Home on Huckleberry Hill

by Jennifer Beckstrand

  Willie Jay had always been Mary Anne’s least favorite relative. She couldn’t quite put her finger on why she disliked him so much, but it probably had something to do with the air of superiority that hung about him like a sharp smell. He thought he knew the Bible better than anyone and soundly defeated anyone who debated him about it. He became insufferable when he was made a minister a year ago. Mary Anne found his pride very un-Amishlike.

  Willie Jay was eight years older than Jethro, with a wonderful nice wife, Naoma, who barely said three words at one sitting, and seven orderly children who never seemed to get their clothes dirty, even when doing chores on Willie Jay’s farm. Mary Anne hadn’t noticed Willie Jay at services. He and Naoma lived in Appleton, and Mary Anne and Jethro didn’t see them much. He was a very unpleasant sight indeed. “Willie Jay, it’s wonderful gute to see you,” she said, adding lying to her list of sins. She couldn’t very well say what she was really thinking. She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of believing she was anything but indifferent.

  Willie Jay shut the door behind him and shook his head. “I am disappointed in you, Mary Anne. I truly am.”

  “So am I. Very disappointed,” Jethro chimed in, probably feeling the need to make it clear who was the most upset by Mary Anne’s leaving.

  Mary Anne bit her tongue on the need to defend herself. They didn’t care about her reasons.

  Lois propped her hands on her hips. “We’ve talked about it—all of us—and we agree that you must move back with Jethro immediately.”

  How nice to see a family so in harmony with one another.

  Mary Anne was going to make her tongue bleed if she kept clamping down on it like this. The only thing she could think to do was distract them. “Do any of you know where I could get a job, preferably one I can walk to?”

  They weren’t so easily distracted. Jethro’s dat found the milking stool, set it on the floor in front of Mary Anne, and motioned for her to sit. “Jethro says you painted one whole side of his tent.”

  “And she hung potato chips and crackers all around the inside,” Jethro said.

  Lois gasped. Chris and Willie Jay were rendered speechless.

  Jethro and his fater were quite a bit alike. They both wasted hours at the river with a fishing pole, and Chris had no regard or patience for nonsense like fish-shaped hot pads or rainbow Jell-O desserts.

  Chris again motioned to the milking stool. “Why don’t you sit down, and we’ll talk about it.”

  Mary Anne wasn’t about to fall for that trick. All four of the Neuenschwanders were taller than she was. They weren’t going to bring her lower. If they wanted to browbeat her, they could do it eye to eye. “Nae, denki,” she said. “I’m not going to stay much longer.”

  Lois, Willie Jay, and Jethro wore matching scowls. Chris seemed confused.

  Mary Anne couldn’t have hoped to have a gute relationship with Lois after moving into a tent, but it made her very sad all the same. She and Lois had always gotten along well. Mary Anne might even have said they were gute friends. Lois had come to the hospital after the miscarriage and spent two weeks after that at the house every day just to make sure Mary Anne was okay.

  Willie Jay glanced at Jethro. “Do you understand the danger you’re in, Mary Anne? What Gotte has joined together, no man or woman can put asunder. Gotte said that man must leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife. Paul said that marriage is honorable for everyone.” He then proceeded to quote several other scriptures about marriage, making sure Mary Anne knew he was familiar with every chapter and verse. He’d practically memorized the entire New Testament. It was quite impressive—not likely to convince her—but impressive.

  Mary Anne smiled and nodded in all the right places during Willie Jay’s speech. She wasn’t going to argue with Willie Jay about what the Bible said. He knew it much better than she did, and she had no scriptures to defend herself with. She was more than willing to admit that.

  Maybe it was time to start handing out pot holders.

  Willie Jay finally wound down, and Mary Anne laced her fingers together. “You’re right about everything, Willie Jay. I am wicked and ungrateful and not worthy of Jethro’s love. He doesn’t deserve such a wife. It is better that I moved out.”

  Jethro narrowed his eyes. “I told you that you couldn’t convince her that way. She won’t ask, ‘Is it I?’”

  The urge to laugh grabbed Mary Anne around the throat. Had Jethro not just heard her take responsibility for everything? To him, asking “Is it I?” meant “Mary Anne has finally given in and moved back into the house.” She found it funny, in a sad way, that none of them cared to ask how she felt. Her feelings didn’t matter to any of them. Jethro had made that very clear year after miserable year.

  It really was time for those pot holders. She retrieved them from her pocket. “Here,” she said, handing them to Lois. “Mammi wanted you to have these. I’m sorry to have caused such a fuss.”

  Lois looked at the pot holders as if she wasn’t quite sure what pot holders had to do with tents and husbands and Mary Anne. “Anna gave these to you? Does she know what you’ve done?”

  Jethro scowled. “Her grandparents are camping out in my woods too. They say they’re on her side.”

  Lois’s mouth fell open. “Well, they’ve got to stop it. No good can come of indulging such wickedness. I’ll talk to Anna immediately.”

  “It won’t do any gute,” Jethro said. “Anna is as stubborn as Mary Anne.”

  Chris nodded. “And I hear Anna and Felty are splitting up. You can’t talk them into anything.”

  Lois stuffed her pot holders into her pocket, more to get them out of the way than anything else. “You’ve got to move back home, Mary Anne. I know you’re upset about the baby, but in a marriage, you work things out. You don’t just leave. I don’t care how often Jethro goes fishing or how many anniversaries he misses, you stay because you’ve made a promise, no matter how hard it gets.” Mary Anne’s ears must have been playing tricks on her. She thought Lois’s voice shook just a little. “The rest of us fraaen stay no matter what. What makes you so special?”

  It was unfair of Lois to assume Mary Anne thought herself anything but a nobody. “I’m not special. I simply don’t have the courage to live a joyless life.”

  Lois’s eyes flashed with something deep and painful, and then the emotion was gone, replaced with the righteous indignation of a mater. “Jethro says you think he’s boring. You should thank Gotte you have a godly, steady man.”

  Willie Jay nodded. “You should be grateful he still wants you, even though you can’t have children.”

  For the first time since she’d walked into the barn, Lois looked unsure of herself. “Hush, Willie Jay.”

  Willie Jay didn’t know how close he had come to the mark. He knocked the wind right out of her. “Jethro doesn’t want me, and it is because I can’t have children. Can you blame me for leaving?”

  Her in-laws fell silent, as if someone had turned off the sound on an Englischer’s television. She should have bitten her tongue. They didn’t care about her reasons, and she’d just given them another stick to beat her over the head with. Oy, anyhow. She’d put too much confidence in those pot holders.

  “I do want you, Mary Anne.” Jethro’s voice was nearly a whisper, which told more truth than his words did.

  Willie Jay pasted a fake smile on his face. “There. You see, Mary Anne. Jethro does want you.”

  “He’s more concerned about his money.”

  Jethro very nearly jumped out of his skin. “I am not!”

  Mary Anne nodded, as if she agreed with him. “I’ve promised to pay him back as soon as I can. That’s why it would be to your advantage to help me find a job.”

  “You wouldn’t need a job if you moved back home,” Willie Jay said.

  “I’ve got quilts to sew and murals to paint, flowers to plant and potato chips to collect. There is so much of life I want to live before I die. I’m sorry to be the cause of so mu
ch pain, but I’m not moving back.”

  The side door flew open as if blown by a stiff wind. Mammi swept into the barn as if she were a firefighter trying to save a cat from a burning building. “Mary Anne, I thought I’d lost you. I didn’t want you to think your camping partner had abandoned you.” She smiled and gave Mary Anne a private wink, her lips forming the word solidarity before she turned to Lois. “I have a special gift for you, Lois.”

  Lois’s mouth curled into a smile, as if she had no choice. Mammi had that effect on people. “There’s no need for presents, Anna. Mary Anne has already given me some of your lovely pot holders.”

  Mammi nodded at Mary Anne as if she couldn’t be prouder. “Good job, dear.” She studied Lois’s face. “Do you like pot holders? If not, I also make scarves and Minion beanies.”

  Lois gave Mammi an indulgent smile. “Anna, I’m concerned that you’re camping in Jethro’s backyard.”

  Mammi scrunched her lips to one side. “I’m concerned too. I don’t particularly like camping, and that toilet seat is wonderful cold in the morning. And Felty’s snoring has gotten worse.”

  Lois cleared her throat. “What I meant was, I’m afraid it sends Mary Anne the wrong message. For sure and certain you don’t want her to think you approve of her leaving her husband.”

  Mammi waved her hand in the air. “Ach, I approve of everything Mary Anne does. Last night she made us Parmesan Chicken Ranch tinfoil dinners with real Parmesan cheese.”

  Mary Anne waited for Jethro to say something about how expensive real Parmesan cheese was, but he didn’t make a peep. He was probably wishing he’d been invited to dinner, even if Mary Anne had spent too much money on it.

  Willie Jay’s nostrils flared. “So, you don’t care that your granddaughter is choosing a life of sin?”

  Mammi looked at Willie Jay as if he were a pesky mosquito buzzing in front of her face. “Camping is not a sin, Willie Jay Neuenschwander, though it should be against the law.” She took Mary Anne’s hand. “We really must go. Mary Anne is making Italian horsey spinach soup for dinner tonight in the Dutch oven.”

  “Italian orzo spinach soup,” Mary Anne said, lest Jethro think she was going to do anything bad to his horse.

  “Whatever it is, it’s going to be delicious,” Mammi said. “It was nice seeing you, Willie Jay. Give Naoma my love, and all those adorable children. Tell her she’s welcome to pick huckleberries again when the weather turns.”

  The argument Willie Jay was going to make died on his lips. Mammi disarmed even the most hostile neighbor with her sweet, grandmotherly kindness. Maybe it was because Mammi had just invited his wife to pick huckleberries or had called his children adorable. Or maybe Willie Jay was worried about Jethro’s horse. Whatever his reasons, Mary Anne was grateful that he didn’t start quoting Bible verses. Mary Anne had had enough Bible for one day.

  Jethro would call her very wicked for having such a thought.

  Ach, vell. She was fully aware of what Jethro thought of her. She wouldn’t let it ruin her day.

  Chapter Eight

  Two weeks since Mary Anne had set up a tent, and the woods behind Jethro’s house were beginning to look like the circus was in town. Not only had Mary Anne decorated both sides of his tent with disorderly butterflies, but she had painted the side of his barn with a six-foot-by-six-foot quilt square, and there was nothing he could do about it. If he had seen her painting the barn, he would have stopped her, but one of the people in this family had to work, and she made a lot of mischief when he was at his job all day.

  Last Saturday, he’d sneaked into her tent while she was off to the market with Anna and Felty, no doubt spending his hard-earned two hundred dollars. Her strange collection of mobiles hung everywhere, and she’d stolen two rickety benches from the barn to use as shelves for her ridiculous collections. Standing in her crowded tent, he had considered getting a lock for the barn, but Mary Anne still milked the cow every day and Anna and Felty used the bathroom in there. He couldn’t lock them out.

  In her tent, Mary Anne had a pile of unusual rocks, a collection of oddly shaped potato chips and crackers, even a group of walking sticks leaning against the tent wall. It was a jumbled, chaotic mess of art and garbage. She had been in the process of sanding one of the old benches, probably to paint butterflies all over it and sell it on the computer. So much trouble for so little profit. Why wouldn’t she just move home?

  Jethro gazed out his back window and scrubbed his fingers through his hair. Mary Anne had attached Jethro’s butterflied tent to Moses Zimmerman’s eight-man tent. She had quite a bit of living space out there. Not only that, but a huge canopy had shown up two Saturdays ago under which Mary Anne had set up her quilting frames, and all sorts of cousins had shown up to help her quilt. There were three cousins out there now, visiting and laughing with Mary Anne while their children played at their feet. Anna was quilting too, and even Felty sat at the quilt holding a needle but not doing anything with it. Jethro would have given anything to be invited to sit with them, if only to feel included in Mary Anne’s circle of friends.

  Even though he was still ferociously mad at her for abandoning him and taking his money and embarrassing him in front of the whole district, he missed her something wonderful. And yes, he admitted to himself, he hadn’t appreciated her as he should have. She made the best kaffee in the whole world, and he had completely forgotten what her sweet rolls tasted like.

  Since the night Anna and Felty had shown up, Jethro hadn’t been invited back to Mary Anne’s campsite for dinner—probably because Mary Anne had been the one doing the cooking, and she wouldn’t have cooked for him if he’d been starving to death, which he was. Except on the nights he went to his parents’ house, he ate cold cereal for breakfast, McDonald’s for supper, and cold cereal for dinner. When he was feeling especially sorry for himself, he pulled a Pop-Tart out of the cupboard and toasted it over the open flame of his stove for dessert.

  He went to dinner every Sunday and Wednesday night at his parents’ house, but there was only so much scolding he could take before he longed for home; even an empty house was better than listening to his mamm’s lectures.

  Didn’t they know he’d tried everything? He’d yelled at Mary Anne and tried to make her see reason. He’d put locks on the doors and brought the bishop to talk to her. He’d made sure everyone in the gmayna was on his side and that no one would hire her. He didn’t want her to find a job, even if it meant he’d never see his two hundred dollars again. If she got a job, she’d move out of his woods and somewhere far away. He’d made it as hard for her as he could, but she stubbornly insisted on sleeping in a tent. He had hoped she would grow tired of camping, but if anything, she seemed to be hunkering down, preparing for a long stay.

  Life with him must have been very miserable indeed if camping held more appeal than his comfortable house. That realization was a knife right to the heart. And Mary Anne didn’t care how much it hurt.

  Jethro fingered the letter in his hand, reluctant to open it, knowing exactly what it was going to say. Willie Jay had sent him three letters in the past week. They were full of scripture, hellfire, and brimstone, as if Jethro was the one who needed convincing instead of Mary Anne. He had lectured her until he was blue in the face, and he didn’t know what else to do. He felt helpless and useless and desperate. And Willie Jay’s letters weren’t helping.

  Jethro glanced at the clock. For some reason, Mary Anne hadn’t taken it. Anna would be here soon for their first cooking lesson. He’d avoided it as long as he could. Anna was wonderful sweet and very thoughtful, but her lessons would be a complete waste of time. He’d been to enough family dinners at Mammi and Dawdi Helmuth’s house to know Anna knew even less about cooking than he did. At the very least, maybe she could teach him how to use the kaffee pot. Surely he could teach himself how to make a gute cup of kaffee if Anna pointed him in the right direction. His mater could probably teach him, but he’d been too ashamed to admit to her that he didn’t alread
y know how. Anna would have to be the one to help him.

  A knock at the front door made him jump. Lord willing, it wasn’t another cousin come to join the quilting party or some Englisch friend of Mary Anne’s here to buy a potato chip mobile.

  He opened the door to his bruder Willie Jay, standing on the porch with Dat, David Eicher, Norman Coblenz, and Adam Wengerd, and none of them were smiling. “Wie gehts?” he said, the anger rising in him like bile. They were here to give him what-for about his wife, but if they thought they could do any better at convincing her to come home, they were welcome to try.

  “Hallo, bruder,” Willie Jay said, laying a hand on Jethro’s shoulder. It was all Jethro could do not to pull from Willie Jay’s grasp. Willie Jay had an obedient, submissive fraa. He didn’t need to act superior about it.

  “How did you get up here?” Jethro asked. Appleton was only half an hour away by car, but the trip by buggy was long.

  “I hired a driver,” Willie Jay said. “I’m concerned that Mary Anne hasn’t seen the error of her ways, and I thought you could use my help.”

  “And mine,” Dat said. Hadn’t he grown tired of lecturing Jethro yet?

  “Can we come in?” David Eicher asked. David was one of the ministers in the district, and he’d given a wonderful gute sermon at gmay on how a wife should reverence her husband—not that Mary Anne had listened. But at least David was on Jethro’s side. Most of the men in the district were, and most of the women too. He could at least take comfort in the fact that Mary Anne was the one who was in the wrong.

  Jethro reluctantly stepped back and invited them into the house. Maybe they wouldn’t lecture him. Maybe they’d come up with a way to convince Mary Anne to move back. He motioned to the easy chair and the sofa. They were the only furniture left in the front room. “Cum reu,” he said. “Mary Anne took the bench and my footrest, but you can sit on the sofa and the floor, if you like.”

  Willie Jay’s frown deepened. “You shouldn’t let her do that. If things are easy for her, she won’t care to come back.”