A Christmas Visitor

by Amy Clipston

  “Beginner’s luck.” Rocky took the ball from Caleb, raced toward the basket, jumped, and jammed the ball through it. “Wahoo, nothing but net!”

  Frannie wrestled Caleb for the rebound, but her cousin had more strength. In a flash, he made another basket. “That’s two points, right? Are we having teams?”

  “Teams. It’s more fun if you keep score. I’ll be on one team, Frannie on the other, since we’re the grown-ups.” Grown-ups, of a sort. Rocky grabbed a stick and began marking the out-of-bounds lines and the free-throw line in the hard-packed dirt that passed for a yard. “We’ll do a half-court game. I reckon you don’t know what that means.”

  Frannie snorted, a very unladylike sound that only served to endear her more to Rocky. “Sure I do. They had games on the TV in the restaurant.”

  “And you watched? Shame on you.”

  “Nee, I heard. Who could help, the way they yell and scream over a game?” Frannie snatched the ball from Caleb. She scampered past Rocky, her long dress flapping behind her. “Hurry up. We’re playing basketball.”

  Indeed, they were.

  “What is wrong with you?”

  Frannie whirled. She hadn’t heard Aenti Abigail enter the room she shared with Rebekah and Hazel. She smoothed her straggling hair with both hands. Her kapp hung by a hairpin. Dirt and sweat marred her apron from top to bottom. “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t act all innocent with me.” Her aunt crossed her arms over her chest. “Everyone saw you out there playing games with him.”

  “Him” had a name. Rocky. “Having fun. There’s no rule in the Ordnung that says we can’t have fun.”

  “Don’t make me the bad person here. There’s fun and then there’s fun and you know it.”

  Frannie did know it. She’d had more fun playing basketball with Rocky and the kinner than she’d had in all the days since she returned to Bee County. Running and shooting and scuffling over the ball. Rocky towered over her and the other players, making it easy for him to block shots. Sometimes he took pity and let her make a shot here and there. Two-pointers, as he called them. She’d learned to defend the basket and what a foul was. Her specialty seemed to be free throws. With no one defending the basket, she couldn’t miss. Her arms ached and her legs shuffled like wet noodles, but she felt . . . happy.

  “It’s just a game.”

  “A game everyone saw you playing with a full-grown man.”

  “There were a bunch of us.”

  “You were the only woman.”

  Frannie sank onto the bed. Aenti Abigail joined her. She patted Frannie’s dirty hands. “I don’t want you to think I don’t understand what you’re going through, but you told me you would never marry outside the church. I took you at your word.”

  “I meant it.”

  “That’s not what it looked like today.”

  “We had fun, that’s all.”

  “Joseph is coming for supper tonight.”

  “Joseph isn’t interested in me. He just likes your casserole.” Frannie went to the window. Dark clouds hung close to the earth, heavy and damp. Rain had finally begun to fall, heralding the end of a long, hot summer. For everyone. She breathed in the scent of moist dirt, fighting the urge to bawl. Plain women didn’t bawl. Inhaling, she faced her aunt. “You didn’t marry Stephen because you knew you didn’t love him.”

  “I gave him a chance before I made that decision.” Aunt Abigail plucked at a thread on her apron, her expression distant, remembering. “I told your mudder I would watch out for you and I am.”

  “My mudder would like a good game of basketball.”

  “She wouldn’t like it if her child left the district and she couldn’t see her anymore, ever. That’s what’s at stake here.” Her aunt’s voice trembled. Surely she thought of her own daughter, Leila. “You know that. Do you want to give up everything and everyone you love for a man?”

  “I’m not Leila. I will never do that. I’m Plain through and through.”

  “So was Leila. Or so I thought.”

  “If you believe in Gott’s will, wasn’t leaving here Gott’s plan for Leila and Jesse?”

  “I’m not smart enough or prideful enough to think I know what Gott’s plan is. It will unfold on Gott’s time, not ours.” Aunt Abigail sounded so sure of herself. Even the loss of her daughter didn’t shake her faith. “Gott is good. What we see today or tomorrow is not the end. We have to have patience and wait on the Lord.”

  Patience had never been one of Frannie’s strong suits. “I’m sorry. I have trouble seeing my life without Rocky in it.”

  There, she’d said it. Her aunt’s arms came out and Frannie found herself embraced in a warm, sure hug. Surprise overcame her. Tears formed. She sniffed. Aenti Abigail did the same and sat back.

  “Did you know I have a new granddaughter whom I haven’t seen? Deborah received a letter from Leila.” She wiped at her face with her sleeve. “Her name is Grace. You’d be surprised at what you can get through. I know I am.”

  “There have been times when people have joined our faith and become members of the district, haven’t there?”

  Aenti Abigail sighed. “Wishful thinking, child.”

  “Why? He bought a buggy.”

  “He’s thinking with his heart too. A buggy doesn’t a Plain man make.”

  “Doesn’t it count for something?”

  “It’s true that it’s happened in other districts. I’ve heard.” Aunt Abigail smoothed her apron, leaving the loose thread to its own devices. “Different districts do it differently, but usually the person who joins spends at least a year getting used to the idea of giving up all those luxuries like electricity and cars and such. The bishop interviews the person to see if his heart is really in it. Sometimes the whole church votes. I don’t know how Leroy would do it.”

  “So it is possible?”

  “But not likely.” Her aunt stood. “Get cleaned up. I need to warm up the enchilada casserole. You can set the table. Put out the pickled jalapeños. You know how Mordecai likes those with his enchiladas. And don’t forget to set a place for Joseph.”

  Her aunt disappeared through the door.

  A pain pierced Frannie’s chest so sharp she doubled over. The happiness of only a few minutes earlier dissipated like dew in the rising sun on an August morning. She closed her eyes and rocked, willing the pain to subside. Gott? Gott!

  Nothing.

  She jerked off her apron, wadded it up, and slung it across the room. “Thy will be done?” She spoke the words aloud in the still silence of her room. She’d heard them a million times it seemed, and she still couldn’t understand how a person knew. How did she know?

  Gott?

  Silence. Heart as heavy as a year’s supply of firewood, she trudged across the room to pick up the apron.

  Thy will be done, but please let it include Rocky. Somehow. Some way.

  Some kind of prayer that was. Trying to say, “Lord, have it Your way, but first, Lord, have it my way.”

  Lord, have mercy on my rebellious soul.

  Worn to a frazzle, she combed her hair, replaced her kapp, and slipped on a clean apron.

  Time to set a place for Joseph.

  CHAPTER 7

  The horsey smell mixed with the rank odor of manure should be considered for a man’s cologne. Rocky smiled to himself. Women might not think so, but any cowboy worth his salt would wear it. The rhythm of his strokes across Chocolate’s wide back and flanks was almost as calming to him as it was to the horse. He leaned his head against Chocolate’s long neck for a second and heaved a sigh. Take a
way everything going on in his life right now, capture the soft evening glow of sunset, a mourning dove cooing in the distance, two calico kittens chasing each other in a rough-and-tumble race across the yard outside the corral, and this moment could be almost perfect.

  Almost.

  The distant clip-clop of horse’s hooves and the squeak-squeak of wheels traversing the rough terrain of the dirt road that led to the Cotters’ homestead forced him to raise his head and squint into the setting sun. A buggy. Too soon to say whose. Chocolate raised his head and nickered.

  “You and me both, sweet thing, you and me both.” Rocky gathered the harness and led the horse toward the fence. “Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. That there is the bishop, Chocolate. What do you think he wants?”

  To tell Rocky to get out of Dodge and leave a certain young Amish woman in peace? Surely not. Rocky ducked his head. His jeans, so worn they were a pale blue with skin peeking through thick threads at the knees, were dirty. His jacket had bloodstains on it from where he’d cut his hand chopping firewood, and he probably smelled a lot like Chocolate.

  Leroy parked near the gate and descended from the buggy. Once both boots were on the ground, one hand went to his back. He was slow to straighten. “Evening.”

  “Evening.”

  Rocky waited. He’d learned in his dealings with the bishop to let the man do the talking. He got in a lot less trouble that way.

  “Tomorrow is the annual auction.” Leroy wiped his face with a bandanna that might have once been white but now looked a dingy gray. “It’s our annual fund-raiser for the school and our emergency medical fund.”

  Rocky shoved through the gate and latched it behind him. “I might have heard something about that.”

  Leroy propped both arms on the top plank of the wooden fence and leaned against it. “Have you finished your readings?”

  The older man’s shift in topics from the auction to a barely legible translation of the Dordrecht Articles of Faith and its eighteen articles had meaning, but Rocky couldn’t say what it was. “I’m working on it.”

  “Those articles are very important to a Plain man of faith.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Don’t ‘sir’ me.”

  “Yes, sir—Leroy.” Why had the man made this trip out here to repeat a conversation they’d already had? More than once. “I know that.”

  “You talk to your mother lately?”

  Now that was indeed a new topic. “I gave up my phone.”

  “You don’t know how to come to the store and use the community phone?”

  Surely that was a privilege meant only for the members of the district. “Well, yes, I mean, I didn’t know, I didn’t think—”

  “Never underestimate how much a parent misses a child who’s left the nest.” Leroy cleared his throat. His gaze drifted over Rocky’s shoulder. Surely he thought of his own son, whom he refused to see and with whom he would never break bread again. “Mother or father. It’s as God intends when a grown child strikes out on his own—for the most part—but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt a parent’s heart.”

  “Understood.”

  He’d talked to his mother every night from his hotel room on the trip down, regaling her with stories of the people he’d visited within the diners along the way, describing parks where he’d stopped to eat a sack lunch and take a quick snooze. She thought he would pick up Frannie and bring her home. If things didn’t work out, he wouldn’t have to tell her how close he’d come to assuming a Texan citizenship. Texas had been its own country more than once, and some still thought it was or should be.

  Writing letters was a lost art in the English world, but one he had given due diligence since coming to Bee County. His mother deserved to know what was going on with her only son.

  “Tell me something about your mother.”

  Leroy’s abrupt command blew away Rocky’s reverie. “Beg your pardon.”

  “Your mother raised you to be a decent human being, best I can tell.” Leroy stared at Rocky over streaked wire-rimmed glasses that rested halfway down his long nose. “Tell me something about her.”

  Food always came to Rocky’s mind first when he thought of his mother. That and the way she used to put vapor rub on a cloth diaper, warm it on the gas register in the living room, and then pin it around his neck when he had a bad cold. Her hands were always cool on his hot forehead. She always hummed a George Strait song under her breath when she made chicken noodle soup from scratch. “She makes the best fried chicken in the state of Missouri.”

  “And your father? What do you remember about him?”

  “What does this have to do with me joining the church?”

  “You are who you are because of your parents. They taught you what’s right and what’s wrong. They taught you what to value.”

  “My dad mostly taught me what not to do.” Rocky let the rough wood of the fence absorb an anger that never really went away. It bubbled under the surface and reared its ugly head at inopportune times. “He wasn’t a real dad. My Uncle Richard, he was my dad.”

  “The boxer who became a farmer.”

  “Yes.”

  “He raised a good man.”

  Rocky ducked his head, his throat tight at the unexpected, matter-of-fact assessment from a man he’d come to respect. “He used to take me to auctions up in Jamesport. I loved the auctioneers. I used to practice all the way home, in the backyard, at the kitchen table, until my mama finally told me to hush.”

  “Any good at it?”

  “Uncle Richard said I could always become an auctioneer if the NFL thing didn’t work out.”

  Leroy sniffed and straightened. He turned and ambled toward the buggy, his limp more pronounced than it had been earlier. At the buggy he turned. “I reckon I could use some help tomorrow.”

  “Help?”

  “Are you deaf? Jah, help. At the auction. It’s a long day and my legs aren’t what they used to be. Throat gets mighty parched too.”

  A chance to be at one of the most important events in the life of this district and he was invited, by the bishop, no less. Rocky squashed the urge to pump his fist and whoop. As an added and particularly sweet bonus, Frannie would be there. “I’ll be there with bells on.”

  “No bells needed. Show up before dawn.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “Don’t be late.”

  “I won’t.”

  Leroy touched the brim of his hat, hauled himself into the buggy, and drove away.

  When his visitor was well down the road, Rocky succumbed. He pumped his fist, did his best Snoopy dance, and whooped until Mrs. Cotter came to the window and looked out, a perturbed expression on her face. Chocolate simply nickered.

  CHAPTER 8

  Englisch folks sure worked up an appetite at auctions. Still pleased that Aenti Abigail had trusted her with taking money and making change, Frannie recounted the bills in the shoe box. More than two hundred dollars just from the food shack since the beginning of the auction. More money than she’d ever seen in one place. From the number of cars and trucks parked in front of the Combination Store, the crowd would equal or surpass those she remembered from previous years. From her vantage point seated by the tables laden with pans of hamburgers, meat loaf, green beans, potato salad, and coleslaw, along with bread and pie, she couldn’t see much. All the same, the stream of Englischers and the steady singsong sound of the two auctioneers said all went well.

  Her mouth watered as she batted away flies buzzing the table. The women wouldn’t eat until the flow of customers became a trickle and then disappeared. This
event, held the first Friday every November, was about raising money for the school, their medical fund, repairs, stocking up for winter, and preparing for emergencies that might occur during the year. Everyone understood that.

  “I’ll have the meat-loaf plate.”

  She’d been so sure Rocky would know better than to seek her out here, in front of Aunt Abigail and the other women. She’d been so careful to avoid him since the impromptu basketball game. She’d taken her aenti’s words to heart and accepted a handful of invitations to go riding with Joseph. He asked almost nothing of her, and he’d never brought up the topic of Rocky again. He was a nice man. Smart. Funny. A hard worker. Easy on the eyes, if that counted for anything, which it didn’t. Not much, anyway.

  She counted off his attributes on her fingers at night in bed. She told them to Rebekah in the dark as they both tried to sleep. Rebekah cheered her on every time, and every time Frannie found sleep eluded her for hours.

  She patted damp sweat from her cheeks with a paper napkin. Even in November, she felt warm. Or maybe it was his presence. “Good choice. Five dollars.” She glanced up at Rocky for a split second. Blue shirt, black pants, boots. All he needed was a straw hat and suspenders to look the part. That’s all it was—a part. “It includes your choice of wheat or white bread, apple, cherry, or lemon pie.”

  “White and apple, of course. You should raise your prices. You could get a lot more for good grub like this.” He tugged a worn leather wallet from his back pocket and handed her a crumpled twenty. “Can I take something to Leroy? He must be getting hungry. He’s been up there auctioneering for hours.”

  She fumbled with the box lid. It took her two tries with trembling fingers to count out the three fives for his change. “He’ll eat when it’s over.”

  “You could at least look at me. I’m just trying to help.”

  “If you want to help, take your plate and have a seat at one of the tables.” Aenti Abigail slipped into the space next to Frannie. Her tone was polite, but her expression stern. “What kind of pie would you like?”