“He used to do it all the time,” Samuel said. He swiped his fingertip across his tongue and turned a page of The Budget. “Goes off by himself most the time, as far as I know. He even went out west about a year ago. Burned off some youthful energy before settling down, I figure.”
“Really? How long was he there? Did he like it?”
“About a week, wasn’t it, Rachel?”
“About a week,” Rachel affirmed, never missing a stitch of her crocheting. “And I think he liked it fine. He didn’t talk much about it. It was just right before he got married.”
“I’d like to ask him about his trips sometime,” Aiden said, more to himself.
After a while, the Schrock children asked Aiden about life in Chicago. He chuckled, thinking they should find his life as intriguing as he did theirs. The conversation fell into that awkward hole when Mark, David, and Moriah pressured him on why he wasn’t married. He circumvented the question the best he could, telling them he was far too busy for a relationship at the moment—not altogether untrue.
Evading such delicate topics with the Amish, Aiden was learning, was like sidestepping thorns barefoot in the scorching sand.
The children’s assertive questions, although harmless, brought up painful memories for Aiden. Conrad and he had been together almost a year. He’d been Aiden’s only serious relationship. Two months after moving with him to Chicago, he had come home from his new part-time job to discover a blur of brusque packing, followed by a quick hug goodbye and a curt “good luck” before another blur of body and luggage bouncing down the hallway steps.
He recovered from Conrad’s abrupt leaving him for another man and soon began hunting for another relationship. But no one shared his interests. Gay men often scoffed at his dream of wanting to live monogamously in a cabin in Montana. They accused him of “trying to act straight.” Many labeled him a “homophobe.” He never could quite understand how wanting to subsist off the land made him a homophobe, but he did know that by asking he would only entrench them deeper into a painfully doctrinaire discussion. He’d learned to shrug and smile.
In his short visit with the Amish, Aiden already believed a stronger bridge connected him to their world than to his own. Even without any religious convictions, he saw much of himself in their simple ways. Not everything came down to his sexuality. He saw his being gay as a small part of his identity, yet others, whether for or against homosexuality, often saw it as his only part.
That was what forced a wedge between him and Conrad. His ex-boyfriend celebrated homosexuality as a lifestyle rather than a simple orientation. Despite sharing a love for the outdoors, Conrad found someone more interested in parties and parades than a domestic life. The more Aiden discovered Conrad’s disposition commonplace, the more he foresaw a future alone.
He was grateful when Samuel pushed his recliner upright and announced time for bed. “We had a long and stressful day today, kinner. Best we get some sleep if we’re to be any good tomorrow. Where’s Daniel?”
“Out in his woodshop yet, I guess,” Rachel said, packing her crocheting into her wooden crochet box with a snap and stowing it in the drawer. Standing, she lifted her lantern, illuminating her gentle face, pretty without the need for makeup. “He’ll be in soon enough.”
Upstairs, Rachel showed Aiden to Daniel’s bedroom. Simple and comfortable. One twin bed, covered in a blue monochromatic patchwork quilt, a night table, a dresser, and a ladder-back chair, all crafted from oak. The twitter of night birds and the vacillating shrill of treehoppers flowed through an open window. Rachel lit a gas lantern on the night table. An old-fashioned windup alarm clock next to the lantern showed it was nine thirty.
“Mark left some of his old clothes in the dresser,” she told him, backing up to the threshold. “They’re a bit worn, but you shouldn’t have trouble fitting in them. Don’t forget the suspenders. You’ll stand out without them.”
“Aren’t my clothes okay?” Aiden nodded toward the duffel bag Samuel had carried up for him earlier. “My jeans should be able to handle whatever I—”
“You can’t wear English clothes while staying here,” she said. “Not if you’re working on the farm. It’s not proper. Goot nacht.” And with those words she shut the door. The hiss from her gas lantern faded as she made her way downstairs.
Aiden chuckled, looking around the dim room. Hard to believe he was spending the night in an Amish home with an Amish family. When he had set out for Henry two days ago to research his article, he’d never imagined anything so up close and personal.
He leaned against the windowsill and inhaled the country air. A young man had lost his life earlier that day, yet the accident seemed so far away, from another time. As the soft, warm breeze wafted past his shoulders, he wondered what the next few days would bring.
Still early, but the day’s events made him drowsy. Crawling into bed, he blew out his lantern and allowed his thoughts to fall back onto the handsome and puzzling Daniel. Just what was it about him? He didn’t dare do what he was considering, as his mind pondered over Daniel. He’d gone without for so long. But not after everything that had happened that day. Not in an Amish house. Not in Daniel’s own bed.
Frustrated, he turned to his side and wished for a fast sleep.
Chapter 4
“Get moving!”
Daniel drove the three-horse team onto the field. His shirt sleeves were rolled to expose the sinewy muscles on his forearms that flexed with each authoritative tug on the reins. He sat on a metal seat high atop the binding machine, the cutting reel rotating like a windmill. Daniel and the horse team passed down the first row of swaying golden oats. Aiden and the boys followed behind, “shocking the sheaves” (setting the cut oats upright in tight bundles) to ensure they would dry in time for the threshing in September.
The sun nudged above the elms and hickories along the blacktop lane. The pink sky, streaked with wispy indigo clouds, slowly faded to a washed blue. Aiden hadn’t been up and out that early in a while, but the filling breakfast of thickly sliced bacon, fried potatoes, “dippy eggs,” and stove-top brewed black coffee gave him a light-headed sense of vim.
When the youngest boy, David, had awakened him at four thirty, Aiden had needed a few moments to reorient himself. Sitting up in bed, he winced from an image of Bobby Jonesboro’s face. But by the time he dressed in Mark’s clothes and came down for breakfast, the vision had dimmed to a subtle irritation and he focused on the day ahead.
He dismissed Rachel’s concerns that he might not be rested enough after the accident for strenuous field work. For his first night in a simple Amish bedroom without air conditioning, Aiden had slept surprisingly well.
The younger children thought he looked like a “real Amish man” in Mark’s clothes. Rachel even took an Amish straw hat from one of the wall pegs and placed it on his head before she and her daughters left for the flea market to sell their homemade pies and breads. “It’s a bit small, but fine enough,” Samuel said, standing next to his wife.
Aiden was a little surprised that any of them showed an interest in his appearance. Amish clothes were not meant to enhance one’s appearance, although the broadfall pants were a smidgeon tight around his backside. He had a rounder butt than average from doing squats regularly at the gym. Nonetheless, he was delighted to have gained the family’s approval. He hoped to impress them further with his old-fashioned work ethic.
Samuel directed much of the action from the sidelines, now and then stepping in among the hip-high oat stalks to instruct or guide Aiden and his sons. Aiden learned mostly by watching. His quick grasp of the field work and willingness to sweat earned him respect from Samuel and his younger boys.
While waiting for Daniel to drive the Belgians farther ahead on the old McCormick, Aiden and the boys scattered across the golden field, looking for rocks and tossing them into wheelbarrows.
“This is the worst part,” Mark said, digging up a rock with his gloved hands.
“Where do they com
e from?” Aiden assumed the rocks would have been cultivated out of the earth years ago. He used a small pick Samuel had given him to loosen the rocks, careful not to disturb the unharvested oats. He did not recall needing to rock pick when helping out as a boy on his grandfather’s tobacco farm.
“They keep popping up out of the ground.” Mark tossed a rock into his wheelbarrow. His shirt sleeves were rolled to his biceps in typical Amish teen male fashion, showcasing farm-honed muscles. He kicked soil back into the hole with his black boots and wiped the sweat from under his straw hat. “If we don’t get rid of them, they’ll ruin our equipment and can harm the draft horses. No matter how many we toss, they keep coming back out of the ground; it’s just the way it is. They’re worse than weeds.”
Daniel jostled back and forth in easy unison with the binder, calling out orders in German to the three Belgians. Their anvil-shaped heads hung low and their coats frothed with sweat. Aiden kept one eye on Daniel, mounted on the McCormick. He thought Daniel looked like the bearded Greek god Zeus charging across the sky in his chariot.
One of the outside horses hesitated with a squeal, forcing the other two out of step. Samuel whacked the mare on her hindquarters to get her moving. He grabbed onto her hind legs and squatted down. She refused to budge. Holding his straw hat on his head, he pushed into her mammoth hindquarters with his whole body.
“We gotta get these groundhog holes filled in,” he hollered up at Daniel. “They’re coming up and out again.”
“We need some new hounds to chase those hogs out!” Daniel tugged the reins, getting the horses moving again.
“What happened to your old hounds?” Aiden asked Mark, once the commotion of the holdup had died down.
“They both bolted three months ago during a really bad storm. Haven’t seen them since. We need to get new ones but haven’t gotten around to it.” Mark stooped down and lifted a rock. “Boogered hounds. They’re fearless around the Belgians and will fight a fox, but a thunderstorm sends them scurrying like cowards.”
With their wheelbarrows full of rocks, Aiden and the boys dumped them into a pile by the horse pen to be washed and dried and sold to gardeners, landscapers, or anyone else interested in rocks.
“We don’t waste anything,” Mark said. “Not even rocks.”
On the way back to the field, David suggested they make a contest out of the rock picking. Whoever filled his wheelbarrow the quickest would be the winner. Half-heartedly, Mark and Aiden went along. Forty minutes later, standing in the midst of the tall oat stalks, David threw his thin arms into the air to celebrate his victory.
“You’re a rock star,” Aiden said.
The two boys stared blankly at Aiden, then, with enormous smiles creasing their young, tanned faces, they laughed. David, holding onto his brother’s arm, nearly keeled over. Aiden realized his metaphor was not lost on the two young Amish boys who, in some ways, were as much a part of the twenty-first century as he.
“Dummkop!” Samuel chastised David with a stern look for his silly game-playing. Aiden understood why Samuel used extra harsh words with David in the field. David, being the youngest son, would someday inherit the family farm.
The sun lifted high over the field. At eleven they broke for the lunch Rachel had left for them in the refrigerator. Aiden had never imagined he’d have such a large appetite after such a filling breakfast, but after choring four hours under the hot sun, picking rocks and shocking sticky oats, he ate himself full as if he’d had nothing but a crumb all morning.
Daniel still did not speak to him. Aiden caught him a few times glancing at him during lunch. But when Aiden met his gaze, he’d look away and busy himself with his cold chicken and sliced trail bologna.
In some ways, Aiden supposed he exemplified the typical Amish man: austere and aloof. Yet the other Schrocks were so much different. Even Samuel, the patriarch who had chastised his youngest son for making a game out of rock picking, displayed a levity that took Aiden by surprise. None of them, not even their chatty neighbors Micah Yoder and Gunny Rupp, who had stopped by for a short visit to meet the “English hero” just before lunch, fit the Amish stereotype. None but Daniel.
Each of them—including little Leah—had expressed gratitude for his veering his car in front of the drunken Bobby Jonesboro. But Daniel had yet to utter a word of thanks. He’d been the first to rush to his side at the accident scene to make sure he was unharmed. Now, he seemed unable to bear his presence. Aiden was more certain his aloofness had to do with the man’s death.
Aiden had even thanked him for letting him stay in his bedroom, but Daniel had sidestepped his gratitude with a grunt. Aiden got the message and avoided him whenever he could.
As the lunch table cleared, Samuel stepped onto the small patch of garden outside the utility room, where they grew vegetables and herbs. The garden was perfect for tucking away their oblong gas tank. One area was reserved for strawberries. Samuel picked a handful and popped them into his mouth. He called to the others to try some.
“Sour, yet,” he said, his mouth puckering. “But goot! Let’s not tell Mom we picked some before ripening.”
Daniel did not have any of the strawberries. He was back out on the field, driving the Belgians down the rippling rows of golden oats. The team turned easily and avoided groundhog holes as the sheaves swept to the sides. The others soon joined him, spreading out in the field, their collarless shirts spotted in sweat. After a while, Samuel waved Aiden in from the back field where he was rock picking with Mark and David.
“Let’s get you up there and see what you can do with those Belgians, Englishman,” he said. Daniel looked down at his father with animus, and even with the Belgians snorting and neighing, Aiden heard Daniel sigh with rancor.
“Come from down there, Daniel. Let our English friend give it a try. Give him something to write about.”
Sighing, Daniel climbed down from the McCormick, and Samuel boosted Aiden up to the seat. To Aiden’s relief, the older Schrock climbed up after him and stood on the aft shaft.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “Wouldn’t let you up here alone on your first time out. Those beasts know who they can take advantage of.”
With Samuel’s guidance, Aiden steered the draft horses forward. Mark and David took a break from their rock picking and looked on and cheered when Aiden made his first turn with the team without so much as a jolt. Folding his arms across his broad chest, Daniel watched also.
But he was clearly not so joyful. Aiden watched him turn hastily and stomp through the corrugated field toward the house as he yanked off his gloves. Just as Aiden focused his attention back on the binding, one of the horses stepped out of sync and stumbled headlong, forcing the binder to jerk. Samuel, experienced with such bumps, held steady to the seat post, but Aiden tumbled over the side. Samuel grabbed for him, but he was gone before he could reach him. Snatching the reins, Samuel wrenched the Belgians to a halt and climbed off the machine. He squatted next to Aiden.
“You get hurt?”
“No,” Aiden said, standing with Samuel’s aid. “I’m okay.” He took off his canvas gloves and inspected the swelling on his palms. Even with the gloves, the reins had left burn streaks from when he had instinctively grabbed onto the reins tighter before sailing over the side.
Mark and David rushed over.
“What happened?” Mark asked.
“Hit a groundhog hole!” Samuel poked his boot into the offending hole. “Those holes. Need to get some hounds to chase out those rodents.”
Aiden wiped the soil and straw from his Amish clothes, his palms stinging, and looked around red-faced. David handed him his straw hat, which had flown off when he fell.
“You sure do get into a lot of accidents,” he said, straight-faced.
“Looks that way,” Aiden said, putting on his hat, happy to hide his burning cheeks.
“Well now,” Samuel said. “How you like being an Amish man, huh? You like being Amish now?” And he laughed as he climbed back up on the McCo
rmick and, still laughing, commanded the Belgians forward.
Drinking a bottled water in the utility room, Daniel had watched the Englishman fall from the binder, and he continued to stare out the window as Aiden brushed the straw and dirt from his clothes and examined his palms.
“Something yet not right about all this,” he said under his breath. “Something bad will come from it all, I know it. It’s all boogered. Des is shlecht.”
Chapter 5
Tuesday morning Aiden awoke to his alarm clock at four thirty. He ached to get back into the field. After his embarrassing tumble from the binding machine, he longed to redeem himself in the family’s eyes. Samuel had hesitated letting him back up on the McCormick after his fall; he had relegated him to rock picking and shocking the remainder of the afternoon. Dressing in the flickering light of his gas lantern, he hoped the family did not already view him as a city-soft oaf.
The lingering burning on his palms, which Rachel had treated last night with aloe, failed to stymie his determination. But as he headed downstairs for breakfast, the sound of Rachel and Daniel’s stiff voices coming from the kitchen stopped him at the top of the enclosed stairwell. His ears heating with blood, he listened in, trying to interpret their unique German words.
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