Chapter 8
Miri’s father tossed a bale of hay into the feeder, and Miri cut the twine with a knife.
It popped open into a fragrant billow, and she pulled the twine out with a sharp tug.
Miri had arrived before dawn that morning with her bags, when the air was cool and the sky was a soft gray, the horizon just blushing red.
Her daet had insisted upon coming along.
He couldn’t stay too long, but his shift at the factory started later this morning, and he counted that as Gott’s hand in their favor.
“You have a family, Miri,” he’d said. “And I’m not leaving you to face the Yoders on your own.”
He had a point, but Miri had been eager to get onto this land by herself and drink in the morning sunlight as it splashed over her own farm.
She wanted to smell the scent of the hay barn and watch the dew soak into the hem of her dress as she crossed the paddock.
She couldn’t quite imagine the house as hers yet, but the land felt like an extension of her own body.
Her farm. The dreams she was afraid to dream had come true.
But this amazing gift came with responsibilities, and currently that was some sort of spreading illness in the herd. At least she had Tabitha to help her tackle it, but it worried her still.
Miri stood inside the fence of the small pasture they were using to keep the sick cattle separated from the rest of the healthy herd.
The animals looked listless, and several were lying down, mucus dripping from their noses.
Would some rest be enough to help them recover?
She hoped so. Her daet crouched down in front of a cow that was lying down, chewing her cud.
Daet wasn’t a farmer, and he wasn’t a vet, but he was a man, and a problem made him want to find a solution, especially when it came to helping his daughter.
The morning sun was still low and golden, the shadows long and cool.
Bitsy stood a little way off by the fence, and Miri studied her from a distance.
She’d already looked her over until Bitsy grew tired of the attention and loped off.
She had the same symptoms as the others, but at least she was on her feet.
“This herd is all yours now,” Daet said, coming up beside her. “How does that feel?”
“Like a dream, and I’ll wake up and find out it never happened.” Miri followed her father out of the penned pasture and closed the gate behind her. “I don’t know if this will last. Someone will contest the will.”
“The bishop was there, and two elders. It’s all done properly, Miri.”
Miri sighed. “A farm of my own is an unbelievable gift, something I’d never even dreamed of getting. But even so, I only get it because Moses and Benuel lost their inheritance. People are going to be angry with me, Daet.”
Her father was silent, and she looked over at him. His attention was fixed on the house ahead of them, his lips pressed together in a grim line.
“They are already,” she added. “You saw how mad they were at the reading of the will.”
“That was a knee-jerk reaction,” he replied. “They were surprised.”
“They were honest,” she countered.
Miri had seen their faces, and that had been anger.
Not hurt. Not surprise. Fury. This had been family land, a farm where they all had personal memories, and a place that they had expected to stay in the family for generations to come.
These sunrises, this dew, the rolling acres of land, the herd of grazing cattle—it was supposed to be theirs.
“Who else is angry?” she asked. “Is it just the Yoders?”
“Time will tell,” her father said quietly. “But you haven’t done anything wrong, Miri. You helped an old man in his final days, and he gave you a gift. That is all.”
It was a big gift, though. Too big, most would say.
Many would say that it was an unfairly large gift to a young woman who should be getting married, not running a farm.
Not that Miri had any proposals in the offing, or any hope of getting one that she could see.
Still, people thought it was a woman’s duty to marry and take care of a home.
They headed back in the direction of the house.
Daet needed to get back home to have breakfast and leave for work at the canning factory.
So long as he was helping Miri with her work here, he’d be doing extra, and she needed to figure out how to do most of the work herself to spare him.
This gift could not become a burden on her family.
When Miri and her father got back to the house, she saw another buggy parked beside Daet’s, and Moses was just sending his horse out to graze.
Miri’s pulse sped up. What was Moses doing here?
Was he going to try to take the farm back?
He knew how the will stood. Somehow it hadn’t occurred to her that Tom’s family might ignore the will.
She stopped short, her heart in her throat, and Daet did too.
“Gut mariye, Moses,” Daet called, but his voice was deeper than when he was being friendly.
“Good morning,” Moses replied. He looked around uncomfortably. “I came to do chores.”
Miri and her father exchanged a glance. Was he going to pretend the will hadn’t happened?
“I’ve—” Moses cleared his throat. “I’ve come to help Miri with chores. The bishop asked me to come lend a hand for a couple of months until Miri can sort out some farm help more permanently.”
Moses’s cheeks reddened, but he didn’t drop his gaze. He wasn’t coming to claim the land. He was coming as a farmhand.
“The bishop asked you to come?” Miri spoke up for the first time.
“Yah, he thought it would be right,” Moses replied. She could see some conflicting emotion in his clear gaze.
“Are you okay with helping her?” Daet asked. “That’s not an easy thing to do, considering everything.”
“The right thing is seldom easy,” Moses replied.
“Then, all I can say is danke for doing this, Moses,” Daet said. “It’s very Christian of you.”
Moses didn’t answer, but he looked down. Maybe his feelings on the inside were less Christian than his actions this morning.
“We’ve put extra feed into the feeders with the ill cattle,” Daet said. “And we got the stalls cleaned out for the two sickest cows in the barn.”
“We haven’t done the stable yet,” Miri said.
“I can start there,” Moses said.
But Miri didn’t like the idea of just handing over the chores to anyone else, especially not a Yoder.
She intended to run this farm herself, not end up in the kitchen.
In fact, if she needed help right now, it wasn’t with outdoor chores, it was with cooking and cleaning.
The bishop would have done better to send her a teenaged girl who could do some baking and scrubbing.
“We can do it together,” Miri said, then she turned to her father. “Daet, you’ve got to disinfect your boots before you go.”
“And make sure you wash your clothes before going out to your own animals,” Moses added. “It’s a spreading illness. Do you know what it is yet?”
“Not yet,” Miri said. “But we don’t want to take chances.”
Daet gave Moses a polite nod. “Yah, Miri told me about it. I’ll be sure to do that. Danke.”
Moses hooked a thumb toward the stable. “I’ll get started.”
Miri pulled out the old washtub and put a hose inside, then turned on the tap.
Daet stepped out of his rubber boots and stood them in the rising water so that the inside of them would stay dry while Miri dumped in a cup of bleach to disinfect the outside.
This was the routine now—every pair of boots that left this farm needed to be properly cleaned.
Whatever this sickness was, they didn’t want it spreading past this farm.
She looked up in the direction of the stable, where Moses had disappeared. She could hear the sound of the steel shovel on the concrete floor.
“Why did the bishop send Moses, of all people?” she asked. “He hasn’t had time to process any of this—not the grief of his grandfather’s death, not the will, not the fact that the land isn’t his. Why send the man who lost the most and rub his nose in it?”
“He knows the farm, doesn’t he? And with Benuel there to help out his daet on their own farm, I can see why the bishop would ask one of them.”
Moses and Benuel’s father owned and ran a dairy farm. It was small, not big enough for three families to work and live off. One son helping his aging father would be enough.
“They aren’t the only ones who could have spared a helping hand. What about the Bielers? They have three teenage boys. One could have come out,” she countered.
And one of the Bieler boys would have taken direction more easily too. He’d have done as she told him and not felt any personal rights to the place. It would have been less awkward by far.
“That would be asking another family to choose sides in a very emotional conflict.” Her father shook his head slowly. “Nee, this was the way it had to be done. It’s best to keep the conflict between our family and the Yoders, if possible.”
“It doesn’t have to be a fight,” she said. She didn’t want conflict. But she did very much want this farm. So maybe it was one and the same.
Her father met her gaze seriously. “If Moses gives you trouble, you let me know, and I’ll come have a talk with him.”
“I’ll be fine,” she replied. “It’s only for a few weeks.”
Besides, this was Moses Yoder. She’d known him since they were in school and she could beat him in a footrace.
For a few years, she was taller than him, too, and in one rather eventful recess time in the sixth grade, she’d beaten him at arm wrestling.
That was before his growth spurt, when he shot up and broadened.
She didn’t dare try arm wrestling him after that.
But Moses wasn’t going to be able to bully her, that was for sure and for certain.
Her father lifted his boots from the water and let them drip for a moment before sliding them back onto his feet.
“I’ll come back and see if you need any . . . support after I’m finished with work,” Daet said.
“Danke, Daet. It’s appreciated.”
Miri helped her father hitch the gelding up to the buggy.
It was a quick job between the two of them—buckles and braces and a horse impatient to get onto the road again.
When Daet was rattling up the drive, Miri headed in the direction of the stable.
The building could use another coat of white paint, and she noted a few curling shingles on the roof—things she noticed now that the property was hers.
All this land—all these acres, buildings, and cattle—was now hers, as unbelievable as that felt right now.
It gave her a shiver to even think about.
She pushed the stable door open, and Moses was in the far stall filling a wheelbarrow with soiled straw. He looked over his shoulder and straightened. He was no longer the skinny boy who was shorter than she was. He was now a good head taller, and he was broad and strong too.
“Could you have said no?” she asked.
“What?”
“When the bishop asked you to come,” she said. “Could you have refused?”
“Refuse the bishop?” He smiled faintly. “I didn’t even think of it.”
“Nee, I wouldn’t either,” she agreed. “It’s kind of you to come, though. I know you probably didn’t want to.”
Moses didn’t answer, but sadness swam in his dark eyes. If he was angry, she’d understand, but she wouldn’t want an angry man working with her.
“Moses, I didn’t know,” she said. “I had no idea your dawdie would leave me this land. I really didn’t.”
“Some people are having trouble believing that,” Moses said.
“Yah?” she said, her throat growing tight. Is that how they saw her now? This community had known her since birth, and now they were questioning her character?
“I didn’t say I was one of them.” He turned back to shoveling out the stall, the scrape of metal against concrete ringing in the air.
“So you don’t believe I had a part in this?”
“I don’t know what to believe, I guess,” he replied. His shovel clanged against the side of the wheelbarrow.
“You know me,” Miri assured. “Since when have I ever been capable of lying or deception? If I lie, I turn red as a beet. You’ve seen it happen.
I’m not capable of holding that kind of secret, and I certainly couldn’t convince a sick old man to sign his farm over to me.
That takes a really devious person, Moses. And that’s not me.”
She might have beat Moses in races, but she’d won fair and square.
She might have turned him in when he spray-painted their schoolteacher’s milk cow with a bright pink daisy on her side the last year of his rumspringa, but Moses had had it coming.
Miri hadn’t been his best friend, but she’d been honest, and that had to count for something.
Moses stopped shoveling again and heaved a sigh. “Yah, that’s true.”
“You don’t have to do this, you know,” Miri said. “My daet will help me, and I’ll see if one of my cousins can come from Dauphin County to pitch in.”
“Are you staying in the house now?” Moses asked.
Miri startled at the abrupt change in topic. But she had come with a suitcase this morning, and it was sitting in a spare bedroom upstairs.
“Yah, I thought it would make getting the work done on my own easier if I slept here,” she said. She still felt like she was a guest, though, like the main bedroom, where Old Tom had slept before his illness took him to the hospital bed downstairs, was untouchable.
“It makes sense,” he agreed. “And it is your house now. I was just wondering if your mamm and daet would be okay with you living on your own.”
“I’m a grown woman now,” she said, and like he’d said, the house was hers. It felt heavy-handed to rub that in, though. “You can take whatever you want from the inside of the house. I’m sure you’ll want your dawdie’s things, and I would never try to hold on to those.”
Moses nodded mutely, and she could feel his sense of betrayal hanging in the air between them like a fog.
“I imagine you want to get back home as soon as you can,” she added.
“Nee, I said I’d help here,” Moses said. “I’m not ready to take Dawdie’s things yet, though.”
Because the Yoders were looking for a way to get the farm back still?
“Whenever you’re ready,” she said.
“Soon.” He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “In the meantime, I’ll help out here. I’ll come early in the morning, and I’ll leave after chores in the evening. If you don’t mind feeding me, I’ll work the farm until you’ve got something else lined up.”
They stared at each other a few heavy beats, then she sighed. “Why are you doing this?” she asked. “I mean, really?”
“Because the bishop asked me to,” he replied, and he turned back to mucking out the stall again.
So Moses wasn’t going to tell her why. The bishop asked—that explained him coming daily, but it didn’t explain him spending the entire day here, did it?
Was there something else simmering under the surface?
But this was her farm now, and her stable.
So she picked up another shovel, and she joined Moses in the work.
How long would Moses last working like a farmhand on his late grandfather’s land?