An Uncommon Grace (11 page)

Levi wanted to mourn his stepfather. He really did. He had come into Abraham’s house as a ten-year-old boy and had been treated like a son. But that in itself had been a problem. To be treated like a son by Abraham Shetler had been to
absorb a great deal of unnecessary discipline. It had been a rocky start between them until he had toughened up and learned to obey his stepfather without question. Over the years, they hammered out a working relationship.

He felt no overwhelming grief for Abraham, but he did feel the weight of responsibility. Abraham had been a worker. Now it would be his job to provide for the family.

He tried not to think about the hospital bills that would soon come due. There was no way he could pay them. It had taken two years just to save up enough to purchase Angel Dancer. He knew that soon one of the oldest men of their church would make the rounds to all the Amish farms in the area, asking for donations. Every family would give as much as they could—just as Levi and his family had always contributed all they could each time others had needed help. After that, there was the existence of the Old Order Amish relief fund that was set up for this sort of extreme expenses, and into which Swartzentruber families sometimes had to dip. Also, the hospitals often reduced the bills of the cash-paying Amish. Levi had watched other Amish deal with medical bills, and by the grace of God, he would also have access to enough help to pay their medical debts.

He positioned his mother and Sarah on the women’s side, beside Rose. He took Albert and Jesse with him across to the men’s side. Albert sat ramrod straight like the little man he was becoming. Jesse, at eight, slipped his hand into Levi’s and leaned his head against his shoulder.

He looked down at Jesse’s hands. Already they were showing the calluses of farm work and a couple of barely healed cuts from the sharp wood strips they used for baskets. He remembered his own hands, still tender from childhood, trying to weave well enough to win Abraham’s approval.

Albert was becoming competent with the basket-weaving.
Jesse, however, was hopeless at it. The child couldn’t sit still for the long hours required to craft a fine basket. He clearly hated the feel of the wet, slippery wood. Abraham had gotten angry many times at Jesse’s inability to weave well. There had been quite a few spankings.

Levi knew that Jesse’s palms were marked with crisscross scars from wrestling with the sharp edges of the weaving strips. He felt sorry for the little guy.

And then the strangest thought struck him. With Abraham gone, Jesse would never have to weave a basket again. Not if Levi didn’t make him—and Levi had no intention of making him. Jesse was simply not cut out for it. Not this sweet child who would rather watch the aerial acrobatics of a barn swallow than pay attention to finishing off yet another badly made basket.

Jesse was fascinated with everything that walked and crawled or galloped. As much as he fidgeted when he was forced to weave baskets, the child could lie still and watch a lizard for hours. He could already name most of the birds that nested around their farm.

Levi turned Jesse’s palm over and traced the cuts. No—his little brother would never sit and cry over making baskets again. Levi was the head of this family now, and he would get to make those decisions. The idea pleased him, but then he remembered his mother’s grief and plunged into remorse over the way his mind was straying.

God’s will be done
.
Just as the preacher was saying.

Suddenly, everyone stood up. Levi had been so deep into his own thoughts he had not heard the cue for prayer. He scrambled to turn around and kneel on the ground with his elbows on the bench as everyone else did.

Then he heard a quiet sob and shot a glance over his shoulder at his mother, who, unable to kneel, was bowed in prayer
in her wheelchair. Rose had taken little Daniel into the crook of one arm. Her other arm rested around her sister’s shoulders.
Maam
sat with her arms wrapped around her stomach, her head bowed—shaking with sobs.

There was a rustle as the group finished their prayer, rose again as one body, and sat down upon the benches for another two hours of preaching.

Levi forced himself to concentrate on the service. Despite his own issues with his stepfather, Abraham had done the best he could with what he knew, and the man deserved a decent funeral and a respectful family.

Why was it so hard to focus today? Through the open barn door, he could see the woods behind their house where the dogwood trees were in bloom. Their white blossoms were the size of a squirrel’s ear now. The weather had been quite warm and humid, which meant that the morel mushrooms his mother loved would be springing up from the spongy ground. Hunting morels was one of his favorite things.

But it was not the time to think about gathering morels. It was time to listen to a couple more hours of preaching. Then the sad ride to the
Graabhof
, the modest cemetery where four generations of Abraham’s family had been laid to rest.

The preacher finished and the church broke into song, their voices rising as one. They sang the songs
shlow
—very slow. They did this because prison guards had once mocked his people by dancing to the hymns they sang while awaiting execution. Those long-ago martyrs had deliberately slowed their hymns down until it was impossible to dance to them. That practice had lingered. Levi had been told that Swartzentruber singing was even slower than in the other Amish orders.

There was comfort in blending his voice with the others.
Becoming one with his church family in spirit and in voice. Levi felt the holiness of it penetrate his soul.

And then he caught sight of Zillah Weaver, the bishop’s daughter, staring at him from the women’s side. She was watching him intently, as though hoping to catch his eye. When she saw him looking at her, she smiled.

Zillah was blond and pretty, and she had been blessed with dimples that she never missed a chance to flash. In fact, the smile she used in order to show off those dimples best was a little odd. Even though his people were not allowed to hang mirrors on their walls, he would be very surprised if Zillah didn’t have a hand mirror tucked away in a drawer somewhere with which she had spent time practicing the art of smiling. She was that kind of girl.

He quickly looked away. Zillah could be as sweet as sugar, but she had a mean streak. He had seen it more than once. When one truly knew Zillah, she did not seem so pretty anymore.

He had always been careful never to give any indication that he was open to courting her, but she was one of the few girls in his church district close to his age and still single. Having to marry within the Amish faith, and specifically within the Swartzentruber sect, limited one’s options.

He wondered if her father, the bishop, was beginning to worry that she might never marry. That might explain his admonition for Levi to soon choose a wife for his mother’s sake.

The preaching began again, a fresh preacher this time. Jesse fell asleep against his shoulder. Albert had his head down, twisting and untwisting two pieces of straw he had picked up from the floor.

Levi scanned the faces of the other women seated across from him. Were there any here for whom he could muster any enthusiasm? He knew of men who had chosen their wives the
way a man chooses livestock, evaluating each woman’s health and ability to bear plenty of children. Levi wanted more than that. He wanted someone with whom he could talk about things other than how many bushels of corn he had taken to market or how many quarts of peaches she had canned.

Deep down, he wanted someone with a good mind who would help him become a better man. And he wanted—truth be told—someone he would not mind lying down beside at night.

At that instant, his mind took flight in a direction that he absolutely did not want it to go. A very dangerous direction: Grace Connor.

She had impressed him with her competency and her compassion. He found himself wondering what went on in that
Englisch
head of hers. His mother said that before Grace came to stay with her grandmother, she had lived halfway around the world, riding in helicopters, going into battlefields, saving wounded soldiers. He wondered if she ever had nightmares about what she saw.

Jesse stirred against him. He put his arm around the little boy and held him close. His family would be depending upon him for their survival. He could not allow himself to think about Grace for even one second. He wasn’t some Old Order teenager on
Rumspringa
sneaking around dating
Englisch
girls before he settled down. At twenty-five, he was a grown man with a family to support.

Getting to know Grace Connor as more than a nodding acquaintance was simply not an option.

G
race’s internal alarm clock nearly always rang a little before six o’clock in the morning. Her father had believed in awakening a child at the same time every morning, and the time he chose was six o’clock. Weekends as well as school days. And it had stuck. At least with her—maybe not so much with Becky.

Grace didn’t mind. It helped her get a lot accomplished. Rising from her grandmother’s couch where she had spent the night, she went over to the window and opened it. A cool morning breeze wafted in, rich with the scent of honeysuckle. The feel of the air on her T-shirt–clad body was so enticing, and the smell of honeysuckle so thick, she almost felt she could waft out upon it like one of those cartoon characters floating toward an enticing scent.

One thing she was not going to do with this morning was let it go to waste. If there was ever a morning made for running, it was today. She checked on her grandmother, who was still sleeping soundly, then went upstairs, threw on some sweats and running shoes, and came back down. She considered running shorts but abandoned the idea. She didn’t want to cause some Swartzentruber man to drive his buggy into a ditch.

Becky was sleeping with a couch pillow over her head. Grace lifted the pillow and shook her sister’s shoulder.

“Becky?”

Her sister sat straight up and looked around wildly. “Is Grandma okay?”

“Grandma is fine. I’m going for a run. I just wanted you to know where I was.”

Becky rubbed her eyes. “What day is it?”

“Saturday. You can go back to sleep.”

Becky didn’t argue. She burrowed back under the covers.

Grace grabbed a piece of cheese and an apple and ate them on the back porch while she read a couple of chapters in the Bible that her grandmother usually left lying in the swing. Even in Afghanistan, she had tried to read at least something from the Bible every day. Sometimes she made it and sometimes she didn’t—but living here, it was as easy as breathing.

Ecclesiastes—one of her favorite books—was where she was reading today. She had always thought it quite thoughtful of the ultrawealthy writer of the ancient book to have tried everything under the sun, only to later record that absolutely nothing of a material nature had brought him happiness—that all of his efforts had eventually felt like just a striving after the wind.

As far as she was concerned, the writer of Ecclesiastes was spot on. In her opinion, nothing really mattered in life except the people who loved you and those you loved. That and enjoying the gift of God’s creation while serving Him to the best of one’s ability.

She finished her Bible reading, did her stretches, and felt sorry for anyone who was sleeping in on a beautiful morning like this. As she took off on a gentle trot, she marveled over the fact that she still could not manage to take for granted the
fact that she was waking up morning after morning to pleasant, cool weather.

Enduring the summer heat of Afghanistan had been a battle all by itself. The winter was a nightmare of freezing temperatures. That country had seemed to be a place of extremes in everything, from weather to geography to the zeal of its religious adherents.

She shook off the memories of broiling while trying to make a run for a medevac helicopter beneath an Afghanistan sun. This was Ohio. The weather was gorgeous and it was going to be a good day.

There was definitely something wrong with Daniel. The child had wailed nearly all night long. Levi worried about his little brother as he finished his morning chores. Breakfast sounded appealing right now, but he dreaded going back into the house to the gut-clenching sound of his baby brother’s cries. Putting off entering the house for a few more minutes, he walked to the top of the hill behind his house to enjoy the sunrise.

As the sky turned into a panorama of color, his eyes automatically traced a line from the pond to the house. It would be so easy to filter the pond water, put in a pipeline, and create an indoor bathroom for his mother. What a burden of work that would lift off her shoulders! If he was honest, he also sometimes wished for a shower for himself. He had never experienced one, but he was certain it would feel wonderful to have the grime so easily washed off his body at the end of a hard day’s work.

He stood on top of the hill, gazing over his fields. The earth was warm enough for him to sow oats. Very soon he could plant the acreage that, in a four-year crop rotation, was ready for corn.

There were still several acres of old cornstalks that had been left untouched by the men of the church. He was glad. Plowing the land with his four well-trained workhorses was something he enjoyed. Tractors were more efficient, perhaps, although that was hotly debated in some circles. Horses’ feet didn’t compact the earth like heavy tractor wheels and their “emissions” only added to the fertility of the ground. To a frugal farmer, it was no small thing that a horse had the ability to replace itself.

But what he personally disliked about tractors was that they drowned out the music of spring—like the song of the horned lark and the sound of horses snorting with excitement over being back in the fields after a long winter. A tractor caused one to miss the music of harnesses creaking and the satisfying popping of alfalfa roots as the sharp plow blades cut through the rich earth.