by P. L. Gaus
But his best mare was already hitched and waiting on the drive. Shuddering from the energy bottled up in her limbs. Just like Mervin, she was eager to begin.
Mervin clipped down the wooden steps on his new leather soles and climbed into his Sunday buggy, laughing at himself. Thinking that he could already hear the chatter. Knowing what the valley gossips would say if they ever got a look inside his cupboards—stuffed full to bursting with Coblentz chocolates of every kind—asking themselves why an old man needed to be driving back to Walnut Creek again, when his cupboards were already shamefully overstocked with more sweets than any sensible man could eat.
For the fun of it, he ought to drop a hint somewhere along the line. Put it out there among the talkers that he didn’t really like chocolate that much. Truth be told, he favored salty chips more than sweets. Wonderful, crunchy, salty chips of every kind.
Just tell one of them, he thought, and soon they’d all be a-chatter. He’d make a few trips into Walmart for a dozen bags of Ruffles, and that news would be singing like electric in the wires. Why, don’t you know? Mervin doesn’t really like sweets at all. Then he could enjoy the sparks. He couldn’t remember a time when he had felt so young.
But don’t kid yourself, Mervin smiled. Today I’ll just tap the glass. See if she’ll come around to the tourist’s gallery for a chat. Maybe he could visit on Sunday with the North Walnut Creek Lehmans, and stay after services for the social. Then his valley would sure be all abuzz. Was it the Coblentz chocolates or the widow Stutzman? A Sunday visit with old Ben Lehman’s district would settle it for sure. They’d all be talking for over a month.
Mervin climbed up, took the reins, and walked his buggy out to the lane in front of the big house. He turned right to follow Township Lane 166 toward the north, thinking that maybe she’d give him a look today. Something to help him make up his mind. But hadn’t she done that already? The last time he had visited? Mervin wasn’t sure. Was it a look, or was it a smile? Maybe it was just a glance.
Yes, at the time, he had thought it was just a glance. Now it seemed to him like it might have been more than that. Was it really encouragement for a suitor, or was she mocking an old fool?
Never mind, he told himself. I’ll tap on the glass today. Then she’ll give me one look or the other look, and I’ll know if I should bother with any more chocolates from the Coblentz store. Not that there’s room in my cupboards.
He set a good pace for his horse, and took the reins in his left hand. With his right, he fished his money roll out of the side pocket of his denim trousers. It was a suitable sum, he thought. Four hundred and eighty-seven dollars, and most of it in tens and twenties. He wouldn’t need nearly that much. Still a man ought to be prepared. Maybe after he stopped in Walnut Creek, he’d run up Route 39 to the Walmart in Millersburg. That’d put him home after dark. Smiling broadly, he thought how that news would spread itself around among the folk. Up to Walnut Creek for the widow Stutzman and way over to Millersburg just for chips? There’d be no end of the talk.
At the intersection with Township 165, Byler turned left and took the gravel lane where it cut a gap in the remote southeastern corner of Holmes County. Exhausted from a brutal winter, most fields lay bare on the rolling hills, but some had been plowed already, their tidy rows of newly turned earth looking eagerly dark and moist for planting.
On the slope to his left, he saw the new shoots of winter wheat promising the harvest in July. Ahead on his right stood the stubble of feed corn cut last autumn, the arching rows of blunted shafts curving gracefully over the crest.
Take the back roads today, Byler thought. No sense getting out on SR 39, where the traffic is so crazy. When had the tourists discovered Walnut Creek? Twenty years ago there hadn’t been anything at all in the little town. Now it was overbuilt for commerce, and the traffic was incessant, with out-of-state plates and buses from all the big cities.
Mervin frowned. He gave the reins a determined slap. Back roads will take longer, he told himself, but the trip will be safer, and you’ll get there in one piece, you old fool. So stick to the back-most roads.
The narrow wheels of his buggy cut fine, wavy lines into the gravel and mud of the lane, and he gave the reins another slap to encourage his horse. The whisper music of his buggy wheels running in the wet gravel and the clipping rhythm of his horse’s hooves spoke peacefulness to him. Coblentz chocolate and the widow Stutzman. Who could ask for a better morning?
Following the creek that was fed by the spring on the Yoder farm, he traveled generally north and west, and made the sharp right turn where the road curved to the north. The glade that lay ahead to his left was lined by sycamores whose old roots sank deep into the rocky cut of the creek. A stand of barren maples beside the road sheltered the little glade from view at first, but soon he reached the clearing beside the road, where the Yoders maintained a service road for an oil well. Behind the low knoll, Byler could see the top of the well head where the Yoders took off their natural gas feed, and beside that stood a green tank for the oil that was being pumped slowly out of the ground.
As he skirted the glade, however, Byler saw a horse and buggy standing at the back of the clearing, beside the bend in the service road. The horse was tethered to a sapling, and it was bucking wildly in its harness, its head popping up and down and back and forth, as it whipped the leather reins that were tied to the tree.
Byler stopped, climbed down from his rig, and circled around through tangled brush to reach the front of the horse, not wanting to agitate it any further by coming up on its rear. As he approached, he called out to the horse, “Hey there! Hey, big fella! Whoa!”
But as he pushed through the brambles, his feet crunching twigs and fallen branches, the horse bucked and danced all the more, its hooves striking strangely to the right and left, as if it were trying to sidestep a rattlesnake. As if it couldn’t bear to let its footfalls touch the ground.
And that’s when Byler first saw the girl lying underneath the rear hooves of the horse. An Amish girl in a forest green dress, wearing the black denim jacket of a man. Sprawled under the hooves of the frantic horse. Trampled face down in the mud beside the spring. Clothes caked with bloodied mud, arms and legs sprawled to the sides like broken twigs. The hair at the back of her head matted with blood from a gaping hole in her skull. The frightened horse pounding out its terror on her back.
Byler stepped up to the sapling and drew his pocketknife. He cut once at the reins wrapped around the trunk but failed to sever the hold. He cut again with more force, and the leather gave way but still held. Then he slashed with his blade a third time, and the reins snapped free, sending the horse bolting off to the side, dragging the wheels of the buggy sideways over the body of the girl, flipping her onto her back. The horse and buggy disappeared around the curve of the lane. Staring down at the trampled body of the girl, Byler could hear the plaintive cries of the horse, as it struggled to free itself from the harness.
* * *
Each time that it bounced out of a chuckhole, it seemed to Byler that his buggy actually flew. He whipped the horse again and tried to keep his seat as he raced back home to the phone booth beside the road.
Thirty yards out, he started slowing the horse, but he overshot the phone. Not bothering to steady or tether the horse, Byler hopped down beside the picket fence in front of Daniel’s house, let the horse pace forward to stop on its own, dashed into the phone booth, pulled the receiver to his ear, and tried to turn the dial. His fingers were shaking badly, and it took him three tries to swing the dial around to get 911.
Groaning as he waited for an answer, Mervin’s feet marched out a manic step-in-place, inside the tight confines of the little shed. When the operator answered, he shouted, “Dead Girl!” as loud as he could, and repeated it, saying, “I found a dead girl!”
He dropped the receiver, pushed back through the door, and ran for the house, shouting, “Daniel! Becky! Get help!”
Then he remembered the phone and ran ba
ck to the booth. When he picked up the receiver, the operator started asking him questions, and he answered them as best he could.
“Beside the Yoder’s spring.”
“Yes, it’s Holmes County. At the big bend of Township 165 and 166.”
“She’s dead, I tell you. Get the sheriff!”
“Because I felt a hole in her forehead! When I tried to brush the mud out of her eyes.”
Then with his thoughts muddled by adrenaline, Mervin answered several more questions, while Daniel and Becky stood outside the phone booth with anxious questions in their eyes.
Mervin finished his call, laid the handset back on its cradle, and stood alone inside, trying to understand how he could manage to do what the man on the phone had asked him to do—to go back, to wait there, and to talk with the deputies when they arrived.
He turned in place, opened the door, and stepped outside to tell Daniel and Becky what he had seen. But several of the children had gathered with their parents, so he drew Daniel aside to whisper.
And Mervin Byler couldn’t remember a time when he had felt so old.