The Christmas Visitors
By
Naomi King
1
“Easy,
Clyde. Back up, fella.” Nate Kanagy stood aside as his Clydesdale came
backwards out of the horse trailer, sensing Clyde was every bit as excited as
he was on this fine December twenty-third. The horse whickered and shook his
massive head, then waited patiently beside his brother’s bay gelding while Bram
shut the trailer gates. Nate stepped up to pay the driver who had brought them
here from Willow Ridge this morning. “Thanks again, Gregg. And a merry Christmas
to you.”
“Merry
Christmas to you boys and your family, too,” Gregg replied as he started his
van. “Enjoy you new sleigh and courting buggy!”
“Jah, we intend to!” Nate’s brother,
Bram, piped up from behind them. “If you can’t have fun drivin’ a new rig,
what’s the point of gettin’ one?”
The
two of them waved as Gregg headed back onto the county blacktop, hauling their
empty trailer behind him. Then Nate gazed around the little town of Cedar
Creek, Missouri. From where they stood in the parking lot of Graber’s Custom
Carriages, the countryside rolled gently beneath a fresh blanket of snow,
dotted with tall white homes, silohs, and barns. Deep green cedar trees
followed the creek at the bottom of the hill, where cardinals called to each
other. Across the snow-packed blacktop, Treva’s Greenhouse sported a sign that
said CLOSED FOR CHRISTMAS, but beside it the Cedar Creek Mercantile bustled
with buggies and cars alike. “We’ll get our fill of Aunt Beulah Mae’s homemade
goodies tonight—”
“Along
with a hefty helping of her nosy questions and Uncle Abe’s looooong stories,”
Bram added.
“—but
a special occasion like this calls for some serious junk food.”
“Jah, let’s hit the merc.” Bram hitched
their two horses to the railing on the side of the carriage shop. “No tellin’
what else we might find there. Looks to be a place that stocks everything under
the sun, including stuff you never knew you needed.”
To
Nate, Cedar Creek seemed a lot like most Plain communities, in that the
businesses were scattered along the roadside, on the farms where their owners
lived. Back home in Willow Ridge they didn’t have a carriage maker, so this
trip was indeed a treat: their parents had given them their choice of new
vehicles on the understanding that he and his younger brother wouldn’t go
running the roads in cars like a lot of Amish fellows did during their rumspringa years. At eighteen, Bram had
chosen a buggy so he’d be ready for that day when a special girl compelled him
to court and marry her.
Nate,
however, had a hankering for a sleigh. Nothing else felt so grand on a winter’s
day as skimming across the snow-covered hills—and what could be more glorious
than such a ride on a moonlit night? After they ate their snack, he couldn’t
wait to hitch Clyde to his new rig and take off. He’d been engaged to a special
girl last Christmas, only to learn she’d been seeing other fellows, so at
twenty, Nate wasn’t out to impress anybody. These days, he was pleasing
himself.
When
they entered the mercantile, he felt right at home. The scent of bulk grass
seed, stored in wooden bins along the wall, filled the warm air and a wide
wooden staircase led to an open second level where they sold work boots and
clothing. A banner on the railing said ABBY’S STITCH IN TIME, and a young
woman—Abby, most likely—smiled down at him from her treadle sewing machine.
Mesh bags of oranges and locally grown apples and potatoes were displayed by
the check-out counter. Nate exchanged greetings with the gray-bearded fellow
who was ringing up an order and then followed Bram toward the aisles of bulk
snacks that had been bagged and labeled here in the store.
“Here’s
those chocolate coconut haystacks you like,” Bram said, “not to mention trail
mix and sweet potato chips and saltwater taffy and—”
But
Nate wasn’t listening. Down the aisle a ways, where they sold livestock
supplies, a girl was hefting a mineral block into her pull cart. Her auburn
hair glimmered beneath her white kapp, and as she straightened to her full
height, she caught his gaze. Held it for a few moments. Then she leaned down
again.
It
seemed only polite to see if she needed help.
As Nate headed her
way, he wasn’t surprised to hear the tattoo of Bram’s boots on the plank floor
behind him. “How about if I get that for you?” he asked as the redhead wrapped
her arms around a fifty-pound sack of horse feed.
“Jah, how many of those do you need?”
Bram chimed in. “No sense in strainin’ yourself when we toss this stuff around
all the time.”
Nate had always
heard that blue eyes could twinkle, but now he was seeing it for himself. The
young woman looked from him to his brother as though she hid a secret behind
her smile. “Not from around here, are you?”
He blinked. Had he
sprouted a second head? Did he sound so very different from the Amish fellows
here in Cedar Creek? Or was it Bram’s lovestruck-puppy grin that made her say
that? “Just got here from Willow Ridge, truth be told,” he replied. “I’m
fetching the sleigh James Graber’s built for me—”
“And he’s got a
courtin’ buggy with my name on it,” his younger brother added.
“Well, you
couldn’t ask for a better rig, then,” she remarked. “James has even built
special carriages for Disney World and the likes of Miss America, you see.”
Nate didn’t know a
thing about Miss America, but she surely couldn’t hold a candle to this girl.
Her ivory skin glowed, with just a few freckles on the bridge of her nose—tiny
ones, that he had to lean closer to see. And then there was the way her eyes
widened as she gazed back at him. He caught himself and grabbed the bag of feed
she’d been lifting. “So how many of these bags do you need?”
“Four, please. And
what’d you say your name was?”
Bram laughed as
he, too, hefted a sack of the oats mixture. “Last name’s Kanagy. I’m Bram—the
cute one,” he teased, “and Mr. Shy here is my brother Nate. He got burnt by a
girl he was engaged to, so now he mostly keeps to his horses.”
Nate closed his
eyes against a wave of irritation as he placed a third sack of the rations in
her wooden cart. “If you believe everything my kid brother says, well—but you
look to be way ahead of him. And your name would be—?”
The redhead looked
him over yet again. “Martha. Coblentz.” She pointed to the shelf where the
mineral blocks were. “A couple more of those and I’ve got to get on home. Denki ever so much for your help,
fellas. Have a gut time with your new
rigs.”
It was on the tip
of his tongue to invite her for a sleigh ride, yet Nate hesitated. After all,
they were only spending the night with their aunt and uncle before returning to
Willow Ridge tomorrow, in time to celebrate Christmas Eve and Christmas Day
with their family. As though she suddenly needed to be someplace else, Martha
strode down the aisle toward the check-out counter, pulling her sturdy wagon
behind her.
“Well, you blew
that one,” Bram muttered.
“And you, little
brother, have a mouth bigger than your brain,” Nate replied under his breath.
“We’ll have to work on that.”
“Jah,
Mary?” Martha murmured into her cell phone. She looked behind her as she walked
down the road, with the wind whipping at her black coat and bonnet. “You’ve got
to come see these two fellas who’re heading over to James’s carriage shop! I
just now met them in the mercantile and, well—you can gawk at the both of them
all you want, but I’ve already decided to go for Nate.”
“Puh! What makes
you think you get first pick?” her twin retorted.
“First come, first
served. Be there or be square,” Martha quipped. She loved the way her breath
came out in a frosty vapor on this brisk December morning. Truth be told, she
was enjoying this day a lot more now that she’d met the two Kanagy boys in the
mercantile. “Better get a move on, though, or you might miss them. They’re here
to fetch a sleigh and a courting buggy James built for them, and they might
head right on home afterwards—unless we give them a gut reason to hang around, you know.”
“Well, I can’t get
there any too fast if I’m on the phone with you
now, can I?” Click.
Martha tucked her
cell into her coat pocket and continued down the snow-covered road as fast as
her heavy pull cart would allow. What with her dat and her older brother Owen out working on a house today, the
barn chores fell to her, as they often did. It was just as well, because she
preferred working outdoors while Mary was happier helping their mamm get ready for today’s meals as well
as Christmas dinner. Martha was perfectly capable of placing those heavy sacks
of feeds in their covered bins and then setting out the new mineral blocks for
the horses, but wasn’t it a fine thing that two gut-looking fellows had come to help her in the mercantile? The
boys around Cedar Creek seemed to think she was part of the landscape . . .
always there, so mostly invisible. Apparently not worth a second look.
By the time Martha
was within sight of the house, here came Mary up the road. Oh, but she had a
glint of mischief in her eyes, too! “So what’s in that sack, Sister?”
Mary laughed.
“That’s my beeswax, ain’t so?”
“Now don’t go
thinking you can have those fellas all to yourself,” Martha protested,
playfully blocking her sister’s path. “I was nice enough to tell you about
them—”
“And Mamm’s
already got her suspicions about me taking out of the house so sudden-like,
too. This better be worth my time, Sister!” Mary declared. “After all, it was your dinner—your favorite oatmeal bread and
goodies I was baking when you called.”
“Puh! If you don’t
think the walk’s worth your while, then I’ll just have some fun with those
fellas myself. Not a problem!”
“We’ll see about
that, won’t we?”
Martha hurried on
down the snowy lane to the barn with her cart, which was harder to pull on the
clumpy gravel. No doubt her sister would know a fine opportunity when she saw
one, so it was best to put these supplies away and feed the animals in short
order. The Kanagy boys didn’t know it yet, but as thanks for helping her they
were about to receive a Christmas gift like they hadn’t counted on.
