Little Amish Matchmaker

by Linda Byler

  They got to the food stand early, and bought cheeseburgers and French fries and more Mountain Dew. They tapped the glass ketchup bottle hard and a whole glug of it clumped on to their fries, but that was fine with them. They loved ketchup.

  They talked about school and Christmas and sleds. Someone stopped at their table, and Isaac looked up to find Catherine Speicher with a tray of food.

  “May I sit with you? The tables are all full.”

  “Sure.”

  Isaac slid over immediately, and she sat beside him.

  “I’m starved; no breakfast.”

  She ate hungrily, saying nothing. Tyler’s father came to get him, so that side of the table was empty, until Sim came in with his lunch and slid in opposite them.

  Catherine stopped eating, then, and got all flustered and acted so dumb Isaac could not believe it.

  Sim took off his hat and asked if they’d prayed. Catherine shook her head. They bowed their heads for a short while, then Sim began eating his ham hoagie. He had coffee, too, which seemed awfully mature. Isaac was glad, him being so confident and all.

  They talked, and Catherine’s face turned pink, and then it turned a greenish-white, and sort of leveled off to the usual color as she finished her roast beef sandwich. Isaac sat in the corner and drew down his eyebrows and made “Ask her!” motions with his mouth, which did absolutely no good.

  They talked about the snow and school, and who went to which crowd, all having names the way the youth did nowadays. There were Eagles and Pine Cones and Hummingbirds and what not. The wilder youth had their own group; the more conservative ones their own as well. Some of them had rules and were parent-supervised, which turned out well. Sim was with the Eagles, but not the same group as Catherine, since she was so much younger and all.

  Oh, she and Sim could talk all right. Endlessly. Same as the night they fixed the water pump.

  Well, this was enough. Sim wasn’t even close to asking her for a date, so what was the use talking about all this other stuff? Who cared if there was a singing here, or a supper crowd there, or who was marrying who after Christmas?

  Just when Isaac was seriously thinking of sliding down beneath the table and crawling out over their feet, Dat came by, looking for him. Catherine blushed again. She said “Hello,” very politely, answered Dat’s questions respectfully and then let Isaac out of the booth.

  Isaac could see the pure elation on Sim’s face when Dat said he bought a pair of Belgians, and would Isaac like to ride home in the truck with him?

  When Isaac looked back on his way out of the dining area, Sim was leaning forward with that intent look of his, and if he wasn’t careful he’d have to have his back adjusted at the chiropractor’s office to put his head back in place.

  But Sim just wasn’t getting anywhere, that was the whole trouble.

  At home, Isaac decided to talk to Mam about the impossibility of the whole situation. It was Saturday afternoon, and she was taking five loaves of whole-wheat bread from the oven. Her gray apron was pinned snugly around her ample waist, covering the front of her dark purple dress. Her covering was large and white, the wide strings pinned together behind her back to keep them from getting in her way as she moved effortlessly from table to stove and back again.

  There were four pie crusts cooling on the countertop, so Isaac broke off a tiny piece. Mam yelped and came bustling over, saying, “Doo net! Doo net. (Don’t) They’re for Barbara, for church. Don’t touch them. I’m making coconut cream.”

  “Never chocolate,” Isaac muttered.

  Like a fluffy, warm comforter, her heavy arm enfolded his shoulders as she steered him to the refrigerator and opened the door, proudly producing a wonderfully high chocolate pie, crowned with an amazing amount of whipped cream and chocolate shavings.

  Isaac turned his face to his mother’s.

  “For us?”

  So often, these wonderful concoctions that Mam made on Saturday afternoons were for someone else. Chocolate layer cakes, loaves of bread, creamy vanilla pudding were usually all “for church.”

  “For you, Isaac! Just for you!” Her words were better than Mountain Dew. What a mother!

  “Mam, did you really bake this chocolate pie for me?”

  “Yes, for you.”

  Love looked and tasted exactly like that pie. It was cool and creamy, rich, the chocolate neither too light or too bitter. He ate two wide slices, then asked Mam what she thought of Sim asking Catherine Speicher for a date.

  Mam’s eyes opened wide, she threw her hands in the air, then folded herself into a kitchen chair and said, “Good lands! You make me weak.” She shook her head.

  “He likes her. He just doesn’t have the nerve to ask her for a date,” Isaac said, scraping up the last of the chocolate pudding with his fork.

  Mam said there was more to it than that. Dates had to be prayed about and God’s leading felt. It always took patience. She wasn’t even aware of the fact that they knew each other, and besides, Sim was older, and she thought the teacher a bit fancy. For us, she said.

  Isaac told her that had absolutely nothing to do with it, look at him and Calvin. Mam nodded and said maybe that was true, and that Abner Speicher’s family was a nice family. It was just that Abner wasn’t too good with money, and now he was sick in the hospital. She made that clucking sound.

  Isaac told her money has absolutely nothing to do with it either. Did God check out money before he put two people together?

  Mam wagged her finger at him and said he better watch it, he was getting too big for his britches. She would talk to Sim about this, he needed to be careful, Catherine was … then she didn’t know what to say.

  Isaac shrugged into his chore coat, slapped his straw hat on and went to start the chores. Sim was batty as a loon. He was either whistling or looking as if he would burst into tears at the slightest provocation.

  Isaac ignored him.

  Even when Sim showered, shaved, dressed up and left with his sorrel horse and buggy, he ­ignored him. He didn’t talk to Mam about it again, either.

  In the morning he tumbled out of bed and did all his own chores, plus Sim’s, when Dat told him Sim was attending church services in another district. Well, that was a fine thing to do. Why would he go off to another church district if Catherine Speicher was in this one? So much for the budding relationship today.

  But as these things went, Isaac forgot about Sim, dressed in his Sunday black suit with his white shirt, heavy black felt hat, gloves and boots. Isaac went with Dat and Mam to church at Johns. John was married to his sister Barbara, Bennie’s mother.

  By the time all the women had been seated on their side, and the men on the other side, and it was finally the boys’ turn to file into the warm basement, his toes felt like 10 nuggets of ice. He was cold and sleepy and not in the mood to sit on that hard bench for three hours. Isaac slumped forward and put his chin in the palm of his hand, until he caught Dat’s eye. Dat drew his eyebrows down and shook his head slightly, the sign of ­disapproval.

  So Isaac snapped to attention, held his corner of the heavy Ausbund, and tried to look attentive and alert. The slow German hymn rose and fell, babies cried, fathers got up to take them to their mothers.

  When the minister stood to begin the sermon, Isaac listened to his voice, hearing the usual German verses he heard most Sundays, followed by an explanation in Pennsylvania Dutch. The real German (hoch Deutsch) was still read and used in the sermon, but explained in the everyday Pennsylvania Dutch as well, for the children and those who found the German difficult. It was, indeed, an old and precious tradition, to be well-versed in both German and Pennsylvania Dutch. It came easy to Isaac, so he understood and recognized most everything from both sermons.

  He fell asleep once, the minister’s face swimming in a sea of black-clad men, and he knew nothing for awhile. He was dimly aware of his head drooping to the left. He was so glad to sing the last hymn, then shuffle his way out to the blinding white snow, free at last.

&n
bsp; Isaac ate at the last table, after the men and women had already eaten. His stomach was so painfully empty that his head hurt. It was the most cruel thing to eat breakfast so early and dinner so late. He spread a thick slice of homemade bread with soft cheese spread made with white American cheese and milk cooked together, piled on a liberal amount of ham, speared two red beets and a sweet pickle and began to feel instantly ­better.

  Teacher Catherine was pouring coffee at the boys’ table, dressed in a purple dress and a white organdy cape and apron. Isaac thought what a golden opportunity Sim was missing. When she poured his coffee, Sim could ask her for a date, very quietly, of course, but he could.

  If Sim never got it accomplished, it sure wasn’t for lack of his younger brother’s great ideas. Or his subtle scouting skills, for that matter.

  Chapter Six

  HICKORY GROVE SCHOOL WAS a beehive ofactivity the following Friday. All lessons had been put aside, serious artwork taking up everyone’s attention. The classroom must be decorated for Christmas.

  They had already accomplished quite a bit, Teacher Catherine said, but they seriously needed to apply themselves, finishing the Christmas poster on the north wall between the two sets of windows. They hung navy blue construction paper for the back drop, which was the upper grade boys’ assignment. Elmer’s School Glue was used to attach all the pieces.

  Michael took charge of the glue, applying it entirely too liberally. It squeezed out when he rubbed his fingers along the edge, so Calvin told him he was using too much, and Michael’s face got red and he told Calvin he didn’t know everything. That was when Isaac decided to work on the pond. It looked safer.

  They leaned over the Ping-Pong table in the middle of the classroom, construction paper scattered everywhere, the tension crackling between them since Michael said that. As soon as Michael got up to get another bottle of glue, Calvin raised his eyebrows, Isaac pointed to the white construction paper and Calvin nodded. He glued the rectangular sheets of construction paper, then whispered to Calvin about the shape of the pond.

  “Whatever you think, Professor,” Calvin whispered back.

  Yes!

  Isaac knew he could do the shape of the pond very well, making it look realistic. After all the construction paper was in place, they’d draw in bushes and trees, stars and a moon, skaters, horses tied and blanketed and a bonfire. It would be a grand poster, one the parents would talk about all Christmas season.

  The girls were making bells with cardboard egg boxes. They cut out the little cups that contained the eggs and punched a hole in the top. They covered them with crinkly squares of aluminum foil, strung red and green yarn through them and hung their “bells” from the roller shades by the windows. They were Christmasy looking, Isaac thought, especially with those brilliant red, green and white candy canes in the background.

  The white construction paper was designed, cut and attached by Isaac, and then the three boys stood back and admired their efforts.

  Teacher Catherine came over and said it was very well done, and that the trees would look great done with black and brown Magic Markers.

  “What about snow?” Isaac asked.

  Teacher Catherine put one finger to her mouth, tilted her head to the side and considered this.

  “There’s no snow on the pond,” Calvin volunteered.

  “Good thinking, Calvin. The snow may have blown off the branches,” she said.

  Isaac thought snow on the branches was an essential, mostly because the pine trees in the background would look so much better with snow on them, but figured he’d stay quiet. Dat often told him how important it was to give up your own opinion for a better one. It was more influential in the long run to keep your opinion to yourself, if it meant working together in peace and harmony as the end result.

  Take barn raisings. Someone had to be the fore gaya, the one who ran the whole business. If each worker recognized this, contributed his share of talent, giving and taking, it worked.

  One Sunday morning Dat explained the Scripture about the lion laying with the lamb, and he said it meant each of us must lay down our own nature to get along with others. Isaac had mulled that one over for days, and he still didn’t get it, really, but figured he didn’t have to until he was older.

  Teacher Catherine was very pretty today, he thought. Her face shone with a soft light. Her red dress made her look like Christmas, her black apron just slightly lopsided from moving around, bending over desks, always trying to be at two places at one time. Well, the way these lower graders raised their hands was ridiculous. How could she be expected to get anything of her own accomplished?

  Then Sarah started crying, rubbing her eyes, mewling like a lost kitten, her lips pouting, as she haltingly told Teacher Catherine that her puppy was supposed to be gray and it looked brown and wasn’t nice.

  What a brutz-bupp! (Crybaby)

  Sarah should have used a gray color instead of a brown one. She was in third grade and old enough to know better. Isaac thought Teacher Catherine should straighten her out, but no, her ever-loving kindness and patience was unfurled like a pure white flag, an example for the impatient ones like Isaac. Putting a hand on Sarah’s shoulder, she bent low, assuring Sarah that if she didn’t like the color of her puppy, she could start over with a new copy. Sarah wiped her eyes, sniffed, then marched proudly to the teacher’s desk for another copy, one woolen black sock falling sloppily over her Skechers. Third graders were an annoyance, no question. But if you went to a one-room Amish school, you just had to put up with them, that was the way of it.

  So now. Night sky and pond in place. This was going to be awesome!

  “Boys,” Teacher Catherine announced. “The girls will soon be finished with their bells, so they may help you with the freehand drawing of figures, horses, whatever. Isaac?”

  Before he could stop himself, his arm shot up. “Well, we can’t have just anyone helping, can we?”

  Then he was subject to the most awful glare of disapproval. It shot from her blue eyes, a laser of reproach. Not one word was necessary.

  Isaac felt his face fire up to about 500 degrees. He wished he could turn into an ant and disappear beneath the baseboard.

  He should have stayed quiet.

  But these girls and their cutesy-pie drawings of flowers and butterflies and birds and stuff. How could they ever be expected to come up with anything decent? This poster was serious material.

  Isaac cringed when Ruthie hung the last cluster of bells on the window shade and went to the cupboard for art paper. He had to admit, though, they had done a real good job on those handmade bells.

  “Put your books away for lunch,” Teacher Catherine announced. Instantly there was a rustle of paper, heads bent to put things in their desks. “Davey, is it your turn to pass the waste can?”

  Davey nodded happily, picked up the tall Rubbermaid waste can and slowly wended his way down the aisle as everyone hurried to throw their crumpled paper, bits of crayon, and colored pencil shavings into it before he moved on.

  The wooden desks all had a hole cut on top, to the right, where pupils had kept their inkwells in times past. There were no more antique ink pens, of course, so that hole was perfect for stuffing crumpled waste paper.

  Hickory Grove School was an older one, so they still had those desks, but the newer ones were made without the hole. Dan Stoltzfus and his helpers made school desks now, sleek and smoothly finished, the steel parts painted black, all glossy and shiny like the buggies.

  Some of the Amish schools got the desks the English schools no longer needed. They were not attached to the floor, the lids opened and you could see your whole cache of books and stuff at once. Nothing fell out of those desks, which was nice, but the teachers complained about them being noisy, saying the tops were propped up too long while bent heads did a lot of whispering behind them.

  Dora got the teakettle from the stove top, poured the steaming hot water into the blue plastic dishpan, then carried it to the hydrant beside th
e porch to add cold water. Why didn’t she fill it half-full with cold water first, then add the hot? If she thought, she wouldn’t have to carry all that hot water out the door.

  You simply couldn’t get past it. Girls had very little common sense.

  She set the dishpan on a small dry sink, added a squirt of anti-bacterial soap, and washed her hands, drying them with brown paper towels from the dispenser on the wall.

  “First row,” Teacher Catherine said. Row after row, the scholars filed in an orderly fashion, washing their hands, drying them, grabbing their lunch boxes from the cloakroom and returning to their seats. Teacher Catherine bowed her head, the pupils followed suit and they sang their dinner prayer in a soft melody.

  When they finished, the “amen” fading away, most of the pupils made their way to the front of the room, where the propane-gas stove held dozens of foil-wrapped sandwiches, hot dogs, chicken patties, or small casseroles containing the previous evening’s leftovers. Tiny Tupperware containers of ketchup were scraped over hot dogs and chicken patties and put on a roll. Juice boxes or containers of milk washed down the good, hot food.

  Calvin opened his lunch and produced a ham sandwich loaded with lettuce and tomato. He popped the top of a can of grape juice and grinned at Isaac, who was wolfing down his sandwich made of homemade wheat bread, sweet bologna and mustard. A pint jar of chocolate milk, made with the good creamy milk straight from the bulk tank in the milk house and flavored with Nestle’s Quik, accompanied his sandwich. Mam bought the chocolate mix in large yellow cylinders at Centerville Bulk Food Store. Sometimes he wished Mam would buy fancy Tupperware drink containers the way other mothers did, but she said all her children used glass pint jars for their chocolate milk, and she had no intention of stopping now.

  There was a gasp from Ruthie, as Daniel and Reuben started to tussle, spilling Daniel’s juice all over everything.

  Teacher Catherine laid down her sandwich deliberately, her mouth set in a straight line as she got up, grabbed Reuben by the arm and marched him back to his seat. “You know you have to stay in your seat at lunchtime,” she said firmly. Isaac didn’t know whether Reuben was pinched, or if the reprimand alone was enough, but he bent his head and cried softly.