Abandoned Prayers (6 page)

Another who seemed to be a close friend was Morton Bissell, the chiropractor from Brewster whom Stutzman said specialized in herb teas.

Stutzman was open and honest about his mental collapse at Mose Keim’s farm. But now his story had changed from the salary increase he sought, to a story that he must have thought the New Order Amish would feel more sympathy for. He said he had been under pressure from the Swartzentrubers because he had encouraged his pupils to speak English during recess, which was strictly forbidden by the conservative Order.

He was glad to get away and start a life of his own, he said.

Stutzman was delighted when Liz Chupp helped him order non-Amish clothes—particularly underwear, since the Swartzentrubers had forbidden it because of the clothing’s worldly elastic waistbands—from the Penney’s catalog. On September 10, days after he got a driver’s license, he bought a 1970 Oldsmobile.

On his birthday, the Chupps presented him with a birthday cake and Stutzman seemed to choke with emotion. “This is the first birthday party I have ever had,” he told them.

In time, Eli Stutzman, who helped with canning, painting, and cleaning—even when he didn’t have to—became a part of the Chupp family.

“We felt lucky to know him,” Liz Chupp said.

When he learned that the Chupps had taken in his son, One-Hand Eli wrote a terse letter to the New Order Amish couple.

“He wrote that he was sorry we saw fit to go against the church and interfere with the
bann
. ‘This is not the Amish way,’ ” Chupp recalled.

The New Order Amish differed in areas of the
Ordnung
.
New Order homes frequently had phones, indoor plumbing, and electricity. They sometimes used tractors in the field, yet many, like the Chupps, used a buggy instead of a car for transportation. They disagreed with the harshness of the
bann
, although they understood its purpose.

They were considered “high” or “high-class” Amish.

Even though he was settled into an
Englischer’s
routine at Stoll Farms, the Amish never seemed far from Stutzman’s thoughts. On the evening of October 6, 1972, he wrote to an Amish friend that he had heard about some trouble in church—as more Swartzentruber boys left the fold.

Presumably for emphasis, Stutzman underlined the last sentence, which indicated that he hoped trouble in church was a thing of the past for him—at least for the time being. His Amish friend wondered if it was a hint that Stutzman would be coming back to church.

Stutzman wrote that he’d run into a friend who had told him how many boys had left the church. “Now just what is this world coming to?” he added.

As the days passed, Stutzman, as far as the Chupps could see, remained close to God and attended the Salem Mennonite Church. His evenings were spent at church functions or attending gospel concerts. For fun, Stutzman donned his Amish clothes and went to a Halloween party.

Abe Stutzman, Eli’s first cousin, left the Amish and eventually found his way to Stoll Farms as a milker. On the weekends he and Eli went to country music shows in town or out for a few beers. Others who left the Amish at that time were Chris Swartzentruber and John Yoder. All the boys were Swartzentruber Amish, but since they had grown up in different church districts there had been little, if any, contact between them. Chris Swartzentruber had learned that Stutzman was working at Stoll’s. Even better, Eli Stutzman had a car.

Eli Stutzman, Lydia Stutzman, and John Yoder formed an odd romantic triangle. John was in love with Lydia; Lydia
was infatuated with Eli; and Eli—well, no one really knew how he felt about either of them. When he had the opportunity, it seemed he came between Yoder and Lydia.

Lydia Stutzman, a Conservative Mennonite, had a couple of dates with Eli Stutzman, although nothing serious ever developed. Once he took her to the Kentucky Fried Chicken in Wooster and ordered a single meal for the two of them to share. Other times they just drove around the community, listening to country music and visiting friends.

John Yoder was no saint, and no one needed to tell him that. But what Eli Stutzman was telling him seemed out of line. It was hurtful to Ida Gingerich.

“I got me a real good girl—that Ida,” Stutzman boasted.

“She lets me do everything when we’re in bed.”

As he listened to Stutzman detail his sexual involvement with Ida, Yoder felt sorry for the girl. Maybe Stutzman had forced himself on her. Or maybe she really did love him. But if he had any real feeling for her, how could he treat her this way?

Yoder liked Ida. He had dated her once—and nothing like that happened between them.

With the exception of his mother and one sister, Stutzman spoke little about his family. He almost never talked about his father, but infrequent comments—derogatory asides, actually—made it clear that they did not get along.

One day while they were passing the time at Stoll’s, Stutzman told Eli Byler, a close friend who had left the slightly more moderate Troyer Amish Order before taking a job at Stoll Farms, that living with his father had been a “hellish nightmare.”

Stutzman said he had once put a little button with an equine image on the bridle of his favorite horse. That kind of adornment wasn’t allowed, but Stutzman as a teenager was determined to test the limits of the
Ordnung
. His father discovered the decoration and became furious and a shouting
match ensued, yet the young man prevailed and the button stayed where he had fastened it.

Later, Stutzman was working as a hired hand on a nearby farm when officers of the Wayne County Sheriff’s Department took him into custody.

“Because of that little button, my father told the sheriff I was crazy,” he said.

Byler was disgusted, yet he understood. Stutzman’s father was a preacher who had to set the standards for the community and uphold the rules of Amish life. But turning his son in to the sheriff and claiming he was crazy was outrageous and extreme—even cruel. Why was it better to say that his son was insane than to have the others in the church district think his boy’s behavior was a reflection on his leadership at home?

Ida Gingerich continued to write to Stutzman after he moved in with the Chupps. She loved Eli and wanted him to see that he was wrong and should come back to her and the Amish.

Susan Stutzman tried to win her son back with Amish baked goods, but it was no use.

Stutzman was examined for the draft on January 22, 1973, and cleared for conscientious-objector classification the following day. To fulfill his obligation to the government—something many Amishmen refused—Stutzman applied for a job as an orderly at Massillon City Hospital in Stark County.

“He told us he didn’t look forward to working at the hospital, he preferred farm work,” Leroy Chupp later said.

On Valentine’s Day, 1973, Stutzman told the Chupps he planned to ask
Ruth Zook
, whom he had been dating off and on since he left the Swartzentrubers, to marry him. Zook was a slightly overweight Amish girl who seemed to find her salvation in the bed of different Amish boys, instead of church. She was gossiped about by everyone,
though the rumors were outrageous and not necessarily true.

“She once had twenty-one men in one night,” John Yoder recalled, although he wasn’t sure where he had heard it—from Zook or one of the twenty-one men.

A month later, Stutzman said Zook had turned him down, but he continued to date her. In April, Stutzman said he was going on a date with the ward secretary at the hospital.

“We wondered if he had gotten over Ruth Zook so quickly,” Liz Chupp said.

Stutzman started working the 3:00–11:00
P.M
. shift at the hospital. When he came home late, he said it was because he’d had to assist a patient. One of many Amish doing CO work, Stutzman made friends with several young
Englischers
. At the hospital, few could name a harder worker or a better-liked young man than Eli Stutzman. In spite of his simple education, hospital friends felt he held his own. He was especially good with patients who needed some extra care and consolation.

At the same time, Stutzman broadened his interests. In the spring and summer he attended Cleveland Indians baseball games, visited Sea World, saw the horses race at North-field, and went to a Charley Pride concert.

He also went out at night regularly. Usually, he said he had a date with Zook.

Rebecca Yost
, a Mennonite girl, thought Stutzman was handsome; he had the deepest blue eyes she’d ever seen. He seemed so sure of himself, so full of fun. Once at a party, he put a napkin on top of his head, like a woman’s droopy head covering, and wandered around the room, breaking everyone up. Some said Stutzman should have been an actor.

Later, when Yost became pregnant, she narrowed down the list of potential fathers to Stutzman and another man. Stutzman gave her half the money for an abortion. He was dutiful, but he showed no remorse for his probable role in the pregnancy.

One weekend evening Stutzman gathered up a group of old friends to see a movie in Akron. When they arrived at a club, it was obvious that they weren’t going to be seeing any movies that night. Stutzman had taken them to a strip joint. Stutzman sat near the stage as a half-dozen women performed. It was clear that Stutzman was not a stranger to this kind of entertainment.

Liz Chupp called the hospital when she discovered that Stutzman hadn’t slept in his bed on the night of November 1. The personnel office told her that Stutzman had clocked out at 11:30
P.M
.

“I’m sorry. I should have called,” a sheepish Stutzman explained when he returned at 8:45
A.M
. “But I fell asleep at a friend’s place.”

He also shared a bit of other news. His classification had now changed and he was no longer CO. He planned to tell Ed Stoll that he was ready to return to farm work. Three days later, he was on the dairy job.

If any of his close friends doubted that Eli Stutzman had odd ideas, they became believers at a birthday party in December 1973. John Yoder was turning 23, and Stutzman showed up wearing a brown plaid jacket, jeans, zippered boots and bearing a gift that would be remembered years later by those who attended.

Yoder unwrapped the small package and revealed a box containing men’s red bikini underwear. Even the outside of the box seemed X-rated to the Swartzentruber boys in attendance, who had been raised without underwear of any kind.

Stutzman cozied up to Yoder on the living-room armchair and urged him to put the bikini on, but Yoder refused. He was embarrassed and didn’t know what to make of the gift.

“Maybe it would be okay to give something like that to a girl,” Yoder later said, “but to a man?”

In February 1974, the Chupps, Stutzman, and his friend Chris Swartzentruber made the 3,625-mile round trip to Orlando to see Disney World and Epcot. The week after they returned, Stutzman traded his Olds’ for a new ’74 Gran Torino. Friends wondered where he had gotten all the money.

Abe Stutzman left Stoll Farms for a job with a silo company in Greenville, Ohio, and Stutzman followed a month later. Before leaving, he told the Chupps he had gone to see his parents and had parked his car at a neighbor’s so he wouldn’t cause them more embarrassment. The visit was a disaster.

“My dad told me I’m not welcome at home anymore,” he said.

Stutzman lasted barely a month on the silo-building job in Greenville. He returned to Stoll Farms on July 27, 1974, complaining that his cousin and the owner of the silo company were involved with drugs.

Liz Chupp doubted his story; Abe Stutzman didn’t seem like a drug user to her. “We knew Abe, he was a good man. He wasn’t using drugs that we could imagine,” she said.

The situation became more confused when word came up from Greenville that it was Eli Stutzman who had been using drugs and had been fired because of it. The New Order Amishwoman, who was a trusting and faithful friend, found that hard to believe, too.

In late August a new employee was hired at Stoll Farms, a former Amishman named Henry E. Miller, whom Liz Chupp felt “had as much get-up-and-go as a lazy dog.” He stuck mostly to himself, but in time Stutzman befriended him.

The following months would later become a blur. Years later Liz Chupp sorted them out with the help of her diary.

On September 5, 1974, Stutzman dropped a bomb when
he told the Chupps he had ordered a buggy and planned to return to the Amish within a year. It didn’t make sense. Stutzman had just spent thousands on a new car. Further, he continually spoke of the rigors of the Swartzentruber world and how happy he was that he no longer had to endure their harsh, archaic ways.

The day after his out-of-the-blue announcement, Stutzman broke his collarbone in a farm accident. He told everyone that a cow had forced him into a wall while he was milking—although no one had seen it happen.

Jim Frost used to tell people he had dreamed of being a cop from the time he was 13. The dream came true. After graduating from Orrville High, he earned a law-enforcement degree at Cuyahoga Community College, quickly followed by an elementary-education degree from Kent State. After working as a dispatcher for the state patrol in Wooster, he was hired as a police officer in Orrville in 1967. He remained on the force for six years.

Brash and bright, at 28 he was elected sheriff of Wayne County. He was a local boy who had made good. People had expected that from Frost, an impeccably neat man with dark hair parted in the middle and a thin upper lip that was barely a line between his mouth and nose. He had a lovely wife who seemed to hang on his every word. Off duty, he favored cowboy hats and boots.

Although on the surface he was perfect, there was something secretive about the man. Indeed, he once told a reporter for the Wooster
Daily Record
, “I am very careful about what I do. I like to get away and go places where people don’t know me, sometimes.”

As sheriff, Frost’s record was exemplary. Aside from some political trouble with a fellow officer when it came time for reelection, his only mistake centered around Eli Stutzman. In late fall, the sheriff’s department, eager to catch some marijuana growers, put out the word that they needed some help in making a case. They even contacted
the Amish for help, which was unusual in that the Amish prefer staying away from the
Englischers
’ law.