Amish Beginnings

by Vannetta Chapman

  She nodded once, and then she stuck the offending envelope from the bank in her apron pocket and went to her son. She climbed the steps and sat beside him in the engine room, leaving Jacob to enjoy the sight of them and the sound of their laughter as Matthew set his conductor cap on her head.

  * * *

  “We were hoping Jacob would stay for dinner.”

  Hannah’s mother set the large pot of chicken and dumplings in the middle of the table. Beside it was a loaf of fresh bread, butter and a large bowl with a salad that Hannah had managed to throw together.

  “He told me he has a mess at home to clean up.” Matthew slathered butter on top of his piece of bread and took a large bite. When he caught Hannah staring at him, he smiled broadly.

  Her father spoke of the rain forecast for the next week. Her mother had been to visit a neighbor and her infant girl. She described how the baby cooed, how rosy her cheeks were, even how she smelled.

  Finally Hannah broke into the conversation. “I have a job.”

  Everyone stopped eating and stared at her.

  “With Jacob. I have a job with Jacob.” She felt the blush creep up her neck. “I’m going to be helping him with his accounting. It might not be permanent.”

  “That’s gut,” her father said, reaching for another helping of dumplings. “You always excelled with numbers.”

  Her mother nodded in agreement. “And you have a real knack for organizing things. Since you’ve been here you’ve straightened up every closet and cabinet, even my spices.”

  “They were a mess.”

  “Well, now they’re in alphabetical order.”

  “Which makes them easier to find.”

  “I think it’s wunderbaar, dear.”

  It was Matthew who was the most excited about her news. He’d begun tapping his spoon against his plate. “So I will get to see him. You told me that I might not see him anymore, that he’d be helping other kids. But if you’re working for him, I’ll get to see him. Right? He even said he’d teach me to whistle.”

  And that was when Hannah knew she’d made a big mistake. Possibly she’d found a way to help her parents, but in the process she had delayed the inevitable. She could tell by the sparkle in her son’s eyes that he didn’t realize Jacob was not a part of their family, not even really their friend except in the most broad sense of the word.

  The elation she’d felt at landing the job slipped away. She would need to be very careful, not with her own emotions—which weren’t an issue at all since she was not attracted to Jacob Schrock—but with Matthew’s.

  She would protect her son.

  Whether from financial hardship that might push him out of his home or emotional attachments that couldn’t possibly last.

  Chapter Five

  Jacob spent Saturday catching up on projects that he’d let slide in order to complete Matthew’s boardwalk. There was a dresser that he’d promised to redo for Evelyn Yutzy. Her granddaughter had recently arrived in town, moved from Maine back to Indiana, and they’d converted the back porch into a bedroom. It was insulated, so the girl wouldn’t freeze, but she needed somewhere to put her clothes.

  He had only half-finished the crib for Grace Miller, and her baby was due in two weeks. He couldn’t put it off any longer. Then there was the workbench that he’d agreed to make for Paul Fisher. It was good that business was...well, busy. But Jacob’s heart was with the playhouses, something that he charged as little as possible for. In order to make a living he had to take care of the individual work orders as well as the business projects that he had lined up.

  Speaking of which, he was supposed to begin a cabinetry project on a new house the following week. He’d written the details down somewhere, but where? He wasted the next hour looking for the small sheet of paper, which he eventually found in his lunch pail.

  Normally once he started a project he had no problem focusing on it, but he found himself lagging further and further behind as the day progressed. He stopped for lunch and went into his house, but even there he couldn’t help looking around him and seeing the place through Hannah’s eyes. It was pitiful really, and he didn’t know how it had happened.

  Dishes were stacked in the sink, where he usually ate standing and staring out the window. Copies of the Budget covered every surface in the sitting room, along with woodworking magazines that the library gave him when they were too far out-of-date to display. That seemed ridiculous to Jacob—woodworking wasn’t something that changed from one season to the next. Still, he enjoyed receiving the old copies and looking through the magazines. He occasionally found new ideas to try.

  When his childhood home had burned down, he’d purchased a prefab house and had it delivered to the property. The building was small, around six hundred square feet, but more than what he needed. The workshop had been left intact. As for the fields, his brother Micah farmed them in addition to his own, which was adjacent to the old homestead.

  The workshop was larger than his home. The vast majority of it was filled with supplies, workbenches and projects in various stages of completion. The office was a cornered-off ten-by-ten space. On one side of the room, windows looked out over the fields. On the other, windows allowed him to see into the workshop. As far as mess, it was in worse shape than the house. Jacob’s heart was in the projects, not the filing systems, or lack thereof, and that showed. He was attempting to move around stacks of paperwork in the office when his brother Micah tapped on the open door.

  “Am I interrupting?”

  “Ya. Can’t you see? I’m making progress on my backed-up carpentry orders.”

  “Huh. Looks to me like you’re tossing papers from one shelf to another.” Micah crossed the room, stopped in front of one of the plastic bins and raised the lid. “What is all this stuff?”

  “Receipts, I guess.”

  “What’s your system?” Micah pulled out a Subway sandwich receipt, stared at it and then turned it over and stared at the writing on the back.

  Jacob snatched it out of his hand and tossed it back into the bin. “If it was something that I felt like I needed to keep, I threw it in a bin. The next year I’d buy another from the discount store and begin tossing things in it. There’s one for the past...six years.”

  Micah let out a long whistle. “No wonder the IRS is interested in you, bruder. They must have heard about your filing system.”

  “The last thing I want to talk about is the IRS.”

  “Gut. Because it’s not why I came by.”

  Jacob grunted as he picked up a bin from the floor and dropped it on the desk. Deciding it looked worse, looked even more disorganized there, he put it back where it was.

  “Why did you come by?”

  “To invite you to dinner, and don’t tell me you have plans.”

  “I do have plans. I should be out there working.” He shifted his gaze and stared through the window into the workshop. He could just make out the corner of Grace Miller’s crib. It would probably take him another two hours to finish it.

  “Then why aren’t you?”

  “Why aren’t I what?”

  “Out there working.”

  “Because Hannah’s coming on Monday, and if she sees this place like it is, she’ll probably turn tail and run.”

  When his brother grinned and dropped into a chair, Jacob realized that the news was already out about his new bookkeeper. No doubt Micah was here to tease him, and the dinner invitation was just a handy excuse.

  “Heard young Matthew likes his caboose train.”

  “Ya, he does. Young kids like him, kids who don’t lead normal lives, the little things seem to make a big difference.”

  “And what about Hannah?”

  “What about her?”

  “Still as pretty as when she was in school?”

  “Seriously? That’s what we’re going to talk about
?”

  “Why not? It’s the first woman you’ve shown interest in since your accident.”

  “I’m not interested in her.” Jacob reached up and scratched at his scar. “I’m hiring her to bring some order to this chaos.”

  “So you don’t find her attractive?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You do find her attractive, then.”

  “This is the problem with you.”

  “Problem with me?”

  His brother smiled as if he’d just told the funniest joke. It made Jacob want to chuck the bin of papers he was holding right at his head.

  “You always think you know what’s best for me, but you don’t.”

  “And you always think that your scars preclude you from dating, but they don’t.”

  “What would you know about scars?”

  Micah stood, raised his hands, palms out, and shook his head. “I don’t know why we do this every time.”

  “I know why. You insist on sticking your nose in my business.”

  “We worry about you. Emily and I both do.”

  “Would you please stop? Would you just trust me to live my own life the way it’s meant to be lived?”

  “Alone? Moping over what happened?”

  “You weren’t there, Micah. Don’t pretend that you know what happened. Don’t pretend you can understand. I’m the one who pulled their bodies from the fire. I’m the one who didn’t get there fast enough.”

  Micah strode to the door, but he stopped dead in his tracks, the afternoon sunlight that was streaming through the open workshop door spilling over his shoulders. Because his back was to Jacob, his words were muffled, softer, but they hit him just as hard as if they’d been standing face-to-face. “You say that you trust Gotte, and yet you won’t let anyone into your life. You say that you pray, but you don’t believe.”

  And with that, he trudged back outside, across the field and to his own home—leaving Jacob to wonder why everyone thought they had to fix him. They didn’t live in his skin. They didn’t look at his scars every morning, and they knew nothing of his guilt and loneliness.

  Jacob understood his scars for what they were—the penance that he deserved for not saving his parents from the fire that took their lives.

  * * *

  Hannah had been living back in Goshen long enough that Matthew no longer drew obvious stares when they met for church. She was grateful for that, thankful that their neighbors were learning to accept him.

  She looked forward to their church services. Loved the familiar faces she’d grown up seeing and the sound of her bishop’s voice—the same man who had baptized her. Other than the loneliness that occasionally plagued her and the constant worry over Matthew’s health, she was happy, living again with her family.

  Church was held every other Sunday and always at a member’s home. This week they were at the Yutzy place, which was on the northwest side of town. A portion of their property bordered the Elkhart River. It was a beautiful, peaceful spot, and Hannah could feel its calming power even as she made her way into the barn where they would have church. The large main room had been cleaned out, the doors and windows flung open, and benches arranged on two sides of a makeshift aisle.

  At the back of the benches a few tables had been set up with cups of water and plates of cookies for the youngest children. It was sometimes difficult for them to make it all the way through a three-to four-hour meeting without a small snack.

  The service was exactly what she needed to quiet her soul. She’d spent too much time since Friday worrying about the job at Jacob’s. She knew she could do the work, but would Matthew be okay without her? Was she doing the right thing? Could the small amount of money she was making help her parents’ financial situation?

  The questions had spun round and round in her head, but that all stopped when they stood to sing the Loblied. The words of the hymn reminded her of the good things in her life, the things that Gotte had given her. She forgot for a moment the tragedy of losing her husband and the trials of having a special needs son.

  Once the service was over and she’d finished helping in the serving line, she went to find her sisters. Both Beth and Sharon were in the last trimester of their pregnancies. In fact, their babies were due only a few weeks apart. They’d tried to help in the serving line and had been shooed away.

  “Finally we get you to ourselves,” Sharon said. The oldest of the three girls, it had taken her some time to become pregnant after marrying. The twins were two lovely girls full of energy and laughter and a tiny bit of mischief. Another six years had passed before Sharon had finally become pregnant again. She and her husband were hoping for a boy, just to balance things out a bit.

  Beth had one daughter, ten-year-old Naomi. She’d had Naomi when she was very young, only seventeen. There had been some problems, and she thought that she couldn’t have any more children, but her protruding stomach was testament to the fact that Gotte had other plans.

  Being around them, watching them rest a hand on their baby bumps or sigh as they tried to push up out of a chair caused an ache deep in Hannah’s heart. She’d imagined herself pregnant again, had thought she’d have a house full of children like most Amish women. She had been certain that she would remain married to the same man all of her life. She’d never imagined herself as a young widow.

  She searched the crowd of children for her son and finally spied Matthew in his chair, pulled up to a checkerboard that had been placed over a tree stump. One of the older boys who had a foot in a cast was playing with him. As she watched, Matthew glanced occasionally at the children who were playing ball, and it seemed to Hannah that an expression of longing crossed his face.

  “Tell us about your new job.” Beth was the middle child and the negotiator of the family. It was Beth who had convinced Hannah to move home. Hannah hadn’t wanted to be a burden to her parents, but Beth had convinced her that home was where she needed to be and that family could never truly be a burden.

  “Tell us about Jacob.” Sharon’s eyes sparkled. She’d always been one to tease. Perhaps because of her work as a midwife, she believed in enjoying life. She saw moments of great joy every day and the occasional tragedy, as well.

  “There’s nothing to tell about Jacob, and as far as the job...well, I’m fortunate to find work at all.” She described her attempts at finding employment in town. She even mimicked the craft shop owner’s voice when she asked if Hannah could bring Matt in occasionally so the tourists could gawk at him.

  “Maybe she meant well,” Beth said.

  Sharon rolled her eyes. “And maybe she has no filter, no sense of what is proper and what is improper. Some business owners—and I’ve seen it in Amish as well as Englisch—they become too enamored with how much money they can make. They forget their employees are people.”

  “Anyway. I suppose I was upset because of the interview, and I had no other ideas of where to apply.” Hannah glanced around to be sure no one else was within earshot. Fortunately most of the women had moved to a circle of chairs under the trees, and the men were congregated on the porch or near the ball field. “I confronted Jacob. I walked right up to him and asked him why he hadn’t offered me the job.”

  “Oh my.” Beth placed both hands on her belly. “How did he take it?”

  “He was surprised, of course. Amish women are supposed to be quiet and meek.”

  Both Beth and Sharon laughed at that. Sometimes the reputation that Amish women had earned was frustrating, other times it was simply ludicrous. While they did believe that the man was the spiritual head of the house, the women Hannah knew had no trouble voicing their opinion or standing up for themselves.

  “What happened then?” Sharon asked.

  “He agreed. It’s a temporary position until his audit is over. Then we’ll see if there’s enough work for me to continue.”

&nb
sp; “Oh, I’m sure there’s enough work. He’s probably just afraid you wouldn’t want a permanent position. I still see his sister-in-law Emily because our homes are fairly close together. The dividing line for our districts is between us. Anyway, she tells me that Jacob’s a real wonder with the woodworking...”

  “Have you seen the playhouse he made?” Beth interrupted. “It’s amazing. I stopped by yesterday and even Naomi spent an hour out in it, and she’s ten. I haven’t seen her in a playhouse since the summer she was six and her dat knocked together something from old barn lumber. Wasn’t even really a lean-to, but she would drag every little friend that came over out to play there.”

  “What are you worried about, Hannah?” Sharon studied her sister. “You might as well share with us. Is it Matthew? Is he feeling all right?”

  “Matthew’s fine, I guess.”

  “You guess?” Now Beth was on alert. “Tell us. What’s happened?”

  “Nothing has happened.” Hannah blew out a sigh of exasperation. “I’m starting a new job that I know nothing about.”

  “Which you asked for—” Beth reminded her.

  “I’m leaving Matthew with Mamm, and she has enough to do.”

  “I’ve already spoken to her about that. She’s welcome to bring Matthew by anytime—”

  “You’re seven months pregnant, Sharon, and you’re still delivering babies. The last thing you need is—”

  “My nephew? Actually I do need to spend time with him and so do my girls. He’s family, Hannah. We want him around.”

  “Naomi asks me every day if Matthew can come over.” Beth rubbed the side of her stomach. “We’ll help Mamm. Don’t worry about that.”

  Which effectively shut down her doubts about leaving Matthew during the day.

  “I’m not sure it will be enough money,” she admitted. “The amount they owe? I was surprised. I knew they’d helped me and Matt, but I didn’t know... I didn’t know they’d sacrificed so much.”

  “It’s what families do, Hannah.” Sharon took on her older sister tone. “You’ve forgotten because you moved away. You and David moved, what was it...”