Balm of Gilead

by Adina Senft

  “And Ginny has agreed to this?” Sarah asked Henry, amazed. “You, too?”

  “Not like this, and that’s the whole problem.” Sarah got the distinct impression that if Sadie’s farm still had a pig pen, he would have thrown the papers in his hand into it for the pigs to eat. “I can’t agree to this contract at all, unless the focus of the episode is changed to something I can live with.”

  “Not possible.” Hands on hips, Matt shook his head regretfully at the ground. “We’ve already got a second-unit crew scouting the locations in Sugarcreek and Denver.”

  “Then you’re fools,” Henry snapped. “I haven’t even signed this contract.”

  “You told Petersen you would. That’s why we’re here. If we intend to meet that air date, we can’t waste any time. I figured I’d save at least four days by bringing the contract in person and doing some preliminary shots at the same time. Waste not, want not.”

  “I can’t,” Henry said desperately. “Who told you to include my late fiancée’s family? How can I subject them to this?”

  “Depends on whether they’re fans of the show,” Matt said cheerfully.

  Henry glared at him in a way that made the smile falter. “Either you change the focus of this episode or you find yourselves another subject,” he said with deliberate emphasis. “I’m not a man who issues ultimatums, but I’m at my limit here. This goes against everything I believe in.”

  Matt took a long breath, as though he was schooling himself to patience. Sarah had done the same thing herself, before she made the mistake of disciplining her boys when she was angry, for instance. But there was no avoiding the fact that Matt was coming to the end of a rope that had never been very long in the first place.

  “Henry, first, we have a verbal agreement. You have to stick by it or there will be all kinds of ugly from the network’s attorneys. And second, the writers of this show have a lot of practice in giving our audience what it wants. And what it wants is the personal story. They don’t care about Art. They leave that to the New York Times. What they want is entertainment and the personal side of religion, which this crew delivers week after week. And third—fifty grand. ’Nuff said. Now, once and for all, let’s go ahead and sign this contract so my crew can get to work.”

  Sarah held her breath as Henry’s hands tightened on the papers. Please don’t do this, she begged silently. It will destroy you, and the repercussions could keep coming back on you for years to come. Don’t let worldly ideas about money and recognition blind you to what is most important.

  As though he had heard her silent urging, he lifted his head to look into her eyes. In his own she saw how badly he was torn—like a man holding the reins of Paul Byler’s two big Percherons, each horse equally huge and each equally determined to go in a different direction.

  “Sarah?” he said quietly. “What’s your opinion?”

  Goodness. Her opinion meant nothing. Less than nothing. And if there was anything she had learned in the past year, it was that sticking her nose into other people’s business invariably led to pain and loss of fellowship.

  But you don’t have fellowship with Henry. You have friendship.

  But that wasn’t true, either. For better or worse, she loved this man—and she had made a choice only hours ago to put her love on the altar of sacrifice. The fact that her love could never be acknowledged—could never even be spoken of outside the whispered confines of a prayer—was beside the point. The point was, he needed her help to make a decision that might change his life. As a friend, she could help him. But it would be he who must decide the actual direction of that change.

  She inclined her head, and he followed her off to the edge of Sadie’s unkempt, uncared-for old garden. But over there, a clump of Michaelmas daisies bloomed purple and blue on the edge of it, a bright spot of color in what otherwise had been left abandoned. Even amid dead plants and the destruction of order, the daisies showed that there was hope for the future. All was not lost, and maybe they shone all the brighter for the mess that was decomposing around them.

  “You don’t need my opinion, Henry,” she said softly, angling them so that her back was to Matt and his crew—just in case that cameraman got ideas. Her hands tingled with the urge to take his, but she slid her basket up her arm and tucked them under her elbows.

  “I wouldn’t have asked for it if I didn’t.” His eyes were haunted, his face drawn, as though he hadn’t slept the night before—or the one before that. “You always tell me the truth, even when it might not be strictly in accordance with the Ordnung.” Her lips tipped up in a smile of acknowledgment. “I need to hear what you think.”

  “Why aren’t you on your phone asking Ginny what she thinks?” she asked. “After all, it’s her wedding that they want to film.”

  “She wouldn’t have a problem with it,” he sighed. “She’s all in favor—for reasons that I can’t go into. But no matter what it means for her—for us—I can’t do this,” he said. “I can’t.”

  “Then that’s your answer, isn’t it?”

  “How can it be? We need that money. I need the commission. I’ll lose everything, Sarah. Everything.”

  “Will you really?” The daisies swayed on the wind, but their roots went deep into the ground. Sarah looked deep inside herself and willed herself to hang on to her composure for one more minute. For his sake. “You have your farm, and you have friends around you who will help when the cupboards get bare and the pipes freeze. You have your two hands and the talent God gave you. D.W. Frith is just one customer, Henry. There are other stores, other people who would buy your pieces. And even if they didn’t, there’s no shame in making mugs for the Amish Market. It’s good, honorable work that fills a need, as any coffee drinker will tell you.”

  His mouth flickered, as though it wanted to smile, but was dragged down again by the weight of his despair.

  It was that despair that made her dig deeper—to say the things that ought not to be said between neighbors. Things she hadn’t said when they’d talked before. “Paul and Barbara and your family will forgive you if you bring their names into this filming. But Henry, I’m very much afraid that you won’t forgive yourself. That you’ll fall into the trap of letting this come between yourself and your family as a way of putting even more distance between yourself and your upbringing. You’ll do it—and you’ll hate yourself for doing it. I’m not sure that’s a road a man can easily come back from.”

  He stared at her. “Is that what you think I’m doing? What this is all about?”

  “What I think doesn’t matter. You have to face the consequences of what you think, deep in your heart, and ask yourself if you want to be the man who walks that road and has to live with them.”

  She must not reach out. She must not succumb to the temptation to fall against his chest and wrap her arms around him, in an attempt to give him strength. She must remember the altar. Her body trembled with the force of the control that held her back.

  He must have sensed it. His gaze locked on hers and held, as if it were a lifeline holding him against the wind that buffeted him, demanding that he go with it.

  And then he seemed to come to a decision. His gaze slid to her mouth, and then to the hands that were locked on her elbows, holding on for dear life.

  He nodded, once. Twice.

  “Denki,” he said.

  And then he walked back to where Matt was waiting, the papers slowly crumpling in his hand.

  Chapter 26

  Not for the first time, Henry asked himself how it was possible to have moved in next to one of the few women in the world who would tell you what you needed to hear, not what you wanted to hear.

  Ginny wanted him to be happy, he knew that. But she only saw the man—the individual. Sarah saw him the Amish way—in terms of everyone around him. The decisions he made affected not only his own life, but also the lives of everyone touched by it.

  He would see just how far the reach of this decision would go.

  Mat
t hadn’t waited for him to finish talking with Sarah—he and the cameraman had gone over to the barn, close to where Jesse was supposed to be working on his car. Matt concluded his conversation as Henry walked up, and gave him an inquiring look. “Well?”

  Henry held out the contract. “I can’t do it, Matt. I’m sorry you’ve gone to all this trouble, but I just can’t.”

  Matt didn’t reach out to take it. “You heard what I said about the verbal agreement, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, but that isn’t going to change my mind. If you have to bring lawyers into this, then that’s up to you. All I know is that I can’t subject my neighbors and family to this kind of intrusion, and the sooner you folks go on and find yourselves another subject to film, the better.”

  Even as he spoke, he had the sensation of a tide going out under his feet, dragging the sand away and leaving him unbalanced. He was going to suffer for this—and so was Ginny—but if all he had to hang on to was the rock of his conviction that doing what all these people wanted was wrong, then that was enough. He wouldn’t change his mind.

  “I’m sorry you feel that way,” Matt said. “We’re not trying to be intrusive. Usually our talent wants to have their story told. I thought you did, too, to introduce the world to your art.”

  “If that were the focus, maybe,” Henry said, “but it’s clear that it’s not.”

  “Let’s not be so hasty.” Matt slid an arm around his shoulders and walked him a few steps away, closer to Jesse’s car. “Maybe we can negotiate a few points on the shot list, huh?”

  “Maybe we could, but there’s still no guarantee that the final product will be something I can live with.”

  “The contract says ‘approval of the rough cut.’ Didn’t you read it?”

  “Oh yes. But what happens when you fine-tune the rough cut? Or you run out of time and have to take shortcuts? Matt, I appreciate your wanting to tell my story, but all things considered, I’m happy to let my work do that.”

  “So that’s it? I fly a whole crew out here and rent vans and pay a per diem, just so you can tell me no, I changed my mind? Do you know how much this debacle is going to cost the network?”

  The smile was gone, and Matt’s dark eyes were no longer laughing. Maybe now wasn’t the right time to remind him that anyone who would mobilize a crew without a signed contract should resist the urge to gamble. Then again, Shunning Amish was so popular that maybe Matt simply wasn’t in the habit of hearing the word no.

  “What am I gonna do with all these people?” Matt asked no one in particular, waving an arm to encompass the vans, the packing cases, and Sarah, still standing silently right where he’d left her. Watching.

  Praying, probably.

  Somehow that thought gave him the strength to stay the course. Not to give in to the threat of Matt’s temper and certain legal action.

  “Why don’t you use me?”

  Henry turned at the sound of a young man’s voice, which cracked on the last syllable. “Jesse?”

  Leaning on a crowbar as though it were a cane, Jesse stood beside his injured car, shaking so hard his pants quivered against his legs. “Would I make a good subject?”

  Matt looked at him a little incredulously. “Who are you?”

  “J-Jesse Riehl. I’m Amish. Or…I’m on Rumspringe, at least. This is my car. My dad kicked me out when I got my driver’s license, and when I bought the car with my harvest money, he made my whole family stop talking to me. I’ve been living in it since the winter.”

  Matt stared at him, then at the cameraman, who flicked a switch that made a red light turn on. He settled it on his shoulder and began to film.

  “An Amish kid, homeless and living in his car?” Matt said thoughtfully.

  Without taking his eye from the little screen on the side, the cameraman said, “Episode Twelve: ‘Driven Away.’”

  “Not quite as good as Episode Twelve: ‘Feet of Clay,’ but it has possibilities,” Matt said.

  “Feet of Clay”? Never mind. “No,” Henry protested, before this went any further. “Jesse, you can’t.”

  The kid’s face reddened. “Why not? I got nothing to lose. And with fifty grand, I could go down to Springfield. Buy a house, maybe. A little one. Or go to Australia.”

  “But your parents—your family—”

  Jesse’s mouth hardened. “I can’t do any worse in Dat’s mind. Car, TV, it’s all the same to him. This’ll give me a start, at least—and that’s just what I haven’t got otherwise.”

  “Jesse, I think we’re on to something here,” Matt said smoothly. “If Henry doesn’t mind us doing a little shooting—”

  “No.” Henry cut him off at the pass. If he was going to turn this down, he’d turn it down in its entirety. “No filming on my place. You folks make whatever deal you want to with some other farmer, but there’ll be no more here. Jesse, is that thing roadworthy?”

  “That thing is a twenty-five-thousand-dollar collector’s item,” the cameraman said imperturbably. “Have a little respect.”

  “No,” Jesse said. “I have to pry the front right panel out of the tire and get a new tire first.”

  “I’m pretty handy with cars,” the cameraman said, still squinting through the viewfinder of the running camera. “Maybe Matt will even take the helm for a second while I have a look.”

  Jesse had been banging away fruitlessly all afternoon, but with one heave by the cameraman and a screech of metal, the panel released its bite on the tire. “We could put the spare from one of the rentals on it.”

  “There’s a repair shop in Whinburg,” Jesse said. “We could get a replacement tire there. She ought to make twelve miles.”

  “Done,” Matt said. “We’ve got reservations at a motel up there anyway. Heidi!” he shouted, and the girl jogged over. “New talent, girlfriend. Take Jesse here out to dinner and listen to his story. I want a shot list by nine tomorrow morning, and a list of locations two minutes after that. You local, son?”

  “Sort of,” Jesse said. “Over west of Strasburg. Does this mean you’re going to do it? With me, I mean?”

  “That’s what it means, my young Amish friend. You go with Heidi here and she’ll get you fixed up with a new contract. And maybe we can advance you a couple of hundred for a new set of tires and a balance.”

  Jesse’s face split in a wide grin. “That’d be great. Just let me wash up.”

  As efficiently as they’d arrived, the crew loaded up the vans again, swapped out Jesse’s ripped tire for a spare, and departed. And as Jesse got into the Falcon with the girl Heidi, Henry gripped the driver’s side door. “Are you sure about this?”

  Jesse nodded with reckless determination. “I only have one shot, so I’m going to take it. Thanks for everything, Henry.”

  “Take care of yourself, and let me know how you do.” What else could he say? The current of other people’s wills had taken Jesse up and was swirling him off with it.

  The kid grinned. “Maybe I’ll send you a picture of my new house.”

  “You do that.”

  And Henry stepped back. The Falcon coughed, wobbled, and finally fired up, and rolled down the lane.

  Henry turned in his empty yard to look for Sarah, to share this fresh disaster—maybe even see if she thought there was a way to stop it.

  But nothing moved on the empty hillside except the wind in the grass.

  * * *

  When Ginny opened the door at the Rose Arbor Inn, her eyes widened at the sight of him. “What happened to you?”

  “Shunning Amish,” he said. She went to hug him and it took a moment before his arms went around her to return the hug. The thought of what he was going to have to tell her made it hard to accept something as simple as a hug…when he knew he didn’t deserve it.

  “Tell me about it.” She led him into her sitting room and sat next to him on the comfortable sofa, pulling up her feet under her. Her toenails, he saw, were painted orange.

  He told her all of it—or nearly. About the
arrival of the crew, about Matt and the lawyers that would probably descend like a swarm of locusts, about Jesse, heading off with them in a direction that would change his life. But he didn’t say anything about Sarah. It seemed that every time they talked, Sarah got into the conversation somehow. Besides, those moments when she’d laid his motivations open to him were too private, too raw yet, even to share with Ginny.

  “Oh, Henry, you poor man,” Ginny said on a long breath, taking his hand. Hers was cold—and Ginny’s hands were never cold. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

  “I’m sorry I let it drag on so long.” But there was more. “If I’d just known myself well enough to say no when the idea first came up, none of this would have happened. Which is what I told Dave when I called him.”

  She went very still, and her hand tightened on his. “You didn’t.”

  “Of course I did. I had to. I couldn’t let him find out from Matt.” Her fingers were starting to hurt. “Ginny? What else would you have had me do?”

  She released his hand and knotted her fingers together. “I wish you hadn’t. I’m sorry you had to go through this, but…I wish you’d gone after Matt and tried to patch it up. Why didn’t you? He offered you a chance—even said they’d change the content. Why didn’t you?”

  He stared at her. “Because I couldn’t stand the thought of the intrusion—into our lives, into our neighbors’ lives. Believe me, by the time the crew left, they were already on to the next thing and forgetting all about me.” Her fingers pressed to her lips, she closed her eyes.

  He had to get all this out. To purge himself of it so he could start over. “Anyway. Dave.”

  “Please tell me that he didn’t do what he said he would. That they’d pull the order if you didn’t do the show.”

  Her tone was so tense with dread that it made him feel even worse—but the truth had to be told. “He did. He was furious—I actually had to hold the phone away from my ear because of the shouting. It was almost worse when he finally calmed down, because then it was lawyer this and contract that and…” He sighed. “One thing about Dave. He always does what he says he will. No Christmas order. No catalog shoot, no special section of the website, nothing. On November twenty-seventh, Henry Byler will cease to exist except in the bargain basement—quote, unquote.”