by Laura Bickle
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.
I untied my bonnet and thrust my hands into the soft, summer-warm water. I splashed it up over my face, scrubbed my grimy hands and neck. I felt a sudden surge of nausea and braced my hands against my knees. I had never been squeamish about blood before, but the only blood I dealt with belonged to animals. I gripped the edge of the bucket with sweaty palms.
The pump stopped squeaking. “Katie? Are you all right?”
“Ja.” I nodded. “Just . . . more water, please.”
Elijah resumed pumping, and I thrust my head under the flow of water. It felt warm against the back of my neck, sluicing through my hair and dribbling underneath the collar of my dress. I let it wash over me until the water ran clear beneath my chin into the overflowing bucket and my dress was all wet.
“Thank you,” I said, breathlessly.
Elijah looked at me oddly. I was soaked, with my hair unbound. Plain girls did not make a display of themselves in front of men this way. A woman’s hair was considered to be her glory, and it was vain to display it uncovered outside of her home. I watched his Adam’s apple move up and down, and then he turned his back to me to wash himself.
I squeezed the water out of my hair, coiled it back. I pulled my apron off, shoved it in the rubbish heap. It was beyond the help of soap or bleach.
My mother had the laundry hung out to dry. I plucked a clean dress from the clothesline and headed inside to change. I knew that I would feel better now that I was clean, surrounded by the familiar scents and bustle of home.
The bottom floor of our house was a large room with a staircase in the middle. Our back door led directly into the kitchen area. Propane-powered appliances lined the wall: a refrigerator and stove, separated by counters and a sink, where my mother was chopping vegetables.
Mrs. Parsall set the long table in the center of the floor. She glanced up when I came in, her smile wan. My little sister trailed behind her, humming and folding the napkins, blissfully unaware of what had happened.
I would not be the one to tell her.
I headed up the stair, to the room I shared with Sarah. Our twin beds, swaddled in quilts, were set parallel to each other with a window between them. I changed quickly, hiding my dirty dress in the bottom of the laundry heap. I didn’t want to see it, wanted to pretend that all was normal. I tied on a clean apron, stuffed my wet hair up loosely under a fresh bonnet. My hands shook as I tied the strings, and I stabbed myself more than once with the pins that closed my dress.
I took a deep breath before descending the stairs. I hoped that my mother wouldn’t coddle me, that she’d give me a chore to do to keep my mind from the awful black stain in the corner of the cornfield.
Downstairs, the table was filling up. My father had returned to the house. He was speaking with the Bishop, Elijah, and Elijah’s father in low tones. Our next-door neighbors, Elijah’s family, often joined us for meals. His mother had died when we were children, and my mother had often filled that role for Elijah and his brothers, Joseph and Seth. Their father always saw to it that our kitchen was well supplied in exchange for feeding his children.
“What are we going to do?” I heard Elijah say.
The Bishop sighed, looked at all of us. His beard was damp from the outside spigot, but his clothes still smelled like ash. He lifted his voice, and it was clear that he meant for all of us to hear. “The English will come when they are ready. They will come with their policemen. They will no doubt want to see the field, investigate the crash. Ask what we saw. But that is their task.”
He spread open his deeply lined hands. “We have done all that we can do. We shall simply . . . go on as we usually do. Ja, there is nothing to be done for it but pray and go on.”
The men nodded, and the nods spread to my mother and even Sarah, who bobbed her head to watch her bonnet strings bounce. Mrs. Parsall looked down at her shoes and sighed. Maybe she wanted to talk about the tragedy, but rumination on such things was not our way. We Plain folk did not obsess over things beyond our own control. From the Bishop’s perspective, we had done the work we needed to: We came to help; we stopped the fire. And it was done. We would surrender the rest to God’s will.
But I still had something to say. I bit my lip. “Herr Bishop . . . I saw something inside the helicopter. I went to help the pilot, but . . .” My gaze slid to Sarah, and my mother immediately distracted her with an early piece of pie.
I squirmed as the Bishop watched me. My voice lowered to a squeak. “It looked as if . . . it seemed that he was attacked, dragged back into the wreckage by . . . another person. A strange-looking person.” I struggled to articulate what I saw, even now doubting those red eyes burning in my memory. The Bishop was a good man, but his authority made me nerv-ous. I knew he noticed that I was often the last one to follow his orders. I always did follow them—but I needed to think on them first. This was not a trait that was encouraged, and it bothered my parents.
The Bishop patted my arm. “It’s all right, Katie. When the police come, you can tell them what you saw. But you’re safe now. There’s nothing left.”
I swallowed and nodded slowly.
“There is nothing to be done for this,” he repeated. “It is done. And we go on, as we always have. It is a tragedy, but it does not have anything to do with us.”
An awkward silence stretched, and I could feel the weight of the Bishop’s pale stare on me.
My mother, more noisily than necessary, brought a bowl of mashed potatoes to the table. “Herr Miller has brought us more potatoes.”
“Thank you, Herr Miller,” I said politely. We were up to our eyeballs in potatoes, and Mother was getting creative with them, turning them into potato salad, mashing them, and shredding them into hash browns. I glanced sidelong at the bushel of potatoes that had materialized by the door.
“You’re welcome, Katie.” Herr Miller perched in a chair beside my father. He was a tall, thin man with a beard white as a chicken’s breast. Somewhat sad, I suppose on account of his wife. I remember that his beard had gone white shortly after his wife died. He seemed much older than my father, but they were the same age.
When all the food had been served, we automatically looked to the foot of the table, at the Bishop. I lowered my gaze to my folded hands in my lap as we recited the Lord’s Prayer. Mrs. Parsall didn’t try; she didn’t know Deitsch. But I imagined her following along in English. We always spoke in English around Outsiders, to be polite, but we lapsed into Deitsch when we prayed. That old habit seemed soothing now. I let myself fall into the familiar rhythm of the words. The Bishop’s “Amen” and the sudden silence after caught me a bit by surprise.
But my father filled in that empty space with a veneer of normalcy. “How are the boys?” he asked Herr Miller, passing the mashed potatoes.
“Good, ja. Good,” Herr Miller replied. “Seth and Joseph are working now at the furniture store in town.�
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Mrs. Parsall nodded. “Ah. They are turning table legs?” She seemed to be game to play along in this forced routine. I noticed that her hand shook on the serving spoon.
“Joseph is going to be a master carpenter, like his uncle.” Herr Miller nodded to himself. Joseph was two years older than Elijah and had been carving since he was old enough to pick up a knife. I still had a doll made with one of Joseph’s carved heads. “Seth is learning. I suspect that he will be a farmer, like his papa, though.”
Elijah shrugged. “Joseph always wanted to be a carpenter. When he’s not otherwise busy chasing Ruth Hersberger.”
My father’s eyes crinkled. “Joseph has been chasing Ruth for years.”
“I know.” Herr Miller sighed. Ruth had just turned sixteen. She was gorgeous: blond curly hair, blue eyes, and a singing voice that could make angels weep. “Hopefully, he will marry her and be done with all the pining.”
“Ruth is a nice girl,” the Bishop said. “Good family. They would be a good match.”
Herr Miller held his head in his hands, though I could see his smile behind his fingers at the Bishop’s approval. “I only hope he is successful in his courting. If she chooses another young man . . . he’ll hang around the house until he’s an old man. Like me.”
The Bishop’s expression was enigmatic as he tucked into the gravy. “These things will sort out on their own.” I wondered if he had already mentioned this to Ruth’s family.
“You’re not old. Yet.” Elijah grinned at his father.
Herr Miller gave him a sour look. “Wait until you have children. You’ll feel old immediately.”
I glanced at the empty places that Joseph and Seth usually occupied. “Are the boys coming?”
Herr Miller squinted at the long sun’s rays through the window. “They should be here by now, but I told your mother not to wait on them. They know what time Nachtesse is.”
“There will be plenty of leftovers,” my mother assured him.
And she was right. She had baked a chicken and cooked a roast, mashed potatoes with gravy, corn, noodles, and spiced apple pie for dessert. By the time we finished, the sun had sunk below the horizon and we had lit the oil lamps. The Bishop took his leave, admitting that he still had not finished his chores on account of the afternoon’s excitement, and I walked Mrs. Parsall out to her car.
The sky was streaked with a slightly paler violet and pink in the west. The evening star had burned through the veil of color, and somewhere in the distant countryside, I heard dogs barking at a sliver of moon that tangled in the treetops. Lanterns were glowing warmly in the faraway windows of other houses in our settlement. The light was comforting. All looked to be well.
Mrs. Parsall slid behind the wheel of her station wagon and rolled down the window to release the heat that had accumulated during the day. It hit me in the face like a warm breath. She cranked the engine to life.
“I’ll come by next week. If you need me, for Sunny or anything else . . .” Her gaze flickered to the dark field, the site of the crash hidden by the corn.
I nodded. “I’ll send someone to the gas station to call you.”
Mrs. Parsall rolled her eyes at the inefficiency of it all. Someone would have to go by buggy or horse into town and then return with a message. The Englisher who ran Schmidt’s General Store and gas station kept a bulletin board of messages for Plain folk to gather and leave. Mrs. Parsall opened her mouth to speak, but then fell silent.
The radio had buzzed to life when she turned on the engine. Mrs. Parsall listened to what she called “classic rock-and-roll.” I would sneak a listen every once in a while. Though I didn’t make out all the lyrics all the time, I enjoyed the music. Once, Father had caught me humming “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” while milking the cows. He may not have known what the tune was, but he knew it was secular music, which was disapproved of by the Amish.
But the radio wasn’t playing music today. It was just a voice, broken up by static:
“ . . . curfew has been imposed. Local law enforcement officers have instructions to arrest anyone found out on the streets after sunset . . .”
I leaned on the car window, and Mrs. Parsall turned up the volume.
“ . . . again, the sheriff’s office and the highway patrol is requiring people to stay in their homes until . . .”
The station faded. Mrs. Parsall played with the dial, couldn’t find the station again. Her brow knit above her glasses. “I wonder if there was another accident? Maybe that’s why no one came for the helicopter.”
“What kind of accident?”
“I don’t know.” She chewed her lip. “I hope that it’s not terrorism.”
I knew about terrorism, in the broadest terms. I remembered when Elijah came running up the dirt road to tell us about 9/11. I’d been milking cows with my father. Well, I’d been too small to milk, so I had just held the bucket while my father did it. Elijah breathlessly announced that planes had killed a bunch of people in New York City. It seemed very remote and far away. Though our lives went on as they always had, I noticed that the English were afraid. Very afraid. Somehow, though, I couldn’t imagine anything like that happening here. Not to us. Our sect of Plain folk had not changed for hundreds of years. It would take more than a handful of men with hijacked planes to affect our way of life.
Back then my father had looked at Elijah and me and told us not to be afraid. That God would protect us, that nothing would change.
I believed him. He was my father. And he was right. He was always right.
I leaned into Mrs. Parsall’s window, watching her face wrinkle in the unnatural green light of the car instruments. I felt some of that same fear emanating from her now.
“Stay here tonight with us,” I pleaded. “You can sleep with Sarah and me.”
Mrs. Parsall nodded. She slowly turned the key to silence the engine. “I’m sure that they’ll straighten this out by morning. But . . .” She reached into her purse and dug out her cell phone. I walked back to the house to give her some privacy. I never really understood the attachment that some of the English had to their devices. But then again, everyone I needed to speak to was within walking distance. Maybe I would feel differently if they were far away.
“Can Mrs. Parsall stay tonight?” I asked my father.
“Of course. What’s wrong?” he asked, reading my expression.
“On the radio . . . it says that there’s a curfew. Police will arrest anyone on the roads. But they don’t say why.”
Herr Miller rose partly out of his chair. “Seth and Joseph are at the furniture store.”
“I can call them, see if they’re all right.” Mrs. Parsall had come inside. Her nervous fingers knit in her pink purse strap.
“Did you speak with your family?” I asked her.
She nodded. “I couldn’t get ahold of my husband. But I spoke with my son. He’s at school, hasn’t heard anything strange. He says he’s at the library.” She rolled her eyes in skepticism. “But he says the Internet is down. He couldn’t find any information on what’s going on.” She blew out her breath. “So maybe it’s minor.”
“I’m sure that everything is fine,” my father said.
Mrs. Parsall held out her cell phone to Herr Miller. “I don’t know if this qualifies as an emergency, but . . . do you want to talk to whoever picks up at the furniture store?”
The restrictions on phone use by Amish were complicated. We weren’t allowed to have phone lines in homes. But we could use the telephone for business purposes and to summon help in an emergency.
“I think . . . that I would,” Herr Miller said. “But I don’t know the telephone number.”
“I do,” Elijah announced. His father looked at him sharply.
“Bishop’s gone.” Elijah shrugged.
“Elijah,” Herr Miller said. “The Bishop may be gone. But God is everywhere.”
Mrs. Parsall gave the phone to Elijah, and he punched in the number, then handed it to his father.
Herr Miller cradled the receiver to his ear. I could hear the phone ringing. It rang for what seemed like a long time before someone picked up.
“Hello? Joseph?” A grin of relief spread across Herr Miller’s face. “Are you all right?” He nodded to himself. “Ja, ja . . . ja. Stay there . . . I will see you then. Goodbye.”
He handed the phone back to Mrs. Parsall. “They are safe at the store. A deputy came by and told them about the curfew.”
“A deputy?” Elijah echoed. “What did the deputy say?”
“He said that there had been rioting last night the next town over. Many people were hurt and taken to the hospital.”
We all looked at Mrs. Parsall. She was our conduit to Outside.
“I don’t know. I haven’t had the television on.” She spread her hands helplessly. “I wonder if that’s what happened to the helicopter. Some unhappy rioter . . .”
“There’s no use in speculating,” Herr Miller said. “The boys are staying at the furniture store tonight. Better that they stay there than spend the night in English jail. The curfew will be lifted in the morning. They’ll come home then, and we’ll hear all about the excitement.”
My father turned up the wick on the lamp. “Everything will be all right,” he said.
And I believed him.
Chapter Three
That night I lay in bed and stared out the window.
Night and I were old friends.
The soft darkness wrapped around me, and I heard the familiar sounds in the stillness: the creak of the house settling as the temperature cooled, my sister’s breathing beside me, the crickets that had not yet succumbed to the frost. Night was a time for rest, for reflection. Sometimes it was the only time I truly had to myself. In fall and winter, the sun stayed hidden for longer and longer. Rather than burn the oil lamps out, we simply went to bed earlier. And that left time to think. Maybe too much time.
Tonight felt subtly different. It wasn’t just being crowded together with Sarah in her bed. It wasn’t just Mrs. Parsall snoring softly from my bed. Part of it was the shock from the afternoon wearing off.
