Breaking Silence

fluorescent bulbs makes me feel half-blind.

An old-fashioned kerosene stove next to the sink is still hot from earlier this morning. On its top, a cast-iron skillet filled with scrapple, an Amish breakfast staple, sits in a bed of cooling, thickening lard. On the table, the remnants of a breakfast left unfinished sits cold. I see a basket of bread and a small bowl filled with apple butter. A pitcher of milk, fresh, probably. Seven plates. Seven glasses. Three cups for coffee.

I move the cast-iron skillet onto a hot burner to warm it; then I go to the table. I feel Glock’s and Pickles’ eyes on me as I pour milk into four glasses. It’s a strange role for me, but I’m compelled to play it. I place a slice of bread in front of each child. Bread that I know was baked by their mother just a day or two before. A mother who will never make breakfast for her children again.

The kids are probably too upset to eat, but I serve the warmed scrapple anyway. When I run out of things to do, I sit down at the table and fold my hands in front of me. “I’m sorry about what happened to your parents,” I begin.

The youngest child, a boy I guess to be about ten years old, looks at me. “Is Mamm coming?” he asks.

“I’m sorry, but your mamm and datt passed away.” Because I’m not sure if he understands the expression, I add, “They’re with God now.”

“But I saw you save her. I saw you.”

“I couldn’t save her. I’m sorry.”

The boy looks down at his plate and begins to cry. “I want my mamm.”

“I know you do, honey.” Reaching across the table, I pat his hand. It’s small and soft and cold beneath mine. Feeling helpless and inept, I turn my attention to the eldest boy. He stares back at me. I see defiance in his eyes, and I wonder if he’s trying to defy death or maybe deny his own grief. “What are your names?” I ask.

“I’m Salome.” The girl sitting across from me is in her mid-teens, with mouse brown hair and a pale complexion mottled pink from crying. Her eyes are forest green and skitter away from mine when I look at her. She’s the only one who has picked up her fork and sampled the scrapple.

I give her a nod, then I turn my attention to the boy sitting next to her.

“I’m Samuel,” he says.

“How old are you, Samuel?” I ask.

“Twelve.”

I give him a smile I hope looks real, then I look at the youngest child, who’s sitting two chairs over from me. He’s a blond-haired boy with blunt-cut bangs and a sprinkling of freckles across a turned-up nose. “How about you?”

“I’m Ike and I’m ten.” The words are barely out when he lowers his face into his pudgy hands and bursts into tears. “I want my mamm.”

I feel like crying, too, but of course I can’t. That kind of emotion is as contagious as any virus, and I can’t afford to allow it into my psyche. Instead, I touch Ike’s shoulder and then look across the table at the eldest boy. “What’s your name?”

“Moses, but they call me Mose.”

He’s a tall, thin boy with greasy blond hair and patches of bright pink acne on both cheeks. But any hint of teenaged homeliness ends there. His eyes are crystalline blue beneath blunt-cut bangs. I see the unmistakable glint of intelligence in those eyes, and I know he’s smart enough to realize that all of their lives are about to change in a very profound way.

“How old are you, Mose?”

“I am a man.” His voice cracks, belying the words, and he sits up a little straighter. “I’m seventeen.”

“My name’s Kate. I’m the chief of police, and I need to ask you some questions about what happened.” No one says anything. No one looks at me. “What are your parents’ names?”

After a moment, Mose raises his eyes to mine. “Datt is Solomon, but they call him Solly. Mamm’s name is Rachael.”

“And the other man?”

“Our uncle, Abel.”

“Last name Slabaugh?”

“Ja. He’s visiting from Lancaster County.”

I feel ancient as I look from young face to young face. Innocent kids whose lives, until now, have been untouched and undamaged by the ravages life can sometimes inflict. My gaze stops on Mose and I say, “I need for you to tell me what happened this morning.”

His eyes go to the plate of untouched food in front of him and for a moment he looks as if he’s going to throw up. He takes a full minute to gather himself, then speaks to me without looking up. “Datt and Uncle Abel were feeding the hogs and cleaning the pens. Mamm and the rest of us were in the house. She sent Samuel out to fetch Datt so we could say our before-meal prayer and eat breakfast.” He closes his eyes briefly. “Samuel came back screaming.”

I turn my attention to Samuel. “What happened?” I ask gently.

The boy looks down at his plate. From where I sit, I can see that his hands are dirty and scabbed, with short, bitten nails. Typical boy hands. Amish hands that work and play in equal measure. “Datt and Uncle Abel were in the pit. I didn’t know what to do.”

“Were they awake?”

Samuel looks at Mose. Mose gives him a nod, which seems to bolster the boy. Samuel meets my gaze, then his face screws up. “Ja. Datt couldn’t speak. But Uncle Abel … he yelled for me to get help.”

“What did you do?”

“I ran to the house to get Mamm.”

I nod, trying not to imagine the horror of that. I look at Mose. “Then what happened?”

“We ran to the barn to help them,” he replies.

“Who ran to the barn?”

“All of us. Mamm. My brothers and sister.”

“How did your mamm get into the pit?”

Little Ike rubs his eyes with small, dirty fists. “She tried to save Datt.”

Mose cuts in. “She lay down on the concrete, right in all that muck, and tried to get Datt to take her hand. She was screaming for him to wake up, but he wouldn’t. She tried to save Uncle Abel, but he fell asleep, too. Mamm started to cry. She was too close to the edge and fell into the pit.”

In the back of my mind, I wonder if she succumbed to the gases emanating from the manure and fell unconscious. “What did you do when your mamm fell in?”

“We were scared. It was like a bad dream. Too bad to really be happening.” Mose lifts a shoulder and lets it drop. “I knew the air was bad, so we opened the door. We yelled at Mamm, tried to wake her up, but she wouldn’t. The children were crying.” He looks at his younger brother. “That’s when I decided to bridle the horse and sent Samuel to Bishop Troyer’s house for help. The bishop has a telephone.”

“What did you do after Samuel left?”

“I kept trying to get Mamm and Datt and Uncle Abel out of the pit. I tried to use the hose, you know, as a rope.”

I recall seeing the hose lying on the concrete, and I nod. “Were any of them conscious at that point?”

Salome cuts in, tears streaming down her cheeks. “They wouldn’t wake up. We yelled and yelled, but we couldn’t get them to wake up.”

“Why wouldn’t they wake up?” Ike whines.

I glance over at the boy. Generally speaking, I’ve found Amish children to be slightly more stoic than their English counterparts. But kids are kids, regardless of culture. Most are unequipped to handle this kind of situation. Some grief is simply too heavy a load for such a young heart to bear. “It’s the gases that made them sleepy,” I say.

“I want my mamm!” Ike cries. “I want her back. Why couldn’t she just wake up? Why couldn’t you save her?”