Huckleberry Summer (Huckleberry Hill)

by Jennifer Beckstrand

  “Bud. The name’s Bud. Forty-Five is south. If you go west until you’re almost to Wittenberg, there’s an exit to Forty-Five.”

  “Thanks,” Aden said. He put his arm around Lily. “Do you think she could have a drink of water before we go?”

  Bud eyed them suspiciously before giving a curt nod. “In the house.”

  Aden nudged Lily away from him. “You go, Lily. I’ll stay out here and have a look around.”

  Lily thought she might faint. Aden was abandoning her mere minutes after he told her to stick by his side? Should she refuse to go?

  “Let’s all go in,” Bud said. “I’d like a drink myself.”

  “I’m not thirsty,” Aden replied.

  “Come in the house,” Bud said. “I won’t leave anyone out here alone.”

  Aden turned to Lily and winked. She managed a shallow breath. Aden had never planned on leaving her alone. He had manipulated Bud into coming with them. His skill impressed her. He’d cleared a path for Jamal and hadn’t told one lie.

  The screen door slammed shut behind them as they stepped into the house. Lily jumped involuntarily. That slam sounded final, as if they’d never escape.

  A lampshade shrouded an electric lightbulb hanging over the kitchen table. Two men sat at the table drinking beer and eating ribs. The older man had to be Bud’s father. He had the same tree-trunk arms and the same blond, curly hair, except less of it on top.

  Both men looked up and scowled at the same time. That one was definitely Bud’s dad. They had identical scowls.

  “Who’s this?” Bud’s dad said.

  Bud stood in front of the door as if he were guarding the exit. “They’re looking for the Lapps on highway Forty-Five.”

  Bud’s father narrowed his eyes and stood up. “You’re Amish.”

  Aden stretched a smile across his face and extended his hand. “I’m Aden Helmuth from Bonduel.”

  Bud’s father didn’t take the offered hand. He turned to the other man still seated at the table. Lily had only seen it once before, but his glassy stare indicated he was drunk, or at least halfway there. “Hey, Reggie,” Bud’s dad said, “you know any Lapps on Forty-Five?”

  Lily kept her eyes to the floor and her hands clasped tightly together. They mustn’t see how violently she shook.

  Reggie leaned back in his chair. “I don’t know, Earl. Is them the folks with the blue silo?”

  “No, that’s the Jorgensens.”

  “They want a drink, Dad,” Bud said.

  Even though she felt like she had a mouthful of dust, Lily couldn’t have swallowed a sip of water if her life depended on it. It took all her willpower not to knock Bud aside, dash out the door, and flee into the woods. How much more time would Jamal need?

  Bud’s dad, Earl, settled into his chair once again. “Glasses are in that cupboard.”

  She should probably act thirsty and get the water. Forcing one foot in front of the other, she located two glasses and filled them from the squeaky tap that smelled of sulfur.

  “Bonduel?” Earl said. “How’d you get all the way out here?”

  “We have a driver,” Aden said. Lily admired how cool he seemed, as if he were shooting the breeze with Floyd or Jamal.

  Earl didn’t like that answer. He frowned and scooted his chair out from under the table. “Outside? Bud, go invite their driver in for a drink.”

  “Oh, he’s not thirsty.”

  Bud let the door slam behind him, and Lily jumped out of her skin at the crack of wood against wood. Water sloshed in the glasses and dribbled onto the floor.

  Her legs turned to stone. She stood with the two glasses of water in her hands staring dumbly at Aden as if he could make everything all better.

  Aden gave her a slight shake of his head. What did he think she wanted to do? Try to talk her way out of this? Didn’t he remember what a coward she was?

  “Lily,” Aden prompted, “do you want to give me a drink?”

  She shuffled to Aden as if she were holding two sticks of dynamite. He didn’t break eye contact, which helped calm her nerves significantly. No matter what happened, she was with him, and he would make everything okay.

  She handed him both glasses of water and stepped slightly behind him. He chuckled softly and finished off the first glass in four gulps. Lily kept glancing at the door. What was happening out there?

  The screen door creaked open, and Jamal walked slowly into the room. Bud followed close behind with Jamal’s camera dangling from his fingers. Another boy, taller and thicker than Bud, came last.

  Lily held her breath. The last boy had a rifle. He didn’t point it at anybody, although that did nothing to calm Lily’s galloping heart. He held it slung over his arm as if it were a part of his body instead of a deadly weapon. If she could have moved her feet, she would have bolted for the door and screamed for Jamal and Aden to follow her. Why, oh why had she asked to come?

  Bud lifted the camera to show his dad. “He was taking pictures.”

  Glaring menacingly, Earl stood up and went toe to toe with the bigger boy, probably also his son. Same hair, same build. Only this one looked as if he could break a lamppost across his leg. “And what were you doing, Sammy? Sleeping?”

  Sammy pursed his lips like a naughty ten-year-old. “Sorry, Dad.”

  Earl turned his attention to Jamal and put his nose within three inches of Jamal’s face. The older man had to stand on tippy-toes. “What are you trying to pull?”

  “Nothing bad,” Jamal said.

  Lily was amazed that he didn’t cower or back down. As Aden had told her, both he and Jamal had plentiful experience in situations like this. They probably enjoyed the thrill. All Lily wanted to do was go home and knit something. She promised herself then and there that she would never, ever do anything so foolish ever again, and she would ask Anna to give her knitting lessons as soon as she got home.

  Earl stuck his face closer, forcing Jamal to back away. “You want to shut me down or something?”

  Jamal’s expression darkened, and he pressed his lips together into a hard line.

  Aden stepped in front of Lily and shielded her completely from Earl. “Jamal, don’t say anything.”

  “A man who mistreats animals like you do should be shut down,” Jamal spat out, as if he couldn’t hold the words inside him.

  Earl took his large hand and shoved Jamal against the wall. Jamal’s shoulder bumped a picture and sent it crashing to the floor. Shards of glass exploded everywhere. Earl and Reggie yelled obscenities at Jamal as if he’d thrown a rock through their window.

  Aden grabbed Lily’s arm. “Lily, get out of here. Go out the front door.”

  Lily hesitated to leave the relative safety of Aden’s side. Her legs wobbled, and she couldn’t imagine being able to run to the door. She would be all alone outside. The thought terrified her.

  Aden pushed her toward the front of the house. “Lily, get out!”

  The harshness in his voice shocked her and spurred her into action. She bolted past Reggie at the table and ran in the likely direction of the front door. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Aden grab Reggie’s arm so he couldn’t chase her down. She ran even harder.

  Utterly terrified, she didn’t stop running until she got to Jamal’s truck. Compared to the chaos in the house, the silence outside felt almost eerie. She didn’t know what to do. Should she get in the truck and wait? More likely than not, those brutes would find her. Neither Jamal nor Aden would want her back in the house, no matter how badly Aden needed help. Even if she charged back in there, there was nothing she could do to help him.

  She was worthless.

  A sob started deep in her throat, and she wrapped her arms around her midsection to keep from losing control of her emotions. She couldn’t just stand here and wait for those men to drag Aden and Jamal’s dead bodies into the road.

  Jamal’s phone sat on the driver’s seat inside the truck. Lily only noticed it because at that moment, it lit up in response to receiving a
text. She opened the door and snatched the phone. She’d always wished for a cell phone in a crisis. Now whom should she call?

  It took a minute to figure out how to actually make a call on Jamal’s phone, and then it took longer to dial because her hand trembled like a leaf in the wind.

  “Dispatch. What is your emergency?”

  “Please, help my friends. They’re killing them. You’ve got to come now.” Her voice rose in pitch with every word until she practically screamed into the phone.

  “Did you say your friends are being attacked?”

  “Yes, you’ve got to stop them.”

  “What is your location, ma’am?”

  Lily tried to quell the rising panic. “I’m not sure. I think we are about thirty miles west of Shawano on Highway Twenty-Nine. It’s a white house. Please hurry.”

  “Do you see a house number?”

  With the phone plastered to her ear, Lily ran toward the house until she could see the mailbox clearly. “I think it’s 435. There’s a puppy mill in the back. Do you know where the puppy mill is?”

  “Ma’am, try to stay calm. I’m alerting the sheriff now.”

  Try to stay calm. The four most useless words in the English language. How did one stay calm when Aden and Jamal might be dead?

  Almost at the point of hysteria, Lily paced back and forth in front of the truck, crying and groaning and praying for the sheriff to hurry up. She clapped her hands over her ears when she heard faint yelling from the house.

  The sheriff announced himself like a soundless exploding firework, and the glare of his bright lights momentarily blinded Lily. She stepped to the edge of the road and waved her hands over her head to get his attention, in case he didn’t know exactly where he was going. He pulled up behind Jamal’s truck, and she could hear him communicating on his radio.

  Two officers got out of the car.

  “Are you the one who called in the emergency?” one of them asked.

  “Yes,” Lily said breathlessly. “Please help them. They’re in the house, and one of them has a gun.”

  Both men suddenly became more alert. They drew their firearms, and Lily had never been so close to passing out in her life. “How many are in there?”

  “My two friends and four other men. That’s all I saw.”

  One of the policemen or sheriffs or whatever he was pointed to Jamal’s truck. “You stay here until we come to get you. Is that clear?”

  Lily nodded.

  They disappeared down the road. Lily didn’t even see them make it to the front door. Jamal had parked his truck far from the house in the shelter of some tall bushes.

  Again she found herself waiting for Aden, sick with worry that he might be injured or dead. She leaned her back against the grille of Jamal’s truck and wept until she ran out of tears.

  For a brief moment, Aden must have blacked out. He awoke sprawled on the floor, nose stinging, frantic with worry for Lily. He hoped she’d had the good sense to run far into the thicket and hide.

  Even though Aden’s brain was fuzzy, he remembered Earl nailing him in the face with that burly fist of his. His head throbbed painfully, and he could feel the blood pouring from his nose like a leaky faucet. He managed to sit up.

  The yelling had stopped, and Jamal sat next to him on the kitchen floor cradling his head in his hands. Sammy, Bud, and Reggie stood over them, poised for an attack. They hovered but didn’t say a word. Aden tried to piece together what was happening. Were they going to shoot them in the kitchen and hide their bodies in the woods?

  Nae, Aden didn’t fear that. These men weren’t that desperate or that evil. Aden hadn’t meant to, but he’d provoked a fight when he grabbed Reggie to keep him from catching Lily. Reggie and Sammy had socked him a couple of times, and Earl took a turn with them. Neither Jamal nor Aden had done anything but try to avoid the blows. Early on they had both learned that if they fought back, they could get charged with something big, like a felony.

  Aden tried to stanch the bleeding by pinching the bridge of his nose, but even a feather-soft touch sent pain shooting through his teeth. Oy anyhow, his head hurt something wonderful.

  Was Lily okay?

  A commotion at the front door caught Aden’s attention. His heart sank to his toes. Had Lily come back?

  “It’s the sheriff,” Reggie whispered. “Put your rifle on the table, Sammy.”

  Earl entered the kitchen with two uniformed officers right behind him with their guns drawn.

  “You see,” said Earl, speaking to the first officer, “they come in here to pick a fight. We was defending ourselves.”

  The second officer went to the table and retrieved Sammy’s gun.

  “I wasn’t never gonna shoot nobody,” Sammy said.

  Aden looked at the first officer. “Did you see an Amish girl?”

  “Yeah, she’s waiting outside.”

  Aden had never felt such extraordinary relief. It overcame every worry he should have had, like whether he would be arrested yet again. If they took him to jail, he wouldn’t be able to tell Floyd that he had kept out of trouble.

  Lily was safe. That was all that mattered.

  “That girl trespassed on my property,” Earl snapped. “Arrest her too.”

  Aden wouldn’t stand for that. It was one thing for him to go to jail, quite another for Lily to be dragged into that horrible place. “She didn’t do anything wrong. She just needed a drink.”

  Earl shoved a thick finger in Aden’s direction. “She was in on your plan all along.”

  The sheriff holstered his gun and shrugged his shoulders in resignation. “You want to press charges against the girl too?”

  “Yes, all of them.”

  Aden thought he might be sick. Even the experience of riding in a police car would bury Lily in shame. And her dat? Her dat would be completely justified in driving Aden clean out of Bonduel. Aden had exposed David’s daughter to things no one should have to see—especially not timid, innocent Lily. Remorse kicked him in the gut.

  Jamal stood up.

  Grunting, the sheriff bent over, grabbed Aden’s elbow, and helped him to his feet. “You got a dish towel or something? I don’t want him getting blood on my seats.”

  Bud handed Aden a paper towel, and he mopped up his nose as best he could even as it continued to drip. He turned to Earl. “Please don’t take this out on Lily. She never meant any harm to anyone.”

  Earl stood his ground. “She can tell the judge.”

  Jamal knew the drill. He put his hands behind his back, and the second officer clicked a pair of handcuffs on him.

  Aden got his own shiny pair of handcuffs, and the sheriff took his elbow and led him out of the house and down the road.

  Two police vehicles were parked behind Jamal’s truck. Aden searched frantically for a glimpse of Lily. Through the blinding lights, he saw her leaning against the front of the truck. Hearing their footsteps, she turned and screamed his name.

  She charged at him and threw her arms around his neck even as the officer did his best to nudge her away. “Aden, I was so scared.” She gasped and sobbed at the same time. “You’re bleeding. What happened?”

  “I’m okay, but listen. Try not to be scared.”

  “Miss, move away, please.”

  In bewilderment, Lily stepped back as the officer opened the patrol car door and pushed Aden inside. Her eyes became huge circles as she caught sight of the handcuffs around his wrists. At that moment, every bit of light seeped out of his heart.

  He loved Lily Eicher better than his own soul. It didn’t matter that she considered his dog a health hazard or that she couldn’t cook tofu to save her life. It didn’t even matter that her dat hated him. He loved her and he’d face a hundred pairs of handcuffs just to hold her in his arms. He ached with longing.

  The officer slammed the door, and Lily pounded on the window with her fists, screaming at the officer to let him go.

  Aden watched in horror as the sheriff took her by the wrists in a su
rprisingly gentle motion and slipped the handcuffs on. Her face twisted wildly with fear as she screamed Aden’s name over and over and tried to pull herself away.

  He put his face against the window and yelled her name. “Lily, Lily, don’t be frightened. I’m right here.” She didn’t hear a word.

  The sheriff dragged her, flailing and screaming, to the front car and shoved her into the backseat.

  Aden groaned and clamped his eyes shut, but Lily’s terrified expression was seared into his memory forever. He leaned his head against the back of the seat and ignored Jamal beside him as tears poured down his face.

  What he wouldn’t give to have this day over again.

  This was what it felt like to be in the depths of despair.

  Jamal lay on a bench, the only thing in the cell, with his knees bent and his feet touching the floor. It was a short bench.

  Every nerve in Aden’s body seemed to be on fire, and he paced in the jail cell until he should have worn a path in the cement. Two steps this way, two steps the other way. Two steps this way, two steps the other way.

  He hadn’t seen Lily since they had hauled her away. How was she holding up? She might faint or fall apart before they even took a fingerprint. Aden shuddered. He had to train his thoughts on something else. Worrying about Lily would drive him insane.

  When he and Jamal had been thrown in jail before, they usually sat next to each other on the floor of their cell and told jokes until one of their friends came to bail them out.

  Jamal, oblivious to Aden’s turmoil, was his usual cool self. “Is your nose broken?” he asked as he drummed his fingers on his stomach and stared up at the ceiling. He probably asked to ease the boredom or the tension rather than because he really wanted to know. “You should see how swollen it is.”

  Aden didn’t answer. If he spoke, he’d probably start yelling at the sheriff to let him out now.

  He was crazy with the need to see Lily.

  Jamal kept drumming. “The good news is, I got the memory card out of the camera before he took it. Three pictures is all I got, but it should be enough.”

  Aden took hold of one of the bars high above him and leaned his forehead against a lower bar. Three pictures. Those three pictures had cost him everything.