The Friends of Meager Fortune

by David Adams Richards

  It was like a Greek tragedy. And how many ships might be launched? Matheson looked at Camellia, and beyond her agitation and tired face she was beautiful. She could launch quite a few.

  SEVEN

  Owen returned to the mountain, arriving sometime in the afternoon of the fiftieth day of the haul.

  There was much cut since he had left; the wind for once had died. Far above, the sky was mute—incomprehensibly silent, as if the hundreds upon hundreds of dying trees needed requiem. It had not gone above minus nineteen in two weeks. The air was flattened and dead. Already two of the men had been injured, one by a widow-maker—a loose branch overhead—and the other by a glancing ax. One had stayed in work, but the other, a good faller, went out. It was poor conditions here, and Owen knew it. He had to keep the men happy or he would lose most of his teamsters.

  There was, as anyone who has been in the true cold knows, a stilled, petrified feeling in the air, a lonely quiet within the camp when the men were on the job.

  The cook’s window—a luxury—was as clear as the great blue sky beyond the huge stove, and Owen could look out on the sled rails as slick and as effective in moving the big two sleds as electromagnetic force on a railway track. He finally saw a moose bird flitting here and there—and then a moment later, the great Clydesdales Missy and Butch, now driven in the lead. This was the team the other horses were to follow down. Richardson was atop the Clydes.

  The horses stopped dead. They had to pass their hovel on the way to the precipice and stopped for a second, hoping they could trick the teamster into thinking it was night. Richardson only said, “Out,” and onward they plodded.

  Missy turned her head toward Butch and gave a snort filled with snot and mist.

  Behind them came the Belgians, Hans and Gretel, with Gravellier; with their ornate buckled harness, making their big black chests look proud, and they too slowed up until they heard “out” and onward they went—towering tons of wood above them, some peeled of limb and bark and some of limb alone, but most with flecks of bark trailing off the timber like ghosts’ arms, which is what the men called them, especially in the twilight snowfalls that happened here.

  After Gravellier came Miss Maggie Wade and Mr. Stewart, which Nolan teamed, both squatter but with thicker legs than Hans and Gretel. Then five minutes later came something Owen had not expected, the huge Percherons. The outside one had red eyes, and he pranced sideways in his traces to give indication of both the immense strength in his legs and his independence from the horse he was teamed with. Although the Percherons were leaner, both were a head taller than the Clydesdales. They were known as Billy Budd and Outlaw Cole Younger, and upon them was Trethewey, a black man who was known to have knocked out three men with one swing of pulp. Unfortunately one of the men he had knocked out was Gravellier, who had kept him away from a job for no apparent reason—which to Trethewey meant it was because he was black. It was most unlikely it was because he was black, but because—black, brown, or white—he was not a paid member of Gravellier’s circle.

  Owen took a cup of tea and went back out into the frozen day, through a doorway covered in a sheet of ice, with dozens upon dozens of beer caps set in this ice, a splendid decoration of glazed art. He limped toward the loading skids, which stretched far down through the shine, punctuated here and there by a smell of horse shit and piss. Down he went into the solitary, silent wood, until he could hear the scrape of the peelers and the unmistakable crack of a tree coming down. There he saw the tips of a horse’s ears sticking up innocently beyond an alder swale.

  Curtis was in with his team, and was busy leaning against the grainier of his two off-colored Belgians while Gibbs, the young tend team, stood beside him holding some rein. The leather reins stayed limp in Gibbs’ hand as Curtis leaning full weight looked half in a wrestling match with the hoof. Gibbs was by now so dirty Owen couldn’t tell if the hair and smeared sweat over his clothes was his or the horse’s, or the smell was horse or human. Or if the trees were any less human than those others.

  No one bathed in here, there was no way to—you washed—at least some did. And for the most part, once the cold weather came you slept in your clothes.

  Curtis, on his horses named Wildgreen and Duff Almighty, made a turn into the yard to pick up a load. In that time five trees had come down to ground, and the peelers began to limb.

  They did five trees while Owen was there, each twice to three times the diameter of their bodies, while the wind picked up against them and the great trees began their swaying, like a top-heavy waltz in a crowded gym. The sky to Owen was almost morbidly blue above them with some distant, forlorn knocking. The unending cold had silenced almost the entire tract. Now and then a moose would come into the range of horses trying to get hay, and sometimes the men would take pity on its gnarled old back. Only the moose birds landed and flitted here and there during twelve o’clock break. Only Meager Fortune, as kind to the birds as the people, went into the shine each day with food and stories to tell not just the men but the birds themselves.

  Owen looked at these men, all of them—and was saddened by their plight, and angered by his. In their great ignorance they would be the ones to build the world.

  His leg ached now unremittingly throughout the day as he walked. And blood oozed out of the wound.

  Two sawyers, Fraser and Pitman, sawed these trees through in a matter of minutes—depending on the length, either in two or in thirds. They were chained and hauled up to the skids, where they were loaded by men and chains onto the two sled, a very dangerous job as strong men got under the block and tackle to help and any slip would mean injury or death. They pitted day in and out their blood and bone against the solid wood that would be carved into beds where ladies dreamed.

  Curtis waited standing between his horses as they loaded his two sled up.

  “Get up out of there, you useless fucking son of a bitch,” you could hear as someone beat a horse forward, hauling the logs on the devil’s mount that had gotten stuck between stumps. They had to back the horse up and turn in another direction. Once in awhile you could see the problem down in the shine. Other times you couldn’t until the Belgian broke through to the top of the skid road, plodding forward with limbs stuck in his tack, his eyes blazed by fear and anger, driven by the men who acted like minions behind him, the Belgian furious in expended strength as snow blasted about his face.

  Men could become insensible in a second, thinking that the horses—straining every muscle and working from dawn till dark, fed too much and brought to their feet by Spanish fly or laudanum—were getting caught up just to spite them—that the wind and the smell of one another was the devil, that the devil’s mount was the devil, that the stumps that impeded their progress were intentionally trying to, that God himself was doing this to make fun of them. And thinking of their brothers or sons at home, whiling away the afternoon, would make them furious with themselves. As their time in increased, so did their ability to become erratic.

  “Up out of that, up out of that, you useless no good mother fucking cocksucking son of a whore,” politely to the horses now straining to break free of everything in the world that had ever caused them pain.

  The sound did not in any way stop until after pitch dark.

  At supper Owen noticed Stretch (Tomcat) Tomkins staring at him and eating by himself. Stretch believed everyone in camp owed him an apology for an incident that had recently happened. The two crews had been at each other’s throats over it, and it had sucked vitality away from the cut. Today Owen had tried to mediate.

  It had to do with the one-armed teamster Richardson. Tomkins felt that it was bad enough to be taken from horse. But Richardson, one-armed—how could he ever be given the Clydes? Tomkins believed he himself was entitled to them. Gravellier egged him on.

  So, Tomkins had approached Owen about Richardson more than two weeks before. And he got Gravellier to approach him as well.

  “Why is Richardson up on the Clydes?” Gravellier asked, hauling
at his peaked hat as he spoke, his eyes squinting accusingly as snow, numb as a wound, fell against his peak and all around was gray.

  “He is a good teamster,” Owen said.

  “But—but he only has one arm.”

  “Yes, and he has acquitted himself with one arm as well as most teamsters with two—”

  “You mean he is as good as the others?”

  “Every bit,” Owen said.

  “Better than I,” Tomkins said, standing behind Gravellier and looking over the man’s broad shoulders.

  “Something he does not have to prove for this job,” Owen said.

  “If it was Will,” Gravellier said.

  “If it was Will my whore—if it was Will—kindly let me tell you if it was fuckin’ Will—No one like Tomkins would be here—if, sir, it was Will. You speak of Will Jameson, you speak quietly and with reverence, and don’t you ever suck life from me by saying, ‘If it was Will.’ And I will tell you this: Richardson is for me on Good Friday, hell or high water—and both hell and high water make you blanch.”

  He felt bad about this outburst and tried to make it up. Yet he knew something others did not. After Richardson had lost his arm, Will and Reggie had taken him on a moose hunt. It was there, after they had killed and quartered a twenty-four-point bull, Will being drunk said that Richardson lost the arm intentionally to get out of service if war came. Richardson pushed him against the wall, drew a knife from his boot, and put it against Will’s throat.

  “Cut,” Will said, “and then I won’t have to carry my quarter out.”

  It was to Richardson like drawing a knife against Alexander the Great, and he put it away. But it was Will who felt lessened by demeaning the man. So said to Owen: “Richardson is always to have a job with Jameson—until his death.”

  So it was.

  Once Owen had gone back out after that initial conversation, tension had built as the cold came, and the days below on the flat where Tomkins watered the sled tracks, and chaffed on the downhill, were long and tedious. He’d not come to do this, not as a professional teamster. And now the rumor that Owen had gone out to fuck Glidden’s wife was rampant in the air. So blaming him this, it was easy to blame the crew Owen admired.

  The two crews—one supporting Tomkins, one Richardson—became more and more competitive. It was said that whips were used against one another. No one can say if this happened, because those alive will not say so now. Bartlett, it was said, ran between both camps explaining them to each other, while remaining out of the fray himself.

  But this was a world unto itself and therefore the world, and people, hid envy and spite only so long. But envy and spite were there even among friends, like Curtis and Nolan, or Nolan and Richardson, and had to be tempered with wisdom.

  This conflagration was normal for Stretch Tomkins to be involved in. Never was there a camp where he did not try to receive the tributes given others or take immeasurable credit for the slightest thing he himself did. After a time he became vociferous in his disrespect of Richardson—telling Gravellier that Richardson was formally Richard—French—and he had hidden his ancestry for shame. So Richardson would come on the cut and Gravellier would not speak to him.

  “You’d not be in a union of mine,” Gravellier would say.

  “Who the fuck would ever want to?” Richardson would answer.

  “I should take you down a peg or two of that load.”

  “Don’t let fear stop you,” Richardson answered.

  It was told to me that Tomcat Tomkins (a man like ourselves) took to mimicking the way Richardson’s empty shirt sleeve was looped in his belt as he hauled back on the reins, to get others to laugh. That is, Colson, and Choyce and Lloyd. Encouraged by this, Tomkins took to teasing the teamster at supper.

  Like most targets, Richardson at first did not know he was one. Then he took to ignoring it. He prayed more with his bible at night. He prayed about what he should do. In any case, the torment Richardson was going through was visible to those who liked him.

  “What are you praying for?” Tomkins said one day. “That’ll not get you out of here alive.”

  Richardson looked down at his tormentor from the top of a load, its chains frozen across the backs of 108 logs, his eyes watering because of the vicious wind, his one strong hand black on the reins:

  “No—no one gets out of here alive,” Richardson said.

  Tomkins turned and walked away, hauling up his Humphreys. He did not know, as he broke wind and took his chaffing pail, that he had made a fundamental mistake. To Richardson, he had challenged his right to exist.

  Four days before Owen returned to camp, Richardson without any provocation picked up his hatchet from the side of his load, where he always stuck it, and threw it into a tree a foot over Tomkins’ head as he was pulling up his Humphreys coming from the outhouse. Then he jumped from his logs, a good fifteen feet down, nonchalantly walked over and took the hatchet back.

  “Don’t be botherin’ me no more, you lanky puke,” he said.

  “Right arm seems okay,” Nolan said, shrugging.

  The teasing was ended, but Richardson would not leave it even though men in his own crew told him to.

  “Leave him be—you’ve proved yourself out.”

  “He’ll get his now,” he said, “even if I am fired.”

  He moved toward Tomkins whenever he saw him, once literally chasing him around the hovel.

  “Go way—go way,” Tomkins yelled.

  Tomkins would not come back up from the skid roads until well after dark, and he would move not up the main bank but in through the trees, and come out behind the outhouse, and then make a dash for supper. Doing this he hurt his big toe and had to have it wrapped.

  Tomkins sat alone and ate alone, and men on his crew, who had laughed with him as he teased the one-armed man, now left him to his own devices.

  “Help me,” Tomkins asked Choyce.

  “Take care of yerself, boy,” Choyce said, putting a pile of beans on his spoon with a slice of homemade crust. “You were man enough to tease a cripple, take care of yerself.”

  “Yous all laughed a’ him yerselves.”

  “Nope—never did—” Choyce said defensively.

  “What will I have to do?”

  “Knowing what I know about Richardson—kill him.”

  “What have I done to you?” Tomkins asked one evening, smiling a plaintive, hopeful smile. “We have to live here together, don’t we?”

  “Not if I kill you, Stretch,” Richardson reasoned. “I’ll get you down on the flat someday—there is lots and lots of time—three more months—we’ll just bide our time.”

  Why was Stretch there in the first place? One of the reasons was his father was scaler for Jameson. But that year his father was fired by Buckler for poor rods—saying it had been going on now for five years. Buckler was right.

  However, there was no thanks for a scaler’s job—he must measure how many board feet the camp was getting before it was cut into board feet. If he told the mill to make ready for seven million board feet he’d better not be shy. But the teamsters and cutters always said the scaler was “gypping” their load, for the scaler would rather be under the estimate given to the mill than over. However, because of his son, Mr. Tomkins had given Gravellier’s crew too many “full counts” and Buckler was finally fed up with planning and paying for wood that did not come to the boom.

  Knowing of this, Gravellier, who had brought Stretch (Tomcat) Tomkins with him as a teamster to placate the father who scaled, now did not need the man. And ignored him. Tomkins had no one left to fight for him.

  When Owen arrived this time, Tomkins reported to him that a great crime had been committed, an attempted murder, and vowed to revenge this, even if he had to go to the sheriff. Owen did not want the sheriff knowing anything about this. So Tomkins became certain he had a good case.

  In the end, Tomkins was talked out of this action by the other men who told him the crime started with the tormenting, and i
t would be difficult to live down if it was mentioned that he himself had baited a one-armed man, and then had pissed himself when the hatchet was thrown.

  Tomkins demanded Richardson be taken from the team, and that team be given to him. For he was a teamster without a team, although he had been promised one.

  Owen could not. Then Tomkins lessened his request. He demanded an apology and an extra day’s wage.

  Owen considered this but decided he would have done the same as Richardson, and could not ask him to apologize.

  “If he can’t take a teasing, he is not a man.”

  “I am sure he has taken many,” Owen said, “for there are those who forget they are men.”

  Tomkins was more angry at this quip than at the attempted murder. So he petitioned Owen later that night. He waited in the dark, until half the men were asleep. Owen was reading, sitting on his bunk.

  “You’re the only one I can talk to—so, anyways, he tried to kill me—” he said, his voice frozen stiff in the air.

  “If a man of Richardson’s temperament decided to kill you, you would now be dead,” Owen said turning a page and not looking up.

  Then Tomkins brought up what he had always depended on to demean those he felt were targets. “He’s a runt—just like Meager and some of the rest of them—as far as I’m concerned.”

  Owen paused and looked at him perplexed, for it was not in his own nature to think this way, or to question men’s nature by their size, and he asked: “So how tall are you?”

  “Six-foot-two,” Tomkins said.

  “That is what I guessed—some of the smallest men I ever met are over six feet tall.”

  Tomkins was furious with this as well. But Owen said this because he was not a large man himself, and knew the measure of Stretch (Tomcat) Tomkins.

  The wind blew and moaned against the tin and timbers.

  “It does not befit a boss,” Tomkins began, over the sound of the wind.