I find that Vette’s abandoned me and I drink glass after glass of warm beer fresh from the keg. You don’t end up here, you choose to be here. There’s a band playing in the next room and the noise is deafening, keeping me from sleep. There’s an assortment of characters here, most of them I’ve never seen. It seems everyone comes from other towns. Like Goshen, Indiana, wherever that is.
Then Luke is in my face asking if I’ve seen Vette and I tell him no and he asks if I want to leave. I stand up, unsure of what I’m going to say, and immediately fall back on the couch.

In the corner of the room is the television with a Playstation hooked up to it and there’s a group of guys gathered around it, blowing up cars. Blowing up each other. And I think, this means something. But I don’t know what.
“Tabor!” Luke shouts over the band in the other room. “Do you want to get out of here?”
“I want Vette!” I shout back.
“I think she’s fucking some guy in the other room.”
I push him out of my face and continue nursing my beer. It’s flat and warm even though it’s fresh from the keg. I guess I should explain what brought me here.

So there we were with the buggy out on highway 10, universally called the Quaker road because it leads to the homestead. Nevermind that we’re not Quakers. We run into Ezekiel and he’s got news for us.
“Holy shit!” he shouts up to us.
“Watch the mouth,” I say weakly, eager to hear what he has to say.
“Tabor got shot!”
“I’m Tabor,” I reply. “I didn’t get shot.”
“Not you, Tabor, the other Tabor from Covington.”
“Where’d he get shot?” Vette asks.
“In the gut.”
“But where?”
“In town.”
Vette and I exchange a look.
“Can you guys give me a ride?” Ezekiel asks.

We arrived to find that Tabor from Covington was in fair health. He was sitting on the curb outside the Bits and Sundries General Store on 12th street. He had a milkshake in one hand and the other hand was on his stomach.
“Tabor!” Ezekiel shouts as we pull to a stop. “What happened?”
Tabor looks up at us and squints his eyes. “It’s so bright out here,” he finally says.
“We’ve gotta do something,” Ezekiel tells Vette and me.
“Tabor,” I say. He looks my way. He puts his sunglasses on.
“Tabor,” Ezekiel says. “Are you with us?”
He puts down the milkshake and uses that hand to mess with his hair.
“Come on,” Ezekiel says. “We’ve gotta take him to the church.”
“What will they do?” Vette asks.
“Fuck, I don’t know,” he says. “We’ve gotta do something. He’s gonna die.”

“Who shot you, Tabor?” I ask.
“Oh,” he says. “That. Some guy didn’t like our kind.”
“We have to get him to a hospital,” I tell Vette.
“No,” Ezekiel says. “We can’t do that. Not without permission.”
“Tabor,” I call out. “Would you like us to take you to the hospital?”
“It’s really hot out here,” he replies. “I don’t want to walk. Can you give me a ride home?”
“But you live in Covington.”
“I’m staying at your homestead with the Knutzens. They’ll take care of me.”
“I really think we should take him to the church,” Ezekiel says.
“We’ll just take him back to the Knutzens’ and be done with it.”
Tabor, the other Tabor, not me, died in the buggy halfway home.

Which I guess doesn’t bring us any closer to how I ended up here.
That night, I took Vette for the first time in the moonlight. Our passion diffused between us as though through a prism. We made two spoons, nestled in each other’s arms.
“I wanna do cocaine,” Vette tells me.
“Raget is having a party tomorrow night.”
“What for?”
“For Tabor.” “Oh,” she says. “Can we do cocaine there?”
“He’s got his own trailer outside of the homestead. We can do anything there.”
“Does he have a tv?”
“Yes.”
“I want to watch tv. And I want to do cocaine.”

I push the bonnet off her head and run my fingers through her hair.
“Don’t,” she says.
“Why not?”
“You’ll mess it up.”

We Amish are Anabaptists. That means children are not baptized at birth. We prefer to give people the right to choose their commitment to the religion. It’s the best idea there is because who wants to be told what religion they are when they can decide on their own? We look down on other religions that baptize children because they really have no choice in the matter. They’re forced into it. And maybe that religion’s not right for them. It would save a lot of disappointment if they had the choice. We have the choice. It’s called rumspringa. When you turn 16, you get to experiment with what the ‘English’ world has to offer. This includes electricity, cars, televisions, cd players, alcohol, and premarital sex. I’m 17 years old and I’ve been exploring my rumspringa for the last year and a half. Vette has just turned 16 and is exploring it with me.
This is the first time that either of us has ever had sex. Walking into the party, it occurs to me that maybe I’m in love with Vette and I could settle down with her. Maybe. We could just both decide to be taken into the church together. It wouldn’t be easy. I would have to farm all day and she would have to do all the housework and have as many kids as possible. Because that’s what women do. It’s so easy for the men. We just do manual labor. We just work until we’re tired. But the wife has to bear all the children.

I have four sisters and six brothers. Only one of them, my oldest brother, Michael, chose not to return to the church after his rumspringa. He moved to Los Angeles and teaches a religious tolerance class at a local community college while trying to be a writer. There are no hard feelings, even if he won’t be saved. He just wasn’t meant for the church. He couldn’t live the way we live.

Vette stumbles out of the bedroom, half clothed.
“Tabor,” she says.
Fucking bitch. There are no words for how she makes me feel right now.
“Did you have fun?” I ask with a leer.
“Don’t get messed up over this,” she tells me.
“Over what? You fucking another guy?!”
“We’re not married, Tabor. I can do what I want.”
The room’s reached a fever pitch and my vision is blurry.
“This is all just because you’re drunk,” Vette says. “You won’t feel bad tomorrow.”

A girl comes out of the bedroom and she’s completely naked. I want to stand up but I can’t find my feet. “Who’s that?” I ask Vette.
“I don’t know. She was in there with us.”
A guy comes out of the bedroom, naked and wearing a condom.
“How many damn people are in there?” I ask.
Vette says, “There were a lot of people in there.”
“So you did fuck somebody in there?”
“I guess it’s what you would call an orgy.”
I find my feet and stand up, as though on the deck of a ship at sea because I’m swaying back and forth. I push past Vette, headed for the bedroom.
“You don’t want to go in there, Tabor,” Vette calls after me.

I push on, determined to see the face of the guy that fucked my Vette.

After the other Tabor died, there was a meeting of the council. The respected elders of the community. There are no phones in the township so two of the elders, Mr. Stenkel and Mr. Oral, got in a buggy and made the fifteen mile trip to town to tell the police. I don’t know what happened. If there was a fight over the custody of Tabor’s body or something. All I know is that Raget had a party in celebration of Tabor’s life or death or whatever. Maybe the party was already planned and Tabor’s death just coincided with it and became a good excuse.

In the crisp April air, after losing my virginity with Vette, I hold her close.
“Don’t do that,” she says. I stop blowing in her ear.
“You need a haircut,” she tells me. “And breath mints.”
“Does it smell like smoke?”
“It just doesn’t- I don’t want to talk about this.”
“Do you love me, Vette?”
“What do you want to hear?”
“The honest answer.”
“Do you love me?” she asks.
I let go of her and roll away. We are on the crest of a hill and we’re both naked. “Paratrooper’s over the side,” I shout and roll down the hill. Vette laughs.

And maybe in the Bible it says that you can’t be homosexual but I don’t know. No one in our township has ever been a homosexual. That’s why I’m taken by surprise when I get to the bedroom. On the bed is an unconscious boy. At the foot of the bed, a guy is giving another guy a blowjob. I know what that means because my brother wrote me a letter when I started my rumspringa and it was filled with words I should know. That was the first time I heard the word cock. Or pussy as referring to a woman’s nether regions.
This brings back a memory of when I was six and my mom had just put me to bed. There were five of us in that bedroom, me and my four older brothers. We had bunkbeds stacked three high. My mom had just put me to bed and focused her attention on the next bunk up, on my older brother Levi, and I snatched the bottom of my mother’s dress and peeked underneath it. I was kept home from school for two weeks, punished. I was forced to help my mother with the housework. I washed clothes, scrubbed dishes, and swabbed the floor with a cloth. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Also on the list, my brother informed me that girls bleed for five days every month and this is called “getting your period” or “the woman’s curse”. I guess every girl does this but I can’t imagine my mom bleeding and not saying anything. Or Vette bleeding. I almost asked her that night but just couldn’t.

I see the two guys, the one giving a blowjob and the other receiving it, and I just stand in awe. It has never occurred to me that a guy could do this like a girl can. I know that if I decide to be accepted into the church, I will not be getting a blowjob ever again. Sex is to be used for procreation only. Anything less is a denial of God’s gift to us.
In addition to the three people I noticed in the bedroom, I now realize there are more. There’s two girls and a guy huddled in the corner, all of them look as though they’re on the brink of sleep. It smells weird in here but maybe that’s how sex smells. I don’t know because the only time I’ve ever had sex was last night with Vette and that was on the hill in the open air. It’s what my brother calls a “decadent scene”. He used this phrase when he last visited, in response to the question my father asked about what is it like in Los Angeles. I don’t think I really understood the phrase until I stepped into this room.

“Which one?” I said to everyone.
The guy getting the blowjob turned his head back towards me and said, “Which one what?”
“Which one of you fucked Vette?”
Everyone laughed at this.
One of the girls stood up and said, “Do you want some pot?”
“Sure,” I said and a waterpipe was passed my way. My brother’s letter told me this is called a “bong”. I light it up and take a hit and the girl falls down in a pile.
“What is wrong with you people?” I ask. There’s more here. A whole other story. About heroin use and my introduction to it in this very room. Not that I actually tried it, but just so you know that I do know what it is now. And what it does to you. The important thing about that night isn’t that the guy on the bed had overdosed and died and nobody noticed. It’s that I lost Vette.

I barged out of the bedroom and headed for the couch. Honestly, I was feeling pretty light-headed and didn’t think I could stand up anymore. Vette was nowhere to be seen. Ezekiel showed up and tried to talk to me. By now the music in the other room had been turned off and everyone was watching a movie with an action star in it and he blew a lot of people up and there was cheering for each death. I wander outside and climb up into the buggy. My suit is filthy. There’s still grass in all the pockets from last night with Vette on the hill. I’ve lost my hat in the course of the evening. I never see Vette again. She disappeared completely. There are rumors that she left with some guy and moved to New York City. New York City is fabled in the township as the height of sin. A real “decadent scene”. There are rumors that Vette went home with some guy and he killed her. There are rumors that Vette just left on her own. There are a lot of rumors but no facts.

When the police are questioning me, I don’t know if I’m supposed to lie or not. They ask if I’ve been drinking and I say yes because it’s well known in the township that during rumspringa you can drink. So there’s nothing wrong with that. The police are not amused. They ask if I’ve been smoking pot and I say no because even I know that this isn’t legal in the outside world. The problem is, I can’t tell what’s okay as part of rumspringa and what is illegal in the outside world. In that great big “decadent scene” that everyone else lives in.

The police want to know if I know this Aramis that overdosed at the party. I tell them that I don’t, that I’ve never seen him before. I ask them if they’ve talked to Vette. They don’t know who she is. I don’t know how the police found out about the dead body. Someone must have called them from the party but I don’t know. I fell asleep in the buggy and woke up to find the police scouring the house. Things aren’t the same without Vette around. Everyone at the party, including me, was arrested. Some, like me, for underage intoxication. Others for heroin use and possession. One for statutory rape. Whatever that is. And I think to myself, I wish I could talk to Michael, my brother that moved to Los Angeles. He had another name when he lived here but he changed it after he moved. And he’s so much older than me that I’ve never heard him called anything other than Michael. So in realistic terms, I don’t really know what my brother’s name is. Because you don’t decide your name, your parents do.

My father does not bail me out of jail. I’m there for three days until my court date and the judge fines me and turns me over to my father’s custody. His words from the bench are not inspiring.
“While I understand it is a part of your religion that at your age you are allowed to experiment with all that the outside world has to offer, it is expected that you will not break the laws of the state you live in. Drinking under the age of 21 is a criminal action in this state and your pious devotion does not circumvent that inalienable fact. I think you should at all times remember the expectations of your father and mother and not do anything to let them down. Ending up in a jail cell is a clear indication of impropriety. I’m a religious man myself and even I know that God’s moral code is coincident with the jurisdiction of this court. Following the laws of the state are part of following God.” Or something like that. I’m not sure I can remember all of it.

When I get back to the township, I find out that Vette’s been missing ever since that party. Raget throws another party the day after I get out of jail. It’s a celebration of him making bail. As the owner of the house, he was charged with the most stuff. I end up at the party. I sleep with another girl and I’m horrible at it. My brother tells me that an orgasm is called “coming”. I come in about two minutes. It’s not like it was with Vette. Nothing is the same without Vette.

I get uncontrollably drunk and vomit on Raget’s carpet. I make a total fool out of myself. At three in the morning, completely intoxicated and therefore breaking the great laws of my state, I try to organize a search party. To go looking for Vette. But no one will join me. Even Ezekiel shakes his head no. And that’s when I know for sure that Vette was the only friend I had. And now she’s gone.

I do cocaine a lot over the course of the evening. I am drunk the whole time. And I think about doing heroin but there’s none at this party. Raget has made a rule about this.
Raget is 25 years old. He was born in the township and he decided not to join the church. But he didn’t move far away, his trailer is only about two miles outside the homestead. He is never at a loss for friends. His home is party central for all the kids going through rumspringa. But his friends usually only last a couple of years at the most. Then they join the church. He runs into old friends and they won’t even talk to him. There’s no doubt that he’s a sinner. But he does provide a place for rumspringa to happen and all the rumspringa kids love him for it. This is his eighth set of friends since he left the church.
“People don’t stick around long,” he tells me.
I tell him I’m worried about Vette.
“She’ll be okay,” he tells me. “She’ll probably end up here.”
“You don’t end up here,” I tell him. “You choose to be here.”

--

This story was adapted to a movie script format. You may read the first act here.