CHAPTER ELEVEN

 

The morning after…

 

“Gun casings where to the right of the man’s body.”   Jeremiah caught the Sheriff’s words as he pulled the black buggy up to where the motel had once stood. 

The motel was completely leveled, and the news crews were interviewing a tall, grey-haired man in his fifties.  The purple-dyed young girl politely stood next to him.  An older lady with tight black curls extended her arm around her.  This was her family.  They were safe. 

Panic entered Jeremiah, for he’d known that the purple-haired girl had taken shelter from the tornado in his back stock room without her family by her side.  “Where’s the baby sister?”

The Sheriff turned away from the motel owner and explained, “She’s over there with the other teenagers.”  He pointed to a group of teenagers that were perched on a couple of picnic tables.  People were in line to get a meal.  Volunteers were serving the storm victims cold sandwiches and bottled spring water.  Mrs. Yoder was at the end of the line, serving generous slices of pies and cakes.

“That’s good.  I was worried about her,” Jeremiah said as he reached up to pat down his waving grey hair.

“Don’t worry about her.  She is twenty-one and the other girl is twenty-five.  They don’t look it, do they?  They are Ohio State Troopers working with the US Marshalls to find some outlaws from Costa Rica.” The Sheriff’s words were calm.  

Jeremiah was amazed at how well the purple-haired girl had blended in.  His mind ran to the storm damage.  He’d never seen a whole motel be wiped away by Mother Nature.

He missed his straw hat and his old farm house.  His farm had taken a direct hit; He knew that the tornado had been a bad one, so his straw hat could be in the next state, or even two states over.  There had been devastation and major fatalities in four states.  The raging twister had been an F5. 

“Sorry about your place, Mr. Troyer,” The Motel Manager spoke empathetically.  His eyes looked puffy and his body fragile. 

“At least I didn’t have to bulldoze it down.”  Jeremiah smiled and tried to act confident.

He had to admit that he was anything but confident, for Miriam Yoder had vanished, and he was worried about her not leaving him a note.  She hadn’t taken her wheelchair or her black bonnet.  She was due to go through a special instruction class in the fall.  She was now nowhere to be found.

“I was just talking to the motel manager about the shoot-out.  Have you heard about it?”  The Sheriff asked Jeremiah, catching him off-guard.

Jeremiah shook his head and gritted his teeth.  “Was the dead man Hispanic with a black pistol?” 

“Yes, he had a blonde-colored hair, though, which was odd for a Hispanic man.”  The Sheriff shook his head and then continued, “He was from Costa Rica.”

“You’re kidding me!”  Cold chills shot up Jeremiah’s spine immobilizing him. 

Finally, he explained, “Miriam had told me that the Costa Rican man that had let her live on the day that her mother was murdered had mentioned that he had a blonde-haired brother.  Could it be a coincidence?  Here lately, what I have thought had been a coincidence had turned out to not be one at all.”

The Sheriff looked puzzled and then asked, ‘Where’s Miriam?”

“She left.  I have no idea where she is at.  She didn’t take her wheelchair or her bonnet,” Jeremiah said as worry pricked his face.

“That’s not good.  There’s was a female body found in a dumpster in Wheeling, West Virginia.  The body was that of a young female and had long blonde hair.”  The Sheriff looked at Jeremiah and then shook his head as he turned to the motel manager.

“It’s probably from the storm.  I heard that there were fatalities in four states.” The manager thought that it wasn’t her.  “She’s probably in the tree house.  Did you check it?”

“The tree house and the hickory tree are gone.  I don’t think that she would stay in harm’s way.  Believe me; she doesn’t care much for hickory trees.”  Jeremiah smiled and looked for agreement.  Both men had a look of disagreement on their faces. 

Jeremiah knew that Miriam had left in an unknown truck, but he thought that she wasn’t in harm’s way.

“They’re looking for a Red Dodge Ram with Texas plates.”  The men that were killed are in a Costa Rican gang.  They had symbols tattooed on their left arms and were wearing cut-off arms of their tee-shirts.”

“That’s the two men that had entered the store yesterday. They were killed?”  Jeremiah felt guilty, for he’d known that those men were acting oddly.  He’d tried to spark conversation with them in the storm shelter, but they hadn’t offered one word.  He now knew…they’d been looking for Miriam Yoder to kill her.

Jeremiah chuckled.  “I’m glad that she wasn’t at the store when they came looking for her.”

“She left with someone who had Pennsylvania plates, not Texas.  Rachael had told me that he was speaking Dietsch. She probably went back home.”

“You’re probably right.  They coincidentally came to take her home at the same time the bad boys came looking for her.  I hope she gets her life straight.”  The Sheriff smiled, but in the back of his mind, he was scared straight, for he knew that there had been a baby girl found dead alongside the female body.  “Where’s her infant?  Didn’t you adopt it?”

“That’s a good question.  Rachael told me that a ‘sister’ came to pick the baby up to watch her for a few days, but she won’t tell me a name.  I thought that it may have been Noah’s wife.  I’ll go back home and ask her. I have some dried strawberries to bring for the storm victims.”  Jeremiah had put up 200 pounds of dried strawberries and knew that God wanted him to share in times like these. 

“Have a good day.  I’m sure the baby’s safe.  I’ll go get the strawberries and some cheese and meats from my store.”  Jeremiah gave a closing nod, turned, and got into his buggy.

He clicked at the horses and sighed. This would be a long road for him and Miriam.  When would she be back?  He hoped that it was soon.  He knew that he would eagerly take turns with Rachael to push Miriam in her wheelchair. 

He’d even wheel her out to the flower garden to relax under the sun’s rays. Actually, he wanted to take her out to the garden so that he could sit and adore her glowing blonde locks of love.  This young lady had the biggest heart and the brightest blonde hair. He couldn’t wait to marry her so that he could run his hands through the spiraling blonde waves of curls.

Sara’s hair had been exactly like Miriam’s hair.  He remembered her playing out in the sand box on sunny days; the sun had shined down and had made her beautiful curls the most magnificent sight that anyone could have seen.

He wanted her to be comfortable, so there would not be a tree house on the new farm, and there wasn’t a hickory tree in sight.  She’d be living in the upstairs apartment of his new farm house that was until she would become Mrs. Troyer. 

He hoped that he had impressed her; he hoped that she hadn’t been picky. He guided the team of horse around the debris on the two-lane road.  Fields of green had turned into fields of grey with storm damage spread and trees twisted and uprooted. 

He directed the horses to the shoulder of the road to let the cars pass him safely. Maryland, Washington State, and even California license-plated cars slowly went around him. 

Glancing at each car or van as it passed him; he noticed that all of the drivers and passengers were giving quick sympathetic nods as tears rolling down their faces.  It had been a long time since he’d seen a grown man cry. 

Jeremiah gave a nod back to a sobbing minivan full of seniors as they passed him.  He had to wonder if they’d remember the untouched shops at Sugarcreek and not the devastation caused by the twister.  Luckily, there had been no fatalities in Sugarcreek, Millersburg, or Walnut Creek.  God had been with them.  He had not been with Sara on Black Mountain when she’d died in a twisting storm. 

“I know she must have been scared.  What had she done, Lord, to lose your protection?”  Jeremiah sent a prayer up to God, knowing that God had never answered him about his sister’s death. 

He slightly trembled and turned cold.  He could feel his sister’s fear as she’d saw the monster tornado coming at their Mennonite-driven van.  He felt helpless; he wished he’d taken the rip instead of her.

In a sense, he knew that he had always wanted someone exactly like his sister because they could imitate his sister and ease some of the pain.  Miriam Yoder had done that by being at his home for two months. 

“God, I’m listening.”  He spoke to God as he glanced up at the now-perfect looking sky.  What a force nature could be to look so harmless, but within a second, turn violently deadly.  “I want her to be the one.  She was so cute in her little pink miniskirt with child in tow.  She had the courage of a lion to walk up to an Amish man.”

  He had to admit that he had become intrigued by her the day that she had approached him, but he hadn’t wanted to admit it.

Jeremiah began to wonder who had taken his soon-to-be-adopted infant daughter.  Where’s my little blond baby girl? Rachael had told him that the sister that had taken her wanted it to be a surprise, as she was taking her shopping. He hadn’t challenged her story since “sisters” were members of their tight-knit community, so it had to have been one of the other mothers wanting to help out. 

He began to feel selfish for not sharing the baby with Miriam.  He was doing this for her own safety, for she was still healing from the tree fall, and he wanted her to not drop the baby.  He didn’t want her possibility dropping the baby and then falling out of her wheelchair by trying to pick it up off the floor.  

Rachael seemed to always be by her side, but it would just take that one time for such an accident to occur.  He couldn’t let that happen.  He hoped that she knew why he’d adopted the baby girl.  He wanted to grab her and the baby into the safe haven that she’d begged for on the day that she’d approached him at the gas station parking lot. 

“She asked if I had a fraa, and I did not,” he chuckled.  Her charm and aggressiveness had worked:  she’d gotten the lonely Amish man.  However, he had to wonder if this was really what she’d wanted.  Would she get stabilized and then leave?  He hoped not.  He hoped that, like her blonde locks of love, her heart was locked, too, and he had the key.

*****

 

 

“You have the chubbiest cheeks!  Smile at mommy.  Go ahead and smile.”   Miriam cradled the baby girl and watched her smile back at her.  “We’re going to be just fine.” 

Miriam could feel the dirt and shredded debris in her long hair.  She glanced down to see if her hair still glowed and seen that it was a dull, dish-wash blonde.  She held tears back and bit her lip.  Her blonde spirals had always cheered her up in hard times. Adding with the guilt of taking Grace shopping without Jeremiah’s permission, the sadness of losing her beauty was almost too much for her to handle. 

She rocked Grace and closed her eyes, trying to block out the kidnapper.  He was going to kill her.  He was going to kill Grace.  She trembled and tried to cling to Grace.  Both her mother and father had been murdered by these Costa Rican gangsters.  She was next in line. 

She tried to block out the man that was holding her at gunpoint by looking into her daughter’s eyes and watching her smile.

“Mommy shouldn’t have had a heart full of vanity anyway.  Mommy’s looks don’t matter.  It’s our love that matters,” Miriam whispered and then kissed her little chubby cheeks.  Had Jeremiah kissed them?  Had he really accepted her as his daughter?  What about her: had he really fallen in love with her or her beautiful gold locks that looked like his sister Sara’s hair?  She had become confused about their relationship.  She knew it was because of her insecurity.  When you lose your father at a young age, get plucked up from your culture, and raped by your mother’s wealthy, abusive boss, you end up losing all security and even begin to question who you are at times.

“You have a father?”  The guarded pistol-toting blonde-haired man asked a question that he knew the answer to, for he had known that members of his gang had taken her father’s life when she’d been little.

Miriam stared at him.  She wanted to ignore him, for if he wasn’t focused on the mission that he’d been assigned to: to kill Mark Yoder’s daughter, then he would maybe have mercy and spare their life.  She remembered her mother’s words and disappointment that she hadn’t stood up for Jesus when the gunned-men had come barreling through the kitchen door of the New York farm house. 

“He was killed.”  She stopped her words, as she was still debating on what to say.  It had been years since she’d set on a wooden bench in her father’s Lancaster County community, but she still remembered what she’d learned:  “Drop everything and follow Christ.” 

She took a deep breath and said a silent prayer: God, I give my very life to you, and I give my daughter’s life to you. 

She looked up and squared her shoulders the best that she could as pain ran down her hurt legs.  “He was killed for his faith in Jesus Christ, and I, too, am prepared to die for my Jesus, as is my baby girl.”

“She doesn’t know who God is or even the Jesus that you Christians talk about!”  He yelled as he ran over and started hitting her, knocking the infant out of her arms. 

“Grace!  Grace!”  She tried to get away from his grip to see where her daughter was, but she couldn’t, for this man was a pro-kidnapper.  “Why did you do it, pioneer girl? Is that what you’re going to ask me?”  Miriam dropped her head to the ground and cried. 

The man stopped hitting her.  She knew that he had known what she had meant, for other than the blonde-dyed hair, he looked exactly like the man that had waved her away from the Texas-plated truck that had come to kill her father.  She’d never gotten his face out of her head.  She refused to be waved away this time.

“I didn’t build a village in Costa Rica!  I didn’t even remember living in Costa Rica, for I was a baby like my daughter here.”  Miriam looked down at her infant and saw her smile.  “See how she smiles.  She doesn’t know anything about which street corner belongs to which drug gang.”

“Your father knew that it was our corner.  Calm down.”  The man looked down at her, but she didn’t look up.  She was busy bonding with her daughter like most new mothers do. 

“Looks like you win today.  I’m he last man standing for the gang that killed your father.  A Christian man beating us down, that’s impossible, but it looks like it just happened.”

“Have you ever heard the story of David and Goliath?”  Miriam asked, still glued to the infant’s eyes.  “Jesus protects us.”

“Where was Jesus when we took your father down?’  The man asked as he looked around and saw six SWAT Team members and the Sheriff, all of who didn’t have their guns drawn. 

“He sends angels.  There are some things that happen that we will never know the answer to, and it is those things that test our faith. I am willing to die for Jesus.  I am willing to drop everything, including my only daughter to follow him.”

“I guess that those tough guys think there are angels surrounding you,” The man announced, getting Miriam’s attention.

 

Miriam was in awe as she looked up and saw the men, arms folded, standing across from her.  Their SWAT Team uniforms matched the seriousness in their eyes.  The Sheriff looked in full control as the wind blew through his brown hair. 

Miriam turned to the young man just in time to see an Ohio Park Ranger come up behind him and knock the gun out of his hand.  One of the SWAT team members pounced over, swept her and the baby up, and flipped in the air with them.  She quickly forgot about the throbbing pain in her legs.  This was like nothing this that she’d ever experienced before and her adrenaline had suddenly started pumping. 

She felt brave and honored to have defended Jesus this time.  She’d wished that her mother could have been there to see her this time.  She started crying as she rocked the infant in the back seat of the Park Ranger’s SUV.  A muscular, rather quiet SWAT Team member sat to her right. 

“Are you a father?”  Miriam asked him.

“Yes, I have two boys.  Did you have permission to take the infant from his father?”  The SWAT Team member asked. 

“Rachael gave me permission.  She is her babysitter; she shares the responsibility with her younger sister.”  Miriam smiled at the member.  “There’s the most beautiful pair of peafowls that a lady two roads over has for sale.  I wanted to take her there to see if she would possibly like them.  We were going shopping, that’s all.”

“Really.  Let’s pull up here and see what Troyer says,” the member remarked as they curved up the driveway. 

Miriam’s mind wondered to her now dirty and un-glowing hair.  It had always been her special quality, one that she’d always use to get her way with young men.  Would Jeremiah Troyer love her without her golden locks?  She didn’t know the answer, and she was plagued with unworthiness and no fear just like the day that she’d come coasting into town. 

The SUV met Jeremiah, Rachael, and Emily in front of the house.  Jeremiah’s eyes quickly met Miriam’s eyes with a warmness that only the two of them shared.  She hung her head in shame for not having the perfect hair.

“Miriam, look at me,” Jeremiah politely asked as he walked up to the open driver’s side window.  “It’s okay that you took our daughter.”

“WOW!  You have a place to stay now and a good family,” The SWAT Team member smiled as he took off his SWAT hat.  “Do you remember me?”

Miriam gave a nervous laugh. He’d been the gas station attendant.  “I thought that you worked at the gas station.”

He didn’t lie, “It’s my moonlighting job on my days off and after work.  This area is quiet, so we aren’t needed much.  You’re the first person that we’ve ever had to rescue.  It’s pretty quiet in Amish Country.

Miriam sighed.  She’d finally found a place where she could fit in and start over again.  God had answered her prayer by placing her back on an Amish farm with an Amish-built black barn and no hickory trees.  Life would be good.