Kornwolf

by Tristan Egolf

  As though in corroboration thereof, Ephraim turned to address them directly. “Sieht er nicht wie ein rosafarbener Gorilla aus?”—he motioned to the Redcoat.

  The Crossbills gawked in stupefied silence. For a moment, they couldn’t breathe. There was stillness.

  Then, blown away as they were, Colin and Isaac could no longer hold back from laughing. After all, it was true: that Redcoat did look like a pink gorilla. His skull was enormous, his skin was flushed and his nostrils were gaping, outturned chasms.

  Ephraim peered into them, squinting one eye. “Sie konnen fast Halfte die seines Gehirns von hier aus sehen.”

  Snapping out of their daze at last, the rest of the Crossbills exploded with laughter—soon to be joined by the Beaver Street League.

  The Pink Gorilla sat gawking dumbly. He couldn’t have known what was being said, but clearly, it ran to his expense …

  Actually, the Crossbills seemed to be having their own deal of trouble following Ephraim. And not because of his use of language. After all, he was speaking a legible, however garbled High German. They had been raised on sermons in the mother tongue. The language would not have been lost on them. Beyond the fact that he was speaking at all, which would have been their biggest shock, the actual content of what he was saying, the tenuous links in the chain of images (threading wire into one of the Redcoats’ nostrils and back out the other, like a “Fisch au der Leine,” then tying both ends to a bumper and dragging him down to a chunk of meat), had them gawking in proper disbelief.

  The Pink Gorilla, on the other hand, was furious—and making no attempt to conceal it. By now, it was clear that what had begun as a one-sided leaning on a beat-up Dutchie who stunk like a roadkill and wouldn’t speak English was taking a backfire turn for the weird, full of snickering gibes at his expense. He couldn’t seem to figure out when, or why, the Plain Folk had started talking back …

  At last, he stood.

  As quickly, Ephraim rose to his feet, sneering greedily.

  All around them, hooting went up.

  Startled, Riggs looked into the room. “Quiet!” he yelled with a show of force. He looked at the Pink Gorilla. “Sit down. And you!” He pointed to Ephraim. “Come here.” Again, he turned his back on the class.

  Ephraim blew the Gorilla a kiss and quietly whispered “next time” in English.

  While turning away, he carefully pulled off the watch and slipped it into his pocket. Then, amid murmurs of wild excitement, he walked down the aisle and out the door.

  Hanging his head, he presented himself to Riggs. The Beaver Street kid was gone. Riggs deferred to a short man in spectacles, forty and balding, dressed in a suit. He smelled like a courthouse. His bearing was firm.

  “Ephraim Bontrager?” He spoke with civility.

  Ephraim stared at the floor in silence.

  (Termites were eating the wall behind him.)

  Offering no introduction, the short man ordered him quietly: “Roll up your sleeves.”

  Ephraim complied, presenting his arms on command. They were lacerated.

  Looking them over, then turning each wrist, the man demanded: “How did this happen?”

  Ephraim’s gaze remained on the floor.

  Finally, the man took a half-step back. He removed his glasses and leaned on the wall. Briefly, he closed his eyes and rubbed them, sighing in torn deliberation.

  At last, he announced: “I’m taking him with me.”

  Riggs shifted back on a heel. “For trial?”

  “No.” The man shook his head with an air of beleaguered dismay. “He’s going to the hospital.”

  By Sunday morning, the property of Jonas and Marcelyn Kachel was all but immaculate. Hosting their district’s worship service had called for extensive preparations. Abraham and Grizelda Hostler, along with their children, Hanz and Barbara, regarded the fruits of the Kachels’ labor while rolling up their gravel drive. On one side, freshly churned soil ran clear to an empty stable yard; on the other, the last of the year’s alfalfa stretched to the edge of a hickory forest. Ahead, a small wooden bridge passed over a creek, its bank cleared of stones and kindling. Beyond, two rows of empty horseless carriages stretched down a small dirt path.

  Their buggy rounded a bend in the drive at the urging of two young men who stood waving. Abraham guided his steed past another row of horseless carriages, seven deep. He stopped before a sloped embankment that rose toward a Swiss barn’s second-level entrance. He got out to help young Shamus Kachel unhitch the steed.

  “Where’s Fannie this morning?” the young man asked.

  Grizelda heard Abraham answer. “Fannie’s at home today, Shamus. She won’t be attending.”

  Together, they disappeared into the stables.

  Grizelda, Hanz and Barbara waited. The yard around them was freshly raked.

  Abraham reappeared from the barn. He walked down the bank to rejoin his family.

  Across the drive stood a pair of corn bins. Their concrete flats had been swept of kernels. Behind them, an oak tree shadowed a pantry house. The Hostlers walked around it.

  The Kachel home came into view—a three-storied farmhouse with pine-green trim and a tall brick chimney, overlooking a yard. Dozens of men in split-tailed mutzes and flat-crowned hats milled about on the grass—offset by the bright white caps of the married women, and the organdy capes of the girls—while the young people, clean as the morning air and on best behavior, crowded the drive.

  With thirty-one families in District Seven, and worship being held in the homes of members on a fortnightly basis in constant rotation, each household might expect, realistically, to host one service every year. For the hosting family, this amounted to an annual inspection by the whole community. Preparations began several weeks in advance with weeding and hedging the property, barn repairs and home front maintenance—all, in the Kachels’ case, on top of the already grueling demands of harvest—then winding down to interior work in the days and hours preceding the service—clearing out every article of furniture, save for a cupboard or two, on the ground floor, removing partitions between the rooms to accommodate over two hundred persons, then cooking, baking, cleaning, scrubbing, canning, washing, kneading, pleating: a lengthy and manifold undertaking, and one not to be carried out secondarily. Any failure to meet with accepted standards could be seen as a lack of devotion. The family was expected to shoulder the labors of preparation among its own. Aside from limited help in the kitchen, outside assistance was clearly discouraged.

  So then, the question naturally followed: how was it, just as Grizelda had feared, that behind the assembly, on the farthest end of the yard, between a flatbed wagon and the side porch, bent beneath the weight of a prayer bench, Ephraim, in view of the whole district body, was hauling furniture into the house?

  Not only would such preparations normally have been dispatched by one of the Kachels—as opposed to a young man in Rumspringa, who hadn’t been baptized and, like his cohorts, normally wouldn’t have attended this service at all—they would have been completed hours, days, even weeks before the assembly’s arrival. The fact that Ephraim was even present could mean only one thing, as would have been clear: Benedictus had ordered his son to task as a public disclaimer, of sorts. Even though Ephraim’s recent behavior had yet to be brought to the council’s focus, his father had reached a verdict already and wanted to make his position known. In two weeks’ time, this case would be ruled on. Until then, the boy was to be avoided.

  Grizelda wasn’t able to reach him in time. She got to the porch as the door swung shut. She wouldn’t be able to go inside until Bishop Schnaeder gave the signal.

  She walked back down the stairs and proceeded to circle the house in agitation. An image of panic, impatience and rage, she parted the crowd, neighbors and friends, without greeting in search of an open window. She added to an already tangible air of unease that hung over the scene like a pall. While everyone else seemed inclined to maintain a veneer of normality, or subtle disquiet, Grizelda alone
made no attempt to curb her outward display of worry. Embarrassed, Abraham, and even to some extent Barbara, attempted to cover for her, to pose a distraction, with awkwardly forced outpourings of joy at the sight of neighbors. These attempts were unsuccessful. Grizelda’s presence was undeniable. And no one dared step forward to calm her—Abraham, her husband, least of all. While essentially respected, Grizelda was known as a problematically willful woman. Which is to say, she ruled her household. Abraham Hostler couldn’t control her.

  And neither could Benedictus, for that matter. Though he and Grizelda, as brother and sister, maintained an unwarlike repose in proximity, the two hadn’t spoken a word in years. Long ago, they had come to an impasse.

  Following the death of Ephraim’s mother, Benedictus had gone on a three-week drunk. Beyond any doubt, by his own admission, he hadn’t been fit for the task of parenting. Thereby, Grizelda, herself a new mother at the time, had been given charge of the boy. Which, on the whole, had been accepted by most of the community as being for the better. For three years, she had raised him as one of her own. In that time, Benedictus had shown no interest in having anything to do with him. Even after becoming a minister, he’d never stopped by to see his son. It was only when community demand had come to bear that he started to press for custody. An ordained minister should have been able to raise his only child, it was felt.

  Staunchly opposed, Grizelda had taken the matter straight to the district council and, to it, before him as one of its members, pronounced him completely unfit for the task.

  Even though Benedictus had been granted custody with little deliberation, the Minister had never gotten over the fact that his sister would dare to defy him in public. From that day forward, he had distanced himself from not just the Hostlers, but most of their relatives. He had forbidden Ephraim from more than required contact with any of them.

  It seemed that an eon had passed when Bishop Schnaeder called the assembly to file. Responding, the women and girls dropped their bonnets and shawls in a basket brought out from the pantry. Members of the Kachel family gathered overcoats from the boys and men.

  First to enter the house were the ordained men. They were followed by the district elders. Then came the middle-aged men. Then the adolescent boys—in single file, down to the youngest—then switching over to the opposite sex, beginning with the unmarried girls and working back up to the crones at the end of the line. At forty-three, Grizelda wound up toward the rear. It took her a while to reach the door, and longer to greet the ordained men inside—as usual, passing her brother in silence—and continuing into the kitchen to drop her bonnet on top of a wooden table, around which several mothers sat cradling newborn infants and younger children. The walls were painted a cool shade of turquoise and mounted with brass-handled oil lamps. A woodstove crackled and spat in the corner, emitting a field of gentle warmth. A bookshelf lined with scripture stood next to a doorway that led to the sitting room.

  She went in.

  Most of the assembly was present already.

  Copies of The Ausbund, the Old Order hymn book, were sitting, face-up, on every bench. A row of chairs toward the front of the room had been reserved for the ordained men. The oldest men in attendance sat with their backs to the wall or in rocking chairs. Behind them: a body of younger men. To Grizelda’s right: the unmarried women. And square in the eye of the district body, at peak visibility, front and center, just as she had been dreading all week, seated on the “Sinner’s Bench,” as it were (the plank on which those who faced social avoidance were (un)customarily placed during worship), with Gideon Brechbuhl and Colin Gray-bill on either side of him, likewise staked—his shoulders locked in a clench, his head tilted forward, his posture twisted crookedly: Ephraim, guilty until proven innocent.

  Fannie would have broken down crying at the sight of him.

  Grizelda could hardly bear to look. As though he weren’t in for enough already—this morning, this service, this day, the whole season—Ephraim was set for a public shaming.

  Benedictus held nothing sacred.

  Finally, Bishop Schnaeder called the assembly to order. Grizelda assumed her place toward the rear of the congregation.

  Soon, a Vorsinger, Jan Pratt, an auctioneer colleague of Jon’s by day, addressed the assembly by raising The Ausbund and calling for hymn number ninety-eight.

  In a doleful, trembling falsetto, Pratt began to sing. Once his pitch was set, the assembly joined in, a cappella. It was painfully slow. The hymn extended for several minutes. Upon its conclusion, the ordained men withdrew to a room upstairs, as scheduled, for Arbot, or counsel. Its being two weeks into the final harvest, custom demanded that autumn affairs and related concerns be brought to the council’s attention this morning, before the service. Even though Ephraim’s predicament wouldn’t have qualified as an autumn affair, the visible rash of welts on his neck was all the excuse Grizelda needed.

  As several young men left their benches and filed to the right toward a doorway that led to a staircase, Grizelda rose to her feet and followed them—edging ahead of the wary crowd, forcing everyone back an obliging step—and then up the stairs to the council room door.

  She knocked on it, waited for only a moment, then slapped it flush with an open palm.

  A startled murmur went up all around her.

  Minister Zook opened up, looking visibly shaken. Behind him, around a table sat Bishop Schnaeder, Deacon Byars, Minister Grabers and Benedictus. Before them stood Jonathan Becker, struck with alarm at the sudden appearance of Grizelda. But Grizelda hadn’t come for him. He just happened to be there, that was all. Her purpose lay in demanding her nephew’s removal at once from the Sinner’s Bench: placing him out on display, as such, would accomplish nothing at all, she told them. It was ridiculous, inhumane and thoroughly idiotic treatment—and the boy faced plenty of that already …

  At the table, Benedictus threw up his hands, as though to say “Here we go again.”

  He turned away, refusing to look at her.

  In spite of him, Grizelda, gently barred from entering the room by Minister Zook, continued to rave, insisting her brother had never been fit to raise beans in a jar, to say nothing of children. One needed only consider the state of his business to know that. Johann Schnaeder got up from the table. He raised his hands while approaching her. “Please,” he spoke in German, cutting her off. His tone was firm.

  The Schnaeders had always been thought of as sturdy, dependable, scrupulous, God-fearing people. Johann, in keeping with all of those traits, was known as a man of equal compassion. In the ten years he had served as a bishop (the briefest tenure among the ordained men), he had opposed in theory and (unsuccessfully) in practice the Sinner’s Bench. For him, social avoidance without a ruling was unjust, pure and simple. He stood alone on that principle—not even Minister Zook would defy tradition. Nevertheless, alone he stood. And not without drawing considerable attention.

  Some district members considered the Bishop too soft, too lenient, far too permissive—unlike his predecessor, Bishop Holtz. Schnaeder had succeeded a disciplinarian. Time was, Ephraim—with Colin and Gideon, would have been shunned from The Order already. But Schnaeder was made of different stuff. So was Minister Josef Zook. Of the five ordained men present, the church stood virtually split down the middle on discipline: Grabers and Bontrager favoring more traditional, stricter, hands-on enforcement, Schnaeder and Zook being less inflexible—and Deacon Byars, at eighty-seven, in latter-day geriatric oblivion, vacillating between them, and somehow preserving the church, if only symbolically. Byars, the last of the district’s founding clergy, had long been considered the mortar by which the assembly held together. Upon his much-anticipated passing, the church would dissolve into three separate bodies. The Bontrager crowd would remain in place, consigning the district, at last, to ruin; Zook, with a party of fifty less rigid, though fervent souls, would join District Ten; and Schnaeder’s group, nearly half of the current church, would found a whole new assembly.


  Grizelda felt certain that Schnaeder, of all the ordained men, would be the most sympathetic. Not only was he more progressive-minded, he had issues with Benedictus. Having grown up down the road from her brother, Schnaeder knew Bontrager all too well. He had never considered him fit for the cloth. Ideally, a minister’s role in the church involved upholding standards of basic decency—including in business and family matters. Yet Johann Schnaeder had always considered the Minister’s line of work obscene.

  And as for parenting, one needed only consider the state of Ephraim’s tobacco …

  Seizing the Bishop’s arm and twisting, Grizelda pitted her weight against him and desperately, mournfully begged him to do something, anything please—this couldn’t continue.

  Again, the Bishop attempted to calm her, gently dislodging himself from her grasp, then imposing his own with a firm command: “Be quiet, Grizelda,” he whispered in English. He fixed her gaze, overriding it. “Please.”

  Abruptly, the young men crowding the stairwell behind her, watching, caught Schnaeder’s attention.

  He backed her into the hallway, shut the door behind them, turned and, gently leading her by one arm, proceeded down the hall to a second door. He opened it, pushed her inside and stepped in. She flinched at the sound of the door slamming shut. Turning to face her, he spoke in hushed frustration. “Now listen …”

  She took a step back.

  Holding his voice at a low, intent whisper, the Bishop explained how first, aside from their placement on the Sinner’s Bench—an informal, draconian custom observed (almost) exclusively in District Seven—the boys were not to be singled out in speech or deed throughout the service. Their case was to be discussed in two weeks’ time at the regional autumn council. Judgment would be reserved until then, Sunday, October 31st. The council, arranged to convene in New Holland, would be comprised of selected ordained men from thirty-one districts throughout the state. When the moment arrived, Schnaeder explained—leaning forward and dropping his volume further—this matter would be addressed to the whole of the regional panel for a detailed review. Bishop Schnaeder himself would see to it. Ephraim’s recent encounter with Officer Beaumont had struck a community nerve. Demand had arisen not only to chastise the boy—by excommunication, if needed—but to figure out what in the world was wrong with him, and to make sure it never happened again. Being more than a nuisance, he had become a cultural hazard / liability. Simply removing him wouldn’t suffice. His condition would have to be sorted out. Meaning: a long-awaited assessment of Minister Bontrager’s role as a guardian—and thereby, his place in the whole community—would be up, at last, for a proper review.