Disappearances (30 page)

Later they called the police and Reuben escorted them to the location. Dat told him it was all right to do that, but he was not supposed to talk to reporters or have his picture taken. The ministers had warned strictly against it. They had hoped all this publicity would stop after the horse thieves had been arrested and sent to prison, so Dat was very stern with Reuben, who, he knew, was much too fond of the limelight to begin with.

So when Reuben’s full length picture landed on the front page of the local paper, along with members of the Humane Society and the police officer, he had an awful time explaining it to his father. But, as usual, he talked his way into Dat’s good graces, was forgiven, then had the audacity to tell Sadie he thought he looked pretty tall standing beside that officer, and how did she like the way he wore his beanie low like that?

Sadie began waking up at night, crying out, covered in cold sweat. She had never experienced nightmares like this, even following her accident. When her nausea persisted, Mark became extremely concerned, but she assured him it was only the flu and nothing to worry about. She’d just have to get the whole scene of those starving horses out of her head.

How had Paris ever managed to escape? Sadie was convinced she had been there, her emaciated state being a dead giveaway. She would have been close enough to her home that she would have been ferocious in her will to escape. Over and over, Sadie mulled this subject, playing out one scene after another. She imagined Paris running at breakneck speed, and, in desperation, clearing that fence at the last minute. That terrible, rusted, filthy gate.

She shuddered as she leaned on Paris’s gate, watching as she lifted a right front hoof daintily, as if to remind Sadie that she was healing nicely.

“Yes, I know. You’re a royal wonder, Paris. All you need is a tiara, and you’ll be the princess you think you are.”

She turned, her ears tuned. What had she heard? Someone calling her? Quickly, she stepped outside, looked up and down the driveway and toward the house, but the sun shone on the snow with blinding intensity, so she ducked back into the barn, shivering from the cold. She swept the forebay and was reaching up for the small canister of saddle soap, when she heard it again. Voices.

Then a pair of boots hung over the ladder that went to the haymow, followed by denim trousers, which turned and crept down the ladder, followed by black, fur-lined boots.

Tim! Anna!

When Anna completed her descent, she was holding her right arm close to her body.

Tim said, “Hey, Sadie. What’s up?”

Anna looked at Sadie completely guileless, as innocent as a child. “Look. I knew your Mama Katz had kittens somewhere.”

Sadie was furious. “What were you doing in the haymow? Anna, why are you here this early in the evening, and Tim, why aren’t you at work?”

They were completely taken aback, surprised at Sadie’s suspicion.

“Come on, Sadie. Grouch. Look at these kittens. Can I keep them after they are weaned?” Anna begged.

“No.”

Tim frowned, watching Sadie’s face. He couldn’t believe the mood she was displaying.

“Hey, just calm down. Anna wanted to look for these kittens last week already, and I promised her the first Tuesday I’d be off early, I’d help her, and today it worked out. Why does that make you so angry?”

“It doesn’t.”

And then because they just stood and looked at her, she began to cry, slammed the barn door, and went to the house. Someone had better tell that couple what was proper and what was not.

When the nausea worsened, the moodiness increased. Mam figured it all out, telling her she honestly thought they would soon be grandparents. Dat grinned behind his paper, Leah and Rebekah whooped and giggled and ran around the table, hugging each other with sheer excitement.

Reuben grumbled and told her in no uncertain terms that he had been right. What else could she expect, getting married the way she did, just out of the clear blue sky? Now he was peeved at this improper celebration.

When Sadie found Mam’s predictions to be true, she was scared, excited, flustered, and caught completely off-guard.

When she told Mark, after Tim had gone upstairs, he took a long, deep breath, tears came to his deep brown eyes, and he said there was no way he could express his feelings just then. He held her in his arms with a new tenderness, almost a sort of reverence, and told her this was the happiest day of his life, besides the day she promised to become his wife.

He got his coat and went outside. He didn’t return for a half hour or more, and when he did come in, his eyes were swollen, although he kept them hidden whenever he could. He soon showered and went to bed, which was puzzling to Sadie.

During the night, the bed shook with the force of his sobs till Sadie lit a kerosene lamp and forced him to look at her. She saw all the emotions in his dark eyes, a roiling mass of joy, pain, remembrance, hope, resolve, and she knew he was letting go, bit by bit, of his self-hatred.

“If God lets us have a child, he must think I’ll be an okay sort of dad, don’t you think?” he asked.

The humility in his voice was unbearably sad. Was this, then, how low his self-esteem really was, as he made his swashbuckling way through life much too often? She assured him this was so true, and it was wonderful of him to think along those terms.

Dorothy was not pleased, making absolutely no effort to hide this fact. She fumed and scolded, asking Sadie what she was thinking, and just who did she figure would take her place helpin’ in the ranch kitchen. Huh? Just who?

Erma Keim was taken by surprise at Dorothy’s reaction, so she said nothing.

Sadie went to work, slicing the cooked potatoes for home fries, then smelled the raw sausage Dorothy was shaping into patties for frying, gagged, swallowed, and made a desperate dash for the bathroom.

Dorothy brought her a cup of hot ginger tea with two teaspoons of sugar in it, saying, “Drink this. Put some peanut butter on these saltines. Eat ’em.”

Sadie knew she’d come around, although grudgingly for awhile yet.

“You won’t be able to be table waiter at my wedding!” Erma hissed when they were away from Dorothy.

“Yes. Yes, I will. I won’t always be nauseated.”

Work in the ranch kitchen became a challenge, then an unbearable drudgery, as her nausea worsened. She only had to smell the dish soap and her day was ruined. She finally told Dorothy if she fixed her one more cup of ginger tea she was going to turn it upside down on her head, and Dorothy became so insulted she didn’t speak to Sadie the remainder of the day.

Then they found out about the horses. Richard Caldwell exploded into the kitchen, his face ashen, his mustache bristling with indignation. It took a long time for Sadie, white-faced and trembling, to explain in full detail Reuben’s suspicion, his discovery, the resulting visit from the police, the professional individual who knew exactly which steps to take.

There was a huge article in the paper with the news, Richard Caldwell said. Why hadn’t he known it was Reuben? The Amish had some strange ways. And he should have known Sadie would be in the thick of it, the way she always was.

He did not say this unkindly, but it hurt Sadie somehow. Richard Caldwell was a good man, devoted to his wife, Barbara, and their young daughter. He had always treated Sadie with respect after he learned to accept the ways of the plain people. Why this frustration now?

He told her, then, that he still worried about her safety. Clearly this ring of horse thieves was not giving up. The jail sentences had been handed down to the guilty individuals, but a remnant of them was bolder than ever. It made no sense whatsoever.

Sadie bit her lower lip and tried desperately to keep from crying. Richard Caldwell eyed her still face, then asked if there was anything at all she found unusual about the gates, the lean-to, the animals themselves.

Sadie shook her head. “But, then, I … don’t want to admit it, but I passed out. Fainted. It was … too much. I don’t remember much, besides, perhaps the snow, the carcass.”

Richard Caldwell nodded.

“I still think you need to bring Reuben to the ranch. I need to question him and your sister, is it Anna?”

Which was why they accompanied her to work the following week. They were to have an interview with Richard Caldwell, the three of them.

Reuben grumbled the whole way. He was perturbed, having to leave Dat with too much concrete work in the basement of a log home they were building. Anna didn’t mind a day off work, and Sadie was feeling too sick to care either way.

Signs of approaching spring were in evidence, the way the snow was creeping away from the fence posts. Patches of gray shingles appeared on roofs where the snow had been blown to a thin layer. Water dripped off the spouting as the sun became a bit warmer each day.

The ranch had grown and added buildings every year. It was still beautiful. Sadie loved the handsome brick ranch house surrounded by well kept shrubs and trees, tended lovingly by Bertie Orthman, the master gardener.

Sadie knew, however, that her work days at the ranch were numbered. In the near future she would spend her days at home doing laundry, cooking, baking, keeping her home clean, making their own clothes on her treadle sewing machine, following the footsteps of Amish mothers all over North America. They did not work outside of the home, unless necessity demanded it. Like Fred Ketty, they might start a dry goods store or a greenhouse, perhaps a small bulk food store, but then when a baby was born, they spent their days at home, caring for the child, making do with the money their husbands provided.

Sadie embraced this future; she was thrilled by it. She loved the ranch, especially Jim and Dorothy, but there was a time for everything, in Dat’s words. She was ready to devote her life to Mark and their children, the years coming like gentle waves lapping at the sands of time, living her life the way Mam always had.

There would be quiltings and sisters’ days, shopping trips, frolics, and school meetings, all patches of the quilt, sewn securely, forming the essence of the community. The people would rejoice when they became first-time parents, bringing food, visiting, plunking baby gifts in Sadie’s lap.

Dorothy would come, too, and Richard Caldwell. They would remain friends, but the ranch and its activities would slide into the distance, a memory to be examined time after time. It was the way of it.

When Richard Caldwell ushered them into his office, Sadie kept close to Anna, who looked as if she was being taken to the gallows, her face pinched with fear.

“It’s okay,” she whispered at one point.

Reuben, of course, who had reached the maturity of 16 years, walked resolutely into the office, his hands in his pockets, his neck craning as his head swiveled constantly, taking it all in—the massive oak beams, the taxidermy, (a mounted bighorn sheep, Sadie!) the huge flat-screen TV, all things he saw in the ads from Lowe’s or Home Depot that fell out of the daily newspaper. But to see a television of those dimensions protruding from the wall like that was truly unbelievable. He’d never imagined them to be that big.

And when Richard Caldwell turned it on to show them the news reports he had recorded, Reuben was glued to his chair, his eyes never leaving the screen.

“Watch closely now. Isn’t there anything that seems unusual to you? I mean, this thing is chewing on my nerves. It can’t be just about horses. Why horses? If you’re going to steal them, shoot them, mistreat them … ”

His voice trailed off as he shook his head in frustration. He recovered when an image of the carcass flashed on screen, the pitiful bones swelling up from the snow.

“I mean, look at that. How can you make sense of it? Why steal horses if you’re not going to make a profit?”

They had no answer. Not Reuben, either.

They watched the different scenes and news reports. Sadie shuddered, wishing it would stop. She felt a thin elbow in her side and turned to find Anna, her eyes huge in her thin face, pointing at the screen with shaking fingers.

“What?” Sadie whispered.

Richard Caldwell was quick to notice the disturbance. “Speak!” he ordered.

Anna obeyed, her voice gathering strength as she spoke. “The … dead horse? The head, lying in the snow. I noticed the day we were there. The dead horse has no halter. And … I thought it seemed weird that every horse, no matter how thin and sick, all wore an expensive leather halter, the leather, the straps, extraordinarily wide and thick. But who removed the dead horse’s halter? And why?”

Reuben sat upright, his eyes wide with understanding. “Yeah!” he burst out. “I thought about those halters, Anna. But I figured it was people from a wealthy stable. Like the place the horses were taken from was a ranch like this and all their horses wore those halters.”

Anna nodded agreement.

“But still, those halters aren’t worth that much. Why not remove the halter? Why are they all wearing them?”

Richard Caldwell nodded, his eyes sharp, observing Sadie’s face. “What do you think?”

He had respect for Sadie’s opinion, having been involved in the episodes that had occurred from the very first.

Sadie shook her head. “Would it be worth trying to find a horse? See if you can examine the halters?”

Instantly Reuben was on his feet, his hands waving, as he told Richard Caldwell he bet anything those halters were made of some expensive substance and were worth a few thousand dollars apiece.

Sadie cringed when Richard Caldwell stroked his gray mustache, his eyes twinkling, hiding the smile that wanted to form.

Sadie knew Reuben was just being Reuben, completely carried away by his own enthusiasm, his guilelessness making him blurt out any nonsense, a man of the world like Richard Caldwell seeing straight through him.

“It would be worth a try.”

Sadie exhaled with relief.

“Hey, you know those Chinese? What were they? Japanese? Those people whose horses were shot? You remember? We had a benefit auction for them? They got one!”

Reuben was shouting now, but it was no louder than Richard Caldwell’s own booming voice.