Читать книгу Between You and Me - Susan Wiggs, Susan Wiggs - Страница 8

The silver flash of a jet plane glinted in the morning sky. Caleb Stoltz tipped back his brimmed hat and watched it soar high overhead. Against the flawless summer blue, the plane glittered like a rare jewel—precious and out of reach.

“Hey, look, Uncle Caleb. Plane tracks,” said Jonah, pointing out the twin white plumes that bisected the sky in the flight path of the jet.

Caleb grinned at his nephew and handed him a galvanized milk pail, half-filled from the milk house. “They’re called contrails. Don’t slosh it,” he cautioned. “I’ll be in to breakfast shortly.”

Lugging the pail, the boy headed for the white clapboard house, his dusty bare feet leaving shallow impressions in the dry earth. Jonah’s skinny legs, browned by a summer of swimming at Crystal Falls up the creek a ways, protruded comically from his tattered black trousers, which only a short while ago had fit him. Now eleven, the kid was growing like the corn in high summer. Caleb would have to get Hannah to sew him a new pair of pants before school started in a few weeks. If not for the way the kids were growing, he would have no notion of the passage of time.

On a farm, the seasons were important, not the years.

Caleb washed down the milking shed, the stream of water hissing on the concrete and misting his work boots. He turned off the hose, reeled it in, and left the shed, glancing up at the puffy trail of clouds dissipating in the sky. The jet was long gone, off to New York or Bangkok or some other place Caleb had no hope of ever seeing. He studied the flight path and then wondered why it was called a path when there was no visible roadway, nothing to mark its way but invisible air. It was only after the jet had passed that its route could be seen.

If Rebecca were with him, she would quirk her brow and scold him for idle thoughts. Then he would challenge her to offer proof that any thought could be idle, and her quirked brow would knit in incomprehension. “I swear, Caleb Stoltz,” she would say, and then she’d change the subject. That was her way.

Ah, Rebecca. She was going to be the most difficult part of his day. The problem had been weighing on his mind for far too long. Time to stop putting off the inevitable. They were supposed to have an understanding. She believed that one of these days, she would get her clock from him, the traditional gift of engagement, and she’d present Caleb with an embroidered cloth to symbolize her acceptance. Baptism, marriage, and a family wouldn’t be far behind. Though she wasn’t keen to raise Caleb’s niece and nephew and take care of his father, she was willing to do her duty.

Caleb needed to acknowledge the truth his gut had been telling him since the day the church elders had presented him with the notion that he and Rebecca Zook should marry. And that truth was going to make for a hard conversation. He had a fine, warm affection for Rebecca, but it was not the deep love that would bind a man and woman for life. He wasn’t even sure that sort of love existed.

It wouldn’t be fair to string her along.

Standing in the yard, he surveyed the farm for a few moments, taking in the sweep of the broad valley that ran down from the Pocono hills. The fields were an abundant patchwork of corn, wheat, alfalfa, and sorghum, spread out over rolling landscape as far as the eye could see. In the distance, Eli Kemp and his sons were cradling wheat. Their scythes swung in tandem to the rhythm of a hymn they were singing, the sound traveling across the valley in the quiet of the morning. They moved along the rows like a line of industrious soldier ants, the forked cradles felling the stalks neatly to one side. Eli’s wife trailed behind, bundling sheaves.

That was Middle Grove, Caleb thought. Faith, work, and family, stitched together by the common thread of devotion. Other farmers in the district might breathe the sweet air and offer up a silent prayer. Thank you for this day, O Lord. But not Caleb. Not in a long, long time.

From the neighboring farm, the roar of a hydraulic engine broke the stillness of the morning, its mechanical cough obliterating the Kemps’ singing. The Haubers were getting ready to fill silo today. The diesel-powered shredder would be used to chop the corn for blowing into the silo.

Caleb would be going over to help after he spoke with Rebecca. In the meantime, he stayed busy. He liked being busy. It kept him from thinking too hard about things. The sun was out, there were chores to do, and the work went fast when neighbors pitched in together.

Taking off his hat, he wiped the sweat from his brow and headed inside. Despite all the open windows, the kitchen was stifling hot. The old iron stove door yawned open with a metallic protest as his niece, Hannah, added fuel to boil the coffee. Smoke and the reek of burned toast layered the room in a misty gray haze.

“Hannah burned the toast again,” Jonah announced, unnecessarily.

His sister, who was sixteen and as incomprehensible as an alien life-form in a science fiction novel, planted her fists on her hips. “I wouldn’t have burned a thing if you hadn’t spilled the milk.” She glared accusingly at a blue-white puddle on the scuffed linoleum floor.

“Well, I wouldn’t have spilled it if you hadn’t called me a brutz baby.”

“You are one,” she retorted. “Always pouting.”

“Huh. You’re gonna get married and have a real baby and then you’ll know what it’s like.”

“Hey, hey.” Caleb held up a hand for silence. “It’s not even seven o’clock and you two are squabbling already.”

“But she called me a—”

“Enough, Jonah.” Caleb didn’t raise his voice, but the sharpness of his tone cut through the boy’s sass. The brother and sister bickered a lot, but a deep bond held them close. Orphaned by a horrendous disaster, they shared a sense of vulnerability that made them cling together, closer than most siblings. “Did you get something to eat?”

“He made grape slush out of his cornflakes again,” Hannah said. “It’s disgusting.” Jonah’s strange habit of putting grape jelly on his cereal never failed to gross her out.

“It’s better than burnt—” Catching Caleb’s warning look, Jonah snapped his mouth shut.

“Go on over to the Haubers’,” Caleb said. “Tell them I’ll be along shortly.”

“Okay.” Jonah jammed on his hat and headed for the door.

“Be sure you watch yourself around the machinery, you hear?” Caleb cautioned, thinking of the shredder’s sharp blades and the powerful auger at the bottom of the silo.

“Don’t worry, I’ve been helping out since I was knee-high to a grasshopper,” Jonah said with a cocky grin, the one that never failed to chase away Caleb’s annoyance. “Oh! Almost forgot my lucky penny.” He scampered to his room and returned with the token. It was a coin flattened in a penny press machine at the old water-powered sawmill over in Blakeslee, a souvenir of Jonah’s only trip away from Middle Grove. He tucked the coin into his pocket, then yanked open the screen door.

“See you at lunchtime,” Caleb said.

“All right.”

“And don’t slam—”

The door banged shut.

“—the door,” Caleb finished, shaking his head.

Hannah was still mopping up the milk while Caleb washed at the kitchen sink. Through the window above the basin, he could see Jonah racing like a jackrabbit across the field to the silo. Jubilee, the collie mix that followed the kid everywhere, loped along at his side. With a sudden leap, Jonah launched himself into the air, then planted his hands on the ground as his legs and bare feet flew overhead in an exuberant handspring. This was the boy’s special skill, his lithe young body’s expression of pure joy, perhaps his way of embracing the perfect summer morning.

In the kitchen, an awkward silence hung as thick as the smoke. Lately, Caleb didn’t know what to say to his sullen niece. She had been so young when he’d left Middle Grove under a glowering shadow of disapproval from the elders. He’d had every intention of finding a life away from the community. But he had returned, reeled back in by a hideous tragedy. By that time, Hannah had turned into a skinny, nervous twelve-year-old, haunted by nightmares of her murdered parents.

Now his niece was a stranger, the lone girl in a household of men, with no woman’s hand to guide her. Just Caleb, who was ridiculously ill-equipped to deal with her, and his father, Asa, a man who clung with iron fists to the old ways. Already, some of Hannah’s friends were getting baptized and promised to young men. He could scarcely imagine his little niece as a wife and mother.

He finished scrubbing his hands and dried them, then fixed up a tray with his father’s breakfast and left it on the table as usual. Asa always got up early to read Die Botschaft in the quiet of the toolshed adjacent to the house. Caleb opened a cupboard and took a wad of cash from the coffee can, folding the bills into his wallet. After chores, and after his talk with Rebecca, he planned to go up to Grantham Farm to bring home a new horse. Baudouin, the sturdy Belgian, was old. He’d given his all and had earned a fine retirement in the pasture, and now Caleb needed a replacement. He ran a yoke of draft horses to make extra money to keep up with the bills on the farm. His team was in demand, especially in winter, when cars got stuck and fallen trees needed to be dragged out of the way. It was remarkable how much hauling English folks needed.

Glancing out the window again, he saw Jonah scrambling like a monkey up the conveyor belt to feed the bound corn shocks into the grinder. The kid loved high places and always volunteered for them. Caleb had always liked that chore too. The world looked entirely different when viewed from the high opening of the silo. He used to imagine the tower scene from Lord of the Rings, a forbidden novel that had once earned him a caning from his father when he’d been caught reading it. While feeding the stalks to the shredder, Caleb used to pretend that the mouthful of whirring, glistening blades belonged to a fierce dragon guarding the tower.

“Sorry about the toast, Uncle Caleb,” Hannah spoke up, taking the charred remains out of the wire rack.

“Not a problem.” To lighten the moment, he grabbed a piece and took a huge bite, closing his eyes and pretending to savor it. “Ah,” he said. “Ambrosia.”

She laughed a little. “Oh, Uncle Caleb. Don’t be silly.”

He choked down the rest of the toast and grinned, showing his charcoal teeth. “Who’s being silly?”

“What’s ambrosia, anyway? You’re always using big words, for sure.”

“It’s what the gods of Greek myth ate,” he said. “So I reckon it means something good enough to feed to the gods.”

She gasped at the mention of Greek gods—another forbidden topic—then whisked the toast crumbs from the counter. “You’re so smart.”

“Knowing the meaning of a word doesn’t make me smart.”

“Sure it does. I heard Rebecca say you went away and came back smarter, and that’s why you still haven’t joined the order—’cause your head’s all full of prideful English nonsense.”

“Rebecca likes to hear herself talk.” At the mention of her name, Caleb felt a trickle of sweat slide down his neck. Rebecca’s notion that his time away had made him proud was yet another reason they weren’t a good match. Getting an education didn’t make a man proud. Instead, it was humbling.

In his time away, Caleb had done the unthinkable. Against all Amish principles, he had attended college classes. The traditional eighth-grade education had left a thirst in his soul, and he’d sought out books and knowledge the way a man seeks cold lemonade on a hot August day. He used to ride his bike thirteen miles each way to take classes at the community college, soaking up lessons in history, philosophy, logic, calculus, and the kind of science that had nothing to do with crop yields or tending livestock. It was humbling to discover how much he didn’t know about the world, how much he had yet to learn. He had just been starting out when he’d had to come back. These days, he imagined the world he’d discovered beyond Middle Grove shimmering like a chimera on the horizon, out of reach, yet tauntingly real.

Hannah finished tidying the kitchen in her negligent, haphazard way. When Caleb’s father came in, he’d likely point out the crumbs on the floor and the dish towels left out on the counter. He’d probably also scowl at his breakfast tray and remark that a proper Amish family broke bread together around the table, their scrubbed faces lit by the inspiration of silent prayer before they dived into hotcakes with berry preserves and thick slices of salty ham.

But they weren’t like other families. Caleb could only do so much.

“Uncle Caleb?”

At the tentative note in Hannah’s voice, he turned to her. To his surprise, her cheeks shone a dull red against the loose strings of her black kapp.

“What is it, liebchen?” He used the old endearment, hoping the familiar word would sound soothing to her ears.

“There’s, um, a singing Sunday night at the great hall,” she said. “I was wondering, um, could I go?”

“I reckon you could do that,” he said. The singings took place on a church Sunday after services. The adults would leave for the evening so the kids could gather around the table and sing—not the slow morning chants meant for devotion, but the faster ones, meant to get the kids talking. And “talking” actually meant sizing each other up, because the goal was to get the young folk started with their courtships. It seemed contrived, but no more so than a high school dance in the outside world.

“All righty, then,” Hannah said, all fluttering hands and darting eyes.

“Anything else?” he asked.

“Can I get a ride home in Aaron Graber’s buggy?” she asked, all in a rush.

Caleb felt an unpleasant thud of surprise in his gut. Aaron Graber, he thought. More like Aaron Grabber. Caleb wasn’t so sure he liked the idea of little Hannah running around with a boy, particularly that one, who looked at girls the way a fox eyes a hen.

A distant, frenzied barking sounded through the window, but Caleb gave his full attention to his niece. This was kind of a big deal. She wanted to go courting. His little Hannah, courting. It seemed like only yesterday he was showing her how to get a hit in slow-pitch softball and making her giggle at his stupid jokes. Where was that Hannah now?

“Well,” he said, “I don’t think—”

“Please, Uncle Caleb,” she said. “He asked me special.”

Before he could reply, the kitchen door slapped open with a violent bang. Levi Hauber’s face was the color of old snow, and his shoulders shook visibly. Even before he spoke, the sheer horror in his eyes froze Caleb’s blood.

“Come quick,” Levi said. “It’s Jonah. There’s been an accident.”