The Calling

by Suzanne Woods Fisher

  “Her vision might not be real,” Hank said, “but it’s real to her.”

  And then Mim came flying through the hole in the privet hedge. “Jimmy—we have to get to the community garden! I just got a call from Bethany. Something’s going on down there.”

  Jimmy fetched a buggy horse from the barn and Hank hitched it to the shafts in record time. Mim jumped in the buggy and Naomi came out of the house to join them, but Jimmy discouraged her from coming along by promising to stop by later with news. He could almost see the headache pain radiating from her eyes. He climbed into the buggy, slapped the reins on the horse, and started to take off, when Sammy and Luke ran through the privet. “We’re coming too!”

  “HOP IN, BOYS!” Hank bellowed.

  Jimmy stopped the buggy and let them climb into the backseat. He glanced at Mim. “What exactly did Bethany say?”

  Mim’s hands were gripping the sides of the buggy. “She and Geena were driving past the community garden on their way home and saw that the garden had been trashed.”

  “What?” Jimmy glanced at her. “By who?”

  “She didn’t say. It was a quick call.”

  “Where were Geena and Bethany coming from?” He hadn’t seen Bethany all day, and he’d been looking.

  “I don’t know.”

  No one said a word for the rest of the ride. Jimmy detoured down a road for a shortcut, across a fire path in a field, and pulled the horse to a stop at the back of the garden, behind a fence. He jumped out of the buggy, tied the reins to a tree, and helped Mim down. The boys raced around the fence corner. Then they stopped abruptly, stunned. Jimmy, Hank, and Mim joined the boys; the five of them stared at the gardens with blank expressions.

  Here was Naomi’s warning.

  It looked like cattle had stampeded through, trampling the new and carefully tended plots. Plants were smashed, dirt was scattered, leaves and blossoms lay in clumps, gravel from the pathways was churned up. Some of the wooden boards that held the plots were smashed into splinters.

  They were ruined.

  Rage rose in Jimmy as he strode through the gardens. Nearly every plot had been damaged, but it was capricious, like a tornado. Some gardens had been trampled and yanked up badly. Others had only sustained wounds. A handful of others had taken a hit, with broken plants, footsteps in the middle. He started counting. Two very badly damaged plots. One of them was the Grange Hall’s kitchen plot. That was better, he felt, than if it had belonged to a needy family or the Group Home. He picked up a stake, shoved the support in the ground, tenderly knelt and propped up a listing tomato cage. Within, the tomato plant had a few broken arms which Jimmy pinched off, but its main stem was intact. It would survive.

  The wanton destruction trailed off toward the far end of the gardens, as if the vandals had been chased away. Or interrupted.

  He heard a slight moan and turned around to see Bethany, standing with her fist clenched against her mouth. He walked up to her. “This is unbelievable,” she said.

  “Mim said you and Geena were driving by when you saw that the gardens had been wrecked. Did you see anyone?”

  She pointed to the back of the garden. “In the shadows back there, I saw some figures moving. Two, maybe three people. When Geena pulled over, they ran off.” Something fierce crossed her face. “How could anyone do such a thing? Why? This is food! They’re gardens. They’re only meant to help people.”

  He looked around the plots, teeth clenched together. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.” Then he turned to face Bethany. “But we’re not going to let them think they’ve taken something away.” He peered at the sky. “It might rain soon, but until it does, we’re going to start fixing things.”

  “Now?”

  “Now.”

  Mim had been standing nearby, listening to their conversation. “I’ll go to the Sisters’ House and let them know.” She took off running.

  “WAIT FOR ME, MIM!” Hank called. “I’ll use their phone to start the Amish telegraph.” Mim waited for him to catch up and the two hurried off together to the Sisters’ House.

  “Jimmy,” Bethany said, “who is capable of this kind of violence?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he called, walking backward toward the Grange Hall to get tools from the shed. “What matters is that the garden keeps growing.”

  Soon the word spread and church members started to arrive. Everyone surveyed the damage, faces masked with shock and sadness. “Why would anyone do such a thing?” Amos Lapp asked, lifting a smashed zucchini plant. He tried to brace the broken boards of a raised bed, but they kept falling over again.

  “I have no idea,” Bethany said. She must have said it over and over. She still couldn’t believe what had transpired here today.

  A few girls from the Group Home drifted over and Geena set them to cleanup tasks. Bethany admired how easily Geena related to those girls. Bethany avoided them, was intimidated by them, but Geena always went right up and drew them into conversation.

  Sammy stood by the garden plot Bethany had planted for the sisters’ soup kitchen. He was peering at his pea shoots, which had been twining up a trellis he had made out of stakes, and made a roaring noise. “Someone wrecked my peas!” he cried, hurt crumpling his face, and Bethany wrapped her arm around his shoulder.

  “No, Sammy, look,” she said, bending down to examine the plants. “Some of the pea vines are broken, but not all. They’ll keep growing. Peas are hardy things.” She spied some stakes and reached out to grab them and put them back in the ground. “I think if you leave those peas alone, they’ll survive.”

  Luke ran over to see the plot, a scowl pulling at his face. He jammed his fists on his hips and jutted out his chin. He whipped his head around to Bethany, his eyes flaring brightly. “Until they do it again.” He stomped off down the garden path.

  Sammy’s mouth trembled. “What if it happens again?”

  Gently she brushed the hair out of Sammy’s eyes. She hardly had to reach down to do so anymore, he was getting that big. He would be nine years old come fall. Before long, he’d be growing past her, like Luke already was. “There’s no point in worrying about what-ifs. Let’s see what can be salvaged.”

  Kneeling, she plucked leaves from an eggplant and removed a crumpled stem of a sunflower. The carrots and potatoes and onions and garlic would be fine, tucked deep under the earth. A swath of corn shoots was crushed. She tried to appear calm, for Sammy’s sake, but as she tossed the ruined plants aside, she saw that her hands were shaking.

  Jimmy walked over to where she and Sammy were working. “Sammy, Amos Lapp brought some flats of mixed bedding plants from his greenhouse to help replace those that had been lost. Run over and see if there are some plants he’ll let you have.” As Sammy ran over to Amos’s wagon, Jimmy examined the two boards of the raised bed. He pulled out some nails from his pocket and hammered the corners together. “That’ll hold for now. I’ll get corner latches on it tomorrow.”

  Bethany still couldn’t imagine who would have done this. She glanced over at the Group Home and saw Rusty and her friends on the porch, watching others clean up the gardens. Maybe she could imagine whom. But why? What could cause those girls—Rusty, if she were honest—to commit such a reckless act? “What would make her do something like this?”

  Jimmy raised an eyebrow. “Why’d you say that? Why’d you say ‘her’?”

  Bethany didn’t know for sure that Rusty had done it. If so, she certainly would have needed help from her friends, but that wouldn’t have been too difficult. Rusty said jump and they asked how high. “Just a hunch.”

  “Well, you might be on to something.” He glanced over at Rusty. “The only plot that wasn’t damaged was the Group Home’s.”

  “We were just trying to do something for the community, to make things a little bit nicer.” She wiped at some dirt on her cheeks. “People think they can do anything to us because we won’t fight back.”

  “I know,” Jimmy said quietly, not looking away. “B
ut we shouldn’t stop trying to do good. Things are damaged, but most of it is fixable.”

  Geena walked up to them. “Whoever did all this has been damaged too, or they wouldn’t choose to do this kind of destruction.”

  “Well, we probably can’t fix them, but let’s see what we can do about this garden.” Jimmy reached down and picked up his hammer and extra nails. “Where’ve you been all day, anyhow?”

  Bethany stilled and her eyes pricked with tears. She glanced at Geena for help.

  “Taking care of some old business,” Geena volunteered. “Jimmy, you’re absolutely right. Let’s see what we can do about this garden.”

  16

  In less than a week, Bethany’s missing brother had returned and was being investigated by a big city lawyer, her church had built a community garden, she had discovered that her mother was mentally ill, and to top it all off, the brand-new community garden had been trashed . . . and rebuilt.

  Still, the sun rose on Wednesday morning and Harold the Rooster crowed and new guests were due at the inn this afternoon. It was strange how time moved along, like a river rushing to meet the ocean. Nothing could stop it.

  Right after breakfast, Mim and Bethany scrubbed and cleaned the guest flat, washed the windows, changed the sheets and towels, and prepared the rooms for new arrivals. Now the sisters were expecting Bethany to help serve lunch at the Grange Hall. As she put on her bonnet to walk to the Sisters’ House, Chase greeted her at the door, barking his big, deep bark, wagging the whole back half of his body. “You want to come with me, don’t you?” Chase tilted his head toward her for a nuzzle. She scratched his back, rubbed his ears. “You’re the best.” She didn’t know how anybody could get along without a good old dog.

  The rain from last night had stopped, but the air was thick with it, dense to breathe, smelling of damp soil. Now and then a slight whiff of horses wafted through. Geena invited herself along and they walked to the Sisters’ House, Chase trailing behind, sniffing and baptizing every bush along the way.

  On the way, Geena asked how she was processing through all of yesterday’s events. “As I thought about it last night, I realized you probably have more questions than answers. And most likely, the sisters have the answers. Some of them, anyway.”

  “I’ve thought of little else.” Bethany blew out a puff of air. “I had to bite my tongue last night when I saw the sisters at the garden—I wanted to ask them what they knew about my mother. Wanted to but didn’t. I’m not sure I can handle knowing anything more. I doubt it’s good.”

  “Wait for God’s timing on this, Bethany.”

  Bethany glanced at her, a little annoyed. “I told you—I didn’t say anything.”

  “Waiting on God doesn’t mean forgetting or ignoring. It means you pray for God’s timing. Ask him to let you know when the time is right. Don’t act until you sense God’s leading. Waiting on God isn’t passive. It’s very active.”

  “Then what happens? Should I be on the lookout for a burning bush or something?”

  Geena laughed. “I don’t think you’ll need something quite that dramatic. For me, it’s more like a knowing, deep inside. The more I pray, the more familiar I’ve become with getting direction from God. I try not to act until I get his prompting.”

  It never crossed Bethany’s mind to pray the way Geena prayed—asking and expecting and asking some more. She had no idea a person could talk to God like that. No idea at all. She’d been in church all her life—different churches too. Amish and Mennonite. Never had she heard that prayer was a two-way conversation. Was it that her churches didn’t encourage that kind of praying? Or had she just not paid attention?

  As they turned onto the road that led to the Sisters’ House, Geena brought up Naomi’s warning. “Does she get those . . . presentiments . . . often?”

  “She thinks of them as intuition. Gut feelings. And she thinks everyone has intuition but people don’t listen to it enough. But I’ve noticed they seem to be related to her migraine headaches.” Bethany kicked a stone off the sidewalk. “Naomi is an interesting person.”

  “Her voice reminds me of a librarian, hushed and refined. She seems like a gentle soul.”

  “That she is. She does generous and loving things without even a second thought. But she’s stronger inside than she might seem on the outside.”

  Geena grinned. “That’s the opposite of the girls from the Group Home. They look tough on the outside, but inside, they’re still little girls.”

  “Why do you like those girls so much?”

  “I’ve always been partial to teens,” Geena said. “That’s why I love being a youth pastor. If I were running that Group Home, I’d start a weekly Bible study for the girls. And I’d try to organize a mentoring program for them, so they could be matched with people—” she held her palm out to Bethany “—people like you, who have so much to teach these girls.”

  Oh no. No thank you.

  “I guess the thing I like about teens is that they’re less jaded than adults, more vulnerable, more willing to believe.”

  “But you’re going to look for another youth pastor job?”

  “Oh yes. I like supporting teens during their impressionable years—to make them feel part of the church, to listen without lecturing them, all while pointing them toward God’s highest and best.”

  “But what if a church wasn’t in a building?”

  Geena opened her mouth to say something, closed it, opened it again, closed it. She seemed flustered by the question, yet it seemed so obvious to Bethany.

  Sylvia was in front of her house and called out to them when she saw them coming up the road. “Turkey Rice Soup on the menu today.” She was filling a little red wagon with jars of homemade turkey stock.

  “It’s the first time all summer that serving a hot meal sounds good,” Bethany said. She and Geena took the wagons on ahead to the Grange Hall while Sylvia gathered her sisters.

  Chase wasn’t allowed in the Grange Hall kitchen, so he moseyed over to the community garden to visit with a few gardeners working on their plots. Geena unlocked the kitchen and started to unload a wagon. Bethany stopped for a moment to gaze at the gardens. It was amazing to see that the garden didn’t look all that different today from how it looked on Saturday afternoon—neat and tidy and full of promise.

  “REMARKABLE SIGHT, AIN’T IT?”

  Bethany flinched at the loud sound and spun around to find Hank Lapp standing a few feet away from her. “Morning, Hank. What are you doing here?”

  “Thought I’d give some help to the gardeners.”

  “That’s nice of you.”

  “Well, some of them are new at this. That family there—” he pointed to a mother with two little girls—“they’re planting onions next to beans. That’ll stunt the growth of the beans.” He shrugged his shoulders. “If you haven’t been raised Plain, you don’t know about gardens.”

  Well, that might be stretching things a little, but it was true that the Amish passed their know-how from generation to generation. Bethany picked up a sack of flour, glad to see it. She’d ask Sylvia to see if she could get some flour so she could start making biscuits for lunches. That store-bought white bread had no taste at all. She glanced at the Group Home. She wondered if those girls ever had a homemade biscuit before, hot from the oven, topped with a pat of cold butter. Maybe today, if she could get started soon.

  Hank shielded his eyes, looking over the garden plots. “You’d never know this place had been such a mess.”

  In her other hand, Bethany picked up a big jar of broth. “When I think of what happened last night to the gardens—yes, it is remarkable.”

  “I wasn’t talking about last night. I was thinking about how it looked just a week ago. The whole lot was a mess.”

  She smiled and handed Hank the jar of broth, then another. If he had time on his hands, she had things for him to do. “I suppose you’re right.”

  “Takes a pretty determined woman to have seen all that through.”r />
  She looked at him in surprise. “You mean me? Oh no. I was just a small part of it. These gardens were a community effort.”

  “Look at this,” he said, spreading his free hand to encompass the garden. “Do you remember what a wreck this was? A less determined woman . . . a less stubborn woman would have given up before she even started. Not Bethany Schrock.”

  She grinned. “Stubborn—now that label most of my family would agree with.”

  “There are worse things than being stubborn.”

  Chase noticed a few girls from the Group Home in the garden before Bethany did. He went flying over to greet them. To her surprise, Rusty bent down and rubbed his head all over.

  Hank was watching the interaction too. “I think we should call it ‘The Second Chance Gardens.’” He handed the jars of broth back to Bethany and sauntered off to help the mother and her children in their garden plot.

  She watched him walk down the garden path. When she first became acquainted with Hank Lapp, she thought of him just like everybody else did: an odd fellow who made church a little more interesting. She remembered countless Sundays when Hank would fall asleep during the sermons, snore loudly, then jerk awake. He would look around the room, startled, blinking rapidly like a newborn owl, oblivious to the disruption he had caused. Another time, his stomach growled so loud that the minister stopped preaching and looked right at him. “Die Bauern haben gern kurze Predigten und lange Bratwürste,” Hank told him in his usual loud voice. The belly hates a long sermon.

  Hank Lapp had always been amusing to Bethany, but that was all.

  After Jimmy started to work for Galen, Hank dropped by Eagle Hill and the King farm often and she discovered other sides to him: his kindness, his good intentions, and his love for the Plain life despite his stubborn streak. He had a good heart, Hank Lapp did. She held the kitchen door open with her foot and motioned to Geena to start the assembly line to unload the little red wagons.