Growing Up Amish - Ira Wagler [21]
It all came down one fine winter day. My parents had left that morning with an English neighbor to do some shopping. They would be gone all day. My sisters, too, were gone. So only three brothers—Stephen, Titus, and I—were at home. We worked through the morning hours, and at noon, after eating, Stephen disappeared upstairs. There he packed a bag—some clothes, his meager stash of cash.
Then he left. Walking across the snow-covered fields to the south, through the woods to Highway 3. From there, he hitchhiked east. And just like that, he was gone.
Before he left, he handed Titus a note to give to Dad. That afternoon, Titus and I worked uneasily around the farm. We did our evening chores until darkness fell. Around six thirty or so, the car pulled in. Our parents had returned.
We helped carry in the day’s haul: bags of groceries, store-bought ice cream for supper, even some candy and hardware items. Dad proudly unveiled a brand-new Homelite chain saw.
“So Stephen can cut wood with it,” he said. Quickly busying ourselves with the bags and boxes that needed to be put away, neither Titus nor I responded.
The table was set for supper, and Mom bustled about, stirring a pot of soup on the stove. Then Titus nervously disappeared upstairs. When he returned, I knew he had the note. He approached Dad in the living room.
“Here’s a note from Stephen,” he said.
I felt very sorry for Titus, for the hard thing he had to do. It wasn’t right that Stephen asked such a thing of his brother. But then again, what are brothers for, if not to do the occasional hard thing for you? Titus stood there bravely, unflinching, looking right at Dad.
“What . . . what do you mean?” Dad stuttered uncomprehendingly.
“A note,” Titus repeated, thrusting it at Dad. “A note from Stephen. He left today.”
“Ah, my. Oh, no,” Dad groaned, his face darkening. Mom, sensing something was amiss, walked into the living room.
“What’s wrong?” she asked sharply, sensing doom.
“Stephen left today,” Dad told her. “We don’t know where he is, or where he went.”
I lurked behind a curtain in the living room and heard the exclamations of dismay and grief as my parents absorbed the news. Dad’s face was twisted into a furious frown. Mom stood frozen in shock, mouth agape.
All the joy was gone—the treats they had brought us from town, the ice cream and candy, the new chain saw. Dad proclaimed he wasn’t hungry and stomped off to his office. Supper forgotten, her soup simmering forlornly on the stove, Mom walked about with heaving shoulders, sobbing and entreating no one in particular to tell her where her son had gone.
But no one could tell her. Because we didn’t know.
Soon the news flashed through the community. Another of David Wagler’s evil boys had left. Now he had lost three of his children to the world. First Maggie, then Jesse, and now Stephen. Everyone clucked. Why, Stephen had been taking instructions for baptism, with such vile plans lurking in his heart. How fortunate that he had not been baptized.
For my parents, it was one more embarrassing burden to bear. As it always is for Amish parents when a young son leaves. (Or a daughter, although daughters leave much less frequently.) Somehow, even though mostly unspoken, the feeling is that it reflects badly on the parents’ abilities. And their methods of raising children. Maybe if they had been stricter, it wouldn’t have happened. Maybe if they had broken their son’s will way back when he was a child. Maybe this. Maybe that. The regrets, the mental guessing games never stop. When Stephen left, people in the Aylmer church offered sympathy, but who knows what they really thought? Or said among themselves.
Stephen ended up settling in Welland, a small town about an hour east of Aylmer, where he found a job in a factory. He came home to visit now and then, but only when he knew my parents wouldn’t be around, and he vowed never to return home to stay—as long as we lived in Aylmer.
Dad, meanwhile, was in a