Promise Lodge (5 page)

Chapter Four

“All right, Gladys, you can go first, girlie,” Rosetta murmured as she coaxed the black-and-white doe onto the milking stand. “We're getting an early start this morning because I couldn't sleep for thinking about your old home being set afire.”

When the goat stood contentedly, eating from her feed bin, Rosetta began to milk her in the back stall of the old stable. As the milk splashed rhythmically into the stainless steel bucket, the four other goats munched their ration nearby, unconcerned about the topic of conversation. Queenie, ever the herder, had ushered the chickens out into the fenced area after Rosetta had opened the door, and now the dog watched from her perch on a bale of straw. She was happy to have Rosetta's company—at least until Noah and Roman came outside.

The morning milking ritual soothed Rosetta, yet a tear dribbled down her cheek as she once again envisioned the barn she'd played in as a child being consumed by flames. Had it happened the way Deborah and Preacher Amos had suggested? And if Isaac Chupp was indeed responsible for two of her family's barns burning, why wasn't Obadiah taking his wayward teenage son to task—and why weren't the other leaders of the church demanding that he punish Isaac, as well?

“Thank God you babies weren't inside when it happened,” she said in a low voice. “You can bet I would've demanded an explanation from the bishop if our barn had burned while we were still living there—and I've got to wonder if Deborah's connected to this disaster somehow. She's scared. She knows things she's not telling,” Rosetta murmured earnestly. “I so badly wanted to ask her who put that handprint on her neck, but—well, I didn't want to embarrass her. Especially if that print fits her
dat
's hand. And I didn't want to upset Mattie, either. She didn't say anything to Deborah's face, but I could tell she had plenty of questions when she saw Deborah's nasty bruise.”

Rosetta shifted the bucket out of the way and released Gladys from the head gate. She vividly recalled the night Mattie had come to their parents' house with a bloodied broken nose after her husband, Marvin, had been in one of his moods. His untended diabetes had drained the life out of their marriage long before it had finished him off. Mattie had been expected to endure such abuse in submission to her husband and to God's will.

Rosetta and their
mamm
had reset Mattie's nose as best they could and Mattie had spent the night. But once Marvin came for her, Mattie had remained sequestered at home for nearly a month until her face had healed and her black eyes were gone, maintaining the code of silence about such episodes. The women around town had whispered about what had happened, but the men had accepted Marvin Schwartz's behavior—just as they believed he had the right to refuse medical attention as he deteriorated from his diabetes.

“Your turn, Betsy. Step on up here,” Rosetta said to the gray speckled doe. “You girls know how it is—having a buck around just makes life messier. So we'll all be happy with our
maidel
lives, right, Queenie? Not that anybody's banging the door down to court a gal who's thirty-seven.”

The dog let out a low
woof
and met Rosetta's gaze.

Chuckling, Rosetta fastened the head gate around Betsy's neck and repositioned her milk bucket. As she milked Betsy, Bernadette, Gertie, and Blanche, she continued chatting in a low voice because her goats were more likely to stand still if they heard her speaking or singing. It was akin to prayer, this early morning time of airing her concerns or talking her way through a project for the day.

“After breakfast I'll be mixing up a few batches of soap, so the bars will be dried and ready in a couple of months,” she continued. “By then I hope we'll have new families here, and we can welcome them with a gift you girls helped me make.”

Queenie's ears perked up and then she dashed out the door, a sure sign the boys were heading to the barn to milk the cows. Rosetta picked up her two pails and walked outside, careful not to slosh any of the goats' milk. “
Gut
morning, Roman!” she called to Mattie's older son.

“
Jah,
back atcha, Aunt,” Roman replied as he slid the barn door aside on its track.

“Your brother's not helping you today?”

Roman shrugged. At twenty-four, he was tall and lanky, a conscientious manager of Christine's dairy herd. “He must've slept outside last night, maybe keeping the coyotes away from your chickens. He'll be along eventually.”

Rosetta sighed and headed for the lodge. Mattie's younger son had seemed sullen and uncommunicative since they'd moved here—and he'd appeared none too happy about Deborah's arrival and the work assignment Amos had given the two of them. She suspected Noah still had feelings for his former fiancée, even though she'd broken his heart. All of them were probably in for a bumpy ride as the young couple reconciled—or didn't. When Queenie loped past her, heading toward the cabins behind the lodge, Rosetta stopped to stare. The dog had gone to her master, who sat propped against the first little cabin, his head lolled to one side as he dozed.

When Queenie circled Noah a couple of times and then plopped down to put her head in his lap, Rosetta refrained from rousing her nephew—and possibly startling him into firing his gun. It struck her how much Noah was beginning to resemble his father, especially when he wasn't smiling the way he had when he'd been living in Coldstream, courting Deborah.

Startled by this thought, Rosetta hurried around the lodge's back door and set her pails on the counter inside the mudroom. Noah had witnessed the way Marvin had mistreated his
mamm
many times—had been a teenager when his
dat
broke Mattie's nose. What if Noah considered it his right to behave the same way when he married? What if he believed Deborah
deserved
the nasty bruise on her neck, because he'd grown up in a home where the woman had to take whatever the man dished out?

“Oh, we can't have that,” she muttered as she took her soap-making equipment from the cabinet. “Not here at Promise Lodge.”

“Are you still talking to your goats, Rosetta?” came a teasing voice from the kitchen. “Or has dear old Mamma come back to us?”

Rosetta had to chuckle, because Mattie had once again brought up her penchant for talking to herself, just as their mother had done in her later years. The topic that had filled her thoughts this morning was no laughing matter, however. Rosetta entered the kitchen, where her two sisters were rolling out the sweet dough she'd taken from the fridge before she'd gone out to milk.

“We've got to help Deborah and—and stand up for her,” she stated as she went to stand beside Mattie and Christine at the kitchen counter. “That hand-shaped bruise on her neck's gotten me all riled up. Surely God does
not
intend for His daughters to suffer at the hands of His sons. It goes against everything Jesus taught us about loving one another—no matter what the men of our faith believe.”

Her sisters' eyes widened, yet they nodded solemnly. With a sigh, Mattie said, “
Jah,
when I saw that bruise I right away figured Preacher Eli had lit into her, so she left home. He and Marvin were cut from the same bolt of cloth in many ways.”

“And with him being her father, there wasn't anything Alma could do about it,” Christine pointed out sadly.

“That's exactly the attitude we've got to stop!” Rosetta cried. “I can make soap from now until Kingdom Come and it won't wash away the pain and humiliation after a woman—or a girl—gets smacked around. We can't let those attitudes—those male beliefs—from Coldstream contaminate what we stand for at Promise Lodge. You of all people should be willing to end that cycle of violence, Mattie.”

Her eldest sister's face fell. When Mattie looked the other way, Rosetta noted the bump in the bridge of her nose, which hadn't been there before Marvin broke it. “I wish I knew how,” she said in a tremulous voice. “I've vowed never to marry again, so as not to subject myself to another heavy-handed man. But I guess that's not much help for Deborah or the other gals who'll be coming here, is it?”

“How do we ask Deborah who grabbed her neck, without upsetting her?” Christine said in a low voice. “Maybe she'll open up to my girls when she feels settled in, or—”

“This is mighty solemn talk from three sisters who usually tickle my funny bone,” Preacher Amos remarked as he stepped into the kitchen. “And it sounds like a topic best discussed by
all
of the founders of the Promise Lodge colony.”

Rosetta's throat went dry as she and her sisters exchanged a startled gaze. Amos Troyer was a skilled carpenter whose talents were badly needed as they repaired the lodge, the cabins, and the outbuildings—not to mention when it came time to build homes for the people who answered their ad in
The Budget
. No matter how vehemently opposed she and her sisters were to domestic violence, they couldn't afford to alienate this man . . . not that he would leave just because their independent attitudes irritated him. Amos had invested all of his money in this tract of land, just as they had.

Rosetta prayed for the right words. “With all due respect for your position as a preacher,” she began softly, “we were saying how Deborah's nasty bruise brings up all the reasons we left Coldstream—and Obadiah Chupp—behind. We don't believe men should be allowed to—to abuse their women,” she went on in a rush, “or to condone such violence when other fellows carry it out in the name of order and discipline as the heads of their households.”

“If we're going to let heavy-handed men have their way in our new colony,” Christine chimed in, “we might as well go back where we came from. I might've gotten a new barn after Willis died in that fire, but I got no justice. And I couldn't watch Mattie remarry because the bishop insisted on it, and then suffer at the hands of another mean-spirited husband while the church leaders support him and the women have to keep quiet about what he might be doing to her.”

Mattie quickly turned back to the counter and began slicing the long roll of dough into inch-wide segments with her knife. Her cheeks turned bright pink and she sniffled loudly.

Amos let out the breath he'd been holding. His weathered face softened as he went to stand beside Mattie, stilling her knife by covering her hand with his larger one. “I'm a day late and a dollar short saying this,” he murmured, “but when I heard that you'd not been coming to church because Marvin had broken your nose, I confronted him about it. Took him before Preacher Eli and the bishop on the grounds that his violence went against our faith.”

Mattie was standing absolutely still, except for the way her nervousness made the skirt of her rust-colored dress flutter. “I never heard anything about that.”

“Probably because Eli and Obadiah were of the opinion that a man may discipline his family as he sees fit,” Amos replied apologetically. “I was outraged, because had
I
been allowed to marry you, Mattie, you would've been treated with love and respect. I couldn't tell you that while you were Marvin's wife and my Anna was alive, so I'm telling you now. I'm sorry about the way he let his illness—and his temper—get out of hand.”

The kitchen rang with silence. Rosetta closed her eyes, hoping Preacher Amos had just responded to their plea for a change of attitude at their new colony.

Mattie sighed, patting Amos's sturdy hand. “
Denki,
” she murmured. “For what it's worth, Dat later admitted he'd been wrong to encourage Marvin's courtship after he bought the farm next door. Water under the bridge.”

“
Jah,
but water's what we use to baptize souls into the faith, and to wash away sin,” Amos replied as he turned so he could look at all three of them. “It remains to be seen who will become this colony's bishop—God will decide that when a bishop moves here, or if we draw lots amongst the preachers to select a new leader. But I'll support your idea that Promise Lodge is to be a place of peace. Jesus spoke of turning the other cheek, of praying for those who persecute us, and above all, of
loving
one another,” he insisted in a low, clear voice. “It was the last command He gave His disciples before He died carrying out God's will—and we should follow Him rather than clinging to man-made attitudes that have prevailed for too long.”

“Amen. And
denki,
Amos,” Rosetta replied as she beamed at him. “I was wrong to doubt you.”

“So how shall we handle Deborah's situation?” Christine asked earnestly. “We all know she's not telling us everything about—”

“But I believe she will, in time,” Amos said as he stroked his gray-streaked beard. “Let's allow her love for Laura and Phoebe—and Noah—to restore her confidence, her trust in all of us. Meanwhile, we can offer her a safe haven until her folks come for her.”

“You think they will?” Rosetta asked. “If Preacher Eli smacked her—”

“Ah, but we don't know that. Yet.” Amos blessed them with a smile that made the skin around his eyes crinkle with mirth. “Now we see in a mirror darkly, but then—well, all will be revealed in God's
gut
time. I'm going out to speed up the milking so we'll be finished by the time those cinnamon rolls are baked. You gals are taking wonderful-
gut
care of me, and for that I'm grateful.”

When Preacher Amos was halfway out to the barn, Rosetta slipped her arms around her two sisters' shoulders. “Well,
that
chat went better than I expected,” she said with a relieved grin. “Let's make Deborah feel welcome and enjoy her time with us. We'll all be blessed by her company.”