Peace Shall Destroy Many (6 page)

He had often, as he worked long hours in the field, planned what he would do in various situations. In softball, concentration was what mattered. A single and the game was won, for Pete would be off with the pitch. As he stepped to the plate, he knew exactly what had to be done and, despite his shoulder, knew he could do it.

The Rempel twins had switched; John was now pitching, with Jake on first. John’s pitch, he knew from long experience, had a weird up-shoot. Unless absolutely certain, it was best to let the first pitch go by, and he stared hard at John’s motion, pushing all else from his mind, and saw the ball approach in swiftness, rising as it came. It was a good pitch, and Joseph barked “Strike!” as the crowd answered. Only then did Thom hear Herb, crouched behind him. It was as if the catcher had been muttering for a long time, not now chattering the ball-banter for all to hear. It was a phrase repeated over and over without pausing even for the throwing back of the ball. Thom would not allow his mind to hear as he fixed on John’s deliberate motions, but for an instant he felt almost savagely that if Joseph were umpiring behind him, Herb would not dare mumble what made no sense. He would not allow his mind to think of it as the ball left John’s hand. Then he knew it was the same pitch and he shifted his shoulders and swung straight and level, just a bit higher than usual to spike the ball between first
and second, and even as he brought the bat around with the aimed swing of his body, he felt it glance up hard off the thick ca
tcher’s glove to top the ball in a dribbler that John had picked up before he broke from the swing.

It burst in Thom like an explosion: he made no futile gesture for first. All he knew was his flaming mind and his yelling “Interference! Interference! He hit my bat with his glove, the—” and he swung round to Herb, who stood back a few steps, a half-grin on his face, arms hanging easily, waiting. Thom felt the bat in his grip. He wished it was a steel club that he could crash across the grinning mockery still soundlessly framing the phrase, “Hide behind your Pa’s pants,” which he knew he had heard and comprehended from the very beginning. Wood would do. He could already sense the smash of the bat as he swung when Joseph’s great hands clamped his wrists. “Thom! Drop it!”

It was gone as quickly. At Joseph’s grip he dropped the bat like a brand. He stiffened, aghast at what he had already committed in his mind and the flashing joy of that committal. He could have sunk with gladness beyond earth into oblivion. But he had to stand there, before them all.

“Thom! What’s wrong?” Ernst’s concern was bare in his voice. Joseph opened his grip as the other players ran up. Herb stood, silent.

“Okay, men. A hot game and frayed tempers. Nothing serious. Now, what happened, Thom?” Joseph inquired calmly. Then, “Have you a complaint to make against Herb?”

Joseph was dependable. “No—no complaints.”

Block came pushing between them, his big voice covering even the question in Ernst’s eyes. “What’
s going on here? Get the game finished—we have to get home to the chores.”

“The game is over, I believe, Mr. Block,” said Joseph, still calm. Miss Friesen came up, her score sheet fluttering. Joseph checked the paper and then announced clearly: “The ball-game is over. Final score: Wapiti 8, Beaver 8. We’ll have to wait till next year to break the tie.”

There was disappointed cheering and the crowd broke reluctantly. Block looked at Thom oddly for a moment where he stood, half turned from Herb, and then faced Pete coming slowly from third. Thom did not wish to think of their thoughts, for no one could have failed to see his exhibition. The other players slapped him on the back with varying remarks of “A good game, Thom,” and moved away. Pete did not say anything. They were all going.

He looked back at Herb, bending over to pick up the two bats, and he said, “I’m sorry.” Herb’s eyes said nothing as he straightened up, bats on shoulder, and Thom turned finally, the hopeless inadequacy of words like a boulder in his stomach. Then Herb walked past him and said in a tone only he could hear, without any expression whatever, “Gutless.”

Franz was shouting in High German from a bench, “Remember, all young people who possibly can are to stay here for a lunch and the young people’s program after by the lakeshore. We have a good program planned. Mr. Dueck will speak on non-resistance, a topic of very great importance to us today. Please stay if you can arrang
e for your parents to do the chores.” Laughter sprang up from the scattered groups.

His mother touched his arm. “Thomas?”

“It’s all right, Mom.” He never could keep anything from her long, and she knew as well as he that it was by no means “all right.” Some time, when they would be together alone and not saying anything, because their experience of each other
was hardly ever a matter of spoken words, he would talk. He was suddenly conscious of a unique statement she had made once, her hands kneading bread dough, “Sometimes you have to do something just so you can finally master yourself doing it. You cannot avoid everything. Sometimes it is merely running away when you should stay to overcome.” To master yourself!

Now she said only, “We want to go home with the Lepps so you and Margret and Annamarie can stay for the evening. But where’s Hal?”

He recalled his small brother; that he had last seen him at the race where, to Hal’s boundless chagrin, a little Russian girl from Beaver had struck the finish line just before him. “I haven’t seen him—he wasn’t hollering during the game,” and then he thought of Two Poles and his son Hankey. “Maybe he’s with that little Indian fella, like last year.”

“Yes, and all the lice I dug out of his hair and clothes! If they’ve been in that tent again—” the distaste in her voice recalling all the vermin-plagued years of Russia, but her face lifted at the shout behind them.

“Mom! Thom!” Hal was running towards them through the trees, knocking with a peeled stick, a small ragged shape behind him. Explanations flew. “We’ve been watchin’ beavers—we saw three biggest ones! Hankey took me—we lay right on the dam, under the bush—man!” He panted
up, his happiness a beacon. “We just watched ’em. Sneaked right up an’ then one came swimmin’ with a log an’ ate it against the dam an’ another came—I think it came from the house ’cause there’s a big pile o’ logs an’ mud an’ Hankey said it was the beaver house. They live right up inside with the door under water.”

“Why can’t you stay here with the others? You always want Mr. Dueck to take the school on a picnic, and when you do have one, you run off into the bush with—” and she glanced up at the tattered boy standing beyond the back-stop, awed by her whiteness, understanding her tone well, “—Hankey.”

“Mom, aren’t there any candies left at all?” Realization dawned pitifully in Hal’s voice.

Thom felt a softness inside his shirt pocket; the chocolate bar, spongy from the heat of playing. He took the yellow package, walked to the back-stop post, and cut the bar in half against it with his pocket knife.

“They handed them out before—when you weren’t here. We’re driving home. Now come.” Their mother turned to where the wagons were already coming one by one along the trail. Hal turned to wave with childhood’s quick forgetfulness. “’Bye, Hankey,” and then his eyes glazed with adoration as Thom gave him half the smudgy package. “Oh boy!” There was nothing to be added to the afternoon. “Oh boy!”

Thom turned and stepped toward the Indian boy. “Come on, Hankey, have a piece of chocolate bar.” But the straggle-haired child sidled away at the motion. Hankey did not look up; he looked as if he were staring into the bus
h and had a great deal to do there; as if it were quite accidental that the distance between them remained the same. He had not looked up since longingly watching Thom cut the bar in two against the post. Thom could hear the shouts of people behind him in the trees, the rattle of harness, the creak of wagons. They were alone in the clearing. How can I give it to him, he thought. I should be helping with the program—that’s the least I can do after all my stupidity. Suddenly he placed the bar on a stump sticking up before him. “It’s for you, Hankey.” There was no
motion or sound from the small figure looking steadily away as if no grown-up existed. Thom turned to where the others had disappeared, and then he saw the straight outline of Two Poles standing in worn blue denims, tall, with arms folded across the leather shirt, just beyond the dusty diamond. It was startling to see him there with the falling sunlight on half his face, without a stir of his coming, like a spirit materializing. Thom hesitated, no speakable word forming in his mind, yet, having seen Two Poles, to just walk away—He gestured. “It’s for Hankey.” That seemed worse than nothing at all. He wheeled and strode across the clearing, the straight look still in his mind, finding the strangest thought forming in his head. At the edge of the trees he glanced back.

He could see the yellow wrapper of the bar on the stump, and beyond, the figure of Hankey, dwarfed by the bush he was still peering into. On the other side, the arrow-like figure of Two Poles, gazing at him, motionless in the fading sunlight against the shivering poplars. It was the strangest thought Thom could imagine. Perhaps it wou
ld be better living in a community with a man named Two Poles than with a man named Unger.

T
HE TWO HORSES
had reluctantly passed the corner where Wapiti School looked south, its front windows glazed in the first light of the moon, when the strangeness of what they were doi
ng edged into understanding in Thom. The day, long anticipated,
had reeled past, soaking him in weariness
. They had dropped Pete where the Block driveway wound stark in
to the trees, his “’Night!” fading after them to the “last-mile”
trot of Star and Duster. The horses snuffed deeply in the spruce air where the roadway skirted the muske
g just before home. When the team halted at the homegate, both
he and the girls, whose murmured talk had never hesitated, abru
ptly realized he should have turned north at the store-corner t
o take Annamarie home first. He sat in his haziness, but Margre
t clambered over the wheel, “Never mind—I’ll
walk to the house. You take Annamarie home.”

So he sawed the horses, their heads and bodies heavy in protest, round to the north. Lax, he watched the spokes twirl
against the road-sand in the last spray of sunlight over the north-west cloud-fringe.

That hovering sun was gone now. They were beyond the Mennonite farms, beyond even the trail to the Razin homestead, and only a mile from the crest of the valley where the bow of the Wapiti River could be seen. It seemed an eon ago that she had raised her head as they neare
d her driveway and asked, in her quiet voice, “Are you tired, Thom?” and his unthinking answer, “No, not a bit.”

It was the first word they had spoken, alone. She had laughed, “I’ll believe you.” Then she added, as if they had driven like this every day of their lives, “Have you seen the Wapiti at night? It’s just three miles—let’s go!”

His “Okay” had been the instinctive agreement he always proffered when he could not lever his mind to reason, but now he grew aware of the world. Though they were on a road-allowance, the road, wound within its limits to avoid swamps and dry mud-holes, twisted tightly through the canyon of poplars, moonlight a burnished roof above. The harness squeaked on the hanging air, the buggy-dash was damp to his touch. Suddenly it struck him, though he had never driven like this with a girl, that silence was not always necessary. Joseph would have known a story to fit this evening. Thinking of Joseph riding to the picnic, he asked, happy to anticipate her voice again, “Does Joseph drive with you ever besides going to church?”

“He says he likes to be independent. Father had quite an argument when he came last fall about his riding to church alone. He finally gave in there, but otherwise he never has. Grey’s smooth as a rocker, he says. It must be nice to ride wherever you like, when you please. Sometimes on Saturdays
he takes his binoculars and a sandwich and stays away all day. Just watching animals.”

It was when she drew in her whole family with the word “father” that he realized that his bare-faced question could have been answered quite differently. As this ran through his mind in embarrassment, he could not but b
elieve that unconsciously he had asked the other question also, though he could never have asked it now, having once thought of it.

She added, after a pause, “Joseph told me once that if I ever wanted to see a beautiful sight, I should go see the Wapiti under the moon. But you know how far a g
irl can go.”

He had not thought about it. Once past fifteen and grade eight, girls stayed home with their mothers and took care of the farmyard. They visited their friends on Sunday, when there were fathers or brothers to drive them. When, rarely, work was done, he himself rode around where he wished, but women were always at home, working, there to return to when one was hungry and cold. Perhaps they too liked the creek ranting its brief spring life away in the hay-meadow—or moonlight on the Wapiti.

“I suppose girls—women—” his confusion bogged him, “you—don’t get much chance to get to see things, if you want. The horses are always used—it’s no fun—” He sounded like a five-year-old to himself.

“Who has time? Mennonite women belong in the home, so they say. And I rather think that that’s a better place than many others one reads about, or hears about on the radio. Ten years from now, it will probably be changed with us too. Now, even men aren’t so free. When do you ever get away from Wapiti? Others—they’re waiting for the call-up or have been hauled into bush camps that they can’t leave. Cornie writes
that it gets pretty bad, sometimes. But not as bad as Normandy, I should think.”

“Did you hear it too?”

“Yes.”

The horses jerked the buggy up a short ditch into the open moonlight of the federal forestry road drawn like a knife-slit across the bush between the highway to the east and Poplar Lake to the west. On the rise beyond Poplar Creek, a finger against the sky, was the fire lookout. The trail to the bluff yawned before. Then they were over: the tree-gloom swallowed them again.