A Stranger's Wish (3 page)

When I’d indulged my daydreams of living on an Amish farm, they were always haloed in gold and washed in a soft warm glow. I anticipated I would feel the peace and tranquility we
Englishers
so often attribute to these nonviolent people. It’s as though we think they never face problems such as illness or poor finances or bad crops or rebellious kids or any of the things that plague the general population.

I’d come to the farm today with my rosy expectations firmly intact. Less than five minutes on my own and boom! Reality. No more golden dreams.

“Well, let me give you a glass of cold root beer before you go to your rooms,” Mary said as we entered the house. Her momentary emotional turmoil appeared to have passed. “On a hot day like today you need something cool after all you’ve been through. Going to the hospital’s always scary, ain’t? You too, Jon Clarke.”

“Root beer sounds marvelous,” I said, even though I’m a Coke person and all I really wanted was to go lie down.

“It does,” agreed Jon Clarke. “I haven’t had your root beer in ages. Why don’t I get Jake?”

“I expect that’s who you came to see in the first place,” Mary said. “He’s in his apartment.”

Jon Clarke nodded and started for the front door, but Mary called, “No, you don’t have to go around to his front door. You can get to him through there.” She pointed to a door on the inside wall of the room. “We put that in for him so he doesn’t have to go outside so much. Just knock. He’s waiting, hoping you’d be back.”

Jon Clarke disappeared through the door as Mary led me to a straight-backed chair at one end of what was obviously the relaxing section of the large room that filled the downstairs of the main house. A large hand-hooked rug in a lovely mix of blues and greens covered the tan linoleum at my feet. I wondered if Mary had hooked it. If so, she had a wonderful eye for color.

Nearby, coal oil lamps sat on an end table and a bookcase. I glanced curiously at the titles in the bookcase and saw mostly Bible study books, many in German, though there were a few lighter volumes. Issues of
Amish Life
were stacked on one shelf. I was particularly surprised to see the brilliant crimson-and-gold cover of
It’s Up to You
by Clarke Griffin. It was the very book I was reading.

At least we’ll have something to talk about at meals,
I thought in relief. When I wasn’t wrapped in my golden daydream of life on the farm, I spent a lot of time worrying about whether the Zooks and I would find enough in common to sustain conversation. It appeared we might.

The other end of the big room was the working area and kitchen. Counters and a sink ran under the windows in the left wall, and a great wood-burning stove sat against the far wall by the back door. A large wooden table topped with a blue oilcloth that matched one shade of blue in the rug filled the middle of the kitchen area, a Coleman lantern and a canning jar filled with flowers sitting in its center. A treadle sewing machine was tucked under a window on the right wall beside the propane-powered refrigerator from which Mary was taking mismatched bottles of dark liquid.

For all its Spartan style, the room was welcoming, bright, and airy with windows running on three sides. There were no curtains because curtains are worldly, but well-tended spider plants and wandering Jews graced the windowsills, and green shades hung from the frames.

A doorway at the far end beside the stove led to a one-story addition that housed the propane-fired water heater, the indoor plumbing and bathroom, and the pantry.

The front door burst open, and a young man exploded into the room, followed by a slight girl.

“See, Ruth?” the young man said. “I was right. I knew Mom’d be serving my root beer. Company’s all the excuse she needs.”

“And my pretzels.” Ruth pointed to the plastic tub in Mary’s arms.

“Hush, you two.” Mary smiled as she pulled the lid off the pretzel tub. “Come meet Kristie.”

It was obvious that the pair were brother and sister and Mary’s children. All three had the same gray eyes and broad cheekbones.

“These are our two youngest, Ruth and Elam. Elam works here on the farm with John, and Ruth works in a pretzel factory. That’s why she calls these her pretzels.”

Mary turned to her daughter. “You’re home early.”

Ruth nodded. “Deacon Dan gave us the afternoon off.”

Elam busied himself pouring root beer into a collection of mismatched glasses. He was a lean, compact man filled with nervous energy, the kind of individual who couldn’t sit still, who probably relaxed by repairing things.

“Here, Mom, let me,” Ruth said. I smiled as she stopped shyly in front of me, offering the pretzels. What a wonderful painting she would make.

Despite her best efforts, little wisps of hair had worked themselves loose about her face and curled softly at her temples. Her brown dress, styled like her mother’s, was covered with a much-worn, much-darned tan apron. Her legs were bare, and, incongruously, she wore pink flip-flops with large plastic daisies over her toes. She looked all of ten years old, though I knew she was eighteen.

I took one of the fat, hard pretzels and bit gently so it wouldn’t break a tooth. I was pleased when Ruth sat beside me.

“What do you do at the pretzel factory?” I asked.

“Make the pretzels.”

“Really?” What did that mean? “Do you work a machine that pushes out the dough, or do you actually roll the dough and bend it into shape?” I’d watched the kids behind the counters at the Auntie Anne’s concessions cut off strips of dough, roll them, and twist them into shape, but their sales gimmick was fresh-made, soft pretzels. Watching them get made was part of the excuse for the prices.

“I roll and bend the dough,” Ruth said. “There are five of us who do it. Then Deacon Dan puts the raw pretzels in huge ovens to bake. It was the ovens that made it too hot to keep working today. It was so bad Rhoda Beiler almost fainted.”

“No air-conditioning?” I asked without thinking.

“No,” Ruth said quietly. “He’s a deacon.”

Of course. That explained the rolling and bending too. Machines that would require electricity from the utility companies wouldn’t be acceptable. “Do you like your work?” I knew I’d find pretzel-shaping old in no time. It wasn’t as if you could be creative about their shape or anything. They couldn’t be lightning bolts or flowers or clouds. Pretzel lovers were very traditional.

Ruth nodded. “I like it a lot. The girls there are all nice, and we can visit while we work.”

Elam handed me a glass filled with a chilled, dark, slightly carbonated beverage, and I took a cautious sip.

“This is good!” I hoped my surprise wasn’t too obvious. “I’ve never had homemade root beer before.”

“I’m glad you like it,” Elam said shyly.

“He’s glad because he made it,” Ruth said, taking her own glass from her brother.

“You, Elam?” Jon Clarke said as he returned to the room. “I thought your mother was the root beer person.”

“She was, once upon a time. Now it’s me.” Elam smiled and held out his hand. “It’s good to see you again, Jon Clarke.”

“It’s good to be back, believe me,” he said, taking Elam’s hand. “And you.” He grinned at Ruth and shook his head. “No more teasing the baby of the family. You’ve grown up very nicely.”

Ruth turned a delicate shade of pink and hid her face in her glass. Such compliments were part of the English world, not the Amish.

I drank some more as I watched Jon Clarke smile ruefully and shake his head at himself. In his time away, he’d forgotten that singling out a person with compliments, however sincere, was a subtle breach of the self-denial ethic so central to Amish life.

I held out my glass and asked Elam, “How do you make this?” I’d heard my grandfather talk about the time when he was a kid and his family made root beer. It fermented too long and blew up all over the attic, but I didn’t know that people still brewed it. It’s too convenient to buy it at the supermarket.

Elam waved his hand vaguely. “You just mix root beer flavoring with sugar and yeast. The sugar and yeast work together, and you get carbonation.”

“Not fermentation?” Jon Clarke teased.

“We don’t worry about that around here.” Elam turned a mock-stern face to his mother. “Mom never lets it sit long enough to ferment. In fact, she barely gives it time to carbonate.”

Mary laughed at her son, obviously used to his gentle joshing.

“I’ll take a glass,” said a voice from behind me.

“Jake!” Mary started to rise and go to her son, and then she forced herself to sit and wait for him to come to her.

I looked with interest at the young man who propelled himself across the room in his wheelchair, noticing his strong shoulders and sad, lean face. I glanced at Mary and saw her force her face to calmness. I couldn’t imagine what it was like for a mother to watch her disabled son and know she could do nothing to make it better.

When I’d originally come to the farm to talk about my rooms, which were on the second floor directly over Jake’s, he’d been back at the rehabilitation center for a checkup. Ever since I’d been both curious and apprehensive about meeting him. My experience with people in wheelchairs was almost nonexistent, and I wasn’t sure what was expected of me or what I should offer.

Jake rolled up to me. “So you’re Kristie. I hear Hawk wasn’t very welcoming.” His voice seemed to contain a slight challenge, though I wasn’t certain why.

I touched my bandage. “It’s not that bad, and it was my fault anyway.” I smiled with apology. “I shouldn’t have touched him.”

Jake nodded, as though I’d said the right thing, but strangely there wasn’t the slightest glimmer of a return smile.

It’s not you, Kristie, it’s him. It’s his life circumstances that make him grim.

Elam and Ruth stared at me curiously.

“What happened?” Ruth asked.

“Hawk bit her.” Jake rolled to rest beside Jon Clarke.

“Hawk
bit
you?” Ruth looked horrified.

“He’s never done anything like that before.” Elam was equally distressed.

“Please don’t feel bad. It was my fault,” I said again. “And I’m fine. I really am. No stitches or anything.” Compared to Jake’s troubles, my dog bite was nothing.

“Elam, get Jake some root beer,” Mary said, turning the attention from me. I smiled at her in gratitude.

Elam quickly got a drink for his brother and topped off everyone’s glasses.

“So, Jon Clarke, are you home permanently or just for a visit?” Mary asked.

“Permanently. I’m going to open an office and establish a practice in Lancaster.”

“To teach people what the Bible says?”

“To teach people how to apply what the Bible says, Mrs. Zook. To counsel people with problems and teach others how to counsel.”

Mary shook her head. “I don’t understand why people can’t just read the Bible and figure out what to do all by themselves.”

I glanced at the bookshelves and the volumes there. I knew that for every Amish person who read the Bible, there were those who didn’t, leaving their spiritual training solely in the hands of their bishops and preachers. Just as there were cultural Christians sitting in the pews of every church, so there were cultural Amishmen and women, those who lived the life rather than practiced the faith. Apparently Mary took the issues of faith seriously.

Her brow was furrowed as she talked to Jon Clarke. “When it says we shouldn’t think more highly of ourselves than we should, it means we should put others first. When it says love the Lord with all your heart, it means you should love the Lord, not the world. Why do they need someone to tell them what it says when it’s so obvious?” She looked genuinely mystified. “And why did you have to go to school all those years to learn what’s written there in black and white?”

To Mary, living in a culture that ended its formal schooling at eighth grade, Jon Clarke’s years of education must indeed seem useless at best and vain at worst.

“Not everyone’s as smart as you, Mom,” Jake said with the faintest of smiles. “Some people need help figuring it all out.” It was obviously an old argument and aroused no one’s real ire.

“Because they’ve already made a mess of things by not following it in the first place,” Jon Clarke said. “My job is to help them untangle their messes.”

As the conversation swirled about me, I drank my root beer and munched my crunchy pretzel. In spite of my butterfly bandage, I couldn’t stop smiling. Here I was, sitting in the living room of a real Pennsylvania Dutch home, my hosts and landlords genuine Amish.

The only potential fly in the ointment of my delight was the little matter of telling my parents that I’d left my apartment with its modern conveniences and huge walk-in closet for two rooms on the second floor and a shared bathroom off the kitchen.

I could hear my horrified father. “An Amish farm, Kristina? No electricity? Bed at dusk and breakfast at dawn? Surely you jest.”

Or my appalled and bewildered mother. “You’ve done
what
? Kristina, I’ll never understand you.”

Or my sister, Patty the Perfect, who had passed her bar exam on the first try and was busy earning her legal stripes at the same law firm our parents were partners in. “Give me a break, Kristie! When are you going to grow up and get a real life?”

It was difficult living with the burden of being a blight on our family tree, a little ginkgo branch on a stately oak. Generations of Matthewses had been lawyers and judges, even legislators of both state and national consequence. Matthewses understood that life was to be seized with determination and a Juris Doctor after your name. Matthewses accepted responsibility with utter confidence, legal eagles flying high. They could and would fix the wrongs of humanity, at least the part they could get their hands on, and best of all, every moment they seized their appropriate place in the scheme of things was billable.

To deviate from this path was considered a sign of weakness and lack of ability. It meant nothing that I could paint a watercolor that delighted people and touched their emotions while Mom, Dad, and Patty couldn’t draw a straight line without a ruler. The only value to be found in the creation of art was that it might turn out to be a good investment if you picked your artist carefully. Although the idea that I might turn into one of those whose work appreciated as the years passed was yet to be determined, such a possibility never even crossed my family’s minds.