by Roxi Harms
Making his way to the unemployment office on Monday morning, Adam wondered how he would survive in the bush at those temperatures until payday in the clothes he'd brought. Once again, the immigration official ended his wondering. The translator was nowhere to be seen, but the official had no problem making himself understood. Looking Adam up and down with raised eyebrows, he hugged himself and rubbed his arms, the international motion for cold, then pointed at a logger walking down the street outside the window, and at the department store across the street. Reaching in his pocket he pulled out a 50 dollar bill and handed it to Adam.
An hour later, clad in his new winter work clothes and boots, Adam climbed into a pickup truck with his new boss, Archie.
CHAPTER NINETY-THREE
It was the end of his second week at camp. Adam scraped the snow off of the last couple of feet of the log, grabbed one of the chokers from over his shoulder, looped it around the log and fastened it, then ran over to the next hump of snow and repeated the process. He could hear the skidder coming back already. Chokerman was a far cry from bricklayer, but it was a pay cheque.
"Lunch," yelled the skidder operator, when the load was all hooked up, motioning Adam to climb aboard.
The cookhouse was boisterous with rowdy conversation and laughter. Adam moved close to the wood stove and held out his hands to the shimmering heat while he waited for the food to come out, careful not to get too close and burn himself. He was starving. Lunch smelled pretty good. It's no wonder that the only warm place here and in the bunkhouse is within ten or 15 feet of the stove, Adam mused, lost in thought among the loud conversations going on around him in English. It wasn't noticeable at breakfast or supper because it was too dark outside, but at lunchtime you could see daylight through the walls where boards were warped or cracked and the tar paper was coming off.
Laughter erupted at the long table and Adam looked over.
"Adam, come sit," yelled one of the fallers over the din. He patted the bench beside him, then waited until Adam was seated. "When the cook brings lunch," he motioned towards the kitchen and the plates on the table, "you go down to the mill," he pointed at Adam and then waved his arm in the direction of the mill, "and tell the big boss it's time to eat, okay?" He made an eating motion.
Adam knew a few of the words. ‘Boss' was Archie, the guy who'd picked him up in town and brought him out to start the job last week.
"You talk English to the boss, okay? Good English," the faller continued. "Say this ‘Archie, you dirty rotten son of a bitch, I want to kick your ass.' Okay, now you say it ‘you dirty rotten . . .'." He waited while Adam practiced a few times, and then coached him through the rest of the sentence.
"Lunch is served!" the cook bellowed from the doorway of the kitchen.
Adam repeated his message one more time as the guys grinned and nodded encouragement, then headed for the door.
He could see the big boss on the roof of the sawmill down by the frozen lake, repairing a sheet of roofing tin that had torn loose in a strong wind a couple of days ago.
"You dirty rotten son of a bitch, I want kick your ass," Adam repeated over and over under his breath as he headed down the hill. "Hallo, Archie!" he yelled up at the boss when he reached the mill. The boss stopped hammering and looked down at Adam and grinned.
"Hello, Adam."
"You dirty rotten son a bitch, I kick your ass."
Archie stood upright and stared down at Adam. "What did you say?"
Just then a noise carried down the hill, and they both turned. A crowd of guys was standing outside the door of the cookhouse, hooting and whooping as they slapped each other on the back, some bending over double with laughter.
Adam looked back up at Archie, not sure what was going on.
Archie's grin was back. "Bastards," he said as he swung his legs over the side of the roof and jumped down to the snowbank and then down to the ground. He threw his arm over Adam's shoulders. "Come on, let's go eat lunch."
When they finished eating, the guys were still laughing.
"You're still gonna play us a few songs tonight, right Adam?" one of the guys asked, pausing to mimic a harmonica, as he got geared up to head back out into the snow. "Tonight?" he repeated.
"Maybe yes, maybe no," Adam said with a grin as another guy gave him a slap on the back on his way out the door.
CHAPTER NINETY-FOUR
A few weeks later, Willy Fleischmann climbed out of a taxi outside of the cookhouse during lunch. The usual mealtime ruckus had gone silent as the crew stared out the window.
"Hallo, Adam," Willy said with a grin when he walked outside, confused. "Vancouver wasn't so great so I decided to come and work here with you. I told the unemployment office I travelled from Germany with you and got waylaid in Vancouver. They called the boss here and he hired me!"
Twenty minutes later, Archie came over to where Adam and Willy were sitting at the end of one of the long tables. "Okay Willy, let's go. I'll show you where the horses are," Archie said to Willy when they'd finished eating. Willy just looked at him blankly. "Adam, come along and help me explain to your buddy. At least you know a half-dozen words."
At the crest of the hill they could see the log yard in one direction with a team of horses standing under a shelter nearby, and the mill down the slope the other way. "Willy is horseman, okay?" He looked at them both until Adam nodded. "With the horses, you pull them logs down to the mill, from where the skidders drop them over there." Archie pointed as he explained.
Adam turned to Willy and spoke in German. "Did you catch any of that? I've seen the other guy doing it. You hook the logs up behind the horses over there, then drive them over there and unhook, so that the sawyers can feed them into the mill."
"Oh sure, I can do that. No problem," Willy said to Adam and Archie in German, nodding enthusiastically.
"Adam, show Willy the bunkhouse, then you both get to work. I'll be back around quitting time to drop off the supplies and see how things are going." Archie turned and headed to his pickup truck parked beside the cookhouse.
After showing Willy the bunkhouse and helping him harness the horses, Adam hurried back to the trim saw and began carefully feeding two by fours through the saw, cutting them to ten feet. He'd been moved up to the trim saw a week earlier. He'd done shorter lengths so far, and that day, he was learning to do ten-foot lengths. It was a little harder to get a straight cut on a longer board.
When he reached the bunkhouse after work, Willy was already there, lying on his bunk. He sat up when Adam sat down on the next bed.
"I don't know if I can be a horseman Adam. The horses don't listen to me."
No sooner had Willy finished speaking than the door opened and Archie came in and towered over them, hands on his hips.
"Adam, listen. When I got back from town and checked on Willy, he was standing there talking German to the damned horses. Not one damned log was moved. No logs moved," he shouted, as if Adam and Willy were deaf. "Looks to me like your friend lied about being a horseman. He doesn't know a goddammed thing about horses."
Archie was obviously angry, but Adam couldn't follow everything he was saying. Archie tried again. "Willy," he jabbed his finger towards Willy. "No good with horses." He shook his head to emphasize the no good part. Everyone was quiet for a moment. Then Archie spoke again. "How about you? Are you good with horses?" Archie pointed at Adam as he asked his question.
"Yes, no problem." Working with horses wasn't difficult, he thought. You just tell them where to go and when to stop and that's about it.
"I'll tell you what. Willy can stay as long as the work gets done. Two guys, two jobs. You figure out how to get both done, okay?" He repeated and re-explained until he was satisfied that Adam understood him, then got up and stomped out, slamming the bunkhouse door behind him.
The next morning, Adam lined up the six-foot boards and taught Willy how to run the trim saw. Then he rushed down to the horses and moved logs as fast as he could. At lunch and after work, he coached W
illy on handling the horses. For the next few days, they repeated this, working until long after the rest of the crew had finished for the day.
"Remember, show ‘em who's boss," Adam said a week later. He couldn't keep this up. Willy better be ready.
Willy grinned at Adam as grabbed the harness. "Giddyup!" he shouted, and looked over at Adam proudly as the horses began to move. "Giddyup, heeya," he yelled, slapping the horses lightly with the reins and grinning at Adam again as they sped up.
CHAPTER NINETY-FIVE
Not long after Willy had been trained, Archie moved Adam up to a slasher job, working alongside a faller named Jim. The new job came with a raise of 15 cents per hour.
A month later, Jim was injured and Adam became a faller. Falling was the most dangerous job in the bush, but he had watched Jim carefully and he figured he could do it. First, you had a good look at the tree to see if it was leaning at all and studied what the wind was doing up near the tops. Then, you made sure there was a clear path to lay it down. Sometimes you used a wedge to force a tree to fall in a particular direction, so that the butts were all lined up pointing the same way. The money Adam had saved so far was just enough to buy Jim's chainsaw. It was an investment, he figured. Fallers got paid by the tree and if he was fast he could make 30 or even 35 dollars a day.
Willy, on the other hand, didn't adjust so well to life in the bush. A couple of weeks in, Adam found him huddled out behind the bunkhouse, tears frozen on his cheeks. The poor guy was frozen half to death, mumbling that he couldn't stand it anymore. The next day Archie hauled him into town and dropped him off at the bus station.
One evening in February, Adam lay down on his bed after supper to read a letter from Laudenbach that Archie had picked up in town that day.
Little Frankie had loved the cowboy suit Adam had sent for Christmas. It made him look just like the guys in the movies. And George wanted to come to Canada. Adam stopped reading and wondered if he'd done the right thing only telling them the good parts about Canada in his letters.
The next day Adam wrote back to George. Canada was great like he'd said before, he explained, but there was more that George needed to know. After describing the weather and the realities of camp life in harsh detail, he assured George that if he still wanted to come, he'd help him get it arranged.
CHAPTER NINETY-SIX
Although he didn't frequent the beer parlour like most of the guys did, that's where Adam was when he met Freddy Brandel. He'd been killing time while his clothes were drying at the laundromat, and thinking about how to find a room in town, for weekends. Camp was bad enough all week and worse on weekends when most of the guys were off, including the cook. Brandel was sitting by himself at a table off to the side of the beer parlour, watching the usual Saturday afternoon shenanigans from a distance, which was where Adam preferred to watch them from as well. After a few pleasantries, Adam realized that Brandel was German and soon they had struck up a conversation. By the time Adam left to fold his clothes, they had shaken hands on a deal for Adam to stay in the little room in Brandel's attic on weekends, share Sunday dinner with Brandel and his young Canadian wife, and have his clothes laundered each weekend.
The Brandels had invited him to join them and a couple of friends for supper one Saturday evening, a few weeks after Adam moved into the attic. Afterward, they would take him to a house party. With Freddy helping when he couldn't think of the right words in English, Adam had just finished telling the little group a story about the night he'd spent in the drunk tank a while back. It had all started because a swig of brandy a couple of times a day helped Adam stay warm out in the bush. He'd picked up a fresh mickey, and the cops had spotted it sticking out of his back pocket. For some reason which Adam still couldn't grasp, they had manhandled him into the back of the police car, and then into a jail cell for the night, with a crowd of stinking, noisy drunks. And he hadn't even opened the bottle yet! He'd lain awake most of the night, fuming. The boss had come in the morning, knowing where most of his guys were when they didn't show up back in camp on schedule, and advanced Adam the ten dollars to pay the fine. And the cops had kept the mickey!
"More, Adam?" Adam's new landlady asked when they'd all had a laugh at Adam's story.
"Yes, ma'am, you cook very good," he complimented her in English.
"Oh, this isn't anything special. Just a bit better than camp food, I imagine," she said, scooping more chili into Adam's bowl. "Tomorrow night, for Sunday dinner we'll be having roast beef with mashed potatoes and gravy. How was work last week? You said you were going to be doing a different job than usual?"
Archie had asked him to fill in on the green chain. It was the hardest job he'd done at the mill so far. You had to be fast to get the boards off the chain as they came down, and onto the right stack based on their size. Otherwise they piled up and made a big mess.
"Very good. Yes, very good. But it is sometimes too much of the fucking lumber coming so fucking fast," he responded calmly before putting a forkful of food into his mouth. As he chewed his food, he looked around. Everybody was looking at him silently. One of the women stifled a giggle behind her hand. After a long pause, conversation started up again.
After supper, the women went upstairs to fix their faces.
"Do you know what you said in there about the lumber coming too fast?" Freddy asked Adam, raising his beer to his lips. His buddy let out a laugh.
"I say something wrong?"
Both guys laughed at Adam's question.
"Well, Adam, that word. . . "
Adam's face was hot with embarrassment when the women returned, lips bright with lipstick.
"I am sorry, ladies. I say bad swearing. Very sorry. English is little difficult sometimes."
"Oh, Adam, don't worry, it's no problem. You're just learning." They smiled sweetly.
"Now let's get going to that party!" The landlord jumped to his feet and downed his beer.
"Okay, one minute, I take music." Adam headed for the stairs to grab his mouth organ from the attic.
"Sure, we'll get our boots on," the landlord said as Adam took the stairs two at a time.
Quickly, Adam changed to a fresh shirt and slipped his harmonica into his pocket.
"Adam, hurry up! Come down!" someone called out from downstairs as he pulled the door of his little room shut behind him.
"Something more?" he asked over the railing.
"No, just hurry up," repeated one of the guys.
Confused, Adam went downstairs.
"I should go up?" Adam asked when he reached them.
"What?" the wife said, looking up at Adam.
"You want I should ‘hurry up'?" Adam said again, motioning with his thumb towards the stairs.
The foursome burst into laughter.
"No. ‘Hurry up' is just a way that we say ‘hurry.' Up doesn't really mean up. It just means hurry more I guess."
"Oh... Okay," he said, shaking his head as he followed the group out the front door.
CHAPTER NINETY-SEVEN
Spring 1952
When the ice on the sidewalks had disappeared and patches of mud began to show through on the sides of the road, the sawmill shut down for the season. Much to Adam's delight, the unemployment office lined up a bricklaying job for him, starting the following week. It was the only bricklaying work in town, but it was a big project, a year, maybe more. George was due to arrive from Germany in a couple of weeks, so the timing was perfect. That weekend, Adam found an unfinished basement suite he could afford on the bricklayer wages. Next, he lugged a used, double mattress home from the Salvation Army and borrowed a hot plate from the landlady.
Monday morning, he showed up at the job site a few minutes early, proudly carrying the bricklayer's tools he'd purchased at the hardware store. They were different from the ones he'd used in Germany, but the man at the store had assured him he was buying the right stuff.
By morning coffee, he was in trouble. Desperately, he tried again to clean up the join he'd just done
and get the block to lay straight. He'd been a top bricklayer on every job site he'd worked on in Germany. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and tried again. It was a mess. He couldn't make the oddly shaped trowel move the mud the way it should.
"Sorry, Baumann." Startled, Adam looked up over his shoulder at the boss. "No time to train new guys on this job. Pick up your pay cheque for this morning and get out of here." The boss motioned over his shoulder with his thumb. Fired? He was a Class One Journeyman!
Adam opened his mouth to protest. "I am a Journeyman, boss."
The boss looked at him and shook his head. "Sorry Baumann. Your story doesn't cut it. You're done."
Adam looked down at the mess he'd been making all morning. Dejectedly, he picked up his tools and then his laughable little pay cheque. It didn't even pay for the tools.
Back at the basement suite, Adam sat on his bed. He'd come all the way to Canada to work as a bricklayer. Now what? He lay down and stared at the ceiling. That was the only bricklaying job in town. All his training was no good now. Class One Journeyman. Highest qualification in the trade, and the boss fired him for having no experience. And in a couple of weeks, he'd have two mouths to feed.
CHAPTER NINETY-EIGHT
"Hi, George! Welcome to Canada!" George looked relieved to see him. "How did you like the trip? Was the crossing rough? Big country, eh?" He put his arm around his younger brother. "I got us a little place to live for a while. Let's go and relax a bit and then I'll show you around