by Patrick Lane
He could see his battered boxcars at a loading dock outside Baton Rouge, men leaning into their work, the lumber piling up on some bayou siding, redneck drivers in flat-deck trucks with bald tires and worn brakes lined up to haul it away to construction sites for floors, walls, and roofs. Shotgun shacks and mansions, they were all the same. The sweat would be running down those black backs. He could smell them. His own men stank the same, the sun hot on their bare arms and necks, their skulls cooking inside hard hats and turbans on the loading docks and chains, blackflies and horseflies swarming on their skin, salt sweat running down their chests and bellies as they filled his boxcars.
They were lucky they had work at all.
Another year, maybe two, and he’d be gone. Once the big outfit down at the coast sold the government log quota they’d fire everybody, auction off the equipment, and torch the buildings for insurance. In five years the Americans would own everything from Kamloops to Jasper. The last few independent mills along the river would die. The towns and villages would shrink back to farms and horse ranches and the mill workers and loggers would walk away from their trailers, shacks, and houses and head south to the city to look for work, most of them ending up on labour gangs or construction crews, collecting welfare, pogey, or down on skid row smashed on booze and drugs when they weren’t hanging around the union hiring halls for a chance to work the fishing boats or catch a few weeks logging off some float camp up the coast. Some would head out to the prairie but there was only summer work there. In the winter everything on the plains died in the cold.
He looked at Art Kenning sitting in his chair with a mug of bad coffee. Art was telling him again what had happened at Jim McAllister’s trailer last night, the wife his sawyer had.
Claude shuffled the papers on his desk. “It sounds like she left town,” he said. “Women do that, you know. They just up and leave.”
“But how? She couldn’t walk or anything.”
“That doesn’t matter,” said Claude. “You said she was small. Easy enough to carry her out to his truck if he needed to. Anyway, Art, she’s his business and you keep out of it. If he says she’s gone, then she’s gone.”
“She’s disappeared,” Art said. “Vanished, just like that. There isn’t a trace of her anywhere in that trailer.”
He waited but Art said nothing more. Claude knew Art had spent most of the night drinking and smoking down in Wang Po’s hole under the cookhouse. Art didn’t look completely wrecked, but he wasn’t totally there either. Claude didn’t care. What Art did with his nights was okay with him so long as he was close enough to hear the whistles. Art was on call twenty-four hours a day. His job was looking after the men at the mill when it was running and when it wasn’t. That was number one. On top of that he could look out for the local farmers and hill people, their wives and kids and sometimes even their animals, so long as he didn’t forget who he was working for, who was paying him his wages.
But this morning he looked beat.
“You get too involved, Art,” Claude finally said, tired of the man sitting there. “You always have, in the war, back when I first met you. Your problem is you think you can fix things. You can’t, you know. Most all a man can do is keep a foot or two ahead of whatever’s dragging at his heels.”
Art looked up from his coffee. “Marie told me my lifeline was broken.”
“Who?”
“Marie. You remember her. Marie in Paris.”
“Christ, Art, what the hell are you thinking about that old stuff for?”
Art tried to smile. He tried to show Claude he was okay. “But what are you going to do about Irene?”
Claude shrugged. “Nothing changes, Art.”
The mug in Art’s hands slowed to a stop, his finger tracing a crooked line along the handle. When Claude didn’t say anything more Art began turning it again.
“Why not?” Art asked.
Claude took a breath and let it out slow. What kind of a question was that? He’d long ago given up trying to figure Kenning out. What Art didn’t seem to understand was that people like McAllister were the same as they’d always been, in the war or up here on the river.
“I don’t know where I am today, Claude,” Art said. “Sometimes, like now, I don’t even know who I am. Every time I look I find someone different.”
“Who? You mean other people?”
The hot coffee in Art’s mug slopped over onto the knee of his pant leg, but he didn’t seem to notice. He rubbed at it absently with his free hand. “Why do you keep asking me? I told you already.”
“Jesus, Art, you’re a mess.”
Claude picked up the stack of waybills the station agent from across the tracks had delivered an hour before and shuffled them into a loose pile. Seven boxcars loaded for Baton Rouge. They’d go out on the Sunday night freight to Vancouver, then to the States.
“Look, Art, Jim was in to see me an hour ago,” Claude said.
Art’s hand started shaking. He put his mug on the floor by his boot. “What did he say?”
Claude ignored the question. “You know how important Jim is to this outfit, don’t you?”
“Claude,” said Art. He began to speak slowly, carefully. “Jim’s woman cut herself up with his hunting knife. I was there last night at the trailer stitching her up and now McAllister says she’s gone. What I want to know is where’d she go? It’s not like she walked away or caught a train. The only train last night was the through freight to Edmonton.”
When Claude said nothing, Art leaned forward, his hands on his thighs. “Christ, Claude, she couldn’t even crawl successfully. Joel, he was there listening at the back of the trailer. He knows what happened.”
“What the hell was Joel doing up there with you?”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Art. “He’s not important, Claude. He was just there. You know how he wanders the village half the night. I’m sorry I even brought him up. This’s about Jim having his wife cut herself. What I want to know is what did he do with her?”
“Dammit, Art, wake up. I swear the shit you’re smoking at Wang Po’s has addled your brain.”
Art placed his face in his cupped hands as if trying to stop it from sliding off his skull. “I’m going crazy,” he said. He dropped his hands and attached them to his knees again, his fingers gripping the worn cotton of his soiled jeans. “You’re still the same gawdam major you were in the war.”
Art waited and then spoke into the silence. “Claude, she’d have bled to death if I hadn’t gone up to that trailer. It was McAllister who came and got me at my cabin. He’s the one asked me to help her. Didn’t he tell you that?”
“He never mentioned you or Joel. We talked about the work that needs doing on the draw cables for the carriage on the head rig. They’re going to need replacing. Look, Art, you and me were in the war together. We saw all kinds of things. Sometimes I look back and wonder if half of what I remember even happened. The parts I do remember, I work hard to forget. Listen to me. You were down at the cookhouse drinking whisky and smoking with the chink all night. How the hell do you know anything? Remember, I gave you this job as much because of the war as because you were hard up. I found you in Japtown down in Vancouver and I can send you back. You can sit in the same bar on Water Street and go into the same gallery and die with a pipe in your mouth and a bottle in your arms, the rest of you wrapped around a toilet that won’t flush. Don’t try to make me pick between you and McAllister. I can get another first-aid man up here Monday on the passenger train from Kamloops, maybe not as good as you, but what does that matter so long as he knows what a bandage or a sling is. McAllister’s the best I’ve got for cutting second-rate, crap timber into usable spaghetti two-by-fours and sixes. I’ll never find another sawyer good as him to come up the river.”
“She cut herself the way you’d cut meat,” Art said, his eyes closed, his body beginning to rock backwards and forwards.
Claude waited and when Art didn’t continue, he went on: “Why don’t you go g
et some sleep. There’s the dance tonight up at the hall. You should rest awhile and then go and take a few turns with somebody’s horny wife, some half-assed farmer’s daughter. If you’re lucky you could take one out back of the hall into the bush. Old Turfoot’s got that girl of his, what’s-her-name, Myrna? You could have her if you want. God knows your friend Joel does her every chance he gets. And there’s always the Indian girl at the café. It’s me who locks and unlocks her this weekend and she’s going to be at the dance. You could take a run at her. She’s prime stuff.”
“She’s just a kid, Claude. Jesus Christ.”
“There’s never enough women there for the men to dance with. The men deserve some fun. Her too. She’s been in that lean-to every night for months.”
“You haven’t changed.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You were the same in Paris.”
“What the hell’s Paris got to do with anything?”
“Remember Hélène?”
“Who’re you talking about?”
“That night at the Olympique, remember?”
Claude just looked at him.
“Hélène? Remember her?”
“La petite pute?”
“She wasn’t a whore,” Art said. “She was just a girl in the war. You never understood that, did you?”
“That was a long time ago, Art.”
Claude said what he said cold. He said it like he was somewhere else, alone.
“What about Irene McAllister?” As Art spoke he knocked over his coffee mug, the coffee spilling. The mug rolled under his chair and he left it there.
Claude sat quiet a moment as if he were pulling wayward parts of himself back into line. “Art?” he said quietly. “Leave it alone.”
“I’m not crazy, Claude. You had to see that trailer today. He cleaned up every sign of what happened last night and he took her stuff away. Even the joy-shack’s cleaned up. There’s nothing in there but Jim’s tools and a few boxes.”
Claude slapped at a mosquito on his arm and missed, the tiny insect circling up around his head. He leaned back and clapped his hands together, the mosquito lifting in the fluff of air above his fingertips and crooning across the room. “I don’t know anything about his gawdam joy-shack,” he said.
“Don’t, Claude.”
Claude watched as Art bent down and fumbled for his coffee mug. He caught at the handle and set the mug upright beside the chair leg. There were times Claude wished he’d never found Art down in Vancouver. Art was a good first-aid man, but he didn’t know how to leave the drugs alone, the booze. There was never enough for him. What was he supposed to do when Art was like this? The opium twisted Art into knots after he came down from it, yet he’d go back and do it again and again. And the war? Hell, Claude didn’t know how many times he’d heard about that Dutch farm woman. He should’ve had Art shipped back home when he got wounded. They’d been fighting a war, for Christ’s sake, too busy to worry about a couple of women. And by the time Art came to him about it they’d moved on toward Amsterdam. By then the Scheldt and Island were yesterday’s news. The Dutch could look after their own.
Art had told Claude he had to talk to the corporal who’d been there, but the corporal, Alvin something or other, had got himself wounded right after it happened and was back in England on the way to being shipped home. Claude never did try to run him down. Hell, he should’ve had Art shipped back home when he got wounded at Moerbrugge. Anyway, it was years ago, for fuck’s sake. And he’d heard the Tommy kid was killed on leave in Paris later. Beaten to death in an alley, knifed, or shot, he couldn’t remember. What was his last name, Bidowski or Bidumski, some bohunk name. He was a shifty prick. And Paris? Christ, Art couldn’t leave that alone either.
“Jesus, Art,” Claude said. “Let it go.”
Art sat back, his hands coming apart like wood does when it’s split.
“What?” Claude cried. “What do you want from me?”
Art stared into his hands.
“Go home, Art. Go back to your cabin. Come Monday morning when the start-up whistle blows I want to see my sawyer sitting in the saw box. When that first log rolls onto the head rig I want McAllister breaking it down into slabs and cants.” He took a deep breath and went on: “Listen. I count on you to do what needs to be done, and what needs to be done here is for you to leave all this alone. You understand?”
Art got himself up slowly.
“And leave the pipe alone. Stay away from that stuff.”
Claude watched him shamble out of the office. Art looked beat-up and broken down, but it seemed to Claude that whatever the beating was it took place a long time before Irene McAllister. The war didn’t do Art Kenning any good, Claude thought, and then, a little belligerent, he spoke into the quiet of his office: “Well, it screwed up a lot of people, didn’t it?”
Loose papers were scattered across his desk. Between his hands in a messy stack were the week’s production figures and invoices he had to sign off on so the clerk could authorize payment. There was the guy down in Kamloops asking for another donation to the Social Credit Party war chest, an election coming up in a few more months. There were the Forestry guys to pay off and the highways minister too. That asshole. It never ended.
A vague image of Hélène, one of the little whores he’d had whenever he was on leave in Paris. La petite pute. He always called her that. She never seemed to mind. She knew Marie, the woman Art always saw. He couldn’t remember if Marie was a whore too. Why did Art always bring those days up? Whatever was the matter with him might go away if he quit the booze and the drugs. His first-aid man. Christ!
“Fuck ’em all,” he said as he pushed the papers away. He glanced at his watch. Eleven o’clock. He’d unlocked the Indian girl at seven that morning. She’d be making sandwiches for the men now, pouring coffee, men leaning over the counter trying to catch a look at her tits, her legs and ass. Pretty little thing. He’d have to lock her back up when the store closed. But he’d be talking to her later one way or another anyway, the dance and all. Maybe he’d take her over to the house for a drink before taking her to the Hall. Get her going a little.
Maybe.
What the hell.
Another year, maybe two and he’d be gone just like the mill would be gone. Once he was finished here he’d move the wife and kids out of that house in Kamloops and take them down to Vancouver or over on the Island. Things were starting to boom again down there.
Art would be at Wang Po’s again come night. Claude knew it like he knew the sun goes down. They were the two men in the village he didn’t have to worry about. They had nowhere to go. All Art needed was to get his mind off Jim McAllister and his wife. If Kenning did go to the dance later, he’d go wrecked on booze and whatever else he had. What happened up at McAllister’s? Hell, Art would have trouble remembering any of it tomorrow.
Claude went over to the window and looked down on the mill yard. Art appeared below him walking almost steady in his boots. One of the Sikhs waved as Art passed by, but the first-aid man didn’t wave back. Head down, hands in pockets, Art crossed the main-line tracks and out of sight.
Claude sat back down, picked up the waybills, and shook them together again, tapping them into a pile on the desk.
“McAllister,” he said. “If it’s not one goddam thing it’s another.”
THE OPEN BOX OF REDBIRD MATCHES and beside the box a delicate pile of charred matchsticks, little withered twigs, crinkled and black from burning. Art held a burning match between his finger and thumb and watched the flame creep down the pine splinter and sear the blackened blister on his skin as the flame consumed itself.
Gentle, almost tender, he placed the fragile stem on the stack with the others. It was important that the carbon sticks not break. If one did then somehow it would be a failing, the burning of his finger and thumb wasted.
He tried to feel the pain, but it was far away, and happening to someone else, not him. His stomach was a knot inside
him, the bleeding from ulcers that wouldn’t heal. His morning shit had been as usual studded with black blood.
The cat jumped up onto the table and brushed against his arm, a white-footed mouse squeaking in her jaws. The pale, translucent ears of the rodent flared as if hearing something huge and unimaginable, its tiny eyes staring wild from its frail skull.
Black and screaming.
Art didn’t waver as he pushed the cat gently to the floor. He watched her crouch and kill what she had offered him, the tiny bones crackling wet in her teeth. Finished, the cat sat in the patch of light coming from the window. One ear was tilted forward listening to the room, the other turned to the door and the end of the early morning rain. The quick shadow of some small bird, a siskin or nuthatch, flittered across the streaked glass. Something alive out there in the world. The cat stretched, then settled onto her paws, closed her yellow eyes, and purred.
Art let his breath go, slowly, surely.
“God…damn…Claude,” he said, each word slow and separate.
A pale light in the window glowed, a few last drops of rain falling in a slow mist as the sky began to clear. Clouds stumbled over the mountains across the river. Swamp grass moved barely by the marsh. He looked to the last of the alders across the field by the raised grade of the railroad. Their leaves shivered like small animals shaking water from their backs. Beyond the berm of the railway lay the river unchanged by the rain, constant in its flow.
He imagined it, deep and brown, flowing and flown.
An empty bottle stood on the raised plank shelf by the door. He’d taken two long drinks before going to see Claude at the mill. He’d needed something to clear his head after the long night, what little sleep he’d had passed out and dreaming. He’d finished what was left of the bottle when he got back, his belly still raging, but quieter by the hour. Beside the empty was another, sentinel, the whisky swirl three inches below the lid.