A Plain Love Song (14 page)

“Look, Dani Jo is a good kid who got the wrong idea.”

Because he’d led her on? “You did nothing to make her think you were interested?”

“I was nice to her. She’s a sweet girl, but she’s just a kid.”

A kid who was Adah’s age. “Like me?”

“What are you, eighteen?”

“Yes.”

“You may be the same age as Dani Jo, but you’re light-years older.” He pulled a stick of gum from his pocket and began to unwrap it, his gaze glued to the paper as if it required his complete concentration. “I don’t know what it is, exactly. I’ve tried to figure it out. You’re raised different. You seem older. Something about you is different from any girl I’ve ever met.”

He hadn’t met many Plain girls, then. She was no different from Molly or Phoebe or Ellie or Diana or Jolene. They all worked hard. The difference was none of her friends were standing in the living room of an Englisch family’s house, about to do the wrong thing with an Englisch man—as far as she knew. Did they have the same temptations? She’d always been afraid to ask. What if it was just her? “I need to finish in here. I’m almost done. My mudder is expecting me home to help with supper.”

He folded the stick of gum twice and stuck it in his mouth. Chewing, he studied her with an expression that reminded her of her brothers on venison stew night. “We’re alone. I can give you what you want.”

She took a step back and found herself wedged against the hutch. “I have work to—”

“I’m talking about the guitar.” He touched the neck with two fingers. “I can teach you to play.”

He could give her what she wanted. Something she had no right to want. Something she didn’t need, truth be told. If she didn’t stop chewing on her lip, she would have a hole in it.

“We’re not supposed to be alone while I’m working.” The protest must’ve sounded as feeble to him as it did to her. He picked up the guitar and held it out. It was a beautiful instrument. She swallowed and dropped the dust cloth on the table. “I can’t.”

“You know you want to try it. Just for a few minutes.”

She did want to, in the worst way. She swallowed hard against the lump in her throat. This was what rumspringa was about. Trying things
out and making a decision. She closed her eyes and opened them. Jackson still stood there, guitar in hand, Captain lolling at his feet. “Just for a minute. I have work to do.”

“Sure, sure.” Jackson nodded toward a chair. “Have a seat.”

He laid the guitar in her lap, leaned the crutch against the floor, and pulled a chair up close, the instrument the only thing between them. “Relax. Hold it like you would a baby, firm, but gentle.” He patted the body of the guitar as a father would the head of a child. “Don’t hold it with your hands; support it with your body.”

It felt awkward in her hands. “Like this?”

“Try crossing your legs so it sits a little higher. Good.” He grinned at her. She couldn’t help herself. She grinned back. His smile widened. “This is fun, right? Okay, now, left hand on the neck, thumb under it.” He pushed her fingers into position toward the top of the neck. “Make your hand like a claw. You use the tips of your fingers. They should be in the middle of the frets.”

“I can’t reach. My hands aren’t big enough.” She wiggled her hand, trying to get it right. “Or the guitar is too big for me.”

“No, it’s fine. It’s fine. It just takes practice.”

Adah glanced from her fingers, stretched and awkward, to Jackson’s. “That’s easy for you to say. You have long fingers. Mine are short.”

“Lots of women play the guitar. Now look at your right hand. You’re holding the pick wrong.”

How many ways could there be to hold a little piece of plastic?

Jackson held out his hand. “Like you’re doing a karate chop.”

“A what?”

“Like this!” He demonstrated and then bent his index finger and held the pick between his finger and thumb. “Stay loose. Relax. Rest your other fingers on the guitar. You want to be able to pick up and down.”

Her head felt like it might explode. “I don’t know—”

“It’ll feel awkward at first, but you’ll adjust. Strum a couple of times to see how it sounds.”

Adah took a breath and strummed the way she’d seen musicians do. The notes rippled around her, sweet, melodic, the thrill of it a second
wave through her body. She closed her eyes, then opened them, not wanting to miss a second of this lesson.
I’m playing a guitar. I’m making music.

How could this be wrong?
God, how can this be wrong?

“Beautiful. Awesome.” Jackson pumped his fist and hooted. “Okay, now pluck each string, one at a time, starting at the bottom. Hear the notes? Bottom to top, high E, A, D, G, B, low E.”

“Jah, yes, I do.” She couldn’t help herself. She laughed. A light burst through the clouds, filling the air around her. A beautiful light. “I do.”

“You’re a natural.” Jackson leaned forward and touched her cheek in a soft, quick caress, his fingers warm and sure. “I knew you would be.”

Adah froze. She should return the guitar. She should clean. She clutched it harder. The pick fell to the floor. “I shouldn’t…we shouldn’t. I mean, this is wrong.”

“I’m only teaching you to play the guitar. That’s all.”

Adah knew it was more. His expression told her so. His touch shouted it. The welling up of emotion inside her said it was much more. Their gazes held.

“I shouldn’t have touched you. I’m sorry.” He tried to look contrite, but didn’t quite manage it. “It’s hard, because you’re…you probably don’t know how pretty you are. I’m betting you don’t have a clue, but I promise not to touch you again—not like that. Until you say it’s okay.”

She would never do that. “Okay.”

“Okay.” His somber gaze faded, replaced with that wide-open grin again. “Every good boy does fine.”

“E-G-B-D-F?”

“That’s right. You learned something in those books at the library. It’s the first step to reading music. E-G-B-D-F. Those are the basic musical pitches. Pitch is the highness or lowness of the note. The notes go on a staff. If they sit on the line, they are E-G-B-D-F. Every good boy does fine.” He laid a slim book on the table, open to a page with the title “How to Read Music.” “If they sit between the lines, it’s F-A-C-E. Face. Do you remember that? Face. This book will refresh your memory on the basics.”

She tore her gaze from the book, wondering how she’d ever remember all this. She wasn’t all that coordinated. And time flew by. She had houses to clean and vegetables to can and socks to darn and laundry to do and pies to bake.

And baptism classes to take.

“What about the strings? Which note is which?”

“Start here.” He stood and limped behind her. His long fingers curled around hers, showing them where to go. “This finger on this fret. This finger here. Now pluck the bottom string.”

Forcing herself to lean away from his warm breath smelling of Doublemint gum, Adah tried to concentrate. She plucked.

“That’s an E.”

“That’s an E! I played a note. A note.” She couldn’t help herself. She laughed, her face inches from his. The pleasure in his eyes told her he enjoyed the moment almost as much as she did. “I played a note. Thank you for this.”

“It’s a start.” His hand hovered near her shoulder and then withdrew. “You’re a natural, Amish girl.”

She blew out air, so acutely aware of his presence that she felt his blood pulse through her veins. She swallowed hard and shifted away some more, increasing the distance between them. Still she felt his physical presence warming her skin. She held out the pick. “I have to get back to work.”

“I know. I know.” He offered his palm and she dropped the pick there without touching him. “I don’t want you to get in trouble.”

“We can’t do this.”

“We just did. I’ve been thinking a lot about this. It’s not a crime to love music or want to play an instrument.” His wheedling tone reminded Adah of when her little sisters wanted cookies only minutes before supper. This wasn’t about spoiling her supper. This was about the way she would live the rest of her life. And where. And with whom. Jackson leaned forward, his expression intent. “In the Bible they play music and dance and leap for joy, praising God.”

Confusion whirled in Adah. She didn’t know that much about the
Holy Bible. She’d listened to Luke and Silas’s sermons. She attended prayer service faithfully, but she left the theology to her elders. Luke said musical instruments weren’t allowed because playing them drew attention to a person. It made a person seem big on himself. Or herself. It took attention away from God. That’s what Daed said too.

She could still try out things. Rumspringa allowed her to do that. She still had time to decide. Her question at this moment left all the other questions of faith in the dust: How could something that gave her so much joy be wrong? She glanced up to see Jackson watching her, waiting for her, waiting for an answer.

“We have rules. One of them is no musical instruments. The adults in the church met and they voted and they kept that rule because they believe it’s the best way to make sure we don’t get…too big for our britches. It’s about God, not about us. We have rules. I don’t know how else to explain it.”

“That’s an understatement. You got more rules than I can shake a stick at.” He picked up his ball cap and slapped it down on his head. “Sometimes rules are made to be broken. Because they’re wrong.”

Adah smoothed her hand over the slick, burnished wood of the guitar. “If a rule turns out to be wrong, isn’t it better to change the rule than to break it? In our community, the members of our district meet once a year and vote on changes to the Ordnung, our set of rules. The rest of the year we have to follow them. We have rules to bring us closer to God and farther away from worldly things that will come between us and Him.”

“I can understand that, I think.” Jackson cocked his head, his eyebrows drawn, mouth pursed as if thinking so hard hurt his head. “But music isn’t one of those things. Music brings us closer to Him. At least it does me.”

“Are you close to God?”

“Go to church every Sunday with my family.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“I know.” He slid the ball cap around so the bill rested in the front. “I don’t feel close to God at church. It’s a bunch of mumbo-jumbo most of the time. A bunch of hot air. I feel close to God when I’m on my horse on the back forty with the wind blowing and the sun shining and
Captain is trotting along after me, his old snout grinning. That life is good because God is good.”

Adah knew that feeling. She had it when she walked by the pond and saw fish jumping and a turtle sunning itself on a rock and a blue jay jabbering at her from a spruce, telling her to stay away from its nest on a low-hanging branch. But she also felt it when she sat on the bench between Mudder and Laura, little Jonathan on her lap, and sang those slow, low, long notes of a hymn from the
Ausbund
. Their kind of music. Worship music. Their voices rising in praise to the One who made all things possible. The One who planned out their lives for them and took them home on His time. Not theirs.

Shaken by the thought, she stood and thrust the beautiful instrument at him. “I need to clean.”

“Take the book with you so you can study the chords. I know you don’t have a guitar to practice on, but at least you can study the pictures.” He laid the guitar on the table and pulled something from his jean pocket. “And this.”

He held out an iPod. Adah stared at it, thinking of the one that had ended up crushed under the sole of her father’s boot. “I can’t.”

“It’s a gift.” His face reddened. “I made you a playlist. Songs that you can think about and use as examples when you’re trying to write your own songs. Rhythm, rhyme, how to make the lyrics join with the melody. They’re the classics—they don’t play them on the radio anymore. Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette, June Carter Cash, Tanya Tucker, Reba McIntyre. Women with real country voices, not the pop crud you hear now.”

The slim device lay in the palm of his hands. He draped ear buds over it. “Consider me your teacher and this part of the lesson, if it makes you feel better. Not a gift, a loan of equipment for the lessons.”

“You’re my teacher?”

“Your music teacher.”

She couldn’t pull herself from his gaze, so intense, boring into her. “Okay.” The word came out a whisper. She cleared her throat and let him lay the iPod on the palm of her hand. He wrapped her fingers around it and let his own hand drop. “Teacher.”

Nothing more.

The ferocity of emotion crackling in the air between them caused her breath to catch in her throat.

“Student.” He heaved a sigh. “Study hard. When can we get together for your next lesson?”

“What?”

“Lessons. You need lessons. The sooner you get started, the sooner we can move on to writing songs together.”

“I can’t—”

“How ’bout next Wednesday when you come to clean? They’re switching out the cast for a brace on Monday, God willing. The doc says I can start driving again. If you finish a little early, I’ll meet you out by the fishing pond. You’ll still be home on time.”

“You’ve given this a lot of thought.” Why? She didn’t dare ask why Jackson was so intent on getting her to do this. The possibilities scared her. “I don’t know.”