Meek and Mild (21 page)

Y
onnie’s eyes popped open and his breath caught. The room sprang into vivid focus, down to the miniscule white dust particles riding on light streaming through the shutterless window.

“Are you coming or not?” His mother’s voice echoed up the stairwell. “I can’t keep your breakfast hot forever.”

The two beds on either side of Yonnie’s were empty, though on most mornings his brothers’ forms rolled and moaned at his movements no matter how quiet he tried to be. Only moments ago he was awake—at least that’s what it felt like. The strength of the sunlight betrayed the true hour. Yonnie had fallen back into the deepest sleep of his night and slumbered through the morning household commotion. Even his brothers would be at their farm chores by now.

Twice during the night Yonnie got up for a drink of water, which did nothing to soothe his spirit.

By the time he finished wrestling with his thoughts, he felt like Jacob, lame from the touch of God on his hip.

When sleep surrendered its reluctance and eased its way into his body, Yonnie knew he had at best two hours before he would rise and prepare for his day’s labor. It was no wonder he had examined the shadows of the room and allowed himself another ten minutes.

That was hours ago.

Yonnie’s heart pounded. A milkman never had the luxury of beginning the day so long after sunrise. He did not have to consult a clock to know that by now a scowl twisted Dale Borntrager’s face. On the way to the hook where his trousers hung, Yonnie paused at the water basin long enough to plunge his face into liquid that was neither hot nor cold. In one swift gesture, he snapped his suspenders into place and dropped his hands to fasten his work boots before thundering down the stairs.

His mother stood at the stove with a spatula in one hand.

“I’m sorry,
Mamm
.” He whizzed past her, bending to aim a kiss at her cheek, knowing it would not land. “I don’t know what happened.”

Despite the allure of scrambled eggs and fried ham, Yonnie could not allow himself the indulgence of breakfast when he was so late. Maybe there would at least be coffee in the pot at the dairy.

Outside the house, Yonnie groaned in realization that his father and brothers had taken all the horses into the fields already. As late as he was, he had no alternative to racing on foot to the dairy.

His night of grappling with the bishop’s message had yielded fruit in those final exhausting moments.
“Each man will have to seek his own conscience,”
Andrew had said, and he was right. Yonnie suspected Andrew meant the words as a defense of his own choice, but as they rolled through the night watches of Yonnie’s mind, he heard in them the obedience of his own conscience.

The right course was to bring to Bishop Yoder’s attention that one of his flock owned an automobile. The clarity that illumined Yonnie’s spirit during the watches of the night now made him wonder why he had tussled so long—weeks—with the decision. In his baptism, he vowed to submit to the authority of the church. It was God’s will that Yonnie had witnessed the spurious circumstances under which Andrew had allowed his commitment to falter. The strength of the church mattered more than Yonnie’s personal fondness for his childhood friend.

And it mattered more than Yonnie’s job. He would have to look for work that would not require him to silence his own conscience for mere financial gain. Not everyone in the congregation dismissed the bishop’s leadership with the indifference of Dale or Andrew or John Stutzman. As his father liked to say, “If you are true to your faith, there are things you give up.”

Yonnie barreled into the dairy without the extravagance of catching his breath. In the office, he scanned the order sheets for anything out of the ordinary. The clock confirmed the degree of his tardiness, but Yonnie pushed through the distraction and mentally calculated how he could economize his movement and trim a substantial margin off the lost time. Cheese, milk, cream, butter. He could pack three crates at a time instead of one and put more in each crate so he could make fewer trips to load the wagon. In the main room, where everything was kept cold, Yonnie moved into action.

Eventually, though, he felt Dale’s glare on the back of his neck. He moistened his lips and turned to face his employer.

“I’m sorry to be so late. I overslept,” Yonnie said. If Dale were in a fair frame of mind, he would acknowledge that Yonnie had never succumbed to this malady before. One incidence had no resemblance to a habit.

“And will you tell that to the customers who expected fresh cream with their morning coffee?”

“I will make every apology necessary,” Yonnie said quickly. “I will ask forgiveness and make clear that the lateness of the rounds is no fault of yours.”

Dale glowered. “First you spoiled an entire order of milk. Then you took the liberty to remove milk suppliers from your rounds. Now you’re intolerably late.”

Yonnie’s gut burned. He had worked for Dale for years and knew the dairy’s operation better than any of the other employees. It should not be so hard for Dale to recognize these truths.

Demut
, Yonnie reminded himself. Humility.

“I will make up the time,” he said. “You will find no more dissatisfaction in my work at day’s end.”

He would have to make inquiries soon about other work—before Dale had opportunity to spread an opinion that disparaged Yonnie. Several Amish farms were large enough that he might be able to hire himself out as a field hand. Most likely, he would not receive any salary until after the harvest and the work might be temporary, but it would be a start. Or the Amish furniture store in Springs might need help in its workshop at the edge of town. Yonnie was not much of a carpenter, but he could clean up and make deliveries.

By the time the milk wagon clattered out of the dairy, Yonnie was formulating the precise wording of his inquiries. He would have to be certain a new employer planned to properly respect Bishop Yoder’s authority.

Sweat tickled Fannie’s ear along a fine line from the roots of her hair down to the side of her neck, and she raised a shoulder to swipe at the irritation. Lifting a hand from her task would have been a vain effort. Tenacious humidity overpowered the air. Fannie had no thermometer, but she had lived through enough Julys not to put false hope in the notion that the weather would break into a stream of tolerable temperatures. If anything, the sweltering days would grow more intense before the turn of the earth yielded relief. Systematically, Fannie pushed a dust rag across the neglected wood surfaces of her front room. She did not much care whether the dust piled up. She only knew that keeping herself in constant motion was the most likely cure for the profound urge to go back to bed that had trailed through the hours since breakfast. Perhaps if her house was tidier, her mind would feel less cluttered as well.

At the dining room table, Sadie banged her heels against the legs of the chair and the pencil in her hand against the tabletop.

“Have you finished copying your letters?” Fannie asked, though she had only given Sadie the task to keep her from pulling items out of drawers and cupboards faster than Fannie could put them away.

“I don’t want to copy letters.” Sadie leaned her chin into one hand. “I’m not old enough for school yet.”

“You will be soon. You can at least learn to write your name.”

“I want to play. That’s what I’m good at.”

Fannie cocked her head and surprised herself with a smile. “Yes, playing has always been your special talent.”

“Then why can’t I go out and play?”

“You heard
Daed
at lunch. It’s going to rain.”

“But it’s not raining now.” Sadie’s eyes rounded into solemn pleas.

Fannie tossed the dust rag on a side table. “All right. We’ll both go outside.” At least outdoors a breeze might flutter and divide the damp air into a small space of relief.

They went into the front yard, where Elam had dug the vegetable plot wider and longer this year. Fannie could keep her hands busy weeding and inspecting produce.

Sadie immediately threw herself into a patch of grass and rolled one direction and then the other.

“Watch me!” she called.

“I’m watching.” Fannie wondered if Sadie was old enough to recognize when the expression on her mother’s face was not quite sincere, though she did observe the girl’s glee and remembered how cool grass close to the earth could refresh a day with little other promise. The caution that formed in Fannie’s mind went unspoken. She should have reminded Sadie to take care with her dress and to roll only in the grass and not in dirt, but she lacked energy to enforce a warning so she supposed there was no point in voicing one. Needle and thread and a cool bath would remedy any damage. Fannie turned to the garden, kneeling in the loamy soil and wishing she had thought to pick up the basket on the front porch. She glanced at the sky and judged that they would not be outside for long. Elam was right. Rain seemed inevitable, and Fannie would have to persuade Sadie to go back inside.

Sadie popped up. “Look! It’s
Grossmuder
.”

Stone formed in Fannie’s stomach. Her mother struggled for a moment with the latch at the gate.

Pull it up
, Fannie thought. Martha always seemed to try twice to open the latch by pulling it down before resorting to the opposite motion. Why didn’t her mother bring a buggy? She should not have walked in this heat in her condition.

Her condition
.

Martha had a definite sway now. Her waistline had seemed to explode in the last few weeks, making it impossible for Fannie to avoid thinking about the child in her womb.

Fannie might be able to hide her feelings from a five-year-old, but her mother would be a steeper challenge. She stood and smiled.

“Hello,
Mamm
.” Not since Fannie had begun going to Singings on her own had she wished this hard that her mother would go away.

“Are you feeling better?” Martha said, dabbing an apron corner at the sweat on her forehead.

Fannie had no desire to lie to her mother. Neither could she tell the truth.

Sadie tugged at Martha’s hand. “Do you want strudel? We have a lot.”

“Yes,” Fannie said quickly, “why don’t you go get
Grossmuder
a piece of strudel? Wrap it in a napkin and don’t squeeze it.”

Sadie skipped toward the house. Fannie felt the first widely spaced drops of rain as she turned to face her mother.

“I know why you didn’t come to supper last night,” Martha said softly.

Fannie said nothing.

“I prayed for years that God would give you another child,” her mother said. “I still do. I never asked for this for myself. I have a house and a heart full of children, and after twelve years I was content to think that the days of new babes were over for me.”

“I know.” Fannie forced out the reply. She
did
know. Other than her husband, her mother was the one to soak up Fannie’s heartache month after month as if it were her own.

The rain spattered with sudden force, and thunder rumbled. Sadie stood on the porch cradling a napkin, unsure what to do.

“Stay there!” Fannie called to Sadie. Raindrops splotched her apron, coming faster and harder like a certain birth.

“This child will be your brother or sister.” Martha raised her pitch above the thrumming shower. “I hope you will love it as much as you do the others.”

Fannie nodded, if only to bring the conversation to a close. She could not keep her mother standing out in the rain, and neither could she expect Martha to begin the walk home in a thunderstorm. She would have to invite her inside. Sadie, at least, would be delighted.

“I’ll find you a cold drink to have with your strudel.”

T
he remains of a barn that stood for fifty years had been removed. Melvin Mast had been talking about a new barn, with more and bigger cow stalls, for close to ten years. Now, instead of a rickety weathered structure, the space beside the Mast house featured precise stacks of beams, joists, rafters, siding, and shingles. The foundation, laid last week, was already covered with floorboards. Clara could see the clear shape of the barn.