Stars for Lydia

by P. L. Gaus

  “OK, why do you want to come over? It’ll take me a least half an hour to get back home.”

  “This is huge, Mike,” the sheriff said. “Rachel is setting up to trap Mary’s call. If I can get her to talk, I want you to listen. And maybe Caroline can speak with her. We’ve got a real chance here, Mike. A really good chance. If she calls again. And I think Caroline would be the best person to speak with her.”

  Chapter 22

  Thursday, August 31

  10:25 PM

  As late as it was, the evening was still warm on the Brandens’ back porch. A steady and humid night breeze was washing through the screens. The back yard was swaddled in darkness.

  Robertson was there with Rachel Ramsayer, his IT Chief. She was the daughter of Pastor Cal Troyer. Rachel was a dwarf woman in her forties. She had found her father after her mother in Atlanta had finally told her about him. It had been a broken marriage that ended while Cal had been serving as a medic in Vietnam. Rachel had been born without Cal’s knowing it. Then once her mother had died, Rachel had come to Millersburg to find her father. Tonight, Rachel was waiting with the others, to see if Mary Yost would make another call to the sheriff’s phone.

  Cal was there, too. Caroline and the professor had served a light snack. Robertson was standing at the far end of the porch with his phone out, hoping for another call. The Brandens were seated in wicker chairs with Cal and Rachel. To the professor, Cal seemed nervous - fidgety and maybe also frustrated by something. Rachel cleared her throat, and looking anxiously to her father, she said, “Dad has some news, I’m afraid.”

  Cal tried to shrug it away, but Rachel pushed him for a response. “Tell them, Dad. You do, or I will. It’s not some awful secret kind of thing.”

  Cal shrugged again. He tangled his fingers in his beard and hesitated. He stood up on his short legs, but he seemed uncertain of himself there, and he dropped heavily back down onto his chair.

  “What?” Caroline asked. “What news?”

  “Well,” Cal said hesitantly, “I guess I’ll be up at the Cleveland Clinic next week.”

  “What for?” the professor asked.

  Cal gave a rueful glance at the professor. “I guess it’s not that big of a problem, really.”

  “He’s got colon cancer,” Rachel declared. “Really, Dad, this is getting frustrating. You haven’t told anyone. Not even your congregation. What were you going to do? Mix it in with Sunday’s sermon?”

  “Something like that,” Cal replied weakly. “It is what it is, Rachel. Can’t be that bad.”

  Caroline asked, “You’ve had tests? They’re sure about this?”

  “Yes,” Cal said. “I’m to go in for surgery next week. Wednesday morning.”

  At the far end of the long porch, the sheriff’s phone rang. He answered the call, speaking a careful, “This is Sheriff Robertson.” He listened for three seconds or so, and he pulled his phone down from his ear. Holding it out to the room, he switched to speaker-phone mode. Then he tapped two of Rachel’s new icons on his screen, and they all heard a woman in mid-sentence, “. . . . fine. We’re fine, Sheriff.”

  “Where are you, Mary?” Robertson said into the base of his phone. To the room, he silently mouthed, “Mary Yost.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Mary said. “We’re both fine. I’m having some labor now, so I can’t talk. But, we’re fine. It’s just that, well, it’s not as easy as Donna said it would be. Living English, I mean.”

  “You need help?” Robertson asked. “Let us help you.”

  “I have a woman with me.”

  “A midwife, Mary?”

  “A nurse. I’m fine. I can’t talk.”

  Then as if speaking to someone in the room beside her, Mary asked, “What?” and said, “OK.”

  Back to Robertson she said, “I need to hang up, now,” and the call switched off.

  Immediately on her feet, Rachel asked the sheriff, “Did you get it?”

  Robertson checked his display. He tapped one of Rachel’s icons and smiled. “Fort Wayne.”

  “And recorded?” Rachel asked further.

  Again, Robertson tapped an icon, and a recording of his short conversation with Mary Yost played out into the room.

  Rachel advanced to him. “Call the Sheriff there?”

  Robertson nodded. “We have her gps location, now. Call Ricky and Pat. They’re going to have to drive over there tonight.”

  Rachel was already passing through the sliding door, headed back into the house. “I need to get down to my systems,” she said. “Dad?”

  Cal rose to his feet, but Caroline stood, took his shoulder and directed him back into his chair. “Oh no,” she intoned. “I’ll give you a ride home later.”

  Robertson called after Rachel. “If she leaves that location, can you track her cell phone? And what kind of place is she at right now?” He was already redialing Mary’s number for a second time. Muttering, he said, “At least we know she’s not dead.”

  Back over her shoulder, Rachel said, “That’s what I’m doing. Tracking the call.” She stopped to study the screen on her phone. “I’ve got it mapped. It’s a motel in Fort Wayne.” She came back out onto the porch. “I’m calling the motel’s office now.” She handed her phone to the sheriff.

  Robertson closed his phone and spoke when the motel desk attendant answered Rachel’s call. “I am Sheriff Bruce Robertson, Holmes County, Ohio. Do you have an Amish woman staying there?”

  Branden, Caroline, Rachel and Cal heard the sheriff’s side of the ensuing conversation:

  “OK, maybe not Amish then. A pregnant woman and her little daughter?”

  “No, look, this is urgent.”

  “Good. Check that room, please. Hurry.”

  “I don’t care. Get over there and knock on her door.”

  “Then give me the direct number to the phone in that room.”

  “Cell phone! She called me on a cell phone! I’ve got that, already. I want the land line into that room.

  No, because she’s not answering her cell phone.”

  “You just check that room!”

  Then pacing back and forth on the long porch, Robertson kept the phone to his ear. Eventually, with sarcasm permeating his tone, he growled back into Rachel’s phone, “Great! That’s just Great!” and he switched abruptly out of the call, saying to Rachel, “She’s already gone. We missed her.”

  Looking at her phone’s map display, Rachel countered, “Sheriff, her phone is still there.”

  Immediately Robertson called the motel back. Once he had the man on the line, he said, “Please go back and look for a cell phone in the room.”

  Presently the sheriff said, “Good. Thanks. I’m going to need that phone. I’ll send someone for it. You make sure you hang on to it.”

  After switching out of the call, the sheriff said to Rachel, “She left her phone in her room. It’s a burner phone, like from Walmart.”

  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

  After Rachel and the sheriff had left for the jail, Cal said to Mike and Caroline, “I’m going to need a ride back home, you know.”

  “Not like that,” Caroline scolded him. “You’re not going to skirt it like that, Cal.”

  “I’ll have the surgery,” Cal said, lifting his palms. “They’ll cut it out.”

  “Just as easy as that?” Caroline pressed anxiously.

  “Sort of, I guess.”

  “Who’s going to be up there with you?” the professor asked.

  “Rachel,” Cal said. “Maybe some church people.”

  “When did all this start?” Branden asked.

  Cal shrugged his shoulders. “There was some blood,” he said. “I got a colonoscopy. They say I have cancer, and they want me to have this operation.”

  “You don’t want to?” Caroline cried with obvious anguish.

  “I don’t know,” Cal said evenly. “We’re old, right? We’re all older, now, and I’ve had a good life. I’m not afraid to die.”

 
Caroline got up on her feet slowly. She could not control her emotions any longer. Tears began to line her cheeks. She took a step toward Cal, and her fingers clenched nervously at her sides. The professor saw her sorrow, and he realized that she wanted to chastise Cal for his stoicism.

  She took another step toward Cal, and she forced her fingers to open out straight. But they closed again, and she fixed her sight on her husband, on the other side of Cal. She couldn’t speak past her tears, so she waved a hand toward her husband and reclaimed her seat.

  Branden took up her cause. “You haven’t thought this through, Cal. You need help with this. If you need surgery, then you have friends who will help you recover from it.”

  “I’m not afraid to die,” Cal whispered.

  Popping up onto her feet, Caroline tried to speak again. But her voice cracked out only a loud and frustrated, “Aaah!” Then softly she said, with her voice stuttering with emotion, “Who told you that you’re going to die?”

  “Nobody,” Cal said, smiling enigmatically. He turned his head toward Caroline with an expression of apology and admission. “But they say I might have waited a bit too long to have that colonoscopy.”

  Caroline again took a step toward Cal. Her palms lifted at her sides and slapped back against her legs. Her cheeks flowed with tears, and she wept. She brushed a knuckle under each eye, and still she wept.

  “It’s not really so much about any of you,” Cal said. “It’s my decision to make.”

  “This isn’t fair to Rachel,” Caroline insisted. “She’s just found you. She’s just getting to know you as her father. How do you think she feels?”

  To acknowledge her point, Cal laid his head sideways and tried for a convincing smile. He stood up and said, “Wednesday, next week. I’d be glad if one of you could come along to sit with Rachel.”

  “Yes,” the professor said. “Good. You needed to tell us this. And you’re going to need a ride.”

  “Rachel,” Cal said. “Rachel will drive me up.”

  “We’re going, too,” Caroline said fiercely. She moved to Cal and embraced him. He turned to her and took her embrace, and he put his short arms around her.

  “You’re not going to do this alone,” Caroline said. “You have too many friends for that.”

  “I am not afraid,” Cal asserted again.

  He released Caroline, but she held on to him longer. He put his arms back around her, gave a squeeze, and released her again. Still she held him, saying, “What were you thinking?”

  Cal gently took her arms down from around his neck, and he stepped back a little. He turned around to the professor, and then he turned back to Caroline. “I’ve preached the Gospel of peace and hope for nearly forty years,” he said to them. “Lots of people get sick. Lots of people die. It’s my turn, now, and I will not lose hope. It’s just not going to happen. I am not dismayed, and I am not afraid.”

  “Then we’re going to be afraid for you,” Caroline said. “We can’t lose you.”

  Cal’s eyes acquired a moist aspect. Branden saw something like perplexity pass across his eyes.

  Cal shook his head. Then he sat again and bowed his head. “I’m not afraid,” he whispered, and looked up. “But I am disconcerted. I am very disconcerted. There is only one thing that frightens me. It frightens me to face death finally, only to crumble because I couldn’t handle the truth.”

  “What truth?” Caroline demanded. “The truth that you’re going to have surgery? The truth that your friends will be there with you? The truth that you can’t avoid this, now? What, Cal? What truth?”

  “No,” Cal said. “That’s not what I mean. This is just life. We’ve always known it was like this. Long or short, life is the process of dying. It’s not avoidable. And when I do die, it will not be premature. Like I said, we are all old, now. I’ve had a good life.”

  “So, what?” the professor asked. “You’re just going to accept it?”

  “Not at all. No. That’s not what I’m saying.”

  “What, then?” Caroline asked, wiping tears from her cheeks with the flats of her fingers. “Tell us what, Cal!”

  “Like I said. I’ve preached the Gospel for forty years. And what? I haven’t believed any of it? No, I can’t accept that. I couldn’t face that. To lose faith now? If that were to happen, I couldn’t live with myself. I wouldn’t want to live with myself. No, it is simple, even if it is frightening. Living by faith means that you must face everything in life, even death – especially death – with your faith. For me, it can’t be any other way.”

  Chapter 23

  Friday, September 1

  5:30 PM

  After all his classes, appointments, office hours and commitments, the professor took his truck into town, Friday at dinner time. The matter had bothered him all day. It had nickeled away at his background thoughts during all his college duties, and finally at the end of the day he had found that he could pursue it. Pursue the Schells, that is. Ed and Donna Schell, and their church and boarding house. Because Mary Yost had said on the phone:

  “It’s just that, well, it’s not as easy as Donna said it would be. Living English, I mean.”

  Donna. Donna Schell, who had conducted bible studies with Mary Yost. Surely Donna had talked with Mary about very much more than just the Scriptures. And so that little statement of Mary’s had pestered the professor all day.

  In the village, he turned onto Perkins Street, and after a second pass, he parked a block away from the Light-Path Ministries church building and boarding house. It was the closest parking spot he could find.

  After he had switched off the engine, and before he had opened his door, the Schells stepped onto the side porch of the boarding house, Donna pushing out hurriedly on the screened door, so that it banged against the side of the house and then slapped back into place behind her. A moment later, Ed Schell pushed out backward, carrying two large and battered suitcases. He was obviously struggling with the weight of them, and when he dropped them onto the porch boards, Donna started talking with her eyes pointed away from her husband. They seemed to be in a conversation that had started inside the boarding house. And Donna seemed to be upset about something. Ed started talking, too, and Donna turned to face him, nodding agreement with him and talking over Ed’s words. Ed didn’t seem to mind. They were five paces apart, and they were facing each other, with Donna folding her hands, and Ed nodding his own agreement as they both spoke, with their words running over each other’s, as if their thoughts were so aligned that they could anticipate each other’s statements.

  Branden rolled down the window of his truck and tipped an ear in the Schells’ direction. He managed to hear only a few snatches of Donna’s words, and he wasn’t certain that he had gotten all of it right, but she seemed to be saying, “ . . . never again!” And “ . . . haven’t worked this hard to let . . .”

  Branden decided to sit in his truck and watch the proceedings. He decided to sit, and if he could manage it, to listen.

  Ed turned his head, and Donna leaned in to address his ear. She was so close to him that her lips must have been brushing against him. Ed wore the somewhat militant expression of a determined evangelist.

  Eventually, Ed Schell seemed to have mellowed a bit. He bent down to pick up the two heavy suitcases. He went backwards down the porch steps, resting the suitcases with each step, and at the bottom, on the side walkway to the drive, he stood to catch his breath and ease his muscles. He shook both of his hands at his sides, and then he picked up the suitcases again. Donna Schell pulled the porch door open, and she stepped back inside the boarding house.

  By the time Ed had wrestled the suitcases over to the back of a blue passenger van in the driveway, Donna was coming out again, this time holding the door for a young couple in Old Order Amish dress, followed by a young Amish girl, who was holding the hand of a three-year old boy in a black vest and black straw hat. The Amish couple wore doubtful expressions, and the little Amish boy watched forward warily.

 
; Donna gathered the family close to her, and they all bowed their heads. Donna closed her eyes, and the others did, too. As Donna spoke a prayer, the mother and father nodded their agreements with her supplications, and when she looked up again, they all said, “Amen.”

  Donna took the porch steps one at a time on uncertain legs, holding tightly to an iron hand railing. When she had made it down to the side walkway, she turned back to offer a hand of assistance to the woman of the Amish couple. Then she helped the girl and the little boy on the steps, too. She took a moment to rub at her sore knees, and then she escorted them all to the side door of the passenger van, where she helped them climb up to bench seats, directing the couple to the second of three benches, and the girl and little boy to the first of the three, where a child seat was waiting for the boy. The girl buckled the boy into his seat.

  At the back of the van, Ed Schell had stowed the suitcases and closed the double doors. He rushed around to Donna, opened the passenger’s door for her, and helped her step up to her seat. He waited for her to arrange herself on the seat, and then he gently swung the door closed and pushed on it, to latch it in place. Again, Donna had been rubbing at her knees. She still wore a large cotton bandage on her left hand.

  By now the professor had his phone out, ringing through with a call to Sheriff Robertson. He said, “It’s Mike. I’m going to follow a light blue passenger van away from the Light-Path boarding house. The Schells are driving it, with four Amish passengers.”

  “To where?” Robertson asked.

  “Don’t know. But I don’t like something about this. The Schells are anxious, and they have an Amish family in the van with them. They have two large suitcases. There’s also an older white van still sitting in their driveway. They are both Amish-hauler vans, for maybe a dozen passengers each.”

  “You want help?”