Simon turns to me. “Maybe we could go down to the cornfields, take a carriage ride?”
The humid afternoon will become a sultry evening, and watching the stars drift above us as we roll through a cornfield sounds amazing. It’s exactly where I want to be.
But before I can answer, Jessup goes on to say, “That does sound great, and I’m sure you’d both have a great time, and that’d be great too.”
“But?” I can’t help but say.
“But,” Jessup adds, “as regards our hosts...and hostess...”
Then I realize what Simon’s best friend is talking about. Lilly. I say, “Simon, he’s right, Jessup is absolutely right. If there is some...miscommunication between you and Lilly, you should take care of it. End it. Don’t wait another minute, for any of our sakes. It’s not fair, and I don’t think it’s what either of us wants.”
Simon looks deep into my eyes. He sees the love for him I feel growing in my belly and brain, my heart and soul. And he feels it too, I can see it in the way he looks at me, emotions wrestling to conquer his expression - ecstasy against agony, determination subdued by resolve.
He doesn’t have to say it. And as much as I want to say it, I can’t.
Not yet.
Go to her, I tell him without words, my little nods guiding him as I release his hands from my own. Go to her, and then come to me.
* * *
I wind up drifting back to my family, half in a daze and hoping they don’t notice. I feign being tired, dazzled by the heat. My parents care so little for me that they’re easy to fool, and my sister cares only for herself, so no real effort is required.
Abram smiles at me. Only Abram knows what’s going on, and he looks like he knows more than he’s had a chance to say.
I flashback to the interlude he’d put together, at just the right time, so I could sneak away with Simon.
Jessup!
As soon as I can, I take Abram aside. “Tell me everything!”
“You first.”
I release a tired sigh. “We kissed, it was nice.”
“You’re in love!”
“Your turn, Abram!”
Abram smiles broadly, enjoying the last few seconds of privacy with whatever information he is about to share. And then, sensing I’m about to rip his head off, Abram spills the beans.
“Well, the folks didn’t like Jessup at all.”
“Of course they didn’t,” I say, “is that the big news? You look like the cat that swallowed the canary.”
He keeps smiling.
There is more.
Abram says, “Turns out, Jessup wasn’t into Rebecca at all, he barely noticed her standing right there in front of him.” Something about that brings me a little satisfaction, but I’m not sure what it is. I don’t have time to reason it out anyway, because Abram adds, “Jessup is in love with somebody else...the girl Lilly.”
“Really?” Abram, you clever little detective! “How do you know?”
“Well, y’know, I mentioned her by name is all, didn’t know I knew about her, I guess. I mean, he didn’t say, ‘I love Lilly’...”
“Shshshshsh! Keep it down, James Bond.”
Abram looks around, in exactly that spirit, and says, quieter, “He mentioned someone he’d loved all his life, y’know, her name kind of dropped out...”
I could see it clearly in my imagination, easy to put the rest together: Jessup nervously wriggling out of Abram’s dating trap, probably withering under Daed’s stern judgment.
Of course he loves Lilly, I hear myself reason out, and that’s why he wanted Simon to end things with her decisively! It’s not just so Simon and I can be together, but so he and Lilly can be together!
“Earth to Hannah,” Abram says, waving a hand in front of my face, “still with us?”
I have to shake it off. “Sorry, Abram. Good work.”
* * *
Even while my family eats and chats and worries and wonders around me, I feel like I’m a million miles away, pacing circles around the puzzle this is all quickly becoming. Lilly’s in love with Simon, but Simon’s in love with me. Now Abram tells me Jessup is in love with Lilly. If Lilly could fall in love with Jessup, everybody’s problems will be solved.
Except for Rebecca’s.
Rebecca.
I look across the table at my beautiful sister, never smiling and never happy.
What can I do for her? Do for her? I’ve barely got a foothold on what I can do for me. And I still haven’t wrapped my head around that.
Or my heart.
Simon really does seem to be in love with me. I thought I saw it in his eyes the first time we met, but that would have been an easy and very vain conclusion to jump to. But after our kiss, and after Simon’s decision to come clean with Lilly, I know that his feelings for me are authentic. And I believe from what I’ve seen of him that he is as authentic as his feelings; he is what he appears to be, and that is quite a thing indeed.
My whole body tingles with the exhilaration of possibility, the trembling quiver of my imagined future with Simon.
“What’s the matter with you?” Daed asks, drawing my attention to him and the others.
I clear my throat, looking around nervously.
Abram says, “Are you praying at the table again, Hannah? C’mon, God knows you’re grateful.”
Mamm smiles, reaching across the table and cupping my hand. Daed shrugs and takes another bite of his turkey loaf. “Things are rough at the stable.”
“Too many New Order families?” Abram asks.
“Too many blacksmiths,” Daed snaps back, Abram retracting back into his chair. “Anyway, what’s the point? All the old ways are being run underground, we’re half in the grave as it is.”
Silence returns to the table, and my mind leaves it once more, back to Simon, back to the world of my private thoughts. But now my family is dominating my mind, as are the questions I can no longer avoid.
Are we strange? I have to wonder. What did Grandmother Troyer mean about fighting God? Does our family fight God? What kind of madness drove granduncle Zeek to die alone and miserable? Was he fighting God, is that what she meant?
And what is God’s will? For me to be with Simon and he with me, that’s God’s will. And doesn’t God help those who help themselves? So, who’s fighting who?
And round and round it goes, until I can’t think anymore.
But I can still feel, now more than ever.
And what I feel is love.
CHAPTER FOUR
With Daed spending every day at the new blacksmith stable, it is up to me and Abram to clear the rest of the farmland. We’d done a pretty good job using a scythe that granduncle Zeek had left in the barn, but the handle had rotted through over the years and the thing broke halfway through the task. Since the blade was rusty and had been sharpened down to the nub over the years, Daed decides to send me to the hardware store in town to buy a new one.
I leave Abram to do some of the fence mending while I take Adeline and one carriage into town. I buy the best scythe I can find for the best price, and carry it back to the carriage. Too big for any bag, I simply tote the nearly six-foot tool, a long wooden handle with a scary-looking blade jutting out from one end.
Behind me, I hear, “Well well, it if isn’t the Grim Reaper herself.”
I turn to see Lilly Zook standing there, hands on her hips, chin jutted, like an angry child. I say, “Hello, Lilly. Thank you again for hosting such a lovely service.”
“Yeah, I’ve already gotten a taste of your gratitude, thank you very much.” I look at her as if I don’t know what she’s talking about, but of course I do. And the question I really want to ask, Has Simon set you straight yet so we can be together? simply isn’t coming. So I say nothing and let her continue, which is always a strong position in almost any situation.
Lilly takes a step toward me. “I know what you’re doing, and you’ve got a lot of nerve, storming into town and stealing my man!”
“Firstly, Lilly,” I say very calmly, “we didn’t storm into town like a horde of rampaging Mongols...”
“That’s your opinion.”
“And secondly, I most certainly am not stealing your man. You’ve known him all these years. If you’re not married by now, don’t you think that perhaps it’s just not meant to be? Simon knows what he wants, and what he doesn’t want. Nobody can force him either way.”
“Don’t play dumb, Hannah. Simon is a man and men don’t know what they want; they need to be shown what they want, they need to be told. Most of them are just overgrown children as it is.”
“But not Simon.”
“Don’t you keep talking about him that way. You don’t know him, Hannah, you don’t love him the way I do.”
“I don’t know what’s in your heart or in your mind, Lilly, and you don’t know what’s in mine. Perhaps we should just leave it at that and let Simon follow his own course in life.”
Lilly glares at me, lips pulled tight across her teeth, sneering. “Now you get this into that pretty Indiana skull of yours - Simon is mine and I’m keeping him. You better give some serious thought to relocating out of Lancaster, missy, because if you stick around much longer, I will crush you, I will destroy you.”
I can scarcely believe what I’m hearing. “You’re threatening me...with physical violence?”
“Physical..? No, my precious Hannah, I don’t mean anything as trivial or pointless as physical violence.” She leans forward just a bit, to make her point more clearly. “But I’ve got friends in this town and you don’t. I’ve got history here, I’ve got...credibility. I’ve got power... power to reduce you to a social outcast, to turn your lovely face into an emblem of shame and rejection. I don’t need to resort to physical violence, I don’t need to damage your body. I’ll simply destroy everything else and leave the empty, rotting husk behind, like a ghost.”
In all my twenty-one years, I’ve never been confronted this way. Of course, I’ve never been perceived as stealing somebody’s boyfriend either, even though I’m not doing that now with Simon. But what counts at this moment is Lilly’s perception, and until she changes that perception, no words or reason will make any difference or have any effect.
I’ve learned this from dealing with my parents.
So I just stare Lilly down, my expression unflinching, a little sneer growing on my face, but not to match her own. Mine feels a bit more like a smile.
I say, “Have a lovely day, Lilly,” before walking past her, letting her sulk in the silent echo of my disinterest. I don’t look back, of course, but I can virtually feel the heat of her fuming behind me.
* * *
I get back to the farm to see Abram still repairing one of the fence posts. Poor little guy has to work so hard, I say to myself. But I resist the urge to feel sorry for him, the same way I don’t ever want to feel sorry for myself, or have anyone feel sorry for me. These challenges, these trails that we endure, they’re blessings, really. They make us stronger, more fit, more able to deal with life. I know there are things that Abram and I will go through that will not back us down, that will not crush us; but I worry for Rebecca’s abilities to persevere in the face of those same challenges because she’s never had to do anything like that. Unless she finds a suitable and very protective husband, Rebecca will not be able to cope with life, a prospect both Abram and I find very worrisome. Wherever Rebecca and Mamm are today, I say to myself and not for the first time, they’d better be preparing.
But we can only worry about so many things at once, and the subject on both of our minds right now is getting this farm into shape so the neighbors don’t pigeonhole us as solitary weirdos the way they did my granduncle. But there’s more to our efforts than mere appearances, of course. We need to get the farm up and running again, producing, because business at Daed’s new blacksmith stable is not promising, and it won’t be long before autumn and then winter fall on Lancaster County. If the farm isn’t producing by then, we’ll be on very hard times indeed.
I’m not ten minutes into swinging that scythe through the overgrown grass when I hear a familiar voice say, “Need a hand?”
Simon approaches from the driveway, on foot. He smiles, with a casual air, appearing to have nothing to hide.
But that’s what I have to find out.
“Simon, hello. How did you ...?”
“Small town, everybody knows everything about everyone.”
Well, I say to myself, they may think they do.
He says, “Swinging a scythe is no proper work for a woman.”
“Now what’s that supposed to mean? It may not be traditionally woman’s work, but I’m certainly capable of it, as capable as any man.”
“Or more so, I’d guess,” Simon responds with a smile as he unbuttons his shirt. “Still, just because something can be done, that doesn’t mean that it should be done.”
He takes off his shirt. His torso is caked with muscle, hairless skin pulled tight, not a bit of fat anywhere on that sculpted frame. He hands me his shirt and takes the scythe from me in return. I’m almost struck dumb by the sight of his half-naked body just inches in front of me.
I know I’m not supposed to focus on physical attractiveness; that’s just another distraction to divert us from our truer, higher paths. But I’m still human, after all, and so is Simon.
Is he ever!
And if these are my instincts, or maybe even God talking to me, I still feel a natural compulsion to listen.
I take his shirt and step back, noting the nervousness of my own movements, the stammering gate of my own speech. “I, um, I’ll get you something to drink.”
I make my way back to the house while Simon begins swinging the scythe. His muscles stretch and pull under his skin as his torso flexes, bringing that massive tool down onto the grass as if it were weightless. Meanwhile, my arms are still numb from swinging the darned thing for just a few minutes.
I mix up a pitcher of lemonade and put it on a tray with two glasses and some ice.
I pull out a small plate, pile it up with Whoopee pies, and carry it out to him. While I walk across the fields toward Simon, I’m struck by the poetry and grace of his movements. He swings that tool with rhythm, with a continuity and fluidity of motion. With his rippling muscles, skin already gathering the sheen of perspiration, he seems almost like a force of nature, a wild animal that is both beautiful and dangerous.
Dangerous because he is so beautiful. My mind and my heart begin racing, and I can barely keep up with myself.
Our children will be gorgeous, I hear myself think, he’ll make such a good father.
Woah, Hannah, I have to caution myself. Slow down.
No! He’s the one and that’s all there is to it. He is why no other boy has come around, he is the reason Daed keeps me working so hard, even if he has no idea himself. This is God’s plan, God’s will, every step leading up to it, to him.
And you can’t fight God!
Unless this isn’t God’s will at all, I hear my inner skeptic offer, but the devil’s.
No! I admonish myself, even more forcefully than before.
And why not? Didn’t the serpent tempt Eve with that delicious and wholesome looking apple? But one bite and she was doomed:
And I know well the price of her damnation.
‘Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.’
These words from Exodus ring in my memory, as clearly as when I first heard them. But even they are not as chilling nor as challenging as the next:
‘To the woman he said, “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”’
And I do not wish to be ruled over. After a lifetime of being rul
ed over by my father, I am not about to be oppressed by anybody, not Lilly, not Simon.
And not by my wild imagination either.
Of course the Bible is inerrant, and God is just and Satan is a bane upon the lives of the faithful; these things I do not doubt and cannot deny.
But as I walk the tray with the lemonade and pies out to Simon even as he continues to toil (my toil) I reflect on all that the Bible reveals of Simon’s worth, his quality, his stature as a child of the Most High God:
Didn’t we ‘Set out to town where the man of God was,’ as it is written in 1 Samuel 10? I have to ask myself.
Watching him swing that scythe, working that field, the words of Matthew come to mind: The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seen in his field. The one who sowed the good seed is the Son of Man. A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him.
And from 1 Kings, 1:42, “Come in. A worthy man like you must be bringing good news.”
No, I say to myself, this is no evil man. Look at the good he does even now, helping without asking anything in return. I know he’s a good man by the way he treats me, and Abram, with respect and consideration. I know he hopes to win my favor, but that’s no sin.
I’m glad for his hopes.
I hope to fulfill them.
He pauses as I arrive, holding the tray while he pours the two glasses.
I say, “I’m very appreciative of your help, Simon. I can see why Lilly has such strong feelings for you.”
Simon’s expression holds no pleasure, and although I don’t mean to cause him any displeasure, I have to know what happened with Lilly, especially given our little confrontation only an hour before.
Simon takes a sip of the lemonade, setting my tray down on the grass. “She didn’t take it well, cried and ran off. It was terrible, to hear her sob like that, to know that I was the one responsible for her pain.”
“But you’re not responsible, Simon. You said you never led her on or encouraged her to...”
“I didn’t, Hannah, at least I never meant to. But we were friends, after all, very good friends. I showed her every consideration and attention I would anybody, and more than any other boy showed to her. And that’s probably my fault too. Everybody in town thought we’d given each other our hearts, didn’t she have a right to believe that same thing?”
Whoopie Pie Secrets Page 4
