The Road Home (15 page)

The historian in Jenny began to take over. “Well, uh, Mr. Hershberger—”

“Please call me Johnny.”

“All right, Johnny. I happen to work as a historical and genealogical staffer at the Wooster library. I research the history of Wayne County and its families. If you have a family tie to Ohio, I could probably locate it for you.”

“Really?” Johnny asked. “If you could, I would be very grateful. I…I'm not sure how to say this, but when I saw the Amish men working in the field, it touched me inside. I felt a connection, and my life suddenly seemed very complicated. It's probably just because I have my own difficulties right now, and it seems that there are a lot of things I could get rid of in my life. Simpler would probably be better.”

For the first time, Jenny really took in the young man standing next to her—not just his features, but something of who he was. She looked
into his eyes and didn't see anything that frightened her. Then she said something that surprised her.

“Maybe God is trying to tell you something.”

“What?”

“I said, maybe God is trying to tell you something. If you have all these troubles, maybe God is showing you a way out of them. He does that, you know.”

Johnny had a strange look on his face. “You know, the Amish man in the field said the very same thing. The thing is, I'm not so sure I believe in God, although I've found myself asking for His help in the past several days, especially when I found myself in…shall we say, a delicate situation.”

“How about if we just say you're in trouble and be honest,” Jenny said.

“Boy, Bull was right. You are direct.” Johnny laughed.

“Bull?”

“Yes,” Johnny said. “Officer Bull, in Wooster.”

“How do you know Bull?”

“I met Officer Bull the other day after I almost ran you over. He encouraged me to get out of town. It was all very much like a scene from a Western. He also said he worked for your uncle, and he said you were very direct, especially with foolish people.”

“Yes, he's my uncle's chief deputy, and sometimes he takes himself a bit too seriously. He also tends to give out information that he should keep to himself.” Jenny frowned, took a deep breath, and mastered her desire to walk away.

“Well, would you?” Johnny asked.

“Would I what?”

“You know, help me find out about my family?”

“My papa wouldn't like me to be seen with a strange
Englisch
boy,” Jenny said.

“But I'm an American,” Johnny said, puzzled.

“Oh, no,” Jenny laughed. “I didn't mean you were from England. We call everyone who isn't Amish,
Englisch
.”

“Will you help me? Even if I am…English?”

Jenny paused before answering, torn between her fear of making her father angry again and the eager expression on Johnny's face. Finally she decided. “All right, I'll help you. Do you still have your van?”

“It's in the shop getting the suspension fixed, but I do have a loaner. I can drive you to Wooster.”

“No, it wouldn't do for me to be seen riding with you. My family and friends wouldn't understand. Besides, I have work to do first. Just meet me in Wooster at the library in three hours. I should be done by then.”

“Where's the library?” Johnny asked.

“Half a block away from where you tried to kill me,” Jenny said, but the bite was gone from her voice.

Just then the bus pulled up, and Jenny got on. She waved and smiled. “See you soon.”

Then the door closed and the bus pulled out, belching a black cloud of diesel smoke.

Johnny went back to the motel and hung out in his room. He tried reading the local newspaper he found outside his door that morning, but he couldn't stay focused, so he played his guitar for a little while. The hours crept by until finally it was two thirty. He went outside and climbed into the brown Dodge Dart Dutch had loaned him. It was pretty funky inside, but it ran like a top. Dutch obviously knew his stuff.

As he drove by the field where he had watched the Amish men, he pulled over, hoping for a glimpse of them, but the field was empty
except for four large haystacks covered with canvas tarps. He pulled back onto the road and drove on, thinking about the powerful feelings that had swept over him that day.

First he had dreamed about the men, and then he had actually seen them. The whole thing was way too weird. A new thought came to him. Maybe God actually was trying to show him something. He sure seemed to be answering whenever Johnny asked Him for help.

Surely it's just a coincidence, or maybe my karma at work
.

Thinking about his karma didn't seem to raise the mystical excitement he had once felt as he sat listening to the guru next door going on and on in his high-pitched, singsong voice about karma and dharma and the great wheel of life. Now when he thought about it, it all seemed like just a bunch of gobbledygook.

Johnny pulled up in front of the library and walked up the stone steps. He walked inside and looked around. A familiar smell brought back a not-so-pleasant memory of childhood days in Levittown when he had gone to the library to escape from his father's indifference and his mother's drunken ramblings. Then he spotted the front desk and went over to it. An older white-haired lady looked up from her work.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“Yes, I'm looking for Jenny Springer.”

The woman's face took on a slight look of surprise.

“May I ask what for?” she asked with an unfriendly smile.

“She's going to help me with a genealogical project regarding my family history,” Johnny said.

The woman gave him the once-over, pointed down a hallway, and went back to her work. Johnny walked toward the back of the building until he came to an alcove off the main hallway. Jenny was seated at a desk with a stack of papers in front of her. She looked cute in her black
kappe
with the errant golden curls peeking out—a little out of place in a library, but still cute.

“Hi there,” Johnny said.

Jenny looked up and then glanced at the clock on the wall. “You're early. You'll have to wait a few minutes while I finish this project for Mrs. Blake.”

She went back to her work, and Johnny took a seat in a chair on the opposite wall of the hallway. He looked around. There were lots of pictures and information on the walls, and through a large open door at the end of the hallway he could see shelves stacked with books and what looked like bound journals and three-ring notebooks.

In about ten minutes, Jenny closed the notebook she was writing in and put it aside.

“Let's get started,” she said. “Sit over here.”

Johnny moved over to the chair Jenny pointed out. “Where do we begin?” he asked.

“Tell me everything you know about your father's side of the family, as far back as you can remember.”

Johnny started in. “My dad's name is Ronald Hershberger, and his father's name was Peter.” Johnny paused, and then he went on. “Peter's father was Jonas, and I know my mom told me what my great-great grandfather's name was. Let me think. Oh yeah, Joshua—his name was Joshua. But that's as far back as I know.”

“That will help,” Jenny said. “Wait here. I have to grab some record books. We have the biography and genealogy master index here, and it's quite helpful. I'll be right back.”

Johnny sat waiting until Jenny returned with a stack of documents and books.

“Can you remember any birthdays or dates of death?”

“Well, my dad was born in nineteen twenty-one—September twelfth to be exact. My grandfather Peter died five years ago in April of nineteen sixty. I remember because the cherry trees were in bloom back home. I don't know much more than that. Oh, one thing, my
birth name was Jonathan, but my dad didn't like it so he started calling me Johnny when I was a kid. I think I was named after someone, but I'm not sure.”

Jenny opened a large notebook. “I've traced my side of the family back to the large wave of Amish settlers that came to Pennsylvania in seventeen twenty-eight and even further back to the Hershbergers and Springers that lived in Europe. Let's see if we can find a connection from my side of the Hershberger line.”

She began to read. “My grandfather Hershberger is Jonas, his father was Ezekiel, and his father's father was Joshua. My great-great-great grandfather was also Joshua, and his father was Jonas.”

Jenny paused for a moment. Then she began scanning through the pages. After several minutes, she looked up.

“This is very interesting. My great-great-great grandfather, Joshua, had a brother named Jonathan, but I don't see him in any of the Amish genealogies. Maybe there's a connection there.”

Jenny pulled out an official-looking volume.

“This is what we call the BGMI. It has exhaustive records of most of the families in the United States. This is the volume for Ohio and the Northeastern United States.”

Jenny looked in the index and then leafed through several pages until she came to an entry. Her face took on a slightly bemused look.

“Here it is. Jonathan and Joshua Hershberger. Twin brothers who moved to the Ohio River valley with their family before the Revolutionary War.”

She read further. “Jonathan had a son named Matthew. Matthew had a son named Jonas. Jonas had a Joshua, Joshua had a Peter, and Peter had a Ronald. And then came you, Jonathan Hershberger, born in Garden City, New York, April twenty-seventh, nineteen forty-three.”

Jenny smiled at the amazed look on Johnny's face.

“That's right! April twenty-seventh!”

“That was easy,” she said. “It seems that you and I are very, very, very distant cousins.”

“You mean my family is originally Amish?” Johnny asked.

“From what it says here, I'm presuming so. Most of the Hershbergers I've encountered in the history books between seventeen twenty-six and eighteen hundred were originally from Switzerland. They were Anabaptists, either Mennonites or Amish, who came to Pennsylvania when William Penn proclaimed religious liberty and offered land to willing settlers. There were slight variations of the spelling of the name, but they were all from the same family. So when you told me your name was Hershberger, I guessed that somewhere back in the seventeen hundreds, your ancestors were Amish from Switzerland.

“And there's more. When I was researching my family, I came across an old volume written by one of my family members. It's called
The Family of Jonas Hershberger
, and it tells the story of the Hershberger family starting when they came to Pennsylvania and continues after they moved out to Ohio in seventeen fifty-three. Let me get it.”

Jenny left again, and when she returned, she had another bound volume. This one was thinner and a bit dusty.

“I've read through this one, and I think it has the answer to your questions, Jonathan.”

“You're the first person who has ever called me that. I rather like it,” Johnny said.

“Let's see, it was back several chapters after the genealogy in the beginning.”

Jenny turned several pages until she came to a piece of paper stuck between two pages. “That's right, I marked it. This is really interesting.”

“Before you get into the story, can you give me a little background?” Johnny asked. “I mean, I know nothing about the Amish, where they come from, or what they believe.”

“Yes,” Jenny said. “It's important that you have a backdrop to the story, or it won't make any sense to you.”

Jenny turned back a few pages in the volume. “Yes, we'll start here.”

Then Jenny began to tell Johnny the story of his family.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTEEN

A Meeting