Greenwood

by Michael Christie

  By the afternoon, Harris can barely follow Milner’s supply chain reports or Baumgartner’s briefs on the Chemainus mill dispute he brutally halted by hiring local thugs to disperse the complaining workers. And by suppertime, his desk is cluttered with unanswered correspondence and unread land leases and documents in want of signature.

  The truth is that he’d much rather be reclining on the divan in his room, as Feeney recites Keats in his cello-like voice, before they dine together on the veranda and discuss some bit of esoteric news they’ve alighted upon in the papers. To prevent suspicion, Harris has ordered Feeney to resist visiting his room after hours, the way he had so freely on the ship, and has decided to limit his presence in the Greenwood Timber Company offices unless it’s deemed necessary.

  To ease the drudgery, Harris arranges a visit to one of his remote mills—along with his describer, naturally. Baumgartner would normally accompany Harris on such a trip, but Harris makes a calculated risk in requesting that he remain in Vancouver to assess their inventory for the big Japanese order personally. Thankfully, with no burr of suspicion in his voice, Baumgartner agrees.

  Harris and Feeney sail the schooner to Victoria, then unload the Bentley and drive north. After a numbing ride over miles of corduroy logging roads, they arrive at the first mill near sundown. Harris is thrilled to be back among the frenzied activity of a logging outpost in late summer, with its sawdust and sap and chock-chock of bucker’s axes. He delights in the shrieks of whistles, the rattles of hooked boom chains dragging his logs from the water, the floorboards torn to splinters by his fallers’ spikes, and the ringing gang saws he can feel in the roots of his teeth. They make camp in a nearby valley, and with no prying eyes about, Feeney visits Harris’s tent, though he’s always careful to leave before first light.

  The bucolic spirit of the tour comes to an end, however, when a ten-foot circular blade is thrown from a gang saw, leaving a man riven in half from forehead to vitals. It’s such a grisly scene that Feeney refuses to describe it, though a millwright later informs Harris that after completing the cut, the bloodied blade ran like a banshee into the forest and lodged itself in a tree a mile distant. Men in Harris’s employ die with some regularity—he signs their notices and pays a paltry severance to the family, which there usually isn’t. Yet to be so near this particular death disquiets him. With Feeney now at his side, Harris is newly alert to the brutality of logging and the general frailty of life. And after a ramshackle service held near the log skids, Harris cancels a final excursion to hunt rare woodland birds for his collection and hastens their return to Vancouver the following day.

  When they arrive at the Greenwood mansion, Milner and Baumgartner immediately request an emergency meeting.

  “We’ve taken stock while you’ve been on your little gallivant, sir,” Baumgartner says. “And things don’t look good for the Japan deal.”

  “Oh, we’ll find the trees, we always do,” Harris says confidently.

  “I doubt you’ve forgotten, Mr. Greenwood, but we’re contractually obliged to provide the Japanese High Command with seventy million feet of Douglas fir railway sleepers, all slathered in creosote,” Milner says in his schoolmarmish tone. “And with many of our land leases expiring imminently, even if we use up all of our existing overstock, we don’t have the trees to cut them.”

  Harris now realizes that his trip had been imprudent, and perhaps even reckless. He can’t help noticing a shift in tone among his senior employees, a heightened air of secrecy and wariness, as though they’re managing him more than obeying. Again, the memory of those dead swampers pops into his mind.

  I’m the one signing the cheques here, Harris reminds himself. And if either Milner or Baumgartner dares to challenge him, he’ll run them out of the province, not to mention his company. That said, they know his affairs better than anyone, and if this Japanese deal falls through, he’ll be finished. And, perhaps most importantly of all, so will his arrangement with Feeney.

  So Harris needs trees. It’s not like he’s never faced this predicament before. The eastern Canadian stock is long exhausted—which is why he broke West in the first place—so his only hope is local timber. When he inquires about some parcels of MacMillan’s that could suit their needs, Milner reminds him that ever since Harris undercut MacMillan for a lucrative railway trestle contract in central B.C., their rival will neither sell nor lease them a single acre, and neither will any member of his syndicate.

  “Why not buy full title on the Port Alberni parcel from Rockefeller?” Feeney interjects from the office’s margins after the discussion has stalled.

  “Mr. Greenwood hired you to be his eyes, chum, not his mouth,” Baumgartner snaps.

  “That’s enough, the both of you,” Harris says, leery of appearing overprotective.

  Perhaps Liam has a point, Harris thinks. Traditionally, Greenwood Timber never seeks full title. Instead, he’s always preferred to lease cutting rights from the Crown or private landholders. That way, after he logs the land to his heart’s content, ownership of the ugly slash and stumpage reverts to them. Yet with the stock of accessible old-growth shrinking, firms are holding tight to what they’ve got and electing not to lease cutting rights at all. With MacMillan’s syndicate united against him, a tract the size Harris needs could only be had from a foreign concern—John D. Rockefeller’s Port Alberni parcel being the best bet. In addition, Harris realizes, the parcel could include that little secluded island he’d half-burned, a place he’s been daydreaming about bringing Feeney someday, where they could perhaps build a little cabin retreat if it all works out.

  So what if he bought it outright? After all, Harris began his company by clear-cutting the Craig woodlot that he and Everett inherited, then selling off the land at a tidy profit. When Greenwood Timber was in its infancy, Harris often acted as his own purchasing agent, talking the crustiest of landholders out of their family plots. Except he can’t propose a sale of this magnitude by telegram. Not to a man like Rockefeller. And he can’t possibly travel to New York—a frail, blind Canadian cuts a pitiful figure in that world. Besides, Harris can neither shoot pheasant nor play bridge nor gossip about New York society. He wouldn’t even get a meeting.

  “We’re finished if we can’t get our hands on more trees,” Harris says exhaustedly into Feeney’s neck later that evening, after his describer has brazenly broken their rule against nocturnal visitation and snuck into his bed for the first time.

  “I have an idea,” Feeney replies. “But you’re sure to dislike it.”

  “Well, come on,” Harris says, kissing his neck, “out with it.”

  “Remind me again how you feel about parties?”

  SAPLINGS

  THE MORNING FOLLOWING Everett and the baby’s arrival, Temple asks one of her men to take the tractor and fetch a hundred maple saplings from Fritz Schelling, whose hog farm borders some of the last glades in the area that haven’t been razed for cropland. She’d prefer to select out the saplings herself, but a few years back Schelling had proposed marriage without so much as speaking three words to her previously, and since her refusal he turns the colour of ripe rhubarb whenever he’s in her vicinity.

  Normally, her men jump at an errand that alters the day’s predictability, but each man she asks drags his feet and claims he can’t drive the tractor. Word of McSorley’s interest in the baby has surely spread, and Temple knows that her men certainly don’t want anything around here that will intensify his scrutiny. And Gertie has reminded her of how much they disapprove of anyone enjoying preferred treatment, like staying in the house or having special meals prepared. So it seems a pact has been made among them to complicate matters for the new man until he moves on.

  It isn’t until after Temple threatens to cut dessert for a week that the youngest farmhand agrees and returns with the saplings by noon. Temple offers to have Gertie mind the baby while they work, but Everett declines. “Pod’s used to watching me lug things around,” he says. “And she might learn somethi
ng.”

  They take Temple’s pickup, slung low with seven jute-wrapped maples, out toward the lot line, where a dusty wind blares from the south. They drive with the windows cranked tight, the child propped in Everett’s lap as he calls out the few landmarks visible in the haze. Whenever she starts to fuss, he bangs her tiny feet together like little cymbals.

  “I tried a caragana shelterbelt out here years back,” Temple says, aware that it makes no difference to him what she tried. “Wasted some good saplings. I still don’t know why they didn’t take.”

  “There’s no surefire way to know if one will,” he says. “You can put a tree in the ground with all the care in the world, and still some switch gets flipped and it dies on you. In my opinion, the tree decides whether it’s worth the effort of going on living or not, and there’s no way you can convince it otherwise. They’re finicky things. But we’ll do our best with yours.”

  When they park, he exits the truck and lays the baby atop his shirt on the vehicle’s windward side, near the front tire. Temple goes and drops the tailgate. “The sun’s the proper angle here,” he says, while together they lift the first jute-wrapped sapling from the bed, gripping its heavy root ball from underneath. He scans the terrain, kicks at the dirt in a few places, and selects a spot. “Soil’s right. And they’ll cut the wind here just fine.” When the baked hardpan refuses a few stabs with the spade, they take turns swinging a pick to loosen it. While they’re both shovelling out the hole, a nearly imperceptible wail causes Everett to bolt back behind the truck. Temple follows and watches him flick away the spur-throated hopper clinging to the child’s cheek. “You little bastard,” he says, stepping on the bug. “Not you, Pod,” he adds, taking her up for a moment to soothe her whimpering.

  When the hole is knee-deep, they shovel in some blood meal then lower the tree, which he rotates to face north, claiming he can tell how it was oriented before it was dug up; Temple can do the same with a wheat sheaf, but trees are a language prairie dwellers don’t speak. When the time comes to refill the hole, his face reddens. “I usually relieve myself in there, before closing the dirt over,” he says bashfully. “It tricks them.”

  “Tricks them how?” Temple asks, straining to take his primness seriously.

  “It may be a superstition, but I’ve heard it convinces them that the soil’s better than it is. So they try their best from the outset,” he says.

  “Have at it then,” she says, turning around and crossing her arms.

  When he finishes, they cover the root ball over with dirt, tamping it with the backs of their spades. Over the course of the afternoon they manage to drop six more maples into the ground, placed at five-foot intervals. They sit mute during the ride back, neither of them able to lift their arms over their head, the child asleep in Everett’s lap like a cat.

  “Only ninety-three more to go,” Temple says exhaustedly when they reach the barn. At this rate of planting, Everett will be here two weeks. Even so, she’s not worried, given that McSorley’s visits land every month, give or take, a stopover he makes while cutting across the prairie by rail. Everett and the baby will be long gone by then.

  “I keep some books in that old church over there,” Temple says after they’ve unloaded the tools. “You’re welcome to any volume you’d like. Just bring one back someday to replace it.”

  “I’m ashamed to admit that I can’t read,” Everett says. “But it’s good what you’re doing here. People speak highly of this place all down the line.”

  Back at the house, Temple parts the leafy skirt of the willow that hangs all the way to the ground. “I’ve got some water in here if you’re thirsty,” she says, leading him into the canopy. Inside, the ground is cool and moist, the high dome forming a green, leafy room. Everett lays the sleeping infant down on his shirt, and he and Temple sit with their backs to the trunk. She fills two pewter cups with a wooden dipper from a bucket as the willow’s switches sway, allowing cuttings of light between them.

  “I prefer it in here to those dusty fields of yours,” Everett says. “I’m not used to seeing that far. Too much distance makes me dizzy.”

  “This farm’s previous owner was English,” Temple says. “And when he first settled here he encircled the house with willows and Garry oaks, except they all came up dwarfed and stumpy from lack of moisture. But somehow this one willow thrived. Must be an underground spring feeding it, the same one that feeds my well, I expect. Where it runs to or from I have no idea.”

  After they’ve replenished themselves, they both sit quiet for a while and listen to the sighs of the leaves.

  “So how does a child get a name like Pod?” she asks. He’d used it when he shooed the hopper from her face, and for a moment he looks stunned, as though he’s never heard the name spoken aloud before.

  “Oh, it’s more a nickname,” he says dismissively. “Like ‘seedpod.’ Those little whirlers that maples send out—she reminds me of one. She’ll have a different name someday. A proper one.”

  “When’s that?”

  His eyes go vacant and seem to look inward. “When I get her where she needs to go.”

  “She yours?” she asks, as lightly as she can.

  “I’m her uncle,” he says. “We’re headed out West. Her family lives there.”

  “You know, nobody ever accused me of nosiness,” she says. “I don’t pester those who turn up here with questions about their past. I figure if you’re here, you need to be. But there’s something I have to say. A short while back a railroad detective came around, a man named McSorley. He said he’s hunting a tramp who beat a man and has taken to the rails with a kidnapped infant.”

  “I’m her uncle,” Everett repeats tensely, though he reddens at the ears.

  She exhales. “That child doesn’t look a thing like you, Everett.”

  He turns from her gaze and pours himself another cup of water, then holds up the cup but doesn’t drink, using it to conceal his mouth while he speaks. “Think what you like. I didn’t kidnap anyone.”

  “You’re an awful liar,” she says, patting his head as if he’s a boy. “But no kidnapper ever fussed over a child the way you do that one. So I’m going to act like I believe you. Still, you’d best not linger here. Once we’ve got those trees in and you two are back to full strength, I’ll pay you for your work and you can be on your way. McSorley is about the only person in the world my men are afraid of. But they value this place even more, so I expect they’ll keep your presence here to themselves. In the short term, anyway.”

  “You’re kind,” he says, taking another sip of water. “We’ll get those trees in. Then we’re gone. You have my word.”

  THE HISTORY OF SEED CRUSHING IN GREAT BRITAIN

  THE NEXT EVENING, after the tree planting is done and Everett and Pod have eaten dinner on the porch with the others—who have allowed them a place at the table, but still greet their presence with disdain—Everett sits at a pew in the ramshackle library, where beleaguered books climb the walls in toppling towers. By lamplight he wills his eyes to read Pod’s journal, hoping that the great surplus of words collected on the shelves will somehow rub off on him, just from his sitting close by. Though the jam smears are permanent, as is the coal dust blackening its pages, he hopes to someday repair the journal’s cracked cover and preserve it for Pod as a gift. She may care to read it someday, once he finds her a good home and someone to teach her how. It will be a comfort in a life lived without kinfolk. If Everett had something like that when he was a boy, something written by his true mother, whoever she was, maybe he would’ve turned out better.

  He hears the door come open, and swiftly he snatches a book from the nearest shelf and stuffs the journal into the gap it left behind. He splits the new book before him and leans in close, feigning intense concentration.

  “Where’s the little one?” Temple says beside him, her hand alighting birdlike on his shoulder, a gesture that steals his breath whenever she does it.

  Everett points to the sleeping ba
by packaged in blankets beneath the table.

  “I thought you couldn’t read,” Temple says, easing into the opposite pew.

  “Not properly. My brother Harris was the one who got his reading and numbers while I cut wood to feed us.”

  “Is that who you’re taking the baby to?”

  Everett silently curses himself for letting the name slip. “Yes,” he says.

  Mercifully, she lets the subject drop and reaches out to examine the spine of the book before him: “The History of Seed Crushing in Great Britain,” she says. “I read this when I first bought this old place. Boring as a ten-hour sermon. You have an interest in seed storage?”

  “Sure,” he says, eager to change the subject. “You read all these books?”

  “Oh, no, no,” she says, glancing around. “There are more books here than anyone could ever hope to get through in a lifetime, which is sad if you really consider it.”

  “You’ve read some, though?”

  “Sure.”

  “How many?”

  “A fair number, I suppose.”

  “You should be proud of that,” he says, eyeing the crowded shelves.

  “Well, I guess I am,” she says, as though she’s surprised herself.

  “What kind of books do people like me usually fancy?”

  “People like you?”

  “Tramps,” he says. “Hermits. Lowlifes.”

  “The Count of Monte Cristo is popular with the lowlife set,” she says slyly. “Not sure why that is. Revenge, I suppose. Sometimes when people lose everything, all that’s left are their grudges. Also Dickens. Dostoevsky. Pulp novels. Detective stories. Not much interest in romances, unfortunately.”

  His face burns at her mention of this last subject. “And what kind of books does your type fancy?” he manages to get out.