Assaulted Pretzel (25 page)

“Have they lost their land somehow?” Doug asked. “Is that why they’re having trouble doing something they’ve done for years?”

At the end of the inn’s gravel driveway, Keith turned left and headed toward town at a slow yet steady pace, the microphone affixed to his shirt collar making it easy for everyone to hear him. “They have the same amount of land they’ve always had, son, but they also have far more people living here now than they did twenty years ago.”

Kayla gave Doug a gentle nudge with her elbow. “That’s right. Diane and Claire told us that, remember? I think they said the Amish population is doubling every twenty years.”

“With that kind of population explosion there just isn’t enough land to go around,” Keith said by way of agreement. “So they’re forced to turn to other ways of making a living—like carpentry, masonry, shoemaking, deer raising, toy making, et cetera. Basically anything they can do to make a living like the rest of us.”

“Ran into a fella down at Glick’s Tools ’n More the other day and he said some Amish are raising alpaca sheep for the wool,” Wayne shared.

Keith nodded then pointed out the front window to
Lighted Way’s shopping district. “I’ll be taking these cobblestones slowly but you’re still going to feel some bumps.” Then, with a pointed look at Claire via his mirror, he addressed her directly. “You want me to drop you off in front of the shop? Or do you want to come along with us and I can drop you off when the tour is wrapping up?”

Virginia’s smile widened exponentially. “Oh, Claire, stay. Your aunt said the reason you were able to sleep in a little today was because Esther is working. So stay. We’d all love to have you along”—the woman glanced at Kayla and Doug for confirmation—“wouldn’t we?”

Kayla was the first to agree. “You probably know everything there is to know about the Amish already but we’d love to have you stay if you have the time.”

Claire held up her hands and laughed. “Oh, trust me, I’m still learning about the Amish every day.” She met Keith’s gaze in the mirror and, at his wink, opted to stay. Besides, the seat felt mighty comfortable after a second night of little to no sleep. “But I’m just going to sit here and listen to all of you. I can ask Diane or Keith questions any old time.”

The bus moved slowly along the cobblestoned street, pausing a time or two as an Amish buggy pulled out from one of the narrow alleyways that ran along the side of many of the shops and cafés.

“The Amish won’t drive in cars, right?” Doug asked.

Instinctively, Claire opened her mouth to answer only to shut it just as quickly. This was Keith’s tour, not hers, and his answer lacked nothing. “No. They’ll ride in cars, they just won’t drive them. That’s why, when the Amish are going to travel farther than they want to go by horse and buggy, they’ll hire a driver to take them. They can also take trains and busses. The only transportation they avoid is airplanes.”

Doug gestured toward a buggy parked in front of
Gussman’s General Store. “How come the buggies around Heavenly are gray instead of black?”

“Gray buggies mean the old Amish order. They’re stricter than some of the other orders you might come across elsewhere.” Keith steered the bus around a line of parked cars and headed out the other side of Lighted Way, the wide-open fields and scattered farmhouses in the distance beckoning in their peacefulness. “Women can drive the buggies. No license and no inspection is needed. But a while back, the state of Pennsylvania mandated lights be installed on the buggies for the safety of both the Amish and the English.”

The bus followed the gentle curves of the road, slowing to a crawl from time to time to afford a better view of whatever Keith was talking about at any given moment. Mile by mile he shared details about the Amish on everything from their homes and beliefs to weddings and funerals. Much of the information he shared was things Claire had learned over the past eight months. But some of it was new to her and, as a result, fascinating.

“I want you all to take a look right here.” Keith pointed to a small white building on the driver’s side of the bus. “Anyone want to take a guess what this is?”

Claire straightened up tall in her seat and looked across Kayla and Doug’s heads to the one-room building beyond—the smattering of bikelike scooters around its exterior soliciting smiles from the women on the bus.

“A school?” Virginia guessed.

“That’s right. It’s a school.” Keith pulled the bus to the side of the road and stopped long enough to add a few interesting facts. “The Amish own private schools. They’re all within walking distance of the families they serve. That school right there? It serves roughly twenty-five children in
grades one through eight. And since most Amish families have an average of seven children, it takes less than six families to fill a school.

“The families in each district pay the teacher and provide the supplies. The teacher is in her late teens or early twenties and is unmarried. Once she marries, she no longer teaches.”

“Do the kids learn the same things our kids learn?” Wayne peered around his wife to get a closer look out the window. “Or are they more sheltered?”

“They learn the cores—math, reading, writing, spelling, history, and geography. But they don’t really get into science. They stop going to school after they’ve completed eighth grade because the Amish believe that the things taught in high school threaten their culture.”

“Do they speak Pennsylvania Dutch or English in the classroom?” Kayla asked.

“In school, Amish children are taught to read classic German and English as a second language. English, though, is what they learn to speak in school. Pennsylvania Dutch is spoken in the home to preserve the Amish culture.”

Keith lifted his finger to the window. “See that cupboard there? It’s filled with drinking cups for the children. And right there, next to it, you can see the hand pump they use to fill their cups. Can everyone see that?”

Heads bobbed around the bus, including Claire’s. Then, as they continued to watch, a pair of little girls dressed in black coats came running out the front door and across the patch of yard between the side of the school and the fence. “And that building those little ones are running off to? That’s the school’s outhouse.”

Five minutes later, they were back on the road, the passing farms and running commentary helping to chase away
the last of Claire’s sleepy fog. She had to admit, Keith Watson gave a good tour. The fact that a stop at Lapp’s Toy Shop was part of the experience only made it better.

Claire took in the rapt interest on the faces around her as Keith continued sharing fact after fact about Heavenly’s Amish. “Only one in ten kids decides not to be baptized in their late teens. And if they don’t, they’re still welcome to have ties with their family for life. But if they are baptized and
then
leave, they will be excommunicated.”

A soft tsking sound emerged from the row in front of Claire but was quickly lost against the sudden roar in her ears. Jakob had been baptized before heeding the call to police work. That single decision—which would have been considered commendable in the English world—had cost him his family.

She pressed her forehead against the cool glass and closed her eyes. Aunt Diane was right. She needed to talk to Jakob. The friendship they’d forged over the past two months meant too much to her to simply accept his recent snub without question. Maybe she’d read it wrong. Or maybe he was distracted by something completely different, like Martha.

“See that cemetery right there?” Keith asked as he again slowed the bus to direct the attention of his customers to the windows on the opposite side of the aisle. “About an acre is set aside in each church district as burial ground for the people of that district. The tombstones, as you can see, are quite humble with only the person’s name and length of life noted.”

“I saw a picture of an Amish funeral procession once,” Doug volunteered. “The line of buggies went on forever.”

“They do that. Why, some processions can have hundreds of buggies in them. And that’s why the young boys are
tasked with using chalk to mark each buggy’s proper position in line. The closer the kinship, the smaller the number.”

Keith pulled back onto the road and continued driving, his words keeping the current subject close. “Widows wear black for the rest of their life.”

“Can the Amish remarry after a death?”

She held her breath as she waited for Keith to answer Kayla’s inquiry.

“Yes, they can. Though you see that more if the death occurred early on.” Keith continued speaking, but Claire didn’t hear the rest of what he said. Instead, she found her thoughts veering off in a direction she knew they shouldn’t go, starring a man that had no business being in her thoughts, let alone her heart.

“Just up ahead, you’ll see the farm where we’ll be stopping. It’s owned by Daniel Lapp. Daniel recently sold half of his farm to another Amish man so he could, instead, concentrate on his growing toy business.”

At the mention of Daniel, Claire shook all thoughts of Benjamin from her head and focused on Keith and the questions coming from her aunt’s guests.

Doug’s head rose up above the seat. “Daniel Lapp? Isn’t that the man Karble Toys was about to do business with?”

“You mean the man Karble Toys was about to
rip off
,” Keith corrected. “Yeah, that’s him. Daniel is a master toy maker, which you’re about to see when we stop. He makes rocking ponies, Noah’s Ark toys, jigsaw puzzles, sewing boards, pull toys, doll cribs, kitchen sets…you name it. And he makes ’em all by hand.”

A hush of anticipation filled the air around them as Keith pulled the bus into a narrow turnoff to the side of Daniel’s barn and cut the engine. “You should head into the shop first
and look around. Then, when you’re done browsing, Daniel will take you inside the barn right here so you can watch him working on whatever toy he’s making at the moment. It’s quite fascinating to see.”

Claire lingered behind as first Doug and Kayla and then the Grandersons descended the steps to the gravel drive below. When they’d cleared the bus, she made her way down the aisle to where Keith was checking his watch and making a few notations in a small notebook. “Keith? I have to tell you, that was a fantastic tour. I can see why your business has grown so much in the past few months. You really give a great window into the Amish world.”

Keith waved aside her praise but not before she caught the tug of a smile on the left side of his mouth. “My business has grown because of this place. Anyone can drive down a road and spout off a few facts. But stopping here, at a real Amish home to watch a real Amish toy maker in action? That’s what has folks like Diane calling me instead of the next guy.”

Setting his notebook on his seat, he followed her off the bus and over to the front door of Daniel’s shop. “Have you been inside? Seen the toys up close?”

She peeked inside the window beside the door and nodded. “I have. The jigsaws are my favorite. Especially the ones shaped like animals that can stand up when the pieces are placed together just right.”

“That is nice to hear, Miss Weatherly, and I thank you.”

Whirling around, she came face-to-face with Daniel’s assistant toy maker. “Isaac! Hi! I didn’t know you were behind me.”

The man’s narrow and beardless face clouded momentarily. “I am sorry. I did not mean to frighten you. I have come to take visitors to the workshop to watch as I make a giraffe-shaped jigsaw puzzle.”

Again and again, despite his attempt at conversation with first her, and then Keith, Claire found herself drawn to the Amish man’s emerald green eyes that were so unlike any she’d ever seen before.

Except, of course, on Isaac’s father…

She nibbled her lower lip inward and contemplated what to say, her thoughts quickly narrowing in on one topic. “Is there any chance you could show us how you make one of your Jumping Jacks?”

Just as quickly as it had disappeared, the cloud that had been Isaac’s just moments earlier returned with a vengeance. “I do not make Jumping Jacks any longer.”

S
he lowered her hand to her side as the bus carrying her friends turned onto the main road and headed toward town with one less passenger than it had at the start. The decision to stay behind and talk to Isaac had snuck up on her during the workshop part of the tour and she’d seen no reason to argue. Especially in light of the wide-open shot he’d given her by swearing off his signature toy.

Drawing in a breath of courage, Claire retraced her steps back to the workshop where, only moments earlier, she’d stood with five other people and marveled at the man’s toy-making ability with nothing more than the simplest of tools. “Isaac?” she called as she tugged on the heavy barn door and peeked inside to find Jakob’s brother hunched over a nondescript piece of wood.

Isaac looked up, his mouth set in a grim line. “Miss Weatherly? Did you leave something behind?”

“No. I…I was hoping maybe we could talk for a few
minutes.” At his answering nod, she pulled the door closed in her wake and pointed at the worktable. “What are you making now?”

He followed her gaze downward, shrugging as he did. “I do not know yet. Something new. Something different. Something that can replace my Jumping Jack.”