by Anna Schmidt
Gunther had offered to go looking for his daughter-in-law, but Levi needed the older man to get started working with the rest of the crew. He would be checking the horses, replacing a shoe if necessary and making sure the horses and their harnesses were in perfect order for the day’s parade and two performances. “I’ll go,” Levi said as he dabbed the corners of his mouth with his linen napkin and laid it aside. “Pleasant, if you would be so kind as to report to the costume tent. The head seamstress, now that Mrs. Stravinsky is gone, is Ruth Davis. She can show you what needs to be done before this afternoon’s matinee.”
He’d looked everywhere when he saw Hannah talking to the box-office manager. She glanced up as if she had somehow sensed his nearness, said a few words to the box-office manager and hurried toward him.
“Good morning,” she said a little out of breath. “I think I lost track of time. I was talking to some of the cast and crew, wanting to learn as much as possible about how things work. I mean, Levi, it’s actually quite exciting, isn’t it? It’s like a small community in and of itself but one that moves around.”
Her cheeks were flushed and her smile radiated the excitement of her discovery.
“And so perhaps you begin to understand the appeal for young Caleb,” he said, and knew in that instant that he would not forbid himself the opportunity—however brief—to be closer to her by working with her. There was something about her that made him look forward to the day. Perhaps it was her innocence, that naiveté that came with discovering a world you never knew existed. He’d been living in the midst of it for so many years that in spite of his wealth and material comforts, life had lost all of its freshness for him.
Her expression sobered. “What I know is that I have suffered the sin of prejudice, Levi. I had judged these people and their lifestyle without once taking the time to understand. It’s not a life I would choose, but I see now that these are good people whose hopes for themselves and their families are not so very different from my own.”
He started to walk back to the outside of the big top toward the backyard of the circus and she fell into step with him. “And what will you do if your son’s infatuation with the life has not yet been satisfied?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she admitted.
“I mean Caleb is what? Eleven, you said?”
“Almost twelve.”
“Then he has some time.”
He saw her peer up at him curiously. “Time?”
“Well, as I understand it, a boy does not make a final decision to follow the ways of the Amish until he’s maybe fourteen?” He had taken this conversation too far and soon she would start to raise questions he wasn’t prepared to answer. Questions like how it was that he knew so much about the Amish life. He cast about for some way to change the subject. “Ah, there’s Jake. Good. You can go over the accounting procedures with him while I see how your father-in-law is adjusting to his new duties.” He walked ahead of her, hailing his friend. He had almost said too much. He had almost opened the door to the past. What was it about this woman that made him want to do that? He’d had dealings with other Amish before—trading with them as the circus traveled from town to town. But of course, he had never actually had members of that faith traveling with him. He had never had to face the daily reminder of what he had run away from all those years ago. Not until Hannah Goodloe had walked up to his front door and into his life.
Chapter Eight
The business office was housed in a converted passenger car, although any resemblance between that space and Levi’s private car ended there. The seats and overhead berths had been removed and in their place were three large oak desks on the window side of the car, and behind them a wall of enclosed shelving filled with files and ledgers and office supplies.
“That’s Ida’s desk there,” Jake Jenkins said. “The middle one is for our twenty-four-hour guy, Chester Tuck, and that last one near the payroll window is mine.”
“Mr. Tuck really works twenty-four hours a day?” Hannah asked.
Jake scratched his slicked-back hair and frowned. Then he exploded into laughter. “No, not at all. It’s a circus term for the lead guy. Chester is the one member of the staff who travels ahead of the rest of the company to make sure everything’s ready for us when we arrive. Usually, that’s a day ahead, like he got here yesterday while our first train section arrived this morning. See?”
“It’s confusing but yes, I think I understand. Mr.Tuck works with the townspeople but always in the next town on the schedule.”
“That’s pretty much the idea. He’s hardly ever here. Or if he is, he tends to be here at night while the show’s going on, catching up before he heads out to the next town,” Jake said as he sat down in a scarred wooden swivel chair and plopped both of his feet on top of his desk. “So, what’s Levi got in mind for you?”
Hannah didn’t like his tone or the way one of his eyebrows arched suggestively. “Filing. Correspondence,” she replied as she considered the items on Ida Benson’s desk. A compartment filled with pencils, a stack of unused paper, a spiral-bound notebook, two bottles of ink—one black and one red—and two fountain pens resting on an onyx stand. The typewriter sat on a separate metal stand to one side of Ida’s desk chair.
“You know how to type?” Jake asked as Hannah ran her fingers over the keys.
“No,” she admitted, noticing for the first time that the letters were not in alphabetical order as she might have expected. The squeal of Jake’s chair as he stood and came toward her startled her and she jumped as if she’d just had a terrible fright.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.” He reached around her and took down a straw hat from the brass hook behind her. The hat looked brand new. Jake was definitely a man who took pride in his looks, she thought. “I have to go out for a while. In the meantim—” he plopped a wire basket piled high with papers on the desk “—you can start filing these.” Near the doorway he pulled open a file drawer and pointed. “Each invoice goes into a folder in here—these are paid,” he said. “So animal food goes under ‘feed,’ people food goes under ‘kitchen’ and so on. Pretty straightforward,” he assured her as he put on the hat, checked his appearance in a small mirror hanging by the door and left.
“When do you think Levi…that is, Mr. Harmon will return?”
Jake shrugged. “He’ll be back soon enough. If you want to impress him, get that filing done.” He waved then turned a corner and was gone.
Hannah stood at the door for a minute longer scanning the grounds for any sign of Levi. After all, supposedly she was working for him. Shouldn’t he be the one giving her tasks to complete?
But there was no sign of him. Outside the railroad car, the grounds teemed with activity and Hannah was struck once again with how very much the circus was like its own little neighborhood. People coming and going, attending to their work, calling out greetings to each other. It felt like…home. It was nothing like she had imagined, and the idea that Caleb had traveled that first night with these good people gave her such a sense of relief that she found herself humming an old hymn as she turned to attend to her work.
Levi had made his escape so abruptly that he realized now that he had failed to give Hannah any proper instructions. Well, Jake could show her the ropes. His friend and business manager certainly knew as much about what Ida did day-to-day as Levi knew.
But that really wasn’t the point. There was something about the Amish woman that made him want to run as far and fast away from her as possible and yet at the same time, he was drawn to her like the moths that fluttered around the spotlights at the evening performances.
True to his nature, Levi was determined to solve the mystery of his attraction to Hannah Goodloe—an attraction that he suspected she would agree was impossible. Okay, so she was a natural beauty. That much he’d already determined. And she was a person of conviction and strength—two traits he had always respected in others. But there were plenty of beautiful women and most of his frie
nds and employees had been chosen on the basis of their strength of character. So what was it?
Her unavailability? Was that the attraction? For some men—like Jake Jenkins—that would have been the draw. The sheer challenge of the chase. But Levi wasn’t like that. Men like Jake tended to view women as objects set before them for their personal pleasure—objects that could be replaced. The one thing that was missing in Levi’s life was a woman with whom he could share the fortune and lavish lifestyle that he’d worked so hard to build. Someone whose eyes would light up with delight as he showered her with jewels and gifts and showed her places she had only read about in books.
Hannah Goodloe was not that woman. She was of the “plain” tradition—a tradition that set no value on material things. And suddenly it clicked. Hannah Goodloe’s attraction for him was that she had found contentment in the very life that he had cast aside all those year earlier. A life that he had cavalierly rejected as too boring and restricting.
Relieved that he finally understood why he was drawn to the woman and could safely dismiss the idea of any romantic attraction, Levi headed back across the circus grounds to the payroll car. He could work with her now that he understood her and he would simply ignore the obvious question of why Gunther and Pleasant Goodloe did not stir the same fascination within him that Hannah did.
Hannah made quick work of the filing project then looked around for other ways to make herself useful. She found cleaning supplies in a corner of the car near the sink. Using a feather duster, she went over Ida’s desk—now hers, she supposed—and then Chester’s desk, which was bare except for a wire basket attached to one corner and filled with papers similar to those she had just filed.
The basket was labeled “Invoices to be paid” so she carefully dusted around them so as not to disturb the order. But the top invoice caught her eye. It was from a feed company in Jonesville, Florida—the town they had just left. She had filed a similar invoice in the paid drawer—similar in more than just the letterhead it was printed on. The amount for the bill struck her as odd.
“Seventy-nine dollars and ninety-seven cents,” she murmured, remembering that she had noted the same reversal of numbers on the filed invoice. She carried the invoice from Chester’s desk over to the file cabinet and compared it to the one marked “paid.” They were identical—date, list of items ordered, amount—everything. “Why would there be two…?”
“I apologize for being away so long,” Levi said as he climbed the two metal steps to the entrance and filled the car with his presence.
Unnerved that she’d been caught snooping into matters that were certainly none of her business, Hannah slammed the file drawer shut as soon as she heard his voice, and by the time he’d entered the car, she was back dusting Chester’s desk.
“I see you found something to occupy yourself,” Levi said, nodding toward the feather duster. “Where’s Jake?”
“He said something about an errand. I did the filing he gave me and then—well, I found the duster and broom and thought…”
“Hannah, I don’t expect you to clean,” Levi said.
“I don’t mind,” she replied. “In fact, I find it soothing. Besides, you keep money in here for the payroll, right?” She had noticed the large heavy safe that practically filled one end of the long car.
Levi’s eyes widened. “We do. I don’t see…”
“It just occurs to me that if only you and I and Mr. Tuck and Mr. Jenkins have access to this car, it would be a kind of safety measure. If it’s just the three of us—and you, of course—then there’s no temptation for someone coming in.”
To her surprise, Levi grinned and then laughed out loud. Oh, the things laughter did for his features. It took her breath away how handsome he was when he smiled.
“It’s just a suggestion,” she huffed, offended that she had been the cause of his laughter.
“And a good one it is,” he agreed. “I didn’t mean to laugh, Hannah. It’s just that you’re the last person I would have thought might imagine anyone trying to steal something.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “You’re Amish.”
“We are Amish, Levi, not angels. As among any people, there are those who lose their way. Some young men broke into the bakery just last fall. They nearly tore the place apart looking for money, not knowing that Gunther always carried the day’s receipts home with him after closing.”
“Were they arrested?”
“It is not our way to turn our own transgressors over to outside authorities. The two young men were brought to the bishop by their families and it was handled within our community.”
“They were shunned,” Levi guessed, and she could not help but notice that it was not a question.
“They were banned and when they saw and admitted the error of their ways and promised to change, they were forgiven.”
“And where are they now?”
“One of them works for my father-in-law and the other works on his family’s celery farm.”
“They came back even though…?”
“Everyone deserves a second chance, Levi,” she said softly. “Our ways offer that.”
He took the feather duster from her and placed it and the broom back on their hooks. “Either way, I do not expect you to clean, Hannah. If you feel the urge to do so in order to think through some issue you may be dealing with, then I suppose it would be cruel to stop you. But you are here in the capacity of interim secretary, and I suspect you will have plenty to do between now and when we reach Wisconsin in a few weeks.”
“I don’t know how to use that contraption,” she blurted nervously, pointing to the typewriter.
“I prefer letters written in longhand for my correspondence. Anything else can wait until we reach Baraboo,” Levi replied. “What else?”
Hannah glanced around the space. “I don’t know—not until you tell me what you expect.”
“Hannah, this is not a test. Gunther wants—no, he needs to feel as if the three of you are somehow making a contribution in repayment for the journey to collect your son. I am just trying to honor that.”
“Then why not put me to work with Pleasant in the wardrobe department?”
To her surprise, another smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “The fact is that I was told that your sewing skills are not exactly…that you are far better at figures and filing and the like.”
“It’s true,” she admitted. “I mean, Pleasant’s stitches are tiny and so wonderfully straight and mine…” She shrugged and risked a glance up at him.
“Actually, I’m relieved,” Levi said. “I find that at the moment, I need the services of a good and efficient secretary far more desperately than I need another pair of sewing hands. So, will you help me?”
It occurred to Hannah that he was very good at his work. For what was the circus business after all, except one of persuading others to part with their hard-earned money to experience something that would be over in a couple of hours with nothing to show for it but memories? That kind of persuasion came so naturally to him that it no doubt took very little to turn those talents of persuasion into talents for making others feel needed. She studied his expression for any sign that he was trying to trick her. But instead, she saw that his eyes were almost pleading. She didn’t know why, but Levi Harmon was counting on her, beseeching her to accept his offer.
“Very well,” she said, and was quite positive that his expression shifted at once to one of relief and then as quickly to one of business.
“Excellent. Now let me show you the basic routine. Every morning, there will be several messages that have come in during the night. I’ll need you to sort through…”
And so it went for the better part of an hour. As Levi instructed, Hannah made notes in the spiral-bound notebook. These files were kept separate. Those were ready to be disposed of as soon as she had updated the ledger. Jake would give her this. Chester would need her to see to something else. She began to have a deep respect fo
r Ida Benson’s ability to keep it all running smoothly.
Still, it was invigorating. For one thing, it took her mind off Caleb and her worries about the boy. For it had occurred to her that bringing him home to Florida would not solve the problem. He had run away—more to the point he had run toward another lifestyle. And now having experienced a bit of that lifestyle herself, she could understand why circus life had been attractive to her son. How was she going to make sure that he didn’t resent returning to the community and culture that he had abandoned?
“What is it, Hannah?”
She’d allowed her thoughts to wander and failed to notice that Levi had stopped talking.
“Nothi…” But she was incapable of lying. “I was just thinking about my son,” she admitted. “I apologize. It seems that even though I know he is safe, I can’t stop worrying about him. I’m sure you never gave your mother cause for such concern, Levi.” She was trying to lighten the moment, but the dark shadow that crossed his eyes told her she’d failed.
“My parents died when I was just a little older than Caleb is now,” he said.
“I’m so sorry. That must have been so very painful. Both of them?”
He nodded. “There was a tornado. My grandfather had insisted that my father go out to the barn and secure the animals. When he didn’t come back, Ma made all us kids go into the cellar and then she went after him. The tornado hit the barn and it collapsed, killing them both.”
“Oh, Levi, how awful for you—for all of you.”
He picked up the story as if she hadn’t spoken, as if he needed to tell it all and be done with it. “My sisters went to live with an aunt and uncle in Iowa. My younger brother and I went to live with our grand parents.” He studied her for a long moment as if trying to decide whether or not to tell her more. “And then,” he said softly, using his forefinger to push a wisp of her hair back into place, “the circus came to town and when it left—just like Caleb—I went with it.”