Davis was a big factor in my life.
Shortly after the fire, when the barn was still half rebuilt and our lives were held together by determination and miracles, winter arrived with a kind of brutality that only western Pennsylvania can produce. One day the wind chill dropped to sixty degrees below zero — the kind of cold that doesn’t just sting your skin but reaches straight into your bones and warns you that you’re not built for this.
That morning, Dennis told me he needed to go get David.
He said it casually, like we were going to pick up a loaf of bread. But I knew what it meant: we were about to take our lives in our hands in his old F‑250, a truck that broke down as often as it ran. But I couldn’t let him go alone. So off we went, the two of us wrapped in layers that felt more symbolic than effective.
When we reached David’s place, the driveway was buried. Amish families don’t plow because their horses and buggies don’t need it, so the snow was so deep that even with four‑wheel drive we had to abandon the truck and walk the rest of the way. The wind cut through everything we wore. The cold felt personal.
And then we saw him — David’s father — puttering around the yard like it was a pleasant summer afternoon. No hat. No panic. No hurry. Just moving through the world with the same calm he always had, as if the weather were a rumor someone else had started.
Dennis told him how dangerous the cold was and how much we needed David’s help. David came out, ready to go with us, but before we could leave, his father stopped him.
“Do you want to take the closed buggy or the open buggy?”
I couldn’t believe it. David wasn’t allowed to ride back with us. He had to take a horse and buggy — in this weather.
But that was the Amish way: discipline, boundaries, and a kind of spiritual toughness that didn’t bend for storms.
David chose the closed buggy. He made it to our farm with a horse whose entire body was coated in ice.
The next morning, Dennis and David filled the manure spreader. Dennis told him to take the team up to the top of the hill and spread it. The wind was blowing the snow so hard it was difficult to see the horses from the barn. I knew it had to be worse at the top of the hill.
Let’s not forget: David was sixteen. My age. A boy doing a man’s work in a man’s world under conditions that would have broken most grown men.
But he did it. He always did.
He stayed with us for a couple more days until the weather broke. And before he left to go home, he turned to me — this boy who had just driven a team through a blizzard, who had shown up for us again and again — and asked:
“Are you going to be alright?”
I laughed. Not because it was funny, but because the truth was too heavy to say any other way.
“I’ve forgotten what alright feels like.”
He nodded, like he understood more than he could say. And then he left, disappearing into the white world that had shaped him.
No comments:
Post a Comment