Jo Brown - The Amish Suitor

He wouldn’t skip the gathering to worship together, but he dreaded seeing people bend toward each other to whisper as he passed. As if he were blind as well as almost deaf. More than once, he’d been tempted to shout that they could yell, and he wouldn’t hear everything they were saying. He also hated the pitying looks aimed in his direction. Each one was a reminder of the expression Betty Ann had worn the first time she came to the hospital to see him after the accident. The first and only time she’d visited him there.

Would Miriam Hartz look at him the same way? The idea that such a lovely woman, who’d stepped in to defend a little boy she didn’t know, would regard him as a victim of sorry circumstances twisted his stomach.

He was glad when Kyle demanded his attention again by pointing out sheep in a field they passed. He didn’t want to think about seeing sympathy in Miriam’s eyes.

God, give me strength .

He hoped this prayer would be answered before Sunday.

* * *

“Got a minute?”

On Saturday afternoon, Miriam looked up from her sewing machine.

Her brother walked into the barn that served as their home while he worked to make the farmhouse livable. The pipes in the house had frozen, and water spread through it, ruining floors and walls.

The barn was a single open space. Upon their arrival, she and Caleb had strung a web of ropes halfway to the rafters. Hanging quilts on the ropes had created rooms, including the private spaces where they slept. She’d placed rag rugs on the uneven floorboards to protect their feet from splinters. A propane camp stove allowed her to cook, and a soapstone trough became their kitchen sink. She and Caleb missed cakes, bread, cookies and everything else prepared in an oven. He’d picked out the double ovens he intended to put in the house. Until then, it was rough living, but with the doors and windows open, including the ones at either end of the loft, the space was comfortable at last. She’d thought they might become human icicles during the coldest days of the winter.

Turning off the sewing machine that got its power from a car battery, she made sure the half-finished purple dress was folded before she stood.

“What do you need, Caleb?” she asked.

“A favor.” He sat at the table in the center of the open area. “Please hear me out before you give me an answer.”

“Of course.” She slid onto the bench facing him.

“I received a letter yesterday from the local school district. They’d written it at the request of the state education department.”

She clasped her fingers together on the table. “Why?”

“They’re concerned our kinder haven’t attended school the minimum days for the school year.”

“Mercy Bamberger has been homeschooling her two, and Nina Zook taught her four kinder .”

“But there are four other families with kinder in our settlement. The state insists they attend the minimum number of school days.”

“Do they have a suggestion of how we should do that?” Her brows lowered as she said, “If we’d had a school here, by now our scholars would be done so they can work on their families’ farms.”

“They suggested—and the local school superintendent, Mr. Steele, agreed—we hold school here for the next four weeks. That would take us to the middle of July, so the older scholars would be available to help with the harvest. At the end of the term, the kinder would be tested to make sure they’d learned what’s mandatory for their ages.”

She leaned toward him. “I thought our schools were independent of interference from Englischers .”

“They are, but as you know, the kinder need to attend for a minimum number of days.” He gave her a small smile. “I’m sure I can talk Mr. Steele into not having the testing, as long as I assure him the scholars will be in school for four weeks.”

“That sounds like a gut idea. We’ve got about ten kinder of school age, I’d guess.”

“Nothing you can’t handle.”

“Me?” she managed to choke out past her shock.

He didn’t look at her as he said, “I sort of volunteered you because nobody else in the settlement has been a teacher.”

“What about Mercy or Nina?”

“Mercy has her hands full with her foster son, and Nina is going to have her new boppli any day. You’re our best choice to oversee the school.”

Like everything else her brother did or said, it made complete sense.

But teaching? Kinder who’d be put into her care for six hours each day? She stared at him. How could Caleb ask such a thing of her? She’d come to Harmony Creek to escape the murmured accusations she couldn’t be trusted with kinder .

“It’s for only four weeks, Miriam,” he said. “By the time school starts in the fall, Nina has said she’ll take over until we can find a teen girl to teach. Just four weeks.”

“All right, I’ll do it.” What else could she say? She had to help keep the new settlement from getting off on the wrong foot with their Englisch neighbors.

“And I need you to do one other thing for me.”

“I thought you said one favor.”

“I guess I should have said one at a time.”

She laughed with him. As hard as Caleb was working to make the settlement a success, he must be learning, at last, that he couldn’t do it all himself. Though he continued to try.

“We’re having a school built, so we’ll be ready to go in the fall,” he said. “It’ll be between our farm and Jeremiah Stoltzfus’s. There’s a level piece of ground with not too many trees that will be perfect. We’ve hired a carpenter.”

“What do you need me to do?”

“He’s never built a school before, and you know what’s needed.”

“Our schools are pretty much the same.”

“ Ja , the ones in Lancaster County are. But schools in Indiana sometimes have two rooms and two teachers.”

“Is that what you’re planning on here?”

He shook his head. “The majority of our families are from Pennsylvania, so we’re building what we’re used to.” His cheeky grin returned. “And one room is cheaper than two.”

“True.” She couldn’t believe she’d agreed to be responsible for almost a dozen kinder .

“Will you work with him on the project?”

“Of course.”

“Gut.” He pushed himself to his feet, came around the table and gave her a quick hug.

“Who’s going to build the school?”

“Eli Troyer.” Her face must have betrayed her shock, because Caleb added, “I know it’ll be a challenge to work with him.”

She hadn’t mentioned yesterday’s incident at the grocery store to Caleb, because she’d been so busy she’d forgotten until after her bedtime prayers. “His nephew—”

“Shouldn’t be around more than any other kid.”

Hating the sympathy in her brother’s voice, Miriam loved him at the same time for worrying about her. He did understand. She’d wondered whether Caleb would have invited her to join him in northern New York if circumstances in Pennsylvania had been different.

“Having kids around seems to be a given.” She was shocked at the bitterness in her voice. She wasn’t angry with her brother, but she was dubious of being in charge of the scholars. What if one of them got hurt?

Caleb’s face lengthened with dismay. “If you don’t want to—”

“I said I would, and I will.”

“ Danki . We should have the school done before the month is over. This weekend we’re going to get the walls up and the roof on. Eli will cut in the windows and doors and finish the interior.” This time her brother misjudged her hesitation because he went on, “I realize Eli has trouble hearing. I speak slowly, and he gets most of what I’m saying.”