Kornwolf (13 page)

From start to finish: affluence, poverty, crime and captivity—cluttered extremes: a castle, the slums, artillery, the stockade—all in the course of a two-mile run.

The center itself was no more consistent. Paisley walls with barred windows. Plastic seats with old wooden desktops. Polished floors and windows, yet stains on the ceiling. And low-powered halogen lighting … The odor of solvents and buried asbestos offsetting, by contrast, the smell of manure and sweat and cologne emanating from the crowd of juvenile offenders seated around him: four other Crossbills—Gideon, Samuel, Isaac and Colin—two Beachies from Smoketown, a Mennonite girl from District Eight and upward of ten inner-city kids dressed in jackets that read: “The Beaver Street League”—all of whom looked more fit and limber than, last, the fifteen English on hand, each of them splotchy, obese and coiffed in appearance—some in stickball caps, with goatees, halitosis and hair-gel …

Only a juvenile alcohol counseling session in Stepford could host such a gathering.

So far, the class had been uneventful. Ephraim hadn't been paying attention. He was too busy riding the crop duster's eye. There was also a groundhog out by the creek. And, more distractingly, he was thirsty. His tongue was like leather. His throat was burning.

Somebody knocked on the door. As the session instructor stepped out, a small piece of metal, a coin, hit the back of Ephraim's head. Ripples of laughter spread around him. Ephraim turned. A fleshy, uni-browed Redcoat was sitting behind him, leering. He was bigger than the others—considerably bigger. His hair was cropped in a dirty-blond flattop. Something was clogging his left nostril. His skin was pink. He smelled like a diaper.

“Hey, Zeke.” He pinched his nose, wincing. “Man, you stink like wild ass.”

The Redcoats laughed in quiet agreement. Expressionless, Ephraim peered around at them.

A voice cut in: “Don't worry 'bout them”—from a Beaver Street kid who was seated beside him. Ephraim looked over. The kid shook his head. He shifted, assuming a guarded air. “Check this out.” He looked both ways, turning his shoulder away from the Redcoats. He leaned forward, sliding his hand in one pocket. “Here.” He flashed a silver watch.

At first, it seemed like an English trinket, one of no particular worth …

Ephraim stared for a moment, unblinking.

Then something started to hold his attention—the radiant luster and glare of the band. His vision narrowed.

A wall of blackness flashed before him.

Behind him, the Redcoats were snickering still. But he couldn't make out what the fuss was about.

Then, as quickly, his focus returned. He nodded to the Beaver Street kid: “
How much?
”

“Fifty bucks,” he was told in a whisper.

Without hesitation, he dug into one of his pockets and pulled out a wad of bills. A collective gasp went up behind him. The sight of his money had filled them with awe.

Somebody whistled. Ephraim ignored it, quickly peeling three bills from the roll. He handed them off in open view. Out of nowhere, the Beaver Street kid looked nervous. He shoved the watch into Ephraim's hands. And no sooner done than Riggs,
the session instructor, poked his head back into the room. He pointed to the Beaver Street kid. “Pendle.”

The kid raised his hands, looking guilty as sin and ready to lie through his teeth, if needed. Everyone yukked and whinnied around him.

Riggs yelled: “Quiet!” Then to “Pendle”: “Come here.”

Smirking, the kid got up from his chair and swaggered slowly out of the room.

Unconcerned with him, Ephraim pulled on the watch and adjusted its silver band. Again, he was soon transfixed by the shimmering gleam of the metal, the points of reflected light dancing over his scope in patterns. Again, he couldn't make sense of the conversation going on around him. And again, a flashing wall of blackness engulfed his vision momentarily. Jumbled images coalesced in semidiscernible, grotesque profusion—visions of moving in darkness, pain, the tearing of mulberry thorns on flesh …

Returning, he sensed a level of muted alarm now filling the room around him. What had just happened? Where had he gone? How long had he been there? … He had no idea. He couldn't account for these fleeting lapses any more than the cuts on his arms, or the odor he seemed to be exuding, or all of this money filling his pockets …

The voices outside in the hall remained flat-toned. Riggs didn't glance back in for a follow-up. Ephraim sat quietly still in his seat while his Redcoat antagonist held back in silence. Only when the voices grew louder, more heated, did Ephraim begin to squirm uncomfortably. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. His shoulders twitched. His breathing quickened.

This only added to the sense of alarm. He could feel it around him, from everyone present. He knew he was making them terribly nervous—panting, fidgeting, flaunting money and buying a watch from the Beaver Street kid. Certainly, charging a trailer in Jonathan Becker's buggy was stranger still—an act for which, incidentally, he had been slapped with a routine drinking charge.
That part, too, would have left them guessing. Ephraim had gotten off easy, somehow …

But nothing would ever begin to contend with the spectacle set to unfold momentarily.

Fed up, annoyed or somewhat nervous (probably all three in combination), the Redcoat seated behind him tossed another coin at Ephraim's head. In a flash, before it hit the floor, Ephraim whirled, gripping the back of his seat and, to everyone's utter shock—even the Redcoats', who couldn't have known he was mute, and the Crossbills', who couldn't know otherwise—snarled, with his cuspids bared and his narrowed eyes in a flash, with conviction: “
Genug!
”

For the Redcoat, this would've been strange, to be sure—and obviously not what he'd been expecting.

Likewise, the Beaver Street League sat speechless, as though a phantom had just blown in.

Yet nobody could've looked more astounded than Gideon, Samuel, Isaac and Colin. For them, this would have brought into question the testimony of their own senses.

As though in corroboration thereof, Ephraim turned to address them directly. “
Sieht er nicht wie ein rosafarbener Gorilla aus?
”—he motioned to the Redcoat.

The Crossbills gawked in stupefied silence. For a moment, they couldn't breathe. There was stillness.

Then, blown away as they were, Colin and Isaac could no longer hold back from laughing. After all, it was true: that Redcoat
did
look like a pink gorilla. His skull was enormous, his skin was flushed and his nostrils were gaping, outturned chasms.

Ephraim peered into them, squinting one eye. “
Sie konnen fast Halfte die seines Gehirns von hier aus sehen
.”

Snapping out of their daze at last, the rest of the Crossbills exploded with laughter—soon to be joined by the Beaver Street League.

The Pink Gorilla sat gawking dumbly. He couldn't have known what was being said, but clearly, it ran to his expense …

Actually, the Crossbills seemed to be having their own deal of trouble following Ephraim. And
not
because of his use of language. After all, he was speaking a legible, however garbled High German. They had been raised on sermons in the mother tongue. The language would not have been lost on them. Beyond the fact that he was speaking at all, which would have been their biggest shock, the actual content of what he was
saying
, the tenuous links in the chain of images (threading wire into one of the Redcoats' nostrils and back out the other, like a “
Fisch au der Leine
,” then tying both ends to a bumper and dragging him down to a chunk of meat), had them gawking in proper disbelief.

The Pink Gorilla, on the other hand, was furious—and making no attempt to conceal it. By now, it was clear that what had begun as a one-sided leaning on a beat-up Dutchie who stunk like a roadkill and wouldn't speak English was taking a backfire turn for the weird, full of snickering gibes at
his
expense. He couldn't seem to figure out when, or why, the Plain Folk had started talking back …

At last, he stood.

As quickly, Ephraim rose to his feet, sneering greedily.

All around them, hooting went up.

Startled, Riggs looked into the room. “Quiet!” he yelled with a show of force. He looked at the Pink Gorilla. “Sit down. And
you!
” He pointed to Ephraim. “Come here.” Again, he turned his back on the class.

Ephraim blew the Gorilla a kiss and quietly whispered “
next time
” in English.

While turning away, he carefully pulled off the watch and slipped it into his pocket. Then, amid murmurs of wild excitement, he walked down the aisle and out the door.

Hanging his head, he presented himself to Riggs. The Beaver Street kid was gone. Riggs deferred to a short man in spectacles, forty and balding, dressed in a suit. He smelled like a courthouse. His bearing was firm.

“Ephraim Bontrager?” He spoke with civility.

Ephraim stared at the floor in silence.

(Termites were eating the wall behind him.)

Offering no introduction, the short man ordered him quietly: “Roll up your sleeves.”

Ephraim complied, presenting his arms on command. They were lacerated.

Looking them over, then turning each wrist, the man demanded: “How did this happen?”

Ephraim's gaze remained on the floor.

Finally, the man took a half-step back. He removed his glasses and leaned on the wall. Briefly, he closed his eyes and rubbed them, sighing in torn deliberation.

At last, he announced: “I'm taking him with me.”

Riggs shifted back on a heel. “For trial?”

“No.” The man shook his head with an air of beleaguered dismay. “He's going to the hospital.”

By Sunday morning, the property of Jonas and Marcelyn Kachel was all but immaculate. Hosting their district's worship service had called for extensive preparations. Abraham and Grizelda Hostler, along with their children, Hanz and Barbara, regarded the fruits of the Kachels' labor while rolling up their gravel drive. On one side, freshly churned soil ran clear to an empty stable yard; on the other, the last of the year's alfalfa stretched to the edge of a hickory forest. Ahead, a small wooden bridge passed over a creek, its bank cleared of stones and kindling. Beyond, two rows of empty horseless carriages stretched down a small dirt path.

Their buggy rounded a bend in the drive at the urging of two young men who stood waving. Abraham guided his steed past another row of horseless carriages, seven deep. He stopped before a sloped embankment that rose toward a Swiss barn's second-level entrance. He got out to help young Shamus Kachel unhitch the steed.

“Where's Fannie this morning?” the young man asked.

Grizelda heard Abraham answer. “Fannie's at home today, Shamus. She won't be attending.”

Together, they disappeared into the stables.

Grizelda, Hanz and Barbara waited. The yard around them was freshly raked.

Abraham reappeared from the barn. He walked down the bank to rejoin his family.

Across the drive stood a pair of corn bins. Their concrete flats had been swept of kernels. Behind them, an oak tree shadowed a pantry house. The Hostlers walked around it.

The Kachel home came into view—a three-storied farmhouse with pine-green trim and a tall brick chimney, overlooking a yard. Dozens of men in split-tailed
mutzes
and flat-crowned hats milled about on the grass—offset by the bright white caps of the married women, and the organdy capes of the girls—while the young people, clean as the morning air and on best behavior, crowded the drive.

With thirty-one families in District Seven, and worship being held in the homes of members on a fortnightly basis in constant rotation, each household might expect, realistically, to host one service every year. For the hosting family, this amounted to an annual inspection by the whole community. Preparations began several weeks in advance with weeding and hedging the property, barn repairs and home front maintenance—all, in the Kachels' case, on top of the already grueling demands of harvest—then winding down to interior work in the days and hours preceding the service—clearing out every article of furniture, save for a cupboard or two, on the ground floor, removing partitions between the rooms to accommodate over two hundred persons, then cooking, baking, cleaning, scrubbing, canning, washing, kneading, pleating: a lengthy and manifold undertaking, and one not to be carried out secondarily. Any failure to meet with accepted standards could be seen as a lack of devotion. The family was expected to shoulder the labors of preparation among its own. Aside from limited help in the kitchen, outside assistance was clearly discouraged.

So then, the question naturally followed: how was it, just as Grizelda had feared, that behind the assembly, on the farthest end of the yard, between a flatbed wagon and the side porch, bent beneath the weight of a prayer bench, Ephraim, in view of the whole district body, was hauling furniture into the house?

Not only would such preparations normally have been dispatched by one of the Kachels—as opposed to a young man in
Rumspringa
, who hadn't been baptized and, like his cohorts, normally wouldn't have attended this service at all—they would have been completed hours, days, even weeks before the assembly's arrival. The fact that Ephraim was even present could mean only one thing, as would have been clear: Benedictus had ordered his son to task as a public disclaimer, of sorts. Even though Ephraim's recent behavior had yet to be brought to the council's focus, his father had reached a verdict already and wanted to make his position known. In two weeks' time, this case would be ruled on. Until then, the boy was to be avoided.

Grizelda wasn't able to reach him in time. She got to the porch as the door swung shut. She wouldn't be able to go inside until Bishop Schnaeder gave the signal.