The Road Home (16 page)

“J
ONAS
H
ERSHBERGER ARRIVED IN
P
ENNSYLVANIA
with his father, Mathias, and his mother in seventeen twenty-eight, when he was three years old,” Jenny began. “His father bought land from William Penn outside of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and established a prosperous farm. Do you know who William Penn was?”

“Yes,” Johnny said. “He was the Quaker who started Philadelphia. He's on the Quaker Oats box.”

“Actually, he started more than just Philadelphia. In sixteen eighty-two, Penn bought all of Pennsylvania from the British Crown to start a colony. He needed settlers to populate his colony, so he went around Europe, especially Holland and the countries along the Rhine River, asking people to come. Thousands of Amish and Mennonites came to America and purchased land from Penn for their farms. Our ancestors were among them.

“Jonas grew up on that farm with his ten brothers and sisters. He was the youngest son, and since there was not enough land to be shared between all the brothers, he left Pennsylvania in seventeen fifty-three when he was twenty-eight years old. Jonas and his wife settled along the
Ohio River near what is now Wheeling, West Virginia, but it was still Ohio territory then. They eventually had three sons and two daughters.”

“Whoa, Jenny,” Johnny interrupted, laughing. “This is incredible. Where did you learn all this?”

“It's all here in this book by my great-grandfather, Ezekiel,” Jenny said. “I've read it so many times I almost have it memorized.”

“You're really into all this history stuff, aren't you?” Johnny asked. “How come?”

Jenny hesitated. “You'd have to know my own story to understand.”

“Will you tell me?”

Jenny had been so absorbed in telling Johnny the story that she hadn't noticed he had pulled his chair close to hers and was leaning on the desk, almost touching her. Distracted, she reached to turn the page of the book and brushed her hand against his. To her astonishment, a strange sensation ran up her arm. Flustered, she stood up and accidentally knocked the book off the desk onto the floor, along with some of the papers she had been working on. She knelt down to pick them up and knocked her head against Johnny's knee. Her black
kappe
came off, spilling the long, golden curls that escaped her bun out onto her shoulders. She felt her face burning.

A surprised Johnny smiled and tried to pick up the book. When Jenny looked up at him, she was transfixed by his eyes. Then suddenly, surprisingly, she was crying.

Johnny stared down at her, perplexed. He wanted to comfort her, but his hands hung like lead weights, and so he sat still, not knowing what to do.

Jenny got up and went into the restroom across the hall. She closed the door and stood for a long time, sobs shaking her shoulders.

What's wrong with me?

She remained there until her breathing quieted and her heart stopped pounding.

There was a quiet knock on the door. “Jenny, are you okay?”

“I'm fine, I just got
ferhoodled
for a minute.”

“
Ferhoodled
?”

“It's an Amish word. It means flustered. I'll be out in a minute.”

Jenny wet a paper towel and washed the tears off her face. She straightened her
kappe
and then looked in the mirror. Her face was pale and her eyes sad.

She opened the restroom door and peeked out. Johnny was sitting next to the desk. He stood up quickly.

“Gee, I'm really sorry if I said something to upset you,” he said. “I didn't mean to.”

“
Ja, wohl
, it wasn't you,” Jenny said, returning to her chair. “It's something personal I'm struggling with. Sit down and let me finish the story about your family.”

As they sat down at the desk, Jenny looked at the book and then back at Johnny again. His face was kind, and there was concern in his eyes. Then she was talking in a rush of words.

“I'm not really a Hershberger. I don't even know if I'm Amish or who I am.”

Johnny looked puzzled. “What are you talking about?”

Jenny sat with her hands in her lap and her shoulders hunched. The story began to spill out of her.

“I'm adopted. I was rescued from a car wreck when I was a little girl. My mama found me. The man who was driving the car died and didn't have any identification. The car had been stolen and there were drugs in it. The police tried to find out who I was but they never did. My parents took me in and later adopted me. Lately I've been having the same dream over and over about the wreck and the man and about a sad woman who I think is my birth mother. And I'm also starting to remember things, little details about the time before I came here.”

Jenny saw the quizzical look on Johnny's face, and she wondered why she was telling him all this, but she went on.

“I asked my papa to help me but he thinks I'm better off to put it all behind me. I think my mama and papa are afraid that if I find my real parents I'll leave Apple Creek. I'd never do that, but this need to know the truth is gnawing at me. I'm not the happy person I used to be and I don't think I will be until I find out who I really am.”

“Is that why you are so interested in history and genealogy?”

“I think so,” Jenny answered tentatively, gaining a little composure. “I've always had an interest in history, but lately it's become an obsession. I met the newspaperman who wrote the story about the car crash, and he gave me some ideas about how to continue the search. But my papa and I had a huge fight about it, and now he's angry with me. I love him so much, but sometimes he can be very set in his ways.”

“Look, if there is anything that I can do to help you, I will,” Johnny said. “I don't think it was just a coincidence that I almost ran over you. I believe in fate, don't you?”

“It's God who directs our paths, not an impersonal fate,” Jenny said stiffly.

“Whatever you want to call it, I just feel like it's no mistake that we met, and my offer stands.”

Jenny smiled as best she could. “I'll remember that, and there may come a time when I will ask you.”

What am I doing? This man is an
Englischer.
I shouldn't even be talking to him. His ways are not our ways!

“Go on with the history,” Johnny said. “If you think you can.”

“Yes, I can. But before I read from the book I need to finish giving you some background. Jonas brought his wife west to Ohio. Back then this area was the most beautiful wilderness. There were several Indian tribes living here. The most notable were the Delaware, a fierce tribe who had been pushed out of their lands to the east by the white settlers
and who had been on the warpath for many years, starting with the beginning of the French and Indian war. By the time Jonas arrived in Ohio, the war had been going on for seven years. The French had suffered serious losses, but the Indians still roamed the woods attacking outlying homes and small settlements. Jonas and his wife settled near what would become Fort Henry and started a family. Soon a small community of Amish believers settled around him.”

“Wasn't that kind of dangerous, living out there without any guns?”

“Oh, the Amish had guns,” Jenny said. “They just didn't use them to kill people. Besides, some
Englischers
came to the same area and eventually built a fort. They didn't have the same reservations about shooting their enemies.”

“I guess people make a lot of assumptions about the Amish without knowing what they're really like,” Johnny said.

“Yes, they do,” Jenny replied tartly. “And one of the assumptions they make is that the Amish don't mind being interrupted.”

Johnny looked at Jenny in surprise. Jenny tried to muster a stern face, but they both burst into laughter.

“You are a real contradiction, Jenny Springer.”

“I'm sorry, Jonathan, it's just my way. I'll try to be nicer.”

“I like it…when you…when you call me that,” Johnny said, suddenly awkward.

On an impulse, he reached out and took her hand. She tried to pull back, but he gripped her hand, and then just as quickly, she stopped resisting. She looked at the floor, blushing.

“Please, don't,” she said quietly, but she didn't try to pull away. “I don't even know you, and I'm Amish. We don't allow such behavior except when people are courting.”

It was Johnny's turn to blush. He pulled his hand back. “I'm sorry, I just feel like we could be good friends. Now go on. I'll stop interrupting you.”

“Where was I?”

“Jonas had just arrived at the farm in Ohio with his wife,” replied Johnny.

“Yes, at the farm…” Jenny opened the book, found the place she had marked, and began to read.

“Over the years, after he arrived in seventeen fifty-three, Jonas had three sons and two daughters. Two of the sons were twins—Joshua and Jonathan—and the other son was named Christian. The daughters were Ruth and Miriam. His wife was named Martha. They lived in relative peace until the twins were seventeen years old. Then came the event that changed the history of the Hershberger family forever.

“On June nineteen, seventeen seventy, the young people of the neighborhood gathered at the home of Jonas Hershberger to have a social. They remained until late in the afternoon. After the young folks departed, the family retired. About that time the dog made an unusual noise, which awakened Christian, the youngest son. He opened the door to see what was wrong and received a gunshot wound in the leg. He realized in a moment that they were being attacked by Indians and managed to close and lock the door before the Indians could enter. In an instant all the family were on their feet. Ten Indians were outside near the barn.

“Several guns and plenty of ammunition were at hand. Jonathan and Joshua, the twins, picked up their guns and were about to defend the family, but the father, Jonas, firmly believing in the doctrine of nonresistance and remaining faithful in this hour of severest trial, refused to give his consent. In vain the sons begged him, but he told them it was not right to take the life of another, even in defense of one's own. Jonathan ever after claimed that the family could have been saved as he and Joshua were excellent marksmen and the Indians could not have withstood a solid volley of musketry.”

Jenny looked up from the book. Johnny was staring off into space as if he weren't even in the room.

“Jonathan, are you listening?”

Johnny's eyes jerked spasmodically and then focused and came to rest on Jenny. “While you were reading, it was like I was there,” he said slowly. “There in the house with them. It was so real, just like my dream.”

“What are you talking about?” Jenny asked.

“The night before I left San Francisco, I had a dream…I guess you could even call it a vision. I was with men in a field, and they wore strange clothes. They had beards but no mustaches and straw hats, and they were working in a field, and I was with them. The earth was cool on my feet because I wasn't wearing shoes, and then I felt, I don't know, like roots growing out of me, down deep into the ground. I guess I woke up then, and when I did I had the emptiest, loneliest feeling.”

“That's what Amish men look like,” Jenny said.

“Yes, and when I was driving into Apple Creek, the first day I was here, I saw them. They were working in a field outside of town, and they were using horse-drawn equipment and singing. I stood by the fence and watched, and I felt that intense loneliness again, like a deep sorrow for something I'd lost. And then, all of a sudden, I was crying. Then a man came over, and he said if I was in trouble, I should ask God for help. What's happening to me?”

This time Jenny reached out and took Johnny's hand. She looked at him for a long time before she spoke. “I think we are the same, Jonathan,” she said.

“The same?”

“Yes,” Jenny said quietly. “Neither of us knows who we are. We're both searching, and I know the answers are right here in front of us, and yet they're just beyond our reach. We're both lost.”

Johnny's hand was warm in hers. She looked at him, adrift in his sea-blue eyes, and she remembered her mother's words.
Someday…you'll
meet a man whom you will love so deeply that you will gladly surrender everything of yourself into his care and protection
.

“Tell me the rest of the story,” Johnny said quietly.

Jenny came back to herself. She took her hand from his and opened the book.

“It will be hard. I've read it before, but of course I didn't know that Jonathan was your ancestor. Now it makes sense, and maybe you'll find the answers to your questions here. But I think they may be hard answers.”

Johnny took a deep breath. “I want to know.”

Jenny glanced up at the clock. “It's almost five o'clock. I'll miss the bus home.”

She shoved the book into the desk drawer and then jumped up and grabbed her coat from the wall hook.