A Simple Autumn: A Seasons of Lancaster Novel (6 page)

“Ya. Otherwise you two would have to sit in the back of mine.” Gabe hopped off his
horse and led it over to the buggy he had “fixed up.” A few weeks ago he had come
home with a big plastic machine that played music CDs. “I got it for just five dollars
at an Englisher’s garage sale,” Gabe had told Jonah. They had talked about how their
sister Sadie would have enjoyed it, though Gabe only had five of the shiny CDs to
play. Sadie was always singing on the farm. Mamm used to say she was born with a song
in her heart.

“But you know we can’t ride with you in that thing.” Adam snickered. “Jonah and I
are baptized members. We can’t be riding in a buggy with music playing all night from
that boom box you have.”

“I like to call it a party machine,” Gabe said.

Adam shook his head, but Jonah laughed. “What happened to the quiet Gabe who was devoted
to our animals?”

“One word,” Gabe said. “Rumspringa.”

“Mmm.” Jonah tightened a strap. “If only we’d had milking machines during my rumspringa.
I remember being too tired to go out some Sundays after the chores and the milking.”

“It’s true!” Gabe agreed. “I didn’t think it was a good idea at first, but you were
right, Adam. The machines were a good thing. Look at us—all three of us going off.
Mary, too. Before the milking machines, I didn’t have much time to think about going
to the singings.”

“And now?” Adam clapped Gabe on the back. “Got your eye on a nice Amish girl?”

“Maybe I do. But I never kiss and tell.”

Jonah laughed along with his brothers, but he wondered at the change in Gabriel. Like
a bird that’d left the flock, he seemed to be flying in his own direction without
a lick of fear. It surprised Jonah, and he wondered if it concerned Adam. Among the
Amish, it wasn’t necessarily a good thing to stand out from the crowd.

Good meant following the rules and obeying the Ordnung. Good Amish didn’t have
Hochmut
, the pride that might fill their heads with
foolishness and let them believe they were better than their neighbors. Good Amish
moved with humility. They filed into church in an orderly way. They dressed the same.
Good Amish lived Plain.

No boom boxes.

Inside the Eichers’ barn, Jonah moved his mouth to the songs, but no sound came out.
He had a terrible singing voice. Sadie used to say he sounded like a wounded animal—so
he kept it to himself. Even with a bad voice, he never missed a singing.

Tonight he had managed to get a seat right across the table from Annie. He could have
spent the whole night watching her red lips form the words to the songs. Those lips—they
were as bright as the red maple trees that glowed this time of year. Her blue eyes
danced with each fast song, a wild swirl of crisp leaves in the autumn wind.

That was how she haunted his heart. Every season, every corner of Gott’s good land,
he saw Annie there.

But to keep from staring at her like a
verhuddelt
man, he let his gaze slide down to the table and over the other girls, too. Annie
sat sandwiched between his sister Mary and her sister Hannah, a young girl as sweet
as a sugar cookie, but to Jonah a paler version of Annie. Emma Lapp, the schoolteacher,
had a fair voice, and she never missed a note or a single word of a song. The three
Mast sisters helped carry the tunes, but poor Nellie Zook had a voice worse than Jonah’s—only
she didn’t know it.

Beside him, Gabe’s voice boomed.

“Joy, joy, joy!”

Gabe’s voice had a lot of power for a kid without a lot of meat on his bones. John
Raber was a good song leader, and fellas like Adam and Five could follow along.

Jonah liked to filter out single voices and listen to the whole
roomful of song, wide and open as a September sky at sunset. When all the young people
sang and their voices blended together, you could feel Gott’s grace.

Pressing his knuckles to the edge of the table, Jonah could feel the vibration of
sound in the wood. A singing could really wake up the soul!

When they took a break from the singing, Jonah forced himself to head over to Annie,
driven by the fact that he had something to say tonight. He was looking out for his
younger sisters. At least, that was what he told himself.

Standing next to Mary, Annie looked much younger, mostly because she was a head shorter.
Her summer blue eyes seemed to peer right through him, but he pressed ahead.

“Annie.” He nodded. “Leah and Susie have been wondering about your mamm’s tea shop
in town.”

“That’s right.” Mary tapped Jonah’s arm gently. “They wanted me to ask you about it.”

“Is it true Lovina’s looking to hire some help?” Jonah asked.

“Ya, it’s true,” Annie said.

“The twins are hoping to be apprentices,” Jonah said. “Somewhere off the farm, I think.”
He threw this last bit in to make the conversation less businesslike, but it didn’t
work too well.

“Then they should talk to Mamm,” Annie said. “With Sarah and Perry leaving, we’re
going to need some help. Maybe on the farm, too, though you know how Dat is about
that.”

“Mmm.” Jonah grunted. He knew that Aaron didn’t want to hire anyone on the farm. After
a storm had torn off part of the Stoltzfuses’ roof, word had gotten around that they
needed help to fix it before the rain got in. Jonah had been quick to volunteer, along
with Adam, who had good carpentry skills. They had gotten a tarp on the roof right
away, and this week they planned to finish up with the new shingles.

Jonah wanted to continue the conversation, but he couldn’t think of another thing
to say. Had he just grunted? He wanted to kick himself.

There was an awkward silence. Well, awkward for him. Annie was gazing off in the distance,
and Mary was smiling at Five, her eyes the color of warm honey.

What a fool I am
, Jonah thought. He was a grown man in his twenties and still he didn’t know how to
talk to a girl. He had no clue how you get a girl to like you.
How do you even know what to say to her?

Annie was looking over his shoulder, already distracted. “They’re setting up for volleyball.”
She looked up at the sky. “We’d best begin now, before it gets dark. Soon it’ll be
too cold for outside activities.”

“Let’s get on a team together,” Mary told her best friend.

When the two girls headed over to the net, Jonah could only follow and hope that his
skills in volleyball would help Annie see him as a man with strength instead of a
bumbling fool.

The teams were already forming. Quickly, Jonah moved to the side of the net where
Annie and sister Mary stood, so that he’d be on their team. Volleyball was his game.
Although pride was a sin, he liked to think that his patience and accuracy were a
blessing here. Gott had made him good at waiting for the ball and popping it over
to the right spot.

He rubbed his hands together, trying to push down the nervousness that boiled from
having Annie just off to his left.

The game was off to a good start when the ball came to Jonah. He popped it up gently,
and Annie moved in to smack it over the net.

“Good one,” he said.

Her casual smile made his insides melt, but there was no time to bask in the feeling.
The second serve was heading his way.

The ball passed back and forth over the net, and Jonah had a few chances to knock
it into the right spot. Some of his teammates complimented him on making good shots.
Did Annie notice?

When he jumped high to send a hard-hit ball back over the net, she looked up at him
with eyes of wonder. “Wow, Jonah.”

He bit back a grin, trying to shrug it off, though he felt sure he’d never forget
those words.

Wow, Jonah
.

He was still smiling down at her when the ball sailed over the net, right toward them.
Annie held up her fists as Jonah, desiring to protect her, lunged toward the ball.
He jumped up and smacked the ball back.

But as he landed he crashed into Annie. She was such a little thing compared with
him, and the force of his weight knocked her over.

With a little cry of anguish, she fell.

By the time Jonah had regained his footing, she was on the ground beside him, crumpled
in a heap like a sack of potatoes.

It was a game-stopper. All the girls rushed in to help Annie to her feet. They sat
her on a chair and gathered round her, coddling and soothing and lending her a handkerchief
to dry her tears.

Arms folded, Jonah hung back with the other young men. “Is she all right?” he called
to the cluster of girls.

“She’ll live,” Mary reported, “but she’s going to have a fat lip.”

“I’m sorry,” Jonah called. “Sorry, Annie.” He looked down at the ground, wishing that
he could be the one to pat her back and soothe her.

Surrounded by Mary and the other girls, Annie went over the
crash. “How did that happen? I was just reaching up to hit the ball, and something
barreled into me like a charging bull!”

“Oh, dear Annie!” one of the girls cooed. “That was Jonah King who banged into you.”

“The game is not fun with one who’s so competitive,” someone else said.

Jonah’s ears burned. Competition was frowned upon in Amish groups. Competitors were
out to prove that they were better, and that was a sign of pride … hochmut. It was
not a good thing.

“It was an accident,” Remy pointed out in Jonah’s defense.

“But it’s always the men who fight too fiercely to win,” Annie said.

Jonah frowned. Of all people to say that—Annie was a tough competitor in any game.

“Sometimes I think it’s too dangerous to play with the men,” Annie added.

Did other people agree with what she was saying? He looked around, but found that
the guys had lost interest in what the girls were saying. They were already lobbing
the ball back and forth, talking about how it was getting hard to see in the gathering
dark.

Jonah’s heart sank. At last, Annie had noticed him, but in all the wrong ways.

“Let’s go back inside and do some more singing,” Adam suggested. “It’s getting too
dark out here for more games.”

The girls surrounding Annie began to move, a slow herd. At their center, he could
see Annie holding on to Mary’s arm.

“Sorry about that, Annie,” he said, making sure to meet her eyes for this second apology.

“Ya.” She waved a hand at him, as if swatting a pesky gnat. “I think we’d best keep
our distance, Jonah. You and me, we’d best stay far, far away from each other.”

“That might be safer for both of us.” Jonah rubbed his elbow, trying to make a little
joke of it.

Annie winced as she pressed her fingers to her swollen lip. “It’s going to hurt when
I try to sing.” Although she didn’t say the words, Jonah knew she was thinking:
And it’s all your fault
.

Sick inside, he stopped walking. Quickly he dropped to the back of the crowd as he
wondered how he could bungle such a simple thing as a volleyball game.

As night fell, most young people wandered back into the barn for some more singing.
Some couples, like Remy and Adam, stayed outside to talk in the privacy of the gathering
dark.

Wounded in spirit, Jonah sat on a hay bale outside the door. How many singings had
he come to with high hopes, only to have them crash to the ground?

This love for Annie bordered on crazy. But the Bible said love was God’s greatest
gift. Wouldn’t it be a sin to ignore the love that God had planted in his heart?

The night air cooled his burning face as he leaned forward and let the song from inside
wash over him.

“Good Lord,” the group sang out, their voices big and bold, “show me the way.”

Good Lord
, he thought,
show me the way
. Jonah sat alone, thinking that he should just go home now. Once again, he would
be leaving the singing without Annie beside him in the buggy.