The Haven (9 page)

“He is busy! M.K. keeps dragging him into the house to settle down the crying baby. And he seems to be the only one who can do it.”

“That’s not the kind of busy I mean. You’ve got to keep him outside, away from the house.”

Amos heaved a stretched-to-the-limits sigh. “Fern, what exactly are you getting at?”

“Have you seen the way he looks at Sadie? He’s paying too much attention to her.”

No, Amos hadn’t noticed that. A more mismatched pair than Sadie and Will would be hard to imagine. He hardly knew Will—he had given his permission to let him stay at Windmill Farm solely because of the game warden’s request. But he didn’t think Will was untrustworthy, the way Fern assumed all English to be. Maybe a little immature and misguided, according to what Mahlon Miller had told him, but not a bad apple. And as for Sadie having more than a casual interest in Will? Well, Amos had faith in his daughter’s judgment. “Sadie has a good head on her shoulders. Surely, she wouldn’t be drawn away by this boy.”

Fern gave him a look as if he were a very small child. She spoke slowly and carefully. “Have you seen the way she blushes when she’s around him?” She shook her head. “Sparks are starting to fly.”

“What?”

“Whenever you see a person’s face turn red, you know something is up.”

Would that also pertain to Ira Smucker’s ears? he wanted to ask.
And what did Ira mean about seeing you on Saturday?

The kitchen door opened, squeaking on its hinge. Their attention turned to see Sadie and Will, laughing over something.

Fern stepped forward, arms akimbo, like a teapot with two handles. “Keep that bird boy busy.”

Could Fern be right? She usually was. He worried suddenly that Sadie might have so little experience with men that she would be easy prey for somebody like Will. He would have to keep an eye out. But then again, she might be misreading the situation. He knew Fern was suspicious of all English folk. Maybe she was just overreacting. Amos watched Fern pass Will, talk to him for a brief moment, point to Amos, then head to the house.

Will walked up to him. “Fern said you wanted to talk to me.”

Amos blew air out of his mouth. Ah, Fern. She had a way of making things happen. “Will, have you ever plowed? With a horse, I mean. Not with a tractor.”

Will’s eyebrows shot up in alarm. “Plowed? Uh, no. Not with a horse. Not with a tractor, either.” His smile drooped.

Amos put a hand on his shoulder. “Well, Monday morning, first thing, you are going to learn. Meet me at the north pasture at dawn. The soil will be just right after last night’s drenching rain. Moist, but not too wet.”

“Dawn?” Will scratched his head. “That’s actually the time of day that’s best for birding. The game warden wants a list made up of all invasive birds on the property.”

Amos nodded. “As soon as you’re done with your bird list, you come find me and we’ll get you started.” He patted Will on the back and strode off to the barn, enjoying the startled look on the boy’s face. If Will Stoltz thought his Sadie was a girl to pursue, he needed to think again. Then his grin faded as he pondered Fern’s comment that Sadie would turn down Gid’s interest. And that she might be growing sweet on this English boy. Why were women so complicated?

It was a miracle. As soon as the baby drank his first bottle of goat’s milk, he stared at Sadie as if he couldn’t quite believe she had taken so long to figure that one out, then he finished the bottle, closed his eyes, and fell into a deep, restful sleep. Sadie gazed at the sleeping infant—the perfection of round cheeks, peach fuzz on his head, minuscule ears. She touched the bottom of a tiny foot, and the toes curled. “Really, he’s a beautiful baby when he’s not doing all that wailing.”

“I made another list of name suggestions, Sadie,” M.K. said, coming over to Sadie with two still warm-from-the-oven chocolate chip cookies in her hand.

Sadie broke off half of one cookie and took a bite. “No more palindromes.”

M.K. shook her head. “Even better. Onomatopoeia—call him Ono. Allegory—we can call him Al. Hyperbole—shorten it to Hi.”

“Joseph,” Sadie said decidedly. She reached out to break off another piece of cookie.

M.K. tilted her head. “Menno’s middle name?”

Sadie took another bite of cookie. “We can call him Joe.”

M.K. put the cookie in her hand on the table and stooped down to peer at the baby in the basket. “Joe sounds too old. Can we call him Baby Joe? Or Joe-Jo?”

Sadie put a hand out to grab the cookie and Fern covered her wrist, holding it there until she released it.

“Joseph it is,” Fern said. “And now, Sadie, you need to get back to work. Whenever you start eating nonstop, it’s your stomach’s way of telling your brain that you are fretting and need more on your mind.” She pointed to a stack of books on the counter. “M.K. and I picked those up from the library. You’ve got to keep up your healing work. You don’t want to forget all that you learned from Deborah Yoder.”

Ever since Sadie had helped cool down an overheated girl at a barbecue, Fern was convinced that Sadie was a natural healer. Gifted, she said, and Fern didn’t hand out compliments like candy. Sadie was less convinced of her talent. She had loved working beside Deborah, helping people with discomfort or ailments. She was fascinated by the use of herbs to help people. It seemed to Sadie that God had planned all along for plants to provide gifts of healing, and he was just waiting for someone to discover those secrets. But there was so much still to learn, and being responsible for others was always a worry.

But she couldn’t deny that she needed more on her mind. Since the moment she had returned home, she was forever eating or thinking about eating. It wouldn’t be long before she gained all of that weight back. Over the last year, she had worked so hard to keep food in the right place in her life—she knew it was a good thing in the right portions, meant to nourish her body, but her mind needed a different kind of nourishment. Fern had helped her to see the difference. Sadie had made such improvements in her eating habits—eating only when she was hungry—yet here she was, right back to fretful snacking.

Sadie ran a finger along the book titles:
Home Remedies, Common Sense Cures.
She slid into a chair and opened one of the books to a page about kidney stones. “Fern, do you think I’m capable of learning all there is to know?”

Fern leaned toward Sadie, her expression serious. “I know you are. But what’s more important, Sadie, is for you to know you are. Nix gewogt, nix gewunne.”
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Swallowing, Sadie offered one slow nod.

“Ira Smucker didn’t sneeze once after you gave him the honeycomb. Early this morning, Orin Yoder saw me at the phone shanty and asked if I knew what to do with canker sores. He said he suffers from them continually. I told him I’d ask you if you had a cure.”

“I do, actually. Old Deborah taught me how to treat them. Just make a paste of alum and put it on the sore.”

“Well, Sadie. What are you waiting for? I think you have your first client.”

A slow exhalation shivered out of Sadie. Ready or not, her healing work was about to begin.

Will felt as if he had been waylaid, a crosscut blow from the front, a kick from the back. He was minding his own business, walking out of the house, and the housekeeper trapped him into attending church. He had barely recovered from that blow when the farmer commandeered him into plowing fields. The invitations were loaded with obvious intention. Will knew the drill. Hadn’t he spent years trying to avoid both? Hard work and church.

He let his mind do a rapid rewind, racing backward. He hadn’t meant to get sucked into an invitation to church, but Fern caught him off guard. He had been feeling pleased with himself for being so useful as a baby calmer-downer and, suddenly,
wham!
She asked him what church he planned to attend while he was staying on the property. When he gave her a blank look,
wham!
She told him he could come with them and to be ready at 7:00 a.m. Sharp.

He thought he was smarter than these only-up-to-an-eighth-grade-education Amish. Ha! Pride goeth before a fall. It was one of those proverbs that his father told him, a few thousand times. And boy oh boy, was he ever falling a lot lately.

A month ago, Will had just received an acceptance to University of Pennsylvania’s medical school—the same place where his father was a teaching professor and had a practice at the university hospital. Will was within a few short months of graduating from college. His future looked bright. It was all going according to plan.

Then it all fell apart.
Whoosh!
One fell swoop.

Two weeks ago, Will had been tinkering around on his computer with Sean, one of his fraternity friends, and hacked into the college’s registrar site. Sean was delighted—he quickly got into his files and improved his recorded grades. Will didn’t touch his own file, but then again, he didn’t need to. He was a straight-A student. He was going to graduate at the top of his class.

It didn’t take long for someone in the registrar’s office to get suspicious when Sean, a C student, normally teetering on academic probation, asked for his transcript to be sent to Harvard to accompany his application for law school. Sean was called in for questioning, cracked immediately, and sent them off in Will’s direction.

Will had been suspended for the semester and lost his acceptance to medical school. Something about ethics. Something about making Will an example to others.

Will had tried to explain it all to his father, but he wouldn’t listen to any excuses. His father had always felt Will didn’t think before he acted and that was hard to deny. But in this particular case, Will didn’t do anything wrong. Sean did. But Will had never been able to win any kind of dispute with his father. Dr. Stoltz owned the truth, pure and simple.

Then his father told him that he had already made plans for Will’s spring and summer, that Will needed to learn how to work—to work hard, to fully appreciate the opportunity he had blown. His car would be sold, his monthly allowance cut off. Will was going to be an intern for a game warden in Lancaster County. If Will didn’t mess up, then his father might consider paying for that final semester of college so that he could at least graduate and get back on track.

Whose track? Will wanted to shout, but he held back. Even he wasn’t that big of a fool as to back talk his father. You didn’t do that. No one did.

Still, Will was so outraged by his father’s controlling demands that he stormed out of the house. He would move away, get a job, and figure out the rest of his life without a penny from his father! He sought out his fraternity friends for consolation. He spent the evening drinking away his woes with them, and ended the night with an unexpected twist: a brake light on his car was out—the very car his father was going to take back to the dealer in the morning— and he was pulled over by a police officer. Just a routine check, the officer said, but then he sniffed the air and asked if Will had been drinking any alcohol that evening. Will spent the next few hours drying out in the bowels of a Philadelphia lockup. By dawn, Will had made two decisions: one, he was not going to let his father know about this DUI, no matter what it would take. And two, he was going to spend the next few months interning for the game warden.

But he never expected
this
. To be plunked in the middle of an Amish farm. No car. No money. No television. No internet access. Not even a radio. He did have his cell phone, but he had to stand in certain high spots on the farm to get reception.

He gazed around the farm. He was sure the game warden had told his father about this latest development by now. Will could just imagine the delight on his father’s face. And what would he do if he learned that Will was plowing fields? Even better . . . he was spreading them with manure! His father would break out a bottle of his finest champagne. He would dance a jig.

Will wanted to quit this ridiculous bird-sitting/field-hand job. He could. There was just that sticky little problem with the law that he needed to keep under his father’s radar. He had two options: he could quit, but then he would have to face his father. Or he could stay, but he’d have to figure out how to actually do the job. Like, how to plow a field. And go to an Amish church service.