Mending Hearts

by Janice Kay Johnson - His Best Friend's Baby

  “Do you need help?” he asked.

  “We’re just going to that driveway right ahead,” she told him. “I think I can make it okay. I came across this one loose on the road, but I know that’s where he lives.”

  “I’ll pull ahead a little way and stop with my blinkers on so no other traffic comes from that direction. Just until I see you’re safely off the road.”

  “Denke. I mean, thank you.”

  “You folks are good neighbors. No need for thanks.”

  The pickup drew away, making the gelding nervous, but he didn’t fight her.

  She easily spotted where he’d broken out, a brittle top rail splintered into two, the one below it already sagging but tangled with vines. David had been working on his fences but must not have seen this weakness.

  The relief when she led the two horses into the driveway was overwhelming. Her legs felt shaky. Working with unpredictable young horses would not be for her, that was for certain sure.

  Both horses calm now, she led them all the way to the barn. She’d put him into a stall, even if it wasn’t the right one.

  She let go of Polly, who wouldn’t go anywhere, and got as far as cracking open one of the big barn doors when a torrent of yapping burst out and the gelding threw himself backward. With the rein tightening dangerously around his throat, he began to seriously fight her, rearing.

  If only the arena were finished, Miriam thought desperately.

  She didn’t even dare turn her head when she heard the sound of approaching hoofbeats and the whir of buggy wheels. A new arrival might scare him worse.

  Eyes rolling, he didn’t seem to hear her calming voice, just kept jerking back, yanking her arms at her shoulder sockets. The next time he reared, she had to let the rein slide through her hand to open some distance between them and keep him from strangling himself. Even then, his hooves flashed closer to her than she wanted to think about. But if she let him go, he’d take off, too frightened to let anyone near.

  Suddenly David was there, grabbing the rein from her. “I have him.”

  As she stumbled back, he used his height to grip the leather strap where it went through the buckle, his strength to haul the gelding’s head down without further throttling him. The moment all four hooves were on the ground, David managed to loosen the loop and immediately start forward.

  “Ja, that’s it,” he encouraged the scared animal. “Here we are, home.” Somehow, he coaxed him into the barn despite the renewed outburst of yapping.

  About to collapse, Miriam backed up until she bumped into the front buggy wheel. Her hands were shaking, she saw in amazement. This was ridiculous. She had to pull herself together before David reappeared.

  * * *

  * * *

  Less worried about Copper than he was about Miriam, David dropped the bar to secure the stall door and rushed back outside. Sagging against the buggy, she didn’t immediately notice him.

  “You’re hurt,” he said.

  Her head came up and her eyes met his. “No. Of course not.”

  Her attempt at a smile told him how shaken she still was.

  He stopped right in front of her, his fingers flexing. He wanted to take her in his arms, but dreaded knowing how she’d react. “I was at Esther’s. On my way back, I saw the broken span of fencing. I knew it had to be Copper. I hoped he’d scared himself and run back up the driveway.”

  “No.” Miriam took a deep breath and straightened, then laid a hand on her mare’s powerful rump. “He ran the other way. It was, oh, almost half a mile down the road, I think, when I saw him. I couldn’t think what to do. I almost left Polly and walked him home, but I thought she’d calm him.”

  “He’s too powerful for you. If he had gone crazy, you could have been badly hurt.”

  She appeared oblivious to his fear—admittedly, the kind of useless, after-the-fact emotion that never did any good.

  “I think he was scared and wanted to go home,” she assured him. “I lured him with an apple, and he was mostly good, walking next to Polly. Only one car came by—actually, a pickup truck belonging to a man who lives just down the road—and he offered to help, but we were almost here.” She told him how the Englisch neighbor had blocked the road to make sure no traffic came from that direction to further alarm Copper.

  Make the idiot horse rear or buck or lash out with teeth or hooves, was what she meant. She was too small a woman to control him if he hadn’t cooperated. If she’d been hurt—

  David forced himself to block out the images that formed in his brain, for now at least.

  David didn’t only want to hug her. He also wanted to yell at her, to tell her she should have gone for help, waited for him. Something other than endanger herself by trying to control an untrained animal with a mere loop around his neck.

  Miriam wouldn’t understand if he got mad, though. He couldn’t tell her how easy it was to imagine her lying on the ground, twisted, broken. Her in place of Levi. Unable to answer when he called her name, when he fell to his knees beside her and begged.

  He clenched his fists so hard, his fingernails bit into his palms. When he turned away, his voice sounded strangely flat even to his ears. “I’ll fasten the rein to the bridle.”

  She neither moved nor spoke while he replaced the rein.

  “I’ll drive you home,” he said. “I can walk back.”

  “I’m fine, David. You haven’t turned Dexter out, and you’ll want to fix the fence.”

  “He can wait.” Patient as ever, his horse seemed to be watching events with mild curiosity. David stalked around to the passenger side and held out a hand to help Miriam step in.

  She frowned at him. “Why are you acting like this?”

  “You took a risk you shouldn’t have.” That just burst out of him. “What if he’d kicked you? Trampled you? Shied so that you were crushed between him and your mare? Did you think of any of those possibilities?” Dimly, he realized he had begun to shout. “Or were you just so sure you could do anything, you ignored your common sense?”

  “I did what any of your neighbors would have done!” she yelled back, cheeks pink and blue eyes sparking. “I caught a loose horse and brought him home. There was no reason to think—”

  “There was every reason to think! I told you that horse is out of his head!”

  The Lord said that a soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. He’d done that, he realized when he saw her expression.

  “He’s young, that’s all. You really think I should have left him running loose to be hit by a car?”

  Her stubbornness kept him from reason. David didn’t even know himself right now. He was the one acting crazy, ranting at her because she’d done what almost any of his brethren would have done—taken charge of a scared young horse foolish enough to endanger himself on a road where Englischers often drove too fast. He wasn’t only the crazy one, he was responsible for Copper getting out of the pasture in the first place because he had put other tasks ahead of continuing to repair the fences.

  He had also just taken several steps until he was close enough to touch Miriam. In fact, he did just that, gripping her upper arms, unsure if he intended to shake her . . . or kiss her.

  Chapter Eleven

  Miriam’s lips parted, and she stared up at him in astonishment and something else he couldn’t read. Maybe a desire to whack him over the head with a cast-iron skillet. Or maybe just disbelief because she guessed he wanted to kiss her.

  “You’re thinking of Levi, aren’t you?” she asked with unexpected softness.

  Stunned, he released her and nearly staggered back. “Levi?”

  “David, I’ve said this before, but you need to trust in God. ‘And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose,’” she quoted.

  David didn’t w
ant to think about Levi’s death right now, far less discuss it.

  “God doesn’t ask us to be foolish,” he snapped.

  Her eyes narrowed. “I was careful!”

  This time, David pressed his lips together and didn’t fire back.

  Miriam glared at him. “I’m going home.”

  He still wanted to insist on driving her, but their argument had obviously reinvigorated her. When she marched around him to the driver’s side of her small buggy, he stayed where he was. He didn’t even look at her. She had such a short distance to travel, he had no reason to worry.

  Maybe this was what he’d run away from, he thought. Ja, guilt was part of it, but also a bone-deep terror of losing someone else he cared about.

  Loved.

  With her too-generous heart, Miriam would do foolish things whether he lived next door or not. Yet if he were here, so close, and couldn’t protect her, he didn’t know if he could bear it.

  She had stopped, looking over her mare’s rump at David. “Are you all right?”

  He forced himself to nod. “Ja, of course. You saved my horse. If he were a mare, I’d name him for you.”

  Her mischievous smile calmed his raging emotions. “You’re saying that because you think we’re both dumb.”

  “There’s a difference between foolish and dumb.”

  She lifted her chin. “I don’t like the sound of either.”

  Now he almost felt a tinge of humor. “Ach, well, there’s a fine line . . .”

  “You called him Copper,” she said suddenly.

  “I never liked orange flowers.”

  When she beamed at him, his knees went weak.

  “Denke. Now, I must go. Mamm will wonder where I am.”

  She jumped into the buggy, lifted the reins, and clucked to her mare, who responded with alacrity, eager to go home.

  David stood for a minute watching the buggy recede down the driveway before turning out of sight on the road. Then he sighed, knowing he had to mend the fence before he did anything else but unharness Dexter and reward him for his patience with a full feedbag.

  Uneasiness stirred in him a minute later as he buckled on a tool belt and chose several boards he had already sawed to length for fencing. Tomorrow would be a full day, and then came Sunday. Amos had decided he was ready to make his confession during the members’ meeting after the service.

  Was he ready? The turmoil he felt instead of the peace he’d expected was a nagging reminder that he hadn’t been entirely honest with Amos and the ministers.

  Would the Lord understand and forgive him his trespasses, when the time came? He prayed so.

  * * *

  * * *

  David had planned his very early arrival at the Schwartz farm to give him a chance to warn Esther of the day’s events. He hadn’t wanted to earlier, in case she refused flat out, but he didn’t consider it kind to allow her to be shocked. Caught wearing a housekeeping dress she wouldn’t want anyone else to see, maybe, or not wearing her kapp when people arrived.

  Expecting to have to hammer on her door until she got mad enough to open it, he spotted her outside hanging laundry when he was halfway up the drive. To have already done her washing, she must be an even earlier riser than he was.

  David tethered Dexter and crossed the lawn toward her. Esther ducked beneath the first clothesline and faced him. “Why are you here again?”

  This morning, he was struck again by how drastically she’d aged, more than the years explained. Her hair had gone completely gray, although he didn’t think she was older than her midfifties. Deep lines on Esther’s face revealed discontent and bitterness. She’d lost weight since Levi’s death, appearing shrunken inside a dress that was too large for her.

  Guilt seized him, as always, but he felt pity, too. Her life must be lonely, but there were many widowers in the settlement. She might have remarried if she weren’t known for her sharp tongue. Of course, he felt guilty having that thought, too, and wondered how lonely he would become, how open to bitterness, if he refused to marry and start a family.

  “I’m ready to paint your house.” He paused. “Others are coming today to help. We hope to finish scraping and paint the barn as well.” At her expression of horror, he almost faltered, but instead forged on. “Your neighbors want to do this for you. The women will be bringing food. It’ll be a fun day, and your place will be neat again, the way I know you’d like it.”

  “It wasn’t your right to plan this without talking to me,” she snapped.

  “Levi would expect me to do this.” A lump filled his throat. “I felt as if you were my mamm, too. I abandoned you when I ran away, but I won’t do that again.”

  A faint breeze lifted a sheet, temporarily blocking his sight of Esther. He took a step sideways, to see that she was wiping her cheeks with the back of her hand.

  “Accept the help in the spirit we give it,” he said quietly. “With joy and friendship.”

  Her voice croaked. “I don’t have any choice, do I?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t feel joy anymore.” Expression arid, she reached for a clothespin. “I need to take my laundry down. I’ll hang it in the basement.”

  Confused, he glanced toward the one full line and saw why she was uncomfortable leaving her wash out to dry. A pair of sturdy panties was clipped between an apron and a towel. At home, laundry hung outside every few days, no one thinking twice about it, but he supposed even his mother wouldn’t let the entire congregation see the family’s undergarments lined up when she was hosting a worship or frolic.

  “If I can help . . . ,” he said awkwardly.

  Esther reached the basket a few feet away and flapped her hands at him. “Go. Haven’t you done enough?”

  Retreating, he feared she hadn’t meant that in a positive way. Still, she’d been aware of him here working on her house every two or three days for a few hours over the past three weeks. She could have come out and ordered him off her property. That meant she didn’t object too much. He hoped.

  While she retrieved her laundry, David led Dexter to a clear place beside the driveway, slipped the bridle over his head, and replaced it with a halter and line that he tied to the fence. He shook his head, exasperated at himself for not having thought of arranging for some boys to be here to take care of the horses and buggies, as always seemed to happen on worship Sundays. Too late. Ach, well, he’d never planned anything like this before.

  Accompanied by a gangly boy, David’s father was the next to arrive, the two walking up from the road. Daad carried a large plastic bucket that probably held brushes and other tools he thought he might need today. David waited where he was.

  “I thought we might need help with the horses,” his daad said. “I borrowed Abram Yoder. You remember his father, Micah, ain’t so?”

  David grinned at the boy. He’d seen Micah at both worship services he’d attended but, because he hadn’t stayed for the fellowship meals afterward, hadn’t talked to him or met his wife and children. “Micah and Levi and I used to get into a lot of trouble together. Daad’s probably told you.”

  The boy grinned back. “My daad says none of it is true.”

  David laughed and slapped him on the back. “I remember you as a little boy.” Of his contemporaries, Micah was one of the first to marry. “How old are you now?”

  “I’m eleven. I think I remember you, too. You and Levi had a great team of Percheron horses, ain’t so?”

  David felt a pang. Fleeing like a rabbit for its burrow, he’d never given a thought to the horses that had been the symbol of the business he and Levi were building. “We did.” Glancing at his father, he said, “I didn’t think of the help we’d need today besides painters.”

  “So I thought. One of Abram’s friends is coming, too, and maybe others.”

  Soon enough Gideon Lantz, the next-door neigh
bor, showed up in his buggy, loaded with cans of paint for the barn. They’d talked it over the last time David was here to finish scraping the siding. David had brought the amount he calculated was needed for the house.

  Gideon greeted the others and said, “Lloyd Wagler offered to bring a generator and a couple of paint sprayers. He has a business painting houses, mostly for the Englisch, and our bishop allows him to use a gasoline-operated generator.” The last wasn’t quite a question, but David heard the hesitation.

  “Bishop Amos will approve that, I think. Several members of our district use generators in their businesses. The sprayers will be especially good for the barn.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  David and Gideon set to unloading with help, Abram carrying the tarps toward the house. Within minutes the numbers multiplied. He was relieved to see how many men from his church district had been able to take time from their own work to come. Even Luke Bowman appeared, saying his daad said only one of them was needed to keep the store open, and Luke would be of more use here.

  “His back has been bothering him some. He doesn’t like to admit it, but he’d be embarrassed to fall off a ladder if his back spasms.”

  David shook his head solemnly. “Hochmut.”

  Luke laughed. “He’d never admit to pride. Still, one minute he insists he doesn’t feel a day older than he did when I was a boy, and the next he groans and grumbles about how I can’t understand what it’s like to get old.”

  As the two men walked toward the front porch with full cans of paint, David chuckled, too. “Eli looks as tough as ever.”

  “He is. He uses a stool more often when he’s working on furniture, but that’s the only change I see. Mamm still gets mad at him because he sneaks out to his barn workshop whenever he can.”

  “He and you both are lucky to love your work.”

  “You haven’t found that yet?”

  It was impossible not to give fleeting thought to the logging and the pleasure he’d taken being in the woods, but that dream was gone.