The Amish Clockmaker

by Mindy Starns Clark

  He would remember Miriam’s stricken parents, three days later, sobbing aloud at the funeral.

  He would remember seeing his wife’s casket in the living room, the same place where his father’s casket had sat just last summer, the same place the baby’s casket sat in the fall.

  He would remember Maisie looking at him strangely all that day.

  He would remember a lot of people not looking at him at all.

  But he would never remember sleeping alone in his bed the night Miriam died or how the shards of the broken bird ended up in the drawer of his bedside table or why he even went up to the hayloft thinking he could talk some sense into her the day she fell.

  What he would remember from that time, what would haunt him for years upon years, was the moment two uniformed Lancaster police officers came to the house two days after the funeral, slipped handcuffs on his wrists, and arrested him for the murder of his wife.

  Clayton lost count of how many times he had to go through the same set of facts. He sat in a hard chair in a small, stuffy room for hours, recounting for the detectives exactly what happened the day Miriam died—over and over and over again. Each time, when he got to the part where she fell, one of them would nod, jot a note or two, and then say, “Okay, let’s run through this again.”

  Clayton just didn’t understand. Did they really think the story was going to change on the third go-around? Or the fourth, or the fifth? For hours, they alternated between being kind and helpful—“You look thirsty, would you like some water?”—and being angry and cruel—“Do you honestly expect us to believe that you harbored no resentment whatsoever over the fact that your wife was pregnant with another man’s child?” Through it all, the best he could do was to try to remain calm, no easy feat, and tell the truth as best he could remember it.

  It didn’t help that Clayton wasn’t even sure if he should be speaking to these men at all. What did the Ordnung say about how to behave when falsely accused of a crime? He had no earthly idea. Amish fathers were often arrested in Lancaster County for refusing to send their children to public high schools, and everyone knew how they were supposed to behave. They were told to emulate the martyrs of the church, conducting themselves with dignity and nonviolence while refusing to acquiesce to government regulations that violated their beliefs.

  But those men weren’t being charged with murder.

  Clayton tried to think of Bible verses that might guide him, but the only one that kept coming to mind was from Isaiah, about not defending himself at all: He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.

  Clayton definitely felt like a lamb to the slaughter, but was that what he was supposed to do, not open his mouth in his own defense? Or did the verse apply only to the coming Messiah, to His interrogation by Pontius Pilate? He just didn’t know.

  In the end, he decided his only option was to tell the truth, and so that was what he did. And did again and again and again until even the words “And then she fell,” no longer wrenched his heart to utter.

  “Okay, Mr. Raber,” Detective De Lucca said once the other man had left and the two of them were alone. “Let’s run through this again.”

  And so they did.

  “You and your wife had an argument on the street a few hours before she died. A dozen people heard her say that you wished you had never married her, that you hated the baby she lost as a stillbirth, and that you wanted that baby to die. Is that correct?”

  “It is correct that that’s what she said. But none of it was true.”

  “Uh-huh.” The man stared at him, as if that might somehow change his answer. “She was trying to leave you that day, wasn’t she, Mr. Raber? Isn’t that why she was on that bus?”

  “She wasn’t feeling well. She was… different after she lost the baby.”

  The detective looked down at his notes, flipped back a page.

  “At the request of Miriam’s parents, you agreed to marry their daughter because she was with child and in need of a husband to hide her shame?”

  Clayton exhaled slowly. “I married her because I loved her.”

  “And she loved you? Is that what you’re saying?”

  Why did the man keep asking him this, over and over? Clayton’s jaw clenched as he responded, “That is not what I am saying.”

  “She was, in fact, in love with someone else, was she not? The real father of her baby?”

  “No.”

  “No?” De Lucca jerked back, as if physically struck. “Your own mother says differently, Mr. Raber. So does your wife’s former employer. In fact—” The detective looked down, flipped a few pages, and looked up again “—this employer, Brenda Peterson. She was very adamant that Miriam was ready to do almost anything to get away from you to be with this other man.”

  Clayton pinched the bridge of his nose. “My wife was ill, Detective.”

  “Your wife was in love with another man.”

  What else could he say? “I don’t know about that.”

  De Lucca’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t know if she was in love with another man but these other women do?”

  Clayton sighed. “Miriam never said she was in love with him. She told me she thought she had been, but he didn’t love her in return. And that every day she loved him less.”

  De Lucca nodded and seemed to back off for a long moment. Then he spoke. “Yet you never consummated your marriage.”

  Anger surged in Clayton’s chest. How could that be any of the state’s business? Who had told the detective this? His mother? Abigail? Brenda Peterson? “What kind of man would I be to force myself on a woman whose heart was divided?”

  “Her heart was divided. Is that how you put it?” De Lucca didn’t even wait for an answer as he scribbled something on the page. “So you do admit she loved this other man.”

  Clayton shook his head, but before he could speak the detective continued, coming at him with a new fact he hadn’t thrown out there until now.

  “You tried to get the marriage annulled when she lost the baby, isn’t that right?”

  Clayton’s jaw dropped open. How did the man know that? Had Miriam told Mamm and Mamm told the detective? Had Uriah somehow volunteered that information to him directly?

  Clayton swallowed hard and gave an honest answer in return. “I asked the bishop about it, yes.”

  “You asked about getting an annulment from the woman you say you loved?”

  Clayton feared he might cry, but to his relief the tears didn’t come. “It was just a misunderstanding. I thought it was what she wanted.”

  “Because she loved another man.”

  “No!” Clayton pounded his fist against his knee. “No, no, no. She was learning to love me. She just needed more time.”

  De Lucca sat back and eyed Clayton, silent as the echoes of his outburst ebbed away. Clayton knew he shouldn’t have lost his temper, but considering what this man had been putting him through, he could have done much worse. He pressed his lips together, waiting for the next question. After a beat, the detective came at him from a different angle.

  “You and your wife were fighting on the day she died. First in town and then in the hayloft. Correct?”

  “She was upset. She was ill. I was trying to help her.”

  “By yelling at her?”

  “I didn’t yell.”

  “Your nephew heard you, Mr. Raber. As did your sister and brother-in-law, your mother, and six of your fellow church members.” De Lucca flipped back a number of pages and then read aloud what those people claimed to have heard them say. “ ‘Go away. Stop it. Don’t come any closer.’ Those were some of the things she yelled at you. They said it sounded like you were insisting she show you something or give you something.”

  “I already told you. We had a history there. Earlier in our marriage, she had been hanging on to things she shouldn’t.”

  “Like her
love for another man?”

  “Detective—”

  “You’ve always had quite the temper, isn’t that true, Mr. Raber?” the man said, startling him with the sudden shift. “Do you know that’s what people say about you?”

  Clayton put his hands in his lap. “I didn’t kill my wife. It was an accident. She was running too close to the edge and she fell.”

  “It’s a nice story,” De Lucca said, closing the notebook, clicking his pen, and sliding it into his chest pocket. “But that’s all it is, a story. The truth is that you were angry with your wife because she was in love with someone else. You didn’t want anyone else to have her. It’s the oldest crime of passion there is.”

  “I loved my wife.”

  “I’m sure you did, Mr. Raber. That’s why you killed her. Because she didn’t love you in return.”

  Clayton had seen photographs of the Lancaster County Prison in the newspaper many times, but nothing could have prepared him for the sight of the incongruous and absurd structure in person. Looming up from the earth like a giant medieval castle, the building was at least two hundred feet long and made of heavy sandstone blocks, with turrets and towers and other castle-like embellishments. Clayton almost expected to see a dungeon inside, but once he passed through the heavy iron doors, shuffling painfully in his ankle shackles, the interior looked normal, like any other jail might.

  Processing took forever, but eventually the shackles were removed and he was handed a stack of folded linens—one bottom sheet, one top sheet, one pillow case, and one rough navy blue blanket—and escorted to a cell by a uniformed guard. The man didn’t say a word, though he grunted impatiently at the hindered speed of Clayton’s gait as he hobbled along behind him. Clayton had expected to hear the jeers and catcalls of other prisoners, but this particular hallway was quiet and empty, and he wondered if he was being segregated because he was Amish—or because he was a suspected murderer.

  When they reached his cell, the guard swung open the door and waited for Clayton to step inside. Then he pulled the door shut again and locked it with a key, the click of the bolt as it slid into place cutting him off like a cleaver from any hope of freedom.

  Without even so much as a nod, the man turned and walked away, his heels clicking against the hard floor as he walked, much faster now than before. Clayton wondered if the man had ever dealt with an Amish prisoner before. Then again, whether he had or not, probably the only Amish men who had ever been prisoners in here had been arrested for the sake of their faith in matters of civil disobedience. Clayton had been charged with something else entirely.

  Dazed, he limped to the cot in the far corner and lowered himself onto the bare mattress. The springs creaked beneath his weight as he sat and looked around at the damp stone walls, the dingy tile floor. The toilet in the corner.

  His home seemed so surreal now. He should be in the clock shop at the worktable at this very moment, polishing the wood of some finished clock, listening to Miriam hum in the back room.

  Miriam.

  Pain struck him anew, like a shattering kick in his ribs. Clutching the stack of linens to his chest, he rocked back and forth, just trying to breathe. He could still see her lying there, unmoving, her beautiful hair fanned out around her. The image was so vivid, he felt as though he could reach out and touch her even now. But he couldn’t. She was gone. And he was trapped, locked in a cell, accused of her murder.

  He wished with all his heart he had fallen instead.

  Clayton crumpled to the cold tiles, and to his knees in supplication. Lord, why have You allowed this? Why am I here?

  He knelt there for a long while, pleading with God to answer him. His knees grew numb, but still he knelt, his bad leg eventually throbbing with pain. He pulled himself up from the floor to lay on the cot, his mind sinking deeper and deeper into hopelessness.

  A few hours passed and Clayton, tired of feeling, closed his eyes. Just before his body surrendered to sleep and his mind became still, a thought popped into his head, a Bible verse he had memorized as a child.

  Remember the word that I said unto you, the servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you.

  Clayton eyes snapped open.

  If Jesus Himself had been accused of crimes He hadn’t committed—was even crucified for them—then who was Clayton to believe he was above wrongful imprisonment? Perhaps the Lord wasn’t punishing him but instead was inviting him into a more intimate understanding of His sufferings, an intimacy that could only be cultivated through the refining fires of persecution.

  Clayton was comforted by this thought, but still his heart ached. His mind was still burdened by doubts and fears. But stronger than these was a feeling of peace, that regardless of the result of the trial to come, the only opinion that mattered was God’s, and God knew the truth.

  God knew he was innocent.

  Three days later, Clayton was resting on his cot after yet another meal of beans and canned fruit and congealed soup when he heard a clatter in the hall. He limped to the cell door and pressed his face against the bars, trying to see what was causing the commotion.

  It was the same guard he usually saw, but this time he was bringing in another prisoner. And though the guard, true to form, said not a word, the man he escorted was about as noisy as a person could be. He was complaining and stumbling, and as they drew closer, Clayton recognized the soured smell of alcohol.

  The guard locked the man in the cell directly across from Clayton, and he found himself feeling oddly pleased. As much as he didn’t relish witnessing the raucous behavior of a drunken man, he’d been so isolated that even this was better than nothing.

  The man tossed his linens toward the cot and then stood where he had been left, rocking back and forth and singing to himself. Then he looked over, noticed Clayton, and grew silent.

  He stared for a long moment, his body swaying back and forth. “You’re him, ain’t you?”

  Clayton blinked. “Excuse me?”

  The man barked out a laugh, as if he couldn’t believe his luck. “You’re him. The one all over the news. I don’t believe it.” Another laugh, this time with a slap to the knee. “They done stuck me in here with a murderer. Not just any murderer—a famous murderer. A famous Amish murderer.” Shaking his head, he moved to the cot and half sat, half collapsed onto it. “Don’t that just beat all.”

  Lying back against the mattress, the man covered his eyes with one arm and almost immediately let out a loud snore. He was asleep.

  An hour later, when he finally stirred, Clayton spoke. He had been waiting.

  “What are they saying about me?” he asked, not truly sure that he wanted to know. If even his mother was against him, telling the detective all sorts of personal things about him and Miriam, then he could only imagine what “facts” were being spread all over town by everyone else.

  The guy ran a hand down his face, sat up, and spat toward the corner.

  “What do you mean?” he grunted, only slightly less inebriated than before.

  “You said I was famous. How? What are they saying, exactly?”

  He laughed. “What do you think? A picture of them taking you away been on the front page of every paper in town, ‘Amish Clockmaker Kills Wife in Jealous Rage.’ ”

  Clayton swallowed hard as the man continued, rattling off a series of mistakes and misconceptions and outright lies. “Somebody said she never even slept with you, not once, ’cause she was in love with another man. She was carrying his child. Is that true?”

  Clayton did not reply.

  The drunk burped and wiped some spittle from his chin with his sleeve. “I said, is that true? You never been with your own wife? Is something wrong with you, boy?”

  Clayton pursed his lips, closed his eyes, prayed for deliverance from this torment.

  To his great relief, he heard what sounded like another snore, and when he looked over at the man again, he realized he’d collapsed back against the cot and was o
nce again out.

  Weariness settled onto Clayton’s shoulders like an iron yoke. He lay back on his cot as well and stared up at the ceiling.

  Heavenly Father, whatever happens I accept the plans You have for me. The servant is not greater than his lord.

  On the fifth day of his incarceration, Clayton heard the main doors down the corridor open and close. He assumed another prisoner was being ushered in, but then the guard was standing in front of his cell and unlocking the door.

  “Let’s go. You’re being released,” the guard said, as casually as if he’d announced the lunchroom would be serving French fries today.

  Clayton stared at him.

  “Come on, Raber. Get up. I have other inmates to manage.”

  His mind numb, Clayton slid his feet into his shoes, stood, and followed the guard down the hall, hobbling as fast as his legs would carry him. As if in a dream, he was processed out of the prison, far more quickly than he’d been processed in. He was given back his clothes and possessions. He signed some paperwork and then changed in the dress out room.

  “What has happened?” he kept asking. But the only answer he got was that he was being released. No one seemed to know or care why.

  Before he knew it, Clayton was standing outside the jailhouse in his black felt hat and dark coat, blinking in the sun, trying to understand what had just happened. He turned to speak to the guard who had let him out, but he was already gone. Stunned, he looked around for someone else to ask when he spotted a familiar face leaning against the sandstone wall nearby as if he’d been waiting for him.

  It was the lawyer, the fellow who had been assigned by the court to defend Clayton. They had met only once, here at the jail the day after his interrogation, and their entire conversation had consisted of Clayton recounting all he’d shared with Detective De Lucca and this man shaking his head as if to say, You told him that?

  Now he had a broad smile on his face and a cigarette in his hand. He offered the cigarette to Clayton, who declined.