The Amish Wife by Olsen Gregg

Author:Olsen, Gregg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2024-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

I find Eli’s one-time roommate on Moser Road, Levi Swartzentruber, on Facebook. This older version of him looks about the same as he did when we first met. Sure, grayer, and all of that. The same facial hair, same haircut, same oversize brown eyes. After speaking on the phone, he—as he did back then—agrees to help. No longer married to Connie, whom I remember screamed at me on the phone that she’d sue if I mentioned Levi’s name in my book. Levi is married to another woman now and has a bunch of grandkids—some he’s raising in Wadsworth, where he lives now.

While Levi had been a huge help the first time around, taking me to Amish sources that would have been difficult for me to find on my own, I always felt he had held things back, but it didn’t matter then. I had more material than I could use anyway.

We meet in the parking lot of a cabinet shop near Wooster, where he’s been working for some time. Sawdust coats his eyebrows, and he apologizes about the mess when he eases into the passenger seat.

“No problem,” I say, indicating the coffee cups on the floor and the oily fast-food wrappers that tell the tale of my diet on this trip. “This car’s a mess already.”

He only has a few minutes, he says, or his boss will get on him. I tell him that I’ve come from an interview with an Amish family and found out something new.

“Ida’s sister found a camera when she was helping Eli after the fire.”

“What would he be taking pictures of?” he asks.

“Right. So, let’s think about those days. There weren’t selfies. You’re not taking a picture of yourself.”

“Okay,” he says. “So, he has to have someone taking the pictures.”

Of course, that’s what I want to know. Levi lived on the farm with Eli, and while he says he moved away because things got weird, I don’t think he’s been entirely forthcoming. That’s fine. He’s helped me in other ways, and if the whole truth is something he wants to keep to himself, that’s okay. I’ve never even asked him point-blank if he and Eli had any kind of intimate relations.

“I’ve seen the one naked picture of him,” I say. “He’s just focused on his junk. Somebody else had to take that photo. Who? Who was around there early on?”

“The only people I can think of is like Levi Levi,” he says.

“Did he take the pictures?”

“Well, I mean, I was there later, ’81.”

“Right.”

“And that was before.”

“Sammy Miller?” I ask.

“I’m going to discard him,” Levi says. “He was all about the women. I don’t think he would.”

I bring up Frost and Brown, but Levi doesn’t have a bead on them. He thought they came later. I don’t remind him that Frost and Eli were connected long before with the marijuana sting in Marshallville.

We settle on Levi Levi. It was his family that told me Levi Levi had confessed to the church. He was there at the fire and after.

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