Author: Ben H. Winters
Category: Humorous
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It’s the voice of the woman, though, that travels in. “Friend,” she begins. “We must ask. Are you ill?”
“I—” I stand in the quiet room, confused. Am I ill? Obviously, I am not well. I have been burned. There is smoke in my lungs. I have been kicked by a horse, and my forehead is split. I am hungry, and exhausted, and worn. But am I ill?
“Friend?” she says again, the voice of a woman in her early old age, firm and maternal and insistent. “You must tell us. We will know.”
I stare at my side of the door. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I don’t understand.”
“She means to ask whether you suffer from the plague.”
The old man’s words are slow and purposeful. He wants to make sure I get his meaning. But I don’t. I don’t think I do.
“Excuse me,” I say. “What?”
“Whether you are stricken like so many others.”
Stricken. A word from another time. Saddlebag. Milking stool. Stricken. I feel my cheeks with my mummy hands, half expecting to find boils or welts, some new biblical form of suffering written on my face. But it’s just my same face, thinned out by travel, mustache thick above my lip, wild stubble across my chin.
The man speaks again. “Here we keep ourselves isolated from the illness. We need to know whether you have been afflicted.”
Slowly I bring my hand down from my face, while my mind races, trying to work this through. Stricken—afflicted. I begin to nod, I begin to think I’ve got a line on the situation here, and I’m already trying to figure out how to navigate my way through, how to get what I need and get out.
I clear my throat. “No,” I say, and cough. “No, sir, no ma’am, I am not afflicted. Can I please come out of the room now?”
* * *
If there are any Amish people in the state of New Hampshire I’ve never come across one, and so my entire concept of Amishness is from culture, the cartoon version: black hats, black beards, horse-drawn buggies and candles and cows. Now she opens the door, an old woman in a faded purple dress and black bonnet, and beside her the old man, just as formidable a presence in daylight: tall and wide-bodied in a white shirt, black pants, and suspenders. Estimable chinstrap beard, black with streaks of gray. Broad forehead and large nose, eyes wary and staring above a carefully set mouth. The woman meanwhile has one hand clasped to her mouth in startled joy that I am alive, that I am well, like I am her own long-lost child.
“Come now,” she says warmly, beckoning me forward, “come on. Come along to everyone.”
I trail along behind her down a sunlit wood-floor hallway, and she is speaking quietly in English the whole way, thanking God and murmuring praise, but not the old man—he’s just a pace behind me, and when I glance at him he just looks back at me wordlessly and grave, his silence an unspoken warning. Quiet, boy. Hold your peace. The house smells like cinnamon and bread, warm and welcoming and calm. We pass three doors, two of them open to neat bedrooms like the one I was in, one closed tightly shut with a light on underneath.
Our destination is a vast sunlit kitchen, crowded with smiling people in plain dress, and as soon as I enter with the older couple everybody gasps.
“He’s okay!” shouts a little boy, no more than eight years old, and then the woman standing behind him bends and hugs him around the neck and says “Praise be to God,” and then the packed room explodes in celebration, everybody hooting and clapping their hands. “He’s alive!” they call, and clasp each other tightly. “Thank God!” Older men, younger men, girls and women, a legion of chattering children in long pants or long plain dresses, everyone embracing and gazing at me with excitement and frank fascination, their hands fluttering at their sides or raised high toward the rafters. Everybody singing out the happy news to each other, repeating the words “Alive!” and “Awake and well!” the news of my good health tossed joyfully about like rice at a wedding. The men seize my hand, one after another, young men and middle-aged men and one ancient doddering grandfather. The women don’t approach, but smile warmly, ducking their heads in murmured prayer.
I stand, quiet and confused, like an idiot savant, mute among the ruckus, unsure what I’m supposed to do. After a minute or so I raise one wrapped hand slowly, palm out, give a sort of awkward wave, and then lower it again. It’s strange, it’s so strange, there is an undeniable Twilight Zone quality to the whole thing, like here I am, a visiting god set down in an alien land.
“Sit now,” cries the old woman merrily, the one who first came to fetch me, raising her voice among the group, shooing the whole tribe into the adjacent dining room. “Let us eat.”
I let myself be guided through the bustle to a seat; I am smiling at everyone, playing up my exhaustion and confusion but paying careful attention—watching the old man, watching him watch me, my mind churning and rolling and popping. I am wondering about the pair of Asian men, the quiet immigrant laborers that Sandy described. They’re a secret is what I’m thinking, one of my new friend’s secrets. Wherever they are, they’re not invited to lunch.
Everyone arranges themselves around the circular tables in the long dining room adjacent to the kitchen. Napkins are spread on laps, and water is poured into cups from wooden pitchers. The women in their bonnets and shawls and ankle-length dresses, the men in plain white shirts without buttons, black shoes, beards. Everyone smiling at me, still, from all over the room, peering at me in my exhaustion and dishevelment.
Lunch is served: a sparse meal, loaves of bread and cooked vegetables and rabbit, but it’s food. I try to tabulate the people, sort out the relationships: the old man, my captor; three men in their late forties or fifties, who would be his sons or sons-in-law, a generation younger, same beards and coats, same stern faces, not yet grayed and lined. And women of that middle-aged set, the wives and sisters—five of them? Eight? Daughters and daughters-in-law, slipping in and out of the kitchen, carrying out platters and plates, pouring water from wooden pitchers, whispering smilingly to each other, straightening the bonnets and collars of a seemingly infinite number of small children. One bright-eyed six- or seven-year-old with big funny ears is gaping at me, and I turn and waggle one thickly bandaged hand and say “Hiya.” He smiles like crazy, turns away and rushes back over to his siblings and cousins.
Everyone at last is seated, and, suddenly, at no announcement or signal that is apparent to me, the room becomes silent and everyone closes their eyes and bows their heads.
We’re praying; we’re supposed to be praying. I keep my eyes open and look all around the room. I can see into the nearer corner of the kitchen, where there is a butter churn, wood-paneled and sturdy, the handle poking out of the basin, drops on the sides showing recent use. Eggs on the counter in a wooden bowl. It’s as if I found an escape hatch after all—you just have to travel back in time to a colonial village, where the death of our species is still four hundred years into the future.
One of the girls, I discover, is doing the same thing as me: a young teenager with red cheeks and strawberry blonde hair in simple braids, peering around the table with one eye open while everyone else prays. She catches me catching her, blushes, and looks at her food. I smile, too. You never really think of Amish people as being people, they’re this weird otherworldly category and you lump them all together in your mind, like penguins. And now here they are, these specific human people with their specific human faces.
The old man clears his throat, opens his eyes to say “Amen,” and the room comes to life again. Happy small conversations, the muted clink of silverware, the rustle of napkins. Though my body hurts, though I struggle to swallow, every bite is delicious, warm and savory. And then at last the old man settles his silverware carefully beside his plate and looks at me with unnerving frankness. “We thank the good Lord God for you, friend. We are glad you are here and you are welcome.” I mutter “Thank you,” nodding carefully. He left me to starve. He deposited me hooded and fearful into the barn and tied me up to die.
He stares evenly back at me, challen
ging, calm—as if daring me to call him out: who would they believe?
“No one has used the south barn for many months, since the beginning of the trouble,” says someone from the far end of the table, a matronly middle-aged woman with dark hair, one of the daughters or daughters-in-law. “And Father has kept it locked.”
The black-bearded old man nods at the detail. The south barn, I’m thinking. The trouble, I’m thinking. They mean this illusory plague, they mean a different kind of trouble than everyone else. The title “Father,” I’m gathering, is as much honorific as literal. The man who shot at me on the path is the respected patriarch, the elder sage of this family or gathering of families. The others bow their heads slightly when he speaks, not as if in worship but as a mark of deference.
“You, friend,” he says now, turning to me, speaking slowly and evenly. “We wonder, did you climb up into the south barn through its window and light a match for a cigarette or for light and put the match down carelessly? Is that what happened?”
The same challenging expression, cold and clear.
I take a sip from my water glass, clear my throat. “Yes, sir,” I say, giving it back to him, striking a truce. “That’s what happened. I lit a match so I could see and put the match down carelessly.”
Father nods. A murmur passes across the table, the men whispering to each other, nodding. The children at their separate tables have mostly lost interest, they’re eating and chattering idly to one another. The only decoration in the room is a wall calendar, spread open to September, a line drawing of a mostly bare oak, the last leaves tumbling to Earth.
“And if we may ask, sir, you are fleeing from the pandemic?” This from one of the younger men, a sturdy character with a beard and face to match his father’s.
I answer him tentatively. “That’s right. Yes. I have traveled from my home to escape it.”
“God’s will,” he murmurs, and the rest of them say it too, look down at their plates, “God’s will.”
Father stands now, draws up to full height, and places his hand on the shoulders of one of the children. “It is through God’s grace that Ruth saw the fire from her bedroom window, way off in the distance, and awoke the house.”
All eyes turn to the girl whom I saw cheating during the prayer. Her cheeks go from rosy red to bright pink. A couple of the smaller children giggle.
“Thank you, young lady,” I tell her, and I mean it, but the girl doesn’t respond, she keeps her eyes trained on her plate of stewed vegetables. “Answer our guest, Ruthie,” says her grandmother gently, nodding to the girl. “Our guest said thank you.”
“Thanks be to God,” says Ruthie, and the others nod their approval, the men and the women and even the littlest kids, murmuring in uneven chorus, “Thanks be to God.” I have nailed down the number of people in the room at thirty-five: six adult men and seven women, plus twenty-two children ranging from toddler to late adolescence. They don’t know. I look at the old man, I look around the room at this silent happy family, and I know that they don’t know. These people don’t know about the asteroid at all.
You mustn’t say those words, he told me. When I said that I had to save my sister before the end of the world, he said you mustn’t say those words.
They don’t know and you can see it on their peaceful Amish faces, that bloom of happiness you just don’t see anymore. Because of course a pandemic would be an absolute calamity, some deadly virus stalking the land, and you would huddle up with your family and shut out the world until it ended, but then it would—it would have an ending. A pandemic runs its course and then the world recovers. These people in this room don’t know that the world will not be recovering, and I can see it, as they finish their lunch and say more prayers and rise, laughing, to clear the plates. I can feel it, a feeling I never had occasion to notice until it disappeared, the odorless colorless presence of the future.
“I would speak with our guest alone,” says the old man abruptly. “We will walk the property.”
“Atlee,” says his wife, the old woman. “He is tired. He is wounded. Let him eat and return to bed.”
“Thank you, ma’am, but I’m feeling just fine.”
That’s not true; I feel like I’ve been hit by a garbage truck. My side hurts each time I swallow or take a full breath, and my hands, within the last ten or fifteen minutes, have begun to burn again beneath their bandages. But I want information, and speaking alone with this man Atlee is the only way to get it. “Thank you, though, for supper, and for everything, Mrs. Joy.”
The old woman’s eyes pop open with surprise, and a bright wave of laughter ripples through the room.
“No, young man,” she says. “Our surname is Miller. Joy is—” She leans to the plain-faced daughter seated beside her, and they exchange whispers.
“Joy is an acronym,” says the daughter. “A way of living. You are to set your mind first to Jesus, then Others, and lastly to Yourself.”
“Ah,” I say. “Oh.”
Atlee takes me by the elbow. “Now,” he says quietly. “We will walk the property.”
4.
The butt of Atlee Miller’s pitchfork thunks in the gravel of the path as we walk away from the house. He is silent for a minute, two minutes. Just our shoes on the gravel, the rhythmic chunk-chunk of the pitchfork on the path.
I am about to say something, try something out, when he starts.
“You and I will walk abreast to where the path bends, just there,” he says. “It continues on there, about a quarter mile to the left, back down to the county road, to our old farm stand. At the bend I will turn to the right, go on along the property line, back around to the house. You will continue on.”
The same words he used when we were together in the rainstorm, when he was pushing me forward. You will continue on. Same steady tone, somber and uninflected. He doesn’t look at me while he’s speaking, just keeps moving, moving fast for as old as he is, long strides with the pitchfork, fast for an old man. As for me, I’m doing my best, hobbling a bit, wincing with my injuries, but I keep up as well as I can—noticing in the meantime, despite all my physical discomforts and the anxiousness of this situation, that the Amish farm in late-day rain-streaked sunlight is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen: green fields, white fences, yellow corn. A flock of healthy sheep gamboling in small circles in their penned lea.
“Your dog,” the man says gruffly, pointing, and there is Houdini, huddled like a phantom behind a shed, staring out. Poor confused sick dog. He sees me, and holds up his head to look me over with watery eyes. He starts to come and then scuttles back behind the little wooden building. I know how he feels. I’m not ready to go—I can’t.
“Mr. Miller, can I just ask you a couple of quick questions?”
He doesn’t answer. Walks faster. I nearly drop my blue notebook into the dirt as I fumble it out of my pocket. “Can you confirm that you did a construction job for a group of strangers, at the police station in Rotary?”
He keeps his eyes forward, but I can see it—a wave of surprise, of confirmation, rushing over his features and then away again.
I press on. “What did you do there, Mr. Miller? You did some concrete work up there?”
A sidelong glance and that’s it. We’re running out of road here. Running out of time.
“Mr. Miller?”
“I will tell my people you decided to return,” he says. “You are overcome with grief for those you love and have decided to take your chances with the plague.”
I scowl. I limp to keep up with him. No, I’m thinking. No. Whatever else is going on here, I have not come this far merely to continue on now, to limp back down to the vegetable stand and my abandoned bike, back where I started.
“I’ll tell them,” I say. “I’ll sneak back in and tell them.”
Now he answers—now he answers right away. “You won’t. You can’t.”
“Of course I can.”
“I’ve made it impossible.”
“How?�
�
He stops talking, just shakes his head, but this is good. This is what we need. All you need is a conversation. To work toward the information you need, to get what you want from a suspect or a witness—all you need is a conversation to begin, and then you shape it, push it.
“Mr. Miller? How are you doing it?”
Just a conversation. That’s police work, that’s half of it right there. I wheel back, change tack, try again. “How did it start?”
We’re at a line of fencing. I stop, lean back on a post, as if to catch my breath, and he stops too. “No more about concrete,” I say, raise my hands in mock surrender. “I promise.”
“It was a Sunday,” he says, and my heart glows. A conversation. That’s half of it, right there. He’s talking, I listen while he talks. “Church was at Zachary Weaver’s. One or two men will go early and help to prepare the service. The others come along later. I was there early, on this day. At the Weavers’ all was in an uproar. Someone had heard a radio broadcast. There was—lamentation. Distress.” He shakes his head and looks at the ground. “And I could tell, d’you see? I knew in the crack of an instant what I would need to do. I could see it in their eyes, these people, the change that would be wrought on them. It was already happening, d’you see?”
He doesn’t wait for an answer. I don’t interrupt.
“I went out on the porch and I saw my family walking to the house from our house and I made this decision in the crack of a moment, just like that. I just—I waved with my hand—like this—I waved—” He stops on the path and raises a hand, pushing at the air: go back, stop, turn around. “I walked out of Zachary Weaver’s and I walked my family back to our home and I gave them all of that. The story you’ve heard.”
“The illness,” I say. “Pandemic.”
“Yes.”
He says it low, the one word yes, down into his beard, and for the first time since we’ve met I can read something other than grave self-seriousness on his face—a wash of grief and self-recrimination.