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He liked what he’d seen of Seven Poplars. The community was conservative but not harsh in their interpretation of the ordnung, and they had made his first week there a welcome one. The county was known to be good farming country, and the small Amish community seemed industrious and well-off. Houses and barns were well cared for; the livestock was sleek and healthy and the roads not too busy for horses and buggies. Gideon would be pleased to write his parents that night and tell them that he was settling in and in good health. He would not mention what he found most delightful—the abundance of rosy-cheeked young women, as fair as he’d seen anywhere.
He and Charley joined the others as they rose for the final hymn. Afterward, Charley had promised they’d enjoy a communal meal served on tables set up outside under the trees. Gideon supposed that he and the other men would carry the benches out of the house for seating. His stomach rumbled. They’d eaten nothing before service this morning, and he couldn’t wait to taste whatever the women had whipped up for the meal. Like at home, he knew the women hadn’t cooked today, but they’d prepared so many delicious dishes the day before that there would be plenty to eat.
After the final prayer, it took a good ten minutes for Charley and Gideon to get outside to the well where other men were washing their hands at a pitcher pump. He could see that Charley was popular. He took the time to introduce him to at least a dozen of the congregation, male and female, that Gideon hadn’t met yet.
“It was a fine sermon, wasn’t it, Charley?” a tall, fair-haired young woman remarked. And then to him, she said, “I’m Mary, and you must be Sara’s—”
“Who else could it be?” Charley cut in and then chuckled. “This is my sister, Gideon. And yes, she’s unmarried and not walking out with anybody I know of.” He grinned at her. “Unless she has a secret admirer that she hasn’t revealed to me yet.”
“Charley!” Mary’s eyes narrowed. “What will Gideon think of me?” And then she smiled at Gideon. “Pay no attention to my brother.” She extended her hand and shook his, as a man might do. “I’m pleased to meet you, and I hope you like it here in Seven Poplars,” she said.
He was surprised at her boldness, but not put off by it. Mary Byler was interesting, and he liked girls who were different. At home, few women would touch a man not related to them, and he wondered if the rules were different here. Mary had a firm grip and a pleasant voice. Strange that such an attractive woman was as yet unmarried by her late twenties, which was how old he guessed her to be.
“Charley has invited me to a young people’s frolic,” Gideon said. “Will you be there?”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” she said with another smile. And then she waved to two other girls. “Lilly, Violet, come meet Gideon.”
Two attractive young women joined them. The first, not as tall as Mary, had curly blond hair, dark eyes and a dimple on each cheek when she smiled. “Welcome to our community,” she said sweetly. “It’s good to have you at our worship service.”
“Gideon, this is Lilly Hershberger, one of my dearest friends.” Mary indicated the second girl, a brunette with blue eyes and a pleasant face. “And this is another friend of mine, Violet Troyer.”
“Violet’s family just moved into our church district from Peach Orchard,” Lilly explained. “That’s about ten miles from here.”
“You’re from Wisconsin?” Violet asked, smiling up at him. “I have family there. My mother’s side. The Harvey Zooks. Do you know them?”
“Ne,” Gideon admitted. “I know there are some Zooks near Brushy Lake, but I don’t remember meeting them.”
Violet shrugged. “You couldn’t forget. They’re a big family. Especially cousin Abram. They’re all big, but Abram is huge. He’s over six feet tall and weighs—” She rolled her eyes. “Let’s just say there’s a lot more of him than there should be. My uncle wrote that Abram has won the county fair pie-eating contest six years straight. Last August, it was four entire blueberry pies.”
“Four pies?” Lilly struggled to control her amusement. “That’s a lot of pie.”
“Charley!” A woman motioned to him. “Time to eat.” She had a baby in a white bonnet and gown balanced on one hip.
“My wife and boy,” Charley explained proudly.
Gideon nodded. He didn’t dislike babies, but they seemed to make a lot of noise, and they all looked alike to him. “A little woodchopper,” he commented, since Charley obviously expected him to say something complimentary about the child. “Healthy?”
“Ya, thanks be to God,” Charley answered. “My wife and me, we waited a while for him. I was starting to worry.”
“For nothing,” Mary told him. “The Lord chooses His own time for His blessings.” She smiled again. “See you at the singing, Gideon.”
“Ya,” Lilly agreed. “And you’d better sing, not just sit there like some of the young men do.” Then the two of them giggled and hurried away, heads together in hushed talk.
As was the custom at home, the men ate at the first seating, and there was a definite hierarchy to the arrangement. The bishop, preachers, deacon and elders sat at one end of the table. Next came the senior men, then the middle-aged and younger married heads of households. As a guest, Gideon was offered a place halfway down the table, next to Charley. He knew without being told that the next time he attended church, his spot would be farther down toward the end of the table with the other single adult males. Teenage boys filled the last empty seats on the bench. Little boys, Gideon assumed, would eat at the second sitting with the women and girls.
There was a moment of silent grace, a few words from the bishop and then everyone at the table began to enjoy the food. There was little talk. Appetites were high, and it was only good manners to eat quickly, so that the second seating could have their turn. Young women moved back and forth behind the men, filling glasses and replenishing trays of bread and cold cuts. Platters and bowls were passed from diner to diner: tomatoes, green beans cooked with bacon, macaroni and potato salads, slaws, pickles, sliced ham, roasted chicken, summer sausage and roast beef.
Everything Gideon tasted was delicious, especially the raisin bread and the apple-rhubarb tarts. He wondered if this was the usual communal fare, or if Hannah Yoder and her daughters put on a special spread when they hosted Church Sunday. It wasn’t uncommon in his community to just have sandwiches for Sunday dinner. Too many dinners like this, and he’d have to worry about his waistline.
“More tea?” A young woman with dark hair and bright blue eyes leaned over to fill his glass. “Did you want more ice? I can get ice.”
“Ne, I’m fine,” he assured her.
A minute later, another unmarried girl stopped to try to fill his glass again.
It was no wonder Sara had moved her business here to Delaware; there seemed to be plenty of available young women looking for husbands. Of course, no Amish woman wore a wedding ring, so he had to guess who was single, but he’d gotten pretty good at it. Even the shy girls had a way of letting you know that they were “in the market,” so to say.
When Gideon couldn’t eat another bite, he finished his tea, then waved away the blue-eyed girl who wanted to refill it, yet again. “Danke,” he said. “I couldn’t drink another drop.” She giggled and stood there just a few seconds too long before moving on to fill someone else’s glass. Gideon wiped his mouth with a cloth napkin and glanced around the yard.
Children of various ages sat in the grass with books or played quietly. Several little girls had what looked like a Noah’s Ark with tiny, wooden animals. Another girl, about ten or eleven, held the hand of a toddler who was dressed like Charley’s son, in white bonnet and gown. It was hard to remember that he was in Delaware, a long way from his home community. Although these were unfamiliar faces, and the hat and bonnet shapes were just a bit different, these could have been his neighbors and relatives.
Gideon felt at peace. He always felt good after Sunday services, and he enjoyed meeting and talking to people. Some Englishers thought that Amish life was severe and harsh, but he’d never believed that. So long as a man believed in the Word and followed the ordnung of his church, he was assured of salvation. What could one ask for but faith, family and community? When he considered how much he received every day, the hard work of living apart from the world was a small sacrifice.
The bishop rose from his seat, followed quickly by the older men. Gideon stood up and left the table as teams of teenage girls cleared away the dishes and glasses for the next seating. Charley and Eli stopped to speak to their host, Albert Hartman, and Gideon decided to walk back and take a look at the alpacas that Charley had mentioned.
As he left the farmyard and strolled past the line of buggies and tethered horses, the clamor of friendly voices and laughing children faded. Earlier, Charley had indicated the smaller of two barns. A pasture with a high fence ran behind it, and sure enough, Gideon caught sight of a group of animals grazing at the far end. He started toward them when someone called his name.
“Gideon! Wait up.”
He turned to see Addy walking toward him.
“I was waiting to get a chance to speak to you,” she said, as she drew closer. “To thank you for mending my dress.” She was, he had noticed earlier, wearing the lavender dress that he’d managed to rescue. “I thought Sara had done it, but Ellie said it was you.”
She looked uncertain, and he smiled at her. “No problem. My sisters taught me. Nine of us, and me the only boy. They weren’t too good at baseball, but...” He shrugged. “Not many men you know sew?”
Addy had nice hair, a soft brown with just a little hint of auburn. She was tall for a woman. He thought he could smell honeysuckle. Was there such a thing as honeysuckle shampoo, he wondered? She wasn’t what you’d call a pretty girl, but she had nice eyes and an intelligent face. Her kapp was spotless white and starched stiff. He knew how much work it took to make it just so. He’d watched his sisters ironing their kapps on many Saturday evenings and now imagined Addy standing at an ironing board, using an old-fashioned iron she heated on the woodstove.
“Not one,” she said.
He suddenly realized that he’d been daydreaming. “I’m sorry?”
“Not one man that I know can sew a tear so that you can hardly see it. I don’t think I could have done it so well myself. And you got the bloodstain out of the hem. Thank you. I thought the dress was ruined.”
“Well, it’s not,” he said. For a moment, she just stood there, and the silence stretched between them, not an uncomfortable quiet, but a reassuring one. He liked that. Addy might not have the fairest face he’d ever seen, but there was just something about her... “I guess you think I’m odd that way. That I know how to sew.”
“I think it’s wonderful.” She produced a carrot, went over to the fence and whistled. She waved the carrot, and the whole herd of alpacas trotted toward her. Carefully, she snapped the carrot into small pieces and tossed them to the eager animals.
Again, there was an easy stillness between them as he came over to stand beside her at the fence.
“I suppose you heard...” she said, breaking the silence. She grimaced. “My parents...they...” A flush spread over her face. “They asked Sara to find a husband for me.”
“And you don’t want them to do that?”
She dropped onto the grass, folding her long legs modestly under her skirt. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “It’s...well, it’s embarrassing...telling everyone that I need help finding someone.” She tugged at a blade of grass, plucking first one and then another. “That, otherwise, I’ll be an old maid peeling potatoes in my mother’s kitchen when I’m sixty, with gray hairs on my chin.”
He chuckled. “Sounds pretty bad when you put it that way.”
She tugged at more blades of grass. “I figured you knew. Ellie does, for sure. Who knows who else does?”
“But you want to marry, don’t you?”
“I suppose, but I always thought I’d find my own husband. Or...” Her eyes glistened as if she might start to cry. “Or he’d find me.”
“Not everybody does it that way.” He sat down beside her in the grass. “Why do you think my father and mother sent me here? I could have found work as a hired man in our community. Or I could have gone on helping my father.”
“What does he do?”
“Makes sausage. Sells it to people.”
“Ach. Sausage. Everybody likes sausage.”
“And it’s good sausage.” He smiled at her. “So what I’m trying to say is that you aren’t alone. My mam and dat and Ellie’s parents think like your mother and father. They’re trying to do a good thing. Because they love us and want us to be happy.”
“I suppose, but...” She tossed the grass through the fence to a young alpaca. “What if I don’t like who Sara picks for me?”
“Then you say no. ‘Danke, Sara, but no.’ It’s easy.” He grinned. “I’ve been doing it for years.”
She turned to him with surprise. “You’ve turned down matches?”
“A handsome, hardworking man like me?” He winked. “I’ve escaped more pretty girls than you have fingers on both hands. If you think you’re hard to please, I’m impossible.”
“So we’re both being difficult,” Addy mused.
He plucked idly at the clover. “It seems that way.”
“My grossmama says that it’s pride that keeps me from finding a good marriage.” She looked at him. “Do you think it is?”
“Hochmut?” He thought for a moment. “I hope not,” he answered honestly. “I’d not want to think of myself as a prideful person. Hardheaded, maybe, but not full of a false sense of my own importance.”
“Goot,” Addy replied. “Because I wouldn’t want that, either.” She got to her feet and brushed off her skirts. “I have to go. My mother will wonder where I’ve gotten to. There’s bound to be cleaning up.”
He stood. “Should I come to help?”
She shook her head. “Women’s work, and not so hard as to break the rules of the Sabbath. Only dishes and food to clear away.”
Gideon stood there awhile, leaning on the fence after Addy left and unable to get what she’d said out of his mind. Could her grandmother be right? he wondered. Was his reluctance to choose a wife hochmut? He tried every day to live by the principles of his faith. Was it wrong to hope that there was someone waiting...someone he could love with all of his heart...someone special that he just hadn’t found yet?
Chapter Four (#ulink_008bfbef-3bcf-520a-acf8-6b13ba1b1a17)
Addy arrived at Sara’s promptly at 8:00 a.m. Thursday morning, and by nine, she and Ellie had cleared away the breakfast dishes, picked crook-neck squash, eggplant and tomatoes from the garden, and swept the front and back porch. Now they were busily taping Sara’s parlor in preparation for painting the walls and trim. The previous day, Gideon had given the ceiling two coats of a soft white and carried in two gallons of pale blue, two brushes, two rollers and a shiny new paint tray.
Addy stood on a stepladder to tape off the white ceiling molding while Ellie applied the blue tape to the floor molding. Addy never ceased to be amazed at how quickly and efficiently the little woman worked. She put Addy in mind of a honeybee, laughing or singing instead of buzzing, but constantly in motion. Any preconceived notions Addy had had about a little person had been quickly replaced with respect. Not only did Ellie do her share of the housework—Addy also found she had to scramble just to keep pace. And Ellie was always good-natured and fun to be around.
Addy had lived in Seven Poplars all her life, and it was rare that she got to spend time with another Amish girl from far off. And although, from what Ellie said, life was much the same in her home community in Wisconsin, Addy found her stories of girlfriends and rejected suitors and new jokes fascinating.
She guessed that Ellie was a few years younger than she was, but like her, past the age that most Amish girls in Seven Poplars married. She supposed that it had to be difficult for a little person, even one as pretty and personable as Ellie, to find a husband. Not that Ellie seemed to mind. According to what Sara said, Ellie was one of her most difficult girls to match, more because she was picky than because she was a little person. Addy was dying to ask how many matches Ellie had turned down, but didn’t want to seem rude.
Addy slowly inched the roll of blue tape along the crown molding with one hand, smoothing it with the other. “Do you know the Zook boy Mary and Violet were talking about on Sunday? The one in Wisconsin?”
“Abram?” Ellie paused, a strip of blue tape suspended between her hands. “I don’t really know him, but Sara asked my mother if she thought I’d be interested. He’s a nice fellow, so I hear, a hard worker, but...” She grimaced. “Too much of him for me, my mam and dat said. Too much Abram altogether.”
“He’s a large man?”
“About the size of one of my father’s Percheron draft horses.” She giggled. “Or maybe the whole team.”
“Ellie,” Addy scolded, a little titillated by her new friend’s daring. “That isn’t kind. My dat says that a person is the way God made them, and we should accept them as they are.”
“Ya,” Ellie agreed. “But think about it. How foolish would we look together? Me little, Abram...well...Abram. If we sat on the porch swing and it didn’t break, it would be like a schoolyard seesaw. He’d sit down, and my end of the swing would fly up.” She chuckled and shook her head. “Ne, Addy. Better I be an old maid knitting baby bonnets for my sisters and mufflers for my brothers than be married to such as Abram.”
“I suppose.” No fat boy had ever asked to walk out with her. No boy, fat, skinny or in between, had even driven her home from a singing or a work frolic. The truth was that she’d passed her dating years watching other girls ride out with boys in their buggies, and play badminton with them on their front lawns.
Her one venture into the marriage market had been a near miss with the then-new preacher in Seven Poplars, Caleb Wittner. Her dat and mam had wanted her to marry him, and for a while, Caleb had come to several family dinners. But they’d never gotten past the considering-each-other part of dating. Caleb was a respectable enough man, but she hadn’t felt as if he were someone with whom she could spend the rest of her life. He seemed a little boring to her, with nothing to talk about but his woodworking. To her parents’ regret, she’d put an end to that courtship before it had even started. Which turned out to be just as well because he soon married her cousin Rebecca, and they were a perfect match.
Addy sighed. It would be nice to have someone she liked pursue her, even if she did later turn him down. But there always seemed to be more eligible young Amish women than suitors, which was why Sara’s matchmaking services were in such high demand.
She climbed down the ladder, moved it over a foot and climbed up it again. The smell of baking bread wafted in from the kitchen. Sara was a fantastic baker, and she preferred to make rye or whole-wheat loaves with yeast instead of the baking powder biscuits that Addy had grown up eating. Sara liked to get her baking out of the way early in the day, and Addy’s mouth watered at the thought of the midday meal they would be sitting down to in a few hours. Between the apple tarts, the lebkuchen, the fastnachts, the streusels and the shoofly pies that Sara whipped up in her kitchen, it was a wonder that she wasn’t as plump as Addy’s cousin Anna.
Thinking of Sara’s round face brought a question to mind. Addy glanced around to see that they were alone and lowered her voice. “Why is Sara’s skin darker than ours?” she asked Ellie.
Ellie shrugged. “I don’t know. Don’t you have anyone with dark skin in your community?”
“Ne.” Addy felt her face grow warm, and she was sorry she’d asked. Most Amish she knew were fair-skinned, with rosy cheeks and German features. Sara had curly, almost blue-black hair, but she didn’t look African-American. What was her family background? Mam had asked her this morning if she knew.
Ellie bent over and measured out another length of tape for the windowsill. “Not so unusual to have members with darker skin in other Amish settlements. I went to school with a girl who was very brown, but she was a foster child that a family in our church adopted. Louise, her name was. Very good at arithmetic. She won the prize every year at the end-of-school picnic.”
“I just wondered.” Addy turned back to her task. “It’s not important.”
“Not all people are alike,” Ellie said. “And a good thing, wouldn’t you agree?”
Addy nodded, liking the way Ellie looked at things. “Ya, a good thing.”
“What’s a good thing?” Gideon came into the parlor carrying a toolbox in one hand and a door latch in the other.
“Nothing,” Addy said quickly, concentrating on unrolling more tape.
Why did she always feel as if she was showing herself at her worst when Gideon popped up? She didn’t want him to think of her as nosy or disapproving of the good woman who paid their wages. She’d only asked because her mother’s question had made her curious.
Gideon stared at her, narrowing his gaze. “But the two of you were—”
“Is that latch for the closet door?” Ellie interrupted, thankfully coming to Addy’s recue.
“Ya, Peanut, what else would it be?” Gideon shot back.
Addy glanced at Ellie to see if his retort or the nickname would hurt her feelings, but Ellie only laughed.
“Hard to say what you might be up to, Long Legs.” Ellie winked at Addy. “All he could talk about this morning at breakfast was the Beachys’ singing. Asking who might be there and if I was going. His mind was on funning and not on his plate and he salted his coffee instead of his eggs.”
Gideon laughed and set down his toolbox by the closet door. “A little salt makes everything taste better, Short Stuff. And you never did tell me if you were going.”
