A Dark Amish Night (2 page)

   “Woman, I give you my word I will not let your pie melt.” Eric lifted Hannah up in a strong embrace and kissed her full on the mouth. Hannah blushed; despite having been married to Eric for ten years he could still make her feel like a love-sick school girl.

   “Eric, put me down the children are watching.” 

   “I love you, Hannah Hershberger, and don’t you forget it. I’m blessed to have you for a wife and I wish you didn’t have to slave away baking for the English. What if I’m never able to provide for you the way a good husband aught? I pray daily for this drought to end, but what if it never does?”  Eric still held Hannah close, but lowered her to the ground. These displays of affection between them were kept strictly at home away from the prying eyes of the other Amish who frowned upon any one of the plain folk behaving in this manner.

   Hannah gripped her beloved around his waist. “Eric, you’re a fine husband. A woman couldn’t ask for better. And really, would you deny the English a taste of your wife’s fine cooking?”

   Eric laughed a full rumbling belly laugh. “No, my humble wife, it would surely be a sin to deny the English your fine cooking.”

   Both of them laughed together at Eric’s obvious sarcasm. Hannah felt her husband’s love most acutely. The Lord knew she loved him with every fiber of her being. More than she should was her thought and she pulled away.

   “Now off with you. It’s getting late and it’ll be dark before you get back. Maybe Timothy should stay with me so you two don’t get sidetracked.

   “Awk, woman, you shame me. I’ll have your son back by nightfall.” Timothy was already on the front seat of the buffy when his father lumbered up beside him.

   Hannah shook off the uneasy feeling that crept up on her as she watched the buggy drive away, kicking up red dust down the dirt road.

   “Stop lollygagging, Hannah, you’ve still got the laundry to do,” Hannah said aloud to herself, picked up Ruth Anne, and went inside to finish her chores.

   After Hannah put Ruth Anne to bed, twilight descended. She ran outside to gather what was left of the laundry hanging on the clothes line in the fading sunlight. Eric had promised to be home by nightfall. It looked like he and Timothy had gotten distracted after all. Most likely Eric was in the town square visiting with the menfolk that tended to gather there when the weather was nice like it was tonight. 

   “Hmmm, if I didn’t love that man so much…” Hannah’s musings trailed off as that uneasy feeling returned, and she said a silent prayer for the Lord to watch over her and her family.

    Hannah fell asleep on the divan in the front room waiting for Eric and Timothy to come home. At midnight she woke with a start. Something was not right. She looked in on Ruth Anne who was still sleeping soundly on her little cot. It was so late. What could be keeping Eric? Surely something had gone wrong. Eric would never keep Timothy out so late. Maybe the horse had thrown a shoe or something. It was time to make some phone calls. One thing that Eric insisted on with them living so far away from any neighbors was an emergency phone in case something happened to her or the children while he was out in the fields. He’d had to get special permission from the Bishop and church deacons for it.

   The phone sat on Eric’s bedside table in their room. Hannah had never actually had to use it before, but she did keep a list of emergency phone numbers in Eric’s drawer close to the phone. She pulled out her list of numbers and went down the list until she found the one she wanted. She sat on the side of her and Eric’s quilt covered bed and carefully punched in the number.

   The phone rang for what seemed like forever to Hannah until a gruff voice answered. “Well, somebody better be dyin’…”

   “Sheriff Ramsey? I’m so sorry to wake you, but this is Hannah Hershberger, you buy baked goods from me.”  A few seconds passed before the man answered.

   “Yes, Hannah, is something wrong?”

   “Oh, I hope it’s nothing, and I am real sorry to wake you, but my husband Eric is not back from town yet and it’s after midnight. He never stays out this late. He has our son Timothy with him. It’s probably nothing, but I’m afraid something may have happened. I’d go out looking for them myself, but I have our little girl, and Eric has the buggy and the horse.”  Hannah trailed off and let the Sheriff fill in the blanks.

   “All right, Hannah, you sit tight. I’ll take a look around town. If I don’t find him I’ll take a drive out to your place. I got your phone number on my phone here now and I’ll call you if I find anything, okay?” 

   “Okay, Sheriff, I’ll be right here waiting to hear from you.”

   Hannah hung-up the phone and went back downstairs to put on a pot of coffee. When Eric did return, he was sure to want coffee.

   Sheriff Quinn Ramsey had a bad feeling about this. It was not likely that an Amish man like Eric Hershberger would be out skirting around at midnight, and especially not with a young boy in tow. No, it was more likely Eric’s horse was injured or some kind of buggy accident was to blame. Living in Amish country, he’d seen his share of buggy accidents some of them caused by cars not paying attention to the buggies that kept to the shoulders on the paved roads.

   After driving around the town square in his patrol car, the Sheriff decided nothing was out of order so he turned onto the highway that would take him to the road that led to the Hershberger farm. About a mile onto the dirt road something flashed in the headlights. Quinn did not mistake the triangle shaped reflector. It was a buggy off to the side of the road just sitting there in the dark. That feeling of dread he always got when something was not right took over as he pulled the squad car up behind the buggy and got out.

   Using his flashlight, Quinn examined the outside of the buggy. The horse was still attached and nickered softly as he walked up to peer inside.  Something dark on the ground caught his eye and he lowered the flashlight to get a better look. He crouched down and put two gloved fingers into the dark wet spot and rubbed them together in front of the flashlight. There was no doubt that something was really wrong. He was standing in front of a pool of blood.

A Dark Amish Night

Chapter Two

  After pouring herself a third cup of coffee Hannah was debating on calling Sheriff Ramsey again before she noticed headlights coming up the road. It was now past three in the morning. Ruth Anne would be awake in a couple of hours. Hannah thought she should be really tired but she was wired with coffee and worry.

   She stepped out on the porch to wait for the Sheriff to pull-up. When he parked the car she walked up to the driver’s side window. She hoped to see Eric and Timothy in the backseat, but only Sheriff Ramsey got out.

   He took off his hat as he exited the car. “Hannah, I need you to brace yourself. I found your buggy a few miles down the road. One of my deputies has Timothy down at the station. He’s fine, but I’m so sorry to tell you that Eric… Well… I’m afraid it looks like Eric fell down a ravine and he didn’t make it. He’s dead. Oh God… I’m so sorry, Hannah, but I need you to come down to the office with me right now.”

   Hannah screamed and fell to her knees. Quinn knelt beside her. “Go ahead, Hannah, scream all you want get it all out.” Quinn stayed with Hannah like that for several minutes until a small voice cried out from the dimly lit porch.

   “Momma, I scared.” Ruth Anne stood on the porch in her cotton nightgown with her bare feet.

   Hannah pulled herself together and went to her daughter. “It’s alright, my darling. We need to get dressed so we can take a ride into town with the Sheriff, okay?”   Hannah wiped away the tears and calmed down for the sake of her daughter.

   Within minutes, she got her herself and Ruth Anne fully clothed in their best Sunday blacks. The ride to town was a silent one. Hannah was numb and just did not know what to say. All she wanted was to fetch Timothy and to get back home as soon as possible.
How will I make it without you, Eric?
The one thought kept repeating itself in her head.

   Hannah stood at her screen door and watched as the men from the church loaded the last of the church benches onto the bench wagon. After four solid days of having the community members come for the viewing of Eric’s body and then the funeral followed by a shared meal, Hannah was exhausted and weary. Some of the women offered to stay with Hannah to help with the children, but Hannah really wanted to be alone so she could just think. She’d had to identify Eric’s broken body from the back of the coroner’s car. Timothy had been found fast asleep in the buggy. He only remembered that his father had stopped to visit with some men at the town square and after a while he’d fallen asleep in the buggy. He did not know what had happened to his father and had no memory of leaving the town square or of stopping alongside the road on the way home. The strange thing was that all of the baked goods that Eric was supposed to deliver were still in the buggy. Everything was there except for Pattie Sue’s pie.

   Of Hannah’s and Eric’s family only Eric’s father was still alive and he was living in a nursing home. It was one of the hardest things Hannah ever had to do when she went to tell her father-in-law of his only son’s death. In some ways it was a relief that the elder Mr. Hershberger suffered from dementia and had no idea what Hannah was talking about.

   The funeral and wake were a blur. Hannah tried to stay strong throughout it all for her children While she was grateful for the gifts of food and offers to help her care for the children as she recovered, she looked forward to a time when all the friends and neighbors would  finally stop dropping in every minute of every day. And after a few weeks Hannah found herself alone more and more as her grief gave way enough that she could get back to taking care of herself and her children.

  
Oh, my darling Eric. How can I raise our children without you?
In the dead of the night this thought haunted Hannah as she lay on a cot next to Ruth Anne. There was no more money coming in. The last of the furniture Eric made had sold from the showroom and that money wouldn’t last long.  Faced with the impossible, Hannah had no choice but to sell the farm. She could maybe rent a cheap place in town, and if she was frugal she could live off of the money from selling the farm until she could get her own bakery established.

   She knew the Amish community would not be entirely favorable to her opening her own business, but what else could she do?  Besides, Pattie Sue owned the Amish Mercantile. Sure, she’d inherited it from her late husband. But if Pattie Sue could own and run her own business then why couldn’t Hannah? The question bore merit. She would take it up with Bishop Miller and the church deacons. Surely they would understand and maybe even help her. After making these decisions Hannah finally succumbed to exhaustion and fell asleep with a small measure of hope that maybe she and her children would be all right.

   Quinn Ramsey sat at his desk in the small town of Heaven, Oklahoma’s Sheriff’s office. Eric Hershberger’s file lay open in front of him. This case was far from closed as far as he was concerned. There were too many unanswered questions. The coroner’s report ruled death by blunt force trauma to the head, but did not rule out the possibility of homicide. Eric’s body was found at the bottom of a ravine near his horse and buggy. That did not explain the pool of blood Quinn found on the ground next to the buggy and now with the reports on samples he sent in he had confirmation that the blood on the ground was indeed Eric’s.

   As much as he was loath to do it, he had to talk to Hannah again. She was the only one who could tell him exactly what Eric was doing in town that night. He also wanted to talk to Timothy some more. Maybe the boy remembered more than he’d already shared.  Either way Quinn needed some answers to burning questions. He put his taupe colored Stetson over his dark closely cropped hair, stretched out his tall lanky frame, and headed out the door.

   “Hey, Jess, I’m going out to the Hershberger farm. I’ll have my cell on me ’case you need something,” he yelled out to his deputy and walked out to his patrol car.

   It took about twenty minutes to reach Hannah’s little farm by car, but Quinn was struck by how remote the place was. It bothered him that Hannah was out here all alone with two small children and no neighbors nearby. He figured she was at least an hour from any other human contact with only a horse and a buggy to get there. It was a good thing she had a phone. He still had a few of the old Amish families even more isolated than Hannah under his jurisdiction that refused any modern amenities like phones. He shook his head. While he respected the Amish way of life he sure didn’t understand it.