The Lesson

by Suzanne Woods Fisher

  Oh. Oh.

  Fern! So overinvolved.

  Amos had hired some hardworking hands on his farm, but he had never seen anyone work as diligently as Chris Yoder. It was as if Chris had something to prove—though Amos didn’t get the feeling that he was showing off. It was more like the boy had something to prove to himself.

  The boy? Really, Chris Yoder was a young man. Amos reviewed what he had come to learn about Chris Yoder: he had a tremendous work ethic, even for an Amish man. He had a kind touch with animals, which Amos admired. Chris hurried off at quitting time, as if he was expected somewhere else. Or maybe someone was expecting him.

  That was about all Amos could gather about Chris Yoder. He was as closemouthed as they came, responding to Amos’s questions in one- or two-syllable answers. He wouldn’t join the family for dinner. Instead, he spent his lunch hour sweeping out the barn or binding hay.

  Fern had been too preoccupied with M.K. this week to think twice about Chris, though she did ask about him once. “Who in the world is this hired hand and why doesn’t he come to the house and introduce himself, be sociable?” Amos answered by saying he was just the quiet type. That satisfied Fern for now, but he knew that when she did get him in her sights, Chris would sing like a canary, without even realizing he had been questioned by a skilled practitioner. Until then, Amos could wait.

  There was something about Chris Yoder that appealed to Amos. He was carrying some kind of a burden, and he was too young or too proud to realize that all he needed to do was to ask for help.

  Chris knew that Jenny didn’t like going home to an empty house, so he worked through his lunch hour to finish up the day’s work. He needed to earn a full day’s wage, but he didn’t want her to have to be home alone very long. As he walked down the lane from Windmill Farm, he braced himself for a litany of complaints about school: the feebleminded teacher, the tragic shortage of girls in her class, the annoying boys. The fact was, Jenny had always been an intense child. She was all or nothing. She loved you or hated you; there was never any middle ground. He actually felt a little sorry for this new teacher—to be inflicted with Jenny’s displeasure.

  On the upside for the week, things were working out well with Amos Lapp. Chris had been patching jobs together whenever he could find work on the bulletin board at the hardware store, but he preferred working at one place for a while. Plus, Windmill Farm wasn’t too far from his grandfather’s house.

  Amos paid Chris with cash at the end of each day. He said he didn’t like being indebted, but Chris had a hunch that Amos wasn’t quite sure if he should expect him again in the morning. He knew Amos was holding himself back from asking questions—he could just sense it. But he didn’t ask anything, and for that, among other things, Chris was grateful. Amos Lapp had eyes so kind that they made you look twice just to be certain the kindness in them was real. It sure seemed to be.

  It wasn’t the meanness in people that surprised him. It was the good in them that he found so unexpected. Would he ever get over that?

  Chris did a good day’s labor for Amos. He hoped it would continue to work out. Not having to wait for cash until the end of the month meant that he could start buying supplies to fix up his grandfather’s old house. Twice now, he and Jenny had driven into town to pick up drywall and tape. He was going to start by repairing the hole in the kitchen wall.

  Chris climbed over the fence—the same spot where that cute girl had knocked him over yesterday and sent him flying into the ditch. He looked around for that red scooter, just in case she happened along. Not that he was interested. He wasn’t. He had no notion to settle down—not for a very long, long time. He had too much on his plate, too many plans. But there was something about that girl that he couldn’t quite get out of his mind. He got a kick out of how flustered she was. And then she was so exasperated with him! As if it was his fault that he was crossing the road like a normal person.

  He wiped the back of his neck with his handkerchief. It was humid today. A wisp of a memory tugged at him as he walked down the hill. It had been a warm spring day, one of the first for the year. Chris was seven, and Jenny was an infant. She cried a lot as a baby, especially in the evening. Colic, he remembered a neighbor lady saying when she dropped off a meal to celebrate the new baby. The lady recommended goat’s milk. “My son had it too,” he remembered her saying as she stayed to rock Jenny to sleep.

  It wasn’t just colic. His mother had used drugs during Jenny’s pregnancy. She and Jenny were both suffering from symptoms of withdrawal—edgy and hypersensitive. His mother had little patience for Jenny’s ear-piercing cries.

  Later that evening, his mother had become so agitated with Jenny’s wails that she threw a frying pan against the wall and it made a gash in the drywall. And then she grabbed her purse and stomped out of the house. She didn’t return for hours. Chris didn’t know where his grandfather had gone to that evening—probably a gathering of old veterans at the local Grange Hall. He just remembered sitting by the front room window, holding Jenny, afraid to set her down because she might start hollering, watching for his mother to come home. When she did come home, she was high. Even at the age of seven, he knew the signs: slurry talk, bloodshot eyes, clumsy movement.

  He remembered how furious his grandfather had been when he saw the condition his mother was in and realized Chris had been left in charge of an infant. He had only allowed his daughter to move back home with two children if she promised to stop using drugs. They had a roof-raising argument that night. His grandfather said he would never fix the hole in the wall—he would leave it there to remind her of what she was turning into. He threatened to turn in his daughter to the authorities. “And don’t think you’re going to saddle me with them two kids!” his grandfather had hollered. “The cops are going to take ’em and plunk ’em into foster care!” At that point Chris ran to his room and pulled the pillow over his head so he couldn’t hear any more.

  Chris shuddered involuntarily. He hadn’t thought about that night in years. It was strange how memories intruded into a person’s mind, uninvited and unwanted.

  That was going to be the first thing Chris fixed. That hole.

  M.K. found Erma Yutzy out in the vegetable garden, picking the last of the summer beans. Feathery white hair stuck out in tufts around her head, except for that inch-wide strip of bare scalp along the crown of her head like so many other Amish old ladies—a result of years and years of hair pulled and pinned tightly into a bun. She was tiny and frail looking. A good stout wind could carry her off.

  M.K. had never paid much attention to Erma Yutzy. She knew her as one of the many elderly ladies in her church, but she had never bothered to stop to talk to her or consider her, other than being careful not to trip her or bump into her at a gathering. She was afraid of old people. They reminded M.K. of a dried-up leaf that would snap in two and crumble if you accidentally bumped into them. Snap. Crumble. Collapse.

  “I JUST WANTED TO STOP BY AND SAY HELLO,” M.K. called out, loud and clear, as Erma shielded her eyes from the sun when she noticed someone in her garden. “FERN DROPPED ME OFF.”

  “I’m always delighted to have visitors,” Erma said in her thin, wrinkly voice. “Nice to have a reason to stop working.” Her face beamed. That was the only word for it. She positively beamed.

  M.K. took the basket of beans from her and followed her into the house. Slowly, oh so slowly. It was difficult for M.K. to walk at such a snail-like pace. She never did anything slowly. But imagine—this woman was one hundred years old! M.K. was astounded. Erma had a pair of amazing eyes, brighter than your average blue eyes—maybe a little on the watery side—with a slight tint of something close to turquoise, the color M.K. imagined waters near Fiji to be, although she had never actually seen an ocean. Or maybe the hazy sky right before twilight in the desert of the Sahara, though she’d never seen a desert either.

  Erma filled two glasses with lemonade. She added a little twist of mint and handed the glass to M.K.

 
; “Thank you,” M.K. said. “THANK YOU,” she repeated, enunciating the words.

  “You’re welcome,” Erma said as she settled into a chair. “Now, tell me why you feel the need to shout at me.”

  M.K. practically choked on her sip of lemonade. “Aren’t you nearly deaf?”

  “No. I thought maybe you were.”

  “Well, no. I just thought . . . I mean . . . you’re one hundred years old. Uncle Hank roars at us and he’s only half as old as you.”

  Erma smiled. “I’ve known Hank Lapp for years. He only has three settings on his voicebox. Loud, louder, and loudest.” She started to giggle like a schoolgirl, her little shoulders shaking with delight.

  Erma Yutzy was not what M.K. had expected. She leaned forward in her chair, intrigued. As the afternoon wore on, M.K. learned all kinds of interesting things about this woman.

  When Fern said Erma had been a teacher, M.K. immediately assumed that she would be an old version of Alice Smucker. Erma Yutzy had three things in common with Alice Smucker: they were both maiden ladies and career teachers and they lived alone. Alice lived in a little cottage on her father’s goat farm, not by choice. When her father remarried, Alice and her stepmother kept having disagreements about how to organize the kitchen. After Alice had reorganized the kitchen cabinets for the third time—to the way her belated mother had kept them—her stepmother gently suggested Alice might be happier in the little cottage, with a kitchen of her own.

  Erma lived alone, by choice. She said she liked her peace and quiet. She had plenty of nearby relatives who kept an eye on her and her home.

  But that was where the commonalities of Alice and Erma ended. Erma was winsome in every way and she was nearly one hundred with no plans of dying. Unlike Alice, who had her funeral planned—just in case—at the ripe old age of thirty.

  The sound of horse hooves on the driveway caught their attention. Fern had arrived in her buggy. M.K. was shocked to discover that two hours had flown by. They were just scratching the surface! There was so much M.K. wanted to know about her—what was life like for her as a little girl? What changes had she seen in her lifetime?

  Erma covered M.K.’s hand with hers. “Mary Kate, I was born into a world of horse-drawn carts on dirty paths, gas streetlights, when you could mail a letter for pennies and a box of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes only cost eight cents. Now, I live in an age where there are eight-lane highways and men on the moon and strange little computers that fit in people’s pockets.”

  “Most people call those cell phones.”

  Erma squeezed her hand. It didn’t matter what they were called. She was trying to make a point. “Mary Kate, do you know what keeps me alive?”

  M.K. leaned forward in her chair. “What?” She wanted to know.

  “I want to see what happens next.”

  It was suppertime and Amos wasn’t sure where Fern or M.K. had gone to. It looked like he was on his own for supper, though he smelled a pot of chili simmering on the stove top and noticed a pan of fresh-baked corn bread. He spooned chili into a bowl and eyed that corn bread again. As long as he was fending for himself, maybe a little bit of butter on that corn bread would be in order. Honey, too.

  Just as he was lathering a chunk of corn bread with a thick layer of butter, the kitchen door blew open and in walked Hank carrying a cardboard box, Doozy at his heels.

  “AMOS! WE’VE GOT TROUBLE!” Hank set the box on the kitchen floor. In it were four yellow puppies, squirming and wiggling and trying to get out.

  “Where in the world did those come from?” Amos asked, swallowing a bite of buttered corn bread as he noticed Fern’s buggy coming up the driveway.

  “Edith Fisher sent them over with Jimmy. She included this note.” Hank pulled his glasses out of his pocket and unfolded the crinkled paper. “‘I have given you plenty of notice to find homes for these puppies and yet you continue to ignore me. So I am ignoring you. Until you find homes for these puppies, you are not welcome for Sunday dinners.’” He stuffed the paper back into his pocket. “She is spurning me!” He shook his head solemnly. “Doozy had a moment of reckless abandon, and look at the dire consequences.”

  Doozy thumped his tail, pleased at his prowess, and Amos set down the bowl of chili. His appetite had just considerably diminished. “Well, I suppose that these things happen.”

  “What are we going to do with them?” Hank blurted out.

  Amos, who was in the middle of putting the butter back into the refrigerator, stopped what he was doing. “We?” he asked. Out the kitchen sink window, he saw the buggy come to a stop by the barn and Fern and M.K. climb out to unhook Cayenne’s traces from the buggy shafts. “I always thought of Doozy as your dog.”

  “He spends most of his time following M.K. around! Why, he’s devoted to her.”

  “I’m not sure about that. He only follows M.K. around when you’ve gone off to visit Edith.”

  “He’s not wanted at Edith’s farm. She turns up her nose at him, you see. Particularly after this moment of indiscretion with her favorite poodle. Edith complains about Doozy an awful lot, mostly about his scent, which I just can’t understand. After all, he is a dog. Dogs should smell like dogs.” He crouched down to pat Doozy’s head. “She refuses to see beyond a few little flaws.”

  “Think that she’ll change her mind about the two of you?” Amos asked. “After all, you’ve been courting her for seven years now.”

  Hank sighed, looking wistfully at the ceiling. “I don’t think there’s much of a chance there. She says Doozy has to go. Said she can’t deal with the both of us.”

  Amos nodded. Hank would be task enough for any woman. Adding Doozy into the equation would put anyone over the edge.

  “Maybe you could compromise,” Amos said. “Leave Doozy with us.”

  Hank shook his head. “No deal.” A puppy was nearly escaping out of the box so he reached down and tenderly held it against his chest. “They sure are cute little buggers. It’d be a shame not to keep ’em.”

  Amos rinsed out his bowl of chili in the sink and put it back in the cupboard, dripping wet. He tried to imagine what it would be like to have five dogs in one house, especially in Hank’s small apartment above his buggy shop. “Well, I don’t know what to say.”

  The hinge on the kitchen door squeaked as Fern came in. She looked at Hank, at Amos, at Doozy, at the box of squirming puppies, and shook her head in exasperation. “I know exactly what to say. Find homes for your dog’s puppies, Hank Lapp.”

  Hank looked at her, wounded. “We were just discussing the possibility of keeping them.”

  “Absolutely not.” She brushed past him and went into the kitchen to wash her hands at the sink. As she dried her hands on the rag, she noticed the missing piece of corn bread in the pan and eyed Amos, who was trying to skooch the remainder of the buttered corn bread behind his back on the counter. She saw. But before she could start scolding him for not waiting for supper, Hank snagged her attention.

  “It is clear to me, Fern Lapp,” Hank groused, “that you know nothing about the world of dogs.”

  “I know plenty about dogs. And even more about men.” She took bowls out of the cupboard and frowned when she spotted the water drops in the top bowl. She pulled flatware from the utensil drawer and started to set the table, working around the box of puppies. They were curled into a pile in the corner of the box, sound asleep. “Both need very clear directions and expectations.” She resumed setting the table. “The puppies go.”

  “Well, that answers that,” Hank huffed. “I come here for sympathy, and all that I’m getting is heartless advice.” He stopped. “Speaking of hearts, who’s got a bigger heart than Sadie? Why, she’s all heart. She might want one of Doozy’s pups. Maybe even two! One for each of her little ones!” His face brightened, like the sun coming out after a rainstorm. He placed the puppy back in the box, picked it up, and opened the kitchen door. “M.K.!” he shouted.

  M.K. was leading Cayenne into the barn and stopped short at the soun
d of Hank’s loud voice.

  “PUT THAT HORSE BACK IN ITS BUGGY SHAFTS! We’ve got ourselves an emergency errand!”

  Fern came up behind Amos at the window. Together, they watched M.K. ooh and aah over the puppies in the box. “Poor Sadie,” Fern said. “She’d better brace herself.”

  6

  Jenny’s shoulders ached from painting the kitchen wall after Chris had finished fixing the drywall. For the first time in her life she didn’t feel like reading a book before bedtime. The problem with not reading, though, was that she couldn’t ignore all kinds of creepy, frightening noises as she lay there in the dark.

  This old house was awful, truly horrible. It creaked and groaned like it was in pain. She heard mysterious scratching sounds in the walls and the pattering of feet above her head. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine her happiest day, her tenth birthday, when Old Deborah had taken her to the prison and her mother was in a good mood.

  Her mother could be sweet and charming at times, but you never knew what you were getting. You always braced yourself for the first minute, as you sized up the expression on Mom’s face.

  On this day, though, her mother was in a happy mood. She braided Jenny’s hair, taming her long curls into two flat plaits down her back. She taught Jenny a dozen variations on cat-in-the-cradle. It was the happiest birthday Jenny ever had. To top it off, that day happened to be a Friday, a day that Jenny had always enjoyed, although Saturday was her absolute favorite. She had the usual feelings about Monday, a day that she had never heard anybody speak up for, for obvious reasons.

  The wind picked up. Somewhere outside, a door banged. A branch tapped at the window. Something whirred past Jenny’s face. Her eyes shot open to see a menacing dark shape flutter around her room. A bird? How had a bird gotten into her bedroom? She sat up in bed. It must have come in through the broken window. How many times had she complained to Chris about that broken window? Mosquitoes flew in every night, eager to torment her. It flew past again, swooping and dipping erratically. Wait. That was not a bird. It was a bat! She ran to Chris’s room, screaming as she flew down the hallway.