Peace Shall Destroy Many (10 page)

As the deep voices about him echoed “Amen,” his mind could only dully comprehend that in all the talking that evening, no one had disposed of any of Joseph’s questions. They had not even been considered.

They lay in the gloom stuffed beneath the
rafters and waited for the thunder. Under the sheet, the long shape lay motionless in the twisted-wire bed, but the small curled one, in the bunched darkness where the rafters closed their jaw, squeaked the straw-tick. A long-avoided touch was clammy. Somewhere, a calf bawled, lonely as the night, and then in a stir the two felt coolness and the mutter of myriad spruce beyond the screened open window. The ribbed roof reached up to the peak where holes like distant stars filtered through the darkness. Mosquitoes probed in high song
.

Abruptly, without a sound, the lightning reached in and tore the darkness wide before their eyes. As a revelation they saw all about them to the hole ripped and hanging folded in the curtain partition and the leaning joints of the stove-pipe edging up, before the night rallied to enclose
.

Then thunder. Like long walls breaking
.

Under the rafters, “M-mom says that thunder is God speaking.”

No stir from the long figure. The shorter
squirmed close to
what seemed a bodiless sound. “Haven’t you learned in school what it is?”

“The Indians say so too.”

“In the hot day one cloud gathers more electricity than another. When the wind blows them close tog
ether one discharges to the other. The flash of the discharge moves very quickly—that’s the lightning. But the boom moves more slowly. That’s the thunder.”

Without a sight came the thunder over and over the bent world rolling. Like righteousness
.

Under the thunder, “It s-sounds like—God.”

Long after, as if no longer awake:

“Yes.”

O
N THE FRINGE OF DAY
balanced the sun. The July world lounged clean as a washed cat. Then Nance, flirting her tail to the morning flies, rocked Thom off the bare ridge into the bending trees along the cow-trail. Just to live, following the sound of Bo
ss’s bell, Carlo charging into the hollowed path from a raucous rabbit-chase! He could not even feel selfish at his thoughts.

Abruptly, when the path emerged to skirt the fence along the oatfield, he saw cattle where they had no right to be. As he kicked Nance into a gallop, thinking they were the milk-cows, he saw the crook-horned brindle cow lift her head from the oats, her dull bell drumming. Herb’s stock! Again.

He reined close at the barbed-wire gate and, with a wrench, sprawled it open. Nance stepped over carefully, and then they were racing around the edge to the gate that opened into Herb’s pasture on the adjacent quarter. After two weeks of intermittent rain in June, the hock-deep oats quivered
like a living carpet. He had to dismount to get the gate open, then he was away. All seventeen head of Herb’s scrubby stock stood bulge-bellied now, among trampled trails, squashed patches, splattered dung, staring at his gallop. In a whirlwind he rounded them up, Carlo glorying slaver-mouthed at the uninhibited chase. Thom’s mind was black as he crowded them hard down the edge of the field, not caring about their laboured breathing.

He did not milk that morning. After driving their own cows home, he returned to the field and easily discovered the break. He strung a double wire across the gap in the rails.

“It was the bottom rail again,” he said to his father, who questioned him at breakfast, face moving in the motions of eating. “If they rub on the rail long enough, it finally breaks and then they scrape through, getting a good back-rub for their warbles from the wire.”

“Uh-huh. I told Herb last year he should put a wire on too.” Wiens stared into his porridge-bowl afloat with milk.

“Sure you told him! And what does that help? Last year they got in earlier; at least the barley came back; but it’s late now. Wrecked at least six acres. You’ve got to do something with him about that fence, not just tell him and have him laugh in your face again.” Thom’s voice lifted as he leaned back on the bench, against the plastered wall, staring at his calm father slurping the thinned porridge. Mrs. Wiens, standing by the stove where pork spat in a pan, turned.

“Thom, remember he’s not a Christian and we have to be especially careful not to annoy him. Perhaps, if we’re lenient enough—”

“Mom, we
have
been lenient and I know he’s not a Christian, but it’s common decency to do your share of
fencing. Everyone made the rules. If Pa wasn’t always so apologetic when talking for himself. He doesn’t have to excuse himself for having a good oat-field—just tell Herb to get that bottom wire on like—”

“Thom!” from his mother. He saw Hal, sitting beside him on the bench, gawking. He said to Hal, in English,

“If you’re through breakfast, why don’t you scram? It’s nice out.”

“Sure!” Leaping up, Hal slid along the bench from behind the table and, scrambling over Thom, charged out the screen door. In massive silence the family continued eating.

Margret said, the boy’s shouts fading to the corral in the flurry of Carlo’s barking, “Why don’t
you
go tell him to fix it?”

Thom shook his head quickly, looking away from her work-lined hand that was reaching for a piece of bread. “That’s not my business.”

“Stop talking about it!” Wiens’ voice broke in. “I’ll get it done and that’s the end of the matter. Since when do the two kids have to run the whole farm?”

Neither said more. Thom did not know about his sister, but since the church meeting, for him many unconsidered circumstances meshed into place. Beyond his boyish need for solidarity, he now comprehended more fundamental weaknesses in his father. David and Ernst managing the farm; Pa as church secretary, though he occasionally murmured mild objections at home, at church meetings always agreeing with church policy—policy originated almost exclusively with Block; Pa ever agreeable: let it affect his own family as it would, as long as the next man held him in good reputation. To be a true Christian, must one always agree? Until now, to consider what he suspected to be the inadequacy of his father
had seemed to Thom like the wavering of his own faith. But all the leading men had wavered and said nothing in the face of Joseph’s ranged facts.

He remembered Joseph’s departure the week before. A leather suitcase strapped behind his saddle, the teacher had ridden up in the early morning. Gray fidgeted as Joseph swung awkwardly down.

“Poor boy!” Thom ran his hand down the silken neck. “Why don’t you ride with Block’s truck on his cream haul? You catch the same train.”

“No need to bother anyone. I have to sell Gray anyway.”

“The livery in Calder?”

“Yes. Wish you could buy him.”

“I do too.” They looked steadily at each other, the h
orse nuzzling Joseph’s pocket. Neither spoke.

“Is that all you’ve got?”

“Mr. Lepp will send the trunk to the folks sometime when he goes to Calder. I don’t need it now.”

They stood, hearing Margret heave the corral-gate open and the cows amble across the yard to the pasture. She came by them then, milking skirts heavy in the level sun-rays.

“So you’re deserting us,” she paused, her pails foam-topped. “Come in and say good-bye to Mom.”

“Yes. In a minute, Margret.”

The slab house-gate squeaked.

“There’s no chance of you visiting your relatives in the south a bit?”

“Huh-uh. My call could come. And we’ve no money for that.”

“You live so differently here from most Mennonites. If you could get out to see for yourself. At le
ast you use modern
machinery and wear ordinary clothes: you haven’t fallen into the pitfalls of some Mennonites who almost equate Christianity with a certain cut and colour of clothes, prayer caps and beards, but if you keep on insisting on the German language and tie your belief to cultural expressions, I wonder. In some ways you’re so progressive here, and in others you’re still so like a colony, so much under one man’s—Thom, you personally are hemmed in—physically—you lose all perspective. There are Mennonites in the south—too many—who live in settlements as you people do here, but others are getting away from this ‘physical separation’ idea. They are living out our common faith. And they do it better, I believe, than you are here, because it reacts and comes alive in contact with people who do not have it. Of course there are big problems too, but those spring up everywhere. If you could only come and see—” Both stared at the ground beneath their feet, in the familiar, useless, circle of their talk.

“A person can’t ignore all he’s ever done, Joseph, what he’s grown up with.”

“And you shouldn’t. There is much good here in Wapiti, and you should hold to that completely. But that only. Don’t be afraid of your mind.” The screen-door banged in their silence. “I’m convinced you’ll do very well with the Bible class, Thom. Remember to watch Jackie Labret—the others always take their cue from him. I tried to sound out Pastor Lepp again, just last night. I’m certain if you talked to him, say some day at work, man to man, he would give you some help with the lessons, unofficially, of course, but he’ll help. And I’ll write to you from camp, tell you what it’s like.”

Get Pastor Lepp’s assistance. Hold only to that which is good. Thom drained his coffee-mug, looking at his father’s
grey face as he wiped grease from his plate with brown bread.

“You go ahead with the fencing on the south line,” Wiens said as his son slid down the bench and got up. “I’ll drive and see Herb later in the morning.” Thom silently tipped his sweat-moulded cap off the nail by the stair-steps
and strode into the blazing sunshine.

It being Friday morning, Block had just returned from Calder. The Deacon was a striking man, pale scar across his temple, steel-like hair bare to the sky. He wore, instead of the usual overalls, denim trousers and a tan-checked shirt. As Old Lamont shuffled out to take the weekly mail bag, streaming ignored chatter about the Indians bringing in a fresh load of seneca roots, the Deacon pulled empty cans from the ton-truck and stacked them on the store-porch. He was not occupied with usual business thoughts; last week’s encounter on the railroad platform in Calder intruded. Since they had not spoken together after the stiffly formal school-board meeting, he had not expected the teacher to ride with him to Calder, yet he had felt sorrow at the man’s departure. As they nodded to each other, the length of the platform between them, the Deacon mentally reframed his great hope. He did not want his community to remain in ignorance of the outside world. He himself had been the first to buy a radio and mechanized farm equipment for after a few years he had realized it was impossible that they cut themselves off entirely from Canada. If the children could be t
aught just enough to know about the world’s evil, they would be happy to remain in their seclusion. Some, like the Unger boys, missed the way, but the others were the more solid for such knowledge. Like young David Wiens.
A teacher was needed who knew the way of the world and yet adhered strictly to the Christian principles of the fathers. Old Miss Friesen would remain in Beaver, but for Wapiti Joseph had been perfect; until his glacial logic hardened him beyond all usefulness. After ten short months in Wapiti, Joseph waited for the train. For an instant Block felt a half-formed fear that had pricked him at the church meeting. Were the young people already nipped? At the church meeting—but Pete and Elizabeth had not seemed affected.

Three men idled from the town to stand near the unused railroad shack, chaffing. Block waited by the cream cans. As the train puffed into view round a cut, Joseph suddenly strode the short length of the platform. “I’m sorry that I have disappointed you, Mr. Block. A man has to follow what he cannot but see as the truth. You have to—even though you seem to be tearing someone else apart.”

The Deacon looked up at the rough face, and for a moment he could have wished him his son. He said, the train halting in myriad screeches, “Good-bye Joseph. You could have done something for us at Wapiti. I pray God that He will show you where you have gone wrong.”

Joseph, turning after the hand-clasp and clambering into the one passenger car, knew he could not doubt the sincerity of that voice. He wondered, as he bumped his suitcase into the dusty car, what would have to happen in Wapiti to move that titan. When he thought of it, Joseph felt a pang, alm
ost of happiness that he was going out. Ha! he was thinking like them already: of going outside. Outside what? Stooping, he stared through the grimed window. The bush beyond the fence blocked his view.

For Block, ignorant of the thoughts he aroused, stacking
the last of the empty cans on his store-porch a week later, the remembrance of the bent figure disappearing into the train worked oddly. The recalled ringing of the train bell tolled him back to his early boyhood in Russia. He leaned against the truck-box, his right hand fingering the welt of the scar.

The iron monster had rested on the tracks, panting to carry their whole village from the crowded Ukraine a thousand miles to the plains before the Ural Mountains. He had never seen a locomotive. Heedless of the crowding villagers, he deserted his parents and went around the front, beyond the other admirers. Alone, he ventured close, touching the great wheels and the gleaming piston-rod, overpowered by the immensity of the chained force before him. Suddenly, in a shrill scream, a blast of steam blanketed him. Terrified, he ran he did not know where, stumbling over rails and cinders. As swiftly the steam was behind him and a Russian voice cursed above his head, “Get in your car, brat! We’re going!” Where? The doors shut above his head, the freight cars stretching endlessly out of sight, the steam nozzle threatening behind him.

“Around the front to the other side, stupid! Move!” He glanced up and saw the heavy bearded Russian face, and he knew that this man who controlled the monstrous machine was only a Russian, like all the rest. Without another look or the slightest flinch, he turned rigidly and walked
past the nozzle, which dripped hissing water on the tracks, and round the front to the other side.