Fearless Hope: A Novel (24 page)

“No.”

“Too bad.” Ivan preened a bit. “Personally, I think writing about me would make an
excellent
book. You can ride on the tractor behind me while I do my spring plowing and I’ll give you the benefit of my years of wisdom.” This time Ivan elbowed Henry sitting on the other side of him. “By the way, Henry, that tractor of mine is a sweet, sweet ride. You don’t have to do a thing except turn it on and steer. Doesn’t require any hay, doesn’t kick you in the rear end when your back is turned . . .”

“Does not reproduce itself,” Henry replied. “Requires expensive gasoline. Compacts the ground. Too many fumes.”

“Don’t mind him,” Ivan said in a stage whisper to Logan. “Henry’s just jealous of my superior farming skills.”

“And you are too lazy to train a horse to plow well,” Henry retorted.

Logan watched the back-and-forth and kept quiet. He couldn’t tell if they were joking or if they were serious. If Ivan had left the Amish church for the Mennonites only because he didn’t want to fool with horses, there had probably been some hurt feelings somewhere along the way. He didn’t think Amish people left their faith quite so lightly.

Hope would never leave, and he would not ask her to. The impossibility of the situation made him half sick. He shoved his plate away.

“Do you mind taking a walk with me down to the barn,
Ivan?” Logan said. “I think Simon Hochstetler might be hiding out down there. I haven’t seen him all morning and I want to check on him.”

“Simon? Of course I don’t mind.” Ivan grew serious. “Excuse us, please, gentlemen.”

Simon was in the barn when they arrived, currying one of the horses.

“Have you been down here all day?” Logan asked. “I didn’t see you in church.”

“I’d rather be here in the barn than in church,” Simon said. “I’ve had enough preaching to last me a lifetime.”

“Simon’s been staying with me for the past few days,” Logan explained to Ivan. “We found out that his dad has a bit of a temper.”

“I don’t know your father well,” Ivan said, “but I can imagine that being the case.”

“Why don’t you go eat,” Logan said to the boy. “It looked like there were plenty of leftovers.”

“But I didn’t go to church.
Daed
always said if we didn’t go to church we didn’t get to eat.”

“That isn’t the rule at my house,” Logan said. “I’m certain Hope would want you to come eat whether you went to church or not.”

Without another word, Simon loped off, his lanky frame looking like a scarecrow in Logan’s larger clothes. He made a note to go purchase something in an appropriate size for the boy, since it looked like he’d be staying around for a while.

“So, you’re taking in strays now?” Ivan said.

“Simon was pretty banged up when Hope found him in the barn last week. I have plenty of room and he’s good company. I don’t mind.”

Ivan leaned over a stable door and stroked the nose of one of the horses that had been stabled there.

“I thought you didn’t like horses,” Logan said.

“Just working with them. They’re still nice to pet,” Ivan said. “You said that Caleb wanted you to stop coming around? That concerns me.”

“He took offense when I said that I felt like I’d been in your house before,” Logan said. “I never did quite figure out why that upset him so much.”

“Caleb’s my eldest son,” Ivan said. “And sometimes an eldest son takes the responsibility for the family on his shoulders, becoming a little more protective than necessary. Ever since Caleb was sixteen and . . . made a mistake that ended up hurting the entire family . . . it’s as though he thinks he has to be the family watchdog. Sometimes he takes it too far. It is my house, not Caleb’s, and you are welcome anytime. My wife sends her greetings as well.”

“Sixteen is a tough age. It is easy to make mistakes then.”

“It’s even tougher when you allowed your little brother to accidentally drown.” Ivan, so quick with a joke, turned deadly sober. “His name was Joseph, and Caleb has never forgiven himself.”

“I’m so sorry,” Logan said.

“Our baby is with God,” Ivan said. “I often think of him sitting on Jesus’ lap with our Lord’s arms about him. It comforts me and Mary to envision that.”

Logan was impressed with Ivan’s reaction to his loss. What a comfort it must be to think in terms of a God who would cradle a loved one.

“With Simon living here, are you going to put that boy to work on some of these fields of yours?” Ivan quickly changed the subject. “It’s almost time to plant.”

“Hope suggested it, but I think it would be difficult to go about getting the equipment that he would need. According to Simon, he only knows how to farm with horse-powered equipment.”

“Oh, I have the equipment. I never got rid of it. You’re welcome to use whatever you want but you’ll need to find Simon a good pair of plow horses, unless you want to teach him how to drive a tractor.”

It occurred to Logan that a few months ago, had someone told him he would soon be standing in the middle of his own barn, with the smell of fresh hay and horses all around him, discussing farming with a real farmer—he would have laughed in their face. Instead, he picked up a piece of straw, stuck it in his mouth, and leaned against a support beam, thoroughly enjoying himself. “Do you recommend I do that?”

“No. Simon knows how to farm in the old ways. If his father happened to see him driving a tractor, it would go hard on the boy if he ever decides to go back.”

“Do you think he will?” Logan asked. “After all he’s been through?”

“Most of them do,” Ivan said. “Swartzentruber boys and girls don’t leave their families easily. Most of them stay until they marry, and even then they stay close. To make a complete break from his people—it probably won’t ever happen.”

“But after—”

“Spare the rod and spoil the child is the proverb they fall back on,” Ivan said. “Way too much, in my opinion. I had trouble even spanking my kids.”

“Your family turned out well. How did you do it?”

“We prayed a lot, got through each day the best we could, but one important thing is that Mary and I made a choice that our family would stand for something bigger than ourselves. After Joseph’s death, we decided we would put our strength and what money we had into doing something that mattered.”

“Like what?”

A sweet smile settled on Ivan’s lips. “Giving away cups of water.”

“Water?” Logan visualized Ivan pouring water into cups and handing them to people on the streets of Holmes County.

“I know I joke about it sometimes, but my move to the Mennonites involved more than my poor relationship with horses,” Ivan said. “The Amish are not evangelistic. Nor are they allowed to fly, except in medical emergencies. The Mennonites, however, have all kinds of evangelistic outreach and no problem at all with climbing on an airplane. At least that’s true of the more liberal ones.

“The way we Mennonites tend to evangelize is by serving. Mary and I chose to focus on one of the most basic teachings of Christ. When Jesus talked about giving a cup of water in His name, we took it literally. Our family has devoted itself to getting sanitary water into the hands of third-world families. We do it through deep wells, installing basic filtration systems, and shipping in special purification packets that cost us less than five cents and produce five gallons of water each.

“Just think, Logan, it only takes a nickel to turn fetid swamp water into five gallons of pure water that a thirsty child can drink without getting dysentery or cholera or God knows what else. My boys and I have also gone into war-torn countries without guns and left behind nothing but the ability for mothers to slake their children’s thirst with pure water. Five gallons of clean water wouldn’t seem like much to most of our citizens, but it means everything to a struggling parent.”

“Is your whole church involved in this or just your family?”

“Our church is involved, but my family has taken it on as our special project. We are just a drop in the bucket of all the good that is happening all over the world in the name of Christ, but we are a significant drop. Other Anabaptist churches, including some that are not connected to the Mennonites, are involved in projects like this as well. It’s amazing what pure water can do to raise the standard of living for a family. I’ve
seen it over and over again. It is just about all I think about these days.”

Logan was intrigued. “And you actually go yourselves to do this?”

“Two or three times a year at least one of us is somewhere helping supervise, carrying equipment, or simply making arrangements for well drillers to come into the area. Once we get the water situation under control, we can teach people how to grow crops where there weren’t crops before. Sometimes the right knowledge and a few packs of seed is all it takes to make a big difference in a family’s life.”

Ivan glanced at his watch. “Well, I need to get going. Mary will have dinner on the table by now, and Mother will have put her teeth in. The kids are all coming over today. We’re planning our next mission trip to Haiti. You should join us.”

“Me?” Logan was surprised. “I’m not Mennonite.”

“You don’t have to be.” Ivan chuckled. “You can use a shovel, can’t you? Don’t worry, we’d never let you loose with the Gospel without a driver’s license anyway. If there’s any Bible teaching to be done, we usually leave that up to William. He’s the scholar in the family.”

Logan was baffled. “A driver’s license?”

“That was a joke, son.” Ivan clapped him on the shoulder. “I’ll ask Mother to pray about it. She always was a formidable force at praying. Now that she’s half-blind, it seems like she puts in double the time. She says there’s nothing much else she’s good for anymore, so she might as well pray. She has such a strong hold on the Almighty’s ear, the rest of us step real careful around that woman. You don’t want to get on the bad side of her. No telling
what
she might pray for.”

With that, his neighbor went whistling off, pausing every few steps to talk to people he knew.

Logan saw Carrie with her head against a nearby tree, eyes
closed, counting. Then suddenly the little girl took off running after her playmates. Logan could hear squeals and giggles as she tagged other children. Some of the older ones allowed her to tag them even though they could easily outrun her. Some pretended to stumble or ran comically slow. Several minutes into the game he saw a sweaty, flushed Carrie run to her mother and whisper in her ear. Hope poured her daughter a glass of water, and Carrie drank thirstily. Then she gave the cup back, wiped her mouth, and ran off to play again.

What would it be like to love a child and not have the ability to quench its thirst? He couldn’t imagine.

“What good do your books do?” Bishop Schrock had asked only yesterday. What good, indeed, compared to the Troyer family’s pure water ministry. Or compared to what Hope was accomplishing in raising her sweet children. Or his mother with her pro bono work at the shelter.

He’d always considered himself one of the good guys. He had taken loving care of his wife during her final days. He had never deliberately hurt anyone. He didn’t cheat or steal. He voted and paid his taxes. But was that enough?

Here he found himself surrounded by industrious, caring people who raised food, created homes, nurtured children, helped their neighbors, and made the world a better place in every way possible. He remembered the joy the elderly quilter with arthritic hands took in the extra-special quilt she told him she planned to donate to an upcoming auction for Haitian orphans. Even the WWII soldiers lived with the knowledge that they had done something to save the world.

He, on the other hand, had spent most of his life sitting at a computer making stuff up. No wonder it had finally resulted in such a paralyzing writer’s block.

He watched Bishop Schrock, standing in a corner of the yard in deep conversation with Simon as the boy poured out
his heart. He saw the bishop put a comforting hand on Simon’s shoulder.

He could see, across the field, all of Ivan’s family’s cars parked around the house, planning their next trip to make certain other people’s children got safe drinking water while William taught those who wanted to learn about Jesus. What kind of courage did that take? What kind of sacrifice? What kind of
faith
?

Marla had been wrong about him. He didn’t need a shrink.

He needed God.

•  •  •

The cleanup after church seemed effortless with so many people helping. Before he hardly knew what had happened, the benches were gone, the partition and furniture put back in place, the house and yard swept clean of any lingering debris.

It was a little astonishing to have dozens of people laughing and talking with him one minute, and be standing there completely alone the next. With Hope and the children also gone and probably not coming back—he was left with a feeling of such aloneness that it was physically painful.

He looked longingly across the field to where the Troyers were still having their weekly family get-together. Ivan had said he could come anytime. He understood better about Caleb now, and Mary had been so welcoming the last time he was there.

He decided to chance it and walked over. When he arrived, Esther was sitting on the porch alone, a blue and white afghan thrown around her shoulders.

“Who’s there?” she asked as he approached.

“It’s Logan, ma’am. Your next-door neighbor.”

“Oh, how nice.” She patted the rocking chair next to her. “Come have a seat. I hear you hosted church today. How did you like it?”

He obediently sat down beside her. It had not been his plan to visit with Esther, but ignoring the old woman would be rude. “I enjoyed it very much.”

“I’m glad to hear it. The rest of the family are all inside working on their plans for the next trip to Haiti,” Esther said. “My job, as I see it, is to pray for them.”

“What do you pray for?”

“For safety. For wisdom. For the project to succeed if it is God’s will, for it to fail if it is not. For my family to bring honor and not shame to the name of Christ.”

“That sounds like a tall order.”