by P. L. Gaus
Table of Contents
A PLUME BOOK
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Epigraph
PREFACE
Chapter 1 - Wednesday, April 18 5:15 A.M.
Chapter 2 - Friday, May 11 8:45 A.M.
Chapter 3 - Friday, May 11 9:00 A.M.
Chapter 4 - Friday, May 11 9:15 A.M.
Chapter 5 - Friday, May 11 10:00 A.M.
Chapter 6 - Friday, May 11 10:45 A.M.
Chapter 7 - Friday, May 11 11:30 A.M.
Chapter 8 - Friday, May 11 Afternoon
Chapter 9 - Friday, May 11 4:30 P.M.
Chapter 10 - Friday, May 11 5:35 P.M.
Chapter 11 - Friday, May 11 8:30 P.M.
Chapter 12 - Saturday, May 12 9:15 A.M.
Chapter 13 - Saturday, May 12 10:20 A.M.
Chapter 14 - Saturday, May 12 11:30 A.M.
Chapter 15 - Saturday, May 12 12:10 P.M.
Chapter 16 - Saturday, May 12 12:35 P.M.
Chapter 17 - Saturday, May 12 12:55 P.M.
Chapter 18 - Saturday, May 12 2:00 P.M.
Chapter 19 - Saturday, May 12 3:10 P.M.
Chapter 20 - Saturday, May 12 7:30 P.M.
Chapter 21 - Sunday, May 13 1:45 P.M.
Chapter 22 - Sunday, May 13 4:50 P.M.
Chapter 23 - Monday, May 14 Morning
Chapter 24 - Monday, May 14 2:30 P.M.
Chapter 25 - Monday, May 14 4:45 P.M.
Chapter 26 - Monday, May 14 7:15 P.M.
Chapter 27 - Monday, May 14 9:45 P.M.
Chapter 28 - Tuesday, May 15 Early Morning to Late Afternoon
Chapter 29 - Tuesday, May 15 5:20 P.M.
Chapter 30 - Tuesday, May 15 8:30 P.M.
Chapter 31 - Wednesday, May 16 9:30 A.M.
Chapter 32 - Wednesday, May 16 11:25 A.M.
Chapter 33 - Wednesday, May 16 1:30 P.M.
Chapter 34 - Wednesday, May 16 5:45 P.M.
Chapter 35 - Wednesday, May 16 6:30 P.M.
Chapter 36 - Wednesday, May 16 9:10 P.M.
Chapter 37 - Thursday, May 17 8:45 A.M.
Chapter 38 - Thursday, May 17 10:45 A.M.
Chapter 39 - Thursday, May 17 1:30 P.M.
Chapter 40 - Monday, May 21 10:45 A.M.
Chapter 41 - Wednesday, May 30 2:45 P.M.
Chapter 42 - Friday, June 1 8:30 A.M.
Teaser chapter
A PLUME BOOK
SEPARATE FROM THE WORLD
PAUL LOUIS GAUS lives with his wife, Madonna, in Wooster, Ohio, just a few miles north of Holmes County, where the world’s largest and most varied settlement of Amish and Mennonite people is found. His knowledge of the culture of the “Plain People” stems from more than thirty years of extensive exploration of the narrow blacktop roads and lesser gravel lanes of this pastoral community, which includes several dozen sects of Anabaptists living closely among the so-called English or Yankee non-Amish people of the county. Paul lectures widely about the Amish people he has met and about the lifestyles, culture, and religion of this remarkable community of Christian pacifists. He can be found online at: www.plgaus.com. He also maintains a Web presence with Mystery Writers of America: www.mysterywriters.org.
PLUME
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) ● Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England ● Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) ● Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) ● Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi ￚ 110 017, India ● Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) ● Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Published by Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First Plume Printing, March 2011
Copyright © P. L. Gaus, 2008
Excerpt from Blood of the Prodigal, copyright © P. L. Gaus, 1999
All rights reserved
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
The Library of Congress has catalogued the Ohio University Press edition as follows:
Gaus, Paul L.
Separate from the world : an Ohio Amish mystery / P.L. Gaus. p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-101-51326-2
1. Branden, Michael (Fictitious character)—Fiction 2. College teachers—Fiction. 3. Amish Country (Ohio)—Fiction. 4. Amish—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3557.A9517S47 2008
813’.54—dc2
2008013987
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Dedicated to the memory of my friend Gary Gale. If height were governed by kindness and decency, he would have towered over us all.
Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord.
2 Corinthians 6:17
PREFACE
The characters in this story are fictional, and none is meant to be a representation in kind, part, or whole of any person, living or dead. The places are real, but they have been used fictitiously. Millersburg College in the Amish-Country Mysteries is fictional, though several people have assured me that they know right where it is.
Calmoutier (pronounced locally as “Kal-Mooch”) is as much a concept in the Amish mind as it is a place. It can be found on some maps, but it is not a city, a town, a burg, a hamlet, or even a crossroads. It is the indefinable area surrounding the old St. Genevieve Church erected by French Catholics in 1836. It lies on the north side of Holmes County Road 229, just east of the Mt. Hope Road and west of where it changes to Nisley Road, in Wayne County.
I have used this area for the story because it is so quintessentially Amish. The story takes place on two Amish farms on a stretch of straight, level road. Purists will note, however, that there is no stretch of 229 that is either straight or level.
1
Wednesday, April 18 5:15 A.M.
LITTLE ALBERT ERB, four years old and dressed Amish to match all the men of his congregation, tackled the steps to the back porch of his house one at a time in the dark, with his most serious frown in place. In his nostrils there lingered the confusion of an unfamiliar
odor. Was that how the English smelled, he wondered? Never mind. There were more urgent things to worry about.
Albert stopped to catch his breath on the porch landing, pushed through the heavy back door, and pulled off his blue denim waistcoat in the mudroom. He hung his coat and round-brimmed black hat hastily beside the door, on one of the low hooks for children, and marched into the busy kitchen, thinking he needed to ask again about Mattie.
Why wasn’t he allowed to play with her anymore? Something had changed. He wasn’t sure what it was, exactly, but he wasn’t supposed to see her anymore, and he didn’t like that at all. And did they know about the woods—how he went there every day to play with her? Yes—remember to ask about Mattie, he thought.
How could it be wrong to play? Was it the secret they kept that made it wrong? Is that why his father spoke so? Why he felt so ashamed? Albert’s thoughts wandered to the woods where they met to play. Mattie always brought one of her puppies. They had fun. He stood in the kitchen, surrounded by family, and puzzled it through in his mind. Why did he have to be secret about playing with her? He knew he did, but why?
Then Albert remembered his uncle Benny, and his puzzlement about Mattie retreated from his thoughts. Uncle Benny was the more important problem right then. Yes—Uncle Benny. Talk to die Memme about Benny.
At his mother’s side, Albert gave a soft tug on her dress and looked up with innocent brown eyes, searching for her acknowledgment. When she turned to look down at him, he waited for her to speak, as any youngster should.
“Yes, Albert?” she said. “You can see I am busy with breakfast.”
Albert nodded gravely, swallowed his consternation, and said, “Benny vill net schwertze.”—Benny won’t talk.
His mother said, “We’re all busy with chores, Albert. Go wash your hands, now, and mind the stove.”
Albert kept his gaze on her for a spell, and then shrugged and moved off to the low sink, skirting the wood stove. He was both perplexed about Benny and unhappy with his mother. She didn’t have to remind him like that. He’d been burned once, when he was a baby, but he wasn’t a baby anymore. He knew about baking biscuits for breakfast. So die Memme really didn’t have to warn him about hot stoves. He should tell her that, he thought, but when he turned back to show her his pout face, he lost his grasp on his reasons for complaining.
At the sink, he put all of his little weight into pulling down and pushing up on the black iron pump handle, and he rinsed his hands in the cold well water. There, he thought, drying his hands on his pants. Good enough to pass die Memme’s inspection.
Albert turned from the sink and went over to his Aunt Lydia at the long kitchen table. He popped up onto the chair beside her and watched her spoon butter into a bowl of fried potatoes.
When she glanced at him, he said, “Benny kan net laufe.”—Benny can’t walk.
Lydia chided, “You know his legs are stiff, Albert,” and got up to pour whole milk from a pail into the dozen glasses set out the night before.
Albert watched her work with the pail, thought about his problem, and decided to tell one of his older brothers. He found Daniel coming into the mudroom with another pail of milk, and he told him, “Benny kan net tseine.”—Benny can’t see.
Daniel nodded, swung past him with the pail, and didn’t reply.
So, Albert took his coat and hat off the wall hook and went back outside. He saw a lantern glowing orange in the barn and decided to try to explain his alarm to the Big Daddy. Standing outside the milking stall, Albert called out, “Benny is net u mova, Vater. Her liechusht stille.”—Benny is not moving, Father. He lies still.
For his troubles, all Albert got was, “Albert, tell your sisters to get out here. This milk’s going to curdle in the pails.”
So, young Albert Erb shrugged his little shoulders, crossed the gravel driveway, and took the sidewalk over to the family’s grocery store. Going in at the back, he felt his way down a dark aisle between tall shelves, bent over beside his uncle Benny, and shook his shoulders. Then he pushed on Benny’s chest, and nothing happened. Albert sighed, got up on his feet, left the store, and walked back to the big house as the sun streaked a faint line of rose over the horizon. There had been that English aroma again, he realized. He wondered what that meant.
When he took his place at the breakfast table, Albert said to his sister Ella, older than he by two years, “Benny vil net schwetze.”—Benny won’t talk.
Ella laughed and parroted, “Benny vil net schwetze. Benny vil net schwetze.”
With an indignant scowl, Albert stood on his chair and stomped his boots on the wooden seat. When his mother turned to reprimand him, he flapped his arms up and down at his sides and shouted, “Benny kan net hicha!”—Benny can’t hear!—determined to make his point.
Before his mother could scold him, Albert’s father came into the kitchen with a basket of brown eggs and asked, “Has anyone seen Benny this morning?”
Thus Albert concluded that no one had heard him. Or worse, that no one believed him. He knew he wasn’t allowed to be a chatterbox. Didn’t Uncle Enos call Benny a chatterbox all the time?
Really, Albert wasn’t supposed to talk to grown-ups at all, unless one spoke to him first. Children were meant to be seen, not heard. How many times had they told him that! So this might get him in trouble with the whole family. Maybe I’ll take a ribbing from the other kids for this, Albert worried. Maybe I’ll have to work all day like the grown-ups. Even though I am only four years old. It might be the last thing I’m allowed to say the whole rest of the day. But it didn’t matter. Even in the dark, Albert could tell that there was something dreadfully wrong with his Uncle Benny.
Standing on his chair, with his fists planted on his hip bones, using all the resolve he could muster, little Albert Erb announced, in his very loudest, sternest voice: “Benny ist im schloffa in die stahe! Al set net das Oatmeal um zie Kopf hawe.”—Benny’s sleeping in the store! He’s not supposed to have oatmeal on his head like that.
2
Friday, May 11 8:45 A.M.
PROFESSOR MICHAEL BRANDEN sat at his battered walnut desk, facing a stack of ungraded blue-book final exam essays, in his office on the second floor of the history building. His mind wandered as he stared at the essays his students had written the night before. His thoughts this morning were not focused on grading, and his concentration hadn’t improved in the two hours since he had walked over to campus. For the first time in his life, he wondered if he could face another year as a professor at Millersburg College.
Branden’s academic career was well into its third decade, and the years he had spent in the classroom were starting to weigh on him. Perhaps he should have taken that university post, after all. Or maybe he should have followed his father into the insurance business. He might have fared better. But now his beard was shot through with gray, and he was weary of grading like never before. He wondered whether the college would still pay him if he just let the grades slide a week or so.
The seniors’ exams were finished—they weren’t the problem. Earlier, he had transmitted grades for graduating seniors to the registrar. Instead, Branden was stalled on the final exams written by the other students, in the lower classes, who didn’t really need their grades for several months. They could wait all summer, if need be. They would all be back in the fall.
Branden pushed back from his desk, turned his chair to face the windows behind it, and gazed across the main academic quadrangle of the college. Commencement would be held Monday, in three days, in the oak grove beneath his office windows, but why should he bother again? Would it be any different this year? Maybe he wouldn’t attend. It wasn’t that he begrudged the students their moment on the stage. Rather, it was that the ceremony was so numbingly predictable.
The president would make interminable announcements and proclamations. The speaker would drone on about youthful opportunity, duty, and promise. The chaplain would rehearse a prayer more erudite than honest, and the students would realize
afterward, in stunned dismay, that their college years were over. Branden could remember thinking like this in recent years; he really did not like commencements anymore. Maybe that was why the morning had gone so badly for him. Another class would soon disappear. Already, the high school seniors were forming the new class of freshmen, and soon enough they would disappear, too.
Lawrence Mallory knocked abruptly and pushed through Branden’s office door, saying, “I’m making coffee, Mike.”
Branden shook himself loose from his stupor, turned his chair, flipped his grading pen onto the stack of essays on his desk, and said to his assistant, “Make it strong, Lawrence. It’s got to carry me through forty-five more blue books by suppertime.”
Mallory eyed the blue books and said, “You haven’t finished, Mike?”
“Seniors, yes,” Branden replied. “I got them done this morning. But I haven’t even started on the others.”
Mallory stood in front of Branden’s desk, waiting for an explanation.
Branden got slowly to his feet and said, “I don’t have it in me, Lawrence.”
The professor was of average height and moderate build, though not as slender as he once had been. His salt-and-pepper beard was trimmed to a neat and orderly shortness, and his brown hair was parted, but characteristically ruffled. Today, his eyes carried a weariness that Lawrence could see.
“Once you get started,” Lawrence offered, “it’ll go fast enough —the same as usual, Mike.”
Branden hesitated a moment before meeting his assistant’s gaze. “I’ve been thinking about retirement, Lawrence.”
“I don’t believe you!”
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.