The Prodigal Son Returns

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The Prodigal Son Returns Page 12

by Jan Drexler


  “You can’t sell your cow.” Ellie refused to think what the delay of the rent would mean to her family, but then, her children weren’t in danger of going hungry. “You pay me when you can, Mrs. Brenneman.”

  The other woman held herself straighter. “We don’t take charity, Mrs. Miller.”

  “And I don’t give it, Mrs. Brenneman, but you have your children to think of. You will pay when you can. I know you will.”

  The other woman’s smile trembled. “Thank you for understanding.”

  “These are hard times for everyone, Mrs. Brenneman. Please send word with the Millers when Mr. Brenneman finds another job.”

  Ellie turned Brownie toward the road as Mrs. Brenneman went back into the house. Without the rent money, she wouldn’t be able to pay the taxes on the farm when they came due next month. If she had only known about this before she bought the strawberry plants! She had counted on the Brennemans paying their rent, and she never thought he would lose his job.

  All three children napped on the drive home, giving Ellie plenty of time to think. Too much time. She was thankful the Brennemans wouldn’t lose their home again—they had lost one farm to foreclosure already—and besides, it wouldn’t help her to turn them out for not paying the rent. At least this way someone was living on the farm.

  But where would the money come from for the taxes? The strawberries wouldn’t start paying until next year, if they survived that long.

  She could ask Dat for the money, but she knew what his response would be. He had told her more than once that she should sell the farm and let go of the responsibility. But she couldn’t. From the time Daniel had first bought that farm, he had meant it as a legacy for his children. To let the farm go would be letting Daniel’s dream die. She couldn’t let that happen.

  Would the church help her? Ja, but Bishop Yoder had already talked to her once about marrying again. The help would most likely come with the condition that she obediently sell her farm and marry Levi Zook or one of the other widowers in the church. She shuddered at the thought of the other two men the bishop had mentioned as possible husbands for her. Both of them were old enough to be her father.

  Then there was Bram. He must have money. He had already spent so much on his farm, but where did he get it? He’d come from Chicago with nothing, but he now owned a farm, horse and buggy, and she had seen a brand-new hay rake and a plow in his barn. Most people she knew weren’t spending money—they didn’t have it. But Bram did. More than enough, it seemed, and he was planning to spend more on a new stove. Was he just going into debt for everything? Ne, even she knew banks wouldn’t lend money for nothing. So he must have brought it with him from Chicago.

  The question circled through her mind: Where did he get his money?

  Chapter Ten

  A red sliver of sunrise pierced through the clinging mist of predawn coolness, promising another hot, dry day. Bram glanced at the sky above. The early-morning gray had given way to clear blue in a sweep from east to west. Not a cloud in sight. A good Saturday morning for a barn raising.

  Partner’s steady trot echoed in the morning stillness as the road led through a stand of sugar maples. The only other noise came from the treetops, where birds chirped and whistled, their predawn singing already done.

  Bram settled back in the buggy seat. How long had it been since he had heard a car horn? Did he miss it?

  He could come up with a whole list of other things he missed. Smoking. He hadn’t had a cigarette since that day in Goshen. An electric refrigerator with cold cuts and cheese for his sandwiches. Telephones. Movies. Music. He missed going to the jazz clubs. That music spoke to his soul.

  But staying in Chicago hadn’t been an option, not with Kavanaugh’s contract out on him. He could have gone west, taken on a new identity, a new job. He could have been enjoying electric fans on hot days instead of sweltering in this breathless humidity.

  No, he would never have felt safe, always leery of someone recognizing him when he least expected it.

  And he would never have met Ellie. The sound of her name caressed his mind with the soft flutter of wings, opening the doors that contained memories of her. He held each one in turn: standing in his kitchen, talking with her as they rode in his buggy, the light touches she let him give her.

  Would she be at today’s barn raising? John and the boys would, but would Ellie come?

  The dark red shadow hovering at the edge of his mind pulsed. Kavanaugh. Was he still a threat? Bram hadn’t seen any sign of him for more than two weeks, even though he had made the rounds through the surrounding towns. His hand slipped down to feel the gun in his pocket. He couldn’t let his guard down, not yet.

  Another buggy turned onto the road in front of him, and from behind he could hear the sound of a third one. He must be getting close. John had said to go west to County Line Road, then north and follow the buggies. The quiet of the morning was broken.

  The barnyard was full of straw hats and black bonnets as families arrived. Bram found a place for his buggy among the others. He tied up Partner, loosened his harness and got his toolbox out of the back. Bram caught the eye of a young boy with a water bucket, and the boy nodded. Partner would be well taken care of by the crew of hostlers too young to help with the carpentry.

  He made his way to the spot where the men were gathering.

  “Good morning,” he said, nodding to several men he didn’t know, and then he joined John and the other men from his church.

  “Good morning, Bram,” said John. His greeting was seconded by nods from several of the others. “There are coffee and doughnuts over by the house.”

  “That sounds wonderful,” said Matthew as he joined the group. “But at least I had a good breakfast this morning. How is that bachelor cooking these days, Bram? Did you even have breakfast?” He smiled as he shook Bram’s hand.

  “My toast and coffee were just fine this morning.” Bram set his toolbox on the ground. “Both of them black.”

  The men all laughed. Bram gave them a grin as he headed over to the long tables set up in the yard outside the house.

  Plates piled high with fresh doughnuts filled one table, while several women filled coffee cups. Ellie wasn’t one of them. Was she even here? How could he ask John without sounding too obvious?

  Bram scanned the crowd as he headed back to his toolbox and caught sight of his brother, Samuel, talking with some men from the Shipshewana district. Samuel at a barn raising? This was something new. What was he doing here?

  When Samuel looked up, Bram nodded to him, but Samuel turned his back. Well, had he expected anything else?

  * * *

  “Levi Zook is here.” Lovina spoke low into Ellie’s ear, but every woman in the crowded kitchen heard her.

  “Did he bring his children?” Mam was across the table from Ellie, where they both worked at rolling out dough.

  “Ja, all ten of them.”

  “His Waneta is a big help, isn’t she?”

  “She and Elias are sixteen years old already. She’ll make a wonderful-gut wife for some lucky young man in a few years.”

  Ellie let the talk swirl around her. Levi and his large family took everyone’s attention wherever they went. Just as well for him. There were plenty of young women ready to mother his little ones.

  She rolled the dough until it filled her half of the table, then picked up the doughnut cutter.

  If she had married Levi, her own little ones would be lost in that crowd. Levi’s children were older than hers, at least most of them. Her Johnny and his Lavern were together in school, and he had one younger, Susan’s age. His little Sam.

  Ja, her heart went out to those poor motherless children, too, but not so much that she wanted to be part of that family.

  The dough on the table filled with empty circles as the cut doughnuts
went to the women frying them up. Circle after circle, blending together into an unbroken pattern.

  She’d be lost in Levi’s family. Daniel would be gone forever.

  She gathered up the leftover dough and rerolled it into a smaller round, ready to be cut again.

  If she married again... Her thoughts flitted to Bram and then back. She could marry again, and when she did, it would have to be because it was a man, not his children, who loved her and needed her.

  “That’s the last of the dough.” Mam emptied the final bowl onto the table and started rolling it out.

  “How many have we made?”

  “I counted fifteen dozen,” said a dark-haired woman at the sink.

  Ellie took a deep breath of hot oil and sugar. She loved sweets, but after this morning she for sure wasn’t hungry for a doughnut.

  She poured herself a cup of coffee and stepped out onto the back porch to get some fresh air. Lovina joined her, carrying plates piled high with delicious-smelling doughnuts ready to take to the serving table.

  “Do you know that man over there?” She nodded to a heavyset man helping himself to a handful of doughnuts.

  “Ne, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him before. Why?”

  “He was asking about Bram. He asked me if I knew him and which district we lived in.”

  “Was he just being friendly?”

  “Ne, I don’t think so. He was very unpleasant.”

  Ellie’s fingers turned cold around her coffee cup. Was Bram in some kind of trouble?

  “It’s probably someone who knew him from before. It’s really none of our concern.”

  Lovina stared at her and then leaned close, her voice quiet.

  “You don’t fool me, Ellie Miller. You ignore Levi Zook, a man who’s had his eye on you for months, but then you turn all shades of red whenever Bram’s name is mentioned. Don’t act like you don’t care.”

  Lovina was right. She cared more than she wanted to admit.

  * * *

  “Isaac Sherk has built more barns than anyone else in the area.” Matthew moved next to Bram, ready to team up with him. “He’ll divide us into crews, and then each crew will work on a section of the barn.”

  Isaac moved from group to group, assigning work. Bram and the rest of the men from the Eden district were given the west wall, and they headed in that direction. Bram loaded his tool belt with his hammer and chisel and then grabbed a handful of nails from a nearby keg.

  “First we put the frame together,” Matthew said, “then we raise that up to join the other frames. After that, the rafters are raised, and then we start on the walls and roof.”

  “How many of these have you been to?”

  Matthew grinned. “Only one, and I was a little shaver then, but I remember how it went. Once you’ve been to a barn raising, you never forget.”

  Bram looked around at the other teams. There were nearly a hundred men here from the surrounding districts. He looked from face to face. Habit. It was hard to break. Kavanaugh wouldn’t be here, not in a million years.

  As the groups organized themselves and started pulling the lumber they needed off the pile of waiting saw beams and planks, the sounds of building started. The hum of voices in the cool, moist air was punctuated by the echoing slap of wood hitting wood, the rhythmic sighing of saws and the occasional thwack of a hammer sounding like a car backfiring in the early-morning air. The work progressed as the men warmed up, a shout or two could be heard, and then the hammers started in earnest. Finishing the framing for the walls became a friendly race between teams, and soon there were shouts of triumph as the first wall was raised into place.

  Bram kept busy working with his team. As the oldest and most experienced among them, Eli Schrock fell into the lead position for the crew, and Bram watched him carefully. Fitting the big beams together was easy with such an experienced foreman, and their wall was soon up.

  When they started hammering the planks onto the frame to enclose the barn, Bram was on more familiar footing. It seemed that most of the men were, because the level of conversation increased and the rhythm of the hammering settled into a steady series of thwack, thwack, bump from each man’s hammer. Bram was enjoying the repetition when he caught the words of a conversation from the Shipshewana group. It was Samuel’s voice.

  “Ja, you’re right about that. I’m just not sure how far we can trust him.”

  “Does he think he’ll just fit in again, after living in Chicago all those years?” This was from the man working next to Samuel.

  “I don’t see how he can, but I know one thing. He isn’t going to waltz in and take what’s mine.”

  “Your old dat gave you that farm, not him.”

  “Ja, but he’s always had his own way. It would be like him to try to buy me out with that money he brought back from Chicago. Don’t you have to wonder where he got all that money?”

  Bram looked around the portion of wall he was working on. Samuel had a hammer in his hand, but he wasn’t using it. He moved from one man to another a few feet away and started talking to him. A troublemaker, just like he was as a kid. Just like Dat. The gossip Samuel was spreading made his stomach grind. All he needed now was for Samuel’s rumor to reach the wrong ears. The reward for leading the feds to Kavanaugh’s gang had been a hefty one, enough to let him live comfortably for years, but he still had to lie low until his job was finished and Kavanaugh was out of the way for good.

  Forget it. Forget him. Bram bent the next two nails under his hammer and gave up. He motioned for Reuben to come over to take his place, then he sat down on a pile of shingles.

  Bram let his hands dangle between his knees and stared at the ground. What could he do about Samuel’s gossip? The thread of truth in Samuel’s words was just enough to hang him, and what if those words got around to Ellie?

  “Worn-out, Bram?”

  Matthew was next to him, holding out a dipper of water. Bram took it, downed half of it in one gulp and handed it back to Matthew.

  “I guess I’m not used to this work yet.”

  “I volunteered to make a trip into Goshen. The sawmill there has donated another stack of lumber, and I’m going to pick it up. Do you want to go with me? I could use the extra hands.”

  “Ja, for sure.” Any excuse to get away from his brother.

  * * *

  Matthew drove the patient horses through the middle of town on Lincoln, past the courthouse square. Bram spotted a policeman still watching the intersection from the police booth. The day he had come into town to buy his farm seemed like a lifetime ago. Had it really only been a few weeks?

  Traffic picked up as they neared the industrial district along the canal on the west side of town. After the quiet of the Amish community, the noise of the factories was deafening. Matthew threaded the borrowed team and wagon between parked dray wagons and trucks to the sawmill. They loaded the lumber and were soon heading back through town.

  “It’s good to get away from those factories,” Matthew said as he turned the horses onto Main Street.

  “When I first got back from Chicago, I thought I’d go deaf from the silence in the country, but now...”

  Bram stopped. He had been letting his gaze move from face to face as they drove by the storefronts when he saw what he had been looking for. Dreading.

  Habit paid off.

  Bram didn’t move, but he let his eyes slide across Kavanaugh’s face and ahead to the next corner. He saw Kavanaugh’s reaction, though. A flash of puzzled recognition, the faltered step.

  Don’t panic. Bram took a breath, then another, keeping them even and controlled. His mind raced. Did Kavanaugh suspect it was him? He couldn’t risk a glance back. Up until now, Kavanaugh had had no idea he was in the area, but if the gangster saw through the disguise... He forced the muscles in his neck to re
lax. Just ride.

  His ears roared. He resisted the urge to jump from the slow wagon, to run as fast as he could. Any second now, he’d feel the pluck of Kavanaugh’s hand on his sleeve. He’d turn around, look into the gangster’s eyes and then who knew what would happen, what Kavanaugh would do. Bram put his hand in his pocket, grasping the comforting butt of his pistol.

  Matthew’s voice filtered through the roaring in Bram’s ears.

  “...getting married in the fall. He’s already started his beard...”

  What was he talking about?

  “...says it makes him feel married already. How about you?”

  “What?”

  “I was talking about my brother. He’s starting his beard now. Says he’s old enough. What do you think? Should he wait until after the wedding?”

  “I guess he could start it now. It’ll make a difference in how he looks, won’t it?”

  Ja, that was what he needed. A beard. He needed to work himself into the community even deeper. A man his age without a beard stood out. He’d stop shaving today. He’d blend in so well his own brother wouldn’t be able to pick him out of a crowd.

  The roaring in his ears eased, and he swallowed. It might be enough. Bram risked a glance back down Main as Matthew turned the team onto Lincoln heading east, out of town. Kavanaugh had turned to follow the wagon, weaving through the other pedestrians to keep it in sight. He was watching Bram, but the puzzled look was still there. He wasn’t sure. Yet.

  Desperate for some way, any way, to keep Kavanaugh off his track, Bram’s mind raced. Would a beard be enough of a disguise? A cold wrench clamped around Bram’s gut. What if it wasn’t enough? What if, by some freak chance, Kavanaugh found him anyway? He knew too well what the gangster would do to him. To Ellie...to the children.

  “Are you all right?” Matthew’s voice made him jump. Bram fought for control.

  “Ja, I’m fine. I just thought I saw someone I knew.”

 

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