by Emma Miller
“Sorry,” Johanna said firmly. “Mam says no.”
“It’s up to Mam,” Anna agreed. “You’ll have to ask her.”
“Ya,” Miriam said. “And she’s at school.”
Tears glistened in Susanna’s eyes and one slid down her cheek. Angrily, she wiped it away. “No library books,” she flung at them. “No washing apples.” Turning abruptly, she trudged out of the kitchen and up the stairs, leaving her sisters astonished.
“I’m sorry she’s upset,” Ruth said, crossing the room to check on her sleeping twins. Mam and Irwin had carried a cradle down from the attic, and when Ruth or Anna visited, there was usually a baby tucked into it. In Ruth’s case, with her twin boys, there were two. “I think someone is awake and hungry,” Ruth murmured. She picked up Adam and sat down in the rocker near the window. Covering herself modestly with a shawl, she began to nurse the baby.
“It’s good to have so many little ones in the house,” Anna said. Her own youngest, Rose, was asleep in Hannah’s bed. She wiped her hands on her apron and walked over to smile down at Ruth’s other sleeping boy. “I know it makes Mam happy.”
“Shouldn’t one of us go up and talk to Susanna?” Johanna wiped off an already spotless counter and shifted a large kettle from one burner on the stove to another. “If she’s really upset...”
“Maybe we should let her be,” Ruth said. “Mam would have our heads if she had another accident with a paring knife, and once she’s over her fuss, she’ll be fine.”
“Can we go see the books?” Amelia ventured. “Is there one about a giraffe?”
“I have a giraffe book,” Mae said. “And a book about chickens.”
“I want a book about ponies.” Katy tugged at her mother’s apron. “The brown pony with the black mane. That book.”
“Come on, kinner.” Miriam indicated the door with a nod of her head. “I’ll take you out to pick books.”
Giggling excitedly, the three girls followed Miriam outside to the Amish community library, in what had once been Dat’s milk house.
“And that leaves us to start on the applesauce.” Anna placed her hands on her ample hips and glanced at the huge copper-bottomed pots that stood on both Mam’s woodstove and the six-burner, propane gas range. “Do you two want to start carrying in the apples? We’ve got a lot of peeling and cutting to do before they’re ready for the kettles.”
“Sure,” Rebecca agreed. Bushels of Black Twig, Granny Smith, Winesap and Jonathan apples waited on the porch. Making applesauce with her family was something that she looked forward to all year. She loved the heady smells of cooking apples and cinnamon, and she loved seeing the results—rows of quart jars of applesauce to line the pantry shelves. There was something so satisfying about knowing that a few days’ work provided good food that would last them until next fall and the next crop of ripe fruit.
The baskets were heavy, but the Yoder sisters had done manual labor since they were young, and Rebecca didn’t mind the lifting. Peeling was easy. Her fingers remembered what to do while she was free to sit and visit with her sister. They laughed and shared memories of their childhood as well as amusing or serious moments in their own homes.
This is a good day, a happy day. But how many days with my sisters do I have left?
Since Rebecca was fifteen, she’d been taking part in young people’s singings and frolics. So far, while she watched her sisters, cousins and friends court and marry, she hadn’t met a man with whom she wanted to spend the rest of her life.
An unmarried girl her age usually began to look farther afield; it wasn’t uncommon to go to another community in another state to find a husband. It wasn’t the thought of leaving her mother’s house that bothered her as much as not having her sisters around her on a daily basis, as she did now. How could she marry and move away and not watch Anna’s little Rose learn to talk, or see Ruth’s twins start to crawl and then walk? What would she do without Miriam to tease and laugh with, or Johanna, who gave the best advice? How could she leave all those she loved to go away to be a wife and miss the remaining years of Grossmama’s life?
If only there were someone here like...like Caleb.
Caleb was a fine man, of course. That went without saying. But she didn’t want him for a husband. He was a preacher and too settled in his ways for her. Not old exactly, but thirty, at least.
A preacher’s wife? she mused. Impossible. She couldn’t imagine herself as a preacher’s wife. The community expected a certain seriousness from the spouse of a religious leader. Dat had been Bishop and her mother had always been respected. Women came to Mam when they needed help or advice in their personal lives. Mam had always had a dignity, an instinctive manner that told even the English that she was an authority figure.
Rebecca sighed as she tossed another apple peel in the bucket. She was definitely too worldly and not humble enough to be a preacher’s wife. Besides, Caleb didn’t think of her as a candidate for courtship. Eventually, she knew that he would seek out a wife, but it would be some older woman, probably a widow with children. Someone Johanna’s age. Johanna would have been a good match for Caleb if she and Roland hadn’t fallen in love all over again and wed.
I could end up meeting some young man from Ohio or Oregon or Virginia and going to make a new life among his family and friends, Rebecca thought.
“More apples,” Susanna said as she dumped a dozen washed Jonathans into Rebecca’s bowl.
As Ruth had said, Susanna had gotten over her huff and come downstairs as cheerful as always. She’d taken her turn at watching the children and rocking babies and changing diapers as the rest of them had. Susanna had said nothing more about peeling apples and no one had mentioned it to her. Rebecca hoped that she’d forgotten all about it.
“So how are you and Caleb getting on?” Miriam asked Rebecca.
“Fine. I like him,” Rebecca answered.
Miriam glanced at Ruth. “What we were wondering is, how much does he like you?”
Rebecca glanced around to be certain Amelia, Mae and Katy hadn’t crept into the room to listen to the adults as she and Leah used to do when they were that age. “It’s not like that,” she said quietly. Suddenly she felt anxious. “Caleb’s my employer, not my beau.”
“Still, he’s a good-looking man,” Anna pronounced, turning from the stove where she was stirring a pot of cooking apples. “And single.”
“Very single,” Johanna agreed. She placed Luke back in the cradle beside a sleeping Adam. “You have to be careful, Rebecca. Make certain that you never give people a chance to gossip about you.”
“Ya,” Anna agreed. She took a long-handled wooden spoon and dipped out a spoonful of cooked apples to taste. “Samuel and I were always chaperoned when we were alone together.”
“Caleb is my employer.” Rebecca frowned. “He’s our preacher. He’s the last person I’d be interested in. And he certainly hasn’t shown any—”
“Ne?” Miriam raised her eyebrows. “I saw him watching you at service. He didn’t look all that uninterested to me.”
Flustered, Rebecca stood up, dropping apples onto the floor. “That’s silly.” She stooped to pick up the fallen fruit. “Caleb’s too old for me.” One apple rolled under the table and she had to get down on her hands and knees to retrieve it.
“Now who’s talking foolishness?” Anna said. “You’re twenty-one, and Caleb can’t be much past thirty-one or thirty-two. There’s a bigger age difference between me and Samuel.” She chuckled. “And look how that turned out.”
“No one would blame you if you set your kapp for him,” Miriam chimed in. “Caleb Wittner is a good catch.”
“Is that what people are saying?” Rebecca rose to her feet. She tried but couldn’t keep the indignation out of her voice. “That I’ve set my kapp for him? Because that isn’t true. He’s the last man I’d want to marr
y.”
Ruth and Johanna exchanged meaningful looks. “That’s what I said about Roland Byler,” her oldest sister remarked. “Sometimes a smart woman is the last to see what’s plain as day to everyone around her.”
Chapter Eight
That afternoon, Rebecca was attempting to open the outside cellar door of her mother’s house while balancing a box of quart jars full of applesauce, when Caleb came around the corner of the back porch.
“You’re here early.” She hadn’t expected him until four or so. What surprised her more was the warm pleasure she felt at seeing him unexpectedly.
“Let me take those for you,” he offered. “They’re heavy.”
“Thanks.”
It was kind of him to offer. Many men didn’t do that sort of thing. They just expected their wives and daughters and sisters to manage the household tasks. Most Amish men considered the home a woman’s domain, and they would be embarrassed to be caught carrying a dish or making a pot of coffee. Not that women were in any way inferior to men in their faith; men and women simply divided the daily work. Maybe their new preacher was more progressive than Rebecca had first thought.
Caleb took the case of jars, Rebecca unhooked the latch on the door and they went down into the cellar. The dirt-floored cellar was a good place for storing potatoes, onions and rows and rows of home-canned fruit and vegetables because the temperature never dropped below freezing. Deep bins of straw held cabbage, winter squash, turnips and apples. Most English people got all of their groceries at the store, but among the Amish in their community, it was customary to buy only what couldn’t be grown in a garden or purchased from neighbors.
Canning, drying and salting food was labor intensive, but Mam had taught her daughters well. Rebecca knew that when she had her own home, she would be as capable of preserving fruits, vegetables and meats as her older sisters and their mother.
“Watch your head,” Rebecca warned Caleb. The old brick stairway was steep and the overhead beam low enough that he had to duck when he reached the bottom of the steps and entered the main room. Barred windows above the outside ground level let in light, but the cellar remained shadowy.
“Back here,” she said, showing Caleb the way to a windowless chamber beyond the main room. She turned on a battery-powered lantern that stood on a shelf, illuminating the shelves built into the brick foundation. Quarts of applesauce already lined one shelf. On the other side of the passageway was an identical space with more shelving, and beyond that, there was another room where strings of sausage and preserved hams hung above kegs of curing sauerkraut.
“You girls have been busy,” Caleb said. “Did you make all this applesauce today?”
“Ne.” Rebecca began to take the jars one by one and stand them carefully on the shelf, turning each one so that the cheerful labels faced outward. Each label bore the date and contents in her own handwriting. “This is our second batch.”
“You wouldn’t have any extra left over for a hungry man, would you?” he teased.
“A dozen quarts,” she answered. “Waiting on the porch for you. Did you find Amelia? She was on the porch reading with Katy.”
“I did.” He smiled a slow smile that lit his eyes up. “She showed me a book about a burro. She said that she could take it home for two weeks. You don’t mind?”
Rebecca shook her head and took two more jars from the box. “Oh, no. It’s Susanna’s library. She has books for the children...and adults. Some in the community wanted books for their little ones, but Bishop Atlee thought it best if they not borrow from the county library.”
“Because not all of the Englishers’ books are suitable for Amish children,” he finished.
She returned his smile. “Exactly. Mam found a used bookstore, and they save books for us. We also buy books from the county library when they have their book sales. Susanna has collected more than two hundred. It makes her feel useful and it pleases the children and their families.”
Caleb lowered the cardboard box as she took the last two jars from him and rested a hand against the wall. He seemed more relaxed than usual, and it made him look younger. The lines around his eyes had eased. In the shadowy light, it was easy to overlook the scars that marred his face. Rebecca wondered if they pained him, but she didn’t want to ask. That seemed too forward.
“Amelia’s mother hated canning,” he said. “I used to help her with the tomatoes. We had a cellar in our Idaho house, the house... The one that caught fire. Our first place, though, was much smaller—only three rooms.” He chuckled. “We were young and poor. That first winter, snow blew through the cracks around the kitchen window and covered our table.”
“Brrr.” Rebecca shivered. “That must have been tough.”
“Ya, it was, but there were good times, too. My Dinah was an orphan, and that first house we rented, it was her first time having her own kitchen.”
“Did she have other family?” Rebecca tried to imagine what Amelia’s mother had been like. She must have been pretty, Rebecca thought, because Amelia was so pretty.
“A half sister and a brother in Missouri, but the sister was fifteen years older, and the brother was in a wheelchair. He had all he could do to provide for his own wife and children. Dinah was raised in an uncle’s family. Six boys and no girls. Dinah had to work hard. Her aunt and uncle didn’t want her to marry me because they counted on her help with the cooking and cleaning.”
Rebecca didn’t know what to say, so she remained silent. Caleb reached up and touched a label on one of the jars of applesauce. “Nice handwriting.”
“Thank you.” She averted her eyes, suddenly shy. Her fingertips tingled, and she felt a wash of warmth flow through her. She didn’t want to be prideful, but she’d always taken pleasure in writing. “If you don’t put what’s in the jar on the label, you might get squash when you wanted beets,” she said.
“Beets?” Caleb chuckled. “Beets are red. At least they were the last time I noticed.”
“I guess you’ve never sent Irwin to the cellar for squash,” she ventured.
“Ach, that one.” Caleb’s smile widened into a grin. “I saw him last church Sunday. Paying more attention to the King girl than to the sermon. He’ll bear watching, that boy.”
Rebecca smiled back, feeling more at ease talking about her foster brother than herself. “Mam says Irwin never seeks out mischief. It just sticks to him like flies to flypaper.”
Caleb straightened one of the jars. “Samuel told me that you write more than just applesauce labels. He said that you are a regular correspondent for The Budget.”
The Budget was an Amish newspaper published weekly in Ohio and circulated not only nationally, but internationally. It featured stories and classified ads pertinent to Amish life, but what everyone read it for was the newsy blurbs about what was happening socially in various Amish communities.
“Guilty,” she admitted. Caleb was standing very close, so close that she was very aware of how tall he was and how broad his shoulders were. She liked his hands best of all: strong hands, even the one that the fire had scarred. And he smelled good. Of Ivory soap and freshly cut wood. “Just community news... The weather, who had visitors and the announcements of new babies.”
“And frolics and deaths,” Caleb said. “It’s not everyone who has a way with words—to write accounts of neighborhood events and make it interesting. I read what you put in about my barn raising. It was good.” He stepped back. “I’ve been reading the Delaware news in The Budget since Eli first suggested I come out here, but I never knew it was you writing it. I didn’t know if it was written by a man or woman.” He hesitated. “You don’t sign your name.”
“Most contributors do,” she said, meeting his intense gaze. It was curious...but was it something else? Rebecca felt a little breathless as she explained, “I started submitting to The Budget when I was e
leven, and Mam didn’t think that I should take credit because I was so young. She was afraid it would make me proud. So I got in a habit of signing Delaware Neighbor or Kent County Friend, whatever seemed right that day.” She hesitated. “Why would Samuel bring up my writing to you?”
“It was an accident, really,” he said. “We were talking about a farm auction listed there. Abe Hostetler’s in Lancaster? Abe’s a second or third cousin of mine on my mother’s side. I mentioned your article to Samuel, because it told about my barn raising. That’s when he said you were the one who wrote it. I was just surprised. I wouldn’t have guessed.”
She wasn’t sure whether that pleased her or not.
His eyes narrowed as he tucked the cardboard box under his arm. “I’ve always considered myself a good judge of character, but you...” He shook his head. “Maybe there’s more to you, Rebecca Yoder, than I first thought.”
Rebecca met his gaze.
“Has the cellar fallen in on you two?” Anna’s cheerful voice came from atop the cellar entrance. “I’ve another case of applesauce here.”
“Coming,” Rebecca called, breaking eye contact with Caleb, feeling off balance and not sure why.
Caleb hurried ahead of her to the stairs. “I’ll take those,” he called up to Anna.
Rebecca waited until he came back down the steps with another box.
“Go on up. I know where they go,” he said gruffly, avoiding looking at her.
Gone was the man who’d looked at her with such intensity...the man who seemed interested in her writing. Back was her...her employer, and the moment of closeness they’d shared receded into the shadows of the cellar.
“I guess I’ll go back to the kitchen for more,” Rebecca said.
Anna stood, hands on hips, one eyebrow arched in suspicious curiosity when Rebecca reached the top of the steps. “A long time it took the two of you to put twelve quarts of applesauce on a shelf.” Her mouth pursed. “You should take care, Rebecca. It’s just us here today, but you wouldn’t want others to get the wrong idea.”