Read Steemjammer: Through the Verltgaat for Free Online Page B

grinned. “The usual fish order and three pounds of hot dogs.” Remembering that she loved something else even more, he added: “And eight chocolate bars.”
    Angelica fist-pumped. Mr. Carter said they had a balance left over for next time, and Will signed for it.
    “How’s your dad?” the store owner asked.
    “Vanished,” Will blurted truthfully and then seized up. No one should know, so why had he said that?
    “Huh?” Mr. Carter said distractedly.
    “We expect him back soon,” Giselle told the man.
    “Fine. Sorry, I gotta take this.” He took a vibrating cell phone from his pocket. “Jimmy’ll bring your stuff right out. You kids take care now.”
    Angelica pulled tall grass growing nearby to feed the horse, while Giselle stared at her shoes, preoccupied. Will had made her a new pair the night before. They felt comfortable, but their colors and seams didn’t match. His own pair looked even worse. The shoe-making machine of Beverkenhaas was hard to master.
    A truck full of alfalfa bales rumbled past, smelling like summer and making Will wonder if he’d be cutting hay alone that year. No one cared that they took grass from the vacant lots around Beverkenhaas, but it was going to be hard without his dad.
    “Oh, look, children,” called a female voice. “Amish kids! Look at their big horsie and their homemade clothes. Aren’t they adorable?”
    A bronze-skinned, athletic lady in a white tennis outfit and huge sunglasses came over with her two young children.
    “Do you speak En-glish?” she said to Will very slowly.
    “Ick kan Dutch spreken,” he answered jokingly. I speak Dutch . Realizing how this might have been misleading, he felt compelled to add, “And English.”
    “Honey,” the lady called to her husband. “Come meet these nice Amish kids.”
    “What’s ‘Amish?’” Angelica asked, but no one seemed to hear.
    “Can we sit on your wagon?” the lady said, lifting her small children into the seat without waiting for an answer. “Oh, you have to take our picture!”
    She thrust a complex digital camera at Giselle, who backed away in consternation.
    “It auto-focuses,” the lady explained, pushing it into her hands. “You’ll see the picture you’re taking on the screen. Just push the button.”
    While the lady and her husband posed next to their children with wide, gleaming, professionally whitened smiles, Giselle looked uneasily to Will and Angelica, holding the camera like it was a dead rat.
    She narrowed her eyes warily. “Is it supposed to do this?”
    The screen flickered radically, and it popped. A puff of black smoke came out, and she handed the ruined camera back to its owner, who gasped.
    “I’m sorry,” Giselle said.
    “It’s okay,” the lady said, trying to remain calm. “All you did was hold it.”
    “I know.”
    The lady’s face got stuck somewhere between “what the heck?” and “huh?” Thankfully their order was brought out, and the Steemjammer kids got in their wagon and left.
    “What’s ‘Amish?’” Angelica repeated.
    Will speculated that it meant someone with hair issues. Giselle just wished people would stop handing her electronic devices. This was the third one she’d broken that month.
     
    ***
     
    On the way home, Angelica stood on the wagon seat, holding onto her brother’s shoulder with one hand and slinging rocks at fence posts with the other. THWACK! A crack shot, she rarely missed. Tucking another rock snugly into her leather sling, she spun it to the side, faster and faster. Because of her hair, she couldn’t use the standard overhead method, but that didn’t hold her back. With a snap of her wrist, she sent another rock flying.
    They stopped at a dead tree that had fallen in the ditch and cut it into logs with a bucksaw they kept under the seat. Using a pulley and rope, they hoisted the timber into the wagon bed, which sank on its creaking iron springs from the weight.
    Going down a narrow, country road, they collected