The Amish Blacksmith

by Mindy Starns Clark

  She turned to face me. “I’m sorry to say that. I am. But it was how they seemed to me. They… they still seem that way.”

  Words to defend Amanda were about to fall off my tongue, but Priscilla filled in the momentary silence before I could say it wasn’t true.

  “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry. I am the weird one. Forget I said that. Please?”

  I could only nod my head as it dawned on me that maybe she was right about Amanda. About a lot of things.

  “I didn’t bring you here to talk about that,” she said.

  At that moment I suddenly realized Priscilla had every right to go back to Indiana. There was only lingering nothingness here for her.

  “You don’t have to tell me anything.”

  “No. I want to. I think maybe… I’m supposed to.”

  We entered the copse of trees. She slid off her horse and so did I. The bank of the creek was level here and a perfect little jetty had formed for an animal to get a drink. We led Voyager and Willow to the water’s edge and they lowered their heads. We looped their leads onto a low-lying branch.

  Priscilla pointed to a log a few feet away that had been rolled into place by long-ago hands. Her father’s perhaps. Or maybe hers.

  We sat down on it.

  “You think you’ve figured out what happened to my mamm the day she died, and you’re right about one thing. There had been an argument. She sent me to my room, and I snuck out without her knowing it. But I didn’t ignore her calls for me because I wasn’t in the barn when she fell. I was nowhere near the barn.”

  Clarity fell across me like a spill of light into a dark room. “You came here that afternoon. To be alone? And maybe away from her?”

  Priscilla looked down at her hands and shook her head. “Yes. I did come here. But no. It wasn’t about me and her. I came here to meet up with the boy I thought was in love with me.”

  PART TWO

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  In the days, weeks, and even months that would follow our conversation in the birch trees, I would look back on the stretch of time when Priscilla shared her story as though it existed outside the span of our appointed days. As she talked, time seemed to stop, and I was ushered into the quiet, private folds of her memories as a rare guest. The only guest. Her words would stretch across my mind and stitch themselves into the fabric of my own needy soul.

  She had crept out of her room the afternoon her mother died to meet a boy. His name was Connor, and he was a guest at the cottage. He was sixteen, Englisch, and the first boy to ever show even the slightest interest in Priscilla.

  The summer she was fourteen, Connor Knight and his divorced mother, Elaine, were guests at the cottage. They came at the beginning of August, Elaine to work on her dissertation on how historical cultures struggle to survive despite modernity, and Connor because she wouldn’t let him stay home alone for a month at their house on Long Island. Connor had made some poor choices earlier that summer and during the school year, so this was her form of discipline. He was cut off from his rowdy friends, the drinking parties, his Xbox, and the video games she didn’t approve of. She took away his cell phone, and he was stuck in Lancaster County with a case of books she required him to read—old classics, mostly—and running shoes she insisted he use. Apparently, he had been on the track team that spring until he was put on academic suspension for failing grades.

  It was obvious to Priscilla that Connor wasn’t happy about being there, but she could also tell within a few days after meeting him that he didn’t really want to wreck his life. He felt bad about the mistakes he had made and the peer pressure he’d caved in to. He didn’t want to be at the cottage with his mother, but he also didn’t want to go back to New York and be the same guy he was when he left. He found Priscilla easy to talk to because she was so quiet. She just sat and listened. Priscilla would bring the Knights their breakfast in the mornings, and many times Elaine would be holed up in her room tapping away at her laptop when Priscilla came back for the dishes. Connor would be sitting on the steps with one of the books his mother had instructed him to read, but he’d just be staring off toward the grain fields that stretched beyond the Kinsinger dwellings. Before she knew it, she’d be sitting next to him, listening to him talk about his friends back in New York and how hard it was to figure out life.

  Priscilla wasn’t attracted to him at first. She felt sorry for him. And when he asked her if she had ever done something with a friend she’d never do if she were alone, just because the friend did it, she was completely honest with him. Because she wasn’t trying to impress him, she plainly told him that was a dumb reason to do anything. Any friend who would like a person less because he made his own choices was no friend worth sacrificing his convictions for.

  Connor had laughed and said convictions were for criminals. Priscilla told him he might want to try having some before brushing them off completely, as it was obvious he didn’t really know what they were. And he told her he had never met anyone like her before. But she could tell he meant it in an admirable way—Connor didn’t think she was weird.

  One evening, he came into the petting barn as Priscilla was taking care of the animals and asked her what was the use of having ironclad convictions if it meant you were alone. Priscilla said she’d rather be alone and make her own decisions about the person she wanted to be than to be surrounded by people she was so desperate to please that she copied their every stupid move.

  Connor began to seek her out after that. He’d come back from a run, and Priscilla would be weeding the vegetable garden or hanging laundry, and he’d stand there and talk to her, sometimes for an hour. In these talks, Priscilla learned that Connor’s parents had divorced when he was eight and his dad now lived in Florida. He saw him two weeks in June and at Thanksgiving. She told him about her daed and how she missed him. Even though they were worlds apart, Connor and Priscilla had two huge things in common. They missed their fathers, and they both felt trapped by their current situations. He felt trapped in friendships that were bringing him down and by the strict rules his mother had laid out for the summer, and she felt trapped by her mother’s constant protective hand on her.

  One day they were in the petting barn, and Connor was helping Priscilla feed and water all the animals. They were talking about what they would change about their lives if they could. She told him she sometimes snuck away to a lovely birch grove on moonlit nights, that she rode her father’s horse there, bareback, and it was in those moments that she felt she wasn’t trapped after all. She felt free. Those secret midnight rides made all the other days of her life possible. He asked her when the next full moon was and if she would bring him there. Priscilla thought maybe he was joking, but he took her hand and said he really wanted to see the creek—and her—by moonlight.

  He was still holding her hand when Sharon stepped into the barn to tell Priscilla something; she didn’t even know what because Sharon never actually got to it. The look she gave Priscilla was one she’d never forget. Connor let go of her hand and said hello to Sharon, but she didn’t acknowledge him. She just said Priscilla was to come to the house. Priscilla told her she’d be there in a minute, that she was almost finished, and her mother said, “No. Now.”

  Priscilla, embarrassed and angry, followed her mother into the house. Inside, Sharon told Priscilla that she was not to be alone with ‘that Englisch boy,’ as she called him, for the remainder of the Knights’ time at the cottage. She was to have no contact with the Knights at all. Sharon would bring their breakfast to them for the last week of their stay. And she would have Owen take care of the barn animals if Priscilla could not see to it that she did it without that Englisch boy’s company.

  Priscilla told her mamm that neither Connor nor she had done anything wrong, that she had only been encouraging him to make better decisions with his life. But Sharon didn’t want to hear it. She told Priscilla she’d seen the way Connor was looking at her just then, when her hand was in his.

  It didn’t
matter how much Priscilla tried to tell her mother she was wrong, she wouldn’t listen. And the more she tried to tell her, the more Priscilla became aware of how devastated she was that her time with Connor was over. She hadn’t realized how attached she’d grown to him in the three weeks she had known him. He was her only friend, and now she was forbidden to see him. When Priscilla begged her mamm to reconsider letting her see Connor, Sharon told Priscilla she had to trust her on this. Nothing good could come from her continuing to see that boy.

  Priscilla told her mamm his name was Connor and she moved past her, went upstairs to her room, and shut the door.

  That night, the moon wasn’t full, but it was bright and the sky was awash with stars. When Priscilla got into bed she heard a tapping at her window. She moved the curtains and saw Connor standing below. Priscilla raised the window and asked him what he was doing. He said he was waiting for her to take him on that ride she had told him about. That was the first time Priscilla snuck out of the house to be with Connor. It wasn’t so hard. Her mamm was already asleep in her room. Priscilla knew which stairs creaked, and she knew how to open the front door without making a sound. She haltered Shiloh, and together they walked him slowly across the gravel so that his hooves didn’t make a racket. As soon as they were past the back paddock, she got on him and Connor climbed up behind her. Shiloh was a big horse, and Connor was slim and not much taller than Priscilla. The horse did not seem to mind the extra weight. Connor put his arms around Priscilla’s middle and in doing so, pulled her close to him. Priscilla’s heart fluttered at his touch and his nearness.

  “Do you know how to ride?” Priscilla asked Connor, as she attempted to gain control of her pounding heart.

  He had replied with, “How hard can it be?” and tightened his hold on her.

  Priscilla told him that when she went up, he had to go up. And he said all right. Priscilla didn’t let Shiloh canter until they were well away from the farm. And then, when they were on the farm trail where the stump was, she let Shiloh take them away. After a few strides Connor fell into an easy rhythm with her. Their bodies moved as one with Shiloh. The moon was pearl-white and brilliant and the stars sparkled. It was a beautiful night. It didn’t occur to Priscilla that she was disobeying her mother. It was as if she were numb to everything she had been taught about honoring her parents. All she sensed was wonder and delight. They arrived at the copse of birch trees and got off Shiloh to let him rest and drink at the creek. Connor told her that was the most thrilling thing he had ever experienced and he put his arms around Priscilla’s waist and pulled her to him. He told her he wished he could take her back to New York with him, that he felt as though he was a stronger person when he was around her, and that she was the best thing that had happened to him in a long time. And then Connor’s lips were on hers. She had never been kissed before. She had no idea how scary and amazing and breathless a kiss could be. Priscilla said she could have drowned in that kiss. Would have drowned if Shiloh had not whinnied then and she broke away.

  As she told me this, Priscilla stopped, and a faraway look seemed to overtake her gaze, even though we were in the exact spot she’d been in when Connor kissed her. I felt as though I were an intruder on that memory, and yet I was also inexplicably jealous.

  A few moments passed before she continued.

  Connor started to kiss Priscilla again, but she told him they needed to get back before her mamm realized she was gone. He reluctantly agreed. On the way back they took a slower pace, and Priscilla told him her mother would be bringing his and his mother’s breakfasts for their last week at the cottage and that she had been forbidden to see him. He said, “Just because she saw us holding hands?” and he pulled Priscilla closer to him. He laughed, as though it was the silliest thing he’d ever heard. She told him it would be hard for her to find ways to be with him, and he said he would find a way to steal kisses from her. He wasn’t bothered by any of it. Not even her mamm’s outrageous edict that she not go near him.

  At this moment in her telling me this story, Priscilla seemed at last to realize her hair was loose and falling around her shoulders. It was as if the memory of this episode with Connor Knight reminded her of how close she had been to laying aside her Amish upbringing to be with this Englisch boy. She reached for the loose strands and tucked them back into the bun in a haphazard way. Several seconds passed before she continued.

  “I should have realized then, when nothing about that day fazed him, that I was far more invested in him than he was in me,” she said as she slowly pulled her kapp back on her head. “But I didn’t. I had completely fallen for him. He had held my hand, held me close, and kissed me. He told me he wanted to bring me back to New York with him. I wasn’t thinking with my head anymore, Jake. I wasn’t even thinking with my heart. I just wasn’t thinking. I was lost in the fog of desire and delight.”

  She paused, waiting for me to respond to her honest and transparent confession. I suppose she thought I would say I knew what it was like to feel that way, especially when you’re young.

  But the blistering truth was that I didn’t know what it was like to feel that way about someone. I didn’t think Amanda felt that way about me. I never sensed her getting lost in any of my kisses.

  And I had never felt myself lost in one of hers.

  Our kisses were sweet and playful and preliminary. They hinted at what we would share as husband and wife. I looked forward to the marriage bed like any other man my age, but those longings seemed purely physical, unifying, and necessary in comparison. I wanted to be with Amanda because I had been created to be with a woman. God had not designed man to be alone.

  But I had never been in the kind of fog Priscilla described.

  I didn’t even know it existed.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Sharon had watched Priscilla like a hawk after finding her and Connor holding hands in the barn, but she couldn’t trail after her daughter every single second. Connor and Priscilla found ways to see each other on the farmstead. It had been almost like a game. Priscilla would come around the corner of one of the outbuildings, and Connor would pop out from behind a wagon or a grain bin or doorway and pull her into his arms and kiss her deep and quick. Then he’d walk away as if nothing had happened. He’d look back at Priscilla and wink as if he couldn’t wait for the next time he could catch her alone and kiss her again. Elaine always stopped writing and researching by six, and she and Connor would go into town to eat or shop or see a movie. Priscilla would hear them coming back each night through her open bedroom window. That last week she was especially tuned in to the sound of their car returning.

  Two days after the first ride to the trees, Connor hid a note in the petting barn telling Priscilla he wanted to go on another moonlit ride before he left. The previous night had been cloudy and too dark to risk another trip. Priscilla was just starting to write a note in return that she very much wanted to do that, but that they needed a sky without clouds. It was as she was writing her answer that Connor snuck into the barn from behind and swept her into his arms. She nearly fell over in shock. Priscilla tried to tell him her mamm might see them and he just laughed and kissed her neck. Priscilla staggered back against the wall of the pen she was standing in, breathless with surprise and dread and desire. She told Connor he had to stop, he had to leave. But his kisses were so wonderful and sweet. She might not have gotten away from him had his cell phone not trilled in his pocket. She had not seen him with a cell phone up to that point because his mother had taken it from him when they got to Lancaster County. But he had it that day.

  He frowned at the interruption but yanked the phone out of his pocket and looked at the screen. She was afraid he would get into trouble, and she asked him if his mother knew he had his phone. Connor smiled and said that Priscilla had been such a good influence on him that Elaine had given it back to him a week early. He told Priscilla he was pretty happy that decent coverage was in that part of the county because he had a lot of catching up to do. She didn’
t know what he meant by “coverage,” so she asked. “Bars,” he replied, but she still didn’t know what he meant. He leaned into her again, kissed her forehead, and said she was adorable.

  The phone made another noise. Connor looked at it again, tapped the little keyboard, laughed, and typed some more. Priscilla said he should probably go as her mother was liable to come into the barn any minute to check up on her. He smiled wide and said he had looked on the Internet and saw that there would be a full moon the next night, and that they should meet out at the back paddock at nine o’clock for another ride, clouds or no clouds. She told him ten so that she could be sure her mamm was in bed and asleep. He kissed her again and then they heard Sharon’s voice nearby. He scooted out the back door.

  The next evening, Sharon was up later than usual, and Priscilla kept waiting for her to go into her room, shut her door, and turn out her light. It had been tense in the house between the two of them, and Priscilla could tell the situation between them weighed on her mother. They had barely spoken at supper. Sharon had tried to engage her daughter in conversation, but Priscilla was nervous about meeting Connor. She just wanted the clock to hurry up and get to ten o’clock, and for her mother to hurry up and go to sleep. She needed a few minutes to get to the barn, get Shiloh out of his stall, and then get out to the paddock without being noticed. Rushing him would make him noisy. Priscilla had hoped to be tiptoeing out to the barn a few minutes before ten. But at five minutes before the hour, Sharon was still moving about in her room and Priscilla could see a thin line of light under her door. Priscilla had long since turned out her light so Sharon would think she was already asleep. She would have to just be extremely quiet and leave.