by Kelly Irvin
The last thing Nathan wanted to do was make it harder for Jennie. He wanted to make it easier. The thought that he had done the opposite hurt like lashes from a whip on his bare skin. “She’s been through a lot. What does that mean? What happened to her?”
Laura plopped onto the bench and lifted the s’more to her mouth. It remained suspended in air for a few seconds. “We all want to see her happy, to see her remarry. It’s what the Gmay wants for her. None of us want to see her make a bad choice and be hurt.”
The words again reverberated in the air. “Was there something with her first husband, something that no one is saying?”
“Jennie’s story is Jennie’s story to tell. Not mine.” Laura took a big bite, the graham cracker breaking into pieces that fell onto the plate she held under it. Marshmallow oozed out and dripped on her fingers. She licked them. A blissful smile made her look younger. She would have been a pretty woman. “My advice to you is the same as hers. Get your house in order before you start barging into someone else’s.”
He hadn’t asked for Laura’s advice. But she was Jennie’s friend. She’d known her since childhood. “I have no intention of hurting her. Quite the opposite.”
“If you make her care for you and then decide you can’t or won’t pursue joining our faith or the bishop determines you’re not fit to join, you will do damage to someone who’s had her share of pain in this life.”
“What, what pain?”
“Don’t concern yourself with the past, only with the future.”
If only it were that simple. His own past turned up in the form of a brother he hadn’t seen in years. His father’s future, on the other hand, invaded his dreams at night. “I can’t map the future without learning from the past.”
Had he said those words? How could he be so interested in her past when he hadn’t addressed his own? He thrust the thought aside and concentrated on trying to read Laura’s face.
“It seems to me you have to learn from your own past first.”
Was she a mind reader? He shook his head, baffled at her insight. Age or female intuition? “What do you know about my past?”
“Why does your brother want you to go home to see your family?”
“Eavesdropping is not a desirable habit.”
“Being old means I can get away with a lot. I’ve earned the right. Did you know I delivered all seven of Jennie’s kinner?” She rubbed together swollen hands, a look of discomfort on her wrinkled face. “They’re like my grandkinner. Practically family. I have a right to weigh in on any man who might become important in their lives.”
“I can understand that.” He did understand. He wanted family relationships like that in his life. “I would never hurt them.”
“Sometimes things don’t work out the way we want them to. Sometimes our actions and desires cause hurt.” She contemplated the pieces of chocolate and graham cracker on her plate. “No matter how sweet our intentions.” She fixed him with a stare so sharp it seemed to slice through old memories and scar tissue. “Gott’s plan is Gott’s plan. We don’t know what it is. You need to pray long and hard before you take another step that affects people around you. People like that sweet woman coming this way.”
The sound of laughter floated on the air. Blake’s laugh, a deep chuckle, mingled with higher and sweeter trills.
“Your brother fits right in.” Laura didn’t sound pleased about it. “He’s not fishing for an Amish girl too, is he?”
“No. No, of course not.” Nathan surveyed his brother from afar. He was chasing Cynthia and Celia with a handful of night crawlers, gooey, nasty, wiggly worms. “He may be older than me, but he’s still a big kid.”
The kids, including Blake, rushed into the pavilion, pushing and shoving. Jennie trailed behind with Mary Katherine. Without looking his way, she began to stuff hot dog buns and condiments in bags. Preparing to go.
“S’mores, s’mores, we want s’mores.” Celia and Cynthia chanted. “Lots of s’mores.”
“Me too, me too.” Blake joined in. “Double-deckers, all around. I’ll help.”
Laura handed Nathan a chunk of chocolate. “Stick to s’mores. They’re easy.”
He glanced at Jennie. She didn’t look his way.
Nothing was easy.
TWENTY-FOUR
A person could only hide out so long in a barn. Leo adjusted the poultices of bran and Epsom salt around Red’s legs, patting each one to make sure it held firmly in place. He planned to stay here as long as Red needed him. He wasn’t hiding, just being a good steward of his resources. Red neighed, but the sound had ceased to be frantic in recent days. He shifted his feet and his long tail swished away the flies that buzzed them both.
The barn’s warm air was dank with humidity. Bits of hay and dust swirled, backlit by sun that seeped between boards shrunk with age and weather. Sweat soaked Leo’s shirt and dampened his face, but he felt at home, at ease. Red still needed him, pure and simple. No expectations for more than food, water, and banishment of his pain.
“I’m glad you’re feeling better.” He patted the horse’s rump. “One of these days I’ll be able to get you some company. Would you like that?”
Red’s head bobbed. His long, velvety nose brushed against Leo’s chest. It was “thank you” in any language. Leo scratched the spot between the horse’s ears. “You’re welcome.”
He received a soft whinny in response. Like Leo, Red didn’t talk much, but when he did he made it count. Leo stuck his hand in a canvas bag hanging from the stall railing and brought out half a dozen apple slices. “A treat because you deserve it.” He held out two. Red nibbled at them with a surprisingly delicate touch. His lips tickled Leo’s palm. He grinned and held out two more. “For good measure.”
People would think him crazy, talking so much to a horse, but Red asked little in return and seemed thrilled beyond measure with what he received. Most animals were like that, unlike humans. Leo longed for a poultice that would stop the pain where his heart should be. The wound that never quite healed. The memory of the previous day’s scene with Jennie after church reared. He lassoed it back into its corral with a desperation born of yet another sleepless night. He’d picked up the gauntlet thrown down by Aidan before the tornado. He’d gone out on the limb and Jennie had cut it off behind him.
The strange, yet familiar look of longing that had spread across her face even as she said no still baffled him. He breathed through a pain so persistent it was like an old friend on whom he could always depend. It didn’t matter. He still wanted to help her. He still needed to help her. With Matthew. And with the buggy. Somehow he would find a way to pay for another buggy or find one she could borrow. Plain folks were good about that sort of thing, but most of them didn’t have an extra buggy sitting around the homestead.
In the meantime work served as the only remedy. He would finish with Red and get to work. Red’s head bobbed. He whinnied as if he’d read Leo’s mind and agreed. Leo chuckled. “We’re a fine pair, aren’t we?”
Beau, who’d been stretched out on his back, paws in the air, sleeping, barked, a loud, vociferous sound, rolled over, and stood. They had company, it seemed.
Matthew Troyer stood half-in, half-out of the barn door. He had a contemptuous look on his thin, pimpled face that reminded Leo more of Atlee than Jennie. His head swiveled as he glanced around the barn. “Who are you talking to? To yourself?”
Beau continued to bark, his tail wagging in an ecstatic welcome. The dog loved visitors. He could not be counted on as a guard dog, however.
“Beau, be quiet. I’m talking to Red. Come on in.” Leo picked up a brush that he’d laid on the stall gate and began to curry the horse’s coat. He might not be able to swing the buggy yet, but Matthew had shown up and Leo was ready to help the boy solve his woes. “I’m surprised you came.”
Matthew stooped and patted Beau. The dog’s tail thumped on the floor in a rhythmic thwack, thwack. He followed when the boy leaned up against the stall, both arms pro
pped on the ledge. He was tall for a fourteen-year-old, broad through the shoulders and sturdy from years of field work. He probably wasn’t done growing, either. He was the spitting image of Atlee. Same black hair and big blue eyes made all the more brilliant by a deep tan. Same way of staring a person down. “Why do you say that?”
“It doesn’t look to me like you do much of anything your mudder asks—or tells—you to do. Like showing up here days after we roofed the barn.”
Matthew snorted in that disdainful way that reminded Leo of English kids he’d seen gathered outside the convenience store when he went into town. Like they knew what the whole world didn’t. “Things she asks me to do don’t always make much sense.”
“She’s your mudder. It doesn’t have to make sense.” He laid the brush down and wiped his hands on his pants. He tried to see some trace of Jennie in Matthew. A little in the nose maybe, the shape of his chin, the dimples. He had none of her sweet disposition. “Where did you learn to be so disrespectful—from your Englisch friends?”
“If I wanted to be pestered about how I act and what I do, I would’ve stayed home.” Matthew’s face contorted in a sneer. “Mudder was wrong again.” He started toward the door.
Leo couldn’t fail in his commitment to help Jennie with this, her oldest boy. She might never take that buggy ride with him, but he would do this for her. She had far, far to go with seven children. How she fared with the first would set the tone for all the rest. Much as he hated to talk, for her he would talk. And probe and keep at it, just as he kept at his efforts to help a horse in pain. He would do more for a boy who so obviously had pain. “Your daed and I were friends when we were kinner.”
Matthew stopped. His shoulders hunched. He turned, the sneer gone. “He had friends?”
The wondering tone spoke volumes. Why would a boy think his father had no friends growing up? “We all played together, but he was one of us that went to Indian Creek Lake to fish and went hunting and swimming, all the stuff you do now.”
Matthew kicked at the dirt with his boot, his effort to not care plain on his face. “Did you ever figure out what’s wrong with your horse?”
He wasn’t ready to ask the real questions yet. “Vet says it’s laminitis.” Leo explained the disease and motioned for Matthew to come into the stall. “Feel here. That’s his pulse.”
A look of concentration on his face, Matthew nodded. His fingers were long and thin. He let them run up Red’s leg. The horse tossed his head as if wondering who this interloper was and why Leo let him into their domain. “Is it painful?”
“Jah, but Todd has given him medicine for it. It’s much better. Laminitis is something a farmer should know about. Are you planning to farm?”
Matthew shook his head. “I came over here today because carpentry is better than being stuck outside plowing a field in the hot sun all afternoon.”
Pure honesty. Leo couldn’t help but laugh. Honesty was a good start. “What do you know about carpentry?”
“You make things out of wood.”
“Then we best get started.” He gave Red a last pat and led Matthew to his work shed, a modest structure he’d built himself. Squat, square, serviceable. His favorite place to simply be. Quiet reigned most days except for Beau’s snoring or the mingled chatter of birds and crickets outside the open windows. He had a view of Missouri fields planted in milo and corn that arched and waved in unison in a summer breeze. Not another soul within miles. Most days, he liked it that way.
“That’s a lot of stuff.” Matthew surveyed the shop, with its hodgepodge of tools and materials, his face intent. “A lot of tools.”
Inhaling the familiar, calming scent of cut wood and sawdust, Leo tried to see it through Matthew’s eyes. It was a lot of stuff, but everything had a job to do, everything in its place. A miter saw, a band saw, the gas generator he used to run the power tools, piles of wood, finished chairs, half-finished chairs, sculpted pieces of wood held tight in braces until ready for assembly, cans of varnish, tubes of glue, piles of sandpaper, worktables, cabinets, all the tools of the trade hanging from peg boards on the walls.
Matthew nudged a pile of walnut with his boot. “You start with a pile of wood and make something.”
“Something useful and beautiful.”
“We don’t care if it’s beautiful, do we?”
By we he meant the Gmay or Plain folks in general. The likes of Freeman Borntrager held utility in more esteem than beauty. Understandable, but a man could view the world in more than one way. “I give myself room to care.” He wasn’t sure why, but it meant something to him that his furniture was more than a place to sit or a drawer that held clothes. “Memories happen in the chairs. Meals are shared on the tables.”
A fanciful notion but one that got him through three or four days of sanding seats, arms, back slats, headrests, and rockers.
Matthew ran a hand across the double rocking chair that sat on the worktable, assembled but still requiring days of sanding and then the finish. “How many have you made, do you think?”
“Single rockers, at least fifty or sixty.” Leo moved to stand next to him, contemplating the days he’d spent cutting and sculpting the wood, creating the joinery, building the something from the nothing. “Doubles, only a few. Maybe a dozen.”
“How long does it take to make one?”
“I can make a single in eight or nine days.”
“It’s a lot of work.”
“It requires patience.”
“You don’t get bored?”
“I think. I think about the people who will sit in it and what they’ll talk about and the boplin they’ll rock.” The words jostled inside his head. So many words. He’d never told another soul. Words he longed to say to Jennie, he said to her son. Because he had promised to help. “The stories they’ll tell while they sit in it. Maybe a mudder and then the groossmammi in the afternoon, holding the bopli while the mudder fixes supper.”
“You think about all that?”
“I’m not just building a chair, I’m building a part of someone’s life.” He picked up a piece of sandpaper. After hours of sanding, it seemed an extension of his fingers. “A rocking chair lasts for generations, if it’s made right and sturdy. It’s passed down and its stories go with it.”
“Never thought about it.”
Matthew likely hadn’t thought about much of anything at his age. “Same way when you’re out there working in the fields.”
“What do you mean?”
“Farms grow crops that feed people’s bellies.” Leo ran his hand over one of the seats. He’d spent hours sanding it to a high sheen, bringing out the natural grain. “They’ll sit at the supper table and eat corn on the cob or green beans or tomatoes or bread and talk about their days.”
“It mostly feels like hot, sweaty work.”
“Work feels good.” Leo offered him a smile. “Work gives us purpose.”
“How come you don’t farm then?”
“Because I do this.” He waved his hand at the shop. “I like working on my own.”
The sneer was back. Like a reflex Matthew couldn’t suppress. “Then maybe you don’t want me around.”
Leo handed him the sandpaper. “I’m no fool. If I can get someone else to do the sanding, I’ll take it.”
Matthew laughed, a rusty sound as if he wasn’t used to it. “For how long?”
“Takes three or four days.”
“Three or four days!”
“It’ll be a thing of beauty by the time you finish.” And he would learn the value of patience. Two birds with one stone. “It’s a present for Todd Riker and his wife. They’re expecting.”
“You’re doing all this work for a present.” His expression baffled, Matthew took a swipe at the arm with the sandpaper. “You’ll not make a penny from it?”
“They’ll sit in this chair with twin babies.” Leo took sandpaper to the other arm, demonstrating the smooth, even stroke. “Like this. What could be better?”
Matthew shrugged, but he began to sand with a softer touch.
Satisfied at this small start, Leo stood back and watched. The boy had shown up. He’d listened. Now he worked.
All was not lost with Matthew Troyer.
Jennie might have gone to the lake with Nathan Walker, but she had entrusted her son to Leo.
TWENTY-FIVE
Jennie gathered her box close to her chest and shoved with her shoulder through Amish Treasures’ door. Her latest load should bring a good sum toward replacing her buggy and the other equipment destroyed by the tornado. She couldn’t keep using Peter’s. The tiny bell over the door tinkled its welcoming notes. The sun peeked in the windows, promising a hot mid-June day in the making. Inside, half a dozen shoppers were spread out, one looking at quilts, another holding a Plain doll in one hand, and another perusing the paperback books.
Mary Katherine looked up from the cash register, smiled, and waved, before going back to her customer, who appeared to have purchased one of Iris Beachy’s crib quilts and several candles. The aroma of lilac floated in the air, mixed with a hodgepodge of other scents emanating from handmade sachets, potpourris, and dozens of candles. Nothing anxious or fearful about this place. In fact, it seemed light and sweet and full of happy thoughts.
Jennie slid the box onto the long counter that ran from the cash register to the door that led to a storage room. Mary Katherine bid her customer good-bye and hustled over to Jennie, her skirt rustling with purpose. “You made it.” She peered into the box, her smile widening. “That scarf is a beautiful piece of work. The tablecloths too. These will fly off the shelves.”
Jennie clasped her hands in front of her, willing them to stop shaking. “The barn is fixed. Everyone is healthy. I had time to make several pieces. Do you have me on the schedule to work today?”