Mending Fences

by Suzanne Woods Fisher

  Luke had forgotten how slow, how measured and deliberate Amos could be when he told a story. He wasn’t quite sure where this story was going, but he hoped it didn’t have something to do with the cherry bomb blowing up the mailbox. He made himself calm down as he listened to Amos unwind the story about his sister.

  “Her name was Julianne. I named my firstborn, Julia, after her. We tried to get my sister to come visit us here at Windmill Farm. Tried and tried, but she didn’t like to travel. Finally, at long last, she agreed to come. She sent a letter with details about when she was coming. But we never got the letter.”

  Ah. Here it came. “Because I blew up the mailbox.”

  Amos nodded. “Since we didn’t answer the letter, Julianne assumed we’d changed our mind. That we didn’t want her to come.”

  Oh, come on. That seemed a little oversensitive. “Amos, couldn’t you call her and explain? I’ll call her for you. I’ll make an apology.”

  “Turns out she was coming to say goodbye. She had a cancer that went fast through her, just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “She was gone just a few weeks later. I’ve been sorry I never had a chance to say a proper goodbye to her. To tell her how much she meant to me. How much she did for me.”

  Oh . . . man. That shed a different light on the situation. “I’m sorry, Amos. I didn’t realize. I’d never considered something like . . . well, that a letter like that would be the casualty to a prank.”

  “A prank.” Steepling his fingers in front of him, Amos cleared his throat. “Who was it who said that every action has an equal and opposite reaction?”

  “Um, I think it was Isaac Newton.”

  “I think that’s what David wants you to learn through this healing time. Your actions—your pranks—have caused equal and opposite reactions.” He raised his head and looked at Luke with his frank brown eyes. “It wasn’t just a prank. You stole something from me with that cherry bomb. You robbed me of a chance to let my sister know how much I loved her before she died.” Amos pushed the door open, and for a moment, a ray of piercing sunlight streamed through, illuminating the barn. Then he closed the door behind him and the barn turned shadowy again.

  Luke had robbed Amos. Robbed him. It was a disarmingly honest choice of a word. He never would have thought of using that precise word, but it captured Amos’s feelings. He stood, sighed, took off his hat and raked a hand through his hair. He felt that odd disoriented feeling again, a little bewildered, like he’d lost his bearings. It reminded him of a time as a boy when he had peered into his house from a back window, then went around to the side of the house to look through another window. And then yet another window. Each time, he discovered an entirely different perspective on the interior of the house. Same house, new views.

  Oh boy, he thought with a sinking heart. Oh boy. This fence mending was going to take some work.

  six

  Izzy’s cold treatment of Luke made no apparent impact. She still woke each morning to find that her sheep had been fed and watered, and led out into the grazing pasture for the day. The clumsy folding wooden window to the farm stand—something that was a daily aggravation for her—had been opened and pulled back into its hooks. The two cows were milked and turned out for the day. She’d hardly milked those cows since he’d arrived at Windmill Farm, and her aching hands thanked him for it. But if Luke thought he was winning her over, he was sadly mistaken.

  “Maybe Amos needs to give Luke more to do,” she grumbled to Fern one afternoon. “I can take care of my own chores.”

  “Don’t judge Luke too harshly,” Fern said. “He’s just trying to help.”

  Izzy wondered.

  She closed up the farm stand and picked up the mail in the mailbox before heading up the driveway. There was another letter to Luke from his mother. The third one since he’d been at Windmill Farm. From the way Luke handled the envelopes—stuffing them in his pocket with a puckered brow—she had a funny feeling that he never even bothered to read them. Outrageous! She’d never received a handwritten letter in her life.

  Izzy set the envelope at Luke’s place setting for supper. When he came into the kitchen and saw it waiting for him, a cross look came over his face. Here and then gone. He reached out and grabbed it and jammed it in his pocket, just like always.

  Izzy planned not to say a word about it. It wasn’t her business what Luke Schrock did. But there was something about the way he handled those letters from his mother that made her mad. Stay out of it, Izzy, she told herself. It’s his letter, and you don’t want anything to do with him, anyway. But out it burst, anyway, full of shaky fury. “You don’t deserve a mother at all.”

  The words fell like a stone into the quiet room, stilling Luke, who had been tinkering with a dented cap on a hurricane lantern—something Fern had left on his chair for him to fix. Slowly, he lifted his head.

  She glared at him, could feel sparks flashing from her eyes as her annoyance boiled up and over. “Do you realize that? You’re lucky to have a mother who loves you. You’re lucky to have a mother at all.” She heard the edge of longing in her voice and was embarrassed by it. “You act so sorry for yourself, playing the victim card. You’ve been given more than most. And what do you do with it?” She crossed her arms against her chest. “Nothing.”

  He looked at her a little strangely, and for good reason. Izzy wasn’t sure if he was shocked because it was the first time she had initiated a conversation with him—and it was—or if it was because she sounded so furious. To her amazement, he actually looked “real” for a moment. The tough-guy façade dropped off and he looked honestly stirred and shaken. It made her anger drop a notch or two. Before he could respond, in walked Amos and Fern, deep in a perplexing conversation about an unwanted insect found in a few peach trees, and supper got under way.

  The next morning, Izzy went down to the farm stand to set it up for the day. She half expected it to be closed up tight after the sharp way she’d spoken to Luke last evening. To her surprise, he had still opened it up for her. The sheep had been put in the pasture, the cows had been milked. She thought she had Luke pretty well figured out, had attributed plenty of critical characteristics to him, but she hadn’t expected this. She hadn’t thought him to be steadfast.

  The sound of footsteps approaching made her spin around. Luke was heading toward the farm stand, a large box of fresh-picked cherries in his arms. She moved some things around so he’d have room to set it down. “Put it there.” She looked around the farm stand for some plastic bags and found them at the bottom of a box she kept tucked in the corner. She wished she had some shelves, more storage. Before the first bus came through, she would put those fresh-picked cherries into one-pound bundles, tied up with a twine knot, ready to go.

  She rummaged through the box to find a small chalkboard and a piece of chalk. It was something new she’d started this season—the day’s produce and price per pound were written out in her best handwriting. Calligraphy, Fern called it, and while Izzy didn’t think it was all that good, she had found a book to teach her precise lettering. It seemed to make a difference—these bags of red cherries were snatched up by the tourists.

  Luke didn’t get her hint that she was ignoring him. He had set down the box and leaned a hand on the small counter. “My mother . . . she left for Kentucky with Sammy, my little brother. And Galen, her husband. They’re gone for a few months. Maybe longer.”

  She wondered why he bothered to tell her this, because she already knew.

  Luke took off his hat to cuff the sweat off his forehead and raked his hair back out of his eyes with his fingers. It was getting long, Izzy thought. Soon he’d look like any other Plain man. Sort of.

  Luke dropped his hat back on his head and cleared his throat in a nervous way. “You see, my father died when I was just a boy. He left a lot of problems for my mother when he died. I’m not sure I understand all of it, but he had a finance company—sort of an investment company—for the Plain people. He made some bad decisions, re
ally bad, and the company went belly up. A lot of good people lost their life savings. Then he died, unexpectedly . . . and my mother had to pick up the pieces. She had a lot on her shoulders. Dealing with the company’s bankruptcy, trying to pay people back what she could, taking care of my father’s mother, who, believe me”—he rolled his eyes—“was no sweet petunia. My brothers and sister and I, we’ve all given her a lot of trouble. But my mother, she’s a strong woman. Strong and kind. If anything, probably too kind.”

  It was the first honest conversation Luke had ever had with Izzy, though it was more of a monologue. She took care to show no sign of interest, but she was listening.

  “You misspelled cherries. Two r’s.”

  She wiped it with the back of her hand, embarrassed, and fixed it, trying to act nonchalant. Spelling was not her strong suit.

  “Galen King was our neighbor. He and my mom, they ended up getting married. I’m glad for her. Galen is good to her. He loves her. I guess it’s just that . . . sometimes it seems like she moved on before I did.” He scuffed a clump of dirt with the toe of his boot. “I was hoping she’d be here when I got back. I guess that’s why I haven’t bothered to read the letters.” He looked up at Izzy. “Dumb reason, huh.”

  “Yup. You’re trying to punish her. She hasn’t done anything wrong. She’s living her life, that’s all.”

  Luke blew out a puff of air. “Okay, I told you about my mother. So Izzy, what happened to your mother?”

  Something seemed to snap shut inside of Izzy as a feeling of familiar sadness crept in. She stilled her writing but didn’t look over at him. “That’s none of your business.”

  “Oh no. No no no. You can’t dish out what you gave me last night at dinner, and then act all high and mighty. If I’m lucky to have a mother at all—and you’re right, you’re absolutely right, I am lucky to have a mother—then what’s happened to your mother?”

  Stalling, Izzy finished the chalkboard and set it on its stand, trying to think of how to answer Luke, if she should answer him at all. Her mother’s face suddenly swam into view, at least what she thought she had looked like. Only fuzzy memories remained of her mother. Some bad, but some good—singing a song, baking cookies together. All those recollections ended abruptly one day.

  Something had happened, something terrible, and a social worker arrived at the little house to plunk Izzy into foster care. She was never told where her mother had gone or what had happened to her.

  Some foster homes were nice enough, but not all. Her first foster family was the best one, and there were days when she nearly forgot she had a missing mother. Nearly. She lived with them for a few years. But then her foster father lost his job and they had to move to another state to live with their elderly parents. Izzy begged them to take her with them, but they couldn’t add another child to the mix. On the day that the social worker drove Izzy away from that family, she felt something harden inside, like the way Fern’s caramel could harden over her brownies. There might be something still soft underneath, but it would take a fork and knife—or maybe a chisel—to break through. She made a promise to herself: she would never let herself hurt like that again. Never.

  The older she grew, the less interested families were to foster her. One time, a social worker drove her to a new home. The foster mother took one look at her and shook her head. “No way. Not here. I don’t want a girl who looks like that to be around my man.” Izzy was only twelve.

  Mostly, she ended up in group homes—depressing, dreary, soulless places. She quizzed the social workers whenever she met with them. Where was her mother? Could Izzy write to her? Could she visit her? Someday, maybe, they would say. But not until she was older.

  When Izzy was young, she created stories about her mother, about why she had disappeared so suddenly and so completely. Her favorite was that her mother was living under the Witness Protection Program, hiding because she’d provided valuable information to the Feds about the Mafia.

  Another story was that her mother was a famous actress—Nicole Kidman came to mind because she had hair like Izzy’s mother—and couldn’t dare claim a love child without risk of losing Keith Urban.

  As Izzy grew older, those fantasies slipped away, but her determination to find her mother only grew stronger. Finally a social worker admitted that her mother had made her a ward of the state of Ohio, so any communication was impossible. She suggested Izzy try to forget about her mother and just move on. Izzy couldn’t accept that then, and she couldn’t accept that now.

  Those were her secrets. Her burdens. She couldn’t share them.

  Chin tucked low, she kept on scooping cherries into plastic bags. She had taken so much time thinking that Luke just gave up, assuming she wasn’t going to answer him, which she wasn’t.

  “All right then,” he said. “Answer me this. You really think I play the victim card as a way of life?”

  She stopped pouring cherries into bags and turned to him. “Absolutely.” She put her hands on her hips. “Absolutely I do. It’s your comfort zone. Blame others instead of taking responsibility for yourself. Instead of being grateful for a chance to start again. Pity party of one.”

  He stared at her in that intense way, with those electric blue eyes of his, and she could feel the color building up in her cheeks. “Well, I did ask, didn’t I?” He tipped his hat to her, backing away, and pivoted on his heels, walking up the driveway to the barn.

  Windmill Farm’s orchards in the month of June seemed to Luke to be as close to the Garden of Eden as a man could get. Row after row of carefully tended old, old trees, some over sixty years old. Some even older, Amos said, planted as saplings by his great-grandparents. Many of those were gone now, but a few apple trees remained and bore fruit. Amos said he never sold those late-in-the-season apples. They were meant just for the family. They gave the best cider known on earth, said Amos. He promised him the first sip after the fall harvest and Luke couldn’t wait to sample it. He stopped abruptly, surprising himself. Would he still be here this fall? He didn’t usually think much beyond a few days at a time. To think past a week felt like it hurt his brain. Mind stretching.

  Today the orchards were a kaleidoscope of color: kelly-green leaves, swelling apple blossoms of pink and white, petals carpeting the ground, cherry trees dotted with bright red, and above it all, a sky wide and blue as a robin’s egg. He picked a ripe cherry, a perfect one, ate it, and wondered as he swallowed if this was the fruit that had once tempted Eve. Or maybe it was something else entirely, something that had long become extinct. But he could imagine the temptation of a just-picked cherry. Yes, he could.

  Right after breakfast, Amos had taken him up to the orchards to start thinning the peach buds. It seemed like a shame to tear a budding fruit away, but Amos explained that doing so was helpful for the fruit. “Believe it or not, I get the same amount of bushels if I thin than if I don’t.”

  “How?”

  “Fruit size. Bigger, better flavor, better pest control,” Amos explained in his slow, deliberate way. “Thinning, done properly, helps a tree focus its energy. Grow strong roots.” And then he proceeded to teach Luke how to carefully thin the buds. “Start thinning when the fruit is about the size of a quarter. Leave the largest, best-looking fruit per cluster. Use two hands to prevent breaking the entire spur. Two hands!”

  Luke rolled his eyes under the shadow of his hat brim. This wasn’t exactly rocket science.

  “Hold the branch with one hand, pinch the fruit with your thumb and forefinger, and twist. Do it again.”

  And again and again. By the time Amos was finally satisfied that Luke wouldn’t ruin his treasured trees, he’d thinned out an entire peach tree. Oddly enough, Luke had been affected by Amos’s attitude, and the trees were starting to become precious to him too.

  As he climbed the ladder to thin the next peach tree, Izzy’s words replayed in his head. Comfort zone of self-pity. It wasn’t an entirely new thought. The counselor would say that Luke preferred his “default pos
ition.” Translation: old habits. He’d tried to help Luke see that he kept returning to a frame of reference that, though familiar and comfortable, had not been successful for him.

  “It’s almost like wearing a pair of glasses with the wrong prescription,” the counselor had said. “You have to be willing to take them off and try on another pair. To see things clearly, distinctly. Instead of fuzzy. Instead of with self-pity.”

  Pity. There was that word again. Pity party. He was a pity party of one.

  Izzy’s words had slapped Luke with surprise. Kind of harsh words from someone who had only known him a few weeks. He wondered why in the world he’d tried to get Izzy to talk to him. Whenever she did, she said mean things.

  But she was right too. He hadn’t bothered to open any letters from his mother. It was his way—his stupid, immature, stuck way—of feeling in control. Making his mother work for his love. Making her feel bad.

  Argh. He hadn’t even recognized it in himself, not until Izzy pointed it out to him.

  He didn’t want to stay stuck. He really didn’t.

  Tonight, he would read his mother’s letters. Maybe he would even write back to her, to let her know he was doing okay. Not great, but okay.

  He led the cows to the barn and milked them, then filled Bob’s bucket with fresh water and left hay in his manger for him to find when Amos and Fern returned. The clean feeling of resolve continued in his heart. He washed up and went inside for supper. Izzy was chopping carrots on a wooden block and looked up in surprise when he walked into the kitchen.

  “Where’d Fern and Amos go?” he asked.

  “Amos had some deacon work to do, so Fern went along with him. They said not to wait supper for them.” She kept her head down as she cut, but there was a determination in the way she sliced those carrots that made him . . . well, a little nervous. It was a very big knife she held in her hands. She scooped up the carrots on the side of the knife and sprinkled them over the salad. “Supper’s ready,” she said, setting the bowl on the table.