by Linda Byler
“Get the police,” Mam whispered. She stroked Levi’s shoulder and massaged his back while Sarah hesitated.
“I don’t want to go out there—all those men.”
“You have to. Priscilla won’t. I think they need to hear what Levi has to say.”
Obediently Sarah went, slowly calculating which group of men looked the most approachable. Good. There was Dat. Walking on, she tapped his arm and said, “Dat,” very quietly. He didn’t hear her, so she tugged at his sleeve.
He turned, smiled, and said, “Sarah.”
“Dat, Levi—Mam thinks the police should talk to Levi.”
“Why?”
“He said there was a white car in here. Without lights.”
Immediately Dat left in search of the officers. Sarah went back inside, away from the hissing and crackling, the mud and blackness, and the stench of rolling smoke.
The propane lamp sent the orange glow of the fire away, its yellowish white light restoring a sense of normalcy to the farm kitchen. Levi shuffled gratefully into its warm circle and settled into the well-used brown rocking recliner with the cotton throw across its back. He looked up with fear and respect when the officers walked through the door.
He told them he was Levi Beiler and politely and quite solemnly shook hands with the officers, peering up at them through his thick lenses. As they introduced themselves, Sarah stood nearby knowing that Levi would never forget their names.
Chapter 2
AS THE FIRE CONTINUED to rage, the streams of water that spurted from the long, snaking hoses turned the barnyard and the macadamed driveway into a brown sluice of debris and charcoal-laden liquid. Firemen in professional gear, their training now being put to use, aimed the nozzles for the greatest efficiency as the night wore on.
Inside the house, Levi gazed in wonder at the stern figures before him—Jake Mason and Brian O’Connell. Awed by the sheer splendor of their uniforms, he filed the men’s names away in his sharp, efficient memory.
“How are you, Levi?” asked Jake, the older one, his hair graying at the sides, his stomach snuggly filling the heavy black shirt like a large sausage.
Levi watched the officer’s stomach, noticing the absence of wrinkles in his shirt.
“Good. I have a sore neck, though.”
He looked questioningly at Sarah for reassurance, knowing the English language remained elusive for him.
Sarah stood by Levi, put a hand on his pajama-clad shoulder, and bent to whisper, “Throat.”
Squinting, looking at them, he pointed to his throat.
“Sorry to hear it. Now tell me what you saw.”
Levi knew he was important and had an audience, so he played it for all it was worth.
“I need a drink,” he said, waving his hand, a kingly motion that sent Sarah to his nightstand. Mam cast a knowing smile in Dat’s direction.
He drank from the straw, grimacing mightily, rubbed his hands, pursed his lips, and said, “A white car drove past the house with no lights on it.”
Giving no sign of acknowledgment, the officer scribbled on a pad and resumed questioning Levi.
Yes, he’d been awake.
No, he hadn’t seen the car here before.
The only person he knew with a white car was Fred Dunkirk, the guy who sold Watkins products, and he hadn’t been here since September twenty-third.
The officers shook Levi’s hand, thanked him, and turned to Dat, leaving Levi with a beatific grin and stars in his eyes—to think he’d shaken the hands of real policemen.
“You have no reason to believe this was an act of revenge, someone acting out against you? No past grudge, perhaps?” Jake asked.
Dat shook his head, bewildered.
Sarah watched his expression with love for her father flooding her heart. He was an ordained minister, carrying the burden of being a servant of the Lord, striving to keep peace and unity among his people—the small district of twenty-some families—protecting his flock from “the wolf,” the ways of the world.
Yes, of course, he had not always said or done the right thing. But so far as he knew, he had no reason to believe anyone would take such hateful revenge, allowing innocent animals to meet horrible deaths like that.
In Sarah’s eyes, at the tender age of nineteen, her father was a wise and godly man, temperate, slow to speak, and above all, kind and gentle. There was pain in her large gray-green eyes when she met Dat’s, also the color of restless seawater, a distinct feature handed down from Grandfather Beiler.
“I certainly have no reason to believe someone would do this against me,” he said quietly.
The policemen nodded.
Dat lowered his head and thought of Jonas Esh’s Reuben, who’d been excommunicated for a time—for sins he had brought on himself by his own rebellion. But Reuben did not have the ability, the meanness of heart, to react in such a way. He believed in Reuben, knowing the Esh boys all went through their rebellious phases because of questionable parenting. But when treated with patience and kindness, they all came around to see the folly of it.
What had his father said? You can accomplish more with honey than vinegar.
So when he lifted his head to meet the eyes of the policemen, these thoughts had brought a softness, a peace, to his own.
“No,” he said firmly. “No.”
As one officer nodded, the other’s hand went to his belt as a device chirped and crackled.
Sarah was startled and restrained a giggle, thinking how closely the sound resembled the chirp of a blue jay at the feeder. She mentally formed a picture of a large, aggressive bird attached to the policeman’s glossy black belt.
For the remainder of the night, the family huddled on sofas and recliners, covered with various afghans and cotton throws. Levi was taken back to bed after the policemen left. There he mumbled and coughed, the light of the dying barn fire playing across his features.
Mam stood at the sink staring out the window at the horrible reality of the loss. The acceptance drew her shoulders forward in a hunch of despair, her hands clenching the Formica top as if she could fix everything as long as she stayed erect, watching.
Sarah sat by Levi’s bed, where the windows were low. Her knees were drawn up, her hands clasping them, her head resting against the cushion of Levi’s blue La-Z-Boy. She watched the silhouettes of Amish men and English ones, of firemen and fire trucks, the smoke and the steam and the mess. Wondering how they would ever recover from this completely insurmountable financial loss made her sick to her heart.
“Mam!” she called suddenly, the need to rescue her mother from her pitiful stance at the sink rising to her throat.
“What, Sarah?”
“Come sit down. You can’t stop the fire by standing there hanging onto the countertop.”
Mam turned her head, looked sheepish, and then sank into the nearest hickory rocker, murmuring and shaking her head in disbelief.
“Try and get some rest, Mam. Morning will come soon enough.”
Mam nodded, but Sarah knew she would only shut her eyes and remain wide awake beneath the closed lids, her mind churning with questions tumbling over each other as she planned the upcoming day. The children needed to go to school. Their lunches needed to be packed. Mervin had brought home his arithmetic workbook with red check marks all over one page. Had he done the corrections?
There would be breakfast to prepare for these men. She counted the dozens of eggs in the propane gas refrigerator in the kesslehaus, where she stored the extra eggs from her fine flock of laying hens.
As if she read her thoughts, Sarah called, “There are plenty of eggs, and we have canned turkey sausage.”
“Yes, Sarah. Bless your heart.”
Sarah was warmed and rejuvenated by the sound of her mother’s voice. Dear, dear Mam. At a time like this, when tension ran high, she remembered to appreciate her daughter’s help. By the light of the flickering flames, she smiled.
The Beiler farm, as always, had been immaculate, the level
black-topped driveway lined with maple trees, the lush green grass beneath them mowed twice weekly, in the spring especially. The white fence beside it contained the herd of clean black and white Holsteins, the clipped and well-fed brown mules, Dutch, the riding horse, and George, Charlie, Pansy, and Otter, the driving horses. The stone farmhouse stood off to the left, a proud old house that had weathered centuries of rain and sunshine, arctic temperatures and tropical ones, humidity, drying winds, thunderstorms, and the dark of night.
Dat had just renovated the shingle roof, replacing it with more expensive standing seam metal that was pewter gray, almost black, and complemented the ageless gray and brown stone. The porch had been expanded and stretched across the entire front, except for Levi’s enclosure with its tall windows shaded by the maple trees and the boxwoods adding a thick, green skirt.
There was a new addition built on the side, a kesslehaus, the hub of Amish farm life. Against one wall stood the wringer washer and plastic rinse tubs. Against another wall were a deep sink, countertops, and cupboards containing canning supplies. The cupboards also held Sevin, Round-Up, insecticides, Miracle-Gro, Epsom salt, and pickling lime.
That was also where they stored the extra-large matches called barn burners used to light the fire for the eisa kessle (iron kettle). The huge cast-iron pot rested on the cast-iron top of a brick enclosure. Heavy pieces of wood, along with newspaper and kindling, were fed into the enclosure and lit with a barn burner through an opening on the front that was then sealed with a cast-iron door. The door was securely shut to contain the heat that was necessary to heat the water in the kettle for cold packing hundreds of jars of fruits and vegetables.
The floor was cemented and painted with at least three coats of a light brown oil-based paint—the color of mud. The man at the paint store had tried to persuade Mam that nowadays the water-based paint was as good. But she pursed her lips and shook her head. Her eyes flashed as she said, no, it wasn’t. She knew what held up under the countless comings and goings of a large family. Only her oil-based paint would protect the floor against kicked-off boots, endless baskets of laundry, bushels of corn, peaches, and apples, cardboard boxes, and stainless steel buckets.
Adjacent to the kesslehaus, the kitchen was large and homey. Golden oak cabinets were constructed along two walls in an L-shape. The large gas refrigerator, an EZ Freeze from Indiana, fit snugly beneath two small cabinets built above it. On the other side of the room were the gas stove and the canister set containing flour, sugar, tea, and coffee running along one countertop.
The kitchen table was large. Two leaves extended it to the required size for seating the seven of them. At one time, when the married boys had all been at home, they’d had as many as four leaves. The brawny sons had needed elbow room as they shoveled heaping mounds of mashed potatoes, beef, beans, and corn into their mouths to nourish their craving stomachs.
The seating area was like an extension of the kitchen, a circle of sofas and chairs, propane lamps housed in oak cabinets, magazine racks containing the Die Botschaft, the Connection, Keepers at Home, and the Ladies Journal—all periodicals about Plain life. Mam looked forward to reading them when Mervin brought in each day’s mail on his scooter.
Levi’s room was off to the left, facing the front lawn and the white dairy barn that was added on to the older barn structure in 1978 and now housed much of their livelihood. They’d added the cement manure pit, the new barnyard, and the large shop and implement shed the year after they remodeled the house.
Mam had been guilty, plain down guilty, when Ammon King’s work crew started gutting the dear old house. What had been good enough for her mother-in-law all of her life should have been good enough for her. But Dat squeezed her shoulders and said they’d been blessed and were now financially able to make the renovations. Though she beamed and smiled and her eyes twinkled as she secretly anticipated her wonderful “new” house, she always kept her head bowed and tried to be humble—but she really wasn’t.
They made do in the buggy shed during the renovations that summer. Now Mam grew pots of ferns and fig trees and African violets on the new wide oak-trimmed windowsills. She hung the required dark green window shades in the living room but made pretty cotton curtains in plain beige for the kitchen.
She was, after all, a minister’s wife, and her house needed to be in the ordnung (within the rules) as befitted the wife of a leader in the church. But, oh, how she adored it! She scattered hand-woven rugs made from cast-off clothing, enjoying the charm the vibrant colors added, and went about her days with a song in her heart, surrounded by the things she loved.
Sarah must have dozed. There was a knock on the door followed by a rustling sound. She realized that someone was in the house. Sitting up and squinting, she carefully lowered the footrest of the blue La-Z-Boy, glancing at Levi’s form beneath the covers, and stood up.
“Hannah.”
At the same time, Mam’s head rolled across the back of the hickory rocker. She gasped, “Ach (oh), my!”
Hannah, the wife of Elam Stoltzfus and the mother of several married daughters and two boys, Chris and Matthew, was their closest neighbor. “Don’t be scared. Stay there. Ach, Malinda!”
An old sweater was slung across her purple dress, a black apron pinned around her rotund form. Gathering Sarah and Malinda in a massive hug of sympathy, she bore enormous amounts of goodwill, kindness, and an mit-leidich’s g’feel (understanding). She shed a few discreet tears as she spoke, trying in vain to contain them. Stepping back, she kept a large hand on each of their shoulders.
“Oh, I told Elam, of all the folks in Lancaster County, Daveys are the least deserving of this tragedy. Your whole barn! In one night? Do they know what happened? Was it the diesel? Gel (right), that was probably where the fire started. You know, I would have come up, but to tell you the truth, I was afraid I’d get smashed flat by a fire truck. Those sirens give me the woolies. Ach, Davey.”
Leaving Mam and Sarah, she went to greet Dat, his eyes red rimmed, his face streaked and blackened.
“Davey.”
She shook his hand as firmly as a man might, then pulled her upper lip over her lower one, ducked her head, and blinked. In the morning light, her dark hair gleamed under her white covering, a shroud of motherliness.
“Good morning, Hannah.”
“Oh, you look awful tired, Davey. What a night! What a dreadful night. Elam came up here right away. He said you got the cows out. That’s good. But the horses. Oh, I can’t think of the horses. I thought of Priscilla’s Dutch.”
Mam lifted a finger in warning, her eyes rolling to the couch where Priscilla lay sleeping, or appeared to be.
“Well.”
Hannah turned to the cardboard box she’d been carrying and carefully extracted two large jelly-roll pans containing her famous breakfast pizza.
“Gook mol (look here), Malinda.”
Where cooking was concerned, insecurity was completely foreign to Hannah. There wasn’t a shred of humility in her. She knew the firemen would be complimenting the huge pans of breakfast pizza as they reached for second helpings. She knew, and she was glad.
Hannah took charge, telling Mam and Sarah to freshen up as she had breakfast under control. Matthew was bringing French toast in her stainless steel roaster.
Mam looked as if she might cry. Instead she laughed with eyes that glistened too brightly.
Sarah went upstairs, her legs cramping with fatigue. She entered her room and held the curtains aside, watching the scene below. It looked like the end of the world—the apocalypse—only all in one spot. Twisted, blackened metal lay jumbled among horrible, charred timbers, once so strong and useful and sweet-smelling from centuries of supporting a roof with the harvest stored below. Now all was reduced to nothingness.
Patches of determined little flames kept breaking out, defiant and rebellious against the dousing torrents of water that had extinguished them. The smoke was unrelenting, groping its ghastly black way into nothingness. The very
maw of hell, Sarah thought.
Dat had often expounded on heaven’s wonders, but he also spoke of an awful place of fire and brimstone, where torment is never quenched. Well, this earthly fire was quenched. Kaput (done). All the power of the devil, and that’s exactly what it was, could not prevail against the human spirit of kindness, sympathy, and the goodness that made a community pull together.
In her mind, Sarah pictured their whole church district with ropes held taut over their shoulders, their backs bent, pulling large cut stones to build a wondrous Egyptian pyramid, like the Israelite slaves in a Bible story book. As the knowledge that good triumphs over evil seeped through the fear and doubt, sealing off the conduits of worry and anxiety, Sarah knew she had nothing to worry about.
Hannah was the first one, lifting Mam’s burden of breakfast. During the restless night, while they had dozed, uncomfortable, unable to sleep, Hannah had been mixing flour and yeast and sugar and oil, spreading the dough to each corner of the large pans, her heavy fingers repeating motions she’d done hundreds of times. Fried, shredded potatoes were next, then crumbled sausages and large bits of bacon that were applied with a liberal hand. The egg beater had been put to work mixing dozens of eggs that were then poured over it all with a flourish. After sprinkling shredded cheddar cheese on top, Hannah had popped the preparation into a hot oven before tackling the dishes.
She’d wake Matthew early. He was the cook.
Sarah smiled to herself. Matthew Stoltzfus. Tall, dark, and built like a wrestler, and happily dating the sweetest, cutest girl in the group of Sarah’s friends.
She shook herself and peered to the right as she heard the grinding of a tractor-trailer’s gears. Surely they weren’t bringing the bulldozers already.
Incredulous, her eyes popping in disbelief, she watched as the large truck bearing a yellow earth-moving machine came slowly up the drive. A line of buggies followed, the horses tossing their heads impatiently, champing bits in frustration.
“Sarah!”
“Yes?”
