Finding Mercy. Karen Harper

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      Ella clambered up and out of the ditch, dripping wet, her snagged braid spilling her hair loose. Despite the headlights in her eyes, she could see someone was getting out of a van.

      “Ella? Ella, you okay? It’s Ray-Lynn. The sheriff’s on his way. What happened? Whose car?”

      “Don’t know, but he didn’t burn up with it. I went to get him out but he was gone.”

      “We’ve got to find him, like you and Hannah found me, saved me. I— Oh, who’s that?”

      “This is our cousin, Andrew Lantz from Pennsylvania, visiting us for a while. We were— We both heard the crash.”

      Ella could see Andrew was already searching among the charred trees along the road, using a Y-shaped branch he’d found for a crutch. “Here!” he shouted to them. “He’s back here!”

      They ran to him, bent over a prone form. It seemed one unwound spool of the crimson cording pointed right at him. A young, dark-haired man lay sprawled half in the ditch on this side of the road. When Andrew turned him over to see if he was breathing, they saw he looked Asian. Andrew gasped.

      “You know him?” Ray-Lynn asked.

      “No—just surprised. Chinese, I think, and here—in Amish country.”

      They could hear the sheriff’s siren coming closer. Andrew’s head jerked up, turned toward the sound.

      “It’s all right,” Ray-Lynn said. “Just the sheriff. He’ll call the authorities for help, and we can tell them what happened.”

      Ella took off her apron and covered the unmoving man.

      “He’s breathing, has a pulse,” Andrew said as he rose and moved away.

      Ella bent over the injured man while Ray-Lynn walked away to flag down the sheriff. He jumped out of his squad car with a bright flashlight. Ella saw him give Ray-Lynn a quick, one-handed hug and whisper to her, though his words carried on the wind.

      “Don’t you let this flash you back to your own accident. You done good, honey, you and Ella and— Where’d that Amish guy go?”

      Ella looked around as Ray-Lynn filled the sheriff in, and he came over to look at the unconscious victim. Unless Andrew had dived back into the ditch, he was nowhere to be seen, and with that sprained ankle. Then in the scarlet reflection of the sheriff’s pulsating light bar, she saw he was crosscutting the field that led toward the pond and the more distant farm, moving jerkily with that homemade crutch.

      Like a real Amish man, was he just humble, not wanting to take credit for helping to save someone’s life—if the car’s driver lived? Or was it because he had his identity to hide and even the sheriff could not know about his being in that protection program? Or, she thought as the new, local newspaper editor, Lucinda Drayton, pulled up, was Andrew just making sure he wouldn’t be interviewed or photographed?

      Ms. Drayton slammed her car door and ran toward the sheriff shouting, “What happened?” Ella would have to tell Andrew that the new editor was real good about not showing Amish faces. Didn’t he know he’d have to talk to the sheriff later?

      Sheriff Freeman told Ms. Drayton, “Don’t know much yet. That license plate’s almost toast, but I’m gonna call in what I can see of it. We got an injured man on the ground. Squad’s coming.”

      He walked back to his car and bent inside it to get some sort of telephone from the seat. Ray-Lynn knelt by the victim, and Ms. Drayton started photographing the still-smoldering wreck. In the reflected headlights, her short, sleek silver hair looked like a prayer kapp.

      Ella walked over and told Ray-Lynn, “I can answer the sheriff’s questions tomorrow, but I’ve got to get back right now.”

      “I can take you home, but it will be a while. Where did your cousin go?”

      “He’s new—shy, too. I’ve got to go see if he’s okay,” Ella said, and hurried away as she heard other sirens coming closer. Even though Andrew was hiking toward the place she never wanted to so much as see again, she cut through the trees the way he had, toward the pond.

      3

      ELLA HURRIED TO catch up with Andrew, but he had a good start on her, even using his makeshift crutch. Whatever he was hiding must be bad if he didn’t even want to meet the sheriff.

      She wasn’t planning to go near the pond now, just skirt around it, but she needed to be certain he’d make it back to the farmhouse. She’d get Grossmamm Ruth to tend to that ankle with a poultice or a wrap.

      Oh, no, he was making straight for the water. It was all worse in the dark, with the trees hunched over it, because it had looked like that when she’d met her best friends Sarah and Hannah there that night so long ago. Back then, Ella had been the wildest of the three, planning pranks, urging the others to sneak out at night. Scolding her once, Mamm had called her a daredevil, but even that bad name hadn’t stopped her adventures.

      That night, they’d taken off their clothes to keep them dry and, stripped bare, had gone into the cold water.

      “Ooh, goose bumps already!” Sarah had said. “I’m gonna get out and just sketch the scene.”

      “Of us naked?” Ella had challenged, and they’d all giggled. “Just swim around a little and you’ll warm up. Hannah’s not complaining.”

      “It’s ’cause my teeth are chattering too hard!” Hannah had cried, chin-deep in the pond.

      And then, somehow, amidst the laughter and the kidding, the kicking and the splashing, it happened. In the middle, where the coldest water came in from a deep stream that fed the pond, it seemed an evil, icy hand reached for Ella and pulled her around and down.

      Had she put her own head under? In their horseplay, had she inhaled or swallowed water? Later, she could never remember. It was black and wet, and she held her breath, but her air was gone and a darkness like death sucked her in. She struggled, but it was too strong until someone grabbed her long hair and pulled and then…

      The next thing she remembered was lying on the bank, spitting up water, shaking, gasping with her friends bending over her. Later, when she could breathe and talk, she begged them not to tell her parents what had happened—what had almost happened.

      But she was changed after that. Hannah and Sarah knew it. Ella admitted it. Her parents saw it as an improvement. The daredevil had drowned and a more careful Ella was born that night, fearful the Lord had scolded her, shaken her.... Ever since, she’d lived with the curse of the sudden, drowning moods that she hid from everyone, however hard that was in such a tight community. Oh, they knew she was moody, a bit of a loner, a hard worker tending her lavender. But they never knew she carried with her the burden of the blackness, the wet, drowning fear of…

      “Ella? I thought you’d stay with them.” Andrew’s voice jolted her. She saw pale moonlight sliced through the opening in the trees enough for him to see her too. He was sitting on the bank of the pond with one leg in it. “Your dad showed me this pond and said the water was cold. I needed to soak my ankle. I should have soaked my head for getting in that mess my first night here, but I’m glad we could help whoever that was. I think he’s going to live.”

      “I СКАЧАТЬ