Fire in the Night

by Linda Byler

  His gray hair was matted, stringy, the scalp showing on top where the hair had grown thin. The odor of smoke clung to him—a bad vapor of premonition.

  No one spoke. The clock on the wall ticked away, unaware of the scene around the kitchen table. Levi slurped his coffee and drained it, carefully swallowing the last of the shoofly crumbs. Then he rubbed his face across an extended sleeve.

  Sarah silently handed him a napkin, raised her eyebrows, and smiled. He returned the smile and punched her forearm with affection.

  Dat lifted his head then, and met Mam’s searching eyes. He found the caring and support he sought, his own eyes conveying gratitude without words. Then he began to talk, quietly at first.

  “It’s a mess. It’s just a horrible thing—the cows tearing at their stanchions, bawling out their terror, the desperate bleating turning into cries that were intolerable, the hay that burned as swiftly as any flammable substance, the shrill, high shrieks of the horses as they banged around in their stalls. The fire engulfing them was actually merciful. We tried. We tried to loosen a few cows, but I’ve never seen a fire like that. It was like a cannon blasting through the barn.”

  Dat shook his head.

  “Not that I’ve ever seen a cannon. I imagine the ball of fire to be like one.”

  “Ball of fire? Was it lightning?” Priscilla asked, her face ashen with memories still vivid.

  “No. It wasn’t lightning. They’re all talking, talking, on and on.”

  He lowered his head into his hands, the work roughened hands now streaked with the soot and ashes of his neighbor’s barn. A stupendous burden weighed on her father, and Sarah knew it was not the fire, not entirely. He sat up suddenly, his eyes weary but filled with a solid light of knowing.

  “It’s so hard to take. Ben is so angry. He is demanding that something be done now. They’re like a clamoring mob. They say, Amish or not, we can’t sit on our hands and take this. Someone started this fire, and he needs to be brought to justice.”

  “But…,” Mam began.

  “That’s just it, Malinda. It’s not our way. It’s not. We are a nonresistant people. Or used to be. To my way of thinking, we do not fight back. God allowed the arsonist to accomplish this. He could have stopped him, but he didn’t. It is a chastening, and in everything, some good can come of it. We need to adhere to our way of forgiveness. But Ben is like a madman. He’s stomping around, making threats, shaking his fist.”

  “But for him to have to listen to those innocent animals’ suffering…” Sarah said gently.

  “Oh, I know. I know. It’s almost more than any man can handle. And Ben’s barn was rich in history, valuable way beyond mere dollars. It was an old German bank barn, built in the late 1700s. You can’t replace that workmanship. It’s just…well, sickening. They’re bringing in trained dogs to sniff out certain chemicals. And the media will go wild about this. With Ben’s anger, we will not be a light to the world. I shudder to think of what he’ll tell reporters. It’ll be a real jolt to the community. I hope all of you stay home as much as possible. We don’t want our pictures in any newspaper or magazine.”

  Quietly, Mam got up from her chair. She broke a few eggs into a bowl, turned on the gas burner beneath her frying pan, and added a dot of butter. She took Dat a cup of steaming hot coffee and then laid a gentle hand on his shoulder.

  “You’ll feel better after you eat,” she said softly.

  Dat reached across and patted the hand on his shoulder, saying quietly, “Ach, Mam. What would I do without you?”

  The day was bright and hot and humid. In spite of the heat, Mam kicked into high gear, urging everyone else along. They would pull the corn they had planned on freezing and take it to Ben’s, along with the lima beans.

  “Sarah, take Priscilla with you. Pull the sweet corn in the garden, the early patch of Incredible. Keep it in the shade. Pick the lima beans. We’ll take them over to shell them. Suzie, is your breakfast eaten? Hurry up. You can pick tea. I’ll make concentrate. Get the woolly tea and all the spearmint. David, what time are you going back?”

  “I need a shower and some clean clothes. Girls, now please don’t forget. Watch out for the cameras. Don’t talk to the reporters. Keep your faces hidden if they try to take your picture.”

  In the garden, Sarah and Priscilla bent their backs obediently, holding the heavy lima bean bushes aside as their hands searched for the ripening pods. There was no sound except the dull thunk of the hard pods hitting the plastic buckets. The sun was already on their backs like a giant toaster, showing no mercy for the girls’ comfort level.

  Sarah straightened and wiped the back of her hand across her forehead, where beads of sweat had accumulated.

  Priscilla groaned. “Whose idea was this—to plant these endless rows of beans? Nobody likes them, except Dat.”

  “Levi.”

  “I could easily live without lima beans.”

  Sarah shrugged her shoulders. “You know how Mam is. A garden without lima beans is just unthinkable. It would be like making a dress with a leppley (the small fold of fabric sewn into the waist on the back of the dress).”

  Priscilla giggled. Then she said seriously, “I think Ben Zook has every right to be angry. I hope the same person lit his barn that lit ours and that the police catch him, and he dies in jail.”

  Sarah gasped.

  “Priscilla! Seriously. We are not allowed to talk like that. Not even think it.”

  To Sarah’s disbelief, Priscilla began to sob hoarsely. A sort of feral anguish tore from her throat in great heaves, a sound Sarah had never heard from her sister.

  As Sarah placed a hand on her sister’s heaving back, Pricilla moved away quickly saying, “Don’t. Don’t.” Sarah stood helpless, holding the corner of her bib apron, pleating it with her fingers, not knowing what else to do.

  Priscilla sank to the soil between the lima bean bushes. She lifted her tormented face, her eyes streaming, and shuddered before catching her voice.

  “Sarah, you don’t know how it is to lose a horse. You were never like me. I know Dat meant well, and my new Dutch is all I could ever dream of. But that arsonist took away my real Dutch, and I’ll never love another horse the same way. It’s not just the barns burning—it’s the loss of heartfelt love for the animals. They didn’t ask for some…some….”

  Priscilla was at loss for the proper word to describe the total disgust she felt.

  “Don’t say it. Priscilla. Don’t. You can’t hate. It will consume you, and you’ll become spiritually unhealthy.”

  Viciously, Priscilla yanked off a lima bean and threw it angrily into the bucket. With a sneer, she said, “What do you know about it, Sarah? Huh? Nothing. Not one thing.”

  Sarah blinked. She started to say something but just looked off across the garden and down to the orchard, where barn swallows wheeled in the sky, their sharp jabbering a sound of home.

  No, she didn’t know. Or did she? Did she hate Rose deep down inside? Did she just frost her hate with a sweet icing of falsehood, going about her life intensely longing for the one thing she couldn’t have? Could she stand here and show her sister the path of righteousness, when in truth she was decaying spiritually by the power of her own obsession?

  She imagined herself covered with sticky, sweet, cream-cheese frosting, her stomach a carrot cake, spoiled, the gray-green mold growing, growing, taking over her health and happiness.

  Was she hating? Did she wish Rose well? And her impatience with Levi. She’d always loved her handicapped brother. But of late….

  Dear God. You have to help me. I can’t do this alone. Oh, I can’t. I love Matthew, helplessly, hopelessly. I can’t get away from it by myself. Give me courage. Give me strength.

  It took her breath away, knowing the truth. Roughly, Priscilla brought her back to reality.

  “Come on, pick beans. Don’t just stand there as if there was a spook in the orchard.”

  Numbly, like a manipulated marionette, Sarah bent her back and started
to pull off the lima beans, a mighty battle beginning in her heart.

  Her love for Matthew Stoltzfus was as all-consuming as the fires that had devoured the barns. He ravaged her whole life, like a disease that would eventually annihilate her.

  Well, obviously, the barns were being started by a person who meant evil, who wanted to harm someone or something, who possibly held a grudge against the Amish and their Plain way of life.

  Her love for Matthew was from God, pure, cleansing, bringing happiness. Or was it? Mam’s warning flashed through her mind. Well, another obvious thing—what did she know? Mam wasn’t at the suppers and singings, the volleyball games. She didn’t know how Matthew admired her, talked to her, made her laugh. He didn’t do that to the other girls at all. She was the only one.

  Soon they’d break up. Soon. Rose was too beautiful, too perfect. He’d tire of her, and he’d be all Sarah’s.

  And so her thoughts tumbled and twisted, first in one direction, then in another. But always, tenaciously, she clung to the love of her life.

  Priscilla attached herself just as firmly to a total disdain of the person who had taken her precious Dutch from her. The barn fires had spawned the works of the devil in all their masked forms.

  Upstairs, the girls showered and then dressed in the customary black, with dear little Mervin gone only a short time. They wore no capes, it being the middle of the week, but they pinned their black aprons neatly around their small waists. Leaning over their dressers, they combed their hair back sleekly, adding mousse or hairspray, anything to tame the unruly hair.

  As always, Sarah dressed for Matthew. He was sure to be there, as were all the able-bodied men of the community. So she combed, patted, combed again, sprayed, stood back, frowned, then took it all down and began again.

  “What is wrong with you? Your eyebrows are arched straight up, and you look as if you could explode or something.”

  Priscilla was ready to go, covering pinned neatly, her blonde-brownish hair pulled sleekly back, her flawless face tanned, her eyes, well, yes, she was turning into a very pretty young girl.

  “It’s my curly, crazy, dumb hair!”

  “You always did have that.”

  “It’s the humidity. It turns my hair into corkscrews. They just spiraling wildly off my head.”

  “Well, go ahead and use the whole bottle of hairspray. Plaster your hair down hard as a board. You know the Fructis stuff isn’t cheap.”

  “Who buys it? You or me?”

  “You.”

  “Well, then.”

  Sarah lifted the green bottle, working the pump madly, while Priscilla plopped down on the bed, leaned back on her hands, and rolled her eyes.

  “Go load the corn and lima beans a while. Dat got the spring wagon out. Go. Go on!”

  “Your hair isn’t the only thing out of control!” Priscilla shot back and started for the stairs.

  Laughing, Sarah could hardly see to comb her hair, so she leaned on the dresser, giving in to the mirth, and was shocked to find herself crying and laughing at the same time.

  Alright. This was enough of this stuff, as dear Mommy Beiler would say.

  She raked her hair back once more, plopped her covering on top, pinned it, and without another look, ran down the stairs, through the empty kitchen, and out to the spring wagon, where Levi and Priscilla sat waiting.

  Dat stood at the horse’s head. “My, Sarah, we’ve been waiting.” But he was friendly, smiling. If he felt impatient, he’d never show it, his emotions about such minor things always on an even keel.

  “It’s my curly hair.”

  Dat laughed and leaned sideways to look through his bifocals at the now severely plastered hair.

  “It looks pretty straight to me.”

  Sarah laughed. “Ach, shick dich (Behave yourself).”

  It was nice to have that reprieve of normalcy before the mile and a half to Ben Zook’s farm, or what was left of it.

  They arrived to the stench, the smoke, the milling about of people with stiff, numb movements, eyes full of dread or horror, caring, or disbelief. They arrived to the fire trucks, the engines and hoses, the black water draining away, carrying flakes of ash and the remnants of this proud old German barn that had been destroyed by a flick or two of a lighter.

  Fire and water—two life-giving elements that humans needed to survive. But in out-of-control quantities, both devastated unlike anything else. Sarah saw the muddy flood waters churning over Mervin’s head. She shivered and heard Dutch’s screams as the raging fire overtook him.

  And when Matthew Stoltzfus walked over to help Dat with his horse, she heard the distinct cawing of the crows.

  Chapter 13

  “MORNING!”

  “Good morning, Matthew. Good to see you. Hey, if you don’t mind, I’ll get the horse if you help the girls unload. Would you see that Levi has a comfortable chair somewhere? Maybe here by the fence?”

  “Morning, Matthew,” Levi chortled.

  “How’s it going, old boy?”

  “Good. I’m real good.”

  “Hey, Priscilla,” Matthew said, grinning down at her.

  She didn’t bother answering, intent on rescuing Mam’s cakes from beneath the seat.

  “Hello, Sarah.”

  “Hi, Matthew.”

  She smiled and looked gratefully into his brown eyes, so glad to see him, her whole world lit by his smile.

  “Only Mam would bake a layer cake. Black walnut with caramel icing,” Priscilla mumbled.

  “Something wrong?” Matthew asked, bending to put his face close to Priscilla’s to hear her better.

  “Oh, nothing.”

  Matthew’s arm went out, for only a second, a half circle about her waist. Blushing furiously, Priscilla yanked at the cake, grasped it, and pivoted out of his way.

  Matthew laughed and looked down at Sarah. “Boy, your little sister is growing up!”

  He whistled, watching her retreating form.

  Sarah giggled and thought how kind Matthew was, always thinking of others, and of someone like Priscilla, who had been so saddened by the loss of her horse.

  “She’ll likely take this barn fire hard.”

  “Matthew! I want down!” Levi yelled.

  “Ach, Levi. I forgot you, talking to Sarah.”

  Oh, what hope! What a true cemented hope sprang in Sarah’s heart, hearing those words. He had just admitted that she was a distraction. She mattered so much that he forgot about Levi! Imagine. The morning was now filled with pure, unadulterated sunshine, birdsong, monarch butterflies, grass as green and flowers as pink and blue and purple as Sarah had ever seen.

  The scene of devastation at the barn faded into the background. Sarah shucked the corn all by herself in Ben sei Fannie’s garden. She threw the husks across the fence to the three pigs they were fattening, about the only animals they had left.

  As her hands ran swiftly across the ears of corn, removing the silk with a stiff bristled brush, she thought of Matthew. When she carried the first dishpan full of golden ears into the kitchen, her smile was dazzling, her face glowing.

  She wasn’t even aware of the cluster of women at the kitchen window watching her sister. Priscilla stood, still as stone, gripping the picket fence with white-knuckles. The color drained from her face as she relived the horror of her own personal barn fire, the one that had trapped Dutch in its fiery claws, making him suffer as no horse ever should. Her Dutch. Priscilla smelled the burnt bodies of the cows, the huge draft horses, and she remembered.

  Levi sat a few feet away, his straw hat pushed back on his head so he wouldn’t miss a thing. Men shouted as trucks moved among the gigantic black hoses. Cameras flashed as reporters skulked about, knowing they would soon be asked to respect the Amish men’s wishes.

  Flames still broke out in the charred wreckage. Blackened stone upon stone—the mortar that had held them together for centuries now crumpled by the intense heat—was all that remained of what the forefathers had built by the sweat of t
heir brows.

  “That girl is going to have to go for counseling.”

  “Not Davey Beiler’s girl. He’s better than any counselor.”

  “She looks awful.”

  “Somebody should go get her.”

  “You can’t help her.”

  “Oh, my heart goes out to her.”

  “Where’s Malinda?”

  “That poor woman has had enough. She doesn’t need to be here.”

  “Priscilla brought two cakes in. She made a black walnut cake.”

  “Ach, that Malinda. She is something else.”

  “Her caramel icing is a tad too sweet, though.” This comment came from the owner of the community’s top roadside bakery, Henry sei Suvilla, completely uncontested by any other.

  Amos sei Leah stuck a skinny elbow into Danny sei Becca’s ample side, causing her to jump with an almost inaudible little squeak. Two eyebrows shot up, and when Suvilla glowered at them, Leah quickly brought a hand to her mouth as she turned away.

  Well, no wonder. Suvilla may have quite a business at her roadside stand, but nobody made walnut cakes with caramel icing the way Malinda did. And her being so genuinely humble.

  Half these tourists didn’t really know what good shoofly pie was. They bought Suvilla’s dry old things and thought that’s how shoofly tasted.

  “Oh, my! No! Here comes a reporter. Straight up to Priscilla!”

  “Oh, siss unfashtendich! (This is just senseless!)”

  “Somebody go get her.”

  “Where’s Sarah?”

  A flurry of searching followed but to no avail. It was too late. The reporter, carrying a whirring black contraption on his shoulder with straps dangling, bore down on the unassuming Priscilla.

  She was completely unaware, lost in her own sad world of memories and loathing of anyone evil enough to murder these faultless animals. They had never done anything except serve their masters—giving their creamy milk, pulling the plow or the hay rake or the balers—servants that made a living, a way of life. Wasn’t that check in the mailbox because of them? Wasn’t the milk possible because of the horses’ hard work, their beautiful heads nodding, their harnesses clanking, doing what God designed them to do?