10

David waited for the right moment to drop the bomb. The house was empty, and he was nonchalantly looking for a snack to tide him over to supper as Ruthie sat at the table, absorbed in preparing a lengthy Penn Dutch vocabulary list for Patrick Kelly. “Ruthie, the school board paid a call this morning. Danny Riehl is going to stay on at Prince Edward Island.They’d like you to consider taking the teaching job this next term.”

Ruthie’s head remained bent over her work. “No. Absolutely not. Never. Not in a million years.”

“I don’t understand that. You love learning.”

She sighed and put her pencil down, then turned around to face him. “I do. But I don’t like teaching.”

“You’re teaching Patrick.”

“That’s different.”

“How so?”

“It’s only for one month. And he’s paying me a lot of money. Even still, the whole process of teaching tries my patience.” She lifted her hands in a helpless gesture. “You might not have noticed, but I’m not a particularly patient person.”

“Actually, I have noticed.” Everyone knew about Ruthie’s short fuse. “What would you like to do for work? The Inn at Eagle Hill isn’t steady work.”

“I’ve been giving that topic a lot of thought.” Slowly, she pulled an envelope out of her Penn Dutch–English dictionary and handed it to him. “I took the GED. And . . . I passed.”

He opened the envelope and read the scores. “You did more than pass. You sailed through it.” He smiled at her. He wasn’t surprised she did so well, not at all. Ruthie had a fine mind.

“You’re not mad?”

“Not that you passed. I’m only disappointed you felt the need to hide it from me.”

He saw her subtly guarded mask drop and her expression change to discouragement and confusion. A memory, more a feeling than a vision, flashed through his mind. He remembered what it felt like to be seventeen or eighteen, about the time his mother was applying daily pressure to make him get baptized. The closer and closer the day drew, the further and further his interest in baptism grew. He understood some—not all, but some—of Ruthie’s inner turmoil.

Ruthie propped her elbows on the table and held her head in her hands. “Dad, I know what I don’t want to do. The problem is that I don’t know what I do want to do. Other than . . . I know I want to keep learning. Is that so wrong?”

David swept a hand toward the living room, where he had a full wall of a bookshelf, filled with books. “I understand. I feel the same way.”

“It’s different for you. You’re a bishop. You’re supposed to know everything.”

“Honey, do you really think I wouldn’t be reading books if I weren’t in leadership? Of course not. I love to read. I love to learn. So do you. No one wants to change that part of you. It’s the best part of you. It’s the way God made you. It’s a gift he’s given you—your curiosity, your intelligence.”

“I don’t want to teach school.”

This wasn’t working. He needed to try a different approach. “Have you ever heard of the Dead Sea?”

She squeezed her eyes shut in that oh-no-a-sermon-is-coming way.

He persevered, nevertheless, well conditioned to that look from his children. “It’s actually not a sea but a stagnant lake near Jordan and Israel. The Jordan River flows into the Dead Sea, but nothing flows out of it. Because of that, water depletes only through evaporation. Water in the Dead Sea is six times as salty as the ocean. Nothing can grow in it. No seaweed, no plants, no fish.” He paused, hoping she would mull over the parallel he was trying to make, and noticed dirt on the floor that he must have tracked in from the barn. He grabbed a broom and dustpan from the kitchen to sweep it up. “Do you understand what I’m getting at?”

“Yes. You’re trying to make me take the teaching job.”

David finished sweeping the dirt into the dustpan with deliberate movements and straightened up, regarding his daughter with an exaggerated display of patience. “No. I would never do that. But I do want you to consider the Dead Sea as a picture of what happens when we don’t use our gifts. They’re meant to be shared with others. If you only take information in, then you’re using your gift for selfish reasons.”

She was silent.

“Consider the teaching job, please. Pray about it.”

“Dad, teachers need patience. I have none.”

He smiled. “Pray about that too.”

It was an auspicious day, warm but not too warm, with blue skies and a gentle breeze. Hank Lapp was at the buggy shop, flopped in a chair in the shade, talking about the weather to the apprentices, who were listening to him with rapt attention, as if hearing that it might rain later on today was a shocking news flash. Why, Ruthie wondered, did people talk about the weather so much? Anyone could see for himself, just by looking out the window. It might appear to be a bright, sunny day right now, but there were a few clouds gathering in the distance, and the breeze was really quite brisk, and that might mean a shower later on. A simple deduction.

Then Hank gave his own weather deduction and Ruthie had to cover her mouth to stifle a laugh. “Wann ich so lass fiel, noh meen ich watt Rege am kumme.” When I feel so listless, then I think rain is coming.

When was Hank Lapp ever not listless?

Suddenly, Hank vaulted to his feet and sniffed the air. “Fresh cherry pie! Out of the oven. Let’s go, boys!” He started toward the kitchen of Windmill Farm and the two apprentices dropped their tools and followed along, like two tigers on the trail of a gazelle.

C.P., stirred from his nap in the shade by the clamor of tools dropping on the floor, perked up his ears, sniffed the air, and charged after them. Jesse sighed. “Hank Lapp’s olfactory sense is top-notch. Too bad there isn’t employment for being a sterling sniffer.” He watched the three of them as they bolted toward the farmhouse like there was a fire. C.P. weaved between their legs and made a general nuisance of himself. The dog slipped into the farmhouse with them, then the door opened again and the dog was banished to sit on the porch.

It was lovely, the scent of Fern’s cherry pie drifting gently in the wind, silently inviting others by making their mouth water in anticipation. One of the great pleasures of life, Patrick had said the other day, as Birdy was browning beef for stew on the stovetop while Ruthie tutored him in Penn Dutch at the kitchen table. “Such good smells,” he had said, inhaling deeply. “There are certain smells of the Amish that warm the heart.”

“What?” Ruthie said. “Like what?” The sour tang of manure instantly came to mind.

“Like the aroma that comes from a pail of warm milk, straight from the cow. Or how about the sweet smell of freshly mown hay? Now there’s a scent I wish I could capture and put in a bottle. Send it to my suburban-dwelling parents.”

Those generous remarks had startled Ruthie, like so many of Patrick’s observations about her people. He saw beauty in such commonplace things, sights and smells she had been immersed in and never gave a second thought.

She gave an affectionate stroke down a horse’s muzzle and watched Jesse try to unscrew a stubborn bolt in a broken reflector on the back of a buggy. “So how are buggy lessons working out for Patrick?”

“Patrick? He’s very conscientious.” Jesse peered around the buggy to answer her. “But not very coordinated.”

She smiled. She’d noticed the same thing about Patrick. Just the other day, the same day as Birdy’s beef stew making, she tossed him an apple to eat and he completely missed it. It ended up hitting him in the mouth and he cut his lip with his teeth. She had felt terrible. “Jesse, what would you be doing if you weren’t Amish?”

“Doing?”

“Yes. Doing.” She sat down on the ground and hugged her knees to her chest. “Do you think you would go to college?”

Jesse arched his back in a stretch. “If I could choose any life, at any time, I would sail a ship across the ocean to the farthest corners of the world. Or go west with the pioneers into the open prairies.”

“Let’s narrow it down to contemporary times.”

“Oh. Then, I’d be an astronaut. No doubt about that. I’d be heading to Mars.”

She gave him a curious look. “So, you see yourself as an adventurer.”

“Yes.”

“Then why are you working in a buggy shop with two simpleminded apprentices?”

“Because this is where I’m meant to be.” He frowned. “And trying to teach those two anything is a daily adventure.”

“Don’t you feel as if you’re made for something more? Like, you should be doing something really important with your life. Not just stuck—”

Jesse’s head snapped up and she realized, too late, she had offended him. She spoke without thinking, as if the words had been rising inside her like hot steam in a kettle.

“Not just stuck in a buggy shop, you mean?”

She wanted to go back to where they’d been a moment before, the familiarity, but worried the moment had passed. “I didn’t mean to imply there’s anything wrong with repairing buggies.”

“Good,” he snapped, in a crisp you’ve-hurt-me tone. “Because I do see my work as important.” His voice softened. “The buggy repairs . . . they help everyone get where they need to be safely. And teaching those two numbskulls some skills that might benefit them in life . . . that means something to me.” He reached down to pat his dog, C.P., who had slunk back to the buggy shop after Fern’s rude banishment from the farmhouse. “Ruthie, I understand that you’re feeling frustrated about what to do with your life. I’ve felt that way too. Most everyone has. I can’t tell you what to do, but don’t lump all the right things, the good things in your life, with that pile of frustration.”

She looked up at her brother’s eyes, almost the same color as her own—blueberry blue, a Stoltzfus trait. “What do you mean?”

“After Mom died, I didn’t care about anything, especially about being Amish. I got pretty full of myself, thinking I could pick and choose which rules I liked and which I didn’t. I hurt a lot of people with that way of thinking. It took someone believing in me, thinking I had something to offer, that made me see our way of life in a different way. I started to appreciate what it meant to be part of something bigger than myself.”

“Who?”

He tipped his head toward the farmhouse. “Fern Lapp’s School of Reform for Wayward Boys.”

A laugh burst out of Ruthie. She hadn’t realized Fern had made such an impact on her brother, but now that she thought about it, she could see it was true. Jesse was different, less self-centered, not at all lazy like he used to be, and more caring too. “The thing is . . . I just want to matter.”

“That’s just it.” Jesse picked up a buggy wheel in need of repair. “See these missing spokes? It might not seem as if they matter. In fact, the wheel could keep going for a while longer. But soon, the weight of the buggy will start to take a toll on this wheel. More spokes will break and the rim will be unbalanced and start to bend out of shape. Every single spoke is needed to keep the buggy balanced. Each one matters.

“Every part of the equation influences the whole. You’re part of our equation, Ruthie. You do matter. If you weren’t a part of us, we’d have a missing spoke.”

Ruthie knew all about missing spokes.

Jesse grabbed a rag and wiped his hands. “I’m going in for some cherry pie before it’s all gone.” He threw the rag on the top of his workbench and looked at her. “You coming?”

“No. There’s somewhere I need to be.” She picked up her scooter and rolled down the driveway, not really sure where that somewhere she needed to be was, but she was leaving Jesse with what she had come for: a lifting of her spirits.

Now that David’s attention had been alerted, he kept bumping into more and more evidence that church members were neglecting the Sabbath. He learned that young Willie King had agreed to work at a farmers’ market in Lancaster on his off-Sundays. When David asked Willie King why, he said he was paid time and a half.

And this was a family who had recently received a bonus from an oil lease signing. Why did Willie King need more? Why did his parents, Ida and Ora, need more?

Why did any of them keep needing more?

It came down to the same issue, in David’s mind. The more money people had, the more they wanted. Longed for, lusted for. He remembered a buggy horse he’d had as a boy, nicknamed “Hay Burner.” This Thoroughbred had such a high metabolism that its appetite could not be satisfied. That one horse took twice the feed as a normal workhorse. That’s what was happening in Stoney Ridge. Prosperity was turning people into hay burners.

There was nothing David could do about Willie King. He wasn’t baptized, not yet a church member, and his mother just threw her hands up in the air, as if she couldn’t do anything to change his mind. “I’ve talked to him until I’m blue in the face,” Ida King said.

The problem, David felt, was not what she said but the example she led. While she might have told her son not to work on off-Sundays despite higher pay, she had recently signed an oil lease and promptly used the signing bonus for a new, slightly used buggy. There was nothing wrong with her old buggy. It was just . . . old.

And then David found himself caught in a tight spot. Jesse’s buggy business was starting to thrive. It had taken him years to get that business sorted out from the mess of Hank Lapp. He had practically taught himself how to make repairs, how to develop a solid reputation for timeliness and reliability. If David were to start putting pressure on the church to reduce expenditures, Jesse’s business would be the first to suffer.

How could he do that to his own son?

He hung his head. Sabbath-keeping seemed so simple, so clear, but it wasn’t quite as easy as it looked.

He found himself filled with a tension, even dread, that he hadn’t expected. He sat back in his chair, suddenly fatigued.