The Amish Blacksmith

by Mindy Starns Clark

  I wanted to be mad at her, but considering how much grace she had shown with my tardiness tonight, I didn’t feel that I had the right. I decided to change the subject.

  “Seriously,” she interjected before I could do so, “I don’t like hearts and flowers, and I don’t need, um, sunshine and rainbows.” Her voice nearly broke into another chuckle, but she managed to hold it in until the urge passed. Then she again took my hand and squeezed it tight. “What I need is a guy like you, Jake. Someone who’s chill, you know?”

  “Chill?”

  She shrugged. “It’s Englisch slang. Means easy to be with. Even-tempered. Uncomplicated.”

  I nodded, for those were the very things I liked best about her.

  We rode along, chatting softly, enjoying the night and each other’s company as we took our usual route, one that would make a big square and eventually bring us back to where we began. At first, we talked of nothing important, but by the time we made the final turn that would lead us to her house, I knew I had to get to the topic of Priscilla.

  I started by explaining the reason for my delay tonight, the dinner for the returning Kinsinger cousin. I had thought Amanda would be surprised to learn that her old classmate had come back to Lancaster County at last, but as it turned out, she already knew. Of course she knew, I realized. The Amish grapevine prevailed.

  “Has she come to stay?” Amanda asked, eager for details.

  She’s come to get married, have kids, and remake her life is what I wanted to say. According to Amos, that was the truth—even if Priscilla didn’t know it yet.

  “I’m not sure,” I said instead. “It’s complicated.”

  “She’s been away a long time. Like, what? Five years? Six?”

  “Six, according to Owen.”

  “I wonder if she wanted to come back or if they made her, for some reason.”

  “Made her? She’s a grown woman, Amanda.”

  “She’s a strange woman, Jake. Unless she’s changed. Has she?”

  I shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. The only time I ever came in contact with her back then was when I was hanging out with Owen or pestering Amos.”

  “Well, trust me. She was a strange one.”

  Amanda’s family lived in the same district as the Kinsingers, which meant she and Priscilla had attended the same school, the same worship gatherings, the same social events, and more. Considering they had practically grown up together, they would have known each other quite well back then.

  “So what was she really like?” I asked. “I always just thought of her as Owen’s odd little tomboy cousin.”

  Amanda let out a laugh. “What was she like?”

  “Yeah. I’m curious.”

  Amanda thought for a moment. “Antisocial. Anti-fun.”

  “That bad?”

  “Oh, yeah. You didn’t live in this district, so you don’t know. If a person wasn’t a horse or a dog or some other kind of animal, they might as well have been invisible.”

  “So you two weren’t close?”

  “Are you kidding? Nobody was close to her—not before her daed died, not after her daed died, and certainly not after her mamm died. It was all so sad, of course. I’m not saying it wasn’t. But she wouldn’t let any of us get near her. She wouldn’t connect, and she refused to accept our help.”

  A pang of empathy rose up within me. It was rare indeed for a member of an Amish community to be isolated, especially in times of grief. Even if it was by choice, I couldn’t imagine what that must have been like for Priscilla.

  “How old was she when her father died?”

  “We were ten.”

  “Ten,” I echoed, wondering why the other kids—Amanda included—hadn’t worked harder to push through those walls.

  “Honestly, Jake, I tried to be her friend.” Amanda’s voice was defensive, as if she’d read my mind. “She didn’t seem to need friends before that, so I hadn’t bothered. But once that happened, I really did make an effort to get close to her.”

  “Okay. I believe you.”

  She was quiet for a moment, the defensiveness gone when she finally spoke again. “It didn’t work, though. After his death, all she wanted was to be with her horse. His horse, actually.”

  “His?”

  Amanda looked off into the darkness, to a place in the past I couldn’t see.

  “I’d sometimes spot her riding that horse after he died—and I don’t mean with a cart. She’d ride it as though she were a cowboy or something, one leg over each side, with her dress hiked up past her knees. Her mother finally made her stop. I, for one, was glad. She was embarrassing herself, you know?”

  I didn’t remember this about Priscilla. I barely remembered anything very specific about her. Just that she was a cute but quiet little tomboy, hung around the blacksmith shop and the horses a lot, and had lost both her parents by the age of fourteen.

  Up on the right loomed the entrance to Amanda’s driveway, but I wasn’t ready to end our conversation just yet. I asked her if she would mind my overshooting it a bit before I brought her home.

  “Why?” she teased, squeezing my hand under the sweater. “So we can make another round on Smoochers Lane?”

  The thought was tempting, but right now I was more focused on the issue at hand.

  “No,” I replied with a smile, squeezing her back. “So we can finish our conversation. It shouldn’t take too much longer, and then we can make a U-turn.”

  Amanda didn’t respond, so I kept going—past the driveway and past her silence—and on to my next questions.

  “Can you tell me about her mother’s death? What happened? Owen and I were talking about it earlier, but we were interrupted and never had a chance to get back to it.”

  Amanda exhaled loudly, letting go of my hand and crossing her arms in front of her chest. “I don’t exactly mind, but why do you care?”

  “Ha. I’ll get to that in a minute.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “Really. This conversation does have a point. Trust me.”

  It didn’t take long. Amanda wasn’t the type to pitch fits or hold a grudge. With a final harrumph, she uncrossed her arms, retook my hand in hers again, and interlaced our fingers together.

  “Fine. Whatever. If you say so.”

  “I say so,” I replied, giving her a wink and leaning my shoulder into hers for a long moment.

  Thus placated, she began her tale, some of which I already knew and some of which I didn’t. I’d always heard that Sharon Kinsinger died by falling down a flight of stairs, but the full story was more complicated than that. Amanda said she’d share with me what she’d been told, but that no one had all of the details, because by the time Sharon was found, she was nearly unconscious, and then she died soon after.

  Still, the events preceding her death hadn’t been all that hard to piece together later by others. The best everyone could figure, Sharon had been alone in the kitchen late one afternoon, canning squash, when she accidentally cut herself with a knife. The injury was deep and angled across her hand and wrist in a way that caused it to bleed heavily. Unable to stop the flow of blood herself, Sharon went upstairs, probably to get help from Priscilla, whom she must have assumed was in her bedroom.

  “What made them think that?” I asked, interrupting her.

  “Can’t you guess?” Amanda replied, eyeing me sadly. “Blood. The trail of blood. From the kitchen to Priscilla’s bedroom door and then back again.”

  “Oh. Right.” I swallowed hard. “Okay, keep going.”

  She went on to explain that Priscilla hadn’t been in her bedroom after all, so at that point her mother headed back down the stairs, likely intending to run up to the main house and get help from Roseanna instead. Unfortunately, Sharon was already so weak from blood loss by then that she fell as she was coming down and ended up in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the stairs. No one knew exactly how long she laid there, but it had to have been at least an hour, maybe more, before she was finally discovered.
>
  “Was Priscilla the one who found her?” I asked, disturbed at the thought.

  “No. Priscilla was out in the barn, as usual, her head all wrapped up in her animals. Roseanna was the one who came.”

  According to Amanda, once darkness fell, Roseanna happened to notice that there weren’t any lights on at Sharon and Priscilla’s house. That seemed odd to her, so she went down the driveway to check on them and make sure everything was okay. Instead, when she got there, she discovered Sharon lying in a pool of her own blood at the bottom of the stairs, just barely conscious. Roseanna called for help immediately, of course, but Sharon died from a combination of blood loss and her other injuries not long after she got to the hospital.

  “And Priscilla?” I asked, not wanting to hear any more of this sad, sad tale but needing to know.

  “Priscilla heard all the ruckus and came running, but by then it was too late.”

  I closed my eyes, my mind conjuring the image of a fourteen-year-old Priscilla Kinsinger kneeling at her mother’s crumpled form as her life slowly slipped away. No wonder she’d had trouble accepting it. Perhaps she even blamed herself. Opening my eyes, I peered out into the darkness ahead of us, fighting off a heaviness that was trying to settle around my heart.

  “Of course, Priscilla was devastated,” Amanda continued, her voice somber as well. “Who wouldn’t be? But rumor had it she really went off the deep end.”

  “That’s what Owen was telling me, that Priscilla had a hard time accepting her mother’s death.”

  Amanda nodded. “You can say that again. Except for the funeral, I never saw her again. Rumor had it she never left the farm at all once her mother died, not even to go to worship meetings. A month or two later, she was sent off to live with relatives in Indiana.”

  It was hard not to imagine how horrible the entire experience must have been for poor Priscilla. No wonder Amos was eager for her to start a new chapter in her life now that she had grown up and finally returned.

  “Did you ever try to contact her after she left?” I asked.

  Amanda shot me a glance. “I told you, Jake. I attempted to befriend her when she lived here lots of times, but she didn’t want my friendship, so once she was gone, there really didn’t seem to be any point.”

  “How about the rest of your circle of friends? Did any of them write to her after she moved away?”

  Amanda gave a grunt of frustration, clearly irritated at my line of questioning. “I doubt it. I mean, some of our parents probably did, simply as an encouragement, but we were just kids.”

  “You were teenagers.”

  “Yeah, young teenagers,” she snapped, her tone even more defensive. “I was all of fourteen when this stuff happened. I get it now, sure. I probably should have bothered to pick up a pen and dash off a note or two. But at that age, why would I have taken the time to write to someone who clearly had no desire to hear from me?”

  Understanding that Amanda’s patience had reached its limit, I put on my left blinker, intending to make a U-turn in a parking lot on the other side of the street so I could get her home.

  “Not a chance, buddy,” she said, reaching across to flip the blinker back off again. “We’re not finished talking yet.”

  “Okay, okay.” I gave a shake to the reins and a cluck of the tongue to Willow, who pulled herself out of turn mode and continued on straight.

  “Good.” Amanda took in a deep breath and let it out. “Now. Tell me. Why are you asking me these things? What’s all this about, Jake?”

  Glad that she was once again calm, I launched in the only way I could think of, by telling her that it wasn’t just Priscilla’s party that had held me up this evening. “Amos stopped me as I was hitching up Willow, saying he needed a favor.”

  “Okay.”

  “He asked… ” my voice trailed off as I sat up straight, trying to collect my thoughts. “Like I said earlier, he asked me if you and I really are seeing each other, as he’d heard, and when I said yes, he told me that he wants us—me and you, I mean—to help Priscilla get back into the swing of things here. I’m sorry, but Amos and Roseanna want us to bring her along to the young people’s gatherings so that she can make friends here again. Meet people. Stuff like that.”

  Amanda’s eyes widened. “Seriously? Why us?”

  I shrugged. “I guess because the Kinsinger cousins are all married. Without any young singles in the family, I suppose I was the next logical choice. And you got roped into it because it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to do this by myself. Amos needs a young couple to take Priscilla under their wing. He wants us to be that couple.”

  Amanda was quiet for a long moment. “So we’re going to bring her with us on all of our outings?”

  “Well, the singings and Sunday afternoon games for sure. Friday night barbeques. That kind of stuff.” I flashed her grin. “Some outings, but not all.”

  “Not Smoochers Lane.”

  I laughed. “You got that right. Not on a night like this. With cookies. And moonlight. And the most beautiful girl in the world by my side.”

  Amanda poked me and laughed. Up ahead loomed the right turn that would take us to our private kissing spot one more time, but it was getting late. Reluctantly, I put on the left blinker instead and then crossed over into the dark, empty parking lot of a bank.

  “Did you tell him that we’d do it?” Amanda asked as we pulled back onto the road in the direction we’d come.

  “Yeah, I hope that’s okay. Amos has done a lot for me, and I think I owe it to him. Besides, it’s really sad what’s happened to Priscilla. I figure we can do this for her.”

  Amanda nodded somberly. “I guess. But I can’t imagine it’s going to be easy unless she came back a different kind of girl.”

  I thought of Priscilla’s demeanor when she first arrived and then at the dinner table. “Like I said, I didn’t know her all that well before. She still seems a rather quiet person.”

  “What does she look like now?”

  “Uh… well, I suppose she looks okay.”

  Amanda turned toward me with a smile. “Looks okay? Is that your way of saying she’s pretty?”

  I shrugged and laughed, eager to get the focus off of me and back on our project. “I suppose so. You can decide for yourself when you see her this weekend. We’ll probably have to take her with us to the Chupps’ for the volleyball game on Sunday.”

  “Ah,” she said, leaning back and bracing her feet on the slope of the floorboard. “And how long will we have to have Priscilla tagging along with us everywhere?”

  As long as it takes, was probably how Amos saw it.

  “I guess we’ll just have to see. It would definitely speed things up if someone took an interest in her and asked to court her.”

  “Priscilla? Married?”

  “Ya.” I didn’t bring up the older man who was waiting for her back in Indiana, the widower who needed a mother for his eight children. Not only was that fact not relevant here, it wasn’t anyone’s business—not even mine. I wished Amos hadn’t told me.

  “Oh, my,” Amanda said after a moment. “Can you imagine?”

  I could imagine a lot of things. “Imagine what?”

  “Priscilla being in love? Or someone falling in love with her?”

  Sure I could imagine it. Anyone can love another person. Or be loved. It really wasn’t that difficult. “Can’t you?”

  “It would have to be the right guy to pull her out of her shell, that’s for certain. Let me think a minute.”

  “Think a minute about what?”

  “Who we can set her up with, of course.”

  Whoa. That was not part of the assignment. I had no interest in involving myself in Priscilla’s love life, or in anyone else’s except my own. “Amos isn’t asking us to do anything beyond bring her with us to the gatherings and make sure she mingles. The rest is out of our hands.”

  Amanda tossed her head. “Oh, come on. That will be the only fun thing about this situation. I might a
ctually like it if I can set her up with someone. We can be matchmakers. This will be great, Jake!”

  I didn’t think so. No, definitely not.

  I told Amanda as much, but it was obvious she wasn’t really listening. Instead, she slipped her hand back in mine and scooted a little closer as the turn for her driveway came into view.

  “So on Sunday, are you going to come get me first,” she asked, her tone light, “and then go back home and get your second date for the evening? Or are you going to bring her with you when you come to get me?”

  As I put on the blinker, I glanced at Amanda, who was clearly enjoying herself.

  I decided I would enjoy myself as well. “Actually, I’ll just send her over to fetch you. On a horse. Bareback. With her dress hiked up around her knees.”

  Amanda tossed her head and laughed heartily. I pulled into the driveway of her home, glad to end our time together on that happy note.

  My smile didn’t fade until I was driving back toward the Kinsinger farm and began to go over in my mind everything I’d learned tonight about Priscilla and her parents and her past. Thanks to Amanda, at least now I had a clearer picture of the challenge ahead of us in terms of helping the poor girl get reacquainted with the community.

  The problem was, that picture seemed more daunting than ever.

  FOUR

  I awoke the next morning, a Saturday, to the sound of a gentle summer rain. Dawn was just beginning to turn the eastern sky a milky gray, edged with a slim line of pink that promised the rain would not last. The current cloud cover and hushed sounds of raindrops would have a calming effect on Trudy’s horse; at least, I hoped it would. I wanted to begin working with him as soon as my morning chores were done.

  As the sole apprentice at the Kinsinger homestead, it was my job to take care of all the family horses. Ten-year-old Stephen Kinsinger, Mahlon and Beth’s oldest child, helped me in the afternoons, but the mornings were mine alone. I didn’t mind the solo duty at dawn. I liked the solitude of being the only one in the horse barns in the morning.

  I lit the bedside lamp and then peered up at the ceiling, pretty sure no leaks were in sight. Good. I had recently patched a new hole in the cottage’s roof, but this was the first rain we’d had since then to test it out.