Would Tara even appreciate them, he wondered, yawning. His own father had given his mother flowers. Would Tara be as pleased as Rachel had been? Should he give them to her?
He should just toss them out of the buggy, into the passing cornfields.
His mind roved on, and on….
He woke up confused, cold. Rubbing his temples, he thought he was in bed. With a start, he sat upright. The understanding that he was still in his buggy hit him like a blast of dirt. It was dark. His eyes were not yet acclimated, and the large trees blocked the half-moon’s light. Waiting unmoving, Gertrude blew air through her nostrils. She was still hitched to the buggy, undisturbed.
Understanding descended over him as his eyes adjusted to the dark. While driving he must’ve fallen asleep, and Gertrude continued to lead the buggy, to the place where Daniel had driven her so many times before.
He knew the mare had not taken him to Tara’s farm or to his own, for the gray gravel of their driveways always emitted lightness at night. This driveway was black, as black as tar. Gradually he recognized the elms and sycamores, and the tiny white bungalow with robin’s-egg blue shutters. And the Chevy Aveo of the same color parked in front of his buggy. Gertrude had taken him to Aiden Cermak’s.
“Gertrude,” he whispered, “why did you bring me here?”
The smell of the daisies in the backseat jostled his memory. He looked toward them, where they lay next to the carving tools, although only the yellow petals gave off a slight radiance. Dreamlike, he brought them under his beard.
When Aiden answered Daniel’s light knock on his front door, he looked at the bouquet in his hands as if puzzled.
“Flowers,” Daniel said, pushing a smile.
“I can see,” Aiden said.
The fall-colored petals were brilliant under the florescent door lamp.
“I was napping,” Aiden said, suppressing a yawn. “Who’re they for?”
“You.” Daniel nudged the bouquet toward him. “You said you wanted someone to give you flowers.”
Aiden stared at the bouquet, his eyes groggy-looking.
“Remember?” Daniel said. “You said so when we went walking by the pond.”
“Oh, yes. Now I remember.”
Daniel pictured them walking side by side along the footpath in the soft night with the birds singing and bullfrogs gurgling and the smell of the wild onion. The pleasant memory brought a tightness to his throat as Aiden finally took the bouquet from his outstretched hand.
Chuckling, Aiden said, “That is sweet of you, Daniel.”
Daniel, his face burning, was bewildered by Aiden’s snicker. Fearful that he was laughing at him, he fumbled to explain himself.
“It’s a joke,” he said, flashing a grin he knew must look as if it were seared to his face. He wanted to chuckle, but it came out more like a cough. “I’m playing a joke on you, just like your joke from the other night. About wanting a man to give you flowers.” He forced a tight smile. “That’s what you get for playing games.”
“A joke?” Aiden stood looking from Daniel to the bouquet. Dazed-like, he brought the flowers to his chest and instinctively smelled them. “It’s a nice joke,” he said.
Daniel’s head reeled. He did not know what he was doing there, standing before Aiden Cermak, having handed him a bouquet of flowers. What had he been thinking? Sleepiness weighed on him. He wanted to flee without words, but it would make him look all the more ridiculous. What a dummkop Aiden must already think of him.
Aiden stepped aside and gestured with the bouquet for him to enter.
“Nay,” Daniel said, almost too rapidly, raising his hand. “I was just on the way through and wanted to give you a good laugh. I see that I was able to.” Daniel turned to leave for his buggy. Halfway down the driveway, Aiden called out his name.
Daniel stopped and, squaring his slumped shoulders with all his might, for they felt as if they scraped the driveway, slowly turned to him. His eyes met Aiden’s from across the blacktop. He savored the golden highlights of Aiden’s brown irises as he stood under the door lamp.
“Thanks for the flowers. I meant it when I said I always wanted someone to give me some. It wasn’t a joke. You’re the first.”
This flustered Daniel. His thoughts could not be shaped into words. He blew out a floundering chuckle and waved his hand to dismiss the silly ordeal. With a nervous grin he climbed into his buggy and, calling to Gertrude, disappeared into the night.
Three miles away Daniel drove Gertrude down the back lanes, taking the turns at higher speeds than he should have for such a dark hour—for any hour—especially now that a drizzle had begun to fall. He was not rushing to meet Tara. Already two hours late to her family’s farm, he had no plans to go there. Pictures of her sitting on the porch bench, growing angrier and angrier at his tardiness, slogged through the haze in his mind. None of it mattered. He wanted only to get home and to the sanctuary of his woodshop.
Gertrude, galloping down the darkened lanes, panted in the damp night. She needed no commands from Daniel to get her back to the farm. Already the mare, just over three months with the Schrocks, knew her way through the grid of roads without any real prompting from her drivers. Her taking Daniel to Aiden’s bungalow after Daniel had fallen asleep was proof of that. Faster she went, back to the farm and to her dry stall with oats and water.
As Gertrude raced home, Daniel’s mind also raced.
He had given Aiden Cermak a bouquet of daisies.
None of it seemed real.
What a mockery he’d made of their friendship.
But hadn’t Aiden stopped him just before he was getting into the buggy to say he liked the flowers? That he wasn’t joking? Hadn’t he repeated what he had said when they had gone for that stroll at the county park, that he wanted flowers from… from a man? Had he been joking both times? Taking a gag too far?
Again he wondered if Aiden was “one of those.” Was it possible? In the past he’d thought he might be. He wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it was some kind of twisted wishful thinking. Lately, he’d dismissed such notions from his mind. Nothing Aiden had ever done indicated he could be, or was interested in Daniel other than as a friend.
Until the last few weeks….
How boogered things had gotten.
He could see Tara one moment in his mind, standing like a statue by his side; then, just like in the DVD he’d once watched with Aiden—what was the name of it?—with the soaring cluster of lights that dazzled a small Indiana town, she would be swept away into a vast vacuum of the universe, and Aiden would emerge in her place, set beside him as if by an angel. Or by a demon?
He tugged on the reins, encouraging Gertrude to get home… faster… faster….
They were about to take the left turn onto the blacktop lane where the Schrock farm was when Gertrude reared up. Daniel slapped a hand on top of his black hat and held steady to the reins as the buggy came to a jolting halt. The buggy veered to the side, skidding on the slick compacted gravel. Instinctively he braced himself with his feet against the dash. Gertrude, kicking out her forelegs, screamed. Daniel held onto the seat to keep himself from falling out. The hydraulic shocks absorbed most of the energy from the sudden stop.
“What is it, girl, what is it?”
Peering beyond Gertrude’s collar, he spotted through the mist in the buggy’s LED lights, that his mare had halted just in time before striking a deer carcass that lay in the middle of the lane.
Shaking his head with both relief and dismay, Daniel thought the entire episode symbolized his life up to that point. Obstacles always seemed to be scattered before him. The deaths of Esther and Zach. Now his relationships with Tara and Aiden, both having started off innocent enough, were galloping out of control as well. And there lying before him was the bloody remains of a young buck, struck down by a car.
How fitting.
His face sagging into his beard, he jumped out of the buggy, dragged the darkened mass of flesh and bones to the side of the lane,
and hopped back into the buggy, letting Gertrude walk the few hundred yards to the farm. His only wish was to get back to the sanctuary of his woodshop where the tears that burned behind his eyes could be spilled in private.
Chapter 20
Aiden thought about his boss’s words from a few weeks before while he sat at his dining table sipping his morning coffee. He had replayed the lecture many times in his head. Maybe Kevin was right. He was being foolish. Playing an overzealous reporter, like one of those on television. The missing boot? Could’ve been anything. Maybe Kyle was so distraught before hanging himself he had forgotten to put it on. And the implausibility of Kyle’s hanging himself from a rafter so far from the loft? Who knew what had really taken place that day?
Aiden did not want to believe the Reverend Yoder had killed his own son, like some kind of Amish Ivan the Terrible. Just speculation he had jotted down in his notepad while he’d been brainstorming. He hadn’t meant for anyone to read it.
So far Reverend Yoder was the one name on his crude list of suspects. There wasn’t another soul in the community who could’ve been responsible for such a horrible crime. To kill Kyle and make it look like a suicide? The thought was absurd.
Yet there were so many holes, so many incongruities surrounding Kyle’s death. Too many unanswered questions. The missing boot, the hay loft, the lack of any severe neck injuries or petechial rash.
And there was that other Amish man’s bizarre death, the one found headfirst in a cistern. Aiden suspected he’d been drowned by his desperate wife and her lover. Was that just another fantasy?
He was chasing ghosts.
He put down his coffee and shook his head in defeat.
It was all a game, something to keep his mind from going sour. Living in a rural community had proved lonelier than he had anticipated. There weren’t many people his age in Henry to do things with other than the Amish, and they were so closed off from his world, even with his reporter’s responsibilities taking him deeper into their lives. The few English his age married straight after high school and moved away, looking for more opportunities and excitement elsewhere, like Chicago or Champaign. His neighbors were kind enough, but they were much older than he, in their golden years. Maybe his investigation into Kyle’s death was nothing more than a distraction. To keep himself from succumbing to the cold reality of his loneliness.
If it wasn’t for Daniel’s friendship, much of his personal time would be spent in despair.
He looked to the bouquet of fall-colored daisies on the dining table. He had put them in a glass vase soon after Daniel had given them to him, making sure to set them on the table where he could see them from any corner of his tiny house. The petals were wilted and had lost their fresh color, but he was not yet ready to toss them into the trash.
Daniel. His head was full of him, more than usual. More than Kyle Yoder’s death. Over and over he reflected on Daniel’s bringing him that vibrant bouquet that strange night.
He’d meant it when he’d told Daniel he wanted a man to give him flowers. Unable to hold himself back, he knew it had been a daring thing to have said. That night by the pond there had been something whimsical in the air. Even the birds had seemed extra bold with their playful chatter and capricious fluttering about.
Never in a million years did he expect Daniel to take him up on it. The somber Amish man had a peculiar prankster in him, Aiden guessed. He was just acting shussly, as the Amish would say.
Why else would Daniel have brought him those flowers?
Aiden had asked himself that question many times since Daniel had showed up on his front stoop with the bouquet. He wanted to understand, to believe. But it all seemed too implausible. Like Kyle Yoder’s suicide….
Daniel had been married and fathered a child. He had mourned their tragic deaths. He courted that Amish girl, Tara Hostetler. Aiden had seen her a few times. She seemed nice. They made a cute couple. Everyone had said so. Daniel seemed to like her. He acted aloof at times, but Amish men always acted detached with their sweethearts in public. That was their way.
He wanted to laugh at the outrageous things he was thinking.
It couldn’t be true. Daniel was Amish.
But what if it were true? How jarring would that be to Daniel, a stoic man with such staunch religious convictions? He knew that the Amish viewed homosexuality as a sin—he didn’t need to do research to discover that. He couldn’t imagine them even discussing the topic in private.
But then there was that time four months ago, when he’d first visited the Schrock’s furniture shop in Henry and had overheard those Amish boys playing the arcade game at the IGA. They’d teased each other using the word “faggot.”
The Amish weren’t so far removed from the twenty-first century not to know that even certain members of their own community might be gay, or bisexual, or whatever the current academic terms were. They must know homosexuality was not confined to the English world.
His mind went back to that night when they were standing by the door, the air cool and soft, Daniel holding in his large hands the yellow, orange, and purple daisies. He’d been so impish when he had told Daniel he wanted a man to give him flowers. He admonished himself for that now. How unfair to have teased Daniel that way.
Daniel’s gift of the bouquet had made Aiden realize something else that he admonished himself for. Something that he had been hoping to dodge for some time. Something that had pestered him since their ride to the horse auction in June. There was no hiding from it any longer.
He was in love with Daniel.
He’d gone so long without any love or romance. Without anyone touching him in that special way. Not since Conrad had he met anyone he’d want to be with. Until now. He should’ve known how vulnerable he would be near someone as needful and profound as Daniel. Not to mention handsome. He was a fool to think his feelings for him had only to do with sympathy.
His compassion hadn’t evolved into longing—the longing had been there all along.
The hard truth was he had moved to Henry to be near Daniel. That unwelcome fact brushed up against Aiden like a spindly oat shock. It irritated him. He had rashly followed one man halfway across the country before. Here he had done it all over, and after he’d sworn to himself he would never do it again. He would never have moved to such a small, isolated town—a village in technical terms—taking such a measly paycheck, if Daniel had not lived mere miles away.
Bad enough to allow silly emotions to motivate his actions. But to fall in love with someone as unattainable as an Amish man? He would’ve been better off if he had fallen in love with a Catholic priest.
Shaking his head, he understood he was jealous of Tara Hostetler too. Ever since spying Daniel boosting her into the carriage that Church Sunday at the Schrock’s, what seemed like ages ago, the hot spices of jealousy had pickled him.
He closed his eyes and sighed, wondering if it could ever be. Daniel? What if it were true? What could come of it? Confused and even angry at himself for making himself wish for something he couldn’t have—or shouldn’t have—Aiden laid his forearms on the table, overcome with tiredness.
It was times like these when he wished he believed in God. That way he could have someone to blame all his troubles on.
If Daniel were gay, he knew it would be an utter nightmare for him. He would rather Daniel be one hundred percent heterosexual than for him to live with such a weighty secret in a culture like the Amish.
Being homosexual wasn’t easy for anyone. Those who were less “visible” and defied the stereotypes often faced the most internal turmoil, people like himself, perhaps. But Daniel? Unfathomable.
Steam from his mug of coffee washed over his troubled face. Rubbing his forehead, he eyed the bouquet of daisies. No man had ever given him flowers, not even Conrad after more than a year together. Though he’d been drowsy from a nap that night Daniel had stood at his front door holding the bouquet, the image was as clear as if Daniel were at that very moment standing before h
im.
What a mess one little bouquet could cause. No wonder the Amish eschewed such sentimental nonsense. He understood Daniel’s derision.
He wished the steam from his coffee would forever fog his mind so he would not have to feel or think so much.
A harsh thud on the front of his house jerked him from his deep thoughts. He raced to the dining room window overlooking the front yard and peered out. He saw nothing. Puzzled, he hurried outside.
Orange and yellow slime oozed down the front of his white house. A pumpkin lay smashed open in his garden, where last month he’d planted black-eyed Susans. Two of the thick flower stalks were snapped in half from the pumpkin having fallen on them. He nudged the desecrated pumpkin onto the grass with his shoe to inspect it. Seeds and pumpkin innards trickled out. He squatted, lifted one of the broken flower stalks. They were dying anyway, he thought miserably, letting the broken flower drop lifeless to the ground.
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