IN PLAIN View

by Olivia Newport

  Objection welled in Annie. Over the winter, she had tried hard to understand Rufus’s refusal to press charges against the man who almost certainly attacked him. But Jesus said to turn the other cheek, as Rufus always reminded her. Instead of revenge, Rufus steered his own livelihood away from projects that would aggravate Karl, even sacrificing jobs that would have turned a good profit.

  Keeping peace from a distance seemed to be working. So why would he voluntarily step within reach of Karl’s slap?

  “Rufus.” Annie reached over and touched his hand, which still thumped the chair. He dropped his hands to his sides, away from her touch.

  Annie grimaced at the sight around them. Voices erupted, people talking over each other. Mo looked like she was ready to punch someone. Here and there others stood to have their say.

  Tom held out both hands to settle the crowd. “Let me suggest that this would be a good time to take a break. There are coffee and cookies in the back. We can reconvene in fifteen minutes.”

  Mo hurtled toward Rufus. Others swarmed as well. Annie found herself snared under a web of swinging elbows. She scooted over one plastic chair at a time until she came to the end of the row. There she stood up to consider the crowd around Rufus.

  These people liked him.

  They trusted him.

  They clamored for him.

  Rufus stood patiently in his black trousers and collarless jacket, his hat on his head. If he were married, he would have a beard. No doubt it would grow long and curly, like his father’s, and cover the space of chest where his shirt formed a white V under his chin.

  On the surface he had nothing in common with these people. Nothing in common with her. The thought unsettled her.

  Annie moved slowly toward the table in the back where refreshments were set up. She never drank coffee this late in the day anymore. That was her old life. She might still be tempted to use her phone and drive in Colorado Springs, but staying up all night drinking coffee and working no longer held allure. Drifting toward the meager refreshments merely gave her a chance to think. Annie picked up a thickly frosted sugar cookie, which she knew for a fact came from the bakery on Main Street, and retreated to a corner.

  Rufus’s proposal stunned her. Work with Karl Kramer? Yet she could see the wisdom. If Rufus Beiler and Karl Kramer could work together, the Amish and the English might truly find their balance with each other. But without funding, Rufus’s effort might come to nothing.

  Every problem had an answer. At least one, and probably more. It was just a matter of finding the most efficient one.

  It was coming to her, taking shape, finding focus. Just because she no longer owned a high-tech business did not mean she could not sift through solutions. By the time Rufus disentangled himself and stood at her side with a steaming Styrofoam cup, she had manipulated the factors to a pleasing conclusion.

  She turned her face up to him. “I want to help, Rufus.”

  “Everyone is invited to help.” He sipped his coffee.

  “When I sold my business, I put all that money in a charitable foundation. It’s not for my personal use. But this project would be perfect.”

  As usual, his face did not give him away. Annie plowed ahead.

  “They’ll settle this question of who should lead the project, and it will be you and Karl, together. You’ll insist on the partnership, and because they want you so much they’ll take Karl in the deal.”

  Rufus raised one eyebrow.

  “The next issue will be money,” Annie continued. “Tom already said the town doesn’t have any. If money were not an issue, this recreation area could be done really well, and everyone would be happy to be part of it. I can do my part by arranging the financial end.”

  His eyes softened now. “Annalise, you have a kind heart. But it’s not that simple.”

  “Why not? I wouldn’t be using the money for personal reasons.”

  “But you would still be controlling it.”

  She shook her head. “Not if I set up a special account with the bank for you to access. The money would go there. I would have nothing to do with it.” She waved her hands, nearly dropping the cookie. “You and Karl could decide together how to spend it.”

  “Annalise—”

  Tom’s voice interrupted him as Tom called the meeting back to order.

  “Please don’t suggest this,” Rufus said, “not until we have a chance to talk more.”

  She stared into his violet-blue eyes and knew he would never agree, but for now she nodded. “Excuse me. I need to talk to Tom before he starts again.”

  “Annalise, please, do not speak to him about money tonight.”

  Annie ducked past Rufus, pulling a phone from her pocket in the same motion. She flipped it open, thumbed a few buttons, and cleared the Internet search history. By the time she reached Tom across the room, her intentions shifted. She held out the phone.

  “Carter must have my phone,” she said. “If you don’t mind, ask him to bring it by the shop.”

  Tom tucked the phone in his shirt pocket. “I’m going to have to hang his phone around his neck. Or take it away from him. I’m not sure which.”

  “He was helping me when he set it down. Anyone could have picked up the wrong phone.”

  Tom scanned the room. “We’d better get started again.”

  Annie returned to her seat next to Rufus.

  When the meeting reconvened, Mo reluctantly agreed to the arrangement Rufus suggested, and others agreed. Karl and Rufus would run the project—including raising the needed donations of materials, labor, and money.

  The ride home was quiet. Rufus pulled on the reins in front of Annie’s house, set the brake, and turned on the bench to face her.

  “Thanks for the ride.” Annie knew she was muttering but she could not help it. Why was it so hard for Rufus to understand that using the money in her foundation could benefit everyone in Westcliffe? She started to get down from the bench.

  He put a hand on her shoulder. “Annalise, why do you think the English buy my furniture and cabinets?”

  In the dark, she could not see his eyes. What was he really asking? “You do beautiful work. I don’t have to be Amish to see that.”

  “Other people produce their merchandise more quickly, for less money.”

  “But it’s not as good. There is value in your craftsmanship. It will last. “

  He nodded. “It is the Amish way. We build to last. Furniture, families, communities. There are no shortcuts.”

  “I don’t see why generosity would undermine the Amish way.” Heat crawled up the back of her neck.

  He picked up one of her hands. “Sometimes the solutions must come from within the problem.”

  Twenty-Two

  A week later Beth Stutzman laid another thick slice of pork roast on Rufus’s plate. The third one. Fortunately, her father had already scraped the last of the mashed potatoes from the serving bowl.

  Rufus smiled blandly into the beam of Beth’s face.

  She sat on his right. On his left was Johanna, and across the table sat Essie. Their uniform hairstyle accentuated the similarities of their features, differentiated only by different eye colors.

  The Stutzmans were living in their own home—and not a minute too soon, which was an opinion Rufus kept to himself. When Beth invited him to dinner as a way to say thank you for his help in readying their home, he assumed his whole family would be there. He came straight from Mo’s motel after installing some trim. Even then, he assumed his family would arrive in the second buggy at any moment. Only when he saw how the dining room table was set did he realize he had been singled out for the invitation.

  “Tell us what you’ve been working on, Rufus.” Ike Stutzman tore a corner off a slice of bread and steered it into his mouth. “The girls tell me you make beautiful end tables.”

  “I do have several orders for custom tables.” Rufus politely pushed his fork through the tender pork. “I’ll be taking a load to Colorado Springs next week.�
��

  “Do you make tables for the English?”

  Rufus swallowed another bite, unsure of the shading of Ike’s question. “Many English appreciate our value in both beauty and usefulness. It is not against Ordnung to do business with them.”

  “I suppose not.”

  Stifling a sigh, Rufus ate yet another bite of pork roast. “You seem to have settled in well here.”

  “I miss your family already,” Beth said.

  With her hair pinned perfectly and her posture flawless, Beth exuded competency at everything she put her hand to. Rufus resisted her gaze. “I’m sure we will see each other,” he said.

  “I have a feeling I will find myself wandering to your place in the afternoons, looking for a way to be helpful.”

  “I’m sure there will be plenty to do here,” Rufus said. “You’ll get used to a new routine soon enough.”

  “But our view is not nearly as lovely as yours.”

  Rufus nodded politely. It was not possible to have a bad view of the Sangre de Cristos from anywhere around Westcliffe.

  “Where are the boys tonight?” he asked.

  Edna Stutzman waved one hand. “Oh, you know, rumschpringe. They are having their running around time.”

  “They have made friends with some town boys.” Beth seemed eager to share the information. “Your brother introduced them.”

  Rufus’s eyebrows lifted a notch. Joel was introducing Amish boys to town boys?

  “The boys have talked about rumschpringe for years,” Edna said. “They just need to get it out of their system. We’re sure they will settle down when the time comes.”

  Rufus nodded. Mark and Luke struck him as a little young for rumschpringe, not even old enough to attend Sunday night singings. Not old enough to consider courting. They were barely out of school. English boys their age would still be looking forward to high school. Amish boys should be taking up a man’s share of household chores, especially in a family just moving to a new farm.

  But Mark and Luke Stutzman were not his sons.

  And neither was Joel.

  “Were you pleased with the outcome of the meeting last week?” Ike stabbed his fork into the last of the green beans on his plate.

  Rufus recognized the seasoning in the green beans. They must have come from his mother’s cellar, canned from last year’s garden bounty. Franey would have made sure the new family lacked nothing.

  Including him, apparently.

  He roused to answer Ike’s question. “I’m pleased that community support seems to be growing. Even in the last week, more people have come forward and said they want to help.”

  “Are they English or Amish?”

  “Both. I am only trying to do what is right.”

  “Then perhaps it will work out. You are an honorable man.”

  Ike’s look of approval moved from Rufus to Beth. Rufus resisted the urge to squirm.

  “I made pie,” Beth announced.

  All three daughters stood and began to stack dishes. Rufus saw no way out.

  Forty minutes later, after insisting he could not eat a second slice of blackberry pie, Rufus climbed into the buggy and told Dolly to take him home.

  If only he and Annalise could have a quiet, uninterrupted meal. They needed to do better than snatch a few minutes at a time.

  “The estate did not look too promising. I’m not sure what’s in the boxes,” Mrs. Weichert told Annie on Friday afternoon. “I made an absurdly low offer for the whole lot, unseen. I did not expect they would accept it.”

  “Let’s hope there’s an amazing find in one of them.” Standing beside the truck bed full of boxes and crates, Annie wriggled out of her unzipped sweatshirt. Drenched in the sunshine of a May sky, she jumped at the chance to work outside.

  “I pulled up next to the trash bin on purpose,” Mrs. Weichert said. “Use your own discretion. Feel free to chuck whole boxes if you don’t see anything we can use.”

  “I’ll get right to work.” Annie hefted herself up on the open tailgate.

  “I need coffee.”

  “Fresh pot ten minutes ago.”

  Mrs. Weichert disappeared through the shop’s back door. Annie went to work. She estimated at least thirty boxes and crates of various sizes, all of them securely sealed. She pulled a box knife off her belt loop and went to work. Slashing open the first six boxes within reach revealed assorted books, handmade crafts, a porcelain figurine collection, dishes, fabric scraps, and throw pillows. Annie could see already that she would have to go through every box to find the one item that might make it to the shelves. Another batch would make a local thrift store very happy, and the rest was headed for the Dumpster. She immediately set aside the box of fabric scraps, wondering if there might be anything in it that could find its way into an Amish quilt.

  Annie lost herself in the work. Two boxes held evidence of a lifetime carving habit and another a colored-glass bottle collection. Annie set aside a box of books for closer inspection later. A box of photographs made her pause long enough to find a place to sit.

  There were almost exclusively black and whites, some of them professional portraits, and some reaching back decades. Perhaps even a hundred years.

  Annie turned over a stack of photos and flipped through looking at the backs. A few had partially legible notations of names, places, and dates. For the most part, though, they were unmarked.

  Probably the last person who might have known who these stern faces belonged to was gone. Words like “Mother” and “Uncle N after the war” did little to bring these lives into twenty-firstcentury memory. Someone was giving away an entire family history because no one was left to remember it.

  Annie thought of the lists of names that traced her family and Rufus’s. Three hundred years ago they shared an ancestor. Now they had an occasional unsubstantiated story, or a rare photo from her family. A year ago she had paid attention to none of it. Now she could not imagine boxing it all up to sell to a stranger willing to haul it away.

  She let out the heaviness that had gathered in her chest and wiped an eye with a knuckle.

  “Annalise, are you all right?”

  She turned at the shoulders to see Elijah Capp standing at the end of the truck, a toolbox hanging from one arm. “Hello,” she said. “Yes, I’m fine. Just sorting all this stuff.”

  “Mrs. Weichert called about a plumbing problem.”

  Annie nodded. “The sink in the back room. It’s not draining well. I don’t think it’s anything too troublesome.”

  “I’ll take a look.”

  “Thank you, Elijah.” She raised her eyes to meet his. He seemed to hold words in his throat that he could not bring himself to say. “Is there something else?”

  “I don’t know if Ruth told you she saw me,” he finally said, “when she came down with you a couple weeks ago.”

  “No, she didn’t say anything.” Anyone could see Elijah Capp was still twisted in heartbreak.

  “I know she’s not coming back.” Elijah ran his thumb and index finger along the brim of his hat. “But she’s not over me.”

  “Well, Elijah, I think you’re right. On both counts.”

  “She’s wrong if she thinks I can’t make my own choice. I wish she would make room for happiness.”

  Annie moistened her lips. She was not sure she understood what he was talking about—and if he were planning something, she was not sure she wanted to know what it was. She sliced open another box. “What are you saying, Elijah?”

  He shifted his weight and shrugged one shoulder. “Ruth and I are not any more unlikely than you and Rufus.”

  Annie stopped, midmotion, and turned her whole body toward Elijah. Squatting in the dust in her jeans, picking through the remains of an unknown life with her hair once again tumbling out of its ponytail, she felt about as un-Amish as she had at any moment in her life.

  “At least you and Ruth have the past together,” she finally said.

  “That’s not good enough for me.” Elijah�
��s jaw set.

  “Still, it’s something.” Annie’s legs ached from squatting. She stood up and looked down at Elijah from the truck bed. “Sometimes I think Rufus and I are getting close, but I always manage to disappoint him with what I don’t understand about being Amish.”

  “Is that how you think he feels?”

  “Doesn’t he?” Annie doubted Rufus talked to anyone about his feelings, so how would Elijah know?

  “He’s not disappointed. He just doesn’t know what to do with you.”

  “Because I’m English? Because he has no business getting involved with me?”

  “Because you do the unexpected.”

  Annie blew out her breath. “That must frustrate him no end.”

  “I think it pleases him no end.”

  “I don’t know if I can ever follow Ordnung. Rufus deserves to be with someone who understands his life.”

  “He deserves to be with someone who is his life.”

  Air rushed into Annie’s throat far too fast, and she turned away.

  Elijah shifted his toolbox to the other arm. “I’ll go see about that stopped drain.”

  Annie smoothed out the purple Amish dress on her bed. It had once been Ruth’s dress. Ruth, someone who knew how to be Amish.

  Annie had done so well over the winter.

  She learned to cook. She would learn to quilt properly. Her ears throbbed with Pennsylvania Dutch and High German. She learned to pray. Sort of. And she had broken the spine of her Bible with wear.

  Then she went home and wore that stupid red dress—still hanging in the closet of her childhood bedroom.

  When she put it on, she slid into old skin, where everything fit. Nothing about her life since had fit right.

  Annie dropped her T-shirt and jeans to the floor and pulled the purple dress over her head. Her fingers had become nimble with pinning the pieces of the dress in place. She yanked a brush through her hair, pinned up the blond mass, and put on a prayer kapp.

  She did not have a mirror in her bedroom. The only mirror in the house was the small one in the bathroom. But she still had her imagination, and it served her well in forming a mental picture of herself.

  Perhaps her own ancestors had looked not so different from this. Plain dresses. Tamed hair. Kapps on their heads as they sought to discern humility and peace as a way of life.