Love’s Journey Home (26 page)

Catherine’s journal

July 30

It’s almost daybreak and here I sit on my bed, laptop in front of me, sleepless, exhausted,
but so keyed up it’s impossible to lay my head on my pillow. Another odd night in
a row of many odd nights. My mind keeps going round and round, thinking about Emma’s
new baby and Helen’s assessment of my life and Gabriel Gless’s sad face when he looked
at those little girls. So many images I can’t get out of my head. I can’t even decide
what approach to take to my thesis. I haven’t written a word of the memoir. A rough
draft of the manuscript is due in three months and I haven’t written anything new
since I arrived here. Just these journal entries, fragmented notes, fragmented feelings,
fragmented sentences. Too many new memories crowd the old ones or awaken things I
didn’t remember before, memories I’d hidden under rocks and behind stone walls
.

I couldn’t sleep so I drove out in the country with the windows down and the breeze
cooling my face. I could smell the alfalfa in the fields and hear the bullfrogs singing.
Memories flooded through the windows, nearly taking my breath away. I drove up the
road that leads to a pond on the Glicks’ farm. I wanted to take a walk, wear myself
out, and I remembered that place as being so quiet and peaceful
.

Not anymore
.

I parked along the road and decided to walk to where it dead ends into the pond. The
stars were out and a nearly full moon lit up the sky. I had a flashlight in the glove
compartment, so I grabbed it and decided to throw caution to the winds. How often
did I get to take a stroll on a moonlit night in Wichita? Never
.

As I got closer to the pond, I could hear unexpected sounds. I slowed, surprised,
a little scared. Then I realized it was kids talking and laughing. The high-pitched
chatter of girls mixed with the lower voices of boys trying to sound older than they
were. They weren’t trying to be quiet. I guess they figured no one would be around
at that time of night. In their world, everyone goes to bed when it gets dark. No
electricity. No TV. No reason to stay up. I knew then this was one of those running-around
parties I’d missed in my youth. Back when I thought I would never leave my faith or
my community. There were cars mixed with buggies. The burning ends of cigarettes bobbed
in the night air like fireflies. The music swelled and died away, an old George Strait
song about Amarillo
.

Let them have their fun, I thought. It would end soon enough. Most of them would choose
to be baptized. They’d pick their life’s mate at the age of nineteen or twenty and
spend the rest of their lives in hard labor and parenting. And what’s more, they would
like it. They deserved this little bit of what others would call a normal life. I
started to turn back, but the engine of a car rumbled behind me and headlights flashed
in my eyes. After a minute I could see it was an old beat-up car with rust on the
sides and gray paint in swatches along the doors. Edmond Crouch peered out the window
at me. Edmond Crouch driving a car. I nearly fell over
.

He looked up at me. We stared at each other. He seemed as speechless as I felt. One
of Gabriel Gless’s daughters was in the seat next to him. It took me a minute to pull
her name from the recesses of the things I’d learned since arriving in Bliss Creek
for this visit. A visit that’s seeming less and less like a good idea
.

Abigail. Her name was Abigail
.

Helen Crouch’s son had already had so much trouble with the buggy ride and the DUI.
What was he doing out here in the middle of the night? Not my problem. Without speaking,
I turned and started walking toward my car
.

He called my name
.

I wavered. Mosquitoes buzzed my head. Even at eleven o’clock at night, the heat sweltered
around me and sweat ran down between my shoulder blades. The muggy air coated my face
in droplets of perspiration that trickled down my temples. Let it go, Edmond, I won’t
tell anyone, I wanted to say. But I didn’t. I turned back. He said something to the
girl. She argued softly with him, but after a second, she slid from the car and trotted
up the lane toward the others
.

He asked me to get in. Of course I didn’t. No one in her right mind would get in a
car driven by a sixteen-year-old Amish boy. Still, it was almost comical how proud
he was of the car. I asked how he could drive a car after what had happened with the
buggy. He said he wasn’t allowed to drive a buggy during his probation, but they never
said anything about a car
.

They didn’t think they’d have to tell an Amish boy not to drive a car. Naïve of them
.

Edmond called the car a classic. He and some of the other boys had pooled their money
to buy it off an Englisch farmer who no longer had need of it. They keep it hidden
behind an abandoned barn on the Stoltz property. He told me all about it as if recognizing
that confession is good for the soul. Or because he thinks that since I left the community,
I’m a kindred spirit. I thought of Mudder and Daed and how they died. He assured me
they never take the car on the highway. They don’t have licenses and the car isn’t
registered. So they haven’t completely gone around the bend
.

If things were different, he’d be just another kid learning to drive, a rite of passage
for most sixteen-year-olds. But things aren’t different. He has no one to show him.
No one willing to show him. He learns by doing
.

His hands smoothing the wheel underneath them in a movement almost like a caress,
he asks me the question. He looks up at me the picture of innocence on his whiskerless
face. His skin shines white in the light of the moon. He looks so earnest and so young.
He and his friends think driving a car without a license and smoking make them English.
I don’t have the heart to tell him those things only make them young and stupid, a
universal, but not irreversible, condition
.

I take out my camera and ask him if I may take his picture. He considers. It will
be evidence of the depth of his running-around. By the same token, it
is
his running-around. He grins and nods. I snap the shots of his face shining through
the open car window. He gets out and leans against it
. Snap. Snap.
We walk down the road to the others. They consider my question, talk among themselves,
then nod at me. I take pictures of them laughing and talking. They seem like average
teenagers. And they are, for the most part. Less worldly, no doubt. They want to think
they’re doing something rebellious and out of line, but most of them will go no further.
They won’t cross lines Englisch teenagers cross every day. Most of them will turn
their backs on this phase of their lives, choose their faith, be baptized, and go
on to be good Plain folks. Like my parents and my sisters and brothers. They’re good
kids
.

Edmond wants me to take him back to Wichita with me when I go
.

The exception to the rule. Like me
.

How can I help him into a life like mine?

Of course I tell him no. Under no circumstances. He’s only sixteen. I urge him to
talk to Josiah about what it was like to be apart from family, living in a big city
at such a young age. He claims he has. I doubt Josiah intended for Edmond to find
his stories to be like notes from the Pied Piper’s flute, luring him to a fate he
can’t begin to imagine
.

How could I tell him? When the excitement dies away, what’s left is an excruciating
loneliness. A sense of desolation. A longing for something familiar. An aching loss.
He’ll long for the smell of fry pies cooking and the clatter of the dishes in the
tub and the familiar sound of the hymns from the
Ausbund.
He’ll want the taste of fresh milk on his tongue and the feel of crackling hay between
his fingers. It’ll all be gone, lost in the cacophony of the traffic and the spewing
fumes of the buses and the taste of metallic, bitter convenience store coffee
.

The look on his face. It seemed so familiar. Like a memory etched on my brain. It
was the look I had on my face when I gazed into the tiny, cracked mirror Emma held
in her hand on my wedding day. That horrified realization that I had allowed myself
to become trapped. I’d awakened in someone else’s skin and somehow had to find my
way out
.

Edmond’s only sixteen. He’s not of age
.

Taking him away would only compound my sins in the eyes of my family and this community
.

He’s not old enough to make this decision
.

He’s only sixteen
.

Yet, I see his face in my mind’s eye and I wonder: How can I leave him here?

No wonder I can’t sleep
.