The Crossroad Read Free

mother, Rachel; the stiff-lipped Susanna Zook and her bearded husband, Benjamin. He shook his head, staring hard at the bridge of Henning’s long nose. “You really don’t get it, do you, Richard? We’re outsiders to the Amish world—two men they’d never be willing to trust, especially one with a camera poised and focused. Sorry, I’m not interested in exploiting their lifestyle to make some extra bucks.”
    “But the Amish exploit themselves. You’ve seen the tourist ads out in Ohio—tourism is a big part of their livelihood.”
    Philip stood his ground. “There are limits.”
    “All right, have it your way.” Henning got up to leave. “But I’ll be back.”
    Philip crumpled his coffee cup and threw it, but Henning ducked and scampered down the hallway.
    Philip turned his attention to the project at hand—writing three pages of upbeat, family oriented questions for Senator Thomason. Something to engage and inspire the middle-aged politician, questions to set him at ease, make him feel altogether comfortable chatting about the toddler-aged Romanian twin girls he and his wife had recently adopted. Philip promptly set to work, putting Henning and the ridiculous proposal out of his mind.

Two

    Rachel Yoder sat next to Lavina Troyer in the older woman’s enclosed Amish buggy, wrapped in a woolen lap robe. She heard the gentle clatter and clipclop of a passing horse as they headed south on Beechdale Road toward Lavina’s house for a morning of baking. Just the two of them.
    “Nothin’ gut ever comes of deceit,” Lavina said out of the blue.
    Rachel listened intently. She had become slightly better acquainted with her father’s somewhat eccentric relative recently. The discovery of an old postcard had drawn the two women together.
    “Awful shame … the People payin’ no mind to Gabe’s preachin’ back when.”
    Of course, Rachel supposed a gut many had given it some thought, seeing as how there was a hearty group of Amish Mennonites ’round here these days. She patted her mittened hands together against the cold, attempting to warm them under the blanket. “Uncle Gabe had a right gut heart,” she said.
    “Not one bit timid ’bout preachin’ the gospel neither … long afore you was born.”
    Rachel thought on that. “I’m wonderin’ something.” She paused a moment, deciding if this was the right time to tell the woman ’bout the promptings inside her. Most everyone looked on Lavina with pity. Even Bishop Seth Fisher did, because she was slow in her mind, had to think right hard ’bout reading and writing, and needed more time than most to process her answers. Proof was in the fact that she failed near every school test she took all through eighth grade, be it true or false, multiple choice, or fill in the blank.
    “Well … cat got your tongue?”
    Lavina was trustworthy. Rachel knew it sure as anything, yet something kept her from speaking her heart. “You won’t laugh if I tell you?”
    “Never onct laughed at Gabe an’ his secret prayers.”
    Rachel was truly glad to be able to share openly with someone ’bout her mysterious relative, the young man born as hesitant and shy as she, but who’d become mighty bold, rocking the community with his teachings against powwow doctoring and superstitions. Lavina was one of the few Plain folk around who knew the whole truth about Gabriel Esh, yet looked on past events in a sympathetic manner—in light of the spiritual, too, which wasn’t all too common among the People.
    Lavina had begun to attend the Beachy church, Rachel knew, turning her back on das alt Gebrauch —the Old Ways—though at the present time she was allowed to continue fellowship with many of the womenfolk from her former church district, even hold work frolics at her farmhouse. Some folk just assumed she’d upped and joined the Beachy group because of the way she was and didn’t know any better.
    But in the past weeks since Lavina had been driving her horse and buggy