IN PLAIN View

by Olivia Newport

  “I think,” he said, “that undoubtedly we will use the land. Our young people, in particular, look for recreation—a picnic, a hike, a safe place for outings or courting. Even if a new park were not situated between several of our farms, we would use it. Many of the people in town are happy to have us here. Almost everyone in this room hires Tom Reynolds for taxiing and hauling, and he is one of the people who would like to see a new park. Since they have invited us, I see no harm in responding to the gesture of friendship.”

  For a few minutes, the room was still and silent. Then a few boots shuffled. The bishop cleared his throat but did not speak.

  “If Rufus were in charge, I would do it,” Gideon said.

  Around the room, murmurs of agreement buzzed. Rufus stifled a sigh. He had no intention of leading anything.

  “There’s an enormous boulder smack in the middle of that land,” Samuel observed. “Are they planning to move it?”

  “It’s too big to yank out with a tractor.”

  “There’s always dynamite.”

  “Or leave it alone.”

  “It’s a mistake to get involved.” Ike crossed his arms.

  Rufus dipped his brush and reached for the trim above the door.

  Old Ezra gripped a ladder and moved it to a new spot. “Where is that younger boy of yours, Eli? He’s tall enough that he could be of some help around here.”

  Annie spun on her heel and left the kitchen. No point standing there staring at the key. She had not driven her Prius in six months. The only reason she still owned it was to placate her mother’s hope that her lifestyle change was temporary.

  The house was empty. Even the cat was nowhere in sight. Her mother’s committee meeting would consume the afternoon. Her father seldom was home from work before six. Penny would gab the afternoon away with her childhood best friend.

  For the last three days, Annie had used electricity freely. When she walked into a room, she flipped the light switch without thinking about where the power came from. When the dishwasher was full, she turned it on. When the telephone rang and she was nearest to it, she answered. She stayed up late and watched two movies with Penny, complete with microwave popcorn. When her mother’s computer froze, Annie knew just what to do to get it going again. Her hair hung freely around her face and shoulders, and she was glad for the furnace that fired up when the overnight temperatures dipped below forty. She did not think twice about the photos her mother snapped constantly. Annie wore comfortable jeans—except for the red dress—and not once did she have to stumble over choosing the right German word or get hopelessly lost in a dinner conversation.

  It was surprisingly easy to be at home. Comfortable. Automatic. And in this situation, being English was the most peaceful option.

  Annie could find something to read and pass a quiet afternoon until her family returned.

  Or she could do what She most wanted to do. See Ruth Beiler. At least she could try.

  Annie pulled a finger across the spines of books on the third shelf in the family room. She turned off lights where no one was sitting and straightened the pillows on the sofa, which she and Penny had left in disarray during their morning sister talk. But Annie was simply passing through the family room, and she knew it. Her cell phone, with Ruth’s number in it, was in the canvas bag she packed when she left Westcliffe. Now she went to the closet, opened the bag, and removed the phone.

  Then she sat on the bed. As automatic as so many things felt in the last few days, this was different. She lived the English life for the sake of peaceful hours with her family, not expecting them to adjust their lives to her choices.

  But this. This was a different sort of choice. She knew Ruth Beiler now used a cell phone daily—even texting.

  Ruth might not answer, though. She might be at work or in a class or studying in the library with her phone silenced.

  And if she did answer—and had some free time—Annie would be making her next choice simply by turning on her phone now.

  She would take the Prius’s key off the hook, get in the car, and drive to Ruth’s dorm across from the main university campus.

  Annie sat for ten minutes with the phone in her hand, still turned off, and her lips pressed together. This was not an emergency by any stretch of the imagination. But she’d had no warning she was going to come home, so she could not arrange a visit by mail. Ruth was so close, yet so far.

  Finally, Annie flipped the phone open and composed a short text. AM IN TOWN. FREE THIS AFT?

  She pushed Send then held the phone in her hand, unsure whether she wanted it to vibrate.

  It did. YES! WOULD LOVE TO SEE YOU. HOW?

  BE RIGHT THERE. SEND. Turn the phone off. Flip it closed.

  Annie jammed the phone in a back pocket just in case she had a true emergency in the course of the afternoon. She stuck her driver’s license and some cash in another pocket and moved swiftly toward the kitchen. If she slowed down, she might feel the guilt.

  The car key fit into her hand in a familiar mold.

  Eleven

  I’m a failure at being Amish!” Annie flopped onto Ruth Beiler’s dorm bed, landing on her back with her arms splayed over her head. “I sent you a text when it was not an emergency, just because I wanted to see you. And I drove over here in a car I still own.” She did not want to admit aloud to wearing the red dress or the number of movies she had seen in the last three days. Or her reaction to Randy Sawyer.

  Ruth nudged Annie’s feet over to make space to sit on the end of the bed. “I ran out on my own baptism. I win the Rotten Amish contest.”

  Annie laughed and sat up. “Maybe I’m not meant to be Amish. I love my simpler life—most of the time—but three days at home with my parents and look what I’ve done. Is that all it takes to break my resolve?”

  “Your family is English, Annalise. You are not baptized Amish. You have done nothing wrong.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “Good. Because I’m not. How can I expect my family to honor my choices if I can’t honor them myself?”

  “We all choose every day.” Ruth leaned her shoulder against Annie’s. “I made a huge choice when I left home. Outwardly, leaving meant I was choosing not to be Amish. On the inside, though, I have to choose every day to stay here and stay in school. Even after two years I have trouble belonging in this world.”

  “I think you’ve done very well.” Annie raised her hands to tick off her points.” You’re a good student, you use a computer, you have a job, you found a church, you’re getting along with your mother.”

  Ruth got up and began to tidy the university-supplied desk next to her bed. “And I dress like a nerd, I still braid my hair, I don’t see the point of reality TV, and other students don’t know what to make of me other than helping them in a study group.”

  “I assure you, reality TV is no great loss.” Annie leaned forward with her elbows on her knees.

  “It would be something to talk about, that’s all.” Ruth snapped closed the rings of an open binder. “When are you going back to Westcliffe?”

  “I’m ready to go now, but I have to get a ride.” Annie put both hands up. “I drove here, so I have to drive back to my parents’ house, but after that I’m hanging up my keys again. I repent!”

  Ruth smiled and laughed softly.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “You’re beating yourself up about driving, and I’m learning to drive.”

  “What!” Annie sat up straight.

  Ruth nodded. “I’ve had a permit for a long time. I have to carry some kind of ID that English will accept. A couple of friends have given me a few lessons.”

  “See! You do have friends. Someone who will teach you to drive and still speak to you afterward is the truest friend of all.”

  “The first one moved away.” Ruth laughed. “Maybe that was her way of saying the lessons were not working out.”

  Annie swatted Ruth’s shoulder.

 
“The second one is from a military family and is a woman on a mission.”

  “I like her already.”

  “Mostly I’ve steered away from any busy streets and have only driven in broad daylight, but Lauren let me drive her car home from downtown at night.”

  “Lauren?”

  “My new suitemate. She wears army clothes all the time, but she looks at me like I’m a regular person.”

  “You are a regular person.”

  “I don’t understand half the stuff she says. Body armor and assault weapons and explosives. Apparently in her family, that’s dinner table conversation.”

  “I’d like to meet her.”

  “I wish she were here now. Another time.”

  “Let’s go driving.” Annie jangled the key to her Prius. “We’ll go out on the interstate.”

  Ruth shook her head. “I’m too nervous. I’m used to the speed of a horse.”

  “Just picture a lot of horses. Galloping. We’ll stay in the slow lane, I promise.”

  Annie met Ruth’s eyes and saw the gleam of desire. With a grin, Ruth clutched the key in her hand and slung her purse over her shoulder.

  Ruth gripped the steering wheel at nine and three, amazed yet again at the sensation of freedom. The car was not hers, and she did not have a license. But in that moment she could choose where to go, and getting ready did not involve the tedious process of harnessing horses or checking their shoes.

  “It’s not so different from driving a buggy,” Annalise said. “You have to be aware of everything happening around you on the road. React appropriately with your feet rather than reining in the horses or pulling on the buggy’s brakes.”

  Ruth nodded. Annalise was right. Even on the bus or in someone else’s car, Ruth found her body reacting slightly to what she saw around her. She knew what it felt like when a driver took a fraction of a second longer to slow than she would have liked. Pedestrians ready to step off a curb put her on full alert even as a passenger. She recognized when a driver did not slow down enough for a turn and her own body fought the centrifugal force that pressed her against the inside of the passenger door.

  Still. Driving. What would her mother think? Even Rufus did not drive a car, not even to haul what he needed for his work. He hired Tom Reynolds for that.

  She negotiated out of the dorm parking lot and onto Austin Bluffs, heading west toward the mountains. Annalise murmured encouragement as Ruth adjusted to the speed limit and moved her eyes frequently between mirrors and the view out the windshield.

  “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” Annalise answered Ruth’s smile with one of her own. “It’s a cultural milestone, Ruth! You’re driving!”

  “Yes I am.” Ruth pressed her lips together in focus. They crossed over Nevada Avenue, and she saw the signs for I-25. Choosing north would take them toward Monument. Choosing south would take them toward Pueblo. And toward Westcliffe.

  “We can go where you want to go,” Annalise said.

  Ruth smoothly entered the interchange that would glide the car into the northbound traffic.

  “Don’t slow down,” Annalise said. “Accelerate to enter traffic at a steady speed.”

  Ruth nodded, blew out her breath, and checked mirrors. Even she knew that her first experience of merging onto the interstate was perfect. Sitting back in the seat, she let out her breath.

  “How far shall we go?” Annalise asked. “Monument? Castle Rock? Denver?”

  Ruth shook her head. “Not Denver. That’s too far.” Too far from what, she asked herself. Too far from her dorm room? Too far from the valley where her heart longed to be?

  They went past the exits, many of them marking places Ruth had never visited in a routine that alternated between classes and work shifts, punctuated on Sundays by attending a nearby church. Though she had left the San Luis Valley region, her world was contained in a simple framework.

  The sky shone blue and broad and bright before her. The Rockies rose bronze and unyielding on her left. The car rumbled softy forward over gray wideness.

  Ruth liked the immediate response to even slight pressure on the accelerator.

  She liked the effortlessness of steering a vehicle, compared to the slow, awkward maneuverings of a team of horses.

  She liked adjusting the seat to fit her.

  She liked being enclosed and keeping the temperature comfortable.

  She liked the speed.

  Ruth glanced at her passenger. “Annalise, I’m going to say something I’ve never said before in my entire life.”

  Annalise smiled slowly. “Can’t wait.”

  “Wheeee!”

  Twelve

  May 1776

  Christian heard the rustle of the corn and looked up, alarmed. The sound came too fast, the steps too heavy and too many. Instinctively he turned his head toward the house, though it was too distant to see from his western field. Despite his first impulse at the breakfast table that morning, he had agreed Magdalena could take the small cart for a half day to visit her friend Rebekah. No doubt she would also drop by Nathanael’s family farm. That meant Babsi was home alone with the smallest children—and heavily pregnant.

  Christian dropped the knife he was using for digging out weeds and stood up straight. A moment later, three men drew their three horses to a halt in front of him.

  “Good morning, gentlemen.” Unafraid to look them straight in the eye, Christian assessed them in turn.

  “Which way did they go?” One of the riders had trouble stilling his mount.

  “They? I assure you I have been alone in my field all morning.” Though he refused to look at the path they had taken, Christian knew the intruders had flattened countless ears of corn. These men were British sympathizers. He had seen them before.

  “Four treasonous Patriots came this way,” the man said. “We saw where they turned off the road. They cannot have gone anywhere else.”

  Christian shook his head. “I have not seen them.”

  “They turned into your field not four minutes ago. You are hiding them.”

  Christian made a wide sweep with one arm. “I’m growing corn, gentlemen, as I do every year. That is all. I hardly think I would be able to disguise four beasts and their riders in a half-grown cornfield.”

  “How do we know you would not give them aid?” As the man’s horse continued to strain against the reins, the hilt of his sword glinted in the sun.

  “I have nothing to do with your dispute.”

  “Dispute! Man, do you not understand that this is war?”

  “I have nothing to do with your war, either. I only wish to live at peace with all men.”

  “You delude yourself, good sir. If you are not for us, you are against us.”

  “I am against no man.” Christian spoke with calm. “If I might be permitted, I ask you to kindly take care of my crop on your way back to the road. It may provide your sustenance one day.”

  “We are not going anywhere until we find the traitors.”

  Christian stepped to one side. “Then I will not detain you further.”

  “If we find these men in your field, we will be back for you. Your Amish pretensions do not deceive us.”

  “It is not my intention to deceive you. I speak truth when I tell you I have seen no Patriots come through my land.”

  The man snorted. “Soon enough you will have to choose a side. If you don’t choose wisely, you will be as traitorous as they.”

  Christian said nothing. What good could come from antagonizing them?

  At the crack of a whip, the horses thundered through the corn.

  Jacob had had enough of the rain for one day. No doubt the farmers of Pennsylvania were happy for some moisture in their fields, but once he left the stone-paved streets of Philadelphia, the risk of a wagon wheel bogging down in muddy country roads would make the trip home to Berks County tedious.

  For the moment, though, Jacob did not want to be anywhere else but in the city where his parents had met.

&n
bsp; He had come to Philadelphia on a routine supply trip, with lists from a few of his neighbors and plenty of space in his wagon for any saltpeter that might have found its way to the city in an unrecorded manner. Only a few hours ago he was eating breakfast in his sister’s kitchen. The simple note from his brother-in-law came by messenger. Nearly giggling, Sarah read it aloud. Come to the State House. We will make history today.

  When Jacob and Sarah arrived at the brick-towered State House, they could not get anywhere near the building, nor catch any sight of Sarah’s husband. Drays, coaches, and chaises congested the streets around the State House. Pedestrians from every neighborhood of the city swarmed the flat brick sidewalks. Despite the steady rain, hundreds—then thousands—pressed in to plant their feet in the yard behind the State House.

  “There’s Emerson.” Sarah pointed, and Jacob saw her relief at the sight of her husband in the throng.

  Even in her layers of petticoats, slender Sarah was nimble enough to twist among the crowd and devise her own path to the other side of the yard. Jacob, requiring more space to maneuver respectfully, kept his eye on the crimson dress his sister sported that day. Her feathered hat made her easy to spot. A step or two at a time, he crossed the yard politely, catching snatches of conversation in the process.

  “Pennsylvania needs an assembly that represents the will of the people.”

  “We’re here to show we mean business. We’re through being bullied by the British or our own Assembly.”

  “By the end of the day, the Assembly will be out on their ears. We’ll have men of vision running Pennsylvania.”

  “Is it true?” Jacob asked as soon as he reached Emerson and Sarah. “Is the Assembly to be ousted?” He wiped rain from his eyes and strained to bring into focus the scene unfolding before him.

  Emerson nodded. “How fortuitous that you are in Philadelphia just now. I knew you wouldn’t want to miss this, not after all the risks you’ve been taking for the cause.”

  Sarah glanced around. “Are you sure you ought to speak so forthrightly, Emerson?”

  Her husband threw his head back and laughed freely. “This is a Patriot crowd if ever there was one. We are among like-minded souls.”