by Ira Wagler
“You have to let him go,” I said, my voice breaking. “You have to let him go.”
She tensed in my arms, trembling, looking into the distance to the south, focused entirely on what she had just lost. Then she pushed me away and walked blindly back into the house.
23
At home, we settled into postaccident life, life with the “new” Titus. Titus was extraordinarily brave. Or perhaps just resolute in the face of the new reality that was his world. And we were brave too, all of us. We stoically accepted the tragedy. I don’t remember even once seeing any of us breaking down or weeping aloud. We kept everything, the shock and horror of it, firmly locked inside. Dealt with it—except we never really did. In time, a dull sense of resignation seeped through us, followed by acceptance, and we proceeded forward from that point to the present day.
The months crept by. Day followed day, and week followed week. I plodded through the motions of farming that year. Tilled the earth. Planted corn. Milked the cows by hand. Rhoda was right there, by my side. Helping where and as she could, even in the fields. And when she wasn’t with me, she was inside, comforting Titus and helping Mom as best she could.
She was strong and resilient, my younger sister. Always of good cheer, even when there was little cheer to be found. But she prevailed and, over time, helped sustain us all with her inner will and her strength.
From what we heard, Nathan was surviving well, working hard in the vast wastelands of the sand hills of Valentine. His experience was quite different, though, from mine. I was part of a group of buddies. He was alone. And that, I think, is one reason that he returned within a few months of leaving. He would lurk about silently at home for about a year before finally leaving for good.
Having tasted the outside world more than once now, I instinctively held on to what remnants I could of that world, most notably making and maintaining friendships with surrounding English people. And Chuck’s Café in West Grove was the natural site for that, the best place to establish real contacts with the local English.
Chuck and Margaret Leonard ran the café and service garage. It was a ramshackle little place, but comfortable and welcoming. Margaret, or Mrs. C as we called her, assisted by her married daughter Linda, bustled about in the kitchen, cooking meals for all the hungry locals. A caring woman, Mrs. C always asked how Titus was doing and clucked in sympathy. Chuck, clad in old, grease-stained, dark green coveralls, fussed and swore in his little shop, words flowing from him in a disjointed stream as he labored at repairing tractors and trucks for the local farmers.
I was hungry for an outside connection, and this simple, solid, southern-Iowa family never blinked but, rather, accepted me as one of their own. I was welcomed into their home as well. I stopped by many times to watch a bit of Saturday afternoon football. Or after hours, just to chat and gossip. I even developed a friendship with Father Mark, their priest, who enjoyed hanging out at the café in his spare time, relaxing with the common folk.
Every chance I got, I rode up with Fry, our old riding horse, tied her to a telephone pole in the churchyard across the road on the corner, then sauntered into the café through the rickety, spring-loaded screen door that closed behind me with a flat, thwacking sound. I usually knew who would be there from the vehicles parked out front. I reveled in the boisterous greetings, the comfortable pleasantness of the place, the chatter, the ribald jokes, and the rowdy conversations. And we just hung out, drinking coffee and swapping tales of this and that—sometimes based in truth, sometimes not.
To me, the little café was a safe haven in a surreal and uneasy world. I deeply treasured every minute of my time there. Dad instinctively resisted the fact that I hung out at the café. He sternly and frequently admonished and warned me about the world that I could never quite let go. But I paid him no mind. And eventually, the fact that I hung out at Chuck’s became just a fact of life. Not accepted, necessarily. But something that was unique to me and could not be changed.
At that time, there was another fact of life we took for granted. A tradition that Dad had planted in our family. I don’t know if the same thing was done at his home when he was growing up. Maybe so. But after each of the boys in our family reached adulthood and joined the church, he was presented with a brand-new top buggy and a horse of his own to do with what he would. He could choose the buggy builder and pick his horse, and Dad paid for it all.
Not every youth in Bloomfield got a brand-new buggy from his father, although many did. It was something we took for granted, the Waglers of Bloomfield. Something we did not and could not appreciate for what it was. I can’t remember hearing even one of my brothers thanking Dad for that gift. I know I didn’t. It never even crossed my mind. He owed it to me, I thought, and I would take what was mine. Maybe it was just a sign of the lack of communication among us. It would have been the right thing to do, to thank him—the honorable thing. I’m sure we would have done it had we known that. But we didn’t.
At any rate, after joining the Bloomfield Amish church, it was time for me to order my new buggy. To his credit, Dad held off on that purchase until after I’d actually joined the church. And because of my numerous adventures, my numerous flights from home, I was much older when I got my buggy than any of my brothers were when they got theirs.
At the time, Bloomfield had one buggy builder, Menno Kuhns. He was originally from Nappanee, Indiana. (That fact always reminded me of the little fat boy I had so mistreated way back when, in Aylmer.) In Bloomfield, Menno farmed and worked part time in his buggy shop. He had built my brother Steve’s buggy and many others in the area. He was a craftsman, and his products were sturdy and well built. But I thought his buggies were too wide and looked a little odd. Besides, his production was sporadic at best. If you ordered a buggy from him, it might be completed in four weeks. Or ten. You could fuss all you wanted. Menno smiled kindly and continued moving at a snail’s pace as he found the time. He’d get it done when he got it done, which was unacceptable to me.
So I chose another builder, one with a stellar reputation. Mullet’s Buggy Shop in Milton, twenty miles or so to the south. The Milton Amish church at that time was much larger than the Bloomfield church. They’d been there longer and the community boasted more established businesses. But Milton was separated from us. More conservative. Much more hard-core Amish. They wouldn’t even fellowship with the Bloomfielders. We were way too modern. Way too worldly. So they would not drink the wine or eat the bread of Communion with us. But they sure would do business with us. Money talks, I guess, in ways the bread and wine cannot.
We despised the Miltonites. Scorned them as a group. Especially their youth. Milton Jacks, we called them. They were novices, hicks, many of them, who desperately cultivated a “wild” reputation. We looked at them with tired eyes, my buddies and me. If you have to prove you are wild, then by definition you really aren’t. That’s how we saw it. Let your deeds, not your words, do your talking, and your boasting. No Milton Jack had ever accomplished the feats we had pulled off.
We considered them caricatures, our Milton peers. Phonies. Fakes. Kids obsessed with image, utterly devoid of substance. Their actions more often than not sank into idiotic farce. We heard the stories of how they acted. Drink a few sips of beer, then start smashing things. Mouthing off, threatening people. Because in their weird world, that’s how wild Amish kids were supposed to act. So that’s what they did. They were destructive and uncouth. We never had much to do with them. Even so, we were always deliberately polite when we met up with them. But we never bragged. And to the Milton youth, we were legends.
* * *
Dad and I headed over to Mullet’s Buggy Shop one day with an English driver. Mr. Mullet, the proprietor, greeted us with a shopworn air. Friendly but curt. He was a slightly rotund man with a mere wisp of a beard, and a worn leather apron tied around his waist. I figured he probably couldn’t grow a bigger beard or he would have, being from Milton and all. I told him what I wanted—the buggy style and interior fin
ish—and he warmed up a bit. As he should have. I was ordering a brand-new buggy. I forget the exact cost, but it was at least several thousand dollars. Quite a sale for Mr. Mullet, and quite an investment for my dad.
Amish and buggies go hand in hand, like cookies and milk. Buggies are Amish. Distinctive, certainly, from community to community. At least, to the discerning eye. Yet regardless of style, buggies are globally recognizable as pertaining to one particular group. The Amish.
But that symbol is not the same vehicle it was way back when nearly everyone still used them a hundred years ago. Not when you strip it down to its structural essence. The Amish have greatly improved and engineered the simple carriage over the last few decades. Solid framing, more safety features, better lights. It’s really quite amazing. Such a simple vehicle on the surface, hiding so much technology.
Amish youth usually drive a single seater. One seat, plus a shelf at shoulder height behind you, and that’s it. The buggy is wired for lights and has a small dash for the light switches. Most are lined with faux velvet of various bright hues.
Mr. Mullet took our order. A standard youth top buggy, in the style common in Bloomfield. Wired for lights. My brother Stephen would install those, after I got the buggy home. For the interior, I chose black velvet fastened with silver tacks. Still clinging to a vestige of my outlaw past, I instinctively went with black. Like Johnny Cash. The Man in Black, whom I deeply admired.
The buggy, Mr. Mullet allowed, would be ready in about six weeks. Dad wrote the check for the down payment and handed it to him. He thanked us, and we left. I was excited.
In the meantime, I was using the top buggy Titus drove before his accident. Also a Mullet model, Titus had received it a few years before. And I appropriated his horse, the stallion he drove on the night of the accident. Titus knew horses, had an eye for them. The stallion, or the Stud, as we called him, was a fine specimen. Deep chocolate brown, almost black, with a flowing mane of coarse, coal black hair. Energetic, muscled, nostrils flaring, the horse could flat out move. I won more than a few road races on the way home from the singings on Sunday nights. The Stud was one of the few horses I ever loved. And the last.
24
Life in the community plugged along. Our world with the wheelchair-bound Titus became the norm. Gradually, slowly, he regained a bit of strength, rebuilding his wasted arm muscles. He could not endure much activity of any kind. He rested long and often. Our brother, and my good friend, now existed in this new, frightful state. He mostly held up well, at least publicly, and with us. But once in a while we could see the flash of desperation and fear in his eyes.
The weeks flowed on, and the months. Titus and Ruth continued dating. Ruth was at our house a lot, since Titus could not go to hers. At least not often, because of all the complications involved. They seemed genuinely happy when they were together.
Marvin and Rhoda were dating right along as well. Going steady. They, too, seemed happy and excited. I looked on with some envy. Felt the yearning, the deep longings stirring inside. Maybe I could find it too, what they had.
Love. Settling down. Contentment. Maybe. Maybe all that could be mine someday. I had my horse. My new buggy was on its way. Soon it would be time to make my move. Providing, of course, that no one else had snatched up the girl I wanted.
And then, right on schedule as Mr. Mullet had promised, my buggy was finished and ready to pick up. We headed over to Milton with Henry Egbert and his old truck and trailer. The buggy sat there in the shop, black and gleaming. The soft interior black velvet glistened in the light; the silver tacks sparkled. I walked around it, inspected it. Breathed deeply the pleasant smell of new canvas, fresh paint, and the velvet interior. I was very pleased with my new wheels. We loaded the buggy and strapped it down and headed home.
Now I was set. My own horse. My own brand-new buggy. All I needed now was a girl.
Even though there were two districts in Bloomfield, the youth still assembled for the singings as one group. At the time, there were probably about seventy-five youth. Roughly half were girls. Girls of every size and shape and height. Shy girls and talkative girls. Girls who were desperate and girls who allowed themselves to be pursued and courted. Lovely girls and plain girls. Bloomfield, like any Amish settlement of similar size, had the gamut of them all, including the one I was eyeing.
She was still quite young, having just turned seventeen. Too young, really, for a serious relationship, but she was a vision to behold—at least to me. Her eyes were blue, and her smile bright and genuine. Her blonde hair waved forward from under her covering, then swept back. She was smart and beautiful. Not overly talkative, but not shy either. She could hold her own in pretty much any setting.
I’d known her for years. Watched her blossom from a spindly kid into a lovely young woman. Been around her and her family. I was comfortable among them all, except maybe when we were alone together, she and I. Which rarely if ever happened.
Her name was Sarah Miller, and she was my best friend, Marvin’s, cousin.
She was definitely part of the elite group, among the prettiest girls in Bloomfield—in my opinion, anyway. Still, she was only seventeen. I fretted. She seemed so young. But if I didn’t ask her out soon, some other Romeo would step in, and she’d be taken.
I had no idea whether she’d say yes if I asked her for a date. I was almost paralyzed by the fear of rejection.
I turned the thing over in my mind. Thought about it a lot. Then decided. And one Sunday I took the plunge, as Marvin had done before with me, and asked him to ask his cousin if she would have a date with me. He didn’t seem too surprised and agreed to do it that week and let me know. The days passed, and before Sunday came again, Marvin got the message back to me.
She said yes.
And that scared me almost more than if she’d said no. No would have been a jolt to deal with; then it would have been over. But yes swung the door wide open to a world of complications, a world I had never before entered.
And then the day came. Church was at the other district, but I stayed home that day and cleaned and shined and polished my new buggy. I combed the Stud’s long, tangled mane and brushed him down. Evening finally came, and it was time to head to the singing. I dressed in my “church” pants and my finest shirt. Then I hitched the Stud to my shiny new buggy and drove proudly into the evening.
I watched for Sarah that night as supper was served, and later as we sang. She smiled faintly a time or two, right at me, I fancied. Oh boy. Tonight I’d take her home. The evening dragged, the minutes passing slowly, as did supper and the inane chatter around me. Then the actual singing started, and the minutes crawled as we sang for an hour and a half until the last song came to a close and we slowly walked out single file. It was finally over.
The experienced daters, the guys who were going steady, didn’t hang around long. They just politely mumbled good night to their friends, hitched up their horses, picked up their girls, and left. Marvin said so long, drove up to where the girls were waiting, and stopped. Rhoda walked out and stepped into his buggy, and off they went. No one even looked twice. They were a steady couple.
Then it was time for my debut.
Out in the barnyard, where I had tied him safely away from the other horses, the Stud snorted and pawed. It was unhandy, driving a stallion, because he was always wired, always tense and jumpy, always alert for any mares in heat. Or any mares, for that matter. He wasn’t shy about announcing his presence, but bellowed lustily, his high, wild call ringing through the air. I calmed and scolded him good-naturedly as I led him under the buggy shafts and hitched him up. Then I stepped onto the buggy and headed through the darkness over to the house.
I don’t know when all the loafing onlookers realized that I wasn’t heading straight out the drive as I always had before. At some point, I suppose, after I guided my snorting horse up to the house and stopped. A shadow shifted from the knot of girls standing there. A girl, dressed in shawl and bonnet. She approached and stepped
up, then seated herself with a smile beside me on the soft velvet cushion. I leaned over and slid the buggy door on her side shut and clucked to my horse. He lunged away, and we were gone. Behind us, the loafers stirred, heads turned, and tongues wagged in overdrive.
Ira Wagler was having a date with Sarah Miller!
It was so long ago. I’m sure we were both nervous. Of course we were. But I am a pretty laid-back guy (at least on the surface), so it really didn’t go too badly. We chatted as the buggy rolled along the three or four miles to Sarah’s home. Once we arrived, I guided the Stud up to the hitching rail beside the drive and tied him up, and we walked into the house.
I’m not sure how to describe an Amish date. It’s somewhat similar to an English one, I suppose. Just two young people spending time together and getting to know each other. Except the Amish girl is escorted from the singing to her home, not off to town to the movies or to a restaurant.
The house was swept and clean. Quiet and dark. Sarah’s parents and younger siblings had already conveniently retired for the night. She had a snack ready. We sat at the table, chatting. After maybe twenty minutes, we moved into the living room, where we sat on the couch. An Amish date, at least the first one, is broken into the bare essence of the way things were a hundred years ago. There is no music, no TV, no entertainment. Just a boy and a girl in the company of each other, with only their muted conversation to keep the minutes moving along. It can get awkward. I’m not saying that’s what happened on our first date, but that’s the way it can go, and often does.
A kerosene lamp flickered low in the kitchen. Back then, at least in Bloomfield, a date was not supposed to unfold in darkness. There must be some sort of lamp, some sort of light, somewhere. Under the lamp’s dim but watchful eye, we sat there on the couch for the next two hours and talked.