by Gayle Roper
“Oh, I didn’t mean—” I started, flushing. What didn’t I mean? I didn’t mean to upset him? I didn’t mean to hurt him? Well, I didn’t. Still, I was mad at myself for making such a stupid comment and mad at him for making me feel so dumb. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t very tactful of me.”
Jake sighed, holding up a hand apologetically. “It was no worse than my answer. I’m sorry too.”
We smiled ruefully at each other.
I took a deep breath. “Isn’t it a beautiful day?” When in doubt, fall back on the weather.
Jake looked without enthusiasm at the sky and then at me. “Beautiful,” he said in a flat voice.
“It or me?” I teased.
“What?” He missed the joke entirely. And the idea of trying to explain my cleverness was more than I could handle. No matter what I said, it was bound to sound as if I were looking for a compliment. And so we sat, silent.
I wanted to pick up my stool and go back to my painting, but I didn’t see how I could without being even more offensive. I searched my mind for something else to say, something safe, something that would get a nice, general, unemotional conversation started but also keep it going.
“What do you do to pass the time, Jake?” Before I could continue and ask if he watched TV or worked at something with his hands or read mystery novels, he answered. Or rather he reacted.
“What do I do?” He scowled and snorted. “What do you think I do? Nothing.”
I was doing about as well here as I had back in junior high when boys scared me to death and anything that came out of my mouth when they were around sounded inane. Obviously, talking to Jake was a minefield, and so far I’d detonated more than my share of emotional explosions.
I decided to brazen it out rather than apologize again. I saw that I could easily spend my whole time on the farm saying I was sorry for some accidental comment or inadvertent hurt. Besides, truth to tell, maybe it wasn’t my thick tongue but his thin skin that was the real problem.
“How did your accident happen?” I made my voice as matter of fact as I could.
He studied me for a moment, and I thought, Oh, boy, I’ve done it again.
“You sure you want to know?” he finally asked.
“If you want to tell.”
He seemed to consider, and I waited.
Apparently he decided to take the risk. “Over on Route 10 south of Honey Brook, there are two steep hills.” His hands sketched a deep V.
“I know where you mean,” I said, drawing the V too.
“Yeah?” He seemed to like that. “Well, I was speeding down the first hill on my motorcycle last fall. October twentieth, to be exact. It was raining hard, but I was so busy picking up speed for the second hill that I never gave the wet leaves any thought.”
I could picture him, crouched forward over the bike, hurtling down the steep incline, preparing for the long pull just ahead.
“As I neared the intersection at the bottom of the hill, a car ran the stop sign right in front of me. I braked and lost control on the leaves. I skidded and flew off and finally came to a stop against a telephone pole. I thought I was going to die. My helmet protected my head and my leathers prevented brushburns and scrapes, but my back was broken when the bike landed on top of me.”
His eyes lost focus as he looked into some private middle distance of memories and anguish.
I sat quietly, not daring to breathe, unable to imagine what it must have been like to have your life changed in one irrevocable moment and because of someone else’s mistake. Life didn’t give do-overs.
Finally, he looked at me. “It took less than a minute, a lot less, to change my life as I knew it. And the car never even slowed up.”
“I’m sorry,” I said inadequately. “I’m so sorry.”
Jake smiled tightly and studied his clenched fists. “Don’t let it worry you. If I could stand all those months in the hospital and in rehab, I can survive anything.” He turned to glare at me. “Except pity.”
I nodded, and we sat quietly again, Jake lost in his memories, I trying to grasp the enormity of his injury and wondering how one showed sorrow without communicating pity. Now there was no awkwardness between us.
He finally broke the silence. “You’ve been here almost a week. Do you regret it yet?”
I stared at him in surprise. He sounded just like Todd. “Why would I regret it? I love it here.”
“Even with Hawk?”
My hand went to my cheek. The wound was healing nicely. “Hawk was just being a dog.”
“You’re not going to give in to the English habit of suing, are you?”
I laughed. “Of course not! It’s not as though the dog did this with malice aforethought. And besides, I’d never do anything to hurt your parents. They’re too nice. After all, I want to stay here, and I think that it will work better if I don’t take the family to court.”
I looked over at the sleeping dog. “I think Hawk is wonderful.” I threw my arms wide. “I think the farm is wonderful.”
His eyes traced the barn and the fields visible behind it. “I complain a lot, but I love the farm too. Not farming, you understand, but the farm. The country. The quiet.”
I nodded my agreement.
“Though sometimes,” he said, sounding lost and small, “it’s just too quiet.”
Dear God, how do I respond to that?
Since I hadn’t any idea and He didn’t send a shaft of insight, I changed the subject completely. “My biggest problem on the farm is that my English inner clock just doesn’t mesh with your family’s German one. I simply can’t go to bed at nine or nine thirty and expect to go to sleep. Nor can I wake up at five and expect to think clearly.”
“I know what you mean. I finally convinced Mom that I didn’t want to get up that early either. It makes the day too long.” This time there was no bitterness in his voice. He was merely stating a fact.
“I’m trying to persuade your mother not to stop her work to make me breakfast when I can very well do it myself,” I said. “That way I’ll be able to sleep as late as I want—at least for the next few days until school starts—and not feel too guilty and lazy.”
“Good luck,” Jake said.
“Well, I’m a guest, right? And how do you argue with your guests, even—or maybe especially—paying ones?”
“You don’t know my mother well, do you?” He waved at my painting, still sitting on the easel under the tree. “Is that kind of thing the reason you wanted to live here?”
I nodded. “I know it probably sounds pure corn to you, but I’ve fallen in love with Lancaster County. It’s beautiful and green and culturally unique.”
“It’s kind of funny when you think about it,” he said, “but I’ve spent the last ten years, since I was fifteen, trying to escape from this culture thing you want to take on.”
Shades of me and my parents. And me and Todd. “But I don’t want to take anything on,” I said. “I have too many problems with Amish beliefs. I just want to observe and enjoy and paint.”
He shrugged, not quite with me. “Well, I guess you’ll be all right as long as you keep painting barns.”
“But not people?”
Jake shook his head. “Old Order Amish like my parents don’t believe in photographs. Or portraits. They see them as graven images. You know, ‘Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing.’”
“I knew the Amish didn’t like having their pictures taken, but I didn’t realize there was a religious reason other than the fact that cameras are relatively modern. And, of course, just about anyone would resent the invasion of their privacy by tourists who poke digital cameras in their faces. Since I personally prefer painting landscapes, I shouldn’t have any problem. Still, I’d love to do your father’s hands.”
“His hands?”
“They’re marvelous, Jake. Gnarled and strong, a farmer’s hands. Do you think he’d let me photograph them sometime so I could paint them at my leisure? Do h
ands constitute graven images?”
“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 on
e 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.”
