A Hand to Hold (8 page)

Gabriel had stopped by her house after the board meeting last night and told her the plan they had devised to get the schoolhouse up and running. Since most of that plan depended on Zachariah Bender to come through, she knew she had to do her part to get things back in order. From what she knew about Zachariah, he couldn’t be relied on to do anything.

She guided the buggy to the hitching post on the west side of the schoolhouse. Once she got out and secured Casey in a shady spot, she reached inside the backseat of the buggy and pulled out a large pail filled with cleaning supplies and old rags. Construction would begin on Saturday, so she wanted to clean up some of the mess inside before then. Armed with her equipment, she went inside the schoolhouse, feeling a bit better already. She couldn’t sit at home marking time, waiting for things to get done.

The hole faced the driveway, so she didn’t bother going around to the front door. She walked to the opening and peered inside. The frustration she had fought so hard to keep at bay started to return. Now that the truck was gone, she could see the extent of the damage. Boards dangled overhead. The wood-planked floor, which hadn’t been fancy in the first place, was ripped up in places. Half of the student desks were destroyed. The bookshelf against the wall where she kept her textbooks, teacher’s guides, and educational magazines lay facedown on the floor. Her shoulders drooped. It would take forever to clean this up.

She took a deep breath, determined not to be discouraged. She’d accomplish nothing by gawking at the disaster. She eyed the floor and decided it was stable. As she made her way through the debris to the front of the room, she noticed how untouched her desk looked, except for the dust that had settled on it. Reaching inside her bucket of supplies, she retrieved her polished apple and put it on her desk. She smiled, feeling a bit hopeful after all.

“What are you doing here?”

She turned around at the sound of the male voice, her brows lifting as she saw Zachariah standing in the middle of the hole, his hands on his narrow hips, a tool belt slung over his shoulder. He’d shown up, and early at that. “I’m here to work.”

He stepped through the opening and navigated his way over to her. His face was ruddy from the morning heat. “I appreciate the thought, but I can handle this. It’s my mess to tackle.” He met her gaze. “You don’t have to stay.”

She regarded him for a moment. He had pushed the brim of his straw hat back so that she could see a bruise almost identical to her own. He had the traditional Amish haircut, his reddish brown hair curled over his ears and cut blunt in the back. Pale brown freckles covered his face, making him look boyish, in a handsome and unconventional way, but she didn’t find him appealing. The only thing that appealed to her was getting the schoolhouse in working order. “There’s lots of work to be done, Zachariah. And four hands are better than two. We should stop the idle chitchat and get busy.”

His lips curved into a crooked grin. “Idle chitchat, huh? Now there’s a phrase you don’t hear very often.”

She frowned. “Are you making fun of me?”

His grin faded. “
Nee
, not at all. Just making a comment.”

“I think we should do less conversing and more working, don’t you?”

He gave her a small salute, then turned and walked away.

Now she didn’t know what to think. He probably was making fun of her. He wouldn’t be the first boy to do that. She’d been teased plenty in school for being a know-it-all and a teacher’s pet. But the worst had been when she was accused several times of being a snob, of using big words to impress adults. She couldn’t help that she had a strong vocabulary. If she knew a variety of words, why not use them? Her aptitude for learning had separated her from her classmates at times. But whenever she felt ostracized, she just dug deeper into her studies. That had satisfied her, for the most part.

Yet there had been times, especially at recess, when she sat off to the side of the playground, pretending to be involved in the book she held in her hand. No one knew how she’d watched the other students running around, playing games, and generally having fun with each other, and wished she could join in. Every once in a while she would see a couple of girls standing on the fringes, talking and laughing, and she’d try to be a part of their conversation. But most of the time they wanted to talk about boys, a topic she had no interest in. If she remembered correctly, more than a few of them had crushes on Zachariah.

Her mind snapped back to the present. She noticed Zachariah had already started to work and now she was the one lollygagging around. She started moving the undamaged student desks to the side. They were nicked and scuffed from years of use, but still serviceable. They were also easy to move, and within a short time, ten of them were against the wall, underneath a double-paned window across the room from the white, wooden door at the front. Once she had cleared a decent amount of space, she took the broom from the small closet by the blackboard and started sweeping.

Zachariah was working at the opposite end of the schoolhouse. He picked large pieces of wood and boards off the floor and tossed them into a pile outside the building. Ruth occasionally glanced up from her sweeping, noticing that he worked quickly and efficiently, often lifting and throwing heavy looking pieces of debris as if they weighed next to nothing.

“Hey, Ruth.”

Her head jerked up and she stilled the broom. Dust flew up her nose, making her cough. “What?” She waved the dust cloud away with her hand.

“Glad to see your forehead is looking better.”

She blinked, surprised that he would bring it up so spontaneously. She peered at him from across the room. “Yours looks better too.”

“Skin’s starting to turn purple, so I guess that means it’s healing.” He picked up another large chunk of the wall and flung it outside. “I know I told you this before, but I’m sorry. I never meant for this to happen.”

She swung the broom back and forth as she moved closer to him. Dust puffed up in the air again. “It’s all right.” But it wasn’t all right, and they both knew it.

“I promise this will be fixed up soon.”

“I hope so.”

He tossed another chunk of wood and looked at her. “You don’t sound convinced.”

She didn’t reply, since he was right. Knowing that she’d had no input in the situation made it worse. “Do you have any idea when you’ll be finished with the repairs?”

He shrugged. “Maybe a week. Or two or three. Hard to tell.”

She moved her broom faster, turning her back on him.

After a lengthy pause, he resumed working.

A few minutes later she spotted him over her shoulder and saw that he had picked up the pace, gathering up the rubble and throwing it out of the schoolhouse with more force than before, his jawline stretched taut.

They kept to their separate sides of the schoolhouse, working for the next couple of hours but not speaking to each other. When it was lunchtime, Ruth was surprised to see how much they had accomplished. Almost all the big chunks of debris had been removed, piled up just outside the hole. The next task would be to collect and remove all the smaller pieces.

Sweat streaked the back of Zachariah’s light blue shirt. He removed his hat and swiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “It’s too
hees
in here. I’m breaking for lunch.”

A bead of perspiration dripped down the side of Ruth’s cheek. They had both worked hard this morning, and she had to agree it was time for a break. Since she’d left her lunch in the buggy, she followed him through the hole and outside. She went to the water pump first, which was situated a few yards behind the schoolhouse next to a small storage shed, and pumped the handle to rinse off her dusty hands.

As she walked toward her buggy, she passed by Zachariah leading his horse to the pump. When she reached her own horse, she turned and saw that Zachariah had moved the large silver tub from beside the shed and placed it under the pump where his horse was drinking water from it. He now stood beside his horse, petting its chestnut flanks and waving away pesky horseflies as he spoke, his voice so low she couldn’t make out the words. Ruth moved to her horse’s head and petted Casey’s nose as she watched Zachariah lead his horse back to the hitching post, take a feed bag out of his buggy, and attach it to the horse’s muzzle.

“Want me to water your horse?” Zachariah leaned against his buggy, his arms folded across his stomach.

“I can do it.”

“I’m sure you can. I’m just offering to do it for you.”

Ruth didn’t say anything for a moment. She struggled to reconcile the polite man in front of her with the irritating pest she remembered from school. His green eyes shined as he looked at her, the trace of a smile on his lips. Now she understood why the girls in school had found him attractive. But he definitely wasn’t her type.

“I’d rather take care of Casey myself.” Once she untied the gelding, she led him past Zachariah’s buggy to the pump and gave him a long drink, then brought him back to the hitching post and gave him his feed bag.

“Care to join me?”

Ruth peered around Casey’s head and saw Zachariah sitting in the shade of the oak tree. He brought a sandwich to his mouth and took a bite. Giving her a closed-mouth grin, he patted the empty spot next to him.

For a moment his offer seemed tempting. Not because she wanted to sit next to him, but because it felt good to be out of the schoolhouse for a while. But she couldn’t lounge outside, not when she should be working at her desk. “I have to put together an order for more school supplies. Many of them were ruined in the accident.”

His grin faded, taking the sparkle that had been in his eyes with it. Shrugging, he said, “Suit yourself.”

She turned and went back inside the schoolhouse. Her eyes took a few minutes to adjust after being in the bright sunlight. She sat down and set her lunch on her desk. Bowing her head, she prayed in silence before pulling a banana out of her lunch bag and peeling it open. She took a bite out of it, then slipped on her reading glasses and thumbed through a school supply catalog, trying to ignore the mess around her.

Zach took another bite of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich he’d thrown together and tossed in his lunch cooler that morning. He’d gotten up extra early, remembering the talk with his mother and how he promised he’d change. He meant it too. Managing to be at the schoolhouse a little past dawn wouldn’t change his life, but it was a step in the right direction, one of many he hoped to make.

He propped his forearm on his bent knee, then pressed his back against the trunk of the tree. He took another bite of sandwich and thought about Ruth. On impulse he’d invited her to sit next to him, and as soon as he had, he regretted it, knowing she would refuse. He hadn’t seen her smile once, although he had to admit there wasn’t much to smile about right now. Still, it wouldn’t hurt for her to relax a bit. Even as she swept, she’d had a white-knuckle grip on the broom. And he was puzzled by her reaction to him offering to water her horse. It was like she thought he doubted she could do it, and that wasn’t the case at all. Then earlier she’d asked if he was making fun of her. His mind wandered back to when they were in school. Had she always been this defensive? He didn’t know; his memories of school were pretty fuzzy. Probably because he’d spent as little time there as possible— physically or mentally. Well, he wasn’t about to extend any more offers to her. He wouldn’t set himself up for failure.

Zach finished the last of his sandwich and headed for the water pump again. The midday sun enveloped him in an oppressive, humid cocoon. August and still broiling hot. He’d be glad when October rolled around and cooled things off for a long while.

When he reached the pump, he took off his hat and dropped it on the ground, then started pressing up and down on the handle. Water gushed out and he stuck his head underneath the flow, wetting his neck and his hair, a thin stream of cold water trailing down his back. His shirt and pants were getting wet, but he didn’t care, it felt so good. Cooled off, he shut off the pump and threw his head back, shaking the excess water out of his hair.

“Oh!”

He spun around and saw Ruth standing behind him, her hands up as if she were warding off something dangerous. Drops of water covered her face and the front of her dress.

“Whoops.”

Chapter 6

R
uth stood beside Zachariah, her mouth wide-open and her face wet with water. When she had come out to the pump to get a drink of water, she had seen him dip his head underneath the flow, but she hadn’t expected him to shake his long, thick hair out like a dog. When she recovered from the shock of the unexpected shower, she closed her mouth and removed her water-spattered glasses.

“Sorry.” Zachariah slicked back his wet hair with his hand. “Didn’t see you back there.”

“Obviously.” She tried to dry the lenses of her glasses on her dress, but the polyester blend wasn’t absorbing the moisture; it just smeared it around.

“Here.” He held out his hand.

“What?”

“Let me have your glasses.”