Wild Horses (28 page)

But seeing Dat’s bent head and his heaving shoulders was more than any of them could bear, so surrounding him with their arms seemed the most natural thing in the world.

When they stepped back a bit self-consciously, Dat kept his head lowered. Digging into his worn, denim trouser pockets, he procured his wrinkled, red handkerchief, shook it, and blew his nose. Then he removed his glasses and wiped his eyes.

“Ach, my,” he sighed.

The girls stood silently surrounding him, supporting him with their quiet presence. Reuben marched to the cupboard, swiping viciously at his eyes. The set of his shoulders said how shameful it was for a big guy like him to be crying. He opened the cupboard door, yanked at a glass, and went to the refrigerator to pour himself a glass of milk.

He sat down at the table, took a sip, then said angrily, “Well, I guess if Mam went so far as to take a suitcase, we better call the police.”

Dat looked at Reuben, unseeing.

“Somebody better go out to the phone shanty and dial 911.”

Did they actually have to?

Sadie took a deep breath to steady herself.

“Well?”

“If the police arrive, we all need to make sense. We have to tell the whole truth, Dat. She’s mentally unstable and has been for…”

“Longer than any of you know,” Dat groaned, holding his head in his hands.

Leah raised her eyebrows and looked at Rebekah.

“I … I persuaded her for much, much too long to carry on for her children’s sake. I kept telling her there was nothing wrong—that it was all in her head. I told her to swallow all the pills she wanted, but to keep it from all of you, the church, and our community. No one needed to know.”

He stopped, averted his eyes.

“This is my fault. She cried during the night. She cried a lot. She wanted to go back home to Ohio. I thought she’d get over it. It’s worse in the wintertime.”

Sadie was horrified.

“Dat! Why didn’t you tell us? Why?”

He sighed. “Because I was afraid you would all want to return to Ohio with her.”

“Well, we’re here now,” Sadie ground out. “I’m going to the phone.”

She could never remember feeling such anger, such a gripping disgust that she actually felt like vomiting. What horrible pride controlled Dat? Why had Mam been so passive? What caused a person to slowly tilt outward and move toward the edge of reasoning? Was it all because, if it boiled right down to it, Mam refused to give up her own will and submit to Dat’s will?

She yanked open the phone-shanty door, punched 911, and briskly told the dispatcher what she needed to know.

No sirens, please, she begged silently. The school children will go home and tell their parents there was a policeman at Jacob Millers’ and tongues will wag. Well, it couldn’t be helped. There was no time for her own foolish pride now.

The crunch of gravel heralded the policemen’s arrival. Two of them stepped out of the unmarked vehicle. Sadie’s heart beat loudly, and for a second she was glad it was a car that was not the usual kind the police drove with flashing blue lights and “Police” written across it in big letters.

The two men strode purposefully to the door, knocked, and stood aside politely when Dat opened it. They were kind but firm, writing on clipboards, searching the room with their eyes, speaking in short but professional tones.

The Millers answered truthfully. Dat spoke and the girls answered when they were asked. Reuben was white-faced, silent, frightened out of his wits. He slouched in his chair at the kitchen table, trying to appear brave, even nonchalant, but his huge blue eyes completely gave him away.

When Dat described Mam to the men, Anna stifled a sob, and Sadie’s arms were instantly around her shoulders. She slid her face against Sadie, struggling to conceal her emotions.

The policemen’s radios crackled, their badges and holsters gleamed. It all seemed like one big, awful dream that would come to a welcome halt the minute Sadie woke up.

One policeman went to the car while the remaining one told them he was alerting every radio station, television news channel, and airport.

“Why an airport?” Sadie blurted out. “She would never fly. We don’t go… I mean, our beliefs forbid us to fly in an airplane. She wouldn’t be in an airport. Perhaps a bus station? A train station? An Amish driver?”

“Amish driver? I thought you don’t drive cars?” Mr. Connelly, the elder of the two, inquired.

“No, I mean, she would have called a person who provides transportation for us.”

They made phone calls to every driver and neighbor on the list, but to absolutely no avail. Trucks and more troopers arrived, search parties sent to comb the entire region around the house and throughout the neighborhood.

Amish friends and relatives arrived, wide-eyed and in different stages of disbelief. Dat remained strong, his face a mixture of despair, agony, pride, shame, and finally, acceptance. There was nothing left to do as wailing sirens climbed the driveway, lights flashing, radios crackling messages.

Someone from the firehall set up a post inside the buggy shed with thermoses of hot coffee and sandwiches. Neighbors brought kettles of chili and vegetable soup, homemade rolls, smoked deer bologna, pies, and cookies. They comforted Dat, hugged the girls, whispered endearments.

Then darkness fell. With the darkness came a fresh despair, a sense of loss felt so deeply that Sadie thought she could not hold up against its crushing force. She cried with Anna. She went into the bathroom with Leah and sat on the edge of the bathtub and cried some more.

“Why? Why on earth did Dat let her go like this? How long has she been sick and we didn’t know?”

Leah peered into the mirror and fixed a few stray blonde hairs. She shook her head in disgust at her swollen, red eyes.

“Well, I know one thing. Remember last year when we had church at our house? Sadie, I mean it, I honestly don’t think we would have gotten ready without you. Mam got nothing accomplished all day. She just puttered around the way she does, you know.

Sadie sighed.

“There were lots of signs—if only we wouldn’t have been so dense.”

They sat for a few moments, Leah on the floor, Sadie on the edge of the bathtub.

“Do you think she became mentally ill from wanting to go back home?”

“Home?” Sadie’s head jerked up in an angry motion. “Where is home?”

“For me, here. In Montana,” Leah said flatly.

“Is it home to you?” Sadie asked.

“Of course.”

Sadie said nothing.

There was a knock on the door. Richard Caldwell and his wife, Barbara, had come and wanted to speak to her. Surprised, Sadie went to the living room.

Sadie’s boss and his wife sat uncomfortably, glancing at the softly hissing propane lamp. In spite of herself, Sadie hid a smile, knowing they had never set foot in an Amish home.

Despite their uneasiness, their concern was genuine, and their hugs bolstered Sadie’s courage. Once again she was amazed at the change in Barbara, the tenderness in Richard Caldwell, and she was grateful.

“They’ll find her, Sadie,” Richard Caldwell boomed.

And then Dorothy came bustling into the living room, the soles of her inexpensive Dollar General shoes squeaking on the highly varnished hardwood, oak floor.

“Oh, my, oh, my!” she kept saying over and over as she gathered Sadie into her heavy arms. “You never let on! You never let on!” she kept saying.

Sadie knew that never again in their household would they take for granted the wonders of human sympathy. It was the genuine caring—that giving of oneself—that brought so much warmth to Sadie’s heart. It was like an Olympic runner carrying the flaming torch, relaying hope from one person to the next.

How could one be crushed beneath despair when so many held them up? Rough cowhands, wealthy ranchers, plain Amish people, men of the law—they were all there, bound by the soft, gentle cord of caring. White-covered heads bobbed in conversation with permed and dyed heads, earrings twinkling beneath them, as tears flowed together.

Mam couldn’t have gone far. She’d be okay.

Was there anything they could do?

Poor lady, she must have been in agony.

Sadie could almost see her father aging before her eyes. It was hard to look at him. Remorse is a terrible thing, she had read once. It’s the hopelessness of wishing that you had not done things in the past, or that you could undo something you knew you couldn’t.

That’s where Jesus came in, Sadie thought. He died for pitiful creatures like us, people who make mistakes because of their human pride and wrongdoings.

Dear God, just stay with Dat. He didn’t do it on purpose. He thought he was doing the right thing.

And then Mark came. Mark Peight. Would she ever tire of just thinking his name?

He was in the kitchen, taller than everyone else except Richard Caldwell. He was talking to Leroy Miller who was moving his hands to accompany his fiery red curls that flew about his head with every movement. His hair was plentiful, and it looked even more so the way he shook his head when he became agitated. His beard was as red as his curls, and it wagged up and down at an alarming rate.

Sadie wished they would all go home now and leave her with Mark. She knew that was quite selfish, but she wished it anyway. Finally she was able to catch his eye and almost swooned when he conveyed all his feelings in his direct look.

“Sadie, how are you?”

She turned into the waiting arms of Nancy Grayson, the taxi driver, as Leroy Miller broke into another passionate tirade, this time to Mark.

The clock’s hands turned to ten o’clock, and still the Miller house was full of people who came to wish them well. Dat was becoming weary, his eyes drooping behind his glasses the way they did at the end of a long day. Reuben was curled up on the recliner covered with a blanket, his hands tucked beneath his cheek. He looked so young and so vulnerable, his usual tufts of hair on the back of his head sticking straight out, the way they always did when he hadn’t brushed his hair completely.

Mark moved across the kitchen to stand by Sadie’s side, being careful to keep an appropriate distance between them.

“Sadie, tell me what happened,” he said quietly.

Tears immediately sprang to her eyes. It was the soft urging in his voice that showed how much he cared. She raised her eyes to his, then looked down as she saw Leroy Miller’s flinty eyes watching their every move.

“Can you come upstairs with me?” she asked.

“You go first; I’ll sneak away later,” he said quietly.

Sadie went over to Reuben and took him upstairs to his bedroom, waiting outside his door until he had his pajamas on. Reuben would never change clothes in his sister’s presence, properly locking the bathroom or bedroom door when any change of clothes or showering was necessary.

After the door was unlocked, she caught his shoulders and drew him against her. He did not pull back but laid his head against her shoulder as she held him, rocking him the way she did when he was two years old.

His hair smelled of shampoo and hay and little boy sweat and his hat. She could feel his thin shoulders shaking beneath his t-shirt as his breath caught in suppressed little sobs.

“Reuben. Listen. They’ll find Mam. In this day and age, people don’t disappear the way they used to. They have computers and video cameras and stuff we can’t even imagine to track every traveler that moves through train or bus stations.”

“But what if she’s lying outside somewhere and she’s cold?” Reuben asked, his breath catching on a sob of despair.

“Don’t think that. Don’t let yourself imagine such things. Remember to pray earnestly tonight, and God will watch over Mam and over you if you can’t sleep, okay?”

Reuben nodded, crept into his bed, and pulled the covers up to his chin.

“You want the lamp on?” Sadie asked, brushing back a lock of hair.

“Nah.”

Sadie blew out the steady, yellow flame that lit a room so cozily, then whispered, “Good-night.”

She met Mark coming down the hallway uncertainly, never having been upstairs in the Miller household. It was not uncommon for a girl’s friends to come upstairs to her bedroom on Sunday afternoons when church was over. All girls had chairs or loveseats in their bedrooms for that purpose.

Now, however, Sadie was uncertain. Should she ask Mark to come into her bedroom at a time like this? He might think her extremely bold, but where else could they go to talk about Mam?

“Is … is it all right to … go to my room?” she whispered.

“If you’re okay with it.”

She entered her room and lit the kerosene lamp with the lighter beside it, replaced the glass chimney, and turned it up to brighten the room.

Mark stood inside the door, waiting until Sadie asked him to sit down. His large frame seemed to fill the entire loveseat, so Sadie sat gingerly on the edge of the bed, her body tense, the pulse in her temples pounding. She pleated the fabric of her skirt over and over, her long, thin fingers never ceasing their movement. Her head bent, her voice barely audible, she related Mam’s disappearance and the shameful, sad history of her parents’ relationship.

“I think Mam is in a much more serious depression than any of us realized. The only person that had any idea was Dat, and he is much too stubborn or proud to admit anything is ever wrong in our family. As long as he can present a smiling group of good Christians to the Amish community, he thinks everything is just great.”

Mark nodded. “Do all of you want to live here in Montana?” he asked after a respectful silence that was so typical of him.

“I have no choice, so this is home now. But if I was allowed to choose, I’d probably go back to Ohio.”

“Why?”

“I miss family. I miss Eva most of all. We’ve been here for almost six years now, and I’m used to Montana. But…” she broke off, timidly.

“What?”

“Well, it’s just that ever since the accident with Ezra and those wild horses, I sense a bad omen. It’s as if fear is alive and haunting, and that black, devilish horse … and then Nevaeh … I don’t know. Is there such a thing as an un-blessing? You know how the ministers say, an
unsayah
.”