trip with horses.”
“That’s how the Fiedlers paid,” Tina says, “with lumber and groceries.”
“Then in fall I went harvesting near Mervin,” Gust is grinning across the table at Tina, “stooking, field pitcher for the thresher, and you come there to cook for the threshing crew. I came to see you.”
“And I slammed the door in your face! I was sleeping in the hayloft on that farm.”
Gust bursts out, “And in three months we got married!”
“How did that happen?”
“Oh, it was Mam,” Tina says. “She thought Gust was a really good man, she told me she’d pray about it.”
We are laughing aloud now. Our mother and her prayers. Every one of us knew that once Mam really started praying for you, you might as well give up.
It seemed the walking stranger had spoken to no one, nor entered any yard. Odd. Anyone who came into dead-end Speedwell always visited someone; there was no place to stay except with a family and no way out, west, north or east, except the south road you had come in on. But a stranger had been seen, and barked at by the farm dogs who charged out of every yard at whatever went by, not even the fiercest brute was ever chained. But the stranger with his redpaint pail had passed by without so much as a word shouted at the dogs.
We knew all about fierce brutes. The most direct wagon trail to our new Franka farm led from the main road across the Johann Martenses’ yard, between their barn and cattle corral, and their dogs were especially violent. The Martens twins, Abe and Henry, told me, “De Hunj motte fe ons op’pausse.” Those dogs have to keep guard for us.
The Martens family of parents and ten children lived in a log house, as we all did, but it was strangely hip-roofed, like the barn picture in a reader with two windows in the gable. Whenever we drove through that yard their dogs rushed us and had to be whipped away from slashing our horses’ heels or noses. The dogs followed us anyway, barking and slavering as if berserk. I never understood what they were guarding in that yard that was so special; our black Carlo never behaved so stupidly.
None of us children, especially me at four and five, ever walked through the Martenses’ yard. Besides, there was a shorter trail to walk or ride a horse from our Franka place to the church and the Schroeder store; it meandered diagonally south through our bush and across the Otto Dunz and Gottlieb Biech homesteads where there were patches of dust and sand warm as water on your bare summerfeet. That trail came out on the main road just north of the church, which stood on the hill above a creek crossed by a culvert whose planks were often cracked or caved in, the road was driven so much. From below, the wide church gable, with its brick chimney straight up against the sky and log walls shingled as smooth as its peaked roof, made the church look even larger. Where over the pulpit every Sunday the mild voice of Präedja, preacher, Jacob Enns pronounced das Wort Gottes, the Word of God.
The graded road cutting up through the crest of the hill beside the church exposed a grey bulge of boulders in a cliff of sand almost as golden as the beaches of Turtle Lake. You could burrow into it as far as your arm could reach, and at your fingertips the sand grew cooler, darker, then changed softly warm in air. And moist, you could shape anything your hands imagined.
But one day, on a boulder exposed by the road in this sand hillside, there appeared words:
BE SURE YOUR SIN WILL FIND YOU OUT
On the largest granite boulder directly below the church. Like a foundational curse.
It must have been the stranger. No one in the community had ever seen such a thing, red wordson a roadside rock, nor knew what to do about it. I remember seeing them, though I could not have read that, nor understood it spoken aloud; I’m not certain I understand it even today. My parents read the Bible daily, but only in High German and the only person in our family then who
“That’s how the Fiedlers paid,” Tina says, “with lumber and groceries.”
“Then in fall I went harvesting near Mervin,” Gust is grinning across the table at Tina, “stooking, field pitcher for the thresher, and you come there to cook for the threshing crew. I came to see you.”
“And I slammed the door in your face! I was sleeping in the hayloft on that farm.”
Gust bursts out, “And in three months we got married!”
“How did that happen?”
“Oh, it was Mam,” Tina says. “She thought Gust was a really good man, she told me she’d pray about it.”
We are laughing aloud now. Our mother and her prayers. Every one of us knew that once Mam really started praying for you, you might as well give up.
It seemed the walking stranger had spoken to no one, nor entered any yard. Odd. Anyone who came into dead-end Speedwell always visited someone; there was no place to stay except with a family and no way out, west, north or east, except the south road you had come in on. But a stranger had been seen, and barked at by the farm dogs who charged out of every yard at whatever went by, not even the fiercest brute was ever chained. But the stranger with his redpaint pail had passed by without so much as a word shouted at the dogs.
We knew all about fierce brutes. The most direct wagon trail to our new Franka farm led from the main road across the Johann Martenses’ yard, between their barn and cattle corral, and their dogs were especially violent. The Martens twins, Abe and Henry, told me, “De Hunj motte fe ons op’pausse.” Those dogs have to keep guard for us.
The Martens family of parents and ten children lived in a log house, as we all did, but it was strangely hip-roofed, like the barn picture in a reader with two windows in the gable. Whenever we drove through that yard their dogs rushed us and had to be whipped away from slashing our horses’ heels or noses. The dogs followed us anyway, barking and slavering as if berserk. I never understood what they were guarding in that yard that was so special; our black Carlo never behaved so stupidly.
None of us children, especially me at four and five, ever walked through the Martenses’ yard. Besides, there was a shorter trail to walk or ride a horse from our Franka place to the church and the Schroeder store; it meandered diagonally south through our bush and across the Otto Dunz and Gottlieb Biech homesteads where there were patches of dust and sand warm as water on your bare summerfeet. That trail came out on the main road just north of the church, which stood on the hill above a creek crossed by a culvert whose planks were often cracked or caved in, the road was driven so much. From below, the wide church gable, with its brick chimney straight up against the sky and log walls shingled as smooth as its peaked roof, made the church look even larger. Where over the pulpit every Sunday the mild voice of Präedja, preacher, Jacob Enns pronounced das Wort Gottes, the Word of God.
The graded road cutting up through the crest of the hill beside the church exposed a grey bulge of boulders in a cliff of sand almost as golden as the beaches of Turtle Lake. You could burrow into it as far as your arm could reach, and at your fingertips the sand grew cooler, darker, then changed softly warm in air. And moist, you could shape anything your hands imagined.
But one day, on a boulder exposed by the road in this sand hillside, there appeared words:
BE SURE YOUR SIN WILL FIND YOU OUT
On the largest granite boulder directly below the church. Like a foundational curse.
It must have been the stranger. No one in the community had ever seen such a thing, red wordson a roadside rock, nor knew what to do about it. I remember seeing them, though I could not have read that, nor understood it spoken aloud; I’m not certain I understand it even today. My parents read the Bible daily, but only in High German and the only person in our family then who
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