Fearless Hope: A Novel (20 page)

“And the fact that his wife is pregnant with her nineteenth child! Who
does
that!”

“The Swartzentrubers live on farms and have huge families. Extra hands mean more help on the farm, just like it used to for your
Englisch
ancestors as well as ours.”

“I don’t understand,” Logan said. “You talk about the Swartzentruber Amish as though they are from a different culture, and yet they are Amish—like you.”

“The Swartzentruber Amish make the Old Order Amish look like . . . like we are modern people.” Hope smiled sadly. “I know that is hard for you to understand, but it is true.”

“So Simon’s father gets by with this behavior? No police are called?”

“The police probably would not be able to do much anyway. Simon would never testify against his father. He would only tell the police that he got kicked by a horse or something. A policeman is like a person from another country to them.”

“Then what can we do?”

“I’ll talk to my father. He likes Simon and will be upset at what has happened. He will pay a visit to Simon’s bishop. The bishop will look into the condition of the family and see what can be done. The bishop’s word will be more effective than anything you or I can do. It will be more effective than anything the police might do as well.”

“How about if we leave your father out of it and I go to see the bishop. I’m the one who saw that boy tonight and the shape he was in.”

“An outsider like you?” She shook her head. “No, it is better handled by my father.” A sound of singing and splashing came from inside the bathroom.

“For someone as beat up as Simon, he certainly seems to be enjoying his bath!” Logan said.

There was the sound of more water being run into the tub, and more splashing.

“It’s probably the first time he’s ever gotten to take a real bath in a bathtub. The Swartzentruber do not allow running water or indoor toilets.”

“You’re kidding!”

“I am not.”

“So what do we do with him after he comes out?”

“Do you mind if he stays here for the night?” Hope asked. “I know him well. He is quite harmless and you have extra beds. I think it would be best to give his father time to cool off.”

“Of course he can stay here. He can stay as long as he likes. It’s a big house.”

A few minutes later, Simon came out of the bathroom, announcing, “I’m done,” carefully dressed in Logan’s clothes. He was shorter and had to roll his pants legs up, but he’d tucked in the shirt, which was also too large, and tightly cinched the waist of the chinos with the belt Logan had loaned him. His hair was plastered down, and he’d been liberal with Logan’s shaving lotion.

His face, however, looked like it had been used as a punching bag. One eye was swollen entirely shut. Hope saw that Simon, in spite of his pain, had tried to leave the bathroom clean. Two damp towels were neatly folded over the edge of the bathtub. It tugged at her heart that the battered boy had tried to tidy the bathroom.

“Are you hungry?” Hope asked.

“I can always eat.” Simon rubbed his stomach. “It’s a little hard to get filled up at my house.”

“Then we will see if we can find you something,” Hope said.

“You’ve already cleaned the kitchen, Hope,” Logan said.
“And Simon and I met a few weeks ago when he brought firewood. I’ve seen how much the boy can pack away. Instead of you cooking again, how about I pick up some pizza? Does that sound good to either of you?”

“Pizza?” As much as possible with the bruises, Simon’s face lit up. “I
like
pizza!”

Hope knew he probably rarely got it, too. Take-out pizza was far too expensive for a large Swartzentruber family to purchase often.

“Then, if you don’t mind waiting a few minutes,” Logan said, “I’ll go make a pizza run. Shall I get enough for all of us, Hope?”

“If you don’t mind.”

It did sound like a good idea. She was tired. Running two households and raising two children while pregnant was not easy. Not having to cook for herself, Adam, and Carrie tonight sounded heavenly.

•  •  •

Logan thought for sure that he’d gotten enough pizza to feed the five of them twice over, but watching Simon pack it away made him wish he’d ordered more. He didn’t know if the boy was actually that hungry, or if he just thought he might never get to eat pizza again in his lifetime.

Adam sat on his mother’s lap and ate one whole piece. Carrie ate one with dainty small bites. Hope managed three pieces. She seemed so grateful to get to sit down and not have to cook that he decided he needed to pick up take-out food more often for her and her little family . . . and him. He enjoyed having company while eating.

“You can spend the night, if you want,” he told Simon. “I’ve got plenty of room.”

The look of gratitude on the boy’s face was worth the small inconvenience it might be.

“I’ll work for you,” Simon said. “I’m a
gut
worker.”

Logan racked his brain trying to think up something for the boy to do. It was hard enough coming up with enough work to keep Hope busy a few hours each week.

“What are you good at?” he asked.

“Livestock,” Simon said. “And I could put in some crops for you if I had a team.” The boy grinned self-deprecatingly. “As long as one of the horses don’t get spooked, I do pretty good.”

Livestock. Plowing. Crops. Subjects about which he knew nothing.

“It would be nice to work away from home,” Simon continued. “
Daed
wouldn’t get so mad if I could work here for you.”

“You might as well ask me to launch a rocket into space,” Logan said. “I know nothing about such things.”

“I know what you need.” Hope’s voice was eager. “I know exactly how this farm should be run. I could easily find a couple of good plow horses and the equipment to go with them. Simon does know how to do this. He’s worked putting in crops and caring for livestock since he could walk . . . and so have I.”

With two sets of hopeful eyes looking at him, Logan felt a little railroaded. “Can I talk to you out on the porch, Hope?”

While Simon happily polished off the last piece of pizza and chatted in German with Carrie and Adam, Hope followed him out to the front porch.

“I can’t hire that boy to farm this place,” Logan said. “I have no idea how to oversee him. I don’t know a plow horse from a racehorse.”

“I disagree,” Hope said. “Simon is a terribly hard worker, and we both know what we’re doing, even if you do not. Give us land, and we know how to work it. If the crops do well, he’ll make his own wages come harvest. You have to do nothing except pay for two horses and some equipment and seed. We can do the rest. Simon will have a job that will keep him away from
his father. Let him live here with you. It will keep him safer than telling the police like you wanted. Besides”—she waved a hand out toward the field—“this land will soon turn to scrub if you don’t do something with it.”

Hope’s lovely face, framed by her white
Kapp
, was so earnest as she argued the subject. He was struck once again with how her eyes were an unusually deep shade of gold-flecked brown. It was becoming more and more difficult to ignore her beauty. A man could lose himself gazing into Hope’s eyes. Her reasoning made complete sense, but he knew that, sadly, if he kept his word to Marla to come back within the time they’d agreed upon, he would not be staying here long enough to even see the harvest.

When had the thought of leaving created a permanent ache in his heart?

“I’ll think about it.” He gave himself a mental shake and forced himself to look away. “That’s all I can agree to right now . . . I’ll think about it.”

L
ogan was having his morning coffee on the porch when an Amish man drove in, pulled his horse around, and stopped in front of the house. He was seated on the hard, wooden seat of what looked to be a homemade farm wagon. There was no red safety triangle on the back, which Logan knew probably meant the man was Swartzentruber.

“I have come for my son.”

So this was Simon’s father. He was a large man with big, raw-looking hands. It made Logan’s blood boil to think of what those hands had done to Simon.

If there was one thing Logan had at ready command, it was words. There were hundreds of words he wanted to fling at the man. His fingers itched to call the police. Show them the bruises on the boy’s face and body. Have the man thrown in jail for domestic abuse.

What he wanted most, what he
craved
, was to climb up onto that wagon and slam his own fist straight into the man’s face.

Instead, he heard Hope’s voice in his head, cautioning him, reminding him that he was dealing with a different culture with different rules and different outcomes.

Let my father and the other men deal with him.

He had looked in on Simon earlier. The boy was curled into a ball in bed, sleeping off the trauma of the beating. With any luck, he would sleep through his father’s visit.

“How did you know he was here?”

“I did not,” the man said. “But now I do. I think . . . he runs to
Englisch
man’s house who gave him doughnuts. Where is my son? He has work at home.”

Two things struck Logan. One was that English sounded more foreign on this man’s lips than in the mouths of Old Order Amish people he’d met. He spoke slowly, sounding as though he were having to stop to translate every word before he spoke. Hope had told him once that the Swartzentruber stayed much more isolated than the other Amish sects.

The other thing that struck him was astonishment that, as badly beaten as Simon was last night, his father still expected him to work this morning.

There was only one way he could think of to keep Simon safe.

“I have work for him, too,” Logan said. “I want to hire him to . . . to help around the farm.”

“This?” The man looked around him in contempt. “This is not a farm.”

“Exactly.” Logan still wanted to smash the man’s face in, but for Simon’s sake, he kept his voice even and reasonable. “I’ll pay him a small wage, and give him room and board. You and your wife will have one less mouth to feed.”

Simon’s father contemplated the offer. “Let me talk to my son.”

“Sorry. He’s not well enough to get out of bed this morning.” The anger and contempt he felt for the man crept into his voice in spite of his best efforts. “I was going to take him to the hospital yesterday, but he said his
father
would not approve. I also considered calling the police, but my Amish housekeeper talked me out of it.”

The man’s eyes did not quite meet Logan’s. “He must bring his pay home each week.”

“I’ll tell him.”

After the man had left, Logan went back inside and found Simon trying to scramble eggs, in spite of the fact that now both eyes were nearly swollen shut.

“You don’t have to do that, Simon,” Logan said.

“I must earn my pay.”

“Yes, you do.” Logan gently took the spatula out of the boy’s hand. “But not today. Not now. Sit down. I’ll fix your breakfast.”

“Thank you.” Simon collapsed onto a kitchen chair, put his head down on his folded arms, and sobbed.

•  •  •

“Would it bother you if I had electricity brought into the house, Hope?” Logan approached the subject carefully after he’d filled her in on what had transpired between him and Simon’s father.

Hope had arrived early with both Adam and Carrie and had immediately attacked the few dishes he and Simon had used for breakfast.

“It is your house.” She placed a dish in the drainer.

“I mean, would it . . . bother you?”

“Because I’m Amish?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t see why it should. We do not expect
Englisch
people to live as we do.”

“So you wouldn’t feel offended if you had to use, say, an electric washer and dryer?”

Hope shrugged. “It is not a matter of using electric devices. Many of us do that in our jobs. Some of our people are also beginning to use solar power on our farms. Many of us own gasoline-driven generators.”

“You are aware that this doesn’t fit into most people’s views of Amish life, right?”

“Then they do not understand. We are not ignorant of technology. It is our hooking into the electric grid that our bishops forbid. It is one of the many ways we try to be separate from the world.”

“And you agree with their decision?”

Hope paused to give this some thought, her soapy hands dripping into the sink. “I feel sorry for our bishops for all the hard decisions they are constantly being called on to make. A cell phone, for instance, can be a life-saving tool for an emergency or nothing more than a plaything tempting our young people to access things they should not.”

The struggles of Amish church bishops were not his problem. His immediate need was to make a decision about his own house. He had held off having electricity put in for several reasons. He liked the glow of kerosene lamps and the quiet and peace of a house that didn’t constantly hum. This was Hope’s childhood home and built by her ancestors. Later, when Hope came, he held off because he didn’t want to create a situation that would make her feel she was compromising her faith.

The problem was, as Hope continued to work for him, he kept thinking of how much easier it would be for her if she didn’t have to wrestle with a wringer washer and heavy, wet clothes in laundry baskets, and didn’t have to wash every dish by hand. Although he had gotten weaned away from needing the noise of television to work by, he did miss having classical music playing. He also missed having a really good light to read by. Besides that, it was getting old having to recharge his laptop and cell phone from his car battery. One thing was for sure, Marla would certainly love it if he brought the house into the twenty-first century.

“I wonder who to get to wire the place,” he mused.

“Oh, that is no problem,” Hope said. “You should call my cousin. He will bring in his crew and have it done in a very short time.”

“You have a cousin who is
Englisch
?”

“No. He is Amish.”