by Anna Schmidt
“Fine,” Hester said. “I’m just going to check on the others.” She brushed past Olive, who had returned to her work as soon as Rosalyn entered the room.
But she stopped halfway to the bedrooms and forced herself to take several deep breaths to regain her composure. Olive’s words had struck closer to home than Hester was willing to admit aloud. She had chosen to help Grady with the situation at Tucker’s Point when she should have focused on getting her grandmother and the others packed up and moved to shelters. Due to her negligence, they had barely avoided disaster. She twisted the tie of her prayer covering around her finger. Pinecraft was her community, not the world beyond that and certainly not Tucker’s Point.
Olive had hit another nerve, too. Ever since her mother’s death, Hester had felt this urgency to fill her days with work. It was almost as if by running from one task to the next she might be able to suppress the discontent and restlessness that dogged her even when she tried to sleep.
Hester retraced her steps down the hall. “Olive, do you have a minute?” she asked.
The older woman eyed her suspiciously but put down the cloth soaked in beach solution that she was using to wipe down a painted built-in bookcase and waited.
Rosalyn looked from one woman to the other. “I’ll just go see if I can be of help in the kitchen,” she murmured as she hurried off.
“I’d like to apologize,” Hester said. “Both for my behavior earlier and for my actions over the last days and weeks. You were right.”
Olive released a self-righteous huff but said nothing.
“Actually, you have done me a great favor,” Hester continued, picking up the cleaning rag that Rosalyn had left behind and starting to wash the wall next to where Olive returned to her scrubbing. “I was feeling such guilt about how long I waited before helping my grandmother and others get moved to the shelters. I am so thankful that nothing happened to any of you. If someone had been injured or suffered a heart attack from the stress …”
“Fortunately for you, God was with us that day. Perhaps He was using the situation to teach you a valuable lesson—one you have refused to heed despite numerous warnings from others.”
Hester did not like thinking of God placing others in harm’s way simply to teach her a lesson, but she held her tongue. This was no time for a theological debate. She had come back to apologize and confess that there was an element of truth in Olive’s concern.
“Yes, well, I wanted you to know that my rudeness before was born of that sense of guilt.”
Olive sloshed her rag in the bucket of sudsy water and twisted it into a skein to squeeze out every extra drop before she returned to wiping down the top of the bookcase and then started on the wall above it. The two of them worked in silence for several minutes until every inch of the wall had been scrubbed clean. All the while Hester was aware that Olive’s lips were pressed into that thin line that was a sure sign that she was about to make a pronouncement.
“Am I to understand that you are telling me that you have seen the error of your ways at long last and that you will be resigning your position with MCC?”
Hester could not have been more shocked if the woman had asked if she planned to cut off her right arm as retribution for her transgressions. “I…Why would…?”
Olive ignored her sputtering. “Because if you are truly sorry for what you admit is a fault brought on by your decision to volunteer for that agency, then perhaps …”
“MCC is a Mennonite agency,” Hester reminded her.
“Do not lecture me, bitte. I am well aware of who and what they are. I am also well aware that over time the people who have been given responsibility for running that agency have fallen prey to the ways of outsiders. MCC is barely distinguishable from—”
“They do good work—we do good work,” Hester said quietly as she tried in vain to stem the anger rising inside her.
“That may be, but as the daughter of a minister, you would do well to reconsider your allegiance to that group. CAM is a far more appropriate group, as your friend Emma Keller has been quick to appreciate.”
“Appropriate?”
“For us. For you, the only daughter of our pastor.”
Hester bit her lower lip and closed her eyes, silently praying for God’s guidance. Aware that Rosalyn had returned and was standing in the doorway, Hester forced herself to remain calm. “My work—”
“Your work? What about God’s work? Oh, Hester, sometimes I despair for you,” Olive moaned. “Against all tradition you decided to pursue a career, and, unpaid though it may be, you clearly see yourself as a working woman.”
Hester had opened her mouth to deliver a retort that she was sure to regret when Rosalyn stepped the rest of the way into the room and saved her. “Seems to me, ma’am, that we are all working women, at least until we get these houses cleaned up and folks moved back in.”
She did not give Olive a chance to respond, but turned instead to Hester. “Kitchen’s almost done, so I thought I’d get started on Lizzie’s house. If you’ll come show me what you want done over there, Hester, I’ll round up some warm bodies and get to work.”
Gratefully, Hester dropped her rag back into the bucket and followed Rosalyn outside.
John was having trouble focusing, literally. His eyes constantly clouded over from the sweat that dripped off his face like raindrops, making it next to impossible to see what he was doing. Between his broken wrist and the ankle he’d twisted, he was already severely limited in what he could accomplish on any given day.
Still, he had made some progress. With Zeke’s help he’d managed to get a tarp over the exposed rafters of the house where the roof had blown off. He’d also scrubbed down the kitchen walls and removed anything that had already produced mold or that might if left untended. It would be some time before he could afford the repairs that would be necessary to restore the second story of the main house, so he had decided to focus his energy on the packinghouse and smaller outbuildings instead. To that end his plan was to make use of the plywood sheets that he’d nailed over the windows before the hurricane came ashore to put down a base for the roof of the packinghouse and work from there.
He had leaned the boards against the walls of the packinghouse that had remained standing after the storm and turned them daily to allow them to dry. Of course they had warped, but not so much that they wouldn’t do until he could afford something better. With his one good arm, turning the boards took several hours all by itself, and there was no way that he alone could wrangle them up and into place on the rafters without help. So he would wait until Zeke decided to stop by and they could do it together. He had learned that Zeke’s schedule was unpredictable to say the least.
Samuel was more reliable. He had biked out to John’s property several times in the days that had passed since leaving the camper with him. He always came alone and after dark when his work in town was finished for the day. John understood that his impromptu visits were the young carpenter’s way of building trust. And it was working. He never stayed long, just walked around looking at what John had been able to accomplish since his last visit. Every once in a while he would comment on the progress in Pinecraft.
“MDS has cleared out all of the houses along the creek,” he’d told John on his latest visit. “The women from MCC and CAM are scrubbing everything down, and Pastor Detlef expects some folks will be able to start moving back in as early as next week.”
“That’s good.” It occurred to John that Samuel never mentioned Hester. Not that he had any reason to talk about her to John. Besides, why should he care?
“Everybody doing okay otherwise?”
“Sehr gut. Jeannie Messner and her husband took in a bunch of people, and others did the same. The shelters aren’t nearly so filled as they were right after the storm.”
John waited for more explanation of Samuel’s definition of very good as applied to the situation at hand, but apparently Samuel had nothing more to report. “Well, I’ll go back now.�
� He paused and studied John for a long moment. “You look thinner, John. Are you eating?”
“I am. Margery shows up regularly to check on that, and to just in general be sure I’m still breathing.”
Samuel nodded. “That’s good. She’s a good person, perhaps too concerned at times about the welfare of others. She probably told you that she suffered some real damage during the storm, but far more afterward when the floods came. Now that we’ve cleared out the houses in Pinecraft, Pastor Detlef plans to take a team over to help her get her repairs done so that her business can open again.” He mounted the bicycle and began pedaling slowly toward the lane out to the main road. “God bless you, John,” he called.
As John watched him go, he had the sudden urge to call him back, to suggest a cup of coffee or a game of checkers—not that he owned a checker set. But he wanted to know more about Margery. He’d been so wrapped up in his own problems that he’d failed to consider that Margery had to have suffered such serious losses as well. It struck him that watching Samuel pedal into the darkness and not knowing for sure when he might see him—or anyone—again, he felt something he hadn’t felt in a very long time. John felt loneliness.
That night he had trouble sleeping. Usually at the end of the day he was so thoroughly exhausted that he had barely closed his Bible from his nightly reading before he was asleep. But on this night that wasn’t the case. Long after the white noise of the traffic that ran along Highway 41 in the distance had subsided, John lay on his sleeping bag in the back of the camper, his eyes wide open as he stared up through the mosquito netting and listened to an owl calling to its mate.
Margery had said nothing about further damage to her place from the floods. He’d asked her how she was recovering after the storm, and she’d brushed him off as she always did.
“You just get yourself back in shape,” she’d barked. “I’ll be just fine.”
And why would she confide in you? he thought. She could hardly count on him to offer any real help or, for that matter, common sympathy for her plight. Margery knew very well that he cringed every time she showed up and that everything he said or did was with one intention—to get her to leave as soon as possible.
He hadn’t always been like this. Back in Indiana he had been known as a man who could be counted on to help a neighbor, help a total stranger for that matter. But he had changed. Instead of his move to Florida being the start of a new life healing the wounds he’d suffered, it seemed those wounds had festered. His anger at the unfairness of life had infected his ability to trust. His ability to care.
True, back home, people he had thought he could count on had turned away from him. People who had expressed love for him had sided with those who accused him of becoming too prideful. John closed his eyes and allowed himself to think about Alice Yoder for the first time in two long years. Just as he had been banned by the church, he had banned the woman he’d been ready to marry from his thoughts, refusing to allow anything about her to color his mind. And in time he had succeeded. Once he’d gotten settled in Florida, the work to get the garden planted, the groves back to producing, and the house habitable had exhausted him to the point where at night it was all he could do to prepare a simple supper, read his Bible, and fall into bed.
Every morning seemed to bring with it some fresh challenge that had to be faced and dealt with, and in time, the image of Alice had faded. But it came to him now that in banning her from his thoughts, he had banned anyone who showed the slightest interest in him, regardless of their age or gender. He had trusted Alice because he’d had no reason not to believe that she would stand with him no matter what. But at the first sign of conflict she had chosen the safety of the community over him. That had been the final straw.
Then when he’d moved into the old farmhouse that had sat unoccupied and abandoned for over a decade, Margery had shown up offering him food and friendship, but he had sent her away. His distrust of others and their hidden motives had been too fresh, too painful, and he had quickly decided that what Thoreau had gotten right was the idea of depending solely on one’s self. And over the two years that followed, he had thought the plan was working. He kept so busy that his need for human companionship became secondary to his need to prove himself.
But now he found himself wondering if he had ever intended that his self-imposed isolation would go on indefinitely. It had begun for him as it had for Thoreau, as an experiment. Nothing more. But with each passing day, each challenge met and conquered, the idea that it was possible to live a life of near-self-sufficiency had become the ultimate challenge.
The truth was that he had not allowed himself to think beyond getting through each day. Every victory was something he celebrated alone. No, not alone. With God. For when he’d seen the first vegetables thriving in the raised planter boxes or the blossoms on the trees in Tucker’s abandoned grove, he had raised his eyes to the heavens, thanking God. He had needed nothing more than that as evidence that he had made the right choice in coming to Florida.
Back then he had told himself that his community had deserted him, resulting in the loss of his farm, his future wife, and the life they would share. But it was long past time for him to admit that he and he alone had made the decision to leave. He had come to Florida to prove a point. Now he had to wonder if he had really intended to stay forever.
He opened the door to the camper and stepped outside. Above him a full moon sat low in the western sky, casting a beam like a path straight onto the waters of the bay. It would be light soon. Tied up at the pier—one of the first things he and Zeke had restored on the property—was a small boat. Margery had towed it over one day, insisting she had no place for it until her pier could be repaired.
“You’d be doing me a favor keeping it here, Johnny. Not that you’re inclined to handing out favors, but I’d appreciate it.”
“Fine,” he’d told her and gone back to working on clearing out the remains of the chicken coop.
“I’ll leave the keys in the ON position–that way you just need to pull the cord to get her started. You know, in case you want to use it or have to move it or something.”
“Fine,” he’d repeated. He had waited for the sound of her boat fading before going down to the pier and having a look at the craft.
Now with his one good arm, he released the rope from the post and climbed in. Awkwardly he managed to get the boat started, back it away from his pier, and turn it toward the mouth of the creek. By the time he was on his way, he was drenched in sweat. The sky had started to lighten. He headed up Philippi Creek, and just ahead he could see what was left of Margery’s marina.
Margery Barker had watched over him for two long years. She had never asked for or seemed to expect anything in return. Indeed, she had endured his barely concealed annoyance at her visits with humor and grace. And his bad temper had not deterred her from coming back again and again. How many times had he shown genuine interest in her business, her health, her happiness? What did he really know of her? That she was a widow and that she ran a fishing charter business. That was pretty much it.
Something his aunt Liz had said the last time they spoke by phone—a phone call that had ended with John hanging up on her—came back to him now.
“You were never a selfish man, John. In fact, you have always been one of the most giving people I have ever known. Rachel was always so proud of the way you turned out.”
His aunt had been taking a risk. She knew that any mention of his mother opened floodgates of remorse and guilt for John.
“Sorry,” Liz had murmured, realizing too late her mistake. “But really, John, I am worried about you. You’ve changed so much.”
“I’m fine,” he’d managed before hanging up the pay phone. And as he’d stood there in the middle of a nearly deserted bus station where he had gone to use the phone, he had felt a lump of grief fill the cavity of his chest like unset concrete until he’d been forced to sit down to catch his breath.
That conversation had t
aken place six months ago. Since then Liz had contacted him by mail as often as not delivered by Margery without comment.
His aunt was right. He had changed, and not for the better. He had allowed his bitterness to color everything he did, every interaction with others. He looked into every face these days with distrust, expecting the person to have some agenda other than simple kindness. Margery had proved him wrong, and she deserved more from him than the disdain he’d dished out for two years. For that matter, so did his aunt Liz, but one step at a time.
Chapter 12
As the sun painted the sky in streaks of vermilion and orange, John idled the boat, taking stock of Margery Barker’s marina. In spite of catastrophic damage to the bait shop and pier, John could see that a lot of work had already been done. Of course Margery would have gratefully accepted the help of neighbors and friends. She was well known and deeply respected, at least among those who lived and worked along the bay.
