Balm of Gilead

by Adina Senft

  Even Mamm was astonished at the pile of pot holders she had ready for the girls to quilt and bind by suppertime.

  Chapter 4

  When Sarah had been a teenager and getting together with the other Youngie for a Sunday evening singing, they’d enjoyed a pretty diverse list of songs. There were the ones from the Ausbund, of course, that they’d been singing all their lives. But once in a while someone would have an Englisch hymn in their homemade songbook, or a popular song from the radio, and they’d all learn it that evening. Whether or not they got the tune absolutely right wasn’t the point—the point was doing something all together. Maybe it pushed the boundaries just a little bit—the way Pris had once told her they sang a popular song about country roads—but there was no real harm in it.

  One of the Englisch hymns always seemed to come back to Sarah in the autumn, when every man in the settlement raced against time to get the harvest in before the rain started, and every woman’s canner boiled nonstop as she preserved for the winter the bounty of vegetables and fruit that God had provided.

  The hymn asked what the harvest would be. A person might make her choices in the joy of spring or the heat of summer, but every choice had its harvest. Every decision bore its fruit. Sarah had often thought how hard it was to see clearly in the heat of the moment—to make the kinds of choices that would produce fruit to sustain a person through the hard times.

  She set her basket on the soil in the garden she had planted in squares and triangles and borders, like a living quilt, and regarded the drooping string on the pea trellises. Since the peas were long over, it was time for them to come down so she could get in some winter vegetables.

  She had one of the four teepee-shaped trellises down and wrapped in a bundle and was unstringing the second when someone yoo-hooed from the slope of the hill between her place and that of her in-laws.

  Amanda Yoder waved as she made her way through the long grass that Sarah kept unmowed so that the wild plants could grow and produce leaves and flowers for her herbal cures. “You’re deep in thought this morning,” Amanda said when she was close. “I called you twice. Anything in particular going on in that blond head of yours?”

  Sarah smiled as Amanda began unstringing the third trellis as if she’d come over for that purpose. It was so like her to see what needed to be done and do it. “I was thinking about an Englisch hymn we used to sing about the harvest. It comes into my mind at this time of year.” She sang a few lines and Amanda nodded. “I’ve heard that one, too. I think Malinda Kanagy has it in her songbook. It’s a very good question, isn’t it—what will the harvest be?”

  “A little too good, considering the kind of summer I had.” Sarah’s mouth formed a rueful moue as she snipped the string off the poles and added it to the growing ball in her other hand. “Benny Peachey may have forgiven me for trying to make his Aendi leave their farm, but I don’t think it’s been thrown into the sea of forgetfulness quite yet.”

  “He’s just a boy,” Amanda said. “Something like that has to be looked at with the eyes of an adult. He’ll come around when he gets older.”

  “Maybe. Their lives haven’t changed much since that cell tower went in, though I did see when we were there for church the other week that Linda has a new propane-powered washing machine and a refrigerator, too, instead of an icebox.”

  “You know what I saw when I was there?” Amanda handed her the string and Sarah wound it onto the ball. “I saw how settled Crist Peachey has become. As though he’d finally found the place where God meant him to be, and as far as he was concerned, it was the best place in the world.”

  “Is it true he actually filed for a patent on that solar cell he and Arlon invented?”

  “I don’t know about things like that,” Amanda admitted. “Dat would, though.”

  “Trust me to see the washing machine and you to see the change in Crist.”

  “We all have our gifts.” Amanda grinned at her and moved to the last trellis. “I didn’t come to talk about our brothers and sisters, though. I came to bring you a letter.”

  Sarah put the string in her pocket and began to pull up the long, thin bamboo poles of the trellis. “A letter came to your place for me? That’s odd.”

  “It’s from Silas.” Amanda pulled it out of her pocket and handed it over.

  “What on earth? Silas Lapp?” Sure enough, there was her name at her in-laws’ address, written in a black, spiky hand. She looked up. “Do I really want to know what it says?”

  Amanda smiled, but her gaze did not quite meet Sarah’s. “I don’t know if you do, but I sure do.”

  All right, then. If he had sent the letter to Yoders’, then clearly he had no objection to Amanda’s knowing he was writing to Sarah. Which was sad and a pretty hard knock to any hopes that Sarah may have had on the subject of those two.

  Dear Sarah,

  Please excuse this letter going to Jacob’s—I do not know your address and did not want to make a scene by calling to ask for it. I hope you are well and that Caleb is also well. You will be expecting your eldest boy home soon, too. I hope he has enjoyed his time in Colorado—seeing that country was one of the greatest experiences of my life.

  I know it has been a couple of months since we saw one another, but I find myself thinking of you often. I wonder if you would like to add one more to your list of correspondents. I cannot say I’m an interesting writer, but I am a faithful one. While you may not be so interested in hearing about the daily activities of the cell tower in my field, I am most interested in hearing about the herbs and cures you compile from yours.

  I hope you will not think me forward. Instead, I hope you will consider me—

  Your friend,

  Silas

  Sarah had to read the letter twice—three times—before she really believed that what she read was what he meant. Finally, she simply handed it over to Amanda and could tell what part she had come to by the gradual closing of her face. It was like watching a convulvus flower close with the fading of the light.

  The letter bent as Amanda handed it back. “Don’t look like that, Sarah. It was pretty much what I was expecting. I haven’t had any hopes in that direction since he left.”

  “But I did. Somehow, I wanted him to get a revelation about what a good wife you’d make, and come back to court you.”

  Amanda shook her head. “I had my chance, but obviously it wasn’t God’s will. I just have to possess my soul in patience until He reveals my future husband to me.” Her clear blue gaze met Sarah’s. “So what are you going to do?”

  Ignore it.

  Write him back and say yes, she would enjoy a correspondence, with no expectations of anything else.

  Write him back and tell him she would enjoy getting to know him better and when might his next visit be?

  Write him back and confess that she had feelings for someone else and—

  Stop that!

  “I don’t know,” she finally said. When she looked down at the ball of string in her hands, she saw that she’d wound her fingers right into it. With a sigh, she unraveled it and rewound it properly. Her hands knew her thoughts better than she did—why else would they get themselves into such a tangle?

  “Do you really not know how you feel about him?” Amanda asked. “He’s such a nice man, and well able to provide for you. I know Mamm and Dat worry about you sometimes.”

  “They don’t need to,” Sarah said quickly, more than willing to abandon the subject, even if it meant talking about her finances. “I’ve actually managed to pay back some of the money I owed them and even get a little ahead this month. I never would have suspected that I could make a living giving people cures.”

  “God would not have prompted Ruth Lehman to call you to a Dokterfraa’s work if He did not think it would support you,” Amanda pointed out.

  That was true, but it had been a mighty leap of faith to step out on His promise, all the same.

  Amanda wasn’t finished. “Doesn’t it worry you,
Sarah? That God put Silas in your path—delivered him right to your door, practically—and you turned him down when he obviously followed God’s prompting and asked to court you?”

  Here was something Sarah hadn’t considered—and she should have. “It was such a mess in June, what with that runaway Englisch boy, Eric, and Henry, and the Peacheys…oh, Amanda…Silas was just one more thing to deal with. And as I said, I was hoping he would notice you, not me. I couldn’t get away fast enough, in case there was still a chance that he might come to his senses.”

  “And now that he wants a second chance—or maybe I should say, now that der Herr is giving you a second chance?”

  Sarah bent to put the ball of string in her basket. She was never sure whether it was a gift or a curse that Amanda’s gaze demanded so much honesty of the person she was speaking to. “You think I should encourage him, don’t you?” she asked as she straightened.

  “I think you should pray about it before you write back. That’s what got you into trouble before, remember—not praying.”

  Goodness. Amanda was like a mirror that God held up to show her all her faults. The only difference between Amanda and a real mirror was that Amanda loved her and pointed out the truth only because she wanted Sarah to be both right with the Lord and happy.

  There was certainly no denying that Sarah had blundered on ahead in June like a horse with the bit between its teeth, instead of waiting to feel the gentle touch of the rein guiding her in the way she should go. She had given Linda Peachey bad advice and come dangerously close to dividing a woman from her husband’s family. Granted, she’d done it with the best of motives and had been honestly anxious to see if her cures could help, but that was selfish thinking. If she’d waited on the Lord, she might have found out before it was too late that He already had plans for Linda, and His plans were much grander than Sarah’s. And much less likely to result in others’ being hurt and offended.

  “You’re absolutely right,” she admitted to her young sister-in-law. “I’ll pray about it, and I won’t put pen to paper until I have peace about what kind of reply I should make.”

  Amanda picked up the bundle of bamboo rods and Sarah picked up her basket. They made their way to the barn across the grass, three of her hens escorting them as though they hoped there might be a handful of corn in it for them.

  Yes, she would pray. Though deep inside, Sarah was a little afraid of what the answer might be.

  * * *

  Hi Caleb,

  Thanks for sending the jar of your mom’s jam. I had it on my toast and those blackberries were just as good as the ones we ate while we were picking. I wish I could send you something but my mom doesn’t make jam.

  I wanted to tell you that I got into the fine arts high school. It started two weeks ago. I have to take a train to get to it but Dad said that if I could cross three states to run away I shouldn’t have any trouble with a 30-minute train ride. Then I walk to the school. They liked my lamp and my sketches for the next thing I want to make, and my homeroom teacher really likes my idea journal. They weren’t so happy about my grades from middle school though. I’m kind of on probation until I get As and Bs.

  But like Henry says, when you really want something, you have to be willing to work for it. I really want this, so I guess that means I have to take geometry and suck up the homework. But since a plate is a circle and a box is a bunch of rectangles, at least geometry will help me with pottery, right?

  I never did get to go and see my grandparents in California. Justin says he went to Disneyland twice. I told him I learned to drive a horse and buggy. If there’s a zombie apocalypse we’ll see which one saves our lives, huh?

  Okay, time for English homework. We have to write a paper on Tom Sawyer. The movie was pretty good. I didn’t read the book. If I get good grades this year, will your mom and Henry let me come back for the summer?

  Your friend,

  Eric Parker

  Chapter 5

  This late in September, the sun rode lower in the sky, which meant it reached much farther into the barn, where Henry maintained his pottery studio. At this point in the afternoon, the long rectangle of light almost touched his feet as he sat at the wheel, using both hands to gently persuade a pitcher to take shape.

  This was the part of pottery that Henry loved the most. The moment when potter and clay were as close to one being as they could be, with one hand inside pressing out to encourage change, and the other outside pressing in to ensure safety and restraint. Both hands together created a graceful shape, but only if the clay was willing to be shaped. Some days, temperature and granularity and humidity all combined to make the clay cranky, and Henry’s job became more about command than persuasion. But on some days, like the last clear, crisp days of September, conditions were right and the clay wanted to be made into something, leaping between his hands into the shape it wanted almost before he was ready.

  This pitcher wanted to be a pitcher in no uncertain terms. The bottom had blossomed in a rich, fruitful curve, and now he had to reverse that curve and bring it back so that he could bend the spout and find the point of balance for the handle. When the wheel slowed to a stop, he stood, putting his sore hands on his hips and rolling his shoulders to get the stiffness out. Then he lifted the pitcher on its bat off the wheel and carried it over to the bench. A couple of quick movements gave him the spout he wanted, and with another hour’s work with fingers and shaping tools, he sculpted the suggestion of the pumpkin shape the finished piece would have. Then he set it aside to rest while he made the handle.

  Pumpkin stems were trickier than they looked. He’d spent a couple of hours in Barbara Byler’s garden sketching them, much to her amusement. Hers were the closest pumpkins to his place besides Sarah Yoder’s, and he wasn’t going over that hill for any reason. Now his sketchbook lay open on the bench, showing the woody curve of the pumpkin stem, its prickly roughness, the nodules that pushed up here and there along the striped ribs.

  Glancing often at the sketch for reference, Henry rolled a tube of clay between his wet hands, wincing at what was becoming a real annoyance. Over the summer, as his production schedule had become more intense, he’d discovered that the hard water in Whinburg Township played havoc with his hands, since he spent half the day with them buried in wet clay. The minerals in the clay dried them out enough, and the hard water amplified the problem when he washed up, to the point that he’d developed deep cracks in the skin of his finger joints and in the seam between finger and thumb.

  Finally, a week or so ago, he’d been driven by the pain to the library in town, where he’d got on the Internet and ordered a box of surgical gloves. The thought of anything coming between him and the clay made him both doubtful and anxious, but other than installing an expensive water-softening system out here in the barn, he couldn’t see a way around it. If the gloves worked, he would just get used to them. If they didn’t, he’d have to change something—though what that might be, he didn’t know. Meanwhile, he got some moisturizer at the drugstore and rubbed it into his sore hands a couple of times a day.

  The pumpkin stem took shape, its curve echoing that of the body of the pitcher, arced a little forward so that there would be room for leaves on the terminus, where it attached to the body. He rolled out the leaves paper-thin, then attached them with wet clay. He suggested tendrils by carving tiny spirals here and there with a dentist’s pick, and then sat back to appreciate the gift the cooperative clay had become.

  “Is that a pumpkin?” came a very young man’s voice from behind him.

  Henry turned to see Caleb Yoder standing in the doorway—where had the sunbeam gone?—and he blinked in confusion. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

  “I was.” Caleb ambled over to look at the pitcher. “It’s almost six o’clock.”

  Already? “Time got away on me again, I guess. Yes, it’s a pumpkin. Time to let it dry now.”

  “What are you going to glaze it with?”

  “Not s
ure yet. I’m torn between giving its future buyer what she expects—some variation of orange or yellow—or doing something different to be true to my art.” He tried to keep a straight face as his tone made air quotes around the last four words, but when he caught Caleb’s eye, the grin broke out anyway. “What do you think?”

  “I think that if I put artistic ideas of what a barn should look like ahead of what the man who hired me was expecting, I wouldn’t be building barns for long.”

  Henry had to laugh. Trust Caleb to be both honest and pragmatic without being critical. “How’s it going? Do you like working for Jon Hostetler? It’s been almost a week, hasn’t it?”

  Caleb nodded, prowling around the studio as if he thought it might have gone downhill now that he wasn’t there to act as Henry’s assistant. “Ja, I like it. I like watching something grow where there was nothing before. But if you need help here, I can come over in the evenings.”

  “I think we got things pretty much down to a science over the summer, Caleb. But maybe if you have a Saturday free once in a while, you can help me wedge clay. I’d give you a dollar a pound.”

  Caleb’s eyes widened. “That’s pretty generous. Sure, I’d like that.”

  It would give Henry’s hands a break, and free up time that could be better used in actually creating pieces.

  “That reminds me,” Caleb said, “I got a letter from Eric.” He pulled a folded-up piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Henry. It had been typed on a computer, and on one side, Eric had inserted a digital image of himself and Caleb fishing, which Henry had taken on Eric’s camera phone before the battery had run down and they had to go to town to charge it up. “He wants to know if he can come back next summer.”

  Henry scanned to the bottom and his face twitched briefly into a frown at seeing his and Sarah’s names paired together so casually. Then he smoothed out his expression in much the same way he’d smooth away a blemish in a sheet of clay. “I don’t see why not. I can’t speak for your mother, of course.”