Home on Huckleberry Hill

by Jennifer Beckstrand

  Jethro probably didn’t even realize he took a step back. “Because Gotte says so.”

  “I’m . . . I’m horrified, Jethro. How could you do this?” Mandy said, sounding as breathless as if she had jogged all the way from her house.

  Mary Anne had never seen Jethro so upset. He looked at Mary Anne. “You’ve made your point. I’ve learned my lesson. If you’ll try to be a better wife, I’ll be a better husband. There’s no camp anymore. You have to move home.”

  Mammi straightened to her full diminuitive height. “Don’t you worry, Mary Anne. We’re not giving up. We’ll sleep on the ground under a pile of leaves if we have to. And we’ll use trees instead of the toilet.”

  Dawdi cleared his throat. “Ach . . . yes . . . that’s right. We’re with you to the bitter end. And just remember, you’re always welcome to stay at our house.”

  “Because the barn is locked, we’re going to have to start using the trees,” Mammi said, “and we’re going to need toilet paper. You’re going to have to unlock the barn so we can steal some toilet paper.”

  Jethro gritted his teeth. “The camping trip is over.”

  Sarah grunted. “The camping trip is far from over. I’m going home to get my tent.”

  Mammi brightened considerably and clapped her hands. “Does this mean you’re going to do solidarity with us, Sarah?”

  “You bet your grandpa’s galluses, I am,” Sarah said.

  Lily pressed her lips into a firm line and took a deep breath. “Me too. Me and die kinner. I’ll bring our other tent. And an extra sleeping bag.”

  Mandy was already stomping in the direction of her buggy. “I’m going home to get my tent and my husband. He’ll dig a latrine for us.”

  “You shouldn’t sleep on the ground,” Mary Anne said, her heart swelling with gratitude for her sister and her cousins.

  Mandy didn’t even break stride. “We’ve got a cot.”

  “I won’t camp without toilet paper,” Sarah said. “I’ll bring some from home. And some wet wipes. I don’t go anywhere without wet wipes.” Sarah pointed at Jethro. “The boys will be back with the canopy. Don’t take it down again or I’ll get very testy. My boys have plenty to do on our farm without having to set up the canopy every week.”

  Jethro shook his head. “You don’t have to do this, any of you. Why are you so mad when I did this for Mary Anne’s own good?”

  If he said that one more time, she was going to explode. “Go away, Jethro.” Before I disintegrate into a puddle of tears.

  His eyes were full of longing. “Please come back, Mary Anne, and I’ll let you use all your stuff, extra toilet paper if you want.”

  It was too much. He didn’t understand her heart at all. He hadn’t ever tried. “You think I care about my stuff?” Her voice broke into a million pieces, and she could no longer hold back the tears. “You took down my tent and painted over my artwork. You stole my sewing machine and trampled my flowers.”

  “Won’t you try to understand?” His voice sounded as if he’d swallowed a bowl of gravel.

  “Won’t you try to understand?” Her crying was uncontrollable now, but she would say exactly what she wanted to say, even if Jethro thought she was weak, even if it gave him a reason to gloat. “You didn’t do this because you want me to move back in. You did this to hurt me.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Well, you should be wonderful happy.” She sobbed like a lost puppy. “I’m broken, Jethro. You’ve broken me.”

  “That’s not what I want at all,” he said.

  Even though Mammi had her arm firmly around Mary Anne’s waist, her legs were going to give out on her any second. She stumbled to the boulder she sat on to tend to the fire. It was the only solid, flat thing in the near vicinity, and if she didn’t sit down now, she’d fall over. She had lost her tent, her rock collection, and any shred of hope in a matter of minutes. Jethro had never been so cruel, and at that moment, she hated him—hated him with a fierceness that frightened her and a despair that shattered her heart. She’d never trust in Jethro’s goodness again. “I want a divorce,” she said, shoving the words out of her mouth like poisonous darts.

  Mandy and Lily both gasped, and one of the twins started crying.

  Mary Anne might as well have slapped Jethro. His face went deathly pale, and he stumbled backward a few steps. “Mary Anne, nae. Please don’t say that. I love you.”

  Dawdi limped to Jethro’s side and placed a firm hand on his shoulder. “It wonders me if you shouldn’t maybe go back in the house and let Mary Anne be. It’s been a hard day, especially now that she doesn’t have a toilet.”

  How did Mammi manage a scold and an affectionate smile at the same time? “I think we’d better cancel cooking lessons tonight, Jethro. We’re going to be a little busy out here.”

  With a stunned and lost expression on his face, Jethro nodded slowly, as if he was trying to figure out what Mammi had just said, then turned and walked back to the house. It seemed they all held their breath as they watched him go. As soon as he closed the door behind him, Mary Anne buried her face in her hands and wept.

  Chapter Ten

  Jethro poured himself a bowl of cornflakes and sank into a chair at the kitchen table. After retrieving all his furniture from Mary Anne’s campsite, he’d had the choice of any of eight chairs he wanted to sit in. Willie Jay had come back this morning and helped him break down the tents and erase any sign Mary Anne had been living in the woods. It had been Willie Jay’s idea to paint over the quilt block Mary Anne had drawn on the side of the barn, just so she would know “she couldn’t do this to her husband.”

  The shadows grew long as he took one bite and then another of his cornflakes. They got soggier and soggier as his heart grew heavier and heavier. Willie Jay had told him it was the right thing to do, but now he realized how horribly wrong he had been. The sight of Mary Anne’s tears had knocked the wind right out of him. No husband should make his wife cry. Ever. He felt as if he’d cut off his own arm.

  The last time he’d seen Mary Anne cry was after she’d lost the buplie—they’d lost the buplie. She had clung to him and wondered aloud why Gotte had seen fit to take her baby. At that time, it had been nearly a year after the miscarriage, and she had still been crying about it. Jethro had found her tears unbearable. He had urged her to get over the loss and to trust that Gotte had something wunderbarr in store for their future, even if she wasn’t meant to have children.

  He had never seen her cry again. He used to be glad about that. Now he wasn’t so sure. She knew he didn’t want her to cry. Did she think he didn’t care about their buplie?

  He sat as still as a stone for fifteen minutes while his cornflakes turned to mush, in turns ashamed and heartbroken and numb. He had done everything wrong. Mary Anne hated him, and there wasn’t a thing he could do to make it better. Everything he had tried made it worse. Much worse.

  A firm knock on the front door made his heart do a somersault. Could it be Mary Anne? Maybe she was here to offer her forgiveness or say she hadn’t really meant what she said about wanting a divorce.

  He hurried to the door, stepping around the quilt frames that took up most of the space in the living room. He didn’t care if Mary Anne wanted three dozen quilters at a time in the house. He’d agree to anything. He’d let her buy that twenty-dollar cheese she was so fond of. And if she wanted to carve their radishes into flowers, he wouldn’t tell her nae.

  His heart crashed to the floor when he opened the door to Felty with a crowbar in one hand, a small cardboard box in the other, and a twinkle in his eye. “Can I use your bathroom? The crowbar didn’t work.”

  Jethro tried to talk himself out of his profound disappointment. “I . . . I suppose so.”

  Felty stepped into the house and hurried down the hall to the bathroom. Jethro heard the crowbar clatter to the floor. Felty must have dropped it in his rush. Lord willing, he hadn’t dropped it on his toe. Jethro went back to his bowl of cornflakes and stirred them aroun
d with his spoon. He should buy Lucky Charms. At least he could eat the marshmallows when the cereal got soggy.

  He heard Felty open the bathroom door and march down the hall like a man twenty years younger. Ever since he’d been camping, he also walked with a slight limp, but he was still as spry as any sixty-year-old. Felty always seemed to have a song on his lips, and Jethro could hear him singing softly. “Springtime in Glory, we’ll have springtime in Glory, where the pansies are blooming in the bright, fresh air. Where the rivers are rushing, and all toilets are flushing, it is springtime always there.”

  Felty came into the kitchen, set the crowbar and the box on the table, and pulled out the chair opposite Jethro. “May I sit?” he said. “It’s been a trying afternoon.”

  Jethro nodded, too numb to ask Felty about the crowbar or the cardboard box.

  Felty cocked his head to one side and studied Jethro’s bowl of cornflakes. “That looks like a very nourishing dinner. Nothing like a bowl of corn paste to fill you up.” He took off his hat and laid it next to the crowbar. “We didn’t have it so gute. Anna and I walked to the market while Mary Anne gathered wood for a fire. We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows and called it good enough.”

  “You walked? The market is three miles from here.”

  “My horse is locked in your barn. I didn’t want to impose.”

  “Ach,” Jethro said, feeling worse and worse by the minute. “I’m sorry. I’ll go out after dinner and take off all the locks. Mary Anne isn’t going to come back just for the toilet.” His heart scraped on the floor. She wasn’t going to come back, period.

  Felty leaned back in his chair and grasped his beard as if it were a handle. “I should have put a stop to this two weeks ago.”

  Jethro eyed Felty doubtfully. “Do you think you could have talked Mary Anne into coming home?”

  One side of Felty’s mouth curled upward, and he shook his head. “You misunderstand, Jethro. You’re only my grandson-in-law, so I didn’t know if it was proper to stick my nose in your business, but I can’t sit by and watch you make a bigger and bigger mess of things.”

  Jethro cradled his head in his hands. “I was doing what I thought was right, but I made her cry. I never wanted to make her cry.”

  “You thought she’d come to her senses and realize you were right all along.”

  Jethro winced. “I thought . . . I thought she was throwing a tantrum. She’s the one who went against the Bible.”

  “Will that be a comfort to you when she moves away?”

  “The truth is always a comfort,” he said, not even believing it himself. There would be no comfort if Mary Anne left him for good.

  Felty stood up, and the chair legs scraped against the floor. They were covered with grit from being outside. Jethro would probably have to refinish the floor when this was all over. His heart stopped beating. Would this ever be over? “Have you seen what’s going on outside?” Felty drew the curtains open and motioned for Jethro to come to the window.

  The woods behind his house weren’t empty anymore. In addition to Aden’s Swift-n-Snug tent, there were four—four!—other tents out there, plus Sarah Beachy’s canopy with a quilt set up under it. Where had the quilt come from? Mary Anne’s quilt was sitting in his living room. The tents stood watch around a glowing campfire, and at least five people sat around the fire on camp chairs. Jethro resisted the urge to check on the camp chairs he stored in the shed. It didn’t matter if they were there or not.

  “Mandy told Lia and Moses, and they rounded up their camping gear. They don’t even care that we have no bathroom. Moses and Aden helped their fraaen set up their tents, and Aden set up Mary Anne’s tent.” He pointed to two big trees standing twenty feet to the left of the campfire. “Sarah brought her giant hammock, and Moses strung it between two trees for us. We’re going to sleep out under the stars. Lord willing, it’s more comfortable than those sleeping bags.”

  “I . . . uh . . . I have some cots.”

  Felty shrugged. “I hear the hammock is wonderful soft.” He tapped on the window. “Noah dug a hole and is building an outhouse about a hundred yards that way, but Anna isn’t real sure about it. I tried to break into your barn with my crowbar, but it didn’t work. Moses is coming back with some bolt cutters.”

  Jethro swallowed the lump of shame in his throat. “He doesn’t have to do that. I’ll unlock it. Or maybe I should let you unlock it. I’m the last person anyone wants to see right now.”

  Felty stroked his beard. “That’s for sure and certain.”

  Jethro couldn’t comprehend the number of cousins who had moved into his woods in a matter of hours. It looked like a small city out there. “They really hate me, don’t they?”

  “They love Mary Anne and don’t like the way you treated her.”

  It was like a crowbar right to the chest. “I was trying to show her that I would do anything to get her back.”

  Felty raised an eyebrow. “You haven’t done anything to get her back, Jethro. You’ve only done things to get back at her. I love you like a grandson, but I’ve never seen anyone quite as slow-witted as you are. I don’t know how you convinced her to marry you in the first place.”

  He wanted to argue. He ached to defend himself, but there was nothing he could say. What did it matter if he was in the right and Mary Anne was in the wrong or if the minister and the deacon admonished him for his wife’s sins?

  Mary Anne was gone.

  All the righteous indignation in the world wouldn’t bring her back. The embarrassment, the tent, the hunger, the need to be right, none of it mattered. All that mattered was that he loved Mary Anne.

  His throat felt as if it had been scoured with sandpaper. In the last two weeks, he hadn’t done anything to make Mary Anne believe anything other than that he hated her. He’d yelled and scolded and locked her out of the house and scoffed at her paintings and rock collection. It was no wonder Mary Anne would rather use an outhouse than move back in with him.

  The sight of Mary Anne’s tear-streaked face had been devastating. There was a time he would have lain down his life for Mary Anne, would have done anything to make her laugh or show that beautiful smile of hers.

  He hadn’t taken down the campsite for Mary Anne’s own good. He’d done it because, for some crazy reason, he’d thought it would fix his wounded pride and broken heart. He nearly fell over when he realized that in the deepest part of his heart, he’d been trying to get revenge on Mary Anne for hurting him. What kind of a husband would do that to his fraa?

  Felty gazed out the window. “If I were you—and I’m wonderful froh I’m not right now—I wouldn’t try to take the camp down again or you’ll have some very angry cousins on your hands. You don’t want to see Sarah when she gets angry. She gave Josiah Zimmerman a dressing-down for losing track of time and arriving late to the birth of his buplie.”

  Jethro turned from the window and collapsed into the nearest of his eight kitchen chairs. He covered his face with a trembling hand. The thought of losing everything important to him nearly buried him. “I love Mary Anne, and she used to love me. What did I do wrong?”

  Felty sat down next to him and wrapped his fingers around Jethro’s wrist. “You need to love her.”

  “I do love her.”

  “Do you?” Felty’s gaze could have punctured a hole through a tin can.

  “Of course I do. More than anything.”

  Felty pressed his lips together. “Love isn’t a feeling, Jethro. Love is something you do.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “The Bible tells husbands to love their wives as Christ loves the church. How did Christ love the church?”

  Jethro didn’t especially want a lesson in scripture tonight, but Felty was trying to help him, so he would go along with whatever Felty had in mind. “With all His heart, I guess.”

  “You’ve been quoting that passage to Mary Anne for two weeks, and you haven’t thought about it any more deeply than that?”

  Je
thro frowned. He needed words of comfort, not another lecture. “It says He gave His life for the church.”

  Felty bloomed into a smile. “You can love Mary Anne deeply, Jethro, but if you don’t practice love, she’ll never know. Were you trying to show your love when you took down her campsite?”

  “Willie Jay said it was a gute idea.”

  Felty raised an eyebrow. “Ah. So you wanted to show Willie Jay you loved him?”

  “Nae,” Jethro said. “I was angry and wanted to be right.” He pressed his fingers to his forehead. “She’ll never forgive me.”

  Felty gazed at Jethro with a sympathetically amused gleam in his eye. “Ach. It’s not as dark as all that, but you’ve got your work cut out for you.”

  “What can I do?”

  Felty stood up and rummaged through Jethro’s cupboards until he found the neglected kaffee pot. He took it from the shelf and filled it with water at the sink. Jethro felt a tiny spark of warmth right in the center of his chest. Was Felty going to make kaffee? Would it be Anna Helmuth kaffee or Mary Anne Neuenschwander kaffee? Did Jethro even care? It had been so long since anyone had done anything for him. He caught his breath. “Do you think Mary Anne made kaffee for me because she loved me?”

  Felty set the pot on the stove. “At least until it became more of a duty than an act of love.”

  Jethro jumped to his feet, opened one of the drawers, and pulled out the pair of fish-shaped hot pads. “Mary Anne made these for me.” He curled his lips upward. He’d never noticed the careful hand stitching around the edges. “She must have loved me once.”

  “What about you? Did you love her?”

  “I always have.”

  Felty turned and leaned against the counter. “Did she know?”

  “Of course she did. I’m her husband.”

  “Do you think that was enough?”

  “I used to think it was.” Jethro ran his fingers through his hair. “When could she have stopped loving me? She made me dinner every night and did the laundry and planted the garden. She loved me with her actions, just like you said.”