On the morning of his eighteenth birthday, Elam Stoltzfus milked twelve cows, mended the fence on the north pasture, split a week's worth of firewood, and sat down to breakfast like any other day.
Mother placed a plate of eggs before him — six, as always, because Elam was a big boy — and a glass of milk. Father sat at the head of the table and ate in silence. Three younger sisters kept glancing at Elam with the expression of people who know a secret but aren't allowed to say it.
There was no secret. Everyone knew that today Rumspringa began — the period when a young Amish person may try the outside world before deciding: accept baptism and stay in the community forever, or leave.
Father finished eating. Wiped his mouth with a napkin. Looked at Elam.
"Do you have questions?"
"No," said Elam.
This was a lie. There were a hundred questions. But none of them could be asked of Father.
Elam had been preparing for three months.
In the workshop, behind a closed door, after everyone had fallen asleep, he did things the bishop might summon him for. Listened to a radio — a small transistor he'd found by the roadside and repaired. The radio told him about a world he had never seen: cities, cars, rock and roll, the Vietnam War, the moon landing, computers.
He knew the earth was round — they'd covered that in school. He knew America was big — he'd seen a map. But between knowing and feeling lies a chasm. The radio filled that chasm with voices, music, noise — noise that didn't exist in an Amish house, where the only sounds were the ticking of clocks, the crackling of the stove, and prayer.
He had also been saving money. Eight hundred and twelve dollars — earned selling furniture he made in his father's workshop. Father paid him ten percent of each sale. Elam spent nothing. Eight hundred and twelve dollars lay in a cookie tin, wrapped in a handkerchief, under a floorboard in the workshop.
He knew where he would go first. Philadelphia. An hour and a half by bus. The biggest city he could imagine.
He left after lunch.
Changed behind the barn — jeans and a plaid shirt, bought from an English boy for two dollars at the Lancaster market square. Sneakers — found at a thrift store, two sizes too large, but with socks they'd do. Baseball cap — Philadelphia Phillies, red, with a white letter P.
He looked at himself in the barn's window glass — dark, like a mirror — and didn't recognize himself. Without the hat, without suspenders, without broadfall trousers — he looked like… like an Englishman. Like any eighteen-year-old from any town.
It was a strange feeling. Not freedom — not yet. More like — disguise. As if he'd put on a costume for a play in which he didn't yet know his role.
Mother stood at the back porch. She wasn't crying — Stoltzfuses don't cry — but her hands were clasped so tightly her knuckles had gone white.
"Komm zrück," she said. Come back.
"Ich komm zrück," he answered. I'll come back.
He wasn't sure he was telling the truth. But he was sure it was what Mother wanted to hear. Sometimes the right words matter more than the true ones.
The Greyhound departed from the gas station in Intercourse — a town whose name made the English snicker and the Amish wonder (what's funny about the word 'fellowship'?). Elam bought a one-way ticket to Philadelphia — twelve dollars — and sat by the window.
The bus pulled out. Fields drifted past the window — familiar, green, flat. Then fields gave way to houses. Houses to shops. Shops to traffic lights. Traffic lights to highway. Highway to city.
Elam stared out the window trying to memorize everything. Billboards — huge, bright, screaming: 'Coca-Cola,' 'Marlboro,' 'Ford.' Cars — hundreds, thousands, hurtling in both directions, each faster than the fastest horse. People on sidewalks — in clothes of every color, with bags, with headphones, with dogs, with coffee in paper cups.
The bus entered Philadelphia, and Elam realized that everything he knew about the world from the radio was wrong. Not inaccurate — wrong. Because the radio transmitted sounds. And a city isn't sounds. A city is volume. Height. Depth. The smell of exhaust and hot dogs. The vibration of the subway underfoot. Pressure — the pressure of people, buildings, cars, information — that he felt physically, like water pressure when you dive into a deep pond.
He stepped off at the bus station, pulled his cap on tight, and walked into the city.
Eight hundred dollars in his pocket. Eighteen years old. Not a single acquaintance within a hundred miles.
For the first time in his life — absolutely alone.