The Outsider

by Penelope Williamson

  Isaiah Miller turned to the outsider. He took off his hat, but he did not lower his head or his eyes. He would humble himself, but not so far as he would humble himself before the Lord.

  "Outsiders sought to take my grandson from me," he said in his careful Englisch, "but you, an outsider, gave him back to me."

  Cain's gaze flickered over to Rachel, and his eyes didn't smile with his mouth. "Yeah, well, I wouldn't be countin' on me for next time. Y'all ought to do what the man said: sell out and move on."

  "Ja." Isaiah nodded slowly. "It's all in the Bible, how Isaac, when the warring Philistines stopped up the wells for his cattle, he moved to new lands and dug other wells. So now you, an outsider and an unbeliever, a man who kills men, you tell us we should leave. I say, what if God is only testing our resolution? 'They that trust in the Lord shall be as mount Zion, which cannot be removed.'"

  "Hunter and his hired guns sure enough seem resolved to remove you folk. And if they can't remove you, it's not too big a stretch before they resolve to bury you."

  Noah made a hacking sound of disgust deep in his throat and turned away. But Samuel stepped up to thrust his finger in the outsider's face. "You speak of death and you smile your devil's smile and think you're somebody. But you'd be stone dead now if God hadn't caused that horse to spook when it did."

  Benjo jumped and paled, and his left hand slid up to cover the sling that was tucked into the waist of his broad-falls.

  The outsider gently pushed Samuel's finger aside. He flashed the most devilish of his devil smiles. "Well, sure enough it must've been a miracle."

  That evening the hymns did sound sad and lonely, like funeral bells.

  Rachel listened from the porch of her father's house. It was tradition for the young people to gather at the end of a worship Sunday to have a sing. It was a time of courtship, with the girls sitting on one side of the long trestle table and the boys on the other, with the day slowing down to greet the coming night—and with eyes going where they shouldn't and hearts occupied with thoughts other than the Lord.

  In the air was the sickly sweet stench of burning sheep carcasses. It was the only way to get rid of them fast and clean, and spare the farm an invasion of vultures and wolves. The woolly monsters burned easily because of the lanolin in their fleeces. They went up, so the saying was among sheep fanners, like pitch torches.

  The young people ended their singing with a crisp, sharp note that echoed in the dusk. Rachel glanced down to the other end of the porch, where Mutter Anna Mary was healing the outsider. She could see the old woman's lips move, chanting Biblical phrases as she stitched the cut below his eye with sheep gut.

  "You're to come in now."

  Rachel turned. It was her brother Sol, and it was too dark to see his face. He reached out, though, with his big, clumsy fingers and pushed a loose strand of her hair back under her cap.

  Their father sat at the long oilclothed table in the kitchen, with the rest of her brothers and Noah on their feet behind him. Mem was at the slop stone with her back to the room and her head tucked low, peeling a basket of potatoes, making herself disappear, even down to her shadow.

  Although Rachel had never lived in this house, had never spent a night in it, she still knew this place as her home. This table where her father sat, she would always have a place at it. They were bound, she and her brothers, Mem and Da, with ties toughened by life and love, too tough to break. Surely, surely, they were too tough to be broken by anything.

  They all waited for Isaiah to be the first to speak. Yet he sat in silence, with the big family Bible open before him, combing his thick beard with his fingers while he gathered the words he would need from his heart and his head and the book he lived by.

  "We have been thinking," her brother Samuel said, though it was not his place to do so, "that you don't need to hire some outsider to work your farm. Your brothers and your good neighbor Noah will give you the help you need."

  She knew what they wanted, especially Noah, and so she would shut her ears to their opinions. But if you were Plain, you never outgrew the commandment to obey your parents. What her father said, she would do.

  She knelt beside her father at his chair, settled back on her heels, folded her hands in her lap, and bowed her head. "Is this what you think, Da?"

  Isaiah pressed his hands flat on the table as if he could draw strength from what it symbolized, the unity of their familial spirit. "I will tell you what I know. I know that he's not one of us. That he can never be one of us."

  "He's not like other outsiders," Rachel said.

  A scoffing snort burst from Samuel's nose, so loud the rafters echoed with it. Beside him, his shadow Abram snickered.

  "He doesn't drink the Devil's brew," Rachel said, "or smoke the Devil's weed." Since he said he'd won that harmonica gambling, she was careful not to mention games of chance. "He's careful not to blaspheme, except for those times when he was out of his head with fever. He—"

  Samuel's hand slashed the empty air. "He kills, is what he does!"

  "He's trying to stop. He has come to us for sanctuary, and so that he might stop." Johnny Cain was staying for a reason. She believed, she had to believe, that in his heart he wanted an end to the death and killing.

  "He brought a gun with him to the preaching," Noah said, and the words came out of him flat and hard.

  "A gun that saved our Benjo's life."

  "If it had been God's will for the boy to die—"

  "Don't say that!"

  Sol stepped between them, as if they'd been about to come to blows. "He didn't mean that as it sounded," he said. He turned to Noah. "It would be uncharitable to deny the good the outsider has done for us all on this day."

  An angry flush streaked Noah's cheek like a slap mark.

  Rachel felt her father's hand settle on her head. "But still," he said, "for all the good the outsider has done for us, for all the good he might want to do for himself, there is but one faith that counts with God. He is not one of us. He can never be one of us."

  Rachel felt the heaviness of her father's hand on her head, and the starchy stiffness of her prayer cap, and these things reminded her of what she was. "You should forbid it if what I am doing is against the Plain way. I only sought to hire a man to help with the farm until I marry again."

  "That's easily solved," Samuel said. "Marry tomorrow."

  Rachel raised her head. She looked not at her brother, nor at Noah, but at her father so that he might know the truth of what she said. "Ben is still in my heart."

  Samuel spat out a short laugh with something sharp in it. "Are you sure it's not the outsider who's come and put down stakes there?"

  "You think deviant thoughts sometimes, Samuel Miller. He sleeps in the sheepherder's wagon."

  He flung his arms out from his sides. "So you say. But four sons our father's raised, and none has been as much trouble, as much pain to his heart as his one daughter."

  Rachel surged to her feet. "Five sons he raised, not four. What stone do you carry inside of you for a heart that you can deny our brother like that? To speak as if he never existed? He might be dead, but you can't deny he ever lived. He was our brother—" She felt as if she were choking on her own breath. "Our Rome."

  It echoed in the suddenly quiet room, that name. The name that had not been spoken for over five years.

  Their mem was gripping the edge of the slop stone with both hands as if she needed it to hold her up. "How can you deny him?" she said to her mother's back, though she had to swallow hard when she did it. "You carried his body and soul in your womb, you nourished him from your breast. He was your son. Rome was your son."

  Sadie whirled and fled from the room, and the slam of the bedroom door reverberated like Rome's name.

  Their father rose slowly to his feet. He stood before Rachel and she saw on his face a terrible fear that she was being lost to the world as her brother had been lost.

  She reached for him. She gripped his sack coat with her two hands and
clung to him, pressing her face into his chest. But he took her by the arms and set her away.

  Samuel shoved their father aside to thrust a stiff finger in her face. "I say that if the Englischer stays through the summer, then, mind you, come mating season he'll be gone and you like the sheep will be ready to marry."

  At any other time she would have laughed, for it was such a preposterous thing. To tell her, a grown woman and with a child of her own, whom she must marry and when.

  But she couldn't laugh, not looking into her brother Samuel's face, flushed as it was with anger and even revulsion.

  Her gaze went to Noah. He stared back at her through eyes dark with anguish. He had never been able to hide the love he felt for her. She didn't want to believe that such a love could be a burden as well as a gift. That it could hurt.

  "If he stays," she said, holding Noah's eyes with her own, "then I promise that come mating season I will marry again."

  She waited for her father to speak, but he gave her only silence. She thought she should leave before she started to cry or said too much. She'd already said too much.

  Yet she couldn't bear to leave things this way between her and Samuel. She made sure to pass by him on the way to the door, and she put her hand on his arm, squeezing it a little. It wasn't until she was back out on the porch that she understood the gift her father had given her with his silence.

  The gift and the burden.

  Noah stared at the door as it shut behind her, and his eyes burned as though there were sand under his eyelids.

  "That's that, then," Samuel said. "She gave her promise. You heard it." He looked at Noah, waiting for him to speak. But Noah couldn't seem to get his tongue to work, even get enough air into his lungs to breathe.

  Samuel snatched his hat off the wall hook and stomped from the house, with Abram at his heels.

  "I should take a look at what's left of our sheep," Sol said after a moment that passed long and heavy. He too lifted his hat from its hook, although he paused with it in his hands, turning it around and around by the brim. Then he pushed out a sigh that sounded as if it hurt, settled the hat on his head, and left.

  "Levi, go milk the cows," Isaiah said.

  Noah thought the boy was so frightened at what was happening to his family that he shook with it. "But I just did already, Da," he said, his voice breaking. "Go."

  The door whispered shut behind Levi's slender back. Only two hats were left on the hooks now. Noah stared at those hats as if he found them fascinating. It seemed impossible to look anywhere else.

  Isaiah fell back heavily into his chair, causing it to scrape on the bare wooden floor. He laid bis hand on the Bible, his blunt fingers stroking the black leather lovingly.

  Noah pushed out the words he knew needed saying, even though they didn't want to come. "Why are you doing this? Why are you letting an outsider such as that one come among us?"

  "If we come across a lamb lost in the wilderness, do we leave him to stay lost, to perish? Or do we lead him back to the flock of the Lord? Ja, there is much wisdom in the Scriptures."

  No, Noah thought. That is not the reason, not the only reason. You think that for Rachel's sake Johnny Cain will be as our sword, cutting down our enemies, while we keep our hands clean of their blood. But though you are our bishop, you are wrong in this, wrong in the path you are choosing for us.

  Noah knew he should speak to Isaiah Miller of the wise words in the Bible, words about how you shouldn't do evil so that good will come of it. But this time his tongue stayed pressed to the roof of his mouth.

  Isaiah stood up and laid the Bible in its place on the crockery shelf above the table. "The outsider will do what he will do. And God will give him his punishment, not us."

  Noah's gaze fell back down to his feet, and the words he should have spoken stayed locked in his heart. He turned away from his bishop and crossed the kitchen to get his hat. He felt that he was moving like an old, old man.

  Out on the porch he filled his lungs with clean Montana air, but it didn't ease the pain that gripped his chest Deacon Noah Weaver, puffed up in his wicked pride, keeping quiet about his misgivings, hoarding his thoughts. Knowing in his heart the right thing and choosing to do wrong.

  And all because Rachel, his Rachel, had looked him in the eye and promised to marry after the breeding time.

  CHAPTER 14

  The croaking of the bullfrogs by the pond rumbled in the blue dusk. Rachel waded through the thick grass looking for wildflowers. An ache pulsed behind her eyes. She felt unstrung down to her soul.

  She knew the outsider would find her, wanted him to find her. Yet when he came, she turned her back on him. She ripped through a patch of mountain bluebell, twisting and yanking at their stems so hard she pulled them up by the roots. Dirt rained on her skirt and shoes. She started to sneeze, but the sound that came out was closer to a sob.

  "What did they do to you?" he said.

  "Nothing." She straightened up, but still she wouldn't look at him. "Did you think they would beat me? Shout at me?" The bluebells in her fist trembled. "Oh, Samuel and I, we shouted aplenty. We exchanged terrible words. We've hurt the family, so badly I wonder if..." She caught at her lower lip, tears blurring hot again in her eyes.

  He thrust his hands in his coat pockets and turned away from her, toward the mountains that were stark flat silhouettes against the ivory light of the fading day. "They want me to leave," he said.

  "I promised Noah I would marry him after the breeding season."

  To that, he said nothing. But then he didn't understand the cost of her promise, or perhaps he didn't care.

  She cut through the grass with long strides, heading for the hill behind the big house. When he didn't come along with her she stopped, turning, and waited for him, and after a moment he caught up to her.

  At the cemetery, she didn't go through the gate as she had earlier that day. She knelt beside the grave that lay outside it. "My brother Rome is buried here," she said. "Do you know why he's apart from the others?" Do you care? she wanted to ask him.

  He studied the neglected grave. "He was an outsider," he finally said.

  "No, not in the way that you're an outsider." She took in a deep breath, closing her eyes for a moment against the pain and loss. "Rome went to one of those revival meetings one day, just for a lark, and this saddlebag preacher there laid his hands on him, and the next thing Rome is coming home and saying he'd been born again in Jesus, that he'd been saved."

  She brushed her hand across her face, breathed again. "How this happened, we don't know. He wouldn't confess to being wrong, and so he was placed under the Bann by the church for having a fremder Glaube, a strange belief. He was shunned."

  Her throat clenched. "Shunned by us all, even his own family. Food was made for him, but no one could speak to him, or smile at him, or acknowledge him in any way. He had a bed in the bachelor house with Sol, but his own brother would have nothing to do with him, for if you break the Bann, then you are shunned by all in turn."

  "Why didn't he just leave, then?"

  She looked up at him, her eyes wide. "This was his home. How could he leave his home? Only to us it was as if he had died. He moved among us, but he was dead. And then one day he did die."

  She laid the ragged bluebells with their bruised petals and ripped roots on the weed-choked earth. She didn't realize he had knelt beside her until he took her in his arms.

  She didn't realize she was weeping until he said, "Go on, now. Get your cry out."

  She clung to his coat the way she had her father's. But he did not set her away as her father had done. He held her, stroking her back. And after a while he rested his chin on the stiff pleats of her prayer cap and held her closer.

  "I want you to stay," she said.

  "... and then the old lady, she yelled, 'So now you do tell me! Mein Gott, his cock, you say? And no wonder the fish they were biting so good. I thought it was an angleworm and I used it for bait.'"

  Mose pretended to l
augh. He leaned against the rough boards of the lambing shed, crossed one foot over the other, dangled a piece of timothy hay from his lower lip, and pretended he was one of them, one of the Buwe. But he wasn't.

  It was like this at the end of every worship Sunday. The Buwe would gather out by the wagons to chew hay and be rowdy, or at least what they thought of as rowdy, which was to swap stories having to do with shitting and farting and screwing, and the more dirty words the better.

  None of them had ever really done anything more sinful than to nail his big brother's brogans to the floor or smear apple butter around the privy hole. They were all nothing but talk. The truth, Mose thought, was that they couldn't tell their own dicks from an angleworm even with the help of a lantern at high noon.

  Someone cut a loud fart, and the Buwe let loose with another burst of laughter. Mose's lips curled in a sneer around the hay stem.

  Their laughter had caught the attention of the Meed. The girls still sat at the trestle tables where they'd all been having a sing earlier. Their white aprons and shawls glowed in the gray dusk, catching the last pale light of the dying day. They weren't supposed to be looking over at the Buwe, but most of them did. Not Gracie, though; she'd probably never broken a rule in her life.

  Even from where he was by the wagons, Mose could pick out Gracie Zook from among the other girls. She had a shoulders-back way of sitting. A way of holding her head just so. Because of that some people accused her of being proud, but she wasn't proud. She was only being Gracie.

  Mose plucked the hay out of his mouth and pushed himself off the shed wall. He headed for the trestle tables, his heavy brogans cutting a swath through the thick buffalo grass.

  Gracie was careful not to look at him as he approached. It was tradition to try to keep your courtship a secret from the others, even though everyone knew who was bundling with whom.

  One of the other girls touched a match to a lantern wick just then, and light spilled over the tables. Before, all his eyes had been able to make out of her was her white apron and shawl. Now he could see all of her, down to the little wisps of honey brown hair that curled out of her crisp black prayer cap, and the tiny mole, like a cinder, caught between her lip and her uptilted nose.