Keys of Heaven (18 page)

M
amm opened Priscilla's bedroom door and leaned in. “You're just going to have to tell him the truth,
Liewi
.”

Pris had dashed upstairs to hide in her room when Benny Peachey's awful buggy had come rattling down the lane after supper, and now he was outside visiting with Dat, who for some inexplicable reason had not sent him packing.

“I have,” Priscilla moaned. “I've told him that I'm writing to Joe, but he doesn't seem to get it. Can't you ask Dat to tell him to go?”

“To hear the two of them, you'd think Benny had come to see him.” Mamm twitched the quilt straight, though there was hardly enough room for the two of them in Pris's little bedroom. “Here's an idea. How about we go out and sit together on the porch swing, and if Benny wants to speak with you, he can, and I'll be there to help if you need me.”

Relief swept through her. “I've had enough of being alone with boys. Joe was the only one who felt like a friend. I can't figure out what Benny wants, and as for Justin—”

Too late, she snapped her mouth shut.

“Justin? That
Englisch
boy?” her mother said carefully.

Priscilla thought fast. She didn't want her mother to worry about someone she would probably never see again. “
Ja
, the one from the Inn—the older brother of that boy who ran away and is staying with Sarah Yoder.”

“It was his parents who thought you were stealing. Were you alone with him? Was it all right,
Liewi?
 ”

Mamm looked so worried that Priscilla got up off the bed and hugged her. “
Ja
, it was all right. He thought he deserved the attention of every girl in the county, and when he didn't get it—well, I was never really alone with him. And he's gone now anyway. It doesn't matter.”

Her mother gave her a squeeze and released her. “But Benny is not gone. Come downstairs and we'll take out some lemonade and cookies and have a nice visit.”

When they came out onto the porch, they found Benny's horse tied up and he and Dat talking easily, Benny on the step and Dat in the wicker chair beside the door. Mamm put the laden tray on the little table between the chair and the swing, and offered Benny some lemonade and cookies.

“What brings you out this way?” she asked as he took them.

“I came to see Priscilla…and you folks.” He bit into a lemon shortbread cookie with relish. “These are real good.”

“That's good of you,” Mamm said. “Especially when we'll see you on Sunday. How are your folks?”

“Mamm and Dat are well. Dat and Crist are up to something these days—but we don't know what. They went to Whinburg to get a crate to pack something up in. Me and Leon think they finally hit on something that works, and they're sending it away to someone who wants to buy it.”

Priscilla usually didn't pay much attention to what the Peacheys did over there in their woods and unkempt fields. “What do you mean, something that works?”

“Aw, they make stuff in our barn. Inventions—you know, like if you wanted to make your stove run on solar power.”

“Why would we do that?” Mamm wondered aloud. “It works just fine on propane.”

“But some things don't. And Dat and Crist like to tinker until they do. That's why I think whatever went in that crate must work.”

“But you don't know what it is?” Pris asked.

Benny turned to her eagerly, as if he was happy that she'd noticed him taking up space on their porch steps. “
Neh
, it could've been anything. But one of these days they'll think up something good and everyone will want one, and then me and Leon can have a new buggy.”

“Seems to me you'd get there sooner if you put in some long days in those fields of yours,” Isaiah Mast observed. “Better to depend on the crops God brings out of the earth than on the efforts of man with machinery.”

“That's true,” Benny allowed, “but Dat and Crist, they want to do good for the
Gmee
. Some of these things have worked—the solar panels on the roof work real well.”

“I hear all the money from last fall's potato harvest went for those panels.”

Which might be why everyone on the Peachey farm was extra skinny now.

Benny nodded. “But they save on gas for the generator. It keeps going up, but the price of sunlight stays the same.” He grinned at his own joke. “Say, Pris, want to go for a drive?”

Any boy but Benny would have found a way to ask quietly, privately, at a get-together or after singing or any other place but on the front porch, right in front of a girl's parents. Priscilla waited half a second for Dat to tell him that no daughter of his was going anywhere with him, but when there was no sound except for Saranne upstairs, laughing at something Katie had said, she realized she was going to have to do this herself.

“I can't, Benny. I have the rest of my chores to do yet tonight.”

“Ain't got 'em done yet? It's near dark.”

“I worked yesterday and I have to work tomorrow, but I still have to do my share at home.” When was Dat going to conclude that she wasn't about to get into any more trouble? She thought he might relax about his rule after the Parkers had given her such a hard time, but he hadn't. There was always hope, though…which was why she didn't pull against the traces very often.

“Another day, then? Say, Sunday afternoon after church? We could go for a drive. Leon could ask your friend Rosanne.”

“Leon's a bit old for Rosanne,” Mamm finally put in. “Isn't he close to twenty?”

“
Neh
, only eighteen. He's too shy to do anything by himself, but if we double dated, it would be okay.”

Priscilla had had enough.

“Benny Peachey, I've told you before that I'm writing to Joe. That means I don't go for rides with other boys behind his back.”

“You could write and tell him if you want. I've known Joe all his life—he's a Woodpecker same as you and me. He won't mind.”

“
I
would mind.” Did she really have to say this in front of her parents? No, she couldn't. “Benny, let's go for a walk in the orchard and get a few things straight.”

Another grin, nearly as bright in the twilight as the first flickers of the fireflies dancing over the lawn. “You're a pushy one, ain't you?”

She didn't dignify this with a reply, merely got out of the swing, smoothed down her dress, and walked down the steps right past him.

“Thanks for the cookies and lemonade, Lillian,” he said to Mamm, and wished Dat good night as if he and Priscilla were going into town for an ice cream and wouldn't be back until midnight.

Boys, honestly.

The grass was soft under her bare feet as she crossed the lawn and made her way under the branches of the apple trees. To one side, she heard the soft murmurs of the chickens as they roosted up for the night in their shed, jostling for space and insisting that the pecking order be observed, even in sleep. The air was soft, still humid but cooling now that the sun had gone down.

It was the perfect evening for a walk. What a shame Joe and Simon were a thousand miles away, and all she had to share this beautiful evening with was Benny Peachey, who wouldn't recognize romance if it fell on his head like a windfall apple.

Not that she wanted him getting ideas along that line.

“Nice evening,” he said, catching up to her with his long-legged stride.

She didn't waste time on pleasantries. “Benny, I'm not going to date you. I've told you time and again that I'm writing to Joe, and it's just too bad of you not to listen to me.”

“I ain't planning to kiss you, if that's what you're worried about.”

As if she'd ever allow it in a million years! “Why did you tell
Englisch
Henry Byler we were courting, then?”

“Aw, I was just trying to get your goat. I can see you're stuck on Joe.”

She stopped dead in the grass and put her hands on her hips in exasperation. “Then what did you come over here for, pretending it was for me? Dat is probably wondering what on earth is going on.”

To her surprise, the bravado fell away and he reached up with both hands to grip an overhanging branch, as if he planned to lift up his feet and swing on it like a monkey. But instead, he just hung on, stretching his arms. “I don't have any girl friends, you know.”

“I can see why, if you tell everyone you pass on the sidewalk that you're courting them.”

“
Neh
, I mean friends who are girls. To talk about things with. To ask things of.”

That took the wind out of her sails good and proper. “What things? Can't you ask your Mamm?”

“She wouldn't understand. And maybe she'd even get mad.” The bravado and humor had leached out of his voice, and in the dusk it sounded uncertain. Young.

Did he have a crush on one of her friends? Did he want to know if someone in her buddy bunch liked him back? But why would that make his mother upset?

“Why don't you tell me,” she suggested at last, mystified.

After a few seconds, he said, “There's someone—what if—what would you do if someone was thinking about doing something…and other people thought it was the right thing, but you thought it was wrong? Would you speak up? If it was none of your business but you still had feelings about it?”

How was she supposed to answer that? She fell back on what she knew to be true. “If something is the right thing, how can it be wrong?”

“Things can be right to some people, and wrong to other people. It depends where you're standing, like whether the creek is running toward you or away from you depending on which way you're looking.”

“Benny, just tell me what's going on, otherwise I don't know enough about it to help you. Is it one of the Woodpecker boys? Is he thinking about jumping the fence?”

In the twilight, his head jerked up, like a horse surprised by a gopher. “Jumping the fence?
Neh
, not that. At least, that I know of. It's
Englisch
Henry.”

If she had been confused before, it was nothing to what she felt now. “Why should you be concerned with what
Englisch
Henry does? He's not one of us anymore. He doesn't have to follow the
Ordnung
. And besides, deciding that someone is doing something right or wrong is prideful. Who are you to judge him?”

She couldn't see his face all that well, but the outline of his head against the last of the light in the sky bobbed up and down in agreement. “All that you say is right. But…well, I heard Sarah Yoder talking with Aendi Linda, and it seems
Englisch
Henry is engaged to your boss.”

It was a good thing she was leaning on the old Pink Lady's trunk, or she might have fallen right over in surprise. “That's not true. She would have told us.”

But would she? True, Ginny had been awfully happy lately. She was a cheery person to begin with, but Pris had never heard her singing over her breakfast pans until recently. Or doing her hair in pretty ways, with braids and things. But it didn't follow that there was a man involved, did it? Couldn't an
Englisch
woman sing and do her hair differently for no other reason than she felt like it?

But if Sarah said it was so, then it must be, mustn't it?

“Maybe, maybe not. But if it is, and he moves off the farm to be with her, I'm afraid Aendi Linda and Uncle Crist would move there, and our family would be all in pieces, like it was before Linda came.”

Pris said nothing, which was good, because Benny was rolling now, like a hay wagon gathering speed down a hill.

“Linda and Mamm are good friends. That's not to say that Mamm and Dat don't get along. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes it's me and Leon's fault, though. But since Crist married Linda, it's just been better. We don't have a lot, but it's home, and I don't want it to change.”

“There's nothing wrong with them wanting a home of their own.”

“I don't think they do. That's the problem. I think that Sarah has been working on Aendi Linda, and now she's thinking about it, and Uncle Crist will do anything in his power to make her smile. I'm afraid that if she goes to work on him, they'll really do it.”

Priscilla tried to untangle all this and get to the bottom of what he really wanted from her. “So you think that while the
Gmee
would believe it's right for them to move out, it isn't really?”

“I don't know what I think,” he admitted, his voice low. “That's why I needed to talk to somebody. Leon's no good for this stuff. If you need to bait a hook or fix something, he's your man, but not for talking things over and trying to figure things out.”

Priscilla girded up her loins. “You want your aunt and uncle to be happy, don't you? If it's God's will that they move out, and they obey Him, then they will be.”

“But maybe we won't,” he said miserably. “How can it be God's will for them to be happy and not the rest of the family?”

But figuring out God's will was a task far greater than Priscilla could ask or think. “I don't know. But Benny, this isn't your business. Whether you think it's right or wrong what Sarah's doing, or what they're doing, it's got nothing to do with you. Just hoe your own row and don't look over at anyone else.”

“But it's our
family
.”

“And they're married and church members and whatever is God's will is what will happen.”

From his silence, Benny didn't seem very satisfied with this for an answer, but Pris couldn't imagine what other answer she could give.

“What if I talked to Henry, and asked him to bring Ginny to the farm instead?”

With a sigh, Priscilla said, “This is grown-ups' business, and nobody will thank you for stomping into their row. You know what, Benny? You should be glad you don't have a dad like mine. If he heard me talking this way, he'd give me even more chores to do, to keep my nose where it belonged. That's my advice. Go back to the farm and find work. Do something to help your family with your hands instead of—of this.”