Williamson, Penelope

by The Outsider

  She lengthened her stride. Her whole body felt as if it were puffing with each heartbeat. Her breathing rushed like the wind in her ears. She tripped over an exposed root and staggered, nearly spilling the bucket of blackberries she carried swinging from one hand.

  It had been Noah's idea that she bring the berries to Rachel. They grew in wild abandon on their side of the creek, way more than they could ever eat or preserve. It was only right, Noah had said, that they share God's abundance with others.

  Hunh. Easy for him to say. Easy for him to promise blackberries to his precious Rachel, and then leave it up to his sister Fannie to be the actual bearer of his charity.

  She emerged from the woods in back of the Yoder barn and immediately felt better out in the hot, bright sunshine. She felt disheveled, though, after rushing along the path like that, and so she paused at the bottom of the porch steps to put all of herself back in order. Rachel—now, she was the one to let herself go flying about without a thought for the hair escaping from her prayer cap.

  The door creaked a little beneath Fannie's hand as she opened it. The Plain never knocked on each other's doors during the daylight hours, for no one ever did anything that was better left unwitnessed. Friends and neighbors were welcome at any time. The Plain always left their latch-strings out.

  At the moment, though, the kitchen was empty, and Fannie was pleased to find it so. If Rachel were here she would have invited her to stay for some coffee klatsch, and Fannie did always love a good gossip. So she would have been tempted to linger and tarry and the next thing she knew she'd have been running home through the shadowy woods after the sun had already begun to sink behind the black hulking mountains.

  This way, with Rachel off doing farm chores somewhere, she would be able to put the bucket of blackberries on the table and leave.

  She did pause long enough on the threshold of the kitchen to glance around and inspect Rachel's housekeeping. All was in order, except for a bathing tub that leaned against the wall, tipped onto its end to dry out. And a damp towel was hanging from one of the wall hooks. Fannie wondered what had prompted Rachel to bathe on a day that wasn't Saturday. Ach vell, she thought, shrugging, Rachel had always been the one for breaking the rules.

  She took a step toward the table, and the house moaned.

  She thought it was the wind, until she heard it again. Deeper this time, more like a growl, like an animal in pain. Another moan, and a rough, harsh panting, coming from the bedroom.

  With quiet steps she crossed the kitchen and walked right up to the door, for it was partway open.

  Rachel lay sprawled naked on the bed, her legs flung wide, her hands gripping the white iron rails above her head. Her neck was stretched in a painful arc, her eyes flaring wide on the rafters, those terrible moans coming from her taut throat. And the outsider was kneeling between Rachel's spread thighs. He was naked all over and slick with sweat, and his eyes glowed wild and savage. And as Fannie watched, he gripped Rachel's bottom with his hands, lifting her, and he pushed his face into her woman's hair, and he—

  Fannie choked and whirled, staggering with such force she banged against the wall. The bucket fell from her hand, clattering, spilling berries that she crushed beneath her half boots as she ran from the house.

  She got as far as the barn before she collapsed onto her knees in the dirt and vomited up the pone and blackberries that she'd eaten before leaving home. Long after her stomach was empty, she retched and heaved, until she feared she would be spewing out her guts next.

  Finally the heaves subsided to a few wrenching shudders. She pressed her fist into her open mouth, squeezing her eyes shut, but it did no good, for the horror of it was seared on her memory forever. The horror of what the outsider, that monster, had been doing to their poor Rachel.

  He had been... Dear God in heaven, he had been feeding on her.

  CHAPTER 23

  Rachel was making a slipped custard pie.

  It was a foolish thing to be doing so late at night, and it was a tricky thing too, which was why she was doing it. She needed something to occupy her head and hands, because when her hands were idle they started to shake, and she was too full of feelings to think. The mashed blackberries had left blue stains, like ink splashes, on her pine floor. Every time her eyes fell on those stains, her belly clenched with a sick dread.

  She ran a spatula around the edge of the custard, separating it from the plate. Da will be the one to come. No—it is the deacon's place to confront a Plain one who has been caught out in a sin. Noah I can face. It will be hard, hard, but I would sooner face Noah than Da. She shook the plate gently, loosening the custard. I'll have to face them all eventually, though, Da and my brothers, Mem, oh, poor Mem to be condemned even more for the daughter she has raised. The custard wasn't loosening very well. She shook the plate harder. Judas, she was ruining it. I'll have to kneel before them all and confess my shame and say I'm sorry. But what if I'm not, not sorry, no, I love him. I would do it again, I will do it again.... Rachel, Rachel, what are you saying? You are damning your soul, you have damned your soul, and I don't care, I don't care. Yes, I do care. I don't want to care, but I do.

  She held the plate of custard above the flaky pie crust shell. Slowly, slowly she tilted the plate and the custard began to slip. Her Benjo and Johnny Cain were out in the barn, getting a late start with the evening milking, getting a real late start when here it was barely an hour left before midnight.

  So when she heard the barn door bang, her hand only jerked the littlest bit. The custard began slipping too fast, though. She tried to stop its slide by leveling the plate, and that was when she heard a stuttering shout that was unmistakably Benjo in a panic. The custard slid slickly off the plate to land on the floor with a soggy plop.

  Rachel hurried to the window. Shielding the lamp glare on the glass with her hand, she looked out into the night-blackened yard. Lantern light spilled out the open barn doors, though, and she could see twisting, whirling shadows.

  Shadows of men fighting.

  She flung herself out the door so fast she bumped her hipbone on the jamb, and she cried out in pain. The wind had come up hard, whipping her skirts and cap strings as she ran. The barn doors swung wildly now with each gust, banging. The night was full of terrible noises: a horse's frightened neighing, men's harsh grunts and panting breaths, Benjo's inarticulate sputterings, the smack of fists against flesh.

  They were all there, those Plain men who claimed to love her—Noah Weaver and three of her brothers, Sol and Samuel and Abram—men with clenched fists and rage in their hearts, there to hurt the outsider she loved more than any other man in this world.

  She had come hurtling through the door in time to see Sol, her big and gentle brother Sol, throw his full weight into a violent punch that snapped Johnny Cain's head back and sent him slamming into a stall door.

  Rachel gasped to see her lover's face. That wasn't the first blow he had taken. Blood oozed from his mouth and from a cut on his cheekbone. One eye was swollen nearly shut. His shirt hung in ripped tatters, and bits of straw and hay dust clung to his hair. Yet he wasn't fighting back. Even with Samuel and Abram now taking turns to pummel him, he just stood there with his arms hanging loose at his sides while they beat him to a blood pudding.

  "You stop it!" Rachel shouted in Deitsch, choking over her own breaths. "You stop it this instant!"

  Sol didn't stop. He smashed his fist into Cain's face again, then followed with a savage blow to his belly. Cain grunted, doubled over, staggered, tripped on a sawhorse, and fell to his knees. Noah Weaver pulled back his brogan and kicked him in the kidneys.

  The anger that flooded through Rachel turned the world red as hot, hot fire. She seized a hay rake off a wall hook and ran at them with it, shrieking, "You stop, stop it, stop it!"

  But it was the outsider who stopped it, by shouting her name.

  The quiet that followed was immediate and complete. The coal oil lamp guttered, casting grotesque shadows on the barn wal
ls. The air was sickly sweet with the smell of spilled milk.

  Benjo had his back pressed against a stall door. His face looked leached of blood, his eyes were staring wild. His jaw and throat were clenching so, he looked to be strangling over his words. The sight of her son shuddering and choking with fear fired Rachel's rage again. That he should have had to witness this.

  "Get off my farm." She waved the hay rake at them, jabbing the air with it. "Get away from me and mine."

  Cain had pushed himself up as far as his knees. He brushed his forearm across his nose, staining his sleeve with slick red blood. Rachel's whole body leaned toward him, such was her yearning to go to him, to comfort him and ease his hurt. She couldn't bear it that he should suffer any more hurt.

  The lantern flared as Noah took a step, holding out a clumsy hand toward her, his voice shaking. "Rachel, please—"

  "Don't say my name! Don't you dare to say my name!"

  Samuel walked right up to her, ignoring the stabbing hay rake. His breathing was strident, his beard bristling. He pointed a stiff finger at Cain, who still knelt in the milk-wet straw. "There's nothing left to your name, now that he's had you for his whore."

  "You take back your filthy words, Samuel Miller—"

  "No! I'll not!" He thrust his face into hers, so close she felt the hot breath propelling his words. "You've let him drag you through mud so deep even hogs wouldn't lie in your bedding." His lips twisted hard with his revulsion. He scrubbed at his mouth with his coat sleeve, then spat in the dirt. "And I've had me a hog's bellyful of him and you both."

  He brushed past her and through the barn doors as if he couldn't get out fast enough. Abram followed, pausing only long enough to say to her, "'She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth.'"

  "And what of your deeds this night, our Abram, our Samuel?" she shouted after them. "You, too, will be answering for them on Judgment Day!"

  She turned to her brother Sol, who stood as if his body felt too weighted to move. The knuckles on his right hand were scraped and swollen.

  "Sol," she said, nearly choking over his name. Her cheeks felt stiff and cold, and she realized she was crying. "I know what you are. How could you have had a part in this?"

  Sol lifted his big head and faced her squarely. "If we wish to destroy a weed we must pull it up by the roots," he said. But when he left the barn, he walked like an old, ill man.

  Of those Plain men who claimed to love her, only Noah remained. It was too hurtful to look at him, so she focused her gaze on the hanging lantern above his shoulder. "You will take yourself away from here, Noah Weaver, and you will never set foot in my house again."

  "He wanted you and so he took you," Noah said, his voice bleak with the knowledge of a thing he could hardly bear to accept. "He took you, and you let him."

  "And that justifies what you've done?"

  "If you couldn't have spared a thought for me, what about Ben?" His big farmer's hands were clenching and unclenching rhythmically, his powerful chest shook. "Did you imagine Ben up in heaven and watching the two of you doing... doing your lewd and disgusting perversions?"

  She flinched a little, but she kept her head up. "Whatever perversion Ben saw on this day, was done by you and my brothers. To beat on a man with fists and boots, four against one, and with vengeance in your hearts—that has never been the Plain way."

  He lifted his hands, palms out, and took a single stumbling step toward her. She saw the silver glint of tears on his cheeks, in his beard. "You remember that night, Rachel, the night of my Gertie's death? You said I was dear to you. Those were your words, Rachel. You said, 'You are so dear to me, my Noah.' You led me to believe that if it wasn't for Ben, you would have come to me that night, that you would have been mine. And now—"

  "And now you have just torn my heart out at the roots. I never want to look into your face again."

  His arms fell to his sides, and something seemed to collapse inside of him, like a rotted tree. He walked away, his brogans scuffing through the straw. But he stopped at the door and, bracing his hand hard against the frame as if he needed it to hold himself upright, he turned to face her.

  "And him, Rachel? An outsider and a man-killer? What can he give you, besides misery and eternal damnation?"

  He was sitting in a chair in her kitchen. She knelt between his spread thighs, putting crowfoot salve on his cuts. When she had looked down on him kneeling in her barn, her thoughts had gone reeling back to the first day, when he'd come staggering across her hay meadow, bleeding unto death from a gunshot. There had been a wild terror in his eyes that day. There was no terror in his eyes tonight. They were flat and cold once again, like a pond reflecting a winter sky.

  Together she and Benjo had helped him get back onto his feet. He'd had to lean on them a little walking back to the house. He'd said not a word to her, though, beyond shouting her name that once, to stop her from stabbing Noah in the back with a hay rake. She wondered if she would have actually done such a thing, to stab a man with a rake. The thought made her feel ill.

  Yet she set about doctoring his hurts with calm efficiency. The crowfoot salve for his cuts. An elderflower infusion for his swollen eye. She chanted Mutter Anna Mary's Brauche prayers, even though she understood now that her faith would never be strong enough.

  She tugged at his shirt.

  He seized her hands. "Leave it be, Rachel."

  She didn't say anything, only looked up at him, fierce in her anger with all men in that moment, with men and their violent ways, and he let go of her hands.

  With tender care she eased the tails out of his broadfalls and pulled the ripped and blood-spattered shirt over his head. Her gaze fell to his belly, where a raw, purpling bruise spread like a blackberry stain over his flesh.

  She sat back on her heels. "Benjo," she said, slowly and carefully.

  The boy had been hovering over by the cookstove, as if he needed it for warmth, even though it was a hot July night. He hadn't once taken his eyes off Johnny Cain. He jumped when she said his name.

  "Benjo, go rake out the barn."

  "Buh... but it's n-night out."

  She swung around at the waist, pointing to the door. "Go!"

  Choking over words of protest, her son ran from the house, slamming the door hard behind him.

  Rachel straightened up until once again she was kneeling before the outsider. She slid her arms around him and pressed her open mouth to his bruised flesh.

  His hand closed over her head, crinkling her prayer cap. "Aw, Rachel, Rachel. Don't, darlin'. I've taken worse beatings—"

  "I will not hear that!"

  She couldn't bear him being hurt any more. She simply could not bear it. She moved her lips over the terrible bruise, kissing him again and again and again, as if she would imprint herself on him, deeper than the bruise and forever. The love she felt for him was so strong it burned with every breath.

  She grew quiet after a while, although she didn't raise her head. She remained kneeling between his thighs, with her face pressed against the warm skin of his belly. I know him, she thought; I have taken his weight, he has pushed himself inside me.

  "I know you, Johnny Cain," she said aloud, the words vibrating against the taut muscle of his stomach. "I know you, and so I love you."

  His hand tightened on her cap. "Rachel, what happened to your brother Rome?"

  She raised her head. He was looking down at her with those empty eyes, but a muscle ticked in his cheek and she could see the pulse beating in his neck, fast and hard. "Your particular friend and good neighbor Deacon Noah, he told me I was to ask you what happened to Rome."

  She had a hard time talking around the knot in her throat, a knot made of tangled threads of fear, anger, and despair. "I told you what happened. He was banned from the church, shunned by his family, and he died."

  "How did he die?"

  She sat back on her heels again. Her gaze fell to her lap, where she was gripping and releasing, gripping and releasing, small handfuls
of her apron.

  "We wondered how he could do it, leave the church like he did, how he could just leave us like he did, just let his family go. We thought he was being so stubborn about it, but that he would relent someday. Relent and repent, because no one could actually live without the loving comfort of family. It's the same as what happens when a sheep leaves the fold."

  Her throat had been getting tighter and tighter, as if a hand had wrapped around her neck, choking her.

  "How did he die, Rachel?" Cain asked, ruthless.

  "He hanged himself in our father's barn with a halter rope."

  He didn't move or make a sound, but she could feel something change in him. She looked up, into his eyes.

  "What?" she cried. "What is it?"

  He bent over and took her face in his hands, his thumbs lightly tracing the bones in her cheeks. "Before your brothers started in on walloping the bejesus out of me, I told them I would marry you."

  "Oh," she said. She hadn't imagined he would do such a thing, never such a thing. They had both been driven by hunger, but she thought the caring had all been on her side. Tears welled in her eyes. She covered his hand with hers, holding it in place, so that she could turn her head and press her lips into his palm.

  "Be my wife, Rachel."

  She shook her head and the tears splattered. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, trying to hold them back, hold them back. She hated tears, they made her feel weak and frightened, and she knew she had to be strong. Stronger than she'd ever had to be in her life.

  "I love you, Johnny Cain. I will always love you. But a Plain woman must marry Plain, or she will be lost, shunned forever by her friends and family. Even the promise of life beyond death is denied to her. She will be lost."

  He still had her face cupped in his hands. He leaned closer now and brushed his mouth across hers, almost with reverence. He started to pull away but she reached up and wrapped her arms around his neck, holding him, and she laid her head on his shoulder, and he rested his chin on her head. It was awkward this way, with her half kneeling and him almost out of the chair, but neither of them noticed it.