Home on Huckleberry Hill

by Jennifer Beckstrand

  She waited for him to finish, then handed him a piece of toilet paper to wipe his mouth. “Denki,” he said, panting and swiping his sleeve across his forehead. “I think I ate too much Cake in a Rind.”

  “I don’t wonder that you did.” She smiled at him. “I hope you know I’m very grateful.”

  “I saw your face turn a slight shade of green when you unwrapped your special treat. I knew you didn’t want to hurt your mammi’s feelings.” His tongue lolled out of his mouth, and he lunged for the toilet just in time. She placed her palm on his forehead again to give him some support. He coughed and spit, then sat down with his back against the wall and his legs splayed out in front of him. “I hope you don’t mind that I’m using the wrong bathroom. The thought of using the Porta-Potty to throw up is enough to make me throw up.”

  “You’re welcome to use this bathroom any time you want for throwing up. I wouldn’t set foot inside that potty thing.”

  The thought of a Porta-Potty must have hit him hard. He threw up again, this time with a loud heave. Jethro had always been a loud thrower-upper. No wonder she’d heard him over the Willie Jay dream.

  He finished, flushed the toilet, and sat back. “Denki for holding my forehead. It can’t be pleasant for you, but I always liked it when you did.”

  “I should be holding your forehead. It would have been me getting sick if you hadn’t eaten the whole grapefruit cake.”

  He pressed his fingers into his shoulder muscles. “I think it was the eggs Anna put in the batter. There’s no telling what those chickens have gotten into since your grandparents have been camping.”

  “I don’t wonder but that those chickens won’t be with us much longer.”

  Jethro leaned his head against the wall behind him. “There was a trail of black and white feathers between the Porta-Potty and Mandy’s tent. I think Chester has a taste for Plymouth Rock hens.”

  “Oh dear.”

  “And one of them laid an egg directly under your quilting frames. I put it in the fridge in the house.”

  “I don’t know if we dare eat it.” It looked as if maybe Jethro was finished throwing up for a few minutes. Mary Anne got off her knees and sat down on the bathroom floor, resting her back against the door so she was facing Jethro. She sat cross-legged, while he had his legs stretched out in front of him.

  He pushed himself up so he sat taller and more firmly against the wall, then studied her face. She didn’t like it when he looked at her that way, as if every hope and dream he had could be found in her eyes if he just looked hard enough. “I wanted to protect you.”

  “From Mammi’s grapefruit cake?”

  He gave her a wane smile. “Nae . . . well, jah, but I mean before. After you lost the buplie. I didn’t ask you about doing more treatments because I thought I was protecting you.”

  Mary Anne did her best to breathe past the dark patch of mold that had been growing in her chest for almost four years. “Maybe, Jethro. Maybe you talked yourself into believing that.” She paused to keep her emotions in check. “But I never did believe. It wasn’t about anything more than money.” She pressed her lips together. The words tasted that much more bitter because she’d chewed on them for a long time, but at least she had finally spit them out. Jethro was going to hear the hard and unpleasant truth.

  He pressed his hand to his forehead, as if he were trying to knead the memories from his brain. “I’ve been so blind, Mary Anne. My regrets feel like a pile of stones pressing down on my head. They’ve very nearly buried me. Believe me, I know how deep my sins are and how far I need to go to get back to you.” He scrubbed his fingers through his hair. “I have used money as a way to control you. It was easier to tell you that we couldn’t afford something than to beg you not to try so hard. I couldn’t bear to see you wear yourself out with all your grief. After you lost the baby, for weeks you stayed up all night long scrubbing floors and repainting walls and making quilts. You tiled our bathroom because I didn’t like the linoleum. You spent entire days cooking gourmet meals. You wore yourself out.”

  “I knew how disappointed you were. I was trying to make it up to you.”

  He heaved a sigh. “I know that now. You were trying to be the perfect fraa. But I just wanted the woman I’d fallen in love with.”

  “You told me not to cry.”

  He winced, as if she’d poked a stick into his chest. “It was selfish, but I hated to see you cry. I hated the thought that you were in pain. I talked myself into believing that if you weren’t crying, you must be okay. Looking back, I see how wonderful stupid I was. I didn’t want both of us to suffer. I thought I was bearing your pain as well as mine just by wishing it was so. As long as you weren’t crying, I told myself that you were okay.”

  “But it wasn’t about my pain or your pain. We could have kept trying for a baby, Jethro.”

  “I told myself I was protecting you, but maybe it was more about my selfishness than anything else. Dat said that those treatments hardly ever worked and would only give us false hope. I didn’t want to see you crumble every time we got bad news from the doctor. I wanted to protect you from that horrible roller coaster. I was afraid it would destroy you, so I told you that we couldn’t afford infertility treatments and that was that. I thought it would be like ripping off a Band-Aid instead of prolonging the pain.”

  She wanted to throw something at him, but the toilet paper was out of her reach. “How could you?” she whispered. If she tried for anything louder, she’d probably end up yelling her lungs out. Mammi and Dawdi were bound to wake up.

  “I should have consulted you. I should have trusted our love for each other. I should have trusted you. The Mary Anne I married was feisty and determined. I forgot that, because I was so afraid you’d break.”

  “I did. I moved out.”

  “Nae, you knew you would break if you didn’t move out. It was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen anyone do.”

  She dared to look into his eyes. He wasn’t trying to soften her with flattery or say something he didn’t really believe. For some strange reason, his praise made her feel as light as a chicken feather. He didn’t hate her for moving out. Maybe she wasn’t such a disappointment to him after all. “I was suffocating.”

  His face was as pale as a frost-covered sidewalk. “I’m sorry, Mary Anne. I did everything wrong because I loved myself more than I loved you. When you first moved out, you took the blame for everything—said that you were the wicked one. It irritated me so much because deep down I knew I was the one who did this to you. It’s no one’s fault but my own.”

  She’d been waiting to hear those words for weeks. He didn’t blame her anymore. It felt like shrugging off a winter coat in the summertime. “Denki,” she said, her voice cracking in a dozen different places.

  He must have realized she wasn’t inclined to say anything else. “I love you, Mary Anne. Do you know that I love you?”

  Unable to trust her voice, she nodded. She didn’t have the heart to tell him that his love didn’t change anything. She wasn’t going back to him. He thought he loved her now, but she would never believe that he’d had a permanent change of heart. How long would it take for him to fall back into his old ways? How long before she disappointed him again? How long before he told her to stop buying artichokes and hummus? She didn’t have the strength to leave him twice. This was it. This was the end.

  Her heart pounded in open rebellion. Ach! Despite all her resistance, she couldn’t deny that she loved Jethro. She had tried to talk herself out of it, but he had bought thirty-one bags of Cheetos for her sake, and he was sitting on the floor befriending a toilet because he’d eaten the cake meant for her. She could picture her mamm shaking a finger in her direction. For goodness sake, Mary Anne. Are you too stubborn to offer your own husband some forgiveness?

  Mamm always said that was what marriage was. Day-by-day, minute-by-minute forgiveness. And a lot of hard work. The trick for Mary Anne was in deciding if all the hard work was worth the troubl
e.

  She slumped her shoulders. “What does it matter, Jethro?” she said, a part of her longing for him to talk her into it. She was so lonely and so confused. And so tired of camping.

  Concern flooded his expression as he lunged forward, and she thought he might try to grab her hand until he reached for the toilet, making it just in time before he threw up again.

  His sudden nausea couldn’t have come at a better time. It saved her from having to look into those dark eyes and reject him yet again, or maybe saved her from having to make a decision she wasn’t ready to make.

  She wanted to be sure, and tonight she was unsure of everything. She needed more time. Praise the Lord, Jethro was in no condition to persuade her. Every decision had to be on her terms and no one else’s.

  She’d never been more grateful for disorderly chickens, raw eggs, or Mammi’s Cake in a Rind.

  Things would look better in the morning. Mammi had said so herself.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jethro’s whistling had stopped. It wasn’t necessarily because he was in the depths of despair, but he wasn’t deliriously happy either. Like as not, he was too busy thinking deep, deep thoughts to give any time to whistling. Since his unpleasant night spent on the floor of the bathroom, Mary Anne had pulled away from him. He couldn’t blame her. She’d found out some things about him that she didn’t like, and she was even more convinced that all he cared about was money.

  He’d made some serious mistakes, and Mary Anne knew everything now. Had he lost her for good?

  Jethro forced a puff of air from his lungs. Thoughts like that were why he wasn’t whistling anymore. He waved good-bye as the van pulled away from the house, unable to remember if he’d spoken a word to anybody on the drive home from work.

  He didn’t want to believe that things between them were getting worse. It had been the best and the worst of birthday parties. She had liked his gift, even though she hadn’t actually seen it. She had smiled as if she really liked him, maybe even loved him. When he’d eaten her cake, her smile had gotten wider. But then Mamm had said too much, and Mary Anne had retreated into a place he couldn’t reach her.

  Jethro trudged around to the back of the house. No matter how things turned out, it was gute for Mary Anne to know his reasons, even if she didn’t understand them or forgive him for them. He’d told her the truth. He’d apologized. Mary Anne was the kindest woman he knew. She would forgive him with all her heart and love him if she could.

  Mandy and three of Mary Anne’s cousins sat under the canopy with Mamm, Anna, and Felty working on Mary Anne’s latest quilt. Jethro had grown accustomed to a herd of dogs and little children running about his backyard. An occasional chicken darted in and out of the pack of kinner. Jethro counted at least six of Anna’s seventeen chickens that had survived a week in the woods. Lord willing, Anna would still have a few birds by the end of June.

  Jethro headed straight for the quilt. Mary Anne could usually be found where the quilters were, and he needed to see her like a starving man needed a chocolate peanut butter pie. Mamm was engrossed in her quilting, but she looked up long enough to smile at him. “Gute day at work, Jethro?”

  Lia also smiled, and he might have detected a pleasant look from Mandy, as if she didn’t mind that he’d come around. Sarah Beachy ignored him completely. She was in the middle of telling a story.

  “He and Pine sneaked out of the house in the middle of the night to go swimming.”

  “Hallo,” Jethro said. “I’m looking for Mary Anne.”

  Sarah rolled her eyes. “You’re always looking for Mary Anne. You’re like a lovesick teenager.”

  Mamm paused her stitching. “Why did they sneak out to go swimming? It seems more sensible to go during the day.”

  Sarah grunted. “They wanted to swim naked. It’s called skinny-dipping.”

  Lily clapped her hand over her mouth. “Oh dear.”

  “They got their fill of naked swimming and walked home in the pitch dark. But they couldn’t hardly see a thing. Pine stepped smack-dab on a skunk, and all three of them got sprayed something wonderful. I burned all their clothes and wouldn’t let them in the house for two weeks. I filled that metal washtub with tomato juice, and they all bathed in it.”

  “That doesn’t work,” Felty said, threading a needle for Anna.

  Sarah shook her head. “Nae, it doesn’t. Baking soda, hydrogen peroxide, and dish soap. They still had to bathe in that three times. But they learned their lesson. There’s no hiding the stench of sin—especially from your mater.”

  Jethro tried again. “Have you seen Mary Anne?”

  Lia finally took pity on him. “She has been at this quilt all day, so we made her take a break to paint with Dennis.”

  Jethro tried not to frown. “She’s painting with Dennis?” It wasn’t proper for an Amish woman to go somewhere alone with a man, but Mary Anne hadn’t done much of anything lately that would be considered proper, so Jethro didn’t know why it mattered. Except that it did. “Do you know where they went?”

  Anna inclined her head in the direction of Jethro’s campsite. “They headed that way.” She drew her brows together. “I hope they’re not thinking of drawing that Porta-Potty. Dennis has strange ideas about what is pretty and what isn’t. He showed me one of his drawings of a man with a hand growing out of his forehead. I hope he doesn’t teach Mary Anne to draw that.”

  With some sense of urgency, Jethro thanked Anna and started jogging in the direction of the Porta-Potty. He didn’t want to appear too eager, but he didn’t like the idea of his fraa being alone with another man, even if Dennis was seventy years old.

  Jethro’s campsite was empty. Adam Wengerd had gone home. Mamm had moved to the other campsite and was happily quilting with the Helmuths. For sure and certain everyone else was working their fields so they would have something to harvest come autumn time. The guilt settled in Jethro’s gut. Willie Jay wanted an opportunity to call Mary Anne to repentance, but he needed to go home. It wasn’t fair to let Naoma take care of the farm by herself.

  Jethro ambled around the camp in no direction in particular until something bright yellow caught his eye in the thicket just beyond the campsite. It had to be Mary Anne’s canary yellow dress that Jethro loved so much. It always made her hair seem extra golden.

  Mary Anne, Dennis, and—to Jethro’s relief—Judy and Alice sat in a small clearing in a semicircle around an elderberry bush in full bloom. Dennis and Mary Anne each had an easel and a blank canvas in front of them, and Mary Anne was intently studying a stem of tiny white flowers in her hand.

  Jethro took gentle steps in her direction so he had a perfect view of her profile, stopping before she caught sight of him. He adored the way her nose turned up slightly, and how the freckles played like carefree kinner across her cheeks. A look of pure contentment rested on her face as if she hadn’t a care in the world except the lovely stem of white elderberry blooms she held in her hand.

  Suddenly she looked up toward the sky and laughed at something Dennis said, stealing Jethro’s breath in the process. This was how he wanted to see Mary Anne forever. Untroubled, eager, and perfectly happy.

  An icy hand wrapped itself around Jethro’s throat. He loved Mary Anne clear down to the marrow of his bones. He wanted her to come home so badly, he could taste the desire like strong kaffee on his tongue.

  But with the desire came the realization that as much as he wanted her to come home, he wanted even more for her to be happy.

  Not only did he want it but, at that moment, he ached for it.

  Mary Anne deserved to be happy, and it was clear to anyone with eyes to see that Mary Anne would be happier without him. She didn’t deserve to be saddled to someone like Jethro for the rest of her life. Jethro stumbled backward as the weight of his sins finally overtook him. He was so full of error, so riddled with scars and flaws, that to make Mary Anne sacrifice her happiness for him seemed almost cruel. He wouldn’t ask her to do that, no matter how much he loved h
er.

  He staggered back to his campsite and grabbed a corner of the Porta-Potty for support. He’d always known this day would come, no matter how much he wished otherwise.

  It was time to let her go.

  * * *

  It wasn’t easy for Jethro to put his life in Gotte’s hands. He had always wanted things to go his way, and he’d worked very hard to see that they had. Up until a few weeks ago, Jethro had thought he’d been doing a fine job running his own life—and Mary Anne’s. He had gone fishing whenever he wanted to. His wife had kept his house clean and made him delicious meals every day. Mary Anne had stopped crying and had quit experimenting with new recipes. She had stretched their grocery budget as tight as a rubber band. He’d been proud he’d taught her to be frugal and content. Except for not having children, his life had been exactly as he’d thought he wanted it. That was usually the time Gotte reminded people who was really in charge.

  After seeing Mary Anne sitting by the elderberry bush, Jethro had driven the buggy into town as if he’d been going to a fire. He’d made a few calls at the library, and then Mary Anne’s friend Pammy had helped him on the computer. He’d sworn Pammy to secrecy, glad that Englischers didn’t seem to have a problem with that swear-not-at-all rule.

  He’d just finished taking down the last of the tents except his own when Dat and Willie Jay came into camp. They stopped short and stared at the indentation in the ground where the Porta-Potty used to be.

  Willie Jay seemed more confused than angry, but the anger would no doubt come. “Jethro, what is going on? Where’s my tent? Where’s the bathroom?”

  Jethro stuffed David Eicher’s tent into its bag and tossed it onto the pile. Maybe Willie Jay wouldn’t be angry. Everyone was sick and tired of living in tents, and the fraaen, even the long-suffering ones like Naoma—for sure and certain wanted their husbands home. Of course, Jethro couldn’t be certain that the other fraaen weren’t like Adam Wengerd’s wife. Maybe they were all enjoying the break from their husbands. Be that as it may, Willie Jay and the others would be sleeping at home tonight. “I’m taking down the camp.”