Taken for English (4 page)

“You can let me out in front of Denton’s Emporium,” Walter said as Maura drove the cart into the outskirts of Gassville, four miles from Mountain Home.

“I don’t believe I’m going to let you loose again.” Maura had lost Walter once already today—and had not even known it. She did not intend to fail to deliver him safely to his father now.

Maura scanned the street, looking for a good place to tie up the horse for a few minutes.

A gallop compelled them both to turn their heads. Walter pointed. “Isn’t that John Twigg, the crazy man?”

“There’s no need for name calling.” Maura swallowed her own guilt. Walter was merely voicing what she herself believed. And he was right—it was John Twigg, riding down the middle of the street far too fast.

Twigg pulled his horse to a halt and slid off it in front of Denton’s Emporium.

“He looks wild.” Walter dropped off the bench of Maura’s cart.

“Shh. Stay right where you are.” Maura stood next to Walter and gripped his shoulder. As much as she loved Belle Mooney and as much as Belle Mooney loved John Twigg, Maura failed to see the endearing qualities of anyone in his family. They made her more nervous every time she saw them with their beady-eyed looks and harsh laughs.

Twigg calmly tied his horse to a post directly in front of the Denton Emporium then methodically removed a stick from a saddlebag.

“What’s he doing?” Walter whispered.

“Shh.” Maura did not take her eyes off Twigg.

Twigg pulled an arm back then thrust the stick at the chest of the horse. The beast screamed in protest, raised its forelegs, and pulled against the post.

Shoppers poked their heads out of surrounding shops. Seeing Twigg, they quickly retreated. Twigg laughed. Then he untied the horse, mounted it in the middle of its complaint, and trotted down the street to his own store.

Maura let out her breath.

“It’s a message,” Walter said, “for the Denton brothers.”

The street was silent, and Maura considered herding Walter back into the cart to take him anywhere but where they were. Maura’s father finally emerged from the emporium, a package in his arms. “Are you two all right?”

“We’re fine, Daddy,” Maura said.

“You look more like your mother every day,” Woody Woodley said. He turned to Walter. “I told the Dentons you would sweep for them this summer. Your daddy said you needed something to keep you busy this summer.”

Walter slumped. “Isn’t it enough that I sweep for my own father’s shop?”

“I wonder if that’s wise,” Maura said.

“He’ll be fine,” Woody said.

Maura glanced down the street. “Speaking of Walter’s daddy, where is Uncle Edwin?”

“He’s at Crazy Man Twigg’s store, isn’t he?” Walter was at full alert again. “Selling eggs.”

Woody shrugged.

Maura clicked her tongue. “I wish people would not aggravate the situation by selling to Twiggs when they have been selling to the Dentons for years.”

Woody moved his head from side to side. “Edwin says John Twigg is offering a better price for eggs and hens. Goose feathers, too.”

“Can’t he see the Twiggs do that on purpose? They’re going to make people take sides. Does Edwin really want to be on the side of John Twigg in this feud?”

“Times are tight. Edwin depends on that egg money. He can’t very well sell eggs in his milliner’s shop.”

“But selling to the Twiggs and then letting Walter work for the Dentons—that could be dangerous.”

“He’ll be fine,” Woody repeated.

Maura held her tongue. “I should get Walter home. I’ll be home to start supper soon.”

Walter pointed across the street. “Who are those men?”

“They were in the emporium,” Woody said. “They look harmless enough.”

“Mmm.” Maura narrowed the space between her eyes. “One can never be sure. I think I’ll go find out.”

“Now who needs to be careful?” Walter laughed.

“If they are connected to the Twiggs or the Dentons, I want to know,” Maura said. The men were oddly dressed in boxy black trousers and jackets with no collars. Maura pursed her lips while she considered what their garb might mean.

“Now who’s looking to get in the middle of that feud?” her father said. “You ought to get yourself properly deputized.”

Walter laughed. “Ladies can’t be deputized.”

Maura put her hands on her hips. “But they can get to the bottom of things.”

Y
es, your appointment is confirmed for Friday at 3:00.” Ruth tapped her pencil eraser on the desktop as she spoke into the phone. She had checked the computer screen three times. “The doctor will have your test results by then.”

Ruth hung up and glanced around the clinic’s empty waiting room. From a pocket in her blue scrubs, she took a key and went to unlock the front door. The first appointment of Monday morning was scheduled for fifteen minutes later. Ruth returned to the desk and double-checked that the patient files she had pulled from the drawers were in the correct order for smooth handling as patients arrived.

When she arranged for this semester-long internship, Ruth had hoped for more patient contact. She had worked as a certified nurse assistant for over two years in a nursing home and had enough of her nursing degree behind her to be qualified to draw blood and do simple lab work. So far, though, the clinic manager had kept her on the front desk most of the time. She only worked five or six hours a day. After carrying a full course load and working twenty-five hours a week at the nursing home, the reduced schedule seemed like a vacation.

It was only the second week. Surely things would pick up.

Ruth could have arranged some clinical experience in Colorado Springs, with its multiple large hospital systems and wide-ranging network of medical practices. But she had left Westcliffe because she wanted to return to a place like it someday qualified to provide a basic level of medical care. People in Colorado Springs had plenty of doctors and nurses. Amish communities often were spread out and remote, especially in new settlements like the one in southwestern Colorado. Though she had chosen to leave, unbaptized, and get her GED and enroll in college, Ruth also longed to be among her own people.

She had a hard time thinking of herself as
not
Amish, but even in scrubs and behind a desk looking at a computer monitor, she did not feel
English
, either.

The door opened and Mrs. Weichert came through it.

“Good morning.” Ruth picked up Mrs. Weichert’s file from the top of the stack. “Is all your information the same?”

Mrs. Weichert laughed. “I’ve lived in this town my whole life. I’ve had that store on Main Street for twenty years. Yes, my information is the same.”

“Sorry. I have to ask.” Ruth stood. “They’ll be ready for you in just a minute.”

Ruth stepped into the hall behind the desk and set Mrs. Weichert’s file in a rack. The clinic manager stuck her head out of her office.

“Why don’t you take the patient back?”

“Me?” Ruth’s heart sped up.

“Sure. Review her list of meds and get a pulse and blood pressure.”

Ruth retrieved the chart and opened the door to the waiting room. “I’ll take you back, Mrs. Weichert.”

In the exam room, Ruth laid the file open. Mrs. Weichert dropped her purse in a chair and sat on the exam table.

“I guess your people are pretty excited about Annie,” Mrs. Weichert said. “Her baptism and all.”

Ruth clicked the point down on her pen. “It’s a big step for her.”

“I respect her choice, but I sure did like it better when she wore jeans to work in the shop.”

“She’s gotten used to the clothes,” Ruth said. “We don’t really let our dresses hold us back.”

Mrs. Weichert scanned Ruth from head to toe. “You’ve made a conversion of your own.”

Ruth shrugged. “Scrubs are standard.” For a long time Ruth had worn skirts to work at the nursing home. Only recently had she relented and agreed to wear scrubs. She had to admit they were practical and comfortable.

“You look like you know what you’re doing.”

“I assure you, I do,” Ruth said. “Let me start by getting your blood pressure.”

Rufus took a thermos of coffee from under the bench of his open-air cart. He stroked Dolly’s long nose as the horse stood obediently still in the street. Mrs. Weichert’s shop had become a familiar destination for both of them. Rufus hoped the shop would be empty for a few minutes. It was noon on a Monday. Tourist traffic should be nonexistent. It was the locals Rufus wanted to avoid.

Annalise smiled when he stepped through the door, making the bell jangle, and reached under the counter to produce two mugs.

“We seemed to have formed a habit.” Rufus unscrewed the top of the thermos and poured.

Annalise wrapped the fingers of both hands around the mug to sip. “Ah. I am glad becoming Amish does not mean I have to give up
kaffi.”

“Tell me,” Rufus said as he picked up his own mug, “does having an Amish employee attract more tourists to the shop on the weekends?”

Annalise laughed. “I could have made a study of that if I were keeping better records.”

“You might have been tempted to write a software program to analyze the data.”

She shook her head. “Nope. There are no software programs in my future. I created and sold two successful companies. It’s out of my system for good.”

“I suppose the busy season is over now.” This would be Annalise’s second winter working in Mrs. Weichert’s shop of unsorted small antiques, rare books, and an increasing inventory of Amish crafts.

“As long as the weather holds up we’ll have traffic.” She sipped her coffee. “Winter will be quieter.”

“Ike Stutzman is complaining that a lantern has gone missing.”

“He probably just misplaced it, or one of his daughters used it and didn’t put it back.”

Rufus nodded. “Most likely. But he was pitching a fit about it yesterday when I got back from the fire. Suddenly he’s worried that an overturned lantern will start a fire in his barn.”

“It could.”

“Yes, it could. But a lantern that is simply lost is not likely to start a fire, now is it?”

“Did anyone get hold of Karl yet?” Annalise picked up a rag and wiped dust from the counter.

Rufus shook his head. “Tom was going to go by his contractor’s trailer this morning and see if his assistant has a number for him.”

“I heard he went to see his dying father in Virginia.”

Rufus lifted his shoulders in an exaggerated shrug.

“I also heard he went to Montana to look at horses he might want to buy for his ranch.”

“I couldn’t say.”

The shop door jangled again, and Joel Beiler stuck his head in. “We have everything ready to load at the back of Tom’s store.”

“I’ll be right there.” Rufus drained his coffee cup as his younger brother let the door close behind him.

“Joel seems to be buckling down,” Annalise said.

“He is. I believe he has a knack for farming that I never had. He ordered soil nutrients through Tom’s hardware store. I promised to help him get the load home.”

“I suppose you should go.”

Annalise’s gray eyes were clear and unsullied.

“You look happy,” he said. “Are you still coming to supper tomorrow?”

She nodded.

“I’ll see you there.” Rufus took his thermos and stepped into the sunlight, wishing he did not have to wait until tomorrow evening to see Annalise again. He never liked being away from her.

He could do something about that dilemma. She had done her part yesterday. Now it was up to him.

Ruth was out of the clinic by two o’clock and walked the few blocks to Annalise’s house off Main Street. She only stayed long enough to grab a sweater and a water bottle.

And her car key.

Annalise had given her the blue Prius a few months ago as part of divesting herself of
English
ways. Ruth had surprised herself how quickly she adjusted to the freedom of going somewhere on a whim. Quick trips. Short errands. Just go and do something and come right back.

It was all very un-Amish, and Ruth was not sure any longer that using a car to be efficient with time meant a person did not value the community.