Between Two Promises Read online

  Only when Rachel took the straight pins from her kapp and refastened her blouse under her cape bib did Daniel realize she had been nursing Gretchen. Cheeks burning, he averted his eyes to his grimy boots.

  Wrapping the dozing baby tightly in her swathing, Rachel laid her in the bassinet by the ovens, warm from baking apple pies, which Daniel could smell. “Everything’s trouble,” she said with a sigh. “But God gives us burdens to make us appreciate His Kingdom all the more, I figure.”

  Daniel, unsure what to make of his mother’s somber mood, sat at the table. He supposed the newborn, the extra work, and being alone downstairs in a quiet house on a snowy winter day after nonstop commotion could make anyone gloomy.

  “Leftovers from the reception?”

  “That’s goot.” Daniel watched his mother prepare him a plate. Shuffling about the kitchen, she took the applesauce and creamed celery from the refrigerator and spooned what remained onto a plate. After slicing a few slabs of trail bologna, she added that to the plate and set it under Daniel’s beard.

  She put everything back into the refrigerator and sat opposite him, where she began cutting peeled Granny Smith apples into a large bowl. He figured she’d been in the process of cutting them when Gretchen had demanded her feeding.

  Without looking at him, Rachel said, “Do you think you’ll be staying in Montana long term?”

  “What do you mean?” Daniel asked, swallowing hard.

  “I was wondering.” Rachel focused on her task. “Is this Montana living going to last forever, or is it some kind of stint?”

  The aroma of baking apple pies clashed with the bitter emotions nudging his insides. “I suppose I’m there for good,” he said, forking more food into his mouth. “Why do you need to know?”

  “Only asking.” Rachel chopped the apples steadily, never once raising her eyes. “No need to get fresh.”

  “Sorry, but you and Dad don’t need to worry over me so much.”

  “Is it wrong for parents to worry over their kinner?”

  Filled with a strange daring by his mother’s reflective expression, Daniel said with a pronounced grin, his cheeks bulging, “I would think you’d be happy I was getting past Esther and Zachariah, living a life in Montana, if that’s what it takes for me to get over things.”

  “But you’re so far away. How are we to be of any help to you?”

  “Your arms are full now.” He nodded sideways toward the bassinet where Gretchen napped. “You have the newborn. There’s enough for you to worry about, don’t you think? I’m a grown man now anyway, in my late twenties.”

  Only the knife chopping into the cutting board and Daniel’s fork scraping against his plate broke the long stretch of silence.

  “What of this promise Aiden Cermak said you had made for him?” Rachel said. “The one I heard him mention to you during the wedding reception.” Her hand momentarily froze, the knife poised over an apple half. Going back to chopping, she said, “You know I don’t like secrets and whispers in my house.”

  Lowering his eyes, Daniel realized his mother must have overheard his and Aiden’s discussion after he’d come downstairs from convening with the ministers and Mark and Heidi. How much had she pieced together? He carefully plotted out what to tell her. He did not wish to lie, but the lies flowed easier each day.

  She wanted to get to the truth, but how much? Was she willing to hear it to the rotten core? His mother had a tendency to scratch for facts without wanting to find any. Everyone in the household knew that. Deciding to hold back his words, he chomped into a bite of trail bologna and chewed like a cow while his mother chopped the apples with extra vigor.

  “A lot of promises being made around here,” Rachel said, her gaze fixed on the apple slices falling from her busy knife. “I heard Elisabeth and Aiden making promises to each other a little while ago.”

  Daniel scrunched his forehead. What secrets could Aiden and Elisabeth need to share with each other? He studied Rachel’s downturned face, awash with worry and dread. Anger rose inside him. But not at his mother. At himself. He should never have allowed Aiden to talk him into bringing him back to Illinois. If only he had practiced more restraint.

  Rachel shook her head. The strings of her kapp swept across her bib. “Maybe your dad’s right. Outsiders bring too much distraction. Maybe he was right to ask Aiden to leave when he did last year. Maybe he shoulda not come back.”

  It was as if Rachel had read Daniel’s mind. Despite agreeing with his mother’s concerns, he wanted to defend Aiden. “He saved us from tragedy. You can’t forget, Mom,” he said.

  Rachel quickly stood and began to shake brown sugar and cinnamon on top of the apple slices. After mixing the spices and the apples with her bare hands, she filled two pie shells. Next she moved to the sink and rinsed her hands. From experience, Daniel understood that his mother, in her special way, had terminated their conversation. As always, she had no desire to know the bare bones of the truth.

  Observing his mother’s back, he admitted they were being pulled apart, but by more than simple lies. Aiden’s presence confused and obscured their two worlds, but much more skulked between them. Regardless of circumstances, sons grew up and left their mothers. Simply by his mother’s indifference to her own search for answers, Daniel grasped there was some truth to the saying he had come across while skimming through one of Aiden’s paperbacks: “You can’t go home again.”

  Digesting this profound yet disturbing realization, Daniel heard, above the rush of water splashing against the sink, the front door open and feet stomping out snow. A moment later, Samuel appeared under the kitchen archway. He clutched his black felt hat with both hands, his fingers flexing over the brim. Above his grizzled beard, he tightened his lips. His gray eyes, wide and full of apprehension, fixed on Daniel.

  Daniel was about to ask his father what bothered him, but subsequently, he saw his answer. Bishop Hershberger and the three ministers, including Reverend Yoder, silently lumbered into place behind Samuel, lining up like ravens perched on a fence.

  “The ministers would like to speak with you, Daniel,” Samuel said in a low voice.

  “Do they need to speak with him now?” Rachel asked. Samuel’s sharp glance pushed her back against the sink. She gripped her hand towel, her eyes wide and searching, roving from the ministers to Samuel, settling on Daniel.

  Daniel stood, his fingertips firm on the tabletop. “I’m ready to speak.”

  “Goot,” Samuel said. “Since the house is occupied, why don’t you go to the barn.” He looked to the ministers, and the bishop nodded his approval.

  “We’ll wait for you out in the barn while you get your coat and gloves,” Bishop Hershberger said to Daniel in his deep baritone.

  A few minutes later, Daniel, coatless and gloveless, stepped inside the barn. The ministers stood alongside the miniature horse stall, peering at Daniel as he approached them. Only Reverend Yoder turned his gaze to the ground, yet none of them seemed to hold the bitterness in their eyes as did he.

  Bishop Hershberger raised his auburn beard. He spoke in Pennsylvania German, which signified he meant business. “We want to speak with you about some things worrying us, Daniel. We wanted to speak with you during Mark and Heidi’s wedding celebration but thought it more proper to wait until today.”

  Daniel refrained from responding right away. He remained firm, stoic. He was a grown man. What did he have to fear? Yet fear taunted him. With his boots planted on the straw-covered ground and his bare hands firm by his sides, he said in German, “What is it you have to say?”

  Another minister, Abel Gingerich, said, “We want to understand what brings you back to Henry.”

  “My brother’s wedding, of course,” Daniel said, screwing his eyes. He clenched and unclenched his hands, drawing warm blood into them.

  “Yes,” the bishop said, “we understand that, but are you here to stay?”

  Daniel’s hesitation bothered him, perhaps even more than it did the ministers, who cont
inued to eye him with skepticism. Of course he intended to go back to Montana. He had a life there. With Aiden. His cabin and his woodshop were there. They had signed a one-year lease with the Missoula couple who rented it to them. Yet his indecision pricked him like a thorn.

  “No,” Daniel finally said. He spit the words from his mouth like piping hot kernels. “I… I do not plan on… staying in Henry.”

  “You intend to return to Montana?”

  “That is… that is the case.”

  “And what is it you are doing there?” the third reverend, Emanuel Troyer, asked.

  The reverend’s words clawed at Daniel. He must temper his irritation. He never had liked nosiness, no matter who displayed it. But this was his community’s way. If the ministers believed a member of the flock was floundering, they had a responsibility to intervene. It was how things had been done in his denomination for more than half a millennium. Now that the judgmental and accusatory eyes of the ministers were aimed at Daniel, bile rose in his throat.

  “I am living there as a woodworker,” he said. He wanted to switch to English, but it would be disrespectful unless the ministers did so first. “There are many trees, at low cost due to bountiful supply. The pine is beautiful.”

  “You lived as a woodworker here,” Bishop Hershberger said, flinging Daniel a sidelong look. “We have hundreds of woodworkers in Frederick County. Wood cannot be any cheaper there than it is here. We sell our work throughout the country, the world, even. I do not understand your response.”

  Daniel licked his chapped lips. He had to will his arms by his side to keep from tugging at his beard. “Would I be wrong to say I like it there and want to call it my home?”

  “No,” the bishop said, shaking his head. He closed his eyes as if reflecting on his words. Looking hard at Daniel, he said, “It is not wrong. I am sure Montana is a beautiful sight to behold. I hear the mountains and the trees reach near to Heaven. I can understand anyone wanting to live in such a place.”

  “Then what is wrong?” Daniel asked.

  Bishop Hershberger sighed. “I think we are taking this from the wrong approach. It is not so much where you are living but what you are doing while you are there. We have spoken with the bishop from the Amish settlement in Rose Crossing. He tells us you keep far from the community. Is this true?”

  Holding the bishop’s gaze, Daniel said, “I have been busy with work orders.”

  “Each of us is busy, Daniel. But we do not hide from our neighbors and shirk responsibilities to the church and the community.”

  “Word has come back to us you have not gone to any of the gmays,” Reverend Troyer added.

  A barn cat crept along the railing of the miniature horse stall. Daniel watched it delicately cross the railing, stretch, leap off, and rush into an unseen corner of the barn.

  Reverend Gingerich folded his arms across his bulky black jacket and swept his beard over his forearms. Steam curled from his nostrils. “This is not good,” he said. “No one can refrain from going to the church services.”

  “Daniel,” the bishop began, glaring at him from under the brim of his black hat, “do you plan on leaving the church?”

  Daniel’s words wedged in his throat. Balanced between two worlds—the plain and the modern—at some point he’d be forced to make a choice. Reverend Yoder, during this time, still kept his icy blue eyes on the ground. He seemed as ill at ease as Daniel. More than anything, Daniel wanted to point to the reverend and shout, “You question me when you have a murderer in your midst!”

  He squeezed his hands into fists to temper his bitterness. Ravens rustling in the rafters overhead took his mind from the senseless and unkind contemplations pattering through his head. Inhaling, he said, “No, Reverend, I do not plan on leaving the church.”

  “You are driving a truck, and word is you carry a cell phone outside of work,” Bishop Hershberger said. “These are things that make us question your sincerity. And no one has any knowledge of what your life is like in Montana. You cannot live by your own rules, Daniel.”

  “We think it best if perhaps you move back to Henry,” Reverend Gingerich said.

  Daniel recognized the sneeze of his favorite buggy horse, Gertrude. For a moment, he appreciated the distraction. It allowed him precious seconds to organize his thoughts.

  “I am not sure I can do that.”

  “Then you need to move closer to the Rose Crossing settlement,” Reverend Troyer said. “You need to seek guidance from the bishop there, and from the community.”

  “You are on perilous ground, Daniel,” Bishop Hershberger said. “I do not wish to threaten you with the shunning, but you must realize it is a possibility.”

  “There will be no need for the shunning,” Daniel said, pursing his lips.

  “I recall the day I baptized you,” the bishop said, softening his tone. “I believed you were as sturdy as anyone to uphold the Ordnung. Now….” He lowered his eyes and shook his head. “Now, I am almost ashamed to think I might have been wrong.”

  “You haven’t been wrong.” Daniel slid into English, needing to stand up for his character. “I always uphold the Ordnung. I’ll always stand by it, wherever I live, whatever I do.”

  “Then how do you explain the truck, the fancy ways?” Bishop Hershberger said, falling into English also.

  Daniel could not explain. He didn’t like to have so many contraptions. But, like for many Amish, avoiding them came not so easily.

  “I live as plainly in Montana as I did here.” He grinned, realizing the partial truth to this. “I used a cell phone when I worked at the family’s furniture shop here in town, and we had a computer too. You permitted it.”

  “That isn’t the same thing,” Bishop Hershberger said. “We permit computers only for our businesses. Without some technology, we would have no means to compete with the Englishers.”

  “I use my contraptions back in Montana for business too,” Daniel said. “I use the truck to carry the furniture I make to the service in Kalispell that drop ships my orders.”

  “You drove your truck many miles from Montana to attend your brother’s wedding. How is that business?” Reverend Troyer’s bushy eyebrows knitted together. “It’s also the same English vehicle that will take you back to Montana, to some cabin hidden away in the woods.”

  “Using contraptions like cell phones and computers aren’t supposed to steal you away from your family and community, Daniel,” the bishop said. “And we’ve never permitted the use of modern vehicles unless it pertained to work for an English employer.”

  Fishing for the right words to defend himself, anything to stave off their burning need to control him, Daniel pressed his beard tight to his neck. Hollow thoughts stomped through his mind. At a loss as to what to say, Daniel slumped forward.

  Bishop Hershberger returned to speaking in Pennsylvania German. “There are many things here I do not like, Daniel. You made a pledge to the church, and we are uncertain you are serious about committing to it. We thought long and hard on this, and apparently we have more thinking to do.” Holding his head firm, he gestured to the ministers to his left. “For now, we will go. But Daniel, we will be back to speak with you some more. To remind you, the shunning looms near.”

  AIDEN, needing to use the only bathroom in the house, shuffled past Rachel and Samuel’s bedroom downstairs. The door was closed, but he heard their voices coming from the other side. Despite his better decorum, intuition told him to stay put. A few feet from the door, he listened in, his ears burning.

  They were not yelling, but clearly they were having a disagreement. Samuel’s voice was stern, sterner than Aiden had ever heard, even when he reprimanded the children. They spoke in Pennsylvania German but mixed with English, making their words more complicated to understand. From what he pieced together, enough of what they said made him uncomfortable. A bitter taste burned the back of his tongue.

  Something that sounded like a steam iron hissed in the background. Rachel was probably ironi
ng clothes with her gas-powered iron while she and Samuel shared words. He smiled inwardly. The Amish always found ways to stay busy, even while arguing.

  They were discussing something about Daniel and the ministers having a confrontation. About their anxiety over what might happen if Daniel failed to say the proper things. Rachel sounded frantic, but Samuel consoled her. She seemed troubled about many things. Samuel grew frustrated. What Aiden heard next shook him.

  Samuel said, “You should not have asked da mann in’s haus. Ich vill that he gasta today.” Aiden loosely interpreted this in his mind to mean, “We were wrong to have asked him to come back. Now he is in our house and disrupting our lives.” Although he never mentioned Aiden by name, he could not help but shiver, knowing Samuel had been referring to him.

  Like a fox, he slinked into the bathroom, took care of business, and quietly hurried past Rachel and Samuel’s shut door, slipping on his boots and grabbing his coat and gloves before dodging outside. He stopped short on the stone footpath when he noticed two unfamiliar buggies in the driveway. The snow, falling steadily, dusted the buggies with a thin coat. The horses were still hitched to the buggies, so he figured their owners would not be long.

  He crept to the barn, looking for Daniel. He halted. Daniel, his back to Aiden, was surrounded by the four ministers from Mark’s wedding, including Reverend Yoder. He sensed an air of seriousness. Was this what Rachel and Samuel had fretted about in their bedroom? Were the ministers finally confronting Daniel? They appeared on the verge of leaving. Trapped no matter which way he turned, drama swirling around him like the snow, Aiden backed away with light steps and waited behind the buggy shed. He peeked at the ministers climbing into their buggies. After they disappeared down the lane, Aiden approached Daniel, who had wandered outside the barn.

  His coffee-brown eyes told Aiden he did not wish to speak. Aiden watched him silently grab three boxes from the front seat of the Suburban and carry them into the woodshop. Aiden followed after him.

  The smell of dry sawdust forced Aiden to step back. This was Daniel’s world. Even back in Montana, he seldom wandered into Daniel’s woodshop. Drawing in breath, he gazed around at the old-fashioned tools hanging from the walls and set on top of shelves. Daniel had already begun planing an oak plank, his downturned face stern.