Page 4 of Outsider

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.”