4
Rain. Normally a nuisance, the rain this morning made Abigail extraordinarily grateful. It presented an excellent opportunity for her to start work on breaking through the brick wall. After dropping Uncle David at the store and the redheaded cousins at the schoolhouse, Abigail planned to go straight to the post office. She hadn’t traveled to town on her own before. Fortunately, navigation was straightforward because all roads in Stoney Ridge led toward Main Street, like the hub of a wheel. She felt this road system really should be made mandatory in all towns.
She parked the horse and buggy in front of the post office. The sign on the door stated it didn’t open for another fifteen minutes, so she drove around for a while to keep the horse warm, then returned to the front of the post office as soon as the town bell chimed nine strokes. She waited by the door for the post office worker to open the door. Five minutes late! And then he acted irritated that he had a customer.
She followed right behind him and waited at the counter. “I’d like to know the street address for whomever is renting post office box 247.”
The postal worker barely glanced at her. He had a long, droopy mustache that curled at each end, so wild and wooly it completely covered his upper lip. “I can’t tell you. That would be a violation of federal law.”
“But I know whose box it belongs to. I only want to know her home address.”
“No can do.” He pulled out a drawer of stamps and took out his ink pad.
“Could you tell me what times of day she comes in to get her mail?”
“Absolutely not. It’s a breach of privacy.” Droopy Mustache put his hands on his hips. “I thought you Plain People were supposed to be honest and upright.” He wagged a finger at her, like a teacher scolding a child. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
Abigail was very sensitive to matters of morality. She did not think this particular request hinted of anything immoral or illegal, certainly not shame worthy. Besides, wasn’t it the job of a postal worker to try to deliver information? Wasn’t he employed to provide customer service? She outlined her argument, but the postal worker showed no reaction. He went about his work behind the counter as if she were invisible. Astonishing! She was thoroughly frustrated by the unreasonableness of the situation.
And then the door opened and a gust of wind blew in. “Well, hello there!”
Abigail spun around to face the young man who had driven her and Laura to their uncle’s house yesterday. He gazed at her with unrestrained delight, as if he had just seen a sunrise for the first time in his life.
She looked at him curiously.
“Dane. That’s my name.” He jerked his head toward the door. “Easy to remember. It rhymes with rain.”
It was an odd comment. “What makes you think I need memory aids?”
“I guess . . . because you look like you have no idea who I am.”
“But we only met yesterday. And it wasn’t raining.”
Dane like Rain held himself completely still, his hat in his hand.
As they stared at each other, she tried to review the things she had noted about Dane like Rain on yesterday’s buggy ride. He had a face that wasn’t unpleasant. No, not at all unpleasant. No feature was too big or too small, and the resulting mixture was one that her sister Laura might call distinctive or handsome. He was tall and broad and appeared strong, like a farmer. He had dark brown eyes, framed by thick, straight brows that looked as if he spent quite a bit of time in thought. He was dressed in a heavy black coat with brown pants that were faded at the knees—same pants as yesterday. And he was wearing the same blue shirt. It was quite rumpled, as if it had never been ironed. His curly dark hair also looked rumpled.
She stepped around Dane like Rain and went outside to stand under the awning to consider her options. Option one: she could write to her client to inform her that her father had sent her to Stoney Ridge to complete the work. It wasn’t entirely the truth, nor was it a lie. Abigail had been sent to Stoney Ridge and she did intend to complete her father’s work.
Option two: she could wait for a few hours and see if any woman came in to get mail from that specific post office box. But . . . Mammi was baking bread this morning and wanted the buggy back to deliver it to the Bent N’ Dent before lunchtime. This morning, Mammi had caught the twins as they dropped Molly’s cookies from their second-story bedroom window. The cookies never broke, never even chipped or cracked. After that discovery, Mammi decided that Molly’s bread might cause someone illness.
Abigail suddenly noticed that Dane like Rain had come outside to stand beside her.
“Apparently, I didn’t do a very good job of dropping a hint to ask what your name was.”
She watched a streak of red travel up his cheeks. “I told you yesterday.”
“Not that I recall. Not you or your sister’s name. I wouldn’t have forgotten. You just said you were David Stoltzfus’s nieces.”
Abigail was confident she had given Dane like Rain her name yesterday. Coming on top of the suggestion for a memory aid, she was beginning to think that this young man wasn’t the sharpest pencil in the box. But she knew that her sister would recommend that she allow a margin of grace. “My name is Abigail. My sister is named Laura.”
In one hand, he held a thick stack of mail bundled by a rubber band. He lifted it up. “I only come in once or twice a week to get my mail. It piles up.”
Oh no. She hadn’t considered that as a possible scenario. “Is that typical?”
“It is for me.”
“Why would anyone do such a thing?” Mail was vitally important. At home, Abigail often waited at the mailbox around the time when the mail truck was due. Nearly each day, the mail brought something of interest: circle letters from her sisters, replies to her requests for genealogical information, magazines and newsletters, including her very favorite, GeneaMusing.
Dane like Rain shrugged. “If folks have a farm, they have to wait. Not easy to get into town when you have livestock that needs attention.” He looked past her. “I see you brought Thistle.” He walked out in the rain to greet Uncle David’s horse. The horse lifted her head in a big nod and pushed her nose against him.
“The horse—” she caught herself, because she was catching on that names were important to Dane like Rain—“Thistle seems to recognize you.”
“Horses have excellent memories.” He stroked the horse between her eyes and she practically purred. “I sold Thistle to your uncle when he first moved here. She’s the first horse I ever trained on my own. Had to work hard to get her to trust me. She used to balk at anything and everything. I called her Thistle because she was so prickly. Beautiful too. Just like a thistle. But we made friends, and she worked out what was bothering her.”
“What was bothering her?”
“She’d had a harsh master and had been put under too much stress at too young an age. She coped by shutting down. Balking, bolting, retreating.”
Interesting. “How did you help her?”
“I had to think the way she thought.”
“How many horses do you have?”
“For now, just one.” He lifted a hand toward a chestnut Thoroughbred harnessed to a gray-topped buggy. “My buggy horse.”
“One? So, Thistle is the only horse you’ve trained? I thought you said you were a horse trainer.”
Dane looked down at the tips of his boots. “Eventually. That’s the plan, down the road. I had to sell Thistle so I could afford some ewe lambs for a starter flock. There’s a good market for sheep and I have just the land for it. Gotta pay the bills, you know? Someday, though, I want to be a full-time horse trainer. I sold Thistle to David, knowing she’d be well cared for.”
Abigail looked at Thistle, standing patiently in the drizzling rain. She was very well cared for. “Ewe lambs?”
“Yes. Sheep. Do you know much about sheep?”
“Yes, actually, I do.” Quite a bit, in fact. Her father had tried to raise a small flock. It was a disaster. “They can be far more challenging to raise than most people realize. Very accident-prone, quite nearsighted—”
Dane took a step toward her. “Abigail,” he said in a low, soft voice.
“Right. Stay on task.” She nodded. “I’ve been told I have a tendency to get mired in detail.”
“No, no. I’m interested in what you have to say.” A streak of red started to travel up Dane’s cheeks. “Maybe we could get together sometime and talk about it.”
“What specifically do you need to know?” She had read quite a few books on the subject of sheep raising and might be able to suggest a few for him to read.
“Well,” he said, starting to look as if his collar was too tight. “I thought we could just talk generally . . . get to know each other a bit.”
That sounded unnecessary. “I’ll make a list of books and give it to my cousin Jesse. He’ll find a way to get it to you.”
“Well, that wasn’t exactly what I was asking.” Now his face had gone flush. A bead of sweat popped out on his brow.
She was about to ask what exactly he was trying to ask when she spotted something of interest. Next to the post office was the drugstore. A poster on the glass door read “Missionary Aid Society’s Bible Drive.” She walked up to read it. A local church was collecting extra Bibles to be shipped to churches overseas.
She had not even finished reading the fine print of the poster when a light went on in her head—not literally, of course. Bibles! Such an obvious solution.
“Abigail?” Dane was standing right behind her. “What would you think about going on a hike on Sunday? After church. It’s supposed to be an unusually mild weekend for November. Won’t be long before winter hits.”
“It’s not possible,” she said, focused on the poster. She was going to need all available time for the Bible plan. “My schedule is full.”
The town bell rang and she knew she’d better get back to her uncle’s house or her grandmother would be fussing at her all day. She lifted one foot onto the buggy step, then stopped. She dashed up to Thistle’s big head, gave her a gentle stroke on her neck, then jumped into the buggy and flicked the reins. She was halfway down Main Street when she realized she hadn’t said goodbye to Dane like Rain. She looked in the rearview mirror and saw him standing in the rain where she’d left him.
How ridiculous! He was getting soaked.
In the afternoon, David set aside some time to carefully read the contracts to lease the minerals on Moss Hill. The digging of the wells—only two wells—would take roughly fifteen days, weather permitting. The wells would be shallow, the contract said, about four thousand feet deep. Two pump jacks would be installed, along with five holding tanks. Because there was no electricity on the hill, they would use a very low-tech engine, run by a portable generator. A truck would arrive daily or weekly to collect the oil in the holding tanks. One tank would hold the salt water that came up the pump with the oil. All water deep in the earth was salt water—a leftover residual from when ocean waters covered the earth.
He sat back in his chair for a moment, pondering that thought. It filled him with awe to think of the acts of creation. He reached for his Bible and flipped it open to the first few pages of Genesis. “And God said, ‘Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.’ And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.”
And it was so.
The greatness of God, setting blessings into the earth for generation upon generation. It enlarged and expanded David’s faith to dwell on these mysteries.
He picked up his pencil and did a little math. If the oil trap brought in one hundred barrels a day—a very low estimate—and oil was sold for around $100/barrel, that meant that Thelma and Katrina would be making about seventeen hundred dollars a day. Over $50,000 a month! Over $600,000 a year. David felt his heart start to race. No wonder Katrina and Thelma were excited. Perhaps . . . this was the miracle the little church needed to get back on track.
“Hey, buggy man!”
Jesse looked up to see Dane Glick standing in the shop’s doorway, completely drenched. His Labrador puppy bounded toward Dane. He dropped down and scooped him up in his arms.
“You shouldn’t pick up that puppy. You’ll spoil him. He’s already hopelessly spoiled.”
Dane ignored Jesse’s instruction about the puppy and actually let him lick the raindrops off his face. Disgusting.
Buggy man. Is that who Jesse had become? A buggy man. It wasn’t the worst thing, he supposed. He had never thought of himself as particularly mechanical, but he didn’t mind the fix-it work quite as much as he thought he would. Frankly, buggies weren’t all that complicated. He didn’t know why Hank Lapp had such a slow turnaround time, but he was careful to not let others know how easy the work really was. It gave him plenty of time for other pursuits. He had some new ideas percolating—
“By the way, Jesse, didn’t there used to be a mailbox by the road?”
“Yes. But it’s been relieved of its duties.”
“Luke Schrock?”
“What makes you say that?”
“Folks say he’s been blowing up mailboxes all over town. Throws a cherry bomb in them and runs off.”
“Why doesn’t someone stop him?”
“No one has ever actually seen him do it.” Dane shrugged. “From what I’ve heard, it’s usually early in the morning. Probably as he’s on the way to school.”
Unbelievable! Even worse, how had Jesse missed out on that vital piece of town gossip?
“Anyway, Jesse, I’ve got news. I’ve found her.”
“Found whom?”
“The woman I want to spend the rest of my life with.”
Jesse put down the sidebar he was working on. Matters of the heart were definitely worth stopping work for, especially when Fern Lapp, his landlady, who felt the need to be a vigilant supervisor over his activities, was not at home. “Well, this is big news. Tell me more. Who is she?” He brushed off his hands and put the hot water kettle on top of the woodstove.
“She’s your cousin. I dropped her off at your house last night. And just now, I saw her in town.”
Ah. Poor, hopeful Dane. He was smitten with his fair cousin, like so many men before him. Jesse got out two mugs, put a tea bag in each one, and turned to Dane while he waited for the water to heat up. “What makes you think she’s the one for you?”
“I just knew it, the minute I saw her. No. Before that. The minute I heard her voice.”
“Dane, are you feeling all right?” Maybe he’d been alone too long up on that hill. Maybe this was what happened when someone lived alone too long. Jesse had been living on his own in the apartment above the buggy shop for only a few weeks, but he took most of his meals in the Lapp kitchen, and Fern was constantly in and out of his buggy shop, giving him a to-do list and checking up on his work, so he didn’t feel at all alone. Not at all.
“The sound of a voice tells you a lot. That’s how I get horses to trust me. My sheep too. They know the sound of my voice. They like my voice. Well, I like your cousin’s voice. It’s low and soft. The second I heard it, I knew that was the voice I’d been waiting for all my life.”
Jesse had never heard anything quite so preposterous, but he suspected Dane had limited experience in the pursuit of women. “I can’t deny you’ve got fine taste. She’s a lovely lass. But don’t you think you should give it a little time? Make sure you know more about her before you profess your love?”
Dane shook his head and water spattered off. “Nope. I was struck by Cupid’s arrow. Nothing can change my mind.”
Nothing except the fact that Laura had a serious boyfriend. But who was Jesse to counsel others in matters of the heart? After all, look at his own rather blank love life. His devoted companion was a fifteen-pound puppy with paws the size of dinner plates. The teakettle whistled and Jesse filled each mug with hot water.
Dane set the puppy gently on the floor and took the mug from Jesse’s outstretched hand. “You won’t tell her, right?” The puppy went right to work chewing Dane’s shoelaces.
Jesse made an X on his chest. “Your secret is safe with me.”
Relief passed through Dane’s eyes. “Thank you, Jesse.” He blew on the tea and took a sip. “The old men at the Bent N’ Dent said you’re the go-to fellow on girls since Jimmy Fisher left for Colorado.”
That was cheering news. Jesse was not immune to admiration. Mim Schrock seemed resistant to his charms, which was very disappointing. Still, there were other girls to consider in Stoney Ridge, many of whom would appreciate his dry wit and carefree approach to life—two things Mim had complained about. His spirits started to lift and he found he was glad Dane stopped by for a chat.
Jesse sat down on a nail keg. “Mind if I ask you something? What do you think Freeman is planning to do?”
“My uncle Freeman? You mean, about the lot switch?” He shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing, is my guess. Just let it blow over.”
“So you’re not hearing any rumbles that Freeman will repent?”
Dane shook his head. “The only thing I’ve heard rumbles about is Freeman blaming Elmo Beiler for starting the whole lot switching in the first place. Most of the finger-pointing among my relatives is aimed at Elmo.” The old bishop had believed there was a dearth of leadership and thought it would be best for the church to put trusted, reliable relatives in those positions.
“That amazes me. Elmo wasn’t shrewd. Not like Freeman.” Jesse glanced up. “No offense.”
“None taken.” Dane leaned against the workbench. “So any idea of the kinds of things your cousin likes to do? I tried asking her out on a date but she blew me off.”
“She won’t go and never will.”
Dane’s face fell. “Is there someone else?”
“Yes. Always.”
Dane dropped his chin to his chest.
“Don’t look so sad. Laura goes through guys pretty quickly. Maybe you can catch her in between boyfriends.” Why not? Dane Glick had his good points. His sisters thought so. Molly called him dreamy, but then, she was a little head-in-the-clouds herself. Ruthie said that Dane had been a chief topic of conversation among the girls since his arrival last year—mostly out of annoyance because he showed no interest in any of them. Clueless, Ruthie called him.
“Laura?” Dane’s head jerked up. “I’m not interested in Laura. Abigail’s the one for me.”
Jesse spit out his tea. “Gabby? You like Gabby?”
Dane nodded solemnly.
Imagine that! Why, there was no end to the twists and turns of life. And Dane? Of all the men in Stoney Ridge. He was as boisterous and animated and filled with emotions as Gabby was deliberate and contained and logical.
And then there was that uncomfortable Glick connection. Did Dane realize how tenuous the relations were between the two families, Glick and Stoltzfus?
“Don’t tell me Abigail has a serious boyfriend too.”
“No. Definitely not.” Of that, Jesse was certain. “Have you had an actual conversation with her?” To Jesse, a conversation with Gabby was something to avoid unless it was absolutely necessary. Either you’d get a one-word answer, or she would spend an hour explaining something in great detail. If you made a joke, her face would take on a blank look and there would be an awkward silence, while the joke fell flat.
“Sure, we’ve talked.”
“And she conversed back to you?”
“Yes, of course.” Dane brightened. “Would you do a little sniffing around for me? Try to convince her to go out with me? A word from you—” he snapped his fingers “—would do the trick.”
Jesse leaned his elbows on the workbench. How did this kind of thing always happen to him? “I can save myself the trouble. Gabby won’t go out with you. She’s too busy with her project.”
“No idea. She has a bunch of manila folders and books and scribbles things down on papers.”
“Sounds important.” Dane swirled the dregs of tea in his mug. “Here’s an idea: How about if you think up a way we can go out together? Maybe a double date?”
“Dane . . . I’m not really the matchmaker type.”
“Sure you are. You’ve got a reputation for gambling. Isn’t that a form of matchmaking?”
Jesse scratched his head. He couldn’t deny there was a certain logic to that argument. “Let me think this through.” It wouldn’t be a problem to get Gabby to say yes—all he had to do was to bring it up in front of Mammi. Ruthie said she heard that Mammi was on a husband-hunting mission for Gabby and Katrina.
It was finding a date for himself that was the problem. Mim Schrock was the only girl he wanted to date in Stoney Ridge, and she refused to go out with him.
Then his eyes caught sight of C.P., curled up, sleeping in the corner. On top of his coat! He grabbed the coat out from under the puppy, who scrambled to get off it. The coat was full of holes and chewed corners. His brand-new birthday coat, given to him by his sisters. Blast that puppy! Blast Mim Schrock.
Dane had the puppy back in his arms. “So what do you think?”
“I don’t know, Dane. Let me give it some thought.” He held the coat up, disgusted.
“Would you . . . just ask her?” Dane looked forlorn.
This whole go-between business seemed like a lost cause, and Jesse was ready to get back to work, which hardly ever happened. “I’ll think about it.”
Dane looked like he’d just been handed the moon. “Jesse, you are the best friend a fellow could ever hope for.”
Jesse frowned. “No promises! No guarantees.”
“Of course. None assumed.”
“And don’t rush me. I need to proceed carefully. If I come on too strong, Gabby will be scared off.”
“Take all the time you need.” Dane scratched the puppy’s ears. “I’ll check back later today.”