Growing Up in Lancaster County (49 page)

It can’t be that hard to bake another pie, she thought. I’ve helped Mom bake some pies before. I’ll try to remember what Mom has taught me to do, but if I get stuck, I can always find her recipe book to help me
.

Rachel went to the sink and washed her elbow. Then she scurried to the refrigerator to get more apples but discovered that there were none.
Guess I’ll take this ruined pie out to Buddy and pick some more apples from the tree
, Rachel decided. She slipped into her jacket, picked up the pie, and hurried out the door.

Buddy was lying on the roof of his doghouse with his eyes closed and his big old nose stuck between his paws. As soon as Rachel stepped into his dog run, his eyes popped open and he jumped off the roof.
Woof! Woof!
Buddy headed straight for Rachel!

Quickly, she dumped the pie into Buddy’s dish and dashed for the gate. Once she was safely outside the door, she stood at the fence and watched Buddy dive into the pie as if it were his last meal.

“Greedy glutton,” Rachel said, shaking her head. “All you do is eat, sleep, and cause a lot of trouble.”

Slurp! Slurp!
Buddy licked his dog dish clean; then he bounded over to the fence to greet Rachel.
Woof! Woof!

“Go back to your doghouse and take a nap!” Rachel whirled around and hurried toward the apple tree on the side of the house.

When she got to the tree, she looked up and gasped. It was bare! There wasn’t one single apple on any of the branches. Then she remembered that Pap had used the rest of the apples to make a batch of apple cider.

“I need to think,” Rachel said out loud. “Do we have any more apple trees in our yard?”

She glanced around. She saw a maple tree, an oak tree, and a walnut tree, but no more apple trees.

Rachel wandered around back and spotted a tree in the pasture. It looked like it had a bunch of red apples growing on it, but they seemed kind of small.

Rachel opened the pasture gate and made sure to shut it. Then she hurried until she came to the tree. Looking up, she could see that it was full of apples! They were a lot smaller than most—in fact, some were barely larger than cherries—but they looked nice and red. She was sure they would work just fine for an apple pie.

Rachel was tempted to climb the tree and pick the apples, but she thought about the broken arm she’d ended up with when she’d climbed a tree to rescue Cuddles.

“I need a ladder and a bucket,” she said, racing back across the pasture. She opened the gate and shut it again then headed for the barn. She found a bucket near the door and a small ladder in one corner of the barn. She put the handle of the bucket over her arm and grunted when she tried to pick up the ladder. It was too heavy to carry.

Think, Rachel. Think
.

She grabbed the ladder and dragged it out of the barn, across the grass, and into the pasture. She continued to drag it until it was under the apple tree; then she stepped carefully onto the first rung and then another, keeping the bucket over her arm. She reached overhead and picked an apple.
Plunk!
She dropped it into the bucket and reached for a second apple and then a third.
Plunk! Plunk!

Rachel kept picking until she’d picked sixteen apples. They were sure little, but she figured sixteen small apples would equal eight larger apples.

She climbed down the ladder and started back across the field. She was almost to the gate when old Tom plodded up and nudged her arm with his nose.
Neigh! Neigh!

Rachel giggled. “I bet I know what you want, boy.” She set the bucket on the ground and offered Tom one of the apples.

He took one bite, shook his head a couple of times, and dropped the apple to the ground.

“Well, aren’t you the finicky one this morning?” Rachel picked up the apple and held it out to Tom.

Neigh! Neigh!
The old horse shook his head and trotted away.

“Guess maybe you’ve eaten too much hay, and now you’re not hungry.” Rachel bent down, picked up the bucket, and headed back to the tree. She climbed the ladder again and picked another apple.

When she climbed down, she discovered Snowball sitting in the bucket on top of the apples. She laughed and picked up the kitten.

“You silly bussli,” Rachel said, petting Snowball’s furry head. “You can’t stay in this bucket; I have a pie to bake.” She placed Snowball on the ground and hurried out of the pasture. She would put the ladder away after she’d finished baking the pie.

As soon as Rachel entered the kitchen, she turned on the oven to 425 degrees. Then she poured the bucket of apples into the sink and washed them thoroughly. After that, she cut each apple into slices and put all the slices into a bowl with a bit of lemon juice to keep them from turning brown.

Next, she made the piecrust. After that, she took out Mom’s recipe book and made the filling according to the directions. Then she mixed it with the apples she’d cut up and poured everything into the crust.

Finally, she placed the pie in the oven, shut the door, and set the timer for fifty minutes.

“Now I think I’ll make some bookmarks using the pressed flowers I have in my room,” Rachel said. She hurried out of the kitchen and was halfway up the stairs when she remembered that she’d forgotten to take the ladder back to the barn.

“Guess I’d better do it now,” she mumbled. “If I don’t, I might forget.”

Rachel raced out of the house and headed straight for the pasture. The ladder seemed even heavier as she dragged it back to the barn.

By the time Rachel returned to the house, she was tired.
Guess I can make the bookmarks some other time
, she decided.

Rachel flopped into a chair and rested her head on the table. She felt so drowsy.

Ding! Ding! Ding!
Rachel’s eyes popped open, and she jumped out of her chair. “The pie! I’ve gotta check on the pie!”

She opened the oven door and stuck a knife into the pie. The apples seemed tender, so she grabbed a pot holder, removed the pie, and placed it on a cooling rack on the counter.

“It looks pretty good,” Rachel said, feeling rather pleased with herself. Juice oozed through the piecrust, begging her to taste it, but she summoned her willpower. She needed to wait until it was time to serve the pie for dessert tonight, and she couldn’t let on that this wasn’t the pie Mom had baked.

Rachel yawned and stretched her arms over her head. Doing grown-up things sure took a lot of work.

“I smell somethin’ good,” Jacob said as he entered the kitchen through the back door. “What’s for lunch?”

“It’s an apple pie you smell, and I don’t know what’s for lunch yet, because I’ve been busy with other things,” Rachel said.

“Are you going to start lunch soon?” he asked.

“I guess so.”

“Well, do more than guess so. Grandpa will be in from the greenhouse soon, and he’ll be hungry.” Jacob marched across the room, took the cookie jar down from the cupboard, and grabbed four peanut butter cookies. Then he turned to Rachel and said, “I’ll be outside with Buddy. Call me when lunch is ready.”

“You could at least offer to help,” Rachel mumbled when the door banged shut behind Jacob. She glanced out the window and saw him heading for Buddy’s dog run. When Jacob opened the gate, Buddy ran out, jumped up, and licked Jacob’s face. Jacob pushed Buddy down and held out a cookie. Buddy opened his mouth and took a bite; then Jacob popped the rest of the cookie into his own mouth.

Rachel wrinkled her nose. “Yuk! Boys can be so gross. I’d never let that bad-breathed mutt touch my cookie with his big dirty mouth!”

She turned toward the refrigerator to find something for lunch. That evening, Esther, Rudy, and their baby came for supper. Little Ben still had no hair, but at least his face wasn’t so red and wrinkly anymore. Rachel figured that after a few more weeks, he might look almost as cute as Hannah.

“Who’s ready for dessert?” Mom asked after the family members had finished their chicken and dumplings.

“I’m pretty full,” Rudy said, “but I might have room for a little more. What are we having?”

“I baked an apple pie this morning before I came over to your place,” Mom said. She pushed back her chair and started to get up, but Rachel jumped up first.

“I can serve the pie,” Rachel said. “Why don’t you stay at the table and visit?”

“Are you sure?” Mom peered at Rachel over the top of her glasses. She looked as though she thought Rachel couldn’t serve the pie by herself.

“I’m very sure.” Rachel hurried across the room and took a knife and pie server from the drawer. Then she pulled back the dish towel covering the pie and cut the pie into eight even pieces. Next, she took eight plates down from the cupboard.

“You’re certainly getting tall, Rachel,” Esther commented. “You didn’t have to reach very far at all to get those plates.”

Rachel smiled and stretched herself so she would appear even taller. “I think I’ve grown almost an inch this week.”

“I think you might have at that,” Pap said with a chuckle and a twinkle in his eyes. “Jah, Rachel’s growing like a weed.”

Rachel grinned as she lifted the pieces of pie out of the pan and placed them carefully on the plates. After she’d given everyone some pie, she took a seat at the table.

“Mmm…this sure looks good.” Rudy took a big bite, and a strange expression came over his face. He grabbed his cup of coffee and quickly swallowed some.

Jacob bit into his piece of pie. “
Agggh
…this pie’s baremlich!” He jumped out of his chair, rushed over to the garbage, and spit out the pie. Then he grabbed a glass from the cupboard, turned on the water at the sink, and took a big drink.

Mom took a bite of pie and made a horrible face. “This can’t be the same pie I made today,” she said with a shake of her head. “Something is definitely wrong with this pie.”

Rachel slumped in her seat as her face turned warm. She’d blown it again, and she figured she’d better confess right away.

“I baked the pie,” she admitted.

Mom’s mouth dropped open. “What?”

Rachel quickly explained how she’d put her elbow in Mom’s pie and then went out to the pasture and picked some apples so she could make another pie.

“You picked apples from a tree in the pasture?” Pap asked.

Rachel nodded. “They were kind of small, so I had to use sixteen instead of eight.”

Pap stared at the piece of pie on his plate; then he looked back at Rachel. “Those apples you picked from the pasture are crab apples, Rachel. They’re sour and tart and not meant for baking pies.”

“Oh no!” Rachel cried. “How could I have made such a mistake? I’m just a big
dummkopp
[dunce].”

“Now, Rachel, don’t be so hard on yourself. Everyone makes mistakes sometimes.” Mom patted Rachel’s arm. “If you’d told me what happened to my pie as soon as I got home from Esther’s, I’d have helped you bake another pie.”

“But there were no more apples on the tree in our yard,” Rachel said.

“We could have baked some other kind.”

“Trouble, trouble, trouble!” Rachel moaned. “My life’s always full of trouble!”

“Trouble’s like a bubble,” Grandpa said. “It soon pops and moves away. Why, I’ll bet by tomorrow you’ll have forgotten all about the pie you made today.”

Rachel sniffed, trying to hold back her tears. “But now we have no dessert.”

“I think I can take care of that.” Pap rose from his chair. “I’ll make a big batch of popcorn, and we’ll have some warm apple cider to go with it.”

“You didn’t make it with crab apples, I hope,” said Henry.

Pap shook his head. “Although I’ve heard that adding a few crab apples to a batch of cider can make the flavor a bit more interesting.”

Rachel wrinkled her nose. “I think I’d prefer my cider and pie without any crab apples, thank you very much.”

Everyone laughed, even Rachel. She was glad that no one in the family seemed to be mad about the pie she’d ruined.

My day might have started out on a wrong note
, she thought,
but it turned out good in the end, and that’s all that counts
.

T
ap! Tap! Tap!
“Rachel, are you in there?”

Rachel sighed. She’d just sat on the floor to look at some of the flowers she had pressed, and she didn’t want to be disturbed.

“What do you want, Jacob?” she called through her closed door.

“I need to talk to you.”

“About what?”

Tap! Tap! Tap!
“Can I come in?”

Rachel sighed again. “I suppose.”

The door opened, and Jacob stepped into Rachel’s room. He raked his fingers through the sides of his hair. “I was wondering if you’d do me a favor.”

“What favor?” she asked.

“I need a haircut.”

Rachel’s eyebrows shot up. “You want me to cut your hair?”

He gave a quick nod.

Rachel shook her head really hard. “I’ve never cut anyone’s hair before. That’s Mom’s job.”

“But Mom’s not here. She’s been busy helping Esther, and she never has time to cut my hair.”

Rachel sat there shaking her head.

Jacob came over and took a seat beside her on the floor. “Come on, Rachel; you can do it. I know you can.”