An Uncommon Grace (26 page)

“I will pray,” he answered. “I will pray that the father of Zillah’s child will come forward and make things right, but it would be wrong for me to confess to a sin that I did not commit.”

He saw Zillah’s eyes dart to her father. It was the first loss of confidence he’d seen in her since the conversation began. Her gamble had failed. She had underestimated how desperately he did not want to marry her. Evidently she did not have another plan to fall back on.

Unfortunately, neither did he.

The joy Levi had taken in the contemplation of the day’s work ahead had evaporated. The only thing left inside him now was a deep dread. The bishop was not someone to give up easily, nor was Zillah. Within the narrow bounds of their Amish culture, he had never seen her ask for anything that she had not received. Zillah did not have to wait as long for a new dress. The shoes she wore were always a little more expensive than the other girls’. Even as a young girl, she had her own buggy cart and a pretty pony to pull it.

Only children were rare among the Swartzentrubers and so he did not know what was normal behavior for one. But he had a strong suspicion that being an only child living with a weak mother and a father who wielded too much power had ruined this girl.

Zillah and her father got back into the buggy. The bishop was so angry he actually whipped his horse as they shot out of the driveway. Levi was sorry that he had caused the horse
needless pain, but it was not something over which he had control.

When Zillah and her father had departed, Timothy looked at Levi with great sympathy. “I would not want to walk in your shoes, my friend.
Gut Gleek
, good luck.”

In the distance, she could see Levi behind a horse-drawn machine that she supposed was a planter of some kind. It was a comfort just knowing he was out there. Even though they were not “friends,” she knew he would do whatever he could if she needed him—not because of any affection for her, but because of who he was.

As he got closer, she waved. He did not wave back, but she thought she saw him tip his head in her direction. With the reins in his hand, that was probably the best she would get.

The swing was cushioned, and there were comfortable pillows on it. She leaned back against them and pulled out the paperback novel the nurse had given her grandmother. There was just a little more to go and she thought she could get it finished during her grandmother’s nap time. Scooping up the gray kitten, which had turned out to be quite a sweetheart, she lay back against the cushions and began to read.

There must have been something about the relaxing feel of being on the porch, or the feel of a rare sunny day, or perhaps the feel of a warm, cozy kitten curled up on her stomach, but as soon as she finished the novel, she fell into a deep sleep.

“Are you all right?” Levi was standing over her, his shirt sleeves rolled up, his straw hat tipped back on his head. What skin showed was bronzed by the sun.

Surprised, she jerked upright. The lurid novel slid off her lap onto the floor and the kitten scrambled to keep from falling.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t want to disturb you, but you’ve
been asleep for a very long time and I thought maybe something was wrong.”

“Have a seat, Levi.” She used her foot to surreptitiously move the novel underneath the swing, hopefully out of his line of vision. “You look like you could use some shade.”

“Actually, I have shade back there with my horses.” He pointed to one lone tree that had been allowed to remain in the middle of the cleared field. Grace had wondered why that tree had been left. Now she knew. “But it won’t hurt if my horses rest a few minutes longer.”

“Have you eaten?” She looked at her watch.

“Yes. You did not move the whole time I ate. That is why I came over.”

He bent over and ran a finger over the kitten she was holding. “Where did you get this little one?”

“He’s one of Becky’s strays.” Grace held the kitten up for him to admire. “If there’s any sort of crippled or abandoned animal on the place, she’ll find it and worry over it until it gets better. I’ve never known anyone more tenderhearted.”

“I saw her cry over a baby robin once that fell out of its nest too soon.”

“What did she do?”

He smiled. “After she spent the better part of her summer vacation catching bugs all day every day, I don’t think she envied the life of a mama bird.”

“Did it live?”

“It did. I was surprised.”

She expected him to leave now that he had discovered there was nothing wrong, but he didn’t. Instead, he sat down on a chair beside the swing.

“Won’t you get into trouble for being here?” she asked.

“I am already in
Druwwel—
in trouble.”

She could tell by the sound of his voice that he was not joking. “What’s wrong, Levi?”

He stared at the edge of the porch roof. “You have another downspout coming loose.”

“There are a lot of things on this old house that are coming loose. What’s wrong?”

“I will fix the downspout for you.”

“You don’t have to do that, Levi. What’s wrong?”

“I will fix it.”

There was a long silence while Levi surveyed her property. “Your barn is in need of repair and some of those outbuildings should be torn down. The lumber could be put to better use. All sorts of unwanted things could be nesting within them.”

She wondered if this was his attempt at small talk—or was he, perhaps, in economic trouble and simply looking for work?

“Do you need a job, Levi?”

“No.” He chuckled mirthlessly. “One thing I do not need is more work.”

“I didn’t think so.”

Another silence ensued while she waited to see what it was that Levi wanted. She had no idea what was going on, but she didn’t think it was normal behavior for an Amish farmer to come to an
Englisch
woman’s house and sit on the porch in the middle of a spring day for no particular reason.

“You are a nurse,” he said.

So it was a medical question. She could deal with that. “What do you need to know?”

“It is embarrassing.” He removed his hat and stared down at it. “It is hard for me to ask.”

“I doubt you can possibly come up with a medical question that will embarrass me.”

“I hope that is true.”
Then he dropped a bombshell. “Is it possible to prove who a child’s father is before it is born?”

Of all the questions Levi might have asked, this had to be the very last one she was expecting. “Yes, but it is risky.”

“How is it risky?”

“A needle has to be inserted into the woman’s stomach. Amnio fluid has to be drawn out. Sometimes the procedure can cause a miscarriage.”

Levi sighed and stared out over the hills. “There is a quail’s nest in that field. I saw it in time to plow around it. There should be a nice covey there soon.”

“Did you get someone pregnant, Levi?”

His eyes were clouded with worry. “No, but Zillah has accused me of fathering a child with her. The bishop is demanding that we marry.”

This shook her. “Is there any chance you are the father?”

“None whatsoever.”

“Do you want to marry her?”

His eyes locked onto hers. “Never.”

Grace believed him. Levi was too honorable a man to put himself in the position of accidentally needing to marry some girl with whom he was not in love.

“What will happen if you refuse? Could you be banned?”

“I could be banned by putting rubber wheels on my buggy instead of steel ones.” His voice held a tinge of bitterness. “What do you think?”

“I think that unless Zillah recants or someone else steps forward to take responsibility for this child, you are going to have a rough time over the next nine months.”

“I think so, too.”

“After a child is born,” Grace said, “paternity is easy to establish. It only takes a gentle mouth swab from the baby to get enough DNA.”

“Nine months of the
Meidung
—the ban—is a long time.”

“I have heard that the Amish aren’t so strict these days,” Grace said. “At least not as strict as a few years ago.”

“That is true for the Old Order Amish,” he said. “But a strictly enforced
Meidung
is one of the reasons the Swartzentrubers left the Old Order in the first place. Our leaders felt that the other Amish were becoming too lenient.”

Grace tickled under the kitten’s neck until it rolled over onto its back. “Is being shunned bad enough that you would be willing to marry Zillah to avoid it?”

“I could not bear it.” His voice was thick with emotion. “My life with Zillah would be a bitter one.”

“Then perhaps you will have to endure the ban for only nine months.”

“I have doubts that Zillah or her father will allow the test even after the baby is born.”

Levi’s head was down and he was staring at the straw hat dangling from his fingers. She had never seen him look so dejected.

“You can get a court order for that sort of thing, Levi.”

There was a flicker of humor in his eyes as he glanced up at her. “Our people do not go to court. Not unless it is something that affects the Amish community as a whole.”

“Have you told your mother what Zillah is accusing you of?”

“It is not a conversation I want to have. Mothers and sons should not have to discuss such things together.”

“Claire needs to know—before someone else tells her.”

His sigh was so deep, it sounded as though it had been drawn up from the soles of his feet. “I will talk to her.”

Levi glanced over at his horses. “I must get back. They are getting restless. We are expecting rain again tonight and they sense it.”

Without thinking, Grace laid a hand on his arm. “Levi?”

His body tensed beneath her touch. “Yes?”

She yanked her hand away as though she had touched something hot. “If there’s any way I can help, please tell me.”

“Thank you, Grace.” He scratched behind the kitten’s ears again before he stood. “I might need your help before this is over. The next nine months will be a hard time.”

Even under the circumstances, as he left the porch he was able to turn and give her a mischievous grin. “Now that I’m leaving, you can get back to reading that book you did not want me to see.”

I
t rained the day after the bishop and Zillah came to call.

And it rained the day after that.

It rained for a full week with little letup.

The rich ground soaked up the water until it could not hold one more drop. Farmers watched their fields in despair.

Those who had managed to get their crops in saw the rain wash away the topsoil from the precious seeds they had planted. Crows pounced upon exposed kernels and with raucous calls gobbled them up. In the places where the corn had managed to sprout, the winged gluttons tugged the tender shoots out of the ground and feasted on the sprouting corn.

What struggling crops the crows did not eat, the deer did. The graceful animals materialized in early-morning mists—virtual eating machines that munched any growing thing they could consume before a distraught farmer or his dogs chased them away.

A feeling of bleakness descended up the county as tourists gave up and melted back to their homes, disappointed that the lovely countryside they had hoped to see had been replaced by a dreary landscape in which even the spring flowers were depressed looking and forlorn.

The engorged earth vomited up rivulets in unexpected places.
The rivulets turned into streams where there had never been streams before. The streams made their way into small creek beds, turning little creeks into raging rivers. Then the rivers spread out into shallow lakes, turning thousands of acres of farmland into untillable swamp.

Because of the turmoil his family had been in in the first part of May, Levi was behind in everything. In a way, it had worked to his advantage. His crops were not hurt as badly as some. He had plowed the fields, spread manure, and purchased seed at the local feedstore, but he had managed to plant only one oat field so far. For a while, with his mother once again presiding in her own kitchen, it had felt almost as though life were getting back to some semblance of normal.

Until it continued to rain.

He watched from a window of his workshop, making plans on how to try to salvage what was left of this planting season. For every day he was delayed in getting his corn crop in, he knew he could lose up to two bushels of corn per acre. If the rain did not stop soon, there would be no reason left to plant.

Grace was getting ready to go for her morning run. It was drizzling, but she was determined not to let that hold her back. She had jogged through much worse than this during basic training.

She was doing her stretches on the porch when she heard something down by the river behind their house. It sounded like an animal of some kind in distress. She stopped stretching and trotted down to the swollen creek bed to see what the problem was.

The river was much closer to the house than it had been before the rains began. It had overflowed its banks and now engulfed
most of her grandmother’s back pasture. Fortunately, there was nothing in her grandmother’s pasture. As she followed the sound, she saw that some of Levi’s fence had been shoved down or torn away by the floodwater. And there, standing on a small hillock in the middle of the river, was little Rose the calf, bawling for its mother.

As it stood there, she could see that the hillock was being washed away in small chunks as the floodwaters rose, and now the poor thing had only a tiny area on which to stand. Its cries were pitiful and she didn’t know what to do for it. Then Grace heard a bellowing and saw that the mother cow was standing near the river’s edge calling to its calf. She couldn’t see the other calf, little Claire, and wondered if it had been swept away while its twin managed to get a foothold on land. But that bit of land was going to be underwater soon.

The hillock wasn’t far from the waterline. Maybe eight feet total. It couldn’t possibly be all that deep, she reasoned. Her shoes, shorts, and tank top were already sopping wet. It appeared to her that she could probably walk over, pick up the calf, and deposit it back with its mother in less than five minutes. She doubted the water would come up any further than her knees, and she would hate it if Levi lost this calf, especially since it looked as if he might have already lost the other one.