The Keeper

by Suzanne Woods Fisher

  “What’s so bad about Jimmy?”

  “What’s so bad about Jimmy?!” She started to sputter. She felt her face turn a shade of plum, but she couldn’t help it. “Why . . . he’s horrible, that’s what’s so bad about him! He’s the kind of fellow you should never ever let turn a jump rope because he’ll trip you sure as anything. He takes the girls’ lunches and throws them high in the trees. Why, it’s practically a holiday at school when Jimmy’s home sick. It just doesn’t happen often enough.”

  “That does sound like a fellow to avoid.” He tried to hold back a grin. “But you’d give Paul a chance to turn the jump rope?”

  “I suppose.” She shrugged. “Julia says she loves Paul. That’s all that matters. So . . . deal?” She stuck out her hand again.

  Rome looked at her open palm. “I need to think this over before I agree. And I want you to make one thing absolutely clear. I’m not hiding anything from Julia. No deceit.”

  Uh-oh. M.K.’s eyebrows shot up. She hadn’t expected Rome to be a rule abider. Why, he sounded as straight an arrow as Julia! This created a problem. If Julia found out M.K. had cooked this up, she would be facing a year of extra choring on top of her current never-ending round of chores. “But . . . she doesn’t have to know that I’m a part of this, does she?”

  “You don’t think she could figure that out?”

  “Julia doesn’t know everything. She just thinks she does.”

  Rome laughed and shook her hand.

  M.K. walked to the barn door and turned back to Rome as she pulled it open. She lifted up the nickel bag. “And there will be a bonus in there for you if Paul sets a wedding date and sticks to it.”

  “M.K., I have to ask. Are you coming by this money honestly?”

  It was a scandal how the finger of blame pointed to M.K. on a regular basis. “Absolutely! I’m working myself to the bone for it.” She slid the door to a close, but just before it shut, Rome called to her.

  “M.K., wait! Why is it so important to you that Julia get back together with Paul?”

  She took a deep, dramatic breath. “’Cuz we’re sisters,” as if that explained everything. “You should be glad you haven’t got any sisters. They are a continual worry.”

  How to explain about Julia? Rome had known her for five or six years; she was a face that belonged at Amos Lapp’s farm. If he’d seen her on the street or in a crowd, he probably wouldn’t have noticed her. So many women tried to catch his attention, how was he supposed to notice the ones who didn’t?

  He had never even thought her particularly beautiful. Yet in the last few days he thought she was the most striking woman he had ever known—tall and slender, with thick and shiny chestnut hair that refused to stay tightly pinned. On any other woman, her full bottom lip would have been petulant, but on her, it was . . . well, he had trouble keeping his eyes off of those lips of hers. Rome was finding that he couldn’t get Julia Lapp out of his mind.

  Surprised by the mere possibility that he might ever find her appealing in any way, he wasn’t prepared to pose the question to himself of why he found Julia’s opinion of him so important. Why did it matter? He would be moving on in a few months, anyway.

  It was just that Julia had taken such a powerful dislike to him, which was more than a little disconcerting, since she was female and he was . . . well, he was Roman Troyer. He wasn’t puffed up with himself as she often accused him. It was just a fact, the same kind of fact that he was six feet tall, with dark eyes and gray hair. He seemed to have some kind of effect on women that made them predisposed to him, with very little effort on his part. It had always been so and he never understood it, though it had some distinct advantages. A steady supply of offers for home-cooked meals, clean and mended laundry.

  He thought about M.K.’s proposition. He would never take her bag of nickels—the thought of how earnestly she offered it to him made him smile—but maybe she was on to something. Julia had always been single-focused about her devotion to Paul, too single-focused for her own good. And here Paul was seeing Lizzie on the sly. Maybe Paul needed to have a dose of his own medicine—to realize what he might be losing. M.K.’s plan might work. At least he could try to help.

  Still, to him, only one course of events made any sense—Julia should forget about Paul Fisher. He wasn’t worthy of Julia Lapp. But Rome also knew that people rarely did what made sense, especially when it came to matters of the heart. Wasn’t he a prime example of that? Wasn’t there a pressing matter in his own life that he couldn’t make sense of?

  Later that evening, he sat down to write a letter.

  Dear R.W.,

  If we are going to carry on this curious conversation, I would like to ask you a question. Why do you want my property? You have never mentioned any reason.

  Cordially,

  Roman Troyer

  9

  Even though the May heat was thick enough to make the brim on M.K.’s bonnet curl and her sweaty legs stick to the buggy seat, she was happy. Happy to not be in school, happy to be headed to Sunday church, happy and excited because she would see her friends today.

  A fly buzzed a lazy figure eight in front of M.K. She sat in the place that she always occupied with her sisters, in the middle of the room and at the end of a bench. A good spot from which to observe the congregation. She saw a mouse scamper along the edges of the kitchen. She stole a glance at Jimmy Fisher, who caught her looking at him and stuck out his tongue at her. She wished she had her peashooter with her so she could send a pea flying right into that boy’s open mouth. Maybe he would choke to death, she thought wryly, and then immediately took back the uncharitable thought, remembering where she was. People were singing the second hymn, the Lob Lied, slow and mournful. She had been thinking, allowing her mind to wander, and had not noticed that the ministers had come in. She bolted to her feet and made an effort to follow the service once it began, but there seemed to be so much to distract her, and after a while she abandoned her attempt.

  Fern jabbed her in the ribs and M.K. straightened up, stiff as a rod.

  “Hmmm,” Fern said, in that way of hers.

  Fern. So everpresent. She was putting a crimp into M.K.’s life. Friday noon, Fern had shown up, out of the blue, at the schoolhouse. She found M.K. playing her shell game behind the backstop. Fern had the nerve to put her hands on the two outside shells and held on tight, staring M.K. down. Somehow she knew that the pea had been dropped in M.K.’s lap. M.K. quietly packed up her game. Fern led her to a big shade tree, far from the schoolhouse. Then Fern told her that gambling was wrong, wrong, wrong.

  “I didn’t know it was gambling!” M.K. told her. “I just thought it was a game.”

  Fern sighed. “When money is at stake, it’s always gambling.” She raised an eyebrow. “It seems to me that somebody as smart as you would have enough sense to figure that out for herself.”

  It seemed that way to M.K. too.

  “Where’d you learn that game, anyway?”

  “A man at the library taught me while you were busy looking for cookbooks. He never said anything about it being a gambling game!”

  There was a slight twitching at the corner of Fern’s lips. Her expression softened a little. After a long pause she spoke. “Don’t tell me anything more. I don’t even want to know.”

  Surprisingly, Fern never told Amos that M.K. had been gambling. Of course, she also didn’t offer up how she knew about it in the first place, but Fern seemed to have a disturbing knack for knowing things.

  The morning sun beat down on her head. Julia was placing produce from the garden out on the shelf at the roadside stand. She put the carrots on a plate, then in a mason jar, then stood back to look at it, frowning. This was the hardest part for her, the presentation. She had no idea how to display the produce so it looked appetizing. She knew it was important to create an eye-catching display to entice those who stopped by, so each day she tried something new. But it never looked the way she wanted it to look. She couldn’t get it right and sh
e hated anything that made her feel incompetent. She heard a deep sigh behind her, an exasperated soughing sound that was becoming all too familiar.

  Fern.

  “What?” Julia said.

  “Seems like a girl who spends hours ironing her clothes and prayer cap, and another hour getting her hair pinned just right . . . could figure out how to put together a good-looking produce table.”

  Julia crossed her arms against her chest, defensive, then dropped them with a sigh. “I know. I can do it with quilt tops, but I just have no imagination for a produce table.”

  “You don’t say.” Fern shook her head, then pulled out a roll of twine and scissors. She grabbed a bundle of carrots and tied them gently with the twine, making a neat little bow. Then she placed the bundles in the basket.

  She handed the twine and scissors to Julia and turned to leave.

  That one little thing looked . . . charming. Absolutely charming. “Wait! Any other ideas?” She waved a hand in front of the shelf. “I’m open to suggestions.”

  Fern sighed. “I have to do everything around here.” She squinted at the table, seeing something Julia couldn’t see. “Run to the house and get a checkered tablecloth.” By the time Julia returned, the table had been transformed. Mason jars were filled with flowers. One with sweet-smelling roses, another with brightly colored zinnias. A small chalkboard was propped up against the honor jar, left in the center of the table. In colored chalk, the prices for the day’s offerings were listed, and a note: Everything picked fresh today. Please leave the money in the jar. Thanks and blessings from Windmill Farm. Even the scripted handwriting was neat, elegant.

  It looked exactly the way Julia had hoped it would look but could never actually create it. “Fern, you are a wonder!” Julia was truly astounded. “What would we ever do without you?” She reached over and gave Fern a loud buss on her cheek.

  Patting her hair back in a satisfied way, Fern said, “You’d do exactly what you were doing, which wasn’t much.”

  Sadie walked up to the stand to see what was going on. In her hand was a half-eaten blueberry muffin. “The table looks amazing!”

  “Fern did it,” Julia said proudly. “Why, she’s got all kinds of talents we’re just finding out about.”

  Fern didn’t pay her any mind. Instead, she took the muffin out of Sadie’s hand and replaced it with a carrot, top still on, from the produce table. Then she turned and walked to the house.

  The weather turned unseasonably hot for the month of May. One afternoon, after Rome had finished a few chores from Julia’s endless to-do list, he sat in the shade of a tree near the barn, his arm draped across Lulu, who’d fallen asleep with her nose resting on his thigh. The dog didn’t stir as Menno approached.

  “Lulu isn’t much of a watchdog,” Rome said.

  Menno chuckled and lowered himself beside him. “No. I guess not. But she’s young still. She was only a pup when I found her rootin’ around in the alley behind the Sweet Tooth bakery.” Menno plucked a blade of grass and began to chew on it. “I’ve noticed you spend a lot of time with Lulu.”

  “Lulu spends time with me, not the other way around.”

  Menno removed the blade of grass from his mouth. “I was thinking that maybe you’d like to have one of Lulu’s pups for your very own. They’ll be ready for a home pretty soon.”

  Rome shook his head. “Thank you, Menno, but no.”

  Menno looked confused. “I won’t charge you. It would be a gift. You could have the pick of the litter. Well, Annie got first pick. But you could pick second.” There were only two pups.

  Again, Rome shook his head, more vehemently than before. “I appreciate the offer, Menno. But I’m not a man who wants a traveling companion.”

  Menno rose to his feet. “It’s just that . . . I think dogs have a way of knowing who they want to be with. Seems like Lulu thinks you’d be a good choice for her pups. She’s picked you.”

  “I’m sorry.” He was too. Menno seemed hurt as he left. But Rome wasn’t about to waver from his “no attachments” policy. It had stead him well for six years. Why change it now?

  Sadie came into the kitchen after working in the garden and saw that Fern had set hot fruit scones on a rack to cool by the window. She noticed one scone was a little larger than the others, so she broke off a corner. Then another corner to even it out, so Fern wouldn’t notice.

  Her mind drifted off to church yesterday. Julia, Paul, Lizzie, Rome.

  Love. It was all so complicated. That was probably why you didn’t get to the good kind of love until you were older.

  She looked at the scone and realized it now seemed as if it had two bites taken out of it so she nibbled delicately around the edges and soon the fruit scone disappeared. She still felt a little hungry—after all, she had worked long and hard in the garden this morning. So she ate another. She slipped one more in her pocket, in case she got hungry before lunch, and she carefully spread the scones out so that it didn’t look as if three—or was it four?—were missing.

  Tomorrow, for sure, she would stop eating sweets. That very morning, she had noticed that her apron seemed too small. She struggled briefly to pin it around the small paunch that, since her fourteen birthday, had begun to inflate like a rubber raft around her middle. She retrieved an apron from Julia’s laundry hamper, but it was too small around the waist. So she decided to skip an apron altogether yesterday.

  She grabbed one more scone, for later, licked her lips, brushed crumbs off of her face, and hurried outside before Fern found her in the kitchen.

  Later that afternoon, Sadie waited for M.K. to come home from school and met up with her at the Smuckers’ goat pasture. When she saw her, she waved her home so that M.K. would join her. “I need to borrow some money.”

  M.K. looked at her suspiciously. “Why?”

  “I need to get something from town.”

  “What?”

  Sadie frowned. “Why do you need to know?”

  “Because you want my money! What makes you think I have extra to spare, anyway?”

  “You always have money.”

  “You tell me what you’ve got on your mind, first.”

  Sadie crossed her arms over her chest and lifted her chin. “If you must know, it’s to buy a Spanx.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s . . . a body shaper. Something to help me hold my stomach in.”

  M.K. looked puzzled. “Like a corset?” She made a face. “Does Dad know?”

  “Do you need to know everything?”

  “Yes. I do.”

  “Fine. Yes, Dad said that if it was so important to me, go ahead and get one. So I need to borrow forty dollars.” She held out her palm. “I’ll pay you back in a week or two with an extra dollar thrown in.”

  M.K. shook her head, but she pulled off her shoe, yanked out the lining, and pulled out two twenties. “Make it two dollars extra.”

  Sadie snatched the money out of M.K.’s hands and ran to the horse standing hooked to the buggy.

  She drove into town and parked at the department store, looked carefully to make sure she didn’t recognize anyone, made her purchase, and hurried home. She ran to the bathroom and squeezed into the body shaper. It definitely made her belly flatter. Her bottom too. But it wasn’t easy to move around or to sit down. She felt as if she had a yardstick down her back. She blew out a puff of air. This was a small price to pay for a flat belly.

  As the afternoon carried on, Sadie felt as if her middle section was in a vise, getting tighter and tighter. She had a hard time getting full breaths of air. And it was itchy. She kept scratching herself and it sounded like a cat scratching a brick wall. She couldn’t think, couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. She was a sardine in a can! A stuffed sausage! She hated this girdle. Hated, hated, hated it. Finally, right before dinner, she couldn’t stand it for another second. She ran upstairs, took off the body shaper, and threw it out the window as far as she could, furious with herself for wasting money.

>   But ahhh . . . relief! She felt free!

  By the time she got back downstairs, everyone was seated at the table. Rome walked in the back door, holding up the girdle. “Does this belong to anyone? I was minding my own business and this came flying at me, out of the sky.”

  “That’s Sadie’s new corset,” Menno volunteered. “Mary Kate told me about it.”

  Sadie gasped, mortified, ran upstairs, and threw herself on her bed. She would never eat again.

  Why did every encounter with Roman Troyer seem to turn her into an idiot? What must he think of her? Just last night, she was peeling a carrot for the dinner salad when Rome came in to ask her father a question or two. While he was there, just a few feet away from her, talking to Amos, Sadie dropped the carrot peeler for the third time. Rome bent down and picked it up, handed it to her, then nodded toward the carrots she’d just peeled. “Are you expecting a family of rabbits as dinner guests?”

  He was standing so close to her that she could smell his shampoo and see dark hairs glinting on his forearms, above the rolled-up sleeves of his shirt. She blinked and looked to see what he was talking about. Instead of peeling just a few carrots for a salad, she’d peeled the entire pile that Julia had brought in from the garden. A small mountain of carrot peels. Enough for a dozen salads. Idiot!

  After a while, Fern had come into her room and sat on the bed, patiently waiting while Sadie had finished her weeping. Then, she said quietly, “Sadie girl. We have got to find something for you to do. You need more on your mind.”

  M.K. and Jimmy Fisher met on the way home from school, not entirely by chance.

  Jimmy blocked her path. “You told! You told Old gnudle Woola that I egged his buggy windshield!”

  “You did egg his buggy! I heard you bragging about it to Noah.”

  He scowled at her. “Now I have to wash every window in that crummy old farmhouse. Plus the buggy!”