Elsie shuddered. She hated to think what that punishment looked like, but if she said something, anything, she might only make it worse for Reuben. She’d never felt so helpless in her life.
Reuben nodded, close to tears. He looked as if he felt more sorry for her than he did for himself. “I’ll be all right, Miss Stutzman. We will see you tomorrow.” He turned his face toward Wally but didn’t look him in the eye. It was obvious that along with everything else, he was embarrassed, painfully embarrassed. “See you later, Wally.”
“Jah, bye,” Wally said, his voice as raspy as a gravel truck.
It was all Elsie could do not to grab onto Reuben’s arm and insist that he stay. That boy needed a warm hug and a whole plate of pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. And a safe place. He for sure and certain wasn’t going to find shelter at home.
Alvin marched down the stairs, with Reuben following. When he got to the bottom of the stairs, Reuben turned and gave Elsie a weak, reassuring smile, almost as if he was resigned to his fate and didn’t want Elsie to worry.
She looked down at the toilet paper in her hand. She couldn’t remember how it had gotten there. All this pain and upset over a few rolls of toilet paper! She had heard from a few of her friends that things were very bad at the Schmuckers’ house. She simply hadn’t known how bad. She set the toilet paper down and plopped herself into one of the desks before her knees gave out. Her hands trembled uncontrollably, and she laced her fingers together to try to stop the shaking.
Wally hadn’t moved from his spot near the wall, as if he’d been glued into place. “Miss Stutzman,” he said, almost as if he were afraid she’d hear him, “I told Reuben to take the toilet paper. We thought it was a gute joke to play on you.”
She attempted a smile. “It’s all right, Wally.”
“But it’s my fault.”
“It’s nobody’s fault. Reuben’s dat . . .”
Wally looked positively stricken as he curled his fingers around the staple remover. “It’s my fault. Reuben is going to get a whipping.”
Elsie couldn’t bear the thought of it. Though she felt too weak to stand and too helpless to stop it, she jumped to her feet. She couldn’t sit idly by, knowing what Reuben’s fater was going to do. Reuben was just a boy, and somebody needed to protect him.
Something inside her cried out in despair, and she sank into the desk again. She was five foot one on a gute day. Alvin stood at least a foot taller, with solid arms and a thick, tree-trunk neck. She couldn’t use force on him, even if she wanted to.
She pulled the air into her lungs and forced it out again, over and over. There was only one person who could help her, and he hated the very sight of her.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Sam emerged from the barn with his full bucket of milk and almost ducked back inside when he saw who was standing on his porch.
“Vie geht, Sam?” Rose called. She smiled and raised a covered casserole dish in the air for his inspection. “I told Maggie I’d bring yummasetti for dinner tonight.”
Sam forged ahead, even though it meant he’d meet Rose on the porch and feel obligated to invite her in because she’d been so nice to bring dinner. Rose appeared on his porch at least three days a week right after he milked the cows. Either he was going to have to change his schedule or stiffen his spine and hurt Rose’s feelings. She was becoming a nuisance.
Ach, vell. She wasn’t becoming a nuisance. She was a nuisance, and he didn’t have time for her anymore.
He tried to swallow the resentment that felt like a bigger and bigger lump in his throat. Nuisance or not, Rose had been a loyal friend, giving him good advice about Wally, baking things for his family, and supporting him whenever Wally threw a tantrum. But he couldn’t stand her hovering around the house, poking her nose into his business, giving her opinion whether it was asked for or not. Despite all her protests, she was scheming to make Sam her boyfriend, and he wouldn’t go along with it. He just wouldn’t do it.
They’d have to have another talk.
The thought irritated him to no end. How many times did he have to break up with one girl whom he’d never dated in the first place?
“Maggie always works later on Fridays,” Rose said, her smile getting wider with each step Sam took toward her. “I told her I’d be happy to bring dinner.”
Sam trudged up the porch. “You didn’t have to do that. You don’t have to do any of it.”
Rose giggled. “Nonsense. It’s what friends do.”
He opened the door for her, and she made a beeline for the kitchen. He followed. “Cook at 350 for half an hour.” She bent over the oven and turned the knob. “I’ll preheat right now.”
Sam set the milk on the floor next to the back door. “Denki, Rose. I’ll put it in the oven and be sure to set the timer.” He took a couple of steps toward the front room. He needed to get her out before she settled in and invited herself to dinner. “Denki for coming.”
Rose closed the oven door. “How is Wally doing? Lizzy says he hasn’t played softball once this week and he’s pretty mad about it.”
This was the one gute reason to keep Rose around. She told him things that went on at school. “He still whines about it, but he can tell I’m not going to budge.”
“I’m proud of you, Sam. It takes courage to stick to what you know is right.”
He nodded, surprised to realize that Rose’s approval meant almost nothing to him. Before he could usher her out of the house, he heard noises coming from downstairs, but not the usual noises of death and guns and mayhem. At least two of his bruders were down there talking to each other. They must have come home from school while he was milking, but Perry and Danny weren’t allowed to watch Wally play games until their chores were done.
Without another word, he left Rose standing in the kitchen. He hadn’t meant to be rude, but he was puzzled, and Rose knew her way to the front door. He jogged down the stairs, and for a second, he thought he was in the wrong house. Wally’s sofa was in the same spot, along with the rug and two ratty throw pillows, but the television, the Xbox, and all of Wally’s games were gone. Perry and Danny were standing with their backs to the sofa absorbed in what looked like a very serious conversation.
His bruders turned and looked at him as if they’d just been caught doing something naughty.
“We were going to tell you,” Danny said.
Perry nudged him with an elbow. “We weren’t hiding it. He would have found out.”
Sam had never suspected that his younger bruders might be jealous of Wally, but maybe they were, and maybe they had finally had enough. He frowned. That didn’t sound like Perry and Danny. They had always been so understanding. “What did you do?”
Rose clomped down the stairs behind him. Ach! Could that girl just one time take the hint and let herself out?
“We didn’t do anything,” Perry said. “It was Wally, last night while you were at the auction meeting.”
Now they had Sam completely confused. “What about Wally?”
Danny nodded and pressed his lips together as if he was the authority on Wally and his TV. “An Englischer came over, and Wally sold everything to him for a thousand dollars.”
Perry rolled his eyes. “It wasn’t a thousand.”
“Yes, it was,” Danny whined. “He’s got a whole wad of money in his pillowcase.”
“Not a thousand. More like three hundred.”
“He got cheated,” Rose said, making Sam wish harder and harder that she would just go away.
Sam took the last step and walked around the room, stopping in the exact spot where the TV used to be. “He sold everything?”
“Jah,” Danny said. “He wants a new leg.”
A . . . new leg? Stunned beyond belief, Sam shuffled to the sofa and sank into its depths. It really was a soft sofa. No wonder Wally liked it so much. “He sold his Xbox to buy a new leg?”
Perry folded his arms, almost casually, but Sam could see the tension playing at the corners of his mouth.
“He wants to play softball.”
Anger flared inside him like a gasoline-dowsed flame. Softball. If he never heard that word again, it would be too soon.
Rose was making herself increasingly unwelcome. “Sam has already told Wally he can’t play, no matter what.”
Sam pressed his palm to his forehead and massaged his temples with his fingers. Why did Wally want to play softball when it had brought him so much pain? It was too much to comprehend that he would sell his precious Xbox for a game of softball. Those video games had been his best friends for more than four years. He took comfort in playing them. They made him forget he was a cripple. They gave him a little happiness in his wearisome life.
Sam’s heart sank. He hadn’t thought of Wally as a cripple for months yet. Until today.
Someone might as well have dumped Rose’s pan of yummasetti on his head.
Wally was determined to be something other than the cripple everybody expected him to be, even though it was easier to sit in this dark, suffocating basement and waste his life away. Elsie knew it. Elsie had always known it. She’d done her best in spite of Sam and his misplaced sense of responsibility. He had tried to protect Wally and made them both miserable in the process.
If it had been up to Sam, Wally would be nothing but a cripple until the day he died. The self-reproach nearly smothered him. He had tried to spare Wally the pain of failure, the pain of shame and hard things. But it was the hard things that gave Wally a purpose, that made him try for happiness, even if the happiness was hard to come by and the purpose was impossible to see.
Softball was everything. Elsie knew. She had always known. Softball was a game that normal children played, something Wally could be good at, even though it was hard. Even though he fell and banged up his leg, or got blisters from trying to hit the ball. That home run had been Wally’s first great accomplishment in Sam couldn’t remember how long. No wonder Wally wanted to play. No wonder he was willing to sell everything and risk his bruder’s wrath. Softball was everything and the first thing. The first step.
And Elsie knew it.
The thought of Elsie drenched him like a warm summer rain. How had he lived without her for so many months? How had he taken breath after breath without her in his life? How could he sit here without her next to him?
How deerich, foolish, and blind could one person be?
He had to make it right. With Wally, with his family, and especially with Elsie. It had taken him months to realize he loved her. He wasn’t about to go one more minute without letting her know.
He stood so quickly his head started spinning. Or maybe it was his sudden, breathtaking realization that he loved Elsie Stutzman that made him so giddy. “I’ve got to go,” he said, to no one in particular. Surely Elsie would still be at the school.
Danny chewed on his fingernail. “Are you mad?”
Sam answered by sliding his hands under Danny’s arms, picking him up and swinging him around the room. Danny caught his breath and then laughed. Sam put him down. “I’m not mad. If Wally is happy, I’m happy.” Danny made a face. His eight-year-old brain couldn’t grasp the journey Sam had taken in just a few short minutes. Sam took the stairs two at a time and only remembered Rose when he got to the top. “I’ll be back soon,” he called from the top. “Rose, will you see that the yummasetti makes it into the oven?”
“Okay,” she called back, and the uncertainty in her voice was unmistakable. He felt a little guilty that he didn’t care, but he’d made his feelings very plain to Rose. If she was hurt, it was because she had chosen to ignore his warnings.
He was retrieving his hat from the hook when the realization punched him in the gut. He loved Elsie with all his heart, but she could never love him. He’d been petulant and rude and demanding, stubborn and proud. Right now she was probably thinking she’d be better off with that Wyman person in Charm, or even Vernon Schmucker—anybody but Sam Sensenig, the resentful bruder who never held his tongue and had insulted her in a hundred different ways.
The clock ticked as he stood there wallowing in regret. He loved Elsie. Did he have any hope of making her love him back?
Sounds from the basement got him moving. He didn’t want to explain anything to Rose. He strode across the living room and opened the front door. Ach, du lieva. His lungs seized, and he wouldn’t have been able to take a breath if his life depended on it—which it did. Elsie, looking like an angel from his dreams, was walking up his porch steps with Wally right behind her.
A few seconds ago, he had been aching to talk to Elsie. Now he struggled to speak, because her green eyes paralyzed his tongue. She was so beautiful. He thought he’d have at least a few minutes to think of the words that would convince her to love him.
Wally tore up the steps on his crutches, looking like a tragedy had befallen him. “We need your help.”
Elsie’s red-rimmed eyes knocked him flat. She’d been crying. With his heart beating against his ribs, he wrapped his fingers around her arms and nudged her closer. She caught her breath as surprise and grief traveled across her face. “Elsie, what’s wrong?”
“Sam,” she managed to squeeze out before her voice faltered.
“What is it?”
She gazed at him with those exquisite green eyes. He’d never breathe again. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know where else to go. My dawdi is eighty-seven. I couldn’t ask him to . . .”
When she paused, he pulled her closer. “What’s wrong, Elsie? I’ll do anything.”
“Reuben needs your help.”
“His dat came to the school,” Wally said, panting as if he’d run a race.
Sam clenched his jaw. Alvin at the school couldn’t have been a gute thing.
Elsie blinked back fresh tears. “Reuben’s been stealing toilet paper from the school, and Alvin found out.”
Wally’s knuckles were white around his crutches. “He hit Reuben right across the face. Both Miss Stutzman and me saw him.”
Sam’s anger flared. With one hand firmly holding on to Elsie, he reached out, wrapped his other hand around Wally’s neck, and pulled him into an embrace. “Did he hurt you?”
Wally relaxed against Sam’s warmth and disintegrated into a flood of tears. “I just stood there like a coward. I didn’t know what to do.”
Elsie smoothed her hand up and down Wally’s arm. “Reuben knows you’re his friend. Anything you did would have made it worse.”
Sam was still having trouble breathing. “Did he hurt you, Elsie?” he whispered.
She looked away. “Nae. I am well.” She didn’t look well. Seeing something like that would have shaken almost anyone. She placed her hand over his hand—the one he still had wrapped around her arm. He felt the jolt of her touch all the way up his shoulder. “I know what you think of me, but I need your help.” She didn’t know anything of the sort, but now was not the time to tell her how much he loved her or beg her forgiveness. “I’m afraid of what Alvin might do to Reuben.”
“He said he was going to punish him,” Wally said, sobbing against Sam’s chest.
“Are they still at the school?”
“They went home.” Elsie shuddered. “Alvin was mad enough to strike Reuben in front of the two of us. What will he do in private with such a hot temper?”
There was no telling, not with a man like Alvin Schmucker.
“I should have helped him,” Wally said. “I just . . . I was so scared. The toilet paper was my fault.”
Sam resisted the urge to pull Elsie close and hold her until his heart slowed its breakneck pace. “What do you want me to do?”
“If you could go talk to him—give his temper time to cool—I just want Reuben to be all right.”
“I’ll go right now. I only need time to saddle my horse.”
“Oh.” She sighed as if she’d been holding all her sorrows in for a very long time. A tear rolled down her cheek. “Denki, Sam. Denki, a thousand times.”
“I want to come,” Wally said. “I want to help Reuben.”
Wally sniffled and nodded. “I suppose.”
Sam removed Wally’s hat and ruffled his hair. “There was nothing you could have done but make it worse. It was better that you did what you did.”
“Miss Stutzman wasn’t afraid. She got right between Reuben and his dat and told him to stop. Reuben’s dat looked like he was going to spit on her.”
“I was wonderful afraid, Wally. Don’t believe for one second that I wasn’t.”
Sam’s heart hurt as if someone had ripped it into four pieces. He clamped his arms around his chest to keep from pulling Elsie into a hug and never letting go. How could he have ever yelled at this woman? How could he have ever not loved her?
Wally pressed his lips together as the line between his eyes deepened. “She lied, Sam. She bore false witness to protect Reuben. I could never be that brave.”
Sam heard someone behind him and knew who it was without turning around. He should have left Rose on the porch with the casserole and never invited her into the house.
“What are you doing here?” Rose said, propping her hand on her hip and scowling at Elsie as if she were a door-to-door salesman.
“Sorry, Rose,” Sam said. “I’ve got to go. You can let yourself out.”
Rose turned her attention to Wally, who was still swiping at his nose and fighting the tears. “Danny told us everything. You sold your Xbox to buy a new leg so you can play softball. Sam isn’t going to let you play softball, so you might as well forget it. Don’t let Miss Stutzman get your hopes up.”
“I’m sorry, Sam,” Wally said.
Sam stretched his lips into an unyielding line. “We’ll talk about that later. I’ve got to get to Reuben’s.” He glanced at Rose and then at Elsie. He couldn’t ask Elsie to stay here with someone who disliked her so much. “Will you wait for me at the school, Elsie? Or do you want to go home?” He didn’t even know where she lived.
A Courtship on Huckleberry Hill Page 26
