by Karen Harper
“Danki, Mamm,” Sarah said, and squeezed her shoulder before turning away. She skimmed the crowd for Nate as she walked toward the field. She finally spotted him up on a tall ladder, pounding nails into the siding over the barn doors. It looked to be the ladder from VERA, the one he’d loaned to her for the painting and had just taken back. Would Bishop Esh ever dare to ask her to paint another quilt square there where Nate was working?
The workers started nailing down the sheet-iron roofing. If the siding made a din, this was a clamor. Surely that would wake the sleepers. Sarah could hardly think, and the sound seemed to echo off her own barn as she hurried toward it.
Tempted to put her hands over her ears, she picked up her pace through the field she’d run across the night of the Esh fire. Only two weeks ago, but so much had happened. At least Hannah’s name had been temporarily cleared, she thought, even if Jacob’s hadn’t. She watched where she stepped because their plow team and buggy horses were grazing here today. It wouldn’t be good to be tracking horse apples around. She barely broke stride to pat Sally as she came up to nuzzle her and walked along for a minute before stopping to graze again on the fringe of the field.
Sarah looked back at the new Esh barn. That gentle slope of land where it had been burned had seemed so naked without it, but there the new one stood, almost identical. The men atop and around it in their black trousers and white shirts with so many moving and bobbing straw hats made the barn look like a living creature now, a benign beast.
She rounded the corner of their barn and glanced up at her new quilt square in satisfaction. Not in pride or hochmut, not because it was “just for pretty,” because it wasn’t. It was a sign of Amish gifts to the world, a sign that the Home Valley was a good place to be, bad publicity of barn burnings or not.
The sliding door to the barn stood about three feet ajar. Gabe probably wanted the light and air inside. “Gabe, it’s Sarah!” she called out as she stepped in. “Hannah, you still here?”
The distant hammering seemed muted inside the cool vastness. No air stirred and silence engulfed her. “Gabe! Hannah!”
Maybe one or both had gone into the house or grossdaadi haus to use the bathroom or get something to eat or drink, but Gabe should not have left the barn open. Even in broad daylight, it was dark in here with just the light from the loft window, muted by Hannah’s apron, and the single shaft of light from the barn door.
And then, behind her, the door rolled shut and slammed, plunging the barn into deeper darkness. Sarah spun to stare in the direction of the door, but her eyes still had not adjusted.
“Gabe Kauffman!” she said. “This isn’t funny!”
Something shuffled through the straw, across the wooden floor. She could hear it, feel it—something alien and evil. Instinct, self-preservation, fought with rising fear as she felt the hair on the back of her neck prickle. Whoever now stood in the corner of the barn near the door, behind the grain bin, was breathing heavily, even as Sarah was from her dash across the field. She had to make a run for the door. One more step back, around to the side, not straight for it.
She tried to tiptoe but a board creaked. Fear careered through her. Was there a beast, some sort of demon? Human, of course. Her heart nearly thudded out of her chest. Even if she escaped and screamed for Nate, for the others, they would never hear her with their noise. She had to make a break for it, run all the way back to her people.
But as she took another sideways step, she tripped over something and fell to her knees over it. In the darkness, she sensed more by touch than sight.
A body!
“Gabe?”
No answer came but the sound of someone’s breathing and the muted din of pounding, pounding. Ya, it was Gabe! He lay unmoving, sprawled facedown, his hair and the floor sticky with wetness.
“Hannah! Hannah, are you still here?” Sarah screamed.
“She left,” a whispery voice said. “Though she’ll be blamed for this barn going up in the flames of hell.”
26
WAS IT JACOB IN THE DARKNESS? SURELY HE hadn’t been working with Hannah. Or was she here somewhere unconscious, too? But something about the voice—she was sure it wasn’t Jacob.
She heard footsteps coming closer and backed away, hitting the ladder that led to the loft. Slowly, her eyes adjusted to the dim depths of the barn she knew so well. A form emerged to become the shape of a man holding two weapons. No, a canister with a spout was in his hands and a camera on a strap was slung over his shoulder.
For one moment she thought to play dumb, ask him to take pictures of the scene so the sheriff could find clues to learn who had hurt Gabe. But she knew the truth now.
“Nate MacKenzie is meeting me here in about two minutes,” she lied, amazed that the words came out of her mouth before she could form a plan.
Peter Clawson laughed. “I knew you two were an item, and if I printed a scandal sheet, I’d lead with that story,” he said, his voice taunting. “I have no doubt he’ll be here, but too bad, too late. He’s still pounding away over at the Esh place. This barn burning is my pièce de résistance, my masterpiece—you know, like a fine painting.”
She made a move to bolt past him, but in one quick blast he shot fire from the canister in front of her feet. She gasped and jumped back.
“‘He even makes fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men’—women, too,” he said, and she knew he was quoting from his own threatening notes. The flames scorched the barn floor but did not ignite the wood. Still she had no doubt what that fire thrower could do to the rest of the barn and to her.
She needed to talk to him, stall him. Obviously, this was a man prideful at his own cleverness. Since she and maybe Gabe knew who the arsonist was, he must intend to burn them with the barn. He might not have meant to at first, but he would have to now. If she played on his weakness, it might give someone time to come. Hannah might have second thoughts and return, Gabe would wake up—or, dear Lord in heaven, wouldn’t someone notice she was gone or taking a long time and come help? No, no, she’d told Mamm where she was going, and she’d only been here a few minutes.
“But why burn our barns and my paintings?” she asked Peter, her voice quavering. “Just to get good stories?”
“Partly, but that’s too obvious and shallow a motive. Ah, my dear, let me count the reasons. I need to keep Ray-Lynn in my control, and she has some wild idea of repping you to her artist friends and leaving me in her dust, so I was hoping to warn you off further painting. She’ll come around, though, admit she belongs to me. Eventually, I’ll find a way to get rid of the sheriff—make a fool of him as I have your gung-ho fire investigator MacKenzie.”
Her mind raced. His words barely made a dent in her frenzy. She knew she had to try to escape soon, even if he shot that fire at her. Her skirts would catch. They would flame, and she would be burned like poor Noah. But if she could get outside, someone across the field might see her. Surely, Nate and Daad were keeping an eye on this barn, too.
“Why do you hate the Amish?” she asked. “Without us, what would make your paper special?”
“I would!” he shouted. “You could put me in the middle of a field, and I’d find something exciting to write about even if I had to create it. The Budget—that gossipy, amateur Amish paper you all read—is nothing compared to mine, and these barn burnings have proved that, so—”
She ran. She leaped past him and made for the door, but something hard hit her head from behind, and the world went black.
Nate scanned the crowd of women, searching for a glimpse of Sarah. When they all wore their bonnets and prayer caps, many looked alike, though he could distinguish the women he knew—and he was good at picking out Sarah. He could spot her mother and grandmother, her sisters, too, but saw no sign of Sarah. With all the clatter and pounding around and over him, he couldn’t hear himself think.
He climbed down his ladder and moved it closer to the corner so he could help to nail the next section. He walked over
to the trough filled with nails and stuffed more into the canvas work apron he’d been loaned before he climbed up again. Shading his eyes, he looked across the field toward the Kauffman barn. Everything looked normal, except for a white something in the single, high loft window. Hannah must have covered it for some reason. Maybe she’d done it to just look through a slit so no one would see her there. Or it could be the glint of sun off the windowpanes at this angle. Despite the fact there seemed to be a separation of the sexes here today, he headed down the ladder again and walked into the throng of women and bent to speak with Mrs. Kauffman.
“There’s a white cloth in your barn loft window,” he told her as some of the women turned their heads his way, lifting their eyes from the quilting. “Oh, ya, I know,” she said, and stood to walk away from the quilting circle with him. “Hannah told Sarah she’d put an apron there when she was ready to leave, so Sarah ran over to say goodbye. Gabe’s there, too. Don’t worry.”
“I didn’t see her go.”
“I know you watch her good.”
Their eyes met and held. A frown furrowed her brow. This woman—all the Amish—seemed to have a talent for saying so much with few words.
“Don’t you worry about her,” she repeated. “It’s nice you are helping here.”
In Amish-mother-speak, Nate thought, that meant don’t go over there where you could have time to talk to Sarah alone, especially right before you are supposed to leave. He excused himself and went back to his ladder, wishing like a fool that he and Sarah had planned that she’d put a white flag of surrender in the window if she’d leave with him today.
Sarah regained consciousness in a haze of crushing pain. She tried to move her arms and legs. Could but just a bit. Couldn’t talk, couldn’t cry. Was she dead? Something in her mouth—gagged. Tied.
It all came back in a rush. The Beast was going to burn the barn.
She forced her eyelids open and saw she was tied to the ladder that went up to the loft. The dreadful nightmare of being burned with the Amish martyrs hit her hard. They tied her to a ladder and were going to tilt her into the flames. They had ripped her bonnet and prayer kapp off. She was going to die. The crowd was screaming for blood—no, that was the distant din of the pounding at the Esh barn. She was so woozy, but she heard a voice in her head, “For wickedness burns as the fire! Burn them! Burn them for the fires of hell!”
“I was hoping you would not wake up again, Sarah—really,” Peter called to her, dragging her from her half-waking dream. He was quickly and methodically going around the edges of the barn floor, shooting flames from his canister until he had a ring of fire burning everywhere but near the front doors. Each blast of flame he threw illuminated his face as if he were one of those fright masks in the store windows at Halloween. Where straw or hay caught, flames leaped and smoke began to billow.
“Since you have such an inquiring mind,” he went on, his words more muffled as he lit the empty horse stalls, “I’ll tell you that my incendiary device of choice this time is a drip torch, used by men fighting forest fires for controlled burns. Controlled burns—that’s one of my many talents.”
It didn’t matter what he said anymore. She had to get loose, get out. Gabe still lay sprawled on the floor, unmoving, almost at her feet. At least the outer walls of the barn would burn first. But then the flames would get to Gabe; though he was low enough the smoke would choke him after her, that smothering stench of this sick man’s hatred and pride. She half prayed, half tried to send Nate a mental message. Barn burning! Come now! That other nightmare was nothing next to this, for this was real.
“Parting is such sweet sorrow,” Peter called through the smoke and flames. “I’m sorry, Sarah, really. I didn’t know either of you would be here but it’s too late now. And Hannah’s being here, then leaving—how perfect. I’ll do all I can to see that she is prosecuted as the Amish barn arsonist. Now won’t that be a fine series of articles? I can see the headline now Rebellious Amish Woman Turns Against Her Own People. Well, back to the barn raising. I’d better return before anyone notices I’m missing.”
He coughed in the thickening smoke. She heard the barn door slide open, then shut, and the outer latch bang down.
The man was everywhere with his camera so no one would suspect him, blame him…. The Beast would no doubt just blend back into the crowd as he always did, or if found here, say he was taking pictures of her painting. Hannah…poor Hannah would be blamed. She had to stop him, to save Gabe.
The smoke thickened; the flames crackled. The gag in her mouth made her want to throw up. Surely someone across the field—anyone!—would see smoke or flames soon. But it was a wide field, and it would take time for the firefighters to come. All their worst fears, their premonition that this barn could burn… Coming true… Nate’s VERA was still back at the pond, so his suit he’d rescued Noah in was out of his reach….
She began to cough. Her eyes stung with smoke. As she pulled against her ties, she saw they were reins for the plow team. Peter had tied them around her and the ladder but not tightly, maybe because she was a sagging deadweight in her unconscious state or he was in a hurry. If she could just get up a step, slide her backside and her bonds upward against the ladder, maybe she could reach the loft, break the window, get out, wave the apron. Maybe she could slide herself right off the top of the ladder. She had to get down to the ground, then back in the barn to try to get to Gabe.
Breathing through her nose only, gagging on whatever was in her mouth, trying not to take in smoke, she managed to slide the reins from around her thighs up enough that she could lift one foot, then the other. Yes, her knees could bend now. Lift one leg, get her heel on the next rung, then the other leg. It was so hard, grueling. If she could only scream Gabe’s name again, try to wake him. Gagging, gasping, sweating, up another step, inching the cords around her upper arms up, too, then straining to take another step.
It seemed a climb up a mountain, higher, higher. But the smoke was thickening, and this took so much strength, so much time. This barn, her family’s barn, was burning, dying. And she and Gabe were, too.
Nate kept watching the field, waiting for Sarah to return. She’d talked to Hannah all last night, so did she have to take so long? He didn’t like it that she wasn’t here when things were winding down. He couldn’t bear to leave if he couldn’t say goodbye to her, even if the entire Amish and Englische community was watching. Or was it her plan to stay away while he left so they would not have to say goodbye?
“Hey, Nate!” Mr. Kauffman called down to him from the roof. “Want to come up and see the view from here before you go?”
Before you go—another kindly worded hint, Nate thought. “Sure,” he said, though he realized his ladder was not tall enough to get him up there. “But I’ve got to check something out first.”
“How about me?” Peter Clawson called out from below. “Nate, can you at least take my camera up there for a shot of the crowd?”
Nate saw Peter was sweating and out of breath, but then he was lugging the camera and a big equipment bag. Before Nate could answer, Jack approached Peter and started jawing with him about something.
And then Nate smelled the faintest whiff of smoke. No barbecues here today. No bonfires for trash. Surely, no one was smoking. But that wasn’t cigarette or cigar smoke.
He didn’t even wait to assess the situation or go for the binoculars he’d brought, thinking he might just end up watching the action today. “Jack, with me!” he shouted, ignoring Peter’s snatching at his arm. He broke into a run across the field with the sheriff right behind.
He wasn’t even halfway across when he knew. The Kauffman barn had smoke seeping out under the front doors. It was ready to break into a blaze.
Sarah slid herself—torso, then legs—off the top of the ladder. The worst of this backward climb had been getting past where the ladder leaned against the edge of the loft, but she’d found the strength—the desperation—to drag the back of her bonds through that snag.
Now, unable to break her fall, tipped backward, she fell about four feet to the loft floor where Hannah had been looking out today. Her eyes streaming tears, her hands still tied but with more leeway now, she scrambled to her knees, pulled her arms around in front and picked up the feed trough from Grossmamm’s old chicken coop. In a burst of panic, she rammed it into the window.
Nothing. She was too weak. No air. She felt faint. If she broke the glass, it would feed the flames below. No choice, no choice. But she did have a choice about painting what she longed to, about who she loved. She desperately wanted to live to make those choices.
She hooked the part of the gag that protruded from her mouth onto a nail sticking out of the loft wall and it snagged. She managed to pull it out of her mouth. It was her wadded-up prayer cap. Coughing as she sucked in air and smoke, she yanked the apron off the glass and hit at the window again with the old trough, wood against bare glass. Two panes shattered outward. Smoke seemed to grab at her, but she broke out the rest, both glass and wood.
She sucked in fresh air even as the smoke rushed past her. Then, through the gray-white haze, she saw salvation coming from across the field—Nate, the sheriff, others. She seized Hannah’s apron and tried to flap it out the window.
Wreathed with smoke, she stuck her head out. Nate was below her, shouting, “Stay put. I’ll get a ladder!”
“No— Gabe’s lying on the floor of the barn! Help him!” In case she didn’t make it, they had to know who did this. “Peter Clawson’s the arsonist!” she shouted down, still coughing. She watched as Nate, the sheriff and her father raced around to the front of the barn.
Her eyes and nose were running. She wiped at them with her sooty sleeve and realized she was not burned.