After Dok dropped Ruthie off at her house and gave a brief update to David, she felt the first wave of fatigue hit her as she drove down the dark road. A big yawn slipped out. When she opened her eyes, someone jumped out in the middle of the road and flapped his arms. Dok slammed on the brakes to avoid him.
Luke Schrock!
Seriously? She got out of the car, furious. “Luke! How can you play a game of chicken after what happened tonight? When are you going to come to your breaking point?” And then she saw his face. He wasn’t playing a game.
“The horse. Galen’s horse. I did something . . .”
“What are you talking about?”
He pointed to the side of the road and it was then she saw a horse lying on its side, one leg twisted grotesquely, moaning the most pitiful wail. Dear God. She would never, in all her life, forget the sound of that suffering. It was a terrible, agonizing sound.
“What did you do? Did you try and jump that high fence?”
Luke couldn’t answer, couldn’t focus. His face looked stark, struggling with some inner torment she couldn’t begin to fathom.
Then the crumbling happened. His whole being collapsed as he sank to his knees. “I can’t . . . stop . . . anymore. Everything’s falling apart.”
Dok reached out and touched Luke’s arm very gently. “Go sit in the back of my car. I’m going to call for help.”
Matt. She needed Matt. She fished her cell phone out of her pocket and dialed. Please, please be there.
He answered on the first ring. “Dok?”
“Matt, I’m on Pinecove Road. I need help.”
“Stay put. I’m on my way.”
“Matt! Wait. Bring your . . . shotgun.” Dok hung up and took a deep breath, walked to her car, and leaned in. She took Luke’s pulse and noted his dilated pupils. “Luke, are you hurt anywhere?”
He shook his head, but she wasn’t sure he could give her a coherent answer. She took his pulse—it was racing—and checked the pupils of his eyes. He had some scrapes, but other than being drunk, he wasn’t badly hurt.
Oh, the moan of that horse. It made her feel sick. If Matt didn’t come soon, she wondered if she had anything to help ease its pain, anything at all. She squeezed her eyes shut, wishing she could clamp her ears and not hear the animal’s agony. She knew enough not to touch a wounded animal, but it felt like her heart was breaking in two. She’d always loved horses.
When she opened her eyes, she saw the flashing lights of Matt’s police car pull up. He bolted out of the car. “Ruth! Ruth, are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” The relief on his face was palpable. It touched her. “I have Luke Schrock here in the car. From what I can gather, he tried to jump the fence and the horse broke its leg.”
“Is Luke hurt? Shall I call for an ambulance?”
“He’s fine. He’s . . . drunk. And maybe in shock.”
Matt checked the horse and went to the trunk of his car to retrieve a shotgun. Dok covered her ears as he readied himself to end the horse’s suffering. And then it was over.
“Galen,” Luke cried, rocking back and forth in the car, arms gripped against his stomach. “It’s Galen’s horse. His Sorrel Bay. His new horse. His prize horse.” He groaned and Dok worried he might throw up in her new car. And then he started to choke and gag and—“Luke! Get out of the car!” Too late. He vomited all over the backseat.
Matt brought rags from his car and wiped it up as best he could, but the smell . . . it was horrific. Alcohol-related vomitus. And all over the back of her new car! Dok was not normally a retaliatory person, she was a healer at heart—but really, she could smack this kid silly and not think twice about it. Her new car!
Luke wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve. “Galen’s going to kill me.”
“No, he’s not,” Matt said calmly. “That’s not Galen. I’ll help you tell him what happened.”
“I’m not going home. I will not go home.” Some of Luke’s old belligerence reemerged.
Dok knew that sometimes people in crisis needed temporary shelter, and Luke was in a crisis of his own making. “You’re coming to the practice. You can stay there for the night.”
Luke eyed her suspiciously. “Why?”
Because you’ve already caused enough damage in this town for one day. “I’m offering you a place to sleep. That’s all.”
Luke was no fool. “I’m fine. I’ll figure out a place to go. I have friends.”
Here was something Dok knew from experience: The needier they are, the more they resist. “Luke, you’re severely dehydrated. I want to keep an eye on you.”
“But—”
“No buts,” she said firmly. “You’re coming with me.” She shut the car door firmly.
“How can I help?” Matt asked. “What should I do?” He glanced at the horse’s still body. “Besides taking care of that.”
She stood before him, temporarily awed. Matt Lehman was amazing. When she called to say she needed him, he came. No questions asked, no excuses about how busy he was. He was just there, by her side. “Would you mind going to get my brother? Ask him to come to the practice. Tell him I need him.”
Matt gave her a brief, businesslike nod. “I’m on my way.”
“Matt!”
He spun around.
“Thank you.”
He gave her a slight grin and patted her on the shoulder. “All in a day’s work.”
Dok opened the door to David as if she’d been watching for him, and she probably had. “Come in,” she said. “He’s back in the exam room.”
There, on the cushioned examining table, was Luke Schrock with an IV in his arm. He was asleep.
“He’s not in any medical danger, but I’m giving him saline. He’s pretty dehydrated after his bender.”
David was still regarding Luke. “Well, at least someone in Stoney Ridge is getting a good night’s sleep tonight.”
Luke opened one eye. “Why not? Excellent accommodations for a bargain basement price,” he said. Slowly, he lifted himself up on one elbow to face David.
“Are you having withdrawal symptoms?”
Luke snorted. “I’m not seeing pigs fly past, if that’s what you mean.”
“Do you know why you’re here?”
“Yeah, I do.” He rose to a sitting position, looking somewhat fierce. “Galen kicked me out. He’s always had it out for me. He’s never liked me—”
David cut right through by stopping him abruptly. He knew that a characteristic of self-pity was to make someone else responsible for your trouble. “You can’t stop drinking, can you?”
Luke’s spine stiffened, briefly proud, then collapsed into wretchedness. He bowed his chin to his chest and covered his face with his hands, weeping, yet silent as stone.
David waited patiently until he was ready to continue.
“I’ve always been able to manage it. But . . . lately something’s changed. It’s like the wheels are falling off the wagon.”
“Luke, when did you start drinking?”
“After my dad died and then . . . my mom remarried. Everybody was so—” he paused—“I don’t know . . . preoccupied with their own stuff. Booze, it helped me get through the day.”
“But how old were you?”
“I don’t know. Around thirteen.”
David closed his eyes. “It hasn’t helped you get through it, Luke. All it did was anesthetize you from grieving. Alcohol has kept you stuck.” Ruthie had given him a few sentences of explanation when Dok dropped her off, but she was thoroughly exhausted and he sent her to bed. “Would you like to tell me what happened tonight?”
“No.” Luke gave a truculent toss of his head. Then he sagged again. “Maybe.”
He fell silent. David watched him chew on a nub of a fingernail and waited.
“I’m the reason Patrick Kelly is in the hospital.”
“Go on.”
“I baited him to play chicken. You know the game—a car comes straight at you. Whoever moves first i
s the chicken. Patrick didn’t move. I didn’t either.” He held his hands in front of him, one in a fist, one open, and knocked down his fist with the palm of his other hand. “Boom. He collapsed like a house of cards.”
“You were driving a car?”
“Not a car. Hank Lapp’s golf cart. I stole it.”
“I see.” But he didn’t.
“There’s more.”
“Go on.”
“Back in June, I was playing chicken on Old Spotted Horse Lane. It was the night that guy showed up at Eagle Hill and died.”
“You were driving?”
“No. It was a variation of chicken. When someone drove down the road, my friends and I would run in front of the car.”
“To make it swerve?”
“Exactly.”
“Why?”
Luke looked up long enough to give David the what-a-dumb-question lilt of his eyebrow. “For kicks.”
For kicks. The same reason Luke had blown up mailboxes with cherry bombs all over Stoney Ridge. And installed stop signs all over the town. And killed Patrick’s bird. And taken Galen’s horse for a joyride.
“It’s a pretty dull life here,” he said, as if that explained everything. Instantly, a tough Luke mask replaced his humbled face.
If this doesn’t get dealt with, David thought, this is exactly what he will look like when he’s old. Brittle. Onerous. Hardened.
Suddenly David got a glimpse of how Moses must have felt when he warned the Israelites of what lay ahead of them in the Promised Land if they didn’t toe the line: Moses blasted away at them, he rained down curses on them. His goal was to scare the sin out of them.
What would it take to scare the sin out of Luke Schrock?
The core of the problem was Luke’s hard heart. Unless his heart was touched, it would be like a candle that remained unlit. God alone needed to light that wick. God alone needed to touch that heart. David knew he would have to think very carefully about what to do next. He needed time. “So how’s this for a plan? You come home with me tonight.” He glanced out the window and saw the darkness was fading, dawn would be here soon. A good omen? “Today, I meant.”
“I guess I don’t have anyplace else to go,” Luke said almost crossly.
“You can get some sleep, then later we’ll talk to Matt Lehman, together. He’ll be able to tell us what’s the best course of action. How does that sound?”
He nodded, somewhat reluctantly.
“You certainly can’t go back to alcohol, Luke, without creating more problems for yourself and the ones you love, and you can’t go forward without help from other people. If you’re ready, I can help.”
Luke stared at him. “You’d do that, for me? After . . .”
After vandalizing property of innocent people? After manhandling my daughter? After doing harm to Patrick? Though David did not wish to hear these words of the Lord Jesus in his mind, they spoke to him, nonetheless: “But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.”
David read confusion, a plea for help, and, yes, hope in Luke’s tired eyes. Hope was good. Hope gave David something to work with. “Of course.” He fixed his eyes on Luke. “Of course I would do that for you.”
20
The sun was rising above the ridge by the time Dok drove David and Luke home. Luke had fallen asleep in the backseat. As the car came to a stop in front of the house, Birdy walked to meet them with a basket of wet laundry in her arms. When she saw Luke in the backseat, jerked awake by the car’s stop—which Dok might have made a little more abrupt than was necessary—her eyes went wide. She looked at them with a question written on her face. Caution was there too.
“Luke needs a place to sleep,” David said. “I told him it would be okay with you.”
“Of course it’s okay,” Birdy said quickly, back to her old cheerful self. “He can stay in Jesse’s room.”
David turned around in the car. “Luke, why don’t you go in and get a shower before breakfast?”
Birdy shifted the basket from one hip to the other. “Everything you might need is in the bathroom. Help yourself to Jesse’s clean clothes.”
As Luke trudged into the house, David and Dok got out of the car. “Where’s Ruthie?”
Birdy lifted her chin in the barn’s direction. “She’s milking the cow.”
That, right there, Dok thought, was the Amish way. Life might be falling apart at its seams, but the cows still needed milking, the bread needed baking, the laundry needed hanging. They kept going.
“I forgot to ask,” David said. “No word on Patrick’s tests?”
“Nothing yet,” Dok said. “I checked just before we left my office.” She had filled him in about the multiple sclerosis diagnosis Patrick had been given by his doctor in Canada. “I’m planning to drop by the hospital this morning. Ruthie wanted to go with me.”
“Stay for breakfast first,” Birdy said. “I’ve made your favorite. Baked oatmeal. It’s not your everyday baked oatmeal. The secret is adding cinnamon.”
David reached out to gently squeeze his wife’s arm. “Thank you for letting him stay. It won’t be for long. Just until Dok and I can figure out what to do next.”
Birdy nodded. “I don’t mind, but Ruthie might. David, she has bruises on her arms from where Luke grabbed her.”
David and Dok exchanged a look.
“I’ll go check on her,” Dok said.
In the barn, Dok found Ruthie finishing up the milking. “Did you sleep?”
“Not much.”
“Let me see your bruises.”
Ruthie set down the milk bucket and lifted up her sleeves. Dok could see an outline of Luke’s viselike grip of black-and-blue bruises on both of her upper arms.
“They will get worse before they get better.” She gently unrolled Ruthie’s sleeves to cover the bruises. “Luke is up at the house. He’s showering, then having breakfast.”
“What?!” Ruthie groaned. “As if the last twenty-four hours couldn’t get any more awful.”
“Your dad and I just brought him over.”
“I’m not going inside. I don’t want to see him. I don’t want anything to do with him.”
“Okay. I’ll take you to the hospital to see Patrick right now.”
“No. Go ahead and get some breakfast.” She blew out a puff of air. “There’s a bus heading into town this morning. I’ll take that.”
“Ruthie . . .”
“You haven’t slept at all. You must be hungry after the night you’ve had. You need to get fortified. Dad, too.”
That was true. Ruthie was such an observant girl.
“Talk to Dad. Figure out what you need to do with Luke. And come to the hospital when you can.”
Dok was reluctant to let her go alone to the hospital, but she did need to talk to David about Luke’s future. She had an idea, but she wasn’t sure if her brother would go for it.
For breakfast, Birdy served a French toast made from thick slices of homemade bread with a nice chewy crust, sunny-side-up eggs (of course! so Birdy-esque), crispy bacon, and broiled cherry tomatoes freshly picked from the garden.
When the baked oatmeal was served up, Luke wolfed down his piece as though he hadn’t eaten in forty days and forty nights. Seeing this, Birdy, whom Dok suspected was as compulsively tenderhearted as David, quietly switched her own plate for Luke’s empty one.
As Luke kept right on inhaling his baked oatmeal without so much as a nod of thanks, Dok was pretty certain he wasn’t even aware the switch had taken place.
And wasn’t that the crux of Luke’s problem, right there?
As tired as she was, Ruthie had hardly slept. All she wanted to do was to head to the hospital and be with Patrick. She saw him for a short time last night, but they didn’t talk about multiple sclerosis or his wobbliness or the stitches on his forehead from a game of chicken with Luke Schrock.
They really needed t
o talk.
She had dressed at first light and gone to the barn to milk Moomoo. It felt good to do something normal, part of her daily routine. Nothing else in her life felt normal. But when Dok had come to the barn to give her a heads-up that Luke was at the house, she felt fury rear up and return toward him. She had no desire to see Luke Schrock, of all people, over the breakfast table.
As she walked down her steep driveway, she saw Mim Schrock climbing the driveway. They met at the halfway point.
“I . . . heard about what’s happened,” Mim said. “I’d like to see Luke.”
Ruthie swept a hand toward the house. “He’s all yours.”
“Ruthie, he needs help.”
“You’re so right.”
“If anyone can help him, it’s you.”
Ruthie fought back a pang of annoyance. She lifted her sleeves to show Mim the bruises that ran along her upper arms. “It’s not my job to fix your brother.”
A look of horror crossed Mim’s face as she saw the bruises. Ruthie thought that would put an end to this discussion, but Mim wasn’t finished with her plea. “You don’t love him enough to help him?” she asked.
Was she serious? Galen King’s new horse had to be put down because of a broken leg, Hank Lapp’s golf cart was totaled, Patrick Kelly lay in a hospital room without enough strength to lift a water glass, and Mim Schrock seemed to be entirely focused on what her brother needed.
“No,” Ruthie said. Her voice sounded unusually firm. She wanted to set the record straight. “I don’t love him.”
“Because of this, though, right?” Mim said, biting her lower lip. “You don’t love him because of this?” She pointed to Ruthie’s arms.
“I’m not sure why it makes any difference. But no. I don’t love him, period. I cared about him,” she said, intentionally using the past tense. “Maybe all I ever cared about was his potential. But even those feelings just aren’t there anymore.”
Mim’s eyes filled with tears. “If you turn your back on him, who’s left?”
Luke was running out of people in his corner who made excuses for him, gave him too much margin, expected too little of him. She patted Mim on the shoulder. “Well, that’s what sisters are for. Sticking together through thick or thin.”
The Devoted Page 21
