by Kelly Long
“I know, Father. I will try to know better.”
Gut . . . gut. Now, how can I help you with the food?” “
Sarah smiled at him. “I can do the food, Father. Please just relax a few minutes.”
She hurried to scramble the eggs and grill the toast, then set tomatoes to grill as well and added mushrooms and slices of cheddar cheese to the bread. She’d just set the last plate, and Father was in his place when the boys came trooping down, asking about Mamm.
“I’ll take a tray up to Mamm,” Sarah announced. “And make it a true holiday of a morning for her.”
Sarah knocked on her parents’ door and entered, offering her Mamm the treat of food she hadn’t needed to prepare herself.
Her mother patted the edge of the oversized feather bed. “Come and sit for a minute, Sarah.”
“You are okay, right?”
Mamm smiled. “Yes, I was just having a bit of extra prayer time. I want you to know, because it was for you.”
Sarah smiled and leaned forward to lay her head on her Mamm’s shoulder, breathing in that familiar and timeless scent of mother and comforter. “Ach, Mamm, thank you so much. I’ve needed extra prayer, extra wisdom these past weeks.”
“I know.” Mamm stroked her hair. “I’ve got eyes to see.”
Sarah pulled back and looked at her.
“I’m sorry that I’ve been moping around so much.”
“Now,” Mamm interrupted. “None of that. You just tend to your garden like you always do and things will turn out all right. You’ll see.”
Sarah kissed her aging cheek, which was still rose-petal soft, and thanked the Lord that she had the parents He’d seen fit to give her.
Well, your time’s nearly up, Son. Do you still want to go through with the baptism?” The bishop forked down his eggs while he talked. The deacons had all agreed that, providing his studies of the Ordnung and the language went suitably well, Grant might “coincidentally” be free to go out among the community dressed as a young Amish man on the day that Sarah opened the roadside stand. It seemed appropriate, being a year out from when he had first moved to the community. His baptism would then take place on the following Sunday.
“I’m surer of going through it now than I’ve ever been. It’ll also be good to be able to practice again without skulking about. I shudder to think of the animals that have met with bad ends because of the drive to Lockport.”
“There now, enough of that. You can’t save the world; you’re doing something to serve Der Herr. Now which is more important?”
“I know.” He munched his toast with a sigh. He had to study the translation of the baptismal questions and ceremony today. “Listen, may I go out to the barn loft to study today? It’s a bit stuffy up in that room.”
“Ha! You’re spoiled! Missing your air-conditioning?”
“Jah, I guess I am. Although I’ve enjoyed thinking up ways to use alternative power to perform surgery and the like.
The bishop laughed. So, becoming Amish means you’ve had to exercise your brain a bit more?”
“To some extent, yes. You’re right.” He didn’t say more because he didn’t feel like sparring today; he felt exhausted, like he’d run a long race and now, seeing the finish, didn’t have the energy to end. He also knew part of him did fear the depth of relationship that Sarah might have developed with Jacob Wyse in his absence. He couldn’t blame her; he’d left so abruptly. And that note he’d written . . . He’d gone over it a thousand times in his mind, wondering if he might have been more forthcoming, but he’d done the best he could.
“What’s wrong, Son?” Ezekiel burst into his thoughts.
“I’m just tired.”
“Listen to me, then.” The bishop straightened in his chair and Grant looked at him, catching a glimpse of the great leader he had to be in order to keep the community at peace and in line. “You’re tired because it’s normal. Don’t give in to despair. Have faith in what Der Herr can do, even if you feel that you have done all you can. That’s where He gets His space to work, when it’s at the end of what you are.”
Grant looked at his plate and considered. His faith was being tested in more ways than one, but there was a lot of sense in what the old man said. “I’ll try to give Der Herr His room to work, then.”
“Gut, and go to the barn loft, by all means.”
Grant rose to scrape his plate, and the bishop laid a hand on his arm and cleared his throat. “I—I will miss you, Son, when you’re gone.”
Grant put his plate down and enfolded the old man in a tight embrace. He hadn’t hugged another man, except Bustle, since his father had died.
“There, there.” The bishop patted his arms and cleared his throat. “I’m just glad you finally got the manure smell off.”
Sarah found that her mamm was right, and focusing on her garden proved a balm to her spirit and soul. She also took to walking with Jacob in the afternoons for an hour each day, mainly because he persisted and because she sensed he was deeply lonely despite his banter and teasing front. It was when he tried to kiss her again, though, and she turned aside, that she knew she had to speak seriously with him. It was not fair to let him think there was hope for them. So now she skirted a mud puddle and cleared her throat.
“Jacob,” she began. “There’s something that I have to talk to you about . . .”
He looked at her from his keen eyes and smiled. “Definitely sure you’re not interested in spending your life with this Amish man?”
She blushed. He always had her words two steps ahead. “No . . . I mean, yes. That sounds awful. I wanted to say it differently.”
“No harm done, Sarah. I assure you, my heart will survive.” He pounded himself stoutly on the chest, but she caught the slight edge in his voice. She’d hurt him.
“Jacob, don’t joke. I was wrong to let you think. I mean, I didn’t mean to . . .”
“Ask yourself, though, Sarah—will you stay in love with the past, with a dream that doesn’t exist anymore? Can a dream give you your own home? Children? A life?”
She considered, knowing she’d asked herself the same questions. “No, but neither can I choose a life that would be . . . second best.”
“Thanks, you’re really letting me down easy.”
She laughed; she had to. He was good at that, at making her smile against her will, but she could not build a life upon it. She knew that even if Grant never returned, it would always be him that haunted her days and her nights and her heart.
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
“Don’t be . . . I suppose this should be our last walk together, then?” He sounded wistful, but she knew she had to be firm.
“Jah, you will find someone better, Jacob.”
He laughed ruefully. “Will I, Sarah King? I think not when she’d have to match eyes like a forest glen and a heart like a breathing garden.”
“You will,” she said again with finality and was glad when he gave her a cheerful wave to show he had no hard feelings toward her. She went onto the porch and back inside, feeling much lighter in spirit.
CHAPTER 26
The spring weather continued, and many of the plants in the doctor’s greenhouse began to take on even more palpable signs of growth in the form of new buds and shoots, blossoms and sprouts. Sarah made it a point to slip across the fields and use the key that she wore on a ribbon around her neck at least once a day to water and check on the plants. This late afternoon, the Bustles had gone to Philadelphia for a few days and Sarah had promised to keep an eye on things. She felt a thrilling sensation when she realized that the door to the greenhouse stood ajar. Her first thought was that Grant had come back at last, and the idea of seeing him sent her heart racing. She pushed open the door, searching the corners of the building, but saw no one.
“Grant?” she called, beginning to walk among the rows of plants. When the door squeaked shut behind her, she turned with a smile to come face-to-face with Matthew Fisher. He looked bad, she thought.
He was thin, his hair scraggly, his smell rank. He wore a blue jacket, and Sarah thought of the fire. Then, somewhere inside her, she began to pray, because she knew that she was in great danger. A hundred Bible verses swam in her mind, but especially she recalled the story of angels encamping around those who thought the odds were too far great against them. Please God, send Your angels to me now. Give me words to say to this man. Calm his troubled soul.
“Calling for the doctor, Sarah King? I think I owe him one.”
“Well, he’s gone,” she said, surprised at the steadiness of her voice.
“He should be,” he said, reaching to give her kapp string a pull and dropping it to the floor. “Messing around with a good Amish girl like you—the Englisch dog.”
Sarah stood her ground, resting one hand on a plot of tomatoes and feeling the fuzzy comfort of the vine.
“I saw your mamm. Father was in the hospital; she works there.”
He froze at her words, then seemed to shrug them aside, reaching out to cup her chin. “You’re beautiful, Sarah King,” he growled, moving as if to kiss her.
“It’s Der Herr that you see in me that is beautiful, nothing more.”
Again her words arrested his movements, and he stopped, as if listening to something far off, but then he moved, his mouth coming toward hers. She turned her head, and his lips found her cheek. “I’ve prayed for you,” she told him.
“That was a waste of time.” He put his hands on her shoulders.
“Matthew, I saw the scar on your mother’s cheek; I can only imagine the scars on your heart.” Her voice was still steady as images of a younger Matthew came to mind, sitting forlorn in a buggy while his father blustered.
He shook her, but without much heart. “You think you’ll turn my head with your gentleness, but I’ll not have it.”
She nodded as if in agreement. “Just talk to me; not everything has to be anger.” She took a deep breath. “Then, if you wish to kiss me, I will let you.”
“You will kiss me when I desire it,” he stated, but there was a spark of interest in his eyes and she was quick to see it.
“Maybe I should tell you a secret about me,” she said. “It’s unfair to just hear everything from one person.”
He scoffed and pushed her away. “What secret does a good Amish girl have? That you’re in love with an Englischer?” He looked away. “You might be better off.”
“No . . . that’s not a secret. I love him, but he left me. That’s my secret. He wrote me a letter and cut me off. I should have admitted it to myself sooner. I’ve hurt other people all because of wanting something that can’t be—just like your father can never be the one you want.”
Matthew took out a cigarette, then dropped it, grinding it beneath his grubby sneaker. “I have no father.”
“You will only get angrier if I say it, but you have Der Herr.”
He barked out a laugh. “Yeah, what a great Father—to give me this life.”
“We all want things to be different sometimes. But you have a choice. You can be a good father yourself. You can give a normal, healthy life to your wife and children someday.”
He stared down at her hand. Tears welled in his eyes and fell down the hollows of his thin cheeks.
“Normal?” he rasped. “There’s nothing left that’s normal about me. You want me to talk to you? I cannot even bring myself to say the things my father did to me. You wouldn’t understand half of them if you heard them. There’s nothing left of me . . . I’m an animal, or worse.”
“Matthew Fisher, I’ve seen your mamm outrun it, outlive it . . . somehow, some way . . . with the Lord’s help. Do you think that she can do this and you can’t? I tell you, you can.”
“How?” he asked bleakly. “I don’t have your faith. I can’t regrow your father’s crop; it’s too late. If they catch me, I’ll go to prison.”
“I don’t know if you would; I don’t think Father would press charges. You can have a different life if you choose it.”
There was a prolonged stillness, an uncanny sense of breath being held, and worlds swinging in pendulum, while she prayed.
“I have an uncle in Ohio; he’s Englisch,” he said finally, and she almost sobbed aloud with joy. “I could go to him, maybe. If he’d have me . . . He knew what my father was like.”
“Then let’s go inside and use the doctor’s phone to call him!” Sarah cried, her beautiful eyes wide and excited.
Matthew stared at her. “You would break the rules and call on the telephone?”
“Jah. Most certainly. I’ve used a phone before, so I know how to do it.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know his number.”
“Do you know how to work a computer and the Internet? I have a key to the doctor’s house. You could look up the number.”
He was looking at her in amazement. “Why would you help me?”
She took a deep breath. “Because you’re worth it. And you can take a bath while you’re in there and find some of the doctor’s clothes to wear.”
“You’re crazy, girl.”
“Maybe I am,” she said with a lift of her chin, as she walked to retrieve her kapp. “But I am going to help you.”
Sarah unlocked the back door and walked into the kitchen she’d helped to paint in what seemed like an eternity ago.
Matthew followed her, looking hunted when she glanced at him.
“Let’s switch on as few lights as possible,” she said. “I don’t want my family to notice and think something’s wrong.”
“You would make a gut criminal mind maybe.”
“No, I’m just practical.”
He was staring around the kitchen and peering into the shadow-filled living room. “It seems so different here now. I . . . can’t seem to recognize it.”
She went to him and patted his arm. “I forgot, Matthew, that this was your home.”
“It was no home ever, no matter how much Mamm tried.”
“But she is well now and happy. She worries about you.”
He nodded but didn’t speak.
“I’ll show you the computer. Can you work it?”
Jah . . . I learned a little here and there.” “
She watched as he dealt with the mysteries of the machine and then somehow found his uncle’s phone number. “I’ll go out while you call.”
“Sarah?” He called to her from the desk, the telephone in his hand.
“Jah?”
“Are you going to leave?”
“No,” she promised. “I won’t leave you here alone.”
He nodded and then started pressing buttons on the phone.
She paced the distance from the foyer to the parlor and back again many times before he came out. He looked exhilarated. “My uncle . . . he’s leaving tonight, to come and get me. I’ll hide in the woods in a place he remembers, and he will pick me up.”
She clasped her hands together with joy. “I’m so happy, Matthew.”
He ran a hand ruefully through his long, greasy hair. “I do wish that I looked better to greet him.”
“Go upstairs and bathe. I’ll cut your hair after and find you some clothes.”
“Not the Amish bowl cut?” he asked, half-seriously.
Nee . . . I can do it differently.” “
And she did, layering his now-clean hair over the too-large collar of one of the doctor’s shirts; she cut his hair into some semblance of the outside world.
“I have to go back now, or the folks will be wondering,” she told him at last, after she’d fixed him some canned goods and made him a cup of tea.
“I don’t know how to say thanks, Sarah. I can’t believe how you helped me, and I have to tell you something. The doctor . . . the one you love . . . he, well—he helped me too, one day, though I didn’t know it at the time. He talked to me.”
“It was the Lord,” she said, thrilled to hear of good that Grant had done, but noting that Matthew’s mouth turned down at the words. “Please, Matthew, don’t forg
et Der Herr’s love . . . even if you’ve never believed much in it before. You can be different; you can make a difference. One day, you can be whole again.”
He couldn’t look her in the face, so she leaned near to him. “I promised a kiss if you would talk with me. I freely give it.” He glanced up, and she kissed him on his cheek. His eyes welled with tears.
“Danki, Sarah. You make me feel—human again.”
They went about cleaning up and shutting things off and then went out into the oncoming evening. She pressed his hand as she began the run across the fields and turned over her shoulder only once to see him loping off into the woods to wait at his rendezvous point. “Dear Lord.” She laughed, praying aloud. “Dear Lord, You are amazing. You turn the darkness into light and set the captives free! Amen. Amen.”
Well, she’s up to something good, she is.” The bishop rubbed his hands together as he perched on the edge of Grant’s bed.
Grant was still half asleep in the predawn hour. “What’s that?”
“Sarah helped Matthew Fisher escape to Ohio last night, used your house to do it too. Edith, at the post office, gets all the gossip. They say Matthew has an Englisch uncle who’s going to help him, and it was all Sarah’s doing.”
Grant rubbed his eyes blearily and ran a hand through his hair. “Am I dreaming?”
“Nee.” The bishop laughed. “But she’s becoming a woman of her own, she is. I always wanted to help that boy but could never get around the father. Guess it took a woman’s touch, after all.”
Grant shouldered the light blanket. “I’m going back to sleep until chore time. You can tell me later that this was a dream.”
The bishop slapped his back. “You’ve got three minutes to sleep, Son. The cows are waiting.”
Gut . . . three minutes. I’ll take it.” “
CHAPTER 27
The King family decided to make their annual trek to the farmers’ market in Lockport on a beautiful sunny day of the last week of April, when the bees had come back to life to flit about in the fresh air. Each family member had something to sell; the boys had leather tooling; Father, fishing lures; Mamm, crochet work; and Sarah had her Patch of Heaven quilt. She had thought long and hard as to what to do with the quilt, but as the months had passed and no word had come from Grant, she decided that holding on to it would only serve to remind her of a brief time of happiness that now caused her great pain. It would be better to let the quilt bless someone else with its warmth. So the family set off in the wagon and stopped by the Kemp farm, where John, Chelsea, and the baby joined them in their own wagon full of various cheese wheels.