by Kelly Long
He found himself in the back of the wagon sitting with the brothers and the large crate between them. He realized upon closer inspection that the crate had a This Side Up stamp and was air-postage prepaid with an address of Hawaii Zoo on its label. The weight was 190 pounds. A little less than him, some more than a sun bear. He met Luke’s gaze across the crate, and an idea began to stir in his head.
Across the secret furrows among the corn and wheat, they plowed on toward Becker’s, stirring up crickets and the earliest twinkling of lightning bugs. And in the quiet interior of the wagon, Grant compared his short-sleeved light blue polo and jeans to the dark pants, blue and aqua shirts, and suspenders of his fellow passengers and felt like he’d fallen out of step with a time that was more dependable than his own. The King men were silent for the most part, eyes steady, only occasionally making a comment here and there to each other in rumbling Pennsylvania Dutch about the height of the field or the stray passing of a bird.
Grant decided to regain some of his footing. He knew the strict beliefs of the Amish to abstain from violence at any cost, but he couldn’t help feeling like he’d been railroaded into something, and he figured he knew how to play cat and mouse as well as the next man.
“So are you going to shoot Becker?”
Mr. King gave a gratifying jerk to the reins and three pairs of eyes met his own with mixed shock and bewilderment.
“You know, maybe just in the leg, truss him up, put him in the crate, mail him to . . .” He peered closer at the label on the wooden box, fingering an air hole. “The Hawaii Zoo?”
Mr. King glanced back over his shoulder and his eyes met the doctor’s with a faint twinkle. “Was it not just awhile ago, Doctor, that you thought it might be you going in that crate?”
Grant shrugged. “Never can tell. One full crate’s as good as another.”
Mr. King slapped the reins. “Boys . . . the good doctor can give as well as he can get. You’d better be warned.”
Grant grinned at Luke, who frowned back, then ignored the gazes of the others as he pretended to study a passing hawk beginning a last nightly round.
In truth, he had no idea about how things would play out at Becker’s, but that just made life more interesting. He closed his eyes, letting the bump of the wagon lull him, and smiled as he thought about Miss King frolicking with paint in his kitchen.
What color have you chosen, Sarah?” one of Mamm’s friends asked as the women trooped into the doctor’s kitchen. Since Sarah had organized the paint vrolijk, the women allowed her the privilege of choosing the color.
Sarah glanced around the kitchen. Mrs. Bustle had visibly done her very best to clean, but the dilapidated stove and the faded wallpaper drew all the heart from the room.
“Light blue,” Sarah replied, ignoring the desire to say that it matched the doctor’s eyes.
“Light blue?” Mrs. Loder questioned. “Are the Englisch used to a blue kitchen? I thought they might favor yellow or something else.”
“Ach, I’m sure it will be fine,” Mamm interjected, rolling up her sleeves. “We’d better get started, though; I don’t expect it’ll take long up at Becker’s.”
The women laughed, sharing the joke, and then each began to work in earnest. Sarah smiled as she pulled down strips of flowered wallpaper; it was called a frolic for more than one reason. It was a grand opportunity to get together to help a neighbor, but it was also a time to joke and laugh together, to update one another on happenings at home, and to generally be merry as they worked.
They soon had the wallpaper down and bundled away and then set to cleaning the walls. Mrs. Loder, Mamm, and Sarah slid the heavy refrigerator, the only gleaming new piece of furniture in the room, out from the wall, being careful not to dislodge the electric plug from the outlet.
“There are hardwoods under this old linoleum. Wide fir, I believe,” Sarah said, bending over the cord in order to see where there was a gap between the wall base and the floor.
“Hmm . . . I wonder why the Fishers never uncovered them?” the bishop’s wife asked. “Maybe the wood’s warped.”
“We could find out,” Sarah announced and then glanced around at the group. “If—if you’d like.”
Mamm laughed. “ ‘Es fenschder muss mer nass mache fer es sauwer mache’—One has to wet the window in order to clean it.”
The others agreed and helped heave the refrigerator and stove up by inches so that Sarah could slide out the old linoleum. A wide fir floor was indeed revealed, scratched but in hearty condition.
Sarah clasped her hands in glee and then complimented the women who already had one of the walls painted. The light blue was very Amish looking, but it brought serenity to the center of the house that she hoped Mrs. Bustle would like, as well as the doctor. Although, she worried, perhaps the Englisch did not consider the kitchen to be the heart of the home. She shrugged off her concerns and scrambled up a footstool to reach the white trim around the top of the walls. With a steady and artistic hand, she had a fresh coat on two walls within minutes. Then she skipped down to pass around cups of lemonade that Mamm had brought, and they all paused to savor the delicious sour-sweetness and to admire each other’s handiwork.
“Looks good so far,” Mrs. Loder remarked.
“Jah,” Sarah agreed, glad that she’d been able to persuade Mamm to organize the frolic despite her reservations. “I just hope the doctor will kumme home happy.”
Mamm gave her a sharp look. “If we want him to come home happy, We’d best get back to work. There’s still a lot to do,” she chided. “We must do a gut job. ‘Whatever you do, do as for Der Herr.’ ”
The doctor was, in actuality, having rather a rough go of it. He’d found himself standing outside the ramshackle attraction of Becker’s Beasts and Birds, facing an irate Mr. Becker, with no true idea of what to say beyond a few awkward words.
The King men stood behind him in a quiet semicircle, seeming to blend in with the stillness of the land and the evening. Grant was back to feeling the fool and tried once more to speak to Mr. Becker.
“I’m here for the sun bear. I’m—we’re taking it out of here.”
Mr. Becker laughed. “You are, are you? Well, don’t expect those dolts behind you to help any. They don’t go in for fighting, and that leaves just me and you, Son. And I’d say that those woman’s hands of yours are in for some trouble.”
Grant didn’t mind the personal slur, but the prejudicial ugliness of “dolts” was enough to get his back on behalf of the Amish men.
He glanced over his shoulder at Mr. King, who still had a twinkle in his eye, and then looked back to Becker. Something clicked in his brain and he found himself repeating what Luke had first said to him back on his own porch.
“Mr. Becker, it appears that the only animal you’ve got missing from your collection is a woodchuck, and we’re here to tell you that we might know where to find one.”
If Grant had hit the man with a full uppercut, he couldn’t have looked more suddenly dazed by the strange words. It was like Becker was a balloon that had just lost all its air. He went from angry to visibly anxious in a matter of seconds. Grant was fascinated. Clearly, Becker believed some mysterious folklore about a woodchuck. At the moment, Grant didn’t care. He just knew that he was within hand’s reach of a suffering sun bear.
“Hey . . . hey, I don’t want no woodchuck. There’s no trouble here,” Becker was mumbling. “I’ll sell the bear, if you’re interested.”
Grant decided to test the power of superstition against cold cash.
“No paying for anything,” he ordered in a deep voice. “It’s the bear at no cost, or—it’s the woodchuck.”
“All right. All right.” Becker frowned. “The bear’s been a mite sickly, and I’d be glad to make room for a monkey I’ve got my eye on. Just come on in and wrestle the bear out. I’ll help.” He was unlocking the double barn doors as he spoke and then pushed them wide open. The stench of wildlife and its droppings came clear and fetid to th
e senses on the evening air, and Grant felt renewed pity for the caged animals imprisoned inside.
The sun bear was lying disconsolately on its side, its hair matted, its eyes blank and listless. Grant paused a moment.
“I’d like to line the wooden crate with some clean straw and set up a water bowl and some food . . . I’m not sure how it’ll take the flight,” he spoke in a low undertone to Mr. King.
“Already done. And our postmistress is Amish. She booked it overnight express . . . so not too long in the crate.”
Becker was looking for the key to the rusted lock, and the sun bear began to stir, sensing something was up.
“You should have told me to bring my bag . . . I could have given it a mild sedative,” Grant whispered to Luke.
“Got all the sedatives you need right here,” Becker commented, indicating a dusty table piled with junk and dirty syringes. “Valium, Ativan . . . they all work the same on people and animals.”
Grant snorted in disgust. “Never mind, We’ll move her as is. She shouldn’t put up too much of a fight as weak as she probably is.”
Becker swung the door open, and the sun bear took one lunging jump straight at Grant’s chest. He fell backward, covering his face against the potential for scratching, but the bear lumbered off of him and sniffed around the ground, staggering to stay on its shaky feet.
“She’s cage lame,” Grant growled, rising to tower over Becker. The man held his hands up in supplication.
“I told you; I don’t want no trouble. Just herd her out to the crate.”
The King brothers had lowered the crate out of the wagon and onto the ground, and Grant saw an ample supply of fresh fruit, a sun bear’s weakness, in the dim back of the box. The sun bear made straight for it, the only sound being her enthusiastic slurping of a watermelon half. James and Luke slid the crate lid down and secured it in place with four pins, then Samuel and Grant joined them and hauled the crate back up into the wagon. They all climbed up to resume their places, and Mr. King picked up the reins. Grant stared down at a subdued Becker and was still amazed at the turn of events.
“Go on with you,” Becker entreated.
Grant shook his head in disgust. Mr. King lightly slapped the reins and they were off, sun bear in crate, veterinarian in perplexity. When they’d gone about half a mile, Grant broke the silence in the wagon.
“What exactly is a woodchuck? Is it code for ‘We’ll deck you,’ or what?”
Luke grinned at him in the growing twilight. “ ‘How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?’ ”
The wagon riders took up the refrain in an instant. “ ‘He’d chuck as much as a woodchuck could, if a woodchuck could chuck wood.’ ”
“Nice,” Grant complimented them. “But that still doesn’t answer my question.”
“Becker’s a superstitious man, according to local talk. A woodchuck can bring the worst of luck, so the stories go, for those who believe such things. We just thought We’d remind him.” Mr. King explained as the horse continued its leisurely pace and Grant began to slap at the night’s mosquitoes.
“Well, are there any woodchucks around here?” he demanded of his silent crew.
Luke laughed. “Nee, but there’s a sun bear sure enough, and that beats a woodchuck cold.”
All of the brothers laughed, and Grant joined in. He understood that they had bonded together to back him up in a quest that really mattered to him, and the warmth of gratitude began to permeate his thinking. It was like having a small army behind you, and he’d never had the security of brothers or sisters.
“Thank you,” he said gruffly, and Mr. King clicked to the horses and glanced around to peer at him in the fast falling moonlight.
Nee thanks yet, Doctor. You’ve got to take this sun bear “down to the post and have Edith get it out for you tonight. You can borrow the wagon, but We’ve all got to get to bed.”
Grant smiled. “No problem.”
The next morning Grant marveled at his gleaming, refreshed kitchen as he grabbed an iced coffee from the fridge on the way to a call about a colicky horse. He had scratches on his tanned forearms from hauling the crate to the miniscule post office by the dark of night, but he felt joyous at the encounter. Edith had turned out to be a riot, a thin Amish woman in a postal shirt thrown over a night robe, who had parceled the crate onto the loading dock with him as if they were mailing Christmas presents. And he’d discovered through a few late-night phone calls that one of the curators at the Hawaii Zoo was a former vet school classmate who was only too glad to prepare for an incoming sun bear.
When he got to his early morning vet call, the elderly Amish man greeted him with a toothy grin and shook his hand.
“Got a horse with a bit of a bellyache, Doctor.”
“No problem. Let’s have a look.”
“See the scratches there on your arms.”
“Yes . . . a late-night call.”
The old man laughed. “Guess that’s what you get for trying to mail a cow.”
Grant didn’t miss a beat. “On the contrary, it was a woodchuck . . . two of them, actually.”
The man’s grin disappeared and he made a lame gesture toward the barn.
Jah . . . jah . . . right this way, Doctor. No trouble here.” “
CHAPTER 9
Sarah noticed the change in the Englisch clothes as the summer days slipped seamlessly into early September. She’d grown used to girls wearing shirts with no sleeves and boys wearing no shirts or denims with strange knee holes torn in the fabric. But now, the visitors to the stand were more young women, holding babies on their hips or the hands of bright-haired toddlers, clad in collared shirts and denims, skirts, and blissfully colored blouses. Occasionally, when a woman’s hair shone vibrant and free in the sunlight, Sarah allowed her gaze to linger a moment too long and then had to pray against the sin of vanity, knowing her own hair, once unbound, hung shimmering below her waist. She tucked any stray brown tendrils that dared escape her kapp ruthlessly back inside and sold caramel apples, kettle corn, and licorice pipes, realizing that she was becoming too familiar with the ways of the Englisch.
Sarah had finally finished the baby quilt top and was working on the actual quilting of it. Her mind had swum when she’d actually gotten to the point where she needed Mamm’s help, and her vocabulary grew over mysterious quilting words like pressing, seam allowances, and batting. But now she felt relatively adept, at least to complete Chelsea’s quilt, and she’d grown to love listening to visiting Amish women who shopped at the produce stand and always had a good quilting quip when they saw her working. Sarah’s favorite traditional verse was “At your quilting, maids, don’t tarry; Quilt quick if you would marry. A maid who is quilt-less at twenty-one, never shall greet her bridal sun.”
She was just smiling over reciting the verse when Jacob pulled in at the stand with a magnificent brown Morgan at the pull of his buggy. Sarah paused in her stitching to admire the movement of muscle beneath the sheen of the horse’s coat and had to admit that no one took better care of horses than Jacob.
“He’s beautiful,” she said when Jacob came up the steps.
“Danki. He was trouble at first because of some cruelty from the previous owners, but he’s as gentle as a lamb now. What are you working on?”
She’d forgotten her quilting and glanced with surprise at her lap. “Ach, just a quilt for Chelsea’s boppli.”
He took off his hat and leaned against a table piled with vegetables. “I thought old Grossmudder King scared you out of quilting once and for all.” He smiled at her, and she recalled that it was Jacob to whom she’d run when she’d been so stung by her grandmother’s comments as a teenager. In truth, she’d run to Jacob for many things as they were growing up, and she realized now how much she’d held herself off from him since he’d tried to change their friendship into something more.
She looked at him and thought that she missed that closeness of childhood and adolescence; she could have
used someone to talk with about the doctor and the feelings she’d been having.
“What?” he asked curiously at her gaze.
She shook her head and looked down. “It’s nothing—just—you’ve been such a good friend to me.”
“Always friends,” he sighed. “I think I put too many years into that role.”
“They weren’t wasted.”
He laughed ruefully. “That depends on how you look at it.”
She pursed her lips and pushed her needle through the quilt.
“Look, do you want to go for a ride?” Jacob asked.
“I have to stay here to work; you know that.”
“Come on, Sarah. Just leave a box for money and let it run on the honor system. We can be back in half an hour.”
She bit her lip in indecision.
“Just to appreciate the horse,” he coaxed drily. “Not me.”
“Stop it. All right; I’ll go, but only if we can stop by the schoolhouse. Mamm’s been wanting me to take some jams over to Lilly Lapp for her and her mother.”
“No problem.” He smiled and put his hat back on while she left a note and an open box for customers to pay. She filled a basket with a variety of jams and jellies, and they went down the steps together. She felt especially happy when he didn’t try to help her up into the buggy. Maybe things could be normal again between them, she considered.
She spent an exhilarating time enjoying the ride and the familiar way that Jacob had only to speak and the horse pricked up its ears and obeyed. They drove to the schoolhouse and discovered the children out for lunch and running about. They all clustered close to see the beautiful horse, and Jacob got down to hold the bridle while they took turns petting it and offering vegetable pieces from their lunches. The schoolteacher, Lilly Lapp, stood in the doorway of the small schoolhouse, and Sarah was struck anew by her dark-haired, blue-eyed loveliness. Lilly and her mother lived alone since old Dr. Lapp, the former vet to the area, had passed away the previous year. The entire community worked together to help care for the widow and her household, though, remembering to bring food goods and to do work around the small Lapp farm.