The pair of men frowned, and Ohr said, “Are you sure? We don’t want to cheat you.”
No, they just wanted to rob him of the privilege of using his own photographs. “It’s fine.” Briley slipped the few approved photos in his shirt pocket.
The two gave identical nods. They turned to the rack on the back wall, plucked their hats from pegs, then strode for the door. Just before leaving, Ohr turned back. “Would the two of you like to come with me for lunch? I’m going to the Pletts, and Mrs. Plett always cooks extra. You would be welcome there.”
Briley answered first. “No, thank you.” He wanted to hurry back to his computer and figure out which photographs had been deemed inappropriate. Len would surely get a kick out of their reasoning.
“Mr. Brungardt? What of you?”
“Thank you, but I have food at my house that needs to be eaten or it might spoil.”
“All right then. Good-bye.” The man departed.
Briley lifted his bomber jacket from the bench, where he’d draped it instead of using one of the pegs, and jammed his arms into the sleeves. “Guess we better get out of here, huh? Odd there’s no janitor still here to lock the door behind us.”
An amused smile played on Steven’s mouth. “A janitor? Locking the door?” He shook his head. “You don’t know much about the Old Order fellowships, do you?”
Apparently his extensive research hadn’t covered everything. Briley fought a grin. “Wanna teach me that while you teach me those math shortcuts?”
Once again Steven took Briley’s teasing seriously. “If you’d like. You can come to my house and eat sandwiches with me, and we can … talk.”
“About math?”
“And the fellowship.”
Given the man’s taciturn behavior, he’d probably tell a different tale than others in the community. Briley patted the pocket where his trusty recorder waited. “That sounds great. Lead the way, Teach.”
Steven
They ate two sandwiches each, drowned by bottles of pop they purchased at the convenience store on their way to the farm, and then dug into the muffins. Steven only had one, but Briley ate three. Since Steven didn’t have a table and chairs, they sat on upside-down buckets from the barn and brushed the crumbs onto the floor. With evidence of his past week’s activity scattered across the scuffed pine floorboards, a few crumbs wouldn’t even be noticeable.
After he popped the last bite of chocolate-chocolate-chip muffin in his mouth, Briley stood, grimaced, and rubbed his hindquarters. “You need to get some furniture in here, my man.”
Steven shrugged. Why bring in furniture until he knew for sure this would be his home?
Briley arched backward, pressing his hands to his lower spine, then straightened and stretched his arms over his head. Even as tall as he was, his fingers didn’t come close to touching the spider-cracked, ten-foot-high ceiling. “How have you managed a week without anything to sit on besides buckets?”
“I sat on this.” Steven patted the cooler and then peeked inside of it. One sandwich, two muffins, and a wrinkled apple lay in its bottom. It would be empty by nightfall. He snapped the lid closed and gestured toward the sturdy plastic box, inviting Briley to make use of it. “But mostly, I don’t sit. I work all day, and then I go to sleep.” The twin mattress on the floor of the bigger of the two bedrooms suited him fine. Being too tired to care helped. He’d worked like a dog all last week peeling layers of brittle wallpaper from every wall in the house, patching cracks in the plaster, and stripping paint from the woodwork because Anna—Grace didn’t like painted woodwork. He had to admit, the egg-and-dart trim above the windows and doors would be pretty with a coat of stain and varnish.
Briley plunked down on the cooler and scuffed his toe against the floor, creating a half-moon shape in the mixture of sawdust, plaster dust, and dustdust. “And a broom. You definitely need a broom.”
He had one. He just hadn’t seen the point in using it. Mr. Aldrich swept the kitchen every day before he left, but Steven chose to wait until he’d finished all the messing in the other parts of the house before he started a cleanup. He’d sweep before Anna—Grace arrived next week, though, whether he’d finished messing or not.
Weary of the topic of his housekeeping skills, Steven said, “Want me to show you those math shortcuts now? I have easy-to-learn shortcuts for addition, subtraction, and multiplication. The division ones take a little more thinking, but—”
“Actually, I’d rather talk about the fellowship.”
Steven’s spirits sank. He’d been looking forward to sharing his mathematical tricks with someone, even if the someone was a grown man rather than a roomful of students. But he only shrugged. He sat back down on the bucket. “Well, let me start by explaining why we don’t have a janitor.”
Briley pulled a small rectangle of black plastic with buttons marching across one short side from his shirt pocket. “Do you mind?”
“What is it?”
“A recording device. It’ll record our voices. Later I’ll plug it into my computer, and my voice-recognition software will type out what we’ve said.”
“Oh.” He’d never heard of such a thing. Did college students use these devices? He should watch Briley closely and learn how the recorder worked, just in case.
“Is it okay with you if I use it? My handwriting …” Briley chuckled, the sound self-conscious. “Not that I’d ever have earned a penmanship award, but now that I’m on the computer most of the time, it’s gotten really sloppy. Sometimes I have a hard time deciphering my own notes. Especially when I’m writing quickly.”
If he had a pad and pencil handy, he’d offer to keep the notes for Briley, but he hadn’t bothered to bring any with him. He’d called Anna—Grace from the convenience store pay phone in response to her letter. “Yes. Go ahead and record us.” Steven sent up a silent prayer for guidance. He’d better form his answers to Briley’s questions carefully since they’d be recorded and then typed later, word-for-word. “Now …” He pulled in a slow breath. “What do you want to know?”
Briley clicked one of the buttons and laid the recorder on his knee. “Start by telling me why the church doesn’t have a janitor.”
Steven explained haltingly, a little intimidated by the black box capturing his voice, the fellowship practice of sharing the upkeep of the house of worship. “Families take turns coming in to clean and dust and make the windows shine. If they find something that needs fixing—like a leak in the roof or a cracked windowpane—they alert the deacons and someone is hired to do the repair.”
“Someone from the fellowship?”
Steven shrugged. “Whenever possible, yes. Our fellowship in Sommerfeld doesn’t have anyone with electrical or plumbing skills, so when we need those services we go outside the fellowship. But most everything else—painting, roofing, construction—we can do ourselves. So we do it.”
Briley asked questions about why they sang without a piano, why different men instead of one minister had stepped behind the pulpit the two weeks he’d attended, and why the Mennonites allowed electricity and cars when their Amish neighbors didn’t. And then he asked about courtship practices. Steven’s face heated a bit as he talked about courting. The topic was more personal than the others. But he answered honestly, and as he spoke, a feeling of pride swelled in his chest.
Divorce and single parentage was common outside his community, but within the fellowship he’d never seen a marriage fall apart. Surely the solid start—the shared faith, the friendship-forming, and the time of being published before becoming man and wife—contributed to the successful unions in his fellowship. Entering a relationship with a pure heart, and knowing your intended came with the same purity, meant the marriage could begin with a strong base of trust and security.
“And you’ll be getting married soon, huh?” Briley grinned. “Did you pick her, or did your parents say ‘Here’s the one’?”
Once again Steven formed an honest answer. “Of all the girls in the fellowsh
ip, my parents liked Anna—Grace best. They told me so. But I’d already decided I wanted to court her. I just had to wait until she was old enough. She’s four years younger than me.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-three.”
“Really? That’s all?” The reporter narrowed his gaze and examined Steven for several seconds.
Steven did his best not to squirm beneath the scrutiny.
“You seem older. Maybe it’s because you’ve got your own farm. Or maybe—”
Steven waited, but Briley didn’t finish the sentence. So he spoke. “I chose Anna—Grace.” It was important Briley understood this. There were many things over which he had no control, but he wanted to make it clear that the person he took for a wife was his decision. “My parents and the deacons approved me courting her, but I chose her.”
Briley nodded. He stretched again, this time with his arms outward rather than up, and yawned. “You know, Steven, I’ve talked to quite a few people in Arborville over the past couple of weeks, and I’ve asked all of them what they like most about living in a Plain community. I’ve gotten the same response, or a variation of it, from all of them. They tell me they like the sense of close community, the assurance that they and their families will be cared for no matter what might happen, and being able to openly live their faith. Do you agree with that?”
Steven thought for a few seconds about what Briley had said. He couldn’t argue with any of it. He nodded.
“Okay then.” He picked up the recorder and then rested his elbows on his knees. Holding the little recording device on his open palms between them, he angled a serious look at Steven. “Let me ask you a different question. One I haven’t asked anyone else.”
Steven stiffened. “Why ask me?”
A sly smile appeared on the man’s face. “I have my reasons, but I’m going to claim journalistic privilege and keep them to myself.”
Well then, Steven just might keep his answer to himself. He wondered about the question, though. “What do you want to know?”
Speaking slowly and with precise enunciation, Briley said, “What do you like least about living in a Plain community?”
Steven took the recorder, turned it button side up, and then punched the Off button. He pressed it back into Briley’s open hand and stood. “That, my man, is none of your business.”
Alexa
Over the course of the week prior to Anna—Grace’s arrival, Alexa developed a new routine. She served breakfast to both Briley and Steven and then packed lunches for three men. For reasons he didn’t explain—and she wasn’t going to ask!—Briley had begun spending his days at the Meiers farmstead with Steven and Mr. Aldrich. He’d been the one to ask her for box lunches, even offering to pay for all three, but Steven insisted on paying for his own, and after the first day of delivering the lunch to Mr. Aldrich he, too, called and told her to keep a running tab so he could settle up with her at the end of the week.
She had fun making the lunches for the men, always tucking in some of her home-baked cookies or brownies, wedges of pie, or man-sized slices of cake. Mr. Aldrich especially liked tea flavored with peach slices, so she bought some refillable bottles and kept several handy to add to his lunch box. Grandmother thought she was nuts for doing it. “This is a bed-and-breakfast, not a café,” she’d scolded, but Alexa assured her she didn’t mind. Besides, it meant a little more money coming into her account. She couldn’t turn it down no matter how small the profit.
Each evening, Briley put the three empty lunch boxes on the back porch so Alexa could wash the containers and ready the boxes for the next day. And for reasons she couldn’t fathom, he began an odd routine of leaving little somethings in his box. On Monday evening she found a piece of very old wallpaper, musty-smelling and brittle and bearing the faded image of a bluebird. Tuesday there were a half-dozen rusty, square-head nails, each bent into odd shapes. Both day’s findings earned a chuckle—they reminded her of treasures a small boy might gather—and then went into the trash bin.
A rumpled, food-stained napkin waited in the bottom of the box on Wednesday, which brought an odd sense of disappointment. Had she offended him by throwing the things away? But when she plucked the napkin out, she discovered he’d used it to wrap a walnut-sized chunk of coal that had nearly fossilized. The black lump was as hard and glossy as polished glass. She set it on the kitchen windowsill so she could enjoy the play of sunlight on the smooth surface.
Thursday she opened his box and found a single page from an old book. A line drawing of a bare tree climbed one side of the page and spread its branches along the top edge. A saucy crow perched on an uppermost branch. The bottom of the page bore a spattering of dots, some more time faded than others, and Robert Frost’s poem “Dust of Snow” filled the center in an old-fashioned script. Reading it brought a smile. Even though the sheet was yellowed, the bottom-left corner permanently smudged with dirt, and the edges frayed, she couldn’t resist keeping it. She showed the page to her grandmother, who also commented on its charm, and then she put it safely in her desk drawer. She’d seek a vintage-looking frame and hang the poem on the wall in the cottage when she was able to move back in.
All Friday afternoon while she baked and decorated a batch of sugar cookies to share with her passel of young cousins, she looked forward to the hour when Briley would deposit the lunch boxes on the back porch. The hands on the clock seemed to move at half their usual rate, but suppertime finally came and went, and shortly after, she heard the clump of Briley’s boots on the porch.
She waited until the screen door snapped into its frame, then dashed out and retrieved the boxes. She pushed Mr. Aldrich’s and Steven’s plain black, arch-topped boxes to the back of the counter and unzipped the lid on Briley’s newer, insulated box. Holding her breath in anticipation, she peeled the cover back and peered inside. At the bottom an envelope waited. The other items had all been old, but this envelope was crisp and white, obviously not something he’d found in Steven’s house. What might it hold?
Biting her lower lip to hold back an eager giggle, she pulled it out and unstuck the flap. A partial image showed in the V-shaped cutout. She frowned at it for a moment, confused, and then her eyes widened and heat rushed to her face. “Oh! Oh, that—that obnoxious stinker!” She dropped the envelope back in the lunch box and smacked the lid closed. Muffled laughter reached her ears, and she turned toward the sound. Briley, his hands cupped beside his amused face, peered through the square window on the upper half of the kitchen door.
With a little growl she marched to the door and gave the curtains a brisk yank that hid his face from view. His laughter boomed louder. She jerked the door open and glared at him, one hand on her hip. “I suppose you think you’re funny, don’t you? As if I’d want that awful picture!”
“You don’t like it? But I had it printed just for you.”
His hurt tone and wide-eyed expression didn’t fool her. “You had it printed just to torment me, you mean.”
He held his hands out in a pose of surrender. “Why, Miss Zimmerman, the things you say. Me? Torment you? Never …”
She folded her arms over her chest and gave him an I’m-not-buying-it look.
He waggled his eyebrows at her—an annoying gesture made even worse because he was so cute when he did it. “Don’t forget, you started it with the apple cider. And then you ended it, because you only gave it to me on Sunday. Didn’t I tell you it’s the only cure for my obnoxiousness? Be happy it didn’t wear off sooner or who knows what you might have found before now.”
“Don’t worry.” She pushed her words past gritted teeth. If the laugh building in her chest erupted, she’d never forgive herself. “You won’t go one day without apple cider from now on.” She yanked the envelope from his lunch box and pulled out the photograph. Holding it where he could easily see, she tore it in two. She stomped to the waste can and, with a dramatic flourish, tossed in both halves, swished her palms together, and smiled at him in triumph. “There!
”
His lips twitched into a mischievous grin. “One down and …” He aimed his gaze upward, pinching his chin as if in deep contemplation. “How many to go?”
Alexa rushed at him. “Do you mean to tell me there are more of those things?” The image—tufts of pink fuzz from her unflattering earmuffs poking out between her clamped fingers and her shocked face above a stack of mugs—was etched in her memory. She didn’t want anyone else seeing that picture.
He stood with his feet widespread and his fists on his hips like Paul Bunyan and laughed at her.
“Briley!”
“Alexa!” He imitated her tone exactly. Leaning forward until his nose was only inches from hers, he whispered, “There’s only one way to find out how many of those prints exist.”
She wrung her hands, half-afraid of what he would say next.
“Withhold the apple cider.” Then he turned on his heel and strode out the door.
Alexa gawked after him for several stunned seconds, then she growled in aggravation and gave the door a firm whack that slammed it into its frame. She spun from the door, then jumped in surprise. Grandmother’s chair filled the opposite doorway. Alexa’s face flamed. What had her grandmother seen? She cleared her throat. “Um … hello. How long have you been there?”
“Long enough.”
Alexa put one hand on her chest and held the other toward the door where Briley had just departed. “None of that was my fault. He played a trick on me!”
An odd smile quivered on the corners of Grandmother’s lips. “I know.”
“And I wasn’t flirting.” She spoke firmly, convincing herself as much as her grandmother. Flirting with Briley would be foolhardy, and she made it a point to never be foolhardy. She frowned, suddenly uncertain. “But …” She hurried across the floor to Grandmother and knelt in front of her. “Was he flirting with me?”
When Grace Sings Page 16