The Choice

by Suzanne Woods Fisher

  “He’s the only one with whiskers. Only married men wear whiskers. The bachelors are clean shaven.” Daniel’s jawline just showed the shadow of a new beard.

  She squinted her eyes. “The one who looks like he’s got a shoehorn wrapped around his chin?”

  “That’s Eli.”

  “So a beard takes the place of a wedding ring?”

  She nearly surprised a smile out of Carrie, the way this woman talked. Carrie nodded.

  “Thank you, Carrie!” Veronica called out, as she hurried toward Eli.

  Carrie couldn’t resist a grin when she saw how quickly Eli shooed Veronica McCall off. They all stood and watched as she zoomed away in her little car. Her red hair flew behind her like a flag waving in the wind.

  “Englisch,” Eli muttered, shaking his head as he passed by Carrie to head into the house.

  With help from neighbors, Carrie and Daniel moved into the farmhouse at the apple orchard by week’s end. Since Carrie and Daniel married in September, with their apple crop ready to harvest and sell, they skipped the honeymoon visits to relatives.

  Carrie knew that Andy was never fond of school, but she couldn’t understand why, after the first few weeks, he seemed reluctant to leave the house each morning. “You’re sure you’re not sick?” she asked him, putting a cool hand to his forehead.

  “Nah,” he said, pulling away from her. “But maybe you should pack me another brownie. I get awful hungry.”

  “But I packed you two yesterday. How could you still be hungry?” Carrie asked, frowning. “And put your shoes on. You are not to go barefoot. Ever, ever, ever. You know that. Too much risk of cutting yourself.”

  Andy sighed wearily and bent down to put his socks and shoes on. Daniel was sipping his coffee, his eyes on Andy, narrowed slightly in the way of a man studying a mildly perturbing question.

  Carrie packed up a third brownie and handed Andy his lunch pail, then opened the door for him. “Go, Andy! You’ll be late!” Andy poked his head out the door, looked both ways before stepping out on the porch, then lit into a sprint and flew down the lane.

  Carrie leaned against the doorjamb watching Andy for a minute, puzzled. As she closed the door, Daniel blotted his mouth with his napkin and got to his feet. He scooped his straw hat off of the peg and stepped around her.

  “Where are you off to, Daniel?” she asked. “To the orchards? Should I tell Eli you’ll meet him there?”

  He was halfway out the door when he tossed a “no” over his shoulder.Then he hopped onto a blue scooter, resting against the house, to catch up with Andy.

  Carrie turned to Yonnie and shrugged, exasperated. “Why use two words when one will do?”

  Yonnie smiled and continued to drizzle white icing over cinnamon rolls, hot from the oven. “Daniel doesn’t say much because he’s busy listening. He hears what others miss because he listens more than he talks.”

  Carrie looked at her, puzzled.

  “He feels the sounds deep inside him.”

  Solomon Riehl didn’t receive his mother’s letter until he returned to Lancaster after traveling with the Barnstormers to Maryland, New York, and New Jersey. All of the team mail for the players had been held at Clipper Magazine Stadium. Sol had started to receive so much fan mail that he didn’t even notice his mother’s familiar handwriting until he had read halfway through the pile of letters. He read the letter, then reread it. A clear stream of fear pooled from his throat to his stomach, the quick panic that comes when you realize something has gone terribly wrong, something that it is simply too late to fix.

  “Who’s that one from, Amish boy?” asked Pete, an outfielder on the team. “From the look on your face, you just got dumped.” He guffawed loudly.

  Sol looked over at Pete, not really seeing him. He took his mother’s letter and hurried outside of the locker room, then ran to his car. The keys shook in his hand as he stumbled to unlock the door. Some paint flaked off in his hands as he yanked the door open to climb in. Carrie had called his car Rusty because it had so much rust under its chassis.

  Carrie, he thought, how could you do this? How could you have married someone else?

  He locked the door, sank down low in the seat, and cried like a baby.

  For the next few days, Daniel rode Andy to school on the scooter and met him, each afternoon, as school let out. Emma passed by them one morning in her buggy as she came to help Carrie cut up apples to dry on racks for snitz.

  “Morning, Carrie.”

  Somehow, Emma could make a simple greeting sound worried, Carrie thought, as she hung Emma’s bonnet upside down on the peg, hanging next to hers and Yonnie’s like three black coal scuttles. Emma lived most of her life in a near panic.

  “You know why Daniel’s doing that, don’t you?” Emma asked. Carrie bristled, irritated by Emma’s nosiness. “Of course I know why.” Though the truth of it was that she didn’t really know why, but she was grateful that Daniel took an interest in Andy. Andy needed a man in his life. At least, that was Carrie’s reasoning when she told Esther she was taking Andy with her to live. Carrie thought Esther would have been relieved, but instead, she reacted with a cold fury. She barely spoke to Carrie during the wedding and hadn’t come to visit Carrie at all since. Esther always had something to be angry about, Carrie knew. She had learned long ago that the only way to handle her was to stand up to her, but Esther nursed her grudges with the same loving care she gave to her roses.

  Emma pulled up a chair to sit down, eager to divulge her news. “Well, I heard that your new English neighbor boys take Andy’s lunch on the way to school. They wait for him at the end of the lane.”

  Carrie looked out the kitchen window. “Who told you that?” “I heard it at a comfort knotting at Ada Stoltzfus’s farm. You should have gone to the frolic, Carrie. Yonnie too. You learn all kinds of things.”

  Carrie frowned. She wasn’t ready for a frolic yet, for all the questions about married life. “So, what’s he like then, this Daniel? What sort of man is he?” her well-meaning friends would ask. Carrie wondered those questions herself. She wasn’t sure she knew Daniel any better today than she did a few weeks ago.

  “Why would those boys be taking Andy’s lunch?”

  “Well,” Emma started out breathlessly, cheeks turning pink with pleasure, “they found out he’s a bleeder, and they told him they want to see him bleed. They’re picking a fight with him so he’ll bleed.”

  Carrie threw the dish towel down and ran down the lane. By the time she reached the end of the lane, Daniel was on the way back.

  “Emma told me!” she said, out of breath, when she reached him. “About the boys teasing Andy.”

  Daniel glanced over at the neighbor boys, who were throwing rocks at a treetop, trying to knock down a bird’s nest. The mother bird flew close by, making distress calls.

  Carrie saw them too. She frowned at them, but said to Daniel, “You can’t take him to and from school for the rest of his life. Maybe I could speak to their parents so they’d understand how serious hemophilia is.” Andy was small, built like Jacob, and looked younger than his years. She worried about him. She always worried about him.

  Daniel’s eyebrows lifted in warning. “And shame him with a fuss?”

  “I’m not making a fuss,” she said indignantly.

  Daniel’s gaze turned toward the boys. “As soon as the weather gets cold, they’ll lose interest in meeting him so early.” Daniel put one foot on the scooter. “Coming?”

  She sighed and hopped on behind him for a lift.

  “Mother, you ought not to be eating dessert for breakfast,” Eli said quietly when he came inside from the barn one morning.

  Yonnie was seated at the kitchen table having a slice of pie. “The way I see it, just in case the day doesn’t turn out well, at least I’ve had my dessert.”

  “I like that way of thinking!” Andy said, bouncing down the stairs.

  Eli looked at Yonnie and shook his head. Carrie handed him a cup of coffee as he sat
down. “You see, Mother? You’re a bad influence on the boy. Carrie, I’m counting on you not to let her get away with this nonsense.”

  Carrie smiled at the teasing, but she knew Eli was counting on her for much more than minding Yonnie. She knew he had hopes that Carrie would be able to turn Daniel around from his burden. Daniel seemed to have an invisible cloud of sadness hovering over him. She hadn’t figured out what Daniel’s burden was, but she had a hunch it had something to do with Abel, his cousin, raised as a brother to Daniel, who had left the family during his Rumspringa. Every so often, a letter from Abel would arrive and she would see Daniel quietly tuck it into his pocket. The letter’s contents were never discussed. But for the rest of the day, Daniel and Eli would go quiet, even by their standards.

  Carrie was filled with wonderings about this Abel fellow, whether he was younger or older than Daniel and where he was now. But it was Daniel’s place to tell her these things and he was not one to volunteer information. Abel’s name was hardly spoken between Eli or Daniel, or even Yonnie. It was like he had stopped living, like he was shunned, even though that couldn’t be right. Carrie knew Abel hadn’t been baptized, so he wouldn’t be shunned. Yonnie had let that slip once. Carrie tried asking Yonnie more, about where Abel was now, but she could see Yonnie’s mind drift off to another place and another time. Yonnie never did answer. Yonnie was a Miller, to be sure.

  Carrie had wanted a home of her own and a future for her brother. In exchange, she received the hidden secrets and heartaches of the Millers.

  In the middle of the night, Carrie woke and went downstairs, out to the porch to look at the stars. A few minutes later, Daniel joined her, wrapping a quilt around her shoulders.

  Daniel was a deep sleeper. He could fall asleep instantly, she could tell so by the sound of his breathing. But he always seemed to know when she left the room. Maybe it was part of his listening, she realized. Even in his sleep, he seemed to listen.

  “I had a nightmare,” she said, hoping he would stay for a moment. “Andy had fallen and needed my help, but I couldn’t get to him. It was like I was in quicksand. He kept calling for me and I couldn’t get any closer.”

  “Just a dream,” he said.

  Carrie pulled the quilt tightly around her. “If anything ever happened to Andy . . .” Her voice drizzled off.

  “It won’t.” Daniel leaned on the porch railing and looked up at the night sky.

  A barn owl flew over them so closely they could hear the whir of its wings.

  “The winged tiger,” Daniel said, watching the owl disappear into the treetops.

  Carrie tilted her head toward Daniel. “That’s what my father used to call owls! They fly silently as moths and seldom miss their prey.” She gave a short laugh. “Esther would correct him and say they’re just flying rat traps.”

  “You miss him.” He said the words simply, his voice low and flat.

  “I do miss him. So much that at times I . . .” She shrugged, pressing her lips together.

  Daniel nodded, as if he understood.

  “Mattie said that all of creation is meant to remind us that God is nearby. She said that God is closer than our own breath.” She turned slightly to face Daniel. “Do you think she’s right?”

  She saw a flash of something in his eyes, the echoes of a longing, a sadness. “I’m not the one to ask.” He went to the door and held it open. “Don’t stay up too late. Morning comes early.”

  Sometimes, she thought, turning back to gaze at the night sky, trying to talk to Daniel felt like trying to pump a dry well.

  One afternoon, Carrie went to town to run some errands. When she returned to the farm late in the day, Daniel came out of the barn to help her down from the buggy.

  “I’m sorry I’m late. I’ll get dinner started right off,” she told him as he unhitched Old-Timer from the tracings.

  Carrie hurried to the kitchen and saw Yonnie at the stovetop, stirring a sauce. Glancing at the table, she noticed it was already set for dinner. “Oh, bless you, Yonnie!” She hung her bonnet up on the peg and untied her cape when she remembered that she had left a few packages in the back of the buggy and rushed down to the barn to get them.

  As she reached the partly open barn door, she saw Andy drag a sack of oats over to Daniel, talking as he pulled.

  “He used to be Amish but now he plays baseball,” she heard him say.

  Daniel stopped in mid-turn. “The baseball player? The one everyone talks about?”

  “Yeah. He’s the one.” Andy held up an English newspaper, pointing to the headline about the Lancaster Barnstormers, about Sol’s pitching.

  Carrie had found the newspaper abandoned on a bench near the hitching post in town where she tied Old-Timer’s reins. She had picked it up. When she was nearing home, she had turned down a quiet lane and pulled the buggy over to the side to read the article about Sol. She read it and reread it, then realized how late it was. That foolish action had made her late getting home, late starting dinner. She clapped her hands to her cheeks. How could she have been so careless to have left the newspaper in the buggy?

  Andy held the sack of oats open so Daniel could scoop them into Old-Timer’s bucket. “Solomon Riehl was courting Carrie, but then he disappeared, right when my dad passed. So she married you.”

  Carrie slid open the barn door and walked in. “Andy!” she said sharply.

  Startled, Andy nearly knocked over the sack of oats.

  “Geh zu Yonnie im Haus.” Go to Yonnie in the house.

  Andy looked at Carrie in mute astonishment, surprised by the sharp tone in her voice, but he hustled past her to go to the kitchen without a questioning word or glance.

  Daniel turned back to filling the bucket with oats as if nothing had happened. Carrie picked up the newspaper and folded it. She wasn’t sure what to say. Maybe she didn’t need to say anything at all. She turned to leave and stopped when she heard Daniel ask, “So Solomon Riehl was the midnight caller?”

  Carrie spun toward Daniel, who still had his back to her. “Yes.”

  Daniel put the bucket down and turned to face Carrie. “It was like Andy said?”

  Carrie looked down at her hands nervously, avoiding Daniel’s steady gaze. “Yes,” she answered quietly.

  Daniel didn’t say a word, he just stood there, waiting for her to continue.

  “Sol wanted to play for the Barnstormers and wanted me with him. We had made plans to leave. We were going to be married that very week when my father died. But . . . then everything changed. I couldn’t leave Andy.” She looked down at the hay-strewn floor. “Sol left anyway. The night that Andy was in the emergency room, after Esther had taken the switch to him, I knew I had to get Andy out of Esther’s home. When you asked me to marry you, it seemed like . . . an opportunity.” She lifted her eyes to gauge his response, but his face was expressionless. “I told you that I wasn’t in love with you. I’ve never tried to deceive you.”

  He glanced out the barn window. “But you didn’t mention you loved someone else.”

  The silence between them felt as real as a brick wall. Finally, she asked softly, “Daniel, why did you marry me?”

  He didn’t move for a moment, didn’t say anything. She couldn’t read him well enough to know what he was thinking. Finally, he took a few steps toward her and gently lifted her chin so that she would look at him. They were inches apart, close enough to feel each other’s breath.

  “Same as you, Carrie. Trying to forget.”

  Daniel strode past her, out of the barn and into the orchards, not returning home until long after dark.

  4

  The pitching coach slapped Sol on the back as he jogged in from the mound after practice on Monday. “We clocked you at over 95 miles per hour! Fastest ever!” He was nearly bursting with pride. “Not sure what you had for breakfast, but keep it up, Sol.”

  Sol nodded, before heading into the locker room for a shower. The other guys on the team congratulated him as he peeled off his uniform. “You mu
st be as pumped up as a hot air balloon after that practice,” said Rody, the catcher.

  Sol shrugged. “Just a good day, I guess.” But he knew why. Every time he wound up for a pitch, the image of Carrie in another man’s arms popped into his head. He pictured the catcher’s mitt as the man’s face—he could barely remember what Daniel Miller looked like—and he threw that ball as hard as he possibly could.

  “Some of the guys are going out for a cold beer.” Seeing his hesitation, Rody threw a wet towel at him. “Come on. I’ll treat.”

  Sol slammed his locker shut. “Okay. Give me ten minutes to shower.”

  Veronica McCall dropped by on a weekly basis to ask Carrie if she was ready to sell the property. Each time, Carrie said no. Today, Emma was visiting to help Carrie can applesauce. Veronica smelled the freshly brewed coffee and helped herself to a cup.

  As she poured the coffee into the mug, she glanced out the kitchen window. “Do all Amish men look like him?”

  “Who?” Carrie asked, cutting the apples and tossing them into a big pot.

  “Him. He’s a hottie.” She pointed out the window. “He could be on the cover of GQ.” She turned to Emma to explain. “Gentleman’s Quarterly. It’s a magazine that has a gorgeous hunk on its cover every month.”

  Carrie put her knife down, wiped her hands on her apron, and looked out the window to see who Veronica meant. “Why, that’s Daniel!”

  “Who’s he?” Veronica asked.

  “Carrie’s husband,” Emma said, raising an eyebrow.

  “He’s my grandson,” Yonnie added, in a voice of quiet pride. Seated at the kitchen table, Yonnie had been peeling apples for a pie. She had a trick of peeling the entire apple skin in one long ribbon—a talent that impressed Andy.

  Veronica shrugged. “Your husband is a babe, Carrie. He could be a male model.” They watched Daniel lift a bale of hay from the wagon and toss it onto a wheelbarrow. “He’s got muscles in his arms that look like ropes.”