Growing Up Amish - Ira Wagler [82]
Phillip replied almost immediately, and I knew his response before even reading it. Phillip and his wife, Fannie, would be delighted to put me up and provide room and board. He was certain I’d be able to find work in the area, and he wanted me to know that he and his wife were eager to have me.
I read the words he wrote. Absorbed them. I had taken the first step, the exploratory step. Now the offer lay there before me in black and white. The doors seemed to be opening for my return. All I had to do was walk through.
Although that was just about the last thing I wanted to do, the invisible force of raw fear compelled me to seriously consider an option so repulsive. This was a chance to redeem myself. To return. If not to Bloomfield, then at least to the fold of the mother church. Return and make good.
It wasn’t easy, considering going back. But it wasn’t easy, either, to consider the alternative, an eternity in hellfire. Pretty scary stuff. This was my last chance, I figured. I was twenty-five years old. If I didn’t make a decision soon, it would be too late. The desire to return would leave me. And like Cain, I would wander the earth alone. Lost. With no mark on my forehead for protection.
I thought it through for a week or two. Or three. Then, in February, through sheer force of will, I made my decision. I would return, for one last try. One last attempt to make it as an Amish person. Strangely, my decision did little to relieve my inner tension. I wrote back to Phillip. I would move up in June, which somehow seemed like a safe distance. But I knew it would come soon enough. I told my friends of my decision. And Nathan. Of the choice I had made—again. He said little, but he supported me. If that’s what I wanted, then that’s what I should do. They all, I think, recognized instantly and instinctively that it would not work.
I tried to put it out of my mind and focus on the time I had left on the outside. June lurked out there in the distance like a Montana mountain storm, approaching slowly, relentlessly, soon to be unleashed with savage force.
It was only a matter of time. From that point, the days passed at hyperspeed. Soon March rolled around, then April. I wanted to return to Alberta and help Ben Walters with the planting that spring, so I packed up and left Florida. Nathan wanted to settle in Daviess for a while, so I dropped him off on the way. After a few days of hanging out with the Wagler family and other friends, I headed for Alberta.
On the way, I passed close to Bloomfield, so I stopped for a few days. I don’t know why, particularly. To see family, I guess. I told them of my plans to settle in northern Indiana and rejoin the Amish church there. I don’t know why they would have thought it would be any different this time, but they believed me. My parents smiled with joy. I was returning to the fold. That’s all that mattered. Whatever I had done in the past could be overlooked, forgiven, if only I returned.
After a day or two, the Drifter and I headed into the Dakotas and then on into Canada. Ben and Donna welcomed me. By the next day, I was driving a four-wheel-drive tractor as big as a house, pulling an eighty-foot-wide harrow across the fields. For days and weeks on end, I tilled the vast fields of southern Alberta.
All too soon, in late May, it was finished. And June approached. I fought the sinking feeling in my stomach, the dreaded thought of returning. But I held fast to the plan. There was no backing out. This was my last chance. It had to work this time. It simply had to. There was no other choice.
I sold the Drifter in Lethbridge to one of my friends from the previous