Exhaling, Kevin dropped into his chair. He rubbed his graying temples. “Aiden, I want you to back off this investigative kick you’re into. This isn’t the Chicago Tribune. Our biggest priorities are recipes and farmer’s markets.”
“They have a newspaper like that, it’s called The Budget.”
“I’m asking you as a friend, Aiden, but I’m also telling you as your boss—stop this. Stop this now.”
“Whatever happened to you wanting someone with ‘true journalistic spirit’? Isn’t that why you hired me?”
“Aiden, this is not Chicago, it’s not Indianapolis. Hell, it’s not even Springfield. It’s Henry. This entire county has had one homicide in the past thirty years.”
“Possibly three.” Aiden again sifted through his paperwork. This time he brandished a notepad, full of dog-ears and flagged pages. “I’ve got information about Kyle Yoder’s death that would make you question everything you think you know about it. Check this out. Kyle was found hanging in the barn without a broken neck, hardly any neck injuries at all. And one of his boots was missing, wasn’t found anywhere. Yet nothing in the police reports ever mentioned—”
“I’ve already read them.”
“The reports?”
“No. Your notes.”
“You read my notes?”
“While you were gone this afternoon I read them. It’s my responsibility to read your notes, especially with all the complaints we’ve been getting.”
“If you’ve read my notes, then you have to agree with my suspicions.”
“I don’t have to agree with anything. And I definitely don’t agree with your theory that Kyle Yoder was murdered by his father.”
“I know I haven’t proved anything yet, but he’s the one who found his body. Why didn’t you mention that in your story on Kyle’s death? It was in the police reports.”
“I chose not to for the sake of the family.”
“But what about the other stuff? All the gaping holes? Even the sheriff couldn’t explain some of the strange findings. Kyle’s missing boot is just part of it. I was doing some research about asphyxiation. Have you ever heard of something called petechial rash?”
“Aiden—”
“It’s what happens when a person chokes to death. Tiny blood clots pop out all over the face. Kyle didn’t have that, which means he might’ve been killed before he was hung. And if you saw that barn, you would know there was no way Kyle could’ve tied a rope to the rafter, and then to have jumped—”
“You had no business snooping around the Yoder property.”
“What?”
“You heard me. The sheriff wasn’t too thrilled with your snooping, either. He was the man who stopped by today to complain. I wasn’t going to mention it, but I think you should know. Someone reported you snooping around Reverend Yoder’s barn a few weeks ago. At first the sheriff just dismissed it as the meddling of a bored English neighbor, but then when you interrogated him at his office last week, asking all those questions, he decided to say something about it.”
“I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Aiden, you’ve wasted too much time on this nonsense already. For crying out loud, Kyle’s suicide was eight years ago. Besides, this is the reason why I left Indianapolis. Too much speculation and gross hearsay.”
“But I haven’t even printed anything yet. I’m being cautious about speculation and hearsay. That’s why I’m investigating; I want to make sure. At least let me keep looking into it. What’s wrong with some harmless investigating on my own free time? Who could worry about that?”
“This is a small town, Aiden.” Kevin narrowed his black eyes. “Everyone knows everything. Word spreads quickly. People even know you’ve been to the County Records Office. Originally I dismissed those complaints, too, but now….”
Aiden chucked the notepad he’d been holding onto his desk and leaned back in his chair with a heavy sigh. “What’s the point of having a newspaper in this town if everyone always knows what’s going on before you print anything?”
“Listen, Aiden. The cornerstone of democracy in this country has always been two things: freedom of expression and privacy. You doing investigations at a public records office is one thing, but you snooping around people’s barns without their okay is an invasion of privacy. You should’ve known better.”
Aiden brooded. He had no idea how he should feel. He was angered, angered about so many things. Mostly because he knew on some level Kevin had a point. But he still wanted some kind of victory. He looked at his boss with a roguish smirk. “You snooped in my notes, isn’t that an invasion of privacy?”
“Not when they’re in my desk and in my office, it’s not, and especially not when people like the sheriff have been coming around making complaints.”
Grumbling, Aiden shook his head. He chortled, frustrated.
Kevin softened his tone, but his sentiments were clear. “Just back off the hardcore investigation kick, Aiden. I don’t want to see you or anyone else get hurt. Any more time wasted on stories like those,”—he nodded toward Aiden’s notepad—“about drug abuse and alleged murders and wife beatings, and I’ll have your backside. Understand? Just back off, please. Find some nice horse auction or flea market to write about. That’s what I hired you for. This is your final warning. Don’t disappoint me.”
Chapter 19
“We’re becoming more English every day,” Daniel said the following Saturday as he and Aiden strolled a paved footpath by a pond at a popular county park.
Evening twilight had just set in. The trees and bushes were forming into colorless shapes. Canada geese took off in flight to their sleeping ponds. Triangular ripples pulled across the smooth surface of the pond as they took to the cobalt sky where faint stars emerged. Bullfrogs splashed by the pond’s bank and mockingbirds and warblers, fluttering from treetop to treetop, twittered, as if rejoicing mischievously in the encroaching nightfall.
Aiden was unable to see Daniel’s expression in the descending darkness; not that it would’ve mattered. Gauging Daniel’s temperament was difficult even under the full brightness of the sun. Yet Daniel’s spirit most of the evening had been pleasantly buoyant.
He was glad when Daniel, after closing the furniture shop early that afternoon, had crossed the street to the Blade office and suggested they go for supper at the corner diner. It was nice to get away from the office, especially with all the pressure from his boss to back off the Kyle Yoder story. And Aiden was happy to see Daniel emerge from his old aloofness. Lately he’d ratcheted it up. During the Schrock’s threshing a few weeks before it seemed to have come out of nowhere. Aiden had a tough time guessing when his moods would swing. He was pleased to see him rebound. He was even more delighted when Daniel had agreed to go for an easy car ride after supper.
How funny when Daniel had reached for the door handle on the left side of Aiden’s Chevy. Aiden had teased him. “Are you going to drive?” he’d said, in mocking disapproval.
Daniel had looked confused at first, his short beard pulled toward his pondering eyes. But then he had beamed.
“I figure I deserve that,” Daniel had said, chuckling as he got into the right-hand side of the car, as any passenger in an automobile should. Neither could keep from laughing, remembering when Aiden had climbed up the wrong side of the wagon before their drive to the horse auction back in June and Daniel had given him the evil eye. It had made an already pleasant evening turn into something even lighter. A flirty sparring had sprung up between the two.
They ended up at the park, where hickories and elms and scarce prairie grass surrounded a tranquil pond. Ancient wild onion, once common throughout the Midwestern prairies and collected by natives for their medicinal value, still grew in protected clusters in low-lying areas slumping toward the pond. Aiden could smell the onions’ odor carried by a gentle breeze that combed through the prairie grass from the south. The late September evening was mild. They were alone mostly; a few straggling shadows of couples wer
e idling back to their parked cars. They sidestepped the goose poop that littered the footpath, some hidden under the yellow and orange leaves that had fallen from the trees.
“How are you becoming more English?” Aiden asked.
“Just last week Dad brought home flowers for Mom.”
“I think that’s sweet,” Aiden said. “What’s wrong with giving someone flowers?” Even in the spreading darkness Aiden sensed Daniel enjoyed their little sparring. Aiden was enjoying it too.
“I don’t remember him ever doing that before,” Daniel said. “It’s very English.”
“He was just showing her he loves her, that’s all.”
“Every day he shows her that,” Daniel said, “with working hard, taking care of the family.”
“Sometimes it’s nice to show people how you feel by doing nice extra little things, like giving them flowers.”
“It’s shussly. Flowers! Nothing but trouble.”
“How could flowers be trouble?”
“Very haughty,” Daniel said. “Toying with people’s emotions. A waste of money, too. All it does is put money into the pockets of florists.”
There was no awkwardness as they strolled through the soft touch of descending darkness. Aiden enjoyed catching glimpses of Daniel’s dark, shiny eyes when he turned his head in a certain way so they’d glow like the eyes of a white-tailed deer at night. He held that sensation even as he sidestepped a cluster of annoying goose poop.
“What if your father got the flowers for free, hmm?” Aiden chuckled. “Maybe your dad cut them from somewhere. What would you say to that?”
“It’s still shussly,” Daniel said again.
Aiden could tell that Daniel did not think it silly. He could tell Daniel liked that his father had given his mother flowers. He smiled in the twilight. Blithely he watched as the first super-bright stars emerged in the sky.
“I sometimes wish someone would give me flowers,” Aiden dared to say. He gazed toward the indigo sky, almost afraid to catch Daniel’s expression, even in the dark. Was he giving away too much? Was he risking scaring Daniel off again?
“Give you flowers?” Daniel blurted a laugh. “But you’re a man.”
“What would you know about that, anyway?” Aiden quipped, still evading Daniel’s look, yet his grin stretching his face to new limits. “To you it’s not right for a man to even give a woman flowers; what difference does it make?”
Daniel tugged at his beard. Aiden could see the whiteness of his teeth when he smiled, his eyes as dark and shimmering as the pond.
“If anyone is to give someone flowers, it should be the man to the woman, not the woman to the man,” he said.
Aiden baited him. “To be honest, I’d rather get them.”
“You English,” Daniel huffed, teasing in his voice. After a pause, he said, “That’ll be the day when Amish women buy their husbands flowers. Then what? They’ll make us cook supper and do the washing and sewing. We’ll be more English every day, see, I told you.”
Aiden rustled up his courage. “Doesn’t have to come from a woman.”
Daniel stopped in his tracks. Aiden continued to walk ahead impishly. As if choking on his chuckles, Daniel said, “You mean… you mean for a man… to give another man flowers?” He advanced one step to catch up with Aiden. “And what reason would that be for?”
“Same reason your dad gave your mom flowers.”
Night birds singing and bullfrogs gurgling filled their tiny space of silence. A bat flew by so close that Aiden could feel the tip of its wing brush his nose. For some reason it only made him giggle.
Daniel, too, started giggling. His giggles mingled with Aiden’s, until both their giggles turned into loud laughter, drowning out the sounds of the birds and the frogs, rising up past the crowns of the trees toward the iridescent stars.
Daniel slapped his thigh, his belly laughter bending him over. Aiden fell into Daniel as his guffaws set him off balance.
A few days later, Daniel was at the flea market hoping to buy some good Swiss-made woodcarving tools when he found himself in front of a flower kiosk. Transfixed, he approached the kiosk inchmeal, tugging at his beard. The English vendor, a cheery elderly woman, spotted him as he neared and asked if she could be of assistance. At first Daniel was not sure he had heard her. She repeated herself. Finally, Daniel took notice.
He looked up, anxious and embarrassed. He tried to force a smile, his lips twitching. He told the vendor he was only browsing and then marched off. Stopping, he turned and gazed back toward the kiosk. The flowers were teasing him, beckoning him like tiny coquettes.
This time he approached the kiosk from the side so that the vendor would not see him. Concealed behind hanging and potted flowers, he gazed at the array of colorful blossoms. He thought about his father giving his mother a bouquet. Rachel was at first embarrassed, but he noted that after Samuel had handed her the flowers she’d blushed like a girl courting. Didn’t all women want to feel like they were forever courting? Even Amish women?
Why did Aiden want flowers? Not to feel like he was courting? What was it that he had said? He would like for a man to give him flowers for the same reason Samuel had given them to Rachel? What had he meant by that?
Surely Aiden had been teasing. Both had been in a playful mood all that evening, poking each other and acting shussly. Aiden’s words had struck Daniel as comical when he’d spoken them; now, he dissected them in his mind like he did the old McCormick to figure out what made the reel stick.
He fiddled with the maroon and white mottled blossoms of an orchid, which he was certain smelled like chocolate.
“Back again?”
Startled, Daniel realized he’d been spotted behind a hanging basket full of fall-colored mums.
“You thinking of buying something?” The vendor smiled at him solicitously, almost maternally, in that manner common among older English women when they interact with the Amish.
“Maybe,” Daniel said, holding himself steady, accustomed to such patronizing behavior.
“I didn’t know Amish men bought flowers for their wives.” She of course would presume Daniel was married because of his beard, as many people did.
“We don’t. I mean, not often.”
“I think it would be sweet. Want to buy a bouquet? I bet your wife will love it.”
Daniel thought of Tara. She wasn’t his wife, but they were courting, whether he admitted it to her or anyone else. He was expected at her family’s farm in less than an hour, in fact. What would she say if he were to show up with a bouquet of flowers? Was Tara the type who would be receptive to such a gift? She was as Old Order Amish as he, and as dedicated to upholding the Ordnung. She had been baptized when she was sixteen, much younger than most. Even Daniel had waited until he was twenty-three, the year before his marriage to Esther, before joining the church. Tara was too conservative to want flowers. Wasn’t she?
He’d never bought Esther flowers. Never even thought of it before. Why was he thinking of giving anyone flowers now?
Amish men were not expected to do such things.
Shussly English ideas.
“Well?” The old vendor was still grinning at Daniel. “Decided on anything?”
He pulled a twenty from his black jacket and laid it on the counter. “Whatever I can get with this,” he said.
The bouquet of yellow, orange, and purple daisies joggled in the backseat of the buggy next to his newly purchased woodcarving tools. He drove Gertrude at a walking speed. No hurry to get anywhere. Tara would be waiting for him at her home, probably by now sitting on her family’s porch, a bit impatient. He didn’t care about that or his gnawing fatigue; he simply wanted to be alone. To think.
He drove the backcountry lanes, his mind rotating like the slow wheels of his buggy. The sun was setting beyond the fields. Unharvested corn stalks, dead as straw, silhouetted against the explosive orange western sky streaked with bold strokes of black stratus clouds. The earthy smell of the daisies filled th
e buggy. Occasionally he glanced in the backseat, uncertain the flowers would still be there.
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