A Stranger's Wish (11 page)

“Who knows? Just don’t ask him until he gets to know you. Then he’ll realize you’re not trying to use him. He’s had enough criticism recently because he let me bring in electricity and a phone. He needs a period of rest.”

“If people minded the telephone and the electricity, they must not approve of my being here.”

Jake shrugged. “Probably not. Some of them are very conservative and very touchy. They’re afraid of anything new, anything that might be seen as a breach of community. To them having an English girl living on our farm seems like inviting the world into the living room. But your being here’s not as difficult for Father as it might have been because—” he paused for effect—“I’m really your landlord.”

“You are?” I was startled, though the information made sense. I’d never quite figured out why John and Mary were willing to open their home to an outsider. I was another complication in a life that already had more than its share.

But Jake as landlord made sense. Some income for him while he tried to decide what to do with the rest of his life. Now I understood why he was afraid I might dislike the farm. He didn’t want to lose his tenant.

“The
grossdawdy
wing is mine,” Jake said. “Because I don’t use the top floor and probably never will, I decided to rent it out. I figured I wouldn’t feel like such a charity case if I had some income.” He grinned impudently. “I think I’m going to like being a landlord, sitting idle as the money pours in.”

I smiled back, but I was moved by how revealing his comments were.

“Anyway,” he continued, “everybody knows Father’s largely innocent concerning you, though people still gripe to him about me because I’m not Plain and I’m not willing to revert, in spite of the obvious chastisement of the Lord.”

I was appalled. “Oh, Jake. Surely people don’t believe your situation is God’s punishment!”

Jake shrugged. “Some do; some don’t. But let me tell you, I wouldn’t blame Him if it were true. I was one wild maniac. You wouldn’t have liked me. In fact, you’d probably have been afraid of me.”

I looked at the man in the chair, his shoulders strong beneath his knit shirt, his hands firm on the wheels. Granted, his face was dark and discontented, but it was hard to imagine him as the man he was describing. “Maybe you’re too hard on yourself.”

“Maybe,” he said. “But I doubt it. I put Mom and Father through all kinds of pain, but they always loved me. They don’t seem to agree with those who think I’m being punished, but I do know they wish I were still Amish.”

“Sure they do,” I said. “I don’t find that surprising. But shouldn’t they be shunning you?” I had the typical English curiosity about this Amish teaching. “I mean, obviously they aren’t, and I’m glad, but why not? You’ve certainly gone against the Order’s teachings.”

“You can only be shunned if you’re a baptized member of the church, and that happens when you’re around eighteen or twenty or decide to get married. That’s when you place yourself under church discipline and rules.”

I nodded. “That signals the end of
rumspringa
?”

“Absolutely.”

I watched Hawk lope across the lawn and come directly to me. He rested his chin on my lap. I put my hand lightly on his back and stroked. He closed his eyes in pleasure and didn’t move.

Jake grinned. “He likes you. And he’s sorry he hurt you.”

“He probably doesn’t even remember,” I said. “Please. Tell me more about shunning.”

“Everybody has to decide when they want to join church. My two older brothers, Andy and Zeke, decided not to join at all but to go fancy like me. My older sister, Sarah, decided to take the vow. She lives with her farmer husband, Abner, and their three and a half kids over near Honey Brook. Elam and Ruth have obviously chosen Plain too, or will when their
rumspringa
is over.”

I thought of the beer rattling in the back of the buggy Saturday night.

“Why do parents allow this wildness? I mean, everything else in Amish life is so structured and ordered. It’s hard to understand why everyone looks the other way when their kids go nuts.”

“It has to do with joining the church. To make an informed decision to live under the
Ordnung
, you have to know what you’re choosing to give up.”

Ah, the mysterious
Ordnung.
I thought I knew what it was, but I wasn’t certain. “What exactly is the
Ordnung
?”

“The unwritten code of conduct that tells you how many pins a woman can have in her dress and when a man can grow a beard. Stuff like that.”

I’d been pretty much right. “You sample the world and all its vices so you can decide to give up those vices for the orderly life of the community and the rules of the
Ordnung
.”

“Basically, yeah. Though lots of kids don’t sample all the vices by any means. They follow the traditional pattern of sings and frolics and volleyball games and ice skating parties. They may stay out late and experiment with sex like lots of regular kids, but they have limits. Not everyone’s a wild man like I was, doing everything. But I never did drugs like some of them. I may be stupid, but I’m not an idiot. Okay, maybe a toke of pot now and then, and alcohol if you consider that a drug. But coke or meth or crack or any of the others—not me. Speed, the fast kind, not the drug kind, was my major addiction.”

“Regrets?”

“Basically one. The guy who ran the stop sign.”

That was a given. “Would you have become Amish if the accident hadn’t happened?”

“When I’m free to pick my own rules, I can function fine. When they are forced on me, I rebel.” He shrugged. “Good or bad, I rebel.”

I looked at his chair and thought about “forced on.” “So because you never joined the church, your family doesn’t have to shun you.”

“Or Andy or Zeke because they’ve never been baptized and taken their vows, either.”

“But if Elam gets baptized like you think he will, then changes his mind and buys himself a car and starts growing a mustache, he’d be shunned?”

Jake nodded.

“Do you know anyone who’s been shunned?” I asked.

“Sure. David Stoltzfus from the farm across the way.” Jake pointed across the cornfield. “He wanted to race cars of all things. And my uncle.”

“Your uncle?”

“My father’s younger brother. He just couldn’t accept all the teachings of the
Ordnung
. He said he couldn’t find them in the Bible. At twenty-two he broke with the church, saying he believed in salvation by grace, not works.”

“And now none of you sees him? Ever?” Such an ostracizing was hard for me to imagine. As frustrating as Mom and Dad and Patty could be, I would never want to face life without them.

“It’s not quite that bad,” he said, smiling. “I see him. Or at least I did when I could get around. He lives in Lancaster, has a nice wife and a couple of kids. One’s even named Amos after Grandfather, but I don’t think Grandfather and Grandmother ever saw Uncle Jake again after he was excommunicated. They couldn’t understand his difficulty with what they considered the God-ordained way of life.”

“Uncle Jake? Are you named for him?”

“Father has never admitted it, but I think so. I know Uncle Jake was his favorite brother.”

“And they never see each other, your father and your uncle?”

“Once in a while Uncle Jake comes to visit, but it’s hard for everybody. And he never stays for a meal. If he did, he’d have to eat at a separate table. It’s too awkward.”

“And they never go to him?”

Jake shook his head.

“That’s a sad story.”

Jake smiled thinly. “In a way, being shunned is like being dead. If you’re under the ban, people can’t eat or do business or socialize with you. If you’re married, your husband or wife can’t have normal relations with you. It’s a pretty brutal situation, and not many people can handle such total rejection by family and friends and community. But it’s one way the Amish church keeps itself pure.”

The screen door slammed, and Mary came outside. She waved at Jake and me and went to my easel as if pulled, a metal filing drawn to a magnet. She looked at it, and a finger came out to touch something. She glanced at me, smiled, and went to the garden to pick beans for supper. Hawk deserted me to follow her.

“Take Mom as an example of how the Amish think,” Jake said. “She prays for me more and cries over me more because of my non-Amish status than because of my paralysis. She can no more understand me than Grandfather could understand Uncle Jake.

“But she and Father are realists. They didn’t want the rift of excommunication in our generation of the family. That’s why they didn’t force us into the fold. Many of their friends disapproved, especially since Father’s a preacher in the district.”

I reached over and grabbed a little marmalade kitten as he ran past. I handed him to Jake. The animal spit and slashed the air with tiny claws, then wiggled and squirmed until Jake let him go. Falling over himself in his haste to escape, he raced for the safety of the barn.

Jake watched the kitten until he disappeared from sight. “I guess you could say that Father and Mom have bent tradition some, but they haven’t actually broken the
Ordnung
. And our family’s still intact.”

I was impressed. While I had no difficulty understanding why Mary was more concerned about her son’s spiritual welfare than his physical condition, I knew I had only the vaguest comprehension of the magnitude of the accommodations she and John were making to ensure family unity.

Jake laughed. “It’s really funny on off-Sundays when there’s no church.”

“Off-Sundays?” How had I missed that?

He grinned at my surprise. “Every other Sunday there’s no service. Then Andy and Sally and their kids and Zeke and Hope and their kids all drive up in their cars, and everybody climbs out in their jeans and Phillies T-shirts. Sally and Hope have the latest hair styles and manicured nails. Sally brings the ham she had in her electric oven while she was at church, and Hope has a store-bought pie still warm from her microwave.

“Then Sarah and Abner pull up in their buggy, Sarah wearing her rimless glasses and carrying cheese and bread she baked Saturday because Sunday baking isn’t allowed. Abner and their boys have on black pants and suspenders, and their little girl has her hair pulled back in a knot just like Sally’s and Mom’s and Ruth’s. The contrasts are a riot. It took Abner a while to get used to us.”

I could just imagine. “I think it’s wonderful that your parents have managed to keep you all together.”

“It is. And you have no idea of the pressure some people put on them. If their Christian character weren’t so consistent, I don’t know what would happen to our district.”

A buggy rattled by on the road, the driver a white-haired gentleman whose beard reached almost to his waist.

“It’s Abraham, the patriarch,” I said, enchanted. “Though I doubt Abraham wore a straw hat.”

“With a brim three and a half inches wide, not a quarter of an inch wider or narrower,” Jake said as he waved to the gentleman.

There was a barely perceptible nod in return.

“That’s Big Nate Stolzfus from over the way,” he said. “He’s one of the ones unhappy with my father, especially since he took such a strong stand with his own son Dave, the one who’s the race car driver.”

I studied the old man with his set face, my imagination gripped by his story. Could a broken heart be hiding under his frosty exterior?

Jake stared at the man too, but with no pity.

“Dave Stoltzfus was one of my best friends, but I haven’t heard from him since he left. It’s like he wants no part of his past, even those of us who sympathized. Sometimes I read about him in the paper, and once I saw him on
ESPN
.”

Jake’s voice became hard again. “They wanted him to confess to the congregation his sin of liking fast cars, but he wouldn’t do it. All the terrible grief and pain, and for the life of me, I can’t see the difference between Dave’s gasoline-powered car and Big Nate’s kerosene-powered motor on his well. It’s that kind of hairsplitting that drives me wild! Dave says he refuses to be a Christian if he has to be so bound, and I agree with him completely.”

I was startled by Jake’s vehemence.

“But I’m a Christian,” I said, “and I’m not under any of those laws. It’s not being Amish or keeping the
Ordnung
that makes a person a Christian. It’s believing that Jesus died for your sins.”

“You sound just like Jon Clarke.” The way Jake said it, it wasn’t a compliment. His dark scowl returned, and he said nothing for a few minutes.

Then, “Is that big, grumpy guy who helped you move in a permanent fixture? The one with the curly hair?”

As a change of subject it was a bit heavy handed, but I cooperated. I shrugged. “Todd is a nice guy and all that, but we’re…I’m…not committed.”

“The proverbial ‘good friend’?”

“And what’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing. I’ve had a few good friends of my own.”

“Any special girl now?”

Jake’s mouth twisted. “Are you kidding?”

Great. Back to square one. But I no longer had the strength to deal with my indiscretions and Jake’s touchiness. Excusing myself, I collected my supplies and painting and prepared to visit Mr. Geohagan. Tomorrow he was having bypass surgery, and I wanted to see him before his ordeal.