The Outcast

by Jolina Petersheim

  Only one Englischer buys his blummen.

  Shifting my attention, I watch Leah and Rachel enter the barn, carrying a bundled child each. The main arena has been mucked and covered with sawdust. Thick corral gates and a holding pen, where the horses wait their turn to be led out by the trader and pranced around the ring, bracket off this area from the bleachers flanking each side. Although the auction has just begun, Amish and Mennonite men—each wearing different-width hut brims according to their bishops’ varying stipulations—are already clustered around these gates, their mud-crusted boots hooked over the bottom rung. A few of the men have pipes or cigars clamped between their teeth, giving the air a smoky, festive scent contrasted by the manure swathing the grounds.

  Hemming in the outskirts of this arena is a section stacked with cages of live chickens, turkeys, peacocks, guinea pigs, guinea hens, bunnies, and bleating sheep accompanied by collie pups supposedly trained to guard them. Beyond even this, in cramped wooden stalls lit by a row of low-watt bulbs, is the place that broke Judah’s heart when he came here as a child, the place where horses not fit for auction are kept. They are the ones with bad feet from years of hauling buggies and clomping over paved roads, swaybacks from being ridden too early, or joints weakened by age. I often glossed over the truth by telling young Judah that these horses would find good homes when the fact is most, if not all, would end up at local dog food companies.

  But the Amish and Old Order Mennonite farmers (and the Englischer tourists who are hoping to spot the Amish and Old Order Mennonite farmers) do not often go to this area. Instead, they remain gathered either on the corral gates or up in the stands eating hot dogs piled with sauerkraut and mustard, sloppy joes that more than live up to their name, chicken welschkann supp from deep Styrofoam cups. Sloshing this assortment down with birch beer or root beer, they then unwrap the cellophane around whoopee pies that have crumbled from passing through so many hands.

  Their bellies thus filled with this typical auction menu, they sit back in the stands and wait for the horses. Sometimes in the arena you can spot the poor creatures that have been drugged. Their heads will hang, lips droop, legs splay wide in a subservient gesture out of place in an area considered the show ring. Back before the price of land increased so much that our community had to leave Lancaster for the South, I used to have Amish and Mennonite friends who were horse traders at New Holland. But they knew the tricks of the trade that did not involve drugging the animals or risking the life and limb of the Englischers gullible enough to purchase the strangely docile horses. No, these friends of mine used vegetable oil to buff their horses’ coats until they gleamed. They rubbed their hooves down with this same oil and washed and brushed the manes and tails so many times that the wiry hair hung like a skein of silk.

  If an animal could be trusted not to spook, my friends would get their young daughters or sons to slide off the rumps of the horses or run a hand over the animals’ twitching bellies or flanks—proving to the awestruck crowd just how safe these auction horses were. With every stunt like this, the price of the horses would increase. The quicksilver mouth of the auctioneer would become parched as it struggled to keep up with the climbing bids. And once that card-flashing frenzy began, there was no stopping it. I remember sitting up in the stands (the left side, I think), watching Samuel Stoltzfus play that crowd into his hands as effortlessly as a circus master under the big top. Even then, years before we became nochberen, I did not think he was your typical Old Order Mennonite man. He strutted too much, leading those flashy sets of matching ponies and the jet-black stallions with the white socks and brilliant starburst blazes. His clothes, though cut from the same cloth as mine and patterned after the same style, somehow accentuated his broad shoulders that tapered down to a lean waist in a way that seemed far more worldly than Plain. He didn’t have a beard then, as he was not yet married, and I remember how his pink lips would peel back and his white teeth flash as he took that crowd into his hands and had them begging for more than an auction, had them begging for a show.

  An introvert who did not understand the personality type opposite mine, I knew, as I watched Samuel lather that crowd up into a horse-buying frenzy, that he and I would never really become friends. I thought of him as a schwindler, someone who would do anything, say anything, just to make a sale. I watched how he manipulated the female portion of that audience, both Plain and Englischer alike. How he would whip his wavy black hair to the side and smile, his blue eyes flitting up into the stands to see if they were watching, which they somehow always were. I remember how he would touch his crop to the hindquarters of those mares to prove his control. How, in response, they would prance their oiled hooves through that sawdusted earth, tossing their glistening manes and whinnying as if they were enjoying the show as much as their master was.

  Once these horses had all sold for astronomical prices, auction after auction I would watch the Englischer women march down out of the stands in their tight-fitting jeans and ruffled shirts and introduce themselves to Samuel. He would then take on another role and leave the one of the ringmaster behind. From high up in those stands, I saw how those women ate up this new role as much as Samuel’s old: the blushing, stammering Mennonite boy who needed to be shown the ways of their carnal Englischer world. By the end of this awkward exchange, the women would be scribbling down numbers on crinkled hot dog paper or napkins and passing them to him. Samuel would take that paper into his hands and smile. But after they’d left, he would throw their numbers to the sawdusted ground now sprinkled with manure and bottle-green flies. He did not care about the prize of the women so much as his conquest of them. Plus, there was no way Samuel could call; he didn’t have a phone.

  Looking back on the days I sat up in those New Holland stands observing and judging Samuel, I understand that I was jealous of him. My being a blushing and stammering Mennonite boy was no convenient role I knew the Englischer women would love. I was so shy, I couldn’t even open my mouth at our community hymn sings if Verna Fisher was there, and I knew it was going to take a miracle to open my mouth when asking that dark-haired woman with the soft brown eyes if she wanted to court. Yet at the ripening age of eighteen, Samuel Stoltzfus made everything I struggled with seem so easy. And up until the point we became nochberen, and I understood his swaggering self-confidence masked insecurities far greater than my own, I envied him for it.

  The auctioneer’s strident voice causes time to zip forward again, covering half a century in seconds. I look down—not from the stands as I had before, but from a height far greater—and see that Samuel’s slot in the New Holland horse sale has begun. There is not an ounce of malice in my heart (for who can be malicious where I am?) when I say these forty years have not been kind to the blue-eyed ringmaster with his penchant for matching ponies. Samuel still has a head full of hair, which I could not boast of fifteen years back, but his broad shoulders have collapsed in on themselves like two halves of an accordion, his lean waist expanded with years of hearty Lancaster County fare, his swaggering stride reduced to a hobbled-over shuffle.

  As Samuel walks into the arena leading one set of matching bay ponies and one set of dun, his face reddens and his once clear-blue eyes water. He draws his right hand up to his chest, the nostalgia in his gaze replaced with confusion and pain, and I watch his body topple forward onto the freshly strewn dust. The two sets of matching ponies go nowhere. They just lean down with their silken manes draping him and snuffle and huff at his pants and shirt. The horse dealer’s collapse takes place in the smallest fragment of time, and then the quiet reverence that had permeated the auction returns to its previous noise. A few of the men who’d been holding the next set of Samuel’s horses run across the arena and turn Samuel onto his back. They pound on his chest and blow hard into his mouth, but it is obvious they do not know what they are doing.

  A woman’s voice cuts through the din. “Somebody call the doctor!”

  Samuel’s family has just reached the corral entrance whe
n its gate opens. Rachel’s eyes fill as she watches the man with a black hat and a long white beard force his body to move faster across that arena’s floor than it has moved in a quarter of his lifetime.

  When the silver braces supporting his arms assist the man enough that his legs are able to reach Samuel, he collapses onto atrophied knees and takes a small white bottle from his pants pocket. He twists it open and pours one of the capsules into his hand. Tucking the capsule under Samuel’s tongue, he reaches for the water bottle one of the corral keepers has brought. He squirts some liquid into Samuel’s mouth and massages his throat.

  The Stoltzfuses and Kings have just made it to Samuel’s side when Tobias eyes the white bottle with suspicion. “What did you give him?” he asks.

  Norman Troyer looks up and smiles without a trace of annoyance. “Nitroglycerin,” he says. “Samuel’s not the only one with heart trouble.”

  Rachel

  Tobias and I were arguing near the concession stands when my dawdy collapsed in the arena. I had walked over to get a cup of cocoa when Tobias tapped my shoulder and said, “We need to talk.” The last thing I wanted on little sleep and less patience was to have a conversation with a man whose very presence made my blood run cold.

  “Sure,” I said, faking a smile. “Let me get my drink.” After stirring the cocoa powder into the hot water with a plastic stick, I threw the stick in the barrel trash can and said without looking at him, “All right. What is it?”

  “I don’t want Eli going to that witch doktor.”

  “And I don’t think what I do with my son is any of your business.”

  Tobias’s jaw throbbed. “He’s still familye.”

  “Really? I didn’t know it was common practice to force family out into the streets.”

  Looking back at the arena and then down at me, he hissed, “You know very well you were not out in the streets!”

  “That’s because Ida Mae was kind enough to take us in.”

  “Judah would’ve taken you in if you had let him.”

  “If I had let him?” I could feel my entire body flush with anger. “You ruined any chance Judah and I had!”

  “Keep your voice down!”

  “I am not the one who wanted to talk in the first place. I will not be told to keep my voice down!”

  It was at this point we noticed the strange silence blanketing the arena, which was only magnified by the volume of our words.

  “What’s happened?” I tried forcing my way through the throng of people, but they all seemed taller than I. “Tobias, what do you see?”

  He turned around, his face ashen. “Your vadder,” he said. “There’s been an accident.”

  My mind bloomed with the image of my dawdy in the barn after the stallion had kicked him: how blood, dark as oil, had drained from his ears and puddled on the concrete floor. Standing there, viewing such a horrific sight, I had thought for sure that Dawdy was dead or that he was in the midst of dying. His accident took place years before Eli was conceived, but even then I regretted the things he and I had never talked about, the things I wished I’d never said. If I’d heeded that call to mend the chasm silence had created, could a few words have made a difference? Or would my dawdy have dismissed my emotions as easily as he had dismissed me?

  “Is he okay?” I cried. “Talk to me, Tobias. Tell me what you see!”

  “He’s not moving.” Tobias turned and wrapped his hand around my arm. “C’mon, we must reach him before your mudder.”

  I jerked free of his grasp. “Don’t you touch me!”

  Leah’s husband dragged a hand over his beard. “Fine,” he muttered before marching through the crowd.

  The doctors claim Norman Troyer’s quick use of nitroglycerin was what opened my dawdy’s blocked arteries and saved his life. Even though his heart attack was minor enough that he could eat the supp and pie my mother brought along in the ambulance, hospital policy requires him to remain under their observation for the rest of the night. Leah and I offer to stay, but everyone can see that we are as exhausted as our children. So the night watch will be shared between Tobias, Norman Troyer, and Mamm, who is just as tired as we are, but she won’t hear of leaving Dawdy on his first night after the heart attack.

  “I don’t want to stay in this ferhoodled hospital!” my dawdy rages, picking at the regulatory gown. “Anyone with two eyes in their skulls can see I’m good as new!”

  “Now, Samuel,” our mamm chides in the same voice she used when Leah and I were children, “you know the doktors are just taking precautions.”

  Seeing that Tobias is distracted by my dawdy, I touch Norman’s elbow and ask if I could speak with him outside. The day’s physical toil must have worn him out, yet Norman staggers onto his distorted feet.

  “You worried about your vadder, Rachel?” he asks as we enter the hall, his light eyes kind.

  I shake my head and jiggle Eli on my hip. “No, Mr. Troyer, I’m worried about my son.”

  “Your son?” Norman uses the braces to move closer and peers down into Eli’s eyes. Six hours ago, when my dawdy’s heart attack occurred, Eli was in dire need of a nap. Now he is tired beyond all reason. This perusal from a stranger causes his bottom lip to quiver before his mouth opens up in a rattling cry.

  “Hear that?” I ask Norman, although there is no doubt he can.

  “May I?”

  I pass Eli to Norman, who places my son’s small chest flush against his own.

  “What do you think’s wrong?”

  Norman Troyer lifts up the hand not supporting Eli and looks down, listening rather than responding to me. Next, he holds my son out with hands tucked beneath his armpits and tries to peer into Eli’s eyes. But Eli only screams louder, chokes, and pedals his hanging legs as if trying to climb higher to breathe.

  Finally, Norman passes Eli to me and shakes his head. “I don’t know what’s wrong. Your son’s crying too hard to look into his eyes, but from the way he’s breathing, I can tell he’s not getting enough oxygen into his lungs.” Norman looks into my eyes as if trying to read the navy rimming the cornflower blue just like, seven years ago, he tried to read my mamm’s. “Perhaps, Rachel, you should take Eli to see the doktor?”

  “But aren’t you a doctor?”

  Norman spreads long fingers across the blue shirt spanning his chest. “In a way, yes. I look into people’s eyes. I prescribe herbs that can soften the effects of rheumatism, take the edge off menstrual cramps and migraines. Your son, though . . .” Norman runs a finger down Eli’s tearstained cheek. “Your son, I fear, needs more knowledge than I have to give.”

  The past seven years, my faith in Norman Troyer’s knowledge has convinced me that holistic medicine is the remedy for every ailment under the sun. Now, looking at the self-doubt lurking in his eyes, I find my faith beginning to wane. “What do you mean?” I ask. “What do you think’s wrong?”

  Norman stares at the wall adorned with a print of a seaside landscape shaded in a color spectrum only known to man. “Has Eli been fighting colds, coughing up mucus, or having difficulties breathing at night? Has he recently lost weight or had fevers, night sweats?” I stop nodding as his words rumble in my ears. “Have you noticed that any of his lymph nodes are swollen?”

  My vision floods. Norman’s face transforms into someone I cannot recognize. “What are you saying? That my son’s really sick?”

  Norman shakes his head. “No, Rachel. I’m not saying anything like that. I just don’t think it’d hurt to have your son checked out by a doktor when you get home.”

  Leaning against the wall with Eli in my arms, I realize that everything bad seems to take place inside hospital facilities such as this one. “But why, Mr. Troyer, have you given up faith in holistic medicine and placed it in here?” I gesture to a harried orderly wheeling down the corridor with a cart of evening meals covered in white domes like spaceships.

  Norman Troyer smiles. “I haven’t.” Taking out the nitroglycerin bottle he keeps in his pants pocket, he rat
tles the contents and says, “Sometimes, I just think you do not have to choose one over the other. I think, when treating an illness, you can apply a mixture of both.”

  Gerald Martin drives Leah and me home from the hospital around ten o’clock. He then grabs his small duffel from beside the couch and leaves to stay at his family’s home in Lititz because Tobias thought it improper for Gerald to remain behind with us. Watching through the storm door as the van lights cut across the driveway, I roll my eyes and sigh at the hypocrisy of Tobias’s request.

  Leah sets a kettle on the stove for tea. “What is it?” she asks.

  “Nothing.” Rummaging through the cupboards for something to eat, for I haven’t touched a morsel since lunch, I find an old Good’s potato chip tin filled with oatmeal cookies. I take a bite of one, and the cookie crumbles into a hundred pieces despite the budder meant to keep it together. “Mamm’s still using the same recipe,” I say. “Even after all these years.”

  Leah doesn’t turn, smile, or nod. Stepping closer, I can see by the light of the kerosene lamp hanging overhead that her small shoulders are shaking.

  “Leah,” I ask, touching her back, “what is it?”

  My sister stabs a finger toward the storm door. “Like you should expect an answer from me! You who tells me nothing!”

  “What are you talking about? What didn’t I tell you?”

  Pivoting to face me, Leah sets her jaw. In all our conjoined lives, I have never seen her like this. “Why did you sigh when Gerald Martin pulled away just now, and why did Tobias pay him not to drive you? Is he . . .” My sister wipes the tears from her face and takes a breath. “Is Gerald Martin Eli’s father?”