Chapter 12
Chapter 12
T he lulling clickety-clack of a railway roused Leo from his slumber. He was taken back in time to an assignment in Europe, one that included a ride on a train. If not for the fact that he got into a fistfight with a Russian snitch, it would have been a pleasant journey. “Where are we?” he croaked without opening his eyes. It was bright, past dawn. Already the sun hurt his head. His mouth tasted like he’d been using paste sticks as lollypops.
“New York,” Esther said.
“Good. The city is anonymous.”
“Leo, we’re not in the city,” Esther said. If he didn’t know better, he might say her tone was wry. With effort, he pried his eyes open, looked out his window, and did a double take when a horse stared back at him. The clickety-clack hadn’t been from a railroad, but rather the sound of horse hooves on roadway. Not much surprised Leo these days; he’d seen it all. But the sight of a horse four inches from his face was enough to leave him speechless. Esther laughed and the car turned left. Leo blinked, disbelieving. The town had the trappings of modernity —restaurants, stop lights, gas stations. But tied up at each store was a horse and buggy.
“What is this place?” he asked.
“Home,” Esther replied, sounding weary and resigned, all at once.
“You’re…you’re Amish?” Leo asked, well and truly shocked.
“Leo, my last name is Stoltzfus.”
He blinked at her. “So? I thought maybe your family was German.”
“We are,” she said, motioning around them. “But I’m not actually Amish. I’m Mennonite.”
“What’s the difference?” he asked.
“Electricity and buttons,” she said in a way that let him know it was likely an old joke. “My parents were raised Amish and left.”
“So, are they, what’s the word, shunned?”
“No, they left during their rumspringa.”
“You say that word like it should have meaning to me,” he said.
“It’s a time in an Amish child’s life when they’re given freedom to experiment with everything outside the religion. It’s also the time when they’re allowed to leave the faith, before they’re baptized.”
“Why doesn’t everyone leave?” he asked. “It must be a hard life.”
“It’s…complicated. The strings of community are thick. Without it, you’re left on your own.”
“You said your parents weren’t shunned,” he reminded her.
“Shunned isn’t the same as not being part of the community. For instance, when we have get togethers, my family isn’t allowed to eat with everyone else.”
“So they are shunned,” he said.
“No,” she said, shaking her head in frustration. “Shunning is hard core. Despite how the media makes it seem, it doesn’t happen often, and it doesn’t happen lightly. When you’re shunned, it’s as if you don’t exist. No one is allowed to look at you or talk to you. You are ostracized, completely, until you repent. I still have relationship with my extended family, there are merely a few specific restrictions.”
“Wait a minute, we can’t go to your home. Whoever is tracking you has insider information. They’ll follow us here,” he said. His brain felt sluggish. Who was he kidding? His everything felt sluggish. Now that his meds had worn off, pain had made a vengeful return. It rippled through him, causing his teeth to chatter. He clamped them together and clenched the fist on his good hand.
“This isn’t exactly my home. This is where my aunt and uncle live. It’s off the grid, not connected to me in any way.”
They wended their way through town, such as it was, and to an oversized white farmhouse. Several barns and buildings hovered unobtrusively in the background. The one thing that made the house stand out, at least to Leo, was the lack of wires. No electricity. No cable. No telephone. In the back, far from the house, was a tiny little building on blocks.
“Is that what I think it is?” he asked Esther.
“What do you think it is?” she replied.
“An outhouse.”
“Then yes, that’s what you think it is,” she said. She parked the car. No one appeared to greet them, but Leo still had the sense they were being watched. It took effort to scrape himself from the car. His body had grown sore, stiff, and weak during the long ride. Esther came around to link her arm with his, offering assistance. She was too little to be of much physical service, but the gesture was comforting. Everything about Esther was comforting, he realized. She was turning into his lifesize security blanket. More like an Amish quilt, he thought before quickly shoving away his thoughts to focus on the task at hand.
They limped to the door and Esther knocked. It was answered by an Amish woman of indiscernible age. She might have been his age, his mother’s age, Esther’s age. With her hair pulled into a severe bun, no makeup, and ubiquitous Amish shirt and skirt, it was hard to carbon date her.
“Esther,” she said, and that was the last word Leo understood for the next forty minutes. Esther spoke some gibberish, motioning occasionally to Leo. The woman spoke gibberish in return, looking more than a little shocked and concerned. Esther stood on her toes, peeled up his sleeve, and showed the woman his injury. She clucked her tongue, her concerned tone deepening to outright worry.
They were invited inside where the conversation continued. Leo had spent considerable time in Germany as a young marine. While there he picked up a handful of words. None of those sounded like these. Unable to understand a syllable of what was being said, he turned his attention instead to inspecting the house.
The kitchen was massive, the size of his entire apartment. The table was equally as large, solid oak, with ten matching chairs. To his right was a giant wood stove. The day was chilly and the stove was apparently in charge of heating the house. Leo had no idea what it was like upstairs in the bedrooms, but the kitchen was toasty warm, almost unbearably so. He rested his head in his hand, fighting against the pull of sleep. Esther put her hand on his good shoulder and rubbed a soothing little circle.
The woman, presumably the aunt, stood, her tongue clucking again. Esther stood and gathered Leo’s hand in her smaller one.
“Come on, Leo.” He wondered if they were heading upstairs, but no. They went through the kitchen and out the back door to a smaller house, tiny in comparison to the other. Unlike the warm and inviting kitchen they’d just left, the small house was closed up, slightly musty, dark, and cold. Esther and the aunt began opening curtains. They spoke a moment more, the aunt pointing to something, and then she was gone. Esther bent and began building a fire in the centrally located woodstove. This one wasn’t as large as its cousin in the main house, but then it didn’t have to be.
Leo watched her, mesmerized. He wasn’t much of an outdoorsman, hadn’t built a fire since his survival training. Esther did it as if it were routine. He wondered if it was, wondered how many times she’d done it in the past. Seemingly within moments she had it going and added a few small sticks of wood. Satisfied that it had caught and would take off, she began selecting which wood she would add next, tilting her head, sorting through the stack. Leo realized he was waiting for her to speak. A normal person would fill him in on everything he’d missed, but Esther wasn’t a normal person.
“Esther, what was that? What happened? Where are we? What did you tell her about our situation?”
She faced him, tearing her attention off the piece of wood in her grasp with effort. “Hmm? Oh. That was my aunt Lydia. She and my mom are sisters. This was her husband’s parents’ house. We call it the Dawdy haus .”
“Why?”
“Because that’s what we call our grandparents, Dawdy and Grossmammi . When they reach a certain age, the oldest son takes over the family homestead and the Dawdy moves into a smaller house, sort of like retirement. They get to stop working, to be cared for. His parents lived here until they died a couple of years ago. She’s letting us stay here for a bit, for as long as we need.”
“Just like that?” he asked. “Your Amish aunt is letting us stay in her in-law’s house out of the blue, no questions asked?”
“Oh, well I told her you were a policeman and you’ve been injured, that we needed a quiet spot for you to recuperate.”
“That makes sense for me, but what about you? Why does she think you’re here?” he asked. He felt like there was something he was missing. Esther had already returned her attention to her wood selection and fire. She added the piece in her grasp and brushed her hands together before turning to face him again.
“Oh, I told her we’re married.”