Levi's Will by W. Dale Cramer

Author:W. Dale Cramer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Contemporary Fiction, Amish—Fiction, Conflict of generations—Fiction, Inheritance and succession— Fiction, FIC053000, FIC042000, FIC026000
ISBN: 9781441205391
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2009-10-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER | 23

July 1957

As soon as Will paid off the land he took out a permit to build a house, then borrowed a backhoe from work and dug his own footings. He chose a site on a little rise in the pasture where two spreading live oaks shaded the southern exposure, a perfect spot. As was his way, he would do it all himself. What he didn’t know about building a house he would learn as he went, from books or from friends.

He started building with whatever materials he could buy out of pocket, figuring that if he worked alone he couldn’t go any faster than his budget allowed anyway. His Amish blood balked at the notion of a mortgage until the framing sucked his savings dry. Even then he chose to borrow what he needed from Barefoot, whose bridge company was running four crews and making more money than he could spend. Barefoot said he was happy to loan Will the money interest-free because it would keep Will beholden to him. It may have been the greatest tribute that Will could offer a man that he didn’t mind being beholden to Jubal Barefoot.

He’d kept in touch with Tobe over the years, writing letters three or four times a year. Early on Tobe had pestered him to come up for a visit. He refused, and eventually Tobe stopped asking. Tobe wanted to know all about the house, and Will kept him posted on the progress. As soon as it was framed and roofed and all dried in, Tobe insisted on building the cabinets. Will sent him the dimensions, and in the summer, when the kitchen walls were ready, Tobe and Sylvia and the girls loaded a utility trailer with cabinets and tools, hitched it behind his brand-new ’57 Chevy, and came down to Georgia for a good long visit.

It had been almost six years, and Tobe’s letters had been Will’s only contact with Ohio in all that time. He didn’t realize how badly he had missed his little brother until Tobe rolled up in the yard with Sylvia beside him and two little girls in the back. Will was on an extension ladder at the time, nailing up gutters. When he saw the car and trailer coming up the drive he got so excited he rushed down the ladder, missed a step and fell sprawling in the front yard, then jumped up and ran to meet the car.

It seemed to Will that he had lowered his head in concentration for a little while—where had the time gone?—and when he looked up, Tobe’s infant girl, Hannah, had been replaced by a six-year-old streak of light who ran everywhere she went, trailing laughter like a comet. Rachel, a four-year-old clone of her sister, was still attached to her mother’s skirts. At first she only peeked out with wondering eyes from behind Sylvia, watching her sister cavort with Welch and Riley as if she’d known them all her life, but by evening she had joined the fray.

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