The Outcast (8 page)

Samuel and Helen ride the elevator up to the third floor, where their daughter lies in a hospital bed recuperating from severe blood loss and dehydration. As the elevator doors slide open, ushering them down the corridor’s maze, Helen reaches for Samuel’s hand in a demonstration of affection considered odd to them both. Still, their fingers
remain intertwined as they hurry toward Leah’s room and Helen knocks on the door.

Tobias opens it at once, his rumpled face relaying the feelings of anxiety and relief his eccentric in-laws somehow always bring.

Helen’s lips are poised to ask, “How is she?” but she can see for herself the pallid tone of her daughter’s features, the skeletal hands overlaid with parchment skin and an embroidery of thin blue veins. Clucking her tongue, Helen strides to the end of the bed and takes Leah’s feet in her hands. She presses her thumbs into the swollen arches, and Leah, still asleep, emits a soft moan.

Moving away from Samuel, whose one-track mind is causing him to discuss his latest set of matching ponies rather than his daughter’s health, Tobias looks at his mother-in-law and barks, “What’re you doing?”

Nothing about Helen acknowledges Tobias but her lips. “I’m seeing which of her organs are inflamed.”

Tobias’s thick eyebrows form a V over his eyes and his jaws clench. Striding over, he jerks the thin blue blanket over Leah’s feet. “I did
not
invite you down here to do witchcraft on my wife!”

It is easy to see where Rachel inherited her temper as Helen Stoltzfus looks up at the man towering over her and snaps, “I guess you invited me down here to watch her die, then.” She points to the machines clustered around the bed and the IV filtering fluids into her daughter’s arm. “These
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contraptions are only masking the problem; they’re not getting to the source.”

“And you think your powwow
doktor
ing can?”

Helen shakes her head. “It’s not powwow
doktor
ing, Tobias. It’s holistic medicine.”

“Still sounds like witchcraft to me.”

“That’s because you don’t understand it.”

Looking at Leah lying there in a shifting purgatory of wakefulness and sleep, Tobias says, “That’s not the only thing I don’t understand.”

Samuel drags a hand over his white beard. “I’m hungry.” He yawns.

Not attempting to hide his annoyance, Tobias asks, “I take it you want to go down to the cafeteria?”

Samuel nods and gets up from the hospital chair. “You want
anything,
Fraa
?”

Helen shakes her head. Only when she hears the sound of the door clicking shut does she feel like she can breathe again. Getting up and walking over to the suitcase, Helen kneels down, unzips it, and throws back the flap. She digs into the netted compartment where she packed her black tights. In the left heel of one pair she feels the small glass bottle. Glancing over her shoulder, trying to listen for the sound of the nurses’ rubber shoes squeaking across the tile, Helen rolls the bottle out of the tights, unscrews the cap, and gets to her feet.

If Leah were in her right state of mind, she would never drink this elixir of healing herbs. Helen knows this; that
is why she must work fast. Leaning over the hospital bed, Helen whispers, “Open your mouth,
Dochder
.”

Leah, always complaisant about everything except what Tobias has trained her to avoid, lowers her bottom lip and even smiles at the sound of her mother’s purposefully soothing voice.

“That’s right, my
meedel
,” Helen says, tipping the bottle’s contents into her mouth and then rubbing Leah’s throat, forcing her to swallow.

Leah’s eyes open. She grimaces at the bitter taste ballooning inside her mouth, and her bleary gaze comes to rest on the woman who is putting the cap back on the vial.

“Mammi?”
she rasps. “That you?”

“Yes,
meedel
.” Tears deepen the timbre of Helen’s voice. “I’m here.”

“What did you give me? What’s in the bottle?”

“Just a blend of healing herbs. . . . Norman Troyer made it for you.”

“You know Tobias doesn’t like Norman.”

“It doesn’t matter who Tobias likes or who he doesn’t. What
matters is getting you well.”

Leah looks down and plucks at her IV. “Why do you and Rachel despise my husband?”

Sighing, Helen sits on the edge of the bed and takes her daughter’s feet in her lap. “I guess the reason I get so angry with Tobias is because . . . well, because I feel responsible for your union. That letter—”

Leah holds up the hand trailing the IV and shakes her
head. “Please don’t bring up that letter again. What’s done is done. I’ve said my vows, and I will live by them until I die.”

Staring down at the bed to hide her fear, Helen rubs and rubs her daughter’s feet as if she can cure Leah’s ailments by her determination alone.

Rachel

Today is my first day working at Ida Mae’s Amish Country Store. Her only stipulations are that Eli and I dress as Amish as possible and that I speak to him in Pennsylvania Dutch whenever
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customers enter the store. I told her that dressing Amish is difficult, since all my Mennonite cape dresses are printed with tiny flower patterns, whereas Amish dresses are cut from plain cloth. Ida Mae just waved her hand and said, “Honey, nobody round here’s gonna know the difference.”

I just nodded and smiled, but I’m not as gullible as Ida Mae must think. I know she’s hired me more for decorative
purposes than for reflexology, though I am not about to complain. McDonald’s wouldn’t see my Plain heritage as a benefit, nor would they allow me to flip burgers with one hand and juggle my son with the other. Plus, $8.50 an hour just to sit around and mutter nonsense at Eli, whom Ida Mae placed in some Amish doll clothes and matching straw hat so he’d look “more authentic,” is not that bad. I have no need for pride, and if I raise Eli up the way I intend, neither will my son. As far as I have seen, pride’s never gotten the people of Copper Creek very far.

Ida Mae calls out, “Somebody’s comin’!” and reaches to turn up the CD player lilting instrumental hymns. Smoothing the green gingham apron over her bust, she sits up higher on the stool and runs fingers through her mop. Although Ida Mae has left the “Amish” garb up to me, whenever she’s in the store, she trades her tight Wranglers for an ankle-length skirt whose stretchy material suctions to her backside. Her muddied boots she trades for clogs, and her gray army jacket for a jewel-toned sweater over a red turtleneck.

“You ain’t the only one who can play dress-up,” she snapped when she caught me giving her outfit a double take over breakfast. “Tourists don’t wanna come in my store and see an ol’ biddy behind the counter. They wanna see their
grossmammi
, so that’s what I give ’em. I fawn over their young’uns. I hand ’em peppermint sticks and slivers of fudge in wax paper. I let ’em set in little tables and color in the Amish books I get from
Lehman’s. I’m telling ya, it makes the parents come back. Not just for my baked goods and pickled beet eggs, neither, but ’cause coming to Ida Mae’s Amish Country Store is an
ex-peri-ence
.”

Looking at my new employer now, smiling from ear to ear and calling out to the customer, “Velcome! Let me know if ve can help vith anything!” I have to agree.

The bleach-blonde woman wearing dark sunglasses on a sunless day, on the other hand, does not see the appeal. “Are these baked goods fresh?” she asks, poking the bread with one manicured nail.

“Fresh this morning,” Ida Mae says, even though I know she tugged them out of the freezer last night.

Pushing her sunglasses on top of her head, the woman squints at the ingredients on the baked goods label. “Shortening!” she exclaims. “But I thought
Om
-mish people cook organically!”

“Look at it like this,” Ida Mae says with a stiff smile. “Everything’s organic one way or another, even shortening.”

“I see,” the woman says, then flounces toward the door in her designer heels and lets it slam behind her.

Ida Mae looks out the window as the woman whips around the store in her champagne SUV. “I’m telling ya, Rachel-girl,” she sighs, “this organic kick’s really gonna do us in.”

“Then why don’t you tell Hostetler’s to bake organically? Couldn’t they just charge a little extra to cover the ingredients?”

Ida Mae rolls her eyes. “I’ve tried telling them that, but they’ve been using the same recipes since the days of Menno Simons. They ain’t ’bout to change their ways now.”

“Why don’t we do the baking? We’d just need a few really good mixers and ovens. I’ve been baking since I was a little girl. I know how it’s done.”

“I’ll think about it,” she says. “But I know one thing you
ain’t
gonna bake.”

“What’s that?”

Ida Mae slaps my back as a Frito-Lay truck pulls into the parking lot. “Cinnamon rolls!”

When the broad-shouldered trucker in the tan Carhartt jacket and steel-toe boots enters the store, the bell above the door is the only thing heralding his arrival. I find this strange, since Ida Mae practically fell off her stool trying to make the last customer feel “velcome.”

“How are you, Miz Speck?” the man asks, unmoved by her stony silence.

She takes out a ledger from beneath the table. Flipping it open, she begins entering debits with a red ballpoint and credits with a black one.

“Did that honey ever come in?”

Ida Mae points to the shelf without looking up.

“Is it local? I can only do local honey or it won’t help my allergies.”

Scribbling out an entry in the ledger, Ida Mae snaps, “Read the label.”

The man lumbers over and takes out a pair of glasses from his jacket pocket. Putting them on, he picks up the honey jar and scans the bottom. “Sure enough,” he says. “Bottled in Blackbrier, Tennessee.”

“So, you ready to check out?” Ida Mae asks like we’re about to close rather than just having opened.

The man shakes his head, his eyes crinkling up behind his glasses. “You sure are in a good mood,” he says. “I bet it’s that pretty sweater you’re wearing. Puts some color in your cheeks.”

“My cheeks and their color are none of your business.”

I would be cowering beneath the baked goods shelf if Ida Mae said these things to me and in such a threatening tone, but this man just says, “Oh, but I wish they were my business.”

Ida Mae slaps the ledger closed and glares up at him. “If you don’t come over here and pay for that honey right this minute,” she says from between clenched teeth, “I’m gonna get my new girl here to throw you right outta the store.”

Alarmed, I look at the man, but he just glances at me and smiles. “Why, that baby she’s holding’s bigger than her. She couldn’t throw out a brute like me.”

“You might be surprised,” Ida Mae says. “She was corn fed.”

Ambling up to the counter with his right hand tucked in the pocket of his jeans and the other holding the honey,
the man sets the jar on the countertop and I glimpse a wedding band.

“Can I writcha a check?” he asks.

Ida Mae nods. “Long as it ain’t rubber.”

Reaching in the basket beside the cash register, the man grabs a peach fried pie and sets it next to the honey. “I’ll take that, too,” he says.

Ida Mae says, “No, you won’t. Those things will give ya a heart attack.”

The man shrugs. “Already had two.”

“Like I don’t know it . . . you out picking ginseng seven miles from home.”

“And
you
keeping me in bed for a day rather than taking me to the hospital. Shoulda known you were trying to get rid of me then.”

My eyes dart between Ida Mae and this man as I try to understand the dynamics of their relationship. Maybe he’s her brother? But that doesn’t make sense because the look in the man’s eyes isn’t the least bit brotherly. No wonder Ida Mae is being so rude to him. She’s trying to deflect the attentions of a married man.

He finishes signing his name with Ida Mae’s black ballpoint and plinks the pen into the empty coffee mug next to the register. Turning the check over, Ida Mae stamps it with the store’s name and address and slips it into the bottom drawer of the cash register.

“You want your receipt?” she asks, tearing it off and holding it up.

The man shakes his head. “I never doubted you were honest.”

Ida Mae flips open the ledger again like she can’t wait for him to leave. Not until he
has
left (with his paper sack of honey minus the peach fried pie) does Ida Mae hit N/S on the cash register.

Pulling out his check, she inspects it under the fluorescent lighting as if it’s a counterfeit. “Ugh, that man. I can never read his writing. You mind?” she asks.

I nod and take the check. His cursive letters and numbers are equally difficult to read, but after a moment of compare and contrast, they become clear. “Two hundred and fifty dollars seems pretty expensive for honey,” I say. “Even if it
is
local.”

“That scoundrel keeps doing this,” Ida Mae says. “Paying for a little something, then giving me a whole bunch of extra money.”

I glance down at the check again, reading the name in the top left corner: Russell Speck, 317 Red Herring Road, Blackbrier, Tennessee 37842.

Speck, Speck. Somewhere I’ve heard that last name before; then I realize and look over at Ida Mae in confusion. “Russell Speck? Is he your brother?”

Snatching the check from my fingers, she rips it in two, and then in four. “No,” she says. “My husband. My
second
husband. And my first
ex
-husband. The other one, we didn’t divorce. He died.”

“How?” I ask.

She drops the check pieces into the trash can beneath the counter and wipes her hand off on her apron as if it is dirty. “That Russell Speck,” she says, “my second husband, my first ex-husband?”

I nod.

“Welp, he killed him. He killed my first husband.”

The words are out before I can think of how accusing they will sound: “Then why did you marry him?”

Ida Mae uncaps her red and black ballpoints and resumes entering debits and credits in the ledger. “It’s a long story,” she says. “And honestly, Rachel-girl, I’m in no mood to tell it.”

AMOS