Leah watched Mamma’s skirt tail flapping in the breeze. Sadie oughta be mighty glad I kept her secret all this time, she thought.
Turning back toward the pond, she walked more slowly than before. She contemplated her mother’s words to both her and Sadie a few years ago as they hung out the wash together. “Remember, girls . . . purity at all costs,” Mamma had said. “May be old-fashioned, but it’s God’s way . . . and the best way.” Mamma also said that a person with a pure heart could draw strength from prayer. The mention of God in such a personal way was odd, really, Leah had thought at the time. Oh, she knew her mother prayed more than most womenfolk, probably. But talk of the Lord God heavenly Father wasn’t something many of the People felt comfortable doing. Sacred things weren’t discussed so much, except at church from the lips of Preacher Yoder and the deacon’s Scripture readings.
Reaching the old willow tree, she sat down and watched dragonflies skim over the surface of the gray-blue pond, ever so glad she’d had something good to tell Mamma. What if Sadie and she hadn’t exchanged heated words earlier? What if she hadn’t known her sister was headed for the kneeling altar? But now Sadie would be making her covenant to the church, so surely Derry was out of the picture.
Thankful for that, Leah breathed a sigh of relief. Keeping Sadie’s secret had tuckered her out but good, knowing that if something bad had happened to her sister, Leah herself would’ve borne the responsibility. Things were changing for the better, after all.
Chapter Eleven
Wednesday at the noon meal, Sadie volunteered to tend the vegetable stand by the road, “so Leah can help Mamma if need be,” she’d said. Dat nodded his head, looking a mite bewildered at her eagerness. Mamma said that was all right with her, since Leah and the twins—once Hannah and Mary Ruth returned home from school—had other chores to see to later this afternoon. Mary Ruth had offered at breakfast to go out round four o’clock, “spell you off some,” she’d said, but Sadie insisted she could easily look after things without any help. She didn’t want sympathy just because she wasn’t feeling so well these days.
So she was on her own, just the way she’d planned to be, having taken extra care to comb her hair back smoothly on the sides, tucking the loose strands tightly into the low bun at the nape of her neck. She’d worn Derry’s favorite color, too. “The color of your eyes,” he had said early on, after one of their first meetings. Now she sometimes wondered if he even noticed how closely the blue fabric matched her eyes on the sunniest days, as today definitely was. Temperatures had dropped slightly in the night, so she wore her clean white sweater over her cape dress, and though she’d come out to the roadside barefooted, she thought about returning to the house to pull on her high-top black shoes, first time the idea had crossed her mind since clear last spring. During the night there had been a trace of frost on the ground, maybe a bit soon for this early in September. Still, she remembered looking out the bedroom window this morning and seeing Dat’s and Leah’s footprints left behind on the thick green lawn. Now the sun stood high in the blue sky and there wasn’t a breath of wind. The day had turned out much warmer than anyone might’ve expected. Who would’ve guessed the predawn hours had been so cold?
Farmers were in full swing, busy filling silos. Vegetable gardens were slowly emptying out and the corn was turning fast. “Buddies Day” came round perty often, when cookie-baking frolics and canning bees were plentiful, well attended by the younger women, especially. Sadie didn’t mind so much making chowchow. Actually, she preferred cooking and canning bees over quilting, maybe because she sensed such scrutiny the past few times she’d been. She was glad Leah had gone in her stead recently to Anna Mast’s quilting. Not that she was happy to be under the weather, no. Just hadn’t felt like putting up with raised eyebrows and the unspoken questions that were surely being thought as she sat and stitched amidst a dozen or more women in fairly close proximity.
The last time she and Mamma had gone over to Hickory Hollow for an all-day frolic, two big quilts were in frames—the Sunshine-and-Shadow pattern for Mamma’s friend Ella Mae Zook, the other the Log Cabin pattern for Ella Mae’s twin sister, Essie King, both women distant cousins of Fannie Mast. On another day the same group of women had gotten together at Ella Mae’s to make a batch of fruit mush. Sadie’s mouth watered at the memory just now, and she recalled that she and Mamma had returned home to find Leah turning the handle on the butter churn and feeling awful tired doing so . . . the closest thing to cooking she’d ever come.
Not so today. This morning, of all things, Leah had insisted on making breakfast for the family. Erschtaunlich—astonishing, really. Sadie had squelched a smirk, observing the look of delight on Mamma’s face, the pleasant smiles from Hannah and Mary Ruth. But the fried eggs had turned out a lot harder than Mamma’s usual “over easy,” the way Dat liked his. As for the bacon, the long strips had gotten much too crisp, almost too hard to eat. Yet the family was as polite as could be and ate what was set before them, chewing longer and harder than they had in many a year.
Sadie was thankful for this time to be alone, out here near the road, wondering if Derry would come by or not . . . hoping he’d received her note. Going round to the front of the stand, she eyed the arrangement of long wooden shelves she and Leah had constructed late in the spring when early peas and head lettuce were first coming in. All told, there were three levels—bushel baskets of sweet potatoes and red beets on the first; bicolored pear-shaped gourds, as well as lime green, yellow, orange, and dark green gourds shaped like miniature bottles, eggs, and apples on the second shelf, along with acorn squash and butternut squash, late raspberries, strawberries, and blackberries. Turnips and tomatoes lined the third shelf. Occasionally, Hannah brought out a flat basket with embroidered handkerchiefs, offering them to the regular customers if they purchased more than a dollar’s worth of produce. Of course, there were always the favorites—usually nearby neighbors—who insisted on purchasing the dainty hankies no matter how much produce they bought. Here lately, Mary Ruth had been baking a whole lot of pumpkin-nut loaf, which was selling out nearly as fast as she could bake it.
Just as her first customers for the afternoon drove up, Sadie moved back to the side of the produce stand. It was Mrs. Sauder and Mrs. Kraybill, two of their most frequent visitors, just down the road about a mile and a half to the southeast. Mrs. Sauder was always headed somewhere, like Strasburg, running errands with two preschool-age children in the backseat, “before my hubby gets home from work,” she would say. Mrs. Kraybill was the Mennonite neighbor who drove Hannah and Mary Ruth to school three days a week. Dat, on the other two days, took the twins to school in his market wagon on his way up to Bird-in-Hand.
“What’ll it be today?” Sadie asked, folding her hands and waiting while the women looked things over.
“Oh, I think I’ll have several pints of strawberries and blackberries,” said Mrs. Sauder.
“Makin’ some pies, then?” asked Sadie.
“My husband loves his fruit pies. So do the children.” Here, Mrs. Sauder motioned toward little Jimmy and Dottie, who were grinning up at Sadie from the car.
After Mrs. Kraybill chose her fresh vegetables for the week, a steady stream of folk began to stop by. It seemed to Sadie that the gourds and squash were in greatest demand, and by two o’clock, once she’d sold what was left of them, the berries and tomatoes were almost gone, too.
Standing there, reshuffling the remaining items, Sadie was a bit surprised, yet very pleased, to look up and see Derry’s gray automobile pulling onto the shoulder of the road. At once she noticed his plaid wool jacket and cuffed blue jeans as he strolled toward her. Usually when she saw him he was wearing a short-sleeved shirt and sometimes a nicer pair of trousers. But today he’d dressed as if he had made the trip just to see her instead of having come straight from work.
She looked at him and smiled, waiting for him to speak first.
“Hi, Sadie,” he said.
“Hullo.” Her eyes sea
rched his.
“I almost didn’t drop by today.”
Was it the note she’d sent? Was he displeased?
“Well, I’m glad you did,” she said. “Care for some sweet potatoes or turnips for your mother?”
Nodding his head, he dug his hand in his pocket, pulling out some change. “Here, take whatever you’re asking for them.”
“No . . . no, I didn’t mean it thataway. I meant for you to take something home for supper, to your family, from me . . . to them.”
He broke into a big smile then, warming her heart. “Thanks, but I can pay.” He chose a turnip and a handful of yams.
“You’ll enjoy a tasty meal tonight.” She felt odd making small talk, aware of the awkward strain between them.
“I received your letter.” His voice had turned suddenly flat. “My mother saw it first, in the mailbox.”
“Oh . . . I’m sorry if—” “From now on, it would be best if you didn’t send anything through the mail. Wait until I contact you.”
So she had been too bold. But with no telephone, no other way to keep in touch with him except the mail, how were they to communicate? Seemed to her the last couple of times they’d talked, it had been too easy to offend him, though she didn’t know why . . . and it was much harder to make amends.
He turned to leave, heading back to his car, carrying turnips and sweet potatoes in the brown bag she’d given him. Should she say again that she was ever so sorry? Plead with him? Mamma would say no, plain and simple. It wasn’t a gut thing to be schandlos—shameless—with a young man. Yet Sadie would like to hear him say good-bye to her at least. Anything at all. But something in her knew that if she dared to call out, she might not see him again. And she could never live with that. So she remained silent, the lump in her throat crowding out her very breath.
Please come back, she thought, fighting tears.
He started up the engine and drove slowly to the front of the stand, stopped, leaned his head down, and called to her through the open window on the passenger side, “Hop in, Sadie. Let’s go for a spin.”
A ride in his car? Ach, he still loved her!
She wanted to abandon her post and go with him, wherever he was headed. Yet what would her sisters think if she turned up missing? And worse, what would Mamma say if she left the remaining vegetables unattended? Then she knew what she could do. It was the clever thing Miriam and Adah Peachey did many a time when they were too busy with house or garden chores to just wait for customers. They made a sign, which was exactly what she did, too.
“I best be pricing the produce,” she told him, overjoyed that he wanted her with him. This day was turning out far better than she would’ve ever dreamed.
Reaching over, he opened the glove compartment of his car and took out a tablet of paper and a pen. “Here, price away.”
She propped up one of the homemade signs against the turnips. It read, Self-service today. Pay on the honor system.
Suddenly she felt ever so merry. More than she had for quite some time. The afternoon would be wonderful-gut, she could just tell now by the glow in Derry’s eyes. Jah, already the landscape looked brighter round them, as if someone had sprinkled golden sunbeams all over the cornstalks.
The school day was over promptly at three-thirty, and Hannah and her twin rode home with their Mennonite neighbors, whose children also attended the Georgetown School. As they made the turn off the road into their lane, Hannah noticed that the produce stand wasn’t being looked after. That’s odd, she thought.
The twins thanked Mrs. Kraybill for the ride, then headed into the house, kissed Mamma, and placed their school books on the kitchen table.
“How was your day at school?” Mamma asked in the midst of stirring up a chocolate dessert.
“Oh, we spent most of the day reviewing simple algebra,” Mary Ruth said.
“Was it easy for you, Hannah?” asked Mamma.
“Not so much, no,” Hannah answered. “Mary Ruth’s much better at numbers, you know.”
Mamma raised her eyebrows. “Algebra sounds like high school to me.”
“It’s required, is what the teacher says,” Mary Ruth spoke up, and Hannah wished her sister would just leave it be. Mamma didn’t need to know how awful exciting such hard problems were to Mary Ruth.
“Well, all I’ll say is do your best . . . but don’t be lookin’ to go past the eighth grade. That’s enough book learnin’ for Plain girls.” Mamma motioned to Hannah right then. “Run out and tell Sadie to come inside, will ya? I’m baking a triple batch of fudge meltaways, and I don’t recall the creamy filling part.”
“Does Sadie know?” Hannah asked.
Mary Ruth was nodding her head that jah, their big sister would definitely recall the ingredients for the filling.
“I’ll see if I can fetch her, then,” Hannah said, heading out the kitchen door.
So intent was she on finding Sadie, Hannah almost missed seeing the handwritten note propped against the turnips at the produce stand. “What’s this?” she whispered, wondering where her sister might’ve gone, leaving a note for their frequent and loyal customers of all things. This wasn’t satisfactory, not the way they were taught to do. Dat would be displeased, even though they knew of others who didn’t bother to oversee a roadside stand for hours on end. But that just didn’t seem considerate, somehow. Now what was she to tell Mamma, who’d sent her out here to trade off with Sadie?
Looking up and down the road, even going out on the hot pavement barefooted, she strained to see if her sister might’ve taken herself off for a short walk in either direction. But there were only acres and acres of corn, the golden brown tassels floating in the gentle breeze. And up the way, farmers threshing their golden wheat.
“Where could she have gone?” she said aloud. “Where?”
She shuddered to think that she’d have to tell Mamma about this. Turning, she ran back to the house to first tell Mary Ruth, who was raking the side yard, that Sadie had plumb disappeared. Then, realizing the seriousness of what this might mean, and having received an alarming reaction from her twin, the two of them rushed into the kitchen. There they found Mamma reciting the old recipe by heart, as if saying the ingredients out loud might help her remember every part.
“Mamma! Hannah says Sadie’s gone—left the produce stand without tellin’ a soul,” Mary Ruth exclaimed.
Mamma’s frown was hard against her forehead. “Hannah?” she said, looking right at her, all ears.
“Jah, Sadie left a sign for the customers.” Hannah nodded her head. “I looked all round, but she’s nowhere to be seen.”
Mamma’s shoulders slumped about two inches. “Well, she’s gotta be somewhere, ain’t so?”
But then and there, the plight of missing Sadie was dropped. Almost faster than Hannah could grasp, really. She was promptly sent back out to the road to remove the sign and stand there to greet folk and make change and whatnot. And Mary Ruth was the one chosen to help Mamma with the chocolaty coconut recipe. All the while Hannah kept thinking Leah didn’t know about Sadie’s being gone. Dat, neither. What would they think? Would they worry as Hannah was doing now? And as Mamma was, too, though trying to hide her concern. Surely Sadie hadn’t been forced to leave against her will. Or had she?
Something truly peculiar had been happening the last full month; Hannah knew that for sure. Her big sister was off somewhere else, at least in her head she was, and most all the time. Maybe that was about to change, though, because from what Mamma had said recently, Sadie was headed for church membership in just four days. Jah, she’d be in the line for baptism come this Sunday, which made Hannah feel ever so much better now, thinking on it . . . even with Sadie gone from where she usually stood behind the hearty turnips and juicy red tomatoes.
Derry drove Sadie all the way out to Pinnacle Overlook, near Holtwood, where they stood high on a cliff and gazed out at the Susquehanna River, an expanse of greenish gray water beneath a robin-egg blue sky. He took her by surprise, whisperi
ng in her ear that he loved her and was sorry about what he’d said earlier . . . about his mother discovering the note in the mailbox and all. He seemed to want to make up for his hasty words and kissed her softly on the cheek when tears in her eyes threatened to spill down her face. He held her hand as they strolled along. All was forgiven again.
“Uncle Sam wants me after Christmas,” he said when they were back in the car, speeding down the highway.
“Your uncle?”
He pursed his lips and motioned her over next to him. And she did. She slid across the front seat and sat right beside him, snuggling close when he put his arm round her shoulders. She listened carefully to his curious explanation that Uncle Sam actually stood for the United States—“Understand now, Sadie?” Ach, he could be so dear when he wanted to be.
But what he said next left her completely shaken. “You’re gonna join up with the soldiers?” she said.
“That’s right. I’m enlisting into the United States Army the minute I turn eighteen.”
“But I thought—you and I . . .”
“Aw, Sadie, it won’t be forever. You’ll see.”
“So, then, are you sayin’ I’ll know where you’ll be?”
He turned toward her then, his breath sweet on her face. “Sure, I’ll write to you twice a day.”
His tender promise touched her deeply, so much so she nearly forgot his plans with the American uncle. She was more than willing to remove her prayer cap as they rode along, letting down her waist-length hair just for him. She took pleasure in the warm breeze coming in through the car windows, blowing her long locks back away from her face, breathing in the spicy scent of early autumn.
Derry was a fast driver but awful gut at it as he steered with one hand on the wheel, the other caressing her shoulder. If today he asked her to be his wife, she’d say she would marry him, let the chips fall where they may. Truth was, come Sunday she was joining church, so if she ran off and married him after that, she’d be shunned for sure. Even still, she had to go ahead with baptism for Dat’s and Mamma’s sake, if nothing else.
The Covenant Page 11