Between Two Worlds

by Shelter Somerset

  He glanced down, still holding his breath, wondering how it looked. Was it authentic enough? Her hands nearly disappeared under his large one. His were so much darker compared with her pallid, store-sheltered skin. Her skin almost glowed, especially in the flickering light of the lantern.

  Tara, her eyes downcast, placed her free hand on top of Daniel’s. They sat like that for several minutes without speaking. The birds singing, Gertrude nickering from the driveway. Daniel could feel the pulse beat in the veins in his palms. Fearing sweating, he pulled his hand away and pretended he had an itch on his nose.

  “It’s a nice night out, for sure,” he said, scratching. “Kinda cloudy, but not too bad.”

  “Ya, it’s a nice night out, despite the clouds. I can sit out here all night, listening to the birds. Aren’t birds a beautiful gift from God?”

  “Ya, birds are a beautiful gift.”

  Tara’s hand rested by her side on the bench, as if she were waiting for Daniel to take it again. This time, he let it be. They sat, quiet, staring into the dark yard. Daniel again wondered what Aiden might be doing.

  Chapter 17

  The days sandwiching Labor Day, the entire county seemed to buzz with excitement. Almost everyone was focused on the threshing. For the Amish, it was a community affair.

  When time came for the Schrocks to harvest their oats, Aiden was there to help. Samuel had invited him when he’d had supper at the Schrock’s last Saturday. He was more than eager to join forces. So were neighbors Gunny Rupp and his two sons and Micah Yoder and his wife, in addition to three of Samuel’s older nephews, one niece, two good friends, four cousins, and an uncle.

  Without the modern combine used by English farmers, threshing was a laborious undertaking, involving several exhaustive steps. Amish farmers would not be able to compete on the market without those in the community lending each other a hand.

  Aiden knew that each season Kevin reported on the harvest with large color photo spreads (it was one of his best-selling issues), but Aiden was hesitant to act as the journalist around the Schrocks. As it turned out, Kevin had told him he did not have to don his reporter’s cap this time. He could cover another Amish family’s harvest later in the week.

  He was glad to be helping the Schrocks as a friend rather than a reporter. Helping them would also give him a good excuse to redeem himself after his embarrassing tumble from the binding machine. He’d never forgotten that hot day back in June, working the Schrock’s oat field for the first time, and his miserable attempt at driving the Belgians.

  Images of his fall from the McCormick regularly flashed across his mind. What a humbling experience that had been. Threshing would be a good way for him to prove he was as sturdy in the field as any Amish farmer, not “city soft.”

  Things were already underway when Aiden, dressed for hardy farm work and wearing his latest Oakley knockoffs, showed at nine thirty in the morning. A few straggling English tourists were leaning on the fences in their shorts and sandals, watching the old-fashioned method of harvesting grain.

  Spread out in the field, Amish children and adults were filling three grain wagons with sheaves from the shocked oats. Pitchforks poked into the overcast sky. An armful of toddlers, too young to be of any real support, rode up and down the oat field in a kid-sized handcrafted wagon led by the Schrock’s two mini horses, Jake and Frieda. Aiden couldn’t pass up taking a few sneaky snapshots with his cell phone. Boris, the Schrock’s new hound they had purchased from the Troyers in August, trotted about the field, his tail wagging, barking and getting into the spirit.

  A fourth grain wagon idling by the thresher was loaded with what looked like a ten-feet-high tower of oat sheaves. Aiden feared the load might fall; it was so top-heavy. The full wagon dwarfed even the two enormous draft horses hitched up front.

  “Hi.” David came up to Aiden, a grin stretching his face.

  “Hi, David. Everyone looks so busy.”

  “There’s a lot to get done yet; we’ll need to make at least forty trips back and forth from the field to the thresher before it’s all over.”

  “Wow, that is a lot of work.”

  “If we used the combine like the English farmers we’d be done in no time, but the ministers won’t permit it.”

  There was some sign of automatic machinery: an ancient coal powered steam engine. David told Aiden it was owned by a co-op of a dozen local Amish farmers, including his father. The old Advance Rumely spun the belt to the threshing machine. Aiden guessed there was no bypassing its use.

  The Rumely was warming up, pulsating with loud claps as the steam pressure built inside the valves, sweet music to the ears of the Amish farmers who stood around it like anxious schoolboys. Gray exhaust sputtered into the ashen sky as an English volunteer fed coal into the firebox.

  The children and adults finished loading one of the grain wagons in the field with oat sheaves. Mark eased the Belgians through the corrugated field back to the thresher. Children rode atop the cumbersome-looking load, giddy with the work and camaraderie. They cheered and laughed. Boris chased after them, barking and running circles around the wagon.

  Daniel was standing by the thresher, talking with a bearded young Amish man and an Englishman as Mark drove the heavy wagon into place behind the first. Samuel and a few of the other elders inspected the steam engine. The Rumely thrashed as it conveyed the thresher belt. With the sides of his mouth pulled toward his grizzled beard, Samuel signaled a “thumbs up.”

  Daniel and the two men he’d been talking with climbed up the wagon like spiders and began feeding sheaves into the thresher with pitchforks. Samuel motioned for Aiden once he spotted him.

  The Schrock’s patriarch was happy to see Aiden and instructed him to help out atop the grain wagon. With a little nudge from David, Aiden hoisted himself up the sheaves. Aiden was glad that Samuel had confidence in him to stride high atop another old farming contraption after losing his balance the first time.

  A clear view of the flat farmland and all the activity below tickled him. He understood why the children liked riding on the loaded wagons so much. Daniel was polite to Aiden, but exchanged minimal words when their eyes first met. It had been nearly a week since he’d last seen Daniel—at the Schrock’s for supper. Lately, he had slipped into his old moody self. Aiden had grown accustomed to his sudden bouts of aloofness.

  The other two men worked the far end of the wagon, while Daniel and Aiden found themselves side by side on the other end. The September day was hot. The white sun burned through the overcast sky. Aiden had read on the Internet earlier that morning that the heat index would climb to ninety. Their shirts were already spotted with wetness, and sweat beads formed on their upper lips and foreheads as they forked sheaves into the thresher.

  Golden grain heads separated from the stalks and came out through the chute into the barn’s storage loft. Immature green heads shot into a smaller wagon. Above the rumbling of the thresher, the clip-clop of a horse-drawn wagon passing below on the blacktop lane caught Aiden’s attention. The middle-aged driver was hauling in more coal for the Rumely.

  The oat stack grew smaller as the men labored. Aiden and Daniel chatted very little. Before long they were down to the bare bottom. They gathered the loosened sheaves with the pitchforks, using them like push brooms as the sheaves gathered in the tongs, and tossed the remainder into the thresher. The men climbed out of the wagon and Micah Yoder hopped into the driver’s position and drove back out onto the field for more sheaves. David drove the second wagon into position. Daniel and Aiden climbed up with the other two men and fed the thresher the same as before.

  Halfway through the second load, Daniel, without pausing in his choring, said to Aiden, “Do you plan on staying in Henry forever?”

  Aiden snickered. He thought it a strange question to ask so out of the blue, especially since Daniel had been so quiet. “Why do you ask?”

  “Just curious.”

  “Well, I’m not sure. I still have my heart set on liv
ing in Montana.” He chuckled with a self-effacing shrug as he hoisted the pitchfork full of sheaves over his shoulder. “In my dream cabin.”

  “If you like rustic living so much, why did you ever move to Chicago?”

  Aiden squinted toward the milky sky, his pitchfork light in his hands. He took the occasion to rest his burning muscles. In the background the sound of the Rumely churned. He felt the rhythmic vibration of the thresher. Leaning on his pitchfork, he thought about his former boyfriend. When Conrad had abandoned him in Chicago two years ago, he’d assumed he’d move back to Maryland. But the more he’d considered his options, the more practical it had seemed to stay put. He’d had a good part-time job and had steadily built his freelance writing portfolio. There had been no reason to leave. A few months after Conrad’s leaving, he’d had so many freelance assignments he’d been able to quit his part-time editing job and devote himself full-time to writing.

  He wondered if he could ever tell Daniel all that, the full truth, that he was gay. What would happen if he did? Could Daniel deal with it? He had feared Daniel might’ve figured him out already (it would explain his rough behavior), but lately he wasn’t so sure. If Daniel thought he was gay, would he spend so much time with him? Or maybe he suspected and didn’t care?

  Leaving out specifics, something he’d grown accustomed to when discussing his personal life with the Amish, he said, “I moved to Chicago to chase after a love.”

  “Ach.” Daniel nodded. “So why did you move here to Henry? Not just for that reporter’s job; I know it doesn’t pay much.”

  Aiden minded little that Daniel asked him personal questions. He liked that he wanted to get to know him more. Still, he knew he was treading barefoot on that hot sand with all those thorns. No way could he speak his mind as he would have liked.

  He turned back to pitching sheaves into the thresher, averting his eyes from Daniel. “I guess to erase the memory of everything in Chicago. Things didn’t work out like I had planned.” He supposed that was as good an explanation as any.

  Daniel could understand Aiden’s reason for wanting to leave Chicago. His life hadn’t gone as planned either. There were times when he wished he could up and leave everything in Henry, take flight like a raven from a field. To run from his sorrows like Aiden had and never look back. It was one aspect of English culture that he both envied and scorned. Being able to just go, far away, wherever and whenever one wanted, without a care for another soul. He often fantasized about running off to Glacier National Park in Montana, to hide among the hemlocks and mountains like he had just before his marriage to Esther. But too much responsibility held him back. Unlikely he could ever travel that far again.

  One of the reasons he always kept a current driver’s license was to have access to places like Glacier, even if he knew he would most likely never return. Even in the face of his parents’ disapproval. Just knowing he could leave was enough. The license meant more to him than access to rental cars for his backpacking trips. For Daniel, it allowed him to keep one foot outside the community while the other remained planted in centuries-old customs and the tenets of his denomination.

  Frowning with sympathy, he looked past Aiden’s bent form toward the house. Rachel and his aunt had just stepped off the stone footpath from the small garden and were carrying glasses of what looked like lemonade on wooden platters. Grace and Moriah followed behind with boxes he was sure were filled with his favorite homemade donuts. Rachel and the girls made them for the threshing each season. It had become a tradition.

  When Aiden straightened from pitching sheaves and followed Daniel’s gaze, he lost his balance and stumbled, heading straight toward the edge of the wagon. Daniel dropped his pitchfork and grabbed him just in time.

  “Watch it!” he said, holding Aiden by the waist.

  “Oh, I’m such a klutz.” Aiden straightened his sunglasses. “At least this time I didn’t fly over the side. Thanks for catching me in time.”

  “Don’t worry,” Daniel said, releasing him and wiping his hands on his broadfall pants. He picked up his pitchfork. “Takes a while to get used to being on top a pile of oats. The kinner fall sometimes, gives everyone a harmless laugh.”

  “I’m just glad no one was watching.” Aiden flushed.

  Aiden was incorrect. Someone had been watching.

  Daniel had noticed his father watching when Daniel had caught the Englisher just in time before he went flying over the edge. He saw Samuel continue to scrutinize them as they climbed down from the wagon and headed to the picnic tables where Rachel and her helpers were laying out the refreshments. It bothered him what his father might be thinking.

  Daniel kept clear of Aiden the remainder of the day.

  Chapter 18

  At the Blade office the following week, Aiden had been aware for several minutes that his boss was studying him from his desk. He wanted to write his latest article about a small house fire that he’d just come from, but Kevin’s staring sideswiped his focus. “Is there something you need, Kevin?” he finally asked.

  “As a matter of fact, there is.” Kevin stood. “We need to talk, Aiden.”

  “About what?” Aiden noticed the deep worry lines etched across his boss’s forehead. He was certain they were about to discuss something he would rather avoid.

  “This Kyle Yoder business. It’s got me concerned.”

  Yes, he was right. It was a topic that he did not wish to broach. At least not with his boss. Aiden had worried Kevin would eventually find out about his investigation into Kyle’s death and chew him out for it. He sighed, accepting the inevitable.

  “All this investigating you’ve been doing,” Kevin said. “You need to back off. We’re just a small-town newspaper.”

  Aiden pushed his swivel chair out from under his desk and looked at his boss squarely. He had no idea how Kevin had learned of his investigation, but he worried little about that now. Folding his arms across his chest, he chose to deal with the matter as if his boss had known all along. He played no elusive games. “You want me to back off what could be a murder story?”

  “You don’t know it’s a murder.”

  “But that’s why I’m investigating; I’m trying to find out what happened.”

  “We know what happened. The police themselves and the coroner all officially say the boy committed suicide.”

  “But Kevin, if you saw the reports, you’d realize—”

  “Aiden, quit acting like you’re Bob Woodward.”

  “Who?”

  Chuckling, Kevin shook his head. His grin failed to mask what Aiden saw as frustration staining his face. “Aiden, it just looks like you’re going after the Amish, like you’ve got some vendetta against them.”

  “Vendetta? That’s ridiculous, I love the Amish.”

  “You already printed that story about that Amish boy, Milo Rupp, the one arrested for dope. And I let you print that sidebar about drug abuse among the Amish. Even that was pushing it.”

  “But that was news. They reported the Milo Rupp story in the county paper too. I think it even made the national wire. My sidebar, if anything, made us out to be the bad guys, tempting the Amish with our ‘evil English ways.’”

  “You made too many speculations about something we don’t know much about. Drug abuse and the Amish? I should’ve known better than to let you print it.”

  “I didn’t write anything horrible. Everything I put in there was based on fact. I was just trying to make the newspaper more interesting.”

  “Aiden—”

  “They’re not immune from this stuff, Kevin. The Amish are like people that way. We shouldn’t be so condescending toward them. I know for a fact that they don’t like that.”

  “It’s not the Amish I’m concerned with.”

  “Who then?”

  “It’s the English,” Kevin said. “They’re the ones who don’t want the Amish to look bad. To a lot of people they are the last decent people on earth. Our last connection to a time when, frankly, we weren�
�t so screwed up. The truth is most the complaints have been coming from the English, not the Amish.”

  “Complaints?”

  Kevin nodded. “People think you’re making the Amish look bad, like you’re out to get them. They think you’re picking on them. They’ve been calling, writing, even stopping by. A man just stopped by this afternoon before you got back from that house fire. He was pretty upset. People here like to think of the Amish as, well, as perfect as those cute little Amish dolls they sell in those souvenir shops.”

  “And you’re taking their complaints seriously?”

  “I have to; I’m a businessman. I have a business to run. At this rate I might start losing subscribers.”

  “Kevin, I want you to see something….” Aiden rummaged through one of his desk drawers. Finding what he wanted, he waved a folder of papers before Kevin’s eyes. “While I was going over some old police reports on Kyle Yoder, I came across something else about an Amish man a few years ago who was found dead. I don’t think you even wrote a story on it. It just so happens a few months before, the police were called out to his farm after some English lady reported a disturbance at their house. The police suspected he was beating his wife, but she refused to press charges. Since the Amish don’t believe in divorce, the ministers shipped him off to some mental hospital in Michigan for treatment. I asked Joe Karpin about it, and he told me that while the husband was gone, another Amish man started to help the wife with her farm work. A few weeks after the other man came back from Michigan, he was found dead, headfirst in a cistern. The police wrote it off as an accidental drowning. No further questions. Doesn’t that seem a bit strange?”