The Healing Read online

  The Clearasil did help. His face cleared up, more or less, and with Mam being so alert, a new bottle would appear in the upstairs medicine cabinet when the old one ran low.

  But then, a whole new disaster struck, in the form of his voice playing mean tricks on him. A lot of throat clearing, gruffness, and sudden unexpected squeaking ensued, causing him to be the subject of his brothers’ hilarity. It hardly ever failed—when he wanted to say something of importance, he lost the use of his voice, resulting in a high squeak.

  Singing in class was out of the question. He had a choice between a breathless squeak or a way low bass that sounded like a bullfrog, so he gave it up, held the corner of a songbook with Fannie King, hooked his hand in his pocket, and waited it out.

  “John.”

  He knew it was coming, tried to look respectful.

  “Why aren’t you singing?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Certainly you can.”

  “No. My voice isn’t right.”

  “Oh, that.”

  The teacher said it with all the distaste of carrying a dead mouse in a trap to dislodge it. As if he was growing an extra ear, or sprouted broccoli from his nose.

  “Well, that’s no excuse. You can still sing. Reuben does.”

  Rueben beamed his superiority.

  John raised his hand. “Rueben’s voice hasn’t changed.”

  Teacher Anna glared at him, mouth compressed. John tried hard not to think how much she looked like a water buffalo. A Mennonite neighbor in the vicinity raised the big creatures, and John never forgot the lowered heads, wide brows, and curved horns, the unabashed belligerence, the pawing at cakes of mud and grass slung up over the shoulders.

  “Bad-tempered creatures,” he’d warned them. “Stay away from the fence.”

  He turned into the drive in a wide arc, leaning to the left, a spit of gravel, the crunch of homecoming. The house was off to the left, sitting white and square in the heat, the maple leaves like limp dishrags, covered with dust and summer’s end. There were cement steps with a black railing leading up to the porch, and pots of pink geraniums, ivy, and a fig tree beneath the porch roof.

  The barn had new red metal applied after the hip-roofed dairy barn had been added. The fields fell away on either side, corn like a small forest of uniform trees marching in rows, sagging with the weight of new ears of corn, two to a stalk. Already the hayfields had produced three cuttings of alfalfa, good timothy, and clover for the Belgians and the six driving horses. Every young man needed his own horse and buggy, even if it was a used one to begin with. At the age of sixteen there was too much craziness going on to afford a new carriage—everyone said it was better to wait till you’re older, ready to settle down.

  John took to snooping in the buggy shed—a sort of parking garage for buggies—a year or so ago, finding empty cigarette packs and English T-shirts. He was disturbed and told Mam about it in a trembling voice.

  “Oh, you know how it goes. They’re with the ‘youngie.’ They’ll have some of these things for a while. Did you find anything in Marcus and Samuel’s buggies?”

  When John nodded soberly, she told him not to worry, she’d tell Dat. He’ll know how to deal with it, she thought, shooing John out of the way so she could set up the ironing board. He was ushered out of the kitchen with all the aplomb of one of the barn cats, then went to change his clothes and get on with his life.

  John threw his scooter in the door, where it fell on one of the fiberglass shafts of a carriage, grabbed his lunch, and went to the house.

  The kitchen was empty and there was a table full of folded laundry. He could hear Mam’s footsteps upstairs. Quickly, he went to the pantry. Fresh chocolate cake with buttercream icing. He knew it. Exultant, he carried the pan high, plunked it on the counter, and grabbed a knife and cut a huge square. He set it carefully in a cereal dish, added milk till the only visible part of the cake was the icing, then dug in with a spoon.

  There was absolutely nothing better. Snug trousers and red pimples were insignificant in the face of chocolate cake. He lowered his head to shovel precariously perched wedges of soggy cake into his mouth, opening wide to insert the wobbling mass safely.

  He listened to the footsteps. Mam was still scuttling around.

  He cut another square, added more milk, and ate it quickly. He felt better, but now he needed something salty. Back in the pantry he found the Tupperware container of potato chips. Perfect. He took a long drink of water from the pitcher in the refrigerator, shot a guilty look at the basket of oranges and apples on the countertop, and then made his way up the stairs.

  Mam was in his room, changing sheets, snapping a fitted one across the top of his mattress.

  “Oh, that you, John? How was school?”

  “OK.”

  “That’s good. Grab ahold there, would you, John?”

  He tugged, adjusted, helped his mother pull the striped blue sheet up over the fitted one, then the thin brown quilt, fluffed the pillow, and returned her smile.

  “There we go. Thanks. It’s so hot up here, I bet you anything it’s ninety-five degrees. How you boys sleep up here is beyond me.”

  “It’s not so bad. We just don’t use covers.”

  Mam nodded. “Well, if it gets too hot, you can always sleep on air mattresses on the porch.”

  “You know what Abner says. Mosquito city.”

  Mam laughed, flapping the hem of her apron in front of her face. She looked pretty good for fifty-one years of age, John thought. She was plump, her arms tanned and freckled, her wide face rounded with pink apple cheeks. Her dark brown hair was smoothed on either side of the part in the middle and her white covering was clean and neat. John thought she was one of the prettiest mothers in church. After ten children, tending to all those boys, she still retained a youthful vigor, a zest for life, an eagerness to start up the grill on the back patio, make burgers and hot dogs, invite the neighbors, throw together a bowl of potato salad, make a pitcher of meadow tea.

  She carried the clothes basket down the stairs, calling to John to get his clothes changed, there was corn to chop.

  He knew it. He just knew it.

  He flopped on his bed, turned his head to the side and grimaced. He would never be a farmer, would never make his wife have a garden. They’d live in a double-wide trailer, a nice one, on an acre of ground with trees and shrubs and at least ten bird feeders so when he came home from work he could drink coffee and gaze at the birds.

  CHAPTER 2

  BUT HE DID CHOP THE CORN, ONE MORE TASK ON THE SEEMINGLY endless list of chores. He worked every evening and on Saturday, emptying the garden of late vegetables—cabbage, green beans, lima beans, potatoes, carrots—which all had to be chopped, peeled, sliced, or shredded. And there were the bushels of tomatoes to be cooked and put through the tomato press, turning each red-cheeked fleshy tomato into steaming, fragrant juice. John stood in the kitchen all day, or so it seemed, turning the handle of the tomato press at least five thousand rotations, if not ten thousand. All the mutilated vegetables were cooked, the ground beef browned with onion, and then everything was dumped into a Rubbermaid tote, which made Mam fuss a stream of nonsense about plastic and its toxins, compared to a copper kettle that had its own oven in the washhouse. S’ Kesselhaus. It was the proper term for the room where laundry was done, derived from the fact that everyone had a brick stove with a round hole on top to fit the cast-iron or copper kettle snugly in its place, and a cast-iron door on hinges where chunks of firewood were shoved through.

  Nowadays, there were laundry rooms with linoleum floors and nice cupboards made of finished oak or closets with bifold doors and wringer washers with drains. That was the reason for Mam’s fuss. No homemade vegetable soup would taste right, mixed in plastic, but oh well, nothing to be done about it now. Those were the good old days, those eissa kessla. John told her it didn’t much matter where vegetable soup was mixed, or in what container, it wasn’t good back then and it certainly wasn’t now.


  Mam threw her hands in the air, gasped, and said she had a good notion to clout him across the head with her dishrag. All this work and he stood there telling her it was no good!

  He tried to correct this gaffe by telling her the other boys liked it. Mam eyed him with suspicion, then said, no they don’t, either, but you know what? Every once in a while a mother needs a break, so eat canned vegetable soup or go hungry.

  Wistfully, Mam told John she believed he was the only one that understood just how big her workload was, which made him feel feathery light, as if he could float away, buoyed by her words.

  John loved his mother, but most of the time she was too busy or too exhausted to really notice what was going on in his life. His father was quiet, mild mannered, with a workload even bigger than his mother’s. There was very little spare time to be found anywhere. If only one brother would stay at home, try to take an interest in farming, but no, one by one, as their sixteenth birthday approached, they worked in construction. Abner and Amos worked for R and S Roofing, Marcus for Hillside Construction, who did mostly rough frame work for apartment complexes, town houses, and single-family homes. Samuel and Allen went to work at B and S Structures, which built storage sheds, garden sheds, garages, and carports. Daniel was helping his father finish up the fieldwork, then he’d be off with the siding crew. They needed a lithe young man to climb scaffolding, and Daniel thrilled to be able to prove his worth.

  John swept the extra silage back to the cows’ reach with uninspired tugs on the wide, hard-bristled broom. Cows were just so dumb, the way they licked all that silage up with their tongues as long as a yardstick and still managed to push a good portion out of reach, periodically straining to reach it, almost hanging themselves in the process.

  Still, he had a deep-seated empathy for these bovine creatures, always hungry, not attractive, plodding through life doing whatever was expected of them, much the same as him.

  Make vegetable soup, sweep the feed troughs, assemble the milking machines, feed calves, all thirteen of them . . . by the time that was done, he was hungry enough to drink a bottle of calf starter himself. But he had to wait till the last cow was turned out to pasture, the milkers washed, and the milkhouse hosed down and swept before he could hope to have his evening meal. Mam liked to eat after the milking so that everyone was home, the day was turning cooler, and they could relax as they discussed events of the day. They often ate on the back patio, especially if there was corn on the cob, which made an awful mess.

  Tonight there was corn—at least three dozen ears—brought to the patio table steaming hot along with plates of cold butter quarters, salt shakers, mayonnaise, sliced tomatoes, cheese, lettuce, onion rings, ketchup, relish, and mustard.

  Dat was taking burgers from the oversized Weber grill, piling the grilled patties high on the platter. “The amount of food we have to make is unbelievable,” Mam laughed, shaking her head.

  “We’ll get married as soon as we can,” Abner said in mock apology.

  A round of laughter, rippling along the tilted-back chairs.

  “Find me a nice girl, Mam,” Marcus said.

  “She wouldn’t take you. Not a nice one.”

  This from Samuel, resulting in a swift fist on his upper arm. Leaning forward, gripping the sore arm, Marcus squeezed his eyes shut as he moaned pitifully.

  “You watch it there. You don’t know the power of your own fist.”

  “Want another one? Huh?” A fist drawn back, a threatening light in his eyes.

  “Mam! Make him stop!”

  Without missing a beat, she said evenly, “As if I could.”

  Dat looked over from the grill. “That’s enough, boys. Straighten up.” He placed the last burger on the platter, set them on the table, and sat down.

  Immediately, tilted chairs crashed forward, hands were folded in laps, heads bent, taking their cue for “patties down,” the silent prayer that was said before every meal.

  Abner was the oldest, of medium height, dark hair, dark eyes, glasses, a pleasant demeanor, and an aura of jaded youth. He was ready to move on, to settle down and start a family of his own.

  Amos was tall and skinny with a glint of mischief in his green eyes and a wide face with a pointed chin. Everyone said he looked like his mother.

  Marcus had brown, wavy hair, brown eyes, and a hooded look. He was stern-mouthed, with an infrequent smile that lit up his whole face.

  Samuel was tall and wide across the chest. He was always happy and carefree, the clown of the family, and movie star handsome. All the best features of both parents had been bestowed on Samuel.

  Allen and Daniel looked like twins with their brown eyes, dark hair, and similar height. They were both skinny, coltish, always lifting weights to build muscle, desperate to impress older brothers.

  And then there was John.

  Mary Stoltzfus lifted her head and unclasped her hands, in awe of these seven young men, all different, and all alike. She had borne and nurtured these young men, and only God knew what each one would prove to be, who would endure unfair trials and who would skip through life unscathed. God had the main control panel, had given them their nature, presented them to Elmer and Mary to guide, to raise, doing the best they could, the job before them phenomenal, but done in gladness if they remembered to depend on der Herr.

  All this flashed through Mary’s thoughts, before she smiled, “Dig in.”

  Steaming ears of corn were lifted with burning fingertips, rolled across cold better, salted liberally.

  “Pass the rolls. Hey, quit with that mustard already.”

  “Mam, is there more mustard?”

  “Pantry,” Mam replied through a mouthful of steaming corn.

  “Samuel, you emptied the mustard. Go.”

  “You want it. I don’t need it,” replied Samuel. But then he sighed, pushing back his chair.

  They had already gone through nearly two gallons of tea, a mixture of homegrown apple mint, spearmint, curly spearmint, and peppermint.

  “Best tea ever, Mam.”

  “Thanks, Abner. Our pure water helps.”

  She brought another platter of corn, steam bringing the glistening sweat to her face. It was another sweltering night.

  “How many burgers does that make for you?”

  “Who, me?” John chewed, swallowed “I’m on my second. Mind your own business.”

  “Had a letter from my sister Naomi. Rebecca is sure not getting any better. They’re taking her to Philadelphia now, to a Lyme specialist. It will cost them thousands of dollars for tests. They don’t have it, Elmer.”

  “Church will help.” Another ear of corn rolled across butter.

  “I feel so bad for Naomi. She struggles daily, just trying to keep her head above water. It looks hopeless. Hopeless.”

  “You mean she’s still sick? Cousin Rebecca?” Marcus asked.

  “You know, Marcus. She doesn’t even go with the youth anymore.”

  “How do they know what’s wrong with her?”

  “Tests, dummy. They did tests.” Daniel answered.

  A knife loaded with mayonnaise connected with Daniel’s face. General hilarity ensued after that. Even Dat threw back his head and let out a full guffaw, tried to look stern, then gave up and laughed again.

  “Our table manners are out of control.”

  This from Abner, the conservative one, responsible for unruly brothers.

  “We’re on the patio, not in the kitchen.”

  “So what?”

  Mam wiped her mouth with a napkin, leaned back in her chair and sighed.

  “I guess it’s true what Daniel said. We relax back here, if it’s just all of us together.”

  “What’s for dessert?”

  “Schwan’s man was here.”

  Chairs clattered backward. Four boys tried to enter the kitchen door in one shove.

  “Ice cream sandwich or Schwan’s bar?” A yell from the kitchen.

  Dat called out, “Bring both boxes.”
r />   Mam enjoyed sitting for another minute. It had been a long day, but what a blessing to have family together on a warm summer evening with good food, health, and happiness.

  Dat rested easy, knowing the silos were full up and there were white plastic rows of silage like giant ghostly caterpillars behind the barn. It was a good feeling, knowing they’d have plenty of winter feed. They’d had a bumper crop of corn, which would have to be put in the corncrib. He prayed silently, thanking God for the provision.

  School was going from bad to worse.

  Anna Beiler was doing the best she could. She had grown up in a home where authority was meted out with hard staccato voices and the children were cowed into respecting father and mother alike. Mercy was rare, retorts or self excuses unheard of, and even the youngest children were expected to obey their parents to the letter. And Anna expected the same of her pupils. Never mind that she was working with kids from twelve families all raising their children with various degrees of love and discipline.

  She attacked every problem with the sword of her outraged voice, the children surprised, at first, then confused, after which many of them broke out in nervous tics. Lower graders complained of stomachaches, crying in the morning when mothers shooed them out the door.

  John sat at his desk, kept his face lowered to his work, and tried his best to stay out of trouble. But for one reason or another, that was impossible. His best friend, Ivan Beiler, said she seemed to pick on John more than the others—not that she didn’t give everyone a hard time.

  “John, get the brush and dustpan. Clean up the mud you tracked in. It dries, creates dust.”

  Bewildered, John stuck one foot into the aisle, then the other. His gray Vans were not muddy. There was only a dusting of it beneath his desk. Leaning forward as far as he could, he inspected the floor beneath other desks. He didn’t complain, though, and was actually getting to his feet to carry out her orders when he was stopped with a sound like a thunderclap.