The Path to Piney Meadows

by Gail Sattler

  It worked for them, and they liked it that way. They were comfortable in their lifestyle, and very much in love with each other, even after being married for more years than Chad had been alive. They were happy with their routine and each other, and in the end, that was what really mattered.

  Half listening to Leonard reading, Chad turned his head slightly to watch Anna as she very diligently followed along. He wondered if domesticity in her household would be a democracy with her husband as well. He actually couldn’t see it being any other way. Unlike many of the women he’d met who lived here, Anna didn’t hesitate to stand up for herself. At least she did with everyone except her father. Peter seemed like a fair and honest man, but everything in his world was black-and-white, including the way he felt about the position and duties of the women in his household, especially his daughters.

  Because of that, Chad didn’t mind helping Anna improve her skills in order for her to make her own way in life and become independent from her father. Yet, even though she wasn’t happy under her father’s strict regimen, from everything he’d seen in the four months he’d been living here, what she was planning was extreme. Not many people, male or female, did what she was planning to do. Those who had left the protective wing of Piney Meadows, and gone to college had done so with full emotional support from family and friends.

  At the same time, from what he gleaned, most who did seek an education outside Piney Meadows, and then a career, didn’t return.

  He didn’t want to see that happen with Anna.

  As much as he was reaping the benefits of Anna’s improved skills, he didn’t want her to reach the point where she would follow her decision to leave and not come back.

  “Why are you looking at me? Have you lost your place?”

  In a flash, his eyes came into focus and he snapped out of his musings. He grinned at Anna. “I was just thinking.” He grinned wider. “About you.” About how one day soon, he’d forget she was his assistant and kiss her.

  Her eyes met his, she paled, and then broke into a charming blush.

  She lowered her head so that she looked like she was intently studying her Bible. “I have no idea why you would be thinking about me, but this is not the place. Stop it.”

  Oh, yeah. She had his number. He leaned closer to her, so no one in the room could hear his words. “I’m always amazed at how organized and tidy your notes are and how you color code everything in your Bible. Want to show me how you do that?”

  She kept her head lowered. “That is not what you are thinking. Shhh. Dü mottst horjche. You must listen.”

  Since Leonard was still reading aloud, Chad didn’t have to follow along to pay attention. He halfheartedly listened to Leonard reading, but he watched Anna.

  “Pay attention,” she whispered without raising her head.

  He grinned even wider. “How did you know I was watching you?”

  “I just knew.”

  Just like he knew she’d know. Working side by side every day and then spending most evenings together, even in a crowd setting, they were getting to know each other pretty well. And the more he got to know her, the more he was coming to like her. A lot. She was different from any woman he’d ever met, not just because of the quaintness of her upbringing or the simplicity of her ways. She was intelligent and resourceful and had a sweet and gentle heart. Most people he knew would be bitter if they felt trapped in a situation like hers—he was no shining example himself. But Anna always saw the good in people and was resourceful in every situation. If this had been at another point in his life, he would have asked her out on a date to see where the relationship went, and he had a feeling it would go well. One day, she’d make the right man a very happy husband, and he wondered what it would be like to be that man.

  He felt his heart start to pound. He didn’t know why he’d just had that kind of thought. He wasn’t in any spot to think about a committed relationship—or any relationship. He’d been that route and been dumped when he’d really pressed for marriage. He’d thought it had been the right thing to do, given the situation.

  He looked down at the pages of his Bible, wide-awake now. He forced his mind back on track and back to where he was. Since he’d lost the flow of the passage, he flipped back a page and read all the verses in the section Leonard was reading aloud, finishing at the same time as Leonard quieted.

  Leonard raised his head for a few seconds to address everyone in the room. “Now, after seeing what those closest to Jesus did when times were not so easy, turn to Jeremiah 6:16 and read it with me.”

  Since it was an easy book to find, Chad found it at the same time as everyone else. “Thus saith the Lord, stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.”

  Chad stared at the page. He didn’t read much Old Testament, but it was like God had a message just for him. Not that Piney Meadows was that ancient, but it was a few decades behind the times. Still, the bottom line was that these people were good and their ways were good. Even though he still had a lot of things to work out here, with them, he was finding rest for his weary soul.

  Maybe God really hadn’t forgotten about him after all.

  Maybe God wanted him to go back to the almost-ancient ways, complete with chickens and all else that went with it.

  He listened to Leonard talk about standing at the different crossroads in life. Of course, Chad already knew he’d come to a major crossroad in his life and had made his decision. He’d looked at where he was and where he was destined to go if he continued living at his broken home, working for his rotten boss, and he’d taken another path. He’d walked off his job and headed north. This was where he’d ended up.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Anna staring at him but saying nothing. Instead of meeting her eyes, he lowered his head and reread the verse.

  He didn’t have a highlighter or an assortment of colored pens like Anna, so he underlined the verse with his pencil, drew some arrows and stars around it, and then dog-eared the page before he turned to the new verse Leonard directed everyone to find.

  When the lesson was at an end, he remained silent during the discussion. This had hit too close to his heart, and he wasn’t ready to discuss it.

  After the closing prayer, he joined the men while the women, including Anna, fussed with tea and brought out some delicious homemade muffins. He was getting to like tea, and he was going to get fat partaking of all the goodies he kept eating everywhere he went. This time, because he had to get home to his chickens, he was the first to get up to leave. Since they’d walked there together, Anna also prepared to leave with him. The second the door closed behind them, Anna gave him a look he was coming to know quite well. She might as well have had a neon question mark hovering over her head.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” he grumbled. “Let’s just go home.”

  He wasn’t surprised that she seemed to read his bad mood, and she kept silent as they walked. He didn’t know how she did it, but just her presence made him feel better. By the time they reached her front door, he was more on track.

  Except he wanted to kiss her.

  Apparently, Anna had no such thoughts. She stepped forward and reached for the doorknob. As she pulled the door open, she turned to look at him over her shoulder. “Goode nacht. Good night. I will see you tomorrow morning for work.”

  She stepped inside, and the door closed in his face.

  13

  I’ve taken the liberty of signing you up for an online course. I also ordered some new accounting software, and together we’re going to learn how to use it to the company’s best advantage.”

  Anna’s fingers froze over the keys. “I do not understand. Is there something inadequate about the way William has been doing his job?” During the last few weeks, William had spent a lot of time in Chad’s office and most of the time had come out frustrated.

  Chad shook his head. “Not at all. But things around
here are about to change. I want you to get the forms and terminate his employment.”

  Anna’s heart spiraled down into her shoes. “You have fired William?”

  Chad propped himself up, half sitting on the corner of her desk. “Only technically. I’ve laid him off as an employee, and I’m contracting his new company to do the same accounting work. He wanted to cut down to two or three days a week so he could contract out to a couple of other businesses besides his sisters’, so we’re going to have him do the same here. We’ve been working together to get his business started up. It’s been a little frustrating with all the government forms and regulations, but now he only has to do the final steps and it’s done. This will be better for him, but it means that we’re going to have to do more of the work ourselves because he’s going to need more time with others.”

  Inwardly, Anna cringed. She didn’t mind adding to her job, but Chad was already overworked. On Saturdays, when she came in to practice her typing lessons, Chad hadn’t been playing computer games like he said he’d planned. He’d been working. Now he would need to do more. “Are you angry about this?”

  “Of course not. This company should be using accounting software anyway, so this just forces us to catch up with it a little sooner than I’d planned. Besides, you can think of this as one more valuable job skill to add to your resumé.”

  “What about William? Will he not also have to learn to use the software?”

  “No. He covered all the most common programs in college. All he’ll need to do is catch up on the updates. For us, it will be slower while we’re learning, but it will be faster once we know how to use it properly.”

  He grinned and waggled his eyebrows. “This means we’ll have to spend more time together.”

  Anna could only stare back at him. She didn’t know how much more time they could spend together. Besides being together all day at work, they spent most evenings in each others’ company. At first, she’d only meant to be with him until he became familiar with more people, but somehow the separation she’d planned never happened.

  He tapped his fingers on her desktop. “Before I forget, I need more food for Blinkie and Waddles.”

  “Who? Waut sajst dü? What are you saying?”

  “There’s only a little chicken food left in the bag. Where do I buy more?”

  “You have named your chicks?”

  He nodded. “I had to call them something, and I needed to pick something androgynous because we still can’t tell gender.”

  Anna frowned. “It is not a good idea to name them.”

  “Too late. You told me to talk to them so they would come when it’s time to feed them after I put them outside. If I’m going to talk to them, I have to call them something besides Chick One and Chick Two.”

  “I suppose I did say that.” However, she hadn’t meant for him to name them. She’d only meant for them to become accustomed to the sound of his voice.

  “They’ve already started to hop out of the box, just like you said they’d do when they got to four weeks old. I need to tell them to get back in the box.”

  She shook her head. “They are chickens. They will not do that.”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Probably not, but it gives me something to talk about with them. By the way, I won’t be here at the office next Saturday. I bought all the supplies and we’re going to build the chicken coop since all the snow finally melted.”

  “Ja. William told me about the plan you chose. You did not need to pay money for instructions. William and Brian and David could have built you a fine chicken coop without plans.”

  “I know, but I found one I really liked.”

  Before she could tell him that the three of them had built many fine chicken coops by themselves, he pulled a piece of paper out of his back pocket and flattened it out on the desktop.

  The coop, which was elevated and accessible by a large ramp for the chickens, had been designed to look like a house, complete with windows, doors, and awnings. The enclosure was large enough for a tall man to stand inside without ducking and was covered by a sturdy roof, which included a fake chimney atop of the chicken’s shelter. “This does not look like a chicken coop. This looks like a playhouse.”

  All traces of humor dropped from his face. “I want them to be comfortable, and it’s got to look good. I’m going to paint it the same color as my house. I found some paint in the basement, as well as a pile of shingles in the storage shed. It’s going to look like a miniature version of the big house.”

  “What have William and Brian and David said about this?”

  “They kind of laughed, but after they calmed down they liked the idea of it being the same as the house. Brian said he’s going to take pictures when we’re done.”

  “You do not need to go to so much work for two chickens. All you need is to keep them protected from dogs, the weather, and wild animals.”

  He folded his arms across his chest and stiffened his back. “If I’m going to do this, I’m going to do it right. I want them to be happy in their new home.”

  Fortunately, the phone rang, saving her from having to tell him that all he had to do was keep them safe and well-fed. As she talked to a customer, Chad returned to his office and they both continued with their work.

  Regardless of what she thought of building such an outlandish chicken coop, she knew it would be worth the entertainment watching them build it. After all, she was next door and would be able to watch through the kitchen window, and no one would know.

  Chad stuck his finger in his mouth, partly to ease the sting from hitting it with the hammer but mostly to stop the string of bad words that he wanted to say.

  “Have you changed your mind about this five-star chicken hotel, and now we can build a more sensible coop, City Boy?” Brian asked around a mouthful of nails as he attached one of the walls to the floor of the designer chicken coop.

  Despite Brian’s teasing, it didn’t look like a hotel—he doubted that Brian had ever seen a real five-star hotel, for people or chickens. However, Blinkie and Waddles were certainly getting a luxury condo. “I’m not bleeding. I’m fine,” he muttered around his finger, pulling it out of his mouth and shaking his hand in the air to get some feeling back. “It’s just that it’s been a long time since I’ve had to build something. It’ll get easier.” He held his recovered finger in the air, looked at the kitchen window of the Janzens’ house next door, waved, and then grinned when the curtains moved.

  He knew who had been watching. And because she was watching, he wished he were better at this handyman stuff. Part of living here and fitting in unfortunately meant he needed to be good with tools, and he wasn’t. He found it easier to swap out a hard drive and add RAM than to nail two pieces of wood together, but that was going to change. It just wasn’t going to happen in one day.

  As he did what he could, taking ten times longer than his friends, he wondered how Blinkie and Waddles were going to like their new home. He’d bought the plans from a website specializing in homes for city chickens, meaning they had to look good as well as be functional.

  It would still be another month before he could leave them outside, but soon, on the warm days, he could come home during his lunch break and put them outside, then be back home to put them back in the house before the evening chill. Anna had told him they would need to be eight to ten weeks old before he could leave them out all night, but the deciding factor would be how cold it got at night. It was also a worry that predatory animals would see his chickens as a tasty midnight snack, so he’d purchased the best grade of chicken wire money could buy instead of the chicken wire that the plans had recommended.

  But already, he wasn’t sure he wanted to leave them outside all night. When they got to be adults, he didn’t know what time they would fall asleep. For now, they went to sleep about an hour before sunset, which seemed late for the little critters. They started getting tired not long after supper. So on the evenings when he didn’t go out, he’d been ta
king them and putting a towel in his lap to keep them warm, while he curled up with a good book. He’d found himself petting them as they nodded off to sleep. Even though they had already lost their down and the feathers were coming in, they were still soft, as long as he petted them in the right direction. They also seemed to like it. They even made funny little whistling sounds as he stroked them, or at least they did until they fell asleep.

  He’d also noticed that since they could now hop out of their box in the kitchen, Waddles came to him whenever he sat down in the chair he used when he was reading, almost like she was expecting him to pick her up. He didn’t know for sure that Waddles was a she, but he liked to think an animal that liked cuddling so much had to be female. As Anna said, he’d know for sure when the time came and Waddles either crowed or laid an egg. He was really hoping for an egg.

  Blinkie wasn’t so quick to jump up when Chad sat in his favorite chair, but when Waddles made it into his lap, Blinkie wasn’t far behind. While Waddles always waited to let Chad pick her up, Blinkie liked to jump up on his leg. He didn’t want a chicken walking up his leg and digging through his pants with its toenails, so he always picked Blinkie up, too.

  “Quit dreaming and start hammering, City Boy!”

  The intrusion of Brian calling to him got his mind back to where it should have been in the first place—not on his chickens, but on the task of building them a safe and secure home. “I was just wondering if I should wire this so I could put a heater in it.” Besides, he was much better at wiring than he was at hammering.