Menno Moto by Cameron Dueck

Author:Cameron Dueck
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Biblioasis
Published: 2020-03-24T00:00:00+00:00

He walked off through a side door of the schmiede and pulled a mobile phone out of his pocket. He dialled a number and leaned against the red flanks of a giant forklift with one hand, staring alternately out to the fields beyond the tree line and down to his boot, which kicked at the dirt.

Henry made several calls, then turned back to the schmiede. He looked up and saw that I was watching him.

“I noticed you were using a mobile phone. That’s allowed on an Old Colony?” I asked.

Henry laughed, his hand patting the phone in his pocket.

“It’s not my phone. It’s one of the workers’, so it’s okay,” he said. “I use it sometimes, here at the shop. But I never take it home.”

Old Colony farms and businesses often employed weltmensch, in part because they could bear the sin of carrying a mobile phone or driving the pickup truck to town. That distance from the activity—registering a phone or truck in someone else’s name—was enough to negate the sin of using the technology.

“I’ve called a few guys who might want the girders,” Henry said. “Someone will take them, I’m sure. They’re perfect for building a nice strong trailer.”

As we said goodbye and turned to leave Henry remembered something.

“Do I have your number?” he asked Ed. Henry fished his phone from his pocket and checked his contact list. “Ya, I have it. I’ll be in touch.”

I smirked at Henry. So it was his phone, not his employee’s. Double lives, one for the church and one for themselves. It was a duplicity that I’d soon see the Old Colony Mennonites put to far more sinister use than mobile phones.

It was late afternoon when we returned to the farmyard. Ed excused himself to look after some paperwork in his office. Carolyn was not in the kitchen and the house was quiet. I walked out onto the veranda. The sound of machinery, the rev of a diesel engine, and the clang of metal drifted up from the meadow that held Chris’s grave.

Ed’s son Anthony had been working for days, mowing lawns and cleaning up the farmyard in preparation for his wedding. The wedding was to be held on the same open field where Chris was buried, and Anthony was removing the rusting hulks of old machinery, tangles of old fencing and vines. I walked down the hill and watched him behind the wheel of a tractor, lifting the remnants of steel machinery high in the air and then dropping them onto a trailer with a screeching crash.

Carolyn sat nearby, beside Chris’s grave, her arms wrapped around her knees. I held back for a moment, and then went and sat down beside her. The grave was so fresh that grass had not yet overgrown it. A grey scar on the green meadow. Carolyn’s eyes were red-rimmed, her nose running. We sat silently, letting Anthony and his machinery fill the void.

“He would have loved to be here for this wedding,” she said. “The boys are all very excited, all playing a part, and we really feel Chris’s absence now.

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