I spent the next week looking for a position as a blacksmith—either apprentice or full-fledged—but there were simply no openings anywhere. It seemed my only choices were to go ahead and open up my own shop or head down some other career path entirely. Neither option appealed to me. The ultimate plan to have my own blacksmith shop someday was far down the road from here, when I had more experience, more savings, and a better idea of where I might want to live.
As for committing to a different kind of work, I saw that as nonnegotiable. After a lifetime of wanting to be a blacksmith, I had finally achieved my goal. No way could I turn my back on it now, not after striving so hard to get here.
I knew I could always take the job Natasha had offered me, as at least it involved working with horses, but that wasn’t a long-term solution. Her world was Englisch and money and fanciness, mine was Plain and Amish and apart. Her stables had been a great place to visit, and I wouldn’t mind doing the occasional consult there, but spending my day, every day, in that environment was about as appealing to me as spending time in a ladies’ boutique would be to a horse.
Besides, something about our last few conversations had rubbed me the wrong way. I still thought of Duchess often and would have loved the chance to work with her, and I liked Natasha as well. But I hadn’t appreciated her attempts to bring me on board for some exorbitant salary without telling me why I’d be worth it to her. It seemed disingenuous, and I didn’t think I wanted any part of it.
As for my own internal state, neither Daed nor Mamm had been any more forthcoming about whatever it was they had seemed to be withholding that first night I came home. I still had hopes they would open up eventually. Sometimes a person just needed a little space to think things through first.
In the meantime, at least, I had a distraction. Searching for a job was completely filling my days, leaving only the nights for extra thought and prayer.
On the morning of August eleventh, the first day of my second week of joblessness, Daed said he had something to show me. As soon as we finished our breakfast, we put on our hats and headed outside into a muggy Monday sunrise.
We started for the buggy shop, a long and wide Morton building that housed Daed’s entire manufacturing operation. Six buggies at once could be built inside it, and several more could be in the repair bay. There were sections for welding, fabrication, upholstery, painting, and assembly. I had worked every phase of the buggy operation, as had my three brothers, Tyler, and several cousins.
But Daed swung wide of the whole thing. We continued past the building and took a right at its corner by the barn, moving toward an outbuilding in which he stored buggy parts.
We stopped at it.
“I was thinking if you wanted, you could fix this up as your own blacksmith shop. We’re far enough away from Amos’s place that I don’t think he could complain too much.”
I appreciated the offer, but I knew he was wrong about Amos. “Our agreement was ten miles at a minimum, Daed. You know this can’t be more than eight.”
“So you go and you talk to him first. I think a couple of miles of grace is the least he could do.”
“Maybe so,” I said, doubting it, “but what about you? You need this building for your own business. All your spare parts are in here.”
“Ya, but they don’t need to be. It makes more sense to keep them at the main building. Tyler’s been saying so for a while. He’s figured out a way to rearrange the inventory so we can fit everything in one building. And I know some of the materials in here are obsolete anyway, so it needs a good cleaning out. It’s big enough, I think, for a small blacksmith shop. I’ve seen Amos’s setup. You could do the same thing here. It would just be a little tighter. One horse at a time instead of three.”
I didn’t know what to say. Of course I appreciated Daed’s offer, but there was still the matter of my needing more experience. I also didn’t know if I was ready to admit my only option was to open a little side business at the buggy shop and hope that it would grow.
When I said nothing, he went on. “I know it’s probably not your dream location, son, and it might take a while to fix up and get a forge and all that, but I know how much you wanted to focus on farrier work and how hard it must be to have all that disappear on you overnight. Both your Mamm and I are feeling bad about it. You don’t deserve what happened to you. I can’t front you any money to get things started, but I can offer you this building if you want it.”
“Thanks, Daed,” I finally said. “I really appreciate this. I’ll think on it.”
And I did think on it for the next few days. At first, it was just a remote possibility, but with every blacksmith shop that said they weren’t hiring and every classified ad that did me no good, my father’s idea began to grow on me more and more. It still wasn’t an ideal location, but at least it was worth further consideration.
On Wednesday evening, Daed and I sat down together with pen and paper, a calculator, and a stack of farrier supply catalogs. Together, we worked up a figure that realistically represented the investment required to supply and stock a fully functional blacksmith shop. It was higher than either one of us expected.
I could see the defeat settling into my father’s shoulders. When we’d crunched the numbers for a third time and still came out too high, he sighed heavily, turned off the calculator, and slipped it into the drawer.
“I’m sorry, son. I’ve been thinking you could get something temporary, just to earn your seed money. But this much would take way too long. To reach that figure in a reasonable amount of time… well, that’s just not going to happen. I don’t know anywhere you could work and earn that kind of money.”
I stared at the number on the page. I thought about my other prospects. I calculated how long it would take.
Then I met my father’s eyes and told him, “I do.”
I finally heard from Priscilla a few days later.
Dear Jake,
Thank you so much for the notes. I have enjoyed them more than you know. I was so sorry to hear about the job situation, but at least it sounds like you’re doing okay.
In my Bible reading this morning, I came across a familiar verse I wanted to share. You know in Ecclesiastes, the part about how there’s a time to every purpose under heaven? In the list of purposes, it says there’s “a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.”
See? Even God is saying you should be fully aware of what your heart is telling you.
Blessings,
Priscilla
I wrote back to her that very hour, penning the note at the kitchen table and then taking it to the post office in Paradise so that it would be on its way to her the next morning.
Dear Priscilla,
It was great to hear from you at last. And thanks for invoking the Word of God to prove your point.
After zero success in turning up work as a blacksmith, I finally accepted a job with Natasha Fremont that starts next week. It’s not ideal, but it’s only temporary. My goal is to earn enough there so I can open a shop of my own.
For now, the biggest hurdle with this job is going to be the commute, as you can imagine. Using the bus, it’ll be about an hour each way, every day, including one transfer and walking a mile at both ends. Other than that, it should be okay. I look forward to seeing January and Duchess again, and at least it will be nice getting to know all of the other horses there too.
Sincerely,
Jake
The next note, short and sweet, arrived from her within the same week.
Dear Jake,
The best thing about long bus rides is that they give you time to think.
And because you have a lot of thinking to do, I figure this is just about perfect.
Blessings,
Priscilla
Tyler and Rachel came over for supper on Friday night, and it was great to see them. After two weeks of just me and Mamm and Daed, I was a little too overeager. In my mind, I’d been envisioning a long night of popcorn and brownies and a rousing game of Settlers of Catan, our favorite. But Rachel seemed tired, likely due to her condition, and they ended up leaving by eight.
As I stood in the driveway and watched them pull away in their buggy, I felt a pang of loneliness that twisted into a knot in my gut. I realized I was in a wilderness as far as my social life was concerned. I had already been feeling too old to be going to the singings and such with Amanda, and now that I was no longer courting her, I wouldn’t have to worry about that anymore. But that was the only social life I’d had for a while. Most of my friends here in this district were already married. I didn’t know what I was going to do with myself in my free time. In the past, I could have hung out with Tyler—hunting, hiking, playing board games or tetherball or whatever—but for the most part those days were gone. He had a wife now and a child on the way. I couldn’t ask him for more than the occasional pity hike.
Later, I laid awake for quite a while in the bed that had been Tyler’s in the room that had been mine. I kept thinking back to earlier in the week, to the morning Daed first offered me the spare parts building for my shop. His words to me as we’d stood there and talked began echoing in my head now.
How hard it must be to have all that disappear on you overnight.
How hard it must be to have all that disappear on you overnight.
How hard it must be to have all that disappear on you overnight.
The echoes wouldn’t stop. I started to pray to silence them, but they seemed to only grow louder, as if the very walls of my childhood room were shouting them. A breeze from outside began to sing around the eaves, and it sounded like someone crying.
Someone crying.
I bolted straight up in my bed.
This room, that sound. A memory began to creep over me, indistinct and vaporous. I sat still as a stone as I waited for it to settle and materialize. But then, as quickly as it was there, it was gone.