“Thank you, ma’am, but I’m feeling just fine.”
That’s not true; I feel like I’ve been hit by a garbage truck. My side hurts each time I swallow or take a full breath, and my hands, within the last ten or fifteen minutes, have begun to burn again beneath their bandages. But I want information, and speaking alone with this man Atlee is the only way to get it. “Thank you, though, for supper, and for everything, Mrs. Joy.”
The old woman’s eyes pop open with surprise, and a bright wave of laughter ripples through the room.
“No, young man,” she says. “Our surname is Miller. Joy is—” She leans to the plain-faced daughter seated beside her, and they exchange whispers.
“Joy is an acronym,” says the daughter. “A way of living. You are to set your mind first to Jesus, then Others, and lastly to Yourself.”
“Ah,” I say. “Oh.”
Atlee takes me by the elbow. “Now,” he says quietly. “We will walk the property.”
4.
The butt of Atlee Miller’s pitchfork thunks in the gravel of the path as we walk away from the house. He is silent for a minute, two minutes. Just our shoes on the gravel, the rhythmic chunk-chunk of the pitchfork on the path.
I am about to say something, try something out, when he starts.
“You and I will walk abreast to where the path bends, just there,” he says. “It continues on there, about a quarter mile to the left, back down to the county road, to our old farm stand. At the bend I will turn to the right, go on along the property line, back around to the house. You will continue on.”
The same words he used when we were together in the rainstorm, when he was pushing me forward. You will continue on. Same steady tone, somber and uninflected. He doesn’t look at me while he’s speaking, just keeps moving, moving fast for as old as he is, long strides with the pitchfork, fast for an old man. As for me, I’m doing my best, hobbling a bit, wincing with my injuries, but I keep up as well as I can—noticing in the meantime, despite all my physical discomforts and the anxiousness of this situation, that the Amish farm in late-day rain-streaked sunlight is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen: green fields, white fences, yellow corn. A flock of healthy sheep gamboling in small circles in their penned lea.
“Your dog,” the man says gruffly, pointing, and there is Houdini, huddled like a phantom behind a shed, staring out. Poor confused sick dog. He sees me, and holds up his head to look me over with watery eyes. He starts to come and then scuttles back behind the little wooden building. I know how he feels. I’m not ready to go—I can’t.
“Mr. Miller, can I just ask you a couple of quick questions?”
He doesn’t answer. Walks faster. I nearly drop my blue notebook into the dirt as I fumble it out of my pocket. “Can you confirm that you did a construction job for a group of strangers, at the police station in Rotary?”
He keeps his eyes forward, but I can see it—a wave of surprise, of confirmation, rushing over his features and then away again.
I press on. “What did you do there, Mr. Miller? You did some concrete work up there?”
A sidelong glance and that’s it. We’re running out of road here. Running out of time.
“Mr. Miller?”
“I will tell my people you decided to return,” he says. “You are overcome with grief for those you love and have decided to take your chances with the plague.”
I scowl. I limp to keep up with him. No, I’m thinking. No. Whatever else is going on here, I have not come this far merely to continue on now, to limp back down to the vegetable stand and my abandoned bike, back where I started.
“I’ll tell them,” I say. “I’ll sneak back in and tell them.”
Now he answers—now he answers right away. “You won’t. You can’t.”
“Of course I can.”
“I’ve made it impossible.”
“How?”
He stops talking, just shakes his head, but this is good. This is what we need. All you need is a conversation. To work toward the information you need, to get what you want from a suspect or a witness—all you need is a conversation to begin, and then you shape it, push it.
“Mr. Miller? How are you doing it?”
Just a conversation. That’s police work, that’s half of it right there. I wheel back, change tack, try again. “How did it start?”