circuitous route out onto 83, north to Township Road 122, dropped through Panther Valley, and traveled south on Route 58. Where 58 broke into the Doughty Valley, they crossed Mullet Run and followed Route 19 over the Doughty Creek itself. From there, they continued south and west and eventually wandered into the farms of the bishop’s district. They rolled slowly past luxuriant farms and ramshackle affairs, what the bishop called kutslich, sloppy, ill-tended. There were tall, splendid farmhouses, with no electric service. Immense bank barns and long runs of wooden fence. Pastures and fields of barley, oats, and corn. Small bridges over rain-swollen streams. Manure spreaders with their distinctive aromas. Children at play under clotheslines, with their fluttering splashes of rich Amish blues, greens, and rose. And everywhere tall windmills, Belgians hitched to slow and ponderous wagons, and light buggies pulled by spirited horses.
As they drove the narrow lanes of his district, the bishop questioned Branden about his family. About his friends, and about his profession. So Branden told how he and Cal Troyer had grown up together, fishing on summer ponds. And how Branden and Sheriff Bruce Robertson had spent winters hunting deer in the glens of the hardwood lowlands and pheasant along the hilltop pasture fence lines. And he explained how Cal Troyer had been changed—called to the ministry—the day Branden’s parents had died in a highway crash, as an impatient tourist had swung out around a buggy in a no-passing zone and hit their car head on.
When Branden began to speak of his job at the college, the bishop questioned him sternly on his studies of war and the weapons of war. So Branden explained that his fascination with the Civil War arose from a scholarly desire to understand the origins of conflict and the impetus to arms. And how his fifth-grade teacher had sparked his interest in the Civil War by assigning a paper on the battle of Gettysburg. How his grandfather had taken him to a rifle range with a muzzleloader when he was ten and started Branden on his quest to understand the firearms of the period.
The bishop drove and listened as Branden rode on the buckboard seat beside him and told of his cannon, fired each Fourth of July as much to commemorate Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address as to celebrate Independence Day. He spoke passionately of the eloquence of Lincoln. Of the valor of soldiers, and of bravery among common men. Of the memories his grandfather had cherished of summer afternoons spent on a country porch, listening to the ancient, grizzled veterans of that war. Stories told in turn to a young Michael Branden. Memories that now spurred his research into the letters and journals of Civil War soldiers.
As time passed, the bishop’s attention seemed to stray, and Branden fell silent. On a long, uphill stretch of a gravel lane, the bishop let the reins go slack, content for the moment to have the horse trudge along at its own pace. He leaned back heavily against the buckboard and sighed like a man who had endured a surpassing loneliness.
“Professor,” he said, and then faltered. Clearing his throat, he began again.
“The ban, Professor, is not cruel.” He looked fervently into Branden’s eyes. His expression was somber, and he seemed overwhelmed by the burdens he had shouldered. “The ban is a prayerful act. The last, joyless thing that a bishop can do to turn a soul around. Often, it brings repentance.”
Branden leaned forward from the buckboard seat, rested his elbows on his knees, laced his fingers together, and studied the backs of his hands, listening, and indicating that he would listen as long as the bishop should need. The horse had brought them to the crest of the hill, and the bishop pulled carefully right and brought it to a halt in the shade at the side of the lane.
“It is a bishop’s duty,” he continued, “to know when to impose a ban. And it is his obligation to have the strength of will to do it.
“Sadly, there are those whose rebellion is so complete, or whose character is so disreputable, that a ban only drives them away. They become nearly irretrievable, Professor. They refuse to be restored to the community of faith. When this happens, the burden a bishop carries is terrible. Still, it is a necessary burden.
“In my years as bishop, I have imposed only three bans. Two were members of the church, and today, they are members again.”
Miller lapsed into silence. Branden looked over and noticed a sheen of tears in the bishop’s eyes. He allowed the bishop to remain with his thoughts, and then asked, “And the third?”
Miller groped for words. He seemed overwhelmed, vulnerable. He remained quiet for some time, enmeshed in a private, enduring sorrow. In time, and with effort, he bolstered himself and sat a little straighter. He took up the reins again and guided the horse back onto the lane, down a small hill, and around a sharp turn that carried them over a ford at a little creek. Turning onto a larger road, he headed the buggy out of the valley, toward the pond where Cal Troyer waited.
“The third one,” Bishop Miller said, “was a lad of eighteen, who was not yet even a member of the church. Had not yet taken his vows.”
“You put the ban on an outsider?” Branden asked.
“He was not an outsider, Professor. He was my son.”
The bishop bowed his head, unable to continue. Branden hid his surprise and waited silently for the bishop to explain.
“The ban has other purposes, Doktor Branden. The community of believers have vowed to be submissive to one another, and the ban protects them from the destructive influences of proud and vain individuals. From those who insist on asserting themselves. Of holding themselves above the welfare of the others. Above the whole community.
“Such disbelievers, Professor, work their greatest evil on the young ones. Especially those in the years of running wild, before they take the vows. It is the Rumschpringe. We allow it for every youth, because our vows, baptism, are meaningful only for those who have seen enough of the world to know that they have chosen the plain life because it is a better life.
“So we have the Rumschpringe. They seem to get the wildness out of their systems. Mostly, they run in small groups, called gangs, and one gang will be a little more crazy than another. They are people, Professor, with all the flaws of any people, anywhere. And without the strong influence of the church, they make mistakes. I know you’ve lived among us long enough to understand that we are not saints, and that our young people can cause a lot of problems in their years of running around wild.
“Of all these people, my son was the worst. There was drugs, whiskey, sex. More self-assertive pride than we have ever seen in one person. His rebellion was so intolerable that he was starting to draw the wilder gangs away. Young people who were wild in their own right, but would have come home, in time, to their places in the faith. He also had a bad influence on young people from other districts. Those who made it to the town bars. I started to get visits from other bishops.
“So, for the good of the district and for the sake of the young people, I put the ban on my own son, so that those who knew they would eventually be coming home would not be drawn too much away by his example. My son would have nothing to do with his family, and I cast him out for the sake of the others. From that generation, we have lost only two. My son and a girl from another district, who ran with him.
“After that, he got worse. I believe he was what you call ‘hooked’ on whiskey. He lived with an English girl who poisoned any remaining hope he ever had of coming home. Some say I sacrificed my son only to save the others. But I thought the ban would bring him to his senses. Draw him back to us.
“Some have said it was cruel. In truth it was harder on my wife and me than anyone can know. She never speaks of it now, but I find her weeping sometimes when she prays. And I have prayed for him too, without failing, in all these years. We pray that to have cast him out will one day bring him home to us. Every day, Professor, we pray for his return. We always
