by Adina Senft
“This is terrible. The police will probably arrest Benny for helping you.”
“They’d have to find me first.” Benny stole a pickle and crunched it, apparently unconcerned. “These are good, Pris. Did you make them?”
She ignored him. “We have to tell someone, Eric,” she said. “An adult. An Englisch adult. You can’t stay here in Ginny’s shed.”
“Can’t I go to Caleb’s? His mom invited me. She won’t mind.”
“Maybe not, but your parents are going to mind a lot, no matter what you think. We can’t go to Sarah Yoder’s. It’s better she doesn’t know you’re here.”
“What about Henry? He wanted me to stay and learn about pottery. I need to finish my project.”
Henry was Englisch now. “And he’s got a phone in the barn.” She gathered up the empty plastic containers and stuffed them back in her bag. “That’s where we’ll go. The first thing to do is let your parents know where you are.”
At the mention of his parents again, Eric’s face closed up in an expression so stony and stubborn that for the second time in a few minutes, Priscilla was shocked.
“No. I won’t. I’ll run away again.”
“You can come and stay with—” Benny got out before Priscilla rounded on him.
“You stay out of this!” she snapped. “You’ve already got yourself in enough trouble for bringing him back here. If Eric won’t come obediently, pick him up and put him in the buggy like a sack of potatoes.”
“Aren’t you the bossy one,” Benny said mildly as Eric backed away, glancing from shed to creek as if looking for a way of escape.
But Priscilla was having no more of this nonsense. “I’m not bossy, I’m the only one down here who has the sense to do the right thing. Now, come on before I have to go and tell Ginny—and you can just imagine what she’ll say.”
Eric looked as if he were imagining it then and there. “But can we go to Henry’s?” he asked, sounding less truculent than he had a moment ago.
“To use the phone. And for you to get your project, if he hasn’t sent it away already.”
“Sent it away!”
“To your address, you big silly. Now, come on.”
Chapter 22
Carefully, patiently, Henry drew his thumb along the soft, damp curve of the clay that would become the handle of a batter bowl, this second depression next to the first forming a ridge in the center like a vein or a stem. At the terminus of the curve, the clay splayed outward, clinging to the body of the bowl in the shape of a peony leaf, a sample of which he had found in Sadie’s garden and pressed between the pages of his sketchbook as a model.
There. Henry straightened with satisfaction.
The classes he’d taken in historical pottery methods, and the hours of research he’d done on the Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts movements, were beginning to pay off. Already his sketchbook had taken on a different character, full of natural forms instead of the abstracts he’d been working with without success in Denver.
This landscape around the farm abounded with natural forms. From the curves of pine needles to the flutter of poplar leaves, from the angle of a chicken’s tail to the swirl of an eddy in the creek, his eyes had been opened to what the D.W. Frith rep had called the “inspiration in the flowers and fields.”
He wasn’t the first to have done so, but with the “sky and water glaze” adapted with different tints to suggest the light coming through leaves and petals, he was definitely on to something. And with each piece, he refined it more. With each stroke of the brush, he found his joy again.
Along with his art, he had found a measure of joy in other places, too. Ginny’s smile flickered in his memory, as did the warmth of her arms around him and the soft brush of curls as she laid her head on his shoulder. It had been a long time since he’d held a woman like that—well, if you didn’t count that brief embrace with Sarah in the garden a few weeks back, which wasn’t the same thing.
No, that one had ended in a push and a denial, and this one had ended in a kiss and a promise. Two totally different experiences, and he’d tell anyone which he preferred.
Gravel crunched under the wheels of a buggy outside the studio, and he grabbed a rag and wiped his hands. Not for the first time, he wondered if putting up that ARTISAN sign at the end of the lane hadn’t been a mistake. There was far too much traffic around here for a man to focus on his work. Though the Amish typically didn’t drive down to watch him. Maybe someone needed a hand—or a car or a phone.
Shapes appeared in the wide swath of sunlight between the heavy barn doors and he blinked.
No. It couldn’t be.
Priscilla Mast gave Eric Parker a push in the small of his back while a skinny teenager wearing an Amish hat and broadfall pants leaned on the door with his hands in his pockets.
Henry didn’t care who the second boy was. He stared at Eric in astonishment.
“Did your family change their minds?” he finally asked. “Are you going to stay with Caleb Yoder after all?”
Eric gulped and looked at Priscilla for help, but she merely raised her eyebrows at him and folded her arms.
This didn’t smell right. He didn’t have much experience with kids, but he had a whole lot of experience with guilty consciences.
“Eric? Where are your parents? Ginny didn’t mention that she had another reservation for them so soon.”
“At home. In Connecticut. I guess.”
It took him a second to absorb this. And the look of the kid—wrinkled, dirty, and eyeing the plate of chocolate chip cookies Ginny had sent home with him way too avidly even for a thirteen-year-old boy—told him something he didn’t want to know.
Priscilla could hold her peace no longer. “He ran away. He took a bus and a train and a buggy and here he is, without his parents knowing a thing.”
“They can probably guess,” Eric mumbled.
“You ran away? From Connecticut?” Henry repeated. “Are you kidding me?”
“I wish he was,” Priscilla said. “So we’re here to use your phone, please, to call his parents.”
“Yes.” Good plan. Excellent plan. One that would no doubt bring Trent and Isabel Parker back into his life with a screaming sound like a jet coming in for a landing. “I can’t believe it, Eric. What were you thinking?”
“I wanted to come here, not go to California.” He wouldn’t raise his eyes from the floor, but Henry saw his gaze dart to the bench once or twice. Looking for something.
“Your lantern is in that box over there, ready to ship to you,” he said.
A little of Eric’s tension drained away. “You didn’t throw it out.”
“Of course not. It’s not mine. But what is mine right now is a boatload of responsibility for you, and I’ll tell you right now, I don’t appreciate it.”
The kid wilted, and Henry’s conscience twinged, but it had to be said. “I thought more of you, Eric. We pursue our art with passion, not deceit and defiance.”
“I couldn’t think of anything else to do.”
“I bet you could have, if you tried.”
“You heard my parents. What they said.”
“What I heard was a dad who was willing to consider a change in your academic future, if he got a chance to have a rational conversation about it. I’m thinking that probably isn’t going to happen now, is it?”
Mumble.
“Well, go on. Call them. The phone is on the wall there, right next to—”
“Benny Peachey,” said that individual cheerfully. “I gave him a ride to Willow Creek from Intercourse.”
“Did you, now? Thank you for not letting him sleep on the street anyway. Eric, call. Now.”
“Can’t you do it?” he whispered, looking so beaten down and exhausted that Henry’s heart melted the rest of the way.
With a sigh, he said, “What’s your dad’s number?”
The kid gave it to him, one reluctant digit at a time, and Henry braced himself as the call rang through.
/> “Parker. Did you find him?”
He must think this was the police. “Yes. He’s safe. I’m—”
“Isabel!” Trent shouted into the background. “Pick up the phone! They found him!” Then into the receiver, “Where?”
“Mr. Parker, this is Henry Byler, in Willow Creek, Pennsylvania. Eric is here, in my studio.”
A receiver clicked, and a breathless female voice said, “Eric? Honey, is that you?”
Henry repeated what he’d just said, to the same shocked silence. Then he thought he’d better elaborate while he could. “Apparently he took a train to Lancaster, a bus to Intercourse, and a buggy to Willow Creek. I’ll say this for your boy—he’s got guts.”
Someone was making inarticulate sounds that finally resolved themselves into speech. “Guts?” Trent Parker roared. “You put that kid on the line right now!”
Henry felt a little like a kidnapper as he stretched the phone cord out to provide proof of life. “Your dad wants to talk to you.”
But Eric didn’t get to say more than a few mumbled words of apology before the volume on the other end got so loud that Henry took the receiver from his unresisting hand.
“All right, all right, I understand that you’re upset, and you have every reason to be. But Eric is safe and I’ll see that he gets a square meal and a good night’s sleep, so he’ll be fine by the time you get here tomorrow.”
“What are you talking about?” Isabel snapped, since Trent appeared to have run out of steam.
“I assume you’re coming to get him?”
“How can we do that? I’ve got flight reservations to California tomorrow, with Justin,” Isabel said. “Does that child have any idea how much it would cost us to cancel?”
“But Trent—Mr. Parker—”
“Has to go back to work. Oil companies don’t run themselves, you know. Some people can’t just work when they feel like it—they have responsibilities.”
“In my experience in the corporate world, it’s the executive assistants who run most things. But all right. Do you want me to drive him up there?” The bowls would take a couple of days to dry anyway, before he could give them their first firing, so the timing could work.
“Mr. Byler, I just told you, Justin and I will be on a plane, and Trent will be in New York City. He’s staying at the company suite while we’re gone. It’s not going to be much fun for Eric—he hates it in the city and the company isn’t all that excited about kids in the suite, either.”
Now, wait just a minute. “Mrs. Parker, do you think you could take twenty-four hours out of your busy life to pay some attention to the boy who loves his art so much he crossed three states by himself to come back to it?”
“The boy who ran away, you mean.” Trent Parker had found his voice again. “The boy I’m half tempted to leave there, since clearly his parents’ and brother’s feelings don’t mean a thing to him. He probably didn’t give a single thought to us, or the cops crawling all over town, or his grandparents in California, who practically had a nervous breakdown when they heard he was missing.”
Henry took a deep breath and committed himself. “You know, my offer still stands. He’s welcome to stay with Sarah Yoder and Caleb, and take lessons in clay with me for a couple of weeks. That way, Isabel and Justin can get on the plane, and you can stay in the city and focus on business.”
“I can’t believe you’d bring that up again when—”
“Trent,” his wife interrupted. “Listen. It’s the perfect solution. Even if I did drive up there to get him, I’m not sure I can be trusted not to do some damage, I’m so angry and relieved and horrified that he’d even do this to us. In two weeks everyone will have settled down, Eric will have gotten what he wanted—again—and we can go on with the rest of our summer as planned.”
“I’m not going to reward that boy for his bad behavior!”
Henry wasn’t sure being abandoned in a New York apartment would teach the kid much, either. “We’ll take good care of him—and you know, there’s no disciplinarian like an Amish mother. It won’t be any picnic for Eric, I can tell you that.” He glanced at the boy, who was watching him like a baby bird getting ready to fling itself off a branch if he moved too suddenly. “But if he can stick it out, I think it will be worth it, for him and for you.”
“If that woman touches my son, the police are going to hear about it,” Isabel snapped.
“Izzy, would you relax? He’s thirteen. Nobody spanks a thirteen-year-old. All right. Fine. Between the two of you, you’ve got us over a barrel,” Trent said. “Eric stays there for two weeks, and then I’ll drive up and get him. But you can tell him from me that the whole art high school idea is off the table. He can’t behave like this and expect us to just give him whatever he wants.”
“That’s not my department,” Henry said. “But I’ll tell him.”
After making arrangements to send clothes and whatever else boys needed these days for a two-week stay, Henry hung up.
“They’re not coming?” Eric whispered.
Henry couldn’t tell if the boy was devastated or glad. “Does that upset you?”
“No. I hoped they wouldn’t. I hoped they’d just go and let me stay with you and Caleb.”
“Well, they have. Your dad isn’t happy about it at all, and once he simmers down, I recommend a phone call to apologize. You might not like it, you know, staying on an Amish farm.”
“It ain’t so bad.” The boy leaning on the door had been listening the whole time, no doubt wondering what on earth kind of parents would find out their kid had run away—and let him stay where he’d run to. “But you can always run away to Connecticut if you don’t.”
Eric shook his head so vigorously, his shaggy skater-boy haircut whipped back and forth.
“Mind telling me who you are, exactly, Benny?” Henry inquired of the strange boy.
“I’m Arlon Peachey’s Benny. Our farm’s on Stickleback Road. I’m courting Pris here.” He tilted his head in the girl’s direction.
Priscilla gasped and flushed as cherry-pink as her dress with embarrassment and indignation. “You are not! What fibs you tell.” She grasped Eric’s hand. “Come on, Eric. I’ll take you over to Sarah’s and get you something decent to eat.” She glared at Benny Peachey. “And no, we do not need a ride.”
Chapter 23
Sarah saw the little parade coming down the side of the hill between her acres and the Byler place—Henry, Priscilla, Benny Peachey, and…she stared. Then she shook the soil off the last handful of baby carrots and salad greens she and Caleb were pulling for supper, put them in the plastic bowl, and got to her feet.
“Mamm, that can’t be—is that Eric Parker?”
“His parents must have changed their minds.” She dusted off her apron and went to meet them.
It took about ten minutes for her and Caleb to understand what had really gone on since the Parker vehicle had roared out of Henry’s lane on Wednesday. The thought of what the boy had done staggered her, and helplessly, she spread her hands as if trying to get the measure of it.
“Ran away. From Connecticut. To come back here. How is that even possible for a boy who’s only thirteen?”
Since Eric looked to be falling down from hunger and weariness, she didn’t really expect an answer from him. But he gathered himself together to reply.
“I wanted to be here. To stay with you, ma’am. And Caleb. And to learn stuff from Henry.”
Now was clearly not the time to teach him that what a person already had was very often what he really wanted. So all Sarah said was, “Please don’t call me ma’am, Eric. We don’t use honorifics, and that word meant my lady in the old days—something you’d call someone of higher status than you. We don’t believe in that—we’re all equal in the eyes of God.” She smiled and brushed the dirty hair out of his eyes. “My name is Sarah.”
“Yes, ma— Sarah.”
She glanced at Henry. “And his parents have really allowed him to stay with us?”
“I talked them into it,” Henry said. “It seemed like the best plan for everyone, since the family is traveling tomorrow—Trent to New York City, and the other two to California.”
This just beggared belief. Simon had done the next thing to running off, that was true, but he was a man grown, and had a friend with him to share the adventure. Eric had nothing but whatever was in that scuffed black backpack—and a will of iron.
The next two weeks could be very difficult. Offering hospitality with the parents’ blessing was one thing. But offering it under duress was very different. She breathed a prayer for wisdom, and then a brief postscript of a prayer that Caleb would not be infected by the same willfulness.
“Come inside, all of you. Caleb and I are having sliced ham, salad, and macaroni and cheese for supper. Would you like to join us?”
“Denki, Sarah, but I need to be getting home to do my chores,” Priscilla said.
“I’ll give you a ride,” Benny said promptly.
“Neh, I would rather walk. It’s not far. Good-bye, Henry. See you soon, Eric and Caleb.” And without another word, she cut across the lawn and into the orchard, where a path led between the Mast and the Yoder farms.
“Guess I’ll collect my rig, then.” And Benny loped off in the direction of the hill and the path Caleb had worn into it going to help Henry.
“You’ll stay, won’t you, Henry?” Eric said, looking about ready to faint.
“We don’t bite,” Caleb told him. “Come on and wash up.” Eric went with him, looking back only once over his shoulder at Henry before they disappeared into the house.
“He looks scared to death,” Henry observed, watching them.
“He should be. Imagine doing such a thing. He’s right here in my yard and I still can’t believe it. Or that his parents didn’t have you drive him home immediately.” She walked over to the edge of the garden, where the big plastic bowl sat.
“I offered, but they said no, and then I offered to keep him here. I think it would be good for the kid, Sarah. Some decent family life.”