by Gaus, P. L.
The thump of heavy boots approached the professor’s door. Branden nodded at Mallory and called out, “Come in.” When Mallory stepped aside, Branden saw an extremely short man in a hand-made blue denim suit of the Old Order Amish.
The dwarf’s graying chin whiskers were long and unruly, lying on his chest. On his head was a black felt winter hat with a perfectly round, three-inch brim and domed crown. His white peasant blouse was tied loosely at the neck. Over it he wore a black vest fastened with hooks and eyes. His work boots were muddy, and his clothes, though not too worn, carried the look of constant labor. Round silver spectacles sat on the end of his nose, and the tops of his white ears poked out through his hat-matted hair. His stunted fingers, creased and calloused, were accented under the nails with the rich black loam of a peasant farm.
Branden stepped around his desk, bent at the waist to offer his hand, and took the little man’s puffy palm and stiff fingers into his. The dwarf seemed embarrassed to shake hands, but he shook nevertheless, and asked, in a high, reedy voice, “Are you that professor friend of Cal Troyer’s?”
Branden offered the Amish man a chair in front of his desk, and said, “I am Professor Michael Branden. Cal Troyer is my best friend. And this is Lawrence Mallory, my assistant.”
Mallory eased past the little person, saying, “I’ll check on that coffee,” and disappeared into the outer office.
The Amish man nodded gravely to Branden’s answer and hopped up onto the front edge of the seat. With his legs swinging free, he asked, “What about Sheriff Robertson?”
Branden laughed, the first relaxed and unguarded thing he’d done that morning, and said, “The sheriff is my best friend, too.”
The little man gave a shrug that said, “That seems reasonable, I guess,” and followed that with, “I know Caleb Troyer. Can’t say as much for the sheriff.” Smiling, he added, “It’s a happy man who has two best friends.”
Branden pulled a wooden office chair over, sat down beside his visitor, and said, “I expect you’re not here to question me about my friendships.”
“Just wanted to be sure I had the right professor,” the Amish dwarf replied.
Branden held his peace, and watched the man turn the brim of his black felt hat through his hardened fingers. The professor knew not to push. This might take some time; it might require the Amish kind of time. This fellow would surely need some encouragement before he warmed to his purpose. Branden happily mused that he would have to wait the Amish man out. In truth, he was grateful for the distraction of a slow, deliberate conversation—an oblique Amish-English give and take, until the man was certain that Branden could be trusted. The dwarf would take it slowly, and Branden’s morning would not spin along on rapid English time. There was good reason now to ignore those remaining blue books on the desk behind him. At least for a spell.
But Professor Branden was wrong. Direct as an Englisher, and blunt as a cold stone, the little man fixed his gray eyes on the professor and said, “I think my brother was murdered.”
3
Friday, May 11 9:00 A.M.
WHEN LAWRENCE brought in two mugs of coffee, Branden was studying the Amish man’s eyes for the turmoil and intensity behind the dwarf’s surprisingly frank words. But that very English frankness had quickly been replaced by Amish diffidence—the plain people’s peaceful resignation to life, which accepts tragedy and fortune as flip sides of the same coin. It is a particularly Amish brand of fatalism, bordering on Zen, and Branden knew it well.
In his Amish self, this man would consider that life and death signified nothing more remarkable than the chance flip to heads or tails. Flip the coin one way, and there was life; flip the other way, and there stood death. We live; we die. It is in God’s hands. To understand this is to practice humility—Demut—the most beautiful virtue—de schönste Tegund.
But Branden had also seen a flash of English hunger when the man had spoken. It was a cold, hollow hunger for English justice, and it would be a sin of contemplation if shown openly to his Amish brothers and sisters. The little man had come in search of the kind of justice that the English world could give him. That Branden, Troyer, and Robertson could give him. And this was a very non-Amish thing for him to have done.
Cocking a hip off his chair, the dwarf fished in his side pocket for a wadded cotton handkerchief. He took off his spectacles, cleaned the glass, and stuffed the handkerchief back into his pocket. Palms raised, he shrugged his shoulders and said, “No one knows I am here.”
Branden accepted a mug of coffee from Lawrence and asked the Amish man, “Do you like coffee?”
The man smiled, said, “Yes, it puts a bounce in my step,” and accepted the other mug from Lawrence. Finding the mug too hot, he handed it right back to a startled Lawrence and again fished his handkerchief out of his pants pocket. Then he reached out for the mug, taking the handle in the stubby fingers of his right hand and cradling the bottom of the mug on the wadded handkerchief in his left palm. As Lawrence was leaving, he turned in his chair and said, “Thanks for the coffee.”
Mallory stopped in the doorway to say, “Sure. There’s more, if you like it.”
The professor set his mug on the front corner of his desk, and said, “You have the advantage of me, sir. You know my name, but I don’t know yours.”
The little man laughed, hoisted his mug to his lips, sipped, and said, “Enos Erb. Of the Samuel Erbs. Brother to Israel and Benjamin. I’ve got the farm across the road from Israel’s, out at Calmoutier. He’s farming the homestead lands. It’s Benjamin, ‘Benny,’ who’s dead.”
“Benny was Samuel’s son? Samuel is your father, too?”
“Yep. Our father is Samuel, and our mother is Annie. Benny lived in an apartment next to the Grossvater Haus we built for our parents when Israel took over the big farm. Benny never married, so he stayed on with Israel. Israel and I support them all. Plus Lydia Weaver, who is Hannah’s sister.”
“And Hannah is?”
“Israel’s wife. She’s a Weaver. Daughter of David and Vesta Weaver. David has been dead for nearly fifteen years. Hannah’s mother, Vesta, lives with the Levi Klines down the road—with Hannah’s sister, Mary, who married Levi Kline.”
“And you’ll have other siblings,” Branden offered, and took up his coffee again.
There was an outcry from someplace on campus, perhaps at the far edge of the oak grove, Branden thought. He pictured the seniors starting their revelries, finished at last with exams and launching the weekend celebrations, prior to Monday’s commencement. His memories fell across the years long gone, and he shook his head. The weekend parties had deteriorated in twenty years from pleasant social events that the faculty might reasonably attend, to unrestrained, nearly continuous intoxicated spectacles. This year it seemed that Friday morning would mark the start of it all. Another good reason to retire, Branden thought.
The Amish visitor watched the thoughts drift across the professor’s face, waited patiently for them to pass, and spoke when Branden looked back to him.
“You asked about our family, Professor,” the little man said. “Israel and I are two of twelve. Hannah and Mary are two of fifteen. Most have moved away. We have sisters who married men up in Middlefield. And brothers who’ve moved to Kentucky and Ontario. We’re all kind of spread out now, because land is so tight around here. So, mostly, it’s me and Israel who are the Erbs of Calmoutier. And Lydia, Mary, and Hannah, who used to be Weavers. I guess Lydia still is a Weaver, because she never married.”
“I think I should be taking notes, Enos,” Branden said dryly.
Enos laughed. “I’ll write it out for you.”
“That’ll help.”
Through the open windows, Branden and his visitor could hear the distant chanting of a protest rally against the war in Iraq. A bullhorn prompted with a slogan, and the crowd responded, parroting the words: “Bush lied and people died!” repeated several times. Then the prompt, “U.S.—Never best!” and the crowd’s response with the s
ame phrase time and again. When the shouts died off, a speech could be heard coming from a P.A. sound system, but Branden and Erb could not make out the words. No doubt, Branden mused, it was psychology professor Aidan Newhouse leading another of his antiwar rallies on campus. Still reliving the sixties.
Enos observed, “It’s pretty wild outside, and I’m not talking about that protest group. No. I saw two students, just now. That boy was sure getting some attention from his girl, and you’d better believe it.”
Branden smiled. “It’s the seniors. They’ll graduate on Monday.”
Enos shrugged. “They were out in the parking lot where I left my buggy. He had her pinned against his car—kissing out in the open.”
“They’re just college kids, Enos,” Branden offered, wondering how to explain the excesses of college life to a man who had devoted himself to plain living.
Looking right at Branden, Enos asked bluntly, “Do you get some attention from those college girls, too, Professor? I’ve heard professors can be like that.”
Branden’s back straightened, and heat flashed into his cheeks. In his present mood, he was powerless to hide his indignant anger. He let it display itself briefly and then quenched it.
Of all the Amish people he knew, few were capable of guile. There was, perhaps, the occasional inconsiderate bluntness in conversation, or an untoward curiosity about the suspect English lifestyles, but certainly no guile. With a mix of alarm and amusement, he eyed the little man and answered simply, “No, Mr. Erb. I am happily married.”
Enos nodded with a degree of satisfaction, drained the last of his coffee, and asked, “Your man said there was more?” lifting his empty mug.
Branden got out of his chair smiling broadly at the man’s directness, went out to Mallory’s front office, brought the carafe back, and poured more of the morning’s brew into Enos Erb’s mug.
The siren of an ambulance started up in the distance, and it mixed soon with the bleat of a sheriff’s cruiser. The sirens came nearer, mounted the college heights, and flashed by the history building to draw up on the other side of the oak grove, in front of the old stone chapel.
Branden stepped to his windows and saw a crowd of students and faculty standing in a ragged circle on the far side of the grove, in front of the chapel. When the paramedics ran up to the group, the crowd parted to let them through, and the professor saw a young woman, college age, in jeans and a white blouse, face down on the chapel’s stone walkway, blood pooling beside her head. The paramedics rolled her onto her back, and her head came to rest facing the professor’s office. In the instant that he recognized her, numbing shock and sorrow coursed through Branden’s veins, and the professor whispered, “Cathy.” He had just seen her final exam in his stack of ungraded blue books.
One of the girls standing beside the body started gesturing dramatically toward the tall bell tower of the chapel, and the people on the ground craned their necks to look up in unison.
Branden followed their gaze, but was unable to see because of the tall trees. Dazed and fighting denial, he moved to his left-most window. Between the top branches of a tree, he caught sight of a senior he recognized, standing bare-chested on the bell tower’s parapet. The boy seemed frozen to the stone, staring down at the dead girl, his face a blank mask of horror, his hair disheveled and sprouting out as if charged from electroshock.
Branden’s mind flooded with images of the two students, one now dead and one now perched on the edge of disaster. He saw them as he remembered them, in the classroom, holding hands on the sidewalk, carrying trays together through the dining room. They’d rarely been separated since they had started dating. Cathy and Eddie. They were his students.
Branden tried to get his mind to settle on the dreadful present, but he couldn’t catch up to the pace of his thoughts. He recognized this mental state. He taught about it in his Civil War classes—the fog of battle, brought on by horror and panic. The mind rendered useless by shock. An eerie, otherworldly kind of detachment from one’s normal capabilities. Soldiers frozen in place by the paralyzing spectacle that was assaulting their eyes. And he realized he’d be lucky in this fog simply to get his feet to move.
Branden’s eyes fell back to the crumpled body of his student, and he sensed that Enos Erb was standing beside him, on his tiptoes, looking down over the windowsill at the death scene.
When he realized what he was looking at, Erb blurted out, “Oh, my!” and ran out of the professor’s office. Mallory took his place at the windows.
Branden pulled his gaze back to the bell tower and saw Cathy Billett’s boyfriend standing with his arms spread wide, as if preparing to launch himself into flight. There was a shout from the crowd below, and the boy’s balance wobbled on the rail. Branden sucked air through his teeth and felt the muscles and tendons in his legs tighten involuntarily to the snapping point. Eddie pitched forward, arms flying, and then righted his balance. He looked blankly out over the treetops like a stage actor peering into floodlights, and seemed to resign himself to death. His face went slack, his eyes closed, and he put one foot out over the edge just as a sheriff’s deputy darted up behind him and clamped his fist onto Eddie’s belt, hauling him forcefully back from the edge.
Eddie screamed and spun around to swing at the man. The officer stepped underneath a wild, roundhouse punch. He pinned Eddie’s arm behind his back and hit him in the kidney to drop him to the roof, putting the two of them below the level of the parapet and out of sight to Branden and Mallory. After a moment, the deputy stood up, drew the flat of his palms over cropped black hair, and blew out a tense breath. Then he turned, stepped over to the edge, and looked down to wave at Sheriff Bruce Robertson below.
In his frozen panic, Branden had not noticed Robertson among the crowd on the ground. When he looked back up to the parapet, Branden realized he also had not recognized Sergeant Ricky Niell.
He should be doing something, Branden realized. He should be down there with Cathy. He should move. His eyes played mechanically from ground to parapet and back again, and he forced himself to breathe. He sensed that his legs were waiting for his mind to clear. He tried flexing his fingers and found them clenched into fists. He purposefully trained his eyes on the bell tower and was grateful for this one remnant of command that was still his. The scene there seemed unnaturally calm.
Sergeant Niell brushed off his uniform shirt, tucked the tails under his duty belt, and straightened a gold pen in his shirt pocket. He motioned down for more men to come up to the roof, and then turned, pulled the handcuffed senior to his feet, and started walking him over to the interior stone steps that would take them back through the belfry and down to the crowd milling around the dead girl’s body.
4
Friday, May 11 9:15 A.M.
WHEN THE PROFESSOR realized that the cry he had heard while talking with Enos Erb had been his student falling to her death, he was finally able to force his feet to move. He stepped haltingly out of his office suite, started running in the hall, took the steps two at a time, and bolted out into the oak grove beneath his office windows. He ran across the expanse of lawn under the oaks and arrived at the ambulance just as paramedics were pulling their orange-padded gurney out of the back.
Sheriff Robertson waved impatiently for the paramedics to move forward. He spotted the professor and stepped up to him, barking, “What gives, Mike? You’ve never had a suicide up here! Not in forty years!”
“I know the girl!” Branden cried.
Robertson pulled the professor aside and asked for a name.
“Cathy Billett. She’s a junior,” Branden said, pulling at his hair, eyes wide with alarm. “That fellow over there in handcuffs is Eddie Hunt-Myers. He’s a senior. Bruce, I can’t believe this! They both took my final exam last night.”
“Would she have taken the ‘express’ off a bell tower over a stupid exam?” Robertson asked, indelicately. “Why would she do this, Mike?”
“No! She was a good student. Eddie too.” Taking a st
ep forward, Branden complained, “Come on. Does he have to be in cuffs, like that?”
Robertson pulled him back. “He took a swing at Ricky Niell, Mike.”
“I saw that, Bruce. It’s more like he was going to jump, and Ricky surprised him from behind. He was just startled. I think you can take those cuffs off him now.”
Robertson frowned as he studied the professor’s expression. “He one of your little rich boys, Mike?”
“Knock it off!” Branden snapped. He paced an anxious circle in front of Robertson, who was still blocking him from the body. Some of the heat drained out of the professor when he realized he would not get past the large sheriff.
Sheriff Bruce Robertson had grown up a simple, small-town Buckeye, a friend from kindergarten of both Branden and Cal Troyer. Heavyset since childhood, in late middle age he was becoming “excessive.” His wife, Coroner Missy Taggert, had convinced him to stop smoking and lose weight when they married, but although he had succeeded at the first of her requests, he had failed at the second. His uniform fit too snugly, and his imposing bulk served as an unfortunate ally of his blunt and sometimes immoderate personality. He was the size of a bull and, when he was off his medicines, as impulsive as an overindulged teenager.
While Branden paced, there was an outburst from the crowd near the dead girl’s body. When Branden and Robertson looked over, they saw Ricky Niell pulling Eddie Hunt-Myers, still in handcuffs, away from an angry girl, who was slapping at Niell’s back and shoulders, as she hurled invectives. The Iraq War protesters had arrived from the far side of campus, led by Professor Aidan Newhouse, and some of them took up the girl’s side, shouting at Niell about police misconduct. Soon the crowd’s protests swelled to resemble the ruckus of a small mob.
A female deputy Branden did not recognize took hold of the angry girl’s shoulders and managed to wrap her arms around her and pull her back from Niell. Some members of the crowd made a surge in Niell’s direction, spurred on by the girl’s fury, as two more deputies planted themselves between the protesters and Ricky Niell.