Better Off_ Flipping the Switch on Technology - Eric Brende [44]
“Joe,” someone said, “is another one looks like he works hard. He has a thick build. His forearms look like wood—”
“—From carryin’ ’round large sacks of feed,” added another.
Joe wasn’t here today. But Red was. Red, at least in his own mind, may have been more deserving of renown. After I took my turn with the concrete (and barely avoided a bad spill), I came across Red. Small, spry, and dashing in looks, Red stood on a two-by-six above the new horse stalls, swaying backwards and forwards on his haunches and beckoning impatiently for more boards. I reached for a couple, but one slid from my grasp, so I asked, “Do you want me to throw up two at a time?”
From his perch, Red snickered. “You can throw up six at a time if you want.” He uttered the taunt in a painful, pinched voice that immediately dropped to a growl. “C’mon boys,” he urged, in low rumbling tones, as if trying to rev up my engine. He gathered his speech at one side of his mouth, pinched it and jeered, and then grumbled again. Next he threw his head back and flashed a brilliant set of teeth, as if to assure me he didn’t really mean it. At the same time, he shifted his weight and hitched up his trousers and snorted, “Yuk, yuk, yuk, yuk, yuk.” Then he resumed the low engine sounds and prodded the company once more, “C’mon boys.”
He acted as though he were the foreman (which he wasn’t). I could easily imagine him holding a cigar in the corner of his mouth or a pair of dice in his hand. What had he done before joining the group? Had he been a bookie? A loan shark? Someone later told me he had worked for his father on a liberal Mennonite farm. He had slopped hogs.
Until today, the Minimite men had seemed an indistinct mass to me. But now, before my eyes they were differentiating into unique characters, each with his own special role in the brotherhood. As the pieces of the building came together, so did the personalities. This was not the monolith of bearded pietism it first appeared. It was a generous slice of American diversity. But I sensed that pietistic teachings like Gelassenheit were not without effect. By paying close attention I realized Red was only acting the part of the punk, the person he might have been had he not deferred to the group’s counsels. His swagger was too studied. Gelassenheit had softened his native rowdiness and given him a sense of irony to go with it. He was performing a kind of self-burlesque.
In view of the personal variation here, I wondered if the teaching of self-surrender might have advanced the cause of self in a roundabout way. By encouraging members to yield to one another, it created an atmosphere of acceptance and good humor—a place to be oneself.
It was getting hard not to let my own hair down. One fellow walked by me and grinned slyly as if we shared a secret joke. I didn’t know what the joke was. His upper lip curled up when he smiled; he had bushy reddish eyebrows that met in the center and a scruffy old-man’s beard on a nineteen-year-old face. When he heard someone else make a wisecrack, he wrinkled his nose, bit his tongue, and giggled. Then I found out he was Red’s younger brother, Sim. Were they now, or had they ever been, in the same crap-shooting ring? Perhaps. He had red hair too, but where Red was lean, Sim was pudgy. He less swaggered than waddled. If anything (his sly look said as he padded by), he was your chum; you could count on him. “You’re sumpin’ special to us, you know?” he said to me one time later in the afternoon. I was so surprised, I didn’t know how to reply.
A lanky fellow cowered in the shadow of the barn door, eyes darting here and there uncertainly. He didn’t seem to have caught on. He was young, maybe eighteen, and apparently