by Jo Ann Brown
Seeing a hastily hidden smirk on Parker’s face, Mercy wanted to ask what he’d said to persuade Sunni to go out without proper clothing. She didn’t. Later, when she had a chance to speak to her daughter alone, she’d find out. Why Sunni listened to him when he said such things was a mystery to Mercy, but her own siblings were so much older than she was, so they hadn’t shared growing up years with her.
Mercy found a new problem when they went outside. The snow was melting, and walking through the high piles was as difficult as slogging through knee-deep mud. Watching Sunni, she wasn’t sure the little girl could trudge up the hill and into the woods.
“Who wants a ride?” asked Jeremiah as he appeared around the house with an ancient toboggan topped with buckets and spiles to use to tap the trees.
The toboggan’s front was scraped as if it’d hit bushes or caromed off a tree. No cushions eased the hard seats, but he connected a new nylon rope to it.
Not waiting for an answer to his question, he bowed. “Young ladies first.”
His words earned a giggle from Sunni as she climbed on, and a mouthed “Thank you” from Mercy. She was grateful for how he didn’t act as if Sunni was incapable.
At first, Parker was going to ride, but he changed his mind when Jeremiah asked him to help carry the battery-operated drill he’d use to make the holes for the sap. Jeremiah grabbed two handfuls of buckets off the toboggan, leaving plenty of room for Sunni.
When Mercy urged Jeremiah and Parker to go ahead, the boy followed him toward the clump of trees halfway up the hill behind the barn. She pulled Sunni on the toboggan, following the path Jeremiah and Parker had made. It was a beautiful day, cold but the sunshine glistened on the unbroken snow. She pointed to animal tracks and had Sunni guess which animal might have made them. Crows sang their raucous songs as they wheeled overhead, and Sunni giggled with delight at the ride through the snow.
“Just like when we went in the sleigh, Mommy!” she called out.
“Except I’m playing the horse’s part.”
That brought more laughter from her daughter, and Mercy’s footsteps grew lighter, even as the wet snow tried to hold her back.
Jeremiah paused and let Mercy catch up. “Do you want me to take the toboggan?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“That you are.” He gave her a wink that made her heart dance with delight.
He went to a tree and walked around it. Looking up at the sky, he shifted partway around again. “Okay, here’s the southeast side of the tree.”
“Is that important?” Parker asked.
“It is. The southeast side gets sunshine first in the late winter.” He held out his hand for the drill. “Stay back.”
Sunni clambered off the toboggan so she could watch as the drill whirred, sending pieces of wood flying in every direction. Her eyes were wide as she leaned closer.
Mercy put her hands on her daughter’s shoulders, drawing her back slightly. She didn’t want the little girl hit by the debris.
Picking up a thin twig, Jeremiah showed Parker how to clean the shavings out of the hole. “This way, they won’t get in the sap.” He hammered a spile into the tree.
“Will the tree be okay?” Sunni asked with sudden concern. “You’re not hurting it, are you?”
“It’ll be fine.” Jeremiah gave her a gentle smile. “We won’t be greedy, so the tree will have plenty of sap to carry up its branches to grow leaves. This is a grown-up tree.” He pointed to the trunk at chest height. “Once a tree is ten inches around at this height, it can share its sap with us.”
He showed Mercy how to place the bucket on the hook built into the tap so it would catch the drippings. He warned her to be careful the bucket’s handle wasn’t in the way. When the first drop fell with a ping into the bucket, Mercy was as enthralled as the children. While Jeremiah helped Sunni set the metal “roof” over the bucket, he explained the folded piece would prevent windblown leaves and other debris from falling into the sap. Some would find their way into the bucket, but not as much as if the bucket was left open.
“It looks like it’s wearing a hat,” Sunni said with a grin.
Motioning for them to follow, Jeremiah began drilling another hole in the tree. He did three in the smaller trees and four in the massive ones. Each of the others had their tasks. Mercy waited while Parker cleared the hole, leaving tiny specks of wood on the snow at his feet. She and Sunni set the bucket and cover in place.
They fell into an easy rhythm as they moved from one tree to the next. After drilling holes in twenty-five trees, Jeremiah called a halt.
“If we do more,” he said, “I won’t have time to collect the sap, make the syrup and milk the cows.” He ruffled the top of Parker’s hat, leaving it askew. “Even with my gut assistant here.”
The boy grinned. “Can I help make syrup, too?”
“Ja. I’ll need everyone to pitch in.” He stepped aside to let Parker clear out the hole. “Wait a moment, Mercy, before you put the bucket on. Do you kinder want to try a sample of the sap?”
This time, Parker went first. He bent and stuck out his tongue beneath the hole exactly as Jeremiah instructed. The boy waited and waited, then frowned at Jeremiah, as if he thought the man was playing a trick on him.
“You’ve got to be patient,” Jeremiah said with a laugh. “Sap comes out one drip at a time, and it’s pretty chilly, so it’s moving slowly.”
“Let her try.” He pointed to Sunni and stepped back, disgruntled.
“All right. Sunni, you want to have a taste?”
Mercy smiled as Sunni stepped forward to take her turn. She stood as Parker had. Silence, except for the rustle of birds in the higher branches, settled on them as she waited with her tongue poised near the hole. When she yelped in excitement, Mercy knew a drop had finally emerged.
“It’s sweet!” Sunni’s face glowed with happiness.
“Wait till you taste how sweet the syrup will be.” Jeremiah turned to Parker as Mercy gave her daughter a hug. “You want to try again?”
“Yeah.” His surly tone surprised Mercy because he hadn’t used it with Jeremiah since the day of his arrival. He stepped forward, elbowing Sunni aside. As she fell into the snow, he ordered, “Get out of my way, cripple!”
* * *
Hearing Mercy’s dismayed gasp, Jeremiah grabbed the boy by his shoulders and pulled him away from the tree. Anger blared through Jeremiah, and he wasn’t sure he could quiet it. Mercy’s face was as pale as the snow as she lifted her daughter to her feet, and fat tears showered Sunni’s cheeks. He wasn’t sure if she was physically hurt or wounded by the cruel words.
“Mercy, will you and Sunni finish putting the bucket on there? We’ll meet you at the house.” Without another word, Jeremiah walked away, tugging Parker with him.
The boy started to speak several times as they went toward the tenant house. Each time, Jeremiah cut him off sharply.
Steering him inside, Jeremiah motioned for Parker to take a seat at the kitchen table. He half expected the boy to make a snide remark about the state of the house, but Parker stared at the floor.
“Why would you say something horrible to Sunni?” Jeremiah asked, not wanting to beat around the bush.
“I dunno,” he muttered.
“I think you do. You treat Sunni and Mercy as if they’re manure on the bottom of your boots.”
The boy clamped his lips closed.
Knowing he needed to take another tack, Jeremiah forced his voice to be calm. The boy wasn’t going to respond to anger. Parker would get defensive and close up.
Quietly, Jeremiah sighed.
The boy looked up, startled.
“Parker, I thought you wanted to be here working with me.”
“I do.” The boy bumped his toe against an uneven floorboard and again didn’t meet Jeremiah’s gaze.
“I can
’t work with someone who says bad things to other people.”
“People say bad things to me.”
He sat on a chair beside the kind’s. “I’m sorry to hear that, Parker. People used to say bad things about me, too.”
“You?” The boy’s head jerked up, revealing his shock. It made him look younger than his nine years and vulnerable. “But everyone says what a nice guy you are. When we went to the hardware store last week, I heard a man say he wouldn’t be as willing as you are to wait to get what he’d signed papers for.” Puzzlement threaded his brow. “What papers?”
Not wanting to be distracted from the issue at hand, Jeremiah said, “Business stuff. Nothing important now.” He was astonished to realize how true his words were. As much as he wanted to own the farm, at that moment his whole attention was on the kind.
“What did they say about you?” Parker asked.
“I was too short. I was too chubby. I was stupid because I had a hard time alphabetizing my spelling words.”
The boy’s nose wrinkled. “I hate alphabetizing my spelling words, too.”
“I couldn’t see the point of doing it when I could be in the barn working with the cows or whittling. The cows and that stick of wood didn’t care if I knew which word should come first.” He leaned toward Parker. “And they didn’t care what anyone else said about me. They didn’t care about anything other than I did my chores and took care of them. So that’s what I did.”
“Me, too.”
“But as much as you and I are alike, there’s one way we’re different. I try never to say anything hurtful to someone else. Jesus asked us to treat everyone else the way we want to be treated.”
“That’s what I’m doing.”
Jeremiah caught and held the boy’s gaze. “Do you really want Sunni to say such nasty things to you?”
Parker’s shoulders sagged. “No.”
“Then why do you say them to her?”
“Sometimes I get mad.”
“I know how that is.”
The boy stiffened. “Do you? Sometimes I get so mad I want to hit someone.”
“I know.”
He frowned. “I thought Amish guys didn’t fight.”
“We shouldn’t, but once, when I was about your age, I thought about hitting the bully who said bad things about me. I didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I knew I was loved the way I was.”
Parker shook his head. “Good for you. Nobody wants me.”
“No? Mercy opened her home to you. Sunni includes you in everything she does. Don’t you realize she thinks you’re someone special? Haven’t you noticed how she was eager to help in the barn because you were helping there?”
He shrugged, not wanting to be swayed by Jeremiah’s words. “Maybe she thought she was missing out on something.”
“Maybe she did, but she didn’t realize it until you showed her how much fun chores can be. She never was interested before you came here.”
Tears bubbled out of the boy’s eyes, and Jeremiah had to resist his immediate impulse to put his arms around Parker and comfort him. The kind needed to realize his mistakes and decide to change.
“I’m sorry, Jeremiah. Don’t hate me, too.”
“I don’t hate you. Nobody on the farm hates you.”
“Sunni does.” He wiped his nose with his arm. “She has to. I hate me.”
“If she hated you, she wouldn’t want to spend time with you. And she does.”
Parker dashed away more tears. “She’s a silly little girl.”
“Maybe, but that silly little girl doesn’t hate you. I don’t hate you, and Mercy doesn’t.” He put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Let me tell you one more very important thing. God loves you.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because His son told us so.” He gave the boy a gentle smile. “He loves all his kinder, including when we make mistakes. I’ve made plenty.” The image of Emmarita’s face flashed through his mind, but he easily ignored it. “God chose for me to be exactly like I am, so He must love what I am. Just as he loves you. Believe it.” He tapped Parker’s chest. “Right here, believe it. Next time you feel angry, give that anger over to God. He doesn’t mind, and He’ll ease the pain in your heart.”
“He will?”
“Ja.” Coming to his feet, Jeremiah said, “I think you know what you need to do.”
“Apologize to Sunni?” He got up. “Will you come with me?”
“Of course.”
A few minutes later Jeremiah stood beside the boy while Parker asked Sunni to forgive him. When the little girl did with a sincerity Jeremiah found endearing, he saw gratitude in Mercy’s eyes. He put his arms around all of them, pulling them into a hug. Feeling Mercy’s soft hand on his back, he knew he’d lost the battle to stop himself from loving her.
That made everything more difficult, and he needed to figure out what to do about it. But right now he was going to enjoy holding her—and the kinder—close.
Chapter Fourteen
The interior of the church could have belonged to the one Mercy had attended with her parents in central New York. Plain, whitewashed walls and simple benches. A trio of windows on either side of the pews had no stained glass like other churches in the village.
Adjusting her prayer covering, she walked with Sunni to a bench on the women’s side. She glanced at where Parker sat next to Jeremiah. The boy’s legs swung as he waited for the service to start. When Jeremiah bent to whisper something in his ear, Parker gave him a big grin.
How she wished she could get such a response from the boy, but he refused to trust her. She kept telling herself not to take it personally. He didn’t trust any woman as far as she could see, and he had good cause. Not only had he been abandoned by his mother in Korea, left at a grocery store according to his records, but Pat Kenton had let him love her and then turned her back on him, as well.
Someday, sometime in the future when Parker was old enough to understand, she hoped she could tell him how much she empathized with his fear of loving again. Mrs. Kenton had chosen her other life over her son’s, as Graham had chosen his mother over Mercy...and her Fresh Air family had chosen their older daughter’s lies over Mercy’s and their younger daughter’s protestations of truth.
Life wasn’t fair, but it was good.
She wasn’t sure who’d said that first, but she believed it with every ounce of her being. If Parker would let her closer, she might be able to convince him she knew his sense of betrayal. Maybe someday...but not today because he’d ignored Sunni and her, talking only to Jeremiah in the car. Even so, she longed to see the boy smile at something she said or did with as much joy as he did when he was with Jeremiah.
Jeremiah... Did he suspect she’d invited him to the Mennonite service hoping he’d feel comfortable enough that he’d consider putting aside his Amish life to join the Mennonites? It wouldn’t be so different for him.
Except he wouldn’t be part of the new community on the banks of Harmony Creek.
Praying about what to do so they could have a future together hadn’t brought her any answers. Few people joined the Amish, and fewer stayed. The dedication to community and to a life separate from the rest of the world was too much for most people who hadn’t been raised in it.
As well, there was the issue of Come Along Farm. Opening a summer camp for children probably wouldn’t fit with the Amish ideas of staying separate. She glanced at Sunni, who was looking everywhere but at Parker on the other side of the aisle. From Whitney, she’d learned Amish might adopt, but it was usually an internal matter. A baby born to an Amish girl who couldn’t rear it would be given to another family.
But if I can’t become Amish and he won’t become Mennonite, there’s no future for us.
That thought echoed through Mercy’s head as sh
e listened to the service but kept glancing over to where Parker sat beside Jeremiah. When the boy yawned, Jeremiah put his arm around the child and leaned Parker against him. She smiled gently before Sunni nestled against her. Pushing her worries from her mind, she gave herself over to the peace filling the sanctuary.
Mercy was smiling when, after the service, she led Sunni to where Jeremiah and Parker were waiting by her car. Urging them to get in out of the windy day, she slid behind the wheel. She turned the key to start the car and twisted the dial so the heat would fill the space. Other cars were backing up and pulling out of the parking lot, so she waited.
After turning to check both children wore their seat belts, she asked the question that weighed so heavily on her mind. “So what did you think of the service, Jeremiah?”
“The harmony when you sing the hymns is pretty. Four-part harmony, ain’t so?”
“Yes, and we sing the hymns at a quicker tempo than you do. I hope that didn’t trip you up.”
“I was able to keep up.” He gave her a smile, which did delightful things to her middle.
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
“Maybe I did. Maybe I didn’t.” He winked at the children.
Sunni began to giggle, but Parker looked baffled as if he couldn’t figure out why someone would find the conversation amusing.
“I’ve made up my mind,” he said abruptly.
“About what?” Mercy asked.
“My name.”
“Is that so?” she asked, careful to make her voice sound calm. “What other name have you decided on? Or do you want to keep the one you’ve got?”
“Not Parker.” His nose wrinkled. “I sound like someone working in a parking lot.”
Jeremiah chuckled. “I had the same thought when I first heard it.”
The boy remained serious. “I thought about Jerry because it’s like your name, Jeremiah, but you might think Mercy is scolding you when I do something wrong.”
