Chapter One
Friday, May 22
4:30 A.M.
Like all Amish children of ten, Jeremiah Miller had known
his share of sunrises. Morning chores had long since taken
care of that. Every day brought the same duties. His
grandfather had made it clear. Children were for working.
Life was supposed to be hard. Generally, for Jeremiah, it was.
But lately, Jeremiah had discovered something new and
wonderful in his dawn chores. Something exhilarating. Also a
bit frightening, because he suspected it was forbidden. It
was so simple, he thought, who could object? If he arose
before the others and slipped out quietly, he could be
alone, drawn awake early by the allure of a solitary Ohio dawn.
It had begun last winter. None of the other children had
understood. After all, who would choose to be alone? So he
kept it to himself, now. Even Grossdaddy didn't know. It was
Jeremiah Miller's little secret. At so young an age, he had
already discovered that the dawn could give him a sense of
identity separate from the others. And this was his first
act of nonconformity. Among the Gemie, that was
considered evidence of pridefulness. And pride was surely
the worst of sins. He worried that it could eventually brand
him a rebel. Like his father.
He'd dress quietly in the clothes his grandmother had
made—clothes that were identical to those of other Amish
children. Long underwear and denim trousers with a broadfall
flap. A light-blue, long-sleeved shirt with no collar. A
heavy denim jacket. Suspenders. And a dark blue knit skull
cap. If he escaped the house before theothers awakened,
Jeremiah Miller was free.
In the barns before sunrise, only the Coleman lantern kept
him company, hissing softly as he drifted among the animals,
in and out of the stalls. In winter, there was the
enchanting, billowing steam his breath made in the crisp
air. The delightful crunching of his boots in the snow.
There was, especially, the peace and the solitude, and at
only ten, Jeremiah Miller had come to reckon that dawn would
always be his favorite part of the day.
Today, late in May, it was nearing the end of a season still
often raw and bleak, the usual for a northern Ohio spring.
Some days were almost entirely awash in gray. Yesterday,
there had been only the barest hint of a sunrise, delicate
shades of pink as he had worked alone at morning chores.
Then an afternoon drizzle had developed into a steady,
all-night rain as a storm front moved in off the great lake,
a hundred miles to the north.
Jeremiah slipped out from under the quilts and sat, wrapped
in his down comforter, on the edge of the bed. He listened
there a while for sounds of his family stirring. Hearing
nothing, he drew the ornate quilt around his waist, eased
lightly across the plain wooden floor to the window, pulled
back the long purple curtains, and peered out. Yesterday's
rain had slackened to a cold drizzle. He saw no hint of
sunlight at his window, but as he was about to release the
curtains, the headlights of a rare car flashed on the foggy
lane in front of his house. He briefly thought it strange,
and then, hitching up the comforter, he let the curtains go
slack.
He sat on the edge of the bed and pulled on his shirt and
denim trousers. He glided down the hall, the wooden floor
cool beneath his stocking feet. He passed the other bedrooms
carefully and crept down the stairs. He eased through the
kitchen unerringly in the dark, lifted his jacket from its
peg, pulled the heavy oak door open, and slipped through the
storm door onto the back porch.
There would be no supervisions on the rounds of his morning
chores. No instructions if he worked alone. No corrections.
No reminders to conform. The hours before dawn were his
alone. The one time of each day when he owned himself
entirely. Jeremiah had discovered that solitude was
personal. More personal than anything else he had ever known.
On the back porch, he stuffed his feet into his cold boots
and laced them, hooked his suspenders to the buttons on his
plain denim trousers, and closed the hooks on his short,
denim waist jacket. Reaching down for the green Coleman
lantern, he gave the pump several adept strokes and lit the
silk mantle with a wooden match. Then he rolled his thin
collar up and stepped off the porch into the rain.
School would close soon for summer, he thought. He set the
lantern on the muddy ground outside the massive sliding
doors to the red bank barn. School wasn't so bad. And
summers could be long. So why did Grossdaddy speak so
bitterly of school?
He set his weight against the sliding door and forced it
heavily sideways on its rollers. Grandfather would like the
teachers, if only he'd come to visit the school. It was just
down the gravel lane, less than a mile. Teacher stayed late
every day, and they could talk. If only Grandfather would.
The other men thought well of teachers, so why didn't
Grandfather? Jeremiah only knew that something had happened
long ago. Something that would never be discussed. He
suspected it had something to do with his father.
A nervous black kitten launched itself through the crack
between the sliding doors at his feet, and he sidestepped it
superstitiously.
"Kommen Sie," he called gently after the cat, momentarily
curious. He whistled for it softly, shrugged, picked up the
lantern, and squeezed through the narrow opening between the
doors.
The three-story bank barn was set into the side of a hill
behind the big house. At the bottom of the hill, the sliding
doors opened to the lowest level of the barn. The top of the
hill gave access, on the other side of the barn, to the
second level. There were nine stalls down the right side of
the lower level, and eight down the left. The avenue down
the middle was strewn with fresh straw. Five massive oak
uprights stood in a line down the middle of the avenue,
taking the weight of the roof. The crossbeams were made of
walnut twelve-by-twelve's. The haylofts ran high above, on
either side of the third level, planked out in rough-hewn
maple and elm. Long runs of rope and chain looped through a
large wooden block and tackle, which was hung from an iron
wheel that ran high in the rafters on a rail the full length
of the peak. Leather harnesses and collars hung in front of
each of the stalls. At the far end, the rakes, mowers, and
threshers stood silently in the wide avenue. Their iron
wheels were easily a head taller than Jeremiah.
Inside, Jeremiah climbed onto a stepstool to hang the
lantern against one of the upright beams, and hopped down in
front of the first stall. He scaled the slats of the gate
and made a clicking sound with the inside of his cheek
against his teeth. He balanced on his toes near the top of
the gate and reached up to stroke the nose of the Belgian
draft horse, light chestnut brown with a creamy white mane.
As it thumped ponderously in the straw, Jeremiah rubbed at
its wet nose and bristling hairs, then jumped down with a
laugh and took the tasseled whip from its hook beside the
stall.
He snapped the black whip playfully overhead and grinned,
mindful that his Grandfather's were the very finest of all
the Belgians in Holmes County. That was good, not prideful,
he thought. Not prideful to admire a good horse. After all,
God had made them Himself. And hadn't Grandfather promised
that his time would soon come to work a whip behind them? To
learn to plow. To run a harrow. To handle a team of
Belgians! A boy should not go to school forever, Grossdaddy
had said. Why should a boy be smarter than a father?
As he played with the whip, the unexpected aroma of tobacco
drifted Jeremiah's way. Startled, he remembered the skittish
cat and the weird headlights earlier on the lane. He stood
tip-toe on the stepstool, took down the glowing lantern,
held it high overhead, hesitated a fateful moment, and moved
apprehensively toward the far end of the barn.
***
IN THE milky light of dawn, a small girl in a black bonnet
stood on the elevated lawn in front of the Millers' white
frame house. Her bonnet was tied close against her cheeks,
with thin cloth strands under her chin. Her narrow shoulders
were draped properly with a black shawl that was knotted
loosely in front and covered her hands. In the delicate
morning light, her long pleated skirt showed the barest hint
of rich peacock blue. She was motionless except for her
large, tranquil brown eyes as they followed the headlights
of a car approaching on the lane.
The hollow sound of slow tires crushing loose gravel ground
to a halt as the car rolled up to a mailbox mounted on the
white picket fence. The driver's window rolled down,
revealing police insignias on the sleeve of a blue jacket.
The driver reached out and flipped an envelope into the
mailbox. As the girl watched silently, the car sped off,
throwing gravel, its taillights disappearing into the
lingering fog.