When the Shoe Drops
An Amish Murder Mystery
written by: Lot Hildegard
When I was in eleventh grade, everyone was very excited on the first day of school because of the arrival of a new boy, a Dutch exchange student named Bolus van Hellendam. Bolus was a strapping youth with blond hair just like the boy on the Dutch Boy Paint label, and wore his klompen or wooden shoes everywhere at first. Then one day two of the mean boys grabbed one of the shoes and started throwing it back and forth in Mr. McConkey’s algebra class, and it hit Doris Box on the forehead and knocked her out cold while she was working an equation. The principal responded by ordering Bolus to wear normal shoes after that. Oddly, Doris had always been nearsighted, but her vision was perfect after such a stout blow to the head, although she got paddled for engaging in horseplay in class.
Bolus began wearing sneakers like everyone else, but, being proud of his heritage, he would say “Klip-klop-klip-klop” as he walked around. Tragedy ensued.
In late November, just after the end of the football season, Bolus went over to Coach Rhodeapple’s house one evening to retrieve the wooden shoe he had loaned to the team for use as a kicking tee, and while he was inside, a local Amish boy who wasn’t quite right in the head rode by in his carriage and saw the coach’s beautiful sixteen-year-old daughter Chastity out front putting a new Betty Boop bumper sticker on her little yellow Volkswagen, which everyone called Pookie. She was never again seen alive.
Astute readers can imagine what happened: The neighbors didn’t see anything, but they heard the “klip-klop-klip-klop” of the horses, and Bolus van Hellendam became the prime suspect. Three days later, Chastity’s body was found in a field on one of the Amish farms, pinned to the ground by a well-thrown pitchfork through the back.
There were no fingerprints, but this was not remarkable at a time of year when everyone wore gloves. Bolus was known to have thrown the javelin in his native land as part of his participation in track and field and an assortment of other sports that obviously were perverted in nature because they didn’t involve a ball. Though he was not known to have had any association with the Amish, the prosecutor won over the jury with an airtight argument: “He’s got the hair.” As the clincher, he reminded the jury that the Dutch “smoke dope and window-shop for hookers.”
Bolus was sentenced to die. Normally, the electric chair was standard in our state at that time, with hanging as an option, but the prosecutor persuaded the judge to require hanging, on the grounds that “Amish people don’t believe in electricity, and this is a free country.”
The fearful day came. Bolus, quaking with terror despite the sedative tablet embedded in his last wedge of Gouda, was led to the gallows. The noose was placed around his neck. Then, just as the guard prepared to secure the black hood–salvation!
A fourteen-year-old Amish boy, Tobias Fussmacher, bravely violated the tenets of his faith by placing a telephone call to the warden’s office, explaining everything. The warden was at the execution site, and his secretary was at lunch, but the janitor answered the phone because he was expecting a call from his astrologist.
Tobias Fussmacher told the authorities that his brother Zebulun had abducted Chastity Rhodeapple and kept her tied to a chair in a tool shed, forcing her to teach him teen slang so he wouldn’t seem weird when he started his rumspringa the following year. She had tried to flee across the field when Zebulun untied her for a privy break, and Tobias, ensconced in that facility with a comic book, had seen Zeb heave the pitchfork home.
Of course, Bolus was immediately set free after this testimony, and he wasted no time leaving a country that had disappointed him. Zebulun Fussmacher was found to be insane and committed to the state hospital.
That was more than twenty years ago. Bolus van Hellendam completed his education, found a new hairstylist, and now leads the populist, pro-Iranian Amerika Zuigt (“America Sucks”) party in the Dutch parliament. The prosecutor is also a political luminary, currently serving his seventh term in Congress after having found a winning campaign message in “Send the Amish back to Amman.” Zebulun Fussmacher was released after ten years of normal-by-current-standards behavior and now coaches the throwing events for the track team at the school. He also helps Coach Rhodeapple with the quarterbacks. His courageous brother Tobias remains permanently excommunicated for reading Prince Valiant and making a telephone call.
Doris Box continues to enjoy perfect long-distance vision, though she recently began using reading glasses. She hasn’t had to work since winning a generous settlement from the school district, having claimed that the paddling she received in algebra class caused a permanent disability. Most people think she’s faking it, but she moves slowly and wears big, chunky orthopedic shoes. They go “klip-klop-klip-klop.”
The End
- The Boy Who Couldn’t Rhyme - October 11, 2025
- When the Shoe Drops - July 28, 2025
