Plain Dead by Emma Miller

Author:Emma Miller [Miller, Emma]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2015-10-29T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

An hour later, they were at the Hostetler farm. “See you tomorrow,” Mary Aaron called as she waved from her mother’s back step.

Rachel backed the Jeep up carefully, not wanting to get stuck in the snow. She rolled her window down and called after Mary Aaron. “Thanks. Give your mother my love.”

Jesse appeared at the corner of the house and heaved a snowball in Rachel’s direction. She laughed as it splattered on the windshield. As usual, Uncle Aaron’s farmyard was a hodgepodge of disordered activity. An assortment of dogs barked; a long-eared donkey, head hanging over a gate, brayed; and a gaggle of white Emden geese hissed and flapped their wings at the shrieking, running children. The children were so heavily bundled against the cold that Rachel couldn’t tell if they were boys or girls. A goat had scaled the peak of a stack of straw bales, and its bleating intermingled with the rusty creak of the windmill blades.

Rachel braked hard to avoid a lean tomcat that strolled leisurely out of the barn, green eyes gleaming, the limp body of a rat dangling from its mouth. This cat was tawny yellow with one ragged ear and a stump of a tail, but it brought Billingsly’s missing cat to mind. She hated to think of the animal alone and hungry in the rambling house or shut outside in the cold. If the cat was inside, she would have to make certain someone took charge of it.

Many people in the English world lived such solitary lives that when they died their pets were often left to fend for themselves or ended up in the back of an animal control officer’s truck. Not so with the Amish. There were always family, friends, and neighbors to care for the old or infirm, to pick up the shattered threads of life after a tragedy, and to take in the livestock and four-legged creatures left behind.

Many outsiders looking at the aging Hostetler farmhouse, with its patched roof, sagging doors, and mismatched windows, might mistake frugality for poverty and miss the strength of love and faith that held this family together in good times and bad. No stray cat tossed from a passing car window or footsore dog was ever turned away, and each of the round dozen babies born to her aunt and uncle had been welcomed as if he or she were the first and only child. Her uncle might be stern, but he was fair, always ready to lend his back to lift a neighbor’s burden or carry firewood or food to someone without, Amish or English.

“Rachel!” John Hannah shouted.

She rolled down her Jeep window as her cousin came out of the wood shop carrying a three-legged stool.

He grinned at her. “It’s finished. What do you think?”

Rachel nodded admiringly. The milking stool was carved from the limbs of a fallen black cherry tree that John Hannah and his brother Alan had cut up near the river two years back. The lumber had been drying and seasoning on racks in the shop since.

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