The Imposter (25 page)

He read, then reread this moment from the book of Exodus, when Moses and the Israelites faced the Red Sea in front of them, Pharaoh's pursuing army behind them: “And Moses said unto the people, Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will shew to you today: for the Egyptians whom ye have seen to day, ye shall see them again no more for ever. The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace.”

A wave of understanding washed over David's mind. This was what the biblical phrase “wait on the Lord” was all about: committing our Red Sea situations to God in prayer, trusting him, and waiting for him to work. God alone could part the waters. And he could hold on to his peace.

He went outside to look at the stars. He lifted his hands toward the night sky, handing to God the outcome of tomorrow's Members' Meeting. Again, that one verse of Scripture filled his mind: “The Lord will fight for you and ye shall hold your peace.” A gentle hush of God's Holy Spirit overtook him and he could hardly speak. He hadn't felt God's presence like that in a long, long time.

If Freeman wanted to have David quieted, so be it.

There was an atmospheric condition known as earthquake weather, a blanket of stillness that forecasted a shaking up. This day felt like such a day to Jesse.

After church on Sunday, everyone who wasn't baptized—mostly children—was asked to leave and wait outside. Ruthie had organized a softball game in the yard for the children while the young adults gathered at a picnic table. “It's times like these that I think I should just go ahead and get baptized,” Katrina whispered to Jesse. “Freeman is making Dad his scapegoat and I can't do a thing about it.”

That was enough for Jesse. He slipped away quietly and walked the perimeter of the house, stopping when he spotted an open window. Just what he had hoped to find. He peered cautiously over the sill and saw the backs of the four old sisters from the Sisters' House, sitting like pigeons on a telephone wire. He waved to Katrina from the corner of the farmhouse. “Hsst! Kumm mol!”
Come over here!
When she started toward him, he cupped his mouth and whispered, “Bring Andy!”

Katrina and Andy walked over to join Jesse. He put a finger to his lips to be quiet. “I can hear everything,” he whispered, crouched beneath the open window. “Freeman is explaining why Dad needs to confess and mend his ways.” Jesse was insulted. “Why, it's because of us!
You and me.
We've veered off the straight and narrow path, Freeman is saying.”

Katrina was amazed. “Did you truly just figure that out now, Jesse Stoltzfus?”

Andy sat down, his back against the house, his head tilted to the open window to listen. Katrina crouched down next to Jesse.

“David Stoltzfus,” they heard Freeman say, “do you refuse to make things right?”

“What exactly do you want me to do?”

“Your daughter must get baptized, right away. She needs to marry the father of her baby.”

“Katrina is not going to marry him.”

“Why not?”

“He's engaged to someone else and, apparently, that young woman is also with child.”

Katrina gasped, her eyes wide with shock. “Jesse, did you know that?”

Jesse shook his head. “I didn't. I would have said so if I'd known! Aunt Nancy must have told him.”

“My daughter will make her vows when she is ready,” she heard her father say. “I can't think of anything worse than to force baptism on a person.”

“What about that son of yours? He's lost to the world, and you do nothing about it.”

“Lost to the world? He's only sixteen!”

“He gambled away Hank Lapp's life earnings.”

“Jesse will be making a full restitution to Hank Lapp.”

“JESSE AND ME ARE ALL SQUARED UP,” Hank piped up.

Jesse smiled. “He's a fine fellow, that Hank Lapp.”

Freeman had a differing opinion. “Jesse Stoltzfus spiked the punch with the devil's brew at Hank and Edith's wedding. He was seen doing it.”

“By whom?” Jesse whispered. He had been so careful.

“Hush!” Katrina said. “I can't hear what Dad is saying.”

Apparently, neither could Freeman. “So,” he said, “you have nothing to say for yourself.”

“No,” David said. “I have no defense.”

“Well, then,” Freeman said. “There's nothing left for us to do but to call for a vote to have you quieted.”

Jesse climbed on the sill to peer into the window, searching past the sisters of the Sisters' House, over the rows of white and black prayer caps to see the front bench, needing suddenly to see his father. He noticed that his father's knuckles were white where they clenched at his side, and his arm muscles were taut, as if poised to jump. Jesse wished he would.

“Get down, they'll see you,” Katrina whispered.

“Not a chance,” Jesse said. Everyone's attention was riveted on Freeman and his father.

Then he saw Birdy stand up. “But there is something else,” she said.

Jesse saw several worshipers shift their bottoms on the hard benches to turn to her.

“Speak up, Birdy,” Freeman said. “No one can hear you. Do you have something to lay against David?”

“I said, there is something else,” she repeated, projecting her voice with effort. “But it's not about David. I have some
thing to confess. I have kept some information from all of you. My brothers took part in a sinful deed. A few months ago, when we voted to nominate a new bishop, they fixed the lot in the hymnal so Freeman would receive it and not David Stoltzfus. They put lots in each hymnal, but Freeman made sure to pick it up first.”

Suddenly the very air itself seemed suspended with tension, the way it felt in the time between a strike of lightning and a blast of thunder.

After some moments, Freeman found words. “Sie verschteht ken Buhn davun.”
She
doesn't know a thing.

“But I do. I saw you do it, Freeman. You and Levi. And I'm ashamed that I did nothing. Der Verhehler is graad so schlecht as her Schtehler.”
The concealer is just as
bad as the stealer.

“Schtehler!” Freeman walked right up to her. His breathing was strident, the wool of his beard quivered. Jesse saw it all. Freeman pointed a stiff finger at her. “Narrisch!”
Foolish!
His lips twisted hard with revulsion. “Narrisch, narrisch, narrisch!” His big farmer's hands were clenching and unclenching rhythmically, his powerful chest shook.

“I'm only ashamed that I didn't say something on that day.”

“How dare you accuse me of such a thing?” His voice roared, as if shouting her down could make his own words truer.

Thelma rose slowly to her feet and Jesse saw people crane to look at her. “She dares,” Thelma said in a shaky voice, “because she's telling the truth. She dares because she's much braver than I've ever been. It's time to bring it all out in the open, Freeman, and admit something that should have been told years and years ago.” She looked around at the worship
ers, who were all staring back. “This terrible deed goes back further than Freeman and Levi. It started with my Elmo,” she said, nearly choking over her husband's name.

The quiet that followed was immediate and complete, as if the very heart of the earth had suddenly stopped beating. Yet it seemed to Jesse as if he could still hear Birdy's words ring in his ears: he fixed the lot. Freeman fixed the lot.

“It was wrong from the start,” Thelma said, “and I told Elmo as much but he wouldn't listen to me. It started after Bishop Caleb Zook passed, and there was a dearth of good leadership in our church. Elmo thought it was best to keep the leadership in the family. He fixed the lot when he was nominated to be bishop, then he brought in Abraham as deacon, then Freeman as minister. He didn't see what it would do, down the road. Elmo could make himself believe that fire wasn't hot. Just like you can, Freeman. You've all become imposters, and it started with Elmo.”

Jesse glanced behind him to exchange a shocked look with Katrina. He turned to Andy, but his head was bowed down, his chin tucked low on his chest.

Freeman's voice was shaking in rage. “Elmo did what he felt led to do. Just like I've done.”

“But you never asked yourself who was doing the leading,” Thelma said.

“Now you listen to me,” Freeman said in a voice that was low and fierce, a tone unlike anything anyone had ever heard him use before. “All of you listen to me. I'm not going to let you undo all the good I've done for this church.” He marched to the door, stopped, and bracing his hand hard against the frame as if he needed it to hold himself upright, he turned back. “I've only tried to do what was best for this church.”
But then his arms fell to his sides, and something seemed to collapse inside of him, like a rotted tree.

Levi stood as if his body felt too weighted to move. Slowly, he turned and followed his brother. The Glick wives stood and brushed past them and through the door as if they couldn't get out fast enough.

At first the congregation sat slightly stunned, afraid to move. Even the infants sensed the need to remain quiet and still. David had never witnessed anything like this. His heart felt bleak with the knowledge of a thing he could hardly bear to accept. Thelma leaned forward, her forehead resting on her folded hands. Murmurs swept the congregation and the room began to buzz like a hive; some were softly crying. Everyone looked to David, waiting for him to say something to help them make sense of what had happened, but he had no answers.

Slowly, David rose to his feet and stood in the middle of the room. “This church,” he said in a tone that hurt to hear, even to his own ears, “has been dealt a great blow. I don't know how this will all unravel, but I do know this: we do not shoot our wounded.” He admonished everyone to pray for Freeman, for Levi, to not gossip or tell tales. To pray for the church as it moved forward to correct the wrongs. What he didn't say aloud was that he desperately wanted prayer for wisdom and discernment for himself as he sorted out church discipline over this disturbing revelation.

Abraham walked up to David, his head bowed in sorrow. “I never knew. I . . . never knew what they'd done.”

“Of course not, Abraham. I would never have thought it of you. No one would.”

“We'll talk later this week,” Abraham said sadly. “I'd better get on home to milk the cows.”

The way of life was strange. Terrible things happened, earth-shattering things, and life had a way of moving right along like it always had. Their little church was rocked to its core today, and the cows still needed milking and stomachs needed filling up with supper. David watched the deacon walk away, his head bowed, his shoes scuffing the floor.

“How did this happen?” Amos Lapp asked, mystified, after he made his way to David. “How could this have possibly happened?”

“I don't know the answer to that,” David said. “Some things are just beyond understanding.”

Pride. The fruit of hell. That surely was the only explanation.

Instead of going home after church, Birdy went to the schoolhouse. Her haven. She sat at her desk in the dusk of late afternoon, not bothering to turn a lantern on, wondering what she would face when she finally gathered the courage to go home. She tried to pray for Freeman, for Levi, but found that she felt empty of words.

She watched a jaybird land on the feeder outside the window and frighten off the smaller birds, and she wondered if that was what her brothers seemed like to others. Like jaybirds.

No. Thelma had called them imposters, and she was right.

The door opened and she braced herself, then relaxed when David walked in. “I thought you might be here.”

“I'm not quite ready to go home.”

He took a few steps into the classroom and leaned against
the doorframe, one booted foot crossed over the other, his hat dangling from his fingers. “Well, Birdy, you're a wonder,” David said, in a voice that sounded as if he really meant it. “I can only imagine how much strength that took for you.”

“Out of me, you mean.” She felt thoroughly exhausted. “I know it was the right thing to do, but somehow, it doesn't feel very good right now.”