“Strange to see a house without power or cable lines, isn’t it?” Ronette said as we drew near the farmstead.
“At least their lives don’t stop every time a storm knocks out power to the grid.”
Most of the first-floor windows were dark, but several at the far end were illuminated by lantern light. I took that room to be the kitchen.
The young woman who answered the door wasn’t remotely Amish. She was thin with honey-brown dreadlocks and a stud in her nostril. She wore blue jeans and a loose gingham shirt from which tattoos were peeking out at the wrists and above the neckline. On her feet were a pair of purple gardening boots. She smelled of marijuana.
“You probably don’t remember me,” Ronette said.
The woman wrinkled her nose. “Did you arrest me once?”
“No.”
“Then, sorry, no.”
“I’m Ronette Landry and this is Mike Bowditch. We’re with the Maine Warden Service. We’d like to ask Mrs. Stoll a few questions.”
“About what?”
“Can you get her for us, please, Ms. Mazur?”
From behind the young woman, a female voice said, “Let them in, Indigo. No need to be rude.”
Nearly identical black coats hung from hooks along the wall of the mudroom. Where the hallway met the kitchen stood a woman wearing a homespun dress, a white apron, and a heart-shaped bonnet made of some sheer fabric. Her hair was the shiny brown of a model’s in a shampoo commercial, but her skin was ruddy with untreated rosacea. If I had to guess, I would have said she was somewhere in her late thirties, a full decade older than Indigo Mazur.
“I am Anna Stoll,” she said in the same slightly Germanic accent as her son’s.
“We saw you out there talking to Peabrain,” said Indigo.
“You know how I hate it when you call him that.”
The hippie chick rolled her bloodshot eyes. “The man’s a tool, Anna.”
Anna Stoll wiped her flour-covered hands on her apron and beckoned us forward. “Please, come inside where it is warm.”
Warm was an understatement; the kitchen was so hot that they had been forced to open the windows. The air smelled of woodsmoke from the stove and of kerosene burning in the lanterns mounted along the walls. More subtle odors drifted on the moving air: cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon. They were making pies.
In my utter ignorance of their culture, I had been under the impression that Amish women were forbidden to speak with strange men, but Anna Stoll seemed poised and confident.
Still, it was Indigo, the blunt Brooklynite, who took the lead. “Are you here about the coyote?”
“It was too big to be a coyote,” Anna said. “It was someone’s pet dog.”
“That’s what Zane keeps saying. I bet it belongs to Peabrain. He breeds some kind of super-aggressive watchdogs. We can sometimes hear them barking at our place, and that’s like two miles from his house. If it was his dog, he should be punished for letting it run loose.”
I turned from Indigo to address Anna Stoll. “What can you tell us about the animal?”
“It slaughtered their burro!” said Indigo. “His name was Little Amos!”
She seemed pretty well baked to me. The cannabis had brought her emotions close to the surface.
In the far door I spotted two little girls peeking at us. Both of them were brown haired and wore bonnets like their mother’s. I waved awkwardly, and they ducked, terrified, behind the door frame.
“We’d prefer to get the story from Mrs. Stoll,” said Ronette. “When did you first see this animal?”
Indigo Mazur puffed air out of her mouth and sat down in the corner on a stool that looked to have been designed for milking cows.
The Amish woman began, “A week ago, my husband and his brother Isaac were coming home from town after dark. They have a furniture shop along the main road. Down near the swamp, the horses became very nervous. Then behind them a black animal crossed the road, just out of the light of the carriage. They thought it must have been a bear.”
Ronette had an easy way with these women. “Have you seen bears here?”
“Once last summer, a mother and cubs. But we had bears in Pennsylvania.”
I thought of taking out my notebook, then reconsidered, not wanting her to stop talking. “How soon after your husband saw the animal did it attack your donkey?”
“The next morning. My husband thinks it was after one of our sheep. But Little Amos was very young, and he didn’t know that this big dog couldn’t be frightened away like the coyotes. It was quite horrible. My son saw it happen and came and told us, but when my husband ran outside with his gun, the dog was gone, and he’d taken Little Amos with him in his jaws like one of my daughter’s dolls.”
“Did your husband pursue the animal?”
“Yes, but he couldn’t follow him through the swamp.”
“Do you know if he fired his gun?”
“He didn’t have a chance.”
“What about your brother or your neighbors?” asked Ronette. “Did any of them encounter this animal?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, because the men were all talking about it again this morning, before they went to town.”
I thought of Samuel Stoll, alone out there with nothing but a switch. I found myself admiring his parents for letting him play outdoors. They hadn’t felt the need to keep their son inside as so many modern people would have done. The world held its share of dangers, but it was highly improbable “the black dog” would return to make a meal of the child. Their attitude seemed to be that a boy needs to be a boy if he is to grow up to be a man. But I was probably projecting my own mind-set on these anachronistic people.
“I have another question. Have you or any of your neighbors seen signs of a second large dog roaming the area?”
“You mean there are two of those monsters?” Indigo nearly knocked over the stool as she rose to her feet.
“No, we haven’t,” said Anna. “Are my children
