by P. L. Gaus
“You know she couldn’t have stayed Amish,” Branden said, taking a seat beside Junior on the well’s platform. He laid a hand softly on Junior’s knee and then took it away before it became intrusive. “I am truly sorry for your loss, Junior. I wish there was something I could do.”
Junior sighed. “Can you explain to five-year-old Rose what it means to be dead, Professor? Because that’s what I was trying to do.”
Branden shook his head ruefully. “It’s a great sorrow, Junior. Does your father know?”
“I don’t think so. We can’t really talk to him right now.”
“Then do your grandparents know? I could go across the street to them.”
Junior shook his head and drew a ragged breath. “I sent Micah off again in his pony cart to tell the bishop about Aunt Lydia. Bishop Yost will take care of it. Probably before he comes here. He’ll minister to Aunt Lydia’s family, before he comes over here. He needs to be the one to tell her parents that she is dead.”
Dottie Yost, a girl of seven years, came out of a wire hen house set off to the side of the farmhouse. Just as on the lane earlier, she was barefooted. She carried a wicker basket of brown eggs. Dressed in her long plum dress and her heavy black bonnet, she looked like a peasant maid from a bygone century. She could have been a weary orphan, a character in a Dickens novel.
Branden spoke gently to Junior. “Evening eggs? You don’t collect them in the mornings?”
Junior shrugged. “The coyotes come at night.”
“You have the children attending to their chores?”
“What else can they do, Professor? Sitting idle now would only make it hurt more.”
The screened door slapped loudly behind Dottie, and she disappeared into the interior of the house. The professor judged that her countenance was downturned and that her eyes were dull and lifeless, as if all her memories of happiness had been washed out of her by the tragedy of her Aunt Lydia’s death.
At the entrance to the milking barn, Ana, aged four and barefooted, carried out a rusty kerosene lantern that had apparently been cast aside as junk. She brought it up to Junior and asked what she should do with the kerosene that was left in the tank. Junior spoke a few instructions to her, and she carried the lantern to the side of the barn, to set it down beside another one that had a broken globe. Junior smiled at her and said, “That’s right. I’ll collect it later. You go inside and check on Jonas.”
He rose to his feet, and said, “If you don’t mind, Professor, I’d like to keep busy.”
At the horse barn, a jumble of old and worn leather whips and tack lay outside on the ground, flattened and wet, suffering from long disuse. Junior scooped up the old leather and carried it to a barrel at the side of the house. On the side of the horse stables, a long exterior slat had blown off in the storm. The slat lay in the mud where it had landed. Junior picked up the slat and turned it over so that the nails that had held it in place were planted into the soil, making it safe for the moment for little feet.
At the back of the house, the edge of a double-bladed ax had been buried deep into a round chopping block. The upper blade stood up from the block like an accident waiting patiently for a victim. Junior dislodged the blade, and carried it into the milking barn, to hang it on wall pegs.
At the weedy garden beside the house, a garden rake lay in the weeds with its tines pointing up. The footprints of the children traced a path beside it, leading around the house to a trail that ran into a stand of trees. Junior took the simple precaution of turning the rake over, so that its tines were pointed downward.
With slow resolve, he came back to sit beside Branden, saying, “It doesn’t really help to keep busy, Professor. I’ve always wished I could be like Aunt Lydia. That’s what’s going on with these whiskers. I haven’t joined the church yet, and I can wear my beard any way I like. Aunt Lydia thought it was perfect. She is a nonconformist. She was a nonconformist. When I do join the church, I’ll have to conform.”
Junior Yost’s blonde whiskers were a thin line, carefully trimmed to take a sharp bend at the base of his jaw. The fancy beard came forward on a narrow line and widened at the corners of his mouth into a mustache and a pointed chin patch. It made a statement. It was the Rumschpringe statement of a young man who had not yet taken his vows. He sighed and stroked his fingers over his rakish beard. “I’m to be married in the Fall, Professor. I’ll have to wear a proper beard, then.”
Little Dottie came out of the house again with a red plastic pail nearly as big as herself. She climbed up onto the boarded platform covering the water well, and she began to work the iron pump handle up and down. Branden stood up to give her room to work. Junior held to his place. Soon Dottie had water gushing out of the spigot into her pail, and once it was full, she bent her knees, took a firm grip on the metal loop, lifted it down off the platform with a grunt, and set it down on the gravel. Then she jumped down off the platform and struggled back toward the house with the full pail of water, spilling some water onto her plum dress and bare feet with each step that she took.
The professor walked over to her and asked, “Can I help with that?”
Dottie shook her head emphatically. “This is one of my chores.”
Back at the well, Branden addressed Junior again. “I’m sorry, Junior. I’ve been a bit out of it. Did you say your father isn’t well?”
Junior didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He was weeping, with his face buried in his hands. Branden lifted him to his feet and embraced him. The professor’s own tears began to flow, and together they stood arm in arm beside the well, crying out sorrow for Junior’s loss. For the professor’s loss. For the loss of Lydia.
Junior shuddered in Branden’s arms, then released the professor and dropped back onto the well’s platform. Branden sat beside him, saying, “I’m sorry, Junior. I am truly sorry. What can I do? Tell me what I can do.”
Junior tried for a brave smile, but he could not quite manage it. He shook his head. “Lydia was more like a sister to me, than an aunt.”
“I know,” Branden said. “I know. But can you tell me again about your father?”
“Die Maemme told us,” Junior stammered, “not to bother him when he gets like this. We just do our chores. He’s been so sad, lately.”
“Is your mother really gone? What? Visiting relatives?”
Junior shrugged. “She left us. Three weeks ago, with little Esther.”
“I don’t understand.”
“She ran off, Father says, but he’s depressed. He’s sad all the time, now. She couldn’t take it anymore, I guess. Anyway, she’s been gone for three weeks. I’ve been trying to hold the family together.”
“What has your father been doing?”
“Sitting inside, in his corner. He always sits in his corner. But he’s got his shotgun, today.”
“What?” Branden said, popping up and taking a hasty step toward the back door. He turned back to Junior. “Where is he?”
“He’s sitting in the corner. In the living room, with his shotgun again.”
Branden spun and hurried to the back door. He climbed the steps, pulled the screened door open and crossed the mudroom into the kitchen. He passed the long pinewood kitchen table, and he hurried forward into the living room.
All the drapes were drawn. The room was dark. Branden advanced to the woodstove in the center of the room, and dimly in the corner, he saw John Yost in a wicker rocker. The butt plate of a double-barreled shotgun was planted on the floor, and Yost had his boney fingers wrapped around the barrels. The muzzles rested under his whiskers, up against his chin. Yost put his eyes slowly up to Branden, and Branden saw the unmistakable signs of anxiety and depression. Eyes half-closed, with drooping lids. A furled brow casting out the signs of a jumble of troubled thoughts. His mouth downturned with a seemingly unrelenting sadness. Fingers of his left-hand trembling on the barrels of the shotgun. Fingers of his right-hand fumbling inside the trigger guard.
“Go away,” Yost said gruffly.
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“Mr. Yost. John. What are you doing here?”
“Get out!” Yost shouted, rising half-way onto his feet and dropping back down onto the rocker.
“Let me just talk with you, John,” Branden said, being careful not to move.
“She left me!”
“I know. I’ve just now realized that. I would have come sooner.”
“You’re too late, Professor. Yes. I remember you. I remember what you did to Lydia. Her parents have never gotten over it, and you’re to blame. She left us for college, and you are to blame for it.”
“Can you please take that shotgun out from under your chin?”
“Why? My wife’s gone now, too. Esther’s gone. Everything is darkness and sorrow. There’s nothing left for me.”
“Your family is here, Mr. Yost. Think of the children.”
“They have no mother. I have no wife. No hope.”
“Perhaps you are wrong,” Branden said. “Think that you might be wrong.”
Yost closed his eyes and sighed. He opened his eyes again and asked, “What do you want?”
“I want you to put your shotgun down.”
“Can’t.”
“You just wait, John,” Branden said, backing slowly away. “I’m going to use my phone.”
In the kitchen, on the other side of the long table, while still watching Yost, the professor called the sheriff’s cell phone. When Robertson answered, Branden said, “I need you urgently at the Yost farm.”
“Mike?”
“At the Yost farm, Sheriff. Inside. I need you to get over here. John Yost is threatening to kill himself.”
Chapter 6
Monday, August 28
7:55 PM
Sheriff Robertson, sitting on a kitchen chair that he had set beside the Yosts’ wood stove, in the center of the dim living room, got his first-ever look at John Yost Senior.
Yost’s gray hair was long past his ears, and it was in a disheveled, fly-away condition. His long chin whiskers hung straight down onto his chest. To Robertson, they looked thinned out, rather than bushy, as if the man had been plucking nervously at his beard for the last several weeks. Above his lips, Yost had an unusual stubble, where typically an Amish man would have been diligent to shave himself smooth. His eyes carried a hollow aspect, showing a mind cast elsewhere. Or it was a mind turned too far inward, staring at a tumble of disconcerting thoughts. Yost’s was a troubled mind, to be sure. Robertson saw obvious signs of depression and personal neglect. And under Yost’s chin, the black muzzles of the double-barreled shotgun were still parked.
Yost’s fingers on his left hand were clenched tightly, now, around the barrels. The fingers of his right hand were fidgeting with the two triggers. The stock was closed on the two breaches, the sheriff noticed, and the hammers were cocked back ready to fire.
Without turning around to Branden, Robertson spoke softly. “Mike, take the children out of the house, please.”
Branden acknowledged that saying, “Sheriff,” and he began to back out of the room, wondering how he’d be able to gather the children in time. But as he turned, behind him he saw that all the children, youngest to oldest, were clustered in the corner opposite to their father.
Branden stopped to address the sheriff. “Should I get Ricky Niell, Bruce?” he asked. “Maybe Pat Lance, too? I mean, who’s at Silver’s place, still? And who’s available?”
“Call Lance and Niell,” the sheriff said. “And Evie Carson. She’ll know how to talk with Mr. Yost, here.”
“Alice Shewmon, too.” Branden said. “For the children, at least until the bishop arrives.”
“OK, but don’t bring her inside. She can make her arrangements outside. Is there still some light?”
“Some, Sheriff. A little.”
“I’ve sort of lost track of the time.”
“It’s only maybe eight o’clock.”
“Can you get them something to eat?” Robertson asked, and then abruptly he barked at Yost, “No! Don’t do any more of that, Mr. Yost! Take your fingers off those triggers.”
“I’ll hurry,” Branden said, and Robertson answered with a flip, “You think, Mike?”
Branden got the children turned and started back through the kitchen when he heard the Sheriff whispering his name again, “Professor?”
Branden turned back into the room and saw that Yost had his mouth stretched over the muzzles of his shotgun. For his part, the sheriff had his suit pulled back on his right side, with his hand parked on the grip of his small revolver.
Louder and rather sternly, the sheriff said to Yost, “If you are going to kill yourself, Mr. Yost, it would be pointless for me to shoot you. Right? I can’t stop a suicide by using my gun.”
Slowly Yost brought the barrels of his shotgun back below his chin. There was wretchedness in his eyes, as well as resignation. Tears began to flow down his cheeks.
“Just you wait,” Robertson said to Yost. “You wait for my people. My best people. Evie Carson is a good talker. You can talk with her. I’m not really too good at this. It won’t hurt any to wait, and then talk a little bit with Evie. And Alice Shewmon is good with children. She knows how to take care of children. You won’t have to worry about them, Mr. Yost. And your bishop is coming. So, you just hold on a minute, here. You just wait, John.”
A scratchy couple of words issued from Yost’s thin lips. “Left me. Took little Esther. Three weeks. Pregnant again.”
“OK,” Robertson said, reaching out an open hand. “We can fix this. This is something we can help you to fix.”
Yost shook his head with an emphatic ‘No.’
Robertson eased forward on the seat of his kitchen chair. “We’re going to find them, Mr. Yost. Your wife and your little daughter. Then, don’t you think little Esther is going to need her father?”
Tears spilled profusely out of Yost’s eyes. Unrelenting sorrow seized his features. His face twisted like Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream.
“The other children need their father, too,” Robertson continued.
Yost shook his head ‘no’ again and said, “Need their mother.”
“Their father, too, Mr. Yost. What does the bible say? Don’t you remember? ‘A man who will not provide for his family is worse than an infidel.’ They need you to stay here, to provide for them.”
Yost pulled his hand slowly off the triggers and raised a fist to rap his knuckles on his skull. “It’s always so dark in here,” he said, and he reached down again for the triggers. “I can’t stand it any longer.”
Softly, Robertson asked over his shoulder, “Mike? You still here?”
From the back of the kitchen, Branden said, “Kids are outside. I’m going to make those calls.”
“Stay outside with the children.”
“I’m fine right here, Sheriff.”
“What good are you going to do from there, Professor? Really, what good? If he pulls those triggers, you won’t have been able to stop anything.”
Chapter 7
Monday, August 28
8:25 PM
When Ricky Niell pulled his cruiser into the barnyard, the professor had the Yost children gathered beside the water pump. Niell, wearing high-topped leather work boots, climbed out from behind the wheel and said to Detective Pat Lance, “See what I mean about the mud?”
Pat Lance got out on the passenger’s side. As she stood up straight beside the sedan, she slipped a little in the mud and remarked sincerely to Niell, “Thanks for the warning, Ricky.” She came forward in her own pair of work boots, catching her balance against the front fender of the cruiser.
Niell said to her, “The footing is better over here. On the gravel.”
From the back seat of the cruiser, Dr. Evelyn White Carson stepped forward in a plain blouse with a modest collar, and a pleated dress of conservative length. She, too, was wearing leather boots. She approached the professor and asked, “A Schwartzentruber father?” and Branden answered, “Inside through the kitchen and back to the stov
e room. The sheriff is still there. He’s gonna be happy to see you.”
Dr. Carson nodded purposefully and turned for the back door. She was a psychiatrist who had helped years ago with the Martha Lehman case, and more recently with Darba Winters. Her skill as an analyst had caused Robertson to trust her increasingly with delicate negotiations, such as one a month ago when she had talked an armed suspect out of his house without injury to his wife and daughter, who had been held captive for seven hours.
Carson paused in front of the screened door to look back at the professor. “A shotgun?” she asked, and Branden nodded.
“So, a vest really wouldn’t help much,” Carson said with a thin and anxious smile.
Ricky said, “Anyway, I have a vest in the trunk if you want it, Evie.”
Carson shrugged and came back down the porch steps to the gravel. Ricky returned to his cruiser, brought back a vest, and he helped Carson strap herself into it.
Carson was a short woman with a round aspect to her build, and Niell adjusted the Velcro straps for her. It was a large and thick vest, with collars that wrapped up to surround Carson’s neck. She looked like a member of a bomb disposal squad. She pulled her shoulder-length gray hair out from under the back collar of the vest, and she went inside the house. While she was still on the back porch, Branden came up to the door and called to her through the screen. “Make a right turn into a long kitchen, Evie. Go straight back from there, past a dining table, and into the sitting room. Robertson is at the wood stove, facing Mr. Yost, and Yost is seated in the far corner. It’s a big room, so stay back at first. At least until you’ve assessed the danger.”
Arching a brow, Carson nodded and turned into the kitchen.
Outside, Pat Lance and Ricky Niell got busy at the water pump, rinsing the caked mud from the feet of the five younger children. Once finished, they had each of them sit on the edge of the well’s platform, with their feet hanging over to dry in the warm evening air. They were lined up as if for a photo shoot for something like Ohio Magazine, the boys in matching blue denim outfits and straw hats, and the girls in their plum dresses and black bonnets.