The Road Home

by Patrick E. Craig

  Bobby looked at Reuben. There were tears brimming in his eyes. Reuben quickly wiped them away with his sleeve.

  “Okay, Reuben,” he said, “I’ll do what I can. But Jenny is headstrong. I may not be able to keep her from finding things out on her own.”

  “I’ll worry about that part,” Reuben said. “I’m only asking you to intervene if she comes to you. I’m not asking you to lie, I’m just asking that you not volunteer information or lead her down a path that will start her thinking. She’s a very intelligent girl, and if she gets on a scent, she is relentless. I know it’s awkward for you because I also know how much you love her too.”

  Bobby took a bite of his turkey and sat silently chewing it. “If Jenny asks, I’ll only tell her what she could read in the newspaper. After all, she works at the library, and if what you say is true about her determination to find her birth parents, she’s probably already way ahead of me. I won’t volunteer any information, but that’s about all I can do.”

  “That’s enough for now,” Reuben replied. “And I thank you for your help.”

  Bobby poured some cream into his coffee and stirred it thoughtfully. “Sure, Reuben, it’s not a problem. I want the best for her too.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  A Helping Hand

  JOHNNY DROVE SLOWLY AROUND THE BLOCK and then circled it again, trying to find that Amish girl he had almost hit. After a while he gave up and turned the van back onto Walnut Street and headed in the direction Jenny had pointed. She had said the sheriff’s office was at the corner of Walnut and North. After he had driven a few blocks he came to North Street and saw the building across the street.

  Johnny pulled up to the curb. He wanted to get out and go in and tell the first person he saw about what had happened in San Francisco, but the possibility of being put in jail himself dampened his enthusiasm. He started to open the van door but paused, debating whether he should really do this. Things seemed a little less urgent in the daylight.

  As he sat there he heard a car pull up behind him. His heart jumped, and he looked back. A big man in a large Stetson hat, dark sunglasses, with a gun on his hip was getting out of a sheriff’s cruiser. The man walked slowly up to the van and stood by the window as Johnny rolled it down.

  “Yes, officer, can I help you?”

  “Got any ID, son?” the sheriff asked.

  “Idee ’bout what?” Johnny asked.

  The officer stared at him impassively.

  “It’s a joke, officer,” Johnny said as he reached into his coat pocket for his wallet. He opened it, took out his New York driver’s license, and handed it to the officer. He noticed that the big man had a nametag that read Bull pinned to his light-brown shirt.

  Appropriate!

  “You’re a long way from home, son. Which way are you headed?”

  “Well, actually, officer, I’m headed to Nashville,” Johnny lied. “I’ve got some gigs down there playing with a band.”

  “I didn’t know they had any psycho-dylic bands in Nashville.” The officer attempted to smile at what he obviously thought was a joke, but the expression was more frightening than friendly.

  “Oh, don’t be fooled by this outfit, officer,” Johnny smiled. He lied again. “I’ve been out in San Francisco, and I wore these clothes while I was playing in the coffeehouses. This is not really my thing.”

  “Well, if it’s not your thing maybe you should change it to a more inconspicuous thing because you certainly attracted my attention, young man,” Bull said. “We don’t see many folks dressed like you or driving such an artistically decorated vehicle around here. If you pass muster with me, I would suggest you follow your dream and head on down to Nashville. Not a lot of tolerance around here for hippies.”

  “Have I done something wrong, officer?”

  Without looking up from Johnny’s license, the sheriff pointed silently to a sign on a pole next to the van. NO STOPPING AT ANY TIME.

  “Wait here while I run your ID.”

  Johnny watched as the big man walked back to his car. The fear of the police among the drug users in San Francisco caused a familiar paranoia to close in on him. It occurred to him that he might be going to jail whether he wanted to or not. In about five minutes Bull came back. He handed Johnny’s license back through the window.

  “Well, no warrants or tickets as far as I can tell, but then we don’t have access to all the modern tools. Now like I said, Wooster is a small town, and you might not fit in here very well. Nashville seems like the place for you, and I would go there ASAP. I’m not going to give you a ticket because that would mean you would have to stick around for traffic court, so a big window of opportunity to move on just opened up for you, son, and if I were you, I’d drive through it.”

  “I would like to, officer, but I have a small problem,” Johnny said. “You see, back down the street a girl in funny clothes stepped out in front of me while I was making a turn. I don’t think she was watching where she was going, and I had to swerve to keep from hitting her. I ran up on the curb, and I think I bent my suspension. Do you know a shop where I might get it looked at?”

  Bull looked at Johnny suspiciously.

  “The best shop is Dutch’s in Apple Creek. It’s about eight miles. Can you make it?”

  “I think so,” Johnny said. “How do I get there?”

  Bull pointed back down Walnut. “Go down Walnut to Liberty and turn left. Then turn right on Bever Street. That’ll put you on 302 South. Keep going until you see the Apple Creek sign. About a block past that is a Quonset hut on the left. That’s Dutch’s place. He’ll get you fixed up.”

  “That’s interesting, officer,” Johnny said. “The girl I met back there said she lived in Apple Creek. She was Amish, but she said her uncle was the sheriff. Are you her uncle?”

  “Oh, no,” Bull smiled, “that would be my boss, Sheriff Bobby. And the girl must have been Jenny Springer. Real pretty, right?”

  “Amazing,” Johnny said. “But she didn’t seem to like me much.”

  Bull laughed out loud. “Bad luck, boy. One of the things we’ve all learned in Wooster is not to get on Jenny’s bad side. She’s a real sweet gal most of the time, but she doesn’t take much to fools. Not to say that you’re a fool or anything. Oh, and speaking of funny clothes…”

  Bull looked at Johnny’s outfit and smiled again. Then he motioned back down Walnut Street. “Dutch closes early these days, so I’d get going if I were you. Good luck.”

  Bull turned and walked back to the cruiser. He was laughing. Johnny could hear him say something about Jenny Springer and laugh some more. Suddenly Johnny felt very out of place. He turned the engine over and put the van in gear. Bull pulled out and passed him. Johnny could see that he was still laughing.

  Johnny headed out of town, trying to remember Bull’s directions. Back down Walnut, left on Liberty, right on Bever, and follow the road to Apple Creek.

  The countryside was beautiful, but Johnny wasn’t able to admire much of it as he slowly nursed his van along the road. It was a lovely day, and a nip of fall was in the air. The smell of fallen leaves and wet earth and freshly burned wheat stubble, something he remembered from his childhood adventures to the farm country around his grandfather’s place at South Hampton, wafted in through the half-open window. Then Johnny saw something that grabbed his attention.

  Up ahead on the right-hand side of the road, a group of men were working together in a large hayfield. They were harvesting and baling the hay, but they weren’t using tractors or gas-powered machinery. Instead, a team of horses pulled their baler through the field. A man out front with a horse-drawn hay cutter was mowing down the greenish-brown hay. Behind him, another piece of machinery was raking the hay into long rows. And at the end of the line, a big machine was being pulled by four horses. It was scooping up the hay, baling it, and then dumping the bales onto a large flatbed wagon following close behind.

  But it wasn’t the machinery that attracted Johnny’s attention. It was the men o
perating the machines. They wore straw hats with wide brims and overalls or jeans with blue shirts. None of the men had mustaches, but most of them had beards.

  Johnny pulled over and got out of the van. He walked to the fence and stared at the scene. There were men of all ages in the group. An old man with a long white beard operated the cutter. Behind him younger men with dark beards drove the horse teams as boys walked alongside them. It seemed to Johnny that the men were teaching the boys as they moved through the field, pointing to the row of hay and calling the boys’ attention to the teams of horses and machines as they walked. It was strange, but these were like the men he had seen in his vision or dream or whatever it was that night in San Francisco.

  Johnny watched intently as the long file of machines turned the corner of the big field and came along the fence line. They obviously had just started working this particular field because they only had a few swaths cut and baled. As they passed close by him, Johnny heard some of the men singing.

  “Lassen Sie ihn, der gelegen hat, seine Hand auf dem Pflug nicht sehen sich um! Presse zur Absicht! Presse Jesus Christus! Derjenige, der Christus gewinnt, wird sich mit ihm von den Toten am jüngsten Tag erheben.”

  Without knowing why, Johnny waved at the men. A man in a black hat waved back at him. Then the emptiness that had been so poignant back in his flat in San Francisco filled his heart again. Suddenly, powerfully, a realization swept over him—nothing about his life and how he was living made any sense. The only thing that was real for him in that moment were the men and their horses and machines and the land they were working.

  The smell of the fresh-cut hay rose up to him, and the hot sun beat down on his face. To his surprise, Johnny found tears in his eyes. Why, he didn’t know. Maybe he was crying for the lost dreams of his youth, or for the foolishness that had gotten him into such a mess, or for the fact that he had never really known his father. Soon, great sobs were torn out of him, and he clung to the fence to keep from falling. His head was down, and he didn’t hear the approach of the man with the black hat until he was standing next to him.

  “Are you all right, son?” a quiet voice asked.

  Johnny looked up with tears streaming down his face. He wiped his eyes with the back of his sleeve and then tried to answer.

  “I…I don’t know what happened to me. I was just watching you harvest this field and listening to the song and it was so beautiful and it just touched something in my heart…” Johnny choked up for a minute and then went on. “Who are you and why are you using horses and…”

  The man smiled at him and put a hand on his shoulder. “We are the Amish, the Plain people. We don’t use modern tools because they’re of the world, and we have separated ourselves from such things. We live the simple life, and that’s what keeps us faithful to our God.”

  “Amish. Of course! I met a girl today who said she was Amish, but I didn’t really know what that meant except I know that the Amish don’t get drafted.”

  “Ah, the draft. Yes, that’s true; we don’t fight in wars. Jesus tells us it’s wrong to kill other men.”

  “What does the song mean…the one you were singing?” Johnny asked.

  “Let him who has laid his hand on the plow not look back. Press on to the goal! Press on to Jesus Christ! The one who gains Christ will rise with Him from the dead on the youngest day.”

  Johnny looked into the kindly face and the soft eyes of the man, and suddenly a longing to be safe came over him. He felt more tears rolling down his cheeks. In the distance he heard a man’s voice calling.

  The man squeezed his shoulder. “Maybe you have troubles that you should give to Jesus Christ, my boy. If you do, He will help you.” Then the man looked away at the group passing by. “I must go then. The men need my help. God’s blessing on you.”

  The man turned and walked away, and Johnny wanted to jump over the fence and run after him and join the men as they worked and sang, but instead he just stood looking after the retreating figure.

  About a half-hour later, Johnny pulled up in front of Dutch’s Garage in Apple Creek. Inside, he found a thin man with bushy eyebrows bent over a bench. He was dressed in blue mechanic’s overalls with a welder’s cap on his head. The place smelled of oil and metal, and a large stove made out of two fifty-gallon drums stacked on top of each other stood in the middle of the shop. The stove was glowing red. The man looked up and smiled when Johnny walked in. He put down the part he was working on and stepped out from behind the bench. He picked up a rag and wiped some kind of grease off his hands as he walked over.

  “What can I do for you, hoss?” he asked.

  “I think I need some work done on my front-end suspension. I ran up on a curb, and I think I bent something. A sheriff named Bull over in Wooster was kind enough to send me here. He said that Dutch’s place was the best, so I guess you’re Dutch?”

  “That would be me,” Dutch said, offering a grimy hand. “And you are…?

  “Johnny, Johnny Hershberger.”

  Dutch gave him an odd look. “So Bull Halkovich sent you my way. He’s a good friend. How is Bull?”

  “Well, it wasn’t exactly a social call. He was trying to run me out of town, but I couldn’t get very far with my van banged up.”

  “Okay, let’s take a look,” Dutch said.

  They walked out to the van, and Dutch got down and looked under the front end. After a few minutes he popped back out.

  “Yep, the tie bar is bent. You must have banged it good.”

  “Can you fix it?” Johnny asked.

  Dutch fixed a stare on Johnny. “Son, I can fix anything. That is, if I have the part. I don’t keep parts handy for this here German-made car since I mostly work on American cars. But I can make a few phone calls and get the part shipped over here. Shouldn’t be more than a couple of days.”

  “A couple of days?” Johnny frowned. The fear of the drug dealers came back over him.

  “Got any money, boy?” Dutch asked.

  “Sure. Do you want a deposit?”

  Dutch took off his cap and scratched his grizzled head. “Well,” he said slowly, “given that I don’t know you, that would probably be a good idea. How about fifty dollars? Oughta cover the whole shebang.”

  Johnny fished the money out of the pocket of his striped pants. “Are there any motels in town that are close by?”

  “Sure, the Bide-a-Wee is just down the street. Nice rooms for a real good price. I think Jonas has a weekly rate too.” Dutch said. “There’s a restaurant right across the street. And if you have need of transportation, I got a loaner out back. Seein’ as how I’ll have your truck and all.”

  Dutch looked the van over. He gave Johnny another one of his curious looks. “You wouldn’t be needin’ a paint job, would ya? Twenty-five dollars, and she’s as good as new. Scrape all that hoo-haw right off and paint her a nice inconspicuous blue.”

  “I’ll think about it, Dutch,” Johnny said. “It would probably be a good idea to keep a little lower profile out here.”

  Dutch smiled in agreement.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Bitter Words

  JENNY WATCHED FROM HER DESK as the man picked up the key to the microfiche room and headed there. When he went inside, she slipped quietly up the hallway and followed him in. He was waiting for her and stuck out his hand.

  “Hi, Jenny. I’m Bob Schumann.”

  Jenny took his hand and shook it. He was a nice-looking older man with white hair and a pleasant smile. He had on an Ohio State jacket and a Cincinnati Reds baseball hat pushed back on his head. The smile wrinkles around his eyes belied the gruffness she had sensed on the phone. A briefcase sat on the desk behind him.

  Jenny went to the files, pulled out the filmstrips, and handed them to Schumann. He sat down at the reader and quietly perused the two articles. Then he turned to Jenny.

  “I remember when I wrote this story. It was a real mystery in nineteen fifty-one, and the fact that there was heroin in the car was a huge deal back
then. Nowadays, with all the stuff going on in San Francisco and New York, the drug angle isn’t so exciting. It’s always bothered me that all the leads in this story were dead ends.”

  “What can you tell me about the man?” Jenny asked.

  “Not much more than what’s here,” Bob said. “They did an autopsy, and the cause of death was drowning. The only possible identifier they found on him was a large tattoo.”

  “A tattoo? That wasn’t in the story,” Jenny said.

  “I made a sketch of it at the coroner’s office when they let me view the body, but the police chief made me leave it out of the article. Seems that it was a popular tattoo with the servicemen during the war, and the sheriff didn’t want anything bad reflected on our local vets, what with the heroin and the empty liquor bottles they found. It didn’t seem important at the time, so I pulled it.”

  “Describe the tattoo to me,” Jenny said.

  “Very large, located on his left shoulder,” Bob said. “Well here, let me show you.”

  Schumann opened the briefcase and rummaged among some papers. He pulled out a sheet with a rough drawing in the middle. The picture was of a large, ornate tattoo of the patriotic type common among servicemen. The Statue of Liberty was in the center, surrounded by four flags, two on each side. Above the tattoo it said, “God Bless America,” and right under the statue were some Roman numerals.

  “Notice the number under the statue. When I compared it to other tattoos like it, they didn’t have a number. I’ve always remembered it, maybe because it was like a palindrome.”

  He wrote the number in larger letters beneath the drawing: IVIII IIIVI.