He slowed when he spied the cockeyed wagon. It had to be one of the Amish. They used buggies most of the time though—unless they were hauling something.
A man came up from the ditch at the side of the road, his dark suspenders and felt hat confirming Henry’s speculation. The man was Amish.
Henry exhaled. Someone else would come by. Amish farms sprawled over the county, and he knew firsthand their disposition to be helpful.
Guilt stabbed him. The Grabills took him in, and Eleanor, yet he wrestled between his schedule and the need of a neighbor.
His foot moved to the brake.
The man on the side of the road flipped back a corner of a tarp covering the wagon bed, dragged out a crate, and set it on the ground. He reached into the bed again, and again transferred a crate to the ground.
Henry eased to the shoulder, stopped, and squeezed his eyes for a moment.
If the man had been a stranger, Henry might have convinced himself to drive past. He could have stopped farther down the road and sent help back.
But the man was not a stranger. He was Thomas Coblentz. Henry turned off his car, breathing a prayer that it would start again. He got out and approached the wagon.
“Looks like you have some trouble here, Thomas,” Henry said.
“Bent wheel.” Thomas dragged another crate to the ground. “I don’t have a jack that will lift this much weight, so I’ll have to empty the load.”
“Have you got another wheel?”
Thomas nodded. “Under everything. Another reason to empty the load.”
“What are you hauling?” The shape of the tarp suggested a full load, but the crates Henry had seen so far had stamped brand names on them.
“Supplies.”
Supplies for what?
“I’m headed to Philadelphia,” Henry said, “but I could drive out to your family’s farm and bring someone to help.”
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
Henry looked from Thomas to the crates, focusing on the space between the slats this time.
Canned goods. English labels. Canned milk. Green beans.
Every Amish family Henry interviewed produced more milk than they consumed. He had the evidence under the seat of his car.
“I’m sure your family would want to help,” Henry said.
“I’m sure they wouldn’t.” Thomas turned away with another crate, setting this one on the ditch side of the wagon. “If you need to be on your way, I understand. I don’t want to hold you up.”
Removing six crates had barely changed the load. It would take Thomas half the day to unload, change the wheel, reload, and get wherever he was going.
“What’s going on, Thomas?” Henry asked. “Why wouldn’t your family want to help?”
Thomas flipped the tarp down. “Maybe it’s better if you go on.”
“This doesn’t have anything to do with the farm, does it?” Henry had interviewed Mrs. Coblentz, reconstructed the report, and verified the information a second time only two days ago. Thomas lived with his parents, and the household records showed no purchases or consumption that matched what Henry observed now.
Thomas’s eyes drifted down the road.
Henry pulled up the corner of the tarp again, throwing it back to reveal canned goods, dry goods, small household items, and seeds. Without untying the tarp completely, Henry couldn’t see the remainder of the goods.
“It’s like you’re transporting a small general store,” Henry said. “I don’t understand.”
Thomas’s gaze snapped back to Henry. “Please don’t say anything to Polly.”
Henry puffed his cheeks, befuddled.
“I want to make her happy,” Thomas said. “I don’t want to ruin it here on the side of the road.”
Henry turned both palms up. “It’s not my business what goes on between you and Polly. But I’m pretty sure she would want to know about something like this.”
Henry would not tell Polly, because it would raise questions he did not have answers for. But Thomas should.
“I’d better get back to work,” Thomas said, “and Philadelphia is waiting for you.”
Henry checked his watch. Then he rolled up his sleeves and reached for a crate.
The Swains were not being very frugal with their gasoline, it seemed to Gloria. Ernie arrived in his truck in the morning and spent the better part of two hours working on Henry’s car. And now Minerva was back with the same vehicle. Gloria leaned against a doorframe coming out of the kitchen, a perspective that allowed her to see straight through the house and into the yard.
Whether it was better to know that Minerva was about to knock on the front door or whether it would have been better to answer the door without the sensation of premonition was a matter on which Gloria was undecided.
But Minerva did knock, so Gloria answered.
No doubt she was there to pick up Lillian, who had disappeared for a long stretch on Sunday afternoon and returned with a smirk on her face. Lillian’s propensity to prattle was unusually well managed today. Obviously Lillian imagined that she was helping Minerva, and Minerva was naive enough to believe it to be true.
“Looking for Lillian?” Gloria said to Minerva through the screen door.
The insight seemed to startle Minerva, and she didn’t respond. Behind Gloria, Lillian pranced through the room.
She was wearing shoes. This was a serious matter.
“Well, here she is.” Gloria stepped aside.
Lillian pushed the door open. At the bottom of the steps, Lillian leaned in toward Minerva to conspire, glancing up toward Gloria only once.
Gloria pivoted away from the door. Lillian was out from underfoot, at least for now. Settling in at her sewing machine, Gloria pretended not to notice the ruckus from the poultry sheds. The unlikely alliance had gotten themselves into this. They could get themselves out.
CHAPTER 44
Polly dismissed all her sisters after supper and evening devotions and plunged into the dishes on her own. She hadn’t had five minutes alone with her thoughts the entire day. Even when she watched Toddy so Eleanor could nap, Alice hovered with unnecessary suggestions about his care until Polly finally handed her the baby. When she decided to launder her father’s shirts, even though it was not laundry day, Sylvia turned up with a basket of aprons. When she thought to fetch the mending basket, Lena already had the need well in hand. Had Yost dismissed everyone as unnecessary in the fields today?
The only person who did not seem to be around was Cousin Lillian, and as long as Polly did not speak the thought aloud, she felt freedom in not missing Lillian’s wandering presence through the house. Whatever Lillian had done all day, she’d worn herself out enough to excuse herself even before devotions were finished.
Polly was firm about the dishes.
Lena was luring Thomas away, and the others found this something to giggle about. Washing and drying a mountain of dishes by herself was preferable to sharing a board game in the front room.
Nancy and Betsy scurried out the back door for the evening milking, and Polly braced herself for the screen door to slam. When it didn’t, she shook water off her hands and turned around. Instead of a door swinging loose, she found Henry.
“Is it too late to get something to eat?” he asked.
Polly reached for a plate she had just stood in the drying rack and handed it to him. “Help yourself to whatever you see in the icebox.”
He pulled out ham, a block of cheese, and potato salad, loading the plate with enough to feed two.
“Didn’t they feed you in Philadelphia?” Polly drenched another plate, scrubbed quickly, and whooshed it through the rinsing rub.
Henry returned the platters to the icebox without answering.
Polly glanced over her shoulder? “Henry?”
“My plans changed,” he said.
“What about your report?”
“I mailed it from town.”
Polly leaned against the front of the sink and considered hi
m. “What happened?”
He shrugged and shoveled potatoes into his mouth, barely swallowing before raising a laden fork again.
“Henry, tell me,” Polly said. He would not have missed the opportunity to apply for the new job without a good reason. “Did your car break down again?”
“It’s running beautifully. Ernie is a genius.”
“Then what?”
He tore off a piece of bread and chewed, staring at Polly long enough to make her uncomfortable. She wheeled around and plunged her hands back into the water.
“Do you think your mother would mind if I took a plate out to the barn?” he asked.
“No,” she said, not looking at him. “The girls are out there milking. You can always send it back with them.”
This time the screen door did slam.
The morning purr of an accommodating engine was a silky coating to Henry’s ears. He laid his hand on the dashboard to savor the soothing vibration of a car ready to do his bidding. The old Ford, parked up close to the Grabill house for nearly a month, had never looked like it belonged there, and Henry had left it at the top of the lane when he came home last night.
Henry let the clutch up and gave the engine some gas to take it up the slight incline and onto the road. He could drive away from Lancaster County if he wanted to, an option absent during the dry weeks on the farm when he wanted it most. Now the thought was no true temptation.
The morning’s drive would not take him far, only to where he knew he would find Thomas and then on to an impromptu interview at the Lichty farm for clarity on the clothing spending.
“Thank you for coming,” Thomas said when Henry closed the car door and paced toward the wagon.
“I wanted to help,” Henry said. Yesterday Henry understood how Thomas had come to suspect that Eleanor had sought shelter in an unused outbuilding on the farm beyond the Grabills’ woods. He himself was using an empty equipment shed on an abandoned farm whose owner had admitted fiscal failure three years ago and disappeared.
Henry could see what Thomas was storing. He just didn’t know why. And where the goods came from remained a mystery.
“I’ve been working alone when I had a few minutes here and there.” Thomas laid a hand on the side of his wagon. “I have to be used to doing it that way.”
“It seems like a lot of work to do on your own,” Henry said.
“Thank you for stopping yesterday.”
“If it hadn’t been me, it would have been someone else.”
“Someone else might have made it far more complicated. People ask a lot of questions.”
Henry had helped Thomas unload the wagon, remove a reluctant wheel, and put the spare wheel in place. Then they reloaded the wagon and tied down the tarp again. During that time a few cars had passed them, but no one else had slowed enough to consider helping. Henry was the only one who witnessed what Thomas was transporting.
The replacement wheel looked as though it had been filling the role longer than Henry’s car—far from new—had been rolling the roadways. Henry didn’t trust it, and he followed Thomas’s wagon to the shed and helped to unload it once again. This time they made organized stacks of crates containing like goods.
And Thomas made Henry promise to return in the morning.
Henry followed Thomas inside now.
Thomas took a locked metal box from under a stack of empty burlap bags. “I know you have questions. I wanted you to see some papers. You’ll know what they are.”
Thomas turned the box so Henry could reach inside.
Handwritten receipts. Typed bills of sale. Order forms marked PAID IN FULL. Everything bore the name of Thomas Coblentz.
Henry blew out a slow breath. At least Thomas wasn’t thieving. But how did an unmarried Amish man who worked his father’s farm find the cash for these purchases?
“I didn’t want you to think you were helping me do something against the law,” Thomas said, “but I don’t want Polly to know yet. I especially don’t want her to know I needed anybody’s help. She is so independent.”
“I don’t understand,” Henry said, closing the box. He wouldn’t tell Polly anything if for no other reason than he had no certainty of the motivations for Thomas’s unusual actions.
“I want to propose,” Thomas said.
Henry chose his words. “If that is what is in your heart, why haven’t you?”
“I was making a gift. Lena was helping me. She knows what will please Polly. Carving patterns, especially.”
Henry swept his hand around the shed. “You’re trying to please Polly with this?” In the last month he’d learned that the Amish didn’t wear jewelry or exchange wedding rings, but canned meats, matches, and lamp oil were hardly the way to a woman’s heart.
“Of course not,” Thomas said. “A small box with a carved lid. Polly can decide what to keep in it.”
Thomas reached into a coarse bag at his feet and lifted out a bundled flour sack. As he unfolded the protective layers, a rectangular box emerged, a lid snuggly set in the opening. He held it for Henry’s examination.
“You did this?” Henry said.
Thomas nodded. “Maple. Her favorite wood. I thought I might try something fancier, but Lena says Polly will like these simple squares.”
“I think Lena is right,” Henry said. The eight sections carved into the lid, and divided by varied meticulous crisscross patterns, evoked Polly’s tendency to organize.
“I just wanted to have the gift ready before I tried to explain all this,” Thomas began wrapping the box again.
“Explain what, Thomas?”
“Now I keep it with me for the right moment, but I can’t seem to get my nerve up.”
“Why not?”
“The problem is, I’ve had some setbacks. I need more time.”
“Time for what?”
“You won’t tell Polly?”
Henry put his hands in his pockets in surrender. He couldn’t tell Polly what he didn’t understand.
Minerva gripped the steering wheel with both fists. Even if Lillian had her own buggy, Minerva would not have deigned to ride in it, and she certainly would not get caught up in hitching a wagon. Besides, they could cover ground more quickly in the truck. The whole plan turned on reaching customers beyond the radius of Gloria’s usual business. Lillian could—rightly—introduce herself as Gloria’s cousin with the assurance that the chickens Minerva was selling mirrored the same high quality Gloria was known for in this region of the county.
As suspicious as Minerva was about the circumstances that brought Eleanor to town, the new mother was proving invaluable. She was the one who knew how to catch a chicken in one smooth motion that confined its wings, the one who could confirm at a glance that the hen was still laying, the one who knew if the breasts would be tender enough for a good dinner. Rose was an eager learner, but Minerva needed someone who knew what she was doing right now.
Minerva drove, and Lillian and Eleanor passed the baby back and forth. In the truck bed were several cages of chickens and a crate of eggs.
“We’ve made a good start,” Lillian said. “Of course, this may take some time.”
“You said you thought we could sell all the chickens and eggs within a week.” Minerva took her eyes off the road long enough to scowl. It was Tuesday, their second day out, and while they made some sales on Monday afternoon, the total did not approach an amount that suggested an acceptable level for daily cash.
“You misheard me,” Lillian said. “I don’t believe I would have said such a thing.”
“On Sunday in my living room,” Minerva insisted. “You said all we had to do was find the right customers and the chickens would go in a week’s time.”
“That is still possible,” Lillian said, “but of course we haven’t found the right customers yet, have we?”
Minerva seethed. She had been too eager, too mindful of Ernie’s demanding exasperation. Every sensible judgment should have sent her running both from Gloria’s absurd con
dition to pay for the shed in chickens and from Lillian’s robust assurance that she could help. Rose, inexperienced as she was, would have made a better business partner.
She flexed open the fingers on one hand and then the other, her gaze drifting briefly to the child in Eleanor’s lap beside her. Eleanor had not been with them yesterday. She was a winsome girl and might yet prove her worth not only in the care of hens but in appeal to potential customers.
Who were the right customers? Minerva wanted to drive directly to those locations. She could not use the truck all day every day, and she could not take it home with the gas tank empty and nothing to show for it.
“Start thinking, both of you,” Minerva snapped as she accelerated. “We need someone who can take the whole lot off our hands.”
Darkness veiled the day once again. Though Gloria paced out to the poultry sheds every evening at about the same time for a short look around, each day shadows crept across the farm a few minutes sooner. She carried a lantern now.
A second light, unexpected, greeted Gloria when she stepped into the largest of the interconnected sheds.
“Eleanor,” Gloria said, “what are you doing here at this time of night?”
“Toddy’s asleep,” Eleanor said. “I had some ideas and I wanted to come out and see if they might work.”
“What sorts of ideas?”
“It’s not really my business.” Eleanor waved a sheet of paper. “So if you don’t like it, I promise I won’t feel bad.”
Whatever grief had brought this young woman to the farm, she bore it with fortitude. Polly had done the right thing to insist that mother and babe join the family’s circle of care, and Eleanor had—at last—done the right thing in accepting.
“I made a sketch,” Eleanor said. “You’ll need to decide where to put the new shed, won’t you?”
“I suppose so.” Gloria took the page from Eleanor and raised the lantern high enough to consider it.
“We—I mean you—could put the new shed here.” Eleanor placed a forefinger on the drawing. “It would be easy enough to open that wall so you could go straight through here to the new space.”
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