Plain Truth Read online

  Samuel took another helping. "Good thing, since that's how I've grown to like it."

  The others at the table continued to devour their lunch, as if they had not been witness to the furious blush that rose on Katie's face, or Samuel's slow smile, or this uncharacteristically public championing. And a few minutes later when the men rose, leaving us behind to clean up, Katie was still staring off in the direction of the barn.

  The Tupperware had been cleaned and returned to the women who'd brought the food. Nails had been gathered up in brown paper bags, and hammers tucked beneath the bench seats of buggies. The barn stood proud and raw and yellow, a new silhouette carved into a sky as purple as a bruise.

  "Ellie?"

  I turned, surprised by the voice. "Samuel."

  He was holding his hat in his hands, running it around and around by the brim like an exercise wheel. "I thought you maybe would like to see the inside."

  "Of the barn?" In all the hours we'd been at the barn raising, I hadn't seen a single woman stray toward the construction site. "I'd love to."

  I walked beside him, unsure of what to say. The last true private conversation we'd had had ended with Samuel sobbing over Katie's pregnancy. In the end, I took the Amish way out--I did not say anything, but instead moved companionably alongside him.

  The barn seemed even larger from the inside than from the outside. Thick beams crossed over my head, fragrant pine that would be here for decades. The high gambrel roof arched like a pale, artificial sky; and when I touched the posts that supported the animal stalls, a confetti of sawdust rained down on me.

  "This is really something," I said. "To build a whole barn in a single day."

  "It only looks like such a big thing when it's one man by himself."

  Not much different from my own philosophy to my clients--although having an ardent attorney by your side to help you out of a bind paled in comparison to having fifty friends and relatives ready in an instant.

  "I need to talk to you," Samuel said, clearly uncomfortable.

  I smiled at him. "Talk away."

  He frowned, puzzling out my English, and then shook his head. "Katie ... she's doing all right?"

  "Yes. And that was a nice thing you did for her, today at lunch."

  Samuel shrugged. "It was nothing." He turned, gnawing at his thumbnail. "I've been thinking about this court."

  "You mean the trial?"

  "Ja. The trial. And the more I think about it, it's not so different from anything else. Martin Zook didn't have to look up at that pile of lumber all by himself."

  If this was some roundabout Amish reasoning, I was missing the mark. "Samuel, I'm not quite sure--"

  "I want to help," he interrupted. "I want to work with Katie in the court so she don't have to be all alone."

  Samuel's face was dark and set; he had given this much thought. "Building a barn isn't forbidden by the Ordnung," I said gently. "But I don't know how the bishop will feel if you willingly take the role of character witness in a murder trial."

  "I will speak to Bishop Ephram," Samuel said.

  "And if he says no?"

  Samuel tightened his mouth. "An English judge won't care about the Meidung."

  No, a superior court judge wouldn't give a damn if a witness was being shunned by his religious community. But Samuel might. And Katie.

  I looked over his shoulder at the sturdy walls, the right angles, the roof that would keep out the rain. "We'll see," I answered.

  "Now what?"

  Katie snipped off a thread between her teeth and looked up at me. "Now you're done."

  My jaw dropped. "You're kidding."

  "Nope." Katie spread her hands over the small quilt, a log cabin pattern with hints of yellow, purples, deep blues, and a streak of rose. When I had first arrived at the Fishers, shamelessly unable to sew on a button, Sarah and Katie decided I was a worthy cause. With their help, I'd learned how to baste and pin and sew. Each night when the family gathered after dinner-- to read the newspaper, or play backgammon or Yahtzee, or--like Elam--just doze off and snore, Katie and I would bend over the small frame of my quilt, and piece it together. And now it was finished.

  Sarah lifted her face from her mending. "Ellie's done?"

  Beaming, I nodded. "Want to see?"

  Even Aaron put down the paper. "Of course," he joked. "This is the biggest event since Omar Lapp sold his twenty acres to that real estate developer from Harrisburg." He lowered his voice. "And just about as unlikely." But he was grinning, too, as Katie helped me unfasten the quilt from the frame and hold it up to my chest with pride.

  I knew that if Katie had completed a quilt, she wouldn't show it off so, and it would have been far more worthy of praise. I knew that the stitches on her side of the quilt were neat and even as baby teeth, while mine scurried drunk across the marked pencil lines. "Well, that's just fine, Ellie," Sarah said.

  Elam, in the La-Z-Boy, opened one eye. "Won't even keep her feet warm in the winter."

  "It's supposed to be small," I argued, then turned to Katie. "Isn't it?"

  "Ja. It's like a baby quilt. For all those children still to come," she said with a smile.

  I rolled my eyes. "Don't go holding your breath."

  "Most Plain women your age are only half done with having their children."

  "Most Plain women my age have been married for twenty years," I pointed out.

  "Katie," Sarah warned, "leave Ellie be."

  I folded my quilt as carefully as a fallen soldier's flag and hugged it. "See? Even your mother agrees with me."

  A terrible silence fell over the room, and almost immediately I reali2ed my mistake. Sarah Fisher didn't agree with me-- at forty-three, she'd have given her right arm to be still bearing children, but the decision had been taken out of her hands.

  I turned to her. "I'm sorry. That was very tactless of me."

  Sarah was still for a moment, then she shrugged and took the quilt. "You'd like me to iron this for you?" she asked, hurrying from the room before I could tell her that I'd rather she sit down and relax.

  I looked around, but Katie and Aaron and Elam were back in their seats, quietly occupied, as if I had never spoken thoughtlessly at all.

  In the next instant there was a knock at the door, and I rose to answer it. I could tell from the look that crossed between Aaron and Elam that in their minds, a caller arriving this late on a weeknight was a sure messenger of trouble. My hand had just reached the knob when the door swung open, pushed from the outside. Jacob Fisher stood there. He met my stunned gaze first, a wry and nervous smile playing over his lips. "Hey-Mom-I'm-home," he said breezily, a parody of TV sitcoms that only the two of us would even understand. "What's for supper?"

  Sarah came running first, drawn by the sound of a son she had not seen in years. Her hand clapped over her mouth, her eyes smiling through tears, she was a yard away from Jacob when Aaron stopped her by simply slashing his arm through the air and saying, "No."

  He advanced on his son, and in deference Sarah melted against the wall. "You are no longer welcome here."

  "Why, Dat?" Jacob asked. "It's not because the bishop said so. And who are you to make a rule stronger than the Ordnung?" He stepped further inside. "I miss my family."

  Sarah gasped. "You will come back to the church?"

  "No, Mam, I can't. But I want badly to come back to my home."

  Aaron stood toe to toe with his son, his throat working. Then, without saying a word, he turned and walked out of the room. A few seconds later a door slammed in the rear of the house.

  Elam patted Jacob on the shoulder, then moved slowly in the direction his own son had gone. Sarah, tears running down her face, held her hands out to her oldest child. "Oh, I can't believe this. I can't believe it's you."

  As I watched her, I understood why a mother would starve herself to feed a baby; how there was always time and room for a child to curl close to her side; how she could be soft enough to serve as a pillow and strong enough to move heaven and