The Saddle Maker's Son Part 13

SEVENTEEN.

School's out. School's out. The shout rang in Susan's ears even though it had long faded away. After the graduation ceremony for Sally Glick and Rachel Hostetler, the kinner had burst from the schoolhouse door like foals set free to frolic in a pasture after a long winter cooped up in a barn. Similarities did exist.

Susan raised her face to the warmth of a late-April breeze as she plopped down in a rickety folding chair that creaked under her weight. One of the many things Plain kinner had over their Englisch kinner, school was out at the end of April instead of late May or early June. And they only went to school until the eighth grade. Plenty of Englisch kinner would like that.

Diego's ftbol game was about to get under way. The older girls were setting out the food on the picnic tables built by the men years ago when the school was constructed. Mordecai's dog Butch-or was he Deborah's dog now?-curled up under one table asleep. Wrens and sparrows wrestled, their chatter fierce, over bread crumbs that fell to the ground as sandwiches were prepared. It was a perfect day.

Yet a strange, bittersweet restlessness overcame her. The summer stretched endlessly ahead, another school year behind. Another year as teacher. Another year without her own kinner and mann. Most days, she felt content. This one day out of the year she couldn't find a yardstick that measured her emotions.

She tried to remember what it was like to run instead of walk, to hop and skip instead of trudge. Her scholars were in such a hurry to escape, to live other lives, lives they thought would be more fun and more interesting than what came from books. Truth be told they would spend their lives working. That's what Plain folks did. She had no quarrel with that.

Still, she loved school. What was not to love? Reading, writing, arithmetic, singing, praying, playing together. Those were good days. Ones she had the opportunity to relive every year. Teaching didn't feel like work. It felt like joy.

"Teacher, my finger hurts."

Startled from her reverie, Susan swiveled to find Liam trotting toward her. He held out his small, dirty hand. "I fell."

Indeed he had. Dirt smudged his cheek and a new rip allowed his knee to show through one pant leg. The pants were too short, revealing bony ankles. Martha had some sewing to do, it seemed. Maybe Susan could help with that. "Come here, let me see that." She patted her lap and the boy climbed on, smelling of little-boy sweat and peanut b.u.t.ter cookie. "How did you manage this?"

"I wanted a cookie from the table and Ida shooed me away." His tone was mournful. "She said I had to eat a sandwich first. I'd rather have a cookie. Two cookies or maybe three."

"What does that have to do with your finger?"

"I ran away." He sniffed. "I was eating the cookie and running and I fell."

"That's what happens when you steal cookies."

"I didn't steal it. I borrowed it."

She brushed off the finger, which looked red but not much worse for wear, and kissed it. "There, all better. Were you planning to give the cookie back?"

"Nee, it's in my tummy." Grinning, he patted his flat belly. "It has to stay there now."

"Then I guess that makes you a cookie thief."

"And you know what they do with cookie thieves." Levi towered over them, his face hidden by the dark shadow of his hat's brim. "They make them eat lima beans and cabbage for dinner three nights-nee, four nights-in a row."

"Nee!" Liam slid from Susan's lap. "Danki, Teacher."

He ducked away from Levi's playful swipe and raced away, his giggle trailing behind him.

"He's a sweet little boy." Susan forced herself to sit still, despite the urge to smooth her kapp and brush the remnants of little boy from her ap.r.o.n. "And smart as a whip. He did well the short time I had him in cla.s.s."

To her surprise, Levi eased into the lawn chair to her right. It creaked under his weight, the crisscrosses of faded nylon material sagging under him. "He takes after his mother." His gaze remained on the makeshift soccer field where the majority of his kinner were racing about, their laughter shrill as they chased after the ball. "He has her face and her eyes. He even sounds like her when he talks. I don't know how that's possible."

"I suppose it's from the older children who had more time with her."

"Any time at all. She died giving birth to Liam."

"I'd heard that."

His gaze shifted to her for the first time. "You're good with kinner."

"A teacher has to be."

"Nee, I didn't mean in that way." He plucked at strings hanging from the chair's arm. "You were . . . motherly."

"Teachers can be motherly."

"I'm trying to say something nice."

And she was being overly p.r.i.c.kly about her single status. "I know."

They were silent for a few minutes. Susan sought another less th.o.r.n.y topic. "How are things at your new shop?"

"We have our first customer. An Englischer who wants a custom saddle and her horse trained."

"Gut."

"It is gut."

This man was not one for small talk, that was apparent. Neither was she. Life was too short for small talk. Mordecai and Abigail knew that. They'd lost their first loves. Susan had let time pa.s.s. Too much time. She did want her own kinner. She was motherly, and she wanted someone to see that. Life was short and the mother of Levi's kinner no longer mothered them. "You've done right by your kinner. It's obvious to see."

"I'm blessed. Tobias and Martha, they've been like second parents since the beginning." His head bent so she could only see the top of his worn straw hat. He seemed to study a scar that ran in a red ridge along his thumb. No doubt the result of an occupational hazard of a saddle maker who worked with awls and skiving knives and sharp tools of the trade. "David, too, but not like them. I spent my time in the shop, working, making a living for them. Which needed to be done. And they did what had to be done at home."

"Kinner adapt. They manage to blossom even when it's cold and dark." Over the years many children had worn their hearts on their sleeves in her cla.s.sroom yet managed to pull practical jokes, steal cookies, and smile even when tears brightened their eyes. "It's one of the things I most cherish about them."

"Martha, my oldest girl, has blossomed." He looked up and cleared his throat. "She's been mother to the younger ones for so many years, I think she's forgotten that they're not hers."

"I doubt that. She'll make a good fraa one day."

"That's the thing." He shifted in his chair. "She turned sixteen last week."

"Time for her to spread her wings a bit."

"It would seem she doesn't know how."

Most fathers wanted to keep their daughters from deviating from the path too much during rumspringa. Levi seemed anxious to push his daughter out of the fold. "The singing is at Mordecai's this week. She should go."

"I mentioned it."

"Mentioned it or told her to go?"

"I wouldn't interfere."

Plain parents were expected to give their kinner leeway. That didn't mean they had to like it. At least Susan suspected as much. Neither Mordecai nor Abigail had uttered a word to her, even after Leila left the fold with Jesse. "She said no?"

"She said she had too much to do to mess with such foolishness." His gaze dropped to his hand again. "Especially now that we have two more kinner in the mix. She didn't even come to the picnic today-said she had to finish making the boys' pants. If they go around much longer in what they've got, they'll be shorts."

It would be funny if it weren't sad. "I'm sure it's hard."

"For a man, it's especially hard. She's my first girl. I don't want her to lose her way because of life's circ.u.mstances."

His life circ.u.mstances. He lost his fraa. Martha had become a subst.i.tute mudder to her little brothers and sisters. Susan had experience with that life story. Now Martha stood to lose her chance at the life to which most Plain women aspired. Susan also knew about this.

Levi was asking her for something. In a very roundabout way. Susan's heart gave an odd little ker-plunk. Levi wanted her help with his firstborn daughter. That said something about what he thought of her. At least it seemed that way. "I can talk to her at the next frolic."

He sat forward in his chair, his hands gripping his knees. "If it doesn't put you out."

"How would it put me out?" She waved her hand toward the building. "I'm on vacation for the summer."

Hardly. She would cook and clean and can and garden with the rest of the women, but Levi would know that. He leaned back again. "Much appreciated." He ducked his head but not before Susan caught his relieved smile. "Teacher."

Said in his gruff northern accent, the word took on a sheen much like it did when her scholars employed it. She liked the sound of it and the sound of his voice.

Another ker-plunk and her heart settled into a rhythm she hadn't felt in a very long time.

EIGHTEEN.

"Canta y no llores . . ."

The sound of Lupe's high, sweet voice singing somewhere beyond the school building made Rebekah smile. A child should be carefree and not worrying about where she would lay her head at night or if she would be sent home to a country full of bloodshed.

Rebekah paused at the corner of the school building and looked back, surveying the remnants of the end-of-school-year picnic. Caleb and his friends were burning the last of the hot dogs on sticks over a fire in a rusted barrel. Little Diego had instigated a game of soccer-which he insisted on calling ftbol. In his black pants and blue shirt, feet bare, he looked just like one of the other kinner. Until he opened his mouth and a string of Spanish came out so fast there was no figuring out what he jabbered about. The younger kids screamed and laughed as they chased a dirty, faded basketball up and down the makeshift field, two trash cans at each end serving as goals.

They could do without her. She rounded the corner and trudged toward the sound of Lupe's voice. She wouldn't miss being cooped up in the school now that summer bore down on them full tilt. They would have plenty of gardening, canning, and baking to do. They would sell goods in town a few days a week and showcase the rest in the Combination Store, famous for fresh-baked goods on Fridays. Surely Mudder would let her go into town with the others.

Or not.

She raised a hand to her forehead and shielded her eyes from the sun. Lupe sat cross-legged in the gra.s.s, a patch of black-eyed Susans and dandelions all around her. She looked so different than she had that first day when she'd been dirty, hungry, and dressed in ragged, filthy clothes. Her long, dark hair had a bright sheen and her cheeks were pink from the sun. The blouse with the strawberries on the collar made her look like any other twelve-year-old girl. Not Plain, but presentable. And healthy. That hollow, hungry look had disappeared after a few good homegrown, homemade meals.

Her head bent, Lupe stared intently at the flowers she'd picked with their stems still long. She braided the stems, making a belt or a headband of flowers.

Tears trickled down her cheeks.

Rebekah stopped. Should she interrupt a private moment? A crying child couldn't be ignored. "Lupe? Ests bien?"

Lupe's lessons each day at the school had resulted in a fair vocabulary for the Plain kinner of Bee County as well. It would hold them in good stead when they made their treks to Progreso in the future. The kinner took turns teaching Lupe and Diego simple English words. German was too much for them. Both sides soaked up the new words with greater glee than others might think they warranted. That, Rebekah would miss. Maybe Lupe would still give lessons while they hoed and weeded the garden or canned the tomatoes at the frolics that would soon come. "Lupe?"

The girl started and dropped her creation. "I am good."

"That was a pretty song you were singing. Me gusta."

Lupe shrugged and picked up her flowers, her face hidden behind a wall of dark, straight hair.

"Why are you sad?" Rebekah plopped onto the ground next to her, then crossed her legs under the long folds of her dress. "You can tell me. You won't hurt my feelings if it's because you don't like it here. I would be homesick too."

"No, no." Lupe raised her head and flung her hair over her shoulder. "I like. I cry because I like."

"Why does it make you cry?"

"They won't let me stay."

"Who won't?"

"La migra."

Rebekah shook her head. "I don't understand."

Lupe clasped her hands together and pointed her index fingers as if she pointed a gun. "Bang-bang, like polica, on frontera."

Police. Border. Rebekah sighed. "We don't know yet. Jeremiah has been talking to other bishops about it. To wise men. They'll know what to do. Don't worry."

"I worry."

"Why? You're safe here. We'll take care of you. We'll get you to your father in San Antonio." She prayed she wasn't making promises Jeremiah, Mordecai, and Will wouldn't allow her to keep. "Jeremiah is fair and he's kind. So is Mordecai."

Will, too, when he forgot the past and embraced his new life with his fraa.

More tears rolled down Lupe's face. "How? And why he no write no more? Why he leave and never send money for us like he told us? What if la migra find us first? Or the bad men who brought us over the river?"

Hombres malos. Bad men. So much pent-up worry in such a little girl. Lupe's small, slim fingers covered her eyes. Her sobs were so mournful Rebekah had to swallow a lump in her own throat. She scooted closer and put her arm around the girl's shaking body. Lupe leaned against her chest and gave another shuddering sob. "You haven't mentioned your mother. Where is she? Did she send you to be with your daddy?"

"Mama is dead. Long time. Mi padre came to los Estados Unidos when I was young. He sent money. Then money stop. We only have abuela. She send us here." Lupe tugged something from her pocket and held it out. Two crumpled, faded photos. "She think it better for us. She think we find Papi."

Abuela. Grandma.

Rebekah took the photo and studied it. A short, buxom woman with gray hair wrapped in a braid around her head stared at the camera, her full lips turned up in a faint smile. She wore a yellow dress that made her look like a sunflower opening to the sky. One hand rested on a much younger Lupe wearing a long braid down her back, the other on Diego, who sat on her lap, wearing only a diaper and a big smile. She looked proud yet somehow sad. Rebekah turned it over. The photo was five years old. Someone had written in a spidery script next to the date: Ana, Guadalupe y Diego. "Guadalupe?"

Lupe touched her chest at the base of her throat with two slender fingers. "Me. Guadalupe. Lupe."

Rebekah smoothed the second photo. A young man with enormous solemn eyes, dark hair that curled around his ears, and a beard. Something in his eyes reminded her of Diego. He leaned against the side of a building, one foot propped against the wall, arms crossed against his skinny chest. He was too young to be a daddy. But then, the photo was yellowed with age. "Your daddy?"

"S."