Stars for Lydia

by P. L. Gaus

  Chapter 1

  Monday, August 28

  9:52 AM

  After his first lecture of the new semester, Professor Branden closed his notes with satisfaction. He still could read the faces of his students, to judge with certainty whether or not he had gotten through to them. Were their eyes alive with thought, or were they blank with disinterest? Did his students have enthusiasm for the classroom, or were they seeking only a graduation credit? Professor Branden had always been able to tell. An entire classroom, or each individual student. He could still read their faces as he spoke. It was Civil War History that had always been his subject, and today had been his first lecture of the new semester, a full year after the Fannie Helmuth case.

  Over a year ago, Fannie had chosen her own unique solution for her life, and now after the start of another fall semester, Branden knew that he had his life’s enduring solution, too. He would always be a professor first. A Reserve Deputy, to be sure, but always a teacher first. He was built for the classroom, and today’s lecture had been a ratification for him of something he had long known. He should never have doubted. He wouldn’t retire after all. Not any time soon. Maybe never. He was in the right place.

  Once or twice during his last academic year, the one following his sabbatical at Duke University, the subject of his retirement had come up. Certainly, Caroline had encouraged him to think about it. Millersburg College had a new president who was putting her personal stamp on things - Dr. Nora Benetti. She had written to him at Duke to introduce herself to him, and once he had returned to campus, she had made a point to engage him about her aspirations and intentions for the college. For the most part, he found that he admired her industry and her vision. Now however, she had a meeting scheduled with him. There had been troublesome rumblings about his museum.

  As he fastened the latches on his briefcase, a young Mennonite woman asked at the podium, “Professor Branden? Can I have a moment?”

  He looked up as the latches snapped shut. “Lydia. I’m glad to see that you’re in the class.”

  “You’d been away, Professor. This was my first opportunity to take one of your courses.”

  “Are you OK? You seemed a little distracted this morning.”

  “Sorry. Trouble concentrating. Family problems again.”

  “Can I help? I know they aren’t very happy with you.”

  “Not really. It’s the same old problem. They don’t think I belong in college. They want me to come home and live Amish again.”

  Branden nodded and smiled sympathetically. “You want to talk about it?” He led out into the hallway, and she followed.

  Lydia shook her head. “Not really, Professor, no. But I do have questions about the slaves.” They continued down the hallway toward Branden’s office, she a half step behind him. “How did they keep a census?” she asked further. “You know, in the slave states?”

  Branden stopped and turned. “There are quite a few records, Lydia. What in particular?”

  “Babies, Professor. Births. Who kept a record when a baby was born to a slave woman? I mean, who would have known if a slave baby was born on a remote farm? Likewise, Professor, who would know if an Amish baby were born at home?”

  Lydia’s eyes seemed troubled to the professor. She was fiddling nervously with the straps of her backpack, twisting them in place on either side of her neck. Instead of the severe black dress, heavy bonnet and shawl of the Old Order Amish, she was wearing a long lavender dress and a white day apron, with black hose and soft black walking shoes. These were Mennonite clothes, appropriate for her new non-Amish “liberalism.” She had made a successful transition out of a conservative Schwartzentruber sect, into a Mennonite order.

  But Lydia appeared somewhat untidy to Branden, as if she had dressed herself in a rush. Her lace prayer covering was a round white disk pinned to the top of her hair bun, but the disk wasn’t properly centered. Her concern for some matter of great importance seemed lodged in the down-turned corners of her mouth. It seemed to be set into the rippling tension along her jaw. She turned her wrist to glance at her watch, and then she went back to twisting the straps of her backpack. Abruptly, she slid her shoulders out of the straps and dropped the heavy backpack to the floor at her feet. She closed her eyes briefly with a sigh, then earnestly she looked again to Branden. “Maybe I’m imagining things, Professor. But I need to know about births to slave women.”

  Several steps behind him, through the open door to his office, the voice of the professor’s assistant/secretary, Lawrence Mallory, sounded out on the phone. Branden took Lydia’s elbow and ushered her in the direction of his office. She picked up her backpack, shouldered into the straps, and followed him down the hallway.

  “We’ll cover this in a couple of weeks, Lydia, but we can talk today. Can this wait until later this morning? I have a 10:00 meeting with the president.”

  Lydia stopped, and Branden stopped, too, and turned to face her. Lawrence Mallory’s voice carried indistinctly out of the professor’s office, two doors down. Lydia searched the professor’s eyes and said earnestly, “My family won’t talk to me anymore. I’m worried about my older sister, and no one will talk with me about her. They won’t talk to me because I’m not Amish anymore.”

  Branden gave her his full attention. “We can talk, Lydia. But I have that meeting. Let’s take a few minutes, here, and then Lawrence can make an appointment for you. First thing after my meeting. Sometime still this morning.”

  Lydia nodded. She pulled out her phone, looked briefly at the display and glanced anxiously down the hallway past the professor. “I’ve got a class, now, anyway.”

  “Can you come back?”

  Lydia started off down the hall. She seemed to have been distracted suddenly by a new concern. There seemed to be a new anxiousness that was animating her thoughts. She turned back to the professor, and he saw the stitch of a ridge appear between her brows. Her eyes closed to slits and then opened wide. She turned and began to walk slowly to her next class.

  “I’ll be in my office most of the day,” Branden called after her. He wasn’t happy about the intensity in her expression. Or the worry in her eyes.

  She shook her head, turned for the corner, and said, “I’ll try.” There she stopped for a moment, eyes looking briefly down to her shoes and then nervously back to Branden. “I’m really glad I’m not Amish anymore,” Lydia said. “The best day of my life was when you gave me that scholarship.”

  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

  Inside his office, in Mallory’s outer vestibule, Branden asked, “Who was on the phone, Lawrence?”

  “President Benetti,” Lawrence answered with a puzzled tone.

  “What’d she want?”

  “She cancelled your 10:00 meeting, Mike. Just like that. Didn’t give a reason.”

  “You sounded cross with her.”

  Carrying two mugs of coffee, Lawrence followed Branden into the professor’s inner office. He set one mug on the professor’s desk and took his customary seat in front of the desk. “I’m hearing rumors, Mike. About our museum.”

  Branden sat behind his desk, picked up the mug of coffee, said, “Thanks,” smelled the rich brew appreciatively, and spoke over the rim of his mug. “Just rumors?”

  Lawrence nodded. “Grumblings.”

  Branden smiled, settled back in his swivel chair and sipped at his coffee. He thought a moment and then stood and turned with his mug to gaze out through his office window, into the college’s central oak grove below.

  Professor Branden was youthfully slender and amply tall, but he was nevertheless half-a-head shorter than his wife Caroline. His trimmed beard and combed brown hair were traced through with gray. Because the summer’s unusual heat had lingered through most of August, and b
ecause he was the senior-most professor at Millersburg College and could manage the attire, he was dressed rather more casually than most professors – sandals with socks and blue jeans, and a yellow Guy Harvey T-Shirt with no jacket. Years ago, as an assistant professor, he had worn sport coats and ties. Now he was “enjoying the benefits of seniority,” as he had lately commented to Caroline. And the benefits of tenure. It was the teaching that mattered to him, not the clothes.

  Turning his head back to Mallory, Branden asked, “Can you find out what class Lydia Schwartz has at 10:00?”

  “Sure Mike, why?”

  “I want to catch her after that class.”

  “Oh?”

  “I don’t like the way she was asking questions just now. She seemed worried to me.”

  Lawrence stood and made for the passageway. “Like what?” he called back from his outer vestibule. “What questions?”

  “Questions about babies born to slave women, Lawrence. Census records.”

  With a puzzled smile, Mallory returned to Branden’s inner office. “She was just asking questions?”

  Branden shook his head. “She was bothered by something during class. She wasn’t really ‘in the room.’ Like the students you spot who aren’t really paying attention. Like the disinterested ones.”

  “You’d spot that kind of thing better than anyone, Mike.”

  “I suppose. But this seemed personal to her. She was worried about her sister. She was thinking about birth records for slave babies.”

  Mallory arched a brow and returned to his outer office. Branden came out from behind his desk and followed him. “Also, Lawrence, try to find out who those professors are. The ones who are grumbling.”

  Then, stepping out into the hallway with his mug of coffee, Professor Branden turned back to face his door, and with pleasant satisfaction, he read the titles that were posted there.

  Dr. Michael Branden

  Chairperson – Department of History

  The Arden S. Beaumont Distinguished Professor of American History

  Mr. Lawrence Mallory

  Director and Curator

  The Millersburg College Museum of Battlefield Firearms

  There in the hallway outside his office, Professor Branden pulled his phone and called the college president’s office. The woman who answered the call was well known to him - Pamela Stone, recently promoted from secretary in the history department, to Executive Assistant in the president’s office.

  “Hi, Pam,” he said, once she had answered his call. “Why’d I lose my 10:00 with Benetti?”

  “Hi, Mike, I really don’t know. But she’s in her office with a couple of professors right now. Talking with an architect about your museum.”

  “Really? An architect?”

  “Yes.”

  “OK, Pam Can you let me know if this grows into something that I should worry about?”

  “Sure, Mike. But right now, I think it’s all rather preliminary. It’s not a secret, really. You know – this new major in neuroscience. We’re trying to find a place for the labs. Benetti says she wants you to be kept up to date.”

  “But can you let me know about meetings like this one? It’s important.”

  “Yes, definitely. When I know something. Probably yet this morning, after this meeting with the architect.”

  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

  Five minutes before the end of Lydia Schwartz’s class on British Poetry, Professor Branden was waiting for her in the hall outside the classroom. He watched carefully for her when the students began to file out into the hallway, and then he looked for her inside the room, as the last few students left for their next classes. Lydia was not in the room. Instead, there was only Professor Karen Byrne, shuffling her notes together at the lectern.

  “Lydia Schwartz?” Branden asked as he came up to Professor Byrne. “Wasn’t she in class?”

  Byrne consulted her class list. “No, Mike, I don’t think so. She didn’t make it.”

  “A young Mennonite woman in a lavender dress?”

  “Definitely not. Do you know her?”

  “She has one of our scholarships, Karen. From Caroline and me. Really, it isn’t at all like Lydia to skip a class. Not on the first day.”

  “Sorry,” Byrne said as she took up her papers.

  “It’s OK, I suppose,” Branden said. It really isn’t like Lydia at all, he thought.

  Back in his office, Branden took out his class list and found Lydia’s cell phone number. He punched it in, and it rang several times before it switched to voicemail. Branden heard Lydia’s greeting.

  “Mary, if this is you, please come up to campus. Call me, or just come see me, OK? I’m worried about you. Anyone else, please leave a message.”

  After the beep, Branden spoke for the recording. “It’s Professor Branden, Lydia. Please call back.”

  After he had switched out of his call, the professor decided that he wasn’t satisfied with his message, so he called Lydia again. This time the phone went straight to voicemail. Carefully, he said, “Professor Branden again, Lydia. I am eager to speak more with you. Your questions are important to me. Please call me back as soon as you get this. Any time of the day. I’ll make time for you. As much as you need. Let’s talk. Just as soon as you are free.”

  Chapter 2

  Monday, August 28

  1:15 PM

  After attending to some electronic and paper correspondence in his office, Professor Branden left the second floor of the history building and passed into the college’s oak grove, walking along one of the shaded brick pathways that laced the campus. He walked at a decent pace for his age, but he knew that his legs had lost a bit of spring in recent years.

  At the edge of campus, Branden crossed the road near the main entrance to the college grounds, and he walked down the sidewalk of his street, where he and Caroline lived in an older brick colonial, with a wide backyard that overlooked a serene Amish valley, spreading out luxuriously beneath the cliffs at the edge of Millersburg. Lost in his thoughts, he walked absently past his own home and realized his error only after he had circled the cul-de-sac and found himself headed back mistakenly toward campus.

  He stopped, shook his head and smiled at his absent-mindedness. Occupational Hazard, he thought, scolding himself. Then crossing the cul-de-sac at an oblique angle, he paced deliberately over to his short front walk, climbed up onto the shallow stoop, opened the door, and entered the cool front hallway of his home.

  The lights were out in the living room to his left. The curtains were drawn there against the late summer heat. To his right, the hallway to his garage was shaded, too.

  Down the hallway to the kitchen, Caroline had the ceiling fan running over their curly-maple kitchen table, and at the table, back-lit by strong light from the kitchen windows, Pastor Cal Troyer was sitting as if haloed, with a small cup of coffee and a delicate porcelain saucer, under the cooling breeze of the fan.

  Branden stepped into the kitchen and asked Cal, “Something up?”

  Cal shook his head. “Caroline called,” he said. “I’m getting a free lunch.”

  Troyer’s white hair and beard were growing long again. His hair was down to the tops of his ears, and his beard was starting to show some need for a trim. The strong light from the windows seemed to put a glow into his features. He had a broad and rugged face, large knotted hands, and a strong workman’s build. Shorter than average, he was a pastor at a small Christian church in town. It had always been impressive to the professor that Cal took no salary from his congregation, instead earning his way in life as a carpenter. They had known each other since kindergarten, and together with Sheriff Bruce Robertson, they were the most respected trio of friends in Holmes County. And maybe the most notorious.

  The professor angled left toward the coffee pot, took a mug out of the cabinet and poured out the last of the brew. He switched the pot off and started back to the kitchen table.

  But Caroline put a hand out to his arm and asked
, “Well, Professor?”

  Branden smiled, moved on past her, and took a seat across the table from Cal. “I guess I’ll stay there a while, yet,” he said. “Teaching suits me, really.”

  “Oh, please,” Caroline crowed. She carried sandwiches to the table. “Like there was ever any doubt? Really, Michael, I don’t know why you won’t consider cutting back. If you retired, you could still teach a class or two as an Emeritus.”

  “What are you talking about?” Cal asked. “You wouldn’t stay on at the college?”

  Branden turned to Caroline. “Is this why Cal is here? In case you needed an ally in our retirement dispute?”

  “What?” Cal asked.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Caroline said, with a conspirator’s smile. She gave a shrug to let the matter drop, and she turned back to the refrigerator, saying, “It’s not a dispute, Michael. I just have a different opinion than you.”

  Shaking his head at Caroline’s ruse, the professor changed to a different topic. “We’ve got a new president, Cal. She appears to have some issues with my museum.”

  Cal sipped at his coffee and passed a glance to both Caroline and the professor. “What’s wrong with your museum?”

  Branden chuckled. “Nothing. But she needs space for a new major in neuroscience.”

  Caroline put out three glasses of milk, sat at the head of the table and said, “Really Michael, I don’t understand why a small Liberal Arts college needs a major in neuroscience.”

  Caroline’s light auburn hair was done up in a bun at the back of her head. She was a slender but sturdy woman, with a fair complexion. She had been a free-lance editor for many years, but with their recent sabbatical at Duke, she had set that aside. She was ‘slowing down as the years speed along faster,’ she had explained to her husband. ‘Slowing down because time doesn’t.’

  “Isn’t neuroscience rather specialized?” Caroline continued. “It’s certainly not part of a Liberal Arts curriculum.”

  “I don’t know,” Branden said. “Seriously, I don’t know.” He started on his sandwich and added, “It’s all just preliminary.”