The Imposter (19 page)

“Oh.” Birdy sank down in her chair. It wasn't unexpected news, but it was still so sad. So very, very sad. “So that's where Noah's been today.”

“Yes. Ephraim was taken off the ventilator yesterday afternoon, and passed away around noon today. Sadie called me at the store to let me know the news. I was planning to go back to the hospital this afternoon, but that won't be necessary. She said they're all heading to the house.”

“How is Noah doing?” He was a solitary character, that Noah. Lean and lanky and not at all interested in school or in making friends with the other children.

“Quiet. Sad. Surrounded by lots of family.” He smiled. “Last night, gathered around the hospital bed, the entire family sang hymns. I think it was . . . a good death for Ephraim.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “The viewing will be tomorrow and Wednesday, and the funeral on Thursday.”

“So no school on Thursday.”

“No school on Thursday,” he repeated. He frowned in thought, then looked up. “I think you said something about a bug attacking Luke Schrock.”

“Yes, yes I did. It's been a frightful thing for him.” Her eyes lifted to the corners of the ceilings. She was sure the bug must live in the back of the room near Luke's desk.

“It only strikes Luke, you said.”

She nodded, but she didn't dare move in case she knocked something else over.

“Have you ever noticed what's going on when Luke gets stung?”

“No, not really.”

“Is there any chance that my daughters could be involved?”

“Your girls? Why, no. No chance at all. Lydie and Emily sit up front. Molly is over there. And Ruthie—” she pointed to the far row—“she's on the opposite side of the room.”

David walked over to Ruthie's desk and turned to look at Luke's desk. “What I meant was—do you think the younger girls might have been the focus of attention for the children while Luke was getting stung?”

Birdy thought back to what was happening during today's bug attack event, but she didn't feel comfortable describing the circumstances to David. It had been Molly's turn to read her short essay to the class. The assignment was to finish the prompt of “My Favorite—” and write a two-paragraph description about something they liked.

Molly had stood by Birdy's desk and read the title, “My Favorite—” and before she could finish, Luke shouted out, “Food! The more, the merrier!”

Molly burst into tears and
zap!
The insect stung Luke. The entire class erupted into chaos. The boys ran to examine Luke's newest injury, the girls surrounded Molly to offer comfort. It took quite a bit of time to settle the students back into their seats. This time, Birdy had Luke stay after and sweep out the schoolroom.

The reason Birdy didn't want to tell David the story was because Molly's story was, indeed, about her favorite food. Ice cream.

She realized that David was waiting for her answer. “It is . . . possible . . . but . . .”

David strode over to Ruthie's desk, lifted the lid, moved some books around. He stilled, and held up a peashooter. “Aha. I think this might explain a few things.”

Birdy's mouth went wide. “But . . . how . . . when . . . ?” How could she not have noticed? What kind of teacher was she? How obtuse! How mortifying. And, more importantly, what must David think of her?

But David wasn't thinking about Birdy. He was holding the peashooter in both hands and snapped it in two, a clean break. Then he put it back in Ruthie's desk and closed the top. “If you don't mind, I'd like to keep this between us. It would be good for Ruthie to think you're on to her. She's sneaky, that daughter of mine. Anna used to say we had to ‘outfox the fox' with Ruthie.” He took his hat off and fingered the brim. “Birdy, I'd like an honest answer. Do my daughters get teased often?”

Slowly, Birdy nodded. “Mostly Molly. The twins look after each other.”

He raised his chin and nodded wisely, as if to say,
Ah, I see.
He didn't seem to be surprised. “Molly has a naïveté that makes her a target. Always has.”

No wonder Birdy had a soft spot for Molly. How well she understood her. Birdy had been teased endlessly throughout her school years. If it wasn't because she was a head or two taller than most everyone, it was her fascination with birds. She used to bring crumbs in her pockets to school and wander off to a quiet place during lunch to lay the crumbs in a circle around her. She would sit as still as a stone until one bird, then another, ventured close. She learned to imitate birdcalls and could summon them as effortlessly as other children whistled for their dogs. Eventually, certain birds learned to trust her and would perch on her open palm to eat crumbs. That was the year her formal name, Betty, was altered to Birdy. The boys meant to insult her but she loved the nickname and it stuck.

David worried his hat in a circle. “Well, hopefully, the mysterious bug stings have been stopped before Ruthie put Luke Schrock's eye out.” He thumped his hat back on. “I bet
ter not keep you. So long, Birdy.” They smiled at each other and a moment of subtle appreciation fluttered between them.

“David, before you go, what made you think Ruthie was the culprit?”

“On Saturday, Mary Mast mentioned that she used to teach school. She remembered a boy shooting off a peashooter in her class. It seemed like something Ruthie might do to protect her sisters from getting teased. She's tricky, that Ruthie. Quiet but effective.”

Birdy's heart sank. Mary Mast was not only lovely, but she was clever. And David had spent time with her on Saturday. Apparently that lucky woman, whom Birdy knew would swoop in one day to win David's heart, had arrived. A fresh wave of envy rolled over Birdy.

God forgive me,
she thought, ashamed of her uncharitable thoughts.

Later, when David was finishing up a few extra dinner dishes that the girls had missed, he thought about the peashooter in Ruthie's desk. He wished he could share that story with Anna. Knowing his wife, she would have laughed and laughed to hear it. She was such a woman for that kind of thing, finding amusement in their children. His hands stilled in their scrubbing, and he shut his eyes. He could hear her voice as if she were standing in the kitchen beside him. She would have said that peashooter solution sounded just like Ruthie; she found a way to get the job done—that of silencing Luke Schrock—and avoid any blame. For a moment, the memories of Anna were so sharp they took his breath away.

He heard a heavy clump on the porch as Jesse jumped onto
it from the walkway, splattering icy mud all over the porch. Then the kitchen door squeaked open and there he was, hungry as a bear and full of interesting news. David shook off his melancholy, grateful for the gift of his son.

Wouldn't you know, no sooner was Jesse prepared to face down the lurking thugs of Stoney Ridge than they ceased lurking. He kept one hand in his coat pocket at all times, and one eye peeled for errant thugs. But even when he deliberately dawdled on Main Street, passing the time of day in front of the Sweet Tooth Bakery, he could not draw them out.

He had Andy Miller to thank for that, no doubt. It was as he indeed hoped, that Domino Joe and his goons were wasting no further time on him. Which was a lucky thing, because Jesse was growing fond of this little charming town. With the exception of Fern Lapp, most people were softening toward him as he became acquainted with them. He found that if he offered to do a stray task that housewives wanted to dodge—clean out a clogged drainpipe or empty ashes from a cookstove—it brought him an invitation to stay for the evening meal. With Molly's cooking being what it was, he happily accepted all invitations.

But he kept the brass knuckles with him at all times, just in case. His concealed weapon was at the ready, and there was never an occasion to use it. A huge disappointment.

Thursday was Ephraim Yoder's funeral. The service would be held in the Yoder's barn, so David went early to see if there was anything he could do to help get ready. The Yoder farm sat in one of the most picturesque settings David had ever seen. A hill rose up behind it on the west. To the south, a broad meadow was dotted with Jersey dairy cows, placidly cropping grass as calves gamboled around their mamas. Beyond that a wide stream created a natural barrier to keep the cows from straying. David heard the rush of water over stone as the creek twisted and bent into thick woodland. A big barn stood to the south of the house, with a corral of horses grazing on lush grass. A broad porch stretched across the front of the house. Rocking chairs were perched along the porch, as if waiting for visitors to come calling.

As soon as David arrived, he went to the barn to make sure the benches were in place and, indeed, they were. Someone had seen to it: neat rows lined up evenly in the center of the barn. He glanced at his watch. Still a half hour before others would start to arrive. He sat on a hard backless bench in the
back row—the men's side—and looked across the rows to the opposite side—the women's side. It felt good to gaze upon the many benches, to think of and pray for all who would be sitting on them soon. How he had grown to care about them over this last year!

Today, the entire church would stop business as usual for the day—school was canceled, his store was closed, even farmers who needed a sunny day like today to harvest hay would forego the chore—everything stopped. People young and old would come together to worship God and to thank him for the life of Ephraim Yoder. And to bury Ephraim in the cemetery down the road. The last thing they could do for their friend.

David looked again at the benches in the barn, facing each other. These benches were a reminder that when everyone came to worship, they weren't isolated individuals but a family of God. They came to worship not just to see and hear but to pray and praise God with one another. As a community.

This.
This was the Plain life he loved so much.

David soaked up this moment of quiet, of stillness. Just being here in this beautiful silence was an act of worship. An aspect of the Amish life that he loved most dearly was that solitude and silence were normal conditions of everyday life. Whenever he went into town, he felt barraged by noises: people talking on their cell phones, the squeal of car brakes, the earsplitting sirens of emergency vehicles. Last time he went to the post office, a county worker blew leaves off the sidewalks of Main Street with a gas-powered leaf blower. A man couldn't even hear himself think!

To David's way of thinking, there was an intimate connection to God in silence. Silence created an open, empty space
where he could become attentive to God, as he was right now, where the useless trivialities of life began to drop away.

This.
This was his life. The life he loved.

After the burial of Ephraim, and after the lunch that would follow, and assuming there was an opportune time, David planned to tell Katrina's news to Freeman, Levi, and Abraham. David gathered all of his stray thoughts and pushed them aside so that he wouldn't be distracted during the preaching of his sermon.

He rose to start preaching, but soon his eyes went to Katrina. She looked scared. She had left the hymnbook open on her lap as if trying to cover up what was weighing on her mind. He felt a surge of protective love toward her, wishing that he could shield her from all she would be facing in the coming months.

And suddenly his mind went blank.

Despite hours of prayer and preparation, his sermon gathered in a hard knot just below his heart and refused to budge loose. That sudden expectant silence fell over the church, almost a breath-held quiet, as if the worshipers had sucked in their breath in unison and were afraid to breathe out again as they waited. The silence stretched, broken only by the bleat of a lamb in the barnyard. David's throat tightened up, threatened to close off completely. Of course, as long as he kept his eyes closed and his head bowed, people would think he was praying instead of panicking.

Indeed, he was praying. With more urgency and anxiety at every passing minute. He waited for some words to come, but his mind remained blank. A few people began shifting
restlessly on their benches as the wait stretched out too long. His prayer got more frantic.
Help!

Then, from the back of the women's benches, came a dramatic, elaborate, enormous, over-the-top sneeze and everyone looked around to see who had sneezed. He knew even before he looked up that it was Jesse, helping him out with a distraction, and David couldn't keep himself from smiling. Into his mind popped a picture of Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus. Words began to form in his mind, one after the other, then complete sentences, then paragraphs, and soon, as always, the Lord took over and filled in for what he lacked.

Hours later, after the burial of Ephraim Yoder, David was the last to leave the graveyard. He wanted to make sure everything was as it should be: no piles of uneven dirt or stray leaves left on top of Ephraim's fresh grave. He scooped up some remaining piles of dirt and dumped them beyond the fence, then leaned on the shovel, gazing out over the sleeping land. There wasn't much to see, though there was.

Here in this plain, unadorned graveyard lay the keepers of the faith. Each rough-hewn granite marker looked just like the one next to it because, even in death, no one should stand out as better than another. He felt a great responsibility to these keepers of the faith who had faithfully run the race the Lord had marked out for them. Now it was his turn to carry the torch for them, for all the members of the church, for the next generation.

No, there wasn't much to see here, though there was.

It was always a curious thing to Jesse to see how serious and solemn people were during a funeral service, all the way
to the graveside, but the minute that cold body was dropped in the ground—
plunk!
—it was like the sun rose after a long dark night and everything was back to business as usual. As people made their way back to the Yoder house for lunch, he overheard several conversations about lame horses and broken buggy wheels and how too much rain this year was spoiling their hay harvest.

Freeman Glick cornered him, as he had a habit of doing, to give him a short sermon of admonishment and warnings. One of the subtexts in virtually every one of Freeman's mini-sermons was “Liquor has never passed my lips.” Jesse heard it frequently.

Today's dour warning from Freeman took a more funeral-ish turn: “And when your earthly body is dead and gone, and your soul will meet God face-to-face, will he say to you, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant'?”

These encounters with Freeman always left Jesse stuttering and tongue-tied. He hardly knew he had a soul. Mostly, he had hormones.

While he was recovering from that odd encounter with Freeman, Miriam Schrock swept past him and gave him a brightening glance, and he smiled gamely back. Maybe this was only a mild degree of thawing out from her, but it greatly improved his mood.

Jesse sat with his back against a tree, watching buggies leave, wishing his father would hurry it up. There was some kind of important discussion going on between the church elders and he just hoped it had nothing to do with the Founder's Day Hundred-Yard Dash. Plus, he was getting hungry again.

He saw Danny Riehl help Miriam Schrock climb into his buggy. A pang twisted Jesse's gut, and he knew it wasn't
hunger. Thinking of Miriam Schrock with someone else didn't set well. All the brightness left Jesse, like clouds swallowing up the sun.

And then he spotted Yardstick Yoder down by the barn and jumped up to go talk to him, to try to find out why he had blown off that race on Sunday afternoon, and did he have any idea how much trouble his carelessness had caused Jesse? Even if the goons had been called off, it didn't mean his debt had been forgiven. Or maybe it did? He liked to hope so but he doubted it. He hadn't forgotten Andy's assessment of Domino Joe: he never forgot and he never forgave. Unconsciously, he bent down and rubbed his kneecap.

He picked up his pace to pin Yardstick down, but the boy saw him coming and took off running. Jesse's good mood disappeared as quickly and completely as Yardstick.

After lunch, after families started for home, David found Freeman and Levi, then they all pulled Abraham away from a discussion with Hank Lapp over the use of divining rods as a means to find water, and the four men went up to the porch to have a conversation. David sat on the farthest rocker and leaned forward. He didn't plan to beat around the bush—just tell them the truth. “I learned recently that my daughter Katrina is expecting a baby.” He could feel their rapt attention waiting for him to try to explain the unexplainable.

Freeman, Levi, and Abraham exchanged looks of surprise. And then Freeman started in. “Do you know who the father is?”

“Of course,” David said, letting the implied remark pass. “Of course. But that doesn't matter.”

Freeman leaned forward in the rocker, his feet making a thudding sound. “It does matter. We'll make him marry her.”

“No, we won't,” David said slowly and firmly. “He's engaged to someone else.”

Abraham, always the peacemaker, lifted a hand. “I know of a couple who've been waiting for years to adopt. They'd be wonderful parents.”

David had anticipated this suggestion. “It's an excellent option, Abraham, but Katrina has decided she wants to raise the baby. Our family will help. And no doubt in time, Katrina will find the right man to marry and that man will become the child's father.”

Freeman let his rocker dip backwards, hands folded in his lap. “Well, David, you seem to have one family problem after another, don't you?” He looked happier by the minute.