by Armin Wiebe
Yes, in school, Isaac learned baseball playing, and only nine he was when the children started calling him Knackbaul because he could knack that ball over the fence almost any time he wanted to. “I hit a home run,” he said when he came home the first time he did that. And he could throw the ball hard too. Soon he was the pitcher for the school, even with the bigger boys, because he could throw so good. Isaac liked school better after this and he would eat his breakfast real fast because he wanted to play baseball with the boys before the bell rang. After school he would come mostly right away home because the other boys had chores to do. Isaac had chores too but we didn’t have much farm going on, just a couple of cows, a few pigs, and some chickens. Obrum never ploughed more than twenty acres—he was too much away with his carpentering—and he said no so many times to neighbours who wanted to acre the land for him that they stopped asking. After a while it seemed that people had almost forgotten us and where we lived.
I wouldn’t altogether be telling the truth if I said that I didn’t worry sometimes about how Obrum just let his land be. Deep inside I had thought that once the house was built, he would plough the rest of his land and grow wheat and barley and be a farmer like the other men. For sure I thought he would be thinking about building a life for his son. I knew that Obrum had different thinking from the farmers in Gutenthal—and for sure I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. And having a carpenter for a husband had its good side—especially a carpenter who could think like a woman, sometimes even better than me. I mean, when he built the house, he put in many small things that made my work easier, things I wouldn’t have thought of. So it wasn’t that I needed to be a farmer’s wife—it’s just that it seemed sometimes like Obrum was like that man in the Bible who buried his one talent that his master had given him.
Preacher Funk preached about that story one Sunday, and I couldn’t help it, I sat there thinking he was preaching to Obrum, and part of me shivered with the feeling that maybe Obrum was wasting his land. “Fekwose” was the word that came into my mind and I felt like the people in the church were fuscheling in their heads, “That Kehler is fekwosing the land that God gave him.” You know, it is scary how a church full of people can squeeze a person’s thinking. But that Sunday when we got home from church, instead of going into the house to eat dinner, this man I had tangled my life up with took little Isaac from where he was sleeping in my arms and led me by the hand out onto his prairie.
Obrum didn’t speak for a while, and the air of the open field lifted the closed-in choking feeling I had had in church. I let myself listen to the sounds and look at the colours that were always different each time I walked. My nose breathed in the smell of the grasses and the flowers and we stopped together to watch a hawk with wings spread wide fly in a circle. When we got to the place where we couldn’t see the yard anymore, and we couldn’t see any farms anywhere, Obrum let go my hand and waved his arm over the prairie. For an eyeblink I felt like I was in the Bible story where God shows Abram which land he should have and which land Lot should have. Funny what makes our thoughts, not?
“Susch,” he said. “If I plough this land all this will be lost. Look at all the grasses and the flowers. Hear the sounds of the birds and see the butterflies. Blatz hears music when he walks. If I plough this land our son will never see and hear all this.” Little Isaac woke up then and so I sat down in the tall grass and Obrum reached him back to me so I could feed him. Obrum sat beside me and we didn’t move or make a sound except for Isaac sucking on my breast. Four orange and black butterflies flew in the air around us. Then they landed on the blue stalks of some high grass and I felt like we were very much altogether there in the warm sun and that Obrum was right, even if it was lonely sometimes.
Not that we didn’t go out into the neighbourhood among people, but it was mostly to church and to visit my parents. And auction sales. We would go to auction sales, even when Obrum was building away somewhere too far to come home for night. Tien would pick us up sometimes. By then Tien had learned herself to be a nurse and she had her own car. Or if the Model T was at home, I would drive us. Blatz often came with too. That was almost the only time he would go anywhere. Oh but yes, the auction sales—that’s where it started I think.
There was one auction sale where things made a turn in our lives. Tien had a day off from the hospital and she came by in her new car to take us to Silberfeld, where a Braun family was auctioning off everything that wasn’t nailed down. Obrum was away building a high school in Morris so he didn’t come with us, but Blatz seemed eager to come along. He didn’t often go out into the community, but every once in a while he needed to see the wider world. Isaac, who was ten then, sat with Blatz in the back seat. In the front with Tien, I breathed in the new car smell and looked at all the clocks on the dashboard that Obrum’s car didn’t have. I watched Tien drive, her hands strong on the wheel. She had her hair cut too short for a ponytail or a bun, but not so short as a man’s, except maybe Blatz, who hadn’t cut his hair for years already. And she was wearing pants, which for sure was different for a woman in those days. I thought she looked comfortable, even if I couldn’t see myself dressing like that. I have to give in, though, that sitting beside her in my long flowered dress and my kerchief around my hair that had never been cut, I was feeling a little old-modish in my style. But I didn’t stay with that feeling long because I was more interested in how Tien was driving the car and part of me wondered if she would let me drive it except I was too shy to ask. Besides, I was comfortable riding with Tien and having Blatz and Isaac in the back seat, because she never looked sideways slanted scheef at me because of how we lived in the tall grass away from the village. There was nothing scheef about my friend.
For sure, it didn’t take long for the slanted scheef looks to start once we got to the auction. Little things, like a clump of people going quiet when we walked by, or a person I had known since I started school who would nod her chin down a little and then quickly look away as we passed. We started together, the four of us, but then Blatz went off to look at stuff and Isaac found some boys he knew. Tien and I wandered over to the house, where inside things had been set out in rows on the veranda and on tables outside. Usually the house stuff would be auctioned after small things from the barn and the blacksmith shop—tools and forks and such. After the house, the auctioneer would move to the big machinery, the animals, and sometimes even the farm itself. This gave men the chance to look at and chew over the big things before the bidding began.
Obrum said it was okay for me to bid on stuff and even to buy things, but he had told me to watch out and not to let my bids be chased up by other bidders and a clever auctioneer. I could have told him not to worry because I was most of the time too shy to bid anyway, even if I had my eye on something.
Tien thought the bidding was like a game, and she had fuscheled to me more than once that she didn’t like to see good things go too cheap, especially if the people selling the farm had had bad luck and for sure needed the money to start over somewhere else. So sometimes she would bid on something she didn’t need or want just so that the people who wanted it would have to bid higher. Tien was careful not to do it so often that people would stop bidding as soon as they heard her voice. Only once did she get caught with the highest bid—on a one-ton truck that was only a few years old and had been driven carefully. Tien didn’t complain or try to sell it to the man who had the next highest bid. No, she paid for it with a smile and then a few days later she traded her old car and the truck for the new car she had now. But I’m losing the story again.
Tien and me were fingering dishes set out on a sawhorse table when the sound of a piano clanged in my ear. I looked over to the sound and I saw Blatz up on the veranda, bent over a piano. He was playing the keys quietly, trying it out the way he had when he first saw my broken piano. Funny ha, how all of a sudden I was thinking about that piano in the schpikja house like it was my piano. Sure, Obrum said he had brought it for
me but I had never really thought like it was mine. I carefully schlikjed myself closer so I could watch Blatz, but I didn’t want other people to see me do this. Blatz didn’t really play, he just pressed the keys to see if they worked. To my poor ears the piano sounded almost altogether in tune. A grizzlijch feeling prickled in my stomach as I watched Blatz run his fingers over the dark brown wood that had been polished so it glanced off the light. Carved wood flowers and curly things decorated the piano and the music rack had holes cut out in a pattern. My heart clappered a little faster when Blatz sat down on the round stool that went with it. The Sonia story he had told me flitzed through my head and I held my breath and waited for him to play Moonlight Sonata. Then my heart hammered like a Model T motor, frightened that he might play the Susch sonata and a chill scraped the cross of my back. Would Beethoven Blatz bid on that piano?
I had to grip onto the back of a heavy armchair to keep myself from sinking to the ground like an empty potato sack. Blatz played the opening notes from the Moonlight Sonata, sat and listened, then shrugged his shoulders and stood up from the stool and walked away from that piano. I held my grip on that chair and got my breathing even again. I saw Tien looking at me. She stepped closer and put her hand on my shoulder and fuscheled, “Come, let’s see if there are any tools left over by the barn. Maybe you can find a saw or a gooseneck for your man.”
I followed Tien, but I could hardly walk. My brain was febeizeling itself with jealousy that Beethoven Blatz might even think that he could want another piano.
But the day wasn’t over yet. I tried to be interested in what the auctioneer was trying to sell, but I hardly noticed how the people laughed when he held up an old spinning wheel and nobody would bid, not even five cents to start. I heard Tien say “ten cents” and people laughed again, but nobody bid. I needed to schtooks myself out of my jealousy so I called out, “Fifteen.” Tien said, “Twenty,” and I said, “Twenty-five.”
“Who will give thirty?” the auctioneer said. Tien screwed up her mouth like she was thinking hard, then she slowly nodded her head yes.
“Thirty-five,” I said, without waiting for the auctioneer. People laughed and then a man I didn’t know called, “Forty.” People laughed some more, then got quiet to see what would happen. The auctioneer looked at Tien and said, “Forty-five?” Tien waited with a schmuista look, then slowly shook her head, no. The auctioneer looked at me, and I heard Obrum’s voice in my head telling me not to let them chase my bids up. Slowly, I shook my head no too.
“Going once?” The auctioneer looked around, looked me in the eyes again, but I turned away. “Going twice?” He waited. “Sold to the gentleman with the red cap!” The crowd laughed, and Tien fuscheled in my ear, “That was fun, not?” Before I could say anything back or poke her with my elbow, the piano started clingling the Moonlight Sonata for earnest it sounded like, because it didn’t stop.
I couldn’t help myself, I had to go and look, thinking for sure that Blatz must have changed his mind about that piano. Tien was beside me when I got close enough to the house to see to the veranda. But it wasn’t Beethoven playing. It was Isaac playing Moonlight Sonata, clearly, smoothly, not a stumble. A bunch of boys stood around the piano, mouths hanging open with wonderment. Isaac finished the slow first part that is like a dream. Then, without hardly taking a breath, he started the second part that sounds like a person skipping in bare feet through wet grass. The women for sure were all looking up from the house things on the tables to where my Isaac was playing. Men came over too, even if the small barn things hadn’t all been sold yet. My eyes were fixed straight ahead on Isaac, so I didn’t even see Blatz watching from the edge of the crowd until after our son was finished the thunderstorm part of the sonata. People clapped and cheered. For an eyeblink I thought Isaac would play some more, but he spun around on that stool two times, then he jumped off and hurried down the veranda steps and led the boys away from the house.
The auctioneer decided that selling the piano first would be a good way to start selling the furniture. I slipped away through the crowd to wander around the yard even though there really wasn’t anything I wanted to see. Tien wandered with me.
“Auction sales are kind of a sad time,” she said. “Pieces of people are being sold to the highest bidders, bidders who won’t know the stories those things could tell.”
I didn’t know what to say to answer that, but then I was still a little wobbly about how I had felt when Beethoven Blatz was running his fingers over that piano.
Isaac was very quiet the whole way home. Even at supper he said nothing. Usually after an auction he had plenty to say about what he had seen, but this day his face had as schwierijch a look as people said mine had had on the day I was born. He looked from me to Blatz and then hurry looked down at his plate when he thought I had seen him. After we finished eating he went outside, and I saw him sitting on the lawnswing through the window while I washed up. After I hung the towel to dry, I took my apron off and went outside to sit with him. The swing creaked as we schuckeled back and forth without words. A row of swallows sat on the spitz of the barn and over the prairie from far to the east we heard the yuelling sound of a train whistle.
“A man said ‘Kjliena Blautz’ when I walked past.” His voice was so hoarse I hardly could understand him, and when I did my heart klunked. “The other men laughered themselves over that.” Isaac didn’t quite cry, but his eyes were wet. I couldn’t breathe. I felt like a belt was schniering my throat. I had no words. Till then I had febeizeled the questions away at the dark edges of my brain. Obrum and Blatz and I understood each other without speaking. What words could I put together for my son? How could I febeizel this?
I swallowed hard and pinched my eyes shut. Shame and anger had a war in my heart until anger won and loosened that schniering around my throat. “Don’t listen to such Schwienarie. Such Kackenkopps have only manure in the head.” I took a slow breath and said quietly, “You, my son, have dark hair and dark eyes like me, your mother. Only God knows why you didn’t get the red hair and freckles.” I put my arm around him and pulled him close to me. I could feel his head thinking as it pressed against my side. But we didn’t say any more. And I febeizeled the questions again—so I thought. For an eyeblink, though, I saw Grandmother Glootje Susch looking at me from the other side of the swing. She wasn’t laughing.
For a while it seemed that our little world on that section of unbroken prairie was back the way it had been. Isaac still learned more piano playing with Beethoven and he often schlikjed himself into the schpikja house when Blatz was walking out in the tall grass. He played baseball at school and when the teacher one day gave him an old ball that was coming apart, Isaac brought it home and carefully sewed the cover back on with a needle I gave him and some black string that Obrum had in his carpenter box. The teacher too gave him a heavy wooden bat where the knob was almost all broken away. Isaac hung up a hoop from an old wooden wheel with a sack full of straw behind it on the barn wall. Then he practised throwing that baseball through the hoop, harder and harder, until he could get it through every time, even when he sort of danced like a wild turkey before he let the ball go. When he got tired of that he would take the ball and bat onto the prairie and practise hitting the ball. In that tall grass he used a lot of time looking for the ball after he hit it, so he painted the ball yellow so it would be easier to see. But he never went out on the prairie when Beethoven walked there.
When I remember it now I see that Isaac got quieter after he told me that men had called him Little Blatz. Not that I noticed it so much then—maybe I didn’t let myself see it. I didn’t say anything about Little Blatz to Obrum, or to Beethoven. I think now that Obrum must have heard those flapping tongues, I mean, he was out there among the people more than I was. Beethoven was too lost with the music in his head to hear such things, I think. And if the women were thinking what the men’s flapping tongues were saying, I never heard any woman say such things to
reach my ears. Even Tien never said that she had heard such things. So I said nothing to my men or even to my best friend. In the Bible it talks about how Mary heard words and pondered them in her heart, and when I would hear this at Christmas I wondered if she was like me, that she couldn’t speak the things that were bothering her. Did her Joseph ever say anything? I can’t remember in the Bible that he talked. And was he a man who would listen to a woman? I had two men who talked to me when they had things that they needed to speak, but I could never make myself believe that they would hear me if I talked the things that were pressing on my heart. Maybe it was just easier to febeizel these things at the dark edges of my brain. But now sometimes I wish …
Still, I was having a good life—I mean, it seemed to be right for who I was—I was not alone and at the same time I didn’t have a swarm of people bizzing me around all the time. Yes, Obrum was away too much, but I had Isaac, and Beethoven too. Beethoven didn’t talk much, but he was there, and sometimes while Isaac was in school, when Beethoven went walking in the tall grass I would go with him. You will maybe laugh when I say this but … well, when I walked Blatz beside in that tall grass, I stepped as quietly as I could because I wanted to hear him listening. Crazy, not? But I wanted not just to hear what he was hearing, I wanted to hear him hearing. Maybe I have febeizeled my brain. How can I say … I think I could hear the prairie, the wind in the grass, the birds, the grasshoppers, the snakes, the gophers, but I wanted to hear him hear it … hear with his ears maybe, no, that’s not quite right. I wanted to listen to him listening.
