Margaret Zook Lapp
Beloved wife and mother
He glanced around, making sure he was alone. Satisfied, he started to talk to Maggie as he knelt down to clear weeds and debris from her stone. He did that, sometimes, when he had important things on his mind. He never told anyone. He knew she wasn’t in that grave. He believed she was in Heaven, in the presence of the Almighty. But it made him feel closer to her.
“Maggie, you know how I loved you. No one could ever take your place. Not ever. But I remember a time when you were expecting our second baby, and we wondered how we could ever love a child more than we loved our Julia. Then Menno came, and Sadie, and M.K. And one night you told me that now you understood—love isn’t finite. It expands, like the yeast in bread dough, you said. I remember you were punching down bread dough when you told me that very thing.” He reached over and pulled the rest of the weeds from the side of the gravestone.
“Maggie, there’s room in my heart to love another woman, and I think I’ve found someone I want to start over with. I want your blessing, dearest.” He brushed away the weeds and rose to his feet, standing quietly before the grave for a few minutes. As he turned away, he found Fern, not three feet from him. He looked her straight in her eyes, his heart beat like a drum. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” Fern asked.
Amos took a step closer to her. “Don’t marry Ira Smucker.”
She lifted her chin. “I told him no.”
Amos felt a smile start deep down in his heart and rise to his face. He took a step forward, putting only inches between them. He reached for her hands. “Fern Graber, do you think you can stand being part of the Lapp family for the rest of your life?” He felt so raw, so exposed. His inner adolescent had kicked in, because he feared her response but at the same time hungered to know the truth.
Fern pursed her lips for a moment, appearing to be considering this.
Amos held his breath until she lifted her face to his. Her eyes softened as she gazed at him. When she finally spoke, her low, husky voice wavered with emotion. “Well, to tell the truth,” she said, “I don’t know how I couldn’t.”
Two hours later, Dr. Charles William Stoltz drove up the driveway to Windmill Farm in his champagne-colored convertible BMW. Will was surprised to see his mother hadn’t come too. Then he remembered that his mother had sent him a text message that she was off to New York City this week to see a new Egyptian exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He was relieved. This was hard enough.
Will’s stomach knotted. He tried to pretend it was from hunger, not regret.
Will waited until his father was out of the car to walk over to him. His mother always said that she was drawn to her father because he reminded her of Gregory Peck—raven hair, now with white wings at the temples, even with that little divot in his chin. He was wearing his customary off-duty uniform: tassled cordovan loafers, light gray slacks, and a powder-blue dress shirt with a pair of Ray-Bans hooked in the breast pocket. He didn’t wrinkle. Ever. He looked like he was going to his country club for drinks with his weirdly cerebral doctor friends who made jokes about aneurisms and neuron tangles. It had always amazed Will that his father had friends at all; he thought he had the personality of a prison warden. And he seemed completely out of place on an Amish farm.
Will took a deep breath to galvanize himself as his father took a long look at him. “How in the world does a person stay on an Amish farm and end up with a shiner?”
Unlike Will, Charles Stoltz never got ruffled or confused. He never lost his sense of purpose, which was why he found it so difficult to understand that Will wasn’t sure he wanted to go into medicine. Will touched his eye. “Long story.”
“Have you packed?”
“Not yet. It won’t take long to finish.”
“So.” Will’s father got right down to business, as usual—no How have you been? We’ve missed you. “What have you done now?” he said in his quiet, detached voice.
Will took a deep breath. He might as well tell. Everything.
If anyone were looking at them from a distance, they would have seen a father and son, side by side, leaning their backs against the car, arms folded against their chests, long legs stretched out, one ankle crossing the other. They would have thought the two were very laid-back. Ha! His father was as laid-back as a mountain lion. And they wouldn’t have known that Will’s heart was beating fast, confessing to his father the many ways he had messed up in the last few months. This confession made getting suspended from school and losing his spot in medical school to be a mere blip on the radar. This was big—it involved the law. The DUI. The shady lawyer. Illegally selling a noncaptive endangered species to a breeder. And now, trying to backpedal and get out of it all.
When he called Mr. Petosky to tell him he couldn’t do the switch, that he had banded all four chicks with the game warden’s bands, there was dead silence, followed by a stream of cussing like he’d never heard before, even in a fraternity house. Mr. Petosky told him to expect to find out that his DUI blood alcohol limit from the night of his arrest was now at the highest level, thanks to a friend at the police station who didn’t mind altering official records. Expect jail time, Mr. Petosky told him. Expect a huge fine. Expect to have your license revoked. Expect to say goodbye to ever getting a decent job. And then he flung a few more swear words at him and hung up.
His father listened carefully, asking a few questions here and there. He was completely unreadable. No fury, or worse, disgust, as Will thought there would be. Nor did he offer any answers or solutions. He simply listened. He could have been taking history on a patient, he was that impassive, that detached. If anything, his father grew more outwardly calm, never a good sign. As Will finished his long tale, he saw the Lapps’ buggy pull up the drive. He was grateful they had been away up to this point.
His father noticed the buggy too, and made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “We can . . . finish this later.” He glanced at Will with eyes narrowed. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so disappointed in you.”
Just like that, Will was eight years old again, and those same cold eyes were judging him for getting a B+ in P.E. on his report card. If only his father could have been like Amos, who only cared about his children’s happiness and well-being. Will tried to play it cool, but his guts were in a knot.
M.K. was the first to spill out of the buggy. She hurried over to meet Will’s father. Sadie went straight to the house with the baby, which didn’t surprise Will. He knew how shy she was around strangers. Amos and Fern walked over to say hello. “You must be Will’s father,” Amos said, offering his hand to Charles. “You raised a fine young man. We think the world of your boy.”
Will winced. How could he face Amos once the truth about him was out? He had been so good to him.
“Oh, I think a lot of my son too,” Will’s father said dryly, shaking Amos’s hand. Zing! Aimed at Will, but one that was lost on the Lapps.
Fern tilted her head in that way she had, sizing up Will’s father. Will wondered what she was thinking—did they resemble each other? Did Will fall short? Of course he did.
Then her eyes went wide. “Why, Little Chuckie Stoltzfus. I haven’t seen you since you tied an oily rag to my cat’s tail and set it on fire.”
As Amos heard Fern talk to the fancy doctor like he was a small neighbor boy, he thought that just possibly she had completely lost her mind. Had that intimate moment in the graveyard unhinged her? Fern kept circling back to the cat—how it was her favorite cat in all the world and she still mourned for it. Amos knew, for a fact, that Fern didn’t particularly like cats.
The fancy doctor glanced at his watch, tapped his foot, seemed as coiled as a cobra. His face was stone, his eyebrows knitted together. And still, Fern chattered on about that cat. Amos was baffled; Fern wasn’t a lengthy talker. Short, pithy remarks that brought a person up short—those were her trademarks. The doctor’s cheeks were turning fire red. So rot as en Kasch! As red as a
cherry.
Amos worried the doctor might explode and how could he blame him? Fern was describing, in infinite detail, how the burnt smell of cat fur lingered on and on. He was just about to step in and muzzle her when the fancy doctor met her gaze, head-on. “Fern Graber, I did not set your cat on fire,” he said. His voice was smooth, no friction between the words. “My cousin Marvin did.”
You could have heard a pin drop, a heart beat. Will’s eyes went wide, his mouth dropped open, noiseless.
So, Fern had been after something! Amos’s heart swelled in admiration for her. Somehow, she seemed to know just how to pressure this man into cracking, admitting something he apparently had kept hidden for—well, at least for Will’s twenty-one years. It boggled Amos’s mind—to think Fern grew up in the same church as Will’s father in Millersburg, Ohio! Even more astonishing was the shock registered on Will’s face. To think that Charles Stoltz, a.k.a. Little Chuckie Stoltzfus, had never told his son that he had been raised Amish.
Fern insisted he stay for dinner, overruling Charles Stoltz’s many objections. Amos suspected there were only a few people who ever told this man what to do—and his Fern was one of them.
Dinner was torture. As they settled in to eat, Will sat there, stunned, wordless. Amos felt sorry for him. Will had shared a few stories about his father with Amos—never in his wildest dreams would he have thought that fancy doctor, with all his degrees, had been raised Plain.
Nothing about Dr. Stoltz seemed Plain now. Certainly not the outside trappings—the clothes, the car. Not a trace of a Deitsch accent. Not a mannerism. Not a single hint of his humble beginnings. Even his surname had been modified. All evidence of his upbringing had been washed away, swept clean.
No one said much at dinner. Except for Fern. She just kept on talking, reminiscing about stories she remembered about Little Chuckie—which seemed to mortify him—updating him about the people in his church as if he had asked. Amos thought she might be trying to squeeze information out of him for Will’s sake. “So if I remember right, you were dead set on going to college.”
“That’s right.” It was pretty clear that Charles Stoltz didn’t want his past sifted through.
“And your father was dead set against you getting a college education.” Fern swallowed a bite of chicken. “He was determined to have you farm alongside of him.”
Charles remained unresponsive and helped himself to a spoonful of mashed potatoes. He cut two precise squares of his chicken.
“Broke your parents’ hearts when you ran off,” Fern said. “I sure do remember that.”
Charles cut his meat with such intensity that Amos feared he might go right through the plate.
“That’s sort of flip-flopped,” M.K. said as she poured a pool of gravy over the potatoes on her plate until Fern stopped her. “Your dad wanted you to be a farmer and you ran off to be a doctor. You want Will to be a doctor and he ran off to be a farmer.”
At the exact same moment, as if it had been orchestrated, Charles’s and Will’s forks clattered against their plates.
No one said much else for the rest of the dinner. Except for Fern.
20
As soon as dinner ended, Will’s father leaned over and quietly told him to go get packed up, that they needed to leave as soon as he was ready. Will nodded once and said only, “All right.”
As Will crested the small hill that led down to the cottage, he couldn’t believe what he had learned about his father tonight. He felt a shock go through him, as real as lightning. Once he had opened a hot oven at eye level to put in a frozen pizza and he was hit by a wave of heat so strong and severe that it temporarily blinded him. The discovery about his father had the same effect.
His father was raised Amish? Dr. Charles William Stoltz had once been Chuckie Stoltzfus, a simple farm boy? Did his mother know? It was too much to take in.
So he wasn’t the only one in the family who kept secrets! He grew somber. The revelation about his father—as big as it was—only served as a distraction. The reason his father was here tonight hadn’t gone away—Will was facing some serious problems.
Will stopped at the doorway of his cottage. The sun had dropped low on the horizon. He watched, transfixed, as the sky filled with deepening hues of red and orange, then purple. In the morning, the sun would rise; tomorrow evening, about this time, it would set. A regular cycle. He stood there for a long moment, marveling at the earth’s precise alignment on its axis when so many other things in life seemed crooked.
Suddenly the fact that he was looking at the last little bit of the sun for this day, knowing that it would rise again in the morning, that it was a solid fact the world could count on—it was a very comforting thought. And the fact that the sun had hung in place since the creation of the world and would be there until the heavens passed away—that God had ordained all of this into being. It struck Will that this same God might have a thought or two for him and his future, as well.
The sun had slipped below the horizon, but the sky was filled with an extraordinary lighting. The world seemed different. The cornfields seemed extra green, the pine trees so vivid they were almost jarring. It was like getting a pair of glasses that were overcorrected. Everything seemed startlingly clear to him.
Fern continued her endless monologue of informing Charles of the people of Millersburg, Ohio, as Sadie and Mary Kate washed the dinner dishes. Amos could tell that Charles was growing increasingly uncomfortable with all these unwanted memories thrust upon him. He finally took pity on the man.
“Let’s go outside. I’d like to show you the falcon scape before it gets too dark.”
Charles bolted from his chair before Amos finished his sentence. They walked to a high spot that held one of Amos’s favorite views—you could see rolling fields in every direction. Will had tilled and planted those very fields, Amos told Charles. Since the corn and wheat were knee-high, you couldn’t see the wavy furrows and Amos was glad for that. He had a hunch Charles would find fault with Will’s plowing.
“I’m glad Will was able to help you,” Charles said.
Amos nodded. “We’re sorry to think he will be leaving us tonight.”
“He’s banded the chicks. He’s done what he needed to do here for Mahlon. And Will has . . . some things to figure out. I think it’s best if we do it together. At home.”
It was late and the sun had already slid down the horizon, turning the wispy clouds in the sky to gold, purple, and red. Charles noticed. “I’d forgotten the sheer beauty of nature. Sunsets on a farm are like no other.”
Amos nodded. The sunset was particularly spectacular tonight. Maybe it was God’s gift to Will, a blessing and a benediction. “I don’t know how anyone could possibly visit this part of the world and not believe in the perfect hand of God.”
Above their heads Adam floated across the cornfield and let out a shrill whistle. “That’s the tiercel.”
“The male falcon, right?”
Amos must have looked surprised that he would know such a fact.
“The first car I ever bought was a Toyota Tercel.” Charles Stoltz’s cheeks pinked a little. “I’ve always liked birds.” He kicked at a dirt clod with his loafer. “I guess there is a small part of me that is still Plain.”
“Oh, I have a hunch there’s probably a lot of you that is still Plain.”
Charles jerked his head around. “I don’t think so. I left at nineteen and never looked back. Never wanted to. Nor was I welcomed back.”
Adam dove straight down in a stoop, like he was performing for them. They watched his shape shift into an aerodynamic missile. Dozens of small songbirds scattered like buckshot. There was no love lost between the tiercel and the other birds. “Doctoring always seemed like farming to me,” Amos said.
Charles raised an eyebrow.
“You learn to fix things, to make things right again. You do your part—do it well, do it thoroughly, and God provides the rain and sun to do the rest. Just like the work of healing.”
<
br /> Charles’s eyes were riveted on Adam, who had snatched a barn swallow midair and swooped up to carry it back to the scape. Adam would be back soon. It was taking more and more hunts to keep his family fed. Amos waited a moment, hoping Charles might say something, but he didn’t. So Amos did. “Do you know much about falconry?”
“Its history, mostly, as a sport of game hunting, where they wear those little hoods.” He looked up, as if gathering details in his mind. “Let’s see . . . the first record of falconry was in China in 2200 BC. The tradition made its way around the world—Africa, Egypt, Persia, Europe.” He stroked his chin. “Shakespeare was an avid falconer. Then the sport of falconry declined when firearms came on the scene.”
Oh. This Dr. Stoltz knew quite a lot about falconry. If Amos ever needed brain surgery, he decided he would definitely want this man to do it. “Falconry is having a revival of sorts. I’ve read of a blueberry farmer in eastern Washington who uses trained falcons as bird abatement. Not peregrines like our falcons—he uses alpomado falcons. The falcons keep raiding birds out of his crops. He calls them his falcon patrol. Uses about twenty birds. All of the handlers have to get permits to become trainers. It’s supposed to be very successful.” Amos grinned. “We’ve been blessed here on Windmill Farm to have Adam and Eve—that’s what Will named our falcons. They’ve helped keep down aviary damage on our crops this spring. Cut way down on those pesky starlings. We’re hoping they’ll come back to breed here next year.”
“Interesting.” And Charles Stoltz did seem interested. Amos had finally hit on the right subject to snag this man’s attention. Above them, Adam did a looping figure eight. “They are . . . fast.”
Amos nodded. “So much of a falcon’s life is spent in the air. The scape is only a place to lay and incubate its eggs, to house its fledglings until it can push them out.”
The two men were mesmerized by Adam’s aerobatics. The falcon was swooping and diving and darting, as if it was having the time of its life.
The Haven Page 24
