Driftless. David Rhodes
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minutes later, he turned into Eli Yoder’s barnyard. A dozen or more chickens, geese, and guinea hens performed a clamorous and feathery retreat. A black and white dog barked anxiously from a safe distance away. Stepping from the truck, Rusty looked for signs of human life among the shabby collection of wood-framed buildings, sheep pen, cement silo, and an overturned cart. Chestnut draft horses grazed beyond the barn and a curl of smoke rose from the tiny, unpainted house.
Hoping to find someone outdoors, Rusty walked to the barn. Road-hoppers flew out of his path, their papered wings rasping. A barefoot child—perhaps four or five years old—darted from a nearby shed carrying a pail. She glanced fearfully at him from beneath her white head scarf and continued running along a dirt path to the house, where she closed the door behind her.
Finding no one in the barn, Rusty followed the dirt path to the house and knocked on a windowless door. It opened and a large woman stood directly inside, holding a broom, her head covered with a coarse dark-blue bonnet with strands of gray hair poking out around the edges. A full-length dress of matching blue provided a shapeless background for the untied apron falling from her neck. Her bare feet seemed surprisingly large, imposing and immanently functional, as though two normal-sized feet were protectively hidden inside them. She did not speak but continued staring at the floor, gripping the broom with red-knuckled hands. Three children under school age stared wide-eyed from a darkened corner of the room. Rusty shifted his weight inside his cowboy boots and pulled his right ear lobe with his left hand. “I’m looking for Eli.”
No response.
“He here?”
“Nope,” said the woman without looking up or offering another explanation.
It seemed an unusually masculine reply, putting Rusty partly at ease, and he continued, “You know where I can find him?” He took a cigarette from his jacket pocket and inserted it into his mouth.
“Fillin’ silo over to Bontrager’s.”
The three children cautiously moved out of the darkened corner and were now about halfway across the little room, keeping the woman between them and the door. The boy—the youngest of the three—continued to stare at Rusty with extreme anxiety, as though Rusty were someone he had been specifically warned about. The only light in the room came through a single window, partly obscured by curtains, and the smell of kerosene lay heavy on the air. The smell nudged something loose inside Rusty—a memory he held for a moment then let fall.
“Where’s that?” he asked.
“Three places over,” she said, jerking the broom handle to indicate north. “Pumpkin patch by the road.”
Rusty lit his cigarette and blew out smoke. “I’ll be going over there, then.”
Rusty found the farm. Six buggies parked in front of the house—some with horses still in harness. Amish men were filling silo next to the barn. Several stood on a wagon piled with bundled cornstalks, feeding them into a gasoline-powered chopper. Other horse-drawn wagons could be seen in a nearby field, where more Amish loaded more cornstalks. All wore straw hats, blue coats, and black boots. The older men had beards without mustaches; the youngest were clean-shaven.
As Rusty approached, the operator of the chopper walked out to meet him. “I am Levi Bontrager,” he said in slightly broken English over the roaring sound of the chopper. “Can I be of help to you?”
“Looking for Eli Yoder,” said Rusty. He reached for a cigarette and then decided against it. Levi Bontrager turned and shouted in German to the workers unloading the wagon. A tall, thin man with a narrow black beard jumped to the ground and came forward. Bontrager returned to his position beside the chopper.
“July Montgomery said you do carpenter work. I need work on my house.”
“Jha,” replied Eli, looking out from under his hat like a badger looking out of its burrow. “What kind of work?” It was impossible for Rusty to judge his age, not only because his clothes, hair, and facial grooming did not communicate the usual signals, but also because of his general comportment. He might be a young man unusually mature, or an older man unusually immature. His teeth, for instance, were in deplorable condition, but his posture was markedly erect; while it seemed inconceivable for a young man to have such rotten teeth, it seemed equally inconceivable for an older man to stand so straight. His eyes were proud, even vain, but not arrogant. The teeth again captured Rusty’s attention. You just didn’t see bad teeth anymore, not like you used to. Rusty’s father had bad teeth—real bad—and he quickly forced the memory away from him.
“Roof work, windows and trim, and humps in the bedroom floor,” said Rusty. “Shouldn’t take longer than a week or two.”
“When you need this done?” Eli asked, absently brushing curls of dried corn leaves from his sleeves.
“Need it done right now.”
“You say you know July Montgomery?”
“Yup. I’m Russell Smith, and my farm’s not too far from here.”
“People call you Rusty?”
“Some do,” Rusty replied, disturbed at being identified by someone he knew nothing about.
“I should take a look at what you have.”
“When can you come?”
“Right now.”
“All right. I’ve got my truck here, I mean I suppose it’s okay for you folks to ride in a truck, I mean if it isn’t . . .”
“It’s okay,” said Eli. He walked straight to the truck, climbed in, and closed the door.
Rusty hadn’t anticipated this. He was unaccustomed to sharing the interior of his truck with anyone and could count on one hand the number of times a passenger other than his wife had sat beside him. He lit a cigarette before settling behind the wheel and noticed a strong smell of human sweat mixed with corn silage.
On the road, he could think of nothing to say. Every topic seemed likely to violate some religious sensibility or unnecessarily accentuate the many obvious differences between them. But while the silence gnawed at Rusty as if it were a rat imprisoned in a wooden box, Eli Yoder appeared unperturbed. He gazed at the passing landscape from beneath his hat, occupying his place on the seat with an indifferent ease.
“Hope the smoke doesn’t bother you,” said Rusty, nearing the end of his cigarette.
“It don’t.”
Rusty lit another and they continued until they reached the state highway.
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to stop at the convenience store,” said Eli. “If you have the time.”
Rusty parked on the lower side of Kwik Trip, where posters announced cheap cigarettes, beer, lottery tickets, bananas, and frozen pizza. Eli went in. Rusty remained in the truck, wondering what business an Amish could have here. Even Rusty disliked going inside, where teenagers abounded, middle-aged women talked in shrill voices, and everyone seemed to move in a fluorescent world of forced humor and snacks wrapped in plastic. Beneath advertisements for a video featuring a blond girl screaming beneath a man with a knife in his teeth and a sale on toilet paper, Rusty could see the top of Eli’s hat. Five minutes later he came out and climbed in the truck carrying a plastic mug of coffee and a pastry filled with raspberry jam.
“Thanks,” he said, sipping from the mug. “I needed to make a telephone call and they had free doughnuts with a cup of coffee. I didn’t get any breakfast.”
Rusty backed out of the lot. “Didn’t think you people used phones,” he said.
“Try not to,” said Eli. “But you got to make a living.”
They went the rest of the way in silence.
At Rusty’s home, Eli looked up at the roof and learned that twenty-five years had passed since the asphalt shingles had been replaced.
“Fifteen years is