by Adina Senft
The shoulder that wasn’t under the duffel bag lifted in a shrug. “The pay’s good. But I wouldn’t go by myself. Me and Simon, we kept each other on the straight and narrow.”
“Was it so difficult?”
“Not in some things—a shirt and pants are not such a big deal. We got a little ribbing about our hats when everyone else was wearing a Stetson or a Resistol. But mostly it was the things you don’t think about when you’re home with the Gmee.”
“Like what?”
“Language, for one thing. It’s easy to talk like the cowboys, taking the Lord’s name in vain in every sentence. And drinking. Lots of that. And work—there’s a fellow or two who’d be happy for me to do his work as well as my own and no thanks for it.”
“Did you?”
“Not after I figured out what was going on. He tried to blame me for some stuff, too, but luckily our foreman had some brains and eyes in his head, so that didn’t go very far.”
“And you had to deal with this as well as the work?”
“It’s dealing with people. Folks are folks, whether they’re Amish or Englisch. Once you figure them out, it’s easier, but some folks don’t like to be figured out. Like that cowboy. Simon took it worse. He’s got a temper on him and some pride, and they gave him quite a battle a time or two. A lot of firewood got chopped out in the shed behind the big house on those days.”
“How’s his foot? I saw he wasn’t limping.”
At this, the frown that had weighed down Joe’s forehead while he’d been talking about the cowboy lifted, and a light came into his eyes that Pris had never seen before. “I tell you what, Pris, I was pretty scared after that horse stepped on him. But that care package Sarah sent was just the thing. I followed her instructions to the letter, and even the foreman, who’s an EMT, was amazed at how well it worked. We thought he’d have blood poisoning, but after a week of the B and W salve and the dock leaves, he was well on his way to being healed, and no problems.”
“I’m glad to hear it. Sarah was frantic. She said if she could have mailed herself out there, she would have.”
“Simon will never say so, but he was pretty worried, too. But now he’s good as new.” He paused. “You know, I never did anything like that before. Like because I was there, somebody or something was different. Better.”
“Really? But when you work on the farm, it’s always different and better because of what you do. That’s the way God planned it.”
“Neh. God planned that beans and corn would come up as long as there was someone to plant them. Beans don’t much care who it is. But this—you should have seen his foot, Pris. Even our foreman shook his head over it. I would never have believed that such a mess could have healed up so good. Sarah might have saved him from being lame all his life.”
“Sarah and you, you mean.”
She liked that he didn’t take credit for what he’d done, that no matter how far he’d traveled, Gelassenheit was still a guiding principle in his character. But still, she was acutely aware of how differently it could have gone without his quick thinking and obedience to Sarah’s instructions.
By now they had reached the Byler lane and were walking between the tall stalks of harvested corn. Just over the rise Pris could see the roof of the house—and it was suddenly clear that someone had called the Byler telephone in the barn. Hanging out of the top gable window was one of Joe’s little sisters, waving a white dish towel.
Pris laughed and pointed. “They’ve posted a lookout. So much for walking in without a fuss.”
Joe’s teeth looked very white in his tanned face as he grinned and tightened his grip on her hand. “I’m glad we had a few minutes, just by ourselves. I can face the fuss and noise now, and be glad.”
Priscilla smiled back. “Me, too.”
And then Joe quickened his pace, until finally, when the kitchen door burst open and his entire family spilled out onto the verandah and down the steps, he dropped both duffel and Pris’s hand, and ran to meet them.
Chapter 7
Sarah sat on her front steps, taking a few minutes to appreciate the sunshine before she and Caleb hitched up Dulcie and went for a drive. She had half a mind to head out in the direction of Peacheys’ farm. Linda Peachey, to the entire family’s joy, was nearly six months along in her first pregnancy, and from experience, Sarah knew that sometimes a soothing balm on the skin of the stomach at this stage might be welcome.
If that were so, then tomorrow she’d mix up a batch—a creamy base infused with calendula, lavender, and plantain that, besides the softening and soothing effect, would have the additional benefit of healing and warming the skin.
From the curve of the drive came the sound of heavy footsteps in the gravel—crunch, crunch, crunch. Though it was Sunday and visitors tended to arrive at any time, she wasn’t expecting anyone in particular. Sarah got to her feet and shaded her eyes with one hand. Patients tended to turn up almost daily now, for which she was grateful. But on a Sunday when the Bible forbade work, it wasn’t likely. On the lawn, the chickens lifted their heads in case the approaching sound should be a threat—and then scattered when the male body with the strange bulky shape over its shoulder emerged from under the trees.
“You silly old Hinkel, it’s only me. Have you forgotten me so soon?”
Sarah caught her breath as the young man swung the duffel off his shoulder. He tossed it on the grass. “Mamm!”
“Simon! ” She flew down the steps, across the lawn, and into his arms. “Oh, my dearest boy!” His arms went around her, hard, and she could swear there were tears on his lashes as she kissed him again and again until finally she set him away from her so she could get a good look at him. “Where did you come from? Why didn’t you let me know? Did someone pick you up?”
“Ja, we hitched a ride with some of the Youngie, and then we met Pris and Katie on the road, so we walked home together.” He laughed. “Mamm, stop looking at me like I’m in the doctor’s office. I’m fine.”
“I’ll want to see that foot as soon as you take your boots off.”
“Mamm, it’s gut, I promise. I couldn’t have walked the last couple of miles if it wasn’t, could I?”
She hugged him again. “You’re right. Oh, won’t Mammi and Daadi be so happy. And as for Caleb—”
“Simon!” Caleb barreled across the yard from the barn, where he must have heard the commotion. And while Simon was usually given to shaking a man’s hand or at the most, giving him a slap on the back, family was different, and his little brother was more special still. Caleb gave him as big a bear hug as he got, until they were both laughing with the joy of seeing each other again.
Sarah thought her heart would burst, and tears swam in her eyes.
Oh thank You, dear Lord, for bringing my boy back to me. Thank you for keeping him safe, and for using me to help make him well after he was hurt. Fill him with the comfort of home, I pray, and with Your love and his family’s love, so that if it is Your will, he will be content to stay now.
All Sarah wanted to do was hover over Simon as he rambled around the yard and through the barn, taking in the home place with new eyes. He exclaimed over her garden, though it was past its best now. And finally, an hour later, they all climbed the stairs to his and Caleb’s room and he unpacked his duffel, which was full of dirty clothes and dirtier socks. He handed Caleb something wrapped in paper and aluminum foil.
“That’s a pound of fudge from Teresa, the cook at the ranch. When I couldn’t walk, I told her stories about you and Mamm and the farm while I was helping her in the kitchen, so she wanted to send something home with me for you. She thought you’d like something to eat.”
Caleb was already cutting into it with his pocketknife. As she tasted her piece, Sarah had to admit that Teresa had a gift for fudge, which she herself hardly ever had the time to make. How kind of her to think of a young boy so far away!
“And these are for you, Mamm. Manuel, one of the other wranglers, taught me to whittle more
than just sticks.”
It was a set of two large spoons carved from some golden wood—maple, maybe—and sanded and polished until they gleamed.
“Oh, Simon, they’re so beautiful! You don’t expect me to use them in cookie batter, do you?”
“You could put them in the salad bowl, instead of everyone using their forks.”
This was a much better idea. She hugged him in sheer delight. “They remind me of the pottery Henry makes—the shape is so graceful—but it forms something useful.”
Simon had been rummaging for something else in the smelly depths of the duffel, but now he lifted his head to ask his brother, “Do you still see as much of Henry as you used to, Caleb?”
But Sarah had the distinct feeling the question was directed as much at her. She ran a gentle finger along the curve of the spoon and let Caleb answer.
“Not so much since I started work with Jon Hostetler. In the mornings, I’m on the job site by six, and we clean up around five, so that doesn’t leave much time for visiting. I was just there to say hi, though. He said that if I wanted, I could wedge clay on Saturdays for a dollar a pound.”
“Seems fair.”
“Yep. I’ll probably do it, and give that money to Mamm for groceries.”
This was news. “You don’t have to do that, Caleb. We’re doing all right.”
“I know, but I want to.”
Her dear, generous boy, fast growing into a responsible young man. She brushed his hair back from his forehead and hoped he could feel the gratitude in her touch.
“Did you hear he’s getting married to Ginny Hochstetler at the Rose Arbor Inn?” Caleb asked his brother. “He asked her to marry him on the way home from dinner at our place a couple of months ago.”
“Priscilla said something about that,” Simon admitted. “What do you think, Mamm?”
Sarah calmed the hitch in her insides that the subject of Henry always caused. It was silly, but she couldn’t stop her body from reacting to the sound of his name, almost as though her spirit had tripped over something. Thank goodness it was deep inside, where no one could see it.
“I think that he is putting her ahead of God, and he’ll find he’s missing out on a greater happiness,” she said quietly.
“Not everyone gets baptized into church,” Simon pointed out. “And if he’s made up his mind, why shouldn’t he marry Ginny? She’s nice.”
“You could look at it that way,” Sarah allowed. “Or you could see that his place is with the church and the family he was born into. There’s still time for him to come back, and avoid a lost eternity.”
“Have you said this to him?”
“Ja, I have, and I might as well have said it to a rock or a tree, for all the response I got. But if I hadn’t done my part to offer counsel to him, I know I’d regret it.”
“Mamm,” Simon said, his brow wrinkling, “isn’t that his cousin Paul Byler’s place, not yours?”
Was he hinting that she needed to mind her own business? That she hadn’t learned that lesson in the hardest way possible in the last couple of months?
“Maybe, and I hope Paul Byler fills that place. But a friend who is a true friend tells the truth when it’s called for. There was an opportunity to say a word in season, and I said it.” She gathered up all of Simon’s dirty laundry in both arms. “Now, I know you’ll want to go and say hello to the horses in the south field. While you’re out there, can you bring in Dulcie and hitch her up? Caleb and I were going to go for a drive. Do you want to come with us, or have you had enough traveling for one day?”
“Where are you going?”
“I thought I’d go see Linda Peachey and see how she’s getting on.”
“All right. It’ll be good to see Benny and Leon. I’ll pull up in the yard when I get Dulcie hitched.”
“And if you have a clean pair of Sunday pants and a white shirt still in your closet, you might put them on.”
Sarah carried the huge ball of dirty clothes downstairs into the basement, where they could wait until washday tomorrow. Goodness, hadn’t he washed his clothes all summer? She could smell horses and grass and dust and smelly feet. By tomorrow night his clothes would smell like home again, and it would be like washing the dust of a long journey off a buggy, leaving it fresh and new and ready for trips much closer to home.
When she came out of the house with a covered basket containing several packets of the tea Linda had been taking lately, Simon was sitting in the buggy, the reins looped loosely around his fingers. As Caleb climbed into the back, she hopped in on the passenger side and said, “It feels gut to see you in your place again, Simon.”
“It feels gut to drive again.” He flapped the reins over Dulcie’s back and she started up the lane.
“I could’ve driven,” came from the back.
“I got so used to going everywhere on horseback in Colorado that I almost went looking for a saddle when I went into the barn,” Simon went on as if he hadn’t heard.
They chuckled, sharing the picture. Folks in Whinburg Township didn’t ride on horseback. The bishop who had had responsibility for the Gmee before Daniel Troyer had possessed strong opinions about the place of horses on a farm. And as for a woman pulling up her dress and exposing her legs to ride astride, well…it simply wasn’t going to happen under his stewardship. Once in a while, in an emergency when someone had to go for help in a hurry, it couldn’t be avoided, but as a general rule, horses were for work, not pleasure.
“I can’t even think of anybody who owns a saddle around here,” she mused as they clip-clopped down the road. “I think Isaiah Mast had one once, but he sold it when the old folks’ farm went at auction. Speaking of the Masts, did you say that Priscilla and Katie met you and Joe out on the road?”
“Ja, just by chance.”
“And you found them well?”
“Ja, they seem to be just fine. Pris looks different.”
“You just haven’t seen her in a while,” Caleb put in from behind them. “She looks just the same.”
“Neh, there was something about her. Something…settled.”
“She’s matured over the summer,” Sarah said. “It’s gut that she and Joe have been writing. She’s a pretty girl and I’m sure the other boys have been taking notice. But Joe is good for her, I think. He’s the one who’s settled—or I hope he will be, now that he’s home.”
“Oh, he is,” Simon said. “But I wonder if he’ll…” His voice trailed off and Sarah looked at him curiously.
“If he’ll what? Stay?”
“No doubt about that. I just wondered about her. And him.”
“You’re not making any sense,” Caleb complained. “Too much talking to horses and not enough to people.”
“She used to be sweet on you, earlier in the year, and before that,” Sarah said, remembering how Priscilla would pop up unexpectedly, always with a good reason, but always with an eye out for a glimpse of Simon. “Did you even know?”
“Did she?” His tanned cheeks deepened in color just enough for Sarah to notice. “Do you think she still is?”
“She’s with Joe,” Caleb said, as if this settled the matter.
“Simon, what are you thinking?” Sarah said in a warning tone. “You don’t have ideas about her, do you? Your best friend’s girl?”
“No, of course not.” He flapped the reins so smartly as they left the stop sign that Dulcie scooted forward and the buggy jerked before it settled into its usual rhythm. “She’s a friend, always has been.”
But his color heightened even further, and Sarah had a hard time keeping her gaze on the road ahead. As a student of the body and its physical manifestations, she had a little practice in listening to what skin and blood and temperature had to say, as well as the mouth.
And Simon’s body was contradicting his words in the plainest way possible.
Chapter 8
When he got his first look at the cell tower with its experimental solar batteries in the Peacheys’ unkempt fiel
d, Simon’s expression was priceless. “And the phone company pays them how much?”
When Sarah repeated the ridiculous sum that the family was paid each month, he just shook his head in amazement. “I knew that Crist and Arlon tinkered in their barn, but no one had any idea they actually knew what they were doing.”
“Come to find out, they’re pretty smart,” Caleb said as he swung down and took the reins to tie Dulcie to the fence. “I wonder if Benny and Leon are smart that way, too.”
If they were, they hadn’t given much evidence of it yet—or so Sarah thought. Those boys spent more time racketing through the woods, hunting and fishing, than they did in their father’s barn. But all in God’s time.
Simon and Caleb headed straight for the barn to see what kind of inventions Crist and Arlon were working on, while Sarah turned to the house. Linda let the screen door close behind her as Sarah climbed the steps. “Sarah, what a nice surprise. Is that Simon I just saw?”
Sarah couldn’t help the smile that spread across her face. “Ja, he arrived home this afternoon, and I’m the happiest woman in Willow Creek.”
“With the exception of Barbara Byler, I think.”
“You’d probably be right.” The smile widened to a grin as Linda held the door for her and they went into the kitchen. “And you, nix?”
The other woman laughed and passed a hand over her stomach. Though her dark green dress was roomy and her cape and apron modest, Sarah’s practiced eye could see the gentle rounding of her figure as her pregnancy advanced.
“I brought you some more nettle and raspberry leaf tea that you should take with your vitamins,” she said. “Drink four cups a day, remember. And I wondered if you might like me to make you a nice softening cream for the skin on your stomach. As time goes on, it will stretch, and a soothing cream to rub on it will really help.”
“I would,” Linda said promptly. “In fact, I was going to ask you if there was something I could put on it. It’s so itchy and tight.” Even as she spoke, she massaged her belly, unconsciously seeking relief.
