Between Two Promises (11 page)

But the differences left gaping potholes.

And what about Daniel? How lengthy were his roots implanted in his Amish world? Were they too strong for even Aiden to yank him free?

Chapter Eight

“I
T
’
S
TIME
for slap-a-pig,” shouted a man after everyone had consumed the afternoon meal and most of the older guests, including the ministers, had left the reception.

Some of the men waved their hands in front of their faces and backed off, flushing and grinning. Others seemed eager and made their way for the sitting room, where the fun was to take place.

Aiden, standing in the hallway next to Daniel, looked up at him. “What in the world is slap-a-pig?”

Shrugging, Daniel said, “It’s a game we Illinois Amish sometimes play at weddings. You probably won’t like it much.”

“Why? How does the game go?”

Mark, who had been standing behind them, cut in and explained the rules to Aiden. “Someone is blindfolded and then bent over a chair. Another person is chosen to swat his backside. The person who got swatted then has to figure out who did it. They ask ‘Veir’ar es?’, ‘Who was it?’ and try to figure it out. If he gets it right, the person who did the swatting takes a turn over the chair. If he guesses wrong, he has to do it all over again. Sometimes the person never gets it right, and his rump is smacked raw.”

“Why’s the game called slap-a-pig?” Aiden asked, his head filling with trepidation.

“Farmers slap pigs to get them moving from place to place,” Mark said. “They use leather pig slappers, but we use our bare hands for this game, so don’t you worry.” He chuckled and joined the growing throng of men and boys, and a few women and girls, who blushed and giggled with their hands over their mouths. They scooted aside benches and tables. A young man dragged a ladder-back chair to the center of the room.

Aiden backed away. But Daniel could not escape. Hands came at him from every direction and grabbed him.

“Come on,” one man said. “We played at your wedding. Don’t you remember, Daniel?”

Flushing and grinning, Daniel peeled his friends’ hands off him. “I don’t want to play this shussly game.” But Daniel’s protests were to no avail. He was scooted next to a group of men who stared at the ominous lone chair in the middle of the room with large grins. Aiden hesitantly followed and stood next to Daniel.

“Who goes first?” someone asked.

“The groom always goes first,” a voice from the crowd shouted.

Objecting lightheartedly, Mark let his friends drag him to the chair. Choking back laughs, they tied a blindfold over his eyes and placed him in position: hands on backrest, knees on seat, butt in air.

With everyone hushed, the first man chosen to slap Mark’s behind stepped up to the chair. Brandishing his large hand to the chuckling crowd, he wound up his arm as if he were about to pitch a baseball and whacked Mark hard against his rear. Mark wailed, followed by the room breaking out into harmonious laughter. Rubbing his backside, he untied the blindfold and looked around with a sneer.

“Veir’ar es?”

He picked a man, but he was the incorrect one. Laughing, his friends repeated the steps from before, blindfolding him and getting him into position over the chair.

Another man stepped up, large and muscular. The bystanders muffled their thrill. The brawny man whacked Mark harder than the first one, as Mark’s robust squeal of pain proved. A wave of giggles rippled throughout the room. He stripped off the blindfold and peered around, this time looking genuinely annoyed.

“Veir’ar es?” he grunted.

To the delight of the bystanders, he again chose the wrong culprit—Daniel. Not a bad guess, considering Daniel and the man who had whacked Mark were about the same stature.

“Sorry,” Daniel said with a shrug.

“This is my last turn,” Mark said defiantly while his friends placed him in position. “I don’t care if I pick wrong or not.”

“The game doesn’t go like that,” one of his friends said, chuckling.

“Now he knows what a wayward pig feels like,” another said. A round of hearty guffaws broke loose.

Aiden watched the game unfold. Whether they were Amish or English, weddings seemed the same. From his observations at the weddings he’d attended, they brought out a strange sexual ambiguity among males. Apparently the Amish were no different.

He theorized that since weddings were, in a sense, a celebration and affirmation of heterosexuality, homoeroticism was displayed with less inhibition or censure. At one friend’s wedding, he recalled another homoerotic reception game that involved a blindfold and a chair. The groom, blindfolded and seated in a chair in the center of the room, was told he had to put the garter on his new wife, using only his mouth. But, to the delight of everyone, with the groom’s eyes concealed, his crafty friends switched the wife with one of their male buddies. When the groom took off his blindfold to discover who was wearing the garter, he was surprised but relieved that the unusually hairy and bulky leg belonged to, not his new wife, but one of his male friends.

Once at his sister’s wedding, when he was nineteen, he had stood agape alongside a group of women watching the best man and a male friend kiss fully on the lips, while the women cheered them on. Some of the more gregarious women had shouted, “Use your tongues! Use your tongues!” and the two buddies, their arms wrapped firmly around each other, had obliged.

He had experienced this often at the weddings he’d been to. Straight men would ask him to dance, and often they’d get frisky, begging for a kiss in front of everyone, drunk or not. He doubted the Amish would go that far. Nonetheless, the same, almost unintentional, sexual games seemed to prevail. Homoeroticism bubbled up as naturally at wedding receptions as geysers at Yellowstone. Heavy amounts of alcohol consumption during the more traditional American wedding receptions never hurt.

The room quieted. This time, David took a turn at swatting his brother’s behind. He glanced around impishly and, scrunching his face, tried to whack Mark as hard as the two men before him. David scurried next to one of the taller men and waited for Mark to make his choice. Like the other two times, Mark failed to pick the correct culprit. He chose another boy about David’s age. When the crowd identified David, Mark, obviously in pain at this point, warned his younger brother with a smirk and finger pointing he would seek revenge.

Blindfolded and bent back over the chair, Mark insisted whoever was to strike next get it over with. Heidi, who had been enjoying the game along with the others, took Aiden by the arm and silently nudged him toward Mark. Her blue eyes brimmed with mischief. Aiden held back and looked to Daniel for help. Daniel merely shrugged.

With the urging of the crowd, Aiden gave in to Heidi’s light pushing. Blood rushed to his cheeks. Embarrassed, he stood before Mark, trying to keep from staring at his backside. Inhaling deeply, he looked away and gave Mark a halfhearted slap. He backed off quickly and stood next to Daniel.

Seconds after taking off the blindfold, Mark guessed right.

“I figured Aiden would be the most hesitant to lay one on me,” Mark said, laughing and pointing. “Besides, he’s redder than a beet.”

Aiden did not fully understand what was happening until he found himself steered to the center of the room. In an instant, he remembered the rules. Whoever was identified correctly had to take a turn at the chair.

Blood seared his cheeks. He begged to abstain. The crowd heard nothing of his lamenting. A series of “uh-ohs” further shook his nerves. What exactly would they do to him? He prayed they’d go easy on him. Would they strike him extra hard for his being an Englisher? Would they take out their frustrations on him for his butting into the Kyle Yoder affair, or any other host of reasons they might have against him?

Someone wielded the blindfold, and despite Aiden’s protests, the man tied the bandana snugly around his eyes, near covering his entire face. Darkness engulfed him. He adjusted the mothball-smelling bandana, moist with Mark’s perspiration, to breathe more easily.

A set of hands turned him around and manipulated him onto the wooden chair. An adolescent boy with a cackling voice instructed him to kneel over the chair. “Now grab onto the back and stay put.”

The hands left him, and he underwent a sudden sensation of freefalling. Disoriented, he grabbed more firmly onto the chair’s back to brace himself. He grimaced for what was to come. How ridiculous must he look with his butt jutting out at a party of Amish people? He wanted to cry and laugh at the same time. The room quieted. A serious air surrounded him. Whispers floated around his barely exposed ears. People were giggling and hushing each other. They were deciding who would be the first to strike.

The moment Aiden relaxed, wondering if they would ever pick someone, he jerked from the heated blow.

Whack!

A wobbly moan came out of his mouth instead of the chortle he had planned. Hearty laughter reverberated around him. He rubbed his behind, burning as if it had been dragged across hot cement.

“Now you have to take off your blindfold and ask ‘Veir’ar es?’” he heard Mark jovially instruct him from somewhere in the crowd.

With both sets of cheeks burning now, he peeled off the blindfold and, shaky and uncertain, faced the chortling crowd. He looked at the contorted and flushing faces around him, male and female. His smile must’ve looked branded onto his face. He had no idea who might’ve swatted him. He was certain he’d be bent over that hard wooden chair for the rest of the afternoon, until the seat of his pants smoldered like embers.

“Umm… well… veir’ar es?”

His first utterance caused a small outbreak of guffaws. He strived to judge who had struck him by studying everyone’s faces. Intent now, he scanned the room, peering into each person’s eyes, watchful of any clues. Which one had the guiltiest look?

Daniel? But Daniel always looked guilty. Especially lately. Besides, he was well familiar with Daniel’s butt slaps. He often slapped Aiden during their lovemaking. This slap had not been one of his.

But the more he scrutinized Daniel, the more he realized his expression was a bit different. He looked… jealous. Yes, Daniel was jealous. Jealous that another man had swatted Aiden’s behind.

He noticed Daniel shoot a piercing glance at a handsome man standing by the window, his hands deep in his pockets. He was Heidi’s burly cousin from Texas. His face was drawn with forced gravity, his head turned askew, as if he were doing his best to avoid eye contact with anyone, particularly Aiden. Body language never lied, Aiden told himself.

Lifting his head with a boastful grin, he pointed a finger at the man and declared, “You, you slapped me!”

“How did you know?” Heidi screamed. A few men approached Aiden and patted his back. They expressed their admiration that an Englisher could play the game as well as any Amish man. He had been one of the few who’d ever guessed right the first try.

While Heidi’s cousin was lugged to the chair and blindfolded among his friends’ loud chatter and laughter, Aiden and Daniel exchanged glances. This time, Aiden shrugged. Daniel scowled and folded his arms across his chest.

Chapter Nine

S
OILED
hay spilled from the wheelbarrow as he dumped it into the compost by the horse pen. The smell of manure and decomposition reached to his nostrils. He held back a gag. It was around nine in the morning, the day after Mark and Heidi’s wedding. Temperatures hovered in the high thirties. To Aiden, it might as well have been in the nineties. Sweat soaked his clothes, despite his silver breath. He had been helping Moriah and David clean the stalls from the wedding guests’ stabled horses, and the stench of livestock dung hung so thick in the air he could taste it.

The work exhausted him. His gloved hands labored to grasp the wheelbarrow’s wooden handles. He stumbled, pushing the wheelbarrow back to the barn. He hoped none of the children noticed his waning. Mark and Heidi were lucky enough to be out visiting relatives and friends. And he envied Grace and Elisabeth, who were helping Rachel scrub the house from top to bottom after its being muddied from the guests.