Meek and Mild (2 page)

“After this date,” Bishop Yoder said, “any families who join the fellowship of the congregation in Maryland will no longer belong to our fellowship, and we will regard them as having abandoned the true faith.”

Catherine twisted between relief that the shunning would only apply to future families who left the church and anxiety that shunning should occur at all.

Another hand went up and another man spoke. “In my conversations with Bishop Witmer, I did not find him so resolute.”

Irritation flickered from Bishop Yoder’s face. “I assure you that Bishop Witmer and I studied the Scriptures together. We also carefully considered the Discipline of 1837, which stresses the importance of a strict ban to maintain a vigorous church. I am sure we all want a vigorous church, do we not? When we neglect God’s ordinance, the church falls away. Have we not already seen this in what happened with our former brethren in Maryland?”

Former brethren
. The bishop had already cast aside Martha and Atlee Hostetler and the families who worshipped at the Maple Glen and Cherry Glade meetinghouses. How was it possible that the believers who labored side by side to build four meetinghouses should now see each other as former brethren? Catherine’s body tensed. Her sister’s heart had not fallen away from God. If the bishop would visit the families in Maryland, he would see this for himself.

A few heads turned now, forming pockets of whisper around the congregation. Catherine watched husbands and wives leaning forward or backward around those among whom they sat to find the eyes of their spouses across the aisle. Hiram rotated at last and caught her gaze. Catherine felt the blood siphon out of her face.

“We must vote now,” Yoder said, “and I again remind you that a unanimous vote is essential to protect us from further division. You are here at Flag Run in Niverton, and not at one of the meetinghouses only a few miles away in Garrett County, because you already realize the authority of the Word of God in this matter. You understand the spiritual benefits that flow into your lives when you submit to the church and the congregation is of one mind. Consider carefully whether you want to be responsible for causing a crack in our unity with a dissenting vote.”

If there had been any honest discussion of the question, Catherine had missed it. The bishop now left members of the congregation with little choice but to vote as he wished.

“All baptized members may vote,” Yoder said. “I ask you to raise your hands with me if you uphold the Word of God and desire to be obedient to the teaching of the true church.”

Catherine’s throat thickened as she again looked at Hiram. Bishop Yoder had not asked whether people believed Sunday school violated the Word of God. He had not asked whether they agreed that the shunning was needful. He had framed his request in a way that marked anyone who disagreed with him as a heretic or an apostate.

Bishop Yoder lifted his right hand high in the air. Catherine, still standing at the back of the congregation, buried her hands in the folds of her skirt. Technically her sister had begun worshipping only on the Maryland side of the border before the ban the bishop now proposed. Catherine could still see her. Yet in her heart she was supposed to think of her as having fallen away. She could not make herself lift her hand.

Yet around the Flag Run Meetinghouse, one hand after another went up. Some lifted eagerly and some reluctantly, but the hands of baptized members present rose. Hiram’s was one of the last, but he complied. Catherine knew her husband had no strong feeling on the matter of shunning those who left to join other churches—even the Lutherans—but she understood that he did not want to be the source of friction in the congregation. Who among the church would accept that role? Hiram sat in a row of men who had already raised their hands. In front of him and behind him, the men watched each other. On the other side of the aisle, the women did the same. Only because Catherine stood in the back could she withhold her vote without notice.

When the bishop asked if anyone opposed, Catherine’s heart pounded. But she said nothing. Perhaps with her silence she had voted in agreement after all.

Bishop Yoder smiled in pleasure. “We have a unanimous vote. God will be pleased that we have placed ourselves in His care and have chosen His will over our own. Let us do as the disciples did and sing a hymn as we depart.”

One of the bishop’s sons, Noah, began the hymn, and the congregation soon joined with German words their ancestors had been singing for two hundred years.

Somerset County, Pennsylvania

June 1916

T
he pan lid clattered to the kitchen floor. Clara Kuhn scrambled to contain the noise by stepping on the lid and then picking it up to press against her chest while her heart rate slowed. Three-year-old Mari had gone down for her afternoon nap not six minutes earlier. Rhoda was likely to stick her head in the kitchen and scowl at her stepdaughter within the next seventeen seconds. Expelling her breath, Clara turned around and dunked the lid back into the sink of water to scrub it again. Once she had dried it and stowed it with its matching pot on a low shelf, she ran a damp rag across the kitchen table and declared the kitchen properly tidied after the midday meal.

Rhoda had not appeared.

Rhoda’s propensity to scowl at Clara was a recent development in their relationship. Clara didn’t know what triggered it or what she could do to make it subside. She rinsed out the rag, hung it over the side of the sink, and drained the water. Mindful of where her skirts might catch or what her elbow might encounter, she moved out of the kitchen and into the hall leading to the front parlor. The voices were low, but with Josiah and Hannah in their last week of school and Mari napping, the house offered nothing to obscure the words. This was not a conversation Clara should walk into, accidentally or not. She halted her steps and held her breath.

“It’s time Clara married,” Rhoda said.

“She goes to the Singings,” Hiram Kuhn said. “When she has something to tell us, she will.”

“There must be any number of young men she could marry,” Rhoda said. “Perhaps she’s being particular.”

“I was particular. After Catherine died trying to birth our child, I waited nine years to marry you even though I had a daughter who needed a
mamm
.”

Rhoda’s voice softened. “And I am blessed that you did. Your wait gave me time to grow up and meet you. I have done my best to love Clara as my own—I
do
love her as my own. I want what’s best for her. She needs a husband and her own house to run.”

“I always thought she was a help to you after the children were born.”

“She was. She is. But I can manage my children without help. Clara should be looking after her own
boppli
.”

Remaining still, Clara allowed herself to ease out her breath and cautiously fill her lungs again.

“Of course you can manage the children, but it’s nice to have help, isn’t it?”

“I won’t have Clara thinking that I need her help,” Rhoda said. “She must know that it’s time to grow up. She’s twenty-three.”

“Hardly past the age of being marriageable,” Hiram said.

“Very nearly. She could go to Maryland to stay with her mother’s people,” Rhoda said. “Perhaps she would meet someone to her liking in their church.”

Clara visited her aunt Martha and her cousin Fannie often. Fannie had her own little girl now, and Clara adored Sadie. But Clara had never thought of joining their church. She certainly wouldn’t look for someone to marry in the Mennonite-leaning congregation.

It was not for lack of possibilities that she had not yet married.

Andrew Raber liked going to the
English
hardware store. Whenever he had reason to do so, he allowed himself three times as long as his errand might legitimately require. If he needed a wrench he couldn’t find in an Amish shop, he went to that aisle in the
English
store by way of the electric toasters. If he needed barbed-wire fence to keep horses in their pasture, he also marveled at the rolls of wire that could carry electricity. If he needed a new ax head, he first flipped through the brochures and catalogs of what could be sent for by special order. He could spend hours under the tin ceiling, walking the uneven wooden floor and investigating the overflowing shelves.

It was not that Andrew intended to purchase any of these things. It was only that he could not stifle his curiosity.

Today he was contemplating a new hoe and rake. Weeks of spring labor had made clear that handles on the cast-off overworked tools he received from his father years ago were ready for replacement. Andrew was fairly certain his grandfather had used those tools as well, and his faulty efforts to sand the long wooden handles back into service without risk of splinters in his hands had persuaded him new tools would not be an extravagance.

He would get to the tools, but right now he was looking at electric table lamps. Some were spare and efficient. Others had ornate bases and decorative glass globes. Some were sold as matched pairs and others billed as unique. Andrew had no doubt, though, that they were all wired alike. When they were plugged into a wall socket, electricity would flow through all the lamps in the same manner.

Andrew chose the lamp that appeared the least fragile and turned it upside down to see if the base might come off and give him a glimpse inside. If he had a screwdriver, he could pry it off, but the risk of damaging the lamp and then feeling obligated to purchase it was too much. He removed the shade and stared at the bare socket where a bulb would go, wishing he understood what he saw.

“Why are you looking at that?”

Andrew didn’t have to look up to know whose mouth the words came from. “Hello, Yonnie.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m only looking.” Andrew carefully replaced the shade and set the lamp back on the shelf. His eyes flicked to a white globe with painted flowers on it.

“We have all the light we need to read by with our oil lamps,” Yonnie said.

Andrew wondered if Yonnie Yoder even heard the perpetual stern streak that ran through nearly every sentence he ever uttered. Perhaps it was just the way he spoke, his own cadence of language. They’d been boys together, and Andrew learned to disregard Yonnie’s tone years ago. Lately, though, it had begun to irritate him. He had always supposed Yonnie would grow into a more graceful way of speaking, but Andrew no longer thought he would.

“Why do you always fuss with the
English
things?” Yonnie said. “Our people do not use them.”

“Maybe we will someday.”

“You should not wish for something so worldly.”

Andrew turned his back to the lamps. “I need a new rake.”

Clara withdrew to the kitchen and then out the back door.

She was in the way. How had she not seen this years ago? It was one thing to be an eleven-year-old child whose father at last remarried and another to be twenty-three and thought to be without options.

Clara’s own mother died when Clara was not yet two. Although Clara’s birth was uneventful—at least that’s what her father always told her—the boy her mother carried had taken too long to come. By the time he arrived—stillborn—Catherine Kuhn was exhausted. The bleeding that followed the birth quickly became uncontrollable, and within minutes Catherine was gone as well. Clara cocked her head, listening to the faraway sounds of that day. As always, she was unsure whether she remembered the screams and the rushing and the clattering of pans as she lay in her crib resisting a nap, or whether imagining the events had seared into her mind in the manner of memories.