****
It was still early—midnight, or so. Mitch was busy checking the milking equipment while the barns-men were bringing in the first thirty cows to be milked for the night. In the midst of all the confusion, he looked up and locked eyes with a beautiful young woman in the office with Ethan Stuart, his boss.
One of the inmates nudged Mitch and pointed toward the office window. “Hey, that’s her—Mr. Boss-man’s daughter.”
“Move it along, prisoner,” the guard said, tapping his nightstick against the palm of his hand.
Mitch locked down the gate in front of the cows to prepare for the milking, and then went outside to check on the feeders to make sure they were bringing in the silage for the hungry cows. When he returned, Ethan stepped out of his office and approached him.
“Hey Mitch, how are you tonight?” Ethan offered an outstretched hand.
Mitch removed his soiled glove, took Ethan’s hand and shook it. “Not too bad, Sir.”
“We have a few new calves to tag, if you get the chance to take care of that sometime before you leave in the morning. Other than that, it should be a routine night.”
“Sounds good.” The two shook hands again and Ethan walked back into the office.
Mitch found it difficult not to steal a glance in her direction ever so often. When he made eye contact with the young woman again, he quickly looked away out of embarrassment. For a brief moment, he felt they might have made some sort of connection, but quickly remembered who he was, and his present appearance put his foolish thoughts in proper perspective. His beard was too long, as was his thick, brown hair, which hung from the sides of his hat. Being deprived of sleep to work the night shift had caused his dark, blue eyes to blend to shadows at the corners. The required coveralls he wore were stained, and his tall, rubber boots were already covered with manure. He felt like a fool to have thought that she might like the looks of him. Still, Mitch stole another glance and the young woman managed a half smile, which he did not feel comfortable returning.
****
Mitch pushed at the flattened pillow beneath his head hoping to make himself more comfortable and free his mind some. Though it had never been easy for him to sleep during the day, he grew to realize that working all night and sleeping a portion of the day somehow lessened the reality of the remainder of his sentence. His first few months in prison, before he started at the dairy, had dragged on until he joined group therapy with some of the other prisoners.
At first, it seemed to be an easy way out of his cell for long periods of time. What he hadn’t planned on was having his life change so drastically from what he learned there.
He recalled his first conversation with Deacon Charles as though it were yesterday…
“What brought you here today, Mitch?”
“I don’t know, Deacon, I guess you could say my bad temper brought me here. I’ve had a bad temper ever since I could remember. My bad attitude carried over into my teen years and I ended up spending more time in juvenile hall than at the public school.”
“Did you dislike school, Son?”
Mitch moved from his chair and walked around the large meeting room. “I don’t know, Deacon.”
“Please, Mitch, call me DC. Everyone calls me that, and it makes me seem a little less formal to the inmates I think.”
“Okay, DC.” Mitch sat down across from the deacon. “If you really must know, I suppose I didn’t feel like I really fit in at school. I didn’t get any encouragement from home, you know. The only thing my father ever said to me was that I would never amount to anything that would make him proud. So I figured why bother to try, if I was doomed to fail anyway.”
“Do you feel like a failure because you’re in here?” DC leaned forward, folding his hands in front of him and resting his elbows on his knees.
Mitch swallowed the lump in his throat. “A few previous squabbles landed me in jail, so this last time I was handed a tougher sentence—repeat offender, they called me. My father always said I would end up in jail. Why was he right?”
“I don’t necessarily think he was right about that. Do you think in some way you let him be right?”
There was caution in the deacon’s voice.
Mitch stood to his feet, anger rising up in him. “I know it’s my fault I’m in here. Any idiot could tell you that much.”
“I’m not here to lay blame, Mitch.” The deacon stood up and moved to the window. “Would you like to tell me what brought you here?”
Mitch pursed his lips and sat back down. His mood showed signs of annoyance with the situation. He didn’t want to talk to this man, yet he felt the strong urge to dispose of the burden he’d carried for too many years. “My father was very cruel to me when I was a child. For that matter; he has been as far back as I could remember. My mother couldn’t take it anymore, so she up and left one day—packed her things and announced she was leaving.”
“Did you go with her?” DC asked, turning from the window to look at Mitch.
Mitch paused, running a hand through his thick hair. “I didn’t go with her. I didn’t want to change schools. I was only fourteen. What did I know about life then? I was more concerned with transferring to a new school than I was with being with my mother. She cried and I just stood there and watched her leave with my little sister, Julie. I haven’t seen them since that day. Now when I look back on that day, it all seems like a bad dream—like it isn’t real.”
“Do you feel guilty for not going with her?”
Mitch felt a tear run down his face. “I’ve regretted not going with her every day since she left.”
“You shouldn’t beat yourself up over a decision you made when you were just a child, Mitch.” DC placed a hand on Mitch’s shoulder to comfort him, but he pulled away.
“That one decision ruined my life. I knew what kind of man my father was and I hated him. My mother was gentle and unselfish—the exact opposite of my father. I don’t want to be anything like that man.” Mitch was pacing the room and flailing his arms in his distress.
DC grabbed Mitch’s arms and stood face to face with him. “Then you must make a choice to change your life.”
“I don’t know how.” Mitch said, breaking free from the deacon’s grasp. “Don’t you understand? That’s what got me here in the first place. I allowed my anger with my father to carry into my everyday life, and jail is where I ended up. I’m here because I beat up a kid in one of my classes at the community college back home—over a cigarette!”
After a long pause, DC broke the silence. “Tell me more.”
“You want to know the whole story?” Mitch challenged DC. “The punk wouldn’t give me a cigarette, so I hit him and I kept on hitting him until the campus cops pulled me off of him. I broke his nose and cracked one of his ribs. The real ironic thing is; I don’t even smoke! I was angry that day and he acted tough around me, so I took it upon myself to put him in his place. I wanted to show him I was tougher than he was. I’m not so tough now, am I?”
“How do you feel about what you did?”
Mitch tried to suppress a fresh batch of tears, feeling defeated and weak. “I feel awful. I even wrote the guy a letter telling him how sorry I was, but he wrote back a very colorful letter filled with threats for when I get out of here.”
“It hurts when others don’t forgive,” DC said, while leafing through the leather-bound bible that now lay across his lap.
Mitch sat down again, looking over DC’s shoulder at the open bible. “Maybe I can’t forgive myself for ruining my life. Now, the two years of college I put in to try to change my life don’t seem to matter. As it was, it took me four years just to get through two full years of college, since I couldn’t keep myself out of trouble long enough to succeed at anything. Maybe I can’t even forgive my father for hurting me and my mother. I think even a small part of me can’t forgive my mother for walking away from me that day—I was just a dumb kid—maybe she should have forced me to go with her.”
DC
found the page he was searching for. “God can help you with forgiveness, if you let him.”
“How?” Mitch’s tone reflected his misery.
“He gives us the tools to change our lives when we give our burdens to him.” DC set the bible down next to him and held out his hands.
Mitch rested his hands in DC’s and the two prayed the sinner’s prayer together. As the prayer came to an end, Mitch felt warm and free—unlike any freedom he’d ever experienced. His tears turned to laughter, making him eager to know more about what was taking place inside his heart that was now bursting with forgiveness. Mitch eyed the bible that lay undisturbed on the chair beside him and lifted it from its place of rest. He wanted to learn all he could, and he had plenty of time for such an important thing.
****
Mitch rolled over in his bunk again, unable to sleep with so much weighing on his mind. Though he despised every day he’d spent in prison for the last three years, he accepted that God had used his unfortunate circumstances to bring him to salvation. For that reason alone, he found it difficult to regret being where he was, though he was fully ready to leave it behind. He held up a hand and traced the lines of meaningless words scratched into the chipping paint on the cinder-block wall of his cell, wondering what others before him had felt in this very same spot. He would be glad to be rid of his cold, graffiti-decorated cell and the hurtful past that put him here.
Mitch sat up, tugging at his long beard, and moved to the stainless steel mirror that hung above the sink to get a better look. His image was hazy, allowing thoughts of Emily to creep back in, wondering what she might think if he should shave the unkempt beard. She had seen him only for a brief moment and he hoped she would get another chance to see him with a clean-shaven face. He knew she was out of reach—if only for the reason that she was, after all, his boss’s daughter. But that didn’t change his unquenchable attraction to her.
He stared at his murky reflection.
I’m a prisoner. What would she ever want with a guy like me?
Still, he felt as though somehow he was destined to have met her. Though he hadn’t actually been introduced to her, he admired the way she and her father conversed with one another throughout the night. He’d tried to keep his mind on his work for the four hours that she’d spent talking over business matters with Ethan, but he couldn’t help himself. Not only did he understand what was being said, having learned the inner workings of business in his college courses, he was mesmerized by Emily’s beauty and intelligence.
****
The prison bell sounded after a routine “head count” for the noon meal to be served. The steel bars of each cell rattled and grinded open in unison, startling Mitch, who had not realized so much time had passed. Being a minimum-security prison, he was allowed to come and go as he pleased—except when the steel bars were locked down during the daily routine head counts.
Mitch stretched and yawned, stomach growling, decided that he would eat in the mess hall with the other inmates. Normally, he would sleep through the lunch hour, but today he found it easier to get up, than continue to compete for sleep with the regular prison schedule.
****
Emily shivered as she pushed back her heavy, down-filled comforter and stuffed her feet into her slippers. She could no longer handle the tossing and turning that she’d endured for several hours. She felt defeat as she admitted to herself that Mitch Rutherford, with his deep blue eyes and boyish grin managed to plague her restless sleep. She sat on the edge of her bed glancing at the clock on her bedside table, which revealed the late morning hour. A sudden knock at the kitchen door interrupted Emily’s quest for stretching, but she rose from the side of her bed to answer it. When she opened the door, snow blew in, scattering across the tile floor. It was Susan, her best friend from as far back in her childhood as she could remember. They had even gone off to college together.
“Bhrrr.” Susan pulled off her hat as she entered the kitchen, leaving her blonde hair flying with static electricity. “I thought this was supposed to be our spring break. I can’t believe this weather.”
Unusual weather for the first week of April, a sudden, heavy snowfall had disappointed Emily and Susan when they arrived two nights ago.
“Well, this is the upper-peninsula we shouldn’t be surprised. I’m thankful we’re in Michigan instead of Minnesota. Before going to bed a few hours ago, I saw on the weather channel, Minnesota got eight inches of snow dumped on them.”
“I suppose you’re right, Emily. But I’ll be glad to get back to LA, won’t you?”
Emily nodded, not yet ready to share her concerns of her father’s health with Susan. She was still unsure of her feelings about the possibility of leaving school so close to graduation, and hadn’t yet thought through how she would finish her studies if she stayed behind.
Susan tried to smooth her blonde, flyaway hair and pulled careless strands from her blue eyes. Emily grabbed a broom from the closet and pushed aside the snow on the floor.
Susan tugged on the corner of Emily’s thick robe.
“Hey, are you just getting up?”
“My father and I stayed up late for the last two nights going over some things regarding the dairy,” Emily said, yawning.
“Is everything all right?”
Feeling put on the spot, Emily hesitated in answering. If she revealed the truth to her friend it would be out in the open. On the other hand, if Susan didn’t approve of her decision, she may feel pressured between leaving her ill father and returning to school for the final weeks before graduation—what she had worked so hard for, for nearly four years.
“Emily?” Susan said, nudging her.
“I heard you. I’m just not sure how to answer that right now.”
Susan raised an eyebrow. “What’s wrong? Is it your dad’s health?”
“Yes, unfortunately. His illness has progressed to the point where the doctors have advised him to put his affairs in order.” Emily choked on her words, trying to retain her composure.
“Oh Em, I’m so sorry. Why didn’t you call me?”
“I figured you’d be busy with your family.” Emily said, wiping her tears.
The two hugged and Emily continued to cry lightly. Yesterday, she had cried so much when her father confided in her, that her face still felt swollen. Now, fresh despair took hold of her. Susan pulled her away and held Emily’s hands in her own.
“Is he saved?” she asked.
Her question came as a shock, but Emily had to admit, it had crossed her mind. Both Susan and Emily had been attending a church off campus with the initial intention of finding a decent dating prospect, but they had gotten far more than they had hoped for at the tiny church. Though the congregation consisted entirely of college students, with the exception of a few older folks that would come and go, Emily and Susan had long since retired the notion of finding a good man at the church and devoted their extra time to volunteering at church events.
“When I was a little girl, my mom took me to church and told me about God and how he created the world. She told me about Adam and Eve, Jonah and Noah over and over, as many times as I would beg her to repeat the stories.” The corners of her mouth turned up as she reminisced.
“What about your father? I’m not sure I remember him going with you.”
“No. Never once do I remember my father going to church or talking about God. Up until she died, my mother and I would go to that big white church with the tall white steeple on the corner of Main Street downtown. You remember that church, don’t you?”
“I remember being there for the funeral, and how afraid I was to go near the casket. Weren’t we nine or something at the time?” Susan asked.
“I never knew that’s why you wouldn’t go up to see her with me. You know, I was mad at you for the longest time because of that?”
“I knew you were mad, Em, but I couldn’t help it, I was just a kid…sorry.”
Emily shook her head. “I can’t believe how many years
ago that was. You know, come to think of it, I remember my Aunt Lilly having to practically force my father into the church at my mother’s funeral. After her death, I don’t think my father knew what to do with me. I guess that’s why he sent me off to boarding school that year.”
“That was the worst year of my life. I hated being at the public school without you.”
Emily wiped a fresh tear from her cheek. “Yeah, I remember how happy I was to come home. My father was never the same though. We haven’t been very close since.”
“Maybe things will get better between you while you’re home,” Susan said, offering enthusiasm to her friend.
“I doubt it. He seems awfully chummy with one of the prison workers, though.” Emily’s voice showed a sudden hint of anger.
“What are you talking about, Em?”
The Taming of a Wild Flower: Book Three (Amish Fiction/Romance, Christian Romance) Page 9