Small Beneath the Firmament
For my father-in-law, his place in the order of Creation was no diminishment, but the beginning of wisdom.
Walter Wangerin Jr | posted 3/05/2001 12:00AM
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It caused in me a sort of sadness, a nameless elemental yearning.
Buying a sturdy servant
Martin purchased that first tractor of his—a John Deere exactly as green as mine but smaller and less powerful—at the only price he could afford, something less than $200. Billig, he judged the sale, German for "cheap," which in his mouth meant "Such a deal!" He bought the tractor used from one of his neighbors. The machine wasn't even two years old but it had kept stalling. In the barnyard, in the field, it would quit, then refuse to produce a spark for starting again, however hard the poor man cranked it. The neighbor figured he was selling aggravation.
Martin, on the other hand, was buying a sturdy servant, not only with cash but also with his character: less than $200 bought the cold equipment; patience and peace bought time to examine it with a complete attention, his mind untroubled, undivided; and mother-wit brought the tractor to life again.
In those days tractors used a magneto generator. My father-in-law opened it and discovered a loose washer inside. The washer had shifted whenever the tractor bumped over rough ground, shorting the coils and killing the engine. Martin simply removed that washer. Thereafter he had a dependable tractor for as long as ever he farmed. It was there when I came courting Ruthanne. It was there when he finally retired at the age of 70 and was forced to auction off his farming equipment.
Quiet obedience
My father-in-law was born in the early 20th century. His relationship to the earth, therefore, was established long before society developed its ever more complex technologies for separating human creatures from the rest of creation.
Throughout his young manhood, farming was the labor of muscle and bone, hoof and hand. The very first successful gasoline tractor wasn't produced until 1892. In 1907 there were a mere 600 tractors in the whole of the United States.
Thanne still remembers the years before her father purchased that first John Deere, when he plowed behind draft horses, Prince and Silver, steady beasts with hooves the size of a little girl's head. Often she was sent to lead them to water. And this is why she remembers the time and the chore so well: it frightened the child to walk between two massive motors of rolling hide, her head below their necks. The quicker she went, the quicker they took their longer paces, until she thought she could never stop them, and they all would fly into the pond.
Her father, however, commanded them mutely with a gesture, a cluck, a tap of the bridle. Silent farmer. Silent, stolid horses. They were for him a living, companionable power. When they spent days plowing fields together, their wordless communication became community. The farmer never worked alone. He was never isolated. And if the dog ran beside them, then there were four who shared a certain peace beneath the sky, four who could read and obey the rhythms of creation, four creatures, therefore, who dwelt in communion with the Creator.
Horses plowed. Horses mowed. Horses pulled the rake that laid the alfalfa in windrows to dry—giving Martin's fields the long, strong lines of a darker green that looked like emotion in an ancient face.
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