“Me?”
“You got people upset. A lot of people.”
“Don’t I know it.” A snicker fluttered from between Aiden’s lips, itching with salt and Diet Sprite.
Daniel shifted to look at him. “Why are you harping on Kyle Yoder’s suicide? You could get a lot of people into serious trouble snooping around like you been.”
“Not you, too, Daniel. Why does everyone think I’m out to cause trouble? I’m just trying to uncover the truth. There could be a murderer out there, maybe more than one. Doesn’t anyone care about that?”
“Just leave the story alone,” Daniel said. “The community is talking about it more and more, English and Amish. You should worry what it all could lead to. Kyle hung himself, that’s all there is to it, people do things like that. There’s not always a clear reason why, quit looking for one.”
Aiden hugged himself in his fleece hoody and squirmed in his seat. He was annoyed with everyone trying to thwart his efforts to find the truth behind Kyle’s death. He had tried to put the story aside, like Kevin had wanted him to, like everyone wanted him to, but his curiosity proved too overpowering. The latest discovery had convinced him something was just not right with Kyle’s death.
Last week he’d talked on the phone with the county coroner, retired in Arizona. The coroner, thank goodness, remembered Kyle’s death. Who could forget an Amish boy found hanging in a barn? Unresponsive mostly, the cranky coroner did say one thing that interested Aiden. Kyle had been dead between eighteen and twenty-four hours when his body was brought into the county morgue. Aiden thought this was odd. A barn on a busy Amish farm usually doesn’t go without someone entering it for more than overnight. Wouldn’t Kyle’s father have found him hanging in the barn much sooner? Unless, of course, Kyle had died from another cause.
Aiden was a man who embraced the truth. But not everyone shared his convictions. For Daniel’s sake, he was willing to listen to his concerns. He trusted Daniel. Respected him. Loved him even.
“Everyone is so worried about the truth,” Aiden chirped. “Why is that?”
“The truth? You mean your version of the truth, right?”
“No, that’s not what I mean. You know I’m not stupid, Daniel, I’ve got a lot to support what I believe.”
“What you believe, huh? And what you believe happens to be the truth, just like that?”
Aiden hesitated, wondering if he should go on since Kyle and Daniel had been second cousins. But he decided because Daniel had brought up the investigation, he needed to tell him what he’d uncovered. Maybe if Daniel understood more, he would be more willing, perhaps even eager, for Aiden to continue probing Kyle’s death.
“Daniel, I’ve done some serious investigating into this. Nothing is adding up the way the police and the coroner reported. I tried to ignore it, leave the story alone like you said. I never intended to find so many incongruities, but a boy might’ve been murdered and I think I can prove it. The autopsy report shows that he didn’t even have a broken neck. I saw the barn. Not only is it near impossible for someone suicidal to have gone through so many steps to successfully hang himself, but even if he did, no one could leap from the loft that high and not break his neck in the process. And there’re other facts too. It’s looking more and more like a setup. Don’t you think it’s important to find out what really happened?”
Lowering his head, Daniel looked ready to hand himself to the executioner. His shoulders slumped forward, his eyes glassed over with lethargy. Aiden wanted to comfort Daniel, but he was unsure what for.
“Uncovering the truth can sometimes cause more trouble than it’s all worth,” Daniel said under his breath.
“Daniel, that’s shussly.”
“Is it really so shussly, Aiden?” Daniel said, his mouth taut. “You’re the one who said you didn’t want to be a haughty reporter, yet you insist you’re right and everyone else is wrong. You think that dragging out everything will make us all feel so much better? Isn’t that just a bit hochmut?”
Aiden wanted to tell Daniel about the threats, the spray painted message on his front door—which he’d since painted over—and the pumpkin smashed against his house. And most recently, the threatening letter someone had left in his mailbox, hand-delivered, with a skull and crossbones drawn where a stamp would go. The note had the same warning, written in the same block lettering as the one on the door. But this message went one step further—it was addressed “to the sodomite.” He had chortled when he’d read it. Doesn’t one have to be sexually active to be a sodomite? When was the last time he’d been intimate with anyone? More than a year ago, with someone he hadn’t even felt a connection with. Some man he’d met online out of desperation.
As unsettling as it was to receive threats in such a small community, Aiden had no fear. Whoever it was, he reasoned, was just out to scare him, not cause any real harm. Difficult to believe otherwise. He had taken pictures of the threatening message on his door with his digital camera before painting it over and stowed away the note for evidence. He considered showing Daniel. But he decided against it. Daniel was upset enough without having to deal with that ugliness. He’d even refrained from telling Kevin and the police.
Whether the threats stemmed from the Kyle investigation or, based on the letter he found in his mailbox, from someone disliking homosexuals living in the community, he could not say. Either way, he refused to be swayed by intimidation.
“It’s not hochmut wanting to know the truth, Daniel.” Aiden took a handful of popcorn and popped it into his mouth. Chewing, he said, “Whoever did this needs to be brought to justice.”
Daniel set his root beer on the coffee table and concealed his ashen face with his large hands. Inhaling, he rubbed his temples.
“Then you better have the police arrest me,” he said.
Aiden’s startled gape did not surprise Daniel. He exhaled. Where to begin? He had never imagined he’d ever reveal his secret to anyone. He came close once to telling Elisabeth. She was always so much wiser than most of the women he knew—most of the men he knew, English or Amish. Yet the words had never parted from his lips. Though he thought sharing the story with Aiden might come easier. He was a good friend, a special friend. He felt for some reason that Aiden would understand. And he was English. It was easier to open up to the English.
“If anyone is guilty of Kyle Yoder’s death,” he said, looking away from Aiden to hide his shame, “it’s me. I’m the one who did it.”
“What are you talking about? Daniel, what do you mean, you did it?”
“I killed him.”
“That’s nonsense; how could you have anything to do with it?”
“I drove him to it.”
Aiden shook his head. “Daniel, stop talking cryptic. Please, tell me, what are you saying?”
“Kyle Yoder and me. We… we were friends, good friends. Kyle killed himself because of… because of me.”
“Because of you?”
Daniel looked toward the ceiling, beseeching God for guidance. Hard to believe he was on the verge of telling Aiden the truth—telling anyone the truth. Other than Kyle, he had never exposed his real self to another soul, but with Kyle he had needed no words to convey his feelings. Now, however, he had little choice. He needed Aiden to back off the Kyle Yoder story before the entire community learned the horrible truth about him—about Kyle. About what they had done.
Gazing toward the television, where some sort of situation comedy filled the screen, Daniel spoke as if someone else were speaking for him. “Kyle and I… we… we were the same age. Growing up we spent a lot of time together, we fished, hunted, backpacked, did everything. When we were about seventeen… something in our friendship changed, we both could feel it. I know we could, it wasn’t just me, it was a feeling we both had.”
He looked to Aiden to check for his reaction. So far, Aiden seemed unmoved. He kept his head riveted on Daniel. His eyes unblinking. He wondered if his telling Aiden would spur him to run. Or would it cau
se an opposite reaction? What would Aiden do when he learned Daniel harbored such feelings?
The room buzzed around Daniel. Holding onto the armrest, he managed to keep himself steady. His mind fluctuated between delight and disbelief as he told his tale. The light murmur of canned laughter came from the television set, but he barely noticed.
“One day, in his family’s barn,” he went on, mustering his courage, his eyes on the carpet, “after we got back from fishing, we… we kissed, a little kiss. We couldn’t help it, it just happened. But Kyle, well, he didn’t take it too well, he avoided me after that. I knew he wasn’t thinking clear. If I wasn’t so worried about myself, what people might say if they found out, I might’ve said something, maybe helped him. People knew he was acting strange. He wouldn’t talk to me about it. Whenever we were near each other, he… he would look at me like… like I was the devil, and run away. Maybe he saw something in me that was really there. I figure he just couldn’t take the guilt anymore. A few weeks later… well, you know what happened.”
Aiden stared at Daniel wide-eyed. He licked his dry lips, his eyes rapt on Daniel. Frozen in attention, he was unable to even scratch the itch that came to his nose. He wanted to reach out and comfort Daniel, but he did not yet feel at liberty to do so. Keeping his hands in his lap, he tried to soothe him with words.
“Daniel, I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry you had to go through that.” Daniel did not respond. He remained silent, staring, trancelike.
Daniel had just confessed to Aiden a tremendous secret, one which for many would have been difficult to disclose. That he was Amish made it all the more poignant. Yet Daniel’s confession did not give Aiden license to show him love.
Aiden did not know if it was appropriate at that moment to declare his own sexuality. Was Daniel even “coming out” to him? Lots of teen boys kiss each other, none of it really meaning anything. Just some kind of sexual test. Gay men, even those who were comfortable with their sexuality, had intimate relationships with women. He knew of some. They were still homosexual. In reverse, heterosexual men could be intimate with other men and not be gay. Human sexuality was a rollercoaster ride of confusion.
He was still hoping Daniel could care for him in that special way. Was his kiss with Kyle a one-time thing?
Reproaching himself for thinking of his own desires when Daniel suffered, he remained still, waiting for Daniel to collect his thoughts, to say something further. He had revealed to him something so intimate, so heartbreaking….
Daniel had mourned Kyle’s passing alone, unable to let anyone know how much he had grieved. He had to keep his emotions concealed should anyone question why he would be so troubled. Everyone had known his and Kyle’s friendship had run its course. In some ways his death had been much worse than Esther and Zachariah’s. With their passing, Daniel had been able to openly mourn, gleaning support from family and community. With Kyle’s death, he had suffered alone.
Wanting to show his deference, Aiden let his eyes fall to the shag carpet, but he kept a keen peripheral watch on Daniel. It was through this perspective that Aiden saw the slow shadow eclipse Daniel’s face. His deep brown eyes turned black as coal.
“Why? Why? Why didn’t I say something to him?” Daniel beat his fist on the armrest. “He wouldn’t even let me talk to him after that. I should’ve forced him to talk to me. He was such a good person, so hard working. Why did I do it to him?” He turned away, hiding his throbbing, reddened face.
This time Aiden placed a hand on his shoulder. To his relief, Daniel did not shrug it off. He strained for the right words to add to his touch, the right expression to impart, desperate to make things better.
“I know whatever I say won’t change what happened,” Aiden said. “But everyone has times when they blame themselves for the tragic loss of a loved one.” He hoped that making the issue more universal would assuage Daniel’s pain. “Logically, you know you can’t blame yourself—”
“There’s nothing logical to any of this.” Daniel shot Aiden a smoldering glare. Aiden flinched. His hand dropped from Daniel’s shoulder with a thud.
Sighing, Daniel forced a tight smile. He lifted his hand to Aiden; it hovered in midair for what seemed an eternity.
“Forgive me,” he said, his arm drifting back to his side. “I understand what you’re saying. Thank you for your kind words, you always know the right things to say. But I can tell you for sure that Kyle’s suicide is my fault.”
“I don’t understand how you can blame yourself, Daniel. All you did was share one kiss, one simple kiss. It’s not so uncommon.”
“His father saw us,” Daniel blurted.
Aiden gawked at him. “The Reverend Yoder saw the two of you kissing?”
Daniel nodded slowly. “He saw us, he saw us that one time, that one time we kissed in the barn. He saw us that one time when we finally allowed ourselves to… to be closer to each other. That one little kiss, sitting on the bale of hay, Kyle’s father saw us. I can remember it like yesterday. The sun pouring through the crevices. The animals calm after their feeding. A warm April afternoon. I looked up when we pulled apart, and his father was standing in the doorway, just staring at us like he was looking into the depths of hell. I had never seen a look like that on a man’s face before. And those eyes of his, they were like blue torches burning into us. I’ll never forget that stare.”
“That must’ve been awful.”
“When Kyle saw his father standing there, his face went completely white, every drop of blood drained from his face. I was afraid he was going to pass out. Then the reverend just left, he turned and walked off, like nothing happened, never said a word. Three weeks later, Kyle hung himself. Reverend Yoder has never said a word to me about any of it, not one word to this day. All these years I lived, worried he might say something to someone, reveal my secret. Every time I sit through church services, I sweat wondering if this time he’s going to call me out in front of the gmay. But he never has, hasn’t even said anything to me in confidence. Sometimes our eyes will meet and they’ll be something there, some kind of silent threat, but that’s it, he acts like nothing ever happened.”
Aiden slapped a hand on his thigh. “I’ve been right all along. I knew there was something not right about him; now I know for sure.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The Reverend Yoder. He did kill his son. He was the one who found him hanging in the barn. It was him who made it look like a suicide. I was right, I’m certain now. He had a motive.”
“Motive? What?”
“He probably struck his son, maybe during an argument about what happened between you two. Kyle must’ve died from the blow, and then his father tried to cover it all up by making it look like a suicide. Everyone knew Kyle was despondent. It all makes sense now. The Reverend Yoder killed his son.”
Daniel peered holes into Aiden. How was he going to get Aiden to stop? To stop his rampage of seeking the truth? A truth, in whatever form, that could destroy Daniel’s life as he knew it.
“Enough of this, Aiden, no more of this game of yours.”
“Game? But Daniel. You’re not to blame. You can stop hating yourself.” He set the bowl of popcorn on the coffee table and switched off the television with a solid click of the remote. “You’re not responsible for what Kyle did, his father is, don’t you see? I even think I know how he did it. There’s a part of the head that if struck just right you can die almost instantly, without leaving hardly any external injuries. I did some research on it. The coroner told me he never conducted a brain autopsy to check for internal bruising of the brain—”
“Do you know what you’re saying?”
“This is all even more important now. Uncovering the truth is for you, Daniel.” Aiden lowered his voice. “You don’t have to feel guilty anymore.”
“What difference does it make whether he committed suicide or was killed by his father? Either way I’m still to blame.”
“But, Daniel, you can’t
blame yourself for someone else’s crime, you’re not the devil in all this. It’s the Reverend Yoder who—”
“You keep up with this and I’ll be shunned.” Daniel’s eyes felt like burning lignite. He willed back the hot, angry tears. “It’ll be me who’ll lose. Not the Reverend Yoder.”
“I don’t see how that can be—”
“You know how it is in the Amish community, in any close-knit community. Even among the English in Henry gossip spreads like a hayfield on fire.” He looked away and shook his head. “Ach, Tara was right about you.”
“Daniel, of all the people, I thought you’d understand. Why are you being this way, don’t you want Kyle’s killer brought to justice? Don’t you understand that I’m doing this for you now? Don’t you see? It’s all for you.”
Daniel glared at him. “Don’t you put any of what I told you in one of your articles. I told you all this in the strictest of confidence, I never expected you to use it against me. Don’t you betray me, Aiden Cermak.” With both hands he seized Aiden by the collar of his hoody. “Don’t you betray me! Don’t you betray me!”
Between Two Worlds Page 19