Knife Ennes

 

Knife Ennes

     By Mr. Douglas

I met Reverend Henry Gerbrandt at my mother’s deathbed who had married my wife and myself. He was now 90 and tottering. He spoke in the hospital, to myself and my brothers, of a soldier who had tried to confess to him that he was a murderer and could not let it rest. Rev. Gerbrandt finally said to him, after many vain attempts at some consolation, “You know, I can think of nothing that will make a bit of difference to you. OK, you are a murderer. So am I. I murdered Christ on the cross. We are told that again and again. We all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. That may not help you, but I think that is the truth you are looking for.“ When I asked the preacher if the soldier had felt healing from these words, he smiled a little smile (the same one I had seen him smile standing before my wife and myself at the altar some 35 years earlier) and shook his head. “I don’t know,“ he said
     Which reminds me of the boy from the Enns family near Winkler who chased a local preacher down the street with a knife but didn’t catch him. The boy was from a Rosetown family infamously named the Knife Ennes. The father had been known to give chase with a knife if angry enough, and the grandfather had cut someone with a one. Their history had knives in it.       

      Preacher Wiebe happened, as bad luck would have it that day, to walk by the Wesley pool hall just as Jimmy walked out of it. Wiebe had a habit of giving out religious tracts to people on the street. He flipped one out of his jacket pocket now from force of habit. A big mistake. As he pulled out the track, and mentioned that it was one, Jimmy drew a knife from his pocket and drove at the preacher with such precipitation that the goodly man fell down. That is what saved him, he later claimed. The knife missed his vital organs and only cut his skin a little at the throat. He was up like a shot running for home, Jimmy at first in close pursuit. Jimmy was a big, heavy man, and though younger, not as quick as the preacher. Jimmy had the disadvantage also of being slightly drunk and so not at his most agile best.
      Well, the preacher suddenly saw 
before him in the sidewalk gutter a stick of good heft and weight and, in mid stride, picked it up from the ground as he passed. He turned the corner of a building and waited. When Jimmy rounded it, knife first, Wiebe  let him have it right in his loins. The boy dropped the knife and fell roaring to the ground where he rubbed and twisted holding his stomach and clutching the parts just below it. He swore and cursed mightily. 
     The preacher stood over him with his stick raised, debating whether to give him some more of the same medicine. He reasoned that, since he had been so fabulously frightened, he was justified.  But also he realized that the Lord asked his servants to forgive and to love their enemies. He debated, and in a flash of insight decided upon an action. He lay a tract upon the big boy’s back, took the stick and hammered down with it six times, thinking about the sacredness of that number, reasoning that the imprint of the words would forever be burned into him and leave their spirit there as marks of wisdom if not actualizations of it.