Blood and Salt

by Barbara Sapergia

  The house is warmed by a clay peech and the Shevchenko portrait hangs on the wall. Also the icon. Daria’s embroidered scarves decorate the walls. Two upholstered second-hand chairs finish off the room. A fine meal is keeping warm on the peech. Soon they gather at the table and Mykola speaks a prayer of thanks.

  Taras hasn’t eaten such food for more than two years. Borshch, kutya, potato dumplings, garlicky beans, carrots with dill and roasted pork. As his body warms from the familiar foods, he thinks of the knife thrust so close to his heart and lets some of the terror float away. It’s not forgotten, just not as close as it was.

  He tells Daria and Mykola that he saw Halya marry another man. Knew that she must have believed he was dead. He tells them everything that’s happened with Viktor. That Viktor asks their forgiveness. That he loved Daria.

  “I should have told you before,” Mykola says.

  “Never mind,” Taras says. “It’s all over. I can never see Halya again.”

  Later, Moses, Mykola and Taras go to the barn. A smokey grey colt stamps its feet in a stall.

  “I got him from a man on a ranch near Lillestrom. He traded me for working on his horses’ feet.” Mykola watches Taras appraise the colt’s slender build, the cloud of pale blue-grey spots on his rump. “They call these horses Appaloosas. Indian horses.” Taras nods.

  “I thought you’d need a horse. He’s pretty raw for a three-year-old and he won’t be an easy one to train, but maybe you can do something with him.”

  Taras strokes the horse’s neck and feels his face and body relax. He talks to the colt in the easy way he has and picks up a homemade bridle of braided leather with a leather thong for a bit. With more touching and talking, he gets the colt to accept the bridle, although he thinks for a moment it’s going to bite him. Taras lifts a worn saddle Mykola got from Kupiak and sets it on the colt’s back. The colt snorts and kicks at the stall.

  “Easy boy, easy Smoke.” He doesn’t know what they’ve been calling the horse, but Smoke feels right. He pats the horse’s neck and flanks and calmly tightens the cinch. Leads him outside and mounts. The colt rears and sidesteps, almost throws him. Taras keeps talking and urges him forward. Lets the horse feel the pressure of his legs. “It’s okay, Smoke. We’re going to have a ride, that’s all. Well, I’ll be the one riding, but you’ll be all right.”

  Taras takes Smoke up the big hill behind the house and away across the hills, every step a conversation about whether the ride will continue and on whose terms. Taras decides to go where the horse wants to go, at the speed the horse wants to go – a roaring gallop. Smoke takes him into hills covered in woolly tufts of grass. Wind slips past, smelling of grass and sage. He’s never had a ride like this.

  After a while Smoke slows to a walk and Taras is able to turn him for home and coax him into an easy trot.

  At the top of the hill above the house, he dismounts. Smoke is still restless, pulling against the reins. Again, Taras examines his colour and conformation. Smoke is like the horse he saw that day in the old country when he went to deliver the pahn’s stallion. It must have been a waking dream, because there were no wild horses near Shevchana. No Appaloosas.

  He thinks he and the horse have things to learn from one another.

  CHAPTER 41

  The union man

  Walking to Moses’s place on Sunday, after all, Taras sees men from the brick plant headed the same way. They meet at the door as if instinct has carried them to this house upon a signal no one else can hear. Taras thinks of soldiers marching in formation. These men come from many directions, each on his own path.

  Taras reaches the open door at the same moment as Frank Elder and Frank shakes his hand as they go in. In a few minutes about thirty men have crowded into the room. They sit on benches, the floor and even the peech. Taras knows at least half of them. Some of the new men from Regina talk to Moses in Ukrainian. So does Rudy Brandt, his old foreman.

  Moses stands under Shevchenko’s portrait and waits for quiet. “We tried this a few years ago and the boss broke us. We’re stronger now.”

  He turns to a man leaning against the wall. “Like I promised, I went to Moose Jaw to ask the union people to find us an organizer. This is Cecil Coulter, and he wants to help us.”

  Coulter is a tall, brown-haired man in his forties, wearing a worn grey suit and old but superbly polished black shoes. The men look unsure. This guy might be too old to stand up for them in a hard fight.

  “Isn’t he a little old?” Taras mutters to Frank Elder.

  “Don’t underestimate him,” Frank says softly.

  Coulter gets up and stands near the peech. “I’m happy to be here,” he says. “And proud to meet a group of men who want to work together. Who want to exercise their rights. Because, yes, we are all taking part in a lawful meeting. In this province you have the right to form a union and no boss can prevent it.” When he speaks, he doesn’t look all that old.

  There’s a collective drawing in of breath. Everybody knows. This is it.

  “I think we’re all resolved here,” Frank says, “but we’re not sure what we have to do next. We’re afraid Shawcross will show up with the cops again.” A few people look at Taras. “We need to know how we can make ourselves stronger.”

  Cecil nods. “There are rules for starting a union and there’s no question you can satisfy those rules. The economy’s strong, the plant’s in great shape. Shawcross can’t pull something like that again. For one thing, too many people would know. I can promise you that.”

  Cecil speaks with feeling, with no empty posturing, no false bravado. The men like what he says. They look tense but determined, in this Ukrainian room under a poet’s gaze.

  “This is like our first meeting in some ways, though,” Frank Elder says. “Taras was here then too. What do you say, Taras?”

  Taras thinks of his days at Shawcross Construction. Rudy Brandt teaching him to lay bricks. Looking after the most amazing horses he’d ever seen. Jimmy Burns, who’ll never get to join a union. And Dan Stover.

  “That first meeting, I was a boy, I didn’t know anything. You all know what happened to me after that meeting. Two years in a stinking internment camp. And what have I learned? It’s no use to say you have freedom if you can’t live it.”

  “Hear, hear,” says Frank.

  “You have to stick up for yourself. It’s natural to be afraid, but you don’t have to stand alone.” Dobre. This time he got to say something sensible.

  The men give him a cheer. Ask what they have to do to set up a union, how it can be managed. And then, “All in favour of the union?” Moses asks. Every man raises his hand.

  They pour outside, shaking each other’s hands.

  Taras doesn’t know why he looks up the hill at that moment. He sees Shawcross on Brigadier waving his arm in a signal to advance. Then over the hill’s crest, egged on but not led by Stover, a bunch of toughs, about forty of them, come running.

  Well, they always knew there could be trouble. Just not this soon.

  “This is it, boys!” Cecil Coulter peels off his suit coat and unbuttons his shirt cuffs. “They’re drunk!” he shouts. “The bastards are drunk! See that red-faced hooligan at the front? That one’s mine.”

  A diamond willow staff Moses has been working on is propped up against his house. He picks it up and holds it out in front of him, a barrier that says, They shall not pass.

  Cecil steps forward to meet the hooligan, who’s well over six feet tall and must weigh at least 250 pounds. He can’t lay a finger on Cecil. He can’t even find Cecil, who dances around a half step ahead of him, peppering the goon with punches to the nose until he goes down spurting blood and barely conscious. A cheer goes up from the workers who see it. Who’d have guessed the union guy was a trained boxer?

  As the goon lies on the ground, Cecil spots the brass knuckles he was wearing and calmly steps on the fellow’s fingers.

  Taras strikes out at the pack as if he’s getting even for all the rotten thi
ngs that have happened to him. Six months of good eating have given him back his strength; he’s light on his feet from walking the rail cars; and he’s never been so angry. A short, stocky bruiser with black hair that sticks out like porcupine quills is suddenly in front of him.

  “Come on, you bastard,” he yells. “Come on and fight.”

  He lurches forward and swings as hard as he can, but Taras steps sideways. He only hits the guy once, in the jaw, but it’s enough.

  Moses wields his staff against the surging bodies. One of them might have a broken arm, the way he’s squealing.

  And then really close, almost in Taras’s ear, a voice screams, “Hunkie bastard!”

  It’s Stover with a poplar branch he must have found on the hill and before Taras can move, Stover whacks him across the back.

  Moses knocks it out of his hand with the staff and, while Stover’s off balance, Taras lands a heavy punch to the jaw and knocks him unconscious.

  “Hunkie bastard yourself!” he says. He catches Moses’s eye. It sounds so ridiculous he almost laughs.

  Moses wades into the fight, the willow staff whirling.

  The moment Shawcross sees his stooge fall, he digs his heels into Brigadier’s sides and gallops straight at Taras.

  At the last moment Taras dodges. As the horse passes, he grabs Shawcross’s leg and jerks him from the saddle. His old boss shoots into the air and floats toward the ground. Lands with a thump that knocks the air out of his lungs and stares at the sky, mouth agape.

  Brigadier keeps going.

  The fight boils on around them. Taras sees flashes of Cecil Coulter bouncing around, picking his victims. A guy the size of a small tree falls. Frank Elder yells furiously as he kicks a thug in the ankle, and Rudy Brandt gives another one a knee to the stomach. The plant workers are normally peaceable men who wouldn’t hit anybody, but now they feel no guilt about fighting dirty. They didn’t start this and they’re outnumbered.

  Shawcross staggers to his feet. Yells, “Goddamned foreigner!” He picks up Stover’s branch and swings it at Taras’s head.

  Taras grabs the branch, wrests it away and breaks it over his knee. Shawcross throws himself at Taras, but he really shouldn’t try it, because Taras hasn’t just fallen from a horse and had the wind knocked out of him.

  Shawcross’s right fist flies at him, but Taras moves back and the blow meets only air. Before he can set up again, Taras hits him twice, three times, and sees Ronnie’s surprise, and then his fury. He throws punch after punch, but Taras ducks some and blocks the rest with his forearm. More or less at will, Taras lands solid punches, until Ronnie’s gasping for breath. Spit dribbles down his chin, blood seeps from a cut on his forehead.

  Taras knocks him down onto the dry grass. Sits on his chest, pinning his arms.

  “Never get in a fist fight with a blacksmith,” he says as Shawcross struggles. “Stop all this right now.”

  Shawcross sees he can’t do anything more and lets his body go limp. Taras gets off him and helps him to his feet. The fight now has the feeling of a mechanism unwinding.

  “Get out of here! All of you!” Taras yells at the toughs. He keeps a hand on Shawcross’s arm.

  The toughs see Shawcross and step back from the brawl; wait for some signal. Shawcross nods.

  Taras turns to the workers.

  “Mr. Shawcross agrees to the union,” he calls out. Again the boss manages a slight nod and the workers cheer. The rowdies go back the way they came, helping their wounded.

  “You can have your union. But you’ll never have Halya.” Something of the spoiled, sulky boy creeps back into Shawcross’s face. “She thinks you’re dead.”

  “Yeah, I know all about it. Save your breath for the walk home.” Brigadier is nowhere to be seen. The horse has better sense than its owner.

  “Viktor will never tell you where she is.” Nothing wrong with Ronnie that a little spite won’t set right.

  “Look, try to get it straight. I don’t care what you think about anything.” Taras feels a growing willingness to hit Ronnie some more and Ronnie sees it.

  Shawcross turns to Stover, lying flat on the ground trying to work out what’s happened. Shawcross helps his man to his feet and they walk away. Now they’ll have to drive the rowdies back to Regina or wherever Stover found them.

  The workers cheer.

  Cecil Coulter, his white shirt torn but his face untouched, grins as he pumps Taras’s hand. “Well done, brother.”

  Moses embraces Taras. Nobody’s fooled. Life doesn’t usually work like this. A black man and a hunkie know how seldom things go their way, but it’s a sweet victory.

  Taras goes into the house and sits by the peech. Waits for the excitement outside to fade and the men from the plant to leave. At last it’s quiet and Moses comes in and puts the kettle on for tea.

  Taras’s right hand aches; the skin over the knuckles is torn. But he’s done what had to be done. He can go back to breaking land for his parents and maybe he’ll help at the smithy. Some day he’ll want to do other things, but for now this is enough.

  He knows he won’t be able to stop thinking about Halya, but he won’t try to see her. She has a new life, one he hopes makes her happy.

  PART 6

  CHAPTER 42

  The bear or the monkey

  October, 1918

  Taras and Moses walk up the hill behind the Kalyna house after Sunday supper. Smoke grazes beside Batko’s gelding in a new paddock behind the barn. It’s almost a year since Taras came home after his parole in Edmonton, and there’s no snow; but the air has the bite of winter.

  “I’ve helped Batko break enough land to prove up,” Taras says. “I’m going back to Edmonton for a while.”

  “Edmonton. Where Halya is.”

  “I won’t try to see her.” But he avoids looking at Moses. “Tymko’s written. He’s not well.”

  “So you’ll go, then.”

  Taras knows that Moses wants him to stay. That there’s nobody else he feels so at ease with.

  “Yeah. In a week or so. I’ll see Tymko first. If I decide to stay for a while, I think the railroad will take me back.”

  “Your parents –?”

  “I’ve told them. Can you come out here sometimes? Take Smoke for a run?”

  “Sure. I’ll come.” Moses smiles a little. “I’ll take Smoke out if he’ll let me.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I better get home before it’s dark, get an early night.” There’s a trace of sadness in his voice. He missed Taras during the two and a half years he was away. “I always have more trouble waking up in the morning when the light starts to go.”

  “I’ll come back, you know,” Taras says. “I just have to do this first.” They walk down the hill, stopping at the paddock so Moses can give Smoke some oats.

  “I’m thinking of making a trip myself,” Moses says. “We get a week’s holiday now, and Shawcross is letting me take an extra week without pay, so I wrote to my aunt and uncle in Pennsylvania, and they asked me to come.”

  Taras remembers Tymko telling them that some day everyone would have holidays.

  “How will you go? It’s a long way.”

  “Not so long on the train. I can get on at Moose Jaw and it’ll take me most of the way. I can sleep a lot.” He almost leaves it at that but decides to go on. “I don’t know if they’ll recognize me after such a long time. But I need to see some people who look like me.”

  “Have a good journey,” Taras says. “My brother.”

  Taras walks up to a two-storey boarding house, its shiplap weathered and needing paint. He knocks on the door and a brisk middle-aged woman in a brown print dress opens it, hears what he wants and points up the dark stairs. Taras takes them two at a time, then hesitates a moment before he knocks. A husky voice tells him to come in. In a moment he knows what Tymko didn’t say in his letters.

  He sits in a battered easy chair, a plaid blanket over his lower body, his right leg resting on a footstool. He has no
right foot, only a stump in a tied-off sock.

  Myroslav sits near him on the bed in the small, dark room lit by a single overhead bulb.

  “So you’re here,” Tymko says with a lift of his eyebrows. “There’s a chair by the dresser.”

  Taras makes no move. “What’s happened to you? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I was walking a boxcar in the yards. I fell when I tried to jump to the next one.” Tymko tries to make it sound matter-of-fact.

  “Fell?” Taras can’t believe this. Tymko was always so sure-footed. “How?”

  Tymko grimaces, leaves the answer to Myro. “Another string of cars came up from behind. They shouldn’t have been on that track –”

  “I fell,” Tymko interrupts. “Happens all the time.”

  “They bumped into Tymko’s string. Just hard enough to knock him sideways.”

  “A wheel ran over my foot.” Tymko gestures just beyond the stump. “My one and only perfect, beautiful, misunderstood right foot.”

  Taras gets the chair and pulls it near to Tymko. “How was it misunderstood?”

  “I never understood how much I needed it.” Tymko’s laugh booms out for a moment and turns to stifled sobs. “I’ve begged its pardon a thousand times since. I don’t hear much back.”

  “I guess not. How do you get by?” Taras tries to be matter-of-fact too.

  “The railroad has given me a small pension. Enough to live in this place and pay the landlady to feed me. So that’s that. But what kind of greeting is this? Give me a hug, Taras. Give the professor a hug. Where are your manners?”

  Taras leans over and hugs Tymko. Then Myro. For a few minutes everybody’s crying. Taras pulls a thin flask out of his coat pocket, finds three glasses in a cupboard and pours a generous shot of whiskey into each. What a change from potato wine in the laundry shack.