Between You and Me Page 25

  Rushing forward, she sank both her fists into the back of a sweatshirt, trying to yank one of them off Caleb. An elbow connected with her chest, knocking the wind out of her. She staggered, but didn’t fall.

  There was a clicking sound. A blade flashed in the glow of the launderette’s neon sign. Caleb grabbed the assailant’s arm and twisted. Reese heard the snap of a tendon or ligament, then a ragged scream of pain. She spotted the knife and snatched it up, though she couldn’t imagine using it. She heard a strange sound, like a wet thud. It was Caleb’s fist, smashing with stunning force into his opponent’s face.

  One of the men grabbed his bike and raced away into the shadows. The others groaned and swore as they dragged themselves up.

  “Fuck my fucking life,” howled one of them, clutching his face. “Dude broke my fucking nose.”

  “I can’t move my goddamn arm,” said another. It was oddly angled at the elbow, probably dislocated. Still, the guy managed to mount a bike and wobble away.

  “I see you again, you’re dead, motherfucker.” The words lacked authority, though, because they were all fleeing.

  Reese dropped the knife—a switchblade—and staggered as her legs buckled. Caleb put his arm around her and helped her sit down on the stairs. “Are you hurt?” he asked.

  “N-no.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “Scared shitless is all. You?”

  “I’m all right.” He bent to the amber-lit sidewalk and picked something up—her necklace.

  She barely looked at it as she stuffed it into her pocket. “They had a gun, Caleb. You’re not supposed to fight back when someone has a gun to your head. Why the hell would you resist somebody who has a gun on you? Damn it, you could have been shot.”

  He rubbed his jaw. “I was.”

  “What? Jesus, where?”

  He tipped up his chin. “Just here. It’s nothing to worry about.”

  “You were shot? Did it graze you? Oh my God.”

  He walked over to the curb and retrieved the gun.

  She shrank from the sinister black object.

  He gave it a shake, and she could hear something rattling like a snake. “It’s a BB gun,” he said. “I recognized it right away. Looks real, but it’s not so hazardous. They must’ve been shooting it off earlier. I saw BBs all over the sidewalk.”

  She nearly fainted on the steps. “A BB gun.”

  “They left your phone.” He held it out.

  She grabbed it from him. Her hands were still shaking too hard to deal with the phone, but the Emergency option could be activated with one touch.

  “Nine one one,” said a voice on the other end. “What’s your emergency?”

  Two

  The Match

  March

  In the end, it is important to remember that we cannot become what we need to be, by remaining what we are.

  —Max De Pree

  14

  The silver flash of Caleb’s blade glinted against the winter sky as he lifted it high overhead. Jonah watched as his uncle swung the long-handled ax in an arc, then brought its blade down deep into the heart of the chunk of wood he was splitting. Against the eye-smarting deep blue above, Jonah spotted the contrails of a jet. The aircraft had drawn a white arrow aiming dead southeast, toward Philadelphia.

  Caleb paused in his work and wiped the sweat from his brow. “A man who chops the wood warms himself twice,” he said with a grin. “Care to give it a try?”

  Jonah eyed the ax. “Maybe later. I got more practicing to do with my arm.”

  “All right then. I think we have enough for the night.” Caleb stacked the split wood in the old canvas carrier. “You warm enough?”

  Jonah nodded, though the cold had numbed the fingers of his good hand. His only hand. Winter held Middle Grove in its icy grip deep into the heart of March. At the last Sunday social, he’d heard folks remarking on the brutally long winter. Woodpiles were depleted, and the spring planting would be delayed.

  The other hand was made of aluminum and thermoplastic and carbon fiber, and it should have felt nothing, and yet it hurt almost constantly, a pulsing, squeezing sensation. Phantom pain, the orthotics people said. In time, and after more surgery, it would stop.

  He patted his thigh to get Jubilee’s attention. The dog had been his constant companion ever since he’d come home six months before. She was such a big help when he practiced with his arm that the therapist in New Hope let her come to all the appointments.

  “Let’s get to it, girl,” he said, positioning himself in front of the workbench where he did his practicing.

  Start with a breath. Focus. Jonah stared at his robotic arm, not the way kids stared at it in school, but the way he’d been trained. He was supposed to picture his muscles and nerves and their connections inside the socket. The arm had electronic motors and sensors that were being trained to know what his mind was thinking. His orthopedist said legs were stronger, yet arms and hands were smarter.

  But only if Jonah concentrated. Today’s practice: picking up a dog’s squeaky toy that was in the shape of a doughnut. Jubilee was focused on the toy and concentrating as hard as Jonah. She crouched on a patch of ground that was just beginning to thaw and stared at the doughnut as though trying to hypnotize it.

  Jonah managed to pluck it from the workbench. Now lift elbow, close grip. The arm lifted, but the grip opened instead of closing.

  “Keep trying,” Caleb said calmly, still bundling the wood.

  In the chilly silence, Jonah heard the tiny gears of the arm whirring.

  He crushed his eyebrows down into a frown. Close grip. Close. Breathe.

  And finally, he picked up the doughnut. The toy let out a squeak, which brought Jubilee to her feet. He held it steady, exactly as his mind was telling his arm to do. Then he tried the most complex maneuver of all, throwing the toy for his dog. Flinging it was no problem. Letting go—that was a different story.

  He drew his arm back at the shoulder and brought it forward. Let go.

  The grip opened at the exact right moment. The dog toy flew through the air. Jubilee gave a yelp of joy and bounded after it.

  “Good work,” Caleb said. He grinned with his whole face. His whole body. He always did, even when the success was just a small one.

  “I tossed a toy for the dog,” Jonah said.

  “With your new arm. That’s something.”

  He was learning to think about muscles he didn’t have anymore, like his biceps, so his brain would tell the arm what to do. Bend, flex, contract.

  In Philadelphia, they told him the pioneering surgery was only the beginning. He figured out that pioneering meant he was one of the first, like a space explorer. It also meant that the real work was up to him.

  He had been very surprised when Caleb made the abrupt decision to come home to Middle Grove. One day Caleb had come to the hospital with his face and his knuckles all banged up from some bad guys attacking him and stealing his money. There was a big meeting with the care team. Even Jonah was allowed to attend. Uncle Caleb had explained that he and Jonah had to go home.

  Jonah had been overjoyed. Home to Jubilee and his regular life. Somehow, they worked out a plan so Jonah could be at home but still get the training and therapy he needed. His days were the same in some ways, different in others. He had more time for reading, and Caleb and the bookmobile lady from the county library made sure he always had something new to read. Lately, he’d been reading a series of adventure books about a kid lawyer named Theodore Boone.

  “Help me carry this inside,” Caleb said. He blew on his hands to warm them.

  Jonah couldn’t remember what it was like to have two cold hands. He watched his uncle, studying those big hands. They were strong enough to wrestle a stubborn bull. Yet even now, long after the attack in Philadelphia, Caleb’s knuckles bore white scars.

  “What?” Caleb asked. He must have noticed Jonah staring.

  “How did you hurt your hands when the bad men attacked you?” asked Jonah. He swallowed har
d, feeling brazen. Until now, he hadn’t dared to ask. Back when he was still in the hospital, he’d stayed quiet about his uncle’s hands, fearful of jinxing his chances of getting to come home.

  “Guess they got bumped or scraped on something.” Caleb leaned the ax against the woodshed.

  “On what?” Jonah persisted. “Did the bad guys beat your hands because you were trying not to let them take your money?”

  Caleb turned to him. He sat on the edge of the workbench. “What do you think, little man?”

  “I think you’re not lying to me because you never lie. But you’re not saying the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” Jonah liked quoting his fictional hero, Theodore Boone. The law was the law. It just laid everything out, which was so much simpler than folks arguing about what was right and what was wrong. He leaned down and picked up Jubilee’s squeaky toy. “I think you fought back.”

  “You do?”

  Jonah was figuring out that to get the truth out of someone, you shouldn’t say what you think. You had to ask questions to see what they thought. “Did you fight with the guys who attacked you?”

  Caleb looked directly at him. His face didn’t show anything. “I did. It’s against our principles and I’m not proud of it, and there’s no excuse for that kind of behavior.”

  Jonah noticed that he didn’t say he was sorry. He didn’t say he wished he hadn’t done it.

  “Why’s it against our principles?” Jonah asked.

  “Because the Amish are strict pacifists,” said Caleb. “Ordnung prohibits us from raising a hand against another human being.”

  “Then why did Ray Graber get a caning from his dat yesterday? Right outside the school it was. How is that different?”

  “We’re out of firewood,” said a loud voice. Grandfather came outside with the kitchen waste. As he put it in the bin, his mouth was a macron of disapproval above his bushy beard.

  “Jonah and I’ll bring some right in,” Caleb said.

  “Jonah, too, eh?” Grandfather shut the bin and turned. He hated the arm. He claimed it was a tool of the devil. He objected to the electrical plug Caleb had installed in the milk house to power the battery pack. “Carrying wood’s a two-handed job.”

  “I’ll thank you to keep your thoughts to yourself,” Caleb said. He never raised his voice, but Jonah could hear the anger, like the low vibration in the throat of a dog issuing a warning.

  “I got two hands,” Jonah said, wanting to break the tension. “Just one of ’em’s made of alloy.” He hooked the strap of the carrier around the hand grip.

  Grandfather wasn’t the only one who didn’t like the arm. The bishop said it was God’s will that Jonah’s arm was cut off, and it was a sin to use an artificial limb.

  In the house, Jonah stoked the fire in the iron stove. Maybe his prosthesis was a sin, but at least he wouldn’t burn his hand when he made a fire. Once the lively flames were crackling, he stacked the rest of the wood in the copper bin.

  Hannah came home from the quilt shop, her cheeks bright from the cold. She was carrying a basket of something. Jonah hoped it was food. The ladies who worked at the quilt shop made the best cookies and cakes.

  “It’s not food,” she said, reading his mind, something she’d always been able to do. “We made a lap blanket for Rebecca Zook. She’s doing poorly again.” Hannah slid a sideways glance at Caleb, and Jonah knew why. A while back, folks thought Caleb would marry Rebecca and bring her here to the farm as his wife.

  Ever since Hannah had been baptized into the church, she seemed more mysterious and grown up. Jonah had been present for the ceremony, when she and her buddy bunch pledged their faith to the church. The pouring of the water, the serious-sounding questions, and the prayers had transformed his sister in ways he couldn’t quite understand.

  “Come with me to give it to her,” she said to Jonah. “Let’s bring Jubilee along for a walk.”

  “I’m tired from all the practicing and wood carrying.”

  “You have two perfectly good legs, Jonah Stoltz,” she said in a bossy voice, sounding like the old Hannah now. She plunked his knitted stocking cap down around his ears. “Let’s go.”

  She knew him better than anyone. They told each other things. He felt lucky to have her. Caleb worked every day—at Grantham Farm, doing bookkeeping for his English clients, hauling, anything that would bring in more money. Jonah knew it was because the doctor bills were so high. But Hannah, she always had time for him, and sometimes she needed him as much as he needed her. Still, she seemed different these days, somehow. Spent lots of quiet time in her room, made mysterious trips to the outhouse at all hours of the night. She was his blood sister, though, and she would always have his back, same as he would have hers.

  They crossed two fields, lifting their legs high over the dried winter wheat stubble. Jubilee raced and cavorted ahead of them, scaring up a flurry of crows.

  “Aaron Graber’s parents won’t let him go to the singing tonight,” Hannah said. “Should I go, even if he’s not going to be there?”

  “You’re asking me?”

  “No, I’m asking the Oracle of Delphi,” she said. “Of course I’m asking you. You’re old enough to have a fancy arm, so you must be old enough to have an opinion.”

  “Why would you stay home just because Aaron’s not going?”

  “Because we’re courting. But I still want to go.” She crushed her boot down on a clump of stubble. “Stuff like this is vexing, that’s what it is. I wish . . .” She didn’t finish the thought, but Jonah knew what she was thinking.

  “Do you ever wonder what it’d be like to have a regular mother and father like most folks?” he asked.

  She lifted her face to the sky, and the wind blew back her bonnet strings. “All the time,” she said. “All the time.”

  Entering the penitentiary at Forest Hills felt as routine as a church Sunday in Middle Grove. Being searched, scanned, and sniffed by dogs before entering was not so different, somehow, from the scrutiny of church elders. Caleb wasn’t sure getting used to this process was a good thing, a bad thing, or just a thing.

  Three times a year, all the Stoltzes visited inmates Anthony Frackton and Darryl Krebs. The Amish principle of forgiveness was absolute. These men had murdered John and Naomi, yet doctrine demanded that the survivors—Caleb, Asa, Hannah, and Jonah—find grace through forgiveness. They brought approved reading material and small change for the vending machines. They’d learned early on that homemade food or anything from home could not be given to an inmate, only what dropped from the machines in the visiting area.

  Early on, Caleb had felt a killing rage toward the assailants who had stolen two innocent lives. As time went on, he resigned himself to the visits. Rage would not bring his brother back. Bitterness was simply poison.

  Yet today’s encounter felt different to Caleb. He knew why. Because now he understood what it felt like to attack someone with raw, protective fury pouring through his body. That, he believed, was what John had felt trying to fend off his attackers. Despite the Amish principle of nonviolence, John had fought back. That night in Philadelphia, Caleb had done the same thing. The assault, and the powerful anger that had overtaken him when the thugs had confronted him and threatened Reese, haunted him still, months later.

  The attack had slapped him out of the trance he’d been in during his stay in the city. He’d realized that night that he had to leave, not because he didn’t like Philadelphia, but because he’d liked it too much—riding in cars and dancing and eating all kinds of food, Reese and her friends, each one so interesting and unique. And Reese herself—complicated and challenging, smart and unpredictable and funny and sexy. She’d woven an enchantment around him until he’d started imagining a life far from the Amish community—a life he couldn’t have. Even the fight had been dangerously seductive. He couldn’t forget those moments of raw energy he’d felt when the thugs had surrounded him. He’d been raised to submit or, at the most, flee when threatened or attacked. But p
ure instinct overpowered teachings and traditions.

  In the aftermath, he’d felt a strange intoxication, as if he could do anything. And he’d known better than to trust that feeling. He told himself he’d fought off the thugs in self-defense, even though he knew it was against Amish principles. Reese had tried to be reassuring, saying that under the circumstances, he’d done the right thing.

  Caleb hadn’t worried about right or wrong. He’d worried because he had liked the fight. He should not have enjoyed breaking a man’s nose and another’s arm. Yet he’d taken a sick satisfaction in the violent act. It was as if all the rage at the attackers of John and Naomi had found a secret home deep inside Caleb, festering like an untended wound. Somehow, the Philadelphia thugs had tapped into that rage, causing it to erupt like a volcano.

  At the end of the seemingly endless night, Caleb had made himself face the truth. The mesmeric effect of the English world was taking hold of him. He had no business there. He could not set aside the promise he’d made to John as his brother lay dying. John had begged Caleb to raise his children Plain. The Amish took care of their own. They didn’t mingle with worldly folks, particularly women like Reese Powell. The time had come to take Jonah home.

  He thought he’d find peace, coming back to Middle Grove. Instead, he’d found tension with his father, worry about the children. Peace was a relative thing. It didn’t have so much to do with where a person lived as how he lived.

  Anthony was his usual terse self—“Whatchoo got?”—taking the chocolate bars they’d purchased from the vending machine. Darryl was the same, too, which meant an unfocused stare, a string of drool from the corner of his mouth. Caleb hadn’t known either man before the attack, of course, but according to reports, Darryl had suffered brain damage in the fight. John had hit him so hard it had fractured the man’s skull, and now he was what some English called “simple.”