Fearless Hope: A Novel (17 page)

“Will the
Englisch
never see the wisdom in putting away their weapons and living at peace with their fellow man?” Ivan shook his head, as amazed with the
Englisch
preoccupation with war as she. “It is the one thing upon which your father and I have never disagreed—the necessity of our Amish and Mennonite churches continuing to hold fast to our practice of nonresistance.”

“I do not know how Logan feels about war, all I know is that he is enjoying writing a book about it.”

“Perhaps it would be better if he tended to his fields.”

“Perhaps it would be better if you met the man and told him yourself,” she said. “I believe he would profit from your advice,
and my father refuses to have any input into the running of this farm. He says it hurts his heart too much.”

“No doubt.”

They were both silent, pondering the tragedy of her father’s weakness, then Ivan heaved a sigh and said, “Now is as good a time as any to meet the man who lives across the fence from me. Will you go get him?”

“I think you will like him,” Hope said. “He pays me more than my work is worth. He allows me to bring the children with me, and he has forbidden me to climb on chairs to clean the high cabinets until after the baby comes. Sometimes there is even extra pay in my envelope, which he calls a ‘bonus.’ ”

“And this man who pays you well . . . he leaves you alone?”

She could hear the suspicion in Ivan’s voice.

“He is very respectful,” she answered. “I would not continue working for him if there was the slightest problem.”

“Then I would be pleased to meet him,” Ivan said.

•  •  •

From the upstairs window, he watched Hope hanging out laundry. She was using the gasoline-powered wringer washer she had asked him to buy. He could not believe how rough and stiff his towels were—he had never used wind-dried towels before, but there were trade-offs. He also had never slept beneath such sweet-smelling sheets.

Actually, there was another trade-off—getting to watch Hope hang the laundry from an upstairs window like he was doing now. The woman
was a study in gracefulness, even while engaged in the most mundane tasks. Who would ever have thought that the mere domestic task of pinning sheets to a clothesline could be so mesmerizing?

Hope made it a thing of beauty, even in early March, when the fields and trees were still gray with late winter. She was
wearing a dark blue dress, with the sleeves folded back over a black sweater, and a simple white kerchief holding her hair back.

Her pregnancy had become quite noticeable beneath her modest clothing. He saw her stop several times, put a hand upon the small of her back, and stretch. It was obvious that she was growing uncomfortable with the extra weight of the baby.

He remembered back to the day when she had confessed to him that she was pregnant. She had been afraid that he would not allow her to work for him anymore, and he had told her that he wouldn’t think of letting her go.

It surprised him how destitute he had felt at the mere idea of her not showing up every day. Hope and her children had brought light and life into his life in many small ways. It delighted him when he found a small toy tractor beneath his kitchen table and knew that Adam had been playing there. Once, he found a sheet of paper where Carrie had drawn a picture of a horse. That picture now hung above his desk. It was purple and made him smile every time he glanced at it.

Hope had seemingly gotten over her inhibitions about being there while he was at home. She had worked for him now for nearly four months and was no longer skittish. To make sure she stayed that way, he spent a lot of time working in his office whenever she was there. To hang on to her, he also routinely overpaid her to make it possible for her to survive without having to take on more hours somewhere else.

Sometimes, while he was in his office, Hope would forget that he was in the house and she would sing as she went about her tasks. Of all the sounds in the world, he decided, a woman singing as she went about doing her housework had to be one of the most comforting. He had never heard Marla sing and didn’t know if she could. She tended to listen to some sort of hybrid techno music when she was home. Carrie and Adam’s
voices laughing and chattering while at play were also music to his ears.

One of the biggest revelations he had experienced since moving here was that a pregnant woman could be so beautiful. He watched her, holding that tiny life within her, and felt a strong desire to protect her. It was everything he could do not to run outside and carry the heavy basket of wet clothes that he saw her lugging to the clothesline.

He realized that he was falling into the habit of comparing everything he saw Hope doing to the life he knew Marla was living, and his fiancée somehow always got the short end of the comparison.

In the real world—the world not of the Amish—Hope would have had many options when her husband died. In many cases, there would have been at least some life insurance. For an Amish woman, there was none. A woman in her circumstances would have qualified for food stamps and welfare. He knew from talking with Hope that she and her people accepted no government help.

In regular society, she would have qualified for Medicaid for the children. Hope barely seemed to realize it existed. Instead, she treated her children’s colds and small illnesses with various elixirs that she concocted. He’d asked about doctors, and she’d explained that she tried to use them as little as possible. Not for religious reasons, but because of the cost. He was grateful that she had the inexpensive birthing clinic to go to.

He found her and her way of life utterly fascinating, and he wondered why. Was it because it was so totally different from anything he’d ever known? Or was it because of a deeper pull—that of a culture trying to live upright and godly lives in a society that they felt was falling to pieces around them?

This baby was also beginning to consume his thoughts. He kept wondering if it would be a girl or a boy. He wondered how
Hope would manage after it came. He admired her more and more as the baby grew and he realized that even under hard circumstances, Hope was happy about its impending arrival.

Marla would have swept it from her life. There was no doubt in his mind. Babies were messy, she’d often said. They smelled bad. They ruined figures and careers.

Hope treated the idea of having this baby as though it were a holy thing. He had asked if she was worried.

“Oh no. It will be so good to have a new baby in the house.” Her eyes lit up every time she mentioned it.

It was as though he were watching an entirely different species from the one among which he had lived.

It occurred to him that few of his and Marla’s friends in New York had children. Those who did tended not to be invited to social events once the child appeared unless they had no issues with hiring a babysitter. It was easier, Marla explained as she’d made out a guest list, not to be bothered with the presence of children when adults were trying to have conversations. He had to admit, the few children he had been around as an adult tended to be annoying, demanding little things.

What he saw between Hope and her children was entirely different. Hope, in spite of the grief he knew she still bore, noticeably enjoyed her children’s company.

Five-year-old Carrie was a tiny replica of Hope, and he was entranced by the picture the two of them made together as the little girl helped her mother at whatever task Hope had set for herself that day. If her mother was washing windows, then Carrie handed her dry rags for polishing them. If Hope was washing dishes, then Carrie dried each dish and carefully set it on the kitchen table for her mother to put away in the cabinets.

The whole time they worked, he was treated to the music of Hope’s gentle conversation with her little daughter. She spoke to her in what she referred to as German, but what he heard
others refer to as Pennsylvania Deutsch. He had always thought German an unattractive, guttural language, but when Hope talked with her children, it became something lovely.

The relationship between mother and daughter was mirrored in the bits of interaction he saw between Hope and her own mother, Rose. There was a mutual respect in the way they spoke to each other. Even when they were speaking in German, he could tell from the tone of their voices that it was respectful and kind.

Adam was given more masculine tasks to do, carrying scraps of food out to the compost pile Hope had started, or taking kitchen trash to the garbage can out back.

Hope represented a way of life to him that was so alien and yet so compelling, he was beginning to have a hard time staying away when he knew that she would be at the house.

He refused to see this as a danger to himself. The cultural gap between the two of them was entirely too great to harbor any romantic thoughts, and besides, he was committed to Marla. Eventually the contracted book would be finished, his need for this extended period of retreat over, and he would go back to his old life. He and Marla had patched things up, and she’d begun to move forward with their wedding plans. She had set a date for October. Her design firm was going through a dry spell and she was using the extra time to create a memorable wedding. She had recently purchased an elegant black wedding dress. Black was the “new white,” she had informed him.

He didn’t really care what she did for their wedding. It was hard to muster any enthusiasm for it. Marla told him that his role would be to nod his head, look handsome, and murmur agreeable words. She said it in a joking voice, but he knew she was not entirely joking.

Often, he reminded himself of Marla’s good qualities. She was smart. She was witty. She was elegant. She was beautiful
and fashionable. She could turn an apartment into a work of art. When she was in the right mood, she could light up a room with her smile.

As Logan stood at the window musing about his upcoming marriage while admiring the picture Hope and Carrie made hanging laundry together, he saw his neighbor, a man in his early sixties, walk through the pasture and approach the fence line near Hope.

He had not yet formally met his neighbor, but the man always waved each time he drove by. The problem with living in the country was that he wasn’t always sure what the rules were. Was he supposed to go meet his neighbors first, or wait for them to meet him? His experience in the city had been that it was wise to avoid even making eye contact with strangers.

Hope glanced toward the house and saw him standing in the window. She gestured for him to come down, and he was happy to do so. Throwing down the pen with which he had been trying to make notes, he grabbed his coat and headed down the stairwell and outdoors.

L
ogan had never met anyone quite like Ivan Troyer. He wasn’t Amish, but he wasn’t exactly
Englisch
, either. He said he was Mennonite, which was yet another religion Logan knew little about.

“I used to be Amish,” Ivan explained. “The problem is, I was never a great hand with horses. Not like Hope’s father. Henry can practically talk a horse into plowing a field all by itself. He makes farming look easy. Seemed like I was always fighting with horseflies, or getting kicked or bit, and I almost got killed when a four-horse team decided to run away with me. Horses don’t like me and I don’t like them. When I turned forty, I decided that if the good Lord really wanted me to fool around with horses, He would not have invented cars and tractors.”

“I think it was Henry Ford who . . .”

“Ivan is making a joke,” Hope said. “That’s his latest Mennonite joke.
Daed
does not think it is funny.”

“Henry doesn’t think much is funny anymore,” Ivan said. “I’m worried about him.”

“He is humiliated and sorry,” Hope said. “The problem is,
nothing can be done about it. He still has to live with his decisions—even if the church and his family have forgiven him.”

“Your father is a good man,” Ivan said. “And he was a good neighbor. The best.”

Logan heard the grief in the man’s statement and wondered if he was expected to apologize for living in Hope’s family’s house. Sometimes it felt that way around here.

“Take a walk with me over to my place,” Ivan invited. “We’ll let Hope get back to her chores. I’d like for my wife to meet the man who bought the house next door . . . just for the pleasure of living beside us.”

“I didn’t . . .”

“I know.” Ivan chuckled. “You were probably passing through and fell in love with the old house. Outsiders sometimes do that here. They see the pretty farms and think they’ll find peace just by living here. I’ve talked to a couple of them. They have no idea how much sweat and tears goes into keeping those farms going. The other thing most of them can’t figure out is that peace can be found anywhere if you have Christ in your life.
Peace isn’t about pretty. It isn’t about where you live. It’s about who you live with, and who you live
for
.”

The man said this in such a matter-of-fact tone that Logan could not take offense.

Ivan’s wife, Mary, was setting food out on the table when they arrived. She was a small, round woman whose face lit up with a sweet smile when Ivan introduced them.

“You’ll have to stay for supper,” she announced. “Thanks to my husband’s hard work, we always have plenty.”

Logan was a little taken aback by the invitation. Dinner parties were one thing. Being invited to sit down and eat in someone’s home whom he’d just met—that didn’t happen in his world.

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t.”

He realized his mistake when he saw the look of disappointment on Mary’s face. The woman truly meant her invitation.

“Although . . . I suppose I could stay for a few minutes. Something smells really good.”

“I’ll set a place!” Mary whirled around and began pulling dinnerware out of a cupboard.

At that moment, an elderly woman wearing a gauzy head covering and a loose-fitting plain dress shuffled into the kitchen. “Is that you, John?”

“No, Mother. This isn’t your brother. This is our neighbor, Logan Parker.” Ivan helped her get seated. “Logan, this is my mother, Esther.”