IN PLAIN View

by Olivia Newport

  Penny stubbed her toe on a stray chair, and when it scraped the floor Rufus turned.

  His face brightened.

  “Rufus, I want you to meet my sister. This is Penny.”

  Rufus brushed a hand against his trousers before offering it to Penny. She took it then glanced at Annie with upturned lips. Annie allowed herself a slow breath of relief.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Penny said with perfect manners. With one finger, she traced the carved pattern in a piece of trim. “Your work is beautiful—everything Annie said it was.”

  “I trust you had a relaxing drive down.” Rufus caught Annie’s eye before dipping his hat at Penny.

  “I had no idea this part of the state was so gorgeous,” Penny said.

  Annie felt as if she were watching from the outside. Her English sister was chatting with the Amish man who had made her rethink her life. She had harassed Penny into coming. Now, though, her blood pulsed faster. Annie wanted Penny to like Rufus. She wanted Penny to see everything wonderful that she saw in him. She wanted Rufus to see past Penny’s English exterior and believe she was a wonderful sister. When she met Rufus’s gaze, and the familiar warmth flushed through her, she saw delight in his violet-blue eyes.

  The lobby door clattered open, and Annie turned toward steps that progressed firmly in her direction.

  Beth Stutzman stood there, and Rufus’s eyes moved to her expectantly.

  “It’s not there. I looked everywhere.” Beth Stutzman’s gaze moved to Annie. “Oh, hello. Annalise, is it? I almost didn’t recognize you dressed like…”

  Annie swallowed and moistened her lips before responding, but Rufus broke in. “Beth, this is Annalise’s sister, Penny Friesen. And Penny, this is Beth Stutzman, an old family friend. She was kind enough to go look for a tool I neglected to bring today.”

  Annie felt her sister’s eyes on her, as if saying, Old family friend? Sure.

  “It’s the oddest thing, though,” Beth said. “I definitely know what a corner chisel looks like, and I promise you, it is nowhere in your workshop. The whole set is missing.”

  “I’m sure it will turn up,” Rufus said.

  “I’ll help you look again later,” Beth said. “But I wanted you to know right away that it’s lost.”

  Annie’s brow furrowed. Since when would Rufus send Beth Stutzman to look for tools? She caught Rufus’s eye then looked away quickly at the slight paling of his complexion. The concern—and the triumph—in Beth’s face were unconvincing, but Annie preferred to sort out her questions with Rufus later. In private.

  “Why don’t we go?” Annie nudged Penny. “We don’t want to get in the way here.”

  Fourteen

  Ruth knelt in the garden. Late afternoon was her favorite time to fill her hands with the mystery of the earth. The garden was dormant now, still readying for its summer yield. In a few weeks, when her sisters worked the soil and planted, the family would see the promise of nourishment for a new year. Weeds were already pressing their way to the sun, though. One by one Ruth picked them out, being sure to get the roots, and tossed them into a wheelbarrow.

  A few feet away, her mother wielded a hoe, splitting clots that had formed over the winter and pounding the fragments into smooth soil. The rhythm was familiar to both of them. Whether in Pennsylvania when Ruth was young or during the last six years in Colorado, Ruth and her mother had chased out the evidence of winter and prepared to feed the family. Until two years ago. Ruth pushed the thought out of her mind and imagined her sisters working in the garden. They would do the weeding and watering as the vegetables grew. For yet another year, she would not be there to see the plants sprout.

  Ruth watched her mother work, envying the contentment she saw and the simple companionship of silence. Finding a ride from Colorado Springs was worth the trouble to see these simple moments of pleasure in her mother’s face.

  “Annalise wants to have a garden,” Franey said. “She has never had a vegetable garden.”

  “She’ll enjoy it. She’s so curious about everything.”

  “Plenty of the English grow vegetables.” Franey raised the hoe several feet before thudding it through a stubborn clot repeatedly. “But gardening will have special meaning to Annalise. For her, it’s part of learning our ways.”

  “Yes, I suppose so.” Ruth wrapped her fingers around a weed already six inches high and yanked.

  “Annalise is persistent about her quilt, too. I suggested she start with a lap quilt, but she was determined to make something she could put on a bed.”

  “She is used to aiming high.”

  “As long as success does not lead to pride, doing your best is an excellent quality.”

  “Demut. Humility. This is not always easy for Annalise.”

  “Demut is not always easy for any of us.” Franey winked. “After all, no one makes a better schnitzel than I do.”

  “Mamm!” Ruth laughed at her mother’s pride. Hochmut.

  “I’m teaching Annalise to cook our traditional foods. She never cooked much at all, you know, before moving here.”

  “She was too busy running a company.”

  “She’s trying hard to change and understand our ways. And she learns so quickly.”

  Ruth stuffed weeds deeper into the wheelbarrow. She loved Annalise, too, but she had not expected the garden conversation to be all about her. Where was the contented silence she used to share with her mother, or the soft humming of hymns from the Ausbund?

  “Rufus says Annalise has room on her land for a small barn,” Franey said. “I think she should learn to drive a buggy soon.”

  Ruth hid a smile at the memory, just a few days old, of Annalise teaching her to drive a car. Would Annalise think managing a horse and buggy was as easy as driving a car?

  “She wants to begin making her own clothes. I told her perhaps over the winter.”

  “But it’s only spring now,” Ruth said.

  “Gardening, cooking, quilting, driving—she has plenty to learn for now.”

  “She won’t want to wait that long.”

  Her mother never asked Ruth about what she was learning. Pharmacology, pathology, health care ethics. Franey had made her peace that Ruth was pursing higher education, but apparently even talking about her courses was too English.

  But Annalise, it seemed, could do no wrong. Jealousy warmed Ruth’s chest.

  “Canning.” Franey stood still and looked over the garden plot. “When we’re just planting, I seem to forget how much will grow. I’ll need all the help I can get canning everything for the winter.”

  “Well, you won’t miss me because you’ll have Annalise.” Ruth tossed an entire clump of dirt instead of knocking the small weed loose from it.

  “Ruth Beiler, what has gotten into you?” Franey leaned on her hoe and stared wide eyed at her daughter.

  “I’m sorry, Mamm.” And she was. Ruth had chosen to leave. She had chosen to miss the rhythm of planting and growing and harvesting the family’s vegetables. She had chosen to surrender the closeness of her family to her own future, away from them.

  Franey slowly resumed slicing into the soil with her hoe, but her vigor had dissipated.

  “Forgive me, Mamm. I should not have said that. I should not even have thought it.”

  “We should go and see how Lydia and Sophie and the Stutzman girls are coming along with supper.” Franey grasped her hoe and carried it toward the house, where she leaned it against the back porch railing and disappeared through the door.

  Ruth slowly stood, brushed dirt from her skirt and gripped the handles of the wheelbarrow.

  After dinner at a small restaurant on Main Street, Annie put her key in the lock of her back door and turned it. She stepped aside to let Penny enter first. They each carried an overnight bag.

  “Maybe I should have taken you in through the front door,” Annie said, “but this is how I usually come and go.” She turned a knob on a lamp at one end of the counter and a clean light illuminated the s
imple kitchen.

  Penny looked around. “It’s…quaint.”

  “The house is a hundred years old, Penny. So yes, the kitchen is small. It’s all small, and I’ve come to love it.”

  “Do you cook much?”

  “All the time now. Not the kind of cooking you do, of course. But you’ll be glad to know I’m going to have a garden this year. I know how strongly you feel about fresh food.”

  “Amish or not, a garden is a great idea. I may make a foodie out of you yet.”

  “Rufus has drawn it all out. He’s going to come and turn the soil for me.” Soon, Annie hoped. “Let me show you the rest of the house.”

  Annie led the way into her small dining room, which opened into the living room. She paused several times to turn on lamps.

  Penny inspected the cabinet beneath one of the living room lamps. “That’s beautiful.” She opened the door. “A propane tank?”

  Annie stoked the tabletop. “Rufus’s handiwork. Propane is a common way to provide light.”

  “Among the Amish, you mean. It’s sort of like camping.”

  A fire started in Annie’s stomach and burned its way up. “Look, Penny, I asked you here to show you my home, my life. Don’t make fun.”

  Penny laid three fingers across her mouth and stared at Annie, silent. But Annie knew what her sister’s expression meant.

  “Ever since we picked up Ruth today,” Annie said, “you’ve been acting weird.”

  Penny put a finger to her own chest. “I’m acting weird? You’re the one who gives up electricity and moves to the boonies, and I’m acting weird?”

  Annie exhaled. “I understand you need some time to take it all in.”

  “This man had better be worth it,” Penny said. “You might tell yourself being Amish is not just for him, but you’d better be sure. You’re changing everything. I mean, hey, Annie, just because you found we had one Amish ancestor doesn’t mean you have to go back in time.”

  “I’m not going back in time, Penny. I’m just choosing a simpler way to live. Simpler values. A faith that asks me to measure my decisions more carefully.”

  “In the end, you’re still choosing Rufus Beiler. So you’d better be sure. Don’t think I didn’t notice your reaction when Beth Stutzman showed up. You’re not sure.”

  Penny was right, of course. Annie was not sure she was the right wife for Rufus. Someone like Beth Stutzman would know how to be an Amish wife who brought no disgrace or embarrassment to her husband. Annie moved to the stairs.

  “I’ll go get your room ready,” she said. “Make yourself comfortable for a few minutes.”

  Upstairs, Annie opened a chair that unfolded into a twin-size bed and stretched sheets across it. She moved to the small desk and stacked up the papers there, clearing a surface for Penny to use. While her hands were busy, her mind also whirled. Sitting in the desk chair, she pulled open the bottom drawer and riffled through file folders. Her fingers settled on one folder, and she paused to think.

  When Annie heard Penny’s footsteps on the stairs, she made a rapid decision.

  Fifteen

  The night was deep when Ruth left the sleepy house. Even the Stutzman girls, who seemed to giggle behind their teeth more than Ruth remembered, had settled in for the night. She had taken a flashlight from the kitchen drawer, and now she turned it on and aimed at the path. Even without a light, though, her feet knew the way. Clouds hung low, a curtain hiding the stars. Her frame ached to lie against the solidity of the broad rock and stare into forever.

  She wore her brother Joel’s warm jacket because it was handy on the hook next to the back door. The flashlight beam bobbed ahead of her steps. Ruth moved swiftly, remembering the tree root she once tripped over and the low branches of an evergreen, the depression in the ground that often collected water, and the bushes with hidden spurs. Ruth’s parents had no idea how many times over the years she had escaped to the rock, whether by light of sun or moon.

  With two families under the roof, fragmented conversation had bounced around the rooms during dinner and games. If she was hearing right, this might be the last time she could find solitude at the rock. At the very least, because of the park improvement project, the acres around the rock would be more populated. And at the very worst, the rock would be blasted. Its pieces could be used to outline a footpath with no hint that they had stood united and unmoved for eons.

  If she walked briskly, Ruth could reach the rock in twelve minutes. On a cloudy night, Ruth estimated fifteen. She moved through trees to a clearing, and there, even under a dull, dim sky, the rock beckoned. The boulder stood more than five feet high and spread six feet long and nine feet across. Ruth knew where to put her foot on the rear side of it in order to heft herself to the top in two wide climbing steps. The flashlight turned off, she lay flat on her back and stared up.

  Without the ornamentation of stars, the view lacked the unfathomable sense of infinity. Instead, clouds veiled the secrets of the sky, leaving Ruth to ponder the shroud around her own life.

  On this rock she had imagined her future as a public health nurse. On this rock she plotted to escape her own baptism and go to college. On this rock, she chose to break Elijah’s heart.

  Now she lived in the in-between, sure of her life calling to nursing, but not yet qualified to carry it out. Sure that leaving the church was the right decision, but not truly finding her place among the English. Sure that she could not drag Elijah away from his promises, but not able to keep him out of her heart. She should not have answered his last letter. She should not even have read the last letter. He was getting brazen.

  A glimpse of one star would reassure her that it was not for nothing.

  The rock was cold, as it always was. Eventually the chill seeped through Joel’s jacket, through Ruth’s sweater, through her skin. Ruth gripped the front panels of the coat and held them tightly around her, but in truth she did not mind the cold. Inhaling, she took in the fragrance of spring, the murkiness of apple blossoms carried on a breeze jumbled with The smell of mud in the damp earth below. Surely rain would come before the night was over.

  Ruth flinched at the sound of a cracking branch. The night was too cloudy to cast a shadow, but she knew someone was there. She sat up and turned her head in the direction the sound had come from.

  “Ruth? Are you here?” The voice was a solid sort of whisper.

  Ruth fumbled for the flashlight and pointed it toward the voice. “Elijah?”

  He emerged from the nearest tree.

  “What are you doing here?” Adrenaline surged into Ruth.

  “I might ask you the same question.” Elijah found the footholds and climbed onto the rock. “Turn off that light.”

  She clicked the flashlight off and lay flat again. “I don’t get many chances to come here anymore. I hear they may blast this rock to smithereens.”

  “Not if I have anything to say about it.” Elijah lay down beside her.

  The hammer in Ruth’s chest pounded harder, faster. More than two years had passed since she and Elijah used to meet at the rock in daytime innocence—and nighttime guilt.

  “Elijah,” she said staring into the gray again, “how did you know I was here?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Do you come often?”

  The length of his silence confounded her.

  “I feel you close when I come here,” he said. “This is where I first knew I loved you.”

  Ruth’s pent-up lungs deflated. “Elijah, I’m sorry I answered your letters. I was thinking of myself and not what is good for you.”

  “My feelings are the same, Ruth. You are what is good for me.”

  “We can’t keep going around this circle, Elijah. We can’t be together.”

  “You made your choice. I could make mine.”

  “No! Not because of me. You’ve been baptized. They would shun you. I would always know what I took from you.”

  “I hope,” he said, his voice low as he turned his face toward hers
, “that you would always know what I gave willingly.”

  They were not more than twelve inches apart. A familiar tremble began when she felt his breath, warm against the cold, mingling with her halting respiration. He raised a hand and grazed her cheek and neck then settled on her shoulder. Ruth could barely feel his touch through her layers of clothing, but memories roused, and she closed her eyes and breathed in his smell.

  Ruth heard Elijah shift his weight, putting himself up on one elbow and turning his whole body toward her. He shielded her now from the chilled breeze, casting a stillness between them. When She opened her eyes, his face was right where she thought it would be, so close to hers that she could barely focus on his features. He was going to kiss her. It would be sweet and ardent and complete. She moistened her lips and swallowed in anticipation.

  A star glimmered through the fog above them. Ruth rolled away from Elijah and sat up out of his reach.

  Sixteen

  June 1776

  General Washington has fallen back time and again.” Joseph moved mashed potatoes around on his plate. “If he doesn’t have a victory soon, we’re going to lose Philadelphia.”

  John reached toward the basket in the center of the table and helped himself to a thick wedge of bread. “Washington has had his share of victories.”

  Joseph let his fork clatter against his plate. “Not lately. I don’t think you appreciate how precarious our position is.”

  Jacob observed that while one brother’s analysis of military realities caused him to leave food on his plate meal after a meal, the other’s unflagging enthusiasm for the cause fed his appetite. He glanced at his mother and winced. At least their wives had already taken most of the dishes to the kitchen to wash up.

  “I think I’ll go help the girls.” The Byler matriarch rose from her chair. “I never know where I’ll find things when someone else cleans up.”