by Jo Ann Brown
“All right. Do I need to leave them with someone in particular?”
“Look for Jim Zimmermann. He’s the auctioneer, and he asked that everything for the auction be brought into the barn before the bidding begins.”
Leah nodded, told Mamm where she was going and inched her way to the door. Outside, she was glad to see Mandy playing with the other kinder as if she’d known them her whole life. The kinder swarmed over the fire truck brought from the village with squeals of excitement. While a couple of the firefighters let some of the youngsters try on the heavy coats and other pieces of their turnout gear, other kinder lined up for their turns. She smiled when she saw Ezra’s brother, Amos, lifting off a little boy’s straw hat and putting a fireman’s helmet on his head. The kind’s smile was so big that it seemed impossible that his little face could contain it.
But tears welled up in her eyes. Johnny had loved mud sales, and he’d looked forward to the first one held in the spring. With his friends, he had sampled the different foods and watched the auction, cheering when one of the lots went for a high price. Like Ezra, he once had talked about joining the volunteer fire department. He would love today, and his absence shadowed her day.
Weaving between the buggies and through the crowd, which seemed much bigger than the population of the whole township, she went into the upper portion of the barn. It’d been swept clean, and the equipment and vehicles moved out. Hay remained stacked on one side, but chairs and a podium with a portable microphone attached had claimed the rest of the floor. People were already sitting, though the auction wasn’t scheduled to begin for almost an hour.
Where was the auctioneer? She saw a thin man with hardly any hair standing on the far side of the podium. She went to him and asked if he was the auctioneer. He quickly confirmed, in his deep voice, that he was and made a place on the overflowing tables for her quilts.
Leah thanked him and started back toward the door. She halted in midstep when she saw Ezra sitting alone to one side with several empty chairs between him and the next person. He was paging through a book and didn’t seem to realize she was there.
If she listened to her gut sense, she’d head straight back to the kitchen and help there. Even as she thought that, she went in his direction, edging along the row behind where he sat.
“That must be interesting reading,” she said with a soft chuckle, putting her hands on the back of the chair beside his. “You’re completely engrossed in it.”
He looked up, his brown eyes as warm and welcoming as Shep’s. When they twinkled at her as he smiled, she wanted to fling her arms around him and ask why they were being overly cautious about what they said to each other. Why couldn’t they go back to when his easy smile had always brought one from her? No questions asked. Just best friends.
He held up the book so she could see the title on the spine. It was a book on dairy management.
“A farmer’s work is never done,” he said as he closed the book and set it on his lap.
“How is Mamm Millich?”
“She seems to be much more herself today. Doc Anstine stopped by earlier in the week and said she might simply be tired because the calf is growing quickly now. He suggested I keep her inside where she can lie down whenever she feels the need, make sure she has plenty to eat and give her a few days to get back to being herself. Looks like he’s right. Danki for asking.”
His hand slid over hers on the back of the folding chair. Not caring that there were others who could see, she put her other hand atop his. She didn’t move it away as she said, “You’re welcome. I’m glad she’s doing better, because the plans you’ve made for the farm are so important to you.”
“You’ve always seen my hopes and dreams more clearly than anyone else.”
A bit of the ice around Leah’s heart melted away as his words touched her. “As you’ve been able to see mine.”
“Are your dreams the same? To be a part of this community and have kinder of your own?”
“I have a kind of my own. Mandy is my daughter, because I have raised her since the day she came home from the hospital. We—”
A man silhouetted in the door shouted Ezra’s name. She moved back as Ezra stood. Instead of leaving to see why he was wanted, he gazed into her eyes. She sensed he was baffled. That she considered Mandy her own as surely as if she’d given birth to her niece? Or was it something else entirely?
“Leah, I really need to ask you about something important.” His mouth tightened into a straight line when his name was called again, more urgently this time.
“Go,” she urged. “We’ll talk later.”
“We will.” He made it sound like a promise. Without another word or glance in her direction, he crossed the barn to the man who called to him.
It was Daniel, his youngest brother, she realized when she came out of the barn to see them hurrying around one side of the barn. She was curious about what was that important.
Please, God, don’t let Mamm Millich be in trouble again. Please help Ezra find his dreams.
“Even if I’m not part of them,” she whispered as she stood in the midst of the busy farmyard, feeling oddly disconnected from the scarcely controlled chaos around her.
* * *
As Leah carried a plate of whoopie pies to the table where they were being sold, she quite literally ran into Rose Stoltzfus. She steadied the plate, then greeted Rose, who seemed to be in much better spirits.
“Leah,” Rose said with a bright smile, “I’m glad you’re here today. I really wanted to talk to you.”
Startled, because she didn’t know Rose well, she blurted as she set the plate on the table and nodded to the women selling them, “Me? Why?”
“You’ve known my husband since he was a little boy, and I thought we should get to know each other, too.” Rose plucked at a loose thread on her apron, not meeting Leah’s eyes. Every inch of her had become as taut as a fishing line with a large fish on it.
“That’s a gut idea.”
“Let’s look around while we talk.”
“Ja. I’d like that.”
Almost twenty tables had been set up in the fallow field in front of the barn. Off to one side, three men tended a smoker puffing out delicious odors of meat while two grills were preparing hot dogs and hamburgers that were snapped up as soon as they finished cooking. She wasn’t hungry, so she was glad when Rose turned toward the tables offering sweets and crafts and even some bedding plants.
Leah answered Rose’s questions, though she found it strange that a wife wouldn’t know more about her husband than Rose seemed to. Still, it was fun to relate stories from when she and Isaiah were very young scholars. She recalled some events she’d forgotten until she searched her memory for more tales of youthful adventures that always had included Johnny and Ezra, too.
She halted in the middle of a story about weeding in Wanda’s garden when Rose began to cough.
“Could we move away from here?” Rose asked between coughs. “The smoke is...” She dissolved into coughing again. Her wheezing began to sound like a straining steam engine. She grabbed Leah’s arm and leaned heavily on her.
“Can I do something?” Leah pulled her arm out of Rose’s weakening grip and grasped her by the shoulders. “What do you need?”
Rose tried to answer but couldn’t. Groping under her apron, she pulled out a small, brightly colored cylinder. She opened one end and put it in her mouth before squeezing the top.
Leah recognized the inhaler. Mandy’s friend Isabella had asthma and carried one with her everywhere.
Steering Rose toward the house, she sat the younger woman on the porch steps and said she’d be right back. It took longer than usual to squeeze her way through the kitchen to get a glass of water and bring it out onto the porch, but Rose was still coughing.
She offered the glass, and R
ose took it, clutching it like a lifeline. She drank, then spewed it as she continued to cough. After sucking in a second puff from her inhaler, Rose took another drink of water. Her coughing eased, but her eyes were watery as she looked up.
“Danki, Leah,” she whispered. “I should have known better than to go over there, because I’ve got to be careful around smoke. It can make my throat feel like it’s closing up tight.”
“Can I do anything else for you? Do you want me to find Isaiah?”
She shook her head. “He’s been looking forward to today. I don’t want him to decide that he needs to take me home. If I’m careful to avoid the smoke, I should be okay. That bout wasn’t too bad.”
“Not bad?” She’d been scared as she listened to Rose trying to draw in air.
“Some of the attacks are worse.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
A hint of a smile drifted across her face. “Do you mind sitting here and chatting until my knees stop wobbling?”
“Sure.” She scanned the yard and saw Mandy with Mamm. They were heading toward the barn to watch the auction, which must had been about to get under way. Though she wanted to go in the barn, too, she sat on the porch beside Rose.
“Tell me about Philadelphia,” Rose said abruptly.
Leah glanced at her in astonishment. No one, not even Mamm, had asked her about the city. There had been a few questions about whether she had been happy there, but nobody was interested in the city itself.
“What would you like to know?” she asked, unsure where to begin.
“Did you live in a house there?”
She shook her head. “We had a small one-bedroom apartment. It was on the eighth story of an apartment building with forty units in total. Johnny had the bedroom.”
“Where did you sleep?”
“We had two small sofas in the main room. I had one, and Mandy had the other.” She could see that Rose was having a tough time imagining such a way of living.
Before she went with Johnny, Leah couldn’t have envisioned living in a box like a colony of ants, either. The situation with her sleeping on the sofa was supposed to be temporary, but in the wake of Johnny’s accident, moving seemed out of the question. The building had an elevator, which made his few trips beyond their door possible. Also the doorways in the apartment were wide enough for his wheelchair.
“Oh, I had no idea.”
She waited, but Rose said nothing else.
Leah decided to change the subject, “I wish I could have been here for your wedding. I’m sure it was wunderbaar.”
“It was, and it came just in time.” Rose smiled again.
“What do you mean?”
“My mamm wanted each of us married before we were twenty-one. I saw how miserable one of my sisters was when she wasn’t married by then, so I vowed that I would not do the same. When Isaiah asked me to ride home from a singing in his courting buggy, I was already twenty. I was glad he asked me to marry him soon after that first ride together.” She pressed her hands over her heart. “Oh, dear! I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I didn’t accept his proposal simply to marry before I was twenty-one. I was in love with him.” Color rushed her face. “I am in love with him.”
It was such a blessing to see Rose Stoltzfus happy. Isaiah’s wife was truly pretty when her face wasn’t puffy from tears.
“Wanda told me,” Rose went on, “that you made those beautiful quilts that Amos has at his store. Did you do them by hand?”
“Most of the piecing I did on a sewing machine, but I always quilt the layers together by hand. Do you like to sew?”
“Ja. Isaiah says he will buy me a sewing machine after he finishes that big project he is doing for the new restaurant down the road from the Stoltzfus Family Shops. They have ordered railings to use as half walls and iron beams, and even a circular staircase to lead up to what will be an outdoors dining room on the roof. He has been working on the pieces for weeks.” Her smile faltered. “Working for very long hours, because the projects must be completed and installed in order for the restaurant to open.”
“What a gut husband he is to work that hard in order to provide for you and get you the sewing machine you want! You were wise to accept his proposal. The Stoltzfus brothers are hardworking and want to provide for their families as their daed did.”
“Isaiah is a gut husband, isn’t he?” Her eyes refilled with tears. “I pray I can be the wife he deserves. And the Leit deserves, though I don’t know if I can ever do that.”
“No one expects you to be perfect, least of all God. He knows that, no matter how hard we try, perfection is only a goal, not something we can ever attain. It’s that we try...that is what matters.”
“You should be the new minister’s wife. You know the right things to say. Of course, you’d need to be a wife before you could be a minister’s wife.” Rose looked at her squarely. “Everyone says that you and Ezra spent a lot of time together before you left. Why didn’t you get married?”
Leah knew she was blushing, because her face felt as if it’d burst into flame. “We were gut friends. That’s all.”
“He’s unwed, and so are you.” Coming to her feet, Rose patted Leah’s shoulder. “That’s something you should keep in mind.”
Glad that Rose walked away without expecting an answer, Leah wondered what the younger woman would have said if Leah had spoken the truth that Ezra was seldom far from her thoughts. She stared at the barn. Ezra must be inside now that the auction had started. Had he heard the two of them were the topic of gossip?
She got up and went into the house. The kitchen was deserted, and she whispered a prayer of thanks that she was able to be alone. She couldn’t hide forever, but she wasn’t ready to chance seeing Ezra until she had her emotions under better control.
* * *
Ezra looked up as a shadow crossed over where he sat at one end of a row of chairs. His hope that Leah had returned was dampened when he saw Isaiah drop onto the empty chair next to him.
“You’re not saving this for someone, are you?” his brother asked.
“No.”
“Gut.” He glanced toward the podium where Jim Zimmermann held up a basket filled with honey from the Millers’ farm. “I thought you might be saving it for Leah.”
He didn’t rise to his brother’s bait, saying only, “As far as I know, she’s busy helping Mamm and the other women.”
“That sounds like Leah.”
“Ja. She wants to help everyone.” He hoped Isaiah didn’t hear the tinge of bitterness in his voice.
“Maybe she can help Rose.” His brother combed his fingers back through his hair. “I knew Rose wouldn’t be happy if I was selected by the lot, but every time I’ve come into the house this week, I can see that she’s been crying. She is upset that she’s now a minister’s wife. Maybe if Leah spends some time with her, Rose can stop thinking about her unhappiness and start to be happy again. Leah has always been such a cheerful person.” He hesitated, then asked, “Is she still?”
“From what I can see, she’s trying to be.”
“That’s gut enough for me. Will you ask her to come over and see Rose?”
“Why don’t you? You’ve been friends with her as long as I have.”
“I don’t want Rose to find out that I was involved.”
Ezra grimaced. “Why not? Wouldn’t she appreciate you caring about her enough to ask Leah to stop by?”
“Normally I’d say yes, but now...”
Seeing the despair on his brother’s face, Ezra relented. Poor Isaiah didn’t know which way to jump, because everything he did seemed to add to Rose’s distress. Could Leah make a difference? He wasn’t sure, but he knew she’d do her best. She never did anything less. Perhaps her faith that God was with her through gut times and bad would help Ro
se believe the same.
Even though I question that myself. He hated the way his conscience spoke up like that. He’d always considered his faith strong enough to handle anything. The past decade had been challenging in more ways than he could count. He had tried to cling to his belief that God walked beside him, holding him up when life beat him down, but after Leah vanished, he’d begun questioning every part of his life.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll ask Leah to go and see Rose when she can.”
“Danki, big brother.” Isaiah’s face lightened like the sun breaking through storm clouds. “Isn’t that Leah’s work?”
Ezra nodded as he looked at the colorful, small quilts Leah had been carrying when she came into the barn earlier. He knew that she thought he’d been absorbed in his reading and hadn’t seen her until she stopped behind his chair. It was impossible to be unaware of her. Even though her buoyant spirit had become heavy during her time away, a joyous glow about her refused to be dimmed.
He had a tough time paying attention to the auction after Leah’s quilts were sold because his thoughts bounced back to Leah any time he tried to think of something else. By the time the auction was over, he hadn’t bid on the seeder he’d hoped to buy. He didn’t know who bought it or for how much. While his brother chatted with the men sitting around them, Ezra skirted the group and headed out of the barn.
His gaze settled on Leah instantly as if a sign glowed above her head. She stood on the porch and was looking up at the sky. A raindrop struck his nose as he strode across the yard. Behind him, people called out to each other as they grabbed items off the table and rushed into the barn to keep them dry. He was surprised when Leah didn’t rush to help, but then he realized that she’d seen him coming toward her.
“Wie bischt?” he asked as he came up the steps to stand beside her. “How are you doing?”
She smiled. “You don’t have to translate everything into English. I may have lived away for a long time, but I haven’t forgotten my first language.”
“You’re right.” He watched as the sprinkle changed into a downpour. “I guess I’m uncertain because I don’t want to offend you.”
