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Chapter 26: Having Fun and Getting Serious

  “Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favour from the Lord.” Proverbs 18:22

  Just before sunrise Mr. Harris went out to the barn and rattled some boards and woke up Luke. “Hey Luke, breakfast,” he told him. (Mr. Harris was a man of few words, but aren’t we all at five a.m.)

  Luke opened his eyes, and then closed them again, and then, with a Herculean effort of will, he rose to his feet. He shook his head in disgusted amusement, because his friend Mr. Harris had inadvertently awakened him during a groovy-innocent dream about a beautiful maiden named Kelly whom he had met while studying Fine Arts at Hun State. But then the smell of breakfast fixed him up, and he forgot about it. Puttin’ on his white rawhide Stetson to cover his bedhead, Luke stumbled out of the barn and cruised on into the farmhouse.

  “Here, have some,” Mr. Harris told him, as he scooped some tasty-tasting omelet onto Luke’s china plate. “This here is my daughter Jenny’s recipe. It’s an omelet, with eggs in it. Oops, guess I shouldn’t have told you her secret ingredient, huh.”

  “Ah, the impeccable eccable egg,” joked Luke, misquoting the universal ad slogan.

  Terry sized him up. “The watt?”

  “Eccable: that’s the word ‘edible’, pronounced with a strong Hun accent--coz I’m a strong Hun after all.” There was stony silence. (He’s laughing on the inside, Luke told himself. Or groaning--I’ve been hanging out with Bert too much!) Then to prove the last point, he apologized to Terry: “Sorry, I guess I gidda little giddy when I giddy up in the morning.”

  Actually, that wasn’t it at all. It was just this Day! Luke felt great! Filled with a nameless bliss, thrilled with a sense that something wondrous was imminent. Maybe it was still the positive outlook from the Laughing One, or maybe it was finding this place, this rural oasis, this place of peace: even the stars had shone brighter last night, and held him closer! Or maybe it was those ace accommodations.

  Terry was changing the subject. “Anyway. She’s quite a cook, yes?”

  Luke tasted the omelet and agreed. “Yeah, it is great! Where is she, so I can tell her Congratulations?”

  “She went back to bed for a couple hours. She works regulation hours, 9 to 5, at the Children’s Center. She only got up to fix breakfast for her old man. Ain’t she sweet?”

  Luke was impressed. “Wow. That is very kind of her. She sounds like quite a gal.”

  “Sure enough is,” Mr. Harris said proudly. “She’s about your age, too. You should meet her sometime. Maybe at lunchtime.”

  “That’s a good time for meeting people,” Luke observed. “Everyone is always at their best and brightest then, because hey, hooray, Lunch!” Then they finished their egg omelets and drank their milk and went out to do some farming!

  It was a good day to be out in the fields. Once the sun got through risin’, it was a shining hot day. Summer’s last stand. Autumn’s golden beginning. It was good timing by both Luke and the weather to show up when they did, because there was still some harvesting to be done. So they spent the morning doing it, and getting tired and dirty and sweaty. Then they jumped in the crick to cool off and get clean before going for lunch.

  By the time they had walked back down the field to the farmhouse, the sun had dried them out and they were feeling peaceful and grand.

  They took off their work shoes and went into the farmhouse, and they found a lovely luncheon all laid out for them on the kitchen table. There were ham sandwiches and apples and carrots and corn, and of course tall, cool glasses of ice water.

  A slender, striking, simple young woman was sitting at the table waiting for them to arrive. Her beautiful curls were red with golden highlights. Her bewitching eyes were ripe fields, corn and wheat, at once both green and golden. Her skin was fair with golden freckles. Her full sensual lips spoke only truth, and her teeth sparkled like white gold and were glorious. A long elegant skirt and a delicate linen blouse chastely covered but could not entirely camouflage her supple, seductive curves. She carried herself with country strength and regal confidence, and she moved with grace and innocence. Luke’s jaw dropped. “Wow,” he said enthusiastically.

  “Wow,” Mr. Harris agreed, as his jaw dropped too. He was lookin’ at the food, though. “This sure is a great-looking lunch, honey,” he praised his daughter.

  “Oh yeah; Yum!” Luke said, remembering what they were there for and helping himself to a ham sandwich. “Eat Ham!” he stated dramatically, emphatically, and semi-automatically, repeating another age-old Hun rallying cry. Then they did just that, finishing off the good meal that Jenny Harris had made for them.

  Terry Harris introduced Luke to his peerless daughter Jenny. “Jenny, this here is a hard-workin’ Hun named Luke. Luke, this is Jenny.” Then he added apologetically, “You see why I made you sleep in the barn.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” said Luke, pulling out all the stops with his best opening line. Jenny reciprocated.

  “Hey, I was thinkin’...” said Terry, “I gotta go open the Bar & Grill for the afternoon, so perhaps Luke would like to spend the afternoon with you at the Children’s Center, Jenny.”

  Jenny contemplated quickly, and said cheerfully, “Yes, I think that would be nice. As long as Luke likes children...” She looked hopeful.

  Luke said mockhaughtily, “Well! Most of the children I’ve ever met are impossibly childish, and even somewhat immature. They should grow up.” Then he laughed and said, “Nah, I’m just joshin’. I think kids are swell! They playa lot and they laugha lot and they don’t worry too much about money or politics. That makes ’em surprisingly wise. Not much of a challenge at arm-wrestling,” he noted, considering the other hand. “But hey, it’ll be fun anyway. I’ll bring my guitar and play some kids’ songs and make some friends. And play with the blocks!” he added excitedly.

  They finished their lunch, and the three of them went into town: Terry to his business, and Jenny and Luke to the Children’s Center. Sun was shining, hearts were smiling, as they commenced their legendary afternoon.

  Jenny and Luke stood outside the Children’s Center. She was filling him in on what exactly it was all about. “Okay, here we are,” she told him, gesturing at the pretty brick building with the white picket fence and the playground equipment in the yard. “I work here Monday to Friday. There are a couple other women, Sister Kitt and Miss Laura, who live here and work here full-time. See, Delightful is a small town, so we have only one Children’s Center to perform a variety of functions. It is an orphanage, a children’s hospital, a day-care center, a schoolhouse, and a Boys & Girls Club. So there are some children who live here, and then there are others who only come to visit during the day, like I do.”

  “Neato,” said Luke. “So you are a teacher?”

  “Well, everybody’s everything: we all teach, we’re all nurses, we’re all like mothers to the children. At the Children’s Center we don’t so much believe in division, or labeling, or in playing limited roles. We believe in being ourselves, and doing all that we can and all that the children need.”

  “So that’s my job too, just to be myself?”

  “Sure, Luke. I think the kids will like you. Just remember to be sensitive, because we have a lot of sick kids, and a few with disabilities, and a lot who have had problems at home, or who have no home but here.”

  Luke the Hun looked confident. “Hey, of course I can be sensitive. I’m university-trained as a bleeding heart and an artist. I am tough on the outside and tender on the inside, like the way my Dad barbecues his steaks.”

  Jenny smiled, and she opened the door for him and led him into the Children’s Center to meet the children. As soon as they went in, they were mobbed by happy little ones, excited to see their friend Miss Jenny. It was then that Luke noticed a change in her. Though he had been quite enchanted and smitten already, with her shining smile and cool confidence and her occasional sassy remarks as they talked on the way over, now he saw her eyes
light up, and fell instantly and eternally in love. To borrow a bus-driver’s metaphor, ‘It’s as if her eyes went from zero to sixty in a single second’--except they were already at 60 to begin with. So it was more like, from 60 to 120. A dangerous speed... But exciting! Luke was excited just watching her, and laughed as he realized he was in love again!

  The children were good people. They were pretty short, but they were good people. Luke met a rowdy fisherman’s-son named Shankleton, and a rambunctious farmer’s-daughter named Patricia, and a rough-and-tumble dentist’s-kid named Haji, and a tender-voiced waif (but don’t let it fool ya) named Michelle. They were learning about chemistry from the lovely Miss Laura. Luke listened in for awhile, and then he said, “Wow. Now I am smart.” Then he lost interest, forgot it all, and went to play with the blocks.

  There was a young guy playin’ with the blocks already. He had curly brown hair and he was about four-and-a-half feet tall and he was wearing blue shorts and a red and yellow T-shirt. “Wow, all the primary colors,” Luke commented observationally, conversationally and educationally.

  The Kid checked himself out and agreed: “Yep. It’s because I am still in the primary grades.”

  “So, when you get to secondary school you will be able to diversify your apparel?” Luke asked.

  “You know it. I can hardly wait until I can wear plaid,” the Kid said slyly.

  Luke thought back wistfully. “Yeah, that was a big thrill for me too,” he pretended to remember. “Hey, you are pretty hip for one so young,” he told the Kid.

  “What, you say I have pretty hips for one so young? Watch it, pervert!”

  Luke blanched, then went beet-red for a second before recovering. “What, you say you want me to watch your hips? Sorry, I’m not like that, weirdo!” Luke shot back.

  After kidding around like that, they decided they were both cool and clever, so they played with the blocks together. The Kid introduced himself as Big Nate, and Luke introduced himself as Cool Luke, and then they got down to business. They built a castle together, but they had a little quarrel about how many towers it should have, so then they started to steal each other’s blocks and compete in creating the best creation. Big Nate used his blocks to build a scale model of a federal penitentiary. Not to be outdone, Luke made a slope by setting a wedge-shaped block under one end of a wide textbook, and then he built the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Not to be outdone, the confident and fun yet arrogant and irritating young kid knocked over the previously-precarious-now-crumbly tower.

  Luke could feel his Hun...instincts...taking...over..., but he remembered that in most cultures it’s considered gauche to declare Total War on an eight-year-old, so he held it in check. Thankfully, at that point along came the main lady, Sister Kitt, and summoned him. “Mister Luke95, there’s someone I’d like u to meet.”

  Luke got up to see what she had planned. “Nice meetin’ ya. It was fun,” he told Big Nate. “See you later.”

  “Thanks for warning me,” Big Nate quipped--an oldie-but-a-goodie from a young naughty. This time Luke smiled a midway-between-amused-and-abused kind of smile, and he went away with Sister Kitt.

  Sister Kitt led Luke down a corridor into the Healing Wing. She took him into a small hospital room, where a dark-haired twelve-year-old boy was lying on a hard hospital bed and lookin’ lonesome. When Luke looked again, he noticed that the boy only had one arm. Yikes, Luke winced. “Hi Tito, how ya doin!” Kitt greeted the boy, and bantered, “D’ja remember the rule?”

  “‘Only good things can happen now’,” the boy remembered, breaking into a bright grin.

  “And what happens if you break my rule?” Sister Kitt interrogated playfully.

  “Bad things?” Tito supplied.

  “Exactly. So be careful. I’ll be watchin’. But look, here’s a good thing now! I brought a friend--Mister Luke. Luke, this is our friend Tito.”

  Tito smiled. “Pleased to meet you, sir,” he told Luke.

  “Wow. You are polite. Well, I reckon it’s a pleasure meetin’ you, too, Tito.” Then they kind of didn’t know what to say to each other, since they were pretty much strangers yet.

  Sister Kitt broke the ice. “Luke, Tito here plays guitar too; maybe you could show him a few tricks.”

  Luke played a few quick notes on his guitar, and asked Tito, “What kind of music do you like?”

  “Jaazzz, man,” Tito told him. “I used to be pretty good, but I haven’t played much lately.” He indicated his absent right arm.

  Luke looked sympathetic. “Yeah, I was noticing that. What happened, boss?”

  Tito didn’t mind talkin’ about it: “Doctor Oyim amputated it. They say I have bone cancer. They say it may not have spread beyond that arm, but I guess we’ll know pretty soon.”

  “Yikes,” said Luke, shocked and awkward “That’s a bad thing there. Is that what led to the rule?” he wondered, to Tito’s nod. “Gosh, how are you dealing with it? I think I would be pretty stunned if that happened to me.” He gave a little shiver. “I can hardly even imagine. Are you okay, Tito?”

  Tito laughed, lookin’ at where his arm used to be. “Well, I was kind of attached to it, pardon the phrase. But hey, life goes on. At least now my mom won’t have to worry about me taking up the cymbals.” Tito could see that Luke was surprised to hear him joking around about it, so he added, “Yeah, I know this is serious, but that’s no reason I have to be serious about it. Mama says to expect a lot of people to either look at me with either horror or pity. She says they don’t mean anything by it, that’s just human nature. (She also says “That doesn’t say much for humans, but that’s beside the point”) But she says that for people to look at me and smile? like they always did? I may have to help them out. Which has been really hard, especially at first, when all I could do is cry.” He paused, blinking back tears even now. “But ‘Life isn’t always easy but it’s always worth it.’ That one’s from Miss Jenny. She and Sister Kitt have helped me a lot. They keep me looking on the bright side, and spend time with me when I‘m sad. Besides,” he finished, “I don’t have time to be stressed out: I’m too busy being myself. It takes all my time.”

  Luke was impressed. “Cool, I like that,” he said about Tito’s last sound bite. “You sure are brave, young fella.”

  Tito laughed. “Young fellas are always brave. Guess we don’t know any better! But hey, I’ll admit it, Mister Luke, losing an arm…” (he winced) “has its…drawbacks. It gets frustrating trying to play the guitar, and I have to face the fact that I’ll prob’ly never be a pro boxer.” (Smiling again, conceding nothing): “Prob-ably! But how important are those things? The main thing is that I’m still here, and I can still enjoy life and play with my friends! Having an illness like this sure teaches you a lot about hope, and about appreciating the blessings you have. I still have two good eyes to see the sunset and two good ears to hear the birds sing. Some people can’t do that. But they might have two arms, to give their little sister airplane rides or help their mom carry groceries. See, none of us can have everything in this life, but we all have something, praise God.” He paused for a moment, and then assigned credit for this attitude. “It was what my mama said to me that helped the most. She hugged me so tight and said in my ear... she was crying but she sounded so happy... ‘You are not an arm. You are not a leg. You are my sacred, wonderful boy! And you are still here with us!’”

  Luke looked up from where he was fiddling around with his guitar, and he looked in Tito’s misty eyes. “Wow. You’re right. Hey, Sister Kitt thought I could show you a few tricks, but it seems like you’re the one teaching me! I wish I could pay you back, but I’m not having much luck figuring out how to play this thing one-handed. I’ve never really tried before; I guess I just took it for granted. It doesn’t seem to be the easiest instrument to play with one hand, does it? But if I can’t teach you that, at least let me give you some advice: Think soccer, for one thing. But then too, take up the trumpet. I know a one-armed trumpet player named
Reuben, up in Chicago. He had his horn mounted on a stand, so he could use his good hand for pressing the valves, and he just kind of leaned into it and blew gold! It was something. Cool cat, too--I’m sure he’d be happy to show you the ropes, if you ever get up that way.”

  “Let’s hope I get that chance,” said Tito. He reminded Luke: “They’re going to wait and see if the operation healed me. But they say it’s still possible that the cancer has spread too far and I could die.”

  “They told you that?” Luke was startled. It seemed a crushing load to put on a kid.

  “It’s okay. I’m not scared. My mother says that ‘God needs children with him in heaven, because what fun would heaven be without children?’ She says they get to help him color in the sky each morning, like a big coloring book. I figure a big kid like me will help them stay inside the lines a little better,” Tito explained, with a joke that went over Luke’s head. Then a related thought struck him, “That’s probably why everything is almost in black and white at night, by the way--coz most of the kids are sleeping!”

  Luke was still trying to assimilate this news. It still seemed like too much to tell a child, even an old-enough-to-know-what’s-going-on-child, although he tried to think what else might be more appropriate, and couldn’t imagine. “She told you God was going to take you home to heaven because he needs children there with Him?”

  “No, she said that might happen.” Then with a note of steely resolve and the will to live and grow, Tito told him: “She said God needs good men here, too.”

  That made Luke feel better, and he clapped him admiringly on the shoulder, man-to-man, with a hearty, “He does.” Still, hoping to change the subject to something happier, Luke asked if Tito was feeling healthy enough to come out and join the rest of the kids for a while. Still beaming from Luke’s approval, Tito decided that it was a good day and he was, so they went back to the School Wing, where Luke gave a guitar demonstration for all the kids. He played some sweet guitar solos, but the kids weren’t impressed, so Luke relented and played some children’s songs: the one about the elephants, of course, which segued nicely into the one about the peanuts, then Mairzy Doats, and Doo Wah Ditty by Manfred Mann, (which isn’t really a kid’s song, but the title sounds like it should be, so Luke’s confusion is understandable. Y’know, the kids liked it anyway?)

  After that, they all went outside and played kickball, and then it was hometime, so most everybody went home. Luke said good-bye to all his friends, and wished Tito well in particular, and then he and Jenny left the building.

  “I had fun!” said Luke, walkin’ home. “But... I was worried about Tito. They told him he might die? Is that the right thing to do? Wouldn’t that scare a kid?”

  “Did he seem scared?”

  “No. Not too much.”

  “Want to know why?” Jenny asked, and then told him before he could answer: “Hope is more powerful than fear, Good is greater than evil, and Love is stronger than death.”

  It was a nice saying, Luke thought, but his Hun experience had taught him, that the more saccharine something sounds, the less truth is likely in it.96 But he couldn’t point that out to Jenny. (“Never be rude to the pretty ones!” was an even better bit of Hun-wisdom.) So instead he simply challenged, “That’s your opinion?”

  Calmly and sternly, she responded: “No. I have it on the authority of Almighty God.” (She looked familiar when she took that tone, but it wasn’t until later that Luke realized who she looked like: Rebecca, lecturing Bert over lunch-money. Rebecca who had said she had a sister Jenny and a Dad with a Bar and Grill, on Prince Edward Island!)

  Hard to debate with Almighty God, so instead Luke shrugged and admitted. “He did seem to be pretty hopeful.”

  Her eyes shone again. “Ah, children! They are our hope, our innocence, our wonder. When we grow up, and lose these things? How hard it is to get them back! But children come straight from God, bearing these virtues with them.97 They balance us out! They keep a culture from becoming fully reprobate. No matter how low society sinks, what wickedness men perpetrate, as long as we have children there is a chance for renewal, recovery, refreshing. Restoration. Like the Israelites who broke faith with God and were made to wander 40 years in the wilderness: what happened at the end of the forty years, Luke? The people who had sinned were all gone. Replaced, as it were. By new generations. What a potential there is in that, for healing!”

  Luke wanted to believe what she was telling him. He liked kids too. But he also wanted to believe the Bible, and he thought he saw a contradiction: “But what about the end times? The final judgment? All the prophecies and revelations? Don’t they talk about growing wickedness, a people upon whom wrath must fall? How will society reach that point, if children keep bringing us goodness?”

  Jenny hadn’t thought about that, and reasoned slowly for a minute, realizing it demanded reconciliation if her claims were to be preserved. Then she ventured, rationally, “Well, certainly a nation, or a world, could hasten its demise, shorten its own time, if it did one of two things. If it somehow found a way to shorten their childhood, steal their innocence, corrupt their goodness. Or...” here she furrowed her brow, dealing with a hard concept, wondering if she might have reasoned wrong. She put her hand to her mouth and went pale as she whispered the inconceivable, “Or if by some madness we began to kill our own children.”

  Even Luke the Hun was shocked by that idea, and said quickly, “Thank goodness that could never happen.”

  “Yes, thank God,” Jenny agreed. And then they talked of happier things until they reached the farm, and the comforting farmhouse.

  Luke’s heart beat fast for a brief second when she said she was ‘going to change into something more comfortable’, but then he smiled and blushed and felt guilty when she came back in play clothes--shorts and a T-shirt and tennis shoes--instead of her nice, professional teacher’s costume. “There, now we can be ourselves,” she announced, setting the tone for their day together. They had started to think about how they would spend their afternoon, when Luke suddenly got up, went to the cupboard for mugs, and started to make them chocolate milk. “First things first,” he prioritized.

  “Mmm, good,” Jenny said as she sipped. Then she started using her straw to blow bubbles in her chocolate milk, making all kinds of happy bubbly noises. Luke paused a moment, surprised and not sure whether to join in, until Jenny gave permission, “It’s okay to be a little silly from time to time. Especially when you’re with me!”

  That said, Luke showed her how it was done, bubbling his chocolate milk so much it came out of the cup. It seemed like a good occasion to compose a quick verse of what passes for Love-poems among Huns:

  “When I am with you, my heart bubbles over.

  And I have to go get a dishrag.”

  He got up and got a dishrag to clean up, showing it to her, with a look saying, ‘See?’, as if to punctuate his point. Then they had a chocolate milk quick-drinking contest (Straw-weight division), which Jenny actually won. To best a Hun in eating or drinking was quite an achievement, and Luke promised his undying admiration.

  She laughed a little, but didn’t refuse it. Then she quickly tugged his sleeve and led him out of the house. “C’mon, let’s go rollerskating! Or bowling! Or get a hamburger!”

  Turned out they did all three. They went to Pinwheels, the local roller rink-slash- bowling alley. (Small town, remember. So the few entrepreneurs have to do double duty. Like Terry’s Bar and Grill, for example.)

  They rollerskated first. It was Luke’s first time, but he took to it quickly: “I played hockey, after all,” he told her. Jenny was quite good herself however, a former figure skater and a life-long rollergirl, and it was all he could do to keep up with her while the live band played disco, funk, and Christian contemporary. Luke enjoyed being near her on the couples-only songs, but finally had to give up, not long afterwards, when the backwards-skating-only song was on. He had fun watching her, however. Just like in the Children’s Center
: her eyes shone with a special light, and she moved with a fluid grace. Luke sighed and his eyes shone too, because of her.

  “I thought you said you were a hockey player!” she kidded him when she came off, wondering why he couldn’t keep up.

  Luke grinned sheepishly, “I was a defenseman.”

  On that note, they traded their wheels in for bowling shoes. Luke was better at that, but somehow Jenny still kept beating him. “I gotta quit letting you keep score,” he accused.

  She laughed, and helpfully explained the rules of the game: “It’s not who throws it the hardest, it’s who knocks down the most pins, guy.”

  “Maybe that’s how you play,” Luke laughed back, throwing another Hun-hard cannonball, that left another split but sounded good doing it. He pumped his fist to celebrate the big noise. (“I win!”)

  After they were all played out, they sat at the snack bar eating hamburgers and french fries. Luke liked watching her eat, watching her play, listening to her talk. Everything. Now, Huns don’t keep secrets very well, and there was no time for that anyway, so Luke wasn’t bothering to try to hide his love. She wouldn’t have wanted that anyway--‘We can be ourselves,’ she had said. That was a great feeling. It felt like they had been friends forever. Or would be.

  So Luke couldn’t help askin’ a flattering question, wondering aloud, “How come a great girl like you is still single? I would expect you would have to beat the suitors away with a stick.”

  “There were a couple who deserved just that!” Jenny laughed, remembering: “My Dad volunteered to help!” Luke grinned. That was Terry all right. Then Jenny added, perhaps a little sadly, “There haven’t been as many as you might think, however. I guess some men don’t appreciate me like you do. Don’t like my religion. Don’t want ‘a woman who waits’. There’s another local girl who seems to get more of the attention...” Jenny admitted. (Luke tried to discern whether there was a little envy in her voice, but couldn’t hear any.) “Miss Pixie Crinkles. She’s a cute little one, true, but she’s a bit of a ... flirt,” Jenny explained, remembering to be kind. “Some men are impressed by that, I guess.” Most men, she thought to herself, exasperated. Then she added, asserting her own control of the situation: “Then again, part of it is the fact that I have standards. So when men do come a-courtin’, I’m pretty good at weeding out the ones who aren’t cut out to be my lifelong partner.”

  At this, Luke looked a little nervous. “Oh?”

  “A man has to respect my mind, my morals, and marriage,” she elaborated. Luke was reassured and relieved to find conditions that didn’t disqualify him, and then he was excited and ecstatic when she playfully added a couple more: “Also he must wear a white rawhide Stetson. And football shoes are a plus.” (Clearly flirting herself, Luke observed, with a wide grin.)

  Time was short, the ship sailed tomorrow, so Luke pressed his advantage: “What else do you like about me?” Pretty bold question for a first date, sometimes that level of seriousness will scare someone away. But there was no time for coyness; and then again, if the question gets answered, it clarifies whatever feelings are there. Then it’s out in the open, one can put something concrete in one’s memory: ‘I loved him for this and that reason’, instead of the vague ‘I felt something for him’, which tends to forgetfulness.

  Thankfully, Jenny played along. “Well, you’re not afraid to stand up for yourself, to go your own way, to choose your own path. My Dad told me about how you played jazz at his country bar! But even the fact that you left your shipmates behind in the city, to seek something different, something better--that shows you’ve got your priorities straight. And you’re good with kids. That’s important, if we were to have some of our own someday.” (Like the rollerskating and the quick-straw drinking, she was better than him at the Being Forward game, too.) “Not only that, but it shows that you have a good heart.”

  Luke smiled, then grew a little sad, at the memory that compliment invoked. “Last person to tell me that was my mother, when I was just a little kid. We were out walking on a rainy day, and I tried to give a worm my cookie! But that’s the last time anyone said it to me. When my father heard about it, he corrected it: ‘Don’t listen to her son. What you have is a good right hand!’” Luke pursed his lips, and then explained vaguely to her, with open hands and a shrug, “Hey, that’s Hun-Country.”

  Jenny perceptively returned them to their discussion before Luke could get too sad, even intensifying the verb to up the ante: “So, what do you love about me?”

  “Everything!” Luke admitted honestly. The sincerity in the way he said it bought him some time, but even a Hun can tell that doesn’t sound too romantic, so he thought for a second, and fleshed it out: “I’ve met a lot of nice women on my trip. I keep falling in love, actually! But whatever I’ve liked in any of them, I find it all in you. But twice as much! I’m sure they’re all special in their way--but you’re the one who is special to me. You have the friendliness and the forgiveness of Hosanna. The composure and good counsel of M-K. The seriousness and dedication of Rebecca. The faith and lithe grace of Louise. The innocence and the laughter of Bridgette. The toughness of Karla the Troll...” Jenny squawked at the comparison, but proved Luke’s point by giving him a playful punch. “The joy and the shining eyes of the Laughing One. All added to the love and the childishness of Jenny,” (knowing she would take the last term as the highest praise.)

  Jenny smiled, and complimented, “Not bad stuff for a Hun. Better than the poem about the dishrag, anyway!” as she gave him another playful punch. Then she challenged him: “But can you really tell all that about me already?”

  “Don’t you believe in Love at first sight?” Luke replied, putting the challenge back on her.

  “I do,” she acknowledged. “I believe that God loves us before He even forms us, and that we can love Him before we see Him. In which case ‘first sight’ is one look longer than what is really necessary. We love because God puts it in our heart to love! Don’t you feel like there are certain times when you’re ready to fall in love with anybody? Heart bursting with joy, spirit filled with peace? It’s nice that we met each other at such a time!” Luke wasn’t quite sure he liked the sound of that, it made their love sound a little artificial, a little coincidental, until Jenny expanded it: “We were meant to meet each other at such a time.”

  “There it is,” Luke agreed happily, still thankful every time she revealed that she felt the same way about him. He told her the story of the Laughing One, and speculated that maybe that encounter was what helped put him in a positive, love-ready mood. “What was it that prepared you?”

  “I went to Church last Sunday. Got all filled up with the love and the Spirit of God,” Jenny proclaimed, unashamed.

  “But don’t you go to church every Sunday?” Luke guessed.

  “Bingo,” she confirmed, with a wink.

  Then Luke got a little sad, as he realized this could be an obstacle for their relationship. “I’m kind of in-between faiths right now,” he admitted honestly.

  “Moving towards grace? Or falling from?” Jenny wanted to know.

  Luke was happy she had put it that way. “Moving towards,” he declared firmly.

  She smiled, and gave him another wink. “So I’ll meet you there,” she promised happily. Then she tugged his hand and gave him another, “Let’s go!” as she paid for their food and they left.

  They hated to call it a night just yet, so they went for a walk, holding hands, down dirt roads, through woods, fields and gardens, on a warm fall evening that felt like summer and smelled like spring. They walked in silence for a while, just enjoying being together, until Jenny suddenly blurted out playfully, as she thought more about what he had said: “Hey! Who are all those other women you were comparing me to?”

  Luke decided that the easiest way to explain it was to give her the highlights of his journey. Took a while, but he was glad for the chance to stretch their time together, still needing to compress a courtship into their single
night together. (He slyly resolved to learn from her all the details of life on Prince Edward Island when he had finished. Then get her full bio, and that of every kid at the Children’s Center! Then if the sun still wasn’t up yet, talk about farming maybe.)

  She interrupted when he got to the part about Rebecca. “I have a sister named Rebecca.” That’s when it finally came clear for Luke. At first Jenny refused to believe the coincidence, but then as he excitedly told her more about the encounter, Jenny grew ecstatic, realizing that Luke really had met her sister. “How is she? Tell me everything!”

  Luke told her as much as he could about the camp, and Rebecca’s friends, and the worship service, and the way Rebecca had kept Bert in line. Jenny got a kick out of that.

  “So she’s doing well?”

  “She looked good.” Then Luke reddened as he realized that wasn’t the question. “Yes, doing well. She loves it there, she says it’s good for her, making her stronger. She says she misses you guys...”

  “Boy do we miss her!” Then she scolded Luke, as though he should have known: “You should have told her to come home!”

  That reminded Luke. “She said she might, eventually, when she was ready. But what did she mean? She said something about fearing you wouldn’t understand her beliefs. But aren’t you Christians here too?”

  Jenny grinned. “Of course. But that’s Rebecca for you: a flair for the dramatic! Maybe she thinks because we didn’t understand her as a teenager we won’t understand her now. But we had problems with her as a teenager precisely because she didn’t believe. We were so pleased when we heard she had come to Christ! But we’ve been a little concerned that it might be a cult or something, and that that’s why she thought that one place was so special.”

  “No, no cult. Anything but,” Luke assured her, gaining confidence in his own judgment. “She’s with good people there, people she can talk to about faith and stuff. I think that’s what she needs it for.”

  “And we’re not? She can’t talk to us?” Jenny was a little hurt.

  Luke reminded her helpfully, out of his own experience: “Sometimes it’s hard to talk about personal things like that, with the people who are close to us. Especially with those people.” Then so she wouldn’t worry, he told Jenny more about the other good people at the Garden, all Rebecca’s friends who were helping her.

  When he got to the part about Louise, she stopped him again. “A thousand years? She said that?” This time Jenny did sound a little jealous. Then she proved Luke’s earlier assessment true--that for him she was twice as special as any of the others--as she volunteered easily, guilelessly, but very deliberately: “Well then, I’ll just have to pray for you for two thousand!”

  She meant to leave him with that promise, for as Luke had talked cheerfully and without paying attention, Jenny had led him back to the farm, and now she let go of his hand slowly, hanging onto just the fingers for a second before finally letting it fall, as she started to back slowly up the sidewalk to the house.

  Luke tried one of her tricks, grabbing her hand, and tugging: “Come on! More walking!”

  But she shook her head. “I have to work tomorrow. Bedtime. Sorry.”

  “You can’t spend the day with me? Take tomorrow off? For me?”

  It was tempting, but, “You have to help my Dad get the crops in anyway. You owe him a day of work, remember?” Luke looked confused by this charge. She laughed, eyes twinkling. “Oh, didn’t I tell you? I was paying for our date with your money. Tomorrow’s pay. Oops!” she said mischievously. Luke returned a half-hearted smile to her winsome wink, but not a good smile, as he was still slightly crushed to learn he wouldn’t see her! “But you see? That’s how all those children would feel, if I didn’t show up for them,” Jenny pointed out responsibly. “And there’s dozens of them, and only one of you.” It seemed to make sense mathematically, if not romantically. “Besides, you’re old enough to understand things like work, and responsibility and stuff. They might not.”

  Luke sighed, but resigned himself. Bed didn’t sound too bad, at least! He started to follow her to the house, but she stopped him with a snapping, pointing finger and a stern voice: “It’s the barn for you, buddy!”

  “But it’s going to get cold tonight. I can’t come in the house? Sleep in the guestroom? Now that you know me, and trust me... and love me?”

  “Especially not now that we’re in love. And you being a sailor on your last night on shore, too! Add it up, Luke. It’s called Temptation. Since Dad’s already sleepin’, like a wise farmer should, let me speak on his behalf. He told me once: ‘One does well not to place oneself in very many situations where one might do wrong: the more times one tests one’s goodness, the more often one is likely to find it lacking. Besides, even if we resist? like good little boys and girls? Even then, the act of placing ourselves in that situation, ‘Because we can say no’, is presumptuous, and proud! So I will not.” She pointed again to the barn.

  Luke could see her point, but ironically, was all the more tempted because of it. “Your modesty, your wisdom. It makes me love you even more!”

  She laughed a thank you, but made sure he knew the difference. “But this? This flesh, these kisses? These are not love. Love is honoring one another. Love is going to the barn to sleep alone, because I have asked you to.” Luke nodded understanding. Jenny took his hand for a last moment, however, and then couldn’t resist giving him at least one long, warm hug, and even ventured a quick kiss on the cheek, before skipping away to her doorstep.

  Luke was thrilled for a second, but then a ‘hey, wait a minute’ look crossed his face. Jenny spotted it, and smiled. “Oh, you want my good kisses?” Now that she had brought it up, Luke nodded eagerly, looking like a dog at dinnertime, (‘Yes-please! Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh!’) Jenny smiled and warned seriously, “You may have them, when you ask for them. But...! My good kisses are sacred kisses, and they only come after we make a sacred covenant. You’re ready for that, are you?” Like a lawyer, knowing the answer in advance...

  As completely as he was entranced with her, when put on the spot like that, nervous Luke realized he still had to think before making that big leap. He laughed, and waved instead to the barn. “Hellooo, Barn!”

  They blew kisses as she went into the house. Then Luke went to the barn and hit the proverbial hay. As he drifted off to sleep, Luke reflected, She had me wrapped around her finger! ...But where else would I rather be? Wondering whether he might have found here his place in life, Luke slept smiling.