The Imposter (8 page)

Today, Friday afternoon, it happened during the spelling bee, a favorite event for the children. No sooner had Birdy announced that it was time for the bee than she was nearly swept aside by the students' stampede to line up along two sides of the room. She paired first graders with eighth graders, second and seventh, third and sixth, fourth and fifth. Each child had a fair chance at winning, and the students were getting a taste of teamwork. No one was excluded.

A one-room schoolhouse, Birdy was quickly discovering, had a way of acting like a giant sponge: younger children soaked up the lessons given to the older children.

On this warm September afternoon, the students were rattling off letters in no time at all, knocking each other out one by one, and the normally quiet schoolhouse was filled with exhortations of encouragement or despair, depending on the team's spelling ability. Birdy added her own noise: “Well done!” or “Excellent!” or a more subdued “Better study up a bit for next time.”

Lyle Smucker went down on
gnat
, neglecting the
g
and adding a surplus
t
. After a frenzied whispered conference with her teammates, Sarah Zook went down on it, too. Ethan Troyer spelled it correctly, then slipped up
asthma
, spelling it
asma
. Ruthie flounced down in defeat on
receipt
, forgetting the
p
. Luke Schrock haughtily spelled it correctly, and Birdy
decided he needed to be taken down a peg. She tossed him
clique
, a small group of people who do not readily allow others to join them, hoping the double meaning might not be lost on Luke. He controlled a tight clique of his own choosing.

“C-l-i-c-k,” he said.

“You have to be careful about words,” Birdy said, waving him out of the round. “Words can be sneaky.”

Luke traipsed back to his seat with a flaming red face.

A few more rounds reduced the teams to two students left standing at the blackboard. Molly Stoltzfus, an earnest fifth grader, and Noah Yoder, a tall and skinny seventh grader who was definitely not included in Luke's clique.

Molly was up next to spell the word
hoard
. “How's it pronounced again?” she asked Birdy.

“Ho-ar-d,” Birdy sounded out the word crisply.

Molly barely got the first few letters out—“W-h-o-r”—as Luke Schrock quickly realized the direction where she was going. He howled with laughter, slapping his desk with his hands, which set the other big boys off in gales of raucous hoots and hollers, though Birdy doubted they had any idea what was so funny.

And suddenly, in mid-guffaw, Luke stopped laughing. His eyes went wide, a look as if he'd been stricken. “I've been shot!”

The big boys leaped up to examine the extent of his injury. Ethan contributed a panicky, “I think he's dying!” The rest of the class scrambled out of their chairs to see Luke writhing on the floor, grasping his neck with his hands.

Sensing a riot, Birdy leapt in. “Everyone! Take your seats!” She helped Luke outside to put a rag of cold water on the red welt forming on his neck. How curious! Inside, she looked
carefully at the ceiling, studying corners, nooks, and crannies for signs of a wasp's nest. There was
nothing
. The building was so newly constructed there wasn't time yet for a spider to spin her web.

This was a frightfully distressing situation to Birdy, especially because it kept recurring at the most inopportune times. Luke's neck was starting to look like a battlefield.

Katrina was supposed to be taking care of Thelma and yet it was the other way around. She came into the house with a basket full of sun-dried laundry and found Thelma in the tiny kitchen, mixing breadcrumbs and eggs and ground pork and ground beef in a big glass bowl, one-handed.

“What are you doing?” Katrina said, putting the basket on a chair by the door. “Making meat loaf?”

“Seemed like a good day for it, with the look of those clouds. Andy won't be able to get much done this afternoon.” She pointed to the coffeepot. “There's coffee fresh brewed.”

The thought of acidic coffee on her turbulent tummy made Katrina feel woozy. “Thanks, but no. I think I'll just fold this laundry here.”

“How are you feeling, Katrina?” Thelma said. “You seem a little under the weather.”

“I'm fine. I'm . . . preoccupied.” She reached for a brightness she didn't feel and redirected the conversation, a skill she'd finely honed in recent weeks. “Trying to absorb all that I can about moss from Andy. It's really quite interesting. Funny how you can see moss and walk on it and never think a thing about it.”

Thelma slipped the meat loaf into the oven and turned toward Katrina, a delighted look on her face. “You're catching my vision! And here it's been, all these years, waiting to be noticed.” She refilled her cup of coffee—one-handed—and stopped to take a sip. “When I tell others that I've gone into the moss business, they look at me as if I might be getting a little dotty. But this is the way I can hold on to my home.”

“Did you ever consider selling your property?”

Thelma's eyes narrowed. “Don't tell me Freeman's gotten to you too.”

“No! No. It just seems like a lot of work at your age. At any age,” she quickly added when she saw the huffy look Thelma got at the mention of age. She could be touchy about some things. “Why would Freeman want you to sell?”

“Freeman is my nephew. He says a widow of my age should be living with family to be looked after, but I'm not moving into the Big House and have Freeman and Levi's wives fuss over me.” She leaned toward Katrina and cupped half her mouth with one hand, conspiratorially. “He also knows that this property could be sold for a tidy bundle.”

“You aren't even a little, tiny bit tempted to sell?”

“Not for a moment,” she said, pushing her lower lip out. “Certainly not to developers. They'll ruin it, every bit of it.”

It was common knowledge that Thelma and Elmo's land was worth quite a bit of money, but not as farmland. Developers wanted to turn it into a spot for outlet malls. It was close to the highway, but not too close. Katrina remembered the developers had plans drawn up to present to Thelma at a meeting Freeman had arranged, but she didn't show up for it. Freeman was outraged.

Thelma shook her head. “No, I'm not budging. And be
sides, I love this new adventure. It's . . . like starting a new book and not knowing how it will end. It's . . . invigorating!”

Thelma eagerly explained some ideas she had to build the business—convert a shed into a gift shop, add another greenhouse. Katrina wasn't really listening but wondering about Thelma, and why she felt so comfortable and happy in her company. How could someone be so full of joy? At her age, even after her husband's death?

The impact Thelma made upon her—upon most people, she realized—was all out of proportion to her words or her appearance. She wasn't imposing or commanding in any way. She wasn't a very big woman. She wasn't even particularly brainy. But something radiated from Thelma and, ponder as Katrina might, she couldn't understand it.

The buzzer went off and Thelma hurried to the oven. She tugged the oven door open with her cane. She pulled out the meat loaf with her good hand in a big oven mitt, frowning at it.

“Thelma, how do you do it?”

“Do what?”

“How do you manage to have such an optimistic view of the future . . . even after you've had some pretty hard blows in life?”

“Life can certainly take some unexpected turns. We can only put ourselves in God's hands.” She squirted ketchup on top of the meat loaf, then pushed the rack back into the oven and kneed the door to a close. “One thing I've learned, my dear, is that life is to be lived as it comes.”

At supper, Andy asked if Katrina had heard anything back from her breeder friend. “I'd like to get a dog as soon as possible. This time of year, the raccoons are digging everything
up to look for grubs. One section looks like it's been used by very bad golfers.”

“I . . . haven't heard back yet,” Katrina said, pouring water into glasses. “Probably, he's just busy
.
”
But probably
not.
By this point, it seemed John had no intention of returning her call.

Andy sat in the chair and spread his napkin over his lap. “Maybe I should just go ahead and look for another dog.”

“Let's give it just a few more days,” she said quickly. She picked at her food, drawing a look of concern from Thelma.

“You're not eating. Aren't you feeling well, dear?”

Down the table, Andy's dark eyebrows squinched together in similar regard of her. Pushing away her plate, she said, “A touch of stomach disorder is all. Nothing a good night's sleep can't fix, I'm sure.”

Later that night, flat on her back atop the coverlet while she stared at the ceiling, Katrina never felt less sure of anything.

One thing Jesse couldn't deny: Hank Lapp's lightning mood changes kept a person alert. His style of management was as curious as it was unpredictable. One day, he could be in high spirits, offering up corny jokes, talking a blue streak for hours on end. Then the next day, without warning, he would barge into the shop wearing the mournful expression of a hound dog on a cold trail, silent and sullen. It didn't take long for Jesse to realize that Hank's moods had nothing to do with the buggy repair business and everything to do with Edith Fisher's pleasure or displeasure with him.

Jesse had yet to touch a broken buggy—Hank was very territorial about those buggies, he had discovered—but he didn't have much interest in learning about buggies, anyway.
The only thing Jesse did care about was to get some kind of recompense for his tireless apprentice work.

It was a mystery how the buggy shop managed to operate before he was there to catch all the tasks delegated from Hank, via Fern, to Jesse. Fern Lapp kept him hopping from chore to chore. If Jesse ever slowed down, even for a minute,
barely
a moment, she appeared out of nowhere, peering at him in that way she had—inspecting him as if she had missed some major facial feature—and instantly thought up something else for him to do. She was relentless, running him ragged.

Jesse looked around at the nooks and crannies of the buggy shop: Tools hung neatly on pegboards, cupboards and drawers were labeled and organized, the concrete floor was now visible, swept and clean. The only part of the shop Jesse didn't dare touch was Hank's desk—it was covered with stacks of paperwork, piled helter-skelter. Judging by the way Hank avoided his desk, Jesse knew there was something on it that he did not want to face.

If you were going to do a thing, Jesse believed, there was no point wasting time. He waited until he saw Fern had finished hanging white sheets on the clothesline and walked back to the house. Then he sauntered over to the buggy that Hank was working on and sat down, leaning his back against the wheel.

Without looking at him, Hank asked, “What's on your mind besides your hat?”

“What I need to know is the scope of my job.”

“Scope of the job?” Rubbing his chin, Hank sat up and gazed into the shop, directly at his cluttered desk, as if some task for Jesse might be hiding behind one of the piles.

“Hank, we've never discussed the fiscal arrangements of this apprenticeship.”

“Huh?”

“The monetary agreement.”

Hank turned to him in exasperation. “Speak English.”

Jesse sighed and held one hand in the air, rubbing his fingertips together. “Money, Hank. A wage. A salary.”

At the mention of money Hank's long face grew longer. Slowly, he rose to his feet and lumbered into the buggy shop in search of a tool.

“Hank, you seem perturbed,” Jesse said diplomatically.

Hank turned to him in exasperation. “I can't find anything since you got here.” He started opening and shutting drawers. “WHERE'S MY FAVORITE WRENCH?”