Page 54 of The Hidden One

She shakes her head, adamant. “It didn’t help. But there was something else there, too. Something she didn’t talk about. It broke her.” She taps her chest. “Inside.”

I ask her about Jonas Bowman and Stoltzfus’s children, but she doesn’t know any of them. “Is there anything else you can think of that might help me find the person responsible?”

She leans back in the recliner and contemplates me, as if trying to decide if I’m worthy of the information. “There’s a story about Levi Schmucker was going around years ago. Can’t vouch for the truth of it.”

“Who is he?”

A light enters her eyes. A storyteller about to embark on a tour de force. “Levi lived down to Reeds Gap with his wife and kids. Worked at the mill out Strodes Mills way. Word got around that Levi was acting improper with his oldest girl. Bad medicine, you know?”

I nod, wondering where she’s going with this. What it has to do with Ananias Stoltzfus.

“It was a hush-hush kind of thing. Somehow, Ananias caught wind of it and paid Levi a visit.” She leans forward, places her elbows on her knees. The light in her eyes shifts, goes dark. “From what I understand, there wasn’t much talking done that night.”

“What happened?”

“Someone beat Levi Schmucker to a pulp. Laid open his head. Broke his arm. Busted his teeth. Heard he spent the night in the hospital up in Lewistown.”

A slow boil of disbelief churns in my gut. Of all the things I expected her to say, this isn’t it.

The old woman isn’t finished. “Levi claimed he fell. But two days later, he quit his job and left town without a word.”

“Are you saying Ananias Stoltzfus assaulted him?”

“I’m saying the bishop got his message across. He was just mean enough to get the job done. For once, all that mean was justified.” She leans back in the chair. “He carried that big walking stick, you know. Needed it for his rheumatism, or so he said. Maybe he used it for other things, too.”

“Is Schmucker still alive?” I ask. “Is he still in the area?”

“Last I heard he was living in a nursing home up in Lock Haven.”

“Does he have family?”

“What do you think?”

I ask a few more questions, but Amanda Garber is no longer in the mood to talk. “All this talk of ghosts.” She waves me off. “It’s exhausted me.”

“Thank you for your time.” I shake a limp, cool hand and start toward the door.

I’m midway there when a final question occurs to me. “Ms. Garber, did Mia ever talk about her life in Minnesota?”

“Minnesota?” She looks at me as if I’m a conspiracy theorist.

“Mahlon and Laura Barkman told me they were from Minnesota,” I tell her.

“Mahlon Barkman is dumber than a bucket of rocks,” she huffs. “He couldn’t find Minnesota if it was a dot on his ass.” She shakes her head, the way a teacher might at a student who’d failed a test he should have aced. “I can’t speak for Ananias, but Mia was from Germany. Bavaria, I think it was.”

“Germany?” I stare at her, flummoxed, wondering if she’s mistaken. I’m no scholar on the Amish or the European history of the Anabaptists, but to the best of my knowledge, there are no Amish left in Europe.

“That’s why her Deitsch was different,” she says. “Mia mentioned Germany a few times. Asked me not to speak of it. She was homesick. Missed it something fierce. I upheld her wish. Until now, anyway. I reckon she won’t mind.”

The old woman shrugs. “The stories she told. Seemed like such an exotic place.” She sighs, remembering. “Her datt owned a bakery, there. That’s where she learned to bake. Everyone loved her Zwetschgenkuchen. Never could replicate the recipe, but it sure wasn’t for lack of trying.”

CHAPTER 17

Twenty-one years before

I was in a dark place the afternoon I eschewed my usual worship Sunday singing for some time alone. I’d been in a dark place a lot the summer of my fourteenth year. That morning, I’d suffered through three hours of preaching and another two of yakking adults gorging themselves on date pudding and pie. I was on my way to the Tuscarawas Bridge, where I knew some of the English kids would be hanging out. I hadn’t yet crossed the threshold of associating with them, but I was just awkward and angry enough to step over that line, if only to see someone else—namely my parents—as unhappy as me.

I was walking along the shoulder of Dogleg Road, a quiet stretch of barely-there asphalt that cut through corn and soybean fields and crossed over a tributary of Painters Creek. I was lost in the maze of my thoughts when the clip-clop of shod hooves alerted me to the approach of a buggy. I didn’t want to see anyone, especially if they were Amish. I sure as hell didn’t want to talk to anyone. I kept walking, head down, hoping they didn’t stop.