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“It seems like wherever I go,” Jacob said as he trudged out of the woods with Mark. “I'm chopping wood, picking up wood, sawing wood, or taking wood somewhere. What is it with this place and wood?”
“What can I say,” Mark said. “Wood is everything.”
In a matter of days, the school would be hosting its yearly pageant, the same one it did every single year. It was a simple nativity scene and the story of the first Christmas. The girls took turns playing Mary, and none of the boys cared who played Joseph. Jacob certainly did not care so long as he was out of the running for the entire thing. The one room schoolhouse was oddly large enough to host a pageant of this size, and each year, it drew a small crowd of Englischers who thought, for whatever reason, an Amish Christmas play would be different from an English one. Fortunately, this 'tradition' was widely understood in Hope Crossing, and the majority of the pageant was performed in English rather than the customary Pennsylvania Dutch.
He and Mark were currently trying their best to supply wood for the furnace. Though he felt he'd chopped enough wood for the day, the school ran on a simple wood burning oven, though for night time events, such as the one they were about to have, there was a very nice white gas generator which would power the lights. This, however, worried Jacob – at least today. With Mark planning to leech power off the generator, there was a very high chance of disaster.
“Why can't we just use the Church for the pageant?” Jacob asked. “It seems better suited to it.”
“Are you crazy?” Sarah Mast demanded as she stepped out the back of the school. “We can't use the church for something trivial! It's the house of God after all!”
Behind her, in the doorway Jacob could make out the shape of Deborah, though he could also tell she was purposefully keeping herself hidden. That was curious.
“Deborah?” he called after her, but she disappeared into the building.
“Leave it alone,” Sarah said, rolling her eyes.
“We need to come in any way,” Mark said. “It's freezing out here.”
“You can come in,” Sarah said, “He stays out here.” “Oh, come on; what did I do?” Jacob demanded.
“Do you really have to ask?” Mark asked, pushing past him and walking into the building. “Do you guys have anything to eat? “
“We have some of those Whoopie Pies,” Sarah said, closing the door and leaving Jacob out in the cold.
He continued to cut wood, bringing it to the wooden chest, just beneath the window. He finally finished his task and took a seat on the chest, sighing, and waiting for his friends to return. He waited for what seemed like hours, staring at the tree line behind the school. Everything here was a tree line. It was as if they were in the middle of a forest with only the most convenient parts chopped down and developed.
Finally, he jumped off the box and walked toward the door. Whatever was happening in there, it could not be that bad, and he was dying to get warm. As he reached for the door handle, Mark pushed past him and abruptly opened it.
“We need to get the straw,” he said. “Excuse me?” Jacob asked, turning around.
“The nativity scene,” Mark said. “It needs hay, and we're going to go to the Meyers place and get it.”
“That's really far out of the way...” Jacob pointed out. He was not joking. It was near the county line, and would take them about an hour to get there. “We could get straw from—”
“No one nearby is selling straw,” Mark said quickly as he made his way toward the cart. They had been using that cart an awful lot lately in this cold weather.
“And you want to keep me away from Deborah.”
“There is that, yes,” Mark admitted as they climbed into the cart and pulled away from the school. “You did quite a thing there, kissing her. She admitted the entire thing to her father.”
“What?” Jacob shouted over the sound of the cart. “Why would she do that?”
“Because unlike where you come from,” Mark said, clearly annoyed, “we are honest with our parents about big things like this.”
“You don't understand,” Jacob argued. “I really, really like her.”
“Well, welcome to being an adult and making adult decisions,” Mark said.
