by Karen Harper
Because she didn’t want to pull the Millers away from their vigil, nor have Mr. Schrock tell her she shouldn’t try this, she picked up only the far end of the ladder and dragged it around the corner and under the window. She was good at setting up ladders against barns, at managing her skirts as she climbed the rungs. She beat down horrible memories of her nightmare of being burned, tied to a ladder. She had to try this without the others seeing her.
When she got up to the level of the window, she saw her idea was useless. Smoke boiled inside, bubbling to get out. But when Noah screamed again, he sounded so close, as if he was just on the other side of the glass. That meant Noah was in the loft! If she could break this window, could he crawl out here? Firemen on ladders made rescues from windows. Nate surely couldn’t climb that flimsy ladder they’d used inside to get to the loft, not in that heavy gear of his.
“Help me!” she screamed. “Back here!”
Peter hurried around and began to take pictures of her up on the ladder. Sheriff Freeman ran around the corner of the barn right behind him and yelled, “What in the Sam Hill are you doing, girl! Get down from there!”
“I can hear Noah close to here! I think he’s trapped in the loft. If you have something to break the window, maybe we can pull him out here!”
Mr. Miller came, too, and started to climb the ladder, before the sheriff pulled him back. “Get down, Sarah, and I’ll try to break the glass with this gun handle. Get down and let me up!”
Something inside the barn gave way and the few flames eating through the roof roared higher, slapping them all with heat and light. Sarah scrambled down and the sheriff climbed up, quickly shattering at least one windowpane with the butt of his gun while Mr. Miller and Sarah held the ladder and Peter’s camera clicked madly away. Mrs. Miller watched in horror.
Sarah saw the sheriff duck as smoke roiled at him like a black fist. If anything happened to Jack Freeman, Ray-Lynn would probably kill her. But if anything happened to Nate, Sarah could almost see killing herself.
“Noah! Noah Miller, you hear me?” the sheriff shouted.
Despite the gush of smoke, he yelled directly in the window, then called down to them, “Says he’s trapped, half hanging down from the loft! Scared to drop down. You go tell Nate! I think he was coming back out.”
“He can’t hear a thing with that oxygen mask on!” Sarah shouted. “Tell Noah he has to let go before the hay under him catches fire! Nate can help him if he’ll just drop to the first floor!”
The sheriff relayed what she had said back to Noah. She knew Noah didn’t have long before the hay in the ground level would be aflame and roast him to death, like chicken on those grills today, if smoke didn’t kill him first. It seemed to be chokingly thick even out here as she ran around to see if Nate had come out yet. Maybe when someone was being burned, the best to hope for was smoke suffocation. Maybe those Amish martyrs years ago could breathe in the smoke and not have to suffer from the flames. She pictured herself and Nate, hanging, caught halfway. No fire then, only the one between them.
Yes, thank God, Nate was outside. But now she’d have to send him back in. Finally, she heard the wail of the distant fire truck sirens coming closer. Should she wait for them and not tell Nate? But Noah could be dead by then.
She got in Nate’s face—his mask, that is—and tried to gesture to him about Noah. Noah in the loft, caught, just like us. Noah’s father almost ran inside before his wife held to him hard. Again, she ignored Peter’s camera almost in their faces.
Sarah thought Nate nodded. At least he lumbered back inside and, in what seemed an eternity, came out dragging Noah with his shoes and trousers tattered and mostly burned off. The skin from his torso looked blistered and his legs blackened and—and loose. Hefting him by his arms so only his feet dragged, Nate and the sheriff laid him gently on the grass, at least forty feet back from the barn. He screamed once as they set him down, twisted in agony, then lay still.
Sarah and Reuben Schrock had to hold the Millers back from touching him, even his head and upper torso, which didn’t look so ravaged. Sheriff Freeman got on his phone; Sarah could hear him telling someone at his office to call for MedFlight and talking about the Cleveland Clinic. Noah started hacking up black spit and gasping for air.
Nate pulled his head gear off. “No—don’t cover him, either!” he told Mrs. Miller as she took off her apron and knelt next to her son. “Don’t touch him, or his skin will come off. It’s bad enough I had to drag him, but the hay was going to go.”
The barn suddenly roared as scarlet and orange flames battled with the billowing smoke. Nate knelt next to the burned boy and put the oxygen mask over his nose and mouth. “Breathe, Noah. Breathe, breathe,” he recited as Noah started to suck in the air. Sarah knew his lungs could be damaged.
Sheriff Freeman finally told Peter to get away, and he did, turning his attention to the firemen fighting with the flames. Though the volunteers worked feverishly to douse them, those around Noah Miller hardly looked away as the boy fought for his life.
17
AN ENDLESS HALF HOUR WENT BY AS NATE kept Noah breathing rich oxygen and the volunteer firemen fought the blaze. Nate could recall vivid details of the moments the Columbus firemen had pulled him from his burning house. One of them had put his oxygen mask over his mouth and nose that day until the emergency squad arrived. He tried to shut out those haunting memories, but concentrating on the here and now was terrible, too.
With whispered prayers, the Millers and Sarah knelt around them in a little circle, as if to protect Noah when that wasn’t possible anymore. They could see he was suffering, gasping for breath, even with the flow of oxygen. He moaned but did not move. Nate knew that third-degree burns over fifty percent of the body would be fatal. Noah’s legs were definitely third-degree with peeling flesh, but his torso seemed second degree with blisters. The smell, not only of smoke, but of burned flesh was stomach-churning.
Nate sent Sarah over to the sheriff, who was helping the firefighters, to suggest he put up more orange cones to stop traffic both ways on the road. “Tell him to signal the medical helicopter to land there, instead of near the barn. We can’t have the fire fanned by the wash from the chopper’s rotors coming too close.”
A few minutes later, the helicopter landed out on the road in a whirl of air and noise. When the two flight nurses—one man, one woman—rushed toward them, pushing their gurney up the dirt lane from the road, Nate identified himself and helped them lift Noah onto it. He followed along to the helicopter and watched as they switched Noah to their oxygen supply and started IVs. It helped to learn that one of them was a burn specialist. They said one person could accompany the patient. The Millers decided Noah’s mother would go.
As frail as she looked, Nate admired how Mrs. Miller had held up in the face of all this, even better than Levi. He felt for them, felt he knew them, after all he had been through with his own family. Sarah had said Mrs. Miller had nearly collapsed at first, but he’d seen her come through strong when Levi almost lost control. His mother would have been like that—if she had lived.
“Nate, you okay?” the sheriff asked. “Soon as I get this traffic moving again and not just gawking, I’m going to get someone to drive Mr. Miller and Reuben Schrock to the hospital in Cleveland.”
Nate nodded. He should volunteer, because then he could go directly to question Hannah Esh again, but Levi and Reuben would need someone who could stay with them for a while. Exhausted, he blinked back tears he wiped away with his filthy hand, realizing for the first time how his eyes watered and stung from the smoke. That was it, wasn’t it—just the smoke?
Sarah came up to him with a wet towel. He hadn’t seen her for a while, but he realized she must have been helping Mrs. Miller get some things together. As the chopper took off, turned tail and flew away to the north, Nate realized an Amish woman and her son were taking a forbidden airplane ride. When it was necessary, the Amish adapted. If he sided with Ray-Lynn to try to get Sarah a c
hance to paint, would she be willing?
“Thanks for all your help—again,” Nate told Sarah as he wiped his face and hands with the towel.
“You’ve seen things like this before, Noah’s injuries, I mean,” she said, her words barely discernible over the noise of the departing chopper. “Do you think he’ll make it?”
“I hope—pray—so, but I’m not sure.” But he was sure he wanted to question the boy as soon as he could, right after he had a chat with Hannah Esh.
After the fire had burned itself to a tumble of black, charred barn bones, Sarah knew she should leave with some of the Amish who had finally arrived from the auction in buggies. But she left the Miller farm as she’d come, in the back of VERA with her mother with her and no one in the front seat with Nate. She was grateful to have someone Amish here instead of Peter Clawson.
As far as she knew, he was still asking questions and taking pictures back at the Millers’. She, like Nate, had noted that Mike Getz had arrived and was helping fight the fire, one-handed. Ray-Lynn had appeared, too, and was handing out coffee and doughnuts, just as she had the morning after the first fire.
“Isn’t this VERA something?” Mamm said, looking around wide-eyed. In the deepening dusk, Nate had lit the interior for them, and the chrome and white walls shone. “Looks like a modern kitchen. Oh, I pray Noah will be healed. Did you hear anything those rescue people said?”
Sarah responded to that and Mamm’s other questions, but nothing seemed to stick in her brain except that three times someone had targeted barns with her paintings on them. It scared her to death that she’d overheard Nate tell the sheriff he was going to question Hannah again. She prayed silently that all this could somehow help bring Hannah home, but the right way, not charged with arson by the man Sarah wanted so to help.
Nate drove up their lane to drop them off at the house, but he turned VERA out toward the road, not the pond, before he got out. Sarah’s stomach knotted tighter. Was he going back to the fire or after Hannah right now?
Martha ran from the grossdaadi haus and Gabe from the farmhouse to meet them, both full of questions until Mamm said that Daad would be back in the buggy soon and they would all talk then. Sarah knew Nate was going to drive away before she could talk to him, but his so-called crackberry sounded and he took the call. As he listened, he looked at Sarah. Everyone stopped talking. Sarah feared Nate might tell them that Noah Miller was dead.
“Okay, just a minute,” he told whoever it was.
“Sarah,” he said, “Hannah Esh wants to talk to me and insists I bring you along. Will you go with me?”
“Ya, but clear to Cleveland?”
“She’s parked by the cemetery, just down the road. She says she’s been in the area all day.”
Sarah gasped and clapped her hand over her mouth. Hannah here all day when nearly everyone else was at the auction? Was she going to confess to the arsons and surrender to Nate so she wanted her old friend there to support her?
Just a week ago, Sarah would have asked for permission to go off with Nate in VERA, but she took her hand down from her mouth and squared her shoulders. “Sure, I’ll help—hopefully help Hannah and you.”
After Nate told Hannah to stay put and they’d be there soon, Mamm told Sarah, “See if you can bring her back here. Tell her we all want her to come home. She can stay here if she needs—you know, needs a place to live halfway home.”
Sarah nodded and climbed up in the passenger seat of VERA while Nate got in and closed the driver’s side door.
“As I said, I’m really grateful for all your help today, especially after I came down so hard on you before. I just don’t want you to get hurt,” Nate told her as he drove out of the lane and turned onto the road.
Her voice snagged with emotion. “I want to help.” It was unspoken and that simple, but somehow she knew they were working together again. But what would she do without him when this was all over, one way or the other?
“When I was inside the Millers’ barn that first time today,” he said, “I could see the fire was set from inside, probably from spilled—or poured—kerosene or gasoline, far back in the corner near no windows or doors. That keeps up the pattern of a different incendiary method for each barn burning, but it’s hard to believe our clever, careful, after-dark arsonist would set a fire in the lower part of the barn while Noah was using a hammer and saw in the loft. If I don’t get a confession here from Hannah…”
“Then you will have no suspects left?”
“We’ll see. By the way, Ray-Lynn tells me she’s approached you about doing some paintings, not to be sold around here, but through an art dealer friend of hers in Columbus. She let slip you have a book of sketches she admires.”
“Ya—yes to both things. But I can’t take that step yet and she knows it.”
“Yet? Then you’ve considered it?”
“Only in my wildest dreams, but I dream about a lot of things that will never be. Why did you bring that up now?”
“As different as these fires are, besides the common link of the barns belonging to church leaders, your paintings are what they all have in common.”
“I know. Someone hates me, you think? Nate,” she said, turning in her seat belt to face him, “you don’t think that Ray-Lynn… I mean, I suppose if all my barn paintings were ruined or I couldn’t do more of them, I’d be more ready to try paintings of Amish life. Or are you thinking the arsonist might want to draw big-time attention to my art instead of ruin it? But—”
“Okay, okay, we’ll let that go for now, but I’m getting desperate enough to set some sort of trap at the Hostetler barn and stop your work on your own barn.”
“No, I won’t stop. I can vouch for Ray-Lynn just like I can for Hannah, if you think someone who cares about me is trying to draw outside attention to my work.”
“Some people are not what they seem. I’ve learned that the hard way. Besides, you can’t vouch for either of them. You weren’t there, weren’t with them.”
“I know my friends! And that fire demon from hell is not going to scare us or stop us, not me, not the brethren and sisters. Let’s set a double trap, one at the Hostetlers’ place and one at ours. I know that’s what my daad is starting to think now, Bishop Esh, too. There—up ahead, see?” she said, pointing through the windshield into the deepening dusk. “There’s Hannah’s car.”
As they got out, Hannah appeared, hurrying down the hill from among the simple Amish gravestones. Sarah knew she used to visit her grossmamm’s grave a lot. They had been very close, just the way Sarah was—had been—to hers. In VERA’s headlights, Sarah could see Hannah’s hair was still spiky and red, her black leggings, skirt and top slashed and torn, but she’d toned down the dramatic makeup.
“Wow, that thing’s quite a ride!” Hannah said, pointing at VERA. Her light tone surprised Sarah. She didn’t sound like someone who was about to confess to arson.
Hannah hugged Sarah, emanating that same incense-smoky smell—not cigarettes—then extended her hand to Nate to shake it. Sarah had to remember to tell Nate that Hannah had smelled like that for over a year, so it was not barn smoke, but her insides twisted tighter. What if Hannah was to blame?
“I was hoping you two would do a big favor for me,” Hannah told them. “I don’t know who else to ask or trust here, or who would agree.”
“Talk,” Nate said as Sarah held her breath. She could tell how tense he was. His muscles seemed coiled, as if he’d leap at Hannah.
“I was trying to get up the nerve to come to the auction today,” she admitted with a big sigh, “but I just ended up here, walking all over, waiting for you to be free, driving around some. I tried your cell number you gave me a couple of times late afternoon, Mr. MacKenzie, but you weren’t answering, and I didn’t want to leave voice mail. I even drove past the auction twice, but when I came by a third time, everyone was peeling out. I have one hundred and thirty-five dollars saved up and I want to donate it—anonymously—to the fund to rebuild my family
’s barn. I thought if you took some of it and Sarah donated some, they’d never realize or question the source.”
“That’s why you were hanging around here all day?” Nate asked as Hannah dug a wad of bills out of her black leather purse. “Don’t you know about the fire at Levi Miller’s?”
“I—no. Not another fire!”
“Or that Jacob Yoder’s in jail for questioning for the arsons?” he went on, his voice hard. “But unless he lit Miller’s barn from behind bars, it has to be someone else.”
For one moment, Sarah thought her friend would turn and run.
“I—I haven’t been online or seen a paper, not even the Home Valley News,” she said, looking panicked. Her gaze darted from one to the other. “It’s not me, if that’s what you’re thinking!” She thrust the roll of bills at Sarah. “I came for this and that’s all. I told you before I did not burn my parents’ barn. I came to donate to help rebuild it and I have nothing against the Schrocks or Millers. All I know about the Millers is that Noah used to be a friend of Jacob’s—you knew that, Sarah. What? Why is Sarah crying?” she asked Nate instead of Sarah herself.
“Noah Miller was badly burned in the blaze today and may not make it,” Nate told her.
Hannah gasped. This whole thing was a surprise to her, Sarah was sure of that. She couldn’t be hiding all that guilt, even though Sarah had seen her hide things from her parents.
“And,” Nate went on, “if there’s a death from an arson, that can bring in the FBI and that will make everything around here ten times tougher—not easier, believe me—for the Amish and my investigation. Sarah, take your friend’s money so we can donate it for the cause, but we’re all going to step inside VERA right now for an in-depth interview about everything you did today, Hannah.”
