Growing Up Amish - Ira Wagler [39]
We called an English friend from Bloomfield to pick us up and take us home. Around dusk that evening, we pulled into the long drive that led to my family’s farm. I stepped out, lugging my faithful black duffel bag—the same one I’d carried down the lane the previous April. Slowly I walked up the concrete walkway to the house.
Mom met me at the door. She smiled in welcome. My younger siblings, Rhoda and Nathan, clamored about excitedly. The older children were all at the Sunday evening singing. Dad was in his little office, typing away. Eventually, he heard the bustle of excitement and walked out to the living room. By then I was downstairs in the bedroom, unpacking.
As I walked back upstairs to the kitchen, I met him on the landing, halfway up. We paused in the semidarkness and faced each other.
“Ira.” It was a half question, tinged with disbelief.
“Hello, Dad,” I said.
“You came home.” His voice quivered slightly.
“Yep,” I grunted.
I walked on up. And he walked out. There just wasn’t a whole lot to say.
* * *
I didn’t particularly have my pulse on Bloomfield’s gossip lines at the time, but I’m sure the news swept through the community very quickly. Two of the six outlaws had returned. Ira and Mervin.
We were back inside the box and the perceived safety of that world. Back to what we had left, not that long ago, in search of adventure and freedom. Back to the world of horse and buggy, barn-door pants, and galluses—and a whole lot more. The world of home. We settled in uneasily.
Those first few weeks were strange, almost surreal. We were forced back into the slow pace of Amish life. No more trucks. No more running to town on Saturday nights. No more hanging out with the English girls of Valentine. We worked on the farm. Attended church on Sundays. The singings on Sunday nights. The other youth welcomed us. Whatever they thought inside, they were friendly enough.
But home, I soon discovered, wasn’t quite the same. It would never be again. And I could never truly return, even as I participated in the community, its life and customs. On one hand, I loved the camaraderie, the feeling of belonging. But, wherever I was at any given moment, the grass always seemed greener on the other side. When I was home, I heard the siren’s song of the outside world. I had followed that song into that outside world until the memories of home had tugged at my heart and pulled me back.
Always I grasped, with tenacious grip, at the anticipation of something rare, something great and grand and fine. Something beyond.
I grasped for tomorrow, with its visions of splendor and a shining city. I dreamed of adventures in strange and distant lands, and of a brighter future of happiness and contentment that always seemed to be just beyond the tip of my outstretched hand.
I would find it tomorrow. Always tomorrow.
16
Mervin Gingerich and I slowly settled into the rhythm of what passed for normal life in Bloomfield. But I had a sinking feeling in my stomach, a sense of quiet desperation. I didn’t think about it much, but it was there. Desperation and tinges of despair. Deep down. Way deep down.
I went through the motions. I worked hard that fall on the farm. Harvesting corn. Plowing the fields behind jangling teams of horses. The world I had inhabited a few short months before in Valentine now seemed far away, in both miles and time.
On the surface, I’m sure I seemed like a normal eighteen-year-old kid, with normal teenage issues. And I fooled most of the people, most of the time. I smiled and laughed, at least in public.
Mervin seemed to genuinely settle in and settle down, and we still hung out on Sundays. Meanwhile, our four buddies remained in Valentine, doing who knows what. I thought of them a lot.
And then, sometime in September, word trickled in and quickly spread through the youth grapevine—the four remaining rebels were coming back home.
They returned a few weeks later—a group of four swashbuckling kids, mildly subdued but still defiant, sporting long hair and worldly haircuts. By then I had reverted to