Fearless Hope: A Novel (9 page)

“It’s hard to imagine an Amish man getting addicted to something like that.”

“An Amish man can get into the same trouble anyone else can.” She walked back to her stool at the cash register. “If someone’s willing to drive.”

H
ope had not been inside the house since her mother and father moved out, and she was curious to see what sort of state it might be in. How strange it would be to clean this house with which she was as familiar as her own body.

The fields were looking quite ragged, she noticed as she drove her buggy up the driveway, and it pained her that apparently no one would be farming the fine acreage.

It was natural, she supposed, to feel some resentment toward the man who had purchased the home she had loved, but it was unfair, and she chastised herself for her uncharitable thoughts. He did not know the history or the heartbreak behind the fact that he was living there instead of her parents.

Of course,
Englisch
choices and ways were a mystery. She did not understand so many of the things they did. Frequently, she wished they would all just go away and leave her people alone, except that they
did
bring much income into the area!

They also brought their loud music and fast cars. When driving her buggy with her children inside, she often fantasized about what life would be like without the foul-smelling
Englisch
cars constantly passing her as she tried to go about her errands. Hills were the worst. She could not force her horse into a trot on
a hill, which meant that she could not hurry. When a car drew up behind her, they could not safely pass because they could not see over the hill, so they were forced to idle behind her as her poor horse labored up the hill. There was nothing she could do about it.

Sometimes the
Englischer
’s need for speed overcame their good sense and they passed her anyway, blindly, not knowing if there was a car coming toward them at all. She had experienced many close calls.

Yes, a world without
Englisch
would be so much easier. It would be even better if the whole world was Old Order Amish like herself and her family. What a wonderful world that would be! Life would be so simple and pleasant!

Of course, then there would also be no doctors to care for them when they got sick. It was a puzzlement.

It was also a puzzlement why a grown man would sit around typing stories all day. And for him to use an old antique typewriter in order to do so! Even the Amish had access to word processors. One of her cousins was a scribe for
The Budget
. She wrote a small column about her church settlement every week on a word processor her husband had purchased for her. The cousin said it worked much like the
Englisch
computer except that it did not have the capability of accessing the evils of the internet.

Her cousin explained that she had heard rumors of terrible things on that internet. She had whispered—the children were within earshot—that some
Englisch
men used it to look at dirty pictures. This was much more than Hope wanted to know. She was grateful to have a culture in which her children would not be exposed to such things! She wanted them to have a wholesome life, one dedicated to God, not one in which there were so many questionable things bombarding them.

That was the reason she chose to leave the children with her mother the first time she entered this
Englisch
man’s house. Who knew
what
sort of things he might have lying about! Better not to bring tender young eyes into this place until she found out what kind of a man she would be working for.

She had stopped at her in-laws’ last night to get permission from the bishop to take this job. Bishop Schrock said that he would not forbid her, and that he respected her desire to provide income for her family, but to let him know if she ever found herself uncomfortable working for this outsider. If so, he would try to find her a different position.

Today she would find out if this job was something that she, in all good conscience, could do.

As she entered the kitchen where she remembered her grandmother rolling out pie dough, it felt so familiar. The place was filled with so many good memories. It was, however, very messy. Nothing seemed to be in its rightful place and there were books scattered everywhere. In addition . . . it smelled bad.

Logan Parker apparently did not know how to wash a dish! The counter was stacked high with unwashed dishes as well as take-out containers. The trash can was piled high with more take-out containers. A dishcloth lay moldering in the corner of the sink, along with a pot that had some burned beans stuck to the bottom.

Did he not realize that dirty dishes attract mice? This was an old house with many secret ways for mice to crawl in. Where mice could enter, so could snakes! Snakes love little rodents. Her mother had fought mice expertly with traps
and
by never, ever leaving food where they would find it.

She was surprised that he had not had electricity brought in. That was the first thing most
Englisch
people did when they bought Amish family homes. They almost always had the solid, honest houses wired for electricity.

She opened the propane-fueled refrigerator. It was not well stocked, but there were some odds and ends of vegetables and her employer had a small roast in the freezer. It also looked like he’d spilled some tomato juice and neglected to clean it up.

This was interesting to her and validated her opinion of men in general, which was that they were not suited to keep house. Most were, from what she’d seen, slobs at heart unless they had a good wife to keep them on their toes.

Leaving the kitchen, she strode into the front room and saw that it was overflowing with newspapers, coffee cups, and scribbled-upon papers. Books were scattered everywhere and many had pieces of paper sticking out of them. Who had time to read so many books? Probably not someone who would care for the land like her father had, or as she could have, if given half a chance.

She mounted the stairs with great purpose. If she had ever seen a person who needed a housekeeper, it was this
Englischer
!

It felt awkward entering his bedroom, but she assured herself that cleaning this room was part of her job, just like any other room in the house. It was as bad as she expected. Clothing was strewn everywhere. The bed was unmade and looked like it had been unmade for a very long time. Socks. Underwear. Scattered around on the floor.

She picked up the man’s underwear with two fingers and held them at arm’s length. Goodness. This was much more than she had wanted to know. Who wore red boxer shorts that had pictures of a drunken Santa Claus holding a beer bottle on them? Was this normal behavior? She dropped them back onto the floor with a shiver of disapproval. The only thing she liked about this room was the scent. Logan Parker used some sort of cologne or body wash that was
very
masculine and pleasing.

Then she entered what had once been her old bedroom,
which overlooked the fruit orchard and had always been a special sanctuary for her.

What she saw when she entered was a shock. It looked like a crazy person had been here! It was completely bare except for a kitchen chair in the middle, and beside it, a card table with a box of colored index cards, pens, and a tape dispenser.

The chair and card table were not a shock. What shocked her was that three of the walls were covered with index cards. The
Englischer
had even drawn upon the wall, itself, in pencil.

She went up to the wall and began to read. There were numbers written all over it. A series of cards were lined up underneath each penciled mark. The notes were so cryptic she could make no sense of them. Beneath the number
23
, she pulled one off the wall and read it. “H/h discovr jewels/airport lockr/chase w/rent-a-cop.” She attached it back on the wall and read another: “Beach/low tide/crab bite.” Another card read, “Parachute/damaged. Freefall/deliberate?”

This wall made absolutely no sense. She had never seen anything like it in her life. She hoped it did not mean that she was working for a crazy man, but one never knew with
Englisch
people! Some did very strange things. She closed the door firmly behind her.

Another bedroom had apparently been intended as a guest room. Everything was new and untouched, including the bed, which had an exquisite quilt upon it. She looked closer at the quilt and its tiny, tight stitching. Unless she missed her guess, that was Sharon Hochstetler’s work. The fact that Logan had bothered to purchase a true Amish quilt instead of the cheaper, badly sewn foreign quilts that stores like Walmart carried, pleased her. The other two bedrooms were about the same. It looked as though this man had hoped to have company, but had not had any yet. Perhaps his New York friends had not wanted to come. If so, she felt sorry for him. He had gone to the effort
of purchasing furniture and bedding, but it was apparent that he was living here very much alone . . . and, with the exception of the untouched guest bedrooms, in squalor.

Well, if he wanted her to clean, she would clean. Her mother had taught her from the cradle up how to keep a house nice.

Starting with the kitchen first, she emptied the sink of dishes, filled it with soapy water, rolled up her sleeves, and started to work. He had hired her for two hours a day. If she worked quickly, she could get a terrible amount of work done in two hours. If he was pleased, by the end of the week, she would have made more than enough money to purchase groceries and the new shoes she so desperately needed. She could hardly wait to retire the ones she was wearing.

In a kitchen that had once belonged to her great-great-grandmother, she pulled the roast out of the freezer to thaw, and then did what her mother had taught her how to do so well—she made the house sparkle.

“V
iolet tells me that you’re writing a story set in World War II?”

The gentleman was nearly bald, quite elderly, carried a cane, and walked with a limp, but he held himself like a soldier as he stood at the table where Logan was typing.

“I am.”

One of the best things about working in Violet’s shop was that he was seldom completely alone. Since he kept telling himself that what he was writing here was only a method of priming the pump for his “real” books, he didn’t mind a few interruptions. In fact, he was enjoying this way of meeting a few local people. Some were apparently fascinated with the fact that Violet had an outsider from Manhattan writing a “book” on her antique typewriter.

“You got time to hear my story?”

“Of course,” Logan said.

The old man sat down, grimacing, with one leg stretched out straight in front of him. “I just want someone who knows how to write to hear a certain story before I die. My name is Frank Young, by the way.” He reached out and shook Logan’s
hand. “I was one of the soldiers who helped liberate one of the German work camps during World War Two.”

Logan sat up straighter. “I’ve seen pictures. They’re pretty hard to forget.”

“If you think looking at some black-and-white photos is hard, try being there. The sounds, the smells . . .” Frank shook himself. “Takes a lifetime and it still doesn’t fade, but that’s not the story I wanted to tell.”

“Frank!” Violet walked in from the back room. “I didn’t know you were coming today. Can I get you some tea?”

“Sure!” He winked at Logan. “Just make sure to stir it with your finger.”

“Oh?” She seemed puzzled. “Why?”

“ ’Cause I like a little sugar in my tea.”

“Oh, you stop, now!” Violet gave Frank a little slap on the shoulder.

He grinned devilishly at Logan as she went into the back room, where she had a small kitchen.

“You should have seen that girl when she was twenty,” Frank said. “I wasn’t the only young man around here turning handsprings hoping she’d notice me.”

“What happened?”

“She fell in love with my brother after the war and made him a real good wife.” Frank gazed off toward the kitchen. “You should have seen her behind the controls of a plane, mister. Hands as steady as a rock. But that’s not the story I came to tell.”

Instinctively, Logan reached for the notebook and pen he always kept in his back pocket. He never knew when he’d need to jot down notes or ideas. This man’s story sounded like it might be jotworthy.

“I got plenty of time to listen, Frank,” he said.

“There’s not really a lot I want to tell,” Frank said. “Don’t
want
to remember most of it. Would rather forget some of the images that got stuck in my head, but I was one of the soldiers who had the honor of giving on-the-site medical care to the people we liberated. I was raised Mennonite and had been a conscientious objector at the beginning of the war, so they gave me some training as a medic. By the end of the war, I had a gun in my hand and was glad to have it. Once I got over there and saw what was happening, I couldn’t remain a C.O.”

“Here’s the tea.” Violet had brought out a tray that also included store-bought cookies. She gave Frank an arch look. “
And
the sugar bowl.”

The old man chortled as he shoveled two heaping teaspoons of sugar into his teacup and Violet went to speak to a young couple who had just come in and were standing in front of the cash register holding an antique doll cradle.

Logan found himself reevaluating old age. It looked to him as though some embers sometimes never went entirely out. Even at ninety-something.

“It was one of the men we rescued at another German work camp who told me about it, once he got some food down him and he thought he might live.” Frank took a slurp of his tea, then cradled the cup in his hands and leaned forward. “Of all the things he had experienced in that terrible place, it was the memories of his sister that he couldn’t shake.”

“What kind of memories?” Logan clicked his pen and held it poised over his notebook.