Stoney Ridge 03 - The Lesson Read online

  By now, if they were going to say anything, they would have. Wouldn’t they?

  Ruthie’s father was the first minister to preach this morning. M.K. had her own rating system for sermons: “boring,” “boring boring,” and “boring boring boring.” Ruthie’s father consistently earned three borings. One thing about his sermons: if you were unclear about the point he emphasized, another would be along in a moment. Fern was forever telling her it wasn’t the preacher’s problem, it was the listener’s. “Hald die Ohre uff.” Keep your ears open.

  Fern poked her with her elbow in a warning to sit up and pay attention.

  Fern! So ever-present.

  M.K. glanced across the room at Chris. He sat next to her father, who had greeted him warmly. Amos Lapp had a knack for tending to fatherless young men. Sometimes, M.K. thought it was a pity he hadn’t had more sons. A houseful. Instead, he lived with a covey of women and he often seemed bewildered by them.

  Chris’s Sunday clothes made him look blonder and taller and grown up. And handsome. He lifted his eyes from the hymnal and looked directly at her, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. He smiled, and it hit her in the solar plexus. She bowed her head, breaking away from his gaze.

  Chris had to bite on his lower lip to stop smiling when he caught Mary Kate Lapp gazing at him in church. She blushed becomingly, he noticed. He still couldn’t get over this was the teacher Jenny had been complaining about so bitterly. He was pleased to see Mary Kate had a full set of her own choppers. She didn’t wear cloppety shoes. She didn’t jiggle when she walked. And she was awfully far from being old.

  Mary Kate was sitting next to a young mother with two red-headed twin babies—a boy and a girl. The young mother had a dreamy smile on her face and a faraway look in her eyes, as if she were listening to a pleasant conversation that only she could hear. She didn’t seem to notice that her little boy was teething and chewing on his shirt collar.

  Speaking of teeth, Chris noticed that Jenny was sitting next to a little girl who was missing most of her front teeth. Jenny had talked about a cute little girl named Barbara Jean at school and he wondered if this might be her. He noticed that Barbara Jean kept sticking her tongue out, as if she was continually surprised to find the teeth had gone missing. He was glad Jenny had someone to sit next to, but he wished she had a friend her own age. The older girls had clumped together before church like clotted cream. Not one included Jenny in the cluster. He had worried it would be a mistake to come this morning. He knew the hearts of these people—they would fuss over the two of them as if they were chicks without a mother hen. They would ask questions about where they came from and want to stop by the house with casseroles and baked goods. As tempting as a good meal sounded—and it really did sound good—it wasn’t enough to make him want to come to church and start joining into the community. Not quite yet. The whole notion of it worried him. If they could only lay low until January, when he turned twenty-one. But how could he have said no to the bishop? You just didn’t do that.

  But then, while the church was singing the LobLeid, Chris was filled with a wonderful sense of worship. It felt good, so good, to be back in church. He breathed in the familiar smells of starch and soap and shoe blacking. He had missed it more than he realized. The worship. Reminders that God was sovereign over all. It wasn’t good to go too long without church.

  The hymn ended and Amos Lapp, seated next to him, took back the hymnal and tucked it under the bench. Someday, in addition to the horse breeding business, Chris would like to have a farm of his own, just like Windmill Farm. Fields, orchards, livestock, bountiful vegetable garden. That was becoming his dream.

  Amos had introduced Chris to some of the fellows who were close to his age. He wondered what their dream would be. Jimmy Fisher, he noticed, had an eye for the ponies. By the barn this morning, he had already spotted Samson and asked Chris how fast he had been clocked. “I don’t know,” Chris said. “I’ve never raced him.”

  Jimmy Fisher looked at him as if a cat had spoken. “Never raced him? Never?” He ran a hand down Samson’s foreleg. “I could do it for you.”

  “Why?” Chris asked.

  “Don’t you want to know how fast he could go?”

  Chris shook his head. “No need.”

  Jimmy Fisher was amazed.

  Right then, Chris knew what Jimmy Fisher’s dream would be: Thrills.

  Jimmy Fisher reached down to pat Doozy’s neck. It was warm from the sun. This dog was devoted to Mary Kate and followed her everywhere, even to church. Or maybe he was just trying to get away from those little pups that were constantly pulling his tail and chewing on his ears.

  Jimmy had known M.K. just as long as he had known his own brother, essentially his entire life. He treated her like a younger sibling too. He had put a billy goat in the cherry orchard when she was picking cherries. She had let the air out of the tires of his hidden ten-speed bicycle. He had tossed a racer snake into the girls’ outhouse at school, knowing full well that she was inside. She had sprinkled water over his entire firecracker collection—just enough to make the gunpowder soft and ineffective. They raced their favorite buggy horses against each other. They were constantly competing, but it never meant a thing. They had a long history together—mostly as enemies, until one day when they put aside their feud and became friends. Good friends.

  And now, suddenly, overnight, it had blossomed into love.

  How to explain what happened? It was like a switch had flipped and in an instant the world had changed. His mind was racing.

  M.K. had taken him along to a volleyball game and barbecue at the Eshes’ home last night, so that he could meet Emily, his future missus. At least that’s what he had assumed until he was actually introduced to Emily and tried to have a conversation with her. He was at his most charming, warm, and witty, thinking at first that she was just shy. Thirty minutes later, his charm had worn out. She had no sense of humor. None whatsoever. She took everything he said literally and tried to dissect it. “I don’t think that could have really happened” or “That sounds like a gross exaggeration.” It was like trying to talk to an IRS auditor.

  Their lagging conversation was interrupted by gales of laughter. He turned his gaze to M.K., sitting by the fire pit, surrounded by four or five fellows and girls, telling a story about something funny that had happened at her school.

  A burst of laughter shook Jimmy back to the present. It would be his turn at bat soon. They were having the after-church-after-lunch softball game and he had talked Chris Yoder into sticking around for it. He noticed how Chris stood at a distance, leaning against the fence, not joining in but not entirely separate either. Chris’s gaze often drifted toward left field. That’s where M.K. happened to be posted.

  Jimmy gave a few practice swings before he stepped up to the plate. His thoughts slipped back to last night at the Eshes’ as M.K. was wrapping up the story by the fire pit. The group was hanging on her every word. She was always good at storytelling—which she attributed to years of listening to Uncle Hank—but that was when it hit Jimmy like a two-by-four. He was dazzled by how she had suddenly become a different person. He was out looking for love and it was right in front of him. It had always been right in front of him.

  He was in love with M.K. Lapp. He was a hooked fish. A goner.

  He stepped up to bat, poised and ready for the pitch, but his mind was fully occupied. The question that faced him: how to convince M.K. that she loved him back? That was going to take some doing.

  A week later, on Saturday, the sky was filled with dark clouds. The air felt damp and raw and smelled of coming rain. Chris Yoder was out in the west field of Windmill Farm, cutting the last of the hay. M.K. watched the work progress; it was painfully slow, even though Chris was always working when she looked in that direction—a tiny figure bent over the land.

  She had just finished baking a few loaves of honey oat bread and decided to give one to him to take home. They weren’t quite as light and airy as F
ern’s would be—her bread never was—but it would be good as toast. As she wrapped the loaf in a red-striped dish towel, she wondered what Chris thought of her. It was difficult to read him. He was polite, slightly amused, but just that and no more. The logical conclusion she reached was that he did not want to spend time in her company. And why should he? She had accused him of a heinous crime. Two crimes! One big, one small, but crimes nonetheless.

  And yet he didn’t tell anyone what she had done to him. Nor had Jenny. M.K. felt grateful to them both, but she wondered why. Maybe, Chris just wasn’t interested in her.

  M.K. wasn’t used to having young men lose interest in her. And, the first few times they had met, Chris Yoder had shown a spark of interest in her—she could see it in his eyes. She could tell he thought she was attractive. That wasn’t an altogether unusual experience for M.K. Boys had always been attracted to her. But that was just it—they were all boys.

  M.K. wasn’t the kind of girl who needed attention from boys, and she certainly wasn’t the type who fell in and out of love like her friend Ruthie did. But she did like to be taken seriously. She liked that very much.

  Chris Yoder did not take M.K. seriously. And Chris Yoder was the first boy M.K. met whom she considered to be a man.

  She found herself thinking of Chris a great deal. She tried to stop herself, but couldn’t. He was a shy man, she decided, and that was another reason why he seemed reserved. Certainly that would pass, she thought, when they got to know one another better, but she wasn’t quite sure how to achieve that. Chris didn’t make it easy.

  She crossed through the fields with the bread loaf tucked in one hand and a thermos of cool lemonade in the other. When he looked up and saw her, he stopped the horses and waited for her. The odd feeling that she had been experiencing lately came back. She felt her heart thumping. Ridiculous, she thought. Ridiculous.

  She handed him the thermos. “Thought you could use something to drink.”

  He opened the lid and drank it down. “Thank you.” He wiped sweat from his brow with a handkerchief.

  She held up the bread. “I thought you and Jenny might be able to use a loaf of bread. Honey oat. The honey is from my own hives.”

  When he hesitated for a moment, she quickly added, “I made too many loaves. We can’t eat it all. I’ll put it in the barn by your coat.”

  “Jenny would put honey on everything if she could.”

  M.K. brightened with that news. Her confidence returned. Honey was an area of expertise for her, thanks to her sister’s husband, Rome. He had taught her everything she knew about beekeeping. “I’ll give you a bottle of my honey for her to try on this bread. My bees are brown bees—not very common, but they produce a delicious sweet honey.”

  His eyes crinkled with his smile as he handed the empty thermos to her. “She’d like that.”

  “Would you and Jenny like to come and have a meal at the house? Tonight?”

  M.K. surprised herself. Oh no. This hadn’t been planned. As he hesitated, she wished the words back. Why in the world had she said that? “My father’s been wanting to have you.” That was true, actually.

  She was afraid to look at him too closely. His eyes, with that unsettling lucent quality, were on her. She looked down at the ground, at the rigging on the horses, at the shoes Chris was wearing, boots that had badly scuffed toes.

  “Your father has been kind to me,” he said softly.

  “He thinks you’re a hard worker.” She glanced at the sky. “Looks like it’s going to rain soon. I should let you get back to work. If you decide you’d like to join us, we eat at six. Nothing fancy, but Fern’s a terrific cook. If you’re lucky, Uncle Hank might be in a storytelling mood.” She started toward the barn.

  “What’s Fern got planned for tonight?”

  M.K. whirled around. “Pot roast. Roasted potatoes. Green beans and bacon.”

  “Any dessert?”

  “Pumpkin pie with homemade vanilla ice cream.”

  Their eyes met. This time, they held. Chris grinned. “We’ll be there.”

  As M.K. walked through the field, she couldn’t stop smiling. Ridiculous, she thought. Ridiculous. But she couldn’t wipe the goofy grin off her face.

  Chris flicked the reins on the horses’ backs, to get them moving. He wasn’t sure it was a good idea to accept Mary Kate’s dinner invitation, but the mention of a good meal was a powerful temptation. Hardly a day went by that Amos Lapp hadn’t extended the invitation to join him for lunch at the house, but Chris always declined. Other invitations had started coming in from other families too—he expected as much after he and Jenny attended church last Sunday. That’s the way it was with the Amish—they extended true kindness. It was one of the many things he loved about these people. He was starting to relax a little and think they should go ahead and accept a few dinner invitations. Help out at a few work frolics. Meet people. Get involved.

  But then nagging doubts crowded in. Would they start pressing him with questions about his family? Would they want to help him fix up his house? He couldn’t risk too much curiosity—look at what happened with Mary Kate Lapp. A few brief interactions, and she had him carted away by the sheriff. Unbelievable! But then again, there weren’t too many Amish women who seemed like Mary Kate Lapp.

  Still, there was something about her that intrigued him. True, she was easy on the eyes, though he was used to plenty of pretty girls in Ohio. Today, flour streaked Mary Kate’s cheek, hiding some of her freckles. He thought about pointing it out to her, but she might feel embarrassed. She was trying to make amends—the loaf of bread, the honey for Jenny, the invitation to dinner. It was sort of sweet to see Mary Kate so ill at ease, so full of humble pie. He had a hunch it was a new feeling for her.

  But here’s what he hadn’t expected about Mary Kate Lapp: she was funny. She had a way of looking at the world that was just off-kilter enough to surprise him into laughing. She wasn’t trying to be funny, but everything about her was amusing.

  And here’s another thing he hadn’t expected about Mary Kate: she was a good teacher after all. Mary Kate was starting to win over his reluctant-to-like-anyone sister. She had given Jenny a word puzzle to figure out and Jenny had spent hours deciphering it: “Beings highly deficient in cranial capacity hastily enter situations which celestial entities regard with great trepidation.” A happy scream burst out of her when she figured it out. In common English it meant: “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” Jenny had raced to school in the morning with the answer.

  Encounters with Mary Kate Lapp felt as if someone threw a snowball down the back of his shirt on a blistering hot summer day. Unexpected, startling, shocking. But not unwelcomed.

  Jenny was surprised when her brother blew into the house, galloped up the stairs to take a shower, and shouted down that they were expected for dinner at Windmill Farm.

  That made no sense to Jenny. No sense at all. Chris was always telling her they needed to keep to themselves and not get too friendly with others. When she called out, “Why?” he opened the bathroom door, stuck his head out, and shouted back, “Pot roast and potatoes!”

  Okay. That made sense. The thought of a home-cooked meal made Jenny’s mouth water. Just today, she had looked longingly at Anna Mae Glick’s lunch: slices of smoked ham between thick homemade bread. A slab of shoofly pie. She nearly threw away her own stupid lunch: stale crackers and rock-hard cheese, and a too-soft apple from the tree in the yard.

  Pot roast and potatoes. She could practically taste them now. She was fully supportive of Chris giving in to temptation. In fact, she hurried to get ready!

  But then they arrived at Windmill Farm and the family, including four wild puppies, came charging out to meet them. The puppies made a beeline for Jenny, jumping up and nearly knocking her down.

  That’s when Jenny became steaming mad. Until that moment, she hadn’t made the connection that Windmill Farm meant she would be seeing her teacher. It was true that Teacher M.K. was showing a little glim
mer of hope as a teacher, but that didn’t mean Jenny wanted to be chummy with her. She was still outraged that Teacher M.K. turned her brother in to the sheriff. She was fiercely protective of Chris, and slow to forgive anyone who might cause him harm. She thought about feigning illness, but suddenly caught a whiff of pot roast in the air and decided she would stay. They would eat, and then they would leave. Old Deborah had taught her manners.

  Fortunately, the food lived up to its aroma. As the platters were passed around the table, as she listened to the table conversation between Fern and Amos and M.K. and Uncle Hank—who did most of the talking by telling outrageously silly stories!—she felt a wave of missing Old Deborah. Of belonging at someone’s table. How she envied these people. She wondered if Chris might be feeling it too. The last two months had been so filled with change that she hadn’t allowed herself to think back on their old life. Not much, anyway.

  “From your accents,” Fern said, passing Jenny a bowl of green beans, “I’d say you didn’t grow up in Pennsylvania. Not in Lancaster, anyway.”

  “Well, we sort of started here—” Jenny began. From the corner of her eye, she caught Chris’s infinitesimal shake of his head.

  “She’s referring to the wave of nineteenth-century immigrants from Europe,” Chris hastily filled in. He glanced around, taking in the blank looks on everyone’s faces. He picked up the breadbasket and held it out to Amos. “William Penn and all that history.”

  Fern squinted her eyes at him as if he had completely lost his mind.

  “NOW THAT,” Uncle Hank interrupted, “reminds me of my great, great aunt Mathilda, who rowed over from the Old Country in a canoe.” He helped himself to another serving of potatoes.

  “A canoe, you say?” Amos said, calm as a cucumber. He reached out for the butter to spread on his bread roll, but Fern intercepted and moved the butter tray away from him. The man’s dark eyebrows sprang up as he gave his wife a look of obvious merriment.

  “A canoe and a pet parrot named Oscar,” Uncle Hank said, winking at Jenny. “So she had someone to talk to. She liked to talk, that Aunt Mathilda. The problem came when the parrot started talking back to her.” He jumped to his feet and shaded his eyes with his hand, as if looking for land. “Paddle faster, Mathilda! Faster! Sqwuak! Sqwuak!”