Blood of the Prodigal. P. L. Gaus
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door to his garage bang shut behind him.
As he walked down the short gravel drive to his car, Branden wondered what Hostettler had meant when he had said, “First, they as much as killed my sister.”
7
Friday, June 19
3:00 P.M.
DONNA Beachey stood awash in memories at a dirty window in Leeper School and watched a horse-drawn wagon roll along slowly in a distant field. She ran a finger along the dusty sill and then absently brushed cobwebs away from a corner of the glass.
She turned to Caroline and said, “I can tell you exactly why they sent you to me. It’s the same reason I asked you to meet me here. The story of Jonah Miller starts here, with me, and they all know it.”
Donna glanced around the single room, seeing a grade-school classroom, filled with happy Amish children of all ages. “This was my first teaching assignment. One of the last groups of children to have been taught in Leeper School.” She wondered, somewhat amused with herself, why she had agreed so impulsively to this meeting.
Her hair was tied neatly in a bun under a white Mennonite prayer cap. She smoothed out the plain apron in front of her pleated aqua dress and walked slowly to the chalkboard at the front of the classroom. There was still an eraser in the tray, and she picked it up out of habit, lost again in memories.
Caroline stood quietly in the middle of the empty room and waited. She had interviewed three teachers today. Two had mentioned Leeper School. The third had also spoken, in hushed tones, of Miss Donna Beachey.
“Funny,” Donna said, “how you forget.” She dropped the eraser back onto the tray and dusted off her hands with a somewhat wilted expression. “That was almost twenty years ago.”
“Why did you want to meet here?” Caroline asked, glad at last to be talking.
“This is where it started.”
“That’s what I’ve been told,” Caroline said, delicately.
Donna Beachey noticed Caroline’s restraint, and smiled appreciately. “I’m surprised you don’t have the whole story,” she said. “There used to be better gossips in these parts.”
“I know very little, really, if anything.” Caroline held back, wondering what she’d learn from the one person who evidently knew it all.
Donna Beachey returned to the window with an air of resignation. She was surprised by how much she had forgotten. Being here again, and using her old keys to open the schoolhouse door, had brought it all back. She had cherished the feel of the curved sandstone as she had climbed the worn steps outside. The familiar noises the hinges had made as the front doors swung open. The aroma of chalk dust and the creaking wooden floor. She stood at the window for a long time, with her memories upwelling.
Caroline let the minutes pass quietly. In time, the teacher motioned for Caroline to join her at the window.
“It’s pushing twenty years since they closed this little school, but the view here hasn’t changed in the slightest.”
Caroline stood behind her and looked out over the top of Miss Beachey’s head covering. Rows of hay, recently turned, lay in the fields beyond. A few shocks of corn stood along a fence where they had been stacked last fall. A flatbed wagon with large black rubber truck tires eased along silently in the distance, drawn by two Belgian draft horses. The driver sat lazily on the plain wooden buckboard, dressed in a summer hat, white shirt, black suspenders, and denim trousers. He held a whip, tassels high overhead, but seldom employed it.
“I was a rookie teacher then, Mrs. Branden. They usually had their own. It would be one of the young mothers from a nearby farm, or an unmarried daughter with time on her hands. In earlier days, the teachers might not have had much more education than their oldest pupils. I think it’s better now, and sometimes there will be one with an actual teacher’s degree. But for a spell, it was the Mennonite colleges that sent most of the teachers here, like me.
“Now as far as Jonah goes, by the time I started, he was in the fifth grade, and already reading at a high school level.” She turned to look at Caroline, wondered briefly if she would understand, and then turned back to the window with a sigh. “The Amish choose a lifestyle that seems backward, but that doesn’t mean they choose to be stupid. It just means that they have different rules.
“Take that wagon,” she said. “See the rubber tires?”
Caroline nodded.
“See how they’re inflated?”
“Umhmh.”
“In some districts, that’d be disallowed. Some bishops might approve rubber tires, but not inflated rubber tires. Just rubber pads on the rims. Others rule out rubber altogether. They use iron or wooden rims only. An inquisitive child wouldn’t understand why. But, when they take the vows, all Amish acknowledge that they have accepted the rules. That was the hard part for Jonah Miller. Accepting the rules.
“You see it in the kids. Especially the younger ones. Like in the fifth grade. They want to know ‘why.’ Fair enough, wouldn’t you say? They just want to know ‘why.’
“Most of them eventually accept such answers as they get, and the rules, too. They finish school, have their year or so for the Rumschpringe and then come home and take the vows. Some are ready earlier. They don’t need a year. Don’t have any doubts. No questions. No Rumschpringe.
“But once in a while you’ll see one who needs to know more. Wants to know why. Really wants to understand why rubber tires are not to be inflated.
“That was Jonah’s problem. He needed to know ‘why.’ Even by the fifth grade. I tried to give him something special in school, because he was so intelligent. At first, he responded well, but eventually, I lost him.”
Donna paused and looked at Caroline again. She walked over to the desk in front of the chalkboard and stood facing out into the classroom, obviously struggling with regrets. Caroline leaned against the windowsill and gave her time. Calmly, at last, Donna Beachey began to tell what she knew of Jonah Miller.
“Jonah was a rebel,” Donna said, “at a time in my teaching career when I was too young to appreciate what that would mean in Bishop Miller’s district.”
She pointed into the back of the room and remembered the little desks. “When Jonah took his seat, he’d scoot the desk two or three inches to the left. Always to the left. Just enough to be out of line with the other children.”
“You think that was important?” Caroline asked.
“Yes, because he always watched me, to see if I had noticed.”
“Some rebel,” Caroline said.
“Don’t underestimate that,” Donna said. “He also began rolling his pants into a tight, high cuff. As a fashion statement. He always did it after he was on school property. Before he left, he’d roll the cuffs out again.”
“It doesn’t seem like a very big thing,” Caroline said.
“Ah, but he was Old Order Amish, Mrs. Branden,” Donna reminded her. “Soon after that, his father—”
“Bishop Miller?”
“Yes. Bishop Miller came to me after school and asked if it were true that Jonah was ‘hitching his britches up’ in school.”
“And?”
“Jonah never did it again,” Donna said. “The tragedy is, Jonah had intellect. He knew. Or suspected, anyway. You know—that the world holds marvels. It tormented him.”
“He quit school like the rest do?” Caroline asked pointedly.
“He had no choice. That’s the way of the Amish. His grandparents, parents, uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters, cousins, and neighbors all quit school earlier. If the state did not now