When Strawberries Bloom

by Linda Byler

  When Stephen brought her home after the hymn-singing on Sunday evening, Lizzie was a bit better prepared to hear him say that their plans were finished now, and they would be leaving Tuesday morning. She managed a small smile as he talked, listening attentively to his plans without once resorting to rebellious feelings.

  “I want to be sure and thank you, Lizzie,” he finished, watching her face attentively.

  “For what?” she asked, in a genuinely small, quiet voice.

  “For being nice about me being gone so long. I know you don’t want me to go, but you’re being an awfully good sport about it, and I do appreciate it.”

  “You wouldn’t stay home for me, would you? I mean, give up the whole adventure if I didn’t want you to go?”

  Stephen was quiet for a very long time, before he said with a soft laugh, “Probably not.”

  So there. She had a notion to give him the whole lecture and bring the Bible to show him that he was supposed to lay down his own life for her. She knew that wouldn’t be a good idea, mostly because they were not married yet. He had never asked her to be his wife, so really being so pointed would be a very wrong thing to do.

  Lizzie wanted to assure him that it was all right for him to go, to let him know that she wanted him to have a good time. She really did, but she also wanted him to worry a bit that she wasn’t happy because he was going and leaving her. So she didn’t answer.

  And in that silence, her own battle of right and wrong raged in her spirit. She knew the right thing to do, but she couldn’t let go of her own desires to make him feel bad, at least a little. She wanted to punish him somehow for going against her will, so she remained silent while right fought wrong with a clashing of swords.

  Finally, Stephen cleared his throat, watching her carefully as she sat in her self-induced little war of wills.

  “Maybe I better go. It’s getting late. Good-bye, Lizzie. I’ll send you postcards, if I can.”

  Lizzie got up to go along to the barn as she always did, feeling perfectly miserable. “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands,” was constantly in her thoughts, but she reasoned that little bother away by telling herself she wasn’t his wife. She didn’t have to submit yet.

  When Stephen was ready to step into the buggy, all of Lizzie’s battles and miseries came crashing down around her, and she reached out to touch his arm.

  “I … I’m sorry, Stephen. I do hope you enjoy your vacation, and I’ll be patiently waiting till you come home. I’ll miss you so much, but you know that, don’t you?”

  She was rewarded by the most loving look she had ever received from him as he told her again how he appreciated her attitude and how much he would miss her.

  After he left, and the battle of her own will won, she felt as light as a feather floating on a soft white cloud. So that was the answer, she thought happily as she fairly danced up the stairs to her bedroom. If you could give up a teeny-tiny bit, God would supply all the feelings of love you needed. He filled your cup way full until it ran over the sides and made a big puddle beside it.

  Chapter 22

  THE GIRLS SAT SIDE by side on the porch swing, pushing their feet lightly against the concrete floor to keep it in rocking motion. It was one of those quiet twilight times, not yet dark, although the sun had slid behind the mountain for awhile already. The birds were twittering and fussing, scooping up the last mosquitoes for their babies’ bedtime snacks. The barn door slammed, sending a few noisy robins into startled flight as Jason came walking across the drive and up the sidewalk to the porch.

  He would turn 16 years old soon and was looking every inch the young man that he was. His shoulders and arms were heavier, the muscles showing beneath his shirtsleeves, and he had grown at least three more inches that summer, or so it seemed. Lizzie and Mandy adored him, their handsome young brother with the kind blue eyes that twinkled back at them as they teased each other or had long, serious conversations. His eyes always twinkled. He was naturally kind, Mam said.

  But then, that Mam, Lizzie thought. She just loved Jason because he did anything she asked of him. If she needed manure for her flower beds, or a bit of mulch brought, or even if she came home with a load of groceries, Jason ran to help. Sometimes Lizzie felt a bit jealous about how much Mam loved Jason, but not very often, knowing he deserved her devotion, as kind as he was to her.

  “Hey,” he said quietly as he threw himself down on the porch steps, sighing as he ran his hands through his shock of curly brown hair.

  “Hey, yourself,” Lizzie answered.

  “You’re awfully dirty,” Mandy observed.

  “You would be, too. It was a long day and I’m about beat.”

  “You work too hard, Jase,” Lizzie said.

  “Shh!” Jason put his finger to his lips and rolled his eyes in Dat’s direction as he came across the yard. He didn’t really hobble or limp; he just had a dragging gait, almost as if he couldn’t lift his feet properly.

  Dat stopped at the porch, grabbing the railing before looking at Jason. “Tired?” he asked.

  “A little.”

  “You work too hard, Jason.”

  Dat shook his head, a frustrated look in his eyes, his hands gripping the railing firmly. He knew he wasn’t able to do some of the fieldwork anymore, and that ever so gradually more and more of the heavy jobs, as well as the responsibility of the farm, fell on Jason’s young shoulders.

  Mam came out to join them. The twins were in bed already. Mam was wearing her blue summer housecoat that still smelled like talcum powder, the same as it always had. It didn’t matter which scent of powder she used, they all smelled like Mam. Even when Lizzie was a little, worried girl, Mam’s housecoat had smelled the same, a soft, flowery Mam aroma that wrapped around you, comforting and instilling a sense of peace, of belonging, of love as warm and sure as the sun that rose and set each day.

  “Do we have any ice cream in the freezer?” Jason asked, lifting his eyes to look at Mam.

  “Oh, yes! Your favorite. I just got two half-gallons in town today,” Mam said, as she hurried into the kitchen to fill a dish with his favorite treat.

  “Anyone else?” she called out the kitchen window.

  Everyone had a dish of ice cream as they had a serious conversation about farming. Dat broached the subject, saying matter-of-factly that he couldn’t see any sense in continuing, seeing how hard Jason had to work just to keep everything afloat. He admitted that the cows weren’t doing as well as most of the other farmers’ cows in the area, and that it was a constant struggle to keep the bills paid with enough left over to live on decently.

  Mam had known for a long time what Dat was now admitting. She had often fussed to the girls, her face red as she toyed nervously with the straight pins in her dress, saying how she wished Dat would give up farming.

  “He’s just not cut out to be a farmer,” she would say wearily, before giving in time after time, hoping that Dat would see it for himself.

  Now it seemed as if Dat had finally arrived at this conclusion. Mam could not hide the excitement in her eyes as she listened to what Dat was saying, and Lizzie could tell she felt like shouting her delight at his words.

  “So some changes are going to have to come,” Dat said.

  “Like what?” Jason asked, his spoonful of ice cream stopping halfway as he turned to face Dat.

  “Well, we’re going to have to make a living somehow. I have MS, which isn’t that big of an issue, really, because I can still do a good day’s work. But …” Dat said, his voice softening, “it won’t always be this way.”

  Lifting his head, he looked out across the fields to the creek. “I always liked to build things, carpenter work. What do you think, Jason? Could we run a carpenter crew?”

  Jason shrugged his shoulders. “You could, maybe. I don’t know much about building anything, although I suppose I could learn.”

  “Sure you can learn. Building is just a matter of common sense and hard work. In a few months you’ll probably
be working circles around me,” Dat smiled.

  Praise from Dat was scarce, so when he did congratulate someone on a job well done, or whatever, it meant the world to them. Jason ducked his head, flustered, not quite knowing how to handle this compliment, but Lizzie could see a small smile of embarrassment on his face. Dat had given him a real compliment, like one man to another, telling him he was a hard worker.

  So the day came a few weeks later, when a tractor and trailer rolled down the country road, and were barely able to make the turn at the end of the drive. The driver had to back up and keep trying at a few different angles, barely inching his way past the wooden corner post of the fence lining the driveway. One wheel went down so far into the ditch Lizzie felt sure the whole truck would twist sideways until it snapped in two.

  Dat got quite fussed up, almost running out the drive, waving his arms, trying to be helpful, which, probably wasn’t of much assistance to the driver, who was used to handling his truck quite well by himself. But that’s how Dat was. When he hitched up a horse, he said, “Whoa, Whoa,” almost continuously. Even if the horse stood rock still, he kept saying “Whoa.”

  Dat was small and became agitated easily, putting in lots of effort to accomplish a task. He was also very meticulous about things, making sure everything was done to his specifications, so that was probably the reason he became so excited, knowing how he would dislike having the corner of his fence run over by a tractor and trailer.

  After the truck was properly parked, the driver lowered the large steel gates, and Dat and Jason started loading cows. Lizzie felt no emotion at all as each homely-looking cow lumbered precariously up the ramp with a minimum of prodding by the shocking stick.

  One good thing about cows being so dumb, Lizzie thought, was the small amount of effort it took to load them onto a truck. The only thing a cow thought about too much was chewing its cud, so they probably wanted to hurry onto the truck so they could get on with their cud-chewing.

  The rest of the afternoon, different trucks and drivers rolled down the lane until every single cow, heifer, and calf had been sold. The whitewashed cow stable seemed strangely silent and eerie, with only a few ambitious barn swallows left to make it their home. The drop seemed deep and dry with no fresh cow manure or water in it, the milk house vacant and lonely.

  Silence hung over the whole barn until it gave Lizzie the shivers, reminding her of a tomb. Maybe they shouldn’t have sold the cows, she reasoned. What if there was no blessing in Dat’s carpenter crew because he had sold the cows? What if Dat only thought he could build things like pole barns and houses, and he really couldn’t? The empty cow stable gave her the creeps so she hurried out into the bright sunshine, back to the normalcy of the farm.

  Dat had reminded the girls that the farm equipment and horses would also have to be sold eventually, which made Lizzie feel sad, loving the sound of those magnificent horses dragging their chains across the worn wooden boards of their feed box. There was just something about watching a workhorse eating mouthfuls of oats, with some of the grain spilling out the sides of their mouths, that was delightful to watch. The way they used their huge mouths to nibble up every little bit of grain was so amusing. They ate corn that was still on the cob so cleanly, it was almost as if they were humans eating corn off the cob. Lizzie often wondered why the horses didn’t chomp down the entire cob, but Dat said they tasted bitter to the horses.

  But there was hardly any use in keeping the workhorses if they had no work in the fields. If there were no cows to feed, there was no sense in making the horses plod their way around and around a field, their heads nodding, harnesses creaking, as they pulled on the thick leather tugs attached to their enormous collars, heaving with their powerful neck and shoulder muscles.

  Lizzie never tired of watching a team of horses working in a field. Sometimes there were only two hitched together to pull a wagonload of hay or a cultivator. Sometimes, for heavier equipment, there were four in the harness, side by side, pulling together. In the spring, Dat hitched six horses to the large plow so that each horse could pull his fair share of the plow without tiring too much.

  Well, she reasoned, they still had Bess, the driving horse, Rocky, the better driving horse, Billy, the beloved oatmeal-colored Shetland pony, and Jason’s riding horse. Dat loved riding horses, so as soon as Jason was old enough, he bought a fine Morgan stallion for him. Mam wasn’t too happy about that horse, but she didn’t say much, just pressed her mouth into a firm line and shook her head ever so slightly.

  Jason’s riding horse was named Charmer, and he certainly was that. His coat glistened in the sun, a deep reddish brown, with a rippling black mane and tail. He had three white “stockings,” or white hair above his black hooves, which only made him look fancier. Dat said he was almost too nice-looking for Amish people to own him, but he said it in a twinkling, humorous way, so that Lizzie knew he was very proud of Jason’s horse.

  Jason was an extremely good rider, sitting back, relaxed in his saddle, moving with his horse as if they were one. Lizzie and Mandy were thrilled to watch Jason and Charmer, exclaiming to each other that surely no other girls in Cameron County were lucky enough to have a kind, handsome brother like theirs, especially now, with his riding skills developing every week.

  Shortly after selling all of the cattle, Dat hired a driver with a heavy pickup truck and bought ladders, scaffolding, saws, and all kinds of tools and equipment to begin building things for customers. He placed an ad in the local paper, made phone calls, and had business cards made. It wasn’t long before he had a few months’ work waiting for his crew.

  Dat was the kind of person who thrived on changes, any kind of new and different changes that occurred in his life. So this carpentry business was just as challenging and exciting for him as farming had been when the family first moved to Cameron County. He didn’t seem to be sentimental about the cows once they were gone, never saying too much about missing them and instead taking this new endeavor in stride.

  Lizzie teased him about the cows, saying he didn’t like them as well as he wanted the rest of the family to think he did.

  “I miss milking cows, Lizzie,” he said.

  “I bet you don’t.”

  “I do!”

  “Not too much!”

  Then Dat had to laugh, and, as he always did, he blinked his eyes in that certain way, which meant, Behave yourself. But what he said was, “Now, Lizzie!”

  So she felt better about the empty cow stable, glad that Dat and Jason enjoyed their work building things. Dat loved going away every day, traveling away from home and seeing the sights along the way, talking to different people, just getting out and about. He often brought home a watermelon or cantaloupes from a farm stand along the way, or candy for KatieAnn and Susan. The supper table was always filled with lively conversation about the progress of a building, an eccentric customer, or a wreck on the highway.

  These were happy days on the farm. Dat built a small room off the dining room that was mostly windows, with a skylight in the ceiling, which made it a greenhouse of sorts. Mam was overjoyed with her new room. She spent many happy hours in it, growing all her own plants for her ever-expanding flower beds around the yard.

  Her favorite were her “cheraniums,” as she called geraniums. Because of Mam’s origins in Ohio, she always pronounced her “g’s” and “j’s” with the “ch” sound. Jacob was “Chakob,” and jelly was “chelly,” and so on. She never changed the sound or pronunciation of her words, tossing her head impatiently when the girls teased her about it, and she never fully accepted the eastern Pennsylvania Dutch. She always rolled her “r’s,” and said, “Fact!” to exclaim about something and “Ei, nay” when she wanted to be emphatic, driving a point home.

  Mam was a bit different from proper eastern Lamton Amish, but that was who she was, and she never changed. She still clung to some of the old traditions from Ohio, in spite of the ever-changing world around her. Joshua genuinely liked Mam, as did Stephen and John,
although they remained shy, staying away from Mam and Dat, as is the Amish tradition when youth are dating. But the times they were there for Sunday supper, Lizzie would often catch Stephen chuckling to himself as Mam fussed away in her Ohio accent.

  Lizzie was glad that Mam and Dat were resilient and brave. They took life and made the best out of what God handed them. Mam had a deep-rooted faith and believed that whatever happened in their lives held a special purpose, a deeper meaning, a lesson from God that they didn’t always comprehend.

  So when the cows were sold and Dat quit farming, Mam felt it was a reward for being submissive to something she had fiercely resisted. She was blessed now with a happy husband who worked well with his son and with a farm she had grown to like. Not love. Mam never loved the old farm, but she accepted it resignedly, appreciating every new thing Dat built for her.

  After the cows left, life on the farm changed drastically for Mam. She had no men to cook for, no milk house to keep clean, and her days turned quiet and peaceful as she went about her work while Lizzie and Mandy were off at their jobs.

  And, of course, not getting up in the morning to help milk was one of the best things that had ever happened to Lizzie in her entire life. Never again would she have to stumble out to a smelly cow stable, in frigid temperatures, as well as on sweltering summer evenings when she detested every cow permanently.

  Mam said it was a blessing to be given a life without cows, which was probably true, but anything in life is like that, Lizzie thought. If some source of irritation is no longer around, of course it’s a blessing, but to Lizzie it was more than that. If was a gift. An undeserved gift.

  Chapter 23

  ONE WARM SPRING DAY, shortly before Stephen left to hike the Appalachian Trail, he drove in the lane to pick up Lizzie for their weekly date. He had slid both buggy doors back and fastened both windows to the ceiling, held there with leather straps. Bob was already wet with sweat from traveling the three miles to Lizzie’s house. The buggy shone a brilliant black, the gray canvas washed spotlessly clean. The blue interior made Stephen’s eyes bluer than ever, and Lizzie’s heart skipped a few beats when he smiled at her.