Afterward, children and parents poured over to Windmill Farm for the barbecue. Fern and Sadie had skipped the program so they could start the chickens on the barbecue. Amos smelled that sweet, tangy smell all the way down the road. He smiled. Behind him, he heard a firecracker go off, which meant Jimmy Fisher was nearby. In front of him, he saw Annie walking up the hill, holding the baby in her arms so that Sadie could cook. Today was a wonderful day.
While everyone ate lunch on blankets on the grass, Amos went to mark out the baselines for the softball game in the gravel driveway. Home base was the tall maple tree in the front yard. The bases were old goose-down pillows that Fern donated to the cause. Gid pitched, Will caught, and Amos helped the six-and-under crowd at bat. When they hit the ball, Amos would scoop the toddler under his arm and run around the bases, pumping and wheezing, red-faced and panting. He was having the time of his life.
Little by little, mothers and fathers made noise about heading home and choring, so the scholars started to reluctantly clear out. Gid remained behind, having a casual back-and-forth toss with Will. They didn’t have ball gloves, so you could hear the smack of the ball in the heel of the hand. No one paid them any mind, until the sound of the smack got louder. Then louder still. The ball was a blur between them now. Gid was red in the face. Will’s upper arm strained and glistened.
Then Gid threw a little wild and caught Will’s guard down. The ball popped him in the stomach and Will let out a loud “ooof” sound. He doubled over like a deflated beach ball. Then he fell back and splayed as he hit the ground, grinning. The few stragglers who had remained stood around laughing at Will’s exaggerated antics.
Will popped up his head and peered at Gid. “Looks like you throw a pitch the way you put together a cradle.”
Gid’s face tightened.
Quick as a flock of sparrows, the laughs were gone.
Gid took out after Will, sprinting like a panther across the yard. Dust rose behind him. Will had just enough time to make that come-and-get-me gesture with both hands. Then they were squaring off, but not throwing punches yet. Gid pushed Will’s shoulders and he fell on the ground.
“Are you crazy?” Will yelled, scrambling to his feet. “What’s that for?”
“That’s for wrecking the petit fours,” Gid growled.
“The what?” Will growled. “I don’t even know what pettyfours are!”
Gid grabbed Will in a headlock. “And that’s for ruining the cradle.”
But Will had a few tricks of his own. He grabbed onto Gid’s arm and bent over, heaving him on the ground. “Why would I ruin your cradle?”
Gid leaped to his feet. “Why?” He worked around to swing again and brought a left hook out of nowhere. Will jumped back to avoid it.
Amos would never admit it out loud, certainly not among this small crowd, but he was impressed with this quiet schoolteacher’s tenacity.
Gid narrowed his eyes. “You’ll do whatever you can to keep Sadie and me apart.”
Will ducked and danced. “Oh yeah? Well, why would she ever want a man like you?”
The world stopped dead to listen.
Gid was up in Will’s face, now pointing a finger at his chest. “You don’t know the first thing about being a man.”
That did it. Will sprang. Down the two went, rolling in the dirt, throwing punches. Dust whipped into a fog. They rolled one way, then another, and knocked over the blue bird feeder. Sadie gasped as the dinner dish shattered when the feeder crashed to the ground. And still, they kept at it.
M.K. edged around to Amos and tugged on his sleeve. “They’re just having fun, right?”
“I think so,” Amos said, then frowned. “I thought so.” It was hard to tell. The boys were a frenzy of flailing elbows and kicking heels. All that could be heard were the sounds of grunts and smacks. More grunts than smacks.
The rest of them stood there, watching. Even the baby, held in Annie’s arms, looked stunned. His eyes and mouth were three little round O’s. Uncle Hank whistled, long and low, then he and Jimmy Fisher started betting to see who would win until Fern put a stop to that.
M.K. looked worried. “Dad—what’s wrong with them?”
Amos stroked his beard, wondering when he should step in. “Those two are butting heads over our Sadie.”
“But why?” M.K. couldn’t take her eyes off the two, dancing and sparring.
Amos glanced at her. “I believe it’s called a love triangle.”
“But that would mean . . .” She scrunched up her face. “Could Sadie be in love with two different boys at the same time?” She scratched her head. “Where could you look up a thing like that in the library?”
In the midst of the boys’ tussle, Amos turned to M.K. How could he make this clear to her? She was just twelve. She wanted simple definitions of love. Love was many things, but it was never simple. Before he could think of how to answer M.K., Fern interrupted him. “Amos Lapp, would you please stop those two before Gid ends up losing his teaching job!”
“What?” M.K. was horrified. “Does that mean Alice would have to take next year’s term?” She covered her face with her hands. “Dad! Please! Stop them!”
“They can’t keep this up,” Amos said, but they did.
Finally, Sadie had enough. She ran to the hose spigot and filled a bucket with water, then rushed over and tossed it at the two. They stopped fighting, shocked and soaked.
“Gid, stop it!” she yelled. “Go home!”
Gid limped to his feet. “I’m not going anywhere.” His shirt front was dripping with water and blood. He held one hand, already swelling, close to his chest. You could tell that he’d broken it. He took a few steps toward Sadie until they were practically nose to nose. She glared at him. Amos had never seen his daughter look so angry.
Gid looked at Sadie through a closing eye and repeated himself. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Sadie was furious. Mad at Gid, mad at Will. Will came out of the fight with surprisingly less damage than Gid, but he seemed to sense he should make himself scarce, and after Fern gave him an ice pack for his eye, he quietly slipped off to his cottage. Fern told Gid he needed a splint made for his hand before he headed off to the hospital’s emergency room for an X-ray. And Sadie was the only one who knew how.
In the kitchen, Sadie wrapped the gauze around the splint she had made to keep Gid’s broken hand immobile. They carefully avoided looking at each other. Amos had gone down to the shanty to call a taxi and offered to go with him to the emergency room, but Gid said no, that he could handle himself just fine.
Mary Kate sidled into the room, watching Sadie clean off Gid’s face cuts with cottonballs and alcohol. “It was my fault,” she whispered.
“What was?” Sadie said, dabbing Gid’s wounds so that he flinched. She could have used something that wouldn’t sting quite as badly, but she didn’t mind seeing him squirm.
“The cradle. The night Gid brought it over—I was carrying it into the house and I was running . . . and Doozy made me trip. I fell right on top of it, hard, and the whole thing kind of collapsed. Nothing broke—it all fit together like a glove. But I didn’t know I should have used glue.” She looked down at her bare feet.
Sadie stared at her, dumbfounded. “Why didn’t you say so? Mary Kate, why would you let me think Gid did it on purpose?”
M.K. studied a fly buzzing on the windowsill with great interest.
“Mary Kate, look at me. When are you going to ever learn? You create problems for other people—and then you let them pick up the pieces!”
“Geduh is geduh, Sadie,” Gid said quietly. What’s done is done. “Let it go.”
Sadie looked at Gid, shocked.
“I don’t think you can blame her for the cradle collapse. The fault was mine for bringing the cradle over too soon. I should have waited a few more days until the glue cured.” The taxi pulled up outside, so Gid picked up his hat with his unbandaged hand. He walked to the door, turned the knob, and opened the door a crack.<
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Gid released the doorknob and turned to look at Sadie. An uncomfortable silence settled over them. “You’re always preaching about how important forgiveness is. You tell other people they need to forgive. But you . . . you won’t forgive me. When God forgives, he does it once and for all. He doesn’t keep dragging out reminders the way you do. I’ve tried every which way I can think of and you still treat me like I’m . . .” His voice trailed off. “Maybe . . . you need to take a dose of your own medicine.”
Sadie’s jaw dropped. This was by far the longest speech anybody’d ever had out of Gid. His words bit to the quick.
19
Annie stopped by every day to see the baby. She fed him, rocked him, cuddled him, offered him her finger to grasp. She lifted her hand with his fist clamped about her index finger to her mouth and kissed his plump little hand. When she got ready to leave, Annie pressed one last kiss on the baby’s cheek. Sadie shifted Joe-Jo to her shoulder and patted him as she watched Annie walk down the hill. Annie was such a lonely little figure, and she was heading home to be with her nutty grandfather. The sight of her tugged at Sadie’s heart.
Amos came out of the barn and crossed over to where Sadie stood with the baby. “Annie and I have had a lot of talks these last few weeks—about why she left and why she came back,” Sadie said. “Good talks. She seems much stronger now, much better prepared to face her responsibilities.”
Amos put his hand on the fence post.
“Dad, I think the time is coming when we need to think about letting Annie have Joe-Jo.”
“Fern has mentioned the same thing,” Amos said. “But we felt it would be best for you to make that decision.”
“Maybe we could start slowly. A day here and there, then maybe an overnight. To help her adjust.”
Amos took Joe-Jo out of Sadie’s arms. “You know that could very well mean she will move to Ohio to join the colony in the fall.”
Sadie gave a slight nod. “I keep trying to think of what Menno might have wanted, if he could understand the situation.”
Amos kissed the baby’s smooth forehead. “I think he would understand that Annie is the baby’s mother. She’s trying to do the best she can. And he would be pleased that we are trying to help her.”
Sadie couldn’t stop thinking about Gid’s words: When God forgives, he does it once and for all. He doesn’t keep dragging out reminders the way people do. The way she did.
She gave her father a sad smile. “Soon, then.”
Will hardly slept. He kept going over every precaution he could think of for banding the chicks.
Miner’s hard hat with LED lamp.
Red helium balloons to tie on his backpack.
Air horn to scare off Adam and Eve if they flew too close to him.
Protective goggles.
Fingerless leather gloves so he could handle the bands.
Cell phone to call for help if Adam attacked him and left him for dead.
A little before 4:00 a.m., he threw back the covers and got out of bed. Bird-watchers were a little on the obsessive side. A group of them had figured out he would be banding today and told him they would set up their scopes at dawn. They knew that banding was done when the nestlings were about three weeks old because, at this stage, they didn’t run out of the scape or attempt to fly off. What Will doubted that these birders would know was that at three weeks of age, the young birds could be sexed by measuring the width of the legs. He had promised Mr. Petosky a male and a female. Last night, Mr. Petosky said he decided he wanted three, not two, and Will put his foot down. Two was his limit. Two left in the wild, two brought in for captivity. It seemed fair.
His plan was to get out there, get up the ridge, wait for Adam and Eve to leave the scape, band the birds, remove the two bigger ones for Mr. Petosky, and be done with it. He would lie and tell Mahlon that only two were found in the scape. Mahlon would wonder what had happened to them from dusk the night before—the time of Will’s last call to him. But Will wasn’t too concerned—there were all kinds of reasonable explanations as to the disappearance of fledglings. They could have fallen from the scape and ended up as dinner for another animal. Even Mahlon said he didn’t expect that fourth chick to survive. They competed with each other in the scape, and the older chicks had the advantage: bigger, bolder, quicker. Once the deed would be done, Will was sure he wouldn’t feel needles of guilt anymore. It was that time of indecision, of anticipation, that made this whole business seem sketchy.
Dressed and prepared, Will climbed the steep, uneven ridge to reach the scape, just like he had practiced. He stopped at a level place, behind the scape, where he would band the chicks. He planned to band them one at a time. He would pluck one from the scape and band it down below. He would also check it for overall health and condition. If he could get the birds banded quickly and back into the scape without Eve getting too aggressive, he would try to collect eggshell fragments and prey remains for examination. That would make Mahlon happy and hopefully deflect his attention from the two missing chicks. The eggshells could be analyzed for contaminants and the prey remains could provide additional insight into peregrine falcon feeding habits. The use of DDT in the 1950s and 1960s had practically wiped out the peregrine falcons by causing thinning of the eggshells. Even though they were recovering, it was still important to analyze the eggshells for contaminants. With a little bit of luck, he would be done in ten minutes and his pulse could return to normal.
He did have luck—more than a little. Adam was already out hunting. He heard the quacking, duck-like sound he made as he soared over the fields. Hopefully, Will could coax Eve out of the scape with some quail left on a lower rock. Then he could get in, do the deed, get out.
Everything was going according to plan. It was eerie, how easy it was. The bird-watchers wouldn’t arrive for another hour, which made Will feel considerably less anxious. He opened his backpack and pulled out a flashlight, turning it on so he could light the area where he would band the chicks. He set out the tools he would need: bands and pliers. A strange thought burst into his mind . . . this must be what it was like as his father prepared for surgery.
Now was not the time to think about his father. He quickly dismissed the thought and got back to work.
Will tossed a quail—Eve’s favorite morsel—on a rock way out in front of the scape. He held his breath, watching her carefully to see if she noticed it. The scape was so much smaller than he would have expected—only about nine inches in diameter. The depression was only about two inches deep. After a long moment, Eve hopped to the edge of the scape and took a short flight to reach the quail. Will held his breath, watching her for a moment. He thought she might bring it right back to the scape, but she stayed put. Probably hungry.
Okay. Go!
Will scaled the rock where the scape sat, grabbed a chick, and jumped back down. He whipped off a glove and picked up the bands Mr. Petosky had given to him. The downy white chick looked at him with those eyes—dark, penetrating eyes, ringed with gray fuzz. It just stared at Will, unblinking. This—this was why falcons have played a prominent role in human history, he suddenly realized. As he gazed back at the chick, he felt the strangest connection. As if the bird knew what he was up to and was disappointed in him. He could almost hear Sadie’s voice, poking his faulty conscience: “Is this the kind of man you’ve become? After all you’ve learned about yourself this spring, about the God who cares for you . . . this is who you want to be? This is the moment of decision, Will. Yours and yours alone.”
Panic crashed through his mind like waves at high tide, his emotions a brackish mixture of embarrassment, confusion, self-reproach, guilt, fear. A cord of guilt wrapped around him and squeezed hard. He’d created this moment, built it one conversation at a time, and now he was terrified of it. His hands were trembling.
Will heard Adam’s quacking sounds grow closer. He heard Eve answer back in alarm. They had spotted him. He had to finish this task. He had to.
Will stared at t
he cell phone in his hand. He had been hemming and hawing for the last hour. He was about to make the hardest phone call of his life. His heart was pounding, his hands were clammy. Finally, he pressed the button. One ring, two rings, three rings, then a fourth.
“Will?” His father exhaled, impatient. “I’ve only got a minute. What is it?”
“Dad . . . I’m in some trouble. I need your help.”
A woven-wire fence enclosed the cemetery. Amos, Fern, Sadie, M.K., and Uncle Hank met with their neighbors to help clean up the graveyard after the recent storm. They went in by the gate to join the others. They knew a good many residents of the graveyard, though the oldest part went back to the early 1900s. Uncle Hank stopped to examine a small tombstone. “WHY, LOOKY HERE! If that isn’t Lovina Shrock! She was my first customer for my coffin-building business. Howdy, Lovina!” He stopped to pull a few weeds around the stone.
“What ever happened to that particular line of work?” Edith Fisher said, coming up to him with a shovel.
Uncle Hank’s face lit up. “My clients never laughed at my jokes!” He took the shovel from her. “But at least I never got any complaints.” He roared with laughter and Edith rolled her eyes, until a rusty laugh burst out of her.
So Edith must have finally forgiven Hank for pulling a practical joke over her on a fishing trip. Now that twosome, Amos thought, watching the two of them wander off to weed a row of graves, was one of life’s great mysteries. M.K. ran off to join her friends as Sadie set the baby in the shade. Fern started to work with a cluster of women.
Amos wandered down a path to Maggie’s grave, under a willow tree, near the fence. Menno’s was next to her. A branch had cracked and he pulled out his handsaw to trim it. Then he dropped down on his knees to clear away the brush. He traced his finger over the lettering on the headstone:
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