The Outsider (34 page)

The baby flung his head back and whimpered. Rachel set him belly-down on the quilt, and he immediately started inchworming his way back toward the waving cattail. She picked up a doll, dancing it in front of his eyes to distract him. Plain dolls never had any faces painted on them.

Rachel glanced again at her mother. They’d never talked this way before and she was afraid of saying the wrong thing, of ruining the moment. Sadie’s whole attention was now on her grandson. There was a look about her that reminded Rachel of the old gappy-mouthed ewe that had died this spring.

“Mem, have I changed so much from that little girl you remember?”

Sadie made a jerking motion with her hand and turned her head away, and Rachel nearly gave up then. A Plain woman was judged by the daughters she raised, and she was surely her mother’s failure.

“In here,” Rachel said, pressing her hand to the hollow between her breasts where her shawl ends crossed, “I don’t feel as if I’ve changed at all.”

The silence stretched between them. Rachel started to push to her feet.

But then Sadie reached up and gripped her sleeve.

Rachel looked down at the hand that held her and she was startled. This wasn’t Mem’s hand. This was an old woman’s hand, webbed with wrinkles and liver-spotted. She looked up into her mother’s face, so beloved and familiar, and it was a face she knew not at all. There were deep lines
around Sadie’s mouth and eyes, and the hair that showed from beneath her prayer cap was the gray of a winter’s day. Yet into Rachel’s head came a memory of her father saying:
She had the merriest laugh in the whole of Sugarcreek Valley, did your mother. The merriest laugh.

“It’s not too late,” her mother said.

Rachel sucked in a breath and nearly choked. “What?”

“It’s not too late for you to have more babies.” Sadie’s hand fell to her lap. She looked down, watching her own fingers make a pleat in her apron. “He’s always wanted you, has Noah Weaver. That man has always wanted you worse than a mudhen on a tin roof wants rain.”

Her mother’s words shocked Rachel, their frankness cloaked in country wryness. No Plain woman ever spoke aloud of a man’s desires, no one even acknowledged the existence of such a thing in the Plain life, let alone made a joke of it.

Sadie raised her head. A smile flickered in her eyes, and then was gone.

Yet for Rachel it was enough. She felt herself smile in return and then heard herself laugh. Her smile widened to include the twins, who laughed with her even though they’d been talking between themselves and missed what Sadie had said. Rachel’s gaze took in all the women, spread out over their hand-pieced quilts, and then went beyond, to the men at the trestle tables lingering over their empty soup bowls, to the children who had gathered around the pond again to play with the tadpoles.

A thousand times her eyes and heart must have taken in such a scene. It was all the same, and so was she. She hadn’t changed at all, not at all.

This is what it means to be Plain, she thought, this certainty of changelessness, of always belonging. This is what
she’d really brought the outsider here to see. Mem, Da, her brothers and Noah, even Fannie: these people defined not the means to her life, but life itself, and she wouldn’t know who she was without them. They were a part of her, as much a part of her as her guts and heart, as her soul. They would always be a part of her in ways she could never be to others. To any outsider, even him.

She thought that if she lost all this, if she lost any more, she would never be able to bear it.

THOSE WHO DIED PLAIN
were buried in a cemetery on a hill behind the Miller big house. It was a pretty spot, this hill, shaded by cottonwoods and box elders and carpeted with lush buffalo grass that bowed and danced in the wind. A snake fence had been built around the graves to protect them from the winter snowdrifts. But one grave lay outside the fence, separate from the others. No stone or wooden cross marked this resting place, though everyone knew it was there.

Rachel’s steps faltered as she passed by that grave on her way to the gate, but she didn’t look at it. Couldn’t bear to look at it.

Ben’s grave was with the others, safe inside the fence. She had picked wildflowers and put them in an empty tomato can. Spring colors and smells—yellow holly grape, white Indian pipe, and pale lilac monkshood. She knelt in the grass and wedged the can of flowers into the sunken earth beneath a rough-hewn granite marker. Into this stone she herself had scratched with a hoof pick his name and the years of his life.

Usually Benjo came with her when she did this, when
she brought Ben things like flowers and holly sprigs and a wreath of fall leaves. She wanted Benjo with her now, but he’d run off to hide somewhere again. Nursing wounded feelings after that incident with Noah and the cider. Maybe Ben would have known where to look for him. Or maybe Ben, like her own father, would have said to leave the boy alone.

She arranged the flowers in the can so that they made a pleasing picture to the eye. “Here you are, Ben. A little something just for pretty.” That’s what he’d always said to her.
A little something just for pretty.
No sooner would the year’s first Indian pipe and monkshood be poking their heads through the spring grass than he’d be out picking her a bunch.
A little something just for pretty.
It was one of the rituals of spring, like feeding the bums in front of the stove and watching the newborns take their first steps—Ben picking her flowers. Now she did it for him.

“We had us a nice crop of fat lambs this year, including six sets of twins. And the bone pile’s been small.”

He’d been killed during the haying time. On this day last year, he’d still been alive. He might have picked her flowers on such a day. A month later she’d been scratching his name into this stone. This afternoon the sun shone warm and bright in the sky, but on the day they buried him it had been raining. Life and death, they were so close, she thought. All that separated them was a solitary breath, a single heartbeat, and the will of God.

Then it had been raining. The earth had been wet and heavy, and it had made loud plopping noises as it slid from the shovels onto his coffin. He had been dressed not in his brown sack coat and broadfalls but in a suit of the purest white.
Der Herr gibt und der Herr nimmt.
The Lord giveth
and the Lord taketh. She had said, weeping, to her father, “Where was God when my Ben died?” And her father had said, “Where was God when His own son died?”

The rawhide hinges of the gate squeaked as it opened. Rachel scooted around on her knees, squinting against the sunlight that splashed through the trees, hoping to see Benjo. But instead it was Noah.

She said nothing, only got stiffly to her feet. She didn’t want him here.

But her annoyance faded when Noah Weaver raised his head, and the broad brim of his hat lifted to reveal his face. His eyes looked like two bruises in the paleness of his face, and she knew she had done that to him.

He stopped in front of her, not looking down at Ben’s grave, but searching her face, as she searched his. The silence between them grew heavy.

She wanted to do something to make it better, to make him better. He wasn’t a man often given to smiles, but she wanted to make him smile.

“I was just telling Ben what a sweet crop of lambs we have this year.”

“And did you tell him how you’ve been letting an
Englischer
work his evil wiles on you?”

Rachel pushed past him, but he grabbed her arm, swinging her back around so hard she fell against him.

His lips tightened and twisted down at the corners, making him look mean. “That outsider, he sure does think he’s somebody, he does. And now he’s got you thinking you’re somebody, too.”

She tried to pull free of him, but his grip tightened, hurting her. “Let go of me, Noah.”

“
Ja,
I’ll let go of you, Rachel Yoder. I’ll let go of you. But not before I’ve spoken plain.” He let go of her, but only to
span her bonnet with his big hand, twisting her head back around toward the gate and the solitary grave that lay beyond it. “That’s what comes of pride, of thinking you’re somebody. Is that how you want to wind up, first shunned in life and then shunned in death, shunned by all, even by God?”

She squeezed her eyes shut. She wouldn’t look, she couldn’t even bear to think of it.

He gave her head a little shake. “Do I need to tell you what to think, Rachel? How to be? ‘Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers; for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? What communion hath light with darkness?’ ”

She wrenched loose of him with such force she stumbled. She flung out her hand to break her fall and scraped her knuckles on one of the rough gravestones. Lurching upright, she backed away from him.

“I’ve done nothing wrong. Do you think I could come up here and face Ben if—”

“Ben is dead!” He closed the space between them and grabbed her shoulders. “Dead!” He shook her so hard her teeth cracked together, shocking a cry out of her. “Aw, Rachel, Rachel.” His hands gentled and moved up her neck to cradle her face. “Ben’s dead and you’ve a life still to live, a straight and narrow life, a Plain life. Homesteading to be done and a boy to raise.” He lowered his head, bringing his face close to hers, breathing hot, harsh gusts. “More children to bear for the glory of God and the church.”

His lips came down on hers, desperate, smothering. She tried to pull away but he held her fast, his fingers pressing into her cheeks. She pushed against his chest and twisted her face aside, cutting her lips on his teeth.

He let her go. He was panting, sucking in great gasps
of air like a drowning man. He pressed his hands to his mouth. “
Lieber Gott, lieber Gott.
Rachel . . . I’m so sorry, so sorry. . . .”

Her legs were shaking so hard she had difficulty standing upright. She could feel herself swaying. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and tasted blood.

“That you could do such a thing, Noah Weaver, and right on top of Ben’s grave.” A harsh sound tore out of her. She had meant it to be a laugh, but it wasn’t. “And you accuse me of thinking I’m somebody.”

He dropped his hands and lifted his head. “You don’t . . .” He drew in a deep breath, his chest shuddering. “Listen to me, our Rachel . . .” He came at her. “No, no, I won’t hurt you,” he said when she scuttled back a step. He spread his arms out from his sides, pleading. “I’ll not touch you. Only you must listen. Send the outsider away. Make him go before it’s too late. Light cannot be found in darkness. Or truth among lies.”

She shook her head, not understanding him, not knowing him. Yet he looked so hurt, so frightened and broken, and she couldn’t bear it.

She held out her hand to him, but she was too far away to touch him. “Oh, Noah. Surely you know nothing can seduce the truth from my heart.”

He stared at her with eyes that were wet with anguish. “Once. Once I thought I knew you. But no longer.”

This time she was the one to take a step toward him. She thought at first her legs weren’t working right, the way the grass trembled and the ground shuddered beneath her feet. A heavy rumbling was pounding her ears, growing louder and louder, like thunder rolling across the sky.

She saw Noah’s face change, contort with horror as his
eyes focused beyond her onto the farmyard below. She spun around.

A herd of cattle about a hundred strong stampeded down the lane that led to the farmhouse. Eyes wild, rolling and white. Mouths bawling and nostrils snorting, hocks clattering and horns clashing. Hooves drumming, churning up the grass and mud.

The sheep in the meadow waddled in panicked retreat, their frenzied bleating adding to the din. In the farmyard men shouted, women and children screamed, running, knocking over trestle tables and benches, scattering quilts, running, running for the shelter of the barn and the houses, and still the cattle came, thundering down the lane. The pretty white pasture fences, those poles so lovingly hewn and peeled and whitewashed by her brother Sol, acted as a funnel for the crazed beasts.

And standing alone in their path was Benjo.