Gladden the Heart

by Olivia Newport

  His effort went unheard.

  “I agree with Anke,” Trina said. “We should go listen to Noah—for the right reasons, as Susanna suggests.”

  “I have been several times,” Barbara said. “’Tis a sight, but he does speak the Word of God.”

  Seth chuckled. “But you also went to the Methodist tent meeting.”

  “I was not alone,” Barbara said, eyeing Seth.

  Adam ticked off in his mind the owners of rigs he had seen parked outside Charles Baxton’s tent. Shem’s words echoed. “You must speak up when you are with the young people.”

  “I do not think what Noah does is right.” Johannes offered his opinion while stretching out his form to lean on one elbow with a good view of Ruth. “The bishop is right to want it to stop. If you do something enough times, it becomes your habit, but that does not mean it is also genuine.”

  “Why can it not be real?” LeRoy challenged. “You must come and see for yourself before you can judge.”

  “Only God can judge a man’s heart.”

  “But God looks at the heart before judging.”

  “Do not go.” The words burst out of Adam’s mouth before he could reconsider. He did not want to reconsider. The bishop was right. “We have all been baptized and made promises. Now is the time to keep them, for the good of the church.”

  “So you think my daed is wrong?” Jonas said.

  Jonas’s eyes burned into Adam’s face, but he did not meet his cousin’s eyes. He had no words to respond.

  “Do you think Noah is doing something wrong?” Susanna said. “That he is being willful in disobedience to the church?”

  Adam cleared his throat. “The bishop is concerned for the welfare of the congregation. I only mean to point out that we also have promised to be concerned for the welfare of the congregation and choose the path of submission. If the bishop believes we may come to harm, should we not heed the warning?”

  Susanna began packing up leftover food. “I should get home.”

  When a few minutes later Adam bent to pick up her basket, Susanna snatched it from him and set a pace that she did not mean for him to keep up with.

  CHAPTER 22

  I want to learn to do that.” Patsy hinged at the waist to peer into the vat.

  “I doubt it,” Susanna said. “If you could see the way you scrunch up your nose when you look in my pots, you would know you do not want to learn to dye.”

  “I concede,” Patsy said. There was no point in debating. She admired Susanna’s skill and determination, but in the middle of the nineteenth century, with a mercantile in every town and factories in the cities, why would she don long gloves and stand over a simmering pot stirring with a wooden paddle?

  “Thank you for keeping me company anyway,” Susanna said.

  Susanna had been quiet since Patsy’s arrival nearly an hour ago. Patsy chalked it up to concentration on her task. Now it seemed something more. Fifteen years of friendship told her to wait. Susanna would speak when she was ready.

  “It soothes me to do something normal,” Susanna said, stirring. “So many things feel out of control.”

  “Noah?” Patsy asked.

  Susanna chuckled. “Noah’s preaching is starting to feel like the most unremarkable part of my day. ’Tis what everyone has to say about Noah—and Niklaus Zug and the bishop and your daed, and I suppose, even me. At church yesterday the bishop preached on submission for the third time in a row.”

  “Surely submission to God is what matters most,” Patsy said. “True spiritual submission, not only obeying a man.”

  Susanna stirred, silent.

  “I’m sorry,” Patsy said. “I do not mean to criticize your faith.”

  “Our calling is to reside quietly in Christ,” Susanna said.

  Turn the other cheek. Go with him a second mile. Patsy could quote the same Bible verses Susanna knew about maintaining a mild spirit even when persecuted. But surely there were circumstances that cried out for righteousness.

  “My father does not belong to your church,” Patsy said. “They cannot ask him to submit to your bishop.”

  “They would not do such a thing,” Susanna said.

  “He is not even here to defend himself, because he is off preaching the gospel and ministering.”

  “That is what God calls him to do.”

  “Then why are they angry with him?”

  “We live apart,” Susanna said.

  “You have been saying that for years.” Patsy picked up a poker and stabbed at flames beneath Susanna’s pot. “Yet you and I are friends. The Amish buy goods from others when they need to.”

  Susanna stirred. “Where the outside world influences us, danger lies.”

  Patsy circled around the pot. “Are you afraid the friend of your childhood will influence you to the point of sin?”

  “You? No. You and I understand each other.”

  Patsy was not sure on that point in the moment.

  “’Tis not that way for everyone,” Susanna said.

  “You confuse me, Susanna Hooley.” Patsy stood still and crossed her arms. “You hear Noah preach. You are moved by his sermons. I see it in your face. You saw for yourself how people responded when Noah preached with my father.”

  Susanna nodded.

  “Then how can you defend Shem Hertzberger?”

  “He is my bishop.”

  “I will have a word with your bishop. I will defend my father—and Niklaus and Noah and you and any other Amish who have found encouragement in Noah’s ministry.”

  “Please do not do that.”

  “What about Adam?” Patsy said. “What are his opinions?”

  Susanna’s answer came a beat late. “He is mindful of the bishop’s role as our spiritual leader.”

  “Does he not have an opinion of his own?”

  Susanna lifted her paddle from the vat, took the poker from Patsy, and pushed apart the coals under the pot. Patsy’s announced strategy would only make things worse. Susanna turned to look her friend in the eye but instead looked past her.

  “Your mother is here,” Susanna announced.

  Patsy pivoted as the door closed behind her mother. “Mama, is everything all right?”

  Mercy Baxton’s visits to the Hooley farm were not unheard of, but they were infrequent. More often, Susanna saw Mercy when she visited the Baxton farm. She had always thought Patsy’s mother was well named. Mercy. Had her character formed under the spiritual mantle of the name, or had her parents seen something in the disposition of their infant daughter that prompted the moniker?

  “What wondrous hue are you concocting today?” Mercy asked. She looked into the pot without the least suggestion of scrunching her nose, but with eyes wide in curiosity.

  “I am experimenting,” Susanna said. If she had done well, the result would be a deep violet cloth, enough for at least three dresses. With the paddle, she found a loose edge of fabric and briefly lifted it from the bath of color.

  “Lovely!” Mercy said. “Such beautiful colors you have in your imagination.”

  “Only those I see in God’s world around me,” Susanna said.

  “Have you come for me, Mama?” Patsy said.

  “I simply felt like a stroll and thought I might find the two of you here,” Mercy said. “Susanna, may I be one of your customers? I would love to have a dress made from your cloth.”

  “Of course,” Susanna said.

  “Yellow, I think,” Mercy said. “The color of a field of sunflowers on a golden summer day.”

  Yellow? Susanna had sometimes added a yellow hue to a brown bath, or even to tinge blue, but yellow cloth had not crossed her mind. The women in her congregation favored muted tones.

  “I am not sure,” Susanna said.

  “You can do it,” Patsy said.

  Perhaps yellow would do for a quilt, just as red might. Even among the Amish she might find those who dared the occasional yellow triangle or square. But catering to the fashions of the English in a way s
he could not also serve her own people was a conundrum Susanna had not yet faced.

  “Look, here comes your mother,” Mercy said, at least temporarily distracted from her request.

  Susanna once again removed the paddle from the vat to let the cloth rest in the liquid and absorb its tint. A conversation with one mother or the other was uneventful. But both mothers together was an event so infrequent—only a few times a year—as to be unpredictable in its outcome. Mercy would live up to her name. It was her own mother who made Susanna nervous.

  “Hello, Mercy,” Veronica said. “I pray God is blessing you.”

  Mercy nodded. “He is faithful.”

  “And your husband is well?”

  “By God’s grace. He is ministering even now.”

  Veronica turned her attention to Patsy. “You look well also.”

  “I am very well,” Patsy said, friendly caution falling on Susanna’s ears in her tone.

  “And how is your cloth?” Veronica said to Susanna.

  “It seems to be taking the color well,” Susanna said.

  “’Tis lovely you could both drop by for a visit.” Veronica even smiled.

  By nature, Susanna’s mother was a person who got to the point. This string of polite inquiries unsettled Susanna. Her mamm could not have expected to find guests in the area where Susanna worked. She had come for a reason but held herself back in their presence.

  Patsy shifted her weight from foot to foot. She would endure her own mother’s chastisement for being rude if necessary, but a body could listen to innocuous inquiries about well-being for only so long.

  “It’s time I was off to the Kauffman place,” Patsy said. “Susanna, will you be able to come today?”

  The glance between Susanna and Veronica did not escape Patsy, and she wished she had not caused it. Perhaps she hadn’t. Perhaps they looked at each other this way every day before Susanna left for Noah’s.

  “The fabric must stay in the bath another half hour,” Susanna said. “Then I will have to spread it to dry.”

  Patsy nodded. “So you will come when you are able.” And if you are not able, I will understand.

  “Did neither of you bring a wagon?” Veronica asked.

  “It’s hardly any walk at all,” Mercy said. “And the afternoon is fine.”

  “We can walk home together,” Patsy said. She would saddle Galahad and ride swiftly to the Kauffmans’.

  Mother and daughter said polite farewells and left their neighbors.

  “I have never quite understood Veronica Hooley,” Mercy said, once they were beyond earshot. “She can be quite a cordial woman until she gets a bee in her bonnet about something. Then her pleasantries begin to grate.”

  Patsy laughed. “I thought it was just me.”

  “The dilemma is that I rarely know what has put the bee in her bonnet.”

  “I’m pretty sure I know this time,” Patsy said.

  “You do?”

  “Not specifically. But it has to do with Noah Kauffman. Apparently the Amish congregation is all in a dither with his preaching.”

  “I see,” Mercy said. “Is there anything to be in a dither about? Your father says he does very well.”

  “He does. But he is not a minister, and the way he falls under the influence of the Holy Ghost is troublesome.”

  “You mean because he is in a trance or asleep?’

  Patsy nodded.

  “But we have heard of many other trance preachers,” Mercy said. “Your father brings news of them when he meets with other ministers. God works in mysterious ways.”

  “It seems that the Amish prefer spiritual matters to be less mysterious.” Patsy sighed. “Why don’t you come with me today? It’s about time you heard Noah for yourself.”

  “Mamm, I do not understand.” Susanna kicked at a smoldering log in equal parts necessity and frustration.

  “’Tis clear enough,” her mother said. “’Tis not against Ordnung to move from one district to another if God leads the way with opportunity or merely simple faith.”

  “But you have lived in the valley all your life. You and Daed have built this farm together.” Using her largest paddle, Susanna lifted the soaking fabric out of the dye bath, impatient for the end of both her task and this conversation.

  “And I pray we will live many more years together in a new land building a new farm.”

  A new land? Indiana was hardly the promised land of the Bible.

  “So we will go through our belongings,” Veronica said. “There is no need to keep every little thing we have ever owned.”

  Susanna could not think of what to say. Indiana! She squeezed excess liquid out of the fabric with less care than usual. As soon as she hung it from the line or spread it over the bushes, she could leave the farm.

  “Do not look so shocked,” Veronica said. “Belongings are material possessions of this world. They have no eternal value.”

  “’Tis not the things I am surprised about,” Susanna managed to say.

  “Indiana, then?”

  “Our church is here,” Susanna said. “The people who know us. Your family is just in the next county, and Daed’s also.”

  “Between your daed and me, we have dozens of cousins—and so do you. We are likely to have relatives in any district we settle in.”

  Susanna could not dispute her mother’s logic on that point.

  Both of her parents came from families with eight children, and her grandparents from families even larger. It would be hard for any Amish church member not to find a family thread tracing to a shared relative among nearly any congregation.

  Veronica looked around. “You have mostly pots and jars out here. Indiana will have pots and jars and all the roots and bark you need.”

  “Mamm, I have spent years learning to dye.”

  “And you have done well, my daughter. No matter where we go, you will contribute to the congregation.”

  “What about the farm? The animals?” Susanna said. Surely her parents had not already made a firm decision. Daed would have told her. Or Timothy’s nosiness would have come in handy and he would have reported what he overheard.

  Veronica waved away Susanna’s concerns. “’Twill be only a matter of time. ’Tis a good farm, and the animals are sturdy and serviceable. Your old mare will be the only one difficult to sell. Your daed can just put her down.”

  “Mamm!”

  “You must be realistic, Susanna. We may as well be ready. When the time comes, we can go without a fuss.” Veronica pivoted and walked toward the house.

  Susanna waited until her mother was out of sight before whistling for the mare and setting out for the Kauffmans’ farm. Just shy of the Zugs’ property, she slowed and then stopped.

  “Noah?” she called. He was walking the other direction—away from home.

  “Oh, Susanna. Lovely to run into you.” Noah tipped his straw hat.

  “Can I give you a ride somewhere?” Susanna dropped the reins and stepped out of the cart to meet Noah.

  “I thought it was a nice day for a walk. That is all.”

  Susanna squinted into the sunlight. “’Tis a very nice day. Have you been out walking very long?”

  “Half an hour or so. Phoebe fusses too much, but surely a brief constitutional can do me no harm.”

  As long as you do not lose consciousness.

  “Do you mind if I walk with you?” Susanna asked.

  “You look like you were on your way somewhere,” Noah said.

  “Only to your house,” she said, “to see how I might be of help to Phoebe.”

  “You are a sweet child. You always have been.”

  “Danki, Cousin Noah.”

  He was perspiring, and Susanna regretted not filling a jug at the well before she left home.

  “Phoebe probably has some cold tea waiting for you.” Susanna looked again at the sun, judging that Noah would fall under inside half an hour. “Did you tell her how long you expected to be gone?”

  “She
was busy,” Noah said. “There was no need to bother her.”

  Susanna’s stomach lurched. “I would be happy to take you home.”

  “I thought I might walk a bit farther.”

  “Then I would be happy to walk with you.”

  “What about your horse and cart?”

  Susanna laughed. “You know this mare. She is not one for speed. I will just lead her.”

  “I suppose if I turned around now, I would still have a good walk.”

  Susanna nodded. “Two miles this way and two miles back.”

  Noah reached out for the reins. “Come on, girl, let’s go home.”

  Susanna wished she could spare Noah what awaited him on his own land, but the safest place for him was home.

  “If you are looking for adventure,” Susanna said, “we could go exploring on the way back.” They could cut through the Zug property, go along the edge of the forest, and approach Noah’s farm from the back. She might even get him into the house without being seen by the crowd.

  “I think I might just be up for a bit of adventure,” Noah said.

  Susanna let out a breath of relief. Phoebe would be frantic if she discovered Noah had left the farm, but at least now he would not be alone if he collapsed before they reached home.

  “You always were a child who wanted adventure,” Noah said. “I have not forgotten the time you frightened the daylights out of all over us when you climbed down the old rope in an empty well.”

  “And then I could not get up,” Susanna said. “But you were the one to find me just as I realized I ought to be afraid. I have never forgotten.”

  “Our little secret. I got you out, returned you to your parents, and that was the end of it.”

  “You never told them?”

  “Never.” Noah stopped walking. “I have changed my mind. It might be better if we rode in the cart.”

  “Of course,” Susanna said, “but we shall still take the back way.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Adam slid off his horse at the Kauffman farm. The picnic had been a disaster, and Susanna had barely looked in his direction at church the following day. At the meal, Adam found himself trapped at a table with Mr. Zimmerman, who shared his wife’s public and suspicious views about Noah Kauffman’s trickery. Of course Susanna would not catch his eye under those circumstances, and she had gone home with her family rather than stay for the activities. On Monday as he worked, Adam tried also to pray. He had always imagined that doing the right thing would be more straightforward than this. Before dawn on Tuesday, Adam woke with the words of Isaiah in his mind. “For the Lord God will help me; therefore shall I not be confounded: therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed.”