Huckleberry Spring

by Jennifer Beckstrand

  “I’m sorry she’s so hard on you, but she’s right about one thing.”

  “That I’ll never manage to get a husband?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Emma. Of course you’ll get a husband, if you want one. Ben isn’t the only fish in the lake. Maybe you should consider other fish.”

  “I hate fishing.”

  Mahlon linked elbows with her and steered her in the direction of the chicken coop. “There is something you can do that will help you not be so sad.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Let’s go get some eggs.”

  She yanked her arm from his. “Forget it, Mahlon.”

  “I’m just venting,” he protested in mock confusion. “Can’t I vent without you getting all huffy?”

  “Venting is unchristian.”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  The gravel crackled beneath the wheels as Ben drove Dawdi’s buggy up the lane. His sister Lizzie and his mamm, in thick black jackets, hung clothes on the line. Lizzie’s hands were mottled red. Hanging laundry was still chilly in April.

  Lizzie turned her head to see who drove down the lane, and her eyes almost popped out of her head. He hadn’t told them he was coming. They’d be thrilled. And uselessly hopeful that he was home to stay.

  Mamm sprinted to the buggy with her arms outstretched as Lizzie ducked into the house, no doubt to alert the rest of the family to his return. Ben jumped from the seat and caught Mamm as she threw herself into his arms.

  “My boy, my boy,” she squealed. “Wonderful gute.” She laid a kiss on his cheek and held on tight. “You’ve come back.”

  He squeezed his mamm tightly, savoring every fleeting moment he had with her. Titus Junior, Ben’s younger brother, raced out the door with Lizzie and Dat close behind.

  Mamm let go, and Titus took her place, being careful not to poke Ben with the toothpick he had sticking out of his mouth. Dat wrapped his arms around both of them, and they laughed with pure joy. Waiting for her turn, Lizzie embraced Mamm and tears sprang into both of their eyes.

  “Ben,” Titus said through his tears, “I’ve missed you something wonderful yet.”

  Ben couldn’t help it. He shed a few tears himself. It felt so gute to be home.

  Dat put a hand to Ben’s cheek. “Your mammi told us you would be coming. We’re so happy.”

  “Mammi told you? I didn’t even know myself until three days ago.”

  Dat shrugged. “My mamm has a sense about these things. I’ve learned not to dismiss what she tells me.”

  Ben reached over and took Lizzie’s hand. “You’ve grown even prettier since last August. I didn’t think it was possible.”

  Lizzie grinned. “Quit your teasing.” She stepped into his arms. She had definitely gotten her height from Mammi Helmuth. Lizzie stood more than half a foot shorter than Ben. “I’m glad you’ve come back, even if it’s just for Dawdi.”

  When Ben shot Mamm a curious look, she nodded. “Mammi warned us. You’re only here for Dawdi’s surgery.”

  Ben’s heart sank. Only for Dawdi’s surgery. It wasn’t long enough, and yet it would be too much. He didn’t know where he would find the strength to pull away again. “How bad is Dawdi, really? Mammi sounded so frantic in her letter, but when I asked her about it, she says it’s nasal surgery, which doesn’t sound all that serious. Is she trying to keep me from worrying?”

  Dat cleared his throat. “You know Mammi. She likes to keep all of us guessing. We’re glad you came and that you can help Dawdi in his time of need.”

  Mamm was already halfway to the house. “I know you’ll be staying at Mammi and Dawdi’s, but I’ll move some beds around in case you want to lay your head here a night or two.” She glanced at Dat. “I need a strong man to move that furniture.”

  Dat puffed out his chest and followed Mamm.

  “Titus, help Lizzie and Ben finish hanging laundry,” Mamm added, over her shoulder, “and then, Titus, muck out before dinner.” Ben often wondered if all mamms were as bossy as his.

  Dat and Mamm marched into the house while Ben, Titus, and Lizzie ambled to the clothesline.

  Lizzie didn’t take her eyes from his face. “You look terrible.”

  Ben didn’t know whether to laugh or wince. Not only did he look terrible, he felt terrible, but he had hoped that nobody would notice. Leave it to Lizzie to be observant. He decided to smile teasingly at his baby sister. “Okay, thanks for that encouragement.”

  “I think he looks fine,” Titus interjected, though Lizzie wasn’t interested in his opinion.

  “You’re still not over her,” Lizzie said. “If anything, you seem worse than before. Being away has taken its toll on you.”

  Ben picked up a pair of trousers. “That’s not so. You haven’t seen me for eight months. I’m doing much better.”

  Lizzie handed him two clothespins. “I don’t think so.”

  Titus tossed his toothpick and grabbed a blue shirt from the basket. “Maybe the Florida winter made you go soft.”

  Lizzie dragged the line through the pulley. “What will you do if you run into her?”

  Ben’s gut sank to his toes. “I already have.”

  This news didn’t seem to trouble Titus, who worked very hard at turning the shirt right side out, but Lizzie’s eyes couldn’t have gotten any bigger. “You’ve seen Emma?”

  “She was the first person I laid eyes on when I got here. She’s helping Mammi grow pumpkins on Huckleberry Hill.”

  Lizzie’s reply almost sounded like she was crying. “Ach, Ben. Are you okay?”

  Her sympathy weakened his defenses. “No.”

  Lizzie pulled hard on the line and catapulted the hanging clothes into the air just as Titus was attempting to get the shirt on the line. He nearly lost his balance.

  “Emma doesn’t have to grow pumpkins for Mammi,” Lizzie said. “Titus and I will go up there and do it.”

  “We will?” Titus said, working on a knot that had formed in the sleeves of the blue shirt when Lizzie had sent the clothes flying.

  Ben pinned some trousers to the line. “She’s very unhappy, Lizzie. Your letters gave me hope that she might be doing better.”

  Lizzie waved her hand dismissively. “She’s doing fine. Last fall, she made all these quilts and such. I see her at gatherings and benefits, and she smiles all the time. She’s not sitting home pining for you, that’s for sure.” Lizzie sounded almost bitter.

  “I don’t want her to.”

  “She’s fine,” Lizzie insisted.

  Ben looked at Titus. “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” Titus said. “She goes to lots of gatherings. Seems okay, I guess.”

  “See?” said Lizzie, as if Titus’s halfhearted opinion confirmed the truth.

  Ben hung a shirt. “But has she set fire to anything lately or fallen into any rivers?”

  Mamm stuck her head out of the back door. “Titus, come fix this table. It’s wobbling something wonderful.”

  Titus threw down the damp shirt, which he had managed to tangle beyond recognition. “I heard her foot went through the ice while skating last winter,” he called as he jogged toward the house. Titus always tried to be helpful.

  Ben rubbed the side of his face. “That’s something, I guess.”

  “I don’t care how Emma feels, Ben. I’m worried about you. Someone so sensitive as you must be downright miserable.”

  Ben hung a handkerchief while Lizzie finished with an apron. “But what has Emma told you?” he said. “She’s your best friend. How is she really feeling?”

  The question seemed to suck all the wind out of her. She lowered her eyes and picked up the laundry basket. “We haven’t spoken since you broke up.”

  She might as well have smacked him upside the head with a flyswatter. “What do you mean you haven’t spoken?”

  Lizzie fingered the basket and twitched her lips guiltily. “I couldn’t do it, Ben. I couldn’t look her in the eye and pretend that everything was okay. Be
cause of her, I lost you.”

  With rising agitation, Ben took Lizzie’s basket, laid it on the ground, and wrapped his hands around her upper arms. “Nae, Lizzie. Don’t you ever believe that. Everything was my fault.”

  She shook her head. “I knew you’d defend her, but someone needs to stick up for you, Ben.”

  “I don’t want anybody to stick up for me.”

  “I will whether you want it or not, even if I’m just the little sister nobody cares about.”

  Ben cracked a smile. “Nobody? You’re the sun, and Mamm and Dat revolve around you. You’ve always been the favorite.”

  Amused indignation sparkled in her eyes. “Everybody says that because I’m the youngest. Someone’s got to soak up all the attention when the other siblings move out, although I really don’t get much. I might as well be invisible when the grandchildren come over.”

  Ben thought of Emma, and a fifty-pound lump of coal parked on his chest. “You’ve got to make things right with her, Lizzie.”

  “Why should I be the one to make things right? Emma could have come to me whenever she wanted to.”

  “Do you really think Emma would do that? She blames herself for everything, including the weather. She probably thought you never wanted to see her again.” He pressed his lips into a rigid line.

  “Maybe I didn’t want to see her again.”

  Ben clenched his jaw. How could things have gotten this bad, when all he wanted to do eight months ago was make things better? “Emma has done nothing wrong.”

  “I don’t see it that way. Why did you go to Florida if she didn’t drive you away? You should quit trying to make things better for her and focus on yourself, like how your family needs you and wants you to come home.”

  The weight of Lizzie’s longing squeezed him like a clamp. The battle between two choices raged within him, like it always did. He didn’t know which way was up anymore.

  He led Lizzie to the porch steps, where they sat and he took her hand. “Lizzie,” he said, pinning her with an earnest gaze. “I know you wouldn’t purposefully hurt a fly.”

  She scooted a few inches away from him but didn’t try to reclaim her hand. “I kill flies all the time,” she said sullenly. She must have known what was coming.

  “Please patch things up with Emma. She needs you.”

  “She has plenty of friends.”

  “But you were her best friend. It’s the reason she and I got so close in the first place.”

  “That doesn’t change how I feel,” Lizzie said.

  Ben wrapped his arms around his kid sister. “Try to understand how important it is that Emma be happy again. Don’t do it because it’s a commandment to forgive or because this has been nagging at you for months—”

  “How do you know?”

  “Do it because I am your favorite brother, and it would mean the world to me.”

  Lizzie pulled away from him and sighed as if expelling all the air in her lungs. One corner of her mouth curled upward. “Titus is my favorite brother.”

  “Do I at least come in second place?”

  “Fifth, after Titus, Paul, Norman, and Dan.”

  “Hey, that’s last place.” He poked her side, and she squealed and jumped to her feet. He grabbed her hand before she could move too far from him. “I’ll settle for a consolation prize. Will you do it because I’m your favorite brother who lives in Florida?”

  Lizzie slumped to sit on the step again. “You’re asking a lot of the girl who used to throw snowballs at the boys who were mean to her. I’m quite resentful when I want to be. Remember, I’m the one who put a mouse in Teacher’s boots because she scolded my penmanship.”

  “You were always a fighter.”

  Lizzie twitched an eyebrow. “You used to tell me I was stubborn.”

  “Same thing.”

  He stared at her until she gave in to a smile. “Okay. I will see if she would like me to help her plant artichokes or asparagus or something horrible like that in her garden.”

  Ben felt lighter by about three tons. “Denki. I love asparagus.”

  Lizzie stood and propped her hands on her hips. “And if she refuses to be friends with me? What then?”

  “Emma has a gute heart. She won’t turn you down.”

  Lizzie narrowed her eyes while a grin played at her lips. “So Emma has a gute heart, and I’m the stubborn one?”

  “Jah, that’s it.”

  “I’m beginning to think I’m not your favorite sister.”

  “You’re in last place,” Ben said.

  She offered her hand and pulled Ben to stand. “How can I be in last place? I’m the only sister you’ve got.”

  “I think you can figure it out.”

  With her smile firmly in place and a bag of potting soil in her fist, Emma knocked on Anna’s door. The crying was over, the blubbering was finished, and nobody, not even Mahlon, would suspect that she’d only gotten four and a half hours of sleep last night. It was hard to sleep on a soggy pillow when your little sister hogged the blankets and poked her knees into your back.

  Even with her heart fluttering like a hummingbird’s wings, she was determined to be painfully cheerful and studiously unclumsy in Ben’s presence. She’d be preparing the soil today, and if she could manage to avoid his spring-green eyes and not smack her foot with the hoe, things would be fine.

  Anna opened the door and invited her in. Emma placed her bag on the table and let her gaze travel around the room. Ben was nowhere to be seen. It was already turning out to be a wonderful-gute day, probably because she had prayed extra hard this morning.

  “Did you bring the seeds?” Anna asked.

  “Jah,” Emma said. “Did you get the fertilizer?”

  Anna nodded.

  Emma pulled the seed packets and the potting soil from her bag. “I thought maybe we could make a few more newspaper pots and start some tomatoes and a cantaloupe in addition to the pumpkin. And we can plant peas outside in about two weeks.”

  Anna carefully read the seed packets. “This is too good to be true. With all you’ve got planned, you’ll be spending hours here every week.”

  Emma felt a little silly telling Anna otherwise. Certainly she wouldn’t be spending more than four or five hours on Huckleberry Hill weekly. She hoped not. There was a limit to her restraint. More time spent here would mean more interaction with Ben, and more interaction with Ben meant more crying.

  How did Anna know Emma was thinking about her grandson at that moment? “Ben is pruning peach trees, but he’s been given strict instructions to help you with the hoeing.”

  Emma thought it would be hard to hoe and bawl like a baby at the same time. “He can finish the peaches. I’ll hoe by myself.”

  “Nonsense,” Anna said. “Hard work like that takes muscles. And don’t worry about the fertilizer. Ben can heft a hundred pounds of potatoes without working up a sweat. Unless it’s July. Everybody sweats in July. I work up a sweat in July when I knit. Felty is tending to the chickens, and he’s been given strict instructions not to help with the hoeing.”

  Once she and Anna made a dozen little pots, filled them with dirt, and planted seeds in them, Emma set their pots on the windowsill to soak up some sun. “Water them every day, but not too much.”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  Emma knew about watering too much. She used to do it all the time last summer when Ben still loved her. She daydreamed about him and the pots often ended up saturated because she mooned over her boyfriend instead of concentrating on horticulture.

  Anna went to her closet and pulled out twelve knitted . . . somethings, each a different neon color. They looked like little woven bags. She slipped one of the newspaper seedling pots into one of her knitted containers. It fit like a sock around a tin can. “This will keep them nice and warm, and they look cheery lined up on my windowsill.”

  “Lovely,” Emma said, taken aback but delighted all the same. The shabby newspaper pots looked almost charming when encased in bright
pink yarn. Maybe when she felt like crying, she could think of the knitted pot holders sitting on Anna’s windowsill. Anna didn’t hesitate to give hours to her knitting when she thought it would make someone happy.

  Once outside, Emma practically sneaked to the toolshed for a hoe. If Ben didn’t know she was here, she could hoe in peace. He wouldn’t be the wiser, and she wouldn’t have to lay eyes on him all morning.

  Donning her leather gardening gloves, she found the wheelbarrow in the shed next to a seriously large bag of Pumpkin Pro. She studied the label. Fifty pounds. She’d have to summon Ben to lift it for her. Anna said he wouldn’t even work up a sweat.

  Emma took a deep breath and wondered how puffy her eyes would get if she cried two days in a row. On second thought, there was no need to bother Ben. She had a wheelbarrow and two strong arms. She was perfectly capable of moving the bag of Pumpkin Pro by herself.

  After scooting some garden tools and terra-cotta pots out of the way, she maneuvered the wheelbarrow closer to the fertilizer bag and tipped the clumsy thing onto its side. The bag stood firmly against the wall as if propping it up. If she scooted it just right, the bag would tumble into the sideways wheelbarrow, and with very little effort, she would be able to right the wheelbarrow with the Pumpkin Pro inside. Probably.

  She clutched the heavy brown bag at the corners and pulled with all her might. The bag creaked and groaned, as if complaining that it didn’t want to move. It fell over, but not in the direction she wanted it to. It ended up flat on the ground parallel to the wheelbarrow but not inside it.

  Emma puffed the air from her lungs, bent over, and tried to scoot the lazy bag into the wheelbarrow. It proved even heavier flat on the ground like that. It felt as if she were trying to move a . . . well, a bag of fertilizer that wouldn’t lift a finger to help her.

  She stepped back to gain some leverage, as if that were going to make any difference, and her foot found the handle of a rake. The rake must have sneaked up behind her at the bag’s request. Obviously the bag of Pumpkin Pro would stoop to anything to keep Emma from moving it.

  She wasn’t quite sure how it happened, but she stepped on the rake and her feet slipped out from under her. She stumbled backward and tumbled into the sideways wheelbarrow, which by some inexplicable law of balance righted itself with Emma in it. With a squeak of alarm, she came to rest on her back, gazing at the ceiling of the shed with feet and arms pointing in every direction like an upside-down potato bug. She waved her hand in surrender. That was one clever bag of Pumpkin Pro. A worthy opponent indeed.