Fall from Pride

by Karen Harper

  Sarah thought again of her interview with Peter Clawson, who had just come roaring in in his truck. Had she been prideful to speak to him and to be so pleased with the printed color pictures of her quilt squares adorning Amish barns? Community oneness was everything to her people, their essence, their very survival. So why couldn’t she squash her desire to paint entire pictures of the Amish? Defiant independence to chase a personal dream fueled by a God-given talent had ruined Hannah’s life so far.

  Word really must have spread that the arson investigator was going to give his verdict. Most of the Lantz family from the third adjoining farm buggied in, including Sarah’s friend Ella, her parents and four of her siblings. Sarah noted that Barbara, nearly sixteen, went over to stand by Gabe, but he shook his head at something she said and shifted a few steps away. Ella came over to stand by Sarah, linking arms with her as Nate’s voice rang out in the hush. It was disturbed only by the spring breeze turning the windmill, birdsong and the occasional snorting of the buggy horses tied to the fence rails near where Hannah and Sarah had stood together just last night. She should be here, Sarah thought, and whispered that to Ella. “Ya, Hannah should be home with her family and you and me, just like in the old days,” Ella whispered as Nate’s deep voice rang out.

  “Arson is often proved by investigators finding a path of foreign accelerants that ignited, then spread, the flames. Accelerants can include grease, kerosene, gasoline and paint thinner, but I’ve been able to eliminate the accidental spill-age of those or even the presence of those. Besides finding a bunch of matches—unlit—outside of the barn, I found evidence of accelerants within, so let me explain and point that out.”

  His cell phone tone sounded. Sarah noted he ignored it.

  “The front door frame,” he said, pointing to a big, tumbled beam with a blackened metal handle on it, “shows what we call alligatoring—shiny blisters.” Several people leaned closer. The Cleveland reporter and Peter Clawson scratched away on their notepads.

  “This indicates a rapid rise in temperature of the blaze, so nothing really smoldered. Evidence here,” he said, continually moving through the debris and pointing things out, “indicates it spread unusually fast, which eyewitnesses corroborated. These beams were from the roof—third or loft floor. Also, the fire seems to have started in more than one place, one at the back of the barn near a window, another near the east side window. Multiple V-pattern burns are also major clues pointing to arson.

  “But how did someone reach those high windows to get the fire going in the loft where hay was stored? I’m surmising that the arsonist used one or both of the ladders that were on the ground outside the barn, which were then destroyed in the fire. In that respect, the arsonist either knew the ladders were available or stumbled into being able to use them. It meant he or she could stay outside the barn rather than going in and climbing the built-in ladders within to start the fire.”

  The arsonist had used her ladders! Why hadn’t he told her that—warned her he’d say that? At least no one but Mattie Esh so much as glanced her way, but it made her sick that her equipment might have been a part of this—and that Nate had not confided that to her earlier when he told her it was arson.

  “What might this accelerant be?” he went on. “I’m still running some tests in my mobile lab, but kerosene residue can be recovered from beneath floorboards, which it permeates. It can be found under the ash-and-water pastelike substance a hot, fast fire leaves behind. That was probably the case here, especially on the third floor or loft level, which was the ceiling of the threshing floor level. Bishop Esh reports that no kerosene was in the barn, not even an old lantern, and no gasoline in the farm equipment. No green hay to give off methane to cause spontaneous combustion, the latex, water-soluble paint cans were sealed.” A few heads turned Sarah’s way. “So my report, sad to say, in such a helpful, concerned community is criminal arson by a fairly primitive incendiary device lit from at least two points through small window access on the loft level.”

  “Any way to catch the firebug with what you got?” Mike Getz spoke up.

  “Arsonists have a way of being caught in a trap of their own making,” Nate said, staring at the big man. “The Esh fire is a crime and will be severely prosecuted by the state fire marshal’s department in the state courts of Ohio. The penalty for such is long prison time. So spread the word that arson is never, never worth the risk.”

  Sarah noted that the portly, ruddy-faced Peter Clawson kept nodding fiercely, as he stood a few people in front of her. Sarah pulled Ella off to the side before he could turn around and ask her more questions. But she heard him tell the Cleveland reporter, “You can’t say the guy isn’t eminently quotable. You got some great sound bites, and I got another great article for the Home Valley News, and you can quote me on that.”

  The next day an Amish work crew of young men—overseen by Nate—removed the remnants of the barn. They hefted the ruined debris out of the stone basement level where a lot had fallen and hauled it away in their work wagons with Nate keeping an eye on every piece for more clues. Then the Amish scraped and raked the place flat, down to the stone foundation on which the new barn would be erected.

  It was hot and sweaty work, even just mostly doing the overseeing. Nate needed a swim in the pond near the woodlot—who needed a shower when the old swimming hole was there?—and some coffee to keep going. The test on the composition of the residue from under the old barn boards had proved to be kerosene, but that was in full supply around here and didn’t necessarily point to an Amish arsonist.

  He drove VERA back past the Kauffman place, wishing he’d see Sarah, but no one was out for once—just laundry flapping on the line, blacks and pastels, men’s and women’s, big and small, the daily life of an Amish family, all hung tight together.

  He parked VERA and stripped to his underwear and waded into the pond. When he saw the water was deep enough, he dived. It felt fantastic, cool, refreshing. Like a kid he swam on his back, splashing. He should have brought some soap out. He floated, then treaded water in the center of the pond, listening to the sounds of the wind through the maples and oaks, birdsong. He stared up at the blue sky with cotton clouds for he didn’t know how long.

  Suddenly a voice called out, “You shouldn’t swim alone, you know. It could be dangerous.”

  6

  “DANGEROUS HOW?” NATE ASKED. HE SPUN AROUND to see Sarah with a large package in her arms.

  “This just came for you at the house—FedEx,” she called to him. “Now that you’ve announced it was arson and you’re going to find the arsonist and send him to jail, what if he tries to hurt you?”

  Nate swam toward her side of the pond, his muscular arms lifting from the surface at each stroke. When he was close enough to talk easily he stopped and treaded water. “You startled me, though I was expecting that package. It’s my fire protection hood. It wasn’t packed in VERA when I left. And thanks for worrying about my safety, but arsonists are usually cowards about confrontation. The arsonist wants my attention, not to get rid of me, but I’ll be on my guard.”

  You won’t if you’re splashing around like a kid and not paying attention to who’s approaching, she thought, but she just nodded. As he remained fairly motionless about twenty feet away, she could see a lot of skin through the water. What if he was in there buck naked, because why would he have brought an ausländer swimsuit?

  “So you fight fires, too?” she asked, hugging the package to her breasts. She’d come out here barefoot, a common practice among her people in the warm weather, especially on their own property. She fought the desire to sit down and dangle her feet in the pond. Though she’d done that a hundred times and her family shared ownership of this woodlot with the Eshes and the Lantzes, it suddenly felt like forbidden, foreign territory.

  “I don’t fight fires if I can help it, but I don’t hesitate to go into a partially burned building or even one on fire if it will help me trap an arsonist. If you wouldn’t mind turning aroun
d for a minute, I’m not exactly clothed in here, and I’ll get out.”

  “Oh, sure. Right,” she said, and sat down facing away with her back to the pond. Beneath the shade of her bonnet, her cheeks flamed. She stretched out her legs. Her toes barely peeked from under her moss-green skirt. “I’ll bet it feels good in there,” she said, hoping he didn’t think she was fishing for an invitation to join him. His voice had faded a bit, and she heard the water rippling as he evidently swam away.

  “Sure does. I’ve got a washbasin and head—sorry, toilet—in VERA but no shower.”

  “I’ll bet Daad will let you use ours if you want. I was going to send Gabe out with this package, but he took his buggy over to see his friend, Barbara Lantz, two farms over.”

  “I take it your family’s close to them, but no quilt square on their barn yet?”

  “It was decided first the bishop, then two elders, then the Millers wanted one. I’ve done those, but since then, no one else has come forward to ask for another. But your mentioning the Lantzes reminds me there’s a second reason to be careful in this pond. There’s a strange, cold current in it sometimes,” she said, still talking toward the trees. “I think there’s an underground spring that flows through it, especially after a rain. When we were teenagers and swimming here, Ella did a little jackknife dive and just kind of stayed under. Hannah and I about went off our beans—panicked, you know. We dived and found her and pulled her up but we could feel the colder current pulling us deep down, very scary. We had to almost pump the water out of her. She—well, she changed after that, got very rigid and strict with herself and others, always followed every rule.”

  “So Ella Lantz owes you two her life,” he said, his voice coming closer until he stood in front of her. He’d pulled his jeans on over his wet legs and his black T-shirt stuck to the muscles of his chest and his flat belly. His short black hair looked even darker all wet. For a second she couldn’t recall what he’d just asked.

  “Oh, we don’t think of it that way,” she told him. “It was the Lord who saved her, and we were just His way of doing it. No thanks needed, and we didn’t even let outsiders know, though someone blabbed, and it got into the Home Valley News.”

  Nate reached down to her, and she gave him his package before she realized that he had meant to give her a hand up. His skin was cool from the water, or else hers was hot. Both barefoot, they walked back around the pond where he had VERA parked beside two big oaks. The vehicle had a tall, thin tower projecting upward from the back, and from that sprouted a five-branched antenna.

  “Peter Clawson’s really got his ear to the ground around here, doesn’t he?” Nate asked. “I need to interview him about any leads he may have.”

  “He keeps a lot of Amish employed in businesses he at least owns part of—the Dutch Farm Table, the Buggy Wheel Shop, a bunch of others. But his paper is his pride and joy.”

  “Can I show you around VERA?” he offered with a sweep of his hand toward his big, worldly buggy.

  “I’d like that, but better not right now. I have to get back. Gabe wants to see it, too, so can we come out later? And, oh, Mamm says come to supper—evening meal, not half the amount we eat midday, in about two hours.”

  “Tell her thanks. I’d love to.”

  She wanted to throw caution to the sweet breeze that had begun to dry and ruffle his hair and go into the back of VERA with him—it was cozy there, he’d said—but she knew she shouldn’t. She was already too attracted to him, like he had some kind of magnetic field and she was a compass needle.

  “Before you go, then,” he said as he walked her back a ways toward the farm, “will you explain the alms fund one of the elders mentioned? It sounds like private Amish insurance, but I thought that was forbidden.” Forbidden, verboten, danced through her mind as she darted another glance up into his intense, blue-sky gaze. Again, she had to unscramble her thoughts to grab for the right thing to say.

  “Not forbidden if we keep it within the Amish community,” she explained. “We do not pay into worldly insurance companies or the American government’s Social Security or ever use such funds, because health is a gift from God and that would be gambling against that in a way. But we do collect a percentage of everyone’s wages on a regular basis and use that to support those in the group who have big medical bills—or something like a house or barn burned. The church deacon collects and puts the money in a savings account until we need it. No big corporations profit. The family in need does pay a small part of their bills first, before our fund is used.”

  “Like a deductible,” he said, nodding. “It’s really a private, small group insurance. Very smart—amazing…” He looked at her closely and he drew out the last word so it almost sounded like Ray-Lynn’s drawl. His gaze caressed her as he peered within the dim shelter of her black bonnet.

  “I’ve got to get back,” she said, quickening her steps. “See you for supper and then Gabe and I can take a look at VERA later, if it’s okay.”

  She didn’t want to seem like she was running away, but in a way she was. Standing so close to him, both of them in their bare feet, had made her think of Adam and Eve in the Garden, and look at all the trouble they’d got into!

  If the bountiful Amish evening meal was what Sarah described as less food, Nate was as astonished by that as he was by his crazy attraction to her. It was probably just the fact she was so different from any woman he’d ever known, he tried to tell himself—bright but naive, stubborn yet humble, plain yet stunning, modest yet sexy without even trying. Man, he had to keep his mind on the food and the conversation, because her father, Ben Kauffman, had been drilling him about some things and here came another calmly couched but key question. At least he’d waited for this one until they were on the coffee and fabulous strawberry shortcake with home-churned vanilla ice cream. How Nate could put this dessert away after chowing down on sauerbraten, homemade bread, German potato salad and noodles with gravy, he wasn’t sure, but maybe he was about to pay the price for this great meal.

  “So far, Mr. MacKenzie,” Ben Kauffman said, “have you found any proof, even hints, that the barn burning might be someone upset by Sarah’s painted quilt square?”

  “No, sir, I haven’t. But it’s something I’ve considered and will stay aware of. I realize that such a work of art is to be useful—not just decoration.”

  “In that case,” Ben Kauffman went on, “I will allow—ask—Sarah to paint a square for our barn. I ran it by Bishop Esh. I want to stand up for the earlier decision that she be allowed to paint her patterns on Home Valley barns to bring more visitors in. Amish businesses are slow. Orders for my gazebos, kids’ playhouses, birdhouses and other items are down. And I want everyone to know that I believe her painting was not and should not be a target of arson.”

  Nate could see Sarah was surprised and elated. Her amber eyes filled with tears she blinked back. “Danki, Daad,” she said. Darn, Nate thought, if he wasn’t actually catching on to some of the German they used. Sadly, he hadn’t been able to speak to her elderly grandmother at all. She rarely spoke English anymore, and seemed pretty afraid of him, not to mention confused about things. She sat at the other end of the table, eating, but with her eyes on him as if he might leap at her. Sarah had introduced them, then whispered something to the old lady about him being here to help and that he could be trusted. Also at the table were Sarah’s mother, Anna, Gabe and Martha.

  It really impressed him how the Amish generations stuck together. When he’d lost his parents in the tragedy, how he’d wished he’d had a grandparent or even an aunt and uncle to take him in. At least his childless neighbors down the street, Jim and Mary Ellen Bosley, had been willing to give him a foster home. But living so close to where it all happened had been hard. In a way, that empty lot where what people called “the death house” had sat haunted him all through his youth—and yet today.

  “I’ll have to replace my ladders,” Sarah said.

  “While you paint here, you can use the ba
rn one and only buy one,” her father said. “And those planks for the long tables you can stand on.”

  “I have a ladder in my truck Sarah can use,” Nate offered, “at least while I’m here. And a safer scaffolding than planks—if you don’t mind the suggestion. I won’t need them—unless there’s another blaze to investigate, and I hope not.”

  “We pray not,” Anna Kauffman said.

  “If the man in black comes back, there will be more fires.” The old lady spoke for the first time and in English. “I heard Sarah tell Martha the fire burned the barn like a beast devouring it. That’s what it will be like again if that monster keeps sneaking around my house at night.”

  Nate could see Sarah was embarrassed by the outburst. “If you mean Nate here,” Sarah said, leaning toward the woman and taking her hand, “he’s only in the neighborhood for a while to help. And maybe you just dreamed the man in black.”

  “No, I saw him with his horrible, glowing eyes when I got up to go to the bathroom. Ya, I did!”

  Sarah’s parents just looked at each other as Sarah helped the old woman away from the table. She was obviously demented. On the other hand, if she had seen someone, Nate wondered who, because it hadn’t been him.

  Ray-Lynn knew Peter Clawson was a bit of a loner, but she couldn’t argue his generosity to others. Whether it was large tips for her Amish waitresses or his funding of local businesses, the man was magnanimous to a fault. And, if she thought she managed to catch all the local gossip, she was a rank amateur compared to Peter, who seemed to know almost everything about everyone. Why, if it wouldn’t be frowned on around here, he’d probably run something called the Home Valley Enquirer. She sometimes shuddered to think that he probably knew what kind of toilet paper she used at her house, though at least she’d stopped his just dropping in.