Growing Up Amish (10 page)

Although far from perfect, our parents had given up a lot. They had uprooted their lives. Moved to this new settlement in hopes of establishing a community where the youth would be respectful and behave, not drag in all the bad stuff, the wicked habits practiced in other places. I couldn't see that then. I can now.

And looking back, not that far from the age my father was at the time, I remember the vast chasm that separated us. The harsh, hollow words that echoed in anger and sadness across the great divide. Words spoken but not heard. Words better left unsaid. I was a hothead, strong willed and filled with passion, rage, and desire. Stubborn. Driven. As was he. I was my father's son.

I misbehaved. He fumed and hollered.

I seethed. He lectured and fussed.

I sulked. He watched and worried.

Mostly though, our communication was pretty much nonexistent.

In reality, my father had reason to be concerned. He knew all too well the blood that ran through me—blood that could never be tamed by force, only by choice—and a will that would not bend.

He knew. He wouldn't have admitted it, or ever told me. But he knew.

Perhaps he felt a slight chill inside, a silent premonition of what was to come. Or maybe he actually believed it would all work out now that we had moved away from Aylmer—that the sacrifices he'd made would be rewarded.

If he did—he was wrong.

Tensions flared and faded between us, as confrontation after confrontation surged and subsided. The mental strain escalated to an almost unbearable level.

13

Gary Simmons, a squat, chunky young man dressed in western clothes, a wide-brimmed cowboy hat, and boots with spurs, showed up unannounced at our farm one day with Trader Don, the local horse dealer. Don introduced him to us as Gary Simmons, a rancher, in the area looking to buy some horses.

Gary shook hands with a firm grip and looked you in the eye. He spoke with a distinct western accent and had a great booming laugh. His pretty, young wife, Joyce, stuck close to his side and smiled.

Dad didn't really have any suitable horses to sell, that much was decided in about two minutes. Our horses were a pretty raggedy bunch. Don and Gary hung around and chatted. Eventually Dad drifted away, back to the office and his typewriter, where he was pounding out his next article for
Family Life
. Soon, I was the only one standing there talking to Don and Gary. Turns out Gary hailed from Valentine, Nebraska, and managed a ranch there.

I asked him about it. How big was the ranch?

Fifteen thousand acres, he said. He ran the ranch for a group of cattle investors from Kansas.

Wow. Fifteen thousand acres. The number boggled my mind.

Then, quietly, out of Trader Don's hearing, I asked, “Do you ever have any use for some good help out there?” I don't know why I asked, but I did. I didn't really have any plans or anything.

Gary chuckled. “Oh, you bet,” he answered. “If you ever need a job, call me. We always have an opening for good help. We can always use another good hand.”

Soon after that, they left. I mulled over what he had said about needing good help. Maybe, just maybe, one day I would call him.

It's not that I particularly liked horses or considered myself a horseman. But like most teenagers, I had often dreamed of being a real cowboy. I'd seen the pictures, read the Westerns—stories by Louis L'Amour. Zane Grey. Max Brand. Before, it had always been a minor dream, but now a doorway had cracked open. It might not be a bad experience, to head out west and work on a ranch.

The idea, and the beginnings of a plan, had been planted.

One evening about six months later, from the phone at the local Amish schoolhouse, I called Gary Simmons at his ranch.

* * *

Somehow I slept, though fitfully, waking now and again to glance at the tiny alarm clock beside my bed. The entire house slumbered in silence.

I dozed off for a time and then jolted awake again. The little fluorescent hands on the alarm clock glowed eerily. Two o'clock. One last time, I slid my hand beneath my pillow and felt for the note. It was still there, exactly where I'd placed it last night after scribbling it on a scrap of paper the day before and where my father would find it at dawn.

Quietly, slowly, so as not to wake my brothers, I shifted in the bed, lifted the covers, and stepped onto the cool concrete floor. I felt my way through the pitch-black darkness to the door, opened it, and slipped out of the bedroom.

I took a few quick, quiet steps to the left, into the furnace room, which housed my father's great brick-and-steel contraption of a homemade wood-burning stove. Dug around in the large lidded wooden box where Mom stored her winter blankets. Located the little black duffel bag I'd packed the day before, lifted it out, and set it on the floor.

Then I slipped into the clothes I had hidden away—a plain, old green shirt and a newer pair of denim barn-door pants. No galluses. Where I was going, I wouldn't need them. I laced my feet into a pair of tough leather work boots and then picked up the duffel bag. I was ready.

Upstairs, on the main floor of the house, my parents slept, unaware. With a keen ear for any unusual sounds, I walked softly to the door, gently turned the knob, and pulled it open, oh so slowly. The hinges protested in a faint, almost imperceptible squeak. I stepped outside into the night and quietly pulled the door shut behind me.

Once I was outside, Jock, our faithful mutt, met me. He seemed surprised and a little startled, but he made no sound.

“Shhh, Jock. Good boy,” I whispered. He shook himself and wagged his tail, whimpering excitedly. Leaning down, I scratched his ears in farewell.

Into the darkness I went, down the concrete walks and out the drive. There was no moon that night and no stars. I had no flashlight, so I could barely see, but my eyes gradually adjusted as I continued on my way, out the long half-mile lane to the road, the gravel crunching beneath my feet.

Halfway out, I passed my oldest brother, Joseph's, house. It loomed dark and quiet. And then it, too, was behind me.

Finally I reached the gravel road. I paused for the first time and turned. Took one last look across the fields to the house where my family slept. The kerosene lamp Mom kept burning at night flickered dimly through the kitchen windows.

Then I turned my face to the south and walked. There should be no traffic on a deserted country road at this early morning hour. At least that's what I hoped. Two miles. That's how far it was. Two miles to the highway and to freedom.

I walked into the night, my senses honed to their finest edge. In my eager mind, the great shining vistas of distant horizons gleamed and beckoned. A world that would fulfill the deep yearning, the nebulous shifting dreams of a hungry, driven youth. And it would be mine, all of it, to pluck from the forbidden tree and taste and eat. I could not know that night of the long, hard road that stretched into infinity before me. That I was lost. I could not know of the years of turmoil, rage, and anguish that eventually would push me to the brink of madness and despair.

And so I strode on through the night, crunching along the gravel road, the duffel bag swinging at my side. Up the steep hill, down, and then up again past the crossroads leading to the schoolhouse. Far ahead, the lights of West Grove flickered in the darkness. To the left stood an old graveyard filled with silent, looming tombstones. Focusing straight ahead, I continued to walk, past the old church on the left and Chuck's Café on the right. Then on to Highway 2.

Other than a few pole lights along the highway, it was pitch black. There was no traffic. None at all. I turned east and walked the final quarter mile to my buddy Dewayne's house.

Dewayne Cason had moved to West Grove from Ottumwa a few years before. In his upper twenties, Dewayne was a tobacco-chewing mule skinner whose favorite activity was hunting coon at night on muleback. I had tagged along with him from time to time, bumping along on the back of one of his trusty mules, following his baying hounds as they trailed and treed the occasional coon. Every once in a while he would give me odd jobs around his little farm, paying me a few bucks here and there to help him out. He was a colorful character and a good friend.

Dewayne worked at the John Deere factory in Ottumwa and drove twenty-some miles back and forth every day. When I first made plans to leave, I asked him if he could take me along one morning and drop me off at the bus station. He readily agreed, probably thinking nothing would ever come of it. But my plans jelled, and I told him I'd be there Tuesday morning.

He was the only person, other than myself, who knew of my plans. I didn't even tell my buddies. It was too dangerous. If it were discovered that they had known my plans and remained silent, they'd get in serious trouble. It was simply not safe to tell anyone. I had hinted about the thing I was considering, but I never told anyone in my Amish world of my actual plans. Not a soul.

I walked up to Dewayne's darkened house at about three thirty. So far, so good. I had met not a single car in the two-plus-mile walk. In the house, everyone was sleeping. I sat on the steps of Dewayne's front porch and waited, clutching my duffel bag. An hour passed. Then two. Light flickered in the eastern sky. Sunrise. About now, they would be waking up back home. About now, my note would have been found. A tinge of fear flashed through me. I was only two miles away. What if Dad decided to come up to West Grove and look for me? Come on, Dewayne.

I heard him then, bumping about inside. He opened the door, saw me, and then hollered back inside to his wife, Debbie, “He's here.”

From inside, Debbie, who was due any day with their second child, said something I couldn't understand.

Dewayne had slept in and was running late, but we eventually got into his old beater pickup and roared east on the highway to Route 63, through Bloomfield, then north, toward Ottumwa. Dewayne mumbled and swore about how he would be late for work. “Of all mornings to have to drop someone at the bus station.”

When we finally arrived in Ottumwa, he pulled up to the bus depot and braked. “Take it easy, Bud,” he said, extending his hand. “And good luck.” I grasped it, thanked him, and stepped out with my duffel bag. He roared away to his job at the John Deere factory.

Hope he doesn't get written up for being late, I thought.

I walked into the station and, half timid, half scared, approached the counter. “How much for a ticket to Sioux City, Iowa?” I asked. After handing the man behind the counter just shy of thirty bucks, I realized that the bus would be leaving in about an hour. So, with my ticket clutched firmly in my hand, I sat on a bench in the station and waited.

And waited.

I was totally focused on what lay ahead. Not once did the thought cross my mind that I should just give it up and go back home. Not once. My only fear was that Dad would hire a driver, rush up to Ottumwa, and intercept me. I wasn't sure I'd have the strength to face him down. He might compel me to return. So I waited, fearfully scanning the street now and then for any sign of him.

The hour passed, and then, finally, the bus pulled up outside and hissed to a halt. I walked up, stepped through the sliding door, and gave the driver my ticket. A few minutes later, the bus shuddered and slid out of the parking lot, onto the street, through town, and then to the highway.

I was out. Free. I wondered—fleetingly—what was going on back home. But not much. I was too excited. I looked out the window at the rolling landscape as the bus rumbled along through town after town, stopping at stations here and there. Noon came and went, and by midafternoon, we approached Sioux City and pulled into the station. I got off and inquired about the next bus to Valentine, Nebraska. It would leave the next day, about midmorning. I bought a ticket and then walked around town to find a motel room.

I had left home with one hundred and fifty dollars, money from a horse I had recently sold. Well, it was a small horse, a half pony, really. And it was worth much more than that, but I needed the money to get away, so I took what I could get.

I found a ramshackle motel and booked a room, my first stay at any motel. It was a hovel, really—cheap, smelly, and damp. But to me, it seemed like a great, grand thing, a huge adventure—a motel room in a big city.

My lodging for the night secured, it was time to venture out and buy some clothes. My shirts were fine, I figured. But I really wanted to get rid of those barn-door pants. I walked around downtown, gawking through store windows until I spotted a clothing store. When I walked in, the worn hardwood floor creaked under my feet.

The clerk was a middle-aged man with a tiny gray mustache. He was stooped over a bit from years of service on the floor.

“I need a pair of jeans,” I told him.

“Certainly,” he replied, smiling. He showed me shelves loaded with stack after stack of blue jeans. But I had a problem. I had no idea what size I wore. Timidly, I mentioned that fact to him.

I'm sure it must have seemed strange to him that I didn't even know my own size, but he didn't blink an eye. Instead, he just smiled kindly, pawed through the piles of jeans, pulled out a few different sizes, and held them up to my waist.

“I'd suggest you try this size,” he said. 32x32. I took the jeans from him and walked into a fitting room. Down went the barn-door pants. And for the first time in my life, I slipped into a pair of store-bought English jeans—Lee brand—with a real zipper in front.

They were probably a little short, but I didn't know any better. I thought they fit perfectly.
Real blue jeans
. I admired myself in the mirror. Then I walked out of the fitting room, picked up another pair the same size, bought them both, and walked proudly out the door and back to my motel. For the first time ever, I was not conscious that I was any different from anyone else around me, because I wasn't—except for my haircut. But I would get that taken care of soon enough. I felt great. This was definitely something I could get used to.