Running Around (and Such)

by Linda Byler

  More teams of horses tore along, both in front of and behind them. One by one, they overtook the buggy Lizzie was in, streaking past them as if they were hardly moving. Lizzie hid her face, hung on, and hoped there was no vehicle approaching from the opposite direction.

  She was sure that they turned into the driveway on two wheels, the horse leaning at a 45-degree angle, but she didn’t say anything because she was too new to squeal or state her opinions.

  Chapter 34

  The youth all filed into the living room of the large house where a long narrow table had been put together. It was made of church benches set on small wooden extenders to form a table top. Other wooden church benches were set on either side, and hymnbooks were piled in the center of the table. The boys sat on one side; the girls on the other.

  Emma and Sara started the first song, an old German hymn Lizzie had often sung in school. She knew the words well and loved to sing, especially with a whole group of people. On this very first weekend she discovered the utter beauty of joining the young people’s hymn-singings on Sunday evenings.

  She was singing heartily when she looked up and saw Marvin and Amos come in and sit down on the boys’ side of the table, followed immediately by two girls whom Lizzie did not know.

  She blinked her eyes nervously, hastily looking at the words in the hymnbook. So that was how it was, huh? You could go for a walk with a good-looking young man, and it amounted to nothing.

  Already, only a few hours later, he had asked another girl to go along to the singing with him. Lizzie felt absolutely dejected, her future of running around as insurmountable as Mt. Everest. She would have to have a serious talk with Emma.

  She noticed Ruthie watching her anxiously, so she knew she had to paste a smile on her face and start to sing again. But all she could think about was Uncle Marvin having the nerve to do this to Ruthie and her.

  She was not only planning a serious talk with Emma about how she managed to go for a walk with Joshua and ride to the singing with him. She had also decided to give Marvin a good scolding on the way home.

  Lizzie felt almost as confused as she did one morning a few years earlier. As they got ready for school, Emma gave her another lecture about how she should look and behave at school. She wasn’t even a teenager yet, but if she listened to Emma, it sounded like she was now too old to horse around with the boys. Let Emma be sedate and domestic, Lizzie decided. But she wasn’t going to stop having fun.

  Lizzie finished combing her hair in silence that day. Emma pinned on her apron, asking Lizzie to straighten it in the back. There was a small piece of cloth sewn to the waist of their dresses, called a lebbley, and their black aprons had to be spaced evenly on each side, according to Amish custom.

  “Yesterday your apron was so crooked I couldn’t even see your lebbley, Lizzie,” Emma informed her.

  “So?”

  “Well, you could let me straighten it for you.”

  “I can do it myself. Besides, I don’t even care much what I look like. Around here, nobody really cares much about clothes. It’s relaxed,” Lizzie said, sniffing.

  “I agree,” Emma assured her. “But you looked so sloppy yesterday in school, I was almost embarrassed. Your hair looked a fright. I mean, I don’t want to be unkind, Lizzie, but you should hold still and be a bit more quiet. We’re not exactly little girls anymore!”

  Lizzie narrowed her eyes at Emma. She had a straight pin in her mouth, because she was pinning her black school apron, so she didn’t say anything immediately.

  “Emma, we’re not old yet. I don’t want to have to grow up right now and start worrying about what I look like. There’s too much to do yet, like playing baseball and going sledding and skating,” Lizzie said, holding a straight pin to the lamp to see why it wouldn’t pierce the fabric of her black belt apron.

  Emma sighed, turning to hang up her flannel nightgown. She shook her head. There was no use trying to persuade Lizzie to act a bit more grown up. Lizzie assumed she was fine exactly the way she was, although Emma thought she was too noisy in school, often speaking her mind quite loudly and at the wrong time.

  As they splashed through the slush on their way to school, Emma hung back a bit because Lizzie was stomping her boots in the shallow ditch beside the road. Bits of slush and water flew in every direction, splattering anyone close to her.

  “Stop it, Lizzie,” Sadie Mae said. “You got my socks wet.”

  Lizzie laughed and skipped ahead, trying to catch up with Ivan and Ray. They were talking, never noticing Lizzie’s approach. Emma watched as Lizzie sneaked up behind them and then stomped her boot in the slush, splattering their pant legs with cold, wet snow.

  “Hey!” Ivan yelled.

  “Cut it out!” Ray growled.

  Lizzie stomped again, splattering more cold, wet snow across their legs. Ray put down his lunchbox, picked up a handful of wet snow, grabbed Lizzie by the shoulders, and rubbed the snow in her face. Lizzie shrieked and tore out of his grasp, stopping to shake the water off her face. It ran down her chin and soaked her coat. She rubbed a coat sleeve across her face in an effort to dry it. Her face was red as a beet, her bonnet pushed to the back of her head, her hair a disheveled mess, and the day hadn’t even begun.

  “Lizzie!” Emma scolded.

  “What?”

  “Behave yourself.”

  Sadie Mae was scowling at her and Emma looked embarrassed. Mandy walked quietly behind them, but her eyes were at least twinkling.

  “That makes Ivan and Ray mad if you splash slush on them,” Sadie Mae told her sourly.

  Lizzie felt terrible. No one smiled—not even Mandy—so she figured that wasn’t a good thing to have done this morning. She pinched her mouth shut and fell behind everyone else. That was just the trouble with getting older, she thought bitterly. There were always these unspoken guidelines about what was nice behavior and what wasn’t. Who was to say what was grown up and what was childish? Emma? Emma couldn’t always be there with Lizzie to remind her to behave herself her whole life long. And that Sadie Mae had nerve, telling her that Ivan and Ray didn’t like slush splashed on them. How did she know? Everybody was mean this morning. Even Mandy was sober and serious.

  Now, Lizzie sat at her first singing, wondering again if she had missed some important rule of behavior. She guessed she’d have to ask Emma.

  Chapter 35

  Spring arrived, along with warm, mellow sunshine and buds bursting from the maple trees in the yard. Even the old walnut tree beside the sidewalk began to shine with a look of light green mist. Thousands of tiny green buds were erupting from its dark branches.

  The swollen creek churned on its relentless way to the river, muddy brown from all the April showers. Little green shoots emerged from the moist brown earth under its blanket of wet, decaying leaves which had mulched the baby sprouts to new growth.

  Dat was working the horses hard, preparing the soil for another crop. Clyde was back in the harness, still bouncing around as if he had springs in his legs. But the spirited horse was learning to buckle down and behave long enough to pull his share of the plow.

  Mam’s energy level was almost back to normal a year after her bout of pneumonia, which comforted and relieved Lizzie and Emma. She asked Dat to bring a few wheelbarrow loads of manure into the yard so she could start a new flower garden. And she asked the girls to help her in the evening with laying out a huge new rock garden on an unhandy slope between the house and barn where no grass could grow decently.

  New Amish families were moving into the community this spring. When the Glick family went to church, they often met new girls and parents with small children whom they had never seen before.

  Each weekend Lizzie went with Emma and Marvin to Allen County, which she looked forward to each and every other day of the week. Running around was even more fun now that warmer weather had arrived, because there was so much more to do. Lizzie thought that baseball games, volleyball, croquet, and just going for drives to different picnic a
reas or lakes with a group of young people were the funnest things in the entire world.

  She became good friends with Barbara and Mary and often spent Saturday nights with them. One weekend blended into the next until Lizzie’s world was filled with warm golden sunshine and so much to do and think about that time flew by like the spring breezes.

  She still liked Amos, and she was never quite as thrilled as when he asked her to go for a buggy ride with him. Those times felt like romance to Lizzie, if not true love, although she didn’t know what the difference was between the two, or how you could know whether your feelings were right or not.

  She liked everyone, and all the boys were her friends. But somehow, it seemed a little different whenever Amos was around. It was almost as if the group of youth was not quite complete until he arrived. And as soon as Lizzie knew he was there, she was not completely happy until he had noticed her and said hello.

  There seemed to be lots of talk about Emma getting married in the fall. Actually, it was only teasing among Mam and the girls because Emma was still too young. She would be only 18 by November. Lizzie knew how Emma felt, though. She had secretly told Lizzie that she would love to get married in the fall and move to Joshua’s parents’ farm in Allen County.

  The old place had a huge brick house with an L-shaped porch, a barn, and lots of sheds and outbuildings. It was the home Emma had always dreamed of, and there were stars in her eyes as she folded towels and sheets and placed them in the cedar hope chest that had her initials on the front.

  Lizzie did not want to get married so young. She discovered that soon after she turned 16. Running around was much too exciting to think of settling down on an old farm with a husband and nothing to look forward to except cooking and cleaning for the rest of your life.

  Mandy heartily agreed with Lizzie when they talked about the possibility of Emma getting married so young. Mandy nodded soberly though, when Lizzie said that Emma had always been different as far as working in the house with Mam, and that she really enjoyed all kinds of domestic duties at a very young age.

  “Hey, look at Clyde!” Mandy yelled.

  Lizzie was in the garden pulling weeds with Mandy. She looked up, shading her eyes with one hand in the morning sunlight. Mandy pointed toward the big brown horse pulling the plow in the old hayfield.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “See how he can barely settle himself down long enough to stay in line and pull his share with the others? He’s always prancing or stepping sideways or shaking his head up and down. I guess he’s just too full of himself to act decent when he’s hitched up!”

  Lizzie continued to watch as Dat plowed the hay stubble. He had already plowed enough so that the girls could see a thin line of dark brown, overturned earth following the curve of their gently rolling land. When Dat and the team of horses returned from the far end of the field, they came close enough for the girls to hear the clank of the plow and the squeaking of the leather harnesses.

  Mandy shook her head in her wise way, clicking her tongue. “Clyde’s never going to last in this heat!” she said.

  Lizzie stood, watching anxiously as Dat turned the team of horses at the end of the furrow. What at first seemed to be an impossible turn became a picture of perfect motion, as Dat called and each horse stepped tightly to the right. It seemed to Lizzie as if they all knew exactly what was expected of them, and they executed the short turn with no effort at all.

  Except Clyde. He hopped about three times too often, tossing his head before Dat yelled at him. Lizzie looked at Mandy and they both smiled, knowing how impatient Dat was with Clyde.

  As the team pulled the plow up over the slope, making the brown strip wider, the girls bent down and resumed their tedious job of weeding. The sun was very warm, reminding them of the hot summer days ahead.

  “Wish we could go down to the creek and cool off,” Lizzie said.

  She plopped down between the rows of corn.

  “Watch out! Lizzie, you sat on some cornstalks,” Mandy said.

  Lizzie didn’t move. Who cared about a few measly little cornstalks? Nine chances out of 10, they wouldn’t make it anyway, so what was wrong with sitting on a few?

  “Wish we could go down to the creek,” she said again.

  “Wishing won’t get you anywhere. Come on, Lizzie. Help with these weeds.”

  Lizzie turned and pulled absentmindedly at a few weeds.

  This garden is way too big,” she said.

  “We need a big garden now. We’re poor farmers,” Mandy said, tossing a handful of weeds into her white plastic bucket.

  Lizzie selected a wide piece of grass, stretched it expertly between her forefinger and the base of her thumb, and, lifting it to her mouth, she blew as hard as she could. A shrill explosion of sound followed. Mandy ignored her.

  “That was a good one,” Lizzie said.

  She got no response so Lizzie watched Mandy pulling weeds. She was mad now, Lizzie could tell by the way Mandy jerked on the weeds and hurled them into her bucket. Mandy was so thin, Lizzie thought. These kinds of clothes made her look good, she decided, because the black bib aprons fit her perfectly. She was wearing a dark blue dress with its sleeves made in a looser fashion, which only accentuated her slimness and made her face even prettier.

  Lizzie scrambled to her feet, pulled her bucket over, and began pulling weeds in earnest.

  “Mandy, did you really, really mind going to church here the first Sunday we went?” Lizzie asked.

  “I don’t know. Not really, I guess. I mean, Elsie and Aunt Becca and Mommy Glick were there. But it wasn’t exactly fun, if that’s what you mean, with all those strange people staring at us.”

  “They probably didn’t really mean to stare, Mandy.”

  “I know, but … it felt as if they were all looking at us.”

  Lizzie walked down the row of corn, lifting her bucket of weeds and tossing them across the fence into the pasture. On her way back, she said to Mandy, “It’s because our clothes don’t look right.”

  “What do you mean?” Mandy asked.

  “I’ll tell you the truth, Mandy. I feel so self-conscious and ugly since we live here. Our coverings haven’t been made nearly as neat as everybody else’s.”

  “I know. But you know why? Emma said it’s because Mam comes from Ohio, and she doesn’t really know how to make neat coverings for young girls. She never did. So Emma told me that’s why she’s learned to make them. Otherwise, we’d never look any better. She didn’t want to insult Mam by saying hers aren’t neat enough. They are alright for mothers and little girls.”

  “Emma can sew anything she tries,” Lizzie said.

  “I know. Did you see her make bib aprons? They’re just as neat as a pin.”

  “I’m so relieved she’s making our coverings now. I was so tired of being embarrassed. I just want to look nice.”

  Lizzie and Mandy took turns using the hoe to unearth the small weeds as they talked on. Birds circled overhead, calling while they flew into the old walnut tree at the end of the sidewalk. The diesel was droning in the distance as Mam filled the clothesline with load after load of clean laundry.

  A desperate cry sliced through their conversation. Mandy dropped the hoe, and she and Lizzie turned to see Dat standing at the corner of the partially plowed field, waving his straw hat frantically.

  “Something’s wrong!” Lizzie gasped.

  “C’mon!” Mandy called, already running across the garden. Together they raced over the tilled plot and out the lane to reach the hayfield. Breathless, they arrived and discovered immediately what was wrong. Clyde was down.

  It seemed as if time stood still, immobile as a huge concrete slab. Lizzie stood looking at the beautiful horse who tried desperately to get up from the ground, who wanted just to keep going. She didn’t want to look at this fallen creature. It was so awful and so pitiful all at the same time that she could not take her eyes away.

  Dat was panting, his eyes wild with fear and worry.
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br />   “You need to help me a minute. Lizzie, I’ll hold up his head. You try and loosen some of the snaps that keep him attached to the team. I don’t know if we can. Mandy, you might have to run to the barn for my leather shears. If nothing else works, we may have to cut the harness. Let’s try and get him up one more time.”

  Lizzie worked to free Clyde, but she couldn’t. Finally, Dat turned toward Clyde, lifting at the bit of his bridle. “Come on, boy, come on. Get up! Get up, now!”

  Clyde tried valiantly. His eyes opened until the whites of his eyes showed the whole way around, and he struggled repeatedly to get his forelegs underneath himself for better balance.

  Dat urged him on continuously, while Lizzie clutched her hands to her chest, bit her lips, and choked back agonizing sobs. What caused him to go down? She was afraid she knew why, but she wasn’t sure she could face the answer.

  Dat kept talking to Clyde, trying to get him to stand up. The rest of the horses stood by patiently, tossing their manes as if they knew something was wrong. Clouds floated overhead as the sun beat mercilessly down on poor, struggling Clyde.

  Finally, Clyde heaved once more with tremendous strength and managed to stand on all four legs. He was shaking violently, sweat dripping from his stomach and running down his legs in rivulets, pooling underneath him.

  “Quick, Lizzie, help me unhitch him!”

  Lizzie hurried to unsnap the traces that attached him, while Dat loosened reins and chains and took off Clyde’s cumbersome collar.

  “He’s loose,” Lizzie said, her voice shaking.

  “Come, boy,” Dat said gently, as he led him beneath the shade of a small locust tree. Clyde took a few faltering steps to the spot where Dat wanted him, away from the sun’s relentless heat.

  There Clyde stood, his head hanging down as far as it would go as he heaved great, unbelievable breaths. His chest and sides rose and fell, rose and fell, in an almost hypnotic rhythm. Lizzie clenched her hands in despair. She could not believe the amount of perspiration draining from this massive animal.