Peace Shall Destroy Many (5 page)

“Okay.” Thom lay back on the moss, the quarrel crouched like blackness on the rim of his conscience. He stretched fiercely, arms grazing the gnarled roots, and then rolled out from under the tree. “Nice to sleep in the daytime, no work to bother. Thought for a minute it was morning
and you were Mom waking me to get the cows.”

The comfort of Pete was that he spoke just enough to suffice; if a grin would do, there was never a word. On a clear morning as the world began to stir, Thom felt that comfort when he heard Pete’s thin wh
istle a mile away and the bark of his dogs starting the cattle from their cud. But now, the lake recalled the school picnic.

“Who’s ahead?”

“Beaver School—127 to 103. Depends on the ball-game—winner gets forty-five points. Joseph’s 5-3-1 point system sure
is better than what we used to do. Every kid really wants that shield for his school.”

“After lunch I just stayed for that race Hal was in—too tired. Of all the silly mornings for the cows to get out of the pasture. They know when you want to get through fast.”

They had walked across the narrow neck of the Point from the fishing beach and now could hear the shouts of the children at ball in the clearing up the bank from the flat of sand used for racing. In the final turn of the road before the clearing, the dark pines leaned in the breeze against an occasional poplar or blanched birch. It was peaceful. Only the poking cry of a flicker in flight, or the jerk and scramble of a scolding squirrel, and the calls of the children far away. They passed teams of horses, dreaming by the wagons under the trees with barely a stamp of feet or shake of a head to show them alive to the droning flies. Then they saw the booth between the tree-trunks and the brightness of people beyond.

Pete said, unexpectedly. “It’d be nice to just stay in the bush—never go out.”

After a moment, “Yah. Alone.”

“No one to bother you.”

They came to the poplar-pole booth, silent in agreement at the known impossibility. Old Lamont, bending a
mong his cartons, straightened up as they neared and stood on the edge of the shade. Two years before, “Ol’ Lamont’s broke because of drink!” had startled the community. Block had bought the store then, but no man could be spared from work, so the Scot had to continue running it, albeit without liquor. Seeing the cherry radish-face, Thom remembered Hal’s disappointment when, just after the “broke” news, they had gone for the mail
and the old man had been quite usual in appearance. “Huh,” Hal had scorned, “he’s not even bent!”

“Not much left, young misters. Should ha’ been here earlier when the boxes were fu’—ay, and I had the two prettiest girls in Saskatchewan helping me then—you missed it a’.” The crumbled old voice dropped into confidence. “But I was wait-in’ for ye. I’ve got two bars left—the verra best, like before the War,” and to the wonder of the boys, he pulled out two Oh Henry! bars. “Ye ha’ to pay ten cents, but they’re the real stuff.”

“It was nice of you to remember us.” Thom smiled at the friendly face.

They left the booth, the two bars in their pockets for after the game, chewing on the imitation gum. Gum and picnics were inseparable. “Tastes like truck inner-tube,” Pete said.

“Probably would, if we had any to chew.”

They neared the group of older men, under a clump of poplars, whose red-wristed hands hung awkward in idleness. Thom knew instinctively what they conversed about. After reviewing the parched spring, the War and politics would receive their ponderous attention. The men agreed on all matters, their opinions on any o
ccurrence outside their own community being formed by general surveys of one Mennonite German weekly and by what Deacon Block told them. Block spoke English fluently and his business took him as far as North Battleford. The War intrigued the Mennonites, partly because they saw it as the culmination of world evil from which they had strictly, consciously, severed themselves, partly because Germany was the storm centre. In the 1920s Germany had been their stepping stone from the tyranny they fled in Russia (few considered that Nazi Germany had little in common with the Hindenburg regime), but more than that,
their own language told them that some four hundred years before their own fathers had been German—and Dutch, which heritage they retained in their Low German dialect. They were honestly horrified at Hitler’s ravage of Europe, but beneath often lurked the suspicion: “Only a German could set the whole world on its tail like this.”

Joseph had once called Thom’s attention to this undercurrent in Mennonite thinking. “Though Mennonites, because of their training, naturally abhor violence, yet they faintly admire it, somehow, in someone who without thought ‘hews to it’! And if Germans are involved, this unconscious admiration is even bolstered a bit by our almost nationalistic interest in Germany. After all, we are displaced Germans, at least ethnically, and because we haven’t had a true home for four hundred years, we subconsciously long for one. It will take this war to knock any silly German ideas out of our heads.” Joseph had laughed his big laugh, but not as if he were amused. “You’d be surprised how different some Mennonites in the south and in
Manitoba sound now, compared to the middle thirties! They had no idea what Hitlerism was about.”

Remembering Joseph’s words, Thom listened hard as he and Pete passed the elderly men, but they were talking again of the weather: the abnormal drought that threatened to choke the barely germinated seed. Block was saying, “Burns Company said pigs should go up to about fifteen, maybe even sixteen dollars. Beef about seventeen. If we get rain in a week, we’ll get a bumper, but…”

Then they were in the sunlight, beyond hearing, walking side by side. Thom looked across the diamond scurrying with children to where the tents of the Indians, camped at the Point for fishing, blinked between the trees. Dark, ragged
forms squatted in groups or moved languidly among the tethered horses, far from the Mennonites, watching the children’s game in rooted bush-like silence. Mennonites, when they passed nearby, stared as they would at any good land that needed clearing.

The spectators around the backstop exploded into cheers. The ball flew far over the fielders’ heads to send them dashing frantically as a dark boy raced around first base. Jackie Labret, in grade three, though old enough for twice that. Joseph had once mentioned his initial wonder at the slowness of the non-Mennonite children, but winter had shown the teacher more than he wanted to know. In the cold when all moose moved across the river and rabbits supplied the only meat, existence, not study, became the problem for the Métis children. Their parents had no concept of planned farming: they ate until there was no more. Labrets, Razins, Mackenzies and Moosomins, the last the w
orst. Only a few Mennonites ever neared the Moosomin homestead, and they never went inside the four-walled shack or knew the mixture of common-law wives and husbands and children that were crammed there. Breeds lived as they lived: they were part of unchangeable Canada for the Mennonites. They associated, to a limited extent, only with Louis Moosomin, and that because in the war-shortage Block had hired him. Thom could see Louis standing with the men behind the Métis women, clean among their grimed gaudiness. Lean Herman Paetkau beside him was the only Mennonite on that side of the diamond. The two were talking, heads close, and Thom’s mind hovered for an instant over the day last February when he had, in his hunting, happened unexpectedly on Herman’s farm and—but he had promised Herman not to speak or even think of it. Let them
find out. But it was four months now, and still no one—Thom turned sharply from his thoughts.

Jackie Labret had raced home to the cheers of all Wapiti and the children swarmed everywhere across the field. The game was over. As the two youths stepped among the people, the chatter of languages enveloped them. Across the diamond, Mrs. Labret was calling to Jackie in Cree; a girl tripped over Mrs. Unger’s feet and stopped to apologize in High German; some older women stood in a tight circle whispering obviously in Low German; and then Thom heard a quiet voice say in English, “It’s best that Wapiti School won the shield this first time. It was Mr. Dueck’s idea.” Thom looked about and saw the profile of Annamarie Lepp as she gazed towards home plate where the children pushed around Joseph and Miss Friesen. The girls in their white print frocks looked like flowers, spread on the
grass surrounding Annamarie, but hers was the only voice that reached clear beyond the pauseless titter that seemed to hover over them. He had not before noticed that, in contrast to the others, she seemed different. Her eyes were now on Block, who as head trustee was handing the shield to the Wapiti school children, his big voice unstumbling, though accented, on the English expressions. She looked at peace. He did not hear a word Block said, and later he could not remember a single detail about her, not even the form of her face. He did not seem to see what she looked like, rather he saw her, and he abruptly felt a lifetime would not be long enough to forget.

Pete jogged his arm. “Come on. We’re next,” and Thom jerked self-consciously, then followed through the crowd to where the wire backstop hung sagging from the leaning poles. The voice of Franz Reimer was announcing, “The final event
of the afternoon: men’s ball-game! Former Wapiti students against former Beaver!” And, always adding his bit, “Beaver won last year—can they do it again?”

“You betcher boots!” Herb Unger bellowed from somewhere beyond the backstop. Thom’s mind stumbled against the remembered quarrel, but then Pete tossed a ball at him and he gratefully backed up the familiar distance, concentrating on the rhythm of pitching. With many gone in Alternative Service work, despite several young married men playing, the breeds made almost half the team. They were good players: despite his gun-shot limp, Louis was better than any Mennonite on their team; but it was not as it had once been.

Thom, pitching steadily now, could hardly have imagined how smoothly his thoughts slipped into traditional ways when he thought without concentrating. Occasionally, after long mulling and searching, when concentration would cause only more problems, he was wearily resigned to let tradition suffice. The War spoiled everything. Even Beaver’s team, where they had no breeds, was half Russian and Pole. The poor white stuff that clung along the edges of Beaver district, as the breeds along Wapiti, could not have made a decent living anywhere. They too would be bought out when the men returned from camps. That kind of people always sold when they got half a price, at the sight of bare money; so quickly forgetful of the agony of scrubbing; so ever hopeful of somewhere finding land where they would prosper like the successful neighbour they had long watched longingly; so ever clustered about by children whose goggle-eyes stared from their faces. As the older men hinted sometimes, it was God’s judgement upon these godless people who never went to church, whose only pleasure was home-brew and bad whisky when they could get
it, that they should wander destitute. The Bible clearly said of the righteous man that “whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.” The Mennonites surveyed their own growing fields and sleek cattle. When you live decently, do not waste your money and health on tobacco, whisky, dancing, shows, fancy clothes, then prosperity comes. “Children, stay frugal and decent.” Even in his most doubtful moments, Thom could not see how there might be a better formula for life.

“Let’s go, men,” Franz was shouting. “Wapiti takes the field.”

“Okay, Pete,” Thom said. “If I’ve got anything I better not throw it away here.”

“You’re all right. The only pitcher we’ve got.”

“Thanks a lot!”

Ernst met them at home plate. The team had practised several evenings and now Ernst just said, “Okay, let’s go.” They scattered to their positions, Pete pounding the one glove into shape while settling himself behind the plate.

Joseph Dueck stood by the pitcher’s box to umpire the game, grinning at Thom as the latter approached. It was not Joseph’s attendance at University that made him so odd: they had had teachers in Wapiti with a year of University before. Rather, despite his strong belief in the truth of the Bible, you could not depend on him to behave traditionally. He and Herman had gone fishing with Louis Moosomin seemingly without thinking about it. Herman had done what he had done, but the teacher?

Thom, wriggling his feet for the right set, felt Joseph lean over his shoulder and heard his quiet voice, with the smile in it, “I will not speak to you for two weeks if you lose this game. And I am not giving you two cents’ worth of help.”

“Okay. Just call Beaver the same way.”

“Right! But a tie goes to them. You can take it, Herb can’t.”

Thom wheeled. “He started it this morning by the boats.”

“And it bothers you. You can’t fight him like that. I told you the other evening that antagonism won’t do.” Joseph was the only man in Wapiti tall enough to look Thom straight in the eye. The gentle smile spread
over Joseph’s strong, rather ugly, tanned face, up into the black-bushed eyebrows and hair. Thom did not smile.

“I got mad.”

“Yes.” Joseph’s voice leaped, “Pla-a-y ba-a-all!”

Thom turned to face the plate. Herb Unger, the Beaver catcher, stood poised, his bat tracing a tight circle over his right shoulder. Pete’s glove was just beyond Herb’s belt buckle. Thom gripped the ball for his fastest pitch and, in the silence of the crowd, he hurled it. There was a crack, the ball shot past him in a streak as the crowd erupted; Herb lumbered around Louis at first and hit Franz hard to jar him off second as Jacq Moosomin threw the ball in swiftly from centre. Franz hung on and scrambled up as Herb gestured for third.

“Nice, Thomas.” Herb’s grin was cold as he stamped the wooden block that was second. Franz threw the ball in and Thom faced Jake Rempel. It would be tough.

And it was, though he gloried in the feel of the ball and the sting of the bat at contact. The bat always hefted as light as a straw, and each time his turn came the power in his limbs assured him he could knock the ball into the lake that gleamed beyond through a straggle of trees; but it was never so simple, and when Wapiti came up for its last inning, Beaver was ahead, 8 to 7. By then his whole arm and shoulder ached from the pitching, and he was despairing of the two runs that would win
the game. But Jacq finally hit a good one along the first-base line into the shrubs and raced home before Moses Labashi could find it. The score tied, both Harry Razin and Jim Mackenzie popped out, but Pete lashed a screamer past Menno Giesbrecht at sh
ort and when the dust and shouts eased away, stood on second with a smile almost wider than his wide face. The winning run was in the balance as Thom came to bat.