- Book info
- Sample
- Media
- Author updates
- Lists
Synopsis
With their thirteen children grown, Anna and Felty Helmuth are ready for their next adventure. That means trying their hands at matchmaking-because what could be more fun than igniting love when it's right and undoing mismatches when they're wrong? Now Huckleberry Hill just might turn out to be the most romantic spot in Wisconsin . . .
Lia Shetler is resigned to being a spinster. She's too tall and sturdy to ever be marriageable-so says her overbearing dat. Instead, she's helping her pretty, spoiled sister Rachel secure the perfect husband-the Helmuths' grandson, Moses Zimmerman. But the more Lia sees of his gently teasing ways and quiet understanding, the more she wishes that Moses could be hers alone.
Moses knew that his grandparents couldn't resist trying to find him a wife. But he never expected that it would be the graceful, sensible Lia-a woman who is tall enough to look him in the eye and honest enough to make him question a promise holding him to his past. Now Moses and Lia will need the kind of miracles that only faith and courage can bring to finally reach for a lifetime of happiness.
Release date: January 7, 2014
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Print pages: 352
* BingeBooks earns revenue from qualifying purchases as an Amazon Associate as well as from other retail partners.
Reader buzz
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
Author updates
Close
Huckleberry Hill
Jennifer Beckstrand
Anna Helmuth eased herself into the wooden rocker where she once cuddled each of her thirteen babies and took up her needles. “Moses is miserable, absolutely miserable. We must find him a wife.”
Felty lowered his newspaper just enough to spy his wife over the top of it. “You mean Moses, our grandson? He doesn’t seem miserable to me.”
“He won’t know how miserable he is until he meets the right girl,” Anna said, peering through her thick, round glasses.
“Then we must make certain he never meets the right girl. Ignorance is bliss.”
Anna clicked her knitting needles with blinding speed. “Now, Felty, don’t tease me. Our grandson’s happiness is at stake.”
“Let the poor boy make his own hay. What young man wants two eighty-year-olds picking his future wife? Besides, I don’t know who is good enough for him. He’s a catch, that one.”
“He takes after you, Felty, except I think you are the handsomer.”
Felty lowered his paper to his lap. “Oh, Annie Banannie, I was never that handsome.”
“Pretty Felty. The handsomest boy in Bonduel. That’s what we girls called you behind your back. I was lucky enough to snag you before Rosie Herschberger did.”
“Rosie Herschberger can’t hold a candle to your fried chicken. It never would have worked out.”
Anna smiled but didn’t look up from her knitting. Already March, and Felty didn’t have one new scarf to wear to ward off a change-of-weather cold. Surely any Amish wife worth her salt would knit her husband at least seven spring scarves, one for each day of the week, to last until the weather warmed up. “All I’m saying is, it is about time.”
“For Rosie to learn to cook?”
“For Moses to find a wife. And we must help him. The grandparents are always in charge of making the matches.”
Felty shook his finger. “Annie girl, you are making that up.”
“Now, Felty. Why else would the good Lord grant us years to sit in our rockers if not to scheme and plan other people’s lives?”
Trying to fold The Budget neatly on the crease, Felty managed to buckle the thin paper until the fold crumpled in his hands. “We reached this age by keeping our noses out of other people’s business.”
“Not me. I like to stick my fingers into other people’s pies. It’s my birthright as a woman.”
“Moses won’t go along easy. That girl broke his heart something terrible yet,” Felty said.
“Three years ago, and the whole rigmarole turned out to be a blessing. She left the church, and Moses, bless his heart, wouldn’t follow her.”
Felty gave up on his paper and wadded it in his lap. “Smart one, that boy.”
“It’s high time for him to get busy.”
“What makes you think you can help him to a good wife? His mamm has tried to match him up with every girl in Wisconsin plus four or five from Ohio and even one from Canada.”
“And she has fallen short on her duties. We are Moses’s only hope. Do you remember that family we met in Wautoma when we went for Bishop Glick’s funeral?”
Felty furrowed his brow. “Bishop Glick passed away?”
“In October. Don’t you remember?”
“I remember getting old.”
“There was a lovely family who took us in overnight.”
Felty brightened and threw his ball of newspaper into the air, but it got away from him and floated to the floor behind his overstuffed recliner. “The Shetlers. With several grown boys and two girls at the tail end.”
Anna grinned at her husband. “I knew you would remember.”
“I still don’t remember about the bishop. But the eldest Shetler daughter was tall and pretty.”
“Just the thing for our Moses.”
“A sweet girl. She helped me when I sank into that sofa and couldn’t get out. We took hands, and I got about halfway up before falling back into the cushions. I grunted, she snorted, and we laughed so hard I think I sprouted a hernia.”
“She baked us goodies for the trip home.”
“A sweet girl. I remember the pumpkin whoopie pies.” Felty stroked his beard. “You could send Moses to Wautoma to fetch her, but I don’t think he would agree to go without a taste of those whoopie pies first.”
“Moses will take some buttering up. We must bring his bride to Huckleberry Hill.”
“Annie, leave the poor boy be. When he’s ready, he’ll find his own wife.”
Annie rested her knitting needles in her lap. “Now, Felty. We can’t leave something this important to a man. What man has ever known his own heart?”
“When I first laid eyes on you, Banannie, I knew I wanted to hold on to you for the rest of my life.”
“Well, you’re stuck with me.”
“And you’re stuck with me.”
“Gute. I’ll write the Shetlers tonight.”
“And I’ll hitch up the buggy and go warn Moses to beware of old women with knitting needles.”
“You’ll do no such thing. We will catch him by surprise. When I am determined to do something even the angel Gabriel himself can’t stop me.”
“Oh, Annie, that I know from years of experience.”
Moses Zimmerman whistled a lively tune as he unhitched his horse from the buggy and led him to the barn. Letting his eyes adjust to the dimness, Moses made a mental note of what needed to be done for Mammi and Dawdi today. Pull bales from the loft, pitch hay, milk the cows. Thin peach trees, chop firewood, haul coal. If he weren’t so busy with his cheese factory, he’d get up here more often. Dawdi had sold his sixty-acre farm to Uncle Tim over a decade ago and moved to Huckleberry Hill where Dawdi tended peach trees and gathered huckleberries and maple sap from the woods. Uncle Titus and three of Moses’s married cousins occasionally helped on Huckleberry Hill when they weren’t busy working their own farms, but in Moses’s mind, it never seemed enough.
Huckleberry Hill sat west of Bonduel, making it a remote place in a remote Wisconsin settlement. Dawdi had plowed two acres for a garden and some fruit trees, but otherwise the hill grew wild with sugar maples and thick stands of huckleberry bushes. Early spring harvest kept the family busy collecting sap, and in late summer, they gathered baskets full of reddish-purple huckleberries.
Moses heard Dawdi’s rich bass voice and poked his head out of the open barn door. Dawdi, carrying a bucketlike container, attended to his chores like he always did—singing at the top of his lungs.
“Life is like a mountain railroad, with an engineer that’s brave, we must make the run successful, from the cradle to the grave.” He stopped singing when he laid eyes on Moses. Smiling in his grandfatherly, protective way, he shook his head. “My boy, there’s trouble brewing.”
Moses took the container from Dawdi’s hands and gave him a stiff hug. “What kind of trouble?”
Dawdi pointed in the direction of the house. “Just keep in mind how much your mammi loves you, and there won’t be no ill will.” He smoothed his beard. “In this case, it might turn around all right. She’s a pretty little thing with a heart a gold. I could tell right off.”
Moses hadn’t a clue what his dawdi was talking about. “Has Mammi been trying out a new recipe?”
“All’s I’m saying is, don’t lay no blame to my charge. When your mammi gets a notion into her head, she won’t go back.”
Moses nodded as if he completely understood and decided to change the subject. He lifted the container in his hand. “What kind of bucket is this?”
Dawdi lit up with enthusiasm. “Ain’t it something? It’s my new chicken feeder. You turn this crank and the feed shoots out here. It spreads the feed without hardly lifting a finger.”
“Can I carry it to the coop for you?”
“I’ll take it.” Dawdi winked. “You got bigger fish to fry. Go look in on Mammi.”
Dawdi disappeared around the barn as Mammi and her curly-haired dog, Sparky, burst out the front door. Sparky sported a green doggie sweater with a black stripe running all the way around Sparky’s midsection. Mammi’s sweater was made from the same yarn as Sparky’s, without the black stripe.
Mammi’s favorite hobby was knitting. She could knit a pair of mittens for every one of her grandchildren in twenty-four hours flat.
Mammi threw out her arms, and Moses couldn’t help smiling as she hopped down the steps like a much younger woman. Her hair, the color of billowy clouds on a sunny day, blended in with the white of her kapp. Her blue eyes twinkled persistently, as if every day were Christmas.
“Moses!” she squealed as she wrapped her arms around his waist. She couldn’t reach her hands high enough to get them around his neck. Moses had not inherited his height from Mammi’s side.
“My favorite day is when you come to see us,” she said.
Moses squeezed his mammi tight and planted a kiss on the top of her head. “What do you need done today?”
“Plenty of time for that. I have two surprises for you.”
“Two?”
“I made your favorite cookies, but I had to hide them because Felty won’t stop eating them. I wanted to save some for you.”
Moses grinned. He had never had the heart to tell Mammi that her ginger snaps could break a tooth if they weren’t soaked in milk first. And “ginger snaps” was an apt name for Mammi’s personal recipe. The heavy ginger made people snap their heads back and look frantically for a drink of water. But it warmed his heart to please Mammi with how much he loved her cooking, so he always gobbled up four or five cookies for her sake.
“What is your other surprise?”
Mammi sprouted a twitchy grin and clapped her hands in delight. “I have found just the girl for you.”
Moses became a wrinkly, deflated balloon. He resisted the urge to slump his shoulders. Dawdi had warned him.
There’s trouble brewing.
Since Moses’s nineteenth birthday seven years ago, a host of well-meaning relatives and friends had done their best to marry him off. Up until now, Dawdi and Mammi’s house had always been a safe haven. His grandparents were his only blood relatives who had never admonished him about finding a wife.
It seemed that their patience had finally worn thin.
Moses had tap-danced around so many requests that he didn’t even have to think about his response. He managed a weak smile, which considering his sudden change of mood was quite admirable. “If you like her, Mammi, I’m sure she’s a peach. But I don’t think I’ll get the chance to meet her. Things at the cheese factory are mighty busy.”
Being conveniently busy proved a wonderful-gute way to avoid desperate girls and their equally eager mothers.
“Not to worry. I knew I’d have to bring her to you.”
“I’m too busy to have visitors at the factory.”
Mammi smiled smugly as if she had bested him in a game of cards. “No, my dear boy. She’s here. In the house. She’s from Wautoma settlement and will be staying with us all summer. You’ll have plenty of time to get to know each other.”
Moses wanted to throw his hands in the air and run screaming down the hill. Instead, he fell silent as his mind raced. Mammi had done her own dance around his bucket of excuses.
What now?
No escape. He’d have to buck up, meet this girl, and get it over with, although he dreaded the introduction almost as much as he dreaded that root canal last year. He pictured the kind of girl Mammi would choose for him. Probably some woman fifteen years older than he with sunken cheeks and a glassy stare from working at her knitting too long. Or perhaps she was one of those empty-headed schoolgirls who couldn’t put two sentences together without giggling. Old ladies like Mammi thought youth was the only thing a female needed to make her attractive.
His own mother said Moses was too picky, but not even Mamm seemed to understand that Moses didn’t want to find another girl. Barbara would be back, and he intended to wait for her. When he told people this, they thought he was deerich, foolish, holding out for a girl who’d left three years ago.
He wanted astonishing, and he’d only found astonishing once. He would wait for Barbara.
Mammi wrapped her arthritic fingers around his wrist. “Cum reu, come in.”
Moses had no choice but to follow. Shuffling his feet, he tromped up the porch steps and into the house.
Mammi handed him three rock-hard cookies in a napkin. “I just know our plan is going to work out wonderful gute. I just know it.”
Our plan?
Moses refused to claim any credit for such a plan.
She looked up at him expectantly. “You’ll find her in the cellar.”
Determined to be grumpy about it, Moses sighed inwardly, surrendered to the inevitable, and opened the cellar door. At six feet five inches tall, he had to stoop all the way down the stairs to avoid scraping his head on the ceiling. He heard a crash and set foot on the bottom step in time to see a girl kneeling on the floor, carefully gathering shards of a broken canning jar.
She turned her face to him, and he almost fell over. He had expected a girl and he had expected Amish, but he hadn’t expected beautiful.
Blast!
Lia sank to the floor and surveyed the pieces of what used to be a bottle. Her first day at Helmuths’ and she had already burned the pancakes, snagged a hole in her stockings, and broken an innocent canning jar that had probably never done harm to anyone in its entire life.
As she reached out to retrieve the biggest piece, her hand grazed a shard protruding from the broken base of the jar. She gasped in pain and watched as droplets of blood appeared in a nice straight line across her palm.
Blast!
One more mishap like this and she wouldn’t blame the Helmuths if they sent her packing. But, oh, how she wanted things to work out here on Huckleberry Hill! This was the first time in her life she’d left home. It was bound to be an exciting adventure, even though her sister, Rachel, kept reminding her that she was only going to tiny Bonduel from just-as-tiny Wautoma to work for “two boring old people.”
Still, Lia had been almost giddy with excitement. Back home she had so many people depending on her for their happiness. Some days the weight of her responsibility felt like it would suffocate her right quick. Huckleberry Hill seemed like a place where she could take a deep breath.
She heard footsteps on the stair and quickly brushed her bleeding hand across her apron. Not even enough blood to worry about, and she didn’t want Anna to fuss about it.
Lia looked up, expecting to see Anna, who could take a set of stairs like a twenty-year-old. Instead she saw an exceptionally tall young man. She estimated he stood taller than she by a good five inches—didn’t see that every day. But his height wasn’t what made her look twice. His lips curled into a half smile, revealing a charming dimple on his left cheek. His eyes, so intensely blue they almost glowed in the dim light of the cellar, studied her face with a mixture of surprise and annoyance. Annoyed or not, he looked unnervingly handsome.
“Oh my,” she said out loud before clapping her good hand over her mouth.
He didn’t seem to notice that she’d made a fool of herself. “I’ll get the broom,” he said.
Stuffing a handful of cookies into his pocket, he bounded back up the stairs. He had to stoop to avoid hitting his head. Lia hadn’t even had to do that.
A thrill of pleasure ran down Lia’s spine before she squared her shoulders and returned to her task of picking up broken glass. Tall didn’t make a difference. Years ago she’d quit sizing up any man as a potential suitor. Dat reminded her often that no man wanted a tall, homely wife with a scarred hand—and she knew he spoke the truth. Lia smiled to herself. What man striving for humility wanted his wife towering over people like the Statue of Liberty?
The young man returned as quickly as he had left with a broom and dustpan in one hand and a small white box in the other. His eyes still held that glint of annoyance, but he smiled pleasantly and propped the broom against the wall.
It shouldn’t be allowed in the Ordnung to be that handsome. His good looks would be thoroughly distracting at church.
Still kneeling, Lia slipped her right hand into her apron pocket. She’d hidden her hand so often, she almost didn’t realize she was doing it.
The young man squatted beside her and held out the box. “I brought a little first aid.”
Blast! He’d seen the hand. She balled her fist and buried it deeper in her pocket. “Oh. No need. It’s no worse than a paper cut.”
He opened the box and rummaged through the contents. “Paper cuts are nasty. I got one on my toe once and couldn’t walk for three days.”
Lia felt the corners of her mouth curl up. “How did you get a paper cut on your toe?”
“I tried to read a book with my feet.”
She couldn’t help the laugh that escaped her lips. “Maybe you should wear stockings next time.”
The dimple became more pronounced. “I never thought of that.” He stared into her eyes for a moment before clearing his throat. Then he seemed to recollect his annoyance. “I should tend to that cut.”
Lia kept it safely inside her pocket. “No need.”
He raised an eyebrow and held out his hand. “Cum, let me see.”
She couldn’t kneel there forever, her hand stubbornly balled in her pocket, without looking foolish. Again. Embarrassed, she slowly pulled her hand from her apron and held it open for him to see.
If the burn scars that covered the back of her hand repulsed him, his expression remained neutral. He took her fingers in his and studied the palm lightly smeared with blood. After shuffling through the box, he dabbed the cut with an antiseptic wipe. “Does that hurt?”
“A little.”
“A bandage all the way around will at least keep it from hurting worse when you use it. What do you think?”
“Um, jah, that would be a gute idea.”
He quickly fashioned a dressing from a sterile pad and some stretchy tape. She tried not to blush as his fingers brushed across her bumpy scars. He’d seen every hideous mark, and she found herself wishing Anna had been the one to doctor her cut.
“Good as new,” he said, closing the first aid box and standing up. “Well, as good as I can do. You can rewrap it later when I’m not looking.” He said it with a raised eyebrow, and Lia cracked a smile. She liked a man who could laugh at himself.
He held out his hand and pulled her to her feet. Lia recognized the look of surprise that popped onto his face when she stood up, the same reaction most people had when they saw her towering height. But this was one of those rare instances when she didn’t have to look down on the person staring at her. She rather liked looking up.
“Oh, sis yuscht!” he exclaimed, his eyes wide. “You are tall.”
Why did his words feel like an icy hand slapping her in the face? She’d seen the same reaction so many times it should have made her laugh. But this time it didn’t amuse her. It hurt in the corner of her heart that she usually kept tucked away.
His annoyance seemed to increase, and he backed away and plopped himself on a step. “Mammi thought of everything.”
She had no idea what he was babbling about, only that a spot deep inside her ached, as if she had the wind knocked out of her. At home when people commented on her height, Lia’s dat would chuckle and say, “Jah, Lia is our beanpole. But my other daughter, Rachel, is a wisp of a thing with golden hair. Like her mamm.” Then he would praise Rachel’s virtues so people would know that he had at least one daughter of whom he need not be ashamed.
Not of a disposition to wallow in self-pity, Lia took a deep breath and huffed the irritation out of her lungs with the air. She threw away the shards of glass still in her hand and reached for the broom.
The young man leaped to his feet as if the step suddenly got hot. “Please, let me do it. You should nurse that hand for a few days.”
“No need. I am gute at sweeping. Even with a handicap.” Lia turned from him and swept insistently while the young man stared at her—probably puzzling at how such a tall girl could reach the ground with a broom. As he watched, he squeezed his eyebrows together as if working out a very difficult arithmetic problem in his head.
She almost asked him if there wasn’t somewhere he’d rather be, when he said, “I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, but I’m not looking for a wife.”
Surprise tied Lia’s tongue into a knot. She stopped sweeping altogether to study the young man’s face. Surely he was teasing or was perhaps just painfully awkward around girls. But this young man didn’t seem the awkward type. With growing confusion, Lia concluded that he was completely serious. The sincerity that washed over his handsome features smacked her funny bone, and she couldn’t help it. She burst into laughter.
His frown deepened and his eyebrows moved so close together they were almost touching.
She couldn’t keep her amusement in check. “Did you think I was about to ask you to marry me?”
He took a step closer. “Nae, what I mean is—”
“I still try to let the boy do the asking. I am not quite that desperate yet.” Lia punctuated the “yet” with a raised eyebrow and renewed vigor in her sweeping.
“I said nothing like that,” the young man protested, taking two steps closer and holding out his hands in surrender.
“Have you judged that my sweeping skills are lacking and decided I would make an unsuitable wife?” Smiling to herself, Lia swept around the coal bin nowhere near where the glass had shattered.
His voice filled with compassion, even as the annoyance etched itself on every line of his face. “I’m sorry. Now I’ve embarrassed you. I don’t know what my mammi has told you or what your expectations are, but this is what I tell all the girls. I am not looking for a wife. It is best not to get your hopes up.”
Lia had to clench her teeth together to keep her jaw from falling to the floor. Was she really having this conversation with a complete stranger in Anna Helmuth’s basement? “You think I want to marry you?”
“And I’m not interested.”
Absurdity always made Lia laugh. Her amusement skipped out in deep, throaty spasms. “Is Anna your grandmother?”
He nodded.
“I don’t know what your mammi told you, but I never even knew you existed until five minutes ago. Are you so arrogant as to assume that every girl you meet wants you for a husband?”
She must have caught him off guard with her bluntness. His face bloomed into a grin. “According to my mamm and dat, every girl would choose me.”
“I wouldn’t.”
He showed all his teeth as his smile widened. “It is nice to meet a girl with a bit of gute sense.” He fingered the stubble on his chin. “So this is Mammi’s scheme, not yours?”
“I don’t know what scheme you are talking about.”
“The scheme to marry me off.” The young man held the dustpan as she swept the last bits of glass into it. “Everyone thinks I’m dawdling.”
“It is none of my concern whether you want to dawdle or not.”
He dumped the dirt and glass into the trash. “Gute. We might be seeing a lot of each other over the summer. I won’t have to pretend to be interested, and you won’t have to try to be agreeable.”
She took the dustpan from him with a mischievous grin. “I’m relieved. I dislike being agreeable. I’d much rather make myself unpleasant.”
“This works out well for both of us, then.”
“It wonders me what you will tell your mammi.”
He rubbed his hand across the back of his neck as if he had a sudden headache. “That she has very gute taste in young women.”
“You do not have to lie to your mammi for my sake.”
“I would never lie to my mammi.” He took a small shovel from a hook on the wall and buried it into the pile of coal. “I’ll be right up with a bucket of coal in case Mammi needs it.”
He turned his back on her, and Lia was left scratching her head at the strange young man who declared his intentions, or lack thereof, before she even knew his name. She marched up the stairs and started chuckling all over again. Pulling her shoulders back, Lia stood up straight so the young man would see she didn’t have to stoop to avoid the ceiling. She wasn’t as tall as some people.
Anna stood at the top of the stairs with a wide grin and a plate of ginger snaps. “Have a cookie.”
Smiling, Lia chose a cookie from the plate and took great care putting it into her mouth. She’d made the mistake earlier of taking a hearty bite, and she’d almost cracked a tooth.
“How did it go with Moses?”
“Who? Oh, uh, the young man downstairs?”
Anna lifted her eyebrows in indignation. “He didn’t even introduce himself? No wonder he doesn’t have a wife.” She deposited her plate on the table, propped her hands on her hips, and called down the stairs. “Moses, will you come up here?” She spoke it sweetly enough, but Lia suspected Anna’s tone was meant to lure Moses upstairs for a scolding.
Moses appeared carrying a bucket of coal, unprepared for an attack. Coal dust tinted his fingers black. “I brought more coal.”
“Moses Zimmerman,” Anna said, “you did not even introduce yourself to our guest. Where are your manners?”
Moses did not miss a beat. “We got to know each other quite well. I proposed marriage, and she refused me. I think that’s enough for one day.”
Moses folded his arms across his chest and chuckled. Mammi’s pretty friend didn’t even flinch, but he caught the sparkle of mischief in her eyes along with a hint of scolding for trying to deflate Mammi’s hopes.
Mammi’s expression was worth a whole gallon of whipping cream. Her eyes popped wide like shutters as she groaned in exasperation and . . .
Felty lowered his newspaper just enough to spy his wife over the top of it. “You mean Moses, our grandson? He doesn’t seem miserable to me.”
“He won’t know how miserable he is until he meets the right girl,” Anna said, peering through her thick, round glasses.
“Then we must make certain he never meets the right girl. Ignorance is bliss.”
Anna clicked her knitting needles with blinding speed. “Now, Felty, don’t tease me. Our grandson’s happiness is at stake.”
“Let the poor boy make his own hay. What young man wants two eighty-year-olds picking his future wife? Besides, I don’t know who is good enough for him. He’s a catch, that one.”
“He takes after you, Felty, except I think you are the handsomer.”
Felty lowered his paper to his lap. “Oh, Annie Banannie, I was never that handsome.”
“Pretty Felty. The handsomest boy in Bonduel. That’s what we girls called you behind your back. I was lucky enough to snag you before Rosie Herschberger did.”
“Rosie Herschberger can’t hold a candle to your fried chicken. It never would have worked out.”
Anna smiled but didn’t look up from her knitting. Already March, and Felty didn’t have one new scarf to wear to ward off a change-of-weather cold. Surely any Amish wife worth her salt would knit her husband at least seven spring scarves, one for each day of the week, to last until the weather warmed up. “All I’m saying is, it is about time.”
“For Rosie to learn to cook?”
“For Moses to find a wife. And we must help him. The grandparents are always in charge of making the matches.”
Felty shook his finger. “Annie girl, you are making that up.”
“Now, Felty. Why else would the good Lord grant us years to sit in our rockers if not to scheme and plan other people’s lives?”
Trying to fold The Budget neatly on the crease, Felty managed to buckle the thin paper until the fold crumpled in his hands. “We reached this age by keeping our noses out of other people’s business.”
“Not me. I like to stick my fingers into other people’s pies. It’s my birthright as a woman.”
“Moses won’t go along easy. That girl broke his heart something terrible yet,” Felty said.
“Three years ago, and the whole rigmarole turned out to be a blessing. She left the church, and Moses, bless his heart, wouldn’t follow her.”
Felty gave up on his paper and wadded it in his lap. “Smart one, that boy.”
“It’s high time for him to get busy.”
“What makes you think you can help him to a good wife? His mamm has tried to match him up with every girl in Wisconsin plus four or five from Ohio and even one from Canada.”
“And she has fallen short on her duties. We are Moses’s only hope. Do you remember that family we met in Wautoma when we went for Bishop Glick’s funeral?”
Felty furrowed his brow. “Bishop Glick passed away?”
“In October. Don’t you remember?”
“I remember getting old.”
“There was a lovely family who took us in overnight.”
Felty brightened and threw his ball of newspaper into the air, but it got away from him and floated to the floor behind his overstuffed recliner. “The Shetlers. With several grown boys and two girls at the tail end.”
Anna grinned at her husband. “I knew you would remember.”
“I still don’t remember about the bishop. But the eldest Shetler daughter was tall and pretty.”
“Just the thing for our Moses.”
“A sweet girl. She helped me when I sank into that sofa and couldn’t get out. We took hands, and I got about halfway up before falling back into the cushions. I grunted, she snorted, and we laughed so hard I think I sprouted a hernia.”
“She baked us goodies for the trip home.”
“A sweet girl. I remember the pumpkin whoopie pies.” Felty stroked his beard. “You could send Moses to Wautoma to fetch her, but I don’t think he would agree to go without a taste of those whoopie pies first.”
“Moses will take some buttering up. We must bring his bride to Huckleberry Hill.”
“Annie, leave the poor boy be. When he’s ready, he’ll find his own wife.”
Annie rested her knitting needles in her lap. “Now, Felty. We can’t leave something this important to a man. What man has ever known his own heart?”
“When I first laid eyes on you, Banannie, I knew I wanted to hold on to you for the rest of my life.”
“Well, you’re stuck with me.”
“And you’re stuck with me.”
“Gute. I’ll write the Shetlers tonight.”
“And I’ll hitch up the buggy and go warn Moses to beware of old women with knitting needles.”
“You’ll do no such thing. We will catch him by surprise. When I am determined to do something even the angel Gabriel himself can’t stop me.”
“Oh, Annie, that I know from years of experience.”
Moses Zimmerman whistled a lively tune as he unhitched his horse from the buggy and led him to the barn. Letting his eyes adjust to the dimness, Moses made a mental note of what needed to be done for Mammi and Dawdi today. Pull bales from the loft, pitch hay, milk the cows. Thin peach trees, chop firewood, haul coal. If he weren’t so busy with his cheese factory, he’d get up here more often. Dawdi had sold his sixty-acre farm to Uncle Tim over a decade ago and moved to Huckleberry Hill where Dawdi tended peach trees and gathered huckleberries and maple sap from the woods. Uncle Titus and three of Moses’s married cousins occasionally helped on Huckleberry Hill when they weren’t busy working their own farms, but in Moses’s mind, it never seemed enough.
Huckleberry Hill sat west of Bonduel, making it a remote place in a remote Wisconsin settlement. Dawdi had plowed two acres for a garden and some fruit trees, but otherwise the hill grew wild with sugar maples and thick stands of huckleberry bushes. Early spring harvest kept the family busy collecting sap, and in late summer, they gathered baskets full of reddish-purple huckleberries.
Moses heard Dawdi’s rich bass voice and poked his head out of the open barn door. Dawdi, carrying a bucketlike container, attended to his chores like he always did—singing at the top of his lungs.
“Life is like a mountain railroad, with an engineer that’s brave, we must make the run successful, from the cradle to the grave.” He stopped singing when he laid eyes on Moses. Smiling in his grandfatherly, protective way, he shook his head. “My boy, there’s trouble brewing.”
Moses took the container from Dawdi’s hands and gave him a stiff hug. “What kind of trouble?”
Dawdi pointed in the direction of the house. “Just keep in mind how much your mammi loves you, and there won’t be no ill will.” He smoothed his beard. “In this case, it might turn around all right. She’s a pretty little thing with a heart a gold. I could tell right off.”
Moses hadn’t a clue what his dawdi was talking about. “Has Mammi been trying out a new recipe?”
“All’s I’m saying is, don’t lay no blame to my charge. When your mammi gets a notion into her head, she won’t go back.”
Moses nodded as if he completely understood and decided to change the subject. He lifted the container in his hand. “What kind of bucket is this?”
Dawdi lit up with enthusiasm. “Ain’t it something? It’s my new chicken feeder. You turn this crank and the feed shoots out here. It spreads the feed without hardly lifting a finger.”
“Can I carry it to the coop for you?”
“I’ll take it.” Dawdi winked. “You got bigger fish to fry. Go look in on Mammi.”
Dawdi disappeared around the barn as Mammi and her curly-haired dog, Sparky, burst out the front door. Sparky sported a green doggie sweater with a black stripe running all the way around Sparky’s midsection. Mammi’s sweater was made from the same yarn as Sparky’s, without the black stripe.
Mammi’s favorite hobby was knitting. She could knit a pair of mittens for every one of her grandchildren in twenty-four hours flat.
Mammi threw out her arms, and Moses couldn’t help smiling as she hopped down the steps like a much younger woman. Her hair, the color of billowy clouds on a sunny day, blended in with the white of her kapp. Her blue eyes twinkled persistently, as if every day were Christmas.
“Moses!” she squealed as she wrapped her arms around his waist. She couldn’t reach her hands high enough to get them around his neck. Moses had not inherited his height from Mammi’s side.
“My favorite day is when you come to see us,” she said.
Moses squeezed his mammi tight and planted a kiss on the top of her head. “What do you need done today?”
“Plenty of time for that. I have two surprises for you.”
“Two?”
“I made your favorite cookies, but I had to hide them because Felty won’t stop eating them. I wanted to save some for you.”
Moses grinned. He had never had the heart to tell Mammi that her ginger snaps could break a tooth if they weren’t soaked in milk first. And “ginger snaps” was an apt name for Mammi’s personal recipe. The heavy ginger made people snap their heads back and look frantically for a drink of water. But it warmed his heart to please Mammi with how much he loved her cooking, so he always gobbled up four or five cookies for her sake.
“What is your other surprise?”
Mammi sprouted a twitchy grin and clapped her hands in delight. “I have found just the girl for you.”
Moses became a wrinkly, deflated balloon. He resisted the urge to slump his shoulders. Dawdi had warned him.
There’s trouble brewing.
Since Moses’s nineteenth birthday seven years ago, a host of well-meaning relatives and friends had done their best to marry him off. Up until now, Dawdi and Mammi’s house had always been a safe haven. His grandparents were his only blood relatives who had never admonished him about finding a wife.
It seemed that their patience had finally worn thin.
Moses had tap-danced around so many requests that he didn’t even have to think about his response. He managed a weak smile, which considering his sudden change of mood was quite admirable. “If you like her, Mammi, I’m sure she’s a peach. But I don’t think I’ll get the chance to meet her. Things at the cheese factory are mighty busy.”
Being conveniently busy proved a wonderful-gute way to avoid desperate girls and their equally eager mothers.
“Not to worry. I knew I’d have to bring her to you.”
“I’m too busy to have visitors at the factory.”
Mammi smiled smugly as if she had bested him in a game of cards. “No, my dear boy. She’s here. In the house. She’s from Wautoma settlement and will be staying with us all summer. You’ll have plenty of time to get to know each other.”
Moses wanted to throw his hands in the air and run screaming down the hill. Instead, he fell silent as his mind raced. Mammi had done her own dance around his bucket of excuses.
What now?
No escape. He’d have to buck up, meet this girl, and get it over with, although he dreaded the introduction almost as much as he dreaded that root canal last year. He pictured the kind of girl Mammi would choose for him. Probably some woman fifteen years older than he with sunken cheeks and a glassy stare from working at her knitting too long. Or perhaps she was one of those empty-headed schoolgirls who couldn’t put two sentences together without giggling. Old ladies like Mammi thought youth was the only thing a female needed to make her attractive.
His own mother said Moses was too picky, but not even Mamm seemed to understand that Moses didn’t want to find another girl. Barbara would be back, and he intended to wait for her. When he told people this, they thought he was deerich, foolish, holding out for a girl who’d left three years ago.
He wanted astonishing, and he’d only found astonishing once. He would wait for Barbara.
Mammi wrapped her arthritic fingers around his wrist. “Cum reu, come in.”
Moses had no choice but to follow. Shuffling his feet, he tromped up the porch steps and into the house.
Mammi handed him three rock-hard cookies in a napkin. “I just know our plan is going to work out wonderful gute. I just know it.”
Our plan?
Moses refused to claim any credit for such a plan.
She looked up at him expectantly. “You’ll find her in the cellar.”
Determined to be grumpy about it, Moses sighed inwardly, surrendered to the inevitable, and opened the cellar door. At six feet five inches tall, he had to stoop all the way down the stairs to avoid scraping his head on the ceiling. He heard a crash and set foot on the bottom step in time to see a girl kneeling on the floor, carefully gathering shards of a broken canning jar.
She turned her face to him, and he almost fell over. He had expected a girl and he had expected Amish, but he hadn’t expected beautiful.
Blast!
Lia sank to the floor and surveyed the pieces of what used to be a bottle. Her first day at Helmuths’ and she had already burned the pancakes, snagged a hole in her stockings, and broken an innocent canning jar that had probably never done harm to anyone in its entire life.
As she reached out to retrieve the biggest piece, her hand grazed a shard protruding from the broken base of the jar. She gasped in pain and watched as droplets of blood appeared in a nice straight line across her palm.
Blast!
One more mishap like this and she wouldn’t blame the Helmuths if they sent her packing. But, oh, how she wanted things to work out here on Huckleberry Hill! This was the first time in her life she’d left home. It was bound to be an exciting adventure, even though her sister, Rachel, kept reminding her that she was only going to tiny Bonduel from just-as-tiny Wautoma to work for “two boring old people.”
Still, Lia had been almost giddy with excitement. Back home she had so many people depending on her for their happiness. Some days the weight of her responsibility felt like it would suffocate her right quick. Huckleberry Hill seemed like a place where she could take a deep breath.
She heard footsteps on the stair and quickly brushed her bleeding hand across her apron. Not even enough blood to worry about, and she didn’t want Anna to fuss about it.
Lia looked up, expecting to see Anna, who could take a set of stairs like a twenty-year-old. Instead she saw an exceptionally tall young man. She estimated he stood taller than she by a good five inches—didn’t see that every day. But his height wasn’t what made her look twice. His lips curled into a half smile, revealing a charming dimple on his left cheek. His eyes, so intensely blue they almost glowed in the dim light of the cellar, studied her face with a mixture of surprise and annoyance. Annoyed or not, he looked unnervingly handsome.
“Oh my,” she said out loud before clapping her good hand over her mouth.
He didn’t seem to notice that she’d made a fool of herself. “I’ll get the broom,” he said.
Stuffing a handful of cookies into his pocket, he bounded back up the stairs. He had to stoop to avoid hitting his head. Lia hadn’t even had to do that.
A thrill of pleasure ran down Lia’s spine before she squared her shoulders and returned to her task of picking up broken glass. Tall didn’t make a difference. Years ago she’d quit sizing up any man as a potential suitor. Dat reminded her often that no man wanted a tall, homely wife with a scarred hand—and she knew he spoke the truth. Lia smiled to herself. What man striving for humility wanted his wife towering over people like the Statue of Liberty?
The young man returned as quickly as he had left with a broom and dustpan in one hand and a small white box in the other. His eyes still held that glint of annoyance, but he smiled pleasantly and propped the broom against the wall.
It shouldn’t be allowed in the Ordnung to be that handsome. His good looks would be thoroughly distracting at church.
Still kneeling, Lia slipped her right hand into her apron pocket. She’d hidden her hand so often, she almost didn’t realize she was doing it.
The young man squatted beside her and held out the box. “I brought a little first aid.”
Blast! He’d seen the hand. She balled her fist and buried it deeper in her pocket. “Oh. No need. It’s no worse than a paper cut.”
He opened the box and rummaged through the contents. “Paper cuts are nasty. I got one on my toe once and couldn’t walk for three days.”
Lia felt the corners of her mouth curl up. “How did you get a paper cut on your toe?”
“I tried to read a book with my feet.”
She couldn’t help the laugh that escaped her lips. “Maybe you should wear stockings next time.”
The dimple became more pronounced. “I never thought of that.” He stared into her eyes for a moment before clearing his throat. Then he seemed to recollect his annoyance. “I should tend to that cut.”
Lia kept it safely inside her pocket. “No need.”
He raised an eyebrow and held out his hand. “Cum, let me see.”
She couldn’t kneel there forever, her hand stubbornly balled in her pocket, without looking foolish. Again. Embarrassed, she slowly pulled her hand from her apron and held it open for him to see.
If the burn scars that covered the back of her hand repulsed him, his expression remained neutral. He took her fingers in his and studied the palm lightly smeared with blood. After shuffling through the box, he dabbed the cut with an antiseptic wipe. “Does that hurt?”
“A little.”
“A bandage all the way around will at least keep it from hurting worse when you use it. What do you think?”
“Um, jah, that would be a gute idea.”
He quickly fashioned a dressing from a sterile pad and some stretchy tape. She tried not to blush as his fingers brushed across her bumpy scars. He’d seen every hideous mark, and she found herself wishing Anna had been the one to doctor her cut.
“Good as new,” he said, closing the first aid box and standing up. “Well, as good as I can do. You can rewrap it later when I’m not looking.” He said it with a raised eyebrow, and Lia cracked a smile. She liked a man who could laugh at himself.
He held out his hand and pulled her to her feet. Lia recognized the look of surprise that popped onto his face when she stood up, the same reaction most people had when they saw her towering height. But this was one of those rare instances when she didn’t have to look down on the person staring at her. She rather liked looking up.
“Oh, sis yuscht!” he exclaimed, his eyes wide. “You are tall.”
Why did his words feel like an icy hand slapping her in the face? She’d seen the same reaction so many times it should have made her laugh. But this time it didn’t amuse her. It hurt in the corner of her heart that she usually kept tucked away.
His annoyance seemed to increase, and he backed away and plopped himself on a step. “Mammi thought of everything.”
She had no idea what he was babbling about, only that a spot deep inside her ached, as if she had the wind knocked out of her. At home when people commented on her height, Lia’s dat would chuckle and say, “Jah, Lia is our beanpole. But my other daughter, Rachel, is a wisp of a thing with golden hair. Like her mamm.” Then he would praise Rachel’s virtues so people would know that he had at least one daughter of whom he need not be ashamed.
Not of a disposition to wallow in self-pity, Lia took a deep breath and huffed the irritation out of her lungs with the air. She threw away the shards of glass still in her hand and reached for the broom.
The young man leaped to his feet as if the step suddenly got hot. “Please, let me do it. You should nurse that hand for a few days.”
“No need. I am gute at sweeping. Even with a handicap.” Lia turned from him and swept insistently while the young man stared at her—probably puzzling at how such a tall girl could reach the ground with a broom. As he watched, he squeezed his eyebrows together as if working out a very difficult arithmetic problem in his head.
She almost asked him if there wasn’t somewhere he’d rather be, when he said, “I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, but I’m not looking for a wife.”
Surprise tied Lia’s tongue into a knot. She stopped sweeping altogether to study the young man’s face. Surely he was teasing or was perhaps just painfully awkward around girls. But this young man didn’t seem the awkward type. With growing confusion, Lia concluded that he was completely serious. The sincerity that washed over his handsome features smacked her funny bone, and she couldn’t help it. She burst into laughter.
His frown deepened and his eyebrows moved so close together they were almost touching.
She couldn’t keep her amusement in check. “Did you think I was about to ask you to marry me?”
He took a step closer. “Nae, what I mean is—”
“I still try to let the boy do the asking. I am not quite that desperate yet.” Lia punctuated the “yet” with a raised eyebrow and renewed vigor in her sweeping.
“I said nothing like that,” the young man protested, taking two steps closer and holding out his hands in surrender.
“Have you judged that my sweeping skills are lacking and decided I would make an unsuitable wife?” Smiling to herself, Lia swept around the coal bin nowhere near where the glass had shattered.
His voice filled with compassion, even as the annoyance etched itself on every line of his face. “I’m sorry. Now I’ve embarrassed you. I don’t know what my mammi has told you or what your expectations are, but this is what I tell all the girls. I am not looking for a wife. It is best not to get your hopes up.”
Lia had to clench her teeth together to keep her jaw from falling to the floor. Was she really having this conversation with a complete stranger in Anna Helmuth’s basement? “You think I want to marry you?”
“And I’m not interested.”
Absurdity always made Lia laugh. Her amusement skipped out in deep, throaty spasms. “Is Anna your grandmother?”
He nodded.
“I don’t know what your mammi told you, but I never even knew you existed until five minutes ago. Are you so arrogant as to assume that every girl you meet wants you for a husband?”
She must have caught him off guard with her bluntness. His face bloomed into a grin. “According to my mamm and dat, every girl would choose me.”
“I wouldn’t.”
He showed all his teeth as his smile widened. “It is nice to meet a girl with a bit of gute sense.” He fingered the stubble on his chin. “So this is Mammi’s scheme, not yours?”
“I don’t know what scheme you are talking about.”
“The scheme to marry me off.” The young man held the dustpan as she swept the last bits of glass into it. “Everyone thinks I’m dawdling.”
“It is none of my concern whether you want to dawdle or not.”
He dumped the dirt and glass into the trash. “Gute. We might be seeing a lot of each other over the summer. I won’t have to pretend to be interested, and you won’t have to try to be agreeable.”
She took the dustpan from him with a mischievous grin. “I’m relieved. I dislike being agreeable. I’d much rather make myself unpleasant.”
“This works out well for both of us, then.”
“It wonders me what you will tell your mammi.”
He rubbed his hand across the back of his neck as if he had a sudden headache. “That she has very gute taste in young women.”
“You do not have to lie to your mammi for my sake.”
“I would never lie to my mammi.” He took a small shovel from a hook on the wall and buried it into the pile of coal. “I’ll be right up with a bucket of coal in case Mammi needs it.”
He turned his back on her, and Lia was left scratching her head at the strange young man who declared his intentions, or lack thereof, before she even knew his name. She marched up the stairs and started chuckling all over again. Pulling her shoulders back, Lia stood up straight so the young man would see she didn’t have to stoop to avoid the ceiling. She wasn’t as tall as some people.
Anna stood at the top of the stairs with a wide grin and a plate of ginger snaps. “Have a cookie.”
Smiling, Lia chose a cookie from the plate and took great care putting it into her mouth. She’d made the mistake earlier of taking a hearty bite, and she’d almost cracked a tooth.
“How did it go with Moses?”
“Who? Oh, uh, the young man downstairs?”
Anna lifted her eyebrows in indignation. “He didn’t even introduce himself? No wonder he doesn’t have a wife.” She deposited her plate on the table, propped her hands on her hips, and called down the stairs. “Moses, will you come up here?” She spoke it sweetly enough, but Lia suspected Anna’s tone was meant to lure Moses upstairs for a scolding.
Moses appeared carrying a bucket of coal, unprepared for an attack. Coal dust tinted his fingers black. “I brought more coal.”
“Moses Zimmerman,” Anna said, “you did not even introduce yourself to our guest. Where are your manners?”
Moses did not miss a beat. “We got to know each other quite well. I proposed marriage, and she refused me. I think that’s enough for one day.”
Moses folded his arms across his chest and chuckled. Mammi’s pretty friend didn’t even flinch, but he caught the sparkle of mischief in her eyes along with a hint of scolding for trying to deflate Mammi’s hopes.
Mammi’s expression was worth a whole gallon of whipping cream. Her eyes popped wide like shutters as she groaned in exasperation and . . .
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Huckleberry Hill
Jennifer Beckstrand
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
