by Senft, Adina
Maybe that was what the Bible meant by being “exercised in the spirit.”
The second part of the service put the first one into action. When Bishop Daniel spoke aloud his willingness to take part in Communion in two weeks and asked forgiveness of the Gmee for any of his offenses in word or deed, Amelia glanced at Carrie. When the minister approached her for her affirmation of readiness, what would she say? Melvin had come home Friday, but Amelia hadn’t seen Carrie to find out if the quarrel between her and Aleta had been repaired.
Since Amelia was older and sat closer to the front, she did her part and then listened with all her might to the quiet words passed back and forth in the rows behind her.
“In…in all my weakness, I wish to participate.” She finally heard Carrie’s familiar voice, pitched so low she would have missed it if anyone had coughed or sneezed. “If I’ve offended anyone, I hope they will admonish me in love, so I can make things right with God’s help.”
Amelia sat back with a sigh that was one part relief and one part empathy. It could not have been easy to take the humble place with Aleta and apologize first. But Carrie had obviously done it, or she could not say those words. Amelia would have to give her a special hug sometime today.
After the service, no thanks to Ruth’s poultice, it turned out that Amelia did not drop anyone’s baby—but then, with Carrie around, a person hardly had a chance to get her hands on one anyway.
“If ever a woman was born to be a mother, it’s Carrie,” Emma said softly when they were helping the Grohl girls set the tables for first sitting. The Grohl house was large enough for the service, but seating was tight for the meal afterward when they put up the tables. So they had two sittings, one for the men and one for the women.
Amelia put down plates the length of the table with the regularity of a clock, Emma matching her on the other side. “I know that people are sorry for her. She must feel it.”
“Is that so bad? You don’t want her proud, do you, and finding a reason to be offended? Not after what she’s just gone through with Aleta Miller?”
“No, of course not. God has heard both our prayers on that score. Maybe I’m just putting my own feelings into Carrie’s heart. She’s such a transparent person—whatever she feels shows right on her face.”
“I hope we find out the whole story on Tuesday.”
“Me, too.” Wait a minute. “Emma, Mandy’s wedding is Tuesday. Aren’t you going?”
Emma straightened a pair of salt and pepper shakers so that they sat exactly in the center of the table. “Do you know there are no fewer than five weddings set for that day?”
Amelia did a quick count. “Six if you’re in my family—my niece up in Smicksburg is getting married then, too. I think Chris and Esther are going, but I can’t spend a whole day on trains and vans with the boys just to have to turn around and come back the next day for the shop.”
“They’ll come for a wedding visit anyway, won’t they?”
Amelia nodded. Newlyweds spent the first year of their marriage visiting family and friends, and Mark’s girl Emily and her new husband would almost certainly spend the better part of a month in Whinburg when they came. “Most of the family is here, and next year Mark will have moved back.”
“She should have waited a year, then.”
Amelia had to smile. “That girl has never waited for anything. She even came a month early when she was born.”
Emma sighed and moved away to the next table. Amelia could practically hear the unspoken words hanging in the air. And some of us wait and wait and no one ever comes.
Or if someone does come, he doesn’t stay. Amelia wished her niece everything that was good and right, but there was no getting around the fact that wedding season was going to be hard this year.
And not just for Emma.
Monday was washday, when Sunday clothes were made clean again and ready for Communion Sunday in two weeks. Sheets and towels and workaday aprons, too, the boys’ pants and shirts—everything. And since Amelia also had to open the shop at nine as usual, that meant she got up at four on Mondays in order to have everything on the clotheslines—indoors and out—by the time the boys got up at seven.
They had their chores, like chopping kindling, filling the wood box, making their beds, and sweeping the floors. Technically those last were Amelia’s, but she saw no harm in having the boys know a few household skills. People who brought dirt into the house ought to know how to get it out again. Enoch had always swept out the mudroom and the porch. When her brothers were boys, they had gotten hold of a library book about knights and jousting, and their mother had an awful time keeping the broom and mop in the closet where they belonged. Many a mock battle had been fought on the lawn until Ruth had declared her kitchen closet off-limits unless they used the contents for their real purposes.
At the shop both Aaron and David were already waiting, as were orders from two Lancaster companies who shipped kitchen appliances. With the sound of the nailer and David’s hammer lending a syncopated punctuation to the scratch of Amelia’s pen, the morning went quickly.
When she saw someone tying up a horse at the rail in front, she hurried to finish the last column of numbers. Without warning, her fingers lost their strength and the pen did a backflip onto the page.
That did it. Tomorrow morning she was making that appointment. And now she’d lost her train of thought, made an ugly mark across the ledger, and would have to total the column again.
She looked up as the November wind blew a man into the office. He shut the door behind him and settled his black winter hat more firmly on his head. “Guder Mariye. Is something wrong?”
“I’m sorry?” She stood to greet him, rubbing her pesky hand.
“You look as though you’re angry at something. I hope it isn’t me.” He smiled, and her frustration faded as she realized that the customer was behaving more hospitably than the shopkeeper.
“No. No, it wasn’t you at all. I’m sorry. Can I help you?”
“I don’t doubt that you can, but perhaps I ought to speak to the proprietor.”
Amelia had this conversation at least once a week. The practiced words rolled off her tongue much more easily with someone in familiar clothes than they had with poor Bernard Burke, Operations Manager. “I am the proprietor, since my husband passed away.” She held out a hand, and he shook it. He had a nice handshake—firm, but not too much, like some who were careful to make their point about a woman’s weakness in a man’s world. “I’m Amelia Beiler.”
“Eli Fischer. I’m sorry. I didn’t expect to meet a sister in a pallet shop.”
“Not many people do. The boys—” She gestured toward the back. “—do most of the heavy work, though I help when it gets busy. Now, what can I do for you? Have you come from far?”
“From Lebanon County, now you mention it. I’m here for the Lapp wedding.”
“Mandy or William?”
“Mandy. Her mother, Mary, is my cousin. Our grandmothers were sisters.”
Amelia tried to sketch the Lapp family tree in her head but couldn’t quite see how closely Aleta Miller and this man might be related. “Are you staying with the Lapps?”
He laughed. “I love them all, but only a small fraction will fit in the house, as big as it is. No, I’m staying with a longtime friend—my cousin Martin King. I believe his boy Aaron works for you.”
In a manner of speaking. “Yes, he does. Were you and your family at the Grohls’ for church yesterday?” How had she missed them?
“I was. No family with me.”
Her first impression of someone older had been mistaken. As he spoke, Amelia realized he probably hadn’t seen his thirtieth birthday.
Oh, my. Emma needed to go to Mandy’s wedding. Amelia would walk over there as soon as the boys were in bed and convince her.
He went on, “I’m thinking of moving over this way. You wouldn’t happen to know of a nice place coming up for sale, would you?”
“Are you a fa
rmer?”
“That’s what I’m doing now, but it’s a big job for one man. My two brothers want to take over, so I was thinking of selling out to them and taking a ramble to a different part of the country. As a matter of fact, I heard that maybe this shop might be coming available sometime. Is that so?”
Amelia gripped the edge of the desk. She knew she should have talked to Daed out in the barn. It had been a big mistake to say anything about the shop in front of her mother.
“Where did you hear that?”
“A few people mentioned it after church. I don’t know how interesting it is to you ladies, but something like that gets chewed over pretty well among the men out in the barn, even on Sunday.”
Hmph. “It was lucky you happened to be there.”
“That depends on whether it’s true.”
Amelia teetered, forced into a decision she wasn’t ready to make. She had to shut the rumor down now, while it was just a trickle, or it would become a stream, and then the torrent of the community’s will would sweep her along until she submitted herself and did what it wanted.
“I don’t know,” she admitted at last. “I haven’t decided. I’m like the colt tied where two ways meet.”
“And where are the two ways going to and coming from?” Eli pulled up a straight wooden chair and made himself comfortable, as if he were settling in for some time. “Maybe it would help to talk it over.”
Look what talking had done so far. But he wasn’t going anywhere until she gave him something to take with him. She followed his example and resumed her seat behind the desk. “Well, down the one way, I can pay off our place.” He nodded, his grave gaze resting on her with attention. “But it’s a dead-end road, because then I’ll have no way to support my boys and no money left over to start another business.”
“Depends on the business. You could sell fruit and vegetables from your garden, like some of the other ladies.”
“Anything more than my half-acre kitchen garden is too much for one person, even if the rest of it’s only five acres. You’ve found that out yourself.”
“And what’s down the other road?”
“I could sell our house, sell the shop, and move back to the home place with my parents. But that would only last for a year, because my eldest brother is moving home next year with his wife and family.”
“That wouldn’t be so good,” he agreed. “Three women in one household.”
“Exactly. But there’s a third way. A path that isn’t really real. It comes and goes when I look at it too hard.” Oh, goodness, where had that come from? Why was she being such a Plappermaul with this man? Was she really going to tell him the thing she and Enoch had talked over in the privacy of their bedroom?
He raised his eyebrows. What nice eyes he had—dark brown, with crinkly corners, as though he found a lot of humor in the world. Would he find humor in a dream that would never come to pass?
He was still waiting for her to speak, and she couldn’t get out of it now. “I could do what my husband and I dreamed of, which is to move the shop onto our place. Build a nice work barn. It would still be a lot to run the business, but I wouldn’t have four miles to walk every day. In the winter it gets hard, because I have to drive, which means I have to put the horse somewhere, usually next door with the Steiners’ animals.” She took a long breath. “I don’t want to be a lunch-pail mother. I want to be home for my boys, where I belong.”
He didn’t laugh. He considered it seriously, frowning as though he were turning it over in his mind. “It sounds like a good plan. It would take a bit of money, though.”
She nodded. “I know. That’s why it’s just a dream right now.” She had a little money in the bank, but not enough to build a proper working barn. And with a mortgage already on the place, the loan officer probably wouldn’t look too kindly on her asking for another one.
“You could go in with a partner.”
She hadn’t thought of that. She hadn’t really thought of any of this before this week—and she didn’t like having to think of it now. “I suppose.”
He was silent a moment. “So my coming to see you this morning is probably an imposition. I’m sorry for that. I shouldn’t have listened to rumors. Too soon old, too late smart, I guess.” This time his rueful smile was directed at himself.
“You’re not the first person to ask. I think that’s how the rumor got out—last week an Englisch man asked me the same question. I didn’t know how to answer him either. But he left me his card.”
“I don’t have a card.”
Now it was she who smiled. “You’re different. I don’t need a card to remember you.” Then she realized how that must sound, and her still in black. Heat flooded her cheeks. “I mean, you’re a Lapp connection and we’ll see you at the wedding tomorrow.”
“But your situation won’t change by tomorrow, I bet.”
“At least I know your family. If things change later, they can get word to you.” She wondered if Bernard Burke had a family. He had referred to himself as “a man,” not as “us” or “we.”
But Bernard Burke was not her business. Not yet, and maybe not ever.
Eli Fischer got to his feet and held out a hand again. “I’ll be on my way, then. Just wanted to let you know I was interested, if you do decide to sell.”
She shook his hand. “I have to pray on it, Eli. If the Lord has a plan for me, it’s best I wait on Him and find out what it is.”
“Better to wait on Him than on Whinburg. If it’s like my district, folks will be only too happy to give a person direction, whether God has prompted them to or not.”
A laugh sprang out of her like a pheasant flushed from a thicket, surprising them both. “Are folks as interested in your business there as they are in mine here?”
“At least as interested. Which is interesting, since I’m a pretty dull fellow.”
She doubted that very much. “We’ll see you at the wedding tomorrow, then.” I have a friend I want you to meet, and that twinkle in your eye will certainly interest her.
“Ja, you will.” He went out the door, and the wind, tricky as ever, blew the rest back to her. “You certainly will.”
“I certainly won’t.”
Emma pushed away from the kitchen table and took her pie plate to the sink. She ran warm water and squirted some soap in after it. Unlike Carrie’s kitchen, which had water plumbed in but no propane hot-water heater, the Stolzfus Daadi Haus had that and other conveniences, too. Like a gas-powered generator in the basement for her mother’s oxygen machine, and the phone shanty located just at the end of the lane in case of emergency. Sure, everyone on Edgeware Road used it when they needed to, but Emma had the shortest distance to run.
“His name is Eli Fischer, and he was very nice. And single. He’s looking for somewhere to settle, and if he meets a nice girl, he’ll be more likely to stay here.”
“Then you chase him.”
Amelia nearly choked on her coffee. “Who said anything about chasing him?”
“Didn’t you always say you chased Enoch until he caught you?”
“I did not.”
“No? Hmm. Must have been someone else. Maybe your Mamm is right. There’s nothing stopping you from marrying again.”
Taken aback by her tone, Amelia firmed her resolve. “Don’t make this about me. I have no desire to marry again, and you know it. I’ve had my chance, and I don’t need another. I have the boys to think of now.”
“Ruth will be the first to say that young boys need a father.”
“Yes, well, Mamm doesn’t get to make that decision. They’re doing just fine.” Now was not the time to share the tornado-size tantrum that Elam had pitched over going to bed tonight and how she’d nearly cried with missing Enoch, who had been so good with him. She’d been lucky to get over here at all. “But we were talking about you. Please come to the wedding with me. There’s room on the seat beside me. I’ll even let you drive.”
Emma did not appreciate her attempt
at humor. “I drive everywhere. I’m not going. If I do, and for some reason he speaks to me, everyone will say I’m chasing him. If he doesn’t, they’ll say it’s because I’m so mupsich. I’ll do us all a favor and leave him to the Youngie. He’s too young for me anyway, if what you say is true.”
“You look the same age.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m going to Sarah Zook’s wedding.”
“By yourself ?”
“If Mamm is feeling well enough, she’ll go with me. The oxygen tank will fit right between us.”
“And if she’s not?” Amelia pulled out the verbal equivalent of the air nailer. “Are you sure you want to walk into the meal alone when the bride has been busy pairing off the courting couples all around you? Do you really want to sit with the oldsters and talk about the latest methods of Dr. Shadle?”
Carefully, Emma put her pie plate on the drainboard. Maybe it was because she wanted to throw it at her best friend.
Amelia softened her tone. “Please come with me. I could use some help with the boys.”
“Ruth always helps you.” Emma’s voice sounded broken somehow, and Amelia got up and put her arms around her.
“I’m sorry, Liewi. Don’t come for him, then, if you don’t want to. Come for me, because I need you.”
Emma sighed, then straightened, and finally, reluctantly, hugged her back. “All right. But only because that Elam has me wrapped around his little finger.”
With a quick rush of happiness, Amelia squeezed her and went back to the table. “I’m so glad. We’ll be there for each other. Because you know Mamm is going to have her eagle eye on me and poor Eli Fischer, too. She might even wangle an introduction. If she does, you have to save me.”
