Smicksburg Tales 1,2 & 3 (Amish Knitting Circle, Amish Friends Knitting Circle & Amish Knit Lit Cirlce ~ Complete Series: 888 pages for Granny Weaver Lovers and 30+ Amish Recipes

by Karen Anna Vogel

  “Well, I can’t promise, but I will try,” Granny said.

  As Marge was leaving, Granny saw Maryann come into the special waiting room. She was pale and her eyes looked dazed. “What’s wrong?” Granny asked.

  Maryann sat next to Granny and took her hand. “I need to come back. They found a mass…some lumps. Need to do a biopsy.”

  Granny squeezed her hand. “When?”

  “In a few days. They have an opening on Saturday, January 7th.”

  Granny felt her throat tighten. Could this be happening? She thought of Old Christmas, a day to fast, pray, and reflect. She’d be doing a complete fast all day…for Maryann.

  ~*~

  Roman dropped the girls off at the one-room schoolhouse and was glad to see Tillie walked with her head up, despite the fact that she wasn’t confident about the spelling bee. His little Tillie, timid yet tender. So much like her daed, at least the timid part. Too timid to open his mouth when he saw someone who was wounded.

  The memories of Lizzie haunted him all night; he even dreamed of their happy courtship. Why all these memories were so fresh baffled him. Maybe when he learned about the lost letter, he remembered how they exchanged letters all the time, stuck in secret places. Lizzie loved a mystery and he tried to make each search a challenge. Roman could usually find out from hints where her letters were, why not this one?

  He thought of the hope chest. The writing was on the top, in the right corner. Did that mean anything? He slowed his horse to a walk and thought. Could it be a direction? Did it mean northeast? Did she mean Old Smicksburg Park then? So many happy walks down Trillium Trail and wading across Little Mahoning Creek in the summer when it was shallow. Could it be in the massive oak at the far northeast corner?

  He turned his buggy around and headed northeast.

  ~*~

  Lizzie looked at the pictures of trains on the far wall of the Iron Horse Inn Restaurant, to avoid the eyes of Amos Miller, heavy upon her. How her cousin got her to agree to go out to eat with this lonely widower was a mystery to her. Maybe it was Amos’ four little ones. He surely needed a wife and it felt good to be needed for something besides filling up bag after bag of dry goods.

  “So, how far is Smicksburg from here by bus?” Amos asked. “Have never been to the western part of the state.”

  Lizzie fidgeted with the end of the white table cloth near her lap. “Four hours. And the bus service is very nice. They changed my ticket to a later date at no charge.”

  “So when are you going home?”

  “My daed needs me in the store, so no more than two more weeks. We have friends helping run it now. They won’t accept pay, saying my daed’s company is all the pay they need.” She smiled. “He’s goot at checkers and Dutch Blitz. They have lots of fun…the store isn’t so busy in the winter.”

  “And your daed has MS? Is it the slow moving kind?”

  Lizzie didn’t want to talk about Smicksburg; she was already too homesick for a grown woman and it shamed her she missed her daed only being away for two weeks. She missed the knitting circle and seeing Roman, to her surprise. “My daed’s on an experimental drug for MS. He took a great risk in taking it, but it seems to be stopping the disease dead in its tracks. No further damage and we’re mighty thankful.”

  “Ach, that’s wunderbar. Your daed taking a new drug shows how brave he is. Maybe the goot Lord allowed him to get the disease so others could be helped?”

  Lizzie furrowed her brows. “I never thought of it like that. I guess everything works out together for the goot, jah?”

  She saw empathy pour out of Amos’ brown eyes. “There were no other medicines for my wife or she would have taken them. She was brave too.” He put both elbows on the table and rested his chin in his fists. “But, we move on. It’s been two years.”

  Lizzie looked at the snow slapping the window; she wished she could open it and let some cold air in to help her profuse blushing. Two years was the usual time that an Amish person remarried. Her mind turned to Roman again. It was three and a half years now that he was a widower. Why he hadn’t found anyone else was another mystery. Her life was turning up mysteries everywhere.

  The counseling sessions and the help of her cousin were the only sure course of action she was positive she’d taken. Keeping her secret, her shame, for so long had only made it grow larger, towering over her every day and she lived in its shadows. No more though. She was not a little bird trapped in a cage with no hope. There was always hope when you let others share your burden. If she’d only not been too independent and confided in one person, her life would have been so different.

  But she did confide in someone: Roman. She told him to go to the big oak, the one in Old Smicksburg Park, a few days after she returned the hope chest, but he acted like he didn’t hear her. Ignoring eye-contact with her and pretending she wasn’t there. But surely he heard and saw the letter, and he rejected her. Now that her cousin and the counselor knew, she realized it was cruel of him. He’d never truly loved her, even though she had all the confidence in the world while they were engaged. But like Granny said, she watched how people reacted; that was the true person, and Roman reacted with silence and anger. She looked over at Amos, and his mellow eyes seemed to help draw her out of the cocoon spun around her. What would the next two weeks hold?

  ~*~

  Ruth put little Micah down for his afternoon nap and walked down the short hall to the living room. A little house was easier to clean; having no man track mud through her freshly washed floors was also a relief. She sat in her rocker and looked out at the birds that flew from feeder to feeder. She looked at the cardinals through her binoculars; the males were vibrant red and the females’ light brownish-red. She looked at the females more clearly. They had a beauty of their own; their feathers appeared softer and their orange beaks were more noticeable than the males’. The females’ eyes always seemed more attentive, too.

  A black image blocked her view, and she saw it was a buggy, with Luke in it. Ruth quickly put down the binoculars, remembering all the times Luke chided her for watching birds and not cleaning the house, and ran to the little kitchen sink to wet a rag and started to wipe down the counter.

  When she heard a knock, she felt weak. She did not want to open that door, but she couldn’t hide forever. So she opened it and a knot formed in her stomach. He held a present in his hand, and in the past, all his little bouquets of flowers or boxes of chocolates were only traps made to get her to trust him again. She did not want the little present in his hand; she wanted a new man.

  “Can I come in?” Luke asked. “It’s freezing out here.”

  Ruth pointed to the rubber mat she’d placed, inside the house, by the door. “Take off your boots first.”

  Luke stepped in on the rug and obliged her. “Where do you want my coat?”

  “Are you staying long? I have things to do.”

  Luke leaned toward her and took her hands. She noticed his breath smelt of peppermint and he had no under arm odor. His hygiene improved but she backed away. “Luke, we can talk, but don’t even try to come near me.”

  “I understand,” Luke said, head down.

  “Do you? Or is this a show like the children’s Christmas play? They all pretend to be something else for a day. Is that what you’re doing?”

  Luke held up a little box gift-wrapped in white paper with a red ribbon. “Take this. You know I can write things better than say them.”

  Ruth reluctantly took the little package and opened it. A carved wooden box. Fannie didn’t waste any time in getting one from Melvin. She opened it up and was surprised it was full to the top with neatly cut papers that fit flat in the box. The top one read, “Your tenacity. I love that about you.” It was what he’d said to her the first time he told her he loved her. She thought back to the buggy ride when she first bent over to kiss him. He was too shy to kiss her, so she not only had to ask him to go on a ride, but she took the initiative to kiss him first.

  But was i
t healthy? Looking at their marriage, she assumed not. She thought of the softness of the female cardinal; there was something so lovely about a woman with a gentle nature. The male birds all pursued the females also, even fighting off rivals. Why did she feel like the male bird in their marriage? She wanted to be a female with soft feathers.

  Ruth read the paper in the box now on top. “Your dark eyes pierce my soul.” Was this a compliment? She bore holes through his head with her glares, most likely. Then she thought of all the times he’d try to tell her about his upbringing and he’d said her eyes pierced his soul. When he’d said that in the past, she thought he meant to stop staring, but was he saying her eyes poked holes in his soul? Holes into his heart only she could see and was he asking for help? She remembered once when he tried to tell her about what was in Uncle Otis’ barn, but when he’d said how she stared, she’d changed the subject. He was trying to confess years ago.

  But he left bruises on her arms and all the name-calling bruised her heart. She didn’t know of a balm that could heal it. “Danki for the present, Luke. But like I said, I’m busy. You need to go.”

  “Ruth, it’s January 5th. We need to be together by tomorrow or you’ll get a warning.”

  “And I have six weeks to repent, if I do,” she snapped. She looked into Luke’s hurt blue eyes. He looked more like his brother, Zach, someone who was the embodiment of kindness. She always wanted him to be more like his brother, and now she saw softness in his eyes, not wild and mean like they’d been. He seemed relaxed and not anxious. Was the medicine really working?

  He walked near her and took her hands. “Give me a chance to show you I’m a changed man. I’m calmer and Jeb’s little book he wrote about marriage is goot. I’ve been trying to snuff you out Ruth. Jeb told me that. He said Granny’s spunk is her God-given personality, and your strong, take-charge personality is from Him, too. I’m so sorry I didn’t see that, and compared you to women who weren’t opinionated, like Ella.” He took her hand and kissed it. “I don’t want anyone but you, and I mean it.”

  She froze with her hands in his. She didn’t want him touching her if he came home, for a long while. If he liked her opinionated self, she’d have to make that clear. “If I let you come live here, you’ll be in Micah’s room, in a twin bed, understand?” She withdrew her hands. “I don’t want you touching me.”

  “Never again?” he asked softly.

  Ruth was shocked he didn’t fly off the handle, but she saw remorse in his eyes, or was it love? She thought back to their first nights together and how sweet they were, but she wouldn’t let memories of the past blind her to the fact that she was married to a man who’d made her feel unclean in the marriage bed. “Never…maybe. But I’m not even sure I want you back. I’m fasting on Old Christmas and will let you know my decision tomorrow night.”

  Luke turned and got on his boots. She turned toward the sink and could hear he was crying, as if totally broken, and her first reaction was to run and comfort him. But she didn’t and let him walk out the door. Ruth didn’t know why, but she ran to the door and opened it, but saw her daed out by the buggy talking to Luke. He showed no sympathy toward him, only admonishing him that he’d better be treating his daughter right. With her parents next door, and a man who appeared to be changing, maybe things could work out for her to remain Amish…

  ~*~

  Roman said a prayer for Luke as they passed on the road. It appeared he was crying. Maybe his daed was right; Luke was a changed man and Ruth needed to give him a chance to prove it. He thought of his mamm mentioning her prayers for Lizzie, her casting off nightly prayers. He knew he was always included and lately, he wondered if her prayers were softening his heart to remember the Lizzie before all the pain she caused him. Bitterness had blinded him to the girl who was warm and loving. How could he be such a fool? Something hurt her and he was determined to find out what it was.

  He pulled into Old Smicksburg Park and tied the horses’ reins to the post, and started down the path that led to the old oak tree. He was glad she hadn’t put it in a white pine or maple tree. Since they grew quickly, the woodpecker hole would be closed from new growth. No, oaks grew slowly and surely he could reach the old hole, still open.

  As he walked down the path, he remembered the many times he chased Lizzie around the park. How fun-loving she was, even wanting to play Hide-N-Seek like a child. He loved sneaking up on her and catching her, nestling her in his arms. A yearning to hold her again overwhelmed him. Feelings he hadn’t felt in over a decade were as fresh as if they’d happened yesterday.

  He picked up the pace to warm up but also to get to the tree. When he reached it, he spied for any holes. Roman looked at eye-height but didn’t see anything. The tree was massive, at least four feet wide. He circled it again, scanning the tree higher, and then he saw it; a woodpecker hole, but too high up to reach. Roman turned to find something to step up on, but there was nothing. He trudged through the woods off the beaten path and found nothing. Without thinking he started to run, run the whole way back to his buggy. He couldn’t get the buggy down the narrow path, but he could get is horse. He unhitched it and jumped up on the horse, riding it bareback.

  Roman soon got to the tree and could see into the hole. He reached in and felt… leather? He pulled out a leather pouch and groaned. Was someone hiding their chewing tobacco in this hole? Most likely. He opened it up, and his heart raced when he found there was a note wrapped up in a plastic bag. Lizzie must have taken great care to make sure the letter wasn’t damaged.

  He ripped it open to read:

  Love,

  I can’t look in your eyes. I can’t speak. The path you told me not to take, I took. A man saw my hair… and other things. A hunter saved me so, I’m still a virgin. R, a man saw the hair I saved for you. The breasts no one has ever seen were exposed. My arms are badly bruised, but my heart is broken, and filled with shame and fear. Please forgive me for bringing this on myself. I returned the hope chest last week in haste.

  If you forgive me, bring wildflowers to my house like you used to? Please, R, don’t reject me.

  Roman read the letter twice and put his head down against his horse’s mane and sobbed. You rejected me… Now he understood. She thought he’d seen the letter. Never! I’d never reject Lizzie…my Love. He wailed and cried, until he could barely move. Ach, Lizzie, it wasn’t your fault. He looked at the letter again, and remembered how he brought her wildflowers wrapped in ribbons. How she’d run into his arms every time he brought them to her. She always loved the purple ones best. His tears dripped against the letter. I would never reject you…

  ~*~

  Granny flew out of her door, exasperated. How could Roman forget to pick the girls up on such a frigid day? The poor girls had to be picked up by another Amish family, as if they were stray kittens. She had both hands on her hips, her shawl flapping in the wind, as she saw Roman’s buggy slowly move up the driveway. Had the horse lost its shoe? He was moving so slow.

  When she could make out his face, she put her hand on her heart. An accident. Something horrible had happened. “Roman, what is it? Is someone hurt?”

  She’d never seen her son cry so uncontrollably. It reminded her of when he was a child and skinned his knees. How he’d wail. Not wanting the girls to see their daed in such a state, she told the girls to stay in her place. Jeb came outside, flew down the stairs and ran to the buggy, demanding Roman to tell him who got hurt. But Roman only sobbed. “Is someone hurt?” Jeb yelled, pulling Roman from the buggy. “Tell us. Who got hurt?”

  “I…” Roman gasped.

  Jeb looked up at her, puzzled, but Granny knew that something had finally broken in her son’s heart. A heart that started to harden when Lizzie called off their wedding; God had heard her casting off prayers and honored her fast on Second Christmas. God was healing Roman’s heart; some tears a woman knew were just for cleansing and healing.

  ~*~

  Ella rocked Moses while Zach fed Vina. The twins had k
ept them up most of the night, but what greater gift to have than two healthy, beautiful babies? She couldn’t help but wonder about the father. The twins were so young and their eye color could change, but for now they both had green eyes and reddish peach fuzz hair. Half Irish perhaps? She picked up little Moses and kissed his cheek.

  She thought back to all the years of hopelessness. Thinking she was pregnant time and time again, but never could conceive. She looked out the window into the twilight morning and thanked God that he really knew her deep down; that these two kinner were gifts from Him and she and Zach had a special carved out place in their hearts that only the twins could fill.

  Ella noticed an unfamiliar car moving slowly down the road, as if lost. There appeared to be an Amish woman in it, maybe someone visiting relatives for Old Christmas. She was glad the church leaders agreed to not have church since Old Christmas fell on a Friday, so close to Sunday. She and Zach would have a quiet day to fast and rest.

  She thought of the meaning of Old Christmas; the last of the Twelve Days of Christmas, when the kings arrived to bring gifts for the Christ Child. Why the English started shopping and baking in the autumn, to only have Christmas for one day, she’d never understand. No, the Amish held fast to their old German ways, and celebrated and reflected much longer.

  The white car came back down the road and pulled into their drive-way. Most likely someone lost and in need of directions. Zach put Vina in her playpen and went to greet the visitors. She heard concern in his voice, and then fear. Was something wrong? She clenched Moses tight and didn’t move. She seldom heard Zach talk in such a confused tone. She got up and walked across the living room back to the kitchen, and saw Lavina. What was she doing here?

  The teenage girl ran to Ella, hugging both her and Moses. She wants the kinner back?

  Ella pulled away and stepped back. “Lavina, the twins are ours now. We agreed, jah?”

  Lavina stared at her with empty eyes. “Ella, I don’t want the babies back. I just can’t live in Troutville anymore. You’re the only person who doesn’t judge me…”