most. He was Ben, but not Ben.”

  Her grandmother was bustling around the kitchen, gathering ingredients to prepare biscuits. “That Caleb, the firstborn, he’s the pick of that Zook litter. Always the serious one, deliberate and thoughtful, even as a boy.” Marge scooped flour into a wooden bowl. “Well, if I were you, I’d be sweet-talking that Caleb into romancing you before Ben snaps out of his funk.”

  Atlee sighed. “I’d hardly call it a funk, Marge. Our Jorie knows what she’s doing. Leave her be.”

  Jorie was watching her grandmother mix ingredients for the biscuits with a growing spike of concern. Marge made biscuits once or twice a week from a family recipe that she knew by heart. Today, after measuring the dry ingredients – flour, baking soda, and salt – she grabbed a can of tuna fish and started to open it. She was just about to dump the can into the flour when Jorie jumped up and held her wrist.

  “I don’t think tuna fish is supposed to go in the biscuits,” she said gently.

  Marge blinked a few times at the can of tuna fish in her hand, as if she didn’t know how it got there. “Oh my,” she said, flustered. “Oh my. I can’t talk and cook anymore.” She put the can down. “Maybe you could finish those biscuits, Jorie, while I go take down the laundry before it rains.” Marge washed her hands in the sink, dried them on her apron, and hurried outside, avoiding Atlee and Jorie’s eyes.

  Atlee watched Marge go and Jorie wondered what was going through his head. Her grandfather wasn’t one for sharing his thoughts. Quietly, she asked, “Do you think she should see a doctor?”

  Atlee jerked his head back toward Jorie. “No. She’s just a little overtired lately, is all.” He got up and went to the barn, his place of refuge.

  Jorie turned her attention back to the wooden bowl and added the liquid ingredients to the flour to make dough. As she gently kneaded, she set aside her worries of her grandmother and picked up her worries about Ben. Cal had prepared her well. She didn’t expect much of a response from Ben and she didn’t get one. She felt a twinge of sorrow for Matthew, that first day, seeing Ben without being prepared for what he was like. Ben didn’t really seem to recognize her, not at first, anyway. When it was time to leave, she squeezed his hands in hers and she felt a squeeze in return, ever so slightly. But, maybe not. Maybe she was just wishing for some glimmer of recognition.

  She thought back to one of the last times she had seen him. He had just returned from the Armed Forces Recruiting Office with the news that he was being sent to Vietnam as a stretcher bearer.

  “You have to go back and make them change it, Ben!” she had said when he told her.

  “No,” he said, too calmly. “I want to go, Jorie. It’s my only chance to see the world.”

  “You did this on purpose, didn’t you? You signed up to go!” She was furious with him.

  Ben gave her a cat-in-the-cream smile. “Aw, Jorie, you won’t tell, will you?”

  She was silent for a long moment, gathering her thoughts. It was so like Ben, to act on impulse before the fire in his belly had time to cool down. “I won’t tell, but I won’t be waiting for you either. You put yourself in this situation. You’ll be sorry for it one day.”

  Now, those words seemed prophetic.

  At the time, though, Ben only laughed and slipped his arms around her waist to pull her close for a kiss to say goodbye. “If you marry some hapless farmer while I’m gone, then you’ll be the sorry one, Jorie King.”

  But she wasn’t going to marry some hapless farmer. She was going to marry Caleb Zook, a fine man. A wonderful man. At least, she was going to marry him until Ben returned.

  Now, she didn’t know what was going to become of them.

  Later that week, Matthew slid open the barn door at Beacon Hollow and shouted, “Cal! Cal! Where are you?”

  Cal and Ephraim came out of the tack room, surprised to see Matthew. “What are you doing here? How did you get here?”

  “Hitchhiked,” he said, still out of breath. “You’re not going to like what I have to tell you.”

  Cal pointed to a hay bale. “Sit down and catch your breath.”

  Matthew sat down, his hands on his knees. “They’re giving treatments to Ben. Twice, now. It’s making him seem weird too. He’s back to just staring out the window.”

  “What kind of treatments?”

  “It’s called electroshock therapy. The doctor zaps Ben’s brain with electric jolts to make him forget things.”

  Ephraim’s eyes went wide. “L-like a l-lightning bolt?”

  Cal took a deep breath and looked at the clock in the barn. “Let’s go get Bud.” He turned to Ephraim. “Can you handle the milking, Ephraim? I may not be back in time. You can ask Amos Esh or Samuel Riehl for help.”

  Ephraim nodded. “I c-can handle it.”

  “You can’t forget and get to them late. You know they’ll try to step on your feet when they see you coming with the milking pump.” Cal’s face filled with worry. “Maybe you should stay here, Matthew.”

  “I can’t, Cal,” Matthew said. “I need to work in the morning.”

  “I said I c-can handle it, C-Cal,” Ephraim said more forcefully. “I’ve done M-Matthew’s j-job since he l-left.”

  Matthew looked at the earnest face on his little brother’s face. It seemed that every time he came home, Ephraim had grown another couple of inches. He wasn’t a little boy anymore. “He can do it, Cal.”

  Cal nodded. “Of course you can. It’s a big job, though, thirty cows. Keep Maggie in the house while you’re milking.” He squeezed Ephraim’s shoulder. “Just don’t be late for them and you shouldn’t have any problem.”

  Cal told Bud and Matthew to wait in the car in the parking lot of the Veterans Hospital, he would only be a few moments. The truth was, he wanted to keep Matthew out of this and not jeopardize his job. Cal walked past Lottie at the nurses’ station and went straight to Ben’s room, scooped him up from the chair in his large arms, and carried him out like a rag doll.

  Lottie must have alerted Dr. Doyle because he appeared out of nowhere and stopped Cal in the hallway. “Hold on there, Mr. Zook. You can’t just take a patient out without being released.”

  “Yes, I can,” Cal said, shifting Ben’s featherlight body for a standoff.

  “No, you can’t,” Dr. Doyle insisted. “There are procedures!”

  “You didn’t ask me about any procedures before you gave my brother this electric therapy.”

  “It’s part of our treatment here. We’ve been doing ECT for two decades now with remarkable results. It helps the patients forget unpleasant memories.”

  Cal peered seriously at the doctor. “We are shaped by our life experiences, both good and bad.”

  The doctor blanched. “ECT is not a moral issue. It’s a medical treatment.”

  “It isn’t right to play God and suppress a man’s memory.”

  “We’re just trying to help these men live as normal a life as they possibly can.”

  Cal shook his head. “Now, Doctor, I do appreciate that you are trying to help Ben. I really do. But if I don’t even have electricity in my home, why would I let you put it into my brother’s head?”


  The doctor held his breath for a long moment, then gave a loud exhale. “Mr. Zook, you remind me at times of a granite wall. An unmovable granite wall.”

  “ ‘They that trust in the Lord shall be as mount Zion, which cannot be removed.’ ”

  The doctor gave Cal a look as if he thought he might belong on the ward too. Then he shook his head and looked through Ben’s file, scanning pages until he found what he was looking for. “Fine!” He slammed the folder shut. “Your brother’s service date was officially over a few weeks ago, anyway. If you want him, he’s yours.”

  “Just like that?” Cal asked, a broad smile covering his face.

  “Sign off on paperwork and he’s all yours.” The doctor brushed the palms of his hands. “I wash my hands of him.” He sighed. “Would you at least put him in a wheelchair when you take him out of here.”

  After signing release papers, Lottie handed Cal a white paper bag filled with amber-colored bottles. “These are all of his medications,” she said. “They’re clearly labeled. Little orange ones are sleeping pills. Blue ones are antidepressants. Big pink ones are tranquilizers.”

  Cal thanked her for her kindness to Ben. Lottie leaned down, planted a kiss on Ben’s forehead, and disappeared down the hallway, her rubber soles squeaking on the tiled floor.

  As they passed through the front door of the hospital, Cal tossed the bag of pills in the nearest garbage can.

  Dusk set in early on that late winter afternoon. It was nearly dark when Bud drove back into the drive at Beacon Hollow. Maggie had heard the car and ran out to greet them. Cal jumped out of the passenger side and opened the back door, helping Ben ease out of the car the way he helped the aunties step down from the buggy. Then Cal picked him up and carried him to the house. He smiled when he saw the wide-eyed look on Maggie’s small face.

  “This is your uncle, Maggie, come home.”

  14

  These last few days Ben had spent a good part of the time in bed. Maggie and Ephraim took turns reading to him, which, Cal thought, seemed to comfort him. Lizzie made all kinds of tempting treats to coax him to eat and he did try to oblige her, though Cal knew he didn’t have much appetite. He hadn’t come downstairs for meals yet, nor did he participate in evening prayers. But there was a little improvement, Cal noticed, with each passing day. He thought it had to do with getting Ben off of all of those drugs. Ben didn’t say much, but he was starting to answer questions, as long as they weren’t too penetrating. Cal had the feeling that he just didn’t remember much. But once, Cal made the mistake of referring to Vietnam, and he could see Ben recoil and close himself off, as real as if he had blown out the light in a lantern. In that instant, though, Cal caught a glimpse of the horror that lived within him.

  After Ben had been at Beacon Hollow over a week, Cal heard him get up and go downstairs in the middle of the night, then the kitchen door – a stubborn door to close – was pulled shut. Cal looked out his window and saw Ben, in the bright moonlight, walk down the long drive of Beacon Hollow toward the road. He watched him for a long while, unsure if he should go after him or leave him be. He finally decided to let Ben have this time to heal. He had to trust in the Lord to take care of him, to take care of them all.

  Every day after school, Jorie stopped by Beacon Hollow to see Ben, but he was always upstairs, sleeping. He had been back well over a week now. Ephraim had told her that he stayed mostly in bed, though he was starting to take meals with the family.

  During breakfast one morning, Marge said she was planning to pay a call to Ben. She had been brewing up a curative for him and was eager to try it out.

  “Please, Jorie, go with her,” Atlee whispered when Marge was out of earshot. “It makes her happy to think she can doctor him.”

  As soon as school let out, Jorie walked her grandmother over to Beacon Hollow. She was relieved that she didn’t see Cal anywhere, though she hadn’t really expected to. She knew he was busy plowing the fields for spring planting. They hadn’t spoken much in the last few weeks, and the silence that was wedged between them felt like it was stretching them further and further apart.

  Jorie and Marge had just climbed the kitchen steps when Lizzie threw open the door, welcoming them in. “You’re just in time!” she called out. “Freshly made doughnuts! Made from my secret recipe. I call them ‘Sleeper, Awake! Doughnuts.’”

  Jorie and Marge took off their bonnets and capes and handed them to Lizzie.

  “I’ve been pulling out all the stops, making the most tempting, best-smelling food I can think of, trying to lure that Ben downstairs.” Lizzie smiled, conspiratorially. “And it’s been working! For two days now, he’s been coming down, about this time of day.” She glanced up the stairs. “Just see if it doesn’t work!”

  “Have you been having many visitors?” Marge asked, raising an eyebrow at Jorie, who had told her grandmother that no one was visiting Ben yet.

  “Gobs! Of course, Cal’s been real protective of Ben and doesn’t let anybody go upstairs poking their nose at him. That Ben, he’s as skittish as a newborn lamb. But yesterday, he was down here and didn’t even skedaddle when the aunties came calling.” Lizzie poured the coffee into three cups. She stopped and got a fourth. “You just wait and see. He’ll be down. No one can resist my doughnuts.” She took a dishrag and whirled it around the kitchen, fanning the smell up the stairs.

  Jorie had to hold back a laugh as Ephraim and Maggie came galloping up the basement stairs, following their noses. They were all talking together at the kitchen table, dipping the doughnuts in coffee or milk, when suddenly Jorie felt someone’s eyes on her. She glanced toward the stairs.

  There was Ben. She almost gasped at the sight of him: he looked thin, so thin, and pale, with dark circles under his eyes. And his eyes – usually so bright, filled with mischief – they looked flat and empty. Jorie put down her doughnut and went to him.

  “Jorie,” he said so softly she thought she might have imagined it.

  She reached out a hand for his. “I saw you in the hospital awhile ago, but I don’t know if you remember that I came.”

  “I remember,” he said. His voice cracked a little, rusty from lack of use. They held each others’ gaze for a long while, when suddenly the kitchen door opened and Cal walked in. He stopped abruptly when he saw Jorie. A look of unspeakable sadness came over his face, but then he recovered almost instantly and the look vanished, replaced with a gentle smile.

  “Marge, Jorie, glad you came,” Cal said, but avoided their eyes when he spoke. “Those doughnuts can be smelled in the next town over, Lizzie. They drive a man to distraction.” He washed up at the kitchen sink. “Please, sit down, ladies. Ben, have a doughnut before they get cold.” He tossed a doughnut to Ben, who caught it, then grabbed one for himself and went to the door.

  “Cal, stay and join us,” Jorie said.

  “Can’t,” he said, stopping at the doorjamb. “Time to start the milking.”

  Automatically, Ephraim scraped the chair back as he rose to join Cal.

  “I’ll come too,” Maggie said.

  Cal warded them off. “Ephraim, finish your doughnuts first. And Maggie, you stay. Practice being a host.”

  Maggie rolled her eyes and plopped back in the chair as her father closed the door behind him.

  Ben sat at the table as Lizzie poured a cup of coffee for him. His hands were restless, drawing circles in the oilcloth. Everyone else was distracted by Ephraim, stuffing his mouth full of doughnuts, washing them down with milk, wiping his mouth with his sleeve before bolting out the door. Maggie watched him go, looking like she’d rather be in the barn.

  An awkward silence fell over the table, until Marge opened the bag she brought with her. “Now Ben, I’ve been working on some remedies for you.” She pulled out bottles of mixed dried herbs. “Steep them, like a tea. One fourth teaspoon to one cup of hot water should do. This one is to help you sleep. And this one is to give you energy. And this one will cure fever, stomach pain, and diarrhea. It’s a mixture of
cayenne pepper and salt. In fact, it’ll cure constipation too.”

  Ben’s eyes went wide at that and Jorie nearly laughed out loud.

  “Uh, thank you, Marge. Valuable stuff,” he said and wiggled his eyebrows at Jorie. She did laugh then. It was something Ben used to do at her during church meetings when the preacher said something very serious that he thought was ridiculous.

  Marge continued to pull out bottles of herbs, describing the contents, until Jorie could see a wave of exhaustion roll over Ben. His face suddenly seemed haggard, almost gray. “If you’ll excuse me, ladies, I’m a little worn out.” He went back upstairs, holding on to the rail as if he didn’t quite trust his own balance.

  After he left, Lizzie looked at Jorie’s face. “Now don’t go feeling too badly. The aunties wore him out in just a few minutes. And that was the most words I’ve heard out of him all week.”

  Jorie smiled and plucked their bonnets and capes off of the wall pegs. “We should be going too, Lizzie. My grandfather likes his dinner at the same time, every night.”

  As she helped her grandmother down the steps on the front lawn, she glanced up at the second story of the farmhouse and saw Ben at the window. She waved to him. When she turned back, there was Cal, standing at the open barn door, watching her. When their eyes met, he dropped his head and turned to go into the barn.

  “How does he seem to you?” Cal asked Jorie two weeks later when he stopped by the schoolhouse late one afternoon on a cold, wet day. “Ben, I mean. I was just wondering what you thought. How does he seem?”

  Jorie was surprised to see him. Cal had been studiously avoiding being alone with her since Ben returned home. Any conversation between them was drawn and tight, carefully guarded. She saw him from a distance when she stopped by Beacon Hollow to see Ben, which was often. It was hard to see Cal but not be able to chat like they used to, laugh like they used to, and share private smiles like they used to.

  “At times he seems like the old Ben.” She hesitated. “But . . .”