Meek and Mild (4 page)

“Only two more days.”

“You’ll miss seeing Priscilla every day when school lets out.”

Hannah giggled. “We’ve promised each other we will nag our mothers all summer to let us play together.”

“
Bensel
.” Silly child. Clara was certain both girls would fulfill this commitment. Whether their mothers would cooperate in their response was another question.

“Can I use your bag?” Hannah rolled over and took the bag from Clara.

“What will you use it for?”

“Maybe I can go see Aunt Martha, like you do.”

Clara had used this bag for overnight visits to Maryland since she was a little girl not much older than Hannah. As soon as her sister died, Martha insisted that Hiram Kuhn allow his daughter to know her mother’s family. Hiram never objected. Because Martha and Atlee had joined the Conservative Amish Mennonites before the bishop’s ban when Clara was a toddler, Clara broke no rules by seeing her aunt and cousins. The shunning was not strictly enforced anyway. Most of the families in the district traced to both churches at some point in the family trees, and those who were not related by blood were connected by friendships spanning generations. Amish business serving both congregations flourished on both sides of the border. Farms on both sides of the border supplied milk to an Amish dairy in Somerset County. Dairy drivers collected the milk on daily rounds, and the dairy sold milk, cream, butter, and cheese to the
English
as well as Amish families who wanted more than their own animals produced. No one stopped to ask what date a person had joined the Marylanders.

“I could ask
Mamm
,” Hannah said, “and maybe the next time you visit Aunt Martha, I can go with you. It’s going to be summer. I won’t miss any school. I could play with Sadie.”

“We’ll have to see.” Clara did not want to make promises. Rhoda would be the first to point out that her children were not related to the Hostetlers in any way.

“That’s what
Mamm
says when she hopes I’ll forget about something.” Hannah’s lower lip trembled on the verge of a pout.

“She’s your
mamm
and she loves you,” Clara said.

“But you’re my sister and you’re a grown-up. You wouldn’t let anything happen to me.”

Footsteps sounded down the hall, and Hannah sat up in recognition of her mother’s approach.

“Hannah!” Rhoda called.

“Go quickly.” Clara nudged Hannah’s thin form and was relieved when the child complied without arguing. The last thing Clara wanted to do right now was inflame her stepmother’s mood. She would stay out of Rhoda’s way, be as silently helpful as she could, and hope that the notion of sending her to live in Maryland would pass.

“Come on,” Andrew said. “Help me.”

“Help you do what?” Yonnie said.

“Move this car.” Andrew picked up the F
REE
sign from the ground in front of the car and carried it to Yonnie’s buggy.

“You’ve been making me do things like this our whole lives.”

Andrew winked. “We’ve never moved a free car before.”

Yonnie turned his head to look both directions down the road. “Where exactly are you planning to move it? We’re still a long way from our farms.”

“So you’ll do it?”

“I didn’t say that. I’m just pointing out reality.”

Yonnie was especially good at pointing out reality. Even as a boy, he persistently hovered over what might go wrong or which rules they might break even accidentally in the course of ordinary childhood play. Perhaps that was why Andrew had long ago developed the ability to ignore Yonnie’s lack of enthusiasm. He barely heard the protests anymore.

“There’s a barn,” Andrew said, “just over a mile down the road. It’s been empty for at least five years.”

Yonnie cocked his head to think. “An
English
family named Johnson used to live there.”

“That’s the place. A fire took the house, and they didn’t rebuild.”

“If they were Amish, they would have. Everyone would have helped.”

“Well, they weren’t Amish and they were getting on in years. I heard they moved in with their son in Ohio.”

“They must still own the land.”

Andrew shrugged. “Probably. But they’re not using the barn.”

“It’s more like a shed, as I recall,” Yonnie said. “Three stalls at most. It might have served as a barn originally, before the Johnsons put up a more sufficient structure.”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“But it would be a good place to hide a car.”

“I’m not
hiding
it,” Andrew said. “I only need a place to store it—a place big enough to work on it.”

“How do you propose to get the car there?”

Andrew rolled his eyes. “You have a horse six feet away from you.”

“I suppose he could pull it, but I’d have to unhitch my buggy.”

Andrew waited. At this point in a conversation with Yonnie, he did not have to articulate his next argument. He only had to wait for Yonnie to catch up.

“I suppose the buggy would be safe here,” Yonnie finally said. “Not many people have reason to come down this road, and no one could steal it without an extra horse and harness.”

Andrew waited again.

“If we drag the buggy well off the road, it won’t be in any danger. No harm has come to the car while it was parked here.”

Now Andrew moved again. He had Yonnie right where he wanted him—persuaded that the job was possible and not, for the moment, entangled with his conscience.

“I’ll get your rope,” Andrew said, one hand already fumbling around under the buggy bench. He had no idea how to tie a rope to a car, but he supposed it could not be much different than dragging a buggy. The main thing was to not put too much stress on the axle, and he would have to figure out how to release any brake that might impede the tires’ movements.

Common sense. That was the primary strategy to solving most problems. Despite Yonnie’s legalistic perspective on decisions, he was loyal. Right now, Andrew counted on Yonnie’s loyalty toward him to run long and deep. As long as Andrew stayed one step ahead of himself and was patient enough to learn, he would have himself a car.

Garrett County, Maryland

T
he vice gripping Fannie Esh’s womb, all too familiar, meant only one thing.

The womb was empty. There was no child this month. Next would come the backache, and then the flow. Heartbreak would smash through hope once again.

Once she weaned Sadie more than four years ago, Fannie assumed another child would come as easily as Sadie had, another wash of luminous wonder into the household, another joyful pitch of a baby’s giggle. She and Elam had never tried to avoid a child, but now all she had to do was catch his eye over his supper plate and he would know what the expression meant. Oblivious, Sadie would chatter through the silent exchange at their small wooden kitchen table. Elam would rise early the next day and be out in the fields before Fannie could fix him a proper breakfast. He would not come in for lunch nor eat more than a few bites at supper. They would not speak of it. What more was there to say after all this time, while their siblings and neighbors and fellow church members received child after child from God’s hand? Sometimes the babes were not even a year apart.

“Sadie would like a little sister, wouldn’t she?” Fannie’s friends used to say.

“There’s nothing as sweet as the smell of a baby’s head.”

“Have you seen the new Stutzman baby? She’s their most beautiful child yet.”

Now her friends had three or four children and somberly promised to pray for God’s blessing to come to Fannie as well.

Fannie yearned for another child, but she was beginning to doubt whether the arrows in the quiver, as the Bible said, were truly a measure of God’s blessing. Perhaps the psalmist meant something else entirely, something that would make Fannie feel less discomforted by her inability to bear another child.

She sat at the kitchen table, where in the past she would allow herself the release of tears when this moment arrived. Fannie had abandoned tears more than a year ago. Now she simply counted off ten slow, deep breaths and composed herself.

Sadie bounded in through the back door, her cheeks scrubbed fresh by the late spring air and her eyes lit with anticipation.

“It’s today, right?” Sadie said. “Today we go to for supper with
Grossmuder, ya
?”

The desire to join her boisterous family for the evening meal could not have been further from Fannie’s mood, but Sadie loved to go. Especially since Fannie’s brother’s son began to toddle, Sadie loved to take Thomas’s hand and lead him around the house or yard.

And Elam would be waiting for them there. He walked over several hours early to help Atlee Hostetler put a new door on the outside entrance to the cellar. Perhaps it was just as well. Among her extended family it would be easier to avoid Elam’s eye. He could have one more day of hope even if Fannie could not.

“Shall we fix your hair before we go?” Fannie said, taking her daughter’s hand. “Your braids are coming loose.”

“If we must,” Sadie said, “but please hurry.”

Fannie took in little of what Sadie said while they repaired her hair and rode in the buggy the two miles to the Hostetler farm. Most of it seemed to be about the words Sadie wanted to teach her young cousin, though in Fannie’s observation the boy showed little interest in expressing himself beyond the few simple sounds he already had mastered. There was plenty of time for that.

Fannie pulled her buggy in beside her brother’s, and Sadie gripped the bench and looked at her mother for permission to get out. After Sadie once jumped out before the buggy stopped moving and nearly rolled under a wooden wheel, Fannie and Elam became stricter than their general natures about a rule that Sadie must not leave the buggy without explicit permission.

Fannie nodded. Sadie leaped down, and Fannie followed. They entered the back door together, and the little girl ran to embrace her
grossmuder
, flinging her arms around Martha’s waist and laying her head against her abdomen.

“
Grossmuder
,” Sadie said, “my arms don’t reach around you anymore. Are you eating too much?”

“Sadie!” Fannie said sharply.

“Sorry.” Sadie hung her head for a few seconds before looking up again brightly. “Where’s the baby?”

Martha Hostetler laughed. “In the front room. But he’s supposed to play on his blanket right now.”

“I’ll help him play.” Sadie shot through the door.

“What can I help you with?” Fannie said.

Martha turned and removed a knife from a drawer. “I haven’t done the vegetables yet.”

“I’ll do them.” Fannie took the knife from her mother.

Amish dresses hid weight gain and shifting shapes, but in a startling moment Fannie saw what had sparked her daughter’s impolite question. Her mother’s bosom was heavier and her apron climbed a less defined waistline.

Martha was thickening.

“Clara!”

Clara jolted at the sound of Rhoda’s voice. Whatever Rhoda needed, Clara would do—dishes, dusting, sweeping.

She stepped from her room into the hall. “Yes? What can I do for you?”

“Nothing,” Rhoda said. “I only wanted to say that I’m going to walk the children up to the road and see them off to school.”