Of course, once the day came that my rumpspringa ended and I joined the Amish church, I wouldn’t be able to hop in a car and just run off with some guy for a few hours, even if he was a trusted family friend. But for now they took such things in stride, and I appreciated it more than they knew.
Zed and I headed toward his banged-up old red Saab, which was waiting in its usual spot in the driveway. As we climbed inside, I noticed that mysterious gleam had returned to his eye, but I didn’t ask what it was about. I knew he would tell me in his own good time.
Soon we were out on the road, zipping up and down hills, past farms and fields and houses, and he was telling me all about his plans for this next movie he would be making. He’d recently won a big contest for his last film, and that success made him eager to plunge into the creative process yet again.
I couldn’t blame him. I felt the same way. I had made most of the costumes for the reenactment portion of that film and would do so again for this one. It had been such a thrill to work with Zed like that, even if I hadn’t understood a lot about the specifics of moviemaking. Before agreeing to help, I had read his script, so I knew going in that the story would be respectful of the Amish, which I appreciated—and which no doubt went a long way in convincing the bishop to approve my association with the project.
But beyond that, I had never even seen a movie, much less helped out somebody who was making one. Of course, when Zed was in high school, I’d seen him working on the computer plenty of times, editing the little films he’d made with his cell phone. But in college it was different, starting with the big, fancy camera and lights and things he was allowed to check out from the media lab for his film project. I had found the process fascinating—and the final result incredibly satisfying.
In the end, the film he made was wonderful—so wonderful, in fact, that the professor of his community college film class had encouraged Zed to enter it into the Pennsylvania Film Festival’s “New Voices” contest once the semester was over. That was where he had won not just one but two big prizes.
The movie had focused on one of Zed’s ancestors, an artist and wood-carver named Abraham Sommers who had lived in Switzerland back in the 1700s. The story was all about the legacy of that man’s Christian faith, symbolized by three beautiful carved wooden boxes made by his own hands, and how that faith had been passed down through the generations all the way to today, just as those boxes had been passed down.
Thinking of it now, I found myself overwhelmed with emotion. I turned away and gazed out at acres of cornstalks swaying in the breeze, a surge of sadness filling my throat. I knew this feeling wasn’t so much about Zed’s touching movie as it was the fact that he was leaving in just a few days. I took a deep breath and held it in for a long moment. As I let it out, I wished for the millionth time he wasn’t leaving at all.
I understood why he wanted to go off to school—why he practically had to, given his field of interest—and I knew how blessed he was that a Mennonite college even offered film classes. Still, the selfish part of me yearned to hear him say that he’d changed his mind and decided to stick around Lancaster County forever.
Oh, how I would miss him!
“You okay, Iz?” he asked, sensing my distress.
Turning back, I gave him an encouraging smile. “I was just thinking how…different it’ll be not having you around anymore.”
“Different as in sad? Or different as in better?”
I smiled, forcing away any tears. “Different as in I sure hope Thanksgiving gets here soon, because I’m going to go nuts without my best friend around.”
To my surprise, he didn’t make a joke or say something sarcastic. He just swallowed hard and nodded.
“I’ll miss you too,” he replied softly. “More than you can imagine.”
We were quiet the rest of the way, but it was a comfortable silence, borne from four years of close friendship. I hoped that friendship would continue to endure despite the impending distance between us and the diverging trajectories of our lives.
Once we reached our destination, he parked along the side of the road near the head of a hiking trail, and a few moments later we were trooping down that path into the woods. Even though it hadn’t rained for several weeks and most of the walk was dry, it became quite muddy in places, just as he’d warned, probably thanks to a spring or two that bubbled up from the ground along the way. At the worst parts, my big boots made a moist sucking sound with almost every step.
Zed talked nonstop as we went, going on and on about the story for his new movie and the various scenes he wanted to film here, but I wasn’t really listening. My mind tended to wander in and out no matter the situation, but now I was starting to feel even less focused than usual. What was the matter with me today? Perhaps it wasn’t just my growing sadness about Zed’s departure but the realization of how different his world was going to be from mine from now on.
Here in Lancaster County, the ways he and I lived were fairly similar, despite the fact that I was Amish and he was Mennonite. Zed’s mother, Marta Bayer, was Mennonite and had been for years, but she’d been raised in an Amish home, so she’d always cooked lots of Amish foods, taught her kids the language of Pennsylvania Dutch, and in many ways emulated an existence more Amish than Mennonite.
Of course, as a Mennonite Zed had access to some things I didn’t, such as electricity and a car and a computer. But in many other ways his lifestyle was still quite Plain. Most importantly, he and I held the same core beliefs about God and His Son, about how being Christlike meant living simply and humbly, in full submission and surrender.
Once Zed went off to college, however, the Amish influences around him would be far less pervasive. At least he would be at a Christian school, but Goshen wasn’t the only college in the area. Who knew what sorts of temptations awaited off campus in town or at some of the secular schools nearby? My mind filled with images of sleazy bars, wild parties, and coeds in tight tops and short skirts. Even if Zed was living and studying in a Christian environment, could he remain the same, solid, faithful guy he’d always been once he had that much freedom—and no one from home to see what he may or may not be doing?
“Okay, Izzy, here we are,” he said now, oblivious to the scowl that had formed on my face. He bent down to pass beneath a low-hanging branch and then turned to hold it out of the way for me as I moved forward.
My scowl fading, I looked up and couldn’t help but notice how tall he was getting these days. Tall and handsome and sweet. No doubt some beautiful college girl would try to nab him within weeks—if not days—of his arrival at Goshen.
We moved forward, side by side, to where the path opened up into a broad clearing, and then we came to a stop.
“What do you think?” he asked as he made a sweeping motion with his arm.
In the distance I could see what looked like the remains of a couple of old log cabins. One was missing a roof, the other an entire wall, but the parts still there looked utterly authentic.
“Don’t you think this could serve as our little cluster of Amish homes?”
I hesitated, wishing I had paid more attention to what he’d been saying about the film itself. I knew it would focus on an historical topic, but beyond that I couldn’t recall what that topic was or even the era it would be in.
“You do you understand what I was saying about selective framing, right?” he asked, taking my confused silence for reticence.
I cleared my throat, embarrassed to admit that no, I didn’t understand what he’d been saying, but only because I hadn’t been listening. “Tell me again now that we’re here.”
With a nod he moved forward, clomping another ten feet or so toward the ramshackle structures and then coming to a stop. “It’s simple, really.” He held his arms out in front of him, making an L shape with the thumb and forefinger of each hand, and then moving the Ls together to form a square. “Even though the cabins are in pretty rough condition, what I’m saying is that we can make them seem intac
t with some simple camerawork.”
“We can?”
“Yeah. Pretend this is the camera lens,” he said of the square, “and that the frame includes only what you can see through here.”
I walked over to him and peered out toward the cabins through his fingers.
“Now, move me so that the top of the frame is aligned just above the door on that first cabin.”
Placing a hand on his upper arm, I did as he said, surprised at the hardness of the muscle I could feel through the fabric of his sleeve as I pressed his arm downward. Zed was so lanky and tall—and his life so cerebral and sedentary compared to most of the men I knew—that I’d never thought of him as being muscular before. But now I realized he must have bulked up during his summers of physical labor at the Gundys’ nursery business and over Christmas breaks on their tree farm. I felt bad I hadn’t noticed that until now.
Once I got his hands into place, I again leaned in close, viewing the scene as he had instructed and trying not to think about the enticing scent of sandalwood that wafted from him. Was that aftershave? Cologne? Had he always smelled like that?
“See?” he whispered, tilting his head down toward mine so he could look through his hands with me. “If the lens never goes higher than this, the viewer won’t even know that building doesn’t have a roof.”
Unable to speak, I simply nodded, aware not just of his scent and his build but of the heat that radiated from his chest and arms. Suddenly, I wanted to be in those arms. Wrapped in them. Pressed against him. Our hearts beating in tandem.
His attention was still on the cabins, but mine was on him. What was going on with me? I had known this guy for years, ever since we were little kids. We hadn’t always been close, but the year we were both fifteen, I had been hired as a caretaker for his dying father, and we had come to know each other well. Almost immediately our friendship moved into a romance, one that was all-consuming. But then my parents sat me down and expressed their concerns—that we were too young, that he was Mennonite and not Amish—so out of respect for them, Zed and I had agreed to cool things down and keep our relationship purely platonic after that. It took some time, but eventually I really did grow to think of him as a brother. To my relief, when I later explained that to my parents, they took me at my word and had trusted us to keep it that way ever since.
Now here I was, no longer a child of fifteen, seeing this man in a way I hadn’t in several years—as a love interest, not just a friend. We were so much alike, he and I, and so very compatible. As my mother liked to say, Zed was just so easy, so loveable. A truly good guy to the core. Our relationship had only grown stronger since, and I enjoyed and appreciated him more than just about any other person on earth. In every sense of the word, he was my best friend.
But was he just a friend? Or something more? At the moment I wasn’t sure. For some reason, I found myself wanting to embrace him—but not like a hug between buddies. With shocking clarity, I realized that the embrace I yearned for was the romantic kind. I wanted to be held—tightly—by this tall and sweet and handsome man, to be taken into his loving arms. Just friends?
Not hardly.
Stunned, I stepped back and turned away, hoping that the range of emotions I was feeling hadn’t shown on my face—or that if they had, he hadn’t noticed.
“I’m going to take a closer look,” I mumbled, and then I began walking as quickly as I could toward the cabins. With each step, a new truth pounded in my head like a drum.
I didn’t just love my best friend Zed.
I was in love with him too.
TWO
Somehow I managed to get through the next hour without Zed noticing anything was wrong. But something was wrong. My whole world had shifted on its axis in a single moment. I simply couldn’t be in love with Zed Bayer for so many reasons…
First of all, we were now buddies, not lovers. Could I honestly kiss someone who was like a brother to me?
Second, the two of us couldn’t marry unless one of us converted to the other’s faith. Was either one of us likely to do something that drastic?
Third, he no longer had any interest in me that way. What if I told him how I felt and it became such an issue that it ended up destroying our relationship? I couldn’t bear to lose Zed from my life, to risk our friendship for the sake of a romance, no matter how wonderful that romance could be.
My mind continued to swirl around such thoughts all Tuesday night and into Wednesday. But I knew I would be seeing him again on Thursday afternoon when we were going location scouting again, so I made it my goal to have composed myself by the time he came to pick me up.
Sure enough, when he returned for our second jaunt of the week, I managed to greet him and get out of the house without feeling or acting weird. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to keep my composure for several hours, but I would do the best I could.
Soon we were off, barreling down the road toward our destination. This time our mission was to figure out which one of several different covered bridges would work best for a certain scene he wanted to film. I reminded him that he had access to a covered bridge right by his house, but he simply rolled his eyes and said, “That one’s too cramped to pull off an arc shot.” I didn’t know what an arc shot was, nor did I care. I was content to simply be a part of the process.
Ten minutes into the drive, I was still maintaining my composure, at least on the outside, but then it struck me that Zed was the one acting odd. He gave me a quick glance when we were stopped at a red light, and in that one look I realized he had an excited gleam in his eye—the same gleam he’d had on Tuesday. But I’d become so worked up over my feelings for him that I’d forgotten all about it.
“Okay, come on out with it,” I said.
“Out with what?”
“With whatever it is that has you grinning like a fool.”
His grin widened further as he gestured toward the console between us. I looked down and saw several pieces of paper rolled into a cylinder, sitting in the cup holder.
“What is it?”
“My score sheets finally came. I’ve had them since Tuesday, but I didn’t say anything then because I was out of toner. I wanted to print them out and show them to you, not just tell you about them.”
The light turned green and he continued on again.
“Wow. I knew something was going on.”
Ever since the film festival, he’d been extremely eager for the score sheets to come in, but I hadn’t really understood why. Three weeks ago, a film Zed made in school had won two different awards at the Pennsylvania Film Festival. That had been cause enough for celebration, especially given that those awards included a generous endowment to be used toward making another film. But it seemed to me that he had been even more eager for the arrival of the judges’ review sheets than he had been for the custom engraved trophies.
“You don’t seem all that excited,” he said, sounding almost hurt.
“I don’t get the importance, I guess.” I reached for the pages and pulled them from the holder. “I mean, you already know the judges loved your movie. They loved it enough to make you the winner, for goodness’ sake. Why do you need to see the individual scores?”
“Because the judges don’t just write a total. They also rate the film’s individual components—cinematography, casting, pacing, things like that. And they add actual comments too, not just numbers. I’ve been dying to see every score and read each word.”
I raised my eyebrows. “So you can hear firsthand about all the things you did right?” That sounded prideful to me.
Zed laughed. “No, silly. So I can hear firsthand about all the things I could have done better.”
Of course. I should have known. Zed was the least prideful person I’d ever met.
“Okay, that makes sense,” I replied as I unrolled the papers and smoothed them across my lap.
Flipping through the pages, I saw three identical forms, each with the name of Zed’s film, The Carving of a Legacy, p
rinted across the top. Various scores were all over the pages, but at the bottom right was a box where each judge had written in his or her total score. In Zed’s case, it looked as though the totals were 97, 99, and 94. Averaged together, they represented the highest in his division, History and Heritage, which had made him the winner.
The focus of the film festival had been Pennsylvania, but the categories had been wide ranging, bringing in submissions on everything from Endangered Birds of the Poconos to Falling for Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water to Business and Industry in Pittsburgh. First prize for each category had been a thousand dollars, but then Zed had also won one of the festival’s biggest awards for Most Promising New Director. The two prizes added together had brought him to a total endowment of $5000, to be held and distributed through his college, as needed, for production costs on his next Pennsylvania-themed film.
My parents thought it was a shame he wasn’t free to spend that money however he wanted, but I was secretly glad. If a check had just been handed over to him, then his mother would probably have absorbed it into the household budget as she had his earnings from the past few summers he’d spent working for his cousin Will’s nursery and Christmas tree farm. This way, Zed’s first official film creation had earned him the right to fund another, bigger, and better creation with every cent of his winnings.
Taking a deep breath, I lifted the first form and studied it more closely. Right away, I could see how he would find these score sheets helpful—just as I’d found helpful the weekly reviews I’d been getting at the caregiving course I was taking. “Izzy, you’re great with the elderly, and they absolutely adore you,” my teacher would say. “But you need to work more with the Hoyer lift. And your time management skills are still weak.”
For Zed, the critiques I held in my hand were all about his abilities with the various elements of filmmaking, and from what I could see, he was best in the areas of pacing, editing, and storytelling, His weaknesses mostly had to do with mechanical issues and cinematography. This film clearly shows a need for more technical mastery, one judge had summarized, but the clarity of theme, the innovative juxtaposition of images, and the gracefulness of the story’s progression more than compensate. Well done! Am eager to see more from this promising young director.
The Amish Seamstress Page 2