Sunday afternoon was a beautiful autumn day. The leaves had already fallen off most every tree and the air was crisp, but not cold. Birdy was raking leaves off Thelma’s front walkway when David drove up the hill in his buggy. She met him as he crested the hill. “Katrina’s gone over to your house. Surely you must’ve passed her.”
“I know. We had it all arranged.” He hopped out of the buggy. “I realize this is short notice, Birdy, but I was hoping you might come on a picnic with me to Blue Lake Pond.”
She looked at him and laughed. He didn’t join her. In fact, he seemed nervous.
Wait. Was he serious? “Pardon me?” she whispered, but she wasn’t even sure she’d be able to hear him, her heart was pounding so loud.
“It’s such a beautiful day, and since it’s an off-Sunday, I thought, why not grab the time while I had it.”
She couldn’t get the words out of her mouth.
As the silence continued, he started to look very uncomfortable. “Perhaps you’re busy.” Then two patches of color burned on his cheekbones. “Maybe this was a bad idea. I’m sorry, Birdy. I thought—”
“It’s a wonderful idea!” She ran inside, told Thelma she’d be gone for a while, grabbed her shawl, and bounded outside. “Let’s go!” She jumped into the buggy.
David laughed and climbed in the other side.
When they got to Blue Lake Pond, they walked to a sunny area and sat down to eat the picnic he’d made. She was touched by the care he put into the meal: turkey sandwiches on freshly made bread, apple slices cored and dipped in orange juice to keep from turning brown, thick and chewy Molasses Crinkle cookies. “Molly made those by herself,” he pointed out. “That baking lesson you gave her is reaping benefits for the entire family.”
“Anytime,” Birdy said.
“I haven’t seen any sign of Freeman or Levi this week. Not once.”
“Nor have I.”
“Oh,” David said sadly, brushing a fallen leaf off the picnic blanket. “I’ve been wondering how this chapter will end.” He leaned back on one elbow.
“Pride and stubbornness, in that order,” Birdy said.
“I’m sorry for that. Sorry for everyone. I hope we can work this through but I do wonder what the future holds for our church. I sense . . . difficult days ahead.”
Birdy looked out at the pond, so still it almost seemed like a mirror reflecting the sky. “Did you know that trees do most of their growth in winter? Their roots push down to find deepwater sources. So what’s seen in spring is the proud display of winter labor, but it’s the empty times when the most growth has occurred.” She turned to him and smiled. “I think we’ll see the same in our church.”
For a long moment, David stared at her. He stared at her so long that she wondered if she had said something wrong. Or did she have something on her face?
She saw him swallow hard.
“Birdy,” he said, his voice cracking with emotion, “I’d like to court you.”
Birdy held her breath, every muscle tight, stunned speechless. One minute, she was overcome by David asking her to share a picnic. The next, he was asking to court her. It was like finding herself in the middle of a dream, and she was afraid that if she said anything, if she even moved, she might wake up and poof! It would all be gone.
But David was waiting for her answer. “Birdy? Did you hear me? I asked if you would consider letting me court you.”
She thought her heart might have stopped. When it started up again, it beat in fits and starts, unsteady lurches. She had been waiting her entire life for this moment, and now that it was here she didn’t know what to do with it. “Yes, yes, I heard you, but . . . why?”
He smiled, a look of relief flittering through his eyes. He placed his hand on Birdy’s arm, squeezing a little. “I’ve prayed for a partner, Birdy, and you’re the answer to that prayer. I have no doubt. You’re a gift beyond my wildest imagination.”
A gift? David Stoltzfus thinks of me as a gift? But she saw by his expression that he meant it. The thought sent a thrill of pleasure through her, and she gazed at him in wonder.
“You honestly don’t know, do you?” he said.
“Don’t know what?”
“That you’re beautiful.”
“I am not.” She looked away, sure she was blushing like a foolish schoolgirl.
He sat up and took her face in his hand to turn it toward him again. His fingers felt rough as he caressed her cheek.
“Beauty is more than perfect features, Birdy. There’s something about you that draws everyone to you, the way flowers turn toward the sun. You walk into a room and the place comes alive. You are beautiful, Birdy. All the more so because you don’t even realize it.”
They were such sweet words to be hearing now, such tender words. And yet she felt her smile falter. “The thing is,” she began and then stopped, leaving the sentence unfinished.
“The thing is . . . ?”
She risked a look up at him.
The thing was . . . it was the greatest fear she had if this moment, somehow, in some miraculous way, were ever to come true. She had to swallow twice before she could speak. She continued to look at her hands, but she made her voice sound light. “The thing is . . . ,” she said, fumbling for the words for a moment longer. And then she found them. “I can never live up to your wife.”
“No,” he said. “No one could. No one should have to.”
She looked up at him through eyes blurred by real tears. She figured she probably wore an expression of pain on her face, but she couldn’t have held it back any more than she could have held back her next breath. “Your Anna sounds . . . nearly perfect.”
He stood and reached down to help her up. “Let’s walk a little.” They went to the edge of the shore and watched the sun slip behind the trees. Then he turned to Birdy and took her hands in his. “The worst day of Anna’s life was when I drew the lot to become a minister. She never wanted it for me—she felt it would take me away from the family and there was truth in that.” He paused for a long moment, as if gathering the right words. “For me, that was the best day of my life. I think I knew, even as a boy, that God had a calling on my life.” He took her hands and lifted them to his chest, pressing her palms into his breast. He tipped his forehead against her and she closed her eyes, afraid suddenly that she might weep. “Birdy, will you let me court you? You haven’t answered.”
She wanted to say yes, but she couldn’t speak. She was laughing and crying at the same time as David kissed her forehead and brushed away her tears with his thumbs. She looked at him at last, feeling happy and shy. “Yes,” she said, surprised at how her voice sounded, so strong and sure and confident. “Yes, yes, of course!”
His face softened, and a tenderness came into his eyes. He leaned into her, tilting his head, and his mouth came down onto hers. His lips were warm, his beard gently tickling. He kissed her with such sweetness it was almost unbearable. She closed her eyes and trembled.
Then he pulled her to him and held her against his chest. It was an awkward embrace, for they weren’t used to it, but still she felt it was her he held, not his Anna.
Evidently, Luke Schrock did not have a conscience. Jesse saw him huffing and puffing after Yardstick Yoder again, two days in a row, shouting out threats between gasping breaths, that he planned to pummel him if he ever caught him.
It was time to do something. The next day, Jesse waited a block away from the schoolhouse at three o’clock sharp. The very second school was dismissed, Yardstick burst out of the door and bounded away like a jackrabbit. Jesse watched in admiration. A few seconds later, Luke and his cronies came chugging after him. Jesse planted himself in the road to block them. He pointed to Luke. “You mess with Yardstick and you mess with me.”
Luke strutted up to Jesse, nose to nose, and jutted out his chin. “Who says?”
Jesse cocked a grin at the boy and lifted his fist with the gleaming brass knuckles. Luke jumped like a cricket, then lifted his shoulders in an exaggerated shrug. “What do you have against Yardstick, anyway?”
“Ruthie likes him,” Ethan Troyer piped up helpfully, and Luke swung around to give a hard jab to his stomach.
Ah, Jesse thought. Unrequited love. It rears its head again in Stoney Ridge.
“Well, touch him and you have to answer to me. Got it?”
Luke frowned, but he got the message and seemed to have run out of conversation. “Come on, let’s get out of here.” He released a tiny sigh, turned, and shuffled away.
Ethan remained for a moment, looking at Jesse in wide-eyed wonder, and Jesse felt a bright glow. He wasn’t immune to being admired.
“What is that thing, anyway?” Ethan asked.
Jesse held up the hardware for inspection. “We call them brass knuckles. They date back to the eighteenth century and were commonly used during the War Between the States.” Jesse had read up on them. He was nothing if not thorough.
Ethan nodded seriously, as if this bit of knowledge only confirmed his own vast experience, and Jesse hid a smile.
He slipped the brass knuckles back in his coat pocket before his nosy sisters caught sight of them and tattled to their father. Down in the schoolhouse playground, the twins played hopscotch. Molly sat on the porch, swinging her legs as she polished off the twins’ lunch leftovers. Ruthie stood guard, like always, one eye on Jesse and one eye on the little sisters.
Jesse had meant to return the brass knuckles to Andy at The Chicken Box on that rainy afternoon, but he and Katrina seemed to be having such a serious talk that he felt it would be an inappropriate intrusion. He could be sensitive like that. Plus, if he did it would mean that Katrina would be tipped off to their existence. He patted his pocket, pleased he had a chance to see the persuasive impact of brass knuckles on young Luke Schrock. Jesse didn’t like bullies.
He saw Birdy skim out of the schoolhouse and talk to the girls, blissful as she had been lately. Love looked good on her, Jesse realized. She was over her case of the flutters. Blunders. Sage hen blunders, Jesse thought of them, the clumsiest of all birds. And then there was his father. These last few days, his dad went around with the musing expression of a person caught up in a fresh rhythm of life.
Love. It’s amazing what it could do.
It was the end of the day. David was eager to lock up the store. Birdy said she would give Molly a cooking lesson tonight and he couldn’t wait to get home. It amazed him—he was in love!
It was a miracle how the Lord had prepared his heart to love again. Birdy had stolen his heart, an unadorned woman whose simplicity and good-heartedness made anyone else seem artificial and hard. He felt as if he was waking up after a long winter’s nap to find that spring had arrived.
As he turned the key in the store door, he spun around to find Andy Miller waiting in the parking lot, his big dog by his side. “Andy, hello.”
“I’ve been waiting here all afternoon to talk to you and haven’t had the guts to walk inside. I need . . . to make a confession.” Andy pushed his hat back and David saw a tightness around Andy’s eyes and a hollowness to his face, a sort of bewildered agony. All he was thinking, all he was feeling, showed on that troubled face.
“Perhaps,” David said, “perhaps we should go inside to talk.”
Seated in chairs in David’s storeroom, Andy poured out his story. David could see the remorse, hear it in his cracking voice, as Andy admitted what he’d been doing on Moss Hill over the last few months. The need for repentance came from his soul, and that was what David wanted to see, that was what he looked for. True repentance.
Confessions had a pattern, he realized, listening to Andy. And they were quite unremarkable. Not, of course, to the confessor, but to the one to whom the sins were confessed. They were all variations on a theme: deceit, betrayal, denial, and an obtuseness about how one’s actions could—and did—hurt others. Eventually, great regret, enough to drive one to confession. And then . . . soulful, soul-filled relief.
“Before I left town,” Andy said, brushing away tears as they ran down his cheeks, “I wanted to tell you how sorry I was.”
“But you’re definitely going to go?”
Andy nodded.
“Years ago, when I first opened my first store, I made a promise to God. Whenever someone walked through the doors of my store, I would pray to ask God to help me see that person as he sees him. Whenever I’ve prayed for you, Andy, I’ve sensed that God is at work in your soul, but that you’re fighting him. There’s a verse that keeps coming to mind whenever I’ve seen you. ‘Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.’” He put a hand on Andy’s shoulder. “Andy, maybe you should stay put and get to know this place. Keep yourself in an environment where God can shape your heart. Otherwise, your life is going to keep going along the same path.”
Quietly, Andy said, “She wants me to leave.”
“Katrina? Well, you might have some work to do to regain her trust. But just because she says that doesn’t mean she means it. And it doesn’t mean you have to.” He tilted his head. “Unless you want to leave?”
“I don’t.”
“Then . . . maybe you should go ask her if you can stay.”
Late afternoon, Katrina was checking on a few things in the mossery. She loved the smell of this old greenhouse: damp earth and moss. Overhead, the sky grew heavy with clouds, masking the sun as it headed toward the hill. Snow was forecast tonight, and it felt cold enough for it. The baby swirled and rolled inside her and she rubbed her tummy, grateful for this new life. Grateful for everything. She straightened her legs, stretching out her body, stretching out her mind.
It felt so good to be here. To be home. She felt it so deep that it hurt—a sweet, sad seizing of the soul.
She heard a bark, a familiar bark, and in burst Keeper through the open door to the mossery. The big dog made a beeline for Katrina, jumping onto her chest and nearly knocking her down. A moment or two later, Andy followed and filled the doorway. His shrill whistle cut through the air and the dog went slinking back to Andy with his tail tucked deep between his legs. Andy shooed him outside, but first bent and pushed his fingers through the dog’s thick pelt.
Everything in Katrina went still, as if every cell was holding its breath. He touched two fingers to the brim of his hat. “Hey, Katrina.”
“I thought you’d be long gone for greener pastures.”
He took off his hat and held it against his abdomen. “I haven’t left because I’ve had some thinking to do. Can we walk a little?” He gestured toward the door and she nodded. They walked side by side up the familiar path of the hillside, and she was aware of his legs and the swing of his arm so close to hers.
“I went to see your father this morning. I have a lot of respect for him.”
“So do I.”
“I told him everything. About Elmo, about the oil trap discovery, about deceiving Thelma.”
“What did he have to say?”
“He told me there was a Bible verse that kept swirling in his mind whenever he prayed for me.” Andy’s eyes grew glassy. “Imagine that. Your father prays for me.” He scuffed the ground with his shoe. “I don’t think anyone has prayed for me since my grandmother died.”
The way he stood there, looking so alone, it filled her with tenderness. She hadn’t known Andy all that long, and he didn’t make himself easily known, only when he had a mind to and that came in fits and starts. But this much she thought she knew about him: his life had left a taint on him, wounds and scars that went deep. Yet there was kindness in him, tenderness, laughter, unexpected wells of gentleness. He had no home, no family, and this more than anything struck her heart with pity for him. Family, friends, a home—those were what gave life meaning and joy.
He had yet to take his eyes off her. He didn’t seem to be breathing. “I want to stay in Stoney Ridge, Katrina.” She saw him swallow hard. “I’ll find work somewhere else, but I’d like to stay. I’ve spent the last few years on the move and I don’t want to do it anymore. For the first time in my life, I want to stay someplace. I want to make it home.”
He glanced over his shoulder toward the house and took a step closer. “I wanted to tell you that meeting you, your father, Thelma, you’ve all changed my life. You, most of all.”
She sucked in a deep breath, feeling almost dizzy, and her hand fluttered up to her throat. “Me? How?”
“A hundred ways,” he said, “but mainly by watching you cope with the problems you were facing. You didn’t run away. You didn’t look for the easy way out. You faced things, head-on, and tried to work through them, not around them. You woke up my world.”
In a way, she could say the same thing about Andy. She was a different person than she had been a few months ago. She had found herself here and he had been a part of that. Not entirely, but definitely a part.
She stared up into his face, a face that had somehow become dear to her, and a sharpness of tears pricked her eyelids but she fought them back. She had to swallow twice before she could speak. “You might not have heard that Thelma has deeded the property to me.”
A pleased look filled his eyes. “Good for her. Good for you.” He tilted his head. “You look well. You seem happy.”
“It’s still hard for me some days, some moments, but I am happy.” And the truth felt good to say, good to acknowledge within herself. She thought about the day she found out she was pregnant, how overwhelmed she’d felt. How differently she felt now.
She’d discovered one thing of great importance during this time. She was only nineteen years old, but already she knew what she wanted for the rest of her life.
She wanted that life to be here, on Moss Hill. She wanted to wake up every morning and look out to the hill propping up the sky. She wanted to grow moss and chickens and a vegetable garden and a family on this land, where she could breathe and feel alive. She wanted to be surrounded by her church, and realized, at that exact moment, that she was finally ready to be baptized. That feeling—waiting for faith enough for it to be real—that’s what her father had wanted her to do. And now it was.
So. She had learned two things of great importance during this time.
While they were talking, snowflakes came tumbling down, that kind that were big and fluffy and slow falling. The first snow of the year. She smiled, a true smile. “It just so happens that we are in need of a farmhand.”
He went utterly still. For the longest moment, he didn’t move, didn’t even breathe. Snowflakes kept falling on him and he didn’t brush them away. And then his face softened and a tenderness came into his eyes, a look that was familiar to her. “Really? Because I happen to have some experience at moss farming.”
“Thelma and I . . . we’re considering whether or not to have oil wells dug. We haven’t decided yet. We’re reading up about the pros and the cons, doing our due diligence.” That was a new business term she’d learned the other day and she enjoyed tossing it around.
“I want you to know that I voided the royalty agreement with Elmo. I voided it and tore it up.”
“I know. Thelma showed it to me.”
“Why would you give me a second chance?”
“Because you’re a good man, Andy. Not perfect, mind you,” she added, “but good.” He wasn’t like John. Not at all. John would never face the hurt he caused, not the way Andy was doing. John would never stay and see it through, not like Andy was doing. She grinned. “One more thing, though. We need to be as clear as we can about each other. You shouldn’t get the wrong idea and think that . . .” There she faltered.
“And think we have a future together,” he finished for her. Yet. She heard the word clearly in his head.
“Exactly,” she said aloud. “Don’t go thinking we have a future together.” Not yet, she thought.
“Your dad told me something else. He said that everyone’s journey begins somewhere.”
She smiled. “I’ve heard him use that phrase thousands of times.”
“So maybe . . . this is my beginning.” With that, he gave her a grin, such a grin, and strode toward the barn to unpack his belongings.