The Winnowing Season (20 page)

“Let’s put it to a vote.” Rhoda lifted her arm. “All in favor of me and
someone
going to a seminar on magical Maine mulch, raise your hands.”

Jacob and Leah held up a finger.

Samuel sighed. “I’m really unsure about this idea.”

“Then you don’t have to be the someone, do you?” Jacob winked at Rhoda.

“It can’t be you either, little brother.” Samuel ripped a sheet of paper off the legal pad. “Here’s what you need to accomplish before the storm hits. The latest weather report says to expect high winds and lots of rain, starting Sunday night.”

Steven laid the brochure on the table. “I see Samuel’s point, and I tend to lean toward his opinions in most things concerning this settlement, but”—he poured sugar and cream into his coffee and stirred it—“we have to keep our primary goal in mind. Being as independent from the Englisch as our forefathers were and avoiding anything that appears to be higher education are very important, but they’re also secondary issues. We succeed or fail based on the production of next year’s crop. If Rhoda feels she may learn something valuable from that seminar, it could be a mistake not to let her go.”

Samuel shrugged. “Okay. Then it should be Rhoda and Landon. He has to drive her anyway, and everyone else is needed around here.”

Rhoda let herself pout a little. “But Landon could drop off Jacob and me and return here to help out.”

Jacob nodded. “I like that plan.”

“I’m sure.” Samuel tapped the legal pad. “But we need to have our first church service this Sunday. That means all work stops Saturday night from this point forward in this settlement. Landon is a good worker, but with a possible Sunday night storm, and the roof needing repairs, we can’t spare you, Jacob.
And with the handicap of no stove, it takes at least two women to keep the meals going, so Leah can’t go either.”

“I agree with everything Samuel said.” Steven stretched his back. “But, please, Rhoda, promise that if you feel or sense anything, I mean
any
little thing, you will keep it to yourself.” He stared at her. “We have a clean slate here. Do you understand?”

Embarrassment crept up her back and stung her face. Did her brother have to say that in front of everyone? No one understood more than she did. She couldn’t stop what she heard, saw, or felt. But he was right. She had to control her reaction to those things.

“Agreed.”

EIGHTEEN

“Ten minutes early.” Landon pulled into a parking space in front of the brick building and turned off the engine. “You nervous?”

“About attending a class? No way. About sticking my foot in my mouth and causing trouble? A little. But this may be the most exciting thing I’ve ever done.” Rhoda grabbed her notepad and pen before she gestured at the two lunchpails. “We’re leaving them here?”

“For now.” Landon came around the vehicle and walked beside her as they crossed the parking lot. “Some people might consider attending a class on a college campus a bit intimidating.”

“Say what you mean, Landon. You’re thinking that because I only have an eighth-grade education and I attended a one-room schoolhouse, I’m quaking in my little black boots.”

He grinned, finding her comfortableness with who she was refreshing. “Yep.” He opened the double-wide glass doors.

Rhoda went inside first. “Intimidating is when a man of God who has a lot of authority over your family thinks you’re pure evil and lets his nephew set out to prove it. This will be fun. Just watch.”

“Okay. If you say so.”

“Just don’t let me do anything that could rile Steven or Samuel, okay?”

“You can count on it. But just so you know now, if anyone quizzes me during this thing, I’m pointing to you to give the answer.”

“If you don’t know an answer, say so. Big deal. You think anyone in that classroom has ever gone through one day when they knew all the answers to whatever came up?”

“You’re feeling mighty good about things since you moved to Maine and Jacob got here, aren’t you?”

“A few things are nagging at me, but overall, I’ve never felt better in my life. Ever.”

Landon was glad he had a hand in getting Rhoda out of Morgansville. If anyone had seen her the day Emma died, as he had, or the excruciating grief and guilt she experienced afterward and didn’t have a heart of compassion for her, that person wasn’t human.

But she didn’t know how that time had also changed him from a happy-go-lucky loner to a man who connected with the realities of life and with a friend who mattered. He still didn’t know why the two of them united as they did—the determined one and the drifter. He just hoped the Kings and the partnership were as good to her as she deserved.

They found the classroom and took their seats. The class hadn’t started yet. Landon noticed that some of the others in the classroom were his age, some were his parents’ age. Several smiled and some came over and introduced themselves.

Rhoda shook hands and answered questions, seemingly unbothered by their curiosity and their surprise that a group of Amish had moved into the area. When people learned she was working to restore the abandoned apple orchard they were all familiar with, she became almost like a hero to them. That seemed to catch her off guard.

No doubt, Landon and Rhoda were causing quite a stir.

The class began, and throughout the session Rhoda peppered the instructors with questions. When they broke for lunch, rather than stay in the truck throughout the lunch break, she mingled and chatted with the people. One woman wanted to monopolize every free minute Rhoda had. She was a blogger for Maine Organic Apple Orchards and US Organic Apple Orchards, two different blogs, but each with impressive traffic. Landon liked Rhoda’s getting time with the blogger. The woman said she knew a
Wall Street Journal
writer
who was working on an article on the pros and cons of organic farming. She wondered if her colleague might be interested in interviewing Rhoda about the abandoned apple orchard. Connections like that could turn into good advertising for the orchard and canning business.

Landon couldn’t remember the names of half the people they met, but one of Rhoda’s conversations led to an invitation to visit the farm for a young woman named Nicole. She knew something about installing solar panels.

Other than that, Landon was bored. By the time the class ended, he was more than ready to go home. He nudged Rhoda to quickly say her good-byes, and before long they were in the truck and a good fifteen minutes down the road.

He braked for a stop sign.

Rhoda clamped her hands down on a stack of papers in her lap. She’d collected them throughout the day and had yet to stop looking through them.

She looked up. “The best method for making a large amount of mulch quickly is to find a way to shred the leaves. I’ve always shredded them by hand, but we need too much for the orchard come spring. Maybe you could rent a leaf shredder, emphasis on
you
. Because we Amish can’t. It would be just for this year. We can do all the shredding by hand next fall.”

Landon couldn’t remember when Rhoda had been as happy as she was right now. Her eyes all but glowed.

“We—the Kings, my brother, you, and me—can make this orchard everything we want it to be. And more. I know we can.”

“I have no doubt of that, Rhodes.”

“Did you enjoy the seminar?”

“Not like you did. You were a sponge.”

She giggled. “I’ve never been to a meeting that wasn’t church or community oriented. Every person in that room had one thing in common, and that was all it took for them to feel a connection.” She sighed. “Wow. Women were in jeans, men in suits, and me in this. Why, you could’ve worn swimming
trunks, and no one would have said a thing as long as you were interested in organic farming.”

Landon grinned. “Swimming trunks on a blustery day? In late October? I think they’d say something.”

She made a face at him. “I’m not so sure. They seemed completely focused on learning all they could about organic farming. Nothing else seemed to matter.”

“You’ve never seen that before?”

“Well, ya, sure. We Christians have the common denominator of Christ, and that’s precious to me, even when we disagree about things. But at the seminar I felt as if what happened inside that building was a different kind of unity—sharing an excitement over organic farming.” She shrugged. “I can’t explain the difference, but it was powerful and fascinating.”

“Yes, but that was one short day with one topic. I’m sure it’s not always that way. Like, if you were on the board or something, I bet there’d be plenty of sharp disagreements and different personalities not getting along.”

A small frown creased her brow. “Don’t ruin it for me, Landon. I saw leaders who didn’t care how other men and women were dressed. They didn’t care if the speaker was male or female. They didn’t even care if someone had a degree in agriculture or had dropped out of high school. The only thing that mattered was sharing information and encouraging one another. I’ve never experienced that.”

Landon pulled into the driveway. “You and I have worked together for several years, and I guess it just never crossed my mind how much you might enjoy a non-Amish event.”

She opened the truck door. “You coming in?”

He grinned. “If you’re inviting, I am.”

“Sure. It’s almost time for supper, and you can help me tell everyone about our day.”

The crisp air carried a delicious aroma, and he
was
hungry, but what
mattered more than food was seeing a certain young woman with big, dark eyes, blond hair, and sass times ten.

“Hallo?” Rhoda called as they entered.

Jacob came out of the kitchen, grinning. “You’re home.” He embraced her and whispered something. Landon couldn’t help but smile. They were good together, the kind of good he’d never have thought possible for Rhoda.

Jacob released her. “Landon, hi. We were just about to sit down for supper. You’ll join us?”

“I’d like that.” When he stepped into the dining room with its long, well-worn table and ten chairs, Leah paused from setting the table.

Her smile was the best thing he’d seen all day.

“Well, don’t just stand there.” She held out the flatware. “Wash your hands and help.”

“Leah,”—Samuel looked up from the ledgers and ordering forms and frowned—“where are your manners?”

When he spotted Landon, it was as though he realized Rhoda had returned. His gaze searched for her and found her. Landon could swear Samuel’s attention seemed glued to Rhoda.

“You.” Leah pointed at Samuel.

He blinked. “Ya?”

“Get your stuff off the table.”

Samuel closed his eyes for a moment before he looked at Leah, a smile in place. He slammed the ledger shut in mock exasperation, then gave his sister a big-eyed grin. “Happy?”

The clamor only grew as the women ladled food from the cauldron into bowls, handed out homemade bread, and settled everyone in their spots. During the silent prayer, Landon kept his eyes on Leah. She glanced up, grinned, and bowed her head again.

Did Leah think about God a lot? It was hard to be around this group of Amish and not take note of their daily respect for Him. Although Leah seemed a little removed on the subject, sort of like he was.

His family went to church regularly—at the start of every season of Lent, Christmas, and Easter. Yep, he’d been to church three times a year for twenty-two years. That had to count for something. When he was a teen, his mom made him spend two seasons of Lent giving up a few minutes of television each day for forty days to focus on the gospel of Luke.

When she wasn’t looking, he slid a comic book into his Bible and read that instead. But he still remembered being interested in certain passages—though he couldn’t recall them right now.

Most of what he read in the Bible confused him more than anything else, but his faith in God had grown over the last few years. He attributed that to watching Rhoda. Persecution came her way often, yet she never wavered in her belief in God and His goodness. Never stopped praying. But for all her faith, she was confused by what He wanted from her.

That
Landon identified with. What did an invisible God want from a bunch of frail, selfish people? The only thing Landon could figure was that He’d like for them to learn to love and help one another. Why else would they be living on such a difficult planet?

For the most part Landon thought it best to keep the relationship between him and God a distant one. Faith was less confusing that way.

As if on cue, every head lifted within a few seconds of one another—Rhoda, Samuel, Jacob, Leah, Steven, Phoebe, and their little ones. What were their names again? Oh, yeah, Isaac and Arie. How did each one, even the children, know when the prayer was over?

Jacob pulled the cloth napkin into his lap. “Was your day all you’d hoped for?”

Rhoda took a sip of water. “Definitely.” She beamed. “It was a great day. I didn’t learn a lot of new things, but they shared a few shortcuts for some of what I’m doing.”

Steven stirred the bowl of beef stew, cooling it. “You didn’t have any, uh, problems?”

“I didn’t.”

At her soft response, Landon looked at Rhoda.

Uncertainty flashed through her eyes as she looked back at him. “Did I?”

Landon shook his head. If they’d just let Rhoda relax about her gift rather than wanting her to keep it all bottled up, she would at least be able to pick up on thoughts and moods like the rest of the world. As it was, she remained cloudy about the most obvious things—until an intuition became so loud she couldn’t squelch it. By that time it about drove her mad.

“It couldn’t have gone any smoother.” Landon shook some pepper into his bowl. “We stirred curiosity. But it went as smooth as skating on ice.”

Jacob studied Landon. “Curiosity?”

He nodded. “This is a small community, and you’re all new here. You had to know that being the first Amish in Maine was going to pique people’s interest.”

Jacob looked at Samuel, and it seemed they had just realized what had been obvious to him from the start. For all their smarts, sometimes these men could be a bit dense about how much the Amish stuck out in society.