Between Two Worlds Page 10

  His family had expressed their gratitude in many ways for his veering his car in front of Bobby Jonesboro. There was no reason for any of them to do more. So what if he even chose to move right next door to them? Daniel would have little if anything to do with him. There were plenty of people in the community he rarely interacted with. Small as the county was, he wasn’t friends with everyone. He didn’t need to be friends with Aiden, either.

  Chapter 10

  Before Aiden knew it, he was backing his sixteen-foot U-Haul into the driveway of his new two-bedroom, one-bath 1920s bungalow. Nestled among sycamores and elms on a small corner lot on the southwestern edge of Henry, the house looked as if it were waiting to be occupied by none other than Aiden.

  Kevin had found the single-story bungalow just in time, a mere four days before Aiden left Chicago. The owner, a widow retired in Alabama, was looking to sell, but after sixteen months on the market she’d agreed to rent it at $450, month to month. According to Kevin, she hoped Aiden might want to eventually buy. When Kevin had called with the news, Aiden had said yes to the house sight unseen. A few hours later, he’d read through, signed, and returned the facsimile of the lease agreement the homeowner’s realtor had expeditiously sent him, and the house was his.

  Looking at the squat white house with robin’s-egg blue shutters, he was certain Kevin had made a decent find. He remembered seeing the house when he had walked the tree-lined streets looking for rentals. He had liked it then. How perfect things sometimes worked out.

  The house was a bit shabby, especially the lawn, which showed bare spots skirting the trees, but Aiden was unfazed. The thought of having outdoor space to spruce up appealed to him. The past few years living in the city, he had missed having a lawn to care for, outdoor work to hone his muscles instead of needing to go to a gym. Compared to his 650-square-foot studio, which he’d been renting at $930 per month, the bungalow was a palatial bargain. Best of all, he was a short two-minute drive straight up Ivy Street to the Blade office.

  He found the set of house keys where the realtor had said she would leave them, behind a juniper shrub by the front door. Peering around inside, he fell in love. It was a perfect fit. All 1,200 square feet of it. He didn’t even mind the 1970s color scheme, or the wood paneling in the small dining area. Already the bungalow fit him like one of his well-worn fleece hoodies. Raddled, but warm and comfy.

  Reading through the original copy of the lease agreement the realtor had left for him on the kitchen counter, he wondered if he should have bought the house. At $125,000, which, after living in Chicago, was a giveaway, it was definitely something for him to consider. But even at that low price, Aiden could not justify buying without knowing if he would be staying in Henry long term. The house had been difficult for the owner to unload; Aiden did not want to be stuck with it either. He still had his sights set on that rustic cabin in the mountains of Montana.

  He had subleased his studio apartment to a young woman from Oshkosh, Wisconsin, for $800 a month. He took care of all the other particulars, as well. Once he learned of his new address, he notified the post office, all his utility companies, and important correspondents. He even filled out the official “accident report” with the State of Illinois to have Bobby Jonesboro’s insurance company reimburse him for the used car he’d ordered from one of those online auto traders, shipped to a dealer in Unity for him to pick up.

  Most importantly, he had finished writing his article, enthusiastically accepted by Midwestern Life for its November issue. To keep the article short and tight, he focused on the “green” angle, since the media liked that sort of thing. He highlighted how eco-friendly the Amish were, from their use of wind energy to their driving horse-drawn buggies.

  Although he fought back a few tears as he drove his U-Haul south on I-57, leaving behind the few friends he’d made and even his tiny studio, which, during the past two years, had become his refuge, he was glad to let Chicago fade into his memory. Leaving Chicago would put Conrad firmly into the past. He even deleted the text message that Conrad had sent him a few weeks before, without responding. That part of his life was over. The future stretched as wide and expectant as the flat, unbending roads of central Illinois.

  He stared at the U-Haul parked in his driveway. Full of all his possessions, the U-Haul symbolized another new beginning. His things had made many trips in his short adult life, from his parents’ house to his college apartment, from there to Chicago, and ultimately to Henry, Illinois. In this small town, surrounded by vast farmland and Amish wonder, a new life was opening to him. A fresh promise, like the corn in the field across the road, green and bursting with life, was unfolding to him, holding boundless possibilities.

  The clip-clop of horse’s hooves on the tree-lined street brought him out of his reverie. He smiled, watching Mark, with David and Grace next to him, steer the wagon into the driveway. They had arrived right on time. He had left a message at the furniture shop two days ago, letting them know when he expected to get back into town, so they could help him unload. His smile faded when he noticed Daniel was not with them.

  “Where’s Daniel?” he asked Mark, acting nonchalant.

  “He’s at the farm, choring,” Mark said. “He’s been choring from sunup to bedtime lately. Only stops to take lunch and supper.”

  “I guess that’s a good thing,” Aiden said, lowering his eyes to the blacktop driveway.

  “When I grow up I want to live in town in a house just like this,” David said as he stood on the front lawn taking in the bungalow, his straw hat pushed high up on his head.

  “Stop being so shussly,” Grace said, rolling her eyes.

  “Ach, almost forgot.” Mark rooted a box out from the back of the wagon and handed it to Aiden. “These are from Mom and all of us. A housewarming gift.”

  Aiden steadied the box on the rear bumper of the U-Haul and dug through it. Inside were eight four-ounce jars of Rachel’s homemade goods. Corn relish, strawberry jam, and four jars of Aiden’s favorite homemade Amish peanut butter. Rachel’s hand-printed labels kindled his cheeks: “A gift for Aiden, who is a gift from God.”

  A few short hours later, Aiden and his crew had almost all his things—TV, kitchenware, bedroom and living room furniture, boxes, backpacking gear, and the office equipment he used for his freelance work—unloaded and placed about his new home. Where to put everything became simple, as the house was small.

  The unloading went quicker than anticipated, for two of Aiden’s new neighbors had strolled from their homes to introduce themselves and lend a hand. Both were retired-age men, yet strong and useful and unafraid of lifting heavy boxes and cumbersome furniture. Aiden was glad to have met some of his neighbors and to find them obliging. An hour later, Frank Burger and Lyle Keating said their goodbyes and left Aiden and the children to unload the smaller items.

  The last of his things carried into the house, Aiden realized that he’d just begun to settle in. Sorting everything would be the most difficult part. For now, he needed to return the U-Haul and pick up the used car he’d ordered online before the auto dealer in Unity closed.

  Mark, eager to drive the U-Haul and to check out Aiden’s new car, insisted he come along. He too had been shopping for cars for his big trip to the Texas shore in December and thought himself a semi-expert. Aiden offered to take all the kinner and treat them to supper as a reward for their hard work.

  Adelaide, the children said, would be happy with the bucket of water Aiden had given her and some hay the Schrocks had stowed in the back of the wagon until they returned.

  A straight shot into Unity, Mark navigated the bulky U-Haul like a master while Grace and David egged him on. He handled the machine as well as Aiden had on the one hundred seventy-five miles from Chicago. They went to the auto dealer to pick up Aiden’s car, a spiffy 2005 Chevrolet Aveo, nearly the identical color of the light-blue shutters on his new bungalow. Aiden drove the U-Haul to the rental office as Mark followed behind in the new car. The Schrock kids wante
d to eat Mexican, so Aiden let Mark drive them to their favorite taqueria for a much-deserved meal. They laughed and chatted while eating, yet Aiden’s laughter lacked its usual cheeriness. He was still disappointed Daniel had not come along.

  Back at the Schrock farm, Daniel tensed as his father walked up to him, where he labored by the buggy shed. He had been choring harder and longer the past few weeks than was usual, and expected his father would eventually question him. His latest project: replacing the ratchet on the reel of the old McCormick, normally a two-man job.

  “You chore diligently, almost too diligently, as if you’re hiding in it,” Samuel said, stroking his graying beard.

  Daniel, stiffening on his haunches, tried to keep his attention on his work. “Choring’s got to get done.” He sighed. “Why put it off?”

  Samuel remained silent a moment. “You can’t suffer forever the loss of Esther and Zachariah, Daniel,” he said, lifting his bearded chin. “God has given you many other things to be thankful for. Too much grieving is selfish.”

  “I’m okay, really. I’m just trying to get needed work done, that’s all.”

  “Don’t use choring as an excuse to hide,” Samuel reasserted, using his fatherly tone. “Things are hard for you, I know, but the Scriptures don’t avow the virtue of hard work just for a means to hide from our troubles.”

  “I’m not hiding.”

  “Then you’re using the sweat from your choring as an anointing to cleanse yourself of something?”

  Daniel suppressed a shudder. Tightening a screw with three firm yanks of a wrench, he squared his shoulders and said, “We don’t believe in anointings.”

  “Ach, there have been some.”

  A moment more of heavy silence, then Samuel said, “You’re courting Tara now, ya?”

  “We’re not courting.”

  “But you drove her home from church last Sunday. Your mom was happy to see it. I have to say, I was too. It’s good that you’re starting to date.”

  “It was only one drive home; I wouldn’t call it a date.” But Daniel knew that, in his old-fashioned community, offering a girl a ride home from church meant more than a friendly gesture. Often it was the first step to courting. When an Amish man drives a maydel home in his carriage on Church Sunday, the community talk has them practically married in no time.

  Tara Hostetler would probably relish such talk. She’d had an infatuation with Daniel for as long as he could remember. She was five years younger than he, but that never seemed to bother Tara, mature beyond her years. Everyone knew she was strong-minded. The middle daughter of eleven siblings, she was the type who knew how to get what she wanted and never look back.

  Daniel was eighteen when he had first noticed the determined adolescent gawking at him in church. Although he had shrugged off her flirting as just a girlish crush, one of many he’d tolerated from the girls in the community, her gazes through the years never lessened. With his tall frame and sharp handsome looks, Daniel had always been the object of coy glances and muffled giggles. Yet his stubborn aloofness kept the other maydels at bay. Not Tara.

  As she grew older and bolder, she would follow him around the singings and other youth gatherings like a fox, peering at him from behind trees or over the rims of her punch cups. Even when he officially courted Esther, she kept him in her sights. During his and Esther’s short marriage, she of course backed off, but even then he sensed her attraction for him scarcely diminished.

  She dated a handful of men in the community, but nothing ever came of their brief courtships. Once a man she’d been corresponding with in Iowa traveled to Illinois just to meet her, but that, too, failed to take root. Since no man was ever good enough for her, the community assumed, even at twenty, she was destined to become an old maid. Independent of mind and spirit, Tara never seemed to worry over the label. She always held her slender neck sturdy, her pointy nose aloft.

  Then in March when Daniel’s world collapsed so suddenly, losing his wife and baby son, she refrained from acting like a hawk sweeping down on an unwary field mouse. Daniel appreciated her self-control. In proper modesty, she gave him the appropriate amount of time to mourn.

  Last Church Sunday when she glanced at him more often and more penetratingly than usual with her indigo eyes, Daniel knew she decided she’d waited long enough. Shuffling over to her after the sermons, he figured he should make the first overture. Her smile stretched to the brim of her black church bonnet when, after so many years, he offered her a ride home.

  “Maybe this weekend you’re going out with Tara again? To one of the gatherings?” Samuel grinned tightly, watching his son tinker with the binder. “She likes you, we think. The way she ogles you.” He snickered.

  “Gatherings are for kinner,” Daniel said.

  “You should go out with her. It would be good for you, Daniel. You’re always by yourself.”

  “I’m fine; you have nothing to worry over. Now, I really do have to get this reel fixed before the binding tomorrow, don’t you think? Or we’ll be stuck with a field full of fallow oats.”

  Daniel felt his father’s gray eyes penetrate his hunched form. With a grunt, Samuel got on his knees and grasped the reel. “This is a two-man job,” he said with an air of authority. “Let me at least help.”

  Daniel did not refuse his father’s support, or shake off his dependable manner. He appreciated his father’s concern. Yet he knew he could not speak with him about relationships, not the way he would have wanted. Not ever. Nonetheless, his father’s sage words echoed inside him.

  Tilting his straw hat higher on his head to get a glance at his father, Daniel mulled over his advice. Take Tara out again? Even last Sunday, while she had sat so squarely next to him during the carriage ride to her family’s farm, the idea had skimmed across his mind. His father’s prodding encouraged him to set into motion more quickly, something he’d already considered.

  Tara Hostetler wasn’t so bad. She was cute in her own way, a woman of first-rate standing in the community. If God wanted him to remain leddich, then why would He have planted her in his life? She’d been nearly stalking him for seven years. The clues were clear. Surely da Hah did not intend for Daniel to spend the rest of his days as a bachelor.

  Yes, he would ask her out again. It was the proper thing to do.

  Chapter 11

  One of the first responsibilities Kevin Hassler had assigned Aiden was to organize the cluttered Blade office. The task of sorting through so many boxes, old files, and stacks of newspapers was taking longer than Aiden had expected. With so many past issues of The Henry Blade lying about that Kevin wanted stored into some kind of accessible filing system (he insisted on having hard copies along with the computer files), some dating back more than ten years, Aiden found himself reading through each issue. He became absorbed by the stories, as inane as some of them were, as if he were taking a stroll through the past, like thumbing through an old yearbook or photo album.

  Convincing himself he was acquainting himself with the newspaper’s style, he perused through more and more issues, day after day, eager to take to the boxes whenever his small reporting assignments were complete. So far his reporting duties were meager: covering obscure community events, writing up notices for upcoming festivals or fairs, or waiting for Kevin’s police scanner to shriek with anything interesting. Primarily, he was responsible for ensuring all the stories were inputted into the computer’s layout template before Tuesday’s midnight deadline. Even for a small weekly like the Blade, when deadline loomed, commotion seized the two-man office as if it were a major daily. The two deadlines Aiden had worked through, each time Kevin had managed to send the PDF files to the printer in Decatur just in the nick of time.

  After two full weeks on the job, Aiden fit in well. At times the reporting work seemed trite, but he was acclimating to the lightness of the stories. Small town fare was interesting in its own way. The stories encompassed a personal scope not always present in larger newspapers, or even the college daily
he had worked for in Maryland. He was learning to focus more on the people in his writing, rather than the actual events that surrounded them. Residents of small towns want to read about their neighbors, Kevin had told him, not faceless events.

  He tried to heed that advice when considering the press releases that flooded the office floor each day from the fax machine. He spent many hours on his hands and knees, sifting through the curled facsimiles to see if any stories sent by the dozens of public relations firms could be shaped into anything of local interest. Kevin expressed his appreciation for his initiative and ambition. Each morning by eight Aiden was at his desk, and rarely did he leave the office before six. If an assignment lured him from his desk—taking a picture of Mrs. Miller’s cow with a spot on its neck the shape of a question mark or interviewing the Henry High School marching band about its upcoming trip to Springfield—he almost always returned for a few hours before heading home, just down the street. He was eager to write up his stories.