Christmas at Rose Hill Farm

by Suzanne Woods Fisher

  Buttering the toast, Bess’s knife stilled. She was being sent to fetch a rose rustler? What would she talk about with him—a stranger—on the ride home? Then she quelled her dismay and nearly smiled. Roses, of course. That’s what they could discuss on the short ride to Rose Hill Farm. She wished Maggie Zook were here. Maggie could effortlessly keep up a one-sided conversation with anyone. “It’s a gift,” she had once told Bess, as if it was bestowed on her like the color of her eyes or hair.

  A few hours later, Bess prepared to head to the bus stop in town. She put one arm into a coat sleeve, then another. Taking her black bonnet from the wall peg, she knotted the strings swift and taut, then made her way to the barn to harness Frieda to the buggy and head to town. There, she waited in the cold buggy for over thirty minutes until the bus rumbled around a bend and turned onto Main Street, coming to a jerky stop.

  Forcing a confident air, Bess opened the door and climbed out of the buggy. She wondered if she should have brought a big sign that said ROSE RUSTLER, but then thought she might seem ridiculous, and if there was one thing Bess didn’t want to seem, it was ridiculous. She wasn’t nearly as acutely self-conscious as she used to be, the way she was when she first came to Rose Hill Farm and her grandmother said she acted scared of her own shadow and hoped nobody could tell. She was much bolder now—nowhere near as bold as her grandmother had been, though few could be that bold.

  She studied the bus steps, waiting for the rosarian to emerge. At the top of the stairs, a young man appeared and paused, his face turned away from her as he peered down Main Street. Bess’s jaw dropped open and a sharp breath gusted in; her heart hit her throat, and she felt her face heat up. She knew him immediately by the set of his sturdy shoulders and the overall familiarity of his form. Even in his big coat, she knew who he was. Speechless, she drank in every inch of him. Broader yet more angular than he used to be, a full shock of hair with long sideburns instead of the bowl cut common to her people, dressed in a dark brown coat and blue jeans over solid construction boots. She thought she might fall down and faint, right there, right on Main Street.

  Bess opened her mouth as if to speak, closed it, swallowed, then opened it again. “Billy Lapp?”

  Billy’s head snapped around when he heard his name. His face suddenly blanched as he made a quick pass over her bonnet and dress. His eyes widened in disbelief while he stiffened as if struck by lightning. “Bess? Bess Riehl?” He quickly recovered his shock and his face closed over. “I expected your father to be coming to get me.”

  She moved forward with uncertain steps. “You? You’re . . . the rose rustler?” She tried to hide her delight and knew it wasn’t very successful. But her smile was met with a scowl that made her bristle. She tried again. Questions galloped through her mind—Where had he come from? What had he been doing?—and she found it nearly impossible to form words into a complete sentence. “So is that where you’ve been living? Over in College Station?”

  When he spoke again, there was a hard edge to his words. “Where’s your father?”

  “The first snowfall of the year always causes his back injury to flare up—he can’t handle the cold well. He was moving slowly this morning so I was given the job to pick up the rosarian. He’ll be thrilled to see you. We never expected the rose rustler to be you.”

  Brows furrowed, he gave her a sharp, quelling glance. “You gonna show me this rose or what?” The question shot out like a challenge.

  Bess’s mouth dropped open. The nerve of Billy Lapp to treat her as if she were nothing to him but . . . a taxi driver! She squared her shoulders and turned toward Frieda, the patiently waiting buggy horse, leaving him to silently follow behind. When she reached the horse, she turned and saw his hesitance. “Are you coming?”

  His eyes flicked to the buggy, then back again. “You’re not supposed to be in a buggy with the likes of me.”

  A crack in his hard veneer. Maybe it was a sign—the old Billy was still there. “I’ll risk it.”

  But her hope extinguished and her disillusionment continued as she snapped the reins and clucked to Frieda. Billy didn’t look at her and she didn’t look at him. Not too often, anyway. Only when she couldn’t help herself. They drove a mile west, then turned south, and the land looked all the same: rolling fields of brown stubble lying silent under winter’s chill. There wasn’t much snow left from Sunday’s covering, only in the shade, and though the day was sunny, the mood in the buggy was dour.

  Bess wondered what thoughts were running through Billy’s mind. Her head buzzed with questions. She wanted to ask where he’d been these last few years, why he hadn’t tried to get in touch with her, what had happened to Betsy Mast, but she felt tongue-tied. Neither of them said a word.

  She found herself remembering what he’d looked like as a young man of eighteen, just before full maturity set in, before he had whiskers and muscles and the brittle aloofness he was displaying. He had changed dramatically. He was still every bit as gloriously handsome as he always was—man-sized, broad shoulders, with curly brown hair and blue eyes rimmed with dark eyebrows. But the roguish twinkle in his eyes was gone. His face was drawn tighter than the lids of Mammi’s rose petal jam jars. Those eyes were cold now. It seemed as if he could barely tolerate being here, as if she and all of Stoney Ridge were nothing but a great inconvenience to him.

  Then why was he here?

  The rose, of course, which gave her a small measure of comfort. The Billy Lapp she once knew would go to any lengths for a rose.

  He turned his head to look out the window, and she noticed his long hair curling over his coat collar. She remembered the day she first laid eyes on him—she had noticed his hair, even then.

  ———

  Mid-October 1969, a bright sunny day. Bess was twelve years old and had come to Stoney Ridge for her grandfather’s funeral. Her grandmother had insisted Bess stay on at Rose Hill Farm for a while afterward to help her adjust to widowhood. That came as a surprise to Bess and her father, because most everyone, including her grandfather, had to do the adjusting for Mammi. Jonah tried to encourage his mother to come to Ohio to live with them, said they could make her very comfortable and there was plenty of room for one more, but she wouldn’t hear of it. Very set in her ways, Mammi was, and wouldn’t budge from her burrow.

  Bess’s father had to return to Ohio for work, and he relented to allow Bess to stay at Rose Hill Farm for another week. One week turned into two and there was no talk about sending Bess home. Finally, on a brisk afternoon when a cheery fire glowed in the stove, Bess broached the subject with her grandmother. “Mammi, when do you think you’ll be ready for me to head back to Ohio? Dad’s been asking.”

  “Well,” Mammi said, patting her chest, “I’ve been having some heart trouble.”

  Bess eyed her grandmother suspiciously. She was as sound as a coin.

  Mammi’s spectacles were on her nose. “I didn’t want to worry your father.”

  “Have you seen a doctor?”

  “Doctor,” she scoffed. “What do I need with a doctor?” She waved that thought away with a flick of her big wrist. She didn’t trust doctors. “They’d just end up giving me pills to shorten my life.”

  Just as Bess opened her mouth to object, a knock interrupted her train of thought. She went to open the door and found herself staring at the most beautiful boy she had ever seen in all her twelve years. His hair was curly and thick, and it looked as if he hadn’t combed it in a hundred years.

  “Who is it?” Mammi bellowed from across the room. She said she was deaf, but she heard everything.

  The boy looked at Bess curiously, then peered over her head at her grandmother. “It’s me, Bertha. Billy. Maggie tagged along.”

  Mammi peered back. “Wann bischt du aaegelandt?” What wind blew you hither?

  “Maggie said you wanted to see me.”

  “You’re late. I was expecting you this morning.” Mammi expected a lot. And she always claimed she knew when a person was coming. But then,
she claimed she knew everything. “Well, come on in, Billy Lapp.”

  The boy stepped around Bess and crossed the room to Mammi. Behind the beautiful boy was a small girl, about ten or eleven, who looked like a pixie, with snapping dark eyes hidden behind big glasses.

  “Who are you?” the girl said.

  Bess’s mind went blank. She couldn’t get a word from her head to her mouth.

  “Is she all right?” Billy whispered, pointing to his head. He spoke to Mammi, not even glancing at Bess.

  “She’s fine. Billy Lapp and Maggie Zook, meet Bess. She’s my granddaughter from Ohio.” Mammi looked at Bess. “Billy lives that way,” she pointed a big thumb in one direction, “and Maggie lives the other way. Bess needs some friends.”

  Billy erased Mammi’s comment in midair. She heard him mutter that he didn’t have time to be friends with a girl, especially one who couldn’t talk.

  Fine. Too bad for him. She didn’t want to be friends either.

  Then he looked up. His eyes were blue, the clear color of a September sky, the bluest she had ever seen. He was staring straight at her with a fierce gaze, and she felt like she was struck by lightning.

  Maggie pushed her glasses up on her nose, peering at Bess. “How old are you?”

  Bess was having trouble gathering her thoughts. She cleared her throat and tried to speak, but nothing came out. She was too overcome by the handsomeness of Billy Lapp.

  Mammi answered for her. “She’s twelve.”

  “Where do you live?” Billy said, enunciating carefully. He still thought Bess was slow.

  “Didn’t you notice her at the funeral for Samuel, Billy?” Maggie said. “I did! She came all the way from Oleo!”

  “Oleo is yellow lard,” Billy said.

  “Ohio,” Mammi corrected. “And it’s not all that far, Maggie. No need to get historical.”

  “Hysterical,” Billy said.

  Maggie turned to Bess. “Don’t you worry about not being able to talk. There’s lots of ways to communicate. We can pass notes in school.”

  Wait. What? School? Bess had no intention of starting school in Stoney Ridge. She’d been more than happy to miss school these last few weeks. She couldn’t wait until she finished eighth grade next year and could say goodbye to school for the rest of her life. She kept a wall calendar at home in Ohio in which she marked a red X over each passing day.

  “Bess can talk. She just don’t say much, unlike some other girls her age.” Mammi lifted a sparse eyebrow in Maggie’s direction.

  “How long is she staying?” Maggie didn’t realize she’d just been insulted by Mammi.

  “She’s staying on a bit longer to help me get through my time of sorrow,” Mammi said.

  Maggie slipped closer to Bess. “I’ve read that mutes can learn to talk with their fingers.” She wiggled her fingers in front of Bess to demonstrate.

  “I’m not mute,” Bess whispered. “I’m just a little shy.”

  Maggie’s coffee brown eyes went wide. “Land sakes, why didn’t you say so?”

  Well, Maggie Zook, besides my being struck dumb by Billy’s beautiful blue eyes, you haven’t given me a spare inch to fit in a word. Bess had to rummage for her response, piecing it together one word at a time like beads on a string. Before she could get the sentence out, Maggie’s attention had swung to the kitchen door.

  Mammi’s eleven-year-old rooster had figured out how to open the kitchen door by flying up to whack the loose handle with a wing, then sticking his clawed foot in the opening. Bess would’ve thought Mammi would singe that rooster’s tail feathers and toss him out the door, but instead she scooped him up under her arm and petted him like a cat, without missing a beat of her conversation with Billy. “I asked you here because I want you to figure something out for me.” She peered at him with mortal seriousness.

  “What?”

  “I want you to learn how to graft roses.”

  “What for?”

  She worked a thoughtful finger over her chins. “I’m working on a plan, that’s why. I need more roses and I need them fast.”

  “What’s the hurry?”

  “I’m not going to live forever, you know.” She patted her heart again.

  Hours spent shadowing her grandmother these last few weeks had instructed Bess about a good many of her mannerisms and curious way of thinking. She could tell exactly what Mammi was up to. Lamenting about her imminent death was Mammi’s way of stirring action out of a reluctant body. Usually Bess’s.

  But Billy was a fumbling fifteen-year-old, oblivious to the wiles of a clever woman and, being a boy, was slow to catch on. “Well, then, just go buy roses.”

  Mammi’s eyes closed to a pair of dangerous slits. Bess figured her grandmother might pick up a broom and swat him home for that. Even she knew the answer to that after being at Rose Hill Farm for three weeks now. Mammi thought modern roses that were sold in nurseries were cheap imitations of the real thing. She had roses from her mother and grandmother and great-grandmother and so on and so on that she wanted to protect for generations.

  Mammi must have decided to pardon Billy for his appalling ignorance. “No need to buy anything. I have everything I need. Problem is, I don’t know how to graft.”

  “But I don’t either,” Billy said.

  “No, but you can learn.”

  “But . . . how?” He appeared mystified.

  “Go to the library,” Mammi said wearily. Her patience, never in great supply, was running thin. “Ask around. Experiment. Figure it out. Using your brain once in a great while wouldn’t be such a cats-after-me.”

  Maggie pushed her glasses up on the bridge of her nose. “Why is a cat after you?”

  “She means catastrophe,” Billy said, annoyed. “And I use my brain all the time.”

  And that’s just what he did. Within a few years, Billy had learned how to grow roses from cuttings and graft so capably that the horse pastures of Rose Hill Farm were converted to thriving fields of roses. Mammi’s heritage rose business was under way.

  ———

  But that was then and this was now. Billy sat stiff on the buggy seat, eyes fastened to the road straight ahead. Bess noticed his hands grip the buggy seat as if it were holding him together. At the last second, she decided to turn Frieda down a different road than the one that passed by his father’s farm and she saw Billy’s hands ease up their grip.

  Aha . . . that’s what was making him act so particularly tetchy. She cast a glance at him, wondering how much of his abrupt disappearance had to do with his no-account older brothers. Billy was the youngest, dubbed Der Ruschde, the runt, and that was when they were feeling kindly.

  Billy had a different way of thinking than the rest of his family. Mammi used to grumble those brothers of his were casing the joint whenever they showed up at Rose Hill Farm. She said Billy was the only one who had any spark of their mother, and she thought well of Billy’s mother. Bess knew her grandmother’s ulterior motive in hiring Billy was to get him away from those brothers before they ruined him. Bertha Riehl never did anything without an ulterior motive.

  Billy tipped his head toward her. “Did you stop taking care of my bees?”

  Just as Bess’s heart was softening a little, Billy went and ruined it. “No! Of course not.” She was incensed. What did he think—that just because he had left the farm, it had fallen into disrepair? Were his expectations that low? You just wait, Billy Lapp, she felt like saying. Just wait until you see what my father and I have done with Rose Hill Farm. It’s never looked better.

  Then her heart caught a beat. Rose Hill Farm had never looked better because there was going to be a wedding there. Her wedding. Hers and Amos’s. In just a few days.

  She turned onto Stone Leaf Road and past the hand-painted sign Mammi had made decades ago: Roses for Sale, No Sunday Sales. Up the long drive lined with cherry trees, now bare of leaves, along the fields of roses, now just sticks of canes. Billy was gazing at the rose fields.

  “Jonah’s
expanded the fields,” he said quietly, more to himself than to her.

  “We’ve gone in a lot of different directions. I’m sure Dad will want to tell you all about it.”

  “I remember when your grandmother converted those pastures into rose fields.” He closed his eyes, lost in a memory. “How does a bundle of prickly sticks explode into fragrant roses?”

  She looked sharply at him. That sounded like something the old Billy Lapp would say. Comments like those were what made her feel dangerously drawn to him. He had taught her to find splendor and majesty in her grandmother’s old-fashioned roses.

  The wood-frame house at Rose Hill Farm was two stories high, absolutely unadorned, like all the other Amish farmhouses they’d passed on their way from town. As the buggy reached the top of the rise of the driveway, Lainey stepped out of the kitchen door, tucking a strand of hair into the bun at the back of her head. Four-year-old Christy was wrapped around her leg. Lainey raised one hand in greeting and stopped, halfway up in the air, as shock flittered over her. Then, joy lit her face.

  “Billy Lapp!” she called, coming down two wooden steps and traversing carefully over patches of snow that covered dry grass. “Why am I not surprised to discover you are a rose rustler?”

  Billy hopped out of the buggy and walked toward her. “Hello, Lainey. You’re looking well.”

  Lainey patted her enormous belly and Bess blushed. Lainey hadn’t been raised Plain and didn’t understand that she should pretend her pregnancy wasn’t obvious to all. “I’m feeling like a beached whale.” She ruffled the hair of her daughter. “I don’t think you’ve met Christy. She was born after you . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  Billy’s eyes scanned the outbuildings: the large barn, the henhouse, the greenhouse. “I’d like to see that rose.”

  “Have you eaten?” Lainey said. “You look as thin as a rail. Come inside and have some supper.”

  His face tightened, Bess thought, a gesture so minute it barely registered. The wary look came back to his eyes and his voice came reluctantly. “Can’t,” he answered, almost too abrupt. “I need to catch the midday bus so I can make my connection in Lancaster.” Hands on hips, he studied the rose fields a long moment. At length he sighed, tugged down his hat brim, and said, “Well, let’s get this over with.”