Separate from the World (7 page)

Branden nodded with a sorrowful smile. “Enos Erb came to my office this morning, just before this happened. He thinks his brother was murdered.”

“The dwarves.”

“Enos is a dwarf, yes.”

Cal said, “So was his brother, Benjamin.”

Branden said, “Right. Maybe we can talk about that, Cal. Out at the house, later this afternoon.”

AFTER LUNCH at the Brandens’, Cal planted himself in a white wicker chair with high armrests on their back porch. He sat there alone much of the remaining afternoon, watching the wind play through the trees at the back edge of the lot. He needed the solitude, and as he watched the trees bend to the weather he let his mind drift on the wind. The spring breeze stiffened gradually and promised rain. Pillow-white clouds grew out of the west and filled the sky. Caroline and the professor gave Cal the solitude he needed to think, and when Caroline once offered coffee, Cal declined.

The professor called Lawrence Mallory and asked him to bring over the essays he needed to grade. When they arrived, he sat in his swivel rocker, staring uselessly at the blue books. Caroline worked at the kitchen table, editing a manuscript for a publisher of children’s books.

In midafternoon, Bruce Robertson called to say that Ben Capper had gone back to campus with the promise of forbearance, and that Robertson was going to give “Edwin Hunt-Myers
The All-Mighty
Third” a good going-over about his night on the bell tower with Cathy Billett. He also reported that although Missy Taggert had not yet finished her postmortem exam, there were no preliminary indications that a struggle might have led to Billett’s death.

When the doorbell rang, Professor Branden pushed himself wearily out of his chair and answered the door. It was Eddie Hunt-Myers, dressed in blue slacks, white loafers, and a white Oxford shirt. Without speaking, Branden led Eddie into the living room, and Caroline joined them there. Eddie sat on the edge of the sofa and stared at the carpet. He seemed shut off from humanity, assaulted by an incapacitating mental turmoil that made him incapable of speech.

Caroline asked, “Eddie, can I get you something to drink?”

Eddie shook his head, glanced over at her briefly with an expression of misery, and turned his eyes back to the carpet. She sat next to him on the sofa. He was big beside her, powerful and tanned, but he seemed as helpless as a child.

The professor took a seat opposite them, again in his swivel rocker, and said, “Eddie, I’m sorry, but the sheriff is going to want to talk to you again.”

“I don’t blame him,” Eddie said. He raised his eyes to Branden. “I must be the dumbest man alive. I blame myself. I wish I had jumped, too.”

“I wish you wouldn’t talk that way, Eddie,” the professor said. “I hope you aren’t going to do anything rash.”

“I can’t stop thinking about her, Dr. Branden. I can’t get the picture of her out of my mind.”

“Eddie,” Branden said, “I think you need to talk to someone.”

Eddie shook his head, opened his eyes wide with dismay, took a deep breath, and raised his palms as if to say he couldn’t make promises about his actions.

Branden said, “Eddie, can you help me understand why you wanted to break up with Cathy?”

With a smile as tragic as his loss, Eddie said, “It wasn’t going to work out. There were too many problems.”

“Why is that?” Branden asked.

“I’m a bit of a simpleton, Dr. Branden. I know boats, the ocean, harbors, that sort of thing. I work at my parents’ boatyard in Florida.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Her folks are big ranchers, Dr. Branden. They want—wanted —Cathy to marry someone with land. Someone who’s big into the cattle business. They had a fellow all picked out for her—the boy she dated in high school. Not some dockhand from the south.”

“I’m sorry, Eddie,” the professor said. “I want to help you.”

“It’s helping just to know that I can talk to you,” Eddie said.

“Come over anytime, Eddie.”

“Thanks, Dr. Branden. It’d be nice if I could come over a couple of times this weekend.”

“Anytime,” Branden repeated.

Eddie nodded his thanks and got up. He looked around the room and said, “It’s nice here.”

Branden walked him to the door and said, “Call my cell phone if I’m not home, Eddie. You’ve still got my number?”

“The one in your course syllabus?”

“Right.”

Standing at the front door, Eddie put his hand out to shake. The professor accepted his hand and said, “I’ll be here grading essays. Come back if you want to talk.”

Eddie left struggling to hold back tears.

 

 

When the professor had finished reading essays, he penciled a grade on each blue book and set the stack on the coffee table, hoping he’d be able to read the essays again on Saturday, before transmitting course grades to the registrar. Depending on the second reading, two of his students might fail the course. Cathy Billett had earned a B+.

The distraction of grading the essays improved Branden’s mood, but he still felt the dismay of loss. He still felt the press of his years. He’d likely change some of those grades once he had a chance to read the exams again. Once his mind was agile again. Still, he was grateful for the familiar task of assessing his students’ work. A second time through, and he’d be happier with his work. It would just have to wait a while to get done right.

The professor set his lapboard on the floor, got up, and wandered into the kitchen. Caroline’s manuscript sat in a neat stack on the kitchen table. She was working on dinner at the stove and declined his offer to help.

“Go check on Cal, Michael. He’s been out there for hours.”

Branden crossed through the family room to the back door.

The wind was blowing across the screened porch, and the temperature had dropped. Cal’s chair was empty. Branden stepped out onto the long porch and saw Cal standing with his hands stuffed into his jeans pockets, down at the cliff edge of the property. The professor took a seat on the porch.

“Try not to be morose,” Branden remembered from Caroline’s note that morning. As he watched Cal’s white hair dancing with the wind, the professor found that request nearly impossible to honor. He closed his eyes on a scene from his childhood, and saw a youthful Cal Troyer with a fishing rod, on the other side of a bass pond. He saw himself hunting pheasant with Bruce Robertson, along the fence line of a high pasture. And the cases they had worked on together played through Branden’s mind—the cases he had worked with Troyer and Robertson over the years, mostly involving the Amish. Most recently, there had been Sara Yoder’s kidnapping, a little less than two years ago.

 

 

When Cal touched Branden’s shoulder, the professor’s eyes were closed, and his thoughts, though not morose, were not particularly happy. There had been so many years. They had all blown away on the breeze.

Cal said, “You don’t look so good,” and took a seat beside Branden.

“Time is an enemy, Cal,” Branden remarked, true to his mood.

“Time is life,” Cal answered. “Death is the enemy.”

Branden nodded. “Caroline thinks I’ve been morose, lately.”

“Probably you have.”

“Even before this,” the professor replied.

Cal asked, “You said you talked with Enos Erb?”

Branden let a silent moment pass and then pulled his thoughts forward. “Yes,” he said. “Enos Erb. Why would anyone murder an Amish dwarf?”

“You’re not sure anyone did.”

“Enos Erb would not have set foot in my office unless he were sure about that.”

“There, you are probably right,” Cal said. “That congregation at Calmoutier is splitting in half, you know. Families are choosing up sides.”

“You knew Benny Erb?” Branden asked.

“Benny, Enos, and Israel. They’re all right in the middle of the biggest congregational split in thirty years.”

“What’s the split over?” Branden asked.

“Science,” Cal said. “Specifically, birth defects. More specifically, genetic research. Your Professor Lobrelli wants to develop gene therapy for the Amish—to reverse the damage they’ve done to themselves through inbreeding. The Amish have more genetic diseases than most people realize, because they marry inside their group. And Enos Erb’s district is so divided that brothers and sisters aren’t talking to each other anymore. Worse, parents and children.”

“Enos didn’t mention any of that,” Branden said.

“He wouldn’t have,” Cal said. “He’s pro-science. His brother Israel across the road is one of the Antis. Benny was caught in the middle, leaning Pro, but living with Israel. It’s a mess.”

“How are we going to sort this all out?” asked Branden.

Cal said, “We’re not going to. There isn’t a sociologist anywhere in the world who’d be able to sort it all out. Families are going to break apart over this. It’s real trouble for Amish folk. If you go pro-science—modern—half of the people you know will consider you lost to them. You’d be shunned. So, right now, everybody out there has a decision to make. The Moderns will work for a cure—cooperate with scientists like Lobrelli. They might have to join a Mennonite congregation if they can’t organize around their own bishop, but that’s what they’ll do.”

“And the Antis?” Branden asked.

“They’ll dig in harder than ever before. It’s already tragic, and it’s going to get worse.”

Branden said, “One of them is dead, Cal. How’s it going to get any worse than that?”

Cal said, “Until I opened the mail today, I had no idea I had a daughter. It’s a shock. But that’s nothing compared to the shock Amish people face when they decide to go modern—when they’re shunned.”

“Is this split the reason Enos Erb thinks his brother was murdered?”

“I don’t know. Amish aren’t murderers. But Enos has a real problem—something like what Martin Luther faced when he nailed his
Ninety-five Theses
to the doors of the Wittenberg church.”

“I think we should go out there, Cal—go see what this is all about.”

“To Calmoutier?”

“Right. Now, if you’ve got time. But what about your letter, Cal? This Rachel Ramsayer?”

“That’s gonna have to wait.”

“What if she’s really your daughter?”

“I need time, Mike,” Cal said, shaking his head. “I’m not ready. Not after all these years.”

MIKE BRANDEN and Cal Troyer drove northeast on State Route 241 to Mt. Hope and then took Mt. Hope Road north to Holmes County 229. At the intersection, there was a single Amish house and the large, open fields of adjoining Amish farms. To the north, the skies were clear, blue, untroubled. To the south there were thunderheads black with turmoil, and lightning flashed along the leading edge, as the storm lumbered toward the east.

Branden turned right onto 229 and followed Troyer’s directions east for several miles, past the old St. Genevieve Church, to a flat and straight stretch where two gravel driveways opposed one another on the two sides of the road. A right turn took them to the Enos Erb farm; a left would have taken them to the Israel Erb farm. At the entrance to the right driveway, Enos had posted a hand-lettered sign on a plywood board:

Edging 229 and set close to the drive, there was a small red barn with a rusty sheet-metal roof. A slat fence surrounding it enclosed a herd of goats. Two billy goats were tethered outside the fence. Forty yards farther down the gravel lane stood the main house—two stories of white wood frame set on pale yellow foundation blocks, with a wide front porch and a green shingle roof. On the lawn between the big house and the driveway, a young boy and girl, dressed in denim blue and flat black, he in a little straw hat and she in a black bonnet, were playing on a sturdy wooden swing set with a green plastic slide. As the professor’s truck approached, the children stopped pumping their little legs and let the swings come to rest. They sat on the swing seats, watching the two English men carefully as Branden and Troyer climbed out of the truck.

Cal called out, “Hi, kids,” but they had no words for him. With blank faces, they watched him approach, apparently unwilling to speak either to him or to each other. Cal thought nothing of it, and Branden knew it was typical behavior. Amish children fall silent in the presence of adults, especially English ones.

There was a side door to the house, covered by a slanting roof of green corrugated plastic. Troyer knocked on the screened door there and stepped back a pace. A woman of average height came to the door, recognized Cal, and greeted him through the screen, “Pastor Troyer.”

The ties of her white prayer cap fell loosely over her bodice. Her dark green dress brushed her ankles, and her black shoes were laced over black hose.

“Hi, Vera,” Cal said. “Is Enos available?”

Vera Erb remained silent while studying the professor, and Cal added, “This is my friend, Vera. Professor Michael Branden.”

Vera nodded a modest greeting to Branden and brought her eyes back to Troyer.

“Enos was in town today,” Cal said. “He came in to see the professor.”

Vera cocked an eyebrow and considered that statement, and Cal realized that she hadn’t known about her husband’s visit to the professor.

“He’s mending tack,” Vera said, and tipped her head toward the stables behind the house.

Branden took a step back, turning toward the stables, but Cal held his place in front of the door. Vera stayed put, watching Cal while nervously drying her hands on a towel.

“Are the troubles getting worse, Vera?” Cal asked.

Vera nodded, ill at ease.

Cal said, “Is Enos going to follow the preacher or the bishop?”

Vera said guardedly, “You’d have to ask him, I reckon.”