An Amish Match

Lloyd Burkholder had been a gut man...when he’d been sober. As he had never been drunk beyond their home, nobody knew about how a gut man became a cruel man as alcohol claimed him. The teasing about how she was clumsy, the excuse she gave for the bruises and her broken finger, hurt almost as much as his fist had.

She put her hand over her distended belly. Lloyd would never be able to endanger their second kind as he had his first. Now she wouldn’t have to worry about doing everything she could to avoid inciting his rage, which he’d, more than once, aimed at their unborn kind the last time she was pregnant. Before Sammy was born, she’d been fearful Lloyd’s blows might have damaged their boppli. God had heard her desperate prayers because Sammy was perfect when he was born, and he was growing quickly and talking nonstop.

Joshua started to say more, then closed his mouth. She understood. Too many sad memories stood between them, but there were gut ones, as well. She couldn’t deny that. On the days when Lloyd hadn’t been drunk, he had often taken her to visit Joshua and Matilda. Those summery Sunday afternoons spent on the porch of Joshua and Matilda’s comfortable white house while they’d enjoyed iced tea had been wunderbaar. They had ended when Matilda became ill and was diagnosed with brain cancer.

A handful of gray buggies remained by the cemetery’s gate. The horses had their heads down as rain pelted them, and Rebekah guessed they were as eager to return to their dry stalls and a gut rubdown as Dolly, her black buggy horse, was.

“Mamm!” Sammy’s squeal of delight sounded out of place in the cemetery.

She whirled to see him running toward them. Every possible inch of him was wet, and his clothes were covered with mud. Laughter bubbled up from deep inside her. She struggled to keep it from bursting out.

When she felt Joshua shake beside her, she discovered he was trying to restrain his own amusement. She looked quickly away. If their gazes met, even for a second, she might not be able to control her laughter.

“Whoa!” Joshua said, stretching out a long arm to keep Sammy from throwing himself against Rebekah. “You don’t want to get your mamm dirty, do you?”

“Dirty?” the toddler asked, puzzled.

Deborah came to a stop right behind Sammy. “I tried to stop him.” Her eyes filled with tears again. “But he jumped into the puddle before I could.”

Rebekah pulled a cloth out from beneath her cape. She’d pinned it there for an emergency like this. Wiping her son’s face, she gave the little girl a consoling smile. “Don’t worry. He does this sort of thing a lot. I hope he didn’t splash mud on you.”

“He missed me.” The girl’s smile returned. “I learned how to move fast from being around Aenti Ruth’s kinder. I wish I could have been fast enough to keep him from jumping in the puddle in the first place.”

“No one is faster than a boy who wants to play in the water.” Joshua surprised her by winking at Sammy. “Isn’t that right?”

Her son’s smile vanished, and he edged closer to Rebekah. He kept her between Joshua and himself. Her yearning to laugh disappeared. Her son didn’t trust any man, and he had gut reason not to. His daed, the man he should have been able to trust most, could change from a jovial man to a brutal beast for no reason a toddler could comprehend.

“Let’s get you in the buggy.” Joshua’s voice was strained, and his dark brown eyes narrowed as he clearly tried to understand why Sammy would shy away from him in such obvious fear.

She wished she could explain, but she didn’t want to add to Joshua’s grief by telling him the truth about the man her husband truly had been.

“Hold this,” he said as he ducked from under the umbrella. Motioning for his daughter to take Sammy’s hand again, he led them around the buggy. Rain struck him, but he paid no attention. He opened the door on the passenger side. “You probably want to put something on the seat to protect the fabric.”

“Danki, Joshua. That’s a gut idea.” She stretched forward to spread the dirty cloth on the seat. She shouldn’t be surprised that he was concerned about the buggy, because he worked repairing and making buggies not far from his home in Paradise Springs. She stepped back while Joshua swung her son up into the carriage. If he noticed how Sammy stiffened, he didn’t say anything.

Once Sammy was perched on the seat with his two fingers firmly in his mouth, Joshua drew the passenger side door closed and made sure it was latched so her son couldn’t open it and tumble out. He took his daughter’s hand before they came back to stand beside her.

Rebekah raised the umbrella to keep the rain off them. When he grasped the handle, she relinquished it to him, proud that she had managed not to shrink away. He smiled tautly, then offered his hand to assist her into the buggy.

“Be careful,” he warned as if she were no older than her son. “The step up is slick, and you don’t want to end up as muddy as Samuel.”

“You’re right.” She appreciated his attempt to lighten her spirits as much as she did his offer.

Placing her hand on his palm, she bit her lower lip as his broad fingers closed over it. She’d expected his hands to be as chilled as hers, but they weren’t. Warmth seeped past the thick wall she’d raised to keep others from discovering what a fool she’d been to marry Lloyd Burkholder.

Quickly she climbed into the buggy. Joshua didn’t hold her hand longer than was proper. Yet the gentle heat of his touch remained, a reminder of how much she’d distanced herself from everyone else in their community.

“Danki, Joshua.” She lowered her eyes, which were oddly almost even with his as she sat on the buggy seat. “I keep saying that, but I’m truly grateful for your help.” She smiled at Deborah. “Danki to you, too. You made Sammy giggle, and I appreciate that.”

“He’s fun,” she said, waving to him before running to another buggy farther along the fence.

“We’ll see you back at Mamm’s house,” Joshua said as he unlashed the reins and handed them to her.

She didn’t say anything one way or the other. She could use her muddy son as an excuse not to spend the afternoon with the other mourners, but she didn’t want to be false with Joshua, who had always treated her with respect and goodness. Letting him think she’d be there wasn’t right, either. She stayed silent.

“Drive carefully,” he added before he took a step back.

Unexpected tears swelled in her eyes, and she closed the door on her side. When they were first married, Lloyd had said that to her whenever she left the farm. He’d stopped before the end of their second month as man and wife. Like so much else about him, she hadn’t known why he’d halted, even when he was sober.

It felt wunderbaar to hear a man use those commonplace words again.

“Go?” asked her son, cutting through her thoughts.

“Ja.” She steered the horse onto the road after looking back to make sure Joshua or someone else wasn’t driving past. With the battery operated lights and windshield wiper working, she edged the buggy’s wheels onto the wet asphalt. She didn’t want to chance them getting stuck in the mud along the shoulder. In this weather it would take them almost an hour to reach their farm beyond Bird-in-Hand.

Sammy put his dirty hand on her cape. “That man was mad at me.”

“Why do you think so?” she asked, surprised. From what she’d seen, Joshua had been nothing but friendly with her son.

“His eyes were funny. One went down while the other stayed up.”

It took her a full minute to realize her son was describing Joshua’s wink. Pain pierced her heart, which, no matter how she’d tried, refused to harden completely. Her darling kind didn’t understand what a wink was because there had been too few cheerful times in his short life.

She had to find a way to change that. No matter what. Her kinder were the most important parts of her world, and she would do whatever she must to make sure they had a gut life from this day forward.

* * *

Joshua walked into the farmhouse’s large but cozy kitchen and closed the back door behind him, glad to be inside where the unseasonable humidity didn’t make everything stick to him. He’d waved goodbye to the last of the mourners who’d came to the house for a meal after the funeral. Their buggy was already vanishing into the night by the time he reached the house.

He was surprised to see only his younger sister Esther and Mamm there. Earlier, their neighbors, Leah Beiler and her mamm, had helped serve food and collected dishes, which they’d piled on the long table in the middle of the simple kitchen. They had insisted on helping because his older sister Ruth was having a difficult pregnancy, and her family had gone home hours ago.

The thought of his pregnant sister brought Rebekah to mind. Even though she was going to have a boppli, too, she had no one to help her on the farm Lloyd had left her. He wondered again why she hadn’t joined the mourners at his mamm’s house. Being alone in the aftermath of a funeral was wrong, especially when she’d suffered such a loss herself.

Take care of her, Lord, he prayed silently. Her need is great at this time.

A pulse of guilt rushed through him. Why hadn’t he considered that before? Though it was difficult to see her because she brought forth memories of her late husband and Matilda, that was no excuse to turn his back on her.

Tomorrow, he promised himself. Tomorrow he would go to her farm and see exactly what help she needed. The trip would take him a long way from his buggy shop in Paradise Springs, but he’d neglected his obligations to Lloyd’s wife too long. Maybe she would explain why she’d pulled away, her face growing pale each time he came near. He couldn’t remember her acting like that before Lloyd died.

“Everyone’s gone.” Joshua hung his black hat on the peg by the door and went to the refrigerator. He poured himself a glass of lemonade. He’d forgotten what dusty work feeding, milking and cleaning up after cows could be.

And hungry work. He picked up a piece of ham from the plate on the counter. It was the first thing he’d eaten all day, in spite of half the women in the Leit insisting he take a bite of this casserole or that cake. They didn’t hide the fact they believed a widower with three kinder must never eat a gut meal.

“Mamm, will you please sit and let me clear the table?” Esther frowned and put her hands on the waist of her black dress.

“I want to help.” Their mamm’s voice was raspy because she’d talked so much in the past few days greeting mourners, consoling her family and Rose’s, and talking with friends. She glowered at the cast on her left arm.

The day before Rose died, Mamm had slipped on her freshly mopped floor and stumbled against the table. Hard. Both bones in her lower left arm had broken, requiring a trip to the medical clinic in Paradise Springs. She’d come home with a heavy cast from the base of her fingers to above her elbow, as well as a jar of calcium tablets to strengthen her bones.