An Amish Courtship on Ice Mountain

by Kelly Long

  The bishop’s words suddenly broke into his thoughts, and Joel listened in growing disbelief and fury.

  “No doubt many of you gathered here understand that those who’ve been impoverished by Derr Herr for their sins cannot truly hope to improve their circumstance on the back of an upright man. This is only a temporary haven that soon will be destroyed by Gott’s Own Hand. And we should not be deceived by pretty words and looks! Nee . . . because the Bible speaks to the fact that even Satan can still appear as an Angel of Light. So be on guard, my friends, that you do not meet the same end as dear Judah, who only sought to banish what was impure from among us.”

  Joel lifted his gaze to meet the bishop’s shark eyes squarely. He nodded slowly at the older man in open challenge, knowing that such lies could not geh on unchecked . . .

  * * *

  Martha was surprised to discover Sarah Umble sitting with her parents one morning when she went to give them breakfast. Up until now, she’d thought that her mother-in-law would rather prefer to be alone.

  “Martha.” Her mamm’s soft voice broke into her thoughts, and she smiled readily.

  “Jah, Mamm and Daed. And my new—mamm.” She put down the loaded tray on a round table that was near the window in the large, pleasant room. “Is anyone hungry?”

  “Always, Dochder,” Chet Yoder said in a cheery tone, and Martha’s smile widened.

  It was rare to find her fater in such gut humor, but then, she had not spent that much time with him lately beyond seeing to his care.

  “Jah, yer mamm and I are enjoyin’ the company of this fine lady. She’s got a ready sense of humor that does a body gut.”

  Martha gazed with wonder for a brief second at Sarah Umble. A ready sense of humor? I must spend more time with her . . . I guess I’ve been hiding from her in a way, since Judah . . .

  Martha set up trays and plates and adjusted pillows to maximum comfort. She was about to ask Sarah if she might bring her something, when that woman chirped up.

  “Sit down, girl. You’re making my nerves ache with all of your moving about. Hand me a piece of bacon and tell your parents a gut joke.”

  Martha dropped obediently into a chair, passed the plate of bacon to her mother-in-law and wracked her brains for some kind of joke. “Well,” she said finally. “I can tell you a tale of a pig named Phillipe . . .”

  * * *

  For days, Bishop Loftus’s words gnawed at Joel. He went through the motions of daily living, but knew himself to be distant and removed, and that was the last thing he wanted to be with Martha.

  The spring chores about the farm kept him occupied, and he found that Martha’s interest in the kitchen garden was something that gave him moments of joy. He and Sebastian had turned a great deal larger plot of land than had been done in years past. Usually, a sustainable garden meant only plowing the minimum amount of footage for each person in the haus, but Martha insisted that the garden should have edible flowers, pumpkins, and herbs, in addition to the regular crops.

  “I’ve never thought about edible flowers,” Joel had to confess as he and Martha left the haus early one morning to plan the layout of the flower section.

  “Perhaps there is much you have not thought of, Joel Umble,” Martha said saucily, flashing him a smile that made him feel warm as toast inside.

  He caught her close when they were outside. “There are some things that I can recall, now that you mention it.” He kissed her gently, with great tenderness, and she responded with an intensity that shook him.

  When he finally pulled away, he saw that she was already two steps ahead, her bare toes digging deep in the rich, loosened earth. He had a sudden image of what a daughter of Martha’s would be like—all brown braids and bare feet, running wild on the mountain.

  He had to shake himself from his imagining as the vision of the tombstones reared up in his mind, and he told himself fiercely to stop daydreaming.

  He followed Martha more soberly now, but her enthusiasm was hard to resist.

  “Ach, Joel, Grossmuder has some heirloom seeds that she’s kept from last year in her button box. I hope that we will have gut crops of sweet cicely, thyme, lemon mint, and borage.”

  “All right. I don’t know half of what you’ve just said, but it sounds gut.”

  She spread her arms wide and made small motions with her hands like a master conductor warming up an orchestra. He began to see her vision for the simple earth that lay before them.

  “We need fennel, nasturtium, pineapple sage, and roses—lots of roses!”

  He caught her close once more, staring down into her bright face. “Ach, Martha, you do a heart gut.”

  “Do I, Joel?”

  Her lashes lowered and he saw a hectic flush of color come into her cheeks. The urge to kiss her was strong, but he turned from her instead, muttering about nonexistent chores that had to be done with the sheep.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Martha sighed to herself and tried for the third time to focus on Sarah Umble’s teaching of the letters in the simple child’s primer. It was bright and sunny out and Martha would have rather been in the garden planting her seeds. Though when she’d been outside with Joel that morning, he’d seemed to be all too willing to escape her nearness. Indeed, since Judah’s death, Joel had been distant, when he wasn’t kissing her, and she found his behavior to be perplexing.

  “The letters on the page, girl,” Sarah snapped. “Not what’s out the window!”

  Martha jumped and refocused her attention. She and Sarah only had time to study here and there, and Martha despaired of ever gaining enough skill to read Joel’s letter. Still, she was a diligent student most of the time and had made progress.

  Now she glanced over the page to discreetly study Sarah, who seemed to spend more and more time with either Martha’s grossmuder or her parents lately. Joel’s mamm had even ceased much of her anxious behavior in the past days, and Martha wondered if the uniting of the two families of older folks might not be a benefit to all of them.

  “The page, girl!”

  Martha giggled and began to sound out the letters she knew.

  * * *

  “Now, what is it you’re wanting to order, Joel Umble?” Sol Kauffman stood with pen poised over an order form while Joel whispered once more what he wanted to have sent up the mountain.

  “Three wheelchairs . . . for Martha’s family. I want them to be as padded and comfortable as possible. I think if they can easily go outside, the fresh air will do her family a world of gut.”

  Sol grunted as he scribbled, then looked up with a sudden gleam in his eyes.“Kumme with me, buwe. Lucy! Mind the store. I’m going out to the back barn for a minute.”

  Joel followed the tall man out through the back of the store, which was attached to the family’s living area. They walked to one of the larger barns on the property, and Sol lit a lantern to illuminate the dim interior.

  Pigeons had roosted here and there and the cow stalls were empty and abandoned, proof of a different time, when the store had not been the family’s business.

  “Now . . .” Sol led the way up to the haymows and then poked about in a dark corner. He lifted a tarp from something, then smiled heartily. “Here!”

  Joel peered into the gloom and was amazed at what he saw.

  “Why is it here?”

  “Polio,” Sol said with a sudden dark look. “Me own grossmuder was bound to the thing, but I wager we can fix it up to give Martha’s family some freedom right away. And I’ll order you two more of the new-fangled ones to be brought up the mountain.”

  Joel clapped the older man on the shoulder. “Danki, Sol. Danki . . .”

  * * *

  Martha watched in fascination as Joel and Sebastian fitted wood planks together after having removed one set of the front steps from the haus. She paused with a packet of seeds in her hand and couldn’t resist watching the play of muscle and sinew across Joel’s back. He was as beautiful as any wild thing, and she longed for their so-
called courtship to be at end so that she could claim him as the lover of her heart.

  She sat down idly on the edge of the porch, and Sebastian suggested that he geh and get some more wood, leaving Martha alone with her husband.

  Joel glanced up at her, and she saw the blaze of his eyes as they trailed down the considerable length of bare leg she displayed as she sat.

  “It grows warmer each day,” she commented.

  “Jah . . .” he replied absently, still much involved with studying her.

  She gave a delicate stretch, knowing his eyes followed the press of her breasts against the apron of her dress. “I think, Joel Umble, that I will forgo the bathtub tonight and bathe in the creek. Would you care to join me?”

  She saw the rigid set of his shoulders and knew what he would say before he spoke. She bounced to her feet and didn’t wait to hear him but rather headed for the kitchen garden.

  She knelt and began to sow some ghost tomatoes, telling herself that she was comfortable in the garden and that it didn’t matter if Joel didn’t want to lie with her. She glanced up suddenly as a shadow fell over her and she saw Joel standing near the row she was working on. “What is it?” she asked, using her hand to shield her eyes from the sun.

  He knelt in the dirt next to her, and she caught the rich manly scent of him, part pine soap and part sunshine.

  “It seems I’ve given you the idea that I don’t desire you, Martha Umble.”

  “Well . . .” She gulped back a sob. “Maybe you don’t.”

  She felt him cup gentle hands about her face, and then he was kissing her in long, sultry pulls. He used his tongue and gentle nips of his teeth until she forgot her tears and was kissing him back with ardor, willing to have him make love to her right in the middle of the fresh field.

  “I will see you for your bath tonight, sweetheart,” he whispered against her throat.

  She smiled against his lips and knew a moment of true joy.

  * * *

  Joel avoided Sebastian’s thoughtful gaze for the rest of the afternoon. But finally, before supper, he grew exasperated and turned from his ramp building to face the Englischer.

  “All right, Sebastian . . . out with it, if you please.”

  “I’m just thinking, that’s all,” the other man replied with his slow smile.

  “About what?” Joel snapped, feeling petty but seeing no help for it.

  “This working on an Amish farm has me thinking that I’d like to start and keep a journal—about our day-to-day experiences, how the sheep fare, what it’s like to watch a garden grow—”

  “Wait.” Joel stopped him with a raised hand, tilting his head to one side as if listening to something far away. “What did you say?”

  “A journal—like you write in . . .”

  “I know. I know.” Joel slowly lowered the hammer he was using. “Judah said something about a journal. I’d forgotten it until now. He said something about . . . reading a journal . . . telling me to do it and to beware the bishop all in one breath.”

  “Well, maybe Judah kept a journal,” Sebastian suggested.

  “I’ve never looked at Judah’s things. The bishop just returned a chest of them, and I carted it off to the attic. So it wouldn’t upset Mamm lying around.”

  Sebastian shrugged. “Maybe it would be worth taking a look.”

  Joel got to his feet, feeling compelled. “I think I will, Sebastian. Thanks.”

  * * *

  Martha sat back on her knees, sorting seeds on the floor in her grossmuder’s bright room. The auld lady had asked if a flower garden might not be planted directly outside her window, and Martha had loved the idea.

  “How about yellow lady’s slipper?”

  “Jah.” Her grossmuder smiled. “They do indeed look beautiful, and are as delicate as the dancing shoe of any fine lady.”

  Martha nodded. “And some Carolina lupine and merrybells . . . Ach, and what about some maidenhair ferns and the woodland iris?”

  “You’re spoiling me, girlie,” Esther Yoder quipped.

  Martha moved to sit in the rocking chair near the auld lady’s bed. She put out a strong, young hand to cover the aged, blue-veined hands of her grossmuder. “Tell me a story,” Martha suggested cheerfully.

  Her grossmuder smiled. “Now, you haven’t asked for that since you were a wee one. Why do you ask today?”

  Martha smiled readily and answered with truth. “Ach, because I love your stories, and perhaps because I want the day to pass more quickly . . .”

  “So you can spend some time alone with Joel Umble?”

  Martha blushed faintly. “Jah.”

  Esther Yoder smiled and leaned back against the comfortable mound of white pillows behind her. “Well, for your truthfulness, I’ll give you a story. An auld tale, but entertaining nonetheless . . . Let’s see, girlie. My husband, your grossdaddi, died a long while ago, though I miss him still. But he and I got to be friends with an Englisch couple named Dutch and Hazel Wolfe. Dutch would geh hunting with your grandfater and Hazel would teach me fancy work called crocheting. Anyway, girlie, there was something folks said was odd about Dutch. He was auld even when we knew him and wore this jaunty hat on his bald head. His face looked like a raisin, it was so wrinkled . . . But Dutch had this Bible, and he’d bid you to try and open it, and you would try and try and it was as if the pages were glued tight. But you’d hand it back to Dutch, and he’d open it just fine.”

  “A trick?” Martha asked.

  “Nee. Because when auld Dutch read the Good Book, the pages moved just fine. Some called Dutch a hex, yet he showed nothing but kindness to us. I remember once, when your daed was small and having nachtmares about something or another, that Dutch came into the haus and took a broom he had and went along and swept the ceiling of the room. He swept it clean like it was a kitchen floor. Then he told your fater that he would have no more bad dreams, that he’d swept them all away. And . . . your fater never did again.”

  Martha was enchanted. “What else did Dutch do?”

  “Well, it was said that Dutch knew a verse in Leviticus in the Bible that could stop a man from bleeding. Sure enough, your grandfather invited Dutch and some other men to geh in a hunting party for grouse. Well, one man got loose with the trigger and shot another fella right in the chest. Your grossdaddi said that it was bad and that the man was sure to bleed to death before they could get him to a doctor, but then Dutch knelt down beside him and said the verse from the Bible, and the bleeding stopped. It stopped long enough for the men to get him a doctor, and he eventually recovered—thanks to Derr Herr and Dutch.”

  Her grandmother’s voice died off softly.

  “What happened to Dutch?”

  “Ach, girlie, he died, same as everybody else is bound to do, and he asked that his Bible be buried with him and it was. Yep, that was the last of Dutch in this world.”

  There was a certain sadness that hung in the room, and Martha sought to banish it by going back to the seeds, but not before she’d kissed her grossmuder’s cheek with tenderness and thanked her for the story.

  * * *

  Joel eased open his bruder’s trunk as he knelt in the attic of the haus. He felt odd, touching Judah’s things, almost as if Judah himself stood nearby. Then Joel shrugged off the melancholy feeling and carefully laid each item on the floor beside him. There were clothes and shoes and knives—Judah’s hunting guns were downstairs in a glass-fronted cabinet. There was a metal deer drag, his pocket watch, and a few bits of coin. That’s all . . . all that a man’s life comes down to, and none of it he could take in his coffin with him . . . But what’s missing?

  “What is missing?” Joel said aloud. Then he realized that not only was there no sign of a journal but that Judah’s Bible was also absent. It was odd, because Judah usually carried the dark-covered Bible with him . . . He put all of the things back and decided that perhaps Judah had been delirious with pain when he’d mentioned a journal—but Joel would certainly heed his warning to beware
of Bishop Loftus.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Martha shivered a bit, but not with the cold. She was nervous lest Joel forget to come. Or perhaps he had simply changed his mind about joining her for a bath in the creek. She’d brought fluffy white towels from the haus and had followed the water back to the woods and the secret pool where she and Joel had met that moonlit nacht.

  After a few discouraging minutes, Martha decided that she might as well take advantage of the chill water and started to unbind her hair. But then she turned suddenly, having the oddest feeling that she was being watched.

  “Joel?”

  Only the light wind answered her, and she decided to shrug off her imaginings. Quickly, she stripped down and made the first bone-chilling plunge into the creek hole. She came up gasping, only to see Joel standing on the creek bank before her.

  “Joel Umble! You scared me half to death . . . Were you watching me earlier?”

  “Nee.” He knelt down on the bank. “I just got here. I’m watching you now, though.”

  Her lips curled in a soft smile. “So you are. Do you need help getting undressed?”

  He shook his head and got back to his feet. His hat and coat were off quickly but then he took his time lowering his suspenders and unpinning his burgundy shirt.

  Even in the filtered light of the moon, she thought his chest looked beautiful—supple skin, well defined, with an arrow of dark hair that ran interestingly downward to disappear beneath the waistband of his wool pants.

  Martha was completely charmed at the sight and waited for him to continue . . .

  * * *

  Joel decided he was definitely having fun. It was a joy to have his wife’s rapt, wide-eyed attention. But it was even more pleasurable when he eased himself into the icy coldness of the creek and then caught Martha close to him. The multiple sensations of rushing water, swirling stimulation, and the feel of her body clasped to his were exhilarating. He started kissing her, finding the honeyed warmth of her mouth and plunging his tongue inside again and again to duel with her own. She curled clever fingers up to pull the hair at the nape of his neck, and he closed his eyes with pleasure when she slid her hands lower. When he lifted his head to catch his breath, he found her eyes dazed in response to his actions.