Shadows of Lancaster County (21 page)

“You have your mom’s face and your dad’s smile,” I said as we pulled
apart. If a boy could be described as “pretty,” then that’s what he was, with delicate features and gorgeous long eyelashes. He was also tall for his age, with Bobby’s lopsided grin and a single dimple in his cheek. Without a doubt, in about five or six more years, the girls were going to be flocking to him like flies to shoofly pie.

I was glad that the kitchen was nice and warm, not to mention well lit, thanks to a big lamp that hung over the broad table. Against the wall sat a wood-burning stove, which gave heat to the entire room; near that was a sitting area, illuminated by a floor lamp connected to a propane tank under its round, wooden base.

After the enthusiastic greeting, everyone returned to what they had been doing when I arrived. The women were getting dinner on the table, and once I had taken off my coat and hung it on the peg by the door, I offered to help. Grete said that dinner was under control but that Isaac could probably use a hand picking up a pile of wooden blocks from where he had been playing with them on the floor near the wood stove. I was happy to oblige, and I plopped down next to him on the floor. As we worked, his shyness seemed to dissipate, and the more vocal he became, the more he reminded me of Bobby. Despite a few odd expressions I assumed were rooted in the Pennsylvania German dialect, he did not have his mother’s lilting accent at all but instead sounded like an average American kid.

By the time dinner was served, the blocks were all put away and my nephew seemed fully at ease with me. At dinner Isaac insisted I sit beside him, which thrilled my heart. Maybe in that special way kids have he could sense my need to bond with him despite the years we had already lost.

I was astounded at the sheer quantity of food that was heaped upon platters on the table: pork chops in sauerkraut, homemade bread, noodles in butter, and a variety of vegetables that the family had likely grown and canned themselves. After a silent prayer, everyone dug in, and even the women scooped up generous portions of butter for their bread. I had forgotten how heartily the Amish ate, especially the men, who had built up an appetite working the farm all day. No one in this family was overweight, though I had to wonder about their cholesterol levels.

The meal passed so pleasantly that about halfway through I simply allowed myself to sit there and take it all in. How could I have forgotten what it was like to be in an Amish kitchen and listen to the gentle banter, the politeness of the children, the sweet teasing of the husband and wife?

As we ate, I kept thinking of the day after the fire, when I was consumed with fear and guilt and rage and heartache over all that had happened the night before, not to mention the uncertainty of how everything was going to play out, legally speaking. My prayers during and immediately after the fire—prayers that God would spare Lydia’s parents and keep Reed safe as he tried to find them inside the burning house—had been fervent and heartfelt, but by the next day I had decided that perhaps God hadn’t cared enough to answer those prayers. With Reed in the hospital suffering from third degree burns and Lydia’s parents both dead along with their newborn baby, I even began to question the existence of God altogether.

I remembered vividly the next day, when Bobby and I were finally released from custody. As we walked out of the police station flanked by our parents and their lawyer, we passed through a gauntlet of photographers and reporters shouting questions and snapping pictures. At the parking lot, we came face-to-face with a small group of Amish men who had been waiting by my parents’ car. I thought they were there to condemn us or call out accusations, but much to my shock, when we got to them, they simply asked the press to give us some privacy and waited in silence as one by one the media retreated—one of the few times the press had acted with dignity throughout the entire ordeal.

“We have come to let you know that we forgive you,” one of the Amish men said finally, looking from me to Bobby. “The deaths of the Schumanns was a terrible tragedy, yes, but we harbor no ill will. Speaking on behalf of the victims’ family and the entire community, you have our forgiveness.”

“Please to let us know if you have need or want of anything,” another one added.

We were touched and surprised, though it was only the first of many similar such acts that would take place over the next few months. Eventually,
when I got up the nerve to ask an older Amish friend how we could have been forgiven so fully, so instantly, she quoted a verse from Matthew, the one that said if we forgive men their trespasses, our heavenly Father will also forgive us. I knew it wasn’t that simple, but at least it was a place to start.

Even though the general public saw the Dreiheit Five as nothing less than amoral monsters, the Amish community embraced us at every turn, sitting in the courtrooms at our various trials, even asking the judges for leniency in sentencing. I hadn’t understood where they managed to find such generosity of spirit, but I kept thinking all along that if Christ Himself had been there, He would have done those things too. Just seeing God’s love in action like that was enough to break through the wall that the fire had erected in my heart and eventually lead me back to Him, back to my faith, back to a private rededication of my life and a renewed faith that had grown steadily ever since.

According to Lydia, to many of the Amish she knew, living the way they did was more about preserving their culture and heritage than it was about true faith. I wasn’t so sure about that. Among the Amish who embraced us so wholeheartedly, what I saw in their actions was nothing less than vivid evidence of the Holy Spirit alive in their hearts. I may not have understood their willingness to live life as they did, but I respected it, and I knew they were walking, talking examples of Christ’s love at every turn. Years later, after the Amish school shooting, the nation would be shocked at the Amish forgiveness extended to the killer and his surviving family, forgiveness that was swift and complete. I, however, had not been surprised at all. I knew they would act as they did because I had once benefited from the same thing myself. Now here I sat in the very kitchen of the house I had helped to burn down, sharing a meal with the children of the couple I helped to kill. If that wasn’t a true example of Amish grace, then I didn’t know what was.

“Don’t eat yourself full, Ezra,” Grete scolded her younger brother as he took a third helping of noodles. “There’s cake back yet.”

“We can make snow ice cream too,
yah
?” Ezra asked.

“Please?” added Isaac. “I put out the…s-squares…like you said.”

“The squares?” Lydia asked, looking at her son with sudden concern. “The cookie sheets, you mean?”

“Yeah. I put them out in the clear, where they’ll fill with…w-white cold.”

A look passed between Lydia and Grete, one I didn’t understand. For a long moment, everyone at the table was silent and oddly uncomfortable—everyone except Isaac, who reached out to take another helping of bread. As he did, he knocked over his glass of milk.

“Schushlich!”
Nathaniel said, quickly rising to grab a towel.

A few sentences passed between him and Grete, though in the Pennsylvania Dutch dialect I didn’t understand. From their tones and body language, however, I gathered that she was trying to calm him down, telling him not to make such a fuss over spilled milk. She and Lydia cleaned it up, and after taking a deep breath, Nathaniel sat down and returned to eating his meal. I didn’t know Nathaniel that well, but his reaction had surprised me. I thought he was more easygoing than that.

“So how do you make snow ice cream?” I asked, trying to fill the uncomfortable silence that followed.

“You take clean snow and add to that milk and vanilla and sugar,” Lydia explained, forcing a smile. “Have you never done that before?”

“I may have, as a child. Actually, come to think of it, you guys are probably the ones who taught Bobby and me how to make it when we were just kids.”

As soon as I said Bobby’s name, everyone around the table again grew silent. This time, even Isaac seemed aware of the tension.

“Aunt Anna, do you know where my daddy is?” he asked me suddenly.

“Not exactly, but I have some good ideas about where to look for him.”

“Is probably a good thing Daddy is not here tonight, though, or he might eat up all the snow ice cream,
yah
?” Lydia added, smiling at Isaac and forcing her voice to sound lighthearted.

We got through the rest of the meal without incident, and soon the older men were bundled up and off to the barns to tend to the cows before bedtime and the women were at the sink, washing all of the dishes by hand. Again, they wouldn’t let me help, and in a way I was grateful. Their movements were efficient, born from years of going through the same motions night after night. I knew my way around a dishwasher, but it had been a long time since I’d washed dishes by hand, so I was glad I wouldn’t have the chance to embarrass myself.

Isaac and I cleared and wiped the table instead, and then we went over to the sitting area where he asked me to read to him. I was happy to oblige, but between the warm kitchen, the heavy meal, and my lack of sleep last night, after a few picture books I could scarcely keep my eyes open.

When the men returned bearing two cookie sheets heaped with snow, I was spared from having to read any more. By the time the ice cream had been made and consumed, I was definitely ready for bed.

Fortunately, so was everyone else. At the stroke of nine, Nathaniel read aloud from a German prayer book, and then Grete doled out flashlights. Lydia led me upstairs to the room I would be using, which couldn’t have been more than forty degrees. Caleb had already placed my suitcase on a chair in a corner, and once Lydia lit the kerosene lamp on the bedside table, she pointed out the stack of sweaters she had left for me on the bed, said goodnight, and excused herself to join Isaac in the room next door.

Using the lamplight and the flashlight, I went through my clothes, trying to find comfortable layers to sleep in. As I did, it struck me that without any electrical outlets, I wouldn’t be able to charge the batteries in my phone and my laptop overnight, as I usually did. I turned them both off, hoping the power they still had in them would hold until I had a chance to get to some electricity. Carrying a pile of clothes, I used the bathroom at the bottom of the stairs to brush my teeth and get changed, grateful at least that the Amish in this community were allowed to have indoor plumbing as long as they drew from a well or a cistern and not the municipal water supply. Finally, I came back up and crawled into the bed, blew out the lamp, and pulled the heavy covers up to my chin. Though
I could almost see my breath in front of me, somehow I managed to fall asleep almost immediately.

I didn’t stir again until after midnight, when a noise awoke me. Startled, I sat up in the bed, trying to get my bearings in the pitch-black darkness.

The sound was coming from outside, a clicking noise that sounded like a door lock or a gate latch. I slowly lifted the green shade that obscured the window and peeked out, holding my breath.

The snow had stopped falling and the clouds had given way to a crystal clear night sky. Amid sparkling stars, the half-moon shone down on a winter landscape, the ground covered in a blanket of pristine white snow. Movement caught my eye, and sure enough I watched as someone stepped out from the shadows of the house and began running across the back field. It was a man, obviously young and fit from the way he moved, dressed in a leather coat and jeans. On his head was a dark knit cap with ear flaps that hung loose from the sides, the strings blowing behind him as he ran.

I grabbed the flashlight from the bedside table and crept to the room where Lydia slept, next door. At least she and Isaac were both safe, gently snoozing away in the twin beds there. I reached out and shook Lydia’s shoulder, careful not to shine the flashlight in her eyes. Once she was fully awake and seemed coherent, I explained what I had seen.