The twins burst out in cackling laughter, Stanley jabbing Stonewall with his elbow and Stonewall jabbing Stanley right back with his own.
“What’s all this ruckus?” We turn at the gruff and familiar voice.
Lester comes back with the hound, and by the look on his craggy, aging face, I know something has happened.
“What is it, Mr. Krebbs?” I ask, a bit too quickly.
He says, “Saw a friend o’ mine, brings me word of the day. Ain’t got any radio, as you learnt.” I nod, not being too phased by a lack or radio, since we never had one in our family.
But that’s not what’s important here.
Lester goes on to say, “Well, ol’ Zeek, that’s my friend, he tells me there were some killings in the local jail, three in one day!”
“That seems like a lot,” I say, “but I’ve never been. Don’t they stab each other a great deal in jail?”
“Thing is, these three people, they’s all brung in on the same crime, tryin’ to kill some Amish girl back in Smicksberg.”
“Trying to ... ?” It doesn’t take me long to figure it out. “The Grabers, you’re talking about the Graber family?”
“Ain’t the names I heard, but that don’t matter. Two guys, youngins like yerselves, maybe a bit older. And a woman in her thirties, she was all the way in another facility, they still got to her.”
“Who did?” I ask.
Lester shrugs, but Cab steps forward. “Jonah,” he says, “he’s got connections in every jail and prison up and down the Eastern seaboard, maybe even as far west as California. If he wants somebody silenced, that’s what happens.”
Lester says, “These are yer people doin’ this?”
“Them,” Cab says, “not me. I’m the one who wants to go to the authorities, bring those people down once and for all!”
“I told you I can’t go to no authorities,” Lester says.
“But I can walk better now,” I say. “You can let us go without worrying.”
“And where you gonna tell those cops you been all this time?”
“We’ll figure something out,” Cab answers, “tell ‘em we’ve been hiding in the woods. The weather’s moderate, it could happen.”
“Look,” I say, “you at least have to believe we didn’t have anything to do with these killings, right?”
“Didn’t you say you knew these fake Amish con folk?”
“I did,” I have to admit, “but only because my daed and I were their intended victims. You know we didn’t do anything to harm them now!”
Lester thinks about it as Miriam steps up to him and whispers, “She’s right, Lester.” He glares at her, but she doesn’t back down this time. “We gotta do what’s right, we gotta help these kids.”
“Don’t gotta do nothin’,” Lester says.
“Well, that may be true,” Cab says, “but Jonah had Beth’s aunt killed just to keep her quiet and she didn’t know anything about Westington. All she knew was that her brother and niece were late for their appointed arrival, and that was enough to sign her death warrant! The Grabers knew something about it, but had never even been there, now look what happened to them.”
I ask, “You think Jonah expected them to bring the police to Westington?”
“Absolutely. They’d rat out the whole state if it would keep them out of jail. But there’s a pretty strict code of silence about it. Now you see how that code of silence is enforced.” Cab turns back to Lester. “So, it seems to me they’re gonna be extra careful, maybe even come down in this direction, looking for Bethany, or her body. It’s the reasonable place to look; downstream, where debris collects on that bank not far from here.”
Lester and Miriam trade nervous glances, but Cab seems very calm. I feel torn between throwing up and passing out, but I can’t afford the luxury of either.
Cab says, “Way I see it, you should be prepared for them to show up here eventually, maybe sooner rather than later. Now, if we’re here, we can help you fight it out if need be. I’m pretty handy with a rifle. Or, if we’re long gone, you really won’t have anything to worry about. I don’t see any third way.”
Lester cocks his rifle. “I could kill you both and give ‘em yer heads in a box.”
“They’d know we’d told you all about them,” I say.
Cab nods. “Absolutely. You do that, and you’re as good as dead yourselves.”
“Why you lyin’ trickster rat!”
“It’s no lie and no trick,” Cab says. “Now you gotta make up your minds; either help us to safety, turn us loose, or we all hunker down and wait, fight it out together.”
Lester gives it some thought, then asks, “S’ppose’n they don’t show up?”
Cab says, “Then it’ll be a long wait.”
CHAPTER FIVE
I’m swimming. My body is cold, wet, but I don’t feel afraid. Dreaming, I know I’m dreaming, vivid, lucid and so strangely clear, but that knowledge doesn’t slow or stop the phantasm. I’m swimming leisurely, gradually making my way to the shore only a hundred yards or so away. The cliffs are gorgeous, fantastic houses balanced and staring out this magnificent vista. The water is warm enough around me, the current isn’t too strong.
Won’t be long now, I tell myself. I’m finally coming home.
I turn to face upward, paddling on my back as the sun shines down on me, warm, a sharp glare. The salty air is thick and damp in my nostrils, my blonde hair heavy above the surface, weightless and free-flowing below.
I kick, my legs passing easily through the water, my arms reaching out to help pull me through it and back onto the safety of dry land.
I try not to think about what kind of safety I’m lacking out in the water. I know what forces linger out here; not only the deadly currents, but the massive and fantastic beasts, some of the world’s fiercest predators.
I can hear my own heartbeat, and I know they can hear it too; it travels for miles through the water, like a beacon to any shark or whale that wants a closer look.
Around me, a sea of black, and I don’t dare to put my head beneath the surface to see what’s there. The salt is already stinging my eyes, my face starting to burn from the reflected sunlight as I pump my legs harder, reaching further and pulling harder through that increasing chop. Waves splash me in the face, but I shake them off so I can focus on the nearby shore.
Only it’s not so nearby anymore. I can feel the water pushing me away from the shore now, waves higher to block my view. I keep swimming, but I feel like the harder I swim, the further I’m drifting from the shore.
Oh no, I think to myself, haunted by similar sensations, not again!
I recall Psalm 38:4, which reminds me grimly, I am drowning in the flood of my sins; they are a burden too heavy to bear.
But the waves don’t care, this bottomless brine churning all around me doesn’t care. The indifference of every natural thing around me has always been a sign, I’ve felt, a warning that the Earth wasn’t where I belonged, that very little of what was on it cared if I lived or died. In fact, sometimes the Earth and its denizens, animal and vegetable and mineral, all seem to know more than I do about my fate, my destiny.
My death.
I keep swimming, my body beginning to ache, my plain cotton dress heavy with water, pulling at my arms and legs, slowing me down. I try to pull the clothes off, abandoning humility for survival. But the clothes cling to me, as much a part of my body as my skin or my eyes. And the harder I pull at them, the stronger they cling to me, unwilling to let me go even at the expense of my life.
A chill runs through me as a current passes me from without, a lone wave countering the natural flow of the ocean.
Something big is underneath me, I realize. Something moving.
Don’t panic, I urge myself, if you stay calm, maybe it won’t notice.
The current passes again, a wave of water under the surface, pushing against me in a long, slow stroke.
My will breaks and panic takes over. I start swimming with eve
ry bit of my strength, breathing too fast and too hard. I kick and reach and stretch, but my soaked dress and my aching limbs are a lethal combination. I hear a splash behind me; something breaking the surface. I don’t dare look back on what it is.
But as the sunlight is blocked out behind me, I realize I have no choice. Still swimming, I turn and get my first glimpse of the Goliath that has been stalking me.
The whale is huge, upright as it seems to hover above the surface of the ocean. Its body is huge, thick, with long, flat fins and heaving ridges along its belly.
Then this breeching whale begins to fall back to the sea, letting its massive body smash down against the surface, kicking up a huge splash and a sharp crack.
The force of the beast’s landing sends me bobbing away from it, carried by the rolling waves. And underneath, I can feel the water churching as the terrific animal swims down and around to come up again.
It does, the colossus throwing its tremendous frame up out of the water. It seems to be a hundred feet long, but from my angle I can only know one thing for sure; it if lands on top of me, I’ll be crushed to death in an instant.
If I’m lucky.
And with that terrifying realization, I can only float helpless as the whale comes down again, thankfully toward its side and away from me. Its wake us irresistible and I go bobbing on the waves again, carried along on the surface like the insignificant little creature that I am.
The surface calms, but the water below still churns. I can almost feel the creature’s tail is it propels itself around me, under me, preparing to breech the surface again.
And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.
But Mark 4:35-41 does not calm me, and it seems to have no effect on this huge creature, seemingly mindless of God’s will or my terror; or perhaps, I realize, it knows both all too well, far better than I.
But I get the terrible feeling I’m about to find out for myself.
My stomach lurches within me as the water pushes up from underneath and I’m carried along the surface again, a tall crest and a deep ebb making me feel like I’m dangling above the water and not trapped in it.
Trapped by it.
With another loud splash, the whale breeches again, this time closer to me than before. Its chunky body stretches upward over me, reaching up and seeming to remain aloft; an impossibly heavy animal untouched by the ravages of gravity.
But only for a moment.
Then the thing comes crashing down, and I know it’s going to land right on top of me. The sunlight is blocked out, my heart near to bursting as I turn and try to swim away, my useless arms and legs only a mockery of the life I once loved so much and treasured so highly.
The thing falls down upon me like a collapsing building, to bury me in its wet rubble. I can’t breathe, and I hold my hand out in a pitiful gesture of instinct, a desperate gambit for a survival that I know is well beyond me.
***
That night, Lester fades off somewhere around the vicinity of the shack, on guard duty as he puts it, while Miriam chains us to the stove to begin her other nighttime chores.
Cab asks, “Do you really have to keep chaining us up?”
“It hurts,” I add.
“S’fer yer own good,” Miriam says. “You make a break fer it, you’ll get caught up on one’o Lester’s traps, if yer lucky enough to get that far without breakin’ yer necks. Woods’s no place for a young couple like you in the dead of night.”
“How long are you going to keep doing this?” I ask.
“Long as Lester says,” Miriam replies. “But I think he’s decidin’ on thangs right presently, so don’t you waste your time worryin’.”
“What little time we have left?” Cab says.
Miriam looks at him, her face a pale, sad mask. She turns away and starts cleaning her plates and pots. “Y’all hush now.”
As Miriam cleans and Cab considers, I can only lean my head back and pray.
Dear Lord:
I know you have hardened this woman’s heart against us, and I know you have softened it too, by your own divine words upon our lips. Please, Lord, dispatch your angels to convince this woman to do what’s right and release us, to help us. This is not where we belong, this is not where you intend for us to be. We’re like the three Hebrew children, and this the fiery furnace.
For I believe I am here with, if not a brother, than a spiritual sibling at least, one who is of the same decent cloth that I am from, both created in Your Image. I wasn’t sure before, but something in my heart and my mind tell me that he is a good man, that you have sent him here to help me and that, perhaps, you have sent me to help him. Perhaps, oh Lord, you have sent us both here to help others, to do Your bidding on some higher level.
To bring justice to Westington, to those vile fiends and criminals who murdered my daed.
Of course, Lord, this is the purpose to which you would bend me, this is the reason for my life, my purpose. It seemed for so long that you had no care for life or death, no reason for my being. For a time, and forgive me, oh Lord, I was convinced that my whole line was a mistake, a family to be blotted out from the book of life. Then it seemed you’d sent me to protect my own daed from harm, a daughter protecting her father!
Then he was sacrificed, and that purpose seemed an illusion.
But I was not sacrificed, Lord, because my purpose is revealed and it is no illusion. There can be no more doubt. You have paired me with a good man, a strong young man whose life is also in need, whose purpose is also being revealed in this seeming chaos.
But it is not chaos, Lord, I realize that now. This is your plan, perfect and pure, to bring a war of the righteous against the wicked. And though we may be outnumbered and captive, reduced and unarmed, with Your mighty help, Lord, we cannot fail, and we shall not fail.
I pray only that the price is not too high, nor the effort beyond our meager abilities, Lord.
If we are to burn as those three Hebrew children, Shadrack, Meshac and Abednego, I know you will see us through it, and let us dance in those flames. For those Hebrews did not stay in that furnace, Lord, and nor shall we stay in our own. I only ask that your help is swift and that our remove from this place is certain, with your everlasting glory and protection. We have a greater purpose now, and let none stand in the way of Your glorious Will.
Amen.
About two hours later, the door flies open and Lester stumbles in. In one hand he carries a brown jug of moonshine, his lean body weaving as he plops himself down onto one of his rickety, homemade chairs. He takes a long swig from the jug, once more balanced over his elbow, then sets it down on to the floor at his feet and glares at us.
He says, “Well, s’been settled.”
I say, “You’re in no condition to speak to us or anyone. Go to sleep, sir.”
“You go to sleep,” he shouts back. Miriam looks like she’s about to approach him, but a cold stare from him backs her off and she retreats to the kitchen where she sits on her work stool near the wash bin.
Lester turns back to us. “Comfy?” Instead of getting an answer, he says, “Well, that’s a shame, since this’s yer last night here.”
“You’re going to let us go?” I say, a hopeful suggestion more than a question.
“Little bird,” he says, swaying and slurring his words, “I’m going to set you both free.”
“You’re going to murder us,” Cab says, “execute us in cold blood and bury our bodies out in the woods.”
“S’yer own fault!” Lester leans forward heavily, then takes another big swig from the jug, swaying in his chair. “You think I wanted any of this? You showed up here! First you,” he says to me, “my little mermaid. Then the Boy Won
der over here. Yer both a couple of saps.”
Cab asks, “How do you mean that? We’re saps?”
“Well you ain’t Bonnie and Clyde, is ya? Talk about a couple of luckless losers. I know’d you ain’t revenuers, and y’ain’t such bad kids at all. But you also know I can’t just let you walk outta here—”
“But you can’t tell Jonah or the others from Westington that you—”
“That’s why yer saps, boy!” Lester belches, then takes another hit off the jug. “Yer the one made it clear what I gotta do. I can’t let cher go, but I can still pop yer off’n then tell them Westerners or whatever that I don’t know what from what. Comes to it and the cops ever find yer bodies, those crooks’ll take the blame, easy as you please.”
Another hit on the jug and my blood runs cold. I look at Cab, and he back at me. But he has no options, no ideas. He pulls at the chain, but it’s bolted tight.
“You two think I’m such a bad guy,” he says, trying to stand. “See, y’don’t understand, I gotta family to protect! You two ain’t even got one relative between yuzz! Fool children, go runnin’ around ... ” He loses his train of thought, but not his interest in talking. “I’m only doin’ what I gotta do.”
“We’re no threat to you,” I say.
“Oh yeah? Fillin’ my wife’s head with a lot of nonsense about doin’ right and God an’ all that. You think God loves us? You think that? Take a look around, youngins!”
We don’t. I’ve seen enough of this place for a lifetime, which sadly seems to be just about right. Lester goes on, “There ain’t no God here, not here!”
“You talked about the devil yourself,” I say.
“I don’t believe in God,” Lester says. “The devil, now that’s a whole other thang.” I look at Miriam, holding herself back, face dipped low, hands folded on her lap. “Whachoo lookin’ at?” Lester asks me. “Don’t choo look’t my wife! That’s my wife, that’s my property! This house, those kids, that hound dog, it’s all mine. And you think you can slither in here like a couple of snakes and gobble it all up, don’t cha?”
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