The Amish

A State of Unrest

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19th of June, Amid 2018 Anno Domini, On the Sprawling Farm Property of Amos, Abreast of a Trough, in Lancaster, PA

Dick and Pete munch slowly on the various greens growing from the ground, while sort of mindlessly swishing their tails about, like a lame attempt at whipping, to keep the flies off their unreachable hind quarters, amid the heat of a disturbingly humid summer day. The pasture is sparsely riddled with what the locals call “road apples”, as they are frequently deposited on said roads with little care as to their eventual and unavoidable impact with a car. The grass never grows too high because it’s constantly being chewed on by either a heifer or a horse or some such livestock. Dick and Pete function as the organic mowers and keepers of their own personal pasture, which is far too small to be legitimately called a pasture. Amos Stoltzfus, the plain man who owns the land and consequently them, doesn’t treat them as contemptuously as some. It’s a fairly difficult job to pull the buggy up and down hills to whatever destination the days errands take them, or to whichever house is hosting church on Sundays, but they don’t have as tough a time of it as, say, the mules: they have to plow the fields, and that seems positively miserable. The humidity was so bad on certain days you practically had to swim everywhere you went and engage in such a minimal amount of physical activity, as to avoid awkward sweating, that you basically just sat and boiled in the near-liquid air - still sweating despite the lack of movement. Dick and Pete didn’t seem to mind though. They did seem to very much mind the moment when Amos would put on their blinders and hitch them up to the buggy, and they would just sort of blindly pull while angry cars would zoom around them and speed by with the sudden forceful push of the gas pedal to levels nearly parallel to the floor, subsequently leading to a sort of tonal shift in car noises from mmmm to MMMM. They seemed to mind these moments very much. Lately Amos had been taking them on more and more trips with strenuous distances being covered each time, hardly ever a short jaunt over to the Smucker farm anymore. Even with these more frequent trips, the horses had it easier than Jack and Jill, the plow mules. Life on the farm was busy, yet quiet, and the life of a buggy horse was quite possibly the most enviable of all the farmhands, unless you had someone like Sam Deiner who drove his horses into the ground. Every time you saw them (the Deiner horses) on the road, they would have this sort of white foam around their massive lips, like they were rabid or something, but really they just hadn’t had water in multiple miles. Thankfully Amos wasn’t like that.

Early On A Sunday in November, Amid 2018 Anno Domini, Departing Dick and Pete’s Farm: Ode to Lancaster

The sun stretches it’s amber arms up over the horizon, to tinge the top of the fog that has been poured over the early morning landscape. The grain silos stick up out of the misty ocean like dozens of rockets and refract a pink-orange light off their domed metallic tops. The fog glows in the valley below as the sun climbs higher to color more rural farmland. From a birds-eye view the varied fields of crops and pastures resembled a patchwork quilt of green, brown and yellow plaid. The patches of forest and trees that intermingle with wide open plains are all bathed in fog, except for slivers of area where the foggy blanket inexplicably disappears, leaving a wall of mystery. Fog sits in the trees likeethereal leaves, and down along the sides of the road like a parallel crick. It’s breathtaking and it’s beautiful.

The darker colored fields were spread with manure last night, and the smell still lingers in the fog. There are no plows out, no cows being milked, no harvesters or combines running, and no honeywagons roaming the roads or fields. It’s Sunday morning, and there are dozens of buggies on the road earlier than most drivers. There’s mostly the fully covered grey buggies that somehow seat an entire family. There’s a few of the uncovered two-wheel carriages. Even more rare are the two-horse covered buggies, as a single horse usually does the trick. Two horses means a longer journey, the extra horse to share the load. Nearly all of the horses are brownish red or occasionally tan. Potentially the rarest sight is a white horse pulling a buggy, though it does happen.

Early Sunday morning all the covered buggies look the same; each one has the grate on the back with a few knick-knacks, an orange and red reflective triangle stuck on the back somewhere, with two-maybe-three little kids peering out the back window hole - just shamelessly staring at anyone in the cars behind them. At night however, buggies often emerge with unexpected distinctions; green or blue - sometimes purple - neon underglow, and the occasional max-volume battery operated stereo. An odd sight to say the least. Every horse will have blinders on; a sort of hand-next-to-face effect that forces the horse to see very little, if anything at all, since horse’s eyes are more on the sides. This keeps them calm as they pull their load slowly up and down roads amid speeding cars and loud trucks. Occasionally, perhaps more often than is comfortable, a horse loses its nerve and sort of -freaks out-, forcing the driver of the carriage to either maintain control with the reins or actually exit the buggy and calm the animal. Typically this doesn’t result in accidents, as most drivers are locals and far too accustomed to the practice to get frazzled.

Amos’ buggy is pulled by the ever-faithful Dick and Pete, an obvious indication of the day’s journey. A two horse trip might equate to a 20 minute drive in a car, or less. Amish don’t travel far in buggies, and are often forced to hire a driver - of a car that is - to take them to the more far and out-of-the-way type places, or occasionally to the beach. There were many loop-holes that most Amish of the Old Order exploited; the classic phone line that wasn’t technically on their own property, the truck with a title in someone else’s name, or the video-games in the barn loft (not in the home). Amos was not like this, though he didn’t look down on his brethren who were. He followed the rules fairly stringently, not wearing zippers or owning rubber tires or having electricity. When he was 18 and everyone in the Amish community was having their rumspringa, he was living life on the outside: he wasn’t born into the Amish community. At age 18 he became one of about 100 people ever to choose to join the Old Order from the outside world - accepting a new name to fit the bill.

Church is moved between congregant houses every Sunday, so a different family hosts church each time. The festivities and fellowship will last clear through till 11:00pm, perhaps running later, and then there’s the long trek home. As the sun rises and Dick and Pete pull Amos and his three children to their Sunday morning destination, Amos reflects on the natural beauty of God’s creation. He marvels at the possibility of anyone never having seen rolling fields of corn and open plains of tobacco, each perfectly planted in rows so that when you drive by you can look clear down each furrow. It’s beautiful. It’s breathtaking.

Early On A Monday in the Beginning of December, Amid 2018 Anno Domini, Making Ends Meet on the Sprawling Farm of Amos

Amos has Dick and Pete hitched up and out late, but it’s not irregular to see buggies out this early into the Monday morning AM’s. It’s the last stop of the night, and then home. Amos dismounts the buggy, opens the secret bench compartment that houses the drugs and removes the packages. As he saunters up to the address, a spindly looking woman emerges from the front door. Her nose is like a mile long. She’s hopping in small jumps toward him. Amos stares at her, not willing to say anything about the hopping but also immensely curious about it. He hands her the package once she has hopped close enough to him to receive it. She looks like a kookaburra, which the hopping definitely adds to the resemblance. He’s given the money and now she’s standing in front of him. She’s not saying anything, so Amos turns around and makes his way back to the buggy where Dick and Pete await him.

As he loads into the buggy he stares after the kookaburra lady who is presently hopping into her house. He can see her through the fenestrated walls as she hops across the kitchen and into the living room, where she begins opening the package. Amos makes that characteristic clicking sound that seems to start horses like keys start cars. As he pulls away from the lady’s house, he realizes that the sun will be up in three hours time, so he’d better get home to start milking the cows. He usually starts around 5:00 or so, and that’ll be about when he gets home - so it works out nicely. It’s about an hour journey back home from here, but the money he’ll make from this delivery makes it worthwhile - after The Plug takes a cut of course. The Plug was his supplier, a very strange man in a white cowboy hat who sometimes growled when you were near him. He talks in a southern accent that really comes and goes. So long as he got the money he needed to keep the farm, he didn’t care who he had to deal with. The recent food craze had gotten so out of hand lately that nobody was buying milk and so he was milking cows and being forced to dump it into the fields. Of course all of his fields were feed-corn for the cows, so he couldn’t sell that - every farmer had enough already - and he couldn’t afford to slaughter the cows for beef because then he’d be out of a living once they were gone.

This little arrangement had come to him, and only hours after he had finished praying for God to provide for him. The contact was from his past life, but Amos wasn’t going to turn down a blessing from the Lord, because “the Lord works in mysterious ways”. The former-friend said there was this eccentric mob-boss fellow looking for people to run drugs, and Amos was a shoe-in in the inconspicuous category. Even though these drugs weren’t legal, they weren’t harmful either, so that helped him sleep at night. He knew plenty of farmers that harvested tobacco and that was harmful and typically addictive too, so really this was better than that.

Dick and Pete are moving along extra slow now, since they’ve been out all night. Once Amos got to a road they knew, he could actually sleep in the buggy and they would take him home on their own - they knew the way. That way he could get 45 minutes of sleep at least. It was a clear night and Amos couldn’t help but marvel at the sky full of stars and planets. It was dark enough out on these backroads that you could see stretches of the Milky Way itself. Truly a breathtaking sight.

Before Amos joined the Old Amish Order, his name was Dean, and he was trouble. He was the boy most mothers warned their daughters of. He was into every kind of bad habit or thing you could be into, and now he recognizes it all for what it was - sin. His conversion was a genuine one that mirrored that of Saul’s: he was on the road, driving drunk and also tripping on he can’t even remember what, when he was struck by a blinding light that he later found out were the headlights to a Ford Explorer. He literally saw Jesus after the blinding light made physical contact with him, and the Savior said that he needed to turn his life around. When he came to, an Amish man that exactly resembled the Jesus of his “vision” was standing over him and that sealed the deal for him. Some of his older habits and mindsets have lingered, but his conversion was genuine and he has done his best to change his ways and remain pure in all facets of life. He doesn’t really think the Somnium dealing is all that bad, considering the drug is non-addictive, and if he didn’t run it, someone else would.

March, Amid 2019 Anno Domini, Amos Stoltzfus’s Day Off - Saturday Though, Not Sunday

Sunday is the Lord’s day - the Sabbath that is - so there isn’t much that happens aside from church. Church takes long enough anyway, practically all day. Saturday on the other hand, lots of things are going on; buildings are being built, markets are bustling with people - Amish and English - and of course there’s the mud sales. Amos is on his way to a mud sale now, which is happening about a mile down from his house in an open area of grass that isn’t planted. Not much is planted yet, however Amos has some soybeans planted already. He’s somewhat desperate to get something growing that he can sell, and it isn’t corn season yet, so soybeans were the only real option.

Money has been tight lately, even with his “supplemental income”. Despite it being easy money, Amos doesn’t deliver all that often. The way it works is somewhat blind; He’s given a list of names that have addresses and amounts, and then he drops off the amounts to the addresses - that’s it. He’s actually supposed to be meeting The Plug here at the mud sale, a fairly good cover for less-than-illustrious activity. He - The Plug - has always been easy to spot on account of his eccentric look, most notably the pristine white cowboy hat he always wore. Without the hat, he would still stick out anywhere in rural Lancaster, with his leather pants and jacket - both featuring refulgent metal spikes that inhibit most necessary movements and glisten in the sun - and his white bolo tie.

As Amos wanders through the squelching mud, navigating the farm equipment that looks as likely to be used for torture as for farming, he spots The Plug from some distance away. He’s leaned up against a blue Oliver tractor in the quintessential cowboy pose: head down, one foot pulled up onto the object he’s leaning on, a conspicuous weed of sorts protruding from his teeth. As Amos casually makes his way toward the tractor, he hears something faint and low. It sounds like a small engine at idle, but the closer he gets, the more human it sounds. As he rounds up to the conspicuous cut-out of a man, Amos hears him begin to grumble in a southern accent.

“Well I’ll be dipped, fried, and completely godamned. Look who it is.”

“How’s that?”

“I mean, look what drugs the cat did.”

“Didn’t we plan to meet here?”

“Shh shh. Yeah I reckon we did, it’s just an expression really.”

“I’ve never heard anyone say that.”

“They do, down in Texas they all say it all the time.”

“So do you have something for me?”

“Bet your boots I do, pony-boy. Just saddle on up to my truck over yonder.”

“Do you always talk like this?”

“As dependable as the weather.”

“The weather isn’t very dependable.”

“Well, you get the idea.”

The two of them begin to saddle on up to the truck, which is parked some distance away in the lot across the street from the mud sale. Amos tries to make conversation as The Plug growls.

“So, how many deliveries do you have for me this time? I could use extra money right about now, so the more the merrier.”

“Hhhnnn. Got four fur yeh.”

“Uh, alright. Any chance I could do more?”

“Nah sir, ‘fraid not.”

“Are you hurtin, do you need to sit down?”

“Shut. Up.”

“How’s that?”

“Huh, nuthin. Hips don’t hurt a pinch, why?”

“Well you’re walking kinda wide - sort of bowlegged - like maybe your hips were hurtin.”

“Shoot, no. My hips er workin better than a dog on water skis. The reason being fur the wide stride - as they call it in Texas - is I was a rancher. Rode horse so much my legs er permenantly bowed out, as such.”

“It must’ve been a very large horse.”

“Eat. Shit.”

“How’s that - you say something?”

“Whasat? No, nuthin.”

“Well, so long as you’re alright.”

“Hhhnnnr. I’m peachy as grandmas pie shut the hell up.”

“Are you talkin to me?”

“No, no, no. Dontchu worry your beard now.”

“Is that something they say down there too?”

“Down where?”

“In Texas.”

“Ah, yes. Texas. Sureyeahright, they all say it. Everyone says it.”

As The Plug’s fickle accent plays peek-a-boo with Amos, the pair round up on the distinctively muddy truck bearing the merchandise. The Plug goes to the tailgate and drops it down. He mounts the bed and removes his hat to wipe his not-at-all-sweaty brow. It’s in this moment that Amos becomes keenly aware of the spurs on The Plug’s boots. They hadn’t jangled as there was too much mud, but they were there. The Plug - whose real name was a close guarded secret - then grabs a case of what is labeled as ‘Whoopie-Pies’ but is in actuality, Somnium sandwiched between two chocolate cookie-buns.

“Seems a waste of whoopie-pies.”

“Well it wasn’t a total waste - I ate the icing.”

“‘Spose you have a big appetite, eh?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I just mean because they say everything is bigger in Texas. At least I’ve heard that.”

“Oh, uh, yes. Huge. Everything’s large as a house out there. Except houses - they’re bigger.”

“Wow. I guess some rumours are true then.”

“Can it - I’m getting there. Anyways,”

“Hows that?”

“Nothing. Anyway, this here’s the list uhv drop offs - four uhv em. You ought to be familiar with some uhv em.”

“Why do you have so many other boxes of whoopie-pies? Cause if they’re more drop offs, I can gladly take on more.”

“Nope, sorry. No can do. Not fer you, pardner. I got my orders.”

“Orders?”

“Uh, I said horderves. Just an expression - a Texas thing. We do love food, ya know.”

“Right…”

Amos takes his box of not-whoopie-pies and begins to walk back to the farm. As he walks by all of the various agricultural hoopla and torture devices, he ponders the msyterious persona that is The Plug. He contemplates the rocky terrain he finds himself, financially speaking. He thinks about the humid day that physically surrounds him, like a hug, or maybe a chokehold. He considers the numerous other boxes of ‘whoopie-pies’ that The Plug had in his truck. He trips in the mud and falls forward onto the box of Amish-made desserts. He smooshes several of them, but there’s not much damage. His trousers are well coated in mud now, as he picks up the box and keeps walking toward the farm.

He walks by someone who’s selling root beer for exorbitant prices - homemade, of course. He walks by a little stand selling signs that attach to the mailbox with mostly abrasive Bible verses - something no Amish farm is complete without. There’s also a stand selling wet hot dogs out of a crockpot. The mud is so thick it grabs and holds your shoe when you go to walk. There is also this stand with a mustached old man who canes chairs, and Amos is pretty sure no one has ever stopped at his little tent.

Tomorrow he’ll have to hook up Dick and Pete and make his rounds. Once all of the deliveries are made, he’ll meet back up with The Plug and hand over the customer’s payments, collecting his cut in the process. The other month he was dangerously close to having to sell Dick and Pete, but he managed to make an extra delivery for The Plug and sell off the nicer carriage he had - the open air one, not the regular buggy. The other farmers don’t appear to be hurting from the outside, but they are. All the farms are struggling lately for a variety of reasons. Amos wonders how many of them have been approached by The Plug and offered the same partial solution.