A Stranger's Wish (12 page)

“You’ll be fine,” I told Mr. Geohagan a couple of hours later. “Bypass surgery is a common thing these days.”

“Not on me, it’s not.” His jaw was clenched and his forehead furrowed. “I’ve got stuff to do. Important stuff. I can’t stay sick!”

“Isn’t that why you’re having this surgery? So you won’t stay sick?”

“I’m having it because some doctor wants to earn more money.”

“Mr. Geohagan!” I stifled a giggle, knowing he wouldn’t appreciate it. “What a terrible thing to say.”

He glared at me for a few minutes, but I didn’t blink. The corner of his mouth quirked up. “Cathleen.”

“Kristie.” But I smiled.

He pointed in the direction of his bedside table. “In case I don’t make it, I wrote you a long letter about what to do with some of my belongings. The instructions are in the drawer. I need someone I can trust to see that the right things happen, things I’ve never mentioned to anyone.”

“Then you shouldn’t mention them to me.” I already had the key, and that was more than enough.

He stared at me though narrowed eyes. “Only read it if I die.”

“Mr. Geohagan!”

“And don’t lose that key.”

“A lot of good it’ll do me if I don’t know what it opens.”

“It’s written in my letter what you’re to do with it if I die. Just don’t lose it in the meantime! And mail this letter for me.” He reached toward his table.

I felt like saying, “A bit bossy tonight, aren’t we?” but I didn’t. I knew the grumpiness was preoperative stress. I took the envelope he indicated and glanced at the address.

“Another letter for Adam Hurlbert. Are you a big contributor or something?”

“Right. I’m a big contributor.” He gave that little snort that passed for a laugh.

“Okay, so it’s not money. It’s a letter of endorsement. It’s questions about his platform. It’s—”

“None of your business,” he cut in, smiling to take away any sting.

I made a face at him, but he was right. I backed off.

“Now promise me you’ll come see me as soon as they let you, okay?” he said. “I told them you were like family and they should let you in whenever they decide I’m not going to kick the bucket.”

“You’re not going to die. You’re too ornery.”

He liked that and smiled at me.

I smiled warmly back, but my heart was chilled by the thought that he had written all those instructions for me. Me, for heaven’s sake. How tragic to have lived sixty-five years and have no one closer than a friend of a few days’ acquaintance.

8

S
ummer still filled the air when school began, but new notebooks, new teachers, and a surfeit of summer boredom made the transition easier for the kids. I was surprised at how glad I was to be back, though I struggled with learning the names of all my students. To cover my ignorance, I smiled a lot. My jaws ached each afternoon when I unglued my fingers and scrubbed paint from under my nails.

Teaching elementary school art might be draining, but it was also fun. The kids didn’t yet feel it uncool to enjoy the class, and most of them were willing to try anything I asked. Much as I wished I could make a living from my painting, I enjoyed helping little hands create something original, even if only a mother could call it lovely.

A few students, though, drove me to distraction. Nelson Carmody Hurlbert was one. The boy was enough to make any adult vote against his stepfather in protest. If the man couldn’t control a child, how would he ever manage the federal government?

But most of us at school excused the would-be senator because he and his lovely wife, Irene, had married when Nelson was eight, and the child’s obnoxiousness was already well ingrained. Of course, if Adam won the election, he’d be getting involved with a national government well over two hundred years old. Talk about ingrained bad habits.

Evenings I collapsed before my TV and watched the occasional news reports of Adam and the ever-smiling Irene, sans Nelson, dashing around the state making well-crafted speeches and shaking hands with everyone in sight. I hated to admit Todd had been right about how much I enjoyed the TV.

The key lay on my bureau day after day. Whenever I looked at it, I prayed for Mr. Geohagan. He was stabilizing nicely after his bypass surgery, and he’d soon be going home. My heart ached for him because he seemed so utterly alone. I never saw anyone else visiting him, and he never mentioned anyone. I stopped in almost every day to give him someone to talk to besides the hospital staff.

But after he was well? Maybe he wouldn’t need or want me then.

On the farm harvesting was progressing at a fine rate. The eating corn was in and the cattle corn was almost ready. It was the tomatoes that occupied everyone’s efforts now. Ruth was completing a two-week leave from the pretzel factory to harvest the fruit that lay rosy and fragrant in the fields. Even Mary left her kitchen to join her family for the gathering.

“We have to finish today,” John said at lunch on Saturday. A scowl hung on his usually taciturn face. “A storm’s coming, according to the weatherman.” John had a battery-powered forecaster he kept in the barn and used to track the weather. “What we don’t get in will be ruint, and we don’t want that, eh?”

“Let me help,” I said as I sliced a piece of Mary’s homemade oatmeal bread. “I don’t know much about farms, but I know how to pick tomatoes. Our housekeeper always grew several vines because she liked to make her own tomato juice and spaghetti sauce.”

I glanced up to see the family staring at me, and I wondered what had gotten their attention most: the mention of a housekeeper or my offer to help.

“I mean it. I’ll help.”

And I did.

I couldn’t quite hide my smile at the picture we women made walking down the road to the tomato fields a half hour later. Ruth and Mary were in their caped dresses while I wore my oldest jeans and a T-shirt with a huge sunflower I’d silk-screened way back in some college art class. Their hair was neatly tucked beneath their
kapps
, while mine, made flyaway by the humidity, was tucked behind my ears, from which dangled red, yellow, green, and blue triangles of different sizes. I wore sunglasses with mottled red frames while they both squinted. Ruth had her pink flip-flops on, Mary a pair of much-darned black stockings and black shoes, and I a pair of scruffy canvas sneakers with a hole by the left big toe.

“We used to grow tobacco on this acreage, like many of our neighbors,” Ruth said as she fell in step beside me. Mary walked a bit behind but close enough to talk with us if she chose.

“When did you change?” I asked.

“About ten years ago. My older brother Andy kept telling Father that tobacco was a sinful crop—which didn’t make Father very happy. Andy said that if we believed our bodies were temples of the Holy Spirit like the Bible says, then we wouldn’t be growing a crop that was harmful to the body. I don’t think Father cared about being a temple and all, because back then so many raised tobacco that it couldn’t be that bad. He hoped that by going along with Andy he could keep him from
fremder Glawwe
.”

I shook my head. The phrase wasn’t familiar to me.

“Strange belief,” Ruth explained. “Andy was starting to go to church with Jon Clarke, and that got him asking all kinds of questions. Father was trying to stop him from turning away. I was only a little kid at the time, but I remember the day Andy told Father he thought you could be sure of your salvation.” There was shock in her voice even now.

“You don’t agree?”

“Oh, no. You can’t know for certain until you die. It’s prideful to assume salvation, and sinful.”

“I see.” Then she’d undoubtedly think me prideful and a terrible sinner. I believed the Bible said you could be certain of your salvation.
My sheep hear My voice
, Jesus said about those who believed in Him.
I know them, and they follow Me. And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand.

“You probably know our Andy.” Mary had moved up to walk with us. “He goes to your church.”

“Andy Zook is
your
Andy?” I said in surprise. “I never made the connection; I guess because Zook is such a common name around here. He was my Sunday school teacher last year. He and Sally are wonderful.”

Mary nodded, but her smile was sad.

“He looks like John.” Now that I knew, the resemblance was obvious. “I don’t know how I could have missed it before. And Jake. He looks like a happy Jake.”

Mary permitted herself a wry little smile. “You’d never know it now, but he was such a happy little boy, our Jake. Always in trouble but so happy. And Andy was such a good boy. He loved helping John in the barn.”

I thought of Andy, who had a large real estate business, and tried to imagine him growing up here on the farm, wearing a Dutch boy bob and a black felt hat. I thought of a little Jake running around in broadfall trousers and suspenders, happy instead of morose.

I wondered which son had hurt Mary more, the one with the strong faith that disagreed with hers or the one with no faith.

Mary looked up and scanned the clear skies, so brilliant that the crystalline blue hurt your eyes. “You’d never think it was going to rain, would you?”

I dutifully looked up at the heavens and the cumulus clouds sailing majestically across the cerullian sea. “You surely wouldn’t.”

We walked in silence for a few moments. I thought of the way Mary moved up beside Ruth when the conversation turned to issues of belief. Did she see me as a threat to Ruth, the one to lead another child from the community?

Possibly. I didn’t mean to cause any problem by living here, but my sunflower T-shirt and dangly earrings and ardent faith apart from the O
rdnung
might seem an attractive alternative to a young woman who felt hedged in—if Ruth felt hedged in, and I saw no sign that she did.

I again marveled at Mary and John. Trying to balance Jake’s unique needs and the contact with the outside world those needs forced on them against keeping Ruth and Elam spiritually safe required some fancy footwork. It necessitated great skill in the art of compromise, and I was increasingly struck by the fine line these parents walked.

“See those flatbed wagons?” Ruth pointed with pride. “There’s the one we filled yesterday.”

The wagons stood at the field’s edge, one with dozens of baskets stacked pyramid style on it. Mary, apparently satisfied with the innocuous topic, dropped behind us again.

“Tonight the truck will come from Campbell’s Soup and take the tomatoes. They come every day or two during picking season.”

“I’m going to be picking tomatoes for Campbell’s Tomato Soup?” I was fascinated by the idea. “The Campbells are coming, hoo-rah, hoo-rah.”

Mary and Ruth exchanged a look, and I shut up.

I soon found there was nothing to sing about in picking tomatoes. In a very short time my back ached and my hands were green from the juice of the vine. The acrid odor of the plant was everywhere, and the sun was baking every ounce of moisture from my body. Next thing I knew, I’d be hallucinating an oasis at the edge of the field—date palms, camels, and all.

“If it gets to be too much, Kristie, you can stop anytime,” Mary said as she offered me a drink of absolutely delicious water from the picnic thermos she’d brought along. Never had any liquid tasted so sweet and cool. “We appreciate all you’ve already done.”

I stretched painfully, listening to my back creak in fascinating and distressing new ways. My neck felt permanently elongated, like a turtle’s, and my nails would give a manicurist a heart attack. I watched Ruth move among the plants, her nimble fingers relentless in their search for the fruit. In the distance Elam was lifting a basket to John, who stood splay legged on the flatbed, the better to swing the basket to its place in the pyramid.

Now I understood why the Amish went to chiropractors so often. I’d have to go along on the family’s next visit. If I could wait that long.

I rubbed the small of my back.

“Oh, I’m doing fine, Mary,” I lied as I brushed my damp hair off my forehead. “I’ll work as long as the rest of you. Todd’s not coming til six thirty, so I have plenty of time.”

The afternoon was an endless haze of agony, of plant after plant and row after row. It was sweat dripping off the end of my nose and spiders lurking under leaves, ready to pounce. I became resigned to the fact that I was going to walk bent over at a right angle for the rest of my life. I’d develop an obsession with shoes, the only attire I could still appreciate, and I’d paint caterpillars and insects and dirt, the only subjects I could see. One thing was for sure: I was never eating another bowl of tomato soup in my life.

I jumped as a hand touched my shoulder. I straightened slowly, each vertebrae shrieking in protest, to face a smiling Ruth.

“Father says we can stop now. We’ve gathered most of the tomatoes, and we’ve run out of baskets.”

I tried to smile back. “Great,” I mumbled.

We turned to walk back to the house, and there stood Clarke at the side of the road watching us. He looked fresh and energetic and clean in worn jeans and a yellow knit shirt. My slumping shoulders dipped further.