By 7:45 a.m., a crowd of almost two hundred people milled around the yard. Some of the men leaned against the fences or walls, stiff and stern in their dark Mutza coats, discussing weather and crops. The women gathered together in clumps, their black bonnets nodding as they chatted about canning or gardening or children.
Furniture had been moved out of the downstairs to make room for the long, backless church benches, which arrived by wagon and could be transported from home to home. The benches were placed in every spare inch so that nearly everyone could see the center of the house from his or her seat—the center being where the ministers would preach.
Shortly before eight, as if drawn by a silent bell, the women organized themselves into a loose line and filed into the house. The young single women walked at the front of the line, the older ones at the back.
Rose half listened while Elmo preached a message, her attention focused more on keeping an eye on Luke, seated on the other side of the room from her. Normally she followed every word of the sermon, but this morning she wished the ministers would finish early. She was eager to get to the baptisms of Tobe and Bethany and felt very distracted.
A small plate of graham crackers was making its way around the room for parents who had little ones curled beside them. Rose saw Luke reaching out to grab one and she sent him an arched eyebrow look, straight across the room. Luke’s hand hovered over the plate, sensing his mother’s message without acknowledging eye contact. His shoulders shrugged in a big sigh and he passed the plate along, untouched. Down the row on the women’s side, a little girl was making a handkerchief mouse to amuse her toddler sister. She glanced over at Sarah, sleeping in Naomi’s arms.
Mim nudged her with an elbow. “Mom, who is that?”
“Where?”
“Sitting next to the insufferable Jesse Stoltzfus.” Who, Mim tried to ignore, was flashing her one of his sweet-rascal smiles.
“It’s Jesse’s cousin, visiting from Ohio. Why?”
“He can’t stop staring at Bethany. And Jimmy Fisher keeps noticing that very thing.”
To be sure, Jimmy was scowling at Jesse’s cousin, who was staring dreamily in Bethany’s direction. She was oblivious, Rose realized, her mind a million miles away.
Mim was glaring at Jesse’s cousin, not saying a word, of course, but then, she didn’t have to. Rose knew just what her daughter was trying to communicate; it was something Vera would do and she had to stifle a smile. Church, Mim was saying with her pointed stare, was not the place to make eyes at a girl.
The silence lay heavy and warm over the house. Bethany relaxed, they were nearly there. Only a few more moments and the baptism would begin. She breathed in the Sunday smells of laundry starch and shoe blacking and coffee percolating. So familiar, yet on this sunny spring morning, she felt as if she were experiencing church for the first time.
Bethany and Tobe had four crammed sessions with David Stoltzfus studying the Dordrecht Confessions. Usually, a minister spent nine sessions of instruction classes to go through all the Articles, but the bishop was eager to get Tobe baptized. Most likely, Bethany reasoned, he wanted to hurry before Tobe changed his mind.
Bethany expected the instruction classes to be boring, and they mostly were, but her brother made them surprisingly enjoyable. He peppered David Stoltzfus with all kinds of bold and audacious questions that the minister didn’t seem to mind at all. In fact, he enjoyed Tobe’s inquisitive mind and encouraged questions. It was a pity Jimmy Fisher declined to take part in the classes, Bethany mulled for the umpteenth time, because she knew he would’ve enjoyed the spirited and lively debates.
Earlier this morning, before church began, Jimmy had sidled close to her and asked if Tobe had smooth talked her into getting baptized with him. It wasn’t just smooth talk; Tobe had badgered her into taking the classes with him, but Jimmy didn’t need to know that. She gave him a benign smile.
“I just can’t understand why you’d want to go ahead with it now. I thought we’d wait and do it . . . you know . . . later.”
She tipped an eyebrow his way. “Oh? What’s later to you?”
“Well, what’s the rush to you?”
“It’s hard to explain. But it’s a real thing, you know, baptism opening the floodgates of grace.”
His mouth formed an O, but the word never made it past his lips. He gave her a strange look, before she moved to the porch where the women were gathering.
When the time came for the baptisms, Bethany looked out at the congregation, all those she knew and loved. Her face grew hot and her voice trembled and she felt herself perspire, but she didn’t waiver. Bishop Elmo asked her and Tobe questions: Did they still desire to be baptized? Were they ready to say goodbye to the world and to rebuke the devil? Would they stay in the church until the day they died?
Tobe gulped at that last one, took a long time answering, so long that everyone leaned forward on their benches, straining to hear him. He turned and held Naomi’s gaze for a moment. In a loud voice, he said, “Yes. Yes, I will,” and there was a sigh of relief among the benches.
Then the bishop turned to the congregation and asked questions of affirmation. He motioned to Tobe and Bethany to kneel for a prayer. A prayer so long that Bethany was sure her knees had sailed past hurting and had gone completely numb. The bishop’s wife unpinned Bethany’s prayer covering as Elmo took a pitcher of water and poured three trickles of water over Bethany—one for the Father, one for the Son, and one for the Holy Ghost—and she felt the water stream down her face. Then she was up, dripping and wet and cold, and she felt new.
The tables groaned with food. Oval platters offered up sandwiches of peanut butter and marshmallow cream mixed together, slathered on homemade bread. A simple bowl of cut apple wedges sat at each table’s end. There were trays of bologna and cheese, dishes of pickles and red beets. Coffee, tea, and containers of unsweetened grape juice—a lively purple from Amos Lapp’s own vineyard.
Rose set out a pitcher of hot coffee on the table and noticed Galen standing by the doorjamb. There was something about the set line of his mouth that made Rose decide to go and see what might be wrong. She followed him into the kitchen to find Bethany, Mim, and Vera, standing frozen in a tableau, their faces expressing different degrees of horror.
“Mom, you won’t believe it!” Mim said, barely able to speak. She held up a tray of half-moon apple pies with the corners nibbled away. “Every single one!”
“And my brownies!” Bethany gasped, white as a sheet. Teeth marks dented the corners of the brownies. Each one.
“It’s the same with the apple snitzes!” Mim’s tears were now openly flowing down her cheeks. “Luke. It was Luke. I know it was him.”
“No—the one to blame is Jesse Stoltzfus! Ee fauler Appel schteckt der anner aa.” One rotten apple corrupts all those that lie near it. Vera stood with her shoulders pulled back and her bosom lifted high, her nose wrinkled and her mouth puckered. “And now Jesse Stoltzfus has added sweet Mose Blank into his gang. Mose has been following him like a shadow lately and Nancy Blank is beside herself with worry. She blames Teacher Danny. She said it was his idea to get Mose friendly with that awful Jesse. She didn’t want her baby to be bullied and now he’s turned into a bully. Leroy Blank is talking of getting Danny turned out as a teacher.”
Mim gasped and Rose noticed that she looked both horrified and guilty, all at the same time. Mim fled the room and banged out the door of the house.
Mammi Vera’s face was working itself into a terrible anger. “When did that ruffian get into this house?”
“Jesse said he’d help the men with the benches,” Bethany said. “I told him I had counted all those brownies before he came in. I saw him eyeing the brownies.”
“If only they could have just eaten a few,” Rose said.
“It’s all ruined,” Mammi Vera said. “Entirely ruined. How easily the young can be seduced by the devil.” Her voice held that familiar high tinge of hysteria that meant a lecture about the devil
was on its way. She got very excited when things were emotional.
Rose had to take action. “Of course it’s not all ruined, Vera. Bethany, take the coffee out. Vera, hand me a knife. I’ll cut up the brownies and put out a smaller selection.”
Galen assembled the criminals together in the kitchen: Jesse, Luke, Mose, and Sammy. “Correct me if I have made an error in identifying you four as the ones who ate bites from the desserts.”
The boys looked around the room like rabbits caught in a trap.
“Well?” Galen’s voice thundered.
“Sammy wasn’t in on it,” Luke said.
“I did have a few bites, though,” Sammy said, his voice full of regret.
“Do you realize what you did? Bishop Elmo and Deacon Abraham are very interested to hear why you felt you had the right to ruin the desserts that Rose and Bethany and Mim made for today’s fellowship lunch. Ruin!” Galen roared the last word.
The boys jumped back in fright.
“But I told them I would handle it,” Galen said in his cool, slow way. “I told them you had all volunteered to wash every dish and plate and cup and glass. That it was your contribution. Tomorrow, right after school, you’ll put the benches back in the wagon and then return the furniture to the rooms. Then you would come to report to me when it is all completed.”
The boys looked at each other in dismay. That would take them all afternoon and evening.
Jimmy Fisher wandered into the kitchen, curious about what was going on.
“What about Jimmy Fisher? Would he like to help—?” Luke began.
“No, Luke, he wouldn’t want to,” Galen said, “and people like Jimmy Fisher will be delighted to know that you volunteered to put away the benches so they don’t have to come back tomorrow to do it.”
There was a beat of silence.
“This day will never be forgotten,” Galen said. “I want you boys to know that. Every time I see you, this will be at the forefront of my mind.”
Sammy’s eyes began to fill with tears.
“NOW.” Galen glared at the boys. “Get started this minute.”
The boys rushed outside to start gathering dirty dishes.
David Stoltzfus stood by the door. “Galen,” he said, in a voice of warning. “I think you might have frightened them.”
“Good.”
“Perhaps you could have just asked me or Anna to handle it. They are our children, after all.”
Rose looked at David. “Anna?”
He looked puzzled, then gave his head a shake. “I’m sorry. That was my wife’s name. I meant Rose. I meant you should have let Rose and me handle it.”
“But you weren’t handling it, David,” Galen said in a patient voice. “You were outside talking to people, completely oblivious to the mischief that your son had stirred up. I saw what you couldn’t—or wouldn’t—see.”
Rose looked across the room at Galen and their eyes locked. There was a message in those words. David opened his mouth to object and Rose cut him off. “He’s right, David. He saw something you didn’t see.”
The boys hurried into the kitchen, tail between their legs as they walked past Galen, their arms full of dirty dishes.
Rose looked once more at the criminals as they filled the sink with hot water and stirred soap into it. It was probably the first time they had ever washed a dish . . . and they would be washing hundreds today. Because her heart was big and the desserts hadn’t been entirely ruined, she gave them half a smile.
As Mim helped Elmo locate his buggy in a long row of buggies standing upright against the barn, the bishop kept exclaiming that it was amazing the way time raced by. It was already midafternoon, he said, astonished by that fact. It was extraordinary how old people thought time raced by. Mim found it went very slowly indeed.
A blue car drove into the driveway. Everyone stopped to watch a portly man get out of the car and look over the crowd, milling about, some moseying over to the pasture thick with horses to hitch them to buggies.
“Where is she?” the man said. “Where’s Mrs. Miracle?”
Dread pooled in Mim’s stomach.
Bethany sidled closer to Mim. “That’s the features editor of the Stoney Ridge Times.” She gave her a look of abject pity. “You are in so much trouble.”
And didn’t Mim just know it.
The buzz of conversation died down, a silence almost like the respectful hush of church came over the crowd.
Elmo walked up to the editor. “How can I help you?”
“Someone in your church writes the Mrs. Miracle column.” He gazed around the yard as Bethany ducked into the house. “Some Amish gal drops off the copy and picks up the paycheck every week. I don’t remember who she is, but I know she’s here.”
Elmo looked thoroughly confused. “I don’t understand. What do you want?”
“Mrs. Miracle is ruining me, that’s what! Her advice is losing advertisers for the paper. She wrote a letter telling people if they’d just stop buying televisions, they’d end up saving their marriages.”
The bishop’s spiky gray eyebrows drew together, as if tugged by complicated thoughts. “Well now, there could be some truth to that.”
“Not when your biggest advertiser is the Stoney Ridge Electronics.” His red face grew redder. “Then she told the butcher’s kid to not go into the family business. The Stoney Ridge Butcher Shop just canceled a year’s worth of advertising!”
Silence. No one said a word. Bishop Elmo turned and looked around those who remained. “Does anyone know who this man is talking about?”
The editor waved a paper in the air. “I can’t make out the sloppy signature, but the name of the person who signed the W-4 form starts with a B. Last name starts with an S. Now . . . where is she? Who is she?”
BS for Bethany Schrock, who had signed the paper because Mim was underage. Mim thought she might faint dead away, right in front of the entire church and her family. Her lungs felt like they were on fire and she knew everyone was looking right at her, boring their eyes into her soul.
“I’m the one you’re looking for. I’m Mrs. Miracle.”
Heads whipped around to see who had spoken. It was the woman from the guest flat, standing about ten yards from the editor. “I’m Brooke Snyder. Also known as Mrs. Miracle.” She smiled widely at him. “I’ve been meaning to get back to you about syndicating the column. Would you like to come in and talk about it over coffee?”
Mim watched the editor follow Brooke into the guest flat. She was stunned, completely and utterly flabbergasted. There was a burning behind her eyes, a hard place forming in her throat.
Jesse Stoltzfus, who seemed to materialize whenever any drama unfolded, spoke up. “Well, wonders never cease!” he said in a very loud voice. “Mrs. Miracle was right here, under our very noses.”
Everyone started talking, and the sound swirled around Mim like the clucking of a flock of chickens. She was wordless. A girl who loved words was thoroughly wordless.
Jesse slipped up behind her, his arms full of dishes. In a voice so low Mim had to strain to hear, he whispered, “Stop shaking and trembling. It may turn out all right. If you’re smart, you’ll realize you just dodged a bullet.”
Mim flashed Jesse a grateful look. But he wasn’t looking at her. He was gazing at Rose, standing on the porch, talking to his father.
“You’ve got a lovely mother,” he said. “She’s strong but kind.”
Mim shrugged. “I suppose.”
“I guess people don’t ever appreciate their own mothers properly, until it’s too late.” He kept his gaze on Mim’s mother. “She reminds me of my own mother.”
She didn’t know anything about Jesse’s mother, other than she had passed recently. She thought about asking him about her, but he darted away, off to the kitchen with another armful of dirty dishes.
She had always thought Jesse Stoltzfus was nothing but a joker, as happy as a fly in pie. But now she wondered if all his jokes were meant to cover up his sadness.
Vera sat at the kitchen table, rehashing the day, the church service, and the dessert disaster.
“Still, all in all, it was a wonderful day,” Rose said, as she brought Vera a cup of tea.
To Rose’s surprise, Vera’s eyes filled with tears. “If only Dean could have been here. If only he could have seen Bethany and Tobe baptized.”
But Dean Schrock was in the Amish graveyard a few miles away.
Rose sat very still. As she gazed steadily at her mother-in-law, she realized dark circles had gathered in the hollows beneath Vera’s eyes. And lines had been pressed into her cheeks. When had she gotten so old? And why hadn’t she noticed before?
“You should have insisted on an autopsy,” Vera said. Every few weeks, she brought up this topic with Rose, probing it like a sore tooth. “You should have had more presence of mind. Even now, two years later, I know people are whispering. I know what they think about us. About Dean. They all think he took his own life. You missed your chance to clear his name once and for all.” She wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “And now it’s too late.”
Vera liked to believe that she knew everything. But Vera was wrong. As hectic as that day of Dean’s drowning was, Rose had had enough presence of mind to know she couldn’t allow the unthinkable. She told the police no autopsy.
If it had turned out that Dean had done himself in, then he would have been buried outside the walls of the cemetery, where the goats and sheep and cows would walk over the graves of those who had not been allowed to have a Christian burial. Life wasn’t yours to take, it was a gift from God and those who threw it back in his face had no place being mourned by the faithful.
Because there was no autopsy to confirm or deny the means of death, Dean was buried with honor and the family could give him a good farewell. It was better, she felt; it gave the family a sort of peace. But she knew, even now, that there was a shadow over how and why Dean had died.
After Vera had gone to bed, Rose fed a bottle to Sarah and rocked her in a chair next to the woodstove. She tried to dwell on the day, on the moment of baptism for Tobe and Bethany, a holy moment. But one thing kept interrupting her thoughts and that was Galen’s pointed remark to David Stoltzfus: he had seen something David hadn’t seen. He was absolutely right. David was often preoccupied with lofty theology discussions while his son Jesse stirred up all kinds of trouble.
Revealing, The (The Inn at Eagle Hill Book #3): A Novel Page 20