by Paul Almond
They tiptoed inside. Catherine lit a whale oil lamp from embers in the open fire, and assembled their bed beside it. Worn out, they arranged their wet garments around the fire and lay down, too tired to make love.
Before James gave himself up to his great fatigue, his worries arose in all their awesome power. How hard it now would be to tell her family about his other son, John. A “half-breed” is what they’d call him. Would they ever accept the child? Of course not. So what should he do? How would he ever resolve it?
***
The next morning over breakfast, news of the impending birth pleased the Garretts, eliminating any misgivings about the couple’s foolhardy plans to winter alone in Shegouac. Catherine did prattle on about her new home, which pleased James, though the Garretts seemingly less.
“Well, you came in good time, laddie,” William Sr. said as he lifted his bulk from the table. “I just signed a contract for supplying lumber to the new courthouse they’re building. I have need of a good few men in the woods. I’m not too keen to send my sons, but perhaps you’d like to join us in this enterprise.”
“Good idea, sir,” replied James. What else did he have? Though it would mean leaving Catherine in the town while he went off to work, she’d be with her family for her first important pregnancy. Perhaps rather a good idea. “Why not us, Father?” little Joseph chimed in.
“Dangerous out there, son. Long way from help. No doctors. Not a midwife around. None but the men working next to you.”
“Tough,” young Will chimed in. James looked up. Was he trying to lord it over his young brother?
“Aye, tough it is, lad. One swipe o’ the axe, and you could be done for. Look at that poor Hardie McGuire...”
“What happened to him?” James asked.
“Bled to death he did, one crack o’ the axe and that was it.”
“You don’t mind if James bleeds to death, Father?” Catherine asked pointedly.
“I’m not going to bleed to death, Catherine,” James said. “I worked all one winter in the woods back of Paspébiac with Robin’s.”
“Aye, and how many of you made it through?” William looked at James.
“All but one. An unfortunate accident, really. A big branch. As one of the trees went down, a branch struck the poor man on the head. Done for. But if you’re careful...”
“Of course, of course, you’ll all have to be careful, and I’ll see you get your share of boards, as deserved. Got to look ahead. No thought of building a proper house for my daughter yet?”
“Lots of thoughts,” Catherine said. “But we’re hard put to see how it could happen without a deal of help.”
This was greeted by silence — ominously so, James thought. No one rushing to volunteer. But that could all change.
***
James loved the crunching noise snowshoes made as he and John Garrett strode over the hardened surface of the snow, as they had done each day for the past two months. It reminded him of his winter with the Micmac, ferreting out the best rabbit and other small-game runs to set their snares on their trapline.
No snow had fallen for a couple of weeks in these February woods far back behind New Carlisle, and the sheeted surface, thawing from a bright midday sun and freezing again at night, now gave off a faint sheen in the grey monochrome of dawn. All was silent, naught stirring save three teams, two young men each, leaving the bunkhouse after a breakfast of porridge, bread, and molasses. John and Will Jr. had prevailed upon their father to let them come, for they planned on building a boat before too long and needed lumber for that. Will Garrett had been paired as an older partner. The third pair had been conscripted by Garrett on a trip to Paspébiac: Alphonse and Abelard.
They had all come back on a horse-drawn sleigh to the camp some fifteen miles behind Hall’s mill, on what was becoming known as Hall’s River. James had brought his firearm and William had his father’s, which dated back to Revolutionary days when he fought for the British. These firearms allowed them to shoot small game, so that they need only send a horse and sleigh every couple of weeks from New Carlisle for supplies.
James and John walked along a horse-road that led out from the central bunkhouse like spokes of a wheel. They reached their own neatly stacked logs waiting to be skidded by horse to the riverbank and floated down in the spring flooding. The log booms would then arrive at Hall’s mill to be sawn into planks for the new courthouse.
Today, the Gaspé cold had come bearing down: breath formed clouds of vapour that condensed on eyelids and eyebrows and stung their faces. James could almost hear the frosty air pinging around them — so snapping cold! The limbs of trees cracked as they moved. Hard chopping today, James thought, those logs’ll be frozen like rocks. Be on guard! Remember the accidents in the woods back of Paspébiac! When it was this cold, axes glanced off wood as if it were granite.
“John,” he said, turning, “we’ll have to be careful, it’s biting cold out.”
“Just thinking the same thing.”
James and John cut trees just far enough from the road so that the eight-foot logs could be upended and easily piled in cords on each side of the track. Once they’d chosen their strip, they took a number; each team put their own mark on their pile with keel, a black marker somewhat like chalk. The scaler would come every month and tot it up. That way, James was both working for Garrett and for himself, so that he’d have logs for the spring when he intended to begin on the house. He had some lumber accumulated from the summer’s work at the mill, as well.
James walked ahead of John, expert on snowshoes after his winter back on the plateau of the caribou. How he loved this part of the day when the soft gauze of dawn light filtered out harsh edges; black trees stood like exclamation marks on white sheets of snow, such stately guardians, stiff, formal, bearing messages from passing millennia as they awaited their unwritten fate. Could James divine what it was? The Micmac might know.
Imagine, James would be making his house from these messengers. What a joy to have these carriers of age-old messages folded around in walls and above him in planks for the ceilings, and above that, in a peaked and shingled roof. Could the old stones of Raby Castle boast the same legacy? Perhaps. Having lain in their rocky ridges for millennia, they might carry messages, too. But he doubted it. Nothing like wood, he told himself as he crunched his way along the broken trail, axe in one hand, saw in the other, anticipating a good day’s work. A happy man, taking his first steps toward the building of their future home in Shegouac.
Chapter Nineteen: Spring 1814
Hammering rung out across the building site above Shegouac brook. John Gilchrist, New Carlisle’s finest cabinet-maker and carpenter, had agreed to help them, together with his son. And prodded by his father and mother, Will Jr. had agreed to come to Shegouac with a close friend while John managed to enjoin two others. Young Joseph, now sixteen, had needed no encouragement, and finally Ben had begged Mr. Hall to give him leave for a fortnight to join the fun. Mr. Garrett himself collected on an old debt to persuade a coastal skipper to bring the lumber.
“I’m so happy to have Ben with me,” Catherine confessed, after the first day’s feeding of the men. “We’d be hard put to harvest enough vegetables, even in these early spring woods, to add to the salt fish Mother gave us. Washing and tidying after meals, too, it’s a big job.”
“Big job indeed,” agreed James, eyeing his wife’s protruding belly. “I’m afraid it might be too much for you. Perhaps you should have stayed behind.”
“And if I had, how on earth would you have managed?” James shrugged. “No idea. But I’m worried about your condition.”
“Don’t be. We pioneer women are tough!” She gave a cheerful grin and went on with her work.
One of the first things they did was dig a pit for the rip-saw with its eight-foot-long blade. One man worked down in the pit and another on top, each pulling the wooden handles in turn. Posts held the log steady while the two men sawed down the length, splitting off rough planks.<
br />
One lunchtime James saw Will and his close friend sitting conspicuously apart, engaged in low conversation. He did not like the look and nudged Catherine.
Putting down his plate, he drew himself up and strode across the building site with Catherine. “Is there a problem?”
William flinched slightly as Catherine turned, eyes flashing. “I think my brother is jealous!”
“I am not!”
“Then why are you so against this building?” William shrugged. “Well, I do wonder, dear sister, why my father, who fought so nobly for the British, has only a small piece of land, fifty acres, and James here —”
“— has a good deal more?” James intervened. “William,” he began gently, but not without a hint of steel, “all the waste land from Paspébiac to Pabos is yours for the taking.”
“It may be here for the taking now, but when that land commission they talk about starts investigating, you might find it’s damn well notfor the taking.”
“That may be.” James struggled to keep his composure. “But now it is, and you are welcome to come and settle anywhere. What about that piece on the other side of the brook? It’s good land. I’ve surveyed it. It would be fine for some young family —”
“Do you think I’d be crazy enough to live this far away? What if my wife had a child, as Catherine is doing? How would she manage here all alone? What if something went wrong — say I broke an ankle and couldn’t walk. What if you slashed yourself with your axe, like poor Hardie McGuire? You’d be done for. No sir. Definitely not for me.”
John joined in. “You know, William and I are thinking of building a ship together. Lots of money in carrying freight along this coast, James.”
James nodded. But these warnings that Will was voicing — he had a point. This was indeed a perilous existence, far from any neighbours. Others might come soon, but how soon? More likely, the Gaspé settlements would actually get smaller, the deprivations being well known abroad. Not many were willing to lead such a harsh life. Those settlements below the border were a whole other kettle of fish. The weather there was less extreme, the population had doctors and officers of the law to help them, and men schooled in the sicknesses of animals; Old Country crafts were also flourishing. Up here, this “savage, uncivilized and barbaric” coastline was without such means of support.
“You don’t have to live here, William,” Catherine added. “There is plenty of land available near New Carlisle. When the time comes for you to build your house and barn, James will be delighted to help. You know that very well.”
Other workers nearby nodded their accord. Here in the New World, everyone helped each other.
“But look at the size of what we’re trying to build,” Will argued. James had planned two buildings: the house, with a downstairs room to serve as kitchen and general living area, and a large upstairs bedroom to be divided later; and a barn for which James had been squaring timbers; he had become handy with a broad axe. “What are you going to do with it all?” Will went on. “You’ve got no arable land I can see. How long do you think it will take to get a farm going? Years and years. You’ve bitten off more than you can chew, that’s what I say. I hate working with no end in sight.”
“Now you listen to me, Will,” Catherine said, eyes flashing. “We’ll get an ox next year, and watch how quick our land will get cleared then. We’ll have children, and they’ll help. Why build half a house? We need a whole one right now. If you’re so against it, just go back to Father.”
James could see Will had no desire to face an irate North Country father. But he wondered if he had, in fact, not bitten off too much. He straightened. “So why don’t we stop for a few minutes?” They had been working since sunrise. “Let’s do as the Navy does: break out the rum.” After producing a keg, he and Catherine went from person to person, dolling a splash into their wooden piggins. On his ship’s deck, the ten-gallon tub of rum had letters: “The King — God bless him” carved into it for their edification, though not many crewmen could read. The keg went round, finishing with the piggin of little Ben. With his one good hand, he raised it to his lips and drank to the last drop.
***
“Now where’s all them trunnels?” Gilchrist asked, as he stood surveying the work, eyeing the site with his carpenter’s practised eye.
James screwed up his face. “Trunnels?”
“‘Tree nails,’ you sailors’d call ’em, you got none made?”
“I don’t think...”
“Murray, better get to work, laddie! Show James.”
“Sure will, Poppa.” His son grinned at James.
“You take a piece of this here wood, left over, and you split it with your froe, here.” He handed James the Lshaped chisel, blade at right angles to the handle, “to get small pieces. Now you shape them.” He winked at John, who already knew this. “On this here shaving horse,” which he had carried up from the rowboat, “you use a drawknife. Now see the cross-piece on the pivot, below the bench? When you step on it,” he demonstrated by pushing his feet forward, “the head comes down and pins the piece of wood you’re making into your trunnel, so’s you turns it. So now, you shave it,” demonstrating, “and turns it,” he worked at it deftly, easily, “till you get a little taper on it, and here! Yer perfect trunnel.”
James fingered the wooden peg. So the mystery of the nails was solved. You used wooden trunnels. All sizes and shapes.
Within a week, Gilchrist had the completed four walls of the house laid out on the ground. “All hands to the pump!” They gathered around, Ben too. “Right, south wall up first!” One after another, with some heaving and lots of loud exhortations, the four walls were raised.
James stood back, inordinately proud of his house on its rock foundations. His whole adventure had come to a head. Catherine took his hand as they stood in admiration.
“Mr. Gilchrist, you achieved the impossible. Catherine and I thank you from the bottom of our hearts.”
“Och, ’twas nothing. Glad to be of help. Right now, lads, barn rafters next!”
***
How on earth can you stabilize roof rafters without any iron spikes or nails? James wondered out loud.
“Mortise and tenon.” Gilchrist hefted a beam with a square hole at one end. “Your mortise is a rectangular socket, like this here.”
“And the tenon?”
“The tenon is that there finger.” He picked up another rafter with a smaller square end shaped into it. “This squared end goes into the socket, the mortise.”
“Looks okay, but how do you —”
“Well, yae drive in the tenon with this here beetle.” He picked up a huge mallet. “You swing it between your legs.” Gilchrist straddled the beam and swung the mallet: tuck tuck tuck, it sounded. “You knock this here beam, well, the tenon, into the mortise of the big beam.”
“Easy when you do it.”
“Now here’s the best bit. You drill a hole through them both, see?” He leaned hard on the drill’s rounded handle, and with a mighty arm circled it so that it drilled a hole through the centre of the fitting. “Your trunnel goes through this here hole in the middle, and holds them together good.”
With that mystery solved, James thought his house would be amongst the most solid on the Coast. Mr. Gilchrist surely knew his trade. But James’s delight was cut short when another argument split the peaceful workers. James put down his heavy axe and walked over.
“No siree,” John was saying, “my sister’s not climbing that ladder every night with a tiny baby!”
“But John, ’tis a fine ladder,” Will countered, “easy to climb. That’s how all houses start. You never put in a staircase at first.” Hot under the collar, Will began to shout. “Ask Gilchrist.”
James hesitated. It was his decision, but the two brothers were his prime helpers. He held out his hands. “Just explain, John. Where would we put a staircase?”
As Will frowned, John pointed to the northeast corner. “Nothing easier. We set it in that
corner. Four steps up toward that north wall, then turn and go up along the west wall. Underneath that, we make a closet. Handy to store things. I could put shelves...”
“Sure, we could put shelves everywhere and cupboards and make this a palace. We just don’t have time!” Will shouted.
James felt John was in the right, but so was Will. “How would it be then, if you began the steps and I finished them off later?”
“Good, James,” John said, taking over. “That fine ladder will be great in the barn, Will, where no one climbs with babies into the loft after eggs.”
The argument was interrupted by Catherine, who called out, “Dinner!” She dolloped out stew in the bowls.
“What’s in this?” Will asked.
“Never you mind. I’ll tell you later.”
James knew she had made the stew with cattail roots from the Hollow. Not everyday fare for New Carlislers, but certainly a delicacy for the Micmac. They all tucked in but James could not ignore the fact that Catherine seemed more out of breath after climbing the hill. The due date of the baby approached.
***
That trauma of his first wife’s death in childbirth kept haunting James. He knew his fears to be mainly groundless, so back in New Carlisle, James was only too happy to settle in with the brothers, helping the Garretts do their spring planting — anything to get his mind off his panic at the looming birth.
One evening, exhausted from the long days, he came back with the brothers. As they washed up at the table out along the back wall, the look on his mother-in-law’s face told him everything. “On its way?”