Chapter 9
Aaron Hostetler’s deep baritone rang out from the porch, and in seconds, Rachel saw her father and uncle ordering the young Amish men in the gathering crowd to separate the two on the ground. “There is no fighting on my farm!” Uncle Aaron roared. “What is wrong with you that you must resort to violence on this day of mourning?”
John Hannah and Alan dragged the English boy up off the ground, his shirt torn and bloody. Once Rachel got a good look at him, she recognized him as Zebadiah’s neighbor’s son, the football player. Mike made no further effort to lash out at Rupert, but his opponent was clearly out of control. Her brother Moses got between the two of them and extended his arms to block any effort to renew their fight.
Paying no attention to Moses, Rupert wrenched off one of the Amish men holding him, shoved the other away, and made a lunge for Mike. Moses and the others grabbed him, not striking, but pinning his arms and legs. Rupert cursed and struggled, but long hours in the fields meant that the peacemakers were nearly as strong and fit as he was. Trembling and sweating, eyes wild, he gradually subsided.
“Rachel! Help him!” Lettie cried. “Don’t let them hurt Rupert!”
Mike was standing quietly, face red, obviously embarrassed. “Sorry,” he said to Lettie.
Rachel glanced from her sister to Mike and then back to Rupert. What did the boys’ fight have to do with Lettie? She looked at her father to see if he’d heard Lettie defending Rupert. Her dat stood stone-faced, arms folded, shoulder to shoulder with her uncle. “Best you leave, young man,” Rachel’s father said. “You fellows can let him go. He’ll cause no more trouble. Isn’t that right?”
“No, sir,” Mike said. He wiped his nose with the back of his wrist and someone handed him a handkerchief. He pressed it to his face and put his head back, trying to stop the bleeding.
At that moment, Mike’s father, Chuck, came out of the house. He crossed the yard at a trot. “My apologies,” he said when he reached them. He glared at his son. “And you, into the truck.” His son obeyed without argument. Chuck started the truck, and people stepped aside to let them drive out of the farmyard.
Rachel approached Rupert. “Get in my Jeep,” she said. “I’ll take you home.”
“No need for that,” Rupert said. “I walked here. If I’m not welcome, I can walk home.”
“Please,” she said, looking up into his eyes. “Just get in.”
Two minutes later, they were rattling down the driveway. Rachel looked at Rupert and saw a bruise over one eye quickly turning dark. He had a swollen lip and another bruise on his chin. Altogether, he looked a lot better than Mike, although Mike outweighed him by a good forty pounds. “What was all that about?”
Rupert stared at the floor. “He made some wisecrack about Lettie and I hit him.”
Rachel braked at the mailbox to allow a car to pass before turning onto the blacktop. “And you believe fighting helped? It won’t help Lettie’s reputation. You should know better. Adults talk out their differences; they don’t hit people.”
“I lost my temper,” he admitted. “I shouldn’t have taken a swing at Mike there. I should have waited.”
“You shouldn’t have fought with him at all,” Rachel said. “Look at you.”
Rupert’s black wool hat lay, dirty, on the floor of the Jeep, the crown crushed. “Not much of an Amish solution, was it?” He wiped blood from the corner of his mouth.
“No, it wasn’t. And if you really hope to fit in here, if you want to be part of the community again, you have to control yourself.”
“Yeah, I know it. But . . . it’s hard. D—” He bit back what she thought might have been a curse. “Mike’s okay. I know him. He thinks he’s a jokester. But I don’t like jokes about Amish girls. Especially not today, after . . . after Elsie.”
“Why would Mike say anything about Lettie? Has she done something inappropriate?”
“No, she’s a good girl. One of the few who seemed to want me to come back.”
“So, there’s nothing romantic between you?”
“I think you should ask her. She’s not a kid.”
Rachel shifted gears. She came to the fork in the road that should have taken her to the Rust farm, but instead of taking the right turn, she took the left. She proceeded until she came to a dirt drive leading into a farm field and pulled over there.
“Thought you were driving me home.”
“I am. I’d just like to ask you a few questions.”
He exhaled loudly. “Not promising answers.”
“Fair enough.” She put down her window and then twisted to look at him. “Why did you lie to me about the fight at the singing the night Elsie disappeared?”
Rupert folded his arms. “Who says I did?”
She sighed. “I’m not playing games with you. Either you’re interested in what happened to Elsie or not. That’s all I’m trying to find out. I’m not trying to blame you.”
“No?” He looked back at her and his eyes clouded over with either anger or sorrow. “Sounds like you are.”
“You lied to me, Rupert, and I want to know why. You said you couldn’t remember if you’d even seen Dathan that night. But that’s not true. Because you and Dathan fought. And my guess is that you were fighting over Elsie. Is that what happened?”
He didn’t answer.
“You and Elsie used to like each other, didn’t you? Before you left to go English.”
“Maybe we did. We were both kind of young then.”
“But not too young to care about each other?” Rachel suggested.
Rupert shifted in his seat and ran a swollen hand through his short hair. Dried dirt sprinkled down his face. “I pretty much made a fool of myself back there, didn’t I?”
“I don’t want to discuss what just happened over my sister,” she said. “I want to know more about the fight at the singing. Were you still angry with Dathan? When he left?”
“Nope. All settled.”
“What about Elsie? Were you angry with her because she was with Dathan?”
He picked up his hat off the floorboard and tried to punch it back into shape, but the hat reverted to its squashed appearance. “I thought a lot about Elsie when I was over there.” He gestured. “Crazy place. People driving down the road, drinking a Coke, and suddenly a bomb goes off, and the guy next to you, the eighteen-year-old kid from Little Rock, has no legs anymore. When I went, I wanted to see something besides this valley.” He waved toward the surrounding mountains. “Those, too. I thought there must be something better outside.” He shook his head. “There isn’t. So when . . . when everything fell apart, I thought I’d come back. Give it another try. See if some of that peace that the bishop preaches about is for real.”
“Rupert.” Rachel laid a hand on his arm. “I can’t begin to imagine I know what you’ve seen over there, but—”
“Not just seen. Done.”
Her throat clenched with compassion for this broken young man. “I’ve seen violent death, too. It stays with you.”
He nodded. “That it does.” Rupert blinked back welling tears. “Sometimes I think I never left that godforsaken place. I can still taste the sand, you know. It gets into everything: beans, coffee, in your eyes, your ears, and mouth.”
“But you’re home now,” she said gently. “You have a life ahead of you. You have to let all that go.”
He shook his head. “I dream about it. Night after night. There was this cute little kid, ten, maybe twelve. Hard to say, because they don’t get enough to eat, and they’re skinny and short. Anyway, his name was Malmud or Mamud, something like that. We called him Manny. He was a shepherd. Just this little kid off all by himself with this flock of goats and sheep. He’d gotten a thorn in his foot and it got infected. Looked awful. Our medic dug the thorn out, patched him up, and gave him some antibiotics. His mother was so grateful that she sent a basket of bread to us as a thank-you. Manny brought it. And it was good bread, flat, but really tasty. Then he stopped coming around. We found out later that the bad guys caught him. Left the basket on his mother’s doorstep with Manny’s head in it as a warning not to be friendly with Americans.”
Tears ran down Rupert’s face and he made no effort to hide them. “We thought we were doing a good thing, keeping the kid from losing his foot. And we got him killed. We should have just taken a few shots at him. Then he might still be alive.”
“Or the infection might have turned to gangrene and killed him,” Rachel said. “You didn’t hurt him. It was evil that took that innocent child’s life. You can’t blame yourself.”
Rupert scoffed. “Sure, you can. People you would never guess could do terrible things, do.”
“Like Dathan? You think he’s the one who harmed Elsie?”
He shrugged. “Can’t say. Maybe. Maybe not.”
“You never said how you got to the singing that night.”
“Wagon. Why?”
“I’m just trying to get a clear picture of that night in my mind. Do other young Amish think Dathan did it?”
“Most do. Which makes me wonder why you’re pestering me.” He picked at something on his hand. Dried blood, maybe. “Not everybody. Not Lettie. She thinks the best of everybody. Even me,” he added, his voice barely above a whisper.
“And who does Lettie think killed Elsie?”
“Why don’t you ask her that yourself?” Rupert jerked open his door. “Enough questions.”
“Don’t go. I’ll drive you home,” Rachel said.
He snatched up his hat. “I think I’d rather walk. I think I’ve said more than enough. Any more questions, ask Dathan.” Rupert got out, put his hat on his head, and walked away without looking back.
“Rupert, please!”
He didn’t answer.
She felt more confused than ever as she called Evan. To her relief, he picked up. At the sound of his voice, she nearly started crying. “It’s so good to hear you,” she said. “I wish you were here with me.”
“Me, too,” he answered. “You don’t sound so good. I guess it’s pretty rough on the family, finding Elsie like that.”
“Worse than you can imagine.” She filled him in on all that had happened, including her odd conversation with Rupert. Evan listened without interrupting. It was one of the things she loved best about him. He was a good listener. “But he lied to me about fighting with Dathan, so how can I trust Rupert now?”
“You can’t. He sounds messed up to me.”
“I’m afraid Lettie likes him.”
“You’ve got to put a stop to that. From what I heard, Rupert is suffering from PTSD. Not good. Sometimes these guys get over it, but it can take years. It’s not something you’d want your sister to have to deal with. Not to mention that he could well have killed Elsie in a fit of jealousy. He probably saw plenty of bloodshed in Afghanistan. From what I heard, he was out in the mountains and was one of the few survivors of his platoon. Not a good scenario.”
“I think Rupert has suffered a lot, but I don’t think he’s capable of killing Elsie. Certainly not if he loved her. And I think he did.”
“Men kill the women they profess to love all the time. You know that family disputes are the most dangerous situations for a cop to walk into.”
“I can’t put my finger on it, but he just doesn’t seem the type to me. He loses his temper, yes, but to actually do real harm to someone? If he was fighting with Mike today because Mike said something rude about Lettie, then he was defending her.”
“Maybe. Or maybe it’s another example of Rupert’s inability to control his emotions. Seems like he’s a loaded gun ready to go off to me.”
“But he chose to come home. He wants to join the church, to be Amish again. If he had murder in his heart, could he do that?”
“Stay away from him, Rache. It’s bad enough you’re running around the countryside asking questions of regular Amish. Have some faith in Lucy. I told you, she’s a good cop. She’ll find Dathan and get answers.”
“She thinks he did it. So do most people here.”
“But you don’t?”
“I don’t know, Evan. I don’t think Dathan did it. But I’m trying to keep an open mind.” Her phone beeped in her ear and she glanced at the screen. “Hey, Lucy’s calling so I’m going to go. Maybe she has news about releasing Elsie’s body to the family.”
“I’ll try to call you tomorrow. Watch yourself, darlin’. I love you.”
“Me, too.” She quickly switched to Lucy’s call. “Lucy? It’s Rachel. I hope you’ve got some good news.”
* * *
Her mother was still awake when Rachel arrived back at her parents’ home. It was late enough that everyone but Lettie and her father were in bed. Lettie met her in the hall. She was carrying a basin with a towel thrown over it, but Rachel didn’t have to guess what was in it. “Mam’s been sick again.”
“Ya. Dat wanted her to come home from Aunt Hannah’s hours ago, but you know our mother,” Lettie said. “Stubborn.”
“I’m afraid it runs in the family,” Rachel answered. She was about to ask Lettie about the fight earlier in the day. She wanted to know what Mike had said that had made Rupert so angry. But Lettie looked as though someone had run her through an old-fashioned wringer-washer machine, so she decided it could wait until tomorrow.
“I was going to get her nausea meds,” Lettie explained. “She wouldn’t take them earlier. Said she didn’t want to get ‘hooked’ on them.”
“ ‘Hooked’? On nausea medicine?”
Lettie shrugged. “You know Mam. No convincing her otherwise. Medicine is for weak people. And she jumped down my throat for suggesting it.”
“Don’t complain. At least she speaks to you.”
“Ya, she does. All the way home she fussed about Rupert. Said if he wanted to be Amish again, his behavior wasn’t showing it. She thinks he’ll break his father’s heart again when he runs back to the English.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll see that she takes her medicine. You go on to bed.”
Lettie yawned. “Thanks. And thanks for getting Rupert away before Uncle Aaron could eat him alive. I know he shouldn’t have been fighting again, but—” Her eyes widened as she realized what she’d just said.
“I know about the fight between Dathan and Rupert,” Rachel said.
“Atch. Who told you?”
“It doesn’t matter. The thing is I know, and it doesn’t look good for Rupert to constantly be getting into fights.”
“I know. But it isn’t his fault. People provoke him. He’s been through a lot.”
“Lettie!” their mother called weakly from the bedroom. “Bring me a clean towel.”
“I’ll go,” Rachel said. “You get to bed. We can talk more about this tomorrow.”
Twenty minutes later, Rachel crept out of her mother’s bedroom and closed the door. She’d gotten her to take the medicine and take a little water. Then she’d been able to help her into a clean nightgown and wash her face and hands. She’d sat by the bed reading to her until she’d dropped off to sleep.
Rachel dropped the towels and washcloths and the soiled nightgown into the washer, thankfully a fully modern one and not a wringer type such as her mam had used when Rachel was a child. She made a final walk-through of the house to see that the doors were locked, the windows closed, and then retreated to the porch for a bit of air before going up to the room she shared with Lettie.
Her father was sitting on the porch. “Your mother?” he asked. “This wasn’t a good day for her, but she thought her place was at her brother’s house in their time of sorrow.”
“She’s better. Sleeping now. No fever, just exhausted and nauseated.”
“For that we need to be grateful,” her dat said. “I was glad to hear your friend the police lady was able to have Elsie’s body released. The funeral in the morning will give her family some peace.”
“She promised me that someone would bring the body to the house sometime after midnight.”
“Goot.” Her father sighed. “As goot as such a thing can be.”
“Trooper Mars told me that the cause of death was cerebral hemorrhage due to blunt force trauma to her temple. That means—”
“I know what it means, daughter. I may be a farmer with only an eighth-grade education, but I read the newspapers. Terrible. Terrible. Your Uncle Aaron is not the easiest man to have as part of our family, but he is a father who loves his children. He doesn’t deserve to have such a thing happen to his family. Neither does your Aunt Hannah.”
“It was a single blow to the head,” Rachel explained. “And someone tried to help her. They bandaged her injury. She lived for a while, but whoever it was, they didn’t seek medical care for her.”
“Foolish,” he said. “A waste of a precious life.”
“She might have died anyway. But we’ll never know that. Maybe if they’d gotten her into surgery right away . . .”
“An accident it could have been. Lots of ways besides violence. She could have fallen. I suppose the horse could have kicked her. But if it was an accident, why wouldn’t Dathan do the right thing? And how could he bury her like that, without prayers, without her family around her? It doesn’t look good for him.”
“No,” Rachel agreed. “It doesn’t.”
“But now, he must know that her body has been found. Why hasn’t he turned himself in to the police? Where can he run? In two weeks, every Amish community in the country will know what happened and be watching for him.”
“What if it wasn’t an accident?” she wondered out loud. “Lucy thinks that they argued and she was killed in the fight. Maybe he was jealous of someone else. Maybe she’d told him that she wouldn’t marry him and he lost his temper.”
“I wouldn’t like to think that, that one of our own could do such a thing. But I know that such a thing is possible. Anger is a poison in a man’s veins. Wherever he is, he deserves our pity and our prayers.”
“I am praying for Dathan. And for Elsie.”
“Maybe he needs your prayers more than she does,” her father suggested. “If he did kill her in a fit of rage, his conscience will tear him apart. And our Elsie is safe in the arms of a loving and all-knowing God.”
“Did you ever think that maybe the way we bring up our children puts them at risk?” Rachel asked. “We’re protected, sheltered from the world’s evil. Maybe we do them a disservice by not teaching them to defend themselves.”
“Ne, daughter. Never think that. The Bible tells us to turn the other cheek. When the martyrs of old were burned at the stake, they prayed for their tormentors. And when savages swept down on our farms and tomahawked whole families, most of our men would not raise an ax or a rifle to take their lives in turn. Nonviolence, love, trying to live by the example of Jesus. That is the only way for us . . . the only way we Amish know.”