Plain Jayne (15 page)

We trailed around the farmhouse while acting like airplanes, elephants, football mascots, and newspaper editors, the latter two involving a lot of jumping and waving of arms. When that burst of energy, well, burst, I collapsed into a handy rocking chair.

As I rested, Mary Ellen whispered into Becky's ear, cast a furtive glance at me, and ran behind a corner. Becky followed. They stayed back there, giggling, peeking, and whispering.

“What are they doing?” I asked Doyle.

He looked away, shy.

“What are you doing, Mary Ellen?”

“We're sneaking!”

Amish children snuck? I had no idea. I turned to Doyle. “Do you like to sneak?”

He nodded without making eye contact.

The whispering continued. “Would you like to sneak with me?”

A pause…and a nod.

So we snuck. And after a successful campaign, Doyle, Becky, Mary Ellen, and I decided to turn our attention on Sara, who looked as though she had the easier time of it. She held the baby, and the baby was fine with the state of the union. But then, Sara had been around babies all her life. She probably knew exactly what to do.

We started behind the chair, then sprinted across the room to the stairwell, followed by a covert jaunt to the kitchen doorway and a shorter distance to where Sara stood, bouncing the baby and looking out the window.

“Oh good, there you are,” she said, not at all startled by the children tugging at her skirts. “Can you hold Baby Ruby? I need to start dinner.”

“Me?”

“Yes.” She held Baby Ruby out.

I stepped back as if Baby Ruby were a smallpox blanket. Maybe “jumped” would be more accurate.

“I don't know what to do with babies. I've never been around babies.”

“I thought you said your sister has a little girl.”

“Yes, but—”

“And you saw her when she was tiny?”

“I did, but—”

“Baby Ruby is a baby too. And she's a real easy baby.”

“You mean she doesn't poop? Or cry? Because that's my definition of an easy baby.”

The children behind me giggled at my use of the word “poop.” I guess such things are humorous to children across all walks of life.

Sara rolled her eyes. Teen eye rolls, I guess, are also the same. “Of course she has…movements…and sometimes she cries, but she's a real good baby and I need to start dinner.”

“But—”

“She doesn't bite. She doesn't even have teeth yet.”

Baby Ruby gave a smiley, toothless giggle, proving Sara's point.

“I don't think—”

Sara didn't give me a chance to think. She placed Baby Ruby in my arms in such a way that if I didn't take the baby, she would have fallen to the floor.

To my credit, I knew enough about babies to know that the whole floor thing would be bad.

Baby Ruby looked at me and blinked. Then burped.

“You need to hold her so her head is supported.” Sara moved my arm until Baby Ruby rested just under my collarbone, with my hand propping up her lolling head.

“Is she okay?”

“She's fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Very. Can you take the children to the living room?”

“I have the baby!”

“They can entertain themselves.”

And they did. They played happily, resuming their game of sneak while I held Baby Ruby.

Then the unthinkable happened. Baby Ruby urped and released a tiny cry. “Sara!”

Sara poked her head out of the kitchen. “What do you need?”

“She's not happy!”

“Bounce her up and down. Take her to look out the window.”

“Can she see that far? I mean, is her vision that good?”

“If it makes her happy, does it matter?”

She had a point. I followed her instructions, and to my surprise it worked. Baby Ruby quieted instantly, her head nestling against me.

This wasn't so bad. In fact, it was rather nice.

Baby Ruby yawned. I agreed.

B
aby Ruby grew heavy, so I sat in the rocking chair. Mary Ellen and Becky herded Doyle into a game of house. Doyle found himself instructed to check on the cows. Often.

These were happy kids. Were all kids this happy? All Amish kids? I suddenly found myself beginning to rethink my previous opinions on the short end of the human race. Maybe they weren't so bad or difficult.

Corruptible, probably, but I'd been watching over this brood for thirty minutes and none of them had tried to wield knives or leap from windows. Perhaps I wasn't the terrible influence I thought I was.

Perhaps.

I might have sat in that rocking chair forever if Sara hadn't finished starting dinner.

“She hasn't bitten you yet, has she?”

“Not yet.”

Sara leaned over my shoulder to look at the baby. “She's asleep.”

“Really?” I craned my neck to see. Baby Ruby's soft eyelashes rested against her cheeks, just as Sara said.

No wonder she'd become so heavy. Had to say, Baby Ruby was awfully trusting. She didn't know me from Eve. How did she know I wasn't going to kidnap her once she lost consciousness?

I touched her head gingerly. “I can't believe she fell asleep.”

Sara shrugged. “She'll wake up hungry at some point. Did she try to root?”

“Root?”

“Try to nurse?”

“You mean, on my—”

“I don't think she's nursed anywhere else.”

I could feel my cheeks turning pink. “But I, um, I don't…have any… you know.”

“Babies don't know that. Don't worry. Naomi should be back from town soon.”

A part of me felt disappointed inside. As disturbed as I was about the whole nursing thing, I was liking the sleeping baby, contented children experience.

Was it like this for Beth? Had my niece been anything like Baby Ruby?

How much had I missed?

I asked Gideon over dinner if he'd heard anything from the police.

“No,” he said with a shake of his head. “There has been no call.”

I didn't point out that the phone, such as it was, was in an exterior shed ten feet from the house and didn't have an answering machine.

But then, the police probably guessed that the Burkholder residence wasn't much of a telecommunications hub. I'd wished at the time that Gideon would have given them Levi's number, but that would have meant acknowledging Levi as a son, and Gideon didn't seem too keen on that.

Sara and I finished the dishes while Leah and Samuel finished their nightly school assignments. Elam and Amos still seldom spoke to me, although it seemed they avoided me less since the car ride to church.

Meaning that they didn't necessarily leave the room when I walked in.

I wrote in my journal on my computer that night, wanting to get the details of my time with the kids and the soccer team of conflicting emotions that kicked my thoughts in circles around my head.

Seriously. I was conflicted to the point that my internal metaphors were getting weird. I rolled my head around to the side, willing my tense neck muscles to relax. I remembered my Tylenol PM. And my melatonin. Seemed like a good idea—I could use a good night's sleep.

The household noises subsided as everyone went to bed. I continued typing until the warning bubble on my desktop advised me to save all my documents lest anything be lost when my computer died. That was fine with me; I could barely see straight.

I tucked my laptop into its case, resolving to drive to Levi's shop sometime the next day to recharge the computer batteries.

I yawned, burrowed under the layers of quilts, closed my eyes, and let the over-the-counter sleeping pills carry me away.

Noises outside reached my ears just before I fell asleep.

I burrowed deeper. Probably another one of Sara's many admirers. I'd been through this before, and tonight didn't strike me as being a good night to fly around in my nightdress.

The amount of clatter increased. For Pete's sake, this particular boy wasn't very good at the whole courting-in-secret thing. I heard a horse whinny, and then I heard another sound.

A word. Followed by several more, and not the kind I heard out here. The Amish weren't much for colorful language.

My eyes opened. Who would talk like that? I could hear the rumble of a motor. I knew some of the boys drove cars before they were baptized into the church, but it's not as though you'd drive to a girl's house, impress her with your command of expletives, and bring a horse along for kicks.

I edged out of bed and peeked out the window. Boys with backward-facing baseball caps and saggy pants were leading Shoe out of the barn and away from the house.

I racked my brain for any reason how this could be construed as something harmless. Came up empty. It's not as though horses need midnight walks when they can't sleep, and even if that were the case, I don't think saggy pants are high on the list of horse-wrangling wear.

Before I could talk myself into a different course of action, I shoved my feet into my shoes and pulled on my armored motorcycle jacket.

I don't know why it hadn't occurred to me last time to wear my jacket. Maybe I was getting better at the whole Amish-defense thing.

I burst out onto the porch and assessed the scene. Three boys in hooded sweatshirts skulked in the driveway. One of them held Shoe's reins.

“What do you think you're doing?” I yelled, deliberately making as much noise as possible.

Shouts of “Dude!” and “Get out, man!” broke out. They began to scatter, but the boy holding Shoe's reins made a mistake. In his panic, he tugged Shoe closer to him while extending his foot. Shoe's hoof landed solidly on the kid's thin Converse sneaker.

The boy cried out and yanked his foot back, the force of which sent him sprawling on his backside. He tried to get up but yelped when he put weight on that foot.

The other hoodlums didn't wait for him—they jumped into a beat-up Datsun and sped away, scattering gravel in their wake. The kid on the ground shouted obscenities at them, ending in a whimper.

“What is going on?” Gideon stepped out onto the porch. Behind him I could see Martha, a quilt wrapped around her shoulders.

“Three boys were trying to take Shoe,” I said. “This one got stepped on.”

The kid's eyes widened at the sight of Gideon, whose sleep-mussed beard gave him a fearsome expression. In desperation, the boy backed away in a sort of crab-walk.

“If you are hurt, you should let us help,” Gideon said. “It's fifteen miles to town.”

“Do you want me to call the police?” I asked.

“Not yet.” Gideon stepped off the porch and approached the boy. “What is your name?”

The kid looked sideways and back. “Drew.”

I didn't believe him, and I could tell Gideon didn't, either. “Oh. What is your real name, Drew?”

This time “Drew” didn't break eye contact. “Mike.”

“How is your foot, Mike?”

“It hurts.”

“Can you take off your shoe?”

Mike looked from me to Gideon to Martha.

“If your foot is broken,” I said, “it may swell to the point that you can't get your shoe off and they'll have to cut it off. Your shoe, not your foot.”

“Oh.” He fumbled with the laces, which were halfway untied as it was. When he removed his sock, the dark purple of the spreading bruise could already be seen.

“Shoe has big feet,” Gideon said.

“Shoe?” Mike shot a confused glance at the sneaker in his hand.

“The horse,” I answered. “The horse's name is Shoe.”

“He has big feet,” Gideon continued. “He's a draft horse, used for pulling, not for riding. Did you have something you needed pulled?”

“Huh?”

“Were you taking our horse because you needed to use him for something? A plow or a cart?”

Mike didn't answer.

“If you needed to borrow him, you only needed to ask. Though, daytime's
the best time for asking. I can understand if you didn't want to wake us. If there's something real important that needs pulling, I can wake one of my sons to help you. Is there?”

Mike shook his head.

“Someone borrowed our buggy a day or two ago. Do you know where'n it might be?”

The boy looked away.

“Your foot does look like it's swelling. Do you want us to call someone for you? Take you to the clinic in town?”

“We took your buggy,” Mike blurted.

“Oh?”

“We hooked it up to Nate's truck hitch.”

Creative.

“Why did you take it?” Gideon sat on the ground.

Mike looked down, shame covering his features.

In that moment I was able to see him the way Gideon clearly did—not as a punk kid with an agenda of hate crime, but as a lost kid. A kid not beyond reach.

“It was just a joke,” Mike said in a small voice.

“Hmm.” Gideon thought on that. “Maybe it will be a funny one when we get it back. Do you know where it is?”