by Marta Perry
“Remember, your aunt Martha has her eye on you,” Jane warned. “Don’t do anything with that Mennonite boy that I wouldn’t.”
“It’s lemonade,” Ruth defended. “They just talk horses.”
“Ya. Horses.” Mary rolled her eyes. “You know what they say about those Mennonites. She just better keep her Kapp on.”
Dorcas laughed, too, although Ruth wasn’t certain she got the joke. Dorcas wasn’t exactly slow, but neither was she as quick-witted or as daring as Charley’s sister or Jane. Ruth often thought that Dorcas acted and, worse, appeared closer to forty than twenty.
It didn’t help that Aunt Martha, who made all of Dorcas’s clothing, was frugal and not the most skillful seamstress. Dorcas’s dresses usually were made over from secondhand ones Aunt Martha acquired when someone passed away. It was a shame, really. Although no one could accuse Dorcas of being anything but Plain, she did have nice eyes.
Mam thought that clothing that fit her niece better would improve her appearance and attitude by leaps and bounds. It might even help Dorcas to find a husband. The truth was, there were always more available young Amish women than marriageable Amish men, and Dorcas’s chances were hardly better than Anna’s.
Together, the four girls walked past a table laden with dusty glass knickknacks and tattered paperback books. There were stands selling DVDs and records and even used children’s clothing, as well as fruit and vegetables. Tables of toys stood side by side with those lined with belts and wallets. One booth was hung with robelike dresses from the far side of the world. An Amish boy from another church district stood amid the garments, fingering one and talking to the proprietor. He seemed to be attempting to get the man to lower the price, but what the boy would do with the foreign-looking dress, Ruth had no idea.
She liked coming to Spence’s, and she enjoyed spending time with Mary, Dorcas and Jane. She was the eldest of the four, but they always had fun together. Even Dorcas rarely whined or fussed when Jane and Mary were a part of the group. The cousins were too upbeat and full of fun to put up with Dorcas’s sullen moods.
“So,” Jane said, clasping Ruth’s hand and smiling up at her. “Tell me. What is Eli like? Have you ridden on his motorbike?”
Mary laughed. “Has he tried to steal a kiss?”
“I don’t want to talk about him.” Ruth’s tone sounded sharper than she’d intended. She didn’t want to offend her friends, but Eli wasn’t a subject she was willing to discuss right now. Maybe not ever.
Jane must have realized that Eli was a sensitive subject because she quickly turned the jest on her cousin. “Maybe you should ask Mary why she’s so interested in kissing.” She linked her arm through Mary’s. “Charley said she was awfully friendly with that Kentucky boy who’s visiting at Silas Troyer’s. Charley said she served him three slices of strawberry pie and four cups of coffee at dinner after services on Sunday.”
“He needed the coffee after all that ham you served him,” Mary said. “And he likes pie.”
“I’ll admit he wasn’t hard to look at,” Jane said.
“And he was really nice,” Mary defended. “Silas said…”
As the girls walked, Ruth’s thoughts drifted. She spotted an English woman in her thirties, with the same round face and distinctive eyes as Susanna’s. She was carrying a shopping bag of vegetables for an older woman who had to be her mother, and the two were laughing as they walked between the stalls.
Ruth thought about an incident at dinner the night before. Susanna had been carrying a bowl of steaming potato soup to the table and had tumbled and spilled the soup over herself, burning one wrist and her ankle. By the grace of God, her dress, apron and stockings had protected her skin from serious burns, but her wrist had taken the worst of the spill.
Whenever Susanna hurt herself, she dissolved into tears. Luckily, Ruth had been in the room and been able to put her sister’s wrist under running water to wash away the hot soup. A little ice and some soothing cream on her ankle had dried Susanna’s tears, and they’d been able to eat supper before everything was cold. But the incident had reminded Ruth just how challenged her little sister was. What if she’d burned herself cooking while Mam was at school? What if she accidentally started a fire? Mam couldn’t be in two places at once, and once Miriam and Anna married, if Anna could ever find a husband, the burden of caring for Susanna would fall on her mother. Like the woman with Down syndrome Ruth had just seen, Susanna would need supervised care the rest of her life.
Mam must have been thinking the same thing because after the incident the previous night, she’d stopped outside Ruth’s bedroom door on the way to bed and hugged her tightly. “You’re my rock,” Mam had murmured. “I don’t know what I would do without you.”
“Ruth? Hello, Ruth?” Chuckling, Jane waved a hand in front of her face.
“I’m having black forest ham and cheddar on a sesame roll,” Dorcas said. “What about you, Ruth?”
Ruth looked up and realized they had reached the deli in the Amish food market. The clerk on the other side of the counter was waiting impatiently for her sandwich order. Embarrassed, Ruth didn’t even look at the menu on the wall. “I’ll have the same.”
“With root beer?”
Ruth nodded and followed the others to a picnic table in the aisle. There were coolers of cheese and sausages on both sides. The food stalls were crowded with customers and the high-roofed building was noisy. The odors of sizzling scrapple, baking bread and brining pickles filled the air. There was about an even mix of English and Amish here today, but Ruth was too distracted to pay much attention to the antique hunters and shoppers.
She kept thinking about how frightened Susanna had looked the night before and how much she wanted to take her in her arms and kiss away her tears, just as she had when Susanna was small. The further she removed herself from the feelings she’d experienced sitting on that bench with Eli, the clearer it was to her where her loyalties had to lie, and the choice her mother expected her to make. She had promised Mam that she’d always be there for her, and she couldn’t let her feelings for a boy, feelings she didn’t even know for sure were real, come between her and her family duty.
“Eli Lapp,” Dorcas said. She smiled, showing a broken front tooth.
Startled to hear his name while she was thinking about him, Ruth looked across the picnic table at her cousin. “What about him?”
Jane giggled and pointed. “Behind you. It’s Eli Lapp. Hello, Eli Lapp.”
“Want to have lunch with us, Eli Lapp?” Mary offered, joining in on the joke. She scooted over on the bench to make room for him.
Ruth felt Eli’s hand on her shoulder, and for a moment she froze.
“Sorry, I can’t,” he said kindly to Mary. He looked down at Ruth, his hand still on her shoulder. “I need to talk to you. I went by the house, but Susanna said you—”
“You shouldn’t have come here,” Ruth stammered, getting up and taking a step back so he couldn’t touch her. She just couldn’t stand feeling the warmth of his skin against hers. She just couldn’t. “This isn’t…” She looked around, thinking they should move somewhere more private, but that would only make this harder on both of them.
Mary popped up from the bench. “Oh, I think our sandwiches are ready. I’ll get them.”
Ruth looked at Eli and then averted her gaze. The lunch area was loud, and the voices buzzed around her. “This isn’t the place to talk.”
He tried to catch her hand, but she didn’t let him. “Then where is? I have to talk to you. I need to—”
“I can’t do this,” she whispered, interrupting him. There was a lump in her throat that warned her that she was close to tears. It seemed like everyone was staring at them, English and Amish. “Eli, I’m sorry if I let you think—”
“Ruth.” He didn’t let her finish, and when she looked into his eyes, he seemed to be pleading with her.
These feelings aren’t real, she told herself. It’s infatuation. Nothing more. “Please
don’t make this hard,” she asked him. “Just go.”
“A couple of minutes. That’s all I need.”
She sat down on the bench and swung her legs under the table. Dorcas was staring at them, hanging on every word. Aunt Martha would know what had transpired between Ruth and Eli by supper. Good, Ruth thought. Then everyone will know and the matter will be settled; there was nothing between her and the boy from Belleville. “You should go, Eli.”
“You won’t even let me—”
“Ne, Eli.” She presented her back to him so she wouldn’t see the hurt look in his blue eyes, the pain she could hear in his voice. “You’re a nice boy, but we were friends, nothing more. And I think it’s better if we don’t see each other at all…for a while. So…so people don’t think we…”
“So people don’t think what? That we like each other? Because we do, Ruth.”
“We don’t.” Ruth knotted her fingers together, her hands resting on the table. “Just go.”
He stood there for another moment and then turned and stalked way, nearly colliding with Mary, her arms full of sandwiches and sodas.
“Aren’t you staying?” she called after him, turning with the tray in her arms.
Eli didn’t look back.
* * *
Two days later, after supper, Eli returned to the Yoder farm. His pride was still smarting from what had happened at Spence’s right in front of half the people he knew in Seven Poplars, but he wasn’t ready to give up yet. Hopefully, Ruth had just been upset about being caught holding hands at the chair shop, and once they talked, everything would be okay between them. Hopefully, they would be better than okay.
Hannah was right. It had been inappropriate for he and Ruth to be holding hands, and he had endangered Ruth’s reputation by his actions. He needed to do this right. As soon as Ruth gave her permission, he intended to ask Hannah for permission to court her.
Ruth was in the garden with Anna and Miriam. As he walked up the lane, he saw the three sisters and Irwin Beachy. He knew Ruth saw him, but when he reached the garden gate, she was gone.
“She’s in the house,” Anna said. He knew by her expression that Ruth had told her she didn’t want to talk to him, but he walked to the back porch and knocked just the same.
Hannah answered the door.
“I’ve come to see Ruth,” he said.
Her mother shook her head. “I’m sorry, Eli. She doesn’t want to talk to you.”
“Is it you or her who doesn’t want me here?” He shuffled his feet, feeling like a boy in front of his teacher. “It’s important.”
Upstairs on the second floor, a window slammed shut. Eli looked up, knowing Ruth had been there looking down at him. He could feel his throat and cheeks flush with heat. Ruth must still be angry with him for getting her in trouble. Why wouldn’t she give him a chance to apologize? His gut twisted. Maybe it had been a mistake to come today, but he couldn’t help it. He had to see her. He had to make the attempt to set things right between them, and he wouldn’t believe that she didn’t want to see him…that she didn’t feel the same way he did.
“She doesn’t want to talk to you. Not today.”
Irwin came around the corner of the house with the puppy that Ruth and he had found in the hedgerow. The little dog still looked thin, but its eyes were shining, and a pink tongue flicked Irwin’s arm. “He’s better,” Irwin said, holding it up for Eli to see. “He eats good.”
Eli stopped to pet the pup as he came down the steps. Irwin was holding it as carefully as if it were a real baby. “You’re gentle with him,” Eli said.
“I know about dogs.” The boy looked up earnestly. “I had one of my own once.”
“And you’ll have another if you’re not careful,” Hannah said, following them out onto the stoop. “I never saw an animal take to a boy more.”
Irwin came as close to a smile as Eli had ever seen.
“Irwin’s going to train him for us,” Hannah explained. “It will be good to have a watchdog around here again.”
Eli scuffed his boots in the hard-packed dirt. “Tell Ruth I asked for her, will you?”
“She don’t want you here,” Irwin announced matter-of-factly. “She said so.”
Hannah smiled. “You come again another time, Eli. And we’ll talk, just you and me.”
“No need if Ruth doesn’t want me here,” he answered, feeling a dull hollowness in his belly. He couldn’t remember crossing their yard, but he was certain that he felt Ruth watching him from the window as he walked down the lane.
* * *
Ruth woke just after sunrise on Saturday morning to hear raindrops pattering on her bedroom windows. She raised the shades to find the garden and fields hazy and wet, a perfect day, considering the restless sleep she’d gotten last night. She’d made her decision, and she wasn’t about to change her mind. But that didn’t keep thoughts of Eli from troubling her dreams and conscience. It broke her heart to hurt him, but if someone had to suffer, better him than Mam and Susanna.
She dressed quickly and made her bed. It was nice being the oldest and having a room to herself since Johanna had married and moved away. She’d always loved this room. With the corner windows, white curtains and the braided rag rug, it was bright and cozy, even on a dreary day. She folded her nightdress and tucked it into a dresser drawer, then did up her hair and covered it with a starched Kapp.
With all this rain, Ruth was glad she and Miriam had picked berries before dark. Otherwise, they would have had to do it in the wet, because Mam had asked them to put up strawberry jam this morning. They used a lot of jam through the year and always liked to have extra to share with young couples and those in need in the community. Ruth had decided to put some in fancy jars and add gingham ruffles to the lids for sale to the English. She’d seen small containers of grape jelly going for ridiculous amounts of money at some of the stores in town. Strawberry jam would bring just as much, perhaps more.
They were just finishing breakfast when Ruth heard the sound of wagon wheels on the gravel drive. She went to the window and looked out. It had stopped raining, but the sky was still cloudy and gray. “Looks like Roman,” she called back to the kitchen. Eli sat on the wagon seat beside him, but she didn’t mention that. As foolish as she knew she was being, she didn’t want to say his name because if she did, she’d start to struggle with her feelings for him. Just speaking his name aloud made her as giddy as a fifteen-year-old, and whatever ailed her, there was no sense in making it worse.
“He’s coming to repair the milk house floor and start on the bookshelves,” Mam explained. “He said he’d be here the next rainy day. Guess that’s today.”
When Dat had been alive, they’d kept enough milking cows to sell milk to a dairy. Now Mam had gotten it into her head to fix the little building up as a library, so that her neighbors could come and borrow books whenever they liked. Both of her parents had loved to read, and they owned more books than anyone she knew. Susanna was thrilled with the idea because Mam had promised her that she could hold the post of librarian. It would be her job to keep the books safe and return them to the proper section.
“My lib-ary!” Susanna exclaimed, clapping her hands. “Today!”
“That’s right, today,” Mam agreed, rising from her chair at the table. “A lot to do today, Susanna. Working men have to be fed.”
“Have to be fed,” Susanna echoed happily.
Eli will probably be building the shelves, Ruth thought, gathering dirty dishes from the table. Great. She didn’t want to see him today, any more than she had on Tuesday or Thursday. What she needed was to put him completely out of her mind, and that was impossible if he was working in her own barnyard.
The screen door banged, and Irwin came in carrying Jeremiah. “Took him out,” Irwin declared. “Did number one, but not two.”
Susanna giggled. “He means Jeremiah didn’t poo,” she explained.
“Samuel’s here, too,” Irwin said. “To help.”
Anna picke
d up the bread tray and walked to the back door. “Anyone for hot raisin scones and coffee?” she called to the men.
Within five minutes, Samuel, Roman and Eli were at the table. Anna set out scones, a pan of gingerbread and some of last night’s biscuits to go with hot coffee and thick cream. Mam was smiling. Ruth knew she missed Dat and liked to watch hungry men eat. Still, it was awkward having Eli in the kitchen and having to avoid speaking or making eye contact.
Ruth noticed Irwin watching from the corner of the kitchen. He’d eaten breakfast with them only a short while before, but Dat had always said that boys needed to be around men so they’d know how to act when they grew up. She went to Irwin, took Jeremiah, and motioned to the table. “You’d best have coffee and a bite as well,” she said.
He looked at her with hopeful eyes. “Just ate.”
“Help yourself, Irwin. You’ll be helping the men today. You’ll need your strength.”
Anna waved the boy to a chair and poured him a mug of black coffee. Irwin added in cream and enough sugar to bake a cake. He didn’t grab, but somehow he managed to acquire a slab of gingerbread, a biscuit and two scones. He didn’t speak, but he followed every word the men said, and when Samuel stroked his beard during a lull in the conversation, Irwin copied his gesture.
As soon as the last crumb of food disappeared, the men got to their feet and filed out. Eli was the last to go, and as he stopped by the back door, he glanced back at Ruth. She busied herself with gathering coffee cups and carrying them to the sink. She didn’t meet his gaze, and after a few seconds, Eli’s shoulders slumped, and he followed the others.
“That was kind of you,” Mam said.
Her eyes widened. Did Mam mean ignoring Eli was the right thing to do?
“Thinking of Irwin. I think he grew two inches when he slid up to the table between Roman and Eli. He needs to know he’s a part of our community. When that happens, you’ll see big changes in him.”
“I hope so,” Miriam replied. “Because he’s not much help at milking or feeding up. I’ve got to tell him every step and then watch to see he does it.”