Fire in the Night (11 page)

“Five hundred! Five! Five! Who’ll gimme fifty? Five hundred fifty! Yes! Six hundred!”

Sarah watched Priscilla, whose pulse was beating against the side of her neck where her sweater had fallen away. The pupils in her large green eyes dilated as she gripped her hands more tightly.

When the bidding escalated to one thousand, she put her hand on Dat’s arm and said it was okay to let him go. Then she turned confused eyes to Sarah, pleading, unsure.

The horse pranced and stepped lightly, tossing his head in excitement, and still the rider sat easily, a tall, blond youth who appeared to have been riding horses since he was six years old.

Levi sat on Dat’s right side, a can of Mountain Dew in one hand, a large bag of buttered popcorn in the other. His face shone with happiness. He was completely unaware of Dat’s subtle nodding of his head. The popcorn was more important.

The bidding escalated. The rider pulled the horse to a stop and then cantered him slowly around the ring.

Dat paid eighteen hundred dollars for Priscilla’s horse, and not one person at the New Holland Sales Stables thought it was a penny too much. The poor girl had suffered plenty at the hand of that arsonist, who still ran loose, they said.

When Dat smiled at Priscilla and said, “Let’s go!” she burst into tears. Sarah had to help her find her way out between the seats, apologizing with multiple soft expressions of “Excuse me” and “I’m sorry.” They finally made it out the side door. When they led Priscilla to the horse, he lowered his head. Priscilla cupped her hand beneath his nose and laid her forehead against his. The tears dropped off her face and ran in little wet rivulets down the horse’s face. She whispered brokenly, “Hello, Dutch.”

Dat got out his red handkerchief and blew his nose hard, then dried his eyes, and squeezed Priscilla’s shoulders.

Levi reached deep into the popcorn bag for another handful and slowly blinked his eyes.

Chapter 8

S
ARAH STOOD IN THE MIDDLE
of the garden and leaned on a hoe watching Priscilla ride Dutch, circling the pasture. They were in perfect tune with one another, a sight to behold. Sarah never tired of it.

It was the middle of May. The rains had stopped, and the soil had dried. The warm bright sun shone from a blue sky alive with scudding white puffs of clouds. Sighing, she turned, picked out a few cucumber seeds from the small packet in her hand, and dropped them in the hole she had made with the hoe.

With all the rains and the flooding, the planting had been late this year. Sarah was grateful to be able to plant the “late” seeds—corn, cucumbers, lima beans—crops that wouldn’t push their way up from the soil if the earth was not properly warmed by the sun.

Chattering barn swallows, daring little acrobats of the air, wheeled and turned, grabbing insects as they executed their aerial show. From a distance, she heard the clanking and squeaking of Dat’s corn planter, the mules walking at a rapid pace, their nodding heads and flopping ears never quite in harmony.

She knew Dat would be on the cart, watching the planter, his thoughts on his sermons, the congregation, the troubles and concerns as well as the joys. Last night, though, he’d talked plenty, for Dat. He wasn’t a person of excessive speech, but he needed a listening ear, he’d said.

The barn fire had occurred, yes. Someone had lit it, with intent to destroy, provoke, excite, whatever. Who knew for what reason they did this? And now the men were sidling up to him at church and saying that he needed to do something about this. Some seemed to think he was not doing his duty as a minister to let this all go on as if nothing happened. He could at least cooperate with the prosecutors. The church members thought Dat was too compliant and said he had to do what he could.

Every Sunday, Dat would develop a headache and a tic in one eye. Apparently, no one in the congregation had gotten a decent night’s sleep since the fire.

Take Amos Fisher. He said he slept in his own bed, or tried to, until all kinds of images encroached on his thoughts. Here he was, with forty head of cattle, beef cows, all housed in his new ventilated barn. What if someone snuck in and just got a big bonfire going?

He’d taken to sleeping on the couch in his kitchen, so that he could at least hear a car if it drove by. The sleeplessness was making him groggy, and his arthritis was flaring up in his thumbs. It would be different if Sylvia cared. She just rolled over on her good ear and slept like a rock. Amos didn’t know what would happen if his new barn burned.

Dat tried to explain to Amos how difficult it was to pin down this arsonist, and the police weren’t even completely sure it was an arsonist. He didn’t get very far after that, the way Amos flew off. So what could he do?

Softly, Mam asked what his own personal feelings were.

Dat gravely stroked his beard and shook his head from side to side as he contemplated the question. Arriving at a decision, he sat up straight, his far-seeing eyes not really aware of his surroundings.

He said he looked on the situation as a spiritual chastening, a call to be a better person. In the Bible, hadn’t Job suffered tremendously? For Dat to poison his own life with unforgiveness was unthinkable. Yes, the loss had been great, but the aftermath had been rich in blessings.

The sight of those caravans of men arriving to help was one blessing. He’d simply wanted to kneel before them all and wash their feet as a sign of humility, the way Abraham did in the Old Testament.

In view of the tremendous caring and love poured out on his family, who could stand if he didn’t forgive?

Suddenly, Dat’s face took on a silly grin. “And besides, now my cow stable has plenty of new and modern things, for an old preacher.”

Mam laughed with him, knowing how happy he was with the new barn and appreciating his resilience.

So, Sarah had thought, no matter how overwhelming the flood of kindness had been, someone always managed to insert a prickly note of dissension. Like Fannie Kauffman.

In the garden, Sarah tramped down the last of the soil, straightened her back, and went to find a small wooden stake for the cucumber-seed packet to mark where they’d been planted.

She reached up to the top shelf in the garden shed, her hand searching for a stake. Something smooth and round came into contact with her fingertips. A lighter. Hmm. Why was a white Bic lighter on the top shelf in the garden shed? Slipping it into her pocket, she decided to tell the family. It was extremely odd.

She found a stake, attached the seed packet with a thumb-tack, and stuck the marker into the ground. That was really cute.

Mam hurried out to the garden, saying it was time for the pea wire to be put up. Those pea vines were growing faster every time she checked them.

Sarah had just emerged from the garden shed with an armload of stakes when a gray car came slowly up the driveway and rolled to a stop beside the garden.

Two policemen extricated themselves from the unmarked car as Mam dropped her roll of wire and went to greet them. They exchanged pleasantries, Mam’s voice low and careful, the way she was with strangers.

“This the new barn?”

“Yes.”

“No information? Nothing unusual? No sightings? No media?”

“Um, excuse me. What is media?” Mam asked, clearly ashamed that she didn’t know.

“Photographers? People asking questions? Reporters?”

Mam shook her head.

Sarah’s heart pounded. Should she come forward with the lighter? But it had been in the garden shed and likely had nothing to do with the fire at all.

She decided to keep her peace and went back to pound stakes into the loose soil.

The policemen asked for Dat, and Mam pointed to the team of mules pulling the corn planter.

Quite suddenly, the white lighter felt red hot, like a small plastic conscience burning a hole in Sarah’s pocket. Stumbling across the garden, she was surprised that her hand wasn’t burning, that the lighter was smooth and cool.

The officers looked up.

“H…hello,” she stammered.

“Yes, young lady?”

She held up the lighter, explained how uncommon it was to find a lighter on the top shelf in the garden shed.

The tall, heavy officer asked quickly if there were more children around. Was there a possibility that one of the younger children had hidden the lighter?

It was terrible to see the color drain from Mam’s face and the raw dread in her eyes. Surely not Mervin or Suzie? “Get Dat,” she ordered, her voice quivering.

Sarah handed the lighter to the police and ran swiftly past the strawberry patch, white with blossoms, past the raspberries, the compost pile, the woodpile, and over the small wooden bridge built over a cement drain pipe. She stood at the edge of the field, waving her arms, although she remained quiet, until he came closer.

“
Komm
!
Komm rei
! (Come in!)”

Dat waved in acknowledgment, finished the row, and then turned the mules toward the house. He left them standing by the garden without tying them and went to greet the officers, tipping back his straw hat to wipe the dirt from his brow.

“Yes. Mr. Beiler.”

“Hello. Good to meet you.”

“I’m supposing each member of the family has been thoroughly questioned?”

“As far as I know.”

“You have no reason to believe any of your children would have been playing with this lighter?”

The officer held it up, and Dat’s face blanched, quiet confidence replaced with confusion.

“Well…”

“Your daughter found it.”

Sarah answered Dat’s questions and turned to find Suzie and Mervin scootering home from school.

“Here are the little ones.”

Dat’s voice tried to be confident, but the bravado held a tinge of doubt.

What if? Sarah thought.

What if Mervin had been playing with the lighter, became afraid, and hid it? Or Suzie? It was unthinkable, Suzie being so timid, so conscientious. Still, one never knew.

The children were called to join them. Priscilla came from the barn, her face glowing from her ride, but she swallowed, wrapped her arms about her waist, and scuffed her sneaker into the dirt.

The police questioned them, not unkindly, but so seriously it seemed as if they were threatening.

Mervin shook his head no. So did Suzie, pure innocence shining from her untroubled gaze, a clear testimony of her genuine goodness, a repeat of Priscilla.

Then Mervin began to cry. Dat looked sharply at Mam, questions clouding his eyes.

Speaking in hiccups, his English broken and mixed with Pennsylvania Dutch, the way little Amish children do, Mervin said he’d found it.

“When?” the officer asked intently, bending low.

“When the barn burned.”

“Which side of the barn?”

“Over there. Where the heifer pen was.”

“You’re absolutely sure you weren’t playing with the lighter?” Dat asked, his face stern and serious.

Mervin nodded, his blond hair wagging over his ears. His guileless eyes stared straight into Dat’s, which was not lost on the officers, who were acquainted with every trick humankind could imagine, and then some.

“Then why did you hide it?”

“You mean, in there?” Mervin pointed to the garden shed. “I was afraid you would think I started the fire, and I didn’t.”

Marvin lowered his head, the silky blond, brownish hair falling over his eyes, a curtain to allow him time to compose himself, to decide to be forthright.

“Dat, I just crumpled some old newspapers and—I wanted to see how high the fire goes, how fast it spreads.”

Lifting his head, he stared wild-eyed at the officer standing closest to him.

“I didn’t do it,” he burst out.

The officer nodded, his eyes liquid and kind.

“Well, we could take the lighter, get the fingerprints,” said the other, “but I doubt if it would tell us much. Arsonists always wear gloves of some sort. Or almost always.”

“Is there anything we can do to make the community safer? Members of the congregation are sleeping very little, if at all, imagining this arsonist on the loose, afraid they’ll be the next victim.”

“As far as you personally doing something to help? No. If someone has an old, especially prized barn, or lives close to the road with the house a good distance away from the barn, yes, there is something they can do. They can always sleep in the barn. It’s the only sure way to hear anything. Or get an extremely good watchdog, trained to bite intruders, which is questionable. What if a person stops and gets out of a car during the night for reasons other than lighting a fire?”

Dat nodded soberly. “So we’ll have patience. Wait. See how it goes, right?

“About the only thing we can do at this point.”

Priscilla turned to go back to Dutch, but Mam called her back. Pea wire was cumbersome, unhandy, and Dat had corn planting to do. It was late in the season.

Sarah smiled and said goodbye to the officers.

No one like Mam to bring you straight back to reality, plunk you down in the middle of it, and put you to work.

Dat was the kindhearted one, the dreamer who colored your days with different shades of jokes, laughter, smiles, little sayings, or poems. Mam was a hard-core realist.