Second Chance Proposal

* * *

John followed the sounds and silences of the service from his position in one of the small bedrooms near the two large front rooms of the Yoder home. The hymns, chanted slowly in unison verse by verse, had a beauty all their own. It was so different from the music he’d heard on the rare occasions when he’d attended an Englisch service. In the outside world hymns were always accompanied by some musical instrument—most often a pipe organ that huffed and thudded as the organist pushed or pulled the stops and pressed down on the row of pedals beneath her feet.

He had missed the quiet rhythm of hymns from the Ausband—hymns passed down through the generations, hymns that could run on for dozens of verses, hymns he had memorized as a boy. He heard the drone of the preacher’s voice as the first of the two sermons was delivered. Since the door to the bedroom was closed, he did not hear the actual words until he was called to seek his forgiveness.

He folded his hands and leaned his elbows on his knees. He ought to be praying for God’s guidance. He ought to be using this time to figure out how he was going to state his case without sounding either arrogant or insincere. He ought to be trying to understand exactly what he hoped to achieve by coming back here—what his life was going to look like after today. He ought to be doing all of that but, instead, his mind was filled with thoughts of Liddy.

She would be there sitting with the other women and girls, all of them dressed in the solid dark-colored dresses and aprons topped by the starched prayer kapps of their faith. They would wear their hair the same, as well, for in the Amish world sameness was a sign of commitment to the community at large; individuality in dress or style was seen as rebellious. Male and female would sit shoulder to shoulder on their respective sides of the room, their eyes either on the minister or lowered in prayer. None of them would be distinguishable from their neighbor. For that was their way. The community was everything and the individual was nothing.

That was, of course, why he had to apologize and seek forgiveness. He had put his personal dreams and plans above what was considered in the best interest of the community. In the outside world such actions would be considered laudable. He would be praised for his ambition and determination to make something of himself. But not in Celery Fields or any other Amish community.

And not in the eyes of Liddy Goodloe.

He knew why the rest of the community had failed to understand his purpose in leaving eight years earlier, but he had thought that Liddy of all people knew why he’d done the only thing he’d felt he could do if the two of them were to have a future. She had counseled patience then but how long was he expected to wait? And she, too, had wanted to marry and start their life together. He was certain of that—or at least he had been.

He stood and paced the confines of the room, the leather soles of his new work boots meeting the polished planks of the wooden floor with a distinct click like the ticking of a clock. He straightened his suspenders and tucked his shirt more firmly into the waistband of his wool trousers. He heard more singing and then the hum of Bishop Troyer’s deep voice as the elderly man delivered the second and final sermon for the day.

Soon the deacon would come for him.

Soon he would face them.

Soon one way or another it would be decided.

And if someone voted against him? What then?

He would have little choice but to leave Celery Fields for good. Mentally he considered each of his neighbors and friends, picturing them waiting to seal his fate. By this time tomorrow he would either be settled back into the fold of the community or once again miles away from everything he had once cherished.

The final hymn began. John stood next to the closed door listening for the deacon’s footsteps. He closed his eyes and prayed for God to show him the way. Liddy would say that if it was God’s will he would be forgiven and just like that, in the eyes of the community, the last eight years would be gone. People would greet him as if he had been in town the whole time. Liddy would no longer look at him with the eyes of a cornered animal...or would she?

Chapter Four

The vote was unanimous in John’s favor.

The bann had been lifted and in the yard, where the members of the congregation had gathered to share the light fare of the after-services meal, the atmosphere was that of a celebration. As Lydia brought out platters of food the women had prepared in Greta’s kitchen she saw John surrounded by a circle of men, his full-throated laughter at something one of the men had just said filling the air around her. It was as if the past eight years had never happened. She froze suddenly, her eyes riveted on John, her ears attuned to his voice, so familiar, so dear.

“Oh, it is so good to have this matter decided!” Greta exclaimed as she came alongside Lydia and followed her gaze to where John was standing. “Now things can return to normal around here.” She wiped away beads of sweat from her forehead with the back of one hand. “Is it me or is it unusually hot today?”

“It’s you and that extra weight you’re carrying,” Pleasant replied as she nodded toward the protrusion of Greta’s pregnancy and relieved Lydia of the platter she’d nearly forgotten she was holding. “Liddy, find your sister a place in the shade before she passes out.”

“Please do not make a fuss,” Greta protested, but Lydia saw the way her younger sister pressed one hand against her side and the grimace that followed.

“Come and sit, anyway,” Lydia instructed. “You still have Samuel’s birthday supper to manage. It will do you good to rest some.” She saw Luke glance up and excuse himself from the group of men, then move quickly to his wife’s side.

“Are you all right?”

“I am fine,” Greta assured him.

“I’ll get you some water,” Luke said, but before he could do so John was there with a glass filled with cold lemonade.

“I seem to remember you liked your lemonade extra tart, Greta.” He grinned at her and Greta giggled as she accepted the glass.

“It is so good to have you back, John,” she said. “Everyone is truly pleased.”

Lydia did not miss the way her sister cut her eyes in her direction as she said this.

“It is certain that we have been losing more people than we have gained here in Celery Fields,” Pleasant added. “What are your plans, John Amman?”

Lydia hid her smile at her half sister’s well-known habit of speaking her thoughts bluntly, not taking time to temper them with discretion.

John chuckled. “Ah, Pleasant, I’ve missed your forthright way of coming to the heart of any matter.”

“That does not answer my question.”

“For now I will work at the hardware store with my uncle. In time...”

Lydia almost gasped when she glanced at John as he paused. In his eyes she saw the faraway look she remembered so well from their youth, as if he were already miles away from this place and time.

He had not changed at all, she thought. He was still the dreamer.

“In time?” Pleasant prompted.

John shrugged. “Only God can say.” He focused his gaze on Lydia.

“I forgot the bread,” she murmured, and hurried back inside the house. From the kitchen she watched out the window. She saw Gert tug on John’s arm and lead him across the yard to be introduced to people who had moved to Celery Fields since his departure.

She saw him smile as he spoke to those families that had moved to Celery Fields since he’d been gone. She saw him nod sympathetically as Gert introduced him to a young couple who had lost everything in a recent fire. She watched as he admired children and bent to their height to speak with them, charming them with some chatter that made their eyes go wide or their faces break out in smiles.

Oh, how she had loved him once long ago. Loved him for all of these things. But he had left her, and seeing the way he had looked away when Pleasant questioned him, Lydia had no doubt that in time he would leave again.

* * *

By the time he walked back to his rooms following the services, John had heard the story of how Lydia had one Sunday simply decided that she would no longer sit with the unmarried girls. He chuckled as he imagined her walking into the service, looking neither left nor right as she took her place in the back row with the married and widowed women. And no one protested.

Of course, that was Liddy. She might not be as free-spirited as he had often been but even as a girl she had demonstrated a streak of independence that had worried her father and older half sister. It had been that very inclination toward questioning things that had attracted John to her. From the first day he’d worked up the nerve to walk home from school with her he had felt she was someone who could perhaps understand his own restless spirit. And as they had spent more and more time together, his certainty had grown that they were meant to be together—destined to share a life filled with happiness beyond anything they could imagine. While at home he had to face his father’s constant disapproval, when he was with Liddy none of that mattered. She listened. She encouraged him to pursue his love of carpentry. She believed in him. She loved him—or so he had thought.

But in the end she had chosen the community over him, as any good Amish girl would have. She had conducted herself as any Amish girl would when dealing with someone under the bann. She had let his letters go unanswered, shunning him as tradition required. That single action had told him more forcefully than any words she might have written that, in her eyes, he had chosen the wrong path and she could not—would not—stand by him.

He stared down at the house he’d visited so often as a boy. He, Liddy and Greta had played tag or hide-and-seek, and he had helped Liddy get through her chores so the two of them could go to the beach. He had sat with Liddy on the porch after a Sunday-evening hymn singing and a ride to her house in the brand-new courting buggy every Amish boy received when joining the congregation. And although no one had spoken openly about it, the expectation had been that he and Liddy would soon marry and start a family of their own.

As he stood at the window lost in memories of the past they had shared—a time when everything had seemed possible—John couldn’t help but wonder if the old wooden swing on the porch of Liddy’s house still squeaked. He smiled as he recalled a day when he had offered to oil the connection between the hook and the chain that held the swing in place. Liddy’s father had thanked him for the offer but said with a wink, “Now, if I let you fix that squeak, how will I know what you and that daughter of mine are up to?”

How Liddy had laughed when he told her that. “We’ll just have to find a quieter place, then,” she’d said with a twinkle that matched her father’s.

And they had. At every opportunity he would meet her at the bay that separated the town of Sarasota from the barrier islands standing between the community and the Gulf of Mexico. At the bay they would walk out on the mudflats where Liddy would collect shells while he fished. In the late afternoon they would walk their bikes along the unpaved roads that led east to Celery Fields. Sometimes they walked the entire distance across the causeway from downtown Sarasota to the islands beyond and the wide sandy beaches of the Gulf of Mexico. They walked instead of riding in his buggy or taking their bicycles because it gave them more time. More time to plan their future together.

“So much for that,” John muttered as he plucked his hat from the peg near the door and headed for Greta’s house. He was not sure why he had agreed to attend the supper and birthday celebration, but a promise was a promise. At least Greta’s boys had been excited to know he would be there.

* * *

“He’ll be here,” Greta murmured as she worked next to Lydia, peeling vegetables for the stew she was making for their supper.

It did no good for Lydia to pretend she didn’t care but she tried, anyway. “It hardly matters to me, after all. He’s your guest,” she said, licking her thumb after she nicked it with the paring knife.

“You’re nervous,” Greta said with a sharp nod. “It’s to be expected. After all, if the congregation had rejected him he would probably be long gone by now. I mean, what would he have left to stay around for? But they didn’t reject him and now you have to decide what to do.”

“About what?”

“About the fact that you are still in love with him. And about the fact that he has come back here for one reason—you.”

Sometimes Greta’s certainty could be so annoying. To disguise her irritation, Lydia laughed. “Greta, John Amman and I have not seen each other in years. He was not much more than a boy when he left here and I was...”

“You were both of age to be married,” Greta reminded her. “You had both been baptized into the faith and you were on your way to starting a life together.” She placed her hand on Lydia’s. “What happened? You never talked about it to me or anyone else.”

Greta had still been a child oblivious to the heartaches of courtship when John boarded the train that took him away from Celery Fields to a job in St. Augustine on the east coast of Florida—a job he’d only read about in the Sarasota newspaper. A job he did not yet have but one he was certain was the key to their future that did not rely on his becoming a farmer.

“He left.” Lydia pulled away from her sister’s touch and scooped the chopped vegetables into the boiling water.

“And now he has returned,” Greta continued. She sat down in one of the wooden kitchen chairs and pulled a bowl of frosting toward her. “He certainly did not come back to work in the hardware store,” she commented as she swirled the creamy confection onto each layer of her son’s birthday cake.

“He had nowhere else to go.” Lydia clamped her lips together. Why was she even attempting to reason with her romantic sister?

Greta gave a hoot of a laugh. “Admit it, Liddy. He came back because of you. So what are you going to do about it?”

“Nothing,” Lydia replied as she picked up a stack of plates and utensils and went to set the long table in the front room. From the yard she could hear the children’s laughter as they played and, after a moment, through the open window that overlooked the porch, she heard male voices drifting into where she worked. Her heart skipped a beat as she realized that one of those voices belonged to John. He was talking to her brother-in-law Luke. This is how it might have been every Sunday evening, she thought as she centered each plate precisely in front of each chair. This is the life John and I might have shared if he had not left.

She felt the sting of tears even as she felt the sting of the memory that not once had he written or tried to contact her after that day. Everyone knew that John Amman was the only boy she’d ever come close to marrying. Almost from that first day when John had caught up to her on her way home from school they had been inseparable. Once they reached their teens their families, as well as the rest of the town, simply assumed that they would wed. But late one night John had left Celery Fields to seek his fortune in the outside world. She fought unsuccessfully against the memory of that night when her entire life had changed forever. It had been raining. She had followed him to the train station hoping to talk sense into him. He had listened impatiently and then he had begged Lydia to come with him, painting her a picture of the adventures they would share, the money he would make, the material things he would buy for her.

“I don’t want such a life,” she had argued. “I just want you.”

“Then promise me you will wait,” he’d pleaded. She had known in that instant that nothing she could say would change his mind.

“I will wait for you to come to your senses, John Amman,” she had told him, tears streaming down her cheeks.

But he never had. No one had seen or heard from him—certainly not Lydia. His family had worn their shame like a hair shirt until the day they sold their farm and moved back to Pennsylvania. Lydia’s father had forbidden any mention of John in his presence. Her mother was dead. Greta was too young to understand what had happened, and Pleasant—in those days—had not been someone that either Greta or Lydia could go to for solace.

So Lydia had turned all of her attention to her teaching, pouring herself into the lives of her students and their families and quickly establishing her place in the community. Through the years there had been hints that this man or that was interested in her and would be a good provider. But when it had come to even considering a match with any other man, Lydia had refused. She had loved only one man in her life and she would not settle for less—even if that man surely had to be the most obstinate and opinionated man that God had ever set His hand to creating.

She set the rest of the plates around the table and then surrounded them with flatware and glasses, ignoring the low murmur of John’s voice and his occasional laughter as he visited with Luke. As she set the last glass in place, the crunch of bicycle tires and buggy wheels on crushed shells told her that other guests were arriving. She gave one final glance at the table to assure herself that nothing was missing and then called out to her sister, “Greta, company.” She smoothed her apron and went to greet Pleasant and her family, Levi and Hannah and their children, the bishop and his wife and John’s aunt and uncle.

In the clamor surrounding the arrival of the other guests Lydia was certain she would be able to avoid John’s presence. Once they sat down for supper she had already planned to let him find a place first and then to take a chair as far from him as possible. The very fact that she was making such elaborate plans told her that John Amman was too much on her mind.

He is here, in Celery Fields and at this party, as he will no doubt be often where you are, she scolded herself silently. Best get used to it.

And having made up her mind to face whatever she must to get through the evening Lydia squared her shoulders and went out onto the porch. She greeted the women and invited them to carry their contributions into the kitchen. Then she turned to the men. “Supper is almost ready,” she said, and forced herself to meet John’s gaze before looking at the gathering of men as a group. “We can sit down as soon as the children have washed their hands.”

Clapping her hands, she stepped off the porch and into the yard and called for the children to stop their games. When they immediately abandoned the tree swing and seesaw that Luke had built and came running, she heard Roger Hadwell chuckle.

“The children mind their teacher better than they do their parents,” he said. But then Lydia noticed a clouded expression pass over his features. “Just wish there were more of the little ones around,” he added softly as he made his way past her and into the house.

“What did he mean by that?” John asked. He and Lydia were the only adults left on the porch.

“Enrollment is down at the school and it may have to be closed,” Lydia explained. She was so relieved that his first attempt at conversing with her had nothing to do with their personal history that she was able to speak easily. She saw John’s eyes widen in surprise and concern.

“But that’s your...that’s the way you...”

“Times are hard, John. You know that perhaps better than anyone in Celery Fields. If the school building and land can be put to better purpose for the good of the community then that’s the way of it.” She herded the children into a single line and pointed to a basin and towel set up on the porch. “Wash your hands,” she instructed.

“But what about you—what’s best for you?” John persisted. He reached around her to hold open the door so the children could file into the house.

She looked at him for a long moment. “You are still too much with the outside world, John,” she said. “You have forgotten the lesson of joy.”

“Joy?”

“Jesus first, you last and others in between.” She actually ticked off each item on her fingers the same way she might if teaching one of her students the lesson. Embarrassed by her primness, she followed the last child into the house, leaving John standing on the porch.

She had not intended to engage in any true exchange of conversation with him, anything that might let him know more of her life after all this time. Her plan had been to remain polite but distant. Still, the realization that he had forgotten the old ways—the idea that community came first—was just one more bit of evidence that John Amman would struggle against the bonds that the people of Celery Fields lived by.

Why should she concern herself with his happiness? He had left her before and he would leave her again.

* * *

After Lydia moved the children into the house, John stayed on the porch staring out over the single street that ran from Luke and Greta’s house to the far end of town where the bakery and ice-cream shop sat. He found it hard to absorb how much the community had changed in eight years and yet so much was familiar and comforting about being back here. In the distance he heard a train whistle and he remembered how as a boy he had dreamed about where that train might one day take him, the adventures he might have. The adventures he and Liddy might have together. But the destinations of that train held no attraction for him now. He knew all too well what was out there.

“John?”

Greta stood on the other side of the screen door watching him with an uncertain smile. She was so very different from Lydia in both physical appearance and demeanor. Greta’s smile came readily while Lydia’s had to be coaxed. Greta’s vivacious personality drew people to her while Lydia’s reserve kept them at arm’s length.

“We are ready for supper,” Greta said.

John pulled open the screen door. “Gut,” he said with a grin intended to erase the lines of concern from Greta’s forehead. “It’s been three hours since I last ate.”

Greta glanced back at him and then she giggled. “Ah, John Amman, it is good to have you back. We have missed you.”

They were still talking and laughing when they entered the large front room where a table stretched into the hallway to accommodate all the adults and children. John paused for a moment to enjoy the scene. This was one of the things he had missed most about the life he’d left behind—this gathering of friends and family on any excuse to share in food and conversation and the special occasions of life. He recalled one time when he had attended a Thanksgiving dinner at the home of his business partner in the outside world. There the adults had sat at a dining-room table set with such obviously expensive crystal and china that John had spent the entire meal worrying that he might break something. The children had been shooed away to the kitchen and a separate table set for them with the more practical everyday crockery.

He liked the Amish way of having all generations in one room much better, he decided as he pulled out a vacant chair. He glanced around until he located Lydia taking a seat on the same side of the table but with the safety of his aunt and three small children separating them. Luke took his place at the head of the table and all conversation stopped as every head bowed in silent prayer.

John thanked God for the food and for the willingness of the townspeople to forgive him and take him back into the fold of the community—and for second chances. After a long moment he heard Luke clear his throat, signaling that the meal could begin. Instantly the room came alive with the clink of dishes being passed. Conversation buzzed as the adults talked crops and weather while the children whispered excitedly. No doubt they were all anticipating a piece of Samuel’s birthday cake—a treat Greta told them would not be forthcoming until every child had devoured all of his or her peas.

From farther down the table he picked out the low murmur of Lydia’s voice and found himself leaning forward, straining to catch whatever she was saying to Pleasant’s husband, Jeremiah. She was smiling as she cut small slices of the sausage and then placed the meat on Samuel’s plate.