by Marta Perry
“Who else—” Isaac began.
“Isaac, stop,” she said quickly, the words racing ahead of her thoughts. But there was only one way this could have happened. “Joseph didn’t start the fire.” She focused on Levi’s small face, dreading the fact that she had to say the words. “Levi, do you want to tell Daadi something?”
Levi was white, his face strained, his fists clenched. His mouth trembled as he nodded, and he swallowed hard. “I’m sorry, Daadi. I’m sorry, Mammi. I didn’t mean it. When I brought the trash out, I thought I could help. I thought I could burn the trash as well as Joseph could.”
Isaac let go of his brother, his face tightening. “How did this happen?” Judith had the feeling the question was addressed to her as well as to Levi.
“I had Levi take the kitchen trash out so that Joseph could burn it later, after the wind died down. I guess Levi wanted to help.”
Wanted to show what a big boy he was, she suspected. He always wanted to show his daadi that he was big enough to contribute to the farm.
Isaac stooped to his son’s level. “Is that what happened, Levi?”
The boy nodded miserably, blinking back tears. “I thought I could do it. The screen was sehr heavy. I guess I didn’t get it back on far enough.”
“You must never do something like that without asking first.” Isaac ran his hands down Levi’s arms, and Judith knew he was trying not to picture Levi with his clothes ablaze. “It is much too dangerous.”
“Ach, the boy knows it now.” Onkel Simon interrupted him, putting one hand on Joseph’s shoulder. “There’s nothing to be done but to get the cows milked by hand. We’ve got plenty of willing workers here, so we’d best get at it.” He nudged Joseph along. “We’ll start them moving to the tie-stall barn, ain’t so?”
Joseph looked as if he was ready to burst out with something, but he met his uncle’s gaze and nodded.
“Right.” The old man and the boy moved off together. The rest of the men, knowing what was needed without asking, headed for the tie-stall barn. Their neighbors and relatives would be here to help with the milking as long as they were needed.
But judging by the bleak expression on Isaac’s face, that was small comfort to a man who’d just seen a crucial part of his business go up in smoke.
Still, that was no excuse for his having jumped to the conclusion that Joseph was to blame. How could the trouble between them ever heal if Isaac lost his temper that way?
CHAPTER EIGHT
Lancaster County, August 1953
Summer was fading into autumn, and still there was no resolution to the school conflict. Adam, perched on a branch of the apple tree in Mattie’s small orchard, picked another ripe apple and dropped it to Toby, waiting below.
“Me, me,” Anna squealed, bouncing on bare feet under the tree. “Throw one to me, Cousin Adam.”
“The next one is for you,” he promised. Reaching over his head, he found an especially bright red one and tossed it gently. Anna, apparently not trusting her small hands, caught it in her apron and raced to the basket they were filling.
Adam could only thank the gut Lord that the younger kinder didn’t seem to be affected by the burden that pressed on the adults. He’d felt for days as he did when a storm brewed in the western sky. There was the same sense of black clouds massing, the same weight of heavy air and rumbles of thunder. Everywhere he went, he was greeted with worried distraction by the Leit and a kind of open suspicion by the Englisch.
“More apples,” Toby demanded. “Rachel and Nate have their basket almost full.”
Adam was just as glad to be distracted from his thoughts. “Right. Here they come.”
He sped up, picking faster. As Toby had said, Nate and Rachel made a quick team, with Nate in the tree picking steadily while Rachel’s deft hands sorted the apples as they went into the baskets. They were working in the McIntosh tree—Mattie especially prized those apples for sauce, so any bruised ones could be used for it.
“Mind the apples don’t have a bad spot before you put them into the keeping basket,” he charged his helpers. “One bad one in the bottom can spoil the whole basket, ain’t so?”
Toby nodded solemnly, but Anna looked up at him with her bright curiosity showing. “Why? How can it do that?”
He grinned down at her, softening as always at the sight of this child who was what his little Sarah might have become. “If one apple in the bunch isn’t sound, that spoiled spot spreads to the other apples around it, making them go bad as well. Understand?”
Anna considered for a moment, then nodded as if satisfied. “I’ll be careful. I’ll look at every single one.”
“Gut girl.” He supposed, in a way, that was what they were trying to do in preventing their impressionable children from being sent off to the big consolidated school. Even one Amish child who succumbed to the lure of fancy clothes or drinking or even doubting their Creator could infect those around them.
Be ye separate from the world. That was the Biblical instruction the Amish followed, but right now the Englisch seemed determined to force change on them even when they were convinced it ran counter to their faith.
He glanced at Rachel. She was laughing up at Nate, looking as sweet and wholesome as always. But he’d seen the worry and doubt in her face when she thought no one was watching her. This situation was especially hard on her.
“Are you thinking or picking, Adam Lapp?” Mattie’s voice, coming from below him, startled him so that he jerked and nearly lost his balance.
“Careful,” she cried, her tone sharp with worry. Not all of it was for him, he knew.
“I’m fine.” He tossed an apple down to her to demonstrate, and she fielded it easily. “Gut catch.”
“I’m not that out of practice,” Mattie retorted. “I could probably climb that tree as well as you.”
He leaned down toward her, grinning. “Dare you.”
For an instant it seemed she’d take him up on it, her face laughing and as young as Rachel’s. Then she glanced at the young ones and shook her head. “Better not. I have an example to set, ain’t so?”
But the kinder had caught the tone of the conversation. “Do it, Mammi,” Rachel said. The others joined in, making so much noise that Mattie put her hands over her ears.
“All right, all right. I’ll do it just this once.” Almost before Adam realized what she was about, Mattie had caught a branch, put her foot in the fork of the tree, and hoisted herself up.
“Careful.” He reached out to catch her arm, holding her securely.
Mattie wrapped one arm around the trunk of the apple tree, laughing. Leaves draped over her head, and one apple hung next to her shoulder as if it had perched there. Leaf-dappled sunlight filtered through the branches to gild her fair skin with gold.
He had to say something. He couldn’t just stare at her like a gawking tourist. “What will your mamm have to say to me if I let you fall?”
“Probably that a woman my age shouldn’t be so foolish as to go climbing trees.” Amusement touched her eyes and her gaze caught his—caught and held—and suddenly he couldn’t breathe.
Mattie was as dear to him as she’d always been, but now he felt more for her, so much more. Emotion stirred between them, thickening the air and making his heartbeat thunder in his ears.
And Mattie felt it, too. It was there in the startled expression darkening her eyes and the way her lips parted. In a moment—
“Throw down an apple, Mammi!” Toby shouted. Mattie jerked back against Adam’s arm, breaking the spell. He glanced down, away from her, afraid she’d read too much in his eyes.
Rachel gave Toby a slight shove, and he shot her an indignant look. “What’d you do that for?”
“You shouldn’t interrupt grown-ups,” she scolded.
“But they weren’t talking.” Toby’s lower lip came out, and he looked prepa
red to continue the argument.
“Never mind,” Mattie said hastily. “I’m coming down. We’ll let Adam and Nate do the tree-climbing.”
“It’ll be time for milking soon.” Adam was talking at random, trying to cover up his confusion. Had Rachel actually recognized what was happening between them?
“Why don’t we just finish up the trees you’re working on now? You’ve picked plenty of apples to keep me busy for a couple of days.” Mattie had reached the ground, and she bent to pick up a half-filled basket that had tipped on its side.
“Right.” Adam tried to focus on the apples within his reach. That seemed to be the only safe thing to think about at the moment.
By the time he slid down from the tree, both baskets were full and he’d regained his composure enough to smile normally at Mattie. “Be sure you save me some applesauce,” he said.
“I will, but I can do better than that after you helped the kinder pick all these apples. How about an apple crumble pie?”
“Yum. Your mamm makes wonderful gut apple crumble pie, ain’t so?” He tapped the top of Nate’s straw hat and got an instant grin.
“Save some for us,” Nate said. “Don’t eat it all.”
“You kids run and get the wagon to take the baskets down,” Mattie said. “I’ll make sure there’s plenty of pie for everyone.”
Rachel grabbed Anna’s hand. “Komm. We’ll race the boys.”
The four of them dashed down the gentle slope toward the barn, with Rachel suiting her long stride to the small steps of her little sister.
He smiled, watching them, but then he noticed Mattie’s expression. She was looking at Rachel, and the worry was back in her face.
“No news?” he asked gently.
Mattie shrugged. “You know how the pastor on the school board said something about private schools? The bishop spoke to him after the meeting, and he thinks if we start our own schools, the board might leave us alone.”
He considered the idea and found it growing on him. “It might be the only answer. As long as our kinder were going to the little school down the road with other farm kids, it didn’t matter so much who was Englisch and who was Amish. We all understood each other. But now it’s different.”
“I keep thinking about how bad feelings were when the war started and the Englisch thought our boys should go for soldiers.” Mattie turned wide, frightened eyes on him. “Rachel isn’t old enough to remember what it was like. But I remember the mean things people said and how some of the neighbors stopped buying our produce. Is it going to be that way again?”
Adam had to be honest. “I don’t know. I hope not. But our promise not to use violence against any person was important enough to cling to no matter what happened.”
He found he was struggling to articulate his deepest beliefs. The Amish didn’t generally talk much about what they believed and why. They just lived their faith.
“Maybe this situation is similar to that one. Sending our kinder out of our community and teaching them things that are contrary to our beliefs—this might be another breaking point between us and the world.”
Mattie closed her eyes for a moment, and he thought she was reaching out in prayer. Finally she looked at him and made an effort to smile. “We were brought up on the stories of the martyrs, ain’t so? I just never thought we would have to be the ones to make a stand.”
“I know.” His voice was husky with the pain he felt. It wasn’t fair—that was all he could think. Mattie had struggled through the loss of Ben and tried so hard to raise their kinder on her own. It wasn’t fair that she had to face so much trouble and make such difficult choices.
More than anything else, he wanted to protect and care for Mattie and her children. But how could he ever find a balance between his loyalty to Ben and his own desires?
• • •
The acrid smell of burning lingered in the air as Judith went through the nightly routine of settling the boys in bed. Getting everyone bathed had been a chore, with soot everywhere. The soot-covered laundry could wait until tomorrow, but her sons had to be clean.
She tucked a sheet over Noah, who was asleep already after all the excitement. In the other twin bed of the room they shared, Paul was letting his eyes drift shut, even as he still tried to talk about the fire truck.
“Shh.” She patted Paul gently. “Tomorrow is another day. Go to sleep and dream about being one of the fire volunteers.”
He seemed to snuggle the idea close as he turned to curl up on his side. In a moment he was sound asleep.
Judith stood, stretching, tired as much from the stress of the fire as anything else, she supposed. She hadn’t really had much to do once the initial flurry of trying to hold back the flames had been taken over by the men.
When she’d finally gone back into the house after the fire truck had left, she’d discovered her kitchen counters and refrigerator filled with food—the inevitable Amish answer to trouble. Word must have spread at the speed of light. More and more folks had shown up to help or to bring supper, until there had been more volunteers than there had been jobs to do.
She stopped at the window in the hallway on her way to the bedroom shared by Levi and Joseph. Most people had gone home by now, promising to be back for the morning milking, but she could still hear the low rumble of male voices from outside.
They were probably trying to figure out a way to save the milk, but she feared there wasn’t a solution. Isaac had sent jugs home with everyone who could take it, but the rest would have to be dumped—such a terrible waste. The dairy couldn’t take the milk unless it had been properly handled, and without the generator that was impossible.
If the dairy decided to cancel their contract . . .
She stopped her thoughts from heading in that direction and turned instead to a silent prayer of thankfulness. No one had been injured. The dairy herd was fine. What had happened was part of God’s will for them, and they must accept, even when it was difficult.
Judith moved to the other bedroom and opened the door quietly, hoping Levi had been exhausted enough to fall asleep. He hadn’t, of course. He was sitting up in bed, his arms wrapped around his knees, staring at nothing. His brooding expression was so like the one Isaac sometimes wore that it shook her. Please don’t let him shut me out the way Isaac does.
Levi looked up when she came in but then resumed his study of the footboard of his bed. Sighing a little, she squeezed onto the bed next to him, leaning against the headboard and putting her arm around his shoulders. His little body felt stiff against her for a moment, and then he seemed to relax, turning his face into her sleeve.
“It’s all right, you know,” she said, stroking his hair. “Everyone understands that it was just an accident.”
He shook his head a little. “Daadi will think I was dumb.”
“Ach, Levi, don’t say such a thing. Daadi doesn’t think that at all. He knows you were trying to help. He’s just wonderful glad you weren’t hurt by the fire, and it makes him scared. You know that, don’t you?”
He hesitated and then nodded, but her mother’s instinct told her there was more going on.
“Komm, now. Tell me what is troubling you. Things never seem so bad once we’ve shared them with someone who loves us.”
“I wanted to help. I did.” He pulled away enough to look at her, as if there was something she must understand.
“I know. Daadi knows, too.” She waited.
Levi looked down, sniffing a little as he held back tears. “I wanted Daadi to see that I’m big enough to help with the farm.”
Surprise held her immobile for an instant before she gathered her wits. “But you do help, Levi. You help with the milking, and Daadi is always saying how gut you are with the animals.”
He shook his head, not looking at her. “It’s not enough.”
Why? That was what she want
ed to ask, but she held back the question.
“Levi, Daadi wants you to learn how to farm gradually. That’s how a child is meant to learn. Your onkels and cousins all learned that way, taking on more and more responsibilities as they became older. You will, too.”
She could still feel him holding back from her, and she struggled to understand. He was worried. She could sense it. Finally she grasped his shoulders firmly, insisting he look at her. “You aren’t telling me something. What is it?”
Levi’s gaze slid away from hers. “I know,” he muttered finally.
“You know what?” Her heart was aching for him, but she kept her voice calm.
“I know that the farm won’t be mine!” The words came out quickly now, in a high-pitched flow that startled her. “I know what Daadi says. The farm will be Joseph’s. But it’s not fair. I love the farm. I love every one of the cows. And Joseph doesn’t even want it.” He stopped, his eyes wide, and clapped his hand over his lips.
So. She should have realized. For that matter, Isaac should have realized.
“It’s all right.” She drew Levi close against her, holding him as if he were a baby again. “I know.” How could she defend a decision she didn’t even agree with? “Listen, Levi. Daadi knows how much you love farming. He will provide for each one of you boys. There will be a farm for you.”
Was she right? She prayed so. But if the dairy dropped its contract with them, money would be tight. What would the future hold for any of them? The question frightened her, but right now it was more important to comfort her son than to think about trouble that might or might not come.
“You shouldn’t keep something like that to yourself,” she said, stroking his back and feeling the fragile bones under her hand. “You can always talk to me or Daadi about your worries. Daadi knows what a fine farmer you’re becoming. You can trust him to see that you have what is right for you, ain’t so?”
Levi nodded, probably as much relieved by speaking as by any reassurance she had offered.
