Clouds without Rain

by P. L. Gaus

  Branden and Troyer came up the steps, and Cal introduced the professor. Weaver offered his hand, and Branden shook it lightly, as he knew the custom to be so often among the Low Ones.

  Weaver explained that the rest of the men were waiting inside, and he escorted the visitors into a front sitting room, where a dozen or so men sat on wooden benches lining the four walls of the room. They were each dressed to match the bishop, the only differences being the colors of a few blouses, one white, another light green, some pink. The rest were dark blue like the bishop’s. All were handmade and buttonless, with a slit at the neck, running down about six inches, and tied with a string. As they sized up Troyer and Branden, there were soft murmurings in low German dialect.

  The bishop clapped his hands to get their attention and instructed that they would all now use only English, for the benefit of their guests. Shaker chairs were provided for both Troyer and Branden, and the bishop offered a teapot and two porcelain cups, saying, “We are all having tea this morning.”

  Branden and Troyer each took a cup and waited for the bishop to begin.

  The bishop said, “So that you will understand, Professor, I’ll start by saying that my brother was a scoundrel and a cheat. He was a shepherd who fed only himself. He was right out of the Book of Jude. A ‘cloud without rain, blown along by the winds’; an ‘autumn tree, without fruit and uprooted—twice dead.’

  “Money and land were his undoing. He loved both, to the exclusion of everything else. He also loved the modern and profane things that money can buy. He was dead to us long before the accident took his life, and all the troubles that are now about to befall us are the direct result of his greed.

  “And Bischoff Melvin P. permitted him to remain in the district, because Yoder was too liberal. More liberal than any I have known, here or in Pennsylvania. I judge that he, too, was a vain and proud man, unwilling to exert his authority to cast my brother out of the fold. As a result, people like my brother were tolerated, loosely, in the congregation.

  “Well, John Weaver should have been removed from the people long ago. They should have been allowed no dealings with him for land, or anything else, so far as I see it. But land was tight, and the district was growing, so Yoder allowed some of the younger fellas to acquire land a while back from my brother, on a lease-to-own basis, with no down payments.”

  Weaver gave both Branden and Troyer a copy of the lease-to-purchase contracts that John Weaver had used to set up the land transactions. Branden leafed through his copy and then decided he could do a more thorough job of reading it later. Cal started reading Clause A, and was interrupted by Andy Weaver.

  Weaver said, “There was no trouble until two weeks ago. But the way I read that contract, there was bound to be trouble, sooner or later, and Bischoff Yoder should have seen it coming. Now, some of our families stand to lose their farmlands.” He said something further in dialect, and eight men sheepishly raised their hands.

  Branden said, “I’d want to look at this in some detail, later, and perhaps have a lawyer take a look at it, too.”

  Weaver nodded and said, “That’s what I had hoped.”

  Then Weaver produced two copies of a letter. “Eight of our men received these letters almost two weeks ago.”

  Branden and Troyer read their copies of the letter, and when finished, Troyer whistled softly and shook his head. Branden opened his copy of the lease-to-purchase agreement and began to read Clause F.

  “Can he do that, Professor?” one of the men asked from a bench.

  Branden read the clause, and then the letter, again. When he had finished, he said, “I don’t know. It appears so. Still, I can’t be sure. This whole thing might hinge on how Weaver’s trust is executed. Whether or not the buyback that Weaver intended is honored, and that may depend on who Weaver’s inheritors turn out to be.”

  Branden turned pensive. He wondered, nervously, what it was that Britta Sommers actually had done. As if to assuage his concerns, he thought of her unquenchable spirit in high school. He thought of the college years when they had lost track of each other. He saddened, remembering the abusive years before her divorce had set her free. Now, it seemed, was the season of her triumph, cashing out to retire comfortably at forty-nine. But the fire changed everything, he realized, as did this matter concerning the land she had helped to sell. Eventually he spoke to Andy. “At the worst, if your brother had already cut the checks to buy you all out, and if he had actually also sold the land to someone else, maybe a developer . . . ” He let the sentence trail off.

  “How would we know that?” Andy asked.

  “We’ve got to start with the bank,” Cal said. “Unless Britta Sommers turns up, someone will be put in charge of John’s trust.”

  Branden said, “Britta told me she had already transferred all her accounts to other officers. We need to know who took over J. R. Weaver’s trust.”

  Andy said, “Are you saying that we may be able to keep the land, already?”

  “I don’t know just yet,” Branden said.

  “The boys have settled their families here,” Andy said. “They’ve taken responsibility for a piece of God’s land. They’ve paid both principal and interest, faithfully. Now, from what you are telling me, the land may already have been sold.”

  Branden rose from his chair and said, “We’re going to try to stop that.” He offered his hand to Weaver.

  Cal rose and shook the bishop’s hand, too. Now all of the men were on their feet, talking in dialect again, looking almost optimistic.

  Bishop Weaver spoke a Dutch phrase to the men and followed Cal and Branden out onto the front porch. Branden went down the steps, but Cal turned to face Weaver.

  “I lost another family, Cal,” Weaver said.

  Cal nodded sympathetically.

  “And those two boys?” Weaver added. “It looks like the worst kind of trouble you could imagine.”

  “What do you plan to do about ’em?”

  “I’ve got to confront them, Cal. Get them away from their parents and confront them face to face.”

  “That serious?”

  “It’s deeply spiritual, Cal, as you know. It may be worse than either of us could have guessed.”

  Cal said, “Whatever you need, Andy,” and shook Weaver’s hand.

  “Don’t tell Branden, Cal,” Weaver whispered and turned back into the house.

  On the ride home, Branden asked, “You said there was a boy from this congregation who’s been acting strange?”

  “He’s not exactly a boy,” Cal said. “He’s twenty-four.”

  “Were any of his family at our meeting just now?”

  “His oldest brother,” Cal said. “He’s one of the eight who stand to lose their farms.”

  “We need to talk to that family, Cal. Also the young man. If I can make arrangements to talk to him, can you set something up tonight with the family?”

  “Who do you want to talk to?”

  “His parents, first. Others if necessary.”

  Branden parked his truck in front of Troyer’s white frame church house, and the two sat and read the lease-to-purchase agreement that eight young men had signed nearly thirteen years ago. There was a standard payment schedule, $80,000 over twenty years, at 8 percent interest, with no down payment. There was a clause that allowed the Amish to pay off the land after fifteen years. And there was Clause F, stating that if the value of the land should triple during the lease period, John R. Weaver could exercise the option to pay back the principal, plus a straight 8 percent interest, and then sell the land outright, to whomever he pleased.

  13

  Friday, August 11

  9:30 A.M.

  BRANDEN found the offices and workrooms of the Weston Surveying Company in one of the old, spacious homes that line the Wooster Road in the north end of Millersburg. He parked in the rear lot, off an alley, and climbed the weathered steps to a wraparound porch. A hand-lettered sign beside the back screen door read “Weston Surveying—Please S
tep In” and gave the business hours. Branden rapped on the wooden door, pulled it open on noisy hinges, and stepped into a large room with faded wallpaper and high ceilings, trimmed in dark wood, with an aged metal desk and a battery of gray filing cabinets lining the walls.

  He called out, “Hello,” and heard a vague response from a room at the front of the house. He walked down a hallway and turned a corner into what had once been the foyer of the grand Victorian house. The floors were wooden, worn in places and covered in rugs elsewhere. The ceilings and corners were trimmed lavishly in wood. The hallways and smaller rooms of the house were cluttered with bins and boxes, map tables and charts, padded cases for surveyor’s instruments—old Theodolites and the newer Total Stations with infrared beams and on-board computers. Tripods and prism poles were stacked in corners. Filing cabinets and computer stations of several varieties were positioned throughout the first-floor rooms.

  In a small parlor at the front of the house, Branden found a diminutive, middle-aged man with curly blond hair, sitting on a rolling desk chair, pulled up close to a computer screen.

  Branden stood in the doorway and waited with his badge holder looped over his belt in front.

  The man’s gaze remained fixed on the computer screen. He waved an arm to acknowledge the professor, said, “Be right with you,” finished a few lines with a flourish at the keyboard, and spun his chair around to look up at Branden. He saw the reserve deputy sheriff’s badge, stood up, offered his hand, and said, “I’m Jim Becker. Foreman.”

  Branden introduced himself and said, “I was hoping to find Jim Weston.”

  “Jimmy Weston is down to New Philly.” Becker lifted a stack of magazines and charts from an old swivel chair and rolled it out for his visitor. Easing back into his own chair, he said, “Jimmy left a message on our machine last night. He’s off on business. Said he’d be gone all day, maybe tomorrow, too.”

  Branden hesitated, wondering briefly if he should stay, and then took a seat. “So he might not be back for a couple of days?”

  “Could be,” Becker said. “You here about the wreck, or Britta Sommers?”

  “The wreck,” Branden said. “Weston evidently saw it all. Did he talk much about it?”

  “Couldn’t talk about anything else all day Tuesday,” Becker said.

  “I wanted to get his account of it,” Branden explained.

  “Jimmy’s awful shook up,” Becker said.

  “About the wreck?”

  “That and Brittany Sommers being missing.”

  Branden nodded and said, “They used to be sweethearts back in high school.”

  Becker pulled closer and said, “Jimmy still loved her,” with an eyebrow raised. “She helped him out of a jam or two over the years.”

  “You’re not his partner?”

  “Foreman. He and I are the only two licensed surveyors in the outfit, and then we’ve got a crew of two more men who go out with us in two-man squads.”

  “But you did talk with him about the wreck?” Branden prodded.

  “On Tuesday,” Becker said. “We were supposed to finish up a couple of lots out north of Walnut Creek, but Jimmy couldn’t work. Or so he said. By noon, I’d heard about all I cared to hear on the Weaver wreck, so I took the new guy out for a training run.”

  Branden gave a questioning look, and Becker explained.

  “Since Larry Yoder hasn’t been working—he’s the fellow who used to hold prism poles for Weston—we’ve been short a man. We always need one to take data at the tripod and another to handle the prism rod.”

  “How long has that been?”

  “Since we lost Yoder?”

  “Right.”

  “Couple of weeks. Weston finally had to let him go officially. Wasn’t reliable. Jimmy tried to help him, but Yoder was a nut case, and he wouldn’t take his medicine. Had a drinking problem, too.”

  “The bishop out with the Yoder family said Larry Yoder was upset about some of the surveying you were doing,” Branden offered.

  “I reckon he was,” Becker said, and eased back on his swivel chair. “We finished up on some five-acre tracts in the hills north of Walnut Creek for Sommer Homes, but Yoder got angry about something when we started in on the farms out there. You never know with that kid, anyways. He and Weston had words, and Yoder went off the deep end. I’ve seen him that way before. He blows hot and cold. One month he’ll be down, brooding, and another he’ll be pumped. Either way his temper gets the better of him and Jimmy fired him. Can’t say as I’m sorry.”

  “From what I’ve heard, your Larry Yoder was upset that those farms were being cut up. He’s got family out there.”

  “That’s John Weaver’s deal. Or it was. We just do the surveying,” Becker said, somewhat defensively. “Anyway, Jimmy has put it all on hold, now that Weaver is dead and Brittany Sommers is missing.”

  Branden considered that and asked, “You say Weston is over in New Philadelphia?”

  “Yes. Trying to scope out new surveying deals. That’s a fresh area for us.”

  “Let’s go back to what he told you about the wreck,” Branden suggested.

  “More than I wanted to know. Got so as I felt guilty that I wasn’t out there myself. He even called me from the roadside after it happened.”

  “I probably saw him make that call,” Branden said, remembering the chaos of the accident scene.

  “He told me everything. It was like he couldn’t shake the thing. There was a backfire, and the horse went down. Buggy stalled. Semi came over the hill too fast. Air brakes squawking and hissing. The jackknife. Cab crashed into the buggy and the trailer overturned on a car as it skidded on down the hill.”

  “That sounds about right,” Branden said and stared at the carpet, thinking about the crash. After a moment, he thanked Becker, saw himself out the back door and sat for several quiet minutes in his car, wondering if there was any point in talking to Becker again. It surely was Weston he needed to talk to, but maybe not. There would be MacAfee this morning, and then the facts of the crash would be well established. Briefly, he wondered what had happened between Sommers and Weston after he had left high school for college. Eventually, he walked back into the offices, hunted up Becker and asked, “Do you know if Weston has been, well . . . ‘involved’ with Sommers lately?”

  “Couldn’t tell you,” Becker said and shrugged. “He never talks much about that sort of thing.”

  The phone rang, and Becker wheeled his chair over to the desk. He said, “Hello,” listened for a moment and said, “How in the world did you manage that, Jimmy?” Then he grinned, gave a laugh, and waved Branden farther into the room. At intervals he said, “I’m NOT laughing. Which hospital? All right. Sure, we can work south of Walnut Creek instead. OK. You sure you’re all right? No problem. What? Nobody knows, Jimmy; she hasn’t turned up. What? Right. OK, bye.”

  When he turned to Branden, Becker was smiling again, almost laughing. He tapped fingers on his knee and said, “That was Jimmy Weston, there. He’s got himself in an emergency room over in Dover. Fell off some boulders at a prospective site and cut himself all to pieces in a patch of wild raspberries along an old barbed-wire fence.”

  14

  Friday, August 11

  10:38 A.M.

  CAL Troyer bent over beside the three-story white frame house and turned on the water spigot for Andy Weaver, who held the open end of the hose down in a shallow irrigation ditch in the garden beside the house. The warm water from the attic tank ran the length of the hose, spilled out the end, and disappeared into the dry soil. Eventually, the soil began to darken with the water. Slowly, the dark patch moved forward in the trough between two ragged lines of beans.

  Andy laid the end of the hose in the trough and ambled back to Cal. They came slowly around to the shaded front porch and took seats, side by side, on a deacon’s bench.

  What was left of a large garden covered a scant quarter-acre beside the house. Beyond the garden there ran a sagging line of grapes, the thick sho
ots hanging with stunted new growth from wire strung between old posts. Behind the garden, three small, matching red barns with rusted metal roofs stood baking in the morning sun. Beyond that, high above the barns, there stood a windmill on corroded metal stilts. The white vanes of the windmill turned slowly from time to time in a light, irregular breeze.

  The tin roof of the white house was painted a fresh, brilliant green, and red brick chimneys sprang from the peaks on either end of the roofline. Beside the house, the driveway was made of baked, packed earth. It came up to the house past a fenced area for a billy goat, and a sturdy wooden bench set on the lawn, taking the weight of three fifty-gallon drums of heating oil. The billy goat was munching on the end of a hay bale in the shade.

  The long clothesline in front of the house was hung with the bishop’s recent wash, dark blue shirts, denim britches, and sheets and towels in faded colors. Scattered on the lawn, there were several old white stumps where trees had come down over the years.

  A neighbor lady in an aqua dress, long white apron, and black bonnet came through the front screen door and past Cal and Andy, carrying another basket of the bishop’s laundry out to the clothesline. At the side of the house, her two youngest boys had set up sawhorses and were working in the heat, pink shirtsleeves rolled up, to install white-trimmed aluminum replacement windows in a downstairs room. By noon, the mother and her sons would be gone, and another neighbor’s buggy would wheel down the drive, bringing the bishop’s lunch.

  Cal leaned back on the deacon’s bench and stretched his legs out. He took a handkerchief and ran it over his forehead and around his neck. He turned slightly to Weaver and said, “Losing their farms doesn’t mean they’d have to leave your congregation, Andy.”