Separate From the World

by Gaus, P. L.

  Lobrelli said, “Well, there’s a rare skin disorder in Holmes County.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Parkinson’s,” Lobrelli said. “At twice the national rate.”

  “But there’s medicine for that,” Branden observed. “I’ve read about that.”

  “L-DOPA, Mike. It’s effective, if you take it on a regular basis. If you start early.”

  “What about Amish who spurn medicines like that?”

  “It’d cut their survival rates in half.”

  “And you’re not developing medicine?” Branden asked. “Not really doing medical research?”

  “We do basic science, here, Mike. I let the big companies figure out the drugs.”

  13

  Saturday, May 12 10:20 A.M.

  PROFESSOR BRANDEN drove out to the Erb farms near Calmoutier and turned left onto the Israel Erb property. Immediately to his left, he found a gravel parking lot in front of a small grocery store with red board siding. He pulled into the lot and parked.

  The building was old, with small black metal push-tilt windows on the front. He found the single wooden door locked. The windows were pushed out and open. Looking in, he found it was dark and silent inside.

  Behind the store, Branden followed a narrow concrete sidewalk that angled across the drive to a large main house of brown brick, standing two and a half stories high over a weathered stone foundation. The concrete walkway took him along the west side of the house to a back porch in the angle created by a wood frame addition that was fully a third the size of the main house. On the back of the addition, there were two smaller structures attached in sequence, with little covered porches in front of matching single doors. Each appeared to be an apartment no larger than a sitting room.

  Branden mounted the steps to the back porch and knocked on the screened door. He got no answer. There was light from several lamps inside the house. Past drawn purple curtains, a movement caught the corner of his eye. But no one came to the door.

  The family garden on the other side of the drive was situated behind the grocery store. There was no one working in the garden. No kids playing in the yard. There was no workaday noise on the farm, he realized. No lawn mowers growling, no buggies moving, no work at all. On an Amish farm as large as this, there should have been activity. Instead it was as still as a prayer.

  Pushing aside a mounting unease, Branden reasoned that someone must be inside. He tried another knock on the back door. He got no response.

  Back in his truck, Branden crossed Nisley Road to the Enos Erb farm. On the gravel drive by the main house, two older Amish men in a conservative black buggy had pulled up to Enos, who was standing on the front lawn, with his eyes cast to the ground at his feet. Branden stopped his truck a dozen yards back and switched off the engine. The older of the two men in the buggy looked straight ahead, neither talking to Erb nor acknowledging him. The other man spoke to Erb in a stern and authoritative voice, in the low Dietsche dialect of the county.

  Enos Erb looked as miserable as a scolded child, but the stern man kept talking, unconcerned about the dwarf’s embarrassment. Next to the buggy, Enos was childlike in size. Even a man of average height would have been mortified, Branden judged, to be spoken to in this fashion by a man sitting so imposingly far above him. Enos no doubt was stricken.

  The men in the buggy bore the attitude and posture of leaders accustomed to steadfast obedience. They were evidently habituated to accepting the rightfulness of stern decisions and commands. To accepting the rightfulness of harsh measures and absolute authority. And Enos Erb appeared to Branden to be completely overwhelmed by their words.

  When the two men had finished talking to Erb, the elder of the two whipped the horse to a labored gait that took them past the professor quickly. Neither of the men acknowledged Branden, who pulled his truck forward as Enos was climbing the steps to his front porch. He got out of his truck just as Enos reached up to open the front door, and by the way the dwarf ’s hand hesitated on the doorknob, Branden knew that Enos was aware of him. Branden used that awkward pause to ask, “Enos, where’s your brother? Where’s his family? What’s happening?”

  Enos held himself motionless in front of the door for a long five seconds, with his back to the professor, head bowed. Then he went inside without turning around or giving an answer, and Professor Branden found himself standing alone on a second farm that had fallen completely silent. Looking nervously around, he sought the normal—a buggy rolling on the drive, kids working or playing, a daughter hanging clothes on a line, a son chopping wood, the ping of a hammer against metal, the whinny of a horse—and found none of it. Instead he heard the silence of mourning—the mute intensity of the dead. It would have made sense to him only if the windows had been draped in black for a funeral.

  Behind him, a woman said, “They’re not coming out, Professor.”

  He turned to see a dowdy woman approaching across the lawn on awkward legs. She had puffy cheeks and fat arms. She was dressed in a faded red dress and a light blue, waist-length windbreaker. Her white knee stockings had bunched at her ankles, and her hair was a matching ultra white. She was shaking her head.

  “That was the bishop, Professor,” she said and stuck out her hand. “He’s laid down the law, for sure.”

  Branden took her hand and said, “You know me but . . .”

  “ ‘But I don’t know you,’” the woman interrupted, finishing his sentence for him. “I’m the neighbor, Willa Banks.”

  Branden held her hand for a moment, released it, and said, “Then you know me because of . . .”

  “Pictures in the paper,” Willa finished for him.

  A sentence finisher, Branden thought. “Then that was ...” he led.

  “The bishop, Andy Miller, of course, I already told you that. He had his little toady Eli Mast with him.”

  “And the preachers in the district are . . .” Branden started.

  “Toady Mast, for one,” Willa said. “Preacher number two is John Hershberger. He’s splitting off a group of Moderns over the question of medicine.”

  “Andy Miller asked him to leave the congregation?”

  “Better off!” Willa sang. “Andy Miller is as close to those dirty Schwartzentrubers as you can get and still buy your groceries at a market.”

  Branden stated, “You don’t like him very much.”

  “Can’t stand him!” Willa spat. “He’s got poor little Enos so flabbergasted that he can’t tend his farm. They’re all holed up in there, you can believe that. And the same across the way.”

  Branden waited, figuring he’d get more.

  Willa Banks stood on the lawn in front of the Enos Erb farmhouse and started right in on the bishop, wagging a finger at Branden. “Miller has been going around to all the Moderns, telling them that they’ll be excommunicated if they side with Preacher Hershberger. He’s got Enos so worked up I think he’s gonna pop a cork. There’s families all up and down this road who have got to decide—and I mean right now—whether to stay with Andy Miller and Toady Mast, or go with Hershberger.”

  Branden looked off in the direction from which Willa had come, and he said, “Your place is . . .”

  “Next door, Professor. Right next door. They’re all so secretive and all, these Amish, and they think nobody out here can see what’s really going on. And that Miller lost a daughter to Parkinson’s. Because he wouldn’t pay for medicine, the cheap, miserable puke! Pardon my French.”

  Branden started walking toward Willa Banks’s property. As she turned to walk with him, he said, “Enos is a Modern. Israel is Anti . . .”

  “And that’s going to be real trouble,” Banks said, and fell in beside the professor.

  Walking slowly, Branden said, “Israel’s place is all closed up, too.”

  Willa laughed coarsely. “Not his store, I’ll bet.”

  The professor did not correct her.

  Banks walked him through a narrow stand of trees dividing the properties and came out
the other side in a field of strawberries. Here, she guided the professor around the perimeter, saying, “I let the Erb children pick strawberries. Brings in a few bucks each year.”

  They walked the edge of the field fronting Nisley Road and came up to Willa Banks’s double garage of corrugated aluminum. She led him around to the front door of a battered double-wide trailer, faded green on the outside and furnished in an outdated orange and brown “modern” style from the fifties. Before he could take the place in, Branden found himself planted deep in a sticky upholstered chair that might have been salvaged from a dumpster. The little living room where he sat was as dingy and tattered as the old rug at his feet. The color scheme was numbingly consistent. What wasn’t orange was brown. Even the shades on the table lamps were yellowed by age to a disconcertingly dirty brown hue. The professor found himself thinking of a shower. Thinking of burning his clothes. Maybe a treatment for lice.

  Willa stepped behind a curtain and came out to hand Branden a can of beer. She popped the top on her own can and drank eagerly before wiping the back of her hand across her lips. Branden’s every instinct was to pry himself off the cloying fabric of the chair and find his way back to his truck. But something kept him pinned where he sat. As he struggled to understand what that was, he reminded himself of the silence. It was the same complete silence at both farms. Perhaps it was the silence of fear. Or it could have been the silence of withdrawal—something that Bishop Miller would require of his people. A silence of pulling inward for safety from the English, in general terms, but was it something else?

  “The two little cousins know better than all of them,” Willa said, breaking into his thoughts. “They sneak over here to play.”

  Branden waved Willa Banks to a chair and took a polite sip of his beer.

  Willa asked, “You a biochemist, too, like Lobrelli?”

  “No, I’m in history,” Branden said. “You know Nina?”

  “Not really, but I’ve heard a lot about her.”

  “From . . .” Branden led.

  “From her students, of course. They all come to see me eventually, on account of I know the scene out here. I know all the kids, all the teenagers, all the parents, and more. Been here thirty-three years. Right here in this trailer. Sooner or later, all those college kids figure out that they have to talk to me to find out what’s really going on.”

  Branden asked, “And what were you saying about two cousins?”

  “Albert and Mattie?”

  “You tell me, Willa.”

  “Albert Erb is four years old, maybe four and a half now. He’s Israel’s kid. Mattie is five, and she’s Enos Erb’s kid. They’ve been playing together while all this split-up has been going on, so I figure they know better behavior than all the grown-ups do! Hah! How do you like that, Professor?”

  Branden saluted her knowledge with a nod. “So, naturally, you know all about Albert and Mattie?”

  “Naturally,” Willa said, and drank long from her can of beer.

  “Can you tell me about it?” Branden asked. He took another sip.

  “Little Albert Erb crosses the road when his mother’s not looking, and he waits in those woods we crossed through. Then his little cousin Mattie comes out of Enos’s house and meets him there. They play in my woods out back, almost every day. They’ve got themselves a couple of beagle puppies.”

  “And they’re not supposed to do that?” Branden asked.

  “Oh, no. Not at all, Professor. Israel is an Anti. He put a stop to those two playing together when Enos declared himself for the Moderns.”

  “But you let them sneak over here?”

  “What’s to let, Professor? They’re only four and five, and it’s a free country, last I checked.”

  It didn’t make sense, Branden thought. Bishop Miller was Old Order Amish and extremely autocratic, but even the Schwartzentrubers would have talked to him, if he had showed up and knocked on their door. Amish people weren’t dug in like the Branch Davidians. They participated in society. They went to town markets. They stopped to talk with strangers. Israel should have come to the door. Enos should at least have turned around to speak with him.

  But it had been the same at Israel’s farm as it was at Enos’s. These two families were barricaded in their houses, not even answering the door. And the store Israel ran? That was locked, contrary to Willa Banks’s intuition.

  So the split in Andy Miller’s district wasn’t the crisis that had caused Enos to rebuff him on the porch. The new bishop wasn’t just telling his people to withdraw from the world. There was something else behind this silence.

  Willa watched him think it through and said, “If you want to know what’s going on out here, you need to talk to some of the kids.”

  Branden asked, “Are Mattie and Albert over here, now?”

  Willa finished her beer, crushed it flat on the coffee table, and said, “Naw. They’re probably back home by now.”

  The professor eased out of Willa’s disgusting chair and said, “Willa, can you show me? Show me where they play?”

  They skirted the south edge of the strawberry patch and entered the woods on a little trail. The path was difficult to see, so Branden allowed Banks to lead and followed her deeper into the trees. As soon as they were out of sight of her trailer, they found a little shoe.

  Farther down the winding trail they found a boy’s denim waistcoat. Willa gave it a puzzled look.

  The trail crested a ridge and dropped at an angle down to a stream. There a knit skull cap was floating in a pool, and Branden charged ahead.

  On the other side of the stream, the trail rose again, and halfway up the other side, Branden, leading by twenty yards now, found more boy’s clothes scattered on the ground, next to a tangle of black hair.

  Near the hair lay battery-powered hair clippers, half buried in the leaves. Banks bent over to pick up the clippers, but Branden said, “No, Willa. Better leave that.”

  And then they heard a muffled whimper.

  On the other side of an oak tree the size of a house, he found a small Amish girl, bound and gagged. Fully clothed but dirty, she lay prone, struggling against her bindings. Her brow was streaked with blood, some of it having run into her eyes, and her hands were stained with a terrifying crimson.

  When she saw Branden, the little girl froze her eyes on him and watched him fearfully as he knelt beside her. Though the panic in her eyes was apparent, the professor did not speak; her need was too urgent. Instead, he wiped the drying blood out of her eyes and worked to loosen the duct tape over her mouth. She fought him at first, but when she saw Willa Banks coming up the trail, she held herself motionless for the professor. Her eyes were locked on Branden, and they spoke terror.

  Once Branden had her mouth free of the tape, she asked, “Am I safe now?” in a scarcely audible whisper.

  Branden nodded and took a moment to smooth her hair with a gentle palm. He motioned for Banks to work her bindings free as he flipped his cell phone open.

  Banks started fumbling at the girl’s bindings, muttering, “Mattie, Mattie. What have they done to you?”

  Mattie popped her hands free as soon as Banks had her bindings loose. She threw her arms around Banks’s neck and clung to her as if Willa were her last hope to live.

  Branden punched in Ellie Troyer-Niell’s number down at the jail and waited for the call to go through, all the while scanning the area visible to him for signs of Albert Erb. When Ellie picked up, Branden said urgently, “Ellie! Send help! We need an ambulance, Ellie. Behind the Willa Banks property on Nisley Road.”

  Banks shouted out her address, and Branden asked, “Did you get that?”

  In answer to Ellie’s questions, the professor said:

  “Paramedics, Ellie. And a search team.”

  “Right. Search dogs, too.”

  “No, we need the whole crew. Ask Bruce to call in the night shift people.”

  “A girl, Ellie—Mattie Erb. She’s been tied up in the woods.”

  �
��She’s covered with blood. It’s her cousin Albert who’s missing. Maybe four years old. Taken off, I don’t know. He’s not here. Might be dead.”

  “No, I think someone took him and tied Mattie up.”

  “No.”

  “His hair’s been cut off.”

  “Clothes are off, too. No, Ellie. We’ve trampled the scene already.”

  “Speed is our ally here.”

  “No, just send me everything you’ve got. I’ll have Willa Banks out by the road to guide everybody back here.”

  “What? No, I can’t tell. She’s conscious. I don’t see any cuts or wounds. If all this blood were hers, she’d be dead.”

  14

  Saturday, May 12 11:30 A.M.

  MATTIE ERB trembled, with her eyes closed, and buried her bloody forehead against the professor’s neck. He held her with both arms and cradled the back of her head with his hand, waiting where he had found her for the paramedics. When he tried to pass her to the first paramedic to arrive, she clung to him as if he were life itself—her last, best hope to breathe. Gently he pulled her arms loose, and she started crying. So Willa Banks took her into her arms again and let the paramedics look the girl over while she held her.

  Concerned for the parents, the professor took Mattie back from Willa, and said, “Can you get her parents, Willa?” and Banks started off through the woods, heading toward the back of Enos Erb’s house.

  While they tended to Mattie, Branden started pacing off wider and wider circles among the trees. Twenty-five yards farther down the trail, he found a shiny mass of bloody entrails heaped on the ground. His stomach lurched, and he cried out.

  One of the paramedics came up to him, saw the organs on the ground, and blurted out a curse. “I don’t think that’s human,” he said. “That can’t be human. It’s a dog or a pig, something like that. It’s got to be!”

  “OK, look,” Branden said. “We’ve got to hope that this is some animal. That the boy has been kidnapped. If we assume he’s dead and he’s not, we’ll have lost what chance we have to find him.”