WHILE THE CONGREGATION STOOD SINGING the second stanza of When Peace Like a River, Anna Raber slipped into the one-room Mennonite meetinghouse through the rear door. She found a seat at the end of the back pew, close enough to the opened window to enjoy the smells of the new planting year. The freshly broken sod, seeded in corn that week, was still pungent from the spread manure, and the crocuses and daffodils blanketed the gently rolling hay fields with a tangy whiff that nearly caused her heart to break with joy for God’s goodness. Her departed mother had so loved southern Indiana in the spring, often commenting how it reminded her of southern Germany, where their Anabaptist forefathers had thrived before being persecuted by the Roman and Protestant churches for refusing to take oaths and baptize infants. Here, on this bountiful American land, their close-knit enclave had thrived for over a hundred years, living in harmony with the German and Irish Catholics who surrounded them.
But like a storm blowing in at the end of a sunny day, trouble was now threatening that peace.
Above the singing, she could hear her father’s husky voice. To her dismay, he was speaking the Low German again. Engaged in an animated discussion with Ezekiah Knepp in the front row, Jacob Raber turned, as if sensing her disapproval. She shook her head in a gentle reminder that he should speak English. Many of the older members of the community still resisted this reform, even though the church had decided that because they were Americans and would inevitably have to deal with the outside world, the younger generations should be taught English as a first language.
She looked around, taking note of those present. The room was so swollen with latecomers that many had spilled out onto the yard beyond the doors. The Sunday evening service was usually rotated from farmhouse to farmhouse, but this one promised to be so contentious that the elders had moved it to the communal hall, the largest building in the settlement. She had never seen so many believers gathered in one place, not even on the day they raised Ezra Yoder’s barn, the largest in their Old Order farming community. That celebration, ten years ago, remained one of her earliest memories, and the fondest. The men on that hot July morning had clambered across the fresh-hewn beams of the looming framework with their hammers and saws while the bonneted women draped the long rows of tables outside with oilcloths and steeped them with platters of fried chicken, candied yams, and yeast rolls for lunch. Just six years old at the time, she had been assigned the task of chasing away the flies from the food with an oak branch.
That was when Micah Yoder gave her the nickname that stuck like sorghum.
Shoofly Raber.
So pretty was her smile, the nervy boy had announced between bites on a drumstick at dinner on that hot afternoon, even the flies enjoy her swats. Fair as a white peach, she had blushed so intensely at the embarrassing compliment that the older men began to tease her mercilessly. In the years that followed, whenever a fly appeared on a windowsill, the elders would laugh and clap until she performed her divine-given gift.
Micah always seemed to show up at her most awkward moments. There was that time, for example, when she had to deliver a calf while her father was away at a biblical conference. To this day, she didn’t know how Micah had known she needed help, but he came running over the snow-fluffed hills that December morning, not a minute too soon to unbreach the calf from the bawling cow. It was then that he had learned her shameful secret: She was squeamish at the sight of blood, couldn’t even bear to dress a chicken. Micah had surely tattled this to the other men, for whenever she passed them now, she could almost hear the whispers about what a poor wife she would make.
The congregation launched into the final chorus of the hymn, shaking the whitewashed rafters. When they finished, her father arose from the front pew to deliver his sermon.
She fussed with smoothing her ankle-length dress, using her primping as a diversion to sneak another sidelong peek across the room. Micah had been stealing brazen glances back at her, flashing his teeth mischievously through his scraggly beard. She felt the heat rise in her cheeks again, a telling sign that only caused him to grin wider. She was doubly nervous because this eve promised to be one of the most important of her life. She could not deny another glance at Micah, but this time his smile had given way to a look of worry. The others sang with heavy hearts, their voices crackling from the tension that had pervaded the week.
Why did God have to bring darkness and division on her special night?
As the worshippers—women on one side, men on the other—finished their hymn, she felt a palpable jolt of trepidation. Standing before the congregation, her father cut the figure of an old German Moses in black as he bowed his head in humility, his long gray beard reaching to the navel of his white shirt and his knuckles pale from clutching his Ausbund hymnal. He no longer laughed as he once did, not since her mother had passed, for the horrid events of the past few days had taken a heavy toll on him. He was weary and burdened by a torrent of modern changes that he could no longer comprehend.
And there he was again, giving her that confused stare.
She used to become flustered whenever, addled by the tricks of age, her father looked at her as if expecting to find her mother. Yet in recent months, she had come to see the striking resemblance in the mirror: the long, strawberry blonde hair, so rare among their people, and worn in the same bun; the provoking cornflower eyes, which gave off her mother’s same insistent gaze, the one that the English always mistook for suspicion; the fair skin susceptible to the sun, the naturally rouged cheeks, and the slender swan’s neck—all frivolous features for a farm girl. Eager to negate the infuriating impression that she was vain about her appearance, she was always overcompensating by doing more grime work in the barns and fields than the other women.
Now, her father motioned forward Jonah Burkhardt, one of the elders who sat in the front row. For the first time, old man Burkhardt turned to face the congregation, and those who had not seen him since the unspeakable deed gasped in horror. Two days earlier, his beard had been crudely hacked away by violence and force. He still wore the scabs on his face and hands from the wounds suffered when he had tried to fight off the attackers—fellow Mennonites—who had broken into his home. Several of the women turned away, unable to look upon the poor soul. In their faith, a man’s beard was a mark of his holiness and virility. Death was preferable to being mutilated in such a vile manner.
“I have failed my people in the eyes of the Lord,” her father announced.
After a nettled silence, Ada Hostetler, the most senior of the women in the congregation, stood to testify. “We have all failed, Jacob. There is a pestilence of the soul sweeping over our land. The Devil has entered many hearts, even some in this assembly.”
A younger man came to his feet in protest. “You talk as if some mysterious power did this deed! We all know who committed it! Amos Gingrich and his boys! This is not our sin. We have been too lenient with these criminals!”
“What would you have us do?” Anna’s father asked him. “We have shunned them, but to no effect.”
“Those men cannot be shamed!” a bearded elder insisted. “They laugh at our shunning and excommunication. They will not be satisfied until they tear us all down and humiliate us before the English.”
“Evil not confronted rises like yeast,” Ada Hostetler warned. “If we do not stop this abomination, soon there will be murder and more mayhem here!”
That prophecy horrified Anna’s father. “You speak of murder, Sister Ada? There has not been such a crime since we came to this land.”
“Persecution is the handmaiden of faith,” Ada insisted. “We did not escape the English when we crossed the sea. The English will always be upon us, just as the Devil was always at Christ’s side during His forty days in the desert.”
“And how would you have us quash this madness?” Anna’s father asked.
Ada did not flinch. “The heretics must be handed over to the police.”
That demand spawned another surge of recriminations, and one of the men objected, “She would have delivered Our Lord unto the Romans!”
“It was not your home that was violated!” Ada reminded the man protesting her demand. “Your piety will fail soon enough when they shear you like a lamb at the slaughter!”
Jacob glanced helplessly at Anna as he tried to restore order. He spotted a hand raised in the far corner of the room asking for permission to speak. Smiling at the source of the request, Jacob nodded with a look of relief and said, “Yes, Micah. You have something to say?”
The elders murmured their astonishment that one so young—Micah was only a year older than Anna—would dare offer an opinion on such a grave matter of community governance.
Micah stood, taking a moment to find his courage. “You remember those five English boys awhile back who burned down my grandpa’s barn?”
The congregation nodded, and some brushed back tears.
“They were out of their minds from drinking liquor,” Micah reminded them. “The county sheriff begged my family to bring a charge in the English court. But Grandpa refused, and he forgave them. Those English boys came out here that summer and offered to help rebuild the barn. We all saw the miracle of their healing with our own eyes. Maybe the calves have to jump the fence a few times before they learn where the hay is on them cold winter days.”
Anna had never heard him speak with such seriousness. Could this be the same carefree boy who was always cracking jokes and flirting with her?
As if sensing the doubt rising around him, Micah kept his eyes lowered to show humility. “I have been reading the Good Book on this matter. Did not Our Lord say that we must not resist one who is evil? Matthew Five-Nine. Blessed are the peacemakers. Grandpa told me that turning aside in the face of violence is a kernel of our faith. I don’t have a vote. But if you send Amos Gingrich and his wildings to the English law now, are we no better than those who afflicted suffering on the thousands of our martyrs who came before us?”
Many in the room nodded, and even those who had called for the unprecedented action of seeking English justice seemed moved by the young man’s plea. Anna looked at her father and saw him beaming at Micah, as if sharing a secret knowledge between them.
Ada Hostetler stood again. “Our Lord sends breezes to warn of coming storms. If the church commands such a course of mercy, I too will turn aside. But I do not for a moment believe that by taking this path of meekness, we will escape greater trials of faith ahead.”
Despite this warning, Anna’s father gave his blessing to the course proposed by Micah. “He speaks wisely. Our Lord always counseled forgiveness.”
“There was one sin for which Our Lord did not counsel forgiveness.” Ada turned to another page in her Bible. “Mark Three-Twenty Nine. ‘But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation.’ This abomination was not only a crime against Jacob Burkhardt. It was blasphemy against the Spirit and the command for our men to maintain themselves outwardly in Christ’s example.”
Troubled by these points, the congregation became silent again. Some of the worshippers turned to their prayer books for answers to their dilemma. Anna saw tears welling up in Micah’s eyes. Why was he was taking this controversy so hard?
When sufficient time had been allotted for private prayer, Jacob Raber stood again and called for a vote. “I would have the full congregation’s guidance on this decision. Those in favor of handing the shunned over to the English court, please stand.”
Only a third of the congregation came to their feet. Micah’s plea for forbearance had carried the day.
Anna’s father raised his hands over the congregation. “Let us then pray for the Lord’s intervention, that these stone hearts in our midst be softened.”
THAT NIGHT, ANNA LAY SHIVERING in the darkness of her upstairs bedroom. Before retiring, she had extinguished the fire in the kitchen stove, and already the house had grown cold. Covered from neck to heels in a woolen sack tied with drawstrings at her ankles and waist, she listened for the footsteps on the stairs, her teeth chattering more from nervousness than the spring frost on the window. When would he ask? Would he wait until those last hours before dawn, making her wait? She had practiced saying ‘yes’ a thousand times, sometimes delaying her answer for an extended moment to make him suffer in doubt, in retribution for those many times when he had teased her. She so wished she could see the anxiousness on his face. What if he snored? Or talked in his sleep? She would just have to act as if she never heard—
The stairwell door creaked open, and two sets of feet climbed the steps. Her skin tingled in anticipation. The latch to her room turned, and a rush of air entered from the hallway.
“Anna,” her father whispered. “Are you settled?”
“Yes, father.”
Denied the benefit of a lantern, Jacob Raber shuffled across the room blindly and found the board that he had rested against the wall. Working from feel and memory, he lifted the long two-by-four slat and slid it into the notched bracings constructed at the foot of the bed.
Anna heard the board screech down the middle of the straw mattress aside her, until the slat’s planed facing came against her shoulders. She remained turned on her side, away from the door. A body compressed the mattress on the far side of the board, drawing groans and cracking from the bed supports. She felt the bed shaking—was that her, or him?
“Bless you, children,” her father prayed. “Give thee both thanks to the Lord.”
“Bless you, father,” she said.
“B-b-bless you, sir,” the young voice next to her stammered.
The door closed, and the room fell silent.
Should she speak first? Now, more than ever, she missed her mother, who would have given her instruction on the ways of bed courting, a biblical practice as old as Ruth and Boaz resting together all night on the threshing floor. But her mother had died before telling her of her own bundling with Papa, and what little Anna had learned about the ritual she had managed to glean from overhearing the grandmothers speak of it during the quilting bees.
No, she decided. She would make Micah speak first. She wasn’t about to let him tease her again for saying something untoward. He could lay there mute all night if he wanted—
What was that buzzing in the corner? Was that the Holy Spirit filling her ears with the sound of holiness? The room became silent again. Seconds later, she heard a puffing, and then:
“Anna?”
He had spoken first.
She smiled, lording her first victory over him. “Yes?”
“I need you.”
Her smile widened into a preening grin. This ritual was all the more enjoyable because her elation over his clumsy attempt at the proposal of marriage was hidden in the dark. She affected disgust and insisted, “You’ll have to do better than that, Micah Yoder.”
“No, I really need you.”
She had waited all her life for this moment, and that flimsy effort wasn’t going to cut it. She had beseeched her father for two months to allow the bundling to take place after her sixteenth birthday. Until this night, she and Micah had enjoyed only a couple of fleeting moments alone together, and this night would be the determining test of their compatibility.
“Did you hear me?”
She tried to decipher the depth of his love for her in the tenor of his voice. He sounded agitated. What was all that puffing and sputtering he was doing across the board? She would have to break him of that nasty habit, for sure. “Say it again.”
“I … need … help!” he pleaded, emphasizing each word in rising desperation.
Help?
He goes from needing me to needing help?
This was going to require more work than she had expected. “Needing is not enough, Micah Yoder. A woman wants to be wooed. I must know that I am the Lord’s gift to you. That you cannot live without—” What in the heavens was he doing over there? The board between them was rattling, and it sounded as if he were thrashing inside his bundling shroud like a revived corpse fighting against the dirt thrown at him in the grave.
“I will recite every word in the Good Book,” he begged, “if you will do one thing for me!”
Exasperated at the thick-headedness of men, she gave up her gentle coaxing and took firm control. “Yes, Micah Yoder! Yes, I will marry you! There, are you satisfied? Did my father tie the string around your tongue as well? Yes, yes, I will marry you despite your insufferable—”
“Marry?”
“What beclouds my very understanding is how a man who spoke like an angel before the entire church only hours ago can now find himself incapable of asking a simple question—”
“Marry?”
“Do you have a farm in mind for us? Ben Wagler’s acres are rumored to be up for sale. It’s a far piece from the road, but —”
“I wasn’t trying to ask you to marry me!”
Stunned, she wiggled and struggled until she managed to sit upright like a woolly worm arching on its back. “What then were you asking?”
“There’s a fly on my nose!”
In the span of seconds, Anna’s kindled emotions caromed from befuddlement to anger to hilarity at their situation. They both broke out in laughter so loud that they heard her father stirring in the bedroom across the hall. She ducked back down behind the board. Sensing the danger in the moment, they stifled their giggling and tried to remain quiet, but their bodies were shaking with suppressed amusement against the bundling board.
“What would you have me do about it?”
“Blow on it,” he begged. “My beard blocks my mouth.”
With great effort, she managed to lever back up again and let loose with a blast. The blow was harsher than necessary to chase the fly, but it carried a silent message punishing him for turning the most important moment in her life into another story that would only entrench her nickname.
Rid of the pest, Micah edged against the board and whispered, “Thank you.”
She huffed and turned her back toward him. “Don’t try to butter me up! And don’t you dare call me—”
“Shoofly.”
She fell silent, fuming.
“I guess I really stepped in the cow pod this time.”
“Do you know how many times a girl bundles in her life?”
“Once?”
“And how many times she gets to feel the first thrill of lying next to—”
“I love you, Anna.”
Her burst of exasperation was rendered stillborn. Now she was the one tongue-tied. Her eyes filled with tears, and she could not find the words that matched her emotions.
“Did you hear me?”
She let loose on him with a torrent. “The Almighty busted the stir pole when he pushed you through the ice creamer, Micah Yoder! Two minutes ago, you could barely put two words together! And now you’re gushing like a broken pipe! Do you not know when to give a girl time to savor the few moments in her life that might make the rest of the horror worth the effort?”
“Just in case that fly got stuck in your ear, I’ll say it again. I love you. I fell for you the day you cut me that piece of cherry pie twice the size you served the others at the barn raising.”
“I was hoping it would stifle your mouth for awhile.”
“I did not come to ask you to marry me.”
Her heart sank as swiftly as it had quickened. Swallowing her disappointment, she tried to remain calm, despite her confusion. “Why then did you ask my father to permit you to stay tonight?”
“There is something I have to tell … to explain to you.”
She pulled her legs into her chest, trying to quell the urge to sob.
“I feel God’s calling,” he said. “The same calling your father once felt.”
That confession hit her like a pan to the forehead. Now she understood that knowing look her father had exchanged with Micah at the church earlier that night—and the uncharacteristic willingness of her father’s surrender to the bundling.
“I tried to tell you earlier,” Micah said. “But I couldn’t find the right moment. Your father wrote to Goshen on my behalf.”
“The bible college? That’s two hundred miles away.”
“The trustees have offered to help me with the tuition.”
She used the sheets to brush away a tear. Had her father guided Micah toward the ministry only to keep her to himself? Coughing back a swell of emotion, she gathered up the courage to ask, “When do you go?”
“This summer. It will take …” He hesitated. “Four years to get my degree.”
She stifled a gasp. Four years seemed like a lifetime. Most of the other girls her age would be married by their eighteenth birthday. Her father was not in the best of health. What if she were left alone? While others were exploring the English world during rumspringa —their run-around time —she would be confined here.
“Anna, will you wait for me?”
There was only one thing she knew for certain: She loved him, too. After whispering a silent prayer for strength, she shoved her heartache deep inside and, inching her head over the bundling board, blew hard into his face.
He blinked from the unexpected blast. “What was that for?”
“For all the flies in Goshen.”