style="font-size:15px;"> “He’s hedging!”
“No. Just what did he do exactly?”
John had taken off his hood and come back. Marion told him that Sy was about to try to pick up the anvil by the horn.
“. . . . so he just lifted it off the ground. No further. Just off the ground.”
“Come on, Bontrager.”
But for all the joking it was noticed that Sy was nearly a giant, and that his hands were bigger than a normal head. But still it seemed impossible. Then he bent down and wrapped his sausage fingers around the end of the horn, tilted it up so that it pointed straight in the air and lifted. At first nothing, but it didn’t slip either; and then Marion, who had his face on the ground, shouted, “It’s off. Drop it, Sy, it’s off.” And he dropped it.
They congratulated him and he went off to find a hand sledge to straighten his piece of metal. Marion grabbed ahold of the horn, gave a little tug and shook his head. No one else wanted to know exactly how hard it would be. “In all your life you’ll never see that done again,” said Brenneman. “It’s incredible anyone could be that strong.”
“He always was big,” said Henry Yoder.
Then everything settled down. Brenneman got a set of leathers for his pump and left. Henry Yoder left with Marion in his car toward Marion’s place. Sy straightened his hitch and put it up behind his tractor seat and drove away. John worked on a small one-cylinder motor, taking off the flywheel to get at the points. Marion and Henry Yoder came back, parked across the street and went into the store.
“I tell you, he did,” they told Wilson. “He picked it right up off the ground, as easy as you please.”
“It’s impossible. Sy Bontrager?”
“ Yes.”
“Well, he’s big . . . No, it’s impossible. There’s a fly in the soup somewhere.”
“He did it.”
“It’s physically impossible,” and Wilson went over to the window next to the street and looked out. No one over there but John, walking around and looking into the street. Wilson looked absently out at him, thinking privately to himself about all the things he had to do before winter, the windows, the rain gutters, some of the roof, get bales around the foundation, install ... John walked across the garage again and looked out, oddly enough, Wilson thought, as though he wanted to be sure he was alone. Then he bent over, and from the store window and in a line clear down an aisle of tools and oil drums Wilson saw him lift his anvil with one hand by grasping the horn, straight up until it was several inches above the ground, behind which he could see the red Riley oil drum, then set it down and hurry back to the small engine.
Wilson’s mind raced. For the first time in his life, he thought: What can possibly be inside him? What is he made of to be able to do that when he’s no bigger than I am? There’s never been any indication of that. Muscles are muscles, and bones are bones; what could make someone so different?
“He did it, I tell you. He said he could and then he did it,” said Marion.
Yes, he probably did, thought Wilson. It’s possible. It’s not that strange if a big man can do it. But still he wondered; and after his store was empty, he closed the door and went over to the garage, thinking that he would have a better look at both the anvil and his son. He watched John putting tiny brass jets and springs into the carburetor of the Briggs and Stratton, and there was no indication there of anything. “Hello,” he said when John looked up, and tried to look casual and uninterested as he went over to where the anvil sat on its back, pointed straight up into the air. When John turned around he grabbed ahold of it with both hands and lifted. And stopped. He felt sure he could, if he really wanted to, with both hands, but one hand! It seemed impossible.
“I was sorry to hear about your dog,” said John, and blushed as he looked at his father.
“So was I,” he answered. “It’s been three days so far and I still can’t keep from thinking about her running around in the front yard the way she did, and the sound of her digging under the porch.”
“I think,” John began, very shyly, “that you shouldn’t get any more dogs. They’re not worth it. Something always happens—”
“They’re worth it! I’ve got a chance to get a wolf cub, anyway. A timber wolf. Marion said his brother shot the bitch in the middle of August and has three pups in the shed behind his house. I guess she was killing his sheep. But there’s nothing hereditary about wildness. It’s learned. They’ll be just like dogs—only wouldn’t it be fine to have a real wolf?”
“I don’t think it’s worth it. Mom almost had brain damage worrying the other night when you were out feeling sorry over that dog, wandering around along the river.”
“My feelings are my own.”
“Maybe so, but maybe—”
“Forget that. Listen, Marion said Sy Bontrager picked up that anvil with one hand—by grabbing ahold of the horn. That true?”
“I saw him do it.”
“It seems impossible.”
“I know.”
“How could someone be that strong?” asked Wilson, and focused his eyes down into John’s face.
John blushed. “I don’t know . . . he’s big.”
He won’t admit it, thought Wilson. He won’t admit it. It’s like he’s ashamed. Very odd. If I could do that, everyone would know. I’d have the anvil put out by the road and once a week I’d lift it up; and if someone came into the store who had never seen me lift it, I’d pick it up again. And if I could do it with my right hand, then I’d learn to do it with my left, and then by holding it backhanded. (All of these thoughts he had while looking at the anvil.)
“Will you and Mom come to church this Sunday?”
“We already talked about that, John. If you want to, that’s fine. But there’s no reason to try to include me and your mother. Besides, I don’t see anything to it. The whole thing is too . . . superficial. No, that’s not quite right. Self-righteous is a better word. Vanity.”
“That’s not right, Dad.”
“We don’t go to church. Our lives are happy and full without it. Each worships in his own way . . . that’s what I think. And besides, Della is dead set against it.”
“I know. That’s why you have to convince her.”
“Foolishness. And anyway, Saturday night I’m going fishing.”
“That’s no excuse. Go some other time.”
“What could be closer to God than being on the river? If there’s anything in religion that belittles fishing or being outdoors in order to promote sitting in a building singing foolish songs and looking righteous—it can’t be of any value.”
“There’s a difference between enjoying God’s gifts and paying for them.”
“Enjoying
