Page 19 - C.A.L.L. #40 - Winter 2015
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gatherings. Worn out, they decided community beginning here in the
their empty commune would be a valley, and it’s going to be awful,’ ” he
hermitage. “We would be hermits, said. “That wasn’t my feeling, but
each in his hermit house,” Johannes there was tension. Here we are 30
said. years later, and it’s still two men
minding their own business.” The
Now, they raise only poultry, turkey beating, he said, “was an
because the birds are easier to take awful thing.” “It was senseless, and
care of. They turned the bunkhouse it was bad,” he continued. “I think
into a library; along with a collection the community came together then
of local religious texts, there is a in support of them.”
prodigious array of “Star Trek”
paperbacks. (In anticipation, they Johannes and Zephram have
christened it the Brokeback rebranded themselves, too, as
Bunkhouse, and decorated its curators of the Mahantongo
crossbeams with saddles.) Heritage Center (that’s the barn
with its exhibits), open to the public
Zephram retired from his teaching from May through October.
job and began painting. “We try to Zephram paints vibrant animistic
live in the spirit,” Johannes said. canvases in his studio; Johannes
Some days are easier than others. frets about the maintenance on
their copious collection of
Then one day in early 2012, their structures. In a tour of the property
turkeys vanished. They found them accompanied by their enormous
beaten to death, their body parts bellowing turkeys (they have
strewn over a field and a bloody replenished the flock), he pointed
crutch tossed nearby. It had been out the peeling paint on the window
years since Zephram and Johannes trim of his hillside house.
had been threatened. The
viciousness of the attack stunned “It was a dream, and it was a good
them. Though they say they know dream,” Zephram said. “Though it
the assailant, no one was charged broke our spirits that we had no one
with the crime. Yet something to share it with. Now, it doesn’t
shifted after that day. “People came matter that we didn’t have brothers.
up to us and apologized,” Johannes It doesn’t matter if the place
said. “It traumatized not just us, but survives. We carry it with us, in the
the town.” moment. The work we did. What we
felt. Star and Bright and all the
Jim Hepler, a sixth-generation animals.
farmer and Pitman native, called it a
turning point. “When they arrived, “It’s not a lonely place. It’s just
people said, ‘Oh, no, we’ve got a gay jumbled.”
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