Huckleberry Summer (Huckleberry Hill)

by Jennifer Beckstrand

  “Stop what?”

  “That mysterious whispering thing you do. It’s improper.”

  He raised his scarred eyebrow. “Mysterious? I’ve never been called mysterious.” Except for his boots and stockings, he was fully dressed, looking unnaturally handsome with his untidy wet hair.

  She was tempted to reach up and tousle that hair. Instead, she shoved her hand into her apron pocket and made a fist until the tingling subsided. “Maybe we should do something safer, like eat our fried chicken.”

  Aden brushed his fingers through his hair. “You might be brave enough to risk it, but I am terrified of eating fried chicken.”

  “Oh, I forgot. You get to eat that tofu stuff. After risking your life in the pond, I hope you don’t die of food poisoning.”

  Felty handed Aden his boots. “Good work, Aden. That horse was plenty scared.”

  Aden frowned and shook his head. “They weren’t thinking real hard.”

  The two boys had pulled their small trailer several feet from the pond and were getting ready to launch their canoe into the water, with them in it this time. Aden beckoned the two boys over. They pulled their boat far enough out of the water that it wouldn’t float away and came to Aden.

  “Denki, again,” John, the shorter of the two, said. “In truth, we would have been sunk without you.”

  Aden waved his hand around and shrugged off John’s thanks. “Will you make me a promise?”

  John wrinkled his brow in puzzlement. “Jah, of course, anything for you.”

  “Will you make sure a vet sees your horse today? I don’t want that cut to get infected.”

  “Okay, we will.”

  “I am organizing a pond-cleaning frolic. I’d like to pull that rusty car and all that old wire out of the water. In a couple of weeks should be good. How about Saturday the ninth at nine in the morning? Will you come?”

  “Jah,” Crist said. “We will bring our three brothers.”

  “And your horse and trailer, okay?”

  Both boys nodded and returned to their boat.

  Lily stared at Aden. “Since when are you having a frolic?”

  “Since just now,” he said. “Don’t you think it’s a gute idea?”

  Felty clapped his hands. “A wonderful-gute idea. People throw trash in this pond like a garbage dump, and they’ve done it for years.”

  “The water used to be so clear,” Anna said.

  Aden’s eyes lit up. “And we’re going to make it that beautiful again, Mammi. Can you help me spread the word? With a dozen people or so, we could make it look a lot better. We might convince the waterfowl to come back.”

  Lily frowned. “Are you planning on diving in for that car?”

  He merely flashed that noncommittal grin. Lily blew out a puff of air. She’d rather stay home from the frolic than stand on the shore wondering if Aden would come up for air. She didn’t even try a disapproving expression. If a sharp look from her could convince Aden of anything, it would have worked before now.

  Anna took Felty’s arm as the four of them hiked back to the other side of the pond. “How many people do you think are coming to the frolic? I want to be sure to make enough scarves for everyone,” Anna said.

  “They will come in handy when we want to drag things from the bottom of the lake,” Aden said.

  “I’m not coming,” Lily announced. “It will make me too nervous.”

  Aden opened his mouth in mock indignation. “And miss all the fun? Who will fry tofu for the workers when we get hungry?”

  Lily nudged Aden lightly with her arm. “You’ll have to find somebody else to do it. I’m not touching that stuff ever again.”

  Chapter Ten

  Aden tromped through the mud to the white barn that housed Monroe Yoder’s dairy operation. Surrounded by acres of lush green pastures, the barn was indeed an impressive building. It looked to be almost two hundred feet long and three stories tall with a loft at the top. Earth mounded two sides of the first level of the barn tucked into an incline on Yoder’s property. Next to the barn, two imposing silos stood sentinel, ready to be crammed with silage for the winter. Aden walked up the small hill and opened one of the doors to the second floor.

  Letting his eyes adjust to the dimness, he breathed in the moist, pungent air of the inside of a cattle barn. Tyler, in a pair of rubber boots that went up to his knees, sprayed the cement floor as his dat cleaned the milking equipment. Milking time was over. The cleanup, no doubt, took almost as long as the actual milking.

  Aden’s heart tripped over itself as he thought of Lily. Would she like working here, helping Tyler and his dat milk the cows and clean out the manure? If she didn’t like dogs, could she learn to tolerate cows? Aden tried not to think of Lily as Tyler’s wife. For some reason, the thought drained him of energy and made him feel excessively tired.

  Maybe Lily wasn’t all that interested in Tyler. Would she ever fry Tyler a slab of tofu? Would she ever wrap a blanket around Tyler’s shoulders in an unnecessary effort to keep him warm? Would she ever show Tyler that fire in her eyes when he made her angry?

  Would Tyler—steady, faithful Tyler—ever make Lily angry?

  Tyler was too smart for that. And Lily would never fall for someone who teased her and never did what she wanted him to do. Aden was a lost cause with Lily. That much was certain.

  He swallowed the lump in his throat and shook off his sudden languid mood. “Tyler,” Aden yelled over the din of the spraying water. “Tyler.”

  The bishop yelled something to Tyler, and Tyler yelled back, but neither of them made any indication that they had heard Aden.

  Aden put his fingers to his mouth and blew the ear-piercing whistle his dat had taught him. Tyler jerked his head around, and Aden could see bright orange earplugs protruding from each ear. He raised his eyebrows, which meant he was happy to see Aden, and twisted the nozzle on the end of the hose until the water slowed to a trickle.

  Tyler’s earplugs were connected to each other by a thin orange string. He pulled them from his ears and let them dangle around his neck. “Hullo, Aden. You finally came.”

  “Jah, I wanted to see.”

  Tyler motioned toward the door. “Like as not, we can hear better outside.”

  They walked out of the barn, and Tyler removed his heavy rubber gloves. His face glowed with sweat as he wiped his brow with the back of his hand. “Do you want me to show you around?”

  “Jah, of course.”

  Tyler tromped clumsily down the incline in his big boots. He probably wore them all day long. “We have seventy-two head this year. That’s about all we can manage with the four of us.”

  “The four of you?”

  “My dat and mamm, my younger brother Joe, and me. And it’s a gute day’s work—sunup to sundown. We have to be more watchful of the animals because it’s harder to cure them if they get sick. Mamm checks every hoof every morning, except the Sabbath.”

  “How much land do you have?”

  “We’ve got two hundred acres, so we can take on more cattle if we want. There’s plenty of room to grow forage for summer and winter. The cattle graze in the pastures all summer and most of the fall. They like it better than being cooped up in the barn.”

  Aden surveyed the nearest pasture where dappled Holsteins and caramel brown Jerseys grazed to their hearts’ content. “This is how man was meant to farm. I think the Amish are the original environmentalists.”

  Tyler curled one side of his mouth. “The original Amish might roll over in their graves to hear you say that. I don’t think Plain farmers would like to be thought of that way.”

  “I would.”

  Tyler curled up the other corner of his mouth. “I know you would.” He shook his head with an indulgent smirk. “You are not quite normal, as far as the Amish go.”

  Aden laughed. “Thanks for noticing.”

  “But I like you. And I think even Lily is warming up to you.”

  Aden cleared his throat. That lump lodged there aga
in. “Do you think?”

  “Jah. The other night she told me you have a gentle spirit.”

  A gentle spirit? She must have been thinking of someone else. Aden massaged the back of his neck and resolved to quit teasing her so much. A boy with a gentle spirit didn’t take delight in watching Lily Eicher turn red.

  But she did have a very attractive blush.

  He coughed really hard as his throat got even tighter. “I also came by today because I want to invite you to a pond-cleaning frolic.”

  “I’ve never heard of one of those.”

  “Cobbler Pond is full of all sorts of trash. Since it’s close by, I thought you might want to help clean it up.”

  Tyler rubbed his chin. “The west end of that pond is grown over with algae. The runoff from the surrounding farms brings in all that leftover fertilizer. Maybe that will get better now that our dairy is organic.” He studied Aden’s face. “Some men ask for help raising a barn or planting crops. You want to do something for a pond that isn’t even yours?”

  “Will you come?”

  “Of course I will come. Is Lily going to be there?”

  Aden tried to ignore the fact that the lump in his throat moved to form a knot in his stomach. He shrugged off the feeling and gave Tyler a teasing grin. “Why should you care if Lily is going to be there?”

  Tyler’s neck bloomed bright red and he looked down at his clunky boots, but his lips quirked into a half smile. “No use hiding it. You know I like her.”

  Aden couldn’t help himself. “I like her too.”

  Tyler snapped his head up and his gaze bored into Aden’s skull. “Don’t joke about such things.”

  Aden forced a lighthearted laugh. “I like her a lot. She won’t touch my dog without sanitizing her hands afterward, and she thinks I’m weird, but I like her. I made her so mad the other day that she actually socked me in the chest.”

  “She did?”

  “I think she would have tried for the mouth, but I’m too tall. And her dat has nightmares about me, and I have nightmares about him.”

  Tyler’s expression softened.

  Aden shoved his hands in his pockets and nudged Tyler with his elbow. “Do you think her dat would like me for a son-in-law? I don’t eat meat. I’m cheap to feed.”

  “To own the truth, you would not be David’s choice to marry his daughter.”

  Aden pretended Tyler’s words didn’t sting. Tyler certainly hadn’t meant them to. “But she is really cute the way she carries hand sanitizer with her everywhere. Maybe I should try harder with her dat.”

  Tyler slapped his gloves against his leg. His eyes danced as he looked at Aden. “She has four different flavors.”

  “Of hand sanitizer?”

  “Vanilla is my favorite.”

  Strawberry was Aden’s favorite. But he didn’t say so. Tyler would be alarmed that he’d noticed. Every time Aden caught a whiff of Lily’s strawberry hand sanitizer, he imagined running through the meadow with her, holding hands and chasing butterflies. The smell made him want to bury his face in her hair and breathe her in.

  Tyler would probably have a heart attack if he knew what thoughts traveled through Aden’s mind.

  Yep. He’d keep his mouth shut.

  “Lily says she’s not coming because she doesn’t want to worry about someone drowning,” Aden said.

  “I don’t wonder that she would.” Tyler considered the problem for a moment and nodded. “I will talk to her.”

  Aden didn’t want to frown, but he did. Tyler seemed so sure of himself. Why did he think a word from him would convince Lily when she had flatly refused Aden’s invitation?

  He knew the answer. He just didn’t want to hear it.

  Tyler put a hand on Aden’s shoulder. “Cum, I will show you where we are going to put the methane digester.”

  How appropriate. What better activity than to survey the manure supply, when Aden felt like he was swimming in it.

  “Lead the way,” Aden said. With Tyler walking ahead, he wouldn’t catch Aden frowning.

  Chapter Eleven

  A flatbed wagon was much less comfortable than a courting buggy. Lily tried to prop herself on her hands as best she could so her arms could absorb some of the shock to her backside bouncing around on the wagon seat. Tyler had come in the wagon this morning because he said he needed to haul something to the pond for Aden. Whatever he hauled sat in the wagon bed covered with a tarp. Something in the shape of a large toolbox sat under the tarp, but there were other lumps that Lily couldn’t begin to guess at. She was definitely curious.

  Lily counted seventeen buggies parked alongside the road next to Cobbler Pond. Had that many people really come to help Aden clean his pond? Lily couldn’t believe it. She thought Aden was the only one who cared about the condition of the Bonduel environment.

  Well, Aden and her. Before Aden arrived in Bonduel, she hadn’t really thought about it, but she cared very much how clean the water in the pond was. If it was good for the birds and the wildlife, then it was good for everybody. Aden would finally get the pond cleaned, and that would make him very happy. Aden’s smile was one of the nicest sights in the whole world.

  Tyler pulled up his team and set the brake on the wagon. He must have been excited. He leaped from the wagon like a little boy jumping into a pile of leaves. He offered his hand to Lily so she could climb down. The wagon seat was at least six feet from the ground.

  “Let’s go find Aden,” Tyler said.

  Lily had no objections. She’d like to see for herself that Aden was not dead at the bottom of the pond. That thought sent her heart racing. He’d better be safe on dry land or she would give him a good talking-to. Sometimes she thought he did reckless things just to annoy her.

  Tyler fell behind as he encountered someone who wanted to talk to him, but Lily didn’t wait. What if Aden was drowning at this very minute, and everyone was too busy to notice?

  The banks of the pond crawled with people, Englisch and Amish alike. Bright garbage bags dotted the landscape like a field of giant orange flowers. A few of the men were in the water but none looked to be farther than knee-deep. Lily spotted Anna and Felty under the shade of a tree passing out scarves and coffee even though it must have already been eighty degrees outside.

  He stood near the shore with slightly damp hair and a sunny yellow scarf around his neck, barking directions to two boys guiding a team of horses. The four horses were harnessed side by side and two deep, hitched to four thick ropes that stretched down to the water and disappeared below the surface of the pond. These were sturdy workhorses with hooves the size of dinner plates and long hair growing at their feet. They strained as the boys guided them away from the pond. Lily’s gaze marked each yard as the horses made progress up the gentle slope.

  To Lily’s astonishment, the curved hood of a car appeared from beneath the surface of the pond, and then the entire front half emerged. The car had no tires and no glass in the windows, and Lily couldn’t begin to guess how old it was because there didn’t look to be a spot of paint on it—just the bare, tarnished metal.

  The water protested loudly as the old car finally made it onto shore. Waves splashed against the back bumper and heaved themselves past the normal bounds of the bank before settling down and giving up the fight.

  A young man with chocolate-brown skin and a lime-green T-shirt stood at the road motioning to Aden. “Can they pull it clear up here?”

  Aden nodded and called to the boys guiding the horses. Lily recognized them as the ones Aden had helped here at the pond over two weeks ago.

  The shorter one, John, waved his reply and led the horses toward the road. Now that the car was out of the water, they had an easier time pulling it, even though it didn’t have tires. It had probably been stuck but good in the mud at the bottom.

  Lily breathed a sigh of relief. Aden would not need to go into the water to fetch the car. It was already out, leaving Lily blissfully ignorant as to how they had managed to secure the towropes
around it.

  Aden watched the car’s progress up the slope before glancing her way. When he caught sight of her, he flashed a brilliant smile that left the sun in shadow. He appeared at her side before she had time to calm her heart banging against her chest. She grinned stupidly.

  “I thought you weren’t going to come,” Aden said.

  “Tyler talked me into it.”

  The brilliant smile faded, although it didn’t disappear. “You’ll have to tell me how he does that. I can’t seem to be able to talk you into anything.”

  Lily shot a quick look over her shoulder. She didn’t see Tyler, but she couldn’t seem to muster any enthusiasm to find him. “A lot of people came.”

  Aden’s eyes seemed to dance with an inner light. “I wouldn’t have believed that so many people cared.”

  “Of course they care. We want to be gute stewards of the Earth.”

  He looked at her as if he were trying to find the meaning of life in her eyes. “Do you?”

  Lily nodded, unable to muster a coherent reply while he looked at her like that.

  Aden fell silent and did that staring thing again. Would he notice how breathless she had become?

  How long would they have stood like that? Lily couldn’t begin to guess because the young man in the lime-green shirt marched over to them and crashed his shoulder into Aden. Aden stepped back to keep from losing his balance and laughed as if getting plowed into was the most fun activity in the world.

  The other young man had a bright smile and a deep dimple in his cheek. “When I agreed to help you, I didn’t realize you lived quite so far out in the sticks. Do you know how hard it is to find a good cup of coffee in Shawano? Are you really that far from civilization that you don’t know what a Starbucks is?”

  Aden laughed and winked at Lily. “Lily, do you know what Starbucks is?”

  Lily curled up one corner of her mouth. “It’s a coffee store.”

  “A coffee store?” the young man teased. “Nobody calls it a coffee store. You people might as well be Amish for as primitive as you are.”