Kansas Troubles

by Earlene Fowler

  “That’s hard to picture,” I said. “They all look so innocent.”

  “Oh, the Amish aren’t any different from anyone else in that respect,” she said. “There’s been more than one Hochzüt that’s been wenn’s pressiert, believe you me.” She spoke the German-sounding words with ease.

  “What?”

  She lowered her voice. “Wenn’s pressiert. When the wedding is urgent because a little one is expected.”

  “Hanky-panky among the Amish?” I said, surprised.

  “Well, you have to say this for them. They never have any illegitimate children. If an Amish boy gets an Amish girl pregnant, there is no argument about what he has to do. We English should be so responsible.”

  “English?” I asked.

  “It’s what the Amish call anyone not of their faith,” she replied.

  “You know a lot about the Amish.”

  “My grandmother was plain. She married outside the church, though, and that’s why I’m Mennonite today. You’ll find many of the old families around here have Amish in their background. I sent Esther, my granddaughter, to let Hannah know you were coming, and Hannah said she’d be by about twelve-thirty, right after she prepared Eli’s dinner. Is that okay?”

  I glanced at my watch. It was eleven-thirty now, and I was beginning to feel hungry. “That’s great. Is there somewhere I can get some lunch?”

  “Miller Cafe up on the highway is good and cheap.” She gave her jolly little laugh again. “And the only place in town to eat.”

  “Sounds perfect,” I said and started to walk out. Then I remembered something. “Excuse me, but may I ask you a question?”

  Her eyes widened with curiosity. “Certainly.”

  “Did Hannah tell you she gave me her sister’s bank book?”

  Fannie’s face grew serious. “Yes, she did. What did you do with it?”

  “I gave it to my husband, like she asked. But he had to give it to the police in charge of the investigation.”

  “We assumed that is what would happen. But Hannah didn’t want the money, so maybe it is best.”

  “Well, I just have a question about it—about her sister. When exactly did she give it to you?”

  Fannie sighed. “Two days before she was killed.”

  “How was she acting?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did she act like she was, for example, afraid or maybe anxious about something?”

  Fannie rested her chubby elbows on the wooden counter. “I didn’t talk with her long. I was very busy that day. My grandchildren were visiting, and it was crowded here in the store. She just pulled me aside and asked me to hold onto the envelope until she came back for it, and to give it to Hannah if anything happened to her. She seemed fine. A little tired maybe. A little sad. But she seemed that way every time I saw her, as seldom as that was, and I just assumed it was because of the type of life she led. I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re looking for.”

  “It’s all right. I don’t really know either.”

  At the busy cafe, I sat in a back booth and watched the young Amish waitresses serve customers who appeared to be mostly truckdrivers whose route passed Miller, or local farmers. The girls were all dressed identically in below-the-knee pastel dresses with oversized puffed sleeves. They looked so fresh and untouched, I could well imagine the appeal they must hold for men. I assumed this was the cafe where Tyler once worked. In the background Sammy Kershaw eulogized in song the queen of his doublewide trailer with her cheating black heart and pretty red neck. The laughing, innocent faces of the Amish girls didn’t seem to comprehend what he was singing about. But then again, who knows what dwells in the heart of another person?

  I dug enthusiastically into the special of the day—chicken and dumplings. The meat was white and tender, the gravy smooth and buttery-tasting, the dumplings light with just a hint of doughiness inside. It was the first completely relaxed meal I’d had since leaving California. I lingered over my blackberry cobbler and flipped through the book I’d just purchased about the Amish, reading paragraphs here and there and studying the pictures. Then I got serious and looked up “shunning” in the index. Apparently there were many behaviors that could bring on the community’s complete rejection of one of their members: adultery, being a drunkard, blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, disobeying some prescript of the Ordnung, the unspoken rules of the local congregation. But the most deplorable of all, as Becky told me, was leaving the church after being baptized into it. Maybe it wasn’t as predictable and easy a way to live as it appeared. Not if you were at all different.

  A black buggy I assumed to be Hannah’s was parked in front of Fannie’s Fabrics when I came back. Inside the store bolts of fabric were already laid out on the cutting table.

  “Benni!” Hannah said, her voice warm and delighted. “I was so happy when Fannie told me you were coming. Come and see what I’ve picked out.”

  We settled finally on a Hole in the Barn Door pattern, one that had been a favorite of mine since I was a little girl. I chose navy blue and maroon with a pine-green border, leaving the quilting pattern to Hannah’s discretion. I insisted on paying for the fabric and giving her a hundred-dollar cash deposit.

  We stood outside discussing stitching patterns while I petted her horse, a brown Standardbred with a mischievous glint in its eyes. She told me about a unique pattern her great-grandmother designed when she first came to Kansas at the turn of the century. In response to her new surroundings, she’d incorporated tiny sunflowers into a traditional feather-spray stitching.

  “It doesn’t sound like anything I’ve ever seen,” I said.

  “Would you like to come out to the farm and trace it?” she asked. “And you are more than welcome to share it with your friends.”

  “That would be wonderful. The quilters at the co-op are always looking for new patterns.”

  “Then you must come.” She turned to Fannie. “Perhaps to save time, Esther could drive the buggy back, and I could go with Benni in her car.”

  Fannie nodded. “Esther loves driving your buggy.” “Are you allowed to ride in my car?” I asked, a bit taken back, though I remembered the Amish man, whom I was assuming was John at this point, leaving in a car the night he argued with Tyler.

  Hannah and Fannie exchanged amused looks. “We can ride in cars,” Hannah said. “We just can’t own them.”

  “Oh,” I said, not saying what I thought and hoping it didn’t show on my face. That seemed awfully convenient to me.

  “We don’t have anything against cars, Benni,” she said in her soft voice. “We just feel that owning them would make it too easy to go out into the world and be influenced by other, more harmful things.”

  “I see,” I said, embarrassed as always at my inability to hide my feelings. When I started the car, the radio blasted Dwight Yoakam wailing he was a thousand miles from nowhere. He’d obviously visited Miller. I switched the radio off quickly, afraid that listening to it was somehow against Hannah’s beliefs or that it might remind her of Tyler.

  She briefly touched a thin, work-roughened hand to my arm. “It’s your car, Benni. You can play whatever you please on the radio.”

  “Oh, okay,” I said, but kept the radio off anyway.

  In front of the house, Emma and Ruthie were having a tea party under the solid shade of a small willow tree. Inside, Hannah directed me to the living room while she went upstairs to find the pattern. Next to a large rectangular window she had set up a small quilting frame where she was working on a mulberry, tobacco-brown, and cream Tree of Life baby quilt, a pattern I knew from my reading was not common among traditional Amish except where they’d been influenced by outside sources, as the Midwestern Amish were. On the table next to her chair sat a twig basket full of pieced quilt squares. I picked them up and saw some picture postcards at the bottom of the basket. Their edges were soft, as if they had been handled often. I took one out and immediately recognized the white marble Arkansas state capitol. I hadn’t
seen it since I was a child and traveled on Amtrak cross country with Dove to visit her only sister in Sugartree, Arkansas, about fifty miles north of Little Rock. There were three other cards—one of Little Rock’s famous rose gardens, one of Murray Dam, and one of the Old State House. Being human (and Dove’s granddaughter) I turned them over to read the message and see who they were from. They were addressed to H.S. in care of Fannie’s Fabrics, Miller, Kansas. No message. I peered closely at the blurry postmarks. Little Rock, Arkansas. The dates ranged from July 2 to December 17 of last year. I had a good hunch that the cards were probably from Tyler communicating with her sister in a way that wouldn’t get Hannah in trouble. What in the world was Tyler doing in Little Rock for six months? Did it have anything to do with all that money? I struggled to remember the date the account was opened, but it hadn’t been important enough at the time for me to make a note of it.

  Behind me, a gruff voice said, “Is Hannah home?”

  I guiltily shoved the postcards under the quilt squares in my lap and faced the unfriendly voice. John Stoltzfus stared at me from the doorway to the kitchen, his long face creased and somber.

  “She’s upstairs getting some quilt patterns for me to trace,” I said as I set the quilt squares and postcards back in the basket. “We met before. I’m Benni Harper.”

  He nodded and held up a paper bag. “My sister sends some plums. Tell Hannah I will put them in the kitchen and be out in the barn with Eli.”

  “Okay,” I said. He turned abruptly, and a moment later I heard the back door slam.

  “I heard talking,” Hannah said, coming down the stairs carrying a pasteboard box. “Has someone come?”

  “Tyler’s . . . uh, Ruth’s husband, John,” I said. “His sister sent you some plums, and he said he would be in the barn with Eli.”

  She set the box down on the floor in front of the sofa. Her face grew pensive. “He is a good man. He appears unfriendly, but underneath he is kindhearted.”

  I looked at her and wondered if she was aware that he might have been at Becky’s house the night Tyler was killed and if I should tell her.

  “It has been very hard on him,” she said.

  “And you, too,” I replied softly.

  She sat on the floor and flipped through the patterns. “Yes,” she said, her voice a whisper. “It has been like losing half of my own heart.”

  I sat crosslegged next to her on the floor. “Hannah, I talked to Detective Champagne yesterday, and he says the place where Ruth was staying . . . Well, they want her things to be picked up. They need to rent the room out. John is officially her next of kin . . .”

  “Oh, I didn’t even think about that.” She touched her cheek with her fingertips, her face stricken. “I’m not sure about what to do with her things. I’m sure John would not want anything. And I . . .” Her voice trailed off. “I think it is something we must ask our bishop.” She looked away from me. “Now, where did I file that pattern?” I heard the catch in her voice and I knew she was fighting to keep from breaking down. “Here it is.” She held up a thin piece of paper. I traced the unusual quilting pattern and wrote down the information about her grandmother to tell the quilters back at the co-op. I traced a few more uncommon ones from her collection, then stood up to leave.

  “Thank you,” I said. “For letting me trace these and for making the quilt. Let me know the postage costs as well as the final amount.”

  “It is my pleasure,” she said. When we went out into the front yard, I saw that her buggy had made it back from Fannie’s.

  “How will Fannie’s daughter get home?” I asked.

  She gave me a surprised look. “Walk. It is only a few miles.”

  I smiled, thinking about the teenagers I knew in San Celina who’d rather cut off their big toe than walk anywhere. Hannah walked me to my car, and as I opened the door, she blurted out, “Could you do it for us?”

  “Do what?” I answered automatically. Then it occurred to me what she meant. Tyler’s possessions. My stomach churned with dread, but I also felt a guilty excitement. “Are you sure?”

  “Perhaps Becky will help. Oh, forgive me for being so forward. You hardly know me.”

  “I don’t mind, really. And I’m sure Becky will be glad she can help you, too. But I wouldn’t be surprised if we’ll need some kind of written permission. Would John give us that?”

  “Let me go ask.” She ran back to the barn and returned a few minutes later holding a folded sheet of notebook paper. “Will this do?”

  I scanned the neatly written note. “I’m no expert, but I can’t imagine anyone disputing this. I’ll show it to Detective Champagne.”

  “Thank you, Benni. This is very kind of you.”

  “It’s the least I can do,” I said, feeling embarrassed because she thought I was only helping her out of altruism. I certainly would have done it whether I was curious or not, but the prospect of poking through Tyler’s stuff intrigued me more than I cared to admit. “What would you like me to do with her things?”

  She tentatively fingered the hanging string of her white cap. “John said we should just give it all to charity but . . . could you just ask Becky if she would mind keeping it until I . . .” She let her sentence taper off. I wondered what she was thinking—until she asked her bishop? or until she could bear to look at the remnants of her sister’s worldly life?

  “I’m sure she’ll be glad to.”

  A look of intense grief suddenly washed over Hannah’s pale face. “You know, when our mother died, Ruth and I were only three years old. We did not remember her, so we did not grieve. It is difficult to grieve for a person one never knew. When Ruth left, I thought it was the deepest hurt I could ever feel. Somehow I could bear it because I knew she was out there. I haven’t heard her voice in a year and a half, but in my mind it is as clear as Emma’s or Ruthie’s. I cannot imagine a world without her in it. I do not understand why this has happened. We are taught by our bishop that suffering is a blessing. That it can make our faith grow. I don’t know. I feel so confused. How true is my faith when I am filled with so many doubts?”

  I didn’t have any answers for her. I did know that all the theology you’ve ever been taught doesn’t mean anything when you are in the midst of such fresh grief. I could only offer her what I myself had discovered. That God was still there. That her faith would sustain her. Maybe not in some hallelujah-angels-singing-from-on-high kind of way, but just by making it day to day until what seemed impossible to endure became possible.

  “Give it time,” I said. “I don’t know how long it will take, but I do know it will get easier. That much I do know.”

  She gave an almost imperceptible nod and didn’t answer.

  I watched her slender figure as I backed out of the driveway. Standing motionless in front of her colorful flower bed in her dark dress and white cap, she looked like a painting from another era. I wondered what she thought about as she watched this English woman drive back to the world that had stolen her sister. Did she envy me? Pity me? Did my inadequate words of comfort only cause her more sorrow? I thought about the complexity of love and why it was we humans so desperately sought something that caused us as much pain as it did joy. I thought of my relationship with Gabe, how confusing it was, how I wished there were some simple answers to make it work, like a course in school—learn these rules, take the test, get an A, and live happily ever after.

  Thinking of Hannah and Tyler and John and Eli, whose lives were governed by their vast set of unspoken rules, it came to me that the quandary of life was a common human predicament, that even within their ordered lives, they were filled with as much confusion and doubt as I was, especially when those lives were touched so closely by violent death, something that seemed so unnatural simply because it was. And that even though I believed in the same God they did, He was still so much a mystery to me, but that was somehow okay because who, after all, could possibly want to believe in a God small enough to be comprehended?

  NINE />
  IT WAS FIVE o’clock when I dropped by the Derby police station. I knew I’d better hustle because Kathryn would probably be cooking supper tonight, and since I’d not done much to endear myself to her so far, I didn’t want to make matters worse by being tardy. Dewey leaned back in his chair, boots propped up on his desk, a beeping Game Boy in his hand.

  I flopped down on the vinyl office chair. “Boy, I certainly feel safer knowing Derby’s Chief of Detectives Dewey Champagne is on the job.”

  He gave a good-natured raspberry. A chorus of miniature cheers erupted from the electronic game.

  “Are you going to Lawrence’s club tonight?” I asked.

  He swung his legs down. “As if I have a choice. I’ve been to so many of Cordie June’s performances, I could sing backup.”

  I laughed. “That’s something I’d pay at least a nickel to see.”

  “That’d be about what it’s worth. Now, what can I do for you?”

  “I’ve got something that’ll make your life easier.” I handed him the note that John had written.

  “I’m always up for that.” He scanned the notebook paper.

  “Do you think it’ll be okay?”

  “Looks all right to me. Just show it to the landlady. I’ll let the sheriff’s detectives know.”

  “So, just how much of a mess did you guys make?” I teased.

  “Now, watch what you say. I was there when they very neatly searched it. It didn’t take long. She didn’t have much.”

  “Did you find anything useful?”

  He shook a finger at me. “That’s privileged information. Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it.”

  “Well, oink, oink to you, Officer Porky.”

  He laughed and handed John’s note back to me. “Just let us know if you find anything we missed.”

  “Aren’t you all going to feel really stupid when we do?” I threw over my shoulder as I walked out the door. He snorted in reply.

  The scent of roasting chicken told me I was right about dinner. After a quick supper and an even quicker shower, I changed into black Wranglers, my black Tony Lama boots, and a forest-green tank top with a lacy V-neck. I stood in front of the mirror and frowned critically at my curly reddish-blond hair. It had been waist-length until last December, when, in an emotionally overwrought moment, I’d cut it to the middle of my neck. It was now just touching the top of my shoulders and was still too short to braid, so most of the time I just let it hang there. I picked up a brush and attempted to tame it.