Chapter Three
When he was ready? David doubted he would ever feel ready to lay himself bare for Bishop Amos Troyer, but he also knew he couldn’t put off what would be one of the toughest conversations of his life. His standing in the community was too uncertain; without the bishop’s approval, many people would keep their distance from him. David knew his mother wanted to have a big family gathering to welcome him home, but his acceptance of the bann on Saturday had reminded her that attendance would be skimpy. Sunday dinner had been just him and his parents. Jake felt he had to keep his wife and children from this renegade brother who had fled the Leit though he was baptized.
Jake was doing what their faith required of him, if carrying it to an extreme, but Mamm didn’t want to see that. And, ja, David couldn’t help feeling some hurt. He’d had good times with Jake, let his brother tag along with him and Levi. Didn’t the fact that he was here at all, come home after so many years away, tell everyone that he intended to confess and make right what he could?
Ja, he would go talk to Bishop Amos late this afternoon.
He had put off stopping to see Esther Schwartz longer than he should have, hesitating in part because, however reluctantly, Mamm had conceded that Esther had become even more reclusive and crankier after losing her son.
“She says such things—” Mamm had drawn a deep breath. “I try to forgive her, to understand that her life hasn’t been easy, but, ach, it’s hard.”
Esther had lashed out at him the minute she learned about the accident. She would see him as something like a leper until he’d knelt before the congregation, and perhaps even afterward.
That didn’t excuse him, though. She had never been a warm woman, but she’d welcomed him into her home and fed him countless meals. As a boy, he’d done chores with Levi to free him sooner to play; as an adult, he had helped Levi with the farm so that they also had time to log. The draft horses they had used for their business stayed at the Schwartz farm, although David had purchased them with his own money. He’d left them there when he ran away, and assumed Esther would have sold animals she didn’t need.
He wouldn’t go farther than her front porch, and perhaps not even that. Working on Onkel Hiram’s farm—his farm—getting crops planted, starting up his business, would consume all his time, but Esther had been left without a son to farm her land.
Since corn sprouted in tidy rows on well-tended fields that were all he could see of the Schwartz farm without cutting through woods or following the lane over a rise to the house, he assumed she leased the land to someone. Even so, to stay in her house, she’d have to plant and maintain a large vegetable garden, prune and harvest fruit from the trees, and do the extensive canning that consumed so much of every Amish woman’s life. She probably needed nothing from him, because it went without saying that the church members would have stepped in to give her the labor and support she needed.
But David owed her more than she would ever know. Part of his homecoming was a resolve to accept responsibility for wrongs he’d committed. Miriam and Esther were the two people he’d most wronged.
Perplexed and unenthusiastic about turning in to a farm lane that didn’t lead to his own barn and dinner that afternoon, Dexter reluctantly complied. When the buggy crested the low hill, David frowned.
The yard was unkempt, the farmhouse—never as large and solid as his parents’—badly needed a paint job, the porch sagged, and grass grew knee-deep in the orchard beneath trees that he was willing to bet hadn’t been pruned since Levi’s death.
Was Esther’s health failing? She’d never seemed to have close friends, but she’d been an active member of the community, joining in work frolics, selling jams at the annual street fair in Tompkin’s Mill, contributing to auctions held to raise money to help someone. Was she turning away help she would gladly extend to anyone else? Didn’t she recognize that as hochmut, the very pride their faith required them to set aside?
He stopped the buggy as close to the house as he could get and hopped out. He had often tethered his horses to this same short stretch of fence, but now a splintered top rail was joined by posts that leaned drunkenly.
Ja, to his shame, he knew what it was like to wobble drunkenly.
The front door opened when he had almost reached the porch steps. Those looked recently rebuilt and solid, he was relieved to see. The woman who came out onto the porch had aged more than six years justified. She had become lean, almost stringy, and those years had carved deep furrows in her forehead and beside her mouth. None of those were smile lines.
“David Miller,” she said flatly. “Until Sunday I didn’t know you were back.”
He had kept his gaze down during the service Sunday. “Just last week. Onkel Hiram left me his farm—”
“Well, you won’t get mine, if that’s what you were thinking!” she snapped.
He blinked. “I never imagined such a thing.”
“Then why are you here?”
“To see how you are. To offer what help I can. I can mow the grass in the orchard—”
“In place of Levi?” Her voice came out harsh. “Six years too late?”
“I can never take Levi’s place,” David said painfully. “And I know I abandoned you—”
Her mouth thinned. “Mow if you want.” Then she turned and stomped into the house, slamming the door behind her.
He stood stock-still for what had to be a full minute or even two before he returned to the buggy, untied the reins, and took another dismayed look at the house, barn, and fields that had once felt like a second home to him.
Tomorrow was Friday. Thinking about his list of chores, he decided he could come back in the morning to scythe the grass in the orchard.
By the time David arrived at Amos Troyer’s home, the sun was low and the air chilly, usual for spring. The bishop suggested David join him for a stroll around his property for their talk. Recalling the reputation Amos’s wife had for gossip, David agreed readily.
At first they walked in silence. He watched robins pecking at the rich earth in the large vegetable garden, the lacy white canopy of blooms on the apple trees. Once he sneaked a sidelong look to see that Amos had clasped his hands behind his back and seemed perfectly content to wait as long as necessary.
Finally, David said, “You know why I left.”
“Do I?” the bishop said mildly.
“I know God called Levi home.” Yet he didn’t—couldn’t—accept that. Not when he knew in his heart that what everyone had seen as a simple accident was much more than that. “But his death hit me hard.” He tapped his fist to his chest, above his heart. “He was my best friend from when we were boys. My brother, as much or more than Jake.” Levi had understood, or maybe just accepted him in a way no one else had. “Gone, just like that. The plans we’d made together, the way it hurt so many people.”
“You as much as anyone,” observed Amos.
“Ja, sure, but—” No use arguing. “I couldn’t seem to just go on as though nothing had happened.” His throat clogged. “I felt guilty. Why him, and not me?”
“We must take on faith that God had His reasons.”
David clamped his mouth shut to avoid saying, I can’t do that. Or, worse, God had nothing to do with Levi dying the way he did, when he did.
“I thought that if I went away for a while, I could deal better with my feelings.”
Amos looked at him, his brown eyes wise and far too perceptive. “Where did you go?”
“I ran away from the Leit. I felt anger and hurt so deep, I couldn’t talk to people I loved. I quit feeling God at my side.”
“And yet He said, ‘Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be afraid, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.’”
David knew the quote from Isaiah. He’d heard it countless times.
“I didn’t feel as if I deserved His help.” And that was the honest truth.
The expression on his bishop’s face looked a great deal like grief. Yet he only asked gently, “Will you tell me about your life these last years?”
David started talking; he talked until he was hoarse, spilling his despair, reaching his lowest moments before he could tell of reclaiming himself, until he believed himself ready to accept God’s grace.
He might have felt cleansed when he finished had it not been for the sin he feared he had committed. The one he had kept to himself, even knowing that it would gnaw at his soul until the day he died and must face judgment. All he could hope was to be as good a man as he could be, extend a generous hand whenever needed, and redeem himself as much as was possible.
Drained and physically exhausted in a way he hadn’t been when he arrived, David stumbled when he’d finished his story. Amos grabbed his arm to steady him.
“You know that our heavenly Father tells us we must forgive the trespasses of others, as He will forgive ours.”
If there was a central tenet of the Amish faith, that was it. It was why David was so ashamed of the act of violence he’d committed that led to a jail sentence.
But I tell you not to resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also.
The quote from Matthew was equally familiar, taught to him from the time he was a toddler. If a man punches you, you do not swing a fist at him in turn. You accept, and you forgive.
His memory of his fist smashing into a man’s face was extraordinarily vivid, colored in blood red. It had taken several years before he’d come to believe that the members of his church could or would forgive him. That God would forgive him for the fight that had sent him to jail. He still stumbled over forgiving himself, even for that.
“I do know,” he said, “and I pray that when I kneel and ask for forgiveness, it will be given to me. As I believe God already has.”
Amos smiled. “If your repentance is genuine, you will be forgiven.”
David swallowed. “Denke for saying that. Drinking alcohol might have been the most foolish thing I did. It let my anger and self-hate fly free.” It had eroded the hard-won control he’d gained over his impulses. “I never drank alcohol again. It’s been almost four years now.”
“Gut, gut.” Amos stopped walking and faced David. “I think when we talk next, I’ll ask Ephraim and Josiah to join us.”
The other two men were ministers, chosen by the congregation. Already, David had heard that Josiah could be harsher than Amos, his gaze too often critical rather than kind. And yet, no one doubted that his faith was sincere, and it was not only Amos’s forgiveness that David must ask. Once again, his throat tightened, but he nodded.
One more thing he was not ready for, yet must do.
Returning alone to his buggy, he asked silently, Have you forgiven me, Levi? He thought it likely. Levi had never denied him forgiveness for mistakes large or small. But David knew how much Miriam had loved the come-calling friend she was prepared to marry. If she knew everything, would she be able to forgive him?
David didn’t have the courage to find out.
He must be friendly to her, as he would be to any of the women who were part of his church family, but no more than that. His darkest fear must remain his secret.
Saturday was the great cleaning day to prepare the house David had inherited to be ready for him to move into.
Miriam had left for last the downstairs windows she could wash while standing on the porch, thinking they would be the easiest. She had just risen on tiptoe to spray the vinegar and water mixture on the upper panes of the kitchen window, when the front door opened.
“You’re too short to reach.” The voice was male and amused.
Spray bottle in hand, she sank back to her heels and turned. David, of course. He kept appearing, anxious to help anyone who’d allow him, since this was his house they were cleaning. She’d seen her own mother flapping a dish towel as she chased him out of the kitchen, though. Mamm and David’s mother had organized this work frolic, assigned tasks, and made plain he wasn’t to get in the way.
“That’s what the step stool is for,” Miriam pointed out. “And I’m tall enough to do everything important.”
The expression on his hard face changed. “Ja,” he said finally. “I suppose you are.”
What was he thinking? She wished he weren’t so much a stranger for all that they’d grown up in the same church district. “I didn’t volunteer to wash the outside of the upstairs windows,” she confessed. “I don’t like heights.”
His eyebrows rose. “You call that high? There are window washers in big cities who work fifty floors up.”
Miriam shuddered. “Why would anyone be willing to do that?”
“Some people enjoy heights. Imagine the view from up there.”
“Everyone down below would be like ants.” It almost gave her vertigo just to picture it. “Watching you and Levi scramble up trees was almost more than I could bear. I’m happy to look up from where I am on the ground.”
He chuckled. “Low to the ground.”
She aimed the bottle at him and squeezed the trigger. Laughing, he jumped back.
“God does not judge us by how tall we are,” he said piously.
“Isn’t that lucky for those who are so tall, they’re arrogant enough to think they can grab eagles out of the sky?”
A grin flashed that stopped her heart. Or, at least, that’s what it felt like. Grim, he had a compelling face. Smiling, he shook her down to the soles of her feet. Back before, when she often saw him with Levi, David had to have smiled and laughed. How had she never been startled into awareness of him as a man, however uninterested that awareness was?
Miriam truly didn’t understand. She must have worn blinders, like buggy horses did.
She suddenly realized that his grin had vanished, as if it had never been. What had her expression told him? Still shaken, she took a step back. “I should get back to work.”
“Ja, me, too.”
But before turning away, she said, “Wait. Have you seen Esther?”
His shoulders literally bowed, as if under a weight. “Thursday.” He hesitated. “Mamm warned me that she can be . . . rigid. I expected . . . ach, I don’t know.”
“That she would be glad to see you?”
He grimaced. “That, or that she would be angry because I lived when Levi died, or because I ran away afterward.”
“We’re supposed to accept that life and death are in God’s hands.”
His attention somehow sharpened, making her realize she’d spoken too slowly, even reluctantly. What she should have said was we must accept God’s will. Had she never completely accepted Levi’s death?
Ashamed, she knew it was so.
“Such a thing is easier to accept when your grossdaadi dies in his sleep than when a young person who should have his whole life ahead of him is tragically killed,” David said.
“I asked why,” she admitted, barely above a whisper, “but God has never answered.”
He searched her face with eyes she realized suddenly were a clear, penetrating gray. How had she forgotten that?
“You haven’t put your loss behind you.”
She felt her mouth twist into what she’d meant to be a smile. “I’ve been thinking lately that maybe I have, but I took too long.”
“You haven’t married.”
“No, although that’s not all because of Levi.” She could not forget her own faults. “You haven’t married, either.”
“No. I suppose I always knew I’d come home.”
“But now?” The minute the words were out of her mouth, heat crept up her neck to her cheeks. What had possessed her to ask such a question, none of her business? Would he think—?
His expression closed. “I’m starting all over. You know how busy I’ll be.”
“Ja. And I’m supposed to be helping, not being some kind of blabbermaul. Look! I’ve made a mess of the windowsill.”
The vinegar and water mixture had run down the glass and pooled on the painted wood. Shaking her head at herself, she sopped it up with a rag.
What would he say? When silence followed, she turned her head to find herself alone. Not so much as a squeaking floorboard had given away his hasty departure.
A clutch of pain reminded her that Levi had been right about her boldness with men. How was it that she hadn’t learned her lesson?
Dripping rag clutched in her hand, she tried to pray but for once couldn’t form the words. How could she, when she’d just expressed pain, or even bitterness, because God hadn’t answered her question to her satisfaction? Until this moment, she would have told anyone that she had unshakable faith in God, but if she truly did, she would trust in His love and accept the unexplainable as His will.
Ashamed of herself in so many ways—had David thought she was flirting with him?—Miriam wished this part of Missouri had those limestone caverns she’d read about that extended miles underground in much of the state. She would walk into the cold darkness and hide until she felt able to face the world again.
“Miriam?”
Oh, no—that was her older sister Rose’s voice. Rose was peering at her through the window in puzzlement, no doubt wondering why she stood here like a doppick, staring into space while the soaked rag dripped down her apron and dress.
Since there was no good answer to that, Miriam forced a smile, dragged the step stool closer, used one hand to crumple an old sheet of The Budget, the Amish newspaper, and climbed up to get back to work.