Table Of ContentBROKEN
ENGLISH
an amish-country mystery
P. L. GAUS
A PLUME BOOK
A PLUME BOOK
BROKEN ENGLISH
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PAUL LOUIS GAUS lives with his wife, Madonna, in Wooster,
Ohio, just a few miles north of Holmes County, where the
world’s largest and most varied settlement of Amish and
Mennonite people is found. His knowledge of the culture of
the “Plain People” stems from more than thirty years of ex
tensive exploration of the narrow blacktop roads and lesser
gravel lanes of this pastoral community, which includes sev
eral dozen sects of Anabaptists living closely among the so
called English or Yankee non-Amish people of the county.
Paul lectures widely about the Amish people he has met and
about the lifestyles, culture, and religion of this remarkable
community of Christian pacifists. He can be found online at:
www.plgaus.com. He also maintains a Web presence with
Mystery Writers of America: www.mysterywriters.org.
BROKEN
ENGLISH
an amish-country mystery
P. L. GAUS
A PLUME BOOK
For my wife, Madonna
PLUME
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Published by Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Reprinted by arrangement
with Ohio University Press.
Copyright © P. L. Gaus, 2000
Excerpt from Clouds Without Rain copyright © P. L. Gaus, 2001
All rights reserved
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
The Library of Congress has catalogued the Ohio University Press edition as follows:
Gaus, Paul L.
Broken English : an Ohio Amish mystery / P.L. Gaus.
p. cm.
ISBN 1-101-46579-4
1. Amish—Ohio—Fiction. 2. Amish Country (Ohio)—Fiction. I. Title .
PS3557.A95 17 B76 2000
813'.54—dc21
99-086623
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication
may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any
form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise),
without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher
of this book.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of
the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons,
living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other
means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please pur
chase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic
piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
Preface and
Acknowledgments
All of the characters and events in this novel are purely fictional,
and any apparent resemblance to people living or dead is coin
cidental. The rifle range in this story is loosely patterned after
the famous Kelbly benchrest rifle range on farmland in Wayne
County, Ohio, beside the Dalton-Fox Lake road.
The author has strived to make descriptions of Amish life
and thought as authentic as possible. The descriptions of places
in Holmes County, Ohio, are true to life, although not all of the
places are real. For those interested, the best Holmes County
map can be obtained at the office of the County Engineer, across
the street from the Holmes County Court House and the old
red brick jail. Millersburg College is entirely fictional.
All scripture cited in this novel is taken from the Holy Bible,
New International Version, Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by
the International Bible Society, and used by permission of the
Zondervan Publishing House.
Music verse courtesy of Ian Tyson, Slick Fork Music.
I am grateful for the assistance of Mr. Robert Eggles of the
New Jersey Department of Corrections, George Kelbly, and
Holmes County Sheriff Tim Zimmerly. Thanks also to Dean
Troyer, Eli Troyer, and Madonna Gaus. Special thanks to Skip
McKee, Bravo Battery, 3BN, 18 ARTY, Chu Lai.
v
Romans 12:17–19
17Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to
do what is right in the eyes of everybody. 18If it
is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at
peace with everyone. 19Do not take revenge, my
friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is
written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says
the Lord.
1
The middle of May
JESSE Sands, twenty-five years in the New Jersey State Prison
for rape and felonious assault, had served a full term, without
credit for either good or industrious behavior. From the ages of
twenty-two to forty-seven, his home had been a cold prison
fortress of brown stone and razor wire, built one hundred and
fifty years ago in a resolute age when prisons had been intended
to punish criminals. For twenty-five steadfast years, the Trenton
prison had done its duty regarding Jesse Sands. Then, abruptly,
once he had maxed out on his original sentence, he was turned
loose without parole. The red iron doors swung open for him at
10:30 A.M., and by nightfall he had bought a gun on the streets
and exacted his first harsh measure of revenge.
In the three weeks following his release, Sands had headed
west, across Pennsylvania and West Virginia, to the Ohio River
at Steubenville, where he thumbed a ride at night over the river
and continued along Route 22 as far as the eastern Ohio burg
of Cadiz. There he caught a ride with a truck driver, and, after
sleeping in the cab as they traveled at night, Sands pistol
whipped the trucker at 4:00 A.M. in the bathroom of a deserted
rest stop along US 250, dragged him into the woods beside the
road, shot him in the back of the head, and stole the rig.
Sands drove west on 250 until dawn and abandoned the truck
in a lot behind a Burger King at New Philadelphia. After walk
ing several miles in the morning, he flagged down an unwary
1
2 P. L. GAUS
farmer north of Dover, and they traveled together peacefully
until Sands got out at Wilmot. He lunched there at an Amish
restaurant and then started walking through the countryside
along Route 62, heading southwest toward Winesburg, Berlin,
and Millersburg. As he stalked the Amish colonies of Holmes
County, he caught rides with two unsuspecting tourists and, to
ward sunset, with a kindly Amish youngster coming home late
from sparking his sweetheart in a buggy. By the time Sands
reached the sleepy hills of Millersburg, it was nightfall on a rainy
Saturday in May, and a report had gone out to the sheriffs in
several eastern Ohio counties about a murdered truck driver at
a rest stop and his abandoned eighteen-wheeler, found in New
Philadelphia with most of the gears ground out.
That night, in a steady downpour, near a west-end neighbor
hood bar in Millersburg, Jesse Sands stood rock-still in an alley,
eyeing the houses along one of the narrow streets that marked
the western limit of town, overlooking the Killbuck Creek and
its broad and marshy floodplain beyond.
From his position pressed flat against the weathered boards
of an old garage in the graveled alley, Sands worked his eyes
methodically, first in one direction and then in the other. He
waited there motionless, watching the comings and goings at a
neighborhood bar at the end of the street. His collar was turned
up tightly against the back of his neck, and the night rain dripped
off the front brim of his rumpled, black rain hat. He was dressed
for the night in black jeans, dark brown workboots, a light
weight black windbreaker over a dark blue pullover shirt and
black sweater.
There was the constant pelting of the rain against the galva
nized tin roof, the clatter of running water in the downspouts,
and the occasional splash of tires on the street as a car eased
along in front of him. In time, the splatter of rain on his hat put
a thin line of cold water under his collar. It trickled down his
back between his shoulder blades. He took his hat off, slapped
