Finding Hope

by Janice Kay Johnson - His Best Friend's Baby

  He studied her. Blinked a few times. “I will do it for you when you want to cook chicken.”

  Here she’d been wallowing in the idealistic vision of farm-to-table without letting herself think through the reality. He probably raised pigs and steers to eat, too—just as her daad and his family did. Hannah ate meat, which made her squeamishness hypocritical . . . but she still didn’t know if she could wring a neck.

  After a moment, she squared her shoulders and nodded. “But not until I learn how to, well, pluck the feathers and get it ready to cut up and cook.”

  He seemed mainly bemused, but might be amused, too. “We have plenty of beef and pork in the freezer.”

  Hannah relaxed. At least he hadn’t fired her on the spot. She took in the orchard of well-cared-for fruit trees, many in bloom, others shedding pale pink or white petals that carpeted the grass. Beyond, tied to taut wire strung between posts, were a few short rows of berries that he said were marionberries.

  “At the back of the property, near the pond, I’ve put in some blueberry bushes, too, not big yet, but I think we’ll get a good crop this year. We catch some fish in the pond, too. Zeb enjoys fishing. The raspberries are that way”—he waved vaguely—“but they don’t come ripe until July at the soonest.”

  A huge old walnut tree shaded the yard just behind the house.

  Hannah turned in place. A woodlot screened the property from its neighbor. A silo topped with a conical aluminum roof gleamed white. She caught a whiff of what might be a pigsty, but not so close as to be offensive. A few cows grazed in a field along with four massive draft horses and a smaller horse with a coat that was more red than brown, accented with black mane and tail.

  The grass was recently mowed; the paint on the side of the barn and the house behind her as well as the board fences was a crisp, clean white, the sky an arch of blue. Gideon Lantz must work hard to keep up his house and farm so well. Something of a perfectionist herself, she admired that.

  They entered the house through a combined mudroom and utility room, where she saw what had to be a hand-cranked wringer washing machine. She recognized it only from old photographs. Hannah hoped Gideon didn’t see her wince. Beside the washer sat a basket filled with clothespins. She had only vaguely noticed the lines outside, but had seen laundry on the line at her daad’s house.

  Inside, she greeted the kinder still at the kitchen table. Zeb gave her a big grin, while his sister looked shy and ducked her head. Ignoring her, Zeb started telling her what he liked taking for his school lunch, mixing English and Deitsh words in a way that made her laugh.

  Gideon stopped to lay a gentle hand on his daughter’s shoulder and spoke in his own language. Hannah made out her name and the word gut. As in, Rebekah was supposed to be good for this strange woman, Hannah guessed. That gentleness with his daughter made her heart squeeze again. The juxtaposition with his big, work-roughened hand . . .

  Hannah closed her eyes. She had to get over this acute awareness of Gideon, or she wouldn’t last in this job for two days.

  She made herself glance around the kitchen. As at her daad’s house, the stove and refrigerator would be fueled by propane. No dishwasher. Cupboard and counter space was generous, and a long, sturdy farm table in the middle of the large room would give her another prep surface.

  Gideon led her down steep steps into a cellar, cool and earthy smelling. The kerosene lantern he lit and carried illuminated walls lined with shelving that held some canning jars but nowhere near what Lilian still had laid by from last year. Several chest freezers were also hooked up to propane, Gideon told her. One was reserved for meat. Wooden bins held potatoes, onions, and dried-up apples.

  Those apples would make fine pies, she thought. Turning, she felt her upper arm bump Gideon’s.

  She glanced up to find him watching her with unexpected intensity, seeming . . . perturbed. Was it their proximity? Hannah became acutely aware of how close they stood to each other, how small this space was.

  That might be why he said so abruptly, “Use anything you can find. Now I have to get to work.”

  She felt an unfamiliar tremor inside, a reaction to the look in his eyes.

  Not a minute later, after leading her up to the kitchen, he strode out the back door, leaving her staring at his kinder, who stared back.

  * * *

  * * *

  The warmth and rich aromas of the barn welcomed Gideon once he’d fled the house. Or was that fled from the Englisch woman?

  This morning, he’d seen clearly all the problems with having her here. He was afraid she wouldn’t last any time. Frowning, he thought, maybe until the weekend. That would at least give him a respite.

  He shouldn’t have hired anyone whose primary skill was fancy cooking. Who wouldn’t kill a chicken and didn’t even know how to pluck the feathers. What else would they find that she couldn’t or wouldn’t be able to do?

  Guilt stewed in his stomach, too, at the memory of his daughter shrinking into herself because this woman he’d hired could neither talk to her nor understand her.

  For that reason, he wouldn’t plow today, although he was already behind. He should have every field seeded by now, but still had one large one to go. He intended to plant sunflowers this year, reducing the acreage he’d have in corn since there had been a glut of it last year, with prices sagging.

  He started the morning mucking out the stalls, adding to his compost pile behind the barn before spreading clean bedding. In no time, he had rolled up his sleeves and hung his hat on a nail, but still began to sweat.

  Then he milked their three nanny goats before turning them out as well. Carrying the milk into the house gave him a chance to find out how the new woman was coping.

  He was met by silence. No one in the kitchen. Before he could panic, he realized that she would be walking Zeb and Rebekah to school right now. Possibly already on her way home after leaving them. Tomorrow, he should join them so that Hannah could meet Susan Miller, his closest neighbor with a school-age kind. If she’d trust Hannah to escort her son, they could continue sharing the task.

  Putting the two cans of milk in the refrigerator, he returned to the barn. This would be a good day to clean harnesses and sharpen tools, the kind of small jobs that too often went undone when so much else demanded his attention.

  His buggy horse, Fergus, would soon be in need of shoeing. It occurred to Gideon he could ask Hannah to speak to her father. Samuel was the farrier who took care of all Gideon’s horses, and she could arrange a day for him to come.

  And here he was, loitering in the kitchen as if he had nothing better to do. Even an Englisch woman couldn’t get lost following the road back from the schoolhouse.

  The cherry tomatoes were planted close enough to the house he’d hear Hannah calling for him if she needed assistance. Gideon picked up a hoe from the barn and strode around it. Weeds not only drew nutrients from the soil, if they grew too tall, they would make picking the tomatoes difficult. Having to weed by hoe and hand was a nuisance, but vine-ripe, flavorful cherry tomatoes brought in high prices at auction and would be worth the more intensive labor. Or so he hoped.

  His goal was to get certified to sell his crops as organic, but that took proof of not having used pesticides for three years. In the meantime, he intended to try a variety of crops rather than only the corn, soybeans, and wheat common to local Amish farms. The produce auction house in town, so close, gave him options he hadn’t had as readily where he’d farmed before in New York.

  Gideon did still have two large fields planted with soybeans; once those were harvested, he’d plow under the stubble and replace the soybeans with corn. And, of course, he had a sizable field with early hay. Otherwise, he had planted pumpkins, squash, and the tomatoes. If he’d had a larger family to help pick, he could do more with tomatoes and the raspberries, but he’d decided that this year it wouldn’t hurt to try small amounts o
f a number of different crops. That was a good way of protecting himself from too much loss if one crop failed because of drought or pests. After a rainy spring in New York and an attack of rust, he’d had to tear out his raspberry plants. It hadn’t quite been a disaster, but closer than he liked, teaching him a valuable lesson.

  He saw Hannah striding up the driveway a short while later, her head turning, but as far as he could tell, she didn’t see him. He wondered which chores inside would seem most urgent in her view. Lunchtime would come soon enough. He’d let her figure out how to get by on her own until then.

  He just wished he had more confidence in a woman who knew almost nothing about their ways.

  The morning passed far more slowly than usual, with him worrying. Finally, his stomach growling and the sun high in the sky, he started back toward the house, stopping for a moment at the sight of clean sheets, towels, aprons and white undergarments hanging on the clothesline.

  He relaxed slightly. It would be good to sleep with clean sheets tonight.

  When he walked in the back door, he was greeted by aromas that had his mouth watering. He took off his hat and hung it on a peg on the wall, his eyes on Hannah, removing something from the oven.

  She must have heard his footfalls, because she turned with a smile. She’d covered her shirt and khaki skirt with an apron that fell well below the hem of her skirt. Her cheeks were pink from the heat of the stove.

  “Rebekah was good about helping me find things this morning,” she said.

  How had she asked for what she wanted in a way his daughter understood? he wondered. But he only nodded. “She likes to help.”

  He washed up in the downstairs bathroom, and returned to find a spread on the table more than ample for only two adults.

  Surveying it, Hannah wrinkled her nose. “I may have overdone.”

  Schnitz un knepp—ham and dried apples—was the centerpiece, accompanied by creamy scalloped potatoes, cornbread with flecks of bacon, and a salad with fresh greens. She’d set out applesauce as well, and he saw apple pies cooling on the counter. The coffee she’d made was dark and strong, just the way he liked it.

  “I think this may feed us tonight, too,” he agreed. “But it looks good, and I’m hungry.”

  The words were inadequate, but the right words didn’t always come to him, particularly when he was speaking English.

  With a shy glance at him, Hannah took a seat across the table. When he bent his head in prayer, she did the same. Was she only being polite, or did she pray? She’d moved in with her daad after the last worship service. Would she attend the next service with her family? Gideon wondered. Ach, why would she? It would be a misery, when she couldn’t understand hymns or sermons.

  Suddenly realizing he had yet to pray, Gideon did so hastily, hoping she wasn’t wondering what had taken him so long. When he lifted his head, she did as well. He reached for the plate with the cornbread.

  She dished up a small helping of the schnitz un knepp. “I met Susan Miller this morning. She was just coming out with her boy, and was glad to let him go with us. I told her I’ll be happy to pick them up, too, because otherwise she has to get Judith—her mamm? Jacob’s mamm?—to watch the rest of her kinder.”

  “If you don’t mind the walk.”

  “Not at all. And it must be harder for her to get everything done with young kinder at home. Two not yet school age, and a baby, I think she said.”

  “Ja, their family is growing fast. Judith and Isaac are Jacob’s parents. They have one other son who inherited a farm a mile or so down the road from an onkel.”

  “Oh.” He watched her ponder that. “So Jacob will take over his daad’s farm?”

  “Ja, I think so.” She’d obviously realized that Jacob and his family lived in a small house on the same property as his parents. Gideon had heard talk that Jacob’s family and his parents were planning to switch houses, since Isaac and Judith no longer needed so much space.

  Everything Gideon put in his mouth was delicious. The cornbread and the dressing on the salad were subtly different from any he’d had before—the cornbread spicier than he was used to—but both were so good, he was afraid he had stuffed himself too full to appreciate the pie the way he should.

  Except, once Hannah served him a large slab, he realized he’d been wrong. The crust was flaky and the apples just sweet enough without being too sweet. He ate his plate clean, then sighed.

  Expression anxious, she said, “Was it all right?”

  “Ja.” He smiled crookedly. “Almost too good. Now I don’t want to go back to work.”

  Looking around, he saw that the kitchen was cleaner than it had been in a while, too. Hannah had worked hard this morning.

  “Was there anything you needed you couldn’t find?” he asked. “Either for cleaning or cooking? I can shop if you give me a list.”

  “Why don’t you let me? If you don’t mind, I’d like to buy more spices and bags of beans. Oh, and split peas. I didn’t see any. The flour is getting low, too.”

  Since he wasn’t growing wheat this year, that was something they’d have to keep buying. He told her about Troyer Bulk Foods, owned and run by Bishop Amos Troyer, where he did much, although not all, of his shopping. “The prices are good on what is carried at that store.”

  “I hadn’t noticed it.” She listened to his directions. “We’re not out of anything, so I’ll probably wait and run to town tomorrow or Thursday.”

  He agreed, gulped the last of his coffee, and fled for a second time that day. Sitting at the table talking to Hannah felt both natural and deeply uncomfortable. Gideon didn’t like noticing the sheen of her hair, or the delicacy of her collarbones and length of her slender neck. He must guard himself when he was near her, especially when they were alone.

  At the same time, he hoped Amos would not ask him to let Hannah go because she was Englisch. Despite his doubts, she’d already showed herself to be as hard a worker as any Amishwoman. As a man who enjoyed his food, he looked forward to the next meal she prepared . . . and all of the meals she would cook for him and the kinder in the days to come.

  * * *

  * * *

  Glad for his obvious pleasure at the meal, Hannah reluctantly tackled another load of laundry. Her arms ached by the time she had rinsed the clothes and was done running everything through the ringer for the second time and carried it out to hang on the line.

  This load of laundry had gone better than the first, which she’d started to hang on the line out back before realizing the fabric was weirdly stiff because she’d forgotten the rinse stage entirely. And then when she’d carried it all back in—grateful Gideon was nowhere in sight, or she might have had to explain what she was doing—she’d come way too close to getting a finger, or her entire hand, crushed in the wringer when she reached out to adjust a sheet that had clumped up. It took half an hour before the spike of adrenaline from her close call subsided.

  Given the sunny day and slight breeze, her first batch was already dry, so she was able to carry it in and fold everything, although the shirts and dresses needed to be ironed. She’d have to ask Lilian how to do that, when she obviously couldn’t plug an iron into an electrical outlet on the wall.

  Upstairs, she made all three beds, resolved to sweep and dust up here tomorrow and take all the rugs in the house out to the lawn to beat them. She added weeding the garden to her mental list. There was so much to do.

  She’d washed all the windows on the inside and the downstairs ones on the outside by the time she had to pick up the kinder. If she got there a little early, she’d be able to see Adah and Emma, too, and maybe get a peek in the schoolhouse.

  According to Samuel, she would have attended school in the same location, but not in the same building. That one had been severely damaged by a tree falling during a storm. A new, larger schoolhouse had been built in its place.

 
Everything she learned was creating an echo, or maybe a shadow she could now almost see. This was the life she would have had if her mother hadn’t stolen her away. At moments, she almost felt as if she had never left, that this was where she should be—but then she’d be jarred to remember she wasn’t Amish. She wasn’t home. She was an auslander. She felt as if her cheeks had been stung by a slap when her ignorance about something essential to their lives or faith was exposed, or her hands fumbled when they should be steady. Worst of all was when Gideon or even a member of her own family looked warily at her.

  Hannah suspected that friends her age would be horrified by the idea of spending their days in such hard labor when modern technology would have allowed the work to be done so easily. So far, she wasn’t bothered; she had always worked hard at whatever job she held.

  The paternal structure of Amish society would offend most modern women of her generation, too. Probably her mother’s as well, which might have contributed to Mom’s disillusionment. But again, none of the jobs Mom had held out in the world—the way Samuel put it—had been anything but menial and low paying. Hannah was willing to bet that most of those bosses her mother had resented were men, too. She had yet to see any sign that Samuel and Lilian had anything less than a partnership.

  The kinder were pouring out the open schoolhouse door when she reached the clearing, joining half a dozen other adults already waiting. Several had driven buggies, including Lilian, who called, “Hannah!”

  The two women hugged, and Hannah hugged Adah and Emma, too, when they ran up. Zeb and Rebekah followed them, Zeb saying, “Hannah works for my daad now,” in an important voice to the Mast girls.

  Emma rolled her eyes. “We know. She’s my sister.”

  His frown expressed as much puzzlement as annoyance. It seemed he hadn’t entirely worked through Hannah’s place in the community. No wonder, when her place was so fragile and temporary.

  “I wish I could drive you, but—” Lilian made a gesture of helplessness when three other kinder piled into the buggy, too. Hannah already knew these were Sol and Lydia Graber’s kinder, Noah, Neriah, and the youngest, Rebekah’s age, Beth.