With Winter's First Frost

by Kelly Irvin

  The first move and the last word, no doubt. “Sure you do. I prefer it that way.”

  “Sure you do.”

  The crackle of the flames and the hiss of still-damp wood filled the silence as they arranged their checkers. Warmth filled the room, followed by a semblance of peace. It felt nice and strangely nostalgic. “I miss having my own place.”

  “I understand that.” Her head tilted, Laura studied the board. Then she looked up, her eyes bright. “Sometimes it’s hard to understand why things turn out the way they do.”

  “Yet who are we to question?”

  “Exactly.” Laura nudged her first checker onto its adjacent block. “My older schweschder and her mann got married in a rush.”

  Somehow her thoughts were connected. “It’s happened since the beginning of time, I reckon.” He stifled a chuckle. Typical first move of a checkers neophyte. Either that or she was going easy on an old man with nothing better to do but hull pecans, argue with his kinner, and sleep in a rocking chair by the fire while pretending to read a book on birds. “Unlike the Englisch world, we don’t look at it any differently now than we did fifty or sixty years ago. Our grandparents and great-grandparents would be happy that we still stand by our biblical principles and the articles of faith.”

  “More importantly Gott sees and Gott knows.”

  “Jah.”

  “She miscarried. But she never regretted marrying Jonathan.” Laura snickered softly at his move and shoved a black checker into the next spot. “They were married almost fifty years when she passed. Jonathan went a few months later. Irene never once spoke about it—not even to me.”

  “It wasn’t something we jawed about then.”

  “Or now. Maybe that’s part of the problem.”

  “There’s altogether too much talking going on, in my way of thinking.” He jumped two of her pieces and landed within spitting distance of the last row and his first king. “Some things are wrong. We know they’re wrong. No point wasting air and discussing them.”

  “Are you telling me I should talk less and think about my moves more?” She did her own double move. “Believe me, I can talk and think at the same time.”

  She had a nice laugh. Sort of a merry tinkle. Not like Marian’s low, breathy laugh. His gut tightened. His fingers twitched. Not now. Breathe. Breathe. He tried to lift his arm and move it toward the piece on the edge of the board. One more move and he’d have a king. Smooth. Smooth. His arm flailed, his hand flapped, and his fingers hit the edge of the board. Pieces sailed into the air. One landed on her black, thick-soled shoe. Another on the piece rug next to the fire. A third in the dwindling woodpile.

  “Ach. Grrrr.” Gritting his teeth, he stood. “Looks like you won.”

  “Don’t growl like a grouchy old bear. You’re not getting off so easily.” She scooped up the pieces on the floor. “I have a photographic memory. I know where each piece was.”

  “You do not.”

  “Do too.” She sashayed over to the woodpile and plucked the third piece from its resting spot. “Ask anyone in my family. I have a memory like an elephant. I never forget. At least not important stuff.”

  “Like where checker pieces go. I wouldn’t put it past you to cheat. Put those pieces back exactly where they were.”

  “I never cheat. I’m a gut Christian woman. Just like I never forget how to make piecrust so it’s tender and flaky. Or how to can blueberry jam.” She sat and reassembled the pieces. It seemed obstinate not to join her, so Zechariah eased back into the chair. Her grin was self-satisfied. And irritating. At least she had all her own teeth. For a woman of her age, that was saying something. “Want to know a secret?”

  Feeling like a schoolboy—he hadn’t felt young in fifty years—he nodded.

  “I keep lists.”

  “Lists?”

  “I have a family tree in my Bible. It’s gotten so long, I have to fold it out two folds. It has my entire family from my groossmammi and groossdaadi, all the way down to my great-grands.” She leaned forward and cupped her hand as if she were telling him a secret in his ear. “I have another one with all the boplin I delivered and their parents. I’m afraid I’ll forget.”

  “Does it help?”

  “Loads.”

  “Maybe you can make one for me.”

  “Sure. I’ll see how much I can do from memory. It’ll be gut work for my brain. Then you can fill in the rest. That’ll be gut for your brain.” The lines wrinkled around her mouth and her green eyes when she laughed. Which seemed often, now that Zechariah thought about it. Her chest heaved with the force of her mirth and her shoulders shook at her secret. “I also kept a planner when I worked at the store. Who knew an old woman like myself would need a planner? It had big spaces for each day of the week. I wrote down my shifts. When the frolics were. When I was to go to the kinner’s house for supper. I used to remember all those things. Not anymore.”

  Zechariah didn’t need a planner. He mostly sat in a chair and read or puttered around in the barn. Ben didn’t let him do much more than feed the chickens or curry the horses. His highlights were going to town for coffee with Abel, bird counts, cleaning the birdhouses, and feeding the birds. What would he do without the birds? He should be thankful for this God-given love of nature. “That’s why you thought you’d forgotten a date you’d made with your Hannah today?”

  Her face clouded. The smile was replaced by sadness. The room seemed darker. “Nee. I thought it was Tamara.”

  “Which is she?”

  “She’s Ruby’s youngest. Ruby is my youngest.”

  “She’s the one who looks like Eli.”

  “You remember what Eli looked like?”

  “Tall. Blond. Like a giant among men.”

  “That was my Eli.”

  “No one had a chance with you once he offered you a ride.”

  “No one else was interested, least ways that I noticed.”

  “You wouldn’t have noticed. You had eyes only for Eli.”

  She nodded, the sadness replaced by an even more painful wistfulness.

  Zechariah had seen that look on his daughter-in-law’s face after Robert died. Maybe that’s why she moved away, taking his grandchildren with her. So she wouldn’t be reminded of her loss. “Why did you think it was Tamara?”

  “She’s leaving the Gmay. She has decided not to be baptized. Or so she says. I thought maybe she would come talk to me about it. Get my thoughts on it.” Laura cocked her head toward the board. “All fixed. It was your move.”

  “Move my piece over there.” He pointed at the black checker that had been returned to its rightful spot—as far as he remembered. “You’re patient.”

  “I’m seventy-three and moving slower every day. I have no choice but to be patient.”

  “You’re helping out Rosalie, taking care of kinner, cooking and cleaning.”

  “It makes me feel useful.” She lifted her gaze to look directly at him. And caught him staring at her green eyes. Heat billowed through his body. No harm in looking at an old woman. He was too old for it to mean a thing. Too old and feeble and jerking around like a man with his finger caught in a skill saw. He hadn’t been alone in a room with a woman in years. That was it. Nothing more. Laura smiled. Which didn’t help in the least. “It’s what we all want. To feel useful. To have a reason for still being here.”

  “Why did it bother you that it might be Tamara?”

  “Because I still hadn’t figured out what to say to her. I needed time to think.”

  “Why do you have to think about it? It’s wrong. She must stay. She must be baptized.”

  “Not if she can’t be baptized in gut faith that she plans to remain Plain the rest of her life and follow the Ordnung.”

  Her hand hovered over the board, then dropped back in her lap. Her head drooped in a dejected air Zechariah had not seen before. The desire to touch her cheek flickered through him, a flame that grew by the second. He hadn’t touched but one woman in his lifetime. Marian. When sh
e died of cancer, he put such thoughts and feelings aside. A man his age didn’t ask for lightning to strike twice. Didn’t need it.

  He could barely walk on his own. He shook like a leaf in a tornado. He had little to offer a woman like Laura, still vibrant and strong and mouthy after all these years.

  Only Marian would understand. Only Marian would accept the man she loved all those years. They could’ve declined together. Now, the bed was cold and the nights long, but the days were longer. At least at night he slept and forgot. The days stretched endless and empty of the small conversations and the laughs over shared jokes that were only funny to them. He missed the crinkle of her nose when she didn’t like something he did or said. The way she rolled her eyes but held her tongue until the words burst out in a singsong tirade that had him gasping with laughter. Soon, she laughed with him, but she always got her way.

  He cleared his throat and banished the memories. Why tonight? Why when a living, breathing, sassy, contrary woman sat across from him looking as if she’d just lost her best friend. She wasn’t at fault that a young woman had made such a heinous mistake.

  He bit his lip and held his peace. She would tell him what was on her mind in her own time.

  “She told Ruby that it was my idea.”

  “Was it?” Stupid question. “Of course it wasn’t.”

  Laura nudged a piece across the centerline. Zechariah had her right where he wanted her. He did a double skip, hop, and jump. “King me.”

  “You distracted me.”

  “You said you could think and play at the same time. You said you could talk and play.”

  Laura laid a checker on top of his and proceeded to hop her way to a king on his side of the board. “So there.”

  “You sound like Samuel.”

  “He’s a gut boy and smart.”

  “Why did Tamara tell Ruby it was your idea?”

  “She’s leaving because she wants to go to medical school and become a doctor. I encouraged her to become a midwife. She followed me around when she barely reached my waist. Then she followed Iris and Rachel around. She would make a good midwife. She’s never courted. They were thinking of asking her to teach at the school after she was baptized.”

  “No boys following her around?”

  “A few have tried, but none seem to stick.”

  “She hasn’t met the right one yet.”

  “Time is running out. If she leaves and goes off to college, she’ll love the choices and the freedom and be so busy soaking up knowledge that she won’t notice that she’s filling up with everything except God and family. She’ll be alone.”

  “Or she’ll meet an Englischer.”

  “Whose side are you on?”

  “Gott’s side.” He hoped. If it weren’t too prideful to suggest it. He moved his king in position for another jump. This game had gone on long enough, but he didn’t want it to end. He wanted the conversation. He liked being treated like an adult and not another child to be questioned about medicine and brushing his teeth and “isn’t it past your bedtime, Groossdaadi?” type questions. “He knows what’s best for her and we need only pray and let Him do His work.”

  “That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be gut stewards of the children He’s given us, the gifts He’s given us. Tamara would make a gut mudder and a gut fraa. She belongs here with her family and her community, where she can go to her eternal Father when the time comes with a clean heart and a clear slate without any of the worldly sins she’ll encounter if she leaves.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Then why argue with me?”

  “Who’s arguing with you? She’ll have to finish school and get into a college and find a way to pay for it.” Zechariah leaned back in his chair, suddenly so tired his bones felt heavy in his body. “Then she has to get into medical school. Our education, while exactly what is needed for our kinner, doesn’t prepare a student for the rigorous entrance exams and the science and math those students need to succeed in medical school.”

  “So you think she’ll fail and come home? How happy will she be here then?”

  “I don’t think anything. I read a lot.” It filled the hours and the days. “I see what’s happening in the world. I would hope she would come to her senses and recognize the void in her that can only be filled by Gott, faith, community, and family. We can’t do that for her.”

  “I’d like to take her to the woodshed and smack some sense into her backside.”

  “That stops working when they’re about eleven or twelve.” He sighed. “You heard that two of my grandsons want to move to Nappanee to work in the RV factory?”

  “I heard. My letter circle includes a friend in LaGrange. She says more than half of the Plain men there work in the factory. Including her mann and two of her suhs. The money is gut. They bought a big boat.”

  “There’s the problem in my way of thinking. Easy cash.” Life made too easy. Too comfortable. “Instead of hard work with their family every day on the farm. What happens when the Englischers don’t have money to buy the RVs? It happened once before.”

  “They’ll come back to the farms.”

  “There will be no farms to come back to.”

  Her smile returned, this time rueful. “You’re pretty smart. I guess there’s something to be said for the combined years in the room. If someone would listen to us, they’d know we’re right about some things.”

  Enough whining. “Gott will prevail.”

  “He always, always does. So why do we worry and natter on about it?” She stood. “I’m tired. We’ll finish the game tomorrow night.”

  The words sounded like a promise. They had a nice ring about them.

  He nodded.

  “Shall I put out the fire or will you?”

  She offered the question as if she spoke to a man who had all his faculties. He liked that about her. “That’s on the list of things I’m not allowed to do.”

  “I never liked putting out the fire myself. I wouldn’t mind not having to do it.”

  He’d never looked at it that way. “That’s a smarty-pants ploy.”

  She grinned. “Don’t you ever ask them to add things to the list that you don’t want to do?”

  He laughed—something he never expected to do about his disease. “Nee, I feel like my world keeps getting smaller and smaller. Work is what makes life worth living. Work is what we do for fun. And now I’m not allowed to have fun.”

  A wicked twinkle sparked in her eyes. “We shall see about that.”

  This time there was no doubt. Her words held a promise.

  THIRTEEN

  TWO HEADS WERE BETTER THAN ONE. THERE HAD TO BE a problem-solving triple threat. Laura plopped onto a chair between Bess, who was knitting a beautiful shawl for her mother, and Jennie, who’d taken the morning off from the Combination Store to work on her quilt. Mary Katherine couldn’t make it—one of the girls scheduled to work at the bookstore was sick today. With Samuel and Delia settled in with the other children, Laura could spend some time picking her friends’ brains before approaching Tamara, who was in the kitchen helping her sisters make sweet-smelling candles and sachets for quilt chests.

  Keeping her granddaughter from making a horrible mistake was the order of the day. The thought gave Laura renewed energy despite a night of broken sleep with Delia’s trips to the potty and Samuel’s nightmares. The children missed their mother and Laura was a poor substitute. She didn’t have the energy she once did. Until it came to this moment of convincing Tamara that her eternal salvation and her happiness lay in Jamesport with her family and her church. She couldn’t lose another child. She’d already lost a son to death. His days were done. But Tamara had a choice. Luke had not.

  “Are you getting enough sleep? You’re not used to getting up with little ones during the night.” Jennie stabbed her needle into the burgundy material. “You look tired and not at all happy.”

  Jennie was almost as good at reading faces as Mary Katherine. Laura composed hers. “I enjoy
watching over the kinner. It makes me happy. I feel useful. Besides, it’s been almost a week and I’m getting used to it.”

  “You feel happy watching over Zechariah?”

  Her knitting needles clacking in a steady staccato, Bess giggled. “How could such a sourpuss make anyone happy?”

  His defeated expression when Laura walked into the front room the previous evening flashed in her mind. The checkers and the conversation had left her feeling better somehow. He felt better, she could tell. He’d laughed and sat up straighter in the chair. Asking him his opinion about Tamara made him feel valued. She understood the need for that. Leaving him to put out the fire showed she trusted him. At the time she hadn’t thought it through, but now she could see the groundwork being laid.

  For what?

  Friendship? She could always use a new friend. She’d never had a man friend. At her age she couldn’t—wouldn’t—ignore a chance to have one more. Especially one so in need of the return favor. Especially one who had enough years under his belt to understand how she saw the world, because he saw it the same way.

  He had a nice smile and enormous russet eyes that had seen so much. She had gone to bed wondering what else went on behind those eyes.

  Bess was too young to understand any of this. She had been through a lot in her short twenty-some years, but not the vastness of experience that came in a lifetime.

  “He’s not so bad.” She sought words in Zechariah’s defense that wouldn’t give away her own thoughts. They were too new and too strange to be shared yet. A woman having a man as a friend at her age might be hard for the younger women to understand, especially Jennie, who’d experienced such pain and hurt at the hands of her first husband. “Not only does he have the aches and pains that come with age, he also has a disease that’s taking away his independence. That’s hard for all older folks, but especially men.”

  “So Mary Katherine was right?” Jennie laid down her needle and stretched her arms over her head. “You are interested in Zechariah. That’s why you were so anxious to stay and take care of Ben’s kinner.”

  Had she been interested in Zechariah before the twins’ birth? The bird books. Reading up on Parkinson’s disease. Only as a friend who’d known the man since childhood. Surely.