I’m a man.” He took the coat from her. “It may be he just needs to talk, one man to another.”
The van driver would be here any minute to pick her up for work. She needed to run inside, brush her teeth and grab her lunch box. But she didn’t know if she felt right, just leaving Zachary with this man she didn’t know very well. Of course she wasn’t really leaving him with James. Sara was there and it had been Sara’s suggestion that Zachary hang out with the workmen; it had to be safe.
“He’ll be fine,” James said gently, seeming to know exactly what she was thinking. “Go to work and Zachary will be here waiting for you when you get home with a smile on his face. You’ll see.”
She met James’s gaze, and the strangest thing happened. She believed him.
* * *
James watched Mari hurry off into the house before turning back to study the six-over-six wooden-framed window Titus and Menno had just set in place. It looked straight to his eye, but he’d been accused more than once of being a perfectionist. “Best be sure before you nail it in place,” he said, picking up a level and tossing it to Menno. “You know Sara. She’d have us take it out again and reset it if it’s a sixteenth of an inch off.”
Menno grinned. “And she’ll be out here with her own level as soon as we leave.”
James chuckled and glanced in the direction of the barn where Mari’s boy had gone. “Get the next window in once you’re finished. I’ll be a few minutes. I might have found a young man to sweep wood shavings and the like.”
Leaving the men to continue their work, James crossed the yard to the barn and stepped inside. Out of the wind, with the heat of the animals to warm the space, it was almost comfortable. Light filtered in through a high window, but the stalls remained in shadow. At one end, a wooden partition divided the stalls from the hay and feed storage. His horse, Jericho, stood, ears erect and twitching, watching something of interest near the grain barrel.
James suspected that Zachary was hiding there, but he didn’t let on. Instead, he tossed the barn coat Mari had given him on a hay bale and approached the horse. Jericho nuzzled him with his nose, rubbing against James’s hand affectionately. “Good boy,” he murmured as he stroked the animal’s head. How a man could become attached to a motor vehicle, James couldn’t imagine. No pickup ever nickered a greeting in the early dawn or ran to its owner looking for a treat.
Jericho nudged him, and James dug into his pocket and came up with a piece of raw carrot. Holding his hand flat, he watched as the gelding daintily nibbled it.
“I didn’t know horses liked carrots,” Zachary said from the shadows.
“Apples, carrots, even turnips. But Jericho likes sugar cubes most of all.” James didn’t look in the boy’s direction.
Zachary climbed up the half wall of the stall and peered at the bay gelding. He was a little small for his age: brown hair, blue eyes. A nice-looking boy. But he didn’t look like Mari, and James couldn’t help wondering about his father.
“He’s pretty big,” Zachary said.
“Just under sixteen hands. He’s a Thoroughbred, foaled for racing. But he wasn’t fast enough, so he ended up at auction. That’s where I bought him.”
“They auction off horses?” Zachary stared at the horse.
“They do.” James glanced at the boy. He seemed wary, prepared to run if Jericho made any sudden moves. “Have you been around a lot of horses?”
“Not a lot of horses in a trailer park.”
“Probably best. Not a lot of pasture in a trailer park.” He looked past Zachary to where bales of sweet timothy hay were stacked. “Toss Jericho a section of that hay, will you?”
Zachary didn’t move from the stall’s half wall. “That his name?”
“It is.”
“Horses on TV have better names.”
James leaned on the gate. “Such as?”
Zachary thought for a minute. “Lightning. Thunder.”
“Thunder. Hmm. Don’t know if I’d feel easy hitching a horse named Thunder to my buggy.” James glanced Zachary’s way. “Nippy out here. You can put that coat on if you want.”
“Nah. I’m good.” Zachary slid down, broke off a section of the hay bale and stuffed it through the railing. Closing his eyes, the horse chewed contentedly. “He’s pretty neat. For a horse. But buggies are dumb. Why don’t you buy a car?”
“I had a truck once, but I sold it when I bought Jericho.”
Zachary’s eyes got big. “You had a truck?”
“A blue Ford F-150 pickup,” James answered.
Zachary watched Jericho eat, seeming to be fascinated. “Horses are too slow.”
“Depends on how big a hurry you’re in, I suppose. Sometimes, you notice things you’d miss if you were in a hurry.”
“It must be boring. Being Amish. No video games or Saturday cartoons.”
“No, we don’t have those things. But we do lots of things for fun. Baseball, fishing, ice-skating, hayrides, family picnics and work frolics.”
“What’s a work frolic?”
James noticed that while Zachary’s voice gave the impression of boredom, his blue eyes sparkled with curiosity. “Well, say someone needs a new barn. Either lightning has struck his old one and burned it down, or a family is starting out on a new farm. A work frolic would be when the whole community pitches in to help build that barn. There might be as many as fifty or more men all working at once.”
Zachary frowned. “Sounds like a lot of hard work.”
“If you’re with friends, all laughing and joking, it is fun. There’s nothing like watching a barn rise up from an empty pasture in one day.” He smiled. “And then there’s all kinds of great food. Fried chicken, shoofly pie, ice cream. And we have games after we eat—tug-of-war, softball, even sack races. Winter is a slow time, because of bad weather. But if you’re here in May, you’ll see lots of work frolics.”
“Oh, we won’t be here,” Zachary assured him. “We’re going back to Wisconsin. I’ve got friends there. In my old school.”
The boy’s voice sounded confident, but the expression in his eyes told another story, and James felt a tug of sympathy in his chest. “Must have been rough, leaving all those buddies behind.” He leaned on the stall gate. “Coming to a new place where everything is strange. I can see how you wouldn’t much care for it.”
“I’m not saying this to be mean, but the whole Amish thing?” Zachary said. “It’s kinda weird.”
James nodded solemnly. “I can see how you’d feel that way. Everybody dressing differently, eating different food.”
“The food’s not bad.”
“I
