Chapter 22
Moses squatted next to the water trough in the “field hospital” for the sick cattle, his boots squishing into marshy ground. He felt along the heavy plastic water trough until he felt the source of the leak—a puncture. How had that happened?
He squinted at the bottom corner. It looked like it had collided with a thick nail driven through a piece of wood—probably his fault.
He’d been the one to fill up the troughs.
The last time he’d filled this one, an annoyed steer had made a run at him, and he hadn’t been paying attention.
Wood and nails had no business being out here either.
Also probably his fault. He picked up the offending piece of wood and looked around for any more.
He tramped back toward the barn just as Miri came out wheeling a barrow full of soiled straw.
Her face was flushed from the warmth of the day, and she tramped along in her rubber boots, taking longer steps than her dress would normally allow because of that split she’d sewn into the skirt.
But she still had a strong, capable femininity about her that he’d started to admire.
All he’d ever noticed in the past was that she was tomboy, but there was a softness under the shell.
He saw it when she tenderly cared for Bitsy or leaned against the fence, watching the ill cattle and looking for some sign of improvement or danger that she didn’t want to miss.
She loved those cattle with a fierce devotion.
He saw a gentler side to her when she made a sandwich in the kitchen, and she was tired and hungry, and her confidence slipped. She protected her heart with bravado.
Was that foolish of him to notice about the woman who’d inherited the farm right out from under him?
His daet hadn’t liked the idea of adding a tourist element to their own farm.
He’d said that it sounded too fancy to him, and he preferred to run a dairy without being watched by curious looky-loos.
If Moses and Benuel wanted to try something different, it would have to be on their own land.
That made it harder to forgive Miri for taking the farm, but he’d caught himself watching her lately, all the same.
“Do you have any epoxy?” he called.
Miri looked up and squinted through the bright sunlight. “I don’t know. Do I?”
He closed the distance between them. “I’ll check the supply drawers in the barn,” he said.
“You’d know better than me about those things,” she said.
Yah, he would. Still, this was her property now, and it was only proper to ask her. Even if it stung to do it.
Miri carried on to the manure pile. All that soiled straw could be reused for fertilizer when they were tilling a field later. Or when she did. That wasn’t going to be his job either, was it? He’d agreed to help for a couple of months, that was it. He wouldn’t be here come spring.
Moses headed into the barn and rifled through some drawers and two cabinets.
There were mousetraps, various ointments for healing abrasions and infections, twine, clippers, hoof care implements, udder disinfectant .
. . but no epoxy. He knew where to find it at home in their barn, but not here in dawdie’s—he winced as he corrected his thoughts—Miri’s.
He headed back outside again just as Miri was returning with the empty wheelbarrow. He held the door for her.
“What broke?” she asked.
“The water trough in the small field has a puncture.” He hated admitting the rest, but he needed to. “It’s my fault. I dropped it onto an old nail. I cleaned everything up, but I need to patch the trough.”
“Oh.” She nodded. “Okay.”
“I’d better head into town and get some putty. It’s handy—you’ll use it more than once, I can assure you.”
“Danke.” She tipped her face upward to meet his gaze and smiled. He found himself softening at her warm, brown eyes. Suddenly, he was thinking of how it felt to hold her close, to slip a hand around her waist like he had on the step. . . .
He broke off the eye contact and cleared his throat. What was wrong with him? That was not a safe avenue of thought.
“Uh, Dawdie had an account at the hardware store, but with his passing, it was closed.”
“Oh!” Miri nodded. “My daet has an account. You can put it on his, and I’ll square with him.”
“I’ll head out, then,” he said. “Won’t take me too long. But we need to keep those cattle in fresh water.”
“Definitely.” She wiped her hands down the front of her dress. “I’m glad you caught it.”
“I’ll be back,” he said, and he headed in the direction of the stable. He’d take his own buggy into town and get the epoxy. For being as passionate as she was about animal husbandry, Miri still had a lot to learn to run this farm on her own.
The ride into town down the curving, narrow roads that wound through the countryside was uneventful, and he parked in the buggy parking behind the strip mall that held the farm supply store.
He spotted Benuel’s buggy in the parking lot too—it had some reflective tape peeling, so he knew it was his brother’s.
After buying the epoxy, Moses came back out of the shop and looked along the street—up one way and down the other. Benuel was around somewhere. He spotted him coming down the sidewalk, a new watering can under one arm. Benuel waved, and Moses started in his direction.
“What are you doing in town?” Benuel asked as Moses reached him.
“Putty.” He held up the package, and his brother nodded.
“Sadie wanted me to get another watering can. She’s tired of the old one dribbling everywhere.”
“About time,” Moses agreed.
“I was going to talk to you about something when you got home tonight,” Benuel said, and he angled his head toward an empty side street.
The planters along the sidewalk overflowed with petunias, and Moses could hear the sound of a radio announcer’s banter coming from the open door of a bike shop.
“What’s going on?” Moses asked.
“This morning, Nehemiah Lapp and Johann Hockstetler came by,” Benuel said. “They were talking with Daet for a good long time, and I overheard some of it. They say it’s wrong how Yoder land got scooped out from under us.”
“The bishop himself said it was Dawdie’s wish,” Moses replied.
“Thing is, I noticed something in Dawdie’s Bible,” Benuel said.
“He had a list of people who’d inherited that farm over the generations, going all the way back to our great-great-great-great-grandfather Anselm Yoder.
From father to son or grandfather to grandson—it was always the same.
It stayed in the family. Now you tell me why he kept that list if he didn’t mean for us to have that land. ”
Moses frowned. “I mean, we knew it went back to Anselm.”
“He had the whole list of who owned the land when. It was a folded piece of paper in the middle of Ecclesiastes,” Benuel replied.
Had Dawdie really been thinking so seriously about those family connections to the farm?
“So what changed?” Moses asked.
Benuel shrugged. “Miri.”
“Come on—you really think she talked Dawdie into changing his will?”
Because he couldn’t see that happening. Miri sitting there, pouring poison into Dawdie’s ear as he neared his last days? That took a certain type of manipulation he didn’t think Miri had in her. It also took someone who didn’t have a lot of fear for Gott either.
“I think it makes more sense than Dawdie just changing his mind,” Benuel replied.
“That land has been in our family for a hundred and twelve years, I’ve done the math.
Dawdie told us that you or I would inherit.
Something changed his mind, and the only thing that was different was Miri helping out.
I know you like her, but this is about our children and grandchildren too. We had plans, Moses!”
A car turned down the road, and Moses gave a cordial nod to the driver, who carried on past. Then Moses turned back to his brother.
“I’m trying to do the right thing and accept Dawdie’s wishes,” Moses replied. “I’m disappointed, too, but it is what it is. What do you suggest we do about it?”
“We’ve been talking that over,” Benuel replied.
“Who?”
“Me, Daet, Onkel Leo, Onkel Joe, our cousin Verne . . . We’ve been discussing what can be done.”
“It’s a legal will.” Besides hiring a lawyer—and the Amish did not hire lawyers—there wasn’t much else that could be done.
“It’s not so legal if someone manipulated him.
” Benuel shook his head. “I’m not ready to give up on our grandfather’s farm.
I know the bishop was there when Dawdie changed the will, and so were some elders.
I know they were convinced in the moment of Dawdie’s sound mind, but what if they were wrong?
We want to sit down with the bishop and lay out our evidence. Maybe he’ll see things our way.”
This was sounding downright rebellious, and Moses pinched his lips together as he thought.
“How would she react if the land came back to us?” Benuel asked.
“Miri?” Moses paused to consider. She loved the cattle, and she was attached to the land. But mostly, she was attached to running a farm on her own. She liked the freedom, the accomplishment. And having gotten a taste of that . . . “She’d be mighty disappointed, that’s for sure and for certain.”
“Does she feel like she’s got a right to it?”
“I mean, she does have a right to it.”
“She has a frail old man’s will that says she’s the sole inheritor. But she doesn’t have a moral right to it.”
“I’m convinced she didn’t ask for this,” Moses said.
“I’ve spent a lot of time with her, and I think she was as surprised as we were.
Plus . . .” How could he explain the look in Miri’s eyes when she was squatting down next to a calf or when she was milking a cow to release some tension in the udder or when she was marching out across a field?
How to explain how she exuded confidence and calm and a bit of excitement too.
“Benuel, she loves cattle in the way Dawdie loved cattle. She’s got that same obsessive passion for cows.
You know how Dawdie could talk for an hour about the right footbaths to keep the cattle’s hooves in the best health? She’s like that.”
“She’s into footbaths?”
“She’s invested in the details like he was. Do you remember how he could talk about hoof-and-mouth disease or whatever and make it sound like the most fascinating thing in the world? To him, at least.”
Benuel shrugged. “So she can practice on someone else’s farm.”
“Look, you know as well as I do that she inherited the place. But I’m starting to think that Dawdie left it to her because she cares so much.”
“Enough to suggest to an old man that she should get the farm?” Benuel looked at him meaningfully.
Benuel didn’t get it. Moses sighed.
“It’s what we’re all thinking,” his brother said. “You’re the only one giving her the benefit of the doubt. If this were anyone else in the community, what would you think?”
And maybe Benuel was right. If this were Tabitha Schrock’s father leaving the farm to someone other than one of his daughters’ families, what would they think? If this were Jonas Peachy’s daet leaving his farm outside of the family, what would Moses wonder about?
Moses knew how it looked, but he also felt like he knew Miri Schrock better than they did. She wasn’t the fraudulent type, and her love of the land and his cattle might explain why Dawdie wanted her to have it.
Maybe he sensed a kindred spirit in her, a fellow bovine enthusiast who would run that farm just like Dawdie would have.
“Benuel, you and I had plans to change things with the farm—to include tourists and bring in some income in more creative ways,” Moses said. “Maybe that upset Dawdie more than we thought.”
“Maybe,” his brother agreed. “His letter said things would be better this way. He might have been thinking about that.”
“Yah.”
“One thing I do know,” Benuel said. “It was out of character.”
And of that much, Moses could not argue.