“How much?” She fumbled for her purse, hoping she had enough cash to pay for all those boxes.
“Like I said. It is a gift. From a widower to a widow.” With that, he left her sitting there and went back inside. Unless she followed him inside, which she did not want to do, she had no choice but to leave with the boxes.
All the way home, she thought of things she could have and should have said to him. The man made her skin crawl these days, and she was suspicious of his sudden generosity—from a man who her father had once said was so parsimonious that if a fly accidentally landed in his milk, he would demand the fly spit out whatever it had drunk.
Yet for all she knew, today he was simply trying to be kind. She had been trained by her gentle mother to give people the benefit of the doubt, and she tried to give Abimelech the benefit of the doubt as she drove home.
She also tried to give Abimelech the benefit of the doubt while she carried the boxes of canned goods into her home and began stacking them on the table so she could see what she had gotten.
It was only after she had laboriously unloaded every last can and box and was beginning to place them on her pantry shelves that she thought to check the expiration dates.
What she discovered was insufferable. Her father once said that Abimelech’s new venture of selling damaged goods was a good fit for the man’s personality. But even she was surprised to find out that every last can and box had passed its expiration date by at least three months.
Abimelech had given her things he had pulled off the shelf and had probably intended to throw away until he saw her trotting by. Was he paying her back for refusing him? Or was this his strange attempt to court her? Either way, she was stuck with having to dispose of a pantry’s worth of items most people would not feel safe eating. Especially not a pregnant woman with small children!
Being a young widow was turning out to be a whole lot more complicated than even she had imagined.
chapter SIXTEEN
“And how is this job of yours going?” Ivan Troyer had a scythe in his hand, evidently intending to clear beneath the split-rail fence that separated his field from Logan’s backyard.
Hope had known Ivan Troyer and his wife, Mary, for as long as she had been alive. She had grown up with their children, played inside their house, and hunted Easter eggs in their backyard. Even though Ivan and his wife had become Mennonites several years earlier, their families had always been supportive of one another.
“It is going well enough.” She pegged the last wet sheet and dried her hands on her apron.
“Is my new neighbor treating you well?” Ivan chopped at some weeds beneath the fence.
“He is. Have you met him?”
“Not yet. I wasn’t sure if someone from New York would welcome a visit. Many city people want to keep to themselves. I was afraid he might get annoyed if I just showed up. I had hoped he would make the first move and drop by.”
Ivan had never had any neighbors from the city that she knew of. “How do you know city people are like that?”
“Our youngest told us. Helda had to move from Sugarcreek to Chicago last month with her new husband. It was because of his job. She says none of her neighbors seem all that anxious to speak to her.”
“Oh, I am so sorry that Helda had to move.” Hope placed a comforting hand on Ivan’s arm. This was indeed terrible news. The worst things besides sickness, death, or having a loved one leave the church, was having family move far away. “I had not yet heard. How is Mary taking it?”
“Crying her eyes out some days, on other days accepting it as the Lord’s will.”
His light blue eyes looked off into the distance, and his chin trembled slightly. For the first time since Hope had known him, Ivan looked old to her.
She clucked her tongue in sympathy. “I will come visit with Mary soon.”
“She would like that,” he said. “We still have Caleb, William, Charlotte, and Leah living nearby, plus their spouses and all the grandchildren—but having Helda move so far away still hits hard.”
Hope truly sympathized. She could not imagine living in a world where she could not go visit her Maam and younger siblings several times a week.
“Helda cried so hard when they left. We are praying that they will find a good Mennonite church to attend soon. At least then we will know that there is someone close who will help them if there is need.”
“I shall add that to my prayers, as well,” Hope promised.
“Sometimes I think . . .” He hesitated, as though unsure whether or not to say what was in his heart.
“Ja?”
“If only the other . . . terrible trial had not happened to our family. Perhaps Mary would be a different person now. Stronger maybe.”
“Your family has endured great tragedy with much faith,” Hope said. The sad business had been many years ago, but it was easy to see that it still affected Ivan and Mary. “How is Esther doing since Helda’s move?”
“Mother?” Ivan smiled. “My mother does as she always does about everything . . . she prays. Even with her painful joints, she gets down on the floor beside her bed every day and prays that Helda’s husband will find a job that will bring them back here where they belong.”
“I will pray extra hard as well, and I will write to Helda. Maybe that will help her with homesickness.”
“That would please her so much.” Ivan pulled out his handkerchief and blew his nose. Then the twinkle in his eyes that she knew so well returned. “Or it will make Helda even more homesick than ever to hear from you.”
Hope laughed. “I will tell her all the bad things I can think of. Including the fact that you are as lazy as ever—allowing your fencerows to get in such bad shape.”
“That is true,” Ivan agreed. “I should be horsewhipped for my lazy ways.”
For years, it had been a running competition and joke between Ivan and her father to see which of them could keep the cleaner farm. Both were excellent farmers and they vied constantly to see who could make the straightest furrows, Henry with his team of horses, or Ivan with his old blue Ford tractor.
“Speaking of fencerows,” Ivan said, “has your employer given any thought to what to do about the farm? It’s good for a field to lie fallow for a short while, but he’ll have scrub pine shooting up before he knows it if he doesn’t have someone come in and mow things down.”
“I do not think Logan thinks of these things. He seemed surprised when I told him that come spring, he will have to buy a lawn mower.”
“What does the man do for a living?” Ivan asked.
“He’s a writer,” Hope said.
“Him and every other person I meet in this county these days.” Ivan laughed. “Ever since writers discovered the Amish, everyone wants to write about our people—including our own people. I heard the other day that Carlisle Printing over in Walnut Creek can hardly keep up with the new demand.”
“Are there not other printing places for our people to use?”
“None that I know of that will accept a manuscript written out in longhand.” Ivan put on a mock-serious face. “I have been thinking about publishing Mary’s shopping lists she’s let pile up over the years. I’d call it A Mennonite Woman Buys Toilet Paper and Eggs. Caleb’s eldest girl could illustrate it. I think tourists would probably buy it in droves and make us rich.”
“I would not bank on that project succeeding.” Hope giggled. “And our Amish ways are not what Logan Parker is writing about.”
“Oh? What is he writing?”
“I think he is writing a war book.”
Ivan’s eyebrows rose. “A war book!”
“I am afraid so. He has been talking with old soldiers.”
“Will the Englisch never see the wisdom in putting away their weapons and living at peace with their fellow man?” Ivan shook his head, as amazed with the Englisch preoccupation with war as she. “It is the one thing upon which your father and I have never disagreed—the necessity of our Amish and Menno
nite churches continuing to hold fast to our practice of nonresistance.”
“I do not know how Logan feels about war, all I know is that he is enjoying writing a book about it.”
“Perhaps it would be better if he tended to his fields.”
“Perhaps it would be better if you met the man and told him yourself,” she said. “I believe he would profit from your advice, and my father refuses to have any input into the running of this farm. He says it hurts his heart too much.”
“No doubt.”
They were both silent, pondering the tragedy of her father’s weakness, then Ivan heaved a sigh and said, “Now is as good a time as any to meet the man who lives across the fence from me. Will you go get him?”
“I think you will like him,” Hope said. “He pays me more than my work is worth. He allows me to bring the children with me, and he has forbidden me to climb on chairs to clean the high cabinets until after the baby comes. Sometimes there is even extra pay in my envelope, which he calls a ‘bonus.’ ”
“And this man who pays you well . . . he leaves you alone?”
She could hear the suspicion in Ivan’s voice.
“He is very respectful,” she answered. “I would not continue working for him if there was the slightest problem.”
“Then I would be pleased to meet him,” Ivan said.
• • •
From the upstairs window, he watched Hope hanging out laundry. She was using the gasoline-powered wringer washer she had asked him to buy. He could not believe how rough and stiff his towels were—he had never used wind-dried towels before, but there were trade-offs. He also had never slept beneath such sweet-smelling sheets.
Actually, there was another trade-off—getting to watch Hope hang the laundry from an upstairs window like he was doing now. The woman was a study in gracefulness, even while engaged in the most mundane tasks. Who would ever have thought that the mere domestic task of pinning sheets to a clothesline could be so mesmerizing?
Hope made it a thing of beauty, even in early March, when the fields and trees were still gray with late winter. She was wearing a dark blue dress, with the sleeves folded back over a black sweater, and a simple white kerchief holding her hair back.
Her pregnancy had become quite noticeable beneath her modest clothing. He saw her stop several times, put a hand upon the small of her back, and stretch. It was obvious that she was growing uncomfortable with the extra weight of the baby.
He remembered back to the day when she had confessed to him that she was pregnant. She had been afraid that he would not allow her to work for him anymore, and he had told her that he wouldn’t think of letting her go.
It surprised him how destitute he had felt at the mere idea of her not showing up every day. Hope and her children had brought light and life into his life in many small ways. It delighted him when he found a small toy tractor beneath his kitchen table and knew that Adam had been playing there. Once, he found a sheet of paper where Carrie had drawn a picture of a horse. That picture now hung above his desk. It was purple and made him smile every time he glanced at it.
Hope had seemingly gotten over her inhibitions about being there while he was at home. She had worked for him now for nearly four months and was no longer skittish. To make sure she stayed that way, he spent a lot of time working in his office whenever she was there. To hang on to her, he also routinely overpaid her to make it possible for her to survive without having to take on more hours somewhere else.
Sometimes, while he was in his office, Hope would forget that he was in the house and she would sing as she went about her tasks. Of all the sounds in the world, he decided, a woman singing as she went about doing her housework had to be one of the most comforting. He had never heard Marla sing and didn’t know if she could. She tended to listen to some sort of hybrid techno music when she was home. Carrie and Adam’s voices laughing and chattering while at play were also music to his ears.
One of the biggest revelations he had experienced since moving here was that a pregnant woman could be so beautiful. He watched her, holding that tiny life within her, and felt a strong desire to protect her. It was everything he could do not to run outside and carry the heavy basket of wet clothes that he saw her lugging to the clothesline.
He realized that he was falling into the habit of comparing everything he saw Hope doing to the life he knew Marla was living, and his fiancée somehow always got the short end of the comparison.
In the real world—the world not of the Amish—Hope would have had many options when her husband died. In many cases, there would have been at least some life insurance. For an Amish woman, there was none. A woman in her circumstances would have qualified for food stamps and welfare. He knew from talking with Hope that she and her people accepted no government help.
In regular society, she would have qualified for Medicaid for the children. Hope barely seemed to realize it existed. Instead, she treated her children’s colds and small illnesses with various elixirs that she concocted. He’d asked about doctors, and she’d explained that she tried to use them as little as possible. Not for religious reasons, but because of the cost. He was grateful that she had the inexpensive birthing clinic to go to.
He found her and her way of life utterly fascinating, and he wondered why. Was it because it was so totally different from anything he’d ever known? Or was it because of a deeper pull—that of a culture trying to live upright and godly lives in a society that they felt was falling to pieces around them?
This baby was also beginning to consume his thoughts. He kept wondering if it would be a girl or a boy. He wondered how Hope would manage after it came. He admired her more and more as the baby grew and he realized that even under hard circumstances, Hope was happy about its impending arrival.
Marla would have swept it from her life. There was no doubt in his mind. Babies were messy, she’d often said. They smelled bad. They ruined figures and careers.
Hope treated the idea of having this baby as though it were a holy thing. He had asked if she was worried.
“Oh no. It will be so good to have a new baby in the house.” Her eyes lit up every time she mentioned it.
It was as though he were watching an entirely different species from the one among which he had lived.
It occurred to him that few of his and Marla’s friends in New York had children. Those who did tended not to be invited to social events once the child appeared unless they had no issues with hiring a babysitter. It was easier, Marla explained as she’d made out a guest list, not to be bothered with the presence of children when adults were trying to have conversations. He had to admit, the few children he had been around as an adult tended to be annoying, demanding little things.
What he saw between Hope and her children was entirely different. Hope, in spite of the grief he knew she still bore, noticeably enjoyed her children’s company.
Five-year-old Carrie was a tiny replica of Hope, and he was entranced by the picture the two of them made together as the little girl helped her mother at whatever task Hope had set for herself that day. If her mother was washing windows, then Carrie handed her dry rags for polishing them. If Hope was washing dishes, then Carrie dried each dish and carefully set it on the kitchen table for her mother to put away in the cabinets.
The whole time they worked, he was treated to the music of Hope’s gentle conversation with her little daughter. She spoke to her in what she referred to as German, but what he heard others refer to as Pennsylvania Deutsch. He had always thought German an unattractive, guttural language, but when Hope talked with her children, it became something lovely.
The relationship between mother and daughter was mirrored in the bits of interaction he saw between Hope and her own mother, Rose. There was a mutual respect in the way they spoke to each other. Even when they were speaking in German, he could tell from the tone of their voices that it was respectful and kind.
Adam was given more masculine tasks to do, carrying scraps of
food out to the compost pile Hope had started, or taking kitchen trash to the garbage can out back.
Hope represented a way of life to him that was so alien and yet so compelling, he was beginning to have a hard time staying away when he knew that she would be at the house.
He refused to see this as a danger to himself. The cultural gap between the two of them was entirely too great to harbor any romantic thoughts, and besides, he was committed to Marla. Eventually the contracted book would be finished, his need for this extended period of retreat over, and he would go back to his old life. He and Marla had patched things up, and she’d begun to move forward with their wedding plans. She had set a date for October. Her design firm was going through a dry spell and she was using the extra time to create a memorable wedding. She had recently purchased an elegant black wedding dress. Black was the “new white,” she had informed him.
He didn’t really care what she did for their wedding. It was hard to muster any enthusiasm for it. Marla told him that his role would be to nod his head, look handsome, and murmur agreeable words. She said it in a joking voice, but he knew she was not entirely joking.
Often, he reminded himself of Marla’s good qualities. She was smart. She was witty. She was elegant. She was beautiful and fashionable. She could turn an apartment into a work of art. When she was in the right mood, she could light up a room with her smile.
As Logan stood at the window musing about his upcoming marriage while admiring the picture Hope and Carrie made hanging laundry together, he saw his neighbor, a man in his early sixties, walk through the pasture and approach the fence line near Hope.
He had not yet formally met his neighbor, but the man always waved each time he drove by. The problem with living in the country was that he wasn’t always sure what the rules were. Was he supposed to go meet his neighbors first, or wait for them to meet him? His experience in the city had been that it was wise to avoid even making eye contact with strangers.
Hope glanced toward the house and saw him standing in the window. She gestured for him to come down, and he was happy to do so. Throwing down the pen with which he had been trying to make notes, he grabbed his coat and headed down the stairwell and outdoors.
Fearless Hope: A Novel Page 13
