Wonderful Lonesome

by Newport, Olivia

  “I like that.”

  “He’s not a difficult child. Quite sweet in temperament, actually. But he is a bit rambunctious and used to life on the ranch. The doctor says we must keep him quiet for at least three more months.”

  “What does he enjoy?”

  “He doesn’t seem to like to read on his own, but he does like to be read to.”

  As Louise launched into describing her son, her eyes lit and her cheeks softened. Within a few minutes Abbie was eager to meet Fin for herself, already sure she would like him.

  Keeping a recuperating English child entertained by feeding his mind was not so different than Noah Chupp’s making shoes for English children. Abbie was certain she could do a good job. Still, staying behind when her family returned to Ohio for a reason other than marriage was a drastic decision.

  By late morning on Monday, Abbie had scrubbed two piles of clothing against the washboard on the back porch and hung pants and shirts on the line strung between metal poles behind the house. In the middle of October, with temperatures more bearable than July, August, or even September, most days were still cloudless and the air free of any whisper of moisture. The clothes would dry and she would be back in the yard to collect them as soon as the lunch dishes were cleared.

  Unless the train had run into trouble, Ruthanna was home by now.

  Home.

  Could Pennsylvania feel like home again after the substance of Ruthanna’s married life had unfolded in Colorado? Abbie turned the question over in her mind as she carried the thickly woven basket, now empty, to the back porch. Even though she had not married, Abbie had fallen in love in this drought-ridden state. Even if she could not marry Willem, he held her heart. Would any other place ever feel like home?

  She missed Ruthanna. Mary Miller was a good friend, but the bond Abbie shared with Mary was thin and crackly compared to Ruthanna’s intimacy with the desires that lined the corners of Abbie’s heart. Her eyes warmed with sudden tears, and Abbie wanted to be alone. Instead of pulling open the back door and going inside to help with lunch, she strode across the yard to the barn. It would have to do for now, just long enough to corral the emotions that threatened to spill through her day. Inside the barn, Abbie reached for a horse blanket on a shelf before marching to the empty stall at the back of the structure. The straw in this unused retreat was not fresh, but it was reasonably clean. She spread the blanket, sat, pulled her knees up, wrapped her arms around them, and buried her face in the folds of her skirt. Breathing with deliberation, she tried to form her thoughts into prayer. The words wriggled away without taking shape.

  Abbie lifted her head when she heard the voices approaching. One was Dead‘s. The other she did not recognize. They spoke English, not Pennsylvania Dutch. Abbie crawled across the straw and peered around the opening of the stall.

  “The barn seems solidly built.” The strange man knocked on the barn wall. “That will help us set the highest price we can hope for.”

  “Of course I want to get a good price,” Ananias said. “But I also want to sell quickly. I believe I have a realistic expectation of the market in the price I seek.”

  “Yes, there are several similar properties available right now—as you well know, since some of them were Amish farms. In any event, I think we can present your land in an attractive way.”

  “Do you have the papers you wish me to sign?”

  “Right here in my satchel.”

  Abbie sat back on her haunches and let her shoulders sag. The land agent.

  “I have spoken to a few people about equipment and animals,” her father said. “I thought selling those items separately would be my best hope for cash to move my family.”

  “That is wise, I’m sure. I don’t believe any buyers would assume the sale of anything but the land and the house and barn. But if you have difficulty, let me know. We might hasten a sale by enhancing what we include in the price.”

  “I am anxious to raise enough cash for train tickets. I want to be home before winter.”

  Home. There was that word again, coming from her own father’s mouth. Even Ananias Weaver did not think of his Colorado land as home. Abbie pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes and waited for the men to withdraw through the barn door.

  The day was one of the longest Abbie could remember. She managed pleasantries with her family over lunch, folded the laundry, sat with Levi as he practiced his reading, cleaned the chicken coop, and mopped the kitchen floor. Supper was somber. By then the entire family, including Levi, knew that Ananias had reached an agreement with the land agent. It was hard for Abbie to know what any of her brothers thought. If Reuben or Daniel disagreed with their father, they hid it well. Neither did they avow support for the plan to return to Ohio. Levi remembered little about living anywhere but Colorado, but in time he would likely have only vague memories of his childhood here.

  After supper, Abbie spread her quilt on the table. If the house were larger, she would have wished for a proper quilting frame where she could pull the project taut and be more confident in the straightness of her stitches. But with care and persistence, she had developed a system of rolling out of the way the parts of the quilt she was not working on. While she could not see the entire quilt, she focused on the square that represented each household as she crafted the angled stitching.

  Twice Abbie turned up the lamp. The sounds of the family shifted from chores and conversation in the other room to bidding each other good night and shuffling steps on the stairs rising from the kitchen. Still Abbie stitched and prayed and ached to see the quilt complete.

  “Abigail.”

  Stilling the needle between her fingers, Abbie looked up. In his nightshirt, her father stood on the bottom step. “Yes, Daed?”

  “Are you aware of the time?”

  She glanced out the window into the blackness but admitted she did not know the time.

  “It is after one in the morning,” Ananias said.

  “I didn’t realize.” Abbie finished a stitch and stuck her needle through the fabric to secure it.

  “I hope you will put as much determination into packing for the move,” Ananias said.

  Abbie said nothing.

  “I find the land agent a trustworthy man,” her father said. “So as soon as I can raise enough cash for train tickets and shipping a few crates, we will go. It is better that none of us is caught by surprise when the time comes.”

  “I understand.” Abbie folded her project down to its smallest size, which still covered much of the table.

  “Good. I will set the boys to building some crates tomorrow. Good night.”

  “Good night, Daed.”

  Ananias turned and went up the stairs he had just descended. Abbie sat at the table with both hands resting on her folded quilt. Mrs. Wood had not sent word yet about the position. Her husband had not been available during Abbie’s visit three days ago, but Louise felt sure he would give his approval, and as soon as he did she would send one of the ranch hands with a note.

  And then Abbie would face a decision full on. Abbie put out the lamp but made no move to climb the stairs.

  Rudy brimmed with resolve one moment and surrendered to reticence the next. This wretched cycle had been going on for days. Weeks. Perhaps months. Tuesday afternoon was no different.

  He bore no ill will toward Willem Peters, but it seemed to Rudy that Willem had set his course long ago. Not all of the settlers knew Willem as well as Rudy did. They were two unmarried men on adjoining farms who shouldered together for tasks that required the strength of more than one man, and between them they had made sure Eber Gingerich lacked for nothing either. Their conversations rarely strayed from the work before them, and they made no pretense of having similar temperament, but Rudy felt he knew Willem’s drive and intentions.

  It didn’t seem possible that Abbie did not also know.

  Rudy went to the trough his horses drank from and splashed water on his face. With his eyes closed and the chill of well
water tingling in his pores, he made up his mind. He had one clean shirt. Now was the time to put it on.

  The back door opened and Levi stood bursting with his announcement. “Rudy is here. He says he wants to talk to you.”

  Abbie pulled her hands out of the dish water, where she had been wiping the last of Tuesday’s supper dishes. “Then ask him to come in. Where are your manners?”

  “He said would I please ask you to come outside.” Levi raised both hands to scratch the back of his neck.

  “Oh. All right, then. Danki.”

  Abbie put the last plate in the rack and dried her hands. She tugged on both strings to be sure her kapp sat on her head evenly and went out the back door into the gray, dusky air. Sunset came so much earlier now than it did during the long, hot summer.

  “Hello, Rudy. What a nice surprise to see you.”

  Rudy dipped his hat slightly. “I thought you might enjoy an evening stroll. We have some time before it’s dark, I think.”

  Abbie looked to the west, where the orange fingers of the descending sun spread their grasp. “A stroll would be lovely.”

  They turned and fell into an unhurried pace together. Rudy had both thumbs hooked under his suspenders. Abbie twiddled one tie of her kapp between two fingers.

  “I imagine you miss Ruthanna fiercely,” Rudy said.

  Tension cascaded out of Abbie’s shoulders. “I hardly had a chance to get used to the idea that she would go, and then she was gone.”

  “I still have the urge to go by the farm and see if they need something.”

  Abbie smiled. “You are a good man, Rudy Stutzman.” And he was.

  “We were all stunned about your father’s decision. It must weigh heavy on you.”

  Abbie’s throat thickened. What a refreshing sensation it was to hear from another’s mouth such truth about her own spirit.

  “Will you go with them?” Rudy asked.

  Abbie blew out her breath. “My daed certainly thinks I will.”

  “But you—what do you want to do?”

  Abbie raised a hand toward the distant mountain. “On some days this feels like the most forlorn place on earth. But other days I can scarcely breathe for how lovely it is.”

  “And the church?”

  Abbie stopped and turned toward Rudy. For the first time, she saw that he was perspiring, even though the evening was not overly warm. “So many questions, Rudy.”

  He took one of her hands, and she heard the shallowness of his breath.

  “If you were to marry, your parents could not object to your remaining here.”

  “No, I suppose not.”

  “Why should you pine for Willem?” he said softly. “He will go to the Mennonites.”

  “I know.” Her words were more a movement of her mouth than sound.

  “If you were to marry me,” Rudy said, “we could be the first of the settlers to marry. Surely a minister would come from Ordway for such an event. It would be a great encouragement to the others to see that we want to pledge our futures to this place.”

  “Is that what you want, Rudy? Truly?”

  “If I can be with you, I can be happy anywhere.”

  Abbie’s hand trembled, and she could not stop it. “I need some time, Rudy.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  Daed!” Abbie called over her shoulder two days later and then returned her gaze to the view out the front window. “An English is here with a wagon.”

  Ananias snapped shut the accounts book in his lap. “He’s here for the hay.”

  “You’re getting rid of the hay?”

  “Did you think I would crate it up to ship to Ohio?”

  Abbie blinked three times at the man who patted his horse’s rump on his way to the Weaver front door. “I hadn’t thought about the hay.”

  Ananias crossed the room. “You were here the day I took delivery on hay because we had so little from our own fields. What’s left is still worth something. We must use every asset.”

  “But the animals,” Abbie said.

  “The cows will be gone before the day is over. The horses can make do with grazing and straw until I sort out what to do with them.”

  Ananias left Abbie standing in the front room of the house and strode across the yard to greet the English. He gestured toward the barn and the man nodded and returned to his rig. Abbie backed away from the window as her mouth soured. Hearing her daed say that he wanted to leave before the end of the month was hard enough. Visible progress in his effort to raise train fare sucked breath from her chest in a way she was unprepared for. He would sell the coal, too, she realized. Though lignite was plentiful, the savings in labor would be worth something to a family who had sufficient cash. And the chickens. Either they would go to a nearby farm, or her mother would pluck and cook one every day until they were gone.

  Abbie suddenly wanted to bury her face in the neck of one of the cows that had kept the Weavers in milk, cheese, and butter all this time. As the English man turned his wagon around and lined it up alongside the barn, Abbie strode in the opposite direction out to the pasture where the cows spent their days, hoping that her father had at least tried to find the animals a home with another Amish family. She opened the gate, entered the field, and closed the gate behind her. The ground was weedy rubble in clumps but mostly hard-packed barren earth that could not sustain the cows that swished tails against flies. Abbie tried not to look toward the barn, but when she heard the rattle of a wagon and knew it could not yet be filled with hay, she relented and turned around.

  It was Willem’s wagon she heard.

  Willem spotted Abbie in the field with relief. He would not have to contrive some awkward reason to see her out of hearing distance of her family. He looped the reins around the top of the fence and then climbed over. The slump in her shoulders bore witness to the disappointment she carried within herself, and Willem hoped the errand that brought him to her would transform both her posture and her mood.

  He strode across the grassless pasture. “I stopped by the Woods’. Mrs. Wood has sent a note.”

  Her spine straightened and her eyebrows rose.

  Willem offered her the cream-colored envelope elegantly addressed to Miss Abigail Weaver.

  “What was her decision?” Abbie tentatively fingered one edge of the envelope.

  “She didn’t say. You’ll have to read the note.”

  Abbie slid one finger under the sealed flap and pulled out the note. Willem watched her eyes go back and forth as she absorbed the words.

  “Well?” he said.

  Abbie smiled. “The position is mine if I choose to take it.”

  He reached for her hand. “I knew the two of you would like each other.”

  “Her husband has given his approval, and she hopes it will be convenient for me to start very soon. She would like me to come for tea on Friday and meet the boy.”

  “And will you?”

  Abbie took her hand from his and raised it to her cheek. “I was not certain until this moment what I would do, but I believe I will gladly accept her kind offer.”

  “So you won’t leave with your family.”

  She turned her head toward the activity around the barn. Reuben, Daniel, her father, and the English man had created an efficient system for transferring the hay.

  Willem followed her gaze. “I see your daed is following through on his decision.”

  She nodded.

  “We all understand his choice,” Willem said.

  “I don’t. I wish he would at least wait to see what moisture the winter brings, but he seems intent on making sure he can’t change his mind.”

  Willem let the silence drape the space between them for a moment, knowing the comfort of his arms would only add to her confusion.

  “I could carry a note back to Mrs. Wood, if you like,” he finally said.

  “I have nothing to write on. I’ll have to go to the house and see if I can find a suitable scrap of paper.” Abbie lifted a hand to control a sniff
le.

  “She won’t expect anything fancy. She does not share our ways, but she understands them.”

  Thirty minutes later Abbie handed Willem the note and waved as he scrambled up to the bench of his wagon in three practiced motions.

  The English wagon was about as full as it could be, bales carefully stacked and balanced to withstand the sway of the ride to their new home. Abbie did not know the man, nor how he had heard about the Weaver hay. Reuben and Daniel lifted the last bale into place and the English shook Ananias’s hand. Abbie turned her head as the cash passed between them. She glanced into the field and wondered how many more hours—or perhaps only minutes—would pass before the cows would take a final nibble of Weaver land before being roped and led behind a horse or a wagon.

  She resolved not to watch. There were half a dozen ways to make herself useful for the rest of the day without listening for the sound of dread to fill her spirit.

  Ananias approached. “Did you see that the boys put your trunk in your room?”

  “Yes.” How could she miss a trunk that sat where Eber’s cradle had stood only a few days ago? Abbie measured her steps toward the house so as not to seem eager to escape her father’s eye.

  “Let me know when you’ve packed it. The boys can carry it out to the barn for a few days.”

  “A few days?”

  Ananias nodded. “Once the cows are gone I should have what I need for the train tickets.”

  “So soon?” Her heart pounded.

  “Abigail,” he said, “we’ve already talked about this. We may as well be expedient.”

  “I know.” She tried to stride ahead of her father, but he kept pace.

  “You can take your hope chest, too, of course. I know you’ve prepared those items with care for your marriage, and there is no reason they should go to waste.”

  Abbie struck the ground with the heel of her right foot and rolled it forward for balance, but she did not pick it up again. “Daed.”