The Calling

by Suzanne Woods Fisher

  “They’re savages, I tell you. Savages. They don’t give anybody a moment’s peace from dawn to dusk.”

  Right under the open window of the boys’ room, Bethany could hear Sammy and Luke arguing about something. She looked up at the house and frowned.

  “My father used to say that sometimes there wasn’t any better music than two brothers bickering.” She looked back at Jimmy. “He should have told that to Mammi Vera. Her favorite saying about those two is ‘Buwe uffziehe is so leicht as Eise verdaue.’” Raising boys is as easy as digesting iron. “Just this morning, she gave them something to chew over for breakfast: ‘Sand and sin are one and the same. Tolerate a little, and soon it’ll be a lot.’ Then they come up with a trick like roping the goat into mowing the lawn. They can’t learn a blessed thing without getting in trouble, those two.”

  Jimmy stared at her for what seemed like forever. She could almost feel his gaze moving over her, like the touch of the wind, before it shifted to the poor goat stuck with a lawn mower roped to its harness. Then came one of those unexpected and dazzling smiles. “Come with me a minute.” He went over to the goat to unbuckle the harness and untie the rope that held it to the push mower. Then he took hold of the goat’s harness and locked the goat in the fenced yard. He led Bethany over to Galen’s yard and pointed to a large wagon, where tools and wood were stacked. He jumped easily onto the wagon bed. “Rakes, shovels, chicken wire for the base of the beds, nails, hammers. Everything we need for the community garden. Practically a fully outfitted hardware store.”

  She walked around the wagon, examining everything inside of it. “This is terrific! Where’d you get all the tools?”

  “The hardware store provided nails, Galen King provided wood from a fence he was replacing, Amos Lapp is delivering topsoil. He told Chris Yoder to donate vegetable starts from the Lapp greenhouse. Even the Sweet Tooth Bakery is offering pastries for the frolic.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “Day-old, of course.” He jumped off the bed and stood beside her.

  Her delight amused him, and once again that slow grin claimed his face.

  Bethany looked at all the supplies, thought of all the work he’d done, the time he’d spent, and put a hand on his arm. “I don’t even know what to say. You’ve done so much. Thank you, Jimmy. You’re really . . .” He looked at her, and Bethany didn’t turn away, wondering if something might be blooming between them. “Thank you,” she said simply.

  He covered her hand with his. “So, then, how about letting me take you home from Sunday’s singing?”

  The warm wind kissed her face and rustled the ends of her capstrings. A sense of anticipation skittered over the top of her skin, traveling up her arm, brushing her elbow, tickling the back of her neck. His eyes were shaded by the soft brim of his hat, so their color was a simple dark blue, and his mouth was very still. He leaned forward, bringing his face close to hers. Too close, so that she wanted to pull back from him, but she didn’t.

  “You know you want to say yes,” he said, giving her one of his cat-in-cream smiles. “And I know a place we can talk privately.” The wind blew between them in a gush of warmth.

  She narrowed her eyes. “Said the spider to the fly.”

  “I mean it. I’d like to get to know you better.”

  There was such a sweetness in his voice that she almost got lost in the sound of it. Maybe, she thought, this was something possible. The thought made her smile.

  Then the kitchen door opened and Naomi came out of the house with Katie Zook at her side, and Jimmy’s head jerked in their direction. He waved and gave the girls his best grin.

  His best grin. The one she thought he saved just for her. Bethany tried not to let her disappointment in him show, but she knew her eyes would give her away. Her father used to say that her eyes were like a weather vane for her feelings. “Save all your charm for the other girls,” she said, sounding a tad more haughty than she intended. She softened, just a little. “I like you just fine without all that embroidery.”

  He looked surprised. “But I do want to spend time with you! I meant it.”

  She nodded and started back to Eagle Hill. “I’m sure you always do,” she tossed over her shoulder.

  Jimmy hurried to catch up with Bethany before she disappeared into the house and before Katie Zook could trap him. She was dropping by more and more often, to see Naomi she said, while cornering him in the barn.

  The lady preacher drove in the driveway and Bethany stopped to say hello, giving Jimmy just enough time to reach her. The woman got out of her car and waved. “I saw you at the Grange Hall the other day but I don’t think we officially met,” she said. “I’m Geena Spencer.”

  “I know. You’re the lady preacher everyone’s talking about,” he said.

  “Actually I’m a youth pastor.”

  “His name is Jimmy Fisher,” Bethany said in a schoolteacher’s voice.

  Geena shook Jimmy’s hand. “What are you two up to?”

  Jimmy grabbed his chance. “Bethany and I were just heading over to the Grange Hall with donations for the community garden.”

  “I never said anything about going with you,” Bethany said, frowning at him.

  “But you were thinking it.”

  Flustered, she jerked her gaze away from his.

  “Is there room to store everything in the Grange Hall?” the lady preacher asked.

  Jimmy half shrugged his shoulders. “Won’t need to. Saturday is the day set for the frolic.”

  “Frolic?” Geena said.

  “That’s what we call a work party,” Bethany said. She glanced over at Jimmy. “Mim and I have started to spread the word.”

  “Wait a minute,” Geena said, confused. “Saturday? This Saturday? You came up with the idea for the garden on Monday, and you’re going to start it on Saturday? Don’t you need work permits? Time to coordinate volunteers?”

  Bethany and Jimmy exchanged a look. “If there’s a need, we just get to it,” Jimmy said. “As for volunteers—like Bethany said, we just spread the word around the church. And we’re not just starting on Saturday. We’re ending on Saturday too. By the end of the day, the gardens should be built and planted.”

  “But . . . that’s so fast!”

  “Well, it’s already the first week of July,” Bethany said. “We can’t wait any longer if people want any produce this summer.”

  Geena tilted her head, amazed. “Count on my help. I’ll be staying in the guest flat through Sunday. Longer, if the heat wave continues and someone else cancels their reservation.” She went back to her car to unload some groceries.

  “I sure hope this hot spell breaks,” Jimmy said, trying to keep Bethany’s interest. He had spotted Katie Zook, popping her head over the privet, watching, waiting for him, and he wanted to stay clear. “This is one summer I won’t miss. Galen and I can’t even work the horses like we want to—they get too overheated. I want to get Lodestar out on the roads but the blacktop feels like it’s melting.” He sidled a half turn to keep Bethany from noticing Katie at the privet.

  “How’s it going with that horse?”

  Jimmy squeezed his eyes shut in disgust. “Bethany, he’s not that horse. He’s one in a million.” Lodestar was Jimmy’s pride and joy. He was a stallion that Jimmy had bought, several times, off that swindler Jake Hertzler. Never mind. Despite how he had ended up with Lodestar, the horse was worth every penny. Jimmy had plans to start using Lodestar as a stud horse, just as soon as he broke him of his bad habit of running off. It would never do to deliver his stud to a mare for a few days’ work, only to have him disappear.

  “So sorry,” she said, feigning her apology. “How is your one-in-a-million horse behaving?”

  “We’re making progress. Patience is required, you see, when you’re a serious horse trainer.” And when you’re serious about a certain girl. He gave her his most charming grin. “So let’s get back to the important matter. What about Sunday’s singing? How about letting me take you home?”

  She
lifted her chin in that saucy way she had. “Well, you’ll just have to keep practicing your newly found patience. I haven’t decided yet.”

  He watched her head back to the house. Before she went inside, she turned and gave him a grin. All he could think when she gave him that grin was that he wished he were a better man.

  Then his smile faded. Katie Zook was still waiting for him by the privet hole.

  Mim bent down and put her eye to the lens. It was a very good telescope, with powerful magnification and a sturdy tripod, even if it was taped together with electrical tape. When she looked through it, the stars popped vividly forward, with one glowing brightly in the middle. “So majestic,” she murmured, then stepped away and looked straight up to the sky, crossing her arms over her chest.

  Then Danny came over to bend down and take a look in the telescope. “Amazing, isn’t it? I never get over the night sky.”

  “Do you know the names of those constellations?”

  “Some.” He straightened up and craned his neck to look at the sky. “That’s Cassiopeia, right there,” he pointed, “and the Big Dipper, of course, and Gemini.”

  She tried not to think of how close Danny was standing to her, of how he smelled of bayberry soap, and how good and kind and smart he was. She tried not to think about sneaking out of the house to join Danny tonight and how much trouble she would face if Mammi Vera were to find out where she was and why. Instead, she tried to focus on those beautiful sparkling stars, diamonds on black velvet, and soon she fell into the vastness of the darkness, the far-away-ness of the stars, the possibilities of so many stars lighting so many systems. “So many stars,” she murmured. “Millions upon millions.”

  Danny nodded. “Each star has a place in the sky, a purpose to fulfill.”

  As usual, whenever she was with Danny, he said something that was so profound, so hard for her to grasp, that she found herself falling in love with him all over again. She tried to rein in her feelings and focus on the stars. Thinking about the stars sent her mind traveling to another baffling letter to Mrs. Miracle from this week’s mail pouch. She didn’t know how to solve this person’s problem:

  Dear Mrs. Miracle,

  Do you think life is fixed? Like the stars are fixed in the sky? My mother is in jail for shooting my father. I wish I could say I cared but I hardly remember either of them. My mother had all kinds of rage issues and my father was an alcoholic. Will I live the same kind of life that my parents did? It seems I already am. Sometimes, I get so angry . . . I want to hurt someone.

  Signed,

  Stuck

  She had no idea how to answer Stuck’s letter. But . . . Danny, with his infinite wisdom, might know. “Do you think a person’s life is all his own to live? Or do you think that the way he grows up, or the kinds of DNA he has, shapes a person’s life?”

  “Nature versus nurture, you mean?”

  She nodded.

  “That is a conundrum.” He glanced at her. “Do you know what that means?”

  “Of course. Of course I do!” She had no idea.

  “It’s an interesting question. Nature certainly does play a role in the way a person thinks or behaves, just the same way your hair is dark and wavy like your mother’s.”

  Mim’s hand flew to her prayer cap. He had noticed her hair?

  “Certainly, there’s a nurture factor. If a person had never received love as a child, how could he grow up to know how to love?”

  Maybe that was the problem with Stuck. It seemed as if she had never known love.

  “That’s what makes it such a conundrum. A difficult problem to solve.”

  Ah! So that’s what conundrum meant.

  “But you can’t leave out the most important factor: God. The Bible says we become a new creation.”

  “Where? Where does it say that?”

  “Second Corinthians 5:17.” He looked up at the sky as if he were reading the words written on the stars: “‘Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.’” He started to fold up the telescope. It was time to head home. “So I guess the answer is that while some people might have a harder time than others to break patterns and habits, nothing is impossible for God.”

  That was just the answer she needed for Stuck! She would write back this very night. She might even say a prayer for Stuck too. It had never occurred to Mim to pray for the letter writers. But Mrs. Miracle had never received a letter like Stuck’s, either.

  Bethany was checking messages in the phone shanty when a battered old car coughed and sputtered its way up to the house and stopped. She thought it might be someone who was lost and needed directions, so she closed up the phone shanty and walked toward the car.

  “Bethany!” the driver hollered.

  Then there was her brother Tobe, of all people! Swooping toward her and picking her up in a bear hug. His face had matured a little in the . . . how long had it been? Ten months? No, closer to a year now.

  “Oh Tobe,” she said, laughing, “I’m so glad to see you!”

  Tobe’s attention shifted to the two little boys who were racing each other from the house to greet him. He opened his arms wide and scooped up Luke and Sammy as they barreled into him. “Who are these two giants? What happened to my little brothers?”

  The boys squealed and hooted. “We have so much to show you and tell you!” Luke started, then the boys started talking at the same time, both at once, telling him bits and pieces of the news—only the news that pertained to them—the eagle pair that nested on a tree high above the creek, Galen’s horses, a new fishing hole Hank Lapp promised to show them before school started in August.

  Tobe laughed his deep, hearty laugh, like nothing had happened in the last year. “Where is Mim? And Rose and Mammi Vera?”

  Bethany shooed the boys up to the house to find Mim to tell her that Tobe had come home. She filled the short span between the car and the house telling Tobe details about who was where and when and updating him about family news. “Mammi Vera had some surgery a few months ago. She’s doing better now. Not one hundred percent, but she’s much better than she was before the surgery.”

  “Did they fix her crankiness?”

  Bethany laughed and clapped her hand to her mouth. “Don’t say things like that out loud, even if you think it. But no, since you asked, she’s as cranky as ever.” They stopped at the porch steps and she took a minute to gaze at her brother. A year of living hand-to-mouth had taken a toll. He was thin, like he needed some good home cooking. A haircut too. His black hair fell in a glossy swath across his forehead. He had large hazel eyes that could be sympathetic or furious or inscrutable. His clothes were English—a washed-out T-shirt, khaki shorts, flip-flops. But when he grinned, he was the same old Tobe: amiable, funny, handsome, charming as ever.

  She could hear the chickens fussing in the coop. Mim hadn’t fed them yet, Bethany could tell. “Where’ve you been, anyway?”

  “Here and there.”

  “I heard you were with Mom.”

  He stopped abruptly, glanced at the house, then lowered his voice. “Where’d you hear that?”

  “Jake Hertzler.”

  Tobe’s eyes widened, and Bethany couldn’t quite tell what was behind that—curiosity? No . . . no, it was alarm. “Jake is here?”

  “Was. Gone now.”

  So it was true. Jake Hertzler, Bethany’s ex-boyfriend (and her mind exaggerated the EX part), was the one who had told her Tobe had been with their mother, and he was full of lies. She wanted to know more, and yet she didn’t. Not yet. So she changed the subject. “You heard Dad passed, didn’t you?”

  A flash of anger sparked in his eyes, then he softened. “Of course I heard.”

  “But you couldn’t trouble yourself to come to his funeral?”

  He stiffened. “Things aren’t as simple as you’d like to believe, Bethany.”

  She let out a short, derisive laugh. “Shootfire! You can say that again. Like
you showing up, out of the blue, after disappearing for a year without a trace.” She was pushing him too far and she knew it. She made her voice as gentle as she could manage. “What matters is that you’re home now, Tobe. I’m glad you’re here. I truly am.”

  8

  When Rose and Mammi Vera arrived home from the Bent N’ Dent to find Tobe, sitting at the kitchen table like he always had done—one leg stretched out, one elbow resting on the back of the chair—Rose was so stunned she nearly dropped the groceries in her arms. She said she had never stopped praying that he would return home someday, but she didn’t know when that someday might ever come.

  And Mammi Vera, why, she practically fainted at the sight of her favorite grandson. Wasn’t it a tonic for her? To have Tobe home—what better medicine could there be for someone recovering from a major surgery?

  It wasn’t long before the house was a jumble of noise and confusion and happiness. As Tobe began to settle in to Eagle Hill, he looked more and more like his own rumpled self. Bethany was struck by how much he resembled their father—the same hair, black as starlings’ wings, and slender build. So much like their father that Bethany kept getting goosebumps on her arms.

  In the midst of the reunion, Galen and Naomi came over to see what the commotion was all about. When Galen saw Tobe, he shook his hand and welcomed him home. Galen’s voice was happy sounding, but his face was curious and stunned and then his eyes sought out Rose.

  A little later, Bethany was getting butter out of the refrigerator for dinner. As Galen helped get a wooden salad bowl from an overhead kitchen cupboard, she heard him whisper to Rose, “So the prodigal has returned. What do you make of that?”

  “I’m not sure what to think,” Rose whispered back. She picked up a garden carrot and cut the greens off, then started to peel it. “I really don’t.”

  “Well, his coming will be good for Vera,” he said as he set the bowl next to her on the countertop.

  Mammi Vera had been pleased to see Tobe, but the excitement exhausted her and Rose had tucked her straight into bed, promising her plenty of time for catch-up talks in the days ahead. She tried to keep everyone quiet, but Vera said not to bother. The sounds of family at the dinner table filled her with happiness.