MEN OF LANCASTER COUNTY 01: The Amish Groom Read online

  He put the book down. “I never told Dad I wanted to quit the team.”

  “But he said—”

  “Maybe you should ask me what I said.”

  He had me there. It hadn’t been my intention to begin this conversation in this way. “You’re right. I was going to ask you tonight over dinner how you were feeling about being on the team. I did this all wrong. Can we start over?”

  Brady shook his head and laughed as though I still didn’t get it. “Not that it’s truly any of your business, Tyler, but I happen to like football. What I don’t like is Dad needing to cram his dreams for greatness down my throat. And if my playing football is going to bring out the worst in him, then I am going to take up marching band. Because I am telling you right now, I will not spend the next three years and then the next four years and then who knows how many years after that in the NFL, should I get lucky enough to play for them, being Dad’s…never mind.”

  And there it was. As I’d suspected, Dad really was coming down way too hard on his younger son. Before I could think of how to respond, Brady continued.

  “Just forget it. Look, I have no plans to quit the team. At least not while you’re here. But if I do, it’s my decision to make. And mine to regret, for that matter. See, I do understand the consequences and I do take them seriously. Okay?”

  “Okay.” I was quiet for a moment. “But even if you stay on the team, you really need to talk to Dad about this when he gets home.”

  Brady rolled his eyes. “I already have. He doesn’t get it.”

  “What if you and I talked to him together?”

  He barked out a laugh.

  “I’m serious, Brady. Once he returns, I think the three of us should sit down and discuss this whole issue. Calmly and respectfully. Trust me. He already knows you’re not happy with him right now. And I’ll be there beside you to back you up.”

  My brother sighed. “Right.” He stood, picked up his glass, and brought it to the sink. “Just like you’ve always been there before.”

  I had no idea what he was implying. All I knew was that he didn’t respect me anymore—nor did he trust me, for that matter. Had I let him down somehow? Certainly, I had lost credibility in his eyes. I couldn’t imagine how that might have happened, but I hoped I would find out soon. The chip on his shoulder was huge, far too big to be knocked off in a single conversation.

  I decided to leave it alone for now.

  “Okay, maybe now’s not the time to talk about this. I’m hungry, and I’m sure you are too.”

  He seemed relieved that we were dropping the subject for now. I asked him to turn on the grill, and he walked to the door, pausing before he went out.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said, turning back. “Lark picked up Aaron after practice today. I asked her about the photography thing. She said she might have a few suggestions for you.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Aaron’s sister. The photographer, remember? Her name is Lark. She couldn’t think of anyone who might be willing to teach you offhand, but she offered to ask around. She wants to talk to you first, though, hear what you have in mind.”

  “No problem. Should I call her?”

  “She said she’d just meet you after the football game Friday night. You’re coming, right?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  FOURTEEN

  The rest of the evening passed without further conflict. Something was still between Brady and me at the dinner table, something we would need to get back to soon, but we managed to bury the hatchet, temporarily at least, and share an uncomplicated evening. That would have to be good enough for now.

  Later, before getting in bed, I updated my list.

  The Pacific Ocean shines like glass.

  Some young women tint their hair with colors not found in nature.

  Reading and researching simply for knowledge is uncommon, at least once one is no longer in school.

  Sitting back in my chair, I thought of the various things I wanted to explore while I was here, including photography and bike riding.

  I hadn’t gone bicycling in many years—not since my mother died, in fact. But I’d seen some bicycles in the garage, and for some reason I had been feeling the urge to hop on one and take it for a spin ever since. Maybe I just wanted to experience that old sensation of flying down the street, like a plane about to take to the sky.

  Or maybe I just wanted to feel closer to my mother, doing something I had memories of us having happily shared together.

  The next day, Thursday, when Brady came downstairs for breakfast—just cereal and a banana this time—he seemed to be in a much better mood than he had when I’d arrived home the night before.

  He poured cornflakes into a bowl. One flake spilled onto the counter and he tossed it to Frisco. “So what’s up for today? More fascinating journeys into the world of research and libraries and history?” He was being sarcastic again, but this time it felt a little less mean spirited and more like simple teasing between brothers.

  I smiled. “You never know.” I didn’t feel like sharing with him my plans for the biking. “Maybe I’ll find some things to do around the house. Something useful. Any ideas?”

  With a shrug, he dug into his cereal, thought for a moment, and then said, “You know how to make a container garden?”

  “A what garden?”

  “A container garden. My mom wants one on the south side of the backyard so she can grow her own herbs and lettuce and stuff. That’s what people do in the suburbs, I guess. Dad was going to hire somebody to do it, but he hasn’t yet.”

  “I could probably build that,” I said, eager to have a project at last.

  “You’ll have to take out the bushes that are there first. They’re right where she wants it.”

  “No problem. Great, actually.”

  He regarded me with a lopsided smile. “Nice to know I’ve made your day.” He picked up his bowl and took it to the table. “You know where to go to find out what a container garden looks like, right?”

  I smiled back at him. “Internet?”

  He gave me a thumbs-up. Another one for my list.

  The first—and often only—step in any quest for knowledge is to search the Internet.

  When Brady left for school and the dishes were done, I headed into the backyard to check out the south side of the house. I found a loose pebble walkway that led to a small garden shed. It was neat and orderly, likely used by the hired gardener and no one else. Walking along a leafy hedge, I could see the area Brady had been talking about. It was about eight feet deep and twenty feet long, give or take. Frisco seemed particularly enthused about my interest in the backyard, and when I tried to head back to the door, he dropped a red rubber ball at my feet. Wishing I had a farm for the little guy to explore, I took pity on him and threw the toy for him to fetch ten or eleven times, much to the dog’s delight. As I did, I had to admit that he was growing on me.

  “You’re no Timber,” I told him as we headed back inside, “but you’ll do for now.”

  I made another cup of coffee to sip while I used Dad’s computer to find out what a typical Southern California container garden looked like.

  I hadn’t really been in the study until that moment. As soon as I stepped inside, I was hyperaware that the room was my dad’s and no one else’s. Two tall, potted palms stood by French doors that opened to the fire pit in the backyard. Built-in bookshelves lined one entire wall, though my dad didn’t appear to own a lot of reading material. The shelves were sparsely populated with books, leaving the remaining space for models of military helicopters, a wedding portrait of him and Liz, and pictures of muscle cars. The few books Dad had were mostly related to collectible cars, his military career, and the places he had lived while he was in the army. As I scanned the titles, I saw that he had a pictorial guide to Germany, where he’d been stationed when I was born. I ran my finger along the spine, knowing I would want to take a look at it later.

  I walked to the desk, put my coffe
e mug down on a leather coaster, and rolled back the office chair. As I settled into the seat and scooted forward, I was startled to see my own face staring back at me. On Dad’s desk, next to the computer and facing the chair, was the framed photo of Brady and me at the beach, the one I had looked for in the living room. Several seconds passed before I was able to move on mentally from the knowledge that he kept my picture, one of perhaps only a few that he had, sitting on his desk, in the one room of the house that was solely his.

  I powered on the computer and checked my email account to see if Dad had sent a note to let us know he arrived safely in Qatar. I also wanted to write to him about the container garden—to let him know I could make it and wanted to make it while he was away. There was indeed an email to me from my father, letting me know his flight had been trouble-free and that he would be in and out of communication while he was over there working. I typed back a quick message about the container garden idea, asking if he or Liz had a preference on what shape it took. I also told him Brady and I were settling in just fine.

  I then spent the next hour hopping around how-to websites for container gardening. I had mistakenly believed that a container garden was one thing, like a 1967 Camaro. But I found dozens of plans for gardens made of contained spaces, from using barrels, to giant terracotta pots, to wood-framed beds raised off the ground and situated in rows.

  These seemed to be the best way to use the long and narrow space and to give Liz distance between whatever things she decided to grow, like maybe one row for lettuce, fennel, and chives and another for basil, oregano, and thyme. I found a set of free plans on one how-to site, which I downloaded and printed. The instructions, labeled “Easy to Moderate,” were for one rectangular box, measuring four feet long by two feet wide by three feet tall. With the space on the south side of the house, I could make four of them, either out of cedar or maybe Douglas fir. I was pretty sure Dad didn’t have a table saw in his garage, so I would need to rent one. The rest of the supplies would be easy to get my hands on: painter’s caulk, lamp holder, electrical covers to use for drainage, some PVC pipe, sandpaper, wood screws, wood stain, and polyurethane.

  I also saw that there were several options for watering the containers, from an automated bubbler system to a soaker hose. It took me all of two minutes to decide I wanted my California family to experience the singular joy of doing something for themselves. I wouldn’t install the automated bubbler. Somehow, I would convince Dad and Liz and even Brady that caring for this garden would awaken something inside of them that appeared to me to be dormant: gratitude for the simple things in life. Caring and tending what God has given you made you more thankful for it. My Amish family had taught me that.

  I tallied up the things I needed and came up with a rough estimate of what it would cost. Dad had left a credit card for me to use for entertainment, groceries, gas, eating out, and emergencies. I wasn’t sure that this qualified as any of those, except maybe entertainment for me.

  I was excited to go to the nearest builders store and get the supplies, but I figured the first order of business was to hack down and dig up the hedge, which, after doing more Google sleuthing, appeared to be a Japanese wax leaf privet. That would likely take a whole day. And then I’d need to figure out how to get rid of the bushes once I dug them up.

  I wouldn’t do any of it, though, until I heard back from Dad. Brady had been acting so odd that for all I knew he was trying to set me up, like maybe that particular hedge was Liz’s favorite thing in the whole yard and he had lied just to make me do something stupid and look bad. I hated to be paranoid, but I’d hate even more to cause some sort of problem. I’d wait for an email from Dad before I would proceed.

  I also knew that while all of this planning was well and good, I’d been at it for too long now. I shut down the computer, returned my mug to the kitchen, and headed upstairs to look for a pair of shorts among my father’s clothes with one specific challenge in mind.

  It was time to get back on a bicycle.

  Whoever invented the expression “It’s like riding a bike” to indicate something one never forgets how to do had clearly never gone without riding a bike for seventeen years. In the next fifteen minutes, I came to understand that this was, indeed, a skill that would need to be relearned.

  I was pretty sure I was doing everything correctly—pedaling, sitting, steering—and I was going as slowly as I could, yet the bike kept falling over. I managed to thrust out a leg and catch myself each time, but after three such incidents, I was getting really frustrated, not to mention embarrassed. Finally, I decided that the next time it happened I would just keep pedaling regardless—which was how I ended up flat on the sidewalk a block from the house, in pain and feeling like an idiot.

  “You’re going too slow.”

  I sat up and twisted around to see who had spoken. A boy of about ten or eleven was sitting on the front stoop of the nearest house, tightening the wheels on a skateboard.

  “Excuse me?” I said, trying to recover some dignity as I brushed myself off.

  “You keep falling ’cause you’re not pedaling fast enough. Pick up the speed and you’ll be fine.”

  I stared at him for a long moment, realizing he was right.

  “Thanks,” I said, standing up and checking myself for damages. An elbow and knee were both throbbing, and I saw that they had been scraped up a bit. “What are you doing home at this hour anyway? Shouldn’t you be in school?”

  “In-service day,” he replied with a shrug, as if I would know what that meant.

  “Oh, okay then. Thanks again.”

  “You’re bleeding.”

  I glanced his way and then back at my wounds. “I’ll be all right.” The scrapes weren’t that bad.

  “I’d offer to get you a Band-Aid, but I’m not supposed to talk to strangers.”

  I smiled, not stating the obvious. “I understand. No problem.”

  Despite the increasing sting from my scrapes, I swung a leg over the bike, thanked him again, and took off. He was right. The key really was to pick up the speed. By the end of the next block, I was sailing along as if I’d been doing this every day for years.

  I rode around for at least an hour, exploring the neighborhood in full and just allowing myself to have fun. It was a beautiful morning, the sun warm on my arms, the sky cloudless and blue. Even my knee and elbow stopped hurting after a while. I felt so free—and so carefree. The experience was glorious, and I knew I would be doing this again while I was here.

  Eventually, I decided to head back, and I was glad to see that it was far easier to find my way home via bicycle than it had been by car. As I retraced my path, turn by turn, I realized why. It was because this was the pace I was used to, the pace of a horse and buggy.

  I was getting close when I passed the big Spanish-looking house with the front courtyard. Then it was a simple right at the home with the rock garden instead of grass, left at the street light, and straight on from there, just two blocks more.

  I slowed a bit as I neared the house where I’d fallen earlier, hoping the boy was still outside so I could thank him again for the tip. I could see movement on the stoop as I drew closer, but as I passed by, he didn’t even look up. He was muttering to himself, obviously frustrated with his skateboard, whacking at one of the wheels now with a wrench.

  He seemed to be having trouble with some sort of repair. I would have loved to stop and help, but I had to remind myself that I wasn’t in Lancaster County anymore. What would be seen as neighborly there might come across as downright creepy around here.

  Instead, I just called out a loud, “Thanks again! You were right!” as I rode past.

  When he glanced up, it looked as though there were tears of frustration in his eyes. Embarrassed, he gave me a wave and then quickly returned to the task at hand. Poor kid. I said a quick prayer for him, that he would find a way to solve his problem or at least find someone to solve it for him.

  When I got back to the house, I made myself
a sandwich and polished it off with a glass of milk. For a moment, I felt a little homesick, thinking how much I already missed Mammi’s delicious noon meals.

  As I washed my dish and neatened the kitchen, I calculated the time difference between California and Qatar then decided to check my email for a response from my dad. It had only been a few hours since I wrote, but the timing was good. If he’d gone online prior to turning in for the night over there, he would have seen it.

  Sure enough, he had responded. His message was brief and to the point and exactly what I wanted to hear.

  Great idea on the container garden! Put the supplies on the card. Don’t work too hard.

  Smiling, I shut down the computer and then headed out to the backyard, Frisco yapping excitedly at my heels. I was happy to find work gloves, hedge trimmers, and a spade in the garden shed.

  Then I got to work, thankful to have something constructive to do at last.

  By the time the sun was setting, I had the remains of the hedge in neat piles on the patio. I had dug out two of the four stumps, which meant I could start on the containers the next afternoon. Brady came outside to see what I’d accomplished, and then I showed him the plans I had found on the Internet. I was relieved when he told me the boxes looked very much like what Liz had described to our dad when she first mentioned the idea.

  While a frozen lasagna baked in the oven, Brady helped me put the pieces of the hedge into big yard waste bags. I liked working side by side with him, even for just a few minutes. When we were done, he said a yard waste truck followed the garbage truck on Friday mornings, which would be tomorrow. We pulled the eight bags out to the curb and then went inside to eat.

  After dinner, Brady brought his laptop into the family room to work on his paper. I asked him if there was anything I could do to help.

  “Not unless you know what MLA is.”

  “Should I?”

  He just laughed, but it was void of mirth.

  I was beginning to see a pattern with him. Whenever a conversation veered toward me as a person or the life I had known as an Amish man, his tone took on a condescending edge. Brady had never been this way around me before. Prior to this, he had always seemed interested, maybe even intrigued, by the kind of life I lived as a Plain man. But not anymore.