by B. J. Hoff
Gideon hesitated, meeting her gaze straight on with defiance burning in his eyes. But finally he sat down.
“Now you listen to me, Gideon. The way you’re behaving is exactly why Fannie didn’t want to tell you what happened. She knew how you’d react. And you’re proving her right.”
“Mamm, it’s all starting up again. Don’t you see that? Abe Gingerich’s barn fire—and there were other incidents before that—and now Fannie. They hit her and kicked her like they would a dog. They hurt her, Mamm!”
“Yes, they did. They hurt her. And nothing you can do will take away that hurt—not the physical pain or the heart-pain. It will take a long, long time before Fannie will heal.”
“That’s right! And I know I can’t do anything about the pain, but—”
“—but cause her more pain.”
“What?”
His mother leaned forward, her expression one of entreaty. “Oh, Gideon, don’t you see? Fannie is afraid for you! She’s terrified that you’ll be hurt—because of her.”
She stopped, watching him closely before going on. “Besides, Fannie completely accepts our belief about leaving justice to the Lord. Just as you should. Vengeance belongs to God, not to any one of us. The Englisch may call for revenge, but we believe in forgiveness. Even at your sister’s young age, she understands that anger helps no one, that it’s a poison. Gideon, you know all this. You’ve grown up with our teachings. Why can’t you take it into your heart and live with it? You’ll have no peace until you do.”
Gideon got to his feet, his face still flushed with passion. “Does Fannie have peace about what happened to her today, Mamm? Does she? Do you? And what about Rachel? I haven’t seen much peace in her since Eli was killed—and his murderers still walking around as free men! Where’s your peace, Rachel?”
From the edge of his vision, Gant saw Rachel stir and knot her hands in front of her. But she made no reply as Gideon went on railing at them.
“I will never understand how you can bear the things that have happened in our community—in our own family—and not seek justice. How can you just—bury your anger? How can you ignore what’s been done to us? And you, Rachel—” he jabbed a finger at his sister—“don’t you dare try to pretend that all you feel toward Eli’s murderers is forgiveness! They killed your husband! They robbed you of your husband and left you nothing but a broken heart and a shattered life! Don’t you tell me you’re not still angry!”
She looked up at him, searching his face as if she were looking for something she already knew she wouldn’t find. “Of course I still have anger, Gideon. And, yes, Eli’s death broke my heart. And it’s true that I struggle every day to keep my anger from controlling me. But I also know that there’s no chance for healing without—”
He dismissed her words, unfinished, with a chopping motion of his hand. “Spare me the speech, Rachel! I’ve heard it all before, if not from you, from the church leaders. ‘The Amish hold no grudges…our faith allows no place for vengeance…only the Lord God can avenge a wrong.’
“Well, you know what? I don’t forgive what happened to Eli, and I don’t forgive what was done to Fannie today! I don’t, and I won’t! And if cowardice is what’s required to be a good Amish man, then I’ll never be one! If it means letting the Englisch bullies walk all over us and murder us and beat up our children, then I don’t want to be Amish!”
“Gideon!”
Susan Kanagy shot from her chair, Rachel too, and called after him, but Gideon wouldn’t be stopped. Pulling his coat from the peg by the kitchen door, he stormed out of the house, slamming the door so hard the windows rattled.
Gant could see the shattering effect the boy’s tirade had wreaked upon his mother and sister, and it sickened him. But after a moment, Susan Kanagy seemed to steady herself. She turned to Gant, and with more dignity than he would have thought anyone capable of in such a situation, she inclined her head toward the door, saying, “I’m so sorry this happened, Captain Gant. I apologize for putting you in such an awkward position.”
Gant shook his head and flicked a hand to ward off any embarrassment on her part. “He’s young, ma’am, and protective of his loved ones. He means well.”
She smiled a little. “You’re very gracious, Captain. Thank you for your understanding.” She touched Rachel’s shoulder, saying, “I’m going back to sit with your sister. Gideon will come back…when he’s ready.”
“Mamma, I’ll stay with Fannie. It’s so late—please, lie down and get some rest.”
But Susan Kanagy didn’t hesitate in answering. “As if I could rest, with your brother on his way to who knows where and our Fannie injured and ill. Don’t worry about me, Rachel. I’m fine. With Fannie is where I need to be.”
Left alone with Rachel, Gant turned to her. “Your mother is an amazing woman.”
She managed a smile. “Yes. She is. And my dat was a remarkable man as well. I’ve been blessed. As for Gideon, though—well, he’s a bit of a hothead. I’m sorry that you had to see him at his worst.”
Gant waved off her words. “It’s as I told your mother, Gideon’s young. His intentions are the best.”
“Perhaps so, but some of his ways are just so far apart from the faith. I want…better for him.”
They sat in silence another moment. “Would you like something more to eat?” Rachel said. “A piece of pie isn’t exactly the Christmas dinner we had planned.”
He studied her, trying to decide whether this was the time for the question that had begun to nag at him almost from the time he’d first met her. He reached out slowly and covered her hand gently with his own. “What I would like, Rachel, is for you to tell me what happened the night your husband died, and what happened to you.”
She looked at him, glanced away and then turned the full intensity of her gaze on him. He could sense the struggle taking place inside her.
“What happened to me,” she finally said, “was much like what happened to Fannie today. Except that I had someone to protect me—I had Eli. Eli died…because of me.”
She told him then, told him of that other time, that night when her husband had been killed. She spoke in a voice so soft that Gant had to bend his head close to hers in order to hear her words. And this time when he gripped her hand, she didn’t pull away.
27
RACHEL’S SECRET
I had a beautiful friend
And dreamed that the old despair
Would end in love in the end…
W.B. YEATS
Darkness still shrouded the outside world as they sat in the warmth and dim light of the kitchen.
Rachel kept her eyes closed at first, and the hand Gant wasn’t holding she clenched into a fist. Her words came out choked and harsh but evened out some as she spoke. Feeling her tension, Gant couldn’t seem to draw an easy breath but let the pressure of their clasped hands come from her, not himself.
“What they did,” she said, “what they did was…they beat him. They beat Eli to death.”
In spite of his intention to remain silent, a groan escaped Gant’s throat.
She looked at him. “Some of the Englischers in the area—maybe most of them—don’t want us here. They think we’re strange because we keep ourselves apart from them and the ways of the world, because our faith is different from theirs, and because we dress differently. Sometimes they do things to mock us, like call us names, and try to frighten us. But until a few years ago, it was just little things they did—they never really tried to hurt anyone.”
She glanced at the window, totally dark, as if she were looking down the years into the past. “But then things started to change. Unexplainable things, like mysterious barn fires and wheels removed from our buggies. Our dog was shot.” She stopped, her lips thinning. “Eli loved that dog. It gave him a terrible hurt when he died.”
Anger flared in Gant, followed by a twist of sympathy. He could almost imagine the pain he would feel if something bad were to happen to his own dog, Mac.
She drew a long breath before going on. “Horses were stolen, and some livestock killed. Even with all this, though, none of us was harmed physically.
“Until the night we were attacked.” She tried to clear her throat, but it sounded more like she was gasping for breath.
“Attacked?” Gant echoed.
“Eli and I. We were chaperones for one of the singings. Our young people like to get together at different homes and socialize. They sing songs and talk and just have a good time. It’s also a time for courting.” She made a weak attempt to smile.
“We were on our way home. It was a nice fall night, crisp but not cold, and we were so newly married it was almost as if we were… courting still. We had had such a good time with the young people, but we were happy to be going home to our own place.”
She was having a hard time now, Gant could tell. She stopped again, her gaze going to that place beyond the window—a place where most likely her worst memories still lived. Her hand had gripped his harder, yet he was fairly certain that by this time she wasn’t even aware of it.
“They were in a wagon—a noisy old thing—but it was faster than our buggy. There were three of them. Grown men but young. Older than Gideon is now but maybe not by much. They were shouting at us from behind and then pulled up alongside us and yelled at Eli that something was wrong with one of the buggy wheels in back. Said he’d best pull over and they’d help him fix the wheel.
“If only we hadn’t stopped…”
She gave a visible shudder. “If we hadn’t stopped, Eli would be alive today. But we did stop, and when we pulled off to the side of the road, they all jumped down from the wagon and came charging at us. Two of them pulled Eli out of the buggy, and the other one grabbed me and yanked me out onto the road so hard I fell onto my knees.”
Gant knew what was coming, and he couldn’t look at her. Just for an instant, he had to look away from the raw pain dug deep into her face. She was remembering all of it, and remembering too clearly. It was happening again.
“They knew we don’t believe in fighting or in violence. They thought Eli wouldn’t fight back. But he surprised them. He did fight back. At least he tried. Even though it went against the way he’d lived all his life, he fought them. Because they—they told him what they intended to do to me, and I suppose he couldn’t…It was unthinkable that he wouldn’t…defend me.”
She felt tears burn her eyes, and so she closed them, unwilling to show her weakness. In this, she would honor Eli. Because even though his actions on that awful night went against his faith, he broke trust with his Amish beliefs because of her, and she would defend what he did with her last breath.
When she again opened her eyes and continued, she felt only a familiar, haunting sorrow, not anger or grief. “The one who yanked me from the buggy saw that Eli was strong and was actually fighting off the other two, and so he left me there in the road and went to fight with the others. And, of course, then Eli had no chance—three men against one. How much could he do? He told me to run. He kept shouting at me to run and get help, but…he knew…knew by the time I could find help, it would be too late…for him…”
Suddenly Rachel realized she was gripping Jeremiah’s hand as if for dear life. All this time she was speaking of Eli and holding another man’s hand. She pulled her hand away and locked her fingers together on the table so as not to touch him again.
“I didn’t want to leave him…I didn’t…But he was begging me to go, and when I didn’t, he told me I must go, that I was his wife, and he demanded that I go. I was so torn, wanting to stay with him, but I knew he had no chance alone with them, and I’d be of little help… so I ran…
“I ran away…”
Gant heard her voice thicken with guilt, saw her features draw into a mask of self-disgust. He reached for her, but she shook her head almost angrily, keeping him at bay.
He understood. At least he thought he did.
She covered her eyes with her hands for an instant and then knotted them again on the table. She kept her head down now. He saw her try to swallow, watched as she straightened her back and shoulders and then went on.
“I ran to the nearest farm—to Abe Gingerich’s place. One of them ran after me but only so far—I think he saw the house and realized I would get there before he could, and so he turned back. Abe and both his sons, Jacob and Luke, went back with me. But it was too late.”
Her voice dropped to a whisper. Gant had all he could do not to touch her, to put an arm around her and draw her to him. But he knew she would reject him.
“Eli was already…dead…when we got there. His head—they had beaten him on his head—his neck was broken too. He was gone.”
She slumped in the chair. Gant saw her hands go limp. Her face in the lamplight looked gray and sunken. She looked as if she herself had been beaten and broken like an abandoned doll.
“Rachel,” he said softly, feeling as if he would choke on the ache in his throat, “I’m so sorry. What a terrible thing for you.” He hesitated and then added, “Your husband was a very brave man.”
She nodded but said nothing. Gant wasn’t at all sure she could speak. He thought perhaps all the strength had drained out of her.
“Were the men ever found?” he asked.
She shook her head and finally straightened a little in the chair. “No. The authorities…‘looked into it’…but nothing was ever done. And of course we don’t believe in pursuing vengeance. We’re taught instead to forgive those who wrong us, no matter in what way…so that was the end of it.”
“I confess I tend to understand Gideon’s difficulty with that part of your faith,” Gant said. “What’s so wrong about demanding justice when a crime is committed against you? How can you simply ignore something like that?”
She looked at him. “We don’t ignore it, Jeremiah. We don’t pretend the offense was never committed. But we have to give up our desire to punish the wrongdoer.”
“But why? Why do you believe that?”
“Because of God’s grace.”
Gant shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s a lot to understand if you haven’t grown up with the belief, if it hasn’t been a part of your life since childhood, I know. But it’s a belief founded on the words of Jesus, and we take His words in all seriousness. We believe that ‘forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors’ means just that—that if we don’t forgive, then we won’t be forgiven. God didn’t exact justice from us but, instead, extended grace, so we’re not to exact justice from others but offer grace to them…no matter what they do to us.”
Gant sighed. “I don’t know that I could ever manage that kind of grace.”
She turned around to face him, regret and something else, something akin to anger, darkening her features. “To my great shame, neither can I.”
He studied her, seeing now for the first time the battle being waged somewhere deep within her.
“Tell me, Rachel.”
“It shames me. I’m a poor witness, a poor example of our faith. I’ve never forgiven those men who killed Eli. I’ve tried. I’ve prayed for forgiveness for them. I’ve begged for it—but I still despise them!” She stopped and looked away from him. “And I despise myself just as much. Because I can’t forgive myself either.”
“For what, Rachel?” Gant touched her shoulder, and she turned back to him. “What do you mean, you can’t forgive yourself. You did nothing wrong.”
Her eyes sought something from him, but seemed not to find it. “I ran,” she said, her voice shaking. “I ran away. I should have stayed. I might not have been able to stop them, to save Eli, but it would have been better if I had died with him. Instead I ran away.”
He clasped both her shoulders now, making it impossible for her to look away from him. “You ran for help, Rachel! You didn’t run away from Eli—you ran to get help for him!”
She slumped under his grasp. “Yes, I know. That’s what Mamma told me, and Dr. Sebastian and the bishop�
�that’s what everyone told me. But it doesn’t help. And still today I betray my faith by not being able to forgive—those men or myself.”
Gant could have wept at the pain that burned through her loveliness. “Oh, Rachel, there’s nothing to blame yourself for. Don’t you see? There was really nothing you could have done. And in all likelihood the reason you can’t forgive Eli’s murderers—if indeed you believe you should—is because you blame yourself as much as you blame them.”
“I should have stayed with him—I should have died with him! And you’ve no idea how often I wish I had.”
Her words seemed torn from a far place, a place deep inside of her, a place Gant had never sensed before this moment. He eased his grip on her shoulders but didn’t release her. “And you have no idea,” he said softly, “how glad I am that you didn’t.”
Her eyes grew wide with surprise.
“I don’t know what in the world we’re going to do about this, sweet Rachel,” he said, “and maybe I also need to ask your forgiveness because the truth is that I have…feelings for you that I don’t know what to do with.”
She tensed, staring at him, and Gant saw something flicker in her eyes that struck him like a blow, something she would no doubt deny if he faced her with it. But he knew. He knew. She felt it too, this…attraction, whatever it was…that was drawing them together, that indeed had been drawing them together almost since that first evening.
“Don’t, Jeremiah…You know it’s impossible. Don’t say this. Anything between us is impossible.”
“Tell me you feel nothing for me, Rachel.” He held onto her. He was going to hold onto her, no matter what.
“I—I can’t tell you that. I care about you…you’re my friend.”
“No. This isn’t friendship, Rachel.”
“Jeremiah—it’s forbidden. It’s impossible.”
But she was no longer tensing herself against his touch.
Carefully, gently, he pulled her closer and coaxed her head against his shoulder. He rested his chin on top of her head, against the starched little white cap she always wore and he had come to fancy, even though it did mark her as “forbidden” to him.