LITMIR.BIZ

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kitchen, Sarah wondered if Mike had just gone to number one on Nate’s list of suspects.

      “We have something to announce,” Reuben Schrock said, and cleared his throat. “Bishop Esh, we would like to hold a barn raising soon as possible with an auction of goods even sooner to raise some cash for the project and to build up the alms fund for the rebuilding and other needs.”

      “We are grateful,” Bishop Esh said, his voice quiet, his face serious. Sarah could hear his wife, Mattie, standing beside her, sniff back a sob.

      The other elder, Eli Hostetler, spoke. “Date for the raising to be determined, when we can clear the space and order the wood and all. But we’ll be announcing the auction for next weekend at the schoolhouse, lest it rains.”

      Sarah knew her family and others would donate quilts and that outsiders would snap them up. For once, she almost wished she liked quilting bees, but she never had, standing out like a black sheep among the other skilled-at-stitching Amish sisters. At least some of Daad’s birdhouses would be for sale, a few things she had decorated. She wished she could contribute some painted quilt squares on wooden wall plaques, but her father had said he didn’t think it was a good idea for her to be branching out too much.

      When everyone rose from the table—still not hurried—and Nate passed Sarah, he whispered, “So is that alms fund like Amish insurance? Will you explain later?” He kept moving, not waiting for an answer.

      They all gathered outside where Nate, standing knee-deep in the black bones of the barn, took over. The TV reporter, a blonde woman, scribbled notes while her cameraman held out a microphone on a long pole. The bishop had asked them not to film, and they’d agreed. It wasn’t so much, Bishop Esh had explained to the reporter, that the Amish saw still or moving pictures as making graven images, which the Bible warned about, but that having one’s picture taken or being featured in a magazine or newspaper story could make one prideful—that is, feel better than or separate from the community.

      Sarah thought again of her interview with Peter Clawson, who had just come roaring in in his truck. Had she been prideful to speak to him and to be so pleased with the printed color pictures of her quilt squares adorning Amish barns? Community oneness was everything to her people, their essence, their very survival. So why couldn’t she squash her desire to paint entire pictures of the Amish? Defiant independence to chase a personal dream fueled by a God-given talent had ruined Hannah’s life so far.

      Word really must have spread that the arson investigator was going to give his verdict. Most of the Lantz family from the third adjoining farm buggied in, including Sarah’s friend Ella, her parents and four of her siblings. Sarah noted that Barbara, nearly sixteen, went over to stand by Gabe, but he shook his head at something she said and shifted a few steps away. Ella came over to stand by Sarah, linking arms with her as Nate’s voice rang out in the hush. It was disturbed only by the spring breeze turning the windmill, birdsong and the occasional snorting of the buggy horses tied to the fence rails near where Hannah and Sarah had stood together just last night. She should be here, Sarah thought, and whispered that to Ella. “Ya, Hannah should be home with her family and you and me, just like in the old days,” Ella whispered as Nate’s deep voice rang out.

      “Arson is often proved by investigators finding a path of foreign accelerants that ignited, then spread, the flames. Accelerants can include grease, kerosene, gasoline and paint thinner, but I’ve been able to eliminate the accidental spill-age of those or even the presence of those. Besides finding a bunch of matches—unlit—outside of the barn, I found evidence of accelerants within, so let me explain and point that out.”

      His cell phone tone sounded. Sarah noted he ignored it.

      “The front door frame,” he said, pointing to a big, tumbled beam with a blackened metal handle on it, “shows what we call alligatoring—shiny blisters.” Several people leaned closer. The Cleveland reporter and Peter Clawson scratched away on their notepads.

      “This indicates a rapid rise in temperature of the blaze, so nothing really smoldered. Evidence here,” he said, continually moving through the debris and pointing things out, “indicates it spread unusually fast, which eyewitnesses corroborated. These beams were from the roof—third or loft floor. Also, the fire seems to have started in more than one place, one at the back of the barn near a window, another near the east side window. Multiple V-pattern burns are also major clues pointing to arson.

      “But how did someone reach those high windows to get the fire going in the loft where hay was stored? I’m surmising that the arsonist used one or both of the ladders that were on the ground outside the barn, which were then destroyed in the fire. In that respect, the arsonist either knew the ladders were available or stumbled into being able to use them. It meant he or she could stay outside the barn rather than going in and climbing the built-in ladders within to start the fire.”

      The arsonist had used her ladders! Why hadn’t he told her that—warned her he’d say that? At least no one but Mattie Esh so much as glanced her way, but it made her sick that her equipment might have been a part of this—and that Nate had not confided that to her earlier when he told her it was arson.

      “What might this accelerant be?” he went on. “I’m still running some tests in my mobile lab, but kerosene residue can be recovered from beneath floorboards, which it permeates. It can be found under the ash-and-water pastelike substance a hot, fast fire leaves behind. That was probably the case here, especially on the third floor or loft level, which was the ceiling of the threshing floor level. Bishop Esh reports that no kerosene was in the barn, not even an old lantern, and no gasoline in the farm equipment. No green hay to give off methane to cause spontaneous combustion, the latex, water-soluble paint cans were sealed.” A few heads turned Sarah’s way. “So my report, sad to say, in such a helpful, concerned community is criminal arson by a fairly primitive incendiary device lit from at least two points through small window access on the loft level.”

      “Any way to catch the firebug with what you got?” Mike Getz spoke up.

      “Arsonists have a way of being caught in a trap of their own making,” Nate said, staring at the big man. “The Esh fire is a crime and will be severely prosecuted by the state fire marshal’s department in the state courts of Ohio. The penalty for such is long prison time. So spread the word that arson is never, never worth the risk.”

      Sarah noted that the portly, ruddy-faced Peter Clawson kept nodding fiercely, as he stood a few people in front of her. Sarah pulled Ella off to the side before he could turn around and ask her more questions. But she heard him tell the Cleveland reporter, “You can’t say the guy isn’t eminently quotable. You got some great sound bites, and I got another great article for the Home Valley News, and you can quote me on that.”

      The next day an Amish work crew of young men—overseen by Nate—removed the remnants of the barn. They hefted the ruined debris out of the stone basement level where a lot had fallen and hauled it away in their work wagons with Nate keeping an eye on every piece for more clues. Then the Amish scraped and raked the place flat, down to the stone foundation on which the new barn would be erected.

      It was hot and sweaty work, even just mostly doing the overseeing. Nate needed a swim in the pond near the woodlot—who needed a shower when the old swimming hole was there?—and some coffee to keep going. The test on the composition of the residue from under the old barn boards had proved to be kerosene, but that was in full supply around here and didn’t necessarily point to an Amish arsonist.

      He drove VERA back past the Kauffman place, wishing he’d see Sarah, but no one was out for once—just laundry flapping on the line, blacks and pastels, men’s and women’s, big and small, the daily life of an Amish family, all hung tight together.

      He parked VERA and stripped to his underwear and waded into the pond. When he saw the water was deep enough, he dived. It felt fantastic, cool, refreshing. Like a kid he swam on his back, splashing. He should have brought some soap out. He floated, then treaded water in the center of the pond, listening to the sounds of the wind through the maples and oaks, birdsong. He stared up at the blue sky with cotton clouds for he didn’t know how long.

      Suddenly

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