The Bridesmaid (26 page)

E
ben quickened his pace up the driveway, anticipating seeing Joanna after all their months apart. He dismissed any notions of her being engaged to Jake Lantz or any other young man, for that matter, although if he were honest with himself, he knew he should be worried. Right now his entire focus was on winning back her heart, if that's what it took, now that he was finally able to relocate here to Joanna's splendid little corner of the world.

A low stone wall along one side of the lane leading to the house was coated with thick moss, and behind it a long double row of marigolds flourished. The windmill beyond the barnyard creaked in a cadence that reminded him of Daed's own, and Eben breathed in the familiar aroma of soil mixed with the fertilizer of more than two hundred years as the sun leaned toward the horizon.

Rhoda Kurtz was sitting out on the back porch when he arrived at the door. She let out a gasp when she spotted him, getting up from her chair right quick to come over and babble something about Joanna's not being home. “She's out of town,” Rhoda said, seemingly too shy to meet his eyes.

“I should've written to say I was comin'. . . .” Eben felt his shoulders slump as the breath left him for a moment. “When will she return?”

Again, Rhoda acted altogether bashful. Was she the type of woman who needed the cushion of others? Eben knew plenty of womenfolk like that, but this apparent change in Rhoda took him aback.

“Not exactly sure when she'll be home,” Rhoda said hesitantly.

“Well, I'll be glad to wait and see her, if you don't think she'd mind.”

She nodded, again behaving in a completely different manner than the first time he'd visited here.

Eben asked if she knew where he might spend the night. Immediately, Rhoda mentioned Rachel Stoltzfus, saying she'd be more than happy to go over there with him. “They'll be pleased to put you up again,” she insisted.

“Don't want to put anyone out.”

“Oh, no worries 'bout that,” she was quick to say. “Let me get you something cold to drink—you look all in.”

He lowered his duffel bag onto the porch and turned to gaze out toward the barn, perspiring as he stood in the dying sunlight. It had been equally as hot back home. He wondered how Leroy and Debbie and all the other family members were getting along while dividing up the spoils. He was actually relieved not to be present for all of that, although he wouldn't have minded having some of the garden tools—shovels, trowels, and such. Things his father's hands had touched all the many years. As for personal effects and furnishings, he desired nothing like that from Daed, who'd given him steady employment since his late teens while asking very little by way of room and board, allowing Eben to stash away much of his earnings.

Eben sighed and realized how tired he was. He watched Nate Kurtz bringing in the field mules, a dark profile against the meadow, where lightning bugs twinkled as far as the eye could see. Eben guessed he'd gone back out to labor after supper, just as Eben's own father often did.
No more,
he thought, wondering how long it would take for his parents to adjust to retirement once the farm sold next week at auction to another Plain family. Daed had been winding down awhile, he'd told Eben that night in the glow of the barn's lantern. And he'd waited for several years, just to be sure this was what he and Mamm wanted. And now, he said, it was.

Eben knew all too well the daily strain, year after year, required in farming the old way—using mule or horsepower to plow, cultivate, and harvest, instead of tractors like the English. Lots of Amish farmers lasted only twenty or twenty-five years anymore before selling their land to their youngest son, or other kin, to keep the fertile soil in the family.

“Here's something to wet your whistle,” Rhoda said as she handed him a tall glass of ice-cold root beer. “Made it just last week.”

“Denki.” He felt terribly nervous around Joanna's mother, just as she seemed to be around him. Joanna was the important ingredient in the social equation, and she was absent. But gone where?

Rhoda asked if he'd like to sit a spell till Nate came in and washed up. “He'll be surprised to see ya, too.”

Eben didn't have to guess what that meant. And he hardly knew where to look, because when Rhoda spoke, she avoided his eyes, which signaled something.
What?

Then a terrible fear gripped him. Was Joanna spoken for? Could that be the reason for her mother's peculiar manner?

Rhoda seemed restless as she got up yet again. “Would ya like some pie, maybe?”

“Oh, that's not necessary,” Eben said, trying to be polite, although he was hungry, having devoured his sandwich, apple, and nearly a whole stalk of celery in the van hours ago.

But Rhoda didn't seem to pay any mind and headed back inside again, fanning herself now with her black apron.

Cora Jane was wandering through the meadow when he looked that way, barefoot and swinging her arms. Strands of her blond hair hung out from beneath her royal blue bandana. She had been picking golden daisies and was waving them in the breeze as she came closer. Then, just that quick, she caught sight of him and began to run toward the house.

“What on earth are ya doin' here?” Her expression was one of total disbelief.

He laughed. “That's an interesting way to say hullo.” This was the plucky sister, he recalled.

“No, I'm
serious
 . . . why are ya here, Eben Troyer?”

“Came to see Joanna.”

“I see that.” She blinked her eyes and frowned toward the back door. Then, coming closer, she whispered behind her free hand, “I was told not to tell a soul this . . . but I think you should know that my sister has gone lookin' for
you
.”

“She what?”

“She's out in your neck of the woods.” Cora Jane nodded her head. “She made us all promise not to say anything. Not even Dat knows where she went.”

Eben couldn't believe it. “I'm here and she's there?”

“Jah, but remember, you never heard it from me.”

“Glad for the tip.”

She stood there looking at him, a smile on her face now. “Something else,” she whispered again, then paused, weighing her words, he thought. “Joanna's in love with you, Eben—she never stopped.”

With that, she hurried to open the screen door and headed inside.

He couldn't have imagined this in his best dreams. Yet what had precipitated this sudden move by Joanna toward him? And what on earth had possessed her to go to Shipshewana without letting him know first?

Rhoda reappeared with a tray of goodies—pie and cookies. Must Eben now pretend he didn't know Joanna's whereabouts while he made small talk? He accepted a generous slice of peach pie and thanked her, picking up a fork from the tray, as well.

No wonder Joanna's mother acted so strange!

He could hardly sit there and eat his pie, even though it tasted truly terrific. Rhoda said hardly a word, and he wondered how much longer before Nate came and joined them, as Rhoda had suggested he might.

Out of habit, Eben pulled out his pocket watch, the light in the sky diminishing with every tick of a second. It was just a few minutes till seven o'clock—he'd been traveling nearly all day.

Has Joanna really gone to Indiana . . . could it be?

“Such a quiet evening, ain't?” Rhoda said for lack of anything else much to say. “Ever so peaceful here.”

“Fridays are like this back home, too,” he said, thinking of his family. Would they come here to meet Joanna and her kin someday?

Friday!

The awareness was an alarm bell in his memory. Eben nearly leaped out of his chair, spilling a bit of his pie, which he leaned down to pick up before returning his dessert plate to the tray on a small table nearby. Then, despite the fact that most likely he'd raise Rhoda's eyebrows by his impulsive actions, Eben hastily excused himself, not looking back to see the startled expression that surely played across her face.

He took off running across the yard, toward the dusty field road. Though the little phone shanty was now nearly hidden by cornstalks taller than his head, he knew the way.

J
oanna sighed, shaking away the doubts. No, she was not as outspoken as Cora Jane . . . nor was she as self-assured as her forebear Aunt Joanna. Still, she couldn't reject the curious pull she felt toward the phone booth down Peaceful Acres Lane from Maria Riegsecker's house. Joanna had to see where Eben went to call her, thinking it might make her feel a little closer to him tonight.

“You might have to wait to use it, though,” Maria had said with a smile. “Sometimes that happens, 'specially on a Friday evening.” She meant the more traditional young men used it as a matter of course to connect with their girls. Others less adhering to the church ordinance used cell phones.

Joanna had not commented on that one iota. Now that she was here in Eben's neighborhood—now that she knew Eben was free to court her and move to Hickory Hollow if he chose to—she felt compelled to see the shanty where he had always phoned her on Fridays at seven o'clock.

It was close to that time even now.

As she walked along the roadside, she saw that the door to the small lean-to was standing open. Once inside, she pushed the door shut. Then, without thinking or second-guessing herself, she raised her hand to the black receiver. Slowly, she lifted it out of its cradle and dialed the operator, ready to use the code Maria had given her for the eventual billing.

There was little hope that anyone would be in the area of the cornstalk-concealed phone shed to even hear the phone ring, let alone answer and go to track Eben down at her parents' house. But Joanna wasn't thinking like herself just now; she was doing what Cora Jane might do. “Or my namesake,” she said aloud.

———

Eben literally jumped when he heard the phone jangle the first time. He shoved the wooden door open at the second ring and picked the receiver right up. “Hullo?”

Silence.

“Anybody there?” he asked.

Then softly, he heard her voice. “Is that you, Eben?”

“Jah . . . Joanna?”

She said it was. “I came to see you in Shipshewana.”

“And I'm here in Hickory Hollow, as you now know.”

They laughed at the wonderful unlikeliness of it all.

She told him of having met Leroy and Debbie and sounded like she was starting to cry, and trying not to. “I'm standing in your phone booth, not far from your father's house.”

“Ach, Joanna . . . this is
erschtaunlich—
astonishing!”

“I came to Indiana to let you know I might be able to transfer my membership to your church.” Her voice cracked.

He contemplated what all this meant and wished he were next to her now, able to show her how pleased he was. “Well, whoever thought we'd go to see each other . . . and on the same day?” he managed to say, wanting to sound strong so that she could be.

“Stranger than what ya might read in a storybook, ain't?”

“I want you in my life, Joanna. I'd rather talk to you this way or write to you by letter than be with any other girl. But all that's goin' to change, if you'll have me.”

“Have you? Oh, Eben, don't ya know . . . I love you?” she said, warming his heart.

“I wanted to wait to say those words to you in person.” He wished she were here in his arms this minute.

“Well, I want to hear them
now
,” she declared.

Cora Jane's spirit had rubbed off on her. “All right,” he said, grinning into the phone. “I love you, Joanna Kurtz, with all of my heart. And I want to make you my bride.”

There was a sudden, poignant silence. He held his breath.

“Will ya ask me again when I see you tomorrow?” she said, surprising him once more.

“I certainly will,” he said. “And you know what I think? We need to preserve these phone shacks somehow. Maybe I could take a few pictures.”

Her laughter was so sweet. “For posterity, jah.”

They laughed together, blending their mirth as the Friday evening sun set. And it was all Eben could do to say good-bye when the time came.

Joanna spied Eben sitting on the front porch waiting for her as she arrived home the next day. She made herself walk, not run, across the front lawn, and when he saw her, he fairly flew off the porch swing and hurried down the steps to meet her.

“Willkumm home,” he said, looking well rested and as handsome as she'd remembered.

“You too.” She smiled as she moved into his open arms, letting him hold her. “I thought I'd never get here.”

“I know
that
feeling.” He chuckled. “My sweet Joanna.”

She loved being so close to him, after having been apart all this time. But this was not the place to be so intimate.

Soon they were walking back to the porch, where he told her all that he'd been doing today. “I've lined up a place to start workin'—for Smithy Riehl. I'll start next week, just as soon as I get my things moved here.”

She was thrilled, hanging on to his every word. “Will you stay with him and his wife, maybe?”

“That's part of the deal, too.” Eben seemed mighty pleased.

She kept waiting to hear the longed-for words but was happy to take in the exciting plans he'd set in place in such a short time.

Eben also talked further about his father's decision to sell the farm. “It's such backbreaking work for my poor Daed,” he concluded.

She fully understood yet was stunned at how this had all come together . . . and for their benefit, of all things!

“And, just so ya know, he did offer me the farm to purchase. But I turned it down, hoping you were still single.”

“You gave it up for me?”

This took her breath away. And now her heart yearned to tell what she'd sacrificed for God—and for him, as well—but Joanna thought better of it.
Maybe I'll wait till my poems are published in the magazine . . . Lord willing!

“You and I—this whole thing—is an answer to prayer,” he told her.

She nodded in agreement, wanting to pinch herself.

He reached for her hand. “So now that we're together here . . . will you marry me, Joanna?”

The words startled her briefly. But then she smiled into his dear face. “What took ya so long?” she replied.

He winked at her, clearly enjoying her spunk. He leaned over and kissed her lightly, and then again. “Is the coming wedding season too soon?” His eyes still lingered on hers. “All right with you?”

“Can we possibly be ready by then?” There were so many plans to be made—where they would live, most important. Suddenly, Joanna remembered the ample celery patch and wondered if Cora Jane would mind if she used it.

“I'll work to make that happen, my love.” He slipped his arm around her and pulled her ever so near, kissing her again for even longer, not seeming to care what the neighbors thought.

And snuggling next to him . . . neither did she.