by Senft, Adina
She yanked the size-small gloves out of the basket nailed on the wall by the office door and grabbed a set of planks—rough wood that they got from the mill cheap—laying them out in their simple grid. Grasping the air nailer with both hands, she nailed the planks on the studs, then another layer, and, with a grunt, flipped the thing over and nailed down the second side. Though she was supposed to work exclusively in the front office, Enoch had taught her well, and she had it down to a science. One pallet went together every couple of minutes until the remaining nineteen were done. While she wrestled the last finished pallet onto the top of the stack, she heard the roar of a diesel engine as a truck pulled in to the parking area close to the back door.
Ach. She’d finished in the nick of time. She yanked off the gloves, checked that her Kapp hadn’t slid off to hang down her back as a result of her exertions, and dusted grit and splinters from the front of her black apron. The back door was heavy—so heavy that it took both hands and her full weight on it before it began to roll aside.
A set of thick, hairy fingers grasped the outside and gave a mighty heave, and the door rolled all the way open, as meek as a lamb. She stumbled back a few steps, her heart pounding. A man to match the fingers peered into the shop and blinked in surprise when he saw her. “Ma’am?”
Deep breath. He is Englisch, he is a scary one, but he is also a customer. “Thank you. That door is heavy.” He was as big as a mountain, but for all his size he seemed even more apprehensive than she as he removed his cap with the seed company’s logo on the front. “Are you here to pick up the order for the Lincoln Seed Company?”
“Yes, ma’am. But I didn’t know— I mean, I thought y’all were— What I mean to say is, I spoke yesterday to a guy name of David Yoder.”
“He works for me,” she said briskly, “but he has Wednesdays off. My other helper had to leave, so I finished up the order myself just now. I’m afraid it’s still on the floor. Do you have a forklift in the truck? Because if not, we’ll have to lift them in the back together.”
The man nodded. She was halfway across the shop before she realized he wasn’t following her, and she retraced her steps. “Is everything all right? Did I forget something?”
He shook his head, still turning his cap in his hands as though he were trying to reshape it. “I guess I’m a little surprised. I never seen an Amish lady in this part of town before, never mind in here. We been getting our pallets from Whinburg for years. Don’t Enoch Beiler own the shop anymore?”
Oh, dear. Oh, dear. “No. Enoch died eleven months ago. I am his widow, Amelia.” The man’s face paled, and the corners of his mouth turned down in an inverted U. Amelia drew in a sharp breath as she realized how much the blunt truth had upset him. This was different—to be in the position of offering comfort instead of receiving it. “Forgive me,” she said. If it had been an Amish man, she might have laid an understanding hand on his arm, but this man was Englisch, and she had no idea what he might do. “I didn’t realize you hadn’t heard.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m in— Well, it’s a shock.” Then she realized that his emotion was not for himself—it was for her. The poor, dear mountain of a man. Any lingering fear she might have been trying to squelch faded away at the sadness in his eyes. “I’m very sorry for your loss. Was he sick?”
She shook her head. “If he had been, we might have been able to prepare ourselves a little. No, it was a buggy accident. A drunk driver crested the hill and didn’t see Enoch in the pickup wagon.” For the hundredth time, the picture flashed in her head. The headlights, the car, the overturned buggy, the vegetables from her garden scattered all over a neighboring field. She shuddered, trying to block it out. “The other man—boy, really—was killed, too, when his car rolled and threw him out.”
If it were possible, the driver’s mouth drooped even more. “I’m sorry to make you think about it again, ma’am. Please. Forget I asked.”
He was a complete stranger. He was Englisch. But in spite of both, his sorrow called to hers—and there was nothing more honest than sorrow. “It’s hard not to think of it,” she said slowly, surprised at herself for saying such personal things to a stranger. “I don’t like working in the shop here, but it does a fine job of keeping my mind occupied.”
“You, uh…Amish ladies, you don’t come out of your houses much, do you? I mean, to work. Of course, I see you driving your buggies all around.”
“The shop was Enoch’s world, and the house is mine, and there was a time when neither of us knew what to do in the other’s,” she said. “I like keeping house. We have two boys, you know, and they’re a job in themselves.” Again his mouth drooped, and she said hastily, “But I’ve learned to keep the books as well as a home, and I’ve gotten pretty handy with the air nailer. Your pallets are ready.”
Strangely enough, this return to business seemed to reassure him that she was all right. “Just give me a minute to drop the gate and drive the forklift off it.”
He was very skilled with the little vehicle, maneuvering in the cramped space as if he’d been working there all his life. Within half an hour, he was signing off on the invoice and helping her roll the door shut.
“You got a nice operation here.” He looked the building up and down, with the tidy stack of lumber waiting outside until it was needed. On the other side of the fence was the Steiner family’s cabinetmaking shop, and on the far side another branch of the Lehmans who were no relation to her parents kept a freezer place, where families could bring their meat after slaughter and rent a freezer to store it.
His gaze got back around to her. “Ever think of selling?”
Caught off guard, Amelia flailed for an answer and couldn’t find a single one.
He went on, “You could get a fair price for it, I bet. Whinburg’s a nice town, with good house prices. A man wanted a neat little business to retire on, he could do a lot worse.”
“Are…are you speaking of yourself ?” Only the Englisch retired. An Amish man handed the farm’s main responsibility over to his sons and kept on helping them. Only when he was too old to work did he watch the proceedings from his front porch, and even then, more often than not, his boys would come to him of an evening for advice and counsel on their decisions. Stewardship of the land didn’t just go away when you were sixty-five.
“Maybe,” the man said. “If you didn’t want to go on with it, I’d make you a fair offer.”
And then, money in hand, what would she do? “I don’t know. I never thought of such a thing.”
“No hurry. I used to be in this area a lot, but not so much lately. Even Whinburg is growing and changing.” He dug in his pocket and handed her a dog-eared card with the seed company’s logo and BERNARD BURKE, OPERATIONS MANAGER printed on it, along with a telephone number and a Hershey address. “If you come to a decision, just give me a call.” He stopped. “You have a phone here, don’t you?”
“We do here. Just not at home.”
“Right. You have to get permission for that?”
She nodded. “But it’s a fact of life that a business nowadays needs a phone. We don’t have them in our homes, though. It’s too intrusive, and it would be too easy to spend all day talking and not working.”
“I s’pose. I hate the phone myself. I’m a lot better over e-mail. Do you have that?”
“No computer. I do the books in…books.”
He grinned at her. “I guess it worked for our grandparents, didn’t it? Well, you have a nice day, now. And I’m sorry about Enoch. He was a fine man. About the only one hereabouts who appreciated my jokes.”
She smiled, and he climbed into his truck. With a last wave out the driver’s window, he pulled away and rumbled off up the road toward the highway. She let herself in through the back door next to the big rollaway doors. In the office she dropped his card in the top left drawer with a bunch of others from salesmen and customers.
A fair offer.
She should have asked him how much “fair” was.
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No. There was no point. She had to live on something, and even if she got a good price for the shop, eventually that would run out. And then what would she do? Buy another shop?
Dear Father Gott, is this really Your will for me? Getting blisters through my gloves from wrestling that nailer day after day? What is Your plan for me, Lord? I once thought my life was in Your hands, laid out from beginning to end, with nothing but happiness and good, satisfying work for my family and Your glory in store. Now I feel as if I’m drifting, and I don’t know what direction is right anymore. Help me, Father.
Amelia opened her eyes and found herself gazing straight down into the drawer.
Then she took the card off the top of the pile and shoved it into the pocket of her black dress.
“A fair offer?” Ruth Lehman, Amelia’s mother, dug into the baking pan of apple crumble a little harder than she had to and dropped a large helping into young Matthew’s bowl. “What a forward, presumptuous man.”
She put a helping only a little smaller into a second bowl, then poured cream over both, jabbed spoons into them, and set them in front of the boys. Matthew and Elam shoveled in their dessert with much more enthusiasm than they’d shown over their cabbage slaw and pork chops and emptied their bowls in seconds.
Amelia took hers and enjoyed the first bite, rich with fresh cream, while her mother chased the boys outside and dished up a second helping for Daed.
“Don’t be so quick to judge the man, Ruth,” he said in his slow, thoughtful way. “You can’t fault him for being interested in a good opportunity.”
“I can fault him for not minding his own business. He already has a job with this seed company, while there’s men like Melvin Miller having to travel days on the train just to find work.”
“Melvin doesn’t have the money to buy the shop.” Amelia only said what everyone already knew. “Not unless he sells his farm, and if he did that, he and Carrie would have to live in the office and sleep on the desk.” She already regretted opening her mouth, but she really did want Daed’s opinion on what to do.
Mamm had lots of opinions, but they were rarely useful and sometimes irrelevant to the problem at hand. If she gave two seconds’ thought to anything but herbs and physicks, or the running of her house, Amelia would be surprised. Daed was the thoughtful one. She was glad she’d taken after him. If she were like her mother, she’d probably have lost the shop long ago.
“What do you think is a fair price, Daed?”
He lifted a shoulder, clearly enjoying the second bowl of crumble as much as the first. “You might have asked him. But I can see why you didn’t. A man is likely to make a woman a low offer just to see if she knows better.”
Mamm snorted. “In courting, too.”
Amelia didn’t let herself be sidetracked. “He didn’t seem like that kind of man. He seemed honest.”
“With worldly folk you never know.” Briskly, Mamm dished up her own helping and sat down. “That’s why it’s better to sell to an Amish man, if you’re going to.”
“I’m not going to sell to anyone, Mamm. And I don’t want you talking about it like I am. The man asked a simple question, and I didn’t have an answer, so I came to get Daed’s opinion, that’s all.”
“A business like that is worth eighty or ninety thousand, I would think,” Daed said. He scraped the last of the pudding out of the bottom of his bowl and licked the spoon with satisfaction. “You could do worse.”
“Yes, but what would I do with what I got for it?”
“The bank would be happy if you gave them some of it.”
“I’m sure they would, but even if I paid off our place, what then? I can’t put food on the table with nothing.”
“That’s easy,” Ruth chimed in. “Get married again.”
Amelia fought the urge to push back from the table, collect the boys, and walk away into the dark. It took her a moment to master herself and answer quietly.
“I’m not ready to marry again, Mamm. I might have a month left in black, but in my heart I’m still grieving as though it happened last week.”
“In time you may feel different,” Ruth said mildly.
“By then we’ll have all starved to death.”
“No one will be starving.” Daed’s gaze reproached her for being lippy to her mother. “You still have us. You and the boys will always find a welcome here no matter what happens.”
She knew it. Daed and Mamm and the farm she’d grown up on were the bedrock of her life—the things she could count on, like the sun coming up and the apple trees blossoming in April. Just last week at church, she’d seen her two brothers and her sister gathered around their parents as though they were warming themselves at the stove. No matter how far apart they spread or how many children of their own they had, they still came back, sometimes for an evening like this one, sometimes for a work frolic at harvest time, and always, always on the Saturday when it was the Lehmans’ week for church. Then twenty years would drop away and it was like being kids again, bossed from one end of the yard to the other by both parents as they organized the work party to get the place trim and sparkling for Sunday.
“I know, Daed, and it comforts me. But it isn’t really practical, you know. I like having my own home.”
“You like having things all your own way,” Mamm corrected her around a mouthful of crumble.
“That, too,” Amelia conceded. Daed smiled—he knew her well. She answered with one of her own and went on, “But when Mark takes over next year, you’ll find things a little too tight in the house if the boys and I are here yet.”
Her eldest brother, Mark, had gone off to western Pennsylvania to buy a farm fifteen years ago and much to the delight of Adah, her sister-in-law, had been so homesick for Whinburg Township and his family that he’d sold up and decided to buy into the home place with Daed. By this time next year, there would be half a dozen children playing in Daadi’s hayloft and being unwilling guinea pigs for Mammi’s latest herbal recipe.
Ah, well. Those recipes hadn’t hurt her any, except for that one time when Ruth had made Amelia drink a glass of apple cider vinegar mixed with honey for a cold and she’d gakutzed the lot into the sink five minutes later.
Which reminded her…
“Mamm, do you have anything in your medicine chest for circulation problems?”
Ruth perked up like a retriever spotting a shotgun. “What kind?”
Amelia rubbed her hands. “I’ve been getting pins and needles in my hands for no reason, it seems. The latest one was this morning, when I was getting ready to go to the shop. Even now these two fingers feel like they’re going to sleep.” She massaged the third and fourth fingers of her left hand.
“Let me see.” Ruth took her hand in both of her work-worn ones and rubbed them briskly. “Does this help?”
“I tried that. It does for a little while, and then it happens again. My hand goes numb and I drop things.”
“Sounds like a pinched nerve. Maybe in your shoulder.”
“But my shoulder doesn’t hurt.”
“It doesn’t have to. It just shuts off the circulation. Dr. Shadle explained it all to me.”
Mamm had the kind of faith in her chiropractor that people should reserve only for God. His word was law in her mind, every pronouncement written there in indelible ink. Amelia would think her mother a tiny bit soft in the head if Daed didn’t share her opinion. She couldn’t remember a single occasion when either of her parents had been to a regular doctor for themselves. There’d been trips to the emergency room for her brothers, of course, and one for Amelia that time she got food poisoning (she had not eaten any of Mary Lapp’s pickled herring since, not once). But her parents either took care of themselves or went to Dr. Shadle.
“You should make an appointment for this week,” Ruth told her. “Meantime I’ll give you a mustard poultice for your hands, to make the blood flow better.”
“Mamm, I don’t think—”
“Don’t think. Just wait.
” Ruth hurried the dessert dishes into the kitchen sink and shut herself in her workroom, which had once been the enclosed back porch. Amelia went out to the boiler to get a pan of hot water. Ugh. Mamm’s poultices were not just goopy, they usually smelled awful, too.
A few minutes later, Ruth sat her down at the table and wrapped her hands in cheesecloth soaked in mustard and who knew what else. “Ach,” Amelia choked, twisting her head away and trying to breathe over her shoulder.
“Never mind your noise,” Ruth chided. “It’s only ten minutes. Any longer and the essence of mustard might burn you, and then you’d be worse off than you are.”
She could at least try to sound sympathetic. But Ruth was a little like Daniel Lapp—words went straight from mind to mouth with no stops in between. Especially when it came to her remedies. And yet people didn’t seem to take offense. More often than not, when Amelia was walking down the lane after work, someone would be coming up it with a plastic bag full of herbs or looking for some mixture to treat this ache or that pain. She might drive Amelia to distraction, but Ruth had a real reputation as a Dokterfraa.
Of course, if a person believed that a mustard plaster would bring her hands back to life, then maybe it would.
After the ten minutes of trying to breathe, Amelia stood at the sink washing her hands and arms all the way up to the elbows. Her hands tingled and burned a little, but under the hot water they still didn’t move properly. She’d stop in at the phone shanty and call Dr. Shadle’s office. Anything was better than this perpetual needley feeling in her fingers—not to mention the sudden numbness and lack of control. What if she went to cuddle someone’s baby on Sunday and dropped it?
No. She’d get this taken care of, and that would be the end of it. She had too much to do to be bothered with such things.
The only pins and needles she wanted were the kind that went into a quilt.
Chapter 3
The sermon and testimony at Council Meeting served one purpose—to prepare the congregation’s hearts for forgiveness. As a child, Amelia had taken this very seriously, once even going to her brother Mark to ask forgiveness for taking his skates without permission. Since she’d managed to break a blade off one of them by accident and then hidden the evidence, he had a hard time accepting her apology until Mamm had intervened. Then, when Amelia was married, she found that the giving and receiving of forgiveness was a little like exercise. You didn’t enjoy having to do it, but once you did, it got easier—and you learned to need it.