A Summer Amish Courtship

“You need to find yourself a nice young woman, marry, have children.”

Ethan stood there, unable to meet his father’s gaze.

Benjamin smoothed the straps of his suspenders and then went on. “You join me in the shop and we’ll start making buggies not just for family and neighbors but we’ll take orders from Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, even. Rosemary’s cousin in Kentucky says that when we’re ready, he’ll be the first one to put cash on our workbench. He’s running a buggy that was his grandfather’s because there’s no one making them down there.”

Benjamin took a step toward Ethan. “I’m not getting any younger, you know. Rosemary and I, we’ve talked about building a smaller house here on the property. Once you older boys are married, and Rosemary’s girls, we’ll have no need for such a big house. You marry and start having little ones and the big house is yours. Someday I’ll be gone and this farm, this family, will be yours. Now, you know I’ve got things worked out so you and all your brothers will have a piece of it, but you’ll be the head of this family someday—you’ll be here to father your little brothers should I pass before they’re full grown men.”

“Dat,” Ethan murmured.

“Sohn, it’s what God means us to do. A man is to marry. And to marry, you have to get out there and meet a woman, court a woman.”

Ethan closed his eyes, beginning to regret having come to his father. After the day he’d had, he didn’t need a lecture. “Dat, even if I did have a notion to court a woman, who would that be?”

“Plenty of single young women in Hickory Grove,” Benjamin declared, gesturing with his hands.

“Young. Exactly. Can you imagine me with one of Ginger’s or Nettie’s friends?” Ethan lifted his gaze to meet his father’s.

Benjamin shrugged. “So you want a more mature woman. A little harder to find, but they’re around. There’s that niece of Eunice’s who stays with them sometimes. Dottie? She’s not much to look at, but she’s a woman of faith.”

Ethan almost smiled. He knew Eunice Gruber’s niece Dottie, one of the many nieces the woman paraded in front of the single men of Hickory Grove and he knew her well enough to know Dottie wasn’t the kind he would court. It wasn’t her looks that he cared about. He truly believed that beauty was in the eye of the beholder. It was Dottie’s incessant giggling that bothered him. She might have been a woman over thirty, but she acted more like she was fourteen.

“I don’t think Dottie is my type, Dat.”

“Fine.” He threw up his hands. “What about Abigail Stoltz? Nice-looking woman. She lost her husband. She understands what it’s like to be alone, to—”

“Abigail?” Ethan demanded, almost laughing out loud. “Dat, did you not hear anything I said? She accused me of doing my job poorly. She threatened to have me fired.” He shook his head adamantly. “I can guarantee you that if I took a mind to court a woman, she’d be the last one I’d pursue.” He turned toward the door. “I need to move hay before supper. We’re short in the barn.”

“Just think on what I said,” Benjamin called after him.

I’ll think on it all right, Ethan said to himself as he walked out the door. Now he was as frustrated with his father as he was with Abigail.

“Amen,” Daniel King announced heartily as he drew silent grace to an end. He clasped his calloused hands together, looking across the kitchen table at Abigail. He was plump to his wife’s slenderness, his gray hair cut short in a bowl cut, his beard long and gray. His gray eyes twinkled with kindness when he spoke. “Looks good, dochder. Let’s eat. I did a little plowing in the garden this afternoon and I’m hungry enough to eat this table.”

Jamie giggled. “You can’t eat a table, Grossdadi. You’d get splinters in your mouth. Knock out some teeth.”

“Only if the teeth were loose.” Daniel tousled his grandson’s blond hair. “Like yours.”

“Just this one.” Jamie wiggled one of his front teeth with his fingers.

“Not at the table,” Abigail chastised as she put a pork chop smothered in gravy and onions on her mother’s plate and then her son’s. She passed the serving dish to her father.

“I knew a boy who once ate a table,” June said, heaping cinnamon applesauce onto her plate. “A big supper table we used to use for church dinners. Ten feet, I suspect. Chewed the boards to sawdust and had nary a splinter to swallow.”

Jamie cut his eyes at his mother but didn’t contradict his grandmother. Instead, he began scooping the gravy and onions off his pork chop and dumping them on his mother’s empty plate.

Abigail gave her mother and her son a serving of mashed potatoes, then passed the bowl to her father. “More gravy on the stove if anyone wants some.” She glanced at her mother who was now spooning applesauce onto her pork chop. She rested her hand on her mother’s for a moment. “You won’t like that, Mam,” she said quietly.

“I like it,” June declared loudly. “They’re dry.” She dumped another spoonful on her pork chop.

“They’re not dry, wife,” Daniel put in, adding pats of fresh homemade butter to his potatoes. “Abby makes a fine pork chop.”

“Dry as the boards in that table that boy Israel ate.” June began putting applesauce on top of her mashed potatoes.

Abigail gently took the Ball jar of applesauce from her mother and served her son.

“Not near the potatoes!” Jamie complained, laying his hand across his plate.

“My day,” Daniel said good-naturedly as he took the quart of applesauce from his daughter, “a boy ate what his mother put on his plate. That or he put his own food on his plate. You’re old enough to get your own pork chop, boy.”

Abigail tried to spoon green beans onto Jamie’s plate, but he held out his hand to her.

“I don’t like green beans. No green beans.”

“I’m only giving you three. You can well eat three measly green beans,” she said, irritation creeping into her voice. She wasn’t upset with Jamie, of course. It was his teacher. It was Ethan Miller who had her struggling to control her exasperation and think of him with kindness in her heart. She’d been stewing over him since he’d brought Jamie home. She still couldn’t believe the nerve he had to come there and try to tell her how she should raise her son.

“You don’t like green beans with bacon?” Daniel scoffed. He took the serving bowl from Abigail. “Suits me just fine. More for me.” He put a healthy portion on his plate and then a smaller one on his wife’s. “Saw that the teacher brought Jamie home. Spotted that dun of his from the garden,” he remarked, directing his comment to Abigail. “My grandson in trouble again?”

Abigail took a moment to gather her thoughts before she responded. She and her father got along well, but like all parents and adult children, especially those living together, they had their disagreements.

He had a lot to say about how she was raising her son, and much of it critical. He thought she coddled Jamie, that he was immature and that she expected too little of her boy. He’d actually used the word discipline the other day, the same word Ethan had used, which had annoyed her all the more. Men didn’t understand the relationship between a woman and her only son. And neither knew what it was like to lose a spouse, to be raising a child alone.

Abigail stalled, using the time to cut up Jamie’s pork chop for him as she chose her words carefully. “There was an incident at school today. Ethan wanted to talk with me about it.”

“Naughty boy,” June chastised, shaking her fork at her grandson.

Abigail pushed Jamie’s plate back to him and began to serve herself helpings of the green beans, pork chops and potatoes. Then, suddenly remembering that she had buttermilk biscuits in the oven, she rose from her chair. “Oh, goodness. The biscuits. I don’t think that pesky timer is working.” She hurried for the stove, grabbing a hot mitt off the counter.

“What’d you do, Jamie?” Abigail’s father asked.

As Abigail opened the oven, she glanced over her shoulder, waiting to hear what her son would say.

Jamie stared at his supper plate, his hands clasping it. “The kids are mean to me. They don’t want to play with me at recess.” He stuck out his lower lip. “I want to go home to Maple Shade.”

“Oh, Jamie, you know that’s not possible.” Abigail pulled the pan of biscuits from the oven. Luckily, she’d caught them before they began to burn. “We sold our farm, remember? We live with your grandmother and grandfather now. We came to help them with the farm.”

“What did you do?” her father repeated, putting a forkful of mashed potatoes into his mouth. “Mmm. Just like I like them. Lots of pepper.” He eyed his grandson as he chewed and waited.

After a long moment of silence, Abigail said, “The schoolmaster said—”

“Daughter, let my grandson tell me. He can speak. He has a mouth.”

“Oh, you’re in trouble now,” June said quietly. She reached for the jar of applesauce again.

Abigail dumped the pan of biscuits onto a plate and carried them to the table. “You have to eat something besides applesauce, Mam.” She set the biscuits in the middle of the table and put one on her plate.

“He’s in trouble,” June responded, pointing at Jamie with a serving spoon that was heaped with applesauce. “That handsome schoolteacher brought him home because he tipped over the outhouse, girl inside.” She plopped more applesauce on top of her potatoes.

“He didn’t knock it over.” Abigail gently took the spoon and the jar from her mother’s hands and then slid into her chair. “Go on,” she encouraged. “Tell your granddad what you did.”

The boy pressed his lips together, slowly looking up. “I was trying to make a lever. Like you showed me at the barn the other day when you were trying to get the cardboard under the rain barrel. I wanted to see if it would work.”

Abigail’s father met her gaze but he held his tongue, though only until supper was over and Jamie had been excused. The boy took no time at all to race from the kitchen and out the back door, headed for the barn he said, to feed the cats.

“So the schoolteacher had to bring him home this time?” Daniel intoned as he carried a stack of dirty dishes to the sink. “Because of his behavior?”

June had taken her position at the sink to wash. It was a chore she could still do well, and she liked it. Abigail had taken over most of the cooking, but she let her mother wash dishes, understanding that it was important that she still contribute to the household.

“Wasn’t there a problem last week?” Abigail’s father pressed when she didn’t respond.

Abigail carried the leftover biscuits, covered in a clean dishtowel, to the pie safe. “Jamie told me he didn’t know Elsie was inside when he started rocking the outhouse.”

Daniel left the stack of dirty dishes on the counter and went back to gather more. “You believe him?”

Abigail hesitated as she tried to puzzle out her thoughts. She had caught Jamie in a few fibs from time to time, but she didn’t want to believe he’d intentionally risk injuring someone and then lie to cover it up. Ethan believed Jamie had known the little girl was inside, which would mean Jamie had lied. Abigail didn’t think Ethan would make up such a thing…which meant her son had told them an untruth. She had to face it.

“He’s having a hard time, Dat. He misses his home, his friends. He still misses his dat.”

“But didn’t you tell me he was having trouble in school before you moved here? Not getting along with the other children, not doing his lessons. Wasn’t that one of the reasons why you decided not to stay in Wisconsin until the end of the school year?”

Abigail closed the pie safe and just stood there for a moment. Her stomach was in knots. She’d barely eaten. She didn’t know what to say to her father. She didn’t know what to do to help her son. She turned slowly to face him. “It’s a hard age.”

“He could have hurt that girl.”

Abigail took a handful of dirty eating utensils from her father’s hand. “I understand that. And I’m going to talk to him.”

Her father stood there looking down at her. She knew he had more to say on the matter, but thankfully, he didn’t. Instead, he said quietly, “I want to help you, daughter. I want to help Jamie. He’s the only grandson I have.”

“I know you do.” She squeezed his arm. “Why don’t you go out and finish up your chores. Mam and I can take care of the dishes.” She shrugged. “Maybe take Jamie fishing in the pond for a little while? He loves fishing with you.”

Daniel nodded. “I can do that.” He turned to go, then back to her. “But you know this isn’t just going to right itself on its own, don’t you? It’s only going to get worse. Something has to change. You keep doing the same thing and it doesn’t work, you have to change your approach.”

“I’ll talk to him, Dat.” Abigail bit down on her lower lip. “And I’ll think on it. Figure out what I need to do differently.” Her thoughts immediately returned to her conversation with Ethan. He’d threatened to expel Jamie. She couldn’t let that happen. Schooling was too necessary, and she knew she couldn’t teach him at home, not with the house and her mother to deal with.

She closed her eyes for a moment, listening to her father’s footsteps as he left the kitchen. She had been feeling overwhelmed for weeks. She had hoped that being here would make things easier for her and Jamie. She’d thought a change of scenery might help Jamie at school, but obviously, she’d been wrong. Her first impulse had been to blame the schoolteacher, but now she felt bad. He was just doing his job. And she’d lashed out at him. She’d raised her voice.

And now she owed him an apology. She just wasn’t sure how to go about it.

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