Breath of Spring

by Hubbard, Charlotte

  After a quick glance at Adam, Annie Mae went along with Rebecca and her mother, back to the dawdi haus wing where this triplet who’d been raised English was now living. Rebecca had no intentions of ever becoming Amish, but there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that her computer, her fresh ideas, and her kind heart were doing a lot of good for people and their businesses in Willow Ridge.

  “This’ll probably work better if you wash your hair,” Rebecca mused as she pointed toward the bathroom in her apartment. “Meanwhile, I’m going to check something online. Towels are right there in the cabinet by the sink.”

  Annie Mae entered the sunny yellow bathroom with Miriam behind her, noting how Rebecca had kept it looking Plain rather than cluttering the room with makeup and hair gadgets. The sink was fairly deep and had a hand-held sprayer, so when the water was warm, Annie Mae leaned over it.

  Oh, but it felt horrible and unnatural, to run her fingers through such chopped-off hair. Annie Mae squeezed her eyes shut against tears, wishing her anguish would go away. Would she ever feel safe again, or . . . socially acceptable? It would be years before her hair grew back.

  “Let me help ya with that,” Miriam said softly. Her hands worked water and then shampoo through Annie Mae’s hair, gently kneading her scalp . . . rubbing away the tension that had bunched in her neck muscles. “No matter how bleak and desperate our lives look, the Lord’s standin’ with us through every storm,” she murmured. “He doesn’t promise we’ll always see a bright, shiny rainbow when it’s over, but He does give us the grace and courage to start a new day . . . if we’ll accept those gifts.”

  Annie Mae stood up, allowing Miriam to massage her wet hair with a towel. “Jah, I knew I’d be stirrin’ up a storm when I brought the kids back with me,” she murmured. “I’ll get by. Might take a while, but I’ve got a lot of mighty fine folks watchin’ out for me.”

  “For sure and for certain ya do. And I’m pleased to be one of them.”

  When Annie Mae sat down in the bedroom chair a few moments later, Rebecca reached into her dresser drawer for a box of bobby pins. “My English grandma used to pin up her hair this way every night for the hairdo she always wore, or I would never have thought of trying it,” she remarked. “It takes a little practice, but I’ve gotten to where I can keep the curls nice and tight even though I can’t see what I’m doing back there.”

  “Nellie—or Nazareth—could help ya with that, too,” Miriam said.

  Annie Mae watched in the dresser mirror while Rebecca parted her hair in the center and then combed it back above her ears. She began winding a section at a time around one finger, holding each curl with two crossed bobby pins . . . winding and pinning . . . winding and pinning.

  “Let me try that,” Annie Mae murmured.

  It felt awkward at first, and it took a while to get the winding motion just right, but after a few attempts she got the coils to stay in place against her head. When Annie Mae finished, Miriam placed the fresh kapp on her and Annie Mae tied the strings under her chin. “If I keep it fastened, I’ll stay covered when I step outside into the breeze,” she said, looking this way and that in the glass.

  She had a center part, as she’d always had . . . her hair looked as though it were tucked back into a bun beneath the kapp, except there was no rounded bump at her crown. From the front, she looked . . .

  I look just like myself, except my strings are tied instead of hangin’ loose. I can live with that. Dat might’ve scared the livin’ daylights out of me, but he won’t keep me down—and my hair will grow.

  Annie Mae sprang up from the stool and grabbed Rebecca in a hug. “Denki ever so much,” she rasped. “I think I’m gonna make it now.”

  “That sounds like the Annie Mae we all know and love,” Miriam joined in as she slipped her arm around Annie Mae’s shoulders. For a long, lovely moment the three of them stood in this huddle, savoring the warmth and affection that thrummed with every beat of their connected hearts and souls.

  “And look what I found online,” Rebecca said, pointing toward the laptop she’d opened on her dresser. “It’s Locks of Love, where they make wigs for kids who’ve lost their hair to cancer or other diseases. What if we donated your hair, Annie Mae? Lucky for us, it’s in a braid so they can accept it.”

  “Jah, my hair’s so thick, braidin’ it makes the bun easier to coil,” she remarked. As the three of them looked at the gallery of recipients . . . before and after photos of young girls who were bald, and then smiling brightly in their wigs, a lump rose in Annie Mae’s throat. “Oh my,” she whispered as she read the text. “It says these girls might never have hair again, so . . . so what am I bawlin’ about? I say we do it!”

  “Makes my heart sing just thinkin’ about what a gift your perty black hair’ll be,” Miriam said as she swiped at her eyes. “You’re a fine girl, Annie Mae. So much stronger and wiser than your dat.”

  “I’ll be glad to send in the donation form and your hair for you,” Rebecca offered. “You’ll change somebody’s life, you know it?”

  Annie Mae’s heart welled up. Wasn’t it just like Miriam—and now Rebecca—to make everything right again? She took one last peek in the mirror. “Maybe, since the kids never see me before I’m dressed of a morning, I won’t have to tell them right away what Dat did to me,” she murmured. “They’re too little to understand what-all’s goin’ on with him and Delilah—or why he took the razor to my hair—and . . . well, I just hate to let on like he’s a monster. He’s their dat, so even though they’re scared of him and Delilah lately, they still think he hung the moon and stars.”

  Miriam hugged her close again before they left the dawdi apartment. “Tom and Naz and Jerusalem can help ya talk about that, when the kids get curious. The right words’ll come, in God’s gut time,” she said firmly. “It’ll all work out, honey-bug.”

  And for now, at least, Annie Mae could believe that.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “That’s quite the helmet you’ve got there, Adam.”

  As the ladies went to the other end of the house, Bishop Tom and Ben stood patiently, with expectant expressions on their bearded faces. Adam knew it was time to come clean . . . not just to admit he’d sinned by riding a motorcycle today, but to clear the slate, far as why he hadn’t been able to move past his mother’s death.

  “Jah, it is a fine helmet,” he replied as he gestured toward the front door. “Ya might as well see the rest of the evidence, so the both of you can decide what sort of punishment I deserve.”

  Ben and Tom glanced at each other but followed him outside without further comment—until they caught sight of the black motorcycle parked beside the porch, glimmering in the afternoon sun.

  “Holey socks, now that’s a road machine!” the bishop declared as he approached it. Then he studied Adam, raising one eyebrow. “And where’d ya come up with this, son? Unless I miss my guess, this old Indian Chief’s worth a perty penny . . . but it’s costin’ your soul a lot more than that, ain’t so?”

  Ben was walking all around the cycle, taking in its shiny black fenders, silver chrome, and the studs outlining the seat and the saddlebags. “I’ve not lived in Willow Ridge all that long, Adam,” he said in a pensive voice, “but you’re the last fella I’d expect to see on such a cycle. Always steady and dependable, you’ve been. Not just talkin’ the talk, but walkin’ the walk, far as our faith is concerned.”

  Adam inhaled deeply. After the way Annie Mae had listened to his story with such acceptance—and after what he’d witnessed at Hiram Knepp’s house—getting this story off his chest didn’t seem so difficult. Confessing to these two friends was small potatoes, compared to what Annie Mae had endured today.

  “I was mighty glad I still had this bike, when I saw Yonnie racing off with Annie Mae this afternoon—not that I’m any less guilty for keeping it so long after I joined the church,” he added. “But . . . well, I stashed it in the back stall of the barn as a reminder of how I was to blame for my mamm’s death. A
nd how I couldn’t trust myself to be responsible for anyone ever again. Including a wife and kids.”

  It had taken everything he had in him to admit his guilt out loud. Again. Yet now that his words were free-floating on the spring breeze, no more substantial than the aroma of Miriam’s dinner coming through the kitchen window, Adam wondered why he’d allowed this story to hold him captive for so long. During all the years he’d kept his secret inside him, the memories of that fateful day had controlled the most important years of his life . . . making him an emotional cripple. A mere shell of the man he was intended to be.

  Bishop Tom’s brow wrinkled. “As I recall, your mother’s rig was broadsided by a pickup truck, out on the highway,” he said quietly.

  “Jah, because when I roared past her on this motorcycle and spooked her horse, it went crazy out of control, running through the intersection,” Adam replied in a tight voice. “If I’d gone to fetch my sister, instead of joyriding all afternoon, Mamm wouldn’t have been out on the road. And to make matters worse, I was too scared to circle back to the accident and help her . . . too yellow to let on to Dat or any of my family that I was to blame for her death.”

  After a few moments of silence, Ben cleared his throat. “So, I’m guessin’ this happened during your rumspringa? A lot of us fellas had our adventures in those days, some of them not so honorable or—”

  “But your mamm didn’t die because of a noisy motorcycle you’d been hiding from your family,” Adam protested.

  “No, but I had a driver’s license, and an old beater of a car stashed behind an English friend’s garage,” Ben replied. “And I had more close calls in it than I ever admitted to.”

  “Jah, me, too,” Tom chimed in. “Matter of fact, I drove Vernon Gingerich out to the English cattle ranch we worked on when we were young bucks. Got pulled over by the cops a few times . . . could’ve gotten the both of us killed once, when I was stupid enough to drive drunk. But more to the point,” he continued in a soft, intense tone, “you’re tellin’ us you’ve been livin’ with this guilt and fear for years—”

  “Since I was sixteen, jah,” Adam rasped, closing his eyes.

  “—instead of askin’ the Lord’s forgiveness, and instead of acceptin’ His wisdom and His will for what happened that day,” the bishop went on. He shook his head, resembling a kindly father reprimanding his young son. “I know it’s been hard on ya, thinkin’ you were to blame, Adam, but where’s your faith? All this time you’ve been sittin’ through church, but not hearin’ a thing we’ve said about takin’ your troubles to God.” Tom paused to smile wryly. “So much for the power of my sermons.”

  Adam looked up, enthralled by the beatific expression on Bishop Tom’s face. “I didn’t want to confess in front of everybody, because they’d know how . . . hideous I really was. Totally irresponsible. A killer and a coward.”

  “But see, that’s where ya didn’t think it through,” Ben remarked as he placed a warm hand on Adam’s shoulder. “Who says you’d’ve had to confess at a Members’ Meeting? Ya could’ve told Preacher Gabe, or Tom—”

  “Not Hiram,” Adam blurted. “He would’ve made a spectacle of me. Or . . . at least I think he would’ve. Maybe I’ve been assuming a lot of things all wrong.”

  Bishop Tom considered this. “Hiram aside, ya came to Ben and me of your own free will, confessin’ what ya did. Far as I’m concerned, your sin—your story—stays amongst the three of us, right here, right now, unless ya care to tell it to other folks yourself,” he said quietly. “So you’ve done the first part, by admittin’ to your sin. Now you’ve gotta believe that God’ll forgive ya. And ya have to forgive yourself.”

  Adam’s lips twitched. “You sound like Annie Mae, when I told her about this.”

  Bishop Tom shook his head, chuckling. “Well, then, believe who ya will—but believe,” he insisted. “Annie Mae’s a gut girl and ya could do a lot worse than keepin’ company with her. Just sayin’.”

  “Jah, jah, I hear you.” Adam looked away, suddenly wanting to laugh and whoop and express this new sense of relief—of freedom—that filled him. There would be no Members’ Meeting called for the purpose of grilling him like a pig on a spit. He could finally let go of the guilt. And because God had witnessed the accident, He had known Adam’s circumstances all along . . . just as his parents, now looking down from Heaven—where all was known with a deeper understanding than folks on Earth could possibly comprehend—probably realized what he’d done on that horrible day, as well.

  It was a wonderful thing to think about, this forgiveness. This grace from God.

  These soul-opening revelations did not, however, change the fact that Sheriff Banks and Officer McClatchey were pulling into Ben’s driveway. When the SUV stopped and the lawmen got out, Tom and Ben greeted them with hearty handshakes. “Mighty glad ya got to the Knepp place when ya did,” the bishop said. “Sounds like the situation with Hiram and Annie Mae got edgy.”

  “Knepp’s a piece of work,” Clyde Banks agreed. “A lot like that rogue bishop out in Ohio—Sam Mullet—who got himself and some members of his church convicted for hair and beard cuttings awhile back. Wish we could’ve taken Hiram and that Stoltzfus kid to the station to put a little fear in them, but I’m not surprised Annie Mae wouldn’t press charges.” The sheriff smiled at Adam then. “That was an admirable thing you did, facing up to Hiram and defending Annie Mae. But we need to talk about you being on the road with this motorcycle.”

  The sheriff’s tone warned Adam to keep his mouth shut—not that he was afraid of either uniformed fellow, because they were both circling his motorcycle with obvious appreciation.

  Officer McClatchey ran his hand over the silver-studded saddlebag. “I’ve got a collector friend who’d give his eye teeth to own this vintage bike,” he remarked. “But it seems your license plate has expired . . . and I’m wondering if you’ve got a valid driver’s license.”

  Adam’s stomach bottomed out. He’d been so concerned about the spiritual ramifications of driving his cycle that he’d forgotten about the legalities. He opened the compartment on the front console and handed over his Missouri license. “I was legal when I was sixteen,” he said sheepishly, “but this cycle’s been stashed in my barn for so many years, I forgot about that part when I took off on it this afternoon. And truth be told, I drove over here without wearing my helmet, too, because Annie Mae had it on.”

  “You had more pressing issues on your mind,” the sheriff said with a nod. He glanced over Officer McClatchey’s shoulder, looking at the license.

  “I suppose you’re going to write me a ticket,” Adam said with a sigh. “Don’t have a lot of cash on me, but my place is just down the road. I can fetch however much money you need and settle it, right here and now, I hope. I’m selling this cycle, see. I don’t ever intend to ride it again.”

  “For what it’s worth, Adam’s just confessed to ridin’ this bike, which goes against our Old Order faith.” Bishop Tom spoke up. He laid a reassuring hand on Adam’s shoulder. “Might not be your way to mix church and legal matters, but for my part, I’m convinced he’s sincere about not takin’ it out anymore . . . even if it is one fine-lookin’ ride.”

  Officer McClatchey exchanged a glance with Clyde Banks and then focused on Adam. “All things considered, I think we can waive the ticket—if you agree to leave the bike here, so you don’t ride it home and break the law again.”

  Adam’s eyebrows shot up. Could any more unexpected events and reprieves possibly occur in one day? “I could do that, jah. Thanks for—”

  “And if you’ll give me your phone number, I’ll see that my friend gets ahold of you,” the policeman continued. Then he winked. “Don’t be afraid to make him pay full value for this beauty, either. Haggling’s a game to him. Aim high—and don’t back off.”

  Adam blinked. While he understood the strategies folks used at auctions and mud sales, bidding high or low, it seemed odd for one friend to insist that another friend pay full price for
something. “Chances are gut that the money’ll end up in the Amish Aid fund, anyway,” he said as he scribbled his phone number on the slip of paper the sheriff offered him. “Or it’ll help Annie Mae support her sibs.”

  Preacher Ben clapped him on the back. “I like your way of thinkin’, Adam. The trick’ll be gettin’ her to accept your help.”

  “I think we’ve settled it then,” the sheriff declared. “You fellows have a good evening, and we’ll hope we don’t have to deal with Hiram Knepp again.”

  As the SUV pulled onto the county blacktop, Adam felt greatly relieved by the officers’ goodwill and generosity. “How about if I roll this motorcycle into your barn, Ben?” he asked. “There’s no telling when I might hear from that friend of Officer—”

  Adam’s mouth closed and then opened again. Annie Mae was coming down the Hooleys’ front porch steps, looking directly at him. Looking . . . settled and strong again. From this angle, there was no way to tell that she’d lost her hair. While most girls wore their kapp strings dangling loose, Adam thought the bow tied beneath Annie Mae’s chin gave her an air of determination . . . a sense that she knew who she was and where her boundaries were set.

  “So how’re you doing?” Adam asked her. “You . . . you look real gut.”

  Her eyes sparkled, even as she clasped her hands in front of her a little nervously. “I’ll make it,” she said softly. “Might need some help with the kids’ questions—”

  “And I’ll be there for ya,” Bishop Tom assured her. He looked at Ben and Adam then. “It’d be a gut idea for somebody to escort Annie Mae to and from work, and to see that Nellie gets to school, and that the wee ones are always with adults from here on out.”

  Preacher Ben nodded. “Jah, we don’t want a repeat of what happened today. All of us want you and your sibs to be safe and happy, Annie Mae.”

  “Count on me to help, too,” Adam chimed in. “And just for the record . . . you had it right. I just talked to these guys about riding my cycle the day Mamm died.”