“O Lord Jesus, what has happened, Jon?” I said. “Tell me what has happened.” I found my legs, and helped him down from his horse. He sat, roughly, and struggled to compose himself.
“I was just, I just, I just came from, to . . .” And he had to catch his breath again. I sat with him, and he tried again. It came out in fits and starts.
Last night there had been shooting, just after dusk. Six or seven shots, all together, then several more a few seconds later. We had not heard it, and it was not far away. Strange, I thought, as he told me, that we did not hear it. They are not far off. Isaak’s property abuts ours to the north. Just a half mile, no more.
It was the time of Sadie’s seizure. It must have been.
Old Jon had told him to ride over to the house, to talk to Isaak, to see if they had heard anything. The shots, they thought, might have come from someone hunting on the Stolfutz property.
But when Jon had cantered up the drive, he found bodies. Right outside of the barn, Isaak and Barbara and little Sophie and Benjamin. Sophie turned seven just four weeks ago. And Benjamin was only ten.
The house was ransacked. Food gone, mostly, but everything smashed up. And in the kitchen, the bodies of the two oldest boys, Jim and Eli. Jim was seventeen, and he and Jon were inseparable. He had been shot in the head. Twice.
I asked about the two middle girls, Maisie and Grace. He just did not know. He was too scared to shout for them, he said, and he had fled.
Jon had ridden straight back home, in a panic, and told his father.
“Dadi told me to tell everyone, to tell everyone to come. He rode to tell Bill Smith, who could get word to the sheriff. And then he will go there himself. He said to get you, you would know what to do.”
At that moment, I did not feel that I knew what to do any more than if he had landed a helicopter in the drive and asked me to fly it. But God gives strength and guidance, especially in those times when we feel lost and uncertain.
I told Jon to ride on, to everyone, to do what his father had told him, and gather up as many of the menfolk as he could and to tell them what he had told me. Tell them to come.
“I will ride there with my friend Mike,” I said. “We will look around, and see what we can find. Go, now, go.”
And he managed to get back on Chestnut, and rode off, nearly as quickly as he had come.
Mike had just walked up, with Derek at his side and Tad loping along behind.
“What’s going on?” he asked. I told him there had been a shooting, a neighbor, Isaak. And that there were others dead.
“Isaak? And . . . Barbara? And . . .” He cursed, and shook his head in disbelief. “I’ll go get my gun.” I knew that he had brought his carbine with him.
I told him that I did not want him to do that. “If you come with me, please do not do that,” I said. “I do not wish for there to be any more killing.”
He muttered something under his breath, but said he would come with me without it. Derek, too, but Tad said he did not want to. Go get my wife, I told him. Tell her this, and get some of our old sheets. So he did.
I moved, quickly, to go hitch up Nettie to the buggy. Mike helped.
Hannah came out to see me as I was finishing, her face ashen. Behind her, Shauna and Sadie.
“Can it be,” she said. “Is this really so?” Barbara was a close friend to Hannah, almost like a sister. “And the children?” Her lips tightened, and her eyes brimmed. “Go. You must go and see.”
We spoke a brief prayer together, for strength, for guidance.
And then Mike and Derek and I left in the buggy. I drove Nettie as quickly as I could.
THE THREE OF US arrived, and it was as Jon had said. The farm was very quiet. There the bodies were out in the drive, two large, two so very small. They had fallen together, close to one another, just a heap, like a pile of meat dumped on the road.
Isaak had been my friend, almost from the moment we arrived in this community. He and Barbara had given us welcome, and he had shared his gentle spirit with us. We ate together, we prayed together, we worked side by side. A good and gentle man. And there he was, that strong farmer’s body, broken, that fine spirit now gone to be with Christ.
His flesh was cold, and his body was hardening. It had been many hours. I asked for help with the bodies. Mike helped me separate them, and to cover them, and to close their eyes, but Derek could not help us. He stood back, clenched fist to his mouth, knuckles white.
“Who does this?” whispered Mike, over and over again, as we wrapped the bodies of the children. As if it was the only thought his mind could form. “Who does this?”
When we were finished with the bodies, we did the same with the boys in the house. And then we moved through the farm. I called out the names of the girls, shouting, shouting their names, Maisie! Grace!, over and over. We stayed together, although dividing up would have been best for searching. I think that none of us wanted to be away from the others.
The house was empty, and so much of it had been smashed and broken. Their basement larder, so well stocked, had been completely ransacked. But much else had been simply broken or shattered, just out of anger. Why smash plates? Why break windows?
But for a heart so far fallen from the love of God, breaking things is easy. If you see no value in a soul, why would you see value in a practical thing?
We shouted, and we searched, and when we found them, they were in the barn.
They appeared like wraiths, covered in hay, their dresses dirty and crumpled. Grace was wide-eyed and distant, her older sister walking with her, guiding her. “Here we are,” said Maisie. “Here we are.”
As I moved toward them, I heard the sound of horses. Others were arriving.
I HAVE FINISHED MY evening’s work late and by lamplight, the task that I did not know I would be given this morning. Mike helped me, his hands working alongside mine.
Six coffins, four large, two small. All pine, from my supply. So simple to build, these boxes. We loaded them onto the wagon, and now I write.
Tomorrow, we will bury them, bury our brothers and sisters in the Stolfutz family plot. It is not on Isaak’s farm, but on the farm of his grandfather, which is now part of the Schrock Farm. Bishop Schrock and the deacons decided this.
We cannot wait, as we would, for a decent viewing. That is tradition, and the way of the Order, but we cannot wait. The funeral home has closed, the director gone. He had family in the South, and no one has heard from him in over a week.
Embalming is not possible, and none among the Order know the art well enough. We must move quickly, before the bodies decay. It is cold, so that will help. But it still cannot wait.