“Mandy,” Titus said, pulling her in for a bear hug. “I didn’t know you were here. Are you in for a visit?”
“Jah, for a few weeks.”
“Well, Mamm will be cross if you don’t come down to the house for a visit. You can meet Ben’s fiancée Emma.”
Mandy nodded. “I’ll be sure to come.”
“I’ll tell her,” Titus said, gnawing on his toothpick. “Freeman Kiem told me Mammi asked him to come help move a stove today, and I thought, ‘Who better to help my mammi than her own grandson.’ So I invited myself.”
“Is Freeman coming?” Mandy asked.
“I told him I’d meet him here. He’s always late. Where are Mammi and Dawdi?” Titus strolled into the room and nodded at Noah. “Noah. I figured you’d be here. It seems nothing gets fixed in Bonduel without you being part of it.”
Noah stowed his measuring tape in the toolbox and smiled that attractive smile he’d flashed at Mandy when she first met him, before she knew how unpleasant he really was. “How is the pump working?” he said.
The toothpick bobbed on Titus’s lips as he spoke. “Better than new. Dat says we should have paid you double for all the money you saved us.”
Noah lowered his head. “You paid me plenty. I’m grateful for the work.”
“From what I hear,” Titus said, “people like your work so much, you’ve got enough jobs to keep you busy for about thirty more years.”
“God has been good to me.”
Okay. So Noah showed a little humility. Maybe he wasn’t completely beyond repair.
Mammi came bustling down the hall as if she were late for her own wedding. Dawdi ambled far behind. “Oh, Titus,” she said. “It’s only you. I was afraid I missed the introductions.”
Titus took the toothpick out of his mouth and kissed Mammi on the cheek. “Good to see you too, Mammi.”
She nudged his shoulder. “Don’t tease me. I didn’t mean it like that. Of course I’m happy to see you. You’re just not who I was expecting.”
“Freeman’s coming soon,” Titus said.
Mammi’s eyes danced. “Actually, this works out better than planned. Mandy, come stand over here by me while Titus answers the door. It will give you a better view of each boy as he comes in.”
Titus gnawed on his toothpick. “Is this a parade, or are you making matches again, Mammi?”
“Never you mind, Titus. Just do your job and don’t ask any questions.”
“What’s my job again?” Titus asked, squinting in concentration.
Mammi went to her hall closet and pulled out five of her colorful hand-knitted pot holders. “Answer the door when the boys come, dear,” Mammi said, handing the pot holders to Titus, “and give each of them a pot holder as a welcome gift.”
Mammi took Mandy by the elbow and dragged her near the sofa. “You and I will inspect each boy as he enters.”
Mandy couldn’t help but giggle.
Dawdi didn’t seem as interested in finding Mandy a husband as he was about getting a new stove. While Titus hovered near the door and Mammi clutched Mandy’s hand, Dawdi had Noah show him where the stove was going to go and gave Noah his opinion on where to drill the hole for the gas line. Dawdi acted as if he truly respected Noah’s knowledge, as if Noah were a close friend instead of a boy who broke hearts with his cell phone.
They didn’t have to wait long for the first visitor. Titus, who obviously wanted to perfectly execute his responsibilities, opened the door almost before the knock came. Two young men stood on the porch, one tall with curly hair and the other shorter, with a mouth full of braces. He looked about fourteen years old. Titus invited them in and handed each a pot holder.
Mammi leaned to whisper in Mandy’s ear. “That’s Paul Zook. He’s going to have nice teeth in seven to nine months. The tall one is Melvin Lambright. He’s twenty-nine years old and has a gute farm with his dat, but he’s lactose intolerant. Do you mind a husband with an acid stomach?”
Mandy couldn’t do anything but humor her mammi, who took her matchmaking duties very seriously. “I suppose an acid stomach is better than a snoring problem.”
Mammi raised her hand to her mouth. “Oh dear. I didn’t ask about snoring.”
Both Melvin and Paul immediately sought out Noah and shook his hand. Mandy heard Paul ask Noah something about a water heater, and both boys listened intently as Noah launched into an explanation that Mandy couldn’t begin to be interested in.
Adam Wengerd arrived next. Stationed close to Titus, Sparky greeted him with a soft yip. Adam was almost as handsome as Noah Mischler. He had a good face and eyes the color of caramel drizzled over ice cream.
“Adam teaches school,” Mammi whispered as they watched Adam slap Noah on the shoulder and join in a conversation about copper piping. “So he’d be out of a job if he married you. You might want to keep that in mind. But he has gute hair. I’m partial to wavy hair like that.”
The last two boys arrived. One of them must have been Freeman because Titus greeted him with a warm handshake.
“That’s Davy Burkholder and Freeman Kiem,” Mammi said. “Davy hasn’t been baptized yet. He is in love with his cell phone.”
Mandy raised her eyebrows and nodded in disapproval. Noah Mischler had a cell phone too. She wouldn’t give the time of day to a boy who had a cell phone.
“But Davy is a gute boy,” Mammi said. “He loves to hunt. Think of the wonderful venison you could eat if you married him.”
Mandy wrinkled her nose. Venison made her gag. She only ate it when absolutely necessary—like when Mammi served it and she didn’t want to hurt her feelings.
Mammi hooked her arm around Mandy’s elbow. “Freeman can crack nuts with his teeth.”
And that must have been all Mandy needed to know about Freeman.
Freeman and Davy also immediately found Noah. Mandy’s five potential husbands plus Titus gathered around Noah as if he were handing out free ice cream cones. They seemed to hang on his every word, acting like he had all the answers to every question ever asked.
Didn’t they know that Noah Mischler slammed doors in the faces of unsuspecting girls?
“Yoo-hoo,” Mammi called, waving her hand as if she were signaling a taxi. “Yoo-hoo, everybody. I’d like you to meet my granddaughter Mandy Helmuth.” In unison, the boys stopped talking. Mammi couldn’t leave well enough alone. “Mandy is only in town a short time. Any of you who would like to ask her on a date had better hurry up.”
Mandy’s face caught fire with embarrassment. The room full of boys stared at her as if they expected her to do a somersault or some other circus trick right there in Mammi’s great room. She would have gladly crawled underneath the sofa and taken up residence with the dust bunnies.
Something akin to sympathy traveled across Noah’s face. He thumped Adam on the back with his palm and nudged Freeman with his shoulder. “Quit staring and help me move this stove. I don’t know about you, but I got other stuff I gotta do today.”
Noah’s unconcerned manner immediately dispelled the awkward tension in the room. Titus and Freeman laughed, and the boys turned their attention to the stove, acting as if they’d forgotten Mandy was in the room. She breathed a sigh of relief and felt almost grateful to Noah Mischler. Almost. He was in a hurry to move the stove, nothing more. He hadn’t intended to help ease Mandy’s embarrassment. But at least no one was staring at her anymore.
Mandy decided to stay out of the way and watch. She couldn’t begin to help lift the old cookstove, and Noah would surely be annoyed if she tried to help.
“We need to shove the stove out from the wall and lift together,” Adam said.
Noah shook his head. “Nae. Let’s do it the easy way. Freeman, you and Davy detach the pipe and take it apart. I’ll be right back. Adam, can you help me?”
Noah and Adam bounded out the front door.
“He’s a smart one,” Dawdi said, grinning and gazing pointedly at Mandy, as if Noah’s intelligence were something she should know a
bout.
Before Freeman and Davy had pulled the pipe from the stove, Noah returned with a strange cart that stood low to the ground and looked like a flat red wagon or a skinny lawn mower. Adam followed, carrying three or four sheets of cardboard.
“We can get the stove out of the kitchen with this,” Noah said. “I’ll need you to keep it steady and then lift it down the stairs and into my wagon.”
Even though Mandy had determined never to speak to Noah again, her curiosity got the better of her. “What is that?”
Noah glanced at her. “It’s a floor jack. It can lift almost anything.”
“I should have thought of that,” Titus said, forgetting that he mostly never had thoughts that deep.
The stovepipe squealed as Davy and Freeman tried to jiggle it loose from the cookstove.
“Wait,” Noah said, reaching into his toolbox for a screwdriver. “You’ve got to unscrew the pipe from the ceiling support.”
Davy and Freeman did as they were told, and with a little more coaching from Noah, detached the pipe from the stove. A cloud of black ash floated into the air once the pipe was off.
“Ach, du lieva,” Mammi said. “Oh, my goodness. I should have cleaned that better.”
Mandy put her arm around Mammi. “It’s okay. We will give the house a gute dusting once the stove is in.”
Noah took the sheets of cardboard and laid them over Mammi’s floor, making a path to the front door.
“Don’t want to hurt the wood,” Dawdi said.
The other boys moved out of the way, and Noah deftly slid the jack under the stove. He pumped the handle up and down, and the jack slowly rose, lifting the stove with it. Adam and Melvin supported the massive stove on either side to ensure it wouldn’t tip, and Noah slowly wheeled the jack with the stove to the door.
The boys followed Noah outside with Mandy and Sparky close behind. At the edge of the porch, Noah lowered the jack and slid it out from under the stove. Dawdi stood back. As much as he liked to do things himself, he was an eighty-five-year-old man who was wise enough to know he didn’t want to strain his back.
The seven young men surrounded the stove and lifted it from the porch to the ground. Noah pumped up his jack again and pulled the stove over the grass to his flatbed wagon parked in front of Mammi and Dawdi’s house. Again the team of seven was needed to lift the stove into the wagon. This was an amazing feat. That stove had to weigh at least eight hundred pounds. All the boys looked strong, but Noah was by far the most muscular, with arms as solid as good timber. In the tepid air of early September, sweat dripped down his face.
Once the stove sat in the middle of the wagon bed, Noah wasted no time. He pulled a pile of ropes from a box near the wagon seat and started securing the stove to the wagon. No wonder Noah had brought a team of horses. It would take quite a bit to get that thing down the hill.
With a bandanna, Freeman mopped up the moisture from his face. “What will you do with the old stove?”
“Noah’s going to sell it,” Dawdi said, overseeing proceedings from the porch with Mandy and Mammi.
Noah tied the stove to the wagon as if he’d done such a thing a thousand times. “If nobody wants it, I’ll sell it for scrap.”
Davy ran back into the house and emerged with the stovepipe. Noah secured it onto his wagon with his seemingly endless supply of rope.
“He’s got gute hands for it, don’t he?” Dawdi said as they watched Noah work.
“Noah’s a gute boy,” Mammi said, paying no attention to what Noah was doing. She nudged Mandy with her elbow. “What do you think of Davy? His ears stick out a bit, but he has beautiful long eyelashes.”
Mandy gazed with concern as Noah tied knot after knot. Was he making them tight enough? Would the stove slide off the wagon the minute it got going down the hill? What man was ever careful about such things?
“Cum, everybody,” Mammi said. “Let’s have some of Mandy’s pie.”
The boys began to file into the house. Unable to resist, Mandy leaped off the porch, dodged Adam and Melvin coming the other way, and went to Noah’s wagon. Starting at one corner, she tugged on the ropes and fingered each of Noah’s knots to make sure they would hold. The ropes seemed to stretch sufficiently taut to hold the stove in place, and she wouldn’t have been able to loosen those knots even if she had twenty fingers on each hand.
Noah seemed to sneak up beside her. “Checking to see if I did it right?” he said as he secured one last knot. There was more of exasperation in his voice than resentment.
“Just making sure,” she said, lifting her chin slightly so he knew he couldn’t intimidate her. So he knew there was at least one person who wasn’t fooled by his big muscles and clever mind. “I don’t know you very well. You might be careless.”
Mandy glanced behind her. No one would hear their conversation. Everyone else was probably sitting at the table with their forks in the air, eagerly awaiting a slice of pie.
Noah’s brows inched closer together. “You knew everything about me yesterday. Maybe you think a boy who treats girls like dirt is incapable of doing anything right.”
She caught her breath when she heard her own words tossed back into her face. “You don’t have to confess your sins to me. I’m already fully aware of what kind of boy you are.”
He pinned her with a piercing gaze. “Are you?” he said, scorn dripping from his tone.
“You told me to get my hinnerdale off your porch.”
He folded his arms. “You wouldn’t leave.”
“You insulted my freckles.”
He rested his hand on the wagon and leaned closer. She leaned away. “I like freckles,” he said. “It’s your nose in my business I don’t like.”
They scowled at each other until Noah seemed to give up on the conversation. He gave the nearest rope one last tug and turned his back on Mandy. “You can be as indignant as you want,” he said, “but I’m going to have another piece of that pie. The girl who made it has a sharp tongue, but her pies are sweeter than honey.”
After her fourth morning of bran flakes, Mandy repented of ever thinking an unkind thought about Mammi’s Eggs Benedict. At this point, she would have been content with a nice pot of boiling water just to break up the monotony. Last Friday, the new stove had arrived half an hour after Noah and the other boys had hauled the old one out of the house, but Noah had taken one look at it and insisted the deliverymen put it back on the truck. Dawdi had ordered a stove that couldn’t be converted to run on liquid propane gas, so another one had to be ordered. No one in the Amish community would have allowed a delivery on the Sabbath, and today was Labor Day, so the stove would supposedly be delivered tomorrow after a very long weekend of cold cereal for every breakfast, bread and cheese at every supper, and tuna salad with pickles for dinner.
After milking and other chores, Mandy borrowed Dawdi’s buggy and made a beeline for Kristina’s house. Surely Kristina had a working stove and food in her fridge. Mandy thought she might die for a warm cup of cocoa with marshmallows floating on top or even a piece of slightly warm toast.
Hopefully Kristina would offer to feed her something. Anything. Especially if it hovered above the temperature of lukewarm milk.
Noah had stayed after the other boys had left, patching the hole in the roof where the stovepipe had been. Mandy’s tongue had gone dry when she had overheard Dawdi asking Noah to reshingle the entire roof once he had installed the new stove. She was only going to be on Huckleberry Hill for a month. Would she have to endure Noah’s presence for the entire visit?
At least he wouldn’t be in the house making a pest of himself. She could easily ignore him altogether even if he clomped around on the roof all day. At least she wouldn’t have to endure the painful silences that prevailed when he was in the same room with her.
Mandy turned the horse down the road to Kristina’s house. She planned on spending the entire day with Kristina, offering her comfort and talking her out of ever trying to get back with Noah. Kristina and M
andy had grown up together in Charm and had been best friends for as long as Mandy could remember. Kristina’s dat had bought a piece of land at a gute price and moved his family to Bonduel last year. Mandy had cried so hard when she said good-bye that her eyes had stung for days afterward. She and Kristina wrote every week and told each other the secrets they never shared with anyone else.
Mandy loved Kristina, even if she was a bit melodramatic at times. To Kristina, life was either absolutely, gloriously marvelous or dismally, depressingly horrible, with no emotions existing between the two extremes. Dat said Kristina was needy. Mandy was just happy to be needed.
As she got closer to Kristina’s house, Mandy spied her friend ambling down the road barefoot with a sunflower dangling from her fingers. Mandy reined in the horse as she reached Kristina’s side. Kristina paused and slumped her shoulders.
“What are you doing?” Mandy said.
Kristina sighed mournfully. “Just taking a stroll and thinking about the boy I love.”
“Really, Krissy. You’ve got to stop. He’s not worth the aggravation.”
Kristina slid open the door, jumped inside the buggy, and pulled her phone from her apron pocket. “He won’t answer my texts. I don’t know what I’ll do.”
“How do you even get service out here?”
“They just put in a new cell phone tower in February. Almost everybody gets service now.” She punched a few buttons on her phone before her demeanor altered almost immediately and she acted as if she’d just been invited to a surprise birthday party. “Oh, Mandy. I’m so glad you’ve come. We’ve got to get to Coblentz’s pasture immediately.” She shut the door and tapped impatiently on the dashboard. “Hurry. I don’t want to miss him.”
Mandy didn’t even so much as jiggle the reins. “What is going on?”
Kristina was so eager, she seemed to bounce like a ball. “Noah. I found out he’s helping Jethro Coblentz fix his corn picker. If we hurry, we can spy on him from behind the trees by the river.”
Huckleberry Harvest (The Matchmakers of Huckleberry Hill Book 5) Page 3