Jacob's Return

by Annette Blair

  “Ya, Datt.”

  “And Rachel, did you have a good time at Esther’s? Your Mama is good?”

  Simon’s disdainful sneer said he expected her betrayal … so she would embrace the wickedness he claimed of her?

  With sudden insight, Rachel realized that the wickedness of others made Simon feel righteous. Deacon Simon Sauder needed others to fall, so he could rise.

  Foolishly astonished by the revelation, she would bet that in his mind someone ‘unworthy,’ like her, made him feel more worthy.

  As worthless as he believed her to be, as he’d convinced her she was, she must have been very good for his self-confidence. She bristled. “Well, no more,” she said, surprising everyone further, especially Simon. “Thank you, Levi. Yes, Mama felt better last evening,” she said, pleased to vex Simon and grateful that Esther had stopped by with the news earlier.

  Clearly bewildered, Levi turned to the children. “And how are my pumpkins?”

  Aaron banged his spoon on the table and laughed in response, lightening the mood.

  Favoring her sore shoulder, Rachel lifted Emma to bring her to the sink for a wash. “I swear, Jacob did not teach them the proper use of a spoon,” she said.

  “They’d rather use their spoons to make noise,” Jacob said, coming into the kitchen, and Rachel’s heart quickened as he stepped right up to her, bold as you please, and took Emma from her arms. “Your shoulder,” he whispered. And Rachel experienced a mixture of fear, and longing, that with a look or a touch, he would declare their love.

  As his big hand covered Emma’s tiny white kapp to hold his daughter’s cheek against his, he looked straight into her eyes. “Beautiful morning,” he said.

  Rachel nodded and moved to the corner jelly cupboard, presenting her back to the room at large, to keep from baring her soul with the love in her eyes.

  Jacob sat Emma on the sideboard to wash her face. “You smell good, like applesauce,” he said, then he carried her over to Aaron. “How’s my rascal?”

  “Good boy,” Aaron said, presenting his porridge covered face, which Jacob kissed. “You taste like applesauce.”

  Aaron’s chuckle blended with Levi’s belly laugh.

  “Any fassnachts this morning, Mudpie?” Jacob asked. “I’ve a craving for something sweet.”

  “Her name is Rachel!” Simon shouted, and only Levi was surprised.

  Jacob sat with Emma on his lap. “The English call fassnachts ‘dough nuts,’ you know. Funny name, when they don’t look or taste like nuts, don’t you think Simon?”

  “I think it’d be nice to eat a quiet breakfast once in a while!”

  Aaron furrowed his brow. “Unk?”

  “Your uncle’s a bear today,” Jacob said.

  “Unkabear,” Aaron said.

  “Good name, Unkabear,” Jacob laughed.

  Simon ignored the merriment and stood. “Come, Jacob. Timothy hay and mixed clover to cut today.”

  “I won’t work with you, Simon.”

  Jacob’s words resounded in the sudden silence.

  Rachel watched for Levi’s reaction as Simon stood and left the house. “Are you and Ruben going to see if you can move the press today, Jacob?” she asked in one breath, to give him a chance to cool his ire and keep his anger from his father.

  Jacob sighed for his mistake and shook his head, asking Rachel’s pardon with his shrug. Running his hand through his hair, he went to the door and put on his straw hat. “First I’ll see Ruben. Then we’ll make a deal with Atlee. Then we’ll bring you your printing press. See you tonight.”

  “No sailor’s songs when you come home,” Rachel called after him.

  Jacob waved away her concern. “Ya, ya, ya,” he said, smiling all the way to the barn. No one could entertain him like Rachel. Well, sometimes Ruben could.

  Ruben Miller, his friend nearly as long as Rache, had made him smile often over the years, and Jacob was looking forward to seeing him again.

  Maybe Ruben could turn his mind from Rachel.

  * * * *

  After last night, he needed her more than ever. He ached just to touch her cheek or squeeze her hand. But he could not, and the sooner he tamed such impulses, the better for them both.

  As he rounded the last bend in Crooked Road, Ruben’s farm came into sight, and what a dilapidated sight it was. According to Levi, Ruben wasn’t doing too good after losing not only his first, but his second wife too, in childbirth. And it didn’t take more than a quick look over his farm to see it.

  The barn door hung aslant and a wooden sap bucket on its side kept it from closing all the way. As Jacob pulled the market buggy to a stop and threw Caliope’s reins over the hitching post, a scrawny chicken flew over the bucket to join his skinny friends in the yard.

  When Jacob noticed how bad the house’s loose boards and windblown shingles looked up close, he almost got back in the buggy. He wasn’t certain he could handle Ruben’s misery right now; his own was too fresh. Still, he pressed on.

  A tattered schnitzelbank basket hung from a low hook on the front porch rail. A family of horned larks nesting inside gazed up at him with questioning, yellow-browed eyes. “Morning. Guess nobody bothers you much,” he said to them.

  Climbing the porch steps, he had to jump a broken one, and almost landed on his knees.

  It took plenty of knocking to hear a grumbling, “Coming, damn it,” from inside … upstairs, maybe.

  Ruben opened the door, hooked a suspender over his shoulder, scratched his thick, brown beard, and yawned widely. Then he looked at his visitor. “Jake Sauder, you mangy, old wolf hound.” He barked a laugh.

  “We could stand side by side and let somebody else judge who has the mange here,” Jacob said, as he stepped into the kitchen.

  Ruben looked at himself, perhaps for the first time in some while, because he seemed surprised, and nodded at what he saw. “Ach. Mangy. Ya. Coffee?”

  “You just get up?”

  “Early for me.”

  “You don’t work your Datt’s farm?”

  “Why bother? Farming don’t call to me these days.”

  Jacob gazed about the ramshackle kitchen. “Neither cleaning.”

  Ruben looked around too. “That neither.”

  “What does?”

  “Ach. A little bit of this, a little of that. I dig a well, shingle a roof. Somebody needs it done, I do it. When I run out of food, I do some more.”

  Jacob hurt for his friend. “Where’s that coffee?”

  Ruben shrugged. “I’m waiting for you to make it.”

  Jacob shook his head, feeling selfish for his misery when Ruben seemed so much worse off. Behind a greasy stew pot, he located a dented coffee pot, then he removed the lid and looked inside. “Ach. You ever clean this thing?”

  “Hardly ever.”

  “You need a wife—”

  “Jacob—”

  The discord was interrupted by a blackbird stepping through a hole in the window to peck at some corn dried to the sideboard.

  “I’m sorry, Ruben,” Jacob said, still shocked by what he’d said. “I’ve got a streak of stupid a mile wide.”

  “All right, Jake. Here it is. You’re back. We’re friends. We’ll spend some time together maybe. I’ll say this once and we’re done. I married. Two times. I got a baby on each wife. They both died trying to give me those boys. I got two dead wives, two dead sons. You got one dead wife, but two children. You’re ahead. Don’t think I’m gonna listen to you moan about losing Rachel. There’s no sympathy in here.” Ruben slapped his burly chest hard. “Empty. Your brother got Rachel. You’re still better off than me. Hell, everybody’s better off than me. Now give me some coffee and tell me what’s on your mind.”

  After a good ten minutes of silence, Jacob slammed Ruben’s cup of coffee down in front of him. Taking a long hot sip of his own, he eyed his rugged, downtrodden friend over the rim. “Guess I forgot you were such a self-centered, self-pitying, sorry excuse of a—”

  Ruben smiled.
“Missed you too.”

  Jacob smiled too. “Want to share some hard cider with old Atlee Eicher and talk him into selling his decrepit printing press?”

  “You mean decrepit Atlee Eicher.”

  Jacob smirked. “Ya.”

  Ruben raised a brow. “Why?”

  “So Rachel can use it to publish the Amish Chalkboard.”

  “That’ll tug on old Simon’s chest hair good.”

  Jacob smiled so wide, a chuckle fell out, and before he knew it, he and Ruben were laughing so hard, they frightened Caliope as they climbed into the buggy.

  “This horse smells,” Jacob said taking up the reins

  “That’s me,” Ruben said. And they laughed some more.

  “Gonna help me fix up the press after we buy it?”

  “Sure. Rachel gonna feed me while we’re fixing it?”

  “Sure. I’ll even throw in some cash and a bar of soap.”

  Ruben nodded. “Deal.”

  * * * *

  Atlee Eicher had been the oldest member of the church district for sixteen years. As far back as Jacob could remember, he kept a nickel cigar clamped between his teeth. Jacob was pretty sure he clutched one there when he slept too.

  Atlee’s great-great-grandfather, an early Anabaptist, had died for his faith back in Switzerland. Atlee’s great-grand-father knew the inside of a cave for worship as a young boy, hiding from those who wanted to persecute the followers of Jacob Ammann for their beliefs. That same printing press printed the notices telling the Amish in what secret place the next worship would be.

  Atlee grew up knowing want, hunger, and sacrifice. He’d heard, over and over again, the story of his martyred relative’s faith, his sacrifice, his torture. He’d tasted fear and determination from the mouths of those who knew it, and death-defying faith from those who practiced it. Sailing across the ocean as a young boy, Atlee lost his mother and little sister.

  As a result of all this, Atlee came across as hardened, shrewd and stubborn. True to character, like all German settlers, Atlee held a well-deserved reputation as diligent and hard-working, and he could pinch a penny harder than any man Jacob had ever known, English or Amish.

  Atlee Eicher was also a man you would want beside you in battle. Because Atlee was loyal. And he fought for what he believed in with single-minded determination.

  Only one thing about Atlee worried Jacob. He was a packrat. He did have the first tooth he ever lost. Jacob had seen it. And that press was a piece of his family’s history.

  Jacob only hoped the old man remembered how good Rache was to him last winter. That would matter when it came right down to Great-Great-Grandpa Eicher’s Gutenberg Printing Press. It would matter plenty.

  Atlee’s house was wide open … and empty.

  “No wonder no woman ever married him. This place is a dump,” Ruben said.

  “Ya, well, then you’re safe from the women, too.”

  “Good. That’s how I want it.” Ruben went into Atlee’s best room and stopped at the bottom of the enclosed stairway. “Hey, Atlee? You hiding up there?”

  “No need to hide, already, little Ruben.”

  Ruben spun around. “God A’mighty, Atlee!” He slapped his hat against his leg. “Scared the spit out of me again. Damn you.”

  Sitting in a corner chair, Atlee cackled around his cigar. “You always make so.” His eyes narrowed. “That little Jake?”

  “That’s us,” Jacob said. “Little Jake and Little Ruben, except we’re bigger now. Got any cider left? We’re plenty thirsty.”

  “Ach, the apples. A good harvest it giffs. Plenty cider. Behind the flour bin, backdoor cupboard, already.”

  “Same place for eighty years,” Jacob said.

  “How you know, you young pup? Been around no more’n thirty yourself, aint? The day you were born, you ‘n Annie-belle, I remember good. I never saw such tiny babes kicking.” He cupped his huge, work-hardened hands side by side. “Held you here, each. Chust fit. God’s own miracles. Annie doing fine?”

  Jacob swallowed. Twenty-five years later, and he wished to God he could say yes.

  “Atlee forgets things these days,” Ruben whispered, as he took down the jug. “Remembers ninety years ago one minute; forgets yesterday the next.”

  “That should help.”

  “Not much.”

  “Look at this,” Jacob said holding up a cigar box.

  Ruben read the spidery writing on the cover. “String too short to use.” He shook his head. “Damn, he does save everything.”

  Jacob handed a cup of cider to their flinty-eyed host. “Beard’s all white now, Atlee. Reach your ankles yet?”

  “Chust about. You lookin for somethin, ain’t?”

  “Ya,” Jacob answered. “You remember Rachel? Rachel Zook?”

  “Your Rachel? Mudpie?”

  His Rachel. Jacob looked at Ruben, unable to form a reply.

  Ruben put a hand on the old man’s shoulder. “Ya, Atlee, Jacob’s Rachel. She made you some good medicine last winter, you remember? Made you better.”

  “Ya.” The old man’s beard did touch the floor when he leaned forward in his chair. “She want my old Gutenberg, aint?”

  This is too easy, Jacob thought, looking into Atlee’s wide, eager eyes. “Brought the market wagon,” he said, worried the man’s age-sharpened gaze might see into his cursed soul. “We came to get the press and bring it to her.”

  “Goot, goot. Kum, ve get.” He rose and began a slow, shuffling trek out the door. “Too hundred dollars, ya?”

  Jacob stopped dead in his tracks. “Chicken shit!”

  “Jacob Sauder, mind your cussin.” Atlee slapped his knee with a cackle. “I got you good, ain’t? Twenty-five, I say, and twenty-five is plenty good. It’s besser to be rich in heaven, aint? Kum, ve get, then more cider.”

  * * * *

  Rachel heard their off-key singing before Caliope pulled the market wagon into the yard. Shaking her head she went outside.

  She hid her smile as the exact words they sang took form. “My mother-in-law’s a cadaver, she lets the noodles burn, she turns the pancakes with a pitchfork—”

  They stopped when they saw her and she nearly laughed at their guilty faces. They looked at each other, shrugged, and began to sing, Bringing in the Sheaves.

  When Caliope stopped, Jacob threw her the reins. “Hey, Mudpie. Got your press.”

  “A mother-in-law song first, then a Mennonite one you sing, Jacob? You couldn’t do better?”

  “Ach, Rache.” He smiled sheepishly. “I couldn’t remember the sailor one.”

  “Good. Atlee give you any trouble?”

  “Just cider.” Ruben grinned and lifted her in the air to turn her in circles. “Hey, Mudpie. Got something good to eat?”

  “You smell like the inside of a barn, Ruben Miller.”

  “Why thank you, Rachel. I thought I smelled worse than that.”

  “You do,” Jacob said. “She’s just being polite.”

  Simon stood by the barn door wiping his hands on a rag, his usual grimace in place.

  Ruben rubbed his hands together. “Hey Jake. Let’s get to pulling those three or four chest hairs. This is the most fun I’ve had in years.”

  Rachel looked to Jacob for an explanation.

  “You don’t want to know. Can the rascal stay for supper?”

  “Sure. Quit at four and send him home with the buggy to take a bath and change his clothes. Esther’s coming for supper too.”

  Jacob put his hand on her arm. “Ach, not for me, Rache.”

  “For supper,” she said.

  They looked at each other, and Rachel knew if Jacob married, it would break her heart. But he wasn’t hers, and she’d best remember it.

  “Good mothering, Rachel,” Simon said indicating the house with a nod. “Looks like those normal two-year-olds learned something new today. Without your help.”

  Everyone turned to look, and Jacob laughed.

  Emma and Aaron stood on the porch, nak
ed as sheep after shearing. “Pa-pop, Pa-pop,” they called, jumping up and down.

  “Ach, you two,” Jacob said. “Where are their clothes?” he asked Rachel.

  “In their beds? They were napping ten minutes ago.”

  “Two new things today,” Jacob said as he scooped them up and brought them toward Ruben. “To climb from their cribs and to remove their clothes. Smart babies I got. Ruben here is my Emma and my Aaron.”

  For a minute Rachel thought Ruben would cry. Then he squared his shoulders and gave them a big smile. “Pleased to meet you,” he said. “Can you say, Ruuu ben?”

  “Boob,” Emma said, raising her arms to him.

  That tormented look passed over his face again, but more quickly this time. He took Emma into his arms and hugged her.

  Emma sniffed daintily, then leaned back looking at him uncertainly. She crinkled her nose.

  Ruben’s laughter erupted full force.

  Having Jacob home might bring Ruben back to the living. Or it might finish him off. Either way, Rachel thought, it would be better for Ruben than being neither one nor the other.

  “Why do my children have red fingertips?” Aaron opened his mouth and showed his father his tongue. “Ah, yes,” Jacob said. “And red tongues too?”

  “Churries!” Aaron said.

  Rachel nodded. “We went cherry picking this morning. With those two, it was one for the bucket, two for the mouth. A pit or two, I think, they swallowed, before they got the hang of spitting them out. But when they understood the way of it, the spitting they did best of all.”

  “Smart, didn’t I say so?”

  Rachel took the naked monkeys into the house to re-clothe them. Ruben and Jacob went to unload the press.

  Jacob and Ruben, sweating and grunting, lowered the Gutenberg from the back of the market buggy into the far corner of the barn’s lower-level near the window.

  Simon watched.

  “We could have used your help,” Jacob said, as he wiped his brow with his sleeve.

  “Not for this will I raise one finger. Everything to do with that newspaper is against the law of God.”

  Jacob leaned on the press and folded his arms. “I know I’m going to hate the answer, but how?”