Disappearances

by Linda Byler

She looked down but could not determine the distance to the ground. Was that a shrub? A low tree? She had to stop or let herself fall to the ground. It couldn’t be too far.

  She dropped. A gasp tore from her throat as she felt nothing at all, only the air rushing past her face as she fell.

  She suddenly landed on her feet, one twisting sideways with the impact of her weight.

  A red hot, searing pain shot up her leg from her ankle. She lay on the ground, her hands propping her upper body, her eyes squeezed shut, her lower lip caught firmly in her teeth, as she struggled to keep from screaming out a high cry of pain and weakness.

  She spun her head. A light went on. No! Oh, please, God, no. She never knew how she got up and started running, but she did. She ran with pain her constant companion. She lowered her back, pumped her arms, her knees raised and lowered, propelling her toward the ravine she projected as her destination. She didn’t look back, afraid of what she might see.

  Her breath was coming quickly now. She imagined herself in school, running with that effortless, little-girl gait. The time when you could run and run and run, and still you could breathe all right and keep running. She had always been good at it. She would’ve won every fast race if it hadn’t been for that long-legged Henry Mast. They should have let the girls and boys race separately.

  Still she ran. Why stop at the ravine? She ran along fences, across water-filled ditches. They would be ice at home. Headlights? A car! A blessed car. A real vehicle. She ran toward it, waving her arms. The vehicle slowed, but then accelerated.

  Sadie would never know how the employee at the Quick-Mart, heading to work on the early morning shift, his face now drained of color, said he had seen a real ghost, white, flapping its arms. It didn’t take him a second to step on the gas and get out of there. When his coworker eyed him coolly and said that’s how those stupid Bigfoot rumors get started, he got hopping mad and told her off, pouted the rest of the day, and wouldn’t speak to her till she brought him a homemade Boston cream pie.

  When the second vehicle zoomed by in all its disregarding splendor, Sadie thought of the bathrobe. She took it off and rolled it up, carrying it under her arm.

  Dogs! Barking in the distance. Who knew though, if they came from the house she had just escaped from? She walked now, backward, holding out her thumb, a hitchhiker. In desperation she kept her arm out. Her breath was coming in quick succession, her fear a palpable thing. The dogs. Coming closer? Yes. They most definitely were. Were the dogs merely herding cattle? Bringing home milk cows?

  What was the best thing? Revert to fleeing across the fields? No, better to stay with the safety of the highway. Another vehicle. Her teeth were chattering, the shaking spreading to her limbs as the pain in her ankle worsened. She could not keep walking backward like this.

  When the truck rolled on past, not even bothering to slow down, an idea entered Sadie’s mind. She would appear to be carrying an infant, a helpless baby, clothed in white. She stepped aside, rolled the white bathrobe into the form of a blanketed baby, then held it in her arms, walking backward, slowly, limping now. Would anyone have mercy? No. A tractor and trailer roared past, spraying her with an odorous sulphur, tiny bits of hard gravel, and a wave of hopelessness.

  Then the dogs were on her. Clutching the bathrobe, she stepped back, which was completely insufficient. There were four. They touched her, milled about, snapping playfully at each other. They were so big. Collars. Tails wagging? Yes! Oh, yes!

  “All right,” Sadie squeaked from a throat gone dry. The leader, a large brown and white dog with short, heavy hair grinned up at her, his tongue lolling. The heavy black one reached up to sniff the bathrobe.

  Headlights made her wince, close her eyes momentarily. She tried hard to pay attention to the dogs, any sign of aggressive behavior, so she did not really comprehend the slowly rolling vehicle coming to a stop on the shoulder of the road.

  It was only when the door opened, and the form of a heavy man emerged, that she lost her courage, her resolve, everything that brought her this far.

  Had the fat man caught up to her? Her legs became traitors, turning to Jell-o at the knees, her arms lost their strength until she could barely hold onto the bathrobe. Then the lumbering giant came closer, the round, ruddy face surrounded by stiff bristles of white hair, his eyes intent, assessing her predicament.

  “Git! Git! Git goin’ there! Ho! Git!” Waving his arms, taking control. Did God not look exactly like this?

  She wasn’t aware that she was crying. She talked, laughed, showed him the bathrobe, became hysterical, and wept in earnest. The dogs bounded off across the level fields, the man helped her into his car, handed her Kleenexes, offered her his cup of coffee, listened, then told her he was on his way to work, had to be there by six, but he was taking her to the police barracks and would call in late. The brilliant white lights of the police building made her shield her eyes, feeling like a castaway, a stray cat brought in until the local humane society rescued it.

  Sadie related her story, saying she didn’t know where she had been, only that she ran for close to an hour. The house had three stories; they had horses; she wasn’t sure how long she had been held there. The officers made her feel as if she was the one who had done something wrong with their stern expressions, gun belts slung across their hips, all creased and crisp and professional. But the morning light brought a bit of understanding, like a jigsaw puzzle when you finally found the missing border section. Things began to make more sense after she was shown to a waiting area with comfortable chairs, pillows, and warmth.

  Gratefully, she accepted a steaming cup of coffee but waved away the sugary croissant, her stomach rolling now. When she winced from the pain of her ankle, the policeman insisted on having it checked at the city hospital.

  While the cruiser moved through the city, the sun brought everything into reality, along with a glorious knowledge that she was safe. She was here in this wonderful vehicle, protected by a man who worked for the good of humanity, in a big city filled with people who walked all sorts of different paths. The wonder of those tall buildings!

  The feeling of appreciation swept through her when white-coated professionals poked and prodded at her ankle, pronounced it a torn ligament, no broken bones, wrapped it in some heavenly, soft brace, and then wheeled her out to the police cruiser. Later, she laughed softly with the officer.

  To Sadie’s surprise, the heavy, white-haired gentleman was waiting at the barracks till they returned, introducing himself as Harry Magill.

  When she laid her head on the back of the sofa and closed her eyes, he immediately brought her a pillow and blanket, then stayed with her the remainder of the day until it was time to return home to his wife, receiving Sadie’s profound thanks as a sort of benediction.

  When the call came, no one answered the phone, as usual. The black telephone in the phone shanty shrilled its eight rings. But the wind was blowing the snow around in cold, painful little spurts, and Mam stayed in the house.

  Dat and Reuben were at work, putting in a fireplace for a friend of Jim Sevarr’s who lived in town.

  Anna was down with the flu, having retreated to her room in a huff after Mam told her it was her own fault, the way she stayed out on Sunday night until who knew when.

  When the second phone call came, Rebekah had just closed the door of the white minivan that took her to and from her housecleaning job, having finished early because of new carpeting going in. She thought she heard the phone, but in this wind she couldn’t be sure. Better check the messages. Too cold for Mam to be out in this.

  There were three. Three messages relating the same thing. The same unbelievable news that made Rebekah sit down on the cold plastic chair and cry big sobs of gratefulness, then forget to replace the receiver and close the door of the phone shanty so that it slapped back and forth in the wind, blowing snow into every crevice and chasing the calendar pages up and down all afternoon. She was hysterical by the time she reached the kitchen, frightening
her mother so badly, she had to sit on the recliner, seeing spots in front of her eyes.

  When the police car pulled up to the door, Mam waved a hand in Rebekah’s direction, who answered the door with tears streaming down her face and dropping on her dress front. Dat and Reuben were brought to the Miller homestead, Mark came with Richard Caldwell, clearly beside himself with joy, Richard’s voice booming as if he really was holding a megaphone. The police had offered a phone to Sadie so she could call her family.

  Leah, after she learned of the joyous news, told a most amazing story. Her sleep had been restless all night. But a few minutes before four o’clock, she awoke with a great and intense urge to pray for Sadie.

  “All the while, I had this sensation of falling. But after I prayed, I fell asleep, deeply, better than I’d slept all night.”

  No one at this point knew how or when Sadie had escaped, or even if she had escaped, but they all agreed—wasn’t Leah’s dream something? Wasn’t it awesome how God heard and answered prayer?

  Next they discussed whether they should let Sadie fly home. Riding in an airplane was verboten. Should they confer with the ministry to see if it was allowed in a case of emergency? Dat said just fly her home. Mark said the same thing. And everyone also agreed that Mark should be the one to make a return phone call to Sadie. He was, after all, her husband.

  She was asleep on the sofa at the police barracks, wrapped in her cocoon of safety, when Mark’s phone call came through. Gently, Cindy, the tall, thin receptionist, woke her.

  “Sadie Miller? There is a phone call.”

  Immediately Sadie sat up, throwing back the blanket in one clear sweep, stumbling a bit, but following her eagerly to the cordless phone, taking it with her to a corner of the room where she could squeeze her eyes shut and blow her nose and sob and talk and laugh, and no one would see her.

  His voice! She had forgotten that deep, gravelly baritone. She couldn’t talk at all, just cry, until Mark thought there was no one there and said, “Sadie? Are you there?”

  She had to answer, and all that came out was a hoarse squeak. Finally she croaked a pitiful, “Oh. Oh, Mark!”

  Then he began crying, and no one said anything for quite some time, until finally Sadie took a long, shuddering breath and said she was fine and asked how soon were they coming to get her.

  “No, I do not want to fly home, Mark. I had enough of being too high up in the air to suit me for the rest of my life.”

  When they hired a driver, he figured his GPS system would get them to Brent, Colorado, in about 12, maybe 13 hours. He could leave after two o’clock. Everyone went along, the 12-passenger van holding them all quite comfortably. No one wanted to stop to eat or sleep, rolling into gas stations, grabbing sandwiches, and back on the road they went.

  They encountered a snowstorm after about six or seven hours of travel, slowing them to a mind-numbing crawl across a corner of Wyoming. The driver peered through a whirl of white until he proclaimed the roads unfit for travel.

  They were forced to stop and stay at a motel, the rooms reeking of stale air and cigarette smoke, the beds hard as nails, in Reuben’s words, and nothing to eat except stale crackers and bitter coffee. The fact that he found the Discovery Channel on TV soon smoothed over the sadness of stale crackers and coffee, and when he discovered Animal Planet on another channel, he was quite beside himself with amazement.

  Twenty-four hours later, they rolled into the Brent police barracks with the voice from the GPS as their guide. “What an absolute miracle,” Dat proclaimed the small device.

  Sadie had been taken to the Hilton Inn a block away. She was pacing the second-floor lobby, dressed in the much-washed blue dress, still without a covering, but showered, her hair combed neatly, running to and from the windows on the second floor.

  When she saw the black van, she knew it was George Gilbert’s. She went down a short flight of stairs as fast as the brace on her foot would allow, then stood rooted to the carpeting, gripping the back of the sofa, until her knuckles turned white. Mark walked up to the glass door. With a cry, she flung herself into his arms, oblivious of anyone or anything around her. They clung to each other, the amazing, unbelievable joy of being alive, safe, and having come through this together, restoring their emptiness, their hopelessness.

  Dat stood back, his hands in his pockets, shy, ill at ease, as everyone held Sadie in their arms, crying, laughing, then crying again. Sadie saw him then. “Dat!”

  There was no self-consciousness. It was not customary, but she needed to feel her father’s arms around her to make her homecoming complete. She put her arms around him. He clutched her tightly to his denim-clad chest, his gray beard caressing her forehead, his tears anointing her head.

  Her parents had aged and had both lost weight. Reuben looked terrible, but he said it was because he had been up all night watching TV and drinking that sick coffee and eating disgusting cheese crackers. He shook his hair into his eyes so no one would see the tears. He was too old and cool to be caught crying over a crazy sister.

  They sat in the lobby, listening quietly as Sadie related her story from start to finish. Mark got them all rooms, and the driver, too, so he would get a solid day of sleep before the long drive home. Mam and Dat welcomed a long-awaited rest, along with the joy of having seen their beloved daughter again.

  For Mark and Sadie, it was very nearly heaven on earth.

  Chapter 6

  IT WAS ALL OVER the news, on every television station and in every newspaper. Richard Caldwell informed them: the horse thieves were caught. The whole ring of them would finally be brought to justice.

  They had been extremely intelligent at first, but as the band of thieves grew, so did their lack of security and loopholes of leaking facts. When they abducted Sadie, it was the beginning of the end.

  Reporters requested interviews with Sadie, but they were all turned down, as was the way of the Amish. No one could appear on TV, so there were no on-camera interviews, although she spoke to many other people about her experience.

  The government agents returned Paris to her golden glory. Sadie laughed to Mark about how they could tell Paris was pouting, standing in her stall batting her eyelashes, a haughty princess who believed a great wrong had been brought on her head.

  Sadie bathed her and brushed her. Then Sadie bundled up in numerous layers of warm winter clothing and rode the horse across the snowy fields. The wind froze Sadie’s face as tears welled in her eyes. Paris ran, kicked her heels joyfully, lifted her head and whinnied high and clear, the sound borne away on the freezing wind. Sadie leaned into her neck, reveled in the motion beneath her, that quivering mass of muscle and speed, understanding the gift of freedom as never before.

  Mark rode with her sometimes on Duke, the new gray gelding he purchased from Sam Troyer. Duke was a magnificent animal, a bit raw around the edges, perhaps, but with careful training, he would improve. Sadie winced, however, when Mark began using the quirt. How she hated that evil-looking little whip! It only served to increase Duke’s nervousness, being a bundle of alarm waiting to implode as it was. Mark was short on patience. He was too quick to use that hateful quirt, as Sadie explained to him, gently trying to keep from deflating his always fragile ego.

  The thing was, life was so good, and, like a delicate egg, she carried their relationship with care. The specter of his dark moods served to put a hand over her mouth, an ear attuned to his derisive snorts of annoyance. It was one of his quirks, this tumble into darkness where he would stay, entombed in a silence of his own making, brought on by who knew what.

  “Mark, that Duke is absolutely fearless. After the snow melts, we’re going to race. Reuben could bring Moon.”

  They were in the forebay of the barn, watering the horses. Sadie pushed the barn broom in a short, quick motion, sweeping loose hay and straw into the open stall door.

  “Duke would win.”

  “Not if you don’t quit using that hateful quirt on him.”

  The words t
umbled out even as she realized their harm, but it was too late to save herself. Deliberately, Mark turned Truman, slid the steel pin into place and ground out, the words serving to box Sadie’s ears. “You think you know more than I do about horses, Sadie. You don’t. Paris is spoiled rotten.”

  Uh-oh. When he spoke in that tone of voice, the harm was done, so she may as well have her say. Besides, she couldn’t avoid it, her anger serving as the propeller that lent wings to her hot words.

  “Paris is not spoiled. She listens to anything I want her to do. Without using a quirt.”

  She turned, flounced her skirt, steamed her way through the snowdrifts, thumped up on the porch, her cheeks blazing with the lust of her indignation.

  They ate supper in silence, dipping spoons into the home-canned tomato soup, then lifting them to their mouths. They dipped grilled cheese sandwiches cut in half into the steaming tomato-y goodness, but they spoke no words. Sadie swallowed water from her glass noisily. The only sound beside Sadie’s clumsy gulping was the ticking of the clock. It wasn’t that she didn’t try. She did.

  “Do you have plenty of horses to shoe this week?”

  When there was no response, she tried another tactic, wrapping her arms about his waist. But they were firmly loosened and set aside as he made his way to his recliner. With a heavy heart burdening the slightest task, she slowly washed the soup bowls, each seeming to weigh 10 pounds now.

  Everything had been so perfect, their love elevated to new levels after her escape. The homecoming, and now here she was, sunk to the bottom again, her life draining away because of what she had said. It was all her fault. That realization, like light entering a darkened room through a slowly opening door, was more and more apparent. She needed to be careful. No words of correction, no unkindness, no rebuke. She would be perfect soon.

  When Mark spent the night on the couch, his dirty work clothes covered with their beige throw with their wedding date, names, and “Love Is Forever” monogrammed on it, his stocking feet sticking out like two questioning gray puppets, a fear arose in her throat. Would it always be like this now?