Centennial (42 page)

Levi, hoisting the keg of pigs’ feet into position, felt his mouth go dry. During the past week he had been thinking of little but the Stoltzfus girl; in reality she was even more delectable than in his dreams. He tried to nod, but she was preparing the counter for the rush that now descended upon it.

The citizens of Lancaster swarmed into the market as if food were their sole preoccupation, which in a way it was, for no other region on earth ate as well as the Germans of this county. In the overloaded stalls they could find a hundred varieties of food from Kleinschmidt’s walnuts to Moyer’s apple butter to Hauser’s crisp celery, kept in the icehouse since last September. Special favorites were yellow noodles so thick you had to chew them and jars of crisp pickles.

Levi Zendt helped his brothers haul in replacements as Mahlon and Christian handed out wrapped packages. A housewife from Fertility stopped Levi and told him in a heavy German accent, “I always feel better when I buy from your brother Mahlon. He don’t use no air pump to make his meat look better’n it is. He sells chust as God made it.” She nodded her head knowingly at the stall of another merchant who had the habit of inserting a pump nozzle into his stale meat, injecting it with air to make it look firmer, then sealing the hole with tallow.

“Mahlon wouldn’t do that,” Levi assured her.

“I know,” she said warmly. She placed her hand on Levi’s and said, “God will look after honest men.” Levi thanked her and continued with his work.

The Zendts did deal honestly. Strict Mahlon would see the business perish before he would pump air into meat or chop old beef and sell it as new. He tested his scales as carefully as St. Peter is supposed to test his when weighing souls, and if he threw in no added chunks, as some butchers did, he took none away either.

As Levi worked, he kept his eye on the Stoltzfus bakery stall, and the wonderful manner in which Rebecca moved and smiled as she waited on customers created new excitement in his heart. He could scarcely wait till the noon bell rang.

It had been his custom, for as long as he had worked in the market, to have a simple dinner. His mother always packed two slices of dark German bread and gave him a hefty helping of cup cheese to go with it. He cut off a cube of his own souse, and from the Yoder stall he bought three cents’ worth of pudding. At the Stoltzfus bakery he always purchased two cents’ worth of cookies, and it was then that he had a precious chance to say a few words to Rebecca.

For the last three weeks he had been planning a bold move, to ask her to eat her dinner with him, and now as twelve approached he got everything in readiness. At the Yoder stall he studied the enticing array of puddings: creamy rice pudding with raisins, good chewy bread pudding, cherry pudding with toasted crumbs on top and a delicious apple pudding rich with cinnamon.

“So today what?” Mrs. Yoder asked.

“Cherry,” Levi said and she dished him out a most generous helping, providing a glass dish and a spoon which he would later return.

He then moved to the Stoltzfus stall, but was dismayed when Peter Stoltzfus stepped forward to wait on him. After a moment of panic Levi said, “I wanted to see Rebecca.”

“Becky!” Stoltzfus shouted so everyone could hear. “Levi Zendt to see you.”

With a gentle flowing movement that melted Levi’s heart, she left her end of the counter and came down to wait on him, the strings of her cap framing her beautiful face. “Today, gingersnaps?” He nodded and she counted them out.

He pushed his pennies toward her and gulped, “Rebecca, how about dinner with me today?”

She looked up brightly, as if she had been expecting just such an invitation, and smiled so that all her teeth showed. “Yes!” she said. “Wait’ll I fetch my coat.”

She disappeared for a moment, then called to him from a rear exit. He would have preferred slipping out the back entrance, but without his being aware of what she was doing, slid maneuvered so that he had to take her directly past the Zendt stall. There, behind the counter, stood Mahlon, staring darkly at his younger brother. Levi did not see this, for he was stumbling along, trying to avoid the sly looks of keepers in the other stalls.

They went out into the snowy town and found a bench by the courthouse. For as far as they could see, the streets of Lancaster were filled with sleighs backed into the curbs, and Rebecca said, “It’s lucky our stalls are inside. Much warmer, eh!” He nodded.

Then she saw his food, that strange combination of souse and cup cheese, and she was about to comment on it when he said, “You ever tasted my mother’s cup cheese? Best in Lancaster.”

Taking a corner of his black bread, he spread it copiously with a yellowish viscous substance that one would not normally identify as cheese; it was more like a very thick, very cold molasses, and it had a horrific smell. Rebecca was not fond of cup cheese; it was a taste that men seemed to prefer.

“Poppa likes cup cheese,” she said with a neutral look on her pretty face.

“You don’t?” Levi asked.

“Too smelly.”

“That’s the good part.” He put the piece of bread to his nose, inhaling deeply. He knew of few things in the world he liked better than the smell of his mother’s cup cheese. By some old accident the German farmers of Lancaster County had devised a simple way of making a cheese that smelled stronger than limburger and tasted better. He ate her piece, his own, what was left and then licked the container. When he got to his cherry pudding, he offered Rebecca some, and this she accepted.

“Amos Boemer lost his bells yesterday,” he said as they finished.

“He did?”

“He cursed like I never heard before.”

“Maybe that’s why he lost them.”

“No. Snowdrift east of Coatesville.” He called it Coateswill.

Rebecca was obviously bored with the dinner, and after a little desultory conversation, said, “I must get back to help Poppa.” Patting him on the arm in a way that sent shivers through his whole body, she pirouetted away. When she reentered the market, she brought herself to Mahlon’s attention again, smiling at him more directly than a mere greeting would have required.

When Levi got back to the stall, Mahlon was dark with rage and would not even allow him to wait on customers while he, Mahlon, had his dinner. Levi, unable to guess what had gone wrong, went back to the sleighs and talked with the brothers working there.

At the end of the day, in accordance with a custom long observed by the Zendts, Mahlon and Christian set aside those bits of meat they would not be taking home, and these they chucked into baskets for the orphan asylum. When the market closed at five, these baskets were placed in Levi’s sleigh and it was his job to deliver them, while the other four brothers rode home together.

But this night, as the sleighs left, Rebecca Stoltzfus impetuously broke away from her father and jumped in with Levi. “I’ll help you deliver the gifts,” she cried, and Levi, in a state of euphoria, drove her past his startled brothers.

They rode out to the edge of town, to the orphanage supported by the women of St. James’ Episcopal Church; there he found the mistress waiting for him, attended by the girl-of-all-duties, Elly Zahm, who was directed to take the baskets into the kitchen.

“I’ll help,” Levi suggested, but the mistress would not allow this.

“You’ve done enough, bringing the meat. Elly can lug it.”

As the sleigh was leaving the orphanage to enter upon the dark street leading back into town, something happened that Levi Zendt would never comprehend as long as he lived. The nearness of this friendly and beautiful girl and the fact that she had chosen to ride in his sleigh got possession of him, and he started to wrestle with her, trying to steal a kiss. He was rough and awkward, and when she coyly pushed him away, he tore her dress. It was an appalling performance, and she began to scream and leaped from the sleigh. Girls from the orphanage, hearing her cries, ran out to see what had happened.

She fell sobbing into the arms of Elly Zahm. “He’s awful!” she whimpered. Then she managed to faint.

By Saturday morning the news had spread throughout Lancaster and had made its way to Lampeter and along Hell Street to the Zendt farm. When Mahlon heard it he had to sit down. He could not believe that a brother of his ... He felt sick. Then, in a towering rage, he went to the door and screamed, “Levi! Come here!”

All morning young Levi had been expecting such a summons. He had fled deep into the smokehouse, attending to the dirtiest work on the farm, cleaning out the flues, hoping thus to escape attention. Pretending not to hear, he continued to work furiously, but soon the door to the house was jerked open and Mahlon’s wild voice shouted, “Come out, you son of the devil!”

In an agony of shame Levi crept slowly down from the flues and along the lines of curing hams and sausages. When Mahlon saw him, black as the fiends of hell, the older brother made as if to strike him, but Levi, anticipating this, grabbed a heavy bar used for moving hams, and brandished it.

“He’s gone crazy!” Mahlon shouted. “He’s attacking me.”

“I’m not,” Levi said stolidly. “You’re attackin’ me.” But he kept hold of the bar.

The other three Zendts ran up and disarmed Levi. They pulled him into the kitchen and forced him into a chair. Standing around him like a congregation of Old Testament judges, their beards giving them a look of great dignity, they waited for Mahlon to speak.

“You pig!” he roared, thrusting his face into Levi’s. “You child of the devil.”

Levi did not consider himself either a pig or a son of Satan. He was a young man caught up in feistiness, and even though he was confused, he understood that Rebecca Stoltzfus would not have climbed into his sleigh if she had not wanted to. It was in this moment of stubborn confusion that Levi Zendt, twenty-four years old, decided that he would not allow his brothers to bully him.

“I did nothin’ evil,” he protested.

That he would dare to argue back when he had obviously done something very evil enraged his brothers, and they closed in upon him so menacingly that their mother started to object: “Now boys! If Levi says ...”

“Stay out of this, Momma!” Mahlon warned, and he indicated that Jacob should take the old lady from the kitchen.

When Jacob returned, the four brothers hammered at Levi in unison—shouting that he had taken leave of his senses, that he had humiliated them, disgraced the family name. “Everyone in Lancaster’s talking about it,” Jacob said bitterly.

For some strange reason Levi replied, “You haven’t been to Lancaster. I saw you workin’...”

The introduction of logic into such a situation infuriated the Zendts, and burly Caspar charged closer as if to strike his brother, but an anguished cry from Mahlon diverted him. “Didn’t you know,” he asked his youngest brother, “that I was planning to speak to the Stoltzfus girl myself?”

Levi looked up to see his tall brother’s face contorted with shame and anger and hatred, and the younger man began to realize what had happened. Mahlon, thirty-three years old, had finally settled on a girl of good family and with substantial land holdings, but being a cautious man, he had not wanted to commit himself precipitately. He had therefore merely indicated his intentions to the girl, then drawn back ... to study, to reconsider all angles. And the girl had grown impatient and had used Levi to stir the pot. How well she had succeeded.

“Mahlon was intending to ask the Stoltzfus girl,” Christian explained, in case that fact had escaped the culprit, and in the next half hour each of the brothers repeated that a great wrong had been done Mahlon, the head of the family. No one ever called the girl Rebecca. To them she was merely the Stoltzfus girl, the property of Stoltzfus the baker and heiress to the Stoltzfus acres.

Finally Mahlon handed down the verdict: “You can never work at the market again, that’s clear. You stay here and tend your duties and at the end of the day you come into the market and clean up.”

“How’ll I get in?” Levi asked, always the practical one.

“You’ll walk,” Mahlon said. “We’ll leave you a sleigh for the cleaning up.”

“You were a disgrace to the family,” Christian said bitterly.

Then Mahlon added, “And on Tuesday you’ll ride in with me and you’ll apologize to Peter Stoltzfus ... and the Stoltzfus girl. Where everybody can see.”

Now Levi dropped his face in his hands, mumbling, “I don’t want to go back.”

“I’m sure you don’t,” Mahlon shouted, his pride burning, “but it’s the only way this family can redeem itself. Your apology to the whole market.”

That first Saturday was hell. Levi returned to the smokehouse, finding both refuge and consolation in its murky depths. With studied care he picked the choice pieces of hickory, placing them individually on the smoldering fire and allowing the smoke to pass over him as if it could purify him of the heavy stain he bore.

At dinner he could not face his brothers again; he walked alone through the grove of leafless trees and muttered to himself, “This is the only place that makes any sense.” Then he visualized himself apologizing to Peter Stoltzfus while Rebecca looked on, and he was so smothered in shame, it seemed to him that even the trees turned away from him.

In the afternoon his mother came out to the sausage machine, bringing a jar of cup cheese and some bread. She told him, “Mahlon’s awful hurt. You must forgive him.”

Without relishing it, he slowly ate the cup cheese, licking it off his fingers and listening as his mother said, “It don’t matter, what happened with the Stoltzfus girl. I knew she was a little flirt the first time I met her. Peter Stoltzfus spoils her crazy, and I hope Mahlon don’t marry her. Maybe you done us all a good.”