At the Beilers’ farm, Susie pushed open the door to the hayloft and noticed how tidy everything looked in the bank barn. The familiar scent of stored hay and the sound of lowing cattle from the level below greeted the three cousins as they crossed the wooden planks to sit with their other Mast relatives on the side facing the young men, most of whom were still standing around talking. Like many young women, Susie usually spent her time at Singings with her girl cousins, other than the handful of fellows whom she’d dated, of course, rarely going out with any more than once or twice.

Susie folded her hands in her lap and noticed that several other girls had worn a pastel blue dress like hers. We all love this nice weather, she thought with a smile.

Out of habit, she looked for Obie but tried not to be obvious about it. She was well aware of which fellows he often talked to prior to the start of the actual singing portion of the evening. But she didn’t see him, so she wondered if he was running late.

Soon, David and Mattie, their hosts for the evening, arrived carrying two plastic bins of cookies to set out on the refreshment table. Now that he was in his late sixties, David’s hair had turned somewhat gray on the sides in the last few years, but Mattie’s was a blend of washed-out blond and a whisper of white, which made her look more youthful than she was.

David walked over to Perry Stoltzfus and a few other fellows and talked briefly, and soon they all left the barn together. Susie guessed they would help bring in the coolers of ice and canned pop. But more than refreshments, she looked forward to singing the gospel songs from a different hymnal than the one they used for church. She wondered again what was keeping Obie, late as he was. Had he gone to a Singing in a different church district, maybe?

In the past, he’d dated at least two girls outside the Hickory Hollow district, something Susie knew because Obie had asked what she thought about dating outside their district. But so far tonight, there was no sign of him.

———

During the break, while Susie ate chocolate chip cookies with her cousins, she noticed Obie’s eighteen-year-old brother, Jerome, not far away, chewing the fat with a few other young men. Jerome’s chestnut bangs had been recently trimmed straight across his forehead, most likely by his father, known to cut both his sons’ hair.

At one point, Jerome caught Susie’s eye and bobbed his head toward the refreshment table, as if wanting her to meet him there. Susie excused herself from her cousins and headed over to the table to see what Jerome wanted.

“Did ya wanna talk to me?” she asked as Jerome approached.