MENDING FENCES (5 page)

            “Tell me about life at the community,” Eldon said, looking at Maria with a hungry expression on his face, as if he wanted to hear every detail in order to make him feel like he was a part of it again.

            “I’m sure you remember,” Maria said.  “I’ve been spending a lot of time in the kitchen making the meals and tending to the baking.”

            “You always had a flair for food,” he agreed.  “Even from what I remember.  How are the crops?”

            “Well, the drought has hit us pretty hard,” she said with a sigh.

            “Is that why I’ve seen more furniture coming out?” he asked.

            Maria nodded.  “The men are trying to supplement the funds we have lost from the crops with extra furniture.  It’s not ideal, but it’s working for us so far.”

            Eldon gave her a half smile.  “It sure had been a lot of extra competition for me.”

            “Competition for you?” she asked, the curiosity rising in her voice.

            “I build furniture.  For part of my living.  I learned the skills from my father and created a few new styles myself.”

            “That table in the storefront down the street,” Maria said, pointing down the block a ways.

            “That’s mine,” he affirmed.  “I try to build tables that look fully Amish, but are unique in their own ways as well.”

            “I recognized the craftsmanship,” Maria answered.  “It almost looked like one of ours, but I was certain it wasn’t.  There was just something about it.”
            “I’d like to show you my work room sometime,” Eldon said as Maria felt his shoulder brush against hers while they walked.

            “That would be interesting,” Maria agreed.

            “Is this restaurant okay?” he asked as they stopped in front of a building Maria had not yet encountered.  “They don’t make everything from scratch, but their bread is the closest to what you have back home that I’ve found around here.         

            Maria smiled at his consideration of her.  Cooper had made her feel better about her situation and now Eldon was making her feel more at home.  Not only with his thoughtfulness, but also with his sheer presence.

            Maria scolder herself.  She needed to be careful.  If she didn’t watch herself, she would find her spirit fitting into the outside world.  She wanted to experience it, but she didn’t want to find herself going so far that she couldn’t go back.

            She glanced at Eldon as they walked, noticing that he was watching her instead of the sidewalk ahead of them.  Eldon definitely had things he could teach her.  She could feel it.  If nothing else, perhaps she would learn more about his own story…why he left the community and where he had been since.  Maria looked forward to hearing what he had to say about the outside world.  The only negative she could see was that he was making her feel things that she hadn’t ever felt before.  She shrugged off the strange emotions.  She was going to feel a lot of things she hadn’t felt before out here.  It was to be expected.

            Maria tore her eyes from the sidewalk and met Eldon’s stare.  She was sure to experience plenty of feelings during her time away from the community.  But she wondered if any would match the way she felt right then.

            Maria and Eldon sat across from one another near the front window of the little restaurant and ordered soup.  It was a warm day outside and hot soup wasn’t exactly inviting, but Eldon said the soup and bread were the closest thing they could find to home so Maria agreed.

            They spent a few minutes before the meal arrived chatting about the town.  Eldon told Maria the best place to buy fabric in case she wanted to make anything while she was there and Maria told Eldon more about the crops and the furniture business that had sprouted out of need.

            When the soup arrived, Eldon took the lead.  “Shall we pray?” he asked, extending his hands across the table.

            Maria nodded and placed her hands in his.  “Dear Lord,” Eldon prayed as the steam from the soup wafted between them.  “Thank you for crossing our paths today and please guide us to teach one another the lessons you would have us learn.  Bless this food for our bodies and bless Maria during her time away from her home and family.  In Jesus’ precious name, Amen.”

            Maria repeated Eldon’s Amen and drew her hands back reluctantly.  It wasn’t the first time she had held hands with a man in prayer, but it was the first time she had noticed and enjoyed it.

            “Would you like to see more of what I do?” Eldon asked, an earnest look on his face.

            Maria scooped up a spoonful of soup and started to blow on the hot liquid.

            “I mean,” he continued, “it’s been such a long time since I’ve run into anyone from the community and I just want to get in as much as I can while you’re here.”

            Maria smiled.  It was nice to be treated like family.  Cooper was friendly and he had Amish in his background, but he wasn’t part of the community.  Eldon wasn’t either, but he had been there and he knew what her life was all about more than anyone else in the town.

            “You want to show me your craftsmanship?” she asked, delighted at the idea.  She was still intrigued by the table she saw in the first window on the other side of downtown.

            “I’d like that very much.  Are you interested in seeing it?” he asked.

            Maria hesitated.  She was interested.  A little too much so.  She didn’t know what she liked more…the idea of seeing Eldon’s creations or simply spending more time with him.  She felt her face flush.  Was this a good idea?  Spending time with a man who left the community many years ago?  He dressed in plain, simple clothing, but it was not homemade.  He lived in the outside world and there must be a reason for that.

            Maria didn’t know the whole story and she had not been allowed to ask.  Eldon was several years older than her so she didn’t really know all that much about him.  She remembered seeing him in church and around the community as he worked in the fields and ate in the communal hall.  As for actually speaking, they may have said a few words to one another from time to time, but they hadn’t exactly been friends.  They were too young for that at the time.  Friendships between males and females didn’t normally form until the teen years and by the time Maria came to understand that she needed to form bonds with some of the men in the community in order to someday marry, Eldon was gone.

            Though Maria couldn’t remember any conversations she had had with Eldon when he was still part of the community, she did remember the conversations they didn’t have.  Eldon had gone out on his Rumspringa break when he was 15 and he had come back a whole month later.  It seemed like a long time to Maria, but she had only been 11 then and she wasn’t all that concerned with boys or Rumspringa.  What Maria remembered more was that two years after Eldon’s baptism, he was shunned within the community.

            Shunning was not something that occurred very often within her community.  If someone was doing something that the community considered wrong, the topic would be brought up before them and most of the time, they quickly changed their ways.  To be Amish was to please God and anyone that was not pleasing God wanted to make sure that they made adjustments in order to do so.

            Maria hadn’t been at the center of the controversy so she didn’t really know very much about it.  She just knew that one day, her parents informed her that the shun was to be placed on Eldon Schrock.  Maria was not to speak to him, look at him, or touch him.  When she was on kitchen duty, she still had to serve him, but he sat at a table all by himself away from his family, friends, and everyone else in the community.

            Maria imagined that being shunned was the most horrible thing that could happen to an Amish person.  To be that close to family members and people you grew up with only to be ignored was a fate worse than death.  When she asked her parents what Eldon had done, her father had simply said, “He has disrespected his parents.”  Maria never knew how or why.  She simply followed the rules and began ignoring Eldon Schrock.

            Shunning Eldon hadn’t been all that hard on Maria because she didn’t know him very well.  But watching the process sent a stab of pain through her chest and as she sat across from him in the restaurant now, blowing on her soup, she felt the same pain hit her.

            “You want to know, don’t you?” Eldon asked quietly, referring to her thoughts as if she had said something out loud.  “Tell you want,” he continued.  “You come to my workshop tomorrow and I’ll tell you the whole story.”

            Maria slowly took a bite of soup to stall for time.  If Eldon had only apologized for his transgressions, he would have been forgiven and he could have gone back to the Amish lifestyle to which he was accustomed.  The fact that he was shunned was harsh enough, but since he never apologized and attempted to atone for his sins, the shunning went on and on.  Eventually, Maria figured that he had had enough.  He went into town on foot one day and he never returned.

            She decided that if she was going to spend time with a man who left the community after doing something horrible enough to receive the shun, she needed to know the details.  It wasn’t that she was going to run back home and share them with everyone else who might have been curious. That would have been gossip, which would be a sin in and of itself.  And it wasn’t to satisfy her own curiosity either.  She simply had to know in order to make a decision about the man one way or the other.  Was he someone who could teach her about the outside world?  Someone she could trust?  Or was he someone she should avoid?

            Maria swallowed.  “I’ll come to your workshop.”

            “Great,” Eldon said with a smile, his dimple diving into his cheek even farther.  He looked so happy and excited that Maria almost forgot that he was going to tell her his heartbreaking story.  That was what the story had to be…heartbreaking.  Maria couldn’t imagine any other way to describe leaving the community and never looking back.  Especially since Eldon had gone through Rumspringa, returned, and gotten baptized.  He wanted to be a part of the community and he had made that clear.  What happened to change all that was something Maria simply had to know in order to move forward with any sort of friendship.

            “There’s a small shed behind the furniture store down the block,” he said, pointing out the window and down the street in the direction from which Maria had arrived earlier that day.  “I’m almost always there unless I’m making deliveries to a business or a home.  Stop by any time tomorrow and I’ll make sure I stay put until you do.”

            Maria agreed as she ate a few more bites of the soup.  Eldon had been right about it.  It wasn’t exactly like something she would have made at home, but it was pretty close.  The ingredients were blended well and they tasted very fresh.  She had yet to taste the bread, however.  That would be the real test.  She reached for a slice.

            As Maria planted her fingers around the fluffy bread, Eldon reached for a piece of his own.  He just started telling a story about Cooper and he was looking out the window towards Cooper’s store.  Instead of grabbing bread as Maria assumed he intended, his hand wrapped around a few of her fingers.

            Eldon paused his story and his head swung around to the bread basket in the middle of the table, as if he was as surprised as Maria was to find her hand in his instead of a piece of bread.  Though they both definitely knew their hands were entwined, neither moved.  Eldon took a deep breath and stared at their clumsily joined hands in the midst of the fresh bread.