The Captive Heart

by Dale Cramer

  The coyote yipped again. Much closer. Another one answered from a different direction. Ada dropped the diaper and snatched up the baby. The clouds parted and a half-moon began to cast a dim light over the rocky landscape. Swaying and moaning, hugging the child, now she could see shapes moving in the dark, hear the clicking of toenails against rock.

  There were more than two, and they were circling her.

  She was surrounded. There was nowhere to run.

  One of them stopped, a faint patch of blackness only slightly darker than the bare rock around it. She would not have known it was there at all if she hadn’t seen it moving. The silhouette narrowed, turning, creeping straight toward her.

  Ada whimpered and closed her eyes, dreading what was about to come. She squeezed Little Amos tight.

  “Shhhh, little one. Gott knows.”

  Because of Little Amos her own fears remained in check and she didn’t go away from herself. It was because of him that she thought of the harmonica. The harmonica was happy, and it loved him. It would ease his fears until the last. She pulled it from her pocket, put it to her lips, and blew.

  There was a sudden flurry as a coyote scrambled. He had been right in front of her, only a step or two away, and she heard toenails skittering on rock as the dark shape beat a quick retreat. She blew again, louder. The shadow withdrew further, turned broadside to her, and stood watching from a distance.

  Little Amos giggled and tried to take the harmonica. Snatching it from him, Ada blew it again. Honking. She had no idea how to make a tune on the instrument, nor did she care. She merely put it to her mouth and blew as hard as she could, over and over.

  Every time the coyotes started to circle, closing in on her, she blew the harmonica. For a long time it worked and they stayed away, but then they seemed to grow accustomed to it. They learned that the noise did them no harm and they began to ignore it, once again trotting steadily in an ever-closing circle. They wanted Little Amos.

  Again, her hope faded. She could see them now, approaching cautiously, haltingly, sniffing, and the red fog nearly closed off her sight. One of the coyotes dashed in and danced away with the dirty diaper, and then two others merged with his shadow and fought over it. The three growled at each other, tugged and ripped at the diaper until finally one of them slung it to the side. Abandoning it, they turned back toward Ada.

  But beyond the coyotes, she caught a glimpse of a larger shadow, rushing as silent as an owl in flight, low across the rock behind the coyotes. The quiet was shattered by a coyote yelp that merged with a chilling scream, the beginning of a great snarling, snapping racket. The coyotes darted away from her, silhouettes dashing toward the fight.

  They were all gone. All of them. She knew they weren’t far away, for her head rattled with the clamor of a furious battle just a stone’s throw from where she sat, but at least for the moment they were not watching her.

  Clutching Little Amos, she pushed herself to her feet and moved away, tiptoeing at first, then running. There was nothing to follow. She had forgotten the wagon tracks and would not have seen them anyway in the dark. She just ran.

  And ran.

  When she was out of breath, she slowed to a walk, panting, listening for the coyotes. She could no longer hear them. Afraid to sit down and rest for fear the coyotes would come again, she kept staggering forward.

  Keep moving, her inner voice repeated. Find Mary.

  She felt she had walked far enough to be back in Ohio. Her breath returned, but her arms ached from carrying Little Amos, and they began to droop. Just when she thought she could go no farther, she heard that scream again, echoing from canyon walls. It was far behind her now, yet the sound still curdled her spine and put the spurs to her. On legs driven by terror, looking back over her shoulder, she ran headlong into something that did not yield.

  It knocked her backward and she fell heavily. When she rolled over and sat up, gathering the crying child against her, she looked up to see a Mexican standing in front of her. In the pale moonlight he was no more than a blackness, an uncertain silhouette like the coyotes, but she could make out the shape of a sombrero on his head. One hand was on his hip, the other pointed to her right.

  She blinked and stared, shushing the baby.

  The Mexican didn’t move. As her eyes adjusted she saw him a little better and thought maybe it was not a man after all. Slowly, holding Little Amos, she rose and crept closer to the Mexican. An arm’s length away, she began to think maybe he was a tree.

  Her shaking, probing hand found the rough surface of a shattered pine with a broken flap of bark lying across the top that in the dark, in silhouette, might look a little like a sombrero. The arms were all that was left of the tree’s dry, broken limbs. Hitching Little Amos higher on her shoulder, she started to go around the tree, but her toe caught on a rock and kicked it loose.

  The rock bounced once . . . and disappeared. Silence, as if it had vanished. Leaning over, holding on to the limb for support, she saw that the dead tree clung to the very edge of a sheer cliff. She couldn’t see the bottom, but she could tell it was a long way down.

  Ada backed away and sat heavily on the ground, staring, trembling.

  This tree was her friend. She didn’t question it, or even think about it. She simply accepted that the tree had kept her from running over the cliff. If she had run off the cliff, Little Amos would have gotten hurt and she would be in trouble. The tree had stopped her. He had saved her from trouble because he chose to, because he wanted to. He was her friend.

  “Thank you,” she mumbled, because her mother had taught her to say it.

  When she tried to gather up Little Amos to walk some more she found her arms too tired and achy to hold him. She couldn’t even lift him. Lying on her side, she drew him into her coat, for his skin felt cold. Ada had no idea where his coat and pants had gone, but now the child was wearing only a shirt, and his legs were freezing.

  Little Amos wouldn’t stop shivering, even inside her coat. When Ada was cold her mamm always wrapped her in a blanket. She needed a blanket for Little Amos.

  In a rare blinding flash of inspiration she sat up and started tearing the skirt from her dress. Underneath it she still wore a heavy cotton slip, so she could tear off the skirt without having to “run around naked.” She’d never quite understood why, but Mamm didn’t like it when she ran around naked. The dress was old, the seam frayed, so her skirt tore off easily. Sitting spraddle-legged on the rock, she laid Amos in the middle of the cloth, bound it around him several times and then drew him up against her, inside her coat again.

  But her arms gave out quickly, exhausted from hours of carrying the thirty-pound child. She laid him down in her lap and let her weary arms fall limp at her sides. He seemed content, though he still shivered a little. But as he lay there, she noticed the pointed corners of the dark torn cloth against the white cotton of her slip, and it was as if they called to her.

  She had seen native women carry their babies in bundles like this without using their hands. They tied the corners of a blanket together and hung the bundle around their necks.

  She tried it. She fought with the loose corners for a long time, trying to figure out how to make a knot like the native women, but she couldn’t do it. When she had given up and sat slumped over with her eyes closed, puffing in frustration, her hands returned to the cloth all by themselves. She had forgotten what her hands knew. Long ago her hands had learned to tie her shoes, but only if she didn’t think about it. She kept her eyes closed tight, thinking only of shoes, and when she opened them again, the cloth was knotted.

  She stuck her head through the hole and tested the knot with her neck.

  It held.

  Slowly, for she was bone-weary and hurting in every joint and pore, she stumbled to her feet, groaning. Little Amos hung nicely against her belly. Fastening her coat around him as best she could, she grinned proudly at the little round face peeking out at her.

  It was his face that reminded Ada of her mi
ssion. Though her memory was porous and most things eventually fell through the holes, looking at Little Amos summoned one last clear purpose.

  Find Mary.

  But there was a sheer cliff in front of her. She couldn’t go any farther; she must turn one way or the other. But which way led to Mary? Ada had no idea where she was, let alone which direction she needed to go.

  Lost and confused, she stared blankly at the gnarled, broken tree for a minute before her mind once again conjured a sombrero on his head, arms at his sides, and she remembered that the tree was her friend. His arm had been pointing to the right the whole time, waiting patiently for her to notice.

  Smiling broadly, she blew her friend a twisted note on the harmonica, then waved goodbye and staggered off to the right.

  Downhill.

  Chapter 22

  Caleb slept fitfully that night, tossing and turning while snatches of dark, ominous dreams nipped at the edges of his sleep. He awoke an hour earlier than usual, but there would be extra chores in the absence of Aaron and Rachel, so he dressed himself and went out.

  When the chores were done, the family gathered for breakfast, and there with them was the doctor. An expatriated American by the name of Leonard Gant, he’d been bunking in Caleb’s basement for the last couple of nights while he tended the diphtheria victims in Paradise Valley. Dr. Gant was about Caleb’s age, a gray-haired, sophisticated gentleman who wore a three-piece suit and tie to the breakfast table. He had run his own practice in Saltillo for twenty years and was fluent in Spanish, but the Benders relished the opportunity to speak English for a change.

  “I’ll be heading back home in a day or two,” the doctor said over bacon and eggs. “I’ve administered antitoxin to everyone at risk in your Amish colony, but some of the younger ones are still in danger. Today will tell the tale, I think. Caleb, your wife tells me your children haven’t returned from Agua Nueva. Any news?”

  Caleb shook his head, took a sip of coffee. “No, and I’m thinking they should have got back by now. Chust as soon as I’m done eating, I’m going to look for them.”

  Even with a guest, the table seemed empty and quiet in the absence of Aaron, Rachel, and Ada. Especially Ada. She was always there. In all her years, unless she was laid up sick, Caleb couldn’t remember a single breakfast without her.

  “I’m sure they’re fine,” Gant said. “Dr. Gutierrez probably just wanted to hold them for a day or two to make sure the toddler was on the mend.”

  The sky was streaked with pink, the sun just beginning to peek over the eastern horizon. There was a nip in the air, and blue shadows still clung to the bottomland when Caleb and Harvey hitched the Belgians to the farm wagon and drove around front. Domingo cantered up from the east on Star, and for some reason Jake Weaver was trotting up Caleb’s driveway on one of Hershberger’s saddle horses.

  They converged in the front yard at the head of the driveway. Caleb hauled back on the reins, bringing his team of Belgians to a shuddering halt.

  “Good morning,” Jake said, leaning on his pommel. “I heard you were going out to look for Aaron and Rachel this morning and I wondered if I could go along. John said it was okay with him.”

  “Harvey’s going with me—and Domingo,” Caleb said. His dark-eyed younger son, on the bench beside him, tipped his hat to Jake. “I don’t know as we’ll need help.”

  Jake nodded. He would never argue with a man old enough to be his father, but Caleb couldn’t miss the crestfallen look, or the way Jake slumped a little in the saddle. The boy was worried about Rachel.

  “But then,” Caleb said, scratching his beard, “I’m thinking another pair of eyes couldn’t hurt anything.”

  “What is that?” Domingo was standing tall in his stirrups, peering down the road to the west into the shadows at the base of the mountains.

  “Where?” Caleb stared, but in the pearly light, with a thin morning mist hanging over the road, his fifty-year-old eyes could see nothing.

  Jake craned his neck, staring hard while his horse pranced nervously. “Domingo’s right. There’s something lying in the road. Maybe somebody’s burro lost a bag of beans.”

  Caleb thought he could see a lump in the road, but it was nearly a mile away. He wasn’t sure he really saw anything until the lump rose up and began to move. To Caleb’s eyes it was only a blurry black and white speck, but as soon as it began to walk he recognized that peculiar swaying gait.

  Ada!

  Snapping the reins and shouting his draft horses into action, he swung hard right, ignoring the driveway and angling across a ripe field of oats at a reckless gallop. Two horses passed by the wagon on either side, Domingo and Jake racing ahead.

  By the time Caleb got there they had already dismounted and were walking alongside Ada, gripping her upper arms and trying to get her to stop. Caleb jumped down from the wagon and ran to his daughter.

  Ada’s kapp was missing and the skirt of her dress torn off. Her frizzy uncut hair shot wild over her shoulders, down her back, in her face. Filthy and bruised, scratched and bleeding in a dozen places, she was taking short little baby steps on swollen feet, limping badly. Her eyes stared without seeing and she babbled incoherently.

  Caleb had to block her path just to get her to stop walking, and even then she didn’t seem to recognize him. When she pushed against him it struck him that the odd bulge under her coat felt a lot like the flesh and bone of a toddler, and his heart leaped.

  But when he started to undo the hooks she grabbed his wrists, squeezing with a strength he didn’t know she possessed, and pushed him back. Her chin jutted and her eyes flared, the familiar angry expression he’d seen occasionally when Ada didn’t get her way. As soon as he backed off, she shouldered past him, hobbling, limping.

  “Help me,” he said, and the three of them tried to steer her to the back of the wagon. But as soon as they put their hands on her and started to exert a little force she let out a bloodcurdling wail and flailed with her arms until they backed away.

  She plunked down heavily in the middle of the road and rocked back and forth, clutching her secret bundle. The baby hadn’t made a sound, hadn’t moved. That stillness, combined with Ada’s bizarre behavior, filled Caleb with the darkest dread.

  It must have upset Jake, too. He stared at her for a moment, shaking his head. “Something terrible has happened,” he said. Then his eyes grew wide. “Rachel!” Without another word he slung himself up into the saddle and tore off down the road toward the mountains at a wild gallop.

  “Domingo, stop him!” Caleb shouted, pointing.

  Domingo leaped on his horse and took off after Jake.

  Caleb knelt in the road next to Ada, trying to reason with her, but she paid him no attention. Her bottom lip stuck out and she stared straight ahead, bleary-eyed, on the verge of collapse.

  The chugging of an automobile motor approached, then died. A few seconds later Dr. Gant knelt next to Caleb.

  The old doctor examined Ada briefly, lifting her eyelids, gently checking her pulse. But when his hands went near the hooks and eyes of her coat she shook him off, leaned lower over the bulge and crossed her arms on top of it.

  “She may not even know you’re here,” the doctor said.

  “Oh yes,” Caleb said, his eyes flashing wide as he rubbed his wrist. “She knows. We need to see about the child, but she won’t let anyone near him. She goes into a tantrum. What can we do, Doctor?”

  “I can give her a sedative.”

  He went back to the car for his other bag, and as he was rummaging through it a buggy pulled up. Mary and Ezra jumped down. Mary ran, breathless, her mouth open, stark terror in her eyes, shouldering her father aside as she knelt in front of Ada.

  She gripped her sister’s round face with both hands, forcing Ada’s vacant eyes to focus on her.

  “Ada?”

  Ada had been rocking steadily and moaning, a low keening from the back of her throat, but when her eyes fixed on Mary she blinked and the moaning abruptly stopped. Her fa
ce tilted down. Black fingernails on grimy, blood-streaked fingers worked slowly at the hooks of her coat.

  They all watched in awed silence as Ada opened her coat, slipped the knotted cloth over her head, carefully lifted the heavy bundle and held it out to Mary.

  Utterly speechless, Mary’s shaking hands peeled back the black cloth to reveal a face. She clutched her son to her breast and bent low over him, weeping.

  Ada reached into her pocket, raised a fist to her mouth, blew a curiously loud note on the harmonica, then held it out to Mary. But Mary’s head was down, her face pressed against her child. Ezra reached down to take the harmonica, but Ada snatched it back and glared at him. As soon as Ezra retreated she offered it again, and a little hand came out of the bundle to take the harmonica from her.

  ———

  They didn’t have much trouble with Ada after that. The men got her into the doctor’s open-top Nash, and the whole caravan turned around and went back to Caleb’s house.

  Dr. Gant said that Ada and the baby were both badly dehydrated, and Ada vindicated his diagnosis by drinking a quart of water without stopping. He checked her out as thoroughly as he could, and then the women drew buckets of water and took her upstairs to set about cleaning her up while the doctor tended to Little Amos.

  The front door opened. Domingo came in, followed by Jake, hat in hand. The young man’s eyes were hard, his mouth open and his breathing sharp, like a man fresh from a fight.

  Caleb went to him, laid a hand gently on his shoulder and spoke quietly to him, in Dutch. “I know how you feel, son, and we will do something. But first we must learn all we can from Ada and then we must act together. The last thing we want to do right now is go running off in different directions. That would only make things worse. Do you understand?”

  Jake’s eyes dropped away and he nodded. His breathing slowed.

  In a little while Miriam came downstairs to the living room, where the men were waiting.