Clouds without Rain. P. L. Gaus

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ retrieved his shoes, and the two strolled through a swinging iron gate and along a rusted fence bordering a sunbaked field of hay. The bishop’s old straw hat was broken open at the front of the crown where he had pinched it so often, putting it on and taking it off. His vest hung limply over rounded shoulders. The leather of his boots was split and scuffed, encrusted with patches of dried manure.

      Cal drew a pair of sunglasses from his shirt pocket and put them on. After they had walked a ways, he said, “What made you decide to come home, Andy?”

      Weaver stopped, stuck his thumbs in his suspenders, and studied his boots. He kicked at some dirt, looked at Cal somewhat ambiguously and said, “They’ve all promised to change.”

      “And your brother?”

      “So, you remember.”

      Cal nodded and Weaver said, “He’s been out for a long time, now.”

      “Bishop Melvin P. Yoder kicked him out?”

      “Should have,” Weaver said, passing judgment.

      Cal’s fingers toyed with his long white beard. He stood thinking silently in the bright sun about the old days, about the crusade against cults that he and Weaver had organized some years ago. After a moment, Cal shook loose from his memories and asked, “They’re all going back to Old Order?”

      Weaver shrugged unhappily. “Not all. I lost one family already.”

      “I doubt you’ll lose that many more.”

      “The rest are waiting to see how I’ll rule on various things.”

      “They asked you back to help after Yoder died?”

      “The most of them did. A few holdouts, I suppose,” Weaver said.

      “But you’re bishop now. They’ll align themselves under your authority.”

      “People here have gotten too far along into modern ways, Cal. Getting back to Old Order will be hard.”

      “They all knew you well enough before you quit for Pennsylvania. Wouldn’t have asked you back if they didn’t mostly want Old Order.”

      “You don’t know how far gone Yoder let the District get.”

      Cal reached down, plucked some dry alfalfa, and stuck it between his teeth, waiting for Weaver to continue.

      “Think about it, Cal. We’ve got at least three neighborhood phone booths out by the roadsides where no one person can be said to actually own the things. Some have secret phones in their barns, and I can’t tell you how many have cell phones tucked under pillows. Good night! I’ve got two families who own vans. They each hire drivers, but they still own the vehicles, for crying out loud.”

      “They’ll get rid of it all, if you tell them to.”

      “The old ways are disappearing, Cal. It’s the kids more than anything. They won’t have farms the way things are going. Right now, there are at least nineteen of them working in shops or stores. Some restaurants, too. For as long as six years in some cases. They’re not going to be able to farm. Probably not marry in any traditional way, either.”

      “Shops seem to be the way to go, these days,” Cal offered.

      “They’ve got too much idle time on their hands,” Weaver complained.

      “Are you going to go to the sheriff with those other bishops? About the drinking parties?”

      “The sheriff can’t stop our young people from drinking, Cal.”

      “It’d be a start,” Cal offered.

      Weaver shook his head soberly. “It’s the cult, Cal. After all these years, it’s still that cult.”

      Cal nodded, cast his eyes at the ground, and kicked up dust angrily, remembering the problems he had faced in his own congregation, when the thing had first gotten started. He and Andy Weaver had crusaded against it throughout the county. In the end, all they could do was to expose it, and keep their own people from mixing in. After that, Andy had moved away, Cal had tended to his own congregation, and the cult had grown quietly to the point where it seemed that everyone in Holmes County knew about it, without feeling the need, in these more liberal times, to stand against it. Live and let live, is what they all would say. Who’s to judge, anyway?

      “I judge it,” Cal thought to himself, and looked back sternly at Weaver. Revulsion for the cult sank deep furrows into his brow.

      Andy peered into Cal’s fierce, narrowed eyes, laid a hand on his shoulder, and said, “It’s bigger now, Cal. More powerful.”

      “And you think some of your people are mixed in?”

      “Don’t know yet, but I’m afraid so.”

      “Mike Branden is working on some robberies that might tie in with this.”

      “I know. I’m going to ask for your help again, Cal, when I know more.”

      Cal fell silent and thought about the difficulties they would face. “This will prove dangerous. Busting it up altogether.”

      “I don’t intend to take on the whole of it, Cal. Just get my own people out. We don’t stand a chance of getting back to true Old Order until I accomplish that.”

       3

      Monday, August 7

      6:30 P.M.

      SHERIFF Robertson was laid out, face down, on one of the metal hospital beds in the emergency room of Joel Pomerene Hospital in Millersburg. His large chest and belly sprawled over the white sheets, and his shoulders bulged over the metal railings on either side. His burned arms hung limply down and his shins hit the metal bar at the foot of the bed. The nurses had stacked two pillows there to soften the edge.

      The nurses had also re-hung the IV lines that the paramedics had started, and now a regulator box clicked on a pole next to the bed, as fluids were pumped into Robertson to combat dehydration. They had also strapped his face with a clear blue plastic oxygen mask, and Robertson’s head hung over the front edge of the bed, mask down.

      When he had first arrived, Robertson had insisted on sitting upright on the edge of the bed while they scrubbed the tattered and melted strips of his uniform shirt out of the second- and third-degree burns on his back and on the backs of his arms. He had made a nuisance of himself by taking his oxygen mask off to give orders to the nurses about who’d be coming in to see him and how soon he’d be needed back at the accident scene. Then the first doses of morphine had begun to wear off, and the nurses had convinced him to lie down on his stomach so that the doctors could tend to his burns. One of the doctors had called for another dose of morphine, and the nurses had pushed enough to sedate an average-sized man. Still, he lay awake on his stomach, grumbling about the procedure through his mask. He tried to sit back up, but an ER nurse kept him pinned on his belly. When Lieutenant Dan Wilsher arrived, Robertson was fighting with the nurse to remove his oxygen mask again.

      Lieutenant Wilsher pulled a metal chair up to the head of the bed and sat to face the sheriff. He took one of Robertson’s hands, partly to help СКАЧАТЬ