The Outsider

by Penelope Williamson

  He gave her a probing look, one she couldn't read. Then his mouth broke into one of those reckless smiles that had a touch of wildness in it. "Don't you worry none about me, Mrs. Yoder. If I waited till I was invited, I'd never go anywhere.... But then I was invited, remember? By you."

  "It's not that the others don't want you, it's just..."

  But they didn't want him, and it was hardly to be wondered at. Looking at him standing across from her brothers, she realized how separate he was from them all.

  Oh, her brothers might look different from each other. Samuel, with his hair and beard black as a starling's wings, and his big square jaw always thrust forward, plowing through life. Abram, Samuel's shadow, but a lighter man with his butternut hair and beard. Sol, with no hair at all on his head and a beard as tangled as a crow's nest. And Levi, still growing up into his features and his self. Yes, different they were to look at, but underneath they were much the same man, in their faith and values and tradition.

  Her brothers, with their open, honest faces and their Plain dress, standing shoulder to shoulder, God-fearing men, good men. Whereas he...

  He was Johnny Cain, man-killer. And an outsider in every way there was.

  "I must go," she said again. And she left him, almost running.

  She crossed over to the side of the yard where the women stood in their own tight little knots. Her steps faltered when she saw her mother. Sadie Miller's mouth and eyes were etched with shame. Her shoulders bowed with the weight of it. In a world where a woman was judged by the daughters she raised, Rachel was her mother's singular failure.

  Standing close to her mother, on either side of her as if she needed shoring and bolstering, were her daughters-in-law. The two younger women each held a baby resting on a hip. Together, they raised their free hands to pat Sadie on the arm. Together, they lowered their heads as if in silent prayer.

  Abram, who followed his brother Samuel everywhere, had followed him into marriage as well, taking the same woman to wife, or as close as he could get without being sinful. Velma and Alta were twins and so alike that no one but their husbands even made an attempt to tell them apart. It was more than a matter of them sharing the same moon-pale hair, dimpled chin, and bow-shaped mouth. They had the same squeaky voice, the same whimsical smiles, the same way of blinking their identical big hazel eyes whenever they were simultaneously confused. They lived, they thought, they even breathed in synchronization.

  Next to the three Miller women, and yet somehow apart from them, was Noah's spinster sister, Fannie. She stood with her shoulders pulled back and her bosom lifted high, as if she'd just sucked in a deep breath and now didn't want to let go of it. She turned her head to stare at Rachel, with her nose wrinkled and her mouth puckered.

  Still, Rachel wanted to go to them so badly her chest ached with it. She thought she could face the twins' blinking eyes and Fannie Weaver's puckered mouth, but she couldn't face her mem's shame.

  So instead she went alone to the snake fence and took off her bonnet, looping it over the top rail with the others. The black bonnets all hung upside down off the fence rail in a row, looking like coal scuttles.

  She stood there by herself a moment, feeling lonesome, even shaky. By the time she turned around again, all the older women, the wives and widows, had already passed through the big sliding double doors into the shadowy coolness of the barn. Rachel was left to join the Meed, the girls and young unmarried women.

  The Buwe—the young bachelors—flanked the barn doors to watch as the girls walked through. The girls' eyes stayed straight ahead, but their lips curled into pleased smiles and blushes pinkened their cheeks. They wore white shawls and white aprons and crisp black prayer caps to mark their virginal state. But those smiles and blushes, Rachel thought, would still have given them away.

  She remembered what it was like to be young and watched, to be wanted. But Rachel had never been like the other Plain girls. Always, at the last moment, as she passed by the Buwe, she would brazenly turn her head to catch first Noah's shocked eyes and then Ben's laughing ones.

  And because she was remembering, she was careful not to turn her head on this Sunday. For Ben wouldn't be leaning there, one shoulder braced against the barn door, his dark eyes peering at her from beneath his hat brim, watching as she walked by. But others were there. On this Sunday, an outsider was there to watch. And perhaps to want.

  The silence lay heavy and warm over the barn.

  It was a time of waiting, of moments that passed slowly, yet were rich with the promise of what was to come. She breathed in the barn smells of horse and cow and hay, the Sunday smells of starch and soap and shoe blacking. Her gaze moved lovingly over the checkerboard of white and black prayer caps in front of her.

  This was her life.

  It was not as if she felt God more, in this moment, in this place, for God was everywhere and with her always. But in this time of waiting, of silence, with her family and friends close around her, Rachel Yoder felt safe. She felt loved.

  She sat on the hard backless bench and lost herself in the silence. For her, just being here was an act of worship.

  Rachel's gaze roamed over the men's benches. The outsider sat pressed between two of her brothers, Sol and Samuel. Her son also sat with the men, sat properly with his hands resting on his knees and his head respectfully lowered. But just then he shifted around on his bottom, caught the outsider's eyes, and pointed to the back of the man in front of him, Joseph Zook's back. Benjo wafted his hand through the air and pinched his nose. Rachel had to bite her lip hard to keep from laughing.

  She closed her eyes. Oh, Lord God, she prayed. Thank You for blessing me with the gift of my son. Thank You for blessing me with life and love and laughter.

  Her prayers drifted, became formless thoughts. The silence spun out and out and out, until the men reached up, as if in one motion, and took off their felt hats, putting them under the benches. They made a soft husssh of sound, like a suppressed sigh.

  And Ezra Fischer shuffled slowly to his feet.

  Ezra Fischer did have small, squinty eyes; they were like two dimples tucked into the smooth roundness of his cheeks and forehead. His coat was worn bald at the elbows and frayed at the cuffs, and even his patches had patches. Everyone knew Ezra wouldn't gift himself with a new coat until this one had fallen off him. But he was a good man otherwise, Rachel thought, although she couldn't imagine being married to him.

  He opened his mouth, and for a moment it seemed he would be smothered by the thick, enveloping silence. But then his voice took flight. A trilling tenor so pure and sharp, it pierced the soul.

  His head thrown back, his eyes on his Lord, Ezra Fischer drew out the first note of the hymn as if it were so precious he couldn't bear to let it go. Then the rest of the men joined with him.

  The men's voices, deep and dark and rich, rolled in slow waves up to the rafters. The women's voices, high and sweet, melded into the low, tolling tones of the men to become one pure song rising up, up, beyond the rafters now, beyond the sky, to reach the ears of God.

  It was an old hymn they sang, mournful and yet beautiful, about exiles wandering through the land. Each word stretched out long and slow, into a chanting cadence, until the hymn itself became its own world of waiting.

  They sang not with many voices but with one, and the glorious sound of it was an embodiment of their unity. For three hundred years the Plain People had sung this hymn in just this way, and so it would always be. "For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever." Forever. The whole of our lives are lived as we sing our hymns, Rachel thought. Slow and unchanging, always together. One flesh, one mind, one spirit.

  And for her, for them all, she supposed, there was such sweet comfort in that. You could never become lost, if you always walked the straight and narrow path.

  Rachel's head fell back as the hymn thrummed through her blood and seized her heart, creating a tempest of joy and wonder within her. The slow chanting washed over her, purify
ing her and making her feel one with God. On and on and on they sang, as if they'd been caught up in eternity.

  And then they stopped, abruptly, cutting off the last word, the last note, as if the hand of God Himself had covered their mouths. Silence descended once more, silence and the sweet sense of waiting.

  Rachel sat on the hard, backless bench, with her face lifted toward God and her mouth parted, her eyes closed, and not until she felt a sharp pain in her chest did she realize she'd stopped breathing. She drew in a draught of air, and slowly she opened her eyes to a world that tilted and blurred dizzily. She was so filled with joy and the glory of the Lord, she could have burst with it.

  Once, Ben had told her that when she sang the worship hymns she looked to be in ecstasy. Dazed still, and breath- less, she looked over to the men's side of the barn, almost expecting to see him there, her Ben. Her gaze locked with the outsider's instead.

  He was staring at her hard, his face fierce and intent. She jerked her head away. And time, which had seemed suspended, as if floating in the rays of sunlight that poured through the cracks in the rafters, rippled suddenly... and broke.

  Noah Weaver stood before the congregation.

  His gaze moved slowly, carefully, over each man, woman, and child, seeing if all were according to the Attnung, if all followed the straight and narrow way. He counted the pleats in prayer caps; he looked for buttons, for suspenders, for other forbidden things. When he saw that all were dressed Plain and as they should be, he nodded his approval. As deacon it was his duty to do this, and he was known as a man who took his duties seriously.

  Before resuming his seat, he once more surveyed the silent and bent heads. If he was surprised to find the outsider among them, he gave no sign of it. But then his eyes met Rachel's, and a look of stark pain crossed his face. Rachel's hands curled into a tight ball in her lap. He could find no fault with her dress, she knew, but what if he could see beneath her carefully crossed and pinned Plain shawl to the confused yearnings, to the doubts stirring in her heart?

  Noah sat slowly and heavily in his place on the front bench, moving as if he carried a log on his big shoulders to round them and weigh them down. Rachel stared at the back of his head, her throat tight. His hat had left a mark, like a ring, in his hair. It made him look oddly vulnerable, she thought, that indentation in his hair. It made him look less a deacon and more a man, with all of a man's weaknesses and frailties. She wanted to go up to him and smooth his hair, to make that mark go away.

  For more long and silent moments, they all sat and waited. And then Bishop Isaiah Miller rose to his feet, which meant that he was the one who'd first gotten the call to preach on this day. There would be two sermons preached, testimony given, prayers and Scripture read, more hymns sung—and the whole of it would last for over three hours.

  He stood strong and tall in the middle of the floor, Rachel's father. His beard was black and fleecy, but his hair had a white streak going down the very center of it, like the stripe on a skunk's back. He had awakened with that stripe the morning after he'd had the vision-dream that had led them to leave their homes in Ohio and settle in this wild and empty land. It had been taken by all as a sign of divine benediction, that white streak appearing suddenly in Bishop Miller's hair.

  He raised his head now and began to speak.

  He talked of days long ago, of a time in the old country when the Plain People suffered terrible torments for their faith: burnings and stonings, crucifixions and whippings, the severing of tongues and hands and feet. He preached the way they sang their hymns, in a slow singsong rhythm. Yet in the dusk of the barn his gray eyes flashed with the passion of his words.

  Sometimes Rachel listened to these old, familiar stories. Sometimes she just let the words flow through her while she drifted on her thoughts. She could smell the bean soup simmering in the big iron kettle out in the yard. She listened to the chickens clucking and scratching in the barn straw, to the baas and bleats of her father's sheep out in the pasture. The air grew heavy and thick, as before a storm. Her father's voice flattened into a deep hum....

  She came back to the world. Much time must have passed. Her father was preaching now of how the righteous, persecuted and driven from their homes, had brought the one true faith with them across the perilous ocean waters. Yet even here there were hardships to suffer, even here in this land of freedom and plenty there was pain, there was loss.

  My Ben, she thought. Oh, my Ben, my Ben, choking to death at the end of a rope. If we are truly God's chosen people, then why does He make us suffer so?

  She pushed the thought away. She listened to her father, the bishop. He spoke of the will of God, of how salvation always came through submission, through acceptance. The familiar words rose and fell against her ears, like gusts of wind, and she imagined God offering those words to her with His cupped hands—words of truth and light and comfort—while that voice, the voice of her father, rose and fell, rose and fell, gentle, soothing. She remembered all the mornings of her childhood, kneeling in the kitchen and listening to that dear voice read the morning prayers. The memory was as deeply etched on her heart as were the words of God in the big black family Bible.

  Those mornings kneeling in the kitchen... Rachel searched the rows of prayer caps, needing suddenly to see her mother's face. Sadie Miller's eyes were closed, her mouth slack; she was sleeping. Wisps of gray hair curled out from the edge of her cap. Her face looked worn, etched by time, and empty.

  Those mornings, kneeling in the kitchen... bright sunshine streaming through the bare window panes, hands clasped, heads bent, Rachel and her brothers casting their shadows on the worn oak floor. And their Vater, with his faith that was so deep and so severe and yet so gentle, throwing his large and loving shadow over them all. Only Mem's shadow was ever missing in her memories. Had the sunlight never reached where Sadie Miller knelt in silence?

  But then, Rachel thought, none of them had ever looked on Mem as a being of substance, something separate from them all. They'd never thought to wonder if Sadie Miller had feelings, dreams, desires of her own.

  Whenever Rachel looked back on all the moments of her life, both small and wondrous, even the shadow of her mother was always missing. That morning of her marriage to Ben, when she'd knelt in the kitchen of her childhood for the last time, that morning her father had ended the prayer by putting his arms around her and holding her close as if he couldn't bear to let her go. Her brothers had grinned at her and made teasing jokes about poor Ben not knowing what he was letting himself in for, and Rachel had wanted to hold that moment of laughter and love tight to her breast as she was holding her father. To make it last forever. And yet where was Mem in that memory? Had her mother not been there, or had Rachel never turned around to see her?

  A dipper of water was being passed down the rows of benches. Velma handed it to her mother-in-law, not realizing that she was asleep. Water slopped into Sadie's lap. Her head jerked, her eyes snapped open. She looked surprised at first, to have been caught napping during the preaching. And then a deep flush spread up her neck and over her cheeks. Rachel felt a painful tightening in her chest and breathed to ease it. She wished Mem would look her way so that she could smile at her, but Sadie Miller's gaze remained fixed on the spreading wet stain in her lap.

  Bishop Miller was approaching the climax of his sermon. His head was bobbing, and the singsong cadence of his words came faster and sharper now.

  Several worshipers shifted their bottoms on the hard benches in anticipation of the end. Benjo swung his feet through the straw, making a loud rustling noise and getting a rap on his knee from his uncle Samuel's knuckle.

  Isaiah Miller was explaining how, through all their sufferings, the Plain People followed the example set by Jesus Christ, who had yielded so completely to His Father's will that He suffered and died on the cross. Rachel listened to her own father's words and tried to stow them away in her heart for later, when the doubts would stir.

  "They spat upon Him and they
scourged Him with reeds. And then they led Him away and crucified Him. They passed by Him, hanging up there on His cross, and they wagged their heads at Him and mocked Him, saying, 'If you are truly the son of God then why don't you save yourself, why don't you come down from that cross and save yourself?' They said to Him, 'If you trusted so much in God, then let Him deliver you now, you who say you are the Son of God....'"

  Rachel's eyes had drifted closed. She saw a mountain and three crosses silhouetted against a black, tormented sky. She saw a man, bleeding, tortured, dying. Saw him throw back his head and scream in his despair.

  And she knew suddenly what had been behind the terror in Johnny Cain's eyes.

  My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

  CHAPTER 12

  Rachel walked out of the dark coolness of the barn and blinked against the sudden wash of sunlight, almost stumbling. After all the stillness and silence and waiting of the worship service, she felt the world rushing past her now in a whirl of sound and motion.

  She fetched her bonnet and leaned against the snake fence, bracing her forearms on the whitewashed rail. Clouds were building up over the mountains. But here in the valley it was spring, periwinkle skies and a warm whisper of breeze.

  She spotted a cocoon hanging from a pokeweed leaf. The tiny silk case trembled once and then went still. She broke off the leaf at its stem, cradling the cocoon in her cupped hand.

  She heard footsteps behind her, moving through the grass. As she turned she saw the outsider coming toward her, his stride so fluid and elegant. He should have been stiff, she thought, after three hours of sitting on a hard, backless bench, listening to preaching and prayers that to him must surely have seemed like only so much babble. During the long worship service Johnny Cain had sat as quiet and unmoving as the rest of them. But through it all, Rachel had felt his awareness of her, like a warmth that just barely touched her on the air.