MEN OF LANCASTER COUNTY 01: The Amish Groom

by Mindy Starns Clark

  I gave him an apologetic smile and a shrug, and though I could tell he was about to lay into me, when he saw that my shirt and pants were covered in dark, slimy mud, he hesitated and then simply grinned.

  He and I both knew that whatever my grossmammi doled out once she saw what I’d done to my clean clothes would be payback enough.

  Stepping inside, I tried to soften the blow by warning her first.

  “Just so you know,” I called out as Jake and I paused in the mudroom to remove our hats, jackets, and boots, “changing out the diffuser in the pond was a lot messier job than I’d expected.”

  “Oh, Tyler, no,” she replied from the kitchen. “You didn’t fall in, did you? Your grossdaadi told you not to trust that old rowboat.”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  I stepped around the corner to see her at the counter, spooning out scrambled eggs from the pan. The aroma of coffee and peach strudel wafted past my nose, and I realized I was starving. I’d fed Timber before going to the pond but hadn’t eaten a thing yet myself.

  She didn’t even look up to see me, so Jake let out a low whistle as he pushed past to go to the table. “Wow, Tyler. Nice going on your clothes there! Did you leave any mud in the pond?” He whistled again, dramatically.

  Of course, at that Mammi’s head snapped up. She took in the sight of me, her eyes narrowing.

  “Just for that, no strudel,” she said. When Jake burst out in a victorious laugh, she gave him a sharp, “I’m talking to you, young man. No strudel for troublemakers.”

  Lucky for me, she hated tattling even more than she hated extra work on laundry day. I grinned, though I didn’t dare make a sound in return lest she come down on me as well.

  “I’ll rinse everything out as soon as I take it off,” I told her.

  “See that you do,” she replied, returning her attention to the food preparations in front of her.

  I flashed Jake a “gotcha” look. He snagged a corner of the strudel when Mammi’s head was turned and tossed it into his mouth with a smirk that said “gotcha back.”

  Ten minutes later, I had returned to the kitchen, cleaned up and ready for the day, relieved that the mud had rinsed right out. I spotted Mammi still standing at the counter and Jake sitting at the table. He was sipping coffee but otherwise waiting to dig in until everyone else had convened here too. I heard Daadi come in the back door as I was taking my seat, and once he’d hung up his hat and jacket, he joined us in the kitchen and crossed the floor toward his wife.

  Daadi always greeted my grandmother the same way when the morning’s first chores were done and it was time for breakfast and devotions: kissing her cheek and speaking in the softest words, meant just for her, saying, “Gud mariye, meiner Aldi.” Good morning, my wife.

  Mammi smiled the way she always did. “Gud mariye, Joel.”

  I loved how tender my grandparents were with each other in these first few moments of the day. Like most Amish, Daadi didn’t give Mammi kisses in front of people, or fuss over her in a personal kind of way, especially not in public. But their morning custom made me feel good about the start of the day, and it always had. It was strange and wonderful to think my mother probably saw them do this same thing every morning of her life too.

  Daadi brought a mug of coffee to the table and took his seat at the end. “Beautiful sunrise over the pond this morning?” he asked, letting me know in his gentle way he’d seen me heading to the place I always went when there was much on my mind.

  “Sure was,” I replied, adding nothing else, not even about the diffuser repair. He knew as well as I did that that wasn’t really why I’d gone out there.

  I avoided his gaze, watching as Mammi brought a plate of sausages to the table. We bowed our heads for a silent prayer, and the topic of the pond was dropped. That was fine with me. I had always felt free to share even my most troubling thoughts with my grandfather. But I wasn’t ready to have that conversation.

  Not yet, anyway—and especially not with him.

  TWO

  After breakfast Jake and I drove the wagon a short distance over to my aunt Sarah and uncle Jonah’s farm to deliver the extra seating we’d constructed for the wedding. We’d helped to get everything set up the day before—clearing out some of the furniture from the main room of the house and filling the space with all of the benches from our district’s bench wagon. The Bowmans still lacked a few more rows, though, and as none of our neighboring districts had benches to spare thanks to weddings of their own, last night Jake and I had ended up doing some quick carpentry work in the buggy shop, making the extra benches ourselves. Today we were back to deliver them, with just two and half hours to go before the festivities would start. When we arrived, we greeted Anna and then went right to work with the help of her brothers, Sam and Gideon, carrying the supplementary benches inside and setting them up.

  This was one of the earliest weddings of the season, and intentionally so, according to Rachel. As the youngest of four children, Anna had grown tired of being the last of everything, so she wanted to be among the first of the courting couples to marry this year. Rachel was Anna’s best friend and had been talking about this event for weeks.

  At least she hadn’t used it as an opportunity to put pressure on me, I thought as Jake and I lifted down another bench from the wagon, though she certainly had every right to. Rachel and I had been a couple for years, long enough for her—and everyone else, for that matter—to assume we, too, would end up married.

  Though we hadn’t begun courting until we were in our teens, we’d been friends long before that. I first met Rachel when I was ten and she was nine. She had come from Ohio after her grandfather died and her parents moved to Lancaster County to take over his dairy farm. Rachel was the youngest of three daughters—all honey-brunettes with a sprinkling of freckles—but she was by far the prettiest. Her eyes were a vivid blue, easily rivaling the bluest cornflower ever to sprout.

  When she first moved here, she was just a new girl to tease—all in good fun, of course. Jake and I couldn’t resist, and we told her all sorts of tall tales, the biggest being that he and I were twins. Though we looked almost nothing alike, she believed us until she learned that he was a Miller and I an Anderson.

  “How can you be twins if you have different last names?” she’d asked one day during her second week there.

  “That’s so people can tell us apart,” Jake replied with a perfect deadpan.

  After a long moment, her eyes narrowed, and then she turned on her heel without a word and marched off to speak to the teacher, knowing we were pulling her leg and ready to settle the matter once and for all.

  “Tyler?” For the second time today, Jake’s voice pulled me out of a memory.

  “Huh?” I asked, blinking.

  He was lifting down his end of the final bench, waiting for me to do the same. “I said, ‘What’s going on?’ ”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re a million miles away. What gives? You okay?”

  “Of course. I’m fine.” Or I would be if he would mind his own business.

  We carried the last bench into the house together and slid it into place. After that, Sam and Gideon went out to handle some other chore, leaving Jake and me to finish up. We both looked around at the room, transformed now from a living area to a church, and began to shift things a bit to allow a little more leg room between rows.

  Nearby, the large kitchen area was bustling with women, including Anna and her mother and various relatives, helping to prepare the wedding feast. If I’d been in there with them, I would have been stepping on people’s toes, bumping into their backs, and generally making a big mess, but they worked together seamlessly, thanks to years of practice.

  “I know what it is,” Jake said suddenly, pausing to look my way as I was tugging a bench into place.

  “What what is?”

  He glanced toward the kitchen before lowering his voice so only I could hear. “Why you’re so nervous and distrac
ted today. It’s because you know that this time next year we’ll be slinging benches around for your wedding.”

  He laughed.

  I didn’t.

  “Oh, come on, Tyler,” he prodded in a soft voice. “I don’t know why you’re not already married. And neither does anyone else.”

  I glared at him, gesturing toward the kitchen and the women who might overhear his words.

  “I’m serious!” he said, moving closer now so he could speak even more softly. “You’re getting up in years, you know?”

  “I’m twenty-three.”

  “Which is high time to take that next step. And you’ll never find a better match for you than Rachel.”

  Now it was my turn to pause. Why didn’t he get it? I spoke through gritted teeth, telling him I was not going to discuss it with him, but he kept talking as if he hadn’t even heard me.

  “You know she’s perfect for you. She thinks you’re wonderful.” He put the emphasis on “she,” meaning, of course, that Rachel thought it even if no one else did.

  “Funny,” I snapped.

  Jake moved to the end of the row. “It’s time to take that next step, buddy, just like Tobias will today with Anna. I know it and you know it. Most of all, Rachel knows it.”

  Unsure how to reply, I leaned down and made one final shift, intentionally pushing the bench at Jake’s knees. He yelped as he tried to avoid the impact.

  “Sorry,” I said in a loud voice, glancing toward the kitchen and giving an “everything’s okay here” wave to the two women who had turned to look. “Guess I didn’t see your legs there, buddy. Must need to get my eyes checked.”

  “Get your brain checked, you mean.” Jake sat down to rub his knee and whispered, “I’m only saying what you need to hear.”

  “No,” I hissed, “you’re only saying a bunch of stuff that’s none of your business.”

  I was saved from further harassment by the appearance of Jonah Bowman—Anna’s father and my uncle—who came in from outside. “We’re all finished here,” I said. “Anything else we can do for you?”

  “Ya. Before you go, can you cut some more logs for cooking? We use propane in the house and in the wedding wagon, but I also borrowed three big cookstoves that we have going out back.” Glancing toward the kitchen, he added, “I thought I had enough wood, but I may have underestimated the need.”

  We all shared a smile, knowing that the women in there would have an absolute fit if they ran short of fuel before they were finished roasting all the chickens this day would require.

  “Happy to do it.”

  Jake and I went outside to the toolshed, grabbed some axes, and then made our way to the woodpile, where we pulled out logs of birch and oak and began breaking them down into smaller, stove-sized pieces. Across the driveway from us, the barn’s big doors were open to the sun, and I could see people milling around inside, setting up for the reception.

  We chopped for a while, quiet except for the thwack of our axes and the crisp splitting of wood.

  “I guess I’ll let you off the hook—for now,” Jake said finally, pausing to wipe the sweat from his forehead. “But just let me say that I really am glad you have Rachel.”

  “Thank you,” I replied, relieved he was willing to let it go.

  Then he added, “After all, you’ll need someone to fill the lonely hours once I leave tomorrow.”

  I couldn’t help but smile as I reached for another log and placed it on the chopping block. “Oh, yeah? You think I’ll be counting the days till you get back?” I slammed the ax down, splitting the log neatly in two.

  “Absolutely. Mark my words. You’re going to miss me while I’m gone more than you can imagine.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, leaning down to pick up the larger of the two pieces and placing it on the block to split it again. “More likely, I’ll forget all about you. You’ll come back in four months’ time, and we’ll have to be reintroduced. I’ll be all, ‘What’s that? Jake who? I suppose you do look kind of familiar…’ ”

  I grinned, he smirked, and together we continued working side by side, the only sounds our occasional grunts and the steady rhythm of our task. I was glad he had dropped the discussion of Rachel, but I would have liked to avoid this topic as well. We both knew that his teasing words held more than a little truth. I couldn’t imagine what the next months were going to be like without Jake around. He was headed to Missouri for blacksmithing school, something he’d been looking forward to for a long time. Though Jake had always labored alongside me in Daadi’s buggy shop, his first love was the horses that pulled those buggies. Shoeing took skill, craftsmanship, and a level of trust between animal and man that few people appreciated. I did, but only because Jake had been talking about it since we were kids.

  Now that he was going to become a blacksmith, he’d be the first of the Millers to leave the buggy trade. His older brothers, Thom, Eli, and Peter, all worked in the buggy shop, as did some of their sons. On a busy day, there could be a dozen of us in there. Now it would be eleven.

  “So I suppose you’re all packed,” I said, clearing my throat.

  He smiled at me. “Just about.”

  “You probably won’t want to come home,” I said, pretending that wouldn’t bother me in the least.

  We both knew it would, though. Low-key guys like me didn’t have a lot of close friends. But since the day I’d come to live here seventeen years ago, I’d had Jake, the best friend of all.

  “Are you kidding? Of course I’m coming back. You might forget me, but the horses in Lancaster County won’t. They need me.”

  “At least the horses, if not the ladies,” I teased.

  Before he could respond, we both heard the distinct clip-clop of hooves behind us. Turning, I spotted a familiar market wagon coming our way, a sight that always filled me with inexplicable warmth. I watched until it rolled to a stop nearby. My eyes met those of the driver, and then she softly said my name. Hers was the sweetest voice I knew beyond that of my mother’s echoes.

  Rachel.

  She climbed down from the wagon, a casserole dish tucked under one arm.

  “Guder mariye, Tyler. Guder mariye, Jake,” she said. She smelled like a summer morning, like sweet pea blossoms. The ties of her kapp flitted in the slight breeze like butterflies.

  We tipped our hats, and she and I shared a smile. As Anna’s closest friend, Rachel was one of her two newehockers, or attendants, so I wasn’t surprised that she had come early.

  “Mariye, Rachel,” I said. “You’re looking pretty today.”

  Blushing, she was about to respond when Jake interrupted.

  “Got a full load here?” he asked, moving to the back of the wagon and peeling up a corner of the tarp to peek underneath.

  “Ya. The last of the dishes and table linens.”

  “Okay. We’ll get them into the barn once we’re done here.”

  “Danke, Jake.”

  He took over with the horse, leading it toward the hitching post nearest the barn as Rachel turned back to me and spoke in a softer voice.

  “How’s Anna?” she asked, her eyes sparkling. “Excited, I bet.”

  I glanced toward the house and admitted I didn’t know, that we hadn’t really taken the time to speak—other than a quick hello—since I’d arrived.

  “Ach, well, she’s probably busy in the kitchen. Guess I’d better get in there too.”

  “Guess you’d better,” I said, but then neither of us made a move to go. Instead, we just stood there, our eyes locked. Rachel really did look especially beautiful today, her cheekbones a rosy pink, her skin perfect cream, her lips soft and full.

  “What?” she whispered, giving me a sexy smile, as if she could read my mind.

  “Nothing,” I said, a twinkle in my own eye. She and I both knew that what I wanted more than anything in that moment was to give her a kiss.

  “All right you two, enough with the googly-eyes,” Jake said, returning to the woodpile. “Tyler, get over here. We’re
not done yet.”

  I tipped my hat again and Rachel gave me a wink before she turned and headed for the house.

  Jake was right: Rachel really was the perfect woman for me. So why did I keep putting things off?

  I returned to my work—lift, place, thwack, split—my mind racing despite the calming scent of fresh-cut wood that wafted up from every chop. Rachel had been so patient with me thus far, but how much longer would she wait before giving up on me—on us—for good?

  Reaching for another log, I thought again of that time long ago, back when we were children in school. After the “twins” incident and our teacher told her that Jake was my uncle, not my brother, I had expected Rachel to be mad and to keep her distance.

  Instead, it seemed our deception had only fueled her curiosity. That night she must have put two and two together and begun to wonder that if I was being raised by my grandparents, then where were my real parents?

  She came to me in the schoolyard after lunch the very next day, concern etched into her face. “Do you not have a mother and father?” She was practically crying.

  “Everybody has a mother and father,” I said, pretending I was not moved by her concern for me. “You can’t be born without parents.”

  She was unfazed. “Are they…are you an orphan?”

  I frowned. “No, I’m not an orphan.”

  “So where are they?” Her eyes glistened.

  Even then, I hadn’t known how to explain. What could I say? My mother had died. She was gone for good, living now in a place very far away, as she had since the moment she’d passed. But what of my dad? I had seen him just twice in the past three years. At the time Rachel asked me that question, he was in Japan, by choice, on an extended tour that would keep him gone until I turned eleven. And even though I knew he was very much alive, most days he seemed just as far from me as my mother was.

  “They’re not here,” was all I said. Then I’d walked off in search of someone to play with who already knew my story and didn’t need to ask stupid questions.