The More the Merrier Read online

  The characters and events in this book are the creation of the author, and any resemblance to actual persons or events is coincidental.

  THE MORE THE MERRIER

  Copyright © 2019 by Linda Byler

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Good Books, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Print ISBN: 978-1-68099-470-4

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-68099-471-1

  Cover design by Brian Peterson

  Cover images by Period Images and Getty Images

  Printed in the United States of America

  Table of Contents

  The Story

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Glossary

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  IT WASN’T THE FACT THAT SHE WAS LEFT alone after Eli died that was so hard. It was caring for eight children in 1931, those bleak years of the Great Depression, when neither hard work nor skillful financial management made much of a difference, seeing how there was no money to manage and no jobs to be had.

  Sammy was the oldest, at sixteen years of age, hired out to Jonas Beiler over toward Strasburg, working on the farm from sunup to sundown. He was a strong, curly-haired youth with an outlook as sunny as possible considering his father’s passing. So that left seven children for Annie to feed and clothe, and no matter what she did, life had turned into a scramble for survival.

  A small woman with an abundance of thick brown hair, wide green eyes that held a shadow of sorrow, and a wide, full mouth compressed with the hardship of daily life, she mourned the loss of her husband and wondered what God meant by casting her in the role of widowhood. But still, she bowed her head and said, “Thy will be done.” She kept the cows, but sold two of the pigs to pay the feed bill, and acquired twenty chickens and a sick calf that she nursed back to health. Suvilla and Enos, ages fifteen and thirteen, helped milk the cows by hand every morning and every evening, and helped lug the monstrous milk cans onto the low flatbed wagon and haul them to the end of the drive for the milkman. They cleaned cow stables, forked loose hay and straw, fed the chickens, and ate coffee soup and fried mush for breakfast, a lard sandwich for lunch, and potato soup for supper. Curly-haired and big-eyed, their cheeks blooming with pink color, the children shed a few stoic tears for their father, and then tried to go on with their lives. Everyone had to die at some point, some earlier than others. That fact didn’t exactly make it easy to say goodbye to their father, but they did their best to accept the simple words of their mother: “His time was up.”

  Ephraim was eleven years old, solemn and wise, and he instructed the smaller children in the way of life and death, repeating the words of the minister from the funeral service. Ida was barely a year younger, and like twins, they spoke and thought alike, although she hung on to every word from his mouth, an adoring younger sister whose devotion to her brother bordered on worship.

  Emma, Lydia, and Rebecca were often referred to as “the three little ones”—six, four, and nearly three years old with thick brown curls plastered severely into rolls along both sides of their heads, the heavy tresses pinned into coils in the back. They were young enough to accept without question the disappearance of their father, feeling only the small portion of grief God allows for little ones.

  It had been six months and twenty days since his passing, Annie counted as she sat on the back stoop with the sound of children playing mingling with the wind in the maple trees, the clucking of the chickens, and distant barking of dogs. She was weary to the point of exhaustion. Early spring, the time of plowing, harrowing, and planting, had always taxed her strength, even when she had worked alongside Eli, his sturdy frame ahead of her walking behind the plow, the reins secured behind his back.

  This year she had Sammy at home for a few weeks, but the work was still more than they could reasonably manage. The seed corn was bought on credit, which was a weight on her mind and shoulders. What if there was not enough to pay it back? She envisioned losing their home. Did people go to jail for unpaid debts? No, the church wouldn’t allow it. She’d have to make a humiliating trip to see Amos Beiler, the deacon, but so be it.

  She watched the three youngest race across the lawn, marveling at their strength and energy after the meager soup in their stomach. The potatoes were all gone, even the smallest one, wrinkled like an old man’s face. They’d gone down cellar, broke off every sprout to ensure the potatoes’ well-being, but they knew the supply would run out in April or May, and the new crop would not be ready to dig till August.

  There were canned tomatoes, green beans, pole limas, and corn left, but none of those vegetables satisfied hunger like solid, starchy potatoes. Cornmeal was good, though, and she roasted one ear of corn after another. She filled the oven of the solid range with the heavy ears of corn and allowed the odor of it to fill her with fresh hope. As long as they had roasted, ground cornmeal, they wouldn’t starve.

  The sun’s rays slanted between the dancing maple leaves, creating a pattern of light and shadow. There was a blaze of color in the west, brilliant orange and timid yellow, a soft lavender that melded with the weightless blue of early spring. It was the kind of evening that made her feel as if everything was manageable. Possible. That she’d be all right in spite of the huge obstacles she faced. She leaned back, rested her weight on her elbows, stretched her feet, and watched a blur of small birds whirring across the sky in a frantic synchronized spiral of movement that took her breath away. Well, if God knew each sparrow that fell, and designed the ability of tiny birds to fly like that, then he would surely favor her with his kindness.

  Yes. He would.

  Dear Heavenly Father, guide me along this path you have prepared for me. Help me to make good choices, to protect my children. Give me strength for today.

  She got to her feet. She was a small woman and wore the traditional purple dress with a black apron pinned around her narrow waist, her substantial white organdy head-covering revealing only a thin strip of her abundant hair and hiding most of her ears. She was a stalwart and modest figure that moved purposefully across the lawn, then bent to examine the rich dark soil for signs of onion tops pushing through. She straightened. Her eyes roved the perimeters of the yard searching for little ones, and, finding none of them, she turned toward the barn to come upon the three little girls on their hands and knees, poking a long hoe handle beneath the woodpile.

  “He’s in here. I saw him go,” Lydia said excitedly.

  A vague question of what was meant by “him” brought a smile to Annie’s tired face. A mouse, rat, snake, earthworm? Which of God’s creatures was hiding beneath that pile?

  Suddenly there was a shriek from Lydia, a roar from Emma, a hurried scuttl
ing followed by a mad dash in her direction. The smallest one, Rebecca, was toddling after them with howls of outrage. Annie brought her hands to her hips.

  “Here, here,” she said, speaking with authority. “Lydia, what is under the woodpile? Stop your greishas.”

  Small hands clutched at her side, her waist, tugged at her apron, with dusty shoes dancing around her own feet. She bent to scoop up Rebecca. “Shh. Shh. Hush.”

  “It’s a snake. A black one as thick as your arm. It turned around and was going to bite us!”

  “They don’t bite, Lydia. Stop saying that. Snakes are good—they eat mice and rats.”

  She turned to go back to the house, the sturdy white dwelling with long, deep windows, a porch along the front, and a smokehouse off to the right. A cement sidewalk separated the green lawn like the part on the top of someone’s head, with a Y that led to the smokehouse. Another block of cement contained the cast iron water pump with a tin cup attached to it, hanging on a piece of thick string. Everyone drank from the cup, without the benefit of even a weekly wash with the rest of the dishes in the house, so the handle was darkened by the repeated insertion of two fingers curled around it—fingers stained with soil, manure, tobacco leaves, hoe handles, and sweat.

  A few yews grew in neatly trimmed rectangles along the front of the house, with a climbing rose attached to a trellis on the right. The windows were without light, the house as if everyone was remembering the loss of its owner, shrouded in grief. Never again would his joyous footsteps announce his arrival. Annie would never again turn from the cook stove to greet him, or walk with him to sit on the old davenport beneath the double windows in the kitchen. He had been taken from her by the freak accident that she had relived over and over in her mind—runaway horses that took a wagonload of firewood down a steep embankment. They’d uncovered his body by clawing at chunks of it, but his actual death had been by drowning, half in and half out of the icy Pequea Creek.

  Annie herded her gaggle of little ones into the house, closed the door firmly against early spring night temperatures, then went to the cook stove to lift the round lid from the glossy top, before bending to grab a stick of firewood to keep the red coals from dying into the bed of cold gray ashes. She smiled to herself as three little ones tucked their feet under their skirts, leaning over the edge of the couch to make sure the black snake had not followed them inside.

  One by one, the older children trickled into the house, fresh-faced and windblown, every one with a headful of thick brown hair in a variety of waves and curls, and wide green eyes that were always curious and full of life.

  Ida and Ephraim were chattering like magpies, the words tumbling from their mouths punctuated by exclamation or giggles, eyes wide with disbelief or eyebrows lowered in concentration. They bent their backs simultaneously to untie the shoelaces on their high-topped leather shoes, peeled off their black cotton socks and stuffed them back into their shoes, then set them neatly in a row along the wall in back of the cook stove.

  “Time for bare feet, Mam!” Ida trilled.

  Bowa feesich. To be rid of cumbersome leather shoes, to wiggle toes and feel the delicious softness of grass and soil and pine needles, was a pure pleasure for all children between the ages of two and fourteen.

  “No bare feet until you see the first bumblebee, Ida.”

  “Bumblebees have nothing to do with bare feet. Why do you always say that?”

  Annie thought for a second. “I guess my mother said that, so I do, too.”

  Ephraim’s round green eyes gazed into his mother’s with no guile, pure and innocent as a forest pool. At eleven years of age, he was unusually quiet, reflective, a lover of school work and books. Annie lay awake at night considering how he hadn’t shed one tear after the death of his father. While the remainder of the family allowed their sorrow to spill out at the funeral, Ephraim stood dry-eyed, his eyes unfocused, as if he had gone to another place that was happier.

  “Ephraim, where were you?” she asked.

  “Down by the creek.”

  “By yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “Watching the tadpoles.”

  Annie smiled at him, then turned to the stove again. She felt torn in so many directions since her husband’s passing. With eight children and only one parent, how could there ever be enough of her time to meet each one’s needs? For one moment, despair crept into her thoughts like an unwelcome virus, an annoying pain that she knew she must endure.

  Each child was an individual, each one with her special personality, his own needs to be met, and Eli had been so good with the boys, such a strong leader, with clear and unflinching authority like a beacon of light to guide their feet. Yes, sometimes she thought he was too hard on them, and there were times when his words seemed suddenly harsh, catching them all off guard. But discipline was important for children, and he was carrying a lot of responsibility. The stress would get to anyone now and then.

  Now he was gone.

  Reality hit her repeatedly. Grief was a constant companion, an unwanted presence that sucked all the oxygen out of the atmosphere around her, often leaving her gasping for air, feeling numb and half-dead inside. It was for her children that she lifted her head from the pillow every morning, got through the dark days of winter. Now there was a promise of spring, with its bursting of new life; each blade of grass that sprouted was a harbinger of hope.

  Taking a deep breath, she turned and spoke.

  “Bedtime.”

  “We’re hungry.”

  “There will be plenty of breakfast in the morning.” She said it with confidence, but wondered how long children could stay healthy on coffee soup and fried mush.

  The anxiety raised its visage once more, but she gave herself up to God’s will, steeled against the fear, and spoke the necessary words.

  “Ephraim, get the water ready.”

  She hoped her voice carried the proper authority. To get the water ready meant setting the agate dishpan on the bench by the back door, adding a good amount of cold water from the cast iron spigot in the kitchen sink, grabbing the teakettle that was always humming on back of the wood range, and dumping enough boiling water into it to produce a nice warm temperature for face washing before bedtime. With a wash rag that hung from a bed and a bar of lye soap, the night ritual was complete.

  One by one, they bent over the soapy water, washed faces and hands, swallowed against the emptiness in their stomachs, and sat waiting till their mother produced the black prayer book, then turned to kneel at a kitchen chair. Who could tell what went through each child’s mind as the soft voice of their mother replaced the deep, strong voice of their father, reciting the words of the old German prayer that had been written hundreds of years ago? Fluent in German, she read well, her voice rising and falling, comforting to the children’s ears.

  When they rose to their feet, she put the prayer book back on the shelf, sighed, and wished the children good night: “Gute nacht, Kinna.”

  The children answered in unison before turning to wend their way up the staircase, their bare feet soundless on the wooden steps. The usual scuffling in the boys’ room was followed by a scattering of voices, bedsprings creaking, a few footfalls in the girls’ room. And then silence spread like a mist through the house.

  This was the time Annie dreaded most, the long evenings that moved toward the stroke of midnight punctuated only by her soft sighs, whispered prayers, and shifting for a better, more restful position. This was when his absence felt as if someone had literally done her physical harm. A knife slash in her chest, a stray bullet grazing a section of her midriff, leaving a wound that wasn’t deadly but one that would never heal.

  She had loved so deeply. Eli had been the one she had always noticed, yearned for, as a youth. But she never thought he would acknowledge her presence, and certainly never want her for his wife. Tall, well built, too handsome for his own good, he’d broken a few silly girls’ hearts before
turning to the quiet, stone-faced Annie, bringing the smile to her lovely mouth, the glistening to her green eyes.

  But as marriages go, theirs was not a perfect union. He was demanding of her physical love, and she the proverbial shrinking violet, needing her rest and the energy to feed yet another infant. He was robust, with a strong personality, a man who needed a social life, visiting friends, inviting them for an evening meal on a Sunday, going to barn raisings and livestock auctions, lingering at the local feed store to banter politics with “die Englishy,” where Annie would have been content to stay home with the children.

  Now, after his tragic accident, the house seemed lifeless, dead.

  She had never realized the life he had breathed into his family’s existence. Like fresh air and the light of the sun, his laughter had rung out through the rooms, fulfilling every child’s need for a bit of merriment when times were hard. A good sense of humor quelled her worrying, effectively making her world a lighter place, so with his absence came the demons of her inability to cope with the hard task of providing for all of them. Occasionally she remembered the darker moments, when he would enter their home with a dark cloud over his head, barking orders and refusing to meet Annie’s questioning eyes, but thinking of those times only brought a pang of guilt to her heart. She should have been more forgiving, quicker to meet his needs while she still had the chance.

  The children were growing fast, thin and wiry, with seemingly bottomless stomachs. The milk check barely paid the bills, with two cows gone dry. The hay supply in the barn was alarmingly low, and it would be a few months before more could be cut. She would have to talk to Jonas Beiler, soon. He’d look for another hired boy even if she desperately needed the three dollars her eldest son brought home every week. She could not handle two freshening cows, the hay to be cut, the corn planting, not to mention the birthing of the sows.

  Yes, she knew the Amish community would never let a widow and her children starve, of course, but she had her pride. There was no reason she could not carry on alone, even if it meant tightening their belts and sending the children to bed a little hungry.