Home on Huckleberry Hill

by Jennifer Beckstrand

  That thought made Mary Anne sort of sad. Jethro should stay in the house. He’d built it with his own two hands. Before the wedding, they’d worked hard to save every penny to put into it. They couldn’t afford anything bigger, but Jethro and Mary Anne had designed it together, thinking that when their family began to grow, they would build an addition on the back.

  She had picked out the kitchen sink and the shower curtain, and he had picked out the toilet. It had been one of the happiest times of her life, dreaming of the day when they’d be married and making plans for their future. She’d been convinced that no one would ever love a boy the way she loved Jethro, that her love was the greatest love the world had ever known. It was funny how fast affection could die when those dreams didn’t come true. Some heartache couldn’t be healed with the power of love.

  Poor Jethro thought he could fix it, like he fixed a toilet or a buggy wheel, but he was wrong. Some things and some people just couldn’t be fixed.

  Dawdi stepped down from the RV, singing at the top of his lungs. “Some sweet day, I’m going away. When camping is done, I’m going home. Some sweet day, I’m going away.” If anyone was still asleep, they were awake now. He stretched his arms over his head and opened his mouth for a wide yawn. No matter what the song said, it looked as if he was sleeping better. Anything had to be better than a tent. Behind Mary Anne, the children in Lily’s tent stirred. She needed to get breakfast going before die kinner got ornery with hunger. One gute thing about Jethro’s mamm being in camp was that Mary Anne didn’t feel guilty about not making Jethro breakfast. Lois was a capable cook. Jethro wouldn’t starve.

  Mary Anne hurried to the barn to take a shower and use the bathroom. The shower was as cold as ice, but at least it woke her up every morning. Mary Anne refused to take a shower in the house, even if the thought of warm water made her giddy.

  After her shower, she dressed quickly and practically ran back to the fire pit. Lily and Aden and their children, plus Sarah and her boys, were standing around the fire. Sarah was making kaffee, Aden was helping Lily wrestle the twins, and Mammi had somehow gotten her hands on a bowl and a whisk.

  “Gute morning, Mary Anne,” Aden said, balancing one of the twins on his knee while feeding her ajar of baby food—organic, of course.

  Mary Anne’s teeth chattered involuntarily. Lord willing, she’d warm up before bedtime. “Gute mariye.”

  “I think I’ll scramble some eggs,” Mammi said, tapping the whisk against the bowl as if summoning the eggs to come to her.

  Sarah shot Mary Anne a horrified look. Mary Anne pursed her lips. Under no circumstances was Mammi to make eggs. When she made them on the stove, they turned out runny and gooey and slid down your throat like a slug on a playground slide. When Mammi made them on the griddle over an open fire, they came out black and leathery and smoking, like a firefighter’s glove.

  “Now, Mammi,” Mary Anne said, “you know it’s my turn to make breakfast. I bought all the ingredients for caramel banana French toast.”

  Mammi held her whisk at the ready. “Do you need help?”

  What jobs could Mammi do without ruining the French toast? “I saved the bacon grease from breakfast yesterday. Do you want to find it in the cooler?”

  Sarah set the kaffee pot into the coals on the edge of the fire. “We’ll need more wood.” She turned to her sons, who were warming their hands. “Pine, Johnny, go gather more firewood. Take the ax, but be careful you don’t cut anything off that won’t grow back. And don’t dawdle. Johnny has to get to school.”

  The only thing more exciting to a teenage boy than fire was the unlimited use of an ax. Pine grabbed the ax from Sarah’s tent, and he and Johnny jogged into the woods.

  “Don’t carry the ax like that, Pine Beachy,” Sarah called after them. “If you trip, you’ll take your neck off.”

  Besides Mary Anne and Mammi and Dawdi, there were now seventeen relatives living on Mary Anne’s side of the camp: Sarah and her two youngest boys; Lily, Aden, and their three children; Mandy and Noah; Emma and Ben and their toddler; and Lia and Moses and their two little ones. Lia had told Moses she wanted to camp by herself, but it hadn’t lasted too long. She needed Moses’s help with the children in the middle of the night.

  Moses and Ben left early in the morning for work. Mary Anne seldom saw them, even for breakfast. Aden and Noah always saw that the fire was out and that the women and children were settled before they left for their farms and chores.

  They all took turns cooking meals, and the shared cooking helped with food expenses. Sarah had told Mammi and Dawdi that they were the leaders, and it wasn’t the leaders’ job to help with the meals, though Mammi still managed to make her mark on every meal. Yesterday, she’d put a “little extra” salt in the beef stew, and it had taken Mary Anne three extra glasses of water to finish off her bowl. It had felt as if her tongue would shrivel up and fall out of her mouth.

  They had to watch Mammi like a hawk.

  Emma and Lia helped Mary Anne soak the bread and get it on the griddle coated with bacon grease. In another saucepan, she stirred the brown sugar into the butter, then set it on the grate above the fire to melt. Once the sugar and butter were melted, she added four sliced bananas to caramelize. Mammi and Dawdi had bought one giant package of paper plates, a hundred paper cups, and a huge box of napkins.

  Emma put a piece of French toast onto each plate, and Mary Anne topped each piece with a spoonful of caramelized bananas. It smelled heavenly. She had a little bottle of syrup for Pine, who didn’t like bananas, but everyone else raved about the topping and nobody said one word about how expensive bananas were.

  Mary Anne and Emma served the others before they sat down to eat. Nearly everyone but die kinner had seconds. Pine, Johnny, and Noah had thirds. “Denki for the French toast,” Sarah said. “We eat so gute in this camp, my boys are never going to want to go home.” She raised an eyebrow. “But it can’t last forever. Their dat wants them for chores, and I’ll get scoliosis if I sleep on that cot much longer.”

  “It’s okay with me if you need to go, Sarah. You’ve been more than kind to stay as long as you have.”

  Sarah grunted. “Ach. I’m not going anywhere. Maybe I’ll stay and send the boys home. They can cook for themselves for a few weeks. It would almost feel like that vacation I’ve been meaning to take.”

  Mary Anne smiled. “Don’t sacrifice on my account. Nobody wants to live in a tent for their vacation.”

  Sarah scrunched her lips together. “There’s plenty of people who consider sleeping in a tent a vacation. I’m just not one of them.”

  Mammi sat in her camp chair and licked her fingers. “This French toast is the most appeditlich breakfast I’ve ever had. How did you make those parsnips taste so sweet?”

  “They’re bananas, Mammi, and I used lots of brown sugar.”

  Mammi nodded. “I bet parsnips would be good in that recipe.”

  That must be how Mammi collected her recipes. She ate something delicious and decided to make her own “improvements.” In Mammi’s mind, parsnips were enough like bananas that they might just work.

  Mary Anne took a bite. Everything cooked over a campfire carried a slight taste of smoke, but she had outdone herself with the French toast. The flavor of eggs with a hint of citrus and the sweet bananas was worth every penny she’d spent on those bananas and real butter. Even the bacon grease had made a difference. What wasn’t good with a little extra bacon grease?

  Lia thanked Mary Anne and threw her family’s plates into the fire. The Zimmermans went back to their tent. Lily and Aden did the same. They had plenty to do just getting die kinner ready for the day.

  Mary Anne watched Lily duck into her tent just as Jethro crossed to her side of the camp, carrying a medium-size box. Jethro loved bananas. Maybe he’d like to try a piece of French toast. Maybe not. He’d probably complain about how much money she’d spent on ingredients. Still, he’d built her a fire this morning and probably kept her from getting fro
stbite. Even if he’d already eaten, she’d be ungrateful not to at least offer.

  When he caught sight of her, he smiled as if he was seeing his first butterfly. “Mary Anne, wie gehts?”

  “Hallo, Jethro,” Mammi said, standing on her tiptoes and patting him on the cheek.

  Jethro winked at Mammi. “You look as green and fresh as springtime, Anna.”

  Mammi laughed. “And you look wonderful handsome. I’ve always thought you had very nice eyebrows and teeth. Don’t you think so, Mary Anne?”

  Jethro turned his dazzling smile to her, and Mary Anne was glad she was sitting. Lois was very particular, and she had always been insistent that her children be careful of their dental hygiene. The persistence had paid off. Jethro wasn’t missing any teeth, and he’d never had a cavity in his life. “Jethro has gute teeth,” she said, wanting to be truthful but not encouraging. She didn’t want Jethro to get the wrong idea.

  Mammi threw Dawdi’s plate in the fire. “Mary Anne, dear, Felty and I are going back to our RV to take a nap. Let us know when you’re ready to go.”

  “What time do you have to be to work?” Jethro said, betraying no emotion at the fact she had a job and was working out.

  “Charlene will be here at 9:45. What about you?”

  “I’ve got another fifteen minutes before the van gets here.”

  Jethro pulled up a camp chair next to her and set his box on the ground. After sitting down, he studied her face as if trying to memorize her freckles. “Your cheeks are bright red. Do you want me to get the blanket from your tent?”

  “I’m warm enough by the fire. Denki for building it.”

  She could have warmed her hands by the glow in his eyes. “I didn’t want you out in this weather trying to light a fire. Going to the bathroom in the barn is cold enough.”

  She gave him a half smile. “I’ll bet the Porta-Potty is worse.”

  “Oy, anyhow, you don’t know the half of it. The smell destroys your appetite for breakfast, and when you sit down, a breeze blows in from underneath. Let’s just say I don’t lollygag in there.”

  “It’s wonderful close to your tents.”

  Jethro winced. “Jah. We tried to move it last night, but it’s heavy, and you don’t want to risk that thing tipping over. It would be a mess beyond anything bearable.”

  “You tried to move it?”

  “We’re going to move our tents fifty feet to the north. Willie Jay isn’t happy about it, but because he’s the one who told the deliveryman where to put the Porta-Potty, he’s the last person who’s allowed to complain.”

  Mary Anne smiled to herself. Willie Jay had no idea how entertaining he was from a distance. She shouldn’t be so smug, but Mary Anne took secret pleasure in Willie Jay’s annoyance. He was too sure of himself by half. “It wonders me if you wouldn’t like some French toast.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “French toast?”

  “Caramel banana. Unless you’ve already eaten or the Porta-Potty made you lose your appetite.”

  He grinned so wide, she could see almost all those perfect teeth. “I’ll never turn down caramel-banana French toast, no matter how many Porta-Potties I’ve been in recently, especially if it was made by you.”

  Mary Anne stifled a smile. Jethro usually only got this excited about a fish on his line. “Will your mamm be offended if you eat my breakfast?”

  Jethro snapped his head around and looked in the direction of his tent, as if making sure he wasn’t being watched. “She doesn’t have to know.”

  Mary Anne giggled. “Just make sure she doesn’t smell bananas on your breath.”

  Emma had filled the plastic tub with water and was washing the griddle, but there were still two pieces of French toast left on a paper plate, plus an ample helping of caramelized bananas. Mary Anne handed the plate to Jethro, who gasped as if she’d just given him a plateful of gold coins. She gave him a plastic fork, then spooned the last of the banana topping onto the French toast. “They’ve cooled down a bit yet.”

  He raised the plate to his face and breathed in the scent of warm bananas. “It’s wunderbarr.” He stabbed his fork into the French toast and took a hearty bite. “Mmm. This is like everything gute about Christmas Day on a fork.”

  “They turned out well.” Warm liquid pleasure threaded up her spine, and she immediately chastised herself for caring what Jethro thought about her French toast.

  Jethro finished off his French toast in about five bites. He scraped up the leftover banana sauce off the plate with his fork. “That was appeditlich, Mary Anne. It’s been so long since I’ve eaten your cooking, I almost forgot what perfection is.”

  “Perfection is expensive,” she said. “The bananas were almost two dollars a pound.” She didn’t mean to snap at him, but she refused to let him soften her up with a kind word and a little appreciation. The last thing she needed was a weak spot in her heart where Jethro might be able to find an entrance. She wouldn’t let him hurt her again. Better to remind him why she’d stopped fixing fancy food in the first place.

  He didn’t scowl at her like she’d hoped he would—a bad reaction from him would put her on safer ground. Unfortunately, she was standing close enough that he could reach out and take her hand. For some reason, his touch sent a tingle of energy all the way up her arm, and it irritated her to no end that she didn’t pull away.

  Jethro tugged her gently into the chair next to him and promptly let go of her hand. Her irritation cooled to a simmer. “Do you want to know what I did on Saturday?”

  Not really. “What?”

  He grinned and shifted in his chair so he faced her. “Vell, the Porta-Potty is nicer than using a tree in the woods, but it still leaves a wonderful lot to be desired. There’s no soap or water in there, so you have to wash your hands with hand sanitizer. When I use hand sanitizer, I feel like I’m just pushing the dirt around in my hands. So I hooked up a hose to the spigot in our yard to run some water to our campsite. Then I took one of my long stockings, put a bar of soap in the toe, and tied it to the branch of a tree. When you get the stocking wet, you can work up a lather and wash your hands without needing a place to set the soap.”

  “Wonderful gute,” Mary Anne said, with a note of hesitancy in her voice. Why was he telling her this nice little story?

  “Neither David Eicher nor Willie Jay had a nice thing to say about it. David said the bar of soap was too little and the stocking was too thick and asked if I’d just been wearing it or if it was clean. Willie Jay complained I’d hung it too far away from the Porta-Potty and the water was too cold to get anything clean.”

  Mary Anne curled one side of her mouth. “They’re not so happy to be camping, but they’re determined to teach me a lesson. It wonders me how long they’ll hold out.”

  “It made me finally understand something. I’d given Willie Jay and David this wonderful smart contraption so they could wash their hands, and all they did was find fault with it.” He laced his fingers with hers. “Your whole life was a gift you gave me every day, and I didn’t even see it. You sprayed lavender water on my handkerchiefs when you ironed them. You made me egg salad sandwiches with avocado and some sort of green, leafy plant.”

  “Watercress,” she said.

  “I loved it. You sewed me fish-shaped pot holders for my birthday, and do you remember what I said?”

  It shouldn’t have been such a painful memory. They were just pot holders.

  He pressed his lips together into a rigid line and studied her face. “I said I loved them. I did say I loved them first.”

  “Jah, you did.”

  “And then I said, ‘You shouldn’t have spent so much time making these. Regular pot holders will do just fine.’ And then I accused you of making them for yourself and not really for me because I never cook.”

  Mary Anne nodded. “Jah.” She couldn’t have said another word if Jethro’s hair had been on fire.

  Jethro rubbed his thumb along the back of her hand. She didn’t know why she allowed
it, except that his touch was oddly comforting. “You gave me gift after gift with your quilts and your rose radishes and your paintings, and all I did was complain or point out a way you could do something better. You did whatever I suggested because you didn’t want to be a disappointment to me. But I stole a little bit of your happiness every time I criticized you or took you for granted or ignored you.” He expelled a long sigh. “I’m sorry, Mary Anne. I didn’t even see it.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she whispered, but it did. At this moment, his remorse mattered very much.

  He gazed at her and she held her breath, afraid of the vulnerability he might see in her eyes. “Maybe it will matter to you someday. I hope you’ll remember I’m sorry.”

  “Okay.”

  “Ach, Mary Anne. I have to go to work, and I brought you a present.”

  “A present?”

  He leaned over and picked up the cardboard box at his feet. “There was an icicle hanging from the eaves of the Porta-Potty yesterday morning. I got you a space heater for your tent. It’s battery powered.”

  A space heater? Mary Anne shivered at the thought of a space heater. What would it be like to finally feel warm? “You didn’t have to do that,” she said, even though she was wonderful glad he had. It couldn’t have been cheap.

  With his pocketknife, Jethro cut the tape and pulled out a smaller box the size of a toaster. A black grill protected the inner workings of the space heater, and the rest of the heater was made of shiny orange metal. Jethro smiled, obviously proud of how clever he was. “Shall we try it?” he said, pointing to her tent.

  “Right now?”

  “You’ll want warm fingers for all that sewing.”

  Mary Anne unzipped her tent and let Jethro duck in first. Pulling the small bench from the foot of the cot, he set the space heater on it. He pressed a button on the front, and it beeped. A muted orange light appeared at the heart of the machine.

  Jethro widened his eyes in excitement and put his hands up to the grill. “It’s warmer already. Can you feel it?”

  Mary Anne waved her hand in front of the heater. A stream of air no stronger than a puff of wind blew from behind the grill. It wasn’t warm, but it wasn’t cold either. Maybe it took a few minutes to heat up. “It’s wonderful kind of you, Jethro, but don’t you want to give it to your mamm?”