A Courtship on Huckleberry Hill

by Jennifer Beckstrand

  Andy gripped the edge of his notebook. “We have been repeatedly shocked and troubled by the disrespectful way you have been known to treat parents, students, and the school board. A teacher should know when to keep silent in front of her elders.”

  It was more than Elsie could endure. “I know gute Amish girls are supposed to keep quiet, but I will not cower to anyone—not when I know I’m right and you’re wrong. You require a teacher to discipline die kinner, teach arithmetic and English, monitor the well-being of two dozen children for eight hours a day, and yet be as timid and meek as a mouse. Why do you want a weakling teaching your children?”

  Andy caught her words as if she’d been throwing rocks at him. “We do not want a weakling. We want someone compliant and dutiful. That is why we are replacing you immediately with my daughter Rose. She knows how a teacher should behave.”

  Rose Mast teaching school? The poor girl couldn’t even do fractions.

  Elsie held her breath. If she started laughing, she’d end up crying, and she refused to do either in front of Andy Mast. If Rose wanted to be the teacher that badly, Elsie would gladly step aside, and if Rose thought this would make Sam fall at her feet, she was welcome to try. He was more likely to come storming up the stairs to yell at her, and she was welcome to it. Elsie was through with Sam and his out-of-control temper.

  She almost lost her composure when she thought of the children, but what did it matter? They’d barely remember her in a few weeks. They never needed to know how much she cared.

  Mammi and Dawdi rose to their feet at the same time. “Vell,” Mammi said, “you can go now. I’m wonderful sorry you came.”

  Elsie cracked a smile at the look on Menno Kiem’s face. No one expected such feistiness from Mammi.

  The school board didn’t need to be told twice. They stood in unison and marched to the door as if the house was on fire.

  Mammi followed them. “Menno, tell Freeman I am working on a girl for him, but I have to find a granddaughter who will like his cleft chin. I’ll let you know. And Abe, how is Edna doing after surgery?”

  “Uh, fine,” Abe stammered, obviously unsure of what to make of Mammi’s sudden friendliness.

  “I’ll bring some soup next week.”

  “Okay.”

  Menno leaned his head back into the house. “I hope your head feels better, Miss Stutzman.”

  Elsie had absolutely nothing to say to that.

  Mammi shut the door a little too forcefully. “Well,” she said. “Well. Well. Andy Mast has a chip on his shoulder as big as a tree stump. I’m so angry, I could spit. But I’m not very gute at it.”

  Dawdi reached out and squeezed Elsie’s hand. “I’m wonderful proud of how you told them what was what. Andy Mast got so mad he turned yellow.”

  Mammi huffed out a breath. “Abe was just embarrassed. He’s never been able to stand up to Andy. They know there’s no better teacher than you, Elsie. It’s plain jealousy. That’s what it is. Andy has wanted Rose to have that job for three years, but everybody knows she’s as thick as a pile of manure.”

  This time Elsie did laugh. She laughed until her head throbbed and her back ached. Then she sank into a kitchen chair, covered her face, and sobbed.

  She would never laugh again.

  And the fried chicken was definitely soggy.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Sam was thoroughly ashamed of himself, and Elsie had to know immediately. Why did it take him so long to learn a lesson? How many times had he lost his temper and said something to Elsie that he didn’t mean? How many times had he jumped to conclusions and stomped to the school, only to be put in his place by Elsie’s gute sense?

  He’d been wonderful shaken up last night, but there was no justification for what he’d said to her, even if he’d been so scared he hadn’t been able to think straight. He’d been wrong. Again. When it came to Elsie, Sam had been wrong more than he’d been right, and he wouldn’t blame her for refusing to speak to him ever again.

  You should have kept them inside, he’d said, as if he was smart enough to know—as if he had been there. He didn’t know anything, and he’d been a fool to say something so hesslich, ugly. He’d gone home to be with his bruders because he’d been frightened and angry and confused. Wally had nearly been killed. Sam had needed someone to blame, and Elsie was the easy target.

  He was a dumkoff, pure and simple.

  At about three this morning, he’d realized that if the children had been inside when the tornado hit, many of them would have been injured by the broken glass and other flying objects. It would have been worse had they stayed inside. Elsie probably hadn’t realized it, but letting the children go outside probably saved them from many severe injuries.

  And he had chastised her because she didn’t know what tornado weather looked like.

  She was never going to speak to him again.

  Sam snapped the reins to get the horse to go a little faster. His three bruders and Reuben were in the back seat of the buggy, and Maggie and Mamm sat alongside him in the front. They had all volunteered to help clean up the classroom so it would be ready for school on Monday. Sam pulled into the school yard. Another buggy was already here, but it wasn’t the open-air buggy Elsie usually drove. Maybe she’d brought her mammi and dawdi with her.

  Sam parked the buggy next to Elsie’s and set the brake. “Wally, take care of the horse, would you? Perry, can you bring in the cardboard?” He had to get in there and apologize to Elsie first thing. He wouldn’t feel right until she knew what an idiot he was. Vell, she already knew what an idiot he was. He just hoped she wouldn’t change her mind about loving him, because he loved her something wonderful and he’d never forgive himself if something he’d said made her question that for a minute.

  He opened the door and bounded up the stairs, his heart aching like a taut rubber band. Rose, bundled in a knitted shawl, sat at Elsie’s desk stacking papers into nice, neat piles. “What are you doing here?” he said. It sounded like an accusation, when it should have been a compliment. It was wonderful nice of Rose to come and help clean up the school, especially since she didn’t like Elsie all that much.

  She jumped to her feet and gave him a glowing, gushing, all-is-forgiven smile. “You came.”

  “Of course I came. I brought my whole family.”

  Her smile stretched all the way across her face. “Ach, Sam! I knew you would come. I just knew it. Miss Stutzman did her best to pit us against each other, but I knew you’d come around in the end.”

  Sam clenched his teeth. “I don’t want to talk about Elsie.”

  To his surprise, she smiled even wider. “Neither do I, ever, ever again.” She skipped from behind Elsie’s desk and weaved between two rows of desks that had been shifted and upended in the wind. “I’m wonderful glad to see you. My dat is coming soon to measure the windows. I wanted to get a head start on things.” She bent over and picked up two pieces of paper at her feet.

  “It wonders me when Elsie will be here,” Sam said. She should be the one to organize the papers and such. She knew where everything went, where Rose could only guess.

  Rose made a sour face. “She won’t come. She’s petty like that.”

  Sam’s bruders, Maggie, his mamm, and Reuben trudged up the stairs. Perry and Reuben each carried several collapsed cardboard boxes. Yesterday, Ben Hoover had covered the windows with garbage bags in case it rained, but the cardboard would be a better window covering until new windows came. They would make the classroom extra dark but would do better than plastic in keeping out the cold. Sam righted one of the desks and directed Reuben and Perry to stack the cardboard on it.

  Wally was still limping, but Sam hadn’t heard one word of complaint from him since the tornado, so Sam didn’t bring it up. Wally had done something truly amazing yesterday. The pain in his leg probably paled in comparison to the satisfaction he must be feeling for saving Maizy’s life.

  It was wrong to set oneself above others, but Sam had never been more
proud in his whole life.

  “The Hoovers are here,” Danny said. “And Jethro Glick and the Bylers.”

  “I don’t wonder but the whole school will turn out to help,” Sam said. It was a testament to the love they had for Elsie and the sense of belonging they had to the school. They had been through something traumatic together. An experience like that tended to bond people to one another.

  Rose beamed. “I’m humbled that they would do this for me. And honored. It’s wonderful nice.”

  Rose thought the world rotated around her. Just because she had been the first to arrive didn’t mean anyone was coming specifically to help her.

  Sam built a fire in the stove, then set to work measuring the windows. Rose had said her dat was going to do it, but he wanted to finish measuring so the windows could be covered as soon as possible. The room was freezing cold. Simon Mischler soon arrived, and he and Wally covered each window after Sam measured it.

  Mamm was usually withdrawn in a group, but Sam was pleased to see that she set to work assigning people to tasks in the school and outside. To keep them from stepping on the broken glass, younger children were sent to the playground to pick up trash and other debris. Toby Byler and his crew found four mitts, two more straw hats, and an unbroken chicken egg. They also picked up seven bags of trash and a pair of trousers that must have blown off someone’s clothesline.

  Rose announced that she was in charge of rehanging all the leaves on the paper tree, though Serena Hoover had to completely reconstruct the tree before Rose could hang anything. Other parents and children picked up papers and books, straightened pictures, cleaned the chalkboard, and swept and swept and swept. Five fraas had brought their brooms and mops. They pushed the desks out from the center of the room, swept up the glass and dirt, and mopped. Arie Burkholder insisted they mop three times. Glass had a way of slipping into crevices and cracks, and she wanted to be triple sure they got it all.

  “You’re all so very nice to come and help me,” Rose said more than once. Sam did his best not to roll his eyes.

  Sam finished measuring and Wally and Simon Mischler covered the rest of the windows, and still Elsie hadn’t come. Sam frowned. It wasn’t like Elsie to leave the work for others to do, especially at her own school. Where was she? His heart twisted at the possibility that she had been hurt worse than Sam had realized last night. Maybe she was in the hospital with a concussion or something.

  He slid the measuring tape into his small toolbox and picked the toolbox off the floor so Serena Hoover could mop under it. “Has anybody seen Miss Stutzman yet?” he said, loud enough so everyone in the classroom could hear him.

  There was a lot of head shaking and a few “naes.” Sam’s concern grew. He should go find her.

  “I told you, Sam. She’s not coming,” Rose said, as she casually rolled a piece of tape in her fingers.

  She was so sure of herself. “How do you know?”

  Rose glanced from one face to another. “Well, you know.” She paused as a shadow of doubt passed over her features. “Doesn’t everybody know? I . . . thought everybody knew.”

  “What don’t we know?” Benjamin Hoover asked.

  Rose pulled some tape from the dispenser, but she pulled too hard and got a foot-long piece. She wadded it up into a ball as she forced the corners of her mouth into an uncomfortable smile. “It had to be done, didn’t it, Sam?”

  Sam went mute. What was she trying to pull him into?

  The entire room seemed to freeze, half of the eyes turned to Rose, half turned to Sam.

  It was obvious Rose hadn’t been expecting this reaction. She sort of smiled and whimpered at the same time. “We were all so upset yesterday. Sam and I agreed that Miss Stutzman should not have let die kinner out to recess when a tornado was coming. She was negligee in her duties.”

  Did she mean negligent?

  Sam’s head started pounding right at the base of his skull. Had Rose said something cruel to Elsie? Had she used Sam’s name to justify herself?

  “How could she know a storm was coming?” Benjamin Hoover asked. There was a murmur of assent around the room.

  Arie thudded her mop against the floor. “She saved everybody.”

  “Did you see the big cut on her head?” another mater said. “She wasn’t negligent. I think she was very brave.”

  “Me too.”

  Rose’s smile drooped as she realized that not everyone agreed with her. In fact, she’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who did. “Well . . . me and Sam . . . my dat . . . the school board met yesterday and decided that Miss Stutzman will no longer be teaching at Mapleview School.”

  It felt as if someone had punched Sam in the gut.

  More murmuring from the parents. Wally gaped at Sam as if Sam had pulled Wally’s other leg off. Sam shook his head at Wally. No matter what he had said to Rose yesterday, this was not his fault. At least he hoped it wasn’t. Could one careless word really have set such a disaster in motion? He was going to be sick.

  “They fired Miss Stutzman?” Reuben said, not bothering to keep his voice down around his elders.

  “They should have consulted with the parents first,” Simon Mischler said. “My Maizy won’t go to school if Miss Stutzman isn’t the teacher.”

  “Good news!” Rose spread her arms wide and tried to pretend her announcement hadn’t gone horribly wrong. “I am going to be the new teacher.” She had the nerve to reach out and tousle Wally’s hair. Wally yanked away from her.

  Sam wasn’t sure how Rose had expected people to react, but she probably hadn’t expected what she got. Freeman Zook and Adam Byler started yelling at no one in particular, and the fraas put their heads together and whispered.

  Wally strode to Sam. Even with his limp, he looked as if he were on the attack. “What did you do?”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “You never liked Miss Stutzman. You got her fired.”

  Sam couldn’t swallow. He could barely breathe. “I didn’t. You have to believe me.”

  Rose’s eyes flashed like a wildcat cornered in a barn. “She kissed someone in this classroom,” she shrieked. “Sam knows. We had to tell the school board.”

  Sam wanted to shrink into a little ball. He’d been the one who’d kissed Elsie. Had he been the one to get her fired because of it?

  “You’re making that up,” Benjamin Hoover said, and his eyes were on Sam, not Rose.

  Simon Mischler folded his arms across his chest. “It’s a sin to gossip.”

  The noise in the classroom rose to a dull roar. No one was happy about this, and they were all looking at Sam as if he’d betrayed them.

  Wally especially. “You told the school board that Miss Stutzman kissed somebody?”

  “Nae, Wally.”

  Wally leaned close and lowered his voice. “You’re the one who kissed her. You wanted her to get in trouble.”

  Sam hesitated a second too long. He had been the one to kiss her. This whole thing was his fault. “Let me explain.”

  Wally scowled. “You always hated her. You always hated me, never wanted me to do anything but play video games.” He threw the trash in his hand to the floor. “I hate you. I’ll hate you forever.”

  He turned and hobbled quickly down the stairs. Sam had no choice but to follow him. “Wally, wait.” Wally ran out the door and started for home on foot. It took about three seconds for Sam to catch up with him. “Wally, stop and let me explain.”

  Wally was having none of it, so Sam grabbed his collar and wrenched him backward. Wally toppled to the ground. Sam hadn’t meant to pull that hard, but now that his bruder was in a position to listen, he saw no need to let him up. He pressed his palm to Wally’s chest and held him fast. Wally struggled and carried on, kicking his legs, both fake and real, and waving his hands like a drowning man, but Sam was too strong. “Listen to me,” he yelled, putting more pressure on Wally’s chest. “Stop it, and listen to me.”

  Wally finally gave up, probably because he could see
he was getting nowhere and the longer he laid there, the wetter his coat got. “Let go of me,” he said weakly. Tears rolled out of his eyes and into his ears.

  “Wally,” Sam said. “I am the one who kissed Elsie, but if I had known that it was going to get her in trouble, I never would have done it.” At least he wouldn’t have done it at the school.

  “Then why did you tell Rose?”

  “I didn’t. Remember that day Reuben’s dat hit him? Rose brought yummasetti and then she walked over to the school to check on me. She saw us kissing. I didn’t tell her anything.”

  Wally wiped a tear from the corner of his eye. “She told us she was going to the school.”

  “I’m not lying to you.”

  “What about that other thing you said about Elsie? That she shouldn’t have let us go outside yesterday?”

  Sam heaved out a breath to try to get rid of the ache in his chest. “I was scared, and I said it without really thinking. I shouldn’t have said it.”

  “She was just being nice. We wanted to play softball.” He let out a shuddering breath. “I wanted to play softball. She was trying to make me happy.”

  Sam’s heart just about broke. “It wasn’t your fault, Wally.”

  “We just wanted to go outside. I used to hate her, but I didn’t want her to get fired.”

  Sam lifted his hand from Wally’s chest and pulled him to his feet. “If you had stayed in the classroom, what do you think would have happened?”

  Wally thought about that for a minute. “Glass blew everywhere. Somebody could have lost an eye or something.”

  “Jah. It was better you were outside, even though you and Maizy almost blew away.” Sam stifled a shudder. Gotte had been watching out for them.

  Wally gave Sam a hard shove. “You’ve got to go get her, Sam. You’ve got to make her come back.”

  “She didn’t leave. The school board fired her. She can’t come back without their permission.”

  “She’s the best teacher I ever had,” Wally said. “You’ve got to make them. Go talk to the school board and make them bring her back.”