Butterfly Garden

by Annette Blair

  Adam crossed his arms and seconded Roman’s name for consideration.

  Zeb Coblentz repeated it, as did Zack Zimmer.

  Just for fun, Adam said it again.

  Others took up the call. Seemed many thought that the man turning green in the corner would make a good preacher, town gossip or not.

  Adam caught Sara’s look. She knew what he’d done. He didn’t much like the way he and Sara could talk without words, but he liked that she seemed to approve his action; he liked the twinkle in her eyes.

  He shrugged. Pleasing her was a good end to their time together, though the pain the notion brought made him scowl.

  Ultimately, four candidates were chosen for preacher, Roman among them. The candidates rose to pass by a table on which sat a row of four bibles, each man choosing one. Only one man would find a slip of paper in his bible naming him preacher, signaling him as ‘chosen by God.’ That man would serve their Amish community for the rest of his life.

  Adam shifted in his seat. Life was a long time to pay for interference, even if it was the kind could change others’ lives. For a minute Adam wished ... but it was too late, because look who was holding that fateful slip of paper.

  Roman knelt before the Bishop to accept God’s will and be ordained. And when Preacher Roman Byler rose and regarded Adam, if looks were flames, Adam would be cinders.

  Afterward, everyone took a short break for babies to be fed and such, during which time the district women ‘protected’ Sara from his approach. This made him angry. Where were they when she was all but shunned for becoming a midwife, when she’d entered the house of a widower seven weeks before?

  Twenty minutes later, the hearing began with a reading of the accusation. Living in sin. Adam almost laughed. The charge had somehow changed from ‘an occasion for sin’ to ‘living in sin.’ If he’d known it would come to this, he would have made the baths count.

  As if she read him, Sara’s face turned pink, and she put Pris down and took baby Hannah from Lizzie, standing her, almost as a shield, except she kept peeking around her ‘shield’ to look at him. Adam tried to calm Sara with his look, tried not to be captivated by her unconscious game. He also tried not to reveal to the others this odd ability they shared to communicate in silence. But Sara could not be calmed, and it bothered him that it bothered him.

  Adam shifted in his seat and saw that the English doctor was there. What was he doing at service?

  The man’s reassuring nod succeeded in calming Sara and her shoulders relaxed. While Adam was glad Sara had calmed, he did not need such a man to do it. Adam Zuckerman took care of his own. Except that Sara was not his, he had best remember.

  The Bishop spoke first, of sin and the rights of marriage, which were not to be given lightly or outside the union.

  Sara appeared as if she were ... bruised ... by the shame of it, making Adam want to hit their high holy leader.

  The Deacon spoke next and suggested repentance and separation.

  Roman, the new preacher, standing to speak last, looked straight at him. ‘An eye for an eye’ best described his silent promise, and Adam braced himself as the new preacher suggested marriage.

  Adam jumped to his feet, but his shout was drowned by The English. “Roman, are you mad? This has gone far enough! We wanted the children back where they belong, but Sara does not belong there.”

  So, it was Roman, and The English too, started this. Well then, served The English right if he lost Sara because of it. Yes, and serve Preacher Byler right too.

  “There’s more at work here than either of us realizes,” Roman replied. “You said so yourself, Doc. Leave it alone.”

  Adam liked the idea of The English losing Sara. He began to feel as if Roman was right. What did he mean, more at work here?

  “Like hell I will,” The English shouted, making his Amish neighbors gasp. Hell was a serious place with his people, and Adam felt a chuckle rising in his throat, which, as always, hurt his chest and soured his mood.

  “It is too late,” the Bishop said. “You have no rights here, Doctor Marks. Much as we appreciate you at our bedsides when we are in pain, Preacher Byler is right.”

  “But I have rights here,” Adam shouted. “Sara does too.”

  The Bishop encompassed them in his high-holy look, which fairly shouted, ‘You gave up your rights when you broke the ordnung!’ Except they had broken nothing. Wishing now that they had, Adam fisted his hands and gave a half nod.

  The Bishop returned it. “Marry and you remain among us. Do not and you will be shunned. Go back home, both of you, and consider how you will respond to your Maker’s will. I will be by this evening for your decision. That is my final word.”

  Adam rose and made his rebellious way to his family then, holding every gaze for certain, as service was not half over. He lifted Katie and Pris in his arms, ignored Pris’s whining. “Come, Lizzie, Sara,” he turned to lead the way out. “Time to go home ... and don’t forget the baby,” he called behind, laying claim to his family, Sara included — which about buckled his knees when he realized it.

  Doctor Jordan Marks, in his fancy Yankee carriage, followed their buggy all the way home, and the first thing Adam did when they arrived was limp over and punch the fancy man in the nose. So much for turning the other cheek, but what was one more sin among so many?

  Sara screamed and Katie and Pris began to cry. Lizzie took out her handkerchief and told the doctor to hold it against his nose, and despite his injury, the doctor laughed, until Sara told him to go home.

  “But, Sara, you can’t marry that miserable man. The whole district is afraid of him. You’re even afraid of him.”

  “I am not. Adam is hiding under all that gruff.”

  “Now, wait a minute,” Adam said.

  “Keep quiet for once Adam Zuckerman and take the children inside,” Sara snapped, and because, since the day his father died, he’d not been ordered to do anything — no one dared — Adam Zuckerman did what he was told. But he and Katie stayed by the door to watch Sara pack The English off with a shove and an annoyed shake of her head. Then she was inside with them, where she belonged.

  Sara was shaking, she was so angry ... with Roman, with the Bishop, with Jordan, the idiot. For the first time in weeks, the only man she wasn’t angry with was Adam. “I can stand being shunned if you can,” she said removing her cape. Anything was better than leaving. Anything.

  She knew Adam did not want to be left alone with the children any more than she wanted to leave them, and as far as she could see, defiance was their only answer. “You have been as close to shunned as can be, without keeping from Sunday service, since Abby married you,” she said. “What would be different about this?”

  “Why thank you, Sara,” Adam said, his voice rising. “That’s the kindest thing anyone has ever said to me!”

  Sara giggled, a measure of her discomfort, then she sighed and bit her lip. “Sorry. I meant, together we can be shunned and not be alone.”

  “We cannot be together.” Sara saw Adam’s hand begin to tremble. “I mean stay together,” he corrected. “You have to move back to your house.”

  “Oh, certainly, it will be easy living in one room again when we have nine now and we trip over each other!”

  Adam stepped back and frowned. He shook his head. “If you care one bit about how many rooms you have, I’m the sweetest man ever lived.”

  Sara laughed; so did Lizzie, but Sara was more shaken than she wanted to admit. “They did not give us the choice of living apart, Adam. They said married or shunned. Period.” Suppose she lost the children. Oh God, they needed her; she needed them. Even Adam needed her, though he didn’t know it — and wouldn’t admit it, if he did.

  “We can go live with Doctor Jordan,” Katie said jumping up and down. “He likes to play with us.”

  Sara caught Adam’s horrified, but quickly-masked, look and ran with Katie’s suggestion. “He did offer. And as long as I’d be shunned, anyway, I should probably consider his
... proposal. It’s likely the only one I’ll ever get.”

  Adam opened his mouth, shut it and paced the kitchen. He looked at her, at the girls, shook his head, and went outside — slamming the door hard behind him — and began to unhitch the horses.

  Sara calculated how long it would take him to issue an order. And while she waited, she prayed for that order to be the one she and his girls, even Adam, most needed.

  Then she wondered how she would survive if he did.

  Chapter 6

  It took Adam less than fifteen minutes to come limping back into the house. He hooked his hat on a peg by the back door with so much force, the peg broke with a loud snap. He stood stock still for a minute after that, while the snapped dowel rolled clacking its way across the linoleum, then he carefully hung his hat on a different peg. He ladled himself a dipper of water, drank, and tossed the ladle into the zinc-lined sink, where it hit and spun with a dull clatter.

  The only sound after that was Pris whining upstairs.

  Sara resisted an urge to giggle as she watched him begin to pace.

  Big, bad, mad Adam Zuckerman was nervous.

  Tall. Big hands. Big feet. Despite his size, and his limp, he looked fit; not an ounce of fat on him. His chest was broad, his waist trim. And his hips were just about….

  Good Lord, in her head she had measured the span with her hands, which was ... acceptable, she supposed. They were discussing marriage, after all. A big step with such a man. An adventure, she thought, as Adam stepped before her, and she regarded his boots. When he reached beneath her chin, she raised her head in surprise, and he proceeded to untie her outer bonnet, which she hadn’t even realized she was still wearing. “Foolish,” she said.

  “I thought so too, at first. But, damn it, Sara, we have to.”

  “What?”

  “Get married.”

  “Oh, but Jordan thinks—”

  “I don’t care what your blasted English thinks. You’re going to marry me, Sara Lapp, and that’s the end of it. Let him find himself an English wife. He can’t have you.”

  “To be truthful, Adam, Jordan doesn’t want—”

  “I don’t give a tin whistle what The English wants or doesn’t want! I thought you cared about the children.”

  “Of course I do. What has that to do with—”

  “Children?” Adam called. “Lizzie, Katie, Pris. Come down here? Now.”

  Sara stamped her foot. “Damn it, Adam.” Heat rushed her for the childish tantrum. “Let me finish a sentence!”

  “Hush.” He put a finger to her lips, warming her to her toes. “Don’t cuss around the girls.”

  Sara’s emotions ran in all directions. This man, who cussed like a heathen more often than not, kept telling her not to.

  His girls—their girls soon perhaps—innocent and wide-eyed, came running down the stairs in eager response to his rare call.

  “Lizziebelle,” Adam said, the nickname bringing surprised reactions all around. “You’re a wise child. Do you and your sisters need a new mommie?”

  “Yes, Datt.”

  “And for your new mommie, would you like to have rickety old Mrs. Good with four teeth and twenty cats?”

  Katie and Lizzie dissolved into giggles, but Pris walked straight into Sara, without ever looking up at her, and buried her face in her apron. “Want Sara,” came Pris’s muffled voice.

  More afraid than he had ever been in his life—that Sara would agree, that she would not—Adam looked into Scrapper Sara’s wide shimmering eyes. “For their new mommie, our girls want you, Sara. They need you,” he said, thinking she looked as if she might be as frightened and hopeful as he was.

  Taking the final step toward sealing all their fates felt a bit like nailing his coffin shut—the nails made of words, powerful, irrefutable, with more raw, soul-deep need in them than he ever dared reveal or acknowledge before. Without taking his gaze from Sara’s, Adam took her hand and placed it over Pris’s tiny kapped head, then he placed his own hand over Sara’s. “And so you shall have her.”

  * * * * *

  Their wedding day dawned frost glazed and kettle dark, a warning from above, Adam worried, for a marriage where no love, only need, existed.

  Over the past week, he had watched Sara stitch her wedding dress in the color of the spruce trees on the far side of his property, every stitch bringing a new fear in him to life—in her too, maybe.

  When The English came, dressed slick as a greased pig, to fetch Sara and the girls for the wedding, Adam said he would take his own family, by God, but Sara insisted that it would not look good if he did.

  Since he had another errand to run anyway, Adam let her win ... this time.

  “Sara,” The English, said. “On days like today, the sea shines the very color of your dress, though you’re a finer credit to God’s handiwork than all His oceans put together.”

  Adam snorted, but Katie giggled and turned in a circle to catch the doctor’s attention and show off a miniature version of the same dress and apron. As ever, her wayward curls popped out the sides of Katiebug’s tiny white kapp, no matter how Sara tried to tame them, and Katie spun so long, she lost her balance.

  The English laughed and kissed the top of Katie’s head as he steadied her, and Adam crossed his arms and growled low in his throat.

  Yes, Sara made the girls’ dresses to match hers for the wedding, but this would be the last time they would match, because, between the ceremony and the celebration, Sara would don the black apron and kapp of a married woman. Tonight, she would pack away her wedding apron—for a good long time, Adam prayed, and may he never see her in it again.

  The next time she wore her wedding apron, Sara thought, as she smoothed its pleats, would be the day they placed her in her casket. The Amish tradition had jarred her from the day she understood its meaning as a young girl, settling a pall over every wedding she had ever attended, but never more so than today. She, who had decided to triumph over death a long time ago, rejected the reminder of its inevitability, especially on a day when life beckoned with a butterfly heart.

  Mother to four beautiful little girls. Wife to Adam Zuckerman—not always mad, but sometimes tender. She would nurture the tenderness, she promised herself, until people forgot the gruff, until he opened his arms to his children in welcome, and love. She could do it, Sara thought as she set off on her journey to the Bishop’s house where her wedding would take place. She would do it.

  As Jordan’s fancy carriage with its shiny brass lanterns jolted forward, Sara looked up at the snow-threatening half-bowl sky above them, trusting in the beauty and peace beyond. ‘Thank you,’ she said, in her heart, to He whose will she accepted. And then, to Abby, ‘Help me to heal the man and children you left in my care.’

  * * * * *

  Jake Escher shoved a chicken coop into the back of his buggy at about the same time Zeke Schmidt crowed over his winning bid on two sows.

  Adam scowled and began to pace when eleven dozen locust poles came up for bid before the manure spreader. He needed that spreader, but if it didn’t come up soon, he was going to be late for his own wedding, and Sara would carve and serve him for their wedding supper.

  When household goods came up next, he sighed and bought Sara a big fancy iron skillet for five cents. A wedding present would turn her up sweet for certain, no matter how late he arrived. And if he had it all fixed as fine in his mind, why was he sweating over waiting for the damned spreader to come up?

  Four dollars he paid, finally, a bargain, of course, because everyone had stopped bidding as soon as he started. Being ‘mad’ had its advantages. Adam coughed to stop the discomfort of a threatening grin, a frequent experience of late, worse since he woke today. Odd how he remembered being downright scared on his last wedding day.

  Of course everything was different this time. This was not a November Tuesday or Thursday, as was usual, and theirs would not be one of three or four weddings that day. Tradition was ignored for the joining of a widow or wi
dower—or to satisfy the ordnung, the rules often twisted by meddlesome preachers.

  He and Sara were not a couple of children who did not know what was what. They were smarter than to think a few words would improve their lot. He knew life was more riddled with gopher holes than fields; he’d stepped in plenty. Fallen in, more like, backside over ears.

  But not this time. Scrapper or no, Sara was going to learn to follow his rules, and she was going to do so quietly. Adam grunted, scoffing inwardly at his foolish, wishful thinking as he arranged for the manure spreader to be delivered.

  Then he slapped the dust from his Sunday suit, climbed up to his buggy seat, and gave the reins a flick, sending Titania and Tawny into a quick trot. He was already late, but a wedding could not start without the bridegroom, now could it?

  Yes, Adam thought, spotting the Bishop’s house down in the valley, his yard full of buggies, Adam knew exactly what he was getting himself into.

  In Bishop Weaver’s summer kitchen, Sara paced. What was she getting herself into? She had once likened having a husband and family to emerging from a cocoon of lonely darkness. She had imagined that, as a bride, she would step into a world of light and color, but perhaps she had been wrong. If her bridegroom did not care to arrive on time for their wedding, perhaps marriage for her would simply become another cocoon filled with another kind of darkness. Perhaps she had never been meant to embrace the light.

  Suppose Adam had run; suppose she never saw him again?

  No. No, she did not believe, despite everything, that Adam would desert his children. And since she came with them—to his mind at least—like as not, he would not leave her either. How foolish of her to wish that she should matter to him for her own sake.

  Her heavy heart rising almost into her throat, blurring her vision, Sara stepped away from Roman and his niece, sixteen-year-old Lizbeth, attendants she barely knew, to gaze out the window, take a breath, and calm herself.