The Amish Blacksmith

by Mindy Starns Clark

  She pulled the buggy to the side of the road and gave way to her own tears.

  “I’m so sorry, Jake. I should have known something was wrong a few months later when I realized you’d stopped crying for him, for us. You just… stopped. It was as though you decided then and there that it was all too much and you were never going to allow yourself to feel that deeply for anyone or anything again. I was so engrossed in my own grief and caring for my grandson that I didn’t think how dangerous it was for you to do that. I just… I just was glad there was one less sad person in the house. I am so sorry. I should have done something.”

  I sat there in the cab of the buggy, listening to my mother’s sobs as I tried to grasp her words.

  “There was nothing you could do, Mamm,” I managed to utter. “Don’t be so hard—”

  “Of course there was. I could have sent you over to stay with Sarah and Jonas for a while. I could have paid more attention to what was happening inside your little heart instead of focusing so exclusively on Tyler’s pain and on ours. At the very least—the very least—I should have moved you out of that bedroom and put you in with Peter instead. At least then you wouldn’t have had a front row seat, night after night, to the pain of a child who had lost his mother and his father and his home practically all in one day. ”

  In my numbness, I heard again my father’s words from when he first offered me the shed for my shop. How hard it must be to have all that disappear on you overnight.

  Closing my eyes, I forced myself to focus. I had questions, so many questions.

  “If you knew all this,” I managed to say, “then why didn’t you just tell me? Three weeks ago, when I asked.”

  She dug a tissue from her apron and dabbed at her face, which was shiny with tears.

  “Because your father and I don’t see eye to eye on any of this. We never have. I knew that night that he didn’t want me to tell you. He didn’t want me to dredge all of this up.”

  I just looked at her, needing to understand.

  “But back then, he didn’t see what I saw, Jake. Or if he did, he chose not to believe it. When the worst of things with Tyler was over and I realized what it had done to you, I was devastated. Racked with guilt. Tormented at how your sweet, tender little heart had been buried under all that pain. The more I went on about it, the more your father didn’t want to hear it. It was one of the few rocky patches in our marriage. We fought a number of times. He insisted back then—as he still does now—that I was exaggerating. That I was ‘borrowing trouble.’ That the changes I saw in you back then were just a natural part of growing up and not some horrible fallout from the grief that had filled our house for months.”

  She pulled in a breath, sharply, and tried to calm her tears as she blew it back out.

  “Eventually, we had to find a way to put the matter to rest. At first, we just agreed to disagree. But as time passed, I don’t know, I suppose it was easier to pretend that your father was right. You seemed happy. And you certainly loved Tyler with all your heart. So I told myself it was all okay, that it was in the past. Then when you showed up here asking us that question, it was as though a very old scar had suddenly been ripped wide open. I knew what was inside—but I couldn’t let you see it. Not yet, not right away. I had to work through it first myself, and then with your father. I knew who you were before Tyler showed up, and I saw who you became after. Now, all these years later, about the only thing I can say to you is forgive me. Please forgive me. Please tell me it’s not too late to be who you were before I failed you.”

  I knew I should have reached over to her to comfort her and assure her she had my forgiveness, but I was like a paralyzed man as a flood of buried memories breached the wall inside me. I could do nothing but sit there as it all came back to me, cold and wet and gray, like the world outside the buggy.

  And with the flood within me came the tumbling of bricks.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  In the days that followed Mamm’s confession, we both had to deal with the fallout. When we arrived at home, she admitted to Daed that she’d picked me up after work and told me everything, and he hadn’t been happy with her. They had argued all evening, mostly in whispers behind closed doors, but I’m sure they both knew there was no taking it back now.

  I wrote to Priscilla that night, though it took me a long time to figure out what to say.

  Dear Priscilla,

  The day you left, you told me something I didn’t want to hear. I didn’t believe you, so you told me to ask God to prove you wrong.

  I asked. He finally answered.

  You weren’t wrong.

  Sincerely,

  Jake

  The next morning, I spoke to Daed on Mamm’s behalf, trying to help him understand I’d needed this truth so I could begin to heal. He disagreed, refusing to believe there was any healing to be done. As for Mamm, he said he wasn’t angry with her exactly, just disappointed that she’d gone to me behind his back and against his word. Mostly, he said, he was upset that she’d dredged up woes that had long been covered by God’s grace and ought not to have been exhumed.

  Our times around the supper table—the only meal the three of us had together these days, thanks to my job—were subdued, to say the least. We found things to talk about, but they were superficial and brief, and then we would retreat back into our silences.

  The truth was, I felt as though I had been stripped of my skin and was now walking around in the flesh of a newborn. Every pore of my being seemed freshly awakened. And even though the depths of my heart were now open to the sun, recalling what had mentally sent me scrambling for mortar and bricks eighteen years ago was not painful in the fearful sense. I felt an ache, crushing at times, but it wasn’t the throbbing sting of despair. It was more a tearing away of pretense and calluses.

  I was not becoming a six-year-old boy again; that child had grown up. But I did sense that God was handing something back to me, something He had been keeping safe for me during my years in the wilderness of my detachment. He was reawakening my passion for things He was passionate about, namely people. I found myself beginning my prayers in the morning and quickly wiping away tears as I prayed for each person close to me. God was regenerating within me a deep and pervasive compassion for those He had placed in my life. My parents. My siblings. Tyler and Rachel. Amanda and Matthew. Natasha and her family. Owen and Treva. Amos and Roseanna.

  Priscilla.

  Dear Jake,

  You may not believe this, but I think I already knew. Somehow, during my prayer times this week, I’ve almost felt I was hearing the shouts and trumpets as Jericho’s walls came tumbling down. When your letter arrived today, I could only bow my head in awe and thanks. God is good.

  I am praying for you, because I know this has to be tough. To feel deeply after so many years of barely feeling at all must be kind of like leaping from a puddle into an ocean. I can’t imagine the pain, the fear—maybe even the regret—that you’re going through now.

  But don’t regret it. And remember the good that’s in store for you! Consider John 16:20, where it says, “Ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy.” You are now a person who can feel both of those things, sorrow and joy, and for that I rejoice.

  I promise, this will get better.

  Blessings,

  Priscilla

  Reconnecting with that part of me that God had created as a basic element of my personality and which I had pushed aside for nearly two decades made me quiet, reflective, and more tuned into the workings of God’s Spirit inside me.

  Sometimes, it also hurt like the dickens.

  Dear Priscilla,

  Every day at my job, when I exercise the horses, I put them through a series of moves and activities that will not just improve their cardio systems but also promote muscle growth. At farrier school, we spent a lot of time studying horse anatomy, and it’s been coming in handy during these sessions. Do you know how muscles are built in horses—and people too, for that matt
er—anatomically speaking?

  You never want to pull or rip a muscle, but you do want to work it hard enough that it develops numerous microscopic tears. (That’s where the soreness comes after a hard day.) But then, as those tears heal, the body does the most amazing thing: It builds them back stronger than they were before. Thus, the way to grow a muscle is to tear it up so that in the end it will grow back stronger.

  This is what I remind myself every single day, that the tearing up is the first, necessary part of the process. But it isn’t always easy.

  Sincerely,

  Jake

  Though I still wasn’t crazy about my job, I was glad for the ten-hour workdays I had to myself during this time. Almost every day, I would spend the entire commute thinking, praying, and pondering what it meant to no longer be locked up inside. Once I arrived at the Fremonts’, there was little there to remind me of my Amish life except for every horse I was growing fond of and every horse that looked to my approach with interest and affection. It wasn’t hard to see, now that my eyes had been opened, what Priscilla saw. Horses were not like any other farm animal. They were created with the ability to display trust and affection, as well as the capacity to fear and avoid what they did not understand. Priscilla had told me once that I only cared about what troubled horses feared, but not why they feared it.

  And she had been right. The why of it I had wanted to avoid, because that is what I did—and had been doing every day of my life for many years.

  Tyler had said I was even-keeled, and he’d meant it as a compliment. Priscilla had also used that word when she said I was “just one long, even keel, sailing through life down the middle.” But I now knew better. A keel on a boat keeps it on a steady course. Without a keel, a boat would soon be adrift. But the direction you choose to travel matters as much as the keel that helps to get you there. As I settled into my new skin and allowed God to have His way in me, I began to sense that the direction of my life was changing.

  Dear Jake,

  Since I last wrote, I’ve been thinking more on this topic of sorrow and joy, and I decided I have a suggestion for you: Look for joy.

  Even if you are still struggling with the more painful elements of this transition, I challenge you to seek out joy in others. Perhaps doing so will help to awaken joy inside yourself as well.

  Blessings,

  Priscilla

  The second week in September, I was beginning to feel less pain in the day to day, though I certainly hadn’t felt anything remotely approaching joy. At first, I took Priscilla’s words in a theoretical sense, simply as an encouragement. But upon several rereadings of her letter, I decided she was serious. She really was challenging me.

  And so I began to look for joy.

  Amazingly, it didn’t take long before I began to spot it everywhere…

  I saw it in the bus driver who handled the second leg of my daily journey, in the way he smiled and greeted the passengers—especially the regulars like me—as if we were precious cargo. I knew he was a Christian because God’s love radiated through every part of him, from the sparkle in his eyes to the peppy hymns he would whistle as he drove to the way he’d call out with every disembarkation, “Have a blessed day!”

  I witnessed joy walking home from the bus stop one evening when I came upon a pair of tourists, a young couple out for a stroll. They were holding hands, and an infant was strapped to the father’s chest by some sort of cloth sling. Partway down the street, they paused so the wife could adjust the baby’s pacifier. Then she kissed him on his fuzzy little head and looked up at her husband, the joy in her eyes striking me so deeply that I had to turn away.

  I observed it during Sunday dinners, in how my mamm and daed looked at Rachel, whose own precious cargo was growing bigger by the week, and Tyler, who was constantly at her side. Even though there was still a bit of a rift between my parents, I could see the joy in their faces whenever they gazed upon their beloved grandson and granddaughter-in-law and the new life—a great-grandbaby—that was growing within.

  I felt it in the serene expressions of many of my fellow worshipers during Sunday services.

  I recognized it in the eyes of my brother Thom when he bit into a slice of his wife’s incredible schnitz pie.

  I heard it in the squeals and laughter of Natasha’s two little girls as they played in their backyard pool.

  Mostly, I found it one day when I least expected, out in the pasture with January and Atticus. Like all of the horses, January needed exercise, but she wasn’t too crazy about wearing a saddle or carrying a rider. Eventually, I found that I could give her just as good of a workout simply by taking her and the dog into the field and playing a vigorous game of fetch. Atticus’s favorite chew toy was a bright orange rope-and-ball sort of thing, and I would start us off by throwing it as far as I could out into the grass. He would take off running, with January close behind, then he’d retrieve it, spin around, and run just as fast to bring it back to me. We would do this over and over until both dog and horse were panting heavily and my shoulder was beginning to ache. At that point, I would usually just plop myself down on the grass for a break, allowing ten minutes or so for them to cool down.

  Usually, they just sniffed around a bit after that, Atticus searching the pasture for rabbit holes and January contentedly munching on grass. But once in a while, if they were in a playful mood, they would interact with each other in various ways. Atticus would get January’s attention by running circles around her, or January would trot toward the dog and then fake him out by stopping short or making a sudden zigzag. Sometimes the horse would simply lie down on the ground and roll over, feet in the air and belly to the sky. Grunting with pleasure, she would wriggle in a way that told me she was scratching her back. As she did, Atticus would run over to lick her face or sniff her body or press himself against her broad side, as if to share in her joy.

  And it was joy. Whether in animals or people, I decided, joy was all over the place. You just had to stop and look for it.

  Joy was also the key that finally unlocked the problem with Natasha’s horse.

  It happened on a Monday in mid-September, on a gray and overcast day with just a hint of coolness in the air. I had already reduced my daily sessions with Duchess down to just twice a week, but now I was ready to throw in the towel. Despite all of my efforts, I was no closer to solving the mystery of her performance anxiety than I had been the day we met.

  As I led the magnificent animal from the workout ring back up the hill toward her private stable, I felt my heart growing heavy, knowing I had let both horse and owner down. The Dressage at the Devon horse show was only ten days away, and it was clear to all that Natasha’s dream of a successful meet was only that—a dream. Worse, the horse’s inevitable failure at the show was going to be like a domino, toppling forward and taking down all the others after it. As Eric had said a few months before, If Duchess fails, her value as a show horse or even a breeding horse will plummet so far that Natasha may lose it all. I felt sick at heart, both for her sake and the sake of this magnificent, troubled animal.

  Unlike the horses in the big stable, Duchess was housed in her own private building, one equipped with indulgences that boggled the mind. Air-conditioning for hot days, of course, but also heated floors for cooler ones. A horse treadmill. An equine whirlpool. All sorts of state-of-the-art equipment. Apparently, these were luxuries befitting a champion. Sadly, once Duchess failed at Devon, she would be a champion no more.

  The only people allowed in Duchess’s stable were Natasha, the stable master, and me, and as I opened the door to lead the horse inside now, I saw that the other two were already there, over in the main sitting area. They both looked up as we came in, their expressions hopeful, but I shook my head and continued on toward the stall.

  Once Duchess was settled in with fresh water and hay, I came back out ready to tell Natasha that this was about it for me and Duchess. There was nothing more I could do for her, and continuing our sessions would jus
t be a waste of Natasha’s money and my time.

  Natasha and Ted were both perched on leather swivel chairs, facing a huge flat screen TV and watching, yet again, the video of Duchess’s last few competitions, where she’d lost control and reared up, nearly getting hurt or hurting others. I had watched these films myself, several times, to study her behavior and see if I could figure out what might have scared her so and set her off. But it hadn’t done me any good, so I’d never felt the need to watch again.

  Ted, on the other hand, studied those clips the way a farrier might study diseases of the hoof. All along, he had been of the opinion that there was some specific trigger that kept setting the horse off, and if he could just identify and eliminate that trigger, the problem would be solved.

  Natasha wasn’t interested in triggers. She was all about obedience training, teaching the animal to resist any aberrant urges—no matter how strong—at the command of her master.

  My approach had been to spend time with the horse on a regular basis and run her through various pressure-release exercises in order to build trust.

  None of our methods had worked. If anything, the horse seemed to be getting worse, not better. Several times, on busy days when the main stable was bustling with activity, Duchess had caught sight of it and gone into a bit of a frenzy, neighing and shaking her head and stomping her feet until I had to lead her away just to get her back under control.

  “Play it again, from the top,” Natasha said now, her eyes still glued to the screen.

  Ted clicked the remote, and the video started over once more. I watched it as well, but this time something about the clip seemed different to me—or rather, the clip was the same, but I was seeing it in a whole new way. After a few moments, I could feel the hairs begin to rise up on the back of my neck.