He leans toward us, biting the air, his brown teeth clacking in front of us like some angry dog, which is just what he is.
Cab says, “We want nothing from you but mercy and our freedom.”
“That ain’t fer me to say,” Lester barks out. “I done tried that, puzzled it every which way. But there just ain’t no turning’ away from it.”
“Is this what you’re teaching your children?” I say, fear tearing my voice into quivering strips of my feeble protest. “Is this how you want them to behave?”
“Well, maybe I oughta take ‘em to church for some churchin’,” Lester sneers. “Well, look around ‘yer, y’see any churches ‘round here? Yer see any schools, any roads? There ain’t no power out here, ain’t no deeds on this land, ain’t no nothin’! Yer Amish people think you’re isolated? Yer ain’t but a Broadway show far as I’m concerned!” He laughs, a hideous cackle that ends with another heavy gulp of moonshine.
“Yer thinkin’ yer so isolated, yer don’t know from it! But we’re not like you, who turned yer backs on the world. S’the world turned its backs on us! You think we wanna live like this? You think I’m proud to raise my family like this? I ain’t! But I can’t make my way out there, in that big-city world. This is what I can do; this is how I can raise my family! It ain’t my fault, it ain’t my country! You wanna blame somebody, why don’t you blame that precious God you love so much? Tell you what? He’s so High an’ Mighty, let ‘im come right down and punch me right in the face, right now!”
Lester thrusts his drunken face forward, squinting his eyes shut, jutting his chin, staggering, almost tipping sideways and falling on his bum. Then he opens his eyes and breaks out in another mean cackle, a laughter that is without joy, from a man who is without happiness.
“Anyways, I hear’d your kind don’t cotton to no church. Yer so high ‘n’ mighty, yer too good to worship in church. But ain’t church the Lord’s house? Than mean yer too good fer the Lord Hisself?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cab says.
“And you do? Ain’t you the one raised up to be the liar, the one who ain’t really Amish at all?”
“Doesn’t mean I haven’t studied it, learned about it, plus the other major religions.”
“Well, you best pick one of ‘em and fast, boy, ‘cause’n yer about to meet God face-to-face, brought to Him courtesy of the devil hisself!” Lester raises his arms and makes ugly faces, sticking his tongue out, rolling his eyes, making the hideous noises of a drunken demon. Then he staggers off toward his bedroom, the jug still in hand. “Yeah,” he mutters as he disappears into the little room, “I’ll show ya how it is, you wanna dance with the devil.”
Miriam is left alone with us, and we have time to whisper to her, “Please, help us!”
She rasps, “You shut yer nasty holes, you heathen lyin’ scoundrels, for I feed yer to the hounds myself! You come in here, makin’ my husband all upset, disrupting my life, and after I was so kind to you!”
I try to say, “Miriam—”
But she answers with, “No! You shut your holes now, git to dreamin’ or prayin’ or whatever else you gonna do. After t’morrow, won’t make no diff’rence nohow.”
She stomps into the bedroom and leaves us. The children are giggling to one another in their own room, but we don’t dare appeal to them. The hound is outside, guarding our escape. The shack is quiet.
We’re alone together.
I say, “This isn’t how I imagined spending our nights.”
Cab smiles. “Are you saying you imagined spending nights with me?”
“No, I mean, um ... what I meant was ... ” I let myself trail off, hoping he won’t pick up the dangling conversation.
When he says, “What did you mean?” my hopes are dashed.
I just say, “Nothing, just ... who could foresee such a thing as this happening. It must be God’s will, because it’s just too big a job for coincidence.”
Cab chuckles. “No, it’s not coincidence. It’s fate.” After a precious little moment, he adds, “Our fate.”
CHAPTER SIX
The sun is up before Lester is, but Miriam is up even before that. She wakes us quietly, fingers to our lips, and then unlocks the chains. Setting them carefully aside, she helps us to our feet, eyes on the door.
“He’s still out cold, I put somethin’ extra special in his jug.” She hands us a Springfield rifle and a box of shells. Cab takes them. She turns and hands me some bread and butter, a jug of water and a small amount of cheese. “All I can spare fer ya.”
“Where are your sons?” Cab whispers.
“Sent ‘em fishing, south toward the river. You head north, you’ll find a road about ten miles up. Watch for those traps though! Take a big stick, push it along the ground in front of you, at least three feet. He uses tripwires.”
“What about Lester?”
Miriam glares at the room where Lester snores even at this very moment. “Don’t you worry about him.”
“Thank you so much,” I say.
“Don’t thank me,” she says. “I’m just trying to do what’s right. Now git on outta here. He comes to, I gotta tell him you made a run fer it.”
I nod, taking her hand. “We understand, and thank you again.”
“You be careful of those traps,” she whispers, pushing us out the door, “three feet with a big stick. And hurry!”
We scurry out into the fading blue of dawn, the sun only beginning to peek up over the mountain ridge.
We walk as fast as we can through the bramble, Cab holding the rifle while I push a three-foot-long branch through the leaves and muck in front of our feet. The branch keeps getting snagged on roots and vines, but it’s better than our heads getting caught in any of Lester’s traps.
“Wish she’d mentioned what kind of traps,” Cab says, both of us looking around as we push uphill.
“Tripwires. What difference does it make?”
“Might help us spot them ahead of time; must be weighted objects that fall out of the trees, maybe looped ropes that snap up, leave us dangling like a couple of hams in a freezer.”
“Okay, well, she didn’t,” I say, pushing my stick through the rot as we climb, my feet slipping in the dewy moss. “Just keep going.”
A few dozen yards up, Cab says, “So, your mother died of cancer, too?”
I nod as I look around, struggling with the big stick. “Yeah. How’d you know that?”
“You mentioned it to me, in front of Lester.”
“Oh yeah, well, I guess my mind’s on other things right now.”
We push on, breathing hard and climbing up further, through the tangling roots that remind me of my terrible dream, woods that I’ve been lost in before. And I was lucky to get out alive.
But this time, I’m not alone.
I finally ask, “Why?” After his confused silence, I clarify, “Why do you ask about that, my Mamm?”
“I’m just saying, it’s rough, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it was pretty bad.”
“You ever feel ... I dunno—?”
“Completely alone?” I suggest.
“Yes, that’s it exactly. Alone. Growing up the way I did in Westington, I ... I always just felt so isolated, especially so after my mother died. I never felt like I’d found my place, y’know?”
After a few more yards up the hill, I say, “Yeah, I guess I do. But recently, Cab, I gotta say, I feel like I’ve found myself, I’ve discovered what part I have to play in God’s plan, what reason I have for being here, all this ... all this trial and effort.”
“Revenge?”
“No, Cab, justice! I ... we’re destined to bring justice to Westington; you said so yourself.”
He nods, eyes scoping out the area. “Yeah, well, good, I’m glad to hear it. It’s what they deserve.”
We walk on, before Cab adds, “And then what?”
“Hmmm? I dunno, what? What do you mean?”
“After we bring justice to
Westington, what happens then?”
I haven’t had any time to think about it; things are happening so fast, I can barely keep up. “I dunno. You’re sure he’s ... my daed, he’s ... gone?”
After a sad moment, Cab nods. “I’m not 100% sure. I didn’t see the face of the body they buried. But it looked like him to me.”.”
“Well then, if it’s real I’ll bring his body to Smicksberg for a proper funeral with my mamm and Margaret; Aunt Sarah too. If not, we will find him in Westington, hopefully still alive.”
“And then?”
I look at him, stunned into stopping halfway up the hill. “Are you hitting on me?”
Cab offers up a surprised little chuckle and we push on. “No, that’s not what I meant at all. It’s just ... if your whole life’s purpose is to accomplish something that’s likely to happen in the next three days, if at all, what about the rest of your life?”
“I’m not so sure I’ll have one.”
“Hey, hey, don’t talk that way, you gotta stay positive. See, that’s what I’m talkin’ about, you gotta have goals, reason, purpose. In a way, it’s always got to be something that’s in front of you, something you’re working toward. Once you’ve climbed one mountain, you’ll only find more mountains, or an ocean or whatever. It’s all about the journey, not the destination, right?”
I puzzle over it, cardinals twittering around us. I say, “Right now, we’re on a journey of great danger and importance, with an important destination. Everything after that will be God’s choice.”
Cab says, “I know He’ll choose well.”
Suddenly, I feel a pressure pushing against the end of my stick. I push it, as I have through so many roots and vines so far.
But this time a huge chunk of tree truck, evenly cut on both sides, swings at us from the left. It knocks into a tree branch not far to my right, cracking the tree right through the middle. My heart nearly jumps up out of my throat, no breath in my lungs. The wooden pendulum swings idly, a tree branch bending above it, weighed down nearly to the point of breaking.
Cab and I look at each other, then at that swinging booby trap, only inches from having killed us both.
“Let’s not talk so much for a while,” I say, and Cab nods before leading me further up the hill.
We walk on a bit further. I almost fall to the ground, but Cab catches me and pulls me to my feet. I lean against him, noticing for the first time how sturdy he is, how strong and well-built. No time for that now, I tell myself. Just keep climbing.
“All they that see me laugh me to scorn,” Cab says, words that are all-too-familiar to me. “They shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, ‘He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him.”
It’s Psalm 22, the same scripture that so struck me during my last flight through the woods, the one that ended in what seemed like my own death.
He goes on, “But thou art he that took me out of the womb: thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mother's breasts. I was cast upon thee from the womb: thou art my God from my mother's belly.”
I interrupt with the next line of the verse. “Be not far from me; for trouble is near; for there is none to help. Many bulls have compassed me: strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round.”
“They gaped upon me with their mouths,” Cab says as we keep scrambling up the hill, “as a ravening and a roaring lion.”
I almost slip again, but Cab helps me up. “I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint.”
I look at him, our eyes locked. He says, “My heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels. My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death.”
We stand, staring into each other’s eyes, our faces nearing. I say, “For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet. I may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me. They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.”
“But be not thou far from me, oh Lord,” Cab says, strong and near, “oh my strength, haste thee to help me. Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog.”
“Save me from the lion's mouth,” I say, “for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns. I will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee.”
“Ye that fear the Lord, praise him,” Cab answers with the next verses of the scripture, from the pen of King David himself, the legendary giant slayer. “All ye the seed of Jacob, glorify him; and fear him, all ye the seed of Israel. For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard.”
I reach out and he takes my hand as I say, “My praise shall be of thee in the great congregation: I will pay my vows before them that fear him.”
He looks deep into my eyes, my fingers trembling in his. “The meek shall eat and be satisfied: They shall praise the Lord that seek him; your heart shall live forever. All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord; and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee.”
My voice joins his and together we recite the last verses of that great, near-forgotten psalm, a vow that binds us in our union, in our shared mission, in our dedication to God, to justice, and to each other: “For the kingdom is the Lord's; and he is the governor among the nations. All they that be fat upon earth shall eat and worship; all they that go down to the dust shall bow before him: and none can keep alive his own soul. A seed shall serve him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation. They shall come, and shall declare his righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that he hath done this.”
An hour crawls by as we push through the woods, up and then down and then further up. The dense forest draws our strength from us, our journey and inch-by-inch push of that big stick, the rifle straining Cab’s shoulders, his fingers opening and closing around that heavy weapon.
“Do you think I still have to push this stick around?” I ask. “It’s getting cumbersome, and we’re almost two hours away from the shack. You think he’s got traps set this far away?”
“I think I don’t want to find out,” Cab says.
I nod and we push on. “I don’t see anybody around. Y’know, if your former neighbors are coming for us, we’re way ahead of the game. By the time they stumble on the Krebbs, we’ll be under police protection.”
“Yeah,” Cab says. “I hope that’s gonna be a safe place for us. Don’t forget what happened to your friends, the Grabers.”
“They most certainly weren’t my friends.”
“Well, neither are those people from Westington. If Jonah’s simply arrested and we’re entangled in that system, he’ll be able to get to us.”
“But ... how?”
“Same way he got to the Grabers. Guards are bribed, rewards are offered to inmates who get the job done. And word travels fast in that world ... at least that’s what they tell me.”
“Well, between the two of us, I guess you’d be the one to know.”
“Hey, it’s not my fault, where I was raised. I was just a kid.”
“I know, Cab, I know. It’s fine. You’re doing the right thing now, that’s what matters.”
We keep walking, hour drifting into hour, mile melting into mile, the sun crawling across the sky above us. My legs start to ache, areas from my previous injuries the first to begin throbbing. My back hurts too. But I don’t complain. It’s my fault we’re out here, trudging through the dirt. I’m not about to be upset about it.
But all that doesn’t stop me from asking, “How much further, do you think?”
“She didn’t say how far the road would be. I mean, ten miles as the crow flies is a lot if you’re going up and down these hills like this. I don’t think we’re gonna hit that road before nightfall.”
“What do we do then?�
�� I ask, knowing the answer.
“We’re gonna have to bed down somewhere, take it up at first light.”
“I’m not ... bedding down anywhere with you, I hardly know you!”
“We’ve been sleeping side by side for almost a week, Bethany.”
“We were chained up, we didn’t have a choice.”
“And we don’t have a choice now.” Cab pushes further up the hill, reaching down to offer his hand. Instead of taking it, I make my own way up the hill. “We can’t trudge through all this in the dark, Bethany, it’s too dangerous. We could stumble over a cliff and fall to our deaths.”
“What do you suggest?”
Cab stops and looks around. “How much booze do you think that Lester Krebbs drank?”
“I dunno. Miriam said she put something in it, he could be out for hours. Maybe she sent him in the wrong direction when he woke up, I dunno.”
“You don’t think she ... she killed him, do you?” Cab goes on to say, “The way she glared into that room, said, ‘don’t worry about him.’ It might her only chance for escape, too.” I can only shake my head. The idea of being part of another man’s death, even Lester Krebbs’, makes me sick to my stomach. Cab adds, “Probably best to assume he’s still a factor. And he’d know where the highway is, so this is the direction he’ll come first. I don’t think we have time to stop.”
“You think he’ll come after us at night? In all the weeks I was with them, they never went out at night.”
Cab gives it some thought, looking around the thick woods that have trapped us. “Yeah, he didn’t have good enough reason to. Let’s just keep going, see what happens.”
And so we do. I lead with the big stick and he follows behind with the rifle, both of us glancing around at every broken twig, every bird that takes flight. But my body aches from hiking, my feet are sore, and my heart feels too weak to keep pushing me forward. “I can’t ... I can’t do it, Cab.”
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