The Girl in a Coma

by John Moss

  She scrambled from bed and looked down. Johannes Haun, her father, was staring up at her window. Rebecca was one of four sisters and four brothers, but she knew that the men were talking about her. Her father saw her through the glass and waved for her to come down.

  She dressed quickly, ran down the narrow stairs, splashed icy water on her face from the basin in the sink, and slipped on her boots. She grabbed a shawl from behind the door and walked out into the yard.

  “Rebecca,” her father said in his sternest voice, “what do you know about Jacob Shantz?”

  “I know him.”

  “He has disappeared. What do you know about that?”

  She couldn’t lie, especially to her father. But she didn’t know what he wanted to hear. The two men beside him were British soldiers. One thing she did know was that Jacob was in trouble.

  “I haven’t any idea where he is,” she answered honestly. She knew he was on his way to Valley Forge, but she didn’t know how far along the road he had made his way.

  “Did he go off to find George Washington?” one of the men asked.

  Rebecca said nothing. She knew what Jacob had planned to do. But you never know what someone actually does until they do it.

  Her father put his hand on her shoulder. It might as well have been the hand of God. Her eyes filled with tears but she refused to cry.

  “What happens to Jacob is not our concern,” her father answered. His tone declared the death of a romance that had never really been born. Rebecca shuddered. Her father would never make her marry someone against her wishes. He was a kind man at heart. But he could prevent her from marrying someone if he chose. He was a righteous man, sure of God’s will. “These men would like to talk to him,” her father said.

  One of the soldiers offered Rebecca a smile and the other looked angry. The smiling man had a scar running down his right cheek and a handsome mustache. His scarlet uniform was quite clean. The other man had not shaved in a week. His filthy uniform was mended in several places with coarse black thread.

  The smiling man introduced himself. “I am Corporal Jonas,” he said. “This here is Private Panabaker. We’re looking for your young man, Miss Haun. It is very important”

  Rebecca’s cheeks flushed with color. Her eyes flashed. Jacob was not her young man. Not now, and maybe never.

  Her father’s hand tightened on shoulder.

  “He killed a man,” said Johannes Haun. “He killed his own father. They found the body in their barn early this morning. Noah Shantz died from a blow to the head. One of his horses is missing and so is Jacob.”

  Allison

  I wake up suddenly. I’m surrounded by quietness. Not silence, because I can hear hospital sounds, the whirring of machines keeping other patients alive, muffled voices through the door drifting down from the nursing station. It’s the quietness you get in the dead of the night.

  But I’m not scared anymore. I’m focused. Whoever this heavy breather was, since he didn’t try to kill me, why should I bother thinking about him at all? My dreams are more interesting.

  I concentrate on Rebecca’s world.

  What I was hoping for was a romance. I wanted Rebecca and Jacob to discover how much they were in love. I wanted them to get married and leave Pennsylvania and travel north by covered wagon. I wanted them to settle in Canada and raise a family. I wanted them to be my ancestors.

  But it doesn’t look like it’s going to work out that way. Not if Jacob has killed his father and stolen a horse. Mind you, Rebecca doesn’t believe it. Maybe she’s right.

  As for me, I have a sort of boyfriend myself. Put that in the past tense. I had a sort of boyfriend.

  I fell in love with his family’s golden retriever. Jaimie Retzinger happened to be on the other end of the leash.

  He wanted to get married.

  I’m fifteen, for glory’s sake.

  He wanted me to change my name! I swore if I ever got married, I wouldn’t be a Retzinger. He didn’t like that I’m very fond of the name Allison Briscoe. Briscoe is the one good thing my mom ever got from my father, unless you count David and me.

  Jaimie Retzinger entered my life early last fall. We hung out together in a kind of witless oblivion but ended up getting on each other’s nerves. He’s not much for thinking or doing things; he’s not much for anything, really. It seemed a nice change at the time. He just lives in the moment, he doesn’t talk very much, or listen. Mostly he rides around on his secondhand Harley, which he bought when he was working for awhile and hasn’t paid off. He’s three years older than me but he still lives at home.

  My relationship with Jaimie Retzinger is complicated. We went to a school dance once. That was our only dress-up date. Somebody took our picture and it ended up in the yearbook. He didn’t like me being in school, he didn’t like being in the yearbook, he didn’t like when I passed my exams. He was happy when I decided to drop out. That would put us on a more equal footing and he liked that. You fill in the blanks: we split.

  More or less.

  He’d still come by occasionally after the snow forced him to stop riding his “chopper.” That’s what he calls his motorcycle, even though there is nothing custom about it. It’s just like he bought it, dints, dirt, and everything. He’d drop in to Tim Hortons, order a double-double to go, then hang around, drinking it out of the cardboard cup at a table, taking up space.

  My good glory, if falling for Jaimie Retzinger was the dumbest thing I ever did, getting rid of him, more or less, was the smartest.

  I mean, talk about no future in a relationship, with Jaimie Retzinger there was hardly a present. Whatever we had was all in the past.

  Thinking about him makes me want to swear. I used to swear a lot. I don’t any more. Glory is about it. It’s what my Nana says. We’ve been using that word in our family for hundreds of years.

  As I drift back into Pennsylvania, the last image in my mind is of Jaimie Retzinger. He’s smiling that scary smile of his, like he doesn’t know what he’s smiling about.

  Three

  Rebecca

  Rebecca squinted against the rising sun and gazed directly at the two British soldiers. This seemed to make them uncomfortable. They were not used to Mennonite women making eye contact. Even among the Mennonite men, some would confront them face-to-face, as if daring the soldiers to challenge God’s authority, but others looked away, being shy, or fearful, or less certain of their faith.

  Johannes Haun stared Corporal Jonas straight in the eye.

  He hardly bothered to acknowledge Private Panabaker’s squalid existence.

  “It is not likely, so, that the boy would kill his own papa, or steal a horse,” said Rebecca’s father. He spoke English with a heavy German accent, echoing what was commonly called Pennsylvania Deutsch. This was the language his people had brought with them when they fled Europe in search of religious freedom.

  While the men talked, Rebecca’s mind burst with images of Jacob Shantz in the shadow of the church. Could he possibly have murdered his father? When they had kissed, did he know he was going to do it? Was that why he wasn’t afraid about what his father might think? No, she answered herself. Satisfied with her conclusion, she let the images fade.

  Jacob’s father was not a popular man. If Mennonites had been allowed to dislike someone, they would have disliked Noah Shantz. But that didn’t justify murder. Therefore, Rebecca thought whoever murdered Jacob’s father, it could not have been Jacob. It had to be someone from outside their community. Her mind was made up.

  “It wasn’t Old Bess, was it?” she asked.

  “Who?” said the corporal with the scar on his face.

  “The horse. She was his, you know. Jacob’s father wanted to use her for meat because she was old. Jacob promised to work twice as hard if she would be spared.” She knew his argument had cost him a terrible beating but his father had given Be
ss another year.

  “Maybe she’s his and maybe she isn’t,” said the soldier who looked like he hadn’t washed in weeks. “The old mare still belonged legally to the boy’s daddy and the boy took her away.”

  Jacob might have borrowed Old Bess. He didn’t steal her. Jacob was not a horse-thief.

  The corporal smiled at her. She glowered back and he blushed. Although his face was in shadow, she could see he had good teeth and he was clean. Why should she care how he looked? She was annoyed with herself. She backed up so that her father stood between them.

  The filthy soldier called Panabaker asked her again, practically shouting, if Jacob was on his way to join Washington.

  “Why should I know where Jacob Shantz has gone?” she shot back.

  “Sei Still!” her father scolded. His sharp tone declared she must be polite. He took it for granted she was being truthful.

  And she was. She had avoided the soldier’s question with one of her own. She had not answered falsely, which she knew was a sin. She had not answered at all.

  It would be better if they did not know Jacob was on his way to Valley Forge. If they knew, they would judge him guilty of treason as well as murder. If he were caught, he would be shot for one crime or hanged for the other. Either way, he would die in disgrace and Rebecca would be a tragic figure for the rest of her life.

  Behind her, she could hear the familiar sounds of morning activities as her brothers and sisters did their chores and got ready for breakfast. She was hungry. It was almost time to set out for the long walk to school.

  “You go ahead now, Rebecca,” her father said. “You help your mother. The soldiers are finished with you.”

  It struck her as odd that he spoke in English. He was declaring to the soldiers their business with her was done. He was being protective.

  For a fleeting moment, she wondered what her father would do if they tried to arrest her for being Jacob’s friend. Could they do that? Would Johannes Haun resist? Was her stern and gentle father capable of violence? To protect his children, perhaps? To protect the people he loved?

  Rebecca felt she should say something else on Jacob’s behalf. She thought perhaps she should lie. She could say he was on his way to Upper Canada on the far side of Lake Ontario to join the British troops. But that would dishonor him, and anyway, why not join right here in Warwick? And of course, it would be wicked to lie.

  “Rebecca, Gehen Sei jetzt!” Her father was ordering her to leave. She knew he was uncomfortable with her being in the presence of such worldly men. It was his duty to shield her from exposure to the larger world.

  They were part of a small group of soldiers garrisoned at the edge of town. They had been there since October. The Mennonites sold them food from their meager supplies but they never got used to them. Soldiers in uniforms carrying guns were an ugly reminder of the war they wanted to ignore.

  And the soldiers were a temptation.

  Some of the Mennonite boys secretly played at being in the army. Some of the girls secretly admired the handsome red uniforms, especially of officers on horseback who carried swords and wore dangerously attractive hats. And at least one of the older boys, who thought of himself as a man, had seen them as agents of a foreign King. That was Jacob Shantz, and whether for adventure or his unruly beliefs, Jacob Shantz had gone off to join the Revolution.

  Rebecca turned her back to the three men and walked away. She calculated that the soldiers could never catch up to Jacob. Not even if they knew where he was going. It would take him two days to get to the winter camp of the Continental Army at Valley Forge. Even less, if he were riding old Bess.

  But something worried her.

  As she stepped back into the warmth of her own home, she wondered what would happen to Jacob if Washington’s Revolutionaries found out he was suspected of horse-theft and murder. Would they be obliged to arrest him? To turn him over to the British? To execute him themselves?

  Allison

  When I wake up this morning, I seem to be in the middle of a thought. It’s not a pleasant one. I’m thinking about Jaimie Retzinger. He’s a little strange. He’s only a little of anything. He just doesn’t measure up as a human being. He gets a job and forgets to go to work and gets fired. He forgets to go home. He forgets my name.

  But if that sounds like he’s stupid, he’s not. That’s what makes it so bad. I could live with stupid. He just doesn’t care about anything, even himself.

  Me, I care. I like people, I like working at Tim’s. I like the people who work there, and I like the people who come in. The regulars and the tourists. I’m planning on doing a cooking course at Sir Sanford Fleming College after university. I want to be an educated chef, maybe with my own restaurant someday. I want to travel.

  The only traveling I can do right now is inside my head.

  It’s a small world in here.

  That’s a joke.

  Maybe it isn’t. In some ways, a mind is bigger than the entire world, the universe, infinity, eternity, everything. Because we can imagine these things. We can reduce them to thoughts. One of my problems, according to Jaimie Retzinger. I think too much. I always explain my jokes and I think too much.

  It’s funny, I feel safe in my hospital room right now because I know it is daytime. During the day, nurses and doctors come and go. The cleaning staff comes in. The lights must be on and the curtains are pulled back. At night, the door is closed and the curtains are drawn. I can tell by the muffled sounds, by the stillness of the air. I’m pretty much on my own in the dark.

  Except for my visitor. He’s in the dark, too. So, is he just listening? That’s creepy. It really is. I wonder if he’ll be back again? They haven’t removed the bandages. I’d know if they had. I wonder if he’s waiting to kill me. If so, why wait?

  Unless he knows I’m aware, in here. Unless he’s taunting and torturing me on purpose.

  That’s pretty funny, if the only person who knows I’m alive is waiting to kill me.

  My world is a very limited place. But I have Rebecca Haun in my dreams, even if she’s terrified herself right now, because the soldiers want Jacob for murder.

  At least she has a life.

  Four

  Rebecca

  After her sisters said their prayers and they all crawled into the big bed, Rebecca lay awake, staring at the ceiling. If she pulled the blue quilt down a little, she could tilt her head and see out the window. There was no moon and the sky was alive with a billion points of starlight.

  Where would Jacob be by now? If he had traveled all night and then all day, he might have reached Valley Forge.

  She tried to understand a world where soldiers were trained to kill people. People just like themselves. But if someone were suspected of being a killer, he could be hanged. She preferred the Mennonite ways, where death was a decision left up to God.

  She tried to fall asleep but she couldn’t stop worrying about Jacob. She decided something had to be done. He was wanted for murder.

  Rebecca dressed very quietly so as not to awaken her sisters. She walked down the stairs one step at a time to prevent them from creaking. She poured a little water from the jug directly into one hand and dabbed at her eyes. She combed her long brown hair and braided it, then wrapped it around her head and secured it with the wooden comb her oldest brother, Christian, had carved for her when she turned thirteen.

  She took two apples from a basket on the table and tore off a piece of dark brown bread from a loaf in the breadbox. She wrapped the apples and bread in a small bundle. She did not want to take more than her share.

  She pulled on her boots and put on her black bonnet with the white trim. She lifted her heavy gray shawl from the back of the door and slipped out into the night. She bent to lace up her boots, then wrapped the shawl around her shoulders and began walking.

  Her parents would be horrified.

 
Johannes and Margaret Haun would not worry about her safety. She was a very resourceful girl. She was smart and she was independent, a quality not admired by Mennonites but one that would give them comfort. No, they would be horrified by how she was going against the law, God’s law and man’s law.

  Their God would be angry at disobedience. Running away, even for a good reason, was disobedient. Running away for the sake of a man, or a boy, who might have broken the Lord’s Commandment against murder, that was an unforgiveable sin.

  Her father would have no choice but to forbid her return. The moment she stepped out the door into the starlit night, she knew there would be no turning back. But the same God, whose wrath she invited, knew she was moving into the darkness for love. If not for love, for justice and mercy.

  Surely their Lord knew Jacob was innocent. The least she could do was to warn him that his father was dead. And that he was wanted for stealing Old Bess.

  The unspoken vows between them demanded that much, even if those vows were in ruins.

  It was cold but the moon cast its light across the fields, making the frost glimmer like a fairyland. The road was a ribbon stretched tightly across the landscape in front of her. She huddled into her shawl for warmth and walked briskly.

  When the sun came up and her brothers and sisters were out of bed, they would discover she was gone. Daniel, Luke, and Matthias, Sarah, Rachel, and Ruth would all scurry around looking for her. Christian, who was the oldest, was away in Massachusetts, studying the Bible at a college in Concord near Boston.

  Rebecca knew her mother and father would be frantic with worry. They would know where she was going. But they would not come after her.

  She had made her decision.

  The rest was out of their hands.