by Linda Byler
Lizzie glanced at Mam, who was chewing on the side of her fingernail, her eyes shining with eagerness. Dat sat up straighter, his hands clasped on his knees.
“Now, I don’t want to tell you what to do, Melvin. But you did say you would consider moving over our way if the opportunity came up,” Uncle Eli continued.
“Oh, yes,” Dat nodded his head. “I sure would. We’re really losing hope here, trying to make ends meet.”
“Well, my sawmill is going pretty good. We’re not rich, mind you, but it’s going pretty good, and if you want to, Melvin …” he paused as Mam served the coffee, leaning back to allow her more room.
“Mmm … boy!” He sniffed his steaming cup, and set it aside to let it cool for a minute before he tasted it.
“Now, here’s what I have in mind. The lumber I cut mostly goes for pallet lumber, and if you want to start up a pallet shop, I’ll supply the lumber. I’ll let you have it at a very reasonable price, and the pallet shop part of the deal is yours. Pallets are a real good thing to get into right now, and I already have a broker willing to give you work.”
Dat wiped his hands on his knees and shook his head. “Oh my, Eli. This is going kind of fast. Do you think I could even get a loan to go into something like that?”
Lizzie pitied Dat. He looked so scared and uncertain; actually, he looked all shook up. He didn’t really know what to say. Emma was watching Dat, and Lizzie thought Emma looked as if she hoped with all her heart Dat would say yes.
“When is the sale for Atlee Yoders’ house?” he asked finally.
Uncle Eli glanced around the kitchen, looking for a calendar. “Mmm, see here, next Saturday, the twenty-fifth.”
“Oh, I don’t think so. We’d have to sell all this, the harness shop and all the inventory. It’s just impossible,” Dat said.
“Well, if you really want to make pallets, and you do actually want to move over our way, Melvin, I can help you out till you have this place sold,” Uncle Eli said, tasting his coffee and reaching for a sugar cookie.
Dat sighed. “It does seem like a golden opportunity. We just have a hard time paying the bills here. It seems as if saddles and harnesses are more of a hobby than a necessity for a lot of people. Even the Amish aren’t farming the way they used to.”
Uncle Eli’s laugh rolled out. “Tell me about it, Melvin! We farmed down on the Rowe place all those years, and if my cows didn’t die, my horses tried to!”
Dat laughed along with Uncle Eli, and Mam beamed. They talked about more serious things, punctuated by Eli’s laughs, until he stood up, saying his hour was up, the driver had to leave.
After Uncle Eli left, the sun was low in the sky when Mam remembered to make supper. They talked for a very long time, but Lizzie did not listen to everything, because she really didn’t care to know whether they were moving for certain. It did sound exciting when she heard Uncle Eli talk about an auction. That was the funny house with a flat roof, and they would live in it.
Lizzie thought of the huge mountain and the river. That was something she liked about Jefferson County. Here, they had no mountains—well, not very big ones, and they were all far away, so it really didn’t seem as if there were mountains nearby.
But Teacher Katie, Betty, Susie, Rachel, and all her friends at school! How could they leave Grandpa Glicks and Marvin and Elsie? It was too much to think about, and it gave Lizzie a headache. Besides, if she thought about things like that, she started chewing her fingernails again, and there was hardly anything to chew. So she went to find Emma.
She was in the kitchen, helping Mam make supper. Mam was making potato cakes, which Lizzie did not care for. Potato cakes were hard, leftover mashed potatoes with raw eggs beaten into them, splatted by the spoonful in a skillet with grease. Sometimes Mam added eggs to cold, congealed leftover noodles and fried them, too, which Lizzie didn’t like, either. Emma often put ketchup on leftover noodles and eggs, which only made them worse.
Lizzie was feeling confused and miserable, because she didn’t know what was going to happen. It seemed as if she were trying to put a puzzle together and some of the pieces were missing. She liked living here above the harness shop, with the apple trees in the yard, and the neighbors, back alleys, and hogs to watch. They had Red and Dolly, the bread man and the meat man, shop customers, and everything always happened the same way—or almost. There was nothing to be afraid of or to worry about—not too seriously, anyway. She worried a little bit about the end of the world coming soon, but not as much as she did in first grade.
Where would they buy their groceries in Jefferson County? And what were pallets? The whole thing just irritated her. She leaned over the stove, watching the potato cakes sizzle in the hot grease.
“What else do we have?” she asked grumpily.
“Oh, some warmed-up hamburger gravy,” Mam said absentmindedly.
“What else?”
“Peas.”
“Ewww!”
“Step back, Lizzie, so I can flip these potato cakes. You’ll be splattered with hot grease,” Mam said.
“Why can’t we have a good supper for once?” Lizzie asked.
“This is a good supper,” Mam replied.
“I hate potato cakes.”
“Then you can eat gravy bread,” Mam said, her mouth in a firm line. “Now go help Emma set the table.”
“I hate gravy bread, too.”
Mam put her hands on her hips and glared at Lizzie. “Now stop that, Lizzie. If you don’t like what I’m making for supper, you just won’t have anything to eat then, will you?”
Lizzie looked at Mam defiantly. “Then I won’t eat,” she said and turned to go down the steps to the harness shop. She sat down hard on the oiled wooden steps, alone in the darkening stairway, and let the tears of frustration well over. And that is how Dat found her on his way up to the kitchen.
“Ach, Lizzie, what’s wrong? Why are you sitting here on the stairway?” he asked.
Lizzie was not going to let Dat see her tears, so she wiped her eyes fiercely, swiping her sleeves across them. “N-n-nothing is wrong,” she said. And then, because the stairway was dark, and because Dat was so kind, she wailed out her misery to him. She told him all about how hard it was to leave Teacher Katie, her friends, and Red and Dolly.
Dat sat and listened, looking down at his shoes, his hands propped on his knees. He listened as Lizzie told him all her fears, and wondered if he didn’t have a lot of those same fears himself. When Lizzie stopped talking, she sniffed, swiped at her eyes with her sleeves, and started chewing her fingernails. Dat took hold of Lizzie’s hand and pulled it away from her mouth gently.
“Don’t, Lizzie.” He sighed. Then he said, “You want to know something?”
“What?” Lizzie looked at Dat.
“I feel exactly the same.”
“You do?” Lizzie could not believe it. Dat was so old and big and brave, and she didn’t think anyone ever felt the same way that she did.
“Yep.” Dat sighed again. “But you know, Lizzie, sometimes we have to give up and accept different, strange things. I would like to go right on living here, making harnesses, but we can’t anymore. We simply can’t go on. And I have to think of Mam, too. She would love to live in Jefferson County, where her three brothers and their families live. You know Doddy Millers live three hundred miles away and Mam often gets homesick. Then if we can’t afford to go to Ohio very often, Mam isn’t always happy.”
“It’s only Doddy Miller in Ohio now, not Mommy.” Lizzie said.
“You’re right,” Dat said.
There was silence on the darkening stairway as Dat and Lizzie sat together in companionable quietness.
“It’s hard for you to think of moving, Lizzie. But think of Abraham in the Old Testament. God told him to go into a strange country that he had never even heard of. At least we know where Jefferson County is and what it looks like.”
“How could God talk to him, anyhow? He doesn’t talk to people now, does He?” Lizzie a
sked.
“Maybe not as clearly, but if we pray, and we feel led to do something, it’s like a still, small voice guiding us,” Dat said, very seriously.
Lizzie almost told Dat how she felt when she prayed, but she was afraid there was something wrong with her, so she didn’t say anything.
“Do you feel better about moving?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Alright, then let’s go eat supper.”
“I’m not going to eat any.”
“Why?”
“Mam said I can’t.”
“Ach, Lizzie, come on.”
So they turned, walking into the kitchen together. Mandy and Jason were seated on the bench, the food was steaming on the table, and Emma was pouring water.
“Melvin, it’s so late that these children are going to fall asleep at the table,” Mam said smiling.
“That’s alright, Annie. We had an unexpected visitor, and we have more important things to talk about later. Making decisions is a lot of hard work, isn’t it?” he said with a smile.
Mam beamed. She absolutely shone; she was so happy. Dat told her he would make a phone call to Uncle Eli and they would be going to the public auction at Atlee Yoders’ on the twenty-fifth of September.
When they folded their hands in their laps, bowing their heads for silent prayer, Lizzie peeped at Dat. His head was bowed extra low, and his lips were moving, his eyes shut tightly as he prayed. Lizzie decided then and there, if Dat could feel like she did and be so brave, then she could be brave, too. Besides, Mam was so happy, and that made Lizzie happy, too. So she prayed, asking God to help her be brave, and that she would someday like potato cakes, as well.
It almost seemed as if God heard her, because when she lifted her head, everyone was smiling, even Jason, and the potato cakes shone with the golden light of the setting sun.
Dat looked at Lizzie. “Didn’t you say it would be hard to leave Red and Dolly? Well, we don’t have to. When we move, they’ll be going along in a horse trailer—Dolly on one side and Red on the other.”
“Really?” Lizzie asked.
“Oh, yes. We need Red to pull us over those Jefferson County hills. They have some huge hills to cross, because the country has so many ridges,” Dat said.
“Widge! Widge!” Jason yelled.
Everyone looked at each other, laughing. Happiness made potato cakes taste almost like mashed potatoes.
chapter 22
Saying Good-bye
“Lizzie, I simply don’t believe it.” Lizzie nodded her head up and down as hard as she could. Betty, Susie, Rachel, and all their friends sat in a circle, eating their lunches on the playground. Betty always smashed her sandwich flat with her thumb and forefinger when she became nervous, so she was squeezing her poor sandwich until there was nothing left of it.
“You’re moving to where?” Betty was incredulous, because she could not imagine school without Lizzie.
“To Jefferson County.”
“Why do you have to?”
“I don’t know. I guess because we’re poor,” Lizzie said bluntly. There was a long, awkward silence. Emma’s face turned red, because it embarrassed her to hear Lizzie tell all her school friends that they were poor. They weren’t so poor that they had nothing to eat.
“I hate to think of coming to school and you not being here,” Betty said.
“We won’t move for a while yet. At least a month,” Emma said.
“Oh.”
There was silence in the circle of friends as they all thought about it. The cool breeze sent shivers up Lizzie’s spine, in spite of the sweater she was wearing. She pulled it around her back, hunching her shoulders and crossing her arms around herself to keep warm.
“We have to wear coverings to go to school in Jefferson County. And much longer dresses. When I’m in eighth grade I’ll wear a cape, too,” Emma said.
Lizzie was the one to be embarrassed now. Why did Emma have to say that? She felt like her friends did not need to know that they would be dressing differently.
“A cape!”
“To school?”
Their friends were laughing at them now, Lizzie could tell. She wished they could move tomorrow, so no one could make fun of them. She got up, saying she was putting her lunchbox away, so she didn’t need to hear the remaining conversation. She dreaded the thought of changing their dress, and she certainly didn’t want Betty to know. So she put away her lunchbox, slid into her desk, got out her library book, and started reading. The clock ticked loudly on the wall, but Lizzie didn’t notice; she was too engrossed in her own thoughts. The book she held contained nothing as far as she was concerned. It was just to hide behind, so Teacher Katie would not notice her expression. Lizzie sat there for a very long time, until Teacher Katie rolled back her chair and stopped to look at her.
“Have you been sitting there during the entire recess?” she asked, peering closely at Lizzie.
“Just about,” Lizzie said dourly.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“There must be a reason.”
“There isn’t.”
So Teacher Katie shrugged her shoulders and forgot about Lizzie. She had a headache, because it was one of those days when nothing went smoothly, so she put her lunchbox away, folded her arms, laid her head on top of them, and closed her eyes. The clock ticked steadily. The pupils on the playground shouted or talked loudly, running past the windows playing “Piggy Wants a Motion.” Lizzie shuffled her feet, wriggling in her seat to change positions as the silence continued.
The front door opened very softly as Betty slipped in, quietly putting away her lunchbox. She hesitated before she walked over to Lizzie’s desk, where she placed both hands on the back seat, leaned over, and asked, “What are you reading, Lizzie?”
“This.”
“Oh. Mmm … Lizzie, I don’t care if you have to wear a covering to go to school. I just wish you wouldn’t have to move. And, Lizzie, you’re not poor. We are. You have chips in your lunch much more often than we do,” Betty said, raising her eyebrows as she looked straight at Lizzie.
Lizzie looked sideways at Betty, her mouth a thin, straight line. Betty blinked. Lizzie kept looking, until Betty giggled, her eyes shining, because she thought Lizzie looked funny, so strict and stern.
“It’s not funny,” Lizzie said. She swiveled in her seat, putting both feet in the aisle, and faced Betty squarely. “You know you are my best friend, and now I probably won’t see you again as long as I live. I don’t know why you think you have to laugh about it.”
“I’m not laughing about you moving away. You just looked so funny because you … well, you act like an old mommy,” Betty said.
Lizzie put her hand up to her mouth and laughed with Betty. She slid over in her seat, patting the seat beside her so Betty could sit there. They sat together, side by side, discussing every aspect of letter writing if you lived far away. Together they decided each one would write faithfully every Friday evening after a whole week of school was over, so they could write their arithmetic scores and whether they had received 100% on their spelling test.
· · · · ·
Things weren’t much better when they drove Red to Grandpa Glicks for the last time before they moved. Marvin and Elsie were a bit subdued, thinking of them moving so far away. They sat on the wooden porch swing that hung from a heavy wooden pole down by the garden, while leaves swirled around them. The garden was almost all cleared out, except for a few late tomato plants. Lizzie thought the garden looked old and tired, making her feel more solemn than ever.
Marvin was taking a bright yellow leaf apart in layers, ripping it along the seams. He threw the pieces away, picked up another one, and proceeded to do the same. Elsie, Emma, and Lizzie rocked slowly back and forth, the rusty chain squeaking with every move.
“What I can’t see,” Marvin began, “is why your Dat is going to make pilots.”
“Not pilots,” Lizzie corrected him. “Pallets.”
&n
bsp; “Whatever,” Marvin said glumly.
“What are they?” Elsie asked.
“Wooden flat things that you put a pile of boxes on at a warehouse or factory. It’s so a forklift can slide under them to lift a whole stack at a time,” Emma explained.
“How do you know that?” Marvin asked.
“Uncle Elis children told us,” she answered.
Marvin thought about this for a while. He kept ripping maple leaves apart, and the girls continued their swinging. Uncle Samuel’s dog came running through the leaves and plopped down beside Marvin, his tongue lolling, watching them with bright, inquisitive eyes. Marvin reached down to scratch his ears before he asked who drove the forklift at Dat’s “pilot” shop.
“Not ‘pilot’,” Lizzie corrected him.
“I bet it is ‘pilot’. You know how flat those Ohio people talk that moved to Jefferson County. They probably just pronounce it ‘pallet’ because for ‘gleich’ they say ‘glach’,” Marvin said.
“Not if they talk English—just Dutch,” Lizzie said.
“I bet not.”
“You don’t know.”
“I bet you won’t live there very long until you talk exactly like they do—so flat, and rolling your ‘r’s the way they do,” Marvin said, laughing.
“Marvin!” Elsie huffed.
“That’s not nice,” Emma chimed in.
There was silence again as they listened to a wedge of geese flying overhead. They honked together, flapping their long, heavy wings to stay in flight.
“Well, at least you’re not going as far as those geese are flying. They’re going the whole way to Canada,” Marvin said.
“I guess,” the girls answered.
“And another thing. We’re getting older, so we couldn’t always play together the way we do now. I’m a boy, you know, and it looks childish if I’m always with three girls when we’re all together,” Marvin said.