The Amish Heart of Ice Mountain (3 page)

Chapter Four

He awoke to a gentle touch on his arm and peered sleepily at the old man who stood beside his bed.

“You want anything, son?”

“I got candy bars, magazines, some peanuts, too.”

“No, thanks.” Edward slumped down, hoping the guy would go away.

“I'm a volunteer. Been one for a few years now.”

Edward heard him slide a chair across the floor with a slight screech and suppressed an irritated groan.

“Yep, had to find something to do after my wife died.”

And here we go . . . more good news.
But Edward was too well brought up in the ways of his people, trained that elders should be respected, for him to dismiss the other man.

“I get to meet all kinds of folks here—some sicker than others.”

“Yeah,” Edward muttered glumly. “I bet.”

“How sick are you, son?”

Edward swung his head, glaring at the old man with as much intensity as he could muster with his single line of vision. “I lost my right eye.”

The old man nodded. “I see your face is bandaged.”

“Scarred too.”

“I suppose there's all kinds of scars—some that we see, some we don't. Take me, for instance—used to be a real heavy drinker in my time.”

“How'd you give it up?” Edward asked idly.
Not that I plan on it . . .

“I found something I loved more.”

“Yeah? Well, you know drinking is a disease, a sickness. Some people can't help it.”

The old man nodded. “True. I was only telling you my experience.”

Edward exhaled and closed his eye briefly. It seemed that only a moment had passed, but he realized he must have fallen asleep. When he opened his eye, the old man was gone and a young nurse was by his side, adjusting some tubing.

“That old guy can sure talk,” he commented with a stretch.

“What old guy is that?” She smiled at him, blinking wide blue eyes.

“The old man—the volunteer. He was here a bit ago.”

She shook her head and he felt like an idiot.

“I don't know who you mean, but volunteers come and go,” she said.

“Yeah,” Edward muttered, confused. “I bet they do.”

He pushed the old man's words out of his mind and drifted back to a fitful sleep.

 

 

Sarah wanted to be there when they took the bandages off, even though he'd ranted and thrown his water pitcher against the wall. But studying under
Grossmuder
May had taught Sarah many things—not the least of which was patience.

“Your wounds make no difference to me,” she'd assured him, ignoring the now familiar ringing of bells at his escapade.

“And why not?” he'd asked sarcastically. “Because you're the healer now and you're above all those superficial things like looks? Because I remember fine how you used to touch my face, run your pretty tongue up my throat, and tell me you couldn't wait to be married.... Well, here we are, so don't have the temerity to tell me that it doesn't matter.”

She sniffed, realizing that any way she answered would only condemn her further in his sight. She was glad when the doctor had
kumme
in, whistling and brisk.

“All right, Mr. King, enough with upsetting the nurses and your young wife. We'll have those bandages off and see what's what.” The doctor ignored his own crude pun and lowered the bed, leaving Sarah to step aside.

The physician pulled out a pair of blunt-tipped scissors and began to work while Sarah prayed. When the clutter was cleared away, the doctor lifted a mirror from a tray and held it out to Edward.

“Now remember, it may be possible to give you a prosthetic eye. I think we've done the best we can with the scarring, though certainly plastic surgery may be an option.... Mrs. King, if you'd like to step closer.”

The doctor moved and Sarah stepped back to the bed, watching the back of the mirror as Edward lifted it toward himself for a brief moment. She jumped when the mirror was cast to the floor to shatter heavily.

“I'll get somebody to clean that up,” the doctor murmured. “It's a normal reaction.” He patted Sarah's shoulder. “And I'll leave this eye patch to use for a time as you adjust your balance and peripheral sight. A good day, Mr. King, Mrs. King.”

Sarah had watched him go, then turned back to face her husband. The empty eye socket was healing over well as far as she could tell, and even the puckered scars on his high cheekbone looked pink and healthy.

She stepped as quietly as she could over the glass crunching beneath her sensible shoes and picked up the eye patch from his lap, playing absently with its black elastic band while she struggled to find something to say. How could she tell him that he still looked impossibly handsome and, with the patch, he'd make a rakish pirate of an
Amisch
man?

“I don't want your pity,” he'd gritted out into the silence, and she lifted her head, his gaze slamming into her.

“I'm not offering it.” Her toes curled inside her black shoes.
And I'm really not . . . Why should he be pitied? He is young, still attractive, healthy . . . there are many who could say far less.

“Well, don't ever offer it, Sarah King, or I'll chew your little rump. Understand?” His blue eye bored into her.

She'd nodded, both annoyed and fascinated by his words, and pleased at the fight in them....

 

 

Mahlon Mast nodded to his wife as he came into the family kitchen before dawn.

“Don't forget your work gloves,” Anne said softly.

“Nee
, I won't. I expect cutting that tree up will be a job. It was probably over two hundred years old.” He took the cup of coffee she offered and drank it in one gulp.

“I—I can't help but wonder how the
buwe
is, and Sarah. Perhaps we should have gone to the hospital with them.”

“Ye've the other
kinner
to tend. We'll hear word soon enough.”

“I prayed for him last
nacht
—Edward King,” Anne said, taking back his cup. “Did you?”

Mahlon frowned. “A man's prayers are his own.”

“
Ach
, I know, but . . .”

“I best be going.” He turned and drew his hat from a peg near the door.

“Jah
, Mahlon. I'll see you there later, when I help the women with the food.”

He gave a brief nod and left the cabin for the inky darkness of the day.

Chapter Five

“This whole thing sucks,” Edward muttered, relishing the guttural
Englisch
slang he'd learned on the gas rigs.

The majority of the mountain community was putting the final touches on the cabin, having done the bulk of the repairs while he'd been in the hospital. The tree that had taken his sight had been chopped into neatly stacked firewood and he knew he'd be grimly reminded of his injury every time he sought to warm himself that winter.
How like the
Amisch
. . . to be so practical, turning brutal fate into provision. . . . Though I suppose I could warm myself up with my wife . . . if she'd stop looking like a poker was up her back . . . and, if I hadn't sworn not to touch her....

He glanced at Sarah, still unused to the claustrophobic feeling of the eye patch. Then a sudden, contrary image came to mind—a girl who'd visited a bar near the rig in West Virginia—blond-haired, blue-eyed, and so willing to pull him outside. He'd let himself kiss her, thinking it meant nothing . . . letting himself forget Sarah waiting back on Ice Mountain. He'd even confessed to Joseph, though that hadn't made him feel any better, and now, sitting in front of the cabin, with Sarah standing beside him, he felt worse than ever about it.

“Do you want something to drink?” Sarah's soft voice broke into his thoughts and he startled guiltily.

“I'm not an invalid,” he snapped, regretting his tone immediately when he saw her flinch from the periphery of his left eye.

“I thought you might be thirsty,” she said tightly. “That's all.”

He sighed.
“Nee
, nothing to drink.”
Nothing to drink . . . No more moonshine—tell me I don't need it.

“I know what you're thinking,” she murmured.

“What?” he ground out, not exactly doubting her assertion.

“That you want to be able to help—that it's a man's job to build his own home.”

“Yeah . . . that's right.”

“Are you being sarcastic?”

Oddly, he wanted to laugh. “No, sweet. I'm never that.”

“All right. I've had enough. I'm going to help the women with the food. Here comes Joseph; he can bear your wit for a while.”

He turned to watch her walk away, then glanced back at his
bruder
. “Go away.”

Joseph stood directly in front of him. “
Kumme
on. Get out of that chair. I want to show you something out back.”

“Why don't you see how your pretty pregnant wife is doing?” Edward suggested, gesturing to his redheaded sister-in-law, Priscilla, as she passed, carrying some clean sheets over her arm. She smiled in their direction but kept moving across the hilly lawn.

“She's more than fine,” Joseph said in an appreciative tone, and Edward gritted his teeth at his brother's smitten ways with his wife.

“You've got the perfect life now—haven't you, Joe?”

“Ach
, you know better than that.... Now
kumme
or I'll escort you myself.”

Edward scowled but obeyed, knowing his big
bruder
too well to doubt his polite threat. He walked slowly over the uneven ground, ignoring Joseph's obvious arm, extended for support. Edward felt oddly off-balance, as he'd been warned he would in the hospital, but he'd been told that things would right themselves in a few weeks. For now, he wanted to growl at the myriad of
kinner
running about, making him feel even more uncertain of his footsteps.

Then a child ran full tilt into his right leg, and he would have stumbled had Joseph not caught him in time. He shook off Joe's hand and glared down at the towheaded
buwe
, recognizing Sarah's younger
bruder
, Samuel.

“Watch where you're running,” Edward snapped with a dark frown, meant to discourage the child.

But Samuel smiled up at him with a gap-toothed grin. “Sorry,
Bruder
Edward.”

Edward chafed under the name brother, having no desire to be reminded that Mahlon Mast's family was now close kin.

“You look like a pirate,” Samuel pointed out in the ensuing silence, his small head tilted as he stared upward. “You need a sword.”

“Jah
, and I'd use the broad side of it to swat your behind.”

The
buwe
giggled, obviously not put off, and slipped his small hand into Edward's with casual ease. Edward was shaken by the child's touch, all warmth and trust, and he reluctantly let his fingers settle around the tender bones, ignoring Joe's stare.

“All right,” Edward grumbled. “Before we get run into again, what is it that you want to show me?”

They rounded the cabin and Joe pointed to the large, sprawling patch of tilled earth, set in a fertile dip in the ground. “There.” Joe pointed, indicating some youths, whitewashing wood frames near the ground.

“Cold frames.” Edward couldn't contain the note of interest that rang in his voice as he moved closer. “Made from the blasted tree, no doubt?”

“Yep.” Joseph smiled.

But Edward didn't care.... Here was something that intrigued him—cold-climate gardening and extending the growing season. The cold frames were like flat, square greenhouses, their wood bases set in the ground and topped with large panes of old framed window glass. Usually, the cold frames were set level with the ground, allowing about eight inches between glass and earth for winter plantings to grow. But these frames were angled into the hillside, which would permit even taller growth at the back end of the frame.

“You've angled them,” Edward noticed, nodding to the
aulder buwes
.

“The better to catch the sun's warmth back here,” Joseph agreed. “And there's about six inches of mulch insulation beneath each frame to prevent any frost from creeping in.”

“Gut
idea.” Edward found himself smiling, much to his surprise. He'd experimented with heirloom seeds and cold frames for years, up until the last winter, which he'd spent secretly meeting Sarah and dreaming of getting away from the mountain to work on the rigs. Now all of his natural interest in planting and the earth came rushing back with vital intensity.

“I know
Grossmuder
May taught Sarah to dry herbs,” Joseph said. “But I figured you might know some that you could keep growing fresh.”

Edward released Samuel's hand to hunker down next to one of the cold frames. He lifted the handle on the glass frame and breathed in the scent of freshly turned earth. “Sure—there's chives, lemon balm, feverfew—a whole bunch of things.”

“
Gut.
Then you ought to be a great help to your wife.”

His
bruder
's words registered and Edward slowly closed the glass lid and rose to his feet.

“Look, Joe, I appreciate the cold frames, but don't assume that my job in life is simply to help my wife.”

“Don't you wanna help Sarah?” Samuel piped up, and Edward's flash of frustration grew. He had no desire to sound unkind about Sarah, but he couldn't help the feeling of being lost when it came to her all-important role as healer for the community. He knew his attitude was probably unfair, but he felt too overwhelmed to work it out at the present moment.

“Of course I want to help Sarah,” he bit out with reluctance, looking down at Samuel and wondering how a seven-year-old's expression could be both so doubtful and so optimistic at the same time.

“
Jah
, that's
gut
,” the child pronounced finally.

“You better watch out, Edward.” Joseph laughed in an undertone. “This little one might be giving you the broad side of a sword if you don't take care of his sister.”

“Yeah,
danki
, Joe. I didn't quite pick up on that. . . .” Edward's smile was sour and his momentary joy in the cold frames was gone, but he told himself that he couldn't expect much more, given the way his life was going lately.

 

 

Sarah walked with brisk intent across the grass. She wanted to leave Edward and his bad attitude far behind. She wondered vaguely if his moods would always be so unpredictable and knew he created more stress in her mind since his accident than she'd felt even at her first midwifery experience. She blinked when she heard a woman cry her name.

“Sarah! Come quickly. Charlotte's gotten into a wasps' nest.”

Sarah recognized Letty Zook's anxious call and took off at a run, knowing that four-year-old Charlotte Zook had been born blind and had probably gotten into the nest by accident.

“Where's the sting?” Sarah asked, putting her arm around the sobbing black-haired little girl while her
mamm
circled anxiously.

“Above her eye, I think.
Ach
, maybe in her eye, too.” Letty pointed to the rising welts between her daughter's dark blue left eye and black brow.

Sarah grabbed a glass of water from a nearby table and emptied it onto the well-trod ground. She pulled Charlotte down close to her and worked the water into the ground with her fingertips, then took the mud and quickly dabbed it onto the child's eyelid and brow. Then she automatically began to pray.