by Amy Lillard
He looked at the girl across from him. She hadn’t said anything since they had walked up. She hadn’t even said hi to Rudy Don. And once she did . . . this might be the only chance he got to say his piece.
“I think you’re pretty.”
The others around them had been talking, but they stopped now to stare at him and the girl. He still didn’t know her name.
“That’s all.” He turned as the embarrassment took hold of him. He had wanted to meet her, find out her name, and instead he had told her she was pretty and walked away. Like that was going to get him anywhere.
He nearly stumbled in his haste to get as far away from them as possible. At least he was one step ahead of Jonathan. He had told the girl how he felt. Maybe one day he’d find a girl who could say the same things back to him. Maybe . . . but as Lorie always said, “don’t hold your breath.” Buddy wasn’t 100 percent sure what that meant, but he thought it had something to do with not getting the thing it was that you wanted. Plus, if you held your breath you would turn kind of a blue color and pass out. Buddy knew. He had done that one time.
He paused at the entrance to the barn. His mother would skin him alive if he went too far without his brother. She wouldn’t really skin him. It was just a saying to let people know that she would be really, really mad. And she would be. Almost as mad as she would be if she found out that he had told a girl she was pretty. And he’d said it loud enough that everyone around heard. Word would get back to her soon enough and he would have to explain something he didn’t quite understand himself.
“Wait.”
He stopped and looked down at the small white fingers touching his sleeve. As if she had only then realized that she had touched him, she drew back.
Buddy looked at the place where her hand had been, even though it was no longer there. Had he imagined her touch? Then he looked up into those angelic blue eyes.
His stomach dropped like that time at the fair when he’d ridden on the big wooden rollercoaster. The one that used to be in Tulsa but wasn’t there anymore.
“What?” he asked. It was all he could gather the courage to say.
“You think I’m pretty?”
He studied her face, not to look at her again, but to see what she needed from him. She wanted to know if he thought she was pretty. But why? He saw no teasing in her expression, no demand in her eyes. But it looked like there was a trace of longing maybe. He wasn’t sure.
“Jah,” he said with a nod. “I think you’re very pretty.” What was that saying his grandmother was always going around quoting to them? In for a penny; in for a pound. That meant don’t do it halfway. If you’re going to tell a girl she’s pretty you go all in. Of course now he wished that he hadn’t said anything to her of the sort, but now that the words were out there . . .
“Maybe even the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen.”
She turned a sweet shade of pink. Like the iced cookies Esther and Caroline had at the bakery for Valentine’s Day.
“I’m not sure what to say.”
“My mamm says when someone pays you a compliment you should say thank you.”
“You’re right. Of course. Thank you . . .” She paused, frowned. “I don’t even know your name.”
“Ivan Dale Miller,” he said proudly. He was named after his grandfather and was secretly proud that he carried the name. “But everybody calls me Buddy.”
She smiled. She had dimples, not too big not too small, just beautiful dimples on either side of her mouth. “Nice to meet you, Ivan Dale Miller.”
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Jennifer Abigail Burkhart. Everyone but my mamm calls me Jenna.”
“What does your mamm call you?”
“Jenna Gail.”
Buddy thought about it a second. “I like Jenna,” he finally said.
She smiled again. “Me too. That’s what my dat wanted to name me.”
Buddy nodded, then shifted as suddenly he had run out of anything to say. He could tell her that he was named after his grandfather, but who cared about that other than him? No one, according to his brother Aaron. And he told her she was pretty and found out her name. He wanted to stay, but how dumb would it be to stand there and say nothing?
“Okay, then. Bye.” He waved and turned back to the milling crowd of teenagers and went looking for his brother.
* * *
“What just happened?” Susannah asked once she had arrived at Jenna’s side. Jenna was watching the place where Buddy Ivan Dale Miller had disappeared. He thought she was pretty. Why did that mean so much to her? She didn’t know. Maybe because he said it and hadn’t talked about what a shame it all was. Such a pretty girl.
“A boy just told me that I’m pretty.” Just saying that once again brought a fresh heat to her cheeks. She wished she had something to fan herself with. She would use the tail end of her apron, but if that got back to her mamm she would never hear the end of it. Which meant her mother would fuss at her for days and days about how to behave in public. So she didn’t.
“You are pretty.” Rose picked that time to come up. She said the words with such certainty that Jenna wanted to believe there was some truth in them, but it still wasn’t as thrilling as when Buddy had said the same thing to her.
Buddy. She liked the name, she decided. It fit him. Ivan Dale was a fine name, but it wasn’t as approachable as Buddy. A guy named Buddy would be friends with everyone. Would tell girls that they were pretty. He would be fun to hang around and even more fun to know. Jah, she might really come to like a boy named Buddy.
“What’s wrong?” Susannah asked, tugging on one of Jenna’s arms.
“Nothing.”
“You’re frowning.” Rose’s eyebrows lifted in what Jenna thought was a questioning manner.
“Sometimes I do that when I’m thinking.”
“You must be thinking really hard,” Susannah commented.
Jenna shrugged. “I suppose.” She didn’t want to tell them what she had been thinking about. How much she liked Buddy Miller. Maybe more than she had liked anyone in a long, long time. Because if she told them that, they would tell their sister Emily . . . She was in the quilting circle Jenna had heard her mother talking about. If she told Rose and Susannah that she liked Buddy Miller, her mother would find out before the following Tuesday. If not before. But at Tuesday’s quilting meeting for certain. That’s the way small communities worked.
“Well, quit all that hard thinking.” Susannah slipped her arm around Jenna and steered her back to the crowd of teens standing around in the barn. “It’s time to have fun.”
Chapter Three
“What’s Down syndrome?” Jenna asked on Tuesday. She and Mamm were remaking the bed after washing the sheets and hanging them out to dry. That was one thing about Oklahoma. It seemed to be hotter quicker there than it did in Kansas. And that was definitely good when it came to hanging out laundry.
“It’s a condition that makes people . . . a little slower, I suppose is the best way to say it.” Mamm snapped the sheet in the air above the mattress and started smoothing out the ends. It was the fitted one that covered tight, and Jenna grabbed her corner and pulled.
Buddy Miller hadn’t seemed slower to her. He had seemed . . . nice. Maybe that was another part of Down syndrome.
“Why?”
Jenna shrugged and moved to the next corner. “I don’t know.” She hadn’t meant to talk to her mother about it. But she wasn’t sure she would be able to go into town to the library and find out for herself. She had looked in all the books they had downstairs. The encyclopedia wasn’t much help. It talked about chromo-somethings and a bunch of other things that she didn’t understand. “There was a boy at the singing with it.”
Mamm nodded, but thankfully kept on making the bed as if the question Jenna was asking wasn’t extremely important. It might not be to her, but it sure was to Jenna. “I saw him at church. Gertie Miller’s son.”
Jenna and Buddy hadn’t gotten a
round to talking about their mothers’ names, so she wasn’t sure about that at all. “It made me wonder what it is.”
This time Mamm did stop. She looked up at Jenna, the flat sheet still folded in her arms. “Jennifer Abigail.”
She never called Jenna that. Only when she was in big trouble.
“I just wanted to know,” Jenna mumbled with a shrug.
“Do you want people discussing you when you aren’t around?”
“No, Mamm.”
Her mother snapped the sheet into place but didn’t wait for Jenna before smoothing it. “That boy has enough trials in his life. He doesn’t need you making things worse for him.”
Jenna had no idea why asking about his condition and wanting to learn about it would make anything worse for him, but she didn’t argue. “Yes, Mamm,” she said and pulled the sheet over the side of the bed.
* * *
“You sure about this?” Jonah pulled his tractor to a stop but waited for Buddy’s answer with the engine still running.
“Yep.” Buddy jumped to the ground and stretched his legs. His mamm said he did that when he was nervous, but he wasn’t nervous. He was excited. He was going to get a puppy. It had been four days since he had made the decision. He had wanted to come on Monday, but his mamm told him to sleep on it. It was a saying that meant he should give it more thought. All that was in his notebook, but he didn’t need to think about it more. He knew what he wanted. He wanted a puppy. A dog to call his own. He was grown now, a man. And a man should have a dog.
Obie Brenneman came around the side of the house just as Jonah was climbing down from the tractor seat. That was one thing Buddy liked about his Amish home. Unlike some of the other ones he had heard about, they got to drive tractors Monday through Saturday. Every day but Sunday. That’s when they drove their buggies to church and for visiting. He’d heard people talk and had learned that most Amish people only drove horses and carriages to get where they wanted to go all the time. It might be a good thing, seeing as how Mamm and Dat would let him drive the buggy but not the tractor. And that was something he never understood. He was a grown man. About to get his very own dog. He should be allowed to drive the tractor.
One thing at a time. He’d get his dog, show his parents how he could take care of it, then he would ask about the tractor. They might not think he could do all the things that other men did, but he knew he could. He just knew it.
“Hey.” Obie smiled as he grew near. Buddy had always liked Obie, short for Obadiah. He was a lot like Buddy in that he loved animals. All animals. He raised golden retriever puppies and Gabe Allen Lambert could build them fancy Englisch houses to live in. That was the next thing Buddy wanted to get. A fancy house for his dog. That would really show his mamm and dat that he was ready for responsibility.
“Hey, Obie.” Buddy reached out to shake his hand. Wasn’t that what men did when they started to conduct business?
Obie didn’t hesitate. He clasped Buddy’s hand in his own and gave it a firm shake. “I hear you are in the market for a dog.”
Buddy frowned. Surely that was just another one of those sayings. But it wasn’t in his notebook. He had come here to get a dog, not the market.
“He is,” Jonah answered for him. Normally he didn’t care when people talked for him, but today it bothered him.
“I can talk for myself.” He tried to whisper the words so only Jonah could hear, but Obie covered his mouth with one hand. Buddy figured it was to hide his smile.
What was worse? Being laughed at or talked about? He hadn’t decided.
He pushed his anger down, something he had learned to do when he started school, and fixed his attention on Obie. “Jah. I’m in the market to get a dog.”
He wasn’t sure he said that right, but neither man corrected him.
“Come on into the barn. I’ll show you what we have.” He turned and hooked one arm over his shoulders.
Buddy looked back to Jonah, who nodded. Then they followed after Obie Brenneman.
The interior of the barn was dim and cool. Little slats of light seeped in through the cracks between the boards, a sure sign that this barn was used for hay and not regular animals. Dogs were different than horses or milk cows. Cows and horses were more useful and had to be cared for a little more than dogs, who were useful but didn’t pull carriages or provide milk and cheese for the family to eat. At least that’s what his dat always said. Buddy thought dogs were equally important. Maybe not to all the farmers, but definitely for him.
He heard them before he saw them, little whines and grunts that made him smile.
“We have eight puppies right now that are ready to go,” Obie said. “Two are already spoken for. There’s four boys and two girls. There in the second stall.”
Buddy couldn’t help peering over the top of the first stall. The mama dog there was lying on her side, a bunch of squirming puppies nursing as she patiently waited. He didn’t see how many since he was only walking past, but he could tell right off that they were too young to take away from their mother.
He leaned over the second stall’s door and laughed as one of the puppies let out a bark. Buddy thought the pup meant it to sound ferocious, but it was funny and cute.
“Hi, baby,” Buddy said on a low, soft voice. He reached out a hand, but the puppy backed away. By now they were all gathering around wanting to see what was happening.
Once the puppies saw so many people standing just outside their stall, they started barking and carrying on something crazy. Their antics made Buddy laugh. It was like they were trying to show off in hopes they would be the one picked. Even if they didn’t know what it was for.
“Let me get that,” Obie said. He reached in and unlatched the door. It swung open and eight wriggling, barking, prancing puppies tumbled out.
Inside the stall, the tired mama dog gratefully laid her head down for a quick nap. Taking care of so many babies had to be hard work.
Buddy plopped down right there on the hay. He was glad his mamm wasn’t with him; she would have fussed over such behavior, but Jonah just laughed as the puppies climbed on top of one another in rambunctious attempts to lick his face.
Jonah chuckled once more. “It’s going to be hard to choose.”
They had talked on the way over about how sometimes an owner picks an animal and sometimes the animal picks the owner. Right now it looked like all the puppies wanted to go home with Buddy.
“The ones with the collars are already sold.” Obie pointed to the two. One had already broken away from the pack of his brothers and sisters and was tugging on Jonah’s pant leg. Definitely not the one he wanted to take home, even if the pup wasn’t already spoken for. Buddy’s mamm would have a fit if the puppy pulled on her good church stockings.
“Which ones are the girls?” Buddy asked.
“How can you tell the difference?” Jonah asked. “They all look the same.”
Buddy sucked in a deep breath, preparing to launch into how to tell the difference between boys and girls, but Jonah raised a hand to stop him.
“That’s not what I mean. All the puppies look exactly the same, no spots or different colors.”
Obie took a step forward. “Actually the girls tend to be a little more territorial, while the boys are more affectionate. At least in my dealings with them.”
The longer Buddy sat there, the more the puppies lost interest. A few started to wander away. Some went back into the stall to plop down on their tired mother while others sniffed around at whatever they could find—hay, boots, and walls.
One, however, settled down in Buddy’s lap as if it was made just for her. Or him. He wasn’t sure, seeing as how he hadn’t had a chance to look. But it seemed like a girl, despite what Gabe Allen had said about the boys being more affectionate.
Buddy scratched the pup behind one ear and the tiny beast let out a shuddering puppy sigh. She seemed more than content to simply sit there and enjoy him without so much as a whimper.
“I think yo
u’ve been chosen.” Jonah’s voice was low and at Buddy’s ear.
“Maybe.” Buddy rubbed her ear between his fingers and contemplated names. But the only name that would come to mind was Jenna. He liked Jenna. He thought she was pretty, but would she appreciate having a dog named after her? Somehow he didn’t think so.
But the name persisted.
“Have you made your decision?” Obie asked. “I can give you more time if not.”
Buddy hated to disturb the puppy’s snoring slumber, but he supposed Obie and Jonah had other things to do besides stand around in a barn while he let his puppy sleep in his lap.
His puppy.
He looked down into the sweet face of the fuzzy puppy. She was the color of one of his mamm’s biscuits just before she pulled them out of the oven. And she was warm too.
Jenna.
It was the perfect name. So what if he named the puppy Jenna? She would probably never see the dog anyway. And it was a really good name. Or he could give her a nickname like the Amish liked to do. Jah, a nickname to tell the girl Jenna from the puppy Jenna. Puppy Jenna. It was settled. That was the dog’s name. His dog. Decision made, he scooped the puppy from his folded legs and handed her to Jonah.
“She’s the one,” he said as he rose to his feet.
Obie and Jonah shared a look.
“What?” Buddy asked, wiping the straw from the seat of his pants.
Just then the puppy started to pee. Jonah held her away from him as to not get any on his clothes.
And what had been evident to them now became known to Buddy as well. “Oh.” Puppy Jenna was a boy.
* * *
PJ, as he became known on the ride home, pranced over to the fireplace and dragged a piece of wood out of the kindling box.