The Names of Our Tears: An Amish-Country Mystery - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Paul Louis Gaus lives with his wife, Madonna, in Wooster, Ohio, just a few miles north of Holmes County, home to the world’s largest settlement of Amish and Mennonite people.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

1

Monday, April 4

7:45 a.m.

It was Coblentz chocolate that had Mervin Byler awake so early that morning—fine Coblentz chocolate, and the artful widow Stutzman who made it. This would be his seventh trip this spring up to the heights at Walnut Creek, and he knew the best gossips in the valley would be making sport of him again today.

What could draw old Mervin out so early, they’d be asking each other so delicately. Was it really the Coblentz chocolate? Was he just a retired old farmer out for a drive? Maybe he just liked to show off his high-stepping racehorse. Or could it be the widow Stutzman?

Oh, how they’d sure be buzzing today, Mervin thought. Why yes—he smiled—it looks as if he’s washed his best Sunday rig again.

Mervin stepped out into the cold air in a new Amish-blue denim suit and stood on the front porch of his white clapboard Daadihaus, set back twenty paces from the wide gravel drive that curled around the back of the big house. A cool breeze tugged at his white chin whiskers, and a gust caught under the wide brim of his black felt hat, nearly lifting it from his head. He settled the warm hat back into place and stood to enjoy the familiar sounds of the farm—all the family, parents and kids alike, at work since well before dawn.

In the woodshop behind the barn, that was his oldest son Daniel he heard, running lumber through the tabletop saw. Lowing as they nipped at the hay in the feeders, the milking cows were back on the hillside pastures beyond. The youngest kids were bringing baskets of eggs out of the henhouse. And beside the big house, an older grandson was starting a gasoline generator, charging the marine batteries for the several electric appliances the family kept—a phone in a little shed out by the road, a secret radio for severe weather, half a dozen lightbulbs where safety called for something other than kerosene lanterns, and an electric butter churn that Mervin had brought home on a whim from Lehman’s hardware in Kidron.

Standing on his front porch, Mervin listened with satisfaction to the familiar sounds of morning chores, the rhythms of family life on the farm. In his day, when the farm had been theirs, he and his Leona had been accustomed to early rising, too. They had owned the farm for forty years, and then they had lived together for seven more happy years in their little Daadihaus, watching Daniel and Becky raise their own, in the same home where Mervin and Leona Byler had raised their twelve. It’s fitting, Mervin thought. The old move aside for the young, who in turn honor their parents with the gift of a new home.

Byler sighed and thought about Leona, gone for nearly three years. So fine a woman; so many good years. Now their little Daadihaus was a lonely place for him, and Mervin had fallen into slack habits. Most would say it was shameful, the way he ignored the chores. He slept in, and he got up when it suited him. Mervin Byler figured he had earned his rest.

Truth be told, Leona might say it was a bit much. When they had retired, she had insisted that they rise with the others and tend to their share of the chores, too. But now Mervin gladly let the sons plant and harvest the crops, tend to the livestock, handle all the duties on the farm. Mervin Byler was retired, and he had fun and suitable places to be, never mind what the gossips might say about the widow Stutzman. He felt young again, and he knew with the wisdom of age that that feeling was not to be squandered.

With great satisfaction over his prospects for the morning, Byler noted that the stiff breeze was snatching a thin gray line of smoke from the chimney of Becky’s kitchen stove, at the back of the big house. The fire is still going, he thought. As late as it was, there would still be hot coffee in her pot. Maybe he could take some of Becky’s biscuits, too. Wrap them in a towel for the trip. Byler considered it briefly.

But his best mare was already hitched and waiting on the drive, shuddering from the energy bottled up in her limbs. Just like Mervin, she was eager to begin.

Mervin clipped down the wooden steps on his new leather soles and climbed into his Sunday buggy, laughing at himself. Thinking that he could already hear the chatter. Knowing what the valley gossips would say if they ever got a look inside his cupboards, stuffed full to bursting with Coblentz chocolates of every kind. They would be asking themselves why an old man needed to be driving back to Walnut Creek again when his cupboards were already shamefully overstocked with more sweets than any sensible man could eat.

For the fun of it, he ought to drop a hint somewhere along the line. Put it out there among the talkers that he didn’t really like chocolate that much. Truth be told, he favored salty chips more than sweets. Wonderful, crunchy, salty chips of every kind.

Just tell one of them, he thought, and soon they’d all be a-chatter. He’d make a few trips into Walmart for a dozen bags of Ruffles, and that news would be singing like electric in the wires. Why, don’t you know? Mervin doesn’t really like sweets at all. Then he could enjoy the sparks. He couldn’t remember a time when he had felt so young.

But don’t kid yourself, Mervin smiled. Today I’ll just tap the glass. See if she’ll come around to the tourists’ gallery for a chat. Maybe he could visit on Sunday with the North Walnut Creek Lehmans, and stay after services for the social. Then his valley would sure be all a-buzz. Was it the Coblentz chocolates or the widow Stutzman? A Sunday visit in old Ben Lehman’s district would settle it for sure. They’d all be talking for over a month.

Mervin climbed up, took the reins, and walked his buggy out to the lane in front of the big house. He turned right to follow Township Lane 166 toward the north, thinking that maybe she’d give him a look today. Something to help him make up his mind. But hadn’t she done that already the last time he had visited? Mervin wasn’t sure. Was it a look, or was it a smile? Maybe it was just a glance.

Yes, at the time, he had thought it was just a glance. Now it seemed to him that it might have been more than that. Was it really encouragement for a suitor, or was she mocking an old fool?

Never mind, he told himself. I’ll tap on the glass today. Then she’ll give me one look or the other look, and I’ll know if I should bother with any more chocolates from the Coblentz store. Not that there’s room in my cupboards.

He set a good pace for his horse and took the reins in his left hand. With his right, he fished his money roll out of the side pocket of his denim trousers. It was a suitable sum, he thought. Four hundred and eighty-seven dollars, most of it in tens and twenties. He wouldn’t need nearly that much. Still a man ought to be prepared. Maybe after he stopped in Walnut Creek, he’d run up Route 39 to the Walmart in Millersburg. That’d put him home after dark. Smiling broadly, he thought how that news would spread itself around among the folk. Up to Walnut Creek for the widow Stutzman and way over to Millersburg just for chips? There’d be no end of the talk.

At the intersection with Township 165, Byler turned left and took the gravel lane where it cut a gap in the remote southeastern corner of Holmes County. Exhausted from a brutal winter, most fields lay bare on the rolling hills, but some had been plowed already, their tidy rows of newly turned earth looking eagerly dark and moist for planting.

On the slope to his left, he saw the new shoots of winter wheat promising the harvest in July. Ahead on his right stood the stubble of feed corn cut last autumn, the arching...