A Prayer for the Night (3 page)

“They must think you’ve strayed pretty far,” Branden said. His solicitous tone took the sting from his words.

“You wouldn’t believe half the stuff I could tell you, Professor,” Sara replied. She toed the dirt between the barn doors and seemed troubled to be talking so freely.

“What has happened, Sara?” Cal said.

“The bishop is getting nervous, Cal,” Sara said. “I’ve got maybe a month. He’s already been to see Henry Erb’s parents about this. But it’s John Schlabaugh and Abe Yoder that I’m worried about. John’s Firebird is parked in this barn, and it shouldn’t be.”

Cal held her gaze, thinking there must be more that she wanted to say. She seemed unnerved in a way that he had never seen. In their talks, Sara Yoder had been open and forthright to a surprising degree about her youthful lifestyle. And Cal knew that Sara Yoder was racing up to a crisis point in her life over her Amish heritage. Over the crucial life decisions she would soon be forced to make. So Cal had heard it all in their afternoon talks. Still, in the shade this morning, Sara Yoder seemed more unraveled than he had thought she could be. He smiled, shrugged, and said, “Sara, is there more?”

Sara was silent for a long time, eyes closed to slits, thinking. All the troubles she could bear seemed folded together in her brow. Eventually, she backed up a bit, blew a little air out through her lips to ease her anxiety, and sighed, “This is a mistake. I’m sorry, Cal, Professor Branden. I shouldn’t have bothered you. There’s nothing you can help me with.”

Branden read her uncertainty and said, “I’d like to be of some help to you, Sara.”

Sara said, “I don’t think anyone can help us now.”

“Give us a chance, Sara,” said Cal. “At least tell us what you’ve found.”

Sara raised her arms and let them flop at her sides. She stepped over to her buggy, took a folded scrap of newsprint off the seat, and handed the clipping to the professor. She waited for him to read the short lines of type. “That clipping is from Wednesday’s
Sugarcreek Budget,
” she said.

Branden read the type a second time and said, “Do you know what it means? Those are coordinates. You know the GPS system?”

“Yes. We’ve got those GPS units,” Sara said. She pulled a receiver out of her purse, waved it briefly, and said, “John Schlabaugh got these GPS receivers for all of us, and matching cell phones for everyone in our group.” Embarrassed, she explained, “So we could arrange our little parties.”

Branden glanced at Cal, who said, “This group of kids has gone a tad modern, Mike.”

Branden nodded and said, “Tell us about those coordinates, Sara.”

Sara held her eyes closed a moment, then looked up at Branden and seemed to take his measure. Eventually her eyelids puddled over and she took back the newspaper clipping, folded it several times into a tight square, and slowly put it back in her purse. She studied the professor a moment longer, and then Cal. With a halfhearted smile, she said, “Those coordinates are for this spot here at the barn. Our usual meeting place.”

Branden thought about the incongruities in a little band of Amish kids tracking each other with cell phones and GPS receivers. He waited a beat. “Modern can be a rough way to go, Sara, if you’re not prepared for it,” he said.

Sara stared at her hands. “Modern looks pretty good when you’ve grown up backward. At least it does at first.”

“I think it’ll help if you tell me a little about it,” Branden said. “For instance, I suppose there’s some drinking at your parties.”

“I wish that was all there was,” Sara answered.

“How many kids in your group?”

“Like I said, it used to be nine. Big John Schlabaugh’s gang out of Saltillo. Now it’s only seven. Two girls and five boys.”

“Should I have been talking with any of them?” Cal asked.

“None of those boys is going to own up to any of it,” Sara said. “The other girl? I don’t know for sure what she’d tell you.”

“Maybe if you asked them to talk with me or the professor?”

“I’m not going to stick around, Cal,” Sara said forcefully. “It’s not safe.” Her eyes flooded with tears, and she softened quickly. “It’s the other kids,” she said. “I want you and Cal to help the other kids. Even if they won’t talk to you. They just don’t understand the danger they’re in.”

Sara pulled a tissue out of her purse and wiped her eyes. More tears came, and she dried those away, sniffed, and blew her nose. In a voice as soft as a flute she asked, “Why does it all have to be so hard? God’s will? I wouldn’t know that if it bit me on the ... Sorry. If it bit me.”

“Have you talked with your parents about any of this?” Branden asked.

“Parents these days don’t understand anything. I can’t believe they ever did.”

Branden smiled and waited for Sara to look at him. When she did, he said, “We’ll do what we can, Sara. Tell us what you need.”

She nodded, dropped her gaze to her hands, and let her shoulders slump with the weight of her burdens. After a spell, she began talking quietly.

“There sits John Schlabaugh’s car, and nobody has heard from him in over a week. Abe Yoder, too. Everybody thought John Schlabaugh was such a great leader. So charismatic. He was going to show us all the world. Cars, cities, everything. We were all really going to have a run at it. A lifetime of fun in the span of a couple of years. Live the fast life, the Rumschpringe, before we settle down.

“But John’s just not cut out for the important things. He’s just a drifter, plain and simple. He’s a child, really. He just drifts on the wind.

“And we’ve gone along with just about everything he could think up. Like there was no tomorrow. Now we’re all in trouble, and there’s no way out. And it’s really big trouble, too. It’s got to be why John and Abe are missing. Why John’s car is here. He’d never give up his car.

“This isn’t the penny-ante stuff Amish kids normally get mixed up in. It’s not throwing tomatoes at cars or knocking over mailboxes. It’s way bigger than that now, and one of us is going to end up hurt.”

Branden watched her intently. He struggled to reconcile the seemingly plain and simple Amish girl he saw before him with the remarkable things she had said. No doubt she would have admitted to none of it if she had not known Cal Troyer so well. As a gentle lead into weightier matters, Branden said, “Let’s start with something simple, Sara. Tell me more about those coordinates. Why were they published in the
Budget
?”

Sara fished the paper out of her purse, unfolded it, and handed it back to Branden. “That last number?” she said, apparently relieved to be talking about something practical. “That’s Abe Yoder’s code. He’s 2. I’m the leading 3. We each have a number to sign a message with.”

“What is John Schlabaugh’s number?” Branden asked.

“He’s 1,” Sara said.

“Why do you need numbers?” Cal asked. “Doesn’t your phone display the name of the person calling you?”

“It’s John Schlabaugh again. He likes secret things. He says it’s all numbers in the modern world. Phone numbers, house numbers, social security numbers, credit card numbers. So he made me 3. He is 1. Messages are very short. But mostly I think he likes the secrecy. Sometimes he calls from a prepaid cell phone he gets from a guy up in Wooster. He says it’s untraceable. So, I get a 1 on my text messages, that’s him, and his new cell number is the only text in the message. He sends us all his new phone number each month, when he buys a new phone. Anonymous, prepaid cell phones, because he says the government can’t trace them.”

Cal asked, “What?”

“John says the government can listen in on the airwaves that cell phones use. So he doesn’t want too many people knowing who he is. He’s just the number 1.”

“What do you think this message means?” Branden asked, drawing her attention back to the newspaper clipping.

“If it came on my phone, it’d mean Abe wants me to meet him at a certain place. Here, at those coordinates. So there’s the leading 3, and that stands for me. Then the coordinates, followed by Abe Yoder’s 2. Sara Yoder to meet Abe Yoder at those coordinates. John and Abe really go in for that secret message stuff. Trouble is, no one has heard from John for a week. Haven’t heard from Abe Yoder, either. They haven’t answered their phones, and they haven’t replied to our messages. We must have sent a hundred by now.”

“Are Abe and John in the habit of making trips out of town, or of not answering their phones?” Branden asked.

Sara shook her head, hesitated, and said, “They run together pretty much all of the time, Abe and John. Mostly they’re all over our little valley. Up and down the Doughty Valley, too. Millersburg, Becks Mills, and Charm. They think they own the place because they have cars and a tractor.

“And then there’s the fights lately. John’s a mean drunk. And Abe’s too proud to back down. One of these days they’re really going to hurt each other. There’s blood on the front seat of the Firebird in there, so they’ve been fighting again. But they’ve gotten too big for their britches, I’ll tell you that much. Making those secret runs down to Columbus. Like the bishop wasn’t going to find out about that.”

Branden read the expression on her face and said, “I gather you don’t approve of those Columbus runs.” He glanced quickly to Cal to see if the pastor had caught special meaning in that. Cal tipped his chin in the smallest nod.

Sara shook her head. “Anyway, I came out here to our meeting place after I read that note in the
Sugarcreek Budget.
Because that message should have been sent by Abe Yoder to my phone instead of to the correspondence section of the
Budget.
”

“You think the message is for you?” Branden said.

“Me or someone in our outfit,” Sara said. “We’re the only ones who could know what it means.”

Branden held silence, and looked questioningly to Cal and back steadily at Sara.

Sara shrugged her shoulders and said, “Like I said, John and Abe are missing. And, now, I’ve found this buried here in the barn.”

She reached into her buggy and lifted the plastic bag off the floorboards. She held it up in the sun, and Cal and Branden came forward to inspect the contents. Cal took the bag, fished out each of the items inside, and handed them one at a time to the professor.

Her eyes open wide with alarm, Sara said, “I really didn’t know what I’d find out here. A raccoon had dug this bag up from the corner of the barn. And the dirt was all loose in that spot. Not like the packed dirt in the rest of the barn.” She glanced at the collection of items Branden held and said, “Those are mostly John Schlabaugh’s things, but I don’t know about the phone. John doesn’t use that kind of phone. But that’s his wallet.”

Cal took the wallet and pulled out an odd collection of business cards and receipts. Sara said, “John doesn’t have a driver’s license, if that’s what you’re looking for. But there ought to be some money. John always had a lot of cash. It’s just not right. Something bad has happened.”

Cal shook his head and handed the wallet to the professor.

Branden stuck the wallet in his front jeans pocket, flipped open the cell phone, and found the battery dead. To Sara he said, “Where can we charge the phone?”

“In the car, I think,” Sara said, and reached out for the keys. She stepped into the barn, opened the door of the red Firebird, sat behind the wheel, and started the engine. Branden handed the phone to her, and she retrieved a car charger from the glove compartment. Efficiently, as if she were glad for the distraction, she plugged the phone into the cigarette lighter and got out, saying, “Those chargers work really fast. We’ve all got the same models.”

Branden said, “I’m going to pull this outside,” and got in behind the wheel. He rolled the car out through the sliding doors into the sunlight, and parked it with its nose pointed back down the lane. Sara followed the car out and stood beside the driver’s window while Branden opened the phone. After punching a few keys, Branden stretched the charger cord to hold the phone out the window for Sara to see, and asked, “Recognize this number?”

“It’s John Schlabaugh’s number,” Sara said, and glanced back nervously toward the dark interior of the barn.

“That’s the last number called on this phone,” Branden said. “It was a week ago. Last Friday.”

Sara took the phone, keyed it, looked at the display, and said, “This is Abe Yoder’s phone. And that was John Schlabaugh’s latest number you displayed. So, Abe called John last Friday.”

Branden wrote the two numbers down on a little pad he took from the breast pocket of his shirt, set the phone, still connected to the charger, on the dash, and climbed out of the low car, leaving the engine growling.

From the wide doors to the barn, Cal said, “There’s more here, Mike.”

Branden turned and saw Cal standing just inside the door, with the blade of a shovel balanced on the toe of his work boot. The professor walked over to Cal, a few steps ahead of Sara.

Sara came up behind him and asked, “What more?”

Cal said, “Sara, there’s more in the hole than that little plastic bag. But I’m not sure you should be looking at it.”

Sara pushed past Cal and went over to the corner, where the pastor had deepened the hole with the shovel. As Cal and the professor came up beside her, tears began to line her cheeks. She had the fingers of both hands wrapped around her throat as if to throttle a scream. A strangled sound droned from inside her, like the low note of a bagpipe. She was backing up from the loosened dirt as if the shallow trench were full of writhing copperheads.

In the opening Cal had cleared of dirt, there was a brown leather work boot and the rolled cuff of a pair of Amish denim trousers. The professor straddled the narrow hole on his knees and pulled up on the boot. There was enough resistance to suggest weight in the trouser leg. He pulled back the cuff of the trousers to reveal white skin and immediately dropped the fabric. Cal gave him a hand up, and Branden brushed off his knees. Through the barn door, they heard an engine rev, and when they ran outside, they saw the red Firebird churning its wheels in the gravel, hurtling down the lane that led out to Holmes County 58.