The Outcast (18 page)

When we were working side by side in the barn,
Dawdy
and I were both so busy feeding the horses or exercising them in the
scheierhof
, there was no need for talk. Yet in that dark, cramped space smelling of leather, oil, and horse liniment, the weight of the silence rested on my chest until I opened my mouth to keep from gasping aloud. I do not know why my father and I had such an awkward relationship—perhaps because we never had a relationship at all. In truth, I felt more comfortable around Judah’s father than I did my own, and Amos King rarely said anything besides, “And how are you, Rachel?” But that simple question and having him wait—bent over and looking into my eyes—until I had stammered my answer meant the world to me. Sometimes, I imagined that my
mamm
had married Amos rather than our
dawdy
, allowing Judah to be our brother who could play with Leah and me without the daily interruption of supper and chores.

“You see the Mummaus have sold?” My
dawdy
reaches across me to point to the buggy’s tiny window. “They moved to Florida,” he huffs. “Of all places.”

Peering through the window made from rainproof plastic,
I see a minivan parked in the driveway and a yellow toddler swing hanging from the branches of the pin oak we’d eaten beneath when it was the Mummaus’ turn to host Muddy Pond’s bimonthly fellowship meal. A satellite dish juts from the roof like an alien appendage; the Mummaus never even had a telephone in their barn. How Mary Louise Mummau would shudder to see her flower beds (always her pride and joy even over winter) crawling with crabgrass and the yard strewn with sticks as thick as her forearms, which were muscled from years of kneading sourdough by hand.

“Do you think our
haus
will look the same before long?” I ask.

Dawdy
shrugs. “
Jah
, but all our
nochberen
are moving.
Bauern
can’t pay the taxes on their property, even if they inherited the land.”

The knot in my stomach begins to loosen. These words are the most my
dawdy
and I have exchanged since he began demanding to know—and I refusing to tell—who Eli’s father is. Although this is not the deep, meaningful conversation I hope the two of us might one day have, I know it is a start. And perhaps my
dawdy
’s near-death experience has challenged his life in more ways than I have dared to dream.

Every Tuesday for as long as I can remember, Root’s Market—a centipede of connecting warehouses interspersed with
small wooden buildings—has transformed from a graveyard atmosphere into a festival. The summer months are the busiest. The tables running through the center of the cement-floored warehouses are covered with green tarps and heaped with cantaloupes as big as bowling balls. There are striped watermelons that could have been prizewinners at some Southern state fair but are just considered normal to Lancaster County
bauern
, who attribute their harvest bounty to a steady supply of manure tea (horse manure mixed with water and poured over each plant). There are always peaches fuzzed as lightly as newborn skin, cherries and grapes that shine like jewels beneath their clear plastic mesh, ears of corn still tucked in their husks, celery stalks freshly sliced from the fields, and heads of lettuce that flare out in layers like a woman’s old-fashioned petticoat.

But even now, when the fields have long been turned under until the threat of frost has left, crowds come from miles around for the baked goods the Amish and Mennonites sell and the handcrafted items they make, such as butter churns, pie safes, and tin stars that can be purchased in the surrounding outbuildings. Walking up and down these aisles with my father at my side, I can almost imagine that I am just a child again, spending a quarter of the afternoon peering in at the quarter-sized chocolates lined up behind the confectioner’s glass counter. The candies are still here, but they do not beckon to me as they once did—perhaps due to my increased height, which no longer has my gaze flush with the
second row: those dark-chocolate disks with white sprinkles glistening on top like the snowdrops for which they are named. To my left is the Greek family’s booth selling flaked pastries called baklava, filled with honey and walnuts. They also sell gyros, grape leaves stuffed with rice and pine nuts, and salads heavy with feta, grape tomatoes, black olives, and a tart dressing infused with peppercorns and olive oil. My father smacks his lips and maneuvers over to this Greek booth. Before I can utter a word of protest, a hot pita filled with a shaved mixture of lamb and beef is in his hand.

I watch him scarf this down while resting his hip against the booth selling dried
abbel schnitz
, pineapple rings, apricots, dates, and a variety of chocolate and nuts that can be made into a trail mix according to customers’ preferences.

“Now,
Mamm
told me you can’t go eating everything in sight,” I warn.

My
dawdy
uses the paper the pita came in to wipe the yogurt sauce from his fingers. “This is my last time at Root’s for who knows how long,” he says. “I’m just getting started.”

I groan, but reminding him of his heart attack will only encourage his eating further.

Under the guise of wanting to say good-bye to his “
goot
friends,” my
dawdy
stops by the sub shop for a six-inch meatball and the fish shop for a deep-fried fillet lathered with ketchup and slid between two slices of Bunny Bread. He attempts to buy an
abbel
dumpling, but the woman
who owns the booth bought a pony from him for her
grossdochder
and gives the dumpling to him for free. He purchases hand-cranked peach ice cream in a paper cup, eats this, then pats his stomach and declares he is full.

Dawdy
has gone to throw his cup away when a Mennonite woman who looks familiar takes me by the elbow. “I haven’t seen you since you moved to Tennessee!” she cries. “How are you and the
bobbel
?”

The only remedy for these situations is to act like you know the person claiming to know you. “We’re doing well,” I say. “And how are you?”

But it is obvious, as she takes a step closer and places a hand on my arm, that this woman is not interested in giving information as much as receiving it. “And your
schweschder
 . . . ?” Her eyes dart across the aisle as if searching for eavesdroppers. “I heard she’s had some trouble.”

Thinking of Leah’s stint in the hospital, I smile and say, “She did, but now she’s doing better.”

“Is she?” A disbelieving frown slices a V between the woman’s brows. “I take it she married the
kind
’s
vadder
, then?”

Only now do I realize that she thinks I’m Leah. I glance at the crowd parting around our bodies, blocking the flow of movement like two stones protruding from a riverbed. Nobody is paying attention to our conversation, but I wonder how many of the Plain people in this building—and the ones surrounding it—know about Rachel Stoltzfus’s fall from grace and her subsequent tumble into shame.

“No,” I say, not even allowing myself to blink as I stare into this woman’s inquisitive eyes. “She
didn’t
marry the father. She actually left the church and is now doing reflexology for an English woman.”

“Oh, my!” the woman cries, splaying a hand across her chest. “That doesn’t sound much better at all!”

“But it is,” I say. “It is one of the best things that could’ve happened to her.” I realize the words are true even as they leave my mouth. I wouldn’t be trying to heal the relationship with my father and to find healing within myself if I were still sheltered beneath the church, which once provided me with so much false security that I didn’t know how deeply I was scarred.

Smiling at the woman’s astonishment, I turn and stride toward the booth where my
dawdy
stands, waiting for a cup of steaming mulled cider.

AMOS

Rachel intended to follow Norman Troyer’s advice about taking Eli to a
doktor
, but back in Tennessee, Eli seemed better, if not fully well. Plus, Ida Mae needed her help preparing the store for Christmas in the Brier—the town’s annual tradition where every shop owner keeps his doors open long after closing and attempts to lure new customers in with the same kind of complimentary powdered cider, store-bought pound cake, and chewy popcorn balls offered by the shop owners before them.

The Apple Plate Restaurant (famous for its signed photograph of Dolly Parton, who visited back in ’75) and Ida
Mae’s Amish Country Store are the only shops in the whole lineup that do not serve this predictable fare. The proprietor of the Apple Plate, Vidalia Swanson, serves apple pie à la mode and carameled apple cider as a way of expanding her business’s reach along with her customers’ waistlines. Ida Mae is not the cook that Vidalia proclaims herself to be. Still, she takes just as much pride in the complimentary food she serves her customers during Christmas in the Brier. The past month alone, Ida Mae’s been forced to lie numerous times, claiming she was sold out of hummingbird cake when she had twenty iced loaves rolled in Saran and stashed in the freezer. Her
Grossmammi
Meltzer’s famous wassail recipe (with the splash of sherry everyone enjoys but no one talks about) Ida Mae’s also hoarded for this very occasion. The farmer’s, smoked cheddar, and Muenster cheeses are just waiting to be sliced and fanned out on a silver platter alongside Lebanon bologna and Ritz crackers.

Rachel spends the day preceding that evening’s festivities hunkered over the countertop, festooning the miniature furniture for the dollhouses with tiny velvet ribbons trimmed in gold and setting everything up in a dollhouse that’s high enough that little curious hands cannot reach. The window display must be yanked to the full height of its yuletide glory, which is difficult, considering the Amish do not believe in Christmas trees and would have an issue with the red, green, and silver tinsel draping the three-foot synthetic pine and the multicolored lights that blink at
random throughout the day. This eyesore gives Rachel a headache, further irritated by Ida Mae’s strict policy that a cinnamon bun candle must remain lit at all times, so customers who come in will become hungry for her baked goods (which do not taste as good as that candle smells) and also buy a candle.

It is a call too close for Ida Mae’s comfort, but everything on her to-do list is completed an hour before Mayor Townsend (dressed as a skinny Santa Claus) cruises down Main Street in his yellow convertible and announces through a megaphone that Christmas in the Brier has begun. The parking lots of the shops filled an hour ago, forcing the overflow traffic to park on the frosted grass hemming in the high school grounds. After Mayor Townsend’s decree, the drivers exit their vehicles and flock like a chattering group of magpies into the shops.

Ida Mae’s Amish Country Store is one of the first to reach maximum capacity. Rachel comes out of the back room carrying trays laden with hummingbird cake and cheese, and then passes out cups of wassail. As she does, she is caught off guard by the customers’ rude stares and ruder comments. She knew from her days running a produce stand in Manheim that her Plain appearance would draw attention, but she had no idea people would think she and Eli were just
Englischers
dressed in Amish costume.

“Him yours?” one woman says, pointing over at Eli, who is sitting on Ida Mae’s lap taking everything in with
round blue eyes. Rachel nods. The woman puts a hand on Rachel’s arm and leans in like she’s about to be privy to a secret. “Tell me,” she whispers, “where’d you find such a cute getup?”

Rachel bristles. Eli’s “getup”—black trousers with snaps to access his diaper, black suspenders with button fastenings, and a long-sleeved teal shirt—is one she put countless hours into making.

“I sewed it myself,” she says.

“Did you?” The woman plucks at Rachel’s sleeve. “Lemme guess, you made yours, too?”

Rachel nods again, then walks back through the curtain separating the store from the darkened reflexology office, which has been closed since her trip to Pennsylvania and will reopen after the holidays.

“I had to escape too,” a man says.

Rachel jumps and flicks on the lights.

Russell Speck rolls the unlit cigarette from one side of his mouth to the other. “I always had to,” he says. “Escape, that is. Guess being on the road so long makes it hard to be around all them people.”

Rachel sits down on the stack of containers.

“You look tired. Did you get you something to eat?” he asks.

Shaking her head, Rachel smooths the material of her dress over her knees. “I don’t want more cheese and Lebanon bologna. And the hummingbird cake’s too sweet.”

“Here.” Russell holds out a paper bag darkened with grease. “Have yourself some curly fries.”

Rachel hesitates, looks over.

Unfolding his bulky frame up from beneath the desk, Russell walks over to the fridge. He plunks a bottle of ketchup on the container beneath Rachel. The ketchup under the lid has congealed into a sticky maroon shell. Rachel peels it off, squirts some of the ketchup on the bag, and dabs the ketchup with a fry.

Russell says, “Pretty good, huh?”

Her mouth still full, Rachel nods.

Sitting back down, he adds, “Didja ever have curly fries before?”

All her frustrations with her customers boiling up at one moment, she swallows with difficulty and says, “What do you
Englischers
think, we Mennonites live under a rock?”

Russell throws his head back and laughs until crow’s-feet stamp lines around his eyes. “Shoot-fire, you’ve been around my wife too long!”

“Ida Mae? But isn’t she your
ex
-wife?”

Russell’s smile disappears. He looks down and raps his thick knuckles on the desk made from more synthetic material than wood. “I figure you gotta have two people not wanting to be married anymore to make it official. But yeah, Ida Mae’s my ex.”

Rachel is silent a moment. She eats a curly fry dusted in salt and swallows. “Why’d y’all divorce if you didn’t want to?”

“’Cause
she
did.” Russell juts his chin toward the curtain to let Rachel know who
she
is.

“You two just stopped getting along?”

“Goodness, girl.” Taking off his cap, Russell scratches his bushy red hair. “You sure you’re not a defense lawyer in your spare time or something?”

Rachel shrugs. “I’ve just been wondering about you two. Wondering why you still come around, when Ida Mae treats you the way she does.”

“Guess ’cause I feel like I deserve it.”

Rachel says nothing, just looks down at the dwindling pile of fries.

“Just between you and me, though—” Russell leans over so that Rachel can smell the fried food heavy on his breath—“I’m hoping one of these days, Ida Mae and me can get back together.”

Rachel smiles. “So
that’s
why you keep coming around.”

“Yes’m. Just gotta get her to forgive me.”

Standing, Rachel picks up the soggy paper bag and sets the rest of the fries in front of Russell. She moves toward the curtain separating the office from the store. But then she stops. Turning, Rachel looks in Russell’s direction without meeting his eyes. “I’m only saying this because of what I’ve been through. . . . I don’t think you need to get Ida Mae to forgive you as much as you need to get Ida Mae to forgive herself.”

In the store, Rachel continues serving customers who continue to stare. What would they think, she wonders, if
they could see the scarlet stain hidden beneath her Plain clothes? The Plain clothes that evoke in
Englischer
minds a naiveté and innocence, when it is they themselves—believing the gentle people infallible—who are naive.

“Rachel!” Ida Mae yells. “You’re spilling!”

Rachel looks down.
Grossmammi
Meltzer’s wassail has overflowed the Dixie cup and splashed onto her cape dress. But Rachel just smiles, watching the red beads roll off the slick cotton without leaving a stain. Perhaps there is hope that her own scarlet stain can be washed from her soul as well.

At ten o’clock, when the
Open
sign flips to
Closed
, the cinnamony dregs of wassail are all that remain in the bottom of the Crock-Pot. A few cheese crumbs and slick spots where circles of bologna have rested are all that’s left on the silver platter. But only ten of the twenty hummingbird cakes have been touched.

Staring morosely at these cakes that have forced Ida Mae to sacrifice her conscience, she says, “I can’t freeze them again. They been setting out so long, I can’t sell them full price. I don’t know what I’m gonna do.”

“Sell ’em half price,” Russell says, holding Eli, who is a little blip on the radar screen of his chest.

Ida Mae is too tired to come back with her typical sassy remark. “You think it’d work? We’ve only got two days ’til Christmas. I don’t even know if the cakes’ll last that long.”

Russell says, “If they don’t, let me buy them off you. I could eat them with my Christmas dinner.”

“And what’s
that
gonna be?” Ida Mae rolls her eyes. “A bucket of KFC and a six-pack like last year?”

Rachel clears her throat. “Actually, I invited Russell to eat here with us. I’m going to cook.” She turns to the man, who is as shocked by this news as his ex-wife. “You’ll be here at six o’clock? And you’re going to bring boiled custard, right?”

Russell keeps nodding because he is imitating Rachel. Ida Mae is staring holes through Rachel’s skull, but Rachel decides she’ll just have to deal with her later.

“Hey. What’s wrong with him?” Russell jerks his chin down at Eli. “Why’s he making that funny sound?”

Taking her son and placing her ear against his shuddering rib cage, Rachel can hear a watery rattle coming from deep inside his chest.

“That’s not the croup, is it?” she asks Ida Mae.

Ida Mae steps closer and listens. “I don’t know, Rachel-girl, but I never known a young’un to be so sickly. Wintertime or not.”

“I’ve been meaning to make a doctor’s appointment. I’ll do it first thing tomorrow.”

“You can’t. No place is open tomorrow. And I wouldn’t wait ’til Monday.” Ida Mae’s eyes are filled with concern. “No, Rachel-girl. This’s gone on long enough. Insurance or no insurance, I think we should take him in tonight.”