Of This Earth by Rudy Wiebe Page A

tohim to say anything, this was men’s cattle business and they’d gotten them out as soon as they noticed and if we couldn’t keep our rail and wire properly in place then that was our poor farming, they had fenced their share. Which made Mam even more indignant because she was convinced the Martenses had not done their full share; that had been an earlier and much longer argument but once, long ago, Pah had conceded that fine, fine, maybe the Martenses had done their share, so why, Johann Martens now demanded, did souhne Fru, such a woman! come yelling at him? If you know so much, go back where you belong and show your man how to build a fence. Our mother, such a woman!
    The fight over Carlo was worse. Our black dog with a white bell of fur at his neck and white-tipped paws. The perfect dog for herding cattle, for playing in brush and yard, hunting gophers, wrestling around the two big trees on the yard, his thick tongue slipping like laughter over his black lips between dazzling teeth. We children were screaming and crying: Carlo had dragged himself home with his leg slashed and throat torn open, we thought we could see right down into his beating heart! Only the two Martens brutes could have done this and Carlo wouldn’t back down, never, and Mam told Pah he had to go and say something to Johann Martens about those animals,we had to drive through their yard to get to the road, how could we say nothing and have our good cattle dog torn apart by those vicious beasts? But Pah would not go; dogs were dogs, he would not jacht, fight, with someone who sat on the same church bench every Sunday over a dog. Who said fight? Just go and tell them, explain, look at poor Carlo!
    He would not go. It seemed to me then, at no more than six, that my father was hopeless, perhaps even a coward. I had seen Johann Martens’ eyes turn into needles behind his glasses, his mouth under its handsome moustache roar in a way I had not heard an adult speak; it was terrifying. Mrs. Martens was slim, bent, and with the incredible ability, it was said, of making Plümemoos, sweet plum soup, for her entire family out of two plums and four raisins, but she never did any family arguing. That was the man’s job and stocky Johann Martens did that very well—but not our father. He was quiet, always agreed with whatever anybody yelled and, even worse, expected his family to accept everything as he did. Mam was excessively forgiving, she wanted peace with her neighbours, but it had to be a somehow equal, orderly, mutual peace—not simply suffering silence endured by us. That was not proper behaviour of Christians among themselves; especially for children to learn.
    I knew nothing then about the centuries Mennonites had searched to find a peaceful community; particularly among themselves. Nor did I know the long Low German maxim common among our people which might well have been applied to Johann Martens:
    If you want to outwit a Jew, you have to get up before breakfast.
    If you want to outwit a Mennonite, you better not go to bed at all.
    Watching Helen search Carlo’s bloody fur for slashes while I held the round Watkins salve tin open for her, I was convinced of one thing: our Pah had no backbone.

    Carlo healed fast back to his original toughness, scars hidden under his long fur. Carlo, whom I sat on, whom I tried to ride around the yard before I could climb our heavy farm horses. In a summer photo, probably 1941, the two white socks of one of those horses gleam in the doorway of the weed-overgrown Franka barn, I’m barefoot and in big-buttoned coveralls astride Carlo, clutching his fur for a gallop. But he has braced himself, set his rump solidly on the bare yard, and is waiting in dogged patience for me to get off. He will not move.
    And actually, I liked the directness of the Martens family. They hid nothing, what they did was what they were, head on. The Martens twins, Abe and Henry, were five years older than I, not quick in school but always