The Brethren (7 page)
Authors: Beverly Lewis
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the stern looks on the faces of the brethren and others. Truth be known, I almost prefer avoiding the stress and simply going with Essie and the children to Julia’s church.
There’s more to that. You see, I’ve been listening right quiet-like when Essie talks about her “Lord Jesus.” I’m not saying that I agree with anything thus far, but something is happening inside of me. My heart Essie calls it my spirit is growing ever so soft to all her spiritual talk. And I’ve found myself whispering prayers at night instead of thinking the rote ones in my head.
I’m anxious to know what you think. Tell me if it’s the strangest thing you’ve heard from me yet. All right?
I look forward to getting your next letter. And I send you a dear hug over the miles.
Love from your Amish friend, Annie Zook
She placed a stamp on the addressed envelope before hurrying downstairs to help Esther with the noon meal preparations, dicing cooked potatoes for a big batch of potato salad she and Essie planned to take to the family of a sick neighbor that afternoon. “I can only imagine how this gesture of kindness will be received,” Annie said.
To this, Essie nodded. “We can keep giving even if the gift is refused.”
“You just amaze me,” Annie said, chopping away.
“Ain’t me.” Essie’s eyes glistened. “It’s God’s spirit in me.”
Annie was beginning to believe her, for there seemed no way Essie’s devotion to helpfulness despite continual rejection could be from anything other than a heavenly source.
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Ziek peered through the glass separating him from his visitor at the county prison. He leaned back in his chair and looked across at Jesse Zook, wearing his for-good clothes. “Hullo, Preacher. What’s the weather like out today?”
“Mighty nice, I daresay.” Jesse paused, a brief smile appearing. “A gut day to be in the clear, Ezekiel.”
“What’s that ya say?”
“You’re free to leave here. The court is releasing you to my custody.”
I’m in the clear? “How can that be?”
The preacher began to explain what the police had told him how the initial report on the bones had come back from forensics. “They aren’t at all what we thought. It’s downright surprising, but the bones are the remains of a sixyear-old girll They matched right up with a cold case, connecting a confessed serial killer to the dead girl.”
Zeke felt dizzy-headed. Was he dreaming? How could it be … Isaac’s bones were someone else’s?
Mighty strange if true, he thought, looking at his arm where they’d taken blood samples. They had taken snippets
78 of hair, too. Gotte Permission from the judge, he’d been told, although he hadn’t been needed at the courthouse on that particular day Something called a search warrant had been granted, ordered by the court and coordinated by the police.
“So, you’ve helped solve a long-ago crime,” Jesse told him.
Zeke stared at his feet they felt awful cold, right through his shoes and his socks, too. So were his hands, now that he tnouht on In a truth, he had been shivering endlessly for the Past few days
He knew he aught to raise his head and pay attention, so at last he did. befuddled.” Zeke knocked on his
chest with his fist.
“You’ll be returrnin to the People today. I’m here to take you back.”
Zeke shook hiss head’ “There’s no place for me now. … I tell you, everywherre I look I see blackness, Preacher.”
“You aren’t to blame for any killing, Zeke. Don’t you see,
this is not your doing
“The voice say so You Just don’t know.” Jesse frowned. “What’s that you say?”
“In my brain. IF hear it Preacher. Each and every day …
an accusing voice.
“This will all pass in due time once you understand you’re free. You had nothing to do with your brother’s death. That is, if he’s even dead, We don’t know one way or the other.”
“No … no, I am at fault’”
“You’re lying Zeke. Listen … you did not kill
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your brother as you supposed. The bones are not Isaac’s.”
Saying he’d meet him out front, Jessie excused himself, but Zeke continued to sit there until the guard came to remove his handcuffs. I’m goin’ home. And with the realization, he shuddered.
Annie was walking back to Essie’s after delivering the potato salad to the neighbor when she saw Yonie driving his car, with Daed and Zeke riding in the back seat, of all things! She stopped walking and watched as her brother made the turn into her family’s driveway. Well, what the world?
Then she understood. “Zeke is out of jail!” She ran toward the house, not thinking what she was doing. Even so, she couldn’t understand why Daed was bringing Zeke back here of all places … and why Daed had allowed Yonie to drive them. Ach, nothin round here makes sense anymore.
By the time she reached the yard, the three of them were making their way inside through the back door. Pausing to catch her breath, her brain began to spin through the possi’ bilities. Did Daed help Zeke out of his pickle? What could’ve happened?
Last she’d heard, Zeke had admitted to killing Isaac, which had never made sense to her. But someone’s bones
were part of all this. What of those?
Annie slowly walked toward the back door and slipped inside. Not wanting to eavesdrop because that sin was equal to most any other in the Good Book, according to her father, anyway, she made some noise in the outer porch, tak’ ing time to remove her sweater. Even with that amount of
80 rustling, the men continued to talk in the kitchen, seemingly unaware of her. Since she couldn’t be seen, she wondered what to do next. Cough? Shut the door again? Or were they so caught up in whatever they were doing they truly did not care if they were overheard?
What came out of Daed’s mouth just then shocked her no end. “You must cease your talk of being guilty, Zeke. Those bones aren’t Isaac’s. You are mighty troubled, is all. I’ll look after you here … till you’re better able to return to your family.”
Annie was glad no mention had been made of her staying with Essie. She was ever so sure Zeke wouldn’t take too kindly to that.
Zeke was saying something now, although she couldn’t quite make it out. Something to do with wanting Yonie to drive him somewhere.
No, no … not home to Essie!
Annie cringed as she listened, hoping Daed would put the nix on that.
“Listen to me,” Daed said. “It’s high time you got some rest and had a nice hot meal. You’ll stay upstairs in the Dawdi Haus for a few days. We’ll see how you’re doin’ after that.”
Zeke replied, “I wish I could see my wife … even just a glimpse of her.”
Annie cringed, felt the roots of her hair tingle on her scalp. Ach, say no, Daed! Essie isn’t ready to handle Zeke yet.
“We’ll see what the brethren have to say on that,” Daed told him.
“Jah. Always what the brethren want, ain’t?” Zeke’s
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speech sounded slurred, like he’d been drinking alcohol, though Annie couldn’t imagine how that could be. His words were biting, too. Wasn’t this man grateful to be out where the sun could shine on his ruddy face, send a ray of hope to his hardened heart? She couldn’t understand why Zeke had always been something of an oozing wound. He’d taken the loss of Isaac much too far, and now he was “mighty troubled,” according to Daed. What did it mean for her father to bring him home here to dear Mamm … and Dawdi and Mammi Zook, too? Where was the wisdom in this?
Feeling horrid about listening in and not wishing to hear more, she reached for her sweater and let herself silently out the door.
I must hurry and tell Esther! Oh, poor, dear Essie.
Everything would have been going according to plan by now. Ben would have applied to the Peace Corps and been making plans to leave home for overseas somewhere. Anywhere I can make a difference.
Instead he kept busy around the house for a few days, helping Mom with spring cleaning sweeping out the rain gutters, hauling large boxes of sorted clothing and other odds and ends downtown to the Goodwill, flipping mattresses, moving furniture, and taking down window drapes to be professionally cleaned. He did all this to pull his own weight, not wanting to leech off his parents while home. Well, while here.
Curious as he was, Mom had asked him to wait until Dad
82 returned from a business trip before they delved further into his past. Ben had sensed there was more to the adoption story-Much more.
The evening Dad returned, following supper, Ben sat brooding while Dad reclined in his favorite chair rustling with the paper. Ben reached over to the stack of books and magazines on the end table and idly pulled a few onto his lap. The top one, he noticed, was a Bible. He opened a sports magazine instead. Mom wandered over to sit with him on the sofa. “You’re a lost soul these days.” She touched his shoulder. “Is it so difficult to discover I’m not your first mother?”
He felt his pulse pound. It was not so much that as it was the secret withheld. His life. His right to know. “I’m reading,” he mumbled.
She eyed his magazine, then Dad. “I think you’d rather talk, son.”
He winced, not even attempting to keep the scowl from his face. This woman had been a party to deceit, as he saw it. He said nothing for a time, trying to find some memory from his distant childhood, wondering why it was easy to remember things that had happened when he was a few years older, like moving out of his childhood bedroom to make room for one of his sisters. But why couldn’t he remember anything from his earlier years not even an important event like a birthday?
Suddenly a strange memory scurried across his mind before disappearing again. This woman, his mom, handing him some new bright white shoes. He remembered looking at them in surprise, the shoes seeming so strange, so oddly
83 foreign to him. Why had he thought of that now? Why could he not recall the day of his adoption? Why could he not make heads or tails of any of this alarming news?
Mom spoke up, interrupting his thoughts. “We’ll tell you everything we know, Ben, though it isn’t much. I’m sorry we didn’t tell you sooner.”
“We both are, son,” Dad said, getting up and coming over to sit near Ben.
“Why was it necessary to keep my adoption from me?” He clenched his fists, looking at both parents.
Dad leaned forward, staring at his hands. “One thing led to another, Ben. That’s the only way to describe what happened.”
Mom shook her head and looked like she was trying not to cry. “Your father’s right. Nothing about your entrance into our lives was the way we’d planned.”
“Planned” … not “hoped,” but he decided the latter was precisely what she’d meant. They had most likely hoped for something, someone far different. Had they simply settled for him?
Dad inhaled slowly. “We were foster parents,” he said with some degree of pride. “Had just become eligible to care for children.”
Ben listened, furious with them, yet he yearned to know everything they knew and more. He longed to know why his mother his first mother or real mother or whatever it was
you called the woman who birthed you hadn’t kept him.
“I see it in your eyes, Ben. You despise the truth, but you do want to know,” Mom added.
84 He bit his lip. Why was this difficult? Why was he struggling so?
“We can’t let you simply imagine the rest,” Mom said.
He had to hear the story how it happened that he’d come to be adopted by the Martins. “All right, tell me. Tell me everything.”
“You officially became Benjamin David Martin,” his dad started, “six months to the day after your arrival on a stranger’s front porch in downtown Marion, Kentucky.”
Listening, Ben guarded his soul.
According to the Department of Social Services report, the wide-eyed boy was approximately four years old on the day he was discovered lost. He was too traumatized to speak, and for months they understood him to be mute, but not deaf. When he did finally talk, after the adoption was final and after months of therapy his language was considered a folk rendering of the Pennsylvania German dialect, or so said the linguist who had been hired to translate the boy’s terror-filled babbling. This meant he was from Pennsylvania or any of the other numerous states where the Pennsylvania Amish had migrated to find fertile land.
When asked his name, the boy answered in halting English only after much coaxing. “I … Zach,” he whispered. Short for Zachary, the linguist concluded.
Vague on his hometown and his parents’ names, the boy eventually hinted at having been taken against his will by a big Mann who frightened him. The boy knew little more, or at least was too disturbed to say.
The Martins received Zachary into their home while
85 officials searched for his family. But his description had never shown up on any missing persons report.
“So we kept you and cared for you,” Mom explained, “and your dad and I loved you so much we secretly hoped you might become our son. Then in a surprisingly short time, you were eligible to be adopted.”
Ben considered these puzzle pieces of his life, so foreign to him. How did they fit together with what he thought he knew? “I didn’t know where I lived?” he asked.
“No,” his father spoke up. “And even after extensive searching by the authorities, we never found out where you were from.”
“My parents never reported me missing?” How bizarre is that?
“We always wondered about that, as well. Made no sense … you were the most darling boy.” Mom looked at him fondly. “We thought perhaps you’d been orphaned. We had so little to go on. You wore ordinary clothes though they were very big on you, I remember. You had no identifying marks, no medical bracelet, no backpack of belongings that might have indicated your origins.”
Ben fiddled with the magazine in his lap, growing more and more frustrated.
“You carried nothing, Ben, except for an old peach stone in your pocket. You clung to it as if it were a prized treasure,” Dad said.
Staring at them now, Ben suddenly felt strangely disconnected from these people. Had he always been so completely unaware they were not related to him, or had he
86 known on some subconscious level? “You still have no idea who my parents were?”
“Sadly, no.”
He was beginning to think he must have been dropped off by the side of the road … dumped like some unwanted stray.
He leaned forward, staring at the floor. He recalled a nagging memory from the past a mischievous cousin’s visit, and Sherri and Patrice jumping all over the joke about him being adopted.
Aware of the silence, he asked, “Did my sisters ever suspect I wasn’t their biological brother?”
“Not that I know of,” Mom offered.
“Why did you change my name from Zach to Ben?”
Mom sighed. “I suppose that was selfishness on our part. Your Dad had always hoped … always planned … to name his son after his father, Benjamin David. When we adopted you, we had all but given up hope of having a son of our own. But you became our son. Our only son. You have to understand that we loved you as our own from the beginning, Ben. Still do. We became so attached to you, loved you so much, that we, or at least I, feared someone might try to take you away from us. You may think that paranoid, but I’ve talked to enough adoptive parents to know it’s a common fear. We wanted to give you a new identity as our son and, yes, to protect you.”
“Protect yourselves, you mean,” he whispered. He was moved by her words but fought the compassion that swelled within him, burying it under his pain, his feeling of betrayal.
“I don’t know how we kept it quiet for so long,” Mom
87 went on. “Your dad’s work associates knew, as did a few of my girlfriends. It was an enormous risk we took … and now I see it was so unnecessary.”
“A little late for that.” Wanting suddenly to be alone, Ben rose and hurried from the room, the books and magazine still in his hand. He tromped downstairs to his bedroom off the family room, where they’d moved him on his twelfth birthday, when he was old enough to want his own space. A boy needs his privacy, the man of the house had said. And they had all agreed their only son should move downstairs to the basement. More up than down, Mom had said. Funny he should remember that. In effect, she’d wanted him to know he was gaining ground, getting a much larger room his own bath, things like that. But with more space came more responsibility, he had been told.
Ben paced a while, did fifty fast sit-ups, then lay on his bed, staring at the window. Another memory fluttered through his brain, so short and insignificant he scarcely believed it was a memory at all. Green shades on windows in a long front room of a farmhouse. Was it Zeke and Esther’s house?
Restless, he picked up the Bible he’d inadvertently brought downstairs with him. He thumbed through it and his eyes fell on a Scripture he’d heard somewhere before. “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”
“All things?” he muttered, reading the verse again. “How can that possibly be?”
Feeling the need to get out of the house, he grabbed his keys and headed back upstairs and out to his car. In some
88 illogical way, driving over the winding country roads seemed to be a good idea right now. He was eager for the serene sight of thriving stands of trees and horses grazing on lush grassland.
“All the beautiful, simple things,” Annie had often said with a big smile on her sweet face. How he missed her!
What if he simply wrote her a short letter? Would that be so bad?
No, he reminded himself, I don’t want to cause her any more trouble.
Yet at this moment she seemed more closely related to him than anyone on the face of the earth.
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with the news of Zeke’s release, Annie’s emotions were a jumbled mire of relief, then worry, and back again. When she arrived at Hochstetlers’, Annie sat Essie down and told her in hushed tones everything she’d overheard about Zeke. “Your husband’s free… . The bones weren’t Isaac’s after all.”
Esther looked both numb and sad.
“I thought you’d be happy to hear this,” Annie said, intently looking at her. “Zeke’s innocent.”
Tears welled up and Essie turned away.
“What is it?”
Essie shook her head. “I can’t believe this. He’s out of jail, ya say? Comin’ home?”
“Well, no, not just yet he’s not.”
“Why not?”
“He needs some lookin’ after, according to Daed.” She explained that her father was handling things. That in due time, Zeke would return home again.
“So then, something’s still the matter?”
“Zeke’s a little mixed up, I guess. Still thinks he’s guilty. Might be best for my Daed to oversee him for a time,
90 especially with young children in the house here … and the baby.”
Essie burst out sobbing again. “And … each, Annie, another … on the way, too.”
Shocked that Essie should cry over such a thing, Annie didn’t know what to say.
“You daresn’t breathe a word …’cause you don’t know what the Bann requires of marrieds, Annie.” A frown on her face, Essie glanced toward the doorway. “And I’m not goin’ to say fully.” Essie nodded her head, hands shaking as she fumbled in her pocket for a hankie. “Zeke’s sin will be found out, is all. He’ll be shunned, too.”
Annie didn’t comprehend at first, but slowly she began to put it together, feeling terribly embarrassed as the light dawned. “I’m awful sorry for you both. Not ‘cause of a new life coming, not that at all.” She patted Essie’s arm softly. “Are you sure you’re expecting another wee one?”
“Jah. Now I am.”
Annie kissed Esther’s cheek and wiped away her tears. “Well, this is a good time to be puttin’ your newfound faith to work, ain’t so, dear one?”
That brought the sweetest smile to Essie’s face, and Annie took heart, hoping she hadn’t spoken out of turn.
At noon the day after his release, Zeke sat stiffly in the small front room of the Zooks’ Dawdi Haus. Preacher Jesse’s parents had vacated the room a quarter hour before, making their way feebly over to the main house. Zeke had watched them without offering to assist, not because he didn’t want to
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but because he felt too weak to move. By now they were surely preparing to sit down for dinner. Ze he, however, had no desire to eat, having refused all offers of food and drink since coming here. He was not at all inclined to change his mind on that point.