I pulled open the barn door with a creak.
“It’s just me. Katie,” I announced to the shadows.
Copper bounded up to meet me, sloshing water on my skirt. Sunny waddled behind him, tail wagging. Straw was stuck to her fur, and I set my burden down to brush it away.
“How is our guest?” I asked, warily.
Sunny gave me an inscrutable look and whimpered.
I followed Copper back to the broken stall. Sunlight had crept through the chinks in the barn siding in broad golden slats that illuminated dust motes stirred up by my shoes. I stood and stared at the young man. Alex, I reminded myself.
Since last night he’d turned over, and the note I’d left him had been moved. Whether he’d read it, or whether it had been disturbed in his sleep, I couldn’t tell. A couple of broad dents in the hay lay at his feet. I assumed that those were the dogs’ work. It was good that they weren’t afraid of him.
And I shouldn’t be either, I told myself.
I took a deep breath. “Good morning.”
He didn’t stir. I knelt down beside him on the straw and placed my hand on his arm. His eyes fluttered a bit, like he was caught in a dream.
“Alex?”
His eyes opened for a moment, unfocused liquid blue.
I tried to smile reassuringly.
His eyes seemed to slide past me, through me. A chill crept down my spine. I had not stopped to wonder, in my haste, if his head injury had damaged his brain. His gaze seemed vacant. It fixed on my white bonnet.
He licked his lips. “Where?”
His voice was so faint, I had to stoop close to hear it. It was as if it were all he could do to summon that one word.
“You’re safe. In Amish country.”
“Eh. Bonnet.” He reached up for one of my bonnet strings that danced in his face. I flinched.
His eyes clouded, and his eyelids shuttered over his eyes. I shook his shoulder, but he did not regain consciousness.
I pressed my hand to his forehead. It was scalding hot. I brushed his hair away from the wound on his temple. It looked infected, telltale runners of red reaching across his hairline to begin creeping through the body.
I swallowed hard. It was just the wound, I told myself. No more serious contagion than that.
I backed out of the stall to the dogs’ area. I kept their birthing equipment in an old metal locker. I retrieved a bottle of antiseptic and clean cotton and returned to the young man.
“This will sting,” I warned him, though I doubted that he heard me as I pressed the cotton soaked in antiseptic solution against his head.
I could see the hydrogen peroxide sizzling on the wound, bubbling and hissing, but he didn’t flinch. I frowned, angry at myself for not having done this the night before. I had assumed that the wound was not serious, that he’d simply been suffering from the concussive shock of a blow to the head. A concussion would subside on its own, but an infection . . .
Awkwardly, I wrapped his head in clean gauze. It was a struggle to position it in my lap to get the gauze around the back of his head. As I bandaged the wound, I felt something hard like bone move in his temple, and my stomach turned.
I gingerly laid his head back down on the straw. I arranged a metal container of water beside him and my breakfast: thick bread with butter, jam, and one of the first apples of the season. They looked like sad offerings to a strange god.
I wondered what would happen if he died; I wondered where I would bury him.
Chapter Seven
After a morning kept busy with chores, my mother sent me to take the Millers lunch. On the walk over, I noticed how tall the corn was getting. The stalks and leaves were golden, time for harvest. Without the boys, our neighbors would need to pitch in to clear the field. The ache in my chest twinged.
Winding my hands tightly in the basket handle, I tried not to think too much about food for the winter. Though we had more than enough to sustain ourselves, there was a delicate balance to be had in consumption and trade. We didn’t have enough storage for all the grain we sold to the Outside. And not enough shelter to last the whole winter for the cattle that were usually slaughtered in November. That meat and grain was sold for resources we couldn’t produce ourselves, like salt, glass canning jars, gelatin, and pectin for preserving. I told myself that the crisis would be resolved by winter, that there would be a solution for all of us.
Herr Miller was gone, probably out with my father. I left him his lunch in the kerosene-powered refrigerator and a note on the table. I idly wondered at the refrigerator. Many Plain folk did own appliances, such as stoves, irons, and refrigerators, that were powered by kerosene instead of electricity. Electrical lines were a forbidden connection with the Outside world. But we still brought the kerosene in from Outside. It occurred to me that this crisis was perhaps God’s way of removing those small luxuries from us.
I arranged two sandwiches and applesauce on a plate and carried a glass of milk upstairs to Elijah’s room.
He was sitting up in bed, between the two empty ones. Sunlight streamed in on the quilts, and I saw that he was reading the Bible. Gently, I set the plate down on his lap and handed him the glass of milk.
“How’s the ankle?” I asked. It was propped up on a pillow.
“Getting better,” he said, closing the Bible and reaching for the glass of milk. He downed it in three greedy slurps.
I sat beside him on the bed and picked up one of the sandwiches. “Are you bored?”
“Of course,” he said, grimacing. Then he looked at the Bible lying between us, and his expression drained away.
I chewed slowly, waiting for him to continue.
“I’ve been doing some thinking,” he began. Then he stopped, reached for the sandwich. His fingers gnawed at the crust.
“About what?” A trickle of cold dread had formed in my stomach, like ice water. The last time Elijah had been “doing some thinking,” he’d ham-handedly brought up the idea of marriage. I’d turned it into a joke, and he went along with it. We both knew that it would eventually happen, but I wasn’t ready for that. Not yet.
“I was thinking about the future,” he said.
Oh no. I glanced away, hoping that he would sense my unease and just stop.
“Seth and Joseph are gone.” He rubbed at one of his eyes with a hand covered with bread crumbs. My first impulse was to place my hand on his shoulder in sympathy, but I didn’t want him to take it as encouragement. I continued to chew silently.
“And . . . I’m afraid of my father being alone. In heaven. I know that my mother is there, waiting for him. And that has to be some comfort.” He tried to meet my eyes, and I looked away.
He took a deep breath. “So, I’ve decided to be baptized this fall.”
The bread turned to glue in my mouth. “You what?”
“I’ve decided to join the Amish church.”
My head spun. Baptisms took place in fall and spring, after Rumspringa, when young people had tasted the Outside world and willingly committed themselves to the church. Elijah had never been in a hurry to join up after I’d pushed aside the idea of marriage. One had to be baptized to be married, of course, but he didn’t like the idea of me going on Rumspringa without him. The shock of his brothers being caught out must have pushed him beyond his ordinary limits.
“But what about Rumspringa?” I asked. My voice sounded tiny, almost petulant to my own ears.
He shook his head. “I can’t leave my father alone. He’s lost too much.”
“What about you and me and going Outside and seeing movies and . . .” My voice faltered, and tears blurred my vision. “You promised.”