…When you were younger, you used to gird yourself and walk
wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch
out your hands and someone else will gird you, and bring you
where you do not wish to go.

—John 21:18
____________

It’s been coming at me right along, life has. And it’s been going pretty well. Still, it’s felt a little strange, lately. I’ve been walking, traveling through. And in more ways than one, it feels like I’m walking lame.

I wasn’t looking for anything out of the ordinary when they told me. Well, I wasn’t looking for much of anything at all back when those shell-shocked days were winding down. I was focused on one thing, pretty much. I was getting ready to leave the hospital after ten intense and brutal days. After where I’d just been, it didn’t matter much to me where I was going, just as long as it was out of that place.

And the doctors came at me, all rat-a-tat, in my face. Eat this. Don’t eat that. Watch your diet, take your meds. Walk real careful for a while. Well, walk real careful for the rest of your life. You’re pretty much an invalid now, and you will always be weak. Your heart will never beat strong again, not like it did before. And then they flung it in sideways, just kind of tacked it on as an afterthought. Oh, and go get a colonoscopy. You’re over fifty. It’s time. We’ll schedule it for you. And I just nodded obediently at everything they said. There wasn’t much else to do, looking back. I felt like an old man, beaten and battered and bruised by life. I’d figure out how lame I was walking soon enough.

I got home, and gradually worked my way to a new balance in life. Got to where I didn’t panic or freak out at every little bump that came along. And, in time, I got my heart strength back, too. Back to full strength, a thing they had told me again and again would never come to pass. I wrote that journey as it came at me.

And the doctor’s people got me scheduled to go see a colonoscopy specialist. Like I said, I didn’t think much about it, one way or the other when they yammered at me to do it. You’re supposed to go get your colon checked out when you’re fifty, at least that’s what I vaguely remember hearing. Not that I ever paid much mind to such things. You think you’re invincible until you walk up and peer down the dark deep hole like I did. After you pull back from such a thing, you go and do what they tell you.

I didn’t pay it much mind as the date approached. And it was sometime in late January that I strolled in for my appointment. Dr. Brown, the guy who saw me, was extremely competent and gracious. He looked over my records on his computer. We chatted a bit. “So you had some heart issues?” he asked. Yep, I said, holding my thumb close to my forefinger. More than just issues. I came this close to leaving. He made the proper astounded noises, and then he told me. “You’re on different meds. This is a routine checkup procedure. Let’s wait a few months and see how you get along. Maybe you’ll be off a few of those meds by then.” Works for me, I said. And on the way out, I made another appointment about two months down the road. And I went home and settled back into my daily routine. I didn’t think about the upcoming colonoscopy for a long time. Out of sight, down the road, out of mind.

And the two months shot by, and next thing I knew, I was sitting and talking to Dr. Brown again. Yep, I told him. I got rid of the most toxic drug. I don’t have to take it anymore. And I’m figuring to get rid of a few more, too, down the line a ways. My heart’s been beating good. And he told me. “We’ll schedule you right in, for the procedure. You can come here, to this facility. The whole thing won’t take long at all. You should be in and out of here in less than two hours.” I stopped up front on my way out, and me and the nice lady found a date and time that would work for me. She penciled me in. “And just wait a minute,” she said. “I have some instructions here for you.”

And it was right at the moment she got the instructions laid out on the desk there, right then that I realized this little procedure was a bit more involved than I had ever figured it would be. She went over everything with me. All three pages. She circled a line here with her pencil and highlighted a paragraph there with her marker. And she talked and talked. No solid foods for a full day before the procedure. Go pick up this prescription for a cleanser, and do that right away. And here’s what you do with that. And blah, blah, blah, and instruct, instruct, instruct, and so on and on. I looked at her and nodded, half stunned. And muttered, yes, yes, as if I grasped everything she was saying. One thing was clear. This was way more complicated than I thought, and it wasn’t going to be a picnic. No part of it was.

But I left, then, and didn’t worry about it much. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, and all that, is what I thought to myself. And soon, very soon, the evil day approached. And I got serious. Dug up the printed instructions and pored over them. Go buy 32 ounces of Gatorade. The day before, you eat no solid food. And after six that night, you eat no food at all. It didn’t sound like fun. But I dutifully followed the instructions, right down to the T. Do what you have to, to get to where you need to go. And it was all going pretty well, I thought, the day before. Until lunch time, at least. I had brought my lunch along to work, a little bottle of apple juice. That would be my lunch. I drank down the cold liquid. I didn’t feel half bad. And a few minutes after that, it hit me. I tried to make like nothing was wrong, but it was just impossible to ignore the sharp and stabbing and absolutely unbearable pain of a rear lower wisdom tooth that wanted out.

There was a cavity in that tooth, I knew. It had been hurting some, off and on, for a few months. And I did what I always do when a tooth starts acting up. I ignored the warnings and hoped the pain would go away on its own. Or at least not hurt so bad. Oh, sure, I figured it would hurt enough eventually that it would have to come out. Some day. But not that particular day. And I gritted hard when the pain came stabbing in. It’s been years since I’ve felt pain like that. There is no pain like a real toothache. And I dug around the medicine cabinet and grabbed a Motrin, or some such thing and swallowed it. That should help. It didn’t. That tooth was hurting bad, and it was gonna keep hurting bad. I could tell. And I thought, good grief. Here I am, half lame and wounded from getting ready for one medical procedure. And now this comes along. I mean, I guess you could figure it would. I shouldn’t be surprised. And the pain kept shooting out in great piercing stabs. And I knew I had to find a dentist. An emergency dentist. It didn’t matter who, as long as he could pull a tooth.

Any yeah, yeah, I know. I don’t have a dentist. I had to go find one. Here’s how that is. I brush and floss my teeth every day. Religiously. I’ve done that for decades and decades. But I don’t have a dentist. I avoid those people like the plague. They always launch into great pious lectures about everything you did wrong in not taking care of your teeth. They look disdainfully down their noses at you. I’ve seen it and heard it all before. And I just don’t feel like hearing it again, ever. I’ll go to see a dentist when I have to, was my motto. Not before.

Well, I was going to have to go now. That I knew right after the tooth started stabbing. It’s been a decade since I’ve had my teeth worked on. Last time was right at ten years ago, when a filling fell out. Ellen knew a dentist over in Lebanon, and I managed to slip in and out with minimal hassles. And that was the last time. So now, I had no idea where to turn.

You do what you gotta do in a time like that. Google emergency tooth extraction. And Google delivered. There was a list, of course. There always is. Lord, let this be a good dentist, I breathed, as I dialed the top number. A man answered. I didn’t hem or haw around, just launched right in. I got a tooth that needs to get yanked, I told him. Can you help me? “We can fit you in as soon as you get here,” he said. “Dr. _____ is here now. He can help you.” And he gave me directions. I thanked him and got ready to head out. Not sure what to think about any dentist who can fit you right in, I thought. Maybe he’s no good. Half an hour later, I pulled into the drive of a small house with a sign out front. Dentist. Looked like a one-man operation. It also looked like a non-scolding operation. Good.

The assistant’s name was Greg, and he and the dentist were the only two souls in the place. I filled out my information sheet and told Greg I had no insurance. I’ll just pay with a check. I need this tooth pulled. Greg took some X Rays of my jaw and then led me to the back room. I settled in the dentist’s chair for the first time in a long, long time. And the man came strolling in, dressed in white scrubs. The dentist. An older guy, tough, hard bitten. Looked like he’d been knocked around a good deal by life. He greeted me curtly. “Looks like we need to get that back lower tooth out of there,” he said. No lectures about anything. That was good. Just yank it out, I said. And then I happened to mention. I’m on a blood thinner, for my heart. The hard-bitten dentist recoiled. “You’re on what?” he snapped. “I’m glad you happened to mention that. I’m not sure I can help you.”

And I groaned. Something always has to crop up, to make things more complicated. Let me call my doctor, I said. I got the number right here. And sitting there in the dentist’s chair, I made the call to Dr. B, my heart doctor. Someone actually answered, a guy. I told him what was going on. I need to know if the dentist can pull my tooth, I said. And after some haggling and dealing back and forth, I was told. Stop taking the blood thinner today and tomorrow. The morning after that, he can pull your tooth. I passed the info on to the hard-bitten dentist. “That’s fine,” he said. I can take you Thursday morning, first thing.” But what am I gonna do with all this pain? I asked. “I’ll drill down and kill the nerve,” he said.

And he numbed my jaw and grabbed his drill. That high shrill scream has always made me shiver. That and the hot smoky smell of burning tooth and seared and severed nerves. He had my tooth drilled and dead in twenty minutes. He packed it out and told me to bite down. That will hold until you get back. Greg wrote out a bill, and I wrote a check. Now, on for home, and an evening of fasting and drinking that cleansing crap for my colonoscopy the next day. Walking out and driving home, I felt like an old man, beaten and battered and bruised and lame.

That evening I drank lots of Gatorade, mixed with a lot of that vile white cleansing powder. It cleansed me, all right. It wasn’t all that bad, though, nothing like the horror stories I had heard told. And I slept OK that night, and woke up and drank the remainder of the vile concoction the next morning. And soon after lunch my sister-in-law, Wilma, pulled in. She would drive me to the clinic for the procedure. I got in, and off we went. We chatted. I remember the last time you took me to the doctor for a simple procedure, I told her. Last November. I didn’t get back home for ten days. I hope this trip doesn’t turn out like that.

It didn’t. Everything went more smoothly than I could possibly have hoped for. Right on time, a nurse stepped out and called my name. And she led me back and into a little curtained room. Explained how things would come down. I changed into a gown, and minutes later my stretcher was being pushed over to a side room. A couple of people were waiting. Blood pressure. Heart rate. An attendant stabbed a large needle into my wrist and hooked up a hose. And I was off, for a little nap. A very short time later, I awoke back in the curtained room. I felt rested. The nurse popped in and told me everything had gone great. And then Dr. Brown stopped by. He’d removed one very small polyp, and it wasn’t malignant, he was 100% sure. He would send me a report. We chatted a bit, and I thanked him. I’m sure glad it turned out well, I said. I’m relieved. We shook hands. And he told me. “Come back and see me in ten years.” I think I can do that, I said.

Wilma took me back home, and I wasted no time cooking up a nice little feast of real food. No more fasting for me. I felt relieved that it was all over. But still. One more little barrier remained. Tomorrow morning. My tooth would come out. Oh, well. Tonight I will eat and be merry. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

A few minutes after nine the next morning, I was sitting all tense in the dentist’s chair again. The hard-bitten dentist numbed my jaw again, and laid out his instruments. And as he got ready to go in and drill, he told me. “A tooth like that, back there like that. It’s either going to pop right out, or it’s going to take an hour to get out.” Oh, God, I prayed. Please let the thing just pop right out. The hard-bitten dentist stuck a pliers back in there and started prying and yanking around. No good. And then, out came the drill. The man knew what he was doing, and he knew what he was talking about. He hacked and sawed and drilled and cut and swore and drilled and hacked and sawed some more. After about fifteen minutes, I figured the Lord wasn’t hearing me, so I quit praying.

And exactly to the minute, one hour in, the tooth came popping out. By this time the hard-bitten dentist was so exhausted and exasperated that he simply laid the tooth on the little table beside me and walked out of the room. Greg the attendant gave me penicillin pills and water and packed the gaping hole with gauze where the tooth had been. “Bite down,” he told me. “Keep the pressure on. Take the gauze out in an hour. If it keeps bleeding, repeat.”

I nodded and muttered incoherently. There wasn’t a whole lot I could say. I followed Greg back up to the front, and he wrote out my bill. I wrote him a check, then hollered into the back room as I turned to leave. Thank you, Dr. ______ . And the hard-bitten old dentist yelled back in a muffled voice. “You are welcome, Ira. You did good. You were a trooper.”

Nursing my frozen jaw, I walked out and got into my truck and drove off. Right about then, I needed some tender loving care. I felt pretty beaten and battered and bruised and lame.
********************************

I’ve been feeling a little bruised and battered and lame in a few other ways, too. It’s strange, how it came to be. Right after I got out of the hospital last fall, the world was a very scary place. The doctors yelled at me. Make sure you take these meds on schedule every day. No salt. Not one drop of alcohol, ever again. You touch one drop, and you will fall over dead. I grumbled at them in my mind and quietly rebelled against them in my heart. But I listened. Not a lot of choice there, I figured.

The months slipped by, and the first thing I knew, I had found a decent rhythm. I felt pretty confident. There was joy, there, in life again. And the next thing I knew, I had been totally dry for four solid months. That’s a long stretch of time. You detox naturally, when that happens. And the thing was, I felt it. And it felt real good, to wake up in the morning, all fresh and ready for the day. I marveled at the difference. And yeah, I still pined in my heart. And grieved, some. A drink. It was never far from my mind, I always wanted a drink. And those first four months came and went, and not once did I consume even so much as a single drop.

And it was around that time, just before my colonoscopy was coming up and my tooth went haywire. About right then, so help me, there came a voice inside my head. Persistent, small and still, but there. You’ve come a long way, my son. You got your head cleared from that fog, that alcoholic haze. Never mind that you got it done because there was no other choice. You got it done. Now I want you to look inside you. Examine your heart. Can’t you see how it’s full of dark, hard things? It’s full of unforgiveness and rage and shame. I want you to do something about that. Now that you know, now that you can see. I want you to go and get yourself cleaned out. I want you to do that so you can walk free, so you can live free.

I recoiled, startled. And I bristled back pretty hard, especially right at first. Ah, come on, Lord. I was just minding my own business, here. Why are you sneaking up on me like that? It’s not nice. Haven’t I been through enough crap, don’t you think? And now you want me to look inside myself? What kind of freedom is that? Of course there’s some rage in there, and of course there’s some unforgiveness and shame. Of course there is. But isn’t that understandable? I mean, look at where I’ve been. Look at what I’ve seen and felt. And it’s not my fault, either. I got a right to hold on to a few little shreds of what I’m holding on to, I claim. So what do you mean, you want me to examine myself? What do you mean, you want me to do something about it? Can’t I have a little peace and rest, here? Why do I have to go looking for more stuff to feel bad about?

That’s how I grumbled at the Lord. With thoughts like that and words like that.

The small, still voice stayed small and still. But it would not stop, would not go away. It stayed. Persistent. I wasn’t losing sleep, and the voice wasn’t incessant, as in always there, twenty-four hours a day. But I could never quite shake it off, the quiet noise of it. Listen to me. I know what’s best for you. You claim you want to be healed, and I believe you. I know you want to be free. Free to live and free to write, and free to speak your voice. Go, then, and get yourself some help. I will show you the way.

And so I finally gave up and shrugged. Out of sheer exhaustion, I suppose. I mean, how long can a guy go walking around arguing with voices in his head? Not for long. You’ll get locked up in some padded room, somewhere. OK, I said. I’ve come this far. I’ve been to the gates of death. I have seen the outer darkness of the wilderness. I looked at it all, right up close, and never flinched. You brought me back from that desolate place, you brought me back to a land where there is life and joy. I will never be afraid again. And yes, I want to be free. If you want me to examine what’s inside me, I’m listening. I’ll do what you want me to. Just show me how.

And the small, still voice was very calm. You need a man to talk to, a friend, someone who will listen and not judge. And you need to tell him what you have kept hidden inside you. The rage and the shame. Especially the shame. It must be someone you can totally trust. And right then, a name and face drifted in and out of my vision like a mirage. Yes. That was the man. Sam. My counselor. The guy who had tried, had labored so tirelessly to keep Ellen and me together, way back. Those were brutal and bitter days. And it didn’t work, then, in the end. I guess we were beyond help. But he was a good man, and my good friend. We had not connected in years. Now, it was time again.

All right, Lord, I said, resigned. I got it. I will reach out to Sam and see if he’ll see me. The small, still voice went quiet, then. And my heart was very calm.

One morning not long after that, Sam smiled in welcome as I walked into his office for my first appointment. And we shook hands and chatted and caught up, two comfortable old friends who hadn’t seen each other in a while. We’re both a lot more worn and battle-scarred than we were years ago when we first met. And then we got down to the reasons I had sought him out after all this time. I didn’t want to come, I told him. But I got my head cleared from the alcohol. And there didn’t seem to be any other way out. So here I am. I have some hard things to tell you. Some things I’ve kept covered up inside, some things I need to work through. I’m not sure how it’s going to go, the telling of it. Or the healing of it. All I know is I just want to be free.

I think it’s going to take a while to get to where I want to go. And it feels like I’m walking lame to get there. But still, I guess I’ve always figured. It doesn’t matter if you’re walking lame. As long as you’re walking.

And for a moment, it seemed, he saw the visages of time, dark
time, and the million lock-bolts shot back in a man’s memory…
Light fell upon his face and darkness crossed it: -he came up
from the wilderness…from a time that was further off than Saxon
thanes, all of the knights, the spearheads, and the horses.

Was all this lost?

“It was so long ago,” the old man said.

—Thomas Wolfe
_______________

Darkness dropped all around, and the evening chill swept in. I was probably twelve, maybe thirteen. At that age, a year is a big deal. And I was pretty excited. My brothers had decreed that I could go along that night. And after the chores were done, and after supper, Stephen hitched Bonnie, his plump little brown mare, to his top buggy. And the three of us loaded up. Stephen, Titus, and me. The “three little boys,” way back, now not so little anymore. We rattled out the drive, and Stephen turned east. And we were off on a quest not all that uncommon, back in those days. Although this was the first time I remember going along. We had told Dad, and he hadn’t made much of a fuss. It was legit enough, our stated goal. We told him we were going out to catch some pigeons.

And yeah, I know. That sure sounds like some strange activity for Amish youth to be doing. Running around the countryside, climbing around great old barns at night, chasing and catching pigeons. It’s more of an old-time thing, I think. I don’t know if it’s done today any more, anywhere. But it was fairly common in Aylmer, the place where I spent my childhood. There, it wasn’t strange at all.

Pigeons were pests. That was a given. Ugly birds, all around. Rats with wings, I’ve heard them called, and that’s about accurate. And the great red barns of Aylmer were just infested with them, pigeons of every stripe and color. They strutted and preened and cooed and flapped about. And crapped all over the place. I can’t say they really did much harm of any kind. But they weren’t much good for anything, either. They just got in the way and got annoying.

And the Amish boys of Old Aylmer had reasons enough to go scrambling around the large barn lofts and silos at night, hunting pigeons. Because every Tuesday at the Aylmer Sales Barn, the Pigeon Man showed up in his rattletrap truck all stacked with cages on the back. He was a bit of a shyster and a blowhard, the Pigeon Man was. But the bottom line was that he paid good money, he paid cold hard cash for pigeons. And the Amish boys brought him many dozens of pigeons, stuffed in burlap sacks.

The story was always told when I was little, of a thing that happened long ago. It came from my brother Joseph and our cousin, Alvin Graber. Old time pigeon catching was something they did on a regular basis. And one week, they had a particularly good haul of pigeons. I guess the old barns were loaded that week, and the boys were nimble in the dark and caught a few dozen birds. They stuffed three or four burlap bags full, and headed off to the Sales Barn the next afternoon. But then they got to thinking, and then they got to talking. They had way more pigeons than usual. If the Pigeon Man saw all those birds, he’d drop his price, for sure. So the boys crafted a little plan. They parked their buggy, grabbed their flapping burlap sacks, and walked over through the parking lot toward the Pigeon Man’s truck. But when they got close, one of them stayed back among the parked cars with three of the sacks and most of the pigeons. The other one ambled on in to see the Pigeon Man, carrying one lonely sack of pigeons. I don’t know who did what. Let’s just say Alvin Graber stayed back, hidden, and Joseph traipsed on in with the one burlap sack.

The Pigeon Man greeted Joseph loudly. “Well, now,” he shouted. “You brought me some pigeons. Let’s count them out. I need a lot more than that. My price today is fifty cents apiece.” And he and Joseph released the dozen or fifteen pigeons from the sack into one of the cages on the truck. And Joseph asked. “Fifty cents apiece, for all I can bring you?”

“That’s right, young man,” the Pigeon Man roared. He took the flask from his hip pocket, unscrewed the lid, and took a vast swig of whatever was sloshing around inside. (OK, I just made that last line up, but I always figured the man must have been drinking to get so loud and boisterous. Maybe he was, and maybe he wasn’t.) And Joseph turned back to the parking lot where Alvin was crouched, hiding. He waved, then went out to help carry in the three remaining sacks of pigeons. “You wait, I’ll be right back,” he told the Pigeon Man as he darted off.

A few minutes later, the two boys triumphantly returned, carrying three large flopping sacks. “We got a lot more pigeons here,” they announced. “You said you’d pay fifty cents apiece. Let’s unload these sacks and count them out.” The Pigeon Man goggled at them and at the flopping burlap sacks in a most displeased manner. He got all unjolly, all of a sudden. He’d been had, and he knew it. He couldn’t even haggle for a volume discount, here.

The specific details remain a little vague in my memory. But Joseph and Alvin didn’t get full price for all those extra pigeons. The Pigeon Man reneged, backed out of his promise. They settled for a little less, maybe thirty-five cents apiece, for the birds. The Pigeon Man probably thought, these little Amish boys don’t know any better, and they’ll take what I give them, and they won’t grumble. And maybe they didn’t know any better, and maybe they didn’t grumble. But they sure told some stories when they got back home, stories that got passed on down, told and retold over the years. Such is the stuff of family lore and legend.

So it was economics that drove the Amish boys of Old Aylmer to climb and scramble around the great old barns at night, catching pigeons. And it was a social thing, too. You get to hang out with your friends for an evening. And catching pigeons was far from the strangest social thing the boys got into. I remember clearly one evening a long time ago, when I was very young. My older brothers were getting together with their friends. They planned to go up to Ervin Lambright’s little farm, up north a few miles.

Ervin was a reclusive, red-haired, red-bearded bachelor with a perpetually red face. He lived alone, kind of away from everyone else. He had moved in from northern Indiana, somewhere, if I remember right. Or maybe it was Michigan. And he kept pretty much to himself, except on any given Sunday, when he showed up for church. Ervin was so reclusive that he once got his Sundays mixed up. The Amish have church services every two weeks. In Aylmer, they had Sunday School service on the in-between Sunday afternoon. Aylmer was one of the very few Amish communities that believed in Sunday School at that time. It was considered a very progressive thing, almost like the Beachys, people who drove cars. Old-time, hard-core Amish still look very suspiciously at any Amish community where there is Sunday School. It’s scandalous, they claim, and so worldly.

Anyway, Ervin got his Sundays mixed up, and one Sunday he showed up after church services had just been dismissed at Levi Slaubaugh’s place. People were sitting at tables and feasting on peanut butter sandwiches and pickles. Ervin thought it was Sunday School Sunday. When he realized his mistake, he blushed and blushed in shame. Deeply embarrassed, he self-consciously wiped his face with his hands and looked at the ground and muttered. “So dumm, so dumm” (So dumb, so dumb).

My older brothers and their friends planned to go to Ervin’s little farm one night. I guess they had asked him, and he said it was OK. Anyway, they were going to hunt and kill rats, out in his barn. I guess Ervin’s place was pretty infested, from what I heard tell. It makes me shiver a little, from where I am today. Rats have always made my skin crawl. Of all the creatures God created, the rat is the most vile and viscous. I couldn’t imagine getting together in any dark old barn at night just to hunt them. Not like the Amish youth boys of Aylmer got together one weeknight, and killed a bunch of rats at Ervin Lambright’s farm. It was a social event for them. A large time was had by all.

We plugged along through the darkness on the gravel road, heading east. Bonnie the mare trotted right along. She was a plump little horse, not all that fast, but enduring. She made the move to Bloomfield with our family a few years later. And a few years after that, Stephen sold her to Bishop Henry, who was looking for a safe driving horse for his boys. And as far as I know, Bonnie lived out her remaining days in great contentment on Bishop Henry’s farm. The man sure kept his horses gleaming and looking good. After half a mile or so, we turned south and headed over toward Highway 3. Stephen had told us the destination earlier, and that was one reason I wanted to go along so badly. We were heading to Piggy Ray Morse’s place, over in Richmond.

Ray Morse was an older retired guy who came around and made a few extra bucks hauling the Amish around in his great white boat of a car. Content, retired, and vastly overweight, the sagging folds of his face reminded me and my brothers of a hungry, eager hog. There was no fanfare, and we didn’t hesitate. We unceremoniously dubbed him “Piggy” Ray Morse. We kept the name pretty quiet, just among ourselves, and we never called him that to his face. So he never knew. But he was always Piggy Ray to us. He lived over in the small village of Richmond, and that’s where Bonnie was taking us that November night.

Richmond is a tiny little town on the path to nowhere, just a few miles south of Highway 3. When I was very young, maybe three or four, my sister Maggie often took me along on her little shopping trips to the Richmond General Store. The store sold groceries and hardware and toys. I remember the toys. And I remember always heading to the back room and staring in fascination and awe and wonder at the shelves and shelves of sturdy metal Tonka tractors and dump trucks I would have died for, and plastic buckets and shovels and little toy barns and all kinds of colorful plastic horses and cows and pigs. The toys were mine only in my dreams and in the deepest longings of my heart. I never got my hands on a single one of them. Which makes my memories of them all the more intense.

Bonnie clopped along the paved road, and we approached the little village. I don’t remember if any of us had ever been to Piggy Ray’s house before, but we had the number. And soon enough, we arrived. Stephen turned his horse in. Off to the side, by the garage, he tied her up. We all got out and stood around and stretched. And the excitement stirred in us. Well, here we were. But we weren’t here to catch any pigeons. Piggy Ray didn’t even have a barn to catch pigeons in.

We walked over to the house. I tagged along behind my brothers. We stood outside the porch and Stephen rang the doorbell. The porch light flipped on, and a moment later, Piggy Ray came waddling out. He recognized us and opened the door. “Hello, boys,” he said. Stephen did the talking. “Good evening, Ray,” he said. “I mentioned last week that we might want to stop by and watch a hockey game, and you said we could come. So here we are.” I’m not sure what Piggy Ray was thinking, but he kept right on smiling. “Come on in, come on in,” he said, waving us by him. And we stepped into the porch shyly, and then followed the man into his house and on into his living room. Electric lights glowed softly everywhere. And there in the living room was a large, heavy floor model TV, black and white. It was turned on, and it was blaring. And we saw right away. There was a hockey game on. A real, organized hockey game. And we settled in, or at least I settled in, to absorb an experience such as I had never seen before.

Hockey was sacred to us. We were huge fans of the game, even though no one had ever taught us a thing about it. We learned the game on our own, with no guidance at all from anyone, from reading the newspaper and looking at pictures. Our hunger and thirst for the game knew no bounds. We set up rinks and played on our pond night after night in the winter cold. And by that time, by that night at Piggy Ray’s, Stephen had already owned a little transistor radio for a few years. He listened to hockey games, and I got to listen, too, now and then. From such a foundation, we taught ourselves to play.

But we had never watched a game. Not a real game with real uniformed players on a real ice rink with a painted center line and blue lines and face-off circles and a crease in front of the net around the goalie. We had read of these things, and seen pictures. And heard them told. But we had never, never seen them in live action.

Piggy Ray waved us to the couch. He sat back down on his recliner, from where the doorbell had called him. He never offered us anything else, no snacks or pop. It never even crossed our minds that he would. Because what he did offer was way more than almost anything we could imagine. The chance to watch real live hockey on TV.

A few words aside, here. A few thoughts. And no, I’m not dredging down, not beating my breast and bemoaning the lack of morality in what we were doing that night, and how we had blatantly misled Dad, getting there. Obviously, there were some relationship issues, some communication gaps, between a father and his sons. It all was what it was. And it all was a long time ago. This is just a story. That’s all it is. But when I look back at who we were and what we were and what we were pulling off, well, the risks involved were pretty serious.

Not just for us boys, but for Piggy Ray as well. I’m sure he would have preferred that no Amish youth show up at his door like we just had. But when we did show up, he did not hesitate, but invited us into his home. It would not have gone well had word leaked out to the Aylmer Amish community that Ray Morse, the driver, allowed Amish boys to come around and watch hockey on TV at his home. It would have drastically affected his business and his livelihood. I give him credit to this day for recognizing and acknowledging the relentless driving hunger that stirred inside us. He was a good and solid man, and he stood tall and shining in the moment. And here, at this late date, long after he’s gone, I honor him for that. Ray Morse, you were a man.

And as for us, well, the risks were more terrible than anything we wanted to even think about. If Dad found out what we had done, there would be severe repercussions. A whipping for me, for sure. I was young enough. And for Stephen and Titus, there would have been dark looks and endless scolding and all kinds of admonitions for a long, long time. None of it would have been any fun at all. We didn’t analyze those risks all that closely. We just knew we were willing to take them. The immediate rewards gleamed and beckoned like a great shining city right close by, the future risks lurked out there far away like dark thunder clouds hovering over distant mountains. Thunder clouds that with any luck would never reach us.

We sat there on the couch in Piggy Ray’s house, our eyes riveted to the TV. Too shy and polite to make much noise, we just sat there, mesmerized, and watched. Murmuring excitedly to each other at a particularly spectacular play or when a goal was scored. It was a Minor League Hockey game, going on. Only in Canada is hockey enough of a religion for Minor League games to be televised. I think it was the London Knights against Hamilton, both relatively local teams.

We didn’t know the names of any of the players, but there’s one name I remember hearing over and over again that night. Hamilton’s goalie. I always played goalie in our little hockey games on the pond at home, so my eyes were instantly glued to that man. His name was Roley Kimble. The teams were badly mismatched. London’s offense ran all over Hamilton’s defense. There was one balancing factor. One man. Roley Kimble. He flopped around like a madman, and fiercely guarded his net. Peppered with pucks from all over, he single-handedly stood firm. And not one shot got by him. Not one. I watched the man in awe. In my dreams, I would one day play like he did.

It wasn’t all that late when Stephen made noises to go. Maybe a little after ten. Hamilton was leading the game, 3-0 in the third period. Roley kept his shutout intact, we saw later in the newspaper. We stood, then, and thanked Piggy Ray. And then we showed ourselves out. Bonnie plugged along toward home, and we chattered excitedly all through the 25-minute ride. At home, we put the horse away and slipped into the house.

It was probably around 10:30 or 11:00. Dad was in his little office down the hall, pounding away at his typewriter, like he always did every night until midnight or so. We slipped quietly past his doorway, so as not to disturb him. And on upstairs to bed. We were practically on a high from the experience, from where we had been and what we had seen. It never happened again, not an adventure quite like that. And I never did play goalie like Roley Kimble did.

There was one more major hurdle to cross. We didn’t fret, or lose any sleep over it, but it was there. The next morning, we got up and did our chores. Then came back into the house, where Mom had cooked up a large, delicious breakfast of eggs and toast and bacon and biscuits and gravy. We sat around the table like normal, hunched over our plates, wolfing down our food. “The boys eat too fast,” Dad always said.

And Dad always tried to chat a little at the table, to get some sort of conversation going. Although in the mornings that task got a little difficult, because no one felt like talking that early. And this morning, he asked. “Well, boys. How did the pigeon hunting go last night? Did you catch anything?”

Titus and I were hunched over our plates right then, looking down, shoveling in our food. We froze when we heard Dad’s question. For a moment, at least. But then we got back to eating, all nonchalant. We figured to let Stephen do the talking.

And Stephen stopped eating long enough to look right at Dad. And then he answered, very calmly.

“No,” Stephen said. “No, we didn’t get any pigeons caught last night.”