Bleeding Kansas (45 page)

“Fremantles',” Eddie hooted. “He goes to Fremantles'. The witch put a spell on him.”

“What are you talking about?” Arnie turned on Eddie.

“I seen him, I seen him,” Eddie insisted. “Crawling through the ditch with the witch.”

“That's a lie,” Robbie yelled, his voice muffled through the trapdoor. “I've never been anywhere with any witch. And I've seen you, too, Eddie Burton. I've seen you in the calf's pen—”

“You haven't seen anything!” Junior roared.

“Enough!” Arnie shouted. “Junior, you're nineteen years old and in college. And Robbie, you're supposed to have a brain, that's what your teachers tell me. Can you two act your age and stop this bickering? Robbie, open this trapdoor and come down.”

“Not if Junior's going to hit me,” Robbie said.

“I'd rather wrestle every drunk in the valley than deal with my own sons. Junior, take Eddie home and keep him away from Nasya. The Jews are coming tomorrow, and I don't want there to be any question about her, you hear me?”

“All right, all right,” Junior grumbled.

“And you, Robbie, come on down, and don't be such a crybaby.”

Robbie moved everything away from the trapdoor and lowered the ladder. Arnie stood watching, breathing hard through his nose, his face as red as the heifer's. Junior took a swipe at Robbie with the ax as he reached the floor, but it was a only a token, a promise of things to come, not a full swing. Arnie decided his sons could be left with Myra while he looked at the calf.

The brothers were still hissing insults at each other when they heard Arnie. His outraged howl carried all the way across the calf pens and equipment sheds to where they were standing in the yard. Robbie and Junior took off for the heifer's pen with Eddie, Myra huffing behind them as fast as she could.

Inside Nasya's enclosure, they found Arnie struggling with Elaine Logan, who had a can and was spraying paint over Arnie, the calf, and the pen. Junior gave a happy cry. Lowering his head, he rammed Elaine with his shoulder, knocking her to the ground. He sat on her while Arnie clamped his cuffs around her fat wrists.

“You're under arrest,” Arnie panted. “For defacing private property and for animal endangerment. And public drunkenness.”

It was only then that Robbie saw the calf. Elaine had painted
MYRA=MURDERER
in white across Nasya's left side.

T
UESDAY MORNING,
Jim waylaid Lara before she could leave for school. He'd wanted Susan to join the discussion; she did get out of bed and put on a pair of jeans, but she sat at the breakfast table staring at her coffee cup, making it hard for Jim to stay focused on the issues he had with his daughter.

“Lara, I don't want to ground you again, but I want you to stop sneaking into other people's houses.”

“I didn't, Dad. I haven't been in the Fremantle house since—” She broke off. She'd been about to say, since she taped the roach to Gina's poster, but then she remembered taking Abigail's diaries into the house three weeks ago, when she fixed up the hayloft.

“Since when?”

“It's been three weeks, and I only went in and out—I haven't been spying on Gina, if that's what you're worried about—but Robbie and I need a place to be private. I fixed up the old hayloft, and I can't even see the house from there, so it's not spying, it's just being private.”

“Sweetheart, you haven't been private: Elaine Logan knows, which means the Burtons will know, because she drinks with Turk at Raider's Bar. If Arnie doesn't already know, he will soon enough.”

“At least it won't be on their website,” Lara grumbled. “Myra—Mrs. Schapen—she'd never be able to hold her head up at Salvation Bible if the world knew someone in her family was joining a hell-bent bunch of atheists like us.”

“We're not atheists,” Susan broke into speech, “although, after a decade in the wilderness, even a believing Christian is entitled to ask where God is hiding Himself.”

“But Myra thinks we are,” Lara said. “She wants Robbie to date Amber Ruesselmann because Amber can save his soul. Do you know, at gym class she won't undress in the locker room? No one can look at her body, not even the rest of us girls. And she never takes off her panty hose, even to play basketball. She told Kimberly to save herself for marriage after she heard Kimberly talk about how she and Kevin Sawyer had, well, done it, you know. Which makes me wonder what Amber is saving—”

“Enough, Lara!” Jim said sternly. “The Ruesselmann girl has an unhappy enough life without you poisoning it further with your chatter. And since you're making your own self the subject of chatter, I think you'd have a little more compassion for someone else. Here's the deal. If you want to be with Robbie, you do it here at home, where your mother or I can see you from time to time. If you don't come home promptly from school, I'm going to tell Blitz to monitor you at school. I would hate to do that, hate to have to make him party to your private life, but this has to stop now, this sneaking into other people's homes, or barns or mangers. Do you understand?”

Lara's lower lip stuck out: defiance, unhappiness, in one look, but she mumbled, “Yes.”

“And do you promise?”

She shut her eyes tightly but finally promised, leaving for school with a great clatter of her book bag banging walls, doors slamming, truck gears grinding, and finally a spray of gravel smacking the yard.

At school, she looked for Robbie, to tell him the unfair edict that had been handed down. She didn't see him all day, and, finally, before sixth period, even waylaid Chris Greynard. They'd known each other at Kaw Valley Eagle, when Chris had ganged up on her with Robbie, but he didn't seem so awful now that they were in high school. Or maybe it was because he was Robbie's friend that he seemed nicer.

“If I ask you something, will you promise not to tell?” Lara said.

“Tell who?”

“Your folks, the people at your church.”

“Maybe.”

She grabbed his sleeve and pulled him to one side. “I need to know about Robbie—He and I—It's a secret, his dad and his nanny will murder him if they know—Where is he?”

Chris grinned. “So that's who he's been writing all those love songs to. I knew it couldn't be Amber Ruesselmann. Well, well, Lara Grellier, who would have thought.”

“But where is he today?” she cried.

He shook his head. “Haven't heard from him. But he'd better pop up by tomorrow because we have our big gig for the Christ-Teen party at church. You coming?”

“Maybe.” Wednesday was Susan's therapy night. Both her parents would be gone at least until nine. Lara could drive into town, go to the party for an hour or two, and be back before they returned. After all, she had only promised not to sneak into people's houses; she hadn't promised to stay away from Robbie's youth-group party.

She finally sent Robbie an e-mail, hoping he could see it without his grandmother or dad snooping.

Lara was scared about what Arnie and Myra might do to Robbie, but, in fact, it was the damage to the calf that worried the Schapens at the moment, not Robbie's liaison with one of the Grelliers.

Arnie made Robbie spend Monday night and much of Tuesday morning cleaning the paint off Nasya and her stall. Robbie removed all the straw, hosed down the obsidian underneath the platform as well as the pen itself, before slowly and carefully working an industrial skin cleanser into Nasya's hide. The heifer bleated the whole time.

When he finished, not only did she smell of lanolin and evergreen, there was a raw spot on her side that Arnie knew the Jews would easily find. Arnie decided that a lie in Christ's service didn't count. They would tell the Jews that the heifer had rubbed herself raw against the slats of her pen.

Robbie was collapsing on his feet. Arnie sent him into the house for a nap. Myra, who seemed to Arnie to be getting angrier by the day, had actually tried to lock the boy out at breakfast time on the grounds that he'd been the cause of all their problems with the heifer, and he didn't get to eat until he'd cleaned it all up.

“But I wasn't,” Robbie protested. “It was Junior who let Eddie into Nassie's enclosure, and then ran off and left it unlocked. Why don't you make Junior clean up?”

“If you'd stayed home, doing your Christian duty instead of rutting around those Grelliers, Junior wouldn't have needed to chase after you. I want to see real repentance in your life, Robbie, before I let you eat my food again.”

“I always learn from your Christian example, Nanny,” Robbie said with heavy sarcasm.

Arnie gave Robbie a sharp reproof but told his mother not to be vindictive, that Robbie more than pulled his weight on the farm and he needed to eat.

“I have to go into town for Elaine Logan's bond hearing. I'm not going to have her let loose on her own recognizance. In fact, when I called Pastor this morning to tell him what happened to Nasya, he suggested we try to get her released to the church's oversight. Anyway, while I'm in town I'll stop at the store for some padded strips to put on the slats around her pen. That'll show the Jews that we're already on top of the problem. So, Mother, while I'm in town I want Robbie to sleep. I'll need his help soon enough with the five o'clock milking.”

Robbie felt tears pricking his eyelids, he was so grateful to his father for this rare intervention. He knew if he started to cry, he'd only earn another round of blisters from Myra, on what a sissy he was, so he gulped out a “Thanks, Dad,” before slapping three cold fried eggs between four slices of bread and wolfing them down on his way up the stairs to bed.

The court hearing went as Arnie had hoped. The presiding judge was predisposed against Elaine: she'd appeared before him a few times over the years on disorderly conduct charges, and she was always combative. At Tuesday's hearing, she was even more obstructive. She kept repeating her claim that Myra had committed murder, and that she was within her rights to stop Myra and Arnie from spying on her.

Elaine's overworked public defender protested Arnie's suggestion that Elaine be remanded to Salvation Bible to do community service under their guidance and asked for a recess to find another alternative. The judge agreed, to Arnie's annoyance, but the recess only delayed the outcome he wanted.

The public defender tracked Rachel Carmody down in the teachers' lounge at the high school and persuaded her to come downtown to speak for Elaine. Like the judge—and even Elaine's attorney—Rachel was tired of Elaine's antics, but she went to court to protest the arrangement. “If she needs the support of a Christian community, we can provide that at Riverside Church, Your Honor. The deputy who arrested her, and whose calf she supposedly hurt, is a member of Salvation Bible Church. He's been making money from showing off the calf and claiming that it's speaking Hebrew. And now I'm worried that he'll be trying to get revenge.”

The judge listened to Rachel's plea impatiently. “If Ms. Logan can make restitution through community service at Salvation Bible, then we won't have to try to figure out a way for her to pay whatever monetary loss Deputy Schapen sustained. She'll also be spared a prison sentence.”

Elaine cried out with rage over the arrangement. “You're a dupe of the Schapen family, Judge. Or, worse, you're part of their cabal. I wish I was a brown recluse spider. Then I'd bite you and poison you for playing up to them.”

“You're not making the court wish to change the ruling, Ms. Logan, except to consider a year in prison instead,” the judge said, as the public defender uselessly tried hushing his client.

Arnie didn't try to hide his smirk at the decision. He had the deputies take a handcuffed Elaine out to his SUV, where Junior helped transport her to the church. Junior's football coach at Tonganoxie Bible had given him a special pass to spend two days in Lawrence “on Christ's business.” Junior would keep Elaine from leaving the church before the Christ-Teen service on Wednesday.

Arnie's smirk faded once he was home and the rabbis arrived to inspect the heifer. Pastor Nabo, Mr. Ruesselmann, and Mr. Greynard showed up as well. Robbie saw how nervous his father was: Arnie shifted uneasily from foot to foot, although he was smart enough not to volunteer information until Reb Meir demanded to know the cause of the evergreen smell and the raw spot on the heifer's skin.

“This is very serious, very serious, indeed, Mr. Schapen,” Reb Meir said sternly after Arnie brought out his explanation about Nasya rubbing herself against the slats. “I hope this doesn't cause a permanent marring of her skin.”

Robbie held his breath, terrified of what they might ask. They consulted with each other in their own language. Finally, Reb Ephraim and the third Jew, whose name Robbie didn't know, said they would return on Thursday to check the heifer's progress. “She is hanging in the balance, Mr. Schapen. You know that we want to be the ones to proclaim the perfect red heifer as much as you do, but we cannot offer Ha-Shem a sacrifice of an unworthy animal. You worry about your own immortal soul. For us, it's much more serious; the fate of the whole House of Israel depends on the purity of our sacrifice.”

With those stern words, the trio headed back to their van. Robbie waited nervously for his father to jump on him for everything that was suddenly looking bleak in the Schapen universe. Instead, Arnie took Pastor Nabo in the house for a private conference. At its end, they summoned Robbie to the front room. Myra, barred from the proceedings, was ostentatiously banging coffee cups around in the dining room.

“I hear you've been seeing a girl who's not a Christian, Robbie,” Pastor Nabo said.

“She belongs to the Riverside Church,” Robbie said. “I thought that was a Christian church, sir.”

“Son, I've done a poor job as your pastor, I can see that.” Pastor Nabo shook his head sadly. “I wonder how many of our young people realize that a person can call herself a Christian but still be traveling on a shortcut to hell? Riverside calls itself a church, but they don't preach the inerrant Word of God. They not only admit to blasphemies of the Word, they boast about them. I could show you a file of their so-called pastor Albright's sermons that would make you shudder. I should say, that
ought
to make you shudder. We'll call it ignorance, young Robbie, not willfulness, that has led you into error. Have you given this girl—what is her name, Lara?—a chance to witness true Christian worship?”