“I believe I am old enough to read any kind of book I want.”
“Okay.” Grace handed it to her. “If you’re sure this is the one you want.”
Elizabeth chuckled. “I was just rattling your chain. One of the nurses at the hospital gave this to me after she finished. She was such a doll-baby I took it to keep from hurting her feelings.” She adjusted her glasses and reached for the book, scanning the cover. “The problem is, I’m afraid she’s going to be disillusioned if she thinks she’s going to find a husband who looks like that with his shirt off. It isn’t possible, you know, although your grandfather came close.”
“Grandma!”
“Well, he did.”
“I wish I could have known him better.”
“I wish I had, too.” Elizabeth laid the book down. “He died so young. We had only been married forty years.”
“He was sixty.”
“That’s entirely too young. You’ll realize that once you pass forty.”
“Is missing him the reason you keep all this stuff?” Grace gestured around her grandmother’s cluttered bedroom. Fishing rods and wooden fishing lures covered most of one wall. “I don’t understand this. None of us fish.”
“He didn’t fish much, either.”
“Then why . . . ?”
Her grandmother scooted further back onto the bed, pulled off her house slippers, and dropped them on the floor. “He just loved collecting those things. We used to go down to Kentucky to the longest garage sale in the world. It went on for miles. I collected antique toys, old dishes, and anything else that struck my fancy. He would look for these old lures and fishing rods. We had wonderful times together.” She gazed around at the room. “To you it’s clutter. To me it’s a room filled with good memories.”
“But the big bedroom upstairs is chock full of things, too, and there’s barely room in the kitchen cabinets for drinking glasses.”
“Are you worried that I’m becoming a hoarder like those people on Oprah?”
“Grandma, I hate to say this—but I think you’re getting close.”
“Do you see any piles of old newspapers?”
“No.”
“Do you have trouble walking through my house?”
“No.”
“Then don’t worry about it.” Grandma picked up a small figurine from her bedside table. “Some of my things actually have value, you know—I mean beyond my memories. Your grandfather and I weren’t completely foolish about what we purchased.”
“Perhaps, but there’s a lamp in the extra bedroom upstairs that is the most hideous thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Now that was a wedding gift. Your great-aunt Hazel gave that to me. I never cared for it.” Grandma’s eyes twinkled. “I never cared much for Hazel, either. She’s gone now, so you have my permission to get rid of it. Does that make you feel better?”
“A little.” Grace traced her finger over the paperback. “Are you really going to read this while you rest?”
“Oh, heavens, no. From the looks of the cover, it might give me another heart attack. Hand me that volume over there on the table beneath the window. The one with note cards sticking out of it. I started that one before I got sick. I think I’m feeling well enough to start in on it again.”
Grace brought her the book. It was a new volume on biblical archaeology discoveries.
“Hand me a pen, will you?” Elizabeth sank back into the pillows that Grace had piled onto the bed. “There’s a chapter in here I think might interest our ladies’ class when I start teaching again.”
“You said that Levi used to come and read books with you,” Grace said. “Did you ever study anything together besides birds?”
“Now that’s an interesting question.” Elizabeth laid the book back down on her lap. “Do you know what textbooks the Swartzentrubers use in their schools?”
“No.”
“Reprinted McGuffey Readers. The kind my grandmother used. They have a couple of other textbooks, but only those printed specifically for Amish schools.”
“You’re kidding.” Grace pulled a chair over to the bed and sat down.
“I’m not kidding. I’m not even exaggerating.” Elizabeth removed her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “It was hard for someone like me—an educator—to watch without saying something. Levi zipped right through those McGuffey Readers and was hungry for more. The young teacher—she couldn’t have been more than sixteen—knew little more than some of her students. I bought Levi a book once, as a gift. It was a large volume of Bible stories for children—just something for him to read at night before he fell asleep. I couldn’t imagine anyone finding fault with a children’s Bible storybook.”
“Did he like it?”
“He loved it. He took it straight home to show Abraham and Claire. Came back the next day, all upset, to apologize.”
“For what?”
“For the fact that Abraham had thrown it into the woodstove and burned it.”
“Bible stories?”
“Abraham was upset. He was afraid I was trying to corrupt their family’s Swartzentruber view of the Bible.”
“Which is . . . ?”
“If it isn’t their High German Bible—the one that Martin Luther penned five hundred years ago—they don’t trust it.” Elizabeth shrugged. “Of course in the book I gave Levi, there was the problem of the illustration of Adam and Eve wearing fig leaves. I thought they were quite tasteful myself, but Abraham disagreed.”
“That was a terrible thing for them to do.”
“It seems that way to you, but in Abraham’s eyes, he was simply being a good father. He was not a deliberately cruel man, but he was a careful one—and sometimes a very strict one.”
“What happened then?”
“I was afraid they would stop Levi from coming to visit me at all. With you so far away, I cherished having an occasional visit from a child. So the next day, as soon as Levi had left for school, I gathered an armful of books I thought he might enjoy and took them down to show Abraham and Claire. I apologized for the Bible storybook and told them it was never my intention to go against their wishes. I asked them to go through the books I had brought and see if there was anything they felt Levi could safely enjoy.”
“How many did they choose?”
“Three. Birds, insects, and one on identifying plants.”
“That’s it?”
“That was it. I had taken some storybooks with me just to see if any would pass their inspection. Abraham rejected them all. Fairy tales are strictly forbidden. Westerns are also forbidden because of the presence of guns. The only thing I did in addition to the books they allowed was to play little games with him that involved math problems. A piece of paper and pencil—no book. He caught on like lightning.”
“As strict as they were, I’m surprised they let him come at all.”
“Claire lost her first two children with Abraham—miscarriages—and she was sick much of the time when I first moved here. Of course, I was widowed by then and they felt sorry for me. Actually, I was feeling quite sorry for myself. That’s one of the reasons I moved to Mt. Hope—after your grandfather’s death, I thought it might be nice to live in a place with such an optimistic name.”
“I always wondered why you chose to retire here.”
“Well, it helped that it was beautiful, and that the crime rate was so low.”
“Did things go okay after that?”
“Like I said, Claire didn’t feel well for a couple of years and I think she appreciated my keeping her son entertained on evenings when he had finished his chores. Even though I was using only a pencil and paper, Levi became quite a whiz at math. Claire made this quilt for me a couple of years after she recuperated. I think it was in thanks for looking after her son. I think she might also have been glad for the bit of extra education I gave him. Claire tended to be more interested in book learning than Abraham.”
Elizabeth glanced down at the book. “Would you take this, Grace? I guess I
was more tired than I realized. I think I would like that nap now. And here, please set my glasses on my nightstand.”
“Of course.” Grace placed the large book back on the table. Then she pulled Claire’s quilt over her grandmother and left, leaving the door open a crack.
She grabbed a Coke out of the refrigerator and headed to the front porch, choosing a rocking chair close by her grandmother’s window. The dogwoods were magnificent this year, and the perfume of Grandma’s lavender blossoms was heady. As she rocked, she gazed down the road at the Shetlers’ farm and pondered everything she had just heard.
What an alien people they were—burning a child’s Bible storybook, using antiquated McGuffey Readers, and accepting sixteen-year-olds as teachers. She wondered what it would have been like to know Levi as a child.
Her father had been a career army officer. With all the moves that the military required, they had not come here all that often. Instead, Elizabeth had come to them. Whenever she got homesick for her family, she would pack a bag and buy an airplane ticket.
Grace popped the tab on her Coke and settled back in her chair. The dishes were done. There was a roast simmering in one of Elizabeth’s many Crock-Pots. For a little while, she had absolutely nothing to do. It was a strange feeling. It seemed as if she hadn’t stopped running since the day she had graduated from high school.
All she had ever wanted once was to be a great nurse. But being a military nurse in Afghanistan had meant having an inhuman toll taken upon her heart and soul. Not only were there soldiers, men and women, whose screams she had deadened with medication long enough to life-flight them to the hospital, but there were the beautiful, precious Afghan children who too often became victims and pawns in the terrorists’ arsenal.
There had come a time, only a few weeks before she returned home, when she realized that in order to endure all the suffering, she had hardened herself emotionally to the point that she was feeling almost nothing at all.
She didn’t want her life to be that way. She wanted to feel again.
She glanced around to make sure no one was nearby, then pulled Love’s Savage Heart out of her right pants pocket where she had slipped it before tiptoeing out of the bedroom.
Perhaps Grandma didn’t want to read it, but Grace had once possessed a romantic streak a mile wide. She didn’t mind reading Love’s Savage Heart one bit.
chapter SIX
“What in the world?” Grace nearly dropped the pitcher of orange juice. The view outside the kitchen window was most definitely not something she had ever seen before.
“What is it?” Elizabeth grabbed her cane, pushed up from the breakfast table, and made her way over to where Grace stood.
A long line of plain black buggies was snaking down the road as far as the eye could see—in both directions.
“Abraham’s funeral must be today. I didn’t know,” Elizabeth said. “Do you notice something odd about that line of buggies?”
“No.” Grace moved closer to the window. “Nothing except that it feels strange to see this in the middle of the twenty-first century.”
“Look harder.”
“I don’t see anything except buggies.”
“Exactly. There aren’t any cars.”
“Of course not. They’re Amish. Why would there be cars?”
“Because there are almost always cars sprinkled among the buggies at the funerals of other Amish sects,” Elizabeth explained. “Sometimes it’s family members who have become Mennonite. Sometimes it’s someone who has become a car-owning Beachy Amish. Sometimes fellow factory or shop workers come. But Swartzentrubers seldom have Englisch friends.”
Grace pointed. “There’s one.”
Sure enough, there was a lone white van coming into view.
“Someone must have hired an Englisch driver.” Elizabeth craned her neck to see it. “I’ll bet that’s some of Abraham’s relatives. Several migrated to upper New York State a couple of years ago. Land is less expensive there. Their bishop must have given them permission to come.”
“You’re telling me they would have to get permission from their bishop to go to a relative’s funeral in another state?”
“Swartzentrubers do, yes. They don’t allow what they consider a frivolous use of vehicles.”
“Have you ever been to an Amish funeral?”
“A couple of them.” Elizabeth went back to the table and sat down. “I wish I could go to this one.”
Grace put the pitcher of orange juice back into the refrigerator. “You aren’t strong enough yet.”
“I know, but would you mind going in my stead?”
“I would stick out like a sore thumb.”
“Of course you would. So?”
“The only thing I have fit to wear to a funeral is a pair of black dress pants and a good white blouse.”
“That will do. But no jewelry, Grace. No high heels. And I’d suggest wearing no makeup. You’ll feel out of place enough when you get there. And you won’t understand a word the minister is saying. They preach only in German. You’ll need to hurry so you can speak to Claire before it starts.”
“Okay.” Grace rinsed out her orange juice glass and put it in the sink.
“You should take something to contribute to the funeral dinner.” Elizabeth glanced around the kitchen. “I wish I had known when it was going to be. I would have had you bake something. Oh—I know.”
Elizabeth dumped out the keys Grace had tossed into the wooden bowl that sat on the table. “Wash this out and fill it with some of that fresh fruit you bought. They seldom purchase out-of-season fruit. Tell Claire the bowl is a gift from me. She’s always admired it.”
Levi and his brothers pushed his mother’s borrowed wheelchair into the barn, which the men had prepared for the funeral service. Claire held little Daniel in her arms. The three other children followed close behind. The benches were all set up as they were for church: the women’s side facing the men’s. The only difference was that Abraham was now dressed in his church clothes, lying in a handmade casket that one of Levi’s cousins had built out of some poplar lumber that Levi had cut last season.
There was a small, hinged door cut into the lid of the casket that, when opened, showed only the top part of Abraham’s body.
The circumstances of Abraham’s death, and the delay in the funeral because of the autopsy, had given people plenty of time to hear about it, and there seemed to be a larger turnout than usual. He estimated there were around three hundred people there, perhaps more.
Ezra Weaver, their bishop, stopped him on his way into the barn. “This is a sad day.”
“Truly sad,” Levi replied.
Ezra had been bishop for only three years, but he was even more conscientious in performing his duties than the elderly bishop he had replaced. Their particular church district, already ultraconservative by anyone’s reckoning, was becoming even more rigid under Bishop Weaver’s oversight. Some of the congregation was pleased over this. Others, like Levi, were worried.
He waited for the bishop to move aside and allow him to get his family seated. Instead, the bishop seemed intent on having a chat with him.
“So an shlim ding to happen to your family,” the bishop said.
“Yes. A very terrible thing,” Levi agreed.
“At least your stepfather is no longer part of this sinful world anymore. But a man should live long enough to raise his children.”
Levi nodded. “Our Daed would have wished to do so.”
The bishop gave him a stern look. “It is your duty now to be a father to these little ones and to help your mother.”
“A duty I willingly accept.”
“You intend to work your stepfather’s eighty acres by yourself?”
“I will, with Albert and Jesse’s help.”
“Good. It would be a shame for such fine land to grow into weeds.”
Levi wondered what the bishop was getting at.
“It would be a great help to your mother if you were t
o select a gute Frau.” The bishop stared at him meaningfully. “Most Amish men your age already have a gute wife and two or three children by now.”
“True.” His voice was steady, but inside, Levi was beginning to seethe. He now understood why the bishop had led the conversation down such a path. Land in Holmes County was at a premium. Eighty prime acres was a prize. A steady man who could farm as well as Levi was an even greater prize to a man with an unmarried daughter. The bishop was such a man.
The bishop bent over Claire. “That is a fine child. Holding him will comfort you in your sorrow.”
“God’s will,” Claire said.
“Yes,” the bishop agreed. “God’s will.”
It was as it always was. Any tragedy—no matter how major—was attributed to God’s will. In Levi’s opinion, this murder was the work of a vindictive Satan instead of a loving God. But he said nothing. His people’s way of accepting tragedy and going on with life was admirable. The Amish could not afford to sit down and stop living because someone they loved had died. There were children and grandchildren to care for. Livestock to be fed. Crops to be harvested. The sound of a herd of cows bawling to be milked did not stop from respect for grief.
The bishop moved aside while Levi maneuvered his mother’s wheelchair around a root sticking out of the ground. He would get a mattock tomorrow and grub that root . . .
“Hello.”
He glanced up, surprised to see Grace standing nearby. She was holding a walnut bowl filled with fruit, apparently for the funeral dinner later. The children would love that. It had been a long winter and there would be many more weeks before the fruit trees began to bear.
As a growing child, he had made himself sick every spring eating green apples and raw rhubarb straight out of the garden—both so sour they made his eyes water—simply because his hunger for something fresh would be so great.
It was obvious that Grace was trying hard to be sensitive to the situation. She had made a real attempt at dressing appropriately. The blouse she wore was more form-fitting than he was comfortable with, but for an Englisch woman it showed restraint.
It was almost time for the service to start, but Grace didn’t seem to realize. She crouched down beside his mother’s wheelchair, the wooden bowl balanced against one hip.
An Uncommon Grace Page 7