The Captive Heart (11 page)

It didn't take a week; it only took two sleepless nights. On the third day, after the singing on Sunday night, in the darkness out behind the buggy shed, Miriam gave Micah his answer.

“Jah,” she said. “In the fall, I will marry you.”

He swept her off her feet, swung her around three times and gave her a hearty kiss before he put her back down. Afterward, they went back to the house straight-faced, as if nothing had happened. It would remain a closely guarded secret between a man and his betrothed. It was tradition.

Miriam and Micah only saw each other once or twice a week that winter. The cold season was neither as long nor as deep as it had been back in Ohio, so there was always work to do. The Shrock homestead was far from finished, and Micah's father kept him busy turning fields and building fences. The men made two more trips into the mountains for timber that winter. Ira Shrock and his strong sons worked every day until after dark, ambitiously fencing in more than a hundred acres of pasture for the raising of beef cattle.

Because Domingo worked for her father, Miriam saw him every day, though she tried not to. He remained polite and distant, almost cool toward her, but once in a while he turned away from her a little too quickly and she could have sworn she saw the glimmer of regret in his dark eyes.

In March of that year the Coblentz family arrived with three big wagonloads of farm equipment and household goods, and everyone pitched in to help them get a foothold in the valley.

In spite of all the busyness, there was love in the air that spring. The oldest Coblentz daughter, a blond-haired blue-eyed girl named Cora, was unattached. Aaron went up to Saltillo with Caleb to bring the Coblentzes to Paradise Valley, and on the return trip Cora sat next to him all the way home. By the time their little wagon train pulled into the Benders' driveway Aaron was smitten. Before the wagons were even unloaded he asked Cora if he could court her, and she said yes. Startled by his great good fortune, Aaron smiled for a week.

Miriam's younger brother Harvey began courting Lovina Hershberger that spring as well, so it seemed that despite the odds all the courting-age teenagers in the valley were suddenly paired off.

The Coblentzes brought nine children with them, most of whom were school age, and Miriam's school grew. The Paradise Valley settlement felt like a viable community now, and it thrived in other ways, too. Miriam's older sister Mary bore another son that spring, and Emma's belly swelled with her third child in as many years.

Life was good.

Chapter 14

T
he spring flew past in a flurry of work and busyness, the days growing long and the corn growing tall. Before they knew it high summer was upon them and it was time for the much-anticipated large group to arrive from Ohio.

In mid-July five families came down together with all their kids and dogs and horses and chickens and furniture, and overnight the settlement doubled in size. There were supposed to have been six families, but the minister had not come with them as planned. The next day the eldest of the new arrivals, a man named Roman J. Miller, addressed the whole crowd after church services to dispel rumors and make sure everyone understood what had happened.

Miller was a tall thin man with a long black beard and a deep booming voice. He stood up in front of them and said, “As you all know, Ervin Kuhns, an ordained minister, was supposed to come with us, along with his whole family, but he got left back. His uncle Abe got kicked in the head by a horse and laid there two weeks, but he didn't pass yet, so Ervin and his family stayed behind to wait. Now, they're still gonna come, but I'm thinking they'll be along a couple weeks later than the rest of us, that's all.”

Emma's third child came into the world later that summer, a healthy boy with a head full of wavy hair. Mamm was down with her back pain when the baby came, so Miriam went with Rachel to Emma's house to help with sterilizing, boiling and ironing. Delivering babies had never been one of Miriam's strengths. Rachel, on the other hand, despite being young and single, was fast building a reputation as a natural and instinctive midwife. She seemed to have a sixth sense. The birthing went smoothly, a first for Emma. Her two earlier pregnancies had been troublesome. Her first baby was born prematurely, and she almost lost the second one early on.

On a bright summer afternoon, while all the men were in the fields, Emma lay holding her new son as her two sisters cleaned up the room. Her honey-colored hair spread over the pillow and her blue eyes shined with pride as she gazed on the tightly wrapped son sleeping on her breast.

“I thought he would never go to sleep,” she said. “This one has a mind of his own. Levi wants to call him Will, and now that I see how he is, I'm thinking it's the right name for him.”

Miriam tied the corners of a sheet around the soiled laundry and dropped the bundle next to the door, then came and sat in a kitchen chair next to Emma's bed. Rachel lowered herself onto the foot of the bed, folding her hands in her lap.

“You two can go home now,” Emma said. “Really, I'll be fine, and Levi will be in soon.”

Miriam shook her head. “We'll stay by you. You have
three
babies in this house now.” Mose, Emma's firstborn, was not quite two years old. “You're going to need us for a day or two.”

Rachel nodded, and made no sign of leaving.

Emma stared at Rachel for a moment and said, “Child, what's wrong? I know you're tired, but you haven't said three words all day and that's not like you at all. Is there something troubling you?”

Rachel looked down at the hands folded in her lap and answered quietly, “Jake and I are thinking about getting married in the fall, after the minister comes.”

Miriam's eyes widened. “Rachel, it doesn't surprise me that you and Jake will be married, but I
am
surprised you would come right out and tell us. Your wedding plans are supposed to be secret.”

“Pfff. How is it a secret with us? Everybody knows already that Jake and I will be married one day. It's just maybe a little earlier than they thought.”

“Jah, you're only a child yet,” Emma said.

“I'm eighteen, Emma.”

“No! Oh, how quickly the years pass! My little sister . . .
eighteen years old
. But Mir's right, girl—why are you telling us this now? You must have a reason.”

“Emma, you and me have always told each other everything, and Miriam needs to know anyway because I want her to be one of my
navahuckers
.” This was no great surprise either, but Miriam smiled warmly and reached out to take her little sister's hand.

“But there's another thing,” Rachel said. “Emma, I told you this because . . . well, because I want to ask you about something else. Something secret that no one ever talks about. I don't know if I did right.”

The worried look in Rachel's eyes spread to both her sisters. Emma spoke first.

“What is it, child? What have you done?”

“I . . . I told Jake there would be no bed courtship.”

“I see.”

A little silence fell, and Miriam knew the darkness in Emma's face was not disapproval—it was remorse. Emma had kept it secret that she was with child when she and Levi married, but her sisters knew. Though it was done quietly and never discussed, bed courtship was unquestioned in Ohio. It was a matter of practicality in a place where the winters were brutally cold. On a Saturday night, a boy might have to drive an open buggy ten or fifteen miles home in single-digit temperatures, only to drive back the next morning for church. The houses were uninsulated, and beds were at a premium with so many children. Bed courtship began as a practical way for a courting couple to keep warm, but for some it opened the door to temptation.

“I know it was normal back home, but I don't think it's necessary here because the farms are close together and it's not so cold,” Rachel said, rushing her words defensively. Then she lowered her eyes and added, “But mostly, I was afraid.”

“Because of me?” Emma asked gently.

Rachel nodded.

“Now I understand. Is that what you said to him—that it was because of what happened to me?”

“Oh,
no
!” Rachel's fingers came to her lips. “I wouldn't speak about that to anyone, Emma. I told him the bed would be too crowded because there were already two of us in it.”

Miriam slapped her shoulder, laughing quietly. “You didn't really say that.”

“I did! There's not enough beds as it is. Do you want to sleep on the floor with the scorpions?” This was only half jest. Miriam had found a scorpion in the kitchen just yesterday—one of the pale, lethal kind.

“No, I don't,” Miriam agreed. “What did he say?”

Rachel chuckled. “He just smiled and said okay. Jake has a way of looking right into me, and he understands. I felt bad, then, because I'm not sure it ever even crossed his mind.”

“You're a lucky girl,” Emma said. “But I have to ask you, does Jake know about . . . what happened to me?”

Rachel shrugged. “I don't know. He has never said, but Jake is no fool. Could be he's just too polite to talk about it. Anyway, he loves you just like we do, and he would never speak ill of you.”

Emma stared at her younger sister for a moment and then said, “That's good, too. You are wise beyond your years, Rachel. Gott has blessed you, and I'm glad you've found such a man as Jake. He'll make a good husband.”

Emma's eyes turned to Miriam, and there was a knowing in them. Miriam had remained awfully quiet. “Well, what about you and Micah?”

Miriam blushed, shaking her head demurely. It was a deeply embarrassing question that only Emma would dare to ask, but it was also true that only Emma would get an answer.

“No.”

“If he asks, what will you tell him?”

Miriam squirmed, scratching her head, avoiding Emma's steady gaze. Then she looked up, grinned sheepishly and said, “I'll just tell him the bed is too crowded already.”

Chapter 15

T
he following Saturday afternoon Micah and Miriam doubled up with Jake and Rachel in the surrey and went to the hacienda village. Long before they reached the village they heard singing, and as they drew closer they could see a crowd gathered by the cattle pens on the outskirts of town. Big, bright red and white letters arced like a comet across the side of a large paneled wagon, advertising
Dr. Lothar's Traveling Medicine Show, Prestidigitator and Hypnotist
. The sign was apparently all it took to hypnotize Micah. He forgot all about going to the dry goods store and steered the buggy toward the cattle pens.

Dr. Lothar was a skinny little man with a great big voice. He wore a pinstriped three-piece suit that somehow managed to look threadbare and elegant at the same time, and a bowler hat cocked a little too sideways. There was a stage built onto the back of his wagon, and as Miriam, Micah, Rachel and Jake walked up Dr. Lothar was parading back and forth, doing card tricks and telling jokes in bad Spanish with a German accent. He invited a Mexican boy up onto his small stage and made him pick a card, pulled the card from behind the boy's ear, then pulled a coin from behind the other ear. Next, he drew a live dove out of a bandanna he borrowed from the boy.

The crowd was hooked, and so was Micah. He couldn't take his eyes off Dr. Lothar as he finished his magic routine, sent the smiling child offstage with a piece of hard candy and launched into a florid speech on the countless virtues of Dr. Lothar's Amber Nectar, a patent medicine in a stoppered bottle that he held up to show the crowd.

Caleb Bender had long ago taught his daughters that men worth listening to didn't need to shout, and real miracles were never sold for money, so Miriam ignored Dr. Lothar and looked around to see who else was there. Scattered through the crowd she spotted half the young Amish in Paradise Valley, most of whom were hanging on Lothar's every word. She caught a glimpse of Kyra and her two boys, and she figured Domingo must be around someplace as well.

Dr. Lothar claimed his Amber Nectar, made from an ancient recipe whose secret a thousand Aztec warriors had died to preserve, would cure everything from hiccups to measles, make rheumatism vanish like the morning dew, grow hair on bald heads and make gnarled old women feel like the sultry señoritas they remembered from their golden youth. Why, he couldn't prove it, for it had happened in a cattle town far away from here in the distant land of Wyoming, but Lothar swore he had once seen this very same potion bring a dead cat back to life.

By the time the huckster finished his speech Micah was already elbowing his way toward the back of the wagon, where Dr. Lothar's lovely assistant pulled bottles of Amber Nectar from a box and offered them for sale.

“What is Micah doing?” Aaron had come up behind them with his girlfriend, Cora, who smiled and said hello. Aaron's hat dangled from her hands. He wasn't wearing it because he was carrying Little Amos on his shoulders.

“I think Micah went to buy a bottle of that stuff,” Miriam said. “His dat let him have a crop of his own this year, so he's got a little money.” Changing the subject, she reached up to touch fingers with Little Amos. “I see you have your helper with you today, Aaron. He's growing like ivy.”

Aaron's big hands held the child's bare feet so he couldn't fall, and Amos seemed perfectly at ease riding high on his uncle's shoulders. At nineteen months old he was already wearing Amish pants, suspenders and a flat-brimmed hat, his downy hair cut into the customary bowl shape. Little Amos smiled at Miriam, then raised his harmonica to his lips and blew a note, which set him to giggling.

“Jah, and he's learning to play, too,” Aaron said, grinning. “Mary lets me borrow him sometimes, and I thought mebbe he'd like to see the show.”

Micah came rushing back and handed Miriam a shiny bottle of Dr. Lothar's Amber Nectar. “This stuff is good for what ails you,” he said proudly.

Miriam smiled and thanked him for the gift. She couldn't help feeling a little embarrassed that Micah could be so gullible, though she managed to keep a straight face.

But Aaron, good-natured as he was, couldn't leave well enough alone. “You know, Micah, I was talking to Domingo just a minute ago—he's around here someplace—and he told me not to buy that medicine they're selling. He said it's mostly
mescal
, whatever that is.”

Jake chuckled. “Mescal is a kind of poor man's liquor the local people make from cactus juice.” Then, when Rachel shot him a questioning glance, his face darkened and he quickly added, “I've never tried it, though.”

“Jah, well,” Micah said, a little indignantly, “Domingo doesn't know everything.” He said this to Aaron, studiously avoiding Miriam's glance.

“Hey, Micah,” Jake said, standing on tiptoe to see over the crowd, “did you see the monkey?”

“What monkey?” Micah took a long look over his shoulder. Another wagon was parked near the back of Lothar's. Larger by half, this one had a big mural of zoo animals on the side.

“They got a cage with a monkey, over in the cattle pen,” Jake said, and Miriam recognized a mischievous gleam in his eye. “It costs ten pesos to get in the cage, but if you can pin the monkey you win a
hundred
pesos.”

Sure enough, Miriam could see just the edge of an iron cage in the cattle pen, partially obscured by the animal wagon. There were people gathered around it.

Micah's eyes narrowed. “How big is this monkey?”

“Oh, he's just a little thing,” Jake said. “About knee high.”

Miriam saw trouble coming. This was almost like gambling—not the sort of thing most Amishmen would even consider—but Micah harbored a measure of pride when it came to wrestling. He wandered off toward the cattle pen without another word. He might be able to
handle
trouble better than Miriam, but she could see it coming from a lot further away.

She tried to call him back, but a little mariachi band had cranked up on the stage in front of Dr. Lothar's wagon, just four Mexicans in gilded sombreros and matching silver-studded outfits—a guitar, trumpet, fiddle and squeeze-box. They drowned her out, and Micah never looked back. She ran after him, dodging through the crowd.

By the time she caught up with him, Micah had made it all the way into the cattle pen and was listening with rapt attention while Dr. Lothar shouted the praises of “this wondrous ape.” The black iron cage was about fifteen feet square by eight feet high, and in the middle of the space sat a chimpanzee. He wasn't moving or anything, just sitting calmly in the dust of the cattle pen with his arms draped over his knees, staring straight ahead as if he was bored. Miriam looked around and saw that the others had followed her to see what would happen. She grabbed Micah's arm and dragged him off to the side, where no one would hear.

“Micah, don't do this! It's foolish.”

“Och, how hard can it be, Mir? Why, you heard Jake—it's just a little monkey. He don't weigh no more than fifty pounds. All I have to do is put him on his back—”

“No! These people are cheaters, liars. It's a trick, Micah. They'll take your money and you might even get hurt. Don't do this!”

He took her shoulders, smiled a patient, fatherly smile and explained. “Miriam, a hundred pesos will buy a few acres of land.
My own land
, Miriam, and a house won't cost hardly anything with all the neighbors we have now. We'll have a good start on our own farm!”

She wanted to reason with him, to talk him out of it, but she had learned to read the look in his eyes. He glanced down at the green medicine bottle she held in her hands, and right then she knew it was hopeless. Aaron had injured his pride when he said Micah's “miracle elixir” was nothing but mescal. Worse, Aaron said it was Domingo who told him this. Worse still, he said it in front of Miriam. Now Micah was looking for a way to salvage his pride, and he really couldn't conceive of losing a wrestling match to such a small monkey. It was a lost cause. She already knew there was no way he would be talked out of it.

She took a deep breath and nodded curtly. “All right, then. You go wrestle that monkey.”

Aaron, Cora, Rachel and Jake gathered around Miriam and stood next to the cage to watch while Micah paid his ten pesos, rolled up his sleeves, and left his hat with Dr. Lothar.

Miriam leaned close to Jake and whispered, “I'm a little angry with you just now. You put him up to this, and don't you pretend for one minute that you didn't do it on purpose.”

The mischievous grin crept back onto Jake's face. “What? It's just a little monkey, Mir. What can go wrong?”

“Plenty. If it's so easy, why didn't you go in there yourself?”

A shrug. “I don't have ten pesos.” This much was true, but he still had that mischievous gleam in his eye. “Anyways, Micah's bigger than me.”

A crowd had gathered by the time Lothar opened the cage door and, with a sweeping bow, ushered Micah into the cage.

Micah circled the monkey in a half crouch, slowly, arms away from his body, looking for an opening.

The monkey didn't move. He paid no attention as the big Amishman eased around behind him, but when Micah was about to make his rush the chimp stood up, turned to face him and backed away a couple of steps. They stared at each other, Micah in his crouch and the monkey standing on all fours, leaning on his knuckles in the loose dirt of the cattle pen.

Micah's eyes narrowed, and a little smile curled the corners of his lips.

Jake leaned close to Miriam and whispered, “I know what he's thinking. All he has to do is put the monkey on his back, so he's going to rush him and try to sweep his legs.”

Jake was right. This was exactly what Micah tried to do, but apparently the chimp had seen it before. The instant Micah started to move forward the monkey charged. He leaped through the air and landed on Micah's chest, wrapping his hairy legs around his waist before he could react.

Micah tried to sling the monkey off, but those powerful hands grabbed his shoulders and began to shake him. In a blinding flurry, the chimp shook Micah so hard his arms flopped like a rag doll and his head danced madly on his shoulders.

Micah managed to stay on his feet but he lost his balance and stumbled backward into the bars. The chimp clung to him, shaking harder than ever, and Micah's head crashed into the bars. He staggered sideways and his head played the bars of the cage like a xylophone.

Micah grabbed fistfuls of hair on the monkey's sides and pitched forward, trying to hold the beast in place long enough to fall on top of him and pin his back to the dirt, but he wasn't quick enough. The chimp leaped clear and landed on his feet. Micah hit the ground face-first and a little cloud of dust rolled out from around him.

The monkey circled him, loping on all fours, watching.

The crowd of Mexicans laughed and shouted, but Miriam couldn't tell whether they were cheering for Micah or the ape.

Micah drew himself up onto his elbows and shook his head. The monkey kept circling, even when Micah got to his knees. The attack didn't come until he rose to his feet. Still dazed, Micah had no chance to fend off the lightning charge of the ape. Before he knew it the monkey's legs had locked around his waist again, his arms were flopping, the back of his head clanging against the bars.

As he neared the corner of the cage Micah tried a desperate spin move, but once again the monkey was too quick. Micah hit the ground face-first, his arms empty. After a moment he raised his head and peeked around to see where the little demon had gone.

The chimp had leaped onto the bars and scrambled up to the ceiling, where he swung casually by one hand, watching Micah spit dirt.

Micah dragged himself up to a crawling position. The monkey dropped nimbly to the ground and circled him again, loping on his knuckles, watching.

Micah looked up—not at the chimp, but at Miriam. It was only the briefest glance, and then he hung his head. Beaten.

The crowd fell silent. A few even walked away, unable to watch anymore.

The big Amishman didn't raise his head again, nor did he try to get to his feet, because he had already seen what the ape would do if he stood up. He would not get up again. Crawling toward the cage door on hands and knees, he motioned for Dr. Lothar to let him out. He'd had enough.

In that moment Miriam's heart broke. Her fingers came up to cover her lips and she could not keep the tears from her eyes. Even though Micah had brought this on himself, in the end she knew he didn't really do it to win a hundred pesos. He did it to win
her
.

What broke her heart was that he had failed.