Page 75 of The Burning

He stiffens upon spotting me, slows his stride. I can practically see the protective shield activate.

“I need your help,” I say without preamble.

“About Milan Swanz?” His mouth turns down as if he’s bitten into something sour. “I’ve told you everything I know.”

“This is about … something else,” I say.

“I won’t talk to you about James, Katie. I mean it.”

“This isn’t about James.”

We meet in the gravel next to my Explorer, two contenders about to face off, uncertain which of us will throw the first punch. We stand there, willing our defenses to relax, snow tapping the shoulders of our coats.

“All right.” He looks out at the barn. “I need to feed the cows.”

“I’ll help you.”

A quick look of surprise, and then he starts toward the barn. “You always were one for a lot of talk.” But his expression softens. “Mamm used to call you her little shvetzah.” Her little talker.

“She might’ve been onto something.” I fall into step beside him. “Not quite like old times, is it?”

“Let’s just say the career you chose suits you.” He gives me the side-eye. “Always asking too many questions.”

In the barn, he strides directly to the raised wooden floor at the rear, which is directly above the livestock pens. There, he bends to a half-full burlap bag, picks it up, and hands it to me. I take it, my muscles recalling the weight, the routine of it, my olfactory nerves remembering the smell of the feed, even though I haven’t fed cattle in years.

He hefts a fifty-pound bag onto his shoulder, and we carry the bags to the feeding cutouts in the floor. He removes the wood cover and I dump the contents of my bag into the trough below. I’m aware of the cattle coming in from outside, pushing and shoving, vying for position. Jacob goes to the second cutout, removes the cover, and dumps feed into the other end of the trough.

When he’s finished, I fold the burlap bag in half and we walk back to where a dozen more bags are stored. “I spoke to Bishop Troyer and his wife this morning. Freda mentioned a group called the Schwertler Anabaptists. Have you heard of them? Do you know anything about them?”

Before he turns to stow the empty bags, I see a flicker of something I can’t quite identify in his expression. “I don’t know anything about them,” he says.

“You’ve heard of them?”

He concentrates on the bags, not looking at me. “That group, Katie … it’s nothing but a shtoahri.” Story. “The kind parents tell their teenagers when they’ve reached their rumspringa years. To keep them from doing things they shouldn’t do. Keep them out of trouble.”

“Tell me what you know,” I say.

He gives me an annoyed look over his shoulder and then starts toward the stairs to the loft. “I told you; I don’t know anything about them.”

Only then does it strike me that my brother is lying. For whatever reason, he doesn’t want to answer my question. It’s an interesting development because Jacob is one of the most straightforward people I know, sometimes to a fault. If he doesn’t want to talk about something, he says so. This time … he chose to lie.

I follow him to the stairs and then up the steps. “To your credit, you’re not a very good liar.”

“I’m just telling you I don’t know much about them. What little I’ve heard is probably wrong. By all accounts, I doubt they even exist. That’s all.”

“Some Amish are very much under the impression that they do exist.”

“Then you should talk to them and leave me to my work.”

My temper stirs, but I push it back. “I’m asking you.”

He bends to pick up a bale of hay, glares at me over the top of it. “Why are you so interested in this group?”

“Jacob, I think they may somehow be involved with what happened to Milan Swanz.”

“You’ve always had an active imagination.” Without looking at me, he grabs another bale and carries it to the door that looks out over the cattle pens below. “The Schwertler Anabaptists are a tall tale, Katie. Folklore. They don’t exist. You should leave it at that and move on to something else.”

“You’ve never lied to me, Jacob. But you are now, and that tells me your reluctance to talk about this group is more important than any morals you have about lying.”