“Penny is feeling so much better since the visit from the vet,” Millie said as she used a pitchfork to toss fresh straw into the goat’s stall. It had been her twin sister’s turn to clean the stalls, but Willa wasn’t much for outdoor chores. Willa thought the barn smelled and she was afraid of mice, so Millie was doing it for her. Millie wasn’t scared of anything she could think of. Certainly not a little mouse.
“You remember John Hartman, don’t you?” Millie murmured as she pushed the straw around on the packed dirt floor. “From Seven Poplars? He grew up Mennonite but went Amish to marry the widow Hannah Yoder?”
Her mother’s favorite goat was getting on in years and Millie wanted to be sure it was comfortable. Past the age of bearing young or even providing milk, the goat had been put to pasture. And Millie figured that having provided for the family for so many years, Penny deserved as good a care as anyone on the farm.
“I’m glad Penny is on the mend. Aren’t you, Mam?”
Her mother didn’t respond.
Tearing up, Millie leaned on the pitchfork. Of course her mother didn’t say anything.
Her mother was gone.
The Lord had taken her home more than a year ago.
Unlike her father, Millie never forgot that Mam had passed, but she still liked to talk to her sometimes. It comforted her. And maybe she was listening. Who knew?
Satisfied that the area was clean, Millie rested the pitchfork against the wall and walked out into the freshly swept aisle that ran between the stalls of the barn. “Come on with you.” She took Penny by her leather collar and tugged, but the goat didn’t budge. Penny was too busy eating her oats from a bucket. “Going to be stubborn this morning, are you?” Millie asked patiently.
The brown-and-white Nubian bleated and stuck her head back into the bucket.
Millie laughed. “Fine.” She stroked Penny’s warm, soft back. “You’ve nothing but scraps left, but you can take them with you.” Leading the goat with one hand and enticing her with the bucket with the other, she returned Penny to her stall and closed the door.
According to her sister Henrietta—whom they called Henry—Penny’s stall was the last of the three that needed to be mucked. Because her parents had been cursed—or blessed, depending on the situation—with seven daughters and no sons, Millie and her sisters had always done barn chores at their father’s side. Now that their dat wasn’t dependable when it came to such matters, the girls worked on a rotating schedule, with Henry overseeing them.
With the task done, now all Millie had to do was dump the wheelbarrow of dirty bedding and she could return to the house to see if there were any apple pancakes left over from breakfast. The manual labor had made her hungry again. And maybe she’d have a hot chocolate, too. As she hung the pitchfork on the wall, she wondered if there were any marshmallows left. She’d bought two big bags at Byler’s store, but her father loved marshmallows and often sneaked them from the pantry. If Millie’s eldest sister, Eleanor, found out he was eating handfuls of marshmallows, she’d be cross with him because, according to his doctor, he was supposed to be watching the amount of sugar he ate.
Millie adjusted the blue wool scarf she wore over her head and tied under her chin, and grabbed the wheelbarrow handles. There were a lot of things she didn’t like about being a big girl—as her father called her—but one of the good things was that she was strong. As strong as any man. Stronger than some. She could easily roll a whole wheelbarrow to the manure pile without a problem. Whereas Willa, a thin wisp of a girl, had to make two trips.
As Millie rolled the wheelbarrow out of the double doors into the barnyard, she raised her face to catch a few warm rays of the sun. It was early October, and they had woken to the welcome relief of a cool breeze. It had been a long, hot summer and she was thankful for the change of seasons. Plus, fall brought all kinds of delicious foods to the table: sweet yams, apple turnovers and savory cabbage stews. And then there was Christmas to look forward to.
As Millie pushed the wheelbarrow toward the manure pile, she spotted Willa under the clothesline in the backyard. Millie had dressed for barn work in an ugly, stained brown dress and her father’s oldest denim barn coat. Willa, however, was dressed for chores in a new peach-colored dress and knit sweater that was more suited for Sunday visiting than housework. Covering her blond hair, Willa wore a white organza prayer kapp rather than a sensible headscarf like Millie.
As Willa clipped a pillowcase to the line, she leaned forward, looking at something in the distance, her pretty face in a scowl. Suddenly she drew back, her eyes going wide, and, spotting Millie, began to wave her arms, shouting something at her. However, between the sound of the howling wind and the creaking of their metal windmill as it spun, Millie couldn’t hear her sister. Then their flock of sheep caught sight of her and must have thought she intended to feed them, because they all came running to the fence, bleating and hitting their front hooves on the rails.
Millie let go of the wheelbarrow handles. “What?” she hollered to Willa, cupping her hand to her ear.
Willa began jumping up and down, pointing. It sounded like she was hollering “Wow!” or maybe “Pal!” Pals?
“I can’t hear you!” Millie called.
Willa ran toward her, flapping her arms. “The wows are out!”
The wows? Millie thought. What on earth was her sister talking about? She turned in the direction Willa was pointing. Then she saw them. Beyond the barn, through several small, fenced corrals and across the pasture was their herd of a dozen cows.
On the far side of the fence.
Millie brought her hands to her cheeks. The cows had broken out of their pasture! “The cows are out!” she cried to her sister.
“I know!” Willa shouted, running toward her. “That’s what I was trying to tell you! We have to get Henry! She’ll know what to do!”
Millie rolled her eyes as Willa came to a halt beside the wheelbarrow. “We don’t need Henry. They’re our cows, too. Come on,” she said, hurrying toward the gate. It would be quicker to cut across the field to the cows than to go around the barn and down their long lane to the road.
“Millie, we can’t herd cows,” Willa fretted, following her. “That’s Henry’s job. You know how she is. Henry’s not going to like it.”
Millie flipped the latch on the gate. “Ach, but Henry’s not here, is she?”
“She’s not?”
“Nay.” Millie started across the pasture. “She took Dat visiting. Remember?”
“Wait! You’re going too fast. Wait for me,” Willa called, closing the gate behind her.
“We have to get them before one of them gets hurt,” Millie said, refusing to slow down. If Willa weighed half what Millie weighed, she ought to be able to go twice as fast, shouldn’t she?
“Oh! Oh my,” Willa cried as they crossed the field.
Millie looked over her shoulder to see her sister hopping in one direction and then another, as if moving from one lily pad to another on their pond. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“Cow pies.”
Millie had to cover her mouth to keep from laughing aloud. She loved her sister. Adored her. But Willa was what their mother had called fussy. Their mother had always said Willa was too persnickety for a farm girl. She didn’t like to get dirty or sweaty or touch anything she thought was icky—which was a lot of things.
“I could go back to the house and tell Eleanor the cows are out. She could send Jane or Beth to help you.” Willa backtracked, to dart around a patch of high grass.
Millie slowed from a trot to a fast walk, keeping an eye on the cows on the far side of the fence. They were moving along the road, sampling the fresh, uncut grass. She tried not to think about what could happen if one of the cows ventured into the road. The year before, a family in a neighboring church district had lost their only milk cow when it broke through their fence and was hit by a big truck.
Reaching the fence that ran along the road, Millie halted, looking one direction and then the other. Where was the hole in the fence? She’d assumed their two dairy Holsteins and the beef cows had broken through an opening along the road. She had intended to go through the break in the fence and herd the cows back in the way they’d gone out, but there was no break there.
Willa stopped beside Millie, panting. Petunia, the older of their milk cows, lifted her head, chewing a mouthful of clover while she stared at them as if wondering how they had gotten inside the pasture.
“Where did they go through?” Willa asked.
“I don’t know.” Millie looked in the direction of their driveway to the north, squinting in the hope of seeing the break, but she didn’t.
Just then, Petunia began moving toward the road.
“Nay,” Millie murmured, snatching a handful of green grass and waving it at the cow. “Come this way. Look what I have. It looks so good. Mmm,” she said, trying to entice Petunia.
The cow lifted her head but didn’t move toward the bouquet of grass Millie held out.
“We have to climb over the fence,” Millie told her sister, afraid to look away from Petunia for fear she would take off for the road.
“Climb the fence?” Willa protested. “I’m not climbing a fence. This is my new dress. We’ll have to walk back to the gate.”
Millie watched the black-and-white Holstein out of the corner of her eye, while continuing to look for the break in the stockade fence. Her father had built it twenty years ago from heavy-gauge wire fencing strung between posts and lengths of lumber across the top of each section. Still seeing no break in the fence, she glanced at the herd again. The other cows seemed content, at least for the moment, to eat along the far side of the fence, but Petunia kept turning away from Millie to look at a patch of thick clover across the road in their neighbor’s ditch.
“I’m cold. I should go back to the house and get help.” Willa hugged herself for warmth. “Or...or maybe we could get Elden to help.” She pointed in the direction of the Yoder farm across the street.
They’d grown up with Elden Yoder and attended school together. He had been a year ahead of them and the best-looking, most popular boy in their one-room schoolhouse. Millie had always liked him; in fact, she liked him so much that she avoided him whenever possible. Even as an adult she felt tongue-tied around him. He’d become engaged earlier in the year, but the wedding had been called off. It had been a bit of a scandal because no one in the town of Honeycomb knew why the betrothal had ended, but there was a lot of speculation. Willa and their youngest sister, Jane, had talked about nothing else for weeks after it happened.
“I don’t need Elden Yoder’s help to catch my own cows,” Millie argued. She looked the stockade fence up and down. “I guess we’re going to have to go over it.” She dropped the grass she’d been trying to tempt the milk cow with and placed her foot gingerly in one of the squares of the metal fence, testing to be sure it would hold her weight.
“But Elden’s right there,” Willa said.
“He’s right where?”
Petunia turned away from Millie and started for the road just as a pickup truck whizzed by.
“Nay!” Millie cried, scrambling up the fence. At the top, she pressed both hands on the board and awkwardly threw her leg over. If she could just hoist herself over—
Millie didn’t know what happened next. Maybe her sneaker slipped, or maybe the old wire fencing broke, but suddenly she was falling. It seemed like such a long way down. She cried out as she went over, spooking the cows, who all took off in opposite directions, bellowing and mooing loudly.
“Millie!” Willa screamed.
Millie hit the ground, arms flailing, and rolled down the slight incline, coming to a rest with her face planted in the drainage ditch.
“Oh!” her sister cried from the other side of the fence.
Millie wondered if she had blacked out for a moment because the next thing she knew, someone was leaning over her. And then a deep, masculine voice asked, “Mildred? Mildred, are you okay?”
Elden had spotted the twin Koffman sisters hurrying across their pasture and had wondered what they were up to. He’d lowered the blade of his scythe to the ground to rest his aching shoulders as he watched. He’d been working on clearing his meadow since breakfast and was thankful for the respite. Then he saw that their cows were on the wrong side of their fence and had dropped the scythe to run to their aid. He was crossing the road when Mildred, head down, not seeing him, had started to climb the fence.
Elden had shouted for her to wait, that he was coming, but he guessed she hadn’t heard him in the wind. He was halfway across the road when Mildred tumbled head-over-teacup, as his mother liked to say. And then the girl hit the ground. Hard.
Elden had sprinted the last few feet.
He now crouched beside her as she lay facedown in the ditch, not moving, and he feared she’d been severely injured. He hesitated, not sure if it was okay to touch her, but then gingerly laid his hand on the small of her back.
“Oh my!” Mildred’s twin, Willa, fussed from the other side of the fence. “She’s broken her neck, hasn’t she? She’s dead.”
“She’s not dead,” he told Willa. With his hand on Mildred’s back, he could feel her breathing. He leaned down, bringing his face close to hers. “Mildred, can you hear me?”
“Millie,” Mildred said softly, still not moving.
Elden leaned closer. “What’s that?”
Mildred moved her head ever so slightly and opened the eye he could see. He had always thought she had pretty eyes—they were big, and the color of nutmeg with little flecks of cinnamon.
“Millie,” she repeated. “No one calls me Mildred. Not since my school days.”
Elden couldn’t resist a smile of relief. If she was correcting him, she had to be okay, didn’t she?
He and Mildred—Millie—Koffman had never been friends, even though their families had lived across the street from each other since they were kids. But he had always liked her. Over the years, he’d heard derogatory remarks from others about her being chubby. Some even called her fat, but he had always thought she was pretty. The way he figured, God had made them all in His image and everyone was beautiful in their own way. Millie had beautiful eyes, beautiful golden hair and a beautiful personality. And most importantly, she was a woman of deep faith. Even though they weren’t exactly friends, he often saw her at social events. She was always optimistic, never gossiping like her twin, and she had a way of looking at the world that made those around her more positive. “Are you okay, Millie?”
“Fine,” she mumbled. “You can go. I’m fine.”
He glanced up at the cows that had scattered when she had fallen. Thankfully, none of them had bolted across the road. “You don’t seem fine. Can you...can you move?” he asked, worrying that she had broken something when she hit the ground. Why else would she still be lying there?
“I can,” she said.
“Then why aren’t you? Do you...do you need a hand to get up?”
She looked up at him with her one visible eye. “I’m not moving because I’m too embarrassed.”
Again, he smiled. Lots of people got embarrassed, but few ever admitted it. Certainly not to others.
“I’m thinking that if I lie here and pray harder than I’ve ever prayed in my life,” Millie told him, “maybe I’ll just die and my mother will come for me.”
It was all he could do not to laugh. But he knew better than to do so because then she’d be even more embarrassed. “What? You’re embarrassed because you fell going over a fence?” He snorted. “That’s nothing. Last Sunday at church, I was carrying a bench, tripped and landed at our bishop’s feet in front of the whole congregation.”
Millie rolled over onto her side and looked up at him, smiling. There were bits of dead grass and leaves stuck to her face. “It’s too bad we’re not in the same church district. I’d like to have seen that.”
“It was quite a sight, I’m sure.” Elden stood and offered his hand to her. “You think you can stand now?”
“Sure.” She gazed up at him, her cheeks rosy, the scarf tied over her hair askew. “Just got the wind knocked out of me. You didn’t have to come over. My sister and I can round up our cows.”
He still held his hand out to her. “If it was my cows loose, would you help me?”
She scrunched up her nose, which made him want to smile again. Goodness, she was pretty. And there was a sparkle in her eyes that made him feel good. Better than he had in months.
“Of course I would help,” she told him.
“Then get up, Millie, and let’s get these cows back in the pasture.” He thrust his hand out to her again and this time, she grabbed it. And when she did, he felt a spark leap from her hand to his. The kind he had feared he would never feel again.