Uncle Plats

by Aqua Allsopp

  “It wasn’t very smart to come into a forest to save anyone when you obviously can’t see.”

  “Says the woman who walked in here to cry. How did you expect to find your way back out once you were done?”

  “I’ve been exploring these woods since I was a little girl, I can find my around blind. The same cannot be said for you.”

  “Fair enough, so why were you crying?”

  “That is none of your business. I should escort you out of here before your grandparents start to worry.”

  The mysterious woman then proceeded to grab his elbow and use it as a steering wheel to direct him out of the predicament he had found himself in.

  As they walked, Levi once more tried to strike up a conversation, but it wasn’t until he asked her name that she finally responded.

  “Leah Graber”

  “Graber…my Aunt Edna is married to a Graber.”

  “Yes, she’s married to my uncle.”

  “Does that mean we’re family?”

  “Everyone in this community is family. If you haven’t noticed it’s only a few families and you have to marry within the church, or else.”

  “Are you married?”

  “No, I am not.”

  “Why not? I thought marriage and having kids was a big deal for Amish women.”

  “I went to the university. By the time I came back, there was no one left available that appealed to me. “

  “Huh, what a pity. I’m not married either.”

  “You’re only half Amish, so that’s half okay.”

  “Did you just crack a joke?”

  “Maybe.”

  At that moment they emerged into the moonlight, and the first thing Levi did was turn to look at his savior. From what little was not hidden he could see that she was attractive. The black dress was very unflattering, but when she moved he was able to make out the round of her hips and the curve of her butt. Leah let go of Levi as she came to stop. He turned toward her questioningly.

  “You should be able to find your way back from here.” She turned around and walked back to the tree line.

  “Wait! You can’t really be going back inside the forest?”

  She didn’t even bother to turn around and answer him. She just continued walking as she replied.

  “You disturbed my introspection. I’ve helped you, now I’m going to go back to continue introspecting”

  “You never told me why you were crying.”

  Leah didn’t even bother responding to that. She just slipped back into the tree line, where the darkness enveloped her like a familiar friend.

  All the way back to his grandparent’s house he thought of Leah. She seemed interesting, like someone he would love to get to know more and as he settled in his mother’s old room that night he found himself looking forward to church the next day.

  *****

  Unsah Faddah im Himmel,

  dei nohma loss heilich sei,

  Dei Reich loss kumma.

  Dei villa loss gedu sei,

  uf di eaht vi im Himmel.

  Unsah tayklich broht gebb uns heit,

  Un fagebb unsah shulda,

  vi miah dee fagevva vo uns shuldich sinn.

  Un fiah uns naett in di fasuchung,

  avvah hald uns fu'm eevila.

  Fa dei is es Reich, di graft,

  un di hallichkeit in ayvichkeit. Amen.

  Levi sat in the same row as his family, which really only consisted of his grandparents and his uncles and their families as his aunts were obliged to sit with their husband’s family. Church services were conducted every other Sunday with each family taking turns to host it. Today the King family had opened their doors to the community, with Abaddon Byler, the minister of the community, preaching. Levi had scowled his way through Abaddon’s sermon, his impeccable self-control pushed to his limits by the hypocrisy. Once Abaddon had finished preaching and disturbing Levi’s soul, he had thought he would have been able to get a bit more into it, but the whole ceremony was being conducted in Pennsylvania Dutch. So Levi was not following a single word. He tried his best to engage and participate, even though honestly the last time he went to church was with his mother on the Mother’s Day before she died. Religion was a past time he never before had the time for, to the never-ending disappointment of his mother. Thus, every time he went down to visit her she would inevitably have him accompany her to church regardless of whether it was Sunday or not. She always used to say “God, doesn’t care what day you worship his name, as long as you worship his name,” He guessed she never left her connection to her beliefs, even after she left her family.

  His mother had always been an interesting character, filled with secrets and surface contradictions. After all a passionate Christian woman who was also a passionate Jazz lover, seems a contradiction somehow. But every time another church sister would criticize her taste in music, his mother would just reply “those artists make art on the fly, no rehearsals at all. They just play from their heart and it sounds beautiful. You trying to tell me there’s nothing holy about that?”

  Speaking of mysterious characters, Levi’s eyes landed on one Leah Graber. She was not sitting with her family, but rather in the back row in the seat nearest the door leading to the hallway. Her head was lowered as if she was trying not to have any attention drawn to her. He observed her throughout the ceremony, her demeanor never changed and when service finally came to an end she was first person to leave.

  After the service a meal was served, that everyone in the community took part in. The whole mood was joyous and friendly with the whole community acting like one big family, which technically they all actually were. Again Levi was struck by how idyllic it all seemed, but he knew that was just on the surface. He proved himself right when he noticed that once again Leah was missing. He began to wonder if she was just the anti-social black sheep of the community.

  So as he was walking back toward the family home with his family, he asked his grandfather about the woman in the back, neglecting to mention their encounter the night before, in case there was some rule about a single man and a single woman being alone, unsupervised.

  “Ah, you probably mean Leah Graber. She’s been shunned.”

  “Shunned?” He vaguely remembered Leah also mentioning this term when he had tripped over her legs last night.

  “Yes, it’s a form of punishment in the Amish community for when one breaks the rules. If you break a serious rule then you face excommunication. However if you just commit a minor transgression, shunning is the punishment for you.”

  “What does shunning entail?”

  “You are cut off from social contact. The community is barred from talking and eating with you.”

  “Sounds… lonely.”

  “That it is my boy… that it is”

  At that, silence fell between Levi and his grandfather as they walked peacefully back to the house. Levi’s uncles were returning to their own homes, so the house would be quite quiet. But, the post-church meal had left Levi feeling energized. So he left his grandparents at their door to take a walk.

  As he walked his feet led him to the forest in which he had gotten lost the night before, except this time his path was lit by the intensity of the sun. But the light of day obviously still didn’t improve his coordination because he once again found himself mumbling a pained curse after his head collided with the leaf padded ground.

  “Do your grandparents know how dirty your mouth is?”

  This time Leah didn’t even bother to try extricating her legs from his. She just calmly sat against her tree, and watched as Levi managed to hoist his sore body into a sitting position. He leaned his pained body against the tree directly opposite to Leah and didn’t bother removing his legs from hers. They sat in silence for a few minutes, each lost in their own head. Surprisingly it was Leah who breached the peace.

  “You seem to have a bad habit of interrupting my introspection.”

  “You seem to have a bad habit of sprawling
out on forest floors.”

  “I was not sprawled on the floor. I was demurely sitting against a tree. You were the one stomping clumsily through the forest like some kind of uncoordinated ogre”

  “I wasn’t stomping. I was gracefully dallying through the trees.”

  They both paused for a beat and started giggling and chuckling simultaneously.

  “You’re not supposed to be talking to me, I’m shunned.”

  “I know.”

  “You could get in trouble. Abaddon won’t like it.”

  “What’s he going to do? I’m only half Amish after all”

  Leah smiled sadly at that.

  “I guess that’s true. They can’t exactly shun someone who doesn’t live here.”

  “Exactly! So cheer up, I’ll be your shun buddy.”

  “My shun buddy?”

  “Yep, I’ll keep you company until your shunning is over.”

  Leah looked at him skeptically.

  “Don’t you have a life beyond this place? By the time you get time to visit again my shunning will probably be over so there’s no need.”

  “Now, what kind of shunning buddy would I be then? That just means I have to make time for my duties. I’ll visit more often just for you.”

  Leah blushed and looked away from Levi shyly. The first time he had seen Elizabeth blush he had thought it was one of the cutest sights, he now knew he was wrong. He gently untangled their legs as he pushed himself up into a standing position, Leah had begun playing with a weed beside her and didn’t even react to Levi moving. Once he was steady on his feet he bent over and extended his hand toward her with a soft clearing of his throat. She looked up and her eyes immediately found his, neither moved, as they tried to size each other up in that moment of stillness. Slowly, Leah placed her hand in Levi’s and he drew her to her feet.

  “Want to take a walk with me?”

  “Sure.”

  That evening Levi didn’t return back to his grandparent’s house until long after the sun had set, he had to drive back to New York in the darkness but he didn’t mind.

  When Leah arrived home flushed and glowing, her father looked at her suspiciously but could ask no questions nor make any comments, as her shunning was not yet over.

  *****

  Weeks passed in much the same manner, with Levi disappearing for hours at a time after meals, and Leah looking cheerier and brighter with each passing day. Leah’s father, Abiel Graber, was completely perplexed. After all, the shunning was supposed to be a punishment, not a treat, but with each passing day Leah simply looked happier and happier. His daughter had always been a weird child not quite fitting in seamlessly with the community. So he began to fear that Leah may actually be happy in her solitude, free from the watchful eyes of the community she had never quite felt comfortable in. So, Abiel talked it over with Minister Byler, and they both decided it was time to relieve Leah of her “punishment” lest it have the opposite of its intended effect and caused her to stray away. However, even with the spotlight eyes once more looking her way, Leah and Levi continued to meet behind the cover of the forest.

  Levi would travel down to Pennsylvania almost weekly, just for those stolen moments in the forest with Leah. All they did was talk, but the subjects they talked about and what they revealed to one another were more intimate than any kiss could ever be. Leah told him about her life, how she had tried to run away when she was twenty-three and was still unmarried because she had refused to marry Abaddon Byler. Abaddon had proceeded to slowly sow disparaging seeds in the minds of the other men, in the hopes that when no other suitor came calling, she would be forced to marry him by default. However, Leah was too stubborn and was more willing to put up with the taunts of “old maid” rather than give the older man the satisfaction. And that is how Abaddon Byles ended up with Damaris Schwartz. Levi thought the whole saga was quite tame for the man’s character, more high school drama than anything else, so he was just thankful that Leah had not been victim to anything worse.

  School yard gossip was not the only thing Leah and Levi shared in their stolen moments, as they found they had both recently lost a mother. Of course Levi’s loss was more recent than Leah’s as she had lost her mother a few months back, but the emotions and the pain were still the same. They spent hours just talking about their mothers. What they loved about them, what they hated, their annoying habits and their passions. Talking about them as if they were still alive was cathartic in a way, it allowed the two to realize that talking about the ones you lose is the best way to keep them alive in your heart.

  Levi was even considering becoming Amish. After all, while the community was not perfect, it was still a community, and the ideals were not flawed—just one individual. These people ate together, worked side by side toward the same goals, it was like having the love and support of a huge family which, as Leah rightly pointed out, they technically all were. But that kind of love and support was foreign to Levi as an only child with “orphaned” parents, all he’d ever known was a family circle of three. Thus having this circle suddenly expand so drastically made him quite giddy. Of course the fact that he would be able to marry Leah was an incentive. He had even started to discuss the possibility of conversion with his grandparents. He had felt even more gratified by the look on his grandfather’s face. Even his grandmother had started treating him more warmly since his announcement.

  “I’m going to talk to Abaddon about my conversion with my grandparents tomorrow,” Levi proclaimed from his perch in the tree that he and Leah had decided to climb on the spur of the moment.

  Leah turned toward him beaming.

  “Really?”

  “Yep, so I was wondering… if you don’t object that is… I mean I don’t expect you to object… but you might like the way your life is… “

  Leah abruptly cut Levi off in the midst of his babbling.

  “Yes.”

  “Huh?”

  “Yes, I’ll marry you,” Leah primly stated, then she began climbing down the tree.

  Levi stared after her dumbstruck for a tick, before he hastened to follow her down.

  When he reached the lowest branch on the tree, he found Leah already sitting there waiting for him

  “Jump with me?”

  “Sure.”

  The limb was only a couple feet off the floor, but Leah and Levi giggled like a couple of teenagers.

  “On the count of three, one… two… three!”

  They jumped while holding hands and despite the short distance between the limb and the ground, both managed to fall over.

  *****

  The next morning, when Levi made his way downstairs, he found his grandparents already waiting at the dining room table with Abaddon eating breakfast. He composed himself internally for this conference that was bound to test his limits. His grandmother got him a plate with cornmeal mush, scrambled eggs and some fruit.

  After everyone had their fill, Levi took hold of the situation and steered it in the direction he wanted. At first, everything went smoothly, Abaddon calmly explained the process it would take for Levi to convert, what would be expected of him and that, if at any time during his conversion he felt like it was too much, it was perfectly all right for him to decide not. He’d still always be welcomed to visit his family, but the church understands that adjusting from a life in the outside world to an Amish life is quite difficult. Once Levi was satisfied with that aspect, he began steering the conversation toward marriage, Abaddon agreed that he could use the time of his conversion as an opportunity to court a single Amish lady as developing bonds within the community does wonders for smoothing out the transition process. It wasn’t until he had declared who exactly he planned to court that problems started to arise.

  “Leah Garber?” Abaddon’s mood immediately darkened.

  “Yes, I would like to court Leah Garber. Is there a problem?” Levi had his poker demeanor on as he and Abaddon had a stare down. His grandparents had mostly stayed out of his discussion allo
wing him to lead the way. But his grandfather, sensing trouble, decided to step in at this juncture.

  “Of course there’s no problem Levi. Leah is a perfectly nice girl, unmarried and around your age.”

  “Exactly, she’s nearly thirty and unmarried, I mean something must be wrong with her.”

  A shocked silence enveloped the room after Abaddon’s little outburst. Surprisingly it was Sabine Schwartz that shattered it.

  “Well I happen to like Leah Graber, Minister. Her grandmother and I were close friends right up until her death and I personally would welcome Leah into my family with open arms.”

  Sensing that he had overstepped the line. Abaddon began to backtrack and fumble on clarifications of his statements. But, all he received in return for his efforts was a brusque dismissal from the Schwartz home. It took a lot of effort on Levi’s part to keep a straight face through the last part of this encounter, as not only was he shocked by his grandmother’s support, but, the way she handled Abaddon was also hilarious.

  After basically kicking out Minister Byler, Sabine returned to the dining room where she was immediately faced with identical expressions of amusement and approval. Apparently this moment of familial love was too much for her and she quickly made her escape with only a muttered excuse about needing a nap.

  Once they were alone Grandpa Levi commented.

  “That boy always was too sneaky for my liking.”

  “I haven’t liked him since I met him… because of how he treats Aunt Damaris.”

  Levi quickly clarified. Grandpa Levi noticed once again his grandson’s strange reaction to Abaddon Byler and wondered why the minister disturbed his boy so much.

  “So Leah is the girl you’ve been seeing every night.”

  Levi nearly got whiplash with how quickly he turned his head toward his grandfather.”

  “I never said I was seeing Leah. I haven’t begun courting her yet.”

  “Don’t play angelic with me, I knew you were meeting a woman, when you went out for your ‘walks’ after dinner. Subtle you are not.”