“Wally doesn’t need to change. Change only brings him pain.”
Elsie wasn’t going to argue. She knew how Sam felt, and he was stubborn enough to hold that opinion until he choked to death on it. “Reuben and Wally used to bully the kinner. As upsetting as it is, it was something they did together, something they shared as friends. Now Wally is trying to change that. He doesn’t want to be a bully anymore. You should be proud of him.”
“He won’t do that again. He knows he’ll get in trouble with the school board.”
“That’s not the only reason, Sam. He wants to be a better person. He wants to be more like you.”
Sam caught her words with surprise and disbelief. “Why would he want to be like me?”
“He loves you. He looks up to you more than any other person in his life.”
Sam turned his head and focused his gaze out one of the windows. “He shouldn’t.”
Elsie pursed her lips. Sam was so stubborn. “Wally is trying to bring Reuben along with him, to help Reuben be a better person too, but Reuben is afraid. He sees Wally changing, and he’s terrified he’ll lose the one friend he has.”
“So Reuben hit my bruder?”
“Toby Byler brought a twenty-dollar bill he got for his birthday to school today because he wanted to show everyone the shiny stripe. Reuben tried to take it at recess. When Wally told him to stop, Reuben smacked him. Wally didn’t even get mad. He’s still determined to be Reuben’s friend.”
“Why didn’t Wally tell me the truth?” Sam said.
“He doesn’t want you going after Reuben or telling Reuben’s dat.”
If anything, Sam seemed to harden like ice on the lake. “Someone has to hold him responsible for hitting my bruder.”
Elsie’s heart leaped into her throat, and she reached out and clamped her fingers around Sam’s wrist. “Please, Sam. Promise me you won’t go to Reuben’s dat.”
He frowned. “I’m not that cruel. You should know that.”
“Wally wants to fix things with Reuben by himself.”
Sam’s frown got deeper. “He can’t, and you shouldn’t let him. I will not stand for my bruder to get hurt again. Rose warned me not to get sucked into your schemes. I didn’t listen the first time.”
If Sam thought mentioning Rose would convince Elsie of anything, he didn’t know her well. If Rose had minded her business in the first place, they wouldn’t be having this conversation. “Reuben needs Wally. Wally can’t just abandon the friendship because he might get hurt. We need to help Reuben. All of us.”
“Nae, we don’t. You will make sure Wally stays away from Reuben from now until the end of the school year. That’s an order.” He immediately averted his eyes.
How dare he try that bit of nonsense? “Go home and tell your girlfriend that I do not take orders from her or you. So what if her dat is on the school board? He can come talk to me if he has a problem with how I run my classroom. I don’t even care if they fire me.”
“She’s not my girlfriend.”
Of all the things he could have said, that was all he had to say for himself? Ach! If she had been a hundred pounds heavier and twelve inches taller, she would have shoved Sam down the stairs, pushed him out the door, and hefted him onto his horse. Instead, she contained her rage and gave him her dirtiest look. “Go home, Sam. I’m sure your girlfriend will make a strawberry-vanilla cake to make Wally feel better. But don’t let Wally cut it. He shouldn’t be allowed to use a knife. He might get hurt.”
Sam looked like lightning about to strike. His eyes grew wide, and his nostrils flared.
Elsie didn’t even care. Nothing made her feel quite as powerful as righteous indignation. Let the school board fire her. She could marry the boy Mammi had picked out for her, or even go back to Charm and marry Wyman Wagler, and never have to worry about a job again. Or maybe not. She’d regret Wyman Wagler before she even made that decision.
“And one more thing,” she said, marching to her desk like a runaway parade. She pulled a piece of paper from the bottom drawer, marched back to Sam, and shoved it into his hand. “Here are those numbers I put together for your dairy.”
The anger fled from his face as he eyed the crinkled paper in his hand. “There’s not going to be a dairy.”
She didn’t want to feel the profound sadness she felt at that declaration, but she did. Sam had given up on his dairy out of guilt or weariness or some other heavy emotion that pressed down on him, but he wasn’t going to get her sympathy, at least none that she would show. She sighed as the anger seemed to seep from her pores like sweat. “Go home, Sam. I need to lock up the school.”
“You’ll promise me to keep Wally and Reuben away from each other?”
“I’ll do what I feel is best for everyone. Go to the school board if you must. I’m done arguing.” She walked past him and down the stairs. He followed. She opened the door for him, and he got close enough that she could smell leather and spring. “From now on, if you have something you want to say to me, please send a note. I’d rather not have to speak to you again.”
Something desperate and pleading flashed in his eyes, as if he wanted to say he was sorry, as if he didn’t like the idea of never speaking to her again. But it disappeared as fast as it had come. He squared his shoulders and put on his hat. “Okay. Fine with me. I don’t have the time for this anyway.”
The pain in her chest was almost unbearable. She tried to draw a breath. “Goodbye, Sam.”
“Goodbye, Elsie.”
Without looking back, he walked out, mounted his horse, and rode away. She watched the road until he was completely out of sight.
Oy, anyhow. She’d fallen in love with the only person who couldn’t love her back.
She’d never be happy again.
Chapter Twenty
The cold February sun beat down on Sam’s neck as he kicked at the dirt clods and hard blocks of snow in his field. He squinted up at the sky. It was a rare sunny day. He should enjoy the warmth while he could. It was likely to cloud over and leave Wisconsin in shadow until March.
Another month and he could think about plowing. The thought of spring usually filled him with excitement and renewed energy for the hard work ahead. This year, he couldn’t so much as muster a smile. Plowing and planting seemed as futile as getting Wally to obey him or asking Rose to stop making him a cake every week.
It had been easier when Wally was cooperative—when he sat in the basement and played his video games like a good boy. But after he’d gone to the hospital with Elsie, the video games hadn’t been good enough. Miss Stutzman had gotten to Wally somehow, and now Wally wouldn’t go quietly into the basement after school. He paced aimlessly around the house and ranted and raved about needing a new leg and wanting to play softball.
Since Sam hadn’t been able to convince Miss Stutzman, he had ordered Wally to stay away from Reuben Schmucker at school, and Wally had out and out told him no. What was the world coming to when a boy wouldn’t obey his older bruder? And short of going to school with Wally every day, there was nothing Sam could do about it. He couldn’t talk to Reuben, because Reuben might decide to take his anger out on Wally, and Sam wouldn’t go to Reuben’s fater, because Reuben’s fater might decide to take his anger out on Reuben.
Miss Stutzman would never be able to convince Sam that being friends with Reuben was good for Wally. Elsie might have the greenest eyes and the prettiest face he’d ever seen, but she couldn’t begin to love Wally the way he did, and she most certainly didn’t know what was best for his bruder.
He didn’t regret anything he had said to her two weeks ago, except for maybe that part where he’d given her an order. He shouldn’t have done that. He’d known it was wrong even as it slipped from between his lips. She had nearly knocked him over with the fire and ice in her eyes.
Ach, du lieva. She was beautiful and feisty and had the power to make him forget his own name. If he wasn’t careful, she would wrap herself around his heart until he couldn’t thin
k straight. And if he needed anything right now, he needed his reason. He had to do what was best for Wally.
Rose always seemed to show up when he wasn’t in the mood to talk to her. She showed up a lot. He wasn’t in the mood very often. “It’s a wonderful sunny day,” Rose said, as she came up from behind him, shielding her eyes from the sun with one hand and carrying a covered plate in the other—no doubt some kind of cake to cheer him up or make him want a wife.
“You want to get me fat, don’t you?” Sam said, trying for more cheerfulness than he felt. He shouldn’t take his bad mood out on Rose. She’d been very kind to them, even though they were all a little sick of coconut and strawberry flavoring.
“The groundhog will for sure and certain see his shadow today,” Rose said.
Maybe she’d made him rodent-shaped cookies to celebrate Groundhog Day. “I don’t wonder that he will.”
“Does that mean six more weeks of winter or an early spring?”
Sam shrugged. “I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter one way or the other.”
Rose puckered her lips and squinted in his direction. “Tsk, tsk, Sam. You’ve been so gloomy, it’s like you take bad weather with you wherever you go.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve got a lot of things on my mind, I guess.” Why did he feel like he had to apologize to her—as if he had to ask her permission to be in a bad mood? It was none of her business what kind of mood he was in.
“You’re still fretting about that Christmas program, aren’t you?”
He gave her a slight nod. He had more serious concerns than the Christmas program, but he wasn’t inclined to share his troubles with Rose. She had the bad habit of getting her nose bent out of shape. And she had the tendency to tattle to her dat.
“You can stop worrying about that. No one thinks less of you for what Wally did. If the teacher controlled her scholars better, it never would have happened. I’ve never seen such a lack of discipline in all my years.”
Considering Rose was not yet twenty, Sam couldn’t muster much indignation. From what he had seen, Miss Stutzman handled her students and her classroom with intelligence and kindness. Despite what she had done to Wally, she was a gute teacher. A wunderbarr teacher.
His gut twisted every which way, and he had to hold his breath to make it stop. Why couldn’t he think of Elsie without breaking into a sweat?
Rose smoothed an imaginary piece of hair from her cheek. “People have been talking. They saw how the teacher ruined Wally. And then there was the paint and the Christmas program and the bullying that she didn’t even try to stop.”
Sam looked away and pretended to study a patch of ice in a depression in the ground. He should be agreeing wholeheartedly with everything Rose was saying, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He should be mad at Elsie for Wally’s sake, but at this moment, his anger felt forced and misplaced. Rose shouldn’t be saying those things about Elsie. She didn’t know what she was talking about.
Rose leaned in. “Mattie Byler says the teacher has been stealing toilet paper from the bathroom.”
Stealing toilet paper? If he hadn’t been so dumbfounded, Sam would have laughed out loud. Amish fraas loved nothing better than to gossip. Who had dreamed up the toilet paper rumor? It was absurd. “Why would Miss Stutzman steal toilet paper?”
Her eyebrows rose as if she could not contain all her righteous indignation. “Why indeed?”
Sam huffed out a breath. “I don’t think Elsie would steal the toilet paper.”
Rose frowned. “Why are you defending her?”
Was he defending her? “I just . . . I don’t like gossip.”
“Gossip? Sam, she made Wally be a base—that children stepped on. Who knows what she won’t do?”
Sam didn’t want to argue. He knew from experience how touchy Rose could be about Elsie. He was touchy about Elsie himself. He nudged a clod of dirt with his boot.
Rose sighed. “We’ve got to cheer you up.” She took the tin foil off her plate to reveal six cupcakes with urine-yellow frosting arranged in a circle with a dirt-brown cupcake in the middle. “It’s a sunflower. Can you tell?”
Sam’s smile was weak at best. At least it wasn’t a whole cake. “Those are really something.”
Rose bounced on her toes and let out a little squeak. “I know. I have an Englisch friend at the library who showed me this thing called ‘Pinterest’ on the computer. You can make all sorts of designs with cupcakes and a little frosting.”
Sam bit his tongue before he said something that would hurt Rose’s feelings, like “Please don’t bother” or “Do you know how many of your cupcakes we’ve secretly fed to your goat?”
“I’m going to make a special cake for my birthday party,” Rose said. “I’m turning twenty in March. I can’t decide if I should make one in the shape of a buggy or a heart. What do you think?”
“It doesn’t matter to me.”
Rose stuck out her bottom lip. “Doesn’t matter to you? You’re going to be one of my special guests at my party. You’re going to get to eat it.”
Sam pressed his fingers into the back of his neck to stave off the thundering headache that was surely seconds away. How many times did they have to go over this? “Rose,” he groaned, “I just want to be friends. You need to find a boy your own age.”
She pursed her lips as if he’d offended her. “Aren’t I allowed to invite my best friend to my own party?”
He winced when he accidentally dug his nails into his skin. “We’re just friends, Rose. Just friends.”
She seemed to bounce without moving her feet. “Of course we’re friends. Why do you think I made you these cupcakes?”
A movement to his right caught his eye, and he turned to see Wally storming across the field, dodging furrows and dirt clods as best he could with his crutches. Wally looked to be itching for a fight, and after fending off Rose, Sam didn’t have the energy. It used to be so much easier when someone had hurt Wally’s feelings at school. Then Sam could march off to Miss Stutzman, demand justice, and be Wally’s hero. Now, in an effort to protect his bruder from himself, he was more Wally’s adversary than anything else.
“Sam,” Wally yelled when he was still a little ways off. “Miss Stutzman says I can’t play softball.”
Rose nodded. “Of course he can’t,” she whispered. “No good can come of it.”
Sam glanced at Rose, willing her to be still. No need for Wally to feel picked on by both of them. “I wrote her a note in November and told her you wouldn’t be playing anymore.”
Wally planted himself squarely between Sam and Rose, turning his back on Rose as if she weren’t even there. “That was November. It’s February, and I want to play. We chose up teams today, and Miss Stutzman made me sit it out.”
“You agreed that you shouldn’t play anymore.”
“That was wise,” Rose said, earning herself a glare from Wally.
“I was wrong,” Wally said. “I want to play, and so does Reuben. I think it would be good for him.”
Sam clenched his jaw. “I told you to stay away from Reuben.”
Wally lifted his chin slightly. “Reuben needs me.”
Rose obviously couldn’t bear to be left out of the conversation. She stepped around Wally to stand next to Sam. He wished she’d just go away. “Wally,” Rose scolded, “Reuben punched you. You shouldn’t be his friend.”
Wally sent another glare in Rose’s direction. “Miss Stutzman said he was frustrated, that’s all.”
Rose grunted her disapproval. “Miss Stutzman needs to quit defending her students’ bad behavior.”
“What else did Miss Stutzman say?” Sam said, before Rose could insert more of her opinions in a conversation she had no business being in.
“She talked to Reuben and then she asked me to talk to him, even though he hit me. I got him to stop taking kids’ money. He wouldn’t be on a team today because Miss Stutzman wouldn’t let me play. They need Reuben. He’s a gute fielder.”
Sam had a feeling the softball argument would be contentious enough without bringing Reuben into it. “Reuben can play softball if he wants. I’m not stopping him.”
“As long as he doesn’t hit the other players,” Rose interjected.
Sam wanted to growl. He opted for a deep frown. “Rose, why don’t you show Maggie the sunflower?”
Rose didn’t seem to grasp his meaning, or didn’t want to. She nodded earnestly and stayed put, gluing her gaze to Wally’s face as if she cared deeply about him.
“It would be good for Reuben to be on my team,” Wally said. “We make a good team, and Reuben helps the little kids when we play. Don’t you see, it’s gute for him.”
Sam put his arm around Wally’s shoulders. Wally shrugged it away. “Don’t you remember how upset you were that night? You broke the kitchen windows.”
“It’s different now,” Wally said. “I want the other kids to like me. I don’t want them to think of me as someone with one leg. I want them to think of me as a friend.”
“And if they don’t,” Sam said, “it will hurt worse than it did the first time. I’m doing this for your own good.”
Wally twisted his face into a scowl. “You mean it’s for your own good. You like it better when I sit in the basement and don’t bother anybody.”
It was like a blow to the shins, but Sam had to stand firm. He would never be able to make Wally see reason. He couldn’t even make Elsie see reason, and she wasn’t a fourteen-year-old boy. “Someone has to protect you, Wally, even if you don’t want protection.”
“Your bruder is right,” Rose said. “He’s only doing what’s best for you. That teacher is no good.”
Rose’s support only made Sam doubt himself. Elsie may have been misguided, but she was more than good.
Wally balanced on his crutches and kicked at a snowdrift at his feet. “I want to be normal. I want to play softball, and you can’t stop me.”
Sam pressed his lips into a hard line. Wally would get the hard truth, whether he wanted it or not. “You can’t hit on crutches, and you broke your prosthetic leg against the wall months ago.”
A Courtship on Huckleberry Hill Page 24
