The Hallowed Ones (11 page)

“But what about
Rumspringa?
” I asked. My voice sounded tiny, almost petulant to my own ears.

He shook his head. “I can’t leave my father alone. He’s lost too much.”

“What about you and me and going Outside and seeing movies and . . .” My voice faltered, and tears blurred my vision. “You promised.”

He took one of my hands. “You can still do that, in spring, after all this is settled. I’ll wait for you. I promise.” He kissed my cheek. “Nothing will change.”

Yes, it will,
I wanted to say.
There will be no more dreaming aloud of cars and movies and comic books. No candy bars and Coca-Cola. No imagining what the ocean looks like, or what it would be like to go someplace exotic like New York. It’s all gone. You’ll be like my parents, and yours, never dreaming of anything other than what you can see . 
.
 .

My throat closed, and I couldn’t put a voice to those selfish thoughts. It felt like my world was growing smaller and smaller, closing in on me.

***

I returned to the dog kennel after supper, under the guise of checking on Sunny. Glancing at my basket, my mother commented on how I was intending to make the dogs fat. Guilt hammered in my chest as I smiled weakly. I hated lying to my parents, but it seemed as if it was becoming easier and easier.

Maybe this was what it meant to be growing up.

I trudged across the field, my heart heavy with my own sins and with the knowledge that Elijah would no longer be a part of my life and my transgressions. Not the way he had been before. Little sins were expected of young people and largely ignored. But once you joined the church, such dalliances were absolutely forbidden. Nothing from Outside that had not been approved. Elijah would belong entirely to God. And I would not want to tempt him from any of that—but I could feel the chasm already growing between us.

I choked back a sob. My heart ached. It ached for the adventures that Elijah and I had dreamed up for ourselves since we were children. They were all gone now, lost. I knew that he was making the right decision. I understood his reasons . . .

But some selfish part of myself wanted to be first in his heart. Before God.

And that scared me, because that impulse felt truly evil. Ashamed, I placed my hand over my heart and recited the Lord’s Prayer. But I could still feel the hot evil of that seed there, taking root.

“It’s me again. Katie,” I said, as I hauled back the heavy barn door.

As before, the dogs greeted me. I fed them their scraps and headed back to the paddock.

There were signs that the young man had moved during the day. Straw had been disturbed, and the blanket was gathered tight around his ears. I knelt beside him and peeled back the blanket. It was stuck to his hot cheek with a sheen of sweat.

He blinked at me as I did so. His teeth were chattering, but his gaze was lucid. “Bonnet. You’re Katie. From the note?”

“Yes.” I situated the basket between us, feeling suddenly pinned under that icy gaze. “I brought you some supper.”

“Thank you.”

I reached toward him, and he flinched.

“I mean to check your wound.” I showed him my empty hands, as if I were dealing with a wild animal.

He licked his lips and nodded. I gently unwrapped the band- age. He winced as the gauze stuck to the wound. I didn’t like what I saw. The rim of the wound was yellowing, and a red runner crept across his cheek. His skin was scalding under my fingers. I bit my lip. This was beyond my power.

He must have seen that. “How bad is it?” he asked.

I didn’t want to lie to him. “It’s infected.”

He stared up at the ceiling of the barn. “No antibiotics here?”

I shook my head. “No. I’ll wash it out again with antiseptic, but . . .” I knotted my fingers in my lap. “I don’t know what else to do.”

“It doesn’t really matter, anyway,” he slurred.

He seemed to be fighting to maintain consciousness, and I wanted to keep him talking. I brought a cup of milk to his lips. He dribbled it down his cheek. He was too weak to hold his head up. I propped my hand behind his neck to help him swallow. I forced down a cup of milk and another of warm broth.

“What happened out there?” I asked. “What happened Outside?” I thought of the stained knife.

“My motorcycle wrecked . . . I was chased . . .”

His eyelids began to fall, and I wiped the broth from his chin. “Chased by whom?”

“They were fast, faster than me . . . like birds . . .” His eyes became more unfocused, and I wasn’t sure he saw me anymore as his pupils dilated in remembered fear. “ . . . soundless . . . they smelled like blood . . .”

His head lolled to the right, and he passed out.

I shook his shoulder but was unable to revive him. I dutifully cleaned and rebandaged his wound. I didn’t think he would last much longer. He had that smell about him—that acrid smell of illness, sharper than sweat. I’d smelled it on sick cattle, on Frau Miller before she died.

Frau Miller had been pregnant, about to deliver. My mother and I had gone over to the Miller house to help, with kettles for boiling water and clean towels. The midwife, Frau Gerlach, greeted us at the door with worried eyes. Frau Gerlach never looked worried. She was always starched, prim, proper, and in control. That morning her sleeves were rolled up past her elbows, and deep circles ringed her eyes.

“She’s been in labor all night,” the midwife said. “All night with no progress.”

My mother and I climbed the stairs to Frau Miller’s bed. She was covered in a sheen of sweat that stuck her nightgown to her chest. Her long hair was strung out on the pillow behind her. She did not look like the glowing picture of motherhood that I expected. She looked pale, sick, exhausted.

“The baby’s a breech,” Frau Gerlach said. “I’ve tried to turn the baby as much as I can, but she needs to go to the hospital.”

My mother knelt down beside the bed, took the other woman’s hands in hers. “You must go to the hospital. You’ve tried, but you can’t do this alone.”

Frau Miller shook her head. Her expression was peaceful but pained. “The baby will come.”

“You’re too exhausted to push any longer.” My mother wiped her face with a cool washcloth.

At the foot of the bed, I saw her leg twitch and Frau Miller’s face cringe as a contraction overtook her. The midwife bustled me out of the way, but I saw a runnel of blood dripping down the edge of the bed.

“Oh no,” the midwife said. “It’s coming. Coming all wrong.”

Frau Miller turned her face to the pillow and howled as the flow of blood thickened and tapped on the wooden floor. I backed away from the widening puddle. My mother and the midwife were up to their elbows in it, shouting instructions. I grasped Frau Miller’s hand. Her nails chewed into my palms like talons, and I did the only thing I could: I recited the Lord’s Prayer, over and over.

My mother finally fled to the door, her sleeves and front of her apron soaked in blood. She looked as if she’d been butchering. She shouted down the steps: “Someone get an ambulance! Now!”

But it was too late. I felt Frau Miller’s hand loosening in mine, saw her blank stare. She didn’t blink.

And there was no lusty cry of a baby. The midwife was unable to wrestle the baby free before it suffocated with the umbilical cord wrapped around its neck. I learned later that the child would have been another son. An unbaptized son who would never join his brothers or parents in heaven.

The birthing room held the same acrid smell of death about it that I smelled now in the barn. It had taken days to air the Millers’ room out and scrubbing the floor with lemon juice to release it.

I sat back on my heels. Light had drained from the day, darkening the barn, and there was little else I could do for Alex here.

He needed medicine. He needed it or he was going to die. Of this much, I was certain.

I trudged back across the field, my gait and heart heavy. I had interfered in things I should not have. This was an ongoing struggle for me. For the others in our community, following the Ordnung was a reflex, like breathing. It was almost as if . . . they were moved by others. Others’ interpretation of the Ordnung. Not self-controlled, not their own interpretation. I knew that, deep down, I was not like that. I had to mull things over. I followed what I understood. And for that, I was both grateful and afraid.

Something pale moved across the meadow, like a sheet blown by the wind. I squinted at it, shading my hand from the last of the sunset.

It was a horse, riderless, pale as moonlight. I could make out some tack and gear on it. It was not an animal I recognized.

I stuffed my fingers in my mouth and whistled. The shrill sound made my ears ache, but it caught the horse’s attention. It slowed, allowed me to approach it within yards. I saw that his sides were heaving, that he was lathered from running, that the white of his eye showed when it rolled back to me.

“Shhh,” I said. I approached him from the front, showing that I was no threat. “Where did you come from?” I whispered.

The horse blew and pawed, agitated. He finally allowed me to reach out and grasp his bridle, rub his nose. I said soothing nonsense words to him. A stab of fear ran through me . . . If this was an English horse, I could not keep him. The horse, unconscious of the rules, had violated the Bishop’s order.

But I set that aside for now. I could do him the kindness of leading him to water and strip him of his gear, so that he could be free and not encumbered by saddle sores.

I murmured to him in low tones, and he allowed me to remove the bridle. I let it fall in the grass, hoping that it would not be discovered. I think that he understood that I was trying to help him.

Then he turned his side to me, to show me the saddle buckle.

And I gasped.

The saddle was stained with blood, a rusty blotch that spread over the horse’s left side. In the foothold, a torn boot dangled.

I stood still, shaking. The horse glanced back at me with a pleading eye.

I sucked in my breath, timidly unbuckled the strap at his belly while trying to keep the boot from bumping my shoulder. I think that there was still something in it: flies swarmed around it, and I could see a bit of bone peeking out of the top of the boot.

I shoved the saddle away, to the ground.

The horse whinnied, shook himself. I saw that the saddle had left angry red marks along his belly, saw that he was relieved to be free of that horror.

“You have to leave from here,” I said. “Go away.”

The horse stared at me, unyielding. His tail switched.

I made shooing gestures with my hands.

“They will kill you if you stay,” I pleaded.

He snorted and walked away slowly, toward a distant tree line where a creek flowed. My heart broke to watch him go.

But it ached even more for that boot left behind in the saddle.

The next morning I rode my bicycle down the dirt road to the gate that separated our community from Outside. It was an old green girl’s bike with a white plastic basket with flowers on the front and on the banana seat. I’d purchased it from an English garage sale for ten dollars when I was twelve. It was on the edge of what was allowed by Ordnung—bicycles were permitted, and the rules on rubber tires had been relaxed when I was a child. The bike wobbled on the ruts made by the metal wheels of the buggies. Determinedly, I rode slowly to the wooden gate. The gate closed the road, connecting a wood and barbed-wire fence on either side that stretched as far as the eye could see.

A meandering cabbage butterfly drifted through it. The fence was a flimsy thing. An able-bodied person would easily be able to climb over it. It was symbolic, every bit as much an illusion of security as the Hexenmeister’s carefully
crafted hex signs. I didn’t understand how remaining behind a couple of two-by-fours was meant to save us from the end of the world.

I pulled up short before the gate. It had been bolted with a simple iron lock that was probably older than my parents. My heart hammered in my throat as I contemplated breaking the Elders’ edicts . . . again.

But I found that each rebellion was easier than the last. Perhaps this was what they meant about the road to hell.

I lifted my bike up and set it down on the other side of the fence. I clambered gracelessly over the wooden beams and dropped down beside it. Money from my
Rumspringa
box clinked in my apron pockets. Money that could hopefully buy some medicine for Alex.

And I prayed I could avoid whatever that bloody fate was that had befallen the horse’s rider. But I could not, in good conscience, allow a man to die when I could do something about it. All I needed to do was get him in good enough shape to walk, to get him out of here. Like the horse.

Righting my bike, I pedaled off into the sunshine.

Some things about Outside seemed utterly normal. Canada geese flew overhead in their tight formations. A red-tailed hawk perched on a telephone wire, watching me as I rode along the empty pavement. Black-eyed Susans and orange tiger lilies grew in profusion at the side of the road. The sun was warm on my back, and a breeze tickled through the tassels of grass.

As before, there was no traffic. I rode without fear, the wind rustling through my skirts. I pedaled fast up hills and allowed myself the thrill of going downhill at hazardous speed. It was like flying. No one could see me, the flying Plain girl with the wind tearing at my bonnet strings.

But other things were not anywhere close to normal.

I saw a trailer that had burned down to its foundations, the sharp smell of the melted plastic siding still in the air. Closer to the village, a car accident made the road impassible. I had to walk my bike on the shoulder around the abandoned cars.

Sobered, I continued on toward town, where there was more evidence of fire. Burned-out cars had slid off the road into telephone poles. All the glass was broken out of the general store, glittering on the asphalt like ice. Smoke billowed out of the structure.

I swallowed and continued. I was afraid to be Outside alone, without Elijah. But, no matter what, I would have to get used to his absence. I would have to prove to him and to myself that I could.