Return to Huckleberry Hill

by Jennifer Beckstrand

  “There are so many big words in that letter, she’s sure to say yes.”

  “I hope so. I got a headache just trying to spell everything correctly.”

  Three loud taps at the door nearly peeled Anna out of her skin. “Do you think that’s Elsie already?”

  “She’s smart, Banannie, but I don’t think there’s any possibility she got your letter before you sent it.”

  Anna folded her letter carefully, slipped it into her apron pocket, and ambled to the door, trying to ignore all the creaking her knees did. Her shoulders were doing quite enough creaking for everybody.

  She opened the door and peered into the darkness. A snowman stood on the porch with his hat pulled low over his eyes. Well, it wasn’t truly a snowman, but his trousers and coat were covered with snow, his hat caked with ice, and the small duffel bag he carried in one hand could have been a giant snowball. Anna drew her brows together. It most surely wasn’t Elsie. She was too smart to be out on such a bitter night. “Can I help you?” Anna said, hoping that whoever was standing on her porch would feel welcome in her home, even if he wasn’t very bright.

  He took off his hat and lifted his head. The dull-witted boy turned out to be Anna’s very icy grandson Reuben, who Anna knew wasn’t dull-witted at all. His eyes caught the light from inside the house, and Anna caught her breath. No wonder she hadn’t recognized him. She’d never seen Reuben slouch his shoulders so low or have such a gloomy cast to his expression. “Hello, Mammi,” he mumbled. Something was very wrong. Reuben never mumbled.

  Anna threw open her arms. “Ach, du lieva, Reuben. Cum reu, cum reu. You look as if you’ve just come from Alaska.” When Reuben didn’t seem inclined to move, she grabbed the front of his coat, pulled him into the house, and wrapped her arms tightly around him, being careful not to crush the precious letter in her pocket. It had taken far too long to write to have to compose another one.

  Reuben tried to pull away. “Mammi, I’ll get you wet.”

  Anna refused to let him go. “Ach, I’d rather have my hug.”

  Felty rocked his recliner back and forth until he built enough momentum to toss himself out of the chair and onto his feet. He joined Anna and Reuben in a three-way hug.

  Reuben grimaced. “Now everybody is wet.”

  “My dear boy,” Anna said, hurrying to the drawer for a dish towel, “why in the world are you out on a night like this? You could have been swept away by a blizzard or frozen solid to a light pole. What will your mamm say?”

  Felty took Reuben’s bag. “Did you ski all the way from Sugarcreek?”

  Reuben drooped even lower. “I’m sorry I didn’t write. I got on the bus in Ohio yesterday, arrived in Shawano station this morning, and walked from there.”

  “You walked from Shawano? That’s ten miles!” It was fortunate Reuben didn’t have creaky knees.

  “I needed the time to think,” Reuben said. From the look on his face, he’d been thinking about very serious things. Too serious for a young man who was usually so perky.

  Reuben used Anna’s towel to wipe the melting snowflakes from his face, then he lowered his eyes and studied his snow-covered boots. The caked snow was sliding slowly to the floor and melting into an impressive puddle. “Can I stay for a few days?” He expelled a quick breath from between his lips. “Ach. I hate to ask a favor of anyone. I don’t want to impose.”

  Ignoring her squeaky shoulder, Anna reached up and patted Reuben on the cheek. “Grandsons are never an imposition.” She took the towel from his hand and caught a bead of water that was about to drip from his earlobe. “Go dry yourself off in the bathroom, change into some warm clothes so you don’t catch your death of cold, and we’ll have a talk.”

  “It’s all right, Mammi,” Reuben said. “I used some cinnamon bark and lavender.” Despite his fine collection of essential oils, he must have seen the wisdom in dry clothes. He trudged down the hall, leaving a trail of melting snow in his wake. Anna would definitely be getting out the mop.

  But there were more pressing matters at hand. She turned to Felty and fingered the letter in her pocket. “If Reuben is going to stay, we can’t hurt his feelings by inviting Elsie.”

  “For sure and certain,” Felty said.

  She pulled Elsie’s letter from her pocket and gave it one regretful glance. She would never want Reuben to think he was unwelcome. What had to be done, had to be done. She quickly ripped the letter into strips, then ripped those strips into small squares, then ripped those small squares into even smaller bits. Not even Elsie would be able to put the pieces back together. Reuben would never know that Anna had been about to invite someone else to live with them. His fragile feelings were safe.

  Anna frowned. Reuben’s feelings had never been fragile before, but something had definitely changed. She didn’t like seeing her grandchildren unhappy. Something would have to be done. She would need to find him a wife without delay.

  Reuben ambled down the hall in dry, wrinkly trousers, an equally wrinkly blue shirt, and bare feet. “There’s a wonderful-pretty doily on the back of the toilet.”

  Anna bloomed into a smile. “How nice of you to notice. I’ve taken up crochet recently. Die youngie were growing tired of my pot holders.”

  Still looking as dejected as ever, Reuben leaned over and planted a kiss on Anna’s forehead. “How could anyone not love your pot holders?”

  Felty smoothed his long, gray beard. “Is your fater going to be worried about you?” Felty was so smart. It was a gute way to ask Reuben about his troubles without really prying.

  “I left a note,” Reuben said, this time studying his feet. He had nice long toes, like Felty. Anna loved long toes. “I told them I didn’t know when I’ll be coming back. Do you . . . do you care if I stay? Maybe for a week, until I can find another place?”

  Anna blew air through her lips. “Another place? You don’t need another place. You stay here as long as you like.” Elsie would just have to be patient. That was all there was to it.

  Reuben didn’t smile, but his expression seemed to grow a few degrees warmer. “Denki, Mammi. I will stay.”

  Anna still had a handful of paper scraps—nothing that Reuben would ever mistake for a letter, but she didn’t want to give him any reason to suspect. She tossed the scraps into the air. “Hooray!”

  Reuben lifted his eyebrows as the bits of paper descended to the floor like snowflakes. One side of his mouth curled reluctantly. “Mammi, you are my favorite person in the whole world.”

  Anna smiled. “And you are definitely one of my favorite grandsons.” She studied his haggard expression. It belonged to a much older man. Poor thing. What had he been through? “If you spent the whole day walking, you must be hungry. I made cheesy banana bread this morning.”

  A spark flickered to life in his eyes. “A new recipe?”

  “I made it up by myself. I just throw this and that into the bowl, and it usually turns out well.” Anna made a beeline for the fridge. “I have a whole loaf.”

  Without a word, Reuben pulled the broom and the mop out of the closet. While Anna sliced bread, Reuben mopped up the watery trail he’d made down the hall as well as the puddle by the front door. Then he swept up Anna’s confetti and deposited it into the trash. He’d always been a gute helper like that. Surely it wouldn’t be too hard to find him a wife.

  “Cum, Reuben,” she said, setting the entire loaf of cheesy banana bread on the table with a plate of creamy butter she’d churned this morning. It was probably why her shoulder was creaking tonight.

  Reuben put the mop and broom away and sat at the table. Without waiting for an invitation, he picked up a piece of the brown bread with orange cheese bits and slathered it with butter. He took a huge bite, dispatching of almost a third of the slice, and leaned back in his chair. “This tastes like it was baked in the ovens of heaven,” he said. “No one cooks like my mammi.”

  Anna stood at the counter, folding and unfolding a dish towel. “There’s lots more where that came from. I
’ve invented a recipe for peach venison stew and one for Chinese dumplings. If you substitute tongue for the pork, it makes them nice and chewy.”

  Reuben took another hearty bite of cheesy banana bread. “I can’t wait to see what recipes you have in store.”

  Anna’s smile only widened. Her dear grandson would never suspect that she had more in store for him than gourmet food.

  She was going to get him a wife.

  Chapter Three

  Reuben took a rake to Mammi’s flower beds as if he were trying to get revenge on the dead leaves that had been there since autumn. Backbreaking work and aching muscles distracted him from his dark thoughts. They’d weighed heavily on him for three months. He’d rake the whole hill if it would help.

  He’d only intended to stay for a week, but Mammi’s cooking had been too gute and his heart had been too heavy to even consider leaving. Mamm and Dat had written ten letters, urging him to come home, but he couldn’t bear the thought of such humiliation. He’d been cooped up in Mammi and Dawdi’s house all of January, February, and March, shoveling coal, driving Mammi and Dawdi to gmay in the sleigh, waiting for spring. At last he could take his frustrations out on the clods of dirt in the yard.

  A chilly morning in early April was a perfect time to try to work himself to death. His shirt was already drenched with sweat, and he swiped away a trickle of moisture from his temple. If it had been any warmer, he would have been dizzy with the heat.

  Reuben kept his head bent over his rake as he made his way around Mammi and Dawdi’s house, dragging the dead leaves from the foundation, pulling weeds from under the rosebushes, and being careful not to disturb the tulips and daffodils making their way out of the soil.

  It felt like an anvil was tied around his neck, as if he wouldn’t be able to lift his face to Gotte, even if he had wanted to. Gotte had seen to it that Reuben was completely miserable. He didn’t much feel like having a conversation with Him.

  John and Linda Sue had humiliated Reuben but good, and he didn’t wonder but the whole community was laughing and gossiping about him behind his back. John had made a fool of him, and even with three months of brooding behind him, Reuben’s pride still smarted something wonderful. Better to stay in Bonduel where people didn’t know of his disgrace and wouldn’t think less of him. Maybe they’d come to admire and like him. Maybe here he could be as popular as he had once been in Sugarcreek. It would never be the same back home.

  Mammi and Dawdi hadn’t asked any questions, and he hadn’t volunteered any answers. Though they’d given him a roof over his head and food fit for a king, he simply couldn’t bring himself to tell them anything. Linda Sue had rejected him—Reuben Helmuth, the minister’s son—for a pig farmer. The humiliation smarted like a carpet burn to his cheek.

  It galled him that even though John had been the one who betrayed their friendship, it had been Reuben who’d left Sugarcreek in disgrace. For sure and certain, John had set out to purposefully embarrass him.

  Linda Sue and John had been so smug, standing hand in hand on the bridge, pretending to feel so bad about hurting Reuben’s feelings like that. Whoever heard of breaking up with your boyfriend on Christmas Eve? Wasn’t that a sin or something? Linda Sue had even managed a few tears, as if she truly felt bad about leading him on and making him believe that she loved him when she had been seeing John behind his back. The crying, the deep distress, had been an act, and he couldn’t have been more humiliated if one of his brothers had joined the army.

  John had been Reuben’s best friend, but he was also a poor, redheaded pig farmer who had no business even hoping for the bishop’s daughter. Reuben had been replaced by a nobody.

  Dawdi ambled around the side of the house singing to himself. If he ever forgot the words to a song, he just made up his own. Dawdi was clever that way. “Denki, Mammi, for praying for me,” he sang. “If you had not prayed I don’t know where I’d be. I thought you were old-fashioned, but you loved the Lord, and your prayers flew to heaven as your tears fell to the floor.”

  Reuben raked another pile of leaves onto the tarp he’d laid out on the lawn. Dawdi reached down and picked up two corners of the tarp.

  “I can move it, Dawdi.” Dawdi was well into his eighties. He shouldn’t be lifting anything.

  “Not all that heavy with two of us,” Dawdi said, motioning for Reuben to grab the other two sides of the tarp. “Besides, I’ve got titanium knees. I can lift just about anything.”

  They dragged the tarp to the edge of the woods, Reuben trying to take most of the weight in his arms.

  “I’ve never seen this place so cleaned up,” Dawdi said, tilting the tarp and shaking the leaves among the trees. “Like as not, some of those leaves have been sitting around the foundation for a generation.”

  “Mammi wants it to look nice for gmay tomorrow.”

  “It will look better than nice. I didn’t even know there were daffodils hiding under there.” Each holding a corner, Reuben and Dawdi dragged the empty tarp over the grass and spread it next to the yet-to-be-raked leaves. “We got a letter from your dat this morning,” Dawdi said.

  Reuben felt the heat travel up his neck. Another letter from Dat. How long before Mammi and Dawdi started asking questions? How long before they figured out why their grandson had shown up at their house a few days after Christmas and didn’t show any signs of leaving?

  Not long, apparently. “Do you want to talk about it?” Dawdi said.

  “Nae.”

  Dawdi stroked his beard. “You’ve been as silent as a skunk on the prowl since you got here.”

  Reuben picked up his rake and attacked the thick and rotting clump of leaves that congregated against the house. “I don’t want to relive my humiliation,” he said, nearly spitting the words out of his mouth. He paused raking and bowed his head. “I’m sorry, Dawdi. I didn’t mean to speak to you that way.”

  “A broken heart is nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “My best friend betrayed me.”

  “You bear no shame for that,” Dawdi said.

  “I’m angry I trusted him.”

  Dawdi nodded, and the lines in his face deepened. “You were hurt by someone who was supposed to be your friend. It’s what you do with your anger that matters now. You’ve got all the time in the world to figure it out here on Huckleberry Hill. Elsie would be happy to let you stay as long as you like.”

  Cousin Elsie who lived in Charm, Ohio? “Denki, Dawdi.” People at home would be laughing about him for years. The girl he loved had rejected him. A broken heart and a large helping of humble pie waited for him in Sugarcreek. He never wanted to go back. But he couldn’t stay on Huckleberry Hill forever.

  “There’s no rush to make plans,” Dawdi said. “But your dat and I both agree that it’s time for you to go back to church. Staying away never did nobody no good.”

  Reuben hadn’t been to gmay since he’d come to Huckleberry Hill. At first it was because he didn’t think he’d be in Bonduel that long. He’d been too low to want to meet anybody new, let alone try to make friends or forge new relationships that would be so temporary. Then it was easier to be the hermit everyone thought he was. Hermits never got their hearts broken. Hermits never got betrayed by their best friends. Hermits didn’t have friends.

  But Dawdi was right. Reuben had been baptized, and Gotte expected him to be in church, no matter how mad Reuben was at Gotte at the moment. No matter how painful, he needed to quit being a baby about it. “Jah. I know I need to go back to church.”

  Dawdi folded his arms. “Tomorrow will be a wonderful-gute day for it since it’s at our house.”

  “Okay. I’ll come. I just don’t like being laughed at.”

  “I can’t imagine anyone will laugh at you. They’ve been curious as cats to know who the boy is hiding on Huckleberry Hill. The girls caught wind that you are handsome, and they’ve been holding their breath in hopes you’ll show up.”

  “I’d rather they left me alone. I don’t have the heart for it.�
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  Dawdi rested a firm hand on Reuben’s shoulder. “No one’s asking you to pick a new girlfriend. It’s gmay. You don’t have to flirt. You only have to show up and listen to the sermons. That will be plenty of excitement for everybody for one day.”

  “It’s a sad day when I’m the most exciting thing to happen at gmay.”

  “Exciting things happen at gmay all the time. Two weeks ago little Jake Zimmerman and Yost Kiem were fighting over a copy of the Ausbund, and Jake yanked it out of Yost’s hands so fast, it hit him in the face and gave him a bloody nose.” Dawdi motioned toward the house. “I can’t prepare for all the excitement on an empty stomach. Your mammi’s made Spam sandwiches and orange Jell-O with pickles.”

  Reuben propped his rake against the side of the house. “Lead the way.”

  At least he didn’t have to pretend to be enthusiastic about lunch. The best thing about being on Huckleberry Hill, besides his grandparents, was the food. Mammi wasn’t a timid cook. She experimented with new combinations and flavors, and Reuben loved her sense of adventure—and her lentil, raisin, and green bean soup.

  If only everybody could cook like Mammi.

  Chapter Four

  Reuben hadn’t felt like singing for three months, but he felt obligated to sing in church. The elders wouldn’t like it if he sat there during the singing like a mute songbird. They were halfway through “Das Loblied,” which took nearly half an hour to sing, but his mind wasn’t on the words. Instead, he was thinking of Linda Sue and her hazel eyes, which were so deep he had often imagined he could swim in them. He used to sneak glances at her during the minister’s sermons. Church would always remind him of Linda Sue.

  No wonder he’d stayed away for so long.

  Linda Sue had a quiet, humble way about her that Reuben liked very much. She wasn’t loud and never drew attention to herself, even though she was pretty and the bishop’s daughter to boot. Reuben had loved sitting with her in the evenings on her dat’s porch swing, maybe gazing at the sunset or laughing at a joke.