The Amish Clockmaker

by Mindy Starns Clark

I was keenly aware, even in the midst of the peace and quiet of Clayton’s simple home, that I was about to hugely alter his day—possibly even his life. On my side, this was a simple matter of needing his help to settle a property dispute. But on his side, my having tracked him down had the potential to reconnect him with an entire world he’d left behind. I didn’t know if that was something he wanted. Perhaps he’d said good riddance to all things Amish—including his own family—the day he shook the dust off his feet and walked away. Judging by the letters he’d written to Joan over the years, however, it sounded as if he was open to hearing from her. I hoped the fact she was finally ready to respond would get me in the door even if nothing else could.

  I rapped four gentle knocks on the weathered wood and then waited. Birdsong filled the silence. I was about to raise my hand again when the doorknob gave a turn and the door began to open.

  I stepped back a little as the form of a bearded, silver-haired man filled the open space in front of me. Clayton Raber, in the flesh, at last. His features held such a scowl that for a moment I feared he was about to yell at me or slam the door in my face. But then I realized he wasn’t angry at all. As Ben Sauder had told me, a scar ran along Clayton’s brow line, causing him to look angry even when he was not.

  “Can I help you?” he said, his tone doubtful but pleasant. The words were in Englisch, but I heard the slight inflection of Pennsylvania Dutch still lingering there.

  “My name is Matthew Zook. I’m looking for Clayton Raber.”

  “Guess you found him, then,” he said with a guarded half smile, one that contrasted strangely with the still-scowling eyebrows.

  He wore a simple plaid shirt and navy blue work pants held up by suspenders, and on his nose perched a pair of wire-rim glasses that had to be decades old. And even though his clothing wasn’t Amish, his beard still was, long and bushy and with no mustache. The grayness of the beard and the wrinkles on his face made Clayton look every bit of his eighty-seven years, and yet there was an odd, almost youthful hunger in his eyes. It was as if—even at his advanced age—he was still looking for something.

  Surprise at seeing an Amish man on his doorstep may have had something to do with that. I had a feeling that not only had he not run across many Amish people around here over the years, he’d definitely not ever had one appear at his door.

  “I’d like to speak with you if I may,” I added, suddenly feeling tongue-tied. “I’ve come from Lancaster County.”

  “You’re a ways from home,” he said with just a twinge of sadness. I couldn’t help but wonder if he used to tell those words to himself, a long time ago.

  “It’s actually not that far,” I replied gently. When he said nothing in response, I explained that I’d had a bit of trouble tracking him down, but I’d finally gotten as far as Mountain Gap, where the folks at his church had been kind enough to direct me from there. “If it isn’t too much trouble, Mr. Raber, I’d really like to talk to you. I need your help with something.”

  His eyes traveled down to the bundle in my arm. “Is that for me to fix? Because I’m retired, son. Have been for a decade. Didn’t they tell you that at the church?”

  “They did. I know you’re retired now, and what I have in the bag isn’t why I’ve come. It’s just something I brought… ” I hesitated, not wanting to get ahead of myself. My goal was to cover all of the property stuff first, just so we didn’t get sidetracked, and then go into everything else after that. “Really, if we could sit down and chat briefly, I’ll explain everything.”

  He stared at the bundle for a moment longer and then raised his gaze to meet mine. “But I don’t fix things any more, my eyes aren’t good enough. Sorry about that Mister… what did you say your name was?”

  “Matthew. My name’s Matthew Zook.”

  “And what part of Lancaster County are you from?”

  I hesitated only a second. “Your part, Mr. Raber.”

  He cocked his head and his silver brows crinkled over questioning eyes.

  “My grandfather was Isaac Zook. He bought your family homestead from your mother sixty years ago. I grew up in the same room in the same house as you.”

  He seemed to falter for just a moment. He teetered slightly as if I had just thrown open a window and a gust of wind had hit him in the face.

  “I’m not from there anymore, Matthew,” he said a second later. “I haven’t been for a very long time. And I no longer fix things. Sorry I can’t help you.” He started to back away so that he could close the door. I put my hand out to stop him.

  “Please, Mr. Raber. Please. I need your help to solve a problem—a big problem—one that was caused unknowingly by your mother when she sold the place to my grandfather. Now I’ve run into a complication, and you’re the only person on earth who can help me.”

  He stared at me for a long moment. “Do you know who I am, young man?” he demanded, his tone an instant challenge.

  “Ya, I know exactly who you are,” I replied confidently, trying to match his belligerence with equal—if more respectful—intensity. “You’re the man who was blamed for his wife’s death even though it was an accident.”

  His eyes narrowed in anger. “What do you know about any of that?”

  “I know you are innocent. I know you were declared guilty in the court of Amish opinion, excommunicated, and rejected even by your own family. I know you eventually left town and found a new place to start life over. And from what I’ve learned today, I know you have continued to love your late wife with fidelity and devotion all the years since.”

  His eyes grew wide, though I couldn’t read the variety of emotions that were surely pinging around inside his head. Surprise. Vindication. Suspicion. Confusion. For a moment it looked as if it was all too much for him and he might just end up shutting the door in my face anyway.

  “How in the world would you know that I am innocent?” he said, every word out of his mouth sounding as if they weighed ten pounds each. “You’re just a kid. You weren’t even alive back then.”

  “If you’ll let me in, I’ll tell you, I promise,” I said quickly. “But I’m actually here for three reasons. The first is what I said before. It’s something I need you to do for me, a legal matter involving a property dispute. I can explain things fully, and all I need is your signature on a document to clear everything up.”

  He seemed to consider that. “And the second?”

  I looked down at the bag and then up again. “Well, sir, it has to do with something I found, something I think you’ll want to see.”

  His lips pursed for a long moment. “And the third?”

  “Your sister Joan. I came here with a message from her, that she is so very sorry for not having believed you all those years ago.”

  At the mention of his sister’s name, the man at last moved aside and slowly swung the door open wide. Thanking him, I stepped into his living room, an unfussy but dusty space devoid of any fancy decorations or furnishings. The walls were a familiar Amish pastel green, and the couch—at least forty years old with threadbare arms—was upholstered in a darker version of the same color. The coffee table in front of it was of similar vintage and wear, as was a camel-colored armchair nearby. A Bible lay open on the table, along with a crossword puzzle magazine and a tattered Zane Grey Western. From the entry I could see his simple kitchen and eating area. A hallway to my right led to the back of the house.

  Though he had electric lights, no television was in the room, nor were any telephones hanging from the walls that I could see. The whole place felt Amish with one major exception: It needed some serious tending to. It wasn’t dirty, exactly. It just looked tired and neglected. Bonnie had been right about this place being too much for Clayton now.

  The door closed behind us, and he motioned me toward the sofa, hobbling forward himself with the aid of a wooden cane I hadn’t noticed before. I took my seat and Clayton eased himself into the armchair. As he settled, I could see that his hands were gnarled with arthritis earned thro
ugh six decades of making and repairing clocks and other things. For some reason, however, I saw and heard no clocks in here at all.

  He was quiet, his eyes on me as I gently set the bag onto the couch beside me and dug into it for the file I had brought. Though I needed to get to the point, I also wanted him to understand the gravity of my request, so I started with a little background.

  “Like I said, I grew up in your old house, and I work in your old shop—though of course it hasn’t been a clock shop since… since you left. My grandfather turned it into Zook’s Tack and Feed after he bought it, as it still is to this day. I manage the store now, and I’m married with my first little one on the way. The whole place—your old place—is very special to me. It’s going to be the homestead where I raise my own family.”

  I could see that he was imagining his former home as a haven of happiness for me as once upon a time it may have been for him. I explained the situation as clearly as I could, laying the conflicting maps on the table in his direction, followed by the quitclaim deed that would solve the entire problem if he would be willing to sign it.

  “You do need to know,” I added, “that the resort company wants the property pretty badly, and it sounds like they’re willing to pay you handsomely for it. I can pay you too, if you feel like that’s fair, but nowhere near as much as they can offer. I just want you to understand that up front. If you’ve been counting on using that property for yourself or selling it as a nest egg, I would understand if you want to deal with them rather than with me.”

  “I haven’t been counting on anything,” he said, his eyes on the papers. “I figured when my mamm sold the place, she sold my piece too and kept the money for both. As I would have told her to do if she’d asked.” Looking up at me, he added, “But the fact that it got left out wasn’t her fault, you understand. She didn’t even know about this. It was a private matter between my daed and me.”

  I nodded, trying to remember what I’d learned from my conversation with Starbrite’s lawyer, Mr. Purcell, and through the various reading I’d done at the library later. These sorts of issues were usually rooted out by title companies, but there wouldn’t have been a need for a title company because my grandfather bought the place from Mrs. Raber in full, with no mortgage involved. And because she didn’t know about the separate piece that belonged to Clayton, the whole incident had been a simple oversight by unaware parties and ultimately no one’s fault. I explained as much to him now, but he surprised me with his response.

  “Well, except perhaps mine, seeing as how I was the only person who even knew about that land, and I didn’t say anything before I left. It didn’t cross my mind at the time.” Meeting my eyes, he added, “I can’t take any money for something I thought was long gone sixty years ago. Where’s a pen? If my name on that line can take care if this for you, I’m happy to sign.”

  Relief coursed through my veins, but I needed to be fair.

  “Are you aware of the value of land in Lancaster County these days?” I asked him. “ ’Cause we’re not just talking about a few hundred dollars here. I feel sure Starbrite would offer you at least a hundred thousand dollars, maybe even a hundred and fifty or more.”

  He looked startled for a moment, but then he smiled, an odd effect when combined with his scowling brow. “Are you aware of the value of setting up treasures in heaven?” he asked with a smile. “Because right is right, son. Now give me a pen.”

  I grinned in return. “I’m deeply grateful,” I said, the understatement of the year. “But for the deed to be legal, you’ll need to do the signing in the presence of a notary.”

  “All right. That’s fine, as long as you can get one here or get me over to one. There’s a lady in town who is probably open today. You got a driver out there, or did you get yourself all the way up here with your thumb, like I did?”

  “My thumb?”

  The old man held up a hand, fist clenched and thumb high, the universal signal of the hitchhiker. I laughed.

  “No, sir. I have a driver. He dropped me off out front, and I told him to come back in about an hour.”

  “Well, then. That should give us enough time to cover the second and third reasons for your visit. The part that has something to do with my sister Joan and, I assume, whatever it is you have in that bag there with you.”

  He sat back in his chair, clasped his hands in his lap, and waited. I hesitated, deciding to explain about the Joan element first. After sixty years of estrangement, I felt sure that would matter even more to Clayton than the old clock we’d discovered in the coal bin.

  I’d already told him that I’d had to do a little digging to track him down, so I started there, explaining that I’d gone to see Joan hoping she would have information about his whereabouts. I didn’t mention the difficulty I’d had trying to get past his niece, fearing it might be hurtful to him. I figured he didn’t need to know the extent of the bitterness which up until yesterday they’d still had toward him.

  Instead, I explained how, after several visits to their house, Becky had finally decided to show me the letters Joan had received from him over the years.

  “The very first letter mentioned the name of the church here, so that’s what I decided to try next. I figured that even if you weren’t still connected with that church, someone could tell me how to find you or at least where you’d gone next.”

  “Where I’d gone next? Where else would I go? This church has been my family.” His expression grew distant, as if he were looking past me all the way to that first pastor and his wife who had taken him in—not to mention their daughter, who had become a loyal friend; to the man who had given him this inexpensive place to live; and to all the members of the congregation who had chosen to trust him rather than the sensationalized newspaper headlines of the day. He had spent sixty Christmases in their homes, and sixty birthday parties had been thrown for him. Love had been bestowed on him throughout the years long after the older generation who knew why he left Lancaster County had passed on. “They have been very good to me. They still are, even though I know I have become a tremendous burden to them these days.”

  “I don’t think they see it like that,” I offered. “It came across to me as concern.”

  He huffed. “That’s just a nice way of saying I am starting to be a real pain. I’m far too much trouble, the way they keep having to come get me every Sunday, and to help me with the grocery shopping and the housekeeping and everything. They worry about me being out here all by myself in an old house with an overgrown yard and all that. The homeowner handles repairs and such, but the little stuff is still up to me, even if I’m not up to it.” He shook his head slowly. “Not sure what’ll happen from here, but I figure the good Lord knows, and that’s all that matters.”

  I hesitated, thinking of Detective De Lucca yesterday and the facility where he would be spending the rest of his days. As an Amish man, I’d never quite understood the need for nursing homes, but as I looked at Clayton now, it made sense. Where else was an Englischer to go when he could no longer live alone but had no family around to live with?

  The church people here had been a huge help to Clayton over the years, yes, but they were not Amish. They had not been raised as he and I had, to take the biblical command of caring for the elderly literally. They might help him out, but they weren’t going to step up to the extent he now needed.

  With a surge of guilt, I thought of the money he was giving up by signing over his land to me at no charge. If he sold the place to Starbrite instead, I realized, he would have enough to put himself in one of those kinds of places that De Lucca was in, where he could live comfortably for the rest of his life.

  Somehow, though, just the thought of it made me feel sick inside. Old people belonged in families, not shoved off together in some institution. I decided not to say anything about it yet, though I would bring it up later before he signed on the bottom line and ended up signing away the one solution currently available to him.

  “Anyw
ay,” I continued, “when I talked to Joan yesterday, she was pretty upset, saying how bad she feels for the way she’d treated you back then and for not believing you when you said you were innocent. She asked me to tell you that she is sorry and to see if there was any way you could bring yourself to forgive her.”

  Clayton’s eyes filled with tears, but he blinked them away. “I forgave her and the rest of my family long ago. I had to. I couldn’t live with the poison of bitterness toward them. It is not how God would have had me live. Joan was no different from anyone else. Everyone thought I killed Miriam. They thought I was an angry, violent man whose wife didn’t love him, so he killed her. The police just couldn’t prove it.”

  “You never thought of returning?”

  I could tell by the way he looked at me that he had, maybe early on, but in the end he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

  “Return to what? There was nothing there for me but blame and unforgiveness for something I hadn’t done. What kind of life would that have been? Am I not still spoken of as the clockmaker who killed his wife?”

  Even as he said this, I bristled. “Not in my house,” I said, with conviction. “You are not spoken of that way in my house.” As an afterthought, I added, “But ya, that’s pretty much what people say.”

  He shook his head sadly. “At least Joan and some of the family members gave me the benefit of the doubt somewhat. They said they knew I hadn’t wanted to kill Miriam, but that it just happened in a moment of jealous rage. Like everyone else, they thought she was in love with another man and that’s why I pushed her.”

  A storm cloud was gathering behind his eyes as he continued. “I saw it in their faces once I came home from jail. The charges had been dropped, but that made no difference. People still thought I’d done it. Even my own mother, who knew how much I loved Miriam, thought that I’d been angry, got caught up in the moment, and pushed her.” He cleared his throat. “Everyone thought I was guilty—everyone.”

  We were both quiet for a few moments, and I could feel righteous indignation pulsing in my veins for this wronged man.