Johanna's Bridegroom (11 page)

“It’s good to see you, David,” Johanna said. “Are your father and mother coming?”

“I
in-vited
him,” Susanna said with emphasis. “I did. I said, come to visit.”

“
Ne.
Not my
mam.
Not my
dat.
Just...just me.” David grinned at Susanna. “Come to visit Sunday. Her.” David wore his go-to-church black trousers, high-top black leather shoes, white shirt and black vest. Under his straw hat, Johanna could see the gold rim of his paper crown. David was so excited that his speech, never as clear as Susanna’s, was difficult to understand, but it seemed that Susanna understood every word he said.

“King David and me,” Susanna proclaimed. “We’re walking. Us. Walking out.”

“We can talk about that later,” Hannah said gently, stepping between Susanna and David. “I think David is thirsty. You should get him something cold to drink.”

“Want birch beer?” Susanna asked. “
Mam
makes good birch beer.” She giggled, wrinkled her nose and shook her head. “Not beer beer. Soda-pop beer.” When David nodded vigorously, they went in search of the soda.

Soon Miriam arrived with Anna and
Grossmama
and the children. Mae and Lori Ann had brought the rag dolls that Anna had sewn for them, complete with changes of clothing, white
Kapps
and small black bonnets. Katy was ecstatic when
Grossmama
pulled an identical doll out of her bag and presented it to her.

“I made the
Kapps,
” Naomi said shyly. “
Grossmama
showed me how.”

Soon, the three little girls had carried their dolls to the grape arbor to play house and
Grossmama
was seated under the tree near Ruth. Jonah was happily trailing after Samuel’s twin sons, who were setting up a croquet game on the grass between the tables and the garden. Rebecca had found a copy of
Black Beauty
for Naomi, and she was happily reading on the back step, while Johanna and Ruth took turns holding baby Rose.

The boys had their game set up and were just starting to teach Jonah how to hit the wooden ball through the hoops when another visitor arrived. It was Nip Hilty, of all people.

“Who is that?”
Grossmama
called loudly. “I don’t know him.”

Aunt Jezzy leaped to her feet, fluttered her hands, and turned as red as a jar of pickled beets. She was so flustered that she just stood there, seemingly unable to greet her guest.
Mam
stepped into the breach, smiling and walking to meet him. “It’s good to have you visit, Nip,” she said.

Johanna glanced at Rebecca. Her sister shrugged, and behind them, Miriam twittered.

“Who do you think invited him?” Miriam whispered.

“She knows about Nip and Aunt Jezzy,” Rebecca murmured to Johanna. “I’m telling you, it’s scary. Nothing gets by
Mam.
”

“I don’t know you,”
Grossmama
repeated from her chair. “Are you from Pennsylvania?” It was her standard question when she met someone she didn’t recognize. “Do you know my son Jonas? He’s milking the cows, but he’ll be up in time for supper.”

Nip was all smiles as he approached the other women. “You may not know me, but I know you. My late wife had a cousin in Ohio who’s friends with your sister Ida. She said Lovina Yoder was the finest braid-rug maker she’d ever known and it was a crying shame that she moved to Delaware.”

Grossmama
blinked. “Ida. Your wife knows Ida?”
Grossmama’s
eyes narrowed and she peered at Nip over her wire-frame glasses. “Ida makes rugs, but hers don’t hold a candle to mine. I teach the Englishers at the Senior Center. I live with my son Jonah. That’s his wife.” She pointed at Ruth. “And this is my grandchild.” She indicated Rose, now sleeping in Ruth’s arms. “I’m going to show her how to braid rugs.”

Nip sighed and hooked a thumb through his left suspender. “My wife would have been pleased to come to your classes, Lovina, but she died.”

Grossmama
was still taking him in. “Was she a faithful daughter to the church?”

“She was,” Nip answered.

“Then she’s in a better place.”
Grossmama
seemed to then notice Aunt Jezzy’s distress. “That’s my sister,”
Grossmama
pointed out. “But not Ida.”

“Jezzy,” Nip supplied. He glanced at Aunt Jezzy and smiled.

“Folks think she’s odd,”
Grossmama
continued in Pennsylvania
Deutch.
“Never married.”

“I can’t think why,” Nip said, “as fine a woman as she is.”

Grossmama
tapped her forehead and whispered loudly. “
Narrisch.
Crazy.”

“Ne.”
Nip threw another admiring glance at the still-silent Aunt Jezzy. “
So schlau wie ein fuchs
—smart like a fox.”

“I have to agree,” came a man’s voice from behind Johanna. She turned to see Roland standing there with J.J. on his shoulders.

“Roland?” Johanna said. “I didn’t expect you today.”

Roland grinned as he lowered his son to the grass. “Well, I’m here,” he said. “Here and starving for some Yoder good cooking.” He cut his eyes at Hannah, a sly smirk on his face now. “I guess she must have forgotten to mention that she invited us.”

Chapter Eleven

J
ohanna threw her mother a questioning look, and a lump of emotion rose in Roland’s throat. He was struck by how beautiful Johanna was, with her curling auburn hair tucked modestly beneath her
Kapp,
her apron crisp and white against the soft blue of her calf-length dress, and the dusting of golden freckles over her nose and cheeks.

“I invited J.J. and Roland,” Hannah said, answering Johanna’s unspoken question and flashing him a genuine smile. “It’s been too long since they broke bread at our table.”

Roland grinned. “She knew we’d be eating cheese-and-bologna sandwiches again tonight and took pity on us.” Seeing Hannah, still so lively and rosy-cheeked in her middle age, made it easy to see why her daughters were all so attractive.
When Johanna is Hannah’s age,
he thought,
she’ll still be the loveliest
hausfrau
in the county.
But whether she would be his
frau
or not was yet to be seen.

“It’s good to have you, Roland,” Hannah continued. “Samuel tells me that you’ve been offered a contract with Windward Farms.”

Johanna’s eyes widened with interest. “A contract?” she asked. “I hadn’t heard.”

“Ya.”
Roland tried not to sound as though he was boasting. “You know Windward Farms? The big horse farm with the white fences on Fox Meadow Road? Their farrier is retiring, and John Hartman recommended me to take his place. I’ve been up there a couple of times, and I guess they liked my work.”

“No reason why they shouldn’t. Everyone says you’re the best farrier in the county.” Johanna smiled warmly at J.J. “Jonah and the big boys are playing croquet. I’m sure they’d like you to join them.” And then to Roland, “I was just going inside to get the ice cream churn. We promised the children strawberry ice cream for dessert. Would you mind carrying it out for me?”

“Of course not.” He lowered his son to the ground. “Go on,” he said to J.J. “But stay out of mischief, and don’t make a pest of yourself.”

“I’m going that way. I’ll go with you.”

Hannah held out her hand and Roland watched them walk away. Raising a child on his own wasn’t easy, and J.J. had been through more than most boys his age. His mother had always babied him, and losing her was a terrible blow. Now, acting as both mother and father, Roland never knew whether he was being too hard on the boy or too easy.

The elders quoted verses from the Bible that instructed a father not to spare the rod, but he was too soft to take a switch to J.J.’s tender skin. Johanna was a loving mother, and her children were well behaved, but spirited. If what he hoped for came to pass, and she did agree to become his wife, he was sure she’d be good for his son.

“Roland? The ice cream churn?”

Johanna had started back toward the house and he quickened his step to catch up. “I would have told you that we were coming, but I didn’t see you after Hannah asked us.” Johanna pushed open the gate and moved through it ahead of him, and his gaze fastened on the tiny russet curls at the nape of her neck. “Are you unhappy that we’re here?” he asked, afraid of what she would say.

“Ne.”

Relief seeped through him. “Are you glad?”

She ascended the back steps to the porch and then opened the screen door. Only then did she glance back at him over her shoulder. “You ask the strangest questions for a man,” she observed. “Why wouldn’t I be happy to have an old friend and his son visit us?”

He shook his head. “You aren’t an easy woman to court, Johanna Yoder.”

“Detweiler,” she softly corrected. A wrinkle crinkled the smooth skin between her brows. “You forget Wilmer.”

“I’d like to forget him,” he agreed, standing at the bottom of the steps, looking up at her. “I wish he’d never come to Seven Poplars and that you’d never married him.”

She gave a graceful shrug. “But then I wouldn’t have Katy or Jonah. And they are the dearest things in this world to me.”

“As they should be. I didn’t mean it that way. They are wonderful children. Being a mother is part of who you are, but you’ll always be one of the Yoder girls to me—the finest one.”

A peach blush spread over her cheeks, but Roland could tell by the gleam in her eyes that she was pleased. Johanna hesitated, half in and half out of the doorway, her slim hands gripping the wooden frame of the screen door. She averted her gaze and then looked up at him from under thick lashes. “You shouldn’t say such things.”

“But lying is a sin.” He placed a hand protectively over one of hers.

“And so is pride.” She slid the captured hand out from under his, leaving him with the memory of her touch. “You’ll tempt me to have foolish thoughts,” she said.

“If there’s a sin for saying what I believe, I’ll pay the price.”

She shook her head and tried to assume a disapproving expression, but he knew her too well. Johanna could never hide her feelings from him. “You always had the knack for saying the right things to all the girls,” she said, as the corners of her mouth tugged upward into the hint of a smile. “Even to the ones who were...plain. And that was something I liked about you.”

“Not you, Johanna. You were never plain.”

She moved into the kitchen and again, he followed. It was warm in there. Not a breeze stirred the curtains through the open windows, but Roland could feel the buzz of tension between them, and he had the urge to kiss her. He remembered the sweet taste of her lips and the way she’d felt in his arms. An aching rose inside him. He wanted her to be his wife, and if he couldn’t have her, he didn’t know how he could face the rest of his life.

She turned to face him and recognition flickered in Johanna’s eyes. He knew with certainty that she felt the same thrumming in the still air that he did. Her lips parted, and she uttered a small sigh as she took a step backward. “There,” she said brusquely as she pointed to the wooden churn standing on the counter. “It’s heavy. We’ve already packed the ice and salt around the barrel.”

Roland took a moment to collect himself and then lifted the churn off the counter. “It’s not that heavy,” he said. Beads of condensation gathered on the outside of the wooden container, soaking through his thin shirt and cooling his skin. “Is this the same one your
dat
used to make ice cream when we were kids?” He gazed intensely into Johanna’s eyes. “I remember the afternoon he made blueberry ice cream and Charley and I went home with blue lips and tongues.”

“Ya.”
She chuckled. “The same one. A wheelwright built them in Lancaster back in the twenties. He did good work. The metal crank still turns as easily as it ever did.”

“That was a
gut
day, when we had the blueberry ice cream. I remember that Jonas built a fire when it got dark and let us make popcorn and toast marshmallows on willow sticks.”

“And we chased lightning bugs and put them in glass jars so they blinked on and off in the dark like lanterns. Remember?
Dat
made us let them all go before bedtime. He was so kind he didn’t want to see even a lightning bug hurt needlessly.” Johanna’s face softened, and the years fell away so that he could see the laughing girl she’d been that night—teasing and merry, without a care in the world.

“We could do that again tonight,” he said. “Catch lightning bugs. The children would like it. It seems as though there are a lot of them this summer. And early in the season to see so many.”

“Children or lightning bugs?” she teased.

Roland grip tightened on the churn. He shivered as the cold seeped through to his chest. “Johanna...” His voice grew husky. “I want to—”

“Mam!”
Katy’s small voice came through the screen door. “
Mam,
are you in here?”

“Ya,”
Johanna answered. Her gaze shifted from the entrance back to meet his. “Here, Katy.”

Roland saw the tautness go out of Johanna’s shoulders, and he knew that she welcomed her daughter’s interruption.

“We’re coming,” Johanna said with forced cheerfulness.

Roland fought a momentary feeling of disappointment. For a second there, things had been right between them...as easy and comfortable as it used to be. And, foolishly, he’d hoped...

She crossed the kitchen and opened the door. “Roland’s going to make ice cream for us.” He couldn’t see the little girl, but he heard her excited giggles. “And tonight, when it gets dark, we’re all going to catch lightning bugs. Would you like that?”

Johanna stepped back, pulling the door open even wider so that he could pass through. As he did, she smiled up at him. “Strawberry ice cream, this time. Will it taste as good as blueberry, do you think?”

His heartbeat quickened at the warm affection in her eyes, and hope flared in his chest. He scrambled to think of something to say that wouldn’t take away from the moment. “At least it won’t turn our lips blue,” he managed, and was rewarded by the sound of her soft chuckle.

* * *

Whatever that feeling of warmth had been that had passed between Roland and Johanna in the kitchen changed everything. He had followed her into the house, afraid he didn’t belong there, no matter how much he wanted to be. But when they rejoined the family, he slipped into his old place of years ago among the Yoders, just as easily as shaping a horseshoe at his own forge.

Susanna and her friend David were sitting at the end of the table, their heads close together, giggling and playing with a cat’s cradle, a loop of yarn that first one and then the other would try to twist into different patterns. David’s straw hat lay on the bench beside him, and his familiar paper crown hung precariously over one ear, but no one seemed to notice. Ruth, Hannah and Rebecca were admiring Anna’s baby girl, cuddled in her mother’s lap at the other end of the table, and J.J., face earnest, was trying desperately to drive a yellow ball through a series of hoops on the lawn while Jonah and Samuel’s twins shouted advice.

Roland noted, to his surprise, that Nip Hilty and Johanna’s Aunt Jezzy were seated together in the old porch swing that someone had carried out to the backyard. Nip was whittling a length of wood and talking a blue streak while she listened intently. He didn’t know what they found so mutually interesting, but it was clear to him that both of them were enjoying the interlude. Johanna’s grandmother was seated near them in a lawn chair, but she’d fallen asleep, her chin on her chest, snoring softly.

Charley, Samuel, Miriam and Eli were talking near the grape arbor. Roland heard snatches of their conversation. A discussion had arisen in the church as to whether a tractor with iron wheels could be used to power farm equipment, as some of the other Old Order Amish groups allowed. From what Roland could gather, Charley and Miriam favored the change, but Samuel didn’t.

Later in the month, Roland knew he’d be called upon to vote on the question. Although women could be full members of the church, they weren’t allowed to have a say in such matters, so Miriam’s opinion didn’t count, other than her influence on Charley or the male members of her family. Which was probably why she was the one talking the most. Roland hadn’t made up his mind yet, but—in any case—the final decision would come from Bishop Atlee. The vote was only meant to help him make his decision. Whatever he decided would be part of the
Ordnung,
and the entire community would obey.

“Will this do?” Johanna asked, drawing Roland’s attention back to the task at hand. She pointed to a small picnic table, one usually used for the children.

“Perfect,” Roland answered. If she’d asked, he would have churned the ice cream while standing in the duck pond or balancing on top of the chicken house. What mattered was that he and Johanna were doing something together, something fun, without arguing.

She cleared the plates and glasses to one side and he placed the churn on the table and began to turn the crank. It usually took between twenty and thirty minutes to turn the milk, cream, sugar and strawberries into ice cream, and the cranking grew more difficult as the mixture hardened. Fortunately, the years of swinging a hammer in his craft as a farrier had given him strong arms. One of Samuel’s twins brought a bucket of cracked ice and a box of salt, so they could stop and refill the outer chamber as the ice melted.

With Johanna there, the time went by all too fast. When the ice cream was ready, they packed the churn into a washtub, added the remaining ice and swaddled the whole thing in an old blanket. Then they stowed it in the shade under the grape arbor to freeze solid, and everyone gathered around the table for supper.

Hannah waved Roland to a place on the bench beside J.J. and Jonah, directly across the table from Johanna and Katy. The only thing better would have been to be seated beside Johanna. But that was rarely done in their community because the women had to get up and down to bring food from the kitchen or serve the guests and family.

Roland ate until he thought he would burst, and then he had two slices of Johanna’s peach-and-rhubarb pie with strawberry ice cream on top. The children pronounced the ice cream the best they’d ever eaten, and Roland felt pleased that he’d been able to add something to the wonderful Sunday supper.

Afterward, the adults rested on blankets spread on the grass and the children played around them. The sun was already behind the trees, and twilight filled the Yoder farm with a delightful peacefulness. Susanna and David joined the youngsters at a final game of croquet before it got too dark to see the wire hoops, and the little girls crept under the table to play house with their dolls.

“I think I’ll check on my bees,” Johanna said to Roland. “Would you like to walk back to the hives with me?”

“I’d like that.” He glanced at Hannah to see if she would object, but she was engaged in conversation with Anna and Ruth. Aunt Jezzy and Nip had claimed their seat on the swing again and, once more, Nip was talking and whittling while she provided a willing audience.

Johanna bent and peered under the table. “Katy, we’re taking a walk. Do you want to come with us?”

“Ne, Mam,”
Roland heard a small voice reply. “Want to play babies with Mae and Lori Ann.”