The Amish Clockmaker

by Mindy Starns Clark

  “Bottom line, Mrs. Glick,” I said, trying to simplify even further, “I very much need to find Clayton or my entire livelihood will be in jeopardy. Is there any way you can tell me how or where I might locate him?”

  The question hung in the air for a moment, and then she shook her head. “Clayton didn’t own that land,” she said. “Before he died, Daed signed the deed over to all the children, not just my brother.”

  I glanced at Becky, who merely shrugged in return. Again trying to keep things simple, I added a few more details, explaining about the specific part of the homestead in question and even mentioning the quitclaim deed. When I was finished, Joan didn’t reply. Almost as if she were disappearing inside herself, she simply looked off in the distance, her wrinkled lips pursed in thought.

  This wasn’t getting me anywhere.

  Glancing around the room, I knew it was time for Plan B. Even if Joan was too old to understand what I was saying, at least I could question Becky now in Joan’s presence. My hope was that if she knew her mother was right there listening, she might be a little more forthcoming.

  “Becky, I’ll ask you again. Do you know where I can find Clayton Raber?”

  “Like I said the other day,” she replied, reaching for her lemonade, “no one around here has seen the man in sixty years.”

  I nodded, letting that sit there for a moment.

  “So when you say no one has seen him, does that mean you don’t know where he is? That you haven’t heard from him in all this time?” I leaned forward in my seat. “Or are you just speaking literally, that you haven’t seen him?” My implication was clear. Was she hiding behind a turn of phrase?

  As I waited for her reply, Joan closed her eyes, the clock still in her hands, and her feeble shoulders began to shake. “It was all the fault of that girl he married,” the old woman said, her voice breaking. “She was nothing but trouble, that Miriam. When God took that child from her, she went plumb crazy, she did. She deserved what happened to her. If it weren’t for her… ”

  “Crazy?” I said. “She went plumb crazy?”

  “Mamm,” Becky interrupted, patting her mother’s arm, “you don’t have to tell him anything.”

  But Joan went on as if her daughter weren’t even there.

  “Clayton had a temper, and we all knew he was upset because Miriam didn’t love him. She loved that Englischer,” Joan said, spitting out the last word as if it were dirt in her mouth. “They fought the day she died because she made a terrible scene in front of a crowd and he had to practically drag her back home after she threatened to run away. It was like she’d gone crazy—and it just kept getting worse and worse. Oh, if only he’d never married her!”

  The woman began to sob.

  “Now you’ve done it,” Becky said angrily as she jumped from her seat. “You’ve made Mamm cry with all your questions.” She rushed to the woman’s side and patted her arm, but tears continued to stream down Joan’s aged cheeks. Becky remained beside her, speaking in a soothing tone. Then she remembered me, and with a fierce gaze she asked me to leave. I stood slowly, looking toward Joan. Somehow I just knew that words had gone unsaid here, words Joan almost seemed to want to say now, but for some unknown reason couldn’t bring herself to do so.

  There was something she wasn’t telling me.

  “It’s time for you to go,” Becky insisted.

  Reluctantly, I offered a quick apology for having upset things, and then I headed for the door.

  I was on the last step of the porch when I heard someone run up behind me. It was Sarah, and she held the clock in her arms.

  “My grandmother told me to give this back to you,” she relayed, though she seemed confused by the request. “She told me to tell you we want nothing to do with the clock or Clayton Raber.”

  Sarah transferred the clock into my arms as if it were a sickly baby, and then she went back up the porch steps and disappeared into the house.

  THIRTY-THREE

  The next morning was a church Sunday, and though my heart was heavy from all that had come the day before, I tried to put aside the failure and disappointment, seeking comfort instead in the sermons, the prayers, the songs, and the fellowship with other believers.

  Once the service was over, I was feeling much better. After rearranging the benches, we all shared in the usual light communal meal and were discussing the shop’s expansion delay when the talk turned to Clayton Raber, startling me out of my short-lived sense of peace.

  “Does it bother you to go in the barn, knowing a woman died in there—and so violently, no less?” one of the women asked.

  “Different barn,” I muttered, not bothering to explain that my grandfather had taken down the one big barn decades ago, building in its place the two barns that were there now—a medium-sized one for the feed store and a smaller one for our horses.

  “Still, what’s it like working and living in the same place he worked and lived?” another person asked, saying “he” with force, almost as if it were a bad word.

  I looked to Amanda on my right and then Noah on my left, hoping one of them would respond more graciously in the moment than I might.

  “Makes no difference to me,” Noah answered confidently.

  Nodding in agreement, I slathered a cracker with homemade peanut butter and shoved it in my mouth. I didn’t want to talk about this.

  I didn’t want to get into any of it, not even to mention the beautiful clock we’d found, which was now sitting on our bedroom dresser until we figured out what to do with it. Mostly, I just listened as the older folks in the group tossed around the facts of the story—or at least as they had always believed them. About the only good to come out of the conversation was when someone mentioned Clayton’s motive. Though I’d been familiar with the tale since I was a child, I’d never been told the supposed reason for the alleged murder. According to the folks here, Clayton had loved Miriam but she’d been in love with someone else, so that’s why he’d killed her.

  As the five of us rode home together in the buggy afterward, I asked my parents for clarification on this new bit of information. Though it was a delicate subject, I managed to garner from them several shocking new facts, including that Miriam was in the family way when she and Clayton married, and that although the child wasn’t his, he married her anyway to save her from shame and give her baby a name. Sadly, they said, she did not carry the child to term and it was eventually stillborn.

  Just the thought of that created a knot in my stomach, one that stayed with me the rest of the day.

  The next morning was Amanda’s seven-month checkup with the midwife. As I drove her to the birthing center, I kept my focus away from the tragic details of Clayton’s life and directed it to Amanda and our own baby instead. Steering the buggy away from Old Philadelphia Pike and its busy lanes of traffic, we took the back roads to get there and made good time. Amanda was her usual talkative self on the way, but for some reason she, too, managed to avoid the one topic we’d been consumed by lately: Clayton Raber. It seemed as if we discussed almost everything else but that.

  We reached the birthing center ten minutes early, which gave me ten minutes to try to talk her out of her plan. Though I had agreed to be present during the birth of our child, Amanda wanted me to come into her appointments with her from here on out, an idea I did not relish. I really didn’t need to be that directly involved with what was basically a matter between her and the midwife, but she insisted, as she had for the past few weeks, saying that all modern Amish husbands were taking a bigger part in the birthing process than ever before.

  “Yeah, it’s the ‘process’ part of that equation I’d rather avoid,” I said, and she slugged me on the arm.

  “Tough luck, buddy,” she said as she began to climb from the buggy with some help from me. “If I have to deliver this child, the least you can do is be there with me.”

  As much as I’d rather stick with the old-fashioned approach to the matter, thank you very much, I knew that when
Amanda Shetler Zook set her mind to something, there was no stopping her. I finally agreed, though once we were both inside, all signed in and sitting in the waiting room, I began to doubt that decision.

  I looked at the other women—no men, only women—all at various stages of pregnancy, at the flowered paper on the walls, and at the posters of mothers playing with their babies, and I suddenly felt very out of place. Fortunately, it wasn’t long before the nurse called us back.

  As I tried to stay out of the way, the nurse checked Amanda’s vital signs and then helped her onto the examining table—which really looked more like a big fancy chair to me—and directed me toward a stool in the corner. I sat as instructed, wondering how long this was going to take. Somehow, the other visits had been a lot easier when all I’d had to do was drop my wife at the door and then kill a little time at the diner across the street with a cup of coffee and some pie.

  The midwife entered, and she and Amanda chatted as easily as if they’d known each other for years. My wife seemed knowledgeable about everything, though many of the words and phrases they used sounded like a foreign language to me. The midwife had an odd little device attached to her belt, and after they talked for a while, she helped Amanda lay back even farther on the table chair and arrange her clothing so that her bare stomach was exposed.

  I was mortified—this was way too intimate for me—but both women seemed perfectly comfortable with whatever was happening, so I forced myself to hover in the background and not do or say anything stupid.

  The midwife pulled a part of the device loose, though it stayed connected with a cord. Then she pressed it against Amanda’s stomach and moved it here and there as both women grew silent.

  I felt as though we were supposed to be waiting for something, and I was feeling so antsy I was just about to ask what that was when I heard the strangest sound come from the base of the device, almost like a heartbeat after running, pulsing in a rapid but steady beat.

  “What is that?” I whispered, thinking surely it couldn’t be what I thought it was.

  Both women smiled my way and I knew. And though I’d never heard anything like it before, it almost sounded familiar to me, as if I already knew and loved what I was hearing.

  “That’s your baby’s heartbeat, Mr. Zook,” the midwife said, smiling at me.

  My baby’s heartbeat. It was such a beautiful sound—and one that brought me tremendous relief. In a way, I realized, I’d been holding my breath since yesterday afternoon when I learned Miriam Raber’s baby had died during the pregnancy. I didn’t know what caused such a tragedy to happen, but at least now I knew that my own child was alive and well, its heart pumping to beat the band.

  The rest of the visit wasn’t so bad after that, and it was deeply reassuring to hear the midwife say that both mother and child seemed perfectly healthy, with everything progressing as expected. When we returned to the waiting room, I noticed two other fathers there now, one of them Amish, which also made me feel better.

  I paid at the window while Amanda studied a wall of brochures—information, no doubt, about pregnancy and childbirth and nursing. As we headed out, I saw that she was carrying one of the brochures in her hand but didn’t think much of it. It wasn’t until we were in the buggy that I noticed her animated expression.

  Something was up.

  “What is it? Why are you smiling? What are you not telling me?”

  Amanda’s expression grew intense. “I think I know why Miriam Raber was acting so weird right before she died.”

  A part of me didn’t want to hear it, didn’t want to think about babies and death and tragedies that ripped families apart. But Amanda insisted I take a look, so before we pulled out of our parking spot, I took the brochure from her hand.

  It was a glossy, tri-fold piece of literature with a bright purple title on the front that said Warning Signs of Postpartum Depression & Psychosis.

  “What is that?” I asked, staring at the words that sounded scary even without being totally sure of what they meant.

  “It’s an illness a woman can get after she’s had a baby, Matthew. Or if she’s pregnant and loses the baby. It’s a mental illness, which tells me it probably wasn’t always diagnosed properly in years past. They didn’t know as much then as they do now.”

  “Okay,” I said, waiting for her to explain.

  “The important part is right here,” she said, flipping open the page and pointing to a list of symptoms. “Look at this. It says that postpartum psychosis can make a woman feel like she’s going insane.”

  I scanned the page, my eyes absorbing the words as quickly as they could. According to the text, postpartum depression could begin soon after giving birth and might include symptoms such as feelings of sadness and inadequacy, a sudden withdrawal from family and friends, frequent crying, or even thoughts of suicide. I flipped to the next page and read it out loud.

  “ ‘Postpartum psychosis is a rarer and more extreme version of postpartum depression.’ ” I looked up at Amanda, who prompted me to go on. “ ‘It can include symptoms of delusions, hallucinations, thoughts of harming the baby or yourself, and severe depressive symptoms.’ ”

  It was all making sense. This explained what Joan had been talking about when she described Miriam’s strange behavior after the baby died. No wonder Clayton had tried to tell his family that Miriam was sick. They all believed she was simply pining away after the Englischer she was still in love with. But it wasn’t that at all. She really was sick.

  I’d stake my store on it. Miriam Raber had postpartum psychosis.

  “Amanda, this is it,” I said, my eyes still fixed on the brochure.

  “I know! It says if a woman has postpartum psychosis, she needs to be hospitalized. It won’t go away on its own. It only gets worse.”

  I looked up at my brilliant wife. “Miriam probably had this and no one knew it. Joan said she just kept getting worse and worse.”

  Amanda nodded, pleased to have solved a riddle that had lasted for sixty years. And we were both relieved to know what really happened to Miriam back then. It had a name. Though rare, it was a true medical condition.

  “Danke,” I said, reaching for her hand and giving it a squeeze. She smiled in return.

  We decided to go straight to the Helmuths’ with the brochure. I felt hope growing in my chest, hope that maybe this information would soften Becky’s heart enough for her to let me back inside to see Joan for one more try. I figured it wouldn’t hurt either to have my sweet, charming, delicate pregnant wife in tow, just as a reminder that our livelihood depended on finding Clayton Raber.

  When we got there, Becky was outside in her squash garden with a rake in her hands. She looked up as I drove in, set her rake down, and came toward us. I helped Amanda out of the buggy.

  “What now?” Becky asked, frustration on her face and in her voice.

  “We stopped by because I have something new to tell you,” I said.

  “I’m sure it’s nothing I want to hear,” she replied, her words biting.

  Ignoring her words, I motioned to Amanda, who quickly produced the brochure. “We think we’ve figured out why Miriam Raber started acting so odd after she lost the baby. We think maybe she had this illness.”

  I added, “Amanda saw this today at the birthing center in Gordonville, and we decided to bring it right over.”

  Becky stared down at the brochure’s glossy front as if it were poisonous to the touch. She looked up at me with the same venom in her eyes. “How many times do I have to say this to you? Stay away from here. You’re upsetting my mother, me—the whole family!”

  “I just thought you would want to know,” I said. “Please take it. Joan would want to know what it says.”

  Becky turned around as if she were going to stomp off without it. Then she faced Amanda and, in one swift motion, ripped the brochure from her hand. She scooped up her rake and propped it against the house as she entered through the door, which she slammed soundly behind her.

>   After the shock of our encounter wore off, Amanda let out a whistle. “You weren’t kidding, Matthew. These people are difficult.”

  She looked over at me, cautiously, perhaps expecting me to be upset or angry, but I returned her gaze with a smile.

  “It may look hopeless now,” I said as I helped her back into the buggy. “But I think once she reads the pamphlet for herself—if she does—she’ll be grateful for the information. This might even change her whole attitude.”

  “I sure hope so.”

  After we returned home, Amanda lay down for a nap, and I made my way to the store to relieve Noah for a break. I stayed busy while he was gone, but once he returned I went into the back room and checked the pile of the day’s mail stacked on my desk, hoping there might be a response to my information request for the police file on the death of Miriam Raber, the one I’d submitted online on Friday. It was supposed to take five days, the website had said, but I was feeling optimistic.

  It wasn’t there.

  I sat at my desk and studied the pile of papers before me. I wished I could talk to someone who was involved back then, a detective, police officer—anybody. They probably wouldn’t remember where Clayton had gone when he left Lancaster, but at least they could confirm whether he would have been required to give them his new address, and if that address would have gone into the police record. Otherwise, there was no reason to wait for the stupid information request anyway.

  So much for doing things the Amish way. As it turned out, face-to-face conversations with real people were no better than the fancy Englisch computer-related searches and tracking technology. Apparently, no one was going to find Clayton no matter what method they used. I sighed heavily. The Amish network had let me down.

  I returned to the front of the store, my mind still going over other avenues to try, other possibilities. I wondered if the old newspaper reports would have had the name of the detective or detectives involved with the case. Though it would take a lot of time and trouble, I could try going to the Lancaster library to find that information—but then a thought struck me.