The Choice

by Suzanne Woods Fisher

  Carrie folded it up, quickly, so Veronica wouldn’t read it. Then she thanked her and left with the quilt money and the information about Abel Miller. Just as she closed the door, she heard the printer click into action a second time. Carrie’s heart rose in her throat. Veronica McCall wouldn’t have made a copy for herself, would she? No, of course not. Why would she bother?

  About halfway home, Carrie pulled Old-Timer off to the side and read the paper. It was a report from a newspaper article, with a grainy picture of Abel Miller on it. She started to read the article: “Amish Man Fined and Sentenced to Prison.”

  Abel Miller, 21, was sentenced today to three years in prison and fined $250,000. He pled guilty to two acts of negligence that resulted in involuntary homicides. Miller had a business supplying kerosene fuel to local Amish farmers. Last November, gasoline had contaminated the containers, causing explosions in two Amish homes that resulted in the death of two women, forty-eight-year-old Lena Miller, a relative of the defendant, nineteen-year-old Katie Yoder, thirty-two-year-old Elam Lapp and his seven-year-old son, Benjamin Lapp. Against advice of counsel, Miller refused to appeal the conviction.

  Carrie sighed. The story only raised more questions than it answered. She reread it, looked again at Abel Miller’s photograph and stared at it for a long while. Her heart felt a pity for this Abel. How humiliating for an Amish man to have his photograph taken and printed in such a way. For the first time, Abel seemed real to her. Not just a shadowy figure in the Miller family, but a real man.

  She wondered why Abel took Daniel’s place in jail. More importantly, why had Daniel let him?

  She folded the paper up carefully and placed it in her apron pocket. She didn’t want Yonnie to come across this, adding to her suffering. Yonnie carried on bravely, but Carrie knew she was grieving deeply over Eli and Daniel.

  One evening, Carrie went through Eli’s accounting books to see what kind of expenses she would be facing. She knew there would be feed bills, a propane gas bill, and in a few months, yet another tax bill to pay. She knew they needed to sell another quilt or two to pay for expenses until the harvest, but it pained her to ask Yonnie.

  Carrie was doing her best to keep the farm up, but it was already looking like the weary efforts of two women and a boy, not the pristine condition that Eli and Daniel had kept it in. Every few days, a kind neighbor or two stopped by to lend a hand with a chore or two, but they had families and farms of their own to care for. Thankfully, Daniel had finished pruning the trees in January and had returned the beehives to the orchards in early March, but her vegetable garden—food that she counted on for summer canning and for roadside stand sales—looked limp.

  As Carrie closed Eli’s accounting book, she suddenly felt a weariness that settled and went bone deep. She felt anxious about the future, and then anxious about being anxious. She put her head in her hands and squeezed her eyes shut.

  Yonnie came up behind her, rested her hands on her shoulders and said, “Try not to worry. The Lord God hears our prayers.”

  Carrie patted Yonnie’s hands and told her she was right, of course. But a part of her mind told her that maybe Daniel was right. Heaven had gone deaf.

  As Carrie said goodnight to Andy, he asked her if they were going to lose the farm.

  “What makes you think that?” she asked.

  “I heard you and Yonnie talking. I saw you scribbling down numbers on a pad of paper.” He climbed under the quilt covers. “Maybe I should quit school and stay home. I could do stuff. I could make money choring for people.”

  Carrie smiled at him and tousled his hair. “Your job is to stay in school and learn all you can. Someday, these apple orchards will be yours. You’ll need to know all about numbers.” She stroked his hair.

  “I know plenty already. More than that ol’ teacher. Bags of fat on her arms bounce when she writes on the board!” He lifted a skinny arm and pinched it, trying to mimic his teacher.

  Carrie tried to frown at him but broke into a grin. “Enough of that talk. Like I said, you do your part by doing well in school. It’s my part to think about making ends meet.” She reached over and turned off the gas lamp. “Night, little brother.”

  “Night, Carrie.”

  Before she closed the door, she asked, “Are those English boys still bothering you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Daniel was right, then. He said they would lose interest.”

  Andy didn’t respond. He just rolled over on his side.

  “Andy, do you miss Daniel?”

  “Nope.”

  Carrie leaned on the doorjamb and watched him for a moment. She worried about him, her Andy. She knew he must be hurting. She wondered how he really felt about Daniel’s death. He didn’t show any emotion during the viewing and funeral. He didn’t really show much emotion about anything, she realized, except for caring for the baby Cooper’s hawks and Mattie’s hatched goslings.

  Those downy goslings looked like yellow balls of cotton that followed Andy around like he was their mother. It was incredible how quickly they grew; in just a few weeks, they were the size of leghorn chickens. Carrie and Andy made a makeshift cage for them in the barn. She was grateful that these creatures hadn’t died. It made her sad to think Andy had grown calloused to death, at the tender age of nine.

  She had to admit, she wasn’t really sure how she felt about Daniel’s death, either. She pushed thoughts of him off to the side before they could settle in for a stay, just like she did with Sol.

  Spring training was under way. Sol thought he might be able to add a little more speed on his fastball after the weight training he’d done in the Clipper Magazine Stadium workout room all winter. The manager had even used him as an example to the other players.

  “If the rest of you players would work as hard as this guy,” he patted Sol on the back during the team meeting, “you’d have a chance for making the All-Star game this fall.”

  The way the manager said it, it seemed as if he was hinting that Sol had a chance for a pitcher’s spot on the All-Star team. Just thinking about it made Sol all the more determined to speed up his pitch. It was all so close to him, within his grasp, this dream of making something of himself, he could practically see himself in the All-Star uniform, jogging out to the mound in Newark or Camden or Long Island, wherever the games were going to be held.

  The only thing missing was no one would be there to watch him.

  But then he got to thinking, with Daniel Miller gone—and it shamed him to admit it but when he heard the news from his mother he was elated—he and Carrie were given a second chance to get it right. Maybe by fall, she’d be at that All-Star game, watching him.

  Late one afternoon, Veronica McCall walked right into Carrie’s farmhouse. “Hello? Hello? Is anybody here?” she called out, before spotting Carrie by the far window in the living room, letting down the hem on Andy’s trousers. “There you are! I knew someone would be home.” She blinked her eyes. “Why is it always so dark in here?”

  “We use the sun’s light. And it’s a cloudy day.” Carrie put down the trousers and stood to meet her guest. “Is something wrong?” She could tell Veronica McCall seemed more on edge than usual today.

  “There’s a flaw in this quilt of Yonnie’s.” Veronica threw the quilt on the kitchen table, searching it over. “There! There it is! See?” She pointed to a corner piece in which a mismatched fabric was sewn in, disrupting the pattern.

  “I do see,” Carrie answered calmly.

  “So she needs to fix it.”

  “No. It’s meant to be there.”

  Veronica McCall looked at Carrie as if she were a dense child. “I can’t have a flawed quilt. She’ll have to fix it.”

  Carrie smoothed a hand over the red and yellow quilt. “Yon-nie’s quilts have a mark of humility.”

  “A what?”

  “It’s a sign of imperfection. Man will never achieve perfection, and we don’t want to be prideful in even trying to achieve it. So many Amish quil
ts are made with an intentional flaw.”

  “Every one?”

  “Not all, I suppose.” Carrie folded the quilt gently. It pained her still, to have sold Yonnie’s quilt.

  “Well, that’s . . . interesting, I guess.” Veronica tapped her chin. “Hmmm . . . I wonder if I could spin it? Maybe I could even point customers to the flaw, to prove it isn’t machine made . . . oh, this could be good!” She clapped her hands together, delighted. “Bet I could charge more too.” She scooped the quilt out of Carrie’s arms and left, nearly knocking Andy over as he came in from school. “Toodles!” she called out, banging the kitchen door behind her.

  Just an hour later, Andy sat at the kitchen table eating a snack while Carrie was making dinner. Suddenly, he spotted something out the window and flew out the door, tossing over his shoulder, “Gotta check on my birds!” Instead of going straight to the barn like he always did, he slipped around the side of the house and behind the vegetable garden, out of sight. Carrie saw a young Amish woman walk up the path to the kitchen door. When she reached the house, Carrie could see it was Andy’s teacher, Rebecca King.

  She started the teapot to boil as Rebecca took off her cape and bonnet. “What a nice surprise, Rebecca! On such a cold spring 98 day too.” Carrie took two teacups down from the cupboard and filled them with hot water from the kettle. “Seems as if we should be getting warm weather by now.”

  Rebecca’s round cheeks were bright red with cold. She wrapped her hands around the cup to warm them. “I wish I could say that the reason for my visit was just because we’re overdue, Carrie, but . . .” She glanced at Yonnie, quilting in the other room.

  “Something about Andy?” Carrie straightened. “He’s not giving you trouble, is he?” She had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, like something terrible was coming.

  “No, I wouldn’t say that,” Rebecca said. She took a sip of tea. “You see, he’s not at school. Ever since . . . your Daniel passed . . . he hasn’t been to school.”

  “But that’s been weeks now!” Carrie said, shocked. “Where has he been all day?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is that he told the kids he was very sick. He said it was extremely contagious. I can’t remember exactly what the disease was.”

  Carrie looked out at the barn. “Was it leprosy, by any chance?” “Yes! That’s it!” Then her face grew worried. “Does he really have it?”

  Slowly, Carrie shook her head.

  “I didn’t think so.” Rebecca finished her tea and picked up her cape and bonnet. “I’d better get home. You’ll speak to Andy about returning to school?”

  “Yes. He’ll be at school tomorrow,” Carrie said, walking Rebecca to the door. “You can count on it.”

  For the next few weeks, until the school term ended, Carrie rode the scooter alongside Andy to school every morning. She even waited to leave until Rebecca rang the bell and she knew he was inside the one-room schoolhouse. Carrie never could get Andy to confess where he had been spending his days; out by Blue Lake Pond, birding, most likely. Once Daniel introduced him to birding, he preferred watching nature to watching Rebecca’s jiggly arms dance on the blackboard. But it bothered Carrie to discover that Andy was so at ease with telling lies. He insisted that they weren’t lies, he just didn’t volunteer the truth.

  “And the part about the leprosy?” Carrie asked, one eyebrow raised. “Your cast has been off for months now.”

  “Well, the doctor said it looked like leprosy,” he told her solemnly. “And my skin did look gross when the doctor took off the cast. All wrinkled and white.”

  She tried to make him understand that not telling the truth was an untruth, that lies start with a seed of untruth that quickly grows into vines—jungles—of deceit. She could tell she wasn’t making much of an impact. What he really needed was his father. She couldn’t do anything about that, but she could make sure he finished out the school year, like it or not.

  7

  Spring inched to summer and the apple blossoms in Carrie’s orchards faded and died, leaving in their place the promise of a crop to harvest, come autumn.

  One August afternoon, the sun burned the back of Carrie’s neck as she drove the wagon over to the Stoltzfuses’ roadside stand to deliver tomatoes to sell. She stayed too long for a visit with Ada Stoltzfus, a woman known to be blessed with the gift of conversation. Carrie ran a few errands in town but was later than she wanted to be as she returned to the farm. Angry, dark clouds had choked out the sun, the air was gummy and heavy, foreboding a downpour, and the wind whipped fiercely against the trees. A summer storm was coming and she wanted to get home as fast as she could.

  As the wagon clattered into the covered bridge, Old-Timer balked. Carrie snapped the reins but he wouldn’t budge. Government workers had been reconditioning the covered bridge and had placed sawhorses with blinking lights so people would stay clear of their equipment. She got out of the wagon and tried to lead Old-Timer, but the horse would not move forward. He was frightened by the white cuts of lightning that lit the sky, making strange shadows in the bridge.

  “You old fool,” she said to Old-Timer. “Now what am I going to do?”

  Out of nowhere, Carrie heard a young man’s voice. “If you trust me, ma’am, I think I can help you.” He had a gentle voice, soft-spoken, polite.

  She whipped her head around to see where the man was standing. She couldn’t make him out in the darkness, only his profile, but she could tell he was English.The stranger told Carrie to hop back on the wagon. He took off his coat and covered Old-Timer’s head with it, talking to him softly. Old-Timer took a tentative step forward, then another, and finally made it through to the other side. The stranger removed his jacket and gently stroked Old-Timer’s head.

  “See?” he said with a grin. “It’s as simple as that.”

  “Thank you for your help,” she said. “Can I be offering a ride to you? This weather is turning bad.” She looked up at the bruised, dark sky.

  “I’m looking for the Miller home,” he said.

  Carrie felt a smile tug at the corners of her mouth. “Millers abound among the Amish. Any idea which Miller?”

  “I’m looking for the home of Daniel Miller. Moved here from Ohio last summer. Father’s name was Eli.”

  She snapped her head up to look at the man for a second time. Her heart started pounding so loudly that she heard it in her ears. She recognized the man from the article printed out by Veronica McCall’s computer.

  This man is Abel Miller.

  Carrie shouldn’t have been surprised by now that Yonnie seemed to be expecting Abel—the woman had an uncanny sense of knowing these things. She was standing outside on the kitchen steps as the wagon wheels rolled into the driveway. Abel jumped off the wagon and ran to her, hugging her little elderly body tightly to his, tears flowing down both of their faces. Carrie thought it was pure sweetness to watch. It felt good to see Yonnie happy. At times she was amazed at how Yonnie carried on, despite so much sadness in the last few years. It almost seemed as if she poured her feelings into her quilts, and that’s why the colors were so dramatic and bold. Carrie left the two of them alone and went in to get dinner started.

  On the ride to the house, Abel had told Carrie he had received a letter about Daniel’s passing. He didn’t say from whom and Carrie didn’t ask. He said it was hard for him to get his mind around the fact of losing his cousin. His uncle too. “I needed to see Yonnie, as soon as I could,” he said. “She’s all I have left.”

  Yonnie was practically glowing as she joined Carrie in the kitchen. “Abel is unhooking Old-Timer from the wagon and said he’d brush him down.” She smiled. “A good Amish man takes care of the buggy horse first.”

  Carrie glanced sideways over at Yonnie as she peeled the carrots for dinner. Was Abel an Amish man? He was dressed in English clothing, his hair was shingled. Maybe he was wearing clothes he had been given when he left prison, Carrie reasoned. But another curiosity: Yonnie spoke English to him, not Deits
ch.

  By the time Abel came in from the barn, Carrie had supper in the oven.

  “I filled your horses’ water buckets and gave them all two flakes of hay. But your cow looks like she’s about to burst. If you’ll give me a milk bucket, I’ll take care of her,” he said.

  Abel Miller was no stranger around horses, she decided, gathering clues about him. Maybe he was a smithy too.

  “Thank you,” Carrie said, “but my brother should be home by now and that’s his chore.”

  As if on cue, Andy burst in the door, doffed his hat, reached a hand into the cookie jar, but froze in motion as his eyes landed on Abel.

  “Andy,” Carrie said, pulling his hand out of the cookie jar, “where did you disappear to? You were supposed to weed the garden. We’re just about to eat. Hope needs milking, first.” She led him by the shoulders to meet Abel. “This is Daniel’s cousin, Abel. He’s come for a visit.”

  Andy looked Abel up and down. “Ich gleich sei Guck net.” I don’t like his looks.

  Carrie squeezed his shoulders in warning. “Andy! Was in der Welt is letz?” What in the world is wrong with you? She turned to Abel. “Kannscht du Pennsilfaanisch Deitsch schwetze?” Can you speak Pennsylvania Dutch?

  Abel shrugged. “I’m pretty rusty.”

  Carrie turned to Andy. “Speak English.”

  Andy frowned at her. “I only said, ‘You don’t look like Daniel.’ ” A frown looked funny on such a young face.

  Abel’s mouth deepened at the corners, trying not to smile, yet he seemed amused. Carrie couldn’t tell if he could understand what they were saying or just found them entertaining.

  “Maybe not. But he’s my grandson too, Andy,” Yonnie said with surprising firmness. She still hadn’t stopped smiling since Abel’s arrival.

  Andy shrugged, grabbed the clean milk bucket off of the bench, and ran outside to milk Hope, who was lowing unhappily from the barn.