Separate from the World (10 page)

Branden stopped her with a palm in the air. “You lost me with transcriptional.”

Lobrelli seemed puzzled, distressed to think that her drawing had not been clear.

“It’s the Amish,” Branden said. “How are the Amish involved?”

“Well, they’re not, really,” Lobrelli said, and erased her drawing slowly.

“You’ve taken blood samples?” Branden asked. “It’s genetic research?”

“Well, the blood samples aren’t part of our main research, really,” Lobrelli said. “I’ve got some students who are tagging blood samples for recessive genes, and Amish prove to be good subjects for that, but it’s not part of my research. It’s a studentinitiated project, really. Cathy Billett was in charge of it, as my teaching assistant. I made it available as extra credit in my genetics class.”

“Why the Amish?” Branden asked.

“They intermarry,” Lobrelli said.

“And that’s something that causes a genetic problem,” Branden said.

“Right. So we map that with our blood samples and our genealogy charts.”

Branden hesitated, perplexed by the discrepancy between her account and Erb’s. “You’re not looking for a cure?”

“No, it’s just research, Mike. Even if we found a perfect transcriptional RNA activator, it wouldn’t reverse anyone’s symptoms. We’re not medicinal here.”

“But you are studying genetics for the Amish, looking for a cure,” Branden said.

“We just do the fundamental science, Mike, on isoxazolidines. It’s strictly laboratory research—biochemistry. You know, the transcriptional activators. The cures come later. We always explain that to them when the Amish ask about it. That the drug companies might come up with a cure farther down the line. On the side, then, I also have my genetics class mapping genetic disorders by taking blood samples and investigating genealogy. But that’s jut a class project, designed to enhance their educations. Nothing will ever really come of it.”

“And Cathy Billett was in charge of that?” Branden asked.

“As my teaching assistant, yes.”

“In the genetics class. OK. And that’s separate from your research?”

“Very much so, Mike. We do fundamental research, in our laboratories. The drugs may become available fifteen to twenty years down the road, but that’s not guaranteed.”

“I’m not sure they get it, Nina. I think some Amish people expect you to develop gene therapy for them. You know—a new drug, right now.”

Lobrelli shook her head vigorously. “Let me show you my latest grant proposal.”

“No,” Branden said and laughed. “I’m not the one for that. I’m curious, though, how you got Amish people to cooperate with you.”

“Oh,” Lobrelli said, disappointed not to be able to explain her research. “OK, well, I got to know a fellow because he was working with Aidan on a psychology project. Upstairs. He does his interviews on the second floor.”

“A dwarf?” Branden asked.

“Yes, but he died.”

“Benny Erb.”

“Yes, Benny,” Lobrelli said. “I met him in Aidan’s office one day. Benny asked me about my research.”

“So, Benny Erb was your first contact.”

She nodded. “I got the idea that we’d do some gene mapping of the population. You know—incident rates for certain genetic disorders. Benny was a dwarf, so that’s where it started. Dwarfism is a common genetic disorder among Amish people.”

Branden said, “His brother is a dwarf, too.”

“I know,” Lobrelli said. “Enos.”

Branden thought for a moment, hesitated, and asked, “Did you uncover other disorders?”

“Why are you interested?” Lobrelli asked.

“I’ve gotten to know Enos a little,” Branden said.

Lobrelli said, “Well, there’s a rare skin disorder in Holmes County.”

“Anything else?”

“Parkinson’s,” Lobrelli said. “At twice the national rate.”

“But there’s medicine for that,” Branden observed. “I’ve read about that.”

“L-DOPA, Mike. It’s effective, if you take it on a regular basis. If you start early.”

“What about Amish who spurn medicines like that?”

“It’d cut their survival rates in half.”

“And you’re not developing medicine?” Branden asked. “Not really doing medical research?”

“We do basic science, here, Mike. I let the big companies figure out the drugs.”

PROFESSOR BRANDEN drove out to the Erb farms near Calmoutier and turned left onto the Israel Erb property. Immediately to his left, he found a gravel parking lot in front of a small grocery store with red board siding. He pulled into the lot and parked.

The building was old, with small black metal push-tilt windows on the front. He found the single wooden door locked. The windows were pushed out and open. Looking in, he found it was dark and silent inside.

Behind the store, Branden followed a narrow concrete sidewalk that angled across the drive to a large main house of brown brick, standing two and a half stories high over a weathered stone foundation. The concrete walkway took him along the west side of the house to a back porch in the angle created by a wood frame addition that was fully a third the size of the main house. On the back of the addition, there were two smaller structures attached in sequence, with little covered porches in front of matching single doors. Each appeared to be an apartment no larger than a sitting room.

Branden mounted the steps to the back porch and knocked on the screened door. He got no answer. There was light from several lamps inside the house. Past drawn purple curtains, a movement caught the corner of his eye. But no one came to the door.

The family garden on the other side of the drive was situated behind the grocery store. There was no one working in the garden. No kids playing in the yard. There was no workaday noise on the farm, he realized. No lawn mowers growling, no buggies moving, no work at all. On an Amish farm as large as this, there should have been activity. Instead it was as still as a prayer.

Pushing aside a mounting unease, Branden reasoned that someone must be inside. He tried another knock on the back door. He got no response.

Back in his truck, Branden crossed Nisley Road to the Enos Erb farm. On the gravel drive by the main house, two older Amish men in a conservative black buggy had pulled up to Enos, who was standing on the front lawn, with his eyes cast to the ground at his feet. Branden stopped his truck a dozen yards back and switched off the engine. The older of the two men in the buggy looked straight ahead, neither talking to Erb nor acknowledging him. The other man spoke to Erb in a stern and authoritative voice, in the low Dietsche dialect of the county.

Enos Erb looked as miserable as a scolded child, but the stern man kept talking, unconcerned about the dwarf’s embarrassment. Next to the buggy, Enos was childlike in size. Even a man of average height would have been mortified, Branden judged, to be spoken to in this fashion by a man sitting so imposingly far above him. Enos no doubt was stricken.

The men in the buggy bore the attitude and posture of leaders accustomed to steadfast obedience. They were evidently habituated to accepting the rightfulness of stern decisions and commands. To accepting the rightfulness of harsh measures and absolute authority. And Enos Erb appeared to Branden to be completely overwhelmed by their words.

When the two men had finished talking to Erb, the elder of the two whipped the horse to a labored gait that took them past the professor quickly. Neither of the men acknowledged Branden, who pulled his truck forward as Enos was climbing the steps to his front porch. He got out of his truck just as Enos reached up to open the front door, and by the way the dwarf ’s hand hesitated on the doorknob, Branden knew that Enos was aware of him. Branden used that awkward pause to ask, “Enos, where’s your brother? Where’s his family? What’s happening?”

Enos held himself motionless in front of the door for a long five seconds, with his back to the professor, head bowed. Then he went inside without turning around or giving an answer, and Professor Branden found himself standing alone on a second farm that had fallen completely silent. Looking nervously around, he sought the normal—a buggy rolling on the drive, kids working or playing, a daughter hanging clothes on a line, a son chopping wood, the ping of a hammer against metal, the whinny of a horse—and found none of it. Instead he heard the silence of mourning—the mute intensity of the dead. It would have made sense to him only if the windows had been draped in black for a funeral.

Behind him, a woman said, “They’re not coming out, Professor.”

He turned to see a dowdy woman approaching across the lawn on awkward legs. She had puffy cheeks and fat arms. She was dressed in a faded red dress and a light blue, waist-length windbreaker. Her white knee stockings had bunched at her ankles, and her hair was a matching ultra white. She was shaking her head.

“That was the bishop, Professor,” she said and stuck out her hand. “He’s laid down the law, for sure.”

Branden took her hand and said, “You know me but . . .”

“ ‘But I don’t know you,’” the woman interrupted, finishing his sentence for him. “I’m the neighbor, Willa Banks.”

Branden held her hand for a moment, released it, and said, “Then you know me because of . . .”

“Pictures in the paper,” Willa finished for him.

A sentence finisher, Branden thought. “Then that was ...” he led.

“The bishop, Andy Miller, of course, I already told you that. He had his little toady Eli Mast with him.”

“And the preachers in the district are . . .” Branden started.

“Toady Mast, for one,” Willa said. “Preacher number two is John Hershberger. He’s splitting off a group of Moderns over the question of medicine.”

“Andy Miller asked him to leave the congregation?”

“Better off!” Willa sang. “Andy Miller is as close to those dirty Schwartzentrubers as you can get and still buy your groceries at a market.”

Branden stated, “You don’t like him very much.”

“Can’t stand him!” Willa spat. “He’s got poor little Enos so flabbergasted that he can’t tend his farm. They’re all holed up in there, you can believe that. And the same across the way.”

Branden waited, figuring he’d get more.

Willa Banks stood on the lawn in front of the Enos Erb farmhouse and started right in on the bishop, wagging a finger at Branden. “Miller has been going around to all the Moderns, telling them that they’ll be excommunicated if they side with Preacher Hershberger. He’s got Enos so worked up I think he’s gonna pop a cork. There’s families all up and down this road who have got to decide—and I mean right now—whether to stay with Andy Miller and Toady Mast, or go with Hershberger.”

Branden looked off in the direction from which Willa had come, and he said, “Your place is . . .”

“Next door, Professor. Right next door. They’re all so secretive and all, these Amish, and they think nobody out here can see what’s really going on. And that Miller lost a daughter to Parkinson’s. Because he wouldn’t pay for medicine, the cheap, miserable puke! Pardon my French.”

Branden started walking toward Willa Banks’s property. As she turned to walk with him, he said, “Enos is a Modern. Israel is Anti . . .”

“And that’s going to be real trouble,” Banks said, and fell in beside the professor.

Walking slowly, Branden said, “Israel’s place is all closed up, too.”

Willa laughed coarsely. “Not his store, I’ll bet.”

The professor did not correct her.

Banks walked him through a narrow stand of trees dividing the properties and came out the other side in a field of strawberries. Here, she guided the professor around the perimeter, saying, “I let the Erb children pick strawberries. Brings in a few bucks each year.”

They walked the edge of the field fronting Nisley Road and came up to Willa Banks’s double garage of corrugated aluminum. She led him around to the front door of a battered double-wide trailer, faded green on the outside and furnished in an outdated orange and brown “modern” style from the fifties. Before he could take the place in, Branden found himself planted deep in a sticky upholstered chair that might have been salvaged from a dumpster. The little living room where he sat was as dingy and tattered as the old rug at his feet. The color scheme was numbingly consistent. What wasn’t orange was brown. Even the shades on the table lamps were yellowed by age to a disconcertingly dirty brown hue. The professor found himself thinking of a shower. Thinking of burning his clothes. Maybe a treatment for lice.

Willa stepped behind a curtain and came out to hand Branden a can of beer. She popped the top on her own can and drank eagerly before wiping the back of her hand across her lips. Branden’s every instinct was to pry himself off the cloying fabric of the chair and find his way back to his truck. But something kept him pinned where he sat. As he struggled to understand what that was, he reminded himself of the silence. It was the same complete silence at both farms. Perhaps it was the silence of fear. Or it could have been the silence of withdrawal—something that Bishop Miller would require of his people. A silence of pulling inward for safety from the English, in general terms, but was it something else?

“The two little cousins know better than all of them,” Willa said, breaking into his thoughts. “They sneak over here to play.”

Branden waved Willa Banks to a chair and took a polite sip of his beer.

Willa asked, “You a biochemist, too, like Lobrelli?”

“No, I’m in history,” Branden said. “You know Nina?”

“Not really, but I’ve heard a lot about her.”

“From . . .” Branden led.

“From her students, of course. They all come to see me eventually, on account of I know the scene out here. I know all the kids, all the teenagers, all the parents, and more. Been here thirty-three years. Right here in this trailer. Sooner or later, all those college kids figure out that they have to talk to me to find out what’s really going on.”