Leah herself had never been to a quilting frolic. Not once in her entire life. She’d heard plenty about it, more than she cared to, really, from Sadie and the twins. Such gatherings were fertile ground for tales, factual and otherwise, seemed to her. She preferred to engage in straightforward conversation, like the kind she occasionally got to enjoy with Dat out in the cornfield, plowing or cultivating the rich soil. Leah craved the succinct words of her father, his no-nonsense approach to life. After all, Sadie had Mamma’s affection, and the twins garnered adequate consideration from both parents.
Here lately, Leah had had the nerve to think that she just might have an exceptionally level head on her mature shoulders and it was time she carved out a corner of credibility for herself. Especially with Dat, even though she and her father wholeheartedly disagreed on one thing, for sure and for certain. Her father had made up his mind years ago just whom Leah should one day marry, though if asked, he wouldn’t have said it was by any means an arrangement—quite uncommon amongst the People.
The young man was Gideon Peachey, the only son of the blacksmith the next farm over. He was known as Smithy Gid, to tell him apart from other boys with the same name in the area. Gideon’s father and Dat had long tended the land that bordered each other’s property even before Leah was ever born. Truth was, when they were out working the field, Dat liked to say to Leah, pointing toward the smithy’s fifteen acres to the east of them, “There now, take a wonderful-gut look at your future . . . right over there. Nobody owns a more beautiful piece of God’s green earth than the smithy.”
It was a knotty problem, to be sure, since Leah wanted to please her beloved Dat in the matter of marriage. And she was well aware of the benefits for the bridegroom, as well as for the lucky girl who would become Gideon’s bride, since the smithy’s son was to receive the deed to his father’s sprawl of grazing land upon marriage. Of course, all this had, no doubt, played a part in the matchmaking, back when Leah and Gideon were youngsters. Not only that, but the smithy Peachey and Dat considered each other the best of friends, and Gideon was the son Dat wished he’d had.
Leah had no romantic feelings whatsoever for nineteen-year-old Gideon. Oh, he was nice looking enough with wavy brown hair that nearly matched her own and fair cheeks that blushed red when he smiled too broad. He was a good boy, right kind, hardworking, sincere and all. As a conscientious objector, he’d received an agricultural deferment, to the relief of his father and the entire community, just as had many other of their boys eighteen and older.
Leah and her sisters, and Gideon and his sisters, Adah and Dorcas, had grown up swinging on the long rope in the Peachey haymow together, and ice-skating, too, out on Blackbird Pond. She knew firsthand what a good-hearted boy Gideon was. And Adah . . . one of her own dearest friends.
Yet Leah’s heart belonged to Jonas Mast and there was no getting around it. Of course, no one but Sadie knew, because things of the heart were carried out in secret, the way Leah’s own parents had courted and their parents before them. Now Leah eagerly awaited the day she turned sixteen. At last she would ride home from Sunday night singing with Jonas in his open buggy, slip into the house so as not to awaken the family, hear the clip-clopping of the horse as he sped home in the wee hours, all the while dreaming the sweet dreams of romantic love. Jah, October 2 couldn’t come anytime too soon.
The hilly treed area known as Gobbler’s Knob had never frightened young Derek Schwartz, second son of the town doctor. He was well at home in the vast confines of the shadowy jungle, notwithstanding his own mother’s warning. As a lad he had purposely sought out frozen puddles to break through with a single stomp of his boot. He insisted on-defying most every periphery set for him growing up, and he proceeded to live as though he planned never, ever to die.
When Derek met up with Sadie Ebersol that mid-August night, he was instantly intrigued. It happened in the village of Strasburg, where two Plain girls, in the midst of their rumschpringe—the “running-around,” no-rules teen years allowed by the People prior to their children’s baptism into the church—were attempting to pull the wool over several English fellows’ eyes. They’d abandoned their traditional garb and prayer caps and changed into cotton skirts and short-sleeved blouses for an evening out on the town. But Derek’s friend Melvin Warner, sporting a pompadour parted on the side, said right away he knew the girls were Amish. “Just look at the length of their hair . . . all one length, mind you, not a hint of a wave or bangs like our girls.”
Derek had taken note of the girls’ thick, long hair, all right. He also noticed Sadie’s roving blue eyes and the curve of her full lips when she smiled. “Doesn’t matter to me if a girl’s Plain or not,” he told Melvin quickly. “I’m telling you, the blonde belongs to me.” Almost before he’d finished his pronouncement, he rose from the table where he and his cronies—newly graduated from high school—sat drinking malted milk shakes, messing around, and waiting for some action. Standing tall, he strolled over to make small talk with the wide-eyed girls. Particularly Sadie.
Sadie never would’ve believed it if anyone had hinted at what might happen if she kept sneaking off to Strasburg come Friday nights. No, never. She had gone and done the selfsame thing several other times before this, discarding her long cape dress and black apron, even removing her devotional Kapp, unwinding her hair, parting it at the side instead of in the center, letting the weight of its length flow down over one shoulder. Ach, how many times in her most secret dreams had she wished . . . no, longed for a handsome young man such as this, and an Englischer at that? The tall boy headed her way, across the noisy café, had the finest dark hair she thought she’d ever seen. And, glory be, he seemed to be making a beeline right for her. Jah, as she waited, Sadie knew he was intent upon her! The look in his dark eyes was spellbinding and deep, and she could not stray from his gaze no matter how hard she might’ve tried. He seemed vaguely familiar, too. Had she known him during her years at the Georgetown School, when she and her sisters and their young cousins and Plain friends all attended the one-room public schoolhouse not far from their farm? Her mouth felt almost too dry, and pressing her lips together, she hoped he wouldn’t notice how awful nervous she was being here in town, this far away from her familiar surroundings.
Quickly she glanced down at herself, still not accustomed to this fancy getup she wore, including what Englishers called bobby socks and saddle shoes. She wondered how she looked to such a young man, really. Did he suspect she was Plain beneath her makeup and whatnot? Would he even care if he knew the truth? By the sparkle in his eyes, she was perty sure her Anabaptist heritage didn’t matter just now, not one iota.
Sadie felt her heart thumping hard beneath the sheer cotton blouse, the one she’d slipped on under her customary clothes so Mamma or Leah wouldn’t suspect a thing if she ever happened to get caught leaving the house after she and her sister had headed on up to bed for the night. Excitement coursed through her veins. She lifted her head and tilted it just so, the way she’d practiced a dozen or more times, and smiled demurely her first hello to the well-to-do doctor’s son, who, she would soon discover, much preferred the nickname his pals had given him—Derry—over Derek, the name his parents had chosen after his devout paternal grandfather, a minister of the Gospel.
For no particular reason, Leah awakened and saw that Sadie’s side of the bed was empty. On a Friday night, yet. This was not a night for a scheduled Amish singing, she knew that for sure. Sadie’s flown to the world again, she thought, wishing Mamma and Dat might’ve heard their wayward daughter leave the house after they’d all gone off to bed. Why must she be so defiant, Lord? Leah breathed her prayer into the darkness.
Slipping out of bed, she went and stood by one of the windows and pulled the shade away. She looked out at the glaring sky, almost white with the rising moon as its light lowered itself over the barnyard below. How had Sadie made her getaway this time? Sadie wasn’t so handy outdoors, not at all— couldn’t have just hitched up one of the driving
horses to the family carriage without making a ruckus on such a silent, moonlit night. Ach, it wasn’t possible for Sadie. She must’ve gotten a ride with someone who owns a car. Such harsh speculating made Leah feel nearly sick to her stomach. Surely Sadie wouldn’t stoop so low as to do something like that. Why, such things would not only break their parents’ hearts but bring awful shame and reproach to their family. Yet Leah feared that was just what her sister had gone and done. Ach, she shouldn’t let herself worry so, not about the unknown. Not about things she had no control over.
Daylight would come all too early tomorrow, she knew. Dat would appreciate her help with the five-o’clock milking. So she needed her rest. After all, somebody around here had to be responsible and get a good night of sleep on weekends.
Turning away from the window, Leah let the blind block out the moonlight and tiptoed back to bed. Refusing to dwell on a host of other shameful deeds her sister might be thinking of tonight, Leah sighed. She slipped back into bed and her head found the feather pillow. She longed for sleep. Truly she did.
The café radio blared the tune “Chiquita Banana,” the calypso-beat jingle: Pepsi-Cola hits the spot, twelve full ounces, that’s a lot . . . as Derek and his pal and the two Plain girls they had picked up headed for Melvin Warner’s car. Soon they were speeding down Georgetown Road, laughing and joking, toward Gobbler’s Knob. He had known almost immediately that Sadie Ebersol, his unexpected date for the evening, was not accustomed to modern ways. Not in any sense of the word. “Stop here,” he told the driver of the car. “Sadie and I . . . we’re getting out.”
“You’re walking her home, through the woods?” Melvin said from behind the wheel.
Sadie cast a wary look at him, the first time he had sensed any hint of alarm from her all evening. “Must we go thataway?” she asked.
“Trust me. I know the forest like the back of my hand.” He opened the car door and helped her out.
“Aw, Sadie, are you sure?” the other Amish girl asked, sitting next to Melvin in the front seat, leaning toward them now, seemingly very concerned. “You know what they say . . . you might never find your way out again.”
Derry nodded his assurance. “We’ll be fine.”
“Don’t worry, Naomi.” Sadie flung a small knapsack bundle through the open window and into her friend’s lap. “Here, take care of this for me. I’ll pick it up from you tomorrow.”
Once the Jeep station wagon had rumbled down the road, Derry turned and offered Sadie a hand, helping her over the ditch that ran along the roadside, then through the underbrush that led to the knoll. “So you’ve never gone walking out here?” he asked, turning to look at her in the moonlight.
“Not on this side of the woods,” she said. “I’ve visited . . . uh, the woman who lives in the log house at the far edge of the forest, though. I’ve gone there with my sisters, by way of the dirt road, over where the foxgloves grow.”
He didn’t know so well the flower-strewn side of the hillock. But on several occasions he had seen the woman Sadie mentioned, as well as the No Trespassing signs posted around the perimeter to alert hunters of her five-acre property. Smiling to himself, he thought, Sadie must think I’m thickheaded. . . . That woman is Amish. He remembered having seen her working in the flower gardens around the log cabin. “Is the woman a friend of yours?”
“Jah . . . er, yes.” Sadie frowned for a moment, then turned to look at him, smiling. “Do you know Lizzie Brenneman?”
He shook his head. “I haven’t met her formally, if that’s what you mean.”
“She likes living alone, always has. Loves that side of the woods . . . and the little critters that wander ’bout the forest.”
“And she can’t be too old,” he said.
“Thirty-four, she is,” replied Sadie, though it seemed she was holding back information, that maybe the woman was in all actuality a relative, maybe even Sadie’s aunt. But he didn’t press the issue. He had other more important things on his mind.
We’ll be sure to avoid the area of the log cabin, he thought, glad Sadie had warned him, in so many words. He knew precisely where this late-night walk should take them. Nowhere near Aunt Lizzie, he’d see to that.
Sadie’s inviting smile and the false air of innocence she seemed all too eager to exude spurred him on. “Ever kiss a boy on the first date?” he asked wryly.
Her warm and exuberant giggle was his delight. He knew he’d met his match. Hand in hand they ran deep into the seclusion of the dark timberland, where the light of the moon was thwarted, obscured by age-old trees, and the night was cloudless and still.
Chapter Two
Since she was a little girl, Hannah, the older of the Ebersol twins—by twenty-three minutes—sometimes contemplated death, wondering what it would be like to leave this world behind for the next. Such thoughts stuck in her head, especially when she was alone and tending the family’s fruit-and-vegetable roadside stand. That is, if the minutes lagged between customers, and rearranging the table and checking on the money box were not enough to keep her mind truly occupied.
The plight of having only a handful of customers of a morning was not so common, really, once the decorative gourds and pumpkins and whatnot started gracing the long wooden stand in nice, even rows. Their bright harvest yellows and oranges caught the eye of a good many folks who would stop and purchase produce, enjoying the encounter with a young Plain girl. But this was August, and the baby carrots, spinach, and bush string beans were the big attraction, along with heads of lettuce and rhubarb.
Shy as a shadow, Hannah could hardly wait till the Englischers made their selection of strawberries, radishes, or tomatoes and then skedaddled on back to their cars and were on their way. Jah, that’s just how she felt, nearly too bashful to tend the roadside stand by herself. She figured, though, this was probably the reason she had been chosen to watch over the myriad of fruits and vegetables, because, as Mamma would say, “The more you do something, Hannah, the better you’ll get at it.”
Well, that might be true for some folk, Hannah often thought, but Mamma must have never had her knees go weak on her, her breath come in short little gasps at the thought of having to make small talk, in English of all things, with outsiders . . . strangers. She felt the same way about attending the one-room public school all these years, too. Thank goodness, Mary Ruth was her constant companion; otherwise, book learning away from home wouldn’t have been pleasant at all.
But looking after the produce stand was even worse, really. The sight of a car coming down the road, slowing up a bit, non-Amish folk gawking and sometimes even pointing. Were they just curious about her long cape dress and black apron . . . her prayer cap, the way she parted her hair down the middle . . . was that why they chose to stop? And then the car pulling up smack-dab in front of the stand. Ach, it wasn’t so bad if her twin hadn’t any chores to tend to and came along with Hannah. Working the produce stand was easily tolerated at such times, if not enjoyed.
Tonight, though, she lay in bed next to Mary Ruth, aware of the even, deep breathing of her sister, thinking once again about heaven, since sleep seemed to escape her. She wondered what it was like when their grandmother on Dat’s side—Grossmammi Ebersol—had breathed her last, six months ago now. Dat had not been present at his mamma’s bedside the night of her passing, but several of the womenfolk had been, Mamma and three aunts, Dat’s sisters. The comment had been made that Mammi’s passing had been a peaceful one—whatever that meant. Hannah wished she knew. She couldn’t quite understand how leaving your body behind and letting go of your spirit—that part of you that’s supposed to live on and on through eternity—how that could be a pleasant experience. Not when just the opposite seemed to be true at the start of one’s life, when you came hollering and fussing into the world. She’d witnessed enough home births to know that was true, for sure and for certain.
So she didn’t know if saying someone’s death had been a peaceful passing was quite the best way to describe such an event
. Of course, now, she hadn’t attended the death of anyone, not yet anyway. “You just haven’t lived long enough, daughter,” Mamma had said recently, when Hannah finally got up the nerve to say just how curious she was about the whole business of dying.
“Himmel—heavens, Hannah,” Mary Ruth had reprimanded her over a bowl of snow peas, “don’tcha believe that the Lord God sends His angels to come and carry you over River Jordan . . . when the time comes? The Good Book says so.”
Hannah had kept still from then on, not bringing up the subject again. Must be not everyone thought secretly about their own deaths the way she did. Maybe she was mistaken to just assume it all along.
Now, lying in the bed she shared with Mary Ruth, she couldn’t help but wonder if her twin was just too cheerful for her own good. Jah, maybe that was the big difference between the two of them. Mary Ruth was unruffled, while Hannah looked at life through serious, worry-filled eyes. For as long as she could remember, that was how it was. Of course, they shared nearly everything, sometimes even finished each other’s sentences—Dat got a laugh out of that if it happened at the dinner table. Same color hair, similar hankerings for food, and some of the same boys had caught both her and Mary Ruth’s eye. Even though the two of them wouldn’t be expected to start showing up at Sunday night singings for another three years—it wasn’t proper for nice girls to do so before age sixteen—there were plenty of cute boys at Preaching service of a Sunday morning. Especially the Stoltzfus brothers—Ezra and Elias— close enough in age to almost pass for twins, though Ezra was the older by fourteen months. She had confessed in private to Mary Ruth that she wondered if some of those boys might not be thinking some of the same romantic thoughts about her and Mary Ruth. The laughter that had spilled out of Mary Ruth at the time was ever so warm, even comforting, when she admitted that she, too, had entertained notions about some of the same young men as Hannah. Mary Ruth answered, with a twinkle in her blue eyes, “We ain’t too young to start filling up our hope chests, you know.”
The Covenant Page 2