by Adina Senft
“So what’s the book on the windowsill?”
He’d gotten up, coffee mug in hand, and was ranging around the room as though he’d grown up in it. She had no doubt that at some point he would circle in on the coolest of the cookies.
She resisted the urge to snatch up the book and stuff it in a drawer. “My songbook.”
“You play an instrument?” He sounded surprised, as well he might. The Amish didn’t play instruments—they were showy, made an individual person stand out in a crowd, and drew the kind of attention that could all too easily become a source of pride.
“Of course not.”
“Sing, then?”
“We all sing, Joshua.”
“But this does not look like die Ausbund, Carrie Miller. What songs are you singing in your own house that you wouldn’t sing in church?”
“Oh, don’t look so shocked. Lots of people make songbooks.” He leaned over the sink to pick it up, and she fought down a ridiculous panic. There was nothing in that book to be ashamed of. It was just private, that was all. “Gibts mir.”
“In a minute. I want to look.” He held it out of her reach, holding it over his head and looking up into it as he flipped from page to page.
“Joshua. Stop it.” She would not jump and snatch; that was clearly what he wanted. It was just like with the chickens—the more a bird showed she wanted someone else’s worm, the harder they’d try to keep it away from her. So Carrie poured herself a cup of coffee and began to arrange the warm cookies on a plate.
He came back to the table, looking interested. “So you collect songs. Where do they come from?”
She shrugged, and offered him the plate. When both hands were busy with the cookies, she whipped the book off the table and slid it into the nearest drawer, among the clean dish towels. “Most of these are from when I was on Rumspringe.”
“And you remember the tunes after all this time?”
He made it sound as though she were as old as Lena Stolzfus. “I’ve been singing them for years. When I do the dishes. When I feed the hens. They’re like old friends.”
They held precious memories, too, of going to Singing on Sunday nights and being the one who dared to suggest a song in the little hymnbook, or one that the Mennonite kids sang—even, that one time, a Psalm set to music that she’d heard the Englisch young folks singing at a tent revival meeting at the park in town. It had a jazzy syncopated beat that was irresistible, and she’d come home and written it down.
Unto Thee, O Lord, do I lift up my soul.
And then the boys and girls would split, the girls singing the echo.
O my God
I trust in thee:
Let me not be ashamed, let not mine enemies triumph over me.
“So,” Joshua said, evidently looking for another subject now that he’d failed to rile her with this one, “Melvin gave me a general idea of what to do around your place. Paint the sheds, clean out the barn and organize it, that kind of thing. But I want to know what you’d like me to do.”
She waved in the general direction of the back part of their acreage. “I have a dozen apple trees out there whose fruit is going to the birds if I don’t finish picking them. That’s the first thing on my list.”
“Sounds like the first priority,” he agreed, nodding. “I never objected to leaving painting for another day.”
“That’s not true. I saw you helping out at Amelia and Eli’s not so long ago. They painted everything that was nailed down, just before their wedding.”
“Ah, but that was different. Everyone who could swing a brush was there, including that Englisch man who turned up from New York City and embarrassed Emma so bad.”
“He’ll turn up again,” Carrie informed him. “His name is Tyler West and he’s invited to her wedding.”
“Maybe he’ll come early and paint.”
Now, there was a sarcastic tone. “What’s the matter? Don’t you like him?”
“Whether I like him or not isn’t the point. He’s an Englisch man and he has no business here, especially at our weddings.”
Carrie gazed at him curiously. He sounded so emphatic, and his face had darkened with displeasure. He really meant it. The joker and tease of a few minutes ago had disappeared completely.
“That’s for Emma to decide,” she said mildly, “and he is representing her book. In a way, he’s her business partner.”
Joshua pushed away from the table. “I’ll go look over those sheds. I’ll need to know how much paint to buy.”
The door had swung shut behind him before Carrie found the wits to open her mouth. “All right,” she said to the empty room. “Remind me not to bring up Tyler West again.”
It was no secret that Joshua had wanted to court Emma earlier in the summer. He hadn’t been the only one. But Carrie had never seen Joshua react this way to the mention of Calvin King’s name, or of Grant Weaver’s, either. Did he have some kind of problem with the Englisch? Or just with Emma’s agent in particular? Or maybe the subject of weddings was as sore with him as it had once been for Emma. He was long past the age when a man usually settled down.
Shaking her head, Carrie turned at the timer’s ping and took the next tray of cookies out of the oven. She would have to ask Emma about it when she saw her tomorrow night.
* * *
“I have no idea,” Emma said when Carrie told her and Lena the story over spareribs and macaroni and cheese the next evening. Emma never served chicken when she knew Carrie was coming. “To my knowledge, Joshua has never even spoken to Tyler West.”
“Maybe it was something else, then. Maybe he just has a problem with Englisch folks.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Lena put in, a little dryly. “Not the female half, anyway.”
“Mamm!” Emma sounded shocked.
“That boy has a bad reputation, and you know it. I’m a little surprised at Melvin, if the truth be told. Not every man would let Joshua Steiner hang around his place when he was away.”
It was a good thing that Carrie had known Lena all her life—and what’s more, loved her nearly as much as Emma did. Otherwise, she might take this as a slight on her own morals, and get offended. Taking offense was a sin, because it meant you had too high an opinion of yourself. “I’m sure those rumors aren’t true.”
“They aren’t,” Emma said steadily. “Joshua told me so himself. That girl he was supposed to have gotten in the family way up in Indiana turned out to have been playing around with an Englisch man, too. And she went outside and married him.”
Every Amish woman faced that choice once in her life—the opportunity to discover the world outside the church. That was what Rumspringe was for, after all: to give a person the experience to make an informed decision.
Carrie had had her share of running around until she met Melvin, and then the choice wasn’t a choice at all. Joining church was the most natural thing in the world when it meant having the life she knew with the man she loved.
“Even if he had the worst reputation in the world, he has still leased one of our fields,” she said. “And Melvin trusts both me and him.”
“Of course he does,” Emma said. “You probably won’t see much of Joshua anyway if he’s doing the outside work.”
“That’s true,” she said. “And it’s good. He makes me nervous.”
“Nervous how?” Lena looked up from her plate.
“Oh, I don’t know. He’s nosy. He was in the kitchen yesterday, supposedly finding out what we needed done, and he spent nearly the whole time needling me about my songbook.”
“Your songbook.” Now Lena put down her fork. “Why?”
Carrie shrugged. “Maybe he’s never seen one before, and there it was, lying on the windowsill by the sink, where I’d been doing the dishes.”
Even Emma looked perplexed. “Well, I never. You’ve had that book practically since you were a girl. Didn’t we used to copy out songs in it in the days before the Youngie would let us come to Singing?”
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“That’s the one. We’d sit up in the tree in the orchard here and practice, like so many birds on a branch.”
“Is that how my Pink Lady got broken that one summer?” Lena raised her eyebrows. “You girls up in it singing?” Carrie and Emma made identical uh-oh faces at each other, and Lena laughed. “That poor tree. It made the best pie apples, and it died that winter.”
“The price we paid for our reckless ways,” Carrie told her. “I’ve always been sorry, and did my singing at the sink after that.”
“It was hard, though, being fourteen and fifteen,” Emma said, gazing into the distance at the memory of the girls they had been. Girls who had graduated from eighth grade but who would not go on to high school, like Englisch students. Hardly any Amish scholars went on—an Englisch education promoted self-sufficiency, pride, and a tendency to criticize and challenge the way things were always done. Amish parents spent a whole childhood training those things out of their offspring. Nobody wanted them to go where they would be put back in. “Too old to be in school, and too young to go to Singing. Even the sixteen-year-olds looked mature and experienced to us.”
“Now we look at someone like Lydia Zook and think, oh, she’s so young.”
“You two are still young,” Lena said, her eyes misting. “And now my youngest will be married and have a home and family of her own.”
Emma smiled at her with such love that Carrie’s own eyes filled. “I wish everyone could find the one that God means for them. Even Joshua. He’s always at home in a crowd, always has something amusing to say…but he just seems so lonely.”
“Is that why you let him court you?” Carrie asked.
Emma snorted and stood to collect their plates. “The world’s briefest courtship. I think it lasted one evening.”
“I wouldn’t have called it even that,” Lena said, attempting to get up.
“Mamm, sit and let me do it. I only have a few weeks left to do things for you. What would you have called it?”
“Oh, I think you and your friends probably came to the same conclusion I did. That boy was using you for a cloak of respectability, and every time I see him, I want to take him to task for it.”
“It’s over and done, Mamm, and it doesn’t matter.”
“Maybe not. I suppose once you’re married, I’ll have to forgive him.”
“I hope you’ll forgive him before then.” Emma’s eyes laughed at her, though her mouth remained solemn. “Your being mad at him won’t bother him a bit, and it will just put a hard spot in your heart that God will have to soften.”
“I won’t put God to that trouble,” Lena said. “Is that lemon–poppy seed cake?”
“Carrie brought it. She’s trying to fatten me up so I can’t get into my wedding clothes.”
“I am not!” Carrie protested, laughing. “It’s not often I get to do something for you, so I’m taking my opportunities while I have them. And I know how much you like this kind.”
And in the simple pleasure of cake for dessert, the subject of Joshua Steiner was dropped. But deep in her heart, Carrie wondered if maybe Emma was right. Maybe he was lonely. She resolved to be a little more patient with him the next time she saw him. After all, Melvin would not have asked him to help them if he didn’t think Joshua was a good man.
And only a good man would have agreed to help, especially since they couldn’t afford to pay him a cent. If he came tomorrow, she would have her own work done and be ready to help him if he needed it. After all, as her Daed used to say, “No one is useless in this world if he lightens someone else’s burden.”
Joshua was lightening hers, so it seemed only fair.
Chapter 4
On Saturdays, Joshua explained as he stood in the kitchen door watching her, he only needed to look after the Hill cows in the morning, and the family dealt with them during the rest of the day and on Sundays.
Carrie plunged her mop into the bucket and leaned on it like a warrior might have leaned on his spear. “I was going to have everything finished so I could help you in the orchard this afternoon.”
“Don’t worry.” He grinned as though he’d caught her shirking. “I’ll leave enough for you.”
She felt out of sorts, partly because of her time of the month and partly because he always seemed to turn up when she wasn’t expecting him, and it was beginning to jangle her nerves. “There are baskets in the cellar, but to get there, you’d have to cross my wet floor. Just wait there and I’ll get them.”
She had to cross it herself, since she was backing across the floor toward the bedrooms so that she could sweep them. However, she’d rather mop up her own footprints than his, especially since his boots probably hadn’t seen a scraper since they’d visited the cows this morning.
She balanced the stack of apple baskets—made by Amelia’s father, Isaac Lehman, who took a craftsman’s quiet satisfaction in making even the humblest household item fulfill its purpose for years—in both arms as she emerged from the cellar. “I left off on the Gravenstein. By the time you fill one of these, I’ll have the drying boxes ready outside.”
“Not going to rig the generator to a dehydrator?”
She pushed the baskets into his arms. “The drying boxes worked for Mamm, and they work just fine for me.” Lined with black paper and with air holes for good circulation, the boxes came up to her shoulder and could dry twelve racks of apple slices at a time.
“Where are they? Do you need help setting them up?”
“Nei. What I need is to finish my inside work.” And for him to stop talking and get himself out to the orchard to do something useful.
Too late, she remembered her resolve to be patient with him.
Laughing, apparently at her little show of temper, he finally left, and Carrie could focus on wiping up her footprints and getting the floor done. By the time she’d swept the other rooms, the kitchen was dry. It didn’t take long to get the worktable ready for that first basket of fruit—paring knives and the big cooling racks originally meant for bakery cakes that Daed had measured carefully before he built the drying boxes to accommodate them.
Carrie sat for a moment on a kitchen chair. Seemed like Joshua should be back by now with the first basket. Even she could pick a bushel of apples faster than this.
With a sigh, she got up and left the house. The chickens, sensing there might be food somewhere in this change in routine, fell in behind her like a string of train cars.
She found Joshua up in the Gravenstein on a ladder, picking steadily, two full baskets in the grass at the base of the tree. “I thought you might have brought these in so I could get started,” she said, tilting her head up and shading her eyes against a sun that arced lower in the sky every day.
He looked down at her. “What are those Hinkel doing here?”
She picked Dinah up and felt her settle into her arms. “They come with me wherever I go on the place. I think they’re looking for a change from worms and bugs.” Two of the hens had already found a drift of windfalls and were attacking them with happy ferocity. “I see you found the wagon. I’ll take these and bring it back to you.”
“How many apples can you do in one afternoon?”
“Enough to fill the boxes, and I make applesauce out of whatever is left over. It takes a couple of days to dry them—maybe less if the weather stays fine like this.”
“I’ll come with you.”
He began to climb down before she could say no, and there she was, in the very situation she’d been trying to avoid. She put Dinah down and caught up the handle of the wagon. What was the matter with him? The wagon, a child’s red one that had once belonged to her youngest brother Orval, bumped along behind her with its burden of bushels. Did the man not think of the most efficient way of doing something?
“Wait up.” Joshua jogged up beside her and took the handle. “You look mad.”
“I’m not. It’s just that I could have had a dozen apples peeled by now if you’d brought me a bushel to start with. Now I’
ve lost all that time, and the sun is over the oak tree already.”
He laughed. “Relax, Carrie. You have days to peel apples in, and the weather forecast is clear and sunny into the middle of next week.”
“How do you know?”
“The Hills have a radio in the barn. It’s on all the time. You’d be surprised at all the things I know about politics, economics, and movie stars.”
“I hope you’re as well acquainted with your Bible.”
“You sound like Mary Lapp.”
“I’m related to Mary Lapp. Melvin’s mother is her sister.”
“Still. You’d better be careful. A virtuous woman like that can’t be duplicated.”
Carrie had the feeling that Mary would find nothing to be puffed up about in that remark.
She hefted one of the bushel baskets and took it in to the kitchen counter. Joshua brought the other one, and she’d begun to run water into the sink to wash the fruit when she realized he hadn’t left. Instead, he’d parked himself at the table.
“Would you like an afternoon snack?” Hospitality demanded that she make the offer, even though he’d done hardly anything yet and she had her hands full—literally.
“Nope. If you’re that far behind, I’ll give you a hand here. Seems to me the picking goes faster than the preparing.”
“That’s not necessary. Melvin hired you to do the outside work, not mine.”
“Many hands make light work, isn’t that what they say?”
There was no point in fighting him. He was obviously going to do what he wanted in her kitchen, and she didn’t have the time to argue. “Fine. Here. Start with these. Do you know how to pare an apple?”
“I’ve seen it often enough.” He picked up one of the paring knives and sliced a chunk out of the fruit in his hand. She bit back the urge to scold, then to instruct. “Don’t you have one of those paring devices that spin the apple around and the skin comes off in one long curl?”
“I do that with these devices here.” She waggled her hands at him. “Watch.”
Many years of practice had her turning the apple and the skin furling away from it in a long ribbon. Then she quartered it, sliced it, and laid the pieces on the drying racks. The whole operation was done before he’d got halfway around his own apple.
