Meek and Mild Read online

  © 2015 by Olivia Newport

  Print ISBN 978-1-62836-632-7

  eBook Editions:

  Adobe Digital Edition (.epub) 978-1-63409-190-9

  Kindle and MobiPocket Edition (.prc) 978-1-63409-191-6

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted for commercial purposes, except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without written permission of the publisher.

  All scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.

  Cover design: Faceout Studio, www.faceoutstudio.com

  Published by Shiloh Run Press, an imprint of Barbour Publishing, Inc., P.O. Box 719, Uhrichsville, Ohio 44683, www.shilohrunpress.com

  Our mission is to publish and distribute inspirational products offering exceptional value and biblical encouragement to the masses.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Flag Run Meetinghouse

  Niverton, Somerset County, Pennsylvania

  1895

  From the first scratch of sound to settle in her daughter’s throat, Catherine Kuhn knew the coming squall would agitate a tempest in the entire row. Even as she tightened her grasp around the toddler and prepared to leave the worship service, Catherine looked across the aisle to catch her husband’s eye. Hiram, the reddish hue of his beard distinguishing him in the third row of married men, kept his eyes forward. Probably he would not know she took the child out until Catherine told him later.

  Clara’s cry rose through her throat and burst across her lips. Catherine hastened her pace, easing herself outside the meetinghouse just before her daughter threw her head back and unfurled her distress into the unsympathetic empty air. Catherine carried the writhing girl farther from the confines of the worship service. This was no simple task. Catherine was eight months along. The energy required for moving quickly enough to contain the disturbance sapped her breath. When she reached the grass at the edge of the clearing where the meetinghouse stood, she let Clara slide down her skirt to the ground.

  Clara was tired and probably hungry. When she was rested and fed, she was a delightful child full of curiosity and fluid smiles. When she was tired, though, she seemed to require a primal eruption of temper before surrendering to sleep. Catherine squelched envy of the mothers whose children slumbered during church, content in the arms of their mothers or older sisters, with their mellow baby noises exuding comfort to anyone seated close enough to hear. Catherine had expected her own baby would be like this. She took the infant to church when she was only a few weeks old, believing it was best for the child to become accustomed at the earliest possible age to the routine of three-hour services on alternate Sunday mornings. But Clara, with her feathery light brown hair in wispy curls, had not been the sort of baby to fall asleep oblivious to surroundings.

  Catherine was grateful to be part of an Amish district that met in meetinghouses rather than homes, alternating between two meetinghouses, both in the southern end of Somerset County, Pennsylvania. Catherine and Hiram had married three years ago in the Flag Run Meetinghouse, Catherine’s favorite. It was silly to have a favorite, since the two were identical and two more just like them existed over the border in Maryland, but Catherine enjoyed this particular clearing around the unadorned frame structure.

  The year after their wedding was when the trouble started. Bishop Witmer visited to help sort it out, but the results seemed dubious.

  Clara settled in the grass, rubbing her cheek in its cool texture, and Catherine saw she had thwarted the tantrum. The child already had closed her eyes and slowed her breathing. Catherine’s back ached, but even if she managed to get herself down to the ground, she wasn’t sure she would be able to rise when the time came. About ten feet away was a fallen log of sufficient girth to keep her off the ground and give her a fighting chance to stand up again. The log had been there for years, and Catherine suspected it was going soft at the core, but it was her best option. Still catching her breath, Catherine lumbered to the log.

  She didn’t mind being alone. On most days she savored a few minutes to hold herself still and notice the signs of life around her, the green of the grass, the flutter of tree leaves, the insects crawling along a wooded path, the birds inspecting the ground with their perpetual optimism of finding sustenance. On this day, though, Catherine had hoped against hope that she would be able to remain in church and hear whether the rumors were true. From this distance, she could not discern what was happening inside the meetinghouse.

  Twenty minutes later, the women’s door opened, and the eldest Mrs. Stutzman emerged. She had five sons, all married with families of their own. Some of her grandsons had married as well, making “Mrs. Stutzman” an indefinite term. The youngest grandson, John, had only one year of schooling left before he would turn fourteen and join his father in the fields. Catherine had always thought he was the nicest of all the Stutzman children. Betty Stutzman now strode as purposefully as her age allowed toward the log where Catherine sat.

  “Hello, Betty.” Catherine reflexively laid a hand on her belly, where the baby had wakened to wriggle.

  “You should go inside.” Betty lowered herself beside Catherine and nudged her elbow.

  A torrid burst fired up through Catherine’s gut. “What’s happening?” She glanced at Clara, who had thrown her arms above her head in her favorite sleeping position.

  “Bishop Witmer should have stayed,” Betty said. “How could he have thought this was settled?”

  “Tell me what’s going on.” Catherine’s gaze returned to the meetinghouse.

  “Just go in.” Betty nudged Catherine’s elbow again, this time with more force.

  Catherine rose. “But Clara—”

  “She knows me,” Betty said. “If she wakes, I’ll bring her in.”

  Catherine was not sure Betty could lift Clara but supposed she could at least take her by the hand.

  She wished her sister, Martha, were there. But Martha and Atlee were at the hub of the trouble, although they held in their characters nothing resembling maliciousness, and the decisions now stirring controversy were made nearly twenty years ago.

  “What happened?” Catherine said, frustrated. “Everything’s been fine
for more than fifteen years. Why must we suddenly quarrel?”

  Betty smoothed her skirt and interlaced her fingers in her lap. “It was peaceful at the time. When some members considered a few small changes, it was a simple thing to use the state line to indicate the preferences.”

  “The ministers agreed, didn’t they?”

  Betty nodded. “People were free to worship where they were comfortable. No one held a grudge. We were still one church, and have been all this time.”

  Martha and Catherine were children when it happened, too young even to have memories of the event. They had grown to womanhood understanding that congregations meeting in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, held to the old ways, while those in Garrett County, Maryland, took a wider view. Still, the differences were small. Anyone looking in from the outside would not have perceived them.

  “So why now?” Catherine said. “If the ministers have held their own opinions and yet served together all this time, why now?”

  Betty held Catherine’s eyes. “You’re worried about Martha.”

  Catherine forced down the bulge in her throat. “It’s just a class for children and a few new hymns.”

  Most of the members in Pennsylvania found the notion of Sunday school hideously of the world. The Amish had lived apart for centuries, so why should they now adopt a spiritual practice that began in Protestant churches? In Maryland, where Martha and Atlee decided to live after they married, church members saw no harm, and neither did Catherine.

  “Go on in,” Betty said. “The outcome will not change my life. It’s different for you—and your little boppli.”

  As quickly as she could, Catherine moved back toward the building and pulled the creaking door open. Inside, the congregation sat in stunned silence as Bishop Yoder spoke in the firm, full-throated manner the congregation had come to expect since he was ordained bishop earlier in the year.

  “We will, of course, take a congregational vote,” Bishop Yoder said. “But I will remind you that Bishop Witmer is well acquainted with the events that have occurred in our district in the last two years. Some of you met him while he visited to advise us on how we should proceed. I have presented to you the substance of his counsel to me as your bishop. Let us not respond to the division we have already suffered with more factions. I plead with you now for a unanimous vote on this matter.”

  What matter? Catherine wished she could pull on Hiram’s arm to find out what was happening and what his thoughts were.

  A man’s hand went up—one of Betty Stutzman’s sons—and Bishop Yoder acknowledged it.

  “Are we certain this is the counsel Bishop Witmer offers? Perhaps he does not realize the extent of our family relationships with the Marylanders.”

  Martha. Whatever had brought the conversation to this point, it was going to involve Martha. Heartburn spread across Catherine’s chest, and she did not think it was because of the baby.

  Bishop Yoder straightened his shoulders. “Jesus said, ‘If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.”’

  Deny. Bishop Yoder was talking about shunning the Maryland families, Catherine realized. Meidung. He wanted her to shun her sister. To not see Martha. To not speak to Martha. For her children not to know their aunti. Catherine stared at the back of Hiram’s head, willing him to turn around and see her, but he didn’t.

  “After this date,” Bishop Yoder said, “any families who join the fellowship of the congregation in Maryland will no longer belong to our fellowship, and we will regard them as having abandoned the true faith.”

  Catherine twisted between relief that the shunning would only apply to future families who left the church and anxiety that shunning should occur at all.

  Another hand went up and another man spoke. “In my conversations with Bishop Witmer, I did not find him so resolute.”

  Irritation flickered from Bishop Yoder’s face. “I assure you that Bishop Witmer and I studied the Scriptures together. We also carefully considered the Discipline of 1837, which stresses the importance of a strict ban to maintain a vigorous church. I am sure we all want a vigorous church, do we not? When we neglect God’s ordinance, the church falls away. Have we not already seen this in what happened with our former brethren in Maryland?”

  Former brethren. The bishop had already cast aside Martha and Atlee Hostetler and the families who worshipped at the Maple Glen and Cherry Glade meetinghouses. How was it possible that the believers who labored side by side to build four meetinghouses should now see each other as former brethren? Catherine’s body tensed. Her sister’s heart had not fallen away from God. If the bishop would visit the families in Maryland, he would see this for himself.

  A few heads turned now, forming pockets of whisper around the congregation. Catherine watched husbands and wives leaning forward or backward around those among whom they sat to find the eyes of their spouses across the aisle. Hiram rotated at last and caught her gaze. Catherine felt the blood siphon out of her face.

  “We must vote now,” Yoder said, “and I again remind you that a unanimous vote is essential to protect us from further division. You are here at Flag Run in Niverton, and not at one of the meetinghouses only a few miles away in Garrett County, because you already realize the authority of the Word of God in this matter. You understand the spiritual benefits that flow into your lives when you submit to the church and the congregation is of one mind. Consider carefully whether you want to be responsible for causing a crack in our unity with a dissenting vote.”

  If there had been any honest discussion of the question, Catherine had missed it. The bishop now left members of the congregation with little choice but to vote as he wished.

  “All baptized members may vote,” Yoder said. “I ask you to raise your hands with me if you uphold the Word of God and desire to be obedient to the teaching of the true church.”

  Catherine’s throat thickened as she again looked at Hiram. Bishop Yoder had not asked whether people believed Sunday school violated the Word of God. He had not asked whether they agreed that the shunning was needful. He had framed his request in a way that marked anyone who disagreed with him as a heretic or an apostate.

  Bishop Yoder lifted his right hand high in the air. Catherine, still standing at the back of the congregation, buried her hands in the folds of her skirt. Technically her sister had begun worshipping only on the Maryland side of the border before the ban the bishop now proposed. Catherine could still see her. Yet in her heart she was supposed to think of her as having fallen away. She could not make herself lift her hand.

  Yet around the Flag Run Meetinghouse, one hand after another went up. Some lifted eagerly and some reluctantly, but the hands of baptized members present rose. Hiram’s was one of the last, but he complied. Catherine knew her husband had no strong feeling on the matter of shunning those who left to join other churches—even the Lutherans—but she understood that he did not want to be the source of friction in the congregation. Who among the church would accept that role? Hiram sat in a row of men who had already raised their hands. In front of him and behind him, the men watched each other. On the other side of the aisle, the women did the same. Only because Catherine stood in the back could she withhold her vote without notice.

  When the bishop asked if anyone opposed, Catherine’s heart pounded. But she said nothing. Perhaps with her silence she had voted in agreement after all.

  Bishop Yoder smiled in pleasure. “We have a unanimous vote. God will be pleased that we have placed ourselves in His care and have chosen His will over our own. Let us do as the disciples did and sing a hymn as we depart.”

  One of the bishop’s sons, Noah, began the hymn, and the congregation soon joined with German words their ancestors had been singing for two hundred years.

  Somerset County, Pennsylvania

  June 1916

  The pan lid clattered to the kitchen floor. Clara Kuhn scrambled to contain the noise by stepping on the lid and then picking it up to press
against her chest while her heart rate slowed. Three-year-old Mari had gone down for her afternoon nap not six minutes earlier. Rhoda was likely to stick her head in the kitchen and scowl at her stepdaughter within the next seventeen seconds. Expelling her breath, Clara turned around and dunked the lid back into the sink of water to scrub it again. Once she had dried it and stowed it with its matching pot on a low shelf, she ran a damp rag across the kitchen table and declared the kitchen properly tidied after the midday meal.

  Rhoda had not appeared.

  Rhoda’s propensity to scowl at Clara was a recent development in their relationship. Clara didn’t know what triggered it or what she could do to make it subside. She rinsed out the rag, hung it over the side of the sink, and drained the water. Mindful of where her skirts might catch or what her elbow might encounter, she moved out of the kitchen and into the hall leading to the front parlor. The voices were low, but with Josiah and Hannah in their last week of school and Mari napping, the house offered nothing to obscure the words. This was not a conversation Clara should walk into, accidentally or not. She halted her steps and held her breath.

  “It’s time Clara married,” Rhoda said.

  “She goes to the Singings,” Hiram Kuhn said. “When she has something to tell us, she will.”

  “There must be any number of young men she could marry,” Rhoda said. “Perhaps she’s being particular.”

  “I was particular. After Catherine died trying to birth our child, I waited nine years to marry you even though I had a daughter who needed a mamm.”

  Rhoda’s voice softened. “And I am blessed that you did. Your wait gave me time to grow up and meet you. I have done my best to love Clara as my own—I do love her as my own. I want what’s best for her. She needs a husband and her own house to run.”

  “I always thought she was a help to you after the children were born.”

  “She was. She is. But I can manage my children without help. Clara should be looking after her own boppli.”

  Remaining still, Clara allowed herself to ease out her breath and cautiously fill her lungs again.

  “Of course you can manage the children, but it’s nice to have help, isn’t it?”