by Mary Ellis
“Fall comes earlier here in Maine. I’ll see you downstairs.”
“Wait. Where are the women going?”
“Sally never sticks around while I fertilize. The smell turns her stomach. The women are meeting at Martha’s house. Her neighborhood plans to spread next week, so then they will probably congregate here. They will quilt all day long, breaking only for meals and tending to little ones. But I bet they will do as much talking as sewing.” Thomas headed toward the door.
“Amy will be gone the entire day?” John tugged a clean shirt over his head.
“Don’t worry. Sally will fix a plate of sandwiches for our lunch. And she’s making a pot of chili for our supper.”
“It’s not my belly I’m concerned with. Amy still hasn’t seen the two farms for sale that I like.”
“All in good time. Patience is a virtue we need to cultivate.” Thomas closed the door behind him, not waiting for his brother’s response.
All in good time, muttered John, tugging on socks. At this rate, I’ll hobble into church with a cane on my wedding day.
In the kitchen, chaos reigned as Sally and Amy bustled around making breakfast, lunch, and dinner for them. Aden attempted to eat scrambled eggs on his own, while Jeremiah howled in his portable crib in the corner, demanding attention. However, when John entered the kitchen, the real eye-opener slouched in a kitchen chair. Elam Detweiler—tall and thin but muscular, with dark hair and eyes—was as different in appearance and temperament from his brothers as a man could be. His traditional Amish bangs had grown out, and he had a scruffy three-day beard, forbidden among unmarried men. Before him sat a plate of eggs and toast, barely touched, as he brooded over a travel mug of coffee.
“Good morning, brother,” said Elam in English. “Glad to see you could join us. I’d hate to have all the fun of spreading manure without you.”
“Guder mariye.” John returned the greeting in Deutsch. “Some of us work hard every day and are bone tired when we fall into bed.” He sat down at the other end of the table.
“Good morning, John,” greeted Amy. “I bet you’re hungry.” She served his plate of breakfast with a pretty smile.
“I am, danki.” Their fingers brushed when she set down his food, and the touch electrified him, erasing the last of his morning grogginess. After bowing his head to pray, he directed his question to her. “Did you sleep well?”
“Jah, just like a boppli,” said Amy over her shoulder. She scooped up eggs for the women.
“Babies don’t sleep very well in this house,” said Elam. “Jeremiah’s cries kept me up half the night.” He leaned back in his chair and stretched out his long legs.
“I can’t see how that’s possible, Elam Detweiler.” Sally turned from the counter where she was fixing sandwiches. “Your bed is in the cellar, and Jeremiah was in his crib upstairs with us.”
Elam laughed and hooked a thumb toward the crib. “You must be immune to the noise, because I’d recognize my nephew’s voice anywhere.”
John concentrated on his plate of food, tamping down a retort. He had no right to interfere in Thomas’s household, however much he wanted to.
When Sally refilled coffee mugs, she served Elam last. “The boy has been fed and his diaper is dry. Sometimes babies just cry. That’s life.” She flashed him a scowl before she resumed making sandwiches.
“Perhaps someday your future fraa will give birth to the first non-crying baby,” said Amy between bites of eggs. She stayed by the stove to eat while she stirred the pot of chili. “Then he’ll be written about in a medical journal somewhere, and the Elam Detweiler family will be famous.”
John took a bite of toast, but it had suddenly turned dry and hard to swallow. For some odd reason, he didn’t like his bride-to-be engaging his younger brother in conversation.
Elam smiled at Amy over his cold food. “I don’t intend ever to marry, Miss King, but I appreciate your confidence that my son would be extraordinary.”
“Never say never. The right woman could turn even your immovable head.”
Elam’s raucous laughter drowned out the baby’s crying. “Someday you will be a lucky man, John, but this gal will keep you on your toes.” Elam pushed away the plate and rose to his feet. “Are we about ready to start spreading autumn joy?” His gaze shifted between his brothers.
John wiped up his eggs with a bread crust and then carried the plate to the sink. “I’d like to say goodbye to Amy. I’ll meet you outside.”
“Isn’t young love sweet?” Elam strode out of the house with an arrogant swagger, leaving his full plate on the table. Two pairs of eyes followed him to the door. One pair belonged to Thomas, whose expression remained dour, while the other belonged to Nora King. She’d watched him from across the kitchen with utter fascination.
John swallowed the bitter taste in his mouth. “Have a good day quilting,” he murmured to Amy, in the un-private company of others.
When he joined his brothers, Thomas assigned John and Elam to work as a team to spread the liquefied composted manure across the harvested fields. Elam chose to ride in the seat driving the team of draft horses. John would ride on the backseat, assuring that the supply to the spreader remained constant. Other than a few annoying flies, work went well that morning. But after lunch the Belgians became mired in a low, swampy section of field. Without hesitation, Elam applied the whip to the horses’ backs.
John swiveled around. “Stop that! Thomas never whips his team, and neither do I.”
Elam sneered. “How exactly can I get them out of this quagmire?”
“If you’d been paying attention, you could have avoided the low spot,” snapped John.
“It’s too late to worry ’bout that now.” Elam used the whip again on the straining horses.
“If you strike them one more time, I’ll take that whip to your hide,” John shouted. There was nothing ambiguous about his intentions. He jumped down into the muck, walked around the equipment, and positioned himself between the Belgians. He patted their sweating flanks to calm them. After a minute he took hold of their halters and led them onto higher ground.
As Elam drove the equipment past him, John climbed back into his seat. “That’s how you free a team without using the whip,” he called with satisfaction.
“Jah, but look at yourself, big brother. You’re caked up to your knees in muck. You better not stand upwind of Amy when she gets home. You stink.” Elam slapped the reins and the team resumed fertilizing the row.
John gritted his teeth, knowing he had to work all day with Elam. And also because he did, indeed, smell bad. Because they wouldn’t enter the house until they were finished, he would have to smell that way until nightfall.
John took his shower first at day’s end. While Elam heated their chili and built fires in the kitchen and living room woodstoves, Thomas rubbed down the horses and put them to pasture for the night. Then the three men ate their meal without speaking. Afterward, John walked down the leaf-strewn driveway to fetch the mail. He needed something to take his mind off the fact the women still weren’t home. Darkness had fallen more than an hour ago. But in the stack he found more distraction than he bargained for—a letter addressed to Amy from a town he’d never heard of. “Chestnut, Maine,” he read on the envelope. Only one person could have written this—Amy’s aunt.
He glanced around and then tucked the letter inside his jacket. Later, after the women returned and everyone had eaten and gone to bed, John pulled the letter from his pocket. With no small measure of shame, he slit open the envelope and extracted the single sheet. His supposition regarding the writer had been correct—Prudence Summerton. By the yellow glow of a kerosene lamp, he read the words meant for another pair of eyes.
My dear Amy,
Your letter filled me with both joy and sorrow—joy to hear from my beloved niece after all these years, and sorrow to learn that my sister and her husband have perished. My heart aches for you and your schwestern. I welcome you to our fine state and hope you’l
l find a good life here, but I must refuse your invitation to visit Harmony. I am banned, Amy. My choices have closed that door forever. But be assured that I am well and happier than I have ever been in my life.
May the Lord bless you and your young man in your upcoming marriage.
Aunt Prudence
An uncharitable, judgmental thought came to John’s mind: You are living a godless existence with a man you had no business marrying. In a weak, impulsive moment, he did something he would live to regret. He stuffed the letter back into the envelope, opened the door of the woodstove, and tossed it inside. With grim satisfaction he watched the words from a willful woman to his beloved Amy reduce to soot and ash.
But, oddly, he felt no satisfaction after removing the threat of a bad influence from their lives.
NINE
Nothing in my hand I bring
Pee-ew!” Nora exclaimed, shutting the living room window with a resounding clatter. “I thought they finished spreading that goop yesterday. Why does it still smell so bad?”
Sally glanced up from the tiny sweater she was knitting for Jeremiah. “Where did you say you came from—Lancaster County or New York City?” She enjoyed a hearty laugh with Amy. “The men haven’t plowed it under yet. Besides, they are fertilizing more acres on the east side today, farther away from the house.”
Nora shut the rest of the windows just as noisily.
“You’ll be opening them back up when it grows too stuffy to breathe in here.” Amy glared over her half-moon glasses. She had recently started wearing them for small, close stitches. “At least the breeze comes from the west.”
“I’d rather sweat to death than smell any more horse dung.” Nora crossed her arms to match her mood.
“Go back to work and stop being vulgar.” Amy raised her voice for only the second time since stepping foot in Maine.
Nora obliged, but she stuck her tongue out at her sister before returning to the ironing board.
Sally looked from one to the other, considering how best to cool off the room’s occupants. “What happened? Yesterday we worked together like a well-oiled machine. Today you two are snapping at each other.”
“We were motivated to get chores done so we could spend the day quilting at Martha’s.” Amy examined her row of stitches. “I enjoyed getting to know the women better. They are all very interesting in different ways. Didn’t you think so, Nora?”
Nora paused while her iron reheated atop the stove. “I suppose so. At least the air smelled better at Martha’s. But that fish salad at lunch contained an herb or seasoning I didn’t like. I can understand egg or ham or even tuna salad, but codfish salad? Very odd. And her cherry cobbler had the sourest cherries and the driest crust. She must have run out of sugar.”
Amy dropped her sewing. “Nora King, you are quite mean-spirited today! I wouldn’t blame Sally if she buys you a one-way ticket back to Pennsylvania.”
Duly chastised, Nora hung her head. “I was only expressing an opinion.”
“Which you are entitled to,” said Sally, chuckling. “I’ll save my money because I thought the same thing about Martha’s cobbler. One bite and my eyes squinted shut from the tartness.”
Nora’s head snapped up. “That’s what happened to me.”
Amy looked from one to the other. “Well, I must admit my lips puckered a bit too. Maybe she’s watching her weight.”
“She could have passed around the sugar bowl for those not counting calories.” Nora carried her iron back to the board.
“In all seriousness, Sally, your district holds no great advantage over you in baking or cooking, so I don’t know why you were so nervous about your food at the harvest frolic.”
Sally unwound a long measure of yarn and pondered Amy’s observance. She opted for the truth. “I got off to a rocky start with the women. And it had nothing to do with food or recipes.” She knitted half a row as the clock provided the only sound in the room. After a while, she sensed the two pairs of eyes on her.
“Go on. Now you’ve got us curious,” encouraged Nora.
“But only if you’re comfortable talking about it,” added Amy, the soul of discretion.
“When Thomas and I came to this district, we didn’t move here alone. A few others also relocated from Missouri to make a fresh start in Maine. One young woman couldn’t stay mum about my past in Paradise, and soon everyone found out. The older women thought Thomas shouldn’t have married a woman with…such a colorful history.” Sally glanced at Amy, who watched her with saucer-round eyes. “Remember, this is a very conservative community without rumschpringe for young people.”
“But it’s a new district. None of those women grew up here.” Amy placed her pillowcase back into the sewing basket.
“True. Everyone came from elsewhere. But many Old Order districts are more conservative than those in Pennsylvania or Ohio…or Paradise, Missouri. Because Thomas married me, some thought he shouldn’t be nominated for minister. But few men are as knowledgeable about Scripture as he is, so that line of thinking was quickly squashed. Even so, the older matrons didn’t find me suitable to lead the wives.”
“Who was this big blabbermouth?” Nora sounded ready to retaliate.
Sally shook her head. “I’ll not say her name. That’s water long over the dam. I’m sure she regrets gossiping.”
“What exactly did you do in Missouri?” Nora whispered the words with unconcealed delight.
Amy sighed. “Pay no attention to her. She forgets her manners at times.”
“Nothing truly terrible, before your imagination runs away with you.” Sally winked at Nora. “But I did cut my hair up to my shoulders and trimmed a fringe of bangs above my eyes.” She touched her eyebrows with her fingertips. “I always considered my forehead too high and thought the bangs would soften my features.”
“What did your mother say?” asked Amy as curiosity got the better of her too.
“Mamm shook her head and muttered that the bangs were crooked. Because I was sixteen and hadn’t joined the church yet, she wasn’t too worried. But my daed didn’t speak to me until my hair grew out. He said no man would marry a woman with scarecrow hair!” Sally laughed at the memory.
“Was that it? Just a bad haircut?” Nora set her iron back on the woodstove to reheat.
“Oh, no, that was just the beginning of my rumschpringe. I rode in cars with English girlfriends. They picked me up and took me to the ice-cream shop in Paradise at least twice a week. Then I took a job at that ice-cream stand. Daed worried I would fall for an Englischer because many young men hung out there on warm summer nights. They polished up their shiny cars just to drive downtown for a banana split, and then they sat atop picnic tables watching other cars drive by like a parade.” Sally clucked dismissively. “It was really stupid to waste gas like that, the more I think about it.”
Nora perched on the edge of the sofa with rapt attention, her ironing forgotten. “You worked in an ice-cream shop? Plenty of Amish girls take jobs for a spell. I had planned to back in Lancaster…until God changed everything.” A pinched expression clouded her pretty face.
“Jah, well, perhaps if it had been only the job and haircut, my past would have been easier to live down.”
Nora almost fell off the sofa. “Go on.”
Sally felt uneasy about Nora’s enchantment with her behavior, but it was too late to stop now. After listening to make sure her kinner still napped, she continued. “Some of the Amish youth held get-togethers that summer—hayrides and cookouts with s’mores and roasted corn. I can still see the giant bonfires with flames shooting high into the night sky.”
Suddenly, she realized the thoughtlessness of her words. “Forgive me, Amy, Nora, for talking about fire so carelessly.”
Amy shrugged her shoulders. “No, Sally. Don’t feel that you have to walk on eggshells around us. Candles light our way, while wood-burning stoves keep us warm on chilly nights. Fire will always be part of life for us. Go on with your story.”
Sa
lly knitted a few more stitches in the sweater. “Amish and English alike attended these parties. One night someone brought a large…boom box, I think they are called, and turned the music up loud. My friends and I walked around the barn to where it was quieter. Soon the noise disturbed a neighbor’s sleep, and the man called the authorities. The sheriff arrived with several deputies to break up the party. My sister and I went home, but daed found out we had been there. An article in the newspaper said beer had been taken away from several underage Englischers.” She paused to count the stitches in a row. “I saw no one drinking, but, nevertheless, the woman who moved here told everyone I attended drinking parties in Missouri.”
A wide-eyed Amy looked sympathetic. “What happened next that summer?” She glanced nervously at Nora.
“Nothing, really. I met Thomas Detweiler in the autumn. He had moved from Pennsylvania looking for cheaper farmland. We began courting, and I never went to another party. He was a bit older than me, so my daed insisted that we wait. We married when I turned eighteen, and then we moved here a year later. We’ve been in Harmony for three years now.”
“You’re only twenty-two—the same as me?” Amy sounded more shocked by that than anything else.
“I’m nearly twenty-three.” Sally cocked her head, listening as Jeremiah began to stir.
“You already have two fine sons and an established home. I’ve accomplished nothing yet.”
“You and John will soon set up your first house. No one’s journey through life is the same, except for the path we follow to the Lord.”
“Goodness, that was quite a story,” said Nora, returning to her pile of shirts.
Amy picked up her sewing again. “Thank you for sharing that with us.”
But Sally wasn’t happy about her disclosure to the sisters, especially not after she noticed the toe of a man’s boot by the doorjamb. Someone had been eavesdropping—a vice she often was guilty of—and she had a good idea who that person was.