A Dog for Christmas Page 2

  “Ow,” Harvey said, levelly.

  “Guess I should have eaten it myself.”

  “Probably would have been best.”

  “I miss my mam, sort of.”

  “I miss her. Dat too.”

  “You think they think of us?”

  “Yes. But they can’t afford us.”

  “I know.”

  Their breathing slowed and deepened. Their little chests rose and fell underneath all those covers, their forms making barely a bump that anyone could see. The brown pupils of their eyes disappeared beneath the heavy lids that slid over them, as thick, black lashes, like teeth on a comb, lay on their thin cheeks.

  A shaft of moonlight found its way beneath the green pulldown shade, creating a patch of light on the heavy rag rug beside the bed. The walnut chest of drawers with porcelain knobs stood guard against the opposite wall, the glass berry set from Ephraim’s mother resting on the oval embroidered dresser scarf.

  The floor was polished pine wood, smooth and clean in the moonlight. Their only possessions were hung in the closet, behind the door with a white glass knob, the paper sacks folded and stored beneath a can seated on a chair in the corner.

  Outside, a heavy, sugary snow lay over the forests and harvested fields of Lancaster County. Roads crisscrossed the landscape like etchings in a pie crust, punctured by dark ponds and waterways not yet frozen, the dark icy water gobbling up the crystalized snowflakes as they fell.

  The horses in the tie stalls rested their weight on two legs and fell asleep as the winter’s cold deepened. Cows rattled their chains, harrumphing a loud exhalation of breath as their legs folded clumsily beneath them, their massive weight settling around them as they dozed. The hens in the henhouse tucked their pointed beaks under their wings, the straw beneath them soiled with broken egg yolk.

  The covered bridge that spanned Pequea Creek snapped and groaned as the moist cold settled into the impressive timbers used in its construction. Below, the icy black waters flowed, swift, deep, and menacing.

  Till morning there was an embroidery of thin ice lining the banks, where the water swirled and eddied in silent pools, downstream from overgrown tree roots. Large bass and carp lay dormant, their metabolism slowed to conserve energy, their colors blending with the light and shadow that played on the creek bed. Beneath the silt and mud, frogs and turtles were burrowed, spending the winter months away from the freezing temperatures, to begin the cycle of life all over again in the spring.

  Life slowed and hummed around Henry and Harvey as they slept the deep sweet slumber of children.

  Displaced, innocent, accepting their lot in life without complaint, they lay side by side, the way they had been placed at birth, without knowing what their life would bring, as children do. Already, they had placed their trust in Ephraim and Rachel, to feed them and keep them warm, the only two things they would need.

  Those three girls would just have to learn to like them, being as unimpressed as they were.

  Nothing to be done about that.

  Chapter Two

  The twins watched in wide-eyed wonder the goings-on in their new home.

  Mam, as she was to be called but still thought of as Rachel by both of them, was a flurry of activity sending the girls off to school amid stern warnings: find their own boots and mittens, and no, she hadn’t seen a package of pencils, but if they’d learn to keep track of their things they wouldn’t have to go through this, finished with a screech about looking at the clock and don’t they see what time it is.

  Her face was red, her hair frizzy, and her covering sideways as she whirled from room to room with a dustrag, a wet mop, and a bucket with hot, soapy water.

  Henry was secretly glad that Rachel told off Malinda; she was only ten, but she acted as if she was as old as her mother, which she wasn’t, so he figured it was time she found out.

  Teeth brushing and face washing were two of her forms of torture, so if she wasn’t put in her place, hard telling what else she’d come up with. But of course, they said nothing, just sat quietly side by side and watched with their slightly unfocused gaze.

  Ephraim King thought it would be best to keep the boys at home from school for a week, let them become acquainted with their new surroundings before being introduced back to the schoolhouse in Leacock Township, a large brick building that housed forty pupils and had one teacher. The children were mostly English, and they had an English teacher named Mrs. Dayble.

  She was tall and wide and as mean as a gluck on her nest. She terrified Henry and Harvey both.

  But it was school, and they knew they had to go. They watched their p’s and q’s, finished their work on time, and watched the teacher with their dark eyes, knowing where she was at every moment. They knew her pinching was painful, so they didn’t plan on having their palms rapped with the sharp side of a wooden ruler.

  They had watched Benjamin Stoltzfus standing by the privy with his hands in his pockets, blinking back tears of pain, after a few cracks with that ruler. They sat up and took notice of any behavior that was unacceptable.

  Rachel’s sister Lydia showed up that morning. Short and round, her apron flaring from her hips, she sailed into the house in a cloud of cheer and goodwill, to help die schveshta Rachel get ready for the family Christmas dinner.

  The family included ten siblings, a mother and father (on the Beiler side), and somewhere between sixty and seventy children. They weren’t exactly sure.

  Amos and Annie had a new one, little Emma, who was their sixth girl and no boys. They thought Davey and Fannie’s little one was already six weeks old, so that made nine for them. Another boy. Was it Manasses or Ephraim? Ephraim, they believed. He was a big one, weighing over ten pounds.

  Well, no wonder. Fannie was a chunk herself, so what did she expect, eating all that bread? Ei-ya-yi.

  Henry and Harvey were sent to the barn to help Ephraim, so they donned their denim coats, pursing their lips in concentration as they bent their heads to close the hooks and eyes down the front. They sat on the painted cement floor and tugged on the rubber Tingley boots, smashed their tattered straw hats on their heads, and slipped and slid their way to the barn to find him.

  “Ephraim,” Henry said.

  “Dat,” Harvey corrected.

  “Dat,” Henry agreed.

  When they found him, he smiled, leaned on his pitchfork, and asked what they were up to.

  “We’re supposed to help you.”

  “Rachel sent you out?”

  They nodded, together.

  “All right. You can sweep cobwebs in the forebay. Schpinna hoodla all over the walls. I’ll get the ceiling.”

  So they obeyed, found brooms, and began to sweep the walls. Their brooms were meshed with the spiderwebs in a short time, and their arms became tired long before they were finished. But they kept on working, eager to please Ephraim. Over and over they swept between the sturdy brown timbers that held up the walls of the barn, until there wasn’t a spiderweb to be found.

  Ephraim came to check on their progress, and smiled. He hooked his thumbs in his trouser pockets, lifted his face to the walls, and gave a low whistle.

  “Gute boova! Fliesichy boova. You did a good job. Now we want to clean the vassa droke.”

  He showed them what he wanted done—the water carried out in buckets and dumped beside the barnyard fence.

  With the high praise ringing in their ears, they lifted buckets of dirty water, riddled with hay and grain and the horses’ saliva, straining to carry each one through the door of the barn, across the slippery, packed-down snow to dump it in the low place by the fence, as they had been instructed.

  The cold water sloshed across their trouser legs and darkened the fronts of their coats. Their hands turned purplish red. Their mouths compressed with determination, they scurried in and out of the forebay, like two straw-hatted ants, intent on receiving more high praise from their new father.

  They scrubbed and scrubbed the sides and bottom of the cast iron watering trough, pebbled and rough, green slime and bits of hay loosening as they worked.

  Their stomachs growled with hunger. Slower and slower they wielded the wooden, stiff-bristled scrubbing brushes. Just when they were beginning to wonder if Ephraim had forgotten them, he appeared at the door.

  “Boova, Kommet. Vella essa.”

  He didn’t inspect their work, neither did he praise them, so they walked to the house, their heads bent, sober and confused. Had they dumped the water in the wrong place? Was the scrubbing done all wrong?

  Henry told Harvey not to worry that he had not checked their work; he would do that later.

  They had both been thinking the same thing, and this comforted Harvey, nodding his head eagerly.

  The smell of cooking greeted them in the kesslehaus, steam rising upward from beneath the metal lid of the “elsa Kessle,” creating a moist heat that felt wonderful as they shrugged out of their coats and hung them on hooks, slapped their straw hats on top, and bent to wriggle their shoes out of the rubber boots. They took turns washing their hands and faces with the green, gritty, and strong-smelling bar of Lava soap. They dried themselves on the navy-blue roller towel, running a hand through their wavy brown hair, and went to the kitchen.

  The kitchen was fragrant with heat and spices. The overpowering smell, sweet and delicious, caused both boys to swallow as saliva rose in their mouths.

  They couldn’t look at the rows of cookies cooling on the countertop. They had never imagined such a sight. Dark brown molasses cookies sprinkled with white sugar, pale sugar cookies with pink frosting, chocolate cookies that were small and shaped like bells, squares of brown cookies with walnut halves pressed into them.

  This was only seen with stolen glances. Harvey lifted his waterglass and drank.
Henry did too. They sat back and listened to the grownups, talking about the weather and if there’d be more snow for Christmas.

  Was Amos busy?

  Oh, he was just hesslich hinna-noch. He had spent too much time with the corn husking, now he still had the fodder to gather, which he wasn’t going to get done in the snow. Not now anymore.

  But she didn’t mean to glauk, he worked too hard; what they really needed was a good knecht.

  Ephraim nodded and smiled, his small blue eyes twinkling in his wide face, his brown beard bushy, surrounding his face like the bristles of a soft broom, hanging below his chin in stiff waves.

  “I have two of them now,” he said, turning to the twins. “Ach, ya. Die glany boovy.”

  Lydia flushed with pleasure as she eyed them both, her face lined with more smiles as she spoke. Rachel placed a steaming dish of chicken potpie in the middle of the table, followed by one of mashed sweet potatoes mounded high, a river of browned butter dripping down the sides. There was applesauce in a glass dish, pickled red beets, small green cucumbers in another, and slabs of homemade cheese layered on a blue platter, pale golden with perfectly round holes in every slice.

  Lydia and Rachel kept talking and Ephraim kept listening. They were discussing the runaway team of horses over toward Nei Hullant.

  Finally, Ephraim cleared his throat and stayed quiet, which was the signal for the women to finish talking, bow their heads, fold their hands in their laps, and pray silently before they ate.

  The boys’ plates were filled with heavy, thick squares of potpie swimming with chunks of chicken, carrots, celery, and onion in a smooth golden gravy. The sweet potatoes in browned butter weren’t as good, but they ate the mound that was put on their plates.

  The cheese was good too, sprinkled with salt and eaten with the little green sweet pickles.

  They sat quietly, their stomachs pleasantly stretched, the warmth of the kitchen coloring their cheeks to a red glow.

  They kept stealing glances at the cookies but said nothing. Rachel served cups of steaming peppermint tea, followed by the sugar bowl.

  “Just one spoonful,” she told the boys.

  They dipped their heads, embarrassed now, as if their new mother had known they’d planned on using two or three if that sugar bowl was passed with the tea.

  They never had sugar in their tea at home.

  And then, like a miracle, she got up and began piling cookies on a dinner plate. Every kind.

  “Cookies!” Ephraim said, laughing.

  Harvey chose a chocolate one. Henry slowly lifted a sugared molasses cookie, watching the grown-ups’ faces for signs of disapproval.

  “Surely you want more than one,” Ephraim called out. “It’s Christmastime. You may try as many cookies as you want.”

  “Go ahead, boys,” Rachel urged.

  So they did. They tasted every different kind of cookie. It was amazing what happened to a mouthful of cookie crumbs if you drank tea. Everything melted and blended in with the tea until there was nothing left but a whole mouthful of unbelievable sweetness to swallow. Then you could bite off another bit of cookie and start all over again.

  The grown-ups kept talking, so the twins kept eating cookies. The kitchen swam as their eyelids became heavy with the warmth in the room, their full stomachs, and the strenuous work they had done.

  But when they got back to the barn to begin their vigorous scrubbing, they felt wonderful. Full of energy, happier than they had been since the day they arrived.

  “I think we have a good home,” Harvey said.

  “I believe we do,” Henry agreed solemnly.

  “The Good Man must have heard our Müde binnich.”

  “I believe so.”

  When Ephraim came to tell them their mother wanted them in the house, they laid down their brushes and watched his face for signs of approval.

  “Good job, boys. Well done.”

  Words as sweet as peppermint tea and cookies. Words they had never heard before from the sad-eyed father to whom they had been born.

  For a long time after that Christmas, the boys would always look at the sparkling clean water in the cast iron trough, remember all over again how they had done well, the thought lifting their small shoulders and straightening their knobby spines, giving them a spring in their step and a fierce, undying devotion to Ephraim King.

  It was the same with Rachel.

  The reason she called them in was to introduce them to gingerbread men. Christmas was not complete without children making gingerbread men, and with the family Christmas gathering at their house, she would not have time to allow the girls to help after school.

  So the boys got the job.

  They concentrated, bit their tongues and crossed their eyes, and tried so hard to cut out perfect gingerbread men. They placed the raisins in the exact position, even became silly and turned the raisins down instead of up, to form a frowning gingerbread man.

  Whey Lydia and Rachel threw up their hands and laughed with them, they giggled and made a few more. They watched them come from the oven, puffed up and spicy, and when they were told to try one, they passed the hot gingerbread man from hand to hand to cool it, before biting off the top of the head, being careful to watch Rachel’s face for a sign that they were doing something wrong.

  When the girls came home from school, there was a general upheaval as they examined the cookies and fussed about the gingerbread men.

  Malinda ate a frowny-faced one, then pretended to be in a bad mood, the cookie having the power to do that. Harvey thought she was serious, his eyes turning bright with shame and unshed tears. Henry became very quiet and sober.

  Anna said she was only joking, but it took a while till the boys trusted Malinda and returned to their usual selves.

  Katie said they couldn’t have done better.

  It was almost too much, all this approval. Harvey was not sure it should be this way, and told Henry so.

  “I mean, surely soon, something bad will happen. We’ll do something wrong, like break a glass or a plate, and then will everything will be as usual.”

  “Our mam was not mean. Just tired, with too many children.”

  “Yes. Too many. We were too many children. There were two of us at one time, so we were too many.”

  They pondered the truth for a few minutes.

  “I think Mattie probably misses us. She liked us, all right.”

  “Yes. Yes, she did.”

  So they repeatedly assured themselves that it was the fact that they had too many children that they were sent away. Then Harvey declared their own Savilla mother would not have sent them to live with Ephraim King. It didn’t matter how many children she had.

  “She died, so she doesn’t know,” Henry said.

  “Maybe she does.”

  “Naw. She’s dead. You don’t know anything if you’re dead.”

  “If you go to Heaven and become an angel, you do.”

  “But not to look down here.”

  “You don’t know.”

  “You don’t, either.”

  “Nobody does.”

  They solemnly accepted this bit of wisdom together.

  They pushed heavy coarse bristled brooms across the rough cement of the forebay. At one time, the concrete floor had been smooth, but with the iron shod hooves of countless horses clattering over it, the surface became pitted. So they pushed the broom, over and over across the same area, until there was no dust or bits of straw and hay.

  After that, they were allowed to go sledding in the back pasture. Ephraim produced a long wooden sled with steel runners and a bar across the front that you could push or pull on either side to turn the sled to the left or right. A rope was attached to holes drilled on each side, long enough so you could pull it behind you comfortably.

  The sun shone in a cloudless blue sky, the cold was tinged with a bit of warmth in the afternoon, the white slopes stretched before them like a brilliant promise.

  They talked and laughed, jerked the sled along as they leaped joyous little bounces of energy, slipped and slid up the hill until they reached the top. It felt like a mountain. They could see wedges of dark forest thrusting into the white corn-stubbled fields, the neighboring farms nestled like toys between them. Roads zigzagged through the snowy countryside, an occasional gray buggy pulled by a trotting horse moved along at a snail’s pace.