Beneath the Summer Sun

by Kelly Irvin

  Nathan attacked the job with more enthusiasm. Trial and error did the trick. Finally, the horses were hitched to the mower. The wheels turned the blades, moving back and forth. If he kept the team in a straight line and stayed awake, they might actually get the milo cut. It was a long, hot, tedious job shared with mosquitoes and flies. Would tedding be easier? So far, nothing had been easy. Not the first time he saddled the horse and it refused to move. Or the time he smacked himself in the face with pliers mending a fence. Or slipped and fell face-first in the manure pile. At least that got a laugh from Darren. A big belly laugh with no meanness in it.

  The sun continued its trajectory across the sky. Birds chattered. He breathed hot, moist air. This is good, God. It’s good.

  Too bad Jennie couldn’t walk by and see him working.

  Now that was a stupid thought.

  He smacked a mosquito on his neck, then brushed away a horsefly the size of his thumb. His eyelids felt heavier with each passing hour. What would happen if he fell asleep at the wheel, so to speak? The horses probably knew how to do this job in their sleep.

  His throat ached. His dry lower lip split. His stomach rumbled.

  “Time to eat.” Matthew’s shout startled him from his revelry. “Come and get it before it’s all gone.”

  Nathan didn’t need to be told twice. He double-timed it to the house, careful to let the others go in first.

  The heavenly scents of fried ham and homemade bread floated through the house. Matthew, Micah, and Mark jostled for position in front of Nathan, washing their hands and splashing each other with water. He was content to wait and watch—surreptitiously, of course—as Jennie bustled back and forth to the table in the front room. Ham, boiled potatoes soaked in butter, rolls, pickled beets, and green beans. Her cheeks were pink. Her apron was spotless, the dirt from a morning in the garden picking broccoli, cucumbers, radishes, and summer squash gone. The woman put on a spread and looked good doing it. She made three passes back and forth to the table, chattering with her daughters who helped and never looking at him, not once.

  Maybe now he could ask her about the books. He cleared his throat.

  His hat in one hand, Darren stomped through the back door and halted behind Nathan.

  Maybe not the best time to compliment her looks. “Good day’s work.”

  Darren’s nose wrinkled as he wiped at his forehead with a semi-clean sleeve. “Barely a half day. We’re just getting started.”

  “I just mean—”

  “I know what you mean. How’s the backside? Are you still walking funny?”

  “Fine, fine.” Heat billowed over Nathan. He’d never said a word about the aches and pains caused by the unfamiliar form of transportation known as horseback riding. “I’m getting accustomed to the changes.”

  “Sitting on a hot water bottle might help.”

  The boys hooted and hollered.

  “You all hush now.” Jennie shook her finger at her sons. “Move along, let Nathan get washed up. Sit down before the food gets cold.”

  “Ain’t going to get cold in this weather.” Darren sniffed in distain. “More like it’ll boil.”

  “Where are your boys?” Jennie’s tone was polite, but her expression seemed anxious. “You’re not getting behind at your place, are you?”

  “Nee, my boys cut our hay yesterday. They’re bailing today.” Darren splashed water on his face and began to lather his hands with soap. “Nothing for you to worry about.”

  Unspoken words hung in the air, something between Jennie and her brother-in-law that Nathan couldn’t fathom. “Food smells great.”

  “Get washed up and have a seat then.”

  No smile accompanied her words.

  He cleaned up and grabbed the seat between Francis and Mark, who immediately threw Elizabeth a triumphant grin. “I get to sit by Nathan.”

  “Quiet.” Darren plopped into a chair at the other end of the long table.

  Heads bowed. A few seconds later Darren said “amen” and the bowls began to pass. The platter of ham felt light in Nathan’s hand. He studied the slices. Enough for one each, if he counted right. He let the plate pass.

  “Don’t you like ham?” Jennie’s anxious tone had returned.

  “Boiled potatoes are my favorite.” He heaped several on his plate and ladled a few for Francis. “Green beans too. Pickled beets are a treat.”

  “Atlee liked fresh potatoes boiled too.” Darren speared two big slices of ham without looking up. “Butter, salt, and pepper. A man could make a meal of them.”

  Jennie ducked her head. She pushed beets around on her plate with her fork.

  The silence built.

  “I like pie,” Elizabeth piped up. “Apple or cherry. Or pecan.”

  “Me too.” Grateful for small children, Nathan smiled at her. “But my favorite is strawberry.”

  “Mudder made strawberry yesterday,” Cynthia volunteered. “Two of them.”

  “I imagine your mudder makes good pie.” Nathan forked a potato and chewed, careful to avoid Darren’s gaze. “Her cooking is excellent.”

  “More eating and less talking will get us back in the field quicker.” Darren gulped his water and set the glass down with a smack. “The hay won’t cut itself.”

  Would that it could. Nathan sneaked a peek at Jennie. Her head came up. She smiled and gave the tiniest shrug.

  He hadn’t imagined it, had he? Heatstroke could do strange things to a man’s mind. He smiled back. Her smile grew.

  On the strength of that smile, he could work in the field all day long.

  And then some.

  FIFTEEN

  Everyone in the world wanted to go to the annual Purple Martin Open House at James and Olive Troyer’s House the last week in May. Everyone except Jennie. She tucked unruly strands of hair under her kapp and stared at the road ahead. If she could slow the buggy down somehow, she would, but Bess seemed intent on getting to the Troyer house as quickly as possible. No doubt because Aidan, an avid birder, would be there. Their marriage still had not been announced, but Jennie knew in her bones it would be any day. They would burst from their happiness if they couldn’t share it soon.

  The clip-clop of the horse’s hooves on the sun-hardened earth, the squeak of the buggy wheels, and the chatter of the children in the back filled the air. It should be a lovely ride. It was a lovely ride.

  “Okay, tell me what’s bothering you.” Bess glanced back at a squeal from her son Joshua. Someone was tickling the toddler. “You’ve been a gloomy Gus ever since I picked you up. Spill the beans.”

  “A gloomy Gus? Have you been talking to Mary Kay?”

  “Don’t avoid the subject. Tell Aenti Bess all about it. You’re not happy to be here. Why? It’s fun. The kinner love it. They learn something about nature. People visit. What’s not to like?”

  “I just have so much to do at home. I need to make jam from the strawberries we didn’t sell at the produce auction yesterday. I’ve got peas, spinach, and brussels sprouts to pick. I still haven’t planted my flower beds. If I’m going to work at the store, I need to get my ducks in a row at home—”

  “All that will still be there this afternoon. Tell me what’s really bothering you.”

  “I don’t know.” The response escaped willy-nilly before Jennie could corral it. “Never mind me. I’m just out of sorts this morning. I didn’t sleep well.”

  “It’s me and Aidan, isn’t it? I’ve found new love after only a year and you’ve been alone four years.” Sadness laced with guilt filled Bess’s sweet face. She was so young still, barely twenty-one. “I’m sorry. I know how lonely feels.”

  “It’s not that. I’m happy for you. I’m happy for Aidan. It couldn’t make me happier. I just don’t understand.”

  “Understand what?”

  “How it’s possible? Aren’t you terrified?”

  Of course not. Bess was one of the bravest people Jennie knew. Unlike herself.

  “I am.” Bess shrugged. Her smile belied
her words. “But if I’ve learned anything from what I’ve been through, it’s that with Gott, anything is possible. Isn’t it?”

  “It is.” Jennie forced herself to say the words with more conviction than she felt. “It’s just hard to see it sometimes.”

  “I admit I haven’t always thought that. After Caleb died, I was lost. You know that. You saw it.” Bess rolled her shoulders and craned her neck from side to side. “But I’m going to marry again. Soon. We were going to wait until the fall, but now we both know we don’t want to wait that long. And don’t be spreading that around. It’s supposed to be a secret still. A year ago I wouldn’t have dreamed such a thing possible.” She sighed, her expression a bittersweet mixture of the pain and happiness that was her life. “It took a lot for me to learn to trust Gott, trust His plan. I learned from Laura and Mary Kay and you.”

  “Me?”

  “Jah, you. You trudge on, no matter how hard it is. You never give up.”

  “A person has no choice.”

  “I suppose not, but watching the three of you helped me to trust that there is a future for me in this place. In this community, I can have a family. It might look different from other families, but it will be a family.”

  Jennie tried to see what Bess saw in her future. It looked beautiful. And so tantalizingly close. Did Laura and Mary Katherine feel the same way? Did they see a new family in their futures? Neither of them had sallied forth with a new love, but they were older, much older than Bess. Single men their ages were not plentiful in Jamesport. They had lived and loved in long, fruitful marriages. Bess’s first love had lasted only a fraction of a moment. “How were you able to risk it again?”

  “I learned that the momentary troubles we have in this world are just that—momentary. Gott doesn’t cause them, but He does walk us through them. I don’t know how many days I have on this earth, but He does. I don’t know how many Aidan has either.”

  The same words Laura had used. Momentary troubles. Jennie clamped her mouth shut. Her friends were right, but it didn’t make it any easier. God didn’t intend for faith to be easy.

  Bess pulled onto the dirt road that led to the Troyer homestead. A sea of buggies, vans, and cars lined its dirt shoulders. If past years were any indication, at least two hundred people, some from as far away as Iowa, Nebraska, and Pennsylvania, would stop by to see the purple martins that made their homes temporarily in houses built and maintained by the Troyers. Bess parked behind a battered blue pickup truck. “Whoa, whoa. We’ll have to walk part of the way.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  The longer it took, the better.

  “Joshua needs a daed.” Bess’s face lit up with a smile. “Aidan will make a good daed.”

  He would. Jennie had no doubt of that. Bess and Aidan would have more children, God willing. Their lives would become more and more entwined. They would risk everything for each other.

  Bess turned and hopped down from the buggy. “So would Leo.”

  How had they gone from anything’s possible with God to Leo? Leo with his callused hands and his carved animals and his penchant for being at the right place at the right time. Leo who once took her on a buggy ride but never came back. She climbed down, keeping her back to her friend. “I can’t imagine myself with a mann again.”

  “I couldn’t either, a year ago, but here I am unable to wait a few more months to marry the man I lieb.” Bess’s delight at the thought flowed through the words. “And you’ll have all that time at the store to talk to Leo.”

  “He doesn’t talk.”

  “Until you spend time with him. Aidan can get him to talk.”

  “Aidan’s family.”

  “Aidan knows how Leo feels. He lost his daed early. Their daeds were brothers. They were close. Leo’s like another older brother.”

  “I can understand that.”

  “So why don’t you extend that grace to your in-laws?”

  The words were uttered softly, but their points still pierced skin. “It’s different.”

  “It’s not. Olive and James are gut people. We used to get together with them on Sunday afternoons when I was little. Olive and my mudder were friends.” Bess smiled at the memories. “She made gut zucchini bread. James went hunting with Daed. They lost a son. That’s some hard times. You’ve been so wrapped up in your own misery, have you never thought of theirs?”

  Her point, however delivered, stung. She couldn’t tell Bess how hard it was not to blame James and Olive for Atlee’s horrible behavior. “I am selfish, I know. For so long I was barely hanging on by my own fingertips. I couldn’t take on someone else’s feelings.”

  “I know how that feels.” Bess did know. She’d lost her first love in a terrible accident. “There’s no time limit on healing. For you or for them.”

  Such wisdom from such a young woman. James and Olive had tried to reach out to her a few times, but Jennie had chosen to go it on her own. They were the parents of a man who had hurt her. How could she trust them? But Bess was right. She was expected to forgive.

  “You’re right. It’s time to get on with it.” Feeling like a persnickety old woman, Jennie followed the children, who ran on ahead, Joshua on Celia’s hip, Francis trotting behind, toward the backyard. A small crowd had gathered around the long pole that held one of several white bird-apartment houses spread across an open expanse of mowed grass. “I’ve kept them at arm’s length for so long I’m not sure if I’m welcome anymore.”

  “You’re all ready to move on—together. I can feel it in my bones.” Bess picked up her pace, no doubt anxious to see Aidan. “What groossdaadi and groossmammi wouldn’t want to spend time with their grandbabies? You’re family.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “We did a nest check yesterday and found we have 127 active nests with eggs or young with a total of 486 eggs laid so far, and 122 of those have hatched.” James’s voice was a deep bass. It carried over the excited chatter of nearly a dozen children who gathered in a tight knot around him. “That’s a little better than last year’s count.”

  That voice. Atlee’s voice. Jennie shivered. Her in-laws stood side by side, smiling, happy to share their birding love with any and all who came. Olive was as short and round as James was tall and thin. His hair was black laced with silver and his eyes blue like his son’s. Olive had fair skin and hair that had gone completely gray years earlier. Her eyes were a warm hazel. Nothing of Atlee in her. Nothing at all.

  Bess looked back. “Are you all right? Are you coming down with something?”

  “Nee.” Jennie would not let the past rule her day. Atlee was gone. Her in-laws had done nothing to hurt her. “The kinner will enjoy it, as you said.”

  “There’s Aidan. Oh, look, Timothy and Leo are with him.”

  Goose bumps prickled Jennie’s arms. Leo bent over and picked up Timothy’s youngest, Nyla. She wrapped her arms around her cousin’s neck and squealed in delight over something he said.

  “Leo, Leo!” Elizabeth broke away from the others and ran toward him, Francis on her heels. “How’s Red?”

  Leo turned. His gaze bounced from Elizabeth to beyond, seeking. For a second some emotion flitted across his face. Something like happiness. Then it was gone. Jennie couldn’t be sure it had ever been there.

  Bess’s hand touched Jennie’s sleeve. “He’s looking for you,” she whispered, her tone delighted. “Go say hello.”

  “Nee.” She wasn’t a teenage girl on her rumspringa. “Don’t be silly.”

  “Don’t be an old lady.”

  Leo patted first Elizabeth’s head and then Francis’s, but his diffident smile reached out to Jennie. He said nothing, as usual.

  Jennie joined him in the dearth of conversation and tried to concentrate on the subject at hand. Bess slipped closer to Aidan. The kinner crowded around James. The sun heated Jennie’s cheeks. Or was it the way Leo’s gaze kept slipping sideways toward her and then back at James? Each time colliding with hers. Stop it.

  “Hot da
y.”

  Was he talking to her? “Jah.”

  “Good day for this, though.”

  “It is.” This was more painful than childbirth. “How is the horse?”

  “Gut. Better.”

  “Gut.”

  Conversation with Leo had never been easy, but this was enough to make a woman choose to be alone for life.

  Nyla tickled Leo’s cheeks. He laughed and tickled the girl back. She giggled, an infectious sound that made Jennie smile. “Knock-knock, Cousin, knock-knock.”

  “Who’s there, Nyla, who’s there?”

  “Cow says.”

  “Cow says who.”

  “Nee silly, a cow says moo!”

  Leo’s belly laugh made her smile as much as Nyla’s high-pitched trill. Elizabeth and Francis joined in. It was all the more delightful because it undoubtedly was a rare occurrence to be treasured by the people around him. He grinned at her over the girl’s shoulder, his awkward stance softened for a second. He might be her age, but he didn’t look it. Time had been kind to him. All muscle and brown skin and only a little gray in his dark hair. She smiled back.

  The moment stretched.

  He ducked his head. “Been to the store?”

  “Nee. I’ve been sewing, though. I have lots of pieces to sell and a few to finish. Mary Kay says Lazarus hasn’t been back, but Kyle, the electrician, came in. She let him look around.”

  “No point in antagonizing them.”

  “Nee.”

  Nyla tickled his ears. He pretended to dump her from his shoulders and she shrieked with laughter. Jennie couldn’t help but laugh too.

  “Let’s get started.” Sounding irked, James raised his voice to be heard over the ruckus. He used a winch to lower one of the birdhouses.

  The collective oohs and aahs that followed said the closest spectators were seeing hatchlings. Elizabeth and Francis squeezed in front of Mark, Cynthia, and Celia, who stood beside a half-dozen English children Jennie recognized from town.

  “What are their names?” Elizabeth’s voice piped up over the others. “Do they have names? Can I hold one? Can I name them? I named my kitty Indigo.”