Davey's Daughter (15 page)

Hannah saw the colors in Sarah’s eyes change from green flecked with gold to a turbulent surf of brown and gray and restless green. She stepped back, away from the ongoing reality she saw there.

Only a whispery sigh and a hint of an accompanying smile gave away any emotion. Rachel Zook handily stepping between them, shaking Hannah’s hand with a hearty good morning, as Sarah fled to the safety of the house.

She found peace was elusive, especially in the face of adversity. She listened closely as the young minister paced the floor, expounding Christ’s life and his lessons, but her mind wandered constantly, thinking of Matthew, his life, his calling, his wife and the child they were expecting.

He wanted me to be the first to know, Hannah? Really?

Sarcasm and rebellion crowded out the morning’s peace, and she felt torn, embattled, losing ground, her feet slipping down the dangerous slope of doubt and self-pity wrapped up with remorse and what-ifs until she couldn’t concentrate on the long closing prayer in German and the final song.

She blinked back the tears that the rousing melody forced to the surface, checked every youth seated on the boy’s bench, and had never felt Matthew’s absence so keenly. Would it never go away?

Would his memory dog her happiness all the days of her life, a barrel of darkness she’d drag along with baler twine slung over her shoulder, crippling her, holding her back from her normal, free walk?

Well, if it did, there wasn’t too much she could do about that now. She would have to do the best she could.

She dressed carefully that afternoon in a crisp navy blue dress, pinned her cape neatly, was careful about her apron, precisely lining up the two ends of the belt, pinning it securely.

Her hair looked better than she had ever seen it now that Priscilla had introduced her to a new product from Pantene, which helped hold the curls in place even better than hairspray.

She put a new white covering on her head, satisfied with her appearance, for once.

“Think of it, Pris. When I teach school, I’ll have to pin on a cap and apron every single morning. And tie my covering, then yet.”

“Then yet?” Priscilla mimicked from her perch on the bed.

“Whatever.”

“What’s with this Pris thing? I don’t want that nickname. You better not start it. I’d rather have Cilla.”

Sarah laughed.

“Who’s taking you?’

“Guess.”

“Melvin?”

“You got it.”

“How can you stand riding around with that old Melvin? He’s way past the time that he should even be running around. He’s not popular at all. You’ll never get a husband, hanging out with him.”

“Priscilla, I like Melvin.”

“I know you do. That’s nice. But, seriously, how old is he?”

“I think twenty-eight or twenty-nine.”

“Shoo!”

“Yeah, really.”

“And every time he comes to pick you up, same thing. He comes in, sits down, eats and eats and eats, talks to Dat endlessly
—
probably because he’s closer to his age than yours
—
then goes through the ritual of combing his hair, and he doesn’t even have any in the front. And there you sit, when I know you’d much rather be on your way to the youth supper.”

“Oh well, I’m not sixteen anymore. And Matthew isn’t here, so going away on Sunday holds very little excitement. The thrill is simply gone. Which shoes should I wear?”

“The flats.”

“Not the heels?”

“No, you’re tall enough.”

“Giraffe tall?”

“No, just tall.”

“Priscilla, I can’t wait till you’re sixteen. It’ll be so fun getting ready to go away together!”

“Yeah, but you have to remember, Omar is going to take me. Melvin won’t be in the picture, okay?”

Sarah raised her eyebrows, bumped Priscilla’s arm with her fist, and said, “My, my.”

“For someone who says there’s no excitement in going to the supper, you certainly are being very careful about your appearance, which is just a nice way of saying you sure are sprucing up for someone. Who is it?”

Sarah slapped her sister playfully. Priscilla yelped and ran down the stairs ahead of her. Suzie looked up from the card game she was playing with Levi, sniffed, and went back to her game.

Dat was seated on the recliner, a large ceramic bowl of popcorn beside him, a steaming mug of coffee on the lamp stand, his white shirt and black Sunday trousers making him look younger, relaxed.

He smiled at Sarah, asked who was picking her up, then smiled again, although his eyes clouded only slightly as he watched her walk to the kitchen for a bowl to fill with popcorn.

“Mam, you may as well make another popper of popcorn, if Melvin’s picking her up.”

As it was, Melvin was late, and they all got into a discussion about Ashley Walter’s strange existence, which seemed to escalate Melvin’s opinions about the barn fires to zealous heights. Sarah watched the clock and figured the day would soon be past and she’d still be sitting there at her parents’ kitchen table.

She agreed it was troubling, but if Ashley made the choice to go back to her boyfriend, there wasn’t too much they could do except be patient and hope no tragedy would come of it.

Dat’s eyes filled with tears of compassion, and Levi looked somber, contemplating the loss of a promising Memory player.

When they finally got to the supper at Aaron King’s, Sarah found an exuberant Rose beaming happily, waiting eagerly to extol every last one of Lee Glick’s virtues to her best friend, who listened, expressed amazement, happiness, disbelief, whatever was required of her.

Aaron King
sei
Anna had done an outstanding job of planning a menu for over a hundred youth. The scalloped potatoes and ham, creamy with onions and cheese, and the green bean casserole were perfect. Sarah balanced her paper plate on her knee, ate appreciatively, talked to her friends, and rose above her heartache once again.

She whipped Rose at an intense game of ping-pong and was surprised when Lee stepped up and asked to play.

Rose acknowledged her new boyfriend coyly but handed over the ping-pong paddle, saying Sarah would never, ever beat Lee, there was simply no way. She followed that statement with a high shriek that drew exactly the amount of attention she’d hoped it would when heads turned, smiled, and watched for a while, before returning to their games.

Caught off guard, Sarah blushed and became flustered, nervous, with Lee towering only a ping-pong table’s length away, his blue eyes challenging, alight with interest.

They were a match, one almost as skilled as the other, but Lee was a wicked server and won by three points. Sarah laughed, her eyes the color of spring water with sunshine dancing on its surface, her hair gleaming in the lamplight. Lee handed over the red paddle as she smiled up at him, guileless, unafraid. Unafraid or released?

He reached for the paddle, his fingers closed over hers, so firm and warm, so compelling, and stayed for seconds longer than was necessary.

On gossamer wings, the breath of attraction dipped and hovered between them, sacred, beautiful, but scarred now by the years of disappointment for Lee, by the doubt that real love could ever be possible again for Sarah.

Without a word, they wondered at it.

S
ometimes, Sarah thought, life goes by so fast, and quite unexpectedly a situation arises that would have been unfathomable before.

She put both hands on her desk, clasped them firmly, the fingers intertwined, took a deep breath, and said loudly, “Good morning, boys and girls,” to the echoing, empty classroom, then bent forward, laid her head on the desk, and whispered, “You’re going to have to help me here, Lord. It’s really scary.”

Teaching in an Amish one-room school was not a job that required any further studies than the eight grades she had already had. She had finished her schooling at age fourteen and then attended vocational class once a week until she was fifteen, as Pennsylvania state law required.

She remembered the order of school, the work, the way eight grades were managed. This school, Ivy Run, had twenty-three pupils distributed among eight grades, so it posed no threat as far as the number of children she would be required to teach.

The frightening part was the bad attitude, the disrespect that had run rampant the past few years, the children, or some of them, grieving their teacher terribly with blatant disobedience, among other things.

Ivy Run School was only about four miles from Sarah’s home, but she rode to school with a driver rather than by scooter or horse and buggy. The school board offered to make arrangements to save her time.

The board members had been extremely kind, offering assistance, volunteering services, but so far, she had not heard a single word from any of the parents. She hardly knew who they were, anyway, so that was no big deal. She just hoped they’d be able to work with each other when things got out of hand, which Sarah felt sure was bound to happen.

It was Thursday afternoon, which left two days at market, one Sunday, and one early Monday morning, before she would stand at this desk and wish every pupil a good morning.

She wondered if her knees would support her, or if she’d faint dead away.

The school was an older brick school on Hatfield Road, set in a grove of chestnut and maple trees. The roof had been replaced a few years before, and the windows were fairly new, but the old brick structure remained the same, the porch built along the gable end, the cloakroom enclosed on one side.

The floor was a smooth, varnished hardwood, gleaming with years of hundreds of little feet walking across it. The cast iron desks were painted a shining black with refinished oak tops and seats that folded up or down.

A blackboard ran the length of the front with a white border along its top, the alphabet in cursive, print, and German on it. Rolled up maps hung just below the letters, and a row of shelves stood beneath the blackboard.

A gray metal file cabinet stood off to the right, a propane gas heater to the left. Above the heater hung a round PVC ring with wooden clothes pins attached to it with nylon string, a homemade wonder for drying caps and mittens in the winter.

The rows of windows on each side of the classroom were topped with beige, roll down blinds, serviceable when the sun blinded a row of pupils hard at work.

The artwork on the walls had been done by the previous teacher, such as it was, and Sarah could tell that had not been her interest at all as the name charts along the top of the blackboard were colored poorly and coming loose at several corners.

Perhaps, if they had time, she’d make her own name charts, colored brightly, with black lettering.

Sarah sat back, sighed, and then became quite giddy with anticipation.

The classroom was infused with a golden, late afternoon radiance, turning an ordinary room into a warm haven of light.

She stood up from the chair, stretched, and turned to get her sweater, when she heard a grating noise, a clicking.

The door.

Okay. Some was trying to…

She stepped back, both hands going to her mouth to stifle a scream, when the handle turned. The door was yanked open unceremoniously, a head was pushed through wearing a beanie. The intruder’s face was dirty, his coat torn in places, soiled, but the eyes as blue as always.

Lee Glick was completely taken aback, his hand going to his filthy beanie, before shaking his head, laughing ruefully, and saying, “What are YOU doing here?”

“Oh, you scared me!”

That was all they said for quite some time, Sarah standing in the middle of the aisle in the gold light, Lee standing just inside the door, his face streaked with dirt, his clothes obviously having seen better days.

He repeated the question, and she answered with one of her own.

“I came to get Marlin’s arithmetic book. He’s crying up a storm, because he had a stomach ache in school and couldn’t get his work done, he told Anna.”

“Your sister Anna?”

“Yeah.”

“They come to this school?”

“Evidently. This is where I was told to go.”

“I’ll be teaching here, starting Monday morning.”

“Are you serious?”

Sarah nodded. “They’re having a lot of problems.”

“Tell me about it. That’s all Ben’s children talk about at the supper table. You know you’re in for it, right?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What I said. Sarah, it’s awful the way these kids act. I’m afraid for you. I really am.”

“I can’t do more than fail, can I?”

“No, you’re right.”

“I think the biggest problem, from what the guys on the school board said, is two or three families. Probably the first day I can pretty much tell who they are. Then I guess I’ll go from there.”

Lee grinned, his teeth very white in his darkened face. “So that’s your game plan?”

“Yup.”

“Good luck. You know you’ll need it.”

Sarah laughed. “By the way, I didn’t know you mined coal for a living.”

Lee looked perplexed, then a hand went to his face, and he laughed sheepishly.

“No, not coal mining. Just removing a very old slate roof and replacing it. I’ve looked like this all week.”

“Anna’s probably having a fit.”

“She is.”

Sarah laughed again, thinking of the overweight little Anna, huffing around her house, cleaning, washing, clucking. She missed her and told Lee to tell her hello.

“I will.”

There was an awkward silence, which surprised Sarah, their conversation having flowed so freely in the time he was there.

“Guess I should go,” he said very quietly.

“Yes. My driver should be coming any minute.”

He looked out the south windows, his gaze unfocused, and she looked through the north ones. It was much easier and safer that way.

Sarah took a step backward and saw her driver pull into the school yard.

“My driver’s here,” she said loudly, nervous now.

His reluctance to leave was apparent when he said, “Sarah, tell me. Tell me something.” His voice faded away as his eyes were lifted to hers, held steady.

“Just…How are you doing? Are you okay? How did you feel when you found out about Matthew? I can’t explain to you, the agony I experienced at…over the time you…he….”

The questions seemed to release a torrent of emotions as his breath accelerated, his voice rasped and cracked before he stopped, bent his head, and kicked the toe of his work boot self-consciously against a desk.

“I have to go,” he said and turned.

“I didn’t answer your questions,” Sarah said coolly. “I am doing okay. Not fine, just okay. I will be fine.” She laughed, a soft sound bordering on hysteria.

“I don’t know how I felt when he left without me. Something inside of me died. I was angry, hurt beyond words, but, of course, part of me protected him, and I didn’t believe any of it, but only for a short time. Hannah, his mother, is a big help. When I think of being actually married to Matthew, I can’t imagine.” Her voice faded away, and she shook her head from side to side.

“So, I’ll teach school. I’ll become a tall, skinny old maid who puts her life into the classroom, and people will call me a leftover blessing for the community. My hair will turn gray, and I’ll make coffee at weddings and wait for some old bachelor or widower to ask me.”

Lee laughed, tilting back his head. Then he looked closely at Sarah, the smile fading from his mouth as he held her eyes with his.

An uncertainty spread across his face, then determination as he made up his mind and closed the gap between them with two long strides, his hands came up to encircle her forearms. He tugged gently, “Sarah.”

The tenderness in his voice was so real, so alive, it brought a lump to Sarah’s throat. She could not have uttered a word if she had tried.

“Do you think you’ll ever be able to love again? I mean, before you become an old maid?”

Sarah shrugged her shoulders and his hands fell away. He clasped them behind his back, but his face was so close to hers, she could feel his breathing.

She raised her face, found his eyes, and was lost in the blueness of them. He watched the color in hers change with emotion turning them dark with remembered pain, gray and anxious with mistrust, then vibrantly green with longing, flecked with lights of new hope.

“Sarah, I have Rose. I must honor that.”

Numbly, her eyelids heavy, covering the display of feelings, she nodded.

“Yes, Lee. You do. And I wish you the best. You two are so perfectly matched. Everyone says.”

“She’s a nice girl. I am in awe of her in so many ways.”

Leaning sideways, Sarah retrieved her new book bag, grabbed her sweater, and said, “Good. That’s good. I have to go now. My driver is here. She’s been waiting.”

They moved as one through the door, suddenly so far apart that any words would have to be shouted in order to be understood.

They didn’t look back, neither did they wave, as each one moved in opposite directions in separate vehicles.

Sarah’s driver, a neighbor who was close friends with Mam, took one long look at Sarah and asked what happened back there. Sarah laughed and told her not to worry about it.

Lee’s work driver reminded him of the arithmetic book and had to pull into someone’s driveway to turn around and take him back to the schoolhouse to get it.

Good thing Ben was one of the caretakers and had given him a key.

One last weekend at market, Sarah thought, as the van sped along the interstate, rain hissing beneath the tires, the windshield wipers clicking rhythmically, the fast-moving monstrous trucks spraying the van as they roared past.

The girls in the van were sitting or lying in various positions, half-awake or asleep, oblivious to the rain or the traffic, trying to grab a few minutes of rest before the churning pace of a busy market day.

Rain meant an increase in customers. It was always that way. Sarah didn’t know why. Perhaps people didn’t want to work in their yards or do any outdoor activities on a rainy day. They thought of a place that was cheerful and bright, filled with comfort food, especially good, hot soups and stews, warm doughnuts and cinnamon rolls and whoopie pies and cupcakes. So they’d be frantically busy today.

She’d try her best to imprint in her mind the many precious memories of the short time she’d been at market, the sights and sounds and smells of this wonderful place, filled with friends and acquaintances, people she had grown to love and respect.

The driver turned up the volume on the radio, and the van was filled with predictions of snow or ice by evening, warning motorists to use caution, especially on interstates leading to higher elevations.

That’s us, Sarah thought, but she dismissed the threatening weather as they pulled up to the vast brick wall of the farmer’s market.

Sarah measured flour, yeast, sugar, eggs, and salt. The great paddles of the mixer turned, thoroughly mixing the cinnamon roll dough, bread dough, and all the different yeast breads that were placed on the shelves in tempting rows.

Sarah’s hands flew. She focused on her work as she rolled pound after pound of soft, delicious smelling dough into long rectangles. She quickly sprinkled brown sugar and cinnamon along the length and rolled the dough to form long pinwheels, before grasping the smooth cutter and severing one cinnamon roll after another from the long lengths of dough. She placed the rolls in foil pains and dotted them with walnuts and chunks of butter.

As she had predicted, the crowds appeared at about ten o’clock in the morning and never let up.

Sarah didn’t get her first break until after lunch, her harried boss apologizing profusely. Sarah understood and said she’d be fine, but she was so hungry she bought a soft pretzel and dipped it in cheese sauce to eat on her way to the restaurant to order her lunch.

She ordered the special there, roast beef and gravy, with French fries and coleslaw. She sat down across from Rose Zook, who was slowly spooning the perfect combination of vanilla ice cream and hot fudge sauce into her mouth.

“You know you eat an awful lot,” Rose observed after Sarah had scraped her plate clean.

“You ate a bunch of my French fries
—
probably half,” Sarah answered her friend. “But you know I had a soft pretzel on the way here,” Sarah added, laughing.

“You didn’t!”

“I did.”

“Well, that’s okay. You can eat. You work hard.”

Suddenly, Rose’s eyes darkened, and she toyed with her paper napkin, her head bent slightly. She sat back as both hands went to her stomach, then she spoke quietly. “I am eating everything in sight right now. It’s stress.”