by Linda Byler
Mam said she was glad Isaac had a soft heart. It spoke well for his character.
Isaac usually fell asleep soon after his head touched his pillow, having to get up at 5:00, the way he did.
Tonight, however, was different. He was thinking.
Ruthie could just give up her poem. But he knew for himself, he would be ashamed to be without that solo piece of poetry, everyone expecting it the way they did.
She was about as decent as any girl could be. For one thing, she could draw stuff other than hearts and flowers. She had drawn most of the figures skating on the pond, some of them looking real. And she liked dogs. She had an English Setter of her own named Shelby. That was sort of cool. Shelby. It had a nice ring to it.
He also liked the way her freckles were spattered across her nose, sort of like God put sprinkles on the icing of a cupcake. If he had to pick any girl as his wife, it would have to be Ruthie. He didn’t know when he’d heard her sniff last. Or blow her nose.
The next day at first recess, Isaac approached her, after talking to Calvin and Michael.
“How would you like to be helped with your problem of stammering?” he blurted.
“You mean stuttering?” Ruthie asked. Her eyes were watchful.
“Yeah.”
“Who would help me? Who would even know how?”
“Me. Me and Calvin and Michael and Hannah and Dora.”
“You would?” She sounded surprised and a little pleased.
“Sure.”
“When?”
“Every lunch hour, ’til the program.”
“Give up sledding?” She asked, considering.
“Mm-hm.”
“Ar-aright.” Ruthie’s eyes shone.
So that was how it started. They called themselves the SOS group. Support Our Stutterer.
Ruthie giggled, twisting her apron. Isaac began by having her read long sentences from a book, anything, as long as she spoke. She could speak perfectly as long as she read from a book, but when she was placed on the stage in front of the blackboard, she could not face anyone and speak a word without stumbling horribly.
When she felt the constriction in her throat begin, they asked her to stop. At first, she was close to tears. She grabbed a corner of her black apron and twisted it, then released it, clearing her throat, blinking her eyes, doing anything she possibly could to avoid eye contact or holding still.
Isaac took charge. Barking instructions, pacing, his voice carrying well, he asked her to look at him. If she wasn’t comfortable looking at him, she could look at Hannah.
She shook her head.
So Isaac met her eyes, told her to watch his face, and repeat this sentence.
She got nowhere, her mouth twisting, her throat swelling with the effort of making just one coherent sound. After that, they stopped.
“Okay, Ruthie, let’s start by saying sentences while you are sitting with us.”
Patiently, they started over. If she read from a book, she was fine, but when she faced anyone, the words stayed in her throat as if someone had closed a gate.
It was time for the bell.
Isaac’s shoulders slumped. Michael walked wearily to his desk, Calvin rolled his eyes in Isaac’s direction and even Hannah lost a bit of her swagger. They could not accomplish this in nine days. It was hopeless.
Isaac hung around the schoolyard until the last pupils had pushed their way home on their scooters, then returned and entered the classroom.
Catherine was surprised to see him.
“Yes, Isaac?”
“Sorry to bother you, but is there nothing we can do for Ruthie? Do you know of anyone who has overcome this problem? Any books we can read?”
Catherine said nothing, just looked at Isaac without seeing him. Finally she sighed.
“Isaac, can I trust you to keep this bit of information to yourself?”
He nodded.
“Ruthie has a sad life now that her mother is … well, she’s in the hospital for … help. She has problems with her thinking. They just found out a few weeks ago that she may have either a tumor on her brain or Alzheimer’s.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s when your brain is diseased, in a way, and you no longer function normally.”
“Oh.”
“I think Ruthie is very afraid. She’s trying to go about her life as if nothing is wrong, hoping none of her classmates find out. She carries a deep sense of shame. Her mother has always been … an excitable woman, to put it mildly, and those children have suffered seriously, in ways you can’t imagine. So … perhaps, Isaac, you could reach her? Maybe if she found out ….”
Catherine’s voice drifted off.
“You mean if I told her that I know about her mother and tell her it’s all right, stuff like that happens to people all the time, she’d loosen up?”
Catherine nodded.
Isaac pushed himself home, flinging his leg energetically, happy with this bit of information. Teacher Catherine was the best, most beautiful, sweetest person he had ever met. She treated him as her best buddy, letting him in on that secret, doing it in a way that didn’t make Ruthie’s mother appear mean, just pitiful. Now he believed Ruthie might be able to overcome her crippling stutter, if he did this right.
At home, he grabbed two chocolate chip cookies and ran out the door to find Sim. It was very important that Sim knew about this, especially about Catherine being so wise and pretty, and if he didn’t get around to asking her for a date soon, it would be forever too late, the opportunity evaporated like mist from the pond. It was time Sim straightened himself up.
He found Sim loading manure in the heifer barn. The acrid odor met his nostrils before he saw Sim, but he was used to the raw stench of fresh manure, so he climbed the gate and walked over to him.
Hatless, his everyday shirt sleeves rolled up above the elbow and his shoulders bulging beneath the seams of his shirt, Sim was forking great quantities of the sodden stuff with each forkful. He stopped, ran the back of his hand along his forehead, stuck his pitchfork into the remaining manure and smiled at Isaac. “What’s up?”
“Hey, you know Lloyd’s Ruthie? The girl that stutters? She can’t talk one tiny bit. And you know what?” He related the entire afternoon’s visit with his teacher, watching Sim’s face, emphasizing Catherine’s part.
Sim didn’t show any emotion, just scratched a forearm and looked out the door at the snowy landscape.
“And, you know, Sim, if you don’t make yourself do it, she’s not going to wait around much longer. You need to ask her for a date. Get going once!”
Isaac was surprised at Sim’s reaction. Sim looked as if he was going to cry. When he spoke, it was quietly, seriously, almost like a preacher in church.
“All right, little brother. I hear you. And I wish I could tell you okay, I’ll ask her. At your age I probably would have. A schoolboy hasn’t seen much of life, of love or loss. It’s not as simple as you think. And, Isaac, a lot of children your age would not talk the way you do. You’re too smart. You see, God comes first. If I pray to him first, ask him for his blessing in my life, then maybe, just maybe, someday, he will allow me to have her. But I have to wait. Wait on his answer.”
Isaac snorted loudly, scaring the heifers in the corner watching the pair of Belgians hitched to the manure spreader with frightened eyes.
“Well, and just how does God go about speaking to you? You a prophet, or what? Catherine likes you. You’re too dumb to see it.”
With that, Isaac climbed back over the fence, popping the last of the chocolate chip cookies into his mouth, and let Sim finish cleaning the heifer barn by himself. If he got out of there fast enough, Sim might not remember the chicken house needed to be cleaned.
Just his luck, he ran into Dat.
“Hi, Isaac! Home from school so soon? How was your day?”
“School.”
“That’s not much of an answer,” Dat said, smiling broadly.
“Same thing. It was ju
st school.”
“Christmas program ready yet?”
“Yup.”
“Good! I’m looking forward to it.”
Isaac smiled at Dat and was rewarded by the warm kindness in his eyes, the same as always.
Dat was like a rock-solid house you could go into and never be afraid of anything or anyone. He was always the same, sometimes busier than others, more preoccupied, but never angry or hateful or rude.
Now he looked at Isaac with a shrewd expression.
“So, do you think a boy like you should be getting a pony spring wagon if he forgets to scrape the chicken house?”
He looked up sharply and found Dat’s smile.
“How would you like to drive Ginger to school every day?”
A new spring wagon for ponies! It was hard to grasp.
“You better get busy, Isaac.”
Dat reached out, lifted Isaac’s torn straw hat and plopped it back down, a gesture of affection.
While Isaac cleaned and scraped, shooing chickens away, he kept repeating, “Wow! Wow!”
Chapter Nine
ISAAC FAIRLY FLEW TO school, the thought of the new spring wagon goading him on, his energy buzzing and humming.
The sky looked dark and heavy enough to fall right down on his head. Big piles of iron-gray clouds were flattening themselves into the fish-bone shape Mam always spoke of. She said if gray clouds looked like a fish skeleton, gray and flat and straight, there was a wet air from the east, and a rain or snowstorm was approaching.
Dat clucked over the morning paper. “There’s another big one coming.”
“Ach, du lieva!” (Oh, my goodness.) Mam set down her cup of coffee, broke another glazed doughnut in half and took a generous bite, hungrily. And she just had breakfast. “You mean we’ll have two storms before Christmas?”
“I would say so. Whatever you do, Isaac, if it gets to rissling (ice coming down), wait at school until someone comes to get you. Your scooter isn’t safe on the road in those conditions.”
Dat was very serious, so Isaac sat up and listened.
At school, he told Calvin about the approaching storm, Calvin nodding and saying already there was a winter storm watch for Lancaster, Berks and Dauphin Counties.
It was dark in the schoolhouse. Teacher Catherine got a lighter out of her desk and lit the propane gas lamp, its warm glow and soft hissing sound wrapping the pupils in homey, familiar light.
It was the only light they were used to at home. A propane tank was set in a pretty oak cabinet, sometimes painted black or off-white or red, depending on the housewife’s preference, with a long pipe attached to the head where two mantles were tied. When a tiny flame was held to the mantles, a bright light burst forth, illuminating a whole room easily. It was the best alternative to electricity.
Mam said years ago they didn’t have propane lamps. They used naptha gas in a lamp hung from the ceiling. They were right dangerous, in her opinion, but back then you never thought about it. You could burn kerosene in the same lamp, except you had to heat the head with a torch, or use the little cup that was provided for a shot of lighter fluid, ignite it, and then a small, steadily burning blue flame heated the mantles until you could turn the lamp on, which was even more dangerous and time-consuming. So they had come a long way.
Dat shook his head about the fast moving solar and battery operations that were creeping into homes nowadays. Some of the more liberal households no longer used propane lamps, but a 12-volt battery in the oak cabinet attached to a bulb on a real electric lamp that was converted to battery use.
You had to wonder where it would all end, Dat said, stroking his beard and looking very wise. It was important to keep the old traditions, he said. They meant a lot.
Sim said change would come, though, it always had. Look at the milking machines and bulk tanks. Propane gas stoves and refrigerators. Some change was good. Dat agreed, but admonished Sim to be trick-havich (hold back) and it would never spite him, reaping the benefits in later years.
As Isaac settled into his desk, he shivered. Normally, the classroom was warm, but the farthest corners were cold this morning. He gazed out the window as Teacher Catherine read the Bible, waiting for those first icy snowflakes to ping against the east side of the schoolhouse. He glanced at Ruthie, appalled to find her blinking, her eyes bright with unshed tears. As he watched, her brown eyes overflowed, the tears leaving wet streaks through her freckles.
He looked away.
When he returned from singing class, he got out his arithmetic book as usual. Now he inserted a piece of paper, and wrote,
Ruthie, it’s O.K. Teacher Catherine says it is. I know about your mam. I feel sorry for her. Hang in there. You’re strong.
We’re all here for you.
Isaac knew it was against the rules to pass notes, but when he exchanged his arithmetic paper with her, he put the note inside, then watched steadily out the opposite window while she read it.
That day was a turning point.
It was as if Ruthie had been slipping, unable to gain a foothold. Now, a shaky attempt had paid off. She had found the strength to shake the crippling defeat in her young life.
At the recess SOS group, she repeated sentences, stuttering, straining, sometimes having to be completely quiet. But she spoke.
Then the snowstorm came at suppertime, all right.
It started like granules of salt, so fine and hard, piling into every crack and crevice it could find. It sifted along the cow stable’s windowsills, a place Isaac could not remember ever finding snow.
The hen’s water froze. They pecked holes into the ice and drank anyway. Dat said to feed the pigs and hens plenty; they’d need extra to keep themselves warm. Isaac and Sim put straw bales around the pigpen, wrapped sheets of insulation, that pink, itchy, fiberglass stuff, around the water hydrants and put a heater in the milk house.
Their Barbara came down with bronchitis, and needed Mam to send over Numotizine.
“What a night!” Mam fumed and fussed. No driver wanted to go out in this weather. She’d be ashamed to call one.
Sim said he’d make the five-mile drive. He had a heater in his buggy. When Isaac offered his company for the ride, Sim grinned and nodded.
Mam put a glob of that vile salve from her own blue and white container in a glass jar. It was an old, old remedy, containing something so awful smelling you could hardly stand to watch Mam put it in a jar, let alone having it applied to your chest with a steaming hot rag slapped on top. It was enough to suffocate a person, having to sleep with that stench, but Mam showed no mercy with her administration of Numotizine. She stated flatly that it had saved her hundreds of dollars in doctor bills, spared her children from antibiotics, and why wouldn’t you use these old home remedies from the past?
So in the cold and dark, the snow zooming in through the opened window, Sim and Isaac started out.
With a horse like Sim’s you had to keep the window latched to the ceiling for awhile, allowing the cold and snow its entry. There was no other way to do it. For one thing, the small rectangular holes cut in the window frame to allow the leather reins to pass through, were actually too small to handle a spirited horse. Horses always needed a firm hand starting out, and Saddlebred Fred was no exception, the way he hopped around. He shied, he ran way out around the driveway, making a large circle in the alfalfa field, and then dashed down the road as if a ghost was after him.
The steel-rimmed buggy wheels lost traction, swaying and zig-zagging across the quickly disappearing road, as Sim strained to control Fred. Isaac wrapped himself tightly into the plush buggy robe, and hoped the snow plows would hold off until they got home. The way Fred was acting, they’d end up in Philadelphia if they met one.
Sim didn’t talk, so Isaac said nothing either. Then, sure enough, the twirling yellow light of a snowplow showed through the gloom, bearing down on them.
“Yikes!” Isaac wasn’t planning on saying that; it just slipped out of its own accord.
&n
bsp; “Hang on!” Sim shouted.
Isaac couldn’t do that, as the buggy went straight down a steep bank. Grimly, he bit down on his lower lip, slid off the seat and socked into the corner of the buggy. Sim was standing up, leaning way back, his gloved hands working the reins, Fred galloping across someone’s field out of control.
The buggy swayed and lurched, Isaac cowering in the corner, his eyes squeezed shut, waiting for the moment the buggy would fly into a thousand pieces, his body exploding out of it into the wild black night. It didn’t happen. They just slowed down. Fred stopped his headlong gallop.
They made it safely to Barbara’s house, who looked as if she needed a hospital more than she needed this Numotizine. She was on the couch, her breathing raspy, her cough sounding like a piece of wood falling down the stairs.
The house was a royal mess. As usual, Bennie wasn’t behaving, sitting on the table spreading Ritz crackers with peanut butter. He had everything all over his pants, the table top and his sister Lydia. When Isaac told him to put the peanut butter away, he lifted his face and howled. John came rushing over carrying the baby, who set up her own high-pitched yell, her bottle of apple juice suddenly disappearing as her dat rushed to the rescue.
John glared at Isaac, got a wet cloth and told Bennie to clean up the peanut butter, which was the same as asking a pig to clean up his pen. Isaac sat on the recliner by the stove, disliking Bennie.
He was glad to leave with Sim.
These things, of course, were not talked about. He couldn’t tell Sim how much he couldn’t stand that Bennie. Sim would say it was a sin, which Isaac knew, but sometimes you could hardly help it.
Sim chuckled to Isaac, saying now that was marriage, and didn’t that take the fairy story out of it? This was the real thing.
Isaac hoped fervently Bennie would get a licking from his dad, although he couldn’t see that happening.
“Bennie was sure making a mess,” Isaac said drily.
“They probably didn’t have any supper.”
Sim, too!
Everyone stuck up for that Bennie, Isaac told Sim, and was happy to see him nodding his head in agreement. “You have a point there.”