Love Redeemed (21 page)

She demonstrated, adding chemicals and turning knobs. “Keep an eye on this doohickey right here. It tells you if you have dirty water. Also keep an eye on the temperature gauge. The health department will shut us down if we don't use hot enough water. Then no one gets paid. I got kids to feed.”

“Got it.” More or less. “Thank you.”

“I got customers waiting.” She whirled and headed for the door. “And you got dirty dishes on ten tables out there. Better get cracking.”

He had a job. Relief poured through his veins like a warm cup of kaffi. He had a job.

“Hurry up!” Lana shouted as the door slammed. “Clean forks would be good any time now.”

He grabbed a tub and followed her. She hadn't been exaggerating about the number of dirty dishes. He began to stack plates in the tub, then glasses, silverware on the side. Trash on the other side.

“You'll never get through doing it that way.” Red-headed Crystal dashed by, a plate of meatloaf in each hand. “Throw them in there. You don't have to organize them. You can do that when you put them in the racks. Move!”

He moved. Time sailed past him. His back ached first, then his feet. The skin on his hands burned from the chemicals and the heat. His shirt and pants were soaked with sweat. Every time he thought he had
caught up, more customers threw down their napkins and strolled to the cash register, leaving him with more dishes to bus and wash.

It was backbreaking work. One his mother had done for years without complaining. With a family of eight—and only three girls counting herself—it was like she ran a small restaurant. Except she did all the cooking and made everything from scratch with no electricity and no air conditioning and no fans, except the nice God-made breeze that occasionally flowed through open kitchen windows. Michael had new respect for his mother's hard work.

Even with the air conditioning on and fans blowing in the kitchen, the heat was sweltering. Sweat burned his eyes and every breath hurt his lungs.

“Ice water?” The cook, who'd introduced himself as Mack somewhere in the third hour of the shift, held up a glass. “You might want to pace yourself. You get dehydrated and you'll pass out.”

“You're not hot?”

“I'm a cook. I do this for a living. I'm used to it.”

Michael gratefully slugged down the water and went back to work. They seemed like decent people. Everyone looked him up and down real good, taking in his clothes, he suspected, but not one of them had said anything about them. Now that he had a job, he would go to a discount store and get some clothes. He would fit in better then. He only wanted to blend in, to be anonymous. Not one person here knew what he'd done and he wanted to keep it that way.

“We're closing the doors.” Oscar leaned on the counter with both hairy hands, his head bobbing in the window. “Finish up. Make sure all the pots and pans get washed and wipe down the countertops. The cooks clean the grill and the stoves. Then come out here and fill out the paperwork.”

It took yet another hour to complete those orders. By then, Michael's legs wobbled. He hadn't eaten since the previous day. His head throbbed and the people around him seemed to weave in and out. The lights flickered. Or was it his eyes closing?

He pushed through the double doors and swayed. Oscar, standing
at the register counting bills, didn't notice, but the other waitress, the red-headed bubble blower named Crystal, did. “Hey, new guy, sit.”

She tugged him into the booth. “A little heatstroke?”

“I don't know.”

She studied him with concern in blue-gray eyes made bigger by a thick black line she'd painted along the bottom of each one. She tugged on a rubber band and her curly red hair tumbled down on her shoulders. She eyed him like he was a cornered animal that might bolt. “You didn't get a lunch or a supper break, did you?”

“Was I supposed to?”

“You're not supposed to work a ten-hour shift with no breaks. Oscar should've told you.”

“I figured he knew.” Oscar scratched his bald head and kept counting. “Anybody who's ever had a job knows that.”

“Right.”

Funny way to talk to a boss. “He's my uncle.” Crystal grinned as if reading Michael's mind. “His bark is worse than his bite. I'm bringing you a hamburger and fries. On the house. Consider it a celebration for your new job.”

“Don't be giving away the food.” Oscar licked the tip of his index finger and went back to counting one-dollar bills.

“It's leftovers. You're gonna give them to the homeless guys out in the alley anyway.” Crystal waved away the objection. “Drink this water and I'll be right back. Don't move.”

He couldn't have moved if he tried. In a moment Crystal brought him a glass of lemonade and a plate heaping with French fries and a massive hamburger loaded with lettuce, tomato, onion, and pickle. She proceeded to sit down across from him and watch him with great interest while he ate.

“So you're Amish, right?”

He nodded, his mouth full of the best hamburger he'd ever eaten. A little pink in the middle, its juice ran onto his hands. He grabbed a paper napkin and sopped it up.

“My mom and I went to Lancaster once before she wigged out and
left me and my daddy in a trailer park on the south side. Are you like those Amish?”

“I don't know. I don't know anyone from Pennsylvania.”

“You're Missouri Amish?”

“Kansas originally, but now, yes.” Where was this going? “I live—lived—up by New Hope.”

“I think the little girls in the long dresses and bonnets are so cute.”

“Prayer kapps. They're called prayer kapps.” Lydia had been cute in her purple dress and small prayer kapp. The hamburger caught in his throat. He swallowed hard. “They look okay.”

“Why are you working in a diner?”

She asked a lot of questions. So much for being anonymous. He would go to Kmart and buy clothes. He stuffed two more fries drenched in ketchup in his mouth and followed that with a huge bite of burger. Maybe if she could see he was busy chewing, she'd lose interest.

“I mean, you're using electricity and everything. I thought you guys didn't do that.”

He swallowed. “I have to go now.”

“No, no, you haven't finished your burger and you still need to fill out the paperwork. You want to get paid, don't you?” As if to punctuate that statement, she pulled a small wad of folded bills from her apron pocket and plopped it down on the table in front of him. “These are your tips from today. We split everything with the kitchen staff. It was a very good day. Tomorrow is Friday, so it'll probably be better. People get their paychecks on Friday.”

He fingered the pile of bills. These were the tips only. He would also get an hourly wage for his efforts. “I'll take the paperwork with me.”

“But you're coming back, right?” Her blue-gray eyes looked worried as her lips turned down. “We really need a hard worker and you definitely qualify as a hard worker. You never even took a break. Isn't that right, Uncle Oscar?”

Oscar nodded, but he didn't look up from the computer screen that sat next to the cash register.

“I'll be back. What time do I start?”

At that, Oscar's head came up. “Be here by five. You can help stock the tables and prep food before we open at six. We get a good breakfast crowd from the guys working at the furniture factory. Don't be late.”

“No, sir.”

He pocketed the bills, grabbed up the stack of forms, and slid from the booth. “Thank you.”

Oscar nodded, as distracted as ever.

“We'll see you tomorrow, bright and early.” Crystal sounded thrilled at the idea. “Maybe you can show me how to make shoo-fly pie or those whoopie pie things. Our customers would love that. I'd like to increase our dessert offerings—”

“Crystal, let the poor kid go in peace. Can't you see he's dragging his tail?”

Relieved at Oscar's intervention, Michael hustled through the double doors and headed for the motel. The door thunked behind him and he glanced back to see Crystal waving at him as she locked it and turned off the flashing neon light. The help wanted sign was gone.

He managed to raise his arm and wave back.

Shoo-fly pie. She really thought he knew how to bake a pie? He chuckled. Then slammed to a stop. It was the first time he'd laughed in a long time.

Despite his exhaustion he enjoyed the walk back to the motel. The air felt cool on his damp face. A smattering of clouds floated in the sky just beyond the buildings that shot up on both sides of the street. The sun disappeared behind those buildings, on its way home to the horizon. The earth was still out there, even in this city.

He had a job. That's what counted.

Washing dishes.

He had a job.

He could still look for another job, but at least he could eat cheap. And the daily tips would help with groceries and clothes until that first paycheck came in.

He opened the door and stepped inside his motel room. The wheezing air conditioning unit in the wall under a long window spewed tepid
air. He sat in the green padded chair. The sun peeking through the dusty blinds began to disappear.

The room darkened. He remained seated, staring at his hands on his knees. The bed was a few feet away, but he was too tired to get up. Not just physically tired, although every muscle in his body screamed with exhaustion. His mind had been racing for days on end, trying to figure out what to do next, how to keep going, where to go, and what to say. And now it had finally stopped. He thought of nothing, felt nothing.

Getting a job had been his goal. Now he had one.

What came next?

A clock on the wall over the TV set
ticked, ticked, ticked
. He could hear his own breathing in tandem. In and out. In and out. Finally, after a while, he tottered to his feet and trudged across the room in the dark. He fumbled until his fingers felt the plastic plate near the door. With a flip of the switch, his life plunged in a new direction in the glaring artificial light.

Chapter 17

K
atie tugged the dress from the hook in the little girls' bedroom where Lydia had left it the morning they'd rushed from the house to pile into the van, anxious for their vacation at the lake to begin. She held it up and examined the creases to make sure it didn't bear any stains. Lydia always had grubby hands. Katie couldn't give a stained dress away. This one appeared pristine. Surprising. Nothing about Lydia had been pristine. She liked to play in the dirt and chase the cats and climb trees to play with the squirrels and the birds. A child who never sat still. Like Phoebe. Katie swallowed the lump in her throat and folded the dress in half and then again before she handed it to Emma, who added it to the scant pile of clothes.

Emma smoothed the small stack of blue, green, and lilac dresses on the double bed squeezed in next to the crib where Sarah lay on her back batting her fat hands at a plastic pig that had belonged to Elam instead of napping as she should be. “Are you sure you don't want to keep these dresses? One day they'll fit Sarah.”

Katie turned back to the hooks, not wanting her friend to see her face. She leaned toward the open window, inhaling the scent of cut grass. The sound of the mower being pushed by Elam in the front yard calmed her. Ordinary sounds of life going on. She didn't want to admit she couldn't bear to think of putting these clothes, once belonging to her dead daughter, on the very much alive and breathing roly-poly
body of her youngest child. She turned back and faced Emma. “Too long. They'll be eaten by moths by then.”

Emma nodded and winced. Her hand went to her swollen middle. “
Ach
, this one is using my stomach for a trampoline.”

“A boy, you think?” Katie tried to smile. “Strong legs?”

“Maybe. Or a girl practicing somersaults.” Emma sat on the edge of the bed. “Is it too soon to think of having another? For you, I mean.”

Katie moved to the window, seeking a breath of cooler air. “I hadn't thought of more. Truth be told, I thought Sarah would be the last. I don't know why. There's nothing to keep me from…”

Emma's cheeks turned pink, but she didn't look away. “Maybe you felt your time for childbearing done. Eight is a nice number.”

Now seven.

“But Gott might think differently.” Katie had no idea what Gott thought. He'd welcomed home her Lydia. It didn't make sense He'd send another in her place. How could she know or fathom His plan? “It's just that with my arthritis, childbearing is made more difficult.”

“Carrying the extra weight is hard on the joints.”

And carrying the responsibility of rearing another child was almost more than she could bear to think about. “You better get these home to Thomas. I know he wants to make a trip to Clark soon.” A Plain family there had lost all their belongings in a fire. They had four-year-old twin girls. “And don't forget the shoes.”

She ran her hand over the black leather. They were like new, having only been worn to prayer services the previous winter. Outgrown now. Lydia wouldn't need new ones.

Resolute, Katie strode toward the door.

“Katie, how are Hannah and Phoebe?”

Katie gripped the door jam and lowered her head. After a second, she forced herself to turn. “The same.”

“We don't know what Gott's plan is.” Emma eased from the bed, her hand on her hip, and crossed the room. She hugged Katie tight, despite the enormous belly between them. “But rest easy in the thought that He does have one. We don't know how this story ends, only that He will be there when it does.”

“I know.” Katie whispered. “I try.”

“Fraa, where are you?”

Silas's voice boomed from below.

“Coming.” She trudged down the hallway to the stairs and began the descent. “What's going on? Why aren't you cutting the hay?”