A Simple Autumn: A Seasons of Lancaster Novel (4 page)

“But you gotta wear a helmet. It’s my dad’s rule.” Blake took two gleaming helmets
from the rack and handed them out. “Try these on.”

Gabe tossed his hat to Ben, who hung both of their hats on the empty pegs. The helmet
squeezed his head as he pulled it on, but once there it felt okay. Gabe flipped the
visor down and the journey was complete.

He had entered another world.

Gabe snapped the kickstand up and turned the key. So easy.

Beside him, Ben straddled the orange bike. “I’ll lead the way,” he said. His visor
was still up so Gabe could see his face, but his voice was a faraway sound from inside
the helmet.

The helmet was heavy on his head as Gabe nodded slightly, then gave him a thumbs-up.

“They call it the need for speed.” Ben revved the engine, dropped his visor. With
a shrill whine his bike shot out of the garage.

Gabe followed the steps Blake had told him—what he remembered—and suddenly the bike
was galloping forward. A wonderful good ride … much smoother than a horse.

He kept his speed slow and steady, testing his balance, leaning a little to the side
as he curved around a fence post.

Not bad.

The bikes were low to the ground—and fast! Ben was speeding down the lane like a fleeing
stag.

Gabe slowed to watch his cousin loop through some turns in the course made out of
hay bales. The rear tire of Ben’s bike shifted in the dirt, fanning out to the left.
The skid sent Ben’s bike toppling sideways. Ben went down into a pile of loose hay.

“Whoa.” Gabe steered over to help his cousin, but Ben was already back on his feet,
swinging onto his bike.

In a flurry of motion to his right, Blake whipped down a path beside them on a yellow
bike.

Gabe grinned at the three of them, buzzing like mad bees in a race.

He soared down the straight path, then shifted to a lower gear to slow on the curve
to avoid the electric fence. The tires slipped on the sand as he turned, but he kept
his balance and sped ahead.

The bike bumped over a tree root and he went flying through the air.

Gabe laughed as he landed, juggling balance with the machine that ate up the earth
like a hungry beast.

This was living. This was the way a man should travel God’s earth.

T
hat night, Jonah sipped his grape juice and wondered if he would grow old waiting
for Annie to notice him. He imagined himself here at the family table in ten years,
having a light supper of popcorn and grape juice before the singing.

Ten years. Leah and Susie would probably be married by then.

And in twenty years, would he be combing his gray hairs before he hitched Jigsaw up
to a buggy?

By then most of his siblings would be married off and settled with families of their
own. But here at the table would be old brother Jonah, still pining for a secret love.
His throat tightened over a kernel stuck in his throat. If he waited much longer to
let Annie know how he felt, he’d be a wrinkled old man.

“So who’s going to watch the little ones tonight?” Adam looked across the supper table,
his brows knit in concern. “Who’s going to the singing?”

“I’ll be going,” Jonah said.

Gabe grabbed a handful of popcorn. “Me, too.”

“If you’re going, you’d best beat the dust off your clothes,” Mary said. “What were
you and Ben doing to get so dirty in your church clothes?” she asked Gabe.

“Just riding around.”

“Hmm. Well, you know I won’t miss the singing,” Mary said. “I haven’t seen Five all
week.” Five was the nickname of John Beiler, Mary’s beau.

Poor Mary
, Jonah thought. With their sister Sadie gone off to the city, most of the household
chores fell on Mary’s shoulders. She barely had a spare moment to spend with Five.

“I promised Remy a ride,” Adam said, rubbing his chin. “Seems that half the house
is going.”

“I’ll make sure Katie and Sam get tucked into bed,” Ruthie said. She put a handful
of popcorn in front of Katie, adding, “We can read a book in bed, right, Katie?”

“The purple crayon,” Katie said.

“Okay.” Ruthie smiled. “I like
Harold and the Purple Crayon
, too.”

“I like that book, too,” Leah said, her eyes bright behind her glasses. “I’ll help
you, Ruthie.”

“And I can make sure Sam gets a bath,” Simon said. “How long has it been, Sam?”

Sam swiped at his mouth, but his upper lip remained stained purple from the juice.
“I don’t know.”

“You know, Leah and I are fifteen now,” Susie said. “When will we be allowed to start
going to singings?”

Adam grunted. “You just turned fifteen. I think you should wait another year. Sixteen
is a good age for rumspringa.”

“It’s too hard to wait that long!” Susie said dramatically.

Jonah grinned. “Is there a boy you’re looking to court, Susie bug?”

Susie’s cheeks flamed a rosy color. “No. There’s no boy, but … I just like to go out
and be with people. I’m a social butterfly.”

Jonah noticed the spark of amusement in Mary’s eyes, though Adam kept a straight face.

“Well, you’ll have to be a social butterfly here on the farm for a bit longer,” Adam
said. “I don’t see you two in the kitchen much. You must help Mary with the chores.
Adult privileges are for those who take on adult responsibilities.”

“I want to learn how to cook more dishes,” Susie said. “And Leah isn’t lazy. She just
gets lost in her books.”

“I pitch in, too,” Leah said. “And what about all those weeks at the end of the summer
when we detasseled corn for Tom Kraybill?”

“That was hard work,” Mary agreed. “You girls were so spent at the end of each day.
It’s the only time I’ve seen Leah fall asleep without a book in her hand.”

“I just want to go to the singings,” Susie said.

“Because you’re a social butterfly,” Jonah teased her. He could imagine his younger
sister flitting from one group to another like a butterfly in the garden. While her
twin, Leah, was a quiet bookworm who liked to view the world through stories, Susie
wanted to be in the world, talking and laughing. In some ways Susie reminded Jonah
of Annie. Such sunny personalities.

“I just can’t wait to go to a singing,” Susie said. “How I miss the singing that used
to go on here with Sadie in the house! Every night while we washed the dishes, we
would sing together. And all over the farm, you could always find Sadie. You just
had to listen for her beautiful voice.”

The family grew silent for a moment, and there was only the clatter of forks on plates
as they all thought of their eighteen-year-old sister, who had left home for Philadelphia
this summer.

Everyone missed Sadie. Sometimes, when the wind whistled through narrow outbuildings
by the silo or stirred the leaves of the beech trees, Jonah was reminded of his sister’s
music. There was always music on the land, a song that changed with each new season,
but somehow Sadie had managed to give voice to Gott’s earth in songs that could steal
your breath away.

Ya, he missed her, too.

Although the younger ones kept hoping she’d return and get right with the church,
Jonah had seen the look in Sadie’s eyes when she was with her boyfriend, Mike. Sadie
had fallen for an Englisher boy and Englisher music, and though Jonah loved his sister,
he feared she was lost to them.

The last time she had visited here, Sadie had seemed happy. But Jonah couldn’t imagine
leaving his family or the life that he knew to chase a dream. He knew a thing or two
about the world out there, the world that the Amish stayed separate from. It had its
temptations, but it also had sharp teeth and the bite of a wolf. Jonah preferred to
chase his dreams right here in Halfway.

As he chewed another mouthful of popcorn, he wondered if maybe tonight would be the
night that Annie Stoltzfus finally looked him in the eye. “Ask, and it shall be given
you. Seek, and ye shall find.” The Bible verse came to him unexpectedly, and he now
understood it. He was going to have to find the words to talk with Annie.

He flashed back over his years of longing for Annie. He remembered every moment, whether
she was just serving him coffee at a barn raising or brushing past him while ice-skating
on the pond. He remembered her words, her laugh, the pattern of freckles on her nose.
And all along, she never noticed him. He wondered what it would take to get her attention.
To look up and see those blue eyes watching him. To press his palm to one of her creamy
cheeks …

Lately he’d spent some time at the Stoltzfus house, helping to fix storm damage. Annie
had a way of looking right through him as if he wasn’t there, but he’d gotten a closer
look at her daily comings and goings. Fixing the shingles on the damaged roof, he’d
gotten a bird’s-eye view of her life.

From the roof he’d watched her go off to the henhouse or out to
the yard to hang clothes. There was something soothing about watching her fingers
clip clothes up so quickly and systematically. Shake, clip, shake, clip, clip … Dresses
and pants and shirts went on the outside line and undergarments inside so that they
couldn’t be seen from the road. He knew the routine from home, but there was something
wonderful about watching Annie do it.

He didn’t mean to spy, but it was hard to look away. He had memorized the way she
walked, and he was a sucker for anything she cooked. He knew her well, but he didn’t
know how to talk to her. He couldn’t find the words to talk to any females outside
his sisters or grandmother. And that was a painful thing for a twenty-two-year-old
man to face.

At the supper table, Sam broke the uncomfortable silence. “I have many things to show
Sadie,” he said. “When is she coming home?”

“We don’t know, dear one,” Mary said quietly.

“She wants to come in November for the weddings,” Ruthie said. “She told me that in
her last letter. She’ll even stay a few days to help with the cleanup.”

“But we don’t know if the bishop will allow it,” Adam said.

“Ya.” Ruthie lowered her gaze to the table. “Sadie is afraid he’ll give her a talking-to
if he sees her here.”

“And he will,” Mary said. “It’s not an easy place Sadie’s gotten herself into, what
with falling in love with her music and an Englisher man.” Although her words were
harsh, there was only sadness in her voice. “I don’t think she’ll ever come back to
us.”

“I want her to come back and see my boat. It’s almost done,” Sam said, his eyes shiny
with hope. Sam had been building a toy boat in the woodshop with Adam, and Jonah had
been glad to see the youngest King boy bonding with the oldest. “I hope it will float,”
Sam added.

“You’d best finish up before the weather turns,” Jonah said. “People are saying it
will be a wet fall.”

“I like fall,” Simon said. “It’s school that’s the problem. I barely have any time
to train Shadow now that I have to go study reading and writing all day.”

“But I miss school,” Leah said. She and Susie had finished their eight years of schooling
last spring. “I miss hearing Teacher Emma’s voice while I’m working quietly. And reading,
writing, and arithmetic are a lot easier than washing down milking stalls and cleaning
house.”

“What if we got real jobs?” Susie asked, turning to her twin. “Yesterday at the market
I heard that Lovina Stoltzfus needs help at the tea shop. One of her daughters is
moving away with her husband to an Old Order settlement up north.”

So it was true; Annie’s sister was really leaving Halfway. Over a mouthful of juice,
Jonah considered what it might mean.

“I’d like to work in the tea shop,” Leah said.

“Ye Olde Tea Shop.” Susie smiled. “That would be the most exciting thing that ever
happened in our lives! We would meet people from far and wide.”

“Tourists,” Adam said glumly. “Englishers. It’s not the same as being social at a
singing.”

“Still … I would enjoy working there. It would be like setting up a tea party every
day.” She turned pleading eyes to Mary. “Will you ask Annie about it? Ask if her mamm
might hire us?”

“And who is going to mind your chores around here while you’re in town?” asked Mary.

“We’ll do both,” Leah said.

Susie nodded. “We’ll do double the work.”

Jonah kept quiet, but he decided to ask for them. It would give him something to talk
to Annie about.

As the meal finished, Jonah asked Mary about the renovations going on at the Beilers’
farm.

“Oh, it’s coming along. They’ve put in a small kitchen and they’re working on the
bathroom.”

“Have you seen it?” Adam asked.

Mary nodded. “It’s nice and new. More than enough space for two people starting out.”

The plan was for Mary and Five to live in the new apartment over the carriage house
after they were married.

“It’s funny that Five’s dat had all those boys,” Gabe said. “He gave the older ones
land when they got married, but then he ran out.”

Jonah nodded. The Beilers’ story was not an unusual situation among the Amish. Five’s
father had set the older Beiler men up with parcels of land, but now he had no more
left to give without cutting the farm too small.

Someday, it’ll be the same problem for me
, Jonah thought as he fetched his hat and headed out to the barn to hitch up his horse.
There’d be no stake in this farm for him. After Adam married in November, he and Remy
would be in charge of the King family farm.

But when Jonah was ready to wed, he’d be looking for a place to live and land to farm.
If he managed to get married before he was an old, withered man. He laughed at himself
as he got Jigsaw’s harness from the tack room.

God willing, Annie would notice him one of these days … before he was sent off to
rock in a chair at the Doddy house.

A
t the Stoltzfus dinner table, everyone was laughing at Dan Esh’s stories of his fishing
capers. Annie’s last bite of panfried walleye melted in her mouth as her brother-in-law
finished telling how he and Perry had caught the fish on the nearby river that afternoon.