The Devoted

by Suzanne Woods Fisher

  David swept a hand toward the living room, where he had a full wall of a bookshelf, filled with books. “I understand. I feel the same way.”

  “It’s different for you. You’re a bishop. You’re supposed to know everything.”

  “Honey, do you really think I wouldn’t be reading books if I weren’t in leadership? Of course not. I love to read. I love to learn. So do you. No one wants to change that part of you. It’s the best part of you. It’s the way God made you. It’s a gift he’s given you—your curiosity, your intelligence.”

  “I don’t want to teach school.”

  This wasn’t working. He needed to try a different approach. “Have you ever heard of the Dead Sea?”

  She squeezed her eyes shut in that oh-no-a-sermon-is-coming way.

  He persevered, nevertheless, well conditioned to that look from his children. “It’s actually not a sea but a stagnant lake near Jordan and Israel. The Jordan River flows into the Dead Sea, but nothing flows out of it. Because of that, water depletes only through evaporation. Water in the Dead Sea is six times as salty as the ocean. Nothing can grow in it. No seaweed, no plants, no fish.” He paused, hoping she would mull over the parallel he was trying to make, and noticed dirt on the floor that he must have tracked in from the barn. He grabbed a broom and dustpan from the kitchen to sweep it up. “Do you understand what I’m getting at?”

  “Yes. You’re trying to make me take the teaching job.”

  David finished sweeping the dirt into the dustpan with deliberate movements and straightened up, regarding his daughter with an exaggerated display of patience. “No. I would never do that. But I do want you to consider the Dead Sea as a picture of what happens when we don’t use our gifts. They’re meant to be shared with others. If you only take information in, then you’re using your gift for selfish reasons.”

  She was silent.

  “Consider the teaching job, please. Pray about it.”

  “Dad, teachers need patience. I have none.”

  He smiled. “Pray about that too.”

  It was an auspicious day, warm but not too warm, with blue skies and a gentle breeze. Hank Lapp was at the buggy shop, flopped in a chair in the shade, talking about the weather to the apprentices, who were listening to him with rapt attention, as if hearing that it might rain later on today was a shocking news flash. Why, Ruthie wondered, did people talk about the weather so much? Anyone could see for himself, just by looking out the window. It might appear to be a bright, sunny day right now, but there were a few clouds gathering in the distance, and the breeze was really quite brisk, and that might mean a shower later on. A simple deduction.

  Then Hank gave his own weather deduction and Ruthie had to cover her mouth to stifle a laugh. “Wann ich so lass fiel, noh meen ich watt Rege am kumme.” When I feel so listless, then I think rain is coming.

  When was Hank Lapp ever not listless?

  Suddenly, Hank vaulted to his feet and sniffed the air. “Fresh cherry pie! Out of the oven. Let’s go, boys!” He started toward the kitchen of Windmill Farm and the two apprentices dropped their tools and followed along, like two tigers on the trail of a gazelle.

  C.P., stirred from his nap in the shade by the clamor of tools dropping on the floor, perked up his ears, sniffed the air, and charged after them. Jesse sighed. “Hank Lapp’s olfactory sense is top-notch. Too bad there isn’t employment for being a sterling sniffer.” He watched the three of them as they bolted toward the farmhouse like there was a fire. C.P. weaved between their legs and made a general nuisance of himself. The dog slipped into the farmhouse with them, then the door opened again and the dog was banished to sit on the porch.

  It was lovely, the scent of Fern’s cherry pie drifting gently in the wind, silently inviting others by making their mouth water in anticipation. One of the great pleasures of life, Patrick had said the other day, as Birdy was browning beef for stew on the stovetop while Ruthie tutored him in Penn Dutch at the kitchen table. “Such good smells,” he had said, inhaling deeply. “There are certain smells of the Amish that warm the heart.”

  “What?” Ruthie said. “Like what?” The sour tang of manure instantly came to mind.

  “Like the aroma that comes from a pail of warm milk, straight from the cow. Or how about the sweet smell of freshly mown hay? Now there’s a scent I wish I could capture and put in a bottle. Send it to my suburban-dwelling parents.”

  Those generous remarks had startled Ruthie, like so many of Patrick’s observations about her people. He saw beauty in such commonplace things, sights and smells she had been immersed in and never gave a second thought.

  She gave an affectionate stroke down a horse’s muzzle and watched Jesse try to unscrew a stubborn bolt in a broken reflector on the back of a buggy. “So how are buggy lessons working out for Patrick?”

  “Patrick? He’s very conscientious.” Jesse peered around the buggy to answer her. “But not very coordinated.”

  She smiled. She’d noticed the same thing about Patrick. Just the other day, the same day as Birdy’s beef stew making, she tossed him an apple to eat and he completely missed it. It ended up hitting him in the mouth and he cut his lip with his teeth. She had felt terrible. “Jesse, what would you be doing if you weren’t Amish?”

  “Doing?”

  “Yes. Doing.” She sat down on the ground and hugged her knees to her chest. “Do you think you would go to college?”

  Jesse arched his back in a stretch. “If I could choose any life, at any time, I would sail a ship across the ocean to the farthest corners of the world. Or go west with the pioneers into the open prairies.”

  “Let’s narrow it down to contemporary times.”

  “Oh. Then, I’d be an astronaut. No doubt about that. I’d be heading to Mars.”

  She gave him a curious look. “So, you see yourself as an adventurer.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why are you working in a buggy shop with two simpleminded apprentices?”

  “Because this is where I’m meant to be.” He frowned. “And trying to teach those two anything is a daily adventure.”

  “Don’t you feel as if you’re made for something more? Like, you should be doing something really important with your life. Not just stuck—”

  Jesse’s head snapped up and she realized, too late, she had offended him. She spoke without thinking, as if the words had been rising inside her like hot steam in a kettle.

  “Not just stuck in a buggy shop, you mean?”

  She wanted to go back to where they’d been a moment before, the familiarity, but worried the moment had passed. “I didn’t mean to imply there’s anything wrong with repairing buggies.”

  “Good,” he snapped, in a crisp you’ve-hurt-me tone. “Because I do see my work as important.” His voice softened. “The buggy repairs . . . they help everyone get where they need to be safely. And teaching those two numbskulls some skills that might benefit them in life . . . that means something to me.” He reached down to pat his dog, C.P., who had slunk back to the buggy shop after Fern’s rude banishment from the farmhouse. “Ruthie, I understand that you’re feeling frustrated about what to do with your life. I’ve felt that way too. Most everyone has. I can’t tell you what to do, but don’t lump all the right things, the good things in your life, with that pile of frustration.”

  She looked up at her brother’s eyes, almost the same color as her own—blueberry blue, a Stoltzfus trait. “What do you mean?”

  “After Mom died, I didn’t care about anything, especially about being Amish. I got pretty full of myself, thinking I could pick and choose which rules I liked and which I didn’t. I hurt a lot of people with that way of thinking. It took someone believing in me, thinking I had something to offer, that made me see our way of life in a different way. I started to appreciate what it meant to be part of something bigger than myself.”

  “Who?”

  He tipped his head toward the farmhouse. “Fern Lapp’s School of Reform for Wayward Boys.” />
  A laugh burst out of Ruthie. She hadn’t realized Fern had made such an impact on her brother, but now that she thought about it, she could see it was true. Jesse was different, less self-centered, not at all lazy like he used to be, and more caring too. “The thing is . . . I just want to matter.”

  “That’s just it.” Jesse picked up a buggy wheel in need of repair. “See these missing spokes? It might not seem as if they matter. In fact, the wheel could keep going for a while longer. But soon, the weight of the buggy will start to take a toll on this wheel. More spokes will break and the rim will be unbalanced and start to bend out of shape. Every single spoke is needed to keep the buggy balanced. Each one matters.

  “Every part of the equation influences the whole. You’re part of our equation, Ruthie. You do matter. If you weren’t a part of us, we’d have a missing spoke.”

  Ruthie knew all about missing spokes.

  Jesse grabbed a rag and wiped his hands. “I’m going in for some cherry pie before it’s all gone.” He threw the rag on the top of his workbench and looked at her. “You coming?”

  “No. There’s somewhere I need to be.” She picked up her scooter and rolled down the driveway, not really sure where that somewhere she needed to be was, but she was leaving Jesse with what she had come for: a lifting of her spirits.

  Now that David’s attention had been alerted, he kept bumping into more and more evidence that church members were neglecting the Sabbath. He learned that young Willie King had agreed to work at a farmers’ market in Lancaster on his off-Sundays. When David asked Willie King why, he said he was paid time and a half.

  And this was a family who had recently received a bonus from an oil lease signing. Why did Willie King need more? Why did his parents, Ida and Ora, need more?

  Why did any of them keep needing more?

  It came down to the same issue, in David’s mind. The more money people had, the more they wanted. Longed for, lusted for. He remembered a buggy horse he’d had as a boy, nicknamed “Hay Burner.” This Thoroughbred had such a high metabolism that its appetite could not be satisfied. That one horse took twice the feed as a normal workhorse. That’s what was happening in Stoney Ridge. Prosperity was turning people into hay burners.

  There was nothing David could do about Willie King. He wasn’t baptized, not yet a church member, and his mother just threw her hands up in the air, as if she couldn’t do anything to change his mind. “I’ve talked to him until I’m blue in the face,” Ida King said.

  The problem, David felt, was not what she said but the example she led. While she might have told her son not to work on off-Sundays despite higher pay, she had recently signed an oil lease and promptly used the signing bonus for a new, slightly used buggy. There was nothing wrong with her old buggy. It was just . . . old.

  And then David found himself caught in a tight spot. Jesse’s buggy business was starting to thrive. It had taken him years to get that business sorted out from the mess of Hank Lapp. He had practically taught himself how to make repairs, how to develop a solid reputation for timeliness and reliability. If David were to start putting pressure on the church to reduce expenditures, Jesse’s business would be the first to suffer.

  How could he do that to his own son?

  He hung his head. Sabbath-keeping seemed so simple, so clear, but it wasn’t quite as easy as it looked.

  He found himself filled with a tension, even dread, that he hadn’t expected. He sat back in his chair, suddenly fatigued.

  11

  No one had ever told David what the best part of grandparenting was: it conjured up all those tucked-away memories of his own babies, minus the bone-tired fatigue of sleepless nights. David dropped by Moss Hill as often as he could to see his grandchildren. Little Anna was two years old now, the spitting image of his daughter Katrina. Strawberry red hair with a peaches-and-cream complexion. Newborn Benjo had more of Andy’s coloring—olive skin, with a patch of dark fuzzy hair on his tiny head.

  Birdy had packed up a hamper full of food for Katrina, to encourage her to rest and enjoy her newborn. As David set the hamper on the buggy seat, he wondered how Birdy was able to give so much to others when her own heart’s desire went unfulfilled. On his drive to Moss Hill, he turned that thought over in his mind, as he had done countless times before.

  Birdy never complained, but he knew she longed for a child of her own. As each few months passed, their hopes for a baby diminished. If he brought the subject up, Birdy would insist that she already had a quiver full of children. And she was an extraordinary stepmother. She seemed to know how to give each child what they needed from her. Not more, not less. Birdy never talked down to his daughters; she always took them seriously. She had the most mother-like role with the twins, and a very friendly relationship with Molly and Ruthie, Jesse and Katrina. But wouldn’t it be wonderful if she could have a baby of her own? Their child. His and Birdy’s.

  He thought of the example of the psalmists, almost demanding God’s attention. “Awake, O Lord.” “God, listen to my prayer.” “Have mercy on me.” Audacious demands! With the kind of familiarity of an irate child speaking to a parent. Yet it struck David that such intimacy didn’t offend God at all, but pleased him. He looked up at the sky. Lord, he prayed, you are a promise keeper. You promised you would give us the desires of our hearts. Give Birdy the desire of her heart, Lord. If it’s your will, let us have a baby.

  On this humid summer morning, David walked right into the farmhouse of Moss Hill and scooped up little Anna as she ran to him. He breathed in deeply, smelling the satisfying aroma of hot brewed coffee.

  “I was hoping for a cup of coffee,” he said.

  Thelma, sitting at the table with Katrina, lifted an eyebrow. “How about a cup of chamomile tea?”

  Ugh. He hated this meal-monitoring business. The women in his life were in cahoots, determined to keep his diet bland, beige, and boring. But then, where would he be without their vigilance? Popping Tums throughout the day, gripping his middle whenever he felt shots of pain. Or worse. He should be grateful for his wife’s and daughters’ surveillance but, oh! how he missed that cup of coffee in the morning. “No thanks. Already had one.” Chamomile tea might be easier on his stomach ulcer, but it sailed right past his taste buds. He went over to the Moses basket in the corner of the room to see how little Benjo was doing and found the infant sound asleep. “He’s grown, I think.”

  “Since yesterday?” Katrina smiled. “Not likely.”

  “How did he sleep last night?”

  “Awful. He has his days and nights mixed up.”

  He turned and looked around the small house. “Weren’t you going to have a mother’s helper?”

  “I had one lined up, but she changed her mind.”

  Thelma lifted a piece of paper. “We were just making a list of possible mother helpers.” She frowned and picked up the pen. “But there aren’t many options.”

  David saw Andy come up the driveway from the mossery. “I’ll be right back. I wanted to ask Andy a question.” With Anna in his arms, he walked down the hill to meet his son-in-law. When Anna saw him, she wiggled out of his arms to run to her father.

  Andy might not be her biological father as he was Benjo’s, but he was, in every way, Anna’s father. When he had told David he wanted to marry Katrina, a single mother with a six-month-old baby, David questioned him about all kinds of things, but he made a point of asking how Andy would feel as more children arrived. He knew that Andy was desperately in love with Katrina, and he knew he adored Anna. But would he feel differently about Anna then? Favoritism could be toxic in families.

  Andy had responded by pointing to the large kitchen garden next to the house, with its neat rows of tomatoes, beans stalks, sprawling pumpkins, spiky carrot tops. “The way I see it, any fellow can plant seeds. It’s the way the seeds are cared for, tended to, nurtured, grown, and harvested that makes the difference. Anna will belong to me just the way our other children will belong to me. I’m the farmer
in this family.”

  After that conversation, David never had another doubt about Andy. He never needed to.

  Anna’s squeals of joy jolted him back to the present. Andy lifted her high in the air, then down low, then up high again like a human swing.

  “Morning, Andy.”

  Andy stopped swinging Anna and settled her onto his hip. “Good morning to you. I saw you drive up. Time for coffee?” He cringed. “I mean, um, tea? Water? Juice?”

  David laughed. “Never mind. Katrina already offered. Actually, I just stopped by to ask you a few questions.” They walked toward the house, matching strides. “Is the oil company still sending out more land agents?”

  “Yes. They seem to keep coming. They’re convinced that the oil traps on Moss Hill indicate more undiscovered oil in the region.”

  “And more leases are being signed?”

  “Yes. I heard of two, just last week. The Noah Zooks and the Henry Smuckers.”

  David nodded. The leases brought in an initial signing bonus—usually ten to twenty thousand dollars, but the big money began rolling in when the oil wells were drilled and pumps installed. Each homeowner received a royalty percentage of the oil. For Moss Hill, it was a staggering amount. The first year, especially, the royalty check amount was beyond anything they could have imagined. Hundreds of thousands of dollars! That was the start of the turnaround for the church of Stoney Ridge. The first year’s income was entirely donated to the church and helped wipe out heavy debts that had been piling up. David had hoped that Moss Hill would be a sterling example to everyone in the church. How to manage riches? Hold on to them lightly.

  David felt a familiar niggling of distress . . . something he kept trying to throw off, but it kept returning to him, like a boomerang. As they reached Thistle and the buggy, he stopped. He’d gotten the information he came for. “I’d better head over to the store.”