The Sacrifice

by Beverly Lewis

  At last she found her voice. “I have prayed this might come to you, dear one. For all my children, really. And now I see that it has. Oh, Mary Ruth!”

  Mary Ruth’s eyes, bright with tears, lit up again. “Then, are you sayin’ you walk and talk with the Lord just as I do?”

  Ida was eager to say she, too, was a believer and in every sense of the word saved—set free from her sins. Openly she told Mary Ruth these things, sharing her belief that people can “stand up and be counted for the Lord” no matter where they find themselves. “Yet just ’cause I’ve opened my heart to God’s truth and attempt to live it out day by day, I don’t feel I must leave the community of the People behind. I want to be a shining light right here in Gobbler’s Knob.”

  “Oh, Mamma, you’re a beacon! You surely are.” Mary Ruth gripped her hand and rose when Ida did.

  “ ’Tis best to pray and not boast of this salvation, just as I do not. The Lord sees your yielded heart and mine. That’s what matters most.”

  Mary Ruth nodded. “Does Dat know of this?”

  “Your father is content with the Old Ways.” That’s all Ida had best be saying. She would not share everything she and Abram had discussed through the years; some of it would no doubt be as troubling to Mary Ruth as it was to her. It was pointless to reveal too much, lest she discourage her daughter’s boundless joy, profoundly registered on her lovely face.

  Hannah didn’t like the thought of winter setting in here before too long; the cold and bleak season had always reminded her of her own mortality. She found herself wondering what it had felt like for Elias to die so suddenly out on the road. Had he endured excruciating pain? Was that the thing that killed a person . . . took a soul from this world to the next?

  As for winter, the season was good only for missing the smell of air-dried clothes on the wash line, the sun beating down on her back as she tended the roadside stand, the sound of birds—the same songbirds Mamma loved. But the worst of it was Mary Ruth leaving home in the month of Christmas, of all sad things. And just as Mamma was close to her delivery date, leaving only Hannah and Leah to help with Lydiann and soon another baby sister or brother. Not much for tending to children, Hannah supposed she best get used to holding babies, what with Ezra Stoltzfus having dropped some strong hints about getting married sometime next year. Here lately, though, she didn’t know for sure where he stood on the matter . . . or where she did. He hadn’t gone to the singing last night, hadn’t let her know he wouldn’t be there, either, and he hadn’t contacted her to go riding with him next Saturday after dark. Most likely he was still taken up with mourning the loss of his brother. Understandably so.

  Still, something in the back of her mind wondered her about Ezra. He might need a lot more time to get back on his feet. She would wait till he felt more sociable again. But that wasn’t her biggest worry.

  She was far more concerned over her twin’s peculiar comments about their visit to the meetinghouse last week. Seemed mighty odd to hear Mary Ruth go on so about the Scripture readings. In the deep of Hannah’s heart, she feared she and her sister might lose the closeness they’d always had growing up. Mary Ruth’s passionate interest in “salvation through grace,” as she put it, was the worst of it.

  Curling her toes, she flinched at the thought. She ought not to have gone, for had she refused, Mary Ruth might never have gone herself. But she had succumbed to her twin’s persuasion—Mary Ruth ever so good at pleading, making things seem urgent and all. Hannah wished she’d stood her ground and stayed home. Of course, riding along to Quarryville meant she was on hand to assist Mary Ruth in case there was trouble with the carriage or the horse. Other than that, she had not enjoyed her experience at the strange gathering and had even felt guilty for being there. Her first, and hopefully last, breach of the Ordnung. Yet according to Mary Ruth, Dat had not put his foot down about their going. He’d even given a halfhearted blessing, though not knowing precisely where they were headed.

  Quickly she set the table while a kettle of oyster stew simmered on the cook stove. She couldn’t help but wonder how much longer Mamma would insist on leaving an empty spot where Sadie had always sat at the table, as if for someone deceased. Mary Ruth’s place was empty, too, and not to be filled by another family member. The family had shrunk down to near nothing—the pain of it especially evident in Mamma’s eyes at mealtime. Wouldn’t be long and Leah’s place would also be vacant, once she married Smithy Gid, which she surely would do. Made no sense to be a maidel if a nice boy like Gideon Peachey was asking.

  When Mary Ruth returned to her new home away from home, she felt nearly wrung out with the effort she’d put forth to steal in and out of the Ebersol Cottage. She could imagine the fury in Dat if ever she was caught visiting Mamma or her sisters—Aunt Lizzie, too.

  For now she could put that worry behind her. She found Dottie in the kitchen peeling yellow delicious apples for drying. Not eager to expend additional energy telling of her visit with Mamma, she asked if Carl was awake from his nap.

  “If he isn’t, he oughta be,” Dottie said, her hair tied back in a ponytail that made her look younger than her years. “Why don’t you go and wake him, if you’d like.”

  Mary Ruth agreed. “I’ll check and see if he’s stirring. If he’s awake, I’ll keep him company for a bit.”

  Dottie nodded her consent. “He’ll be glad to see you. I think he’s becoming very attached.”

  He’ll mistakenly think I’m his big sister before too long, she thought, wondering if that was such a good thing, being that she didn’t know how long she would be living here.

  In Carl’s nursery, she tiptoed to the pint-sized bed and was delighted to see the beautiful boy lying very still but smiling up at her with shining eyes. “Well, hullo, sweetie,” she said, standing over him. “Do you want to play with Aunt Mary Ruth?” She smiled at the name she’d just assigned to herself.

  “Ma-ry,” he said, sitting up.

  “That’s right.” She helped him escape from under the tucked-in sheet and blanket.

  Together, they found the box of blocks and began to pile them up in a tower, only for Carl to take absolute glee in knocking them down with a swift sweep of his small hand.

  Later she took him downstairs to Dottie, and while Carl sat in his high chair and fed himself pieces of orange and banana, Dottie began to tell of the “miracle that occurred when Dr. Henry Schwartz called with news of a baby boy.”

  Mary Ruth listened with eagerness, thankful for the obvious hand of the sovereign Lord on the Nolts’ home, especially because they had longed for a child for a good long time before Dr. Schwartz’s phone call had come. “God knows our hearts’ cry—our deepest desires” was all Mary Ruth was able to express for the lump in her throat.

  Intuitively Gid recognized there was something downright gritty about early December that made him contemplate the future and prospects for having a family of his own. Fields had already turned brown and the mouth-watering apples had been picked—a few rotten ones languished on the ground, and red fox, scavengers at twilight, came searching them out, devouring them in quick chomps. Farmers were twiddling their thumbs following the corn harvest, looking ahead to the first farm sale of the season and finding excuses to gather in the barnyard, smoking pipe tobacco and chewing the fat, watching teenage boys play cornerball while waiting to bid on a piece of farm equipment. Such happenings turned Gid’s thoughts to hearth and home, helped along by the scent of cinnamon pervading the kitchen as spicy pumpkin pies appeared supper after supper on the family table.

  Perhaps it was the nearness of Christmas that got him thinking, as well. Complete with the annual program at the one-room school, as well as the feast day, the Lord’s birthday was the most celebrated of all the holidays among the People, no doubt because it centered around kith and kin. Second Christmas, observed January 6—known as Epiphany by some—was also a time for families to gather and eat and play games indoors and out. Seemed to him every young man his age had alread
y married and was expecting a baby come next summer. Even Adah had settled down and married Leah’s cousin Sam in the past few weeks. Dorcas, his younger sister, would follow in Adah’s footsteps in another year or so, most likely.

  As it was, Gid would have to go through another long and cold winter without a mate to warm him, since the wedding season was all but past. If Leah would have him, they would wait till next autumn to marry.

  These were a few of the reasons he felt urged to ask Leah to be his wife while they rode together in his open carriage on a courting Saturday night. A wistful winter night of nights, chilly enough for a woolen lap robe and his protective arm around his dear girl.

  What with all Smithy Gid’s talk of plans to help his uncle butcher hogs next week, Leah hardly felt much in a romantic mood, yet she listened intently as he talked of sharpening knives and scouring the enormous iron kettle.

  “There’ll be plenty of youngsters there,” he told her, “takin’ turns working the sausage grinder, ya know.”

  She knew all right from her own childhood days. Several times Dat had allowed both her and Sadie to miss school for a butchering day, saying the event was “mighty educational,” so she’d had ample experience in just what butchering a hog entailed. Everything from heating the water to scalding in the black kettle situated in the washhouse, to hanging the carcasses up and, later on, squaring the middlings and trimming the hams and shoulders. Sadie had always said the stench was awful, and she didn’t see why she had to watch when she much preferred to stay home with Mamma and cook or clean or sew.

  For Leah, the whole process was intriguing; she especially liked watching the men hoist up the large hams and shoulders, hanging them from the smokehouse crossbeams till they were completely cured and flavorful. Sometimes she’d chase after the younger girls, who collected the silken pigs’ ears, and she giggled as the little boys took the tails for souvenirs of the day, pretending to fasten them to one Dawdi or another. Naturally for the women there was the fun of visiting and planning the next work frolic, while men talked of divvying up the meat, daydreaming, no doubt, about the tender sausages, tasty fried bacon, and home-cured baked-ham dinners their wives were sure to prepare.

  Sadie said the best part was knowing the rendered lard would make for yummy doughnuts. Thinking of that, just now, helped put Leah in a sweeter mood as Gid slowed the horse’s gait.

  “I’ve been thinkin’ an awful lot.” His tone was gentle as could be. “What would ya say ’bout becomin’ my wife . . . come next year?”

  She’d honestly wondered if Gid might ask her tonight, but she hadn’t expected the important question to come on the heels of the hog-butchering talk. “We have been seein’ a lot of each other lately,” she said.

  He paused before continuing. “If you agree, we could marry in late October next year. Be one of the first couples to marry during the wedding season.”

  She was glad to be snug and warm under the lap robe, her hands hidden from Gid’s touch. That way his words and his eyes did the talking, and his fingers couldn’t cloud her thinking, putting pressure on her to say jah.

  “Would it be all right if we pray privately ’bout this? Ask almighty God to bless our union?”

  He nodded, seemingly taken back a bit by the unexpected reply. “No need to hurry up with your answer,” he was kind enough to say—kind as he always had been for as long as she’d known him.

  It wasn’t that she thought she needed time to consider Gid as her husband-to-be, her betrothed. She honestly couldn’t stop thinking about recent talks with Mamma, who seemed to want to speak to the Lord about most everything. So why not pray about her response to a possible mate?

  She assumed it best if she not say what was going through her mind. Clearly Gid was eager to move on now, discuss something else. She hoped he wasn’t miffed. It was just that most couples who’d spent time courting this long would probably go walking in the woods somewhere, hand in hand, watch the moon from a high vantage point, then talk of their wedding day. She had no idea what she and Gid would talk about for the rest of the evening, now that she hadn’t answered with a quick reply to his heartfelt question.

  Settling back, she breathed in the fresh and crisp night air, glad Gid had simply begun to play his harmonica, sweet and low, surprising her with his unruffled repose. One tune after another, he played, seeming to her as a kind of loving serenade to a nervous sweetheart. As he played, she thought back to all the years of his unwarranted faithfulness to her, years of uncertainty. Yet he’d responded with sheer loyalty, patiently waiting for her, and now he was asking her to be his wife, the mother of his children, making it possible for her to do that thing she was called to be and do. What Amish girl would refuse such a true and sincere gesture? Gid loved her immeasurably; she knew that beyond doubt.

  A stir of affection for him welled up in her. When he stopped playing his cheerful tune, he clicked his cheek to send a signal to the horse to speed to a trot, and she brought her hand out into the cold air and touched his arm. “Gid, I don’t need more time to think on your question.”

  He waited without speaking, eyes fixed on her.

  “I would be ever so glad to be your wife.” At that very moment she truly cherished her own words.

  Chapter Seventeen

  If any former blemishes had been evident on the rolling front yard and surrounding landscape of her father’s house prior to the thick blanket of snow, the present winter scene was so breathtakingly perfect that Leah found herself staring at the Ebersol Cottage as she made the turn into the lane leading to the barnyard and back door.

  She had stolen away in the predawn hour of Christmas Eve day to Grasshopper Level, choosing the faster of Dat’s two driving horses. At the Masts’ orchard house, she dropped off a basket of goodies and fruit for little Jeremiah and the twins. Once there she got out of the carriage and made her way through the ice and snow to the back stoop, depositing the bright basket with its red ribbon on the top step.

  Only Aunt Lizzie was aware of her “splendid idea,” as she’d put it, to spread cheer to relatives who’d shunned them for much too long. Not even Mamma knew of the furtive trip, and Leah hoped to keep it that way. Together, she and Lizzie had made a big batch of peanut-butter balls dipped in melted chocolate, several dozen sand tarts, candied dates, and crystal stick candy at Lizzie’s house yesterday. They’d had a laughing good time doing so. The best part of all was there were still plenty of sweets to go around, even having shared a considerable portion with Cousin Peter and Fannie’s family.

  Dat would more than likely devour a half dozen or more himself before the weekend was over. Unhitching the horse and buggy in the barnyard, she was glad to bring such happiness to his heart with the surprise. This, along with the fact she’d purposely let slip her intention to marry his choice of a mate, come next year.

  Their neighbors down the road, including the Schwartzes and Nolts, had already taken axes to the dense woods and found attractive trees to chop down and set in a prominent place in their houses. Tonight, following Christmas Eve supper, most English families would carefully decorate fir or spruce with strung popcorn, colorful glass balls, bubbling lights, and tinsel strands.

  The Ordnung did not allow for a tree to become an idol in the way of the Englishers. Instead, the People would happily celebrate the birthday of the Son of God tomorrow by attending Preaching service and sharing a common meal. Since Christmas fell on Sunday this year, much visiting would go on throughout the week. Folk would look into the faces of dear family members and friends, enjoying their precious nearness while sharing feasts at noon on Christmas Eve Saturday and sitting around the wood stove afterward to tell stories and recite poetry, giving and partaking of homemade candy, cookies, and other sweets. Dat would also read aloud certain passages from the Good Book to all who gathered there. Others would wait till Monday to celebrate, being Sunday was church.

  Leah had seen the Nolts’ tree twinkling from their front windows in the two-story clapboard h
ouse where Mary Ruth now lived and worked. They must have been eager to put it up and decorate before Christmas Eve this year, maybe because Mary Ruth was living there, and, too, because young Carl would enjoy all the merriment.

  As for the Schwartz family, Leah had observed the enormous tree the doctor and his two sons dragged from the forest across the street just yesterday, when she dusted the furniture and washed the floors for Lorraine. She was certainly glad not to have been formally introduced to the younger Schwartz boy, Derry, whom Sadie had said such horrid things about—though Leah might have had to meet him if she’d stayed much longer at the Schwartz abode. Fact was, Leah had purposely finished up her duties in a jiffy, having clearly recognized Derry as she watched the threesome tugging on the nine-foot tree from the dining-room window, hoping against hope to avoid either shaking his hand or looking him in the eye.

  Miraculously she had. She’d called rather softly, “Happy Christmas,” over her shoulder to Lorraine, not wanting to draw a smidgen of attention to herself, then hurried out the door. Too nervous to look back, she found herself rushing down Georgetown Road, heart in her throat. She was most afraid she might not be able to temper what things came flying out of her mouth if she encountered Sadie’s former beau.

  Thank goodness she’s nowhere near Gobbler’s Knob, Leah thought, awful anxious for Dat’s farmhouse to come into view.

  But now, as she slipped into Mamma’s toasty-warm kitchen, she spotted the pretty presents wrapped and waiting on the sideboard for the family to gather on the day after Christmas, when they planned to celebrate with the Peacheys. After the Monday meal, following Aunt Lizzie’s desserts of nut loaf, apple pie, and hotwater sponge cake, they would exchange simple gifts, fewer than any other year before. Mary Ruth’s absence would add to the pain of Sadie being gone yet another blessed Christmas. But Mamma, great with child, was the next best blessing of all. Leah could scarcely wait to hold the newborn babe, coming so close to the Lord’s own birthday.