Chapter 32
My cell phone rang again just as I hung up with Cass. I sighed. It would be just like Cass to call me right back, probably to tell me a creative new way to dispose of my ex-boyfriend that she’d thought up.
“Cass—” I started without looking at the screen to see who the call was from.
There was mumbling on the other end of the line that was most certainly not my best friend. I couldn’t make out what the person was saying.
“Hello?”
Nothing.
I was about to hang up when I heard a voice whisper in my ear, “It’s Charlotte.”
“Charlotte, where are you? Are you at Swissmen Sweets? I’m right outside the shop. I will be inside in just a minute.” I pressed my ear against the phone, hoping to be able to hear her better.
“Nee, I am at my father’s buggy shop,” Charlotte said in a breathy voice.
“You are?” I asked, surprised. “What are you doing there?”
“Can you come and get me?” She sounded desperate. “Please.”
I sighed. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Where is it located?”
She rattled off the location of the shop while I shifted my car into reverse.
* * *
Weaver Buggy Company was at the top of one of the rolling hills Holmes County was famous for. The buggy shop was a large, aluminum-sided barn overlooking the countryside. My small car chugged its way slowly up the hill. The car was a new addition to my life. I had had no need for one in New York, but I had learned, after just a week in Holmes County, that I couldn’t get many places without some mode of transportation, and my grandfather’s old buggy wasn’t a practical option. Daadi’s buggy sat in the alley behind Swissmen Sweets. My grandfather had long ago sold his horse to another church member when he became too ill to care for the animal himself. He, like so many Amish, depended on Amish drivers, Englischers who drove an unofficial Amish taxi service, to take him and my grandmother around the county.
The small hatchback sputtered halfway up the steep hill, and I was beginning to regret choosing the cheapest option for my first car since high school. The car was made when I was still in high school, so that should have been my first clue that it wasn’t a great investment. I patted the top of the dashboard. “You can do it!” I thought it was best to be encouraging when dealing with cars, computers, and any gadget that was threatening to fall apart on me.
Finally, after what seemed to be an eternity, I crested the hill. I gave the dashboard a final grateful pat. “I never lost faith in you. I promise to wash you and get your oil changed on a regular basis. Just keep it together for me, okay?”
Gravel crunched under my car’s tires as I parked beside the enormous building. There were five buggies in the gravel lot, but only one of them had a horse tethered to it. The black horse shook his head as if trying to shift his bridle into a more comfortable position, and then he dug his nose back into the feed trough that was attached to a pole just in front of him.
Weaver Buggy Company stirred a memory in the very back of my mind, and it wasn’t until I was sitting in my car in the parking lot that I realized I had been there before. I had visited the buggy shop nearly twenty years ago when I was staying with my grandparents for the summer. On that warm summer day, my daadi had taken me with him to have an axle repaired. He jumped out of the buggy; I remembered it so well. He was so lithe and athletic back then, so different from the crippled man using the walker who’d finally succumbed to heart disease earlier that fall.
A bear of a man had come out of the aluminum barn to meet my grandfather. The man had even growled when speaking to my grandfather. I’d tried to make myself as small as possible inside the buggy.
The man peered inside the carriage, and there I sat in my frayed jean shorts and teddy bear T-shirt. “That’s your Englisch granddaughter, is it?” He said “English” as if it was some kind of disease. It was the first time I realized I was different from my grandparents. Yes, I knew that they dressed differently and didn’t have a television, but they were my maami and daadi. It wasn’t until that large Amish man brought it to my attention that I knew I was very different from them, and in that moment, being different felt bad.
“That is my girl Bailey,” my grandfather said. “She is my greatest joy.”
I remember looking at my grandfather, and he smiled at me with so much love in his eyes that the man’s comment about my Englishness stung a little bit less.
There was a knock on the driver’s-side window. I jumped and would have hit my head on the roof of my car had I not been restrained by my seat belt.
There was another Amish man at my window, but not the big bear of a man that I remembered. Sol Weaver, Charlotte’s father, peered through the window at me.
I unclipped my seat belt and exited the car. He stepped back out of my way.
He grimaced. “Why are you here?”
As subtly as possible, I glanced around for any sign of Charlotte.
“If you are looking for my daughter Charlotte, you’re too late. I sent her away. She’s not welcome here any longer.” His voice was bitter.
I wondered if Charlotte had finally told her father that she planned to leave the Amish life. It certainly sounded like she had.
“Charlotte was here?” I asked, playing dumb. “I just happened to be driving by and remembered this place from my childhood. I drove up the hill for a closer look to see if it was what I remembered.”
“You have been here before?” His tone clearly said that he didn’t believe me.
“Only once, when I was a little girl with my grandfather. I remember visiting this shop with him when he needed his buggy repaired. There was a different man who met my father at the buggy that day. He was a big bear of a man.”
“My brother Hiram,” he said, leaving no room for argument on that point.
I opened my mouth to reply, but he was faster. “You can’t talk to him. He’s dead.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said quickly, even though I already knew from Charlotte that Hiram had died. I thought it was best not to let Sol know that Charlotte had already told me this. Also, my mind spun as I remembered my conversation with Ruby in her tiny apartment over the yarn shop. She’d implied that Josephine’s death was somehow related to her husband Hiram’s death, even though Hiram had died so long ago. I just wished that that little tidbit of information had come from a more reliable source than Ruby. No one would consider Ruby a reliable witness. The Sheriff’s Department certainly wouldn’t, if it came to that.
“It’s no matter any longer. He’s been gone close to fifteen years,” he said, speaking of his brother’s death.
“I’m still sorry.”
“It was Gotte’s will. May His will be done.” His face clouded over. “My daughter doesn’t look for Gotte’s will in her life. She forces His hand. I know what she has chosen is not the will of Gott for her. How can it be? I had no choice but to send her away from me.”
I shifted from foot to foot. Maybe I should go now that I knew Charlotte was no longer there. “You and your brother shared his shop?”
“Amish sons do not share.” He said this as if I should have already known it. “The shop was my brother’s until he died. He was the oldest.” He looked back at the large barnlike building. “This is my shop now, and when I die it will go to my oldest son.”
“Could I look inside?” I took a step forward.
He frowned. “Why?”
“It might remind me of my visit here with my grandfather.” I knew it was a lame suggestion, but it was the best that I could come up with. I thought if I got a look at the inside of the shop, maybe I would understand a little bit better what Ruby had been implying about the connection between Hiram’s and Josephine’s deaths.
He frowned.
“I promise I won’t stay long,” I said.
“Very well. Jebidiah was a friend.” He turned toward the barn. “Follow me.”
I fell into step behind Sol. The yellow late-fall sunlight reflected off the tin roof. I held a hand up to shield my eyes when a sunbeam hit me squarely in the eye as it lowered in the west.
Once upon a time, the old building had been a horse barn and had been converted into a buggy shop. From the shop’s location on the hillside, I could see the entire valley. Black-and-white milk cows spotted the hillside. There was no sign of a black-and-white pig though. I was constantly on the lookout for Jethro. Not that I expected to see him this far from the square.
My boots crunched on the gravel as I kept an eye out for Charlotte. On the phone, she had seemed so eager to leave the buggy shop that I had thought she would be waiting for me outside, but she was nowhere to be seen.
Sol held the door open for me. As I stepped inside, the overpowering scent of wood shavings and grease hit me. There was a faint layer of sawdust on the floor that was noticeable only because of the bright sunlight coming in through the westward-facing windows.
At first glance, I counted five buggies in the cavernous room. Behind one of the buggies, a door led deeper into the building. Three of the black buggies were jacked up onto platforms to access the undercarriage. The other two buggies sat in pristine condition.
“You sell buggies here?” I asked.
“Used buggies,” he said. “A buggy isn’t made all in one shop. Most Amish men own only three buggies in their lifetime. We, the Amish, take great pride in our buggies and care for them. It is our way. The Englisch are the ones who discard possessions when they are still useful.”
My grandfather had cared for his buggy like it was a beloved pet. On hot summer nights, he would wash and polish his buggy until it shone.
“Just like a car, there are many pieces and parts,” Sol went on. “The bulk of my business is buggy repair. Most Amish in Harvest bring their buggies to me for repair.” He puffed out his chest. “I have the best shop in the county.”
I raised my eyebrows. Typically, the Amish weren’t ones to boast about their achievements. “It must have been hard to take the business over when Hiram died. How did it happen? He must have been relatively young.” I knew the story from Charlotte, but I wanted to hear his version.
He picked up a flathead screwdriver from the workbench and smacked the handle end in his hand a couple of times. Perhaps that was my signal to leave, but I ignored it.
“It was a long time ago,” Sol said. “He died right at the bottom of the hill here. He was at the bottom of the hill. A buggy got loose, rolled down the hill, and hit him. At the point when he might have realized what was happening, there was no time to get out of way, and it hit him. Hit him and killed him on the spot.”
A shadow moved across one of the windows to my right. “Did you see it happen?”
He glanced at me. “Nee. I wasn’t here that day. One of our young workers was and told me what happened. I should return to my work.” Sol turned back to the workbench. When his back was turned, I glanced at the window again. Charlotte waved to me from the other side of the glass. Her eyes were the size of dinner plates as she saw me inside the shop with her father.
I made a shooing gesture at her. That was a bad move because I caught Sol’s attention, and he too looked at the window. His face flushed red when he saw his daughter’s face peering through the dusty glass. He dropped the screwdriver onto the workbench and stormed to the door.
Charlotte saw him coming and jumped back from the window.
I hurried after Sol. He was yelling even before I reached the door. I couldn’t understand what he was yelling at his daughter because it was in their language, but his anger was unmistakable.
Charlotte stood a few feet away. She was hunched over slightly as if his words were putting some type of weight on the back of her neck, causing her to bow to her father. “Daed,” she said and then switched to English, “I’m not coming home. I have already told you what I think. I have made my choice.” She straightened up slowly as if it took much effort and stared her father in the eye.
His face deepened into another shade of red. “No child of mine is going to leave the Amish way. No Weaver has ever left the Amish way.”
“Daed, this is my choice, not your choice.” Her voice was calm and even. She had come to a decision finally, and she was going to see it through.
“You choose to turn your back on Gott?” Her father spat on the ground near her feet.
Tears gathered in Charlotte’s eyes. “Nee. I would never choose such a thing, but I can worship Gott in my way. The Amish way is not the only way. I can praise Him with the organ.”
“Get out of my sight.” Sol turned his back to her.
I shuddered and walked to Charlotte’s side. “Let’s go,” I whispered to her.
“You!” He spun around on the heels of his work boots. “You are helping her? I should have known. You come to our county to pull our children away from the Amish.”
“I came to the county to be with my grandmother and make candy. I don’t have any Machiavellian plan,” I said.
His brow knit together at my mention of Machiavelli. Apparently, The Prince wasn’t on the Amish reading list.
He turned back to Charlotte. “If you have made your choice, leave my sight. You are no daughter of mine.” He spun around and went back into the buggy shop, slamming the door after him.
The resolve that had appeared to be holding Charlotte’s spine erect dissolved, and if I had not been there to catch her, she would have crumpled to the ground.
Her father’s reaction came as a blow. It was rejection in the most devastating form. Charlotte, like me, must have known this. Rejection of this kind was like a death, but a death when you know that the other person still lives but chooses not to love you. That loss seemed so much worse.