Castillo Linda - Outsider

The airbag had deployed. A crack split the front windshield, but the glass was still intact. His gut tightened at the sight of the blood. There was a lot of it. Too much, a little voice whispered. Adam didn’t know anything about cars or trucks, but he didn’t think the impact would have been violent enough to warrant so much blood. What on earth had happened here?

Adam leaned into the vehicle for a closer look, but there was nothing else of interest. Straightening, he looked around. Any tracks left behind had long since been filled in. Where had the driver gone?

He walked to the rear of the truck. A tinge of apprehension tickled the back of his neck at the sight of the bullet holes in the rear window. Six holes connected by a mapwork of white cracks.

“Datt? Is someone in there?”

He startled at the sound of his son’s voice. Turning, he saw the boy come up behind him, hip-deep in snow, craning his neck to see into the vehicle.

“Go back to the sleigh, Sammy.”

But the boy had already spotted the blood. “Oh.” His thin little brows drew together. “He’s hurt, Datt, and needs help. Maybe we should look for him.”

The boy was right, of course. Helping those in need was the Amish way. Still, the bullet holes gave Adam pause. How had they gotten there and why?

“Let’s go back to the sleigh,” he told his son.

Side by side, they struggled through the ditch. Adam kept his eye out for tracks as they walked, but there were none. Either someone had come by and picked up the injured driver or he’d walked away and found help.

“Who is it, Datt?” asked Annie.

“No one there,” he told her.

“Are we going to look for him?” Lizzie asked.

“We’ll look around a bit,” he said.

Sammy lowered his voice, as if to avoid worrying his sisters. “Do you think he’s hurt, Datt?”

“ Fleicht, ” he said. Maybe.

Adam set his hand on his son’s head. Such a sweet boy, so helpful and caring. But Adam didn’t like seeing those bullet holes. He sure didn’t like seeing all that blood. Even so, if someone was hurt, finding them and helping them was the right thing to do.

“I’m going to look around,” he told the children. “I want you to stay close to the sleigh. Call out if you see anything. If we don’t find anyone here, we’ll ride down to the freezer shanty over on Ithaca Road and use the phone.”

“The Freezer” was a metal building containing a dozen or so freezers the Amish rented to store vegetables and meat. It had a community toilet, a hitching post, and a phone.

Adam lifted his youngest daughter from the sleigh and looked around. The fence that ran alongside the road was a jumble of bent posts and sagging barbed wire. On the other side of the road, the woods grew thick all the way to Painters Creek.

“Be careful, children,” he said as he started along the fence line. “Stay together and watch out for deep drifts or else I’ll have to dig you out, too.”

His words were met with a spate of giggles as they started toward the road.

Adam traversed the ditch and followed the fence. Fifty feet ahead, there was a knoll with a smattering of saplings and a place where blackberries flourished in late summer. He’d only gone twenty feet when he saw the scrap of fabric hanging from the barbed wire. Farther, a disturbance in the snow. At first, he thought maybe a deer had been hit and run into the ditch to die. But as he drew closer, he spotted the black leather of a boot. Blue denim.

He broke into a lurching run. “Hello? Is someone there? Are you hurt?”

From ten feet away he recognized the silhouette of a woman. Dark hair. A black leather coat and boots. Blue jeans.

Adam reached her and knelt. She was lying on her side, her head and shoulder against a fence post. Her legs were pulled up nearly to her chest, as if she’d been trying to stay warm. Brownish-black hair stuck out from beneath a purple knit hat, covering much of her face. Her clothes were caked with snow. Adam brushed the hair away and was shocked when he found it frozen stiff. He saw blue-tinged lips set into a face that was deathly pale. She wore a scarf at the collar of her coat. A single leather glove on her right hand. The other was bare and covered with blood. Her skin was cold to the touch and for a terrible moment he thought she was dead. Frozen to death.

Shaken by the thought, he worked off one of his gloves, set his fingers against the back of her neck, beneath her hat and hair. Warm, he realized. Still alive.

Relieved, he looked around. The closest house was his own. The Yoder farm was another mile down the road. The snow was coming down so hard he couldn’t even see the roof of their barn. They were Amish and didn’t have a phone, anyway. The closest Amish pay phone was at the freezer shanty, which was in the opposite direction.

He craned his neck right, spotted Lizzie and Annie using sticks to play tic-tac-toe in the snow. Sammy had made his way twenty yards ahead, checking the area along the fence.

The woman moaned. Adam turned back to her to see her twist. She raised her head and squinted at him. She was staring at his hat, her eyes wide. Her face was a mask of confusion and pain. “Get the fuck away from me,” she slurred.

He didn’t know what to say to that. He was trying to help her. Was she confused? He’d seen it happen, like the time he’d been hunting and his cousin fell through the ice. By the time they arrived home, his cousin hadn’t even been able to speak.

“Don’t be afraid.” Raising his hands, he sat back on his haunches. “I’m going to help you.”

“Back off.” She raised her left hand as if to fend him off. “I mean it.”

“You were in an accident,” he told her. “You’re bleeding. You need a doctor.”

“No doctor.” She tried to scoot backward, as if to put some distance between them, but ended up flopping sideways. Her face hit the snow. There were ice crystals on her skin. A smear of blood on her cheek. Propping herself up on one elbow, she reached beneath her coat with her right hand and pulled out a pistol.

“Keep your fucking distance,” she hissed. “Stay back.”

Adam lurched away, raised his hands. “I have children.”

She raised her other hand, fingers blue with cold and covered with blood. She looked at it as if she wasn’t sure it was hers, wiped her face. “Who are you?”

“Adam … Lengacher.”

She blinked at him. “Where am I?”

“Painters Mill.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he ascertained the location of his children. They were ten yards away, near the fence. Too close. If this woman was narrisch —crazy—and fired that gun, there would be no protecting them.

Adam scooched back another foot, kept his hands raised. “I’m leaving. Just stay calm and we’ll go. Okay?”

“It’s a lady .”

His heart gave a single hard thud at the sound of his son’s voice. He hadn’t heard him approach. He twisted around fast and made eye contact with him. “ Gay zu da shlay, Samuel. Nau. ” Go to the sleigh. Now.

The boy’s eyes widened at his datt ’s tone. He took a step back. “What’s wrong?”

“ Gay, ” he said. “ Nau. ” Go. Now.

The boy walked backward, frightened. Adam turned back to the woman. She was looking at Sammy. Gripping the pistol as if it were her lifeline. Dear God, what had he stumbled upon?

Before he could ponder the question, the hand holding the pistol collapsed as if she no longer had the strength to keep her arm outstretched. The gun slid from her palm. Her body went slack and she settled more deeply into the snow. She stared at him for a moment and then closed her eyes.

“I’m spent,” she rasped.