by P. L. Gaus
“Renovations?” Branden asked.
“It’s the space, Professor. Your museum occupies important real estate on campus. Benetti has had her eye on it for a while, now. Neuroscience is going to need offices, classrooms, new professors, and those new labs, too. She had architectural plans drawn up for a preliminary study. It’s nothing official, yet, but she has been moving in that direction. I don’t think she was going to be much help to your cause.”
Branden turned to Mallory. “You knew about this, Lawrence?”
“A word here. A whisper there. You know how it is, Mike. Small campus. Academic politics.”
Branden arched a brow. He smiled and combed his fingers back through his hair. To Rausch, he said simply, “Again Kathryn, thank you. Thank you very much. I don’t know what to say.”
Rausch stood and offered her hand again. “Trustees aren’t always locked up in the high towers, Mike. We do see what’s happening from time to time. And my Grandfather wouldn’t too much appreciate it, if I didn’t step in now to rescue your museum.”
Chapter 36
Tuesday, September 5
5:20 PM
As the Brandens ate their dinner, Caroline said, “We’ve changed our plans a little for driving up to the Cleveland Clinic, Michael.”
“Oh?”
“Cal is going to ride with Rachel, in her car. You and I will follow them. They want to get started a little earlier.”
“How soon?”
“Well, now Michael. Finish here, and I’ll load the car. Rachel and I have adjoining rooms at the hotel.”
Professor Branden rose to clear their dishes. “You going to stay just Tuesday and Wednesday nights?”
“More, Michael. I’ll stay with her during the surgery. No one should have to wait alone for that. Then I’ll stay Wednesday night, and probably Thursday, too. They might send him home as soon as Friday.”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The professor was glum on the ride. Caroline drove, and he rode slumped in the passenger’s seat.
“You’re more tired than you realized,” Caroline said. “You should have rescheduled your office hours.”
“I’m not tired. I’m weary.”
“Because of this case?”
“I guess.”
“Meredith Silver confessed, didn’t she? She wrote it in her suicide note. She shoved Lydia, and it was more than just an unfortunate accident.”
“It was all unfortunate, Caroline. It was unfortunate from start to finish. The Yosts should have had some help. Instead they got bad advice from a couple of evangelical zealots. Plus, the bishop should have recognized the trouble they were having at the farm. He should have done something sooner to help them.”
“And the Schells are going to be charged?”
“Oh yes. You can count on that.”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
In the Cleveland Clinic surgery ward, to the head floor nurse, Rachel said, “I thought he could stay at the hotel tonight. He’d be more comfortable at the hotel.”
The nurse said, “We want to start prepping him tonight. They’re going to want him in the OR by five AM.”
“Why is he already sedated?”
“It’s just a little Ativan, for anxiety. You can still visit. Talk. He’ll just be calmer.”
In the hospital room, they had provided Rachel with a step stool. She stood on it at Cal’s bedside, to talk with her father. Mike and Caroline waited for nearly an hour before Rachel came out. When she emerged, she was crying. Caroline sat with her in the family lounge around the corner, and the professor went in to Cal.
Branden started with news. “Bishop Yost spoke with Mary Yost on the phone, Cal.”
“I’d like to have heard that conversation,” Cal said, smiling.
“He actually apologized to her. He explained that he’s going to let John take antidepressants, and that convinced her. She’s going to come home to help him with John. Pat and Ricky left for Omaha yesterday, to bring her and Esther home. Plus, she has a new son, now.”
“A Schwartzentruber Bishop using a cell phone?” Cal said. “It must be the end of the world.”
“He was gentle with her, Cal. Compassionate.”
“Good.”
“Nobody had told her about Lydia, and he was tender with her. I don’t understand their Dietsche language, of course, but I could tell that he was treating her kindly. Giving her space for her grief. Consoling her.”
“Tender,” Cal said from a secluded place inside the Ativan. “Kind. Gentle.”
“You’re a little drugged up, Pastor. You can sleep if you want to.”
Cal smiled. “So, this is how we end up Mike? In a sterilized hospital bed, with a tranquilizer drip?”
“This is not how you’re going to end up, Cal.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Neither do you, old man.”
“Look who’s talking, with gray in your beard like that.”
Branden smiled and took Cal’s hand. “Do you remember how we used to go fishing? We went all the time, Cal. They couldn’t keep us off the water.”
Cal’s eyes closed, and he said, “I’ll see you on the other side, Mike.”
“The other side of surgery?” Branden asked. “Or the other side of life?”
Cal’s eyes opened. “Does it matter? Doesn’t the one follow the other fast enough to make the difference unimportant?”
“You’d leave a hole in the world, Cal.”
“I can’t keep my eyes open.”
“It’s OK to sleep, Pastor,” Branden said.
Cal smiled with his eyes closed again. The last thing he said to the professor was spoken as a whisper.
“God is still on His throne, Professor. I shall not be dismayed.”
Chapter 37
Friday, September 8
4:00 PM
They gathered on the grassy hilltop overlooking the Yost farm, to bury Lydia beside the babies. The small headstones of Mary’s infant children, buried there years earlier, were to be joined by a new stone, inscribed with nothing more than the name Lydia Schwartzentruber.
The entire congregation attended. Strong deacons of the church carried the pine coffin along the bridle path through the woods, and up the long slope to the top of the hill. Other men pulled Lydia’s headstone along in a hand wagon. There was a general drizzle over all of Holmes County, and a soft sheen of water settled on the black wool of the Schwartzentruber clothes, as Bishop Alva Yost conducted the funeral service in German.
Mary Yost attended, leaning on her husband John as she cried, and all their children stood with them, including little Esther who had been to Omaha with her mother. Mose and Ida Schwartzentruber stood among them, Ida holding Mary and John’s new baby boy Henry. Alva and Miriam Yost attended with their children. His brother Lucas and his wife Hannah Yost similarly were there, with all their children. All the men of the congregation had gathered on the hilltop, plus many of the women and children. Some women and children of course stayed behind in the Yost house, preparing food for the congregational dinner.
By the time they roped the coffin into the grave, water had puddled in all the dozens of stars that had been chiseled deeply into the face-plate of the wooden box. There were large stars and small ones, too, and they had been cut into the wood with great care. There were enough stars that Branden thought, as he watched the coffin disappear below the surface, that they constituted an entire constellation.
Branden and Robertson stood off to the side. They were not there to participate. They were there to witness and to testify to the tragedy and to the sorrow. They would not presume to have anything to say to the congregants. If they had spoken to John Yost, he probably would not have acknowledged them. The two English men were tolerated, though they were not particularly welcome. The sheriff and the professor knew this, and so they held to themselves. They spoke to no one.
After the mourners had trudged down the hill, and while four men were shoveling
dirt into Lydia’s grave, Branden and Robertson started down the hill. Quietly, they spoke to each other. The falling rain cocooned them under Robertson’s umbrella. It muffled their voices and their footfalls. They enjoyed a measure of privacy as they made their way down the hill.
“Stars, Mike?” the sheriff asked the professor. “Schwartzentrubers tolerate no adornments at all, so what’s going on with those coffin stars?”
Branden nodded. “They wouldn’t be there if the bishop hadn’t allowed them.”
“Do you know what they mean?”
“Yes, they were special for Lydia. If the bishop chiseled those stars himself, then there are maybe only four people in the world who know what they mean.”
“You gonna tell me, Professor?”
“Maybe someday. Right now, they’re just Lydia’s stars. It’s a concession from the bishop. Or maybe an apology. I’ll tell you someday.”
After they had descended the path another twenty yards, Branden asked, “The Schells? What about them?”
Robertson touched the professor’s arm and halted him under the umbrella. “You’re a puzzle, Mike. Just tell me.”
Branden shook his head. “I’ll let you read a letter that Lydia wrote to the bishop. That’ll explain it better than I can.”
“You can just tell me now, Mike.”
Branden shrugged. “Lydia wrote in a letter to the bishop that he had gotten her started thinking about the stars. What are they? Why are they there? Where did they come from? Like that. She told him it’s why she wanted an education. It’s why she left the Amish church. So, if he has put stars on her coffin, it’s an acknowledgement of sorts. Now, what about the Schells?”
When they started walking again, the sheriff said, “Ed has been charged, but it’s a minor crime, Mike. Interference with a law enforcement investigation. He’ll never go to jail for anything.”
“And Donna?”
“Charged with involuntary manslaughter. The prosecutor is convinced that she really did not intend to shoot Meredith Silver.”
“I’d be happy if they both went to jail,” Branden said. “Lydia and Meredith got tangled up in their ministry, and they both paid for it with their lives.”
“Yes, I suppose so. Anyway, we found the revolver in the woods, where Donna tossed it. Her prints are all over it.”
“Doesn’t that pretty much close the case, Sheriff?”
“Not entirely. I’d like to charge someone at the Church of True Believers for those fake phone calls, pretending to be Mary Yost. But I don’t think we’ll ever find out who it was.”
“No. Probably not.”
“How about you? Are you done out here, Mike?”
“Actually, no. The bishop asked me to come out from time to time, to check on Junior.”
“That’s huge, Mike. You and Junior. The antidepressants. Talking on a cell phone with Mary, instead of shunning her. And hand-cut stars on a coffin. He’s changing. For a Schwartzentruber, that’s huge. It’s a huge matter to think that Mary would have left in the first place.”
“I think she was just trying to save herself and Esther.”
Robertson shook his head. “You know what I mean. She broke away. It accomplished something good. The bishop is showing some flexibility because of her.”
“Yes, and because of Lydia, too. I just don’t expect him to go right out and buy a cell phone.”
“Maybe in a hundred years, Mike.”
“Maybe. What do you think Donna will get for manslaughter?”
“Sentencing is next week. I wouldn’t want to predict.”
“I wish she had given Mary Yost better counseling.”
“No doubt. The thing is, Mike, she claims that Mary was really the one who wanted to leave. She insists that it was Mary’s decision to leave. She insists that Mary had experienced a true religious conversion.”
“Yes, but don’t you think Donna and Meredith pushed her pretty strongly in that direction?”
“We’ll never know. When does simple evangelism cross over into something more like manipulation?”
“Or into exploitation, Sheriff.”
“Cal would know the difference.”
Branden stopped on the trail. Robertson stopped beside him, holding the umbrella. The professor said, “Cal is the only kind of pastor that I’d trust to know the difference, and to respect it.”
Robertson nodded solemnly. “How is Cal? When’s he coming home?”
“Tomorrow, Bruce. He’s not really doing too well, yet. He came through it hard.”
“Has it spread? The cancer?”
“To his spleen. They had to remove that, too.”
“He’s not going to live forever, Mike. None of us is.”
“Let’s stretch a few more years out of it, Sheriff. I know a farm pond that has too many fish in it. Cal and I can hit it in the spring.”
“I never understood the fishing thing.”
“I know. It’s just something that Cal and I used to do. After this, I’m going to make certain that we get back to it.”
“Time is the only significant asset, Mike. Time with friends. Time with family. Maybe I’ll buy a fishing pole.”
“Between Cal and me, Sheriff, I think we can probably fix you up with a pole.”
“Fishing?”
Branden nodded and smiled. “In the spring.”
“Then that’s a date, Mike. That’s a firm date. But in November next year, I’ve got a little something planned with Missy.”
“A trip?”
“You could say that. We’re both going to retire.”
Branden scoffed out a laugh. “And do what, Sheriff? Really, do what?”
“You said you liked Sarasota?” Robertson led.
“Yes.”
“We’re gonna start there, Mike. We’re gonna find a place where it’s warm. Someplace with water. Maybe buy a boat.”
“I don’t believe that, Bruce.”
Robertson shrugged. “I’m going to help Ricky Niell run for sheriff in the fall elections.”
“This is not a joke?”
“No joke, Mike. It’s time I stepped aside. It’s time for Missy and me to live somewhere warm. And it’s Ricky’s turn. Sheriff Ricky Niell. But, look, you and Caroline should come down with us. We can find a couple of places near the water, and see what kind of trouble we can get into.”
The professor shook his head. “I need to teach, Bruce. Maybe a couple more years.”
“You’d be missing out, Mike. I think Caroline would support me on this. Maybe I’ll just mention it to her.”
Branden frowned at first, but then he smiled with a happy light in his eyes. “Do you remember the day we met, Bruce?”
The rain puttered on the umbrella, and the sheriff smiled too, grandly. “Kindergarten, Mike. You were dressed in short pants and suspenders.”
“I remember you teased me about that, Sheriff. I also remember that you were already quite chubby.”
The sheriff kept his smile. “Cal was a regular little juvenile delinquent. A discipline problem, if you don’t remember. Miss Sampson made him stand in the corner for ten minutes. I remember him there in his Mennonite denim, as if it were yesterday. I think he was crying.”
“I remember,” Branden said. “When he gets home, I’m going to find out if Cal does, too. The pastor, the professor and the sheriff. Little friends in Kindergarten. Who could have predicted how it would all turn out?”
“Small towns are built for life-long friendships, Mike. We were lucky.”
“Yes Sheriff, and we were blessed.”
Copyright Notice
Copyright © Paul L. Gaus 2019
All rights reserved. No part of this work, either in part or in its entirety, may be reproduced, published or copied for any use whatsoever without the expressed written consent of the author or one of his counselors or assignees.
Disclaimer
The characters in this story are entirely fictional, and none is meant to be a representation in kind,
part or whole of any real person living or dead. If characters appear to resemble real people, it is coincidental and was not intended by the author. The locations, though real, have been used fictitiously.
Relevant Scripture Verses
From the Holy Bible, New Testament, The Apostle Paul’s Letter to the Church at Ephesus:
Ephesians 2:8-9
8For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – 9not by works, so that no one can boast.
And then, from the general letter of James, to the twelve tribes scattered among the nations, Chapter 2, on the question of faith as evidenced by deeds:
James 2:24 and 2:26
24You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone.
26As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful for the patience of my fans, who have waited too long for this tenth novel to be published. Thank you for your forbearance, and for the many fine letters you have sent me through my website, asking about my progress on this novel. Because of the sensitive nature of the issues, this is surely the most difficult topic that I have addressed. I have tried to write fairly and even-handedly about the lifestyle choices of the most conservative of the Amish peoples.
There are many people to thank, but let me especially mention Steve and Dawn Tilson, good friends and capable advisors, and Mr. Ed Schrock of Holmes County, Ohio.
