A Stranger's Wish by Gayle Roper

with sex like lots of regular kids, but they have limits. Not everyone’s a wild man like I was, doing everything. But I never did drugs like some of them. I may be stupid, but I’m not an idiot. Okay, maybe a toke of pot now and then, and alcohol if you consider that a drug. But coke or meth or crack or any of the others—not me. Speed, the fast kind, not the drug kind, was my major addiction.”
    “Regrets?”
    “Basically one. The guy who ran the stop sign.”
    That was a given. “Would you have become Amish if the accident hadn’t happened?”
    “When I’m free to pick my own rules, I can function fine. When they are forced on me, I rebel.” He shrugged. “Good or bad, I rebel.”
    I looked at his chair and thought about “forced on.” “So because you never joined the church, your family doesn’t have to shun you.”
    “Or Andy or Zeke because they’ve never been baptized and taken their vows, either.”
    “But if Elam gets baptized like you think he will, then changes his mind and buys himself a car and starts growing a mustache, he’d be shunned?”
    Jake nodded.
    “Do you know anyone who’s been shunned?” I asked.
    “Sure. David Stoltzfus from the farm across the way.” Jake pointed across the cornfield. “He wanted to race cars of all things. And my uncle.”
    “Your uncle?”
    “My father’s younger brother. He just couldn’t accept all the teachings of the Ordnung . He said he couldn’t find them in the Bible. At twenty-two he broke with the church, saying he believed in salvation by grace, not works.”
    “And now none of you sees him? Ever?” Such an ostracizing was hard for me to imagine. As frustrating as Mom and Dad and Patty could be, I would never want to face life without them.
    “It’s not quite that bad,” he said, smiling. “I see him. Or at least I did when I could get around. He lives in Lancaster, has a nice wife and a couple of kids. One’s even named Amos after Grandfather, but I don’t think Grandfather and Grandmother ever saw Uncle Jake again after he was excommunicated. They couldn’t understand his difficulty with what they considered the God-ordained way of life.”
    “Uncle Jake? Are you named for him?”
    “Father has never admitted it, but I think so. I know Uncle Jake was his favorite brother.”
    “And they never see each other, your father and your uncle?”
    “Once in a while Uncle Jake comes to visit, but it’s hard for everybody. And he never stays for a meal. If he did, he’d have to eat at a separate table. It’s too awkward.”
    “And they never go to him?”
    Jake shook his head.
    “That’s a sad story.”
    Jake smiled thinly. “In a way, being shunned is like being dead. If you’re under the ban, people can’t eat or do business or socialize with you. If you’re married, your husband or wife can’t have normal relations with you. It’s a pretty brutal situation, and not many people can handle such total rejection by family and friends and community. But it’s one way the Amish church keeps itself pure.”
    The screen door slammed, and Mary came outside. She waved at Jake and me and went to my easel as if pulled, a metal filing drawn to a magnet. She looked at it, and a finger came out to touch something. She glanced at me, smiled, and went to the garden to pick beans for supper. Hawk deserted me to follow her.
    “Take Mom as an example of how the Amish think,” Jake said. “She prays for me more and cries over me more because of my non-Amish status than because of my paralysis. She can no more understand me than Grandfather could understand Uncle Jake.
    “But she and Father are realists. They didn’t want the rift of excommunication in our generation of the family. That’s why they didn’t force us into the fold. Many of their friends disapproved, especially since Father’s a preacher in the district.”
    I reached over and grabbed a little marmalade kitten as he ran past. I handed him to Jake. The animal spit and