A Dog for Christmas

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

  A DOG FOR CHRISTMAS

  Copyright © 2017 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.

  ISBN: 978-1-68099-333-2

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-68099-334-9

  Cover design by Koechel Peterson & Associates, Inc.,

  Minneapolis, Minnesota

  Printed in the United States of America

  Table of Contents

  The Story

  Glossary

  Other Books by Linda Byler

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Henry and Harvey were born on a cold January night, just before the blizzard of 1929.

  Their mother laid them next to her, side by side in the double bed, wondering how they would manage to feed nine children when times were lean.

  By the time the twins were six years old, she had borne four more babies, bringing the total to thirteen children. They managed from year to year until 1936, when the lean times became leaner still. Oatmeal gave way to cornmeal mush, ground from the leftover field corn and roasted in the oven of the Pioneer Maid wood range.

  Rueben Esh, the children’s father, worked the farm from morning till evening. Tall, thin, and just a bit weary, his brown eyes questioned why milk prices were so low. With thirteen children to feed, his mortgage payment was increasingly hard to meet.

  Savilla, the good wife, spare and angular, patched their clothes and pinched pennies, cooked green beans and potatoes without a smidgen of meat, sold eggs and butter, and rode into the town of Intercourse, Pennsylvania, on the spring wagon, with half a dozen brown-eyed children who never in their lives ate an egg for breakfast.

  Much too wasteful, to let a child eat an egg, when they could bring the wonderful price of a dollar a dozen.

  Milk fever set in after the birth of the fourteenth child, and Savilla died.

  The twins were seven years old, their unruly brown hair bouncing above button noses splattered with freckles, their brown eyes not quite aligned. When they looked at you, they saw not only you, but what was behind you as well.

  They pressed around their mother’s coffin, swallowing their tears, standing side by side in their grief, the way they’d lain side by side in the double bed at birth.

  They knew hunger and cold and filth, that next year. The oldest daughter was overcome with the avalanche of responsibilities. She sat and rocked Baby Ezra while the rest of them did the best they could, under the tutelage of their sad-eyed father.

  When he married Mattie Stoltzfus, she entered the house like a freight train, tall and wide and hissing steam. The twins sat wide-eyed on the worn-out davenport that smelled of cow manure and sour milk, and wondered how they’d manage in times like this.

  They knew they disliked Mattie, so they agreed that they wouldn’t do what they were told. They never spoke back to her, just stood and looked at her with their curiously unfocused gaze and disobeyed.

  Rueben Esh listened to his new wife, found a green willow branch, and switched their thin bottoms, his sad brown eyes filled with resolve.

  “She doesn’t like us,” Harvey said.

  “No, she doesn’t,” Henry said.

  The parents made arrangements, packed their clothes into two brown paper sacks, and sent them down the road to neighbors who had only three children of their own.

  Rueben stayed in the barn that day, left the parting to Mattie.

  December 18, a week before Christmas, they stepped off the porch in their torn shoes into a few inches of snow, through the wire gate and out the lane, past the barnyard and the bare maple trees that waved their black branches in the cold wind.

  The boys didn’t look back, knowing that what was behind them was something they could never have again.

  After the first mile, their feet were cold from snow leaking into the cracks in the soles of their shoes. Their hands were red and chapped from the cold, so they switched their paper sacks from one hand to the other. Their torn straw hats flapped in the wind, and occasionally they took a free hand to slap the top of it. Behind them, their tracks zigzagged through the frozen pellets of snow, but they never strayed from each other, their shoulders meeting again and again.

  A buggy passed from the opposite direction. They waved solemnly and kept walking. They were being sent to Ephraim King. They had been told how far to walk on Peters Road, where to turn, and which driveway to look for, so they recognized the place when they came to it. A low rise, and suddenly, behind the woods, there it was.

  Instinctively, they drew together. Their steps slowed. The wind blew cold. They could hear their stomachs rumble underneath their thin coats that closed down the front with hooks and eyes.

  The farm where they were expected to live looked much the same as any other Lancaster County farm. A white-sided house with a porch and a kesslehaus, a white barn with white outbuildings flanked by patches of woods and corn-stubbled fields, a winding creek with willow trees swaying bare-limbed on its border.

  “I guess they know we’re coming.”

  “I hope so.”

  Unsure which door to enter, they hesitated at the end of the cement sidewalk. No barking dogs announced their arrival, no one appeared at a window, and both doors stayed shut, as if the farmhouse had turned its face aside.

  They looked at each other, one’s uncertainty mirrored in the other’s brown eyes.

  “You want to go back?”

  “We can’t.”

  Harvey nodded, and together they moved to the front door, lifted their fists, and knocked, first one, then the other.

  A patter of feet, and the door opened.

  “Oh, it’s you! I was watching for you. Thought your dat would bring you mit die fuhr. Have you walked all this way?”

  “Yes.”

  She opened the door wider, standing aside to usher them in. She was of medium height, and not too thin. On her round face, spectacles perched on her wide nose. Light-colored eyes peered through the polished lenses, her small red mouth like a raspberry. They noticed the row of safety pins down her dress front and the narrow gray apron belt with a row of small pleats across her stomach. The apron was wet, as if she had left her dishwater. She extended not one, but two, warm hands, red from the hot water.

  “Well, here you are, then. We are looking forward to having you. My name is Rachel. But I suppose now I am your Mam. You may call me Mam. We have three girls, Malinda, Katie, and Anna. They are in school. They will be home this afternoon.

  You are Henry and Harvey Esh, right?”

  “I’m Henry.”

  “I’m Harvey.”

  She rolled her eyes, raised her hands, and laughed, a long rolling sound that neither of them had heard very much in their short lives. They didn’t smile, only watched Rachel with a serious, off-kilter expression in their brown eyes,
unsure if they were being mocked or merely laughed at in a kind way.

  “I’ll never know which is which. Well, what does it matter. Here, give me your bags. I believe we have the necessary clothes in here, right?”

  They both nodded.

  Four eyes looked at her, two of them not quite focused with the others. Rachel stepped closer, peered into their faces.

  “Your eyes…”

  She straightened, led them to the kesslehaus, and showed them where to keep their shoes and hang their coats and hats.

  The kesslehaus was warm with the steam coming from the elsa-Kessle, the great kettle built into the brick oven, with a heavy cast iron door in front, where wood was shoved through to heat the water above it. There was a white Maytag wringer washer with a galvanized tub for rinsing, a painted gray chest, a sink built into cupboards, and a cream separator in the corner by a door. The cement floor was painted gray, slick and shining.

  After Rachel took their paper sacks and set them in a corner, she turned to them with a serious expression.

  “Now, I will have to check your heads for lice.”

  Willingly, they bowed their heads as she took them to the white light by a window and lifted their wavy brown hair, peering closely behind their scabby ears.

  She said nothing, just took them to the kesslehaus and doused their heads well with coal oil, then lifted a bucket of steaming water, added lava soap, and scoured their heads. Retrieving a galvanized tub, she made them bathe all over.

  She pinned their heads to her stomach and washed their ears and the sides of their necks, taught them how to use a toothbrush and baking soda, then told them to sit at the table and she’d get their dinner.

  They felt pink and scrubbed. They wiggled their toes inside their patched socks, touched their raw scalps, and watched Rachel with solemn eyes.

  She had dimples in her elbows that only appeared when her arms hung straight down. Her covering was not as big as Mattie’s. Her hair was rolled tight on each side of her head, and her dress was navy blue.

  She was making something in a pan that she stirred all the time. It smelled sweet, like cornstarch pudding.

  Their mouths watered. They swallowed.

  Harvey wiped away a trickle of saliva.

  Henry was dizzy with hunger.

  Mattie had not given them breakfast, saying the cornmeal was low. But now, past dinnertime, the thin reserve they had was almost used up.

  Harvey felt hollow inside, like the bottom of tall grass in the fall when it turned brown. Henry thought he might fall off his chair if he couldn’t get the kitchen to stop spinning.

  Rachel got down a tin of saltines, spread them with butter, then ladled a thick, yellow pudding over them.

  “Do you like crackas and cornstarch?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “You never had it?”

  “No.”

  “All right.”

  That was all she said, then left them alone.

  Harvey looked at Henry.

  Henry nodded.

  They bowed their heads, their hands clasped in their laps. Too shook up to pray, they waited till the proper time to lift their heads, then took up their spoons and ate the sweetened pudding and the salty, buttery saltines that melted on their tongues.

  They scraped their plates, and sat, unsure what they should do now.

  Rachel appeared, asked if they wanted more.

  They nodded, quickly.

  She refilled their plates, and they ate until they scraped their bowls a second time. A full stomach was a new sensation, and with the scrubbing with soap and hot water, their eyelids fell heavily. They made their way to the couch by the windows, and fell asleep in bright light of the afternoon sun on the snow.

  When the girls came home from school, swinging their black lunch buckets, they stopped inside the kesslehaus door when their mother appeared with lowered brows and a finger held to her lips.

  “Die boova sinn do.”

  Carefully, the girls tiptoed to hang up their bonnets, hiding their faces for a few seconds longer than they normally would have.

  Malinda, the oldest, was the first to turn, questioning her mother with her small blue eyes.

  “Why are they sleeping?” she whispered.

  Harvey woke up first, blinked, then sat up quickly, his hair tousled and stiff from the kerosene wash.

  Henry followed, clearly ashamed to be caught napping, rubbed his eyes and slid a glance sideways at Harvey, gauging the mood of his brother. He sidled closer, until their shoulders touched.

  Katie stood by the rocking chair, small, round and blue-eyed, dressed in a purple dress and black pinafore-style apron, her hair rolled back like ropes, sleek and glistening, her face an open book, revealing eagerness and curiosity, like a squirrel.

  The boys gazed back at her, four brown eyes that took in every detail of this girl they would supposedly call their sister.

  Anna wasn’t interested. She went upstairs, like a wisp of fog that blew through the room and that no one was absolutely sure had been there at all.

  Malinda, prodded by her mother, walked over and peered at them, tall, thin, a black apron pinned around her skinny waist with safety pins, her green dress buttoned down the back with small green buttons. She wore black stockings and the biggest black shoes the boys had ever seen, coming up over her ankles, tied with black laces in a row of holes that marched up her foot like ladybugs.

  The reason Henry noticed her shoes was because he lowered his face and kept it lowered when Malinda approached.

  “Hello.”

  She stuck out a hand for the traditional Amish handshake.

  Henry took it, then Harvey did, but cautiously.

  “So you will be my new brothers?”

  Two sets of shoulders were shrugged, first one, then the other.

  “Can’t you talk?”

  Two heads nodded.

  “What’s wrong with your eyes?”

  And that was the twins’ introduction to a new life in a strange house, doing chores in an unaccustomed barn with a new father who did not resemble their own in the least.

  Ephraim King was of medium height, built like a bulldog, massive shoulders and neck, large hands with fingers like knobby branches, legs that bowed out from the knees, so that when he walked his steps looked like a broken pair of scissors.

  He was loud, and always talking, or whistling, and sometimes he broke into song, snatches of hymns, but most often, silly little songs that made no sense.

  The bear went over the mountain,

  The bear went over the mountain,

  The bear went over the mountain,

  To see what he could see.

  That was one. There were many more, so the twins found themselves creeping through the barn, hoping to catch another song. But too often it wasn’t worth their tiptoeing, when he was only whistling.

  He was always happy, that was one thing sure.

  The first few days, Ephraim’s happiness carried the boys along, acquainting them to their altered existence. It was all so befuddling, a new bedroom upstairs, the stairway cut in half by a landing, then veering off to the left to continue on its way.

  Sent to bed without a light, they both ran into the wall before learning the stairway turned to the left.

  In the mornings, they were expected to rise in the stark, frigid air of the strange room, dress and be downstairs at 5:30, walk through the kitchen to the kesslehaus, shivers waving over their backs and down their legs, dress in their chore boots and coats by the light of a blue kerosene lantern, already lit and set on the countertop of the sink.

  Their appearance inside the warm barn, moist and steaming with the Holsteins’ breathing, always brought a cheerful “Guta Marya, boova.”

  They were expected to answer in the same way, so they did, hesitantly at first. This whole Guta Marya thing was so brand new and out of the ordinary, they only mumbled the words in a hoarse whisper.

  There were calves to be fed, heifers
to give forkfuls of hay, which proved to be more than they could handle. They stood side by side in the dark, frosted morning, when the east was changing from night to a gray awakening that would turn to a splash of lavender and pink, and pondered the problem of the lengthy pitchfork handle, the amount of hay to be moved, and the allotted time they were given to accomplish this.

  “Wheelbarrow’s too slippy in the snow,” Harvey said.

  “Wagon’s too small,” Henry said. “Think the man would get us a tarp to fork the hay on, slide it down?”

  “Don’t know. We can ask.”

  They had a hard time calling him Dat. There was only one Dat, and that was Rueben Esh, tall, thin as a stovepipe, sad-eyed and quiet as a forest pool on a still day.

  They could not place noisy, whistling, smiley-faced Ephraim in the notch reserved for Rueben.

  So they compromised and called him da mon.

  They didn’t understand the tooth brushing, either. All that effort, ramming a toothbrush back and forth, upside down and inside out, with that vile tasting white baking soda on it, just did not seem necessary.

  Malinda showed them how to wet the bristles of the toothbrush and hold it in the dish of baking soda. It didn’t make it easier.

  Another perplexing thing was all the food being carried into the house. How could one family eat so much food?

  Harvey asked Henry that night, snuggled together in the big double bed, warm and cozy on the soft flannel sheets that smelled like some flower they couldn’t name. The covers on top of their thin bodies were so heavy and warm, they could easily feel as if The Good Man who lived in Heaven had his Hand pressed down at the quilts and sheep’s-wool comforter.

  It felt so good, to be warm from the top of their kerosene tainted head to their skinny pink toes.

  “Why do you think they went away with their buggy and came back with all those paper sacks?” he asked, his voice burry with sleep.

  “It has to do with Christmas,” Henry answered, yawning.

  “Oh.”

  Then, “Christmas at home wasn’t different from any other day, was it?”

  “Sometimes we had a Grischtag Essa at Doddy Beiler’s. Remember we got an orange? It was so sour I fed mine to the chickens. Mam pinched me and twisted my ear.”