The Lesson

by Suzanne Woods Fisher

  Chris took a deep breath. “Yes. I was.”

  M.K. started each morning with roll call. She wasn’t really sure why it was necessary—but that was what Alice Smucker had done, and Gid too, so she thought it must be necessary. When she came to the eighth grade, she called out, “Jenny Yoder.” Jenny raised her hand.

  “Yoder? Jenny Yoder?” Something clicked. “Is Chris Yoder any relation to you?”

  Jenny nodded. “He’s my brother.”

  M.K. was a little stunned. She hadn’t expected the sheep murderer and coffee can thief to be anybody’s brother. She stood quietly, studying Jenny. Granted, Jenny didn’t resemble her brother—she had dark auburn hair and he was fair-haired. Except for the color of her blue eyes, they looked nothing alike. He was tall and muscular, she was short and bird-thin. Still, how had she not put the two of them together? M.K. did have a lot on her mind—but she was usually so good at making those kinds of connections.

  M.K. heard the rumble of thunder and hurried to shut the schoolhouse windows. Through the window, she noticed the sheriff’s car drive slowly past the schoolhouse. In the backseat was Chris Yoder.

  As the car passed by, Chris looked over at the schoolhouse. For one brief second, their eyes met.

  M.K. spun around to see if Jenny had seen her brother in the police car, but her head was bent over, tucked into the book she was supposed to be reading from. It was a strategy M.K. had used many times herself. A terrible feeling flooded through M.K. When she went to see the sheriff this morning, she hadn’t really thought through that Chris Yoder might be arrested and hauled off to jail.

  But if he was a thief and a murderer, jail was where he belonged.

  Unless, pointed out a small voice in her head that sounded a good deal like Fern, unless . . . he’s not guilty. Unless Mary Kate had no right to accuse another person of crimes. Unless he was another Plain person—one of her own. Unless she had no business meddling in police business.

  M.K. felt the courage she had started the day with drip away like ice cream on a July afternoon. She interfered with something she should have left alone.

  What if Chris Yoder were found guilty? But what if Chris Yoder was guilty?

  What have I done? M.K. thought. What have I done?

  As soon as Jimmy heard the news from his brother Paul, who heard it from a girl he was dating, who heard it from her friend who answered the phone part-time at the sheriff’s office, he rushed over to tell M.K. He could hardly wait. This was going to be a delicious moment.

  The Lapp family was just sitting down to supper as Jimmy rapped on the kitchen door.

  Fern opened the door to him. “You have an unusual knack for appearing at mealtimes,” she said, as if she wasn’t at all surprised—or excited, either—to see him.

  Jimmy was in too generous a frame of mind to worry about that. Besides, Fern was already setting another place at the table for him.

  Fern’s cooking was legendary, so Jimmy was happy to be invited to stay. He took his time, waiting for just the right moment. The moment had to be perfect. M.K. had been cranky lately, with this school teaching and all, so Jimmy thought this would be just the thing to snap her out of her funk.

  Finally, in between supper and dessert, Jimmy leaned back in his chair. “So, it turns out that the culprit has been found for the murdered sheep farmer.”

  “I know,” M.K. said quietly.

  “You knew? You knew?” Jimmy was astounded. How did she know things faster than he did? She was stuck in a schoolhouse all day! She looked at him strangely, pale and unhappy. “Are you all right? Are you sick?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, but she didn’t sound at all fine.

  Come to think of it, she hadn’t talked during supper either. Uncle Hank did most of the talking.

  “BOY, WE’RE ON THE EDGE OF OUR SEATS!” Uncle Hank roared. “Don’t keep us waiting.”

  All eyes were upon Jimmy—his favorite moment. “As you know, the sheriff has been baffled over this murder.”

  “Tell us something we don’t know,” M.K. added mournfully.

  Jimmy leaned forward in his chair. He lowered his voice to add suspense. “No one else was around, and no footprints led to or from the scene of the crime. But our trusty investigators sifted through the meager clues surrounding the farmer’s death, and they have fingered the culprit.” He pointed his finger in the air for a dramatic touch.

  Uncle Hank sat straight up in his chair. “WHO? WHO?”

  “Turns out the farmer had fallen asleep amidst his sheep without securing his rifle.”

  “AND?” Uncle Hank yelled. Fern looked at him, annoyed.

  Now Jimmy was in his dramatic element. “A moment of neglect, another one of leisure, a wooly hoof on the trigger, and a speeding slug sentenced the sleeping shepherd to his final slumber.”

  All faces were blank. It was Fern who put it together first. “One of his sheep stepped on the rifle?”

  Jimmy grinned. “The coroner’s report came back from the autopsy—something to do with the angle of the bullet. It was the only logical conclusion.”

  “When did they figure it out?” M.K. asked meekly.

  “Today,” Jimmy said. “I guess they found a witness who saw the whole thing and it all added up to what they had been thinking. You can all sleep easier tonight. The weapon has been confiscated from the flock. The perpetrator has confessed and the judge has handed down the sentence.” Jimmy had been waiting to deliver this line all afternoon: “The guilty party has been sentenced to ewe-thanasia.”

  A moment of silence followed. Then, Uncle Hank and Amos burst into laughter. Jimmy joined in. Tears flowed down their cheeks. Their guffaws were so loud and out of control that Fern and M.K. grew thoroughly disgusted. They gathered up plates and took them to the kitchen, leaving the men to howl like a pack of hyenas, Fern said. But Fern was not the laughing kind.

  Jimmy wiped tears from his eyes. “One more thing, M.K. Now there’s no reason keeping you from introducing me to Emily Esh!” He turned back to Amos and Uncle Hank and started laughing all over again.

  M.K. felt a surge of jangly nerves as she sloshed the dishes with soapy water. The minute Jimmy walked through the door, she knew he had on his I-know-something-you-don’t smile. Now she understood why.

  She had been so sure, so absolutely, positively sure that Chris Yoder was the culprit. Maybe he had lied to the sheriff. But then, there was that autopsy finding. Forensic science was quite accurate. She knew that to be true because she read it in her Unsolved Crimes magazine.

  Jimmy sidled into the kitchen. “So, I sure hope your dad and Fern don’t have to leave town, thanks to you not setting a good example for the community. All eyes are upon the teacher, I hope you know.”

  “What are you jabbering about now?”

  He grabbed a dish towel and pretended to help her dry the dishes. “Seeing as how you were escorted home by a very important means of transportation the other night.” Carefully, he enunciated, “It involved a police car.”

  M.K. froze. The soapy dish she was washing was suspended in air.

  Jimmy whistled two notes. “Did the sheriff cuff you before he took you home?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “What do you know about anything?”

  “You mean . . . your transportation in a police car?” he reminded. Again, he enunciated the words police car with utmost care. He took the dish out of her hands and rinsed it off, calmly drying it.

  “I wasn’t doing anything wrong,” she spat out. “I was trying to help and—” Just then, Fern came into the kitchen with a few condiments to put in the refrigerator and M.K. knew enough to snap her mouth shut. This conversation with Jimmy Fisher would have to wait.

  “Why, there it is!” Fern said. “I completely forgot I had put it there while I was cleaning out cupboards.”

  “What?” M.K. said.

  Fern spun around. In her hand was the coffee can that held her spare cash.

  M.K. dropped a wet, soapy dish on the f
loor and it shattered into pieces. What have I done? she thought. What have I done?

  8

  Chris tossed the forkful of hay into Samson’s makeshift stall, in the garage-turned-barn. Then he clipped a lead rope to Samson’s harness and led him outside to brush him down. He stroked the brush across Samson’s withers, and the horse nickered, nudging Chris’s shoulder with his nose. Normally Chris would laugh at the horse’s antics, but not now. Not after a day like today.

  Currycombing the horse was Chris’s way to calm down and sort things out. Samson was annoyed that dinner was getting delayed, but tonight, it would have to wait. Chris still felt shaky inside after being hauled off to the police station like a common criminal. He was even more shocked by how the conversation with the sheriff had unfolded.

  “So, Chris Yoder, tell me why you were at Raymond Gould’s farm on the afternoon of August 28th,” the sheriff had said as he settled into the chair behind his desk.

  “I had been doing odd jobs around Stoney Ridge. I found the jobs on the bulletin board at the hardware store in town. Raymond Gould needed someone to lift hay into his barn loft, so I went over to his farm that morning and he hired me for the rest of the day. Said he has—said he had—a bad back.”

  The sheriff scribbled down notes as Chris spoke. “Go on.”

  “I was up in the hayloft, using a pulley to haul bales of hay into the loft. I heard a gunshot go off and looked out the door at the end of the barn. Down in the pasture was the farmer, Raymond Gould, sprawled flat on his back, and a bunch of frightened sheep.”

  “No one else?”

  “No one. I had a pretty good vantage point from the upper story of the barn.”

  “Then what?”

  “I scrambled down from the hayloft and took off on my horse to call for an ambulance. I remembered that I had passed by a phone shanty near the schoolhouse.”

  “And then?”

  “I went back to the farm, waited until I heard the police sirens, and left.”

  “You didn’t bother to give Gould CPR?”

  “I don’t have any idea how to give someone CPR.” He turned the brim of his straw hat around and around. “Look, Sheriff, I’ve been around farm animals enough to know when a creature still has life in it. I have to say, Raymond Gould looked pretty dead from the barn.” Chris pointed to his head. “The bullet, well, it—”

  The sheriff waved that thought off. “Yeah, yeah.” He jotted down a few more notes.

  Chris was growing impatient. “Am I under arrest? I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  The sheriff leaned back in his chair. “No. Your story checks out. We have two calls coming in, five minutes apart, from the schoolhouse phone. And the coroner’s report corroborates your story. Turns out a sheep stepped on the rifle. The safety wasn’t on.”

  “Then, can I go?” Chris started to rise in the chair.

  “Not so fast. I’ve got a few more questions for you.” The sheriff tossed down his pen and fixed his gaze on Chris. “If you weren’t guilty, then why did you act guilty? Why did you leave the scene?”

  Chris stifled a groan. He cleared his throat and tried to answer calmly. “I could see things were taken care of. I had nothing to add. I didn’t see the actual shooting. I would have just gotten in the way.”

  The sheriff raised his eyebrows. “Or maybe you didn’t want the authorities to know you were in town.”

  Maybe. “I haven’t done anything wrong. Can I go?”

  “Just a few more questions.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like your real name.”

  “I’ve told you. Christopher Yoder.”

  “Your father’s name was Yoder?”

  “I don’t know who my father was.”

  “Where’d you pick up the name Yoder?”

  “My foster mother. She raised me.”

  “She adopted you?”

  “No. Not officially.”

  “Then why don’t you tell me what your legal name is?”

  Chris sighed. “Mitchell. Christopher Mitchell.”

  “Tell me about your mother.”

  Chris snapped his head up. “What about her?”

  “For starters, what is her name?”

  “Grace. Grace Mitchell.” Chris rubbed his temples. His mother’s name always seemed ironic to him. It was as if his grandparents must have known she would require a lot of grace in life.

  The sheriff scribbled it down. “Grace Mitchell.” He looked up. “Where is she now?”

  Chris wanted to tell the sheriff that his mother was none of his business. He hated sharing his personal life with anyone, much less this arrogant officer. But he feared the sheriff would continue to harass him unless he answered his questions. He cleared the lump from his throat again. “I haven’t had any contact with her in quite some time.” That was the truth.

  The sheriff leaned forward in his chair. “Let me be straight with you, Chris . . . Yoder or Mitchell or whoever you are. And maybe, then, you will be straight with me. What I want to know is what happened in your grandfather’s house, fourteen years ago.”

  Whoa. Why was the sheriff ripping the scab off this old wound? Leave it alone! Chris pleaded silently. That was such a long time ago. That was the last day he had ever seen his grandfather.

  Jimmy Fisher left Windmill Farm after extracting a promise from M.K. to introduce him to Emily Esh. As soon as he disappeared around the bend in the road, M.K. set out for Erma Yutzy’s house. This morning’s storm clouds had been blown away by a change in the wind, and the evening sky was high and open. She found Erma, as usual, bent over in the garden, weeding.

  “Hello, Erma,” M.K. called out as she crossed over a row of spinach seedlings.

  Erma lifted her head and blinked a few times. “Well, well. My new young friend is here.” She leaned on her cane as she straightened up and shielded her eyes from the setting sun. “Can I get you a piece of apple snitz? I just took it out of the oven.”

  M.K. smiled and shook her head. No one came or went from a Plain home without being fed. “I just finished supper. I was passing by and thought I’d say hello.”

  But Erma couldn’t be fooled. She took a few steps closer to her, pausing for a moment, sizing up M.K.’s mood. “Weeding is good for a heavy heart.”

  “Really?”

  “When you weed, you get rid of the things that distract a plant from growing.” Erma watched her for a long moment, then grinned. “It’s a metaphor, Mary Kate.”

  Oh. Oh!

  “And there are a lot of weeds.” Erma pointed to a row of carrots and radishes. “I could sure use some help.”

  The two women worked their way down the row, carefully tugging weeds without uprooting carrot seedlings. About halfway down the row, M.K. quietly said, “Erma, how do you make something right when you’ve done something wrong?”

  Slowly, Erma straightened up and leaned on her knees. “You ask for forgiveness and try to get things back on track, that’s what you do.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it,” Erma said. She pointed to the carrots. “Keep weeding.”

  Twenty minutes later, Erma’s carrots and radishes were safe from the distractions of intruding weeds, and M.K. said goodbye.

  As M.K. scooted down the street that led to Colonel Mitchell’s house, she wondered what she might find—was Jenny left alone while her brother was thrown in jail today? Was Chris still in jail? M.K. felt terrible. When would she ever learn? This was just the kind of thing Fern was always getting after her for—she acted first and thought second. She had sent someone to jail today! And he wasn’t even guilty. Oh, what would her father say if he found out? She hoped he never would.

  She zoomed past Colonel Mitchell’s driveway the first time, but found it on the second pass. The house was on a flag lot, sitting way back from the road, its long drive edged with overgrown bushes on both sides, hidden from the street. At the end of the long driveway, the house loomed, pale white in the gathering purple dusk.
Fireflies flickered in the canopy of the trees, and whip-poor-wills chirped from the high grass. Fat, fuzzy bumblebees hovered in the warm evening air. Under normal conditions, she would stop to identify the variety of bumblebees. Maybe follow them to their hives. Not tonight, though. Tonight wasn’t a normal night.

  As she neared the house, she slowed, astounded. It was a stately old home, in utter neglect. Something wiggled around in her memory. She suddenly realized that the house backed up to the stand of pine trees on the far edge of Windmill Farm—not far from the honey cabin. If she didn’t have the scooter, she could probably get home quicker by slipping through the fields. She set the scooter down, took a deep breath, and started for the porch but stopped when she saw Chris lead a horse out to a hitching post.

  Well, at least he wasn’t in jail! That was good news.

  She smoothed her skirt and took another deep breath before she approached Chris. “Hello.”

  He looked over the neck of the horse at her, didn’t say anything, but calmly continued with his grooming, running the brush down the animal’s flank. For a long minute M.K. just watched him. It struck her all of a sudden that he was a very handsome young man, clean-cut and wholesome looking.

  She tried again. “We haven’t been formally introduced. I’m Mary Kate Lapp. Apparently you have been working for my father, Amos Lapp.”

  “You look like a Lapp,” Chris said.

  He didn’t seem at all angry. Maybe the sheriff hadn’t told him who had turned him in. Maybe that piece of information could remain between her and the sheriff. In her detective books, the witness was always protected. Maybe that’s what the sheriff had done. She stood up straighter. Everything was going to be all right! Maybe there was no harm done, other than a minor interruption in Chris Yoder’s day. Maybe . . .

  “Coming by to see if I got let out of the slammer?”

  Oh. She knotted her hands, not knowing what she should say. No, that wasn’t true. She knew what to say. She just wasn’t accustomed to saying it. Finally, she pushed out the words that needed to be said. “I came over to apologize.”