A Courtship on Huckleberry Hill Page 3

  Sam shook his head. “If you can listen and play, what was the question I just asked you?”

  Wally took the drastic measure of pushing himself up on his one leg and hopping toward the TV. “You can’t just turn it off while I’m in the middle of a level.”

  For the second time today, Sam thought he might explode with anger. But he never yelled at Wally. Wally had enough hard things in his life. Sam went behind the TV and unplugged both the TV and the Xbox. “Don’t hop. You’ll hurt your knee.”

  “Ach!” Wally growled. “Now it won’t even save. I’ll have to start all over again.”

  Sam swallowed the guilt that rose like bile in his throat. Wally had so few things that made him happy. “I’m sorry, Wally. You can turn it right back on, but I need to talk to you.” He put his arm around his bruder and helped him back to the sofa.

  Wally clamped his arms across his chest and turned his face away. “It doesn’t matter now. My game is ruined.”

  Sam sat down next to his brother and pushed a cookie in his direction. Wally didn’t even glance at it. “Did you throw someone’s math paper in the mud at school today?”

  “You stopped my game to ask me that?”

  “Jah. How you treat others is more important than any Medal of Honor game.”

  Wally still refused to look in Sam’s direction. “I wasn’t looking where I was going, okay? You’re not going to get mad at me for accidentally bumping into someone, are you? Reuben made a joke, and I turned around and laughed and knocked into some goofy second grader. The kid dropped his stupid number paper and cried like I’d shot him with a rifle. Teacher got mad at me for something I didn’t even do.”

  That seemed reasonable. The teacher had overreacted, just as Sam had suspected. “I’m glad to know you weren’t purposefully being mean. But you should try to be more careful. You’re tall, and the little kids don’t always have time to get out of your way.”

  Wally scowled. “I’m not very stable on my crutches—but you wouldn’t know how that feels.”

  Sam swallowed the lump in his throat. “Nae, I wouldn’t. I’m sorry for that.” Sam couldn’t begin to imagine how hard it must be for Wally, so he tried to make things as easy as possible for the poor kid. That’s why he’d dropped everything and ridden to the school. He’d be hanged before he let some snooty teacher mistreat Wally. She’d show Wally the respect and understanding he deserved, or Sam would see that the school board hired someone who did. “I’m sorry more people don’t show compassion.”

  Wally suddenly seemed very interested in having a conversation with Sam. “Did you talk to the teacher?”

  “I talked to her.”

  Wally leaned closer as if eager to hear some juicy gossip. “Did you tell her what was what?”

  Sam pressed his lips together. Wally shouldn’t take so much pleasure in the teacher’s comeuppance. Sam had tried to put her in her place, but he wasn’t so certain she’d listened. It annoyed him to no end that she didn’t seem intimidated or persuaded. “She won’t give you any trouble again, and if she does, you let me know, and I’ll go to the school board.”

  “I warned her not to cross me,” Wally said. “I bet she’s sorry now.”

  “She said you put your foot on the desk.”

  “So? My stump hurts when I sit for a long time. It helps relieve the pain on that side to prop my foot up.”

  It made perfect sense to anyone with a reasonable bone in her body—which didn’t seem to include Wally’s teacher. How could Wally be expected to sit at his desk like a normal child? Sam frowned. Wally seemed to be able to sit quite comfortably for hours in the basement playing Xbox. Of course, the sofa was much softer than a school desk chair. Maybe Sam should send Wally to school with a pillow.

  “Reuben put his feet on the desk too. Teacher didn’t like that, because Reuben had mud on his shoes. She got mad about the mud, but then she let Reuben go home and made me stay after and clean all the desks. She made me do it twice because she said the first time wasn’t gute enough. I got a blister.”

  “You already told me.”

  “I probably won’t be able to hold the pencil tomorrow. Not that Teacher will care. Like as not, she’ll make me do my work anyway.”

  Sam’s gaze flicked to Wally’s right hand. There was a little blood blister on the tip of his ring finger, but it didn’t seem to get in the way of Wally’s video game. Could it really hurt that bad? Sam got blisters and scratches all the time. He’d learned to work past them. If he let every little injury put him down, he’d never get anything done on the farm.

  Sam pressed his lips together. Why was he second-guessing this? Wally had been through something terrible. He already had enough pain in his life. The teacher had made things worse, and now she knew that Sam wouldn’t stand for anyone hurting his little bruder.

  Sam messed up Wally’s already unruly hair, jumped from the sofa, and plugged in the TV and the Xbox. “I’m going out for chores. Let me know if you need anything.”

  Wally didn’t answer. He was already pressing buttons on the remote, turning everything back on, looking for his game. Sam hoped Wally would be able to finish his level without having to start all over again.

  Sam bounded up the stairs and back into the kitchen. Maggie had finished washing her hands and was holding a pink envelope with a heart stamp. “This came for you in the mail.”

  Who would be sending him a pink envelope? There was no return address, but the handwriting was definitely a woman’s. A small knitted clump of yarn fell out of the envelope when he opened it. The stationery inside was also pink.

  Dear Sam,

  My granddaughter has just come to town, and I would very much appreciate it if you would come to our house and meet her. She is from Greenwood and needs a husband something wonderful, and I think you will do the trick. It has to be a secret because she wants to wait until January, but I say, the early bird gets the worm. Would you and your family come to dinner at our house on Friday night? You can meet my granddaughter, and I will make my famous Indonesian beef stew. It’s a vegetarian dish.

  Much love,

  Anna Helmuth and Felty—

  but he didn’t write this letter.

  P.S. If you need more convincing, I have enclosed a small dishrag.

  Sam drew his brows together. Anna and Felty Helmuth were a very kind old couple who lived on the other side of town on a rise of ground they’d named Huckleberry Hill. Anna had a reputation as a very gute matchmaker and a very bad cook. They didn’t live in Sam’s district, but he took a load of hay to Felty every summer and helped him get it into the haymow. Anna always told him what a nice boy he was. Sam probably should have been pleased. When someone wanted to match you up with one of their relatives, it was usually a compliment.

  But he had no time for a wife, and a girl who needed her mammi to find her a husband was probably thirty-seven years old with no teeth. Sam preferred teeth. He folded the letter and handed it to Maggie. “What should I do about this?”

  Maggie quickly read over the letter and giggled. “We should go, Sam. At least I wouldn’t have to cook dinner.”

  “Anna wants me to meet her granddaughter. I’d rather get a cavity filled.”

  “But what will you tell her?”

  Sam fingered the whiskers on his chin. “I’ll think on it while I do chores. It will have to be an honest excuse that discourages her from ever asking again.”

  Maggie smiled. “From what I hear, nothing discourages Anna Helmuth.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.” Sam gave his sister a wink and walked out the back door. He didn’t have time to waste on bad teachers or toothless girls. The corn would be ready soon. He had to make sure everything was prepared before his uncle and cousins came to help bring it in.

  Perry and Danny were in the barn milking the cows. They only had two cows, so Sam couldn’t justify buying a milking machine, but he wanted to expand. He had plenty of gute pastureland and enough acreage to grow more feed corn
. He’d need a silo, but those weren’t expensive. With a dozen heifers, he could justify putting in milking machines and a storage tank, and he’d almost saved enough money to do it. The trick was convincing Mamm that a small dairy would be a wise use of their money.

  Sam helped Perry muck out, then tended to the animals and cleaned his tools. Then he and Danny walked the fence line looking for repairs that needed to be made before it got dark.

  Sam nudged Danny and pointed to an errant wire sticking out from the fence. “Here’s one.” Danny held the strand of wire steady while Sam wrapped it back around itself.

  Sam’s next-door neighbor, Rose Mast, wandered toward them from her side of the fence. “Hallo, Sam. Hallo, Danny. Do you want to see our new goat?”

  “A new goat?” Danny said, showing the excitement only an eight-year-old could muster.

  Rose smirked in Sam’s direction. “Mamm wants to try making goat cheese.”

  Sam raised an eyebrow. “Who doesn’t like goat cheese?” Rose’s mamm was always elbow-deep in one project or another. She never finished anything, so her house was cluttered with half-done quilts and needlework, exotic spices and strange kitchen gadgets that never got used. Ach, vell. The good news about goats was that they didn’t require much care. The new goat could live quite happily for many years, running loose in the Masts’ pasture without any attention at all.

  Danny looked up at Sam. “Can I go see it?”

  “Hurry. Maggie wants us in for supper at five o’clock.”

  Danny gingerly slid between the barbed wires of the fence to Rose’s side of the pasture. He secured his hat on top of his head and peered at Rose. “Will you show me?”

  Rose glanced at Sam and fingered one of her kapp strings. “Dat built a little pen behind the barn. Go and see. Prissy and Lydia Ruth are out there.”

  Danny took off across the pasture toward the three-story barn that loomed over the Masts’ farm.

  Rose leaned her hand on a fence post as her gaze darted back and forth between Danny and Sam. “Did you like the cookies?”

  Sam furrowed his brow. What cookies was she talking about? “They were appeditlich.” That was true enough, even if he couldn’t remember eating them.

  She stuck out her bottom lip. “You never got them, did you?”

  He grimaced. How could she see through him like that? “I’m sorry, Rose. It’s been a hard day. I don’t remember any cookies. I’m sure they were delicious. Everything you make is gute.”

  Her face fell. “I found a recipe especially because you said you liked coconut.”

  Coconut. Okay. He vaguely remembered coconut. Last week some sort of lumpy, roundish coconut cookies had appeared at his house on a paper plate. Sam and Wally had eaten them without even bothering to find out where they had come from. “Ach. I remember. The coconut haystacks. Wally and I ate every last one in about half an hour. I’m a dumkoff for forgetting.”

  Rose brightened considerably. “I forgive you, but I’m writing my name on the plate next time. I don’t want you to forget. A girl gets worried.”

  Rose and Sam’s families had been neighbors for years. The Mast children and the Sensenig children had grown up together, practically like siblings. When Sam and Rose were younger, they and their brothers and sisters had spent most of their summers playing together. They ran around the pastures and explored the woods for hours at a time. They hid in the haymow and waded in the creek a mile from the house, sneaking frogs and pollywogs home in Mamm’s canning jars. Mark and Mose, Rose’s older bruders, built a secret hideout in a big old tree in the forest, and they all took turns guarding it from intruders.

  Of course, once they got older, they had naturally grown apart, except for Rose’s brother Mark and Sam’s sister Naomi. They had married each other four years ago.

  Sam and Rose were still friends, even though they didn’t spend nearly as much time together as they had when they were children—mostly by Sam’s choice. After Sam’s fater had died, Sam had even less time to spare. Rose was now at the age to think about marriage. When a girl and boy spent a lot of time together, people just assumed they were a couple, and Sam didn’t want anyone to think he and Rose were a couple—especially Rose herself. She’d had a little crush on him when he was twelve and she was the ripe old age of eight, but her infatuation had petered out years ago.

  Rose had always been the tagalong kid sister—whiny and prone to pout. Just because her brother had married his sister was no reason for the gossips to expect a romance between the two of them.

  Rose had sandy brown hair, full lips, thick eyebrows, and eyelashes that touched her cheeks when she blinked—they were that long. She was pretty, in her own way, and lots of boys were interested. Rose stuck out her bottom lip altogether too often, but Sam couldn’t imagine it would be long before she had a steady boyfriend.

  Sam knelt down and snipped an errant wire with his cutters. “Did you go to the gathering last night?” Maybe she’d already met her future husband.

  “Jah, but it wasn’t any fun. You didn’t show up.”

  He shrugged. “Gatherings are for die youngie. I’m too old yet.”

  Rose harrumphed. “You’re only twenty-four. No one would call you a bachelor until at least thirty.”

  “It’s good for you to go to the gatherings. You’re younger.”

  “The new teacher was there, and she’s your age.”

  Sam clenched his teeth. The new teacher? How dare she show her face when she couldn’t even show kindness to one little boy in her class?

  Rose frowned. “Nae, that’s not right. She said she is Davie Bontreger’s age, and Davie is twenty-two.” She sighed. “Ach, vell, it doesn’t matter. You should have come.”

  “What did you think of the new teacher?” Sam said, trying not to sound hostile.

  “She’s short. If you visited during school, you’d probably think she was one of the scholars. She played volleyball almost the whole time until the singing. My sisters like her. Prissy says she wrote a song about the times tables so the kinner could learn them, and she sings and smiles all day long.”

  Sam slid his wire cutters into his pocket. “She was mean to Wally today.”

  Rose’s mouth fell open. “What did she do?”

  “She got after him for accidentally bumping into someone on the playground, and then he put his foot on the desk, so she made him stay after school and clean up.” Sam pressed his lips together. When he said it out loud, it didn’t seem all that serious. But it was Wally she’d mistreated, a kid who deserved compassion, not contempt.

  Rose nodded. “He does put his foot on the desk.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Prissy says he does it all the time.”

  Of course he did it all the time, but the teacher hadn’t taken the time to find out why. “His stump feels better if he rests his foot on the desk.”

  “Oh.” Rose blinked rapidly and fanned up a breeze with those eyelashes. “Come to think of it, Lizzy complained that the teacher wouldn’t let her braid Mary Lynn’s hair during singing time. That seems a little petty, doesn’t it? Do you think I should mention it to my dat?”

  Rose’s dat was on the school board. “He should know that we’re concerned. It would be gute for them to keep a close eye on her.”

  “Okay. I will tell him. We must protect Wally. Things are hard enough for him already.”

  “Jah,” Sam said. Rose understood about Wally, and Sam was grateful for the sympathy.

  Rose seemed to forget what they had just been talking about. “What’s Wally’s favorite kind of cake?”

  “What?”

  “I’m going to make Wally a cake for being such a brave boy. What is his favorite kind?”

  “I don’t know. He likes chocolate, I guess.”

  Rose clapped her hands. “Wunderbarr. I will make him a chocolate cake and you a coconut pineapple cake.”

  “Denki. Wally will be very happy.”

  Rose was only nineteen, yet she ha
d more kindness and sympathy in her little finger than that new teacher would have in her whole lifetime.

  Too bad the school board hadn’t hired Rose.

  Chapter Four

  Elsie blew a frustrated puff of air between her lips.

  Toilet paper.

  Who would steal the toilet paper?

  She had her suspicions, but it would be unfair to make assumptions when school had only been in session for two weeks and she was just getting to know the children. Children needed the concern and care and trust of their teacher, even when they didn’t deserve it, or maybe especially when they didn’t. Elsie’s expectations were high for all her students, but some of them resisted her guidance. Those were the ones who needed her most of all—children like Wally Sensenig, who had been coddled and babied for so long, he was incapable of behaving any other way.

  With two rolls tucked under her arm, Elsie trudged to the porta-potty that served as a bathroom for the school. She wrinkled her nose as she opened the door. At least it wasn’t as unbearably stinky as the outhouse at the school in Charm. But still a porta-potty. The thought was repulsive enough.

  She caught a glimpse of the children playing in the yard for recess. It was strange that they never played any organized games, like volleyball or softball. Those were Elsie’s favorites. She might have to get a game going.

  Wally Sensenig stood off to the side with his friend Reuben Schmucker. Wally leaned heavily on his crutches, never joining the other children in their play. The crutches couldn’t have been comfortable to run with, but Elsie sensed his leg was more of an excuse than a reason. Instead of being someone on the outside looking in, it seemed that Wally was overseeing the children rather than wishing he could join in.

  Wally Sensenig was unlike any child she’d ever taught before. He was missing his leg just below his knee and three fingers on his left hand. He limped around on crutches and acted as if he were the most picked-on, unfortunate boy in the whole world. Yet Wally was used to getting everything he wanted. Elsie had overheard him tell his friend Reuben about his video games. He had a TV and a video game player in his house, which his brother had specially wired for electricity.