The Outcast (15 page)

As Samuel walks into the arena leading one set of matching bay ponies and one set of dun, his face reddens and his once clear-blue eyes water. He draws his right hand up to his chest, the nostalgia in his gaze replaced with confusion and pain, and I watch his body topple forward onto the freshly strewn dust. The two sets of matching ponies go nowhere. They just lean down with their silken manes draping him and snuffle and huff at his pants and shirt. The horse dealer’s collapse takes place in the smallest fragment of time, and then the quiet reverence that had permeated the auction returns to its previous noise. A few of the men who’d been holding the next set of Samuel’s horses run across the arena and turn Samuel onto his back. They pound on his chest and blow hard into his mouth, but it is obvious they do not know what they are doing.

A woman’s voice cuts through the din. “Somebody call the doctor!”

Samuel’s family has just reached the corral entrance when its gate opens. Rachel’s eyes fill as she watches the man with a black hat and a long white beard force his body to move faster across that arena’s floor than it has moved in a quarter of his lifetime.

When the silver braces supporting his arms assist the man enough that his legs are able to reach Samuel, he collapses onto atrophied knees and takes a small white bottle
from his pants pocket. He twists it open and pours one of the capsules into his hand. Tucking the capsule under Samuel’s tongue, he reaches for the water bottle one of the corral keepers has brought. He squirts some liquid into Samuel’s mouth and massages his throat.

The Stoltzfuses and Kings have just made it to Samuel’s side when Tobias eyes the white bottle with suspicion. “What did you give him?” he asks.

Norman Troyer looks up and smiles without a trace of annoyance. “Nitroglycerin,” he says. “Samuel’s not the only one with heart trouble.”

Rachel

Tobias and I were arguing near the concession stands when my
dawdy
collapsed in the arena. I had walked over to get a cup of cocoa when Tobias tapped my shoulder and said, “We need to talk.” The last thing I wanted on little sleep and less patience was to have a conversation with a man whose very presence made my blood run cold.

“Sure,” I said, faking a smile. “Let me get my drink.” After stirring the cocoa powder into the hot water with a plastic stick, I threw the stick in the barrel trash can and said without looking at him, “All right. What is it?”

“I don’t want Eli going to that witch
doktor
.”

“And I don’t think what I do with my son is any of your business.”

Tobias’s jaw throbbed. “He’s still
familye
.”

“Really? I didn’t know it was common practice to force family out into the streets.”

Looking back at the arena and then down at me, he hissed, “You know very well you were not out in the streets!”

“That’s because Ida Mae was kind enough to take us in.”

“Judah would’ve taken you in if you had let him.”

“If I had let him?” I could feel my entire body flush with anger. “You ruined
any
chance Judah and I had!”

“Keep your voice down!”

“I am
not
the one who wanted to talk in the first place. I will not be told to keep my voice down!”

It was at this point we noticed the strange silence blanketing the arena, which was only magnified by the volume of our words.

“What’s happened?” I tried forcing my way through the throng of people, but they all seemed taller than I. “Tobias, what do you see?”

He turned around, his face ashen. “Your
vadder
,” he said. “There’s been an accident.”

My mind bloomed with the image of my
dawdy
in the barn after the stallion had kicked him: how blood, dark as oil, had drained from his ears and puddled on the concrete floor. Standing there, viewing such a horrific sight, I had thought for sure that
Dawdy
was dead or that he was in the midst of dying. His accident took place years before Eli was
conceived, but even then I regretted the things he and I had never talked about, the things I wished I’d never said. If I’d heeded that call to mend the chasm silence had created, could a few words have made a difference? Or would my
dawdy
have dismissed my emotions as easily as he had dismissed me?

“Is he okay?” I cried. “Talk to me, Tobias. Tell me what you see!”

“He’s not moving.” Tobias turned and wrapped his hand around my arm. “C’mon, we must reach him before your
mudder
.”

I jerked free of his grasp. “Don’t you touch me!”

Leah’s husband dragged a hand over his beard. “Fine,” he muttered before marching through the crowd.

The doctors claim Norman Troyer’s quick use of nitroglycerin was what opened my
dawdy
’s blocked arteries and saved his life. Even though his heart attack was minor enough that he could eat the
supp
and pie my mother brought along in the ambulance, hospital policy requires him to remain under their observation for the rest of the night. Leah and I offer to stay, but everyone can see that we are as exhausted as our children. So the night watch will be shared between Tobias, Norman Troyer, and
Mamm
, who is just as tired as we are, but she won’t hear of leaving
Dawdy
on his first night after the heart attack.

“I don’t want to stay in this
ferhoodled
hospital!” my
dawdy
rages, picking at the regulatory gown. “Anyone with two eyes in their skulls can see I’m good as new!”

“Now, Samuel,” our
mamm
chides in the same voice she used when Leah and I were children, “you know the
doktors
are just taking precautions.”

Seeing that Tobias is distracted by my
dawdy
, I touch Norman’s elbow and ask if I could speak with him outside. The day’s physical toil must have worn him out, yet Norman staggers onto his distorted feet.

“You worried about your
vadder
, Rachel?” he asks as we enter the hall, his light eyes kind.

I shake my head and jiggle Eli on my hip. “No, Mr. Troyer, I’m worried about my son.”

“Your son?” Norman uses the braces to move closer and peers down into Eli’s eyes. Six hours ago, when my
dawdy
’s heart attack occurred, Eli was in dire need of a nap. Now he is tired beyond all reason. This perusal from a stranger causes his bottom lip to quiver before his mouth opens up in a rattling cry.

“Hear that?” I ask Norman, although there is no doubt he can.

“May I?”

I pass Eli to Norman, who places my son’s small chest flush against his own.

“What do you think’s wrong?”

Norman Troyer lifts up the hand not supporting Eli and looks down, listening rather than responding to me. Next,
he holds my son out with hands tucked beneath his armpits and tries to peer into Eli’s eyes. But Eli only screams louder, chokes, and pedals his hanging legs as if trying to climb higher to breathe.

Finally, Norman passes Eli to me and shakes his head. “I don’t know what’s wrong. Your son’s crying too hard to look into his eyes, but from the way he’s breathing, I can tell he’s not getting enough oxygen into his lungs.” Norman looks into my eyes as if trying to read the navy rimming the cornflower blue just like, seven years ago, he tried to read my
mamm
’s. “Perhaps, Rachel, you should take Eli to see the
doktor
?”

“But aren’t
you
a doctor?”

Norman spreads long fingers across the blue shirt spanning his chest. “In a way, yes. I look into people’s eyes. I prescribe herbs that can soften the effects of rheumatism, take the edge off menstrual cramps and migraines. Your son, though . . .” Norman runs a finger down Eli’s tearstained cheek. “Your son, I fear, needs more knowledge than I have to give.”

The past seven years, my faith in Norman Troyer’s knowledge has convinced me that holistic medicine is the remedy for every ailment under the sun. Now, looking at the self-doubt lurking in his eyes, I find my faith beginning to wane. “What do you mean?” I ask. “What do you think’s wrong?”

Norman stares at the wall adorned with a print of a seaside landscape shaded in a color spectrum only known
to man. “Has Eli been fighting colds, coughing up mucus, or having difficulties breathing at night? Has he recently lost weight or had fevers, night sweats?” I stop nodding as his words rumble in my ears. “Have you noticed that any of his lymph nodes are swollen?”

My vision floods. Norman’s face transforms into someone I cannot recognize. “What are you saying? That my son’s really sick?”

Norman shakes his head. “No, Rachel. I’m not saying anything like that. I just don’t think it’d hurt to have your son checked out by a
doktor
when you get home.”

Leaning against the wall with Eli in my arms, I realize that everything bad seems to take place inside hospital facilities such as this one. “But why, Mr. Troyer, have you given up faith in holistic medicine and placed it in
here
?” I gesture to a harried orderly wheeling down the corridor with a cart of evening meals covered in white domes like spaceships.

Norman Troyer smiles. “I haven’t.” Taking out the nitroglycerin bottle he keeps in his pants pocket, he rattles the contents and says, “Sometimes, I just think you do not have to choose one over the other. I think, when treating an illness, you can apply a mixture of both.”

Gerald Martin drives Leah and me home from the hospital around ten o’clock. He then grabs his small duffel from beside the couch and leaves to stay at his family’s home in
Lititz because Tobias thought it improper for Gerald to remain behind with us. Watching through the storm door as the van lights cut across the driveway, I roll my eyes and sigh at the hypocrisy of Tobias’s request.

Leah sets a kettle on the stove for tea. “What is it?” she asks.

“Nothing.” Rummaging through the cupboards for something to eat, for I haven’t touched a morsel since lunch, I find an old Good’s potato chip tin filled with oatmeal cookies. I take a bite of one, and the cookie crumbles into a hundred pieces despite the
budder
meant to keep it together. “
Mamm
’s still using the same recipe,” I say. “Even after all these years.”

Leah doesn’t turn, smile, or nod. Stepping closer, I can see by the light of the kerosene lamp hanging overhead that her small shoulders are shaking.