The Amish Blacksmith

by Mindy Starns Clark

  “I think I do. But I have to ask… ” I looked from one to the other. “What do you see as the worst of who I am? Was there something bad Amanda was bringing out in me?”

  “Not bad, not at all,” Mamm said. “Just… ” Her voice faded as she gestured helplessly for the right words.

  “Well?”

  She looked to my father, who reached across the table and covered her hand with his. Then his eyes met mine.

  “The marriage vows aren’t to be taken lightly, Jake. Life is not to be taken lightly.”

  “I have to ask you both a question,” I said, my voice nearly snagging in my throat. It had been almost four weeks now since Priscilla went away, leaving her challenge behind. And though I had spent much of the time since then ruminating on her words and wondering how I might ever get to the truth, it wasn’t until this moment that I had finally summoned the nerve to say what needed to be said. If something had happened in my past that taught me to bury my emotions, I really wanted to know what it was. I really wanted to find the answer.

  “Have I always been this way?”

  “What way?”

  “Unemotional. Shallow. So… cavalier about everything.”

  They didn’t answer right off, and suddenly the room felt very quiet, so quiet I could hear not just the ticking of the kitchen clock, but the very movement of its hands. As I waited for whatever it was they were going to tell me, I felt myself growing acutely aware of this moment, this place where God had plunked me down, back at my childhood home, with nothing to my name but a duffel bag, my horse, a courting buggy, and my farrier tools.

  “You’re none of those things,” Mamm said at last, but there was an odd avoidance in her eyes. “A shallow man wouldn’t even think to ask such a question. And you were never cavalier with Amanda’s affections, were you?”

  I shook my head.

  “As for unemotional, you’re one of the kindest souls I’ve ever known. So there you go. You are none of those things.”

  Daed nodded in agreement, his bushy beard bobbing against his collar.

  They didn’t get it.

  “That’s not what I’m saying.” I looked from one to the other, searching for the right words. “I don’t feel anything deeply. It’s as though everything with me is always somewhere up near the surface. What I want to know is if I have always been like this, or if something happened to make me this way.”

  Again, an odd silence descended over the table before my father finally spoke.

  “You’re a man, son. God designed men for action, for protection. For strength. Feelings—or the lack of them—are beside the point.”

  I looked over at my mother, but her eyes were cast toward her plate. I returned my attention to him.

  “You have feelings, Daed, deep feelings. For Mamm. For me. For God. You can’t tell me you don’t.”

  He pursed his lips and just stared at me for a long moment. “You’ve grown up fine,” he said with finality. “So that’s enough of that.”

  My heart sank. My parents had been my best hope for answers, but now it was clear they could give me none. I returned my attention to the food in front of me, no longer hungry but needing somewhere to direct my eyes. I finished what was on my plate and then stood to carry it to the sink.

  I would have thought this was the end of it had I not seen a look that passed between my parents. My mother’s face was hopeful. Almost pleading. My father’s face held a warning—a raising of the eyebrows, a tightening of the mouth—that told her the subject was closed.

  In this home there had been three bedrooms to be divided among the children. Which kid went in which room depended on their age and the total number living here. As the youngest of the bunch, I wasn’t even born until the two oldest—Sarah and Sadie—were married and out of the house. At that time, Thom was eighteen and in his rumspringa, so he had a room to himself. That left the remaining two rooms to be divided between Eli, who was fifteen, Peter, who was six, and me, the infant of the bunch. Reportedly, Eli and Peter shared and I got my own room—but only until Eli turned sixteen, at which point Mamm shifted Peter in with me. I was three when Thom married, so that’s when Peter moved back out again. Three kids still at home, three bedrooms, so finally we each had our own.

  Until I was six, that is, when I got a new and unexpected roommate.

  How he came to me was a long and complex story, but it started with my sister Sadie. She was twenty years older than I, and I’d never had the chance to meet her because she left the Amish faith two years before I was born. Though my parents longed and prayed for her return, Sadie ended up marrying an Englischer and moving far, far away. When I was just a few months old, Sadie and her husband had a son they named Tyler, but I never got to meet him either, at least not at first. I grew up knowing of their existence—that my sister Sadie and her husband and child were out there among the Englisch somewhere—but I also knew it was one of those things we just didn’t talk about.

  Then, when I was six years old, our family received the terrible news that Sadie had died, suddenly and unexpectedly, of a brain aneurism. My parents were heartbroken, of course, but especially because of the estrangement that had preceded her death. Though it wasn’t easy for my parents, Sarah came and stayed with us boys while Mamm and Daed made the trip to Sadie’s funeral. A few days later, they returned—with Sadie’s son in tow. Tyler’s father was in the military, and he had asked my parents to take in their grandson just for a while, until he finished his next tour of duty. It ended up being a lot longer than that, but that’s a story for another day.

  Technically, the scared little boy with the Phillies baseball cap and the wrinkled Englischer clothes was my nephew. But considering that he and I were the same age, I saw him more as a brother right from the start. Mamm moved him in with me, and he and I soon became not just roommates and relatives but friends. Best friends.

  We stayed together in that room until Eli moved out and got married a few years later. Once again, we were down to three kids, three rooms, so I shifted into one of my own. That was the one I’d remained in, from the time I was nine until I moved out at twenty-three, first for farrier school and then to live with the Kinsingers.

  That was also the room I was returning to now, and I entered it with an odd, unsettled feeling. I had been part of a good family and grown up in a happy home, but I wasn’t glad to be here. How could I have ended up in this place after all I had managed to accomplish? Two days ago, my life was on track for work and marriage. Now I was tossing my duffel onto my childhood bed and hanging my hat on the same peg that had held my hats as a boy.

  Standing here, resentment and frustration began to swell within my chest, so I closed my eyes and asked God to take those feelings away, to help me be patient with all that was happening in my life—no matter what.

  The same words I’d told myself earlier came springing into my mind once again. I was back where the answers likely awaited.

  Back where I began.

  Except that I wasn’t, I realized now, not exactly. I’d begun in the room across the hall, the one I’d first had to myself and then shared with Peter and then had to myself again before sharing it with Tyler. If I really wanted to be back where I began, that was the room for me now, not this one.

  The very idea seemed a little silly, but the more I stood there contemplating it, the more I felt God prodding me to move to the other room. I picked up my bag, crossed the hall, and opened the door. In the months Tyler had been gone following his marriage to Rachel, Mamm had done nothing to this room other than strip the bed and place a few extra chairs inside along with her old sewing machine. I set my bag down and backed out to get some linens from the closet in the hall. As I was reaching for a set of sheets, Mamm came up the stairs with fresh towels off the line for me.

  “The linens on your bed are clean,” she said, nodding to the room I had first walked into.

  “Ya. I know. I’m taking Tyler’s room.”

  Her eyes widened in surp
rise. “What? Why? That room is just for storage now.”

  “I don’t care if you don’t care. A few chairs and the sewing machine won’t bother me.”

  Mamm stared at me. I could tell there was something she wanted to say, but she held her tongue.

  Forcing myself to respect her silence, at least until I found a way to get around it, I took the pile of clean sheets into the room. Mamm followed me in, placing the towels onto one of the extra chairs. “I’ll help you with the bed.”

  We made it in silence. Mamm smoothed down the thin quilt that I likely would not need as August was traditionally the hottest month of the year, but it helped the bed seem complete.

  “It’s been a long time since you’ve slept in this room.”

  “Ya, it sure has.”

  She went to the door, and then she turned back to face me. When she spoke, her voice seemed faraway, as though she had just walked down a long corridor in her mind.

  “Everything changed for you when Tyler came, didn’t it?”

  “I don’t know. I was only six. I don’t remember much from before, if that’s what you mean. And we’ve always gotten along great. Tyler’s like a brother to me, Mamm. You know that.”

  She nodded absently. “I just… I wonder… ” Her voice trailed away.

  “What? What do you wonder?”

  For a second she seemed to have disappeared altogether. It was as if her body was still in the room with me, but her heart and soul were whisked back to that dark and painful time when her daughter died.

  “Mamm?”

  She returned her gaze to me, the faraway look still in her eyes. Then, with a slight shake of her head and a squaring of her shoulders, the look was gone, and she was just her usual self again, as if nothing was going unsaid at all.

  Even her voice was now clear and matter-of-fact. “I know you’ve had a rough couple of days, Jake, but it’s good to have you home. You can put those chairs into your old… into the other spare room if you want.” Mamm turned and left, pulling the door softly closed behind her.

  My mind swirling, I set about unpacking my things, a task that shouldn’t take long. As I worked, I kept returning to my mother’s odd demeanor and her question.

  Everything changed for you when Tyler came, didn’t it?

  I thought of Priscilla, in the grove, pleading with me to see the truth, telling me something must have happened to me, some incident that made me the way that I am. Now God had brought me all the way here, to this room, the room I’d shared with Tyler as a child.

  Could my “incident” tie in with him somehow? Did it have anything to do with him? If so, I couldn’t see how. Lowering myself to the edge of the bed, I tried to think.

  I’d never resented having to share my life or my room or my childhood with Tyler. Quite the opposite. My world was so much richer because of him—then and now.

  Sure, Mamm, everything changed for me when he came, but in a good way, not bad.

  He was the one who had lost a mother, who had essentially lost his father, who had to come here not knowing the people or the language or the lifestyle or anything.

  He was the one who had lost it all.

  I was the one who gained.

  THIRTY-THREE

  I spent the next week looking for a position as a blacksmith—either apprentice or full-fledged—but there were simply no openings anywhere. It seemed my only choices were to go ahead and open up my own shop or head down some other career path entirely. Neither option appealed to me. The ultimate plan to have my own blacksmith shop someday was far down the road from here, when I had more experience, more savings, and a better idea of where I might want to live.

  As for committing to a different kind of work, I saw that as nonnegotiable. After a lifetime of wanting to be a blacksmith, I had finally achieved my goal. No way could I turn my back on it now, not after striving so hard to get here.

  I knew I could always take the job Natasha had offered me, as at least it involved working with horses, but that wasn’t a long-term solution. Her world was Englisch and money and fanciness, mine was Plain and Amish and apart. Her stables had been a great place to visit, and I wouldn’t mind doing the occasional consult there, but spending my day, every day, in that environment was about as appealing to me as spending time in a ladies’ boutique would be to a horse.

  Besides, something about our last few conversations had rubbed me the wrong way. I still thought of Duchess often and would have loved the chance to work with her, and I liked Natasha as well. But I hadn’t appreciated her attempts to bring me on board for some exorbitant salary without telling me why I’d be worth it to her. It seemed disingenuous, and I didn’t think I wanted any part of it.

  As for my own internal state, neither Daed nor Mamm had been any more forthcoming about whatever it was they had seemed to be withholding that first night I came home. I still had hopes they would open up eventually. Sometimes a person just needed a little space to think things through first.

  In the meantime, at least, I had a distraction. Searching for a job was completely filling my days, leaving only the nights for extra thought and prayer.

  On the morning of August eleventh, the first day of my second week of joblessness, Daed said he had something to show me. As soon as we finished our breakfast, we put on our hats and headed outside into a muggy Monday sunrise.

  We started for the buggy shop, a long and wide Morton building that housed Daed’s entire manufacturing operation. Six buggies at once could be built inside it, and several more could be in the repair bay. There were sections for welding, fabrication, upholstery, painting, and assembly. I had worked every phase of the buggy operation, as had my three brothers, Tyler, and several cousins.

  But Daed swung wide of the whole thing. We continued past the building and took a right at its corner by the barn, moving toward an outbuilding in which he stored buggy parts.

  We stopped at it.

  “I was thinking if you wanted, you could fix this up as your own blacksmith shop. We’re far enough away from Amos’s place that I don’t think he could complain too much.”

  I appreciated the offer, but I knew he was wrong about Amos. “Our agreement was ten miles at a minimum, Daed. You know this can’t be more than eight.”

  “So you go and you talk to him first. I think a couple of miles of grace is the least he could do.”

  “Maybe so,” I said, doubting it, “but what about you? You need this building for your own business. All your spare parts are in here.”

  “Ya, but they don’t need to be. It makes more sense to keep them at the main building. Tyler’s been saying so for a while. He’s figured out a way to rearrange the inventory so we can fit everything in one building. And I know some of the materials in here are obsolete anyway, so it needs a good cleaning out. It’s big enough, I think, for a small blacksmith shop. I’ve seen Amos’s setup. You could do the same thing here. It would just be a little tighter. One horse at a time instead of three.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Of course I appreciated Daed’s offer, but there was still the matter of my needing more experience. I also didn’t know if I was ready to admit my only option was to open a little side business at the buggy shop and hope that it would grow.

  When I said nothing, he went on. “I know it’s probably not your dream location, son, and it might take a while to fix up and get a forge and all that, but I know how much you wanted to focus on farrier work and how hard it must be to have all that disappear on you overnight. Both your Mamm and I are feeling bad about it. You don’t deserve what happened to you. I can’t front you any money to get things started, but I can offer you this building if you want it.”

  “Thanks, Daed,” I finally said. “I really appreciate this. I’ll think on it.”

  And I did think on it for the next few days. At first, it was just a remote possibility, but with every blacksmith shop that said they weren’t hiring and every classified ad that did me no good, my father’s idea began to gro
w on me more and more. It still wasn’t an ideal location, but at least it was worth further consideration.

  On Wednesday evening, Daed and I sat down together with pen and paper, a calculator, and a stack of farrier supply catalogs. Together, we worked up a figure that realistically represented the investment required to supply and stock a fully functional blacksmith shop. It was higher than either one of us expected.

  I could see the defeat settling into my father’s shoulders. When we’d crunched the numbers for a third time and still came out too high, he sighed heavily, turned off the calculator, and slipped it into the drawer.

  “I’m sorry, son. I’ve been thinking you could get something temporary, just to earn your seed money. But this much would take way too long. To reach that figure in a reasonable amount of time… well, that’s just not going to happen. I don’t know anywhere you could work and earn that kind of money.”

  I stared at the number on the page. I thought about my other prospects. I calculated how long it would take.

  Then I met my father’s eyes and told him, “I do.”

  I finally heard from Priscilla a few days later.

  Dear Jake,

  Thank you so much for the notes. I have enjoyed them more than you know. I was so sorry to hear about the job situation, but at least it sounds like you’re doing okay.

  In my Bible reading this morning, I came across a familiar verse I wanted to share. You know in Ecclesiastes, the part about how there’s a time to every purpose under heaven? In the list of purposes, it says there’s “a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.”

  See? Even God is saying you should be fully aware of what your heart is telling you.