The Saddle Maker's Son (10 page)

After swallowing the last savory piece, she stood, wiped her hands, and picked up the pitcher of water. The men had been working hard planting onions and okra to sell to the grocery chain. They would be thirsty. At least that's what she told herself.

“I was going to do that.” Susan stood next to her, hand still in the air. “You can finish eating. I'll pour the water.”

“I'm finished. I've got it.”

“Nee, you should eat another one.”

“I'll full. I'm done.”

Susan looked as if she might grab the pitcher from Rebekah's hand. Her gaze skittered to the men's table.

Levi glanced up. He smiled. At Susan.

Well. Well, indeed.

“Why don't you see if anyone wants more potatoes? There's still some in the skillet. I reckon the men will want some more.”

Her face the color of beets, Susan nodded, whirled, and marched into the kitchen without looking back.

Who knew?

Smiling to herself, Rebekah traipsed up and down the men's table, pouring more water into every glass, just not Tobias's. If he wanted water, he could get his own.

Tobias had added two heaping spoons of the red sauce to his three pupusas. The sauce dripped down his hand and landed on his pants. He didn't seem the least bit worried about it. “I'll take some of that water.” He smiled up at her as if there had never been a cross word between them. “This sauce has some kick to it.”

She managed to pour water into his glass without spilling it. “You like it?”

He nodded and took a big bite. “Hmmm.”

Rebekah handed him a napkin. “I can see that, I guess.”

He swallowed and wiped at his face with the napkin. “I like to try new things.”

“Me too.”

“Gut.”

What did that mean? “A person has to be open to new ideas.”

“Agreed.”

At least they agreed on something.

“I heard there's more pupusas in the skillet.”

His pronunciation of the word had to be worse than Mordecai's.

Rebekah took his plate. “I'll bring you some more.”

Her fingers brushed his. His eyebrows rose and fell. A smile danced across his rugged face. “Danki.”

The way to a man's heart is through his stomach.
The words of the old axiom fluttered in Rebekah's head like butterflies released from a net.

And to a woman's heart?

School's out. School's out.
The shout rang in Susan's ears even though it had long faded away. After the graduation ceremony for Sally Glick and Rachel Hostetler, the kinner had burst from the schoolhouse door like foals set free to frolic in a pasture after a long winter cooped up in a barn. Similarities did exist.

Susan raised her face to the warmth of a late-April breeze as she plopped down in a rickety folding chair that creaked under her weight. One of the many things Plain kinner had over their Englisch kinner, school was out at the end of April instead of late May or early June. And they only went to school until the eighth grade. Plenty of Englisch kinner would like that.

Diego's fútbol game was about to get under way. The older girls were setting out the food on the picnic tables built by the men years ago when the school was constructed. Mordecai's dog Butch—or was he Deborah's dog now?—curled up under one table asleep. Wrens and sparrows wrestled, their chatter fierce, over bread crumbs that fell to the ground as sandwiches were prepared. It was a perfect day.

Yet a strange, bittersweet restlessness overcame her. The
summer stretched endlessly ahead, another school year behind. Another year as teacher. Another year without her own kinner and mann. Most days, she felt content. This one day out of the year she couldn't find a yardstick that measured her emotions.

She tried to remember what it was like to run instead of walk, to hop and skip instead of trudge. Her scholars were in such a hurry to escape, to live other lives, lives they thought would be more fun and more interesting than what came from books. Truth be told they would spend their lives working. That's what Plain folks did. She had no quarrel with that.

Still, she loved school. What was not to love? Reading, writing, arithmetic, singing, praying, playing together. Those were good days. Ones she had the opportunity to relive every year. Teaching didn't feel like work. It felt like joy.

“Teacher, my finger hurts.”

Startled from her reverie, Susan swiveled to find Liam trotting toward her. He held out his small, dirty hand. “I fell.”

Indeed he had. Dirt smudged his cheek and a new rip allowed his knee to show through one pant leg. The pants were too short, revealing bony ankles. Martha had some sewing to do, it seemed. Maybe Susan could help with that. “Come here, let me see that.” She patted her lap and the boy climbed on, smelling of little-boy sweat and peanut butter cookie. “How did you manage this?”

“I wanted a cookie from the table and Ida shooed me away.” His tone was mournful. “She said I had to eat a sandwich first. I'd rather have a cookie. Two cookies or maybe three.”

“What does that have to do with your finger?”

“I ran away.” He sniffed. “I was eating the cookie and running and I fell.”

“That's what happens when you steal cookies.”

“I didn't steal it. I borrowed it.”

She brushed off the finger, which looked red but not much worse for wear, and kissed it. “There, all better. Were you planning to give the cookie back?”

“Nee, it's in my tummy.” Grinning, he patted his flat belly. “It has to stay there now.”

“Then I guess that makes you a cookie thief.”

“And you know what they do with cookie thieves.” Levi towered over them, his face hidden by the dark shadow of his hat's brim. “They make them eat lima beans and cabbage for dinner three nights—nee, four nights—in a row.”

“Nee!” Liam slid from Susan's lap. “Danki, Teacher.”

He ducked away from Levi's playful swipe and raced away, his giggle trailing behind him.

“He's a sweet little boy.” Susan forced herself to sit still, despite the urge to smooth her kapp and brush the remnants of little boy from her apron. “And smart as a whip. He did well the short time I had him in class.”

To her surprise, Levi eased into the lawn chair to her right. It creaked under his weight, the crisscrosses of faded nylon material sagging under him. “He takes after his mother.” His gaze remained on the makeshift soccer field where the majority of his kinner were racing about, their laughter shrill as they chased after the ball. “He has her face and her eyes. He even sounds like her when he talks. I don't know how that's possible.”

“I suppose it's from the older children who had more time with her.”

“Any time at all. She died giving birth to Liam.”

“I'd heard that.”

His gaze shifted to her for the first time. “You're good with kinner.”

“A teacher has to be.”

“Nee, I didn't mean in that way.” He plucked at strings hanging from the chair's arm. “You were . . . motherly.”

“Teachers can be motherly.”

“I'm trying to say something nice.”

And she was being overly prickly about her single status. “I know.”

They were silent for a few minutes. Susan sought another less thorny topic. “How are things at your new shop?”

“We have our first customer. An Englischer who wants a custom saddle and her horse trained.”

“Gut.”

“It is gut.”

This man was not one for small talk, that was apparent. Neither was she. Life was too short for small talk. Mordecai and Abigail knew that. They'd lost their first loves. Susan had let time pass. Too much time. She did want her own kinner. She was motherly, and she wanted someone to see that. Life was short and the mother of Levi's kinner no longer mothered them. “You've done right by your kinner. It's obvious to see.”

“I'm blessed. Tobias and Martha, they've been like second parents since the beginning.” His head bent so she could only see the top of his worn straw hat. He seemed to study a scar that ran in a red ridge along his thumb. No doubt the result of an occupational hazard of a saddle maker who worked with awls and skiving knives and sharp tools of the trade. “David, too, but not like them. I spent my time in the shop, working, making a living for them. Which needed to be done. And they did what had to be done at home.”

“Kinner adapt. They manage to blossom even when it's cold and dark.” Over the years many children had worn their hearts on their sleeves in her classroom yet managed to pull practical jokes, steal cookies, and smile even when tears brightened their eyes. “It's one of the things I most cherish about them.”

“Martha, my oldest girl, has blossomed.” He looked up and cleared his throat. “She's been mother to the younger ones for so many years, I think she's forgotten that they're not hers.”

“I doubt that. She'll make a good fraa one day.”

“That's the thing.” He shifted in his chair. “She turned sixteen last week.”

“Time for her to spread her wings a bit.”

“It would seem she doesn't know how.”

Most fathers wanted to keep their daughters from deviating from the path too much during rumspringa. Levi seemed anxious to push his daughter out of the fold. “The singing is at Mordecai's this week. She should go.”

“I mentioned it.”

“Mentioned it or told her to go?”

“I wouldn't interfere.”

Plain parents were expected to give their kinner leeway. That didn't mean they had to like it. At least Susan suspected as much. Neither Mordecai nor Abigail had uttered a word to her, even after Leila left the fold with Jesse. “She said no?”

“She said she had too much to do to mess with such foolishness.” His gaze dropped to his hand again. “Especially now that we have two more kinner in the mix. She didn't even come to the picnic today—said she had to finish making the boys' pants. If they go around much longer in what they've got, they'll be shorts.”

It would be funny if it weren't sad. “I'm sure it's hard.”

“For a man, it's especially hard. She's my first girl. I don't want her to lose her way because of life's circumstances.”

His life circumstances. He lost his fraa. Martha had become a substitute mudder to her little brothers and sisters. Susan had experience with that life story. Now Martha stood to lose her chance at the life to which most Plain women aspired. Susan also knew about this.

Levi was asking her for something. In a very roundabout way. Susan's heart gave an odd little
ker-plunk
. Levi wanted her help with his firstborn daughter. That said something about what he thought of her. At least it seemed that way. “I can talk to her at the next frolic.”

He sat forward in his chair, his hands gripping his knees. “If it doesn't put you out.”

“How would it put me out?” She waved her hand toward the building. “I'm on vacation for the summer.”

Hardly. She would cook and clean and can and garden with the rest of the women, but Levi would know that. He leaned back again. “Much appreciated.” He ducked his head but not before Susan caught his relieved smile. “Teacher.”

Said in his gruff northern accent, the word took on a sheen much like it did when her scholars employed it. She liked the sound of it and the sound of his voice.

Another
ker-plunk
and her heart settled into a rhythm she hadn't felt in a very long time.

“Canta y no llores . . .”

The sound of Lupe's high, sweet voice singing somewhere beyond the school building made Rebekah smile. A child should be carefree and not worrying about where she would lay her head at night or if she would be sent home to a country full of bloodshed.

Rebekah paused at the corner of the school building and looked back, surveying the remnants of the end-of-school-year picnic. Caleb and his friends were burning the last of the hot dogs on sticks over a fire in a rusted barrel. Little Diego had instigated a game of soccer—which he insisted on calling fútbol. In his black pants and blue shirt, feet bare, he looked just like one of the other kinner. Until he opened his mouth and a string of Spanish came out so fast there was no figuring out what he jabbered about. The younger kids screamed and laughed as they chased a dirty, faded basketball up and down the makeshift field, two trash cans at each end serving as goals.

They could do without her. She rounded the corner and trudged toward the sound of Lupe's voice. She wouldn't miss being cooped up in the school now that summer bore down on
them full tilt. They would have plenty of gardening, canning, and baking to do. They would sell goods in town a few days a week and showcase the rest in the Combination Store, famous for fresh-baked goods on Fridays. Surely Mudder would let her go into town with the others.

Or not.

She raised a hand to her forehead and shielded her eyes from the sun. Lupe sat cross-legged in the grass, a patch of black-eyed Susans and dandelions all around her. She looked so different than she had that first day when she'd been dirty, hungry, and dressed in ragged, filthy clothes. Her long, dark hair had a bright sheen and her cheeks were pink from the sun. The blouse with the strawberries on the collar made her look like any other twelve-year-old girl. Not Plain, but presentable. And healthy. That hollow, hungry look had disappeared after a few good homegrown, homemade meals.

Her head bent, Lupe stared intently at the flowers she'd picked with their stems still long. She braided the stems, making a belt or a headband of flowers.

Tears trickled down her cheeks.

Rebekah stopped. Should she interrupt a private moment? A crying child couldn't be ignored. “Lupe?
Estás bien
?”

Lupe's lessons each day at the school had resulted in a fair vocabulary for the Plain kinner of Bee County as well. It would hold them in good stead when they made their treks to Progreso in the future. The kinner took turns teaching Lupe and Diego simple English words. German was too much for them. Both sides soaked up the new words with greater glee than others might think they warranted. That, Rebekah would miss. Maybe Lupe would still give lessons while they hoed and weeded the
garden or canned the tomatoes at the frolics that would soon come. “Lupe?”

The girl started and dropped her creation. “I am good.”

“That was a pretty song you were singing. Me gusta.”

Lupe shrugged and picked up her flowers, her face hidden behind a wall of dark, straight hair.

“Why are you sad?” Rebekah plopped onto the ground next to her, then crossed her legs under the long folds of her dress. “You can tell me. You won't hurt my feelings if it's because you don't like it here. I would be homesick too.”

“No, no.” Lupe raised her head and flung her hair over her shoulder. “I like. I cry because I like.”

“Why does it make you cry?”

“They won't let me stay.”

“Who won't?”

“La migra.”

Rebekah shook her head. “I don't understand.”

Lupe clasped her hands together and pointed her index fingers as if she pointed a gun. “Bang-bang, like
policía
, on
frontera
.”

Police. Border. Rebekah sighed. “We don't know yet. Jeremiah has been talking to other bishops about it. To wise men. They'll know what to do. Don't worry.”

“I worry.”

“Why? You're safe here. We'll take care of you. We'll get you to your father in San Antonio.” She prayed she wasn't making promises Jeremiah, Mordecai, and Will wouldn't allow her to keep. “Jeremiah is fair and he's kind. So is Mordecai.”

Will, too, when he forgot the past and embraced his new life with his fraa.

More tears rolled down Lupe's face. “How? And why he no
write no more? Why he leave and never send money for us like he told us? What if la migra find us first? Or the bad men who brought us over the river?”

Hombres malos. Bad men. So much pent-up worry in such a little girl. Lupe's small, slim fingers covered her eyes. Her sobs were so mournful Rebekah had to swallow a lump in her own throat. She scooted closer and put her arm around the girl's shaking body. Lupe leaned against her chest and gave another shuddering sob. “You haven't mentioned your mother. Where is she? Did she send you to be with your daddy?”

“Mama is dead. Long time.
Mi padre
came to
los Estados Unidos
when I was young. He sent money. Then money stop. We only have abuela. She send us here.” Lupe tugged something from her pocket and held it out. Two crumpled, faded photos. “She think it better for us. She think we find Papi.”

Abuela. Grandma.

Rebekah took the photo and studied it. A short, buxom woman with gray hair wrapped in a braid around her head stared at the camera, her full lips turned up in a faint smile. She wore a yellow dress that made her look like a sunflower opening to the sky. One hand rested on a much younger Lupe wearing a long braid down her back, the other on Diego, who sat on her lap, wearing only a diaper and a big smile. She looked proud yet somehow sad. Rebekah turned it over. The photo was five years old. Someone had written in a spidery script next to the date:
Ana, Guadalupe y Diego.
“Guadalupe?”

Lupe touched her chest at the base of her throat with two slender fingers. “Me. Guadalupe. Lupe.”

Rebekah smoothed the second photo. A young man with enormous solemn eyes, dark hair that curled around his ears, and
a beard. Something in his eyes reminded her of Diego. He leaned against the side of a building, one foot propped against the wall, arms crossed against his skinny chest. He was too young to be a daddy. But then, the photo was yellowed with age. “Your daddy?”

“Sí.”

“Why did your daddy come here?”

“To escape
soldados
. They thought he was bad man
.
”

“Soldados?”

Lupe scrambled to her feet and stood, her shoulders straight, head back, arms at her side. Then she saluted. “Soldado.”

“Soldier.”

“Sí.”

“What is his name?”

“Carlos.”

“Carlos.” Carl. “And your mama?”

“Lidia.”

“Pretty.”

“Sí. No picture of her.”

“I'm sorry.”

The girl plopped down next to Rebekah and picked up her flowers. “Nice here.”

It was nice here. Rebekah hadn't always thought so. When she first arrived in Bee County, she'd thought of it as a barren desert. Now it was home. The people made it home. That and believing God had a reason for sending her here. Now this little girl and her brother were here too. A long way from home. Growing up without a mother. Not knowing where their father was. Dead or alive. It was no wonder Lupe felt so torn. She was safe here. People cared about her. She had no way of knowing what she would find in San Antonio. If anything. Or anybody. “Do you pray?”

Lupe cocked her head, her expression puzzled. Rebekah bowed her head and pressed her palms together in front of her, fingers pointed toward the cloudless blue sky. “Pray?”

The girl crossed herself, forehead, chest, then arm to arm, bowed her head, and pressed her hands together.

She believed in a different way, but she believed. “We'll pray then that we figure out what Gott's plan is for you and Diego. We'll pray we find your father.”

“I no know him. He gone long time ago.” Lupe shrugged. She plucked a dandelion and handed it to Rebekah. Smiling, she took it and held it close to her face. A universal rite of spring. “You first.”

Lupe tugged another dandelion from the multitude that surrounded them. Together, they blew. The soft thistles lifted and floated in the air, tossed and turned by the humid breeze that blew them skyward, then waned as if it were too much trouble. The delicate seeds landed on the photo in Rebekah's lap, covering it like a lacy blanket.

Rebekah sighed. She wouldn't mind sitting here forever. Lupe's sigh joined hers, lifting to the heavens, a prayer all their own on the same breeze that blew the dandelion thistles.
Gott, thank You for this scant moment of peace. Show me what the future holds. Tell me what to do. How to help Lupe and Diego. They need their daed. Help us find him so they can stay.

He had stopped sending money. Maybe he had none to send. Or maybe he was dead. Rebekah suppressed a shudder. How would they even begin to look for a man in the country illegally?
Help us, Lord. They need our help. Show us what to do.

Lupe's lips trembled. Shimmering tears kept each other company on her smooth brown cheeks.

“What is it? Don't you think Gott will help?”

“Bad men looking for us.”

Bad men. That first day Lupe had been so afraid of Tobias. Even Mordecai's genial smile and simple ways had not dissolved the hard knot of anxiety so apparent in Lupe's face every time he approached her. There had to be more to her story. “You can tell me anything.”

Lupe ran her hand across the black-eyed Susans, making them ripple, back and forth, before settling back into formation. “Abuela paid to get us to
Mejico
.
Más
dinero for us to get over border.” She waved her arm to encompass the field. “Aquí.”

“You had money to cross the border to America.”

She nodded. “It not enough. Men wanted more.”

Despite the warm South Texas sun, a shiver scurried up the backs of Rebekah's arms, raising goose bumps usually reserved for the dead of winter. “But they brought you across anyway.”

Lupe nodded. Fear made her eyes huge. She swiped at her face with the back of her hand. “They tell me after we cross Rio Grande, they sell me.”

Nausea swelled in Rebekah's stomach. The hot dog she'd eaten at the picnic heaved in her throat. Men who sell little girls existed in the same world as sweet Lupe and Diego. Rebekah didn't want to imagine the purpose of such a sale. As nannies? As maids? Or worse. Hombres malos indeed. Rebekah wanted to draw a breath but found she couldn't. She swallowed, her throat dry. “But they let you go?”

“We ran away. Hide.”

“In the shed.”

“Sí.”

“That's why you didn't want to go to the store to buy clothes.”

“They find us.”

“But they didn't. You're safe with us.” It had been days. Those men would never think to look for two Salvadoran children in an Amish community. Thousands of children crossed the border monthly. They'd moved on to other little girls. The thought made Rebekah queasy again. She couldn't save them all, but she could do whatever possible for Lupe. “Mordecai and Tobias and Levi and all the others will keep you safe.”

What could they do? Call the sheriff? He would take Lupe and Diego away. Would Tobias and Levi and the other men go to jail for harboring these children who came into the country illegally?

Could they take that chance? Should they be willing to pay that price to keep kinner safe from the evil in the world? Rebekah's head ached, each question like an arrow that burrowed in her flesh, the reverberation bringing fresh pain with each shudder.

“There you are.”

As if thinking the name could bring him to them. The deep voice with that unmistakably northern accent—or maybe it was the lack of a southern accent that gave him away—sent a wave of warmth flowing through Rebekah. The pain eased and disappeared. Why Tobias affected her that way, she couldn't say, and it kept her awake at night. Something about the look in his eyes as if he protected everyone and everything that mattered to him. Whatever the cost. She needed him now. Lupe and Diego needed him. She slung her arm around Lupe's shoulder and glanced back. “Here we are. Why? Are you looking for us?”

“Mordecai was.” He held his hat in one hand and ran the fingers of his other hand through damp hair. A sheen of sweat glistened on his chiseled face. His shirt was wet and dirt smudged his pant knees. Like a child who'd been running and had fallen.
He'd been playing with the kinner, no doubt. “He wants to talk to you and Lupe. Him and Jeremiah. Will too. They're in the school.”

This was it. A decision had been made.

Her hands shaking, legs weak, Rebekah rose to her feet. Her childlike smile fleeing, Lupe snatched up her photos and stashed them in her pocket. Rebekah wanted the little girl back. She tucked her arm around her skinny shoulders. “Why did they ask for me?”

He shrugged. “He didn't say.”

Rebekah chewed on her lip until it hurt. Lupe's secret couldn't be a secret anymore. It might cause problems—even danger—for the community. “Wait a minute, Lupe, okay?”

A look of relief on her face, the girl sank to the ground cross-legged again. Rebekah inched closer to Tobias, careful to keep her back to Lupe. Her English was getting better every day. “There is more to their story than she has been telling us.”

Tobias rubbed his forehead, his expression perturbed. “What?”

“She didn't tell us everything about how she and Diego ended up in the shed.”

“We know they came here from El Salvador and entered the country illegally.” Tobias's dark eyebrows rose and fell. “Weren't they hiding from immigration in the shed?”

“Their daed is somewhere here in the States, but he stopped sending money a while back and they have no idea where he is now. Her groossmammi sent them here, thinking it wouldn't be so hard to find him.”