The Amish Clockmaker

by Mindy Starns Clark

  Clayton’s heart warmed at the thought of what Miriam described. Yes, he could see how nice that would be, the chance to putter around, maybe clean a little, maybe cook their supper, all without comment or criticism.

  “Of course,” he said, and the relief on her face made him feel guilty that he hadn’t been the one to think of it.

  At the end of the day a neighbor stopped by the store in the hopes that Lucy would be there, and the two women were busy chatting when Clayton was ready to close up. Gently ushering them outside, he locked the door behind them and then went about cleaning and closing out after a long but profitable day.

  His mother and her friend were still visiting when he was ready to head up to the house, so he just locked the back door of the shop and then came around the side of the building to give Mamm a wave. She waved back, barely breaking stride in the conversation, so he continued on up the hill by himself.

  It had been a beautiful summer day, the sky a rich blue dotted with perfect white fluffy clouds. He had chores to do and animals to tend, but it struck him that maybe he would take his wife for a buggy ride while it was still light out. There were some hiking trails nearby, including one that ran along a beautiful bubbling creek, and after six days in a row of being cooped up in the shop, the thought of strolling along that creek under those trees with Miriam at his side was too appealing to resist. Fortunately, she was a spontaneous person and probably wouldn’t hesitate to jump on it once he shared his idea.

  To his surprise, when he arrived at the house she wasn’t inside anywhere. There were no smells or sights of some bubbling stew or baking bread or any other kind of kitchen work. He decided that maybe she was out in the barn, so he went there, expecting to find her talking to Rosie or brushing the horses or yet again organizing the tack closet.

  Instead, she was nowhere to be found there either—or so he thought. He was just about to turn and leave when he heard the soft strains of her humming, coming from above.

  She was in the loft. Again.

  What was it about the place that held such fascination for her? He didn’t want to be like his mother and condemn her being up there outright, but he did have his concerns. The bigger Miriam grew, the more her center of gravity was shifting. One of these days, if she wasn’t careful, she was going to fall off that ladder just like Mamm had said.

  Clayton took a deep breath and blew it out, reminding himself what she’d told him about the loft and what it meant to her. As her husband, he should want that for her if it made her happy. As her husband, he should try to understand what it was really about.

  With a smile, he quietly crossed to the ladder and then began climbing, softly and slowly, hoping to surprise her at the top. He knew if he called up to her that she would come down to him, but it was time for him to do this, to join her there, to see what a place of one’s own actually involved.

  It was slow going, but finally he reached the top of the ladder. As he paused to catch his breath, he saw Miriam with her back to him, kneeling in front of the old trunk where they had kept the spare horse blankets, only now the blankets were stacked in a neat pile next to it.

  Miriam, still humming away, was seemingly lost in her own world. On her hands she wore a pair of white gloves with sparkly, diamond-like button closures at the wrists, and her humming turned to singing as she pulled them off, finger by finger, and then daintily laid them across her knees.

  She then turned her attention to the trunk and thrust her hands inside.

  Shocked by the sight of those gloves, Clayton shifted his weight, causing a floorboard to creak. She snapped her head around as she yanked her hands from the trunk.

  Her eyes were wide with surprise and fear at being discovered, but when she saw that it was her husband rather than her mother-in-law, she seemed to relax somewhat, her expression slowly changing over to something more like sadness and loss.

  “What are you doing?” Clayton asked.

  “Nothing. Can you please just let me be for a minute?”

  “Why?” He took a step toward her. Miriam shrank back a bit before turning toward the open lid on the trunk and slamming it shut. Then she stared up at him, almost defiantly, determination creeping into her expression. It was obvious to him something was in there she didn’t want him to see.

  Anger, swift and unsettling, swept over him in a rush. Things had been going so well. He thought they had been making progress. He thought they had been moving toward the kind of love and affection a husband and wife should share. Now he realized it had all been a lie, that having a place of one’s own merely meant having a place to keep secrets.

  “What are you doing?” This time curiosity didn’t lace his tone. He heard the anger in his voice and so did she. Miriam leaned back against the trunk as he strode awkwardly toward her.

  “Nothing,” she said, but her voice, her manner, and her posture told him she was lying to him.

  He tipped his head toward the gloves in her lap. “Where did you get those?”

  Miriam glanced down and startled—she had forgotten she’d laid them across her bent knees. When she looked up again, dread and longing were both etched across her face. “They’re nothing, Clayton! Brenda gave them to me. She didn’t want them anymore. They’re just a pair of gloves.”

  “They are fancy.”

  Her eyes pleaded with him. “Please, Clayton. Don’t make more of this than need be. I am not wearing them. I just like looking at them.”

  She was definitely lying now—she’d had them on when he first came up here! He took another step toward her. “What else is in the trunk?”

  Miriam sat up straight on her knees and put a protective arm across the top of the closed lid. “Nothing important!”

  She looked so childlike and afraid that it was almost more than he could bear. Despite her protestations and her lies, she seemed so vulnerable and desperate in that moment that Clayton felt his anger ebb somewhat. He lowered himself awkwardly to the floor beside his wife.

  “We cannot have secrets from each other, Miriam.”

  She opened her mouth as if to protest but then closed it again. She turned to face the trunk. The look in her gaze told Clayton that whatever was inside, it was precious to her.

  “Show me what you have in the trunk.”

  For a long moment she did nothing. Then she looked down at the gloves and fingered a shimmering button.

  “Everything that makes me happy is always taken from me,” she finally whispered, but not to him.

  Clayton reached out and covered the hand that Miriam held over the gloves. He could feel the silky satin just under his fingertips.

  “Miriam,” he said softly.

  She exhaled deeply and her shoulders slumped as she lifted the lid with her other hand.

  Clayton leaned over and peered inside. Down in the bottom sat an array of fancy items. A sky blue hat with a netted brim and silk forget-me-nots woven into its band. A nearly empty perfume bottle with a sparkling pink sprayer. A rhinestone bracelet in need of polish. A butterfly-shaped brooch of gleaming green and blue. A beaded evening bag with a missing clasp. And more.

  He had never seen such extravagant items. As a member of the Amish church, Miriam had no business having them. She had taken vows. She had pledged to live a life apart from the world, vows of separateness and simplicity.

  “Where did you get these?” Anger was seeping back into his tone. And fear for her.

  Miriam didn’t look at him. “I told you! Brenda didn’t want them anymore. She was going to donate them to a thrift shop. I said I knew somebody who would enjoy having them, so she let me take them.”

  “Somebody who would enjoy having them?” he echoed. Clayton wanted to believe that that somebody was someone other than Miriam, even though deep down he already knew she had meant herself.

  She sighed heavily, angrily. “Yes, I wanted them. I wanted to have them. Not to wear or use or show anyone. I just wanted to be able to look at something beautiful from time to time. Is
it really so terrible that I wanted to have a tiny little part of the world out there in here?”

  Clayton was quiet for a long moment as he considered her words and genuinely tried to process her question. Was it so terrible that she’d lied to her husband? Yes. Was it so terrible that after all that had happened to her out in the world, her heart hungered for it still? Yes. Was it so terrible that she’d hung on to fancy things despite having taken vows to the contrary?

  Yes.

  “Miriam, you took a vow before God and the church,” he finally said, as gently as he could manage. “You know what the Bible says about storing up treasures here on earth. Our treasures are to be stored in heaven.”

  The defiance in her countenance seemed to melt somewhat. “I know.”

  “Then you know that you cannot hold on to these things. You must know I cannot let you keep them.”

  Miriam looked up at him, perhaps sensing for the first time that Clayton had a role of authority over her she had not considered until now. It seemed she had suddenly realized he was more than just her rescuer from a scandalous situation, more than just someone who would be the father to her child from another man.

  He was the one she had married. She had vowed to love and support her husband, just as every Amish wife had done in all the decades there had been Amish wives.

  Clayton saw the depth of this realization as she stared at him.

  “Can’t I keep them for just a little while longer?” The distress in her voice at the imminent loss of that which she found dear made part of him want to take her into his arms and another part of him want to shove that trunk over the edge of the loft and let it crash to the concrete floor below, destroying everything inside it. Her attitude toward these Englisch trinkets put her on precarious ground.

  “What would be the good in that?” he asked, his tone a mix of gentle counsel and solemn authority.

  Miriam hesitated only a moment. “It would give me time to get used to the idea of not having them.”

  “Not having them would get you used to the idea of not having them, Miriam. You must know I am right about this.”

  For several long moments she just sat there with the gloves on her lap. Then she picked them up by the wrists and dropped them onto the hay-strewn floor.

  Before he could reach for her, she rose to her feet and headed for the ladder.

  “Miriam,” Clayton called after her.

  She turned to face him, and it seemed the light had gone out in her eyes. “Do what you think you must, Clayton.”

  “Miriam!” He exclaimed angrily as he struggled to his feet.

  But by the time he got to the ladder, she was stepping off the last rung and running out of the barn.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  For the next several days Miriam barely said a word to Clayton, not even to ask what he had done with her treasures. He’d wanted to burn them that very night with the week’s rubbish, but he hadn’t been able to figure out how to carry out that plan without his mother noticing. Miriam still slept next to him in their bed, but she made sure their bodies no longer touched. And when she came down to the shop in the morning, she arrived after he did and stayed in the back room until customers came, at which time she would emerge and plaster a semi-cordial smile on her face while she waited on them.

  If that wasn’t distressing enough, it seemed other people noticed the animosity between them. Thanks to Uriah’s speech at the wedding about forgiving and forgetting, their closest friends and family members no longer seemed to be whispering about them behind their backs. But for the members of the church who hadn’t been there that day, Clayton and Miriam Raber remained the big topic of conversation—and now that it appeared their marriage was in trouble, there were even more sideways glances and whispered comments.

  Clayton didn’t know what to do about it, nor did he know how to get rid of those Englisch trinkets in the hayloft. He wished they would just disappear on their own, along with Miriam’s displeasure.

  Mamm witnessed firsthand the tension between the two of them, but she made no mention of it until Wednesday morning, when she appeared in the mudroom at daybreak as Clayton was sitting on the bench, pulling on his work boots.

  “I don’t mean to pry, son,” she said softly. “Your marriage is your business. But seeing as I let you agree to this marriage without doing much to talk you out of it, I’m going to speak my mind. I don’t know what’s come between you and Miriam, but if she’s been unfaithful to you in her heart, I think you should go to the bishop. If she still loves this other man, Uriah needs to step in and handle it from here, maybe even require another, more public confession and repentance from her.”

  Clayton nearly dropped the boot he held in his hand. Hot anger pulsed inside him in an instant. “Unfaithful to me?” he exclaimed. “What would make you say that? How can you even think that of her?”

  Her tone turned defensive. “She hasn’t been a proper wife to you, Clayton. I know she hasn’t. And she’s barely spoken to you for days. She barely speaks to anyone. She walks around with her hand on her belly, stroking that child and looking off into the distance like she’s waiting for that Englisch man to come rescue her!”

  Clayton rose to his feet as swiftly as his disfigured leg allowed. He was only a few inches taller than his mother, but she shrank back from him as in his anger he seemed to now tower over her. “You will not speak of Miriam that way.” He could scarcely get the words past his lips.

  She was instantly flustered. “I only meant—”

  But Clayton cut her off, raw emotion now lacing his words. “You cannot speak of Miriam that way. She is my wife. She is your daughter-in-law. And that baby will be your grandchild.”

  Mamm’s eyes turned glassy with tears. “I just… I just don’t want you to get hurt, Clayton. I’m afraid she is going to hurt you!”

  “She is not the one hurting me right now.”

  The two of them were quiet for a moment. When she spoke, a tear ran unchecked down her cheek. “I just can’t help feeling that we all made a terrible mistake. That we stepped outside of God’s will and took things into our own hands—and far too quickly.”

  For half a second Clayton wished he could turn to Daed and ask him if that’s what had happened. Had they all made a terrible mistake? Had they acted in contradiction to what God desired for their lives? Clayton couldn’t imagine it to be so. In fact, he realized now, he had known exactly what God would have him do the moment Miriam’s parents stated their request on that life-changing day. He didn’t need his father to affirm what he had decided, what he had pledged. What God had led him to do.

  “It was no mistake, Mamm, I can promise you that. But even if it were, Miriam and I are married now. I took my vows. What’s done is done.”

  His mother seemed to grapple for a response, finally having to go with a repeat of her earlier words. “She’s not been a proper wife. She doesn’t deserve you.”

  “Deserve me? Deserve me? Is that how Christ loved us? Did He wait until we were perfect before He died on the cross for us? Do we deserve His grace?”

  Mamm wiped her cheek as she shook her head. “No, son. We don’t,” she whispered. “But that doesn’t mean Miriam can continue to treat you this way. She took vows too. To support you. To love you.”

  “And I will give her as many reasons as I can to want to make good on those vows.”

  Mamm had nothing at the ready to say in reply. Clayton sat back down on the bench, slipped on the other boot and tied it tight. Then he stood, grabbed his hat off its peg, and opened the mudroom door.

  His mother reached out her hand and laid it across his forearm just as he stepped onto the threshold. She opened her mouth to say something else, but then closed it. He hesitated only a moment before walking out into the half-light of dawn.

  Clayton went down to the shop early that morning, alone, not bothering to get cleaned up after doing his chores and not waiting for Miriam to go with him. Apparently, she hadn’t appreciated that, becau
se she never showed up at all. Opening time came and went and Clayton remained alone.

  As far as the store went, he didn’t care. Things were always their slowest midweek, and he passed the first few hours of the workday with just two customers and no sales.

  He was glad. Alone at the table, he poured all of his anger and frustration and confusion about his wife into his work, finishing up several quick repairs so that he could start on the order for the Uptons. Theirs was to be a real showpiece, a highly polished and buffed wood mantel clock with brass bushings, beveled glass panels, and satin black Arabic numerals on a silver chapter ring. Its base would be larger than the norm, large enough in fact to sport a single hidden drawer in the front panel, one that could be opened using a recessed latch in the back. Mrs. Upton wanted the drawer for her husband’s smoking supplies, and she especially liked the fact that the compartment and the latch were both virtually unnoticeable, as that would keep the grandchildren out of the tobacco.

  The case was to be constructed primarily of Windsor cherry and would have inlays made from ten different species of hardwood and veneers, including Padauk, Sycamore, Kingwood, Avodire, Silver Gum, and more. He started there, with the wood, going into the back room and looking through his supply of small beech planks. He chose the most flawless one he could find and pulled it from the pile. It wasn’t until he turned to go that it struck him how nice everything looked in here. He hadn’t bothered to look before, but he saw now that Miriam had really tidied up the place. There was no dust, the stacks of papers were gone, and the wood shavings had been swept from the floor. He hadn’t even noticed.

  A short while later, he was sitting at the machinery area behind the table, carefully sliding the band saw through the perfect, unmarred piece of beech when he realized he wasn’t alone.

  Miriam had arrived and was now standing beside him.