Huckleberry Hill

by Jennifer Beckstrand

  Lia smiled the unhappy smile that Moses saw more and more often. “You should stay here with Rachel.”

  Moses wanted to shout in exasperation but decided it would be unseemly to pitch a fit. Why in the world would he want to stay here with Rachel?

  Maybe Lia was tired of taking Rachel along and having to care for her sister as well as her patients. But more likely, Lia would much rather be with Ben or Max than Moses Zimmerman, the boy who wouldn’t let go of the memory of a girl who had rejected him. Why wouldn’t Lia want to be with a boy who found her fascinating instead of one who took her for granted?

  Moses watched Ben put a light hand at the small of Lia’s back to guide her to the path that would take them back to the house. Lia smiled, still unhappy, and let Ben lead her away. Moses couldn’t catch his breath.

  Moses had never seen any food so mouthwateringly tempting. Plump huckleberries peeked from under a golden, flaky lattice crust on top of the three pies Lia had made for dessert. She had a gift for making food look delicious.

  After three hours, they had finally finished picking the berries, making sure to leave a sufficient amount for the bears as Dawdi wanted. Moses had picked like a madman. Maybe he thought if he finished soon enough, he could take a horse to Lia and be there when she walked out of the house, her face aglow with the exhaustion and satisfaction of hard work. He loved that face.

  His daydreams were ridiculous. Moses didn’t even know where they had gone. He’d have to ask Mammi the names of all the women in Bonduel expecting a baby this month and go to each of their houses. It was a wild-goose chase, and with this worthless leg of his, it would take him the better part of a week.

  When he and his family walked into the warm kitchen, they were greeted with the sight of three huckleberry pies on the table and the aroma of potato soup in a Dutch oven on the cookstove.

  A good-sized wedge had been carved out of one of the pies and a note lay on the table beside it.

  I begged Lia for a piece. She made me write this apology note. I hope I left enough for the rest of you.

  Ben.

  P.S. It is even better with ice cream.

  Moses didn’t think his heart could sink any lower. Ben had eaten the first piece. Moses’s piece. Ben had probably smiled and told Lia how heavenly it was, and Lia had soaked it up like a desert soaks up the rain.

  Moses should have been the one to tell Lia how good it tasted. He’d been waiting for three months for this chance. Ben had innocently stolen it from him.

  Dejectedly, Moses helped Rachel set the bowls and spoons while Max and Titus Junior put two more leaves in the table and brought up folding chairs from the cellar. Moses studied his leg encased in a cast. He couldn’t help with the heavy lifting, and he couldn’t drive Lia places. He was truly worthless.

  At supper, Moses ate his soup—the best potato soup he’d ever tasted—in silence while the family chattered merrily away. Rachel scooped up his slice of bread and buttered it for him. He wanted to growl in frustration. Rachel’s hovering had become unbearable.

  “Now that your leg is in a cast, how long do you plan on staying here, Moses?” Mamm asked.

  “We’ve enjoyed taking care of him,” Mammi said. Her eyes twinkled. “The girls especially have.”

  Mammi and Mamm shared a knowing look.

  Rachel poured Moses another glass of milk and smiled ever so sweetly. “All the hard work has been a true pleasure.”

  Moses coughed to cover up the protest that broke free from his throat. Had Rachel known a day of hard work in her life? Ach, but she was very good at playing the long-suffering nurse. An actress. She should have been an actress.

  “I am going home tonight,” he announced. “I still have two good hands to make cheese. Adam has been running the factory almost by himself since I’ve been gone.”

  “Adam is a gute boy,” Mammi said.

  “He takes after his dawdi,” said Dawdi, waving his spoon for emphasis. “This soup is the best I’ve ever tasted. The queen of Mexico doesn’t eat this well.”

  An overwhelming desire for solitude wrapped itself around Moses’s chest. He would have liked nothing better than to hike to the rocky side of the hill and recline on a boulder while he tried to make sense of his jumbled emotions. But going anywhere proved to be a huge production with his casted leg as heavy and clunky as a motor home negotiating a narrow road and Rachel clinging to him like a cocklebur on his pant leg.

  Mammi scooted her chair from the table. “And now for the best part.”

  Mandy stood to help Mammi as she pulled ice cream from the freezer and got ready to cut the pie.

  Rachel leaped from her seat. “I’ll serve the pie if you want to scoop ice cream, Mandy.”

  Mandy shrugged her shoulders and handed Rachel the spatula. “Okay, sure.”

  Rachel picked up one of the pies and tilted it so everyone at the table could see the lattice top crafted by skilled hands. “Lia and I made the pies.”

  Rachel had been with Moses at the doctor when Lia made the pies. He pressed his lips together so something impolite wouldn’t accidentally come out of his mouth.

  “They look delicious,” Mamm said, not suspecting that Rachel stretched the truth beyond recognition. “Do you use lard or shortening for the crust?”

  Rachel looked confused for a fraction of a second, put the pie on the counter, and waved her hand dismissively. “Oh, Lia did the crust this time. I’m not sure which she used.”

  Moses couldn’t stand it. He’d break his other leg before he took anything from Rachel’s hand ever again. Even Lia’s pie.

  Grabbing the crutches that rested against the back of his chair, he said, “I’ll go pack the rest of my things so Mamm and Dat can take me back to my house tonight.”

  Rachel held out a generous piece of pie, with luscious purple berries dripping from between the crusts. “Don’t you want pie?”

  “I’ll eat a piece with Lia when she gets home. She ought to have a taste of her own pie.”

  “But that might not be for hours.”

  Without replying, Moses limped into Rachel’s room to gather his things. He stopped short. A whole pie sat in the middle of Rachel’s bed, complete with a fork tied with a ribbon and an envelope addressed to Moses. He eagerly ripped open the envelope and pulled out a card filled with Lia’s handwriting.

  Moses, You always seem to miss out on dessert. I wanted to make sure that you got a piece today, so I made a whole pie especially for you. I hope you enjoy it. Thank you for being such a good friend to me.

  You can share it with Rachel, if you like.

  From Lia

  Moses couldn’t hold back the smile that sprouted on his face. She hadn’t forgotten him. He read her note four times, delighted with the way she curled the tails of her y’s and g’s.

  On the fifth time reading through her note, his eyes got stuck on “friend,” and he sucked in his breath because it felt like a semi truck crashed through the house and ran over him.

  He didn’t want to be friends.

  Staggering with the weight of this realization, Moses dropped his crutches and sank to the bed where he sat in stunned silence. He wanted so much more than friendship.

  The feeling overtook him like a flash flood, crashing into him and tossing and turning him until he didn’t know which way was up.

  He loved Lia Shetler.

  He loved Lia Shetler! He loved her laugh and her smile. He loved the way her graceful hands shaped bread into pans and plucked huckleberries from bushes. And he hated it when she smiled at one of his cousins.

  Moses kneaded his forehead as if trying to pull out every confusing thought in his brain. Did he really love Lia more than Barbara? He couldn’t decipher his deepest emotions.

  But he did know that he loved Lia so much that he couldn’t bear the thought of not being with her. He remembered their embrace at the Millers’ house. He’d never felt so strong or secure, even with Barbara.

  Especially not with Barbara.

/>   Barbara had always kept one foot in the community and one foot in the world. When they got engaged, fear that he might lose her followed him like a cloud of black, choking smoke. He never felt sure of her love.

  His world had shattered when she chose to leave the community, but then she dangled that carrot. I need to see what it’s like, but I will come back. You’ll wait for me, won’t you, Moses? If you truly love me, you’ll wait. So he had waited.

  The guilt that had been sitting on Moses’s shoulder since he met Lia slapped him in the face. Was he being untrue to Barbara by entertaining such feelings for Lia?

  With his clenched fist, Moses pressed on the spot between his eyebrows. How true had Barbara been to him? She had crushed him when she left and then expected all the sacrifice on his part. She wrote every week, but she hadn’t visited once in three years. She had told him she thought of coming back to the community no less than a dozen times yet had registered for school in Minneapolis and bought a car.

  Moses took a deep breath.

  Barbara wasn’t coming back.

  And he didn’t want her anymore.

  He’d been so young when he’d fallen in love with Barbara. She now seemed like a wisp of smoke compared to the raging fire that was his love for Lia. He had wasted so much time pining for Barbara that he failed to acknowledge the girl right in front of him—the tall beauty who was his perfect match.

  His perfect match.

  Moses’s heart soared through the clouds as he felt the weight of Barbara’s expectations fall from his shoulders. He loved Lia Shetler!

  He thudded to earth when he thought of Lia’s face that afternoon. She had been silent and withdrawn ever since his accident. Had she sensed his growing affection and didn’t return it? She always pushed Rachel forward and drew herself back.

  Moses slapped his forehead and growled in frustration. Did Lia believe he loved Rachel?

  What a ridiculous notion!

  But maybe not ridiculous to Lia. Why else would she have left him at the mercy of Rachel when he recovered from his accident? She insisted that Rachel accompany him to the doctor. In her note she told him he could share the pie with Rachel.

  Lia was trying to get out of the way.

  Moses felt ill as the pieces of the puzzle came together. He had told Lia plainly that he had no interest in her sister. But Lia was so accustomed to people showering Rachel with attention and taking no notice of her, she would have naturally concluded that Moses had changed his mind.

  He clenched his fists until his knuckles turned white. Lia, no doubt, had seen Rachel and him emerging from the woods on the day of the picnic. As he recalled, he had put his arm around Rachel and held her hand in plain sight of the house. His efforts to mollify Rachel had convinced Lia of something that wasn’t true.

  But surely it wasn’t too late to persuade Lia he loved her. She’d only known Ben for a few hours.

  He yanked the reins of his racing heart. What if Lia wasn’t interested? She had told him he was arrogant to think that she would want to marry him. What if she didn’t even like him? Considering that possibility made him feel as if a large hand had shoved him to the ground.

  He breathed in the aroma of warm huckleberries. She had made a pie for him. His heart jumped around inside his chest. She liked him.

  Could she love him?

  Rachel burst into the room and slammed the door behind her. Her eyes grew wide. “What are you doing? Where did you get that?”

  “Lia left it for me.”

  She raised her eyebrows in surprise and tried to snatch the pie from his hand. He pulled it from her reach. “Did you steal this from the kitchen?”

  “Nae. Lia made it for me. She left a note.”

  Frowning, Rachel folded her arms and studied Moses’s face. “Why would she do that?” she said, more to herself than Moses.

  “She wanted to be sure I got a taste.”

  Rachel narrowed her eyes. “She wanted to take the credit and leave me out of it.”

  Moses’s sigh came from deep within his chest. No matter the consequences, he had to have this talk with Rachel. Again. And he must have it now.

  He stood up and hopped to the small nightstand next to the bed, where he placed his precious pie.

  “I could have done that for you,” Rachel said resentfully.

  Moses eased himself back onto the bed and patted the space next to him for Rachel to sit. She relaxed her posture and tweaked the corner of her mouth upward as she sidled next to him.

  “Remember when I told you I wasn’t looking to marry?” he said.

  Rachel’s eyes popped wide open and her smile spread so far it almost flew off her face. She nodded in anticipation.

  Wrong thing to say. Moses slumped his shoulders. “Rachel, I told the truth. I do not want to marry you, and I never will.”

  Rachel stiffened beside him. “Lia is not a better cook than me, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  Moses wanted to laugh. Oh, that choosing a wife were that easy. “It has nothing to do with the pie. I do not love you.”

  “And I told you, if you are worried about Lia getting her feelings hurt, my dat will make her go back home.”

  Could Rachel possibly perceive that a man might not be interested in her? He would have to be blunt. “No, Rachel. I am not going to marry you. Ever. Not in a million years. Never, ever. I-do-not-like-you.” He lengthened his syllables for emphasis, as she always did.

  His using her own tone of voice caught her attention, and she fluttered her eyelashes in indignation. “You don’t even like me?”

  Oops. He’d meant to say “love,” but his choice of words was accurate. He did not even like her. “Not in the way you want me to like you.” How could Lia not have recognized his dislike?

  Rachel stood up with a huff and stared at Moses with fire in her eyes. “So, you love Lia?”

  The pace of his heart quickened at the mention of her name, but Rachel would not be the first to hear his declaration of love. “This has nothing to do with Lia.”

  Rachel rolled her eyes and threw up her hands. “Ha! It has everything to do with Lia. She’s been pushing herself on you all summer.”

  “Rachel, I don’t want to marry you.”

  “A man who lets a stupid pie sway his affection is not worthy of me.”

  Moses gave up. “You’re right. I am not worthy of you. You deserve better.”

  To his surprise, Rachel burst into tears. She put her hand to her cheek. “Is this the thanks I get for nursing you back to health? I stayed by your side even when I wanted to fall over with being so tired.”

  “I never asked you to—”

  “You held my hand. I wrote my dat that you loved me. I’ll be humiliated in front of my family.”

  Her tears only served to heighten Moses’s agitation. “I’m sorry if I made you believe that.” Was it useless to defend himself? “And you held my hand. I never wanted to hold yours.”

  “What a liar you are! You were teasing me because I’m so beautiful. You wanted all your cousins to see you with a pretty girl.”

  “Another reason that you should never want a husband like me.”

  She snapped her head up and glared at him. “Don’t make fun of me.”

  She sniffled and cried while he sat in silence. He knew he couldn’t say anything to make her feel better. Moses had assumed that Rachel had no proper feelings, but she seemed genuinely heartbroken, and a broken heart didn’t heal overnight. He knew that from very personal experience.

  “I’m sorry that I hurt your feelings.”

  Rachel sniffed and seemed to remember that he was in the room. “You didn’t hurt my feelings. I’m crying because you’re such a liar. Liars go to hell, you know.”

  All the fight drained out of him. He could never make Rachel see what she would not see.

  Before he even registered what she did, Rachel snatched the pie from the nightstand and flung it to the floor. Moses called out in surprise as the glass pie plate sh
attered. Rachel stomped indignantly until huckleberry pie filling covered her shoe, and the pie and plate were beyond recognition. With that, she turned on her heels and stomped out of the room, leaving a trail of purple footprints behind her.

  In mourning, Moses slid off the bed and knelt beside his pie. So much for trying to spare Rachel’s feelings.

  Mammi came shuffling into the room, and her eyes grew big as buggy wheels. “I heard a noise and thought you had fallen.”

  Moses looked up at Mammi with a guilty curve of his lips. “We had an accident with the pie.”

  Mammi pushed her glasses up as her gaze fell on Rachel’s purple trail out the door. “Rachel must not like huckleberries.”

  The quirky lift of her eyebrows and the pathetic mound of glass and pie tickled Moses’s funny bone. He couldn’t help it. Guttural laughter exploded from his lips and left him breathless. Mammi shut the door behind her, smiled, and let a giggle trip out of her mouth. Her whole body seemed to be laughing. She wrapped her arms around her stomach as she bobbed up and down.

  After a few minutes of uncontrolled mirth, Mammi composed herself and wiped the tears from her eyes. “That girl is getting some valuable lessons. I hope she learns something from them.”

  “It wasn’t really her fault—”

  Mammi patted him on the shoulder. “Oh, Moses, I could write a book about all the things you think I don’t know.”

  Bracing his arm on the bed, Moses stood up. “I’ll go get the mop.”

  “You are helpless with that cast on. Rachel made the mess. She should clean it up.”

  “She’s probably halfway to Wautoma by now.”

  Mammi opened the door and gazed down the hall. “No, she’s left a trail to Lia’s room. Although if I were her, I’d get that shoe into a bucket of soapy water before it stains purple.” Mammi put her hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh. “I’ll see Rachel cleans it up. You go in the kitchen and be with your parents.”