The Haven

by Suzanne Woods Fisher

Sometimes, he wondered how well his parents really knew each other. Even now, they lived side by side, amicably. They gave each other a lot of space. But they never laughed with each other, or sat around the dinner table, lingering the way the Lapps did, playing board games or working on jigsaw puzzles by the flickering firelight. He thought of the talks he and Amos had in the barn, how much Amos had told him about Menno, his son with special needs. Whenever Amos spoke about Menno, it was always about something he had learned from him. Patience, kindness, or how Menno helped Amos’s faith grow.

  The world outside Windmill Farm would have looked at Menno Lapp as a problem to be dealt with, a burden to be endured.

  Windmill Farm considered him to be a gift from God.

  Will looked up at the sky. He had thought more about God in the last few weeks than he had in his entire life. Just last night, Amos pointed to Adam, soaring on thermals, and quoted a Scripture. Something from the book of Isaiah, about how a “youth can grow tired and weary, can stumble and fall, but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles.” It spoke to Will, deep down, in a way he couldn’t explain. It felt so right, so appropriate. This spring, he had felt weary. Not physically, but mentally. Weary of his father’s endless pressure, of never succeeding or pleasing him. And Will had stumbled and fallen.

  Something was changing inside of Will this spring, something was softening. What a fluke! To end up on a quiet Amish farm and find himself reenergized, renewed, inside out.

  But it didn’t feel like a fluke. It seemed that this place, Stoney Ridge and the people here, had been prepared for him, designed ahead of time as a nurturing nest, a soft place from which to grow new wings.

  He looked over at Sadie. “Your parents loved each other very much, didn’t they?”

  The corners of her eyes crinkled. “Yes, they did. They built a life together. It was a good life, and they were happy.”

  He slapped his hands on his thighs. “Sadie . . . I’m going to follow your example. I’ve decided no more resentment.”

  Her smile faded. “It’s really not something you can do without God’s help, Will. Only God is the true healer of hurts.”

  Only God is the true healer. That was a phrase Sadie often said, especially when people came to her for remedies, which they were doing more and more. Hardly a day went by when someone wasn’t seeking her out for help. Will worried they were taking advantage of her because she didn’t charge them, but she said it brought her pleasure to help others. And then she would always say, “After all, only God is the true healer.”

  What would his father, the brilliant neurosurgeon, say to that? He would probably be outraged. He believed that a good surgeon shouldn’t go into surgery unless he believed he was the sole instrument of healing. But then, his father would scoff at Sadie’s remedies too, saying that they were merely anecdotal and that she used unproven, unscientific methods. “My dad wants me to follow in his path and go into medicine.” He wasn’t sure why he admitted that to her.

  “Have you considered it?” Sadie said.

  Will lifted a shoulder in a careless shrug. “I considered nothing else. I even got accepted to medical school—assuming that I would be graduating this spring.” He took in a deep breath. “So what did I do? Nine weeks shy of graduating with honors, I get myself suspended by doing something stupid.”

  That was only half the story. He then did something even more stupid, but he just couldn’t tell her about the DUI. There were only three people aware of that little problem—Will, the police officer, and his lawyer, Mr. Arnie Petosky, found at four in the morning through the yellow pages at the city jail. This particular lawyer was the only one who answered calls in the middle of the night and took credit cards for payment of criminal defense. “It’s your first offense, Will. Sure, you came up a little high on the blood alcohol concentration—and that can usually mean a little jail time—”

  Will’s eyes went wide.

  “—plus a $5,000 fine—”

  Will’s eyes went wider.

  “—plus your license could get suspended. But this was a routine traffic stop. No doubt your constitutional rights were violated—”

  Will scratched his head. The police officer had actually been pretty nice to him.

  “—we might even end up with a claim. Money back.”

  Will doubted that. He really just wanted it all to go away. Will was trapped. Up a creek without a paddle.

  As the calming water lapped against the shore, Will found himself telling Sadie about hacking into the registrar’s office, about losing his acceptance into medical school. He wondered what she thought of him. He was telling her things that shamed him. She didn’t say anything for a long while. Sadie was one of those people who knew the virtue of quiet patience.

  “So you thought it would be easier to just walk away from your future, from your father, than to try, didn’t you?” Sadie spoke quietly, and when he lifted his head, he marveled again at the piercing depth in her blue eyes.

  She tucked in her shoulders, like she was embarrassed to have brought up something painful. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

  “It’s okay,” he said, and he felt her hand slip into his, small and warm. Her face turned upward, her eyes dark like liquid. Slipping a thumb under her chin, he tilted it upward, looked into her in a way he never had looked at a girl—all of the girls he’d dated but never got too attached to. With Sadie, things were different in some way he didn’t even understand yet.

  He leaned over and kissed her, because they’d talked long enough.

  Gid wondered what was wrong with him as he turned right onto the dirt road that led to Blue Lake Pond, through a thick canopy of pine trees. He shouldn’t be spying on Sadie like this! This was wrong, wrong, wrong. Unspeakably wrong. But still, his hands didn’t seem to get the message from his brain to pull back on the horse’s reins. Not until he saw Sadie and the cowboy sitting on the shore. Then, he stopped the horse abruptly.

  He watched them for a moment or two, trying to decide if he could interrupt without looking like a fool.

  Though the distance was enough that they didn’t hear his horse and buggy approach, Gid tried to make sense out of Sadie’s expression when she looked up at the cowboy. Was it gladness or dismay? Shyness? Or maybe just plain amusement?

  The cowboy said something to make Sadie laugh. Gid heard laughter floating on the breeze, the cowboy’s deep and husky, Sadie’s light and young.

  Suddenly something clicked in Gid’s mind. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t figured it out sooner. No wonder she had been ignoring him. A dark thought suddenly began to take form in Gid’s mind—he had always felt a tweak of concern that the cowboy was sweet on Sadie, but now he realized that she was growing fond of the cowboy! Gid saw Will’s head dip toward Sadie. Quickly. Briefly. Not so briefly he couldn’t have kissed her in that time. And Sadie made no move to shove him away from her.

  Pain streaked through Gideon. He turned and left.

  As soon as Sadie and Will arrived at the Kings’ for the gathering, they were called over to join in a volleyball game, already in progress. Gideon was taking a turn as server in the back row, so Sadie intentionally joined the opposing team and Will was sent to Gid’s team. She was feeling far too mixed up tonight to spend any time near Gideon. She was still reeling from Will’s unexpected kiss. She wished she had been prepared for it—she might have participated. Instead, she responded like a block of wood. A clay brick. A stone wall. And then, cheeks on fire, she jumped up and said they should be going.

  But she was not going to let her nerves get the better of her. She was an adult now. Fern had said so. Tonight, she was going to act like she was kissed by handsome cowboys all the time. Practically every day of the week except for Sundays! The truth was, it was only the second kiss from a boy she had ever received. The first one was from Gid and it had made her knees go weak. Today’s kiss from Will felt sweet and gentle. Nice. Maybe it would have made her
knees go weak if she had been ready for it.

  She cast a furtive glance at Gid, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was talking to Will, tapping the ball delicately into the air, to show him how the game was played. Will waved Gid off, telling him he had played plenty of volleyball in his day. He threw his cowboy hat off to the side and winked at Sadie. She looked away, embarrassed.

  Gid went back to the service line. He cracked his neck on each side, like the prizefighters did at the county fair as they prepared to head into the ring. He was staring at the back of Will’s head like he was boring a hole through it. He tossed the ball in the air to serve, and instead of the ball arcing through the air, sailing over the net, it was launched like a rocket, straight at Will’s head. Will fell to the ground, face-first.

  Every place on a farm had its own sound, if you stopped and listened. Will liked to identify those sounds as he walked through the fields each morning before dawn to check on the falcons. The streams that crisscrossed through Windmill Farm had a soft, gurgling sound. The crops in the fields had a rustling sound, like they were whispering. The trees had a sound—pine needles dropping as the branches waved in the wind. The rocky ridge on the northern edge of the farm had a sound—pinging sounds that echoed.

  Will climbed a tree to watch the falcons with a telescope just as the sky began to brighten. Adam flew off the edge of the scape and circled overhead. Will watched him glide on the warming air currents, stretching his wings in the mist. Eve remained in the scape, as he expected, incubating her brood.

  Sure enough, a whitish down head with a disproportionately large beak poked around Eve’s body. The first eyase to hatch! He expected the next one to hatch today or tomorrow, with the other ones to follow. He watched the small chick until the sun had emerged on the horizon, filled with wonder and awe. It was times like this that he thought Amos Lapp might be right, that God had a plan. It was a phrase Amos repeated often, especially when he told Will stories about Menno as a boy. It seemed as if he always wrapped up a memory of Menno with that phrase, “God has a plan,” like it was a benediction. An “Amen.”

  Will rubbed the back of his head, feeling the goose-egged lump from yesterday’s surprising encounter with a volleyball. When he had come to, twenty Amish teens were staring down at him with deeply concerned looks on their faces. Sadie fussed over him the entire evening, bringing fresh ice for him to hold against his head and checking the pupils of his eyes for signs of a concussion.

  “I’m fine,” he kept reassuring her. She wanted to take him home but he insisted on staying. To be honest, he enjoyed the attention he was getting from everyone. It felt like he had finally broken through that invisible wall that separated him from these Amish people, the wall he felt whenever he was at their church service. All but with that Gideon guy, the one who whacked him with the ball. Sadie was furious with Gideon. He offered up a weak apology to Will, something lame about how a bee landed on him just as he was serving up the ball. “There was no bee,” Sadie whispered loudly, after Gideon sauntered off. She glared at his back with a look he wasn’t accustomed to seeing on her sweet face. Like she was about to go after him with a shovel as if she was killing vermin.

  He wouldn’t have missed the barbecue for anything. The food was the best grilled food he had ever eaten, bar none—chicken and steak, smothered in thick sauce, spicy baked beans, coleslaw that was nothing like the soggy mess his mother served, three kinds of pie for dessert. And still, everyone kept fussing over him like he had suffered a mortal blow! Hardly that. His head was harder than a pileated woodpecker’s, his father often told him.

  Now, if Sadie had insisted that they leave before the singing, it wouldn’t have been hard to be persuaded to go. He hadn’t realized there was singing involved—she had just called it a youth gathering. But after his third helping of pie, she seemed confident that he was fine and didn’t ask him again if he wanted to leave.

  Afterward, he was glad they stayed. The singing was different from those long, lugubrious hymns sung during the lengthy Amish church service. For one thing, the host asked others to call out requests to sing. Like eager bidders at an auction, several shouted out song titles. Unlike Sunday church, they sang only one stanza of each, and it was easy to tell these were favorites. Also, unlike church, these tunes were quick, with a beat. The boys took a turn alone, bellowing the melody like they were a marching band made up of tubas and trombones, trying to impress the girls with their deep, honking voices. Then the girls took a turn at it. It had struck Will that the sound of women’s voices had a tinny sound—nothing that came anywhere close to raising the roof like the boys did. The girls sounded like a little choir of flutes and piccolos. Except for Sadie’s. Her voice rang the truest.

  He had a surprisingly enjoyable evening, sore head and all.

  The ringing of his cell phone cut off Will’s wandering thoughts and pulled him back to the present. He set the scope in a nook on the tree and looked at who would be calling him at 5:34 a.m. Mahlon Miller, the game warden. Will sagged.

  “Morning, Mahlon,” he said as he answered.

  “Have any hatched?”

  Not even a hello. Or, how are you, Will? Need anything? Like, food, money, clean laundry, transportation? “First one. I’m watching it now. Looks like a viable eyase.”

  “Good. As soon as the clutch is hatched, I want you to think about how you’re going to band them.”

  Will was silent for a moment.

  “You’ve banded before. Your father told me you had. He said you had volunteered at a raptor rescue center and banded hundreds of birds.”

  Aha! Will’s father was behind this. “Well, yeah, I’ve had a little bit of experience with banding. But not out in the wild. Not when the parents were hovering nearby.” At the raptor rescue center, Will had become so good at banding that he was dubbed the Band-Aid. Banding birds provided important information on the birds’ movements and habitat needs year-round. These metal bands on the birds’ legs were uniquely lettered and numbered by the government so that if the birds were observed later, or found injured or dead, they could be identified. “Don’t you have an expert bander in the office?”

  “Nope. Well, we do have a guy who usually does banding, but he’s out on paternity leave. He said you just gotta act quick so it reduces stress on the birds.”

  What about the stress on the unpaid intern? Act quick so that he didn’t get his eyes pecked out by Adam and Eve. Quick so that they didn’t try to strike him with their powerful feet. Quick so that they didn’t carry him away with their razor-sharp talons and drop him, like a stone, into the field.

  Banding a falcon chick was serious work. Adam and Eve would turn into threatened predators if anyone—or anything—messed with their clutch. Just a moment ago, he watched Adam capture, in midflight, a menacing crow that flew too close to the scape. Eve was provided with fresh crow for breakfast. “I thought that fell under game warden duties.”

  “Nope. It’s part of your internship duties.”

  Will doubted that. “Do you have suggestions?”

  “Well, I’d recommend you wait until the parents are away from the scape.” He snorted a few times, as if he had made a funny joke.

  Will rolled his eyes.

  “Timing is critical. Besides watching out for falcons, that’s another reason I put you out there on that farm. There’s really only one day that is the ideal point to band—the foot is small enough for the band to go over the toes, but not too small that the band falls off. They can start fledging at three weeks—especially the males, and they’ll begin to leave the scape for short times.” Mahlon took a long slurp of coffee. “As soon as you tell me how many eyases are in the clutch and what sex they are, I’ll put in a request for the bands and drop them off next time I see you. You’d better start figuring out how you’re going to do it.” And he hung up.

  Will stared at the phone in his hand. Broken connections—wasn’t that the story of his life?

  Passing over him, Adam cried out
a complaint, letting Will know he was horning in on his territory. As a serious birder, Will knew it was ridiculous to attribute human characteristics to birds, to any animals. Anthropomorphism, such foolishness was called. But still, he talked to wild things like he expected them to answer. He cupped his mouth and shouted at Adam, “I’m not doing anything to hurt your babies. If anything, I’m helping them.” Adam circled near him again, uncomfortably close, as if he knew exactly what Will was talking about. He let out a cack cack cack cack—one of a wide range of sounds he made. As if he wanted to taunt Will by saying, “Who do you think you’re fooling?”

  16

  Off-Sundays had their own feel. On Sundays without church, everyone was allowed to sleep in and start the day slowly. M.K.’s father was the only one who would rise early, feed the stock, but then he would head back to the couch in the family room and lie down. “Just resting my eyes,” he would tell M.K., if she tried to stir him. The only part of the day M.K. didn’t like was that Fern didn’t make a hot breakfast like she normally did—today’s offerings were cold cereal or toast. She said it was her off-Sunday too.

  On this morning, M.K. felt as jumpy as popcorn in a skillet, waiting to hear the first sound of Sadie stirring upstairs. She had the cradle hidden in a corner of the family room, covered by a blanket. She knew Sadie would be home late from the gathering last night, and she didn’t want to miss seeing the look on her sister’s face. She knew better than to wake Sadie up. Even she wasn’t that big of a fool.

  Finally, M.K. heard Sadie’s door open and her light steps come down the stairs. Fern was in the family room, feeding the baby a bottle. Her dad was in his chair. reading the Bible and sipping coffee. Sadie went to the kitchen and poured cereal into a bowl.

  Perfect. The moment was perfect.

  M.K. cleared her throat to get everyone’s attention. “I have here a lovely gift to present to you, made by Gideon Smucker himself, to show Sadie how deep are his affections.”