Accidentally Amish (22 page)

“Sneaky doesn’t mean unsuccessful,” Annie pointed out. “That’s what lawyers do. No offense.”

“I’m on your side, Annie. I’ll do my best.”

“How could he have these papers ready so fast?”

“Because they were already sitting on the corner of his desk. He’s two steps ahead. Does he play chess?”

Annie groaned and put her face in one hand. “I never once could beat him.”

“Well, I will. Just get me the papers.”

“I’ll take care of it right now.”

She clicked off.

“Honey, are you all right?”

Annie spun to face her mother. “Just … a complication I didn’t foresee. But my new lawyer is not worried.”

Myra held up a spiral-bound book with a pink cover. “I found it.”

“Oh, thank you!” Annie took the book in her hands and flipped to random pages. List after list of names, single spaced, filled a hundred pages.

“I’d better get supper going.” Myra turned to the sink behind her, lifted the faucet handle, and ran water over her hands. “Pork chops in applesauce just the way you like them.”

Annie grimaced. “I don’t think I can stay after all, Mom. I need to run back to the office.” She held the book against her chest. “Let me know when Aunt Lennie gets here. I promise to come to dinner.”

January 1738

Y
ou must go,” Verona insisted.

“We’ve only had the warrant two days,” Jakob countered. “There’s plenty of time for the survey.”

“The weather is clear now.” Verona would not give up easily. “Surveyors will be eager for winter work. If you do the survey now, we’ll have no trouble with the papers come spring.”

“You can always smell spring in the air.”

“I don’t smell spring, but I smell enough clear weather for the survey. It is the first day of a new year, Jakob. Celebrate by engaging a surveyor.”

When Verona’s deep violet eyes lit up in that particular shade, Jakob knew not to argue further.

So he found a surveyor well recommended for his efficiency and mounted his horse in the middle of winter to visit the land he had already come to think of as his own.

The next week, the surveyor did his work with Jakob pointing and describing and gesturing. They started at the black oak Jakob and Hans Zimmerman had leaned against together, and the surveyor marked three other trees as well. Jakob’s land had corners now. Assured that the legal description would be filed as soon as possible, Jakob shook the surveyor’s hand and watched the man pack away his brass and oak instruments, mount his horse, and head in the general direction of Philadelphia.

Jakob decided to stay another day and make his own sketches. The Siebers offered night shelter in their barn, but Jakob spent the daylight hours on his own land along Irish Creek. In winter sun, he dipped a quill and drew ink across thick paper. A great stone fireplace would anchor the house. He would carve the mantel out of black oak—plentiful on the land—with a table to match, both of them sanded and polished to a sheen. He sketched paths to the smokehouse, the icehouse, the barn, the stables. Pastures, crops, orchards, and gardens took form in black on white. Jakob drew a little square and wrote in it, “Maria’s Beets.” The creek bubbled through his drawing in the shade of black and Spanish oaks. A tanyard, farthest from the house in its own clearing, would supplement his income. If he could clear fifty acres of the 168 the surveyor had measured, the family would do well.

At first light the next day, Jakob closed the Siebers’ barn door behind him and mounted his horse for the ride to Philadelphia. Verona had been right to insist he come, he reflected. Perhaps in as little as two months they would all come back together to Irish Creek.

“If my calculations are correct,” Christian announced to his sisters, “
Daed
should be back in no more than two days.”

Verona smiled as she stirred the stew in the pot hanging in the fireplace. She loved the feeling of having her children gathered in the warm room. Only three of them could sit on crates at the small table at one time, but they had acquired a couple of rickety chairs, and Lisbetli never stayed in one place very long anyway. Christian was rarely without a map anymore. Even Hans Zimmerman said that Christian knew distances and terrain better than most of the men. He had begun marking his maps with the names of Amish families to indicate their future homesteads. To keep up with Christian, Maria was taking more interest in learning to read. Verona was pleased that Barbara, who had more schooling than anyone else in the family, made up lessons for the other children.

Verona gasped when the pain burst behind her eyes again. The ladle clattered to the floor as she put both hands to her temples. Though she closed her eyes, she felt Barbara and Anna lurch in her direction. Anna picked up the ladle, and Barbara caught her mother’s elbows.

“I’m fine.” Verona waved her daughters away. “It will pass in a moment.”

“It’s happening more often.” Barbara did not let go of her grip. “Go lie down.”

“Supper is almost ready.” Verona reached toward the pot.

Barbara stopped her. “I will feed the children. Please,
Mamm
, lie down.”

Verona feared that if she put her head to the pillow, she might never get up again. She would never get to tell Jakob about the new baby. Perhaps it would be better if he did not know.

Until the moment the horse buckled under him, Jakob had let his mind wander, dreaming of the homestead and fields rich with buckwheat, rye, and vegetables. By bedtime he would be sharing his sketches with Verona.

Suddenly his feet left the stirrups and his hands lost their loose touch on the saddle horn as his body flew off the mount. He landed on his back, inches from a tree trunk that could have cracked his skull. The breath went out of him, and for a moment he lay on the ground unsure whether he was capable of inhaling. Eight feet away, the horse neighed in protest and struggled to regain posture. To Jakob’s relief, she did. He could see now the hole she must have stepped in with her left front leg, the soft depression camouflaged with wet leaves and broken branches. The horse limped in a small circle, and Jakob, still flattened, felt a swell of panic. If the horse’s leg was broken, he did not even have a rifle to put her out of her misery. This was not a hunting trip, after all, and he had no other use to carry a gun through the wilderness. He would never shoot anyone, not even natives on the attack. And he didn’t know how he would pay for another horse if this one turned up lame.

The immediate question was whether Jakob himself could stand. Pushing up on one elbow, he regretted the decision to take a deep breath. His hand went immediately to his rib cage. Once, years ago, he had broken three ribs. Instantly, he remembered the injury. With his fingers, he gently probed his side. If he was lucky, this time only two had cracked. Controlling his breathing, he managed to sit up and lean against the tree trunk he had come so close to striking. With quick, jagged breaths, he watched the horse.

Jakob clicked his tongue to call the horse to him, and she came. At first, he limited his evaluation to visual inspection of the fetlock in question. No bone protruded. Mindful of his precarious position, within easy kicking range and barely able to move, Jakob slowly reached for the animal’s leg and ran his hand gently down the line of the bone. He felt no break. She seemed to favor the leg less with each step.

With a few minutes’ rest, the horse would be fine. Jakob, on the other hand, winced at the thought of trying to mount in his present condition, never mind withstand the motion of riding. He studied the sky. Light would fail soon, and the temperature would plummet. Scanning the immediate vicinity, Jakob determined he could support a fire with deadwood for several hours if only he could manage to strike his flint hard enough to create the required spark.

Mrs. Zimmerman shook her head. “How long has she been like this?” She touched Verona’s cheek.

“She only went to bed a few hours ago.” Anna’s face scrunched anxiously. “We asked if she wanted some stew, but she wouldn’t wake up.”

“She has been ill much longer than a few hours,” Mrs. Zimmerman said.

“Since the boat.” Christian stood in the doorway watching his mother sleep.

“She gets tired.” Barbara choked on her words. “I try to help as much as I can so she can rest. Christian should not have bothered you.”

“She is burning up with fever.” Mrs. Zimmerman dipped a cloth in a bucket of water once again and turned to the boy. “Christian did the right thing to come and get me. Now he must go find my husband.”

“What can Mr. Zimmerman do?” Anna asked.

“He knows the road your father would take back from Irish Creek.”

Lisbetli wailed from the other room.

The fire burned low. Jakob examined the eastern sky for any hint of pink before deciding to put on more wood. His sense of time was gone, swallowed by catnaps he jerked out of without knowing whether he slept two minutes or twenty. Most of the night he was awake, partly in pain and partly on alert for the sounds of the forest around him. A squirrel’s scamper, a twig’s snap, the fluttering wings of a bird—it all made Jakob twitch. In the dark, he parsed every sound, making sure it belonged.

At the sound of hooves approaching, Jakob straightened his back with a silent wince.

A lone horse.

It could carry a single Indian.

The rhythm he heard was too rapid for the dark and getting louder.

Jakob slithered into the woods behind him. There was no time to kick dirt on the fire or untie the horse.

The hooves stopped. Someone dismounted and moved around the campsite.

“Jakob?” a voice called.

Jakob looked out from behind a tree to see Hans Zimmerman patting his horse’s neck on the other side of the fire.

“Jakob? Are you here?”

“Yes!” Jakob called back. “I’m here!” With an arm cradling his ribs, he moved into Hans’s view.

“What happened?” Hans rushed forward to catch Jakob’s weight.

Jakob shook his head. “First, you tell me why you’re looking for me in the middle of the night.”

“Do you think you can ride?” Hans asked. “We have no time to spare.”

“What happened, Hans?”

“It is Verona.”