Free Little Amish Matchmaker by Linda Byler Page A

strong.
    We’re all here for you.
    Isaac knew it was against the rules to pass notes, but when he exchanged his arithmetic paper with her, he put the note inside, then watched steadily out the opposite window while she read it.
    That day was a turning point.
    It was as if Ruthie had been slipping, unable to gain a foothold. Now, a shaky attempt had paid off. She had found the strength to shake the crippling defeat in her young life.
    At the recess SOS group, she repeated sentences, stuttering, straining, sometimes having to be completely quiet. But she spoke.
    Then the snowstorm came at suppertime, all right.
    It started like granules of salt, so fine and hard, piling into every crack and crevice it could find. It sifted along the cow stable’s windowsills, a place Isaac could not remember ever finding snow.
    The hen’s water froze. They pecked holes into the ice and drank anyway. Dat said to feed the pigs and hens plenty; they’d need extra to keep themselves warm. Isaac and Sim put straw bales around the pigpen, wrapped sheets of insulation, that pink, itchy, fiberglass stuff, around the water hydrants and put a heater in the milk house.
    Their Barbara came down with bronchitis, and needed Mam to send over Numotizine.
    “What a night!” Mam fumed and fussed. No driver wanted to go out in this weather. She’d be ashamed to call one.
    Sim said he’d make the five-mile drive. He had a heater in his buggy. When Isaac offered his company for the ride, Sim grinned and nodded.
    Mam put a glob of that vile salve from her own blue and white container in a glass jar. It was an old, old remedy, containing something so awful smelling you could hardly stand to watch Mam put it in a jar, let alone having it applied to your chest with a steaming hot rag slapped on top. It was enough to suffocate a person, having to sleep with that stench, but Mam showed no mercy with her administration of Numotizine. She stated flatly that it had saved her hundreds of dollars in doctor bills, spared her children from antibiotics, and why wouldn’t you use these old home remedies from the past?
    So in the cold and dark, the snow zooming in through the opened window, Sim and Isaac started out.
    With a horse like Sim’s you had to keep the window latched to the ceiling for awhile, allowing the cold and snow its entry. There was no other way to do it. For one thing, the small rectangular holes cut in the window frame to allow the leather reins to pass through, were actually too small to handle a spirited horse. Horses always needed a firm hand starting out, and Saddlebred Fred was no exception, the way he hopped around. He shied, he ran way out around the driveway, making a large circle in the alfalfa field, and then dashed down the road as if a ghost was after him.
    The steel-rimmed buggy wheels lost traction, swaying and zig-zagging across the quickly ­disappearing road, as Sim strained to control Fred. Isaac wrapped himself tightly into the plush buggy robe, and hoped the snow plows would hold off until they got home. The way Fred was acting, they’d end up in Philadelphia if they met one.
    Sim didn’t talk, so Isaac said nothing either. Then, sure enough, the twirling yellow light of a snowplow showed through the gloom, bearing down on them.
    “Yikes!” Isaac wasn’t planning on saying that; it just slipped out of its own accord.
    “Hang on!” Sim shouted.
    Isaac couldn’t do that, as the buggy went straight down a steep bank. Grimly, he bit down on his lower lip, slid off the seat and socked into the corner of the buggy. Sim was standing up, leaning way back, his gloved hands working the reins, Fred galloping across someone’s field out of control.
    The buggy swayed and lurched, Isaac cowering in the corner, his eyes squeezed shut, waiting for the moment the buggy would fly into a thousand pieces, his body exploding out of it into the wild black night. It didn’t happen. They just slowed down. Fred stopped his headlong gallop.
    They