The inside of the small chicken coop was dry and dusty, with that special, warm chicken smell she loved. She eyed the eight chickens on their wooden boxes. Every last one sat with their feathers puffed protectively, sitting like queens on thrones, their round, lidless brown eyes watching her balefully.
“Chook, chook, chook.” Hester murmured soft words, trying to make peace with these sitting biddy hens, soothing them so they would allow her to reach softly beneath them and steal their eggs. Bappie simply grabbed them by the neck and flung them into a corner, where the poor hens shook themselves, looking dazed and confused for some time, before they gave up and pecked at the cracked corn.
“Chook, chook, chook.” Tentatively, she reached out.
Wham! The hen’s aim was true and as sharp as a knife. The beak’s impact drew blood just above her wrist, where the glove gave way to the soft skin on her arm. After that, it was all chaos as the irate hen left her nest and flew directly into Hester’s face, her dusty wings beating and thrashing.
Blinded, Hester screamed as she stumbled toward the door of the chicken coop, swinging the basket back and forth for protection. She stepped through the door, her arm held over her face, then ran into a person, shoving him backward as she reeled to the side. “Oh, oh. My goodness, I’m sorry.”
Lowering her arm, her large, dark eyes wide with fright and embarrassment, she looked up directly into eyes that she knew well. Now they were half-closed as laughter welled up, then broke out in a deep, rumbling sound that carried her straight back to Noah and Isaac and the place of her childhood.
“Noah!” Caught so completely off-guard, she let her eyes shine with the gladness, recognizing his laughter, and savoring the warmth that welled up in her heart because of it. But only for an instant.
“What are you doing in our backyard?” The words were only fringed with coldness, but it was there.
The smile never left Noah’s face, nor did his eyes leave hers. The unguarded moment was like a cold drink of water to a man dying of thirst, coming at a time when he realizes there is no more strength, no hope of keeping himself alive.
“I’m sorry. I never meant to intrude or disturb your morning.” The smile lines stayed around his serious blue eyes, as if the moment of recognition lingered, shoring up his courage.
Ruefully, Hester bent her head, her hands going to the front of her dress, dusting the clinging bits of straw and a few stray chicken feathers.
Noah watched the slim, tapered fingers, the small brown hands that never left his dreams. He could still feel the soft blows of those lovely fists—pure joy—when she lost her temper and came after him with all the fury of a wronged Indian brave. How long had he loved her? Always. Since the age when he understood that she was not his sister in the way that Lissie and Barbara were. Then came years of holding up his head, facing life with the knowledge that a wall stood between them, impenetrable because of his father.
Hans lived in the same house, an upright and pious member of the Old Order Amish church, who taught his children well, led them in the path of righteousness, and loved Kate, his good wife.
Noah and Isaac knew that obedience and hard work were always rewarded by the approval of their father, their taskmaster. They knew nothing else. Hans assigned their duties, taught them to feed the livestock, milk the cows, plant and cultivate and harvest. They were taught to fell trees, dig stumps, haul manure, and butcher the steers and pigs. For a time, they attended a one-room school where the stern schoolmaster, Theodore Crane, led Noah and Isaac into the wonderful universe of books, sums, and knowledge of the wide, unexplored, and unknown world around them.
But always, it was there.
The first time Noah understood his father’s feelings toward Hester, he pushed it away, allowing disbelief and denial to make tolerable what he suspected. He told himself that he was the suspicious one, the one who needed to straighten himself out, to stop watching for his father’s admiration of anything about Hester that seemed inappropriate.
Hester became the light in Noah’s life. His memory of her was like a written journal, the pages turned with the soft sighing of his love. Hester in an old blue dress, the hem torn out, trailing ridiculously in the dirt and the dusty corn fodder, or in the mud bordering the still and brackish waters of the creek on a dry summer’s day. Her tightly braided hair like black silk, the dry winds teasing stray tendrils around her brown face. The way she would squint her lustrous brown eyes, puff out her perfect lower lip, and expel a short quick breath to blow the hair out of her line of vision.
Like a young fawn, she was. As quick and graceful, easily outrunning anyone, boy or girl, in a footrace. How his heart would swell to watch her pull ahead every time, her long legs beneath the skirts that hampered them, churning determinedly, her arms pumping out her competitive spirit.
There was Hester sitting by the hearth, tired and sleepy, her heavy eyelids drooping, and still she rocked the cradle with one foot as she sang to yet another wee baby Kate had brought into the world. She had loved them all, her large eyes dark and liquid with awe after another birth, each new, tiny bundle containing the delight of Hester’s young life.
She held the babies, bathed them, changed their thick flannel diapers, and carried them to Kate, large and quiet, resting on the high bed, which cracked and groaned under her considerable weight. After Kate had begun to feed the baby, Hester would softly, sometimes hesitantly, lay her dark head on Kate’s ample shoulder.
Always, Kate’s free arm would leave the baby, slide quietly around Hester’s waist, and draw her a bit closer. Hester would lift adoring eyes to her mother. Her mother, not in the true sense of the word, but with love binding them as securely and tenderly as any bond could.
Noah had often felt like an outsider, watching this with the keen eye of the sensitive observer he was. In his young heart, he longed to do what Kate had just done—draw Hester close and let her lay her head on his shoulder. Being too young to fully understand this longing, he dismissed it as jealousy, a childish stirring to be equally as close to his mother himself.
He asked Isaac about his feelings. Isaac waved Noah away as if his longing was only a burst of dust from the cornfield, annoying, unimportant, and soon to end. Slender, brown-haired Isaac, who was a shadow behind Noah, copied his brother’s ways, never noticing any difference between his feelings for Hester and for little Lissie.
So Noah figured he must be wrong, allowing these feelings to stir in his body or his heart—he wasn’t sure where they came from. He just knew they were there, like a jewel he always guarded securely, but with a painful edge that tormented his innocent well-being.
Hester’s restless hands fluttered at her waist, her fingers connecting and clenching tightly there. “Why are you here?” she asked none too kindly.
Hesitantly, Noah looked around, first to the small barn where Silver, the driving horse, tossed his head impatiently, nickering for his morning allotment of oats then to the back stoop, with the oak door leading into the house.
“There is a-a lady, a frau who talked to me yesterday. She is in need of a man to help her at a farm she owns. I understood her to say she lived on Mulberry Street, but …”
“It isn’t here. This is not the right place. We, she, I don’t believe your services will be …”
CHAPTER 3
THE BACK DOOR WAS FLUNG OPEN, FOLLOWED BY BAPPIE, her red hair wet and flattened into submission by a steel comb, her muslin cap pinned securely. The brilliant purple dress she wore, with a black apron tied around her narrow waist, did nothing for her femininity. But her smile was wide and welcoming, her dark eyes eager to acknowledge this powerful, young man, only as a means for her to forge ahead with her plans.
“You found me! Good.”
“Yes, good morning, Barbara? How are you?”
Bappie became flustered then, blinking furiously, color washing over her face, a pink tide that gave away her fierce denial of any attraction for men, any man. In her mind they were all alike, and
she didn’t need them. She waved a hand in front of her face, as if his manners were a mosquito whining about her head.
“Doesn’t matter how I am. How soon can you start?”
Noah remained quiet, then looked at her.
“Well, I’m working for Dan Stoltzfus right now. He’s building a barn west of town. I don’t know his plans from one week to the next.”
“You mean Bacon Dan?” Bappie asked.
Hester, remembering the frying mush, slipped away across the yard to the back door.
Noah exercised all the willpower he possessed to keep his attention on Bappie’s question without turning his head to watch Hester enter the house, his whole being willing her to stay with him.
He nodded. “Flitcha Danny.”
“He doesn’t say two words a day, hardly, does he?”
Noah shook his head. “He’s a man of few words, that’s for sure.”
Bappie’s lips compressed into a firm line, and her eyes narrowed as her thin hands curled into a fist and came to rest on her narrow hips. Noah could see her mind was churning. “So we need to get out there. You tell Dan we need you for the next two weeks at least. He can get someone else to help him. I’ll pay you double what he does. I can about guess you’re not getting very high wages. Why are you here? Just home from the war or what? Are you Amish? Are you staying around? Not married. No beard. Where are you staying? Out at Dan’s?”
Noah laughed. “Whoa, whoa. I’m a man. One question at a time. You know we men have to think a while before we answer.”
“How come you know Hester?” Bappie asked, charging ahead to get all her questions out there so her curiosity could be folded away and disposed of before planning his work schedule.
“She’s my sister, from my childhood in Berks County.”
“She’s not your sister.”
“No, well, yes. My mother, Kate, found her by the spring.”
Bappie waved impatiently. “I know all that. So you’re Noah.”
“Yes.”
“I heard so much ‘Noah this, Noah that.’ What was the other brother’s name?”
“Isaac.”
“Yeah. That’s it. He was younger, I guess, right? Sort of an afterthought, as far as Hester’s concerned. It was all Noah.”
Bappie untied her apron in the back, then retied it, as if that would prepare her a bit better to finish the conversation and move on to a solid commitment from him.
“Do you know how to repair a shake roof? We need an addition to the house and a porch. I need gates repaired and doors, and a new floor put in.”
“In two weeks?”
“Well, I’m going to make a frolic for the neighbor men. They can erect the walls for the addition and put the roof on in a day. You can do the rest.”
Noah thought he might be able to but said nothing, only shaking his head slightly from side to side.
“I think you can. Me and Hester will help. Hey, she’s in there frying cornmeal mush. Why not come in for breakfast? I’ll probably have to get the eggs. Go on in.”
Noah hesitated.
Bappie entered the chicken coop, extracting chickens from their boxes with an expert flick of the wrist, grabbing their necks, and flinging them across the floor. She gathered eight large brown eggs while he stood and watched, terrified of entering the kitchen alone. Hester would not want him at her table, of that he could be certain.
“Thanks for the invitation, Barbara, but…”
“Oh, don’t start. You’re hungry. You haven’t eaten. Two eggs for me, two for Hester, and four for you. Come on.”
With an upward arc of her arm and an inclination of her head, she led the way across the yard.
Noah was a coward. His stomach roiled; his breath came in quick, short spurts. “No, I’ll …”
“Oh, come on. I’m making panna kuchen.”
Noah followed her hesitantly, then made the inward decision to listen to Bappie and go in. It was, after all, a business meeting, and surely Hester would be civil, or at the least, distantly polite.
He was right. The kitchen was pleasant, sun-filled, clean, and cheerful. The violets in the pitcher on the red and white tablecloth reminded him of the large stone house in Berks County. Unbidden, he felt his throat tighten, his eyes stinging. Too much had happened since then. He didn’t know if he could ever risk remembering those days.
Hester did not look up when they entered. She was placing knives and forks on the table beside two white ironstone plates.
“Add another plate, Hester. He’s staying for breakfast.”
Hester said nothing. A slight nod was her only acknowledgment. Irritation flickered across her perfect eyebrows, then disappeared.
Bappie drew a bowl from the kitchen shelf, measured flour, and melted lard, all the while talking faster than her hands moved.
“It’s because of the early crops in the garden that we’re moving out there, Hester and I. Put your hat on that hook by the back door. You can wash up in the bowl there. There’s water in the bucket. Soap’s there somewhere.”
Noah turned, removed his hat, and placed it where he was instructed. He poured some lukewarm water into the bowl, rolled up the sleeves of his blue shirt, and soaped his hands.
Hester glanced in his direction. His eyes caught hers in the small oval mirror above the dry sink, but she stepped aside as swiftly as a frightened moth. He lowered his head and resumed his washing.
“Here, Noah. You sit here. Right here by the door. Hester, you fry the eggs, and I’ll finish the pancakes. Noah, do you mind pouring the buttermilk?”
Hester set the pitcher on the table quickly before she slid away to the stove, turning her back to him immediately. Bappie watched, pursing her lips.
“For people who knew each other as brother and sister, you two sure don’t have an awful lot to say to each other, do you?” she blurted out with all the tact of a sledgehammer.
Noah said nothing. Hester remained at the stove, rigid with annoyance.
“Oh, well, whatever dumb fight you had, you may as well forget about it now.”
Hester began to breathe again when Noah said easily, “Oh, no fight. It’s just strange, having known one another all those years, and now, we’re grown up. We’ve experienced living and found out the world is a lot more complicated than we could have imagined.”
“Yeah, yeah, well, get over it. Get on with your living. Life isn’t easy. Nobody’s going to carry you around on a satin pillow, careful of your comfort, or lack thereof, mind you. The way I see it, you have to stay ahead of the wolves—meaning hard times, unkind people, death, disease, whatever God slaps in your direction.”
As if to add emphasis to her basic wisdom, Bappie flipped the pancakes high, letting them settle back into the pan with a dull sound.
“Get the maple syrup, Hester. Is there any butter?”
Wordlessly, Hester obeyed, lifting the iron latch on the narrow cellar door and disappearing through the opening like a ghost.
They bowed their heads in silent prayer and folded their hands in their laps, the way they had done since they were two years old.
Hester had no idea how she would eat anything, although she planned on doing it even if she choked. He was not going to have the satisfaction of seeing her completely ill at ease and painfully aware of him seated at this too-small table.
Noah was tall and wide and powerful, completely filling his chair. His hair was blond, clean, and well cared for. His face was as she remembered it, except now it was a man’s face, tanned by his days in the sun and chiseled by the strength of his work. His blue eyes were calm and nearly closed as he smiled, the light in them the same as the light Kate had possessed.
Kate was interested in whatever the world around her had to offer. And she felt kindness toward all living creatures, not only her husband and children, but aunts and cousins, the elderly and the wayfarers, and most of all, the animals, even the wild ones that ate the strawberries and the beans.
Oh, she would say, the bu
nnies needed those beanstalks. It was probably a mama bunny with a whole nest of little ones at home. Or the birdies needed a few strawberries to take home to their young.
Hester cut her fried egg with the edge of her fork, swallowed, then softly laid the utensil beside her plate as she reached for her glass of water. She sipped, keeping her eyes lowered.
“Hester, pass the bread, please.” Bappie stopped talking to Noah long enough to ask this, her eyes wide with a question in them.
Noah sensed Hester’s misery immediately. Laying down his fork, he looked directly at her. “Hester, if I’m making you uncomfortable by being here, just say so. I’ll leave and not put you through this. I know it seems odd, the way I show up so suddenly.”
Hester looked at Noah, searching his face for sarcasm or loftiness, the tones William used when speaking to her. When she found only blue earnestness and kindness, it was her undoing. Quick tears welled in her dark eyes. Taking a deep breath, she calmed the beating of her heart.
“No, no. You’re welcome here at our table.”
Noah acknowledged her well-spoken words with a dip of his blond head.
“Thank you, Hester. I heard you are widowed. I knew your husband only slightly. He was older than I. That must have been very hard.”
Hester nodded.
Bappie snorted, lifted an alarmingly high pile of pancake pieces into her mouth, chewed, swallowed, then sat back, lifting her fork for emphasis. “Well, Noah, don’t think she mourned too long. Hester was married, yes, but not in the way most folks are. William King is a nephew of your stepmother, Annie King, before she became a Zug, when she married your father, Hans. So what does that tell you? There’s a mean streak in that family, you mark my words. Just like a breed of horses that bites and kicks, you ain’t ever gonna get it out of them, and that’s right.”
Noah’s eyes widened, as what he had heard changed and softened his features. Hester looked up at that moment, but her eyes fell away quickly, unable to fathom the tenderness she witnessed in Noah’s blue eyes.
Hester Takes Charge Page 3