AUGUST
Difficulty is a miracle in its first stage.
—AMISH PROVERB
The silver flash of a jet plane glinted in the morning sky. Caleb Stoltz tipped back his brimmed hat and watched it soar high overhead. Against the flawless summer blue, the plane glittered like a rare jewel—precious and out of reach.
“Hey, look, Uncle Caleb. Plane tracks,” said Jonah, pointing out the twin white plumes that bisected the sky in the flight path of the jet.
Caleb grinned at his nephew and handed him a galvanized milk pail, half-filled from the milk house. “They’re called contrails. Don’t slosh it,” he cautioned. “I’ll be in to breakfast shortly.”
Lugging the pail, the boy headed for the white clapboard house, his dusty bare feet leaving shallow impressions in the dry earth. Jonah’s skinny legs, browned by a summer of swimming at Crystal Falls up the creek a ways, protruded comically from his tattered black trousers, which only a short while ago had fit him. Now eleven, the kid was growing like the corn in high summer. Caleb would have to get Hannah to sew him a new pair of pants before school started in a few weeks. If not for the way the kids were growing, he would have no notion of the passage of time.
On a farm, the seasons were important, not the years.
Caleb washed down the milking shed, the stream of water hissing on the concrete and misting his work boots. He turned off the hose, reeled it in, and left the shed, glancing up at the puffy trail of clouds dissipating in the sky. The jet was long gone, off to New York or Bangkok or some other place Caleb had no hope of ever seeing. He studied the flight path and then wondered why it was called a path when there was no visible roadway, nothing to mark its way but invisible air. It was only after the jet had passed that its route could be seen.
If Rebecca were with him, she would quirk her brow and scold him for idle thoughts. Then he would challenge her to offer proof that any thought could be idle, and her quirked brow would knit in incomprehension. “I swear, Caleb Stoltz,” she would say, and then she’d change the subject. That was her way.
Ah, Rebecca. She was going to be the most difficult part of his day. The problem had been weighing on his mind for far too long. Time to stop putting off the inevitable. They were supposed to have an understanding. She believed that one of these days, she would get her clock from him, the traditional gift of engagement, and she’d present Caleb with an embroidered cloth to symbolize her acceptance. Baptism, marriage, and a family wouldn’t be far behind. Though she wasn’t keen to raise Caleb’s niece and nephew and take care of his father, she was willing to do her duty.
Caleb needed to acknowledge the truth his gut had been telling him since the day the church elders had presented him with the notion that he and Rebecca Zook should marry. And that truth was going to make for a hard conversation. He had a fine, warm affection for Rebecca, but it was not the deep love that would bind a man and woman for life. He wasn’t even sure that sort of love existed.
It wouldn’t be fair to string her along.
Standing in the yard, he surveyed the farm for a few moments, taking in the sweep of the broad valley that ran down from the Pocono hills. The fields were an abundant patchwork of corn, wheat, alfalfa, and sorghum, spread out over rolling landscape as far as the eye could see. In the distance, Eli Kemp and his sons were cradling wheat. Their scythes swung in tandem to the rhythm of a hymn they were singing, the sound traveling across the valley in the quiet of the morning. They moved along the rows like a line of industrious soldier ants, the forked cradles felling the stalks neatly to one side. Eli’s wife trailed behind, bundling sheaves.
That was Middle Grove, Caleb thought. Faith, work, and family, stitched together by the common thread of devotion. Other farmers in the district might breathe the sweet air and offer up a silent prayer. Thank you for this day, O Lord. But not Caleb. Not in a long, long time.
From the neighboring farm, the roar of a hydraulic engine broke the stillness of the morning, its mechanical cough obliterating the Kemps’ singing. The Haubers were getting ready to fill silo today. The diesel-powered shredder would be used to chop the corn for blowing into the silo.
Caleb would be going over to help after he spoke with Rebecca. In the meantime, he stayed busy. He liked being busy. It kept him from thinking too hard about things. The sun was out, there were chores to do, and the work went fast when neighbors pitched in together.
Taking off his hat, he wiped the sweat from his brow and headed inside. Despite all the open windows, the kitchen was stifling hot. The old iron stove door yawned open with a metallic protest as his niece, Hannah, added fuel to boil the coffee. Smoke and the reek of burned toast layered the room in a misty gray haze.
“Hannah burned the toast again,” Jonah announced, unnecessarily.
His sister, who was sixteen and as incomprehensible as an alien life-form in a science fiction novel, planted her fists on her hips. “I wouldn’t have burned a thing if you hadn’t spilled the milk.” She glared accusingly at a blue-white puddle on the scuffed linoleum floor.
“Well, I wouldn’t have spilled it if you hadn’t called me a brutz baby.”
“You are one,” she retorted. “Always pouting.”
“Huh. You’re gonna get married and have a real baby and then you’ll know what it’s like.”
“Hey, hey.” Caleb held up a hand for silence. “It’s not even seven o’clock and you two are squabbling already.”
“But she called me a—”
“Enough, Jonah.” Caleb didn’t raise his voice, but the sharpness of his tone cut through the boy’s sass. The brother and sister bickered a lot, but a deep bond held them close. Orphaned by a horrendous disaster, they shared a sense of vulnerability that made them cling together, closer than most siblings. “Did you get something to eat?”
“He made grape slush out of his cornflakes again,” Hannah said. “It’s disgusting.” Jonah’s strange habit of putting grape jelly on his cereal never failed to gross her out.
“It’s better than burnt—” Catching Caleb’s warning look, Jonah snapped his mouth shut.
“Go on over to the Haubers’,” Caleb said. “Tell them I’ll be along shortly.”
“Okay.” Jonah jammed on his hat and headed for the door.
“Be sure you watch yourself around the machinery, you hear?” Caleb cautioned, thinking of the shredder’s sharp blades and the powerful auger at the bottom of the silo.
“Don’t worry, I’ve been helping out since I was knee-high to a grasshopper,” Jonah said with a cocky grin, the one that never failed to chase away Caleb’s annoyance. “Oh! Almost forgot my lucky penny.” He scampered to his room and returned with the token. It was a coin flattened in a penny press machine at the old water-powered sawmill over
