Second Chance Proposal

“You’re the teacher now,” he said with a gesture toward the room filled with desks and the other trappings of the school they had both once attended. “Liddy?” He took another step toward her but stopped when she moved away from him.

“You look terrible,” she replied in the voice she used to reprimand a truant student, then she clamped her lips shut. To her surprise he laughed, and the sound of it was a song she had heard again and again over the years whenever she lay awake remembering John Amman.

“I guess I do at that,” he said, looking down at his patched and ill-fitted clothing as he ran a hand over his unshaved face.

She placed books on desks, her back to him.

“Are you not glad to see me?”

The question infuriated her because the answer that sprang instantly from deep within her was, Yes. Oh, yes. How I have worried about you, thought of you, longed to know if you were well. And, most of all, wondered if you ever thought of me.

“I am pleased to see that you are alive,” she replied, unable to prevent the words or stem the tide of years of bitterness in her voice. “As I would be to see any prodigal return,” she added, raising her eyes defiantly to his. “And now please go. The children will be here any minute and I...”

“...don’t wish to have to explain about me?” He stepped closer and fingered the loose tie of her prayer covering. “When did you marry, Liddy?”

She jerked the tie free and at the same time heard the school door open and shut. She turned to find Bettina standing uncertainly inside the doorway.

“Teacher?”

“Guten morgen,” John said, crossing the room to where Bettina waited. “I am John Amman. I expect you know my uncle and aunt, the Hadwells?”

Bettina nodded and looked at Lydia. Lydia considered the best way to get John out of the classroom without raising further questions.

“I am Teacher’s niece, Bettina.”

“You are Pleasant’s daughter?”

Lydia saw Bettina take in John’s rumpled clothing, his mud-caked shoes. Her niece was a bright girl, and Lydia knew she was trying to decide if this man was who he said he was or another tramp passing through, trying anything he thought might work to get a handout or a meal. Her eyes darted from Lydia to John and back again as she nodded politely. But at the same time she edged closer to the bell rope, ready to pull it if she deemed them to be in any danger.

“John Amman was kind enough to light the fire, Bettina. Now he will be on his way.” Lydia was satisfied that in directing her comment to the girl she had not further violated her responsibility to shun him. She moved to the door and opened it, waiting for John to leave.

He paused for just an instant as he passed her, his incredible eyes, the green of a lush tropical jungle, locking on hers.

“You may as well know this now, Lydia Goodloe. I’ve come home to stay.”

As Lydia closed the door firmly behind him she noticed that her hand was shaking and her heart was racing and all of a sudden the room seemed far too warm.

* * *

John had not meant to say anything about his plans. He didn’t know what his future might hold. There were too many unknowns. How would his aunt and uncle, the only family left here, respond to his return? The night before he’d watched them close up shop and head home together and been glad to know they were still there. But could he seek and be granted their forgiveness? Could he find work and a place to live? And most of all, what kind of fool deliberately tormented himself by living in the same small town where the love of his life had settled into a marriage of her own? Still, as he walked the rest of the way into town, oblivious to the rain and wind, he knew that he had spoken the truth. He had come back to stay, for in reality he had nowhere else to go.

When he entered the hardware store it was as if he had stepped back in time. The same bell jangled over the door as he closed it. Instantly he was certain that he could easily fill any order a customer might have because everything was in the same place it had always been. Including his aunt.

He smiled as he watched Gertrude Hadwell chew the stub of the pencil she used to figure the month’s finances. She was behind the counter, the ledger open before her, her elbows resting on either side of it as she hummed softly and entered figures into the narrow columns. She looked as if she hadn’t aged a day, adding to his sense that nothing had changed.

“Be right there,” she called without glancing up. “Roger Hadwell,” she shouted, turning her face toward the back of the store as she closed the ledger and walked toward the storeroom. “Customer.”

John understood that she was not being rude. His aunt had always felt that their mostly male customers would far rather deal with her husband than with a woman. He removed his hat and smoothed his wet hair as he moved down the narrow aisle past the barrels of screws and nails until he reached the counter.

“Guten morgen, Tante Gert,” he said softly, not wanting to startle her more than necessary.

She whipped around to face him and immediately her eyes filled with tears. “Johnny,” she whispered. Then she hurried around the counter until they were face-to-face and she grabbed his shoulders, squeezing them hard. “Johnny,” she repeated.

Behind her John saw his uncle come from the storeroom wiping his hands on a rag as he looked up to welcome his customer. He hesitated when he saw his wife touching a strange man, then rushed forward. “See here, young man,” he began, and then his eyes widened. “Gertrude, no,” he said firmly, and turned her away from John. “Go in back until he leaves.”

John’s knees went weak with the realization that his uncle was shunning him. If that were true of these two people whom he had felt closest to all his life then he knew everyone in town would follow their lead. Well, what had he expected? That the entire town would set aside centuries of tradition for him? He sent up a silent prayer begging forgiveness for his prideful ways.

His aunt hesitated, gazing at him as her husband folded his arms across his broad chest and waited for her to follow his instructions.

“Go, Gert,” Roger repeated.

“I will not,” she replied. “This man needs our help and I would help him the same as we would any stranger.” She brushed by her husband and pulled out a chair. “Come sit by the fire. Why, you’re soaked.” She pulled a horse blanket from a shelf and handed it to him.

Behind her his uncle took one last look at his wife and then left the room.

“It’s good to see you, Gert,” John said as he savored her motherly nurturing.

“Where have you been?” she fumed, then quickly added, “No, I do not wish to know the details of your foolishness. It is enough that God has brought you back to us in one piece.” She studied him critically. “You’re too thin, John Amman. When did you last have a decent meal?”

John shrugged as she tucked the blanket around his shoulders then handed him a bakery box that had been sitting on the counter. It was filled with large glazed doughnuts. He bit into one and licked his lips. “I see Pleasant Obermeier still makes the best doughnut anywhere,” he said as he devoured the rest of the pastry and licked the sticky sugar coating from his fingers.

“She’s Pleasant Troyer now,” his aunt informed him as she busied herself setting a teakettle on the wood-burning stove. “Obermeier died a few years back and shortly after that Bishop Troyer’s nephew, Jeremiah, came to town. He opened up that ice-cream shop next to the bakery and it wasn’t long before Pleasant and him married and adopted all four of Obermeier’s children. Now they have a couple of their own.”

“But she still has the bakery?”

“She does. After her dat died she managed on her own for a while and then once she married Jeremiah...”

Pleasant was not the Goodloe sister John wanted to know about, but he thought it best to hide his curiosity about Lydia until he knew just how much things had changed in Celery Fields. “They live up there in the old Obermeier house at the end of Main Street then?”

Gert perched on the edge of a chair across from him to watch him eat. “No, Jeremiah bought a small farm just outside of town for them. Greta Goodloe married the blacksmith a year after Pleasant married. It was her husband, Luke Starns, who bought the Obermeier place.” She poured him a mug of strong black tea. “Drink this. You’re shivering.”

“And Liddy?” he asked as the hot liquid warmed his insides.

“Still teaching,” Gert replied. “Pleasant’s oldest girl, Bettina, helps her out, not that there’s any need. So few children these days. Lots of folks have moved away and until Greta’s brood and a few other little ones reach school age, well, it’s getting harder to justify keeping that schoolhouse open.”

“She ever marry?” John mumbled around a mouth filled with a second doughnut. He kept his head lowered and steeled himself to hear the name of some former friend, some boy he’d grown up with who had known very well that Liddy Goodloe was taken.

“Liddy?” Gert said, as if the name was unfamiliar. “No. She lives up the lane there in her father’s house all alone now that Greta’s married. I doubt she has any plans in that direction.”

John thought he must be hallucinating. Had he imagined the white prayer covering? No. He’d touched one of the ties and Liddy had pulled it away from him. That had happened. Of course, he could hardly ask his aunt about that unless he was ready to admit he’d already seen Liddy and spoken with her.

“You’ll need to see Bishop Troyer and the sooner the better,” Gert instructed. “We have services this coming Sunday so there’s time enough to have everything in place so that you can make your apology and seek forgiveness and get the bann lifted. Then you’ll be needing a job and a place to stay.” Gert ticked each item off on her fingers as if she were filling a customer’s order. “And some decent clothes.”

She reached for her shawl and bonnet. “I’m going across to Yoder’s to get a few things and when I come back we’ll get you settled in.” She headed for the rear of the store. “Roger Hadwell, go fetch Bishop Troyer,” she instructed. “And then go see if Luke Starns is willing to let John stay in his old rooms above the livery until he gets back on his feet.”

John watched as Roger came to the front of the store and retrieved a black rain slicker and his hat from a peg behind the counter. Without so much as a glance at John his uncle left by the front door.

By suppertime John had a place to stay as well as two sets of new clothes. He’d shaved and washed and enjoyed his first solid meal in days, wolfing down three bowls of the beef stew his aunt kept simmering in the back room of the hardware store along with half a loaf of Pleasant’s crusty wheat bread. In exchange for being able to live above the blacksmith’s shop, Roger had agreed that John would take charge of the stables behind the shop and care for any animals housed there overnight. All of this had been arranged between his uncle and the blacksmith. Roger had yet to utter a single word to John.