Title image detail from Henrietta by Tina Berrier, Acrylic on stretched canvas, 11″ by 14″, 2024.
Gelassenheit
The Wengers are angry with me again. The first time was because I married Ramey Gluck. Ramey was Horning. Horning Mennonites are more moderate. They speak more English in their Sunday services. They drive automobiles, black ones with black bumpers, no chrome or whitewalls. By contrast, we Wengers are horse and buggies. We speak German in services as often as we can. Other than that, the two—Wengers and Hornings—are just about the same. We even share a church house. Hornings use it on odd Sundays, Wengers on even. We park our autos or buggies in the same sheds, Mennonites one and all.
I grew up Wenger. My home was the same farm Ramey and I took over after Papa died. Before Ramey, I followed the Ordnung. I kept the strings of my head covering tied. I didn’t wear face makeup or a clock on my wrist, didn’t listen to radio programs. When the Bibles were handed around the nomination table and Papa opened the one with the paper in it, meaning he’d been chosen by God as our next minister, he had to take the electricity out of our house. Only permitted were kerosene lamps, coal stoves, hand-crank washers, sewing machines with pedals. I must have pedaled a thousand shmartzlich miles there in our living room, making dresses for me and my sisters, shirts and trousers for my brothers.
Like other Wengers, we didn’t have an auto, but we did have a tractor. Up until Ramey took over the farm, our tractor had steel wheels. Steel was allowed. It kept the labor hard and the farms small. Sons would always be able to find work. Rubber tires could create big farming operations. Plus, they signified comfort. They might lead to the sinful trappings of the outside world. When Ramey put the rubber tires on the tractor, he might as well have slapped each and every Wenger in the face. The Wenger brethren even talked of shunning my own mother. Nowadays, though, some Wengers put rubber belts and studs over their wheels, ride their tractors to town, all haughty and proud. All Hochmut. As they say, “When a man is Hochmut, the Devil makes of him a Spielzeug”—a plaything. Even though Ramey has passed, I still believe that, especially when I consider what the Wengers are doing to me now.
♦ ♦ ♦
I’ve known Harlan Schaeffer a long time. Gluck’s Fine Poultry and Schaeffer’s Produce have served customers at Dutch’s Market, a family grocery in Conoy, for years now. Only the butcher’s stand is between us. For over a year now, Harlan and I have bundled. It used to be common among young Wengers who were courting to sleep in the same bed but with a centerboard—a long pine plank—between them. Of course, Harlan and I have never used that board. Seems like so much bother, and for what? Nothing important.
Harlan’s an instigator. A divorced man, he flirts with the ladies who shop at his stand, tells them things even their husbands wouldn’t dare. He prods them with off-color remarks. But underneath it all, he’s a good man, a sensitive man. He listens, he makes me laugh. Since Ramey’s passing, he’s the best friend I have. I love him, but I’m just not sure in what way yet. How’s a woman of my age and circumstances to know?
“What’s the matter, Chicken Lady?” Harlan calls down to me now, bunches of celery in each fist. His arms are like stalks of celery too, all veined and ropy, and so is the rest of his skinny self.
“Nothing, Harlan,” I call back. “Just the usual. Can’t wait for the heat to pass.”
It’s early Tuesday morning and only a few customers have trickled in. I’m up to my elbows in chicken legs, a tub of breading beside me on the counter.
“Now, Viola. You’re not your usual chipper self, heat or no heat.”
“I’m just tired, Harlan. That’s all.”
Elsa, the butcher’s wife, comes down the aisle with an armload of wieners. “You ever try that Gold Bond medicated cream?” she says. “That’ll freshen you right up.”
“Can’t say I have, Elsa.” It’s normal for me to patronize Elsa. Like any good fence, it keeps the peace.
The butcher hoists a pair of pork butts on the counter. His arms stretch the fabric of his shirtsleeves like wurst casings. “She smears that damn cream on like it’s gonna make her sixteen again,” he says and turns on the saw.
Elsa practically throws the wieners in the case. “I do not, Troy!” She shouts it so as to be heard above the saw’s whine. “I use it on everything that chafes. That’s all.”
Behind the happy couple, Harlan dances the stalks of celery, makes them attack each other energetically, as though they are vegetable dolls of Troy and Elsa. I laugh and wave at him with my rag, go back to my business.
But Harlan isn’t the kind to let me off the hook easy. Later in the morning, on his way to the cooler, he stops by. “I got ten bucks says something’s eating you, Viola,” he says. His apron has an old plum stain down the front. His eyes are familiar ponds of green. “You wanna talk?”
I dump a row of chickens off a rotisserie rod into the steam case. It fogs up my glasses. “Maybe you’ll spend the evening with me and find out,” I say, flirting some myself but also needing him to say yes.
As the fog clears, I see Harlan grin. His nose slices the air between us. “It’d be my honor,” he says. “And my pleasure.”
♦ ♦ ♦
I first met my husband, Ramey, at a barn raising. My mother had sent me over with a bowl of pepper slaw and a rhubarb pie. I was seventeen, just beginning Rumspringa, our “running around” time. I noticed a boy about my age holding a ladder for the others working in the bare rafters. He was short, squat, his suspenders a fat X on his back. A felt hat with a tiny red feather sat on a crown of fiery hair. He looked up at the men working, not budging.
“Who’s that boy?” I asked another girl.
“Who?” the girl said, arranging a dish of spaetzle.
“With the ladder. He’s not Wenger, is he?”
“Horning,” she said. “Can’t you tell? Looks like a little banty rooster, ya? With that red hair and feather? His brothers are powerful good looking though.”
By and by, I wandered over to him. “Aren’t you going up?” I said.
His coaly eyes burned a hole right through me. “Maybe,” he said. “No.” He looked back up the ladder rungs. “I don’t do too good with heights.”
“I guess you could work down here some.” I waved at a stack of pine boards near one corner of the frame.
He scanned the ground, dotted with fresh sawdust. “I’m not much with a hammer either. Can’t seem to drive a nail straight for the life of me.”
“What are you good at?” I felt myself redden as I said it.
He sent me a startled look. Then he grinned, heaved out his chest. “Catching chickens,” he said. “I can catch chickens like nobody’s business.”
“I bet you can,” I said.
What attracted me to this rooster-looking chicken catcher with a fear of heights is still a puzzle to me. I guess I was always a little different from other girls my age—liked my lima beans with ketchup, preferred mucking out the cow stalls to dressing up my dolls, wore a coat only on the coldest of days. Over the next year, I saw Ramey at the few events where Wengers and Hornings came in contact. I always found myself talking to him, soaking up the darkness in his eyes. I felt the tremor in his voice, a sound that made me want to stroke him, soothe him, comfort him.
The next year, I was baptized into the church with the other children my age. I was expected to start dating a Wenger boy and then marry him. But I had other designs. I got Ramey invited to a Wenger picnic at the churchyard that included a softball game. He came and played in the outfield. When he was batting, he patted these pitiful little balls that barely made it to the fielders and took off running. Boy, could Ramey run. He ran so fast, the fielders kept trying to chase him down. But they were always too late. He crossed home without stopping once along the way. I wondered if he was picturing a chicken on each base he had to catch and went around grabbing them up.
A few weeks later, Ramey came to my house to visit. Papa wasn’t too happy to see a Horning come calling, especially one driving an automobile. But being a man of God, Papa let him stay. After Mama and Papa had gone to bed, we sat on the sofa. We kissed and held hands and talked. From then on, we knew it was only a matter of time before our engagement would be announced to our churches, and we would be forever tied together in matrimony.
And that’s exactly what happened…except the Wengers weren’t too happy about it. Ramey and I were married as Hornings, though the Horning minister kindly allowed Papa to read scripture and line a hymn in German. Then we lived with Ramey’s parents while Ramey worked in the local egg hatchery. We had an electric mixer and indoor plumbing. I was seen riding around in Ramey’s auto, the radio playing. The Wenger elders convened. Despite Papa’s attempts to sway them, and not taking into account the struggle I myself felt about such a forward life, they voted to excommunicate me. The deacon agreed.
Excommunication meant I could still attend Wenger services. But until I confessed my sins and returned to the Wenger way of life, I could no longer take communion or join in any other rites. I could be in the company of Wengers, which I tried for a time, but there was always a layer of shame hanging over me—like the sour buttermilk that rises to the top of the churn. If you don’t remove it, the butter will quickly turn rancid. The excommunication soured my Wenger friendships. They went rancid and died.
It wasn’t long before Papa died too, trampled by his own breeding bull. Passing a farm along to a daughter is rare. But it wasn’t as brave as it looked either. My brothers had all moved to Elkhart, Indiana, where a Wenger community had sprung up, where land was plentiful and cheap, and where a new deacon had built a brand-new church house with electric heat. My sisters were already comfortably married and settled in other parts of Conestoga County. Ramey and I took over the farm and began to raise chickens. Soon after, we opened the stand at Dutch’s Market. We put in a rotisserie, some fryers. We began selling chicken, fresh and cooked. Folks seemed to really like it. They came from all over. They started calling me “The Chicken Lady.”
And that’s pretty much all we did, until Mama wilted away and Ramey himself succumbed to Nephrotic Syndrome—a disease known among Mennonites, caused, they believe, from too many second cousins marrying each other. It damages the kidneys. In short work it can kill you. It did Ramey.
Ten years can seem like a lifetime, or it can seem like a day. The chicken houses have all collapsed in on themselves, though I still buy fresh, locally raised poultry and sell it at the stand. I have come to grips with Ramey’s absence, with the silence that settles like dew on the crumbling farmhouse. But sometimes I still feel him lying next to me in bed—a presence that’s both solid and quickly shifting, even in sleep.
Since my excommunication from the Wengers, the Hornings haven’t been much better, shunning me in their own private way. But that was a long time ago, and I’m not one to hold grudges. Unlike some others, I understand what the Wengers taught me as a child, what they claim to revere more than anything else: Gelassenheit—yielding to the will of God and suppressing the self for the good of the community. I went on with my life.
Now, some of the Wengers are at it again. They want me to sell them the farm. Not the house I live in, but the land around it. Since Ramey’s death, I’ve rented it to them, one year at a time, for very small sums. But land is scarce now in Conestoga County, families continue to grow. Not everyone wants to move a thousand miles away to a new life elsewhere. “You don’t have children, Viola Gluck,” certain Wengers say, rapping on my door whenever they please. “We have sons who need a place to move their families, a place to build their lives on. You owe us the land. Your papa would have wanted us to have it.”
That may be true. Papa put the community ahead of his own happiness more often than not. But it’s also true I could sell it for ten times what they can pay. Housing developers have written and telephoned me more than once, and though I’m not greedy by any stretch, I may yet live a very long life. The poultry stand has suffered of late, hurt by the big new supermarket in town. Groceries like Dutch’s Market are a dying breed. They’re horse and buggies in an automobile world. To put all my eggs in one basket would be a mistake I may deeply regret.
♦ ♦ ♦
Later that evening, Harlan and I sit facing each other on the glider in my yard. A herd of Wenger dairy cows munches grass in the pasture down below. There are some Wenger buggies parked by the barn, their owners readying for milking.
In my lap I hold a lace doily I’m tatting. Harlan grips a glass of birch beer. He’s got on a nice checkered shirt, clean trousers. “That’s a dandy shuttle you got there, Viola,” he says after a while.
I look at the tortoiseshell shuttle with mother-of-pearl inlay as though seeing it for the first time. “My mama gave it to me before she died.”
“Bet it means a lot to you.”
“Yes, Harlan. It does.”
The house paint seems to peel in the humid evening air. Cicadas buzz in the half-dead sycamore next to it. Swallows veer overhead, swooping to catch bugs. The bell clangs, and the cows, still chewing, make a beeline for the barn.
Harlan fidgets in his seat, creaking the wood. “I’m not gonna drag it out of you,” he says finally. “If you wanna tell me, you will.”
I ponder a moment, then I point the shuttle at the barn. “It’s them,” I say, and I explain to Harlan what the Wengers expect of me, the sacrifice they want me to make. I try not to sound petty or vengeful. I try hard.
“Well,” Harlan says, after I’m done. “You want my opinion?”
“Always.”
The seat squeals beneath him. The green in his eyes seems to deepen. “I think you’d be crazy to sell it. You paid your dues and then some. They’ve never given you the least consideration.” He chugs the rest of the birch beer, coughs.
I tie a knot in the lace, remember that, when Ramey died, not a single Wenger came to his funeral, not even my own family. “Thanks, Harlan. I needed someone to tell me that.”
“Shoot, yeah!”
“I’d feel funny selling that land. It was Ramey’s as much as anybody’s.” I sit back and sigh. “He’d come home from the store and head straight out to them fields. He worked harder than even my papa.”
“He certainly did that, Viola.”
“Oh!” I tuck the strings of my prayer covering behind my ears. “I’m sorry for getting all foolish with you Harlan. You don’t deserve to sit here and listen to somebody go on and on about their dearly departed.”
Harlan burps softly. “Viola, you know it makes no difference to me. You can talk about Ramey anytime. Till the cows come home, even, if you want.”
I look out across the pasture, where the cows wait now to get into the barn. I fail to stifle a laugh. “Guess I better keep quiet then,” I say.
Harlan sees what I’m seeing. “Now, Viola,” he says. “That’s not what I meant at all.”
♦ ♦ ♦
The next week, two Wengers come by with a bill of sale. “It’s just a draft,” says one of them, a bear of a boy with big bear hands and big bear shoulders. He smells like maple syrup and limes together. “See, here’s a map too. Drawn to scale.”
“We can change it,” says the other, a bony jangle of nerves who sometimes walks with a limp, sometimes doesn’t. He looks like a wooden puppet, worked with secret strings. “We just wanted to give you an idea of how a hundred-and-three acres can be split in two without cheating anybody out of anything.”
At first, I’m amused by this. They seem like such stumblebums, I can’t imagine them ever making a serious go of it. But their papa’s been teaching them the dairy business, and they’ve been renting my pastures for almost three years now. So maybe they’ll figure it out yet. Then suddenly I find myself angering at them. “Do you boys even know what it takes to run a farm? Do you know the kind of hours you have to put in, how much you have to learn? How every mouth in your family is fed by how well you understand the digestive system of each and every cow? Do you know that?”
They look at me in silence. Then puppet boy jangles away toward his buggy. “Deuces,” says his burly brother. “We’re just trying to be fair.”
♦ ♦ ♦
When I tell Harlan about it the next day at the store, he gets a snappy grin on his face, says, “Well, Viola, it sounds like you gave them something to ruminate over.”
I throw down a rag. “This is all just a big joke to you, isn’t it? You could care less if I sell the doggone thing.” I point at the blade of his nose. “You’d probably be glad if I did. You wouldn’t have to listen to me talking about Ramey this and Ramey that, about how that land was like blood to him. You’d just love it for me to give all that up.”
Harlan picks up the rag, folds it across the lip of the sink. “Viola, I think you’re mistaken about me.” Then he walks away.
I go outside on the loading dock and hold my face in my apron and bawl. I wonder how they can be so callous. So cruel. I feel like a lamb in a pen full of rams, all head-butting each other for no good reason than to be ornery. But I’m tired, so tired. I want to just lie down in the middle of them and let them trample me into the straw. I cry and then I dry my eyes on my apron and go back in. There’s chicken yet to be sold.
♦ ♦ ♦
The following Sunday I relent and ask Harlan up to the Fort Henry 4-H Fair. Since Harlan can’t see at night, not distances anyway, I drive. I’m more than happy to take Ramey’s Rambler out for a little spin. I know Harlan’s not real fond of my driving, but except for an occasional gurgle of surprise, he never says anything about it. To his credit, he never brings up my tirade either, which by the way I still feel was justified, given the particulars surrounding it.
I can never get enough of the 4-H Fair. We roam the Farm Show Building and watch the children all so intent on their animals—the sheep, the pigs, the bulls. I’m even wild to hear about the latest brand of hybrid seeds from the Extension agents, though I’ll never have a need to know it. The new tractors give me a special thrill, what with their enormous rubber tires, and I love climbing into the big glassed-in cabs, complete with air-conditioning and clocks and new stereo radios. I look down on the crowds of people eating ice cream and apple dumplings and straw fries, checking out the latest blue ribbon winners. Tonight especially, I relish this escape.
After the horse jumping exhibition, we run into some Hornings, Grace and Earl Martin, longtime friends of Ramey’s family.
“How are you, Viola?” Grace says, laying a hand on my shoulder. Her bonnet flops behind her, getting in Earl’s face as he tries to step aside. Her dress has flowers bigger than you’d ever see on a Wenger woman.
I say I’m fine, return the question.
Grace shrugs. “My lumbago acts up still, but the chiropractor takes care of that.”
Earl shoulders between us. “We haven’t seen you at the church house in some time, Viola. Hardly at all since Ramey passed.”
I glance over at Harlan, standing patiently, hands clasped behind his back. All I want to do is get us out of here with minimum damage. “I’ve been doing some service projects,” I say. “You know, social work or whatnot.”
The lenses of Earl’s glasses are smeared with what appears to be powdered sugar, no doubt from funnel cake. “Our granddaughter Emily does a heap of that.”
Grace wiggles back in. “She’s been going down to Baltimore, witnessing to the Baptists and the Catholics. She’s very good at it. Have you seen our grandson Noah’s prize shoat yet? He raised that little piggie like it’s his own son. He’s over in the annex building. Should’ve won the blue ribbon, but they gave it to some English boy from Perry Valley.”
I take a half-step away from them, toward Harlan.
“Who’s your fellow here, Viola?” Earl sticks out his hand, little crumbles of cake still on it.
Harlan steps forward and shakes with Earl, introduces himself.
“Now are you Wenger?” Earl says. “No, wait. You must be from the Conestoga Conference, right? There’s a slew of you people there.”
“Actually, I was raised Brethren.” Harlan scratches his head like he’s not really sure.
Earl backs up. “Brethren? No sugar! I knew a Brethren fella once. Owned a used-car lot outside Conoy. Sold us a lemon of a Nomad. Now, what was his name…?”
Grace leans around Earl. “Maybe Viola will bring you to services some Sunday, Harlan,” she says, louder than normal, like Harlan’s either hard of hearing or the town idiot. “We welcome everyone, no matter who they are or where they’re from.”
“I’ll ask her to do that,” Harlan says, shooting Grace a flirtatious smile.
We say goodbye, and as soon as they’re out of earshot, I turn to Harlan. “I’m so sorry you had to put up with that. They used to be nice.”
“It’s okay, Viola,” says Harlan. “They’re still nice.” The snappy grin returns. “Let’s go check out their grandson’s pig, see if there’s a family resemblance.”
I shake my head and laugh, take his arm. “Harlan, you are truly bad, you know that?”
When he winks, his mouth goes slack. “A man can only dream.”
♦ ♦ ♦
A week and a half later, right before closing, I’m cleaning the grease out of my fryers when two Wenger girls show up. They see me and come right around the end of the counter. “Mrs. Gluck?” says one of them, a tall girl with an insistent chin. “Are you Mrs. Gluck?”
“That’s right,” I say. The grease spatters into a five-gallon bucket. “We close in five minutes.”
“Might we have a word with you, Mrs. Gluck?” She frowns as the teenaged boy from the grocery crashes carts into place near my stand. “Alone.”
The other girl fidgets behind her, looking like she’s about to curtsey at any moment. They are young, maybe twenty tops.
I nod, steer them to the vinyl booth in the corner of the store where workers take their breaks. They sit beside each other, their elbows propped on the table, hands clasped as though in prayer.
“It’s about my farm, ya?” I say.
The girls look at each other. The insistent girl juts out her chin, swallows hard. Her white neck blotches red. “We’ve come to ask your forgiveness,” she says.
“My—?”
“Our husbands could not have been ruder to you, showing up at your door like that. I give Aaron a good brow beating the minute I found out. And a swat on the head too.” Her lips press together. I wonder which one she’s married to—the bear or the puppet. It’s hard to imagine either.
“I told Micah he’s not to bother you,” the fidgety girl pipes up. “Not ever again.” She sits back, and I realize now that she’s pregnant—no doubt the cause of her discomfort.
“We just had to come here and tell you,” says the insistent one. “We couldn’t be sorrier. We hope you’ll forgive us, Mrs. Gluck. If not now, then someday.”
The pregnant one sighs from a very deep place. “We’re so grateful to you. We pray to God you won’t hold it against our families. We pray you’ll continue renting your fields to us. We need your place for our cows.”
Out the store window, a van sits at the curb, a very old man behind the wheel, obviously not a Wenger. “Why didn’t the boys come here themselves?”
The girls look at each other again, frown. “They’re just so ashamed,” the insistent girl says. “They can’t even face each other right now.”
I push a piece of breading around the table, between the salt and pepper shakers. Stunned by this sudden outpouring of remorse, I want to forgive the boys to whom these girls are, for better or worse, married. But as much as I appreciate the girls’ sincerity, I can’t do it, at least not yet. Not until the boys have shown me something equal in themselves.
I stand, smooth my apron. “Thanks, girls,” I say. “I’ll consider that when your lease comes due.”
The girls slide out of the booth. “Thank you, Mrs. Gluck,” the insistent girl says, her brown eyes flashing. “You’ve been very kind.”
The pregnant one fidgets. “If there’s anything we can do …” she says, her eyes dropping to the linoleum. She hugs herself with tanned arms. I think that, despite her insistent friend, she’s maybe the more convincing of the two after all.
When they’ve gone, I go back to work, wondering at the strange unpredictability of events, thinking maybe I’ve been too harsh, too quick to judge. As I’m finishing up, the building owner, Dutch Stoltzfus comes by. “Don’t forget your rent, Viola,” he says, looking up at the ceiling tiles, as though he might find a wad of money stashed up there. “I think you’re a ways behind.”
“I know, Dutch,” I say. “I’m getting it together.”
“Just so you know,” he says, then shuffles away.
“Like I really need to mind that right now,” I say to myself. But I know it’s not Dutch’s fault. How could it be?
♦ ♦ ♦
“I’m going to services at the Wengers tomorrow,” I announce that night, as Harlan and I bundle in bed. Moonlight floods the windows, making the starched sheets look like fields of snow. Harlan lies on his back, his bare white arms flung behind his head—skeleton arms.
“You are?” he says.
“There’s something I need to find out.”
“Yeah?” His toenails scrape my ankles.
“Yes.” I don’t tell him what it is, and he doesn’t ask. Instead, he pulls the sheet over his chest, lies there quietly for a time.
Eventually he stirs. “You’re sure you really want to go?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’m coming with you then.”
I roll towards him, smooth a snowy hill. “Harlan, you don’t have to do that.”
“I know I don’t have to, Viola.” He stares up at the ceiling, where a slice of plaster curls away. “I just want to, is all.”
“Okay,” I say. “I think that would be all right.”
“It don’t matter if you think so or not. I’m coming and that’s that.”
♦ ♦ ♦
The next morning, we get dressed and head out. Harlan’s got on a pair of Ramey’s old suspenders and a jacket that makes him look tall but also swallows him up. I wear a dress as Wenger-like as I can find. For the first time in ages, I tie my head covering under my chin.
At the church house, I park the Rambler at the end of a line of buggies. We wade between a group of playing children and go in. The hymn singing has already begun, a cappella.
More than a few eyes stare at us as I show Harlan where to sit, on one of the benches to the left of the minister’s table with the men, while I take a back row seat with the women on the right. Someone hands me a songbook, opened to the correct page, and I begin humming along to a hymn I haven’t heard in many years, but which I apparently never forgot.
After a few more numbers, the children file in. The song leaders and Reverend Yoder, a balding man with tiny spectacles, sit at the singers’ table in the middle of the room, and one of the leaders stands and reads from scripture. Then Yoder delivers a message in German. Across the room, Harlan’s eyes seem riveted on the minister. Had he known Harlan was visiting, Yoder surely would have spoken in English, as is the Wenger custom. Soon, I notice the two young wives seated a few rows in front of me. On the opposite side of the room are their husbands—the bear and the puppet—hair combed, cheeks scrubbed red, straw hats in their laps. There are others I know, some well, some not. Some of the younger ones look almost exactly like their parents did a long time ago. More singing and another message later, the service ends with the Lord’s Prayer.
After the service, one of my old friends comes over and hugs me. “How are you, Viola?” she says. “I can’t tell you how much we missed you!”
Can’t tell me, I think, because it would be embarrassing to both of us. Others express similar concern for me. I find Harlan and lead him to the singers’ table where I introduce him to Reverend Yoder. “It’s good you’re here, Viola,” Yoder says. “Will we be seeing you regular now?”
“I have something to ask you,” I say. “I’d like you to hear me out.”
“All right, shall we adjourn?” He takes us into the minister’s meeting room, behind the big glass window.
“Would you mind calling in those two boys?” I point out the two young husbands.
Yoder does so, and they shamble in, watching the floor as if for snakes. We sit around a table, Harlan beside me on one side, the two boys on the other. They stare down at their hats in their laps. Yoder is a stone statue at the end of the table.
I take a breath, hold it in, let it out. “I want to ask you a question, Reverend,” I say. “As you may know, these two boys here want to buy my farm. Well, the pastureland anyway. At a price well below its true value.”
Yoder nods his stony chin. “I’m aware of that. They want to keep their families here, in the area.”
“What I want to ask you, Reverend, is this. If I sell them the land, will you lift my excommunication?”
Yoder looks like he just bit into a grapefruit. “Viola, you know only the deacon can do that.”
“But will you work with him on it? In earnest? I don’t have to tell you how scarce land is around here. It would be a big sacrifice for me.”
“Excommunication is a serious matter, Viola.” He glances at Harlan, then back at me. “Let me ask you. Will you also return to the Wenger life? Will you give up your worldly ways and ask the congregation for forgiveness? Show the true fruits of your faith? If so, then maybe…”
“Just the land, Reverend. That’s all I’d be giving up.”
“Well, I don’t see how…” His eyebrows knit together while he ponders. Then he nods and smiles. “Let’s ask the boys here what they think, okay?”
The lanky one looks at his brawny brother, who clears his throat with a growl. “Well, Reverend, who am I to judge? I’m as guilty as anybody. Worse, maybe.” He lays his paws open on the table. “But according to the Ordnung, it doesn’t work that way.
“Me, too,” his brother says. He looks at Viola. “I’ve hurt you, ma’am, and asked God to forgive me for it. But if the Ordnung says…”
Yoder grimaces at me. “I’m sorry, Viola. But the boys are right. We can’t make exceptions to the Ordnung, or pretty soon everyone will be doing whatever they please. You understand it has nothing to do with any superior attitude on our part. It’s just our way.”
Harlan fidgets in the seat beside me. I don’t look at him, but I know his face is red with anger. Now, I speak to the boys directly. “Your wives are very special girls. Hard-working young women. Like tortoiseshell and mother-of-pearl. You should cherish them, treat them with respect.”
“Yes, ma’am,” says the puppet. “We do.”
“Every day we thank God for them,” the bear says. “Even when they smack us on the head.”
I look each of them in the eye. “Okay, well I guess I learned what I came here to find out.” Yoder and the boys all bow their heads, giving in to their disappointment. A tiny chuckle escapes Harlan’s throat. But they couldn’t expect what I’m about to say next.
I speak to Yoder first. “Reverend, I’ll sell them the land. At the price they’re asking, and abiding by the Ordnung. Truth be told, it heartens me that the old ways are still respected.” I hear a number of gasps go around the table, including one I know to be Harlan’s, a strangled chicken kind of gasp.
Next, I turn to the boys. “I only ask that you honor the land, the memory of my husband. And—” The heads of both boys snap up from their laps. “And that you send your children around once in a while, maybe bring me some cut flowers or a jar of bread and butter pickles.”
The barrel-chested young farmer rises out of his seat quicker than a big man seems able. “Why, yes,” he says. “Yes, we promise.”
The puppet knocks his chair over getting up. He crushes his hat against the table. “Mrs. Gluck, you’re…we’ll always owe you.”
“Thank you,” says the burly young man. “Our families thank you.” He comes around the table, takes both of my hands in his paws.
“Well, thank yourself, doggone it,” I say. “You’re a good man. You’re both good men.”
Yoder wears a smile like a child’s drawing of a sun. Beside him, Harlan looks completely perplexed. He blinks and blinks. I know that, later, I’ll touch my fingers to his lips and put my fingertips on his cheeks. I’ll pull him toward me, the green ponds of his eyes pooling up, and I’ll fall right into them. But in the meantime, the bear holds my hands in his paws and shakes them for all they’re worth, and I let him.
Scott Bradley Smith’s fiction has appeared in Subtropics and Hawaii Pacific Review. His awards include First Prize in the Pittsburgh City Paper Short Fiction Contest and Honorable Mention in the Tucson Weekly Fiction Contest. He is the author of five produced plays and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona in Tucson. Scott grew up in Lancaster County—part of “Pennsylvania Dutch Country”—and now lives in Pittsburgh.
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