The Covenant

by Beverly Lewis

  “Not our church district?”

  “No, guess not.”

  “Well, we could still all ride together. Gid will take us wherever we want.” Adah paused a moment. “Who you end up with after the singing . . . well, that’s your business.”

  Still, Leah was worried Gid might think she would simply ride home with him, too. But that wasn’t the way she’d planned things in her head. She must have a semblance of freedom, in case Jonas was in attendance, and she thought he would be, remembering how they’d talked together a week or so ago, when Dat and Mamma took all of them over to pick apples.

  The morning spent in the orchard had started out ever so murky, she recalled, but by the time the Mast children and Cousin Fannie, along with Leah, her sisters, Mamma, and Aunt Lizzie had gone out to the apple trees with bushel baskets in hand, the fog had begun to lift slowly, allowing the sun to peek through. Leah had never had such a pleasant time picking apples, though they went to Grasshopper Level to do so every single year. She guessed her happiness had more to do with Jonas and his faithful observing of her all the while. Jah, that surely was the reason. Even now, as she remembered the day, her cheeks were warm with the memory.

  Jonas had come right out and asked which of the October Sundays was she going to singing for her first time. And where? She had been at ease enough with him to tell him that the very first singing “after my birthday, I’ll go. Prob’ly near Grasshopper Level.” To this, Jonas had grinned, nodding his head, as if to say that was ever so fine with him. She’d taken his response as a not-so-subtle indication he’d be there himself, and if so, maybe he would ask her to ride home with him in his buggy. Well, if that happened, the way she thought it might, Smithy Gid would be out in the cold. Which, in her mind, was right where he’d been all along. Unknown to Dat, of course.

  Sighing just now, she told Adah, “Denki for asking me, but I’ll ride to singing with Sadie, prob’ly.”

  “So Sadie’s goin’ back to singings, then?” Adah seemed too eager to know.

  Leah wasn’t sure what was going to happen in the next weeks. Hoping against hope that Sadie might surprise everyone and follow through with joining church, Leah had thought of asking Sadie about Sunday singing here perty soon. Maybe she would tonight if Sadie stayed home for a change.

  “I think you’re gonna see a lot more of my big sister from now on.” She said what she herself hoped might be true.

  “Oh, at singings, you mean?”

  “I have a feeling Sadie misses goin’. Honest, I do.”

  “Then, why’d she ever quit?”

  Leah kept walking, didn’t want to stop just because they’d come to the giant willow on the north side of the pond where she and Adah always liked to stand in its shade and skip pebbles, watching the ripples swell out across the blue-gray water. “Sadie’s got her own opinions, same as we do” was all she said.

  “I ’spect so,” Adah answered. “It’s all part of growing up, Mamma says.”

  “Ain’t that the truth.” With that, Leah tossed away the snapdragon she’d picked and sat down in the dirt beneath the willow tree.

  “What’re ya doin’?” Adah eyed her sitting there.

  “Just come sit beside me . . . ’fore we grow up too quick.”

  Adah was nodding her head. “Jah, lest we forget who we are, who we always were.”

  Leah smiled, lifting her face to the sweet sunshine. Sitting here with Adah, she felt wonderful-gut all of a sudden, the cares of life falling off her back, tumbling into the plentiful grazing grass under the crooked willow and a wide blue sky.

  At the corn-husking frolic that afternoon, Ida brushed off the remark made by Preacher Yoder’s wife, Eunice, that Sadie had missed the next-to-last-baptismal class. Seemed Ida’s daughter’s forgetfulness or downright apathy had caused more than one eyebrow to rise askance. Lest the gossip focus too much on her family, Ida quickly turned the women’s attention to her most recent visit to Grasshopper Level. “Abram and I took all the girls—and Lizzie, too—over to pick apples at my cousins’ orchard here lately. You should’ve seen us make quick work of ’em trees.”

  “What kind of apples?” asked one.

  “McIntosh. Wonderful-gut for applesauce-makin’, ya know.” She went on, talking too much about the sweetness and texture of the apples found over at Peter Mast’s orchard and felt downright peculiar going on so. Especially with all eyes on her, waiting . . . wanting a response to the preacher’s wife’s comment.

  Their gaze was on her, boring ever so deep with unanswered questions. Why would a girl continue in her rumschpringe at the same time she was preparing for church baptism? Made no sense. Preacher Yoder—the bishop, too—would have every right to confront Sadie with simple laziness or even worse, indifference, if this wasn’t nipped in the bud. The brethren might exclude her from baptism altogether. Ida knew that shoddy behavior and tendencies were to be reported, and goodness’ sake, folk were already beginning to talk. She’d have to confide in Abram about this as soon as possible. Sadie’s future in the community was in jeopardy.

  Frightened, even distraught by her daughter’s seeming lack of concern, Ida felt ever so lonely just now, yearning for Sadie to acknowledge her as a sounding board for whatever was ailing the girl spiritually. Not looking up at the women at all, she kept on husking ears of early sweet corn, hoping and praying there was some way to divert the conversation away from her ferhoodled and defiant daughter.

  Chapter Nine

  Leah couldn’t help but recall the conversation she’d overheard between her cousin Rebekah Mast and her sister Mary Ruth that hot Sunday afternoon back toward the end of August. Seemed downright ironic that here she was driving horse and buggy over to help Anna Mast put together a wedding quilt on a Saturday, and both Mamma and Sadie sick in bed with stomach flu. It wasn’t that she was filling in for either of them. She would’ve come along today, no matter. She was truly looking forward to her first quilting frolic.

  A hint of fall was in the air. The horse snorted and clip-clopped along, and boastful blue jays shrieked at sunflowers growing near the road. Enjoying the short ride to Grasshopper Level, Leah was mindful of how this horse had been a balker back when Dat first bought him from Uncle Noah Brenneman. The steed had been doing fairly well the past year, especially when the reins were in Leah’s able hands. Seemed he liked knowing Leah was in charge, which was a gut sign that her confident yet gentle ways with the animals hadn’t been lost during the time she’d been laid up.

  Leah was also very much aware of the quiet giggling of Hannah and Mary Ruth in the seat just behind her. “C’mon, now, isn’t it ’bout time you two shared the joke with me?” Leah said, looking over her shoulder.

  “Well . . . guess it ain’t so funny, really,” Mary Ruth spoke up.

  “What’s not?” Leah asked, thinking she knew now what had tickled the younger girls so.

  “You sittin’ up there in the driver’s seat like Dat usually does,” Hannah said at last.

  Leah smiled. “So then, you’re thinkin’ you’ve got your very own driver?”

  “Well, jah, could be.” Mary Ruth leaped over the front seat and sat there next to Leah, still laughing. “There now, how’s that?”

  “What ’bout me?” Hannah leaned over Mary Ruth’s shoulder playfully.

  “There’s room, if you want to squeeze in a bit,” Leah replied.

  “Jah, we’ll make space for one more.” And with that, Mary Ruth scooted over so close to Leah she could scarcely sit.

  “Let’s make ourselves right skinny,” Leah said, holding the reins just so . . . holding her breath, too.

  That brought another round of sniggers, and off they went—the three of them smushed together, but mighty happy about it—heading off to a daylong quilting bee.

  “Too bad Mamma’s under the weather,” Hannah said as they made the turn off the main road. “Ain’t like her to go back to bed after breakfast.”

  “Not Sadie, neither,” Mary Ruth offered.

/>   “Guess they must have the same bug. Or something they ate made ’em sick,” Leah said, yet she wondered why the rest of the family were healthy as horses.

  Going to the quilting bee turned out to be a wonderful-gut idea. Leah surprised herself, really, at how much she enjoyed sewing quilting stitches into Anna’s Diamond-in-the-Square quilt. Come winter, the happy bride and groom would snuggle beneath its colorful woolen squares, cozy and warm. It made Leah wonder how much longer before Mamma might be saying they ought to start thinking about the number of quilts and coverlets Leah should have in her hope chest by year’s end.

  It was an exceptionally sunny day, which made for plenty of light shining in the front-room windows, the shades high at the sashes, as twelve women sat in short intervals round the large frame. Three of the quilters were Leah’s first cousins from SummerHill—triplets, Nancy Mae, Sally Anne, and Linda Fay. Two of the older women, Priscilla and Ruth Mast, were also close cousins, by marriage, to Fannie Mast. Old acquaintances, longtime cousins, and friends all mixed together. Leah sat between her sisters, Hannah and Mary Ruth, near Cousin Fannie’s three oldest girls, including Anna, who seemed to wear a constant smile these days, while eight-year-old Martha entertained little brother Jeremiah outdoors.

  Still a bit unaccustomed to a sewing needle between her fingers, Leah was grateful to be here. Though nary a word was said about the fact that here she was on the brink of her sixteenth birthday, and yet this was her first-ever quilting frolic. She wondered if one of the older women might not mention something in passing as the hours ticked by. But the women were good-natured, seeing as how she was nearly a stranger to them—not by blood nor church ties, no. Only in respect to never having spent time at their frequent frolics and work bees.

  Leah found herself settling into her usual comfortable silence, like the tiny green stitches she made that seemed to disappear into the jade background.

  “Since America’s war, ain’t it harder to get nice material and dyestuff?” Fannie Mast said, across the frame from Leah. She asked this of Priscilla and Ruth.

  “Jah, and the fabrics just don’t hold up so well, neither,” replied Priscilla.

  Ruth nodded her head. “Colors just fade out in the wash.”

  “The sun fades ’em, too,” Fannie added.

  “I have seven quilts that are nearly wore out in just a few years,” Priscilla agreed.

  “Well, and such a shame, too, since some of my best stitchin’s in them quilts of yours,” Ruth said. This brought a peal of laughter all round.

  When it was finished, Anna’s new quilt would measure seventy-five by seventy-six inches. The border was nice and wide, and the corner blocks were big and bold. But what Leah liked best was the color contrast—green and scarlet against plum-purple. Such gay colors reminded her of a joyous celebration. Jah, that’s what a wedding—a lifelong uniting of two cheerful souls—ought to be.

  She was nudged out of her contemplation by Fannie’s cousin Ruth, who must’ve been talking about the fact that Ida was down sick with the selfsame illness as Sadie, “for goodness’ sake.” Then came the peculiar reference to Leah herself—“But we’re awful glad to have Abram’s Leah with us today.”

  All eyes met hers. Abram’s Leah . . . Surely Ruth Mast hadn’t meant that Leah was headed for a life of singleness, like Aunt Lizzie. She didn’t see how they could be thinking such a thing today, now, would they? Not when she’d come to quilt with her sisters on her own accord and having such a wonderful-gut time of it, too. Till this moment.

  The September day dawned breezy and a bit nippy, accompanied by a flat white sky. By midafternoon the heavens had turned indigo, a telltale sign that colder weather was on the way. Lizzie had gotten up at six o’clock, unable to stay in bed a second longer. An uneasy feeling had settled in round her, yet she couldn’t put her finger on just why.

  After a breakfast of fresh fruit, black coffee, and fried eggs, she set about cleaning her little house, going from the front-room parlor to the kitchen and back to her bedroom—redding up, dusting, sweeping, and changing the bedclothes on her big feather bed, bequeathed to her by her mamma. So grateful she was for the hand-me-down bed, glad for anything at all from her childhood home. Thinking on the goodness of the Lord, she returned to the kitchen and took a loaf of bread out of the oven, surprised at how quickly she was completing her chores this day.

  “I’ll have myself a nice long walk,” she said, going to the pantry, which also doubled as a utility room. Finding her woolen shawl on the peg near the back door, she took it down and slipped it over her shoulders. Then she headed outdoors.

  Large red-winged blackbirds fluttered from tree to tree, following her as she made her way toward the deepest part of the woods. Walking briskly now as she often did, Lizzie was conscious of scurrying animals, especially the graceful brown-red squirrels flitting up and down the trunks of flaming yellow oaks, playing hidey-seek with each other. In a couple of months, hunters would be up here combing through these woods, hoping for a nice plump turkey to take home for a Thanksgiving feast, and she’d have to find another spot to do her walking till all the shooting was done.

  This time of year brought with it plenty of wistfulness, almost a feeling of homesickness. Her sisters, especially Ida, never seemed to pay much attention to the turning of the seasons the way Lizzie did. She actually looked forward to it, particularly the autumn when leaves danced and crackled, showing off their daring new colors. So she walked often through the woods—winter, spring, summer, and a scant few weeks in early fall, bundled up against the cold, somewhat sheltered by ancient trees that had become her constant companions.

  She followed an unmarked path, one she sometimes took up to a little lean-to where turkey hunters rested and ate ham-and-cheese sandwiches sent along by their wives and sweethearts. A place where some of the men smoked cigars. She’d find the remnants discarded carelessly on the simple wood floor long after hunting season was over, having gone there to redd up the place a bit, even taking her own broom and dustpan sometimes. She liked things to be clean, even if the shanty was over a half mile from her own house.

  Today she’d had no intention of sweeping out the old shelter, and she wouldn’t have bothered to stop there at all if she hadn’t heard what sounded like a raccoon or maybe a sick dog inside, whining to beat the band.

  Pulling hard on the old door, she went in to see what all the racket was. And then she spied the most pitiful sight—a baby raccoon, tiny as can be, coming toward her as if it hadn’t eaten for days, trapped in here away from its mamma. “Go on, s’okay, little one. Go home now.” With that he scuttled past her, out the door, making a beeline for the woods. “Your family will be mighty glad to see you,” she called after the downy, black-masked critter, wondering how on earth the poor thing had ended up inside instead of out in the forest where he belonged.

  Standing in the doorway, she gazed after him till she could no longer see his bushy ringed tail. “Lord, please be ever mindful of your smallest creatures this day,” she prayed softly.

  Leaning against the door, she closed it behind her, knowing full well it would stick tight due to the current dampness, and soon she’d be prying it open with all her might when she was ready to leave. Still, she wanted to shut out the cold air and the sound of those raucous blackbirds high in the trees, no doubt waiting for her to walk home.

  Suddenly overcome with fatigue, she went to sit on one of the wide wooden benches, noticing just how clean the place was since her last visit here. Noticing, too, how few human trappings littered the place. Usually she would find refuse in the corners— old newspapers, bottles of soda pop and beer, wadded-up paper bags and Baby Ruth candy bar wrappers, and the ever-present cigar stumps, smoked out. Looking round the small room, she had the feeling someone had taken extra care to redd up. It was uncommon for the place to be this free of rubbish. Someone had to have been here, taken their personal belongings, trash and all. Seemed ever so peculiar.

  Not fully rested but
ready to get home, knowing she had a long walk back to her cabin, she rose and straightened her shawl. As she did she noticed a white handkerchief lying on the floor beneath the bench, a delicate hemstitch round the edges. Leaning down, she picked it up, the cutwork embroidered butterfly catching her eye.

  “Well, for goodness’ sake,” she whispered, recognizing Sadie’s favorite hankie.

  A metallic taste sprang into her mouth, the taste of fear. Slowly she brought the handkerchief to her heart, blinking back tears.

  Lizzie took the short way home, through the thickest brambles; though, if she wasn’t mistaken, there seemed to be a slight path cut through the wild brushwood, ever so subtle, as if a tall and willowy young woman had come this way on more than a handful of occasions. So then had her eyes not deceived her back several weeks ago? That half-moon night when she’d gotten up in the wee hours, too warm and restless to sleep. She’d thought she had seen someone running through the woods, past the foxgloves, past the high stone wall . . . a wispy likeness of a girl, lantern in hand. Though at the time Lizzie had wondered if she was just too sleepy eyed to put much faith in what she thought she saw.

  Why must history repeat itself? she wondered, sorrowfully making her way to the back porch of her house. Why, oh why, dear Lord?

  The caw-cawing of the blackbirds was loud, if not merciless and grating. A swarm of them were so bold as to perch near her flower beds. But their heckling was not the answer she sought.

  Sadie searched everywhere she could think of for her lost handkerchief. Unable to find it in any of her bureau drawers, she wondered if it might not be clinging to the inside sleeve of the dress she’d worn yesterday. But when she slipped her hand into the blue dress hanging on the wooden peg in her bedroom, she felt nothing. Where’d I lose it this time? she wondered, retracing her steps in her mind.

  Then suddenly she knew. Sure as anything, she must’ve dropped it on the way up the knoll to the little hunters’ shack, where she’d waited and waited for Derry last night. But he hadn’t ever arrived, and she just assumed he had to work late for Peter Mast. Either that or something else important had come up. She didn’t know for sure, though.