Every Little Scrap and Wonder

by Carla Funk

  We’d come for the thrum and thrill of something new, for the surprise of the unknown. Around me gathered truckers in lumberjack flannel, cowboys in their boots and jean jackets, teenagers with shaggy hair hanging in their eyes, moms in jogging suits, moms in slacks and sweater sets, and kids, my closest rivals. Everyone buzzed with the same anticipation. Even the Pennsylvania Dutch, those other, stricter Mennonites who kept to themselves and did not mix much with the rest of us, had come in force. Pinheads, my dad called them, for the way the women looked in their white bonnet-like head coverings—like plastic-beaded straight pins—and for what he deemed their ignorance at not allowing chrome on the vehicles they drove because they believed the silver flashiness too worldly. They waited at the edge of the assembly, the serious men and boys in their dark clothes standing apart from the females in their simple dresses. All the girls my age wore their hair pulled back in long, tight braids, and I wondered if that might give them an edge. My throat tightened with my heart’s adrenaline thud. I brushed my bangs back from my face. The competition was making me jittery.

  Before anything had appeared in the sky, I heard it— the far-off thwack-thwack-thwack like a wooden paddle slapping water at high speed, or a machine gun firing down a threat. Then—there, there—I saw it, too—the helicopter rising from behind a tree-topped hill and banking into the valley. An awe-filled gasp dominoed through the crowd. A man’s deep baritone called out, “Get ready! Here she comes!”

  Like everyone around me, I started shuffling forward, toward what I wasn’t sure yet, but the will of the crowd overtook and I followed. My brother, slipping ahead, had the gleam of pursuit in his eyes, like when he set off into the trees with his slingshot. The helicopter banked a sharp right, and suddenly I was turning, too, caught up in the flock of bodies, jogging, then stopping, then starting again. From an aerial vantage, our horde of hundreds must have looked like a shape-shifting amoeba, struggling toward the promise of the prize, wobbling and warping as we tried to anticipate the chopper’s path.

  It was the first time I’d felt the energy of a mob, at least outside of a church service. I was accustomed to standing in my pew and with my fellow congregants belting out verses one, three, and four of “All Hail the Power.” I was used to being part of the sacred throng, but outside in the early-May coolness, we were uncontained, loosened from any structure, and tilting toward chaos.

  A mustached man in a ballcap began waving his arms over his head, as if in a bid to lure the chopper closer. “Hey!” he yelled. “Over here!” Like a contagion, his waving and yelling caught hold, and soon everyone was doing it—our noise a mix of shrieks, hoots, and bellows. I raised my hands above my head, supplicating to the far-off forestry service helicopter like a stranded desert-island child catching a first glimpse of rescue. I’d lost sight of my brother’s bright-blue windbreaker, but I was sure he was waving his hands, too. How could he not be? Everyone else was doing it. Somewhere at the edge of the parking lot, my mother clutched her purse, waiting for the mayhem to subside.

  As the helicopter veered down, its side door opened. The shape of a man appeared—dark hair, flash of a red jacket. A huge black bag. And the man’s hands working to open it. Like Christmas morning before the gifts, like a bonfire before gasoline and the lit match, like the darkened hush before the choir’s first note, my exhilaration surged. The helicopter circled again and held its hover. Out of the heavy-duty garbage bag spilled a cluster of white dots. What looked like a thick cloud of hailstones began to break loose, scattershot in the sky, falling and falling toward my outstretched hands, my thumping heart. Suddenly, nothing about our small town felt small. The usual quiet of our slow roads and sidewalks crescendoed to the raucous noise of rotor chop and crowd chatter. The world was as wide as the blue open sky, broken only by the noise of a whirring machine pouring out its bounty.

  If ever there was a time to ask for God’s favour, this was it. In my head, I thought a prayer that went something like, Please, God, pick me, make me win—the kind of words my dad said every Wednesday night as the lottery balls popcorned in their metal cage, and one by one, their numbers were revealed live on television by a news anchor and his glossy, lipsticked assistant. One day, my dad said, one day, it’ll be my turn.

  Above the parking lot, the ping-pong balls drifted down. Wind currents caught them, shifted their course. It grew clear that anyone who wanted to snatch the balls in mid-air would need some serious agility or a fluke miracle. Around me, men and women zigzagged. Some lost their footing, skidded, wiped out belly-down on the ground, but jumped up again and kept following the wind’s path.

  As the first wave of balls began to land, a whole new level of intensity gripped the crowd. Punctuating the plastic clatter on the asphalt were the cries and groans of full-grown men as they scrambled, dove, shot their bodies to the ground, as if pitching themselves into water. Around me, balls bounced like jumping beans, rolled beneath vehicles. As I grabbed for them, other hands grabbed, too. A bent-over kerchiefed grandma sideswiped me as I reached. Like a scavenger, a boy swooped by and scooped up two nearby balls. Women crawled on scraped and bleeding knees, their brows furrowed and jaws clenched. An old man who minutes earlier had tapped his cigarette ash into a puddle and smiled at me now seemed ready to clamp his false teeth onto anyone who crossed his path. When a secondary spill of balls fell on top of Aunt Lavonne’s station wagon, two guys climbed over the hood and roof without hesitation, scuffing the powder-blue paint with their boots and snapping off the antenna as they scrambled for the prize.

  For all my grabbing, I came up empty-handed. Those who had balls in hand clutched them close, tight-fisted, but when I stood up and looked around the parking lot, balls were still rolling loose and free over the asphalt. No one seemed to care. Next to me, a lady gripped a ping-pong ball with a number inked in black. Finally, I understood the game. Only some were winning balls. The blank ones counted for nothing.

  Above the brief lull in the skittering and jostling, the helicopter hovered still, louder and lower than ever, and about to dump its final bag. This time, savvy to the wind, I moved to the edge of the crowd, hoping that fewer bodies surrounding me might mean a greater chance at the balls bouncing to the outskirts. When the last load let loose, balls confettied the parking lot. I scouted for the ones marked with black ink, tossing away the blanks as I scrambled toward them. I was singular in purpose, focused on the goal, and scooped up a number 23. Those around me faded to the nameless and faceless. Somewhere in the pandemonium, my brother ran after his own prize, but I’d stopped watching for his blue windbreaker. When a lady and I reached for the same winning ball, I didn’t back down, and jerked it away and stuffed it in my coat pocket before she had a chance to see the number written on it.

  From the helicopter’s high, omniscient vantage, I was a blip amid other blips scrounging on the ground, one yellow speck in a speckled network, but still, I felt strangely spotlighted. Like God’s eye was fixed on me with favour. Like my striving to win translated into glory, and the degree of my desire intensified into a prayer that refused to go unanswered. After the helicopter’s door slid shut and it broke its hover over us, after it disappeared behind the hill and into clouds, the crowd headed toward the Co-op. Inside, at the back of the store, volunteers in red Co-op T-shirts sat at a row of tables, doling out prizes corresponding to the numbered ping-pong balls.

  As I stood in line beside my brother, a girl my age walked past carrying a jumbo jar of Magic Bubbles. Another girl held the string of a helium-filled balloon emblazoned with a smiley face and the Co-op logo. Prizes shuffled by. A giant plush bear with a bow around its neck. A sand pail and shovel set. A toolkit. A bunch of bananas. Some folks held slips of paper, coupons for discounts on goods and services. Buy one tank of gas, get a free Shell air freshener. Ten per cent off a watermelon at Shoppers Food Mart.

  When I reached the front of the line, my two numbered ping-pong balls were slick with clammy palm sweat. I handed them over to a red-shirted la
dy, who ran her finger down a sheet of paper printed with columns.

  “Number 23,” said the lady. “And number 52.” She looked up at me and smiled. “Back in a minute, sweetie.” She disappeared behind flaps of black rubber into what looked like a warehouse buzzing with action and bodies and stacks of boxes.

  My knees burned when I tensed them, the skin tender from crawling on asphalt and now chafing against the corduroy fabric. I expected something good, if not grand. A sparkle-seated bicycle with streamers sprouting from the handles. An inflatable swimming pool or Hot Wheels racetrack or even a grocery sack full of candy. I believed I’d earned it, was worthy of it. The eyes of the Lord are in every place, taught the proverb, beholding the evil and the good. Surely, I’d been good enough for God to will the winning balls toward my outstretched hands.

  The red-shirted Co-op lady returned carrying a smallish cardboard box. Behind her, a red-shirted man hefted a huge, lumpy burlap bag. “You’ve won,” she said, “a portable camp stove!” She paused while the man set down the sack with an oomph. “And fifty pounds of potatoes!”

  That life would disappoint, that I wouldn’t always get what I wanted—these things I’d caught wind of in the way caskets opened at the front of the church, in mosquito bites and wasp stings, in liver and onions for supper instead of burgers and fries, but that something about me didn’t deserve the best—this was a new thought glimmering in me. Out there in the crowd, another girl had caught God’s shining eye. Maybe she was tiny as a sprite, a pretty thing who never stuck her tongue out at kids on passing school buses, who didn’t whisper into a classmate’s ear that Tammie smelled like pee and dirty underwear. This girl was surely the one Christ pulled close when he said, “Suffer the little children to come unto me.” While Jesus laid his gentle hand on her head, I stood on the sidelines, waiting for him to notice me.

  Flush-cheeked and tight-throated, I walked past those still standing in line to claim their prizes. Beside me, my mother carried the box with the camp stove in it. She tried to sound enthusiastic. “This will be great for when the power goes out,” she said. Behind us, the red-shirted man trailed with the potatoes, cradling the sack over his shoulder like a body off the battlefield as he followed us to our car.

  “Fifty pounds is a heck of a lot of potatoes,” he said as he heaved them into the trunk.

  Though my mother never said it, the last thing we needed was more potatoes. We had a root cellar full of last summer’s harvest. We ate potatoes almost every night for supper. Mashed, hash-browned, boiled, baked, scalloped, in soups and stews, sliced and fried. The humble potato, my mother would say, the true peasant’s food.

  BACK HOME, I wandered over to the shop, where my father and a few trucker buddies sat around the woodstove with their drinks and the radio crooning the local country-music station.

  “Win anything?” my dad asked.

  All the men laughed when they heard about the potatoes, that burlap sack now leaning up against the carport’s stucco like a good joke.

  “What’re you gonna do with fifty pounds of potatoes?” said Sparky. Heavy-lidded, he slumped on his block of wood with his can of beer. I shrugged. “If you want to sell ‘em,” he said, “I’m buyin’.”

  My mother helped me load the potatoes into the red wagon, and I pulled it across the yard and into the shop. Sparky hoisted the sack into the back of his pickup and pulled his wallet from his pants pocket.

  “Go buy yourself something fun, Blondie,” he said, and handed me a ten-dollar bill. “But maybe not potatoes.” His laughter crackled.

  As I walked back toward the house, the money clutched in my fist didn’t feel quite like a winning ticket. More like a backup plan, or a consolation prize. If water could be turned to wine, and that was called a miracle, then fifty pounds of russets swapped for cash might be okay. I had ten dollars to spend on anything I wanted—a cap gun, dinky cars, fishing tackle, jacks—and I had a camp stove to set up in the tree fort so I could imagine myself into an orphan learning to fend for herself in the wild. With scoured old pots and pans from the basement crawlspace, I’d cook pinecones and sand and clay, and chop up thistles and dandelion heads into a cold, murky stew, the food of a starving child hankering for scraps, eager for anything to eat. Even without the charcoal lit to embers, it wouldn’t be hard to pretend a fire. I’d make do with what I got, and learn that when you’re thirsty enough, even water scooped from a puddle in the ditch tastes sweet. Even the sky, unzipping its blue, could pour forth the abundance of the earth, if I was willing to receive, hold open my hands and catch whatever light might fall.

  Ask Now the Beasts

  But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee ...

  —JOB 12:7

  NO OTHER BIRD sings chick-a-dee-dee-dee, my mother said, the way the chickadee can.

  Except for the piano keys I plunked, I had no signature song. In the choir, I was one kid among a row of boys and girls, and we all sang someone else’s tune, a score composed for children’s voices, simple and unadorned. When I looked out the window at the chickadees flitting on the feeder, I studied them for some trait of a maker blinking through. As they jittered and scratched at the suet and sunflower seeds, the shells flew to the dirt, their black-capped heads moving like figures in a stop-motion animation. I wanted to read those birds and know what God was thinking when he invented their buffy feathers, black bibs, round heads, when he hollowed their bones for flight. God had a master plan, but what and why, I still hadn’t figured out. I wanted to know the truth behind the mystery, to be able to decipher the code etched into the universe. I wanted to listen like a prophet, to hear what only the wise ones hear, so that I, too, could have my own chapter in a thick, leather-bound book, like Joseph and Gideon and Esther, all those famous lives of faith. I wanted my life to be worthy of a Bible story, illuminated in full colour.

  “All of nature speaks of its maker,” said our school principal, Mr. Schroeder, which is why, he explained, we study both books written by the Creator—the Holy Bible, and the book of the natural world, with all the chapters in its glorious design.

  Like I’d learned in our school’s weekly devotional time, I leaned on the pigpen fence and studied our quintet of pigs to see what God might be saying. As they wallowed in late-spring mud, their snouts, rooting in the sludge of their own poop, came up brown and glistening. Their small eyes wheedled, and when I dumped a bucket of slop into the trough, they squealed and snapped at each other like wild boars, the kind that would gore an old yeller dog. Only weeks ago, I’d fed them by hand, and before that, when they’d first arrived, swaddled each of them in turn in a flannel doll blanket. On the fresh straw in the corner of the shed, I’d cradled a piglet, scratched its wiry pink chin until it fell asleep in my arms. But now, in their filth and gluttony, they’d gone primal, forgetting my kindness.

  Even my closest animal companion, Leslie, the patched tabby I’d found as a kitten in a hollow log, seemed to have forsaken me. The one who used to follow me like a stealthy shadow had grown aloof ever since Packsack, the trapper who lived part of the year in a trailer in our yard, had stuffed the cat headfirst into a length of stovepipe. After the jackknife-quick castration, Leslie shot into the bushes, leaving droplets of blood in a trail on the dirt. My dad shook Packsack’s hand and paid him his case of beer. A couple days later, the cat slunk out of the woods, healed up but wary of human hands, including mine.

  I watched our black dog, too, for signs that God was speaking, but mostly, she just licked herself, barked whenever someone drove into the yard, and scooched her bum along the grass. In the crowns of poplar trees, the crows flocked, their scrawk and screech like fingernails on a chalkboard. God’s voice said nothing to me. Squirrels sketched the yard in zigzags, scouting and scratching for clues to last autumn’s cache of nuts and seeds, but I remained clueless to what the maker of all squirrels might be trying to say.

  EVERY WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, our primary grades tromped single-file out of the classroom, down the stair
s and hallway, and into the small chapel where we held morning worship. We plopped down on the weary dun-coloured carpet, elbowing for space closest to the chair on the podium, anything to be near Mr. Schroeder and his big brown book. When he walked through the door at the back of the sanctuary, we settled into our best behaviour, we girls quiet and prim, the boys quitting their bloody knuckle fights. Even the rowdies, the ones held almost daily for lunchtime detention, sat up straighter for Mr. Schroeder. When, at the end of a chapel sermon, he asked all the students to repeat after him, “Good, better, best, let’s never rest, until our good is better and our better is the best!” I chanted loudly and with conviction, certain I was speaking a passage of scripture that would transform me with ever-increasing glory into the likeness of a saint.

  In his suit and tie, with his glossy hair trimmed to school-regulation standards—off the collar and above the ear—Mr. Schroeder was the closest representation of holiness I knew. To sit at his feet in that cold little chapel was what I imagined being near to God must feel like—scary, awesome, and smelling of Old Spice. I couldn’t help but inch closer to him as he spoke, yet fearing I’d say or do something wrong, commit some sin that might banish me from his presence.

  Mr. Schroeder held the big brown devotional book the same way he held the Bible—with a grip that said: This book is important. The leather-bound volume was one in a series of books about the animal kingdom and was our text for Wednesday Devotions, the school’s weekly time set apart to study spiritual truth, to learn about God and the wide realm of his creation. Every chapter in the big brown book was dedicated to a different creature that crawled, crept, slithered, swam, stalked, or flew. Migration maps, feeding habits, average wingspan, habitat—all these facts and figures showed us more about the natural world.