The Thorn Part 1

The Thorn.

Beverly Lewis.

To my darling cousins Bonnie, Marcia, Susie, and Marie, sisters four. And in loving memory of dear Caroline. 1923-2010.

September 1985.

At times I wonder what might've happened if I'd gone with Mamm that damp, hazy morning eleven years ago. She was so tired - she'd said it herself - preparing for market day. Such a bleak expression dulled her sweet face as she trudged out to the waiting horse and the enclosed gray carriage filled with gourds and squash and other garden vegetables.

A shudder rippled through me as I watched her step into the buggy, carrying the rectangular money tin for making change at market. Was I somehow sensing what was just ahead?

She set the tin box on the front seat next to her and picked up the reins as I stood on the back steps. Then she gave a faint wave and our eyes locked momentarily. In that burning second, I felt the urge to run out to the buggy and stop her, or at least offer to join her, as though my presence alone might keep Providence from having its way.

But before I could do so, Mamm clicked her tongue for UpsyDaisy to move ahead, and the young mare trotted off by way of Salem Road, where our farm adjoins the bishop's own. Then over one road and down ... down the precarious Bridle Path Lane that rims the rocky ravine, our shortcut to the main roads leading to Quarryville.

Even now, as a young woman of twenty, I think back to that miserable hour and tremble, wis.h.i.+ng I'd heeded the alarm clanging in my brain. Yet there I stood, watching silently in the mist and the fog.

How could I have known Mamm would be found sometime later, lying along the road and unable to walk, the family buggy turned upside down in the rugged ravine below?

Around that time, our neighbor, the bishop, brought home a foster child from Philadelphia. I'll never forget the day I met Nick Franco. He was just ten and scrawny as a stick ... his wavy hair as black as a raven. My mother had taken my sister and me next door to welcome him, a basketful of food tucked under her arm.

There, in the far corner of the big kitchen, Nick had sat all slumped over, as if someone had dropped a feed bag on his slight shoulders. He was dressed like any of the Amish schoolboys round here - the thin black suspenders and baggy pants out of place with his short English haircut. When he glanced up from his perch on a wooden stool, I caught the lost look in his dark, sad eyes and realized he must've been taken away from everything he'd known. Nick never so much as uttered a word when the bishop's wife introduced him as "our new son." Neither did he speak to a single soul the rest of that week, the bishop later told Dat.

Right away, I felt sorry for Nick Franco - an outsider come to live with our man of G.o.d. I learned later that his father had abandoned him when Nick was a toddler and that his mother was seriously ill, too sick to care for him. No other family members were willing or able to take him in, so he wound up in a foster program. Like it or not, the People hoped that he might become Amish.

Nick was sullen and quiet during those early months. Honestly, it irked me no end how aloof he could be. I occasionally got brave enough to attempt conversation, but he would turn away as if he hadn't heard me. Or didn't care to. Even so, I heeded my inner urge to treat him kindly, the way I'd want to be ... if I had to walk in his shoes.

And I kept trying to talk to him. About the time Nick turned eleven - a year after his arrival - his expression became a bit softer. Sometimes when he looked my way, there was even an inkling of a smile. But the misery lurking in his eyes never completely faded.

It was then he started working for my father on Sat.u.r.days and weekdays, after school. I'd wander out to the barn, if my sister was looking after Mamm, to watch him haul manure with Dat and my older brother Mose.

Quickly, I learned not to call hullo when I entered the barn, because there was just no getting a response from the bishop's second son. For the longest time, I actually a.s.sumed Nick Franco was partly deaf.

Eventually I tried talking to the horses, loud enough for Nick to hear. "You're growin' a thicker coat, ain't ya, Upsy-Daisy?" I might say, stroking the mare while glancing at Nick out of the corner of my eye. "Winter'll be here before we know it, ain't?"

Nick would sometimes snicker or cough. Now and again he might even mutter something back, like "Ain't even fall yet," and then quickly return to his apathetic whistling.

For the longest time this strange sort of game continued between us. Then one day he began to say a few words directly to me. I felt ever so proud - in a good way, of course. Jah, somehow we'd managed to become friends. And considering his sullen nature and the way he normally kept to himself - even during school recess - I daresay I was his only friend.

One afternoon, he surprised me by asking if I'd go riding horses with him, "just for fun." He was still quite standoffish, so I was taken aback at this invitation. And I resisted.

Nick persisted the next day, and the next, just as I had all those months trying to draw him out in conversation. At last I agreed. So he took one of the bishop's spirited colts, and I chose our feisty George, and we rode along the narrow treed section of Salem Road, west of our house, down past the Amish schoolhouse and Farmdale Road.

Oh, what a wonderful-gut time it was! I'd never felt so carefree in all of my young life, the wind on my face, my hair falling out of its formal bun. Much to Nick's and my own amus.e.m.e.nt ... but hopefully not to the Lord's dismay!

It was a turning point in our friends.h.i.+p. And, little by little, I began to feel more comfortable with the shy city boy who rarely spoke as he listened to me chatter on about whatever popped into my head.

Last month after Preaching service, Mamm eyed Nick while we sat out on the lawn waiting for the common meal. "I hope ya know that boy's trouble," she said softly from her wheelchair.

"Dat's had him workin' for us all these years," I replied too quickly.

Mamm waved her hand absently. "Workin' and socializin' are altogether different." She let out a long sigh, her eyes growing stern. "Just mark my words: Nick ain't our kind."

I considered that, surprised she was so pointed. "Bishop made him one of us by takin' him in, jah?"

"Plain clothes don't make ya Amish and never will. And just look at that ponytail he's got." Mamm clucked her tongue. "I honestly pity the girl who ends up married to him."

I nodded my head wholeheartedly. The way he was wearing his hair so long in back made anyone look twice, especially since the rest of him looked downright Amish.

"Hen's blunder oughta be a lesson to any girl," Mamm added.

Always, always, my parents set up my only sister as an example to encourage my ongoing compliance. "Look what Hen went and did," they'd say, "getting herself hitched to Brandon Orringer" - her Englischer husband.

"Don't worry, Mamm. I'd never marry someone who's not really Amish."

My mother gave me a fleeting glance, then turned to greet her many sisters and oodles of Kauffman and Blank cousins as they stopped to chat. The steady flow of womenfolk continued, all of them ever so fond of Mamm.

And as they came, I caught their unmistakably sympathetic gaze - since I was stuck there and not off with the other youth. And I couldn't help thinking how very different Mamm's life might now be - and mine, too - if I'd simply gone with my mother to market that long-ago autumn day.

- SHAKESPEARE, from Sonnet 35.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.

- PROVERBS I:7 KJV.

The history of Rose Kauffman's ancestors was well known in southern Lancaster County. They had fled Switzerland with other persecuted Amish families, eager to embrace the freedom to wors.h.i.+p as they pleased, and to settle on valuable land offered by the heirs of William Penn.

Generations of Amish Kauffmans, Hartzlers, and Zooks thrived there in the fertile Big Valley area of central Pennsylvania, hauling limestone in the 1820s, then tilling the soil and planting corn and other vegetables. They raised hogs and chickens and milked dairy cattle, too.

That is, until one of Rose's uppity great-uncles, Yost Kauffman, began to argue with the Big Valley bishop, declaring the Good Lord wanted him to grow a full beard and mustache. The Anabaptist forefathers had always forbidden their men to grow hair on the upper lip, a sober reminder of their European persecutors. When stubborn Yost refused to shave off the offensive fuzz, he was ousted and moved his family away to the floodplain southeast of Quarryville, near Bart in Lancaster County. His old clapboard homestead on Shady Road still stood but a half mile from Rose's own father's land.

Rose's father, Solomon, never heard what became of the errant uncle's whiskers. But Yost's gumption meant Solomon and his family were settled in a fine old three-story redbrick farmhouse set back on the westernmost stretch of rambling Salem Road. There, Solomon lived and worked as a crop farmer and a wagonmaker.

Idyllic Salem Road ran west to east, between Bartville and Farmdale Roads, connecting the two oft-traveled thoroughfares, and a short distance from the ill-fated Bridle Path Lane. Quiet Salem Road was populated by farmhouses and outbuildings, including chicken coops, granaries, hogpens, and woodsheds.

During the summer months, Rose Ann's flower beds on both sides of the house boasted profuse colors, as well as a sea of white daisies. There were rows of golden mums, a well-tended rose garden, and Rose's own flouris.h.i.+ng grape arbor. Small birds and b.u.t.terflies fluttered nearby all summer and into the early autumn.

Years before, when Rose and her older sister, Hannah - nicknamed Hen - were younger, they frolicked outdoors on nippy autumn Sat.u.r.days, raking leaves into deep piles. Occasionally, if she was strong enough, their mother sat near the front window doing her hand sewing, cloaked in sunlight. On such mornings, Emma Kauffman undoubtedly observed her daughters making quick work of the raking and believed they were as sedate and obedient as any well-mannered Amish girls.

Sometimes, though, when they thought no one was watching, the sisters made a running start and fairly flew into the brittle heap, leaping and scattering leaves with cheerful abandon before stopping again to rake up the strewn foliage.

But those carefree days were long past. Hen's shocking union to an outsider at age twenty-one had made it painfully clear that at least one Kauffman daughter was anything but proper.

Rose Ann pressed her embroidery needle into the pretty white pillow slip and pulled the light green floss through the stamped ivy design. She knotted the thread on the underside and removed the small hoop.

With a great sigh, she cast an impatient gaze out the window and watched the fast-moving clouds against the gray-blue sky. Her eyes drifted to the treetops and the tall white martin birdhouse, then to the rolling front lawn. A horse and buggy pa.s.sed by, and she wished she might be heading somewhere this morning. Anywhere at all, she thought desperately.

Mamm moaned softly, and a pang of guilt tugged at Rose's heart. She dipped the point of her needle into the pillowcase and set it on the small table nearby, then helped her feeble mother out of the wheelchair and onto the daybed. There, she'd made a cozy nest for Mamm's daytime naps in the spare room just off the sitting room. Later, when twilight fell, Dat would lift her mother into his strong arms and carry her to their bedroom on the first floor, as he did every night.

"Still feelin' chilly, Mamm?" Rose asked.

Her mother nodded.

Rose raised the quilt and gingerly slid Mamm's frail, useless legs beneath the handmade coverlet, as careful as she could be. "That should warm you up right quick."

"Besser now," said Mamm. "Denki, Rosie."

Rose gave a smile and went to sit on the old cane chair near the foot of the daybed. Because Mamm was in near-constant pain, Rose felt ever so tenderhearted toward her.

Mamm turned her head to face the window, the suns.h.i.+ne spilling over the small bed and onto her brown hair. "Be sure 'n' leave the shades up all the way," she told Rose, "and the door ajar, too." Ever since her injury, Mamm craved the light.

Rose never forgot to do her mother's bidding. She doubted she ever would, intent as she was on being the best caregiver her mother could have - at least now that Hen was gone.

Honestly, as much as Rose loved her mother, she didn't know how she'd managed these last six months without the daily a.s.sistance of her maternal grandmother, Sylvia Blank. In the years since the accident, dear Mammi had faithfully helped to bear the burden of Mamm's care, but a sudden stroke had left Dawdi Jeremiah incapacitated and dependent on his wife's help, as well as anxious for her company. Here lately, though, Dawdi was able to get out and about on his own again and was nearly his old self, which meant Mammi could once more tend to her daughter most mornings. During those times when Mammi Sylvia came over from their adjoining Dawdi Haus or when Mamm took long afternoon naps, Rose could scarcely wait to be in the fresh air, free of the confines of the house. Carrying fresh feed and water for the field mules and the driving horses - Upsy-Daisy, George, and Alfalfa - was one of her few joys.

Her outdoor adventures with Nick were another pleasant reprieve. Sometimes they'd ride horses after nightfall, and other times they'd sneak off to go fis.h.i.+ng or exploring in the high meadow, once ch.o.r.es were done. When they were younger, they used to make little floating boats of leaves in the bishop's pond, with sticks for the masts ... and caught tadpoles, and made tiny mud huts, too.

Then, as now, Rose spent time talking Nick's ear off, and occasionally about the day Mamm became paralyzed. It had long been rumored that their inexperienced driving horse had been spooked by a runaway stallion on the precarious road, though this was no more than hearsay, since the day of the accident had been wiped clean from Mamm's memory.

What they did know was that their family buggy had flipped over and rolled partway into the rocky chasm. Mamm had been thrown free when the carriage snapped loose from Upsy-Daisy's. .h.i.tch. The People called it a "mystery of G.o.d" that she and the horse had survived at all.

Nick listened attentively as Rose wondered aloud what had, in fact, happened that frightful day. Neighbor Jeb Ulrich had later told Dat of an English boy who'd appeared at his door, asking for help after the accident. But Dat had always questioned the validity of senile Jeb's farfetched account - especially since there were no English boys around the area that they knew of.

Rose shared with Nick how she'd gone with Hen to the narrow dirt road the very next day. They'd knocked on Jeb's door to no avail and scoured the area, looking for Mamm's money tin with its thirty dollars worth of change. They and their seven older brothers speculated about the cause of the accident for weeks. Yet neither the tin box nor the reason for the accident could ever be found.

For months afterward, Mamm came in and out of herself. Bless her heart, for all she'd been through, their mother looked just as pretty and sweet, if not more so, than before the fateful mishap itself. Her will was as strong as ever, but despite the good care she'd received at the Lancaster hospital, she simply did not get any stronger, and her legs remained as useless as twigs.

There were times Rose would find her singing to herself, sitting in the wheelchair Dat and his father had made for her, darning socks near the black cookstove in the kitchen. Mamm wanted to help out - "do my part," she'd say with a pensive, pained look in her golden-brown eyes. Rose was determined to make her life as happy and comfortable as possible.

Presently, Rose Ann reached for the book she was reading. Opening to the next chapter, she read aloud for a while, glancing at Mamm every so often. Oh, the lovely romance described on these pages!

After a time, she set the book down, daydreaming ... the story alive in her heart. She couldn't help wondering if she'd ever be so loved and cherished as the girl in the book. Would she someday know the joys of marriage and having children, as she'd dreamed of even as a young girl ... before Mamm's mishap?

It seemed less likely now with Mamm so frail and growing feebler as the months pa.s.sed. And Silas Good no longer pursuing me. Rose thought sadly of the handsome, likeable fellow, though she was resigned to G.o.d's will. If being a Maidel and caring for Mamm was her destiny, then so be it.

She stared at her mother, resting peacefully. Rose folded her hands against her black work ap.r.o.n, trying yet again to imagine what it must be like, unable to move her legs to walk or run or move about at will.

Or to ride horseback .. .

Quickly, she dismissed her own secret goings-on, knowing her mother would not approve. Mamm would be quick to point out the perils of spending hours with the bishop's wild son on a Sunday night. Instead of going to Singings to pair up with real Amish boys.

Rose opened her book yet again, anxious to lose herself in the fictional world as she waited for her mother to drop off. Devouring stories - especially those with surprising twists and turns - was her favorite escape from her semi-isolation.

Later, standing in the doorway till she was certain Mamm was asleep, she whispered, "Rest well." Then, quietly, Rose walked to the coatroom off the kitchen and pulled on Hen's old sweater before hurrying outside.

The sweet scent of hay drew Rose into the humid stable, where she spotted Nick, disheveled as usual, shoveling out the manure pit. The tall young man's long, dark hair blended in with his black s.h.i.+rt. It was hard to believe that Nick had persuaded Barbara Petersheim, the bishop's wife, to sew him so many dismal-colored s.h.i.+rts. The black, gray, and brown s.h.i.+rts were clearly Nick's favorites, which amused Rose, since the men in their church district wore s.h.i.+rts made of blue and green fabric, as well as white for Preaching services.

Not even the bishop could get him to conform to their ways. Not in Nick's preference for long hair, nor his five-o'clock shadow ... and definitely not in the bishop's hope for his foster son's living a peace-loving life. No, Nick could b.l.o.o.d.y a fellow's nose as quick as he could drop his straw hat. Did he think fist fighting was an acceptable sport here? Was it something he'd learned in the city?

"I learn the hard way," Nick had once told her haughtily. And Rose knew it for truth. He'd insisted on using a makes.h.i.+ft fis.h.i.+ng pole from a willow branch, even though he could see how many fish she caught by simply using her brother's conventional fis.h.i.+ng pole. But he would stubbornly shrug and cast his line into the water. The same was true when it came to cutting hay with Dat or hanging tobacco to dry for a neighbor. Nick refused to imitate what her older brothers - or his foster brother, Christian - did routinely ... and correctly.

Rose justified his disruptive behavior, considering his difficult childhood - something Nick never talked about. It wasn't surprising to her that he seemed so angry. Angry at everyone, really.

Everyone but me.

At twenty-one, Nick had pa.s.sed the age many young people joined church, yet he still showed no sign of wanting to do so. Didn't he understand that being selected by the bishop to be raised Amish meant the Lord G.o.d himself had chosen him? Out of all the lost, worldly souls.

"But by the grace of G.o.d I am what I am." Rose thought of the verse from 1 Corinthians that she and Silas Good had discussed months ago, when she'd last gone riding with him. "Sure seems like Nick would look on being chosen as a mighty gut thing," she'd suggested to her former beau, and he had agreed. Silas had felt as strongly as she did about the privilege it was for Nick to have the bishop as his father. "What most fellas wouldn't give for that," Silas had remarked as she rode beside him in his black courting buggy.

Now, while she distributed the feed, Rose felt a twinge at the memory of blond, blue-eyed Silas. She had no idea where things stood with him, since her expanded caretaking duties had kept her from attending Singings for quite a while. And, too, the few Sunday evenings she could've gone, she'd chosen to ride horses with her friend Nick instead. The thought of sitting still and singing the same songs put her on edge - hoping a nice fellow would smile and catch her eye for a ride home and all - when she could be out on a galloping horse, breathing in the nighttime fragrances.

It was her nighttime romps through the countryside with Nick that made her life most cheerful. They'd kept their outdoor jaunts secret - between just the two of them. Even now no one was aware of their companions.h.i.+p, apart from the work they did together in the barn. It was best, they'd long agreed, to avoid needlessly raised eyebrows.

She turned now to look at Nick. He smiled back and fixed his eyes on her head, where he'd once snipped off a strand of her strawberry hair when he was sure no one was looking. They had been pruning the grapevines near the road, after harvesting a b.u.mper crop. He'd pressed the curl into his pocket, declaring it the "most striking red-blond" he'd ever seen. Rose had worried the clipped spot would show till it grew out again. But not a soul ever noticed.

Nick's scruffiness had amused her from his first day here. And sometimes she caught herself double-checking her own schtruwwlich hair, reaching up to push a loose strand over her ear, hoping she didn't look as unkempt as Nick. Goodness!

There were times the womenfolk shook their heads, though not unkindly, when they saw her at canning bees or quilting frolics. They took one look at her and must've understood that her mother couldn't rein in her youngest daughter like most able-bodied mothers did. Still, they liked her even as they winced at the stray hairs at her neck. Rose was known, after all, as a dutiful and loyal daughter. Unlike her sister Hen.

Plitsch-platsch - slapdash - Hen liked to describe her, but with a loving expression to soften the truth. There was no arguing it - Rose did have a penchant for letting things go. She couldn't deny her aversion to tightly twisting her hair on each side to pull it into a tidy bun. After all, she figured no one really noticed her hair beneath the boyish blue paisley kerchief she preferred to wear around the house - nor under her best Kapp on Preaching Sundays, either.

But Hen's opinion didn't count for much anymore. Not since she had joined ranks with the "high people," as Nick called them. For the life of her, Rose had never understood why the rough-and tumble boy from Philadelphia could just blurt out whatever was on his mind one day and clam up the next.

Today, Rose moved along the horse trough. She walked right up to Nick. "I've been wonderin'," she said. "Are all English bigheaded, do ya think?"

Nick smirked and returned to his shoveling. "I'm English, jah?"

"Ain't what I meant." She shook her head. "Remember what you said about my sister?"

"What about her?"

"That she joined up with the high folk when she married."

"Well, she got herself hitched to an Englischer, didn't she?" His black eyes pierced her own.

"That didn't make her uppity, though."

"Says who?"

"Honestly, I'm tellin' ya, Hen's not stuck on herself like some fancy folk." She stroked Upsy-Daisy's mane. "I'd be more apt to worry over her loss of faith."