Separate from the World

by P. L. Gaus

  “We could try.”

  “Would you?”

  “I’ll go back tomorrow.”

  “Ask Bruce to give you some help.”

  “Won’t be a problem, Mike. But what are you thinking here? This looks like three separate things to me. It looks like an accidental death, a suicide, plus the kidnappings.”

  “I think it’s all related, Missy. I think a fraudulent student thesis is the link to everything.”

  “You going to be able to prove any of that?”

  “Not at this rate,” Branden said. “Probably not in this life.”

  At home, the professor found Caroline preparing for bed. He propped up several pillows and stretched his legs out on the bed, but couldn’t find comfort. Abandoning the bedroom, he went into his study, but there he was still restless. He tried the soft chair. He tried the desk chair. He couldn’t relax.

  Caroline followed, tying her blue terrycloth bathrobe around her waist. “Did you find Eddie?”

  “He left for Florida with his family,” the professor said. He stood in front of the window to stare out at the streetlights. “I need to take a photograph of Eddie out to the Erbs. See if Albert or Mattie can recognize him.”

  Caroline said, “The only thing you’ve really got, Michael, are suspicions about his thesis.”

  “They might recognize him,” Branden said, falling behind Caroline’s remark.

  “You’ll harm them if you do that,” she said emphatically.

  “Then you’re right,” the professor said. “I’ve got nothing but suspicions.”

  “I still think you should call Cal about this, Michael.”

  The professor considered that suggestion while he mulled over the evidence. In the end, he admitted that he really didn’t have any evidence. Suspicions, yes. But not evidence.

  There was the thesis—a fabrication? Probably. There were also the two deaths—murders? Probably not. He saw Mattie in the woods, struggling against her bindings, and Albert in his father’s arms, squeezing his eyes shut as tightly as he could manage. OK, Professor, he thought. Toss out Cathy Billett. Maybe she jumped, like Eddie said. Maybe Eddie had been cruel to her, so she jumped. But if Eddie had actually killed Benny Erb, he would have done everything he could to have stopped her. He would have talked her back from the edge, because a second suspicious death was not what Eddie would have needed right then. It was the last thing he would have wanted.

  But the kidnappings, Branden thought, were still a problem. Did Eddie do that? Why would he need to? What would he gain?

  In his memory, he saw Enos standing on the front steps of his house. “Confession is the start of humility,” he had said. John Hershberger’s confession. For what? What had Hershberger done?

  A new thought occurred to him. Maybe that was it. Did it make any sense at all? Hershberger was set to be bishop in a new district. He was prepared to take all of the Moderns out of Andy Miller’s church and start a new congregation. But not now. Something had changed that. Confession. Why the need?

  And the children had been released by their abductor. Why? What did the Amish have that the kidnapper—Eddie Hunt-Myers —would want?

  Branden pulled his cell phone out, punched in Cal Troyer’s number, and asked, “You asleep, Cal?”

  Troyer laughed. “No, I’ve been out at Calmoutier most of the day. Came home and couldn’t sleep. So I’m up trying to write a letter.”

  “Cal, I talked to Enos Erb yesterday. He told me John Hershberger is not going to split that congregation after all. Is that right?”

  “Right, he’s not,” Cal said. “Andy Miller is letting him stay if he confesses and repents.”

  “This Sunday?” Branden asked.

  “It’s all set up. Everybody knows about it.”

  “Cal, I want you to take me to visit Bishop Andy Miller.”

  “When, Sunday?”

  “No. Tomorrow, Cal.”

  “OK, that shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “It might be, once I talk with him.”

  Cal asked, “Why? What’s going on?”

  “Bishop Miller, Cal. I want him to put a stop to the whole thing.”

  31

  Wednesday, May 16 9:30 A.M.

  BISHOP ANDY MILLER lived on Harrison Road, just over the Wayne County border, about a mile east of the Schlabaughs’ furniture store. His house was a new, simple wood-frame box of two stories, with steep rooflines and green shingles. There was a sitting porch off the second-floor bedrooms and a clothesline strung under the porch, at ground level. All the usual absences of an Amish home were in evidence—no electric or cable service, no phone lines, no fancy garage, and no cars. In the front yard, Miller had five purple martin houses perched atop tall wooden poles, and on the hill behind a red bank barn stood a new aluminum windmill, silver blades turning slowly against a blue morning sky.

  Cal pulled his gray truck up to the side of the house, shut off his engine, and waited in polite Amish fashion for Miller to come out. Professor Branden sat restlessly in the passenger’s seat, wanting to walk up to the house and knock on the door. He had his hand on his door handle when Miller appeared around the back corner of the house.

  The bishop was a short, balding man. His chin whiskers were gray and bushy, and he wore wire spectacles. His denim clothes were old and worn, and his black vest was undone in front. The sleeves of his blue shirt were rolled to precisely the approved location on his arm, just a little below his elbows. When Branden pulled himself out of Cal’s truck, Miller offered his hand, pumped the shake once with firmness, and led the men to the back.

  Miller’s wife served coffee to the men on a back patio with a picnic table. Cal listened while the professor sat across from the bishop and asked polite questions about Albert and Mattie. Polite questions about Enos and Israel. About Hershberger’s rebellion and subsequent capitulation.

  Miller answered all of the professor’s questions calmly and carefully. When Branden asked him to postpone the Sunday confession of John Hershberger, Miller’s gaze turned sadly inward. He smiled like a reluctant sage and studied the redwood boards of the picnic table. When he turned his eyes up to Branden’s, he spoke slowly, deliberately, as if the sanctity of the whole congregation rested on how he answered this particular question.

  “If we don’t do it, Professor,” Miller asked, “who will keep the old ways? If we Amish don’t keep the old ways, who will? And what is the new? Should a bishop tolerate any new doctrine? Should I allow the people to go out into any part of the English world they choose? Any part at all, Professor? Shall I tell a mother and a wife that it is acceptable to spend two hours a day at an exercise spa to lose weight, when her family waits at home? What shall guide my decisions?”

  Branden tipped his head to acknowledge the questions without answering.

  “The people need authority, Professor. How else are they to understand the difficulties of the Bauern, the peasants? And does God ask of us more than a life of simple peasant farming?

  “But a man will think he knows better than a bishop. He rehearses his reasons and thinks himself better. To do so is prideful, Professor. It is the start of a great fall.

  “Others lose strength when this happens. Their sufferings, then, do not make them godly. They only make them miserable. Here is where Grace is most diminished, because we all must suffer. God promises that we will suffer for a reason—to make us whole. If we try to fix everything to lessen our sufferings, we deny our relationship with God. We deny our dependence.

  “So, we Amish accept our disabilities. To do otherwise is to rebel against God’s authority. Our lives are supposed to be hard. We do not flee this truth. We trust that nothing can harm us that God has not allowed. Should a short man blame God? Should sorrow diminish our faith?

  “John Hershberger knows these things. He was raised to honor them. He will repent at Sunday services because he accepts the authority God has instituted among us. I cannot postpone his repentance. I too must submit to God.

>   “Do you understand, Professor? This binds us to one another. This is what makes us whole. Nowhere else is faith more strong than in submission.”

  Branden did not interrupt. He knew he had his answer. He had thought a postponement would help give him time. Time to work on the one thing that would best give Albert and Mattie a chance to heal. But Hershberger himself had set the clock on this, and the clock was running. By this time Sunday morning, Hershberger’s secret would be spoken aloud. And if Eddie Hunt-Myers had done this to Albert and Mattie, then confession was the one thing Eddie couldn’t allow.

  Branden struggled for a way to explain this to Miller. He struggled to match English justice with Amish fatalism, and he felt certain he would fail. Still, he wanted to ask the question that most troubled him about Amish pacifism. “What then, Bishop Miller, of people like Mattie and Albert, who are victims of evil men? Where is the protection for the children? How does your leadership give them safety? Or give them peace? And what do you say of the kidnapper who took the children?”

  Miller smiled as if he appreciated the irony of the question. He smiled as if he had answered these questions for himself on a daily basis for as long as he had lived. “You are troubled for the children?” he said. “I understand. But, we are nonresisters, Professor Branden. We take pacifism to the next level and will not resist verbal or physical attacks of any kind. As for safety, only God can provide for us.”

  Miller held off Branden’s response with a raised hand. “We know from the long persecutions our ancestors endured in Europe that we are powerless to stand against evil. We do not resist. To do so would add violence to violence, and the sin of this would then be ours. Answer this question for me, Professor. We do not understand. How can English be opposed to abortion but in favor of war? Or how can English be opposed to war but in favor of abortion? Are these not both killing?”

  Branden nodded to say he acknowledged the point. He asked, “Then, Bishop Miller, what of the people who do evil against you? Is there no justice as far as you’re concerned?”

  Miller stroked his beard. He spoke with the voice of deep conviction. “What is justice?” he asked. “It is nothing in this world. No, it is testimony alone that matters, Professor. An evil person has testified about himself, because every act of life is testimony. We all testify with our lives. That testimony is laid down as an historical record in the linear realm of time, but our testimony is lodged also in the infinite realm of eternity, where it stands as a witness of what we thought, said, and did. From the viewpoint of eternity, the condition of our hearts is assessed by God, as we testify about ourselves. As our lives are written in the record of eternity. Based on this assessment, our lives are judged by God, who is solely capable of doing this. There is, therefore, no escaping who we are and what we have done. Our lives follow us into eternity. We let God judge us all. We are content to accept His judgment. We let God judge the hearts of evil men, because He alone is qualified to do it.”

  Branden considered what the bishop had said, taking his time to understand it. Giving it the appreciation it deserved. In the end, he could ask only one thing of the man. “May I attend Sunday services?”

  The bishop smiled and said, “Yes, Professor. Have Pastor Troyer bring you out.”

  Cal asked, “Which farm, Andy?”

  “John Hershberger’s, Cal. We’ll be at John Hershberger’s barn, on Nisley Road.”

  32

  Wednesday, May 16 11:25 A.M.

  PROFESSOR NATHAN WELLS had kept the same ritual for thirty-five years. On the days after commencement, he sat on a bench in the oak grove each morning at 11:00 and read the senior thesis of each of his students who had died. He spent an hour at it each day and continued until he was done. Only foul weather kept him home. This year, he had five to read, plus an essay Cathy Billett had written for him as a sophomore. It wasn’t a thesis, but it was all he had of hers.

  It was his habit to go through the students in order, starting with Able Sayers, who had committed suicide the day before commencement, at the end of Professor Wells’s first year of teaching. The count had held at five for the last twelve years. Besides Able Sayers, there had been two deaths from cancer, one in the first Iraq war, and one in a car crash in Boston. To have added Cathy Billett’s memory to his devotions had been nearly the limit of what Nathan Wells could bear.

  Branden found him on his bench with his eyes closed, Cathy Billett’s essay lying open in his lap. When Branden sat down, Wells gently folded the pages and said, “It’s too hard, Mike. I can’t read them anymore.”

  Branden said, “I didn’t know Cathy had written for you, Nate.”

  Wells took a long look at Billett’s paper and handed it to Branden, saying, “It’s her final essay from my class on lesser-known American cultures. I told Arne Laughton this morning that I’ve retired, Mike. Gave him my letter.”

  Branden nodded and smoothed his palm over the front of Billett’s essay, saying, “I’ll read them all for you, Nate, in your place. As long as I’m still here.”

  Wells took a calming breath but said only, “OK, Mike. I can’t do it anymore.”

  Branden held his peace, letting the oak grove serve as witness to their covenant. After a few moments, he broke the silence. “Hope Elliot wrote her senior thesis for you this year.”

  Wells, staring inward at his own thoughts, seemed not to have heard.

  “What can you tell me about her, Nate? About Hope Elliot.”

  Wells pulled himself back to the present. “Hope Elliot? Solid student. Bs for the most part. She had a rough patch early last semester, but she got over it. Then, Cathy Billett.”

  “They were friends?”

  “Since Cathy’s first year. Except this last semester, of course. They were roommates last year.”

  “Is Hope reliable, Nate?”

  “On what topic?”

  “Eddie Hunt-Myers.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No. She told me something about Eddie. I need to know if she is reliable.”

  “She knows a lot about him, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “I am.”

  “They were an item, those two—up until last semester. But Eddie had a lot of girlfriends. He traded them in like used cars.”

  “And how about Cathy Billett? What was her relationship to them?”

  “She broke them up, Mike. Otherwise that would have been Hope up on the bell tower.”

  “He drove a wedge between Hope and Cathy?”

  “Very much so. I told her ‘good riddance.’”

  “Hope?”

  “Yes. I told her she was better off without him.”

  “So you know Eddie, too,” Branden said, hoping to draw Professor Wells toward a comment about Eddie.

  “Only had him for one class.”

  “I think Eddie is pretty smart, Nate.”

  “Too smart by half, Mike.”

  Branden waited for the explanation.

  “Eddie got everything the first time. If he heard it or read it, he had it down pat. Never really had to study. Trouble is, nothing ever held his interest long enough for him to master it.”

  “Knew a little about everything, Nate?”

  Wells nodded, “But not very much about anything.”

  “He did finish a thesis for Aidan Newhouse, Nate.”

  “Then that’s the first thing he ever finished in his life.”

  33

  Wednesday, May 16 1:30 P.M.

  THE REGISTRAR had Hope Elliot’s cell phone number, and when Branden rang it, she answered with a cautious, “Yes?”

  “Hope Elliot?” Branden asked.

  “Who’s calling?”

  “Professor Michael Branden.”

  Hope did not respond.

  “Hope,” Branden said, “I’m listening, now.” He’d thought this through. It was the best thing he could say to gain her trust. “I want to hear about Eddie.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Professor.”

&n
bsp; “Hope, it does. It matters a lot.”

  “Why?”

  “I think his thesis is a fraud.”

  “I could have told you that.”

  “I also think he kidnapped two little Amish children. Last Saturday, Hope.”

  “They all right?”

  “They’re home, Hope, but they are not all right.”

  “He’s got a stone for a heart, Professor. He doesn’t care about anyone but himself. He hasn’t got a single male friend in the whole world. And he hates his parents.”

  “Can you help me understand that, Hope?”

  “I’ll tell you several things about Eddie. He’s rich. He’ll never want for anything. But he takes what he wants, and he discards what he’s tired of. He threw me over for Cathy Billett without so much as a word to me. But before that, one night last October, he told me what he wanted out of life. I don’t know why he did, because Eddie hides his real nature most of the time. But he told me that night what he dreamed of most. I think he wanted to see shock in me. To see shock in my eyes, because that’s what he did when he told me—he looked so deep into my eyes that it felt like rape. He said his biggest dream in life was that his parents would be killed in a plane crash, and he’d inherit everything they have. How’s that for cold ambition, Professor? He would trade his family for a boatyard.”

  Branden was stunned. It took him several long seconds to speak, then he said, “Hope, I want you to tell me again why you think he killed Cathy Billett.”

  Silence from Hope Elliot.

  “Hope? Are you still there?”

  “Yes.”

  Branden waited. He let time fill the connection.

  Eventually, Hope said, “He called me yesterday, Dr. Branden.”

  “Eddie?”

  “He said he wants us to hook up again.”

  “I hope you’re not considering that.”

  “No, Professor. But that’s not what he meant.”

  “Did he threaten you, Hope?”

  “It was a threat just to hear his voice. He wanted me to know he can find me. I think he was laughing to himself when he spoke. You know—laughing that he’s so clever.”