by Laura Bickle
“Mrs. Parsall!” I could feel the blush spreading beneath my pale cheeks. Though I had seen the dogs breed many times and knew perfectly well what caused children, I was still uncomfortable with the idea of myself having babies. Or experiencing sex, for that matter. And love . . . love was a mysterious thing. I saw a lot of couples marrying out of a sense of acceptance, of duty. That was a kind of love, but not the passionate love that I saw people emphasize Outside.
“These are the facts of life, m’dear.” Mrs. Parsall chuckled. “Love and lust and laundry soap. Just ask Sunny.”
Sunny grinned her inscrutable canine grin, her pink tongue protruding beyond her teeth. She was a dog and already more wise than I was about such things.
I walked Mrs. Parsall outside the barn, through the golden field back to my house. No one but she and I and the dogs ever came back here, and there was no path worn in the grass. The sun had lowered on the horizon, shining through the leaves of sugar maple trees just beginning to yellow with the coming of fall. I could still feel the warmth of the day through the dark brown cotton of my dress. If I didn’t look up at the trees, I could almost convince myself that it was still summer. Almost.
But our community was bustling with the work of autumn and the activities of harvest: younger children gathered apples from a small orchard; men drove horses with carts containing bales of hay to barns; a group of women was busy gathering grapevines to make wreaths to sell in the English shops for Christmas.
We were a good-size settlement of Plain folk, about seventy families, spread over half a county. We had heard rumors of other Plain communities that were shrinking, owing to the youth and the spell of Rumspringa. And there were tales of other communities that grew so fast, there was no farmland for young families. But not ours. Ours had remained the same size and shape as far back as anyone could remember. There always seemed to be enough land for everyone to have at least forty acres to farm, if they wanted it.
And everyone seemed happy, unaffected by the schisms that seemed so common in other Amish settlements. The Bishop said that was because we stuck to the old ways. Everyone knew what was expected of us. There was no renegotiation of rules every time some new technology flew up a bonnet. The Ordnung was the Ordnung. Period. And we had been rewarded for following the Ordnung: there was always enough work and food and spouses and land for everyone. God provided for his people.
The pumpkin patch that my little sister tended was nearly as ripe as Sunny with distended gourds. There was one particularly large monster of a pumpkin that Sarah had a special fondness for. Twice daily she squatted beside it, whispering to it and petting it. Whatever she was doing seemed to be working—the pumpkin was easily over a hundred pounds, with another month to go before it would be severed from the vine.
Mrs. Parsall leaned against the bumper of her old blue station wagon. She pulled her keys from her pocket, gave me a one-armed hug. “You take care of yourself, kiddo.”
I grinned against her shoulder. But something dark against the blue sky caught my attention. I squinted at it, first thinking it to be a bird. But it wasn’t a bird at all.
I stepped back from Mrs. Parsall, pointing at the sky. “Look!”
A dark dot buzzed overhead, growing larger. It was a hel-icopter, flying so low that I could hear the whump-whump-whump of its blades. It was painted green with a white cross on the side, seeming to wobble in the blue.
Mrs. Parsall shaded her eyes with her hands, shouting to be heard above the roar. “It’s Life Flight.”
“It’s a what?”
“It’s a medical helicopter. From a hospital.”
“It shouldn’t be doing that, should it?”
“Hell, no. It—”
The helicopter veered right and left, as if it were a toy buffered by a nonexistent tornado. The breeze today was calm, stirred by the helicopter blades and the roar. I thought I saw people inside, fighting, their silhouettes stark through a flash of window, then lost in the sun. The helicopter made a shrieking sound, the whump-whump-whump plowing through the air as it bumped and bucked. It howled over us, so close that I could have reached out and touched it if I’d been standing on the roof of our house.
Mrs. Parsall grabbed me and flung me to the ground. I shoved my bonnet back from my brow in enough time to see the helicopter spiral out of control, spinning nose over tail into a field. It vanished above tall tassels of corn.
For a couple of heartbeats, I saw nothing, heard nothing.
Then I felt the impact through my hands and the front of my ribs, bit my tongue so hard I could taste blood. Black smoke rose over the horizon.
“Oh no,” Mrs. Parsall gasped.
I scrambled to my feet, began to run. I heard Mrs. Parsall behind me, the jingle of her purse strap. I dimly registered her voice shouting into her cell phone. I ran toward the fire, across the grass. I swung myself up and over the barbed-wire fence, mindless of the scratching on my hands and in my skirt.
I plunged into the stalks of corn, taller than me, following the smell of smoke and the distant crackle of fire. I was conscious of the brittle yellow stalks tearing at me as I passed and realized that they were too flammable this far into the season. If the fire got loose in the corn, we’d have no way to stop it.
But my immediate concern was the people on the helicopter.
I ripped through the field and shoved aside blackened stalks of corn to view the site of the crash. The heat shimmered in the air, causing my eyes to tear up. I lifted my apron to cover my nose against the smell of oily smoke.
Fire seethed above me in a black and orange plume, curling around the husk of the dead helicopter. The bent and broken tail jutted out from the ground at an odd angle. The cockpit had broken open, flames streaming through the broken glass.
And I swore I saw something moving inside.
Chapter Two
I squinted into the sizzle of the heat, sucking in my breath. A hand slapped against the cracked glass of the window, slithered out the broken edges. Something alive.
Instinctively, I stepped toward it. I clambered over a smoking piece of metal and climbed up on the bent nose of the helicopter. I cried out when I braced my hands against the metal—it was hot as an iron. Tears streaming down my face from the smoke and the fumes, I reached out to the bloody hand and clasped it in mine.
It ceased twitching and writhing at my touch, and for an instant all was still. I didn’t feel the searing heat of the metal through my apron and dress. I even ceased to hear the crackle of fire. I only sought to give some bit of comfort to the person in the wreckage. For that moment, we connected. The hand felt still in mine, as if soothed by my presence. I could see that it was a man’s burly hand. I saw a green sleeve of a jacket pulled past his wrist, slick polyester from a manufactured uniform. I thought that he must be the pilot. He gripped my hand tightly. I could feel the fear pulsing in his palm. I did not know what I intended to do, only that I could sense the desperation clasped in my fingers.
Suddenly, his arm jerked, and sound came rushing back to me. I heard him scream, and he clutched my hand tighter, so hard that I cried out. He pulled against me, and I felt myself sliding against the hot metal, into the wreckage.
But it wasn’t the pilot pulling me. He was still screaming as he was dragged back into the wreckage . . . by something else. I peered into the smoke-encrusted glass and saw a pair of red eyes, glowing with reflected light like a cat’s in the smoky darkness.
My heart lurched into my mouth. Whimpering, I struggled against the urge to extricate myself from the viselike grip—I wasn’t sure if I was trying to pull him free, or me free of him. But his fingers spasmed around mine, and I was lifted off my precarious balancing point on the helicopter nose.
“No!” I cried, yanking back with all my might. I might be small, but I was strong from years of hard work. I braced my shoe against a crease in the metal . . .
. . . and a splash of blood struck me in the face like a slap.
I gasped. The bl
ood and sweat in my palm slipped against the pilot’s, and his hand slid free. His arm lashed back into the cockpit, like a fish on the end of a line, and I landed hard on my backside on the scorched ground.
My spine ached from the impact, and I stared up at the glass, dazed. I heard another short scream, then nothing. My fingers wound in the burnt grass, and my heart hammered. I knew, deep in the core of my being, that there was something terrible in there . . .
“Katie!” I felt arms around my waist, hauling me to my feet. I blinked stupidly at Elijah, who gaped open-mouthed at my face.
I looked down. My chest and apron were spattered with blood, as if I’d slaughtered a pig. My stunned gaze slid back to the wreckage. I could hear popping noises inside the metal shell, like popcorn in a kettle. “The pilot is in there,” I whispered. “We have to help the pilot . . .”
“Get back!”
A familiar voice thundered over us. It was a voice from Sunday church service. The voice of the Bishop. He stood yards from us, holding a shovel, his salt-and-pepper beard damp with perspiration. Other Elders had materialized from the corn, sparks bright against their black clothes.
“Get back!” he shouted again, brandishing the shovel. “Get away from it!”
The others backed away, receding into the corn. Plain folk were supposed to be obedient; they did not question an order from the Bishop.
But I paused, as I always did. I never followed commands as a reflex. The Bishop had remarked on my lack of submission before, had said that was a failing in my character. I stared at the fire with my breath rattling in my throat, trying to understand why he would order us away when someone needed our help. God charged us to help those in need, and I had never seen anyone more in need of—
“Katie!” Elijah dragged me back into the tall stalks with the others. I struggled against him, transfixed by the fire and still hearing the echo of the pilot’s scream in my head. I felt the shadow of the corn closing over me, my shoes scraping in the dirt . . .
And a boom thundered through the wreckage, shaking the leaves around us. I threw my hand over my eyes as I fell back against Elijah, tangled in his limbs and mine. He covered my head as bits of shrapnel rained down on the field. I heard him hiss and wince, slapping at an ember threatening to ignite his shirt.
On hands and knees, I crawled to the edge of the blackened corn, watched as an orange fireball raced to the sky, turned black, and dissipated.
I swallowed hard. The Bishop must have known that the helicopter would explode again. I should have listened to him.
But that was not my nature. I always questioned.
I stared helplessly at the wreckage. There was nothing left but a split-open, flattened bit of metal that burned, like a tin can in a campfire. I could see nothing in it. No glass, no pilot. No bodies.
Just a fire that burned black at the seams.
* * *
Our community fell upon the wreckage like ants.
We had to.
Above any other thing aside from God, Plain folk feared fire. We had no fire departments, no running water from bottomless city lines. We had no telephones to summon help from Outside. If a fire caught and fanned itself to life, it could devour a field, houses, barns. We were defenseless against it.
Except for the earth the Lord gave us. We had plenty of dirt, and we used it.
Unbidden, men and women streamed to the field with shovels. Someone handed me one, and I worked in silent fellowship beside them. We heard the sound of the flames crackling behind us, the slice and cut of the shovels in the skin of the earth, the hiss of dirt raining down upon sparks. When we ran out of shovels, women went into the corn and crushed down the smoldering stalks with their shoes, stamping out the leaves.
We worked the fire line for hours, interrupted only by the Bishop’s orders to advance and retreat. A child brought me water, and that was the first time I paused to look back at the shell of the helicopter. It stunk of plastic and something like kerosene, but there was nothing in it anymore except for a fine gray ash that made me cough. The ash shimmered dreamily in the setting sun, like the haze of mosquitoes at a river at dusk. I smeared the foul-tasting ash across my face when I wiped my lips with the back of my hand.
And I realized that we were alone. There were no English among us. My brow creased at that. Surely they would have sent someone for their helicopter. Surely they would have responded to Mrs. Parsall’s call by now?
“Enough,” the Bishop called out. He leaned heavily on his shovel. Sweat stained the front of his shirt, dripped from his beard. “The fire is out.”
I stretched, my back aching from the hard work. We gathered around the Bishop, smelling of dirt and sweat and that synthetic burning stink. This corner of the field was destroyed, but it seemed that most of the crop was salvageable.
“Let us pray.”
I lowered my head, clasped my hands. Our voices murmured in the gloaming, merging into one, lifting beyond the stalks of corn into the darkening sky. This was the Lord’s Prayer that the English knew, but it was our prayer for all purposes and all seasons, spoken in our own Deitsch tongue:
Unser Vadder im Himmel,
Dei Naame loss heilich sei,
Dei Reich loss komme.
Dei Wille loss gedu sei,
Uff die Erd wie im Himmel.
Unser deeglich Brot gebb uns heit,
Un vergebb unser Schulde,
Wie mir die vergewwe wu uns schuldich sinn.
Un fiehr uns net in die Versuchung,
Awwer hald uns vum Ewile.
Fer dei is es Reich, die Graft,
Un die Hallichkeit in Ewichkeit.
Amen.
As we finished, silence seemed to press down eerily upon our gathering. After the explosions, perhaps it was only my ears ringing. Or the soft shock of the death of the pilot.
I only knew that the weight of the sky had changed, that something was indelibly wrong. I could feel it on the walk back to my house. I couldn’t articulate it, not even to Elijah, but I think that he felt it too. He walked beside me, head bowed, shovel slung over his shoulder. Our shadows stretched long in the sunset.
I opened my mouth to speak several times, but no sound came out. This was too far out of my everyday experience to understand, but I wanted to get home. Home to my parents and the familiar rhythm of what I knew. A lump rose in my throat. My mother will know what to do, I told myself as I approached the house.
She was waiting for us on the back step. Though in her forties, my mother could easily have passed for my grandmother: she had the same gray eyes and straight, light brown hair streaked with wiry strands of silver. Years of sun and laughter had freckled her face and etched a spider web of lines around her eyes and mouth. Looking at her was sometimes like looking into my own future.
When she saw us, my mother rose to her feet and ran toward me. She thrust the hair that had come loose from my bonnet off my face, eyes wide at the dried blood on my cheek and clothing. “Are you all right, liewe?”
Plain folk were discouraged from using terms of endearment on the grounds that they were superficial. But the rules were loosened for mothers communicating with their children. My mother often called Sarah and me liewe—“dear.”
“Ja, Mother,” I said.
Her gaze wasn’t fixed on me, but on my stained apron.
“It isn’t mine, Mother,” I whispered.
She nodded, wiping some dampness that had fallen on my cheek with the heel of her palm. “Are there any survivors? Your father went to find Frau Gerlach—”
I shook my head, unable to speak. I noticed that there were no red ambulances or paramedics even here. Frau Gerlach was our midwife, and the closest thing we had to a doctor, but saving the pilot in the helicopter probably would have been beyond the scope of her skills.
Mrs. Parsall paced down the driveway, staring at her cell phone, stabbing at the buttons.
“Did you reach the fire department?” Elijah asked.
“I called the
m. Ten times.” She sighed in frustration. “And the sheriff and the highway patrol.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Why didn’t . . . Why didn’t they come? These are their people.” My fingers curled into fists. How could the English leave their people here to die, how they could not come to help their own?
Mrs. Parsall frowned at the device. “I don’t know. I got a dispatcher the first three times I called. They said that they would send someone. After that, I just got a busy signal. I’ve been waiting by the road to flag them down, but . . . nothing.” Her shoulders slumped.
My mother reached out, patted my sleeve. “Katie, go wash up. Mrs. Parsall, it’s almost time for Nachtesse. Will you stay for a meal?”
The Plain reaction to any crisis is always to feed everyone in sight. My mother was no exception. She knew what Mrs. Parsall’s answer would be on an ordinary day. She had spent many an evening at our table in the last months.
I often felt a bit sorry for Mrs. Parsall, returning to an empty house with her children and her husband gone. He was in the military, stationed somewhere in Europe. The Amish didn’t believe in military service, so the idea was utterly foreign to me. Though I wasn’t sure I wanted my mother’s life as an adult woman, I wasn’t certain that I wanted Mrs. Parsall’s, either.
Mrs. Parsall hesitated. “I—”
“Please stay,” I said, reaching for her hand with my filthy one.
“Ja, Mrs. Parsall, you must stay,” my mother decided. “We’ll have a table full in minutes, as soon as everyone comes in from the field.” She gestured with her chin to the corn beyond. Some figures were already beginning to disperse to their own homes, but she knew that she had a duty to feed anyone who stopped by.
“Okay. Thanks. But let me help you set the table.”
My mother nodded in satisfaction, and the women disappeared into the house with the screen door swishing shut behind them. Elijah and I gathered around the backyard water pump. Elijah primed it, pushing against the squeaking lever until spring water rushed out into a bucket below.
