The Tempted Soul (4 page)

“I am not!” Carrie protested, laughing. “It’s not often I get to do something for you, so I’m taking my opportunities while I have them. And I know how much you like this kind.”

And in the simple pleasure of cake for dessert, the subject of Joshua Steiner was dropped. But deep in her heart, Carrie wondered if maybe Emma was right. Maybe he was lonely. She resolved to be a little more patient with him the next time she saw him. After all, Melvin would not have asked him to help them if he didn’t think Joshua was a good man.

And only a good man would have agreed to help, especially since they couldn’t afford to pay him a cent. If he came tomorrow, she would have her own work done and be ready to help him if he needed it. After all, as her
Daed
used to say, “No one is useless in this world if he lightens someone else’s burden.”

Joshua was lightening hers, so it seemed only fair.

O
n Saturdays, Joshua explained as he stood in the kitchen door watching her, he only needed to look after the Hill cows in the morning, and the family dealt with them during the rest of the day and on Sundays.

Carrie plunged her mop into the bucket and leaned on it like a warrior might have leaned on his spear. “I was going to have everything finished so I could help you in the orchard this afternoon.”

“Don’t worry.” He grinned as though he’d caught her shirking. “I’ll leave enough for you.”

She felt out of sorts, partly because of her time of the month and partly because he always seemed to turn up when she wasn’t expecting him, and it was beginning to jangle her nerves. “There are baskets in the cellar, but to get there, you’d have to cross my wet floor. Just wait there and I’ll get them.”

She had to cross it herself, since she was backing across the floor toward the bedrooms so that she could sweep them. However, she’d rather mop up her own footprints than his, especially since his boots probably hadn’t seen a scraper since they’d visited the cows this morning.

She balanced the stack of apple baskets—made by Amelia’s father, Isaac Lehman, who took a craftsman’s quiet satisfaction in making even the humblest household item fulfill its purpose for years—in both arms as she emerged from the cellar. “I left off on the Gravenstein. By the time you fill one of these, I’ll have the drying boxes ready outside.”

“Not going to rig the generator to a dehydrator?”

She pushed the baskets into his arms. “The drying boxes worked for Mamm, and they work just fine for me.” Lined with black paper and with air holes for good circulation, the boxes came up to her shoulder and could dry twelve racks of apple slices at a time.

“Where are they? Do you need help setting them up?”

“
Nei
. What I need is to finish my inside work.” And for him to stop talking and get himself out to the orchard to do something useful.

Too late, she remembered her resolve to be patient with him.

Laughing, apparently at her little show of temper, he finally left, and Carrie could focus on wiping up her footprints and getting the floor done. By the time she’d swept the other rooms, the kitchen was dry. It didn’t take long to get the worktable ready for that first basket of fruit—paring knives and the big cooling racks originally meant for bakery cakes that Daed had measured carefully before he built the drying boxes to accommodate them.

Carrie sat for a moment on a kitchen chair. Seemed like Joshua should be back by now with the first basket. Even she could pick a bushel of apples faster than this.

With a sigh, she got up and left the house. The chickens, sensing there might be food somewhere in this change in routine, fell in behind her like a string of train cars.

She found Joshua up in the Gravenstein on a ladder, picking steadily, two full baskets in the grass at the base of the tree. “I thought you might have brought these in so I could get started,” she said, tilting her head up and shading her eyes against a sun that arced lower in the sky every day.

He looked down at her. “What are those
Hinkel
doing here?”

She picked Dinah up and felt her settle into her arms. “They come with me wherever I go on the place. I think they’re looking for a change from worms and bugs.” Two of the hens had already found a drift of windfalls and were attacking them with happy ferocity. “I see you found the wagon. I’ll take these and bring it back to you.”

“How many apples can you do in one afternoon?”

“Enough to fill the boxes, and I make applesauce out of whatever is left over. It takes a couple of days to dry them—maybe less if the weather stays fine like this.”

“I’ll come with you.”

He began to climb down before she could say no, and there she was, in the very situation she’d been trying to avoid. She put Dinah down and caught up the handle of the wagon. What was the matter with him? The wagon, a child’s red one that had once belonged to her youngest brother Orval, bumped along behind her with its burden of bushels. Did the man not think of the most efficient way of doing something?

“Wait up.” Joshua jogged up beside her and took the handle. “You look mad.”

“I’m not. It’s just that I could have had a dozen apples peeled by now if you’d brought me a bushel to start with. Now I’ve lost all that time, and the sun is over the oak tree already.”

He laughed. “Relax, Carrie. You have days to peel apples in, and the weather forecast is clear and sunny into the middle of next week.”

“How do you know?”

“The Hills have a radio in the barn. It’s on all the time. You’d be surprised at all the things I know about politics, economics, and movie stars.”

“I hope you’re as well acquainted with your Bible.”

“You sound like Mary Lapp.”

“I’m related to Mary Lapp. Melvin’s mother is her sister.”

“Still. You’d better be careful. A virtuous woman like that can’t be duplicated.”

Carrie had the feeling that Mary would find nothing to be puffed up about in that remark.

She hefted one of the bushel baskets and took it in to the kitchen counter. Joshua brought the other one, and she’d begun to run water into the sink to wash the fruit when she realized he hadn’t left. Instead, he’d parked himself at the ​
table
.

“Would you like an afternoon snack?” Hospitality demanded that she make the offer, even though he’d done hardly anything yet and she had her hands full—literally.

“Nope. If you’re that far behind, I’ll give you a hand here. Seems to me the picking goes faster than the preparing.”

“That’s not necessary. Melvin hired you to do the outside work, not mine.”

“Many hands make light work, isn’t that what they say?”

There was no point in fighting him. He was obviously going to do what he wanted in her kitchen, and she didn’t have the time to argue. “Fine. Here. Start with these. Do you know how to pare an apple?”

“I’ve seen it often enough.” He picked up one of the paring knives and sliced a chunk out of the fruit in his hand. She bit back the urge to scold, then to instruct. “Don’t you have one of those paring devices that spin the apple around and the skin comes off in one long curl?”

“I do that with these devices here.” She waggled her hands at him. “Watch.”

Many years of practice had her turning the apple and the skin furling away from it in a long ribbon. Then she quartered it, sliced it, and laid the pieces on the drying racks. The whole operation was done before he’d got halfway around his own apple.

“By the time I get through those bushels, I might be one twentieth as good as you.” His curl broke, and sighing, he kept going.

“This is why you need a wife. If you like
Schnitz
pie and applesauce, she would be doing this for you.”

“I do like them, and it’s not for lack of trying that I haven’t found a girl who will have me.”

“I don’t think you’re trying very hard. Who are you taking home from Singing on Sunday night?”

“An old man like me doesn’t belong at Singing with all the
Youngie
.”

“That’s where you’ll find the single girls—young women like Esther Grohl, who’s close to your age and who would make a wonderful wife.” Carrie was on her third apple as he quartered his first one. “You can’t go looking for corn in a bean field.”

“Apparently I can find chicken in an apple orchard, though.”

“Not by now, you won’t. They’ll all be back on the lawn.”

“But you see my point. I’m not looking for an eighteen-year-old.”

Which was why she’d mentioned Esther. “You’re not much older than that.” She calculated for a second. He and her next youngest brother, Kenneth, had been in the same class at school. “You’re only twenty-eight, aren’t you?”

“Soon twenty-nine.” He glanced up at her. “You don’t know any girls like you, do you? Pretty, good in the kitchen, like to laugh?”

“I know at least a dozen with one or more of those qualifications.” She would not react. He had no business calling a married woman anything but her name, never mind things that would only make her too fond of her bathroom mirror. “And most of them go to Singing. It doesn’t matter how old you are, Joshua.”

“Feels out of place,” he mumbled, partially covered by his interest in choosing the perfect apple to pare next.

“Do you mean Singing feels out of place, or you do?” There was nothing wrong with her hearing.

“I do, I suppose. These kids have never been outside Lancaster County. Never done anything or seen anything.”

“How can you say that? Look at Esther. She and her sister, Marianne, and two other girls just came back from a tour of twelve different national parks, from here to Montana to California.”

“I don’t want to look at Esther.”

“She may not be as pretty as some, but you can’t say she’s never been anywhere or done anything. And goodness knows, she can cook.”

“All the Grohl girls can. They’re worth their weight in rubies. But I’ve decided I need to catch a young one and train her up proper. Like that Zook girl. What’s her name?”

“Lydia.”

“That’s right. I wonder if she sells purple? You know, like that woman in the Bible.”

“I imagine she does. I heard last church Sunday that she’s working in the fabric shop in Whinburg.”

He threw back his head and laughed. “There’s no putting one over on you, is there, Fraa Miller?”

She dropped her chin and concentrated on the perfect peel curling off her knife.

“Aw, now I’ve made you blush. Look, this is hopeless. I guess skill at peeling is one of those things you’re born with, like a good singing voice or the ability to dowse water with a forked stick.”

“I think it’s more a matter of practice,” she said dryly. “And if you’re not in the habit of being in the kitchen, you can’t be expected to do it perfectly the first time.”

“You’re kind to excuse my clumsiness. But it’s back to the trees for me.”

He dumped the remaining apples into the deep water in the sink, picked up the baskets, and took himself off, whistling.

Carrie let out a long breath and rolled her shoulders. Thank goodness. What a trying conversation.

The only good part about it was his joke about Lydia. How strange that she had come up in conversation so many times this week. The poor thing. Her mother had died of an untreated infection when Lydia was six, and she’d been keeping house the best she could ever since, with occasional help from the women of the community. Tall, gangly Abe Zook was probably not going to win any prizes for his skills as a father (“He’s got a face like barbed wire, all sharp and hooked,” Emma had whispered once, when they’d seen him out in his field whipping up his plow mule), but he was a member of the church, and once a year the whole
Gmee
got together to put a shine on his ramshackle place when it was his turn to host the service.

As the years passed, people realized that all the best of Abe and Rachel had been distilled into their only living daughter, with her red hair and pretty face. But as Carrie’s
Mammi
used to say, “Handsome is as handsome does.” It was a person’s works in God’s service and their kindness toward others that counted, not what they looked like, and Lydia had a feisty spirit that would get her into
Druwwel
one of these days.

Carrie picked up the next apple and began to hum.

Let me not be ashamed, let not mine enemies triumph over me.

Carrie read the postcard again and took it upstairs to their bedroom, where she tucked it in the top drawer of her dresser. There were a few letters there already from Melvin, as he’d traveled around over the last year. The two of them had written back and forth when they’d been courting, of course, since she’d met him at a band hop fifty miles away from Whinburg, in his district. But those youthful letters had been thrown away through some accident of spring cleaning. She was determined that the letters he’d written as her husband wouldn’t suffer the same fate. He wasn’t as eloquent on paper as he was in person, but every word was precious.

Downstairs, she smiled as she thought of him coming to a halt at the picture of the mother hen. Under her were a lot of tiny legs, so that she looked like a puffy tree with a dozen tiny trunks. Buried in those feathers, safe and warm, were her chicks.

Unaccountably, Carrie’s throat closed up.

Maybe Melvin was trying to tell her that he still had hope they’d have lots of chicks of their own yet. Or maybe that they should be satisfied with feathery children rather than real ones. Or maybe he just liked the humor in it and wasn’t trying to say anything at all.

“Back to work, Carrie.” Her own voice sounded loud in the kitchen, and she set to work with the apples once again.

It was Saturday, when she usually dusted and did light housework, with the evening sacred to preparing her spirit for church the next day. Today she’d abandoned those tasks and turned to the more urgent one—apples. She’d filled the two drying boxes and turned them to the sun, and now the kitchen was soft with the scent of apples and cinnamon as a big kettle of them cooked down on the stove.

Three successive thuds on the porch outside told her Joshua and the baskets were back. “Should I just leave these out here?” he called through the open door.

“
Ja
. They’ll keep cool overnight and I’ll get started on them early Monday.”

He came through the door dusting off his hands. “It smells good in here.”

“I’ve made dinner, if you want to stay.”

He raised his eyebrows in a comical way that told her the next words out of his mouth would probably be outrageous. “Fraa Miller, asking a single man to dinner?”