Love’s Journey Home (12 page)

“We are to keep ourselves separate from the world so that we don’t become like the
world.” Micah rubbed bloodshot eyes, his expression making Helen wonder if he ever
rued the day he’d drawn the lot to become the district’s bishop. “On Friday, you became
like the world. Take time and think about how that turned out for you. You’re not
the first to do this sort of thing, by any means, but each time it happens, I’m surprised
and disappointed. Not nearly as surprised and disappointed as your mudder, I reckon.
Now you must accept the consequences.”

He paused and fixed Helen with an equally hard stare. “Do you have any words you would
like to say before I pronounce Edmond’s punishment?”

Helen breathed. In and out. She raised her head to meet his gaze. “It was suggested
to me that it might be good for Edmond to spend some time with Josiah Shirack.”

Micah’s white, bushy eyebrows rose and fell. “Not a bad idea.” He glanced at Edmond.
“Tomorrow you and I will go into town and speak to Josiah about the apprenticeship
he’s been talking about filling at his shop.”

His eyes wide, breathing noisy, Edmond managed a nod. Most likely, his thoughts centered
on days spent in the fields now exchanged for the heat of the anvil.

Micah turned back to Helen. “Anything more?”

“I take responsibility—”

“Nee. You do not.”

Helen closed her mouth once again and waited.

“What we must do is minimize contact with this legal system. Edmond, I will go with
you to the court. Only you and I will go. You will plead guilty and accept your punishment.
No lawyer. No trial. As soon as possible. I imagine there will be a fine. It will
be paid. There will be community service. We’ll ask for a task that will not put you
in further contact with these boys.”

Edmond nodded. Helen nodded. Nothing more to be said.

“Then you will confess your sins in a kneeling confession before the community at
our next Sunday service.” Micah’s gaze softened imperceptibly. “You’ll confess and
you’ll be forgiven. We’ll move on.”

He stood. For a second, Helen remained seated, still contemplating his words.
We’ll move on
. After the harsh words, forgiveness and grace. She tasted the sweetness of it, hoping
Edmond saw it as well.

Micah lifted his eyebrows again as if inquiring. Helen hopped to her feet and jerked
her head at Edmond. He rose. “I’m sorry,” he said to the bishop. “It won’t happen
again.”

“See to it that it doesn’t.” Micah opened the door. “Go on. Wait outside. I want a
word with your mother.”

Edmond stumbled over his own feet getting out the door. Helen longed to follow. She
stood still, gaze averted.

“A word of advice.” For the first time his voice held a note of uncertainty, something
Helen had never heard in it in all the time since Micah had been bishop. “Look at
me.”

She forced her gaze to his.

“Word of advice. There’s been talk about why you continue to remain single. I don’t
like gossip and chitter chatter among the women. Or the men, for that matter. Still,
it would be best if you would try harder when the unattached men of this district
show an interest. We are most at peace when our families are complete.”

“None have shown an interest.” To her horror, she blurted the words aloud. A wave
of dizzying embarrassment washed over her. “That is to say, I’m so busy with caring
for Mudder, Daed’s death, the children—”

“It’s long past time. You need a partner in raising your children. We’ve several men
without fraas.”

“I’ve not noticed them on my doorstep.”

“They will be, sooner or later, of that I’m certain.”

Did he mean to say he would tell them to make that journey to her door? Surely not.
Courting was private. Not even the bishop interfered.

“Think on it. Pray on it.”

“God’s plan—”

“Keep your heart open to God’s plan. Someone might walk through its door.”

Helen closed her mouth and nodded. Silence served her best, even though everything
in her cried out to ask him one simple question:
When?

She slipped through the door, aware of his presence as he followed her into the yard
and to the buggy where Edmond sat, head down, shoulders sagging.

With relief, no doubt. She climbed into the buggy, long past weary, to the point of
exhaustion. She lifted the reins. A buggy came jolting up the road before she could
pull forward. Eli Brennaman held the reins. Why had he come to the bishop’s house?
Had something happened? To Emma. The baby. Her heart slammed against her ribs with
such force Helen feared bones would shatter. Thomas? Had something happened to Thomas?

“Bishop, bishop!” the boy hollered. He brought the buggy to an abrupt halt halfway
between the house and barn. Panting, he jumped from the buggy. “Bishop, my daed sent
me. He dug a well. He dug a well.”

“Calm down, boy. Calm down.” Micah slapped a hand on Eli’s shoulder. “You’re talking
gibberish. What’s happened?”

“Daed and Gabriel dug a well. We found water.” Eli wiped sweat from his face with
his sleeve. “It came up black. It’s a gusher.”

“A gusher?” Helen couldn’t help herself. She climbed down from the buggy and went
to Eli. “What do you mean?”

“Daed says we struck oil. We struck oil on our farm.”

H
elen picked up her pace. Micah moved quickly for a big man, and Edmond had the long
stride of a boy who’d shot up in height in the last few months. Everyone moved quickly
to get this visit to Josiah’s blacksmith shop over. The bishop had much more pressing
issues to which he needed to attend. After Eli’s arrival the previous evening, she
and Edmond had been sent home while Micah rushed to the Brennaman farm. She knew from
her brothers Thaddeus, Tobias, and Peter, who’d brought their families to supper,
that a meeting had been set to discuss what happened next. Her brothers talked of
nothing else during a meal of fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, corn on the
cob, and watermelon, none of which anyone seemed to taste.

Thaddeus’s order that she and her mother not worry about it fell on deaf ears. How
could one not worry? Telling her it was a sin didn’t seem to help. She couldn’t very
well harness her thoughts. They rode willy-nilly through her brain like wild horses
stampeding through an open pasture. She sighed. Her eyes burned with fatigue. Between
the oil discovery and Edmond’s transgressions, she’d slept little. Whenever she had
managed to nod off, she’d had dreams the likes of which brought her upright in her
bed, hair damp with sweat, her skin icy cold and hot at the same time. Dawn came as
a relief.

Micah’s order she come with them to talk to Josiah came as a surprise. “Come along,”
he’d said from her porch with a brusque wave toward his buggy. So come along she had,
although she knew she would have no say in the conversation. Nor would Josiah. Micah
had that plodding-oxen approach to discussion. Once set in a particular direction,
nothing stopped him. Perhaps a good quality in a bishop. What would he have done with
all that bossiness, had he not been the one to draw the lot?

Concealing a sudden, inadvertent smile at the thought, she slowed and waited for Micah
to open the door to the shop. He entered first. Edmond followed, but he had the good
grace to hold the door for her. She slipped in and gave him an encouraging smile.
He didn’t want to be here, that she could see, but he also knew he’d made his bed
and he’d have to lie in it. He shrugged and let the door swing shut behind her.

The shop opened up into a huge room with rows and rows of horseshoes of all sizes
on one side and a series of stalls on the other. In the middle stood a cart filled
with tools next to the anvil. Josiah Shirack straddled the back leg of a mammoth black
horse. He bent over, hammer in hand, and pounded the shoe onto the hoof with a quick,
sure
pop, pop, pop
. Eight nails. He dropped the hammer and scooped up a large file, which he used with
the deft movement of a man who had performed this task many times.

No one spoke. No one with any smarts at all interrupted a blacksmith in the middle
of shoeing a thousand-pound animal. Although she’d never been in the shop before,
even Helen knew that. Not that this horse seemed to mind. His head dipped now and
again, but his body remained motionless as he gazed out an open window in front of
him.

Josiah made quick work of it and let the leg drop. Muttering soft nothings to the
animal, he moved away from the horse’s hindquarters. “Good job, Smoky, good job.”

He smoothed a hand across Smokey’s back and then looked up. “Morning. What can I do
for you folks?” He frowned as his gaze came to rest on Helen. “Helen,
gudemariye
to you.”

“We were waiting until you finished the job.” Micah shoved his hat back on his head.
“No hurry.”

“’Preciate that. I do.” Josiah strode forward, wiping his hands on a rag that hung
from his worn leather apron. “He’s a good horse, but he doesn’t like to be bothered
when he’s getting his new shoes.”

“Getting to the point, then. I’m told you are looking for some help.” Micah jerked
his head from Edmond to Josiah as if to say
Here you go
. “This young man is in need of a job. And a stern taskmaster.”

Josiah’s hands stilled on the towel. He chewed on his lower lip, looking as if he
were doing a hard addition problem in his head. “I’ve been thinking about taking on
an apprentice, but I hadn’t spoken to Caleb about it yet. He owns the shop, bought
it from my brother Luke when my…a couple of years ago.”

His voice trailed off. Helen could almost see when he put two and two together and
got four. Edmond was being punished, and Josiah’s shop would be the appointed place
from which his punishment would be meted out.

“I’m aware of that.” Micah crossed his massive forearms over a belly that must have
been the recipient of one too many whoopie pies. “Edmond wants a job where he has
to work hard. He wants to keep his mind on work and off the things that get a young
man his age into trouble.”

The shop door opened and in tromped Isaac Gless, looking so much like his father with
his broad shoulders, big hands, and easy stride that Helen wanted to drop her gaze.
It refused to go.
Stop it
. The room warmed, even though it wasn’t even noon yet. Isaac brought with him a breath
of the outside air. It might be eighty-five degrees outside, but the air was cooler
than the ninety-five inside the building. He strode forward, and then halted, his
mouth open in a half-spoken greeting.

“Well, gudemariye.” He touched the brim of his hat. “Busy place, this.”

“Becoming a bit of a meeting place, it is.” A tiny undercurrent of sarcasm ran through
Josiah’s words. Helen hoped the bishop didn’t hear it. Josiah didn’t seem to care.
“You don’t, by any chance, have a horse you need shod, do you?”

“I came about a job.” His face reddening, Isaac glanced at the bishop and then at
Helen before planting his gaze on Josiah. “I don’t mind hard work. I get up early.
I go to bed early. I mind my manners.”

Josiah wiped his face on the towel and grinned, a real smile for the first time. “I
don’t much care about the manners, unless you’re helping a customer. As far as the
rest, sounds like you have the basic requirements. Ever shod a horse?”

“A few times back home when…”

“Sorry to interrupt, but I haven’t much time.” Micah didn’t seem sorry at all. “As
I said, I’d like you take to Edmond on as an apprentice. You don’t have to pay him
much.”

Josiah’s dark eyebrows went up. He lifted his straw hat and his forehead wrinkled
under rambunctious hair soaked in sweat before he settled the hat back on it. “I didn’t
know Edmond had a hankering to be a blacksmith.”

“Nor did I.” The bishop slapped the boy on the back. “All the same, I’d like you to
show him the ropes. Never can tell. Might be exactly the right occupation for a boy
who likes to use Main Street like a buggy racetrack.”

Josiah had to be thinking punishment wasn’t the best reason to take on an apprentice
when a man wanted to make his business fruitful.

“I’m sorry, Josiah.” Helen couldn’t hold it in any longer. “I know it’s a bit much
to ask, but I thought since you had your own problems back in the day, you might have
a few words of wisdom you could share.”

“You think since I was a wild child, I’ll know what to say?” His skin darkened to
the color of ripe tomatoes. “Do as I say, not as I do?”

“You saw the pain that is caused by taking running around too far.”

“I learned from my mistakes, as we all must do.” His gaze whipped to the bishop, then
to Isaac, and back to Helen. “This is a man’s job. It can be dangerous. It requires
a willingness to settle down and concentrate.”

“Someone like me.” The corners of Isaac’s lips turned up. He thought he’d won. He
didn’t know Micah Kelp. “I only ask a fair wage.”

“You’ll have to look elsewhere,” Micah intervened. “As Helen said, we want Edmond
here to spend some time with Josiah. He can help him learn from his mistakes.”

Josiah’s face shuttered, became stony.