“Well, Hank, you’ve got a real bird’s nest here,” Will observed. “I’ll try, but I’m not sure I can fix this one.”
“DAGNABIT. I was afraid of that.” Hank sauntered over to the kitchen table, pulled things off a chair, sat right down across from Will, and eyed his cup of coffee.
“Here, take this. I haven’t had a sip.” Will pushed the cup on the table in front of him.
“Oh, no thanks. No, no. I didn’t come over here meaning for you to offer me food and drink.” Hank picked up the coffee cup and took a sip with a loud slurp.
It always amazed Will to see how much space Hank Lapp took up. It wasn’t just his Christopher Lloyd–like appearance: ragged white hair, leathery skin, one eye that looked at you and the other that didn’t. It was his presence. He had an outgoing, fun-loving nature and a window-rattling laugh. Whenever Hank found him on the farm, Will felt as if he needed to protect himself from the blinding brightness, the piercing loudness. He wanted to shout out: “Warning! Warning! Protect yourself! Get your sunglasses on! Put on your earplugs!”
Hank picked up a cereal box and looked at the cover. “I’m not stopping you from breakfast, am I?”
“No. Would you like some cereal? I don’t have milk.” Will didn’t have a refrigerator in the cottage, which considerably limited his meal choices—just one of the many reasons he happened upon the farmhouse at mealtimes.
“No milk? Ah well.” He reached in the box to grab a handful, as he started talking about a recent fishing trip with Edith Fisher. “I told you about it, didn’t I?”
Will was always a little uncertain of how to respond to that question. He couldn’t begin to keep straight all the tall tales Hank wove into his fishing stories. Fishermen, in Will’s point of view, were pretty much the same everywhere—they talked, they fished, and they talked about fish. It’s one of those universal rules.
But there wasn’t time to answer. Hank had taken a sip of coffee and started in again. “Now, what was I saying? Oh yes! Edith! It might surprise you to hear that Edith likes to fish. Some of the ladies think fishing isn’t ladylike, but Edith isn’t one of them. She even makes up her own bait and she’s a little secretive about it, which I happen to find appealing in a woman. A little mystery is a good thing, I always say.”
With a sinking feeling, Will realized that this didn’t have the makings of a short visit. Hank was so easily diverted that Will was afraid he’d never get back to the original point if he didn’t stay on task. What was the point of the story, anyway? Maybe there wasn’t a point. That was often the case with Hank.
“So the fishing was a little slow the other day. I rigged up a jiggin’ hole to trick her. When she wasn’t looking, I made a slipknot on her lure and let it go. Looked to Edith like she got herself a fish! She started hootin’ and hollerin’ ’cause she was sure she had a whopper fish on the end of her lure. Telling me how she was bringing home dinner! When she reeled it in, she sure was bringing in a nicely prepared meal!” Then he threw his head back and laughed with gusto, stopping with a choking snort. “She reeled in a can of Spam! And here’s the best part—she stood up in the boat to scold me—” he wagged a finger at Will to illustrate—“and she fell right overboard!” He laughed so hard that tears ran down his cheeks. “Then, she was so mad that she spent the entire way home drenching me in the mighty flood of her words.” That started him on another laughing jag. “She’s still mad. Says I should have my fishing license taken away.” Finally, he pulled himself together and wiped his face. “If a man can’t fish, he might as well pull up the sod blanket, if you ask me.”
The story went on, but Will lost the thread of it. He emptied the rest of the coffeepot into Hank’s cup.
“Anyhoo . . . Edith won’t go fishing with me anymore.” Hank ran his knuckles over his bristled cheeks. They’d probably get a shave sometime in the next day or two—for sure before Sunday church. “So I came to see if you might like to go fishing with me. Menno used to be my fishing partner, you see, and M.K. is eager to go but she never stops talking long enough for the fish to get a word in. Sadie’s plenty quiet, but she’s too tenderhearted for fishing and hunting. She refuses to hook a worm. She carries spiders outside instead of smushing them like the rest of us.” He looked Will directly in the eye. “I just thought you might like to give it a try.”
Will felt honored. He felt like he had crossed over a bridge and was considered a member of the family. “I would. I’d like that. I know I could never take the place of Menno, but I’d like to go with you sometime.”
“No one could take the place of Menno. No one should be asked to. But I can’t deny you’ve been a blessing to all of us, Will. Especially Amos. He’s finally got his vim and vigor back. It’s been good to have you.” Hank looked over at Will swiftly, then stood and looked for a place to put the empty coffee cup. The sink was filled with dirty dishes, as was the counter. He finally put it back on the table. He paused at the door and turned around. “Life’s full of turnarounds.”
“Yes, I suppose it is,” Will said, walking over to see him out.
“But it sure is a blessing to know that the good Lord knows about every single thing that happens to us and has a divine, almighty reason for it all, the good and the bad too.”
Will closed the door behind Hank and looked at the kitchen counters and sink. What a mess. It would take half the morning to clean it all up—to get hot dishwater, he had to heat up the water on the woodstove. No wonder he hated to wash dishes. But it wasn’t just the mess that troubled him. It was everything, his whole life. That would take much more than half a morning to clean up.
What if these Amish people in this little church district were right? What if every detail meant something? What if the ups and downs and stupid mistakes he had made in the last few months had some kind of specific purpose? What if everything that happened to him ultimately fit together into a plan?
The thought was overwhelming. Terrifying and wonderful.
M.K. had been looking forward to this particular morning for five weeks. It was the last Saturday to serve her sentence with Jimmy Fisher at Annie’s grandfather’s house. When he arrived in his buggy to pick up M.K. and Uncle Hank, he was alone. His mother, he said, was still miffed at Hank for playing a practical joke on her and said she wouldn’t be coming today to help.
“You mean, help supervise,” M.K. said under her breath, and Uncle Hank jabbed her with the pointy part of his elbow.
Uncle Hank begged off. “I better go do some fence-mending with Edith.”
M.K. squinted at him. He squinted back. He opened the buggy door and practically shoved M.K. inside. “Now you two work hard and see that old feller gets plenty of loving care.” He put Fern’s hamper, filled with prepared food for the week, in the backseat.
Jimmy and M.K. didn’t speak to each other for the entire fifteen-minute ride to Annie’s grandfather. When they arrived, the old man was in his chair on the porch, looking dead, as usual, and M.K. carefully tiptoed up to him to see if he was still breathing.
“GIRL, WHERE YOU BEEN?”
M.K. flinched. He got her every time.
“He forgets,” Jimmy said, lugging the hamper past M.K. to take to the kitchen.
“SPEAK UP, BOY! YOU MUMBLE. I’VE SPOKEN TO YOU ABOUT THAT BEFORE.”
“I SAID GOOD MORNING,” Jimmy said. He lifted the hamper. “BROUGHT YOU GROCERIES.”
“COYOTES?” He smacked his lips together. “I AIN’T HAD COYOTE MEAT IN YEARS. GUESS IT BEATS STARVING,” he snapped, in his wrinkly voice. “HOP TO IT. STIR YOUR STUMPS.”
Jimmy and M.K. exchanged a glance. Jimmy was going to try to fix the sagging porch corner today, so he went back to the buggy to get his tools as M.K. started to unload the hamper. She added some wood to the smoldering fire in the stove so that she could warm up some oatmeal Fern had made for the old man’s breakfast. The stove started to smoke and seep soot. “You’d better clean out the stovepipe,” she told Jimmy as he passed through, swiping a cooki
e from the hamper of groceries.
“Me?” He mumbled around a cookie in his mouth. “That’ll take all morning. I wanted to get that porch done. I can’t do everything, you know.”
M.K. held back from giving him a snappy retort. “We can’t leave him with a clogged stovepipe. It’ll start a fire.” M.K. pulled a chair over to the stove. “I’ll help.”
Jimmy exhaled, a slow whistle. The pipe rose out of the stove and angled at the ceiling. He climbed up on the chair to try to pull apart the lengths but couldn’t work them loose. “Botheration! This could take all morning.”
M.K. pointed out to him that botheration wasn’t a word, but he ignored her. “Sometimes I think you are getting as deaf as Annie’s grandfather.”
“I hear you,” Jimmy grumbled, “but it goes in one ear and out the other.”
“Nothing to stop it,” M.K. said.
“It’s too bad you don’t think about things that the average person might actually have to face.”
“Like what?”
“Like how to tolerate working alongside one of the most aggravating girls on earth.”
It never took long on these Saturday mornings for Jimmy Fisher’s manners to go right out the window, which wasn’t a long toss. She thought about pushing his chair back so he would fall, but she supposed that might be mean. “And that, Jimmy Fisher, is just one of the many reasons why you don’t have a girlfriend.”
“Who would want one?” He looked down at her. “Nothing but a nuisance. But if I wanted girlfriends—” he snapped his fingers—“they’d come running.”
Sadly, that was true. It was a never-ending mystery to M.K. that so many girls swooned over the likes of Jimmy Fisher.
He hopped off the chair. “I’ve got a brilliant idea.” He reached into a pocket and drew out a metal tin. He opened it and showed M.K. what was inside. “Firecrackers.”
It was a well-known fact, to everyone but his mother, that Jimmy Fisher was never without firecrackers. He took three out of the tin. “Just takes a pinch of gunpowder to clear the stove, pipes, and chimney.” He snapped his fingers again. “Easy as pie.”
For once, M.K. was the one to think twice. “Jimmy . . . I’m not sure . . .”
He waved her off. “Prepare to be swept up in a whirlwind of superior force.” He unlatched the stove door, then looked at her and squinted. “Uh, maybe you should stand back.”
M.K. went into the other room and watched from behind the doorjamb. Jimmy struck a match to the kindling inside and threw in the firecrackers.
Then quite a lot happened. With an explosion that left M.K.’s ears ringing into the new year, the whole stove danced on its legs. The stovepipe came clattering down from the ceiling, belching a bushel of black soot all over them and the entire kitchen. The windows were covered with coal dust, darkening the kitchen. M.K. thought Jimmy would have been killed outright by the explosion, but he seemed to be still standing. She saw his eyes blinking rapidly in the midst of his coal-blasted face. His eyebrows were missing.
“Maybe one firecracker might have been enough.” He spit soot out of his mouth. A burnt-powder haze hung in the room.
It took M.K. a few minutes to get over the shock of it. Then, she roared! “Jimmy Fisher! Er batt so viel as es finft Raad im Wagge!” That did as much good as a fifth wheel on a wagon! She stamped her foot and shook a fist at him. Her ears were still ringing. “I won’t be hearing right for a week or two!”
“As if you didn’t bring this all on yourself.”
M.K. and Jimmy whipped around to locate the source of that familiar voice.
Fern! So ubiquitous!
“At this rate, you two are going to be working off your Saturdays for the rest of your lives.” Fern said she happened to be leaving the Bent N’ Dent when she heard the firecrackers and knew Jimmy Fisher was behind it. So, she decided to check up on them. “Good thing I did,” she said, as she folded up her sleeves to set to work. “The two of you without supervision are an accident waiting to happen.” She pointed to Jimmy. “Don’t look so surprised. A person could hear that explosion halfway to Harrisburg.”
“Oh, he’s not surprised,” M.K. said. “He just doesn’t have any eyebrows left.”
It took the three of them the rest of the morning to put the kitchen into the shape Fern expected it to be in. By noon, a miracle had taken place. Jimmy scooped a little soot here and there, not much, but at least he fit the stovepipe back together. M.K., naturally, did the work of ten, scrubbing, sweeping, polishing, dusting. The kitchen was restored to its pre-explosion condition. And the stovepipe was cleaned out.
Annie’s grandfather slept through the entire thing. When he woke up, he hollered for his lunch.
As Will dipped the oars into the placid, dark water, a glorious feeling of well-being washed over him. Sure, he was broke and facing serious legal problems, but not at the moment. At the moment, he was rowing on a beautiful lake with a gorgeous girl seated before him, serenaded by the soft hoots of a pair of screech owls.
Often, lately, Will forgot that he had a job to do and that Sadie was an Amish farmer’s daughter. All he could think about tonight, as they set out for a fishing trip to Blue Lake Pond so that he would have some practice before Hank took him out, was how much he wanted to kiss her.
He blamed the soft spring air, the colors of the evening sky, and that strand of sandy blonde hair that kept working its way loose. He blamed the tiny scatter of freckles on her nose and cheeks. He blamed those sky-blue eyes and that rosy mouth. He blamed the way her soft laugh chimed like bells. Granted, today wasn’t the first time his thoughts toward her had turned in a romantic direction.
He rowed the little boat out to the middle of the lake. “It doesn’t get much better than this—fishing on a warm spring evening!” A mockingbird imitated the call of a dove. A dove cooed in reply, and he figured the mockingbird had a laugh over it. Will slid onto Sadie’s seat and put a worm on the hook for her as she looked away. She didn’t like anything to get hurt, she said. Even a worm.
He was so close to her that all he needed to do was to tilt his face and he was in a perfect position to kiss her. He slipped a hand behind her head and pulled her face toward his. Then he was kissing her deeply, but gently, as if he had all the time in the world.
After a moment, she pulled away. “That was nice, Will. Very, very nice.” She put a finger to his lips. “But don’t do it again.”
He studied her face for a moment in disbelief, trying to judge how he should respond. Were his instincts off that much? She was always giving him mixed signals—something he found mysterious and compelling. Certain he caught a twinkle in her eyes, he said, “My deepest apologies. The moonlight has made me lose my sensibilities.”
The corner of her mouth ticked, but whether it was from amusement or annoyance, he couldn’t tell. Then she laughed, a sparkling fall of notes in the still of the evening. He didn’t look right into her eyes but rather at those adorable freckles that were sprinkled across her nose and cheeks, like someone dusted her with cinnamon.
But she had a point. They came here to fish, not kiss. He was ashamed of himself. Okay, maybe not at this exact instant, but by tomorrow for sure. His only excuse was that he liked her so much. The more he’d witnessed her caring ways, the more she had gotten under his skin. There were times when he thought he might be falling in love. She wouldn’t believe him if he told her, so he didn’t intend to. He could hardly believe it himself.
He cast his line out into the lake and watched the gentle ripples undulate through the calm surface. “What would you say if we went into Lancaster for dinner soon?”
Sadie practically dropped her pole. “I can’t.” The answer was quick, like she didn’t even have to think about it. She shifted her shoulder away from his and kept her eyes on the surface of the lake. “Someone might see us.”
A laugh burst out of Will. “People around here aren’t stupid you know. They’ve figured it out.”
She pulled farther away, look
ed at him. “Who has? What are you talking about?”
He read the shock in her voice even though he couldn’t see her face—just the outline of her hair and prayer cap, lit by the moon around its edges like an angel.
“People know about us, Sadie. They’re not blind.”
She stood up. The boat rocked dangerously. “Who knows? And knows what? There’s nothing to know.”
He wished Sadie would quit moving around so much. One slight misstep and they could both end up in the lake. Wasn’t this just what had happened to Edith Fisher? He reached up and put his hand on her shoulder, pushing her down on the bench. “You’re going to capsize this little boat.”
She pressed her palms together, tucked her hands between her knees, and bowed her head forward. “I can’t do this, Will,” she said, and her words hovered above them for a second. “Will . . . I . . .” She didn’t have to finish the rest of the sentence for him to know he wasn’t going to like what was coming next.
Finally, he said it. “You want to just be friends. Buddies. Pals.”
Her shoulders rose, then fell. “Exactly.”
It was a speech he had given to many girls, but this was the first time he had been the recipient of it. “Is this because of the bumbling schoolteacher?”
She looked at him sharply. “He’s not a bumbling . . .” That single strand of hair, pulled loose from the bun at the back of her head, framed her cheek. She guided the lock behind her ear with trembling fingers before answering. “This doesn’t have anything to do with Gid.” She stiffened her back, lifted her chin. “It has to do with me. And it has to do with you.”
“That’s the thing I don’t get about the Amish. You should be free to choose your life’s path, Sadie.”
Long seconds ticked by before she lifted her eyes to meet his. “I am free to choose, and I have made my choice. But you . . . are you so very free, Will? It seems as if your life has a giant shadow over it.”
Will looked away. He hadn’t expected this. His mind spun around and around. This conversation wasn’t going at all the way he had planned. He looked back at Sadie, who was still searching his face. He was trapped. He would have to say something. “A shadow?”
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