Chapter 11
Moses had seen Miri from a distance on Service Sunday, but he hadn’t spoken to her.
His parents, aunts and uncles, and cousins had all been tense and upset still.
Benuel had been like a coiled spring. Moses had felt the bishop’s eyes on him, but even the bishop didn’t approach the Yoders for more than a polite greeting.
And his grandfather’s will had been the topic of interest. Or maybe he was just imagining it.
Maybe those murmured conversations were about others’ problems.
Monday morning, Moses arrived at the farm on time, but he wasn’t settled in his heart.
Gott, why do I have to work for her like a hired hand?
It was one thing to attempt to forgive, to try to understand, and quite another to be taking orders from the woman who’d ended up with the farm he’d built all his future plans upon.
He remembered once as a teenager he’d been helping his grandfather with some chores, and he’d come across a gate that needed fixing.
But Moses had wanted to attend a youth group event of some sort, and instead of stopping and fixing the gate, he tied it with twine and left it.
Dawdie told Daet, and the next day, Daet gave him a lengthy lecture about doing a job right.
“Don’t you know that will be your farm one day? You’re shirking responsibility, and you’re cheating yourself out of a well-maintained farm. You’re going back today, and you’re fixing that gate.”
When Moses returned to finish the job, Dawdie had already fixed it, though. And his grandfather’s silent disappointment in him had been punishment enough.
The morning sun crept higher in the sky, evaporating dew and warming the air while Moses and Miri finished mucking out the stable and brushing the horses.
When the job was done and they stepped back outside into the warm sunlight, he looked across the yard toward the house. His heart clenched with fresh grief.
“My mamm packed me some breakfast,” Miri said. “She packed lunch, too, and dinner. I don’t have time to cook yet. Are you hungry?”
“Uh . . .” He might be working through his own emotions, but his body needed fuel, and his stomach growled. “Yah, that sounds good.”
“Come on, then.”
Miri led the way toward the house, and Moses had no choice but to follow. She stepped out of her work boots and onto the stairs, and he followed suit. It was how Dawdie liked things done. Work boots outside, unless it was winter or raining, and somehow Dawdie’s rules still seemed to apply here.
Moses followed Miri inside and inhaled the familiar scent of Dawdie’s house.
Very little had changed. His calendar hung on the wall with doctor appointments written in the little boxes.
There was one still booked for the next week, he noticed.
Dawdie’s felt church hat hung on a peg, next to it his well-worn straw hat, and Moses found himself looking toward the sitting room.
It had been cleaned, swept, and emptied by the women who’d worked together to get the house ready for the viewing.
The kitchen had been cleaned to a shine by that same group of women in their family, but Dawdie’s favorite pot still hung on the handle from a hook next to the stove, and there was a little shelf with some odds and ends he used regularly—a spray antiseptic for when cattle got cut on a barbed wire fence, a box of Band-Aids for himself, a pair of pliers, some matches, a ball of twine, and a roll of duct tape.
None of that had been touched, and if it weren’t for the empty sitting room behind him with its reminders of the funeral, he’d feel like his grandfather should be around somewhere—upstairs in the washroom, maybe out in the yard.
He stopped at the shelf and fingered the ball of twine.
“Do you know where my dawdie’s Bible is?” he asked.
“I wasn’t here when they cleaned,” Miri said. “I’m sorry. But I did notice that they put some of his personal items up in his bedroom. I looked into the room, but I didn’t go inside.”
“Why not?” It was hers now, wasn’t it?
“It felt . . . private.” Some color touched her cheeks. Then she turned away and opened up an insulated bag. “I have breakfast burritos. Mamm made them with eggs and bacon. I think there’s sausage in them too.”
Miri pulled out two foil-wrapped packages. They did smell good.
“Before I leave today, maybe I’ll go up and see what personal items are in Dawdie’s room,” Moses said. He needed to bring those memory-laden bits of his grandfather home with him.
“Yah, you should.”
He accepted one of the foil-wrapped burritos and opened it. Melted cheddar cheese peeked at him from the end of the tortilla roll.
“If you want to stay inside and work on the house, I can finish the outside work,” Moses said.
“Nee, I don’t want that.”
“I mean, it’s a lot of work, and you probably have just as much to do in here. We don’t have to do every job together. I can just take care of it.”
She cast him a frustrated look. “Do you really think that I’m the kind of woman who bakes better than she farms? I don’t want to keep house, Moses. I want to run the farm.”
“You have to feed yourself, get your laundry done, all of that,” he said.
“And I’ll figure it out. But the part that excites me about this land is the cattle, the outdoor work. I’m not excited about the kitchen.”
Fair enough. In fact, that rang true for Miri. She’d always been a tomboy.
“I thought you were bringing a cousin from Dauphin, though,” he said. Hadn’t she said that was the plan? “Won’t he be doing the heavy work?”
“I want to bring Susanna,” she said. “She’s sixteen, and she could cook and clean over the summer for me.”
Moses blinked. He hadn’t expected that. “Oh. You really are going to do the outdoor work yourself.”
“It’s what I’m good at. It might be the only thing I’m good at.
” She lifted her gaze and pinned him with an unveiled look.
His heart skipped a beat at the unexpected intimacy.
Miri had always been the painfully honest type—even when it was awkward—but today she was being honest with him in a different way, and it was like she was letting him look right down into her heart.
He had to break eye contact first, and he dropped his gaze to the table and caught his breath.
“I was just trying to help,” he said.
“It would be more helpful if you knew how to cook,” she said, and he heard the humor in her voice.
“Sorry, I’m not any better than you are in a kitchen,” he said, and they both laughed, the tension from earlier that morning suddenly breaking.
“What does your family think of you doing the farmwork?” he asked. “Just out of curiosity.”
“I think they’ve given up on me,” she replied. “I’ll have to figure out a way to take care of myself sooner or later. It’s not like I’ll get married.”
Miri picked up her own breakfast burrito, shut her eyes for a moment in silent prayer, and then took a jaw-cracking bite.
She’d never been a dainty girl. She’d been strong and fast and determined to prove herself.
He remembered the humiliation of getting beaten by her in an arm wrestling match in the sixth grade.
The boys had teased him for a year afterward.
Looking back on it, none of them had offered to arm wrestle her after that to prove they could beat her, either, so he had a feeling they’d suspected they’d lose, too.
It was a complicated time in a boy’s life, when he was physically small but emotionally large.
Now as an adult, though he was a full head taller than her, he’d retained a slight, illogical fear that she could still beat him.
“Why do you think you won’t get married?” he asked.
“Because I don’t want to be in here.” She gestured to the kitchen behind her. “I want to be out there with my cattle. I want to fix fences and tag calves. I don’t want to miss out on all the fun, and when you get married—as a woman, at least—you get put right back into the kitchen.”
“Oh.” He wasn’t sure what else to say. Most women wanted to take care of the home, raise the kinner, cook, clean, and be the last word inside those walls. But Miri didn’t, and somehow that didn’t surprise him either.
“So, nee, I don’t want you to take care of the fun stuff and leave me in here to clean. No offense.” Miri took another big bite and chewed, her gaze moving past him toward the window. Her heart already seemed to be moving back outside again. “I’ll do both. Bachelors manage it, don’t they?”
She had a point, Moses had to admit. But the house tended to suffer. A well-run home took a lot of work to maintain.
“What was my grandfather’s advice to you?” he asked.
“What?” She swallowed.
“He had advice for everyone. What was his advice to you?” Moses asked.
“To get married and have babies,” she replied.
Moses shrugged. Yah, that sounded like Dawdie, all right. But he’d wondered if Dawdie had somehow been encouraging her to live her own peculiar way.
“What was his advice to you?” she asked.
“To pick one thing to do and do it well,” he replied. “He wanted me to pick a specialty in farming and focus on it exclusively.”
Miri took another bite and chewed thoughtfully. Then she nodded slowly. “Will you do it?”
“Follow his advice?” Moses asked.
“Yah.”
“Benuel and I had another plan that we thought would work better.”
“What plan?”
In his mind’s eye, he could still see that western field with the little cottages lined up for his brother to run, leaving the rest to Moses to farm with Englisch tourists observing the work.
It would be enjoyable to educate the tourists on their way of life—a different approach to the pressures of running a small farm and trying to make a living off it.
Extra monthly income would be a big help.
Plus, they would bring Englischers in to buy their other products—farm-fresh eggs, milk, cheese . . .
Dawdie had never liked the plan. He said it was too wishy-washy. It didn’t focus enough on one, proper thing. It was just a business based upon Englisch curiosity, and he said he didn’t trust that curiosity to continue or to be good for them on a soul level.
“You don’t need an audience when you’re working for the Lord, Moses.”
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” he replied. “The farm didn’t come to us.”
Her gaze flicked up to meet his for a split second, and then she looked down at the burrito in her hands. She had long lashes—a funny thing to notice at a time like this. But she did. She could be intimidating and bullish sometimes, and others, he’d suddenly see some unexpected femininity.
“I’m sorry, Moses,” she said. “Like I said, you don’t have to stay here and help me.”
“I actually do,” he replied. “When the bishop tells you to do something, you do it. Or I risk getting shunned for being uncooperative.”
He was a baptized member of the faith now—not a boy. He was a man who was expected to act like one, including in obedience to church leadership.
“It’s my chance at freedom, you know.” She lifted her gaze, and this time she met his and held it.
“This is my chance to have a life of my own. You men don’t ever have to question that.
You’ll grow up, build a career, and you’ll make your own life.
We women don’t get that. We grow up and get married—that’s the life we get.
Marriage and kinner. But what if you’re not pretty, and you’re not feminine enough, and you don’t like handcrafts and cooking?
What then? Then you end up in your daet’s house, being reminded daily that you failed at the one thing you were supposed to do—find yourself a man and run your own home. ”
Her cheeks pinked, and she pressed her lips together tightly.
“As a man, you can be whatever you want, within reason,” she went on. “This is my one chance to be what I want, Moses. I know it ruins your plans, and I hate that. But it also gives me a breath of freedom, and I can’t give that up.”
Miri was a unique woman, he could see that. But it had never occurred to him before that her unusual way of doing things might have less to do with choice and more to do with how she was on the inside. Did she really hate women’s work that much?
“I didn’t ask you to give the farm up,” he said.
“Not out loud,” she said. “But I know everyone is hoping I will. I want you to know that I’m not selfish or greedy. I didn’t seek this out. But now that I have this opportunity, I can’t abandon it.”
The bishop had made it clear that the will was legal and legitimate. Miri had well and truly inherited the farm, and it was Moses’s duty to get used to it and formulate new plans for his life.
“I didn’t know you felt so trapped,” he said. “You couldn’t just get a job and start your life?”
“I was hoping that I could work as my cousin’s veterinarian assistant, now that Amanda is married,” she replied. “I wanted to keep buying cattle, and I thought I could maybe start paying your grandfather to board them for me. I could have a little herd in my own way.”
“It’s smart,” he admitted.
“A girl does what she has to do.” She smiled faintly. “What is your plan?”
“I don’t have a new one yet,” he replied. “I’ve only had a few days to start rethinking everything.”
“Maybe there is a creative solution,” she said.
“Yah, maybe.”
Because if Miri could come up with a way to work around her limitations, he could do the same thing.
He and Benuel thought they had a farm coming, but that didn’t mean they had to stop planning, did it?
What if they connected a tourism element to Daet’s dairy farm?
It could provide extra income right where they were.
“You just got an idea,” Miri said. “I saw it.” She waggled a finger at him.
“Yah, I did.” Moses shot her a smile. “You’re smart. You look at things differently.”
“It’s a blessing and a curse.” She returned his smile and took another bite of her burrito, chewing slowly.
“Did you tell my grandfather about your plans to help Tabitha and buy more cattle?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Nee, he was sick. It would have been crass to tell him that I’d been counting on his help to make my dream work. Besides, I have uncles and aunts. I could have asked some of them if they’d be willing to let me board cattle with them. I didn’t want to take advantage of Tom.”
“You really didn’t,” he said quietly.
“Of course not.” She met his gaze again with that completely open look. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Do you want to get this farm away from me?” she asked.
Moses thought for a moment. He owed her some complete honesty too.
“Nee,” he said after a moment. “I don’t like that my grandfather left it to you, but I guess what I need to do is make my peace with how he left things. I don’t want to take it away. I just want . . . to feel better about it.”
“Okay,” she said. “That’s fair.”
He was a grown man now, and somehow he still felt like that boy who’d lost an arm wrestle fair and square.