Plain Truth Read online

  Finally, it seemed as though not another person could have been squeezed inside. Ellie waited in the pointed silence for the service to begin. And waited. There was no hurry to start; apparently, she was the only one even remotely concerned by the fact that nothing was happening. She glanced around as a current of whispers volleyed: "You do it." "You ... no, you." Finally, an elderly man stood and announced a number. In unison, hundreds of books opened. Katie, who held the Ausband on her lap, moved it slightly so that Ellie could see the printed words of the hymnal.

  Ellie sighed. When in Rome--or so she had figured. No pun intended, but she didn't have a prayer of sight-reading a musical score that wasn't printed on the page. Only the lyrics were there, and she didn't know the tunes for Amish hymns. Actually, she didn't know the tunes for any hymns. One old man began singing in a slow, measured falsetto, and others picked up on his lead. Ellie noticed the ordained men--Bishop Ephram, and the two ministers, and another fellow she had not seen before--leaving their seats to go upstairs. Lucky bastards, she thought.

  She thought so, still, thirty minutes later when they finished the first hymn, sat in silence for several minutes, and then launched into the second hymn, the Loblied. Ellie closed her eyes, marveling at the stamina of these people who managed to remain upright on the backless benches. She could not recall the last time she attended a church service, but surely that one had finished long before these Amish preachers and the bishop came downstairs again to deliver the introductory sermon.

  "Liebe Bruder und Schwestern ..." Dear Brothers and Sisters.

  "Gelobet set Gott und der Vater unssers Herrn Jesu Christi ..." Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

  Ellie was nodding off when she felt Katie's soft explanation at her ear. "He's apologizing for his weakness as a preacher. He doesn't wish to take time away from the Brother who'll bring the main sermon."

  "If he's so bad at this," Ellie whispered back, "how come he's a preacher?"

  "He's not really bad. He's just showing how he's not proud."

  Ellie nodded, eyeing the older man in a new light. "Und wann dir einig sin lasset uns bede," he said, and as a unit, every single person in the room--except Ellie--fell to their knees.

  She glanced at Katie's bowed head, at the bowed heads of the ordained men and the sea of kapps and neatly trimmed hair, and very slowly she got down on the floor.

  In the middle of the night, Katie's room filled with light. With a rush of anticipation, she sat up in bed, then dressed quickly. Most of the boys kept high-powered flashlights in their courting buggies that they'd shine in a girl's window when they wanted her to sneak down to see them on a Saturday night. She wrapped a shawl around her shoulders --it was February, and freezing outside --and tiptoed down the stairs thinking of John Beiler's eyes, the same warm gold as the leaves on a beech tree in the autumn.

  She would scold him, she thought, for dragging her out on a night as cold as this one, but then she'd walk with him and maybe let her shoulder bump up against his now and then to know that she didn't mean it. Her best friend Mary Esch had already let Curly Joe Yoder kiss her on the cheek. She eased the side door open and stepped onto the landing. Katie's eyes were bright, her palms damp. She turned, a smile skimming her lips, and came face to face with her brother.

  "Jacob!" she gasped. "What are you doing here?" Immediately she glanced up at the window of her parents' bedroom. Being found with a beau would be bad enough; but if her father discovered Jacob back in his house, there was no telling what might happen. Putting a finger up to her lips, Jacob reached for his sister's hand and pulled her off the porch, running silently toward the creek.

  He stopped at the edge of the pond and used the sleeve of his down jacket to wipe the snow from the small bench there. Then, seeing Katie shiver, he took off the jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders. They both stared at the black ice, smooth as silk, so clear that tangles of marshy grass could be seen frozen beneath it. "Have you been here yet today?" he asked.

  "What do you think?" She had come early this morning, to mark the five years that had passed. Katie held her hands up to her cheeks, blushing to realize that she'd been so full of herself she'd been thinking of John Beiler, when her thoughts should have centered on Hannah. "I can't believe you came here."

  He scowled at her. "I come every year. I just never called on you before."

  Stunned, Katie turned to him. "You come back? Every year?"

  "On the day she died." They both stared toward the pond again, watching the willow branches scratch its surface with each bite of the wind. "Mam? How's she?"

  "Same as every year. She got feeling a little grenklich, went to bed early."

  Jacob leaned back and stared at the sky, cracked open wide and carved with stars. "I used to hear her crying outside on the porch swing, underneath my window. And I'd think that if I hadn't been so chairminded, it wouldn't have happened."

  "Mam said it was the Lord's will. It would have happened whether or not you'd been off reading your books, instead of skating with us."

  "That's the only time, you know, I ever thought twice about wanting so badly to keep up my schooling. As if Hannah drowning was some kind of punishment for that."

  "Why would you be the one punished?" Katie swallowed hard. "I'm the one Mam told to watch her that day."

  "You were eleven. You couldn't have known what to do."

  Katie closed her eyes and heard the great groan that came from the ice so many years ago, the sound of tectonic plates shifting and deep monsters bellowing at trespass. She saw Hannah, so proud to have tied her skates all alone for the first time, taking off in a streak across the pond, silver blades winking from beneath her green skirts. Watch me, watch me! Hannah had cried, but Katie never heard, too busy daydreaming of the fancy, glittering costume of an Olympic figure skater that she had seen in the newspaper at the market checkout stand. There was a shriek and a crash. By the time Katie turned, Hannah was already sliding beneath the ice.

  "She was trying to hold on," Katie said softly. "I kept telling her to hold on, while I got a long branch the way Dat taught us to. But I couldn't reach the branch to break it off, and she kept crying, and every time I turned my back her mittens slipped a little more. And then she was gone. Just like that." She lifted her face to Jacob's, too embarrassed to admit to her brother that her thoughts on that day had been worldly, and just as worthy of censure as anything he had done. "She would be older now than I was when she died."

  "I miss her too, Katie."

  "It's not the same." Fighting tears, she looked into her lap. "First Hannah, and then you. How come the people I love the most keep leaving me?"

  Jacob's hand crept across the bench to cover hers, and Katie thought that for the first time in many months, she recognized her brother. She could look at him in his puffy red coat, with his clean-shaven face and his short copper hair, and see instead Jacob in his shirt and suspenders, his hat tossed aside, his head bent over a high school English textbook in the hayloft, trying to hide his wildest dreams. Then she felt a stirring in her chest, and her hair stood up on the back of her neck. Lifting her eyes to the pond, she saw a slight figure skimming over it, whistling across the ice and kicking up small clouds of snow. A skater, which would not have been remarkable, except for the fact that Katie could see the cornfield and the willow's greedy arms right through the girl's shawl and skirt and face.

  She did not believe in ghosts. She believed, like the rest of her people, that working hard in this life might send you to your greater reward --a sort of wait-and-hope-for-the-best policy that left no room for errant spirits and tortured souls. Heart pounding, Katie got to her feet and inched across the ice to the spot where Hannah was skating. Jacob yelled out, but she could barely hear him. She, who had been taught to believe that God would answer your prayers, realized that it was true: at this moment, both her brother and her sister had come back to her.

  She reached out and whispered, "Hannah?" But she was grabbing at