“Gott has given you a heavy burden. Sometimes, all we can do is accept the load, and accept the familiar road.” The bishop faced James. “Listen to your father. He is wise when it comes to falling in with the Englishers. And you know your parents can’t keep pouring out money. Who could? And the Englishers, I’ve seen them advise medical tests and exams that amount to nothing but a lot of debt.”
“But they have therapies that can help me walk again,” James said, keeping his voice respectful. “By the grace of Gott, they might have a cure for me.”
Disappointment burned in Bishop Samuel’s eyes. “Did you not hear anything we’ve said? Doctors might help, but it’s Gott who heals. It’s time to accept His will.”
“But there’s still hope …” James insisted.
“Hope is a good thing, ya?” Samuel said coolly. “The Bible says ‘Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is.’ But the main thing is to trust in the Lord. You do that, and the other things will fall into place. For now, you’d best listen to your dat. Find ways to pitch in with other things while your brothers work the orchard.”
“There’s a lot for you to learn in the office,” Dat said. “Get to know the business end of the orchard. I’ll be happy to have you working side by side with me.”
And I’ll shrivel up and rot, like a fire-blighted apple.
As the bishop put on his hat and headed out to his buggy, James felt sick inside. He reminded himself to stay strong, keep pushing himself toward recovery, but when the bishop’s words replayed in his mind, he felt frozen in place.
Dat and Samuel wanted him to give up, and they wouldn’t be satisfied until the last flame of hope inside him was snuffed out to a charred, sizzling wick.
“Isn’t today Friday?” Shandell Darby asked as the car whipped past green fields of corn.
“I guess. Where’d I put my sunglasses?” Gary pulled the visor down against the sun as he steered with one hand. There was a harsh quality in his normally handsome face when he squinted that way. “What’s it matter? When you’re on a road trip, you don’t have to worry about what day it is. We got the wind in our hair and the open road in front of us.”
“Yeah, but I thought you said we’d be home by the weekend.”
“What’s your rush?” Agitation prickled in his voice.
Shandell squirmed in the passenger seat, not sure how to answer. It seemed the more she pushed Gary toward going back to Baltimore, the more obstinate he became. It was a side of him she’d never seen back home, but when their road trip had begun to unravel, so had their friendship. She opened the console, fished out his sunglasses, and handed them over.
He took them without a thank-you. “I wish you could talk about something besides going home,” he said as the car swung on a curve. She wished he didn’t drive so fast. “It’s getting a little played out.”
“But you’re the one who said—”
“I don’t know what you think you’re going to find when you get back to Baltimore,” he said pointedly. “It’s not like a fairy’s going to wave a magic wand and get old Phil off the couch.”
That hurt, maybe because she knew it was true. Since her stepfather had lost his job as a plumber, he seemed to be sinking deeper and deeper into the couch, a can or two of beer always on the end table beside him.
She scraped back her blue-tinted black hair as she stared out the window at her own reflection in the side mirror. The round-eyed, button-nosed face in the reflection was pathetically childish for an eighteen-year-old. It didn’t help that she was petite, with the small body of a pixie. When would she begin to look her age?
When will you begin to act your age?
Maybe that was a better question. She had made a lot of mistakes in the past few days, and now she was beginning to see the consequences.
Shandell stared at the cornfield beyond the window. She had never seen corn so young—short green stalks reaching up to the sun. So hopeful. Shandell wished she had that kind of hope in her heart. She wished someone would hire her stepfather and give him a reason to stop drinking. She wished that she was anywhere else but driving in Gary’s big boat of a car.
Three days ago, when her mother had freaked out over a notice from the school that Shandell was failing math, Shandell had taken Gary up on his offer of a road trip. Maybe it wasn’t the best decision Shandell had ever made, but the prospect of escaping her sorry life for a visit to Gary’s sister had seemed like a great idea at the time.
“Road trip!” Gary had shouted, pumping a fist in the air. In need of relief, Shandell had found his enthusiasm contagious.
In the past six months, life at the Darby house had become unbearable for Shandell, who was expected to keep house and cook for Phil while Mom worked two jobs to make enough to keep up with the rent.
Chelsea Darby’s plan for a stable, happy life had not worked out the way anyone had envisioned it. No one had anticipated that Phil would lose his job, and as if the loss of income weren’t enough, Phil had dwindled into a bitter, critical man when he turned to drinking to ease the pain. The shriveled core of a person who now sat on the couch in their living room barely resembled the kind, athletic man who had once told Shandell that he considered it an honor and a privilege to be her stepfather. Lately, Shandell had focused most of her energy on coming up with ways to stay away from home. That had led her to hang out in Ryan’s garage with her more low-key friends, like Lucia, Kylie, Ryan, and Gary. She’d passed many a lazy hour there talking and listening to music. “It’s your therapy,” her friends always told her when she felt nips of guilt over missing school to hang out. Ryan had some great music on his iPod, and his mother understood that the teens had nowhere else to go. With music and a Ping-Pong table, a deck of cards, and snacks that everyone picked up from the convenience store on the corner, hours passed easily in Ryan’s garage.
School … that was another sore spot she didn’t want to think about. She was supposed to be graduating in June, but now there was probably no chance of that. And it’s not my fault, Shandell thought, frowning. Although Shandell loved history and writing, she was terrible at math and science, and with Mom working the evening shift at the hospital laundry, Shandell lost her tutor. From the first day that she failed a quiz in Algebra 2, Shandell felt herself sinking fast without Mom to teach her the lessons. By the time midterm grades came out, she was drowning with no lifeboat in sight. They couldn’t afford a tutor, and her teacher could not spare the time to work with individual students. At this point, her high school diploma was in jeopardy.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, there was her stepdad. She raked her silky black hair away from her forehead and tried to let the neat rows of corn beyond the window chase the dark thoughts of her stepfather from her mind. Thinking about Phil made her want to cry, despite the Amish farmland, bursting with the colors of springtime. She had enjoyed her time out in the bright countryside, a nice break from the shadowed living room where Phil carped at her from the blue light of the television screen.
What’s wrong with you? You can’t even pass dummy math.
With grades like that, you’ll never amount to anything.
“Aw, come on.” Gary slung his arm around her in a conciliatory gesture. “Don’t forget why you wanted to leave home in the first place.”
“I haven’t forgotten.” The images of her stepfather passed out on the couch and her mother raging through tears were branded in her memory. After the terrible fight with Mom, she’d wanted nothing more than to be far away from home. But now they were out of money and running out of gas. Twice she had washed her hair in public restroom sinks, and sponge baths left her feeling grungy. She just wanted to go home. “It was fun in the beginning, Gar, but you said it yourself. Our plan didn’t work out. Your sister couldn’t put us up, and you can’t really live in a car. We need to go home.”
“You can’t go back there.” His voice was soft, but there was an insidious edge that was beginning to wear on her. “Your
mother told you to go, didn’t she?”
Chelsea Darby had told her daughter to leave, but Shandell didn’t think she meant it, not really.
“I already missed three days of school,” she told Gary. “If I miss too much, I won’t graduate.”
“Too bad, so sad. You’re old enough to drop out of school, and what would you do with a high school diploma, anyway? There are no jobs for people like us anymore. We have to blaze our own trails. Do something different.”
Gary considered himself to be industrious, but at twenty-one he was three years older than Shandell and still didn’t have much to show for it. He had dropped out of school when he was seventeen and taken a job with a moving company in Baltimore. But there were slow periods when they didn’t need him. Like now.
When they’d left Baltimore, she’d thought that Gary might be her savior; now she recognized that he was an ordinary thief. Twice they had bolted from gas stations without paying for the gas, and she realized that the hot food from the convenience store was probably stolen, too. The excitement of the road trip had soured into a bad dream, one of those feverish dreams where Shandell kept climbing a mountain but every time she looked up, she was miles from the top. And when she looked down, the steep drop paralyzed her with fear.
She wanted out of the road trip.
“Maybe I want to do something different,” she said, “but just back in Baltimore. It would be nice to sleep in a bed again. I’ll be better at blazing a new trail with a good night’s sleep.”
“You can be such a dweeb. But okay. We’ll head back after dark. I just want to hit a few more of these Amish towns. Lancaster County is full of them.”
“They are really quaint,” she said, though she was surprised that Gary was into patchwork quilts and buggies.
When they passed over the rise, the road descended steadily into a green valley flanked by farms on either side. The dark road seemed to reach into the future. My road, she thought, not sure where it would lead. Still, it was a lovely road, smooth and steady. And the green, growing life surrounding it gave her hope. She would work things out with Mom when she got home. And Phil? Well, that wouldn’t be so easy if he didn’t want to help himself. But maybe Mom would help her convince Phil to get help.
Up ahead on the right was a little farm stand—a small white shack with a sign that read FLOWERS & PIE FILLING. NO SUNDAY SALES. It was tidy, with flowers and jars set out on the counter. Shandell was wondering about the Amish people who ran it when Gary pulled off to the side of the road and rolled to a stop in the gravel near the white hut.
“It’s closed,” Shandell said. That was too bad, because she wouldn’t have minded seeing some Amish people again. They were kind of brusque and blunt, but they didn’t gush or waste words. She had gotten used to their uniform clothing—the way all the women parted their hair in the middle and pinned it back under a kapp. All the women wore brightly colored, loose dresses and the men could be seen in black pants, colored shirts, and black felt or straw hats. Although they kept to themselves, there was something intriguing about them, as if they knew a secret path to peace that they couldn’t share with outsiders like her.
“Let’s see what they got,” Gary said, cutting the engine.
She shot him a suspicious look, but he ignored her, leaving the car door open as he strode ahead. She followed him over to the counter, which was nearly covered in neat rows of potted yellow daffodils and fragrant hyacinths. The crowded blossoms of the pink, purple, and white hyacinths reminded her of fireworks exploding in the sky. Only these had a deliciously sweet scent.
Gary moved out from behind the counter and circled round to the back of the stand.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Just checking. There’s nobody here.”
“I told you, they’re closed. They’re probably in one of these farmhouses, eating dinner.” With their family. Longing blossomed in her chest, but she tamped it down. She would be home soon enough. Right now, she just needed to keep Gary on track.
“We should go,” she said, “unless you suddenly have a yearning for hyacinths.” She turned to the jars on the side of the counter. “And cherry pie filling.”
He rubbed his ear, considering. “You know, I think I do need some flowers.”
He lifted up the entire carton of hyacinths.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Nope. These are a deal at a dollar apiece. We’ll take them home to butter up your mother.”
“Wow. That’s kind of sweet, Gar.” It had probably been years since anyone gave her mom flowers, and once these were planted in the yard, they would come back year after year. She softened as he carried the flowers to the car and placed them in the trunk.
Shandell calculated what they owed. Basic math came easily to her; it was the multistep procedures that lost her. She lifted the lid of the little gray cash box. “That’s twelve dollars,” she told him. “You just leave the money in this box.”
He grabbed two jars of cherry pie filling. “Since we’re here, might as well take these, too.”
“Then that’ll be twenty, even.”
She imagined the pleasure of the Amish people when they noticed the big sale tomorrow. The thought of it made her smile, too.
But that faded when she heard Gary cackling behind her, on his way to the car.
“Get in the car, girl. You don’t pay for stuff when you can get it for free.”
“But it’s the honor system,” she insisted, wheeling around to face him. “You can’t steal that stuff.”
His laugh was giddy. “Oh, yeah? Watch and learn.”
“Come on, don’t do this. It’s wrong and … and you don’t even need it. Come on, Gary, just leave the money.”
“I’m not leaving these people a nickel. Honor system, my ass. They don’t need my money. They got plenty of money and cows and horses. Look at all the land they got. Now get in the car, before I throw you in the trunk, along with the flowers.”
This time, Gary was not laughing.
Her jaw dropped as she stared at him. Did he mean that? He wouldn’t hurt her, would he? She didn’t think so, but then again, she hadn’t thought he was a thief when they’d left Baltimore three days ago.
“Get in the car.”
Biting back tears, Shandell got into the car and began to plot her escape.
The lavender light of sunrise filtered through the curtains in the attic room as Rachel put the finishing touches on her painting. Wanting to bring James a little gift today, she had risen early and crept upstairs to her old bedroom to finish this small canvas, a close view of a ripe peach still hanging in a tree.
As this was the only space in the house suitable for painting, she had to work quietly while Rose slept in the single bed against the wall. The steady whisper of her sister’s breath reassured Rachel as she sat at her homemade easel, a pyramid of wood sticks her dat had built for her last year as a birthday gift. She hoped that the soapy paint smell and stirring noises didn’t disturb Rose, but so far there’d been no complaints from the lump curled under the patchwork quilt.
Rachel swished her brush in water and added a dab of cerulean blue to the palette of bright colors. She had finished painting the peach in a combination of magenta, cadmium orange, burnt umber, and sienna, and she had to admit, the sight of the fat fruit made her mouth water. Usually her work wasn’t so realistic. Most of her paintings focused on the colors of Amish life: a patchwork quilt, gem-toned dresses swaying from a clothesline, flowers blooming beside a bright blue watering can, a dark horse and buggy silhouetted against an orange sky and autumn gold fields. But today, for James, she had tried something different—a close still-life. She had worked hard to make the peach look real and delicious, with sundappled rose streaks and dewdrops on the skin. Even a bit of peach fuzz.
Now as she layered on a cloudless, bright blue sky, she hoped that James would like the reminder of the orchard he so loved. These days he was able to move through the wide aisles bet
ween trees, but he wasn’t able to help much with the mulching and spraying. When it came time to prune or harvest … Well, no one could say if James would be able to run the orchard in the coming seasons. Only Gott in heaven knew if he would ever be able to rise from his chair and climb the fruit trees like the monkey he once was.
A tender smile softened her lips as she painted, circling the brush to create round texture in the sky. How easy it was to lose herself in her art! James sometimes teased her about it, telling her to return to the farm, but she found such contentment in re-creating the stillness of Amish life. And the bright colors of life brought her such joy! The temptation to paint the day away was strong, but Amish life was not a life to be spent alone. Although her parents enjoyed her artwork as a gift from Gott, they often reminded her not to spend too much time on her hobby. And many Amish thought that things like art and music were an indulgence—a way to show that you were special and superior, which was never a good thing for a person.
“It’s good to have a little something on the side,” Mamm always said, “but the center of life is your family and your community. Family is among Gott’s greatest blessings—the unbroken chain of life.”
Before the accident, Rachel hadn’t really seen their noisy, boisterous family as such a blessing. Her tall, muscular brothers who swiped the last of the bacon or spiked the ball right at her in a volleyball match? And her sisters, who seemed glued to their beds nearly every morning? One look at the kitchen after a meal, and any person in his right mind would run in the opposite direction. Her siblings teased one another mercilessly at times, and they could raise some thunder, but when one person was hurting, the way she had been after the accident, they all pulled together to help. She loved them dearly.
A Simple Hope Page 4
