A Plain Love Song (12 page)
“He’s Aaron’s oldest, you remember, right, Joseph?” Groossmammi elbowed her husband. “He caught that catfish that was longer than he was tall the summer he was ten years old.”
Groossdaadi peered from behind wire-rimmed spectacles that perched just above the ridge in his nose. He cocked his head. “That was some mighty fine eating, that catfish.” He leaned closer, head cocked. “That you, Matthew?”
“It’s me.”
“Hmmmph.” Groossdaadi escaped Groossmammi’s grasp and strode past Matthew, skinny legs pumping. His faded blue shirt and black pants hung on him as if he’d shrunk or Groossmammi had sewed them a size too big—something she would never do. “Then hitch up the buggy. You can take me home.”
“You are home.” Groossmammi waved a finger at Molly, who scurried after him. “We talked about this. Go on in. I’m right behind you.” Groossmammi turned to Matthew. “He’s a little peeved at the move, but he’ll settle in. Like I told your daed, he’s a stubborn old coot, but he’ll get used to the idea.”
Matthew bent to hug her. She felt like a bag of bones, all hard angles and points. “Welcome to your new home.”
“No need to get fancy.” She squeezed from his grip. “Point me in
the direction of the kitchen and I’ll get busy and help. Looks like you have a lot of mouths to feed.”
“We have plenty of help. Molly will show you the room they made up for you—just until we get the haus ready.” Matthew searched for a way to ask the question.
“Don’t worry. He’ll be fine once he’s settled in. He’s a little tired from the drive. A change in his routine sets him back a bit. Doctor says it’s to be expected.”
“He’s been to the doctor?”
“He fell and hit his head Friday, so he didn’t have a choice.” If Groossmammi was tired, it didn’t show. Her wrinkled cheeks were pink and her faded blue eyes bright with good cheer. “It’s old age, pure and simple. Ain’t nothing pretty about it, but we’ll get by.”
Matthew watched as she fairly skipped up the front porch steps. Spry as ever. It seemed old age picked on some more than others. Daed trudged by, bags in both hands. “You gonna help or stand there watching?”
“He didn’t recognize me.”
Daed dumped the suitcase on the porch and reached for the screen door. “When I got there yesterday, he called me Levi.”
“Who’s Levi?”
“I have no idea.”
A
dah scooped the steaming stewed tomatoes from the large pot with a long ladle and poured the contents into the Mason jar, careful not to spill a drop of it on her bare hand. She wiped at her sweating face with the back of her sleeve. The billowing steam coming from the pans on the propane stove enveloped the entire kitchen. The pungent aromas of fresh tomatoes, dill, onion, and oregano made her mouth water.
Three rows of six jars each already sat on the prep table, their lids popping in a merry tune that sang in her ears. They sang of contentment, prosperity, blessing, bountifulness. She hummed along in a tune that had no need of lyrics. The chatter ping-ponging among Matthew’s mother and his Grandma Frannie, Emma, Katie, Mudder, and Clara and Elizabeth Gringrich, who were seated around the prep table, provided the harmony as they cleaned and chopped cucumbers and onions, the knives rapping on wood, the percussion in this canning frolic.
“You’re sure quiet over there.” Emma’s voice wafted over the steady give and take of the other women. “Whatever are you thinking about, Adah? A boy, maybe?”
Not a boy anymore. A man. Men. Two men. A cowboy and a Plain man. Cowboy hat. Straw hat. Work boots. Cowboy boots. There was a song in there somewhere. Jackson had walked into her life like a cowboy right out of a country western song. Matthew had always been in
her life, like a farmer working the fields year after year, certain he would reap what he sowed.
Adah kept her back to the other women so they couldn’t see the heat rising on her face. At least she could blame the steaming tomatoes for it. She’d been able to avoid Jackson for a couple of weeks now. He was off at doctor’s appointments or out with his father. Hopefully tomorrow would be the same. She hoped. Really. She would clean the house and that was it. In the meantime, she expected to see Matthew here, but so far their paths hadn’t crossed. He worked with the other men in the dawdi haus, finishing out the interior rooms, laying the linoleum in the kitchen, and painting.
“Adah? You really are daydreaming, aren’t you?”
She started, realizing Emma was waiting for a response. “Nee. I was thinking about the books Molly likes to read sometimes. Westerns.”
“Cowboys,” Emma giggled, a funny sound coming from the mother of three and stepmother to two more. “The cowboys around here are fun with their hats and boots and Western shirts.”
“And those big buckles,” added Katie, sounding more like a teenager than a grandma. “They do like to show off, don’t they?”
Big buckles. Show-off. Jackson didn’t strike Adah as a show-off, more as someone at ease with who he was and what he wanted. The heat deepened on her face, spreading to her neck. She could never be at ease, because what she wanted was something she shouldn’t want. Thankful she had her back to the other women, she wiped her hands on a dishtowel and threw it on the counter. “I’m going to see what’s taking the twins and Rebecca so long to dig up those beets. They should be back from the garden by now.”
“I’ll go.” Elizabeth rose from the table. “You have your hands full here.”
“Nee. I’ll go. Don’t worry about it.”
“It may take both of you to get them in here. They probably decided they’d rather pick strawberries. None of them likes beets much. ’Course, what one says, they all repeat.” Emma bent over and smoothed the hair of baby Jeremiah, sleeping in a basket at her feet.
“Knowing little Mary, she probably took a detour to the barn to see the new batch of kittens.”
Emma’s younger twin sister, little Mary, so known to distinguish her from Matthew’s mother, Mary Troyer, had become known as the instigator of many an escapade on which her twin Lillie never failed to follow. Older stepsister Rebecca’s influence helped some, but Emma despaired of taming their unduly stubborn streak. While no one offered the excuse, Adah often wondered if it had to do with losing their parents at such a tender age. They were sweet yet wayward girls. “I’ll get them back on track.” She brushed past Elizabeth, who had a puzzled look on her heat-flushed face. “They know me. They’ll do as I ask.”
The implication being they didn’t know Elizabeth.
“Make them pick the beets. Don’t you do it,” Emma directed. “They can’t be allowed to shirk their assigned duties.”
“Don’t you worry. I have no problem with that.” Adah liked digging around in the fresh-smelling dirt in the garden, but today her job was at the stove. Still, the cooler air outdoors—if July air could be called cool—would be nice after the stifling, damp heat of the kitchen. “I know how it is. I used to be just as wayward.”
“Used to be.” Mudder and the others cackled with laughter. “You’re a reformed soul now, are you?”
“I’m a grown woman.” Adah trotted to the door, trying not to catch her mother’s gaze. “I’ve given up childish play.”
She hadn’t written a single word since her encounter with the various members of the Hart family. She wanted to be good. She didn’t want to stray. Yet the words pressed inside her head, longing to be released. Words with notes attached. Now that Jackson had opened her eyes to the possibilities of writing music to go with the lyrics, she couldn’t stop hearing the tunes in her head. When she lay down at night, when she awoke in the morning. Why was writing music—playing music—wrong? How wrong could it be? The rest of the world did it. They couldn’t all be sinners.
Such thoughts for a Plain woman. She did her best to stifle them. Time to set aside childish play. Time to grow up. The Ordnung was the
Ordnung. One didn’t question why. The point was to give oneself up. To put God first. No others before Him. No idols. The women’s laughter followed her as she fled out the door and down the back steps, her thoughts chasing her like a pack of snarling, hungry coyotes.
Mary’s garden had flourished despite the endless days of one hundred degree weather—with the help of a few soaking rainstorms scattered across the last few months. To Adah’s surprise, the twins hunkered down next to Rebecca at the far end, a nice pile of beets next to them, dirt still clinging to their roots. Like her, the girls were trying to be good, it seemed.
“Girls, that’s probably enough for today,” she called, shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand. “We have a bunch of pickles and green beans to do first.”
“Does that mean we have to go inside?” Lillie’s face puckered in a frown matched by the one on little Mary’s face. “It’s too hot in there.”
“I’d like some lemonade,” Rebecca offered. “Wouldn’t you? Let’s take these in and get a nice, cool glass of lemonade.”
“You need to clean the beets and get them ready to pickle,” Adah added. “They’re waiting for you. One of you needs to bring another box of empty jars up from the cellar too. It won’t take all three of you.”
“I’ll do it.” Rebecca popped to her feet, brushing dirt from her apron. “Meet you inside, girls.”
Lillie frowned. Little Mary pulled another beet and plunked it down on the pile. Neither responded to Rebecca’s cheery statement.
“Let them have their fun.” Richard Bontrager strolled across the yard toward her, his broad shoulders silhouetted against the fierce sun. “Can’t you see they’re having a ball getting dirt on their faces and under their fingernails?”
They didn’t look particularly content to Adah. “What are you doing here?”
“Helping finish out the dawdi haus.” He glanced at the house and then back at Adah. Something about his expression told her there was more to it. “I thought I’d fill a cooler with lemonade. The water’s about all gone. The men are thirsty.”
She started to turn. “I’ll get it for—”
“Nee, I wanted to…I mean I need to wash up anyway.”
Adah studied his sweaty, sunburned face. No way Richard came up to the house to wash up. The men didn’t do that. They might stick their face in the horses’ water trough to cool off now and again, but they didn’t care if they were dirty and sweaty. No sense cleaning up until the end of the day. “What are you really doing here?”
“Getting lemonade.”
“Did you come to see someone?” The memory of Molly’s longing face floated in Adah’s mind. Had Molly taken her advice and made the brownies to take out to Edna’s when she picked up the library books? “You did, didn’t you?”
“How do you know I didn’t come to see you?” He flashed her a smile. “How come you didn’t make it to the last baptism class? I thought I’d see you there.”
She ignored his question. “I don’t live here so you had no cause to think I would be here. It’s Molly, isn’t it? You wanted to see her.”
A dull red crept up his neck, deepening his tan. “She brought brownies to the house a while back when she came to pick up some books to return for Edna.” He hesitated, his gaze falling to his feet. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “She told Edna…well…anyway, I thought I’d thank her for the brownies.”
“That’s real polite of you.” Plain folks didn’t abide much by fancy thank yous, but it didn’t hurt to let a person know a kindness was appreciated. In this case, Richard had played right into her plan. Unfortunately, Molly had to work at the library today. “Molly’s at work. I bet she has her hands full helping with all the extra company and the grandparents here.”
“That’s why I’m here. I’ll be helping out for the next month or so, maybe longer. Tobias said he could spare me.”
Good. He’d see Molly on a regular basis. “That’s
gut
.”
They were both silent for a few minutes. “I guess I should—”
“I should—”
They both stopped, waiting for the other to finish the sentence.
“Are you and Matthew courting?” Richard’s face darkened to the color of the pile of beets on the ground next to Mary and Lillie. “Still,
I mean. I know you were, but lately, I hadn’t seen y’all together, and, well, I just wondered…”
Adah opened her mouth and shut it. She wasn’t sure how to answer that question—not truthfully, anyway. “Courting is private.”
“I know it’s an awkward question, not one I should be asking.” He traced a line in the dirt with his dusty work boot, looking like a little boy with his head ducked. “But I got myself into trouble once before and I don’t want to do it again. So I figure it makes more sense just to flat out ask and save everyone a lot of embarrassment.”
Adah had heard about those problems, seen them firsthand with her brother Daniel’s friend Michael and his special friend, Phoebe, now his fraa. She had enough man troubles already. “If you’re asking about me, my heart is taken.”
Those words were the flat-out truth. Two men had a hold of her heart and between the two of them, they might tear it apart.
“A day late and a dollar short…again.” Richard’s woebegone expression squeezed Adah’s heart. He sighed. “I guess God’s plan is for me to be a bachelor.”
“Nee. You must be blind as a bat.” Men were so thickheaded sometimes—most of the time. “Don’t you know why Molly brought those double fudge brownies with walnuts for you?”
His forehead wrinkled under the broad flat brim of his straw hat. He cocked his head. His dumbfounded expression would be funny were it not so painful. “Molly?”