Gladden the Heart

by Olivia Newport

  He set his face like a flint to make things right with Susanna.

  Somehow.

  The benches outside Noah’s window were full by the time Adam arrived that afternoon. He had not expected to sit, nor had he wanted to. Susanna, not Noah, drew him to the farm. Nevertheless, the number of the assembly alarmed him. This was the largest number he had witnessed. Would it continue to rise? Some of the Amish in the front benches had not even been in church two days earlier. The squirming and chattering were worse than you would find in a flock of jaybirds.

  Adam’s stomach hardened and soured. It was one thing for Shem to decide not to come to Niklaus’s land any longer, but it was another to absent himself from this scene. Shem’s incessant stern sermons about submission were not diminishing the interest in Noah, but one sight of the bishop might send the congregation’s members back to their farms. What the English did would be up to them.

  As he led his horse to a fence post where he could tie the animal, Adam’s eyes swept the scene. Noah was in the window turning pages in his Bible. Even Adam knew he sometimes did this for several minutes before breaking forth in speech. Patsy was at his side. Phoebe would be in the kitchen or the barn or away at her sister’s. If this was one of the rare days when Susanna did not come, Adam would ride over to the Hooley place. He circled to the side of the house, where his unexpected presence startled a young English girl and sent her scampering to the front yard where she belonged.

  Except she did not belong there either. No one did.

  The back door cracked open, and Susanna’s dark eyes peeked out. “Adam.”

  If only they were walking in the forest. He would take the basket from her hands and lean in to kiss her. As it was, she might never let him do that again.

  Adam swallowed. “The crowd today.”

  “Worse than ever,” she said, stepping outside. “I want to believe the best of their hearts, but some of them make it difficult.”

  Adam nodded. “Where is the edification?”

  “I asked the very same question just a few minutes ago. I fear it is drowned out.”

  At last they found something to agree on.

  “If they cannot come with seeking hearts, they should not come.”

  Adam’s heart sought only Susanna.

  “I wanted to explain what happened on the picnic,” he said.

  Susanna covered her face with both hands and exhaled before moving them aside. “Adam, I know this is difficult for you to understand. But I must be here, and I do not believe Noah is willful.”

  “Neither do I,” he said. “’Tis the crowd in front that I find willful.”

  “Some of them,” she said, guarded. “Some do come with pure motives.”

  “God sees the heart.” If Adam knew the right words to say that would align his heart and Susanna’s, he would say them with gladness. Instead, in the last few weeks, every thought that found spoken form had pushed him away from her. He heard them in his head as he lay in the dark and wondered whether he believed them.

  Phoebe pushed open the back door and stepped out onto the stoop. “I pray every night for Gottes wille, and to know the patience of Christ, but I do not know how much more of this I can stand.”

  “The crowds?” Adam said.

  “I try to ignore them, to reside quietly in Christ as we are taught, but they cackle like an overcrowded henhouse.” Abruptly her face brightened.

  “What is it?” Susanna said.

  “I have an overcrowded henhouse,” Phoebe said.

  Adam did not understand.

  “Come with me,” Phoebe said.

  “What about Noah?” Susanna glanced back into the house.”

  “Patsy will be all right on her own for a few minutes.”

  Adam looked at Susanna, who shrugged, and they followed Phoebe off the stoop, across the yard, and into the chicken coop. Phoebe unlatched the door, ducked in, and pulled a handful of flour sacks off a shelf.

  Tossing them at Adam and Susanna, she said, “Grab some chickens.”

  “In the bags?” Adam said.

  “Have you not ever picked up live chickens?” Phoebe asked.

  A chuckle escaped Susanna.

  Adam was glad to see her smile but was less enthused that her mirth came at his expense.

  “I am not laughing at you,” Susanna said. “I see what Phoebe means.”

  Susanna scooped up a chicken, deftly holding its wings to keep them from flapping.

  “I will put this in your sack,” she said. “Your job is to close it immediately until I get another.”

  “Do not forget Cranky Amos,” Phoebe said, pointing at a rooster.

  That a rooster should be so named made Adam take him seriously.

  Within minutes they had four sacks filled with squawking, wriggling chickens. Adam and Susanna each grasped two bags in rigid fists. Phoebe picked up a pail of chicken feed and began dribbling it behind her as she left the coop and crossed the yard. Loose chickens followed and pecked.

  “What are we doing?” Adam whispered to Susanna.

  “Just watch.”

  Susanna tightened the grip of her left hand, holding both bags well away from her body. She and Adam followed Phoebe and her trail of fowl around the house to the front.

  “God’s call to repentance is a call of love,” Noah bellowed from the window. “To repent is to receive His love.”

  Phoebe led the parade right up to the side of benches and then swung the pail with enough force to scatter chicken feed on the occupants. Undeterred chickens followed the food.

  “Now!” Phoebe called, grabbing a bag from Adam.

  They opened the bags and loosed the chickens.

  The clacking and shrieking startled even Adam. But if the outrageous scheme would sunder the crowd—and perhaps deter some from returning—there might yet be hope of bringing to an end the contentiousness around Noah’s preaching.

  Patsy laughed. She couldn’t help it. Startled chickens flapping in the laps of doubters was as delicious as raspberry peach pie. Of course the devout were also under siege, and Patsy hoped Phoebe had the sense to use hens who were not long for the stew pot anyway, because the poor, frightened things might not lay for days after this. Cranky Amos crowed, standing tense at the base of the front bench. Patsy had fed Phoebe’s chickens enough times to know what Amos might do if provoked—and it wouldn’t take much to provoke him.

  Noah preached on. “Hear the voice of the Lord calling you to repentance. Do not turn Him away when He knocks on the door of your heart desiring to sup with you.”

  Yet above the fray laughter rose. It was not the startled giggling decamping from Patsy’s mouth against her best intentions, but mockery.

  Mr. Grauman.

  He pointed at Noah, who continued his sermon despite the disturbance outside the window at which he stood, and guffawed in an unseemly manner that defied Patsy’s patience. Noah’s oblivious persistence only spurred more laughter from Mr. Grauman. Patsy’s clamped jaw thrust forward.

  Phoebe and Susanna and Adam continued to lure and shoo chickens toward the benches, and not everyone laughed. A good number of people shoved chickens off their laps and stood up, some abandoning the bench arrangement altogether while raising elbows to shield faces from short bursts of feathered flight. Not everyone was a farmer, but chickens were common enough even for people who lived in the small town nearby. It was the distress Phoebe had stirred up in her own flock that made people reconsider their presence below the window.

  “If God chastises you, it is because He loves you,” Noah said. “Yield your heart to His in all things. This is what the Scripture teaches.”

  How could anyone see and hear Noah and not perceive God at work? The question befuddled Patsy.

  Mr. Grauman was unperturbed, maintaining his position and beckoning others to come back with one hand while pointing at Noah with the other.

  “Keep going, Mr. Kauffman,” Mr. Grauman said, his belly rising in laughter. “That’s right. Let no
thing distract you. Show us what you are made of.”

  When Mr. Grauman bent for a pebble, Patsy reached her limit. The stove was not hot, the lamps were out of Noah’s path if he should pace, and the furniture was permanently rearranged. Noah would be safe for the two minutes it would take for Patsy to execute her plan.

  She scrambled out the front door, down two steps, and into the yard. Cranky Amos didn’t frighten her. He would scratch her in protest, but the result would be worth the wound. Patsy marched straight for the crowing rooster with a layer of her skirt raised to wrap him. He squalled, but she triumphed. With the rooster tight in her arms, she stomped toward Mr. Grauman.

  “Would you like to make fun of an angry rooster?” Patsy glared at the man. “Perhaps face-to-face?”

  “Mr. Grauman chortled. “That you would consider such a feat tells me you have not heard a word this man has been saying even as you stood right next to him.”

  Patsy lifted the rooster toward his face.

  “You can be certain I will speak to your father when next I see him.”

  “As will I.” If Patsy’s father witnessed Mr. Grauman’s antics, he might well take charge of Cranky Amos himself.

  “Noah!” Phoebe called her husband’s name and barreled through the front door to go to his side.

  Patsy heard Noah’s voice but not his words. Most of the crowd, stunned, increased their distance from the altercation.

  “Patsy,” Adam said, coming from behind. “Let me have the rooster before he hurts you.”

  “I’m not afraid.”

  “I know.”

  With a slight grimace, Adam took the rooster from her. But he did not retreat with it as Patsy expected. Instead, he braced both of his feet, extended his arms forward, the cantankerous rooster in his grasp, and stood right in front of Mr. Grauman. The rooster stretched his neck toward the man’s belly.

  “’Tis time for you to go,” Adam said. “All of you. ’Tis time to go home.”

  Susanna’s breath burst forth in relief. This was the Adam she craved. The man who had done what was needful to keep Noah safe during his first falling under all those weeks ago had found his footing again. They stood—Patsy, Adam, and Susanna—watching the crowd disperse.

  “I am sorry that those who truly were listening could not stay,” Susanna said, “but the matter is out of hand. Thank you, Adam, for your help.”

  Adam grinned. “Patsy, would you really have thrown the rooster in Mr. Grauman’s face?”

  Cranky Amos, released, continued to crow and flap his wings as if he might attack, and the three of them kept their distance.

  “In the moment, it seemed right to at least give him pause,” Patsy said.

  “I love Noah’s preaching,” Susanna said, “but it is taking a toll on Phoebe.”

  “Perhaps she should keep the rooster in the front yard from now on,” Adam said.

  “Noah can preach again with my father,” Patsy said. “He can still have a ministry. We could even arrange a tent meeting nearby.”

  Susanna appeared to consider the idea, but it was Adam who gave words.

  “The bishop would never allow it,” he said.

  “The bishop, the bishop,” Patsy said.

  “Patsy!” The sharp edge in Susanna’s voice surprised even her. “The bishop is not perfect, but he is still our bishop.”

  Patsy clamped her mouth closed.

  “I apologize for my tone,” Susanna said.

  “We are all feeling the toll,” Adam said.

  We. Adam had held himself at a distance for weeks, and now he spoke of we. Susanna’s spine tingled.

  Noah’s voice still carried across the yard.

  “I’m going inside,” Patsy said.

  Standing beside Adam, Susanna let her fingers stray toward his. They faced Noah. Behind him in the front room, Patsy put an arm around Phoebe’s shoulder.

  “I miss Noah,” Susanna said.

  “But you see him every day,” Adam said.

  “I see this.”

  “I thought you like to hear him.”

  “I do, but by the time I come in the afternoons, he has fallen under, or will soon, and for hours afterward he sleeps deeply. I miss the talks we used to have.”

  “Can you not come in the mornings?”

  In the mornings, Noah would be sweet and fine and himself. In the mornings, they could talk as they used to.

  “I have my work,” Susanna said. “Chores. My mamm.”

  “She still disapproves?”

  Susanna nodded. It was hard to find the balance between Noah’s needs and her mother’s shifting temperament.

  “I have something you can take to your aunti,” she said.

  They walked together to her cart, and Susanna handed Noah a bundle wrapped in brown paper and tied with string.

  “I suspect you may have a new blue shirt soon,” she said.

  “Perhaps in time for Jonas’s wedding.”

  Susanna nodded.

  “Because you have colored the cloth,” Adam said, “’tis sure to be my favorite shirt.”

  Susanna flushed under his gaze, a sensation she had missed all this time.

  CHAPTER 24

  A few mornings later, the sizzle of sausage greeted Niklaus. Now that most of their children were married and settled in their own homes, Niklaus frequently told Deborah he could manage coffee and leftover coffee cake if he needed to eat something midmorning. Breakfast and devotions were hours ago, and as usual Deborah sent off Niklaus, Adam, and Jonas with a hearty morning meal. This offering, coming after Niklaus’s morning barn chores were completed, would be just husband and wife sitting together. The effort Deborah still put into it after all these years, when her day was filled with mending, preparations for the midday dinner in another three hours, and the weeding of the vegetable garden, as well as the gathering of its ongoing summer harvest, cut straight through Niklaus. What tenderness God had given them when they married a lifetime ago, both of them barely eighteen. And what blessing it was that they should still share it now.

  This is what the sizzling sausage meant.

  Niklaus sat at the table, catching Deborah’s free hand as she poured coffee with the other. He had nearly lost her when Jonas was born, and after that the babies came too soon. Three tiny mounds under the apple tree nearest the house marked their grief. Yet life was rich, their hearts full of abundance.

  Deborah set a plate of steaming sausage and warm bread in front of Niklaus.

  “I am thinking to visit Noah and Phoebe this afternoon,” he said.

  “They will be glad for it,” Deborah said, lifting her own fork.

  “Come with me.”

  She shook her head. “I have promised to help Mrs. Glick bind a quilt. ’Tis a gift, and she is running out of time for the occasion.”

  “Another time, then,” Niklaus said.

  “Will you go again?”

  “Perhaps. I have only been in the early morning when Noah knows only the task at hand, but Adam has been going quite often when he has fallen under.”

  Fall under. Niklaus was still getting used to the term Charles Baxton used so easily.

  Deborah smiled. “Obviously Adam goes to see Susanna.”

  “Obviously,” Niklaus said. “She does not happen by here as she used to. If she did, I am not sure Adam would go to the Kauffmans’.”

  “He seems fraught of late.”

  Niklaus nodded. “Change does not come easy for Adam.” His nephew did not approve when Niklaus traveled with Noah and Charles, and whatever Shem said to Adam before dismissing himself from the building project had twisted the boy in knots. But his heart beat for God as surely as Niklaus’s did.

  “Will you go before Noah falls under?” Deborah asked.

  “I will try,” Niklaus said. “But even if he has begun preaching,

  I am sure his words will edify my spirit. And I can still speak to Phoebe to be sure she lacks for nothing until this passes.”

  “Will it pass? Is
it that simple?”

  “If it does not, I will still inquire from time to time.”

  “In your heart you are still a minister.”

  Niklaus swallowed the last of his sausage. He felt no different than he had before telling Shem he would withdraw from the congregation. No title was required for him to carry compassion to the farm next door.

  Adam arrived early enough to talk with Noah for a few minutes before he fell under. It was not hard to see why Susanna liked her cousin Noah as much as she did. His bright, eager eyes and wide smile put anyone at ease. But when he flushed and slumped and then stood up straight, Adam left it to Patsy and Susanna to help Noah to his place at the window. He and Noah were members of the same church. Turning his back when Noah was in danger was not something Adam would do again. But helping him to the window? Was that not condoning his preaching?

  Three days had passed since Phoebe connived for Adam’s complicity with the chickens. Adam had no regret. No doubt rumor left the Kauffman farm that day along with the listeners. Everyone in the Kish Valley soon would have heard that Phoebe Kauffman had turned as batty as her husband. The words would vary, but the sentiment would hold. Already three members of the Amish congregation had spoken to Adam about his own participation in the scheme. Nevertheless, the effort seemed to bring a good outcome. The benches were still there, and some people still came to sit on them, but the size of the crowd had been cut at least in half. And Mr. Grauman had not been back.

  Yet.

  No one could say what might happen. Noah could stop preaching tomorrow or return to the occasional nighttime rhythm.

  Adam had taken to perching on the pasture fence, well away from the house, where he could survey the whole of the front portion of the Kauffman property. If there was more trouble, he would step in. If the crowd composed themselves, there would be no need to chase them off.