Meat Thy Maker by Tamar Myers

Author:Tamar Myers
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781448310098
Publisher: Severn House
Published: 2022-09-20T00:00:00+00:00

FIFTEEN

It may come as a surprise to a few Englishers that there are some strikingly handsome Amish men. One just has to overlook their scraggly beards, and how odd they look without moustaches. The custom of the Amish men forgoing facial hair on their upper lips dates back to the early days of the sect, when military officers wore long, curled moustaches, which the Amish saw as a sign of vanity. Incidentally, only married Amish men are allowed to wear beards. Whether or not a widower reverts to the smooth face of a bachelor depends on the local Ordnung – or community rules.

When Peter was sixteen, and went on rumspringa, he disappeared into the canyons of New York City. He was gone five years, not the usual two, and when he emerged from the city of nearly eight and a half million sinners, he brought with him a wife. This woman, age thirty-five, was anything but Amish. She had a PhD in sociology, and a master’s degree in English Literature. It is important to note here that Peter, like virtually all Amish, had only an eighth-grade education, and was by then a full decade younger than his spouse.

Everyone in the Amish community (and quite soon in many other Amish communities) was dumbfounded. And since the Amish were not the only ones to shop at my Cousin Sam’s grocery store in the village of Hernia, most of the Englishers were also gossiping about this unlikely duo, and speculating on how long this marriage would last.

Now, according to the Ordnung, this wasn’t a real marriage because Peter and Delilah had been wed in a Unitarian Church, not an Amish Church. In order for them to be married in an Amish Church, Peter had to make his confession of faith, now that he was an adult, and be baptized into the Amish Church (the Amish baptize only adults). For Delilah, the path was not going to be quite so straightforward.

Bishop Schrock (my third cousin, twice removed) decided that Delilah first needed to spend a year living with an Amish family and learning their ways. This included learning to speak their particular dialect of Swiss German, dressing like them, and of course religious instruction. Delilah surprised everyone by taking to it like a kid to candy, and when the year of probation was over, both Peter and Delilah were baptized and formally received into the Amish Church and subsequently married.

Peter went to work full-time for his brothers at Schmucker Brothers Sausages, which was still just a local brand, where he’d been apprenticing for the year leading up to his marriage. Meanwhile Delilah kept house (no small task without electricity) and maintained a large vegetable garden. As Delilah was by now almost thirty-seven, the couple wasted no time trying to get pregnant. They tried until Delilah turned forty.

On Delilah’s fortieth birthday, Peter came home from work to an empty house. On the kitchen table, in his wife’s spidery handwriting, was a ‘Dear John’ letter. In

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.