Running Around (and Such) (16 page)

L
IZZIE’S HEART SKIPPED A
beat when she read the postcard from Sara Ruth inviting Mandy and her to attend a skating party.

“Oh, my!” Lizzie breathed as she leaned against the mailbox, reading the postcard. “Oh, my,” she repeated, her eyes narrowing as she contemplated the message on the postcard. Mandy would be thrilled to see Joe’s brother, John, again. Some of Sara Ruth’s cousins from Lamton, a huge Amish settlement 50 miles away, would be there. Joe would be there, and Viola, who was not Amish, would be nowhere around. Sorry, Viola, Lizzie thought.

A grin spread across her face as she tucked a strand of hair nervously behind her ear. She yanked her scarf tightly under her chin, then she burst into a run, racing up the driveway, her breath coming in short hard puffs. The frigid air hurt her lungs, but she didn’t care one bit. She was going skating!

“Guess what!” she yelled as she clattered through the kitchen door.

“Shut the door!” Mam said, as she bent to open the oven door. “I declare it hasn’t gone one degree over zero today!”

“Guess what, Mam! Sara Ruth wrote a card saying she’s having a skating party! Can we go? Huh? Can we?”

Lizzie bent down beside her mother, peering into her face as Mam squinted, testing a shoofly pie with a toothpick.

“Better not,” she muttered to herself as she closed the oven door, straightening her back to look at Lizzie.

“Better not what?” Lizzie asked. What if Mam wouldn’t let them go? She wouldn’t be so cruel, would she?

Mam threw her pot holders on the countertop and sat down at the kitchen table. She sighed as she gave Lizzie her full attention. “I meant better not take those shooflies out quite yet,” she said. “Now what are you so excited about?”

“Sara Ruth wrote and said she’s having a skating party,” Lizzie said patiently.

“Where?” Mam frowned.

“I guess at her house,” Lizzie answered.

“Is the ice thick enough? And how would you go?”

“I bet the ice is a foot thick!”

“I wonder.”

Mandy came clattering down the stairs. Lizzie jumped up and grabbed Mandy’s shoulders. “Sara Ruth is having a skating party!”

They squealed and hopped and danced across the kitchen until Mam said they had to calm down because the whole house was shaking.

And so, the following Friday evening, Lizzie and Mandy took their baths earlier than usual. Lizzie carefully combed her hair and chose a pale blue dress to wear. She couldn’t wait to see her friends from vocational school again.

Dat hitched up Bess and made sure the battery in the buggy was charged so their lights would stay bright on the way home. He also double-checked that the turning signals and the orange blinking rear lights worked as well. He complained a bit about letting the girls drive so far by themselves in the dark, but he was smiling as he told them to be careful.

It was almost six miles to their destination, but it didn’t seem far. Bess clopped steadily through the star-strewn evening. The heavy, warm buggy blanket covered their knees, and the steel wheels rattled gently on the macadam. Lizzie and Mandy chattered on about lots of subjects as Bess pulled the buggy up hills and around bends, through little tree-filled hollows and across different roads.

“They have a beautiful farm,” Mandy said as they approached the well-lit house.

“I know,” Lizzie said. “That’s because their house is bigger and better than ours, and it has classy white shutters on it.”

“They have more money than we do, don’t they?”

“Probably. Yeah, I’m sure they do.”

The Kings’ red brick house stood like a sturdy sentinel in the night with warm yellow light radiating from the windows. Isaac King, Sara Ruth’s Dat, finished up his evening milking in the glowing barn. He helped Lizzie unhitch Bess beside the big new cow stable with a rounded roof and the two new silos which towered over the other buildings.

Through the darkness, Lizzie could see a bonfire burning down by the pond next to a line of willow trees. On the pond, dark figures dashed across the ice, while others huddled around the bonfire. Lizzie shivered with cold and something almost like fear. For one wild instant, she felt like hitching Bess back up again and heading home as fast as she could.

“M…Mandy!”

“What?”

“Aren’t you…I mean…don’t you feel afraid, or…shy or anything?”

“Kind of, yes. But we won’t for long.”

Sara Ruth and Sharon came running towards them, calling their names.

“It’s so good to see you again,” Sara Ruth gushed as she linked her arms in theirs. “You’ll have to meet our cousins. And, oh yes!” She let go of their arms as she skipped forward, then turned to face them as she walked backward. “Do you know that new Beiler family who moved in from Allen County?”

“Who are they?”

“I don’t know. Their oldest boy is 16 already. They have a girl about exactly our age named Anna.”

“Are they coming tonight?”

“Probably.”

They reached the pond where they met Sara Ruth’s cousins from Lamton. These girls were perfectly thin and so pretty, Lizzie could only stare at them. They wore pretty colors in the latest style, and their hair was combed so beautifully, Lizzie could only hope to be able to comb herself half as neatly someday.

They look like little dolls, Lizzie thought miserably, feeling very much like the fat little country mouse being shown the trim city mouse. But the cousins, Linda and Louise, smiled so honestly, welcoming them so sincerely, that Lizzie soon forgot about being self-conscious.

Joe and John skated up to the bank, their grins welcoming the girls to the pond.

“Did someone help you put your horse away?” John asked.

“Your dad did.”

“Good!”

And they were off, racing across the pond with a few of their smaller cousins.

The girls sat down on the straw bales and pulled on their white socks.

“Do you always wear white socks?” Sharon asked.

“Yes, to go skating.”

“That looks nice.”

Sara Ruth started giggling, saying she never even thought about wearing white socks to skate. She was going to bring a bunch of the twins’ socks down to the pond. Then the girls were off, leaving Lizzie and Mandy to put on their skates.

They were still struggling to lace up their skates when a dark shadow hovered over them. Lizzie looked up from tying her skates at a tall, thin guy standing beside the fire, holding a pair of black skates.

“Hi,” Lizzie offered.

“Hello. Are John and Joe here?”

“They’re skating. Oh, there they are.”

A grin spread across the boy’s face as the twins swooped up on the bank, almost colliding with the youth.

“Stephen!”

“Hey!”

So that was his name—Stephen. Lizzie glanced at him sideways. His hair was way too long in the back, and his bangs almost fell over his eyes. His eyes were big, huge, actually for a boy, and a light baby blue. Long, dark lashes surrounded them, unlike any Lizzie had ever seen. She wondered why he didn’t get his hair cut.

Girls swooped down on Lizzie and Mandy like a bunch of blackbirds in the fall. Lizzie couldn’t help giggling. Sharon pushed Lizzie over on her hay bale and started pulling on a pair of socks. Stephen stood watching in his eerily quiet way.

“You sound like a bunch of wild geese,” he said.

“Where’s your sister, Stephen?” Sara Ruth asked.

“Too cold for her.”

“You should have brought her. Lizzie and Mandy don’t know her yet.”

“They’ll see her in church.”

And with that, Stephen moved off as quietly as he had come. Lizzie burst out, “He’s different! He’s so quiet, he gives me the creeps.”

Lizzie jumped up and skated onto the pond. She threw back her head and laughed. She loved skating with all of her heart, and this was the first ice-skating of the season. She didn’t think about boys or fancy girls as she glided across the ice with wings on her skates. She twirled and turned, skated sideways and backward, warming to the thrill of being alive.

Suddenly she heard girls clapping and cheering from the bank. She slid to a stop.

“What?”

“Can you ever skate!” Sara Ruth called.

“Show-off!” Sharon teased.

Lizzie laughed happily as Mandy, who was even more graceful because of her slight form, joined her. They skated together until the boys hooked arms with them, and they all met in the middle of the pond and decided to play Freeze Tag.

This was one of the best nights of Lizzie’s whole life. The stars were so close she could almost reach out and grasp one. The air was sparkling cold, burning her nose the way it did when she drank Pepsi and then burped.

Stephen was an extremely fast skater. No one could escape once he decided to pursue them without mercy. Joe chased her a lot during the evening. Maybe he might someday like her without Viola around. Who knew?

Lizzie’s heart was light. She was chased and held captive, dipping and swaying, breaking free, being caught again, all under the light of the too-close stars. Before Lizzie had even begun to tire, Sara Ruth announced that her mother would serve an evening snack just as soon as they went to the house. Lizzie wanted this evening to go on forever, this perfectly crisp, thrilling, heartfelt, starry, wonderful evening on the ice.

Inside the house, Mrs. King had all kinds of delicious food for the skaters, which helped ease Lizzie’s sense of disappointment about leaving the pond. The dining room table was filled with big thick slices of homemade pizza piled high with cheese and browned ground beef, root beer in glass mugs, crackers, pretzels and potato chips, and warm chocolate chip cookies for dessert.

Sara Ruth beamed, Linda and Louise flitted about like rose-colored parakeets, and Sharon giggled in a corner with Mandy. Stephen was quite shy, staying well away from the bright gas lamp in the kitchen. Lizzie wished her family could have a skating party at their house. They had the creek that was perfect for swimming in the summer, but no pond on the old farm for ice-skating.

When the evening finally ended, they all walked to the barn to hitch up their horses.

“Does the creek ever freeze solid?” Lizzie asked Joe.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“I doubt it,” John echoed.

“Is the water pretty swift? How deep is it?” Stephen asked.

“It depends. Some places it’s way deep and quiet, and other places it runs real fast over rocks.”

“If it stays this cold, it’ll freeze over.”

Lizzie and Mandy talked the whole way home. Bess plodded faithfully, her breath coming in hard, round little puffs of steam as she pulled the buggy safely back to their farm.

In their kitchen, a kerosene lamp shone bright. The girls hurried to the warmth of the coal stove, quickly shedding their snow boots, pushing their stocking feet against its glowing warmth.

“Mmmm!” Mandy closed her eyes, enjoying the stove’s wonderful heat.

“You home?” Mam tiptoed out from her bedroom, her housecoat clutched in her hands. She smelled of talcum powder just as she had when Lizzie was a little girl.

“Yes, Mam. We’re almost frozen.”

“I’m glad you’re here. I haven’t slept yet.” She turned to go back to bed, relaxed now that her girls were safely in the house.

“She looks like an angel.”

“She smells like one.”

Lizzie could hardly bear the feeling of love she felt for Mam. Wasn’t it just wonderful that God made soft, warm Mams who smelled so good? Her soft housecoat felt like Lizzie imagined heaven must feel.

Lizzie decided there was no place sweeter than home, and she wanted to stay there for a very, very long time.

She only blinked at the moonlight once before she fell into a deep, lovely sleep.

O
NE DAY MAM FROWNED
when Emma handed over her paycheck. She had been away for five days, but the money she brought home wasn’t much for an entire work week.

“Emma, I don’t mean to criticize or complain. I know you work hard, but if I need to think about buying your hope chest and starting to fill it for when you get married, we’re going to have to earn more money somewhere. I know these young dairy farmers who you’re helping are struggling, and they have to spend a lot on your transportation, too, so it isn’t their fault that you aren’t earning more. I just wish we could find a better paying job for one of you, at least,” she said.

“Mam, I could work in town at a restaurant,” Lizzie volunteered.

“I guess not. We’re not that desperate,” Mam said, shaking her head.

Lizzie knew that was what Mam would say. But ever since she was a little girl she had wanted to be a real waitress in a real restaurant.

Her first restaurant meal was etched forever in her mind. On the second morning of their once-in-a-lifetime family vacation to Luray Caverns, they had eaten breakfast in a real restaurant! Lizzie had never eaten in a restaurant, so she didn’t know what the inside would look like.

There were lots of electric lights, and a shiny green floor with dark blue lines and streaks running through it. The place was filled with so many tables and chairs, Lizzie could not imagine how the waitresses could remember who sat where and what they wanted to eat. It was all a bit frightening and confusing, until a smiling lady with a small white apron came to seat them.