Kupiak watches him, pats his arm. Talks about what comes next. By the time they come down, they have a plan. Daria has a pot of kasha simmering. She holds the sugar bag, weighing it in her hand, weighing today against future days. She shrugs and throws a handful into the pot.
“I’m going to town today with Mr. Kupiak,” Taras says.
Daria looks puzzled. “Mis-ter?”
“It’s how Canadians speak,” Kupiak says. “Like ‘pahn’ in the old country, only everyone is mister, not just rich people. Mykola, you are Mr. Kalyna.”
“And me?” Daria asks. “Am I Mr. Kalyna too?”
Kupiak laughs. “Mister means a man. A woman is Miss if she’s unmarried and Missus if she’s married. You’re Mrs. Kalyna. Mis-sus.”
“Mis-sus Kalyna. Dobre. So why, Mis-ter Taras, are you going to town today?”
“So I can look for work.” Daria starts to protest, so he hurries on. “Winter’s coming sooner than we think. We need money for supplies.”
Her face admits this is true. “And Halya? Are you going to look for her too?”
“Not yet. Later, when I can speak some English.”
They set out at seven o’clock by Kupiak’s pocket watch. Taras finds it strange to see the town again; while he was busy digging the garden, it vanished from his consciousness. Now Kupiak points out places he needs to know about. Coaches him on what to say. First they go to the livery stable, where the owner grooms a horse with a stiff brush.
“You have work, please?” Taras asks.
The owner shakes his head. “Nothing here. You can try the hotel.” Taras is amazed. The man said hotel, he’s sure of it. Hotel is the same word in Ukrainian.
The hotel desk clerk, barely older than Taras, also shakes his head. “Not enough business. You might try the brick plant.”
“Proshu. Brick...plant?”
“Just south of town.” He points the way. “Give them a try.”
“Douzhe dyakuyiu. Thank...you.” Outside Kupiak waits. He’ll take Taras as far as the brick plant.
The plant has many buildings, some square, some round, in front of a range of rugged hills tall enough that Taras sees them almost as mountains. Near the entrance gate a large brick building stands, where he must ask for work. As Kupiak drives away he walks through the gates alongside twenty or thirty men on their way to work. He’s almost at the door of the building when a scowling red-faced man steps in his path.
“What the hell do you want?”
“You have work?”
“If we did, we wouldn’t be lookin for no bohunk.” Taras doesn’t understand the words, but knows he’s being insulted.
A man in a black suit and matching felt hat rides up on a Thoroughbred stallion. At a hitching rail near the door, one hand on the pommel, he shifts his weight to his left foot and starts to dismount. A steam whistle shrieks to signal the start of the workday.
The horse shies, throwing the man to the ground, his boot caught in the stirrup. An iron-shod hoof grazes his head. The horse rears again, trying to dislodge the weight, and the man jerks into the air, then slams to the ground. The stallion rears again. Taras runs to him, grabs the bridle and pulls the bay down, lets it feel his strength and hear his voice, soothing. The Ukrainian words mean good boy, good boy, it’s all right all right all right. As soon as he can safely do so, he reaches back and releases the man’s boot. Tethers the horse to the rail.
The man who insulted him hasn’t moved.
Taras goes to the fallen man. His suit is dusty and torn, his forehead scraped where the horseshoe struck him. He gasps for breath, tries to move his arms and legs. Nothing seems to be broken. Taras offers his arm and the man tries to get up. His right knee buckles, but he readjusts his weight and is able to rise slowly. When he goes to brush the dust from his clothes, though, he cries out and clutches his collarbone on the left side. Taras supports him until the pain eases a little.
“Thanks.” Thanks is dyakuyiu, Taras learned it on the train. The man offers his right hand. Says something about horses. Taras hears him say “Brigadier.” That seems to be the stallion’s name.
Taras takes the hand gently. “Taras Kalyna,” he says. This must be the owner. The pahn. Fancy clothes, good horse, who else would he be?
The man sees that Taras knows little English. “That was good work,” he says slowly. He goes on. Seems to be admitting he was in real danger. Well, it’s true. He could have been injured. Or killed. But even when he’s thanking someone, he can’t help acting like he’s better than other people. He almost falls again but Taras steadies him. “Well, if there’s ever anything I can do...” The words mean nothing, but their tone says, Bye-bye, then.
“Please...you have work?”
“Uh no, I don’t.” He doesn’t need anyone. Wait, though, he’s hesitating. He says a lot of other stuff that Taras hopes could mean, “Looks like I owe you a favour.”
Taras understands the man is thinking about it.
The red-faced man pipes up. “We don’t need anybody, Mr. Shawcross.”
Mister Shawcross, that’s the pahn’s name. A sneer settles on his face. His next words probably mean, “Yes, thanks for helping me when the horse tried to take my head off,” because the guy’s face looks even redder than before.
Shawcross looks Taras over, nods. Is he thinking of a job Taras could do? He turns to the red-faced man and gives directions. Points to the round buildings in the distance. Kilns, he calls them.
The red-faced man hesitates. Shawcross says, “Now, Stover.” So, Stover is the man’s name.
Taras notices that the pahn didn’t say Mis-ter Stover. And that he has not made a friend.
Shawcross holds up a hand and says something more to Stover. He takes Taras’s arm and limps inside, past an older man at a desk looking at columns of numbers on a sheet of paper – who looks startled to see his boss with a stranger – and through to a larger room. Oak desk and bookcase. Pen sitting in a marble base. Shawcross looks stunned, but manages to take a sheet of paper from a desk drawer, scrawl something on it and hand it to Taras.
“Thank you,” Taras says, but he doesn’t know what to do next.
Stover hovers at the door. “Take him to Moses,” Shawcross says.
“Come on, bohunk,” Stover says. As they go out, Shawcross reaches into his desk and takes out a bottle of liquor and a small glass. Taras hears him pour a drink.
Stover leads Taras through an iron door into the noisy plant. A worker grabs bricks off a press, two at a time, at great speed. Others take wheelbarrows stacked with the unfired bricks out the back door to the kilns.
Stover leads Taras into one of the round brick kilns. A tall, powerfully built man in his late twenties loads bricks for firing. A man with dark brown skin and curly black hair. Taras tries not to stare. Stover greets the man as “Moses.” The name Shawcross said.
“Dan,” the man says. “What can I do for you?”
Stover says something Taras can’t understand except for the word “work.” He grabs the note from Taras and hands it to Moses.
Moses asks a question. “Work at what?” maybe.
Stover shrugs. He’s obviously against Taras doing any work for Shawcross at all. He tells Moses something about “bohunk” and “horse.” Telling what Taras did. Sneering as if it’s nothing. As if he’d have done it himself if Taras hadn’t been in the way.
Moses reads the note and nods. He looks Taras over. “Dobre dehn.” Good day.
“You know my language?” Taras is amazed.
“Speak white!” Stover kicks the dirt.
“Why should I? I’m black. Haven’t you noticed?” Moses says this in Ukrainian, and winks at Taras.
Stover starts to walk away. “Blackie and a bohunk,” he says under his breath but Taras hears. “What bloody next?”
“Ignore him,” Moses says, still in Ukrainian, “the guy’s got his head up his ass. When he can get it out of the boss’s ass, that is.” Out of the bossovi sratsi is how he puts it.
<
br /> Taras smiles but is careful not to look toward Stover.
Moses leads Taras to the back entrance of the yard and Taras helps him harness a couple of horses to a wagon. As they drive away, Taras burns with questions. How is it you speak Ukrainian? Where do you come from? Are there other people like you?
Moses gets right down to business. Has Taras built anything before? Yes, wattle fences and storage sheds. Thatched roofs. Nice, but can he work with wood? Yes, he makes carvings. What about larger jobs? Carpentry? Yes, he’s made benches and tables and helped repair the wooden church. Bricklaying? No.
Moses looks disappointed. Taras sees this will make it harder for Moses to find him something to do. But he’s thinking, weighing Taras’s skills.
“What did Stover mean, you did something fancy with the boss’s horse?”
“His horse bucked him off. I just calmed him down.”
Moses nods again. “So you’re good with horses?”
“Yeah, I know how to look after them. I learned in my father’s blacksmith shop.”
Moses smiles. “Can you shoe a horse? Mend harness? Drive horses?”
“Of course.” Finally, he’s said something that makes Moses happy.
Moses drives toward the centre of town, where, he explains, Shawcross Construction is building a school with bricks from the brick plant. On the way, he points out his house, which Taras realizes is just over a hill from the brick plant.
“Come to my place after work. I’ll tell you about Spring Creek.”
The construction site swarms with men framing walls, hauling bricks, laying bricks. The hauling is done by enormous Clydesdales. Moses takes Taras to Rudy Brandt, the foreman, who speaks some Ukrainian. Within half an hour, Taras is busy in the site’s small smithy with the biggest horses he’s ever seen. Taking off shoes, trimming hooves, reshaping and reattaching shoes. The great horses stand calmly the whole time, so strong, so amazing they bring tears to his eyes. Rudy says Taras can make new shoes for them another day.
Later there’s a bricklaying lesson. By the end of the day Taras can see it’ll be a while before the foreman lets him do anything but practise. But there’s work he can do on the inside of the building and they’ll start him on that the next day.
After another whistle from the brickyard signals the end of work, Taras walks up to a whitewashed house built in the Ukrainian style, sitting well apart from the Canadian houses of wood or brick, as if a piece of Shevchana has blown across the ocean and planted itself in the prairie. At the back, there’s a vegetable garden and a small stable. The hill he noticed earlier, crowned by a thick aspen bluff, separates the yard from the brick plant.
Moses greets him at the door. Inside there’s a peech and an icon on the wall. Wooden benches around a wooden table. Embroidered scarves draped around the icon and a picture of Shevchenko.
His new friend pours glasses of chokecherry wine. Choke-cherry is a berry that grows on the prairies, he says. Taras smiles. “Tse smachniy.”
As Moses cooks, he asks Taras many questions but reveals nothing more about himself. Soon he dishes up supper, a simple meal but more than Taras has seen in several weeks. Scrambled eggs with slices of sausage. Potatoes fried with onions. It all tastes marvellous. Smachniy. He can’t help wolfing it down. All he’s had since breakfast is a chunk of bread he brought along. Moses gives him second helpings. Finally all the food is eaten, the wine replenished.
“Now,” Moses says. “Ask me anything you want.”
Taras knows Stover doesn’t like Moses and thinks it has something to do with the colour of his skin. “Proshu,” he says, “I never saw a man like you before.”
“Black, you mean? Lots like me where I come from.”
“But why do you have Ukrainian things? How is it you speak my language?”
“I live my life as a Ukrainian. This house belonged to Pavlo Panko, my adopted father. From Halychyna. He left me the house when he died.”
“I see,” Taras says. “Dobre. How did you come to know him?” He should get back to his parents, but nothing can tear him away until he hears this man’s story.
“My family lived in Pennsylvania. In the United States. See their pictures?”
He points to two photographs in oval frames hanging on the wall above an old pump organ with music open on its stand. One shows a man and a woman – his parents – and the other his whole family, with a younger Moses kneeling in front of his mother and father. They look a little stiff in their best clothes, hair carefully brushed or, in the case of his mother and sisters, swept up on top of their heads, and proud.
“My father worked in the coal mines. That’s how he knew Pavlo. We’d all heard things were better in Canada, and Pavlo thought we should give it a try. At first, it was just something to talk about on a winter night.”
Like men in the tavern back home talking about Kanady.
“After a while there was less work in the mine and we all decided to come here. But no one told us how cold it would be. We barely had time to build shacks before the snow fell. All we had to eat was flour and salt pork. Near Christmas, my family got sick with a fever.
“I don’t know why I never got sick. Soon I was the only one walking around. First Jessie, my older sister, got it, then Rebecca, then Mama. Then Albert, my little brother. Mama told Papa and I what to do, but after a while she could barely talk. Then Papa got it.” The words catch in his throat. He takes a drink of his wine and goes on in a quiet, even tone.
“I was ten years old. I knew how to make pancakes from flour and water. How to fry up salt pork. After a while nobody but me was hungry. I tried to keep the shack warm, but the frost kept creeping up the walls and windows. Even so, they were all burning up with fever. I put damp cloths on their foreheads, I talked to them. One morning I didn’t think Mama and Papa could hear me any more.
“But Jessie was starting to get better. She looked at me and said, ‘Go for help, Moses.’
“I think that was what I was waiting for. Someone else to take charge. So I put a bridle on Billie, our plough horse, and rode to Pavlo’s homestead. It started to blizzard. I made it to the house before it hit.”
Moses seems to be looking at something far away. Taras wants to ask what a blizzard is like but doesn’t want to interrupt.
“I yelled at Panko, told him he had to come, but he said we wouldn’t get a hundred yards. Wouldn’t even know what direction we were going. He told me afterwards that I kept hitting his chest and arms and screaming. Once I ran out into the storm to get the horse and head home, and he had to drag me back. The blizzard lasted three days.”
Taras is almost afraid to breathe.
“When the storm ended, we made it to the shack. All my family were dead. Jessie, too. Frost on their hands and faces. Eyes frozen over like they were made of glass. There was a story about it in the paper. They called me the Orphan Boy.”
Taras can see it as if the people were in the room with them. No one has told the Kalynas, either, how cold it will be here, and now he wonders. Surely it can’t be colder than in the old country? What if it is?
“I thought it was my fault.”
“How could it be? You were a child.”
Moses shakes his head. “You don’t think that way. It was up to me, and I failed. Pavlo helped me bury them. We had to wait till spring. He took me in and raised me as his son.”
“Why did he build his house in town?”
“When he adopted me, he got a job at the brick plant. He’d decided that neither of us were meant to be farmers, and he wanted me to go to school. So he built us a little piece of Ukraïna. People in Spring Creek thought it was odd, but they didn’t want to fight with the man who looked after the Orphan Boy.”
“Did they call you the Orphan Boy in school?”
“Some did. Some called me the black hunkie. Some just called me Blackie. ‘Hey, Blackie! Whatcha doin’?’ I heard that a lot.” Moses gets up to make coffee.
“I only went for six years, enough to
read and write and work with numbers. Then I got a job at the plant. I always worked hard to be the best. At work I’m not the Orphan Boy. I’m the one who keeps things moving. All the stuff Shawcross has no idea how to do.”
Taras smiles. It’s not hard to believe that Shawcross is a bit useless. “What happened to Pavlo?”
“He died a few years back. He had a disease in his lungs. Years of mining coal causes it. I looked after him and he taught me everything he could.” He pauses a moment, as if not sure Taras is ready to hear the rest.
“I didn’t only learn his language. He taught me to sing the church services.”
“You’re a cantor?” Taras tries not to sound too amazed.
“Sometimes – when they bring in a priest from the city. At first, the few Ukrainians scattered around here didn’t want me. Didn’t think a black man could be a cantor. But they got to know me. Now... Anyway, there’s nobody else.”
“But are you Ukrainian, then?”
Moses raises his eyebrows at Taras. “You tell me.”
Taras doesn’t know the answer. It’s time he got back to his parents. They could never guess that he’s got work and met a black man who is somehow Ukrainian. Now they’ll be able to buy supplies for winter. He has a friend who speaks his language and Moses says there are some other Ukrainians on farms not too far away.
Other bohunks. Moses has explained the word to him.
He asks Moses if he’s seen anyone who resembles Viktor. A short, stocky, arrogant man with a smart, lovely daughter, Halya, and her baba, a tall, hardy old woman with a sharp tongue. Moses hasn’t seen them.
“Most likely he’ll be on a farm working for someone, or maybe he’s got a place of his own.”
“He’ll have a place of his own, all right. Viktor could never work for anyone else.”
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