“What about this guy, Isaac Hunter? You’re absolutely sure you never heard the name?” When she shook her head, Chris looked to Nathan. “You’ve got to know something. Yeah, yeah, I know you trust Jess and if she says he can help, you believe that, but we’re not in Rule now and Jess isn’t calling the shots. So even if it’s only rumors or educated guesses, anything you know or suspect might help.”
He watched Nathan think about that. “I never knew the name,” Nathan said, finally, “but there was this story floating around from when I was about your age. So . . . sixty years ago?”
“About Hunter?”
“No.” Nathan ran a hand over his chin. “About these wild kids. No, no,” he added when he saw Chris’s expression, “it’s not what you think. We’re not talking kids going native or something. It’s something the Amish kids do, though.”
“You mean rumspringa,” Lena said. She propped herself up on an elbow. “I know about that.”
“Well, I don’t,” Chris said. Merton was far enough southeast that anything he knew about the Amish came from movies, which translated to not much. “What is it?”
“An Amish custom,” Nathan said. “It means ‘running around.’ The Amish are different in a lot of ways, and especially when it comes to baptism. Children aren’t baptized into the church at birth. It’s a lifestyle they have to choose with their eyes open, and the Amish believe that only adults, who’ve experienced the world, can do that. So at sixteen, they let the kids run free to do anything they want. The theory might be sound, but it’s a terrible idea.”
“How come?”
“Because they don’t know anything. None of those kids has the faintest idea of what’s beyond their settlements, in the English world, and when they get cut loose like that, with no one to guide them, they run wild.” One corner of Nathan’s mouth tugged down in a wry grimace. “I met . . . quite a few girls. That was something we boys took advantage of, because no girls we knew would go as far as those Amish girls. All those kids partied hard. Looking back, it’s not something I’m real proud of.”
“Okay, I think I get it.” Chris felt his own skin heat with embarrassment. The last thing he wanted was to hear a guy his grandfather’s age reminiscing about all those great hookups from the good old days. “But what’s that got to do with this?”
“Maybe nothing,” Nathan said. “In the end, most Amish kids run around for a couple years before choosing to follow Amish ways. They get themselves baptized and that’s the end of it. But there are always kids who don’t want to come back or do and then leave, which takes a thousand times more guts.”
“Guts?”
“Yeah,” Lena put in. “If they leave after they’re baptized, then they’re shunned.”
“Shunned.” A small ding of recognition. “You mean, like the Ban?”
“I mean, almost exactly that,” Nathan said. “It’s called meidung. Basically, it’s the Amish version of tough love. People will still talk to them, but that’s about it. They can’t take communion, participate in the community, any of that. The idea is to get them to repent and change their minds. I don’t remember how long a person’s got before it becomes permanent.”
“Permanent? As in, no going back?”
“As in excommunication. If that happens, it’s like you’re a shadow, or dead. These poor kids got nothing: no education, no family, no resources, nowhere to go.” Nathan paused. “But it would be natural for them to stick together and try to help each other.”
“Like an underground railroad.” The slow dawn of an idea glimmered in his mind. Chris could feel his brain grinding through the implications, making connections. “Is that what I’m looking for?”
“Well.” Nathan paused. “Jess thinks you found it. A piece, anyway.”
“I don’t get it,” Lena said.
“A breakaway community. A settlement of kids made up of those who chose to leave. But they’d need help, maybe even someone who knew what they were going through because he or she had been excommunicated . . .” Chris’s voice trailed away as another idea bubbled from whatever stew his mind had been brewing these last few weeks. He looked back at Nathan. “They’d need help.”
“You said that,” Lena said.
“Jess,” Chris said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that Jess had to be one of them.” He looked back at Nathan. “That’s right, isn’t it? She’s Amish, or she used to be.” He saw the hesitation cross Nathan’s features and added, “Come on. The only way she could know about them in so much detail, enough to give you a name, would be if she’d lived there.”
Nathan gave a slow, almost reluctant nod. “That’s the theory.”
“Theory?” Lena asked. “Why would this even be a secret? So what if she was Amish and then shunned or excommunicated or whatever? Who in Rule would even care?”
“Well, if their leader’s the Reverend’s brother,” Nathan said, “they just might.”
71
“Brother?” Chris echoed in surprise. “My grandfather’s brother? I thought he was dead.”
“He is,” Nathan said.
“But you just said—”
“Wait, I get it. It’s not dead-dead, Chris. It’s dead, as in excommunicated,” Lena put in. She’d pushed herself all the way to a sit. Her skin was milky-white, and the circles around her huge eyes were a dusky purple. “To the Amish, it’s the same thing.”
“But his last name is Hunter, not Yeager,” Chris protested.
“You’re a Yeager,” Lena said.
“Only half,” Chris said. “My dad wasn’t from Rule at all.”
“Once you’ve left the Amish, you’ve crossed into the English world,” Nathan said. “Yeager is German for ‘hunter.’”
Chris let that sink in for a moment. If his grandfather’s brother had provided a refuge for shunned or banned Amish kids, then that meant Rule had to be some kind of crazy breakaway community, too. It would explain some of their customs, how cult-like the village was. But which split came first, Rule from Oren, or Hunter’s group from Oren? Or even Rule. “Do Amish have, like, I don’t know, a council? Some group of guys who run things?”