Fall from Pride

by Karen Harper

  She jolted alert. Her heartbeat pounded. That sound! Gravel against glass, against the window? That was the signal she and her friend Hannah Esh had always used during their rumspringa years to get each other up at night when they wanted to sneak out. Not to meet boys like some did, but to go for a night swim in the pond in the summer or just stuff themselves with candy or listen to a transistor radio until dawn while Sarah sketched pictures and Hannah sang along with every Top Ten hit. They knew better than to get their friend Ella from the Lantz farm for such goings-on. No way Ella, as much fun as she could be, would take a risk sneaking out like that.

  Again, she heard the sound of gravel against the window. As she stood and looked, the glass was like a big black mirror since they hadn’t pulled the curtains closed. Sarah turned down the kerosene lamp and peered out, seeing at first only her own reflection. The Martyrs Mirror, she thought…now why had they put the word mirror in the title? She’d never thought about that. Were the Amish all martyrs to something or other? Did it mean to look deeply into your own life, to see yourself as you really were or to decide what you were willing to die for?

  And then Hannah’s face appeared, not the old Amish Hannah but the new one her parents were so riled about. Hannah and her friends in Cleveland had gone goth. Whereas Hannah was a natural blonde with eyebrows and lashes so pale they hardly showed, she now had red, spiky hair and eyeliner dark as sin. Sarah was used to seeing her friend in the soft pastel dresses unwed women wore, not in black, partly ripped and fringed tight pants and wearing silver chains and pins and piercings. Even now, Hannah looked like some kind of worldly Halloween freak. And she was gesturing for Sarah to come outside.

  Sarah held up one finger and, her hands shaking, scribbled a note for Martha. “I had to leave for a little bit. Stay with G., please—S.”

  She grabbed the windbreaker she wished she’d worn last night and tiptoed out. Hannah here! She wasn’t shunned so she could come back anytime, but she didn’t. After she’d had the argument with her father almost three years ago, she’d left for Cleveland. Their daughter’s loss was the cross the bishop and his wife bore, and Sarah’s and Ella’s loss, too. When Hannah’s plan to record and sell her own songs didn’t work out, her friends and family prayed she would come home. Instead, her worldly boyfriend got her a job in a recording studio mixing something or other, answering the phone and greeting people at the front desk, looking just like this.

  Sarah and Hannah hugged hard. Hannah smelled of an exotic scent Sarah could not name. Something smoky. She’d had incense burning in her little apartment the one time Sarah and Ella had visited her in Cleveland. Or had she been over to her family’s burned barn?

  “Jacob phoned me,” Hannah told Sarah as they stepped awkwardly apart. “I couldn’t believe the barn was gone. It’s supposed to be in the Cleveland paper tomorrow, but I had to see it first, before all the gawkers in the world come flocking in.”

  “You didn’t have to come at night. Everyone would have been glad to see you.”

  “Give me a break. About like they’d be glad to have Satan himself drop by. But I knew I could come to you, that you’d go with me. I just can’t go see it alone, any more than I could face my father. I parked back down the road by the graveyard and walked here. He—Jacob—said you were the one who spotted the fire and he called it in, but that you weren’t back together yet.”

  “Yet? Never. He crashed our party for Gabe’s friends. That’s why he was here.”

  “Jacob also said there’s a superhero here to save the day, solve the crime—if it’s a crime.”

  “Word travels fast, because Jacob was asked to leave before the state arson investigator showed up.”

  “Will you go with me, Sarah? I can’t go to Ella. I don’t need her telling me I’ve got to mend my ways and come back. She never did quite get the ‘judge not lest ye be judged’ bit, did she?”

  “I guess accepting that comes with suffering, and she’s been all wrapped up in traveling the road of her perfect Amish life.”

  Sarah instantly regretted she’d said that with such a sharp tone. But sometimes she resented Ella’s sticking to the straight and narrow, when she herself would like to go her own way at times. How she yearned to paint entire landscapes instead of the geometric quilt squares that called for no more creative decision than what color of hardware store paint to use.

  “In other words,” Hannah said with a bitter laugh, “she still hasn’t found out ‘it’s not all cakes and pies.’”

  “I’ve been thinking lately that it’s not all quilts and pies.”

  “You never did like to stitch quilts. And you think I’m a freak? But your painting—that’s you. Jacob told me about the quilt square you did on our—my family’s—barn.”

  “A real font of information, isn’t he?” Sarah said, surprised again her voice was so sharp. Maybe Hannah’s rebellious nature was rubbing off on her. And was Nate right to be suspicious of Jacob? Nate had said that some firefighters loved the attention from a blaze, but did Jacob, too? Nate had also said that some arsonists returned to the scene of their crime, not only to watch the fire, but even later to relive the excitement. Maybe that’s why Jacob stopped at the very next farm. Or did he think his phoning in the fire would build bridges back to his people—and her?

  The two young women started down the Oakridge Road that linked their farms. Sarah was glad Hannah didn’t insist on a run through the fields, like she’d done last night. They didn’t worry that there would be buggies or cars on the rural road now, because traffic was rare even in the daytime, unless a buggy clip-clopped past or tourists pleasure-driving some back byways happened by.

  As they sneaked around Hannah’s childhood home, not going up the lane but skirting along the fence, Hannah cursed. “Damn! There’s a hole in the sky where it should be! Nothing but blackness and stars! It’s so—I can’t believe it, all of that destroyed to almost nothing!”

  Her family’s team of horses plodded over to the fence as if to commiserate about the loss of their stalls, feed troughs and harnessing gear, the wagons and equipment they used to pull. Hannah put her hand out to one’s muzzle, and he snuffled against her palm as if he were crying.

  “At least you guys still know me,” Hannah whispered.

  “Why don’t you write your family a note!” Sarah suggested. “They’d love to hear from you, know that you cared enough to come see it.”

  “It won’t help them to know I was here and saw this,” she insisted. Even in the darkness, with only the wan quarter moon rising, Sarah could see her friend’s tears track down her cheeks. “The heart of the farm, so many good times here… I’m so sorry, so sorry about what I’ve done,” Hannah cried, and began to sob so hard that some of her mascara ran down her face in dirty lines and smeared against Sarah’s cheek as she hugged her again.

  “Good evening, ladies.” The deep male voice came from behind them. “Sarah, I thought you were going to stay all night with your grandmother, and what is this person confessing she’s sorry she’s done?”

  4

  “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE IN THE DARK?” Sarah demanded.

  The other girl glared at Nate and tugged her arm free. He was so shocked by her appearance that he let her go. He read in her defiant stare that she wouldn’t run, but he kept a light hold of Sarah’s arm. It was the first time he’d touched her. She radiated warmth from what must have been a walk down the road from her farm.

  “I’m going to ask the questions, Sarah,” he said more harshly than he’d intended. “I’m Nate MacKenzie, state arson investigator,” he told the other young woman, riveting his gaze on her. “I want to know who you are and what you are doing here in the dark.”

  Since he’d been in a sleeping bag near the back of the barn, Nate knew they hadn’t come across the fields. He’d seen the Eshes turn off their house lamps over an hour ago, so he’d been startled to hear women’s voices. Earlier, the bishop had sat outside with him for a while, over milk and cookies, no
less. Nate had explained to him that he had obtained a search warrant to examine the ruins of the barn, but the bishop had said he had his permission and didn’t need anything from the government to say so.

  Bishop Joseph Esh had also reminisced about the barn, which his father had bequeathed him. Amish barns were almost a part of the family, he’d learned, the cornerstone of their way of life, necessary not only for running their fifty-or-so-acre farms but for keeping the generations working and worshipping together.

  “This is Hannah Esh, from Cleveland,” Sarah said when the stranger continued to glare at him in silence. “She’s the Eshes’ third-oldest daughter, but she hasn’t lived here for three years because she’s away building her career.”

  “It’s okay, Sarah,” Hannah said. “I can talk for myself. He just surprised me. I thought, at first, it might be my… Never mind. Mr. MacKenzie, a friend phoned to tell me my family’s barn burned to the ground, and I wanted to see it without bothering them. I’m a big disappointment to them and am living in so-called worldly exile.”

  Hannah Esh, Nate noted, had a bitter tinge to her voice and a defiant expression on what could be—with that harsh makeup, he wasn’t sure—a pretty face.

  “She’s not being shunned like Jacob. She left home before joining the church—perfectly permissible,” Sarah said.

  “Then she’s able to be welcomed back with what you called open arms,” Nate said.

  “I’d appreciate it if you don’t tell my parents I was here,” Hannah said. “And I certainly don’t want to see them tonight.”

  She stared straight at him when she talked. Like Sarah, a strong woman—or were all Amish women?

  “I would think they would be happy to know you cared,” he said.

  “But only to visit to see a—a dead barn? I don’t think so.”

  “Hannah, I need to know where you were last night, when the barn burned.”

  “Why?” she countered instantly, and this time her steady gaze did dart away from him, back toward where the barn had been. He heard Sarah suck in a breath, so she no doubt recalled what he’d said about arsonists possibly returning to the scene of the crime. And Sarah’s quick mind would get it that Hannah, just as Jacob, had a motive to hurt the Eshes for rejecting her.

  “All right,” she said, cutting off Sarah, who seemed ready to leap to her friend’s defense. Hannah folded her arms over her breasts. “I was in the recording studio, making a demo and mixing my own audio background.”

  “You’re a singer?”

  “I am, and trying to be a professional one.”

  “She has a great voice,” Sarah added.

  “So you’re saying you were alone last night,” Nate said, looking only at Hannah. “Who called you to let you know the barn burned?”

  “No one you’ve met. Jacob Yoder.”

  “But someone I’m going to meet real soon. I need all your contact information, Hannah, including the name and address of the owner of the studio where you work—just in case there are more questions.”

  “And I’ll just bet there will be,” she said, her voice slightly shaky now. Ordinarily, he felt he could really read suspects, but with the barrier of her appearance, he couldn’t. It was tough enough to try to read the Amish, but an Amish woman who had rebelled? Maybe he could get more out of Sarah about Hannah later. She was becoming his touchstone here—his translator, as his boss had put it.

  “I’d like to be able to drive you ladies back to Sarah’s but I jogged over from where I left my vehicle in the woodlot behind the Kauffman farm. So I’m going to walk you back.”

  “Not necessary,” Hannah said. “No one’s out in Amish country in the dark.”

  “Someone was out last night,” Nate said, handing her a small pad and a pen to write down her contact information. “Someone, I’ll bet, who had a big beef against either your father or Sarah, or both.”

  Sarah loved her job taking Mamm’s and Lizzie’s half-moon pies to Ray-Lynn at the Dutch Farm Table Restaurant six mornings a week. Honoring the Amish tradition of no Sunday sales, the place had been closed yesterday. Sarah had to get up before dawn, but she didn’t mind. Grossmamm was always still asleep and either Martha, if she wasn’t in school, or Mamm if she was, came over to stay.

  Some amazing sunrises greeted Sarah as she went out to the barn to hitch Sally to her buggy, but, she had to admit, never one as stunning as the orange, fuchsia and apricot blaze in the sky today. Cirrus clouds and feathery floaters made the heavens look like a kaleidoscope quilt—one with Nate MacKenzie standing near the barn, silhouetted by it all. Ya, if he’d only been wearing an Amish jacket and straw hat, what a painting that would make. As good as his word, he’d walked her to the grossdaadi haus last night and Hannah to her car down the road at the Amish cemetery. He seemed to turn up everywhere.

  Somehow she managed to find her voice. “So you’re an early riser as well as a night owl,” she said as she carried her big flat basket with four boxes of half-moon pies into the barn. Daad and Gabe were already out in the fields with some of the work team, and the barn door stood open.

  “I do what I must to solve a crime.”

  “You’re sure it is?”

  “I’ll start going through the debris today, and then—if it is—I’ll be interviewing others. Hannah just more or less knocked on my door before I was ready for her.”

  “She’s had a hard time.”

  “So have her parents.”

  “Did they mention her to you?”

  “Not a word, not even when I had a heart-to-heart talk with her father.”

  She nodded, put the basket down on a hay bale and pulled her buggy out of the back corner from among the lineup of the big carriage, sleigh and smaller carts. She saw Daad and Gabe had already taken the work wagon out. Trying to stay calm near Nate when she didn’t know what was coming next, she went out to fetch her buggy horse, Sally, in the side field. Although the horses were often out in this mild weather where they could graze, she still took the mare’s feed bag with her so Sally would get her grain and vitamins. She saw three of the family’s work team of big Percherons were still grazing in the field. She whistled and her smart former harness racer came right over to the gate.

  Again, she was grateful that the Eshes’ horses had not been in the barn when it caught fire. Could the arsonist, if there was one like Nate evidently thought, be Amish and know how important the horses were? No, not if he’d burn a precious barn.

  She fastened Sally’s feed bag on, brought her through the gate, past Nate, and backed her up to the double-seat buggy. Most Amish women, unless they were unwed, didn’t have their own vehicle. Despite the fact it marked her as an unwed maidal, she loved her freedom and kept the horse well-tended and the black fiberglass buggy clean and shined. Although Nate was usually full of talk and questions, he came closer and leaned against a stall rail just watching.

  “I have to have these half-moon pies at the Dutch Farm Table before they open at seven,” she explained. “It’s a real challenge in the winter, but I like the time alone to observe everything just waking up, any season of the year.”

  “I guess the speed of a buggy gives you time for that. I keep learning about things I thought I had answers to.”

  She wasn’t sure if he meant about his investigation or the way they lived here, but she just nodded as she put the crupper under Sally’s tail and the breast strap between her forelegs, then took the feed bag off so she could get the bridle on.

  “When your father and brother opened up the barn this morning,” Nate said, “I really looked around in here to get an idea of the preburn layout of the Esh barn. Then I searched German bank barns on VERA’s laptop.”

  “Searched?”

  “Oh, yeah, sorry. On my computer. I studied up—a crash course on barns with three levels like yours and the Eshes’. I couldn’t believe how your barn exteriors are misleading. I mean, there’s so much more space inside than what I expected. It’s like, don’t judge a book by its cov
er, I guess, like with people, too. Sarah, I don’t want you to get the idea I’m prejudging people, Hannah or Jacob or anyone else.”

  Over Sally’s back, their gazes locked and held again, the way they too often did. She always felt a funny fluttering in her lower belly she’d never had with Jacob. This man made her blush, too, but at least her complexion usually hid that.

  “I had to ask your friend those questions last night, get her info,” he added in a rush.

  “You’re really barking up the wrong tree with her.”

  “You said that about Jacob, too.”

  “She loves her parents, but they wanted her back in the nest under their roof and rules, and it led to harsh words. She was crushed to see the barn was gone.”

  “Sarah, she’s still bitter about all that. She’s chosen to be about as far from Amish as she can get, despite the fact she’s still dressed in black.”

  “She would never burn the barn!” she exploded at him, then put her hand up over her mouth as if she’d cursed. This man brought out all kinds of emotions in her she’d never known were there, or at least ones she’d never let out before. Why couldn’t she just be like other Amish women, content with her lot in life? Why did she have to yearn for the forbidden—to paint pictures, that is?

  “Okay, thanks for that testimony about Hannah,” Nate said, his voice clipped. “You’re starting to sound like an expert witness, but I guess I asked for that. See you later. I’ve got a long day over at the site of the burn.”

  As he strode away, she was upset she’d lost her temper. Patience and humility, not anger and pride, were what she needed. She went back to harnessing Sally but turned her head to watch Nate walk away. The man was too lanky, and she’d like to feed him up good. His head was down while he punched something into a little cell-phone type thing with both thumbs. He headed toward the back lane where he had VERA parked. She might have just kept staring, except Sally snorted and stamped her foot.

  Just as she was heading out of the end of the lane onto the road, Sarah heard the purr of the big engine behind her. Nate in VERA, of course. Was this driven man, who needed some speed bumps in his life, as edgy as she? Was he annoyed to be slowed down by the buggy, impatient with their ways? May the Lord forgive her, but sometimes, Sarah had to admit, she was impatient with her people’s ways. But right now she hoped Sally didn’t leave any horse apples for his fancy vehicle to drive through. At least he knew better than to honk like some moderns.