Separate from the World (16 page)

And understanding what that meant nearly broke Cal Troyer in half.

 

 

Troyer pushed up from his knees with a weariness so heavy that he faltered. He rose up, turned around as Israel carried Albert back into the house, and saw Bishop Andy Miller coming slowly up the steps. Cal stood speechless before the bishop, and Miller laid a gentle hand on the pastor’s shoulder. He drew Cal toward the steps and walked down to the lawn with him.

Robertson said, “Cal, I’ve never seen anything like that.”

Andy Miller said, “We need to handle this our way, Sheriff. You need to let us minister to the boy.”

“We can take him to a doctor,” Robertson argued. “We can help here.”

“No,” said Miller. “Our ways are best. We know suffering. Our lives are supposed to be hard.”

Robertson said, “No offense, Mr. Miller, but that boy needs professional care. At the very least, he needs to be seen by a psychiatrist. He’ll need medical attention.”

Cal stood listening with his eyes cast to the ground. He heard Missy’s wagon start up and drive off.

Miller turned to him and said, “Do you know your Jonah, Pastor?”

Cal nodded his understanding, but he could not look up.

“Jonah 2:8,” Miller said. “All your medicines are worthless idols to me.”

Cal nodded, and Miller climbed the steps and went inside.

Robertson started after him, but Cal caught his sleeve and held him back with force.

Ricky Niell took a defensive step toward the sheriff, but Robertson raised a palm, saying, “No, Ricky. It’s all right.”

Cal let go of the sheriff’s sleeve and said, “There are no answers here for us, Sheriff. If he ever starts talking again, he won’t tell us any more than he already has.”

“What’s that?” Willa Banks asked from the side. “What has he told us?”

Troyer turned to her and said, “That it’s too terrible for a little boy’s eyes. That it’s too terrible for words.”

 

 

Willa Banks walked home alone to her trailer and shut herself inside. Robertson took Chief Deputy Dan Wilsher back toward Millersburg, saying, “I’m going back to see what Missy can find on the clothes.”

Ricky Niell followed in the second cruiser, leaving Branden and Troyer standing on the drive, next to the professor’s truck. Branden studied the closed front door of the house and said, “This can’t be his plan.”

Cal asked, “What?” consumed by sorrow.

“This can’t be his plan—the creep who took these kids, Cal. This can’t be his plan.”

Bitterly, Cal growled, “He’s already gotten away with it, Mike.”

“How do you figure that?” Branden asked.

“If the kids can’t describe him or can’t pick him out of a lineup, we’ll never get him. All he has to do is go away and stay away.”

“If you’re right,” Branden said, “then he’s already gotten what he wants out of them.”

“What’s that?” Cal asked.

“Don’t know.”

“It makes no sense,” Cal said. “He should have killed them. Most of these creeps would have killed them.”

“So,” Branden said, “he got what he wants, and he knows they’re so young and scared that they’ll never be able to help us catch him.”

“If you’re right and he has what he wants,” Cal said, “then what is that?”

Branden did not answer the question. He had nothing to offer. He looked back at the house, closed to the world of the English. “Jonah 2:8. What’s that, Cal?” he asked at last.

Cal recited, “
Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could have been theirs.
”

“What does that mean, Cal? Medicines are worthless?”

“No, Mike. He means that they have the grace to endure this without us. He means that they are made whole by their trials—so that grace may increase. He means that they’re not going to ask for our help. He considers our medicines to be worthless idols. For his purposes, here, they probably are.”

CAL WAS in no condition to handle the stark reality of the coroner’s labs, so Branden dropped him off at his church and drove back north to the hospital alone. As he entered the bright hallway outside Missy Taggert’s labs, he heard Taggert arguing with her husband about Albert Erb.

“Knock it off, Bruce,” she said, heat flaring in her tone. “I’d no more go back there now than jump out of an airplane.”

Branden pushed in through the door to the labs and found the sheriff standing in a far corner, by one of Missy’s stainless steel sinks. Missy had her palms planted on a metal examination table, elbows locked, and she wasn’t finished. As Branden came in, she added, “If I did go back to look him over, it’d cause him more harm right now than it’s worth,” and she eyed Branden as if to say, “You try talking to him!”

Branden understood the pressure Missy would put on herself now. To the sheriff he said, “You found a gutted beagle beside the road?”

“Yes,” Robertson said. “My people did, anyway.”

“So, that’s where he left his car when he went after the kids. That’s planning, Bruce. That’s a level of planning that’s pretty sophisticated.”

Robertson shook his head. “There’s got to be something, Missy. You’ve got to be able to find something on those clothes.”

“I know,” Missy said grimly. “It’s on me, now. If he gets away with this, it’s all on me.”

She lifted the Wal-Mart bag from the floor and pulled the items out one at a time. Starting with the larger items, she arranged first a pair of red cotton sweatpants, and then a Spiderman T-shirt, a pair of Jockey briefs in size 3T, and the pink flip-flops. She pulled her illuminated magnifying ring down from the ceiling and bent over to study the sweatpants.

“You boys clear out,” she said dismissively. “I’ll call you if I find anything.”

Robertson moved toward the door, but Branden stayed to ask, “Do you remember the Benny Erb case, Missy? The dwarf from the store in front of Israel Erb’s house?”

Distracted, Missy said, “Yes,” and moved the magnifying ring over to the Spiderman T-shirt.

Branden said, “That may not have been an accident.”

That took several seconds to register with her, but Missy looked up and asked, “What? Benny Erb, right?”

“You ruled that death accidental,” Branden said.

“And?”

“His brother says he couldn’t climb ladders anymore.”

Taggert’s eyes narrowed. “He had a broken neck, Mike. He pulled oatmeal off a high shelf, and he was covered in it. Off the top shelf, Mike. He would have needed the ladder to do that. Anybody would.”

Branden shrugged. “His brother says he couldn’t have done that.”

“Legs were stiff, short, like that?” Missy asked.

“Right.”

“It was little Albert who found him, Mike—one morning a couple of weeks ago. I examined the body myself. Benny Erb must have been up on that ladder. He hit his head, and his neck was broken.”

Branden said, “OK, you were there, and I wasn’t. But, still, Missy.”

Missy pushed back from her table shaking her head and said, “I don’t like this. I don’t like making mistakes.”

Branden said, “OK, maybe I’m wrong.”

“I wouldn’t be able to tell, one way or the other, Mike, unless there had been unusual bruising, something like that. Something to suggest force.”

PROFESSOR BRANDEN couldn’t shake the image in his mind. It was as if his lids were clicking camera shutters, his brain was film, and the print in his mind would not dissolve—Albert squeezing his eyes shut, tears running freely. After supper, Branden drove Caroline’s Miata out to the Nisley Road farms, with Caroline riding in the passenger’s seat. He wasn’t entirely sure why he was going there, and he wasn’t sure why he wanted his wife to go along.

When he turned into the Enos Erb driveway, they saw what looked like all of Enos Erb’s children out on the lawn, Mattie excepted. As soon as he pulled in, the two smallest children, maybe six and seven years old, got out of their sandbox and ran inside. Two slightly older girls stood by the swing set and watched the little sports car approach on the gravel drive. Their faces were as blank as the dead, but their eyes stayed fixed on the Brandens. They watched the English strangers roll toward them, then turned in eerie unison to hurry inside.

Two boys of grade school age stopped their game of volleyball. The older of the two put the ball on the ground and motioned for the younger to step under the net. Close together, they watched the car approach. Behind the house the Brandens could hear the drone of a gasoline lawn mower.

A girl of about fourteen years had been hanging clothes on a line beside the swing set, but when she saw the Brandens, she dropped her clothespins into her basket, left it on the grass, and went directly inside.

A lad of about eighteen came out onto the front porch and stood his ground, watching solemnly from above. When he whistled and waved, the two volleyball players walked into the house, never once taking their eyes off the two English in the car.

Behind his son on the porch, Enos emerged and came down the front steps, halfway to the lawn. There he stopped. He was in work clothes—dirty denim trousers, a dark blue shirt, a black hook-andeyes vest, a summer hat of cream-colored straw, and black leather work boots. A cigar creased his lips, and his eyes held a chill aloofness. He spoke quietly to his boy, and the lad went inside.

On the lawn lay the evidence of a family that had been trying to win back the normal. The volleyball, swing set, and clothes were now abandoned. The gas mower behind the house shut off, and that person no doubt went inside, too.

In the dwarf’s expression, Branden could read the timeless suspicion that all back-roads Amish harbor for the modern. He also saw assuredness there—a self-confidence that stemmed from a secure place in the world. A peacefulness that stemmed from faith. This was not the same Enos Erb who had come to his office at the college last Friday morning.

Enos stood on the front steps of his house as a sentinel, having pulled all his people inside before barring the gates of the castle. Branden asked Caroline to wait in the car, and he stepped up to Enos, eye to eye. “I think you’re right about Benny, Enos,” he said.

Enos shrugged indifference and said, “No matter. It shouldn’t trouble you now.”

“I just came out to tell you that I’ll find the man who did it. And the man who took the kids. I will, Enos, I promise.”

“No matter, Professor. You are very kind, but the harm is done.”

“Has Mattie started talking, Enos?”

A silent “no” from Erb.

“I don’t blame you for being bitter, Enos. Nobody would.”

Erb chewed his cigar pensively. “How could bitterness heal the girl, Professor?”

“You’re not bitter?”

Enos offered a pensive smile. “I am not permitted bitterness, Professor. That would harm the child more than she has already been harmed.”

Branden looked around the abandoned yard. “Have you gone with the Antis, now, Enos? Is that it? Is that what’s happened?”

Gravely, Enos said, “There are no Antis anymore.”

“What?”

“John Hershberger has confessed his sins to the bishop. The bishop has asked him to keep his people in the church.”

“Confessed his sins, Enos? What does that mean?”

“That’s between Hershberger and the bishop. We will all hear his confession Sunday, at services. He will be restored.”

“Enos, I don’t understand what you’re telling me.”

“Humility is the most beautiful virtue, Professor.”

“And Hershberger, Enos, what of him?”

“He seeks humility again,” Enos smiled.

“What has he done?”

“It doesn’t matter, Professor. The children are safe.”

“But they’re not talking, Enos.”

Enos evaded the professor’s point. “The bishop has decided that we will all hear John Hershberger’s confession.”

“Yes, I know. Sunday at services.”

“Humility is the . . .”

“Yes, I know—the strongest virtue.”

“No Professor. The most
beautiful
virtue.”

“Is humility the most beautiful virtue to Hershberger?”

“Confession is the beginning of humility, Professor. Confession is just the beginning, and that’s where John Hershberger will start again.”

Across the road, Mike and Caroline found the Erbs’ grocery store open late. Hannah Erb was behind the cash drawer, waiting for three customers to make their purchases. Two rang out quickly and left, but the third lingered in the aisle for dried fruits and roasted nuts.

The interior of the store was lighted by two round skylights and six white-glowing propane mantles hanging from brass fixtures in the ceiling. Hannah’s counter was a simple three-by-five plywood bench with an old crank-handle adding machine. On shelves behind Hannah were hats and bonnets. Down the aisles stood three floor-to-ceiling shelves, double sided, holding a wide array of dried and canned goods.

The flours were put up in clear plastic bags closed with twist ties. Higher up, the cereals were in ziplock bags. Dried fruits sat in barrels, with paper bags at hand. There were canned goods of the commercial variety—beans, carrots, peas, soups, fruit, and syrups—and local goods put up in glass jars by neighbors—fruits, vegetables of every description, jams, jellies, and peanut butter. The Erbs also sold a few household goods—brooms, clothespins, coffee filters, and can openers. In one corner they even had a display of kitchen utensils.

After the last customer had left the store, Caroline stood near the door and let the professor walk around. He found a ladder on wheels, the top hooked to a metal track, like a library ladder. He pushed it to the end of the aisle and climbed up to reach a plastic sack of oatmeal. At the top, he was nearly six feet off the ground, and the ladder was unstable.