Blood of the Prodigal. P. L. Gaus
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the left. The avenue down the middle was strewn with fresh straw. Five massive oak uprights stood in a line down the middle of the avenue, taking the weight of the roof. The crossbeams were made of walnut twelve-by-twelve’s. The haylofts ran high above, on either side of the third level, planked out in rough-hewn maple and elm. Long runs of rope and chain looped through a large wooden block and tackle, which was hung from an iron wheel that ran high in the rafters on a rail the full length of the peak. Leather harnesses and collars hung in front of each of the stalls. At the far end, the rakes, mowers, and threshers stood silently in the wide avenue. Their iron wheels were easily a head taller than Jeremiah.
Inside, Jeremiah climbed onto a stepstool to hang the lantern against one of the upright beams, and hopped down in front of the first stall. He scaled the slats of the gate and made a clicking sound with the inside of his cheek against his teeth. He balanced on his toes near the top of the gate and reached up to stroke the nose of the Belgian draft horse, light chestnut brown with a creamy white mane. As it thumped ponderously in the straw, Jeremiah rubbed at its wet nose and bristling hairs, then jumped down with a laugh and took the tasseled whip from its hook beside the stall.
He snapped the black whip playfully overhead and grinned, mindful that his Grandfather’s were the very finest of all the Belgians in Holmes County. That was good, not prideful, he thought. Not prideful to admire a good horse. After all, God had made them Himself. And hadn’t Grandfather promised that his time would soon come to work a whip behind them? To learn to plow. To run a harrow. To handle a team of Belgians! A boy should not go to school forever, Grossdaddy had said. Why should a boy be smarter than a father?
As he played with the whip, the unexpected aroma of tobacco drifted Jeremiah’s way. Startled, he remembered the skittish cat and the weird headlights earlier on the lane. He stood tip-toe on the stepstool, took down the glowing lantern, held it high overhead, hesitated a fateful moment, and moved apprehensively toward the far end of the barn.
IN THE milky light of dawn, a small girl in a black bonnet stood on the elevated lawn in front of the Millers’ white frame house. Her bonnet was tied closely against her cheeks, with thin cloth strands under her chin. Her narrow shoulders were draped properly with a black shawl that was knotted loosely in front and covered her hands. In the delicate morning light, her long pleated skirt showed the barest hint of rich peacock blue. She was motionless except for her large, tranquil brown eyes as they followed the headlights of a car approaching on the lane.
The hollow sound of slow tires crushing loose gravel ground to a halt as the car rolled up to a mailbox mounted on the white picket fence. The driver’s window rolled down, revealing police insignias on the sleeve of a blue jacket. The driver reached out and flipped an envelope into the mailbox. As the girl watched silently, the car sped off, throwing gravel, its taillights disappearing into the lingering fog.
2
Thursday, June 18
9:00 A.M.
ON A clear summer morning, Bishop Eli Miller drove his top buggy into town along little-used township roads. The buggy was a one-seater, a boxy, covered affair of the typical Ohio Amish style. The large wooden wheels carried iron rims, not rubber, as was proper among the bishop’s sect of the Old Order. The roll curtains on the side windows were tied up, as was the curtained windshield over the wide dash. The hooves of the horse swung left and right in front of the rig, and struck a steady gait of hollow clicks in the gravel. The horse was well-lathered and had started to tire, but the bishop, in a somber mood, kept after him with an unrelenting whip.
Bishop Miller was dressed in dark blue denim trousers with cloth suspenders, a long-sleeved white shirt, and a collarless black vest with hooks and eyes instead of buttons. He wore precisely the one type of white straw summer hat that was currently approved in his district. To the English who saw him that day, he seemed plain, Amish, nothing more. Certainly no different in dress and demeanor than any Amish man, on any particular day. In Bishop Miller’s district, as for all Old Order Amish, that was the whole point. Look the same, live the same, stay the same. To live every day in tranquillity.
Today, only a few would be any the wiser. Those who, studying his face closely, could have discerned the weeks of anguish in his reddened eyes. Little else betrayed him. Neither his dress nor the buggy. Perhaps only the horse’s unusually brisk pace and heavy lather.
The buggy was entirely flat black. It sported no frills. Nothing in the way of vain decorations, horns, mirrors, paint, shiny metal, or any other of the various ostentations of the more liberal Wayne County Amish congregations to the north. These, he thought, had compromised with the world. Surely in the north, the bishop mused, the Gemei had lost its way.
The narrow wheels of the buggy cut wispy lines into the berm. Miller worked the horse with the reins, staying carefully to the right. A car roared by, shaking the rig in its backdraft. The horse skittered, and he whistled softly and worked the reins to steady him. Another auto blared its horn and sped around. The impatience surprised Miller. Rather, it puzzled him. “English,” he whispered disapprovingly, as a pickup blared behind and passed abruptly. A day spent among them was a trial. “Remember,” his wife had said, “you have not chosen this.” Wise, he thought. And righteous. “Thank you, Lord, for the counsel of a Godly woman,” he prayed.
The deacons, too, had urged him. Use the pastor to approach the professor. If the professor wouldn’t help, maybe the pastor would. Pastor Caleb “Cal” Troyer was known among the plain people. They would trust him, and Professor Branden, too, but no one else. Certainly not the law.
His grip on the reins went limp as he shook his head, lost in thought and prayer. Little Jeremiah had been taken nearly four weeks ago. The burden of his chores had fallen to the other children. And lately the bishop had begun to doubt. The deacons had sensed these doubts in his prayers. He hadn’t spoken of it outright, but still they knew. Doubts about his outcast son bedeviled him endlessly, now, almost as much as the loss of his grandson.
It was the same for his wife, although she never spoke of it. He knew that she never would. That was their way. So it had always been. Es steht geschrieben—it stands written. So it shall always be. From this, he assured himself, they drew strength for the life of separation. For the one true path to salvation.
Bishop Miller found himself staring down blankly at the reins. He forced himself upright and snapped the whip grimly. His son had been lost more than ten years ago. “Lord,” he prayed today, “not my grandson too.”
He had started out before dawn, carefully traveling the remote gravel roads and township lanes in southern Holmes County, heading up out of his Old Order Amish district, toward the city, where greater prosperity had enticed the brethren into easier lives. Into compromises with the world. It was the city that had drawn too many of the brethren away from the paths of righteousness.
Today was Thursday, a day for labor. He’d not normally have forsaken the chores of the farm for a journey into town. But the deacons had agreed. In point of fact, they had urged him to go.
After days of prayer, he had relented. The child had shown promise with the Word. Jeremiah’s gift was to speak of the Book. He’d surely be called, in his day, to be a Diener zum Buch—a preacher. An interpreter of God’s character in the scriptures. And he must not be sacrificed to the world. Not for so much as a single summer.
On the south edge of town, Bishop Miller watered his horse at the buckets set out in front of the Wal-Mart store and pulled the buggy into the parking lot of the Pizza Hut on the other side of the street. He stepped down and around to the back, lifted a faded green canvas feed bag out of the buggy, and walked to the front to hang the bag over the horse’s ears. He tied the reins around a light pole next to a telephone booth, and then he ran his hand along the rump of the horse, reached up into the seat of the buggy, and lifted out his black metal lunch pail.
As he lunched with the horse, a teenage girl came out of the Pizza Hut and sauntered over to the phone booth. She looked him over disdainfully, made a quick call, and then stood impatiently beside the phone until a rusty truck arrived, driven by an older man in a ragged tee-shirt. As she got in, he gunned the engine, popped the clutch, sprayed gravel toward