The Witnesses

by Linda Byler

  Sarah went to spend the evening with Anna and was surprised to find her scrubbing the front porch. She was using a broom and a hose with a nozzle attached to it, taking on her task with a renewed vigor. The three children were soaking wet, and Marianne’s dress clung to her chubby form. Their hair was plastered against their skulls, and water dripped in rivulets down their faces as they ran and splashed across the wet floor of the porch.

  Sarah helped Lee unhitch and waited while he checked on the cows. Then she watched as he fed his horse, closed the door of the cabinet where he kept the harnesses, and turned to accompany her to the house.

  “My goodness, Anna. What ambition!” Sarah greeted her soon-to-be sister-in-law.

  “I was hoping Lee would bring you!” Anna shouted, her face beaming from the confines of her dichly, which was tied behind her ears so securely it seemed to pull her eyebrows outward.

  Sarah thought of Aunt Jemima on the box of pancake mix. Dear, dear Anna.

  Anna shut off the water, coiled the hose on its rack, and swished the broom across the remaining bit of floor. The three children were ushered into the bathroom for soapy baths and their pajamas, before returning to the kitchen.

  Lee sprawled on the recliner, picked up Lancaster Farming, and was soon engrossed in an article. Anna and Sarah poured tea and cut cheese in neat slices. They put crackers, a plate of Rice Krispy Treats, and a container of chocolate ice cream on a tray to carry to the porch.

  “I didn’t bake. I hardly have anything in the house to eat. Sorry. Now tell me all about the wedding. Please do.”

  Leaning in, Anna began eating the cheese. She shook her head, clucked, sighed, and clapped her hand on her breast, as Sarah described the service and meal afterwards.

  Finally, Anna sat back and rolled her eyes toward the sky. She clasped her hands across her ample stomach.

  “But, you know, Sarah. I don’t mean this in a bad way. Lydia’s doing pretty good, marrying Melvin. But seriously, he just—you know—turns me off with his crazy ways. Nothing is calm and restful with him. To be honest, my eyebrows go straight up—and so does my blood pressure—the minute I see him. It’s like, whoa!” Anna spread her arms, her feet thumping the floor.

  Sarah jumped, then burst out laughing, Anna joining in with her.

  “So now, you’re feeling better, aren’t you?”

  “I’m getting there. Every day is a challenge, but every day I can rise to it better.”

  Sarah nodded, understanding. A silence enveloped them in its calm, providing a sense of rest, allowing them both space to contemplate the past and the future.

  Finally, Anna spoke, her blue eyes twinkling with humor.

  “Just do me a favor, Sarah. Don’t let Melvin within a mile of my house for at least a month.”

  Despite the twinkle, Anna was so sincere, so genuine in her desire for avoidance that Sarah promised solemnly. She tried not to laugh, but it burst through despite her attempts. She and Anna both exploded into whoops and hollers that brought Lee to the door. Anna was wiping her eyes, her face in a grimace that was almost painful to watch, as they gasped for breath, and Sarah emitted a few more ungraceful guffaws.

  Lee sat down and watched, laughing just to hear them, chuckling again as Sarah tried to stop.

  “Sorry, Lee,” Sarah said, placing a hand on his knee.

  “It’s okay, my love.”

  Anna’s eyebrows shot up, her eyes widened.

  “My love? Isn’t that a bit much?”

  Lee and Sarah shrugged their shoulders, and the three all smiled at each other. As the evening flowed along, they enjoyed the time together. And each was inspired to help the others along the way as they realized the time was swiftly approaching when they would co-exist on this farm.

  This home place, Sarah thought. That is truly what it is. My place to call home for the rest of my life with my handsome, kind, and loving Lee.

  On the Beiler farm, Mam was trying to grow the celery for the wedding. She was a great traditionalist and remembered her own mother carefully tending to the long rows in her garden, fertilizing, watering, and finally bleaching it—covering everything but the tops with heavy layers of newspaper.

  Mam fretted and stewed, worried and watered the stuff. Meanwhile, the heads of cabbage grew enormous, as that robust vegetable required very little care. The carrots were every bit as easy to grow as the cabbage. The tops were thick and heavy, the oblong orange roots below truly huge. They were amazing, for ordinary carrots.

  Dat wanted to raise chickens for the wedding, but Mam said, no, they weren’t going to put their roasht leit (people who make chicken filling) through that. Too many folks were unaccustomed to the fine art of beheading a chicken. Even if the men braved that gruesome act, the women would still need to scald and pluck them, not to mention remove that nauseating coil of, well, chicken guts. If Mam wasn’t willing to do it herself, she was not going to make others do it on their behalf.

  Dat said too many of these old traditions were being lost. Lots of young couples were no longer able to do their own butchering or smoking of meats. They no longer made cheese or churned butter. All of the old ways were being left behind, and Dat thought it was shaut (a shame).

  “We still have so much, though,” Mam said. “We want to be glad for what we do have. All in all, Sarah won’t look much different than I did the day I became your bride, Davey.”

  Dat nodded.

  “Yes, and I have to remember that we men use air-powered tools, milking machines, and generators to run electrical tools. You know, the list goes on and on. Times change, and so do we, very slowly. Change does come.”

  It was the end of a late summer day. There was still a bit more than two months before the wedding, and tension was building. They had to finish a thorough housecleaning and paint the shop, among many other things.

  But for this evening, the time went by slowly. The air was mellow, their moods matching the quiet, peaceful time.

  Levi was cracking peanuts, one by one. Suzie grabbed the shelled ones before his heavy fingers could retrieve them. Frustrated, he yelled at her, then drew his heavy arm back and fired a peanut against the side of her head. Suzie giggled and made a face at him.

  A rooster crowed somewhere off in the distance. The caw of a crow answered the poorly-timed noise from the rooster.

  The train zoomed through Gordonville, sending a rumbling across the fields as it always did. A dog barked. A siren sounded, far away.

  “We won’t be doing this too much longer, will we?” Mam asked.

  “Listen!”

  Dat held up a finger. Everyone snapped to attention, their ears fine-tuned to the sounds of wailing from the fire sirens. They faded off into the distance.

  “You think we’ll ever get over those sounds completely?” Sarah asked.

  “Oh, I think so. This will all be a distant memory someday. Our children will talk about it to their children, until it’s only a passing thought. The nights of terror, the fear, the rebuilding will all become lukewarm memories, then hardly worth mentioning, then forgotten. And that’s as it should be. Why would you want to remember? What good could come of it? It’d certainly be of no help where forgiveness is concerned,” Dat answered, his voice soft, relaxed.

  Continuing, he told them that some things in life are best forgotten—the evil of fellowmen, the sins of others, the misdeeds of anyone around them, English or Amish, Mennonite or whatever. “But we will always remember the good, won’t we?” he said.

  His eyes were soft and liquid, bluish green and flecked with gold, like Sarah’s. She could have watched the changing colors all evening, when Dat spent precious time with his family.

  Levi threw another peanut at Suzie and said he would never be able to forget Suzie stealing his peanuts.

  “I work hard to crack these, and she gets them all. It’s just horrible.”

  Levi began to cry, and Suzie cast a guilty look in Dat’s direction. She was sent to bed immediately with a stern reprimand.
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  Priscilla watched her younger sister go, her face soft with empathy. Discipline was a way of life in every Amish household. It was to be respected, especially when Dat doled it out.

  Levi sniffed, then bent to his peanut cracking, his glasses wet with tears. Laboriously, he took them off, grasped his shirt tail firmly, and began wiping the heavy lenses methodically. Then he replaced them, sniffed, and went back to his chore.

  A figure walked up to the house in the semidarkness. He was unseen until he was almost at the porch.

  Dat’s head turned swiftly, clearly shaken.

  “Omar!”

  Relieved, Mam sat back in her chair. Sarah breathed out.

  “Hey, Omar!”

  “Hi, everyone. Priscilla, want to come for a walk?”

  “Sure. I’m barefoot, not cleaned up at all.”

  “That’s okay. Just come on.”

  Priscilla rose, rushed off the porch, and together they walked down the drive, their faces turned toward each other, talking.

  “I never saw anyone who can talk endlessly the way those two can,” Mam observed.

  “I look forward to the time when we all stop snapping to attention every time someone shows up unexpectedly,” Sarah said.

  Dat laughed.

  “Whether we admit it or not, we’re still extremely jumpy. Even with the arsonist in jail, it’ll be like this for a while.”

  “Has anyone heard what’s going on?”

  “It can take months. Even up to a year or two.”

  Mam nodded and wondered if any of the Amish would show up at the hearing.

  “Probably,” Dat answered.

  “Who would?” Sarah asked.

  “There are always the few disobedient among us,” Dat said.

  Mam drew her breath in sharply.

  “There! Something is out in the rows of celery. It’s not a cat. I think it’s a rabbit. No wonder my celery isn’t doing well.”

  Grabbing the stiff straw broom, Mam hopped off the porch, moving fast and waving the broom.

  Dat yelled the same time that Sarah screamed.

  “Mam! No!”

  It was a skunk, and a very defensive one. He turned his backside, lifted his tail, and sprayed the garden, Mam’s broom, the celery, and everything else within a ten-foot radius.

  Levi roared with glee as Mam pivoted and made a stumbling dash for the porch. The evening came to an abrupt halt as they all scrambled to be the first one in the door, laughing and gasping, Levi shouting that he’d seen a skunk, a real one.

  Mam took a shower and used her best talcum powder, but Dat said she smelled mildly of skunk all night. He shook with laughter at her indignation. Suzie said that’s what they deserved, getting sprayed by a skunk, because they made her go to bed early.

  Levi said he had spilled all the shelled peanuts. But the next morning, there was not a single one left on the front porch. He bet that skunk was up on the porch during the night, eating them.

  Since the celery now smelled like skunk, Mam finally admitted defeat, much to Sarah’s relief. They bought crates of celery the day before the wedding.

  CHAPTER 19

  MEMBERS OF THE SCHOOL BOARD HAD VOICED their disappointment that Sarah would not teach again. Jonas King, however, had a genuine twinkle in his brown eyes, so Sarah figured he must have gotten wind of her upcoming marriage aus grufa (being published).

  It was good to know her efforts had been appreciated by the school board. It was rewarding to understand the ways she had made a difference, for girls like Rosanna and for Joe, all the sullen eighth graders who had become her friends.

  Suzie had gone back to school the last week in August, and Priscilla worked several days a week in the bakery at the farmer’s market as Sarah had done. Mam and Sarah worked side by side through the busy fall days in anticipation of the approaching wedding season.

  The organized, relaxed atmosphere in the quiet house allowed Dat a deep and peaceful nap after dinner. His glasses slid down his nose, and Die Botshaft (a weekly Amish newspaper) lay open across his stomach. With his head lolling to one side, he started softly snoring, enjoying a genuine, restorative power nap.

  Mam yawned and yawned after dinner, but she always said she had to keep going. They were “making wedding.”

  Sarah read a few lines of a book and dropped off to a deep, restful snooze. She woke with renewed energy and started in again.

  Today, it was pears. Four bushels of the odd-shaped, green fruit were purchased from the fruit peddler at a whopping sum of fifty dollars a bushel. But Mam refused to do without her beer (pears). You could not buy the taste of home-canned pears, and that was all there was to it, she said.

  Dat nodded vigorously as he wrote the check for the peddler. Yes, indeed. There was no better dessert than a heavy chunk of chocolate cake with rich caramel frosting and home-canned pear juice ladled over it, two succulent halves of pear beside it. Nothing better, not even vanilla cornstarch pudding.

  It was the first real disagreement Sarah had with Mam. Pears and peaches were traditionally served at every wedding dinner. The golden yellow peach halves were mixed with the pale pears, and the juices combined. It was wholesome, delicious, and should be served, Mam insisted.

  Sarah cringed at the thought of that common, everyday fruit being dumped into Melmac serving dishes and set on the wedding tables. Nowadays, many of her friends did not have fruit. They only served pies, or jello or tapioca dessert, and cookies and doughnuts at their weddings. If they didn’t serve fruit, why should she?

  Mam was firm, unmoving. She’d never heard of a wedding without home-canned fruit. Sarah told her it would be different if they didn’t have to be served in those koch-shissla (serving dishes). Why, she, her own mother, would never serve fruit to company in plain old serving dishes like that.

  Mam’s lips tightened, her eyes narrowed. She said in rigid, clipped sentences that what had been good enough for her was good enough for her daughter. Sarah could either accept it or make it hard for everyone, and then they’d all be miserable just because of fruit.

  Grimly, they sorted the pears, discord hanging between them like Plexiglas.

  Pears were different than peaches. Peaches were spread on newspapers on the kesslehaus floor. Each day they were squeezed gently. The soft ones were chosen, put in large stainless steel bowls, and peeled. They never ripened all at once.

  Aunt Lydia King had taught Mam, only a few years before, to leave pears in their bushel baskets and cover the tops and sides with heavy comforters or sleeping bags. Then they would check them each day, and eventually, they’d all ripen at once.

  Today, they had all turned yellow, soft to the touch, every one of them, except a few tiny ones that had been picked off the tree way too soon.

  They filled their bowls and washed the pears. Then they spread clean towels on their laps to absorb the juice that never failed to drip off their elbows. They took up their paring knives, cut the pears in half, expertly gouged out the centers, and began to peel. The heavy outer skin came away easily. Sarah popped the first peeled pear into her mouth, her senses infused with the perfect, autumnal taste of ripened fruit.

  One by one, the pear halves made soft thudding sounds as they hit the bowls, and nothing was said. Sarah coughed. It was forced and unnecessary, but at least it was something. She ate another pear half and glanced sideways at Mam, whose stony features remained unchanged.

  Levi shuffled out to the kitchen, helped himself to a pear from Sarah’s bowl. He sat down heavily in the chair beside Mam, took a large bite of the fruit, chewed, swallowed, and looked at Mam.

  “Vell, Malinda.”

  Mam raised her eyebrows.

  “Why aren’t you talking?” Levi inquired.

  “Oh, we’re relaxed, busy with the pears.”

  He looked into Sarah’s face, his small brown eyes cunning, sharp.

  “Bisht base (Are you angry)?”

  Sarah shook her head.

  “Bisht an poosa (Are you pouting
)?”

  “Stop it, Levi.”

  Levi grinned cheekily, turned to Mam, and said Sarah was both angry and pouting.

  Eventually, Sarah told Mam it was alright to have peaches and pears if they put them in glass serving dishes. Mam thought that was completely unnecessary, but she did not want to be too set in her ways, so they reached a compromise. Pears and peaches would be served in glass “company” bowls.

  As they worked, Levi was allowed to spear the pear halves with a fork and place them—every single one of them—in the wide-mouthed jars.

  Mam scooped a half cup of sugar over the pear halves, then added water. She wiped the rim of each jar, placed a lid on top, added a ring, and tightened it. After she had filled fourteen jars, she set them in the heavy, water-filled canner, turned on the burner, and sat down to continue peeling pears.

  The pears would cook for fifteen minutes before they were preserved, or cold-packed. Then each jar was wiped clean with soapy water. They would be taken down and set on the shelves in the basement.

  They did 102 quarts that day. Levi speared every pear half, and Mam praised him with warm words of affection. He had done well.

  Levi said he knew what Davey and Malinda should do with their boy since he had worked so hard. They should take him to the Tastee Freez in Smoketown for a large swirled cone, the kind that had chocolate on one side and vanilla on the other.

  Mam said she’d ask Dat, but Sarah watched her mother’s shoulders droop with weariness and knew she needed a good long rest, not to have to get dressed up. Mam would never go away without a halsduch (cape).

  So Dat took Levi and Suzie down to the Tastee Freez with Fred hitched to the buggy. Mam and Sarah stayed behind to clean the kitchen, wash the supper dishes, and sweep the porch.

  Mam surveyed the rows of sparkling clean pears, the jars shining, ready to be taken down to the cellar in the morning. She sat, rocking slowly, eyeing the day’s work. She knew it had been a day well spent.

  Oh, it was a restful thing, going about her work, knowing the family would no longer have to live in fear now that the barn fires were a thing of the past. She thought of the troubled youth, Michael, and her lips began to move as she prayed for the teenager, who was so obviously misled. He had made bad choices, perhaps, but still.