by Linda Byler
John knew, though, that he was a bit of a loser. He could never have Malinda, he had heard Samuel say. He needed to lower his sights. Emma would take him, but he thought he was much more handsome than some others, and Emma far below his status.
There was nothing wrong with Emma. A bit mousy, perhaps, but an all-around nice, quiet girl, one that would make him a really good wife. That was the snare you could get yourself into real fast, wanting only the best looking, the high steppers, the one everyone else wanted.
Like Lena.
John cringed. He knew he spent too much of each day sitting at his desk, watching her, although he consoled himself with the fact that it wasn’t merely her beauty, it was the expertise, the way she moved so efficiently from class to class, teaching all her subjects as if she had been doing it for years.
He was only fourteen, in eighth grade, and he figured it was nothing, an admiration, perhaps even a crush, but never serious.
Until Ivan told him he was planning to marry her someday. It was easily possible, he said. They were only a few years apart in age.
John listened to Ivan’s confident portrait of the future, watched the verbal brushstrokes paint a picture suffused with good luck, sprayed with a lacquer of conceit, and said nothing. Best to keep his mouth shut in the face of that steamroller.
And then he noticed small changes. Lena avoided Ivan as much as she could, and instead asked John to light the gas stove, hang up artwork.
As January progressed into February, Valentine’s Day hovered. Sure enough, his mother bought the teacher a box of chocolates—Russell-Stover from Walmart, packaged in a pink box with a red ribbon. Plus, three yards of fabric, mint green, from Rebecca Zook’s store, wrapped in white foil with pink hearts on it. The worst thing by far was the pink box of candy hearts on top, those fat little hearts that say stupid, lame things like “Cutie” or “My Crush” or “Be Mine.”
John agonized over the gift for two days, caught between being kind to his mother or presenting his teacher with that blatant overdose.
He asked kindly if she didn’t think that was too much.
“Why no, John. Of course not. We didn’t give her a gift for Christmas, remember? She didn’t want any. So sweet of her. Honest, John, I do believe she is an exceptional girl. I dropped a few hints to Samuel. I believe they’d make an awesome couple.”
John cringed.
Overweight mothers with thinning hair should never say “awesome.” It just didn’t fit. They shouldn’t say “totally,” either. Or the worst of all, Mam had taken to peppering her speech with the word “lame.” That was a “lame” bag of insecticide. The Dawn dish detergent that did not produce enough suds was also dubbed “lame.”
Mothers didn’t get it right, it seemed. They listened to teenage slang like that, tried to incorporate it into their own speech, and it came out way wrong, like a foul ball.
All those thoughts on speech did not make the box of chocolates go away. The present sat on the library table in the living room as big as a cow, and stayed there. John thought of telling his mother how the gift itself was awesome, but it would be totally lame to give it to Lena.
But of course, he scootered off to school with the present in the basket, thinking maybe a car would hit him lightly, just enough to scatter the chocolates, candy hearts, and mint green fabric all over the road. He could almost hear his mother’s gasp of disapproval at such thoughts.
He had slush all over his backside, the back of his coat peppered with clots of melting snow and water. The present, however, stayed perfectly dry.
He arrived early, hoping that meant fewer pupils would see him carry the present to the teacher’s desk.
“Why, John. You’re early. Good morning.” Lena was wearing a red dress, for Valentine’s Day.
“Good morning.”
He placed the present on her desk, returned her smile. Polite.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
He turned, shucked his coat and straw hat, ran a comb through his hair. A little bit of styling gel goes a long way, he thought, guiltily.
More pupils arrived. More presents.
At recess, one of the mothers brought pizza from Benny’s, in town, as a surprise for the children. Not just pizza, but Pepsi and Mountain Dew, potato chips, macaroni salad, cupcakes and jigglers. Plenty of everything.
John ate four slices of pepperoni pizza. He was actually contemplating a fifth, but ate another cupcake instead.
Lena had a tower of presents, her pretty face flushed, unable to thank everyone enough. More dress fabric, chocolate candy, tea towels and bath towels, washcloths, even a packet of kitchen sponges, a trio of wooden spoons, all items for her hope chest.
John thought of the mint green dress fabric.
She seemed to think that was the best gift, clearly delighted with the color and texture, her face beaming with pleasure.
Well, wasn’t that something then? Perhaps mothers knew a thing or two about Valentine’s Day.
By the time school was almost over, John had acquired another few inches in height, his shoe size exceeded a twelve, and he had put on another ten pounds. No amount of styling gel, cream, or spray would ever tame that volcanic thatch on top of his head that most people were fortunate enough to call hair, so he gave up, shampooed and conditioned with whatever the brothers were using at the time—Axe, or Dial, Dove, or Suave, sometimes Pantene. None of it made a difference.
He towered over his classmates and his teacher, his voice a low growl and his feet like rowboats. He was a fearsome ballplayer, of course, his sheer size enabling him to whack the ball far beyond the school’s boundaries.
On the day of the picnic, he received his diploma, a framed verse about the future and God and love, which he glanced at hastily, then stuck it back in the box, knowing the tears would form immediately.
With it was a handwritten card, thanking him for his kind heart.
He blinked, then ran out to play ball with the fathers. It was the biggest day of the year, the long awaited ball game between the children and parents.
Hats were thrown aside, black vests flung after them, sleeves rolled up, a few warm-ups by swinging the bat, the softball thrown to loosen the old pitching arm.
Sides were chosen and the cry was flung into the air: “Play ball!”
Lower graders and preschoolers held lollipops, balloons, candy pacifiers and bracelets, all prizes won by games, wheelbarrow races, sack races, everyone participating, everyone allowed a prize.
John was nervous and missed the ball, struck out amid loud moans of disappointment from his peers. He loosened up, driven by determination, then made home runs, hitting the ball as hard as any of the parents. He high-fived his team, his hair gone wild.
Elmer told his sons he believed the youngest son was the best ballplayer yet. Mam grinned, shaking her head.
They were on the back patio again, the first real warm day, with asparagus from the garden, new spring onions and radishes with homemade dinner rolls, fried chicken, and potluck potatoes.
The platters were heaped high, as usual, but it didn’t take long for them to empty. The amount of food that disappeared down these boys’ gullets was always a source of amazement for Mary.
The other boys didn’t take kindly to Dat’s comment about John’s ball-playing skills.
“The big ox?”
“Never saw a muscle on those arms yet. Where are they? Huh? Let’s see what you use to slug that baseball.”
Eye contact, a knowing glimmer of “let’s get him,” and John was hauled out of his chair, carried kicking and squirming down the steps and into the yard, his arms punched and squeezed amid howls of protest.
He gave them a good run for their money, anyway, clawing, punching his way partially out of their grasp.
“You’ll quit this in a few years,” he told Marcus and Samuel. “I’ll pick you up by your pants and throw you over the railing. Both of you at one time, too.”
Dat
tried to be gruff, authoritative, but there was a glint in his eye, and a wide grin plastered on his face.
They were out of control, these hefty sons. But he loved them all.
There was chocolate cake and canned peaches for dessert, the traditional everyday dessert of busy mothers everywhere.
Mam made a cake almost every day, unless there were whoopie pies or cookies on hand. Shoofly, cherry, raspberry, apple pie. Or the all-time favorite, pumpkin. The record pumpkin pie disappearance was four pies in one sitting. They praised Mam’s pumpkin-pie-making skills till her face was flushed with pleasure, and she baked six more the next day.
“Rhubarb pie. French rhubarb pie,” Mam called out, carrying the pies, heaped high with buttery crumb topping.
Tongues protruded, icks and yucks following. Mam laughed, winked at Dat.
“Didn’t you notice we didn’t eat cake?”
“Course we didn’t. We have more important things to talk about or notice than what our parents put on their plate,” said Abner.
“Oh well. We shall enjoy the fresh pie immensely. You may all help yourselves to a slice,” Mam said airily, lifting her chin, closing her eyes as she waved her fork like a baton.
Here was the last of the children passing from eighth grade to vocational class till his fifteenth birthday. What a blessing to be together, celebrating in good health and happiness.
After dessert, Mam said she’d appreciate mulch on the asparagus.
“Manure? Or mushroom mulch?”
“I would use mushroom. We put plenty of manure on in the fall.”
This, then, was the reward of being a mother to seven sons. There were always able bodies ready to help out with whatever task was at hand.
Clamoring, shoving, joking, three of them set off for the mushroom soil. Abner and John carried the dishes to the sink, while two more helped Dat with the hay, moving bales to make room for fresh alfalfa.
Mam wiped a tear of gratitude, watched John plunge his arms into sudsy dishwater.
“John, you can hardly reach down to the sink anymore.”
“I’m five foot eleven and three fourth.”
“No. Come on. Surely not.”
“No. Just kidding. I bet I will be six three or four, though.”
“Probably. Here. Let water run in this potato dish. It’ll have to soak for a while. I left them in too long.”
“They were good.”
“Oh, I know. Fattening as all get out.”
John laughed. Everything was fattening, according to his mother. She lamented the counting of calories every day, but didn’t care a whit, once she got hungry. She ate chips straight from the bag, even spread mayonnaise on a slice of bought white bread, piled it with potato chips, and ate it in three bites with a Diet Coke.
Another summer, with its accompanying heat and humidity, the air hanging moist and heavy, draining the good spirits from everyone living in the valley. The river ran sluggish, the color of black tea, river snakes and dragonflies darting between the rocks.
Leaves hung like exhausted rags, listless in the still air. Cows stood up to their bellies in brown ponds, flies swarming in thick black clouds.
A sick deer emerged from the woods in broad daylight, dragging its hindquarters, gaunt, near death.
Dat put it out of its misery, the boy’s faces sorrowful. The Game Commission was notified, men in green uniforms with serious faces. Tick paralysis. Hundreds of ticks feasting, engorged on the deer’s blood, infecting it with the Lyme bacteria.
Notes were taken and the deer hauled away. Mam panicked.
“I don’t know why none of us has ever been bitten. No one has ever pulled a tick off, have you?”
Noncommittal shrugs.
“Tonight I want everyone to examine yourselves. Carefully. This is no laughing matter. You know how your cousin Naomi is suffering. I just heard of another case like hers.”
She rambled on and on, the way she always did. John said that it was unnecessary to create that kind of drama. If you found a tick, you pulled it off, and went to see a doctor. As simple as that.
When the last week in August rolled around, John was dressed in a new shirt, his Sunday pants, and his comb in his pocket. He was on his way to vocational class at Benuel Zook’s. His wife, Annie, taught the fourteen-year-olds, one half day a week, a total of three hours. Each pupil kept a diary of their workweek, which would be turned in to the state of Pennsylvania, as proof of their education in vocational class.
It was a time of stepping out, these young boys and girls who would not officially be considered teenagers until they were sixteen years of age.
They learned arithmetic, spelling, and German, safety classes, and German hymn singing. The boys kept their diaries up to date and dreamed of which girl they would ask for a date.
CHAPTER 4
WITH COOLING AUTUMN WINDS, MAM FORGOT HER OBSESSION WITH ticks, too busy canning peaches and apples, grape juice and pears, the last of the tomatoes, neck pumpkins peeled and cut.
She worked from five a.m. to bedtime, bustling through the house, her white covering taking on a grayish hue. No time to wash coverings.
She counted over a thousand jars in the cellar. There were two hundred quarts each of peaches, pears, and applesauce, plus spaghetti and pizza sauce, salsa, hot pepper jelly, zucchini relish, fifty quarts of spiced red beets, and hundreds of quarts of dill, bread and butter, banana, and mustard pickles.
The rectangular stainless steel canner bubbled all summer long, or so it seemed to John. He was Mam’s helper, turning the handle on the Victorio strainer, turning eight bushels of apples into sauce.
He told Mam he was pretty sure they put a ton of tomatoes through that thing.
“No-o. You think?”
Mam pulled a funny face, her mouth puckered in the way that made John smile.
She was cleaning the kitchen, washing her huge kettles after peeling the neck pumpkin, cutting them in chunks, cooking them, then cold packing the orange mess, for pumpkin pies.
“You like pumpkin pie,” she ordered, “so peel, and stop complaining.”
Peeling pumpkin was a mean job. The skin was thick, stubborn. It took a steady hand and a strong arm to peel pumpkin, so that job fell to the boys, whoever was available at the moment.
Every one of them gave that pile of pumpkin a wide berth, thinking if they stayed away from the pile on the back patio, they would not be the one collared into peeling.
Inevitably, and usually on a Saturday, with a special breakfast of sausage gravy and biscuits, a mound of fluffy scrambled eggs with white American cheese melted through, grape juice and pancakes with blueberry topping, there was a steep price to pay. Peeling neck pumpkin.
Dat drank coffee with the last of his pancakes, a gleam in his eyes, a grin on his face.
“Frolic today. Enos Beiler’s building a dairy barn. Who wants to go? And who wants to help Mam?’
Abner, of course, the chief, said he had a dentist appointment in town. Down came the tilted chairs.
“No, you don’t. It’s Saturday. You’re fabricating a huge schnitza to get out of the pumpkins.”
“I do have a dentist appointment. Doctor Burns is in on Saturday from nine to twelve.”
“I bet.”
“You made that up when you saw the pumpkin.”
Samuel was going to Harrisburg to the sportsman’s show. So was Marcus. Amos was taking Daniel to check out a horse about ten miles away, which would take up most of the forenoon.
So of course, the job fell on Mam and John.
“Ach, vell, so gehts,” Mam said, wielding a kitchen knife like an axe, the heavy wooden cutting board taking the “chunk” of her strength.
John resigned himself to the miserable task, but not without telling his mother that he was a real-life Cinderella, except he was a guy.
“Just call me Cinders,” he breathed, pressing down on the paring knife, his tongue clenched between his teeth.
“Ach, I know. Poor baby.”
He went fishing, that afternoon, his mother’s gratitude ringing in his ears. He walked through acres of corn fodder, careful to avoid the rough, stumpy remains of the brown cornstalks. A light jacket kept him comfortable, his tackle bag slung across one shoulder, his fishing rod across the other.
He waded through a vacant field, wet and swampy, grasses up to his waist. Good thing he wore his Muck Boots.
Bulrushes were already going to seed, leaves falling everywhere. Brilliant colors of orange, yellow, and red were turning to a dull brown hue.
It all seemed a bit early, but then, there was always the chance of having a long, hard winter, the way his father described from his youth—being snowed in for days, dumping milk from the tank with the milk truck unable to get through.
He pushed his way through heavy grasses, brown milkweed pods, blackberry vines, multiflora roses, those parasitic, prickly growths every farmer fought.
He should put a blade on the Weed Eater, bring it down here to hack a path to the creek, but decided against it immediately. He knew cranky old Mr. Baldwin would never allow it. He barely had permission to catch a few fish.
Reaching the bank of Rock Creek, John was soon situated at his best spot. He had the roots of an old, peeling sycamore tree for a footrest and thick, wide grass for a comfortable seat. A deep, tea-colored hole was in front of him and the smell of new fallen leaves and skunk cabbage was like a rare cologne. He breathed deeply, closed his eyes, and smiled. Two chocolate whoopie pies and a ripe pear waited in his tackle bag, along with meadow tea and ice in his insulated water bottle. The late October sun warmed his shoulders and his mother’s thanks filled his heart. He found himself thinking about the two weddings approaching in November, which he’d been invited to as hosla, someone to care for the horses.
Before November the fourteenth, something had to be done about the nipping of Samuel’s hair cream. Not a confession, as he had no desire to be beaten up. He knew his limits, and confessing to Samuel was definitely crossing a line.