The Friends of Meager Fortune
Page 9
After breakfast Richardson jumped aboard the Clydesdales heading out behind Gravellier and the Belgians. Miss Maggie Wade and Mr. Stewart teamed by Nolan. Then Colson and Davies and Choyce.
Two hours later, just as sunlight was flushing cold against the far ridges and flaring red on the one-paned window, the Belgians came back with the first load—six feet higher than the heads of the horses, which seemed dwarfed and puny—all big logs, placed vertically but flattened like an accordion squeezebox toward the base. That made it square and stable for the teamster and the horses to pull. The great two sleds almost disappeared under the weight of the wood. Each load was supported by heavy cross-chains.
This would be the best Jameson cut and haul since long before the war.
It was still just light and they moved past the hovels as silent as a nineteenth-century painting of some other place and time—heavy with logs and moving under a fresh snowfall, the very essence of romance those painted pictures seemed to illustrate.
They had to come off a mountain with these logs. It was what Will, when he was only fifteen and in argumentative fashion with his father, just before Byron died, said he would never allow his men to do. He would quit before he worked men on Good Friday Mountain, no matter how the trees grew up there.
The Jamesons now had no choice. So they sent this second son high, to do what the favorite son warned against a few years before he died.
With Lear tucked into his parka pocket and his chest still half bare, and the light from a lantern he carried lighting his shoulder bone as he swung it forward, Owen yelled, in a voice almost too shrill, as if he was giving something away about the hidden worry in his nature: “We have much to catch up with if we are to get our fuckin’ pay!”
And he swung the lantern in the black air, as snow still came down on the exposed shoulder, and melted there against a patch of white skin. He walked forward swinging the lantern, as if at a runaway train. But this train was on eight sturdy legs, buckled by harness and twitching in the cold.
To get them down such a steep run, Owen ordered Stretch (Tomcat) Tomkins, along with some swampers, to get out with the shovels and sand and chaff the downhill as smooth as they could. In a minute Tomkins was running alongside his mentor Gravellier whispering, and in another moment Gravellier stopped his two sled and came back over. Both men reared out of the still half-dark like phantoms and stood before Owen, who was leaning heavy to get the stone to move better on the axes.
“What is this?” Gravellier said. “Trouble here—with Stretch—you know he came in as a teamster?”
“That’s what I know,” Owen said, holding Bartlett’s double-bladed ax. “And he can go out today as a teamster, but he can’t have a team of mine—can he have a team of yours, Huey?”
Gravellier was quiet. His lips twitched against the frozen morning and the side of his big, plump face. His eyes narrowed like many people saw when he spoke at union meetings. He shrugged his huge, round shoulders. He wouldn’t take any of his men off to give a team to Tomkins, because he got a part commission on the load—and would not sacrifice one of his better teamsters. Yet if Tomkins took one of Owen’s teams, he would get commissioned on that from Tomkins himself.
“That’s settled then,” Owen said. “We both know where we stand.”
“Never mind—you go work here today,” he said to Tomkins. “We’ll have a grievance over this.”
“A grievance, Gravellier?” Owen said, picking up a bucksaw and handing it to Pitman. “A grievance—in what way—let us have the cunt now, sir!” Owen shouted, shouldering an ax and putting his foot up on the stone. “This is not a union cut—and I’ll have no fuggin’ remarks about grievance this high up. For we all have a fucking grievance, sir—and it is this.” And he swung the ax high against the snow.
Gravellier was too refined, and refused comment. He turned away and in the gloomy dawn was heading toward his load again, as paralytic snow wavered before the lantern’s light.
Owen drove the ax down into a stump, and took another bucksaw and gave it to a youngster named Fraser.
Tomkins waited to see if there was any chance at all that people would protest. He then looked at Meager Fortune and said: “Meager, you couldn’t have had all those kids by yourself.” (He did not know how many kids Meager had but decided, because the man had almost no teeth, it must be seven or eight.) He smiled at this great joke. Meager simply looked at him curiously, like, Tomkins thought, the simpleton he was.
But with no more support, Tomkins turned and went down over the hill, muttering and carrying a bucket of hot sand, heated at one of three places along the downhill just that morning.
Owen heard the muttering trail off amid the sound of tin pans and coffee cups clinking against the side of the cabin wall, and what would be familiar for months, the squeaking of timbers and sleds moving together, with the hellish offsetting sound of wind.
FIVE
Soon after, the chaff was laid almost a half mile down—and across the hastily constructed bridge, then the Belgians came very slowly past Owen Jameson to the top of the great hill. And the larger Clydesdales that Richardson teamed, Missy and Butch, followed behind by a good two hundred yards; Nolan behind by the same mark. The Clydes would replace the Belgians as the lead within a week, seeing their strength on the downhill run. This would create tension between the two crews, even more than there was now. But by that time the loyal men would be ready for any show.
The horses breathed frozen air against the sharpening wind, their breath coming now like steam from a boiling pot, and icicles already forming under their mouths. Their great broadened backs seemed to shimmer, even in the gallant dawn, with muscle. They were animals who did not walk, but like the great giant moose that they themselves sometimes met on their journeys, they strode forward, the very purpose of their life cast in the symmetry between movement and power.
Richardson, with wisps of cold about his hairless, scarped face, looked down at the dog Nancy, and tossed it a sliver of bacon. Then the horses stopped up, waiting.
The horses did what they were told, in this age-old ritual, not because they were less smart than the men, but because they knew from experience they had no training to be as brutal.
There were very few horses—even Missy—who were not afraid of a load on the downhill. Sometimes, fearing the timber, they tried to halt the sled by stopping up. If that happened the logs would fall headlong into the animals, maiming or killing them. The Jamesons had lost four horses in the last twelve years from one calamity or another. Yet these were men as fond of horses as any animal rights activist, and knew them better.
A teamster got the horses going downhill by wiping them forward and not letting up. It looked harsh and it was (although few teamsters ever hit their horses, but rather snapped over them). It was to the animal’s benefit—and that is what Gravellier, driving the Belgians, did as soon as he passed Owen.
Owen heard the snap of the ten-foot whip, heard the horses bolt down over the chaffed road, straight down into the valley in a wail of feet, clots of chaff and snow flying from their hooves.
It was at this moment the Clydesdales behind Gravellier were whipped forward by Richardson, and the same act occurred; and then a moment later Nolan’s team went, the long, limber whip snapping above the horses’ heads, and all the horses in gallop trying to keep their feet, with tons of logs behind them. Tomkins, dressed in black woolen coat and high V-shaped yellow suspenders, looked back over his shoulder at the frightening scene developing beneath him. Others ran to the edge to look, as the horses barreled down between the two shale walls as the first feeble rays of dawn came over the stark distant hills.
Within a week or so, the men would be so used to this headlong plunge that, taking a break and pissing over the embankment “into the devil’s maw,” they wouldn’t even notice.
Each trip would get longer until they hit the south fork of Arron Brook itself—some twenty miles away. All this yarded wood would then be cut from its c
hains and tumble into the freshets of water come spring, and the men would stand upon it, ride it out to the mill, which was as dangerous or more as the job they were now doing.
At this moment Bartlett and seven other “fellers” were gone out to the shine, two at a tree, to cut. A good axman could fell a tree within an inch or two of where he said he would if the wind wasn’t bad. Some made a mark with a spit of tobacco and had the tree fall upon it.
Two sawers could do a tree in less time than an axman, but some of the older men still used axes.
But with the wind coming through the mountain woods at noon hour and lasting all afternoon up at this height, it was hard to cut, or at least make a promise not to kill.
The trees would be sawed into two or three sections. The cedar were tallest, then the white pine, then the hemlock. Hooking chains to them, they were hauled to the side of the skid by roans or quarter horses if they had them—Belgians from the sleds, if not—to await loading on the two sled.
Then when tons of logs were loaded, sometimes three times higher than the horses’ heads, the teamster would start his long journey, plodding the great horses out toward the stream they had recently dammed.
With Mr. Trethewey’s Percherons and Mr. Curtis’s Belgians arriving near Christmas, time was taken that afternoon to construct another hovel near the camp. It was dug out in the snow and cold, using barked spruce, rope, and nails.
Young Gibbs, Meager Fortune, and Nolan’s boy worked at this all that day, in the freezing snowfall.
It was 1946—at the very twilight of the year, and the very twilight of this world—yet forty thousand horses still worked in the lumber industry in Canada. Missy and Butch were two. The four teams of little Belgians made eight more. The big Percherons were to come. Another team to follow. That made fourteen horses and thirty men that would cut and haul Jameson’s wood. A feat of such character and strength that it is impossible to praise.
This first day there was another dispute between the two crews. Richardson and Nolan did not want the first loads put near the bridge.
“Take them down a mile,” Nolan said.
“You’re giving up a mile of space—for what?” Choyce asked. “This is insane—”
“You’ll see how insane in weeks to come,” Nolan said.
“Goddamn do as he fuckin’ says!” Richardson demanded, his face already frozen. “You’ll see why—if it storms too bad later, we can place them near.”
Gravellier knew another reason why. And he said: “You are crazy boys, aren’t you?” No one knew if the emphasis was on crazy or boys; Gravellier was too political to make it clear.
However, if time got short, these two and perhaps Curtis and Trethewey to come were going to run down loads in the dark. And they wanted space to drop their loads next to the bridge if they worked at night.
When they made the flat, one huge sled after the other was drawn by the horses, and the men shielding their faces from the wind would begin their sojourn over the flats and hills of snow.
Now and again they would yell back and forth to each other, and their voices would dissipate in the gusts.
This was the first full day—there were only 129 more to go.
SIX
Owen went out the next week to see Buckler at the mill.
Buckler and he decided they needed new saws, and Owen was to travel to Nova Scotia after Christmas to buy them. He was angry about this; feeling claustrophobic in the mill might have made him so. Feeling already the strain of overwork—which came because he had never taken to it like Will. He had never taken to firing men. Or to hiring them, for that matter. Besides, though he did not admit this, his leg was paining again.
“Will was a man for the woods, I am not,” he said to Buckler.
That is, Will was a man for men, and Owen knew he was not that kind of man. He had been solitary and should remain such.
They needed new saws, new barker, new sluices—and if they were truthful, a new mill.
That night Owen did not get home until late. He ate supper with his mother and later went upstairs, where he drank Scotch to quell the pain in his leg. Then he undid his pants to look at the wound. It was now red raw again, and irritated from brushing against his Humphrey pants—and if not careful, he would run a fever from it.
He decided to clean it, which he did, and then lay down to sleep the night.
But at eight o’clock he heard some people come in. They had come to celebrate Mary’s sixtieth birthday, and he was called to join them.
He walked down the stairs and around the corner to the room, with its high ceiling and pine walls, and saw in the corner, kneeling at the base of the tree, Camellia. She looked up at him, startled. Her face lighted up, and standing, she said: “Come with me—right now, Mr. Jameson, sir, and get your Christmas present.”
“Go—where?”
“I don’t want none of them to see it,” she said.
She grabbed him by the hand and led him into the pantry and closed the door. It was dark, the pine wood smelled of earth and spices, and her hair fell in front of her face. This terribly compromised them. That she didn’t know made him stay.
“A present—what for?”
She shrugged, took out a medal of something or someone, and lifted it over his neck.
“Saint Jude,” she said, as she straightened the medal, “the saint of impossible cases. You have your VC, and I have this. I was going to up and leave it for you—I even wrapped it—but now I can put it on.” She straightened it, and then put it under his collar.
“Who is he?” Owen asked.
“Saint—great saint—I promised long ago to pray every day for the intercession of Saint Jude.” Then, seeing his incomprehensible look, she broke out giggling.
“So I’m impossible.”
“No—but your job is—everyone is saying men will be killed—the paper has blasted you for being up there. That’s why we need Reggie back,” she said. “You save the mill, Reggie will get the wood.”
“What about praying to God—instead?”
“God hears what one prays to Saint Jude.”
“Well, I’m not Catholic.”
“You don’t need to be to have an impossible task ahead,” she laughed, stroking his shoulder suddenly in delight.
He was startled by her beautiful troubled face and black eyes.
“Well, thank you,” he said.
He had to move by her to open the door, pressing his body against hers and smelling—what?—some sweet candy on her breath, and they went back out into the living room.
Everyone had watched them leave. None watched them as they came back.
The idea that Owen had saved her husband only to have her cheat on him was one of the spokes in the wheel of rumor that now turned by her sweet breath against its hub. It was defaming, vulgar and in a way understandable, and was openly criticized and secretly applauded.
There was at about this same time a rumor started by a feeling of abandonment in that house on George Street, a rumor not so malicious or predatory as it was speculative, stating that Owen and Camellia had been seen together, not just at the house but in an embrace at a secluded place. It was speculative because Lula was so sure people were being dishonest with her, so frantic that they would not tell her the truth about these two, she took a dark and somewhat sardonic stab at what the truth might be—now that Owen had not come to visit after being home a month.
There was a place where lovers met as kids, and where the worst thing in Camellia’s life had happened.
Lula was frantic to know how serious Camellia and Owen were. The Steadfast Few when they periodically visited suggested something terrible but declined specifics, to elicit Lula’s awe and heighten suspicion. Then they left her to her imagination.
If she said Winch’s cave—that dank, murky place of lost childhood and young girls’ pregnancies—if she spoke of them being seen there, she would be able to tell instantly by a person’s look if the rumors were true or false.
She did not know which person to tell, but needed someone who might tell her if what she believed to be true was indeed true.
So she told one person, the one who came late afternoon on December 22. It was the best person, for Solomon Hickey would know, and keep nothing from her—and if she mentioned it, she would be able to tell by his look what was going on.
So she told him that she had heard, and wasn’t it just like Camellia?—hoping he would say he had or hadn’t heard it himself. “I have heard from someone, I won’t say who—and I heard Camellia is down there with him now—having sex on that old cot, planning their getaway—to go to Florida, mark my words—I can tell! There is an old cot back there to lie on and everything. Who knows where poor Reggie is, cheated on already, what everyone says, my word. And Owen with all his kind talk to me before he left to play hero, what was it for, tell me that!” She trembled and sounded angry and wounded.
Solomon only added that he himself was very heartsick about Camellia now, remembering all the nice things Lula’s family had done for the girl.
Yet at that instant she knew it wasn’t true, and just her imagination. She tried to lessen the import of what she had said, but Solomon left and didn’t come back. She was awake most of the night. How could she just say this, without seeing or knowing anything about it—especially about Camellia? Because she had been alone and worried and her mind played tricks. But more important, she had always been able to say whatever she wanted about whoever she wanted to, without anyone saying a thing, or thinking less of her.
The following morning it was reported on the radio, which she constantly listened to for information about the town, that Owen had been in the woods for more than two weeks, taking provisions into Good Friday Mountain. Worse, Buckler himself phoned to ask her if she would like to see Owen over Christmas. She said she’d be delighted to. But then her heart sank. How could she, after what she had said? Certainly people would find out she had said something this mean.