Miriam's Heart

“Ya,” Miriam agreed. “A shame.” Ruth liked Charley. So did Anna, Rebecca, Leah, Johanna, Susanna and especially Mam. The trouble was, ever since the school picnic last spring, when Charley had bought her pie and they’d shared a box lunch, her sisters and Mam acted like they expected the two of them to be a couple. All the girls at church thought the two of them were secretly courting.

“Lucky for you that Charley was nearby when the wagon turned over,” Eli said. He and Ruth exchanged looks. “He’s a good man, Charley.”

Miriam glared at Ruth, who assumed an innocent expression. “It’s John you should thank,” Miriam said. “Without him, we might have lost both Molly and Blackie.”

“But Charley pulled you out of the creek.” Ruth followed Eli out into the barnyard. “He might have saved your life.”

Miriam could barely keep from laughing. “Charley’s the one who nearly drowned me. And the water isn’t deep enough to drown a goose.” She glanced back at John. “Pay no attention to either of them. Since they decided to get married, they’ve become matchmakers.”

“So, you and Charley?” John asked. “Are you—?”

“Ne!” she declared. “He’s like a brother to me. We’re friends, nothing more.” It was true. They were friends, nothing more and no amount of nudging by her family could make her feel differently. When the right man came along, she’d know it…if the right man came along. Otherwise, she was content staying here on the farm, doing the work she loved best and helping her mother and younger sisters.

Ruth led the way up onto the back porch where Miriam and the two men stopped at the outdoor sink to wash their hands. John looked at the large pump bottle of antibacterial soap and raised one eyebrow quizzically.

Miriam chuckled. “What did you expect? Lye soap?”

“No.” He grinned at her. “People just think that…”

“Amish live like George Washington,” she finished. Ruth and Eli were having a tug of war with the towel, but she ignored their silly game and met John’s gaze straight on. “We don’t,” she said. “We use all sorts of modern conveniences—indoor bathrooms, motor-driven washing machines, telephones.” She smiled mischievously. “We even have young, know-it-all Mennonite veterinarians.”

“Ouch.” He grabbed his middle and pretended to be in pain. Then, he shrugged. “Lots of people have strange ideas about my faith, too. My sister gets mistaken for being Amish all the time.”

“Because of her kapp,” Miriam agreed. “Tell her that I had an English woman at Spence’s last week ask me if I was Mennonite.”

“I’ll admit, I didn’t know much about you until I came here. I was surprised that the practice had so many Amish clients.” Eli tossed the towel to him and he offered it to her.

“Of course. We have a lot of animals.” She dried her hands and took a fresh towel off the shelf for him.

She liked John. He had a nice smile. He was a nice-looking young man. Nice, dark brown hair, cropped short in a no-nonsense cut, a straight nose and a good strong chin. Maybe not as pretty in the face as Eli, who was the most handsome man she’d ever seen, but almost as tall.

John was slim, rather than compact like Charley, with the faintest shadow of a dark beard on his cheeks. His fingers were long and slender; his nails clean and trimmed short. When he walked or moved his hands or arms, as he did when he hung the damp towel on the hook, he did it gracefully. John seemed like a gentle man with a quiet air of confidence and strength. It was one of the reasons she believed that he was so good with livestock and maybe why he made her feel so at ease when they were together.

“Miriam, John, come to the table,” Mam called through the screen door. “The food is hot.”

It wasn’t until then that Miriam noticed that Ruth and Eli had gone inside, while she and John had stood there woolgathering and staring at each other. Would he think her slow-witted, that it took her so long to wash the barn off her hands?

“Ya, we’re coming,” she answered. She pushed open the door for John, but he stopped and motioned for her to go through first. He was English in so many ways, yet not. John was an interesting person and she was glad he’d accepted Mam’s invitation to eat with them.

Her sisters, Irwin and Eli were already seated. Mam waved John to the chair at the head of the table, reserved for guests, since her father’s death. She took her own place between Ruth and her twin, Anna. Since John knew everyone but Anna and Susanna, she introduced them before everyone bowed their heads to say grace in silence.

Miriam hadn’t thought she was hungry, but just the smell of the food made her ravenous. Besides the chicken and dumplings, Mam and Anna had made broccoli, coleslaw, green beans and yeast bread. There were pickled beets, mashed potatoes and homemade applesauce. She glanced at John and noticed that his gaze was riveted on the big crockery bowl of slippery dumplings.

Mam asked Irwin to pass the chicken to John and the big kitchen echoed with the sound of clinking forks, the clatter of dishes and easy conversation. Susanna, youngest and most outspoken of her sisters, made Mam and Eli laugh when she screwed up her little round face and demanded to know where John’s hat was.

“My hat?” he asked.

“When you came in, you didn’t put your hat on the coatrack. Eli and Irwin put their hats on the coatrack. Where’s yours?”

Miriam was about to signal Susanna to hush, thinking she would explain later to her that unlike the Amish, Mennonite men didn’t have to wear hats. But then Irwin piped up. “Maybe Molly ate it.”

“Or Jeremiah,” Eli suggested, pointing to Irwin’s little dog, stretched out beside the woodstove.

“Or Blackie,” Anna said.

“Maybe he lost it in the creek,” Ruth teased.

John smiled at Susanna. “Nope,” he said. “I think a frog stole it when we were pulling the horses out.”

“Oh,” Susanna replied, wide-eyed.

John was teasing Susanna, but it was easy for Miriam to see that he wasn’t poking fun at her. He was treating her just as he would Anna or Ruth, if he knew them better. Sometimes, because Susanna had been born with Down syndrome, people didn’t know how to act around her. She was a little slow to grasp ideas or tackle new tasks, but no one had a bigger heart. It made Miriam feel good inside to see John fitting in so well at their table, almost as if the family had known him for years.

“We won’t forget what you did for the horses,” Mam said. “Even if they did eat your hat.”

Everyone laughed at that and Susanna laughed the loudest. It was the best ending to a terrible day that Miriam could ask for, and by the time John had finished his second slice of apple pie, she was sure that he had enjoyed his meal with them as much as they’d enjoyed his company.

Later, after she and John and Ruth and Eli had inspected the horses, John drove away in his pickup. He had one final house call before calling it a day. Eli left as well, wanting to clean the chair shop for his uncle. That left Miriam and Ruth to do the milking. Irwin drove the cows in and offered to help, but Miriam sent him off to see if Mam needed anything. Irwin was shaping up to be a good gardener, but he didn’t know the first thing about milking and usually ended up getting kicked by a cow or spilling a bucket of milk.

Miriam looked forward to this time of day. She and Ruth had always been close friends and soon Ruth would be in her own home with her own cow to milk. Miriam would miss her. She loved her twin Anna dearly; she loved all her sisters, but Ruth was the kind of big sister she could talk to about anything. Of course there were some nights when Miriam might have preferred to milk alone.

“You know he’s sweet on you,” Ruth said. She was milking a black-and-white Holstein cow named Bossy in the next stall. Ruth had her head pushed into Bossy’s sagging middle and two streams of milk hissed into her bucket in a steady rhythm.

“Who likes me?” Miriam stopped a few feet from Bossy’s tail, her empty bucket in one hand and a three-legged milking stool in the other. She’d tied a scarf over her kapp to keep it clean and pushed back her sleeves.

“Charley. He’s going to make someone a fine husband.”

“I know he is. It’s just not going to be me.” Miriam sighed and walked to the next stall where Polly, a brown Jersey, waited patiently, chewing her cud. “And I’m tired of you and Anna trying to make something of it that isn’t.”

“You like the cute vet better?”

Polly swished her tail and Miriam pushed it out of the way as she placed her stool on the cement floor and sat down. “John?”

“Was there another cute vet at supper?”

“He came because we needed him. It’s his job.”

“Ya, but you like him.” Ruth’s voice was muffled by the cow’s belly. “Admit it.”

Miriam took a soapy cloth and carefully washed Polly’s bag. The cow swished her tail again. Miriam dropped the cloth into the washbasin and took hold of one teat. She squeezed and pulled gently and milk squirted into the bucket. “First Charley, then John.”

“He’s Mennonite,” Ruth said.

“I know he’s Mennonite.”

“But you think he’s cute.”

Miriam wished her sister was standing close enough to squirt with a spray of milk. Once Ruth started, there was no stopping her. “Mam invited him to dinner, not me.”