Family and Friends
In ‘Away Game’ by Mitchell Toews, it turns out that in Manitoba’s Mennonite country, you’re never too old — or too dead — for a pickup game. Enjoy this slice of Canadiana from Pulp Literature Issue 20, Autumn 2018, on sale for the throwback price of $8 till the end of February!
Away Game
by Mitchell Toews
My great-great-grandfather came to visit us at the lake. This was unexpected because he had died ninety years earlier.
He spoke in a Mennonite haferlschuh with short demanding sentences and syntax reminiscent of a buggy ride over frozen stubble. Clear eyes stared you down into the blackened remnants of a failed Red Fife wheat crop.
“That’s some beard you have there,” I said.
“Call me Opa,” he said. “Why don’t you have a beard?”
“Too itchy,” I replied.
He stared at the lake. “Why are you living here? What’s wrong with town?”
“We like it here, Opa. How is it where you are?” I asked, half-rising to adjust my lawn chair.
“It gets terrible hot and smells like sewer gas, but the women sure are sporty,” he said. Then he took a long sip of his drink, eyes merry over the rim of the glass while he regarded me. Janice, standing behind my chair, misted me with lemonade as she burst out laughing.
“He told me to say that if you asked. That is such a funny guy,” he said.
Opa was a former church deacon. He was the delegate selected to come to Canada to choose the land on which the Molotschna Mennonites would settle. Bearded and bonneted, my ancestors left in a staggered diaspora when the friendly steppes of Catherine the Great became unwelcoming. Following his journey in 1874, the migration continued until 1920, more or less.
Death agreed with Opa. He looked exactly like he did in the crinkled black-and-white pictures from the shoebox in our closet. He showed off a fine set of store-bought choppers.
I kept playing it straight. “You are with the Lord?” I said.
“Well, it’s not exactly like that, but I’m not supposed to tell. They don’t let us.”
Read the full story in Pulp Literature Issue 20, Autumn 2018, on sale till February 28th.
Mitchell Toews lives and writes lakeside in the Manitoba boreal forest. His short fiction and creative nonfiction appear in print and online, in places near and far. A collection of short stories, Pinching Zwieback: Made-up Stories from the Darp is available from At Bay Press. His story ‘All Our Swains Commend Her’ won second runner-up in our 2022 Raven contest, appearing in Issue 38, Spring 2023, and ‘Piece of My Heart’ was the Editors’ Choice in the 2019 Bumblebee Contest, appearing in Issue 27, Summer 2020. You may follow Mitch on the trails or out on the water or the ice, or more conveniently at Mitchellaneous.com.
Want more Mitch? From now till the end of the month your can pick up all three issues containing his stories at a three-for-the-price of two deal! Check out the Mitchell Toews Bundle here >>
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