She glared at him. “I’ve never said I don’t believe in God.”
“But it’s one thing to believe in God. It’s another thing to give ourselves to God.” He pushed himself off the stall wall and took a few steps toward her, an earnest look in his eyes, almost pleading. “At the end of every baptism class, every single one, David’s put this question to us—‘Are you ready to love God with your whole heart and soul?’”
Izzy pulled her gaze away from him. Those blue, blue eyes of his. They were fixed on her like lasers.
“You really shouldn’t be getting baptized tomorrow if you can’t say yes to David’s question.” He waited a long moment, but when she didn’t respond, he didn’t press her. He turned and strode away, leaving her alone in the quiet of the barn. That was wise.
“Are you ready to love God with your whole heart and soul?”
Izzy kept replaying that question over and over again as she helped Fern with supper and then as she ironed her dress for tomorrow’s baptism. A few weeks ago, Luke had asked her a similar question, and it had bothered her, on and off, but like a lot of other things that weren’t quite right, she’d pushed it to the back of her mind and tried to forget about it. The fact was, she’d never wanted to face this question head-on. So tonight, as she tossed and turned in bed, she considered it.
Luke was not wrong. She loved the Plain life. She was at home in it, impressed by the simplicity, the priorities, the community, the reverence, the emphasis on humility. She wanted to say yes to Luke’s question and mean it. But even she knew she’d left God out of becoming Amish.
There were plenty of times in her life when she wondered if there was a God. The problem was, if that were true, why was she so angry with him?
She thought back to the emotional outburst she’d had in the kitchen yesterday morning. It was embarrassing. But it was utterly honest. Why did she have to grow up the way she did? Rejected and abandoned and forgotten. She couldn’t understand why God had dealt her such a harsh hand.
Then a thought hit Izzy like a thunderbolt. Understanding. She had always sought—no, demanded—understanding from God, made it a condition between them. Maybe that was why she felt so blocked from God. For as long as she could remember, she’d been shaking her fists at God, demanding that he explain himself to her. Blaming him for her troubles and never once thanking him for the good things. And there had been good.
Finding Sheila in that graveyard when she was so lost and frightened and alone. Coming across Bob the buggy horse when she did, and how it led to meeting Amos. David. Fern. Living at Windmill Farm. Then Luke, awful, wonderful Luke . . . he had found her elusive mother. And now she had a sister in Jenny.
Instead of feeling resentful and sulky like she usually did when she thought about God, she felt ashamed. She’d been arrogant. The very quality she’d branded on Luke. The very one. Overwhelmed by feelings of remorse and relief, all mingled together, she burst into tears. Deep inside her came a need to pray, to say something honest to God, from her heart. First time.
Not like this, though. Slipping out of her bed and onto her knees, she wondered how to pray. The Amish mostly did their praying in silence, with chins tucked to chests. Was there a right way to start? A guaranteed way to get God’s attention? She didn’t know. “Father in Heaven, God of all Glory and Wonders, Creator of the Universe . . .”
She paused. Too much?
“Lord God, Sir.” Not enough?
She took a deep breath and tried a third time. “Lord, I need you in my life more than I need understanding. I choose you, Lord. Amen.”
Out the window, she saw the proud full moon hanging over the farm. She wasn’t sure what time it was, but dawn couldn’t be far off. Sleep was not going to come tonight. She grabbed her quilt off the bed and padded softly downstairs and out of the house to sit on the front porch.
In the dark and cold, wrapped up tightly in the quilt, she waited for the sun. Suddenly it emerged, bathing the hillside of Windmill Farm in a golden light, almost as though somebody had flipped a switch. A shaft of light, breaking through the darkness. She felt so thoroughly . . . what was the word? . . . thankful.
Luke wasn’t sure why he kept waking before dawn, why he couldn’t seem to remain in bed once he was awake, drowsing, dozing, the way he used to. He blamed the raccoon.
Winter was just around the corner. Knowing that, the raccoon had left the barn to find a warmer place. Luke was pretty sure he was gone, because two whole weeks had gone by and he hadn’t been woken in the night by Bob’s big nose. It irked him that the raccoon was smarter than him about moving on to someplace warm. At night, the barn was cold and so was Luke.
He yawned. Today was his baptism day, and he was ready and eager. The only mar on the day was that he had no family coming to witness the ceremony. He’d written his mother to tell her but didn’t mail the letter until a few days ago. His fault, he knew. The letter might not even have arrived. He should’ve called. In a way, maybe it was good that this would be a private moment for him. A public confession, but private in its own way.
He stretched and sat up, ready to get the day under way. He wondered if Izzy was awake, if she’d thought about what he asked her yesterday. She hadn’t come down for supper because of a headache, or so she’d told Fern.
He wasn’t sure if it was right or wrong to push her about faith the way he did—probably wrong, but he couldn’t get it out of his mind. It was the same way he’d felt when he’d spoken to Alice Smucker. He had to do it.
He knew that Izzy might be furious with him for asking, and their friendship, if you could call it that, might end. He knew that, but he still had to ask. What Izzy thought of him didn’t matter. But it did.
He put on his coat and left the barn to go outside to get the clean milk buckets. The sun was just cresting the horizon, bathing the farm in golden light. And there, on the porch, was Izzy, wrapped up in a quilt.
He strode toward the house and stopped at the bottom of the steps. He needed to see her face for only a second to know something important had happened.
“Hi,” she said shakily.
“Oh, Izzy,” he said. In a moment he was at her side, arms wrapped around her, holding her close. He felt her soften against him and held her as tight as he could without crushing her, for the longest while. The world had shrunken to just the two of them.
Then the rooster started crowing and they separated, each heading to their day’s chores. Before she headed into the house, Izzy turned around and gave him a real honest-to-goodness smile, and he felt pleasure spiral through him.
In church that morning, after the sermons, the time came for baptism. Izzy’s throat began to ache and tears stung her eyes. Tears ran down her face and onto her dress as David asked baptismal questions to the applicants, then as they all kneeled. They spilled down her face when Amos, as deacon, poured water three times through David’s cupped hands, held over Izzy’s head, and said those momentous words: “Upon your faith which you have confessed before God and many witnesses, you are baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and Holy Ghost.”
And then she cried when she saw Luke—awful, wonderful Luke—close his eyes and tuck his chin so reverently to receive the baptism. More tears. When would they run out?
She felt like she’d been crying nonstop since Friday. As if the tears had been collecting deep inside without her knowing it, and couldn’t be stopped up any longer. She never used to cry. Not ever.
Fern nudged her arm and handed her a tissue. She tipped her head a bit, to make sure Izzy noticed something. Someone. There, down a long row of benches on the women’s side, sat a woman with tears streaming in ribbons down her cheeks. “That’s Luke’s mother,” she whispered.
twenty-seven
Autumn ended as quickly as it had begun. Rain started to fall and didn’t stop, turning the ground to mud. Today was the first day without steady rain since Luke’s baptism, and with winter looming, he knew time was running out for snake hunting.
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br /> He waded through the marsh’s edge, through the cold muck, gently moving the tall grasses with a big stick, checking on his traps. It amazed him that he’d been looking for a sign of that Massauga rattler whenever he had some time to spare . . . since August. Big Teddy was convinced she was in this swamp, somewhere, and Luke had a gut feeling he was right. Call it crazy, but he felt at times that snake was watching him, waiting. Grinning. A little like the raccoon.
Yeah, that sounded weird, even to him.
As he meandered along, his thoughts drifted to the visit he’d had with his mother last Sunday. It still touched him; she’d traveled all the way from Kentucky to be there for his baptism, all on her own. She was only able to stay for a few days—enough time to check on the Inn at Eagle Hill, and enough time for some good long talks with Luke.
Right before the bus was due to arrive to take her back to Kentucky, she started to cry. “I always knew, Luke. I knew you’d get to this good place.”
And then he started to cry, which was embarrassing. But good, though. He hadn’t cried in front of his mother since he was a boy.
Luke got to the last trap he’d set and found it empty, like the others. He let out a big, sad sigh. Teddy had warned him that snakes, like bears, went into hibernation during the winter months. The grass was covered with hoar frost in the morning, and the forecast called for a chance of snow this weekend. This snake-hunting venture had to come to an end. He was bummed. This, he had wanted to do for Teddy.
He bent down to pick up the trap to take back home. As he lifted the trap, he heard a strange sound. Under the trap—his trap—was a smallish snake. Not as small as a garter, but not as big as some of the water snakes he’d been finding in the marsh.
He watched it, not even daring to take a breath. The snake watched him too. A triangular head, pupils like slits, a coiled body, and then he saw the tail’s end. Rattles.
Oh boy. Oh boy, oh boy. This was it. This was her! This was Teddy’s Massauga rattler. He was sure of it. He thought. He hoped.
What to do? How to capture it? He had to capture her for Teddy, but he sure didn’t want to get bitten.
He thought back to everything Teddy had told him about this snake. They’re extremely secretive—boy, wasn’t that the truth—and rarely interact with humans. They’re surprisingly docile, he had said. Okay, that was good. That they would prefer to avoid humans whenever possible. Luke felt the same way about rattlesnakes.
Okay, okay. Deep breath. He needed to make a plan before she slipped away. Food. What did they eat? Rodents, Teddy had said. Small prey.
Slowly, slowly, he backed up. A few feet away from the trap, he’d noticed a dead frog floating on the water. He grabbed the frog and pushed it inside the bottle, then carefully moved it toward the snake, with the open door of the bottle facing the snake. Then he waited, and waited, and waited.
Ten minutes passed, then thirty, then more than an hour. His feet had gone numb. He tried to remain as still as he could, eyes fixed on that snake, but he was shivering from the cold, sure he was going to freeze to death before this snake made a move. Maybe snakes didn’t even like dead frogs.
She didn’t budge. She watched him, though, and flashed her forked tongue once or twice. Just often enough that he knew she was alive.
He tried to figure out Plan B—grab her head, hold her jaw from biting? But he remembered Teddy had said that this rattler was particularly venomous. Plan B sounded like a death ticket.
He moved on to Plan C—grab her and wrap her up in his coat and hope she didn’t slither out. That, too, sounded like a potential death ticket—and then her head moved a fraction of an inch toward the frog, as if she’d gotten a whiff of it. Could snakes smell? He didn’t even know. She moved another fraction of an inch, then another. Slowly, painfully slow, she slithered into the bottle. Luke closed the flap behind her, his heart pounding like a drum. He had found her! He’d found her for Teddy! He hoped this was her, anyway.
Holding the flap shut, he wrapped a piece of twine around the bottle to keep her in there, and ran as fast as he could through the muck to reach Teddy’s carpentry shop. He didn’t want to stop or look at the snake. He just ran and prayed, and ran and prayed.
Teddy looked up in surprise as Luke burst through the door of the carpentry shop. Gasping for breath, he held out the bottle and put it on the workbench. “I got her. I found the Massauga rattler. I think I did, anyway.”
“No way. There’s no possible way you found her.” Teddy walked over to the bottle and examined it.
Still panting, Luke said, “Think it could be her? Maybe?”
Teddy didn’t respond, didn’t even look up. His eyes were glued on the snake in the bottle. The snake peered right back at him with her beady eyes. “Well, I’ll be.” A wide smile wreathed his face. “It’s her all right.”
Izzy wasn’t at all surprised to hear that Luke had found the Massauga rattlesnake for Teddy Zook. She knew he would find it, sooner or later, if it was in that marsh to be found. That was how Luke was. He didn’t give up. She was pretty sure he could figure out how to build a rocket ship to Mars if he put his mind to it.
She’d been wrong about Luke. Maybe not at first, not the way he acted when he arrived at Windmill Farm last May. But he started to change and she had been slow to believe it. She kept her defenses up around him. Finally, she was letting go.
For so long, she’d worn her defense like a skin, protective and impenetrable. Now she felt herself slipping out of it, not in bits, but as a whole piece, like a molted skin, it sat dry and weightless beside her. She thought of Luke again, awful, wonderful Luke, and of his Massauga rattlesnake. Was this how a snake felt when it shed its skin?
Since the weekend of her baptism, Izzy felt as if she’d fallen asleep one person and woken up another. She couldn’t remember who she used to be. It was bewildering. It was wonderful.
Amos walked through the orchards, looking over each tree, noticing its condition. His heart started racing out of control, something that was happening more and more often, and he sat down under a tree, leaning his back against it. Not yet, Lord. Just a little more time, please. There was so much he still had to do, so many things to take care of.
After a few minutes, the rapid beating of his heart settled down and so did his breathing. Slowly, leaning on the tree for support, he rose and straightened the kinks out of his back. He stepped away from the tree trunk to look it up and down. He tied red ribbons around the branches that would need pruning this winter. Bright enough to see, sturdy enough to last until mid-winter, when Luke would climb the ladder to prune.
It was something he’d thought of while helping Fern clean up the greenhouse, getting it ready for winter. Fern always left things in such a way—pots, tools, seeds, notes—so that anyone coming behind her would know just what to do. He thought he should do the same.
Luke found Amos standing at the top of the hill overlooking the orchard, watching the sunset. Huffing from the climb, he exhaled loudly and dramatically. “Whatcha doing?”
“Breathing in crisp, cold air. Basking in the last sunrays for the day. What a moment. What a fine, fine moment.” A V-formation of Canada geese scudded across the sky, honking in a way that sounded like rusty nails getting pulled out of dry wood, and Amos lifted his head to watch them.
Luke admired that. Amos was never too busy to miss the gifts of nature. After the geese disappeared behind the ridge, he turned to Amos. “Fern said you were looking for me?”
“David stopped by. Deacon business.” He glanced sternly at Luke. “Don’t tell anyone else the news.”
“What news?”
“Teddy Zook and Alice Smucker want to get married.”
Luke already knew. Teddy had confided the news to him after he’d found the Massauga, kind of a reward to him. But Luke could see Amos’s delight in having a secret to share and didn’t want to steal that from him. “How about that!” A satisfied grin covered Luke’s face. How about that.
Amos sm
iled back, pleased, but then his smile faded, and a chill went down Luke’s spine. Something else was on his mind and Luke wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
“That’s not why I asked Fern to send you up the hill. See those red ribbons on that tree? Those are all the branches that need pruning. I’m going to mark each tree for pruning. Come January, when the weather stays cold for a spell, pruning begins. It’s critical to do it at the right time, and in the right way.”
“Got it. We’ll start in January.” Amos didn’t have to tell him what to do, because he already knew. “You’ve talked about pruning from the moment the last apple was picked. I’ve been listening. You don’t have to worry. It’s only November. We’ll get it done, come January.”
“It’s time to talk about the future.” Without meeting Luke’s eyes, Amos said, “I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be around. My heart, it’s failing. My time’s coming soon, I know that.”
Luke was well aware of Amos’s continued decline. He’d been napping more and more in the day, looking grayer, huffing for breath at the slightest exertion, halting every few steps up the driveway.
Luke’s vision blurred beneath a wash of unexpected tears and his chest was suddenly choked with feelings—feelings of love and respect and sorrow. He swallowed once, then twice. “Isn’t there something that can be done? A new heart?”
“Fern wants me to keep my name on the transplant list, but I’m also sixty-seven years old. Wait. Scratch that. I’m already sixty-eight, she said. I’ve had my chance. I don’t know that it’s right to take a heart from someone else. Besides, this heart”—he patted his hand over his chest—“this is the one I want to keep. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but the heart pumping away in my chest is a transplant.”
Mending Fences Page 24