In Plain View

shouted me away, off to the house. ‘Back to your chores,’ he yells.

“I was pretty unhappy about that, the way he talked to me. I’m not a child anymore,” she insisted earnestly, her eyes glassy. “I went back to the house and then we all heard that big fuss with the sirens and car engines. That’s when they told us stay in the kitchen because there was Englischers everywhere with a fire truck, too.” She sniffed and raised the back of her hand against the end of her nose.

Grace clucked and dug her pocketbook from under the seat. She unsnapped the latch and passed Rachel a cloth handkerchief.

Rachel nodded her thanks. “I wasn’t so happy there were hard words between my father and me, but I wanted to know what was all that business with the fire truck. I thought maybe I would see Thomas.” She wasn’t crying yet, but her voice had gone high and light enough to break glass.

“I knew Father wasn’t in that barn anymore. He’d gone to help with cleaning the milking equipment. I went up to the loft window. From up there, I could see the lights sparkling, the fire truck, all those people. My foot kicked that,” she nodded at the binoculars, “and I found the phone buried next to it under some hay.

“I knew it was Thomas’ phone. He let me use it once. I couldn’t think how it got into the barn. I took the phone and went to call his fire station so I could leave the message I had this phone. I thought he must be working with the others over in the field. Maybe that’s what had made Father so angry.”

“That’s when I found you under the bush.”

She nodded in agreement. “I was afraid someone might find me using it if I stayed in the barn.”

Grace squeezed her hand. All three of us did some more staring out the windshield. The hood of the Galaxie stretched almost to the horizon from where I was sitting.

“How do you suppose your dad ended up with Tom’s phone?” I asked.

“Father must have seen Thomas. That’s all I can think.”

“Seen him?”

“Yah. Maybe in town? Friday is farmer’s market.”

“Maybe.” I didn’t have the heart to point out she didn’t believe it herself. “Has the phone been on the whole time?” There was enough power to read the LCD.

“No. We only turned it on to call you.”

I took a deep breath and scanned the menu for the calling record. My cell number was first, with the date and time of Grace’s call noted in the corners of the tiny screen. I hit the menu button to see previous calls, going back once, twice, and then some.

“Oh man.” I started to shake with the full-body-willies.

Seven calls were stored in the phone’s memory. On a guess, I’d say they were all placed within minutes of Tom Jost’s death. I searched my pockets for a pen and scrap of paper from Jenny’s hospital admittance. I copied all the numbers down, so I wouldn’t lose anything to the phone’s waning charge. The first and last numbers were the same. Maybe it had been busy?

One of the numbers, I didn’t need to write down. It was the number for WWST.

Rachel watched me making the list. She pointed to the number that had been called second. “That’s the number for our phone at the dairy.”

“Do you know any of the others?”

She shook her head.

I put Tom’s phone back in Rachel’s lap and took out my own.

“This’ll only take a minute.” I called each number and made a note of who answered.

The Clarion.

Police non-emergency.

Firehouse, station six.

And one number identified as no longer in service.

Television, news, police, his partners in fire-this wasn’t a call for help. This was a staged media event.

Tom himself placed the calls that brought everyone to the scene. But how had the phone gotten into his father’s hands? I mumbled to myself for a while. Yucky thoughts. It was hard to tell if Grace and Rachel were concerned or disgusted. I waited to be asked something, anything.

Nothing.

Coming up with questions is never my problem. “Rachel, why give these things to me?”

She bowed her head. “I saw the box you brought my father that day. You knew already.”

“Knew what?”

“My father had those binoculars in the barn. I think he saw Thomas die.” She was crying now, jagged glassy tears. “And he sent me off to do my chores.”

She surprised me. Naive doesn’t mean stupid, but I didn’t expect her to be able to visualize the ugliness of the situation.

“I didn’t know. I only guessed,” I whispered. “Neither of us knows what happened-not really. How your dad got the phone. Or how he felt inside.”

Grace clutched Rachel’s hand in a grip that made the knobby knuckles of her old hands bulge. “Leave God’s business in God’s hands,” she chided.

Rachel’s face showed the struggle to calm herself. “You asked me about the binoculars before, when the camera was there. I didn’t speak the whole truth. I don’t want to hide from things I know. If I will begin a new life now, I will begin right.”

Every wrinkle on Grace’s face was tight with concern.

“I’ll do what I can. To make it right.” I wanted to offer Rachel some sign of comfort but I was afraid to touch her bare hand. She seemed so new to the world I occupied, I feared the contact of my bare hand on hers might pass some unseen ruin, some Englischer pox, invisible and deadly to those historically unprotected. Instead, I leaned into her shoulder. Just for a moment.

Then I got out of the car.

Grace called out, “Wait.” She maneuvered herself out of the vehicle more slowly, no surprise. That old steel car door had to weigh more than she did.

I walked around to the trunk end and propped my butt against a back fin. Grace came around the back fender, her chin tilted high to look at me through glasses speckled with rain drops. “Rachel told me about that business with the television camera. I certainly hope we can trust you to use your better judgment regarding that recording. It wouldn’t be too good for this girl to have her private things on the TV right now.”

My “better judgment”? That would give Ainsley a laugh.

I heard the splat and ping before I felt anything. I looked up. It was raining again. I started to laugh, one of those private, unhinged sounds that cause most folks to back away. With my face raised to the drizzle, I managed the words, “I understand.”

Her thank you was crisp and perhaps, a little dubious.

“I don’t understand, Grace. What was Tom Jost trying to do? This wasn’t your typical depressive slide into suicide. He planned something. He was making a point.” My lack-of-sleep headache was becoming a full-frontal pain lobotomy. “Wasn’t he?”

“Maybe the bad things that happen in this world aren’t something we can understand. Maybe all we can do is keep walking.”

“Walking away doesn’t help. Look at the mess they got into when Tom walked away. Rachel, her dad, Tom- they had this whole community looking out for them. People keeping them in line, keeping them connected.”

Grace made a soft exhalation, the sound of someone exhausted by irony. “And so do we, Miss O’Hara. So do we. Look at all the trouble we still get into. But each time we fail, we always have the chance to start again.” Her crumpled, arthritic hand took hold of my sleeve, slid down to my fingers and gripped me there. She gave my hand a shake. “Use my old face all you want, but be careful of Rachel, you hear me?”

I did my best to nod.

I hiked back toward the grassy space where the camera sat resting on a tripod. It didn’t take long to break down the equipment for transport. A couple of fire-guys stomped into range, one of them clanking along in fifty pounds of cutting-edge fire apparatus, the other wearing only knee-high rubber boots, a heavy canvas coat and six inches of beard. Mutual aid requested and provided. I hefted the camera into place and got the shot of them walking past the smoldering ruins of the house.