Gary took me to the bunkhouse, a decrepit, old, two-story structure with a livable bas.e.m.e.nt. A lanky cowboy lounged there. His name was Leonard Paris, and he was from New Mexico. I unpacked my bag and hung my few clothes on a wire stretched across a corner of the room. That night I slept in the bed that would be mine for the next five months.

The next day I called my sister Rachel back in Bloomfield. She taught at one of the two Amish schools there, and each schoolhouse had a community phone. I called her collect and told her where I was. We chatted. She spoke carefully, choosing her words. She said things werenat good at home. The community was abuzz with shock, and my parents were taking it pretty hard.

Years later, she told me that Dad had refused to pay for my collect call. He said she had accepted it, so it was her responsibility. To me, thatas a strange and puzzling thing. I had called to let her know where I was and that I was okay. Surely it was worth the cost of the call to Dad, to know that. But he refused to pay, so she paid from her meager teacheras salary. I still owe her for that.

The first few days and weeks at the ranch were a blur. The trauma of leaving so abruptly, so secretively, was washed away by the excitement of my new surroundings. I was rough, uncouth, and raw, fresh from the primitive Amish life that had been the only one Iad ever known. I was eager, but quite naive. A remote ranch in the sand hills of northern Nebraska was probably about as ideal a place as any for my first transition to English life.

In the next few weeks, I acclimated to my surroundings. Leonard Paris was an amiable fellow. He immediately took me under his wing and very patiently taught me the things I didnat know. He was rough around the edges, but he was a gentleman. He didnat swear much, and he always said please and thank you at the table during our shared meals with Garyas family. I watched and learned and emulated.

I quickly adapted to the ranch work and the brutal schedule. Calving season had just begun, and we had to get up every morning at two or so to check for problem births. Then it was back to bed for a few more hours of sleep before getting up at six for the real dayas work.

Leonard regaled me with tall tales of New Mexico and his fatheras ranch there. He was a true horseman, born to the saddle. His favorite phrase, after telling a tale, was aWe have more fun than people.a Gradually, I settled into the rhythm of English life. We worked from dawn to dark. I was used to working, so that was no problem. I just wasnat used to being on my own. But I was learning. And it wasnat as if I could get into much trouble on the ranch.

My pay was room and board and a hundred bucks a week. Four hundred a month. Not a lot, even back then. I was fed well and worked hard. In many ways, it wasnat that much different from what I was used to back home.

Of course, I had to learn to drive a trucka"an old green and white 1972 Chevy. I had never driven a truck before, or any other motor vehicle for that matter. Leonard carefully coached me and allowed me to drive from the bunkhouse to the main house for meals. Within days I was confident and comfortable behind the wheel.

The first month pa.s.sed, and payday approached. And boy, did I ever have places to put that money. I needed a new pair of cowboy boots and a real cowboy hat. I also needed some shirts, more jeans, and maybe a real belt buckle with a horse or a bull or some such appropriate cowboy icon.

That Friday, Robert, the head of the investment group from Kansas that ran the ranch, stopped by with our paychecks. It was a gray, cloudy day. Robert handed Gary his check, then Leonard his. Then he turned to me.

aHere you are, first paycheck,a he said.

aThank you, sir,a I replied, taking it from him.

His eyes glinted mischievously. aItas a nice check,a he said. aHow would you like to double it?a I stared at him, uncomprehendingly.

aWeall flip a coin,a he continued. aDouble or nothing.a He would have done it too. I considered his proposition for about two seconds. I held the slip of paper in my hands and looked at it. My first paycheck. Four hundred bucks. A small fortune for me. I could double it. Or I could end up with nothing.

aNope,a I answered. aDonat wanna do that. I canat afford to lose this.a They all laughed, as did I. Many times since, Iave wondered what would have happened if I had taken him up on it. Knowing my luck, I would have remained penniless for another month.

Soon after that, Leonard, who had come to Valentine from the huge feedlots in Kansas as temporary help, returned to his old job. As he left, we shook hands, and he smiled and said he hoped we would run into each other again. I was sure we would. Of course, we never did. He left me with his patented saying, aRemember, we have more fun than people.a Leonard was replaced by a cowboy a year younger than me. A local tough named Allen Hazen. At sixteen, Allenas reputation as a first-rate cowboy and a hard drinker was already well established throughout the Valentine area. He smiled at me with a loopy grin and took it upon himself to coach me throughout my short-lived career as a cowboy.

Up until now, I had not socialized much in Valentine because I didnat know anyone in the area. Gary had introduced me to the neighbors, and everyone was friendly, but I had no social life. And that was okay for a while. I saved a few bucks and bought the basic necessities. But that all changed after Allen arrived.

On his first Sat.u.r.day night at the ranch, we quit a bit early, cleaned up, slicked up in nice clothesa"or at least the nicest ones in my meager closeta"and drove to Valentine in his old Ford pickup.

Allen knew all the local kids, and he was quite the stud. The girls loved him. By hanging around him, I soon got to know many of the town kids. On Sat.u.r.day nights, we hung around partying until the morning hours. I usually drove the thirty-five miles back to the ranch, while Allen slept soundly on the seat beside me in a comfortable drunken stupor.

Life on the ranch had gotten increasingly interesting. While I was perfectly comfortable herding cattle, tending sick cows, and mending fences, I clearly had a lot to learn when it came to socializing.

Meanwhile, back in Bloomfield, my buddies were continuing in their wild and wicked ways. They called me sometimes, usually on a Sunday morning. Back then, it cost much less to call on Sundays, so thatas when they contacted me. They filled me in on the latest, and after a time, I began to feel a tinge of homesickness. I missed them. And I missed my family. But not enough to lure me back.

After I gave Rachel my mailing address, the letters started flowing ina"from Mom and, of course, from Dad. Mom wrote from a broken heart. Told me she missed me and wanted me to come home. Dad wrote masterfully, laying on every guilt trip he could devise. Of course they werenat perfect as parents, he wrote. But they did the best they knew. He had hoped his sons would be happy and settled in Bloomfield. Now I had left, and that was a big disappointment to him and Mom.

And always, he waxed poetic about my spiritual state. I had chosen a path of wickedness. What if I were killed in an accident? Where would I go? How would I fare when I faced the judgment seat? And so on and so on.

I believed that what he said was truea"that I had left the protection of the Amish fold and was as good as lost. That there was no hope for me, should I die. That there would never be any chance of salvation outside the Amish church.

Thatas what he wrote, and thatas what I believed. The fires of h.e.l.l awaited me. That was a fact I never even tried to dispute. But despite that knowledge, I had chosen to leave. And despite that heavy mental burden, I really did not want to return.

My father knew how to write in a way that always cast a cloud of gloom, even on the sunniest day. But I tried hard to shake it off.

I rarely, if ever, wrote back.

Then one Sunday morning, while I was enjoying a rare hour of sleeping in, Gary clattered into the bunkhouse, hollering for me. There was a phone call for me back at the house. I stumbled from the bed, bleary eyed, and got dressed. Gary said the caller would call back in fifteen minutes, so we drove to the house, and I waited. Then the phone rang. It was Vern Herschberger, one of the gang of six in Bloomfield. He had left home early that morning and was at the bus station in Ottumwa. He was heading out to join me.

He arrived the next day, and instantly landed a job at a neighboring ranch about six miles away. A few weeks later, Mervin Gingerich and my best friend, Marvin Yutzy, arrived. By now, the Amish boys from Bloomfield were causing quite a stir among the local ranchers. Gary made his rounds and bragged loudly about how hard we could work. They all wanted a piece of us. Mervin and Marvin landed jobs the day they stepped off the bus. A week or two after that, the last of the sixa"Willis Herschberger and Rudy Yutzya"arrived. And just like that, there we all werea"all six of usa"in a radius of about twenty miles, working as cowboys in the sand hills south of Valentine, Nebraska.

It had been a month or two since Iad seen any of them, and I was thrilled to talk to them and hear the news from Bloomfield. As it turned out, things were about as bad as theyad been when I lefta"maybe even worse.

Our exodus caused a huge uproar in Bloomfield. Five families were affected. Five families left in shock, absorbing the sudden loss, the abrupt disappearance of certain sons. Five sets of parents, including Bishop George, whose son Mervin had left with his buddies. Tongues wagged. The community staggered from the shock and the shame of losing so many of its young sons to the world.

And people in the older communities from which the Bloomfield families had emigrated sadly and dramatically shook their heads. See how it goes when you move to an untested place like Bloomfield? Itas no better than the place you left.

The Aylmer people, too, Iam sure, smirked silently. David Wagler moved far away for the sake of his sons, and now look at how they repay him. Better he had stayed in Aylmer and confronted the problems there instead of uprooting his family in such a futile move.

As for our little gang of six, well, we had done it. Done what we had claimed we could do, back there in the safety of our Amish world. Many Amish kids threaten to leave and never do. They never have the nerve or the guts to go. We did, and no one could ever take that away from us. We were far away, safe in another world. Safe and free.

15.

We quickly settled into the cowboy life, though the reality was a far cry from my idealized childhood perceptions of it. It was tough work, with long and dreary hours. We rode the range for days on end, herding cattle. Within two months, I was walking bowleggeda"and not because I wanted to. Even when everything else was done, there were always endless miles of old, rusty fences to repair. Sometimes Allen and I worked together, and sometimes I went alone, driving the fence rows in an old four-wheel-drive pickup loaded with fencing tools and rolls of barbed wire.

Itas a harsh and desolate land, the sand hills of north central Nebraska. Remote and empty, and brutally lonely. The people who live there and scratch a living from the land are tough and hard. They have to be to survive and keep their sanity. It takes many acres of sand hills to sustain one cow for one year, but the very desolation, the emptiness, is a thing of beauty, too. The hills are alive with mule deer, jackrabbits as large as dogs, and coyotes.

And, of course, cattle. On many a day I worked alone, sometimes riding miles through vast empty stretches to retrieve a stray bull or a few cows.

In late May and early June, it was branding time, and the ranchers all got together and helped one another, kind of like the Amish do with their threshing. We loaded the trailer with our horses and headed out, arriving shortly after daybreak. All the cows with calves were corralled and ready. Amid much frantic bawling from their mothers, the calves were then separated, roped by their hind legs, and unceremoniously dragged to where the brands were heating on a fire.

Two cowboys grabbed a calf and stretched it out, helpless, on the ground, while a third approached with the red-hot branding iron and applied it to the calfas rump. Once branded, all the calves were vaccinated, and the bull calves were castrated.

The air was filled with smoke, the smell of burning flesh, the sound of crying calves and bawling cows, and the riotous shouts of the cowboys. It was all quite exciting. Usually by noon or a bit later, the task was done, and we all a.s.sembled at the ranch house for the noon meal. After the meal, we sat around outside, and a bottle of whiskey was pa.s.sed from man to man. Any cowboy was free to take a few swigs. It was an exciting time for the six of us. We were younga"kids, really. At sixteen, Rudy was the youngest. Willis was the oldest at eighteen. He was the only legal adult among us all. Such a thing would probably be impossible, not to mention illegal, today, to hire minors to work a manas job. Back in 1979, though, life was a bit less complicated.

We wore jeans and Western shirts and cowboy hats, and we felt cool. That summer I began smoking cigarettes for real, a habit that would stay with me, off and on, for almost ten years. From what Iad seen and read, the ideal cowboy smoked, so I did tooa"filterless Camels, the real deal. In my mind, I can still taste thema"not an altogether unpleasant memory.

On Sat.u.r.day nights, we all hit the town. Allen and I usually met the others there, and we would all hang out at the drive-in movie theater, still a staple of small towns back then. Thatas where all the action was. Teenagers converged every Sat.u.r.day night and hung out, drinking beer and socializing.

We got to know the fairer s.e.x too. Iad never had much to do with girls in my seventeen years. Not that Bloomfield lacked girlsa"even beautiful onesa"but they were mostly prim and proper. And unapproachable, we felt. Plus, we were actually pretty shy when it came to such things.

The painted, pretty town girls of Valentine seemed like G.o.ddesses to us, visions of splendor and worldliness. They were bold, aggressive, and available.

Late one muggy Sat.u.r.day night, in the summer of 1979, I kissed a girl for the first time. Shead been around. I had not. I still remember her name.

We saw and lived all the things wead never seen or donea"parties, drinking, and dancing on the large hardwood floor to the fiddle and guitars of some two-bit country band at the Norton Dance Hall, an old converted barn out in the country. We heard the arguments and saw the fistfights triggered by the cowboysa sensitive code of honor, which is quick to take offense at the slightest insult, real or perceived.

One night, outside the dance hall, one of our townie buddies tangled with a cowboy from the range. One had said something offensive to the other, and without delay, they faced off and began whacking merrily at each other. The townieas friends and the cowboyas friends hovered close but did not interfere. Had anyone stepped in to help one or the other, a general melee would have ensued. But no one did.

The townie got the worst of it by far. He was beaten and pitched around like a rag until his face was a pulpy and b.l.o.o.d.y mess. And then, after a few minutes, it was over. The townieas friends helped him up and took him away. Everyone else headed back inside to dance and socialize.

Itas a wonder that none of us, the six from Bloomfield, got beaten up. Maybe it was the fact that anyone could glance at us and instantly know we were innocent rubes from another place. Or maybe it was that the real cowboys viewed us with bemused condescension. Whatever the reason, all of us pa.s.sed through our Valentine days unscathed.

Come Sunday, we always returned to our jobs, broke and hungover, then got up early the next day and slaved in the hot summer sun. We told ourselves we were in the real world and making it. And we were. But we werenat getting ahead. Work, party, drink, blow your money, then go back and do it all over again.

By late summer, the thrill was gone in more ways than one. Gary, the jovial ranch manager with the great booming laugh, turned out to be a hard-driving, volatile man with a fiery temper. He was tough, worked like a maniac, and demanded the same from us. Not that thereas anything wrong with that. But on the slightest provocation, his mean streak would surface like a shark from the waters. We never came to blows, he and I, but we got close a few times during sporadic in-your-face shouting and swearing matches. We always patched things up, but I never forgot.

By late August, I was ready to get out of Valentine. I was sick of ranch life, and to be honest, memories of home tugged at me. I missed the security and stability of ita"the quiet life, the old Bloomfield haunts, and my family.

And therein lies the paradox that would haunt me for almost ten years: the tug-of-war between two worlds. A world of freedom versus a world of stability and family. A world of dreams versus a world of tradition. And wherever I resided at any given moment, trudging through the tough slog of daily life, the world I had left called me back from the one I inhabited. It was a brutal thing in so many ways, and I seemed helpless to combat it. Torn emotionally, moving back and forth, always following the sirenas call to lush and distant fields of peace that seemed so real but, like shimmering mirages in the desert, always faded away when I approached them.

Before heading back home, Mervin Gingerich and I decided to take a two-week trip on Greyhound. After fourteen days of travelinga"through Wyoming, the empty beautiful stretches of Utah, into California, to New Orleans, and back northa"we ended up in Ottumwa one Sunday evening, flat broke. We didnat have a dime between usa"just a couple of candy bars and half a pack of cigarettes.

We called an English friend from Bloomfield to pick us up and take us home. Around dusk that evening, we pulled into the long drive that led to my familyas farm. I stepped out, lugging my faithful black duffel baga"the same one Iad carried down the lane the previous April. Slowly I walked up the concrete walkway to the house.

Mom met me at the door. She smiled in welcome. My younger siblings, Rhoda and Nathan, clamored about excitedly. The older children were all at the Sunday evening singing. Dad was in his little office, typing away. Eventually, he heard the bustle of excitement and walked out to the living room. By then I was downstairs in the bedroom, unpacking.

As I walked back upstairs to the kitchen, I met him on the landing, halfway up. We paused in the semidarkness and faced each other.

aIra.a It was a half question, tinged with disbelief.

ah.e.l.lo, Dad,a I said.

aYou came home.a His voice quivered slightly.

aYep,a I grunted.

I walked on up. And he walked out. There just wasnat a whole lot to say.

I didnat particularly have my pulse on Bloomfieldas gossip lines at the time, but Iam sure the news swept through the community very quickly. Two of the six outlaws had returned. Ira and Mervin.

We were back inside the box and the perceived safety of that world. Back to what we had left, not that long ago, in search of adventure and freedom. Back to the world of horse and buggy, barn-door pants, and gallusesa"and a whole lot more. The world of home. We settled in uneasily.

Those first few weeks were strange, almost surreal. We were forced back into the slow pace of Amish life. No more trucks. No more running to town on Sat.u.r.day nights. No more hanging out with the English girls of Valentine. We worked on the farm. Attended church on Sundays. The singings on Sunday nights. The other youth welcomed us. Whatever they thought inside, they were friendly enough.

But home, I soon discovered, wasnat quite the same. It would never be again. And I could never truly return, even as I partic.i.p.ated in the community, its life and customs. On one hand, I loved the camaraderie, the feeling of belonging. But, wherever I was at any given moment, the gra.s.s always seemed greener on the other side. When I was home, I heard the sirenas song of the outside world. I had followed that song into that outside world until the memories of home had tugged at my heart and pulled me back.

Always I grasped, with tenacious grip, at the antic.i.p.ation of something rare, something great and grand and fine. Something beyond.

I grasped for tomorrow, with its visions of splendor and a shining city. I dreamed of adventures in strange and distant lands, and of a brighter future of happiness and contentment that always seemed to be just beyond the tip of my outstretched hand.

I would find it tomorrow. Always tomorrow.

16.

Mervin Gingerich and I slowly settled into the rhythm of what pa.s.sed for normal life in Bloomfield. But I had a sinking feeling in my stomach, a sense of quiet desperation. I didnat think about it much, but it was there. Desperation and tinges of despair. Deep down. Way deep down.

I went through the motions. I worked hard that fall on the farm. Harvesting corn. Plowing the fields behind jangling teams of horses. The world I had inhabited a few short months before in Valentine now seemed far away, in both miles and time.

On the surface, Iam sure I seemed like a normal eighteen-year-old kid, with normal teenage issues. And I fooled most of the people, most of the time. I smiled and laughed, at least in public.

Mervin seemed to genuinely settle in and settle down, and we still hung out on Sundays. Meanwhile, our four buddies remained in Valentine, doing who knows what. I thought of them a lot.

And then, sometime in September, word trickled in and quickly spread through the youth grapevinea"the four remaining rebels were coming back home.

They returned a few weeks latera"a group of four swashbuckling kids, mildly subdued but still defiant, sporting long hair and worldly haircuts. By then I had reverted to the upended-bowl haircut.

One night during the first week after their return, I hitched up my horse and buggy after supper and rattled over the five miles of gravel roads to my friend Marvin Yutzyas place. He emerged from the house, grinning. We shook hands and then sat on the buggy and talked.

aWeave been pretty calm since we got back, me and Mervin,a I said. aIam not sure whatas going on, but I think Mervin will probably join the church next spring. He seems to be heading in that direction.a Neither Marvin nor I were particularly inclined to join church quite yet. I had just turned eighteen. And he was about to, in December. In the end, we both thought it would be best to wait another year and see what developed.

Nevertheless, we were backa"the six of us. Back safely in the fold. But somehow, after the Valentine experience, we never quite connected like before. Sure, we still hung out. Rehashed our experiences. Told war stories. Got together with the other youth on Sunday nights, and one night a week we played hockey out on the iced-over ponds. But it just wasnat the same.

January pa.s.sed.

February.

Then March arrived. And with it came a huge event. The wedding of my sister Rachel. She had been dating Lester Yutzy, Rudyas older brother, for a couple of years, and they had made plans to marry that montha"March 6, 1980. The wedding was to be held at our home.

The last time we had held a wedding at our house was my sister Naomias wedding to Alvin Yutzy, an intense man a few years her junior, in the spring of 1978.

And I faintly remember my oldest sister, Rosemaryas, wedding in Aylmer. I was four or five years old. I recall much commotion about the house, nothing at all of the service itself, and boxes and boxes of hot dogs Dad had bought for the noon meal. Red boxes, with a picture of a chef waving a spatula. Hot dogs were a rare treat, entirely suitable for a wedding feast.

There werenat many weddings in Aylmer when we lived there, because the church fathers had dictated some very stringent rules on dating. For example, when a couple started dating, they could see each other only once a month, or every four weeks. Then, when things got really serious (expressions of love, talk of marriage, and so on) and they were agoing steady,a they could increase that schedule to one date every two weeks. (Love made the days fly, Iam sure.) And the couple had better not get caught sneaking around or even looking at each other between dates. Anyone caught in such verboten activity could expect a prompt visit from the deacon, a grizzled, imposing man. And he wouldnat be there to chat about the weather, either. At least not for long.

I donat know if the Aylmer church fathers thought the end of the world was imminent and procreation was therefore unnecessary, or what. But thatas the way it was. Talk about regressive conservatism.

After we moved to Bloomfield, we discovered that dating couples there could see each other every week. We felt very liberated. Or at least my siblings did. Within a span of about six or seven years, five of them got married.

Needless to say, over the years I took part in many weddings. My favorite job was waiting on tables for the noon meal. As a table waiter, you got to putz around getting ready in the morning, and you could leave the wedding service immediately after the vows to go and prepare to serve the meal. All told, a table waiter might have to sit for maybe an hour as opposed to the full three or four hours the regular guests had to sit quietly on those backless benches.

Being a witness attendant, or aNava Hocca,a was the least favorite job. The wedding couple had two sets of such attendants with them all day. It was considered the higher honor, to be Nava Hocca, but it was vastly more tiresome and boring. More than once I fell sound asleep sitting straight up with no support to lean against. (Try it sometime. Itas hard to do.) Anyway, an Amish wedding is an all-day affair. The morning service begins at nine or nine thirty. A good preacher can make the time pa.s.s relatively unnoticed, but chances are that the preacher will be as boring as chalk on a blackboard and drone on and on.

Few things in life are more irritating than a boring Amish preacher who likes the sound of his own voice and doesnat pay attention to the time. And there are plenty out there. Sometimes the hands on the clock seem to stand still, or even go backward, resulting in what feels like an endless day and restless guests.