Among the Wicked: A Kate Burkholder Novel (12 page)

I recall Suggs mentioning that the girl is special needs and about the same age as Rachel Esh had been. She’s got a round face and chubby cheeks mottled with acne. Though she’s wearing a black cape, I can tell she’s overweight. Her pale blue eyes are slightly strabismus, or cross-eyed, and possess the guilelessness of a much younger child.

“Hi, Anna.” I reach out for a shake. “Cold enough for you this morning?”

The girl smiles, looking uncertainly at my hand. “Even my nose is cold.”

“She’s shy until she gets used to people.” Mary elbows her. “Get on up front with your
datt
so Kate and I can sit back here and talk.”

I raise my hands. “Thank you, but I don’t mind riding up front.”

The woman reaches into a slot behind her and pulls out another afghan. “Figured we might need an extra this morning.”

Taking the cover, I climb into the buggy and settle onto the seat a respectable distance from Abe.

“What’s in the bag?” comes Anna’s voice from the rear.

“Anna!” Mary exclaims.

Smiling, I turn. “Date pudding,” I tell her. “Do you like it?”

The girl’s eyes light up. “It’s my favorite. I helped Mamm and Rachel make it once and it was good.”

I hold my smile, not even allowing myself to blink. “Is Rachel your sister?”

Anna falls silent, her eyes dropping to the afghan.

The woman picks up her daughter’s hand and rubs it between both of hers as if to warm it. Sighing, Mary turns her attention to me. “Rachel is a girl who stayed with us for a while. She wasn’t getting along with her family. We tried to help.…”

“She went to live with God,” Anna adds.

“Oh.” I feign shock. “I’m sorry.”

“It was a bad thing,” comes Abe’s voice from beside me.

“Rachel was a troubled child,” Mary adds.

“She went out in a snowstorm and died in the cold,” Abe finishes.

“How incredibly sad,” I murmur.

“It was truly awful and a terrible loss,” Mary says.

Though I’m already privy to the details of Rachel Esh’s untimely death, it doesn’t take much effort to show that I’m aghast at the thought of a young girl freezing to death.

“It must have been devastating for her parents,” I say with a shudder.

Abe clucks to the horse and jiggles the reins. “She’s in a better place,” he says as the horse breaks into a working trot.

No one mentions the possibility that Rachel may not have been alone. I don’t press the issue; I’ve probably already asked too many questions. Instead, I make a mental note to get Anna alone at the first opportunity.

Mary makes small talk as Abe drives the rig onto the main road and heads north. Within minutes, we fall in behind another buggy. At the next turnoff, a third buggy pulls onto the road behind us. We pass a group of teenage boys decked out in their Sunday best—black overcoats, black flat-brimmed hats, and black trousers—walking alongside the road.

The frigid air chafes my face as the horse sets a fast clip. By the time we turn into the narrow dirt road that will take us to Schrock’s place, there are six buggies in the caravan. My cheeks are numb, and though I’ve pulled the afghan up to my waist, I’m shivering. I attribute it to the cold, but my nerves are stretched taut beneath my skin as we draw closer to our destination.

The area is heavily treed with ancient hardwoods that soar sixty feet into the air. Abe makes a final turn. We pass a white clapboard schoolhouse, and then a massive bank-style barn looms before us like some primordial beast. The two-story structure is painted white with a tin roof gone to rust. It’s nestled in a clearing with horse pens to the right and a small pasture that slopes down to a creek on the left. The large sliding front doors stand open and I see a dozen or so men milling about inside. Vaguely, I wonder where the women have congregated.

Abe makes a U-turn and stops the buggy in front of the barn with a low “whoa.” A boy not yet in his teens goes around to the horse and, watching Abe, waits for us to disembark. Picking up the bags of date pudding, I slide out of the buggy and wait. Mary climbs down, but I can tell immediately that Anna needs assistance, so I jump in to help. Once we’re out, Abe nods to the boy, who will take the horse to the paddock where the animal will be unharnessed, stalled, and given water and hay.

Worship is a time of anticipation for the Amish, but it’s also a time filled with quiet reflection and hope. Conversation is hushed and respectful. Smiles are subdued. Laughter is not appropriate, even among children.

“This way, Kate.”

Carting the bags, I follow Mary and Anna to the barn door. Some of the men have gathered beneath the overhang at the end of the building. Having grown up in Painters Mill, I’d attended hundreds of worship services before leaving the fold. Generally, the ordained men enter first, followed by the older men, the married men, the married women, the unmarried, and, finally, the teenagers. The order of things is atypical here; the women are nowhere in sight, and I remind myself that this is a different church district, a different state, and that Eli Schrock is originally from Lancaster County.

I keep my gaze cast down, but I feel the men’s eyes on me as I go through the door. We enter a common area where I imagine the farm implements, wagons, and buggies are usually stored. All that has been cleared to make room for the congregation. The interior is dimly lit by several lanterns. It’s warmer, but not by much. The smell of wood smoke fills the air, and I spot an old-fashioned potbellied stove in the corner. A boy of about ten years of age has been charged with keeping it stoked.

A scarred wooden table has been set up at one end of the main room. Dozens of backless benches have been arranged in rows separated by an aisle. At the rear, a dozen or so chairs have been neatly arranged. Several are occupied by elderly women.

“We’ll put the pudding in the tack room.” Mary motions to a door with a step up to a wood plank floor.

Nodding, I take the two bags into a room that smells of molasses and leather. A lantern flickers from atop an oak barrel. Two women stand next to a rectangular table already teeming with food: pies, rustic breads, and a ham dotted with cloves that looks home-cured. Steam rises from the spout of an old-fashioned enamel coffeepot.

“Hello,” I say.

A stout older woman wearing a black bonnet and heavy black cape smiles at me. “You must be the widow from Ohio.”

I introduce myself.

“Welcome to New York,” the younger of the two says. “You settling in okay?”

I tell them I’m renting Bowman’s trailer and the two women exchange looks. “It’ll be a nice cold winter for you.”

They get a good chuckle out of that.

The older woman jabs a thumb at the bags I brought. “What do you have there?”

“Date pudding,” I tell them. “Where shall I put it?”

“Just set it up there with the rest.” The older woman looks past me. “I believe Bishop Schrock is about to begin, so we’d best get in there.”

By the time we enter the main part of the barn, the last of the unmarried men and teenage boys are coming through the door single file and making use of the benches in the back. As is usually the case, the women are seated on one side of the aisle, the men on the other.

The smell of kerosene from a large space heater mingles with the aromas of woodsmoke, the food in the back room and the lingering scents of hay and sweet feed and horses. I haven’t attended a preaching service in years, but already I feel the anticipation of that first hymn building inside me.

It’s a reverent moment and, though I don’t know any of the people around me, a shared kinship. In unison, the men remove their hats, placing them beneath the bench upon which they’re sitting. I don’t feel like a cop as I take my place on the bench with the rest of the single women and visitors at the rear of the room. I’m young and Amish and the words to the first hymn venture from the recesses of my memory.

Mer misse glawe an sell was unser Harr un unser.

Heiland Jesu Christi uns g’sagty hot.

Ja, sell hot er g’sagt. Ja ich glab, sell is recht.

We must believe in that which our Lord and our

Savior Jesus Christ told us.

Yes, that’s what He said. Yes, I believe that is right.

The hymn is followed by a period of silence. I should be observing those around me. Taking an inventory of the number and ages of the children present. Scrutinizing those children for signs of abuse. Instead, I close my eyes and the old prayer from
Die Ernsthafte Christenpflicht
—
The Prayer Book for Earnest Christians
—pries into a brain that doesn’t necessarily welcome it.

O God and Father of all light and comfort …

The words come back to me with astounding clarity and ease. When you’re Amish, some things are so entrenched, become such a sacred and immovable part of your life, that you can’t escape them. Worship is one of those things, and not for the first time my roots threaten to overshadow who I am today and why I’m here: to infiltrate this group, ask questions, and, hopefully, glean new information that will either exonerate them from wrongdoing—or put me closer to unraveling the mystery of Rachel Esh’s death.

I’ve moved on to a silent reciting of the Lord’s Prayer when a male voice calls out the number of the next hymn. I open my eyes to see an older Amish man with a long salt-and-pepper beard standing at the bench where he’d been sitting. He begins to sing and within a few syllables, the rest of the congregation joins him until everyone is standing and singing.

When the second hymn is finished, the congregation falls to silence once again. The squeak of a hinge echoes within the room. The steady tread of boots thuds against the wood plank floor. I glance toward the front to see a tall, black-clad Amish man approach the preaching table. His beard is shot through with gray and reaches his waist. He moves with a masculine grace and a certain physical power that reveals he’s comfortable with who and what he is. When he looks out at his audience, I can’t help but notice piercing eyes the color of a nor’easter. A full mouth that would have been feminine on another man. His face seems to be cut from sculpted leather, the kind that’s weathered sun and sleet in equal measure but never lost its sheen.

I know immediately that the man is Eli Schrock.

Looking at him, I’m reminded of a painted portrait, the kind in which the eyes follow you, judging and weighing, and never look away. I know that’s not the case, but in the seconds before he speaks, I feel his eyes on me, as if he’s sought me out. I actually experience a rise of alarm, as if he knows my weaknesses, my lies, the sins of my past.

He sets large hands against the preaching table, leans slightly and begins the
Anfang
, the introductory sermon, in a deep, singsong voice. For the next three and a half hours, Schrock takes his congregation through the main sermon, several prayers from
Die Ernsthafte Christenpflicht
, benediction, and, finally, the closing hymn.

Once Schrock makes his exit, the congregation rises. The men replace their hats. The crowd exits the same way they entered, according to age and status. I’m in one of the last groups, so I use the time to introduce myself to several women, taking a few minutes to get myself noticed as “the newcomer” before heading to the food area.

The aromas of cinnamon, yeast bread, and coffee titillate my olfactory nerves as I move closer to the tack room. I’m exchanging pleasantries with a cute twentysomething woman who is expecting her first child when I notice a line of sorts has formed and I’m somewhere in the middle of it. Through the crowd I catch a glimpse of the cause. A quiver of anxiety ripples through me at the sight of Eli Schrock standing in the doorway, greeting everyone as they enter the room.

He takes his time and seems to relish speaking with each and every member of his congregation. I watch him carefully as I move ever closer. He shakes the hands of both men and women. With an elderly woman, he takes her hand into both of his and bows his head slightly as he speaks to her. He holds the most elevated position in the church district, and yet he’s respectful of his female elders. Even from a distance I discern his charisma. He’s engaging and attentive, with a demeanor that oozes benevolence and beckons trust. But there’s power there, too, and the strength to make the tough decisions when needed.

The woman behind me says something. I turn to her and we exchange a pleasantry. Then suddenly it’s my turn. Eli Schrock stands just two feet away. So close I can smell him: a combination of hand soap, alfalfa hay, and coffee. Tilting his head, his eyes find mine, and in that instant the rest of the crowd melts away. Anxiety scratches at the back of my neck as he scrutinizes me. I know it the moment he realizes he’s never met me, and he steps closer.

Bowing my head slightly, I extend my hand. “It was a good preaching service,” I say in Pennsylvania Dutch.

“Humility is the way of the Lord.” His hand closes over mine. I’m keenly aware of the heat of it. The scuff of calluses against my skin. His eyes are dark gray, nearly black, but a light seems to radiate from within.

“You’re the widow from Ohio,” he says.

The statement takes me aback; I know better than most how quickly word of a newcomer travels among the Amish. Still, I’m surprised he knows who I am. “I’m Kate Miller and I’m happy to be here, Bishop.”

“We welcome you.” He’s still gripping my hand, looking at me with such intensity that I struggle to maintain my poise. “You’ll be living permanently here in Roaring Springs?” he asks.

“Yes.” I’m cognizant of the woman standing behind me, waiting her turn.

Schrock doesn’t seem to notice her. He’s still holding my hand, looking at me intently, unhurried. “You’re planning to join the church?”

“As soon as possible.”

“Good.” He releases my hand. “We’ll make it official next Sunday.” He turns his attention to the woman behind me.

Giving myself a small mental shake, I continue on.

CHAPTER 10

The tack room bustles with activity. It’s ten degrees warmer than the rest of the barn and filled with conversation in
Deitch
. Suggs had told me there are approximately a hundred and fifty people in the community. I don’t know if that’s an official number, but I’m guessing the number is closer to two hundred.