Finding Mercy

by Karen Harper

  “Sarah’s at her parents’ house?” Ella asked, because her mind had snagged on that impossibility. “But she’s under the bann, and her father won’t allow… And Nate’s been sent for—to go there?”

  Her own heart was beating so hard she shook. Would she soon wake up from all of this? But Grossmamm’s news about Sarah’s being taken in by her family was a blessing.

  “Ya, Nate McKenzie will be welcome there, for now. Sarah’s resting good. She asked where you went, but I said I would tell her later. Now, it will be much later.”

  Grossmamm turned and walked away. Ella’s head was spinning worse than when she rolled down the hill.

  As Andrew went down to talk to Daad, Ella started to throw things into her little suitcase. Grossmamm popped back in one more time.

  “And put in some of that nice lavender suntan cream too,” she said. “We’re not just going to hide out down there. We’re going to enjoy life and see if we can save that man, save his life and save his soul.”

  14

  SO, ALEX THOUGHT as the miles blurred by outside the bus window, he was playing Amish again. He was not only fleeing but with others to worry about this time, though they acted as if they were taking care of him.

  Ella and her grandmother slept in their seats across the aisle. He’d insisted on sitting in the back of the bus so he could keep his eye on the few other passengers—eight Amish, two Mennonite and four English, nowhere near a full load. Somehow it made it all worse that it was the middle of the night and too dark to really observe people inside the bus or cars outside that might mean trouble.

  Imagine, he thought, shaking his head, Alex Caldwell, executive director of a Manhattan-based international firm, a refugee riding something that resembled a Greyhound bus down Interstate-75 through the Appalachians, running for his life—and maybe now for Ella’s too.

  After convincing her distraught parents this was the best thing to do, after prayers, hugs and advice, the three of them had trekked over the familiar field between the Lantz and Esh farms. In the early-morning hours the night of the wedding, the bishop himself had buggied the three of them a roundabout way into Homestead, where they’d roused an Englische driver the Amish often hired. He had driven them into Wooster where they waited hours the next day at a place called the Guerne Heights Drive-In to catch this Pioneer Trails bus.

  Though exhausted, Alex had stayed awake until they’d bought their tickets and finally boarded. At least it was a luxury cruiser with a bathroom on board. Mrs. Lantz had packed them food, because there would be only one stop during the seventeen-hour trip, and that was for breakfast later this morning in Tifton, Georgia. Alex hated the idea of going through Atlanta, right past the motel where he could have been killed.

  Now and then he leaned out into the aisle to see what time it was on the clock above the windshield at the front of the bus. Almost 4:30 a.m. His eyes had long ago adjusted to the dark, and he’d been watching Ella in the reflected lights of passing traffic. She looked so beautiful asleep. For a moment, he pictured her lying on the pillow next to him in a big bed, to have and to hold. But now her brow was furrowed, and she fidgeted as if snared in a bad dream, which, thanks to him, she was. He longed to comfort her but he needed comforting himself.

  As a noisy semi passed the bus, her eyelids flickered open. She glanced over at him and gave him a sleepy smile that made his insides flip-flop like a sixteen-year-old’s. She rose carefully from her seat beside her grandmother and came across the aisle to sit by him as he shifted over to the window seat.

  “We could all spread out on our own seat and lie down to sleep,” she said, stifling a yawn. “There’s room enough, for sure.” The hypnotic hum of the wheels on the road meant she didn’t have to keep her voice down. Besides, Grossmamm Ruth slept like a rock. She’d been exhausted at the wedding but had put on a good front about being able to make the trip. He knew too that she was worried about her daughter in Pennsylvania, who had some sort of health issue she’d recently learned about.

  “Grossmamm says these buses are loaded in the winter,” Ella told him, “but I only counted seventeen passengers, including us.”

  He turned even more away from the window toward her. Their arms touched on the armrests, and it seemed so natural to be close to her. “One of the best things your grandmother said was that little Pinecraft would be almost a ghost town right now. It sounds like a good refuge until I can figure out what to do and it’s safe for you to go home.”

  “I always wanted to see the Gulf of Mexico, walk the beach and gather shells, though I sure won’t get in the water. When my grandparents told me years ago about how pretty it was, I thought it sounded like paradise. I’ve seen Lake Erie, but this is the farthest I’ve ever gone. See, something good comes out of something bad.”

  “That’s what I’m hoping for in my life.”

  “Will you—I mean, now that I know your first name at least—will you tell me more about your life, about the real you?”

  The seats around them were empty, and Grossmamm was still asleep. It scared Alex how badly he wanted to share everything with Ella when he’d tried to keep his secrets. He sighed and took her hand.

  “My name is Alexander Caldwell, and I’m thirty-two, never married. My parents are deceased, and I was an only child—hardly an Amish-size family. I grew up in Fairfax, Virginia, went to William and Mary College where I played guard on the basketball team—my big passion at that time in my life.”

  “Guard. That sounds like your mission, trying to take care of others.”

  He smiled to keep from laughing at that. Better not to explain that his mission as guard was to take care of the ball, and his original mission in life was to just have fun, chase girls and take care of himself. It touched him how she gave him credit for what was a really selfish youth.

  “So then what?” she prompted.

  “I went to another college—Harvard—to get an MBA, which is a business degree.”

  “So then you learned all about the packaging, branding and promotion you said I should use to expand my lavender business.”

  She’d surprised him again, remembering all that he’d only mentioned once when he should have kept his mouth shut. “That’s right,” he said. “And I want to apologize for taking you away from your lavender in peak season.”

  “Barbara’s helped me before. She and Mamm can keep it going, though I hate to think of Connie Lee coming around again with her fancy car, clothes and ideas, when she was probably just spying on us and you. And here,” she said, with a sigh, “she was the main way I was thinking to expand.”

  “Once I—we—get through this, and we nail whoever took you and wants me, I’ll help you expand. I owe you a lot.”

  She shook her head. “We were all glad to help you, take you in and tend to—to your wounds, like the Good Samaritan did to the man who fell among thieves. Is that kind of what happened to you? You got in with someone bad and tried to make it right and now they’ve turned on you?”

  He gripped her hand. “Yeah, that’s kind of it.”

  “Do you miss your other life a lot?”

  “Some of it. But some of it seems—well, shallow and too rushed and—I don’t know—pointless since I’ve observed and been a small part of your people’s ways. But I’ve got to see all this through. Ella, there’s going to be a trial where I’ll testify against my former mentor and boss. Big publicity, things brought out into the light that will rattle a lot of cages, even affect some high-ups in the government of two countries. It’s a Pandora’s box.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Like a can of worms.”

  “Oh. And you will testify about man-made spy satellites and the Chinese?”

  He reached out to cup her chin. “You aren’t a spy sent to seduce me into telling you all my deepest, darkest secrets, are you?”

  “I’m your guard. Like in basketball, only this is the game of life. And, Alex, there is a real paradise much better than sunny Florida beyond li
fe. Facing death is terrifying—as I can testify—but there can be something wonderful beyond if you just trust Someone stronger than yourself, and I sure don’t mean me.”

  “I’ve got to get through the here and now and keep us all safe,” he insisted. “And part of my problem is you really get to me in all kinds of ways, and I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “In all kinds of ways—I like that,” she said with a pert smile as he reluctantly loosed his grip on her chin. “I want us to stay safe for you but I don’t know if I want to stay safe from you. And on that, I’m going to get in my own seat, lie down and sleep until the Cracker Barrel Restaurant stop for breakfast in Tifton, Georgia. Do you think there will be palm trees there?”

  “Not there, not yet.”

  He longed to pull her to him and kiss her, just a good-night and grateful kiss—or more—but she popped up and left him to his agonizing.

  * * *

  “I’m in shock,” Alex told Ella and Grossmamm, as he woke up from a dead sleep and looked out the window.

  “And you weren’t when you first saw Amish country?” Ella asked.

  “True, but this little enclave of Pinecraft—there’s not even a sign labeling it, but I’m grateful for a well-kept secret.”

  The neighborhood was nestled on the east-side sprawl of busy Sarasota. Jets coasted overhead and cars were everywhere on busy, four-lane Bahia Vista Boulevard. Yet, down the grid of side streets and all around was a quiet enclave of what appeared to be a separate, sleepy village.

  He admitted to himself he missed the hills, open fields and woodlots. Nothing looked Amish at first, until he saw a sign for Troyer’s Dutch Heritage Restaurant and a couple of bearded men in straw hats. Except for that, this tidy community of trailer courts, small houses, bungalows and little shops could be any lower-class but neatly kept Southern neighborhood.

  It was half past noon when the bus pulled up in front of the Tourist Mennonite Church and finally came to a stop. Alex felt dopey, as if they were still moving. They’d had the air-conditioning on ever since the Georgia-Florida line, so he knew it was going to be hot and humid outside, but that was the price to be paid for Pinecraft being a ghost town this time of year. Man, he needed a shower or dip in the Gulf, but Grossmamm Ruth had told him that Lido Beach and Siesta Key Beach were a city bus ride away.

  A few folks greeted the bus with happy, noisy reunions when their fellow passengers got off. The three of them waited until the little welcoming committee had dispersed. Alex kept looking out the windows, all around, but saw no one suspicious, no one who didn’t appear to belong. They disembarked and retrieved their bags from the driver who had stored them in the belly of the bus. “Hope you got three-wheeled bikes like everyone else around here,” Lem, the driver said. “Always thought buggies would add something to the charm, but the horses would melt in this heat.”

  They thanked him and, blinking in the bright sun, trudged a few blocks to the Raber cottage, for that was Grossmamm’s married name.

  Why didn’t the Amish wear sunglasses? Wasn’t that needful and therefore not prideful for eyes in this bright sun? Hat brim or not, he was getting a pair ASAP. He told himself to calm down: he was strung out physically and emotionally as well as still scared for himself and his companions.

  “Good thing we didn’t rent it out this year,” Grossmamm said as she produced a key to unlock the door. “Next door, I see they rented again, though. That’s where the Kurtzes from Sugarcreek live in the winter, real good, nice folks.”

  As they stepped into the dim, quiet cottage, Alex got hit with more surprises, welcome ones. The old woman clicked on an electric light, started a window air conditioner, and he saw a wall telephone. “Came with the place, got to have all that fancy worldly stuff to rent it,” Grossmamm said only.

  The narrow cottage had a small front room, two little bedrooms with a bathroom between and a tiny kitchenette. “Wow,” he said. “The modern world.”

  “But we go to the beach on a bus and in the water dressed just like this,” the old woman told him. “Does this place need cleaning! But not now. What you call this I have—jet lag?”

  “Bus lag,” Alex said, walking around quickly to look out all the windows. In the tiny, high-fenced backyard, trees were laden with citrus fruit, one with limes, one oranges. Off-season ghost town or not, she was right about someone living right next door. There were clothes hanging on the line, stranger than some of the things he’d seen on Amish clotheslines. Old-time police uniforms? Clown costumes?

  “Ella and I will sleep in here,” Grossmamm announced and went inside the bigger bedroom, followed by Ella with both their suitcases Alex had been carrying. He collapsed in a rocking chair in front of the air conditioner but started to sneeze when it kicked out dust.

  “God bless you!” Ella said when she came back out and plugged in the refrigerator, closing the door on its empty insides, which reminded Alex he was starving. “I can’t wait to look around this place and see the beach!”

  “We’ll head to the beach tomorrow, maybe eat at Yoder’s tonight. I figure I can pretend I have a sore throat and you two can talk for me if the Deutsche is going fast and furious. But we are going to have to be wary and aware of our surroundings—of people. I don’t think they, whoever they is, can track us here, though they found me twice before.”

  “I pray we will be safe. But even your Mr. Branin doesn’t know where you are. Bishop Esh said he wouldn’t tell. No one but my nearest family members and Bishop Esh know.”

  He sneezed again. “Speaking of God bless,” he told her, “I’m praying He keeps a good eye on your family as well as us. As clever as our great escape seems, I’m still a hot commodity to someone who tried to kill me once before.”

  “But since I was just kidnapped,” she said, “I was thinking maybe that’s all they’d do to you—keep you prisoner until after the trial and then it would be too late for you to do them any damage.”

  He shook his head, got up wearily and went to her, put his hands on her shoulders. “It doesn’t work that way. No Alexander Caldwell, no trial. Now that you know what kind of a target—and danger—I am, maybe I should leave you two here for a while and go off on my own—really get lost.”

  “No,” she said, clasping his wrists with both hands so that it seemed they propped each other up. “They won’t find you again. At least give it some time, get some rest. As long as you don’t call in—call anyone—it’s got to be safe here.”

  She looked as if she were going to cry. He kissed her cheek, turned her around and gently propelled her toward the bedroom door.

  “I’ll wake you both for dinner later,” he said. “Table for three at Yoder’s—very romantic.”

  She lifted a hand in a little wave, his Ella enchanted and enchanting, went inside and closed the bedroom door.

  Alex checked to see the front and back doors were locked, then the living room and his bedroom windows. He carried his few earthly, Amish possessions into his tiny, plain bedroom. He hid most of his money under the pine dresser, now only about three hundred fifty dollars since he’d bought the bus ticket. He took his shirt and suspenders off, used the bathroom. He splashed cold water on his face and upper torso, then, leaving his bedroom door open, unlike the women’s, stretched out atop the quilt on the double bed that almost dwarfed the room.

  Being here with two Amish women, both of whom he admired, but one he wanted… So conflicted. What to do? What next?

  His eyelids were heavy, but what was that strange sound? He could not let this place and Ella’s confidence lull him into complacency. The bus could have been followed. Someone could figure out where they were… Would he ever be able to relax again, to be himself—whatever that self was now that he felt so changed after such a short time in the heart of Amish country, in his own heart, yearning… Situation analysis: goals, competitors, brand… Goals, to protect these women and live long enough to testify…competitors…captors, killers…brand upon his heart…Ella…

&nbs
p; He jerked awake and sat straight up, his heart thudding. What was that sound? He rose, walked to the room’s only window and parted the slats. A spear of sunlight shot in, almost blinding him. He couldn’t believe what he saw. From behind a fence and their neighbors’ clothesline, which was crowded with two orange shock wigs and floppy pants and jackets of two dark blue, old-time policeman costumes with oversize brass buttons, a man kept appearing, rising, falling. He made strange faces, weird posturing frozen in space for a moment as if he were chasing someone or running away. Then he disappeared downward again. Was he on a trampoline? Was he watching their house while pretending to practice some crazy stunts? No, Alex scolded himself, he was the one punch-drunk with exhaustion, but he was not seeing things. He shook his head and snorted a laugh. His life was in shambles, and he just might be going nuts. There was a contract out on his life. He had fallen for an Amish virgin. And his next-door neighbor was not an Amish bishop this time but a circus clown!

  15

  “I DIDN’T KNOW it could all look so big, the waves too,” Ella said to Andrew—they’d decided they must still use that name for him—as he put the cooler on their blanket late the next morning at Lido Beach. They sat side by side about twenty feet from the surf rolling up on the slick sand. It was pretty obvious the tide was coming in. “I think I’ll just look for shells in the dry part of the beach,” she told him.

  Grossmamm had been too worn-out to come with them on the city bus. Truth be told, Ella knew the old woman had been exhausted the night of Seth and Hannah’s wedding when she’d urged them to flee to Pinecraft, despite her claims that she wasn’t tired at all.