New York City
Katie looped her arm through Nellie’s as they walked out of the opera house and into the freshly fallen darkness. “That was so long, but it seemed so short!”
“Five hours of Gypsy opera,” Nellie agreed. “Tell me, what did you think?”
“Beautiful,” Katie breathed. “It was beautiful. I’ve never experienced anything so...” Katie searched her vocabulary for the correct word. “So...”
“Amazing,” Nellie offered. “Breathtaking. Spectacular, magnificent, superb, splendid, glorious, dazzling, heart-rending?”
“Yes, all of those!” Katie was incredulous. As a girl, she’d seen some of the teen boys come back to Gasthof Village stumbling and laughing after their Rumspringa. “Drunk,” her mother whispered when she caught Katie staring. “Their world is fuzzy now, but it will wear off by morning when the whiskey drink of the English wears off.”
That was how Katie felt now. Fuzzy, stumbling, laughing, warm inside. Drunk—not on their whiskey—but drunk on the ways of the English. She couldn’t imagine this emotion fading with the dawn’s coming light. “Where did you learn all of those words?”
“School, Katie Knepp.” Nellie took off walking down the dirt road, lit with sizzling gas lamp lights that scattered the shadows, pulling Katie along with her. “And you, too, can learn words like those. And so much more!”
“Oh no,” Katie began. “I’m finished with schooling. We only go until the eighth grade.”
“You’re not on the farm any more, Katie Knepp. Just look at you! You look the part of a fine English lady. Now, all we need to do is get you some schooling. After you return from seeing the world with me, that is!”
Katie puzzled over her cryptic words. “Where would I get schooling? Surely not alongside English men?” A sneaky sensation crept out of the scattered shadows and crept down her backbone with an icy shiver.
“Goodness no. Barnard College. A college, a place of higher education, that only accepts women. No men allowed!” Nellie quickened her step as they turned down another road. At once, she wrinkled her nose. “Pew! Surely they have someone to clean up after the horses that pull the carriages around here.”
The smell of horse dung in the streets was somewhat refreshing to Katie, at least it was something she understood and was used to. She was about to say so, but bit her lip instead. Since it disgusted Nellie, horse apples must be disgusting to the English. And if she wanted to be English...
“The first thing you must do once we return from our trip around the world, Katie Knepp, is buy up every Sherlock Holmes book we can find and get you to reading them.”
“What is a Sherlock Holmes book?” Katie’s feet ached in the English boots as she struggled to keep up with Nellie’s quick steps. If she were in her plain shoes, she could have kept up, or even set the pace. In these boots though, her feet screamed and her legs ached, begging for a moment of respite.
“Sherlock Holmes is an English detective. He and his sidekick, Watson, solve mysteries. Hey!” Nellie stopped. Her eyes twinkled. “That’s what you are. I am Sherlock Holmes, and you are Watson, my sidekick. Elementary, my dear,” she cried.
Katie furrowed her brows and puzzled over her words as Nellie took off at a trot once again, yanking Katie along behind her.
“Diners in New York City are open all night long, which is great for the likes of us,” Nellie explained loudly. “So we shall stop in one and take a meal before sunrise. See what all you’ve been missing all your life, Katie Knepp?” Nellie charged forward, oblivious to her aching Amish charge. “Thank Heavens for Rumspringa that led you away from the Plain people and into the light!”
What a strange choice of words, Katie thought as she stumbled along behind Nellie. To talk about coming into the light as I’m quite literally stumbling into the unknown, cloaked in darkness.
***
“Tell me Katie Knepp, was that apple pie at Joe’s All Night Diner just the best you’ve ever had?” Nellie leaned on her forearms against the metal railing that separated them from the ocean and the docks. The mild rays of the pre-dawn sun were just beginning to peek up over the horizon as the world around them, which never really went to sleep, continued to buzz to life with even more fervor.
Katie thought a moment. Back in Gasthof Village, she was the witty one, the outspoken one. The one who always had a smart quip, an answer, or a mischievous comeback. But here, in the world of the English, she found herself mostly overlooked, and when she was given the opportunity to speak, she often stumbled over her nonsensical words or didn’t take the opportunity at all.
Below them, dubious men with stringy hair and bulging muscles got off the boats in a cloud of profanities. Angry faces and their sharp movements unloading wooden crates gave her pause.
“Honestly?”
“Of course, Katie Knepp. Always be honest.”
“The crust was much too thick and weighty. You could tell right off they didn’t cut the butter in cold, it was probably already melted to make it easier to blend. Goodness knows I used to use the same trick to save time, but unfortunately got the same results as the pie at Joe’s.” Katie sucked in a breath and continued. “The apple pie I make now though is light and fluffy, and it is because of the crust. You see, you have to fetch your butter from the cellar after your dry ingredients are already mix…”
Nellie’s sideways look killed her sentence. “What else, besides the crust, failed to meet your expectations, Little Miss Apple Pie?”
The stinging quip was akin to one that she herself would have flung all over Gasthof Village with reckless abandon. Flinging hurt at anyone within listening distance. Rebekah Stoll’s face popped into her mind without warning. No doubt her quips over the years had found their hurtful mark on Rebekah’s tender heart.
Rebekah. She was probably there in Gasthof Village, living her perfect, simple life, preparing her blue wedding dress to marry Joseph Graber...
Nellie cleared her throat. “You were saying, Katie Knepp?”
“Well, honestly, the apples themselves. They were too chunky and hadn’t been boiled near long enough. And the cinnamon tasted as though it had something else mixed with it, something bitter and strange.” Orange peel maybe? Or lemon? Katie screwed up her face. Rebekah would know, if she were here.
Nellie shrugged. For once, the worldly woman was at a loss for words. Perhaps it was exhaustion, or maybe it was something more. Regardless of the reason, Katie was glad for the break. “Well, Katie Knepp. That’s something.”
“What is?”
“If elite schooling doesn’t work out for you, after our trip circumnavigating the globe, rest assured you can always find work somewhere, cooking in some derelict kitchen, making scrumptious apple pie, the likes of which the lowly English obviously know nothing of. Despite having invented coin operated telephones and indoor restrooms.”
Nellie’s salty remark, peppered with big words she no doubt knew Katie couldn’t understand, stung. But their meaning stood out stark clear as the sun rose over the water and the men below them cursed louder still, something about the hot sun heating up the already humid air.
Katie turned and faced Nellie, eyes wide. “Nellie Bly, do you mean to tell me that you believe in your heart of hearts that cooking good food doesn’t require an education?”
Nellie returned her stare without emotion.
“I have been learning to cook at my mother’s elbow since I could toddle. I’d say that’s quite a lot of education. Hard earned too.” Katie paused, a strange heat welling up from within her. “And a dang sight better than Joe’s or anyone else’s.”
Nellie’s stoic face broke into a beaming grin, but before she could say anything, a shrill whistle cut through the early morning air. Both Nellie and Katie turned toward the unappealing sound, which came from the tar-paper shanties that lined the docks behind them.
A slight, blond woman, with bobbed hair, probably no older than Katie, stood in an open doorway wearing nothing more than a dirty, torn slip.
“Would you look at that,” Katie whispered. “Why, she’s standing outside calling attention to herself in her undergarments!”
“Open for business when the loadin’s done, boys,” the woman called.
Katie glanced down at the docks where several men appeared from seemingly nowhere, and joined the burly man with the stringy black hair.
At once, the muscular sailor stuck two fingers in his mouth and returned the woman’s catcall.
Nellie grabbed Katie’s arm and started down the street to the tune of crying gulls and slapping waves. She didn’t offer any explanation for their sudden departure from the docks, or the man and woman’s strange display.
“What was all that?”
Nellie didn’t answer, but only walked faster.
“Where are we, Nellie?” She fought her whipping hair to look around. Tar-paper shacks lined the street and more and more women, some with bruised faces and torn underclothes, appeared at their doors. If they could be called doors. Some were no more than tattered blankets tacked over the entryway of their shack.
Nellie stopped sprinting so quickly that Katie plowed square into her. Annoyance tinged her words and colored her porcelain cheeks. “There are dregs of society everywhere, Katie Knepp, and can be found in every society, probably even among the Amish.”
With her arm still firmly in Nellie’s grasp, Katie felt little more than a spoiled child being admonished by a too-tired mother. “What is this dreg?”
“The ones you do not want to end up like. The prostitutes, the drunks, the wretches. The losers, Katie Knepp.”
Katie narrowed her eyes at Nellie, the woman she thought would be her friend in the English world. “Did God not create us all in His image?”
Nellie rolled her eyes with a huff and turned away, leaving the answer to hang in the air unanswered.
Katie’s arm began to throb as Nellie pulled her down the street much like a horse might pull a plow. Her mind drifted to Indiana. And try as she might to prove Nellie Bly, the woman who spent ten days in a madhouse and was now set to break a world record, Katie couldn’t think of even one person who could be labeled a dreg back in Gasthof Village.
***
As they passed under a giant sign that was stuck to a post on the roadside that read East 28th Street, Katie couldn’t take it anymore. She yanked her arm from Nellie’s grasp and sunk onto some stone steps. She wasted no time in clawing at the unforgiving laces that seemed to cinch tighter as the night turned to day. Katie hadn’t been able to properly feel her toes since they left Joe’s All Night Diner, and now the cramps in her calf muscles were so severe, she had to sit down or risk falling down.
“Katie Knepp, what do you think you’re doing?”
The cold stone stairs felt strangely comforting against her backside as she battled it out with the laces. “I cannot feel my feet. At all. I think these shoes have squeezed the life out of them.”
“Those are patent Italian leather,” Nellie quipped, her bright face now unsmiling and strangely gray. “You have to wear them when they hurt. Wear them through the pain, it’s a good thing!”
“A good thing?” Exhaustion made Katie laugh as the absurdity continued to flow out of Nellie’s mouth.
“Yes. It’s called breaking them in. Everybody knows that.”
Katie shook her head. “That’s the most ignorant thing I’ve ever heard, Nellie Bly!” Katie freed one foot from the constricting boot and went to work on the other. “Back home in Indiana, we make our own clothes and shoes. And we make them to fit, not to hurt until we get used to them or lose feeling in our whole body. Whichever comes first.”
Nellie stood staring at Katie, her mouth agape. “Well I never!”
“Me neither.” Katie yanked the second boot off and closed her eyes. “Ahh, now that’s so much better.”
Katie dropped the second boot, which tumbled down the stairs, taking the first boot with it.
“Oh Heavens! They’ll get scuffed!”
“Serves them right, the way they pinched my toes.” Katie rubbed her feet and relaxed against the black, wrought-iron hand rail that lined the steps.
Nellie scrambled to collect the misbegotten articles that Katie dropped with such blatant disregard. After picking her way back down the stone stairs, Nellie hung her head and clutched the unkempt boots, that looked to be as done with Katie as she was with them, to her chest. “Come on, Katie, we have plans to finalize before we set sail for London. That starts today, you know.”
Nellie glanced up at the giant building that belonged to the stairs where Katie had taken up residence. “According to The Church of Our Lady of The Scapular of Mount Caramel, it is almost eight o’clock.”
Katie stopped rubbing and followed Nellie’s gaze to the giant watch face on the building’s front. Funny looking numbers, the likes of which she’d never seen, were there. Katie shrugged and went back to rubbing. “If you say so. But I can’t read those numbers, so I’ll have to take you at your word.”
“I’m leaving, Katie Knepp. Are you coming?”
Katie squeezed and rubbed, relaxing the knots and soothing the angry muscles. “Yes, I’m coming. Just not yet, unless you’ll have me hobble along like a three-legged mule behind you.” She dared a peek at Nellie. “What is this place where I’ve chosen to rest anyway?”
Or the place that chose me.
“It’s just a church, Katie Knepp. A Catholic Church.” Nellie glanced at it with a huff. “It will probably be torn down this time next year, like so many more before it.”
“Why would they tear down a church?” Katie stopped rubbing. The icy feeling of fear returned with a fresh vengeance. “Do the English not believe that churches are God’s house?”
“I suppose so. But if New York City wants apartment buildings here, like they usually do on corner lots like these, God had better find a new place to live.”
Such talk is blasphemy. A deep kernel, planted years ago somewhere in her heart or maybe even in her soul, throbbed because of Nellie’s unashamed words. Katie’s heart thundered in her chest. “Nellie...”
Slowly, Katie forced herself to her feet. She suddenly felt very ridiculous and plucked the ornate hat from her head. That’s better already. “Come on, let’s go in and spend a moment in prayer before your worldwide journey.”
Nellie reached and took the hat from Katie’s hands, lest she disgrace it more than she obviously already had. She dusted and fluffed and spiffed the velvet hat and it’s long, plumy feather. “I’m not Catholic, Katie Knepp. And you certainly aren’t either.”
Katie turned and started to climb the stone stairs to the wooden double doors. “The ways of the English are so confusing, Nellie. Are all people not welcome in God’s house in the world of the English?”
“Well, I suppose so...but...”
Katie placed her hand on the handle. “Then let’s come into Our Father’s home and pray for safe journeys.”
Nellie clutched the boots tightly to her chest and glanced up at the clock again. “It’s really time to head to the ship, Katie.” The jovial note to her voice was noticeably absent. “So let’s go.”
Katie didn’t turn around. I may be running from Peter and from Gasthof Village. I may be running from the Amish. I may even be running from Rebekah. But I am most certainly and above all else not running from God. “I’ll catch up with you, Nellie.”
After an eternal silence, Nellie exhaled. “Fine. Head right down this street, the same direction we were going, until you hit the ocean. Surely even you can’t miss an entire ocean, right?”
Another stinging quip.
“Surely not.”
Something in the air softened. “Be there in an hour, Katie Knepp. At the docks, I mean. So we can catch the Augusta Victoria. Bound for London.” Nellie’s voice had softened too. “I am truly honored to have you with me on this trip.”
Katie’s mouth had formed into a hard line over the course of the night and into the morning, but it too softened. She gave a little wave and opened the heavy door. “And it is my honor to go with you. I’ll be there, God willing.”
“It’s impossible to get lost, Katie Knepp,” Nellie said again. “Just walk until you hit the water and I’ll be there.”
***
Katie crept into the giant church, quietly, like a mouse. Somewhere, people were singing—chanting, rather—and it echoed mysteriously off the stone walls. Something about the solemnity of the atmosphere gave her pause. God was here, just as real and just as present as He was in the Amish church meetinghouses in Gasthof Village. Katie recognized Him immediately. She stumbled into a pew and sucked in a breath.
Finally, for the first time since leaving Peter at the end of Rumspringa, she was able to take a breath, reflect, and collect her thoughts.
“Father.” Her voice cracked without warning. All of the emotion she’d hidden, packed down, put away, came bubbling out through that crack. Before she even prayed the prayer that she had bumbling around in her muddled mind, all of those emotions threatened to strangle her.
“Father, oh Father.” Peter’s face, innocent and gentle, filled her mind. The hopeful look he’d given her when she’d promised to meet him. The fear she’d seen in his eyes when he couldn’t find her, yet she watched, hiding in the shadows.
Like a coward.
Like a selfish coward.
Who thought only of herself.
And thought not of anyone else, or their feelings.
“Oh Father, I’m so, so sorry.” Tears dripped from her eyes and hung like an English diamond necklace in her fringe of lashes.
“Peter,” she mumbled. “Samuel Stoll, his sickness.” Her words came fast and garbled. She fell down onto her knees between the pews. “Rebekah, Joseph. My mother and my father. Annie.” She sucked in a long, whoop of air. “Father, help me. I don’t know what to do.”
“My child, what troubles your heart so?”
Katie gasped and opened her eyes. A man in simple garb sat before her. “I—I thought I was alone. I’m so sorry...”
“No need to be sorry Miss.” He spoke with a soft accent that Katie couldn’t place. “I’m Father Plant. All are welcome in God’s house.”
“I am so sorry, I have done so many people wrong. I don’t know what to do...” Before she could say more, she gave over to another fit of tears. When she lifted her head, Father Plant was there. Smiling a gentle smile.
He reminds me of Pa.
“You start with forgiveness, my child.”
“Who do I forgive?”
“Yourself.”
Katie balked. “Forgive myself, for all I’ve done? I cannot.” She ducked her head onto her hands and shook. A very real and eternal fear shook her to her core and she was powerless to stop it. She’d done too wrong. “I’m not deserving.”
“None of us are deserving Katie Knepp.”
She raised her face again. Fear turned to ice in her veins. When did I tell him my full name?
Father Plant continued. “That is the very reason Jesus came and died on the cross for us, is it not?”
Katie hiccupped and nodded.
“We were given Grace. None of us are deserving of Grace, we all deserve judgement. Take your gift of Grace, Katie. Forgive yourself.”
Her voice was a meek whisper. “How could God ever forgive the likes of me?”
He placed his hand over hers. “Because He’s God. That’s what He does.”
Katie locked eyes with the quiet priest. “I am so lost. Far from myself. It was easier when I was closer to God, back home in Indiana, on our farm. But here...”
“You have to deliberately look for the quiet moments to seek God, especially when the world around you moves fast.”
Katie chewed her lip. “What do I do? I don’t even know anymore.”
“My child, you already know.” The simple priest stood. “All you have to do is ask.”
Katie bowed her head in prayer and opened her heart to God. “My God, I am so sorry for offending those who love me, including You. Please forgive me, and allow me to forgive myself.” Her head sank lower. “Please make clear my path. I don’t know anything anymore, I’m so far from myself. So far from You.”
An image at once came to Katie’s mind of a pre-Rumspringa Katie. Standing in spring green grass in Indiana, wearing her plain garb, with her friends and family all around. And a sincere smile on her face.
“Thank you, God. Amen.”
Katie looked up into the kind face of the priest. “He is so faithful. Even to someone like me.”
He nodded. “Will you be staying to celebrate Mass with us?”
Katie glanced around, shocked. As she poured her heart out to God, people had filtered in and filled the pews of the church. Some were on their knees, their hands clasped before them in prayer. Others sat, muttering, with strings of beads in their hands. “Oh, oh my. I have somewhere to be, but thank you.” She stood to go, but turned back toward Father Plant. He was dressed as simply as the Amish, in a plain brown frock with a rope belt.
She looked down at the dress Nellie loaned her back on the train. Everything had been a whirlwind since then. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“What doesn’t?”
“This dress. Might you have something simpler I could buy?” Katie froze. “Actually, my bag is back on the train, so I have no money. I’m sorry, I’ll let myself out.”
Father Plant reached out and touched her arm as she turned to go. “Actually, you don’t need to pay. At least not with money.” He gestured to a little room off the side of the sanctuary. “Come on, I’ll show you.”
Katie followed him to the small, dark, windowless room. Father Plant struck a match and lit a single candle in a sconce nearest the door. Several rows of frocks, just like his, hung there. “Help yourself to what you need.”
“These are very plain.” Katie sucked in a breath. “These make sense.”
Father Plant nodded. “That was the idea when a man named Francis Bernardone, nowadays known as Saint Francis of Assisi, gave up all of his riches for a life of poverty.”
Katie shook her head. “Forgive me, Father, did you say he gave up his riches? For poverty?”
“Yes.” The simple priest clasped his hands at his middle. “His family was the richest in his part of Italy. A town called Assisi. And you and I both know what the Good Book says about rich people entering the kingdom of Heaven.”
Katie nodded. “Camels don’t fit through the eyes of needles very well, just as rich men...” She paused. “And rich women, don’t seek God with their full hearts. They seek riches first.”
“Exactly,” Father Plant continued. “And Francis didn’t realize this for many years. He was cruel to the poor, greedy, and selfish.”
Katie stared at the priest with unbelieving eyes. This was not how I thought this story would go.
“Then, one day, he changed. Completely. People he’d known all his life, including his rich father, were none too happy with him.” Father’s eyes twinkled in the muted room. “They figured nobody in their right mind would give up a life of riches and luxury.”
“Why would he do that?” Katie’s eyebrows knitted together over her eyes. “Change so suddenly, I mean?”
“God spoke to him. And when God speaks, we must listen.” Father Plant smiled. “Francis desired to take the Bible’s words literally, and be like Jesus. No possessions, no fancy clothes. Just faith in God and a kind heart for the poor. Loving others as Jesus taught us to love—by loving us, when we were drenched in sin and unlovable ourselves.”
Katie nodded. In the end, Francis’s story made sense. “This Saint Francis of Assisi sounds like he may have had an Amish heart too.”
“I think you two would have gotten along quite well.” Father Plant smiled and gestured to the rack. “Help yourself, Katie Knepp. And Go with God, I trust He answered your prayers?”
“He did. He always does, even when sometimes I don’t like the answer.”
The priest laughed a hearty laugh that echoed off the stone walls. “You have a minister’s heart, Katie.”
“Thank you,” she whispered, unsure if he was making a statement or an observation, as she thumbed through the identical articles.
Katie chose a plain, brown frock and pulled it to her chest. “How can I repay your kindness?”
Father Plant turned to her from the doorway. “Do unto others, Katie. Show others the same kindness I’ve showed you, just as Jesus commanded us.”
“Love your neighbor as I have loved you,” they said together.
“Maybe we can change the world,” Katie said with a shrug.
“It only takes one person to change the world,” Father Plant agreed. “Jesus Christ was proof of that. Now go into the world and love others as He first loved us.”
Katie looked down at the frock and clutched it even tighter. “Thank you Fa—” But when she looked up, Father Plant was gone.