Read Online The Miting by Dee Yoder - Free Book Online Page B

the bishop. She was hoping to have a chance to talk to Martha alone, but she didn’t see her friend right away. As families arrived, buggies were unhitched, horses tended, and greetings extended. Leah took her mother’s jars of recently preserved bread-and-butter pickles to the kitchen. It was their family’s contribution to the traditional church suppah of bubbli soup, red beets, bread, peanut butter spread, and pickles.
    She still had not spotted Martha as the men and boys lined up in the barnyard, preachers and bishop, oldest to youngest, in line and in control. They filed into the machine shed, which had been cleaned from top to bottom and filled with rows of benches.
    The women came next, falling into their queue as their husbands, brothers, sons, and uncles had done: oldest to youngest.
    Leah studied the room as the women settled themselves on backless benches. Some immediately bowed their heads, showing reverence, while others gathered skirts and children near. Old and young, wide-hipped and slim-hipped wiggled into their spots, hoping to find a position tolerable to the numbing hours ahead. No concession was made for those in their later years; creaking bodies made the same brittle contact with hard unyielding wood as young bodies.
    Starched and pristinely pressed kapps perched on the heads of women bowed low in preparation for the start of service. Men folded their long legs in against the benches, bare heads and scraggly beards bobbing right and left as they greeted their neighbors.
    Many men and women leaned forward, resting their chins on hands supported by their knees. Mothers wrestled their toddlers into a final submission, and a low buzz of voices hummed through the room.
    Leah caught sight of Abner on a bench against the back wall among the buves who tried hard to suppress their youthful energies. The reverence of their elders was not matched on the faces of these young men. They had spent their morning getting in a last smoke, a last joke, a last burst of joviality before having to endure the three hours of sermons and hymns. Their eyes smoldered with a myriad of emotions: boredom, restriction, strong-armed vigor, resolution, and smugness. Abner stared straight at Leah with spite-filled eyes.
    She flinched and jerked her gaze from his malevolent glare. Martha was still not in the room, and Leah fretted something had happened after all. Abner’s surly expression cast a shadow over the room like an oncoming storm. Leah locked her gaze on Jacob, and his warm smile calmed her spirit. Finally, Martha sauntered in, settling into the back row of women, her demeanor distant and distracted.
    Before Leah had the chance to catch her friend’s attention, the first preacher stepped forward and started the service. The rising and falling inflection of his voice lulled Leah quickly into a haze of gloomy considerations.
    That morning at breakfast, Leah had sensed her parents were reluctant to go to church at the Masts’. She wondered if they were thinking of the deep shameful sin they feared was harbored in that household. But being the good Amish people they were, they had not wanted to disappoint the Mast family or Bishop Miller, so they came anyway.
    Leah contemplated a plan to attend the Bible study, glancing at her neighbors as she imagined their reactions if they knew her thoughts.
    The service seemed unusually long, with the preachers dwelling on obedience to the Ordnung , of being a help and not a hindrance to the community. They stressed the importance of always obeying parents. Always putting the needs of others first.
    Preacher Byler looked directly at the youth during the third and final sermon. Most of the jungen missed his pointed stare as they had long since lowered blank eyes to the floor and hunched their shoulders to their ears, shutting out the admonitions with daydreams and strategies.
    By the time the service was over, Leah’s back railed at the long hours of stiff sitting, and her head throbbed