FERN HAD THE STRANGE SENSORY EXPERIENCE THAT SHE was weightless as she felt herself held against him, his arms solid as oak and the press of his long legs against the back of her skirt like mountain rock. Yet there was restraint present as well. She felt his quick intake of breath, and she herself breathed as if she’d just run across two plowed fields. Her heart hammered loudly in her ears.
“Are you all right?” His voice was low in her ear.
She remembered his comment about her hair and stiffened in his arms. “Of course. You may let me go . . . I wouldn’t want to offend you any further with my hair being down.”
Instead of removing his arms, Abram bent closer so that she could feel the brush of his own hair against her cheek. He laughed. “Hair like yours could never offend. I was being irritable, and I apologize.”
She sniffed, breathing in the strange male scent of him— like spices with a deeper musky undertone that did little to help her focus on the matter at hand.
“May I?” he asked, and she scrambled desperately for the response to a question she couldn’t recall.
“Are you going to kiss her?” Matthew asked eagerly.
Abram turned her in his arms as if she were light as thistledown, until they both faced the interested face of the boy at the table.
“Nee,” Abram breathed, then abruptly let her go.
Fern straightened her spine. “Nee, he most certainly is not. I must be leaving. A gut day to you.” She carefully marched over the pile of blocks on the floor and hit the screen door handle with force, feeling it give with a satisfying squeak that echoed behind her in the drifting silence of the Fisher kitchen.
Had he been about to kiss her? The thought teased around his brain like the water touching his wrists as he stuffed an extra shirt into the generator-powered clothes washer. The daylight was fading fast. His mamm would never have been caught doing wash at this hour, but Abram figured that the order of chores didn’t matter much with housework. He’d busied Matthew in setting the table for a supper of warmed-up stew that their mother had left in the freezer. Mark and Luke were nowhere to be found, as he might have expected, and John was struggling with some wooden clothespins in an attempt to hang up a sheet on the line Abram had lowered nearby.
He glanced sideways at Mary as she knelt in the shadowed grass, making a “house” for a toad he’d caught for her. He remembered his little sister’s expression of mingled delight and surprise when he’d caught Fern Zook close in the kitchen that afternoon. Mary’s little mouth had formed a gentle O, and he couldn’t help but think that Fern’s mouth had probably been in the same shape . . .
He shook his head and slammed the lid of the washer down. Mary looked up.
“Are you mad about somethin’, Abram?”
“Nee.” He wasn’t mad, but he sure was acting crazy. He told himself sternly that it was simply a passing phase or the result of not being in the surety of the fields for a few days.
He looked up as the rustling of cornstalks alerted him that someone was coming, cutting across his family’s field. His friend Joe Mast stepped lightly from between the waist-high stalks, a smile on his usually sober face.
“Hiya, Joe!” Mary cried, then laughed as Joe swung her and the toad up into his gangly arms. He balanced her easily against one hip, called a greeting to John, then looked at Abram.
Abram felt it no light mistake on the Lord’s part that Joe should come round for a visit just when he was having addled thoughts about a woman. Joe was Abram’s unspoken cornerstone against marriage . . . and kissing, which for women had a funny way of leading to the idea of wedded bliss.
“How’s Emma?” Abram asked the question with purpose, wanting to see the familiar droop to his friend’s shoulders and the tightness around his mouth. Instead, Joe’s expression brightened considerably, and he jiggled Mary against his side.
“Emma’s right as rain, and the babe’s due any day now.”
“Uh-huh,” Abram grunted, knowing he was not being the best of friends, but unable to help himself. “Any day now—that’ll make three kinner.”
“Yep.” Joe grinned. “And I know you’re getting some practice with kids yourself since your folks are away. I came over to see if I could give you a hand.”
Abram stared at him. Joe worked two jobs—one as a hand on an Englisch dairy farm and then trying to keep his own cows going. He and Emma lived in a small house of little means and neither had parents to help out. Yet here Joe was, offering to help and looking as cheerful as fresh pie.
“Are you all right, Joe?” he asked before he could stop himself.
Joe jostled Mary and smiled wider at her giggles. “Who, me? Doin’ gut for once . . . Had a long talk with Emma one afternoon while her aenti watched the little ones. Realized we hadn’t made any time for just us, me and Em, in a long while. I figured out that I gotta have that with her, and then everything feels real calm and settled . . . like when we were first running around together.” He gave a sheepish shrug.
“Ach,” Abram mumbled, his friend’s words of intimacy piercing him to the quick. He’d based a lot of years of thinking on Joe’s silent communications that marriage was not such a great state of affairs. Now the man he’d thought terminally unhappy because he’d wed was giving him lessons in sustaining love. What could it mean?
Nothing, he told himself. It meant nothing. He was overworked, out of his mind with the kids, and generally not himself; that was all. Fern Zook and her loose honeyed hair was nothing more than a mirage . . . a distraction when what he really needed was to work out some sort of schedule and get things running well on the farm and with the kids. But he couldn’t accept Joe’s offer to help, not when his friend was so sincere in having found happiness despite his own workload. He smiled.
“Joe, we’ve known each other since we were kids. You know if I get into something that I can’t handle I’ll ask for help. Things are fine here—”
A high-pitched scream cut off his speech. Both men turned in alarm to the cornfield where the sound had echoed with eerie intensity. John ran over from the clothesline and took Mary’s hand as Joe eased her to the ground. The scream came again, then Abram saw smoke rising from the tops of the cornstalks, followed by a colored combustion of red and blue. Fireworks. He might have known . . . the Fourth of July had just passed, and the boys had probably gotten hold of some of the things from the Englisch boy they played with at times.
“Stay with Mary and John, will you, Joe? I’ll be right back.” He began to move through the field.
“Luke Fisher? Mark Samuel Fisher? When I get my hands on you, I’m going to tan both your—” He broke off as he came to a sudden clearing where the cornstalks had been trampled down. Mark was fooling with a sparkler and matches while Luke held his fingers to his mouth, jumping up and down.
Luke took one look at Abram, pulled his fingers out, and started to bawl.
“Ach, it’s just a little burn, Luke. Come on!” Mark said.
“Let me see your fingers,” Abram demanded.
Luke snuffled and held out his left hand. Abram frowned at the heavy blisters on the boy’s fingers. Great. Just great. Back to Fern Zook . . .
Three times in one day, he considered grimly as he hauled the boys along through the field . . . The girl would think he was either off in the head or plotting ways to see her. Either idea was enough to make him feel sick himself. He tightened his grip on his bruders’ collars as he marched them home through the cornstalks in the twilight.