Harmless as Doves (2 page)

In his stocking feet, he eased down the cherry-wood staircase to the kitchen, drawing his sleeping shirt around him. Sure of his way in the dark, he stepped to the wooden counter, took a match from a canister, and stroked it against the metal dome of his red kerosene milking lantern. Once he had the
flame guttering with new life, he adjusted the wick and set the lantern on the counter. Then as the lantern threw soft light into the kitchen, he rubbed the sleeve of his blouse and asked himself silently how many men still knew the blessings of silk, sleeping in the garments their wives had made—a soft blouse, sleeping pants of cotton, and socks of warm wool?

He had tried to teach his men about this, too. But how many men understood these blessings? How many men still knew to thank God for their wives in this peaceful time of the day, before the worries of life pressed forward in the mind?

Striking another match, Bishop Shetler lit a fire in the front chamber of his cast-iron woodstove, and the aromatic smoke from the walnut kindling lifted a pleasant aroma into the cold kitchen air. At the aluminum sink, he pumped the black spigot handle several times and rinsed soot from his knuckles, using the sulfur water from the well beneath the house. Back at the counter, he sliced an orange on the wood block and stood at the kitchen window to bite into a wedge, thinking it a marvel that this orange had been hanging on a tree in Pinecraft, Florida, only a week ago. But why should he marvel? The congregation had arranged for the bus driver to bring him a box of oranges every week, and he was only too happy to accept the gesture. After all, the gift of fresh fruit was scant compensation for the duties he shouldered as bishop.

Maybe this year he and Katie would go to Pinecraft and pick their own oranges. Blue skies, palm trees, and the white sand beaches nearby. Just a week in Pinecraft, like everyone else. Twenty-four hours on a Pioneer Trails bus to Sarasota, and they’d be slicing the oranges they’d picked themselves. They’d ride the city bus out to the beach. Everybody said Lido Beach was the best. Less crowded than Siesta. Just an easy bus ride over the causeway bridge, and he and Katie would be wading in the surf, while snow blanketed the ground in Ohio. And they’d ride those large tricycles there, all around among the cottages and trailers, visiting with folk from the Amish settlements up north, lounging on chairs in the sun, and meeting the bus each day to see who else
had just made the trip down. Yes, Pinecraft is the Amish place for winters, the bishop reckoned. They could bunk in with relatives—everybody knows someone down there—and take their time with each sunny day, letting the ocean breezes stir through their hair.

But what nonsense, Leon thought. What vanity. Of course you’ll never go. The people—
the Gemie
—the church needs you here. Your duties are clear. And why complain? You have fresh oranges—all you can eat—so let it be, old Leon, let it be.

Finished with his orange and shaking his head at his dreams of Pinecraft, the bishop poured hot water into a coffee mug. He spooned instant coffee into the water, stirred it twice around with a callused finger, and carried it out to the mudroom in back. There, he took his first sip and set the coffee mug on a shelf. Then he stuffed his stockinged feet and sleeping pants into the legs of his denim dungarees—his wife had made those, too—and he swung his shoulders through his suspenders, pulled on a denim waistcoat, and set his black felt hat on his head.

When he had wiggled his feet into his muck boots, he pushed through the back door into the night air, chuckled over his forgetfulness, and turned back inside to retrieve the lantern and his coffee mug. But he noticed that he’d left the door on the woodstove hanging open in front, so he set the lantern down on the porch floor and walked back into the kitchen, where he closed the door of the stove to temper the flames.

No point wasting wood, he thought. Let it burn slowly until Katie wakes up. As cold as it was these days, she’d appreciate the fire in the stove. The kitchen would be warmed up in no time at all, if puttering old fools didn’t leave the stove door hanging open in front of the flames.

Outside behind the big house, Shetler headed for the barn with his coffee and lantern in hand, and as he drew near to the barn, he heard Hedda, already in her stall, stomping to be milked. Impatient in her old age, he thought. She was his last milking cow.

Once his dairy herd had numbered in the dozens. His spread was as big as anyone’s. But he had drawn the lot, and God’s calling had settled upon him. He had decided to disperse his herd in order to attend to his new duties as bishop. But old Hedda he had kept. Hedda for her sweet milk. And to preserve his illusions, he chuckled, that he was still only a simple, peasant farmer, and not the leader of all his people.

Nosed into her milking stall, Hedda stamped her feet again as he walked up to her with his lantern. He took his three-legged milking stool down from a peg and dropped it onto the straw-covered floor, beside her back feet. After he had positioned his milking pail under her udder, he warmed his hands on the coffee mug, and as he stroked the milk from her, Bishop Shetler remembered the other cows he had tended in his years on the farms. First as a lad on his father’s sprawling farm, then on this smaller section, once his father’s original spread had been divided among the sons. Now Shetler’s nearest neighbors were his own brothers and their families. The other people of his district had the outlying farms, with a few English souls sprinkled into the mix, all of it straddling Salt Creek Township Lane 601, in the hill country south of Fredericksburg, Ohio. Salt Creek South, his district was called. Thirty-five families with the one-room schoolhouse for their young scholars. A cemetery, a sawmill, two furniture shops, an engine repair shop, a sewing machine concern, a buggy shop, and a wheel factory, plus a harness shop and two blacksmiths.

As he milked, the bishop’s mind turned toward his duties, and as the peacefulness of his morning thoughts faded, he remembered again that there were English in the valley, too. Just a few, but some of them were rare characters. Like Billy and Darba Winters—Billy a conspiracy theory nut, and Darba half troubled in her own way. She kept that Rumspringe room in her barn, for the Amish kids running wild, and Shetler knew he’d have to challenge that, someday. Trouble was, the kids were going to run wild sometime, and maybe a safe place to do that was what they needed
most. Maybe he should just look the other way. If he never brought it up, he’d never have to rule against it. So, maybe the better wisdom was just to let it be. At least for now.

And remember, the bishop thought, that Katie liked Darba Winters, and she cared for her in her “blue” times. She sat with Darba in her periods of “negativity.” Leon didn’t understand Darba’s troubles entirely, but he respected Katie’s instincts to care for her, and when Darba had needed someone other than her psychiatrist to talk to, Katie had proved as good a listener as anyone. Katie was good for Darba, and Bishop Shetler knew to let that be, too. Darba had been a fine teacher, and she deserved a good friend to talk to.

Then there was Glenn Spiegle, a new convert to Amish ways but, truth be told, little more than a wayward drunk from Florida, who hadn’t yet confessed all of his sorrows. A man who couldn’t yet speak of his deepest remorse. But Shetler had accepted him, and so had the congregation. Spiegle had taken a pledge to stop drinking, moved to Holmes County, studied with Shetler, and been baptized—converted to Amish life by the guilt he carried forward from his past, and by the testimony of peacefulness that he had witnessed in the brethren in Pinecraft, in the eastern suburbs of Sarasota.

But remember, the bishop thought, that it was Billy Winters who had brought him up here. Yes, acknowledge that, Old Leon. Conspiracy nut though he was, Billy Winters had still managed to dry Glenn Spiegle out after prison, and he had brought him up to Ohio two years ago in his truck. Now Spiegle lives righteously among us—because of the friendship of Billy Winters—and the bishop wondered how many men would make that much of a difference in another man’s life.

But there was also trouble in that redemption story. Spiegle had money. Cash money, and a lot of it. He’d agreed to pay an
English
price for an Amish farm, and it had been my decision, Leon mused, whose land he would buy—Mony Detweiler’s and not Jacob Miller’s.

But now Leon realized he should have foreseen the trouble. He should have known that the allure of riches would
snare the greedy man first. He should have known that Jacob Miller, always quick to perceive a slight and far too interested in his personal prosperity, would never get over the loss of all that money. It wouldn’t matter in the least to Jacob Miller that Mony Detweiler’s duty was to hold that money for the district, as an emergency fund. For hospital bills. For the property taxes. For new land purchases for the young lads who would need farms in order to start their own families. It was money that was already spoken for, and Detweiler could never spend it on his own. He was obliged by the bishop’s instructions to hold the money in reserve, to be used only for the good of the people.

Miller’s daughter Vesta was another concern. Such a beautiful girl. So many suitors. Evidently she had chosen a boy—Crist Burkholder. They had been to see Shetler already, to have their first marriage consultations with their bishop. They’d be a fine couple. Vesta Miller was to marry Crist Burkholder in March, before the spring plantings, when all the families could attend.

It was all arranged, it seemed, but then Jacob Miller couldn’t accept it. He wanted Vesta to marry Glenn Spiegle, a man twice her age. Miller the bullish authoritarian, insisting that Vesta was only seventeen, and that he was still the ruler of his own household. The
scriptural head of his family,
the bishop sighed. So, that was another long, hard conversation that awaited him today—to teach Jacob Miller the deeper truths about a father’s authority.

You’ve already chastised him enough, Shetler thought as he milked. Time for sterner words. Take Jacob Miller aside today, and warn him one last time.

Behind him, Shetler heard a rustling in the straw. When he turned on his milking stool, he saw young Crist Burkholder standing behind him, head down, hat in hand, grief in all his features.

When he saw Burkholder’s face, Shetler stood and turned, asking, “What’s wrong?”

Burkholder shook his head and shrugged fatalistically. “You know Herr Spiegle wants to marry Vesta Miller?”

“Yes, I’ve heard that, Crist. But I reckon that I’m still bishop. I reckon that I’ll have something to say about that.”

“Doesn’t matter, now, Bischoff. Vesta isn’t going to be able to marry me or Spiegle.”

“Why, Crist? What’s wrong?”

“I just killed Glenn Spiegle.”

* * *

Bishop Shetler pulled Crist Burkholder out of the barn, and Crist tried to follow on legs that were stiff and unresponsive. His mind was the same—stiff and frozen—processing thoughts only sluggishly, giving him mostly the surreal flashes of a nightmare he himself had just created.

There was a brief glimpse of Vesta Miller’s eyes, hopeful yesterday. Happy. Then he imagined how her face would twist in disgust, once she knew that the man she had pledged to marry was now a murderer. Lost, outcast, frozen.

Crist tried to command his legs to move as the bishop pulled him out into the dawn air, but his mind gave him no encouragement in the task, and his legs produced only a feeble stutter step, like the Tin Man in that Oz movie.

Strange that you’re thinking of that. Funny. That Tin Man, frozen in place without his oilcan. Couldn’t get his legs to move. In that Wizard movie we saw. In Crazy Darba’s Rumspringe room.

“Crist, tell me what happened.”

“I hit him. As hard as I could. Can’t remember.”

One good swing, and he dropped at my feet like a limp rope.

They were out under the stars now, and Crist still couldn’t get his legs to cooperate with the bishop’s intentions.

“Stand right here, Crist,” the bishop was saying.

Cold night air, still as death. Light beginning to break at dawn. Oilcans and the Tin Man. Maybe the Scarecrow, too, with a useless, frozen brain. A head full of straw. Why can’t you think, Crist Burkholder? Hooves pounding out through the barn door, the clatter of wooden wheels on a hack trailing behind it.

“Crist, climb up!”

But Crist Burkholder was frozen by a singular mental clarity—dead Glenn Spiegle, in a crumpled heap at his feet.

“Crist! We’ve got to call the sheriff.”

“What?”
Vesta is waiting for me.
“Crazy Darba saw me.”

“Stop calling her that, Crist,” the bishop scolded. “Climb up. We’ve got to get to a phone.”

Nervous tension broke in Burkholder’s throat as a strangled croak, and the bishop shouted down from the hack, “Wait!” and jumped down from his seat to run back into the barn.

This was to be our day of emancipation. Vesta and me. Does she know by now? Darba Winters saw me run away. So, Vesta surely knows by now that I am a murderer.

“Here, Crist,” the bishop said behind him. “Sit down on this stool.”

Sit? Sure. Ease down on your Tin Man knees.

As Burkholder tried to lower himself to the milking stool, the old bishop failed to guide him down, and Burkholder lost his balance, struck the edge of the seat, and toppled onto the packed soil in front of the barn doors. Shetler set the lantern on the ground beside Burkholder’s head and tried to sit him up. But the strapping farm boy, built like a sturdy oak and twice the size of the old bishop, lay stiff and unmovable on the ground, and before the bishop could get a good grasp on his shoulders, Burkholder pulled his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them, thinking,
I’m the Tin Man.

And I just killed the only man who could have taken Vesta away from me.

So, that’s what the sheriff will think. What everyone will think.

That I killed a man over Vesta Miller, because her father just couldn’t let it be. That he just couldn’t let Vesta marry a simple farm boy, when so rich an eligible man lived right among us.