Sandra Hill - [Jinx] (18 page)

Till the ice was broken by . . . who else? Tante Lulu. She said, “I ain’t seen so much black and blue since Tee-John fell off a tupelo tree and practic’ly broke his tailbone.”

Everyone looked at her.

“He was skinny-dippin’ from a limb over Bayou Black when it broke and sent him flyin’. ’Member that, Tee-John? Ha, ha, ha! The nurse at the hospital took one gander at yer bruised hiney and said mebbe they oughta put a cast there.”

“
Mais, oui!
After that, I started flashin’ my ass, I mean, hiney, at the girls in my class at Our Lady of the Bayou School. That black-and-blue butt, she was lak a badge of honor, yes.”

“Sister Serenity soon put a stop ta that, though, bless her heart.”

“Tell me about it. She gave me a matchin’ color on my other cheek with that switch of hers. Talk about!”

Stone-cold silence continued.

“What?” Tante Lulu asked, looking right and left. “Did y’all suck on a bunch a lemons? Did we say sumpin’ wrong?”

“Maybe they don’t like you mentionin’ skinny-dippin’,” John said with a grin. It was obvious that the scamp could care less if they’d offended anyone.

“Don’t Amish kids go skinny-dippin’?”

“It’s the words
butt, hiney,
and
ass
that’ve thrown them for a loop,” Caleb drawled, then made a comical face at Levi’s sneering face.

“Well, mercy’s sake! Everybody’s got one.” Tante Lulu threw her hands up in the air with exasperation. “Though I lost mine about nineteen-eighty-two.”

A ripple of giggles erupted, then an outright hoot from Caleb’s father, followed by a wave of laughter. His mother had a hand over her mouth, hiding her amusement.

“God bless that old woman,” Caleb said to Claire.

“You should probably thank St. Jude, too,” Tante Lulu called down the table. She must have ears like an elephant.

Finally, it was all too much for Caleb. The poor man put his face in his hands. His shoulders were shaking. Claire feared he would have a breakdown in front of everyone. Did he really want to be seen crying like this?

“Caleb? Honey? Do you need a tissue?”

He raised his head, and she realized he wasn’t crying. He was laughing hysterically. Like a screwball.

And people say I’m crazy.

Chapter 11

The homecoming from hell . . .

“Take this church spread wit ya, Caleb. It alveese was yer favorite.”

Caleb stared at the plastic container his mother shoved in his hands as he prepared to leave. “Ah, Mam!” It was sad beyond belief that she didn’t know the Caleb he was now. He would no more eat that concoction of syrup, marshmallow, and peanut butter on a piece of no-fiber white bread than he would shoot up with sugar.

Still, he took the container from her and leaned down to give her a kiss on the top of her head. “
Denki,
” he said.

“You’re welcome.”

Everyone had left within the past fifteen minutes. All the family had gone in their buggies, including Dat, who was off to Bishop Lapp’s home; Jonas, with Lizzie, in his truck back to his business; and the Jinx folk back to the B & B. He was about to follow.

Claire had wanted to stay behind, but he wouldn’t let her. Clearly fuming over his shunning, she’d probably be giving Dat and Mam lectures on Indian family practices and how the Amish could learn a thing or two from them. Or else she’d have a slug fest with his father, despite her claims of being a pacifist.

Not one of his brothers and sisters, his nieces and nephews, had dared break the
Bann
today. It was ridiculous the way they’d had to communicate with hand signals for “Pass the bread” and “More lemonade?” and then “Your turn” at the outhouse. Aaron, his second oldest brother at forty-one, who’d always been a pole-up-the-ass jerk even when he was younger, probably broke a few
Ordnung
rules when he’d mouthed at Caleb, “Traitor,” but that was okay, because Caleb had mouthed back at him, “Asshole!,” causing Aaron’s eyes to about pop out of his sanctimonious head.

“What will happen next, Mam? Is this a one-day reprieve, and will we go back to the way things were? Will Jonas and I still be shunned?”

His mother took his hand and walked toward the Jeep with him. Her silence was answer enough.

Son of a bitch! Son of a fucking bitch!
he railed inside, but he remained silent, too, just watching this older woman who was his mother, yet was not.

Had she shrunk? He didn’t recall her being this short or frail-looking. She was sixty-five, but sixty-five wasn’t that old today in the regular world. Yeah, he’d expected the gray hair, which had been mostly blonde the last time he’d seen her, but her back was slightly bowed from all those years of bending . . . over washtubs, gardens, quilting, and endless canning. And Dat . . . oh, how he had aged! Pure white hair and beard down to his belly, spindly legs and arms, eyes a bit rheumy, possibly with cataracts from the way he squinted sometimes. They’d all changed so much.

“You look so different now, son,” she said, as if reading his mind.

“Better or worse?”

“Different.”

That was a nonanswer if he ever heard one.

“You left a boy and returned a man. You left hurt and angry and returned hurt and hardened.”

He shrugged, not about to apologize for being hard. That’s how he’d survived. “We all change.” He forced himself to smile and squeezed her hand. “Even Dat.”

Dat had shocked them all today by welcoming him and Jonas to his table, by speaking to them when the
Bann
clearly forbade both.
What does it mean?

“
Jah,
he shocked me, too.” Then she motioned for him to sit on a bench near the chicken coop. She had a tight hold on their linked fingers and wouldn’t let go, even as they sank down. “Did ya miss home, Caleb?”

The birds behind them squawked their opinion of these two humans sitting so close without feeding them. God, the place reeked of chicken shit and cow manure. How could he have forgotten how overpowering the outside smells were? And pee-you, but a couple of his brothers and nephews could use a stick of Right Guard. No electricity or plumbing. Stubborn mules for plowing. Putrid pigs to slaughter. No, he hadn’t missed this a bit . . . or at least not for more than a dozen years. “I missed
you,
” was all he would say. “And Dat, too, except I was mostly angry at him for not standing up for me. You backed him up, Mam. How could you do that?”

“With a broken heart and a bucket of tears. It is our way, son. Alveese has been.” Unspoken was “always will be.”

“What next?”

“Well, Dat is gonna talk ta the bishop and elders. If they did this vile thing, they will pay for it.”

That’s not what he meant. Oh, well! “In money? That’s all?”

“There will be church penalties, too. Maybe they will be barred from service for a time. And forced ta confess their sins before the congregation at Sunday meeting.”

“And that’s all? I get shunned for life because of an accident, and they get a smack on the hands?”

“The difference is in the confessing. Ya never would do yer kneeling. Ya wouldn’t bend ta the elders’ will.”

That’s for damn sure.
“Listen, I’ve got to go. I’ve been away from the project too long as it is.” His cell phone had been ringing constantly the past hour. Ronnie with concerns about their safety and giving him the Jinx policy numbers for the insurance adjusters, which he’d already relayed to Famosa. Abbie with an update on her insurance situation. Mark with a preliminary list of damages.

His mother nodded, tears in her eyes.

“I don’t know when I’ll see you again . . .
if
I’ll see you again.” He waited for her to say something like, “Of course we will be together again,” but she didn’t. She couldn’t.

As if sensing his thoughts, she said, “Try to understand, Caleb. I would leave . . . maybe yer Dat would, too. We could go live Mennonite like Jonas. But I couldn’t bear the shunnin’. Not bein’ able to talk to my children and grandchildren. Not bein’ able to eat wit’ them at my table.”

But what about me? What about Jonas? Are we disposable and the rest of them aren’t? How fair is that?
He said none of that, even though he felt as if a KA-BAR knife had been stuck in his heart. It was hopeless to expect anything more, he realized, but that’s just what he’d done.
Fool, fool, fool!
When Dat and Mam had talked to him today, he’d foolishly hoped that their shunning of him and Jonas was over. Now he just leaned down and kissed his mother’s cheek. “Good-bye, Mam,” he said, and he meant just that, with finality.

As he backed the Jeep down the drive, he noticed his mother sitting in the same spot, tears streaming down her face.

Hopeless.

Sometimes only a brother’s shoulder would do . . .

Despite the need to get back to work, Caleb stopped at Jonas’s home first.

Before he’d even turned the ignition off, Jonas was out on the porch. “Welcome, brother, welcome,” he said, motioning for him to come up the steps. Then he surprised the hell out of him by pulling him into a big hug and refusing to let go—or maybe it was Caleb who was holding fast.

“What a day! What a day!” Jonas said against his ear.

Caleb couldn’t speak over the lump in his throat, knowing that Jonas suffered just as much as he did. He understood, without words. Finally, he drew away and noticed the wetness in Jonas’s eyes, probably matching his own. “You know what really sucks, Jonas?”

He had to give Jonas credit for not flinching at the word
suck
or asking what it meant. “What, Caleb? What . . . sucks?”

“They love the others more than they love us.”

“
Ach,
Caleb, that’s not true.”

“Yes, it is. Today they made a choice. Do they continue the
Bann
or shove it down the bishop’s throat? They chose the status quo.”

“You’re bein’ too harsh.”

“I wish! Mam said as much to me a few minutes ago. She and Dat would ignore the
Bann,
or leave the church, except for the pain of losing their other children and grandchildren.”

Jonas flinched.

“I’ll go even further than that. You know how some kids who’ve suffered child abuse from a father or male figure end up hating their mother when they grow up, for not stepping in and ending the cruelty? Well, I’m starting to feel that way about Mam.”

“Dat never abused us.”

“You don’t think the shunning is a form of abuse?”

Jonas looped an arm over his shoulder, squeezing. “Well, at least we have each other now,
jah?
”

“
Jah,
mine
Brudder,
” Caleb said in an exaggerated Pennsylvania Dutch voice that made Jonas’s lips turn up with humor.

“Come meet the rest of your family, brother. My children.”

Soon Jonas’s kids, initially shy of Caleb, were crawling all over him, asking question after question, while Lizzie and Jonas watched, beaming with pleasure.

“Have ya ever been in an airplane?”

“Have ya ever jumped out of an airplane?”

“Do ya know the president of the United States?”

“Can ya go fly fishin’ with us?”

“Where’s yer gun?”

“Why don’t ya have a gun?”

“How come ya don’t have kids?”

“Have you ever kill—”

“That will be enough,” Jonas said, cutting his son Noah off. “Caleb has ta go back ta work.”

“Will ya come back? I kin make ya some tasty gingersnaps.” Eight-year-old Fanny sat on his lap, arms wrapped around his neck, and refused to get off till he answered.

“You couldn’t keep me away, sweetie, and gingersnaps are my favorite,” he said, pushing some blonde hairs that had slipped out of her braids behind her ears. The girl was adorable.

“I have a snakeskin collection,” nine-year-old Noah told him.

What a thing to collect? Eew!
“Hey, I happen to be personally acquainted with the biggest snake in these parts.” He extended his arms wide to illustrate. “His name is Sparky. I’ll bet we could find one of his shedded skins around the cavern somewhere.”

Noah stared at him as if he was some kind of god, or Santa Claus. “A snake with a name? A big snake?”

“Yep.” He ruffled Noah’s shaggy hair, which hung down past his ears. It looked as if his hair had been cut with a bowl over his head, bangs and all, like a Dutch boy.

Jonas’s kids dressed plain, but not as plain as the Amish. They wore colors and patterns and different styles. Some of the Mennonites also used electricity and drove cars.

“Why dontcha come back fer supper t’night?” Jonas suggested, walking him to the door.

“I don’t know if I can. It depends on how things go this afternoon.”

“We could eat late . . . at seven?”

Seven is late?
“I’ll try, but how will I let you know if I can’t make it?”

“Ya could call me on the phone.” Jonas grinned at him.

“
You
have a phone?”

“
Jah.
I need it fer my business.” He handed Caleb a business card.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“Ya didn’t ask.”

He punched his brother in the arm. “You have a beautiful family, Jonas.”

“It’s yer family, too. Uncle Caleb.”

They smiled at each other.

But then a silver Corvette pulled into the lane beside the house, and out crawled the nurse of red-boots fame, except today she wore high-heeled sandals, tight black jeans, and a glittery yellow tank top. “Hi!” She waved. “I brought homemade lasagna. Anyone hungry?”

Jonas’s jaw was practically sitting on his chest. “Don’t ya dare leave now,” he whispered to Caleb.

Caleb figured it was his cue to leave Dodge. “Brotherly love only goes so far. She’s all yours.”

Welcome to my wigwam, baby . . .

“The tab so far is twenty thousand dollars. Are you sure they’ll pay for those kinds of damages?” Famosa was tapping away at a calculator on the library desk.

“They better,” Caleb said. “Either that, or charges will be filed. Either way, they pay.”

“We don’t have any proof,” LeDeux pointed out.

“And really, Peach, why would the Amish do something so . . . violent?” Famosa wanted to know.

“They think that I’m a bad influence. A shunned Amishman coming back, flashing a car, English clothing, and all the trappings of a world they consider evil. Temptation on the hoof. Throw into the mix my military background, and they consider me Lucifer in the flesh. Put me in a cavern that’s all dark and spooky, and they figure it’s the ultimate bad guy’s lair where I’ll be performing Satanic rituals, all to lure their young people away from the fold.”

“If you’re Satan,
mon Dieu,
what’re we?” LeDeux pointed to himself, Famosa, and Mark, as if they were less devilish than he was.

“My minions.”

“Minions! Talk about! No way am I a minion,” LeDeux declared. “I’ve gotta be a fallen angel, at least.”

“LeDeux, you are a moron,” Famosa said.

“Why, thank you very much,” LeDeux replied.

“Are they always like this?” Mark asked him.

“Always,” LeDeux and Famosa answered for him.

“Anyhow, stop worrying about the money, you guys. I’ll meet with my father and the church leaders tonight. Meantime, we’ve got to get these items shipped or picked up. Read the list back again, Mark, to see if we’ve missed anything.”

Mark picked up the notebook in which he’d been writing. Luckily, he was right-handed. “Three air tanks, one wet suit, three sets of flippers, two twenty-foot and four thirty-foot lighting cables with bulbs, a caving ladder, six lengths of SRT nylon rope with accelerators and decelerators, two SRT harnesses, six safety helmets, and a bunch of small miscellaneous items. Oh, and I made arrangements for a new door to be built. Ironically, the carpenter is Amish, from over in Belleville. He won’t be able to come for three days, though.”

“Okay, Famosa, you’re making a trip to the Jinx warehouse in Barnegat to pick up the diving equipment, right?”

“Yeah, but some of it needs to be special-ordered and delivered here. No sense having them ship to Jersey.”

He groaned. “And how long will that take?”

“Two days with special handling.”

“And I’ve gotta make a trip today to Pittsburgh to a lighting supply manufacturer,” LeDeux said. “Some of these cables we need aren’t available locally.”

“I figure it’s going to take us five days to get back to the point where we were yesterday at this time,” Mark announced.