Peace Shall Destroy Many (4 page)

“How much left?” his father asked, passing towards the kitchen.

“Half a day maybe. Is the disc ready to take out tomorrow morning?”

“You’ll have to use the hitch from the plow—I haven’t fixed the other.”

A grimace flicked over Thom’s face, but David Wiens had already walked beyond hearing. Forty years before, Wiens had been Thom’s age, unstooped and husky, serenely at ease in the Mennonite community life of Central Russia. The upheavals of Russian life after 1917 that drove him to America with his family had wrenched him from his roots. He had lived his lifetime in Russia: his sons built the farm in Canada. For him, the Canadian bush disrupted the whole order of things,
for though one could succeed with some Russian Mennonite farming methods, most past standards seemed barely authoritative. Farming villages were impossible, married children had to settle far and farther from their parents, the family was splintered, the English language intruded itself. Yet if practical difficulties alone had been involved, Wiens might have regained himself.
There was more, however. In Russia behaviour for him, the last of eight boys, had always been clear: right was right and wrong was wrong. Any situation could be quickly placed into one or the other category. Here, the people scattered in the Canadian bush lived, according to accepted Mennonite standards, such nonchalantly sinful lives that when Wiens was among them, even on his infrequent visits to Calder, he felt as if the foundation of all morality was sliced from beneath him.

For Wiens, as for his third son, there was one rock in the whirlpool of the Canadian world. They were both thinking of him at the same time. Deacon Peter Block. Where even the middle-aged Pastor Lepp was at a loss, the Deacon held the church community solidly on the path of their fathers. He seemed to understand how the newness of Canada must be approached. It was at his insistence that they had bought out all the English years before, despite the deeper debt it forced upon them, that they might have a district of Mennonites. Now, there were only four breed families left, and war prices had almost cleared them of their debt.

The first cattle ambled through the gate as Thom turned with the brimming pails. He glanced at the trough. With the cattle drinking at the full sloughs, there should be enough. He walked up the path, and then he heard the rumble of approaching planes, coming from the north-east this time.
There were only two, and they came roaring directly over the yard, the tiny figures of the men, one behind the other, bumped in each plane, the motors hammering. The whole yard burst into a chaos of squealing pigs, flying squawking chickens, Carlo barking, Hal screaming “Bang! Bang!” and the cattle stampeding, milk jetting from
swinging udders, towards the safety of the barn to crash against its closed door in a convulsion of bodies. Wiens, Mrs Wiens, Margret before the summer-kitchen, Hal astride Nance by the gate, Thom on the well-path: they could only stare in apprehension as the cattle bunched against the cracking door. In a minute the rumble had died over the flickering poplars to the south, and then Boss, her lead-bell clanging, broke through the bunching and galloped to the trough, circling crazily as she over-ran her mark. Others followed, one by one, to drink in gasps of slurping water. Wiens, shouting Carlo to silence, strode down the path to the few still strained against the cracking door, his wife behind him, both soothing with voice and then hand. From where Thom stood, one cow looked very bad.

Godless heathen, he thought. With all the sky to fly in, to come messing here twice on one day! He could see Pa feeling Nellie slowly. Her calf would be dead after that
. Nowhere was there peace from them; after you were nineteen you could be sure it was coming. Pete Block’s came when he was twenty. The judge would not feel that his staying home would be necessary: they did not have enough land. But to Thom’s thinking that aspect of war was of no significance at the moment. He thought, If it comes on Friday, I will
go to court on the day and say with the same conviction as Deacon Block’s son, “It is against my conscience!” In the spirit and in the faith of the fathers. Murdering heathen!

I
T WAS ALMOST SUMMER
, and Thom received no call.

The far shore of Poplar Lake slid a thin line between water and sky. With the breeze on the lifting lake,
the sunlight darted up at Thom in broken pieces wherever he looked. They spoke no word while fishing, except in the tumult of the catch. Holding the bamboo binder-whip he used for a pole, he reached his long arm under his seat for the can and dipped out the seeping water, careful not to disturb the balance of the stubby boat. Pete rowed steadily, the line tied to his belt, stark feet flat in the sloshing water. Pete rowed every year: he never had his own tackle.

At the prow of the boat Ernst hissed,

“He’s hooked!” Pete shipped oars and leaned back to grip Ernst’s twitching willow-pole. Ernst’s hands clenched the taut line and he pulled the fish hand over hand. Thom watched him, the line flipping back without tangle, and then he turned to see the pike break surface behind them, mouth plowing, to vanish
again. Ernst muttered, “He’s big. And going deep.” For an instant the line was slack. The fish was going down off the rim of the bench along which they had been trolling, down to get ahead of the hook, but if caught well it could not escape and Ernst grinned as the line dripped stiffly again.

The fish came up hard, fighting with body and fins and mouth. Just alongside, it gave one last desperate
slash, maw cavernous, and then Ernst’s great hand clamped down on the middle of the speckled back. He held its twists aloft like a triumph, working with the pliers to get the hook free.

“Biggest of the lot. Look at that jaw! Hit it so hard he got it right back between the gill. Look how his eye moves—ha! Caught it right into the back of his eye! Greedy ol’ brute.” Thom saw the staring eyeball jiggle in the ridged head. Ernst said, “Well,” and held the fish against a rib of the boat. He lashed twice with the pliers, expertly, and the fish twitched. After a moment the hook was free.

Ernst leaned to the water, washing his hands, contented. “That’s eleven now. It’s enough.” Pete grasped one oar and turned in a tight circle.

Thom waggled his pole, having forgotten it in the excitement. “I’ll leave mine out a bit.”

“Pull mine in,” Pete said.

“You’re just like David was, Thom. Always the last in the boat and once you’re fishing, you won’t take in your line until you catch some kid’s toe. ’Member how excited he got that last year and we were in on shore before he thought of his line and we had to shoo everybody away so he could get his hook in.”

Thom laughed. “Sitting still for two hours in the boat always oiled his tongue for the rest of the day too.”

“That was the last year he was home, eh?”

“Yah,” said Pete. “I came with you next year.”

“At least you do all the work for us now.”

“Huh! It’s your line.”

Thom thought of the Deacon. It was typical of him that he had bought a truck anyone could use as needed, but he would not “waste” money on a fishing line. Such a—Thom could only think of “strong”—man. His thought slid away, in musing wonder at this one man’s aggressive edge, his eyes vacant over the bleached water, when abruptly he comprehended the two other boats returning from the open lake to the west.

The short white-sand curve of bay enclosed by Cree Point merged bleakly to rocks. The women and older men, gathered this first Friday of June for the annual Wapiti-Beaver Schools picnic, lounged in the pine shade above the rocks while children shouted in the shallows. As the boat neared, Mrs. Wiens and Mrs. Block turned from their blazing fire in its ring of blackened stones. Hal came staggering through the water, “How many? How many?” slowing only as the sand-bottom faded into the rocks. Ernst stepped out; with a last heave from Pete, they were up and handing fish to the eager hands of the women. The June sun shone.

Margret, slim in her white dress, came down the trail through the pines with Elizabeth Block. Looking up, Thom felt a somehow nameless sorrow push in him at Elizabeth’s squandered womanhood. Not actually squandered, he thought, for she seemed never to really have lived it. Neglected, rather. Why had she never married? She was at least ten years older than Margret; she worked always: the hard drudging labour of men, yet work never seemed to interest her beyond the point of its immediate necessity. As far back
as Thom could recall, she had appeared exactly as now, dumpy, uninvolved, oddly wast
ed. As he handed up the last fish, his mother’s gentle smile touched him. He remembered her words to him once on a last summer’s evening when she stood in the kitchen door, sweat like jewels on her face and neck, the whiff of saskatoons boiling on the stove, and Elizabeth driving by on the road with a great hayload, rolling listlessly with the bumps, barely caring to wave: “That poor girl needs children. She’s dying of old age and not thirty-five. At her age I had all of you except Helmut.” Now, Margret ran towards the glistening fish, but Elizabeth stood afar, rounded as
with weathering, all the bloom gone.

There was a tremendous shout and all turned to watch the other two boats in their race for the shore. Joseph Dueck, the Wapiti teacher, rowed to break the oars, Herman Paetkau mock-paddled with his hands, while Louis Moosomin, his position as Block’s hired man forgotten, balancing in the stern, whooped to the world’s echo. But the other boat was the sight: young Franz Reimer rowing, the Rempel twins laughing, and above all the yells of the watchers, Herb Unger’s bellows, “C’mon, Franz, let’s
go
, let’s
go!”
The spectators screamed, “Head for the beach—the rocks here—the beach!” and the startled turn of the rowers, the hasty double-handed pull on one oar, and then the final effort with all the shouts coming as, with a roar, Herb leaped into the shallow water to hurl a tremendous heave against his boat in despair at not grounding first. But the other boat had run up with a lunge that sent Louis sprawling over Joseph in a welter of tackle and sloshing fish; the heavier boat followed on the instant with the twins laughing open-mouthed while Franz’s gasps choked him into collapse over the oars.

“Not fair!” Herb was wading the last few yards, soaked to the hips. “They only had three! Besides, Franz is hardly used to his wife’s cookin’ yet.”

Mary Reimer, white with apprehension, had run forward towards the boats but now halted abruptly in the roar that surrounded her, the memory of her wedding two weeks before written in blushes on her gentle face. Old Mrs. Martens said in Low German, beside Thom, “With that Franz she’ll have to get used to it. He’ll do what he always has—if she sits worrying her pretty eyes out or not. When Martens was young he—”

Her voice was swallowed in the mass of the people surging forward to survey the tangled boats and aid, or impede, unloading. The family men remained aloof, as usual, watching from under the pines, arms crossed behind their backs. Only old Mr. Reimer limped across the hard sand on his frost-stumped feet. “What a race! What a race! Like two stallions fighting to reach the chop-crib first! And look at the fish!” Food for the taking was ever a marvel to the Mennonites after the Russian famine of 1921-22. The old man stood near the boat, eyes shining, water inching to and fro at his boots.

Herb was shouting at the crowding half-naked bodies, “Gwan, you kids, you just get in the road here. Beat it!” while stringing his fish. The children eddied away towards their teacher. Herb looked up as Thom peered into the boat. “We got nine. You?”

“Eleven.”

Herb’s face darkened. “Lucky. But wait—we’ll get you in the ball game after noon.”

Against an inward prompting to drop the subject, quickly,
Thom muttered, “We never wanted to beat you. Eleven’s enough for us to eat.”

“Course not. Did it just naturally, without thinkin’.” Herb’s voice spaded up sarcasm. “Your call’ll come naturally too—without you thinkin’. Just wait.”

Thom knew then he should let it lie. Beyond the cheapness of a quarrel was the fact that Herb was older: he really belonged in Ernst’s age-group. No man with his own farm, though a bachelor, bickered with anyone in his teens, yet the five years between them egged on Thom’s answer; suddenly struck with the pettiness of the other’s ire, and not to be outdone in wit, he spoke, and knew as soon as the words left his tongue that they were not witty, only malicious: “At least
you
needn’t worry—you beat me there.” For he could not keep his glance from sliding down to where Herb’s ugly feet showed clear through the flicker of riled water: the flat feet that, despite a tough body and sharpshooting skill, forced Herb home; neither Air Force nor Navy nor Army would accept him. And Hank flying round the world, the younger brother by three years.

“At least I didn’t sit around till they ordered me to report, and then hid behind my Pa’s pants!” It was a hiss of rage.

“I know.” And as Thom turned away he knew that even the last two words had the wrong inflection. Why did I go near his boat, he cringed. To quarrel with him, who does not hold to the belief of the fathers, who flaunts his scorn of all that is decent. To squabble about two fish! Heavenly Father, help me from myself.

The slap on his back shocked through him. Franz, his thin face gleaming above the sopping shirt, was beside him, wife hooked on his arm. “Sorry, Thom, that’s a bit harder than
I meant. Smell those frying fish! Let’s go eat—I’m so hungry I could eat a horse between two mattresses.”

Mary’s laugh rang above the crowd.

The lake was immense about them like the sky; the black storm above had knocked them so long it seemed they had always been beaten bruisingly. The others had vanished; he alone was left to the waves’ heave and drop, when he awoke and found someone shaking him. Thom sat up quickly in the surprise that after such a storm he should have to go for the cows, when he sensed the smell of the pine low above him, the lake beyond drained white in the sun, and then he comprehended that it was Pete and not Mom whose hand gripped his shoulder.

“The kids’ll soon be through their ball-game. It’s time we warmed up.”