Courting Ruth (5 page)

“I have to go back inside.”

“
Ya,
I suppose you do,” he agreed. “But it’s nice sitting here, don’t you think?”

“
Ne
. I don’t.” It was actually. Her mouth was dry, her heart raced, and her knees felt oddly weak, but the barn did smell good and the rain patting on the tin roof sounded comforting.

And then he took hold of her hand again.

She wanted to pull her hand free. He’d gone too far. She wasn’t the type to be so easy with a boy. Especially one she didn’t know. A boy with a reputation. She had her good name to think of, her family’s. “Let me go, Eli.”

He released her immediately. “You haven’t asked me about the burns on my hands, the injuries I got by coming to your rescue and saving you from a fiery death.” He held out his hands. They were lean hands, a working man’s hands.

“See that? And that?” He indicated two tiny blisters and a faint redness. “I may need to see an English doctor—go to the hospital.”

Ruth could hardly hold back a giggle. “That? That’s the smallest blister I’ve ever seen, Eli. You boys in Belleville must be sissies, to make such a fuss about a little burn like that.”

“Say it again.” He stared intently at her, making her warm all over again. “What?”

“Eli. Say my name again. I like the way you say it.”

Ruth clutched the quilt bag to her chest. “I have to go. I—”

“Ruth?” Irwin pulled open the heavy Dutch door of the barn. “Teacher wants to know what’s taking so long.”

“Coming.” Quickly, she scrambled down, ignoring the offer of assistance from Eli’s outstretched hand.

He chuckled and put a finger to his lips. “I won’t say a word,” he promised. “What happened here in the barn will be our secret.”

“We have no secrets,” she said and marched stiffly away, trying to salvage some shred of dignity.

If Irwin knew that she hadn’t been alone in the buggy, he made no mention of it. She went back to the house. As she neared the sitting-room entrance, she heard Aunt Martha’s raised voice.

“She’s not getting any younger, Hannah. What was wrong with Bennie Mast, I ask you? Eats a little too hearty, maybe, but a good boy, from a good family. I’m telling you, she’s too choosy, your Ruth.”

“She’s that,” Aunt Alma joined in. “And I heard she turned down Alf King, wouldn’t even ride home from the singing with him. If she’s not careful, she’ll miss out on the best catches. She’ll end up marrying some Ohio widower twice her age.”

Ruth stopped short. Bad enough she’d made a fool of herself in the barn, but now her aunt was holding her up as an old maid, someone who couldn’t get a husband. She couldn’t believe they were talking about this again. Why wouldn’t they understand that she couldn’t accept Bennie or Alf or the other boys who’d wanted to drive her home from a young people’s singing? Why couldn’t she make them see that her duty was to remain at home to take care of Susanna and her mother? That not every woman could or even should have a husband and children of her own? Mam needed her. Her little sister needed her. Her responsibility was to her family.

“Here’s your bag, Mam,” she said too loudly as she entered the room. “So many buggies in the yard, it took a while to find ours.” That wasn’t dishonest, was it? Or had her foolishness with Eli Lapp caused her to make up lies as well?

“Look at these colors,” Mam said as she took the bag from Ruth. “Barely faded in all these years. And such beautiful needlework. I vow, Johanna, you must have inherited your great-great-grandmother’s gift with stitchery.”

Ruth settled gratefully into her empty seat and picked up her square of cloth. She would make up for her wasted time in the barn, and she would forget Eli and his inappropriate behavior. It would have been a much easier task if the memory of his hand on hers wasn’t so real or if she could forget how nice it had been sitting next to him in the privacy of the big barn. No boy had ever made her feel that way before.

Hazel Zook’s round cheeks and pink laughing mouth rose to haunt Eli, replacing the image of Ruth Yoder’s angelic face in his mind. He picked up his pace as he strode back across the wet fields toward his uncle’s house. Glimpses of that night flashed in his head. He’d put miles and months between him and Hazel, but it wasn’t enough. He just couldn’t get her and what had happened off his conscience.

Light rain hit him in the face as he walked, and he wondered if coming to Seven Poplars might have been a mistake. Maybe he should have run farther, gone into the English world and never looked back. He wondered what was keeping him from taking that final step? He was already lost to his own faith. People would never let him forget what had happened back in Belleville.

What was he thinking coming here? Was he going to ruin another woman’s life now? Ruth Yoder was a nice girl, a girl from a strict family and church. She deserved respect. And the best thing he could do for her was to stay away. He should never have gone to the Beachys’ tonight. Better choices.

He wished things could have been different, that he’d made a better choice that night at the bonfire. He wished he’d done the right thing, but now it was too late. There was no going back and no changing what had happened.

The bishops and the preachers said that God was merciful; they preached it every service. They said you could be forgiven any sin if you truly repented, and maybe that was true. But what they didn’t say was how you could forgive yourself.

T
he following Monday afternoon, Ruth left Susanna and Anna baking bread to walk to the school. Mam wanted to work on lesson plans after supper, and Ruth had offered to carry her heavy books home for her. It was so rare that Ruth had time alone to think, and it was such a pretty day that she enjoyed having the errand.

Eli Lapp and how to handle him was foremost in her mind. It was clear that he wasn’t going to stop following her around until she made him understand that he was wasting his time with her. She needed to explain that it was nothing against him; she had no plans to marry anyone.

Still, she had to admit that she liked being told she was pretty, and that he was both clever and attractive. Vanity, she feared, was one of her sins. After all the talk about her being an old maid, it was nice that someone liked her, but it had to stop. The trouble was, she didn’t know what she should say to Eli. How could she tell him to quit courting her when he’d said nothing about wanting her for his girlfriend? What if he laughed at her? What if he told her that she had completely misunderstood, and she was the last girl he would consider as a wife?

And then there was the problem of Irwin. The boy had promised Mam that he’d meet her at the schoolhouse on Saturday, but he hadn’t shown up, and she’d had no opportunity to speak to him alone at church. Ruth wondered if Irwin had come to school today and if Mam had been able to question him about the fire.

Eli Lapp hadn’t attended the Sunday services, but that hadn’t kept him from being the center of attention. Hearing the girls giggling about how handsome he was, or the mothers repeating that Eli was just the sort of boy that Preacher Reuben warned them about, was no help.

“Shepherds of our church must be diligent to protect our lambs,” Aunt Martha had warned a group of mothers. “The loose ways of the world threaten our faith.”

Ruth wondered if her father would have agreed with Aunt Martha, or would he have made Eli welcome and tried to turn him back to the Plain ways? Ruth hadn’t done anything wrong in the barn, but if people knew she’d been alone in the buggy in the barn with Eli, her reputation could be tarnished. For all she knew, Irwin was the kind of person to tell tales, and that worried her. It wasn’t necessary to simply avoid wrongdoing, but a Plain person had to avoid the perception of wrongdoing as well.

For an instant, just as Ruth rounded the bend through the trees, she remembered the schoolhouse as she’d seen it the day of the fire, and a knot rose in her throat. So many bad things could have happened. But this time, there was no smoke or the scent of smoke. School was out for the afternoon, but a few of the boys had remained for a game of softball on the grassy field. Samuel Mast’s buggy was there, as well as Roman’s big team and wagon, the horses standing nose to nose at the hitching rail.

When Ruth entered the schoolroom by the temporary steps, she found Roman, Samuel and her mother deep in conversation about the building repairs. Mam was smiling, and it sounded as though she was getting her wish for more room. The hand-drawn plans spread out on the desk enlarged the main area by the size of the original cloakroom and included a new porch with an inside sink and water faucet.

“Isn’t this wonderful?” Mam exclaimed. “We’ll be able to add eight more desks and a new cloakroom.”

“Will it be done in time for the new school year?” Ruth asked, looking over the drawing.

Roman nodded. “With Eli to help, we’ll finish by September.”

“So Eli’s good with his hands,” Samuel observed.

“
Ya,
he’s a fine craftsman, that boy.”

“You can go on home,” Mam urged, resting her hand on Ruth’s arm. “We’ve still got things to discuss here, but there’s no need for you to wait for me. If you can take the reading books and the big arithmetic book, I can manage the rest.”

Ruth gathered up all the texts, including the oversize cursive writing book, said goodbye, and walked out of the school. She had just started toward the woods when Eli stepped out from behind the shed.

“Don’t pop out at people like that,” she said. Her cheeks felt as warm as if she’d been standing over a kettle of simmering jam. Just being near him scrambled her wits and made her tongue thick, and she was immediately more annoyed with herself than with him. She was a woman grown and should have more sense.

Worse still, Ruth had the sinking feeling that Eli knew the effect he had on her. “What do you want?” she asked.

“Does a person have to want something or can a person just say hello?”

He had a good point, but she certainly wasn’t going to tell him that.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

She moved around him and continued walking. “Home.”

In two strides, he caught up with her and scooped the books out of her arms. “These are heavy. Let me drive you in Uncle Roman’s wagon.”

“I prefer to walk.” She tried to retrieve Mam’s textbooks, but Eli held fast to them.

“I guess you can take them in the wagon if you want to.” Ruth walked away. “Just leave them on our porch.”

“I’ll walk.” He chuckled as he caught up. “You’re stubborn, aren’t you, Ruth Yoder? Miriam said you were.”

All the Yoder girls were a handful. He liked that, and he liked their mother, Hannah. It wasn’t often you found a widow teaching school. He thought the whole family was a breath of fresh air, even if Ruth could be as prickly as a green briar vine. He’d never known a girl to be so immune to his charms.

“When did you talk to Miriam? Certainly not at church.”

“I’m not much for church. Not lately.”

He had stayed away from church services yesterday because he had wanted to make sure he didn’t see her. No, that wasn’t true. He probably would have stayed away just the same. He didn’t feel at ease at a worship service anymore. He couldn’t see where he would ever be the type of man God would want. He had considered going, had gone so far as to ask Aunt Fannie to iron his good shirt and trousers, but in the end, he’d just stuffed them back in the drawer and gone off to the Dover Mall on his scooter. Instead of worship, he’d spent his afternoon feeding tokens into a video game box. His father would have been proud of him…a chip off the old ice block.

“I heard you were
rumspringa
. I suppose you like English ways.”

“Some. Maybe.”

“I suppose you drink beer,” she accused.

“
Ne
. I don’t drink alcohol. I never have.” He never understood why anyone would want to drink a substance that made them angry or foolish or made them act as they never would have sober. He looked into Ruth’s warm brown eyes, and for just a second, he saw a flash of compassion.

“I didn’t mean to accuse you,” she said in a gentler voice. “It’s just that I know it goes on. I hear lots of
rumspringa
boys do.”

“Girls, too,” he admitted. “But not me. When I was eight, my older brother was riding in a car with some guys who were drinking. He was killed in an accident. I never thought it was something I wanted to do.” He swallowed hard. Why had he told her that? He rarely felt comfortable sharing his feelings. It wasn’t something a man did…not something he did.

She stopped and faced him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” Her tone was suddenly tender, her voice sweet.

He nodded, too full of emotion to answer for a long moment, then he said, “Free, my brother, was funny, and he used to take me fishing sometimes.”

“It’s hard to lose someone you love.” She started toward home again. “My dat died two years ago. I miss him every day.”

Somehow Eli sensed that everything had changed between them. He was walking beside her, and they weren’t arguing. They were just talking like friends, talking as though he’d known her his whole life.

“My dat died, too, when I was young. I don’t remember much about him, just him laughing and me jumping out of the hayloft into his arms.” He hesitated. “Mam never talked about him much.”

“Did your mother remarry? My aunts are urging Mam to, but I don’t think she’s ready.”

“My stepfather, Joseph, is my father’s second cousin. He married my mother when I was four, but I never thought of him as a father, just Joseph. He already had his own sons. He never liked Free and me much, and he was strict.”

Ruth reached down to pluck a wild daisy from an open space beside the path. She brushed the flower petals over her lips and asked, “Is your mother happy with him? Is he a good man?”

“Joseph is a hard worker. He provides for her.” He shrugged. “I never asked Mam if she was happy. In my family, you don’t talk about private things.”

She nodded. “My dat was different than a lot of men I know. He laughed when he was happy, shouted when he was mad and wasn’t ashamed to shed a tear when our old collie died. He used to talk to us about everything.”

“He must have been a special man. I wish I could have known him,” Eli said. Uncle Roman was the closest he’d ever had to a father figure, and because of the distance, he hadn’t seen too much of him until he’d been invited to live with them and work at the shop. “I think my uncle Roman is a little like that,” he admitted. “It seems like he’s a man who talks.”

“
Ya,
we all love Roman.” She smiled at him with her eyes. “Roman says you’re talented with your hands. Your stepfather must have taught you woodworking—”

“
Ne
. My grandfather taught me his trade. I was apprenticed to him after my brother died. Mam had a new baby and I went to live with my grandparents. It was better for Mam that way.” He paused for a second. “Enough talk about me.” Eli’s mood changed swiftly. Their conversation was becoming too intimate, and he wasn’t comfortable. He forced a grin. “Why doesn’t a girl your age have a steady beau?”

“That’s a rude question.”

“I just wondered. I mean, you’re pretty, smart, and I hear you aren’t afraid to make a sharp deal with the English tourists at Spence’s.”

“Miriam talks too much.”

He laughed. “She does talk a lot.” Not three days ago, he’d promised himself he wouldn’t have anything more to do with Ruth Yoder. And here he was, walking her home with an armload of schoolbooks like some grass-green boy too baby-faced to shave. And saying things he’d never said to another girl.

What had made him tell Ruth about Free? He should have gotten over Free’s death a long time ago. Hadn’t his grandfather insisted he had gone to a better place, and only a selfish boy would want him back? But that was hard to accept then and still was now. Somehow, he felt he would never get over losing his brother, and that everything had started to go wrong, not when Dat had walked out, but the night Free had gone out joy-riding and never come back.

When they reached the stile at the fence line, Eli dared Ruth to jump and offered to catch her. He didn’t mean any harm, but he would have liked to have circled her small waist with his hands and to get close enough to smell the sweet shampoo she used on her hair.

But Ruth was having none of it. She scrambled down the steps and hurried on ahead of him. As they crossed the fence, the closeness between them seemed to evaporate. Now she was just an attractive girl, and he was just a stranger with a bad reputation.

“Oh, no!” Ruth cried. “The cows are out.”

Eli looked in the direction she was pointing. A heifer was trotting down the rows of ankle-high corn, snatching mouthfuls of newly sprouted field corn and munching for all she was worth. Ruth snatched off her apron and, waving it, ran toward the wayward animal.

“Shoo! Bossy! Get back!”

Eli placed the stack of books on a dry tuft of grass and dashed after her. Another cow, a black and white one wearing a bell around her neck, was just loping into the cornfield. And behind her, on a plow horse, came Ruth’s sister Miriam, riding astride, skirts up around her knees and
Kapp
flying off her head. A Shetland sheepdog ran after them barking.

Since Ruth seemed to have the heifer on the run, Eli turned to cut off another cow. Yet another cow, followed by a calf, appeared on the far side of the field. Eli waved to Miriam and pointed. “I’ll get this one!” he shouted. Miriam dug her bare heels into the horse’s sides and lumbered after the runaway mother and baby through the corn.

The three of them had rounded up the escapees and were just driving the four animals into the barnyard when Samuel Mast’s buggy came up the lane.

“Oh, no,” Ruth groaned. She dropped the broken cornstalk she’d been using as a switch and hastily tied on her apron and tucked the worst of the loose strands of flyaway hair under her
Kapp
. “It’s Samuel and my mother. We’re in trouble now.”

Miriam slid down off the horse and shook her lavender skirt over her ankles. “You’d better get away while you can,” she whispered to Eli.

Eli glanced from one sister to the other. “Me? What did I do? You were the one on the horse.” He pointed to Miriam, then hooked a thumb in Ruth’s direction. “And Ruth just helped to catch—”

Miriam wrinkled her nose and tsk-tsked. “I’m telling you, you should go. Hannah Yoder doesn’t lose her temper often, but when she does, no one is spared.”

Hannah was climbing unaided out of the buggy. She looked at the cows, then back at the three of them, took a book from Samuel and started toward them. Samuel frowned, clicked to his mare and sent her trotting back down the lane in less time than it took Ruth to close the pound gate.

“What is this?” Hannah demanded.

“The cows were in the corn,” Eli began. “We were just—”

“Thank you for your help. Come again another day, Eli Lapp,” she said, her tone clipped. “I wish to speak to my daughters about their behavior. And it is best if you leave us in private.”

He hesitated. “I left your books back in the field. I’ll just—”

“Ruth will fetch the books.” Hannah’s eyes flashed. “You will come for dinner on Sunday. It is not a church Sunday, and I’ve already invited your uncle Roman and aunt Fannie. Now, you can help best by leaving us.”

Eli felt his face flush. “They did nothing wrong.”