The Lesson (25 page)

“I could use the help, but I can’t pay you cash. If there’s some other way I can return a favor, let me know. I don’t like to be beholden.”

Jimmy took another swig of water, his mind working. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve. He looked at Samson, grazing in the paddock. He grinned. “Well, now, if that’s the case, we might just be able to figure something out.”

13

C
hris jerked awake from a heavy, dreamless sleep and sat straight up, blinking, trying to gather information as fast as possible. Where was he? Was there any trouble? What had his mother done now?

The soft light of dawn splashed on the slanted walls of his bedroom.

No, he didn’t have to worry about his mother. She wasn’t here. She was in Marysville, Ohio, in a rehabilitation treatment center. And he was in Stoney Ridge, Pennsylvania.

With a sigh of relief, he fell back on the soft bed and scrunched the pillow under his head like a nest. It was still super-early. Too early to get up.

He didn’t want to think about his mother. He didn’t want any news about her.

But he did.

When it came right down to it, it just wasn’t that easy to give up completely on the family you were born into. As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t rid himself entirely of the hope that one day his mother would be well.

Chris wished he’d been born into a regular family, one where everyone was just a normal person. But right from
the start something was wrong, because there was no father, and his mother was not equipped for motherhood. She was young, immature, selfish, and loved to party. Chris ended up living with his grandfather, who never did know what to do with his rebellious daughter, even less with a baby. Then his mother moved back home again and life took on a reasonable calm, until his mother and grandfather started fighting all the time and his mother started using drugs for the first time. The thing about methamphetamine was that it was highly addictive. One time, two times, and she was hooked.

The counselor at the rehab center said that meth changed your brain chemistry, so you weren’t the same person. There was always hope, Old Deborah would say. Always, always hope.

Hope. He turned that word over in his mind, the way a gold miner might examine a rock for specks of promising glitter. No sooner would he feel the comfort of the word and fear would swoop in from the sidelines to snatch it away. He lifted his head and peered out the window to see what kind of day it was, but his mind was still on Old Deborah.

Old Deborah talked so strangely, so intimately about God, as if the Almighty spoke to her the way he spoke to people in the Bible.

Chris believed in God, of course. He had attended church ever since he started to live with Old Deborah after they moved to Ohio—when he was eight and his mother had been put in jail the first time, for using credit cards from a lady who had asked them to housesit while she visited her sick daughter. His mother was in and out of jail or rehab after that, mostly in. She believed the world owed her something, and she had no problem helping herself to it. Her chief income strategy was to live off the generosity of others, and she
always seemed to find kindly people who were willing to give her another chance. Chris didn’t believe his mother had the capacity to change. Old Deborah would tell him that nothing was outside of God’s capacity to redeem. But it wasn’t God whom Chris doubted—it was his mother.

The morning was chilly. Winter was coming. Chris got up, dressed, and went to the living room. He made a fire in the fireplace and it finally began to heat the downstairs. He stayed by the fire for a moment, warming his hands. Samson would be expecting breakfast soon. As he put his boots on, he looked around the room. The walls were repaired and painted. The broken windows were replaced. The stair railing was fastened. The broken latticework around the porch foundation had been fixed. He had ripped out the rotting kitchen flooring and laid new linoleum—he was able to buy linoleum tiles for a bargain because the hardware store had ordered the tiles for a lady and she didn’t like the tan color. He didn’t really like the color, either, but he liked the price.

He still had a long list of things to do, but the house was getting into shape. He thought his grandfather would be pleased. Memories flashed at random intervals, faster than he could take them in—the way his grandfather ducked his tall frame when passing through a doorway, his uncanny accuracy at reading the night sky and knowing tomorrow’s weather, and how his old dog would respond to his slightest whistle. He remembered the way his grandfather would scold him for slamming doors, how mad that used to make him. Chris could never figure out why that was a big deal.

Flashes of his previous life surprised him like this. He sure wouldn’t mind hearing his grandfather scold him about those slammed doors now. No, he sure wouldn’t.

The sun was hanging low in the sky, casting a mellow autumn glow across the garden. Amos checked the ripening pumpkins. Soon, they would be ready to pick so Fern could can them. He whistled for Doozy and strolled out to the orchards, with the dog trotting behind him.

As he reached the orchard, he feasted his senses, turning his face into the warm breeze. He sampled a still-tart, late-to-ripen variety of apple off the tree and examined the pears, swelling toward perfection. M.K.’s brown bees had worked their magic again.

Ah, Mary Kate.

Amos had stopped in at the schoolhouse this morning to drop off M.K.’s forgotten lunch, and thought he might stay for a few moments, quietly observing in the back. He ended up spending two hours, mesmerized.

Amos glimpsed a side of his youngest daughter he had never seen before. Her quick brown eyes took everything in—she could listen to one scholar’s recitation while simultaneously managing the entire wild pack of big boys. It seemed to him that she was a born teacher—patient, creative, dedicated. If a pupil had trouble grasping a concept, he saw her search for a new approach. He observed her trying a different explanation until the light of understanding finally lit a pupil’s eyes. He never saw her lose her temper or grow impatient, no matter how thick-skulled or stubborn the pupils could be at times. And Eugene Miller, he noticed, could be both.

Usually, he cut M.K.’s descriptions about people in half. Some truth, heavily embroidered with exaggeration. Not so for Eugene Miller. Watching that boy’s sulky behavior, he decided that she was telling the complete and total truth.

“You can do this,” she would urge him. “It’s not as hard as it seems, take your time.” The satisfaction on her face when Eugene finally caught on told Amos that for M.K., the joy of teaching was its own reward. Who could have imagined it? Fern had been right all along—M.K. would rise to the challenge of teaching.

Children. You think you have a sense of who they are, the person they’ve become . . . and then they surprise you by becoming another person entirely.

He squinted against the sun. His eyes swept over the orchards. These orchards, planted by his grandfather years ago, added to by his own father, had kept Windmill Farm solvent during some lean years when Amos had heart trouble. He stood there for a while, amid the long, even rows of trees, branches weighed down with heavy fruit. A farmer always looked forward, sacrificing long hours in anticipation of a good harvest. A reflection of God’s character.

The trees were lovely reminders to him of God’s steady reassurance—that goodness and gentleness will someday prevail. He ran his fingertips over a branch and almost marveled, as if he could imagine his grandfather planting the tree as a mere twig. He lifted his head, breathed deeply of the pear-scented air, felt his heart tighten with gratitude.

Herr
, he thought,
denki
. Lord God, thank you.

A Saturday came, silent and sun-dazzled. M.K. turned off the burner under the pot of beans. She sprinkled some brown sugar into the pot, then a little ketchup. She stirred in some more of each, then added salt and pepper. She tasted it.
Not bad.
She got the apple cider vinegar out of the cupboard and stirred in a little of that and tasted it again.
Better.

M.K. moved the pot to the oven, where it could bake peacefully.

She opened the kitchen door and stepped out into her yard.

There, coming up the driveway, was Jenny Yoder. M.K. crossed the yard to reach her.

Jenny was soaked with water. “I’m looking for my brother. Do you know where he is?”

“My uncle Hank talked him into going into town to pick up some buggy parts at the hardware store,” M.K. said. “He shouldn’t be too long, if you want to wait. What happened to you?”

Jenny looked uncertain. “I was trying to fill a water bucket for the horse and when I turned this, it broke off in my hands.” She held up a water spigot. “I can’t get the water to stop. It’s shooting everywhere, like a geyser!”

Amos was on the far side of the barn, hooking Cayenne’s bridle to the buggy shafts.

“Let’s ask my dad what to do,” M.K. said. She took the water spigot from Jenny and explained the situation to Amos.

He looked at the rusty edges of it. “M.K., get my wrench from my workbench. And see if you can find another spigot in the top right drawer.” He looked at Jenny. “Hop in. We’ll get that water shut off in the blink of an eye.”

“I’ll come too,” Fern said, appearing out of the barn like magic, startling Amos. He practically jumped.

“Everybody knows Fern has a knack for turning up out of the blue,” M.K. whispered to Jenny. “You’d think Dad would be used to it.”

The way Jenny looked at her then, almost giggling, filled M.K. with some relief. It was the first time Jenny hadn’t peered at her with that suspicious, birdlike glare. Maybe she was finally thawing out.

Chris decided that he wouldn’t seek the sheriff out on his trip to town today, but if he happened to see him, he would tell him about the memory—or was it a dream?—that seemed to pop into his head last night.

Maybe. But maybe not.

Of course, just as he pulled into the edge of town, he saw the sheriff’s car at the silverstream diner, The Railway Station. Chris thought it was a strange choice for a diner name because Stoney Ridge didn’t have a train running through it, but he had heard the burgers were good. If he ever had an extra ten dollars to spend, he should take Jenny out for a burger and shake. If he had an extra twenty dollars, he might consider asking Mary Kate Lapp out for a meal.

Maybe. But maybe not.

After all, she was spoken for by Jimmy Fisher. A pang twisted Chris’s gut, and he knew it wasn’t hunger. Thinking of M.K. with someone else didn’t set well.

Chris had taken pains to avoid Mary Kate after finding out that particular piece of news. This morning, he was even a little rude to her. She brought him coffee in the barn and he refused it, brushing past her as if he was on his way to put out a fire. He wasn’t the kind who would ever take another fellow’s girl, especially a friend’s. And Jimmy Fisher had been a friend to him. He had come over again last Saturday afternoon to help Chris tackle the overgrown yard.

Chris knew Jimmy had an angle—he was itching to borrow Samson for a horse race. That wasn’t going to happen, not ever, despite Jimmy’s strong hints. Still, Chris couldn’t help smiling at the challenge. Jimmy Fisher was the type who made a competition out of everything. How fast you could
hammer nails. How quickly you could rip boards off the porch. Everything was an opportunity for a race. Even stupid things, like thinking you could race a hot-blooded stallion at the tracks. Everybody knew you didn’t take a stallion to the tracks. Too distracting. Stallions instinctively tried to create a harem. Everybody knew that.