The Devoted

by Suzanne Woods Fisher

  Dok squinted at the card. “Diced onion.”

  “Oh, of course! Silly me. What’s a lamb stew without an onion?” Birdy hurried down the cellar stairs and returned a moment later with her apron full of round yellow onions.

  Dok had a déjà vu moment as Birdy disappeared into the cellar. Years and years ago, she had come to David and Anna’s home to meet the new twins, then infants, and Anna had made that very stew. The smells took her right back to that moment, as if time had never passed.

  Sometimes it seemed as if Birdy was following in Anna’s very footsteps, slipping into the groove she had forged and left behind. Was that always the way of it for second wives? Dok wondered. But maybe they didn’t mind. There was a groove to settle into, just waiting for the right fit. Dok, on the other hand, never seemed to find her groove.

  “Birdy, do you happen to know what caused the death of Matt Lehman’s wife?”

  Birdy glanced up to the ceiling, as if she was trying to remember details. “Cancer. Caught too late. She was only thirty-three.”

  “And no children?”

  “No. They’d only been married less than a year, as I recall.”

  “How sad.” Dok was leaning against the silverware drawer, thinking about the sharp grief Matt must have experienced as a young husband, when she realized that Emily and Lydie stood peering at her with napkins in their hands. “Ah! Looks like you want to set the table and I’m in your way.”

  “You’ll stay for supper, won’t you, Dok?” Birdy asked as she whisked from one task to another.

  Dok wasn’t planning to stay, but the tantalizing aroma of that lamb stew changed her mind. “I’d love to.”

  Birdy stopped what she was doing to give her a bright smile. “Excellent.” She pulled another plate from the cupboard and added it to the pile on the counter. “Didn’t he tell you?”

  “Didn’t who tell me what?”

  “Matt. He and his wife, Kathy, met at a cancer support group. Matt’s a cancer survivor.” She chopped an onion at a remarkably fast pace, then tossed it into the pot on the stove where Molly stood stirring. “Sauté those onions, Molly. Keep stirring. Don’t let them burn.” She spun around with the knife in her hand. “Matt’s Kathy wasn’t as fortunate.”

  With that news, Dok had been chewing a piece of carrot and stopped, mid-chew. Her respect for Matt grew another notch or two.

  Birdy looked up from cutting carrots into circles. “Why do you ask?”

  Dok shrugged. “The other day Matt came over to help me set up some shelving at the practice and . . . I just . . . got to wondering.”

  “Good for you,” Birdy said in her cheery way, giving her arm a little pat. “Good for you.”

  Jenny Yoder was a quiet person. That, Jesse had always known. What he hadn’t realized was that she was quiet but not timid. She had settled with ease into life on Windmill Farm, working alongside of Fern like a mother and a daughter. Sometimes, from a distance, if it weren’t for their height difference, Jesse could confuse the two. The way they stood, spoke, moved. She was a mini-Fern.

  Why did Jenny Yoder have to return to Stoney Ridge? Things had been going along just fine for Jesse. Just fine. Now, everything was turned upside down. He was turned upside down.

  Why couldn’t life just stay static? Why did it always have to change?

  Take today, for example. Jesse had been taking Patrick out on country roads in the afternoons so he could practice buggy driving. Patrick was a shockingly slow learner, especially for a pretty intelligent fellow, though he’d never been around horses, he had said. Still, he had a difficult time acquiring the reflexes and coordination for negotiating traffic. But Jesse was determined to help him master the art of buggy driving. And it was, indeed, an art.

  So it came as a bit of a surprise when Patrick told him today that he was going to need to suspend the buggy driving lessons for the time being. He offered him no explanation as he handed him a week’s pay with an apology.

  Even more surprising was that Jesse refused the money, automatically, without thinking about it.

  “You’re a very generous person, Jesse,” Patrick had said.

  On the drive back to Windmill Farm, Jesse mulled over Patrick’s compliment, said with sincerity. Generosity and Jesse were not two words that had ever been placed together in one sentence before. It pleased him, and he was glad that someone, somewhere, felt he was a generous guy. It was quite unfortunate that certain affirmations couldn’t be held in reserve, then delivered in front of just the right person, at just the right time. For example, it would be very timely if Patrick could repeat that he thought Jesse was generous in front of his father, who recently inferred that his son didn’t do anything unless it brought him financial benefits. He’d like to see that look of shock on his dad’s face.

  And it would be particularly nice if Jenny Yoder had heard Patrick compliment Jesse. Would it seem peculiar if he asked Patrick to repeat the compliment in front of her? Probably. He could practically hear his sister Ruthie’s voice in his head: Yes. That would be weird.

  He was driving past the Bent N’ Dent and pulled the horse into the parking lot. No sooner had he crossed the threshold and been heartily welcomed by the old codgers who considered him to be one of them, that he was annoyed with himself for two reasons. The first was that he’d forgotten it was Tuesday and Jenny Yoder would not be working at the Bent N’ Dent today. He knew that.

  The second annoyance was that he was here to see Jenny Yoder in the first place.

  He’d had to deal with both of these annoyances while being roped into an endless game of checkers with Hank Lapp that he ended up losing, topped off with the realization that he was astoundingly disappointed by Jenny’s absence. That, in itself, seemed as strange to Jesse as if a woolly mammoth had appeared in the store, shopping for a box of Froot Loops.

  Leaving the store to head home, Jesse flicked the reins over the horse’s withers and gave the horse his head, cantering along the road, eager for this disappointing afternoon to end.

  It meant nothing, really.

  Ruthie found that whenever she was in Patrick’s company, she experienced a kind of deep serenity. He was one of the few people who actually listened when she talked and so forced her to think about what she was saying. She knew herself well enough to know she liked talking more than listening. With Patrick, she was learning to listen carefully. To really hear what someone was saying and not let her mind race ahead to formulate her response, as she was inclined to do.

  Today, though, she couldn’t understand why he said what he did. They were sitting in the shade on the porch steps of Ruthie’s home. He had dropped by unexpectedly to ask if he could talk to her. “Ruthie, we need to hold off on the Penn Dutch lessons for a while.”

  “We what?” Ruthie demanded, unsure she had heard him properly. “Why?”

  “You’ve given me so much to study . . . I need time to catch up.”

  He didn’t look at her as he said those words, though he did say them in a lighthearted way. Ruthie couldn’t pinpoint why, but she knew he wasn’t telling her the truth, or at least not the whole truth.

  Was it her? Had she said something, or done something to offend him? She should have been nicer to him, more patient. She could be nicer! Starting now.

  “I could slow things down. We could repeat some lessons.” She was talking a little too quickly, a little too loudly. She didn’t want the lessons to stop. She found herself wanting to etch out more scenes, fill in the shapes and colors and shadows of Patrick Kelly.

  He seemed to be watching something in the distance. “Thanks, Ruthie.” He stood up and turned to her, his voice matter-of-fact. “Maybe in a few days or so. I just need to slow down a little.”

  He reached down for Ruthie’s hand in order to help her up. Then, to the surprise of them both, he held it for a minute.

  Ruthie looked up at him and made no move to take back her hand. There was a sensation of something surrounding them as he held her hand that
Ruthie had never experienced before. It felt as though she were living in two realities at the same time: Ruthie’s World, which was jumbled and vague and out of focus, and Patrick’s World, which was peaceful and orderly and clear.

  She didn’t want to leave his world.

  15

  Luke Schrock, David decided as he drove past him on the road one afternoon and noticed a fishing rod in his hand, was a dabbler. That young man needed something to light the fire inside him, a reason to get him up in the morning.

  David thought back to all the jobs Luke had had over the last few years, and realized he’d been fired from every single one. Finally, Galen King, prompted by Luke’s mother, tried to take him on in the horse training business but that backfired when Luke kept forgetting to lock the paddock gates. After chasing down horses on a daily basis, Galen concluded Luke wasn’t cut out for the job. David wondered if leaving paddock gates open might have been Luke’s method to avoid work. Most of his previous employers thought Luke Schrock wasn’t very bright, but frankly, David wondered if Luke wasn’t the clever one—he sabotaged every employment opportunity and ended up with a lot of free time on his hands, which was, David suspected, exactly the way he liked it.

  It was a conundrum. Luke had potential. But how to tap it? It felt a little like the oil traps on Moss Hill. The oil sat there for centuries, just waiting for the right equipment to tap into it. What equipment, what means, could possibly tap into Luke Schrock’s potential?

  And then David had an idea.

  As soon as he reached home, he hunted down Birdy. She was in the garden, down on her hands and knees, weeding the carrot patch. “Birdy, what kind of a student was Luke Schrock?”

  She sat back on her heels and wiped her muddy hands on her apron. “What kind of student?”

  “Yes. How did you enjoy teaching him?”

  She bit her lip. “‘Enjoy’ might not be the word I would use for being Luke’s teacher.”

  “What word would you use?”

  “Challenge. Dare. Trial. Test.”

  “Ah.”

  She smiled. “Toward the end of eighth grade, I asked each scholar to choose a life verse to memorize. On the last day, they recited it in front of the entire class. With a perfectly straight face, Luke recited Deuteronomy 32:15. ‘Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked.’ The class looked puzzled, trying to understand the deeper spiritual meaning of that verse.”

  “So he was just being a smart aleck.”

  “Yes, but he is frightfully smart.” She went back to a tug-of-war with an unyielding carrot. “Any reason you’re asking about Luke?”

  “The school board is looking for a replacement for Danny Riehl. I was thinking . . .”

  “Luke?” She gasped, eyes wide. “You are considering Luke Schrock? To shape and mold young minds? To care for little children? To nurture varying intellects?”

  To put it mildly, Birdy was flabbergasted. “I thought it might fill his mind. You know, challenge him. Help him find a way to contribute to the community. But from the way you positioned it, I can see that it’s a bad idea. Never mind.”

  “That verse of Luke’s . . . I’m not sure he meant it this way, and I have no idea who Jeshurun is, but he sounded a little like Luke. Growing fat and kicking?”

  “Jeshurun is another name for Israel,” David said, taking off his straw hat and waving it at a bee that hovered too close to Birdy. “And yes, the same thought occurred to me.”

  Back to the drawing board.

  Jesse noticed Jenny Yoder coming down from the orchard at Windmill Farm before she noticed him. He liked looking at her from a distance. There was a sense of purpose, an aliveness in Jenny’s stride. She knew what she was about. So different from Mim Schrock’s wishy-washiness.

  The comparison startled him. When had he ever found fault with Mim? Never! Look what Jenny Yoder was doing to him. Scrambling his head. Tangling his mental wires. It was a dangerous and destructive effect she had on him. The Jenny Yoder Effect.

  But, truth be told, Mim was wishy-washy. She could never quite decide if Danny Riehl was the one for her and, in her indecision, kept Jesse dangling on a thin thread of hope.

  Or could his father have been right? Was Jesse the one who preferred the fragile thread of hope to the ups and downs of a real relationship?

  That, too, was an alarming thought. He didn’t like to think of himself as one of those guys who avoided commitment. Not like Jimmy Fisher, who managed to dabble with matrimony and avoid it the way a clever fox toyed with a trap.

  A trap? A trap. Did that description of matrimony just flip through his mind? The fact that what he had thought felt peculiar made him realize, indeed, he had become a cliché—he was one of those guys.

  Leroy Glick, the older apprentice, exchanged a knowing glance with Sammy Schrock, the younger apprentice. “I think our boss is sweet on Fern’s helper.”

  “Ooo-la-la!” Sammy whistled. “Jesse has a girlfriend!”

  Jesse sighed. It would be easy to lose his temper with these boys, but he knew he should hold his tongue and exercise patience with them. It helped to remind himself that these two boys had very little brain power.

  “I never want just one girlfriend,” Leroy said. “As soon as I turn sixteen and my dad gets me my own buggy, I am going out with a different girl every night. Lots and lots of girlfriends.”

  Sammy looked blank. “But that would be a lot of girls to keep track of. Sundays too?”

  “Every single night. Different girl.”

  “That would be thirty or thirty-one girls every month, except for February.”

  Leroy smiled. “Maybe I would have three dates on February twenty-eighth,” he said smugly, “just to keep the numbers even.”

  This information stretched Sammy’s mind beyond capacity. “But then . . . what would you do about leap year?”

  Exasperated, Jesse looked at the boys. Where does one start? He considered himself to be an expert repairman, but how could he try to patch the holes in their faulty thinking? Especially when they thought they already knew everything.

  Jesse left the two of them as they tried to work out their meager mathematics. They were appalling, those two. He had to have faith in the young girls of Stoney Ridge and hope they were all smart enough to avoid his apprentices.

  He looked toward the farmhouse and saw Jenny Yoder climb the porch stairs. Without any warning, right by his side, C.P. let out an ear-busting woof. Jenny turned her face toward the buggy shop and lifted her hand in a casual wave.

  Why, if his eyes weren’t deceiving him, Jenny Yoder was smiling at him. Jesse’s whole being soared upward.

  C.P. looked up at him with his big saucer eyes, and he reached down to pat him fondly. Maybe this dog wasn’t quite as useless as he thought.

  David forgot all about Luke Schrock’s smart-alecky life Bible verse for a few days. He sat at his desk and opened the Bible to the thirty-second chapter in the book of Deuteronomy. “But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked: thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness; then he forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation.”

  Luke had missed the point by not memorizing the full verse, which came as no surprise. And didn’t that just seem to summarize Luke Schrock? He lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation. In doing so, he missed the very heart and soul of the Amish life: glorifying God.

  Context, context, context. David knew it was dangerous to pluck a verse out of Scripture and put weight on it that it wasn’t meant to bear. He turned the pages of his Bible to set the stage for this verse. Who was speaking? And why?

  Moses.

  It was Moses’s last day as leader to the Israelites. God had informed Moses that he was going to die—which David thought was such a gift. It gave him peace to know that God had prepared Moses for his death. A good death. Buried by the very hand of God.

  Moses had time to prepare for his death. These last few chapters of Deuteronomy consisted of his farewell address. Pa
stor Moses preaching the Word of God to his congregation in the desert. The Israelites were poised on the brink of the Promised Land. David’s imagination wandered as he pictured old Moses high on a ledge, speaking truth to the two million Israelites in the barren valley below him, his aged voice amplified by the rocks around him in the desert. God had told Moses to teach the people this song, known as the Song of Moses, as a reminder of God’s faithfulness and a warning to not abandon their faith once they inhabited the Promised Land.

  “But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked: thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness; then he forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation.”

  The thought that followed literally took his breath away. This time the verse struck him, as palpably as if he’d received a blow to his gut. It seemed eerily prophetic of the condition of the church of Stoney Ridge. They were growing fat and lightly esteeming God.

  David covered his face with his hands. Without God, the Promised Land was nothing.

  A summer storm blew through Stoney Ridge, hitting Eli Zook’s old dilapidated barn with such strong winds and rain that it collapsed, killing two cows. David sent word around the community that a barn raising was scheduled for Saturday. Ruthie could see the look on Patrick’s face when he heard about the barn raising. He’d asked her all about them, which she found to be amusing. How many barn raisings had she seen in her life? Dozens and dozens. To her, they were just a long day of hard work.

  To Patrick, the work frolics were a romantic slice of Amish life. Of community, a concept he felt the Amish excelled in. She tried to correct his assumption. “You’ll see when you come. It’s not so much a community as it is a few men bossing everyone around. Everyone has very clear roles.”

  “They’re probably the ones who know what needs to be done. Any construction project needs supervisors.”

  She hadn’t thought of it in that way. “The women stay out of the men’s way to get a huge meal ready for them, then spend the afternoon cleaning it all up.” She had tried, when she was eight years old, to join the boys as they hammered nails and was shooed away by one of the fathers, told to go back to the kitchen. It was one of her many pet peeves about being Amish. You had to fit in the box.