Rebecca's Christmas Gift

The memory of walking the beam with Rebecca in his arms rose in his mind and he pushed it away. He hadn’t felt the softness of a woman’s touch for a long time. Had he been unnecessarily harsh with Rebecca because somewhere, deep inside, he’d been exhilarated by the experience?

Caleb sighed. God’s ways were beyond the ability of men and women to understand. He hadn’t asked to be a leader of the church, and he certainly hadn’t wanted it.

He hadn’t been here more than a few weeks and had attended only two regular church Sundays when one of the two preachers died and a new one had to be chosen from among the adult men. The Seven Poplars church used the Old Order tradition of choosing the new preacher by lot. A Bible verse was placed in a hymnal, and the hymnal was added to a pile of hymnals. Those men deemed eligible by the congregation had to, guided by God, choose a hymnal. The man who chose the book with the scripture inside became the new preacher, a position he would hold until death or infirmity prevented him from fulfilling the responsibility. To everyone’s surprise, the lot had fallen to him, a newcomer, something that had never happened before to anyone’s knowledge. If there was any way he could have refused, he would have. But short of moving away or giving up his faith and turning Mennonite, there was no alternative. The Lord had chosen him to serve, so serve he must.

Caleb looked up at his house, barely visible in the darkness, and came to a halt. He had come to Seven Poplars in the belief that God had led him here. He believed that God had a purpose for him, as He did for all men. What that purpose was, he didn’t know, but for the first time since he’d arrived, he felt a calm fall over him. Everyone had said that, with time, the ache he felt in his heart for the loss of his wife would ease, that he would find contentment again.

As he stood there gazing toward his new house—toward his new life—it seemed to Caleb that a weight gradually lifted from his shoulders. “All over a kitten,” he murmured aloud, smiling in spite of himself. “More nerve than common sense, that girl.” He shook his head, and his wry smile became a chuckle. “If the other females in my new church are as headstrong and unpredictable as she is, heaven help me.”

* * *

The following morning, Rebecca and her sisters Miriam, Ruth and Grace walked across the pasture to their sister Anna’s house on the neighboring farm. Mam, Grace and Susanna were already there, as they had driven over in the buggy after breakfast. Also present in Anna’s sunny kitchen were Cousin Dorcas, their grandmother Lovina—who lived with Anna and her husband, Samuel—and neighbors Lydia Beachy and Fannie Byler. Fortunately, Anna’s home was large enough to provide ample space for all the women and a noisy assortment of small children, including Anna’s baby, Rose, and Ruth’s twins, the youngest children, who’d been born in midsummer.

The women were in the kitchen preparing a noonday meal for the men working on Caleb’s barn, and Rebecca had just finished quietly relaying the story of her new kitten’s rescue to her sisters.

Rebecca had spent most of the night awake, trying to feed the kitten goat’s milk from a medicine dropper with little success. But this morning, Miriam had solved the problem by tucking the orphan into the middle of a pile of nursing kittens on her back porch. The mother cat didn’t seem to mind the visitor, so Rebecca’s kitten was now sound asleep on Miriam’s porch with a full tummy.

Grace fished a plastic fork out of a cup on the table, tasted Fannie’s macaroni salad and chuckled. “I’d love to have seen that preacher carrying you and the kitten across that beam,” she teased. And then she added, “Hmm, needs salt, I think.”

“Keep your saltshaker away from my macaroni salad,” Fannie warned good-naturedly from across the room. “Roman has high blood pressure, and I’ve cut him off salt. If anyone wants it, they can add it at the table.”

Grossmama rose out of her rocker and came over to the table where bowls of food for the men were laid out. “A little salt never hurt anyone,” she grumbled. “I’ve been eating salt all my life. Roman works hard. He never got high blood pressure from salt.” She peered suspiciously at the blue crockery bowl of macaroni salad. “What are those green things in there?”

“Olives, Grossmama,” Anna explained. “Just a few for color. Would you like to taste it?” She offered her a saucer and a plastic fork. “And maybe a little of Ruth’s baked beans?”

“Just a little,” Grossmama said. “You know I never want to be a bother.”

Rebecca met Grace’s gaze and it was all the two of them could do not to smile. Grossmama, a widow, had come to live in Kent County when her health and mind had begun to fail. Never an easy woman to deal with, Grossmama still managed to voice her criticism of her daughter-in-law. Their grandmother could be critical and outspoken, but it didn’t keep any of them from feeling responsible for her or from loving her.

A mother spent a lifetime caring for others. How could any person of faith fail to care for an elderly relative? And how could they consider placing one of their own in a nursing home for strangers to care for? Rebecca intimately knew the problems of pleasing and watching over her grandmother. She and her sister Leah had spent months in Ohio with her before the family had finally convinced her to give up her home and move East. Still, it was a wonder and a blessing to Rebecca and everyone else that Grossmama—who could be so difficult—had settled easily and comfortably into life with Anna. Sweet and capable Anna, the Yoder sisters felt, had “the touch.”

Lydia carried a basket of still-warm-from-the-oven loaves of rye bread to the counter. She was a willowy middle-aged woman, the mother of fifteen children and a special friend of Mam’s. “I hope this will be enough,” she said. “I had another two loaves in the oven, but the boys made off with one and I needed another for our supper.”

“This should be fine,” Mam replied. “Rebecca, would you hand me that bread knife and the big cutting board? I’ll slice if you girls will start making sandwiches.”

Lydia picked up the conversation she, Fannie and Mam had been having earlier, a conversation Rebecca hadn’t been able to stop herself from eavesdropping on, since it had concerned Caleb Wittner.

“I don’t know what’s to be done. Mary won’t go back and neither will Lilly. I spoke to Saul’s Mary about her girl, Flo, but she’s already taken a regular job at Spence’s Market in Dover,” Fannie said. “Saul’s Mary said she imagined our new preacher would have to do his own laundry because not a single girl in the county will consider working for him now that he’s run Mary and Lilly off.”

“Well, someone has to help him out,” Fannie said. She was Eli Lapp’s aunt by marriage, and so she was almost a distant relative of Caleb. Thus, she considered herself responsible for helping her new neighbor and preacher. She’d been watching his daughter off and on since Caleb had arrived, but what with her own children and tending the customer counter in the chair shop as well as running the office there, Fannie had her hands full.

Mam arched a brow wryly as she took a fork from the cup and had a taste of one of the salads on the table. “A handful that little one is. I’d take her myself, but she’s too young for school.” Mam was the teacher at the Seven Poplars schoolhouse. “My heart goes out to a motherless child.”

“No excuse for allowing her to run wild,” Grossmama put in. “Train up a child the way they should go.” This was one of their grandmother’s good days, Rebecca decided. Other than asking where her dead son Jonas was, she’d said nothing amiss this morning. Jonas was Grossmama’s son, Mam’s husband and father to Rebecca and all her sisters. But although Dat had been dead for nearly five years, her grandmother had yet to accept it. Usually, Grossmama claimed that Dat was in the barn, milking the cows, although some days, she was certain that Anna’s husband Samuel was Jonas and this was his house and farm, not Samuel Mast’s.

“Amelia needs someone who can devote time to her,” Fannie agreed. “I wish I could do more, but I tried having her in the office and...” She shook her head. “It just didn’t work out. For either of us.”

Rebecca grabbed a fork and peered into a bowl of potato salad that had plenty of hard-boiled eggs and paprika, just the way she liked it. From what she’d heard from Mam, Amelia was a terror. Fannie had gone to call Roman to the phone and the little girl had spilled a glass of water on a pile of receipts, tried to cut up the new brochures and stapled everything in sight.

“Caleb Wittner needs our help,” Mam said, handing Rebecca a small plate. “He can hardly support himself and his child, tend to church business and cook and clean for himself.”

“You should get him a wife,” Grossmama said. “I’ll have a little of that, too.” She pointed to the coleslaw. “A preacher should have a wife.”

Lydia and Mam exchanged glances and Mam’s lips twitched. She gave her mother-in-law a spoon of the coleslaw on her plate. “We can’t just get him a wife, Lovina.”

“Either a housekeeper or a wife will do,” Fannie said. “But one way or another, this can’t wait. We have to find someone suitable.”

“But who?” Anna asked. “Who would dare after the fuss he and his girl have caused?”

“Maybe we should send Rebecca,” Grace suggested.

Rebecca paused, a forkful of Anna’s potato salad halfway to her mouth. “Me?”

Her mother looked up from the bowl she was re-covering with plastic wrap. “What did you say, Grace?”

Miriam chuckled and looked slyly at Rebecca. “Grace thinks that Rebecca should go.”

“To marry Caleb Wittner?” Grossmama demanded. “I didn’t hear any banns cried. My hearing’s not gone yet.”

Anna glanced at Rebecca. “Would you consider it, Rebecca? After...” She rolled her eyes. “You know...the kitten incident.” Anna’s round face crinkled in a grin.

Rebecca shrugged, then took a bite of potato salad. “Maybe. With only me and Susanna at home, and now that Anna has enough help, why shouldn’t I be earning money to help out?”

“You can’t marry him without banns,” Grossmama insisted, waving her plastic fork. “Maybe that’s the way they do it where he comes from. Not here, and not in Ohio. And you are wrong to marry a preacher.”

“Why?” Mam asked mildly. “Why couldn’t our Rebecca be a preacher’s wife?”

“I didn’t agree to marry him,” Rebecca protested, deciding to try a little of the pasta salad at the end of the table. “I didn’t even say I’d take the job as housekeeper. Maybe.”

“You should try it,” Anna suggested.

Rebecca looked to her sister. “You think?” She hesitated. “I suppose I could try it.”

“Gut. It’s settled, then,” Fannie pronounced, clapping her hands together.

“Narrisch,” her grandmother snapped. “Rebecca can’t be a preacher’s wife.”

“I’m not marrying him, Grossmama,” Rebecca insisted.

“You’re going to be sor-ry,” Ruth sang. “If that little mischief-maker Amelia doesn’t drive you off, you and Caleb Wittner will be butting heads within the week.”

“Maybe,” Rebecca said thoughtfully, licking her plastic fork. “And maybe not.”

Chapter Three (#uede5edac-330e-503e-a609-c8cce8718db1)

Two days later, Caleb awoke to a dark and rainy Monday morning. He pushed back the patchwork quilt, shivered as the damp air raised goose bumps on his bare skin and peered sleepily at the plain black clock next to his bed. “Ach!” Late... He was late, this morning of all mornings.

He scrambled out of bed and fumbled for his clothes. He had a handful of chores to do before leaving for the chair shop. He had to get Amelia up, give her a decent breakfast and make her presentable. He had animals to feed. He’d agreed to meet Roman Byler at nine, in time to meet the truck that would be delivering his power saws and other woodworking equipment. Roman and Eli had offered to help him move the equipment into the space Caleb was renting from Roman. He’d never been a man who wanted to keep anyone waiting, and he didn’t know Roman that well. Not only was Roman a respected member of the church, but he was Eli’s partner. What kind of impression would Caleb make on Roman and Eli if he was late his first day of work?