Peace Shall Destroy Many (29 page)

Within Thom, after five days of deep pondering, stirred the thought of whether such obvious simplicity of explanation could really suffice. Why was he never allowed to question that basic pattern? He said, carefully reining in the first twitches of his temper, “I hear Louis’s come back now. What are you going to do with him and his people—
let them just live and die as in the past?”

Block glanced swiftly at the youth with his prying questions, then deliberately heaved a wad of hay into the rack. “No, we won’t.” Thom stepped aside as the other reached for another forkful. “And you heard wrongly. Louis was here, but he’s left again. We are not having
drunken jail junk around here. I told him to get away and stay away.”

“But his parents are—”

“They’re moving in spring too. I bought their farm.”

Thom said, dazed a moment, “The children weren’t in class Sunday.”

“Yes. Old Moosomin was a bit huffy. No matter. This jail business only proves that we should have gotten rid of them years ago. They just cause trouble—even for strong Mennonites like yourself who get the wrong ideas of what should be done for them. You didn’t have any converts, did you?”

Thom said slowly, “No, but there will—”

Block returned, as if he had heard only the first syllable, “And there won’t be. You’ll have the Christmas program and that will finish it. They’ll all be bought out by spring.”

Thom stared speechless at the Deacon; his own thoughts startled him. Last spring he had accepted just such a buying as natural and inevitable, but now the scheme looked quite different. He said quietly, “You have been planning this for some time.”

“Why, yes.” The Deacon was slightly, but pleasantly, surprised at the youth’s calmness. “Do you think I’d have allowed someone from our community to become as involved with the breeds as you have if I thought they’d be staying here for years to come?”

“Oh!” After a long moment, “But Brother Lepp—”

Block said quickly, turning from the rack, “This is no place to discuss our pastor.” He levered loose a forkful of hay. “He’s a good preacher, but I think you’ll find him a bit shortsighted regarding the effects of many of his well-intentioned actions.” He added, almost dryly, “We’ve had some examples this summer.”

Hearing, Thom could not swallow; the year had mined at his beliefs. His eyes on the Deacon’s labour
ing back, he tried to clamp rigid his tightening anger. All these months Block had deigned no mention of his plan. This man handled everyone, Mennonite and half-breed, as if they were pieces of farm machinery: each pawn had a particular spot in his scheme, and each was told what to believe and what to denounce. Each had small significance beyond covering his spot. You there, and you there! Could someone merely be ordered: Believe! Holding himself rigidly controlled, needing to know more, he said, “You say we must be taught to believe the right. What about the new school-teacher? She isn’t a Christian. Is she going to go on teaching the small children—”

Block wheeled around to him, breaking in, face intent now, “Yes—the new teacher. I was going to talk to you. I met you coming from the schoolyard last week—late. Let me tell you, Thom, that is no place for you. If someone else had seen you coming from there, the story would already be about.
The first way to protect a good reputation is to give no cause for doubt. I’m surprised your father allowed you—”

The straw broke the dam: Thom’s blood charged to his face. “You should talk about my father and he being careful about what I do! What about what you allow
your
children to do?”

Block stiffened, whitely, “Wha—”

Thom was too furious to consider at whom he shouted. “Check up on me when I go to get my correspondence explained!” The crest of his rage bore him, inevitably; the whole summer’s turmoil and now wasted labour convulsed his words. “You send Louis Moosomin
packing because he isn’t fit to live in your Wapiti. You push people around without bothering to tell them your plans. You tell me what my father does wrong. Why don’t you make sure you’re doing well with your own family? You wouldn’t even let your own daughter marry—she had to ruin herself on your farm! Elizabeth told me herself that day! And what have you taught your son? Just acting on the father’s say-so won’t get him through this world—”

The look on the Deacon’s face finally hit through to Thom. Block stared lifeless, his mouth forming, inanely, the words, “Elizabeth—Louis—what do you know—”

Thom did not know what he had shouted; only that she had been dead six weeks. His own cruelty crushed him: “Mr. Block, I—I—don’t know what—how I could have said that—I just get
mad
sometimes—I—please—”

But Block’s eyes seared him, voice pale, “What did Elizabeth tell you—that day at threshing? Thom, tell me!”

“Why—why—” remembering now, he wished the iron-frozen earth would envelop him; he could but speak the truth, and the Deacon’s strangely paralysed necessity repelled the statement. But he had to answer.

“She said—I should get out of Wapiti—that I would be dragged down by useless rules and be buried here—and—I could not understand what she was saying at first—”

“She said something else.”

“I—I—”

“Thom!”

“Yes!” Abruptly he did not care. Let him know what she had thought of him and his ruthless re
gimentation the day she died. “She said, ‘God in Heaven! Can’t you see what’s happened to me?’ ”

The Deacon staggered slightly, almost as if he had expected a frontal blow and suddenly been savagely cut from behind. Silence froze the white world of the hay meadow, the men on the stack as carved from ice. No puff of breath stirred.

Block, ancient now, turned and tortuously poked another forkful of hay. But he did not lift it. His mittened hands gripped twice, about the gleaming fork-handle; he said hoarsely, “God forgive her—and you—” And me, he added, in the clamouring silence of his heart.

Thom, ashamed beyond comprehension, could only stumble a few words, then turn, leap to a drift and flee to his team that still waited patiently on the trail to pull home. The sun was sinking in the brief December day. The horses moved at his whistle, even as he twitched off their blankets and clambered up on the load. Over the shoulder of the hay-load he could see the stack and the half-filled rack beside it. Block lifted a fork of hay, slowly, and put it in place. The cold burning in his nose, Thom’s mind staggered about as he hunched down to the ride. The question stared through his widened comprehension and his heavy shame: what really had happened to Elizabeth?

“—AN’ WE PUT UP THE STAGE
all along under the windows an’ there’s a stair in one an’ we climb
right through
to go to the teach’rage an’ get dressed for the pl—uh—” Hal barely caught himself, ending weakly, “for the thing.”

“Better watch,” smiled Margret, dusting around the radio. “If you keep talking about it, you’ll give the best of the Christmas program away.”

“Nah. Don’t you think I can keep a secret? Not like those silly girls. Why Johnny said Trudie had blabbed to her Mom almost the first day we practised the—anyway—an’ she isn’t even
in
it!” Hal ran his finger down the side of the organ but there was no dust for patterns. He crawled up on a chair by the window and began melting a spot with his tongue. “Wow, is it ever thick here! Look, Gret.” He flicked the ice with his tongue again, then pulled back. “Look at the picture my tongue made—two bumps like on the camels in the—” he stopped dead, glancing pleadingly at Margret.

She pushed the rocker into place and said solemnly, not looking at him, “Have you seen pictures of camels with two humps? The book I read in school once showed them with only one.”

“Oh, there’s two kinds.” In his relief, Hal was quite willing to benefit others with his knowledge. “I think maybe they found this two-hump kind after you got out of school” (Margret gasped a laugh, caught herself, but Hal,
designing the camel with a wetted finger, noticed nothing). “We’ve studied about camels quite a bit; these new ones—like this—come from real far East and can carry big loads a long ways. We were studyin’ about them in school,” he repeated casually, again confident. He applied his tongue to the frost.

Margret, to get him away from the subject, asked, “Have you memorized that poem yet?”

“It was too long, so Miss Tan’amont give half to—somebody else to learn. I know my half.”

“Does she know her half?”

“Well, it’s a pretty hard poem but Elsie just about—
aw Gret, you’re a cheat!”

“Why, what’s the matter?” she looked around at him, eyes wide, laughing.

“You tricked me—I didn’t want to tell you she’s sayin’ the poem with me.”

“Oh you little sniggle-fritz!” Margret reached over and hugged him fiercely. Hal pushed away and she said, “Got a hole thawed in that window yet? See if Pa’s hooking up.”

“Yah!” Hal attacked the thinner ice and soon discerned the outlines of the frosted yard. “There comes Pa with the team—he’s drivin’ to the cutter! Boy, I’m goin’!” and he dashed through the living-room drapes, across the narrow
kitchen and up the stair-steps to the landing. Looping his parka off the nail, he shouted to his mother, bent over the stove in the floating aroma of baking buns, “The Parcel will be there today, won’t it, Mom?”

“It should be, Sonny,” she raised her heat-flushed
face. “It’s been three weeks now—otherwise it might be late for Christmas. Only one more mail-day left.”

“It’ll be there—it couldn’t be late for Christmas. Come on, Gret, you comin’?”

“Don’t rush. Pa’ll come in before we go.” Emerging leisurely from the living room, she passed Hal fumbling with his buttons on the landing and climbed the stairs. Thom opened the outside doors just as Hal came hurtling towards them.

“Whoa there!” Thom gripped the little boy under the armpits and tossed him to the ceiling. “Want to run me down?”

“Thom—don’t—I gotta get out—with Pa to the store! The Parcel’ll be there an’—Thom!” Hal burst in laughter as he was tossed again.

“And maybe there’ll be something in it for you? Okay, beat it.” Still gripping him, Thom backed out the door and tossed the boy, muffled in his thick clothing, into the snowdrift against the slab-fence. Carlo charged immediately. “After noon we go for the Christmas tree. Don’t let the candy-case hypnotize you.” Hal managed to struggle out of the drift despite Carlo’s flashing tongue. Together they raced furiously into the yard.

Thom closed the door behind him as his mother, her arms flour-white to the elbows, said, “You shouldn’t leave the door open.”

“Sorry.” Thom sniffed. “Buns baked yet?” She shook her head, hair tied back with a tea-towel, kneading steadily. “I’
ll just wait then—smells like they should be soon.” Slipping the snow-shined rubbers from his felt-boots, he relaxed on the bench-end, unbuttoning his parka. “We sure fooled Hal, ordering that sleigh in October when he wasn’t watching the mail like a hawk. We’d never get it past him now.”

Wiens pushed into the house. “Is Margret ready to go? Margret!” he called, reaching for the water-pail on the wash-stand.

“Right away, Pa,” her answer came down the stairs.

Lowering the dipper back into the pail, Wiens muttered, “Hope Eaton’s send that whole order. At least substitutes.” The War disrupted even the inviolability of the mail-order catalogue.

Thom lounged, waiting, and Mrs. Wiens looked at him with a laugh. “They won’t be done for a few minutes yet—you can carry the slop-pail out.”

“Never safe from work, sitting in your kitchen,” Thom grinned. As he emerged from the house, Hal shouted, trying to pause in his wrestling,

“We won’t be long, Thom. We’ll come home with the Parcel right away—we can get the Tree—” Carlo spilled him.

“Okay. But we’ll eat dinner first.” Thom went around the house and dumped out the pail. While he cleaned it with snow, he heard the door bang and then the harness-ring as hooves squawked from the yard. He had found a beautiful tree that summer on the far edge of the muskeg near the swamp; he would have to lead Hal round-about and come to it as if unawares. Like last Ch
ristmas. All the brief afternoon they had stomped through the snow-cloaked muskeg on their skis,
searching, discovering squirrel nests and weasel slurs and rabbit forms, ducking beneath laden spruce-boughs where snow slid with a soundless
whooooosh!
if they raised their heads. At last they had found it. Hal said, as he always did, face cherubic from cold’s pinch, “It’s been waiting all these years to be a Christmas Tree.” Then Thom brushed him aside, sprawling, and before he could scramble erect because of all his clothes and the feather snow and the skis on his feet, the Tree was down. Grins cracking their faces, they headed home, Hal breaking trail and Thom following where he led, dragging the booty. When they reached the sleighroad at the gate where Carlo wagged in greeting, Thom perched the Tree erect in a drift and they studied it, green fluffed with snow. After a moment, Hal said, “That’s the nicest we’ve ever had.” And then he was sprawling in the snow again and had to ski madly to catch up before Thom and Carlo reached the hous
e with the Tree.

Having stomped off the snow, Thom re-entered the kitchen where his mother was just removing the first pan of golden buns from the oven. He padded to the table and surveyed the smoking pattern of their bottoms, breathing deeply. With a long finger he tapped off the brownest corner-bun and tossed it back and forth from hand to hand. Mrs. Wiens chided,

“You’ll burn yourself. I’ve told you since you were wee tiny not to do that.”

“I know. But it’s
best
to eat them like this—see,” he explained elaborately, “You crack open the soft centre, so, let it steam a bit, then you eat the middle as hot as—ouch!—your finger and mouth can stand. Then the crust is cool enough.” Gingerly he suited words with action, slouched on the bench-corner near the glowing stove; she pushed in another pan and
turned to form more from the dough. They were quiet in contentment.

Thom thought abruptly, I could ask her about that threshing-day. Even as he hesitated to blunder into her calm, his mother asked gently, “Have you ever gone to Herb and talked to him about your quarrel? It’s so close to Christmas—the end of the year.”