In Plain View

by J. Wachowski

  Hospital people stopped to stare as we bumbled along the hall. The doctor walked slowly, enjoying her moment of fame. She may not care about television in general, but she enjoyed showing her colleagues that she was TV material. More power to her.

  I couldn’t help wondering which of the people we passed might have known my sister, worked with her, spoken to her in this very hall only a few months ago. Focusing on the doctor, I pulled an imaginary string with my fingers, reminding her to speak in full sentences. “What about Tom and Rachel? Could they have gotten married outside the church?”

  “A couple who married outside the community would be put in the bann. They would be shunned by other Amish, a very different life from the one Rachel expected. Normally, a young couple lives with their parents until a child is born, then they move to a separate household.”

  “No way,” Ainsley said.

  “Enough with the commentary.” I had a hand free, so I smacked him. Quietly.

  “While they live with their parents, working the farm, they receive a share of any profit and save for a home or farm of their own. If it’s a dairy operation like the Jost family runs, young couples will often build on the same farmstead, so they can be nearby to help.”

  Jost’s family farm was a dairy operation. But Tom was not invited to work the farm and build a home there. He’d gone off and made the fire service his home.

  In the end, both families had turned on him.

  The corridor the doctor led us down seemed impossibly long. On camera, it would read like the Flintstone’s house. I held that image in my head to ward off the shivers. The smell of the place reminded me of my sister’s house. She must have used the same cleaning liquid.

  “Can they leave the community during the rumspringa?” I asked. “Go live in the city for a while?”

  “Certainly. Many do. Especially the boys.”

  “Really?” That confused me. “A man could leave the community before being baptized, go make a living in the world and then return, years later?”

  “It’s possible,” Dr. Graham said. “But experience changes everything. One of the paradoxes that the community creates for itself is raising people of such strong convictions that when they choose to stand apart, it can be very difficult to heal a breach.”

  Tom’s ghost must have hovered nearby. I felt the tickle of hair rising on the back of my neck.

  “Especially after they’ve had cars, broadband and safety razors,” Ainsley said.

  “True. The experiences of the early teen years fundamentally affect the possibilities of a person’s future. The life that looks like happiness takes on a certain shape.”

  I shook off my unease. “Sounds like living in the Amish community stunts your growth.”

  She stopped walking. “Don’t play ignorant with me, Ms. O’Hara. Obviously, we benefit by the choices available to us. Although, personally I can’t say I’m happier, or even more useful to the world because of them.” She pointed a scolding finger my way, although if Ainsley had the shot framed correctly, it would look as if she were pointing to the viewer. “Can you?”

  As soon as we stopped, the camera drew a crowd. I felt my hackles rise again. I was monitoring the audio levels, watching the cables that tethered Ainsley to me and trying to maintain eye contact with the doctor while she lectured me. It was hard to get a good look at the people around us. Last night’s adventure had me paranoid. I could swear someone was following us. Following me.

  “This is it.” The doctor stopped in front of a padlocked set of metal doors. She looked around at the people who had stopped to watch. “I’ll be signing autographs in my office later, for anyone interested.”

  I heard a few chuckles. Her comments had the desired effect. The crowd moved on. Dr. Graham jangled a ring of keys, searching for the right one.

  “Come on, Doctor, as a woman, would you choose that environment?”

  “I agree, it’s a sexist, masculine hierarchy. But that exists everywhere. My chosen career environment for example.” She popped the lock off the cabinet. “And yours perhaps?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Amish women work the system, just like you and I. Many find balance-mates, family who appreciate them, rewarding kinds of work that they enjoy. Is it really that different?”

  Academic arguments only go so far with me. “Rachel had to stop attending school after eighth grade,” I said. “She told us how she enjoyed the museums and the airport and the library and the movies. It seems as if she wanted-wants-a bigger world.”

  “Sadly, she can’t have both. To accept an outsider’s offer of marriage and live in this world, she’d have to leave everything behind, her father, her home, the only life she’s ever known.” The doctor glanced at her watch. “On the other hand, accepting her community’s rule means giving up the wider world forever.”

  “A devil’s bargain.”

  She frowned. “Only if you think in terms of this life and not the afterlife the Amish believe in. Any Amish girl has been raised to consider the eternity after death as her highest priority.”

  “Eighth grade.” I frowned, too. My dad died the summer after eighth grade.

  “A very formative time,” the good doctor said. “I really must say goodbye.”

  “One more question? About the bann, how does it work? What does it do to you?”

  She sighed. It wasn’t an easy question. “Bann is the term for prescribed shunning. Sometimes it is done as a punishment, for a term of days, to remind the one who has broken the rules what it would feel like to be left out of heaven. When the time ends the person is welcomed back into the community. Under the bann the person shunned may not speak to or eat with anyone in good standing in the church. They must sleep in a separate space, like a cot in the barn or the basement, and no one can accept money or work done of their hands. It is a state of almost complete isolation. Every schoolchild knows how it works. And how it feels. ‘You are not one of us. You can’t play. We don’t want you.’”

  “Does it work? Does it really make someone change?” Ainsley chipped in.

  She nodded seriously. No question was too stupid when it came to the boy. “Human beings are social animals. It’s not simply a question of wanting company, we need it. The same way we need food, water and rest.”

  “People die if they don’t get food and water.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Tom Jost didn’t die of shunning.”

  “There are stages. Like the stages of malnutrition. You don’t fall over from missing one meal, even a small amount can keep you going for a very long while. Since we are of a religious bent today, think of the monks who choose to go into retreat. They often describe a God so personal, he’s capable of conversations, touch, even sharing a meal. Not to mention the tendency to anthropomorphize their pets, the birds they feed, even the plants around them.”

  Rachel had said Tom was always sneaking off to talk with the animals. Poor lonely kid.

  “You’re saying, where there’s no human contact, we work to create it.”

  “Exactly. People will go to great lengths to make those connections. Without them, it gets harder and harder to interact ‘normally.’” She put the little quotes around the word with her fingers. “That is, in a way which is predictable and compatible with the people around you.”

  Only psychologists have to define normal.

  “Believing the people around you would never respond, that you would always be an unwelcome outsider?” She grimaced and her whole body tightened with a suppressed shudder. “That would be like living death.”

  Her words conjured the image of Tom standing on the pile of boxes, knowing he was being watched. The cold of that thought was enough to stop my breath.

  His father, his work, his girl…how many times had Tom died inside, before he finally surrendered to the dark?

  “I’m sorry.” The doctor jingled her keys like an alarm bell. “I’ll be late for my next appointment.”

  “Right, righ
t. Thank you. College, shut us down.”

  Ainsley and I broke down the equipment enough to make the transport back to the truck easier.

  I popped my head around the door to say goodbye and thanks again. “What is this room?” I couldn’t help but ask.

  “Just a storage locker for my office.”

  “What have you got there? What are those?” I pointed to a plastic bucket that held a few opened foil-blister packs like the ones I’d seen in my sister’s emergency kit, the kit Jenny had dragged out of the garage to bandage me after my fall.

  “These?” The doctor held up several of the small boxes, she had obviously come to retrieve. “Medical samples provided by the pharmaceutical companies. You really shouldn’t be in here, Ms. O’Hara.”

  “Sorry.” I said thanks again-despite the cold prickles her words gave me.

  What was my sister doing with a bucket full of medical samples normally kept under lock and key?

  11:59:32 a.m.

  Back in the truck, work was the best way to improve my mood.

  “Make yourself useful, College. Figure out how to get me another Amish interview and the all-doughnut lunch is yours.”

  “Amish on-camera interview? No way.”

  “‘No’ doesn’t get the job done.” Another hidden downside to training newbies-every once in a while, I sounded like my mother. “I worked the story over hard Saturday night. We still need meat on Tom Jost. Somebody who can explain him, build us a little sympathy.”

  The shots from the sesquicentennial gave us visuals, but I needed audio. Walking, talking Amish, not just wide shots of guys in beards and hats. I wanted to understand how the Amish felt, what they thought about Tom and Rachel and all of us Englischers.

  That was part of the piece I was thinking of spinning out-the blessing and danger of perspective. We know ourselves better when we look from the outside. Unfortunately, as Tom discovered, the view is not always all that flattering.

  “Won’t Dr. Graham’s interview build sympathy?”

  “No. She comes across as an outsider, an expert.” Empathy was the missing element. “The problem we have here is that people revere firemen. Fireman does something weird-like kill himself in Amish clothes-people are so pissed that their hero isn’t perfect, the tendency is to swing the other way and vilify him. Tom Jost, evil-weirdo, would be easy. We could stop today.”

  “Why don’t we?”

  Was he kidding? I wasn’t adverse to a little sex teaser, but I wasn’t going to hang a cheap resolution on Tom Jost any more than I would hang a half-ass rap on Curzon’s precious cousin.

  “Easy sucks,” I said.

  Ainsley’s smiling huh of approval was exactly that sort of throaty sound that drives teenage girls to their knees in adoration.

  “Fuck you,” I grumbled, reaching for my notebook.

  “Nice try.” He might have passed for cool-if he hadn’t turned pink paying me the compliment. “You’re rough, Maddy O’Hara, but you’re not all bad.”

  What do you say to that?

  Ainsley went back to making faces at the road and slapping his thigh to the music. Thinking was a full body experience for my college boy.

  “Does it have to be on a farm or just talking to an Amish person?”

  “It’s a visual medium, College. I want the farm.” I flipped back through my shot list notes. “But we’re fairly desperate here. Compromise is possible.”

  “I got an idea. The fire chief mentioned that Tom Jost used to have dinner with a teacher of his?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What if I know that teacher? I think it might be Grace Ott. She grew up Amish.” He glanced at me and shrugged. “I told you, it’s a small town.”

  “Why didn’t you say something sooner? Pull off at the next doughnut factory. We’ll make a few calls.”

  My notes slid to the floor as Ainsley cut into the turn lane to bang a U. The kid was like a universal locator for bakeries. I tried to gather all my spilled papers in one hand and that reminded me. “Hey, who was that guy on Jost’s front porch anyway?”

  “Man! I can’t believe I forgot to tell you about him. He was from some bank in town. When we finished picking up his stuff he goes, ‘That old man’s crazy.’ I said we knew the daughter and she was nice.”

  “Smooth.”

  “Then he says, ‘Tell Rachel to come see us at the bank. It’s her money now. She needs to come talk to me.’”

  “Her money now? What money?”

  Ainsley shrugged. “Weird, huh?”

  “Holy shit. Do you think Tom left money to Rachel?” Out loud, it didn’t sound like much. In my head, something snapped together. “How much money?”

  “Guy didn’t say.”

  “We need to find out.”

  “Sure. I’ll just add that to my list of calls,” Ainsley tossed off.

  “Great.”

  I swear he rolled his eyes. Did he think I was kidding?

  The sight of Grace Ott’s home reminded me, I’m on the verge of old. I fight the slide of downhill acceleration every day: increase exercise, decrease calories. Increase sleep, decrease expectations. Occasionally, it makes me cranky. Being cooped up in a remote truck with the Boy Wonder doesn’t help. But standing on the doorstep at Grace Ott’s house did, strangely enough.

  This was the house you look for when you go over the river and through the woods. The frame was a simple white clapboard saltbox. The driveway was gravel. The garage was detached with old-style sliding barn doors.

  Hanging from the doorknob was a weather-faded paper daffodil. I could barely read the printing on one of the leaves. “Happy Spring! Mrs. Ott! We Love you!” On the stoop of a house like this, we were all youngsters.

  Ainsley knocked.

  With one glance, it was obvious Grace Ott was the kind of woman who had butter in the house and knew how to use it. Her round, sweet face contrasted nicely with the no-nonsense chin. Her hair was white, neatly curled and pinned. She studied me through the mesh of her screen door and turned to Ainsley.

  He raised the wattage on his smile to tanning-bed levels.

  “Come in then, Ainsley Prescott.” She sounded amused, but not fooled. I got a nod. “You come, too.”

  We followed her up the hall that divided her tiny house. In my sister’s neighborhood, the garages were bigger than this house. Grace’s place smelled of time and detergent.

  I kept an eye out for photos. I’ve always liked the display of past and present in an oldie’s house, but there was only one picture out-an eight-and-a-half-by-eleven black and white of a young man with a ’50s haircut that showed way too much ear.

  “That’s Mr. Ott,” Grace said. “He keeps me company.”

  The kitchen would have seemed smaller if it hadn’t been so spare. White cabinets. Yellow Formica. No knickknacks. No pasta-espresso-processor gadgets. No mess at all. There was a drop-leaf table and chairs, a wall-mounted phone with two yards of well-stretched spiral cord, and a calendar with a farm scene.

  “I’ve got lemonade in the ice box. Sit right down.” Grace’s heavy-soled shoes clunked across the tile. “Television, hmm? Didn’t I warn you you’d come to no good without another year of history?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Ott.” College hunched his shoulders humbly. She turned her back to get the lemonade out of the fridge, and he grinned at me. Thumbs up!

  “So what’s all this about Thomas?” she asked.

  “We’d like to do a story on him,” I explained.

  “Have you heard-” Ainsley started.

  “I heard.”

  Even in profile, I could see how the thought stiffened her entire body. You live as many years as Grace, you’ve got to take a surrender like Tom’s personally.

  “We understand from his captain at the fire station that he visited you now and then.”

  “Sure. Amish leaves the community around here, they’ll need to get their GED, sometimes take tests for college and such. I help with all that.” She busied around the cabinets, taki
ng out glasses and setting up a tray.

  “How long have you been teaching over at North, Mrs. Ott?” Ainsley asked politely.

  “Since before you were born.”

  “You still teaching high school?” I asked.

  “They put me in administration two years ago. Part-time. I do the GED paperwork for the district. Used to teach history. And German. Ainsley knows about that.”

  “Ja. Himmel,” he answered.

  She gave a snort at that. “What do you want to know about Thomas?”

  “Whatever you can tell us,” Ainsley answered.

  Preparation of the lemonade tray continued without comment. Ainsley looked at me and shrugged.

  Interviewing people for a living can be a bit like burglary. What the Boy Wonder didn’t understand yet was how to slip into someone’s house. You aren’t selling vacuums. You don’t necessarily go in the front door.

  “Tom seems like a good guy who got stuck.” I struggled to phrase it right. “So stuck that life ended up crushing him from opposite sides. I want to know why.”

  “Oh, do you?” She turned those old eyes on me and looked hard enough to make me nervous. After a minute, like a soft dissolve, I realized she wasn’t looking at me anymore, she was looking into her own head. “It wasn’t really opposite sides, you know, more like from the inside out.”

  The lemonade came to the table on a tray with extra sugar and long spoons for stirring. There was a fruit bread and jam in a lumpy glass jar. Good omens.

  “Did Ainsley tell you I grew up Amish?” Grace asked. She sipped her drink with a frown, once, twice, then finally approved. “Youngest of ten. Things were different for me than for my eldest sister, of course. My mother was barely eighteen when my sister was born and nearly forty when I came along. I’ll save you the trouble of calculating. My eldest brother was sent to jail for a short while for refusing to fight in the Second World War. My husband and I both were jailed for participating in a protest against the Vietnamese War. Times change even for the Amish.”

  “I thought the point was not to change.”

  “The point is to stay humble, and focus on something besides yourself,” she said. Not angry, more like a teacher pinpointing the danger of a little bit of knowledge.