Mary's Christmas Goodbye Read online

  The characters and events in this book are the creation of the author, and any resemblance to actual persons or events is coincidental.

  MARY’S CHRISTMAS GOODBYE

  Copyright © 2015 by Linda Byler

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Good Books, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

  Good Books books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Good Books, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, NewYork, NY 10018 or [email protected].

  Good Books is an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.®, a Delaware corporation.

  Visit our website at www.goodbooks.com.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available on file.

  ISBN: 978-1-68099-057-7

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-68099-117-8

  Cover design by Koechel Peterson & Associates, Inc.,

  Minneapolis, Minnesota

  Table of Contents

  The Story

  More Books by Linda Byler

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  SHE STRAIGHTENED HER BACK, ONE HAND RUBBING the sore spot below her shoulder blade. Still seventh-and eighth-grade stories to correct, and it was already five o’clock.

  The classroom was bathed in the early spring sunlight, a pale yellow glow that turned the white walls into a golden color, the children’s artwork into brighter colors as well. Another month of school, and she’d be free for the summer, or at least as free as any single, thirty-year-old Amish old maid would ever be.

  Mary Stoltzfus wrinkled her nose, hiding some of the freckles that lay splattered across it. She rubbed at the end of her nose as if to eliminate a few more freckles, then gave up, allowing a tremendous sneeze to rip through her head. “Whoo!” she said to herself. Mary was alone in the one-room Amish schoolhouse in Ronks, Pennsylvania.

  She sat back, grabbed a Kleenex from the small, square box on her desk, and honked into it before tapping her desk absentmindedly with the cap of her red Bic pen. How many Bic pens had she emptied through the years? Twelve whole years of teaching Chestnut Run School. Well, all but one month to go in this school year. She’d started her first term at eighteen years of age, inexperienced, nervous, so young, her only goal to be a teacher, and a good one.

  The love of the children kept her going through difficult times, the way it kept her going through the good times, too.

  She was an experienced schoolteacher now. She was on the board of the teachers’ class, who were asked to help young teachers and give advice, which was expected after you’d been teaching for a while. It was all right, she supposed, this prestige in the world of teachers, but certainly not what kept her going from year to year.

  Before she knew it, the coming summer would end and she’d be back in the classroom with fresh yellow pencils sharpened, stacks of new tablets, and gleaming workbook covers shining in neat rows on top of the folding table. Boxes of pink erasers, bottles of Elmer’s Glue, new rulers smelling of wood, it was all she knew and all she wanted.

  She read Ben Beiler’s story, then leaned back so far she almost tipped her desk chair, hurriedly righted herself, thumped both elbows on her desk, and snorted loudly. Now, Ben could do better than that. He should be ashamed. She scrawled a red C-across his paper, with the words, “Hey. Come on!” written below. He’d know what she meant.

  This time of year, too many Lancaster County farm boys had spring fever. They wanted to ride the hay wagons or follow the plows with tin cans, picking up worms to go fishing, the sea gulls circling overhead. They thought of new colts and calves, baby goats, and squealing piglets.

  Mary sighed and bit down on her pen so hard it hurt her teeth. Ah, she was tired. Her eyes felt like the plastic black and white ones you stuck on art projects, the eyeballs rolling around unattached. She needed to make an appointment at the optometrist. Da owa dokta. The eye doctor, as her aging father put it. He couldn’t pronounce the fancy word, that was sure.

  She got up, swiped her desktop with the hem of her black apron that was pinned around her slim waist, then gathered up her lunchbox and book bag. She let herself out the door and down the steps.

  Her eyes surveyed the playground, looking for bits of paper or orange peels, anything the playground cleanup crew had overlooked. There was nothing. Good. She’d have to let the second-grade students know she appreciated them. She closed the schoolhouse gate behind her and set off on the fifteen-minute walk home.

  An oncoming horse and buggy bore down on her, the horse’s head held high in the manner of Saddlebreds. She waved at John King, the neighbor man, then stepped away from the roadside to allow a car to pass. It slowed to a crawl with its window lowered as a passenger aimed a small red phone at her face.

  Mary shrugged. They’d love the finished product—a tired, red-haired schoolteacher wearing a crooked covering with less than clean strings tied beneath her chin. Good for them. They could label it Scary Schoolteacher. She grinned, picking up her pace.

  “Hello!” she called, yanking the screen door open. No one at home. Well, that was nothing new. Her parents were empty-nesters who loved going away, visiting, shopping, helping the “marrieds,” as she put it.

  The house was long and low with wide white siding, a black roof, and a porch along the front. Four round white pillars supported the roof. A white picket fence kept the household as isolated as possible from the never ceasing flow of cars, trucks, horses and buggies, scooters, and pedestrians.

  Her mother’s hibiscus, ornamental grasses, and shrubbery, as well as begonias and pink geraniums, made the small garden a haven of color in summer. She’d already planted a few petunias, saying they’d take the frost.

  Mary’s apartment, or “end,” was to the right of her parents’ part of the house. She lived comfortably with her own small kitchen and seating area all in one, along with a bathroom and nice-sized bedroom. It was all she needed with plenty of space for company.

  Her walls were white throughout the whole apartment, with the doors and trim the same color. Her collection of various antiques and oak furniture set her taste apart. Mary was a little different, the marrieds said, nodding their heads knowingly. She hung curtains at her windows that they thought were plain ugly. She was just trying to be in style. No wonder she was still single. Without children, yet.

  She put her book bag on the old wooden chair that had been her grandmother’s, then went to the pedestal oak table to sift through her mail. Propane gas bill. A credit card offer. Time to renew her subscription to National Geographic.

  All of the Geographics went to school with her, with a few pages torn out if she chose to eliminate anything improper.

  Hm. What was this?

  She slipped a thumbnail beneath the seal on the envelope, then ripped the end of it, and extracted one page of tablet paper. Her brow scrunched into deep furrows, the red hair that escaped the dusting of the morning’s hair spray, waving and quivering on her forehead.

  What? Someone wanted her to teach school in…. Where? Maine? “MT?” No, that was Montana.

  She leaned forward, thumped the heels of her gray Nikes down hard, and read it again.

  “Dear Mary.”

  She blew out impatiently through her nose. How informal was that? They could have been a bit more businesslike and written, “To Mary Stoltzfus,” or “To Whom It May Concern.” Maybe tha
t was over the top, but still.

  It was a wonder he didn’t sign, “Love, Arthur Bontrager.” What in the world kind of name was Arthur? Was he even Amish? Did they call him Art or Artie? She’d heard of Bontragers and Weavers and Schlabachs, but they lived out in the western states mostly.

  Well, Montana was west. Way west. The wild, wild way-out-yonder-clear-to-the-moon west.

  Mary folded the letter, stuck it back in the torn envelope, and said out loud, “Sorry, Artie. No can do.”

  She went to the refrigerator and popped the top on a can of Diet Pepsi, took a long swallow, burped, and breathed, “Ah!”

  Now for her Dagwood sandwich. She placed a roll right side up, lathered it with mustard on one side and mayonnaise on the other, then piled sweet Lebanon bologna, leftover turkey, Swiss cheese, hard-boiled egg slices, pickles, onion slices, and green peppers on top. She heated a can of Campbell’s tomato soup until it was at the boiling point, added saltines and applesauce to cool it, then sat down to her evening meal.

  Teach school in Montana? Yeah, well, this is what happened after you accumulated twelve years of experience. Everyone took for granted that you could move thousands of miles away and straighten out the mess they’d created. No wonder the children were a problem. She bet anything not one of them wanted to live at the end of civilization. Bless their transplanted little hearts.

  A slice of egg squeezed out of her mouth, slid down her chin, and landed on the clean linoleum. Bending, she picked it up and stuck it back into the towering sandwich, her mind on the handwriting in the letter. Not bad, for a man.

  His English was better than some Amish men she’d known. How had they even found her address? Or even knew who she was?

  “Dear Mary.” Now that was personal.

  She scraped out the last of the tomato soup, then lifted the lid of a small wooden box, broke off half of a chocolate Kit Kat bar, and chewed methodically.

  No, she wouldn’t go. It was too far away. Besides, they wore those stiff coverings that stuck so far out the back, and there she’d be with her soft, organdy, heart-shaped covering, her black apron pinned about her waist, standing out like an owl in a flock of pigeons. No, no thanks. I’ll pass.

  She heard the crunch of steel buggy wheels turn in the drive and saw her parents seated on the spring wagon. Mam’s face was red from the brisk wind. Dat’s black felt hat was smashed down as far as it would go, his white hair and beard sprouting out beneath it, his cheeks ruddy with good health.

  Why the spring wagon? It was too chilly. Now Mam would come down with the pleurisy, moaning and groaning and carrying the hot water bottle around like a second skin. Aging parents were sometimes as much worry as a classroom of twenty-one children.

  But, of course, the powerful magnet called “parents” drew Mary to their door a few minutes later. She plopped on the worn blue recliner with the pink crocheted afghan slung across its back. Her backward force lifted the end of the afghan, flinging it over her head and thoroughly messing up her hair and covering, which hadn’t been too straight to begin with.

  Impatiently, she lifted the offensive throw and flung it to the floor beside her. “Why do you insist on covering all your chairs with those things?” Mary snapped.

  “Now.” Mam was in her early seventies, thin, and for all anyone could tell, as fit as a fiddle, in Dat’s words. Her hair was white, her skin gently folded into wrinkles that showed her friendly character. She always had a smile on her face, and her hands were willing to help with whatever task presented itself.

  “Mam, look at this.” Mary shoved the letter into her mother’s hands. Mam raised her eyebrows in question, then sat down and began to read.

  Mary knew what was forthcoming before it actually came out. “My, oh,” Mam said, soft and low.

  Dat entered the kitchen whistling, hung his hat on a peg in the adjoining mud room, then bent to wash his hands. Hand-washing was necessary after driving and unhitching a horse. The smell of leather, horse sweat, and animal hair mingled to give off a distinctive odor.

  Wiping his hands on the brown towel, he turned to look at his daughter. “School over?”

  That was what he always said. Of course school was over for the day, or she certainly would not be sitting there.

  “Yup.”

  That’s what she always said, too.

  Cars and trucks whizzed past the house, the steady clopping of horses’ hooves accompanying them. Mary and her parents never thought about the noise. It was as natural as breathing. They lived in the humming tourist area of Lancaster County, so they had learned to adjust to the constant stream of traffic. The hustle and bustle, the gawking visitors, was a way of life. Amid all of it, including the Sunday meetings in homes, the Amish culture prospered and grew, a quiet way that remained untouched.

  “Here. Read this.” Mam handed over the letter. Dat lowered himself heavily into a chair, read slowly, his mouth moving as he whispered the words to himself.

  “Well.”

  “What should I do? I’m not going so far away to teach those children.”

  “Then why do you ask what you should do?”

  Mary shrugged. “Habit.”

  Mam smiled. “Aaron, what shall we have for supper?”

  Mary went home, finished correcting the papers she’d brought, and prepared tomorrow’s German lesson. Leaning back in her chair, she raised both arms above her head and flexed her fingers toward the ceiling, her mouth opening in a yawn of gigantic proportion. Time to shower and go to bed.

  But there she lay on her side with her hands scrunched up beneath her chin, eyes closed, perfectly ready to nod off, but completely unable to stop the mad dash of thoughts in her mind.

  Montana was vast without a lot of people anywhere. Weren’t there snowy peaks and mountain ranges and pine forests? There were lions and wild burros and rattlesnakes called sidewinders and huge, hairy tarantulas. Or were they in Arizona?

  What kind of Amish people would name their boy Arthur? King Arthur of the Round Table in medieval times, his armor clanking as his steed’s hooves pounded the earth, was pretty distant from the Amish!

  Those western people allowed bikes. She could picture herself pedaling along a country road, the smell of fresh pine branches in her nostrils, her skirts flapping in the breeze.

  Then there were the mountain lions. Un-huh.

  She’d wait a few days, think about the invitation, and sleep on it. She flipped on her back, sighed, and envisioned a row of sheep leaping across an imaginary fence, counting each one as they landed on their front hooves.

  Well, it was definitely no. She was a citified Lancaster Countian, used to the comforts of home, money, having things handy. She even owned one of the newfangled electric clothes washers some genius had converted to the compressed air system. No more lifting wet, twisted clothes out of pounding, frothy water and stuffing them through a squeaky wringer.

  If she felt like eating at a nice restaurant, she could. She could call a driver, the handy person who made a living hauling Amish people to places too bustling—with too many stoplights and lanes of fast-moving traffic—for a horse and buggy to go. And that wasn’t very far away, just right down along Route 30 where all the outlets, hotels, motels, and restaurants vied to accommodate the thousands of tourists who descended on the farmlands of Lancaster County.

  What did people in Montana do for entertainment? Probably roast buffalo steaks on an outdoor fire. Or no, buffalo were in Wyoming. What did they roast? Leg of mountain lion?

  She sat straight up, lifted her pillow and thumped it against the oak headboard, folded it in half, and flung her head back down. Ow. Now she had a mean crick in her neck.

  She picked up her pillow by one corner and threw it across the room, flipped over on her stomach, turned her head to one side, and closed her eyes. Now she didn’t know what to do with her hands, so she stuffed them under her waist. That didn’t work, either.

  Thoroughly disgruntled, she sat up, put her feet on the rug and heave
d herself upright, went to the kitchen, found the flashlight, and aimed it at the old schoolhouse clock above the table. 11:30. Oh, no. Tomorrow was a school day.

  She opened the cupboard door above the refrigerator, brought down the box of Wheaties, scooped a generous amount of sugar on top, added a dash of whole milk, and thumped them good with the back of her spoon, then lifted a big spoonful to her mouth.

  That was the thing about Wheaties. You could load an awful big bunch of them on a spoon with a bit of maneuvering and get them all in your mouth at one time, which made them twice as delicious, same as a filled doughnut. Wheaties were just delicious, she decided again, carefully getting every whole wheat flake to her mouth, then lifting the bowl and draining the sugary milk in one swallow.

  There. Back to bed.

  She wondered what God thought. She wished she was a prophet or at least a good person like Abraham. God told him very sternly to get out of the house and into a land that he knew nothing about, and his seed would outnumber the sands of the sea, or words to that effect. He made it very plain.

  God wasn’t that close or that easy to understand. In fact, he often seemed elusive. But then he might not have too much time for cranky, red-haired old maids who tried pretty hard to get their own way in most circumstances.

  None of this, “Yes, Charles.” “No, Charles.” “Whatever you think best, Charles” kind of thing for her. Look at Ma Ingalls, dragged all over the Dakotas and Wisconsin, or wherever. Ah, well.

  Please then, God, if you think it’s okay to let me know, would you? Show me, direct me. You know, though, that I’m happy right here, don’t you?

  A truck roared past, shifted gears, and churned to the top of the low grade. Mary thought they should outlaw loud trucks but didn’t think it would happen in her lifetime.

  She finally fell asleep and, when she did, dreamed that every grain of sand was red like her hair.

  That whole week everything seemed to go flat. Even the sunlight was tainted. She noticed the cracks in the tile flooring, the dozens of black scuff marks made by the pupils’ shoes. She was irritated at the old stubborn desk drawers and cried when she couldn’t find the WD40 to grease them.