Broken English

by P. L. Gaus

  “How about the English who sell electric phones and then let citizens believe that 911 can save them from an intruder?

  “Why don’t I blame the fools in New Jersey who set Jesse Sands free?

  “Abigail, trust me. If I were to kill all of those who are to blame for Janet’s murder, I’d have to kill at least twenty people here and in New Jersey.”

  In the light of the candle, he saw a puzzled look on Abigail’s face, a look curiously mingling fear, confusion, disquiet, and hope. Fear that David Hawkins could really blame them all. Confusion at the depth of his emotions. Disquiet knowing the desperate life from which he had fled. Hope, maybe blind faith, that he would do the right thing, now that he had found a new life with her.

  “Abigail, can’t you see? The very reason I love you is why I must do this now. The very reasons that I have sought the plain life among your brothers is why I have to finish this now, before I can have a life of peace with you. The very things that drove me from the world, the things that make the English ways so detestable to me now, are the things that force me to finish my life there, on my own terms, before I can come to you. I’ll not have a life with you if I walk away from this now. You must believe me when I tell you that what I am about to do is the last thing that must be done before I can walk among the peaceful ones with truth and peace. This one thing that is left undone will take another week. Abigail, hang on to your hope until then. Wait only another week, and I will come to you.”

  As she walked back to the big house, the last cherishing words he had spoken to her were buried deep within her heart, where all her hopes for their future together were stored, now, in absolute trust. David Hawkins had promised her a future, and she clung to that. He had offered his life’s promise to her on irrevocable terms, and she embraced that promise tonight with an unquenchable faith. She had taken the measure of the one man who had given her the gift of love, and her trust in him now brought her peace. With her mind clear and her heart tranquil, Abigail remembered the last things he had said to her tonight, in the cabin where they soon would be married.

  “Abigail,” he had said. “Know this above all else. No matter what you hear and no matter what they say, by the finish of next week, I will come home to you, on terms your father can accept. Abigail, I will come to you, and we will marry. I know what I am doing. Trust me now, my love, to do this one last English thing.”

  17

  Wednesday, June 11 9:15 A.M.

  “OH, listen, darlin’,” one woman said to the other as they stood in front of Abigail’s little roadside stand. “They gather the reeds themselves, off the land. It’s the way they do everything, isn’t that right, dear? Off the land.”

  Their husbands sat in the long Cadillac, dozing after an early lunch at the Harvestfest Authentic Amish Restaurant on Route 250 south of Kidron. The lady friend stood over Abigail’s folding table and peeled off bills to pay for five baskets.

  “Well, I know they make everything at home. That much I do know,” the first chirped confidently. “I’ve been coming down here for four years now. But, do you, my dear?” she asked Abigail. “You know. Gather your own reeds off the land?” Both ladies waited eagerly for an answer.

  Abigail had been selling baskets there beside the road for ten years. In those years, she had learned to listen to the prattlings of the English tourists without an opinion or a thought showing on her face. And she knew that a little broken English would help sales more than anything.

  Abigail counted back change and said a few words in Low German. Then, haltingly, she said, “We gather, yes.”

  In an audible whisper, the veteran of four day-trips to Holmes County explained to her neophyte friend, “They don’t speak that much English.”

  Abigail looked up and, in Low German, said the equivalent of, “We gather the reeds by post. They come in crates from an art supply wholesaler out of New York City.”

  The ladies smiled at the German, understanding nothing whatsoever of it, and then gathered up their baskets, roused their husbands, and drove off with the satisfying knowledge that they had garnered another secret of the mysterious Amish ways. Certain that they had unearthed another of the authentic mysteries of Holmes County, Ohio. Satisfied to have hunted down the kind of rare, personal experience that would carry the day at bridge games and lawn parties for weeks to come.

  Abigail folded the bills, pushed them into a small cloth drawstring purse, dropped the purse into a brown grocery bag under her little table, and counted the baskets that remained. Only five hadn’t sold, and now it seemed that there might not be enough. She had started the day with twenty-six.

  Earlier, when she had returned to the Daadihaus after her visit to the cabin, Abigail had sat in her rocker until dawn, filled with a peacefulness she had rarely known before. By the light of her kerosene lamp, she had hummed the young people’s songs, favorites at the Sunday socials, and she had changed the prices on all of her baskets. The first six or seven she had doubled, marking the new prices in pencil on each of the paper tags. Then, to be sure, she had changed them again, to triple her usual asking prices. Surely, she had thought, that would do it nicely. Triple the regular price on all of her baskets. It would take all day to sell even one. And today, Abigail had reasoned, she might very well need to sell by the road for a very long time. It all depended, now, on Cal Troyer.

  With her baskets loaded into her small buggy, she had hitched her pacer at dawn. The buggy was light and fast, as everyone in those parts knew. Scandalously, it was her eighth buggy, now. The eighth buggy that father Raber had bought for her, never speaking a word to her about her driving. He just bought her new rigs whenever she needed them. He had never refused her. Everyone knew the stories of Abigail Raber’s pacer.

  Of course, one could expect a buggy to last only a short while in the hands of a spirited Amish lad. Light racing buggies and fast horses harnessed to rambunctious boys—and of course a buggy could be run into the ground in a very short time, indeed. But a lass of twenty-nine was thought to be a different matter altogether, and it had been a topic of no small gossip in the District that Herman Raber Sr. had spoiled his daughter with an endless supply of buggies, and with a racing steed to match her spirited soul.

  It was also not news in those parts that Abigail Raber had a joy of driving fast, sometimes even at night when it was most dangerous, sometimes in broad daylight, as if she were flaunting it about. As if she were wanting to be seen. As if her scar allowed her an extra measure of imprudence, an extra privilege of nonconformity. Indeed, it was widely held that Abigail Raber had managed to acquire the only traffic ticket for speeding that could be remembered among the Amish. And it was rumored to be a sport among the sheriff’s deputies, trying to catch the fearless Abigail Raber in her buggy.

  True, as the gossip went, Raber Sr. had derived intense satisfaction from buying the lightest rigs for Abigail. To be sure, they had all been proper in every aspect of style and form. Black with no add-on frills other than a triangular reflector on the back flap. They had also been swift as the wind. Each of the eight rigs lighter and faster than the last, custom built to his demanding specifications.

  Her horse, too, was a perfect match to her spirit. It was a championship pacer that Raber had arranged to buy in Delaware, Ohio, after one of the Little Brown Jug races there. Raber had set an extravagant limit, and he had sent the purchasing agent with instructions to buy the finest of the lot. Though the price was severe, Herman Raber Sr. had not been disappointed. In the years since, Abigail’s pacer had run the wheels off eight buggies and showed no signs of tiring in front of Abigail’s enthusiastic whip.

  But today, Abigail had left home with her baskets and had driven slowly to her stand. She needed the length of an entire day. Needed to speak with Cal Troyer face to face. To convince him.

  Though her prices were set at triple the going rate, none of the sisters would know anything other than that she had set up to sell baskets beside the road, and likely, as usual, she’
d not be home until they all had sold. So, with a buggy loaded to overfilling, she had walked her anxious pacer north to Route 250. Outside of Mt. Eaton, she stopped at a phone booth and called Cal Troyer at his church house. Then, east of Mt. Eaton on 250, she had set up to sell and to wait until Troyer would be able to meet her. The trouble was, even at triple the going rates, most of her baskets had sold before noon.

  She gathered up the last five, arranged them in the grass in front of her table, and sat back down to count her profits. Seven hundred and eighty-seven tax-free dollars from something like twenty dollars of unwoven New York City art-supply reeds.

  The challenge now was to not sell the last five. Once they were gone, she would have no reason to tarry beside the road. No reason to be there when Cal Troyer arrived. She stepped around to the front of her table, took one of the largest baskets, and sat back down to unravel the reeds. When she had the basket about half undone, she set it on the table without its price tag, content that she’d never be able to sell out, now, before Cal could break away from his morning’s obligations in the city.

  When she was down to only two baskets, Cal arrived in his pickup. He parked on a side road, came over to her, kneeled down beside her table at the edge of the grass, and listened as she told him the details of her conversation with David in their cabin the night before. She told Troyer of the promises Hawkins had made to return to her at the end of next week on terms her father could accept. She told Cal Troyer of the vow that Hawkins had made that she would always have a life joined to his. Most of all, she hoped that whatever Hawkins intended to do, Cal Troyer could see, now, that it surely would not be murder. She hoped that Troyer would understand it all, in those simple terms, and then convince the sheriff that Hawkins was not a threat to anyone at all. That Hawkins was not the murderer of Eric Bromfield and would not become the murderer of Jesse Sands.

  Cal listened to all she had to say and then returned to Millersburg. Abigail sat at her table with her last, half-unwoven basket and labored to assure herself that she had done the right thing. She tried to convince herself that the pure logic of it was irrefutable. But she also wrestled, now, with a lingering suspicion that Cal Troyer was no longer so convinced of the peaceful intentions of David Hawkins.

  Until last night, no one had seen David since his night trip to the jail. But now she had seen him. She had talked to him. She had held him in the cabin. She knew that Sheriff Robertson need no longer hunt for him. Knew that the man who had kissed her, loved her, held her—that that man had not killed anyone. That he had not murdered Eric Bromfield, and, assuredly, now would not kill Jesse Sands. She knew it as one who knows a lover, with a lover’s conviction, with a lover’s hope.

  It made such perfect sense in the only terms that Abigail Raber could understand. It made such an absolutely reasonable truth. The burden of revenge was a lifetime’s staggering weight. To seek revenge and to act upon that worldly impulse could bring only a worse fate. To kill for revenge would do as much damage to the soul of a killer as it did to the life of a victim. To strike in violence was forbidden. Even to respond in kind to a threat was forbidden. The life of peace was the only way to heaven. There were good and fast reasons to cling steadfastly to pacifism. There were also scriptures that put retribution out of the reach of the Peaceful Ones. The Plain People knew from their lives of martyrdom in Europe that the violence of resistance multiplied itself a dozen times over to the detriment of all. So, in Abigail’s world, the thought of vengeance was as foreign as the thought of war.

  But she also lived in the world. Separate from it, that was true, but in the world nevertheless. And she knew that in the world, the violence of men seemed to rule the day. The influence of evil seemed to poison their minds. The preachers were right. The ways of the English were inscrutable. Their lives seemed to hang from a puppeteer’s strings, and the puppeteer cherished violence and destruction. The English willingly walked the broad road to destruction.

  But surely not David Hawkins. He knew the narrow way. He knew the staggering burden of needless bloodshed. She had told him in the cabin, and he had agreed. So surely now, Cal Troyer could also see. David Hawkins had left the broad way and had chosen the narrow way to life. David Hawkins was one of the peaceful ones. He was to be her husband.

  With contentment, knowing that she had done all that she could, Abigail pulled the last unfinished basket into her lap and idly began to weave the reeds back into place. Her fingers handled the task from memory. The long ends began to disappear into the basket, and Abigail began happily to consider the route she’d take home with her racer.

  When the basket was nearly finished, she ducked under a wooden fence at the edge of a pasture and whistled her pacer to her side. She reached up, stroked between his ears, and then led him to her buggy under a tree. She hitched him, walked him around to the table beside the road, and wrapped the reins under the corner of a large foundation stone that she had long ago hauled there for the purpose of tethering her horse.

  As she prepared to gather her chair and grocery bag into the back of the buggy, a station wagon with out-of-town plates sped by, pulled in with a skid beyond, and backed up to her table on the gravel berm. An English lady in a long, flowered, low-cut summer dress got out and ushered three small children from the back seat of the station wagon.

  “Look, kids,” she said. “She’s weaving one now.”

  The mother pushed her unwilling children up to the stand and asked Abigail, “Did you learn to do that from your grandmother?”

  Abigail smiled openly and remembered how she had learned to weave her simple baskets from a book at the library. She said, “A bit, I suppose,” circumspectly, and finished up the basket.

  She penciled on a price that was fully six times that of any similar basket in Holmes County, and by the time the family had loaded the last of her baskets into the back of their station wagon, she was headed home with all of her baskets sold to tourists, and $1,289 in her little cloth purse.

  18

  Wednesday, June 11 10:00 A.M.

  THAT same morning, as Cal Troyer was taking the call from Abigail, Branden returned to the Hawkins place on the west edge of town. He went in through the side door off the driveway, opened the back room in the basement, and took down the logbook where Hawkins had recorded the data for his rifle cartridges. At the point where Hawkins had made his most recent entry, Branden read the lot number again and then searched the shelves below the workbench for the ammo can that held the 6 mm rounds. Finding the right can, he set it on the bench, pulled up the top of the can, and heard the watertight gasket release its seal. Inside the can, he found seven plastic boxes of ammo fitted with individual spacers to separate the single rounds, each of the boxes labeled with a lot number. He set the seven boxes out on the workbench and began the task of matching them to the records in the logbooks. The seven boxes of 6 mm rifle ammo had been recorded in three different logs over the past two years. None of the boxes listed there matched the lot number of the cartridges Hawkins had described only a few days earlier, as the last entry in his book. Hawkins’s last box of cartridges was missing.

  Branden lifted a cartridge out of its slot, replaced the boxes in the can, and returned the can to its shelf under the loading bench. He put back all of the logbooks except the one that held the data for the last rounds Hawkins had made. Then he locked up, pulled out of the drive, and drove to a small gun shop in the hills north of town.

  The shop was in an old converted garage at the side of a one-story frame house, set back in the woods at the end of a long gravel drive. As Branden entered the shop-garage, Billy Martin, dressed in surplus army green, came in through a door from the adjoining house with a mug of coffee and took his place behind the counter.

  Branden asked, “What do you make of that?” and set the cartridge on the counter.

  Martin looked the cartridge over and said, “A 6 mm PPC.”

  Branden showed him the log entry. Martin studied the data and said, “It�
�s a benchrest competition round.”

  “Strictly target, Billy?”

  “Right. Where’d you get hold of it?”

  “Could you hunt with it?” Branden asked.

  “No point, I reckon,” Martin said. “22-250s are better for groundhogs and that’s about all a 6 mm PPC is any good for, other than punching holes in paper.”

  “It’s strictly a target round?” Branden asked again.

  The shop owner nodded yes and said, “Benchrest target shooting.”

  “Could it kill a man?” Branden asked pointedly.

  Martin turned back to a shelf behind his counter and pulled down a book. He leafed through the pages and found data on the 6 mm PPC cartridge. He studied several tables of numbers, and said, “From 100 yards, the 75 grain 6 mm PPC bullet, traveling at 3,400 feet per second at the muzzle, packs 1,550 foot-pounds of energy. At 200 yards, it drops to 1, 240 foot-pounds.”

  “Would that kill a man?”

  “It could, but it’s not likely.”

  “What would make it more likely?”

  “Maybe a head shot.” He looked curiously at Branden, a bit nervous.

  “From 300 yards?” Branden asked.

  “Maybe even 400, Doc, but who’s gonna make a head shot at that range?”

  Branden thanked him, pocketed the cartridge, took the logbook, and drove back to the Hawkins place. In the secret basement room, he replaced the cartridge, slipped the book back into its slot on the shelves, and turned to the door. On impulse, he pushed the door shut from the inside and confronted the empty pegs where the composite target rifle once had hung. For some elusive reason that he thought only briefly strange, the professor realized he was not surprised. Hawkins had taken his bullets and his rifle.

  When he stepped out of the side door of the Hawkins house, Branden found Ricky Niell in uniform, leaning back against the professor’s light truck. Niell’s cruiser blocked the drive.