Abram's Daughters 04 The Prodigal (2 page)

By the time Dat and young Abe dashed indoors, got themselves washed up, and sat down at the table, Dawdi John and Aunt Lizzie had come over from the Dawdi Haus, commenting on the delicious aroma of Sadie's stew. Lydiann was swinging her legs beneath the long table, clearly restless as Leah slipped in next to her on the wooden bench.

"What's takin' everyone so long?" Lydiann whispered to

ier.

"You must be awful hungry," Leah replied. "But how 'bout

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let's be willin' to wait, jah?" She bowed her head as Dat motioned for the traditional silent prayer.

After the table blessing, Leah noticed Dat's gaze lingering a bit longer than usual on Aunt Lizzie, who was smiling right back at him. Well, now, what on earth . . . Is it possible? For a moment she contemplated the idea Dat might be taking a shine to Mamma's younger sister. She couldn't help wondering how peculiar she'd feel if Dat were actually sweet on her own birth mother.

And what might precious Mamma think?

Sadie dished up generous portions of the stew as each person in turn held a bowl to be filled. Abe's eyes were bright, apparently pleased at the prospect of his favorite "plenty of meat and potatoes." He smacked his lips and dug a spoon deep into his bowl.

"I'll be takin' Abe with me to the farm sale come Thursday," Dat said, glancing at Leah. "Just so ya know."

"Yippee, no school for me!" Abe exclaimed, his mouth a bit too full.

"Aw, Mamma . . ." Lydiann complained, looking at Leah with the most pitiful eyes. "Can't I "

"No need askin'." Lovingly, she leaned against Lydiann.

"But you always went with Dat to farm auctions growin' up, Mamma," Abe said, surprising her. "Ain't so, Dat? You told me as much."

Their father had to struggle to keep a grin in check, his whiskers wriggling slightly on both sides of his mouth. Truth was, Abe was quite right, and Leah was somewhat taken aback that Dat had told about those days when she had been her father's substitute son.

"Jah, Leah was quite a tomboy for a gut mahy years*" Here

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I 'lit turned and, for a moment, looked fondly at her. Feeling

I1 it* warmth in her cheeks, she lowered her head. It had been i he longest time since Dat had said such a thing in private, li'l ulone in front of everyone.

"I daresay our Leah has herself a higher callin' now," Aunt I izzie spoke up.

"She's our sister and our mamma," Abe said, grinning from

cur to ear.

Lydiann muttered something, though just what, Leah

;ired not to guess. Best not to make an issue of it. No, let

I ydiann simmer over having to attend school on the day of

I1 le farm sale. She needed not to miss any more school, havuif* recently suffered a long bout with the flu. Even if Lydiann hadn't missed at all this year, there was no reason for her to I m> traipsing off to the all-day farm sale with Dat, Abe, and i iiJ when her place was at school or home.

Mamma must've thought that of me, too . . . all those years

"You go 'n' have yourself a fine day of book learnin' on Thursday, Lydiann," Dat said just then. "And no lip 'bout it, ya hear?" *

Dat must have sensed the rising will in his youngest daughter. He was becoming more in tune with his family's needs as each year passed, in spite of the grief he carried over him like a shroud.

Lydiann buttered her cornmeal muffin and then asked meekly for some apricot jam. Sadie hopped right up from the iable to get it, and Dawdi John smiled broadly at the preserves coming and asked for a second helping of both stew and muflias. "Won't be a crumb of leftovers." He patted his slightholly. ; ., -.:. ,:,,.- . ; ' ...,;,.,- .-:, ,,-;-. ;..,,-./;

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This got Abe laughing and leaning forward to look down the table at their grandfather. "Maybe Dawdi oughta be goin' with us to the sale," Abe said. "What do ya think of that, Dawdi John?"

Dat murmured his concern. It was anybody's guess whether or not Dawdi, at his feeble age, could keep up with the menfolk, since a full year had passed since Dawdi had made any attempt at going. In fact, Leah recalled clearly the last time Lizzie's elderly father had decided to push himself too hard and go down to Ninepoints, where an Amish farmer was selling everything from hayforks to harnesses to the farmhouse itself. Dat had soundly reprimanded Aunt Lizzie for suggesting that her frail father go. Leah knew this because she'd unintentionally overheard them talking in the barn that day. Turned out poor Dawdi had gotten right dizzy at the sale, sick to his stomach, and later that night, he'd suffered with a high fever and the shakes. The illness had put an awful fear in not only Dat, but all of them.

Thankfully Dawdi was now saying no to young Abe's request, his white beard brushing against the blue of his shirt as he shook his head. "Acfi, you and Abram go for the day. Leave me here at home with the women folk."

Once again Leah felt a warm and welcome relief, and she realized anew how deep in her heart she carried each one of her family members.

Sadie and Dat hitched up the open sleigh to the horse the next morning, which took far less time than the usual half hour or so when the job was to be accomplished by only one

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prison. With weather this nippy, Sadie couldn't see letting I rnli sliiit out with frozen fingers and toes from having to UU'li up and then drive Lydiann and Abe to school, stopping Iiir nil I he neighborhood children who attended Amish and hi^'lish alike. It had been her idea to surprise Leah, getting

I 'ill from the barn so the two of them could prepare the .IHkIi.

Since returning home in October, she hadn't found the (oumge to open her mouth and tell the whole truth to her .11 si cr, but she was awful sorry about the part she'd played in keeping Jonas from marrying Leah. The letter from Leah to Ikt beloved, the one Sadie had deliberately and angrily dis(.uxlcd so long ago, continued to haunt her. But she worried

I1 iiit it might cause another rift between herself and her dear fisler if she were to confess the wicked deed. Meanwhile, she simply tried to find ways to help lift the domestic burden for li'iih anything to lessen her sense of guilt.

Leah's face shone with delight when she came out of the house, her pleasure evident at not having to face the chore si ilgle-handedly. She rushed to Sadie and hugged her but good while Dat gririned and waved and headed back to the barn. "Ach, Sadie . . . and Dat, you didn't have to do this."

Sadie rubbed her hands together. "We wanted to."

Just then Lydiann and Abe came flying out the back door, lunch buckets in hand. "One more day of school till the farm stile," Abe hollered over his shoulder, beating Lydiann to the sleigh.

Sadie saw Lydiann pull a face. Then both children huighed and hopped up into the sleigh. Turning to face her, I hey waved as Leah twitched the reins, pulling out and heading down the long lane to the road.

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Sadie, aware of the bitter cold, stood there longer than need be, watching the horse's head rise and fall as the sleigh, soon to be filled with schoolchildren, slipped away from view.

I might' ve had a sleigh full of my own little ones.

Slowly she made her way toward the house, up the sidewalk shoveled clean of new snow. Tis nearly Christmas and I ought to be happy.

"Oughta be a lot of things," she muttered as she reached for the back door and hurried inside. She didn't move quickly to the wood stove to warm her ice-cold hands and feet. She went and stood at the window, looking out over the side pasture, her gaze drifting all the way to the edge of the woods. Deep in that forest, there were deer hunters probably right now resting and warming themselves in an old, run-down shanty. She wished to goodness the place had fallen down in disrepair, wished Aunt Lizzie might have discovered the flattened shelter on one of her many treks through the woods, its walls of decaying wood lying flat on the snow-glazed ground, just asking to be hauled away.

Sadie, recognized anew the one reason she'd ever hesitated to write to Bishop Bontrager telling of her widowhood and of her desire to return home to her father's house: the sordid memories here of the sin she had allowed herself to get caught up in as a teenager, the wickedness she'd shared with the village doctor's younger son. Although she had safely passed the Ohio church Proving and eventually married an upstanding young man, Harvey Hochstetler, there were times when thoughts of Derek Schwartz still haunted her. Did he even know she'd given birth to a stillborn son?

Derry. . . the boy who'd stolen her virtue. No, that was not true and she knew it. She had willingly given up her

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innocence to a virtual stranger, a heathen, as Dat often said "I linglishers. She had known firsthand that Deny was just

11 al, but he had not been a thief those nights in the hunters' .hack.

Now, though, having heard that Mary Ruth was seeing

I Vrry's older brother, Robert, Sadie couldn't help but feel .i|iK'iimish at the wretched possibility of having to meet him i nw iliiy. This made her tremble, and she hoped such a meet'

111)4 might be months, even years away. She just felt so helpless .ii limes, missing Harvey something awful, even more so now i hill she was safely home again, snug in Dat's big farmhouse. Yet the knowledge of that horrid shanty, the place where she h;ul conceived her first child, illegitimate at that, caused her id draw her black shawl around her chin as she looked out

I1 tward the dark woods.

// the bishop knew my thoughts, he'd surely be displeased. She enew she ought not to dwell on the past. She ought to think l)n I he good years she'd spent with Harvey, the kind and loving husband the Lord God heavenly Father had granted In1 r... for a time. Still, coming home had stirred everything lap again. Sometimes she wondered if the almighty One had vithheld His favor even though she had turned from her fbellious ways, with the help of the Ohio ministers to begin (with . . . and thoughtful Jonas. She had completed her Provling time in Millersburg well before ever meeting Harvey and (moving to Nappanee.

All the babies I carried, she thought. All of them lost to

me . . . to Harvey, too. All the blue'faced wee ones I birthed . . .

Silently she questioned if the reckless willfulness of her

early sin had made divine judgment most severe. Here she was,

all this time after, stuck in a mire of doubt and hopelessness, a

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woman longing for her dead children and husband. The awareness that Bishop Bontrager had set her up as an example to the young people did not make things any easier.

She had long wished for Dat to have known Harvey, for her sisters to have enjoyed her husband's hearty laugh and interesting stories told around the hearth. And yet in spite of the congenial and closely knit family she had shared with Harvey, she had often felt she was marking time clear out there in Indiana, far away from home. There had always been a feeling of waiting to undo what had been already done. She had sometimes cried herself to sleep, longing for Mamma's loving arms and nighttime talks with Leah. All of this unbeknownst to her husband.

I'm home now. Regardless of her initial reservations, she was glad to be living in a big family once again, with Dat and Leah, Aunt Lizzie and Dawdi John, and the eager-faced Lydiann and Abe finally getting to know her youngest siblings. Most of all, it was fun watching her young sister and brother growing up underfoot, seeing their wide-eyed devotion to Leah. She wouldn't let herself envy Leah for having what she did not a close bond with children, the memory of having held Lydiann and Abe ever so near as infants, rocking them to sleep in their tiny cotton gowns, rejoicing over their first toddler steps. Constantly, though, Sadie noticed every young one who was the age her children would have been had they lived . . . especially her dead son.

Still, it did seem a bit unfair that Leah was a mother without having given birth, while Sadie had given birth but was not a mother. Yet she wouldn't allow herself to contemplate that too much, not wishing to usurp Leah's position in Lydiann's and Abe's eyes. ... . ...,.,,,.,

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Moving away from the window, she trudged to the utility mom just off the kitchen. There, she removed her shawl and lninjL( il on the third wooden peg. The first peg belonged to I >iif, of course, and she had noticed right away upon her i'!urn home last fall that Leah's shawl now hung where N lamina's always had. So, even though there was still a vacant

1'l.ice at the table for Mamma, Leah must have felt no need

111 leave the wooden peg empty.

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W hen the nine o'clock auctioneer's chant began, Abram was ready. He and Abe had taken plenty of time to scrutinize all the farm equipment, as well as the field mules up for sale. Abe followed him around, never leaving his side, and Abram was downright pleased.

Dozens of men milled about in the snow and mud, most of them wearing black felt hats, the telltale sign of an Amishman. They stood around chewing the fat and telling jokes, some of them spitting tobacco. Each potential customer eyed the enormous array of farm tools, woodworking implements, livestock, milking equipment, and odds and ends of things old green medicine bottles, two martin birdhouses, woolen mufflers, work boots and gloves, and a pile of garden rakes all the men hoping for a bargain price. Their sons and grand' sons were off playing cornerball or sitting over on the splitrail fence like black-capped chickadees perched on a wire.

When the time came, Abram raised his head slowly, signaling his first bid on a good-sized box of saws, drills, and sandpaper. The auctioneer scanned the crowd shrewdly,

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Hpknisly spying another interested farmer. Up another dollar. Mirntn Nickered his eyebrow at the local auctioneer, older limn hi urn' but known for keeping the crowd loose.

"Who's biddin' against us, Dat?" whispered Abe, jumping up mid down, trying to see over the crowd.