Keys of Heaven (19 page)

“Will you do something for me? Will you ask Ginny if it's true that she and Henry are getting married?”

“She'll tell me to mind my own business. They haven't known each other but a couple of months.”

“You know old people. He probably wants someone to cook for him, and she probably wants a man around the place.”

Priscilla had never seen any evidence of Ginny wanting any such thing, but again, what did she know?

“If it comes up, I'll ask. But if it doesn't, I'll mind my own business. And now I'm going back to the house. I'm making some pot holders for Mamm's birthday and to sell at the Amish Market, and they won't sew themselves.”

When they passed the porch, in the warm light from the lamp in the dining room Priscilla saw that Mamm and Dat were now rocking contentedly in the swing, Dat's arm around Mamm's shoulders. Marriage was a mystery. Her parents had sought God's will for their lifelong partner, and He had shown them both the one person in the world that He had chosen. But presumably this work had gone on in Arlon and Ella's lives, too.

Why, then, did Benny feel the family was “in pieces” without Linda's influence? Should Arlon have married Linda? But she came from a different district altogether, so that didn't make sense. God had arranged for her and Crist to meet, not her and Arlon.

Priscilla held Benny's horse's head as he climbed into the buggy. This whole subject of courtship was a puzzle, for certain. At least she was feeling fairly settled about Joe. She had no idea if he was The One, but she was perfectly content to answer his letters and hear his news about the strange new world out West. As for Simon, she was well over him. She'd been concerned to hear about the horse stepping on him, and hoped that in his next letter Joe would tell her Simon was recovering, but her heart didn't make that leap of anticipation at the sight of his name that had been her experience before.

Joe didn't make her heart leap—or only a little anyway. It was his steadiness she appreciated. And he liked the sound of her voice in her letters. Which wasn't even something she could control, and yet he still liked it.

It was nice to be liked just for being yourself.

“Well, good night, Pris,” Benny said, picking up the reins. “
Denkes.
”

“I don't feel I helped much other than telling you what you already knew.”

“Sometimes that's all a person needs to hear.”

“You'd be better off finding out what
der Herr
wants you to hear.”

“
Ja
, maybe. Tell Joe hey when you write next.”

“I will.”

“Tell him he's a lucky fellow, and if he's not careful, I'll still steal you away.”

“I will not.”

Chuckling, Benny flapped the reins over the horse's back and the ancient buggy with its peeling top heaved itself into motion.

Boys, honestly.

T
he most exciting part of pottery, after creating a shape that satisfied his hands, was glazing it in a way that brought out its beauty and allowed light to give it that extra dimension that satisfied the eye as well.

Henry wondered if artistic philosophy might go over Eric's head, but then said it anyway. Fellow artists needed to discuss what they loved about their craft, no matter at what stage they found themselves.

To his surprise, Eric nodded. “It's the glaze that I look at first, and then the shape, and then I figure out what something is used for. Mom took us to a craft fair once and I spent the whole time talking to the potters about what makes brown, or blue, or that shiny stuff.”

“Shiny stuff?”

“Like when it rains and there's oil on the puddles.”

“Ah,” Henry said. “That's called
iridescence
, and it's part of what I'm using in my sky and water glaze.”

“Can I use it on my lantern?”

Here was a poser, where a man had to tread the fine line between using the resources at hand and using someone else's creation to get credit for his own.

“Can you justify to the admissions panel that you conceived and mixed the glaze as well as applying it?”

Eric stopped peeking into the five-gallon buckets of minerals and mixtures that were neatly labeled and lined up under the workbench. “Would I have to do that?”

“Probably.”

The boy gazed into a bucket, but Henry got the impression he didn't see the contents. “Dad's not going to let me go, you know. He calls every night, and even when I tell him what we're doing and how much I'm learning, all he cares about is if I'm being a pain in the neck to Sarah.”

“Nothing wrong with that. Are you?”

Eric made a face. “One false move and Caleb's grandpa will take a pitchfork to me.”

“I doubt that very much. The Amish don't believe in violence.”

“Then how come they spank their kids?”

“People have been spanking their kids for thousands of years. It's only lately that it's gotten political. But getting back to your dad, the way to show him you're serious about the school is to show him you've changed. That you're prepared to do what it takes—even if what it takes is boring stuff, like helping out around the house and making beds like you do at Sarah's.”

Eric raised his eyebrows in an
Are you kidding me?
face. “Making beds is going to help me get into an art school? Ri-i-i-ght.”

“Making beds is going to show your parents you're willing to work hard and make their investment worthwhile. That you're not just sitting there with your hand out, expecting them to cough up the cash.”

“They have the cash.”

“Not the point.”

“But what if—” The sound of crunching wheels in the gravel stopped him, and he swiveled to see out the doors. “You've got a customer. In a big van.”

“It's probably an Amish taxi.” That many Amish folks in a van probably meant customers, a welcome interruption, so he washed his hands quickly and tucked his shirt into his jeans. An old straw hat hung on a nail next to the door, so he slapped it on his head—not so they'd think he was like them or was giving respect to their traditions, but because it was hot and bright outside the barn, and he had no idea what had become of his sunglasses.

Two guys were standing on the barn ramp, looking around the farm with their hands on their hips, like Realtors sizing up the value of a place. In the open doors at the back of the van, a girl with tattoos as thickly applied as sleeves on both arms was heaving on a metal box of the kind that musical instruments or other high-end equipment came in.

“Good morning,” he called, and the two guys swung to face him. “What can I do for you?”

“Are you Henry Byler?” The older one came forward, his hand outstretched, and Henry shook it.

“I am.”

“Great.” His face broke into a smile. “I'm Sol Edwards, and this is Kyle Madison. We're the film crew that Dave Petersen from D.W. Frith sent to do the video segment.”

Henry distinctly felt his jaw sag in astonishment. “What?”

Kyle dug in his jeans pocket for his phone. “We got the date right, didn't we? Thursday the twenty-fifth?” He scrolled through his e-mail and showed Henry the screen.

It was a message from Dave Petersen confirming the date and saying that while he hadn't yet spoken with Henry about the exact time, they were good to go.

Dave Petersen hadn't yet spoken with Henry because…well, other than the ones from Ginny, he hadn't picked up any of his calls. He knew there were messages on his phone, but he'd been so consumed by his work and Ginny and dealing with Eric that nothing else had seemed very important.

Except that D.W. Frith was important if he planned to have a career. What had he been thinking, ignoring Dave Petersen's number? Was he setting himself up to fail before he even started?

“Sorry,” he said, pasting on a smile that he hoped was reassuring. “I've been pretty busy and it completely slipped my mind. Can you brief me on what we're doing?”

At the van, another box of equipment thumped on top of the first one. Why was the girl doing all the heavy lifting when there were two perfectly strong and healthy men standing here? He took a couple of steps toward her. “Can I help you with that?” he called.

“No,” she said. “Do I look like I can't handle it?”

“Don't mess with Carmen,” Kyle said. “The cameras are her department, and she will tear your head off if you get a fingerprint on them.”

Too late, Henry saw Eric emerge from around the back of the van and reach inside.

“What do you think you're doing?” the girl snapped, her red, angular haircut swinging as she whipped around.

“Helping you.” Eric froze in mid-motion, his hands around a box about two feet square.

“Did I ask for help?”

“You shouldn't have to ask. If a person sees work that needs to be done, he should pitch in and do it.”

Henry distinctly heard the echo of Caleb's voice and, behind that, Sarah's, but the urge to smile was buried in the need to save Eric from having his head torn off.

The girl regarded him. “You aren't Amish.”

“Nope. But I still want to help. Is this all camera equipment?”

“Yes. Break something and I break you.”

“Okay. Where do you want it?”

“Here for now. I want some establishing shots. Maybe you can be my guide. You live here?”

“No, I'm taking pottery lessons from Henry. But I can show you stuff.”

“Deal. Watch that, it's heavy.”

Sol exchanged a glance with Kyle. “That's a first.”

“I heard that,” Carmen called.

Henry began to revise his assumptions about exactly who was in charge here. “So what is your plan, Sol? Eric and I were about to start glazing, so if we're talking hours here, that's going to affect our schedule.”

“Not hours, I hope,” Sol replied. “A couple maybe. And I know you Amish are sketchy about having your photo taken, so mostly it'll be shots of the farm and the surrounding area, which we won't need you for. For the interview, maybe we could—”

“I think there might be something lost in translation here,” Henry interrupted gently, before the error went any further. “I'm not Amish.”

“You're not?” Sol looked him up and down, and Kyle began to look worried. “You look Amish.”

Henry pulled off the straw hat, and ran his hands through his distinctly non-Amish haircut. “It's just a hat that was hanging in the barn. I thought Dave was clear on this. We already talked about it.”

“That's not what we were told,” Kyle said. “This video is for the home page of the D.W. Frith website, introducing your line of pottery, right? The marketing department is going crazy about the Amish stuff—back to the land, simplicity for your home, made by hand, all that. They're thinking fifty thousand hits a day.”

“I suggest they think about the pottery, not about their marketing slant, then.”

Sol adjusted his weight, as though he were digging in for some serious persuasion. “You know as well as I do that the marketing brings the customers in, and the product sells them. The creative brief said you were Amish.”

“I used to be. And I explained to Dave that I'm not now. It wouldn't be honest to market me, as you say, as something I'm not. The people buying my pieces aren't getting anything more than the piece itself. They're getting a Byler bowl, not an Amish bowl.”

Again the exchange of glances between Sol and Kyle. “That's what you think. Because what marketing is selling is a shared experience of Amish life, my friend, not just a bowl.”

“How do you want to play this, then?” Kyle finally asked his colleague, when it was clear Henry—who had run through a dozen things he could say and decided against all of them—wasn't going to speak. “Because this isn't how the script reads.”

“There's a script?” Henry managed.

“Talking points,” Sol said, and then raised his voice so the woman at the van could hear. “Yo, Carmen, better cancel the establishing shots of the women and kids in the garden with the bonnets.”

“Sarah's probably in her garden,” Eric put in.

“Never mind Sarah,” Henry said hastily. “Bad enough I might have to do this. I'm absolutely not allowing my Amish neighbors to sell the
experience
by appearing in a video.”

Sol looked as though a lightbulb had gone off in his mind. “But that's how we can get around it,” he said. “The magazine copy is all ‘Amish fields and flowers' so the outdoor shots can be about that. Your house. Your neighbor's garden. Bonnets in the distance, you know? No identifying shots or faces—oh yeah, they briefed us on that. Can we do close-ups of you in the hat?”

“It's an Amish hat. It says something about the man who wears it—primarily that he belongs to the church.”

“Yeah, I know. Do you have any suspenders?”

“No.” Henry was getting more than a little concerned. “I'm not dressing up Amish for this. It would be a lie. I left the church two decades ago and have no plans to go back.”

Sol looked crestfallen. “No on the hat. And the shirt's just a plaid shirt, not a solid like those guys in town were wearing. So how are we going to shoot you?”

Carmen had finished unpacking her equipment, and hefted a video camera the size of a suitcase onto her shoulder. “Okay, kid. Show me some fields and flowers. And a few bonnets would be good.”

Henry started forward. “No, you can't—”

“Mr. Byler, do you want those fifty thousand hits or not?” Sol demanded, clearly coming to the end of his allotment of persuasion. “Either I get this segment filmed today or I don't get paid, and D.W. Frith is one of my best clients. They're probably one of yours, too. Now, do we make them happy using whatever means we have available, or don't we?”

If he refused, Henry had no doubt that whoever wanted those fifty thousand hits on the website would make good and sure his pieces were relegated to the bargain basement, and that would be the end of his career outside the confines of the Amish Market in Willow Creek.

Eric and Carmen were nearly to the top of the hill behind the barn. “Eric, if Sarah is outside, run down and ask her if it would be okay to film her garden. If she's not, only go to the fence. I won't allow trespassing.”

“Great.” Sol brightened, clearly taking this as permission to go ahead with whatever Plan B was. “Kyle, get busy with the lights in the pottery studio so Carmen doesn't have to stand around waiting when she gets back. Meanwhile, Henry, if you don't mind, we'll wire you up with a mic so we can do some voice-overs. Any chance you can sound more Amish?”

Henry didn't even reply to that one. Instead, he allowed Kyle to hook a battery pack to his belt at the back, and run a microphone wire up under his shirt to clip on his collar.

“Now, if there's anything you don't feel comfortable answering,” Sol said, “just say, ‘No comment.' Picture yourself talking to a customer who's stopped by your studio. Be relaxed, breathe, don't be afraid to pause and think before you answer. We're going to scrub everything in post, so any slips of the tongue will be taken out, too. Be natural.”

Be natural.
“That's an un-Amish concept. The natural is something to be overcome in favor of the spiritual.”

Sol nodded at Kyle, who nodded back, and Henry realized he was being recorded.

“So in one way, I'm going against my upbringing when I focus my work on natural forms, but in another way, I'm celebrating the shapes and curves that the Amish believe God made, and turning the lily of the field into something that can be used in home and kitchen.”

There. That wasn't so hard.

As Henry talked, he thought less about the man he used to be and more about the man he was now. He talked about his process, and the more he told Sol about the forms he created and the glazing method he'd discovered down in the creek bottom, the more Sol drew him out until his philosophy of art was articulated in full.

When Carmen came back, Eric was still in tow and Caleb was with him. “Who's this?” Sol wanted to know. “Do we have a release to film him?”

“No,” Henry said quickly. “This is Caleb, and he's underage.”

“It's all right, Henry,” Caleb said. “This lady already filmed Mamm and me from the top of the hill. She promised she wouldn't show our faces. I wanted to come and see. I've never seen a film before.”

“Caleb, I want you to go home.” He wouldn't put it past any of this crew to sneak a few shots of the boy without anyone being the wiser. That's all he would need, is to have Caleb's face seven hundred pixels wide on fifty thousand computer screens.

“But Henry, I just wanted to—”