A Simple Autumn: A Seasons of Lancaster Novel Read online

  Blake was tall and thin—a similar build to Gabe’s, though he didn’t seem to have a lot of muscle on him. Gabe held his breath until the rider took off his helmet, revealing just a tall boy. The short, pale curls cut close to his head reminded Gabe of one of the neighbor’s sheep.

  Ben did the talking on their end, and Blake nodded at Gabe, saying, “Cool.” He led them over to an outbuilding that had been turned into a garage. Inside, half a dozen shiny bikes were lined up, tilting casually to rest on their metal pokers. Kickstands, Ben called them.

  “Very nice,” Gabe said, taking in the glimmering silver and parts painted in crazy lime green, orange, and blue brighter than a bolt of lightning. He hadn’t seen anything so tempting since his Grossmammi had taken him into a candy store in Paradise when he was just a boy.

  As Gabe listened to Blake’s explanation, he learned that the bikes had funny names like Rupp and Taco, Arctic Cat and Yamaha. He didn’t understand what made them different from one another, but he didn’t care. He just wanted to give one a try.

  “You’ll want to start with a minibike,” Blake said. “For newbies, they’re easier to handle than a full motorcycle. They all give a different ride. Depends on what you like.”

  Gabe swung one leg over a small blue bike and planted his hands on the handlebars. The grips fit his fingers like a glove. He pressed his shoes to the ground, testing. Would he be able to balance?

  “This is great,” Gabe said. “But why do you have so many?” A guy could only ride one at a time.

  “My father is into toys,” Blake said. “Besides, there isn’t a whole lot else to do out here. But we ride all the time. Dad and I built a dirt bike track out in the back pasture. And sometimes, when I get bored, I take the trails through the woods. Have you ridden a bike before?” he asked.

  “This is his first time,” Ben answered for Gabe. “But I told him it’s not that hard to do.”

  “Let me show you how it works.” Blake grinned. “Knowing how to stop is key.” Gabe got a lesson on how to switch gears with the kick pedal so that the bike could go faster.

  It didn’t seem so hard to learn, though some of Blake’s words floated off in the air. In his mind, Gabe was already flying down the path a mile from here.

  “But you gotta wear a helmet. It’s my dad’s rule.” Blake took two gleaming helmets from the rack and handed them out. “Try these on.”

  Gabe tossed his hat to Ben, who hung both of their hats on the empty pegs. The helmet squeezed his head as he pulled it on, but once there it felt okay. Gabe flipped the visor down and the journey was complete.

  He had entered another world.

  Gabe snapped the kickstand up and turned the key. So easy.

  Beside him, Ben straddled the orange bike. “I’ll lead the way,” he said. His visor was still up so Gabe could see his face, but his voice was a faraway sound from inside the helmet.

  The helmet was heavy on his head as Gabe nodded slightly, then gave him a thumbs-up.

  “They call it the need for speed.” Ben revved the engine, dropped his visor. With a shrill whine his bike shot out of the garage.

  Gabe followed the steps Blake had told him—what he remembered—and suddenly the bike was galloping forward. A wonderful good ride … much smoother than a horse.

  He kept his speed slow and steady, testing his balance, leaning a little to the side as he curved around a fence post.

  Not bad.

  The bikes were low to the ground—and fast! Ben was speeding down the lane like a fleeing stag.

  Gabe slowed to watch his cousin loop through some turns in the course made out of hay bales. The rear tire of Ben’s bike shifted in the dirt, fanning out to the left. The skid sent Ben’s bike toppling sideways. Ben went down into a pile of loose hay.

  “Whoa.” Gabe steered over to help his cousin, but Ben was already back on his feet, swinging onto his bike.

  In a flurry of motion to his right, Blake whipped down a path beside them on a yellow bike.

  Gabe grinned at the three of them, buzzing like mad bees in a race.

  He soared down the straight path, then shifted to a lower gear to slow on the curve to avoid the electric fence. The tires slipped on the sand as he turned, but he kept his balance and sped ahead.

  The bike bumped over a tree root and he went flying through the air.

  Gabe laughed as he landed, juggling balance with the machine that ate up the earth like a hungry beast.

  This was living. This was the way a man should travel God’s earth.

  FIVE

  That night, Jonah sipped his grape juice and wondered if he would grow old waiting for Annie to notice him. He imagined himself here at the family table in ten years, having a light supper of popcorn and grape juice before the singing.

  Ten years. Leah and Susie would probably be married by then.

  And in twenty years, would he be combing his gray hairs before he hitched Jigsaw up to a buggy?

  By then most of his siblings would be married off and settled with families of their own. But here at the table would be old brother Jonah, still pining for a secret love. His throat tightened over a kernel stuck in his throat. If he waited much longer to let Annie know how he felt, he’d be a wrinkled old man.

  “So who’s going to watch the little ones tonight?” Adam looked across the supper table, his brows knit in concern. “Who’s going to the singing?”

  “I’ll be going,” Jonah said.

  Gabe grabbed a handful of popcorn. “Me, too.”

  “If you’re going, you’d best beat the dust off your clothes,” Mary said. “What were you and Ben doing to get so dirty in your church clothes?” she asked Gabe.

  “Just riding around.”

  “Hmm. Well, you know I won’t miss the singing,” Mary said. “I haven’t seen Five all week.” Five was the nickname of John Beiler, Mary’s beau.

  Poor Mary, Jonah thought. With their sister Sadie gone off to the city, most of the household chores fell on Mary’s shoulders. She barely had a spare moment to spend with Five.

  “I promised Remy a ride,” Adam said, rubbing his chin. “Seems that half the house is going.”

  “I’ll make sure Katie and Sam get tucked into bed,” Ruthie said. She put a handful of popcorn in front of Katie, adding, “We can read a book in bed, right, Katie?”

  “The purple crayon,” Katie said.

  “Okay.” Ruthie smiled. “I like Harold and the Purple Crayon, too.”

  “I like that book, too,” Leah said, her eyes bright behind her glasses. “I’ll help you, Ruthie.”

  “And I can make sure Sam gets a bath,” Simon said. “How long has it been, Sam?”

  Sam swiped at his mouth, but his upper lip remained stained purple from the juice. “I don’t know.”

  “You know, Leah and I are fifteen now,” Susie said. “When will we be allowed to start going to singings?”

  Adam grunted. “You just turned fifteen. I think you should wait another year. Sixteen is a good age for rumspringa.”

  “It’s too hard to wait that long!” Susie said dramatically.

  Jonah grinned. “Is there a boy you’re looking to court, Susie bug?”

  Susie’s cheeks flamed a rosy color. “No. There’s no boy, but … I just like to go out and be with people. I’m a social butterfly.”

  Jonah noticed the spark of amusement in Mary’s eyes, though Adam kept a straight face.

  “Well, you’ll have to be a social butterfly here on the farm for a bit longer,” Adam said. “I don’t see you two in the kitchen much. You must help Mary with the chores. Adult privileges are for those who take on adult responsibilities.”

  “I want to learn how to cook more dishes,” Susie said. “And Leah isn’t lazy. She just gets lost in her books.”

  “I pitch in, too,” Leah said. “And what about all those weeks at the end of the summer when we detasseled corn for Tom Kraybill?”

  “That was hard work,” Mary agreed. “You girls were so s
pent at the end of each day. It’s the only time I’ve seen Leah fall asleep without a book in her hand.”

  “I just want to go to the singings,” Susie said.

  “Because you’re a social butterfly,” Jonah teased her. He could imagine his younger sister flitting from one group to another like a butterfly in the garden. While her twin, Leah, was a quiet bookworm who liked to view the world through stories, Susie wanted to be in the world, talking and laughing. In some ways Susie reminded Jonah of Annie. Such sunny personalities.

  “I just can’t wait to go to a singing,” Susie said. “How I miss the singing that used to go on here with Sadie in the house! Every night while we washed the dishes, we would sing together. And all over the farm, you could always find Sadie. You just had to listen for her beautiful voice.”

  The family grew silent for a moment, and there was only the clatter of forks on plates as they all thought of their eighteen-year-old sister, who had left home for Philadelphia this summer.

  Everyone missed Sadie. Sometimes, when the wind whistled through narrow outbuildings by the silo or stirred the leaves of the beech trees, Jonah was reminded of his sister’s music. There was always music on the land, a song that changed with each new season, but somehow Sadie had managed to give voice to Gott’s earth in songs that could steal your breath away.

  Ya, he missed her, too.

  Although the younger ones kept hoping she’d return and get right with the church, Jonah had seen the look in Sadie’s eyes when she was with her boyfriend, Mike. Sadie had fallen for an Englisher boy and Englisher music, and though Jonah loved his sister, he feared she was lost to them.

  The last time she had visited here, Sadie had seemed happy. But Jonah couldn’t imagine leaving his family or the life that he knew to chase a dream. He knew a thing or two about the world out there, the world that the Amish stayed separate from. It had its temptations, but it also had sharp teeth and the bite of a wolf. Jonah preferred to chase his dreams right here in Halfway.

  As he chewed another mouthful of popcorn, he wondered if maybe tonight would be the night that Annie Stoltzfus finally looked him in the eye. “Ask, and it shall be given you. Seek, and ye shall find.” The Bible verse came to him unexpectedly, and he now understood it. He was going to have to find the words to talk with Annie.

  He flashed back over his years of longing for Annie. He remembered every moment, whether she was just serving him coffee at a barn raising or brushing past him while ice-skating on the pond. He remembered her words, her laugh, the pattern of freckles on her nose. And all along, she never noticed him. He wondered what it would take to get her attention. To look up and see those blue eyes watching him. To press his palm to one of her creamy cheeks …

  Lately he’d spent some time at the Stoltzfus house, helping to fix storm damage. Annie had a way of looking right through him as if he wasn’t there, but he’d gotten a closer look at her daily comings and goings. Fixing the shingles on the damaged roof, he’d gotten a bird’s-eye view of her life.

  From the roof he’d watched her go off to the henhouse or out to the yard to hang clothes. There was something soothing about watching her fingers clip clothes up so quickly and systematically. Shake, clip, shake, clip, clip … Dresses and pants and shirts went on the outside line and undergarments inside so that they couldn’t be seen from the road. He knew the routine from home, but there was something wonderful about watching Annie do it.

  He didn’t mean to spy, but it was hard to look away. He had memorized the way she walked, and he was a sucker for anything she cooked. He knew her well, but he didn’t know how to talk to her. He couldn’t find the words to talk to any females outside his sisters or grandmother. And that was a painful thing for a twenty-two-year-old man to face.

  At the supper table, Sam broke the uncomfortable silence. “I have many things to show Sadie,” he said. “When is she coming home?”

  “We don’t know, dear one,” Mary said quietly.

  “She wants to come in November for the weddings,” Ruthie said. “She told me that in her last letter. She’ll even stay a few days to help with the cleanup.”

  “But we don’t know if the bishop will allow it,” Adam said.

  “Ya.” Ruthie lowered her gaze to the table. “Sadie is afraid he’ll give her a talking-to if he sees her here.”

  “And he will,” Mary said. “It’s not an easy place Sadie’s gotten herself into, what with falling in love with her music and an Englisher man.” Although her words were harsh, there was only sadness in her voice. “I don’t think she’ll ever come back to us.”

  “I want her to come back and see my boat. It’s almost done,” Sam said, his eyes shiny with hope. Sam had been building a toy boat in the woodshop with Adam, and Jonah had been glad to see the youngest King boy bonding with the oldest. “I hope it will float,” Sam added.

  “You’d best finish up before the weather turns,” Jonah said. “People are saying it will be a wet fall.”

  “I like fall,” Simon said. “It’s school that’s the problem. I barely have any time to train Shadow now that I have to go study reading and writing all day.”

  “But I miss school,” Leah said. She and Susie had finished their eight years of schooling last spring. “I miss hearing Teacher Emma’s voice while I’m working quietly. And reading, writing, and arithmetic are a lot easier than washing down milking stalls and cleaning house.”

  “What if we got real jobs?” Susie asked, turning to her twin. “Yesterday at the market I heard that Lovina Stoltzfus needs help at the tea shop. One of her daughters is moving away with her husband to an Old Order settlement up north.”

  So it was true; Annie’s sister was really leaving Halfway. Over a mouthful of juice, Jonah considered what it might mean.

  “I’d like to work in the tea shop,” Leah said.

  “Ye Olde Tea Shop.” Susie smiled. “That would be the most exciting thing that ever happened in our lives! We would meet people from far and wide.”

  “Tourists,” Adam said glumly. “Englishers. It’s not the same as being social at a singing.”

  “Still … I would enjoy working there. It would be like setting up a tea party every day.” She turned pleading eyes to Mary. “Will you ask Annie about it? Ask if her mamm might hire us?”

  “And who is going to mind your chores around here while you’re in town?” asked Mary.

  “We’ll do both,” Leah said.

  Susie nodded. “We’ll do double the work.”

  Jonah kept quiet, but he decided to ask for them. It would give him something to talk to Annie about.

  As the meal finished, Jonah asked Mary about the renovations going on at the Beilers’ farm.

  “Oh, it’s coming along. They’ve put in a small kitchen and they’re working on the bathroom.”

  “Have you seen it?” Adam asked.

  Mary nodded. “It’s nice and new. More than enough space for two people starting out.”

  The plan was for Mary and Five to live in the new apartment over the carriage house after they were married.

  “It’s funny that Five’s dat had all those boys,” Gabe said. “He gave the older ones land when they got married, but then he ran out.”

  Jonah nodded. The Beilers’ story was not an unusual situation among the Amish. Five’s father had set the older Beiler men up with parcels of land, but now he had no more left to give without cutting the farm too small.

  Someday, it’ll be the same problem for me, Jonah thought as he fetched his hat and headed out to the barn to hitch up his horse. There’d be no stake in this farm for him. After Adam married in November, he and Remy would be in charge of the King family farm.

  But when Jonah was ready to wed, he’d be looking for a place to live and land to farm. If he managed to get married before he was an old, withered man. He laughed at himself as he got Jigsaw’s harness from the tack room.

  God willing, Annie would notice him one of these days … before he was sent off to ro
ck in a chair at the Doddy house.

  SIX

  At the Stoltzfus dinner table, everyone was laughing at Dan Esh’s stories of his fishing capers. Annie’s last bite of panfried walleye melted in her mouth as her brother-in-law finished telling how he and Perry had caught the fish on the nearby river that afternoon.

  “Nothing was biting,” Dan said. “Three hours, we were waiting. So Perry broke out the cooler Sarah had packed for him. Gave me half of his sandwich, which was nice. Denki, Perry.”

  Across the table, Perry touched his short beard and grinned. “Ya, but I thought you’d be eating it yourself.”

  “I was eating it when I remembered something my father had told me. How he once had baited a hook with bread and caught a whopper. I figured it was worth a try.”

  “And that’s how you caught these fish?” Annie asked.

  “Not exactly,” Perry said.

  “The problem was, that bread wouldn’t stay on our hooks,” Dan said. “I don’t know how my dat did it. But I was getting frustrated. I pulled a piece of ham from my sandwich and stuck that on the hook.” He paused, his gray eyes twinkling. “Next thing I knew, I had a tug on my line. A heavy pull! It didn’t come in easy, but I finally landed that big fish.”

  Laughter rose from the family.

  Dat roared with amusement. “With ham? I’ve never heard of that.” He pressed one hand to his chest and laughed some more.

  Dat’s laughter lightened Annie’s heart. Aaron Stoltzfus had always been warm and good-natured, but lately the stress of the farm had been wearing him down. It showed in his pale complexion and his lack of energy at the end of each day. With a small farm to run and no sons to help him run it, Aaron had relied on the help of his two sons-in-law, Perry and Dan, to keep things going. But Perry would be leaving soon, and the Eshes’ harness shop in Halfway was demanding more and more of Dan’s time lately.