When Grace Sings (22 page)

Briley swallowed a chortle. Obviously Steven wasn’t trying to be funny, but he found humor in the response. So much concern over a few photographs! How much damage could looking at pictures of a bunch of men repairing a barn do? It seemed a little silly, and he fought the temptation to say so. “Betcha that’s kept you out of trouble over the years.”

The young man gave him an odd look. Then he turned toward a pair of men—Mr. Ohr and today’s preacher—approaching with the photographs. The other men exited the church, and Briley expected Steven to follow them. Instead, he stayed put, his head low but obviously listening.

Ohr placed a short stack of photographs in Briley’s hand. “These are fine.” The preacher kept hold of the larger stack. Ohr gestured toward them. “These, though, we’d rather you didn’t use. So if you’ll tell me how much it cost you to print them, we’ll pay you that amount and then burn them.”

He reached for the stack of photos, but the preacher pulled them back slightly. Briley raised one eyebrow. “If you’re going to reimburse me, I need to know how many are there.”

“Seventy-two.”

He gawked at the man. Out of the ninety images he’d printed, they’d only approved eighteen? “What’s wrong with them?”

The two men exchanged a glance. The preacher spoke. “Some showed full front view faces. Others seemed designed to draw attention to a man’s strength or muscles. Some just included men who didn’t wish to be photographed. How much do we owe you?”

Briley stifled a frustrated huff. He’d printed them at a one-hour kiosk in a Wichita drugstore, which added the equivalent of four gallons of fuel to the bill, but he stuck to the photo cost. “Fifteen cents per photograph.” He pulled out his phone and brought up the calculator. “Seventy-two times fifteen is—”

“Ten dollars and eighty cents,” Steven said.

Briley poked in the numbers and punched the equal symbol. He looked at Steven in surprise. “You’re right. How’d you figure that so fast?”

The man shrugged. “I taught myself shortcuts. Instead of multiplying by fifteen, I multiplied by ten—that got me seven hundred twenty, or seven dollars and twenty cents. Five is half of ten, so I halved that amount to get the three dollars and sixty cents. I added the two sums together for the final figure.” He shrugged again. “It goes quick in my head.” His tone held not an ounce of boastfulness.

“Huh …” Briley blew out a breath, carried on a chuckle. “I wish I’d learned those shortcuts. Then I wouldn’t have to use this.” He waved his phone, the calculator still showing on the screen.

“I could teach you.” For the first time interest sparked in Steven’s eyes. “If you want. For those days you don’t have … that.” He glanced at the phone.

The preacher cleared his throat. “Do you want the tax, too?”

Briley grinned and pocketed his phone. “If Steven wants to figure it.” To his surprise Steven ducked his head and released a short laugh. Briley said, “No, that’s fine. In fact, you don’t need to pay me at all. It’s a business deduction for me, so I’ll get it back eventually anyway.”

The pair of men frowned, and Ohr said, “Are you sure? We don’t want to cheat you.”

No, they just wanted to rob him of the privilege of using his own photographs. “It’s fine.” Briley slipped the few approved photos in his shirt pocket.

The two gave identical nods. They turned to the rack on the back wall, plucked their hats from pegs, then strode for the door. Just before leaving, Ohr turned back. “Would the two of you like to come with me for lunch? I’m going to the Pletts, and Mrs. Plett always cooks extra. You would be welcome there.”

Briley answered first. “No, thank you.” He wanted to hurry back to his computer and figure out which photographs had been deemed inappropriate. Len would surely get a kick out of their reasoning.

“Mr. Brungardt? What of you?”

“Thank you, but I have food at my house that needs to be eaten or it might spoil.”

“All right then. Good-bye.” The man departed.

Briley lifted his bomber jacket from the bench, where he’d draped it instead of using one of the pegs, and jammed his arms into the sleeves. “Guess we better get out of here, huh? Odd there’s no janitor still here to lock the door behind us.”

An amused smile played on Steven’s mouth. “A janitor? Locking the door?” He shook his head. “You don’t know much about the Old Order fellowships, do you?”

Apparently his extensive research hadn’t covered everything. Briley fought a grin. “Wanna teach me that while you teach me those math shortcuts?”

Once again Steven took Briley’s teasing seriously. “If you’d like. You can come to my house and eat sandwiches with me, and we can … talk.”

“About math?”

“And the fellowship.”

Given the man’s taciturn behavior, he’d probably tell a different tale than others in the community. Briley patted the pocket where his trusty recorder waited. “That sounds great. Lead the way, Teach.”

Steven

They ate two sandwiches each, drowned by bottles of pop they purchased at the convenience store on their way to the farm, and then dug into the muffins. Steven only had one, but Briley ate three. Since Steven didn’t have a table and chairs, they sat on upside-down buckets from the barn and brushed the crumbs onto the floor. With evidence of his past week’s activity scattered across the scuffed pine floorboards, a few crumbs wouldn’t even be noticeable.

After he popped the last bite of chocolate-chocolate-chip muffin in his mouth, Briley stood, grimaced, and rubbed his hindquarters. “You need to get some furniture in here, my man.”

Steven shrugged. Why bring in furniture until he knew for sure this would be his home?

Briley arched backward, pressing his hands to his lower spine, then straightened and stretched his arms over his head. Even as tall as he was, his fingers didn’t come close to touching the spider-cracked, ten-foot-high ceiling. “How have you managed a week without anything to sit on besides buckets?”

“I sat on this.” Steven patted the cooler and then peeked inside of it. One sandwich, two muffins, and a wrinkled apple lay in its bottom. It would be empty by nightfall. He snapped the lid closed and gestured toward the sturdy plastic box, inviting Briley to make use of it. “But mostly, I don’t sit. I work all day, and then I go to sleep.” The twin mattress on the floor of the bigger of the two bedrooms suited him fine. Being too tired to care helped. He’d worked like a dog all last week peeling layers of brittle wallpaper from every wall in the house, patching cracks in the plaster, and stripping paint from the woodwork because Anna—Grace didn’t like painted woodwork. He had to admit, the egg-and-dart trim above the windows and doors would be pretty with a coat of stain and varnish.

Briley plunked down on the cooler and scuffed his toe against the floor, creating a half-moon shape in the mixture of sawdust, plaster dust, and dustdust. “And a broom. You definitely need a broom.”

He had one. He just hadn’t seen the point in using it. Mr. Aldrich swept the kitchen every day before he left, but Steven chose to wait until he’d finished all the messing in the other parts of the house before he started a cleanup. He’d sweep before Anna—Grace arrived next week, though, whether he’d finished messing or not.

Weary of the topic of his housekeeping skills, Steven said, “Want me to show you those math shortcuts now? I have easy-to-learn shortcuts for addition, subtraction, and multiplication. The division ones take a little more thinking, but—”

“Actually, I’d rather talk about the fellowship.”

Steven’s spirits sank. He’d been looking forward to sharing his
mathematical tricks with someone, even if the someone was a grown man rather than a roomful of students. But he only shrugged. He sat back down on the bucket. “Well, let me start by explaining why we don’t have a janitor.”

Briley pulled a small rectangle of black plastic with buttons marching across one short side from his shirt pocket. “Do you mind?”

“What is it?”

“A recording device. It’ll record our voices. Later I’ll plug it into my computer, and my voice-recognition software will type out what we’ve said.”

“Oh.” He’d never heard of such a thing. Did college students use these devices? He should watch Briley closely and learn how the recorder worked, just in case.

“Is it okay with you if I use it? My handwriting …” Briley chuckled, the sound self-conscious. “Not that I’d ever have earned a penmanship award, but now that I’m on the computer most of the time, it’s gotten really sloppy. Sometimes I have a hard time deciphering my own notes. Especially when I’m writing quickly.”

If he had a pad and pencil handy, he’d offer to keep the notes for Briley, but he hadn’t bothered to bring any with him. He’d called Anna—Grace from the convenience store pay phone in response to her letter. “Yes. Go ahead and record us.” Steven sent up a silent prayer for guidance. He’d better form his answers to Briley’s questions carefully since they’d be recorded and then typed later, word-for-word. “Now …” He pulled in a slow breath. “What do you want to know?”

Briley clicked one of the buttons and laid the recorder on his knee. “Start by telling me why the church doesn’t have a janitor.”

Steven explained haltingly, a little intimidated by the black box capturing his voice, the fellowship practice of sharing the upkeep of the house of worship. “Families take turns coming in to clean and dust and make the windows shine. If they find something that needs fixing—like a leak in the roof or a cracked windowpane—they alert the deacons and someone is hired to do the repair.”

“Someone from the fellowship?”

Steven shrugged. “Whenever possible, yes. Our fellowship in Sommerfeld doesn’t have anyone with electrical or plumbing skills, so when we need those services we go outside the fellowship. But most everything else—painting, roofing, construction—we can do ourselves. So we do it.”

Briley asked questions about why they sang without a piano, why different men instead of one minister had stepped behind the pulpit the two weeks he’d attended, and why the Mennonites allowed electricity and cars when their Amish neighbors didn’t. And then he asked about courtship practices. Steven’s face heated a bit as he talked about courting. The topic was more personal than the others. But he answered honestly, and as he spoke, a feeling of pride swelled in his chest.

Divorce and single parentage was common outside his community, but within the fellowship he’d never seen a marriage fall apart. Surely the solid start—the shared faith, the friendship-forming, and the time of being published before becoming man and wife—contributed to the successful unions in his fellowship. Entering a relationship with a pure heart, and knowing your intended came with the same purity, meant the marriage could begin with a strong base of trust and security.

“And you’ll be getting married soon, huh?” Briley grinned. “Did you pick her, or did your parents say ‘Here’s the one’?”

Once again Steven formed an honest answer. “Of all the girls in the fellowship, my parents liked Anna—Grace best. They told me so. But I’d already decided I wanted to court her. I just had to wait until she was old enough. She’s four years younger than me.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-three.”

“Really? That’s all?” The reporter narrowed his gaze and examined Steven for several seconds.

Steven did his best not to squirm beneath the scrutiny.

“You seem older. Maybe it’s because you’ve got your own farm. Or maybe—”

Steven waited, but Briley didn’t finish the sentence. So he spoke. “
I
chose Anna—Grace.” It was important Briley understood this. There were many things over which he had no control, but he wanted to make it clear that the person he took for a wife was his decision. “My parents and the deacons approved me courting her, but I chose her.”

Briley nodded. He stretched again, this time with his arms outward rather than up, and yawned. “You know, Steven, I’ve talked to quite a few people in Arborville over the past couple of weeks, and I’ve asked all of them what they like most about living in a Plain community. I’ve gotten the same response, or a variation of it, from all of them. They tell me they like the sense of close community, the assurance that they and their families will be cared for no matter what might happen, and being able to openly live their faith. Do you agree with that?”

Steven thought for a few seconds about what Briley had said. He couldn’t argue with any of it. He nodded.

“Okay then.” He picked up the recorder and then rested his elbows on his knees. Holding the little recording device on his open palms between them, he angled a serious look at Steven. “Let me ask you a different question. One I haven’t asked anyone else.”

Steven stiffened. “Why ask me?”

A sly smile appeared on the man’s face. “I have my reasons, but I’m going to claim journalistic privilege and keep them to myself.”

Well then, Steven just might keep his answer to himself. He wondered about the question, though. “What do you want to know?”

Speaking slowly and with precise enunciation, Briley said, “What do you like least about living in a Plain community?”

Steven took the recorder, turned it button side up, and then punched the Off button. He pressed it back into Briley’s open hand and stood. “That, my man, is none of your business.”