Broken English

by P. L. Gaus

  Together they pushed with their fingertips on the right seam of the nearest panel. Then they tried on the left, and the panel opened inward on its hinges. The professor reached in on the left and found a light switch. He pushed the panel open and led Caroline into David Hawkins’s private arsenal.

  There were guns, knives, and battle rifles of every description. Handguns filled glass-topped cases, and rifles hung on the walls. There was a riot shotgun, with a large circular magazine hanging under the barrel, as well as several double-barreled sporting shotguns. The waist-high display cases against three walls held revolvers and semiautomatic pistols—everything from Smith and Wesson revolvers to the H&K squeeze-cocker 9 mm, with the characteristically wide grip that was contoured in front for the shooter’s fingers. A matched pair of Ruger Government Target .22s, the Mark II variety with 6.5-inch barrels, lay in the case. Also an old .44 Auto Mag and an imposingly large .50-caliber, Israeli Desert Eagle. Shelves above the display cases held other handguns and gear. There were a dozen or so military long guns on a vertical rack in one corner. Several had bayonets and military slings made of brown leather or woven khaki. Branden lifted one of the longer rifles, a Fabrique Nationale FAL .308 with a British illuminated battle scope, and held it to his eye. When he lowered the rifle, he noticed a small white paper tag hanging from a string on the trigger guard. It read “sighted 300 yds, Federal Match Grade, 168 grain boattail hollow points.” He made a quick visual check of the other long guns in the room and saw that they too, whether military or sporting, bore similar tags that specified range and style of cartridge.

  Branden noted an early-version M16 with the first triangular forestock, and no forward assist. A thirty-round magazine was attached under the receiver, just forward of the pistol-style grip. He identified an Israeli Military Industries Uzi pistol—small, heavy, and fitted with a collapsible, metal shoulder stock. Several Russian AK-47s stood on a rack. There was one battered SKS rifle with a plain and inexpensive wooden stock, bayonet, and Chinese insignias on top of the iron sights. Two H&K Model 91 automatic rifles were mounted on a wall. Branden recognized them as probably the most expensive items in the lot, and they each had switches that would change the fire mechanism from semiautomatic to fully automatic. On the wall above the rifles, there was a fully automatic H&K MP5 machine pistol, with a long, thin, 9 mm magazine mounted in front of the trigger guard. A fully automatic MAC 11 machine pistol hung shoulder high on the wall next to the secret door. Beside the small machine gun, there were six long magazines attached to the wall. Branden took one down from its clip and found it loaded. He depressed the top round, noticed that it sank into the magazine only a fraction of an inch, and said, “Thirty rounds, fully loaded.”

  Against the fourth wall of the back armory room, there was a long workbench about waist high. Under the bench there were racks of small metal drawers, plus stacks of green army-surplus ammo cans. Each drawer and each can was marked with a different caliber. Caroline pulled one drawer open and lifted out a handful of copper coated projectiles.

  Branden gave them a glance and said, “9 mm. Full metal jackets.”

  On top of the long bench, Hawkins had mounted several die presses. Branden pulled the arm down on one of them, and the ram for a .45 bullet die rose into position where a projectile would be seated into a brass case.

  “Reloading presses,” Branden said. “Hawkins makes his own cartridges.”

  Caroline pulled a bound notebook from one of the shelves over the workbench and leafed through it. She chose an entry at random and read it aloud for her husband.

  Lot Number 1523

  220 SWIFT, 55 grain Hornady Boattail, FMJ

  Federal cases trimmed to 2.196 +/- 0.001”

  CCI Benchrest primers seated 0.002”

  43.70 +/- 0.02 grains of IMR 4350 = 3800 fps

  c.o.l. = 2.680 +/- 0.001”

  The professor came over and took down another notebook for himself.

  He studied it for a minute or so and then said, “It’s load data. The prescription for making up a cartridge. It specifies the case, primer, powder, projectile, and c.o.l.”

  “What’s c.o.l.?”

  “It stands for case overall length.” He read another page and said, “These powder charges are specified to the nearest two one-hundredths of a grain. The c.o.l. to the nearest one-thousandth of an inch.”

  “That’s significant?” Caroline asked.

  “It’s excessive,” Branden said. “Most reloaders get it to the tenth of a grain and go with that. My grandfather used to scoop in powder until it looked right to him and almost never bothered even weighing a powder charge, much less weighing one to a hundredth of a grain.”

  The logbooks were arranged in chronological order. Branden took down the latest book, opened to the last entry and read:

  Lot 2155

  6 mm PPC, 75 grain Hornady hollow points

  Remington cases trimmed to 1.505 +/- 0.001”

  CCI Benchrest primers, seated 0.002 inches

  24.30 +/- 0.02 grains IMR 4198 = 3110 fps

  c.o.l. = 2.102 +/- 0.001 inches

  It was dated three days ago.

  “I think that’s a target load,” Branden said absently. He turned slowly in place, looking for the rifle that would match the cartridge, and failed to find it.

  He walked over to the wall panel they had pushed open to enter the custom room. He swung it closed, and on the back they saw the weapon that matched the target round from the last entry in Hawkins’s load book.

  The rifle that hung on the back of the door had a stainless steel barrel and a blue-sparkle polymer stock with extravagant features. The cheek plate was custom molded and unusually tall. The forestock was flattened and tapered. The thumbhole in the stock was cut for a personal fit to one man’s hand. The barrel was fluted. The action was a custom remake of a standard Remington 700 bolt. There was an enormous 36-power Leupold scope mounted on top. The machined silver steel gave it a look of enormous power and precision.

  Beside the rifle there was a framed photograph of a man holding the rifle and a trophy. The caption below the photo read:

  David Hawkins, Millersburg, Ohio

  Grand Champion

  2002 Benchrest Internationals

  Erlanger’s Range

  Beneath the photo, there was a target mounted in another frame. It was hand lettered in the margins, with pencil.

  Caroline bent over and read the lettering out loud. “Five rounds. 6 mm PPC. 200 yards.”

  The target contained a single bullet hole about six millimeters in diameter. The bullet hole had missed the small bull’s-eye on the target. Instead, it sat curiously on the page, well away from the bull’s-eye, a single six-millimeter hole, about an inch and a half high-right.

  “Is it possible that only one bullet hit the target?” Caroline asked.

  Branden shrugged and said, “Cal wanted us to see all of this.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t know,” Branden said. “Cal knows about this room. I’d be willing to bet there aren’t two other people in Millersburg who do.”

  “Plus us makes five,” Caroline added.

  “Cal is standing by Hawkins.”

  “Then why tell us about these guns?”

  “To convince us he’s right.”

  Caroline gave a little nervous laugh that clearly said Cal had not succeeded with her.

  Branden studied the target on the back of the secret door. He held the rifle a moment longer and then lifted it to his eye. The butt of the stock hit him at the round of his shoulder, but when he laid his face softly against the tall cheek plate, the eyepiece of the scope hit him above the eyebrow. “Long neck,” he said to himself.

  “Long neck?” Caroline asked.

  “The stock’s custom built for one man alone. The scope is high for me. Hawkins has got himself a long neck.”

  Branden hung the rifle behind the door and said, “I’ve seen enough.”

  After Caroline had left the
room, he hit the lights, stepped back through the secret door, and shut it from outside in the machine shop. He worked the hidden switch to throw the electric bolts home, replaced the block of wood that hid the switch, and climbed the steps behind Caroline.

  In their car in the driveway, Branden sat a moment with the motor running, absently tapping his thumbs against the steering wheel and thinking of what they had just seen in the custom basement room. As they sat there, Ricky Niell came slowly up to the driver’s side in his immaculate black and gray deputy sheriff’s uniform. Laying his right arm atop the roof of the car, he bent over to the window and rapped at the glass with the knuckles of his left hand. Branden jerked almost imperceptibly but recovered quickly and rolled the window down, wondering if Niell had watched them go into the house as well as come out. He switched the engine off.

  “Recognized your car, Professor,” the deputy said cheerfully.

  “Ricky,” Branden said. “I see Robertson has you on the clock.”

  Niell laughed and shrugged. “Something like that. More to the point, he has me on you.”

  Branden looked first to Caroline, who arched an eyebrow, and then to Niell, who was still leaning over at the professor’s window.

  “Look, Professor, I thought you might like to know that Robertson sent Cal Troyer home about ten minutes after you left.”

  Branden muttered, “More of his games.”

  “I don’t think he’s playing games,” Niell said.

  “He wants Hawkins, and all the rest is just games,” Branden said.

  “Cal Troyer is a way to Hawkins,” Niell said.

  “Cal said he can’t help, and I believe him,” Branden said. “He truthfully doesn’t know where Hawkins is.”

  “I think Hawkins is only part of the problem,” Niell said. He looked down, studied the blacktop beside the sedan, hesitating awkwardly as he considered what more he could safely tell the Brandens without running foul of the sheriff’s specific orders. Eventually he added, “The sheriff is not going to ease off on Hawkins until Jesse Sands goes to state prison.” He watched the professor’s expression for a reaction.

  Branden said, “If Cal says he can’t help find Hawkins, then he can’t do it, and that is the long and the short of it, Ricky. If Robertson pushes there, a long-time friendship is going to crumble away.”

  Niell looked to Caroline, held her eyes for a spell, and then said directly to the professor, “Then all I can tell you is that Cal Troyer is going to be on the hot seat until next week, because Robertson believes Troyer can deliver Hawkins.”

  “Why next week?” Branden asked.

  “Next week, Friday, Jesse Sands is going to trial, and Robertson’s got it figured that that’s when we’ll hear from David Hawkins.”

  Branden shook his head and frowned.

  Caroline asked, “Ricky, do you know where Cal went after he left the jail?”

  Niell said, “Troyer drew me aside and asked me to tell you two that he’d be pitching hay.” Then he looked into the car, waiting for one of the Brandens to translate. Neither did.

  As Niell headed back down the drive, the professor smiled, remembering the little map that Cal had drawn to the Raber farm.

  15

  Tuesday, June 10 6:00 P.M.

  CAL Troyer was dressed about as close to Amish as he could get, but still not quite be there. His old straw hat was the proper straw hat, creamy yellow with a plain black band. His black vest hung casually open, but it was assuredly the proper black vest. The sleeves on his light blue shirt were rolled up to the correct spot on his elbows. But a few crucial details were out of sorts. His blue jeans were Levis, not the plain denim the Rabers wore. He used a belt rather than cloth suspenders. And he wore Reeboks instead of lace-up boots. Other than that, the only thing that gave him away readily was his full, white beard, not shaved smooth above and below the mouth.

  He worked in the tall barn next to a wagonload of new-dried hay. There was the sweet aroma of the new hay and a swarm of insects. The horses whinnied in their harnesses and stomped at the dirt floor. The odor of manure was strong. The barn was cool, and the work was steady. Today, the Raber boys had helped their father gather in his crop, and tomorrow, they’d all help the oldest son on his south fields. All of the men were there, and so were all of the boys, the lot of them dressed alike. The weather looked good for making hay—sunshine and gentle breezes, with no change in sight.

  Cal threw pitchforks of the loose hay from the flat wooden wagon up to Joshua, the youngest Raber son. Joshua dispersed it toward the back of the loft. Other brothers worked with the senior Raber to bale the remainder of the hay using a gasoline engine outside the barn. Cal had put in five hours in the fields, and it was understood that he would stay for supper.

  When the last wagon had been emptied, Joshua unhitched the team from the wagon and, following behind them with a whip, drove them, still in harness, into the other barn. Cal walked outside and stretched the muscles in his back and neck while he watched for Abigail at the big house.

  The Raber barns were set low on a hillside, near a small stream. The Rabers’ white frame house, two and a half stories, stood fifty yards farther up the hill. The tall windows were draped with aqua-green curtains that hung full length and straight inside. At the back of the house, there was a breezeway-style porch, with screened windows and a long oak-slatted porch swing suspended on springs from hooks in the ceiling. The breezeway led from the rear of the big house to a smaller, grand-parent’s house in the back. It was in this small Daadihaus that Herman P. Raber now lived with his wife and their unmarried daughter Abigail. The oldest son, Herman H. Raber, lived with his family of fourteen in the big house.

  The two red barns towered to three full stories, counting the lowest level, where the doors opened into a small ravine with a trickle of a summer stream. The stream bed was trampled by the hooves of dairy cattle and draft horses. There was fifty years of mud splattered against the foundation stones of the barn.

  The two top levels of the biggest barn faced toward the house, away from the stream. There were cutouts in the high walls for swallows. A tall pole on a nearby mound held a two-level martin house. Along toward dusk, the martins and swallows came out and began their ballet overhead, scooping bugs from the air in swift, erratic, darting maneuvers, and steady, graceful, arching glides.

  When the day’s hay was in the barns, Cal joined the brothers at the brick well behind the house, and they pumped sulfur water for each other, to wash for supper. The cleaner, sweeter water in the attic tanks inside the big house was pumped up from a deeper formation by a windmill set on a rise behind the house.

  At dinner, father Raber offered grace, giving thanks for the blessings of crops, family, and peace. The meal itself was substantial. Beef with heavy gravy. Mashed potatoes, and sweet potatoes with brown sugar. Beans, corn, and homemade breads. Reheated ham for those who wanted it. An assortment of fresh pies, all served on a long kitchen table with simple benches on its four sides. By the time the meal was finished and the women had begun collecting the dishes, the sun had set behind the windmill. After the meal, Cal and Raber Sr. sat together on the back porch swing as the other Rabers headed for their various chores.

  Herman P. Raber was an extraordinarily short man, no more than five feet tall. His gray beard was tangled and heavy on his chin. His long, straight hair was thinning and had taken a set under the rim of his hat. His forehead above the hat line was creamy white. Below the hat line, it was tanned a deep red brown. His short fingers were callused and worn. There were large cracks in the skin, and these cracks held the dark stains of a lifetime spent close to the soil. His fingernails were broken and uneven, and the two smallest fingers on his left hand were missing, victims of a forgetful childhood moment when he had caught them in a reaper. His beard was stained yellow in the corner of his mouth where his pipe always had hung, and his index finger was brown from tamping the pipe. He wore small, round spectacles low down on his nose. His belly stuck out ben
eath his unbuttoned vest. He had a copper wrist band for arthritis and an iron band on one ankle. He wore no wedding ring. His boots, tonight, were unlaced because his feet were swollen from diabetes. He was fifty-seven years old, and he had known Cal Troyer for thirty years.

  Cal spoke quietly in Low German dialect, expressing assurances that David Hawkins, whatever he was up to, would come home to the Raber farm. “He’s made a commitment to Amish life,” Cal said. “You know his resolve as well as any, Herman.”

  Raber puffed on his pipe and followed the lazy plumes of smoke with his eyes. After a while, he said, “I’ve got a cabin back over the hill. It was the original homestead that my great-grandfather built when he started out. Several generations have farmed the same land after him. Tilled the soil in their own days. Great-grandfather. Grandfather. My father, and now me. Not to mention the original lands divided to the sons and handed down faithfully through the generations.

  “We live the same life today, on the same land as my great-grandfather. We keep the old ways because that is important to do. Certainly no one else is going to do that. Keep the old ways.

  “And Hawkins can have his place among us. He and Abigail are to have the homestead cabin and fifty acres to get them started. But now I wonder. Don’t think you can blame me either, with him disappearing the day Abi found his gun.”

  “You can’t be certain that was his pistol,” Cal said.

  Raber shrugged and relit his pipe. “Who knows if an Englisher can truly honor the old ways?”

  “What will it hurt to trust him, now?”