A frightened thought pushed the tamer of the two out of the way. Thinking of your dress? Think of your life!
“Don’t cry out,” her attacker rasped into her ear. He pinched her nose shut and tightened his grip across her middle as he pulled her backward between the tar-paper shacks and out of the view of anyone—even Joseph or Peter—on the docks.
***
The world was hazy and sounds were meeting her ears, but she didn’t know if they were real or imagined.
“Let her go,” one demanded.
“Or else,” shouted another.
Let me go! Rebekah fought back as hard as she could.
A disembodied voice shouted from somewhere. “Better hope I don’t catch you!”
Sounds swirled in her mind, real, imagined, or both, and Rebekah’s neck ached with a stabbing, catching, righteous ache. She wasn’t entirely sure that whoever grabbed her hadn’t broken it. Then, the world, already fuzzy, started to go black. Something jolted her from behind, and the man finally released her. Air burned into her lungs, but he wasn’t done with her yet. Whoever had grabbed her pushed her, hard, and sent her flying into the side of one of the ramshackle tar-paper shacks. With her arms guarding her head, one hand ripped clean through the tar paper, right into the little dockside house.
The pounding of footsteps, hitting the earth hard and fast, met her ears, but she didn’t dare look up. She couldn’t, even if she wanted to. Instead, she kept her head down and covered as she gulped cool air into her burning lungs.
Once, Samuel brought home a mule from the English auction in Montgomery when he went to sell his handmade wheels. The mule was as wild as rice and did not like anyone to look at him. If you did, he laid his ears back and charged. Rebekah liked the look of the mule and believed that, somewhere, he had a good heart hidden inside him. All he needed was a little love. So every day she went out to not look at the mule, but stand by his pen. The mule got used to her and even let her stand in the pen. As long as Rebekah didn’t look at him, he was fine. Well, after about a week of this standing together, Rebekah got the bright idea to try and ride him.
She stood by him, and when he wasn’t paying her any mind, she ran and jumped, landing longways across his back. This was the ugliest mistake she’d made. The mule, all trust broken, crow hopped, bucked, and reared—anything to get Rebekah off his back. And he did. When she was on the ground, the mule did all he could to snuff her out, like a candle. Instinct took over and she curled into a little ball, guarding her tucked head with her arms, until her father pulled her to safety.
In the alley, she kept her head tucked down and her arms over her head. Just as she had with the mule.
“Get back here you scoundrel!” Peter’s voice came from somewhere.
“Get him, Peter,” Joseph, always the slower of the two, shouted.
Neither stopped to check on Rebekah, if indeed that was them thundering by like wild horses, and not some figment of her oxygen-starved imagination.
“Rebekah?” Katie’s voice was so quiet, she was unsure if she was dreaming or if she was dead. “Rebekah Stoll?”
Rebekah tightened her arms over her head and said nothing. If she was dreaming, she didn’t particularly want to wake up, because the bad guy who grabbed her might be there. If she was dead, and she was hearing Katie’s voice, that must mean Katie was dead too, and she didn’t particularly want to see Katie in Heaven.
Not because she figured she would go right to Heaven, or that Katie wouldn’t make it to the Pearly Gates. The fact was, that if she was dead and Katie was too, then a heartbroken Joseph and heartbroken Peter would have two bodies to haul back across the country, from the English world to the Amish, and bury. The thought of Katie’s parents and sister, heartbroken, standing at their gravesides, flanked by her parents and all of her little brothers...little Beanie cooing and chewing his fist and Thomas...oh Thomas...
“Rebekah, Rebekah you’re crying; wake up Rebekah!”
Someone jostled her shoulder. “Rebekah, Rebekah Elnora Stoll! Wake up this instant!”
A shooting pain in her ankle, coupled with a well-placed pinch from some faceless fingers shocked her awake.
Rebekah opened her eyes. Nobody was there. Only a heap of rubbish and some wooden crates. “Am I dead?” she asked the empty alleyway. “This doesn’t look like Heaven.”
She paused for a moment. “If this isn’t Heaven...oh no...” She covered her face with her hands.
“Rebekah!” Katie’s disembodied voice filled the void around her. “Rebekah, sit up.” Through the rip in the tar-paper shack, an arm pushed her, trying to get leverage to sit her up. “Here, I’ve got you. I won’t let you go.”
Rebekah followed the arm. Sure enough, there inside the shack, was the face belonging to Katie Knepp. Rebekah reached up and grabbed the hand. “Oh Katie! Katie, thank God you’re alive!” Rebekah sat upright with inhumane precision, though her head hung at an odd angle. “I mean, you are alive, right? We aren’t dead...are we?”
“No.” There was no laughter behind Katie’s word. “We are not dead. I think we were both closer than we’d ever come, though. Well, maybe not you, but definitely me.”
Still, Rebekah held onto her hand. And one of them, either she or Katie, was trembling.
“You’ve lived through barn fires, and getting all your hair burned off, and mule attacks. And—” Katie snorted. “Remember that time we found Old Man Marley’s honey box? You were dead set on eating some fresh honey, but you didn’t account for the swarm of bees that came out of his box.” Katie dissolved into a fit of laughter.
“Katie?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t ever say dead set again.”
“Okay.” Katie eked out one more chuckle. “Okay.” She sucked in a breath. “Dead set. Oh, I’m sorry! Never again, never again.”
Rebekah couldn’t help herself. With Katie’s musical laughter coming from the other side of the tar paper, she joined in.
“Are you steady enough that I can let go of you and come on out now and greet you proper?”
“Yes, hey, what are you doing inside—” Rebekah stopped talking as Katie, clad in a brown robe just as Father Plant said she would be, and a woman with paint over her eyes and lips, wearing a slight dress, no bigger than Sadie’s had been, came out and around the corner.
“Rebekah, this is Molly Sue Shannon.” Rebekah took Molly Sue’s hand and consented to be pulled to her feet. “Molly Sue Shannon, this is Rebekah Elnora Stoll. My oldest friend in the world, besides my twin sister, who’s older than me and always will be.”
Katie beamed. “You know, you were out cold for a minute there. I was worried that you were...”
Molly Sue shook Rebekah’s hand gently before letting go. “I was about to go get a bucket of cold water to bring you to.” She slipped under Rebekah’s arm and helped ease her down onto an overturned wooden crate. “There now, you look a wee bit shaky. Let’s sit you down.”
“I was afraid I was dead, and that you were too, Katie. I pictured our parents, and Joseph and Peter at our gravesides...”
“Hush up now and look down that alleyway.” Katie pointed down the alley at a righteous scuffle. “Looks like Peter and Joseph caught him.”
Never had Rebekah seen Joseph, or Peter, hit another living thing. Only Peter had shown fire in his temper, never Joseph. Now, that was all changed. Both men were swinging wildly at something on the ground.
“They’re like to kill him,” Molly Sue observed. “And I for one won’t be sad of it.”
“Murder is a sin,” Katie and Rebekah said together.
Rebekah looked at Katie and they shared a smile.
Molly Sue crossed her arms. “And what do you do to a murderer? Just let him walk free? Don’t you know who that is?”
“No,” Katie started. “Look, they’re dragging him off.”
Sure enough, Joseph appeared to carry the man’s arms, and Peter, his legs. They disappeared in an alleyway.
“Who is he?” Rebekah asked. “ And what happened?”
Molly Sue moved around beside Rebekah as she began to tell the story. Like Joseph had done, she placed her hands on her neck and began to rub, hard. “He came in from Whitechapel, London. The East End. I heard him talking, to himself of course—”
