MENNONITES, by Andrew Porter
All summer they had been disappearing, one or two families a week. Across the river you could see the square patches of dead grass where
their trailers had been only days before. In the evenings, after dinner, my brother and I would sit on our back porch and watch them across the dark water, moving through the shadows in their drab clothing. Doug liked to claim that these people weren’t the real Mennonites. These were the fake ones, the ones who were too poor to own their land, the ones who had to work on other people’s farms. He would go on in this manner, working himself into a state of disgust. I didn’t hate these people in the way my brother seemed to, and those evenings we sat out on the porch I liked to imagine where they were going. Ohio maybe, or Indiana. Somewhere in the Midwest, where the land would be cheaper. I pictured their trailer homes moving across the vast prairie highways in a long line, like a funeral procession.
We were living at that time with our father in one of the small grey houses on the east side of the river. There was a community swimming pool down the road from us, and an old dump, but that was about it. This was the country, the deep country, and behind our house there was nothing but fields and, beyond that, more fields. A few months before, we had moved up from Virginia, where our mother was still living and where most of our belongings still were. So far, our father had bought us a green vinyl couch, a few chairs, a kitchen table and some mattresses to sleep on; but otherwise, we were just waiting until August when, we were told, our mother would be joining us.
That June our father had taken a night job at an aluminum factory in town and during the day Doug and I had to stay out of the house and find ways to occupy ourselves while he slept. Sometimes we’d wander over to the dump, looking for things to break, or down to the edge of the river where we’d watch people floating by on old inner tubes, drinking beer and laughing. Later, when the heat and boredom finally got to us, we’d make our way down the long dirt road to the community swimming pool. The pool was small and old, the water a light, algae green, with leaves floating in it. The diving board had been torn off years before and the concrete around the edges was discolored and cracked. We’d only seen people actually venture into the deep end once or twice. My brother was fifteen then, three years older than me, and he liked to believe that there might be some beautiful college girl there one day, an undergrad who might stumble upon us by accident. But there never was. Every day it was just the same group of old people from down the road, wheezing with their cigarettes and their noisy grandchildren, and Doug and I would just sit there in the shade of an elm tree and talk about what our lives had been like in Virginia. At the time it seemed like Virginia held all of the possibility our current lives did not. I would talk about my old friends and Doug would go on about all his women, how back in Virginia he could get laid whenever he wanted. “This, little man,” he would say, looking around at all the old people, the dirty pool water. “This, my friend, is shit.”
At the far edge of the pool lot there was a tall cyclone fence that surrounded the property and sometimes in the afternoons a group of Mennonite kids from the trailer park would wander across the bridge and watch us from the other side. We mostly ignored them, and after several minutes of studying us, they usually went away. But if they hung around too long, or if they began to smile or laugh at us, Doug would stand up and walk over to the fence. He’d stare down at them and threaten to climb over and kick their sorry little asses. Sometimes he’d even jump up on the fence and start shaking it, screaming like a wild man, and they’d take off running down the road toward the bridge.
Later, in the evenings, after our father went to work, I would sit out on the porch and listen to Doug talk about all the things he planned to do to these kids. Like everyone else, Doug believed the rumors: that several among the Mennonites had multiple limbs, extra toes and fingers, that beneath their drab clothing were hidden deformities. Once in a while, after the sun had descended, we’d even make the long walk across the bridge, on what Doug called reconnaissance missions, to see if we could spot any of the disfigured among them. Camouflaged in our black jeans and t-shirts, we’d sit perched in the tall grass at the edge of the trailer park and watch the Mennonite men and women move through the shadows. They seemed normal enough to me, but Doug claimed that they never let the deformed ones out in public, that they kept them hidden away inside the trailers, where they did all sorts of strange things: spoke in tongues, practiced magic, chanted verse. Most nights we’d end up getting bored and heading home after about an hour or so of watching; but occasionally Doug would spot a group of the girls hanging around below the trailer park or down by the river bank, and he’d tell me to wait for him by the bridge, while he walked over there.
I would sit on a large rock by the muddy bank and watch my brother as he approached them. Sometimes he’d actually get a chance to talk to some of them, but usually it wasn’t long before a group of the older men from the trailer park would wander over to the bank and break things up. I would see them huddling around Doug in their dark clothes. Doug would hug himself, nodding and looking at the ground while they talked, and after a while he would turn around and head back toward me. Usually he’d be too pissed off to want to talk about it on the long walk home. But later, as we lay in our beds, he’d tell me about the girls and what they’d said to him, how they all wanted him, how they’d even told him so, and how they were willing to do everything. Everything, he’d say and smile, and then he’d go on about what they’d said to him specifically, about how they had promised him this and that, and I’d lie there in my bed listening silently, wanting to believe every word.
On the day we left for Pennsylvania, six months earlier, our mother had taken us out into the backyard behind our house and told us that this would be just a temporary arrangement. She said that she’d be coming up to join us in a couple of months and that we shouldn’t worry. I’d hugged my mother then and started to cry, but Doug had just stood there with his arms crossed, not looking at her. Intuitively, he seemed to understand that she would never be coming up. Now, whenever I brought her up to him or whenever I mentioned what our lives might be like when she arrived in Pennsylvania, Doug would shake his head and say, “Don’t count on it, bud.”
In the late afternoons, when our father awoke, the three of us would have an early dinner together before his shift started; then afterward, while Doug and I did the dishes, our father would take the phone into his bedroom and call our mother. He pretended sometimes that he was calling his brother or one of his friends from work, but I could tell by the way he looked after these conversations, the way he dragged his feet and slumped down on the couch, that he had been talking to her, trying to convince her to come up to Pennsylvania and join us, trying to plead his case.
Sometimes I’d even find him sitting outside on the front porch late at night, after he’d returned from his shift, talking quietly into the receiver, his shoulders hunched, his head pointed down toward the ground, or other times looking out into the distance, as if he expected at any moment she might appear. If he noticed me standing there, he’d sometimes tell me to go back inside, but other times, he’d simply stare at me and say nothing, as if he wanted me to see him like this, as if he wanted me to understand what all of this meant.
There was a way to get into the community pool at night. A weak part of the cyclone fence that Doug had peeled up one afternoon when we were over there swimming. I was in the water, practicing my underwater breathing, when he waved me over. I pulled myself out of the pool and jogged over to him. He was kicking at the loose fence and smiling in a way that told me he was already planning something. He pried the fence up, then let it fall back into place. He did this two or three times then winked at me and I nodded, though I had no idea what he had in mind. It wasn’t until a week later, as we were walking back from the convenience store, that he told me about it. The way he talked I knew he already had everything planned out. Not a party really, just a small gathering. He said that he’d already made some arrangements. There would be women involved and beer.
“What women?” I said.
“I’ve taken care of that,” he said.
He told me then that he’d talked to a few of the Mennonite girls the night before and that they’d agreed to sneak out of their homes that night and meet us at the pool. He didn’t say much else, only that I should be prepared to see some action. I was only thirteen at the time and had never even kissed a girl, let alone seen action, but I nodded at my brother anyway.
The rest of the afternoon I spent taking care of the various things on the list that our father had left for us that morning on the counter: cleaning out the shed, pulling out the crabgrass on the front walk, washing the back side of our house with a hose. Technically, these were chores that Doug and I were supposed to split equally, but Doug never even looked at these lists. He barely even talked to my father back then, barely even looked at him in the mornings when he came home from work. So that day, while I worked outside in the midsummer heat, my father slept and Doug lay on a mattress in our room, listening to music and smoking cigarettes, and then at one point, after my father had left, he disappeared for about an hour or so and then returned with a case of Schlitz, which he claimed one of the guys at the trailer park had bought for him.
He slid the beer into the refrigerator, lit a cigarette, then vanished into the bathroom where he proceeded to spend the next twenty minutes getting ready for our “date.” While my brother showered, I turned on the TV and then dialed up the number to our old house, hoping our mother would answer, though she rarely did. In fact, she hadn’t answered once in the past two weeks, and I’d recently begun to wonder if she was even living there still. I knew that my father never seemed to have a problem getting hold of her, so it’s possible she was now living somewhere else, maybe at her sister’s, my Aunt Anne’s, or at her mother’s. I tried to picture what her life was like now, what she did in the evenings, tried to remember what she’d told us on that last day we’d seen her: how she was taking a little time for herself right now, some time to work some things out. I didn’t really know what any of this meant, only that the open- ended nature of it bothered me. Doug and I had both tried to get our father to talk to us about it, to give us a more specific idea of how long it would be before we saw her again, but whenever we brought it up he’d simply shrug and change the subject. The most he’d ever said to us was one time when he’d told us that he expected her to arrive at the end of August, though other times he seemed to forget that he’d ever said this. Other times he’d simply sigh and say, “She’ll be up here when she’s up here, boys, okay?”
When Doug finally emerged from the bathroom, he looked good. Not handsome exactly, but well put together, clean. Even though it was still the middle of July, he was wearing a crisply ironed black shirt, new jeans and a pair of black loafers. These were clothes that our mother had bought for him just before we left, clothes that Doug hadn’t touched since we’d arrived in Pennsylvania.
“That’s what you’re wearing?” he said, eyeing me strangely. I was still wearing the same dingy t-shirt and shorts I’d been wearing earlier.
“I could change.”
“No.” He shook his head. “No, don’t worry about it. You ready?”
I told him I was, but he’d already turned around by then and started loading up a duffle bag he’d found in our closet with cans of Schlitz. I turned off the TV and walked over to him just as he was loading the last of the cans into the bag.
He paused for a moment to light a cigarette and then smiled at me.
“This is going to be good, little man. Okay? Trust me.”
The walk over to the pool that night seemed to take a lot longer than usual, maybe because Doug kept having to stop to put down the bag and rest his shoulder. The whole way there he kept talking about the heat and how he was worried it was going to skunk the beer and then later about how he hadn’t brought enough cigarettes. By the time we finally arrived at the pool, the sun was already starting to set in the distance and the old people from down the road were starting to pack up their coolers and folding chairs and stuff their towels into tote bags and make their way back to their cars. Within a few minutes, the only people still there were the two late- afternoon lifeguards, two college boys, who were stacking up chaise lounge chairs into piles at the far end of the pool.
Doug directed me to a small patch of bushes at the edge of the parking lot and we sat there for a while, watching as the two lifeguards passed a joint back and forth between them and then later as they started doing cannonballs off the side of the pool. A few minutes later, a car pulled up, a white VW Cabriolet convertible, and three girls got out and ran over to the fence and started shaking it. Eventually the lifeguards came over and let them in and pretty soon everyone was in bathing suits and another joint was being passed and someone with a radio had turned it on to the local pop station and two of the girls were dancing.
Doug shook his head. “This isn’t good,” he said. “Not at all.”
He reached into the duffle bag then and pulled out a can of Schlitz and handed it to me. The can was already warm, but I opened it anyway and forced myself to take a sip.
“This isn’t good,” he said again.
“You know those kids?”
“No.” He shook his head. “No, I don’t.”
I didn’t know them either, but I could tell that they were rich kids, probably high school students from the local private school on the other side of town. I had never been to this school myself, but I had heard of it, and apparently our father had once called them up to inquire about scholarship opportunities for us, but whatever they’d told him that day must have turned him off because he never mentioned that school or those people again.
“I have a feeling they won’t be staying here very long anyway,” Doug said, staring up at the pool. He said this as if he believed it to be true, or as if he believed that saying it would make it true, but within the next few minutes, a couple more cars appeared and six or seven more kids got out and joined the others. This time they were carrying cases of beer and a watermelon, which one of the kids claimed he’d soaked with vodka. I could see the expression on Doug’s face darkening as he reached for another beer and the party on the other side of the fence began to pick up, the girls shrieking, the music booming, the boys shouting chug. At one point one of the girls fell into the water and three of the boys dove in after her, two of them holding her shoulders underwater while a third tried to grab at her kicking legs. You fuckers, she yelled, as she came up gasping for air, angry but also half- laughing as she said this, and for a while there they played a game of chase with the boys swimming around her in broad circles, pretending to reach out for her bikini top, and the girl shrieking at them and splashing water in their faces. Finally, the boys grew exhausted with the game and they all got out of the water and I could see another joint being lit, though it was getting darker now, almost too dark to see.
“Should we head back?” I asked Doug, but he was staring up at them intently now, deep in thought, drawing on his cigarette and then taking a long sip of his beer.
“No,” he said. “We’re not going anywhere.”
It’s strange, but when the Mennonite girls did eventually show up, it was like Doug didn’t even see them. I remember them appearing at the edge of the lot, five or six of them, and Doug looking over at them absently. They were all dressed in long black dresses and had their hair pulled back in buns and there was a boy there too, a young boy, maybe one of the girls’ brothers. They were standing under the glow of a streetlight at the edge of the lot and staring at us expectantly. Doug shook his head, as if in annoyance, and then walked over there and talked to them a little. I don’t know what he said to them, only that they didn’t stick around long. He gave them each a beer from the duffle bag and then pointed them back down the road toward their trailer park. A moment later, he turned around and started back toward the bushes, still shaking his head.
I’d expected him to come over and sit down next to me again, but he didn’t. Instead, he just set down the bag, grabbed another can of Schlitz and started up toward the pool. I watched him as he approached the fence slowly, then stood there and said a few words to the boys on the other side. Standing there in his long- sleeved shirt and blue jeans, he looked a little silly, maybe even absurd, but a few minutes later, to my surprise, one of the lifeguards walked over to the gate and let him in, and then, before long, the music had resumed and the girls were dancing again and Doug was opening another beer.
I knew my brother well enough to know that he wouldn’t be coming back for me anytime soon. Back in Virginia, he used to ditch me all the time whenever his friends showed up at the mall or whenever a group of pretty girls appeared at a soccer game. It was something I’d come to expect, though that night, for some reason, it bothered me more than usual. Maybe because I’d come to see us differently since we’d moved to Pennsylvania, more as brothers perhaps, bonded by our mutual alienation and displacement. We were different in age, yes, but not in blood, and I thought that this might have been enough for him to at least nod down the hill in my direction, to mention that I was waiting down there with another six- pack of beer, that I’d gladly bring it up to them if they simply waved.
But the more time passed, the more I realized this wasn’t going to happen. This wasn’t my brother’s style, and besides, I could tell he was enjoying himself now, taking hits off the joint, chatting up the girls. Down behind the pool’s parking lot there was a small patch of trees where I could see the Mennonite kids still standing, drinking their beers, and so after a while, after it became apparent that my brother would not be returning, I took what was left of the beer and headed down there. I figured they might want the remaining sixpack, or maybe some of our cigarettes, but the closer I got to them, the more they seemed to retreat toward the shadows. When I was finally about twenty feet away, I opened up the duffle bag and placed the sixpack down in the middle of the road, then stepped back.
“You can have this,” I said. “We don’t need it anymore.”
They looked at me but said nothing.
“It’s fine,” I said. “Go ahead.”
The girls, most of whom were about five or six years older than me, looked at each other and then began whispering something. A moment later, they turned their backs to me and looked back down the road toward the trailer park. Only the youngest one, the boy, kept staring at me.
I stood there for a while, staring at this boy, as if I were staring at a creature that might harm me, but he only seemed interested, as interested in me as I was in him.
Eventually I turned around and left, leaving the six- pack in the middle of the road and heading in the opposite direction toward home. I didn’t stop or turn around once until I hit the curve in the road where the asphalt turned to dirt, but when I did, I could see that the Mennonite girls were now gone and so was the beer.
I can say now, twenty years later, that I’d probably always known in my heart that my mother wouldn’t ever be coming up to Pennsylvania to join us, that this was only something that she and our father had told us to make us feel better, but I don’t think I really realized it until that night, walking home along that empty road in the dark, the sound of distant farm machinery humming, the flicker of fireflies in the fields, the vastness and the emptiness of the world around me.
I took my time walking home that night, and when I finally got close to our driveway, I could see that my father’s car was now parked there, that he must have come home early from work, and that beside it were several other cars. As I walked through the door, I braced myself for what I thought was going to happen, but instead what I found was just my father sitting at the kitchen table with a group of about six or seven other men, all of them drinking beer and talking.
I think my father must have been surprised to see me, must have thought that I was asleep in my room, because he looked up at me with a kind of stunned amazement, or perhaps embarrassment, embarrassment that he hadn’t known where I was. The men all turned and greeted me warmly, and one of them even offered me a slice of pizza from the box on the counter. I could see that my father was still trying to process what was happening, that he was maybe a little drunk.
“Why are you home so early from work?” I said before he could ask me where I’d been.
My father looked over at the other men, then down at his hands.
“There was an accident at the factory,” one of the men said.
“Pretty bad,” another one added.
“Yes,” my father nodded. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
“Was anyone hurt?”
“Two men,” my father said. Then he looked at me. “Where’s your brother?”
“He’s at the pool.”
“This late?”
I shrugged.
My father’s eyes dimmed, but before he could say another word one of the men spilled his beer on the table, and everyone started laughing, and I took this opportunity to disappear down the hallway to my room. There, I lay on my bed in the dark and contemplated calling my mother, though I knew she’d never answer.
It must have been at least two or three in the morning when my brother finally returned. The room was quiet but I could hear him fumbling around in the dark, knocking things over, as he looked for the light switch on the wall. I’d been lying on my mattress all night, unable to sleep, and I think he was surprised to find me still awake, staring at him, when he finally found the switch.
“Hey,” I said.
I could see that he was drenched from head to toe, his clothes sticking to his skin, his hair still wet and dripping, matted to his forehead. I also noticed he wasn’t wearing shoes, just socks, which were muddy and torn from the long walk home, and that, when he turned, there was a small, angular cut on his left cheek, just beneath his eye. He looked terrible.
“What the hell happened to you?” I asked.
He looked at me but didn’t answer. Instead, he just turned off the light again, sat down on his mattress and began to peel off his clothes.
“Those kids do that to you?” I asked.
But again he said nothing. Instead, he threw the rest of his damp clothes into a pile in the corner, lit a cigarette and lay back on his mattress in the dark. I could hear him breathing heavily, like he’d just returned from a long run.
I wanted to ask him what had happened back there, at the pool, but I knew he’d never tell me, so instead I just lay there in the darkness, listening to him breathing, watching the tip of his lit cigarette as it moved back and forth. Outside in the hallway, everything was quiet now, no sound of my father or his friends anymore. Just the distant whir of the air conditioning unit my father had installed earlier that week.
“You know what’s crazy?” Doug said after a while, turning to me.
“When I was heading home, you know, they were still there—those Mennonite girls. They were still there, waiting for me.”
“I thought I saw them leave.”
“Me too,” he said. “I mean, they did, but then they must have come back.”
He was quiet then for a while, and I lay back on my mattress and stared up at the ceiling, listening. I thought about how in a matter of months they’d all be gone, all of the Mennonite kids, all of their parents, though I had no idea where they were headed.
“Did you say anything to them?” I said finally.
“Yeah,” he said. “I told them to go the fuck home.”
Doug put out his cigarette then and rolled over on his side, and I closed my eyes and tried to imagine them, those girls, waiting for my brother under the glow of that streetlight, on the side of the road, standing slightly in the shadows and waiting for this boy who had promised them something that must have made them want to wait, and how they might have waited there all night, not so much for my brother but because they simply didn’t want to leave, because they didn’t want to turn around and head back into the darkness and go home.
Andrew Porter is the author of the short story collections The Theory of Light and Matter (Vintage/ Penguin Random House, 2010) and The Disappeared (forthcoming from Knopfin 2022); and the novel In Between Days (Knopf, 2012). His short stories have appeared in Ploughshares, One Story, The Southern Review, The Threepenny Review, in The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and on NPR’s Selected Shorts.