Naomi's Hope

by Jan Drexler

  “Why didn’t someone else adopt him? One of your brothers’ families, or your parents?”

  Naomi was at a loss. He didn’t believe her. “Because when he clung to me, I couldn’t let him go. From that moment he was my son.”

  Cap was silent, staring at the fire. Naomi’s eyes stung as they filled with tears. Another thing she remembered from that time three years ago was telling Mattie that she didn’t care if adopting Davey meant that no man would ever want her. That Davey needed her and that was enough.

  Ja, it was enough. Until now.

  She rose from her seat and stumbled toward home. Her footing grew more sure and her pace quickened as Cap made no move to stop her.

  5

  Monday morning brought a cold, drizzling rain that dampened Cap’s spirits as well as his campfire.

  Tired of trying to get the tinder to light, Cap sat back on his heels and looked at the half-finished fireplace on his new house. He could complete it today, even in the rain, with a stick and daub chimney, now that the body of the fireplace was done. But that shortcut didn’t sit well with him. He’d rather take the time and finish the stone chimney the right way. He could cook over the campfire for as long as it took.

  He turned back to the pile of tinder just in time to see the little flame gutter and go out in a stream of gray smoke. Crouching down, he blew gently on the smoking embers, trying to coax a flame from them, but the cold, damp air won. Even as he gave up, a larger raindrop fell directly on the last ember, extinguishing it completely.

  Cap stared at the gray-and-black ashes as if wishing could make the fire roar to life. As if wishing could make Naomi’s story about Davey ring true.

  Why couldn’t he believe her?

  The rain fell harder and Cap stood, hunched under his hat, and made his way to the house. At least he would be dry there. Cold and hungry, but dry.

  He would give almost anything for a hot cup of coffee.

  He leaned against the doorframe and watched the rain. The Schrocks would welcome him this morning. Lydia would offer him a cup of coffee from the pot she always had on the back of the stove, and Eli would be happy to sit and talk for an hour or so. Naomi would . . . what?

  Cap shrugged his shoulders against his wet shirt and grabbed the blanket off his bed to wrap up in. The back door faced the deer trail, and as he watched a rabbit hop slowly across the path, the rain eased.

  Naomi might welcome him, if he dropped in for a cup of coffee. Perhaps she would even join in the conversation as if yesterday afternoon had never happened.

  He should never have let Shem’s words worm their way into his mind. When Shem was a boy, he had sent his words flying like embers in a high wind, starting fires wherever they landed, and Shem as a man was no different.

  If he had to make a choice between trusting Shem’s words or Naomi’s, he had to choose Naomi. He might not know her well, but he knew Shem.

  Before he could think himself out of the decision, he tossed the blanket back on the bed and started across the clearing to the trail. He trotted along it through the trees, dodging the large drips that gathered on the young leaves before plummeting to the ground. The forest was silent after the brief rain, the sky a gray fleece batting covering the earth. As he reached the Schrock farm, the steady stream of smoke from the kitchen chimney prodded him onward.

  Davey spotted him from the covered porch next to the kitchen door, where he was skimming cream from the milk pail.

  “Cap!” He jumped off the porch and ran toward him. “Do you want to come fishing with us? Henry said he’d take me, but it would be wonderful-gut if you could come too.”

  Watching Davey’s face put a grin on his own. Seeing the boy’s excitement drove his gloomy thoughts out of his mind. “Fishing? It’s perfect weather. Where do you plan on going?”

  “Henry said the river, down past Josef’s farm. He says there’s a bend there that’s perfect for catfish.”

  Cap kept walking toward the house and Davey hopped along to keep in step with him.

  “What did your mamm say? Will she let you go with Henry?”

  Davey’s face fell as if someone had slapped him with a wet rag. “Memmi said she would think about it.” He kicked at the porch step before he followed Cap to the door. “That means she won’t let me go.”

  “You have to obey your mamm.”

  “I know.” Davey’s voice dripped with disappointment. Then he hopped up onto the porch, the grin back on his face. “Maybe if you go, she’ll let me. She said she wanted a grown-up to go along, and Henry said he was a grown-up, and Memmi said he was only seventeen, and too young to watch me by the river.” He tilted his head back to look at Cap. “I thought Henry was a grown-up.”

  Cap fought to keep from smiling. “We’ll see what your mamm says when she finds out I’ll be going along.”

  Davey whooped and crashed through the kitchen door. “Memmi, Cap is here!”

  As Cap stepped through the open doorway, Naomi grasped her son by his arm. “Davey Schrock, what has gotten into you? You know better than to run and yell in the house. We walk quietly when we’re inside.”

  “But, Memmi,” Davey wriggled from her grasp but tried his best to stand still as he spoke. “Cap is here, and he said he’ll go fishing with Henry, and if it’s okay with you I can go too. Is it, Memmi? Tell me. Is it?”

  Naomi glanced toward Cap, her face turning a pretty shade of pink. “I don’t know if he wants to do that.”

  “He said so. And he’s a grown-up, isn’t he? More grown up than Henry?”

  Cap nodded and Naomi knelt on the floor to talk to her son. “If Cap will watch you, then you may go fishing.” Davey started to leap into the air, but Naomi held him down with a hand on his shoulder. “Henry isn’t going to go until after dinner, though, so you have plenty of time to finish your chores.”

  Davey ran out to the porch, slamming the back door as he went.

  “I don’t know what I’ll do with that boy. He’s never still for a moment.”

  Cap took his hat off and hung it on one of the hooks by the back door. “He’s a boy. Boys aren’t meant to be still.”

  “I suppose not.” She gestured toward the table in the middle of the kitchen. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  “For sure, I would.” Cap sat in a chair while she poured a cup for him. “My fire went out and I just didn’t have the patience to get it going again in the rain.”

  Naomi set his coffee in front of him and sat down with a cup for herself. “And you knew there was coffee here that we would share with you.”

  “I hoped there would be.” He wrapped his cold fingers around the stoneware cup. He could hear Lydia in the loft. “I don’t want to disturb your workday, though.”

  “I’m ready for a short rest, and Mamm will be too, after she finishes gathering Henry’s and Davey’s clothes. We’re late getting wash day started, but Mamm is hoping the rain will clear up in time to hang the clothes out to dry.”

  He watched her delicate hand grasp the coffee cup as she brought it to her lips. “Before Lydia comes down, I want to tell you I’m sorry for yesterday.”

  Her cheeks turned pink and she set her cup on the table. “You don’t need to do that.”

  “I know better than to listen to anything Shem Fischer tells me. I have no reason to believe what he says, and every reason to believe you.”

  His hand moved across the inches separating them and grasped hers. She turned her hand and intertwined her fingers in his, squeezing his hand slightly.

  Cap smiled and took a drink of his coffee. He was forgiven.

  After dinner, Cap walked with Henry out to the barn, Davey hopping and skipping ahead of them.

  The short time spent with Naomi in the kitchen had warmed his spirits, and the rest of the morning helping Eli and Henry build a new farrowing pen in the barn warmed his muscles. He had been alone too long, living on his own in Ohio, and then here in Indiana too. Working with Eli took him back to the days when he had
been Henry’s age, working alongside his daed. The memories were good ones, up until he lost Martha.

  “Maybe we’ll catch a snapping turtle.” Davey hopped on one foot as Henry sorted through the cane rods balanced on pegs along the barn wall. “Remember, Henry? You said if we caught one, Grossmutti could make turtle soup.”

  “I was making a joke with you.” Henry grinned at his nephew. “If you catch a snapper, we’d be spending our time pulling you out of the river.” He crouched down on the boy’s level. “Snappers aren’t something to fool with. If you catch one, you let go of your pole right away.”

  Davey’s body stilled, his brow wrinkling as he thought this through. “Mose said his mamm would make him turtle soup if he caught one.”

  Henry handed the bundle of poles to Cap. “Mose would do better to catch a catfish. I can’t imagine his mamm touching a snapping turtle. You remember how she turns up her nose when he brings her crayfish.”

  Davey laughed and started hopping again.

  “Did you dig the worms like Henry said?” Cap asked as Henry handed him the third pole.

  “For sure I did. They’re in a bag on the porch.”

  “Get them, then,” Henry said. “We’re ready to go.”

  Cap laughed as Davey dashed back to the house. “He’s some boy.”

  “For sure, he is. Into mischief all the time, just like I was at his age.”

  “I was too.” They both watched as Davey grabbed the dirty cloth bag and ran back toward them. “Sometimes I think it would be fun to go back to being a boy.”

  Henry grinned. “It sure would.”

  The sky was still overcast, but the rain had stopped over the noon hour. Cap and Henry skirted the puddles in the road as they walked, while Davey ran from stump to stump, jumping off one just to run to the next.

  “Do all the roads still have these stumps in them?”

  “All through here they do.” Henry kicked at the short stump in front of him, cut off just inches from the ground. “When the first settlers came twenty years ago, they followed the Indian trails from one settlement to the next. By the time we bought our land, some of the trails had been widened to roads so a man could drive a wagon through. But the stumps were left. No one wanted to take the time to clear them out, I suppose.”

  The stumps were short enough to drive over, and rot had set into the center of many of them. They would disappear with time.

  “I was surprised to hear Jacob Yoder call this area Pleasant Prairie,” Cap said. “I haven’t seen any prairie since I got here. Only dense woods all around.”

  Henry laughed. “Ja, that’s what Jacob and Mattie call it, and others have started, too, as more trees are cleared. There is prairie to the southwest of here, and a bit of it is on Jacob’s land. Mattie always wanted to live on the prairie, so Jacob made sure he found open land for her.” He swept the air in front of him with his arm. “Soon all these trees will be gone, just like in Ohio and Brothers Valley, where we came from. Can’t you see it? Open farmland all around. A real prairie.”

  Cap could see it, and he was working as hard as anyone else to clear his land. Soon he would have a pasture for the horses, fields of grain growing, a garden for vegetables. He grinned at the thought of the work ahead of him. Useful work. Work that would build a home for . . . His grin disappeared. He might have a house and land, but it wasn’t a home, yet.

  “I see the river!” Davey’s shout drifted back to them from around a bend in the road.

  “Wait there for us,” Henry called.

  The water was high, flooding into the low stands of trees along the edge. Henry led the way along a small ridge of clay until they reached a wide spot where the river had made a cut in the bank and a tree had fallen across the stream years ago, making a cove of quiet water.

  “There’s a big trout that lives by that stump.” Davey whispered the information to Cap. “I’m gonna catch him someday.”

  “I’m certain you will,” Cap answered. If Davey knew enough to keep still and quiet while fishing, he’d do well.

  Henry chose a spot to the right along the bank, while Davey led Cap to a rock closer to the fallen log. They baited their hooks and dropped them into the water.

  Davey sighed. “Now we wait.”

  “Fishing helps a man develop patience.”

  The boy leaned against Cap. “Patience is hard.”

  “It helps you be content while you wait for something you want.”

  Davey wiggled his feet. “I know something I want, but I don’t think I am very content while I wait for it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I pray for it, and I hope for it, and nothing ever happens.”

  Cap thought of all the things a boy might want—a dog, a knife, a pony. Any of those things could be possible for him to give to Davey, with his mother’s permission.

  “What is it that you want?”

  Davey leaned his head back to look at Cap’s face. “I want a daed, like Mose has, and Henry has.”

  A knot grew in Cap’s stomach. “You have your grossdatti.”

  Davey looked back at the fishing line in the water. “He’s my grossdatti.” His feet wiggled again, as if he couldn’t keep them still even when he was sitting down. “I had my own daed once.”

  “Ja, everyone has a daed.”

  “Memmi said he died, and my other memmi too. And a baby sister.”

  “Do you remember them?”

  Davey shook his head. “Did you ever have someone who died?”

  Cap blinked back sudden tears. “Ja.” He cleared his throat. “I had a wife once, and a baby boy.”

  “Do you remember them?”

  When didn’t he remember them? “Every day.”

  Davey’s head leaned against him again, and Cap put his free arm around the boy, tucking him in under his shoulder. Together they watched the still water. A ring of ripples appeared where a fish struck at an insect on the surface, and the little waves ran to the sandy mud at their feet.

  “Do you miss your boy?”

  Cap cleared his throat again. “For sure, I do.” He had never gotten to know his son, to know if he would have been anything like Davey. But that life was gone. Forever gone.

  Davey pushed away from him and turned to look into his face. “You don’t have a boy, and I don’t have a daed.”

  Cap nodded. What was Davey trying to say?

  “Could you be my daed?”

  His throat tightened. “I think your mamm would have something to say about that.”

  “Not really my daed. We could pretend.” Davey’s grin was infectious and Cap found himself smiling.

  “Maybe we could.”

  Davey threw his arms around Cap’s neck. “I love you, Cap.”

  Cap’s cane pole dropped as he wrapped his arms around the small body. “I love you too, Davey.”

  Naomi checked the damp clothes hanging from the clothesline on the back porch. The dresses and shirts were dry enough to bring inside to iron, but Daed’s and Henry’s trousers needed more time. As she took her dress off the line and rolled it into a bundle, her gaze went down the road toward the river where Davey had gone with Cap and Henry to fish. The thought of her active and careless boy along the banks of the spring-swollen river set her nerves on edge.

  “There’s no reason to be concerned,” she told herself, and bit her lower lip. Davey would be fine with Cap there, and Henry. The two of them together would keep her boy safe. She fought the urge to leave the laundry for later and walk down to the river to check on them.

  “He’ll be fine.”

  Naomi jumped at Mamm’s words and reached for the next dress. “I know you think it’s silly for me to be worrying about Davey, but I can’t help it.”

  Mamm sighed as she pulled Daed’s shirt off the line. “You get used to it. When your brother Isaac was young, I didn’t want to let him out of my sight. But Noah and Annie kept me so busy, I couldn’t keep my eye on him all the time.”

  “What did
you do?”

  “I had to trust your daed. By the time Isaac was five years old, Eli convinced me that it was time to let him spend his days working in the barn.” Mamm smiled at her. “I soon learned that he could keep his son just as safe as I could, and that working with his daed was good for the boy. It was easier when Noah got bigger.”

  “And by the time Henry came along, you nearly pushed him out of the house to help Daed.”

  “You’re right.” Mamm gathered the bundles of shirts in her arms and started toward the kitchen door while Naomi followed. “As much as I would have liked to keep him with me, I knew it was better for him to be with his daed and older brothers.”

  Naomi paused on the threshold, her mind still with the fishermen. “Do you really think Davey will be all right with Henry and Cap?”

  Mamm spread the first shirt on the table and lifted the iron from the stove top. “For sure, I do. Your brother loves Davey nearly as much as you do and will watch out for him. And Cap seems to be a man you can trust. Don’t worry about him.”

  Don’t worry? Naomi had worried about Davey from the first moment she had taken him in her arms. Mamm might as well tell her to stop breathing.

  After the dresses and shirts were ironed, Naomi gathered the clothes that needed mending while Mamm went out to work in the garden. The empty house was quiet. Naomi sat in the rocking chair and kept it going with her foot while she sewed, just to have the company of the chair’s comforting squeak. But with no one to talk to, she couldn’t keep her mind off Cap’s words from the morning. Shem Fischer seemed to be intent on spreading rumors about her, but there was no reason for him to do that.

  Naomi finished mending Daed’s torn shirt sleeve and reached for Davey’s trousers.

  Why was Preacher Shem so interested in Davey? And why didn’t Cap like him?

  For sure, she didn’t like the man, either. She would never admit it to anyone else, but Shem gave her an unsettled feeling whenever he was around. She couldn’t be the only one who felt that way, which made her wonder how he had been nominated for election as preacher in his home church.