Sojourners Hollow An Anthology of Amish Romance

By Janet Coburn

A shy Amish woman writes a love letter to a farmhand that she has a crush on but it is delivered to another young man instead. Embarrassment ensues as the young woman finds herself with an unwanted suitor...until she gets to know him...but when her original crush begins to express an interest she finds herself in a quandary...whom will she now choose?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trellis Publishing
• Release date: Jul 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201090098

Book preview

SOJOURNER’S

HOLLOW

JANET COBURN

table of contents

SOJOURNERS HOLLOW

TAINTED SPRING

I WOULD LIKE MY HEART BACK NOW

TO TRUST AGAIN

THE SHY AMISH BRIDE

RUMSPRINGA ROMANCE

It was 4 o’clock in the afternoon, the clouds were a looming gray, and only a thin spray of sunlight penetrated the windows of the Sojourner’s Hollow General Store. It was a long building of sturdy wooden planks, raised like a barn and painted a dull red, with squat rectangular windows trimmed with white.

Through the open storefront, behind the shelves of stock and produce - woven baskets, hard cheeses, jars of jams of many kinds, beef jerky, every variety of animal feed, and more - there was a set of stairs leading to a little living space. Three cramped bedrooms and a tiny washroom served as a home to Susanna King, her father, and her brother.

Susanna King sat behind the store counter, hunched over a table in the back corner, not realizing how dark it had grown outside. Her entire focus taken up by a letter she was scribbling - now adding a word here, now crossing a word out, now removing entire sentences or adding whole sentences and drawing lines to show where they were meant to go.

Susanna was 14 years old - or nearly 15, as she thought of herself - a pretty girl, though she didn’t know it yet. Her full auburn locks, when they weren’t covered over and tied into a bun, tumbled down almost to the back of her legs. Even tied up, it glowed like autumn leaves in the fading embers of late afternoon sun.

Her eyes, though they were now squinting in the late, low sunlight, were usually big and round and hazel, and often sparkled with cheer.

Now, though, they were thin and tired and she scrunched them closed. She reached out a slender hand and scrunched her letter into a little ball, then let out a moan as her head thumped forward onto the table.

Why can’t I figure out what I want to say? she thought to herself.

Don’t let dad catch you belly-aching, her brother said. Susanna jumped - she hadn’t seen him come in. She stuffed the crumpled paper into her apron, her eyes darting all around and beyond the windowpanes, noticing for the first time that it was almost twilight.

A merry heart does good like a medicine, he told her, quoting the Book of Proverbs in his best imitation of their father’s voice, which was a very poor impression indeed. The Lord loves a cheerful servant.

His biblical quotations were in German, of course - Sojourner’s Hollow was an Amish community, and children learned the German of their forefathers, as well as the English of the outside world, from as soon as they were born.

Aaron King was a weedy boy of 12, only just starting to grow into the man he would some day become. His shoulders were starting to widen, and his little arms were strong from the work he did in the store, though they were still pretty weedy all things considered.

Aaron insisted he’d found a hair on his chest just the other week, he wouldn’t stop talking about it, except when dad was around - dad didn’t stand for that kind of boastful nonsense, nor would he stand to hear Susanna moaning to herself when she was supposed to be minding the store.

There was no need to warn Susanna about that, though. Somehow, she thought, feeling almost angry about it - thought a measure of guilt came mingled with that anger - she always seemed to know the right thing to say.

Susanna’s father was not an unkind man, but he was a strict man, a devout man of God, and a deacon of the church. As a deacon, he was a kind of assistant to the bishop and to the church. He collected the offering that would be distributed to those in need and announced upcoming marriages, as well as a thousand other tiny tasks, whatever was needed, whenever it was needed.

Father was always out and about in the community, doing this and that, but the work of a deacon wasn’t a full-time job, and it was a position of honor and duty, not something you did for the pay.

So Susanna’s father also ran the community’s general store,

along with a couple of local men who pitched in part-time, and the help of his children. Between his duties as a deacon and his work in the store, Susanna hardly ever saw him.

When they weren’t at school - a single tiny building for children of all ages - Susanna and her brother Aaron were helping out around the store. They counted and sorted stock for the shelves, read through orders from local farmers and shoppers, packed was due to go out, and sometimes sat in with Amos or Jacob when they drove the buggy to make the deliveries.

Amish women tended to work around the house more than out and about in the community. Usually, a young Amish woman like Susanna would be learning to keep the home and tend the garden and other such womanly arts from her mother, rather than helping with the store - but Susanna’s mother had passed away when Aaron was born, and her father needed all the help he could get to keep up with the orders.

Susanna would go out with the drivers whenever she could possibly manage - not because she wanted to get away from the store, but because she wanted to head out over the Miller Stream.

The Miller Stream ran down from the nearby Sojourner’s Lake, from where the nearby farms watered their livestock and irrigated their crops.

Whenever there was heavy rain, the Miller Stream cackled and tumbled down from the lake, its harsh wet laughter heard all through the town center. In the springtime, as the winter ice was thawing, the Miller Stream babbled quietly to itself in a watery voice. At other times, it flowed silent and gentle between its banks, minding its own business.

On this side of the Miller Stream was the town center, the general store, the schoolhouse, the blacksmith, and the smokehouse, where they smoked the beef to make jerky and beef sticks.

Down the main street and to the south there were the local farms - the farms of the Weaver family, the Stoltzfuses, the Lapps, another King family (distantly related to Susanna’s family, as were many families in the community, either by blood or marriage).

But over the stream, and to the west, that was where the Miller farm was, and whenever an order came from over the stream - whether it was from the Millers or not - Susanna would speed through her schoolwork or swap chores with Aaron or do whatever she needed to do.

She’d do whatever she could to get in the buggy when it went over the Miller Stream for a a delivery - because that was where the Miller Farm was, and when they went past the Miller Farm, Susanna might see David Miller.

She saw him around town, of course, when he came into the general stone, or to the blacksmith, and then there was school, where all the kids in the community were taught together from a young age — but it was different seeing him at the farm, where he worked to help out his family.

David Miller wasn’t the best looking boy in school, that was for sure - all the girls agreed on that. His growing arms and legs were longer than they should be, and with his long nose on his long face, it hadn’t taken much creativity for the younger kids at school to make up a nickname: horseboy.

Susanna suspected it was Aaron who had come up with it, though she couldn’t prove anything.

The adults around town didn’t seem to think much of David, either. He did well enough in school, he was polite enough, hard working enough, when he had to be. He even sat quietly in church and lived a godly enough life.

Yet it was clear, somehow, in some way, that he wasn’t content with his life. He always seemed to be wanting something more, waiting for something more - and that seemed to make him pretty unpopular with the grownups around town.

Still, Susanna thought there was just something about him. He had always seemed kind, to her, kind to everyone he ever spoke to. Whenever she saw him at work on the farm, he had this look of concentration that brought his brows together and seemed to straighten out all his features just right. When she saw him unload the buggy or haul things around the yard, his long arms flexed, and Susanna blushed.

Susanna and David had been friends at school since they were very young, and she had never had a problem talking to him - not until last Summer. Susanna didn’t quite understand why her feelings had changed, but she was sure they had. Now, when she looked at David, she didn’t just see a friend. She saw something more.

She was much too embarrassed to say a word to him at school, now - what if someone noticed the way she looked at him, what if one of the other girls saw her blush when David smiled at her? She sometimes felt too embarrassed to even look his way.

When she saw him at the Miller Farm, though, all that awkwardness seemed to fade away, and they could talk together like they were still the same friends they’d always been. She’d smile to him, and he’d smile back, and his whole face seemed to shine, and Susanna would feel the heat and joy lighting up her face.

Susanna hadn’t told anyone about her feelings, not even her best friend at school, Hannah Weaver. These were still new feelings - and they were frightening feelings, too.

The letter Susanna had been writing was for David. She couldn’t decide what to say or how to say it, and had been working on it and reworking it for hours now, instead of doing her school work, not realising how late it had been getting.

Until Aaron had come in and interrupted.

It didn’t really matter, she thought, mournfully. She knew she’d never send it. She never did. She must’ve written more than ten letters for David this year, all of which had ended up as unread scraps in the wastepaper basket.

Susanna sighed and hopped out of her chair and looked down at her little brother, who was now nearly up to eye level with her.

Come on, she said, ignoring her brother’s terrible impression of their father. We need to get dinner ready. It’s getting dark - father will be home soon.

––––––––

Tomorrow, an order was going out - over the stream, and not just past the Miller Farm, but further out to the homesteads around the lake. It was all Susanna could think about, as she sat down with her father and brother at dinner, and she felt the excitement racing up and down her arms like lightning.

Susanna’s thoughts were interrupted when her father said, I don’t want you going out with the delivery tomorrow, Susanna, and she felt the lightning turn to ice in her bones.

She was getting older, her father said, stiff and stern as always — though a little uncomfortable too, Susanna noticed, which was an odd thing to see. He was usually so sure of himself.

If Susanna’s mother was still around, he’d said — and at this, he’d had to stop himself, and take a deep breath, before continuing — she would’ve been able to teach her about what it meant to be a wife, working around the house, and keeping the garden. That’s where Susanna’s focus should be now, her father explained — not on helping with the store.

Susanna didn’t have any objection to any of this, in itself — she hadn’t really thought much about her future. Like a lot of people her age, the future wasn’t quite real to her yet. When she thought about it at all, she’d always just assumed she would grow up to be a housewife, just like nearly every woman in the community ever did, and it sounded just fine to her.

There was only one thing wrong: it meant she wouldn’t be able to make deliveries to the Miller Farm anymore, and that was the only time when she could speak to David.

The only time she could see David’s smile.

That was when she decided what she had to do.

––––––––

After dinner was done, and the dishes all washed up, Susanna asked to be excused to work on her schoolwork.

She took out her papers, and her pencils, and all of her supplies, and set them up on the table in the back corner of the store. She smoothed out a single sheet of paper, and lay a pencil over the middle to hold it down.

Then, she went to the waste paper basket.

There, in the basket, were the torn up, scrunched up pieces of the letter she’d been writing this afternoon, which she’d thrown in there before dinner. Alone in the quiet, she carefully reached in and drew the scraps out one by one.

Here were her words, the words she’d worked so hard to perfect. The words she wanted to send to David Miller, to let him know how she felt about him.

Her heart was beating in her chest, but it was a pleasant feeling. Susanna smiled as she looked over the words she had scribbled earlier, and decided what she wanted to say.

Her mind was focused, now. Her father’s words had given her a clarity she hadn’t known she was capable of. It needed to be short, it needed to be simple, and it needed to be an honest expression of her feelings.

After thinking it out, she knew what she wanted to say:

I know we don’t talk very much at school, or at church. When I see you I get shy, but I feel happy when you’re around. You are kind, and never mean to anyone, and when you smile it’s like a sunrise and my heart feels warm.

I’d like to spend more time with you. I won’t get to see you so much anymore unless we make an effort. So if you want to spend more time with me too please let me know. You will get this letter on Friday evening so I will see you at church on Sunday.

Susanna had never felt so excited and so nervous all at once before. After all her daydreams, she was finally doing something real.

She folded the letter, then folded it again, and folded the corners over each other to make it into a kind of self-contained envelope.

Finally, she wrote on the front: DAVID MILLER

There was only one thing left to do, and it would have to wait until later tonight.

Susanna hummed a happy tune to herself as she got into her schoolwork.

––––––––

Aaron, Susanna whispered. It was late, and dark, and quiet.

Huh? What?

I need you to do me a favor.

Ugh, feed them yourself, he groaned. Susanna heard the quilt rustling. He’d turned over and gone back to sleep.

Aaron! she hissed, still in a whisper, but more piercing this time. She reached out and shook him. He was such a little brat.

Nnngh! he said. Susanna saw a shadow pop up in the rays of moonlight that trickled through the window. Aaron was sitting up in bed. Finally.

What? he asked her, groggily.

I need you to give this to David Miller tomorrow. Susanna thrust the letter into her brother’s hands.

Give the letter to dad, okay, Aaron answered. There was another soft thump, and he began to snore.

No, Aaron, to David!

Give it to him yourself at school, he said, and he shoved the letter back.

Susanna could feel her face grow hot — both with embarrassment at the thought of this, and with annoyance at her brother.

How could he be so dense?

"Aaron! If I give it to him at school, everyone will see!"

Okay, okay! Aaron grumbled. In the dimness of the room, Susanna saw - and heard - as Aaron got up out of bed and shuffled across the room.

His jacket, hanging up against the wall, was bathed in a gentle silvery glow from the night sky outside. She saw him put the letter in the inside pocket.

There, so I won’t forget, he hissed. Now please go away.

Susanna reached out in the darkness to give her brother a hug, and kissed him on the head as he struggled to get away from her.

You’re the best, she said in a whisper, and left him to get back to sleep.

––––––––

If Susanna usually couldn’t look at David during school, the next day she could hardly bare to even be in the same room. She could feel him, without even having to see him. She was so aware of his presence, it was like heat from a blazing fire.

After school, Susanna thought