Читать книгу Clouds without Rain - P. L. Gaus - Страница 15

2

Monday, August 7

4:30 P.M.

PASTOR Cal Troyer crested a hill on a gravel lane south of Walnut Creek and turned left into a crushed stone driveway, where a two-story white frame house with a green roof stood in the lee of a mature stand of blue spruce mixed with wide oak and tall hickory. He parked his old white truck off to the right of the drive, where a small patch of gravel normally was occupied by a buggy. Out of the barn to his right, two teenage boys drove a pair of draft horses hitched to a manure spreader, waved briefly, and turned toward the field beyond the trees.

On the lawn at the side door, Cal greeted two small children, a boy and a girl, about four or five years old, splashing in full Amish garb in a round plastic toddler’s pool. They stopped when he spoke to them, but, obedient to their teaching, they did not reply.

He stepped up onto the small porch, rapped his knuckles on a wooden screened door, and was admitted by a young girl in a long purple dress and a white cap, who let him in and kneeled immediately to sweep a small mound of dust into a dustpan on the gray wooden floor. Behind her, the floor into the kitchen was bright and clean, and before Cal took another step, she caught him gently by the sleeve, produced a weak smile, and pointed to his shoes. Cal nodded reassuringly, untied his white cross trainers, and slipped his feet out of them, saying, “Is Andy Weaver staying here?”

The girl stood up with her dustpan and broom, said, “For a spell,” and pointed the end of her broom handle toward a door on the other side of the kitchen. She had never met Cal Troyer, but recognized him from stories of his long, white hair. Like everyone in her community, she knew of the preacher’s reputation as a friend to her people. She stood respectfully and studied his powerful arms and large carpenter’s hands. He thanked her in a gentle voice and stepped over his shoes.

In the kitchen, uncomfortably warm from the wood stove, a mountain of rising dough nearly three feet abreast and a foot high lay on the open door to the oven. In a corner behind an icebox, another daughter was scrubbing the floor with a damp towel wrapped around a pine two-by-two board, switching from one side of the board to another as each became soiled.

Cal asked again for Andy Weaver, and the teenager said, “On the back porch.”

Cal pushed through the heavy walnut door the first girl had indicated and entered a large dining room with several china cupboards and a round dinner table with ten chairs and one highchair. The only other door in this room led to a moderately sized sewing room, where three women, eldest daughter, grandmother, and mother, Cal guessed, sat leaning over a square wooden quilting frame. As they took small stitches in the ornate patchwork of cloth, only the mother looked up from her work.

Cal asked, “Andy Weaver?” and she wordlessly nodded toward a screened door behind her.

The door led Cal to a long concrete walkway connecting a Daadihaus to the main house, and on the porch of the little house, Cal found Bishop Andy R. Weaver sitting on a three-legged stool, mending tack, or rather holding it in one hand while he gazed, lost in thought, at a distant fence line. Weaver’s hair was pushed down over his ears by a battered straw hat. His shirt was dark blue, and his trousers were of denim. His long gray beard fell loose and uncombed on his chest, and he was shaved around the mouth, though some stubble was evident.

“Andy!” Cal said, and approached. Weaver turned, saw Cal, and rose to offer his hand happily, saying, “You’re white, Cal,” indicating Troyer’s shoulder-length hair and full beard.

“Been a long time, Andy,” Cal said. He shook his old friend’s hand and added, “So it’s Bishop Andy, now.”

Weaver nodded self-consciously and said, “Thought I had gone to Pennsylvania for keeps, Cal. Take a walk?”

Cal retrieved his shoes, and the two strolled through a swinging iron gate and along a rusted fence bordering a sunbaked field of hay. The bishop’s old straw hat was broken open at the front of the crown where he had pinched it so often, putting it on and taking it off. His vest hung limply over rounded shoulders. The leather of his boots was split and scuffed, encrusted with patches of dried manure.

Cal drew a pair of sunglasses from his shirt pocket and put them on. After they had walked a ways, he said, “What made you decide to come home, Andy?”

Weaver stopped, stuck his thumbs in his suspenders, and studied his boots. He kicked at some dirt, looked at Cal somewhat ambiguously and said, “They’ve all promised to change.”

“And your brother?”

“So, you remember.”

Cal nodded and Weaver said, “He’s been out for a long time, now.”

“Bishop Melvin P. Yoder kicked him out?”

“Should have,” Weaver said, passing judgment.

Cal’s fingers toyed with his long white beard. He stood thinking silently in the bright sun about the old days, about the crusade against cults that he and Weaver had organized some years ago. After a moment, Cal shook loose from his memories and asked, “They’re all going back to Old Order?”

Weaver shrugged unhappily. “Not all. I lost one family already.”

“I doubt you’ll lose that many more.”

“The rest are waiting to see how I’ll rule on various things.”

“They asked you back to help after Yoder died?”

“The most of them did. A few holdouts, I suppose,” Weaver said.

“But you’re bishop now. They’ll align themselves under your authority.”

“People here have gotten too far along into modern ways, Cal. Getting back to Old Order will be hard.”

“They all knew you well enough before you quit for Pennsylvania. Wouldn’t have asked you back if they didn’t mostly want Old Order.”

“You don’t know how far gone Yoder let the District get.”

Cal reached down, plucked some dry alfalfa, and stuck it between his teeth, waiting for Weaver to continue.

“Think about it, Cal. We’ve got at least three neighborhood phone booths out by the roadsides where no one person can be said to actually own the things. Some have secret phones in their barns, and I can’t tell you how many have cell phones tucked under pillows. Good night! I’ve got two families who own vans. They each hire drivers, but they still own the vehicles, for crying out loud.”

“They’ll get rid of it all, if you tell them to.”

“The old ways are disappearing, Cal. It’s the kids more than anything. They won’t have farms the way things are going. Right now, there are at least nineteen of them working in shops or stores. Some restaurants, too. For as long as six years in some cases. They’re not going to be able to farm. Probably not marry in any traditional way, either.”

“Shops seem to be the way to go, these days,” Cal offered.

“They’ve got too much idle time on their hands,” Weaver complained.

“Are you going to go to the sheriff with those other bishops? About the drinking parties?”

“The sheriff can’t stop our young people from drinking, Cal.”

“It’d be a start,” Cal offered.

Weaver shook his head soberly. “It’s the cult, Cal. After all these years, it’s still that cult.”

Cal nodded, cast his eyes at the ground, and kicked up dust angrily, remembering the problems he had faced in his own congregation, when the thing had first gotten started. He and Andy Weaver had crusaded against it throughout the county. In the end, all they could do was to expose it, and keep their own people from mixing in. After that, Andy had moved away, Cal had tended to his own congregation, and the cult had grown quietly to the point where it seemed that everyone in Holmes County knew about it, without feeling the need, in these more liberal times, to stand against it. Live and let live, is what they all would say. Who’s to judge, anyway?

“I judge it,” Cal thought to himself, and looked back sternly at Weaver. Revulsion for the cult sank deep furrows into his brow.

Andy peered into Cal’s fierce, narrowed eyes, laid a hand on his shoulder, and said, “It’s bigger now, Cal. More powerful.”

“And you think some of your people are mixed in?”

“Don’t know yet, but I’m afraid so.”

“Mike Branden is working on some robberies that might tie in with this.”

“I know. I’m going to ask for your help again, Cal, when I know more.”

Cal fell silent and thought about the difficulties they would face. “This will prove dangerous. Busting it up altogether.”

“I don’t intend to take on the whole of it, Cal. Just get my own people out. We don’t stand a chance of getting back to true Old Order until I accomplish that.”