Jodie Picoult - Plain Truth

I walked over to Samuel and placed my hand on his arm, turning him away from the eyes of the gallery. He was trembling. “Samuel, what’s the problem?”

“We do not pray in public,” he whispered.

“It’s only words. It doesn’t really mean anything.”

His mouth dropped, as if I’d just turned into the devil right before his eyes. “It’s a promise to God-how can you say it means nothing? I cannot swear on the Bible, Ellie,” he said. “I am sorry, but if that’s what it takes, I can’t do it.”

Nodding tightly, I went back to the judge. “Swearing an oath on the Bible goes against his religion. Is it possible to make an exception?”

George jockeyed into position beside me. “Your Honor, I’m sorry to sound like a broken record, but clearly Ms. Hathaway has planned this performance to make the jury sympathetic to the Amish.”

“He’s right, of course. And any minute now the troupe of thespians I’ve hired to reenact Katie’s grief will come and take center stage.”

“You know,” Judge Ledbetter said thoughtfully, “I had an Amish businessman as a witness in a trial some years back, and we ran into the same problem.”

I gaped at the judge, not because she was posing a solution, but because she’d actually had an Amishman in her courtroom before. “Mr. Stoltzfus,” she called out. “Would you be willing to affirm on the Bible?”

I could see the gears turning in Samuel’s head. And I knew that the literal-mindedness of the Amish would serve the judge well here. As long as the word she posed wasn’t swear or vow or promise, Samuel would find the compromise acceptable.

He nodded. The clerk slipped the Bible beneath his hand again; I may have been the only one who noticed that Samuel’s palm hovered a few millimeters above the leather-bound cover. “Do you . . . uh, affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

Samuel smiled at the little man. “Ja, all right.”

He took the stand, filling the whole box, his large hands balanced on his knees and his hat tucked beneath the chair. “Could you state your name and address?”

He cleared his throat. “Samuel Stoltzfus. Blossom Hill Road, East Paradise Township.” He hesitated, then added, “Pennsylvania, U.S.A.”

“Thanks, Mr. Stoltzfus.”

“Ellie,” he whispered loudly, “you can call me Samuel.”

I grinned. “Okay. Samuel. Are you a little bit nervous?”

“Yes.” The word came out on a guffaw of relief.

“I’ll bet. Have you ever been in court before?”

“No.”

“Did you ever think you would be in court, one day?”

He shook his head. “Ach, no. We don’t believe in the filing of lawsuits, so I never gave it a minute’s thought.”

“By ‘we’ you mean whom?”

“The People,” he said.

“The Amish?”

“Yes.”

“Were you asked to be a witness today?”

“No. I volunteered.”

“You willingly put yourself into an uncomfortable situation? Why?”

His clear, blue gaze locked on Katie. “Because she didn’t murder her baby.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ve known her my whole life. Since we were kids. I’ve seen her every single day for years. Now I work for Katie’s father on the farm.”

“Really? What do you do there?”

“Anything Aaron tells me to do, pretty much. Mostly, I’m there to help with the planting and the harvesting. Oh, ja, and the milking. It’s a dairy.”

“When is the milking done, Samuel?”

“Four-thirty A.M. and four-thirty P.M.”

“What does it entail?”

George raised a brow. “Objection. Do we really need a lesson in farm management?”

“I’m laying foundation, Your Honor,” I argued.

“Overruled. Mr. Stoltzfus, you may answer the question.”

Samuel nodded. “Well, we start by mixing the feed. Then we shovel up behind the stanchions, and that goes into the manure pit. Aaron’s got twenty cows, so this takes a while. Then we wipe down their teats and put on the milking pump, which runs on generator. Two cows get hooked up at a time, did I say that? The milk goes into a can that gets dumped into the bulk tank. And usually in the middle we have to stop and shovel up behind ’em again.”

“When does the milk company truck come to pick up the milk?”

“Every other day, save the Lord’s Day. When it falls on a Sunday, it comes crazy times, like Saturdays at midnight.”

“Is the milk pasteurized before the truck takes it?”

“No, that happens after it leaves the farm.”

“Do the Fishers get their milk from the supermarket?”

Samuel grinned. “That would be sort of silly, wouldn’t it? Like buying bacon when you’ve just slaughtered a perfectly good pig. The Fishers drink their own fresh milk. I have to bring a pitcher in to Katie’s mother twice a day.”

“So the milk the Fishers drink has not yet been pasteurized?”

“No, but it tastes just the same as the stuff you get in the white plastic jug. You’ve had it. Don’t you think so?”

“Objection-could someone remind the witness that he’s not supposed to be asking questions?” George said.

The judge leaned sideways. “Mr. Stoltzfus, I’m afraid the prosecutor’s right.”

The big man reddened and looked into his lap. “Samuel,” I said quickly, “why do you feel that you know Katie so well?”

“I’ve seen her in so many situations I know how she acts-when she’s sad, when she’s happy. I was there when her sister drowned, when her brother got banned for good from the church. Two years ago, too, we started to go together.”

“You mean date?”

“Ja.”

“Were you dating when Katie had the baby?”

“Yes.”

“Were you there when she gave birth?”

“No, I wasn’t,” Samuel said. “I found out later.”

“Did you think at the time that it was your baby?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

He cleared his throat. “We never slept together.”

“Did you know who the father of that baby was?”

“No. Katie wouldn’t tell me.”

I softened my voice. “How did that make you feel?”

“Pretty bad. She was my girl, you see. I didn’t understand what had happened.”

For a moment, I simply let the jury look at Samuel. A strong, good-looking man dressed in clothes that seemed strange, speaking haltingly in his second language, trying to keep afloat in a situation that was completely unfamiliar to him. “Samuel,” I said. “Your girlfriend gets pregnant with someone else’s baby-the baby’s mysteriously found dead, although you’re not there to see how it happens-you’re nervous about being in a courtroom to testify-yet you’ve come here to tell us she didn’t commit murder?”

“That’s right.”

“Why are you sticking up for Katie, who, by all means, has wronged you?”

“Everything you said, Ellie, it’s true. I should be very angry. I was, for a time, but now I’m not. Now I’ve gotten past my own selfishness to where I’ve got to help her. See, when you’re Plain, you don’t put yourself forward. You just don’t do it, because that would be Hochmut-puffing yourself up-and the truth is there’s always others more important than you. So Katie, when she hears others telling lies about her and this baby, she won’t want to fight back, or stand up for herself. I am here to stand up for her.” As if listening to his own his words, he slowly got to his feet and stared at the jury. “She did not do this. She could not do this.”

Every one of the twelve was arrested by the image of Samuel’s face, set with quiet, fierce conviction. “Samuel, do you still love her?”

He turned, his eyes sliding past me to light on Katie. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I do.”