Clouds without Rain (3 page)

He stepped up onto the small porch, rapped his knuckles on a wooden screened door, and was admitted by a young girl in a long purple dress and a white cap, who let him in and kneeled immediately to sweep a small mound of dust into a dustpan on the gray wooden floor. Behind her, the floor into the kitchen was bright and clean, and before Cal took another step, she caught him gently by the sleeve, produced a weak smile, and pointed to his shoes. Cal nodded, untied his white cross trainers, and slipped his feet out of them, saying, “Is Andy Weaver staying here?”

The girl stood up with her dustpan and broom, said, “For a spell,” and pointed the end of her broom handle toward a door on the other side of the kitchen. She had never met Cal Troyer, but recognized him from stories of his long, white hair. Like everyone in her community, she knew of the preacher’s reputation as a friend to her people. She stood respectfully and studied his powerful arms and large carpenter’s hands. He thanked her in a gentle voice and stepped over his shoes.

In the kitchen, uncomfortably warm from the wood stove, a mountain of rising dough nearly two feet abreast and a foot high lay on the open door to the oven. In a corner behind an icebox, another daughter was scrubbing the floor with a damp towel wrapped around a pine two-by-two board, switching from one side of the board to another as each became soiled.

Cal asked again for Andy Weaver, and the teenager said, “On the back porch.”

Cal pushed through the heavy walnut door the first girl had indicated and entered a large dining room with several china cupboards and a round dinner table with ten chairs and one highchair. The only other door in this room led to a moderately sized sewing room, where three women—eldest daughter, grandmother, and mother, Cal guessed—sat leaning over a square wooden quilting frame. As they took small stitches in the ornate patchwork of cloth, only the mother looked up from her work.

Cal asked, “Andy Weaver?” and she wordlessly nodded toward a screened door behind her.

The door led Cal to a long concrete walkway connecting a Daadihaus to the main house, and on the porch of the little house, Cal found Bishop Andy R. Weaver sitting on a three-legged stool, mending tack, or rather holding it in one hand while he gazed, lost in thought, at a distant fence line.

Weaver’s hair was pushed down over his ears by a battered straw hat. His shirt was dark blue, and his trousers were of denim. His long gray beard fell loose and uncombed on his chest, and he was shaved around the mouth, though some stubble was evident.

“Andy,” Cal said, and approached. Weaver turned, saw Cal, and rose to offer his hand happily, saying, “You’re white, Cal,” indicating Troyer’s shoulder-length hair and full beard.

“Been a long time, Andy,” Cal said. He shook his old friend’s hand and added, “So it’s
Bishop
Andy, now.”

Weaver nodded self-consciously and said, “Thought I had gone to Pennsylvania for keeps, Cal. Take a walk?”

Cal retrieved his shoes, and the two strolled through a swinging iron gate and along a rusted fence bordering a sunbaked field of hay. The bishop’s old straw hat was broken open at the front of the crown where he had pinched it so often, putting it on and taking it off. His vest hung limply over rounded shoulders. The leather of his boots was split and scuffed, encrusted with patches of dried manure.

Cal drew a pair of sunglasses from his shirt pocket and put them on. After they had walked a ways, he said, “What made you decide to come home, Andy?”

Weaver stopped, stuck his thumbs in his suspenders, and studied his boots. He kicked at some dirt, looked at Cal somewhat ambiguously and said, “They’ve all promised to change.”

“And your brother?”

“So, you remember.”

Cal nodded and Weaver said, “He’s been out for a long time, now.”

“Bishop Yoder kicked him out?”

“Should have,” Weaver said, passing judgment.

Cal’s fingers toyed with his long white beard. He stood thinking silently in the bright sun about the old days, about the crusade against cults that he and Weaver had organized some years ago. After a moment, Cal shook loose from his memories and asked, “They’re all going back to Old Order?”

Weaver shrugged unhappily. “Not all. I lost one family already.”

“I doubt you’ll lose that many more.”

“The rest are waiting to see how I’ll rule on various things.”

“They asked you back to help after Yoder died?”

“The most of them did. A few holdouts, I suppose,” Weaver said.

“But you’re bishop now. They’ll align themselves under your authority.”

“People here have gotten too far along into modern ways, Cal. Getting back to Old Order will be hard.”

“They all knew you well enough before you quit for Pennsylvania. Wouldn’t have asked you back if they didn’t mostly want Old Order.”

“You don’t know how far gone Yoder let the District get.”

Cal reached down, plucked some dry alfalfa, and stuck it between his teeth, waiting for Weaver to continue.

“Think about it, Cal. We’ve got at least three neighborhood phone booths out by the roadsides where no one person can be said to actually own the things. Some have secret phones in their barns, and I can’t tell you how many have cell phones tucked under pillows. I’ve even got two families who own vans. They each hire drivers, but they still own the vehicles, for crying out loud.”

“They’ll get rid of it all, if you tell them to.”

“The old ways are disappearing, Cal. It’s the kids more than anything. They won’t have farms the way things are going. Right now, there are at least nineteen of them working in shops or stores. Some restaurants, too. For as long as six years in some cases. They’re not going to be able to farm. Probably not marry in any traditional way, either.”

“Shops seem to be the way to go, these days,” Cal offered.

“They’ve got too much idle time on their hands,” Weaver complained.

“Are you going to go to the sheriff with those other bishops? About the drinking parties?”

“The sheriff can’t stop our young people from drinking, Cal.”

“It’d be a start,” Cal offered.

Weaver shook his head soberly. “It’s the cult, Cal. After all these years, it’s still that cult.”

Cal nodded, cast his eyes at the ground, and kicked up dust angrily, remembering the problems he had faced in his own congregation, when the thing had first gotten started. He and Andy Weaver had crusaded against it throughout the county. In the end, all they could do was to expose it, and keep their own people from mixing in. After that, Andy had moved away, Cal had tended to his own congregation, and the cult had grown quietly to the point where it seemed that everyone in Holmes County knew about it, without feeling the need, in these more liberal times, to stand against it. Live and let live, is what they all would say. Who’s to judge, anyway?

“I judge it,” Cal thought to himself, and looked back sternly at Weaver. Revulsion for the cult sank deep furrows into his brow.

Andy peered into Cal’s narrowed eyes, laid a hand on his shoulder, and said, “It’s bigger now, Cal. More powerful.”

“And you think some of your people are mixed in?”

“Don’t know yet, but I’m afraid so.”

“Mike Branden is working on some robberies that might tie in with this.”

“I know. I’m going to ask for your help again, Cal, when I know more.”

Cal fell silent and thought about the difficulties they would face. “This will prove dangerous. Busting it up altogether.”

“I don’t intend to take on the whole of it, Cal. Just get my own people out. We don’t stand a chance of getting back to true Old Order until I accomplish that.”

3

Monday, August 7
6:30 P.M.

 

 

SHERIFF Robertson was laid out, face down, on one of the metal hospital beds in the emergency room of Joel Pomerene Hospital in Millersburg. His large chest and belly sprawled over the white sheets, and his shoulders bulged over the metal railings on either side. His burned arms hung limply down and his shins hit the metal bar at the foot of the bed. The nurses had stacked two pillows there to soften the edge.

The nurses had also re-hung the IV lines that the paramedics had started, and now a regulator box clicked on a pole next to the bed, as fluids were pumped into Robertson to combat dehydration. They had also strapped his face with a clear blue plastic oxygen mask, and Robertson’s head hung over the front edge of the bed, face down.

When he had first arrived, Robertson had insisted on sitting upright on the edge of the bed while they scrubbed the tattered and melted strips of his uniform shirt out of the second- and third-degree burns on his back and on the backs of his arms. He had made a nuisance of himself by taking his oxygen mask off to give orders to the nurses about who’d be coming in to see him and how soon he’d be needed back at the accident scene. Then the first doses of morphine had begun to wear off, and the nurses had convinced him to lie down on his stomach so that the doctors could tend to his burns. One of the doctors had called for another dose of morphine, and the nurses had pushed enough to sedate an average-sized man. Still, he lay awake on his stomach, grumbling about the procedure through his mask. He tried to sit back up, but an ER nurse kept him pinned on his belly. When Lieutenant Dan Wilsher arrived, Robertson was fighting with the nurse to remove his oxygen mask again.

Lieutenant Wilsher pulled a metal chair up to the head of the bed and sat to face the sheriff. He took one of Robertson’s hands, partly to help the nurses, and also to let the sheriff know he was there. Wilsher was dressed in street clothes, but his badge was out on his belt, and his face and white shirt were smudged with soot.

Robertson immediately asked, “How’s Schrauzer?”

“I’m not sure,” Wilsher lied.

Robertson scowled and said, “Get me a report, Dan. I’ve got to know.”

Wilsher answered, “I will, Sheriff, but you’ve got your own problems to worry about here.” He looked back and winced at the scrubbing that was underway on Robertson’s back and arms.

A doctor had a scalpel out, cutting skin loose where it was stuck to bits of tattered cloth. One nurse kept a flow of cool saline on Robertson’s burns, and another applied ice packs to those areas where the skin was only pink. The darkened skin on Robertson’s back had swollen considerably, and near the ugly splotches of third-degree burns, another doctor was cutting shallow lines into the flesh. A third nurse dabbed with a saline swatch at the open wounds to clean them.

Wilsher grimaced and said to Robertson, “We can handle this, Bruce. You’re gonna have to stay here for a while.”

Robertson groaned and shook his head. “Going back out there tonight. Something’s not right.”

Wilsher said, “It’s OK, Bruce. We’re doing everything that can be done. Even setting up portable floodlights for night work if that’s what it takes.” Relenting slightly, he reported, “The car is a total loss.”

Robertson asked, “Casualties?” His voice sounded muffled through the mask. He tried to lift his head to see Wilsher more directly, but couldn’t quite manage the angle.

“A young fellow died in the car,” Wilsher said. “He’s local. We’ve got some identification from the license plate, and the family is being asked to come in.”

“Won’t have a solid ID until Missy Taggert has a look,” Robertson said. He shook his head lightly from side to side, remembering the smoke and tremendous heat from the flames.

Wilsher opened a small spiral-bound notebook and said, “There were three others there, besides Schrauzer. Jim Weston in one truck, a Mr. Robert Kent in the second pickup, and Bill MacAfee driving one of his produce trucks. We’ve got preliminaries from all three.”

“Weston owns a surveying company,” Robertson said.

“He’s surveying those high-end housing developments,” Wilsher added.

Robertson grunted. “How about folk in the buggy?”

“Only one, a something ‘Weaver.’ Taggert pronounced him at the scene. He was turning left into his own driveway when the buggy was hit. The truck driver is dead, too.”

“You figure it was the semi?” Robertson asked. He gave out a couple of groans and asked, grousing, “Hey, Doc. You sure you’re using morphine?”

The doctor came around to the front of the bed, leaned over, and asked, “You’re not comfortable?”

Robertson barked, “No!” and tried to lift his arms to register his dismay.

“We’ll push some more,” the doctor said and gave the order to the nurse.

Because of his large size and the intense pain, Robertson had worked through the initial doses of morphine quickly. Now the latest dose added its effects, and Robertson began to grow drowsy. Deputy Ricky Niell arrived in a neatly pressed uniform, eyed the sheriff’s back, made a pained expression for Wilsher, and took a seat next to the lieutenant. Robertson noticed the uniform and waved his hand feebly to urge Niell closer. Then he let Niell and Wilsher talk, while he struggled to follow the conversation.

“You got second statements from the witnesses?” Wilsher asked Niell.

Niell tapped a finger on his creased uniform breast pocket and said, “Got it all right here,” followed by, “How’s the sheriff doing?”

Robertson muttered something, but it was muffled by his face mask. Wilsher said, “Fine,” obviously not meaning it. He drew close to Niell’s ear and whispered, “Nothing yet about Schrauzer. Understand?”

Niell nodded and said, “Sheriff, the skid marks from the semi cab are not that long. And from the hilltop where the professor was, there wouldn’t have been more than three, four seconds reaction time, as fast as that truck was going. We figure he hit the buggy at close to forty-five, maybe fifty-five miles an hour, even jackknifed like he was.”

Wilsher asked Niell, “The Amishman’s name was Weaver?”

“Right. John R. Weaver. I think he’s connected up with Melvin Yoder’s bunch.”