The Outsider

by Penelope Williamson

  Another lambing season nearly ended, she thought, another spring unfolding. She remembered all the Sundays she had done this, looked back this way to the farm as the buckboard rolled across the bridge and started up the rise on the way to the preaching. During their first year here in the Miawa country, Benjo had been but a baby and he'd slept in a cracker box on the seat between her and Ben. Now her baby was barely even a boy any longer, but edging up to being a man. And the outsider sat on the other side of him, in her husband's place.

  She wanted to tell herself it was not the same, having him on the buckboard alongside of her in place of Ben. No, it wasn't the same at all, for he was only like Ben in small ways, like the way he could make her laugh with his teasing, and the way he moved so gracefully for all of his man's big size and hard strength. But then she remembered how just looking at him a few moments ago from across the yard had changed her world. Changed not only the sun and the wind, but how she felt about herself, deep inside. She'd been that way with Ben, when they were courting, and sometimes even after seventeen years of sharing a bed and a table and the day-to-day chores of life. Breathless, her chest aching, her belly heavy. Her skin tight all over, too tight for her body, so that it seemed she would burst apart if he so much as touched her hand. Or spoke her name.

  And he had taken off his six-shooter. He had done that for her. She was sure he had done it for her.

  Rachel turned her back on the farm, settling down on the hard board seat. For once the wind wasn't blowing wild, and the buckboard's wheels clicked and creaked along in the silence. Benjo kept slanting calculating looks at the outsider. He pursed his lips, and the muscles in his throat clenched as he worked on dredging up his words.

  The first word burst out with a misty spray. "Guh—good thing you're finally c-coming to the p-preaching with us, Cain. 'C-cause how you'll be able to see all those men who want to muh—marry Mem in c-courting action."

  Rachel's head snapped around. She poked a stiff finger into her son's ribs. He jumped and squirmed, but he kept his face turned carefully away from her.

  The outsider slapped the reins and clicked his tongue at the plodding mare. "Your ma's got lots of suitors, does she?"

  Benjo nodded vigorously. "Fuh—fuh—first there's Deacon Weaver. Everyone f-figures he's got the best chance at it."

  "Yeah, I bet everyone does. Good neighbor and particular friend that he is."

  "Thuh... there's also Joseph Zook. Buh—but everyone f-figures he's the long shot 'cause he's real old. He's got hair growing out his n-nose and ears, and he's got st-store-bought choppers." Benjo made a face. "And he farts during the p-preaching, then he looks around and g-glares at you, as if you were the one causing the big stuh-stink."

  "Benjo!" Rachel shot a glance at the outsider over her impossible son's head. Those blue eyes were squinting in a smile beneath the soft brim of bis hat. One corner of his mouth twitched.

  "I think you'd better cross that fella off your list, Mrs.

  Yoder," he said. "A man who farts in church... well, no tellin' where else he might do it."

  Benjo's head bobbed with exuberant relish. "Th-then there's Ira Chupp. His wuh—wife died a while back and now he con-consorts with those Jezebels who live in the Red House."

  "Joseph Benjamin Yoder!"

  "And he s-sneaks s-sips of rhubarb wine even when it's not Com-Communion Sunday."

  The outsider sucked on his cheeks so hard, he looked as if he was about to burst into a whistle. "He sounds like a real bad hombre, this Ira Chupp. Better cross him off, too. Who else is there?"

  "Euh—Ezra Fischer. He talks real sweet but he's got... smuh—small, squinty eyes, like p-pumpkin seeds. And he's suh—so stingy he'd skin a flea for the hide."

  "Ezra Fischer is a good man," Rachel stated. "He's our Vorsinger, he leads the hymnsongs during worship. His voice can warble up and down like a wren in the spring. What's more, he's not stingy. He merely believes that if he's careful with his pennies, the dollars will take care of themselves, and it's uncharitable of you to say such a thing, Benjo, even if it were true."

  Benjo made his eyes go all round and innocent. She'd have thought him a living angel if she didn't know better. "Muh—Mutter Anna Mary said the exact suh—selfsame thing, and n-nobody yelled at her for it."

  Johnny Cain and her son exchanged a look. The outsider drew an imaginary line through an imaginary list in the air.

  Rachel fastened her own gaze hard on the space between the mare's ears. She also jabbed her son in the ribs again, this time with her elbow. She couldn't imagine what was possessing the boy to carry on such a conversation. She would almost have suspected him of playing matchmaker, except that he knew full well a Plain woman and an outsider could never marry. It was forbidden.

  "That's quite some inventory of suitors your ma's got herself there, Benjo." The outsider spanked the mare's rump with the reins again. "Gee-up, you lazy ol' glue pot. If you went much slower we'd be travelin' backwards.... I bet all of 'em, Deacon Noah Weaver included, wouldn't mind gettin' their hands on them creek-fed hay meadows of hers."

  "It's not the Plain way to take pride in one's own worldly possessions, nor to covet those of others," Rachel said. "And there are rules against trying to use such a thing as land to increase one's stature within the church."

  "Rules, huh? You can make up all the rules in the world, but they don't change a man's nature. And it's in a man's nature to covet creek-fed hay meadows."

  Rachel said nothing. She lifted her head and looked toward the distant mountains, blurred by the haze of spring. She couldn't help herself—it hurt a little that he so readily assumed it was her land the men wanted and not herself. If he'd been in their place, in all likelihood it was her creek-fed meadows he would be thinking most about. If it crossed his mind to court her at all.

  But then, after that one night she had never again allowed her hair to be uncovered in his presence. And not once had he come close to touching her in any deliberate way, not once had he called her Rachel.

  At the end of the first week of lambing, she had said to him, "I'll hear no more talk about you earning your keep. I'll pay you the proper wages of a hired man."

  His mouth had taken on that teasing look of his. "Just how much would that be?"

  "A dollar a day and found."

  "Yeah? Well, I reckon that's more'n I ever made. By any honest means, anyways."

  "Oh, you!" she'd exclaimed, flustered by his joking. He had been joking, surely____For she didn't want to be reminded of the ways he wasn't at all like Ben. Reminded of the sins he must have committed, of the wicked life he must have lived before he'd come stumbling across her wild hay meadow.

  So she had said, "I'll hire you on through the end of summer and mating season." Just so he'd know that she understood there would be an end to it someday. Just so he wouldn't think she was some lonely Plain widow who'd fallen into a wild crush for a flashy, handsome outsider.

  Then he had said, "Just through the end of summer, Mrs. Yoder." And she had known that, of course, there really would be an end to it someday. As there should be.

  Because anything else was forbidden.

  The buggies and buckboards and spring wagons were lined up in Bishop Isaiah Miller's pasture like pigs at a feeding trough. No Plain family ever missed a preaching if they could help it, not even during the lambing season.

  As the outsider squeezed their buckboard into a shady spot along the north side of the lambing sheds, a gangly boy came running up to them. He was supposed to help with unhitching the horses, but when he caught sight of Johnny Cain at the reins, he skidded to a dead stop. His eyes grew wide and his shoulders hunched, as if he expected the man to explode into crackling gunfire at any moment, like a Fourth of July celebration.

  "The way that mouth of yours is gaping open, Levi Miller," Rachel called down at her youngest brother, "it'll be a pure wonder if you don't catch yourself a fly."

  The boy snapped his mouth shut and turned a half dozen shades of r
ed. But of course Levi, fifteen and the baby of the Miller family, flushed over everything.

  Laughing, Rachel climbed out of the buckboard. The Plain People weren't ones for public displays of affection, or private ones for that matter, but Rachel gave her brother a hug anyway and set off another string of blushes. His gray eyes, still round as silver dollars, stayed riveted on the outsider.

  In spite of the way he was behaving, this was hardly the first time Levi Miller had set those big eyes on the notorious desperado. Indeed, even though it was lambing season and the busiest time of year, nearly every Plain man and boy in the valley, and a good many of the women too, had found a spare moment during the last month to come around to the farm and take a gander at Johnny Cain. Rachel thought she'd probably told the story of how he'd come staggering and bleeding across her wild hay meadow dozens of times, yet even repeat visitors never seemed to tire of hearing it.

  Then they would say to her in Deitsch, so that he couldn't understand: "So, what's he like, then, this outsider? What sort of man is he?" And Rachel would wonder herself.

  The outsider, given what a skittish man he was beneath those charming manners and easy smiles of his, had shown remarkable forbearance while being gaped at and jabbered over in Deitsch by all her friends and family. Still, he'd always slipped that six-shooter of his from its holster, every time he heard hooves or wagon wheels turning into the yard.

  He wasn't wearing that gun of his this morning, though, and all because of her, to please her. He was even pretending not to notice how her brother was gawping at him.

  Rachel nudged the boy's bony shoulder. "Are you putting down roots? Go show Mr. Cain where to pasture the horse."

  She gave the bow of her bonnet a straightening tug, then smoothed her hands over the skirt of her apron. She didn't need to look around to see that the knots of people, who'd all been standing outside the front doors of the barn, gossiping before the preaching, were suddenly staring stock-still, wide-eyed, and open-mouthed at the Yoder buckboard.

  Benjo ran off to join the other youngsters, who had crowded around a pond in back of the lambing sheds where tadpoles hatched this time every year. "Don't you go using that sling of yours on the poor frogs," Rachel called after him, and he, of course, pretended not to hear.

  Rachel waited while Levi and the outsider led the mare through a gate in the nearby snake fence, built of peeled and whitewashed pine poles. It wrapped around hay fields as lushly green as any of her creek-fed ones.

  In one large meadow, which was shaped like a horseshoe, a flock of ewes and lambs grazed on the sweet spring grass, quietly growing their premium wool. In another, smaller meadow the drop band huddled, those few ewes still awaiting the arrival of their babies.

  The meadows surrounded her father's house, which was two stories high and made not of rough Cottonwood logs but of milled lumber. Snuggled up next to the big house on either side, like step blocks, were two smaller houses. In one, her elder brother Sol was batching it. The other, called the Daudy Haus, was where her great-grandmother, Mutter Anna Mary, lived. It was tradition for the old folks to live in houses separate but not apart from the younger generations. A white-spooled railed porch wrapped around all three houses, linking them like a daisy chain.

  Bishop Isaiah Miller had the biggest and finest sheep farm in all the valley, mostly because of her older brother Sol. A solemn, gentle man and a lifelong bachelor, Sol had filed his claim alongside their father's, and they had combined the two homesteads. The bishop spent a good part of his days praying, studying the Scriptures, and shepherding his human flock, while his eldest son tended to the sheep.

  Rachel wondered if the outsider would believe that Isaiah Miller's stature within the church really did come from his prayers and spiritual guidance, and not from the size and wealth of his farm.

  The outsider came back through the gate alone, without Levi. He flashed one of those sweet-rascal smiles at her. She wondered what sort of look she was wearing on her face that he felt he had to smile at her that way.

  They walked together toward the front of the barn where the preaching would take place. They passed along the rows of buggies and wagons, all of them Plain, without backrests or dashboards, whip sockets or booster steps, the seats all simple plank boards. The outsider's restless gaze lingered a moment on a large gray wagon, which had the look of a hearse.

  "That's our bank wagon," she said. "We use it to carry the benches for the preaching service. Since we worship in a different barn every time, the family who hosted the service last time brings the benches along for the next preaching in the bank wagon. Our church is a body of believers, not a single place."

  He said nothing. He wasn't looking at the bank wagon anymore, and she couldn't tell what he was thinking. She could never tell what he was thinking. Not during all his teasing talk and lazy smiles that drew her to him, or the hard and brutal silences that made her fear him—she never knew what he was really feeling.

  But then she wondered about herself, what her own thoughts and hopes were on this day. She had wanted the outsider to see this because it was so much a part of her, the backbone of her life. And yet she had known that even seeing it, he would never really understand. It could never matter to him anyway.

  As they drew closer to the silent crowd in front of the barn, Rachel felt a nervous quiver in her belly, and she unconsciously smoothed her apron again. There would be consequences to face over what she had chosen to do. It was one thing to take in an outsider who'd been found gunshot and bleeding to death in your hay meadow. It was quite another to make him your hired man. And another thing entirely to bring him along with you to the preaching.

  Rachel looked for her father. Of all those here today, he would have the most influence over whether the outsider would be allowed to stay among them for a time. But he was already in the barn, meeting with the community's other two ordained ministers, Noah Weaver and Amos Zook, as he did before every worship service.

  Her brothers certainly appeared to have made up their collective Miller minds. They stood in a row, looking like a chain of cutout dolls in their freshly brushed Sunday sack coats and broadfalls and wide-brimmed felt hats, all of them glowering at the outsider as if they wished him in perdition.

  Or rather, Abram and Samuel glowered. Levi gawped and blushed. Sol, whose big and gentle heart was incapable of glowering, looked only at her, with concern shadowing his face. Sol wouldn't send the outsider away, at least not without a lot of prayer and thought. Not so the others. Samuel was the sort to leap headfirst into a raging river without a care for whether it was deep enough. And where Samuel leaped, Abram followed.

  It was Samuel who broke away from the group to stride toward her and the outsider, with the others trailing after him like wind-stirred leaves. He stopped in front of her, hands on his hips, long black beard jutting.

  "What the die-hinker do you think you're doing, bringing him here?"

  Rachel thrust her own chin into the air. Samuel always had something to be angry about, and Rachel had learned long ago that the only way to handle him was to stand up to him. "Mr. Cain has come to witness the preaching. It's not a forbidden thing."

  A loud snort punctuated the air. This came from their brother Abram. Some people thought Abram was skewed in the head, mostly because he never had a thought there that hadn't started out in Samuel's head first.

  "It is not forbidden," Rachel said again, "And you just now sounded like a sick hog, our Abram."

  "He'll not understand a word he's hearing," Samuel said. "He'll be bored."

  "He'll be bored stiff as a corpse," Abram echoed.

  Since they were already speaking Deitsch, presumably he couldn't understand a word he was hearing now. But Rachel thought the man could probably make a pretty good guess at the sentiment behind the words.

  "So what's it to us all if he is bored," she said, in Englisch. "I've told him he can leave whenever he wishes and we won't be offended. You would deny him an opportunity to pray and wor
ship God in fellowship with us?"

  "He's an outsider," Samuel said, in Deitsch.

  Abram's lips curled. "Englischer."

  "He's a man in the sight of God," Rachel said, in Englisch.

  "The Devil's own son, more like," Samuel said. In Englisch.

  Four pairs of gray Miller eyes looked the outsider up and down, four wide Miller mouths flattened into frowns. Even Sol's. The Devil's own son stared back at them with lazy, hooded eyes, and that empty face he could slip on like a mask.

  "She's right," Sol said. Sol's words were so soft, they sounded as if they came out of his shirt yoke rather than his mouth. But when Sol spoke, others always listened. "About the preaching, at least," Sol went on. "It's not forbidden if he wants to come and witness."

  "Aaugh..." Samuel waved his hand as if brushing away a pesky fly. "He'll grow tired of it all soon enough, anyway. Long about the time his back starts to feel like it's going to crack in two and his butt goes numb."

  Levi snickered. Samuel and Abram exchanged knowing grins.

  Just then, as if they'd been given some invisible signal, the Plain women began to file into the barn. The children came running up from the pond, the girls going with the women, the boys joining the groups of men. Benjo seemed to have something in his hat and he was laughing and showing it to Levi, who had gone trotting over for a look. Rachel wouldn't have put it past that boy of hers to bring a frog into the preaching.

  But even a frog would be more welcome than Johnny Cain. She turned to him, feeling this strange need to stay with him, to keep him safe—which was ridiculous, for her brothers would do him no terrible harm, nor even a small harm. There was probably no safer place on this earth for Johnny Cain than here, in this place, at this moment.

  "I must go," she said to him. She wanted to touch him, simply touch him in some small way, but she didn't dare. She wouldn't have touched him even if they'd been alone. "We women always sit separate from the men."