Huckleberry Spring (6 page)

Ben grunted as he buried his shovel blade into the hard dirt. By the shadow overspreading his features and the hard line of his lips, she could tell his mind was at the lake too. Maybe he remembered the sunset that tinged the clouds pink and orange before fading to a deep crimson and finally giving way to the darkness.

Did he remember how they had sat so close that her sleeve had brushed against his arm and made her tingle all over? Or how he had told her that he wanted to kiss her so bad that it took every bit of strength inside him not to go ahead and do it?

She studied the frown on his face as he labored with the dirt. Maybe he was thinking about how she’d accidentally sprayed mosquito repellant into his mouth while they were at the lake. He had laughed about it then, but maybe it wasn’t as fond a memory to him as it was to her. Mosquito repellant tasted pretty nasty. It was probably one of the reasons he’d left her.

She frowned to herself. Doubt and self-condemnation always accompanied thoughts of Ben—always the second-guessing and what-ifs. If she hadn’t burned down the chicken coop and sewed through her own finger, would Ben still love her? If she hadn’t sprayed repellant into his mouth or burned his birthday cake, would they be married right now? Thoughts of what might have been left her breathless.

Silence prevailed between them for a few minutes. Emma didn’t know how the silence could be any better than the conversation. If she stayed silent too long, Ben might start to notice how she hoed the dirt and determine that she was not a good enough gardener to be his wife.

“How is your family?” she blurted out. Talking was better than thinking about the regrets.

He paused, as if considering how to answer her question. “They’re gute. I went yesterday for supper.” He almost choked on his next words. “Lizzie said to tell you hello.”

Emma immediately decided she preferred the silence. It was impossible to talk about anything without dredging up memories too painful to contemplate. She most definitely did not want to talk about Lizzie, her former best friend. Lizzie blamed Emma when Ben ran away, and Emma couldn’t bear to face her.

Of course, Lizzie had been right to cut Emma off. How could they hope to be friends when Lizzie had lost her favorite brother because Emma was too flawed to be loved?

“My family is going to the lake when it gets a little warmer.” His face suddenly brightened. “I bet they would love it if you came. You and Lizzie could take that old canoe out.” Why did he smile like that at another memory that only made her want to weep? “Remember the first time you got into that canoe with Lizzie, and it started rocking something wonderful?”

Emma turned her face away so he wouldn’t see it glow bright red. “I remember.”

“It tipped over, and you thought you were drowning, but then you stretched your feet out and touched bottom. The water barely went to your waist.”

He’d obviously forgotten the best and the worst part of that story. She’d panicked when the canoe tipped and had started flailing her arms and praying for some sort of rescue. Even as her feet found purchase on the bottom of the lake, Ben had jumped into the water without hesitation and scooped her into his arms. They both laughed when they discovered how shallow it was, but he had still insisted on carrying her to shore.

It was the day they had met and the day she knew she loved him. Love at first sight, so to speak, although Mamm would say that notion was a bunch of baloney. Emma had been seventeen years old and had never looked back. Ben would always be the only boy she ever loved.

Her eyes stung with those blasted tears again. She attacked the dirt clod at her feet with renewed determination and pretended Ben wasn’t standing five feet away staring at her. The tears retreated.

“In the summer, you and Lizzie towed that canoe behind Dat’s buggy and went floating in the lake at least once a week.”

“She liked to row around the lake, but she always wanted to be the one to steer.”

Ben grinned. “That’s Lizzie. Bossy as a wren guarding her nest.” He dropped the grin and transformed into a minister giving a sermon. “You are blessed to have each other.”

Emma twitched her eyebrows in surprise and turned her face to her task so Ben couldn’t see her reaction. Didn’t he know that she and Lizzie hadn’t spoken since he left for Florida? She risked a glance at his face. His expression looked as if a plow had done its work on his brow.

Jah. He knew. Did he feel guilty that she had lost a friend as well as a fiancé?

Of course he felt guilty. She searched for a way to reassure him that things weren’t so bad, that she had plenty of other friends to paddle canoes with. She didn’t want him to feel any worse about this than he already felt. Her penchant to burst into tears at the slightest provocation wasn’t helping either.

She forced a cheerful—but hopefully not overdone—smile. “Martha Weaver, Amanda Coblenz, and I like to quilt together. And Edna Fern Glick and I go to
singeons
all the time. I have lots of friends. Besides, Mahlon still drags me to go fishing sometimes, although he says I scare away the fish with all my talking.”

Ben nodded with a weak smile on his lips. “Mahlon likes to fish.”

“I don’t. A hook stuck in your thumb hurts worse than a needle sewing through your finger.” Oh. She shouldn’t have mentioned that. Ben was already fully aware of how accident-prone she was.

His eyebrows rose two inches on his forehead, and his lips formed a silent
O
. “Did you have to go to the hospital?”

Her face got warm, and with her hoe she reduced the nearest clod to dust. “Dat pulled it out with his pliers. He said I didn’t need stitches.” Emma rejoiced that she wore garden gloves. She did not want Ben to see the scar. It would serve as further confirmation that he’d made the right decision to dump her.

“Titus caught a hook in his earlobe once. He has a little scar. Mamm says he looks like one of those Englischers with piercings all the way up their ears. One day, Titus stuck a tiny rhinestone over the top of his scar and told Mamm he’d gotten his ear pierced. You should have heard her squeal.”

Emma loved the sound of Ben’s laughter. Next to his singing, it was the best sound in the world. She smiled at him and tried to enjoy his company without thinking about what she had lost.

Unfortunately this was impossible for more than about ten seconds. But it was a gute ten seconds.

Ben proved to be quick with the shovel. They fell into an easy rhythm with each other as he turned up the soil and she broke it down. Emma started to feel comfortable. Her heart resumed a relatively normal pace. Relatively. The hard work diverted her attention from the handsome boy who was definitely working up a sweat and helped her focus on dirt and earthworms. She barely noticed how the muscles of Ben’s thick arms bulged with every slice of the shovel.

Once they’d turned up the soil, Ben shoveled dirt to make a little hill for the pumpkin plant. “You’re only planting one?”

“Jah, the giant one.” Emma didn’t want to say any more about giant pumpkins. Growing the giant pumpkin was the last big thing she and Ben had done together.

He didn’t mention it either. “Did you sell all those pumpkins you grew last year?”

“I had over two hundred yet.”

“Two hundred? That’s wonderful gute.”

“Mamm thought I was foolish to plant two full acres, but Dat said he had enough room for feed corn and he wanted to rotate the crops anyway. Mamm put seven big ones in the root cellar, and I made pies for several neighbors.” Emma trained her eyes to the ground. That had been after Ben left for Florida. She made pies until they came out her ears. The hard work hadn’t made her feel better about Ben in the least. But the pies had made her neighbors happy.

“When Yost Newswenger came to me and asked if he could have a few to sell, I let him have the rest of the crop. He sold most of them.”

The line between his brows deepened. “You gave Yost your pumpkins?”

Her heart sank. “Do you think that was foolish of me? Mamm scolded me for doing all the work and then giving away all the money. But Yost needed a bike to make deliveries for his
fater
. With his mamm feeling poorly, they don’t have extra money. I wanted him to have a bike.” She studied Ben’s face. He was probably counting all the reasons she would make a bad wife, like the fact that she gave away her hard-earned money like candy.

His expression revealed a mixture of delight and sadness, which didn’t make sense, but that’s what she saw. “You are the kindest person I’ve ever met, Emma.”

The way he said her name sent tendrils of electricity traveling up her spine. Maybe he didn’t think she was such a dolt after all.

Heat rose to her cheeks. “You haven’t met very many people, have you?”

“Thousands,” he said, almost breathlessly.

She couldn’t endure his penetrating gaze for long. “We’re almost ready for the bone meal. And how are you at shoveling manure?”

He buried his shovel in the dirt and lifted a heaping scoop. “You tell me.”

She glanced at his straining muscles and cleared her throat. “You’ll do fine.”

He slit the bag of bone meal with his shovel and carried the powdery fertilizer to wherever she asked him to dump it. Then he did the same with the other fertilizer and finally took the wheelbarrow to fetch an ample batch of manure while Emma worked everything into the soil with the rake and another shovel.

Sometimes, she wished she was hard of hearing. Everything had been going along so well. She hadn’t thought of crying for over half an hour when Ben came out of the barn with another load of manure, singing with his powerful bass voice.

“
No tears in heaven, no sorrows given. All will be glory in that land.
” Ben’s dawdi Felty was known for his beautiful voice. The sound could carry all the way to the highway on a good day. But Felty had nothing over Ben. Ben’s voice could charm wings off hummingbirds and stingers off wasps. When he sang, the breeze stopped playing with the trees so it could listen.

Last summer when they were alone together, Ben used to sing hymns to her. Emma had almost come to believe that God’s gift to Ben was only for her and that no other girl in the whole world would be sung to after she died.

She had worked so hard to maintain her composure, and she felt it slipping away the moment he started singing.

“
No tears in heaven fair, No tears, no tears up there.
”

How could he know that every note broke her heart a little bit more?

She dropped her hoe and started running. If she was going to disintegrate into a puddle of tears, she would do it in the privacy of Anna’s bathroom. And she was determined not to ruin the toilet paper roll this time.

“Emma? Are you okay?” he called after her.

She kept moving. Even with his long legs, he wouldn’t be able to waylay her. She had a pretty good head start.

“Emma, what’s wrong?”

She couldn’t leave him standing there guessing. He would blame himself for yet another outburst from Emma Nelson. “I have something in my eye,” she yelled, hoping that he could hear her with her back turned and her hand covering much of her face.

That wasn’t a lie. She had a thousand tears in her eyes that would escape as soon as she set foot in that bathroom. Once she left her bathroom sanctuary, she’d have to sneak away. She refused to show the puffy eyes ever again. The garden would have to wait.

By suppertime, Mahlon would be throwing eggs at Ben’s house for sure.

Chapter 4

Ben tilted his head to one side and nearly groaned out loud. His neck felt so stiff, he almost couldn’t move it. Trying to be as subtle as possible, he pressed his fingers into the tight muscles of his shoulders and worked his way up the right side of his neck. The firm pressure helped the stiffness a little, but he didn’t want Mammi to notice, so he didn’t really work himself over like he usually did. Hopefully Mammi was too engrossed in her knitting to pay him any heed.

Dawdi sat in the front seat of the car so he could get a good look at every license plate that passed by. Their driver, Roy, pointed out unusual plates, which wasn’t much help since there were about twenty different kinds of Wisconsin plates. Dawdi’s hopes were dashed more than once with an unfamiliar Wisconsin plate.

Dawdi had played the license plate game every year since Ben could remember. Last year, he had found his last plate, Nevada, three days after Christmas in a hospital parking lot in Milwaukee.

“Here comes one yet,” Roy said.

“I can’t see it,” Dawdi said. “Change lanes.”

“It looks like Rhode Island,” Roy said, as the car lurched to the right while he tried to get a better look.

Since Ben had the best eyes of the bunch, he leaned forward stiffly and looked out the windshield. “It is Rhode Island, Dawdi. See the anchor?”

“Well, what do you know about that!” Dawdi said, jotting down his find in his miniature notebook. “I thought having surgery would be a waste of time, but now that I’ve found Rhode Island, I don’t feel so bad about the whole thing.”

Roy and Dawdi refused to rest on their laurels. While careening down the highway, they glued their eyes to every car that passed in case they’d be fortunate enough to see New Mexico or Louisiana.

Ben leaned back and held on to the door handle for dear life. Nobody seemed to be paying attention to the driving while the hunt for license plates went on. The trip to Green Bay took less than an hour. They’d get there in one piece, Lord willing.

Mammi, oblivious to all the excitement of finding license plates, sat in the backseat next to Ben concentrating on her knitting or purling or whatever she worked on today. She reached over and patted Ben on the leg. “Don’t worry. We’re almost there.”

Her knitting creation looked as if it would be a very big forest-green blanket. “That’s pretty, Mammi,” Ben said, trying to keep his mind off the road while keeping his eyes glued to it. If they were going to crash, he’d rather it not come as a complete surprise.

“I’m making a shade covering for my pumpkin,” Mammi said. “Emma told me that if I want a really big one, I’ve got to keep it in the shade.”

Ben couldn’t nod well with the stiffness, so he smiled as best he could at Mammi and concentrated on the road while pressing a thumb into the long muscle that ran up the length of his neck.

The discomfort in his neck was nothing to the pain in his heart. As long as he stayed on Huckleberry Hill, it would be impossible to keep thoughts of Emma from burying him. He’d seen her three days last week, and his endurance was weakening. Dear Mammi had no idea how she tortured him when she pushed Emma and him together at every opportunity. His emotions were a raging fire that would consume him if he let down his defenses. He had come dangerously close last week when he and Emma prepared the soil for planting. The vivid memories of working side by side with her in the pumpkin patch last summer had nearly overwhelmed him.

He resolved to do a better job of staying away from Emma, no matter what Mammi wanted. Better to risk Mammi’s displeasure than to be so tied up in knots over Emma that he couldn’t function.

That had already happened once. He wasn’t strong enough to pull himself away from Emma’s love twice. He had to stay away from her, encourage her to keep her distance as well. His life would be so much easier if she had already given him up, if she had found another boyfriend. It would have been so much easier on everybody—especially him. He craved Emma the way most people craved air.

He shifted on the seat and kneaded the other side of his neck. Today was Dawdi’s nasal surgery. Depending on how well Dawdi recovered, Ben could be on a bus to Florida this time next week.

It couldn’t come soon enough.

“Look,” Dawdi exclaimed from the front seat. “
Ach, du lieva
. That’s Hawaii!”

No matter how reluctant Dawdi was to have surgery, he would consider the trip worthwhile.

 

 

Examining her handiwork, Emma grimaced and a low growl rumbled in her throat. She’d already unpicked the brim of this prayer
kapp
twice and there were three spots of blood on the crisp white fabric where she had pricked her finger on a sharp pin.

She grabbed her seam ripper for the third time and began picking out the stitches, wondering whom she could hire to sew a prayer kapp for her little sister Rose. Mamm had assigned the covering to Emma because she desperately needed the sewing practice. Emma longed to tell her mamm that kapps looked better without bloodstains, and quilts sold better if all the corners matched up—a skill that Emma had yet to master and probably never would. She didn’t have nimble fingers, but she had a green thumb. Why wouldn’t Mamm leave the sewing to Rose and let Emma tend produce all day? They’d make a lot more money from her cucumbers than they ever would with her clumsy quilts. As an added benefit, she didn’t usually bleed on the vegetables.

Except for that one time.

She felt a twinge of pain where her heart should have been if it hadn’t broken eight months ago. Ben used to tell her that he didn’t care if she had trouble with the treadle machine or if she burned the chicken every night. He assured her that he would hire a cook if they ever really needed to eat. He loved her and only her.

Correction. He had told her he loved her, but he hadn’t really meant it. Either that or her frequent mishaps had prompted a change of heart. Either way, she’d done plenty to drive him away, and she couldn’t be good enough or smart enough or graceful enough to get him back.

A tear plopped onto the white fabric, joining the three spots of blood and a gray smudge from her thumb. She might have to throw the whole thing away and start over.

But she was learning to control her emotions better when she had to be around Ben.

Surely she was getting better.

In the five occasions she’d been on Huckleberry Hill, she’d run to the safety of the bathroom only three times. Yesterday, she hadn’t needed to blink back one tear while she soaked pea seeds. Of course, Ben had been gone the whole day and she hadn’t seen him, but dry eyes under any circumstance was progress.

Mahlon strolled into the kitchen where the sewing machine sat. Studiously working on her covering gave her the perfect excuse not to look up. Mahlon would see the tears and get all riled up about Ben again. If there was one thing she didn’t need, it was Mahlon dumping rotten tomatoes on Ben’s doorstep.

“You coming to the gathering tonight?”

She silently sniffed back the tears. Lord willing, the moisture on her cheeks would dry before he looked too hard, and he’d be none the wiser. “Probably. But I’ll be late. Felty Helmuth is having surgery this morning, and I want to go visit him later today.”

Mahlon plucked an apple from the bowl on the table and took a hearty bite. “Will Ben be there?”

Why did her voice crack at the most inconvenient moments? “Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

Mahlon took an even bigger bite and smacked his lips. “Is that better?”

Keeping her face turned away, Emma giggled. “Jah, much better.”

Mahlon pulled a chair from the table, scooted it next to the sewing machine, and sat down. He leaned sideways so he could get a good look at Emma’s face.

She dipped her head lower.

Mahlon grunted. “Emma. Look at me. Is Ben going to be there?”

She promptly swiveled in her chair and turned her back on her brother. “Of course. He lives there. I see him all the time.”

“So why are you crying about it?”

She twisted around to look at him. His expression loomed as dark as if a tornado were about to come through.

“I pricked my finger.”

Mahlon pounded his fist on the sewing machine cabinet, making pins hop and dust motes take flight. “Anna Helmuth does not need help growing pumpkins.”

“Mahlon Nelson, you control your temper or you’ll get no supper.”

The trenches around his mouth deepened. “You mean perfectly cooked bread and crispy brown fried chicken? I don’t want it.”

“It’s getting better, Mahlon. I’ve only gone to the bathroom three times.”

He lifted his eyebrows as if she had stunned him beyond speech, but he still managed to expel the words from his mouth. “In your life?”

She cuffed him on the shoulder and laughed until tears ran down her face. Or rather, her tears of laughter mingled with the other ones and washed them away.

Mahlon merely grunted again and watched her laugh, probably wondering if he should put her in an asylum.

Emma wiped her eyes and sighed. It felt so good to laugh about something.

Mahlon picked up the pins that he had knocked onto the floor and pushed them into the pincushion sitting next to the machine. “You should wash your hands of that whole family, Emma. They’ve brought you nothing but grief. You don’t owe them anything.”

“Jesus said to love my neighbor as myself, and it was Pilate who washed his hands.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to plant pumpkins for them. Why don’t you just love them from the safety of your own vegetable garden? I’m sick of seeing you in tears all the time.”

Emma sniffed and blinked the moisture from her eyes so she could see well enough to finish picking the seam on the kapp. “I’m doing much better.”

Mahlon stood and shoved his fingers through his hair. “I know. I know. You only go to the bathroom when absolutely necessary.”

Mahlon turned when someone knocked on the back door. “I don’t like seeing you like this, Em.”

“I’m doing better.”

Emma’s heart jumped to attention and pounded in her chest like a bass drum. Ben’s younger sister Lizzie, Emma’s former best friend, stood on the back stoop clutching a brown paper bag to her chest like a shield. She’d probably need it the way Mahlon scowled at her.

“If it isn’t Dizzy Lizzie,” Mahlon said. His voice dripped with disdain. The only person who made him madder than Ben was Lizzie Helmuth. She had rejected Emma at the same time Ben had. Mahlon hadn’t forgotten.

Lizzie arched an eyebrow and pinned Mahlon with a sharp eye. She and Emma had been best friends for years. That meant Lizzie was more than capable of dealing with Emma’s annoying twin brother. She had never let him intimidate her before. “I wish I could say I am glad to see you, Mailman, but I don’t like to lie.”

He motioned to the bag she still clutched to her chest. “That better be fifty letters of apology, or you can forget about coming in my house.”

Despite her distress at seeing Lizzie after all these months, Emma leaped from her chair and shoved Mahlon aside. He didn’t resist, but merely threw his hands in the air and turned his back.

Lizzie lost all the swagger she’d used on Mahlon moments before. She turned bright red and stared at Emma as if she wished she could say something but couldn’t speak the language.

Emma decided that she must break the ice. Jesus said to love your neighbor. “Hi, Lizzie.”

Obviously embarrassed, Lizzie forced a smile and held out the bag to Emma. “The orphans are having a benefit sale.”

“The orphans?”

Mahlon made unnecessary amount of noise as he pulled a chair out from under the table. Training his eyes on Lizzie, he sat and made no indication that he would ever move again.

“There is an orphanage in Mexico that needs money. My aunt and uncle went there last year. They need diapers and stuff.”

“Oh, that’s interesting,” said Emma, with no idea how to keep the conversation going. She and Lizzie had never had trouble finding things to talk about before. My, how things had changed. What did Lizzie mean by coming over?

Lizzie forged ahead even as Emma drew back. “I am wondering if you would like to help me make a quilt. We used to quilt together every Thursday night.”

“There are a dozen girls better at quilting than me.”

Lizzie nibbled on her bottom lip and lowered her eyes. “I thought maybe we could be friends again.”

Mahlon glared at her and took a giant bite of another apple from the bowl. “Why would she want to be friends with you, Lizzie-Lizzie-in-a-Tizzy?”

Flames leaped into Lizzie’s brown eyes. Mahlon certainly knew how to make things significantly worse.

Emma turned to him. “Mahlon, close your mouth.”

Lizzie squared her shoulders, marched past Emma, and slapped the paper bag down on the table next to Mahlon. “I want Emma to help me make a quilt, and if that’s too difficult for your tender feelings to bear, then you should go stand in the corner and suck your thumb, you big baby.”

Mahlon nearly choked on his apple. Emma’s lips twitched upward as she pounded Mahlon on the back while he coughed and sputtered in surprise.

Lizzie always knew how to take Mahlon’s pride down about three notches. It was one of the reasons Emma liked her so well.

It didn’t take Mahlon too long to recover. “Why don’t you go tell your brother to quit bothering us, Busy Lizzie? Better yet, why don’t
you
quit bothering us?”

“Stop it, Mahlon,” Emma ordered.

Lizzie snatched the apple from his hand and threw it out the open door. “Why don’t you go fetch your apple, Mailman?”

Mahlon’s scowl could have peeled the paint off the barn—actually, off every barn in the county. He should have known better, but he got up anyway and strode out the door to retrieve his apple. Lizzie followed and slammed the door behind him, then slid the latch into place and clapped her hands together as if she’d dispensed with a household pest.