16

Luke was waiting for Ruthie outside Eli Zook’s kitchen. “Let’s go to Blue Lake Pond,” he said, as soon as she came down the steps. “Please. It’ll be fun. Like old times.”

She’d been out with Luke enough times to know how this would play out. “Luke,” she said, “I don’t think I’m going to go.”

He seemed genuinely disappointed. “But . . . I want you there for the games.”

The strange thing was that not so long ago, just a few months, she would’ve been jumping at the chance, pleased that Luke didn’t want to go without her. But today, all she could think about was how Patrick was faring, and if his cold was getting worse.

“C’mon,” he teased. “You’re my good luck charm. I never lose when you’re with me.”

The pull of old habits tugged hard. It was only two o’clock on a beautiful summer day. She wasn’t needed at home. “Fine. I’ll go.”

But she regretted that decision as soon as she climbed out of the buggy in the parking area of Blue Lake Pond and felt very . . . uncool. It was an effect Luke’s friends almost always had on her. In their company, she felt acutely aware of her tightly pinned hair, her plain dress and apron, her starched organza prayer cap. Most everyone was Amish, from different churches, but nearly everyone ditched their plain garb for the evening and wore jeans and T-shirts. She couldn’t let herself go that far.

“Hi!” she said, smiling, as a few girls approached the buggy.

Too loud, she thought.

It didn’t matter. Since Ruthie had broken things off with Luke, they never paid any attention to her, only Luke. “Hey . . . Luke!” one girl called to him and he waved back. He wasn’t immune to the flirting. She knew he could have pretty much any girl he wanted. So why was she even here this afternoon? Why had she let him talk her into going with him?

Because it was a glorious summer day, she wasn’t expected at home, and there was no reason why she shouldn’t enjoy the lake. Luke untied the kayak off the top of the buggy roof and lifted it easily over his head, smiling from head to toe. Ruthie got the paddles out of the backseat and followed Luke down the shore to join the others. The beach was already packed with teenagers, kayaks, volleyball. Luke fist-bumped a couple of his friends on the beach, then stood talking to a group of them.

Within a few minutes, Luke had pulled off his shirt and was in the water, paddling out to the center of the pond in his kayak beside a couple of buddies. Ruthie took off her shoes and socks. The soft sand swirled around her toes, sun-warmed on top and cold underneath.

She plopped down on the sand to watch Luke. He and his friends played a game of chicken out in the water. Two boys paddled their kayaks to the center of the pond and faced each other, about fifty feet apart. Someone on shore would blow a whistle and the two kayaks would rush each other. Whoever swerved first lost the game. It was harmless fun, and the worst thing that ever happened was someone’s kayak would tip over and he’d get a dunking.

Luke paddled back out for more rounds of chicken. He never lost at kayak chicken and she grew bored of watching. A gentle summer breeze wafted over Ruthie, and she closed her eyes, listening to the sounds of summer at the lake. She was starting to relax, starting to feel glad she’d come.

Too soon, Luke returned. He leaned close to shake water from his hair, the spray pelting her. Someone brought out hot dogs to roast on sticks over an open fire, someone else passed around a big bag of potato chips. Naturally, there was the ever-present, bottomless pit of six-packs of cold beer, which Luke and his friends dove into. He offered her one, but she turned it down.

As the sun dipped down the horizon, guys and girls gathered around the fire, eating, laughing, drinking. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a small flash of light. Someone was lighting a twig. No, not a twig. Too big. A cigarette? No. It had a brown wrap, like the wrapping of a cigar. The guy who lit it drew a deep breath and held it, before slowly exhaling. A sweet smell, like alfalfa hay, filled the air. Ruthie could see it being passed from one person to another.

“What is that?” she whispered to Luke.

“A blunt.”

“A what?”

“It’s . . . kinda like a small cigar. Better though.” He put it to his lips and inhaled slowly, holding his breath for a long moment, before he passed the blunt to her. She held the wrapped glowing light in her hand . . . wondering what magic this little thing held that made it so enticing.

“Use it or pass it,” a boy called to her.

“Go ahead,” Luke whispered. “Give it a try.”

Ruthie looked at him, then around the circle, resting eyes on the guy who had first lit the blunt. Watching him watch her, she tossed the blunt directly into the center of the fire.

“Hey!” the guy roared. “What are you doing? That cost good money!”

She stood up. “I need to get home.”

Luke tugged on her dress sleeve. “Chill out, Ruthie.”

“No. I want to leave. You can stay but I’m leaving.” She started walking up the shore.

Luke snatched his shirt and ran to catch up. He grabbed her arm to make her stop. “What is with you lately?”

“I’ve put up with your derelict friends, and I’ve put up with your drinking . . . but I’m not putting up with that.”

“Then just pass it along. No one was forcing you to try it.”

“You’ve tried it before, haven’t you? That’s why sometimes your eyes look weird. Dilated.”

Luke blinked slowly, his head tilted as if he was considering the appearance of his pupils. “It’s no big deal, Ruthie. Marijuana is legalized in a bunch of states.” He cut her off, brightly raising a finger in the air, as if to point to the source of his inspiration. “And you’re the one who wants me to drink less.”

“Me? You’re smoking marijuana to appease me?” She shook her head. “You can justify anything.”

“Maybe you should try it before you get so high and mighty. It might loosen you up a little. Geez, you’re wound so tight lately. You used to be—”

“Stop it!” Halfway to the buggy, she wheeled around on him. “Don’t turn this into my problem.” She climbed into the driver side of Luke’s buggy.

“Hold it. If I’m taking you home, then I’m driving.”

“You’re not driving me anywhere. You can either get in the passenger side or stay here and get a ride home from someone.”

From down on the shore, a girl called Luke’s name. He glanced back at the bonfire.

“I’m sure she’d be happy to give you a ride home. As for me, I’m going alone.” She snapped the reins on the horse’s rump, perhaps a little harder than she should have, and nearly ran the buggy wheel over Luke’s foot as it lurched forward. He ran along and jumped in the open door as she circled the parking area. Once she reached the road, she pushed the horse to a fast trot, jostling Luke as he tried to slide the door closed. He made a strange choking noise, and fearing that he was going to throw up, she pulled over onto the shoulder. Luke slumped against the passenger door. He was drunk. Or worse.

“Luke,” Ruthie said. “Don’t you dare get sick in—”

But she was interrupted by blue and red lights in her rearview mirror and one short burst of police siren, which was enough to cause her to cry out. “Straighten up!” she barked at Luke. “And don’t say anything.”

She put down her window as a flashlight came poking into the interior of the buggy. She looked up. The police officer was Matt Lehman. “Ruthie? Your right taillight is out. Makes it very hard to see a buggy, even with the reflector.”

“I didn’t realize. I’ll have my brother fix it tomorrow.” Now wasn’t the time to point out that this was Luke Schrock’s horse and buggy. Matt wouldn’t care whose it was.

Matt frowned. “Have you been drinking, Ruthie?”

“Me? No. I don’t drink.”

Matt poked his head into the buggy and studied Luke, leaning against the buggy window. “Is he drunk?”

“Affirmative,” Luke said, without opening his eyes.

Ruthie sighed. She had hoped Luke would pretend to be asleep. She hoped he was asleep.

Matt studied Luke for a second and then Ruthie for a longer second. Finally, he said, “Seems like you could do a lot better than Luke Schrock, Ruthie.”

“You’re so, so right.”

“Hey!” Luke said.

She kept her eyes on the twitchy ears of the horse.

“How’s your aunt doing?”

“Good, I think. Over the last week, she had a few more patients come in to the practice. She seems a lot more encouraged.”

Matt straightened up. “I could give you a ticket for that taillight. You know what happens when a buggy and a car collide. The buggy always loses.”

“I know.” She knew all too well.

“You’re almost home, so I’m going to let you off with a warning. Be smart, Ruthie. Get that taillight fixed.” Luke let out a deep snore. “And maybe give some thought to getting rid of your boyfriend.”

“I will,” she said. Both.

David was flummoxed over Eli Zook’s barn raising . . . or lack thereof. After he left the Zook farm, he went straight to Henry Smucker’s, the church’s architect of barn building, to find out what had happened to the ordering of the lumber. And to find out what had happened to Henry Smucker.

And then came a shock. Henry hadn’t ordered the lumber because he had forgotten all about Eli Zook’s barn raising and gone fishing with Hank Lapp. David learned all of this through a visit to Edith Fisher Lapp, sister to Henry, wife to Hank. David interrupted her as she was in the middle of canning cherries in a steam-filled kitchen. David asked why she wasn’t at Eli Zook’s today, and she pointed a large cherry-stained finger at a counter full of bowls of pitted cherries, as if it was obvious. “When the fruit is ripe, you don’t wait.”

She gave David a look of mild exasperation when he asked her why she hadn’t thought to let anyone know about the fishing trip. She folded her arms across her ample middle section and looked down at him through spectacles perched on her nose. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” she snapped.

“Well, yes,” David said, which only annoyed her all the more.

Since she was already irritated with him, David went ahead with the question that had been rumbling around his mind for weeks. “Why did you and Hank buy a golf cart?”

Edith sighed a grievous sigh. She never had fully accepted David as the bishop. In her mind, he was too young, too inexperienced. Too everything. “To get the eggs down to the roadside stand.”

“And a wagon or pony cart wouldn’t suffice?”

“Not with Hank. The way he handles a horse or pony, taking corners too tight, he tips the cart so my eggs jiggle and break. The golf cart has solved that problem. And it runs on a battery, you know.” She gave him a look as if to dare him to find fault with that.

He wasn’t quite sure how to respond, so he didn’t.

Tonight, after David saw Ruthie march into the house and go straight upstairs, apparently bothered about something, he sat at his desk and opened his Bible, the best way he knew to settle his mind, his heart, and to seek God’s wisdom. He read a passage from Exodus 16, about the manna that rained down from heaven to help sustain the Israelites as they wandered in the desert, slowly making their way to the Promised Land. Two verses kept running through his mind. “And the children of Israel did so, and gathered, some more, some less. And when they did mete it with an omer, he that gathered much had nothing over, and he that gathered little had no lack; they gathered every man according to his eating.”

Not too much, not too little. Just enough.

He sat back in his chair, feeling that something had arrived and hovered over Stoney Ridge, like a low-lying cloud.

The church seemed to have lost a sense of “enough.” The income from the oil traps wasn’t the problem. Money was only a tool. It was the attitude that came along with the income. Instead of drawing a line in the sand on a lifestyle and sharing the abundance, church members had merely erased the line and moved it farther out. A new line, one that included an emphasis on leisure and pleasure. Curiously, it seemed to correlate with a de-emphasis on caring for those in need.

David remembered another bishop once describing that very thing: the more money we make, the less we give away. He thought, surely that couldn’t be true for Stoney Ridge, with all the income that was coming in from the oil leases. Surely not here.

But the issue kept poking at him.

Nyna the Mynah had become a local celebrity. Jesse’s youngest sisters, Emily and Lydie, told anyone who would listen about Patrick Kelly’s talking bird. Even Jesse found himself driving out of his way to drop by the cottage at the Inn at Eagle Hill to hear Nyna’s latest wisdom: “Be slow to anger!” “All things are possible!” “A time for everything!”

She was better than a circus show, that bird.

When Edith Fisher Lapp heard about Nyna the Mynah, she sent word to Jesse to bring Patrick over to the house with the bird. She was persistent about it, absolutely relentless, which translated to sending her husband, Hank, over to the buggy shop each day in the golf cart to remind Jesse. He didn’t have time for bird visits! He had a buggy shop to run. He had apprentices and a dog to mind. He had to keep an eye on Jenny Yoder.

But it wasn’t easy to put off Edith Fisher Lapp.

Luke Schrock dropped by the shop on Monday afternoon when Hank was hanging around. Patrick happened to be there too, when Luke volunteered to take the bird over to visit Edith.

“Only if Patrick goes too,” Jesse said, shooting him a look of warning.

“Of course!” Luke said, as if such a thing would never occur to him. He seemed wounded by the implication. “I’ll take your scooter home and get the bird, then I’ll be right back. Fifteen minutes, tops.”

Jesse felt a little bad about always assuming the worst of Luke, but he thought he detected a troublemaking look in his eyes. Maybe that was just Luke’s regular look. If he could get Edith off Jesse’s back, he would be doing him a favor. Jesse should be grateful, not suspicious. Ruthie had told him Luke promised he was turning over a new leaf. He had promised he would stop drinking and avoid his no-good friends. New leafs were a welcome thing. Jesse should be supportive, not skeptical.

But then, as so often happened when Luke Schrock was involved, disaster struck.

Patrick went with Luke and Hank to take the bird over to Edith’s. They returned much sooner than Jesse expected, without Patrick and Nyna the Mynah. According to Hank, who relished giving Jesse and the apprentices a blow-by-blow account, Nyna the Mynah had stared her black beady eyes at Edith and let loose a string of hair-curling cuss words.

Edith was outraged. Patrick was mortified, hugely apologetic, and thoroughly baffled as to how his bird had gained that particular vocabulary.

Hank retold the story twice, doubled over with laughter, as red in the face as a turkey gobbler. The apprentices ran for Jesse’s dictionary to try to figure out what the words meant. Luke remained stone-faced, shocked and disappointed by Patrick. Saint Patrick, he called him.

But when Luke thought no one was looking, Jesse saw a look of mirth flit through his eyes. Here and then gone.

Whenever Galen King was away from the Inn at Eagle Hill to attend an auction, Luke would slip into his stable and ride the newest horse, bareback, the one straight off the racetrack, hot-blooded, eager to run. It was Luke’s favorite on-the-sly pastime.

On Wednesday afternoon, as Ruthie and Patrick watched from the open paddock, Luke was dashing around the property of the Inn at Eagle Hill on a new Sorrel Bay, a Thoroughbred horse Galen had recently purchased to train as a buggy horse. The horse was lathered up, eyes wild, as Luke yanked hard on its reins and pulled it to a stop in front of them. The horse stomped its legs impatiently, but Luke had the reins pulled so tightly its mouth was stretched.

“How about you, Saint Patrick?” Luke said. “You ready to give this horse a try?”

“Stop it, Luke,” Ruthie said.

“What, are you scared?” Luke taunted. “You do look a little pale. Don’t tell me you’re not man enough to ride this gentle little pony. I got him all warmed up for you.” The horse was panting, its nostrils flaring.

“Knock it off, Luke. He’s never been on a horse.”

Luke smiled that mean smile. “There’s a first time for everything. Right, Saint Patrick? You said you wanted to live the Amish life. That includes knowing all about horses.”

“Then go get a gentled horse,” Ruthie said. “Racehorses are trained to run. This one’s barely rideable.”

Patrick spoke for the first time, his voice tight. He spoke in English, not Penn Dutch as Luke and Ruthie had been doing. “Thank you, Ruthie, but I can answer for myself.” He drew himself up tall. “Perhaps another time.” He turned and walked to the cottage.

To his back, Luke shouted, “Farichbutz!” Coward.

Patrick swiveled and strode back to Luke. “Socrates was once asked, ‘What is courage?’ He responded by saying that there were times when the courageous thing to do was not to persevere but to retreat or even flee.” He lifted his palms in the air. “Thus, I am retreating.”

“Then you, my friend, have a thing or two to learn from the Greeks,” Luke said, arrogance in his voice. “Alexander the Great would have never retreated.”

Patrick didn’t offer up a retort, though Ruthie could see the forceful jut of his chin. He simply turned and went to the cottage.

When the door to the cottage shut, Luke turned to Ruthie with a smirk. “Imagine that. Quoting Socrates to justify cowardice.”

“Imagine who you’ve become,” Ruthie said, furious. “Justifying fun at the expense of another.”

David was surprised to see Ruthie standing at the door to his storeroom at the Bent N’ Dent. She had spent a few hours helping Dok unpack her office and said she’d come by at closing time to hitch a ride home. Was it five o’clock already? He glanced at the wall clock. It was!

“Come in,” he urged.

Ruthie closed the door behind her. “Dad, who was Socrates?”

He put down his pen. “Socrates was a wise Greek man. It’s thought that he’s responsible for shaping Western philosophy.”

“When did he live?”

David rubbed his forehead. “I think . . . somewhere around 400 to 300 BC.” He wondered what had triggered her curiosity about Socrates. “Are you asking for any special reason?”

“Patrick said something about Socrates and courage. That sometimes the courageous thing is to know when to retreat.”

David nodded. “That’s in reference to the Laches, a dialogue written by Plato, another Greek philosopher. Two generals had gone to Plato to resolve a question about what true courage is. Socrates kept questioning them to find the faults in their thinking. That’s what Socrates did best—questioning and questioning, so the seeker came to his own discoveries. Truth discovered is better than truth told.”

“So how does the story end?”

“The generals go back and forth, examining all sides of courage, but they are stumped. It allows the reader to come to a conclusion. Courage is strength in the face of knowledge.”

“What does that mean?”

“I think it means that true courage is acting on the truth we find.” He could see Ruthie was taking it all in, and he wondered why Patrick Kelly had sparked this particular conversation. But then, he was finding that Patrick Kelly’s presence was sparking quite a few unexpected conversations this summer.