A Plain Love Song (3 page)

“You’ve not seen a horse react that way before?” She had, but Daed had never been hurt breaking a horse. He said it was his voice. Horses trusted him. “She doesn’t know you. You just got here.”

“I spent two days getting her used to the blanket. She walked all over it yesterday.” Jackson gasped, a vein pulsing in his temple. “Do we really have to argue about this now? Help me up.”

He held out his hand. She hesitated for a tiny second. His dark blue eyes sparkled and widened. “I don’t have cooties. I promise.”

“I know. I know.” She took his hand. His fingers were long, his skin hard and callused. She’d never touched a man other than her family and Matthew. “I just…You need to go to the hospital.”

“Nope. Help me up.”

He weighed a good thirty pounds more than she did, but Adah let him lean into her as he struggled to his feet. His left leg buckled. He gasped as they nearly went down together. Inhaling his scent of sweat, cigarette smoke, and aftershave that reminded her of the woods, she braced her legs and stiffened her back. His arm went around her neck. His warm, ragged breath touched her cheek as he fought to stand up right. Together, they shambled toward the gate.

Adah glanced back. The horse pranced and snorted, its hooves digging the now torn blanket into the ground. “Come on, hurry.” She tightened her grip around Jackson’s waist and urged him toward the gate. “We’re almost there.”

A groan escaped his gritted teeth.

“Is it your shoulder or your leg?”

“Both.”

She shoved the gate open just enough to let them squeeze through. Once on the other side, Jackson slid to the ground while she fastened the latch, turned, and sagged against it.

“Haw, get, yahaw?” Jackson chuckled and then coughed. “An angry filly is throwing a fit and you come storming in and flap your apron at her?”

“You’re welcome.”

“You’re crazy, girl. I would’ve gotten myself out of there.”

“On your hands and knees?” Adah should’ve left him on his own. “And then that horse would’ve kicked you two or three more times in the backside for good measure.”

Jackson leaned over and spat blood on the ground.

“Maybe you’re right.” His face turned white under the beginnings of a summer tan. Teeth gritted, he inhaled and then exhaled. His dirty, blood-spattered hand went to his head. “Lost my hat. I don’t suppose you want to go back in there and get it for me.”

Adah tossed a quick glance at the corral. The hat was as flat as her chicken fried steak. No loss. It appeared old and dirty and sweaty. Besides, Jackson looked better without it. His thick black curls were damp with sweat and dust, but he had a nice head of hair. She gave herself a mental shake. No thinking about a strange man’s hair. What had gotten into her? No wonder the
Ordnung
called for hats for all men and prayer
kapps
for women. “Forget it. It’s a goner.”

“It’s not like I don’t have half a dozen more in the house.” Jackson shifted and stuck a hand on the fence as if to pull himself up. He didn’t make much progress. “Help me get up. I need to get into the house.”

“You need to go to the hospital. You’re coughing up blood.”

“Ain’t the first time I’ve been kicked by a horse and won’t be the last, I reckon.” He coughed and spat more blood. “I bit my tongue, that’s all. A cold soda pop, a cigarette, and a couple of aspirin and I’m good.”

He had a strange way of doctoring himself. “Cigarettes will kill you if the horse doesn’t. Is your father here?”

“He’s out baling hay. I left my cell phone on the porch with my coffee cup. I need it and a cigarette bad.”

“Stay. I’ll get the phone for you.” The cigarettes he could get under his own steam.

“Stay? What do I look like, a dog?”

Jackson Hart looked like he’d been beaten to a pulp by a guy twice his size and he was still full of vinegar, as Daed would say. “Just hush. I’ll be back.” Marveling at how quickly she’d learned to talk back to this Englisch man with his silver buckle and torn blue jeans, she turned and ran.

Better to put some distance between her and that silver buckle.

Chapter 3

T
ired to the bone, Adah trudged from the barn to her house, the calico momma cat who lived there following her, surely hoping for scraps. Not tonight. Not even the thought of her mudder’s fried chicken could make Adah lift her feet any faster. It had been a long day and she was late. Likely there wasn’t much of that chicken left. It couldn’t be helped. By the time Mr. Hart came in from the field and carted Jackson off to the New Hope medical center emergency room, Adah had been far behind in her work cleaning the house. She’d scrubbed it from top to bottom, concentrating on the kitchen first, where it looked as if Mrs. Hart had been making bread, such was the flour flung in all directions and the dough dried and caked on the counter. Floors had to be mopped, toilets cleaned, and furniture dusted. No one had returned by the time she finished, so she locked the front door as she’d been instructed in the past, pocketed the key that had been entrusted to her on her very first visit, and hurried home.

Momma cat meowed. Adah stooped to scratch her behind the ears. The cat rubbed up against her shoes and meowed again, a mournful yowl. “You must’ve had a bad day too.” Adah patted her back. The cat’s purr revved. “You should be taking care of your babies. You’d better run home to them.”

“Where have you been?”

Adah jumped, straightened, and slapped her hand to her chest.
Momma cat bolted across the yard. Adah had been so deep in thought, she hadn’t even noticed Daed sitting in a folding lawn chair on the front porch. It said nothing good if he’d decided to wait out front for her return. She sucked in a breath and steadied herself. “At the Harts’. There was an accident—”

“We’ll get to that in a minute.” He rose and stomped over to the steps, a sheaf of papers clutched in one hand. Adah’s heart contracted in a painful one-two punch. Her throat closed. She wiped her damp palms on her apron. Daed knew. He knew. He shook the papers at her. “What are these?”

“What are what?” She stalled for time as she climbed the steps. She wanted to whirl and flee the way Momma cat had. Flee where? She couldn’t hide in the barn forever. Her whole world existed right here on this farm, in this small community of Plain folks. “Where did you get those?”

“Your mudder found them in your room.”

In a box Adah kept under her bed. She had nothing that was hers alone. The thought pressed on her. Even though she didn’t have to share her room with her sisters, she still had no space to call her own. “It’s nothing, just scribblings. Little poems to pass the time.”

“Ben.” The screen door creaked and Mudder stuck her head through the opening. “Might be better if we talk inside.”

Mudder, with her soft voice and ready smile, had a way about her. A way of soothing Daed that fascinated Adah. As cantankerous as he might be sometimes, his rough edges smoothed whenever Irene Knepp walked into the room. Adah loved that about her mother.

“Fine.” Daed clomped through the door. “Get in here.”

Adah followed them both into the front room where Daed towered over her, his face stony and unreadable. They stood for a few seconds. No one spoke. Daed dropped the papers on the oak table wedged between two hickory rocking chairs. He crossed his arms over his broad chest and directed a frown at Mudder. “Tell her.”

“I was looking to see what old dresses you might have outgrown. Figured I could take them down for Melinda.” Mudder wiped her hands on a dishtowel, her thin fingers gripping it until the knuckles
were white. Adah knew how she hated being in the middle. It seemed she always landed there. “I found a few things.”

She nodded toward the table. Next to the papers lay the iPod. Adah closed her eyes. Her stomach rocked in waves of nausea. She smoothed her apron with sweaty palms. “I know—”

“I know you’ve chosen to dig your heels in and run around for over two years now.” Daed’s scowl deepened, his blue eyes full of angry flame. “I ain’t said much. Not my place. But this”—his big, callused hand swept an arch over the table—“this I won’t abide by. I don’t abide by having this junk in my house. You know better.”

“Daed—”

“And this stuff you call scribblings. Looks like songs to me. Songs about things you shouldn’t be talking about, even thinking about. I brought you up right.” He gathered steam as he went, his deep voice bordering on a bellow, stunning Adah into taking a half-step back. He never raised his voice. Never. “I’ve told your mudder more than once that you’ve taken this too far. Now you’ve proven me right.”

“We only want to know our
dochder
hasn’t lost her way.” Mudder inched toward Adah. Her voice remained soft, but if she didn’t stop wringing the towel it would be ripped into two pieces soon. “These words you’ve written here…they’re…worrisome.”

“They’re just poems. I’ve always written poems.” Adah tried to match Mudder’s tone. She swallowed against the knot in her throat, determined to keep her voice even. No tears. No fear. “You know how I like to put words on paper. That’s all it is. Poems.”

Daed snatched up the top paper and smoothed the wrinkles he’d inflicted earlier. “What are these notes, then? They look like chords. Music. That’s what it looks like to me. I’ve seen sheet music.” He fixed his stern gaze on her. “I’m not stupid, dochder. I was young once too.”

Hard to believe. Time had carved harsh lines around his mouth and eyes. White lines like scars from years of hard work in the sun. Silver and gray bolted in thick lines through his long beard. Lines, too, that bore witness to tragedy that went back before Adah’s time. She ducked her head. Here she was giving them more grief. “It’s just for…for fun, that’s all. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“You’ve heard Luke and Silas talk about the slippery slope? Writing
Englisch
songs about love and such nonsense…” Daed crumpled the papers and shook them in her face. The corner of one sheet caught her on the chin. She flinched and jerked back. He lowered his hand, something like sorrow enveloping his rock-hard features. “This is that slope. Right here. It’s time, girl. Time you put away foolishness. You should be studying for the baptism classes. The confession of faith. I don’t see you working on that.”

Adah swallowed, caught in his furious gaze. She’d never seen him so angry. Not even when he caught her sneaking from the house in jeans and a T-shirt on her very first foray into the Englisch world the night after her sixteenth birthday. Then he’d shoved his hat down on his head, turned his back on her, and walked away, his disappointment radiating in the stiff set of his shoulders. “I go to the classes. I listen. I do the reading. I try. It’s just—”

“It’s just what?” Daed growled. “It’s not fun? Life isn’t fun and it’s time you learned that.”

“What your daed means to say is we know it’s been hard for you since we moved here.” Mudder tossed the towel over her shoulder and turned on the pole lamp, her back to them both. She hated this. She hated to see discord between father and daughter. “I thought it would be better after the Masts moved in up the road with Mavis and Janice and the Planks in the other direction. Diana and Lizzy seem nice. I thought you’d make new friends…friends more like you.”

Mudder turned. The soft glow of the gas light softened the lines on her face. “Spend more time with your own kind and you’ll be more content. That’s what he means.”

Adah held her gaze. Mavis and Janice were nice. So were Diana and Lizzie. And she enjoyed working alongside them at the frolics. She’d seen them plenty of times at the Englisch parties too, looking so different without their kapps and aprons. She couldn’t tell Mudder that. These girls were doing their own experimenting so it didn’t matter if she sought them out. They were in the same boat. “I—”

“What is that on your apron?” Daed dropped the crumpled paper
onto the table and leaned forward, his lips contorted in a deep frown. “That looks like…is that blood?”

“It is. That’s what I started to tell you before.” Adah grasped at this new topic, this opportunity to turn the spotlight away from her future and baptism and all it represented. “There was an accident. That’s why I was late. Jackson Hart was breaking a horse in the corral and the horse trampled him. He was hurt, so I had to help him.”

Daed’s bushy gray eyebrows rose and fell. “You had to help him? You were there with him—just you two? What were you doing at the corral? You’re supposed to be in the house, cleaning.”

“I drove by and saw him working the horse. I stopped for a second. It happened so fast—”

“What did you do?”

“The horse kicked him. I ran in and helped him get out of the corral—that’s all.” She faltered. “Then I ran up to the porch and got his cell phone.”

“You used the telephone?”

“No, he wasn’t passed out or anything. He called.”

“You helped him out of the corral. How?”

“Ben.” Her mudder’s voice held a note of entreaty. “You would have her stand aside and not help a hurt man in need because of propriety?”

Daed tugged at his beard. If he didn’t stop, he would rip it from his chin. “Nee. I wouldn’t. Still, I thought the boy was away studying.”

“He’s home for the summer.” The image of Jackson’s face and the smile he wore despite his injuries flashed in her mind. He wasn’t a boy. She struggled to keep her face neutral. “He’ll be working with his dad.”