by Karen Harper
When he didn’t comment but just studied her, she rushed on. “I’ve already asked Bishop Esh if Sarah could paint a mural inside the restaurant. I didn’t get anywhere with that but thought I would try my luck with a quilt square.”
“Sarah mentioned you encouraged her art, even thought she had a style like Grandma Moses.”
“She’s very talented. I have a friend who runs an art gallery in Columbus in the Short North area, specializing in naive art—that is, paintings by untrained but talented artists, often rural, often somewhat primitive in style. Since you’re from there, you surely know how arty that area is. If you saw Sarah’s sketchbook she’s kept for years—drat, I forgot it’s supposed to be a secret—but you’d be amazed.”
“So you looked at her quilt square on the barn and left.”
“Oh—I did open the barn doors and glance inside to see if someone was there, just in case. It seemed dark, but sometimes you can’t tell when they just have a lantern. I swear, Amish eyes are more used to darkness than ours.”
“And was someone there?”
She hoped her voice sounded steady. It wasn’t working to just try to charm and chatter at this man. She was afraid that part of what she was going to admit would get her the wrong kind of attention from Jack as well as from Nate. And if her ultimate plan came out, she could lose everything she’d worked so hard for.
“It was pitch-dark inside, but, as far as I could see, no one was stirring, not even a mouse,” she said, and forced a smile. “I hope to talk to the Amish powers-that-be about Sarah’s art again, but with all the dreadful goings-on, I just haven’t had time, not with packing things to donate for the auction tomorrow and all. I didn’t want to bother you or the sheriff since I’d seen nothing amiss there before the barn burned. I must have just missed the arsonist, though, and that gives me the absolute willies.”
His eyes bored into hers.
“I—I’m sorry,” she went on. Was she even making sense anymore? “It’s just I didn’t want any bad PR for the restaurant. I realize I shouldn’t have held back, but I didn’t want Peter—or Jack Freeman—all upset with me. I was afraid Bishop Esh would resent my request to act as a sort of agent if they’d let Sarah paint—get her in trouble, too, as if she were in on it—but my timing was terrible to go there, and I just figured I should keep quiet.”
“You should have come forward. Next time you hear or see anything that could help, don’t just say you’ll ‘think about it tomorrow,’ got that?”
“I do—and you’ve seen the movie.”
“My foster mother loves it.”
“And you love her, so you sat through it more than once.”
“I repeat, next time you know anything about anything, let me know and no stalling. It looks bad.”
“Yes, yes, I understand. Thanks for all you’re doing for all of us, and keeping an eye on Sarah, too, a close eye.”
She wasn’t sure if he got the hint that she knew things about him, too, that hadn’t been shouted from the rooftops, but he simply nodded and went out. She leaned against the door with shaking knees until he pulled away in the big black vehicle, then went over to clear the table. On her way to the kitchen with the plates, she saw that he must have turned her Scarlett doll to face the china plate of Atlanta burning. Now what in heaven’s name was that supposed to mean?
15
AS THE AMISH WORKED TOGETHER TO SET UP the auction early Saturday morning, Sarah hurried over to her friend Ella Lantz’s Lavender Plain products table to buy several things before the crowd swelled. Already people were parking cars in the adjoining fields, and a sea of black buggies surrounded the scene. Blessedly, the weather was lovely, crisp and clear. The fact that this was the first day of their Memorial Day weekend gave moderns an extra Monday away from work and they might be more eager to shop. Sarah wondered if the arsonist would be here—if it wasn’t Jacob.
“I’ll take some more shampoo and some of the sachet,” she told her longtime friend after a hurried chat. She helped Ella unpack and lay out some of her goods. “Hmm,” Sarah said as she picked up a small quilted bag of the sweet-smelling sachet, “I see you’ve included a note here that this can keep moths away. If I was a moth, it would draw me right in.”
“You probably can’t tell, but I’ve mixed in some rue,” Ella explained. “I just didn’t want to be selling things that weren’t purposeful.”
“Oh, right,” Sarah said. It was back to that again, she groused silently, but perhaps Ella hadn’t intended it as a criticism of her barn paintings. No, she was just getting too sensitive about that, but what if the arsonist was targeting her work? As she hurried back toward the table with her father’s birdhouses, which she had promised to mind for a while, she felt she was being watched. And then she saw she was.
Nate had arrived and was looking her way, though he just waved and didn’t come over but kept pacing at the periphery of the activities. She saw him walk in, then out, of the schoolhouse like a security guard, which, of course, her people would never hire. Well, she told herself as she settled in with her box of coins and small bills for change, she and Nate weren’t the only ones nervous today. Sheriff Freeman had been here from the beginning, talking to the Amish men who would guide the cars in, looking around everywhere as if he could spot some criminal in the crowd. Even the Amish, who trusted all things to the Lord, were on edge. This was an important day, one that should make them all joyous instead of jumpy.
Daad had left a disappointed Gabe behind in the house with a loaded hunting rifle, though he promised to relieve him just after noon. Mr. Miller, who was unloading sacks of rhubarb next to their buggy, had said he’d left his boy Noah in their barn with orders to repair the loft floor and keep an eye on the place, even though it was broad daylight. Mr. Hostetler, too, who had a painting on his barn, had someone watching it during the night since the arsonist had struck in the dark. It was sad and scary, Sarah thought as she made her first sale of a birdhouse, that her quilt squares were starting to serve as hex signs, not ones that kept disaster away but attracted it.
Nate had surveilled the entire area, amazed at the variety of things for sale, everything from baked goods to beautifully crafted oak, cherry and maple furniture pieces, which he’d expected, to farm machinery, which he hadn’t. He walked the rows of plows, spotted an antique-looking McCormick-Deering tractor and two types of machines he didn’t recognize. Reuben Schrock told him they were corn binders and manure spreaders. Yard tools, new and used, were propped along the east side of the schoolhouse, some with prices, the rest waiting for bids to be written on their tags. Buggies, four wagons and a sleigh vied for places with bales of hay—or was it straw?
Meanwhile, both men and women prepared booths or tables that would sell every kind of what the Amish called “eats,” such as ice cream, popcorn balls and submarine sandwiches, not to mention preparations for lunch—no, Sarah had said they called it dinner. Five hundred pounds of chicken would soon be cooking on smoking grills that were being set up. He’d only had half-moon pies and coffee in VERA this morning, and his stomach rumbled.
The hand-lettered signs that boys were pounding in the ground promised dinner starting at 11:00 a.m. It would consist of chicken, noodles or mashed potatoes, green beans, dressing, gravy, coleslaw and dinner rolls with a piece of either rhubarb cream pie or oatmeal pecan pie, iced tea or pop included. Rather than a price being posted, the meal was available for “a kindly donation.”
Random items for sale included Ben Kauffman’s birdhouses and made-to-order gazebos, various handcraft goods and even Ella Lantz’s lavender items, which wafted out a cloud of fragrance that reminded him of Sarah. Strangely, the scent made his mouth water more than the sight of the food. Cute little kids toddled freely around, most barefoot, dressed like miniatures of their parents, while kids of elementary school age clustered around the playground’s volleyball net, swings and slide.
Nate had also checked out the interior of the schoolhouse. It was hard to believ
e that at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, the school was a one-room building with a cloakroom and a potbellied stove. Not a TV screen or laptop in sight. It made him feel even more that he’d stepped back into pioneer days. The schoolroom was hung with quilts on clotheslines along the four walls, stretched from blackboard to blackboard or just hung over dowels between stacks of cinder blocks.
He’d talked briefly to the sheriff as he made his rounds. Jack reported that Jacob had paced in his cell most of the night but had eaten a good breakfast. They were awaiting a visit from Jacob’s parents this morning, so Mr. and Mrs. Yoder were probably the only people from the area not coming today.
Many Amish nodded to Nate, said his name in passing or gave him a smile. Strange how that warmed him, not only to be accepted but to feel somehow included. Since he didn’t want to call attention to himself, he slipped out back behind the two school outhouses and the rented Porta-John facilities to make a second phone call on his cell. Earlier, he’d talked to his boss, Mark Lincoln, to give him an update of Jacob Yoder’s arrest. He told Mark that Jack Freeman was getting a search warrant for Jacob’s car and single rented room in West Salem, a small town where the sheriff had made the arrest.
Mark had asked him how sure he was that Yoder was the arsonist, and he’d told him truthfully, “On the evidence, about seventy percent. On my gut, about twenty percent.”
Mark had urged him to pull out all the stops to solve the arsons, which were getting higher profile by the day, thanks to news agencies and online servers picking up some of Peter Clawson’s headlines and photos. Amish Barn Arsons Could Be Religious Hate Crimes was sure to bring in more outsiders to this auction today as would Plain People Targeted by Barn Burner. Was there a Pulitzer Prize for Peter Clawson in the future? Maybe.
“M.E., it’s me,” Nate said when his foster mother answered her phone.
“Nathan, so good to hear from you. You’re all right, aren’t you? Did you catch that barn arsonist? There are lots of stories about it in the newspaper here. Are you taking time to eat all right? I still think you’re too thin.”
“Are you kidding? I’m gaining weight the way everyone feeds me here, and you should see the spread they have today.”
She had a hundred questions of concern. He usually called her on Sundays. She was seventy-four, and her health had not been the best lately. After seeing how tenderly the Kauffmans looked after their matriarch, Nate felt guilty he didn’t see her more.
“As for the arsonist,” he told her, “I’m still working on it, but you know what they say about all work and no play. I’m at an Amish sale and auction, and I just saw your birthday gift—a handmade quilt, but I’m not sure what colors you’d like.”
He knew he’d better not tell her how much the quilts were likely to go for. A factory-made quilt from Wal-Mart or Sears was more her style. He thought he’d like to buy one of those beautiful pieces for himself, too—well, he’d rather have a painting by Sarah, but he didn’t dare ask—and he wanted to contribute to the rebuilding of the Esh and Schrock barns.
“Blues, greens and golds would be lovely,” M.E. said. He’d never been able to call her “Mother,” and she understood that. So Mrs. Bosley had become Mary Ellen and then M.E. over the years. “You know,” she went on, “I’d like for you to take me up there someday to see the area, after your work there is done—I mean, if you would just take a few days off.”
“I hope we can do that. Okay, blues, greens and golds. I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Nathan, what are we going to do when I can’t get out as easily to meet you somewhere? I know you don’t like coming here, but what will we do? Even with this knee replacement, I’m just not as spry as I was when Jim and I were chasing after you.”
“I’ll talk to you later about that. It will all work out.”
“I’m not moving out of this house I love. I’ve told you that before and I mean it. My married life and rearing you, my dear boy, all happened here, and they’ll have to carry me out feetfirst.”
“I know. I—I gotta go, but I’ll talk to you soon. I—I love you, M.E.”
He returned his cell to its case on his belt and went back into the schoolhouse to see if there was a quilt with blues, greens and golds.
Sarah saw that Peter Clawson had a camera with a huge lens. It must be one of those cameras where the photographer could stand back a ways yet get close-up pictures. When her father came from where the men were barbecuing chicken for the big feed—picnic tables were being set up near the playground—and took over selling his birdhouses, she went a roundabout way to where Peter was taking long-distance shots from the side field.
“Sarah, how’s the birdhouse biz?” he asked when he saw her coming.
“Doing fine. How’s the newspaper biz?”
“Hate to say it, but the arsons and the Amish make fascinating reading both here and outside the Homestead area.”
“I happened to be talking to Mike Getz and thought, since he spotted the second fire, you might want a picture of him from where he saw it.”
“I already used one of him with the lead article on the first fire.”
“Just a thought. It’s terrible to sound as if we’re numbering the fires, isn’t it?”
“You mean, like we’re waiting for the next one—third time’s a charm? You see, Sarah,” he went on, crossing his arms over the top of his big-lens camera, “that’s the thing that’s pulling people in to read about these crimes. The contrast between the charm of Amish country—including your quilt paintings—and the obscene outrage of burned barns. You have to admit that your artwork might be helping some sicko decide which buildings to burn. I’d bet on it. Though now that your family’s going to have one, too, you must not agree you’re tempting fate.”
“You know the Amish don’t believe in betting or in fate, Mr. Clawson,” she said, and went back into the crowd to help set up the tables for dinner. But what he’d said scared her more than ever.
Sarah saw that Ray-Lynn was helping set up, too, opening folding chairs. Way before eleven, a line of folks waiting to eat wound around the grills and serving tables. Sarah ended up dishing out a choice of mashed potatoes or noodles while, with clear plastic gloves on her hands, Ray-Lynn added a dinner roll to each plate as people passed down the line.
Mike Getz and Cindee Kramer passed through as well as numerous other locals she knew, but lots she didn’t. Both Amish and Englische seemed to see the women serving as part of a fast-food machine, because time after time, they discussed things as if they weren’t there.
“Do you believe these fires around here?” one woman asked another. “Wasn’t there a Hallmark Hall of Fame TV special with Patty Duke that had something about Amish fires? You know, the actress that played that deaf and dumb girl, Helen Keller?”
“They must think we’re deaf and dumb, the way they carry on,” Ray-Lynn muttered as the women moved on to the dessert table.
“Welcome to being Amish with outsiders discussing your ways in front of you as if you only understand German,” Sarah whispered. “Potatoes or noodles,” she asked the next person and dished out potatoes.
“It’s just like in the restaurant,” Ray-Lynn said. “You wouldn’t believe the things I sometimes overhear. We live in an in-your-face world, Sarah, not to say people don’t still have deep, dark secrets. So, does Nate think Jacob’s behind everything?”
“I haven’t spoken to Nate since he interviewed him. Potatoes or noodles?”
“Ever think you’d like to paint this busy scene?” Ray-Lynn asked. For once Sarah wished she’d just shut up and serve. It was too much to keep her mind on this work, listen to Ray-Lynn, skim the crowd for Nate and worry about someone possibly coming through the line who burned barns.
Wishing another server would step up to take her place, Sarah didn’t even bother looking up anymore. “Potatoes or noodles?” she recited.
“Noodles, please, Sarah.”
Her hand jerked, and her heart
beat kicked up. She almost put a heaping spoonful of noodles on Nate’s coleslaw instead of next to it.
“How is your day going?” Sarah asked him as Ray-Lynn popped a roll on his plate.
“I hope to buy a quilt for my foster mother,” he said. “Thanks. You, too, Ray-Lynn.”
And he moved on. He ended up sitting with Bishop Esh, no less, but it made Sarah nervous that he could look straight at her, which he did. Whenever she could grab a glimpse between moving heads in the line, it seemed he was staring at her.
“He cares about you,” Ray-Lynn said out of the side of her mouth.
“Not a possibility. He cares about solving the arsons. And speaking of caring, how is your I-don’t-care campaign going with you-know-who?”
“Better, but he’s married to his work, too.”
On it went in a blur—plates, people, food and worries…and disappointment when Nate left the table where she could see him and disappeared into the crowd again.
Nate could not believe the bidding for the quilt he had his eye on was going so high. Five hundred and twenty-five bucks already with four people still holding up their hands off and on. At least it was going to a great cause. Reuben Schrock himself was the auctioneer, and he was good at it, his voice rolling along in rhythm like a stick stuck in the spokes of a wheel. It was ironic that some of the money earned here today would go to help the Amish rebuild Schrock’s barn, after enough was taken out for the Esh barn.
