Shunning Sarah

by Julie Kramer

  But when I arrived in town, I discovered bear hunting season was still under way, and anyone within fifty miles who owned a gun was also out looking for the bear. The woods were a dangerous place.

  I got a quickie lesson in bear hunting. Hunters can only actually fire during the day between a half hour before sunrise to a half hour after sunset. The rule wasn’t designed so much to give wildlife a chance at survival as to keep people from shooting each other.

  I recorded some sound bites from hunters on the prowl.

  ((HUNTER1 SOT))

  THIS IS MY CHANCE TO

  LAND A TROPHY.

  Signs with names and addresses showed up in the woods, and were described to me as “stands” where hunters reserve their spots. I considered putting up a sign myself to reserve safe space for the station even though our form of shooting was not fatal.

  ((HUNTER2 SOT))

  HUNTING IS WHAT I DO AND IF

  THAT BEAR’S AROUND, HE’S MINE.

  Southern Minnesota is not considered prime bear-hunting territory. In fact, few hunters bother trying. They go after deer and waterfowl. The knowledge that an American black bear was somewhere close changed the hunting dynamics.

  ((HUNTER3 SOT))

  WAHOO!

  One hunter expressed confidence that his bait station would do the job, and showed me donuts and jelly designed to lure the mammoth beast to his sight line.

  “Isn’t that cheating?” I asked.

  Sure seemed like cheating to me. But a DNR official defended the practice on the grounds that bears are so elusive, few of the beasts would fall prey to man without baiting. He guided me to the parkland and showed me the tree bark clawed deep by our celebrity bear.

  ((WILDLIFE SOT))

  SEE THE STRENGTH BEHIND

  THAT REACH. NO WONDER

  EVERYBODY’S AFTER THAT BRUTE.

  I found myself feeling sorry for the bear. And I was starting to think Channel 3’s viewers would, too.

  • • •

  Once I had enough bear material for a news package, I drove down the dirt road toward Sarah Yoder’s grave. During my walk in the woods, I’d picked a couple stems of red autumn foliage to lay on her plot in lieu of a flashy floral bouquet.

  The first thing I noticed was that the sketch I’d left of her face was gone. But I wasn’t actually surprised, knowing that Amish faith rejected pictures as vain. Leaving Sarah’s picture might have been selfish of me. But I didn’t see any shredded paper or burnt ashes. Any destruction must have happened off site.

  I decided to be bold and drive by Sarah’s house in case anything looked different postfuneral. As I got closer, I saw a small figure carrying a lunch pail in the driveway. It was her sister, probably coming home from the Amish country school.

  I pulled alongside her and rolled down the car window. I didn’t make any mention about Sarah, because I didn’t want to ruin our second encounter.

  “Hi there, I could use some eggs. Are you open for customers today?”

  She glanced around as if checking to see whether I might be talking to someone else, but she was the only one on the road. I smiled at her like my presence was a blessing.

  “Maybe you could tell your folks you have a customer.”

  While she went in the house, I parked the car down the road so that my ultimate departure would take longer in case her mother chased me away again. The girl’s lunch bucket sat on the porch steps. Bored, I plopped down and peeked inside it, under the cloth dishrag.

  The drawing of Sarah Yoder stared up at me from the bottom of the pail. I dropped the fabric quickly to keep the secret covered and scrambled to my feet as mother and daughter came outside.

  I knew now who had beat me to the cemetery.

  I said nothing beyond requesting a dozen eggs from Mrs. Yoder, who startled me by agreeing. She sent the child back to bring them out and told me that would be a dollar. I handed her the bill and asked what crafts she sold, making sure I flashed the cash in my wallet.

  “Just a moment,” she said. “I’ll be back.”

  I knew she recognized me from my other visit, but was certain she had no idea I’d been to her daughter’s funeral.

  The child returned with the eggs first. “Your name was Hannah, wasn’t it?” I asked.

  She nodded, and I handed her the bucket. “Best you take this away.” She knew I knew. And so she left.

  Her mother brought a key and led me to a shed between the house and barn. Shelves lined the walls and crafts filled the shelves. Quilted table runners. Numerous handmade baskets. Jars of jams. But most unnerving, a row of rag dolls, dressed like Amish men and women. Without faces.

  CHAPTER 38

  The empty faces wore hats and bonnets along with their aprons and suspenders. They lacked eyes, noses, and mouths. I was both fascinated and repelled.

  I picked one up, but couldn’t understand how a child could embrace such a blank slate. Yet even without eyes, the dolls seemed to be watching me. Their expressions covert.

  Somehow, I couldn’t shake the feeling we’d met before. I set a pair—boy and girl—on the counter to purchase with some cash.

  “Why don’t they have faces?”

  My question didn’t seem unexpected. Tourists probably asked it all the time because the Amish woman had a practiced, ready answer. “That is our way. No images or likenesses.”

  The image of Sarah as a faceless Amish doll came to my mind. And until the forensic artist gave her back her identity, that’s what she was, another Jane Doe lacking a proper burial.

  Just then the little girl stuck her head in the door to check on us. Her mother made a sharp comment in Pennsylvania Dutch and left me alone at the counter while it sounded like she was scolding her daughter. Reaching to put my change back in my purse, my fingers found a marker. On impulse, I added facial features to my handmade doll to make her more human. Eyes. Nose. Mouth. I smiled at my creation just as Hannah was leaving the shed.

  The Amish woman gasped when she saw the blemished toy. Before I could react she’d grabbed my rag doll away from me and ripped its head off. But holding each piece of doll in a different hand, the woman seemed even more shocked than me. She, embarrassed for displaying temper. Me, impressed by the strength necessary for the damage.

  As we considered each other, the doll’s head and body dropped from her hands to the floor. I picked up the torn head and flashed back to a childhood moment of dismay, finding another doll head facedown in a ditch by my family’s farm.

  “I suspect we might have met before.” I described two little girls having tea with their dolls decades earlier while our fathers talked business. “Perhaps you are that other child?”

  She nodded without hesitation. The long-ago afternoon had apparently made a bigger impression on her than me.

  “My father tore my doll,” she said. “He told me the face you drew was prideful.”

  “My name is Riley Spartz. And you are Miriam Yoder?”

  Another nod.

  “Sarah’s mother?”

  Again, a nod.

  “Can we talk about Sarah?”

  She shook her head. “God’s will.”

  “God also wills justice,” I replied. “I know your daughter lost her Amish faith. I’d like to try to understand why.”

  Sometimes a victim’s family appreciates being able to talk about a loved one. Not the case here. Miriam seemed a by-the-Bible Amish.

  “I’m sorry for what happened to her,” I said. “And I’m sorry for you, too. Nobody deserves to lose a child like that.”

  Her mouth tensed, before once again she replied, “God’s will.”

  “Why was Sarah being shunned?” I asked.

  I sensed her struggle. How best to explain such an esoteric concept to an outsider?

  Miriam Yoder paused. “Sarah was rejecting the Amish way. Things most important to our people.”

  I talked about all teens struggling to find their path. “Sports cars can be habit-forming.”

 
; Miriam did not look amused. She justified the shunning because in her words, Sarah had her chance to test the English world, but chose to be a baptized member of their church.

  “She should have respected the Ordnung,” Miriam said. “But she refused. We couldn’t look away.”

  “Did she tell you she was leaving? Or was it a surprise?”

  She shook her head. “She was gone one morning without a word.”

  “How about the rest of the family?” I asked. “Her father? Her siblings? Was she close to them?”

  Miriam was a widow. I shared that I also had lost my spouse. Neither of us said anything right away after that. Miriam started stacking baskets methodically.

  “Sometimes I think having a child would have helped me better cope with my loss,” I told her. I hadn’t ever said that to anyone else before. “I envy that you have a family to raise.”

  “My son is everything to me.”

  I was puzzled she didn’t mention Hannah. But I saw her remark as another indication that men have higher standing among the Amish. If Miriam was grieving, she was keeping specific feelings private. Considering I was a stranger, that seemed normal. But I doubted she was sharing them with anyone since Sarah’s burial.

  I remarked that she and her youngest both wore black dresses. “Is there a certain length of time you will keep the black?”

  “One year,” she answered.

  Maybe she thought by getting me to understand their manners, our conversation would end. But it just made me more curious. The journalist in me focused on the one question her story seemed to hinge on. “What rule did she break?”

  Miriam squirmed, clearly not wanting to say more. “That is our concern, but Sarah knew the outcome for obstinance. The bann.”

  Then I asked again about how Sarah’s brother and sister coped after she left. “Did she tell either of them goodbye? Or where she was headed?”

  Miriam shook her head. “Hannah was upset. And her brother knew nothing about her plans either.” She mentioned how a neighbor reported later that Sarah had been seen in town. But because of the shunning, her family did not seek her out.

  When investigators arrived with questions, she did not imagine Sarah had come to harm. She suspected her daughter was in trouble with the law. Maybe drugs and sex. Or theft. She had heard disturbing tales of other runaway Amish youth.

  “The sheriff carried the same drawing you did the first time you came,” she said. “I told him, yes, it was Sarah. He told me she was dead.”

  “That must have been horrible,” I said. “But surely you can understand how using the sketch—and the media—might help their investigation.”

  Before she could answer, an unmarried Amish man entered the shed. I concluded he was single because he was clean shaven. Miriam called him Gideon. Hannah had apparently told him I had returned as a customer. He was her brother. The head of the family.

  He ordered me to leave. “You don’t belong in our world.” Then he scolded his mother. “This is the television woman I warned you about.”

  The nickname wasn’t especially flattering, so I tried to tell him my real name. But he wasn’t interested in that or a business card. My phone number, email, or station address meant even less to him than my moniker.

  “Why was your sister being shunned, Gideon?” I hoped his answer might yield more detail than his mother’s.

  It didn’t. “That’s no business of the English.”

  I noticed one of the fingers on his left hand was missing, but didn’t pry because he didn’t seem the chatty type.

  I thanked Sarah’s mother for her time and didn’t let on to her son that we’d been visiting before he interrupted us. At the car, I realized I only had half a doll in hand. The boy doll was still on the counter, the girl doll body presumably still on the floor. I was afraid to go back for either souvenir, instead settling for my doll head with a smudged face.

  CHAPTER 39

  A woman with a hammer was pounding orange campaign signs in the ground near Chatfield, another town up the highway en route to Minneapolis. When I saw the notices were for Sheriff Eide’s rival, I pulled over.

  Turns out, she was Laura Schaefer—his opponent—currently a deputy sheriff.

  “So why are you running against your boss?”

  I introduced myself as a TV reporter covering the murder of Sarah Yoder. I figured their race was too local for Twin Cities media, but I was still curious about their rivalry.

  “Give me your campaign spiel, Deputy.”

  “I’m running to make a point, and you can call me Laura.”

  Her issue was that the sheriff was too free in handing out gun permits. One had gone to a buddy of his who had been convicted twice of drunk driving, and had been inebriated at the high school football game.

  “A blatant example of public intoxication,” she said. “He ran out on the field and tried to stop the game when a call went against his team. He had to be dragged off so play could resume. No telling what would have happened if he’d been armed.”

  After she outlined that story, I wish I hadn’t stopped to meet her. Now the newsroom spree shooting would torment me the entire drive back. I tried to shake it from my mind and instead saw visions of bloody referee uniforms and fallen cheerleaders on the twenty-yard line while a coach tackled the drunken gunman.

  “Certainly sounds like an issue worth raising, Laura. How did the sheriff react when you announced your candidacy?”

  “Transferred me to the night shift.”

  I believed her. Sheriffs generally don’t take it well when subordinates challenge them for their job. Besides being dark and lonely, the night shift is full of crazy calls.

  “But working nights gives me time for this.” And she gave the sign a final pound, then stepped back to admire her work.

  “What makes you think this guy and the sheriff are pals?”

  “They’re more than friends. Roger Alton’s his biggest fundraiser. He hosts an annual party for campaign contributors.”

  “How much does he raise?”

  “More than five grand in an afternoon,” she said. “Certainly enough that no one’s wanted to run against him.”

  “So how about you, Laura? Do you have any supporters?”

  “Not nearly enough.” She showed me, in the backseat of her car, campaign signs with her name blacked out. “That’s why I’m out here today.”

  CHAPTER 40

  The six o’clock newscast was still half an hour away while I waited for my set piece about the rogue bear. Then the desk got word that firefighters, with lights flashing and sirens blaring, were racing to a restaurant in south Minneapolis.

  Malik was on his way home, not far from the blaze, so Ozzie ordered him to meet a live truck and broadcast from the scene. This week was Channel 3’s political reporter’s chance to audition for the anchor slot. After the standard good-evening greeting, he informed viewers of the two-alarm fire, promising a live report within minutes.

  I watched the early action from the control booth, because I was the second story, after the lead about school referendums. After my wrap, the producer cut away to the fire, which by now, had been upgraded to a three alarm.

  ((ANCHOR CU))

  NOW FOR BREAKING NEWS—

  MINNEAPOLIS FIREFIGHTERS

  ARE RESPONDING TO A BLAZE

  THAT HAS ENGULFED GRETA’S—A

  NEIGHBORHOOD RESTAURANT

  THAT IS CONNECTED TO SEVERAL

  BOUTIQUE SHOPS IN THE SAME

  COMPLEX.

  ((DOUBLE BOX))

  MALIK RAHMAN IS STANDING BY

  AT THE SCENE WITH DETAILS

  IN THIS LIVE REPORT.

  Malik stood across the street from dramatic smoke and flames. Truck engineers manned the live-shot cameras to forestall technical difficulties. But Malik, despite wearing a mic and an earpiece, was silent.

  “You’re hot,” the producer yelled in both his ear and the camera operator’s.

  The anchor also ste
pped up to fill time. He didn’t have any facts about the fire but used questions.

  ((ANCHOR DOUBLE BOX))

  WHAT’S THE SITUATION THERE,

  MALIK? ANY REPORTS ON

  WHETHER THE RESTAURANT

  WAS EVACUATED?

  Malik just stood there.

  His lips weren’t even moving, so we knew it wasn’t that kind of an audio problem. The anchor referenced technical difficulties to the viewers. Then those of us in the control booth realized at the same time that the problem was Malik.

  “He’s frozen.”

  Sometimes the pressure of a live shot—knowing there’s no do-over—freaks rookies. By the time reporters reach a market the size of Minneapolis–St. Paul, they’ve worked through those issues or left the business. But Malik had never reported live before. He’d been able to re-record himself over and over until his lines were perfect. The same difference between acting onscreen and onstage.

  “Camera off Malik.” The producer instructed the photographer to pan to the burning building itself. The assignment desk ran over with a written page of details about the blaze which the producer rushed to the anchor to ad-lib under pictures of a row of firefighters aiming hoses of water at broken windows.

  ((ANCHOR NAT))

  WE’RE ALSO GETTING WORD THAT

  THE BLAZE HAS SPREAD TO THE

  NEIGHBORING SUNFISH CAFE.

  Then the producer gave a wrap and signaled him back to the comfort of the teleprompter and the original newscast lineup.

  ((ANCHOR CU))

  WE’LL BE BACK IN A MOMENT WITH

  THE DAY’S WEATHER.

  ((ANCHOR NAT))

  AND YOU’LL HEAR FROM A

  WOMAN WHO HAS SPENT HER

  LIFETIME COLLECTING SALT

  AND PEPPER SHAKERS … WHAT

  DOES SHE INTEND TO DO WITH

  THEM WHEN SHE DIES?

  The newscast was crippled, but this week’s anchor sub showed he could adapt to the pressure of breaking news. I figured this now made him the leading internal candidate for the job. Normally the anchor would tease that more on the restaurant fire was coming after the break. But no such promise was made here.