Blood of the Prodigal Page 3

  “Professor,” he said, and then faltered. Clearing his throat, he began again.

  “The ban, Professor, is not cruel.” He looked fervently into Branden’s eyes. His expression was somber, and he seemed overwhelmed by the burdens he had shouldered. “The ban is a prayerful act. The last, joyless thing that a bishop can do to turn a soul around. Often, it brings repentance.”

  Branden leaned forward from the buckboard seat, rested his elbows on his knees, laced his fingers together, and studied the backs of his hands, listening, and indicating that he would listen as long as the bishop should need. The horse had brought them to the crest of the hill, and the bishop pulled carefully right and brought it to a halt in the shade at the side of the lane.

  “It is a bishop’s duty,” he continued, “to know when to impose a ban. And it is his obligation to have the strength of will to do it.

  “Sadly, there are those whose rebellion is so complete, or whose character is so disreputable, that a ban only drives them away. They become nearly irretrievable, Professor. They refuse to be restored to the community of faith. When this happens, the burden a bishop carries is terrible. Still, it is a necessary burden.

  “In my years as bishop, I have imposed only three bans. Two were members of the church, and today, they are members again.”

  Miller lapsed into silence. Branden looked over and noticed a sheen of tears in the bishop’s eyes. He allowed the bishop to remain with his thoughts, and then asked, “And the third?”

  Miller groped for words. He seemed overwhelmed, vulnerable. He remained quiet for some time, enmeshed in a private, enduring sorrow. In time, and with effort, he bolstered himself and sat a little straighter. He took up the reins again and guided the horse back onto the lane, down a small hill, and around a sharp turn that carried them over a ford at a little creek. Turning onto a larger road, he headed the buggy out of the valley, toward the pond where Cal Troyer waited.

  “The third one,” Bishop Miller said, “was a lad of eighteen, who was not yet even a member of the church. Had not yet taken his vows.”

  “You put the ban on an outsider?” Branden asked.

  “He was not an outsider, Professor. He was my son.”

  The bishop bowed his head, unable to continue. Branden hid his surprise and waited silently for the bishop to explain.

  “The ban has other purposes, Doktor Branden. The community of believers has vowed to be submissive to one another, and the ban protects them from the destructive influences of proud and vain individuals. From those who insist on asserting themselves. Of holding themselves above the welfare of the others. Above the whole community.

  “Such disbelievers, Professor, work their greatest evil on the young ones. Especially those in the years of running wild, before they take the vows. It is the Rumschpringe. We allow it for every youth, because our vows, baptism, are meaningful only for those who have seen enough of the world to know that they have chosen the plain life because it is a better life.

  “So we have the Rumschpringe. They seem to get the wildness out of their systems. Mostly, they run in small groups, called gangs, and one gang will be a little more crazy than another. They are people, Professor, with all the flaws of any people, anywhere. And without the strong influence of the church, they make mistakes. I know you’ve lived among us long enough to understand that we are not saints, and that our young people can cause a lot of problems in their years of running around wild.

  “Of all these people, my son was the worst. There was drugs, whiskey, sex. More self-assertive pride than we have ever seen in one person. His rebellion was so intolerable that he was starting to draw the wilder gangs away. Young people who were wild in their own right, but would have come home, in time, to their places in the faith. He also had a bad influence on young people from other districts. Those who made it to the town bars. I started to get visits from other bishops.

  “So, for the good of the district and for the sake of the young people, I put the ban on my own son, so that those who knew they would eventually be coming home would not be drawn too much away by his example. My son would have nothing to do with his family, and I cast him out for the sake of the others. From that generation, we have lost only two. My son and a girl from another district, who ran with him.

  “After that, he got worse. I believe he was what you call ‘hooked’ on whiskey. He lived with an English girl who poisoned any remaining hope he ever had of coming home. Some say I sacrificed my son only to save the others. But I thought the ban would bring him to his senses. Draw him back to us.

  “Some have said it was cruel. In truth it was harder on my wife and me than anyone can know. She never speaks of it now, but I find her weeping sometimes when she prays. And I have prayed for him too, without failing, in all these years. We pray that to have cast him out will one day bring him home to us. Every day, Professor, we pray for his return. We always will. We never lose hope. I have even been praying for him now, as we have traveled together.”

  Branden looked over at the bishop and watched him snap his whip to bring the horse to a brisk pace. The look on his face made it plain that he did not intend to linger in the memories of bygone years. Having said what needed to be said so that Branden would understand, he now evidently considered the matter closed.

  “My son will not be lost forever,” he declared. “Only God can understand the reasons for the ban. And only God can restore my son to us. His sinfulness endangered us all. Now it endangers my grandson, too.

  “It is our son, Professor, who has the boy. Jonah, who has been lost to us all these years, has our grandson.”

  Reaching beneath his vest, he drew out a carefully folded note and handed it over without comment. Branden opened it, read it, refolded it, and handed it back to the bishop. The bishop gestured for him to keep it.

  “My son intends to keep Jeremiah for the summer, but he does not know the danger,” Miller said. “He never really did. The danger of the world. Less than a month remains now, and my son does not know as much as he thinks he does.”

  “Why would your son take one of your grandsons?” Branden asked.

  “Because he is the boy’s father.”

  Branden’s eyebrows lifted with surprise.

  “After the ban, my son lived in town with a wretched woman he had met in the bars. At least he lived with her when he wasn’t in jail.

  “Then, apparently, he left town altogether. At least we have heard nothing of him since then, up until he left this note. After he had been gone several months, Jeremiah’s mother gave birth, and we have pretty much raised the boy since he was a few months old.”

  “And the boy’s mother?”

  “Dead,” the bishop said curtly.

  Branden waited for an explanation. When it became clear that no further details would be forthcoming, he tried another tack.

  “You put the ban on Jonah when he was eighteen?” Branden asked.

  “Thereabouts,” Miller said.

  “And he ran with a wild crowd living in town?”

  “And in jail.”

  “Then, for all you know, he just moved out and went away. Nothing from him in those years?”

  “Nothing until about a month ago, when he put that note in our mailbox and took Jeremiah away.”

  “Then you want us to help you find Jonah?”

  “Not so much my son. It is Jeremiah we seek. But with restrictions, Professor.”

  Urgently, then, as they finished their drive back to the pond, the bishop explained his restrictions. The terms under which they could accept his help. The extraordinary fact that they had decided to ask any Englisher for help at all.

  When they returned to the pond, the bishop nodded approval to Cal Troyer, shook Branden’s hand warmly, whipped his horse back up the lane, and headed the buggy home.

  HIS TRIP had been successful, the bishop mused. The professor and the pastor would help. And the professor had given his word. He would abide by the deacons’ restrictions.


  There would surely be great risk for the district, not to mention for the boy. But the deacons had agreed. The bishop consoled himself again with an urgent prayer. This was the only way. Sad, he thought, what assurances a bishop needs in these perverse times. In this perverse world.

  Once, life had seemed flawlessly simple. As it was written, so it had always been. Their lives need never change. But now, there was the ever-clamoring pressure from the outsiders. First it had been the land. Always scarcer, and repeatedly divided among the boys. Few parcels worth farming still remained. Those that came up for auction these days were priced well beyond his means. He had seen that pressure coming for years. What he had not seen coming was the pressure from the tourists. Gawking city English, with their billfolds full of money.

  But the land had been the start of it. The pressing need for money to buy new land. And the boys who worked in the sawmills and the wheel shops had become, inexorably, ever more accustomed to the world. No less the girls who worked in the restaurants. And in the quilt shops. Worldly enticements at every turn. That was where the liberals had gone astray. Today had confirmed it for him as nothing else could have. What greater proof might a bishop need than a single trip into town?

  The bishop could see, with perfect clarity, what threatened his people. Rumbling over the back roads, he prayed for insight and for strength. There would surely be many tests to come. He asked for resolve, steadfastness, and simplicity. His fingers tightened on the reins. He prayed for protection from the world. As his thoughts turned to the families of his district, an answer was given to his prayers, and a sense of peaceful belonging returned to him.

  There had been no serious infractions, lately. At least none that had been brought to his attention. One girl was suspected to have worn a dress with fewer than the proper number of pleats. When warned, she had submitted. A good sign. On the northern edge of the district, a lad had been found letting his hair grow past the earlobes. Again, easily corrected. Radios with batteries were a challenge, but they could get through that, he figured. In truth, there had been no serious challenges of authority or custom since his son’s. And his ban had assuredly taken care of that.

  His authority as bishop was rarely challenged, now. Why couldn’t the other bishops understand? Of course he had a reputation for severity. But didn’t they know that the real issues were never the color of clothes or the number of pleats in a skirt? Not the length of hair, or the style of a summer hat. The real issue was, and always had been, authority. The willing, dutiful submission of a serene people. Righteousness thereby preserved. The profane world held at bay.

  The strength of the people was not available merely to individuals. It rested only upon the whole, the Gemei, through hard work, plain living, and obedience. Submission to one another by denial of the individual self. Through sacrifice and, above all, lack of pride. And hadn’t he kept the Gemei pure through a tireless vigil of leadership? His people understood, better than any, that to be different was to be proud. To be profane.

  There, precisely, was the root of evil, he thought. It was pride that caused nonconformers to assert themselves. Pride, the greatest of all sins. Such, he recalled heavily, had been the downfall of Jonah. He thought again of little Jeremiah, gone a month now.

  He knew Pastor Caleb Troyer. A good man. If he would only forsake the world and become a farmer, then surely a righteous man. And the professor, Michael Branden. Serious. Not worldly. Not profane. Certainly not kutslich. And yet, still one of the vain ones. One of the proud. One of the English de Hoche.

  Miller wondered again how much these two English should be trusted. Certainly more than the police, that was clear. But not yet entrusted with everything. Not yet trusted to the uttermost. Perhaps only trusted completely if the next month came to naught. May God forbid that so grim a need should ever arise.

  5

  Thursday, June 18

  4:30 P.M.

  “I TOLD Cal you’d take the case, Michael,” Caroline said as she gathered up the scattered pages of her manuscript, smiling outwardly at her husband and inwardly at her gentle mischief.

  Branden carried two more mugs onto the spacious back porch and poured coffee for himself and Cal. “It’s wiser to be a historian than a prophet, Caroline,” he scolded.

  Caroline turned to Cal, taunting. “The Professor doesn’t like to be thought so predictable.”

  Cal held out his palms in mock surrender, laughed, and sidestepped the jab by pointing to Caroline’s loose stack of papers. “Another book?”

  “It’s a revision of a collection of children’s stories I edited a few years ago,” Caroline said. She stacked the pages on edge, laid the manuscript on the glass-topped patio table where she had been working, and joined them in white wicker chairs by the porch windows. The day had begun brightly, but now a front was coming in from the north. A cool afternoon breeze blew through the tall screens of the porch.

  The porch was more than spacious, running the entire length of the two-story brick colonial, extravagantly wide and screened on three sides, with windows stretching from floor to ceiling. Because of a gentle slope to the Brandens’ long back yard, the porch seemed to hover over the lawn, so that the Brandens and their guests enjoyed a spectacular view of the eastern hills and Amish valleys. In summers, the porch had come to be Caroline’s favorite place to work, and often, Branden would find her standing there, watching the hawks ride thermals, or gazing at the patchwork of Amish farms and fields in the distance.

  Caroline sat in an old-fashioned, low and wide wicker chair, her legs crossed casually. She peered at Branden and Troyer over a fresh mug of coffee. “You did take the case,” she said.

  “Wasn’t up to me,” Branden said. “The bishop made the decision. I just showed up for the interview.”

  “How’d that go?” Cal asked.

  “Slowly, as you predicted,” Branden said. “We toured Holmes County for over an hour before he asked anything about me.”

  “Typical,” Cal said.

  “Mostly we talked about the people and the farms we passed. In remote regions of the Doughty Valley. He showed me each of the family farms under his leadership. Named all of the children, parents, grandparents, land holdings, livestock, relatives, and relationships. Even courtships. Essentially, he introduced himself to me by detailing all of the district over which he serves as bishop. Eventually, he wanted to know about me. And Caroline. And whether we had any children.”

  Cal glanced at Caroline and saw the memory of her losses pass heavily across her eyes. Troyer and Branden exchanged glances, wondering how she would handle a case involving a child.

  Eventually Caroline asked, “Does he have a lot of children?”

  “Fourteen. Thirteen living,” Branden answered gently, grateful to see her strength. He wondered again, briefly, how he’d mention the Federal Express envelope to her. Wondered how she would handle the prospect of moving to the new university professorship he had been offered.

  He took a moment, turning his coffee mug in his fingers, sipping from it thoughtfully, and then said, “Actually that’s the whole point of this case. His children, that is. One of his sons, Jonah Miller, is dead to them, but still alive.”

  He glanced from Cal to Caroline, giving them a chance to think it through.

  “He left home?” Cal asked.

  “Shunned,” Branden answered, pointedly.

  “His own son?” Caroline said. “That’s hard to believe.”

  “He’s the bishop,” Branden answered. “If anyone in that district were to have been mited, the bishop would have done it himself.”

  “I would have hoped the mite was a thing of the past,” Caroline said.

  “He wouldn’t have had any choice,” Branden said. “He’s the bishop.”

  “Many of them would not so much as have spoken his name,” Cal added.

  “Then there’s more to this case than the custody of a boy,” Branden said. Cal and Caroline waited for an explanation. “Bishop Mille
r did actually speak his son’s name, once. At the end of our interview, Cal. He said something like, ‘It’s my son, Professor, who has the boy. Jonah E. Miller. He’s been lost to us for nearly ten years.’ Then he handed me this note.”

  Branden gave the note first to Cal. When Cal had read it, he passed it, disquieted, to Caroline. She read it out loud.

  Dear Father.

  I want my boy to see some of the world.

  You’ll have him back in time for harvest.

  Do not try to find us.

  Jonah.

  “Extraordinary,” Cal said after a pause. He ran the fingers of both hands back through his long white hair.

  “Because of the note?” Caroline asked.

  “Yes, but more,” Cal said. He slouched in his white wicker chair, his stocky legs out straight and crossed at the ankles, coffee mug balanced on his belly, eventually saying only, “There must be more.”

  “Agreed,” Branden said. “Let’s think it through.” He leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees, and counted out each assertion on the fingers of his left hand. “First, the bishop put the ban on his own son, ten years ago.” The first finger went up.

  “Must have been good cause,” Cal said.

  “Indeed,” Branden said, and another finger went up. “Also, the bishop evidently thinks there’s good cause, now, to involve outsiders in this case.” A third finger popped up.

  Cal stood up, walked over to the large windows of the screened porch, ran his eyes out toward the far hills in the east, and said, “He’d not have mentioned his son, or have involved us in this case, if it were simply a matter of a father taking his boy for the summer.”

  “Precisely,” Branden said, and held up a fourth finger.

  “Whatever the reason, his Dieners would have concurred,” Cal said.

  “Right again,” Branden said, and lifted his thumb.

  “You’d think that if the bishop were really worried about his grandson, he would have gone to the police,” Caroline said.