Keys of Heaven (13 page)

T
he next morning after breakfast, Sarah sent Caleb out to weed the garden. There hadn't been a single moment yesterday to tend to the mullein she'd gathered at the Peachey farm, and if she wanted it at its best, she needed to pay it some attention.

She stripped the leaves from the long stems and took all but a couple of cups of them outside to the drying rack on the south side of the house. Then, working from one of the recipes Ruth had given her, she measured olive oil into a deep saucepan and tore up the remaining mullein leaves, adding them to the warming oil with chopped comfrey leaf, a palmful of chopped fresh mint, a tablespoon of rosemary, and a few whole cloves.

With the flame on the burner down as low as it would go, she mashed the leaves in the oil with the back of a spoon, and breathed in as the kitchen filled with a delicious aroma. It needed to cook slowly for two hours, but she had no shortage of tasks to fill the time.

She had just filled the sink to do the dishes when feet pounded on the porch, and Caleb burst into the kitchen. “Caleb! You're supposed to be weeding the garden!
Was tut sie hier? 
”

“Mamm—the phone. It's Joe, and he needs you quick!”

Simon!

Sarah dropped the frying pan in the water with a splash and dashed for the door. It had been a long time since she'd run foot races at the little one-room school in her home district, but her legs hadn't forgotten how to stretch out and eat up the ground.

She swung into the phone shanty that she, her in-laws, and the Kanagy place across the road all shared and grabbed the receiver, out of breath.

“Hallo? Joe?
Ischt du? 
”

“
Ja, ischt mir.
”

“Is it Simon? Is he all right?”

“Sarah, calm down. Simon is fine.” He cleared his throat. “Mostly fine.
Wie geht's?
 ”

“Never mind how I'm doing, what does ‘mostly fine' mean?” For whatever had happened must be serious, if Joe had had to find a phone instead of writing. And how many times had he tried the shanty number before someone had come close enough to hear it?

“We were taking care of the horses this morning and one of them stepped on him, is all.”

“On him? What part of him?”

“His foot. The rest of him is fine, Sarah. He can't walk real well, though, which is why it's me down at the big house using their phone, and not him. It's a couple hundred yards' walk and the foreman wouldn't let him get up.”

“Thank goodness for that. And it wasn't a thigh or an arm. How bad is it?”

“That big brown gelding got him pretty good. Simon was looking at his foot, thinking he'd picked up a rock—which he had—but it's a new horse and I guess he thought Simon was getting too familiar. Stepped sideways and Simon couldn't get out of the way in time.”

“Did you get his boot off?”

“
Ja
, before the swelling got too bad. It's bad now. He'll probably lose the nail. It's looking pretty squashed.”

“Is that what the doctor said?”

“Ain't no doctor out this far, and we can't afford to pay the clinic anyhow. The foreman is an EMT and is pretty good with injuries, but they asked me to call you even so.”

“To do what? Do they want me to come?” Sarah's whole spirit quailed at the thought, but if Simon needed her, she would gird up her loins and go.

Other than a trip to Ohio for a wedding and a trip to Florida as a girl, she hadn't been outside Pennsylvania—and as majestic a picture as Silas had painted, she wasn't sure she was up to it alone. Would Caleb and Amanda go with her maybe? Could she ask Jacob and Corinne for the train fare for all three of them?

Joe made a huffing sound of astonishment. “Come all the way out here because a horse stepped on his toes? Of course you don't need to. Simon didn't even want me to telephone you. Said he didn't want to worry you.”

“I'm glad you did, Joe. That's the mark of a true friend—doing the right thing.”
Help me be calm, Lord. Help me to think what I can do, from my place right here.
“What does the foreman suggest for treatment?”

“Ice, elevation, some salve they keep on hand.”

Salve.

“Do they have B and W out there in Colorado?”

“Ain't seen any. Mamm uses that stuff on us all the time, but I don't think she tried it on stomped toes.”

Sarah might not be able to go out there herself, but she could send something to help. “Joe, listen to me. If I send you some B and W and some herbs to put on his foot, will you see that it goes on and he doesn't argue?”

“Herbs? Aw, Sarah, I don't think—”

“
Neh, lauscht du.
I'll write out the instructions on what to do, wrap everything you'll need in a parcel, and send it out there overnight.” It would cost a fortune, and maybe UPS wouldn't even go up into the mountains if it was so remote, but she had to try. “I learned what to do, Joe, so if I can learn how, then so can you. Expect it tomorrow. I'll put it together right now and be in town within the hour. All right?”

“If you're sure you want to do that.”

“Ruth told me about a similar case, and what she did. A boy got an augur right through his toe. The toe was infected and swollen up so bad they thought the boy would lose it, but they put burdock leaf and B and W on it, and it healed up just fine. You'd never know he was injured, she says. So we're going to do the same for Simon, and no matter what kind of fuss he puts up, you tell him if he doesn't do what you say, I'm coming out there to do it myself. You hear?”

Joe laughed, and said something to someone over his shoulder. “I'll tell him.”

“If you have questions, call Henry's phone in the barn and he'll come over and get me. Then you won't have to chance that someone will hear the ringing in the shanty.”

“All right. Good-bye, Sarah.”

“Thank you, Joe. Give Simon my love.”

“I will.”

Sarah's heart was still beating fast as she came out of the shanty and found Caleb waiting anxiously outside. She told him what had happened. “You're going to make him a cure, Mamm? What can I do?”

She didn't have one son to hug and comfort, but she did have the other. She took him into her arms and hugged him hard, much to his surprise. “You're a good boy and I'm glad I still have you with me,” she said into his hair. “Now, I need at least three dozen fresh, unblemished burdock leaves from behind the chicken house. You remember where I showed you?”

“
Ja.
I'll get them.”

He took off down the lane and she hurried into the front bedroom. Despite her best efforts to look on the sunny side, gruesome images of Simon's long foot all black with bruises and maybe even infection kept rising up in her mind's eye. No, she couldn't think that way. She had to focus on the healing, or she might forget something important and he would suffer.

She had several small tins of burn and wound salve, that Amish standby that seemed to heal everything from lawn mower blade cuts to burns from the stove. She chose a big one, because Joe would have to apply it every other day at least. Several lengths of surgical gauze and padding—though a foreman trained as an EMT would probably have some, she couldn't take the chance. And a roll of tape.

Caleb came in with the leaves and she took them from him gratefully. “
Gut
—these are just what we need, fresh and pliable so Joe can wrap them around the foot.”

She layered them between wet paper towels and sealed them in a zip bag.

“Caleb, hitch up Dulcie. We're going into town to UPS.”

He dove out the door. She turned off the burner under the mullein—it would have to wait until later, when she was calm—then tore a sheet out of her recipe book.

On a second sheet, she wrote Simon's name.

At the UPS office, the woman behind the counter assured Sarah that they would have the parcel on the ranch's doorstep by four o'clock the following afternoon. Simon's foot would probably be swelled to the skin's limits by then, but considering how far the package had to go, it was the best anyone could do. Sarah watched the woman take it into the back, and sent a prayer with it. The parcel was in God's hands now…and the extra money she had hoped to put toward the mortgage was in the UPS till.

But Corinne and Jacob would understand. In fact, she and Caleb should go over there now and tell them what had happened. If Joe got it in his head to call his mother on the phone they kept in the garden shed, figuring his dad would be out in the fields, it would never do for Corinne to hear what had befallen her grandson from Barbara Byler at the sisters' day quilting tomorrow.

“
Kommst du
, Caleb,” she said as they left the counter. “We're going to Mammi and Daadi's.”

“Can I drive?”

“I would be happy if you did.”

Delighted, Caleb took the man's place on the right side of the buggy. Usually she or Simon drove, but her younger son was the man of the family now and he never missed a chance to take the reins.

When they pulled up in the Yoder yard, Corinne came out, her forehead creased with concern. “Jacob says he saw you heading into town as if a barn was on fire,” she said, reaching up to pat Dulcie's neck and loop the reins over the fence while Caleb and Sarah got down. “Is everything all right?”

There weren't too many ways to give bad news, but Sarah did her best to tell Corinne what had happened with a spirit that wouldn't worry her any more than necessary. And when she finished and they were seated at the kitchen table with Fannie and Amanda, Corinne actually smiled.

“You've sent a cure and told Joe Byler how to handle it.” She laughed in delight. “You never know. That boy might find he likes making cures and take up the work himself.”

“He wouldn't be the first man to do it,” Fannie said, and blew gently on her mug of hot coffee. “There's that man out in Indiana who's in the papers all the time for curing people—even folks whose doctors have despaired of them.”

“Who's despaired of whom?” The men came in, having obviously seen Sarah's buggy outside. Jacob's gaze found Sarah's, full of concern.

She told the story again, with more fact and less emotion this time, and Jacob's face relaxed. “Joe is a good boy. He'll follow your instructions to the letter, and it will be just like you being there.”

“Without the kisses and the pillow plumping and the mother-hen clucking,” Zeke put in.

“If I could have sent myself UPS, I would have, clucking and all,” Sarah admitted. “But the foreman is an EMT, apparently, so Joe has someone to help if he needs it. Between
Englisch
medicine and mine, Simon will make a good recovery, I'm sure of it.”

She wasn't afraid, not after that first rush of panic at the sound of Joe's voice. She had done what she could, and the rest was up to God.

“It's like we heard on Sunday,” Silas said in his quiet way. The preaching had been on the subject of faith. “Didn't the preacher say we must have faith in the strength of God's hand around us?”

Sarah smiled at him gratefully for the reminder. That image of her boy in God's mighty hand would calm her when she woke in the night, worrying about infection and whether the parcel would get there in time and whether Joe would skip a line in the instructions and forget to—

Sarah took a deep breath.

“No matter how old they get, we still worry,” Corinne told her, and squeezed her hand. “That doesn't mean we lack faith. It just means we're mothers.”

C
orinne asked Sarah and Caleb to stay for supper, even though the next day was Friday and they'd be back again as usual. But Sarah was glad. While the fear had subsided, her spirit was still unsettled and she couldn't think of anything that would help more than Corinne's warm gaze and Amanda's steady shoulder at her side as they peeled potatoes and shredded carrots and red cabbage for a colorful slaw.

“The taxi is coming tomorrow morning to take Zeke and Fannie back up to Mount Joy,” Amanda said. “I'm glad you could stay so we can all be together this last night.”

Something she said snagged Sarah's attention the way the cleavers on the hillside did her skirt. She rinsed the potato and picked up another one. “Zeke and Fannie? But Silas is going with them, isn't he?”

“Apparently not,” Amanda said in a low voice. “Miriam and Joshua invited him to stay another week—more, if he wants. Joshua has been planning to remodel the old bathroom in their house for ages, and with another pair of hands he could get the job done this month.”

“Is that the only reason he's staying on?” Sarah asked carefully, focusing completely on the smooth movement of the peeler.

Amanda blushed. “I don't know. I hope—I mean, it would be prideful of me to think that—that—” She stammered to a stop.

“Has he said anything to you?” Sarah's voice was nearly a whisper now, since the men were washing up just outside at the double sink.

“That's the trouble—we talk all the time,” Amanda said in a rush. “But there is nothing to it. He remarks on the weather. I say how the garden is doing. He wonders if Dat will get the third planting done before it rains. I say I'm working on a quilt to go in the auction in the fall. But nothing about—about—nothing personal.”

Poor Amanda. Sometimes, before a boy finally decided that a girl might be the one for him, he spent more time hemming and hawing and making conversation than he did courting. When Michael had come along, all thoughts of other men had fled from Sarah's mind. Conversation with Michael wasn't difficult. It was a joy—two souls who couldn't wait to discover each other, to peel back the layers of their characters to reveal the hidden fears and hopes inside. Conversation with Henry was a little bit like that—though why that should be was a mystery. She seemed to have jumped right into his life and learned some of his secrets—and he hers—without even trying. Sometimes she'd even made those discoveries in anger, which was even stranger.

“Maybe some men have a gift from God,” she said to Amanda. “Conversation isn't easy for everyone, you know. Just be patient and make it easy for him to come to you. Be the listening ear and the welcoming smile, and you will be the one he wants to tell things to.”

“I try,” Amanda whispered. “But I don't want him to think I'm forward.”

“Nobody could think that of you,” Sarah assured her.

The men came in, and Corinne bustled over to take the roast out of the oven, and the time for confidences evaporated.

After supper, Caleb and Miriam's boys went with their grandfather to the barn to muck out the dairy and carry milk cans while Zeke and Jacob milked the cows. Jacob didn't do it by hand anymore, but used a pair of portable vacuum milkers with hoses for his small herd. Still, it was a two-person job, and three was even better. The older boys carried the buckets of fresh milk to the big holding tank that was emptied by the milk truck driver every other day, and Miriam's and Amanda's job was to wash the buckets and equipment in hot water and detergent once they had been used.

While they were doing that, Sarah got busy in the kitchen, putting the food away and filling the sink with hot water. To her surprise, instead of heading out to the barn as well, Silas took a dish towel out of the drawer and leaned on the counter next to the drain rack.

“You don't have to do that,” she told him, thinking quickly. “Not here, at least. You could help Amanda in the dairy with the cans, and send Miriam back here to help me clean up.”

“Knowing those two, the job is probably half done already,” he said with a smile, and Sarah knew she'd been outmaneuvered.

Well, she would just have to keep the conversation friendly and light, and hope that with all the help Jacob had in the barn, the milking would be done so fast they'd be back before she knew it, and the cows would wonder what had happened.

She got busy with the piles of dishes. “Fannie and Zeke have had a good visit, haven't they? My in-laws will be sad to see them go tomorrow. We all will.”

“Myself included. You've heard I'll be staying a little longer?”

Sarah nodded. “You'll enjoy staying with Miriam and Joshua. He's a wise man, and loves a good joke. Not as much as Zeke, though! Miriam will be glad to see the new bathroom finished, too. She's had to put up with leaky pipes and a cracked sink for too long—it's a big project to take on when time and money are short.”

“I'm glad to help. I've had a little experience with plumbing at my own house, which was painful at the time, but now I'm glad to have had it, if it helps Joshua.”

“Is your house old?”

“Yes—two hundred years or so. Which is probably why I was able to afford it.”

“Two hundred years!” She'd never lived in a house that old, but she'd visited plenty. They took a lot of upkeep, from what she'd heard folks say.

“Everything works, despite its age, though it could use a woman's hand. It feels an awful lot like a bachelor place, and needs a change.”

Oh dear. Oh dear. What needs a change here is the subject—and quick.

She scrubbed a plate with energy. “I'm sure there are any number of girls in your district who would take on a job like that with pleasure.”

Another plate. And another.

“There might be, but some are easier to have around a home than others.”

An opening, she thought with relief, rinsing the plates and putting them in the rack, then plunging her hands in the hot water for the next one. “Amanda is very easy to be around, isn't she? There is something about her calm spirit and loyal heart that makes you want to be in the same room with her, no matter where in the house she is.”

“You are a good friend to her.”

“She is a better friend to me. I have three sisters in Mifflin County, but I count her as my fourth. She might be only twenty, but she's mature, a member of the church, and ready to care for a home of her own.”

There. Hints didn't come any broader than that.

He took the stack of dry plates to the cupboard. “If I didn't know better, I would say you are trying to point me in her direction, Sarah Yoder.”

“And why not? I've seen many a man who doesn't know better. Sometimes they have to be pointed, for their own good.”

He smiled and began to dry the silverware. “I admit that sometimes we miss what's right under our noses. But I don't think that's the case here.” The drawer closed with a sound like an exclamation point. “Sarah, I want to stop beating around the bush and ask if you would be interested.”

If she could have run from the room, she would have. Instead, she prayed that someone—anyone—would come.

“Interested…in what?”

“In me.” Color washed into his face. “I know there are many better prospects, and maybe you already have your eye on someone, but I wanted you to know that on my side, I'm very interested.”

She could hardly gather her thoughts together, between watching the door hoping someone would come through it, and hoping Amanda was not that someone. “I told you—Michael—I—”

“I have to confess that I engineered the extra week with Joshua just so I would have a reason to stay. Hoping that there might be some opportunities for us to get to know one another better.”

She had to settle this once and for all, with no more stammering.

“I would value those opportunities, Silas, to become better friends. But friends is all we can be.” Oh dear. That sounded blunt. Unkind almost, and she didn't mean it to be. But she couldn't think of a way to soften it so he would not misunderstand.

He gazed at her, his towel going around and around inside a glass. “You sound very definite. Have you made your mind up so soon, without even giving me a chance?”

“I…had hoped that you might give Amanda a chance,” she said into the soapsuds.

“And I think I hinted before that while I like Amanda a lot and respect her very much, it is not she who fills my thoughts and makes me walk up the hill three and four times a day, and turn back before I get to the top.”

“Is that what you've been doing?” Could her face get any redder? Maybe someone better not come in right now. What would they think?

“It's a sad confession, but it shows you my state of mind.”

“I'm sorry,” she whispered. This was awful. How was she going to tell Amanda this? They told each other nearly everything.

“You're sorry about my state of mind, or you're sorry you can't return my feelings?” His tone was gentle—but she still didn't dare look up and meet his eyes.

“Both.”

“Then I am sorry, too. And you're sure?”

She didn't know whether she was standing on her own feet, or upside down, or was just plain going crazy. “I'm so
verhuddelt
right now I don't know what to think. But mostly I'm disappointed for Amanda's sake. She—” Oh, no, she couldn't betray Amanda's feelings for him, and she had come within a word of doing so! She gulped. “She would be worth getting to know, Silas.”

“And I'm sure I will—as friends. We'll all be friends.” But his voice had a note of disappointment in it. “No matter what, you are still my sisters in God.”

“And that is how you must think of me. Silas—I'm sorry. I don't think I can face everyone just now.” She drained the water from the sink and wrung out the cloth. “If you could tell Corinne I've had to go home, and tell Caleb I'll see him there…”

“Sarah, don't—I don't want to chase you away.”

“You haven't. I just need a little walk and some breathing time. You'll tell them?”

“Of course. Be prepared for Zeke to say something about it in the morning, though.”

Zeke always had a joke for every situation. But as Sarah slipped out the kitchen door into the soft summer night, she doubted very much whether anyone could find anything amusing in this one.