Fruits of the Earth

by Frederick Philip Grove

  Still, it was staggering. Twenty years ago the site of a farm had not been worth taking; right now a quarter section could be had for the asking. And just because one quarter section was not enough for this man, he bought three quarters for twelve thousand dollars. As always in a boom so called, a temporary, disproportionate, and unjustified rise in price was taken for permanent; a condition that was bound to produce the corresponding slump.

  “By gosh!” Wheeldon said at Nicoll’s Corner. “What’s the bright idea?”

  “High finance,” Henry Topp replied.

  “The idea is flax,” said Stanley.

  Henry’s brother Dave, invalided home during the previous winter, nodded in that peculiar way which he had brought back from overseas and which made people say that “he was not all there” any longer.

  Nicoll, too, rarely smiled these days; his eldest boy Tom had been killed in action. “I suppose the man knows what he’s doing.”

  And Stanley shrugged his armless shoulder. “If the war lasts–”

  At which more than one head nodded; and everybody resolved that next year he, too, was going to “take a shot at flax.”

  “Look here,” Wheeldon said into the silence. “The fellow’s got children. We should have him on the school board.”

  The silence of the others remained unbroken. Everybody knew what Wheeldon was driving at. As soon as the war was over, consolidation was going to be an issue throughout the ward. More and more children in Spalding District had reached or were about to reach high-school age. As elsewhere in the Canadian west it was an ever-present problem what to do with or for adolescent children. There was land a-plenty; but it takes money to start a boy. Hiring out on the farm did not pay, though Horanski was drawing fifty dollars a month and had land for garden and potato patch, milk, and fuel besides. In the city and in construction camps a man could earn three or four dollars a day. Shilloe’s and Nawosad’s eldest boys had gone. Bill Stanley and the third Nicoll boy, Stan, made no secret of it that, if they returned from the wars, they had no intention of going back to the farm. And it was worse for the girls; for opportunities to get married were lacking: with half the youth of the country dead in Flanders or disabled at home, it seemed imperative that parents should train their daughters to make a living of their own. If a high-school education were within reach, girls could be nurses or teachers. Teachers’ salaries were rising; and it was easy to become a teacher. A hundred dollars a month was being paid!

  Years ago Abe had put in a good word for the plan of consolidating half a dozen rural districts into one educational centre at Morley; but incomprehensibly he had turned against the scheme, without volunteering reasons for his change of front. It took Nicoll’s stubborn loyalty not to abandon an allegiance thus sorely tried.

  Ever since Spalding District had been formed Abe had sat in the chair; and Nicoll had been secretary-treasurer. The third position on the board had been successively filled by Hartley, Stanley, and Wheeldon. As soon as Wheeldon was naturalized he had tried to have himself elected; but there had been a feeling that it was best not to embarrass Abe. At last, however, Abe himself had said, “Put him in office. Let him air his complaints at the meetings of the board. If he can convince one of us, he will have his way.” Since his election, business had been conducted in a more formal manner. Thus, in the spring of 1917, Nicoll had been in need of a small sum of money due to him for having taken the census of the district; and Abe had simply signed the cheque. Wheeldon had kicked up a row. Such accounts must be passed at a regular meeting of the board. “Not,” he said to Nicoll, “that I grudge you the cheque. You’d have got it anyway. But it isn’t business; and it isn’t legal.” He was right; but in the rush of seeding it was inconvenient to hold a meeting. Most ratepayers considered the matter a trifle not worth the ado that was being made about it. Yet Wheeldon was beginning to have a following: Hartley, Henry Topp, and others.

  The issue of consolidation was going to become acute as soon as peace came. If, therefore, Wheeldon suggested that John Elliot should be on the board, it could have only one meaning: that he should take Spalding’s place. The district was growing; McCrae would move in when he returned from overseas; Horanski would have the vote when he left Abe. Others were looking for land; and as new settlers moved in, Spalding’s prestige would wax or wane according to the attitude of the older settlers with regard to him. Already Wheeldon considered himself as one of the founders of the community. A priority of five or ten years in the date of settlement became negligible in the consideration of seniority.

  “While I’m single,” said Henry Topp, “I don’t give a tinker’s damn.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong.” Wheeldon replied. “That’s not what I call citizenship!” That word was just becoming the slogan of the hour.

  “Oh well,” Henry drawled, “I’ll act the fool and make you laugh.” And the way in which he danced his shoulders and moved his fingers, as though playing an accordion, did fetch a laugh from the meeting.

  Other things troubled the district. Since Bill Stanley had gone to the wars, against his father’s wish, yes, defying his orders, the latter had become filled with missionary zeal. The world as it was was going to come to an end; and the kingdom of God on earth was going to be established. He and others of his creed, he said, had long prophesied the coming of that war which was shaking the foundations of the present world. By strange interpretations of certain passages in Holy Writ he was pointing out that the course of events in Europe had been predicted hundreds of years before the birth of Christ. Though nobody could follow his exegesis or believe in his prophecies, he succeeded in stirring the district into metaphysical shivers. Especially David Topp, who, since the war, had become quiet and introspective, gave himself over to silent and melancholy musings. “We must better our lives! We must live more closely in accordance with what our Lord preached when He walked on earth!” Such things he said in a tense and laboured voice and with unalterable conviction. His preachments, as people called them, made the more impression since they came from a brother of the man who remained an absolute scoffer. David spoke of his intention of leaving Henry to his perdition and breaking up the partnership of the brothers.

  Shilloe, Nawosad, Horanski attended meetings at Morley where a preacher from the city conducted services in Anderson’s shop; for the two churches in town were closed to what many called a freak religion.

  Hartley and Wheeldon did not take sides in the endless discussions. But Hilmer made long trips on Sundays to attend such services as were held in his own church in the so-called Reserve.

  While most of the settlers listened when Stanley talked, awed though unconvinced, Henry Topp contradicted. “That’s all nonsense! Talk of the soul. There ain’t no such thing. Ask any doctor. They’ve searched men’s bodies. They haven’t even found the seat of the soul.”

  “Exactly! If they had, the soul might be physical; but it isn’t.”

  Perhaps Nicoll was most profoundly disquieted; he had always been given to metaphysical speculation. Yet he adhered to conclusions arrived at long ago. “I don’t know what the soul is. But as it arises with the growth of the body, it must disappear with death. If it were to continue for ever, it could not have had a beginning either.”

  “Like everywhere else,” Stanley argued, “it was created. And like everything else it will remain unless God uncreates it. All those who refuse to listen God will destroy. But those who find truth will be called into the kingdom. Millions now living will never die.”…

  Horanski still lived on Abe’s place; but he broke a small field on his own quarter, seeding it to barley. Jim stayed at home for three weeks to help Abe; and Ruth raised no objection. Throughout the district new land was broken; and Abe did not even look for additional help. He, Horanski, and Jim did what they could; and the rest remained undone. He enlarged his pasture, seeding down a wide strip of his fields. Every one experimented with flax; but Abe did not.

  After seeding John Elliot reapp
eared. He was not going to move out that summer after all; he had been unable to sell his place in Saskatchewan. This fact lost him part of his prestige. Still, he walked and talked as if he meant business, and as if, once ready, he would do unheard-of things. As for the price he had paid for his land, that was nothing; one crop–what he’d call a crop–would pay it off.

  When Wheeldon heard that he was in town, he hunted him up. “Too bad,” he said, “you aren’t coming at once. There’s an election ahead. For the school board. You’d be our man.”

  “You bet.” John Elliot pushed his sombrero back on the huge, sandy-haired dome of his almost bald skull, inserted his thumbs in the loops of his braces, and, splitting his face by a broad, exaggerated smile, “I’m the natural chairman.”

  “What about consolidation?”

  “Ye-es. I’ve heard. I’m in favour. Who’s not?”

  “That’s the point,” Wheeldon said. “There’ll be opposition. This district’s been run for many years by one single man.”

  “Spalding?” John Elliot stretched himself in an endeavour to look down on Wheeldon who, however, was but slightly shorter than he.

  “That’s the man.”

  “Well-l-l,” Elliot drawled, in that way which made people doubt whether he meant what he said, “we’ll have to take him down a notch, I suppose. You don’t mean to say consolidation’s an issue now?”

  “Not while the war lasts.”

  “Don’t worry. That war’ll last another year or two. If it doesn’t you’ll see me here in a hurry. I’ll build a shack this fall.”

  “Will you be able to sell out west?”

  “Like a shot!” Elliot said, raising a finger and slanting his head. “When the war stops, there’ll be a rush to the land.”

  And, soon after, carpenters began to erect a barn on Elliot’s land.

  Every step was watched by Mrs. Grappentin, who was alone with her son, the two children having gone to live with cousins of theirs; of her husband, the last thing reported–told by herself–was that he had fetched a team of oxen from her farm; these he had promptly sold at Somerville for what they would bring. Mrs. Grappentin had been compelled to insert a notice in the town paper that she would not be responsible for debts contracted by the man. She herself continued to visit in the district, retailing gossip in broken English.

  “Yes,” she said, “a good thing, this. That man Elliot moving in. A fine man he. A man of understanding and wealth. And not proud. Such a barn he is building! Three-inch lumber throughout! Bigger than the barns on the other place. As big as the two together.”

  Which, however, nobody with eyes in his head could credit. It was apparent that it would not be larger than half of one of Abe’s barns.

  The fact was that Abe had begun to weigh like a substantial shadow on the district. Did not Stanley have as nice a house as one could wish to have? A rectangular structure with a bay window in the south wall and a porch at the corner, pleasantly painted white, with roof, doors, and windows brown. He, too, had planted trees; and he had a good barn, a granary and a hen-house. But his hens did not lay by electricity.

  A granary Wheeldon did not have so far; nor had he planted trees; and his house was only oiled, not painted. But he was a good farmer. With some people he would have carried more weight had he not been jealous. “He hates Spalding,” Stanley observed to Nicoll. “Not because Spalding is rich; but because he is tall and broad. When Spalding is around, Wheeldon feels like a pup. I’m not a small man myself; and if we didn’t have Spalding, I believe Wheeldon would make me a present of his dislike.” Nicoll laughed. With him, it was a matter of personal pride that everybody’s achievement was measured by Abe’s.

  So, when at the end of the summer another prospective settler looked the district over and found his way to Nicoll, asking where he might pick up second-hand lumber to build stable and shack, he referred him to Abe. For Abe still had the old house, crowding against the new one and detracting, in a rear view, from its impressiveness.

  This new man became the butt of all jokes in the district. His name was Schweigel; and he was a Jew, well known in the settlements south of the Line where he had been a pedlar for a decade. He was fat, round-faced, with the hands of a plump woman. When he spoke, he held these hands clasped in front of his face, waving them forward and backward to give emphasis to his shrill, piping voice. He was always imploring whomever he happened to talk to, either to give information or to sell at a less exacting price whatever he had to spare. In this, he was extraordinarily successful, for people almost gave him what he wanted, taking out part of their price in laughing at him. He came with a horse lame on three legs and kicking with the fourth at each step while drawing the skeleton of a spring wagon on top of which, in a long coat of raw hide, perched the Jew. A Jew farmer was in himself a novelty; but Moses Schweigel supplied inexhaustible mirth.

  For some reason Henry Topp, in speaking of him for the first time, called him Itzig; and in spite of the passionate protests of the man the name stuck. Over and over he would spell and pronounce his real name; Henry provoked him to do so. “What is that confounded doggone, Yiddish name of yours, Itzig?” And Schweigel spelt it, lisping the sibilant. Henry could hardly suppress his laughter, for the Jew pronounced every letter with the fervency of prayer. “And how do you pronounce that gibberish?”–“Shou-i-gel!”–“Well,” Henry said, “that’s too twisted for my outlandish tongue, Itzig.” Whenever Schweigel heard that name, he lifted his hands as though stung by a needle.

  He had filed on the south-west quarter of twenty-seven, west of Hilmer’s, much to Mrs. Grappentin’s disgust; and with only two horses, both crippled, he managed to break a patch of ten acres. Out of half of Abe’s old house he put together a small hut in which he lived with a beautiful young woman and two little children “pretty as angels” his stable fitted the two crippled horses like a glove, people said. As for feed, he was not ashamed to beg it: an armful here, a few trusses there, carrying them home on his back in a ragged sheet of canvas; and soon he had a little stack. Whenever, on these trips, he passed Hilmer’s Corner, Mrs. Grappentin, standing in door or gate, shouted abuse at the bent figure under its load. “Look at the yellow one! Taking home what he did not work for!” Yet, as for work, nobody slaved as indefatigably as he; and scarcely had the weather, in the fall, become the least bit inclement, when he was out again with his little wagon, clad in his long, loose horse-hide coat, with the mangy hair outside, and drove amazing distances to buy eggs and fowls to ship to the city, making a handsome profit on each transaction.

  Horanski, too, built a shack before threshing time, using the remainder of the lumber from Abe’s old house. That shack, of two rooms, stood in the extreme south-west corner of his land. Several of his children being still of school age, he was favourably placed.

  Finally, just before the armistice, young McCrae turned up; and before the freeze-up he had his place fenced. A neat, shed-like shack was built which, however, he did not occupy during the winter.

  With all these new settlers coming in, it was doubtful how things would stand should it come to a “show-down” between Spalding and Wheeldon. That such a decision was at hand, nobody doubted any longer.

  ABE’S HOUSEHOLD

  It would have been hard to tell whether the metaphysical disquietudes that rippled through the district found an echo in Abe. He had never taken part in the discussions. He had kept himself to himself. Instinctively he despised the intellectual powers of most of the “crowd.” But he brooded; and in his broodings he sought help from his brother-in-law and old man Blaine. Their conversations were all of a type.

  Sometimes he went through the great house, speaking to no one, his face clouded. Ruth respected that privacy which his mood seemed to demand. Absently he looked at this or that; at the furniture–chesterfield, arm-chairs, and rug–of the living-room which reached across the whole front of the building, only the hall being taken out; or at the dining-room in the centre of the house; at the “den”
where his little desk stood, with three or four shelves full of books and a library table strewn with papers; even at pantry and kitchen behind. Then he turned and entered the hall where there were hooks for hats and coats and a gun-rack with two guns which had never been used since Charlie had first started to go to school–for even in the fall when a steer and two pigs had to be killed for winter meat Abe had always left the farm for the day, hiring the butcher at Morley to do the work. And ultimately he went upstairs to look into room after room, winding up at the east room which was locked.

  For a while he hesitated at the door; but at last he unlocked it, entered, and looked about in the half light, blinds and curtains being drawn; at the bed, still made up; at the chest of drawers which still held a boy’s clothing; at the open cupboard by the window where a few books stood, a few toys lay about, and a few curiosities were arranged in a sort of display: stones found on the prairie, plants dried and pressed, half decayed now, bird feathers, and a football which Abe always touched as if to make sure that it had long since become soft.

  Having finished his round, he went to the barn and hitched his drivers to buggy or sleigh to go to town. There he stood about in the store and finally, having inquired whether the doctor was in, which he rarely was, he went to his sister’s house.

  Mary received him at the door and asked a few questions about his health which was always good, about Ruth and the children, and, seeing he was in his monosyllabic mood, she said briefly, “Charles is in the den.”

  Abe entered the den; and the doctor went through the ever-repeated ceremony of clearing a chair for him. “Sit down,” he said.

  They sat in silence, the doctor sucking the stem of his pipe. “I can’t understand it,” Abe said with darkening brow.