Abandoned Prayers (37 page)

On Sunday, Eli went to church with the Byler family. He seemed so much better, so much more relaxed than he had been in September. Byler felt that whatever had been troubling him back then must be gone by now. Byler was glad to see his friend happy.

Stutzman came and went during the couple of weeks he stayed at Byler’s place. Whenever he left he told them he was going down to Apple Creek to see his mother, who he said was still very ill.

Stutzman returned to the Bylers’ one day visibly upset. He said his father had met him on the porch and told him not to come there again. Old One-Hand Eli didn’t want to see him anymore. His father was as mad as Stutzman had ever seen him.

Stutzman said that later he had managed to sneak a visit with his mother.

At the midpoint of his stay in Ohio, Stutzman went down to Benton to visit friends, and, later, to house-sit while they were away. He never said who they were or how he met them.

Al Jorgensen wrote Stutzman in care of Eli Byler’s address. He wanted to know how things were going with his mother’s health, and had he had a good time at his cousin’s wedding?

Stutzman wrote back on December 31 that he was staying at the trailer belonging to the gay man he had traveled to Key West with. The man and his lover had moved to Texas and needed someone to watch their place. Stutzman had agreed to.

It was closer to his parents’ farm than the Bylers’ place, so he could more easily see his mother.

It was shocking at first to see the condition of my mother. I don’t believe at all she realizes who people are. My sister doesn’t think so either. I haven’t been able to see change either way since I’ve been here. I wish they would put her in the hospital, but dad doesn’t think it’s necessary. So far I’ve managed to see her every day for awhile. Dad hasn’t said too much so far to me about being around, surprisingly.

Stutzman indicated he had made it to the Amish wedding and had a good time.

There were some that looked at me out of the corner of their eyes, but most of them were pretty good.

He wouldn’t be planning any ski trips—not until his mother’s condition improved.

Jorgensen wondered when the Amish were going to leave Stutzman alone and accept him for the nice guy that he was? Staring at him with accusing looks—it was so unfair.

No wonder the guy has a hard time communicating feelings—he’s afraid
, Jorgensen thought.

January 11, 1986

The Bylers took Stutzman down to see Liz and Leroy Chupp, now farming in Kentucky. Stutzman again repeated that Danny was skiing in Wyoming.

“He’s in ski competition now. He has gotten real good,” Stutzman said, adding that the boy had won some races.

“We talked about it for some time,” Liz Chupp later recalled. “The Amish don’t ski, so we were real interested in learning about Danny. Eli seemed so proud.”

Stutzman left the Bylers on January 17, saying he was going back to New Mexico to return the borrowed Gremlin. Before leaving he paid for his phone charges.

“I can’t believe it that I didn’t notice that there were no calls to Wyoming,” Byler said later.

As January gave way to February, the unbearable winter chill of the snow-powdered Kansas prairie only made John Yost feel more lonely. He wondered if Eli Stutzman felt the same.

The weeks apart had erased any of the concerns he’d had about his new lover. The murder in Texas, the dead wife, the dead lover from Colorado—none of it mattered. Too many things about Stutzman were just right.

He found Stutzman’s phone number in New Mexico and dialed it—it was the number to the trailer house on Chuck Freeman’s Aztec ranch. The number, however, had been disconnected. Maybe Eli was still there? Maybe he just couldn’t afford to pay his bill? Yost searched again, this time pulling up the number of a friend of Stutzman’s who lived near the ranch.

The man who answered the phone said Stutzman had moved to Texas. He didn’t have a phone number, but the man provided an address in Azle, Texas.

Yost mailed a valentine and waited. He didn’t want to be pushy; he just wanted Stutzman to know how much he cared and how much he wanted to see him again. No strings. No pressure. He would wait.

Stutzman, meanwhile, mailed his last car payment—$176—to Neil’s Auto Plaza on February 8. One can only wonder why he told Eli Byler that the car had been borrowed, yet bragged to John Yost about the great deal he’d gotten on it. . . .

Yost received an answer of sorts from Eli Stutzman on Valentine’s Day.

There was no return address on the small white envelope postmarked Fort Worth, Texas. Inside, Yost found the three
photographs he had given to Stutzman when they first met through the ad. There was no explanation or good-bye. As far as Yost was concerned, Stutzman had sent him a “Dear John” letter.

But why? Yost’s first reaction was to find Stutzman and talk with him. Maybe Stutzman needed help? Maybe he was in some kind of trouble?

Weeks passed. Maybe a month or two. Later, when he tried to put it together, Yost could never be sure. All he knew was that he was not going to let Eli Stutzman slip out of his life forever. He got his telephone number from Stutzman’s friend in Ohio. The number was to a place in Azle, Texas.

Stutzman was cool and abrupt when he answered Yost’s call.

“I don’t want you contacting me anymore. You took a big chance sending me that card. If my boyfriend saw it he would get angry at me. Don’t call me. Don’t write to me at all.”

Stutzman was adamant, but Yost didn’t want the conversation to end at that. He wanted to know who Stutzman was involved with and what the circumstances of the relationship were.

“I’ve fallen in love with one of my sisters’ husbands and we’ve dropped out of sight.”

“Your brother-in-law?” Yost didn’t know what to make of that.

“Yeah. That’s why we’re hiding out down here. We don’t want her to find us. He’ll have to pay alimony. That’s why we came out here. We’re just laying low until it blows over.”

Stutzman said he and his brother-in-law/lover were running a successful vending-machine business in the Fort Worth area.

“We had to hide out. We didn’t want to leave a trail.” Stutzman emphasized his words with sincerity and urgency.

When Yost thought about it later, the story seemed outlandish.
Yet, Stutzman had talked so fast and given so much information, there seemed little room or need for questions or details. How had his family taken all of this? First, losing Stutzman to the modern world, then losing a son-in-law to Stutzman? It was a regular Amish
Peyton Place
with Eli Stutzman as the lead character.

Stutzman was so anxious to end the conversation that Yost didn’t ask about Danny.

A little sadly, Yost put away the soccer ball. Stutzman wouldn’t be coming back for it after all.

Stutzman stopped in at Kenny Hankins’s new trailer house in April to pick up a few things, spend the night, and test some bad news. He stunned Hankins with the news.

“I’ve just come from Danny’s funeral. He died in a terrible traffic accident in Salt Lake City,” Stutzman said.

Hankins thought something was wrong, something other than Danny’s death.

“He had no emotion about it whatsoever. A man who just lost his kid, I thought he would have broke down and bawled, but he showed no emotion, just he’s gone, that’s it,” Hankins later said.

Stutzman’s blue eyes were cold and distant.

“The Barlows’ Bronco was going onto the freeway on-ramp when a truck hit it broadside,” Stutzman said. “Danny suffered massive head injuries—his head swelled up like a balloon.”

Hankins was shocked, yet Stutzman remained oddly controlled.

Stutzman said he had flown up from Texas to go to the funeral.

“How come you have a car then?” Hankins asked, trying to pin Stutzman down.

“I had a car up there already.”

Stutzman stayed the night in Hankins’s mobile home.

“I got a sheet and draped the whole thing, because that
way the sun wouldn’t be shining in and exposing him to my neighbors. Whether he slept nude I don’t know. He was dressed when I got up the next morning,” Hankins recalled.

They loaded up the boxes that he had left. Now he had room in his car for the stuff.

Stutzman gave Hankins a couple of sheepskins as a thank you.

“I told him they were nice, because he had a couple in the box, along with a straw hat and several other things. Pictures, knickknacks and stuff, and two cock rings. They were bull rings!
Solid chrome rings
. He had two, one bigger than the other, and I shook my head when I saw them,” Hankins said.

Stutzman left without seeing Chuck Freeman. Hankins did notice, however, that he placed a call to Kevin Whitten.

The Gingeriches received a letter from Stutzman, postmarked Farmington, New Mexico, April 14, 1986. Stutzman apologized for being so late, but their letter, dated February 26, had just reached him.

“It had no zip code on it,” he wrote.

Again he played up the charade that Danny was with him and enjoying school and involved in the soccer program.

“He finally has all of his new teeth which make him look quite different,” Stutzman wrote, “He had some trouble with a couple teeth. Had to take him to the dentist twice.”

Stutzman hinted that he and his son would be taking a trip in the summer to see the family.

He directed some comments to Susie, who had expressed concern over Ida’s Amish clothes and other belongings: “All of Danny’s Amish clothes and Ida’s clothes, are all packed in the chest with mothball, and I plan on keeping them till Danny is grown and give them to him.”

The letter was sent the same week
People
came out with the story of the unknown boy from Chester.

•    •    •

Stutzman called Hankins to say he was settled into a place in a small town near Fort Worth—a nice big house on Toronto Road in Azle, Texas.

Stutzman called again and asked Hankins to send some of the things from the boxes stored at his house. He said he’d had a falling out with the man he was living with, and was moving across the street.

“He wanted some sealed envelopes and the pictures of Danny and of his wife,” Hankins said later.

Hankins couldn’t help but notice a newspaper clipping about the barn fire that had taken Ida’s life. It surprised him, and he told Chuck Freeman about it.

Stutzman had told them his wife had died in a car wreck. “
We secretly owned a car
. . .”

Of course, the photographs of the woman were not of Ida Gingerich. She was Amish, and they didn’t pose for photos. Maybe one of them was the same photo Stutzman had used as his “girlfriend” when Eli Byler and his family came out to Colorado on vacation in 1983.

Into the summer of 1986, Hankins continued to forward letters for Stutzman, who occasionally sent him twenty dollars to cover postage.

Weeks after Stutzman had told him that Danny had died in a car wreck, a letter arrived at Hankins’s addressed to “Eli Stutzman and son Danny.”

The return address was that of a Stutzman in Ohio. Hankins figured it was Stutzman’s father.

This is one hell of a note
, Hankins thought. If Stutzman’s dad knew the kid was dead, why was he writing? Hankins had understood that when Danny died Stutzman had told his folks. They hadn’t come out because they don’t fly.

So now what was Stutzman up to?

“I wanted to leave Danny where God could find him.”

—Eli Stutzman

Amos Gingerich was working in his generator-powered carpentry shop building picnic benches for the
Englischers
when the death letter came. It was postmarked Fort Worth, July 30, 1986. His son Dan opened it and read it aloud.

7/29/86
Dear Folks,

Greetings in his name, who shed his blood for us.

This is Tuesday morning 10:30
A.M
., the Temp. is 104 degrees already. Hope yours are all well. With some things have not all been well recently. But I’m sure our good Heavenly Father knows best. He gives to be taken.

I just found out this morning that the message I sent yours last week was returned instead of delivered. It was a Mail-A-Gram (Tel-A-Gram). The post office’s reason was because there was no ph. # included for destination’s party.

The sad news is about Danny. He was in a car accident near Salt Lake city on Monday of last week (July 21st) around 10
A.M
. & died at the hospital in Salt Lake City Utah, on Tuesday night 11:30
P.M
. (July 22nd) due to head injuries.

Grave side services were held on Thursday
(July 24th) for Danny in Kemmerer, Wyoming where Danny is buried at the [Barlow] Family cemetery.

I’m sorry you did not get my message. But I tried. When I had the message sent I was assured that the message will be delivered to yours personally by someone for your local post office no later than Wed. 10
A.M
. July 23rd your time.

Danny has been at this children’s camp at Lyman, Wyoming since June 1st. (Same place as last summer) Which is run by the [Barlow] Family & was being taken to the airport by [Dean Barlow] to Salt Lake City, where they were hit by a semi truck. He was going to fly here to Dallas–Forth Worth Airport, where I was going to pick him up. I received word of the accident at noon Monday just as I was getting ready to go pick him up. So I went to Salt Lake City Monday afternoon, and got back here yesterday.

Am finishing up a project here I started earlier, will probably be here about 2 more weeks & will return to N. Mexico.
So long for now,
Eli.

The stationery featured pictures of running horses and upbeat mottos: “There is only one success . . . to be able to spend your life in your own way.”

Stutzman had obviously found
his
way. Without Danny.

For the Gingeriches, relief followed the immediate shock of the death message. Amos later told his family, “If only this could be true. It would be an answer to our prayers. God did not want the boy to suffer anymore.”

Still, parts of the letter were puzzling. There was no way the Gingeriches would have missed the boy’s funeral if Stutzman had truly tried to get hold of them. It would not have been difficult to call an
Englischer
in the Beaverton, Michigan, community to get a death message delivered.