Little Amish Matchmaker (9 page)

He looked away.

When he returned from singing class, he got out his arithmetic book as usual. Now he inserted a piece of paper, and wrote,

Ruthie, it’s O.K. Teacher Catherine says it is. I know about your mam. I feel sorry for her. Hang in there. You’re strong.

We’re all here for you.

Isaac knew it was against the rules to pass notes, but when he exchanged his arithmetic paper with her, he put the note inside, then watched steadily out the opposite window while she read it.

That day was a turning point.

It was as if Ruthie had been slipping, unable to gain a foothold. Now, a shaky attempt had paid off. She had found the strength to shake the crippling defeat in her young life.

At the recess SOS group, she repeated sentences, stuttering, straining, sometimes having to be completely quiet. But she spoke.

Then the snowstorm came at suppertime, all right.

It started like granules of salt, so fine and hard, piling into every crack and crevice it could find. It sifted along the cow stable’s windowsills, a place Isaac could not remember ever finding snow.

The hen’s water froze. They pecked holes into the ice and drank anyway. Dat said to feed the pigs and hens plenty; they’d need extra to keep themselves warm. Isaac and Sim put straw bales around the pigpen, wrapped sheets of insulation, that pink, itchy, fiberglass stuff, around the water hydrants and put a heater in the milk house.

Their Barbara came down with bronchitis, and needed Mam to send over Numotizine.

“What a night!” Mam fumed and fussed. No driver wanted to go out in this weather. She’d be ashamed to call one.

Sim said he’d make the five-mile drive. He had a heater in his buggy. When Isaac offered his company for the ride, Sim grinned and nodded.

Mam put a glob of that vile salve from her own blue and white container in a glass jar. It was an old, old remedy, containing something so awful smelling you could hardly stand to watch Mam put it in a jar, let alone having it applied to your chest with a steaming hot rag slapped on top. It was enough to suffocate a person, having to sleep with that stench, but Mam showed no mercy with her administration of Numotizine. She stated flatly that it had saved her hundreds of dollars in doctor bills, spared her children from antibiotics, and why wouldn’t you use these old home remedies from the past?

So in the cold and dark, the snow zooming in through the opened window, Sim and Isaac started out.

With a horse like Sim’s you had to keep the window latched to the ceiling for awhile, allowing the cold and snow its entry. There was no other way to do it. For one thing, the small rectangular holes cut in the window frame to allow the leather reins to pass through, were actually too small to handle a spirited horse. Horses always needed a firm hand starting out, and Saddlebred Fred was no exception, the way he hopped around. He shied, he ran way out around the driveway, making a large circle in the alfalfa field, and then dashed down the road as if a ghost was after him.

The steel-rimmed buggy wheels lost traction, swaying and zig-zagging across the quickly ­disappearing road, as Sim strained to control Fred. Isaac wrapped himself tightly into the plush buggy robe, and hoped the snow plows would hold off until they got home. The way Fred was acting, they’d end up in Philadelphia if they met one.

Sim didn’t talk, so Isaac said nothing either. Then, sure enough, the twirling yellow light of a snowplow showed through the gloom, bearing down on them.

“Yikes!” Isaac wasn’t planning on saying that; it just slipped out of its own accord.

“Hang on!” Sim shouted.

Isaac couldn’t do that, as the buggy went straight down a steep bank. Grimly, he bit down on his lower lip, slid off the seat and socked into the corner of the buggy. Sim was standing up, leaning way back, his gloved hands working the reins, Fred galloping across someone’s field out of control.

The buggy swayed and lurched, Isaac cowering in the corner, his eyes squeezed shut, waiting for the moment the buggy would fly into a thousand pieces, his body exploding out of it into the wild black night. It didn’t happen. They just slowed down. Fred stopped his headlong gallop.

They made it safely to Barbara’s house, who looked as if she needed a hospital more than she needed this Numotizine. She was on the couch, her breathing raspy, her cough sounding like a piece of wood falling down the stairs.

The house was a royal mess. As usual, Bennie wasn’t behaving, sitting on the table spreading Ritz crackers with peanut butter. He had everything all over his pants, the table top and his sister Lydia. When Isaac told him to put the peanut butter away, he lifted his face and howled. John came rushing over carrying the baby, who set up her own high-pitched yell, her bottle of apple juice suddenly disappearing as her dat rushed to the rescue.

John glared at Isaac, got a wet cloth and told Bennie to clean up the peanut butter, which was the same as asking a pig to clean up his pen. Isaac sat on the recliner by the stove, disliking Bennie.

He was glad to leave with Sim.

These things, of course, were not talked about. He couldn’t tell Sim how much he couldn’t stand that Bennie. Sim would say it was a sin, which Isaac knew, but sometimes you could hardly help it.

Sim chuckled to Isaac, saying now that was marriage, and didn’t that take the fairy story out of it? This was the real thing.

Isaac hoped fervently Bennie would get a licking from his dad, although he couldn’t see that happening.

“Bennie was sure making a mess,” Isaac said drily.

“They probably didn’t have any supper.”

Sim, too!

Everyone stuck up for that Bennie, Isaac told Sim, and was happy to see him nodding his head in agreement. “You have a point there.”

Isaac was glad he had spoken. Sometimes schoolboys observed things from their lowly vantage point that adults like Sim would be wise to learn.

“You know if Barbara doesn’t watch it, that little Bennie is going to be a handful, the way no one makes him listen,” Isaac said.

Sim agreed.

Isaac was convinced Sim would make a great father. He was just humble enough, and agreeable, too. He took advice, and took it right. Yes, indeed, it would be a pure shame if Catherine and Sim never started dating.

On Friday, Ruthie stood by the blackboard, wringing her hands, her eyes clearly terrified as she lifted her head.

“I … h - h - h.”

She stopped, searched for Isaac, found his face, then his eyes.

Come on, Ruthie! You can do this! He didn’t say a word. His belief in her came from his eyes.

“H - hope m - m … my h …”

She stopped.

Isaac’s eyes never left her face.

He was aware of Hannah and Calvin beside him. They all waited and waited. Ruthie took a deep breath. He watched as she clasped and unclasped her hands. That day, she spoke two whole sentences, haltingly, with exhausting effort.

At third recess, Isaac left sledding and found her sitting the porch, her feet dangling down the side.

“Ruthie, why don’t we talk about your mam?” he asked.

“Who told you?”

“Teacher Catherine.”

“I told Hannah and Dora today. It feels good. It’s … everything feels easier now.”

Isaac grinned encouragingly. So she told him. The struggles at home, trying not to hate her mother, the relief now, knowing her problem may actually be physical.

The following Monday, Ruthie made real progress. Teacher Catherine was beside herself with excitement. The Christmas program was shaping into a good one, molded by days of practice, pleading, cajoling, praising, the teacher at the helm guiding her Christmas ship.

Isaac wondered if her energy and enthusiasm had all been because of Ruthie. He doubted it. Didn’t Sim have something to do with it when he came to pick Isaac up Friday afternoon? Late on purpose, then yet. Teacher Catherine was sweeping the snow from the porch, her cheeks red, her eyes sparkling as they exchanged greetings.

Well, Isaac was done. They could just keep up all this nonsense. He was out of it.

If Sim wanted to wait on God, he could. Hadn’t God always been slow? Look at Methuselah. He was 900 and some years old. Let Sim wait until they were both 60 and then they could go visit the eye doctor together. He was thoroughly tired of Sim’s
ga-mach
. (way of doing things)

Christmas was coming, and the program and the spring wagon were much more important, anyway.

R
UTHIE STOOD BY THE
blackboard now, the only sign of agitation her interlaced fingers, which she loosened, then hung her arms at her side for only a second before entwining her fingers again.

Endlessly, they had practiced sentences, words that began with the letter B, or H, or C, the hardest ones.

Hannah and Dora spent nights at her house, listening to her amazing stories of the past when her mother had been ill.

Ruthie no longer picked her face. Her eyes seemed quieter, somehow.

The parents had their invitations to the Christmas program, stamped holly with brilliant red berries on a gold card, inviting them to Hickory Grove School at 1:00 P.M. on Friday, December 23.

One more day to practice, then two other schools were coming to see their program on Thursday, a day before the real one, when all the parents would attend.

The plays were shaping up. Four white sheets hung from the wires suspended from hooks in the walls and on the ceilings. Bright tinsel was draped from the curtains.

The poster was magnificent. It was the finest piece of freehand art work Hickory Grove School had ever shown. Isaac knew that, but didn’t say so. It was bragging, which was wrong. It was a form of pride. He could be pleased with it, though; he just couldn’t say so. He told Calvin, however, who said he agreed 100 percent. It was a great poster.

Teacher Catherine drew camels and wise men on the blackboard, and the upper-grade boys helped color them with colored chalk.

Isaac had to bite back his observance of the similarities between these camels and Hannah’s horses on the poster. They looked exactly alike. The noses, especially.

Teacher Catherine’s apron, even her
halsduch
(cape) was covered in colored chalk dust, but her blue eyes radiated her enthusiasm. She talked nonstop, even chewing gum at recess, which was sort of unusual. Chewing gum wasn’t allowed in school.

Thursday morning, Isaac leaped out of bed, flicked the small blue lighter and lifted the glass lamp chimney on his kerosene lamp. The small flame traveled the length of the wick.

He yanked open his dresser drawer, hopped into his denim work trousers and shrugged into his blue shirt as shivers chased themselves across his cold shoulders.

It had to be zero degrees outside.

It was! The red mercury hovered at the zero, and if you stood on your toes and looked down, it was colder than zero degrees. No doubt Calvin would have the real temperature, though.

Isaac rushed through his chores. The minute he walked into the kitchen, Mam said he needed to shower before breakfast. His black Sunday pants and his green Christmas shirt were laid out. He was supposed to wear his good shoes, not his sneakers.

If Mam would give him time to catch his breath when he walked into the kitchen, it wouldn’t be so bad. But barking orders when you were cold and hungry and wanted to sit by the coal stove and think of fried mush and dippy eggs just didn’t work very well.

So Isaac grumbled under his breath, scalded himself in the shower and shivered into his Sunday clothes. He brushed his teeth, watching the blue foam from the Crest toothpaste splatter the mirror. His face looked pretty good this morning. He liked his green eyes. He thought they looked nice, but you couldn’t tell people that. Not even Calvin.

He bowed his head over his plate. He had to rearrange his thoughts away from the Christmas program to thank God for his breakfast before digging into a pile of stewed saltine crackers, fried mush and dippy eggs. Now he felt much better, fueled to meet the day. Mam’s eyes approved of his clean appearance, but nothing was said. It wasn’t Mam’s way.

“Did you get my name-exchange gift ready?” he asked Mam, as he bent to pull on his boots. His Sunday shoes were in his backpack, reminders of the importance of the day.

“Yes, indeed I did. Why would I wait till the day before the program?” she replied tartly.

Isaac laughed, knowing that was an insult. Mam prided herself on her good management.

The schoolhouse was fairly bursting at the seams, with Red Run and Oak Lane schools there at the same time. Teacher Catherine was flitting about, trying unsuccessfully to remain calm, unflappable.

Isaac could hardly wait to get started. This was Ruthie’s chance to prove herself, and the SOS group’s chance to savor their success. Isaac was confident, eager to get out there and show these schools what they had done.

The program went very well. The singing rose to the ceiling and swirled around the room, lighting on each pupil, bringing Christmas cheer to everyone.

Because the curtain divided the schoolroom, Isaac only became aware of Ruthie’s absence when the program was almost over.