Jack refrained from breathing a sigh of relief just yet.
Yoder hadn’t finished speaking.
“Here’s the story—” He began to explain. “We brutalized Stutz. You should have seen it. Percy ripped him a whole new valve.”
That, alone, was cause to rejoice. But what about the kid? What about those release papers?
Laughing: “He told him to shut up and sit down.”
Come on …
“It was beautiful.” Yoder coughed. “Excuse me.” Clearing his throat, he finally got on with it. “So, then: the bad news is …” He faltered, catching himself. “Well, first, the good news—why rush matters, right?—(I’m killin’ ya, right?)—The good news is: a restraining order went through against Senior. He’s out of the picture. The kid almost murdered somebody today. Yet Percy took one look at him—Jesus, the state of him, Jack—you’d better be careful—Percy took one look and, I don’t know—everything seemed to go our way.” Yoder paused for a moment, then added: “And I daresay, I wasn’t so bad myself.”
With that, The Coach started loosening up. He still had a hard time believing it possible, but it looked as though someone had finally managed to snare The Crow by legal means. It would now be a matter of nailing him proper.
Still, Yoder wasn’t finished. “The bad news is …”
And here it came.
“We didn’t get custody. The reason being: he would have wound up in jail, guaranteed. I didn’t even push for it: especially after his aunt showed up. The Minister’s sister. What’s she to you?”
Jack stopped breathing.
“Your sister-in-law, I guess. She, more than anyone, disabled Stutz. She might have been the deciding factor.”
A cold panic gripped The Coach. He tipped back, wobbling—jolted with sweat. His heart boomed into the wall of his ribcage.
No, Jarret—please say you didn’t …
“And not only that,” he continued buoyantly. “She’s willing to work with us, starting tonight. Man, she answered all our prayers. It’s too bad you hadn’t kept in touch with her. She could have saved us a lot of time.”
No, Jarret knew nothing at all about—
“Grizelda Hostler, that’s her name. The kid’s under house arrest with her family.”
Jack had never told anyone …
“We’re due in court on the fifteenth.”
He ran out the door.
PART FIVE
Put It Down
The whole way home, Ephraim squirmed in a feverish state of semiconsciousness—traffic lights panning across his field of vision in the backseat, his posture slumped, his ear cocked into Auntie’s bosom, his forehead slick with perspiration. Gideon Brechbuhl was driving their Hornet. The passenger seat beside him was empty. The rest of the Crossbills were back in the city, having deferred to the Bishop’s order: they would be finding another way home—if needed, by rail, or the public bus. Ephraim’s condition was “top priority.” He was running a fever, apparently.
Auntie mopped his brow and gently ran her fingers through his hair. He drifted in spells—here again, gone again—dipping in and out of awareness. Through every lapse, he was conscious of movement outside, rolling by in the early evening. 342 was alive with activity. Most of the bar lots were filled with cars. Children in costumes wandered the streets. And the ceaseless, glaring hum of traffic …
Turning south onto Laycock Drive, he spotted an outdoor fire in the distance. On either side, the backyard parties and cookouts and field bashes started appearing: the first of which showcased a pack of already stumbling Redcoats with microphones huddled behind a towering wall of speakers, one of them horning a four-hundred-decibel message across a field of stubble, beyond which glowed another fire, beside which stood more giant speakers and through which another pack of Redcoats bellowed back their replies. Above, what looked like a deep-sea emergency spot beam probed the underside of a choppily rolling shelf of clouds. More fires appeared along the horizon.
Around the next bend, a rock band was filling a crumbling barn with torrents of feedback. Dozens of pickups surrounded the building. Bodies were moving around in the darkness. Blankets of smoke wafted over the road.
The English had gotten started already.
Finally, the schoolhouse appeared up ahead. Gideon slowed to a stop by the fence. He got out, holding a leather bag, and opened the back door. Grizelda accepted his hand. She stood to position and turned. Together, they managed to drag a listless, sweat-soaked Ephraim out of the backseat.
Off to the north, a jagged, tree-lined escarpment was etched along the horizon. A low-riding shelf of cumulus clouds drifted over the sky, moving steadily east.
The hinge of a seesaw creaked in the wind. The light from a pole down the road cast a network of shadows across the facade of the schoolhouse.
Halfway up the stairs, supported by Auntie and Gideon under both arms, Ephraim began to find his legs. Once on the porch, he caught his balance, though still in a feverish, wobbling daze. Auntie turned to Gideon, bidding him leave. He bowed in quiet deference. He placed the leather bag at her feet, and without hesitation, backed down the stairs to the car, got in and started the engine.
Ephraim watched him drive away.
Kicking up spirals of dust, the Hornet vanished around a bend to the south.
Auntie unlocked the door. It swung in, dimly breaching a wall of darkness. The smell of hickory tables, candlewax, ashes and moldy books drifted out.
“Come, then, Fastnacht.” Auntie motioned.
The term resounded in Ephraim’s head: a relic from deepest, fading memory. That’s what she’d called him. Before the fall—when Fannie had lain on the bedding beside him: Fastnacht, after the dough ball fried in lard and coated with powdered sugar. “Hello, Fastnacht,” Grizelda would coo, standing over their crib. “Fastnacht Sweet.”
She closed the schoolhouse door behind him. She led him to a chair at the front of the room.
“Sit here,” she spoke in Py. Dutch.
He did as she ordered, still wrapped in the blanket.
Grizelda placed her bag on a chair. Ephraim watched her root through a drawer of the wooden cabinet along the wall. The shelf above her was lined with Bibles.
On either side of the kitchen’s door frame, iron candelabras were mounted. She lit the wicks and backed away. The wall before her glowed into focus: cabinets, fixtures, an alphabet chart … Next to the Bibles, a marble cross hung perfectly centered, lit from below.
As Auntie made for a kindling bin in the corner, Ephraim studied her movements. It was amazing to look on her now without any fear of retribution … Although she had never left his side, in spirit, she hadn’t been there in person, in body, for almost fifteen years. In essence, they had been barred from—or otherwise terrified out of maintaining—contact. Being together, now, in this place, in this circumstance, unleashed a flood of images: learning to walk in the Hostler kitchen, stumbling, tripping and falling toward Auntie, his first attempts at speech with Fannie, a tractor ride with Abraham at harvest …
Auntie came back with a bundle of sticks. She walked to the woodstove and opened the door, then proceeded to break the wood into pieces and carefully place it inside, over straw … The flare of a match went up in her fingers … The flame brought her countenance into relief.
She was older now. Strands of gray jumbled out of her bonnet. Jowls were beginning to form.
Ephraim felt like he’d missed, or been robbed of, an age. The feeling was all too familiar.
The past few days had passed in a series of free-floating, grisly, disjointed episodes: moments of clarity buried in voids from which only occasional flashes emerged: like a stone skipping over the lake of fire: hours, whole evenings, were gone from his memory—with only abrasions and puncture wounds, adding to already torturous thirst, to show for it. And every awakening growing ruder, more violent, deeper into the fray than the last … As had been the case that very morning … He couldn’t remember the night before—asid
e from a terrible scene in a toilet. But he did remember waking up. He recalled having come to his senses entangled in willow roots, lying beside a creek—bleeding from granules of lead in his backside. And running home naked he wouldn’t forget. And digging his overalls out of the stable. And the state of his father’s house, Jesus, Mary and Joseph … But after that, there was blackness again. Emerging from which, more horrible injuries. Onward, thence: to a moldy, floodlit shower room under the blast of a hose. Somebody taking his fingerprints, shoving him. Then the arraignment.
Or part of it, anyway.
Auntie closed the door of the woodstove. She stood up, turned and walked to the kitchen. The white of her apron ties faded to black, disappearing. A pump handle broke the silence. A gurgle of well water rose through the pipes, increasing in pitch. It splashed onto metal. The handle was pumped, again and again. A steel container was filling steadily. Drifting, the water thinned to a trickle, then cut.
Auntie emerged from the dark. She placed a pan on top of the stove. She drew the flap on the range beneath it.
“Now.” She glanced to the bag on the floor beside Ephraim. Her eyes came to rest on him squarely. Candlelight flickered across her face, throwing overblown shadows against the wall. Her silhouette moved in distorted passes.
“You’ve been injured,” she said. “And you’re running a dangerous fever. Take off your clothes.”
Ephraim stared.
He could no longer place any faith in his senses: treading the waters of reason while caught in a tailspin of harrowing sensual derangement. He couldn’t distinguish between the illusions of sound, or of optical subterfuge. In his mind, Auntie had just announced (or guessed) that he had been wounded, shot. But that was something she couldn’t have known.
Still, she appeared to be waiting for something.
Dispelling all doubt on the matter, she added, “We mustn’t allow for blood poisoning.”
After which, turning, she walked to a window and drew the blinds. “There’s too much at stake.”
He didn’t know how to interpret that either.
“Quickly,” she said.
He took off his shirt.
Looking away so as not to embarrass him, Auntie walked to the leather bag.
“And remove your trousers,” she said while unzipping the bag and producing a towel and soap.
Ephraim removed his trousers, snaring one cuff on the plastic ankle bracelet.
Grizelda returned to the basin on the stove. She lifted and brought it around behind him.
Standing naked, his skin was an off-shade of gray now—with yellowish splotches of brown—and a patchwork of blood-crusted lacerations. Light glowed in from the roadside windows, touching on every abrasion and welt, every puncture, the gouge on his inner thigh, the hundreds of scratches all over his back—and the weeping, pitted, angrily swollen shot wounds marring his lower backside.
Auntie set the tub on the floor and got down on her knees. She reached into the bag. She pulled out a household medical kit. Ephraim sensed her fingers running on metal—on the polish of surgical instruments—followed by glass—a bottle: liquid (traces of iodine) splashed into fabric.
Water was wrung from a larger cloth. Then came a dab of liquid, the texture of fabric and, finally, a spear of fire.
Ephraim screamed.
Auntie gripped his leg and held it. “Be still.”
He shuddered, clenching his jaws. The burning persisted. “Verdammte Scheisse!”
Auntie said nothing. The sound of his voice triggered no response. She didn’t even flinch.
At last, the pain began to subside, settling now to a burning rash.
Ephraim wondered how Auntie had known about this—his condition, his festering wound.
Could talk of a shooting have reached her attention?
Had somebody sighted and drawn a bead on him?
Or had it been one of the city cops in the decontamination room? Had one of them spotted his injuries during the hosing and mentioned them, later, to Auntie?
None of these scenarios seemed very likely, yet none was discountably far-fetched either.
As for the sound of his voice not perturbing her, rumors could have been circulating.
Moreover, Auntie may never have placed any faith in his diagnosis to begin with. That is to say: she might not have believed he was mute in the first place—and so, not reacted.
Again, these explanations were feasible. But Ephraim had trouble believing them, somehow. Auntie had always known more, he felt, than anyone living might have suspected. There was an air of omniscience about her. Maybe, then, she could help him now.
But first, the lead shot would have to be dug from his backside. The tissue was badly infected. The pain to come would be nearly unbearable.
He leaned forward to grip the desktop. His fingers dug into the wood. He braced himself.
Slowly, she started working the tips of a pair of tweezers into the wound.
Locking his gaze to the floorboards, he held on in rigid suspension as, one at a time, a half dozen pellets were dug from his backside.
He almost vomited.
Forcing his mind back to Auntie Grizelda, he searched for an out …
While either he couldn’t remember clearly, or hadn’t been conscious for most of the arraignment, one specific remark by the juvenile attorney who’d represented him lingered: the reference he’d made to some unpronounceable madness running within the family.
What did that mean? The Bontrager family? Or did it have something to do with his mother?—his mother, about whom he knew so little, and most of whose family had moved away—with the rest thinning out to distant cousins from outlying districts. Virtual strangers … On several occasions in youth, he had seen them in wagons, exchanging words with his father.
He’d once met his uncle Aaron too. But Aaron hadn’t seemed crazy at all.
Surely, there had to be some explanation. Auntie Grizelda might know what to make of it …
The final grain of shot was extracted. It plinked in a tray from the medical kit. Water splashed into the metal pan. The towel was wrung out again. Dabbing gently, Auntie washed his wounds with soap. She rinsed and carefully dried the skin. Then she applied more iodine. Once again, Ephraim winced.
The procedure was over.
Behind him, Auntie stood and continued dabbing his shoulders and back with the towel. “There,” she mumbled under her breath, as though to say, soothingly, Better, much better …
She put down the towel, uncapped a bottle and began to rub his neck with oil.
He hadn’t felt anything less disturbing, more soothing, since Fannie had held him last.
“Auntie?” he broke the settling calm. He spoke in German. “Who was my uncle?”
Her fingers lifted away from his skin. Ephraim sensed a flash of surprise in her. Slowly, he turned to regard her expression.
She looked surprised, if somewhat amused.
But before she could answer (or not) his question, a rumble of hoofbeats and carriage wheels pounding on asphalt sounded from down the road. A patrol was approaching. Grizelda shot to attention. She leapt to the candles and snuffed them. She doused the fire in the stove with water. Then she pulled Ephraim away from the window. She ushered him quickly into the kitchen.
There, they couldn’t be seen from the windows.
She motioned to keep down.
They waited.
After a minute, three sets of wagon wheels rolled to a stop in the driveway outside. Shouting from carriage to carriage in Plain Folk. Footsteps advancing along the walk. The glow of approaching fire. Torches … Up on the porch now: silhouettes peering in every window. More voices behind them. Surrounding the house. Had they spotted the smoke?
Ephraim’s heart was booming. A gouging sensation was tearing his brain to pieces. Auntie wrapped her arms around him. Gripping his temples, he choked back a scream.
Finally, the footsteps receded, retracing the path down the staircase, back to their wagons.
Carriage wheels pivoting, steel on gravel, and off they rumbled: the glow of their torches shimmering past the schoolhouse windows—panning the ceiling in arcs of yellow, into which Auntie emerged from the kitchen. She stood by the window to watch them go. Ephraim, cross-eyed, stumbled behind her. He tripped on a table leg, fell to it, rolled over, belly-up, and clamped down, not letting go.
The blood in his veins had begun to boil. It felt like his spine was hyperextending.
A series of turbulent flashes commenced, each of them striking a cardio thunderbolt—booming cacophonic, fragmented crashes of falling timber and echoing foghorns—beaming erratically in between fire and blackness, the stench of decay and malevolence, deafening, blinding, burning his nostrils—whirling adrift in it, slipping away …
On coming to, he thought that a good deal of time had elapsed. Auntie was still at the window, but now she had opened the blinds. She no longer seemed concerned with the road patrols.
Slowly, she stepped away from the window and mumbled: “We don’t want to block your light.”
Again, it was such a bizarre remark, he had trouble believing she’d actually made it.
Along the horizon, a gentle glow appeared behind the retreating clouds.
Doubtfully looking him over, Auntie returned to the subject. “You really don’t know?”
He shook his head.
Again, she appeared surprised, though not altogether amazed, by his incomprehension. Maybe she’d always assumed that community rumor had filled him in on this matter. Maybe she thought he’d been able to distinguish between fact and fiction.
If so, she was wrong.
At last, with an air of sardonic mirth, she went on: “I guess there’s no harm in telling.”
She took a deep breath and turned. Exhaling slowly, as though to say “Where to begin,” she proceeded from what he could only assume was the start, in a time when his parents were young …
The year before Ephraim’s birth, it had been—when his mother Maria’s beloved brother, Jacob, was called up for military service. As a member of The Order, his term had been delegated to public utility work. For many families, “road patrol,” as this option was known, was no better than combat—as, even though young men were spared active duty (which wasn’t at all to be taken for granted), their terms of service were such as, too often, proved wholly disastrous to life back home.
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