Davey's Daughter (24 page)

“Yeah. Something like that.”

He walked away, toward the door, and Sarah opened her mouth to protest, then closed it again when he stopped.

“You’re free to go then. Just forget about the fact that we had planned to begin dating, alright? When Matthew comes back, you’ll be completely unfettered. You alone must choose.”

Suddenly, the significance of that tremendous impasse loomed before her, a fire-breathing dragon of impossibility, hopelessness, coupled with the knowledge that she was clueless, holding a key to her future that was securely locked, and what if the key was all wrong? What if it didn’t fit?

When Lee buttoned his work coat and placed a hand on the doorknob, her eyes took in the shape of his shoulders, the tilt of his head, as if she could store away the memory, a keepsake, something to hide in the deepest recesses of her heart. She had loved him, hadn’t she?

Guilt made her cry out. “Lee?”

He froze.

“Don’t. I mean…I…”

Without another word, he let himself out, closed the door softly behind him, and did not look back.

Sarah repressed the urge to run after him. What would she say if she did catch up to him? How could she begin to tell him she did love him, but she loved Matthew more? Matthew Stoltzfus’s whole life was intertwined with her own. He was the missing piece of her, the way he filled up every loneliness, every moment of longing. She could not make Lee understand this.

Sighing, she stood and watched the road for a glimpse of Lee. When there was none, she simply didn’t know what to do, so she sat back down, staring straight ahead, seeing nothing, until her driver arrived and pressed her palm against the steering wheel, emitting two loud honks. The sound brought Sarah quickly back to reality.

When Mam looked into Sarah’s eyes and saw all the dark misery threatening to dissolve into tears, she wisely did not press the issue. She just turned away and said nothing.

Sarah mumbled something about not feeling well and went upstairs slowly. She flopped on her bed and wished there was someone she could confide in. Someone who understood.

Mam walked around with her mouth pressed in a firm line of denial, boding no good. Priscilla told Sarah unabashedly and repeatedly that she was crazy. And Dat was too involved in the meetings and goings on about the barn fires.

That was another thing. Sarah was completely fed up with all this talk of a dangerous person on the loose and people speculating about what to do. Men from the community just kept showing up in the kitchen, placing blame on Dat, on members of the community who clung to the old ways. What exactly was he supposed to do?

She felt a great pity for her father. He had aged many years in a short time. Over the winter, his cough would not go away, no matter how many different home remedies Mam spread on his chest or how many bottles of tincture or piles of herbal pills he swallowed. The cough wracked his body relentlessly.

He kept at his work, doing chores, hauling manure, oiling machinery, doing the things every farmer did during the winter, but he never quite got ahold of the rasping cough.

Even when he preached in church, he coughed, and it seemed to embarrass him. Perhaps he thought it was a sign of weakness and was ashamed.

Whatever the reason, Mam talked in hushed tones to Sarah, saying she knew why Davey coughed like that. He was under too much stress. There had never been a time like this for as long as she could remember. The way brother turned against brother, valuing his own opinion above everyone else’s
—
it was turning into a battle of senseless speculation, and not one of them really knew anything.

Mam said that was the whole trouble with the world, the way no one could stay silent in the face of unexplainable situations. They all tried to figure it out, when in actuality, they were all helpless. Even the world, the
Englishe leid
(English people), did not know what to make of the repeated disasters.

As Sarah sat on her bed, staring into space, she heard Dat’s cough in the kitchen below, then a murmur of voices, and she knew her mother would be clucking, fussing, hurrying to heat water for a bracing cup of peppermint tea.

She tried to imagine her life with Matthew as her husband, comfortably living in a house together, talking of ordinary, mundane subjects, the way they always had in school, at family get-togethers, their whole lives. They had been so close. Dating, seeing him every weekend, and often on week nights, living her dream.

He would have changed a bit, of course, which was only to be expected, living a different lifestyle. He had probably adopted different mannerisms, the way his people talked openly of their faith, freely expressing their beliefs, whereas Amish people preferred their worship in silence, their views often hidden.

But Matthew would return. He would come back to the Amish way. Sarah felt sure. If she couldn’t believe in that, she didn’t know Matthew very well, and she did. She knew him better than he knew himself, she told herself.

Sighing now, she leaned back on her pillow and let the anticipation of the future envelop her, seal her safely inside, secure, the doubts and fears kept outside. For now.

The candle on her nightstand flickered. Headlights beamed across the room as a car approached on the road, arcing across the ceiling as it turned.

Downstairs, Dat coughed again. A cow bawled from the barnyard, where the black and white Holsteins frolicked about, getting a bit of exercise in the still, cold air, their breath a whoosh of steam expelled from their warm nostrils.

Levi sat by the window, dressed in clean flannel pajamas, his hair wet, combed properly, his teeth brushed furiously. A jar of Vicks stood on the nightstand at his bedside for the long night ahead of him, when his sinuses would close, causing him grief and long hours of sniffling and honking dryly into piles of Kleenexes.

His eyes were tired, drooping at the corners, but it was only a quarter past seven on a cold winter evening. He’d finished his jigsaw puzzle. That one had been easy, and he didn’t feel like playing a game with Suzie, so he thought perhaps he’d just go to bed.

He grasped the arms of his chair and started to get up, when he thought he saw someone, something.

He reached for his glasses, polished them on the tail of his flannel pajama shirt, and plunked them on his nose, squinting.

Slowly, he reached out and pushed a pot of geraniums aside, brushed off a brown leaf that fluttered to his lap. Aha. Some chap was walking up to the fence.

Tilting his head, he peered out the window between the leafy geraniums and watched. There. This chap sure was bold. Not ashamed of anything. What in the world? Was he just going to stand there and look at the cows?

It was too dark to see exactly what was going on, but Levi saw the animals stop and watch, their ears held forward, their wet noses held high, sniffing.

Levi’s eyes slide toward the kitchen, where Dat sat hunched over his tattered German Bible, a cup of tea at his elbow. Well, he didn’t need to be bothered. This was Levi’s sighting. All his own. And so he sat, a still form peering between the geraniums.

F
or several long moments, Levi sat as still as the most experienced hunter stalking his prey, completely engrossed by the spectacle before him. As he tilted his head one way, then another, he figured he’d have to get rid of some of these geraniums if he wanted to know what was going on.

He turned his head, saw Dat was alone as he read, no Mam or Priscilla. Suzie sprawled in front of the black coal stove, so he reached out with calculated precision and set two coffee cans of geraniums on the sewing machine to his left, soundlessly.

There, that was much better. He had a full view of the chap by the barnyard. With snow on the ground and the waning, half-moon’s light providing illumination, Levi could plainly outline the man’s dark form, standing stock still, looking up as if he was checking out the barn roof.

He figured the man was doing no harm. He certainly was not driving a small white car, so it couldn’t be the man that had “struck the barn on,” as the Amish often said. Likely this man was out for a walk, maybe taking pictures of the cows in the moonlight.

The man turned his head and looked at the house. Levi’s breath came quick and fast. He could not tell who it was. Better tell Dat.

He had just opened his mouth to call Dat when a pair of headlights came slowly in the drive beneath the maple trees, their trunks inky black, lined up like sturdy sentries but allowing the car access to Davey Beiler’s farm, the tires crunching quietly on the frozen snow.

Good, Levi thought. Now he’ll be afraid and run across the field. Instead, the man turned, waiting beside the driveway, as the vehicle pulled up slowly. He looked toward the house.

Levi did his best, peering intently through the lenses of his thick spectacles, his breathing accelerated now. He looked like that other man. Not the man from California, the other one. That night they’d gone to Ashley’s viewing, there where she had lain so dead in that great big fancy casket, with all those flowers.

Levi watched as the man opened the passenger door and lowered himself into the car. It moved off slowly, the crunching of the snow audible to Levi’s ears.

Well, they were taking their time, he reasoned, so they weren’t going to stick the barn on. And the car was not white. Levi couldn’t really tell what color it was in the darkness.

When it turned around out by the implement shed, Dat lifted his head, coughed, and looked toward the window above the kitchen sink, as if he thought he heard something, but then he lowered his head and resumed reading.

Levi kept his eyes on the car as it drove slowly out the drive, turned left, and continued down the rural road.

Quietly, Levi replaced the geraniums, picked up the withered brown geranium leaf, and placed it carefully in the trash before shuffling out to the kitchen with his empty water pitcher.

David Beiler looked up as Levi approached, smiling at him absentmindedly, his thoughts on the verses he had read.

“
Bet zeit
(Bed time)?”

Levi nodded.

“
Brauch vassa
(Need water)?”

Levi nodded again.

“Did you take your garlic and echinacea?”

“No.”

“You better would.”

“Garlic stinks.”

Dat chuckled.

“It does you a lot of good in winter, Levi.”

“It still stinks.”

Muttering to himself about his plans to hide the plastic bottle of garlic capsules, Levi took a tray of ice from the freezer, twisted it, and shook the cubes into the small plastic water pitcher. Then he opened the tap and filled the tray with water.

Mam emerged from the steaming bathroom, her face rosy from the heat, her navy blue bathrobe belted securely, a white
dichly
(head scarf) knotted around her head.

“Ready for bed, Levi?”

“
Ya. Vett an snack ovva
(I would like a snack).”

Mam’s eyes twinkled. “We have good oranges.”

Levi gave her a baleful look and shook his head from side to side.

“
Vill
(I want) shoofly.”

“No, Levi, shoofly pie tomorrow morning, for breakfast. Oranges tonight.”

“I don’t like oranges. They’re sour. Hard to peel.”

“How about an apple?”

“Apple pie?”

His face was so hopeful, his expression so woebegone, Mam’s heart melted like soft butter, and she went to the pantry, got down the freshly-baked apple pie, and cut a sizable wedge for her perpetually hungry son.

Wreathed in smiles, Levi thanked her profusely, grabbed a fork, and enjoyed every bite to the fullest, then sat back and wiped his face very carefully.

“
Denke
, Mam,” he said.

“You’re welcome, Levi.”

He thought he should tell Dat, the apple pie suddenly escalating his goodwill toward his beloved parents.

“Davey.”

“Hmm?”

“There was a man standing by the barnyard tonight.”

“Aw, come on, Levi.”

“There was. I saw him.”

Dat shook his head, “No, Levi.”

Levi nodded. “A car came and picked him up. He looked at the house, then he looked at the barn.”

“After he was in the car?”

Dat was fully alert now. He picked up his German Bible and took it to his desk with the rest of his German books, coughing again.

“No,” Levi said slowly.

“Before?”

“
Ya.
”

“Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t I see or hear anything?”

“You were reading.”

“Hmm.”

Mam watched Levi’s face intently.

Suzie rolled over, sat up, yawned, and said Levi told
schnitzas
(fibs) if he felt like it. She hadn’t heard anything.

Levi said the man did not want to stick their barn on, and he was not driving a white car. He looked like that other man.

“What other man?” Dat asked sharply.

“Not the one from California. The other one.”

“See? He’s just making this all up,” Suzie yelped.

“Hush, Suzie.”

“Which man from California? When? Where?” Mam asked, bewildered now, hurriedly placing the apple pie back into the Zip-loc bag, keeping order in her kitchen even if other events in the world appeared unsolvable and disorderly.

“That dead girl. When we ate at McDonald’s.”

Dat looked hard at Levi, glanced hurriedly at Mam, went to the window, and looked toward the barn for a very long time without saying anything.

When he turned, his face appeared pale, and he spoke tersely, “Time for bed, Suzie, Levi. Where’s Sarah and Priscilla?”

Going to the stairs, Mam called the girls, who appeared obediently soon afterward. They sat on the couch quietly as Dat reached from the German prayer book, nodding his head.

In perfect unison, they turned, kneeling as Dat read the old prayer, the evening prayer from the same
Gebet Buch
(prayer book) his father had read at the close of each day, his voice rising and falling as he pronounced the words, so dear to his heart, so comforting to Mam’s.

As the rest of the family slept through the cold wintry night, David Beiler could find no rest. He paced the kitchen floor, turning repeatedly to stare out the window, the one above the sink, gripping the countertop unknowingly, his shoulders tense, his mind tumbling with unanswered questions.

Was he putting the community at risk with his refusal to talk to the media and allow better coverage? What if Levi really had seen a suspicious person on their property that night?

Over and over, his anxiety led him to the window, his mind reliving the horror of his own barn fire, the terror, and poor Priscilla, losing Dutch, now not even caring whether she had a horse or not.

Cruel. It was all so cruel. And Priscilla had been just one victim of the arsonist. Still, it didn’t hurt for children to give up their own wills. That was old knowledge passed down for generations, and it never failed to amaze him. Discipline served as a boundary of love, producing caring adults for society, over and over.

As long as there was love to balance the discipline, it worked. Traditions were dependable, safe. But always? Even now?

In the face of this fiery adversary, who was he to say? Old John Zook exhorted them over and over to forgive. God had allowed the barn fires to take place, so he would provide a way, if they stuck to their beliefs.

Christ had suffered so much more, and He without sin, and here they were, ordinary sinners, beset with flesh and blood, and they couldn’t forgive without rising up in anger, insisting on vengeance.

In his heart and soul, he knew it was wrong.

Upstairs, lying beneath the heavy comforters, Sarah struggled with her own private battle, without confiding her fears to Priscilla, who had flounced out of her room after asking what was up with her sour mood and telling her she was crazy yet again.

Jagged edges of fear taunted her, restricted her from looking forward with a clear gaze, unable to decipher an uncertain future.

Torn between a great love for Matthew and an unexplainable misery about Lee, sleep eluded her completely. She lay on her back, staring wide-eyed at the dark ceiling as her thoughts chased away every last shred of peace.

What if Matthew did return and refused to acknowledge her? What if he denied the fact that he had ever cared for her?

He wouldn’t. Would he?

Hannah told Mam he’d likely be home in the spring. Six more weeks! Not even two months.

Would he appear different? Older? Wiser? Ready to admit his mistakes? Would he grieve for his poor, deceased wife?

Suddenly, she remembered the Widow Lydia’s words, a precise pinprick inserted into the magical bubble she had built around herself. She had bowed her head, Lydia had, in that way of hers when she was contemplating a weighty matter, as Sarah’s words had rained around her, happy little dashes of anticipation, exclamation marks of joy punctuating every sentence. Matthew was coming home! That seemingly was all Sarah knew or cared about.

When Lydia finally spoke, she simply said, “Hopefully, Lee is an extraordinary man and understands this.”

Sarah’s face had flamed. Reaching up now, she touched the tips of her ears, remembering the searing heat of her discomfort. There had been no words to justify her anticipation of Matthew’s return.

Melvin, of course, had his usual lack of tact, bluntly telling Sarah that he wanted nothing to do with Matthew, and he certainly hoped she felt the same. He said that if she didn’t watch it, she’d be left high and dry, turning 40 and not being able to figure out what had happened.

“I can’t think of it, but there’s a word for girls like you,” he finished.

Sarah looked up sharply.

“Fickle?” Lydia asked shyly.

“That’s it. You can’t be trusted, Sarah.”

But what did Melvin know? He was one to talk. Going on 30 years old, unmarried, and now, by all appearances, completely enamored by Lydia. If he was a bit off the beaten track, why couldn’t she be?

Besides, he didn’t know if Matthew would return to the fold or not. Opinionated troublemaker.

Flipping onto her side, she peered at the numbers on her battery-operated alarm clock. 12:42.

Sighing, she resigned herself to a day of tired irritation at school. She began breathing slowly in and out, relaxing her shoulders, cleansing her mind of troubling thoughts about Matthew.

Just before she fell asleep, she thought she heard Lee say, “See you, Sarah.”

Startled, she jerked awake, her heart hammering. Was she really losing her mind? When all else failed, she prayed fervently, asking God to direct her path and help her lean not on her own understanding.

She prayed for guidance, prayed for her pupils at school, for her ability to teach them with wisdom and understanding. Peace enveloped her, covering her softly as she fell into a deep sleep.

In the morning, a soft temperate wind moaned around the house, whistling along the eaves, gently tossing the small branches of the bare maple trees in an undulating dance of promised spring.

Water dripped off the roof’s edges, and icicles broke loose and crashed to the ground, burying themselves in the dirty snow. Everything melted together in a sluice of water, creating a fine, sticky mud anywhere there was bare earth.

Brown grasses huddled in sodden little heaps as the white snow around them dissolved into frigid water, slowly moving in little rivulets to join the large stream of water gushing from the downspout on the implement shed’s corner.

Sarah jutted her chin comfortably into the confines of her dark head scarf, tying it securely as she walked to the barn to join Dat for the morning milking.

Ah. She lifted her face, felt the soft wind, heard the melting snow running along the eaves, and thought how lovely, how absolutely deliciously lovely, it was that spring was on its way.

Her eyes were dry and itchy, so Dat found her standing in the milk house, rubbing them with two fingers, blinking, then yawning.

“Didn’t sleep?” he asked as his morning greeting. Just then a yawn caught him, his mouth gaping open tremendously, followed by a shaking of his head, a bleary look, and a grin of humility.

“No.”

“Me either. What was bothering you?”

“Not much.”

Time to start milking, Sarah thought wryly. Subject closed.