Home on Huckleberry Hill

by Jennifer Beckstrand

  Jethro wasn’t here to scold her, so she ate her helping of funeral potatoes right out of the pan. She pressed her lips together and glanced behind her as if she might catch someone spying on her. With her fork, she skimmed all that golden, crusty, melted cheese off the top, and ate every oily bite. She’d never felt so rebellious.

  She had craved Jethro’s approval for years, but all she’d gotten was criticism. She’d ached for his affection, only to be rewarded with indifference. He paid more attention to that new fishing pole than he did to her.

  The candlelight seemed to grow brighter as she finished up the last of her cheese and glanced at the veggie tray. It didn’t matter if her radishes were shaped like roses. Vegetables were for well-behaved people, and tonight she was feeling a little disorderly.

  She went to the fridge, took out one of her rainbow parfaits, and held it up to the candlelight. The different layers of Jell-O in the small cup sparkled like sunshine on a lake. She really had outdone herself. It was the most beautiful dessert anyone could wish for.

  It was almost too pretty to eat. Mary Anne took the parfait to the table and admired it for a few minutes before picking up her spoon and eating the whole thing in seven bites, telling herself one thing she disliked about Jethro with every bite. Another parfait came out of the fridge, and then the last two. She ate every one, not even feeling guilty that she hadn’t saved one for Jethro.

  As her Englisch friend Pammy said, you snooze, you lose.

  Maybe she was completely useless to Jethro, but she made a wonderful gute rainbow parfait, all the same.

  She frowned. Maybe she was completely useless to Jethro, but wasn’t it also true that Jethro was completely useless to her? Of course, he went to work every day to earn money, but then he spent it on fishing poles and worms and went fishing when he could have been home eating rainbow parfaits with her.

  The truth hit her like a tree branch to the head.

  Oh, sis yuscht.

  She couldn’t stand to live this life anymore.

  Sometimes during the day, she felt so trapped that she would ball her hands into fists and scream at the top of her lungs at an empty house. Some nights she was so lonely, she’d sneak out to the barn and sit with the cow just to have someone to talk to—someone who wouldn’t chastise her or tell her she was being silly for feeling the way she did. She’d tried, she’d really tried to stick with Jethro, to be a gute Amish fraa, but her desperation was mounting. She just couldn’t do it anymore.

  Should she be concerned that such a thought didn’t make her feel guilty?

  Jethro was a nice person, seldom grumpy, but often quiet and—might as well face it—boring—especially in the last four years. But more than that, she was a huge disappointment to him. She cooked for him and cleaned his house, but otherwise he didn’t especially care whether she was around or not. How had she not realized this about him when they were dating?

  She didn’t love him.

  And she wasn’t going to wait for him to notice her. As of right now, she didn’t care if he noticed her or not. Of course, there was the tricky thing about being married to him and being Amish. They were stuck with each other. But that didn’t mean they had to stick by each other.

  Sitting in her quiet kitchen feeling a little sick to her stomach, she had the terrifying thought that she wanted to live for her own happiness without regard to Jethro at all. Her heart all but leaped out of her chest. She had been sufficiently miserable for years, but was she brave enough to do something about it?

  Did she have the courage to defy the gmayna, her family, and her husband?

  Nae, of course she didn’t.

  But courage didn’t matter. If she stayed in this house even for one more day, she thought she might shrivel up into a little, wrinkly ball and blow away with the wind. She might not have the courage to leave, but she didn’t have the strength to stay.

  Nothing mattered now but her escape.

  * * *

  Jethro woke with a start when the alarm clock rang. He’d gone to bed late last night or, more accurately, early this morning. He turned over, pressed the button on the clock, and stretched his arms over his head. He was exhausted, but it was a gute kind of tired after a wunderbarr night of fishing. His new fishing pole had performed better than he’d even dreamed. It was worth every penny he had spent on it.

  His fishing pole lay beside him on the bed. He’d gotten in late and hadn’t wanted to disturb Mary Anne, so he’d gone to sleep in the spare bedroom with his fishing pole beside him like a teddy bear. He couldn’t really cuddle his fishing pole, but he took comfort that it was in a safe place. He had gotten the feeling Mary Anne hadn’t been too happy about storing his fishing pole on the bed in the spare bedroom, but their dream for filling that bedroom with children was gone, so what was wrong with his fishing pole?

  Even in the dim light, Jethro could still make out the faintest outline of Mary Anne’s old artwork on the walls. Mary Anne had been so excited to have a baby that she had started painting the walls of the nursery before she’d even gotten pregnant. She loved to paint, though she hadn’t done much of it lately. She’d drawn a whole farmyard of animals on the walls—orange and black chickens, fat cows with ribbons around their necks, shiny pink pigs with smiles on their faces. Jethro had teased her that pigs didn’t know how to smile, but that hadn’t stopped her from painting them with grins on their snouts. When she had the miscarriage and the doctor had told them they couldn’t have children, Jethro had painted two coats of white over the whole scene, so Mary Anne wouldn’t have a daily reminder of the pain. The whole thing was too bad. It had been a wonderful pretty farm scene.

  Jethro dragged his feet into the bathroom where he showered and shaved any traces of a mustache off his face. He got dressed and made his way to the kitchen, where Mary Anne would have breakfast and kaffee waiting for him.

  It was their daily routine. Every morning, she got up and milked the cow while he got ready for work. Then she would make him breakfast and a sack lunch. When they were first married, she’d put all sorts of strange things in his lunch, like crackers with unusual cheese or hummus or a chicken salad with kale and something called quinoa. He always liked what she made him, but it had concerned him that she spent so much money on his lunch. After the miscarriage, he had told her not to bother with the fancy stuff. It was too much work for her and money she didn’t need to spend. He’d taken a plain turkey sandwich to work ever since.

  The kitchen was dark. No pot of kaffee on the stove. No bacon sizzling in the pan. Jethro drew his brows together. Was Mary Anne still milking? It wasn’t like her to be late with his breakfast. That van came at 7:30 sharp every morning.

  He went down the hall to the bedroom. The gray blanket was pulled tightly across the sheets and tucked in neatly at the corners. She must still be milking. He stomped back to the kitchen, trying not to let himself get irritated, but didn’t Mary Anne care that he needed his kaffee before he left? It had been a late night. How did she expect him to stay awake at work?

  He pulled the kaffee pot off the shelf. How hard would it be to figure out how to make kaffee? Then again, how hard would it have been for Mary Anne to start the kaffee before she went out to milk? Mary Anne had always made the kaffee. He didn’t know what to do. He shouldn’t have banged the pot on the counter so hard, but what was taking her so long?

  He reached out to open the fridge and noticed a note taped to the door. It was written on some of the bright pink notepaper Mary Anne had bought without consulting him. He couldn’t convince her that plain white notebook paper was just as useful and much cheaper. Mary Anne’s handwriting was neat and easy to read, even if she did dot her is with hearts and put a curlicue on the tail of every word. “Jethro, there is salmon and asparagus in the fridge left over from dinner last night. That should hold you over for a couple of days, plus a whole plate of vegetables and three-fourths of a pan of funeral potatoes. It turns out they were a very appropriate dish. There are no parfait
s, but I am happy to report that they were delicious—all four of them. Good luck after that. Mary Anne. P.S. I’ve taken the two hundred dollars from the jar in your underwear drawer. I’ll need it more than you do.”

  Jethro snatched the note off the fridge and read it again. He couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Growling like a bear, he marched down the hall to the bedroom and opened his underwear drawer. The jar was there, but no money, though his underwear was folded neatly like always. If she’d taken the rainy-day money to buy pink stationery, he’d be very annoyed.

  He marched back into the kitchen and opened the fridge. A platter covered in plastic wrap sat on the top shelf. Two plump salmon filets rested on a bed of grilled asparagus looking like something right out of a magazine. Why had she gone to all that trouble? He was perfectly happy with shepherd’s pie and corn for dinner, or even his latest catch with a little salt, cooked on the grill.

  He took the tray of vegetables off the refrigerator shelf. Mary Anne had cut the radishes into rose shapes. They looked pretty but had surely taken her hours to create. He couldn’t understand why she wasted so much time trying to make the food look like something it wasn’t. A radish tasted the same whether it was shaped like a rose or not.

  Pure hunger drove him to tear the plastic wrap off the veggie tray, pick up a crinkle-cut carrot, and bury it halfway into the dip—the dip in a bowl made from a hollowed-out cabbage. He shook his head and finished the carrot off in three bites. Three radishes and four cucumbers later, he still had no idea what was going on.

  Where in the world was his wife, and what had she done with his two hundred dollars?

  The van would be here in fifteen minutes. He wouldn’t get his kaffee now, and he needed to find Mary Anne before he had a nervous breakdown.

  After grabbing one more carrot from the plate, he stormed out the back door to the barn. Daisy had been milked because a full bucket sat on the floor next to the door, but Mary Anne wasn’t in the barn. He had just exhausted his list of places he thought to look for his wife. She might have left him a little more information in that fancy note of hers.

  Growing more and more puzzled and more and more irritated, he stepped outside and scanned his backyard and the woods behind the house. Through the trees, he could just make out a light green tent and a wisp of smoke hanging in the air. Was somebody camping on his property? Was it Mary Anne?

  He almost laughed at that thought. Almost. Mary Anne hated to camp. She’d rather go to the dentist than sleep in a tent.

  Jethro jogged toward the tent. His time was running out, and he wasn’t any closer to finding his wife—until he did.

  His missing fraa sat on a generous-size boulder just outside the tent door, tending a fire in their small fire pit. How had she dragged the fire pit all the way out here? It wasn’t light. A piece of toast sizzled on a griddle that sat on top of the fire pit grate, and a pot that looked suspiciously like it might contain kaffee sat beside the griddle.

  Mary Anne furrowed her brow and pressed her lips together as if she wasn’t all that happy to see him. And maybe she was feeling a little guilty for not brewing him his own pot of kaffee.

  “What are you doing?” he snapped, not even trying to hide his irritation.

  She poked at the bread with a spatula while doing a good imitation of a smile. “Making Gruyère-and-bacon-stuffed French toast. It’s a recipe I’ve wanted to try for a long time. Doesn’t it smell good?”

  It did smell good, but Jethro wasn’t going to be distracted by the smell of an imported cheese that had probably cost twenty dollars a pound. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it. Why are you out here?”

  Her fake smile stayed in place, even though he could see the uneasiness in her eyes. “Did you get my note?”

  “Didn’t understand a word.”

  “Ach. I’m sorry. I tried to be plain. There’s salmon and vegetables and potatoes in the fridge. You can eat leftovers for days, and then there’s always McDonald’s if you get desperate.”

  “Who cares about what food is in the fridge?”

  “You might care tonight after work, when you’re hungry.” She flipped over her piece of French toast, and the melty cheese dribbled onto the griddle. The sizzle hid the sound of his stomach growling.

  She wasn’t making any sense, and he wasn’t any closer to understanding why he hadn’t gotten his kaffee this morning. He glanced inside the tent to see a pillow and a sleeping bag—one of his nice, hundred-dollar sleeping bags—sitting on top of his nice, hundred-dollar cot. “That’s my stuff,” he said.

  She stiffened her spine so fast, he could almost hear it snap. “Ach, vell. When you bought it, you said it was for the two of us, so I think I’m entitled. You insisted on the eight-man tent because you wanted to have plenty of room even though there would only ever be the two of us. I’m froh you spent the extra money. The tent is very roomy.”

  “But you hate to camp.” The strangeness of the conversation didn’t escape him. Mary Anne was talking about tents and French toast and ignoring the fact that she was sitting on a boulder in the middle of the woods when there was no gute reason for her to be here and no explanation in sight.

  She tapped her spatula against the griddle, three, four, five times, for sure and certain trying to annoy him. She must not have realized he couldn’t have gotten any more annoyed if the neighbor’s dog had done his business in the yard.

  He clenched his teeth. She seemed to be annoyed with him. She had some nerve, especially when he was the one standing in the middle of the woods with no breakfast, no kaffee, and a crazy wife. “I do hate to camp,” she said, as if she were confessing her deepest secret, “but the expensive cot is very comfortable, and I only had to hike to the barn once to go to the bathroom.”

  The previous owners of the property had built a small bathroom with a toilet and a shower in the barn for their farmhands. “You used the bathroom in the barn?”

  She nodded and seemed to regain some of her cheer, which only made him madder. “It really wasn’t as bad as I feared, and it’s better than an outhouse, for sure and certain.”

  He snatched his hat off his head and ran his fingers through his hair. It was still wet. “Tell me now. Why did you sleep in this tent last night?”

  Mary Anne lowered her eyes and started that tapping thing again. “You’ll be late for work.”

  “I still have three minutes.”

  “I didn’t want to impose on the family, and I couldn’t bring myself to ask any of my friends for a place to stay. I’m too proud. I suppose that’s my greatest sin after all. A tent was the only thing I could think of.”

  “Mary Anne,” he said, a warning note in his voice. She was being purposefully vague.

  She slumped her shoulders and huffed out a long and heavy breath, as if surrendering to the inevitable. “I’ve left you, Jethro.”

  He drew his brows together in confusion. “Left me?”

  “We can’t get a divorce because it’s against the church, but I don’t want to live with you anymore.”

  Something inside Jethro’s head exploded. He couldn’t possibly be hearing what he thought he was hearing. “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m sorry to be so blunt, but you’re boring.”

  It was like a blow right in the chest with a two-by-four. “Boring? I’m not boring. I used to do doughnuts in the parking lot with my buggy. I play Scrabble every Saturday night with my parents. And I bring home all sorts of delicious fish.” His voice rose with his agitation. Soon only the wolves would be able to hear him. “A man who owns a four-hundred-dollar fishing pole is not boring.” He pointed in the general direction of the house. “You get back in there right now. This is nonsense.”

  Mary Anne squared her shoulders and seemed to grow taller and fiercer. “You are the most boring man in Wisconsin, Jethro Neuenschwander, and I would have died of boredom.”

  “You just don’t . . . you don’t just . . . you don’t leave someone because they’re boring.
”

  She shook her head. “It’s been six years. I’m finished.”

  Jethro caught his breath. Yesterday was their anniversary, and he’d forgotten it. How could he have been so deerich?

  But how could Mary Anne be so touchy?

  He bit down on any apology she thought she was entitled to and shoved aside the guilt that niggled at the back of his mind. This wasn’t his fault. So he forgot an anniversary. Everybody forgot anniversaries and birthdays and special days. It wasn’t a reason to leave your husband. Mary Anne was throwing a tantrum, plain and simple, and he wasn’t going to indulge her.

  He pulled the watch from his pocket. “I have to go.” He took one last, longing look at the kaffee pot before turning his back on all of it. “You’ve made your point, Mary Anne. I expect all of this to be taken down and put away when I get home. Wipe down my tent and let it dry before you put it away. Read the instructions about how to fold it or you’ll ruin it. Shake out the sleeping bag and hang it on a hanger. Don’t stuff it in the bag.”

  The van honked for him just as he reached the edge of the backyard. He had no kaffee and no lunch. It was going to be a long day.

  He hoped Mary Anne was satisfied with his misery.

  Chapter Three

  There was no way a set of quilting frames was going to fit in the tent, and Mary Anne just had to have quilting frames. And her sewing machine. And a bookshelf for paint and brushes and sticks and strings.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate what a spacious tent Jethro had purchased, but she was going to need a bigger one. She simply had to have more room for her imagination, which seemed to have taken wing in the last twenty-four hours.

  And like it or not, she was going to need more money. Not only did she have big plans, but she needed to eat, and Gruyère cheese wasn’t cheap. That was why she liked it so much. Jethro’s two hundred dollars would only go so far, and he wasn’t likely to fork over more money even if she asked, especially not after his reaction that morning. She didn’t know what she’d expected. Of course he was upset at her leaving, even if he had practically ignored her for years. She was part of his routine, making breakfast for him every morning and dinner every night. She set his slippers by his chair every evening so he could enjoy his paper in comfort, and she cleaned the fish he brought home and cooked them up like any frugal fraa should. Maybe she had hoped he wouldn’t mind her moving out so much. It would have made things easier for both of them.