Shunning Sarah (31 page)

“She told me, ‘I am staying, Mamm. You’re the one who should leave,’” Miriam said. “I tried to drag her toward the door, but Sarah pulled away from me.”

Everything Amish was crowded with furniture displays. Miriam described how Sarah fell, hitting her head against the corner of a sturdy table. She slid downward, her body collapsing to the floor. There was no blood. Sarah was unconscious, but still breathing. The girl looked like she was merely sleeping.

I
tried waking her,” Miriam continued. “But Sarah didn’t move.”

“Did you consider calling for help?” I asked. “The store has a telephone.”

I knew it wasn’t that simple. The Amish were not conditioned to seek medical help during emergencies. They tended to wait it out, and see if the condition improved on its own.

“I thought this was God’s way of returning my daughter to me,” she said. “I would take her home, and when Sarah woke, she would be glad to be back with her family.”

Everything Amish was closing soon. So Miriam alternated between dragging and carrying the girl to the backseat of the buggy. She had yanked a quilt down from the middle of a hanging row on sale and used it to cover Sarah.

“I had wanted to keep her warm,” she said.

I didn’t ask her whether she also wanted to ensure no one else would see her passenger. Knowing it was unusual for Miriam to be out alone after dark, I pictured her angst as she drove the whole way back to the farm.

She ignored me to glance over at her son as she recounted the happenings of that night, recalling that Gideon had been waiting to take the reins when she arrived home. “He started to ask
where I’d been, but I cut him off and ordered him to help me bring his sister inside.”

But it was too late. When they pulled back the quilt to check on Sarah, she stared at them accusingly from the back of the buggy. Her eyes were glassy, her body limp. I recalled the medical examiner’s conclusion about blunt-force trauma and bleeding on the brain and knew from past cases how unpredictable such injuries could be. At least, Sarah had died quickly.

“I didn’t want Hannah to see her, so we pulled the buggy into the barn,” Miriam explained, “while we thought about what to do.”

No doubt, Sarah’s death would mean unwelcome questions from outsiders. I imagined Miriam felt conflicting emotions: guilt and relief. Essentially, she had to decide between her daughter and her son. Except she had already chosen long ago.

“So which one of you had the idea to hide her body?” I asked.

Gideon spoke: “We both agreed it best.”

“I asked him to leave Sarah and I alone for a few minutes,” she said.

Sarah had wanted to be English, so she would be. Miriam erased her Amish identity by unbinding her hair and removing her garments. Unclothed and decomposed, it would be harder to identify Sarah.

“When I took off her bonnet, I felt a bump on the back of her head.” Miriam gave a small sob. She was ashamed of her daughter’s nakedness. “So I rolled her in the quilt, and told Gideon to hide her someplace where she would be thought English if found.”

And that was how Sarah ended up in the sinkhole.

In the minds of the Amish, English frequently died from violent crimes. The Yoders’ hope was for Sarah to rot and never be recognized as Amish again. To anyone who inquired about her whereabouts, they would shrug and simply reply that she was in the bann and had left their world. Eventually the questions would stop. People would forget about Sarah.

But they did not. Her anonymity was short-lived.

By the end of the story, Gideon had remembered he held a scythe. And his next swing demonstrated he had a much worse scheme in mind than cutting off my hair. Visions of the headless Amish doll came to my mind.

“Is your mother telling the truth, Gideon? If you’re not a killer, then prove it by not killing me. Amish reject violence. Don’t let her destroy your faith.”

He seemed momentarily confused, so as he swung, I made my move for survival. Thrusting my foot outward, while twisting backward, I attempted the critical kick—and messed up. Without practice, without Xiong, such combat did not come naturally to me. Instead of striking Gideon, my kick hit the kerosene lantern Miriam was holding. The glass broke, fuel and flame flew into the dry corn, and within seconds the maze was on fire.

I heard a scream, but it wasn’t mine. Or Miriam’s. Or Gideon’s.

The screams came from Hannah. I don’t know how long the little girl had crouched amid the stalks, watching our altercation, but definitely too long.

A
lmost immediately, I smelled smoke. Nearby stalks and tassels were fully engulfed. And the fire was spreading fast throughout the field, much faster than any forest fire I’d ever covered. In the darkness, the danger was vivid. If I waited much longer, I’d be smelling burnt flesh as well as burnt corn.

Gideon and his mother were on one side of the flames, Hannah and I on the other. I grabbed the little girl’s hand and ran.

I didn’t think about the other two. And maybe that was wrong, but a nine-year-old and I were racing death and losing. And maybe this was the hell that Miriam and Gideon deserved.

Instead of an exit, our path led to a dead end. Fire followed us close behind, and ahead. I tried a new direction, cutting through the corn.

The heat was almost unbearable. Hannah was holding tight to my waist. Burning was such a bad way to go. And while minutes earlier the flames seemed to light the way out, smoke now formed a thick wall obstructing our vision.

We were both coughing. I tore off Hannah’s bonnet and held it over her nose so she could breathe better. I once shot a news story about escaping from a burning building by crawling on the floor, where the air was cooler. That technique didn’t seem to work in a cornfield because the flames had fuel to burn, from ground to sky.

Then I remembered my tour of the corn maze. And the employee shortcut. I forced myself to concentrate, which was difficult while surrounded by smoke and sparks. Finally I located the homestead’s windmill against the night sky and I got my bearings.

By then Hannah was too weak to walk.

M
inutes later, I stumbled out of the maze with the Amish girl clutched in my arms, our clothes blackened, faces blistered, and eyebrows singed.

Firefighters eventually arrived and put a plastic mask over Hannah’s face and pumped oxygen into her lungs before an ambulance arrived to take her to the hospital. I tried to tell them two more people were trapped inside, but they could do nothing but let the field burn. All twelve acres of corn maze burned like fire and brimstone. Later reports said flames and smoke could be seen in the darkness more than twenty miles away. Like curious moths, gawkers came to watch.

Neighboring fields and other farm buildings would also have been consumed as the corn maze turned into a raging prairie fire, but then the heavens opened up and the promised storm delivered biblical rain.

People sought cover from the downpour. But to me, the water was refreshing, and diminished the smell of smoke. So I stood, allowing myself to become drenched, welcoming the rainfall. Though the inferno had destroyed the corn maze, the squall could not wash the vivid sights and sounds from my imagination of what it must have been like for Miriam and Gideon to burn alive.

I
remained standing, almost numb, as ambulances and squad cars pulled out of the corn maze parking lot, sirens blaring. I couldn’t understand what could be more urgent than the chaos underfoot. Then I learned a pickup had crashed into a horse and buggy a couple of miles down the road.

Word spread the truck driver had been speeding toward the fire scene to watch the burn. The buggy, without lighting or a reflective triangle, was almost invisible along the dark route.

I headed toward the collision, but traffic was being directed away from the scene. So I parked and walked up to the police line where pieces of broken wood and wheels lay scattered across the road, illuminated by the flashing lights of emergency vehicles.

I showed my media pass to a state patrol officer who had worked on another accident reconstruction case I’d covered years ago. Then I pointed toward the body of a dead horse along the shoulder. “Was that the only casualty?”

He shook his head, telling me the animal had been euthanized. “And we have a fatal.” He explained that the buggy driver, a young Amish man, was dead on the scene. However, his passenger was barely injured. “Sad situation.” He gestured toward an Amish woman standing in the headlights of one of the squad cars, talking to another investigator. “But we can’t release any names yet.”

He didn’t have to. Even in the dim light, I had no trouble recognizing Miriam.

T
hat Gideon and Miriam fought their way free of the corn maze only to meet with more danger might prove that God believes in making the punishment fit the crime. Undoubtedly, Miriam would suffer more living without her son than dying beside him.

He was buried in the plot next to Sarah’s grave. I don’t think she’d have welcomed her brother as an eternal neighbor, but Miriam made the arrangements. I steered clear of his funeral.

Unfortunately, Sarah’s diary did burn. And while I had printed copies of her words and the translation, not having her writing in her own hand damaged the credibility of any sexual abuse charges. And while Amish typically steer away from English law, this was one time the English wanted nothing to do with Amish crime.

The bishop refused to discuss Sarah’s shunning. And without victim or perpetrator alive, there wasn’t much to accomplish by continuing any investigation of molestation.

Officially, Sarah’s homicide remains unsolved. Miriam refused to speak with detectives about my tale of how Sarah came to be injured at Everything Amish and how her body was moved to the sinkhole. If true, the charges were more likely to be manslaughter than murder. So I was surprised authorities took my word seriously.

What I didn’t know then was that Sarah’s autopsy had showed
a small splinter of wood in her scalp where she suffered the head trauma. Detectives had initially speculated she might have been hit with a club. Now they wanted to compare that tiny piece of oak with the table inventory at Everything Amish for the missing sliver. A match would be as conclusive as DNA or fingerprints. However, most of the furniture had been sold by then in a giant clearance, so that lead was a dead end.

But apparently all this was enough to get Hannah removed from Miriam’s custody and placed in the care of Yoder cousins in an Amish settlement in Iowa. Child sexual abuse records are kept confidential, so I never found out whether she was victimized by her brother.

I never saw Hannah again. I just hope she still has the picture of her sister.

•   •   •

Even though I was only heartsick, not dying, Father Mountain anointed me with holy oil on my eyelids, ears, lips, nose, and hands. He prayed with me for the Lord to forgive me any evil I had committed through my powers of sight, hearing, speech, smell, or touch.

“Don’t think of this as last rites,” he told me. “Think of it as a second first chance.”

•   •   •

As promised, I returned to Thao’s grandmother, the seamstress, and hired her to sew me a spectacular Hmong wall hanging, because I didn’t want to see another Amish quilt ever again.

•   •   •

Deputy Laura Schaefer won the race for sheriff, but a surprising percentage of the voters still cast ballots for the incumbent, even though he faced allegations of assault and theft.

A jury eventually acquitted Ed Eide, but Roger Alton was convicted
because of his police interrogation video. I made a copy of it for my parents as a Christmas present. I also gave Husky to them, or perhaps them to Husky, because he seemed happier as a farm dog. And I could always visit.

•   •   •

Brian Kueppers returned a war hero after putting his life on the line for fellow soldiers. He was awarded a Purple Heart and served as grand marshal for the town’s annual Fourth of July parade.

•   •   •

Nick Garnett left his government job in Washington and was back as head of security at the Mall of America.

A holiday “smash and grab” flash mob riot recently broke out there involving hundreds of shoppers. Managers of the nation’s largest mall had overreacted, going into lockdown mode. Cell-phone video of gang members throwing chairs across the food court received network play, so MOA managers lured Garnett back.

Rather than receiving an elated phone call from him, I’d read about his relocation in the business section of the Minneapolis newspaper, so I didn’t see any future for us.

•   •   •

As for Channel 3, Nicole still feared that getting her boss fired might hurt her news career. I figured not getting him fired might hurt mine. But she pointed out that our next news director might be even worse, so we worked out a compromise.

Since she had all the evidence, Nicole took it into his office one night after work. I listened with my ear at the door.

“Bryce, there’s something we need to get straight.” She told him about the sexts she’d saved, and the hidden recording she’d made.

To my surprise, he didn’t sound panicked at all. “So let’s cut to
the chase, Nicole. You’re here to blackmail me into making you lead anchor. I’m sure we can work something out.” He sounded smooth and confident, making a kissy sound with his lips.

“That’s not what this is about,” she said. “That’s not what I’m after.”

She and I had talked. She didn’t want a short-lived news career. Sure, accusing her news director of sexual harassment could get her a reputation. But so might landing an anchor job if the rest of the station thought she had something going on the side with Bryce.

“So what are you after?” He sounded suspicious.

That was my cue to enter. Bryce looked pissed. “I might have guessed you were behind this, Riley, when I heard about the hidden camera. How about that lecture you gave me about invasion of privacy?”