Jan Drexler - The Prodigal Son Returns

Susan climbed onto her stool and pulled at the small hand pump that brought water to the kitchen sink.

“He’s a nice man.” She wiggled her fingers under the running stream.

“Ja, I guess.”

“He isn’t afraid of horses.” Susan’s eyes grew large as she said this. “He told me Dawdi’s horse isn’t scary, and he’ll let me pet it.”

“When will this be?”

“Next week. He said he’ll come back and I can pet Dawdi’s horse.”

Ellie dried Danny’s hands and set him on the floor.

“Susan, take Danny in the front room and help him find the cows.”

Ellie rubbed at the spot between her eyes where a headache was threatening. How had he convinced Susan to look forward to petting a horse?

Movement out by the garden drew her eyes to the window over the sink. He was leaving. She watched until the buggy left the drive and turned into the road. How dangerous was he? Ellie tucked a loose strand of hair under her kapp. Well, he was Englisch, wasn’t he?

Wasn’t he?

She got out a mixing bowl to make piecrust, then dug into the flour canister with more force than she meant to. Flour spilled onto the counter and floor, wasting it. Ellie bit her lip as tears threatened to come.

Why was a simple thing like making a piecrust so hard? Nothing had been right since Daniel died.

Ellie wiped up the spilled flour. She had to keep everything balanced, normal.

What was normal, anyway?

Just do what needs to be done; keep to the routine. That was something she could do. It was when something unusual happened that her life tilted.

That Englischer. He upset everything.

Ne, that was unfair. He was just the little nudge that sent her stack of balanced plates teetering. It wasn’t him; it was her own fault.

Ellie crumbled lard into the flour with her fingers and then added an egg and a teaspoon of vinegar.

Her thoughts found their familiar rut and followed it stubbornly. Her pride had urged Daniel to buy the extra land. The extra land that needed more work and new, green-broke horses.

Her pride, her hochmut, had caused her to plead with Daniel, to force him to see things her way. She had wanted the larger farm, and she had urged him to buy the new team so he could work more land. If she had just kept to her place, listened to him...but no, she had to keep after him until he agreed to her ideas. If it hadn’t been for her nagging, he never would have bought that half-trained team.

The half-trained team that spooked easily. Too easily. A loose piece of harness, a horsefly bite, a playful barn cat... She’d never know what had set them off that day. All she knew was by the time she’d reached the barnyard with Susan, Daniel was already under their hooves, his body broken and bloody.

Her stubbornness had cost her the only man she had ever loved.

She worked the stiff dough with her hands until it was ready to roll. The rolling pin spun as she spread out the crust.

Ach, ja, the punishment for her disobedience had been bitter.

But now, wasn’t she sorry? Hadn’t she prayed for forgiveness? Gott had to be pleased. What more could she do? She went to church, wore her kapp, followed the Ordnung...

The piecrust was a pale full moon. Ellie eased it off the wooden breadboard and laid it on the pie plate.

She must try harder. The Ordnung, the church rules, was there to keep her close to Gott. She just had to obey them perfectly, and everything would be all right.

No matter how handsome that Englischer Bram Lapp happened to be.

She knew what was most important.

The crust eased into the pan. She trimmed the edge with a knife and then crimped the edges with her fingers. Neat. Perfect. And empty.

* * *

Bram swayed with the buggy, letting the clip-clop of the horse’s hooves set the pace of his thoughts. He’d known moving back to Indiana wouldn’t be easy, but he’d never expected to plunge into a pool with no bottom. Nothing was the way he remembered it. The life he knew as a boy on his father’s farm held none of the peaceful order he had found here.

From the simple white house nestled behind a riotous hedge of lilacs to the looming white barn, the Stoltzfus farm was the image of his grossdatti’s home, a place he thought he had forgotten since the old man’s death when he was a young boy. A whisper of memory rattled the long-closed door in his mind, willing it to open, but Bram waved it off. Memories were deceptive, even ones more than twenty years old. They covered the truth, and this truth was that he had a job to do. Grossdatti and his young grandson remained behind their door.

But a question snaked its way up Bram’s spine. What would Grossdatti say if he could see his grandson now? Bram cast a glance down at the dust caked in the perfect break where his gabardine trousers met his matching two-toned wing-tip shoes. Fancy. Englisch. Twelve years as one of Kavanaugh’s boys had left their mark.

Was it those long-forgotten memories that kept bringing him back to the Stoltzfus farm? He liked the family. John seemed to be on his side, ready with advice, but the older man was almost too trusting. He’d hate to see what the Chicago streets would do to a man like that.

That little girl. Now, she was something, wasn’t she? Bram smiled. When she wasn’t screaming in terror, she was almost as pretty as her mother.

The smile faded. The mother. Ellie. She was worse than a bear defending her cubs. He had to get past that barbed-wire barricade she threw up every time he tried to talk to her. There was something about him that rubbed her the wrong way. If he figured that out, then maybe she’d be more civil.

Something else he couldn’t figure out was why he cared so much.

Bram chirruped at the horse to try to quicken its pace, but it had only one speed. The drive into Goshen was slower than he remembered, and it took even longer when he had to stop for a train at the Big Four Railroad crossing. The people in the cars stared at him as the train rumbled south toward New Paris and Warsaw.

Oh, what he wouldn’t give to trade places with them. But it would be no use. The mob would find him, even if he went as far as Mexico. No, it would be better to keep on course. He’d run across Kavanaugh eventually, then Peters and the bureau would do their job. Maybe Mexico would be a good place to think about after that.

The train disappeared around the bend, and Bram urged the horse up and over the tracks, then on into Goshen.

Main Street was still the same as it had been when he was seventeen. He let out a short laugh at the memory. He couldn’t believe he had once thought of this place as a big city.

There was something new. He pulled the horse to a stop in the shade at the courthouse square and stared. On the corner of Main and Lincoln, right on the Lincoln Highway, stood a blockhouse. A limestone fortress. A cop behind the thick glass had a view of the entire intersection.

Bram tied the horse to a black iron hitching post and then snagged a man walking by. “Say, friend, can you tell me what’s going on? What’s that thing?”

The man gave him a narrow look that made Bram aware of how out of place his expensive suit was in a town like Goshen. “That’s our new police booth. The state police built it to keep an eye on the traffic through town and to keep gangsters from robbing our banks.”

“What makes them think Goshen is their target?” If the state police were working the same angle as the bureau, it sounded like Peters had good reason to think Kavanaugh had come this way.

“You remember back in thirty-three, when Dillinger stole weapons and bulletproof vests from some Indiana police facilities?”

Bram nodded. Oh, yeah, he remembered. Kavanaugh had gloated about that coup for weeks, even though he hadn’t been in on the heists.