The Shunning Read online

  Katie decided to make it easy for him. “You’re a right tall boy, nearly as tall as your big brother,” she said with a smile.

  The smile was not returned.

  While she was fumbling for another topic of conversation, Nancy stepped in to ease the strain. “Levi never says much,” she volunteered.

  “I say what I need to say.”

  There was a chorus of chuckles from the other children at their brother’s abrupt announcement. Then Jacob began pulling on Katie’s apron, tugging her over to the rocking chair near the woodstove. “Will ya play me a game?”

  Nancy’s eyes lit up. “Jah! Checkers it will be!”

  The others—Hickory John, Susie, and Jacob—sat cross-legged on the linoleum floor with the identical checkered pattern as Rebecca Lapp’s kitchen. Most of the kitchens around Hickory Hollow looked alike—same black woodstove in the center, same gold-flecked countertops, same checkered linoleum. A gas lamp hung over the long table, and a tall corner cupboard stored books and odds and ends. On the far wall, near the steps leading to the cold cellar, was a picture calendar with farmland scenes. But no other ornaments decorated the walls.

  Levi went to sit near the bishop, who was still talking with Katie’s parents and brothers at the table. Twice Katie caught the boy glancing over at her playing with the other children. Should she invite him to join them?

  Uncertain as to the approach she should take, Katie went on with the game. For a moment, she wished for Mary Stoltzfus. Mary would know just what to do to win over a boy like Levi Beiler.

  “Crown my king!” Jacob ordered as his black playing piece made it through the maze of Katie’s red ones.

  “Already?” she said, suddenly aware that the child had been paying closer attention than she.

  An hour later, when the time came for the Lapps’ departure, each of the children gave Katie a hug. All but Levi, who stood aloof beside the bishop.

  “I’ll see you again soon,” Katie called to Levi, deliberately singling him out.

  The boy’s cold-eyed stare met hers. There was something unsettling in his face. What was wrong?

  On the ride home, Katie cringed when Samuel brought up the music and the fact that little Jacob had heard her humming. “Were you singin’ those songs of yours right out in the open for all the world to hear?” he demanded.

  “Jah, Dat . . . I was.” Katie’s voice, from her buggy seat behind her parents, was subdued.

  “That’s no example to set for a young boy and his brothers and sisters, now is it?”

  She had no answer. So this was how Levi Beiler must have felt tonight. As if he was cornered, with no way out.

  She could hear Dat mumbling something to Mam, then his angry words burst out. “There’s just not many left around these parts who live the way the Lord God intended from the beginning.”

  An uncomfortable silence followed, and Katie could feel the pull of the powerful undertow. She had precious little time to apologize.

  When she did not reply, Samuel spoke again. “I have no choice, daughter. I’ll be speakin’ to Bishop John first thing tomorrow.”

  “But Dat, I—”

  “Save your arguments. It’s too late,” he said with finality. In that dreadful monotone her father assumed for solemn occasions, he began to recite the Scripture about the bitter and sweet water. Eli and Benjamin sat soberly on either side of her, listening.

  To say she was sorry would be a lie. Katie wished she could ask for forgiveness and mean it sincerely, but how could she? The songs she’d hummed and played today had marked the end of her singleness. She had celebrated her memories of Daniel Fisher. There on the road and later in the barn, she had reveled in the last bright days spent with her love. And when the song was done and the guitar put away, she had decided to turn her back on the music, once and for all. Yet, in all of it, she knew she had defied Dat, had knowingly and willfully partaken of one last forbidden expression.

  “It would be displeasing to the Lord if I said nothin’ to Preacher Yoder or Bishop John.” Her father’s righteous indignation seeped into the damp darkness. So heavy and oppressive was it that Katie felt it close in around her, suffocating her.

  Rebecca was weeping now in the front seat as the horse pulled the carriage down Hickory Lane toward the sandstone farmhouse. Katie didn’t have to see Dat’s face to know what he must be feeling. Still, even as stern and devout as her father was, surely he was also torn between doing God’s bidding and altering his only daughter’s future.

  ————

  John Beiler read his children an evening prayer from the standard prayer book, Christenpflicht, before heading upstairs to his bedroom. It had been a long day, but an even longer night stretched ahead of him.

  How fetching Katie is, he thought, settling down under the covers and quilts. So kind and cheerful. . . .No wonder my children already love her.

  As for himself, he’d admired Katie Lapp from the day he’d become aware she’d grown into a young woman. From the day she’d knelt before him there in Preacher Yoder’s barn in front of all the People. As the presiding elder, it had been his duty to administer the rites as the tin cup spilled baptismal water over her head and down her face. But he’d not been prepared for the silky feel of her auburn hair beneath his fingers.

  Waiting for Katie to reach marrying age had not been easy for a man whose children needed a mother and whose own bed had been long empty. More than three years he had waited. And soon, very soon, she would belong to him.

  He yawned and stretched, then let his tired body relax, eager for their first night of intimacy, when he would gather his new bride into his arms here in this very bed—hold her tenderly and demonstrate his love for her. Of course, a woman’s beauty was not the main consideration when taking a mate, but when a woman was as pretty as Katie Lapp, the spark was stronger. Still, it was far more important that Katie create connections with the People as a married woman. Together, they would start their wedded life, taking on the added responsibilities of a bishop and his wife.

  He yawned again and was dozing off to sleep when he heard the floor creak. In the inky darkness, he felt a presence. Which one of his children was out of bed?

  “Daed,” whispered his second son, “are you awake still?”

  John sat up. “Come on in, Levi.”

  Levi, carrying an oil lamp, approached the bed.

  John saw the look of hesitancy on the boy’s face. “What is it? Can’t you sleep?”

  “I have to tell ya something, Daed,” Levi said softly. “I can’t put it out of my mind.”

  “Put what out of your mind?”

  “Today after school, someone . . . a stranger . . . stopped by the house.”

  “Go on.”

  “A lady came up to the front porch—an Englisher. I went to the door . . . that’s when I saw her face.” His sleepy eyes were wide now with the telling. “She was askin’ for directions ’cause she’d gotten lost or something.”

  “Well, I hope you helped her out.”

  Levi nodded. “I tried to tell her how to find her way back to the main road. She seemed ferhoodled some, said she’d looked and looked but couldn’t find Hickory Hollow on the map, nohow.”

  John chuckled. “Hickory Hollow was never meant for outsiders. What was she doin’ out here, anyway?”

  Levi sobered. “Said she was tryin’ to find someone’s friend . . . a woman in her early twenties. Didn’t know the exact name.”

  John was as puzzled as his son. “Mighty strange . . . an English woman away out here. And looking for the Hollow on her map, you say?” He squinted at the boy, who was breathing hard. “What’s got you so worried?”

  Levi shrugged. “Just curious, I guess.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “’Cause she had hair like I ain’t never seen before . . .’cept for Katie’s.”

  John suppressed a chuckle. Wouldn’t do to be thought mocking his shy son. “Lots of folks have red hair.”

  “Not a
round here.”

  The boy was dead serious, and because Levi rarely spoke, John knew this information was more than a little troublesome. “Why don’t you head on back to bed. We’ll talk more tomorrow, jah?”

  “Jah . . . good night, Daed.”

  “Good night, son.”

  When the boy was gone, John reached for the quilt and drew it up under his bushy beard. He reflected on Levi’s words. ’Twas a curious thing. Why would an Englisher say she was searching for a Plain friend, yet be way off course? Seemed to be some kind of contradiction.

  The more he thought on it, the more John realized that the woman might’ve been telling the truth. Maybe the stranger had simply lost her way on the winding paths off the main road. But even as he tossed about, trying to find a comfortable spot in his bed, John pondered the matter. He did not rest easy that night.

  ————

  In another Beiler home, Ella Mae sat quietly as Mattie’s husband read from the German Bible. A familiar passage from Exodus, chapter twenty—the first of the Ten Commandments: “‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me,”’ David Beiler read. “‘Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them; for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.”’

  Ella Mae folded her arthritic hands for the German prayer, but long afterward, her thoughts were on Rebecca Lapp and the peculiar way she’d acted at the quilting. Rebecca had gawked at her, calling her “lovely” and “near like an angel,” for goodness sake. What foolishness! And she’d kept staring with those clouded eyes. Worry-filled eyes.

  Something about it didn’t add up, not the way Ella Mae knew her niece inside out—almost as well as a woman knew her own child. After all, a twin sister’s offspring had to be linked more closely to yourself, or so she’d always thought. And if that wasn’t true, then why did Rebecca Lapp resemble Ella Mae herself almost as much as Mattie did?

  The old woman sighed. What had gotten into Rebecca today, anyway? Her mind wandered. And why was it that Rebecca’s daughter, young Katie, had not inherited a single one of their closely linked twin genes? At least, not so’s a body could tell it. Where was the broomstick hair and the hazel eyes—their family mark? Or the high forehead and the deep dimples?

  Ella Mae had never been one to worry her head over silly goings-on. She was the sensible one people brought their worries to—not the other way around. Still, she thought it mighty peculiar how Katie’s reddish hair had shown up out of nowhere. Not even as far back as great-great-Grandmammi Yoder had there been a speck of red hair. Ella Mae knew that for a fact. Even though there were no photographs to prove it, the People of Hickory Hollow passed on the stories of their kin, knew what they’d looked like—right down to the last eyelash.

  Not only that, she’d secretly traced the family line back several generations on Samuel’s side—to the man who’d built one of the best-looking sandstone homes in all of Lancaster County. Samuel Lapp’s ancestor, Joseph Lapp.

  Later, after the family had gone to bed, Ella Mae closed the door between Mattie and David’s big farmhouse and her smaller attached Dawdi Haus. She sat in her tiny front room, rocking and thinking about the events of the day, then snuffed out the only lantern in the room.

  How long she sat there in the darkness, she did not know. But around the time the moon started its climb into the sky, through the wide branches of the old elm tree on the east side of her house—about then—she heard the distinct sound of a car motor out front. Turning, she peered out the curtainless window. The pane was a bit frosty, but clear enough to see a long black car creeping down Hickory Lane. The closer it came, the better she could make out its front bumper and chrome-trimmed doors.

  Seconds later, the fancy car—a lim-ou-sine, she recollected—came to a gentle stop across the road from the house. The lone yard light cast an eerie glow over the streamlined chassis.

  Ella Mae abandoned her rocking chair to stand in front of the living room windows, staring out at the unusual sight. Then, quite surprisingly, the window glided down on the passenger’s side. A woman’s face stared out into the semidarkness. Had it not been for the full moon, Ella Mae might have missed seeing the white fur hat slip back away from the woman’s face, revealing a billowy cloud of hair. Such a splendid burnt red it was that instantly she thought of her grand-niece Katie.

  “My, oh my,” she whispered into the darkness. “Who is this?”

  She inched closer to the window, knowing she could not be seen from the road. As she watched, a light came on inside the car. A man, dressed all in black and wearing an odd, beaked hat, unfolded a large paper. The woman and her driver bent over to study what must be some kind of map, best Ella Mae could make out.

  “Strange,” she said to herself. “Imagine bein’ lost on a wintry night like this.” If she hadn’t been feeling her age tonight—what with the cold weather and all—she might’ve put on her warmest shawl and snow boots and tromped outside to help. Not wanting to risk a fall on the ice, though, she waited and watched from inside.

  Soon, the English car rolled down the lane, and Ella Mae turned away from the window and headed for bed.

  ————

  There were two large flashlights in Benjamin Lapp’s open buggy. Katie found them quickly and took one along with her. She stopped by Satin Boy’s stall just long enough to whisper to him, “I won’t be gone long,” then quietly hitched up Molasses to the family carriage. Dat and Mam surely were asleep by now—Eli and Benjamin, too.

  The wind was stiff and cold as she rode to Mary’s house.

  Once there, she shone her brother’s powerful flashlight up at Mary’s bedroom window, grinning to herself. Her friend would probably think a young man was outside, wanting to propose marriage. That’s how it was done in Hickory Hollow. The boy waited till he was sure—or hoped, at least—that the girl’s parents were soundly sleeping. Then he’d park his open courting buggy out by the road, run to the house on tiptoe, and shine the light up to his sweetheart’s bedroom window until she opened it to tell him she’d meet him downstairs.

  When the window opened, Mary peeked out. “I gave up on you ever coming over and went to bed,” she began apologetically, “but come on up. The door’s unlocked.”

  “Did you think this was your night?” Katie teased as Mary closed her bedroom door behind them.

  Mary was wearing a long white nightgown, her unbound hair hanging down past her waist. “When I saw your flashlight, I sat right up and said to myself, ‘O God bless me, he’s come!”’ Mary confessed with a light laugh. “But someday soon it’ll be so.”

  Katie knew she was thinking of either Preacher Yoder’s middle son, Jake, or one of Mary’s own second cousins, Chicken Joe, who helped his father run a chicken farm. “Are you sure your parents are sleeping?” Katie asked, removing her coat and heavy black bonnet and perching on the edge of Mary’s bed.

  “Jah . . . listen. You can hear Dat snoring!”

  Katie leaned her ear to the wall. Abe Stoltzfus was sawing more logs than one, and with that kind of racket going on, Mary’s mother couldn’t possibly hear what Katie was about to say. “When I was here this morning—before the quilting—you thought I wasn’t going through with marrying John Beiler, remember?” she began. “Well, since then, things have gotten worse.”

  Mary frowned, leaning forward. “Worse?”

  “Oh, I’ll marry Bishop John all right, but Dat’s making things mighty hard for me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Somebody heard me singing today.” Katie took a deep breath and dropped her gaze to her apron. “Little Jacob heard me . . . and told.”

  Mary gasped. “I thought you put your guitar away ye
ars ago!”

  “It wasn’t the guitar he heard. I was humming on the road home from your house this morning—and it wasn’t a tune from the Ausbund. Dat says he’s going to take the matter straight to the bishop.”

  “Over Preacher’s head?” Mary asked, aghast.

  Katie nodded, feeling the shame of it.

  “So, then, are you guilty of sinning?”

  “Guilty as ever,” Katie replied. “But it’s over and done with, the music is. And that’s the truth.”

  “Then hurry and tell your Dat!” Mary was adamant. “Don’t let him go to Bishop John—whatever it takes, ya have to confess!”

  Katie stared at Mary in disbelief. “You’re saying this only because you don’t think anybody else’ll have me if the bishop lets me go, ain’t so?”

  Mary shook her head. “You know that’s not true. You’re a good and kind woman, Katie, everybody knows that. And any man with eyes in his head can see you’re just as pretty on the outside.”

  It was the first time Katie had ever heard her friend speak this way. She mulled it over before replying. “What good are looks when stubbornness gets in the way?” she muttered. “I just plain run the fellas off.”

  Mary was silent for a moment. “But there was someone who didn’t run off. He knew about your humming and singing, didn’t he? That’s why he gave you the guitar.”

  She was right, of course, but Katie was determined not to let on about Dan. Not even to Mary. “Dan’s long dead. Leave him be.”

  Mary scooted over and put her hand on Katie’s. “You still love Daniel Fisher, don’t you? You’re still clinging to him hard . . . but he’s gone.”

  “Not his memory. That ain’t gone!”

  “No,” Mary whispered. “Still, have you thought what you’ll do when you’re married to a man you don’t love?”

  Katie jerked her head around. “John’s a gut man,” she insisted.

  “He’ll be a right fine husband, and I’ll come to love him . . . in time.”

  “Maybe you will . . . and maybe you won’t.”

  The two friends sat in silence, as still as their fathers’ fields in winter. Katie wished the conversation hadn’t taken this turn. Why was Mary asking these questions?