by Laura Bickle
Once I got him arranged on the bed of straw, I did my best to get him out of his muddy jacket. It was like trying to undress a giant rag doll. The coat finally peeled off, and I landed on my butt in the straw.
I moved to hang the jacket up on a peg for horse dressage on the crumbling wall. It occurred to me to look for identification. Englishers always seemed to carry their lives with them. I reached into his pockets and found a few coins, a key ring, and a silver folding knife. Curious, I opened it. The blade was stained with blood. I shuddered and put it back. It reminded me of the saw on the floor of the furniture store.
I found a sopping wet wallet in one of the zippered pockets. Tentatively, I opened it. It was half-full of English money, a credit card, and a foil-wrapped package. I read the wrapper: Latex condom with spermicidal lubricant for contraception and STD protection. To prevent pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, and other sexually transmitted infections . . . Repulsed, I dropped it. I wrinkled my nose and searched for a driver’s license. I found it tucked in between some bills. I squinted at the license in the dim light. It said his name was Alexander Green, age twenty-four. He lived in Toronto.
I paused and stared down at him. He’d come a long way. Why? Had he been fleeing the disaster? Or just passing through and gotten caught up in the storm?
I put the wallet back in the pocket, then knelt beside him to get a better look at his injuries. Brushing his straw-colored hair aside, I could better see the wound in his temple. The rain had rinsed the blood away, and it seemed that it had clotted. I was reluctant to disturb it further. I pried his eyelids up to check to see if he had a concussion. My sister had gotten a concussion when she was five, tripping on the back step. My mother had showed me what to look for.
His eyes were a startling shade of pale, icy blue, the color of winter skies. As near as I could determine in the lamplight, his pupils were unevenly dilated. Not much, but enough that it made me diagnose him with a concussion.
I carried a bucket of water that had been drawn for the dogs back to the stall. Using a clean rag, I daubed at the mud around his face. He did not stir, remaining disconcertingly still. I brought him a clean dog blanket. Copper followed me back and stared at him, perhaps jealous that I was making such a fuss over a two-legged creature.
I don’t know what I expected. I guess I thought that the stranger would regain consciousness once out of the elements. But he remained stubbornly closed. An enigma.
And I hoped that he did not regain consciousness while I was gone. I filled a dog dish with water and set it beside him. On a scrap of paper I’d used as a receipt for the sale of a puppy from Sunny’s last litter, I scratched out a note for him, and anchored it under the dish:
You are safe. But don’t leave the barn until I come back for you. No one else knows that you are here.
—Katie
I had no way of knowing if he’d ever read it. But I didn’t want him wandering out in the day, where he’d be found by the Elders . . . the ones who’d shown him no quarter earlier.
I stood, gathered the lantern to my chest, and walked out of the barn.
“Watch over him,” I told the dogs.
I glanced back at the barn as I drove Star out of sight. It was then that I noticed that the hex sign over the door had blistered and was peeling. Shards of paint had begun to litter the grass, like snow.
If I believed in omens, I might have taken that as a sign.
***
I began to doubt myself by the next morning.
I’d lain awake the rest of the night. My heart told me that I’d done well, but my mind chastised me for going against the Elders and my father. I’d never been that rebellious before. I’d read comic books and taken a sip of beer before deciding that it was irredeemably disgusting. I had even gotten myself a library card and had spent more than one afternoon reading pulp fiction in a secluded corner carrel. But those were the little rebellions expected of a teenager. Those things hurt no one. But this . . . this was beyond rebellion. This involved a victim. Whether the victim would be the young man in the barn or some harm befalling our community, I could not pretend that this was a minor crime. I had been buoyed by my outrage, by my sympathy yesterday. Perhaps I wasn’t thinking clearly. Perhaps, as my father said, I allowed myself to be led too much by my heart.
But it was done.
And there was nothing left for me to do but to continue on that path, wherever it led.
I went out in the early morning, just after the sun rose. I told my parents I was going to look after the dogs. That much was true. I took my breakfast with me in a basket and some scraps for the dogs. There was much work to be done with the Miller boys missing and Elijah injured, and my parents did not question me about not eating at the table.
I walked across the long fields with a bucket of water and my basket. My spirits gradually began to lift as the sun rose. Eve- rything always seemed worse in the silence of night. Here, in the sunshine of the day, I felt justified in my actions. I raised my chin and walked to the barn, stepping through the paint chips that were beginning to accumulate on the gravel and grass.
I pulled open the barn door with a creak.
“It’s just me. Katie,” I announced to the shadows.
Copper bounded up to meet me, sloshing water on my skirt. Sunny waddled behind him, tail wagging. Straw was stuck to her fur, and I set my burden down to brush it away.
“How is our guest?” I asked, warily.
Sunny gave me an inscrutable look and whimpered.
I followed Copper back to the broken stall. Sunlight had crept through the chinks in the barn siding in broad golden slats that illuminated dust motes stirred up by my shoes. I stood and stared at the young man. Alex, I reminded myself.
Since last night he’d turned over, and the note I’d left him had been moved. Whether he’d read it, or whether it had been disturbed in his sleep, I couldn’t tell. A couple of broad dents in the hay lay at his feet. I assumed that those were the dogs’ work. It was good that they weren’t afraid of him.
And I shouldn’t be either, I told myself.
I took a deep breath. “Good morning.”
He didn’t stir. I knelt down beside him on the straw and placed my hand on his arm. His eyes fluttered a bit, like he was caught in a dream.
“Alex?”
His eyes opened for a moment, unfocused liquid blue.
I tried to smile reassuringly.
His eyes seemed to slide past me, through me. A chill crept down my spine. I had not stopped to wonder, in my haste, if his head injury had damaged his brain. His gaze seemed vacant. It fixed on my white bonnet.
He licked his lips. “Where?”
His voice was so faint, I had to stoop close to hear it. It was as if it were all he could do to summon that one word.
“You’re safe. In Amish country.”
“Eh. Bonnet.” He reached up for one of my bonnet strings that danced in his face. I flinched.
His eyes clouded, and his eyelids shuttered over his eyes. I shook his shoulder, but he did not regain consciousness.
I pressed my hand to his forehead. It was scalding hot. I brushed his hair away from the wound on his temple. It looked infected, telltale runners of red reaching across his hairline to begin creeping through the body.
I swallowed hard. It was just the wound, I told myself. No more serious contagion than that.
I backed out of the stall to the dogs’ area. I kept their birthing equipment in an old metal locker. I retrieved a bottle of antiseptic and clean cotton and returned to the young man.
“This will sting,” I warned him, though I doubted that he heard me as I pressed the cotton soaked in antiseptic solution against his head.
I could see the hydrogen peroxide sizzling on the wound, bubbling and hissing, but he didn’t flinch. I frowned, angry at myself for not having done this the night before. I had assumed that the wound was not serious, that he’d simply been suffering from the concussive shock of a blow to the head. A concuss
ion would subside on its own, but an infection . . .
Awkwardly, I wrapped his head in clean gauze. It was a struggle to position it in my lap to get the gauze around the back of his head. As I bandaged the wound, I felt something hard like bone move in his temple, and my stomach turned.
I gingerly laid his head back down on the straw. I arranged a metal container of water beside him and my breakfast: thick bread with butter, jam, and one of the first apples of the season. They looked like sad offerings to a strange god.
I wondered what would happen if he died; I wondered where I would bury him.
Chapter Seven
After a morning kept busy with chores, my mother sent me to take the Millers lunch. On the walk over, I noticed how tall the corn was getting. The stalks and leaves were golden, time for harvest. Without the boys, our neighbors would need to pitch in to clear the field. The ache in my chest twinged.
Winding my hands tightly in the basket handle, I tried not to think too much about food for the winter. Though we had more than enough to sustain ourselves, there was a delicate balance to be had in consumption and trade. We didn’t have enough storage for all the grain we sold to the Outside. And not enough shelter to last the whole winter for the cattle that were usually slaughtered in November. That meat and grain was sold for resources we couldn’t produce ourselves, like salt, glass canning jars, gelatin, and pectin for preserving. I told myself that the crisis would be resolved by winter, that there would be a solution for all of us.
Herr Miller was gone, probably out with my father. I left him his lunch in the kerosene-powered refrigerator and a note on the table. I idly wondered at the refrigerator. Many Plain folk did own appliances, such as stoves, irons, and refrigerators, that were powered by kerosene instead of electricity. Electrical lines were a forbidden connection with the Outside world. But we still brought the kerosene in from Outside. It occurred to me that this crisis was perhaps God’s way of removing those small luxuries from us.
I arranged two sandwiches and applesauce on a plate and carried a glass of milk upstairs to Elijah’s room.
He was sitting up in bed, between the two empty ones. Sunlight streamed in on the quilts, and I saw that he was reading the Bible. Gently, I set the plate down on his lap and handed him the glass of milk.
“How’s the ankle?” I asked. It was propped up on a pillow.
“Getting better,” he said, closing the Bible and reaching for the glass of milk. He downed it in three greedy slurps.
I sat beside him on the bed and picked up one of the sandwiches. “Are you bored?”
“Of course,” he said, grimacing. Then he looked at the Bible lying between us, and his expression drained away.
I chewed slowly, waiting for him to continue.
“I’ve been doing some thinking,” he began. Then he stopped, reached for the sandwich. His fingers gnawed at the crust.
“About what?” A trickle of cold dread had formed in my stomach, like ice water. The last time Elijah had been “doing some thinking,” he’d ham-handedly brought up the idea of marriage. I’d turned it into a joke, and he went along with it. We both knew that it would eventually happen, but I wasn’t ready for that. Not yet.
“I was thinking about the future,” he said.
Oh no. I glanced away, hoping that he would sense my unease and just stop.
“Seth and Joseph are gone.” He rubbed at one of his eyes with a hand covered with bread crumbs. My first impulse was to place my hand on his shoulder in sympathy, but I didn’t want him to take it as encouragement. I continued to chew silently.
“And . . . I’m afraid of my father being alone. In heaven. I know that my mother is there, waiting for him. And that has to be some comfort.” He tried to meet my eyes, and I looked away.
He took a deep breath. “So, I’ve decided to be baptized this fall.”
The bread turned to glue in my mouth. “You what?”
“I’ve decided to join the Amish church.”
My head spun. Baptisms took place in fall and spring, after Rumspringa, when young people had tasted the Outside world and willingly committed themselves to the church. Elijah had never been in a hurry to join up after I’d pushed aside the idea of marriage. One had to be baptized to be married, of course, but he didn’t like the idea of me going on Rumspringa without him. The shock of his brothers being caught out must have pushed him beyond his ordinary limits.
“But what about Rumspringa?” I asked. My voice sounded tiny, almost petulant to my own ears.
He shook his head. “I can’t leave my father alone. He’s lost too much.”
“What about you and me and going Outside and seeing movies and . . .” My voice faltered, and tears blurred my vision. “You promised.”
He took one of my hands. “You can still do that, in spring, after all this is settled. I’ll wait for you. I promise.” He kissed my cheek. “Nothing will change.”
Yes, it will, I wanted to say. There will be no more dreaming aloud of cars and movies and comic books. No candy bars and Coca-Cola. No imagining what the ocean looks like, or what it would be like to go someplace exotic like New York. It’s all gone. You’ll be like my parents, and yours, never dreaming of anything other than what you can see . . .
My throat closed, and I couldn’t put a voice to those selfish thoughts. It felt like my world was growing smaller and smaller, closing in on me.
***
I returned to the dog kennel after supper, under the guise of checking on Sunny. Glancing at my basket, my mother commented on how I was intending to make the dogs fat. Guilt hammered in my chest as I smiled weakly. I hated lying to my parents, but it seemed as if it was becoming easier and easier.
Maybe this was what it meant to be growing up.
I trudged across the field, my heart heavy with my own sins and with the knowledge that Elijah would no longer be a part of my life and my transgressions. Not the way he had been before. Little sins were expected of young people and largely ignored. But once you joined the church, such dalliances were absolutely forbidden. Nothing from Outside that had not been approved. Elijah would belong entirely to God. And I would not want to tempt him from any of that—but I could feel the chasm already growing between us.
I choked back a sob. My heart ached. It ached for the adventures that Elijah and I had dreamed up for ourselves since we were children. They were all gone now, lost. I knew that he was making the right decision. I understood his reasons . . .
But some selfish part of myself wanted to be first in his heart. Before God.
And that scared me, because that impulse felt truly evil. Ashamed, I placed my hand over my heart and recited the Lord’s Prayer. But I could still feel the hot evil of that seed there, taking root.
“It’s me again. Katie,” I said, as I hauled back the heavy barn door.
As before, the dogs greeted me. I fed them their scraps and headed back to the paddock.
There were signs that the young man had moved during the day. Straw had been disturbed, and the blanket was gathered tight around his ears. I knelt beside him and peeled back the blanket. It was stuck to his hot cheek with a sheen of sweat.
He blinked at me as I did so. His teeth were chattering, but his gaze was lucid. “Bonnet. You’re Katie. From the note?”
“Yes.” I situated the basket between us, feeling suddenly pinned under that icy gaze. “I brought you some supper.”
“Thank you.”
I reached toward him, and he flinched.
“I mean to check your wound.” I showed him my empty hands, as if I were dealing with a wild animal.
He licked his lips and nodded. I gently unwrapped the band- age. He winced as the gauze stuck to the wound. I didn’t like what I saw. The rim of the wound was yellowing, and a red runner crept across his cheek. His skin was scalding under my fingers. I bit my lip. This was beyond my power.
He must have seen that. “How bad is it?” he asked.
I didn’t want to lie to him. �
�It’s infected.”
He stared up at the ceiling of the barn. “No antibiotics here?”
I shook my head. “No. I’ll wash it out again with antiseptic, but . . .” I knotted my fingers in my lap. “I don’t know what else to do.”
“It doesn’t really matter, anyway,” he slurred.
He seemed to be fighting to maintain consciousness, and I wanted to keep him talking. I brought a cup of milk to his lips. He dribbled it down his cheek. He was too weak to hold his head up. I propped my hand behind his neck to help him swallow. I forced down a cup of milk and another of warm broth.
“What happened out there?” I asked. “What happened Outside?” I thought of the stained knife.
“My motorcycle wrecked . . . I was chased . . .”
His eyelids began to fall, and I wiped the broth from his chin. “Chased by whom?”
“They were fast, faster than me . . . like birds . . .” His eyes became more unfocused, and I wasn’t sure he saw me anymore as his pupils dilated in remembered fear. “ . . . soundless . . . they smelled like blood . . .”
His head lolled to the right, and he passed out.
I shook his shoulder but was unable to revive him. I dutifully cleaned and rebandaged his wound. I didn’t think he would last much longer. He had that smell about him—that acrid smell of illness, sharper than sweat. I’d smelled it on sick cattle, on Frau Miller before she died.
Frau Miller had been pregnant, about to deliver. My mother and I had gone over to the Miller house to help, with kettles for boiling water and clean towels. The midwife, Frau Gerlach, greeted us at the door with worried eyes. Frau Gerlach never looked worried. She was always starched, prim, proper, and in control. That morning her sleeves were rolled up past her elbows, and deep circles ringed her eyes.
“She’s been in labor all night,” the midwife said. “All night with no progress.”
My mother and I climbed the stairs to Frau Miller’s bed. She was covered in a sheen of sweat that stuck her nightgown to her chest. Her long hair was strung out on the pillow behind her. She did not look like the glowing picture of motherhood that I expected. She looked pale, sick, exhausted.