An Amish Picnic

by Amy Clipston

  “But who’ll take charge of the store?”

  They both turned to stare at Esther Marie.

  Her heart beat in her ears. Her stomach flopped. In four years she’d worked in every part of the store. She did inventory. She ordered products. She packed bulk items, unpacked discounted banana boxes, and priced canned goods. She even worked the registers over the lunch hour. “I can do it.”

  Not even a tiny stutter.

  She waited until they rushed out the door to toss a handful of jelly beans into her mouth. A store manager needed her strength.

  Chapter 2

  Stents. Blockage. Blood thinners. Jasper Cotter dug in his heels and studied the cardiologist’s face. Maybe if he read his lips, Jasper could translate the man’s hurried speech about Father’s condition into something that could be understood by Jasper’s pea brain. Mother nodded, but she surely understood no more than he did.

  The pain in Father’s shoulder had increased until he could take it no more. In his agony he sank to the kitchen floor, scaring the bejeebers out of Salome. Jasper’s younger sister called their favorite English driver, who took them to the community clinic in St. Ignatius. After a brief examination, arguments ensued. Father wanted to go home. The doctor said no and sent him by ambulance to the heart hospital in Missoula, forty-five minutes away.

  The decision had been made in the time it took Jasper and Mother to arrive at the clinic. The ambulance darted away just as they pulled up. Fortunately, Eileen Jones hadn’t left yet. The driver kindly filled her dusty gray minivan with gas and took the three of them—Salome insisted on coming along—the forty-two miles along Highway 93 south to Missoula.

  “We’re taking him into surgery now. It’ll take a few hours.” The bespectacled doctor with clear gray eyes in a pale face looked younger than Jasper. He gestured toward doors in the distance in the long hallway where they stood. “Visit the cafeteria. Have some coffee. Get some food. You won’t miss anything. The waiting room will be here when you get back.”

  “We’ll be right here waiting.” Mother gathered her faded-blue canvas bag against her chest. Her lower lip trembled, but her words were firm. “Take your time and fix him up good. Don’t worry about us. We know what to do.”

  Pray and then accept Gott’s will.

  “I’ll get the coffee and find us some snacks.” Eileen patted Mother’s arm as she smiled at Jasper and Salome. “You three rest your weary bones. I did this a few times with my sweet Bill before he passed, and the time will drag. Make yourselves comfy.”

  Her sandals made a clacking sound on the tile as she marched away in the opposite direction from the doctor, leaving them to find seats in the waiting room with its rows of cushioned seats and the flat-screen TV hanging on the wall. The muted show on it appeared to be some people talking or arguing about something.

  Gaze averted, Jasper collapsed into the seat next to his mother and heaved a breath. Salome, who’d been sniffing and wiping her eyes with her apron during the entire ride to Missoula, took a seat on the other side. She was only thirteen. So young to be thrust into a situation like this. Another hour and Jasper would’ve been at the house for lunch before he returned to the field to harvest the corn.

  No sense in playing the if-only game.

  It seemed Jasper had been holding his breath since that moment in the store. What had he been doing in the seconds before his mother’s shriek? He couldn’t remember. Something about Esther Marie.

  Yes, she was busy and didn’t want to ask for help. He understood that. He should’ve offered to help her. What did he know about the deli meats, cheeses, salads, puddings, and pickles? Nothing. Not the menu or the prices. The thought twisted his gut into knots. He preferred to work behind the scenes. The idea of talking to strangers made his shoulders tense. His jaw got tight, like somebody had wired it shut.

  As much as he wanted to help, he couldn’t.

  Esther Marie didn’t seem to like him. Not so he could tell, anyway. She was never rude about it. She was far too kind to show it. She often seemed flustered around him. Her face turned red and her cornflower-blue eyes were downcast. She kept fiddling with her prayer covering as if it might slide from her wheat-colored hair. She couldn’t wait for him to leave. That was obvious.

  He set the thought aside, as he always did. With all the other facts that saddened him. Not having a wife or even the possibility of one. Which meant not having children of his own. Being so uncomfortable inside his own skin.

  This isn’t about you.

  The voice in his ear sounded like Groossdaadi Stan’s, but he had been dead for five years. Grandpa Stan was always right.

  This wasn’t the time to think about himself or the thin woman with a sweet disposition and sad eyes who made his heart do a funny little hippity-hop when he saw her. He turned to his mother. “It’s hard to believe, isn’t it?”

  “As long as I can remember he’s told me he’s the picture of health.” Mother’s pensive face was a rare sight for the cheery woman who liked to sing English hymns while she cooked. “He always tells me, ‘Fraa, I don’t need to go to the doctor. I’m healthy as a horse.’” She imitated his hearty laugh perfectly. “That’s what he always tells me.”

  “‘I have the body of a twenty-year-old.’” Salome mimicked the way Father struck a pose at the supper table after a hard day’s work at the store. With her blonde hair and blue eyes, his sister looked more like Mother than Father, but she managed a fair picture of the antics that made them all laugh as they finished off another delicious meal of moose steaks, fried potatoes, and huckleberry cobbler. “‘Extra portions of cobbler for me.’”

  Mother chuckled. Jasper managed a smile. “He’ll be fine.”

  “Gott’s will be done.”

  Mother closed her eyes. Salome clutched her hands in her lap and bowed her head. Jasper did the same. Two men arguing about the president’s immigration policy droned on. A woman blew her nose with a noisy honk.

  Gott, I know we’re just passing through here. You know the number of days Daed will be with us. I’m asking You to let us have him awhile longer, if that’s not too much to ask. Thy will be done. “Amen.”

  Mother raised her head and smiled. “What were you jawing at Esther Marie about?”

  “What?”

  “When I came out to tell you about your daed, it looked like Esther Marie was upset with you.”

  Mother never missed anything, no matter what was going on. Eagle eyes and elephant ears—that’s what she always told her children, from Darcie, the oldest, down to John, the youngest. Her eight children knew better than to underestimate her ability to ferret out their transgressions.

  “Nee. I brought in the lettuce and tomatoes you wanted for the sandwiches and salads.” He leaned forward, put his elbows on his knees, and studied the rust-and-green geometric patterns in the gold carpet. The adrenaline of the past two hours drained away, leaving him with the desire to put his head in his hands and close his eyes. “She needed help. I thought she should call you, but she said nee.”

  “Esther Marie is more than able to handle a crowd. She knows when to call for help.”

  “I know that, but she should ask for help so customers aren’t kept waiting.” He softened his voice. His frustration had nothing to do with her work. He wanted her to like him. They’d known each other since they were babies. He didn’t know what to say to her then, and he didn’t know now. “I should’ve helped.”

  “I would’ve loved to see that.” Mother chuckled, but her tone was kind. “You must really like Esther Marie if you’re thinking about helping out with customers.”

  “I don’t like—”

  “Don’t bother to deny it, suh.” She patted his back as if he were still her eight-year-old with a skinned knee. “I see how your gaze follows her at church and at get-togethers. What I don’t understand is why you don’t do something about it. Poor girl will be an old lady if you don’t court her soon.”

  “It’s not that easy.”


  Nothing was easy when it came to people.

  “I was going to ride my bike over to the store to help after I finished the laundry.” Salome’s eyes had reddened. She sniffed and wiped at her nose. “I was hanging the last load on the line when Daed came to the back porch and told me he felt real bad. I went into the kitchen to see what I could do. He fell to the floor right there in front of me.”

  She’d told them the story in the van, but her need to tell them yet again spoke of the shock she couldn’t shake. Bless her heart for taking the focus off him and Esther Marie. If he were the hugging type, he’d hug his sister.

  “It’s okay, dochder.” Mother stuck her arm around the girl’s skinny shoulders and tucked her close. “You did the right thing. You went to the phone shack. You called Eileen. You went to the clinic with him. You called us. You did everything a dochder could do for her daed.”

  “Why do I feel like this?” She stifled a sob behind her hands. “Like I should’ve done more?”

  “Because you love your daed.” Mother smoothed back Salome’s mussed hair, but it wouldn’t slip back behind the prayer covering where it belonged. “It’s hard, but you have to leave this in Gott’s hands. Tears don’t help. Worrying doesn’t help.”

  “But it is human.” Jasper didn’t mean to contradict his mother. It was a fact. Salome shouldn’t be made to feel bad because she felt sad or worried. Everybody did. He surely did. “We pray that Gott makes us stronger in our faith. He forgives us for our failings, sinful though they are.”

  Mother’s gray eyebrows rose and fell. “You’re right, suh. I forget you are a grown man and not a child.”

  As the oldest son he would be in charge of the farm and the store while his father recuperated. Jasper ran the farm anyway. That didn’t bother him. But the store. That was another gaggle of geese. He stood and paced.

  Eileen returned with a cardboard container filled with Styrofoam cups of coffee and a bag of pastries. “Comfort food all around.” Eileen offered a cup to Jasper. “It’ll warm you up. They keep it way too cold in these hospitals. I added sugar and creamer so it won’t bother your tummy so much. I know how that is, all those gastric juices boiling in there.”

  Eileen talked a lot, but she was kind. Jasper took the coffee. His hand shook. She smiled. “That’s okay. That’s why I put a nice, snug lid on it.”

  Heat blistered his face. No amount of steely determination quieted the shaking. He set the cup on an end table and resumed pacing.

  “Suh.”

  He glanced at his mother. She shook her head and nodded at the chair. “Sit.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Have a muffin.”

  His stomach rocked, and his throat closed. “I’ll be back.”

  “Where are you going?”

  He let the question disappear into the void of icy refrigerator air, stinky smells of cleanser and sickness, and the anxiety of the room’s occupants, all waiting for word, hoping for good news, fearing the worst.

  The hallway offered the closest thing to the wide-open spaces he craved. The Mission Valley where he’d been born and grown up offered a man open land to farm, clean air to breathe, and mountain vistas in the distance that provided a feast for the eyes every single day. No more beautiful place existed in this world.

  The windows in the hallway revealed a parking lot and a busy road and more buildings beyond. No succor there.

  Gott, worry is sinful. I know better in my head, but my heart is giving me trouble. I want to be obedient. I am humble. But I tremble at the thought that Daed will die. He’s young still and full of life. People like him because he is kind and generous and funny, all things I’m not. I can’t be him or like him. If You could see Your way to keep him on this earth a little longer, I would be forever thankful.

  “Excuse me.”

  He squeezed against a wall to allow a woman in scrubs pushing a cart to pass him. She smiled. “There’s a chapel on the first floor, if you need a quiet place to pray.”

  How did she know he’d been praying?

  “A person can pray anywhere.” Not the right answer. If Darcie were here, she’d rebuke him. His oldest sister often tried to peel off his hard, crusty outsides to what she called his internal honeypot. “I mean, thank you.”

  “I recognize a praying person when I see one.” The woman pulled out a gold cross on a chain from inside her scrubs. “I sometimes walk down the hall praying as I go too.”

  “Okay.”

  With another smile she continued on her trek. “I’ll pray for you. God bless you.”

  Her kind words eased the tightness in his chest. The headache that battered his temples ratcheted back to a low throb. God put people where they were needed. A person couldn’t help but notice. Danki, Gott.

  “At this rate, you’ll beat a trench in this hallway with all that pacing.”

  The familiar booming voice of Darcie’s husband, Bart Detweiler, filled the space. Just like the oversized man. He seemed incapable of quiet. Bishop David Hershberger and Deacon Matthew Miller followed. Darcie brought up the rear. A caravan of concern.

  “Esther Marie sent Rachel to the house with the news,” David added. “What do you hear?”

  Nothing. They’ve heard nothing. Jasper worked to steady his voice. “They did something called a heart catheter and found blockage, so they’re putting in stents to open up the vessels that carry blood to the heart.”

  David tugged at his brownish-blond beard, now beginning to show signs of fine silver threads. He’d been young, only thirty, when the lot fell to him. “You should go back. You’re needed at the store. Chuck is waiting to take you.”

  Chuck Larson, another regular driver, had a twelve-passenger van favored for family trips and vacations. Jasper didn’t need a big van for one. “Eileen is with Mudder and Salome.” He jerked his head toward the waiting room. “In there. Waiting.”

  Because that’s what people did in places like this. They waited.

  “We’ll call the store with word.” Bart poured earnestness into the statement. “Darcie will be with Mudder. Kimberly is at the house taking care of the kinner. Get James and John to finish bailing the hay. When your daed awakes, he can be happy that the family took care of business.”

  Bart had a plan for the entire Cotter clan. James, John, Darcie, and Kimberly were Jasper’s brothers and sisters. Not Bart’s. Jasper cleared his throat. “I should be here for Mudder.”

  “We’re here,” David pointed out. “Darcie and Salome are here for Lucy.”

  They were right. Duty called. Jasper would take charge of the store.

  His stomach lurched. His breakfast of sausage, eggs, biscuits with strawberry jam, and milk threatened to spill onto the slick pale-blue tile floor. Do not do that. Puking now is a sign of weakness. A sign of fear and worry. An obedient follower doesn’t fear or worry.

  He inhaled and breathed out through his nose. He fixed what he prayed was a calm look on his face. “It’s been an hour. The doctor said two total, if all goes well. I’ll expect your call.”

  He said his good-byes and walked out into the sizzling heat with Eileen chattering like a yellow finch in spring.

  A man who ran a farm could run a store.

  Even if it meant talking to people.

  People like Esther Marie. If a woman who stuttered could do it, so could he.

  Chapter 3

  Walking a mile in Lucy’s shoes felt more like forty miles uphill through snow mixed with sleet and gale-force winds from the north. Esther Marie smiled to herself. Such a fanciful exaggeration. In the three hours since Lucy and Jasper’s mad dash from the store, she’d been pulled in every direction a dozen times over, but nothing had happened she couldn’t handle. Years of experience held her in good stead.

  Years in which she’d longed to be a wife and a mother, but God gave her this instead. Even if potential suitors didn’t see past her stutter, Fergie did and so did God.

  A woman had to take blessings where she found them.


  Esther Marie knelt and gingerly picked broken glass from the mess of cherry jam on the floor in front of the homemade jelly-and-jam display near the front of the store. The towheaded English girl who dropped the jar whimpered and hid her face against her mom’s pink-and-purple-polka-dotted leggings.

  “It’s okay.” Esther covered the remains with an old washrag and scooped them into a trash can. “Ac-c-c-i-dent-s-s-s hap-p-p-p-pen all the time. We mop every d-d-d-ay.”

  “Thank you for cleaning up the mess. I’m sorry.” The mother, who looked in a family way, patted her child’s mass of curls. “I’ll pay for it, of course.”

  “No n-n-need.” Esther rose. “Accidents happen.”

  Two lovely words with no stutter.

  In fact, Rachel had just cleaned up a package of pretzels from the floor on the bulk aisle, the result of a fight between two preschoolers who wanted to be the ones to open their snack.

  The mother nodded. “That’s kind of you. Thanks again.” She scooped up the child and plopped her in the basket, which produced squeals of protest. “That’s what happens when you touch something after I told you not to.”

  Off they went. A squawk on Esther Marie’s walkie-talkie indicated one of the girls was trying to speak to her. Rachel hadn’t mastered this simple technology Fergie had instituted to allow them to handle business quickly instead of running through the aisles of the big store to discuss business while customers often waited for service or answers.

  Fergie was all about customer service.

  Please, Gott, heal his body.

  “Esther Marie, are you there? It’s Rachel.”

  She tugged the radio from its perch on her apron waistband. “What do you need?”

  “The tape ran out on Sally’s register.”

  “Do you know how to put in a new one?”

  “Jah.”

  “Then you should probably do it.”

  “Right. Jah. I will.”

  It seemed Rachel simply liked talking on the radio. Esther Marie kept that observation to herself.