Peace Shall Destroy Many (19 page)

He was driven by furies then. Driven to confess and repent, driven to labour for the Widow Esau and her family as for himself, driven to lift the village out of the morass of poverty, driven to bring them back to the paths of the fathers that they had missed over the years, driven to innumerable massive efforts, alone, that he might be an example for his son. But it was no use: Russia was ruined for him. They were in the first group of emigrants to find exit to Canada in 1925. Yet even finding a homestead in remote Wapiti was not enough. He wanted to raise his son as he himself, neglected by a careless father, had not been, and he knew this was impossible in what he saw as a mixed district. To have a colony of true
Mennonites again! In the last stragglers to escape Moscow he found the people he wan
ted: poor, but with the convictions of faith on their conscience. The colony was grown now. No snip of a teacher was going to disrupt it.

Suddenly, as he looked up, he saw his open field again. The harvest sun was fading in glory. He was opposite Elizabeth, who still stooked unceasingly. He halted the team and called, “Elizabeth!”

She set up the two bundles and turned, rubbing her forehead with her arm. “You’ve stooked enough today. You and Pete can finish tomorrow.”

Surprised, she said slowly, “All right, Pa.” He chirruped to his span as she walked towards t
he house, pulling at the sweat-soaked gloves. Over the binder-clatter he could hear the dogs barking as Pete drove the cattle home for milking.

I
N THE LAST WEEK OF
O
CTOBER
the threshing crew was working at the Block farm. When they concluded there, the harvesting for the year would be done.

Thom squirmed under the body of the massive machine to get at a grease cup. Running tractor and thresher with Block, he had been with the crew almost a month and, though he would have been happier on the open field, he wanted to know as much as he could about tractors. Capping the cup, he pushed out, wiping his greased hands on the chaff snowed about the machine.

The stillness of the noon-hour quivered in Indian-summer haze. The vanished bedlam that usually engulfed the outfit gave the world an almost timeless hush. The men ate in the house. The horses chomped on oat-bundles around their racks. As a harness shivered, a blue-jay called through the autumn trees; Thom felt the peace of the world. The smell of threshing in his nostrils, from where he stood he could look
across the half-threshed stack of bundles to the garden, now mounded and sprawled with empty vines, beyond the house and along the line of poplar and willow and birch in mottled yellow and white and dull-red stretching far as in smoke. The geese were long gone, but a covey of sparrows, swooping round the granary at the heap of cracked wheat by the elevator of the thresher, spied him, and vanished in a swirl. Another day, and the harvest would be home.

The door banged. He looked up to see the men straggling from the house. Placing the grease-bucket in the machine-box, he dropped the lid into place and walked to the house to eat. On the path he encountered Block. “I took a link out of that loose chain, as you said.”

“Yes.” Block hesitated, as if preoccupied. “Good. I’ll have to get a new chain there for next year.”

Thom looked after him, puzzled, then strode on, washed roughly at the bench outside the door and stooped into the lean-to that served as kitchen. He slid behind the long table in the living-room to Mrs. Block’s murmured direction. Over his shoulder through the windows he could see the men hitching up; the coughing start of the tractor echoed through the house. Elizabeth came in noiselessly to clear the dishes. He said, half-joking, reaching for the potatoes-with-peelings, “Hardly fair you should work on the crew and in the house too. When will you eat?”

She smiled slightly, “Pa said I needn’t work outside this afternoon. They’ll get through by tomorrow night anyway. I’ll just help Mama.” Her quiet voice dropped tiredly; he looked at her as he drew the knife through his meat. She walked back to the kitchen, her arms laden, and he almost called after her, “Pitching bundles from a stack is no woman’s
work anyway,” but he held his peace, now knowing what her father meant by work. Never before in his young life had he so exerted himself merely to keep up. Elizabeth entered from the kitchen with a clean plate and cutlery, placing them on the table across from him. “Hope I don’t bother you if I eat here.”

“You sure won’t. All this month of threshing I’ve hardly ever had a chance to eat with anyone at noon. Have some meat.” She blanched suddenly as he proffered the meat-platter, and he stammered, confused, “Is anything wrong?—I—”

“No,” she gasped slightly, her hand seeming to press her abdomen, “—it’s nothing. Just a pain I get—sometimes. Nothing.” Her colour faltered back slowly, and she reached for the platter he was still offering over the wide table. She set it down quickly and picked a bit of meat with her fork.

Thom said, eying his food, “This is really good bread. Just like Mom makes it. Did you bake it?”

Her voice was quietly colourless again, “No, I’m outside too much to do baking. Ma baked the bread.”

They were silent for a time, she picking at her food, Thom working at a second helping. He had never before been so close to her, or ever noticed, despite the dark formless outdoor clothes, the womanliness of her face. He said, without thinking, “You and Pete put up all those bundle-stacks?”

Suddenly she spoke, “Yes. It was fun. To drive out in the morning and load up and watch the birds fly south over the wide field and then come back to the house. Pa was gone with the thresher—”

He said, across the odd silence in the room, the cries of the men welling above the distant din of the threshing, “Pretty hard, wasn’t it?”

“What’s there to do if you don’t work?” She did not even shrug.

He was silent, remembering once again Margret’s words after the church-meeting in August. The month of grinding physical labour under Block, of learning about tractor and thresher, had absorbed Thom completely. The Deacon was so phenomenally efficient: an actual expert in anything. If a problem arose, he stood motionless in thought for a moment, then rapped out precise orders. Invariably, his solution worked. Thom, thinking of his own father, could only envy Elizabeth hers. But Margret’s quiet-felt words, “Poor Elizabeth.” Sitting now across the table from her, Thom’s mind drove him back irresistibly to the many autumn-cool evenings when, as he settled himself beside the other men on the straw of the temporary bunkhouses, head filled with admiration at the Deacon’s efficiency that day had revealed, he had nevertheless hesitated on the brink of the thought, You cannot run people like machines. Remember the past summer. Then welcome sleep would wipe all away, and the new morning broke to simpler necessities.

He shook his head slightly. She was there before him. A slight allusion she had made caught in his though
ts and he asked, hoping for diversion, “What kind of sounds do you like?”

“Sounds?” her voice hinting interest.

“You know—things you like to hear when you’re alone?”

“It’s hard to hear them now.” Dishes crashed in the kitchen. “But you mean geese honking in a V—”

“Uh-huh! Or the frogs on a spring night. The stir of spruce when you lie in the damp moss of the muskeg. Cattle breathing in the barn as snow piles to the rafters.” She interrupted quietly.

“You know the most peaceful sound? I heard it once long ago when I visited my uncle beyond Saskatoon one summer. They lived about a mile from the railroad. Every night the train blew for the crossing.”

“A train whistle?” He could not remember having lis
tened to one. “Isn’t that just men and machines—”

“No, it’s not harsh at all. That long ‘Wooooo’ of the train on the prairie at night—as if all the world—and men—are as they should be.”

Mrs. Block entered from the kitchen to collect another stack of dishes. Pushing his wiped plate forward, Thom slid out from behind the table. “Have to get back to work.” He glanced at Elizabeth as her mother shuffled out on worn felt-socks, but her face was grim in tiredness. Her eyes on vacancy, her fork traced wearily in the spot of gravy on her plate. He could not deny his thoughts now. He murmured a word to Mrs. Block as he ducked out the door into the threshing.

“Wolfe! Can’t you handle that team?” A mighty laugh roared above the puffing of the tractor and the hammering of the separator as young Reinhard struggled to back his wagon from the flashing carrier. Franz was feeding from the opposite side.

“Better than you any day, Reimer!” Reinhard hollered as by degrees the half-rearing horses jabbed the rack away from the drive-belt.

Franz bellowed, “You’ll have to
show
me sometime. Not just yell.” The rest was lost in clatter as Reinhard bounced away and Pete wheeled his top-heavy rack
expertly into place. Never pausing in his pitching, Franz shout
ed, standing on the last layer of bundles, “You’re
really gonna have to work to keep up with me!” Pete grinned as he reached for his fork.

“Say that when you’ve a full load!” The straw sprayed and the grain poured into the granary.

Block knelt in the bin, checking the grade of wheat. After the late spring rains, all the Mennonites, except Unger and his care-nothing son, had bumper crops. Well, the land had to be worked properly. Kernels sliding from his hand, he considered the Wapiti harvest, but his thoughts slipped aside. What could be the matter with her?

The scene of the previous night aggressed across his memory. The outfit had arrived late from near Calder and they had manoeuvred the thresher into position between stacks and granary by lantern-light to get the usual early start in the morning. Not having been home for a week, he was draining his coffee-mug when Elizabeth entered the room. As he watched her walk towards the stairs, he felt strangely stirred. Pete and she had taken good care of the farm; had stacked all the bundles from the south quarter for threshing. The long years she had silently spent on the farm abruptly tumbled over him. He had never noticed her cracked, men’s boots, shapeless dress and, the thought suddenly shamed him, her habitually bowed head. Pete and Elizabeth were all he had, really. She was at the stair-turn when he said, from his gratitude, “Elizabeth.”

She paused, raised her head. In the yellow light, her face held, as in a faded copy, the lineaments of his wife. The memory drenched him: of the night when he had asked her father, the rich miller of the village, and she had walked
into the yellow light, as Elizabeth now stood, and he had seen the gentle loveliness of her face. He could not remember when he had thought of that; or if he had ever discerned it in his daughter before. She looked wind-worn.

“What’s troubling you?” His tone was warm. “Have you been working too hard with the harvest?”

She looked dully at him, as at a lump of mud. Then she dropped her glance away.

“It’s not the work—” Her face crumpled suddenly under his look and sobs burst as through a dam. “It’s—nothing,” and she fumbled blindly, as in desperation, up the stairs.

He could hear the straw of her bed rustling above his head as he turned to his wife, silent as a shadow in the kitchen doorway, “Go see what’s the matter with her.”

Scooping another handful of grain unthinkingly, he thought, now as then, That fool Louis! He should not have allowed him to go: a breed with ten dollars in his pocket was dynamite with the fuse lit. But Louis, sullen across the barnaisle, eyes never quite meeting a glance, the dead-pan look hardening on his face, as it had once before when he stated flatly he would walk to Hainy and get the Mounties if he was not given his wages, could be dented by no argument about saving. Ten dollars was better than having the fool blow up everything he had earned. But six months in jail! And Joseph and Thom trying to teach half-breeds Bible lessons. It kept their Sunday afternoons occupied, but what could you teach them? He had hammered at Louis for three years.

His wife had backed down the stairs into the room, and he looked up. “She won’t say what’s the matter; just says it’s nothing. She did stop crying, but—”

“Well, if she says it’s nothing. Likely some momentary womanish thing.” He cut off her words as Pete entered from the barn; they discussed the stock. But his wife’s half-haunted look returned to him. And there was something about the ungainliness of Elizabeth’s work that morning. He did not
know whether to ascribe it to his new-found perception or—

“Mr. Block.” Thom’s face peered over the rim of
the bin; he flushed slightly as he rose. “Everything’s running fine. Perhaps I could go out with Pete and help there a bit?”

“They have a field-pitcher. But—you got the gas barrels from the shed?” Thom nodded. “Okay. But come back with him.”

Thom’s head dropped from sight as the Deacon reached up to pull himself out. He should not have had her pitch that morning, but the west-quarter haul took so long for the men—he had never known her so awkward before. Well, she was thirty-three. He heaved himself over the bin-edge and dropped into the doorway. The chaff was snowing slowly from the hazy oil-and-wheat-smelly air.

They had tossed up the first stooks before Thom, alive to the quiet of the field, said fervently, “Wish I could have done this all fall.”

Pete was silent, pitching double-bundles from the opposite side unerringly, regular as a pendulum, unwasting of motion. Thom shouted, “Giddap!” and the two horses pulled along between the rows of st
ooks. Two mice scurried; Thom swung wildly, but they vanished under the next shocks. Jabbing his fork deep, he hoisted up three bundles at once, the third caught dangling by the twine on the last tine.

“You wouldn’t have lasted a day, working like that.” Pete calmly swept the stray stalks together with his fork.

“Aw shucks,” Thom was thoughtlessly jubilant. “What’s the use of forever being so calm and steady about everything. You’ve got to get rid of it somewhere. Don’t you ever feel like yelling like mad and maybe riding for about five miles with the wind in your face just as fast as your horse can go?”

“How would that get the work done?”