Sarah's Orphans (31 page)

“With the big head?”

“That's Sarah.”

“Our arms are longer than our legs.”

“That's Mia!”

Mia had drawn herself between the two larger stick figures, who were each clasping one of her stick hands.

“Very
gut
drawing,” Paul said.

“And Mateo, Andy, Henry, Luke, Isaac.” She pointed at a different blob with each name. They were drawn to the side, standing together in a large group with a giant sun beating down on them.

In truth the image struck a chord deep in Paul's gut. Did Mia think that they were a family? Did she think he and Sarah were more than friends? He supposed she had no way of knowing what a real family, a normal family, looked like. To her, it would seem natural for him to leave and reappear every few days.

“I forgot
Mammi
.”

Sweat broke out on his brow as she scrambled off his lap.

“
Mammi
! I need cwayons!” She was gone with another bang of the door.

“She's talking more these days, but still working on the
r
sound,” Sarah said. “I'm sure she'll get it eventually.”

Paul wanted to invite Sarah to see the piglets. He wanted to sit beside her on the porch until the sun set in the western sky. He wanted to stay.

Instead, he mumbled an excuse about needing to check on the boys. But as he drove his tractor back down the lane, he was thinking about a little stick girl, holding hands with a stick mommy and stick daddy.

CHAPTER 57

M
ateo and Isaac hadn't wasted any time getting into the enclosure with the pigs, though Luke warned them they had best not get dirty. In the end, he couldn't resist and joined them.

“I thought they would be bigger,” Mateo confessed.

“Still plenty heavy.” Isaac was trying to scoot one off his lap. The pig happily rolled over on to its back, apparently waiting for a tummy rub.

“How old are they, Luke?”

“About six weeks. Paul said they were weaned at twenty-eight days.”

Mateo nodded wisely. He wouldn't have known what weaning was a month ago, but he and Isaac had been reading Brian's books. It was plain enough from the pictures that weaning meant the piglets no longer received their mother's milk.

“Will they grow up to have piglets of their own?” he asked.

“
Nein
. Paul bought these for slaughter.”

“I like bacon, but I don't think we should talk about it here.” Isaac's voice was so serious that they all started laughing.

The piglets squealed at the sound and took off like a flock of geese, trundling across the pigpen.

“It is important to remember that they're not pets.”

They all turned around in surprise at Paul's voice. Mateo had been focusing so hard on the piglets he hadn't even heard the tractor.

“
Ya
, but…we should take good care of them. Right?” Mateo thought they were about the cutest things he'd ever seen—all pink and chubby with curly tails and little brown ears.

“Of course we will. They're our responsibility now.”

“We'll give them the best life a pig can have.” Isaac jumped up and stuck his hands in his pockets, and then he remembered that they were covered with mud and jerked them back out.

“We will do that. People have to eat, but we can still be kind and be
gut
stewards of what
Gotte
has given us.” Paul waved at the enclosure. “So what do you think? Does it meet your approval?”

“Sure it does.” Mateo reluctantly pushed his piglet away, and it took off after the others. “You have a covered area with lots of straw.”

“So they won't get cold.” Isaac nodded in approval.

“Do you know why we have the lower area filled with water and mud?”

“Because pigs don't sweat,” Mateo and Isaac said in unison.

Luke rolled his eyes, but Mateo could tell that he was enjoying this as much as they were. They spent the next few minutes walking around the pen as Paul showed them what he'd done to accommodate the little creatures.

He'd attached a water trough to a sliding bracket on the side of the fence. “So we can move it up as they get taller.”

“Why not just put it on the ground?” Luke stuck his hand in the water and then shook it dry.

“My
dat
raised pigs every year. No matter how we secured the water trough to the ground, the pigs would uproot it, spilling it. I might be in the field and not notice. If that happened, they could be without water all day.”

“A pig's body weight is one half water.” Isaac had practically memorized that book. He'd been quoting it to Mateo for over a week.

“Correct. If they don't have access to clean water, they can get very sick.”

“What will you feed them?”

“
Mammi
said she would start a slop bucket. Can I count on you two to bring it over every day?”

In answer, Mateo and Isaac high-fived one another.

“The majority of their diet will come from grain. We'll need to measure and watch each day. We don't want to waste it, but we want them to have all they need.”

All three boys sat down on top of the fence rail, and Paul stood beside it.

“There's going to be enough work here for all three of you. I'll admit to you right now, it's hard work. You have to scoop out the manure each day.”

Luke glanced at Mateo and Isaac. When they both nodded, Luke asked, “And you're going to share the money with us?”

“I will. One pig will provide meat for the winter for your family, and one will be for mine—for me and Rebecca and Joseph.”

“What about the other eight?” Isaac asked.

“We'll sell them to neighbors. I can put up a sign at the store. Half the money will go to you boys, and I'll keep the other half.”

Again Isaac looked at him, and Mateo could feel his head nodding. He'd never actually earned money before. Maybe he could help Sarah with their fall school clothes. He and Isaac had even talked about using the money to purchase some goats. There were a lot of different things they could do with their half of the money. Even split in thirds, it would be more than he'd ever had. The possibilities sometimes kept him awake at night.

“We're in,” all three boys said simultaneously.

“Will you ever let them out of the pen?” Mateo asked.

“Actually, I was hoping you boys could help me with that.” Paul showed them a fenced cattle pen that as yet had no cattle. “The grass will come up good in here. I need to add some fencing around the bottom so they won't get out. Want to lend a hand?”

Of course they did. Luke claimed he needed to get back to the house and take care of Dusty's stall, but Mateo and Isaac stayed. They handed Paul nails, made sure there weren't any gaps in the fencing, and then promised to come back the next day to see how the piglets liked it.

“I'm counting on you two. I have fields to take care of, but with your help, we should be able to provide these piglets with a nice place to live.”

Mateo and Isaac promised they would help, and then Paul told them they should get home before dark. “You don't want to keep Sarah or
Mammi
waiting.”

It was Isaac's idea to cut across the field rather than go by the road. Mateo thought that maybe it was to avoid cars. Was there even a chance that his mother would try to come back again? Mateo didn't think so. He was pretty sure that he wouldn't be seeing her for a long time, and while one part of him felt sad about that, another part—a bigger part—was relieved.

Isaac insisted that he go over the fence first. “Just step in my hands and hold on to that post.”

“How are you going to get across?”

“I'll climb up. I've done it plenty of times.”

Maybe he had. Maybe what happened next was simply because they were in a hurry. Mateo had landed in the weeds on his backside, laughing and standing up, trying to brush off the pieces of grass. Unfortunately, the grass was stuck to the mud he'd managed to splash on his clothes earlier.

He was thinking of that, and of how he would offer to clean them in the sink so Sarah wouldn't have to, when he heard the tear of fabric. He looked up to see that Isaac had ripped a hole in his pants across the entire seat.

And while they should have been worried, instead they laughed more and ran across the field, toward their home, as the sun set over their family's farm.

CHAPTER 58

T
he letters began arriving on Friday. At first the mailman left them in their box at the end of the lane. Then on Saturday he left a note, saying there were more to pick up at the post office. And finally, on Monday, he brought a large bag and set it on their porch.

Fortunately, the mail came early in the day, so Sarah had been able to hide it from the children.

“You're going to have to tell them.”
Mammi
was baking a pie, and the smell was distracting Sarah from the problem at hand.

She hadn't realized how much she had missed good cooking until
Mammi
arrived. Actually, they had never enjoyed very good cooking. They had been the Amish family with few sweets on the counter and barely adequate meals on the table. She realized now that many of their prior difficulties had probably been owing to her mother's depression as much as their father's illness.

“
Ya
. I will tell them. Tonight, I guess.”

Andy wasn't there for their family meeting. He'd cleaned up and taken off in the tractor, claiming he had friends to meet. Sarah was pretty sure it was one friend by the name of Emma, but she didn't call him on it. Maybe it wasn't serious, and that was why he hadn't brought up the subject himself.

Henry, Isaac, Luke, and Mateo sat on the couch—yawning and making an obvious effort to keep their eyes open. Mia was curled in
Mammi
's lap, and the gentle motion of the rocking chair assured she would be sound asleep in no time. Sarah sat in the chair where her mother had always sat. There was a time when she'd felt a spike of anger every time she used something that was her mother's. Those times were fewer and farther between. Perhaps she was healing.

“Let's get on with this,” Isaac said. “I'm tired.”

“
Ya
, the pigs got out again today. Took forever to catch them.” Mateo leaned his head back in mock exhaustion—or maybe it was real exhaustion.

“Next time we won't leave the gate open for even a second.”

“Who would have thought a piglet could run so fast? They're like flies or bees or—”

“Torpedoes?” It was the first military word Luke had used in several weeks. He wasn't spending as much time at the neighbor's house, not since
Mammi
had arrived. Had she talked to him about it? Regardless, Sarah was glad. She was also happy to see the neighbor boy in their yard, playing on the trampoline or enjoying a game of baseball.

“Don't know, but they're fast.” Mateo yawned, covering his mouth at the last second.

“I'll be quick about this,” Sarah promised. “We've been getting a lot of mail since the piece about Mateo and Mia came out in the paper.”

There had been no keeping Chloe's article from the boys. It seemed that every family in their community had seen it, though very few of them subscribed to the paper.

“How much is a lot?” Henry sat up straighter and focused his attention on the group. He was their dreamer, often reading or thinking of other things. But when one of his family was in any sort of trouble, he was all ears and quick with a plan to resolve the situation. Just out of school one year, and already he acted like a grown man.

“At first there were only a few, but today the mailman brought a large sack.”

“All for us?” Isaac squirreled up his nose. “Who would want to write us?”

Sarah still wasn't sure exactly how to explain this, so she chose her words carefully. “People. Some people who want to encourage us, who think it's a
gut
thing we're doing by having Mateo and Mia live here.”

Mateo's eyes widened, and he looked suddenly awake.

“Other people think both Mateo and Mia would be better off somewhere else.”

“What do they know?” The question burst from Mateo. “They've never even met us!”

“That's true, but sometimes when people read about others they feel like they know them.”
Mammi
's voice was calm, quiet, and reasonable. “I suppose that because of the pieces in the newspaper, these people do think they know something about you.”

“But I don't get it. Why would we be better off with someone else?”

“It's a question of your being Hispanic and us being Plain.” Sarah hadn't known how to broach the subject of ethnicity, but after worrying over it she had prayed and determined it was best to meet it head-on. “Some people think you'd be better off with a Hispanic family.”