Chapter 3: The Heat of the Creamery

Marybeth Yoder had always liked the creamery best in the morning, when the floorboards still kept the chill of night and the windowlight came in like quiet ribbon—soft, unjudging. She was twenty-three now, well past rumspringa, baptized last autumn along with three of her cousins, and the work of her hands had become the way she measured days. Milk to cream, cream to butter, labor to blessing. Simple arithmetic the heart could bear.

But lately the sums would not come out even.

Elijah Miller was already there when she pushed open the door with her shoulder. He stood with his sleeves rolled to the elbow and his broad back to the window, the churn braced between his boots. The dasher rose and fell in his grip, steady as a psalm. The muscle in his forearm flexed with each stroke, and for one absurd heartbeat she hoped her cap hid the way her face had warmed.

“Brother Yoder asked me to finish the first crock,” Elijah said without turning. His voice was a low, practical thing, but it thrummed through her like wagon wheels on a wooden bridge.

Marybeth set the basket she carried—linen squares, salted water, two wooden paddles—on the table and folded her hands as if prayer could tuck away a reckless thought. “Then I’m in the right place,” she said, and reached for the clean apron hanging by the door.

He looked over his shoulder at that, and the corners of his mouth tugged upward before he could stop them. Elijah was twenty-six this summer, come back to the district after two years roaming to the east for carpentry work. He’d returned with tools wrapped in oiled cloth and a silence that made the younger boys hover near him like sparrows around a still pond.

“Do you want a turn?” he asked.

The words were innocent enough. The way his hand stayed on the dasher a breath longer than necessary was not.

She stepped up to the barrel. Her fingers brushed his knuckles when she took the handle. Work-roughened skin met hers. Not a shock, not exactly. Something worse—recognition.

Marybeth began with the rhythm she’d learned at twelve: deep, even plunges, patience before speed, listening for that subtle change when cream loosens its grip and begins to break. The room filled with the wet whisper of the dasher and the faint sour-sweet scent of the cream rising. She told her gaze to fix on the churn. It slid to Elijah’s profile anyway.

He didn’t move away. He stood close enough that the warm of him pressed through the empty inches. Watching. The heat pooled under her collar.

“Your hand is steady,” he murmured after a time. “As steady as your faith.”

She wished he hadn’t said it; she wished he would say it again.

Before she could find the safe answer, a shadow crossed the window. Sister Ruth’s bonnet passed by like a ship with eyes. Marybeth straightened, doubled her effort, made of her pulse a blunt instrument against temptation. “Steady hands are what the butter requires,” she said, a touch too brisk. “Not holiness.”

Elijah’s smile tilted. “Sometimes they are the same thing.”

She should have scolded him for foolishness, or left him to the churn and gone to salt the last batch from yesterday, or—anything but this: “You’re warming the cream too fast. The room’s already hot from the sun.”

“It’s the only kind of heat we have in here,” he said, then caught his own meaning and angled his head away, the line of his throat working. “I mean—we can shift the crock closer to the springhouse door.”

He set his hands at the sides of the churn, careful not to jostle her grip on the handle, and together they edged the heavy thing a foot toward the open doorway where a slice of cool air spilled in. When they paused, she realized his palm had spread over the rim where her forearm rested for leverage. The brush of skin was nothing, a nothing that sent bright noise through her chest.

“We should fetch more cool water,” Marybeth said, throat dry. “From the spring.”

He nodded and reached for the yoke hanging on the peg. She fitted it over her shoulders, felt the familiar weight settle at the collarbones. When he bent to lift the buckets onto the hooks, his sleeve slid a fraction and she saw a white line crossing his wrist, a carpenter’s scar, pale as thread.

“What took you away?” she asked, because questions made good fences.

“Work,” he said. “And not being at peace with… what I left undone.”

She could not trust her feet if she tried to step around that sentence, so she said nothing at all. They walked the few strides to the springhouse in a silence that wasn’t empty. The low stone building held the sleep-cold of water even in July; the air bit like an apple. Elijah dipped the buckets and they rose heavy and shining, little planets of rippled light.

When they came back, they poured a little along the outside of the churn, dampening the staves. Marybeth plunged the dasher again. She could feel it now—the living change in the cream, the first shy granules gathering on the blade. She slowed, the way her mother had taught her, listening with her hands. And then it happened, the small miracle: the cream broke. Golden flecks clung to the dasher like bees.

She laughed out loud, surprised by her own joy. Elijah’s answering grin felt like an exposed roofbeam—strong and vulnerable at once. He took up one of the paddles and dipped it into the crock, his motion deft, his attention wholly on what his hands did. Together they coaxed the butter into one mass, worked out the buttermilk, rinsed, salted, pressed. It was a simple choreography they had both learned from the same mothers and aunts, and it felt to Marybeth like a hymn sung without words.

Footsteps sounded on the path and the doorway filled with Brother Yoder’s cheerful shape, cap askew. “Mornin’, you two. The Good Lord smiles—Widow Lapp sent the last of her cream late, but we might still have it churned afore the heat gets wicked.” His eyes took in the room, the tidy board, the finished yellow bricks. “Ah, work well done. Marybeth, could you take two bricks to Widow Lapp with a jar of syrup? And Elijah—my cart wheel keeps complaining like a sinner at the bench. Can you have a look while you’re going that way?”

Elijah wiped his hands and nodded. “Ja.”

Brother Yoder winked. “You can go together. The bishop always says two hands make light work and keep trouble in the shadows where it belongs.”

Marybeth wasn’t sure whether that was a blessing or a warning. She wrapped the butter bricks in linen, tied the jar in the basket’s corner, and set the small parcel at her feet as she hitched the pony. Elijah came out with his tools under one arm, his hat in his other hand like a promise he hadn’t decided to make.

They took the lane between corn tall enough to listen. Marybeth handled the lines and set the pony to a comfortable trot. Elijah walked beside, long strides unhurried, one hand steadying the basket against the jostle. They said nothing for a stretch. The quiet went with them the way shade follows a tree.

At the bend where the sycamore threw its dappled blessing, he said, “Do you remember when we were children and the bishop caught us in the springhouse because we’d dared each other to see who could keep their feet in the water the longest?”

She had forgotten until that instant and then the memory sprang up bright as laundry on Monday. “You lied for me,” she said, startled. “Said I’d gone in to fetch a jar and slipped.”

“I told a story that kept you from a scolding,” he corrected mildly. “And repented for it by pulling weeds in his kitchen garden till my hands cramped.”

“You never told me.”

“You never asked.”

The pony’s ears flicked, and a summer cloud, fat and lazy at breakfast, had gathered a steel edge by noon. A low roll of thunder grumbled like an old man’s stomach. They looked up together.

“Storm,” Elijah said.

“Widow Lapp’s springhouse is near,” Marybeth answered. “We can shelter there if it breaks.”

The first drops came big enough to count. They turned the pony in before the widow’s dooryard and hurried the last yards under a darkening sky. Marybeth led the pony into the leanto and looped the line; Elijah shouldered the springhouse door open. Cool, clean air and the sound of water on stone met them.

Inside, they were in the blue-green world of the spring—low ceiling, stone shelves, crocks submerged to their shoulders. The storm thickened so fast it was as if the clouds remembered all at once what rain was for. Water drummed the roof in a million quick fingers.

Elijah set the basket down and reached to tighten the knot at Marybeth’s shoulder. The linen strap had slipped, dragging her apron askew. His hands hovered before they touched her—just the tips of his fingers brushing the fabric, as if the cloth could complain. She found she could not draw a deep breath. Not for the air’s chill, but for the nearness of him.

“Thank you,” she said, and the two words felt like something else.

He stepped back. The storm filled the space he left. For a long moment they simply listened. Marybeth could feel the hum of the rain in her bones.

“There’s a line,” he said softly. “Between what is dutiful and what is… kind. I have not always known where it is.”

She thought of the scar at his wrist, the way his eyes went to the window when the talk at meetings turned to work and wages, the way the younger boys watched his hands when he planed a board. Men left; men returned. Some came back with edges that wouldn’t sand smooth again. Elijah had come back with a hush around him that wasn’t brittle. She had no name for it.

“‘Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth,’” she said, the words moving of their own accord. “And guard the door of my lips.”

He laughed, surprised and breathless at once. “You always had scripture ready like kindling.”

“I do not want to be foolish,” she said. “Or the cause of foolishness in someone else.”

His gaze lowered to the basket of butter wrapped neat, then lifted to her face. “Nor do I.”

The rain eased at last to a friendly patter. They walked again into the world, bright as if washed. Widow Lapp met them at her door, wiping her hands on her apron. She was cheerful and shrewd in equal measure, with eyes that missed little and forgave much.

“Bless you for braving the weather,” she said, and ushered them into the warm kitchen that smelled like cinnamon and vinegar. “Set it there, dear. Elijah, my pump squeals like a pig in January—can you look while I find your thank-you?”

Marybeth set the butter down while Elijah went to the pump. Widow Lapp leaned on the table and appraised Marybeth as one woman sized up another’s heart.

“You make good butter,” the widow said. “Your mother always did, too. It runs in the hand.”

Marybeth smiled. “It’s the waiting that makes it come right. And the cool.”

“Aye.” The widow’s eyes softened. “It’s like a marriage that way. Hot heads spoil the working. Cold working and a warm room—there’s the trick.”

Heat crawled up Marybeth’s neck. Widow Lapp chuckled so low only the cups could hear.

“Give this to your mother,” she said, and pressed a small earthen jar into Marybeth’s palm. “Clotted cream. And keep a spoon for yourself. Righteousness is no enemy to a good thing.”

When they left, the world had gathered itself back into ordinary. Elijah fixed Brother Yoder’s cart wheel in five efficient minutes, tapping and tightening in a rhythm that made the younger boys stare as if he were spinning coins. Marybeth stood at the edge of the yard with the lines slack in her hands, aware of him the way the skin is aware of sun long after the cloud has moved.

By suppertime, the storm had wrung the heat from the sky and left the evening forgiving. Marybeth went to the quilting at the bishop’s house because she had promised to and because promises were the scaffolding she trusted when her mind was restless. The big room was bright with lamplight. Women’s voices ran together in a hum that reminded her of bees in clover.

Anna Stoltzfus took the place beside her and bumped her shoulder like they were still thirteen and sharing a bench. “Did you see Elijah at the wheel today?” Anna whispered, as if gossip were a spool of thread she couldn’t stop rolling. “Lem says he carries his plane like it’s an English violin.”

“He’s only a man with a useful skill,” Marybeth said, and stuck her needle through three layers with too much force.

Anna laughed. “Only. And you are only ‘not looking.’”

“Anna.”

“All right, all right.” Anna bent to her stitch. “Your blocks are neat as a deacon’s ledger. Mine look like they were pieced by a baby with mittens.”

“You say that every time and the Lord has yet to smite your quilts,” Marybeth said, trying to make her voice light. It came out shaky.

When the tea was poured, Marybeth slipped away with the kettle to the pump. The night smelled of wet earth and clean wood. As she came back around the corner, she nearly collided with Elijah, who was carrying a wrapped bundle.

“Forgive me,” he said, stepping back so fast his hat slid. He caught it, flustered in a way that made something tender happen to her insides. “I brought a plane back to the bishop. Borrowed it two days, should have been one.”

“Oh.” She could not make her tongue find anything more useful.

They stood in the clothespin shadow of the line strung across the yard. Shirts and dresses moved faintly in the lingering breeze, a small congregation dancing without sin.

Elijah held out the bundle. “I made this—” He stopped. Started again. “I thought the creamery could use it. I sized the handle to suit a smaller hand.”

She unwrapped the cloth. Inside lay a new butter paddle, smoothed to satin, the edge thinned to a perfect curve. It was a pretty thing the way a good tool is pretty: not fussy, not showy, simply right. Her hand closed around the grip and fit it as if her palm had been the measure—because it had.

“Elijah,” she said.

“It’s not a courting gift,” he said quickly, the words landing hard for all their humility. “I would not put you in a pinch. It’s for the work.”

“Thank you,” she said. “It’s fine work.”

A voice called from the house—Sister Leah asking if anyone had seen the extra thimble. They stepped farther into the shade without meaning to. The shirts flirted with them like tame ghosts.

“You said this morning that I warm the cream too fast,” he said, not looking at her.

“You did.”

“I have learned speed serves me most places.” He lifted his eyes. “I’m learning it does not serve me with you.”

The line between them drew tight as if some invisible hand had hauled it. Marybeth set her thumb along the paddle’s smooth edge and held on.

“We are watched,” she said finally.

“We are,” he agreed. “By good people who love us. And by God, who knows the truth even if we don’t.”

“Are you sure you don’t?” The question came out small and bold at once.

He smiled then, a thing quick and earnest that undid her. “I am sure I should let the butter tell me when it’s ready.”

The screen door creaked. Anna’s head popped out, eyes bright as a fox’s. “Marybeth? Are you talking to the laundry like it’s your child again?”

Marybeth choked on air. Elijah bit his lip to keep from laughing.

“I’ll be in,” she called. “In a minute.”

Anna disappeared with a wink so exaggerated it could have been mischief or mercy.

Elijah took a step back into the light. The distance returned and steadied the air. “Good night, Marybeth.”

“Good night, Elijah.”

She kept the paddle hidden in the folds of her apron until she could slip it into her basket. No one saw. Or if they did, they loved her enough to pretend blindness.

At home she measured out quiet like flour. She kept the new paddle beneath her pillow as if simplicity could sanctify desire. She knelt by the bed, as she always did, and tried to pray words that weren’t about a man’s hands or the memory of rain. Her mother’s footsteps went once down the hall and twice back before settling. Somewhere in the stable the old mare snorted and returned to sleep.

“Lord,” Marybeth said at last, in the smallest voice she had. “Set a watch before my heart.”

The watch He set must have been a kind one, because when sleep came it brought a dream without heat or shame: a churn in the cool morning, the dasher rising and falling under two steady hands, the butter breaking into gold as if it had been waiting to be persuaded all along.

Dawn found her awake before the rooster. She dressed in a haste that looked like care, braided and pinned her hair so tight the skin at her temple sang. She slid the paddle into her basket and set out for the creamery by the path that ran along the corn and kept the bishop’s house at her back.

The floorboards were cool again. The windowlight came in its quiet ribbon. She laid the new paddle on the table with a ridiculous ripple of pleasure and then scolded herself for foolishness. Still—she took a square of linen and polished the handle though it needed no polishing.

The door opened.

Elijah stepped in, the sun catching the side of his face and making his eyes a color she could not name. He stopped when he saw the paddle. The softest laugh breathed out of him—no mockery in it, only a recognition she had not earned and therefore felt unsteady holding.

“Shall we?” he asked.

She laid her palm on the wooden grip, and in the stillness before the morning’s clatter, the creamery felt like a place set aside from time. Not outside the Ordnung, not outside the look of God—only a little room where honest labor could burnish the heart and make it bright.

They worked in companionable silence. No glancing, no accidental brush of hands, no language that needed guarding more than usual. And yet the heat returned all the same—less the reckless blaze of noon, more the banked coals that keep bread rising.

By the time the first butter broke, Marybeth understood something simple and frightening: there are fires that ruin and fires that refine. She did not know yet which theirs would be. Only that when Elijah looked at her, what was undone in both of them did not feel like sin. It felt like a task—hard, good, and waiting.

Outside, the day took its breath. Inside, the churn sang. And the heat, once again, found them.