by J. Wachowski
Ainsley coughed. “Speaking of times changing, I’ve seen guys drag racing that empty stretch of 39 in the middle of the night. They go out in horse buggies with boom boxes blaring and high-power flashlights.”
That won him a twinkle of a smile. “Sure. Those are courting buggies. Shine a light into a girls’ room at midnight, she might climb out and join you for a ride. In my day, it was pebbles against the glass. There’s another change for you.”
“I don’t get it. No electricity but halogen flashlights are acceptable?”
“Oh, heavens, I can see your hackles rising all the way over here.” Grace waved at me. “People are never as simple as rules, Ms. O’Hara. You’re old enough to know that by now. That’s why everyone has to make their own peace with the contradictions.”
“What about Tom? Did he make his peace?”
The question deflated her. “Tom was the kind of boy who needed the rules. Not because he didn’t want to do good. He needed rules to be at peace. He wasn’t like some of the ones who go away from the community. They stretch and try new things; they experiment. Tom didn’t do that. He held the Ordnung inside as a shield, and kept to much of it. The fire service was the same for him. Rules to a greater purpose. A sense of order, routine. He would have liked the military, I think, except for the fighting. Only man Tom ever hurt was himself.” She took off her glasses and pulled a tissue from up her sleeve.
Ainsley sipped his lemonade. I shook my head at the waste, of both Tom and the image of the moment. I’d never get her to tear up again, even if I could convince her to repeat the interview for the camera.
“Tom liked structure,” I restated to keep her talking. “He played by the rules.”
“Yes. It’s prideful to analyze a person too much. We can never know someone’s heart without walking in their shoes, but maybe…” She sighed in speculation. “Tom’s childhood shook him. He had good reason to wish for security. When he first came to me, I could hardly imagine how he lay down to sleep, he was so stiff.”
“Did he visit you often?”
“More so in the beginning. I gave him a list of chores I needed done and told him what time dinner would be on the table-‘If you’re late,’ I says to him, I said, ‘might be nothing left.’ He was raised on a dairy farm. He wasn’t late.”
Ainsley laughed, but Grace could see I didn’t get the joke.
“All farmers aren’t the same, you know. Dairy farmers have a schedule to keep, every twelve hours. Those cows got to be milked. Now a seed farmer, what with the equipment people have today, they barely have to show up once a week.” She curled her knobby fingers in front of her mouth and pressed, holding a memory back. She nodded until she was calm again. “Thomas would have made a good dairy farmer.”
All together, we preserved the quiet for a moment, imagining a good life un-lived.
Finally I had to ask, “Why do you think he did it?”
We locked eyes. I’ve seen the same look in women’s eyes in every part of the world I’ve stood upon-fire, flood or fighting-the pain of failing the one you’ve tended.
“I keep asking myself, why didn’t he come to me?” Grace leaned back in her chair and rested her hands in her lap. Her cotton print blouse was buttoned all the way to the neck. She was built wiry, and her collar gaped at her throat. The soft loose skin that circled her neck made her look fragile, exhausted by time. “Something happened to Thomas at the fire station, oh some weeks back. I’m sure it was before school started. I was bringing in tomatoes that day. Most of those firemen, Tom revered them. I don’t know exactly what all went on, but somebody on his shift did something that put Thomas in a real twist. Wouldn’t say much to me, but I gathered some fellow broke a rule. Something that put a terrible weight on Tom’s conscience.”
“What rule? Why Tom’s conscience?”
Grace winced as she shrugged, embarrassed or hurt not to know the answer. “He was so upset. It’s hard for Englischers to understand the feeling-”
“What feeling?”
“An Amish community watches over each other. We have the elders, yes, but we also have each other. We are each responsible and we are all responsible.”
I nodded to encourage her. Did she know she used the inclusive “we”?
“After all,” she reached out and patted Ainsley’s knee with a gnarled hand, “what would heaven be without all your loved ones around you? When someone is no longer at peace with himself, he must seek public confession. I think, maybe the fighting, even the things that happened later, maybe it was Thomas’ mixed up way to make the problem public.”
“Uh-oh,” Ainsley summarized.
“Yes. Public confession is not sod, not the worldly way. The last night I saw him, Thomas said he didn’t know if he could belong anymore.”
“At the fire station?”
“I thought he meant there, with the Englischers. I always wondered if perhaps, Thomas might wish to return to Amish ways someday. He’d hinted as much to me. Perhaps he meant something else.”
“Then what happened?”
“He left after dinner as usual.” She pressed her lips together, frustrated. “The world looked different to Thomas than it does to most. It was all a bit darker, more unpredictable. He expected bad things. They never surprised him. Rules helped keep him-” She stopped and searched for the right word.
I thought about saying “sane” but changed it to, “-on track?”
“Yes. That’s just it. When this fellow he trusted broke the rules, poor Thomas was at a loss. He seemed to feel anything could happen and all of it would be bad.”
“Did he tell you about how he was getting along with the men at the firehouse after that? Or about an incident he might have had with the police?”
“Thomas? No. Of course not.” The denial came first because that was fundamentally how Grace thought of Tom, not because she was out to fluff me. I didn’t enjoy watching her perception change. “Did something happen with police?”
“An officer found him with a girl in a parked car,” I said. “They were taken to the station because the girl appeared to be breaking curfew. And she was Amish.”
“Rachel.”
I took a breath. I liked Grace. I didn’t want her to agree to be part of this story without knowing the whole story. Being civilized was a professional liability, but there it is.
“They also found magazines in his trunk.”
“Magazines?”
“Can I have a piece of that fruit bread now?” I asked.
Grace served. It gave me a good excuse to keep my eyes on my plate.
“They were adult magazines,” I told her. “Someone at the police station found out and there was some gossip. It seemed to affect how his colleagues were treating him.”
“Mercy.” She said it softly to herself. Loud and firm, she said, “If you are here to gather information to slander that boy further, I’ll ask you to leave right now.”
“No, Mrs. Ott. I don’t want to slander anyone. I wouldn’t be here if I thought that part of the story was the whole truth.”
I looked over at Ainsley, mostly because I was wishing he wasn’t there. Right at that moment, I didn’t like doing this interview in front of him. It felt uncomfortable. I took a breath and spoke the truth, despite the audience.
“Help me understand what happened. Lots of people know what it feels like to be stuck between old ways and new ways.”
Grace stared at me, eyes large behind glasses. Her face wore a mask of age, but I sensed the empathy of recognition behind it.
“I know what it feels like,” I confessed. “Help me understand why he gave up trying.”
3:30:58 p.m.
We finished way past lunch. Since we were expected back at the office already, Ainsley was driving like a high-school boy after dark. The tires screamed at every stop light.
Bits and pieces were flying around in my head, I needed quiet to sort through the whirl.
“I can’t believe you talked her into that inte
rview. I never thought she’d go for it.” Ainsley rattled along, doing the ten o’clock football recap. Let’s see that play again. Wasn’t that great?
“Yeah.”
“I thought we’d never get it. But you talked her into it. Man. That was great. Great stuff. The farm and teaching. Maybe I should call the high school tomorrow? I bet I can get yearbook photos of Mrs. Ott from way back. What do you think? Maddy?”
“Yeah, great.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Timing’s not right.”
“What timing? On the track?”
“No,” I snapped. “Think about this. Grace said Tom came to her to complain about feeling betrayed before school started, but he was arrested after that. Rachel said the same thing. He was upset before they got caught in the car.”
“So?”
“So something must have happened at the fire station first. Tom gets all worked up about it. He goes out with his girl-he’s frantic, he’s pushing her to marry him, give him some reason to return to the Amish-not only does she turn him down, he also gets busted with jack-off material in the trunk. Doesn’t that sound funky to you?”
“You mean like funky luck?”
“I mean like a funky-fucking-set-up. Somebody set him up with those magazines. That’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“Why?”
“To ruin his reputation?” As soon as I said it, I knew it felt right. “To make him look like a sneaky, untrustworthy bastard? To distract him? Revenge maybe? It has to be something to do with that fight at the fire station.”
The chief had said Tom and Pat were fighting right before he died. Was that what put Tom “in a twist” before he saw Rachel? Or did the boys fight later, over the magazines in the trunk? Talking to Pat just moved to the top of my list.
I jumped to Tom’s death and started playing with another idea. “How much do you think a firefighter makes a year?”
“I don’t know. Maybe 40K?”
“How much would that cheesy apartment he lived in cost a year?”
“Maybe five hundred. At most.”
“Used car. Cheap-o housing. No drugs, no expenses. He’s been working four or five years in the fire service. He could have forty, fifty grand saved. Maybe more. That might rate a personal visit from a banker.”
“Whoa.” Ainsley shook his head. “Never thought of that.”
“Oh, it’s diabolical,” I cackled as I pieced possibilities together. “Tom makes it up to his girl and sticks it to his old man all in one blow. Fucking ingenious.”
“What?” Ainsley flashed quick looks between the road and my grin. “Why is that good?”
“He’s left all that cash in Rachel’s hands. She can do whatever she wants now. If we’re right about the money, she could choose to leave her father’s farm. Buy her own place. Or go to college. Now, she has a choice.”
I sat up straight, leaning against the strap of the seatbelt. If the money went to split Rachel from her father, the binoculars went to split him from what? Peace of mind? His community? I crammed that thought under cover. Would my story make it worse for him? No room for that guilt. I had to produce a piece for television and Rachel Jost would be appearing in it. If Old Man Jost had to take the hot seat with his Amish neighbors over six minutes of pre-prime, well, maybe he deserved it.
“Tom Jost wasn’t shunned. Rachel told us that,” I calculated aloud. “He left the community and didn’t take vows.”
“Sort of the same difference, isn’t it? He never went back.”
“He never left.” It all spilled into place, his apartment, his relationship with the other firefighters, his relationship with Rachel. “That’s why Rachel said, ‘I would be his Amish.’”
What’s a guy who follows rules to do, when nobody else will play fair? The words of an Amish school ditty I’d found in my research came rushing back:
I must be a Christian child
Gentle, patient, meek and mild;
Must be honest, simple, true
In my words and actions too…
Must remember God can view
All I think, and all I do.
“‘God can view all I think, and all I do,’” I quoted for Ainsley’s benefit. Picturing those binoculars in Jost’s closet, I shivered. Could Jost have been trying to get the old man arrested? “Remind me to call our favorite sheriff when we get in. I need a little instruction on Samaritan law in this fair county.”
Ainsley looked confused, but hopeful.
Just the way I like ’em.
3:38:25 p.m.
Jenny usually walked around the playground during outside time. The school aides didn’t pay much attention to her when she walked. They were too busy yelling at the big kids.
“One at a time!”
“No chicken on the monkey bars.”
“Mulch stays on the ground.”
It was a good day to walk. Sunny, but cold. With her hands in her pockets, Jenny stopped under the twisty slide. It was shadowy there, like a cave. She could see out but it was hard for other people to see her.
There was a man watching the playground. He leaned against the hood of his big shiny car, arms across his chest.
Jenny couldn’t stop staring. Was it him?
His car was parked at the curb where other moms sometimes waited for kids after school. He looked like he was waiting for somebody.
She wasn’t sure if it was him. She decided to climb the slide tower for a better view.
She was only a second grader the last time she saw him. He came to The Funeral. He stayed at the back of the church though. One time, she waved hello but he turned his face away. She didn’t see him again after that.
Jenny thought he must be mad at her, maybe even hated her. It wasn’t her fault that Aunt Maddy moved in and took over. Thinking about it made Jenny feel like crying and wrecking something. If she thought about it too long, she got that shrinky feeling inside and couldn’t eat, until she smelled the inside of Mama’s closet for a long time.
From up on top of the slide, she could see pretty well. There were some trees and dumpsters and the grass field and then sidewalk.
He smiled at her and waved with one hand.
Jenny was surprised by how good she felt seeing him recognize her, like a happy memory coming back for no reason. She waved back at him with a small, secret bend of her wrist that hid the motion from everybody else. She smiled, too.
The kid behind her at the top of the ladder was getting impatient. “Go!”
Jenny pushed off and leaned back, speeding faster through the tunnel than she expected. Her stomach felt afraid and excited and sick and happy all at the same time.
The bell rang right as she shot off the slide onto the mulch.
Jenny looked at the blacktop where the other kids were running to line up. She looked back at him. He called her with a wave.
What a relief!
Usually grown-ups came to the door to sign out the kids who were going home. If the kids were on the playground though, parents usually signed them out first and then took kids home from the playground.
He probably signed her out already. Jenny was glad. She didn’t want to go back inside. She wanted to leave. Right now. She walked straight out to the curb across the grass.
He used to pick her up all the time, before. It wasn’t like he was a stranger or something. She knew not to get in a car with strangers. She wasn’t a baby. He knew it, too. He even let her sit in the front seat.
“Hi.”
“Look at you. You’ve been growing.”
“Yeah.”
His car was so big, it felt like sitting on top of the world. He told her to buckle up and she did. They started driving and for a long while he didn’t say anything. He only looked at her, quick, and then looked back at the road.
Was she supposed to talk? She bit her fingernail instead.
When they were almost at her house, he started asking her the usual stuff about school and how her fish was doing and
if she still liked Scooby-Doo. He kept driving right past her house. Did he forget where she lived?
“Um? You passed it. That was my house.”
She got a weird feeling inside, bad weird. What could she do? She couldn’t think of one good thing. Pretty soon the worried feeling was a fuzzy feeling, almost sleepy. She wiped her hands on her jeans.
“Seen any movies lately?” he asked.
“Where’re we going?”
“You’ll see,” he answered. “I need you to understand something, Jen. Something really important. Something your mother would want you to understand.”
“Okay,” she said. Nobody talked to her about her mother. Quickly, without looking at him, she asked, “Do you think about her ever?”
He pulled over to the side of the road and snapped the stick thing between them into the slot marked P. Jenny stayed very still, wondering if she’d made him mad.
“Do I think about your mom?” Very quietly he said, “All the time.”
Jenny sighed. “Me, too.”
He turned in his seat and stared at her. “Look around. You know where you are?”
They were on the edge of the neighborhood, somewhere. She recognized the fence up the road a ways, that went around the old cemetery. She and Aunt Maddy passed it when they took walks on the Prairie Path last summer. Jenny had never gone in there.
She said yes with a tiny nod.
“You ever say anything to your aunt about me?” he demanded all of a sudden.
“Like what?”
“Like anything.” He said it in a funny tight voice.
“No.” Suddenly, it hurt her throat to say even that one word.
“Good. That’s good. I didn’t want any of this, you know.” He banged one fist against the steering wheel.
Jenny jumped. Her seatbelt got really tight. It was hard to breathe.
“Look at what I got here.” He pulled a shiny silver square out of his pocket. It was one of those medicine things with the pills in little bubbles. “You ever seen these before?”
Jenny nodded. They looked just like the ones that Tonya had for her hurting leg.