Chapter Twenty-Three
Miriam was almost to the house when she knew she couldn’t go there. Not yet. Mamm and Daad would demand to know what was wrong.
Even blinded by tears, she veered and ran away from the house, through the orchard to the woods that ran behind the big barn. They wouldn’t look for her there.
Hidden by its bulk, surrounded by trees in full leaf, she stumbled to a stop at last. The only time she’d ever cried so hard was when Amos and Daad came to tell her about Levi. She’d known something terrible had happened the instant she saw their faces. Luke dead, something going wrong with Rose’s pregnancy, Elam in a buggy hit by a car. So many possibilities had flashed in front of her eyes. The very last that crossed her mind was Levi. It was his name she’d whispered.
“Ja,” her daadi said, his voice raw, his eyes kind but so sad for her. He’d pulled her into an embrace, and she had cried her heart out against his shoulder.
Now . . . she had no one. Sobbing, she fell to her knees, then to her hands, finally curling on her side in the soft loamy soil beneath the trees. It was as if Levi had just died, all over again. Only now she knew. Not a tragic accident. Not God’s will, demanding her acceptance. Not even, as she’d imagined, because he’d been upset by his last quarrel with her.
Levi died at David Miller’s hands.
She cried until she was as limp as a wrung-out dish towel. Worse: the kind of dish towel her mother consigned to the rag bag to use for especially dirty cleaning.
Ja, dirty cleaning was about right.
Her eyes were so swollen, she saw only through slits when she tried to open them. She had to be red and blotchy. She wasn’t at all sure she could stand up. And she had no idea how much time had passed.
Would Mamm be growing worried? Or did she think her daughter and David were smooching, making plans for Miriam to give up her spinster ways?
It took her another several minutes to gather herself enough to crawl to the nearest tree with a broad enough bole and sit up, leaning against it. She’d use the faucet outside the barn to splash her face with cold water, hope to erase the evidence of her crying.
Driven by a jagged piece of glass piercing the wall of her chest, she thought, Why should I? Why not tell everyone? He should be banned, driven away.
She whimpered. How often had she heard the passage from Romans? Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath; for it is written, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord.
Drained, she tried to remind herself that the Lord was always near to those who had a broken heart.
Twice broken, because she’d loved Levi . . . and she had come to love David, too. One with the heart of a girl, one with the heart of a woman.
She could let the wrath go more easily than she’d expected. As for vengeance? God would not need to demand it from David. The torment she’d seen on his face told her he was already suffering as much as anyone could wish. And that was why she didn’t want to tell anyone at all what he’d said. Outward measures weren’t needed. Until he could determine what measure of blame was really his, confess to his Lord and forgive himself, the burden must stay on his shoulders.
She wouldn’t make it heavier.
If her need to avoid drawing yet more pity was selfish . . . surely God would forgive her that much.
David tripped over the broken fence rail and fell hard enough to knock the air out of his lungs. He’d landed in some briars, too, that dug tiny thorns into his clothes and the skin of his lower arms, bared by shirtsleeves folded almost to his elbows.
Slowly he rolled, lifted his arm to see droplets of blood, and let his arm fall back to his side. Staring up at the sky, still bright, he tried to think of any reason at all to get up.
That last expression he’d seen on Miriam’s face would haunt him for the rest of his life. He’d known what she would think, and still not prepared himself. Her eventual forgiveness wouldn’t wipe that image from his mind or heart. He’d still be one of the brethren in her eyes, but her life would go on separately from his—except that each time he saw her, every torturous feeling would be reawakened.
Not just for him, he realized. Facing a bleak future, he wondered if, for her sake more than his, he should sell his farm and move to another settlement.
But . . . never to see her again?
The sky looked like a watercolor painting now. He lifted a hand to his face to find it wet. The last time he’d cried was after that tree fell and he had to use his ax to clear branches away until he found Levi’s broken body. Even then, he’d tried desperately to cut through the trunk of that maple so that he might shift it off Levi. Alone, it was impossible. He needed someone on the other end of the crosscut saw.
As Levi had always been.
That was when David fell to his knees, sobbed, and shouted at God.
Ja, these past six years he’d been running away from God as much as he was from Miriam, Esther, and his own family.
If he left now, he would still hold God close. Whatever life lay before him, it wouldn’t be a godless one.
As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving.
Someday, if he could forgive himself, he would find thanksgiving. Feeling as old as Onkel Hiram must have near the end, David got to his feet. Every joint in his body ached, although none so much as the pain that swelled in his chest.
He looked around for the basket he’d been carrying and realized he’d left it where he and Miriam had talked. Food held no interest for him, but he couldn’t chance one of the Bowmans finding it, Deborah thinking he hadn’t valued her gift. As careful as the old man he felt himself to be, he climbed back over the fence, retraced his steps, and retrieved the heavy basket.
The sky was deepening in color by the time he set the basket on the back step of his house. His own horses had lined up at the fence now that he was home, and a trumpeting call from the barn along with excited yipping reminded him that he was needed.
As he set about his evening chores, David tried to keep his thoughts turned from Miriam. He would hope she hated him and therefore didn’t hurt as much as he did . . . except that wasn’t what their Lord asked of them.
All he had to do was remember the familiar passage from the book of Matthew.
You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.”
But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you.
He had no doubt that Miriam would wish him well, do good for him if she could, but whether she could bring herself to love him in any meaningful sense of the world, David didn’t know. For her sake, he prayed it would be so, even if her love wasn’t the kind he craved.
Miriam had managed to slip into the house without her mother hearing her. By the time she went downstairs, she had erased the evidence of tears, only saying, “Ach, I tore my dress.” Which was true. “I needed to change. And you finished cleaning the kitchen without me.”
Mamm brushed off her apologies, of course, looked at her closely enough to make her wonder whether her turbulent emotions were seeping out like poisonous water from swampy ground. But Mamm didn’t say anything, and the evening passed much as usual. Daad pulled himself too hastily up from his lying position on the couch, clenched his teeth, and finally shifted to his chair.
As he read scripture, Miriam mended the rent in the skirt of her dress, then started on a pair of Daad’s pants that had a tear so clean, she thought he must have cut the fabric with a saw or sharp-edged chisel. Mamm hemmed a small dress for Abby, then crocheted a cloud-soft blanket sized for a crib. For Julia’s unborn boppli, she had admitted to Miriam when she started it. Miriam would make this kind a quilt, too, but the blanket would be softer.
She worked a full day on Saturday, their busiest of the week. More of the curious mixed with real shoppers. Miriam was glad to stay so busy. She didn’t even have time to slip down the street to have lunch with Julia, which might be best. She wasn’t ready to talk even to her best friend yet.
She spared a moment to be grateful because this wasn’t a worship Sunday. Yet a quiet voice inside insisted that she couldn’t continue to pretend nothing had happened, that she had to think about David’s confession and why he had made it.
Soon—but not yet.
On Saturday, David drove Copper pulling the small cart up and down the driveway—which was really more two dirt paths separated by a hillock of grass. Grass that he needed to mow soon, he noted.
The third time they reached the bottom of the driveway, he heard an approaching car and reined Copper to a stop. A car rather than a noisy pickup truck was what he’d sought, but this one sped past faster than was safe on this road. David allowed the horse to turn his head to watch it go, pleased at how steady he remained.
He turned him around in the road, hearing the approach of a buggy. This time he kept some tension in the reins, signaling that Copper was to disregard this distraction. Which he did.
Soon he’d be ready to go out on the road hitched to the buggy rather than the cart.
Halfway up the driveway this time, he heard a deep-throated engine that hesitated. Someone turning in behind him.
Copper’s ears swiveled, and his trot broke into a canter. David sternly corrected him, and the gelding fell back into a smooth trot that brought them to the barnyard. Only then did David look back and see the massive SUV with a light bar across the top.
The police chief, again. What did he want this time?
David got down from the buggy and waved a hello. Nick parked and turned off the engine, then strolled David’s way as he unhitched Copper from the cart and began removing the harness.
“Glad I don’t have to do that every time I want to go somewhere,” the police chief commented.
David smiled. “Ja, that is a disadvantage, but one that keeps us aware of the choices we make every day.”
Once he’d turned Copper loose in the pasture, he invited Nick to the house for a cup of coffee. The chief seemed glad to sit and took a long swallow.
“Julia told me that she thought those men would have shot at her and Luke if you hadn’t yelled at them not to,” he said abruptly. “She thinks they hesitated because of what you said.”
“It was nothing—”
“It was something. You were trying to protect everyone.”
He supposed he had been. Preventing violence from erupting had been his only thought.
“I’m glad only the police officer and Eli were hurt, and neither so bad.”
“My sister says he’s a stubborn old fool.” At David’s raised eyebrows, Nick laughed. “She didn’t say fool. Or maybe even old. I could tell what she didn’t say.”
Normally, David would have laughed, too. Instead, he studied the other man. A police officer, who must have seen a great deal of violence in his career. Maybe even committed some. Would he talk about that?
David wondered whether God had created this opportunity for him. He realized Nick was studying him in turn, as if seeing something unexpected on his face.
Before he could have second thoughts, David asked his question. “Have you ever been responsible for another person’s death?”
The police chief’s expression closed like heavy doors hiding whatever lay behind them. The silence grew uncomfortably long.
David cleared his throat. “You’re the only person I can ask.”
“This have anything to do with why you left the Amish for a few years?”
“Yes.” He realized he’d switched to speaking English without even noticing, it still felt so natural. “Julia didn’t tell you what she knew?”
“No, only that you’d been a friend of Miriam’s fiancé, who died in an accident.” His expression changed. “You have something to do with the accident?”
His stomach churned, as if the coffee had gone bad. He shouldn’t have started this. He never wanted to confess his guilt to anyone else.
Want, no. But he’d already resolved to speak to Bishop Amos. So why not one more man?
“Ja,” he said slowly. Shook his head. “Yes. Everyone thought it really was an accident, but I blame myself. I ran away from the accusation I expected to see on everyone’s faces.”
“I . . . know that feeling.” Knots formed to each side of Nick’s jaw. His reluctance was obvious.
David understood. “We had a two-man business doing what you Englisch call selective logging, using our pair of draft horses to drag the logs out of the woods. We’d been good friends since we were boys.”
Nick didn’t move, only listened.
This was the worst part.
“I was jealous because Miriam loved him, but I put it aside. Levi was like a brother to me. I knew she’d never have looked at me anyway. I would have rejoiced at their happiness.” He prayed that wasn’t a lie, but truly believed it.
“But something changed.”
“Levi began to complain about her, saying she was too friendly with everyone, even other men and boys. She flirted, he said, was flighty.”
Nick frowned, but didn’t comment.
“It wasn’t true. She’s always been warm, friendly, willing to help, but she had eyes only for him. Her goodness was what drew me. I couldn’t understand where Levi had gotten these ideas, but he kept bringing up his discontent. She was only a girl, maybe too young for marriage. He should look around.”
“There was no basis for any of this?”
“You know her. What do you think?”
Frown still lingering, the police chief said, “I agree with your assessment of her. She and Julia became friends right away, and I could see why. They’re both . . . compassionate. Always willing to listen, to care. But flirtatious?” He shook his head. “I’ve never seen even a hint of that.”
“I think now it was coming from his mother, Esther Schwartz.”
“The one whose house you painted recently?”
“That’s right. I need to make sure she’s all right, for Levi’s sake.”
The nod reassured him.
“Then, I was angry instead. I would have given almost anything to have Miriam love me. He had what I wanted, and was saying bad things about her.” He told the story, then: Levi whining instead of thanking God that he’d been so blessed while David swung his ax to make the undercut that would control the tree’s descent. How he’d told Levi to shut up and made him take the other side of the crosscut saw. How the tree broke before they expected, and he’d known immediately why.
He described the utterly quiet moment when he felt the quiver that ran through the trunk, the long, drawn-out groan that followed as the tree began to fall. Still in slow motion, but nothing he could do. The expression on Levi’s face, the way he tensed to leap away but too late. His own grief and shame.
Voice choked, he said, “Later, after we cut the tree up enough to pull Levi’s body out, I looked at the core of it, where I’d opened it with my ax.” The rot, the strange twisting grain that told him any lumber from this tree would be useless. “I had to have seen it,” he concluded. “What if I was angry enough to want—” Even now, he couldn’t finish.
Nick sighed and rubbed his neck. “That kind of guilt can eat you alive.”
“It has. It does.”
His eyes met Daniel’s. “I have the same problem. I’d say with less excuse than you, but given my profession, the risk is high that any cop will make a mistake.”
Daniel nodded. He could see that. Carrying a deadly weapon, even with the intention of using it only to protect people, to save lives, was asking for trouble. Everyone made mistakes. For a police officer, it would be so easy to tighten a finger on the trigger.
He didn’t say anything, having no right to expect this man to share the tragedy that haunted him. But after a minute, Nick kept talking.
“I shot a kid. Killed her. She was only thirteen years old.”