Hope deferred, p.1
Hope Deferred, page 1
The characters and events in this book are the creation of the author, and any resemblance to actual persons or events is coincidental.
HOPE DEFERRED
Copyright © 2020 by Linda Byler
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Good Books, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
ISBN: 978-1-68099-587-9
eBook ISBN: 978-1-68099-606-7
Cover design by Koechel Peterson & Associates
Printed in United States of America
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Story
Glossary
Other Books by Linda Byler
About the Author
“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but when longing is fulfilled, it is a tree of life.”
Proverbs 13:12
CHAPTER 1
EVERYONE KNEW THEY WERE BEST FRIENDS.
In the Amish circle that was a bit unusual, but nothing ever changed, from that first day of school when they played a game of kickball and he told her she could kick better than any girl he knew. She looked into his sparkling blue eyes and checked out his white teeth in a smile that was as big as her world. He watched her step back, lower her brows, bite her tongue in determination, and place a direct kick that sent the ball flying in a wonderful arc.
They lived on neighboring farms in Lancaster County. They walked to school together with a gaggle of older siblings who hardly took notice of either one, except to yell at them to get off the road; didn’t they see that car coming? They didn’t.
David Stoltzfus was six years old, already tall and well built, with blue eyes that seemed lit with an inner light. His beaming enthusiasm endeared him to his teachers. Way ahead of his class, his hand waving wildly at every question, knowing all the answers, he was never left behind in any discussion, or sport.
Anna Fisher was no slacker, either, only a bit shy and unsure of her own answers. She was a small child, thin to the point of being skinny but able to run effortlessly, like a small deer, her legs propelling her forward with no strain, simply a seamless rhythm of arms and legs. Her blonde hair was the color of ripe wheat flecked with cream-colored strands where the sun bleached the rolls along the side of her head and where her mother twisted them according to the Amish ordnung for small girls. Every school day she wore colorful dresses with a black pinafore-style apron, her feet bare in warm weather.
When David learned to drive a pony, Anna was the first one he took for a ride. She sat beside him in the spring sunshine and allowed a giggle of pure joy to escape her mouth before turning to look at him to share the bubbly feeling of riding in a cart that swayed and bobbed. The pony arched its neck and trotted down the road, its small hooves beating out a staccato rhythm that caused the harness to flap and bounce, sending small puffs of dust from the thick hair on its rump. It was all right if the loose hair from the pony’s winter coat floated back and clung to the sides of her mouth or stuck to her cheeks. It was all in the bargain of being allowed to sit beside David as he handled the reins, a competent driver, even if he took the turns too fast, causing her to lean over and grab the iron railing that curved around the wooden seat.
Their lives intertwined like the borders of their families’ properties were joined by the Pequea Creek, each family’s right to half of the water never disputed. It was a lovely little waterway, meandering through the countryside beneath overhanging willow branches that hung into the creek, the ends carried endlessly along by the current as it ran its riverward course. It separated rolling hills, deep-soiled corn fields, and verdant stands of soybeans and alfalfa.
In spring the water turned the color of caramel pie, a thick brown roiling sluice that was more dangerous than it appeared. Parents warned their children, “Bleivat aus de grick.” More than one drowning had cruelly taken loved ones when the Pequea was in flood, and well they remembered. But in summer, the creek was a pleasant place to play, cool, deep and green beneath overhanging maple and oak branches, the banks slick with mud and heavy green grass. Minnows darted beneath gnarled tree trunks, and the only way to catch them was with a net scooped in the proper area. The minnows were deposited in their mother’s plastic scrub bucket, taken home, and dumped into the water trough in the barn, where they all met an untimely death. David and Anna never could figure out what caused them to become so dead so quickly, the white flash of their silver bellies the first thing they saw in the morning when they checked on them.
“Dote. Sie sinn all dote.” David said sadly.
His older brother gave him the oxygen statistics of a creek versus a water trough, but David shook his head in furious denial. “You don’t know everything!” he shouted, then gathered up all the dead “minnies,” put them in an old shoebox, gave them proper names, and then buried them behind the henhouse.
Melvin, Marcus, Mervin, Mary, Mattie, Marvin, and when he couldn’t think of more names that started with M, he named the rest with names starting with N. Nancy, Naomi, Neil. He couldn’t tell the boys from the girls, but that was all right; at least they had a proper burial if they could never grow up to be big fish.
Anna and David loved playing in the creek, with Abner and Isaac and Anna’s sister MaryAnn, who were all older and wiser and tried to boss them around. The bossing resulted in the same passionate blow-up from the outraged David, Anna standing stoically beside him completely in awe of every word he said.
Where does childhood begin and end? No one can say, as each child is an individual and begins remembering at a different time than his or her peers.
David remembered being carried to the barn in his father’s arms and deposited on a prickly bale of hay, his father hurrying to milk the cows. He never stayed on the bale of hay but slid off immediately, finding cows that couldn’t reach their allotment of corn silage, which he quickly remedied by pushing it within the reach of the animal’s long, sandpapery tongue. He wandered quietly around the barn like one of the cats, darting here and there in search of whatever interested him at the moment, usually the corn silage disposal, an empty bucket, a brush, or any empty feedbag he could throw at the cats that rubbed themselves against his trousers.
In summer, he played in the milk house, squirting water on the floor from the hose coiled on the cement block wall, then sliding across the slick painted floor, making an awful mess. Being the youngest boy, he was not scolded, simply put up with.
His life was inhabited by adults, his closest sibling being eight years his senior. MaryAnn was like a second mother, sent to keep an eye on him and make sure he didn’t get into trouble. How was she supposed to keep him out of it if he turned into an outraged little Rumpelstiltskin the minute she tried to propel him away from yet another disaster? He would turn fire engine red, yell, wave his arms, and stomp his feet if he was not allowed to continue with whatever forbidden project he’d thought of now.
And this all before he turned five years old.
His mother, Rachel, a bowed and plump housewife of forty-seven years, was simply tired. She had been past what she considered childbearing age when she produced a nine-pound, twelve-ounce baby boy. The pregnancy had been rife with nausea and water retention, until she felt like a water balloon and resembled a hippopotamus.
After David entered the world, she was merely exhausted and stayed that way, her shoulders steadily rounding, her head tilted forward in a bowed stance of martyrdom and submission. The spark that had been reduced by the antics of Abner and Isaac had been extinguished completely by the youngest son’s passionate outburst of rage.
His father, tall, slim, with energy that never waned, went full speed from sunup to sundown, his eyes bright with the zest of his life on the farm. If his wife seemed unenthused, it was all right; he loved her anyway. Chewing tobacco behind her back, he sat on the cultivator and sent streams of its juice across the corn rows. He lifted his old straw hat to scratch his head and consider ways to improve profits on the price of milk. Good-humored 90 percent of his life, easygoing, and never riled about much of anything, Eli Fisher was well liked and respected, always voting on one board or another. He’d done a good job with his boys, raising them to be hardworking and obedient. The girls, too, were good workers and sought after by the market-stand owners.
The farm itself was a testimony to hard work and good management, the buildings preserved through decades of use from one generation to the next. The gray limestone house was built in 1798 and set close to Hollander Road, a bank of Boston ivy keeping the weeds down on the north side beneath an oak tree.
The first impressions on anyone who turned into the homestead came from the wide front porch, the low windows, and a massive door that seemed to welcome visitors. A white barn appended with a new hip-roofed cow stable complemented the constant flowering of perennials and annuals s
The Stoltzfus property was another picturesque Lancaster County farm built on fertile soil tilled for centuries and nurtured with animal waste, lime, and commercial fertilizer. Seasons came and went, babies were born, the elderly were laid to rest, the traditions carried on, a vein of teachings from the ordained ministers nourishing the lifeblood of the community.
Vass die alte trick glesst hen. An interwoven mixture of moral values and obedience to God and His word, submission to the ordnung, chaste, honest brotherly love, one caring for the other in humility, the wife’s duty to her husband as keeper of the home.
Some more than others.
As in every culture, there was diversity. Liberals and conservatives strove to coexist in harmony, to allow each one his own prickling of conscience by standards as various as the colors on the earth, yet bound to God and each other through the very existence of the Amish faith. A simple life, without electricity and automobiles. In spite of this truth, modernity stabbed its fingers into the woven fabric of the ancient culture, rearranging, tweaking, and bringing small changes here and there. Solar panels on roofs powered washing machines and LED light bulbs positioned above a happy housewife’s sink. Cell phones creeped into the fabric of the church, considered unwanted as sin by some folks, and the handiest of devices by the more liberal ones, gleefully Googling a world of knowledge. Either way, the youth slipped into the informational lure of the cell phone on the well-oiled slide of the world. The ministers and bishops repaired rents in the woven fabric of the church. They conferred among themselves, prayed for the wisdom to advise, admonish, discipline, and tread the tightrope of accepting small changes while preserving the old Amish lifestyle.
David Stoltzfus was born and raised in this world, where his story begins at the age of seven, when he attended Meadow Run School in New Holland township.
The windows were bitter cold. Autumn wind blew the leaves in nervous shades of dull orange and red as the gale tore at the tender stems, sending a great many of them swirling off into the woven wire fence surrounding the small parochial schoolhouse that was the color of sand. Cornfields had been reduced to stubble by the plodding teams of Belgians or mules that drew cutters along the rows, binding the immense stalks of corn that had grown all summer, nurtured in the excellent soil by sun and rain that seemed to arrive when and where it was needed. It truly was the garden spot of America.
David walked backward, his hat pulled down so far it hid his eyebrows and most of his eyes, so he could talk to Anna, his words hurled away on the howling wind.
He carried the same sensible red and white Rubbermaid lunch box he’d carried the year before, the bottom lined with a stiff Great Value paper towel from Walmart, a juice box, a bologna and cheese sandwich on a white roll with mayonnaise, a sour red apple he wouldn’t eat but that would stay in his lunch all week, a bag of rippled potato chips, two molasses cookies sprinkled with sugar, and a packet of cheese crackers.
No granola bars. He’d eaten the last one in bed last night, waking up to find his pillow holding a raisin, which he popped into his mouth first thing.
David entered the schoolhouse, answered Naomi King’s “good morning” with one of his own, smiling, jaunty, already organizing the game of kickball that would take place before the bell rang. Anna, Melinda, Marvin, and Sammy on his team; Ruthanna, Elvin, Christopher, Mark, and Emily on theirs.
The sound of the bell clapper atop the roof of the schoolhouse put an end to the game. Each child raced to the front door, eager to begin the day.
Naomi King was in her late twenties, a tall, slim, brown-haired brown-eyed girl with a pleasant but plain face. There was no outstanding feature, but no ugliness either, just a face that held no attraction, save an occasional smile that showed more of her gums than what was deemed conventional. She was kind, strict but fair, managing her classroom of eight grades efficiently. Twenty-four students and one sixteen-year-old helper who was more interested in the shape of her eyebrows and the gleam of oil on her nose than anything else.
Naomi thought wryly about having twenty-five students and no helper.
She stood to read the first chapter of Psalms in the Bible, watching for any movement, any rustling of paper from beneath lowered lashes. Students were expected to sit still while the Bible was read.
“David.”
Guilty, David closed the tablet and put it away. Like a cornered rat, he glared back at the curious stares of his classmates, ready to hurl insults at accusing eyes.
They stood to repeat the Lord’s prayer, all together in modulated tones and a certain reverence.
“Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.”
After praying, they all surged forward and helped themselves to a handmade songbook, the pages filled with hymns the various teachers had taught them through the years. They raised their eyes expectantly.
“Sally, I believe it’s your turn.”
Sally whispered shyly, “Forty-three.”
Naomi repeated it more loudly so the others could hear. Shuffling their songbooks, older children reached forward to help the first graders. Then the room was filled with the voices of twenty-four children who poured their hearts and efforts into the hymn. The clean bell-like tones of innocent children whose voices were unmarred by self-consciousness or strife rose and fell as the beauty of the song poured across the classroom.
“Father, I adore thee, Lay my life before thee.”
Once singing was over, David found his Spunky the Donkey arithmetic book and opened it to the page to be worked on that day. He looked around furtively before clicking down on his lead pencil and proceeding to write. He knew he was supposed to wait till Naomi announced his class, but he was ambitious. By the time she got to second grade, he had finished more than half of his work, bringing a sigh from his teacher.
“David. You know you should wait till I explain your new lesson.”
“I already know how.”
“I know. But you need to wait.”
“Why?”
“What will you do the rest of the period?”
“Read.”
David held up a copy of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
Naomi shook her head. “Really, David? Tom Sawyer?”
“What’s wrong with that?”
Nothing really, Naomi thought as she shrugged and gave him a small smile. But he was seven. Most of her students were reading Amish picture books. There was nothing really wrong with David’s book, it was just, well, advanced for a seven-year-old.
But she knew he would be able to read and understand every word. He was just so ahead of his class, just so old for a second grader.
Too busy to be pondering the intellectual advancement of one small boy, she moved on to aid little stumbling Henry Esh. “Anna, would you give Henry these flas hcards after you’re finished, please?”
Eagerly, the angelic blonde-haired girl nodded.
Naomi smiled, gave the class to her helper, and moved on to third grade.
His arithmetic completed in less than forty-five minutes, David slid down into his seat, opened Tom Sawyer where his bookmark was inserted, its black tassel swinging from the stiff cardboard, and began to read, entering Tom’s world of a muddy brown Mississippi River, the villain Injun Joe, the blonde-haired Becky Thatcher, and all the crazy things that went on in that watery, steamy hot world in the antebellum South.
David sneezed, unexpectedly sending a spray of moisture across his desk and anointing the unkempt strands of brown hair directly in front of him. The hair turned into a furious white face, eyebrows lowered in true boyish outrage. David met the snapping black eyes with indifference, lifting a forefinger and twirling it slowly.
“Turn around,” he mouthed silently.
And, of course, Henry did. In the unspoken pecking order among the children, David was the undisputed king of second grade.
Anna Fisher was the second child in a family of five. Her parents were in their early thirties, a slim ambitious mother with hair the color of new wheat and eyes bluer than robin’s eggs.
