The Saddle Maker's Son Part 2

An impa.s.se. "Let's ask them."

They turned. Lupe had her arm around her little brother. He slumped against her chest, eyes closed, his dirty face relaxed in slumber, his apple still clutched in his dirty hand. He looked so very young. Lupe glanced up at them. She shrugged. "Mucho sueno."

Tobias turned to Rebekah. She was smiling at the girl. "Me too. After I eat."

"What did she say?"

"He was sleepy."

"Ah. The beds are already set up at our house-that and the kitchen." He nodded toward the school. "With all those little ones, beds were first, for our peace of mind, and cooking food for theirs."

"I imagine your mudder thinks so."

The knife sliced as deep as ever. Six years of trying to come to terms with G.o.d's plan for Daed, for himself, for Martha, who at age ten had taken to carrying around a baby as if he were her own, for all those little ones. It made no sense to Tobias, but Daed frequently reminded him that it didn't have to make sense to them. In those long days working in the saddlery shop in that companionable silence, in those long evenings, legs sprawled on the front porch, contemplating the sheer majesty of an Ohio sky, he'd struggled to absorb his father's stalwart faith, but to no avail. "My mudder pa.s.sed six years ago."

"Ach." She nodded but offered no meaningless plat.i.tudes. Another thing to appreciate. "Your daed has his hands full then."

"We all do. My sister Martha keeps everything running in the house. My brothers David and Milo help. Everyone pitches in, even the little ones."

As was expected in any Plain household, but in particular one missing the cornerstone, the fraa and mudder.

"A big job."

Tobias cleared his throat. "Made easy by kinner who know what they're to do."

He turned to look at Diego and Lupe again just as Rebekah did the same. "You should take them." Rebekah's voice was soft. "They'll feel at home with a big brood like yours. Kinner will understand each other."

"But she's afraid of me."

"She saw all the children in your wagon. If they're not afraid of you, why should she be? If they think you're bueno, you must be bueno, right?"

Wise for so young and so pretty.

She slid onto the seat next to Lupe and began to talk softly, almost a whisper. He couldn't make out the words. Lupe kept glancing at him, her expression noncommittal at first, then curious, and finally hesitant.

After a few moments Rebekah stood and brushed her hands together in a definitive gesture. "She says for one night."

"One night. Where are they from? And where are they going?"

"They came from El Salvador. I couldn't understand the name. I think she says they have family in San Antonio. A daed, maybe. I heard the word for 'family' and 'San Antonio' as the same. Something about eating fish, which makes no sense at all." Her tone combined with her expression suggested she wasn't sure whether to believe much of what the little girl said. "Anyway, it's a start."

Indeed it was. "I'll tell Daed." He clomped up the stairs past her.

"You said Jeremiah talked your daed into coming here."

He looked back. "Jah."

"Why did Jeremiah want y'all to come?"

"Because we're saddle makers and we train horses. He figured it was more goods and services to offer to the Englisch folks. To keep the community going, Daed said."

"So you'll work with Leroy's sons breaking horses?"

"They will."

"You don't break horses?"

"I'd rather work the leather." Breaking horses was a dangerous job, one he once had embraced and enjoyed, but now someone had to stand back in order to make sure the kinner were never left alone, never left without someone to protect them. "I'm in charge of keeping the shop, doing the bills, and making the saddles."

Should something happen. Because no one knew better than he did how something could change a man's entire life in the time it took him to inhale the sweet scent of roses in spring and exhale the schtinkich of burial plot dirt in fall.

THREE.

The bishop managed to arrive before the supper dishes could be cleared. Susan suspected Jeremiah hoped a piece of Abigail's pecan pie might still be on the table should he arrive at the opportune moment. Not tonight. Not with Levi Byler's brood crowding the benches interspersed with Abigail and Mordecai's combined bunch. Susan liked having a full table and a full house. The chatter and the way food disappeared faster than a coyote after a chicken made her feel content. She smiled to herself as she poured kaffi in a huge earth-colored mug and added a splash of milk fresh from Mordecai's latest addition, one dairy cow named b.u.t.tercup.

All the company would put Mordecai in a good mood too. Her brother liked commotion as much as she did. She needed him on her side to convince Jeremiah to let Lupe and Diego stay until things could be figured out. However long that took. Until that hollow, hunted look disappeared from the little boy's face. He'd polished off two bowls of ham and beans and three pieces of cornbread at supper.

She'd rather they stay here in the King home, not the home of folks she hardly knew, but that would be up to Mordecai. Letting Levi take them to his house had been a mistake. She hadn't had time or inclination to argue, what with her scholars hanging on every word and Levi standing there looking so . . . so what?

What was it about the man that made her lose her normal gabbiness? She couldn't figure out how Levi, Tobias, and David could look so much alike, yet so different. All three were tall and broad chested, like triplets. They had hair the color of toast well done and eyes that color of green that reminded her of fresh sprouts of gra.s.s peeking through the dirt in early spring.

The younger boys, Milo, Micah, and Liam, must look like their mother, with their blond hair and blue eyes. Levi's face had lines around his eyes from squinting in the sun, or laughing, and streaks of gray highlighted his beard. But that wasn't what made him look different from his sons. It was something in the way he carried himself. As if a burden she couldn't see weighed him down. Sadness he attempted to hide cloaked him as surely as if he wore Joseph's coat of many colors.

Though she'd never had to carry that burden herself, Susan had seen it before. In Mordecai after his first fraa died. And then in Abigail when she first arrived from Tennessee, a widow in need of a mann for herself and her five kinner. The two had managed to shed their lost air and sadness in a second season of love. Now all seemed right in their world.

Contemplating Gott's goodness, Susan picked up a platter of peanut b.u.t.ter cookies-not as good as pecan pie-but they would help soften up Jeremiah. Jeremiah, Mordecai, and Will, the three who would decide little Lupe's and Diego's fate.

She turned and there stood Levi Byler, calloused hands tucked around his suspenders, a bemused look on his face that said he'd been there awhile.

She jumped and dropped the kaffi cup. And the platter of cookies. Hot kaffi splattered in all directions, including on her ap.r.o.n and bare feet. "Ach!"

Levi's eyebrows arched. He strode forward, stopped, and knelt by her mess. "Sorry."

Susan's hands fluttered to her chest and she heaved a breath. "You scared me."

"So I gathered. Hand me a towel." His tone remained soft and distant. "Mordecai asked about kaffi for Jeremiah. Abigail and Rebekah took the kinner outside to organize a game of volleyball, so I came around to see if you might get it."

"There was kaffi." She couldn't contain a chuckle as she knelt across from him. "And cookies."

"That's a shame. Reckon you could make more?" Levi didn't join in her laughter. Contemplating the soft gruffness of his voice, she reached for the platter, which somehow had remained unscathed in its rapid descent. Her hand grazed his fingers. His hand shot back as if he'd touched a skillet on the stove. He stood before she could speak, towering over her, his expression bleak.

"I'll bring in the kaffi in a jiffy." She tried out a smile. He didn't return it. "There are plenty of cookies."

He nodded and turned.

"I wanted to say . . . the children, Lupe and Diego, they should stay here with us. We have room and plenty of food."

Levi pivoted and looked down at her. "That will be for the men to decide."

No equivocation there. "I know, but they're only children, and they're scared and in a country where they don't know anyone."

"You have a heart for children." His gaze rested somewhere beyond her shoulder. His lips twisted as if he were remembering something bitterly sweet. "Naturally as a teacher you would, even though you don't have experience-"

"With my own. Nee." She scooped up the soggy cookies and deposited them on the plate. "That doesn't make me blind to what a little girl and a little boy need."

"That's not what I meant."

"If you call the authorities, they'll send them to one of those holding places and then back to their country."

"They'll get their hearing. It's the law."

From a motherly perspective, that meant little. And Plain folks had their own book of rules. It didn't always jibe with that of the Englischers. "They've come so far. A parent wouldn't send them on such a long, dangerous journey for no reason."

"They can't expect to come into this country without papers and make themselves at home."

"I doubt they expect any such thing. They're children who did what their parents told them to do."

"It's not for you to decide."

She wanted to say it wasn't for him either, but then, he was a man, so he would have more say than she. Men always did. Which was fine, except when it came to kinner. "Since they're here, you could leave them with us. We likely have more room than you do with such a large brood."

"The kinner have adopted them already. They're teaching them English." For the first time he smiled. The years fell away and he became Tobias's twin for a split second. "Martha, Ida, and Nyla are like little mudders. I reckon it comes from taking care of Liam."

The smile fled. Susan caught a glimpse of raw pain before he shuttered it just as quickly. "They may pick up their share of Spanish as well. It might come in handy in this neck of the woods."

"But nine are so many." While she had none. That fact had come to bother her more in recent years. She couldn't say why, nor had she admitted it to another soul. Gott's plan was not to be questioned. "Your beds are surely full."

"Catherine wanted more."

"Your fraa?"

He nodded. "She always said there's room for one more, isn't there? Every time. A house full of kinner is a blessing."

"She was right."

"Nee, sometimes enough is enough." His hands gripped his suspenders so hard his knuckles turned white. "I best get back. They'll think I got lost."

"I'll bring the kaffi."

One quick jerk of his head and he was gone. Yet Susan felt his palpable presence left behind. She shook her head. The man was so still and measured in his movements and his words. But when he opened his mouth and spoke, she felt a storm bearing down on her, the pressure burrowing to her bone and marrow.

"Rubbish." She said the word aloud. It came from one of the many novels she read every night in the endless quiet while the others slept. She checked them out from the library or bought them at garage sales in Beeville when she could. They were stacked in all the corners of her bedroom. Jane Eyre. The Hounds of the Baskervilles. The Scarlet Letter. The Raven. Little Women. Gone with the Wind. The Oregon Trail. Stories from across continents and countries she would never see. New words, words no one ever spoke around her, gave her pleasure, a secret pleasure she didn't share with the others. They would think she was daft. This one exactly fit her strange reaction to Levi. "Rubbish, indeed."

FOUR.

Men always made the decisions. Even when they weren't the experts. Rebekah pressed her lips together to prevent those words from making a run for it and escaping her mouth. It tended to flap open when it shouldn't. At least that's what Mudder said. She whipped the back door shut behind her and grabbed the plate of cookies from Susan's hands in one fell swoop. Her step-aenti started and shrieked.

"Not you too!" Susan's free hand fluttered to her chest. "Y'all will be the death of me."

"Why? What?"

"Nothing." Susan picked up a tray crowded with five mugs of steaming coffee. "Just people sneaking up on me."

"Like who?" Rebekah squeezed past Susan and dashed to the door. She didn't want to miss this conversation, and any minute Mudder would come flying through the door and tell her to hightail it back out to the volleyball game. Who could concentrate on volleyball at a time like this? "It looks to me like you're alone in the kitchen. It looks like you could use some help, as a matter of fact."

"It looks to me like you're about to stick your nose into a place where it might get chopped off."

Susan's persnickety tone didn't deceive Rebekah one wit. Her aunt wanted in on this conversation as much as Rebekah did. She could feel her breathing down her neck as they two-stepped into the front room like twins joined at the hip.

Mordecai, Jeremiah, Levi, Tobias, and Will sat on an a.s.sortment of rocking chairs and stools gathered in a circle in the front room. They could be visiting like old ladies at a sewing frolic.

Ignoring Mordecai's raised eyebrows, Rebekah pa.s.sed the cookie plate and stepped into the niche between the wood box and the big, empty fireplace. Maybe they would forget about her presence. That was as likely as she would forget Leila's note in the hem of her ap.r.o.n. Susan bustled about with coffee and napkins. None of the men spoke until she finished. After a few seconds she nodded at her brother and then slipped away. As far as the overstuffed, tattered couch in the corner, where she proceeded to pick up her basket of darning and plop herself down.

Rebekah wasn't the only one determined to hear this conversation.

"It doesn't seem we have much choice." Jeremiah dusted cookie crumbs from his beard with the back of a hand the size of a shovel. He'd taken to his bishop role without a misstep after Leroy's retirement to the dawdy haus. "I can call the sheriff's office in the morning. They'll know which authorities to notify."

"Nee-"

Mordecai's glare forced Rebekah to close her mouth once again. He was being kind in letting her stay and she knew it.

"If we do that, the kinner will end up in some warehouse full of little ones just like them." Will might have been the youngest and the newest in his post as minister, but he had proven himself a quick study. He seemed so happy since his marriage to Isabella Shrock, a different man than the one who had pined for Leila. Stronger. More certain of things. "They've traveled a long way. Would it not be kinder to help them find their family members in San Antonio? They can sort out the legalities."

Jah. Jah.

"I'm new here, but I imagine the Ordnung is not too different here than up yonder where we come from." Levi's tone was soft and even, yet it commanded attention. "What does that say about us adhering to the laws of the land?"

"Our kind has often chosen to step away from the laws of the land if they endanger our way of life by connecting us too much to the outside world." Mordecai sipped from his cup and then set it on one knee, his calloused hands wrapped around it twofold. "The Englisch often think they know best for us. From little things like filing blueprints and getting inspections for additions to using companies to remove sewage from our outhouses instead of collecting it for the fields."

"Or sending our kinner to public schools," Will added.

Good job. Good job.