A Prayer for the Night

by Gaus, P. L.

  “How is this related to anything now, Michael?”

  “Old man Earl didn’t like his son. Didn’t like people in general, but didn’t like his son in particular. Said his son was too much like his mother. He used to say that his son wasn’t good enough for all his gold. None of his relatives was good enough. ‘Ain’t any fool gonna get my gold.’ Said that more than a few times.

  “Gold was the only thing he liked. It took him a lifetime to collect it all. Started buying and trading gold coins while he was still a teenager, back when gold hadn’t shot up like it did. He got hooked on it, and started selling off household goods to buy more coins. Spent all his savings and spent all of his wife’s savings, too. He didn’t care that he lived in a shack and drove a rusty pickup. Spent every dime he made on coins. His obsession with gold cost him everything he had. It’s why his wife eventually left him. But Earl didn’t care about her by then at all. He settled up with her in the divorce by selling off some of his collection, but her lawyers never really knew how much he had, so I suspect he got off easy. I’d sit with him on his old porch, and he’d talk for hours about how he wished he had never met the woman. Other days it’d be the other way around. He’d reminisce about their younger years, when he had first met her. What a looker she had been. Wondering what went wrong.

  “And he felt guilty for some reason about the way Spits turned out. Earl had been too hard raising the boy, and something had happened between them. So, he didn’t like Spits at all, but he also couldn’t just cut him out of his will altogether. He wasn’t willing to disown him outright. Anyway, Earl wrote out a will and left his gold to his son. Didn’t like the idea, really, but we talked it through, and old Earl came to accept the idea that it was the right thing to do.”

  “You’re not really getting to the point, Michael.”

  The professor gave a satisfied smile and a bemused shake of his head. In the harsh light of the Coleman lantern, he popped the cork on the champagne bottle. The cork thudded against the rock ceiling of the cave, and the champagne foamed out over the lip of the bottle. The professor held the bottle at arm’s length to let the foam spill out onto the floor of the cave, and then he poured a glass for Caroline and one for himself.

  “The point is, Caroline, unlike his father, Spits Wallace never wrote a will. So I’ve had Henry DiSalvo checking on who his closest blood relatives are. The people who will inherit this gold.”

  “Anyone we know?”

  “Rabers, for the most part. About thirteen Rabers. There are a few distant relatives on his father’s side, but Spits Wallace’s mother was Bishop Irvin Raber’s oldest sister. She took up with young Earl Wallace in her first year of the Rumschpringe and never went back to Amish ways.”

  “Sara made the right choice, didn’t she, Michael?”

  “She did indeed,” said the professor, smiling, and clinked his glass to Caroline’s.

  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 waist-coat 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.