Fire in the Night (17 page)

Dat paced the lawn, lifting his head to watch in all directions, the memory of his own barn fire still fresh in his mind. Mam was the first to see, gasping as the small pink glow turned to orange.

“Dat!” she called. “Look to the east.”

Sarah looked, a dagger of fright following as she watched. Dat leaped up on the porch, his eyes wide as the orange light intensified.

“It has to be close to Ben Zook’s,” he said. “I’m going over.”

“Walking?” Mam called, not expecting an answer the way Dat ran, hatless and wearing only his t-shirt and trousers. And him—a minister.

There was no use going back to bed. It was just after two o’clock. Mam and Sarah sat together on the wooden glider listening to the sirens, watching the night sky, and waiting anxiously for Dat’s return.

After a few hours, they went to the living room and stretched out on the recliners. They knew there would be lots of work ahead of them, and they needed to rest. Finally they dozed off but slept only fitfully.

When Dat had not returned at five o’clock, they dressed, tied men’s handkerchiefs over their hair and called the cows in. Sarah washed their udders with a disinfecting solution while Mam began to attach the milking machines. The friendly hissing of the gas lanterns that hung from nails on the walls was comforting, but they watched them warily now with, presumably, a barn burning somewhere.

When dawn broke across the farm, the rooster in the henhouse crowed raucously, the hens began their silly “be-gawks,” the heifers mooed hungrily, and still Dat had not returned.

Priscilla woke then stumbled wide-eyed to the barn looking for Sarah, Mam, anyone. She said Levi was crying of a stomach ache. Mam hurried back to the house while Sarah and Priscilla finished milking. They fed the horses and chickens, poured milk in the cats’ dish, washed the milkers, swept the milk house, and still Dat had not returned.

Sarah decided to check the messages on their voice mail and was relieved to hear his voice.

“Mam, this is David. The barn at Ben’s burned to the ground. They didn’t save anything. They think it was an explosion. I’ll be home soon.”

Mam’s eyes filled with quick tears. She shook her head in thought, murmuring as she broke eggs into a bowl.

“It’s awful. Just awful, girls. What a loss! It’s unbelievable. How long can this go on before someone catches up with these people?”

Her words fell in a hard rhythm as she beat the eggs with a fork. Still muttering and shaking her head, she added chunks of fresh tomato, parsley, peppers, and onion, throwing in bits of leftover cheese and sausage.

Sarah fried potatoes and poured juice, while Priscilla hunkered on the floor, waiting until the toast was finished in the broiler. Suzie stumbled sleepily down the stairs, but Levi wouldn’t leave his bed, saying his stomach pain was so bad he hadn’t slept all night.

They told him about Ben Zook’s barn, and he became so excited he forgot all about his stomach. He hurried, shuffling to the table, exclaiming that the man in the white car was at it again. He ate three slices of toast with butter and peach jelly and fried potatoes with homemade ketchup spread liberally all over them. Then he asked for shoofly pie to dip in his coffee. He burned his tongue on the coffee and said it was Sarah’s fault. She should remember to add cold water.

Mam told Levi quite firmly that Sarah had nothing to do with it and to stop being so quarrelsome. Levi said that if he had to go to the hospital for his stomach ache, Mam wasn’t allowed to go along.

When Dat finally arrived, his face was gray with black streaks where sweat had mingled with the ashes and smoke. His eyes gave away his feelings of helplessness in the face of another monstrous fire, flames crackling and leaping, destroying the centuries-old handiwork of another Lancaster County barn.

He sank into his chair, lowered his elbows to his knees, and hung his head, a gesture so unlike Dat. A dart of quiet fear pierced Sarah’s mind. It was the defeat, the undoing of one who had always been so brave and capable of meeting adversity head on.

His gray hair was matted, stringy, the scalp showing on top where the hair had grown thin. The odor of smoke clung to him—a bad vapor of premonition.

No one spoke. The clock on the wall ticked away, unaware of the scene around the kitchen table. Levi slurped his coffee and drained it, carefully swallowing the last of the shoofly crumbs. Then he rubbed his face across an extended sleeve.

Sarah silently handed him a napkin, raised her eyebrows, and smiled. He returned the smile and punched her forearm with affection.

Dat lifted his head then, and met Mam’s searching eyes. He found the caring and support he sought, his own eyes conveying gratitude without words. Then he began to talk, quietly at first.

“It’s a mess. It’s just a horrible thing—the cows tearing at their stanchions, bawling out their terror, the desperate bleating turning into cries that were intolerable, the hay that burned as swiftly as any flammable substance, the shrill, high shrieks of the horses as they banged around in their stalls. The fire engulfing them was actually merciful. We tried. We tried to loosen a few cows, but I’ve never seen a fire like that. It was like a cannon blasting through the barn.”

Dat shook his head.

“Not that I’ve ever seen a cannon. I imagine the ball of fire to be like one.”

“Ball of fire? Was it lightning?” Priscilla asked, her face ashen with memories still vivid.

“No. It wasn’t lightning. They’re all talking, talking, on and on.”

He lowered his head into his hands, the work roughened hands now streaked with the soot and ashes of his neighbor’s barn. A stupendous burden weighed on her father, and Sarah knew it was not the fire, not entirely. He sat up suddenly, his eyes weary but filled with a solid light of knowing.

“It’s so hard to take. Ben is so angry. He is demanding that something be done now. They’re like a clamoring mob. They say, Amish or not, we can’t sit on our hands and take this. Someone started this fire, and he needs to be brought to justice.”

“But…,” Mam began.

“That’s just it, Malinda. It’s not our way. It’s not. We are a nonresistant people. Or used to be. To my way of thinking, we do not fight back. God allowed the arsonist to accomplish this. He could have stopped him, but he didn’t. It is a chastening, and in everything, some good can come of it. We need to adhere to our way of forgiveness. But Ben is like a madman. He’s stomping around, making threats, shaking his fist.”

“But for him to have to listen to those innocent animals’ suffering…” Sarah said gently.

“Oh, I know. I know. It’s almost more than any man can handle. And Ben’s barn was rich in history, valuable way beyond mere dollars. It was an old German bank barn, built in the late 1700s. You can’t replace that workmanship. It’s just…well, sickening. They’re bringing in trained dogs to sniff out certain chemicals. And the media will go wild about this. With Ben’s anger, we will not be a light to the world. I shudder to think of what he’ll tell reporters. It’ll be a real jolt to the community. I hope all of you stay home as much as possible. We don’t want our pictures in any newspaper or magazine.”

Quietly, Mam got up from her chair. She broke a few eggs into a bowl, turned on the gas burner beneath her frying pan, and added a dot of butter. She took Dat a cup of steaming hot coffee and then laid a gentle hand on his shoulder.

“You’ll feel better after you eat,” she said softly.

Dat reached across and patted the hand on his shoulder, saying quietly, “
Ach
, Mam. What would I do without you?”

The day was bright and hot and humid. In spite of the heat, Mam kicked into high gear, urging everyone else along. They would pull the corn they had planned on freezing and take it to Ben’s, along with the lima beans.

“Sarah, take Priscilla with you. Pull the sweet corn in the garden, the early patch of Incredible. Keep it in the shade. Pick the lima beans. We’ll take them over to shell them. Suzie, is your breakfast eaten? Hurry up. You can pick tea. I’ll make concentrate. Get the woolly tea and all the spearmint. David, what time are you going back?”

“I need a shower and some clean clothes. Girls, now please don’t forget. Watch out for the cameras. Don’t talk to the reporters. Keep your faces hidden if they try to take your picture.”

In the garden, Sarah and Priscilla bent their backs obediently, holding the heavy lima bean bushes aside as their hands searched for the ripening pods. There was no sound except the dull thunk of the hard pods hitting the plastic buckets. The sun was already on their backs like a giant toaster, showing no mercy for the girls’ comfort level.

Sarah straightened and wiped the back of her hand across her forehead, where beads of sweat had accumulated.

Priscilla groaned. “Whose idea was this—to plant these endless rows of beans? Nobody likes them, except Dat.”

“Levi.”

“I could easily live without lima beans.”

Sarah shrugged her shoulders. “You know how Mam is. A garden without lima beans is just unthinkable. It would be like making a dress with a
leppley
(the small fold of fabric sewn into the waist on the back of the dress).”

Priscilla giggled. Then she said seriously, “I think Ben Zook has every right to be angry. I hope the same person lit his barn that lit ours and that the police catch him, and he dies in jail.”

Sarah gasped.

“Priscilla! Seriously. We are not allowed to talk like that. Not even think it.”

To Sarah’s disbelief, Priscilla began to sob hoarsely. A sort of feral anguish tore from her throat in great heaves, a sound Sarah had never heard from her sister.

As Sarah placed a hand on her sister’s heaving back, Pricilla moved away quickly saying, “Don’t. Don’t.” Sarah stood helpless, holding the corner of her bib apron, pleating it with her fingers, not knowing what else to do.

Priscilla sank to the soil between the lima bean bushes. She lifted her tormented face, her eyes streaming, and shuddered before catching her voice.

“Sarah, you don’t know how it is to lose a horse. You were never like me. I know Dat meant well, and my new Dutch is all I could ever dream of. But that arsonist took away my real Dutch, and I’ll never love another horse the same way. It’s not just the barns burning—it’s the loss of heartfelt love for the animals. They didn’t ask for some…some….”

Priscilla was at loss for the proper word to describe the total disgust she felt.

“Don’t say it. Priscilla. Don’t. You can’t hate. It will consume you, and you’ll become spiritually unhealthy.”

Viciously, Priscilla yanked off a lima bean and threw it angrily into the bucket. With a sneer, she said, “What do you know about it, Sarah? Huh? Nothing. Not one thing.”

Sarah blinked. She started to say something but just looked off across the garden and down to the orchard, where barn swallows wheeled in the sky, their sharp jabbering a sound of home.

No, she didn’t know. Or did she? Did she hate Rose deep down inside? Did she just frost her hate with a sweet icing of falsehood, going about her life intensely longing for the one thing she couldn’t have? Could she stand here and show her sister the path of righteousness, when in truth she was decaying spiritually by the power of her own obsession?

She imagined herself covered with sticky, sweet, cream-cheese frosting, her stomach a carrot cake, spoiled, the gray-green mold growing, growing, taking over her health and happiness.

Was she hating? Did she wish Rose well? And her impatience with Levi. She’d always loved her handicapped brother. But of late….

Dear God. You have to help me. I can’t do this alone. Oh, I can’t. I love Matthew, helplessly, hopelessly. I can’t get away from it by myself. Give me courage. Give me strength.

It took her breath away, knowing the truth. Roughly, Priscilla brought her back to reality.

“Come on, pick beans. Don’t just stand there as if there was a spook in the orchard.”

Numbly, like a manipulated marionette, Sarah bent her back and started to pull off the lima beans, a mighty battle beginning in her heart.

Her love for Matthew Stoltzfus was as all-consuming as the fires that had devoured the barns. He ravaged her whole life, like a disease that would eventually annihilate her.

Well, obviously, the barns were being started by a person who meant evil, who wanted to harm someone or something, who possibly held a grudge against the Amish and their Plain way of life.

Her love for Matthew was from God, pure, cleansing, bringing happiness. Or was it? Mam’s warning flashed through her mind. Well, another obvious thing—what did she know? Mam wasn’t at the suppers and singings, the volleyball games. She didn’t know how Matthew admired her, talked to her, made her laugh. He didn’t do that to the other girls at all. She was the only one.

Soon they’d break up. Soon. Rose was too beautiful, too perfect. He’d tire of her, and he’d be all Sarah’s.

And so her thoughts tumbled and twisted, first in one direction, then in another. But always, tenaciously, she clung to the love of her life.

Priscilla attached herself just as firmly to a total disdain of the person who had taken her precious Dutch from her. The barn fires had spawned the works of the devil in all their masked forms.

Upstairs, the girls showered and then dressed in the customary black, with dear little Mervin gone only a short time. They wore no capes, it being the middle of the week, but they pinned their black aprons neatly around their small waists. Leaning over their dressers, they combed their hair back sleekly, adding mousse or hairspray, anything to tame the unruly hair.

As always, Sarah dressed for Matthew. He was sure to be there, as were all the able-bodied men of the community. So she combed, patted, combed again, sprayed, stood back, frowned, then took it all down and began again.

“What is wrong with you? Your eyebrows are arched straight up, and you look as if you could explode or something.”

Priscilla was ready to go, covering pinned neatly, her blonde-brownish hair pulled sleekly back, her flawless face tanned, her eyes, well, yes, she was turning into a very pretty young girl.