“You said you got hundreds,” Lester says, “you could have the whole place surrounded.”
“Then why aren’t they just rushing in right now?”
Lester sits, thinking about it, peering around the eerie silence around us. “Maybe, I oughta take a look around the perimeter.”
“Do whatever you need to do, if it’ll convince you I’m on the level,” Cab says.
“Ah-ha!” Lester says to him, pointing his rifle at Cab’s chest. “You’d send me out into an ambush, have me killed straight off the bat. You both could still be in cahoots as far as I’m concerned!”
“Wait a minute,” I say, my attention still on Cab. “What about my aunt?”
“What about her?”
“She ... ” I have a hard time saying it. “She was ... found murdered in Somerset. The police think we did it, me and my daed, I mean.”
Cab seems stunned and sympathetic, in his sad expression and his tender tone. “Oh, Bethany, I am so sorry—”
“I didn’t know her well—”
“Still—”
“So how’d that happen?” Lester asks impatiently.
Cab doesn’t need to think about it long. “Jonah must have ordered it, to keep her from bringing any heat down on Westington. Probably figured he’d blame it on Beth and her father, and with them disappeared, the whole matter would just ... fade away.”
“That’s what I figured exactly,” I say.
Lester rolls his eyes, “Big surprise there.”
“Surely this proves my daed and I didn’t kill anyone.”
“All it proves is that some folks is dead,” Lester says. “And ‘til we get to the bottom of all this, that’s all the proof there’ll be.” He turns to the boys. “I’m gonna take the hound out, sniff around the area. You two are on guard duty.”
Stonewall nods, but Stanley jabs him with his bony elbow, then says to Lester, “Yessir.”
***
The next day, Lester decides to put us both on hard labor duty in the back area of the shack. Cab digs a hole, destined to be Lester’s new septic tank if I understand things correctly. I’m given a dull machete to clear away the foliage.
“Strange,” Cab whispers, “they give us a shovel and a big knife, then put us under the guard of two kids. Not very bright kids either, I don’t think.”
“Remember David,” I say. “He slew Goliath with nothing more than a sling and a stone.”
“Yeah well, King David went on to write all one-hundred and fifty psalms. I don’t think these kids can write their own names.”
“Just because they’re uneducated, doesn’t mean they’re stupid. I mean, look at them out here; they have no community, no contact at all with the outside world. We Amish are all for protecting ourselves, insulating ourselves, but this ... ”
“Well, they do live a life free of distraction,” Cab says, “that’s the Amish way, right?”
Before I can say anything, Stanley pulls the band of his slingshot back and lets a rock fly straight in the back of Cab’s right leg. It hits with a loud thud and Cab snaps back, gripping his leg and dropping his shovel.
Stanley and Stonewall both laugh, but Stanley sneers at Stonewall, who quickly stifles himself. Stanley sneers at Cab. “Back o’ the leg, yer fine. Keep diggin’.” After a few seconds, he adds, “Who stupid now?”
The door opens and Miriam comes walking out from the house. “What’s all this nonsense?”
“Nothing at all,” Cab says, “Just, um, talkin’ about the Bible.”
Miriam stands there, then crosses her arms as if waiting for something. “S’that so? You both love the Bible so much, do you?”
“Don’t you?” I ask.
“Never read it. That don’t mean I don’t love God—”
“No, of course not,” I say in a soothing tone.
“Some people think you don’t read the Bible, you can’t get into heaven!” Miriam shakes her head. “Well, what about us good folks that can’t—I mean, that just ain’t got a Bible, or the time to read one, or the like? That ain’t fair if I gotta go to hell just on account o’ that!”
“It doesn’t say that in the Bible,” I say. “The Bible wasn’t collected until years after the death of Jesus, Miriam. He never said to anybody, ‘Read your Bible or go to hell. There was no Bible.’”
“There was Torah,” Cab says, referring to the first five books of the Old Testament, said to be written by Moses himself.
“And Jesus was a rabbi,” I say, turning back to Miriam. “So you really have nothing to worry about there. Why would you or anybody be looking for reasons that God would deny you His love, or Jesus His divine redemption? The problem with this world isn’t that God doesn’t love us, it’s that not enough of us love God.”
Cab says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
I say, “John 3:16”
Cab says, specifically to me, “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”
“Hebrews 4:12,” I say with a little smile.
***
Cab and I must sleep sitting huddled in the corner, a long chain looped around our waists and bolted to the iron stove. The chain digs into my side when I breathe, and my injuries are starting to hurt again, leg muscles cramping, back throbbing.
By day, we keep working, soon we’re both in the pit together, me digging with the shovel and Cab with the dull machete. It’s almost like they don’t really want us to progress in digging the ditch; they just need to keep us busy.
But, for what? I can’t help but wonder. They could just keep us chained to the stove if that’s what they wanted.
With Lester and the hound out scouting the terrain, and on one occasion hunting for our dinner (and bringing back an impressive buck), Miriam begins to spend more time with us. She tells the boys she’s relieving them of their guard duty, and that she needs them to fetch plenty of fresh water from the stream.
And that’s all perfectly reasonable, even if I get the feeling more and more that what she really wants is to spend time with us alone.
And to talk about God.
“You were raised in a God-fearing home?” I ask Miriam as Cab and I keep digging the hole.
Miriam, sitting nearby, shrugs. “Didn’t hardly have a home, mostly went from one aunt or cousin to the next. That’s why I’s so sad to hear about your auntie, hon.”
“My name is Beth, please ... ”
“I’s just tryin’ to be friendly, Miss Bethany Ann whatever-it-is.”
“She didn’t mean anything by it,” Cab says. “For us, it’s a sign of affection to use our real names. A good name is better than a precious ointment. Ecclesiastes 7:1”
“S’that so?” Miriam says, folding her hands over her lap. “Well, I guess ... I guess my name was never no good nohow. Don’t know how much better Krebbs is, now that things are all going south.” We look at her, silently waiting for her to continue. “You two showin’ up, all that mess with the taxes, I dunno ... I feel like the hand of the devil’s upon this house, that we ain’t right with God, whatever bein’ that truly means in this crazy world.”
I turn from the earth and stop digging, then turn to Miriam and really start digging. “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith,” I say, from Romans 5:1, “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Cab says to her, “And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sin.”
I know the scripture, another of Paul’s, this one the opening verses of Ephesians 2: “Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.”
“That’s Satan, yer talking about,” Miriam says, “the Prince of the Power of the Air, I’ve h
eard of that, I’ve heard him called that.” She looks at us, eyes wide as these truths are revealed to her. “And we’re the children of disobedience, me and my family,”
I go on with the next verse: “Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.”
Cab and I are looking directly at each other. He knows I’m talking as much to him as I am to Miriam, and he understands the condemning nature of my words.
He accepts them.
“But God, who is rich in mercy,” Cab counters with the next line of the chapter, “for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, by grace ye are saved.”
Miriam draws what she can from the conversation while Cab and I know a whole other conversation is actually taking place; one between him and me.
“And hath raised us up together,” I say in a forgiving, spirited tone to make my change of feelings clear, “and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: That in the ages to come he might eschew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.”
Miriam says, “Yer saying God still loves me ... and Jesus is how ... how I receive that love?”
Cab says, “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.”
“I want the gift of God,” Miriam says, “I deserve it, all I been through.”
I say, “Not of works, lest any man should boast.”
“Well, I don’t mean that,” Miriam says, suddenly looking around. “I didn’t mean to boast, Lord.” She looks back at us. “Did I make Him mad? He gonna strike me down?”
Cab offers her a gentle smile and a shake of his head, saying, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.”
Cab and I share a gentle glance, and Miriam gazes off as she thinks about it. “Yer saying I can still do good, that it ain’t too late, that I still got my place in the light?”
Something wrings tragically familiar about Miriam’s sad realization, and I quickly realize it’s because she reminds me of myself. I walked through my life in a daze, searching for God’s love and doubting His will, yet all the while I was a lost and pathetic as this poor wretch.
But I never will be again.
***
Hours later, Cab and I are still working the ditch. Lester has arrived home, and we can see her stooped over her cooking pots as he stands behind her, leaning forward, muttering angrily. She nods or shakes her head but says little in response.
“What do you think they’re talking about?” I ask, already knowing the answer.
“Us,” Cab says, confirming it. “But what worries me is what they’re saying, not who they’re saying it about.”
I swallow, my mouth dry and chapped, my arms burning and numb. “They’re never just going to let us go, are they?”
Cab peers at them through the window. “A man like that will do what the circumstances demand.” He looks back at me. “But we follow a higher power, one who overlooks the kind of circumstances that men like our Lester here need to survive.”
I don’t have to think long before reciting Corinthians 1:25-26. “Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”
Cab gives me a little wink. “For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble ... ”
Cab and I share a warm silence, a reassuring quiet that prevails over the muttered anger of the man who holds a sword blade to our very throats.
I ask, “Then what are we supposed to do, just sit around and wait to be slaughtered?”
“I’m open to anything. What’d you have in mind?”
I don’t have anything in mind, of course. This isn’t exactly my specialty.
Or is it? I have to ask myself. I’ve faced forces like this, in gradually more-dangerous numbers. Surely, it seems to me, those experiences happened for a reason. And that reason is that God needed me to learn, to grow, to acquire the wisdom I’d need to see me through my ultimate confrontation still to come!
But I cannot master the scattershot array of images that pelt my imagination. I recall every recent dream; falling and drowning, hunted, devoured, propelled into the heavens. But I can’t make sense of any of it. If they are warnings, I wonder, how can I use them to change my direction, avoid disaster?
It seems that no matter how clear the warning, there must still be the catastrophe. These dreams aren’t warnings, I realize, merely heralds of what is to come, to make of what I will or what I can.
I dreamt of being thrown into a pit; now I run from those same figures I’d imagined. But what pit? Where can I go where I won’t find such a pit waiting for me, opening up in front of my stunned feet to pull me down into murky depths of my own failure?
No, I tell myself, I am no failure, because I am a child of the Most High God, and he will prove me worthy and Himself loyal, and neither of us shall be swayed from our task, or from His glory.
But how I am to make that happen, what answer I can offer my erstwhile companion, I simply haven’t a clue.
“That’s okay,” Cab says with a wry smile, “I’m stumped too. But if anything strikes you, don’t be afraid to let me know.”
***
Another day working in the ditch means another day chatting with Miriam about God and Jesus and the Bible; and that means another chance to enlighten her so that she’ll realize her own folly and let us go. If nothing else, it’s a chance to spread God’s Love and His Word, and that is an opportunity never to be missed.
And I can tell that Miriam is a person who needs God’s Love and Word and Truth as much as anybody, maybe even more so.
Anyway, we have little choice, and what better way to while away the time than to reflect on the awesome truths of the Holy Bible?
“So, if God is so great and perfect,” Miriam asks us, “how come he created a world with so much evil?”
“He didn’t,” Cab says. “All this is our doing. At the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve violated their covenant and brought us mortality. Then Satan turned that to his own advantage, and brought us sin.”
“But God’s all-powerful, why can’t he just reach down and smite Satan anytime?”
“Because it is not in His plan to do so,” I say. “Some things children must learn to do for themselves.”
“Such as defy the great Satan himself?”
Cab asks, “What else?”
We keep digging and Miriam sits there, thinking. “So, yer saying if we do something wrong, it’s not our fault, it’s Satan’s fault.”
“No,” I say, “we’re just saying it’s not God’s fault.”
Quoting Luke 6:31, Cab says, “And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.”
But I choose Ezra 10:4, hoping she’ll understand my own personal urging: “And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.”
Miriam starts to think about it, confusion overtaking her gray face. “Well, what am I supposed to do? I can’t fight the government, all those Westington folks, not even my own husband ... especially not him!”
"‘Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth,’” I say, quoting the words of Jesus himself, from Matthew 10:34. “‘I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A man's enemies will be the members of his own household.'”
“Who would say these terrible things?” Miriam asks.
“It’s Jesus himself,” Cab answers, “and He’s calling to you personally, Miriam, through us, telling you to reach into your heart and do the right thing.”
Almost breathless, I add, “Before it is too late.”
***
A few hours later, Cab is standing with Stonewall and Stanley, near the ditch in the front yard. He’s muttering something to them, I can’t hear it at this distance. Perhaps he’s telling them about girls, it seems to me, or how to better use those nasty slingshots. Either way, I can tell that they’re listening with great interest, even respect. They nod and look at his gesturing hands, following whatever it is that he’s saying with the keenest attention to detail. After a few moments, curiosity overtakes me and I can’t resist making my over to them with as much as subtlety as I can muster.
“And don’t let them see that you’re nervous,” I think I hear Cab say, affirming one of my two best guesses. “Girls really like a confident man, a ... ” He turns, as if only now seeing me approach.
But I think he knew all along, and he was speaking as much to me as to the boys.
“What are you fellas talking about?” I ask, turning to Stanley and Stonewall. “You two finally giving this one some pointers? He sure could use ‘em!” I chuckle, and the boys do, too; Cab, not so much. He even seems to shoot me a little sneer, which I have to admit I quite enjoy.
I’m truly enjoying seeing Cab interact with the boys this way, even though they are his captors, his guards. He has an easy way with children, it’s plain to see, and that’s a worthwhile trait in a man, any man.
But especially this man, as far as I’m concerned. I’m not afraid to admit that at this moment, I’m ready to imagine that he might become Daed to my own children someday, and that when such a day comes he’ll no doubt be a good and strong father, a wholesome and intelligent guardian that they can grow to love and respect. They’ll bring their own children to him willingly, I tell myself, a beloved patriarch of the family most accepted and beloved in the community. No neighbors will ever turn against our kin, as they have my own family. We will be in their very bosom, and the Zook family line will flourish. We were not meant to die out as I’d feared, but to multiply and become leaders, helpers, good and decent people whose names are written in the Book of Life and never expunged, never erased.
I say to the boys, “Y’know, our Mr. Coleson here may not be as knowledgeable as you two, but he is a fast learner and an eager study, so I suggest you tell him everything you can.” I try not to break out laughing when I say, “Not that he’ll ever have any need of it with me. But somewhere out there is a girl who enjoys ... this sort of man, I suppose. For her sake alone, school him well, boys, please!”
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