The Amish Groom ~ Men of Lancaster County Book 1 (8 page)

Even after Brady was older, our lives were just so different that it was often hard to relate. I loved him, of course, and it was easy to see he looked up to me, but sometimes it took the first day or two of my visits there just to relax and grow comfortable together again. I knew he enjoyed having his big brother around, and it hit me with new clarity that my life had been made much richer by the aunt and uncles I’d grown up with, all of whom had been like siblings to me.

Since coming here to live, I’d always been surrounded by other kids, but what of Brady? Except when I visited, he was the only child living in their home, which had to be a lonely state indeed—especially given that our father was not one to show emotion unless it involved the acquisition of a new muscle car, the only thing Dad had a passion for outside his former military life. And Liz? She was polite and hospitable, but she always seemed to be on her guard, as if she were hesitant to be her true self. I didn’t know if she was that way all the time or just around me, but if it was the former, then it was no wonder Brady looked forward to having me in the house for a few weeks each summer. There was much he had that I didn’t, but I saw now that that was true in the reverse as well.

When Timber and I reached the stables, I paused at the supply closet to serve up some dog chow and then used the hose to rinse out his water bowl and refill it. After that, I moved the rest of the way inside and turned my attention to Jake, who had obviously been going through his duties at record speed. I was feeling a little more up to conversation by that point, but he was so antsy that we barely spoke. Instead, he finished picking each horse’s hooves while I drained the watering trough, scrubbed it out, and filled it back up again.

Jake had already dumped the grain into the feeding trough before I got there, so as the horses had their fill of water, I opened the broad double doors to the pasture. The animals were usually eager to get outside, but this time several of them hung back, as if they knew Jake was leaving today. The stalls needed mucking out, however, so finally I insisted on taking over, telling Jake to go on back to the house, that he and his mopey animals were in my way.

“Thanks, Tyler,” he said without a hint of his usual sarcasm. He tried to shoo the animals out, but as he patted down the one who lingered, he called out to me a laundry list of things I was not to forget about caring for his beloved horses while he was gone—from keeping an eye on the pasture for a particular invasive clover that was toxic to horses if ingested to checking them daily for bites and sores and rashes. None of it was news to me.

Finally, he headed out, pausing at the doorway to turn back. “You’ll take good care of them for me?” he asked. He’d been a good farrier, and I knew he would become a great blacksmith as well.

“They’ll never even know you’re gone,” I replied, though he and I were both well aware that wasn’t true. He had a way with horses I would never master, no matter how hard I tried.

I managed to finish the rest of the chores by myself, and then I returned to the house for a delicious breakfast of fresh sausage and banana pancakes. That was followed by the reading of a psalm and prayers for the day, and then I headed to the shop.

My morning was spent on finish work to a buggy that was nearly complete. When the detailing was done, I straightened up my work area and then went in search of Jake. I found him in the driveway, beside the family buggy, his backpack slung over one shoulder and a large duffel bag at his feet.

I grabbed the duffel and threw it onto the rear seat of the vehicle as he stepped toward
Mammi
to give her a hug.
Daadi
tightened the harness on the horse as the animal lazily chewed on the bit in his mouth.

“There are two sandwiches in the bag for when you get hungry and a slice of coconut cake leftover from the wedding,”
Mammi
said as she pulled Jake in and squeezed him tight.

“
Danke, Mamm
.”

Daadi
came around to where Jake and
Mammi
stood, placed a hand on Jake’s shoulder, and bowed his head. “ ‘Be of good comfort, be of one mind, live in peace; and the God of love and peace shall be with you,’ ” he said, quoting from the book of Second Corinthians. Then he clasped Jake to his chest.

“
Danke, Daed
.” Jake returned his father’s embrace.

I climbed onto the driver’s seat as Jake said his final farewells.

He stepped aboard, resting his backpack on the floor, and gave his parents a final wave as we moved down the driveway and set off at an easy canter along the main road. A few other buggies were also out and about, some no doubt headed over to the Bowman farm. Only a few cars passed us at first, but the closer to town we got, the more the automobile traffic increased.

I was bringing Jake to a stop on the New Holland line, where he would catch the local to Lancaster then switch over to Greyhound for the day-and-a-half ride to Missouri.

We talked about nothing in particular as we made our way, but when we were just a few blocks from the bus station, his voice took on a more serious tone. “Tyler, are you okay with my leaving the buggy business? I never asked you. And things will be different when I get back.”

“Of course I am. I know how much you want to do this, Jake. We all do.”

He regarded me for a moment. “You don’t have to stay with the buggies either, you know.
Daed
would understand if there was something else you wanted to do.”

I had been trained on nearly every facet of the buggy-making process, from welding the axles to upholstering the seats to installing the hydraulics for the brakes. I had been working alongside
Daadi
every weekday, all day, since my schooling ended when I was fourteen. It was the most familiar thing in the world to me.

“What else would I do?”

Jake laughed, but gently. “What do you
want
to do?”

I turned my head to look at him before swinging my attention back to the road in front of me. “Why are we talking about this?”

He shrugged. “I know you’ve had a lot on your mind lately. I thought maybe it had something to do with my leaving the buggy shop.”

“Oh. No.”

“Okay. Good.” He was quiet for a moment. “Do you and Rachel have a problem?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“You want to tell me what it is, then?”

I did and I didn’t. I wasn’t sure I could articulate what was on my mind, especially after yesterday’s mishandled conversation with Rachel. But I knew I couldn’t keep it in much longer, so finally I gave it a try.

“I don’t know what it is exactly, but I’ve been feeling restless lately. Like there’s something out here I am supposed to be doing or looking for.” He knew I meant out in the non-Amish world. The world outside.

“And you don’t have any idea what that might be?” He didn’t seem shocked or surprised, and I was glad.

“I don’t. But I can feel something tugging at me, Jake. And I think…this is going to sound crazy, but I think it might be God. Pulling me to the outside.”

“That doesn’t sound crazy at all.”

He couldn’t have understood what I meant. “I’m talking about feeling that God wants me
out there
!”

He nodded. “I get it, Tyler. Like I said, not crazy.”

I signaled for a turn and eased the buggy into the left lane. “Well, it feels crazy.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

“I don’t know. But I can’t go to the bishop and tell him I want to become a church member when I’m feeling this way.” I made the left turn and the car behind me zoomed past as soon as it could.

“No. Of course you can’t.”

“And that means I can’t ask Rachel to…I can’t…”

“I know what it means. And you’re right. You need to settle this first.”

I looked over at my uncle, envious for a moment that he had already made his membership vows and was now headed out to learn a trade he’d been longing to pursue for years.

“But I don’t even know where to start.” I motioned to the busy streets, the cars, the people on the sidewalks with their cell phones in hand, the humming buzz of activity that was everything the Amish world was not. “I get out here and I sense no direction. And I just can’t see how God would be drawing me to look for something when I don’t know what it is or where I should begin. That’s not like Him at all.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

We were just half a block from the bus stop and Jake reached for his backpack. He slung it over his shoulder.

“God calls people out of the familiar all the time when He wants to teach them something new.”

“Okay, maybe He does. But the problem is that when I’m here, I feel a restlessness to be out there. But when I’m out there, all I want to do is get back here. It’s like I don’t belong in either place.”

I pulled on the reins and my horse obeyed. We slowed to a stop.

“You know you need to talk to
Daed
about this.” Jake stepped down and reached into the back to retrieve his duffel.

I sighed heavily. “I know. I’ve been putting it off. I don’t want him to think I’m like…that I’m just like my mother. That I want to leave. I’m afraid I’ll hurt him the way she did.”

He shook his head. “That was different, Tyler. She was raised Amish, but they have always known that the outside world was a part of…” He gestured blindly, trying to state the obvious without putting it in a way that would sound mean. I knew what he was saying, that the outside world had been a part of my past—and a potential for my future—since the day I was born.

Jake leaned forward across the passenger seat to clasp my hand, meeting my eyes with a firm gaze as we shook. “Talk to
Daed.
He’s a very wise man.”

“I know. You’re right. Have a great time in Missouri.”

Releasing his grip, he stood up straight, shifting the weight of his pack. “Tell
Mamm
I’ll call the shop phone when I get settled.”

“
Ya.
”

“See you in February?”

I nodded. I very much hoped he would see me in February. He stepped out onto the street and then turned back to face me.

“So you’ll talk to him?” His eyes were filled with brotherly concern.

“I’ll talk to him.”

Jake shut the buggy door, patted the horse goodbye, and turned to wave as he walked off. I watched until he joined the handful of people already at the bus stop, some chatting on cell phones, a few smoking, the rest simply staring off into the distance.

Turning my eyes from the scene and swallowing hard, I waited for a lull in the traffic and in my racing thoughts before signaling and easing the buggy back on the road.

I spent the rest of the day at the Bowmans’, silently beseeching God to help me find the right words to tell
Daadi
I was struggling with something I hardly knew how to describe. I was also praying He would show me the right time for that conversation to happen. God answered my second prayer first. Actually, He answered only that prayer.

The next afternoon, back at the buggy shop, everyone was either done for the day or working outside in the covered bay, and
Daadi
and I ended up inside alone. It was obviously a great time to have a quiet conversation with him, but I had no ready words at my disposal.

His final task of the day was to mount a new set of tires on a courting buggy. As he did that, I worked in the space next to his, adding extra suspension to the rear axle of a new top wagon.
Daadi
slid the first tire on the back axle and then pulled out a wrench and began tightening the nuts. Glancing his way, I could almost feel God whispering over my shoulder.

This is the time you prayed for.

Pausing in my work, I cleared my throat. “
Daadi
, I need to talk to you for a minute.”

“Oh?” He looked relaxed and unfazed, his eyes on the task at hand.

“I’m struggling with something, and I don’t even know how to put it into words.”

He stopped turning the wrench and gave me his full attention. “Have you done something you regret, son?”

“No. No, it’s nothing like that.”

He began to turn the wrench again, perhaps sensing it would be easier for me if we kept working while I stumbled through what I needed to say. “Tell me what’s on your mind.”

And so I told him, as near as I could, what I had admitted to Rachel and Jake, what I had been sensing lately when I went to the pond on early mornings, and how I had begun to feel that God Himself was beckoning me from beyond Lancaster County—though for whatever reason I couldn’t imagine.
Daadi
continued to mount the tires as I talked, pausing now and then as I spoke but saying nothing.