Keys of Heaven

by Adina Senft

  “Can you do that? Make a party like that?”

  “Well, not as well as Sarah or Ginny could. Why don’t we ask Sarah first? Then if she says yes, we can invite the others.”

  Sarah wasn’t in the garden when they got to her place, but when Eric carried the crate into the house, Henry saw movement in the compiling room.

  “Sarah? It’s me, Henry. I brought Eric back with his lantern. It’s all done.” He paused in the doorway, watching the slender figure in the sage-green dress and black kitchen apron moving confidently from shelf to table.

  “I’ll just be a minute.” Carefully, she measured a dropper full of liquid into a small brown bottle, then put a funnel in the mouth of the bottle and filled it to the top with—he squinted at the label—grape seed oil.

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m making oregano oil. It cures toenail fungus.”

  That would teach him to ask questions he didn’t really want to know the answers to.

  “I have a customer who’s Englisch and as stubborn as an old mule. It’s taken me two months to convince him to eat his vegetables. Now he tells me he’s had toenail fungus for months and did I have something to cure it. Sure I do. He has to soak his toes in white vinegar for ten minutes every other day, and then put a drop of this oil on each toenail afterward. But if he follows my instructions even once, I’ll be surprised.” She stuck a handwritten label on the bottle. “Why do people resist being made well?”

  “Maybe they don’t really believe that something so simple will help them. We Englisch are used to just going to the doctor and taking a pill.”

  She gave him a sharp glance at “we Englisch,” but said nothing. Just in case she had ideas along that line, he changed the subject. “Eric heard from his dad this morning. He’ll be here tomorrow night to pick him up. It would be nice for Eric to be able to say good-bye to the friends he’s made here, but I don’t think there’s time for him to get around to everyone. I was wondering…could we have a farewell dinner for him here?”

  “What a good idea. When?”

  “Tonight?”

  She glanced at her watch. “It’s already nearly noon. That’s not much time—we go over to Jacob’s, you know, on Friday nights, so I don’t have anything prepared for a company dinner. But I thought you said his father was coming tomorrow. Can you wait until then, so he can join us?”

  It hadn’t even entered his head. “I suppose we could, if you thought that would be better.” He wasn’t sure Trent Parker would fit in so well in an Amish kitchen, but what did he know? Maybe the man would surprise them all.

  “It would. And since it’s Saturday night, we should keep it small and quiet—and early. Many of us will want to prepare for Sunday. Church is at Lev Esh’s, you know. Caleb has been helping at the work frolic over there today.”

  “I wondered where he was. I was thinking Jacob and Corinne, and Priscilla, and Benny Peachey, and Ginny. Those are the people Eric knows.”

  Sarah turned away. “Benny will be thrilled at any excuse to give Priscilla a ride over here. I’m not so sure how thrilled she’ll be. Can Ginny pick her up?”

  “I was going to collect Ginny.” And take her home again. Which was the first time he’d thought of it, but now that he had, he didn’t want it any other way.

  “Oh.” Sarah’s voice was muffled as she squirted the strong-smelling oregano extract into another bottle, then diluted it with grape seed oil. “Of course. Well. I’ll invite Jacob and Corinne, and Priscilla. You’ll have to drive over to the Peacheys’ to tell Benny—they don’t have a phone, and there’s no shanty on that spur of the road. It’s a dead end.”

  Henry nodded, though she wasn’t looking at him. “I can see you’re busy, so I’ll head out. I’ll check in tomorrow and you can tell me what you need from town in the way of groceries.”

  “Denki, Henry.”

  But she spoke absently, measuring and eyeballing levels in the brown bottles, and he slipped out the door without disturbing her further, wondering what he’d said to bring on the chill.

  * * *

  Since he had the car out, he’d swing by the Peachey farm now and issue his invitation to Benny Peachey, and drop by Ginny’s afterward instead of calling. Then again, Henry thought as he bumped and crunched his way down the Peacheys’ weedy lane in low gear, it might have been smart to leave the car out on the road and do this on foot. An Englisch vehicle had probably not come down this drive in years, if the tall weeds swaying between the dual set of buggy tracks were any indication.

  He was wrong.

  When his car emerged from the trees into the yard, he found that not only was there a big Chevy diesel truck parked there already with some telecom company’s logo on the side and a toy-hauler hitched to it, but the whole family was out there, hugging each other and hooting and generally whooping up such a ruckus that he wondered if he’d come to an Englisch farm by mistake.

  But no, there were Benny and Leon, red-faced and breathless, hanging on to each other as if they’d fall down otherwise. Benny pounded on his thigh with his free hand and hollered, “I knew it! I just knew it would happen someday!” He caught sight of Henry as he got out of the car, and galloped over, Leon on his heels. “Henry! Did you hear the news?”

  “Did you win the lottery?” Henry asked before he realized what he’d said.

  But Benny didn’t miss a beat. “Naw, even better. This ain’t the wages of sin, so the bishop won’t make us give it up. Dat and Onkel Crist, they finally hit it big, and that man there with the truck is the one who made it all happen.”

  “Who is he? What happened? Is your mother all right?”

  For Ella and Linda were hugging each other on the front porch, both of them in tears—but from here, Henry couldn’t tell if they were tears of joy or of despair.

  “It’s a shock, but she’ll get over it. She and Linda, they had a hard time believing, even though they never said a word to us boys. But they’ll believe now. See, Dat and Onkel Crist, they didn’t plant a second crop of corn—or a third, either—this year at all. They sank the money they had left into solar panels and batteries.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  Leon chimed in. “We got talked to by Bishop Troyer, which is kinda funny because he does mechanical conversions himself, and you’d have thought he’d see where this was going.”

  “Where what was going?”

  “It’s for them cell towers, Henry,” Benny said eagerly. “They run on county power, but when the power goes out, they got these big old battery packs for backup. What Dat and Crist did was invent a battery pack powered by solar panels. So not only does it use less power, but the solar chips in and helps out, so it costs less to run.”

  “Wow,” Henry said. “Your dad and uncle must be smart men.”

  “They been tinkering long enough to invent the washing machine all over again,” Leon said. “Batteries ain’t nothing to them.”

  By this time, Crist Peachey had detached himself from their first Englisch guest and come over to see what the second one was there for. The boys quickly introduced him and brought him up to speed on what they’d told Henry, and when Henry reached out to shake hands, the other man did so with a smile. “You didn’t tell him the second part of the story, boys.”

  “To try it out, we get our very own cell tower!” Benny burst out. “Mamm’s not so sure she wants to grow metal poles instead of corn—”

  “But for the money they’re offering, it won’t take long before she’s convinced.” Crist laughed. “We won’t be the first—I was talking with our brother Silas Lapp, who’s staying with Joshua Yoder, and he’s got one in his field. We never did much with these fields anyhow,” he said, turning to look past the barn to the closest one, where a crop of corn was about half the size of everyone else’s. “The cell tower will be the most profitable crop they ever seen.”

  “Congratulations,” Henry said. “Say, Benny, I just remembered what I came over for. Can you come to Sarah’s for supper tomorr
ow night? Eric is leaving the next morning with his dad, and he wants to say good-bye to all his friends here. I figure that includes you, since you pretty much picked him up off the street and saved him from sleeping under someone’s porch.”

  “That’d be real nice. But you know, Pris helped. Is she coming?”

  Henry took the plunge. “Maybe you might collect her on the way over.”

  Benny’s grin was even wider than it had been over the astonishing family news. “I’ll do that. That sounds just fine.”

  Leon gave him a punch in the shoulder and their father called them over. Henry figured he’d been forgotten in the general merriment, and nodded at Crist in farewell. The man nodded back, unable to keep the grin off his face, and went to see how his wife was surviving the good news.

  At least, that was what it looked like to Henry. The willowy woman with the brown hair under the organdy Kapp turned to Crist as he loped up the porch steps, and her hand went to her belly in a gesture as old as time. Henry had seen that protective bend of the wrist a couple of times in his youth, before his mother had told the family but after she’d told his dad.

  Well. A baby might grow up in a ramshackle environment, but at least there was love enough to go around—and it seemed there would be no shortage of food on the table, either.

  Chapter 30

  Eric and Caleb were running races up and down the lane, but Sarah had a feeling it was a thinly disguised way to keep an eye on the road for Trent Parker’s SUV. She’d seen the boy take out his phone twice now and look anxiously at the screen, as though he almost expected his father to cancel at the last minute, or change the plan. They’d let Trent know that he was invited to supper and to stay the night—Eric had already put fresh sheets on Simon’s bed and made it up to perfection, so that his father could sleep there and he could camp on the air mattress in Caleb’s room.

  But whether Trent Parker would go along with this was another question. He hadn’t replied to the last message.

  The windows were open and the scent of baking macaroni and cheese filled the kitchen. The boys had requested Eric’s favorite dish, and since Jacob was going to barbecue outside when they got here, and Priscilla was bringing two kinds of vegetable dishes, all Sarah had left to do other than slice a loaf of bread and put out some pickles was to make a salad.

  She collected her basket from the compiling room and took it out to the garden. Her crazy-quilt mix of vegetables, flowers, and herbs was at its best now, and as she brushed by the dill and mint, the sweet and spicy scents mingled in the air as if to greet her.

  Up on the hillside, the “keys of heaven” was blooming, its tiny red flowers forming a mist of beauty and concealing all the hard work the roots were doing among the rocks. Where the soil was deep enough, banks of golden and orange daylilies nodded in the breeze, and the hum of bees was like a bass note under the shouts of the boys and the whisper of the leaves above her head.

  Lettuce first, both butter and romaine. She knelt beside the plants and got to work. Some spinach and carrots, of course. She would grate the latter and slice in pickled beets, too, for color. Green onions, ja, and how about some fresh calendula petals, now that the nasturtiums were finished?

  It was a good thing that Englisch John Casey, her vegetable-hating patient, wasn’t going to be at her table tonight!

  She heard a whoop of greeting, and the crunch of wheels in the lane. Buggy wheels, not rubber, which meant it was probably Jacob, Corinne, and Amanda. Sure enough, Corinne waved through the open buggy door, a big square tub of marinating meat on her lap.

  “I’ll start the barbecue,” Sarah called, and picked up her basket. Her barbecue was fairly small, but it was propane and not the kind that used charcoal. Michael, who had learned how to cook outdoors on many a hunting trip with his father, had loved to use it in the summer.

  While Jacob got the meat going, Benny and Priscilla arrived—and the latter wasted no time in getting down and hustling her two dishes into the kitchen, where the other women were washing the vegetables.

  “Hi, Corinne, Sarah, Amanda…I trimmed all these beans earlier and all they need is to go in a pot. I’ve never seen such a crop as we’ve got—Mamm was so glad some of them were coming over here. And this one is fresh pea salad. I know you’ll have some mint to put in it. That always makes it so nice, doesn’t it? Did you hear the Peacheys’ news?”

  “No,” Sarah said with a laugh when Priscilla paused for breath. “The way you hightailed it out of Benny’s buggy, there couldn’t have been that much time for conversation.”

  “Oh, believe me, there was time for this. Arlon and Crist have sold some kind of invention to the phone company, and they’re going to get a cell phone tower in their field.”

  “Are they now?” Corinne’s busy hands fell still—which didn’t happen very often. “Have they talked it over with Bishop Dan?”

  “They must have, if the tower is going in.” Amanda fetched two serving bowls from Sarah’s good set on display in der Eckschank, the china cabinet built into the corner of the sitting room next to the kitchen. “Here, Pris, put the pea salad in one of these.”

  “I’m glad they live on the other side of the settlement and we don’t have to look at the ugly thing,” Sarah said. “But think of the money. Didn’t Silas say that with the rent the phone company pays, he doesn’t have to farm?”

  “He did,” Corinne answered when it was clear that Amanda wasn’t going to. “That will suit Arlon and Crist just fine. I’m glad their money worries will be over.”

  Would Linda and Crist move off that place now? Sarah wondered. Having some money coming in would make a huge difference to the family—but would it improve their lot, or make them more eccentric and the boys even less inclined to take up a sensible trade?

  She hoped not. Surely der Herr had sent them this blessing for good reasons of His own. It was their place to be good stewards of it, and she could only hope that they would be.

  By now, Eric and Caleb had joined Jacob at the barbecue, and Sarah could hear their voices just outside the back door. Corinne smiled at the sound, too.

  “I’m glad to see that Eric is no longer quite so terrified of Jacob,” she said to Sarah. “He’s been a real good little helper in the barn, even though he had never even seen a cow up close before he came.”

  “He was a good helper because he wasn’t sure what Dat would do to him if he wasn’t,” Amanda said with a laugh. “I’m glad he realized that his help was appreciated. Listen to them now.”

  It was a gut sound, the two boys’ chatter, punctuated by Jacob’s belly laugh and the thump of the barbecue lid going down. And then a car approached down the lane. Trent Parker? Or Henry?

  Drying her hands on a dish towel, Sarah checked out the big front window. “Eric!” she called. “Your father is here.”

  Hurrying outside to meet the SUV, she saw Eric catapult around the corner of the house.

  Trent slammed the car door just in time to catch him in a hug. “Oof ! Dude, you’ve grown!” He looked him over, then pulled him in for another hug. “I’m glad to see you safe and sound.”

  Here was the unhappy man who would leave his child with strangers in order to go and work. Well, at least he didn’t seem shy about showing affection after a long absence. He wore suit pants and a button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, but he’d clearly been driving with the windows down, because his hair was mussed. He looked like the driven executive she’d seen two weeks ago…and yet something had changed.

  Absence made the heart grow fonder, and there was a lot about Eric to love. Maybe he’d been doing some serious thinking after Eric had run away.

  “Dad, you remember Caleb, right? My friend? And his mom, Sarah?”

  Sarah extended a hand. “Welcome back.”

  “I hope my kid wasn’t too much trouble.”

  “Not at all. We were just saying in the kitchen what a good helper he’s been.”

  “I got up at four o’clock every day and
milked cows, Dad. And weeded the garden and made the beds and one day we went fishing and I caught two brookies and Caleb got skunked and we cooked them for supper!”

  Trent’s mouth dropped open. Then he turned to Sarah. “Is that so?”

  “Ja,” she said. “Like I told you. A real good helper and provider. We were happy to have him.”

  “Wow.” It took the man a moment to gather words together. “Wow. So where’s Henry, the potter? And how about this lantern? When do I get to see that?”

  “It’s in your room, in a crate. Henry’s not here yet, but I can show you.” And Eric dragged him into the house just seconds before Sarah heard another car arrive.

  Henry and Ginny.

  They were clearly a couple now. He came around the hood of the car to open the door for her, and when she got out, she took his hand.

  Sarah’s stomach plunged and righted itself, settling into a kind of hollowness that she had no business feeling. She was concerned for his soul, that was all—if he and Ginny kept on this path and decided to get married, he would be lost to fellowship. Even if he didn’t go through with it, a man who loved a dead woman for ten years would love a living one for a lot longer, so how could he tie a whole sacrifice to the altar when his heart would be torn in two?

  But she had said her say and it was not her place to say it again.

  Sarah arranged a smile on her face and shook hands. “I’m glad to see you both. What have you got there, Henry? Is that a computer?”

  “It’s Ginny’s tablet.” He indicated the shiny sliver of metal under his arm. “We’ve brought something to show you, since you’re in it.”

  Sarah didn’t know the difference between a computer and a tablet, but this wasn’t making sense in any case. “In it? In the com—the tablet?”

  Ginny laughed. “In a manner of speaking. The video that the crew took of Henry the other week is up on the D.W. Frith website. We brought it along so we could all see it. And I can’t tell you how hard it’s been not to watch it before everybody else— Henry tells me he’s going to make us all wait until after dinner. Why would he do that unless fame has gone to his head?”