Blood of the Prodigal. P. L. Gaus

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СКАЧАТЬ that she never would. That was their way. So it had always been. Es steht geschrieben—it stands written. So it shall always be. From this, he assured himself, they drew strength for the life of separation. For the one true path to salvation.

      Bishop Miller found himself staring down blankly at the reins. He forced himself upright and snapped the whip grimly. His son had been lost more than ten years ago. “Lord,” he prayed today, “not my grandson too.”

      He had started out before dawn, carefully traveling the remote gravel roads and township lanes in southern Holmes County, heading up out of his Old Order Amish district, toward the city, where greater prosperity had enticed the brethren into easier lives. Into compromises with the world. It was the city that had drawn too many of the brethren away from the paths of righteousness.

      Today was Thursday, a day for labor. He’d not normally have forsaken the chores of the farm for a journey into town. But the deacons had agreed. In point of fact, they had urged him to go.

      After days of prayer, he had relented. The child had shown promise with the Word. Jeremiah’s gift was to speak of the Book. He’d surely be called, in his day, to be a Diener zum Buch—a preacher. An interpreter of God’s character in the scriptures. And he must not be sacrificed to the world. Not for so much as a single summer.

      On the south edge of town, Bishop Miller watered his horse at the buckets set out in front of the Wal-Mart store and pulled the buggy into the parking lot of the Pizza Hut on the other side of the street. He stepped down and around to the back, lifted a faded green canvas feed bag out of the buggy, and walked to the front to hang the bag over the horse’s ears. He tied the reins around a light pole next to a telephone booth, and then he ran his hand along the rump of the horse, reached up into the seat of the buggy, and lifted out his black metal lunch pail.

      As he lunched with the horse, a teenage girl came out of the Pizza Hut and sauntered over to the phone booth. She looked him over disdainfully, made a quick call, and then stood impatiently beside the phone until a rusty truck arrived, driven by an older man in a ragged tee-shirt. As she got in, he gunned the engine, popped the clutch, sprayed gravel toward the bishop’s buggy, and drove away shouting vulgarly out the window.

      The bishop shook his head, took down the feed bag and carried it wearily around to the back. Then he tightened the lathered hip straps at the breeching, dried his calloused hands on his trousers, climbed back into the buggy, dropped the plain black curtains on the buggy’s windows, and teased the horse into awkward back steps. Once clear of the phone booth, he snapped his whip, brought the horse to a determined pace, drove further north into town, and turned onto a side street in a working-class neighborhood. He traveled several steep blocks through the hills of Millersburg and pulled into the gravel parking lot of a white frame church. Out front there was a plain white sign that read: “Church of Christ, Christian. Pastor Caleb Troyer.” It gave the times of the Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday night services. A color poster planted on the lawn announced the details of this year’s Vacation Bible School.

      The bishop entered a side door of the small church and remained inside for nearly an hour. When he emerged, he turned around on the steps of the church to study the pastor’s face. Cal Troyer was a short man with a round, leathered face that marked him in those parts of Ohio as likely descended from the Amish. He had flowing white hair and a heavy, tangled white beard with no hint whatsoever of its original color. He was dressed in workman’s blue jeans and a denim shirt. He had a carpenter’s belt strapped to his waist. A ladder stood against the gutters of the church house, where he had been working earlier that morning.

      The bishop took his hand and shook it firmly, gratitude showing openly on his face. He gazed an extra moment into Pastor Troyer’s eyes. With proper grooming, once shaved around the mouth, Cal Troyer would easily pass anywhere for Amish. Perhaps his hair was too long, but that was easily remedied. The deep tan on his face and the powerful muscles in his short arms had always brought him respect with the Gemei. Troyer was a preacher, but he earned his way in life as a carpenter. And the way the bishop figured things in these perverse times, that was not far at all from the true calling.

      In truth, it was Troyer the bishop had wanted, but he was resigned now to the fact that, with the preacher leaving in a few days for a missions conference, that wouldn’t be possible. But Troyer had vouched solidly for the professor, and the bishop had taken him at his word. The deacons had agreed. They would place their trust in Professor Branden if Troyer would assure them that they could do so. If not for that, the Bishop would have driven home and closed his doors, resolved to ride it out alone, without the aid of any English at all.

      But, as he walked to his buggy, the bishop’s hopefulness began to fade. Whatever else, wasn’t Cal Troyer still one of de Hochen, the high ones, the “English”? Wasn’t he of the proud people, not the plain? Not of our people, unser Leut. And if not plain, then perhaps not entirely trustworthy. He turned at his buggy and glanced back at Troyer on the steps of the small meeting house. A line from the Liedersammlung song book came to the bishop’s mind. “Demut ist de schönste Tugend”; humility is the most beautiful virtue. He gazed a moment longer at Troyer and was reassured by what he saw. Cal Troyer was not schtolz, not proud. Rather, he was possessed of deep humility. Staring at Troyer from the seat of his buggy, Bishop Miller resolved finally to rest his hopes in the hands of Professor Michael Branden, on the word of this humble country preacher, the least prideful of all de Hochen the bishop had known—a fitting resolution of their dilemma, considering that all of their trials had begun, nine years ago, with the death of little Jeremiah’s mother, the most profane of all de Hochen the bishop had ever known.

       3

      Thursday, June 18

      11:30 A.M.

      A MILE or so south of Millersburg, in the wooded hill country sheltering the largest Amish settlements of Ohio, Cal Troyer eased his truck over the berm onto an isolated lane and dropped into a hidden glade near a long forgotten farm pond. Tranquil glens tucked away in nearly every corner of Holmes County hold spectacular bass ponds, made available to only a select few, and those few almost exclusively Amish. This particular pond, stocked years ago with fingerlings, had been fished by only Pastor Caleb Troyer and Professor Michael Branden.

      They had acquired the privilege while working for a farmer who could not otherwise have paid them. “Working a case,” as the professor’s wife Caroline liked to tease. It had concerned a chemical problem with fertilizers used on a nearby English farm, plus runoff disputes, and the EPA. Children had taken sick. Farmers in the valley had been blamed. The EPA, it developed, had been wrong, at the cost of several livelihoods.

      The bass pond had been Branden’s idea. He and Cal Troyer would accept no fees. But, in return for their help, they would fish the pond for life. The land would never be sold without provision for this.

      Cal dropped the truck into low and chuckled, thinking it no surprise to find Mike Branden fishing here, today, working the far edges of the pond with a spinner bait. Troyer parked in tall weeds at the tree line, eased himself out of his rusty truck, and leaned back against the hood, watching, his short arms folded across his chest. His thoughts drifted to the first summer they had spent here, and his eyes turned up to the dilapidated farm house on the hill.

      Branden cast into the shallows at the opposite edge of the pond and retrieved the spinner quickly, churning its blade just beneath the surface. At a point where the color suggested deeper water, a surge erupted under the spinner, and the bait jerked sideways under the impact of a strike. He played the bass on his arching rod, brought it steadily to him, lipped it with his thumb and forefinger, and held it up for Troyer, who acknowledged it with a wave, as Branden extracted the hook with a quick twist and tossed the fish back into the pond.

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