The Parting (9 page)

Nellie pushed the gnawing thoughts away. Slowly she began to relax, the monotone of the preacher’s voice fading more and more, until . . .

Nellie’s head bobbed, but a hard poke to her arm from Rhoda jolted her. Hoping not to draw attention to herself, she sat up straighter and inhaled deeply, then held her breath, doing what she could to try to stay awake from now till the end of the three-hour service. Why was it so hard?

On the other side of her, Nan seemed to be choking down a chuckle; either that or she was struggling not to cough. No, Nellie was pretty sure Nan had seen her doze off during the unending sermon—just like their mamma, who was nodding off herself. That at least made Nellie feel some better, though she was thankful to be well out of Caleb’s view this Preaching service.

During cleanup following the common meal, when the women and some of the older teen girls were putting the kitchen back in order and the men were folding up the tables, Nellie came across two men talking heatedly on the back porch.

Not wanting to eavesdrop, she walked past them with the bag of rubbish she was carrying to the trash receptacle behind the barn, but the angry words followed her across the stillness of the barnyard. For the most part, the People were still gathered in the house.

“Listen here, I’ve got fifteen children, and four of my sons are out seein’ English girls,” one of the men said. “Can’t get my boys much interested in farmin’—the minute they turn sixteen, seems they’re out getting themselves an automobile . . . and, well, who wants to join church after that?”

“’Tis a bigger problem ev’ry year,” said the other, an old-timer. He took a puff on his pipe and blew out the smoke before going on. “You just ain’t hard enough on your young’uns.”

“You’ve forgotten what it’s like,” retorted the first man. “All this talk of cars and electric and telephones round here don’t help much, neither.”

Nellie nearly stopped walking, so badly she wanted to hear the rest of their pointed discussion, but she didn’t pause until she’d reached her destination. If men right here in their midst were demanding such things—and she had every reason to suspect they were, despite Ephram’s tight-lipped refusal to comment—then surely the bishop would set them all straight. And anyway, why wouldn’t a son want to farm with his father? She didn’t understand and was quite sure Caleb would never do otherwise as the youngest son in the family. In the Old Order community, the youngest typically inherited the farm.

She thought of Caleb receiving the nearly one hundred acres his father and grandfather had farmed—property that went clear back to his great-grandfather Yoder. Was Caleb itching to claim the land of his ancestors?

Surely he is,
she thought.
Just like any son who finds himself on the eve of his father’s impending retirement
. But before Caleb could take on the family farm, he must find himself a bride.

Caleb knew he would remember weeks, maybe months from now, exactly how Nellie Mae Fisher looked as she came walking across the yard toward Deacon Lapp’s house. Her face was rosy, like she’d gotten a mite too close to an old cookstove, and a stray slip of hair on her neck made her appear younger than her seventeen years.

Nellie had not been a girl who stuck out in a crowd, at least not until this past summer. As if blossoming overnight, she was suddenly altogether feminine and pretty in a way he couldn’t describe. She possessed something more than the curvaceous beauty of some of the girls he’d dated and quickly tired of. The sparkle to her eyes and mystery in her smile made him wonder why he hadn’t noticed her before.

He’d gone out to get some fresh air, secretly hoping to encounter Nellie. Instead, he happened upon two men locked in debate. Thankfully the pair were moving now from the interior of the back porch to outside, near the well pump, as their arguing rose to a higher pitch. Unexpectedly three more men marched up, joining the first two as one raised his fist in the air.

“No tellin’ where all this will lead.” One man’s words floated to the sky.

Caleb wanted to spare Nellie the commotion, but she was making a beeline straight for the house. She would have to enter the back doorway and head through the porch to return to the kitchen.

He called to her. “Nellie Mae!”

When her big eyes caught his gaze, her engaging smile spread clear across her face. “Hullo, Caleb,” she said right out, not like some girls who seemed nearly afraid of their voices. Of course, he’d expected such composure in a girl capable of running a bakery shop. Surely he could also expect to hear back from her soon regarding his written invitation.

His heart beat more quickly at the thought that, for the first time in more than a year of asking girls to go riding after Singings and such, he couldn’t be sure what the answer would be.

“You mind walkin’ round the house with me, right quick?” He steered her away from the growing cluster of men.

“Why, sure.” She smiled at his request and turned, not waiting for him to smile back. “Did you hear what they were talking ’bout?” she asked.

“Some, jah.”

“Well, I didn’t like it, not one bit. Did you?” She was straight to the point and it pleased him.

He stopped then, where the Dawdi Haus jutted out from the main house, hiding them well enough. He was glad when she did the same, her eyes squarely on his as she awaited his answer. “There are men who are lookin’ for loopholes in the Ordnung,” he told her. “Some are willin’ to walk away from the beliefs of our forefathers . . . what they laid down as the right way to live and work.”

A way of life paid for with the blood of our martyrs . . .

He wouldn’t go on; he would spare her too much of his opinion now, alone as they momentarily were in broad daylight.

“Well, I’m altogether sure of one thing,” she replied.

“What’s that, Nellie Mae?”

“My father will have nothin’ of that sort of talk.” She did not blink and her pretty, heart-shaped face was mighty sober. “Will yours?”

He grinned at her refreshing frankness. Here was a girl who spoke her mind, not caring to wait first to determine
his
opinion.

“We Yoders are Old Order through and through,” he stated.

She nodded and there was a hint of a smile. “Wonderful-good.”

They stood there looking at each other.
Has a girl ever intrigued me so?
he wondered.

When Nellie spoke again, he was suddenly aware of her lilac fragrance. “It was nice of you to drop by, Caleb, with your note.”

He waited for her response, but she gave no hint of her reply. She merely smiled, turned, and walked away. He watched her head toward the front of the deacon’s house, to the seldom-used formal entrance.

That’s all?

Never before had a girl treated him so casually—not rudely, but keeping him at an almost measured distance.

When Caleb had waited enough time to prevent people from suspecting he and Nellie Mae had been together, he looped back through the yard and onto the porch, aware only of his great curiosity about Nellie.

Nellie feared her face might be suspiciously rosy as she walked nonchalantly into the house by way of the front door. She retraced her steps in her mind, wondering how she had bumped into Caleb. Was he already outside when she had headed through the porch and down the steps? For the life of her, she could not recall having seen him out there. Had it been an accident, or had he intentionally sought her out? She blushed once more at the thought.

Warning herself to keep her emotions in check, Nellie looked for Nan and Rhoda and found them in the kitchen, still helping Susannah’s mother and others redd up.

To think I almost didn’t offer to take out the trash today,
she thought with a suppressed laugh.

C
HAPTER 8

The dawning of Monday’s washday was peaceful with Mamma and Rhoda already busying themselves with the laundry. Nellie slipped seven loaves into the belly of the woodstove, wondering why Nan remained in bed at this hour. While her sister slept, Nellie had put her morning to good use making eight pies and ten dozen cookies, mostly chocolate chip.

For a moment, Nellie thought she felt the rumble of a distant train. Pausing from her work, she realized the rumble was instead the sound of the wringer washing machine in the cold cellar below where she stood. If she had a few minutes today sometime during the usual afternoon lull at the bakery shop, she might ask Mamma to tend the store a short time—not breathing a word to Dat, of course. She needed to slip away for some quietude out in the meadow, near the sugar maples, hoping for a glimpse of a deer, rarer these days than she remembered. No doubt the drought had affected them, too.

Strange how wild things and humans can live side by side and yet keep such a distance
. She contemplated the mystery of that, and as was often the case lately, her mind made the leap to her deceased sister, fond as she had been of God’s creation.
Why hadn’t Suzy drawn a line . . . kept herself set apart from the modern world as she’d been taught?

Nellie shook off the thought. Right or wrong, Suzy had always insisted her friends were wonderful-gut people.

There are good people right here, sister . . . in the hollow
. Nellie shrugged away her opinion and went to check on the cooling cookies. If they were ready to put into her large wicker carrier, she could begin her several trips up the lane to the shop, where she would arrange the day’s baked goods and hang the Open sign.

“Another day, another dollar,” she muttered, using an expression her father sometimes said in jest. There was more than a grain of truth to the saying.

When she arrived at her shop with the first basket of cookies, someone was already standing outside, waiting for her to open. The woman turned at her arrival—it was Uncle Joseph’s wife, Aunt Anna. Uncle Bishop, as she and her sisters sometimes referred to the man of God, certainly loved his sweets.

Anna had come on foot across the cornfield that lay between the families’ homes. “Hullo, Nellie Mae,” she said right quick. “I saw the light on in your kitchen and decided to pick up some pastries for our trip.”

“Oh?” This was the first Nellie had heard they were traveling.

“Joseph says ’tis past due for us to get away for a vacation,” Anna explained. “So this afternoon, we’re boarding a bus to Iowa . . . Kalona, where I have kinfolk.”

“Plain?”

“For the most part.”

“Well, come on in.” Nellie didn’t need to bother with a key, as she never locked the shop; neither did her parents lock the house. She opened the door wide for Anna, who looked awfully glum for someone about to embark on a trip. “I’ve got plenty of cookies—all nice and warm, too. The pies and such are comin’ if you’d care to wait.”

Anna shook her head. “Your uncle will be mighty happy with cookies.” Anna slowly selected several different kinds—oatmeal raisin, pumpkin, and the bishop’s all-time favorite, chocolate chip—almost as if the effort of choosing was too much this morning. Clearly her mind was on other things.

“There’ll be no charge,” Nellie said when she had carefully wrapped up Anna’s requests.

“Aw, Nellie Mae, are ya sure?”

She nodded. “Yous have a wonderful-gut time out where you’re goin’.”

Anna brightened momentarily. “Denki, we will.”

“How long will you be?” Nellie thought to ask.

“’Tis up to the bishop.”
And to the Lord God,
Nellie thought she heard Anna murmur with a slight frown on her face.

She watched the gray-haired woman pull her black woolen shawl close around her before heading out the door. Anna made her way toward the desolate cornfield, carefully picking her way among the remaining hard stumps as she moved across the field toward home.

Nellie wondered if Dat knew his elder brother was leaving town for a while.
Why now, for goodness’ sake?

When Nellie’s Simple Sweets was officially open for the day, Rhoda came to help with customers until she had to leave for her housekeeping job. Nellie was grateful for the assistance, though she wished for some privacy when her friend Rosanna stopped in.

“You’re spoilin’ us but good, Nellie Mae,” Rosanna said after selecting two pies. “These look just delicious.”

Nellie slipped away from the counter, delighted to see her again so soon after visiting just last week. “You getting . . . uh, things ready?” she asked, not wanting to say more with Rhoda nearby.

Rosanna nodded. “Oh, goodness, I certainly am. Made an afghan—finished it off early this morning.” She whispered, “But I don’t have a pattern for baby booties.”

“Ah,” Nellie said, her voice low. “Walk across the road and see Maryann ’bout that. She’d be glad to help.”

“You think so?”

“Well, Maryann’s thoughtful that way. And with so many young ones, she prob’ly does have a knitting pattern. No doubt she’s making a pair or two herself.”

Rosanna touched her arm. “How’s your mamma been?”

“Good days and bad.”

“’Tis to be expected. Losin’ a child is the hardest loss of all.” Rosanna smiled weakly. “Word has it . . . well, some of her best friends seem to think she’s in need of some peace and quiet.”