Because of their relative proximity to one another, the Stoltzfus and Fisher families had often assisted one another in the work around their respective farms. If the Fisher family’s barn needed repair, Joseph would repair it. If the Stolzfus family’s cows needed tending, David (Sarah’s father) would tend them. Additionally, because of Joseph’s work as Bishop, Annie would often prepare a large enough Sunday meal to accommodate Joseph, his wife, and sons.
This all worked together to bring Sarah into close proximity with Joshua on a regular basis. Because of the vast age gap between Joshua and his next youngest brother, and Sarah being much younger than her next youngest sibling, they would often play together after the Sunday meal. One day, when they were about twelve and thirteen, they promised each other that they would marry as soon as they had joined the church.
But Joshua was gone.
Sarah has been wrestling with the question of what to do about Joshua for several weeks now. She wants to join the church, and to stay with her family, but David has always taught each of his children to never break an oath, as it would be dishonoring to God. She never only left the community for a short time during her own rumspringa, trying on some of the popular clothing that the Englisher girls wear, and going to see a movie. When she returned, she had decided that staying with her parents would be much easier than attempting to learn a new way of life, and so began waiting for Joshua to return.
Sarah is caught up in her recollections of all of this, not realizing that there are no more green beans to break. Finally, her mother breaks into her reverie,
“Sarah!”
“Yes mother?” Sarah answers completely surprised.
“You have finished your bowl, have you not?”
“Oh! Yes’m, I have.”
“Look,” Annie says, “Why don’t you go for a walk this evening. Take some time to pray, and ask the Lord what he would have you to do. I know that you feel bound to honor your promise to Joshua, but he has broken his to you. Let the Lord judge.”
“Yes, mother,” Sarah says, getting up, and stepping off the porch. She walks toward the barn, and down to the fenced in area where the calves suckle at their mother’s teat. “What should I do, Lord?” she prays aloud. “Joshua is gone, and I do not know which way to turn. Please, Lord Jesus, show me some sign of what your will is in my life. Amen.”
Suddenly, the night air is ripped by the sound of a man’s screaming. Sarah is immediately given to action, as she runs immediately toward the sound of the scream. Her feet pound at the hard, dusty road leading toward Joseph Stolzfus’s farm. Finally, she can see the small, white-washed steeple of the community church breaking through the darkness, and she can hear the subtle moans of a man near the steps leading into the building.
As she quickly approaches the bloody mass of flesh and rags, she can see the man’s clean shaven face, ripped and bloody from an encounter with a particularly bloodthirsty attacker. She runs to the well that is situated in the center of the square before the church, and rapidly draws a pail of water to give the man. When she gets back to his side, she can feel the presence of a figure behind her, and she turns to see the rapidly limping form of Joseph Stolzfus approaching her.
“What is wrong with him, child?” he asks her.
“I’m not sure, Mr. Stolszfus. I was praying by the pen where our calves are resting, when I heard a scream. I came running, and I found him like this.”
“Well, Sarah,” says another voice. “It looks as if you will need to take care of him, and bring him back to health.” Sarah turns to see her father, standing just behind Joseph. “We will bring him home, and give him room. You will care for him until he is strong enough to leave our community.”
Chapter two
David and Joseph found a board and carried the bloody, lifeless form of the young man back to the Fisher farm. With the help of Sarah’s mother, the two older men set him up in the hay loft above the barn, where he would have the most privacy and seclusion from the family in the house. Sarah then walked to a spring to draw water for the man, praying as she went.
“Father,” she prays, aloud. “I don’t know why you have brought this man into our home, but I pray that you would work through me to heal him. I do not know what you will for this young man, but whatever it is, I pray that your will be done, in all things, amen.”
Reaching the bottom of the hill where the Fisher family’s spring is located; Sarah begins the arduous task of taking the water back to the barn. It takes her only a few brief moments to fill the two buckets with water, but the increased weight slows her journey back to her home. It is a full twenty minutes after she left the young man’s side before she is able to return to the barn. When she arrives, she ties two ropes to each of the bucket handles, and climbs to the loft, ropes in tow.
When she is safely in the loft, she carefully pulls the buckets up with the ropes, setting them carefully beside the young man. Sarah then fetches a rag from the house, and dips it in the water. After she has squeezed as much of the water out of the rag as she can, she uses the remaining dampness to wash the coagulated blood from the stranger’s face and arms. She has nearly finished removing the blood from his broken visage when he begins to stir.
“Ughhhhh,” he moans.
“It’s okay, you’re safe now,” Sarah coos at him, attempting to keep him laying down and not exerting himself. “You’re safe…”
“Water…” he croaks, sounding as if he has not had the vital liquid go down his throat in over a week. Sarah immediately takes a small tin cup from a nail on the wall, and fills it. When it is full to the brim, she gently holds it to his lips, and tips it into his mouth. He drains the cup, and she refills it once, twice, three times until he waves her off. “Thank you,” he says, not nearly as croakily as before.
“You’re welcome, stranger,” Sarah answers, smiling gently into his earnest face as he stares deeply into her electrifyingly blue eyes.
“My name is Matthew,” he says without breaking his stare.
“Well then, you’re welcome, Matthew,” she answers softly. “Tell me, how did you end up in such a mess?”
“Well, I was walking through your village, and something attacked me.”
“Something? Like what?”
“I don’t know. I would presume that it was a person, who clearly did not like my obviously English appearance.” This comment causes Sarah to consider Matthew’s appearance for the first time. He certainly did look the part of an Englisher, with his torn and tatty “Led Zeppelin” t-shirt, raggedy denim blue jeans, and tennis shoes. On his neck, he wore a thin golden chain, which was further decorated with a diamond encrusted cross. His flyaway brown hair and bangs lay gracefully across his brow, and obviously would be obscuring his eyes if he was only standing upright.
As it is, his bright, green eyes shine earnestly through the dim, evening light. His nose curls slightly upwards, and his thin mouth currently rests in a relaxed smile. “Sorry,” he says, breaking into Sarah’s reverie, “I don’t believe that I’ve gotten your name, yet.”
“Oh! I’m sorry, I am called Sarah. Sarah Fisher. My father is David, and my mother is Annie.”
“Is it only the three of you? I always thought that Amish folks had big families?”
“Yes, we do. I am the youngest of eleven, but all of my older siblings have married already.”
“Eleven!” Matthew exclaims, breaking into peals of laughter, “didn’t your parents know what causes child birth?”
“I’m sorry?” Sarah asks, not understanding the joke. “I don’t understand?”
“Didn’t your parents know what causes child birth? I mean, eleven kids! Wow!” Matthew says, still laughing raucously. “I mean, I don’t think I could ever be around that many kids at once!”
“I’m sure they do know, thank you,” Sarah snaps back at him, coldly. Matthew seems to hear the frigid tone that Sarah’s voice has taken, and immediately is in full retreat.
“Listen, I’m sorry…it was j
ust a joke, okay? I’m sorry…just a joke.”
“Oh, well then…even though it wasn’t very funny, it’s okay. I forgive you.”
“Thanks…listen, how did I get up here, anyway?” Matthew asks, looking over the edge of the hay loft to the dirt floor of the barn below.
“Father and Reverend Stolzfus carried you to our home on a board, and they placed you up here.”
“Oh…”
“Why do you ask?”
“Well, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this place doesn’t look like the town square. There’s no well, we aren’t outside, and I’m not alone,” he says grinning once more.
“Well, no, it doesn’t,” Sarah answers, smiling gently at him.
“So, how old are you?” Matthew asks, lying back onto the hay once more.
“I will be eighteen years old next week.”
“Ahhh, okay. So you are in your rumspringa?”
“Yes, but how did you know about that?”
“Well, I read a lot,” he says shiftily, carefully trying to evade the question.
“Oh, and you just happened to know the term, rumspringa?”
“Well, I once wrote a paper in High-School about the differences between the Amish and Mennonites.”
“Oh?” she asks, “Such as?”
“Well, first of all, there are a lot more types of Mennonites than Amish.”
“Oh really?”
“Yeah, many modern Mennonites do not dress any differently than the rest of the world, drive cars, and have electricity in their home. In the Amish community, there aren’t many who drive cars or have electricity in their homes. And there are few Mennonite groups that practice the rumspringa.”
“Ahh, okay,” Sarah answers. Just as she opens her mouth to continue their conversation, a voice interrupts her.
“Sarah? Perhaps it is time to come down for bed? I daresay that the young man needs his rest.”
“Yes, Mother,” Sarah responds to her mother. Turning back to Matthew, she says, “I’ll be back tomorrow morning, once my chores are completed.”
“I look forward to it,” Matthew answered, turning over. “Sarah?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you for helping me.”
“Of course,” she says, mounting the ladder to descend and go inside to her warm bed.
Chapter three
Over the course of the next few days, Sarah nursed Matthew back to health, and they continued to have conversations every evening in the hay loft above the barn. She carefully sewed patches into the tears on his jeans legs, and painstakingly closed the holes that had been torn into his t-shirt with close, tight, even stitches. When he was able, he began to do the best he could to assist her around the Fisher family farm. The attacker had left him in very rough shape, with a sprained left knee and right ankle, and dislocated Matthew’s right shoulder. This all, of course, is in addition to the numerous bruises and lacerations that scar his young face.
Matthew is only nineteen years old, but other than being from “far away,” not being Amish, and having attended high-school, Sarah knows very little about him. She enjoys their evening conversations, and by the time Matthew is fully healed from each of his injuries, she is no longer thinking of Joshua, the young man she had promised herself too all those years ago. As a matter of fact, she and Matthew are feeding the chickens on the morning of the eve of her eighteenth birthday, when Matthew inadvertently brings Joshua up in the course of their conversation.
“So, tomorrow is your birthday, right?” Matthew asks, gathering eggs from under then hens.
“Yes, it is,” Sarah answers him, spreading corn around on the ground of the chicken pen.
“Any idea of what you are planning to do?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you’ve got to decide if you are going to join the church or not, right?”
“Well, yes, now that you mention it.”
“So, do you know what you want to do?”
“Well, maybe,” she answers. “I know what I want to do, but I don’t know if it is possible, or if it is the will of God.”
“Well, what is it you want to do?”
“I made a promise once,” she says. “I want to keep my promise, but I don’t know if I’ll ever be able too.”
“Why not?”
“Because Joshua is gone. I promised him that I would marry him, one day. He is my oldest friend, but he left almost three years ago, and has never returned. Reverend Stolzfus’s wife died shortly after Joshua left, and he didn’t even come back for her funeral.”
“So…Joshua is Joseph’s son?”
“Yes.”
“And he left for his rumspringa and never came back?”
“Correct.”
“So you don’t think he is ever going to come back?”
“Right.”
“And you want to keep your promise to marry him?”
“Exactly.”
“Then why don’t you leave and find him?” he asks with the air of a man who has arrived at an obvious conclusion.
“Because I don’t want to leave my family! I love it here! I love the people, the simplicity, the work. I love God, and can’t think of turning my back on Him. I went to Louisville last year, and I dressed as an English girl. I went to a movie with a few other girls from our community, and I even tried beer. I hated it. I can’t help but think that if I left, life would be so complicated that I would run back here at my first opportunity. Why waste my time? Why would I leave, knowing that I am only going to come back? But at the same time, I believe I am bound to my promise.”
“I see what you are saying, Sarah,” Matthew says, thoughtfully. “What do your parents think about this?”
“Well, Mother thinks that I should stay here, if it’s what I want, and take another man as a husband. She thinks that Joshua broke his promise to me, and that because of this, I am not bound to my promise to him.”
“But you do not agree?”
“No. I think that God didn’t break his promise to the Hebrews, even though they turned their backs on him. If I am going to be like him, then I can’t break my promise, right?”
“I see what you mean…” Matthew says, thoughtfully.
“What do you think?”
“I think that you are torn,” Matthew says, “between two things that you really want. You want to keep your word, but can’t because you don’t want to leave. You want to stay where you grew up, and the life that you love, but you feel the need to leave because you don’t want to break your promise.”
“Exactly. What is your point?”
“You have got to decide what you are going to do. Which do you want more? Do you love this lifestyle or Joshua more? Do you value the safety and security of your life here more than your word? And most importantly, you need to remember one thing.”
“What’s that?” Sarah asks.
“Can you keep your promise if he doesn’t keep his?”
“What d0 you mean?”
“Well, if Joshua does not keep his promise to marry you, then will you be able to marry him?”
“No, I guess not…”
“And did you promise him that you would not marry any other man, should he break his promise?”
This causes Sarah to pause, and think over what Matthew is suggesting. Has he provided her with a way to have what she desires so ardently? A way to remain in her community, with her family, without being bound to keep her promise to Joshua? Can it be that this English man, an outsider who just recently appeared in the area, has shown her a path that she never thought possible?
“No, I didn’t make that promise…”
“Well then, problem solved. If you didn’t promise him that you would wait for him if he didn’t return, then join the church, if that’s what you want. If you didn’t promise him that you wouldn’t continue on with your life if he chose to leave it forever, then go on with your life. I am sure there are young men in your community who would love to marry a wom
an such as yourself, who are dutiful, nurturing, caring, compassionate, and a hard worker.”
“What makes you say all that, Matthew?” Sarah asks, blushing.
“Well, let’s see…you and your family brought me here after you found me, so that is compassionate and caring. You have brought me back to health, so that is nurturing.”
“I only did those things because they were the right thing to do!” she protests, ever humble.
“Which makes you dutiful,” Matthew says, now grinning.
“Come on now, anyone would have done that, Matthew,” she says, trying not to laugh as well.
“But you did, so that means that you are those things.”
“Okay then,” she says, finally breaking into a small grin, “and how exactly am I a hard worker?”
“Seriously, Sarah? Have you noticed how much you do around this farm every day?”
Chapter four
Sarah had never given serious thought to how much she does around the farm each day. Sure, each day begins with rising for an hour of prayer and Bible study, followed by feeding the chickens and gathering the eggs. After breakfast, she assists her mother each day in many of the tasks that Amish woman partake in, such as sewing, shopping, cleaning, washing, and tending the garden. Annie also sells baked goods to bring extra income into the home, helping David to provide for their basic needs. Each of these things are tasks that she has taught Sarah over the years, preparing her youngest daughter to soon become a wife and mother herself.
But it was not until Matthew suggested that Sarah does quite a lot around the Fisher property that she ever considered it. Each task that Sarah has performed through the years was necessary to the continued survival and prosperity of the family. Performing these tasks was nothing more than her way of “pulling her own weight.” Now that she has realized her importance in the Fisher household, she feels somewhat proud of her work ethic, which has been instilled in her over the last eighteen years.
The Time Turner Page 4