Julie

by Catherine Marshall

  Late that Friday afternoon, the Editor and I locked up the office and climbed into the old Willys. Mother was going with Anne-Marie to a church supper for the junior Sunday School classes; Tim left with Graham Gillin and his younger brother, Troy, to attend a sports dinner. When Dean heard that Dad and I were free, he invited us out to the farm for dinner.

  When we were gathered about the picnic table outside, the subject of Dad’s editorial on the dam came up. “Dean, do you think it will rile certain people?” the Editor asked.

  “Nobody in Alderton expects anything controversial from a weekly newspaper,” Dean answered slowly. “So my guess is, most people will read it with mild interest, figuring you’re saying what the McKeevers want said.”

  “Only mild interest?”

  “The Club and the dam are remote to most people in Alderton, Ken. But,” he continued, “something you said about how ugly we’ve made the Alderton area may arouse a few people.”

  “Who, for instance?”

  “The McKeevers. Railroad officials. Businessmen.”

  “I hope they’ll do something constructive, not just get mad.” Dean smiled. “Stick a needle into someone and he’ll yell ouch! I’m glad you did that story. It could lead to something good.”

  After dinner, Miss Hazel and I were clearing the table when Dean Fleming rose from his chair. “Would you mind if I took Ken and Julie over to the cabin for a while?”

  She shook her head. “Cleanup’s no problem with a picnic.” As the three of us walked toward the cabin, I was feeling conscience-stricken. Was it selfish of me to prefer talking with the two men rather than staying to help Miss Hazel?

  As Dean opened the cabin door, my anticipation shunted aside all other thoughts. We were standing in a rustic pine-paneled room with huge ceiling beams from which were hanging old-fashioned kerosene lanterns. At the far end was a pot-bellied wood-burning heating stove. Along both walls were built-in bunk beds in two tiers. Wooden benches filled the remaining space on the side walls.

  Adjacent to where we stood was a fieldstone fireplace and in the space before it, several Adirondack-type chairs around a large wooden-slatted beer keg upturned to form a table. A deep blue cloth with a white cross appliqued on it had been thrown over the keg.

  But what really caught my attention hung over the fireplace mantel—a double-edged woodsman’s ax, or what Dean called a double-bitted ax, the real thing as compared to the decorative aluminum ax on the outside chimney. Standing on the hearth and tilting my head, I could barely make out an inscription burned into the wood of the handle: And now also the ax is laid unto the root of the trees . . . Matthew 3:10.

  “There must be a story behind that ax,” I blurted out. Though I knew Dean had heard me, he did not respond immediately. He struck a match and soon a log fire was blazing on the hearth. Then he stood up and faced my father and me. “The ax, Julie? That was a special gift from Big John Hammond. It’s a symbol of a covenant relationship between the two of us.” After we found comfortable positions in front of the fire, my eyes kept returning to the ax. How could simple firelight reflect so many colors in the polished steel?

  I hoped that the mystery about Dean and Big John Hammond was about to be revealed.

  Dean Fleming sat for a long moment, staring silently into the dancing flames.

  “John Hammond was an extraordinary man, Julie,” he began. “Most people spend ninety percent of their time thinking about themselves, ten percent about others. With Big John it was just the opposite. He was the most selfless man I ever knew.”

  Dean got up to rearrange the logs with a poker, then settled back in his chair, repositioning his bad leg. “I first met him in a saloon in a timber camp outside a town called Cameron, east of here. I was in my early twenties, married, with two small children: worked as machinist on a log train. My problem was booze.”

  Dean then went on to describe how greed for lumber during the last part of the century nearly destroyed the vast forest land of hemlock, white pine, spruce, and poplar in central Pennsylvania. Roads were cut, crude camps for lumberjacks erected. Each camp contained bunkhouses, a dining room and adjoining cook shed, an office, a store for necessities like tobacco and patent medicines, barns for the horses, and a blacksmith shop.

  Soon the faces of small Pennsylvania villages were altered beyond recognition. What had been quiet, unspoiled communities became lusty, boisterous frontier towns, always dominated by the saloons.

  Dean described how a motley collection of brewers, bartenders, and saloon touts would meet all arriving logging trains and genially lure newcomers to the nearest bars. Awaiting were the professional gamblers, pickpockets, short-change artists, and brothel keepers, all with their hands out to strip from the lumberjacks their stake—the wages earned back in the tall timber. Towns were irresistible to the lumberjacks since there was neither recreation nor relief from isolation back in the deep woods.

  Most of the boisterous, thirsty men couldn’t wait to pull out their rolls of bills and slap the money on the counter. For those slow in loosening up with their cash, there were often knockout drops in their drinks. In one night a man could lose all he had earned in six months and be tossed into the Snake Room.

  “I’ll never forget the first time I ever saw a Snake Room,” Dean reflected. “Julie, it won’t hurt you to hear this. It was about two in the morning when I entered this upstairs room. There was no ventilation; the foul air was a combination of unwashed bodies, stale tobacco, overpowering whiskey breaths, and the stench of vomit; plus head and chest colds in all stages.

  “On a filthy floor, men were lying like huge rag dolls, sprawled one atop another. Some were sobbing, others groaning, talking to themselves, snoring, cursing, singing in cracked voices. Several men were hallucinating, clawing at spiders in the air or fighting mad dogs or snakes.

  “The Snake Room was necessary for every saloon, since usually it was too cold to throw drunks outside. Men sometimes smothered to death under the weight of the bodies. If a man died back there, who cared? Local undertakers did a booming business.”

  By that time, Dean explained, he would be away from home on hard drinking sprees for three to five days. “I would come back from each fling penitent but broke, like most of the lumberjacks—everything blown in the bars. Each time I would promise my wife, Betty, that I would stop. Then would come the temptation of just one drink and off I would go again.”

  Dean sighed heavily. “I could see Betty’s love for me dying by inches. By then her father hated me. He was having to help us financially and that ’most always tears a relationship.”

  Our host got up to poke the fire again. “One night I strolled into Willie’s Place, which was the newest and largest saloon in the village. A lumberjack had just staggered in ahead of me and was shouting to everyone in sight, ‘Come on you road-monkeys and river-pigs, it’s all on me. Turn on the spigot. This here’ll cover it.’ And he slapped a fat roll of bills on the bar.

  “I watched the bartender reach for the money. Suddenly another hand shot out and picked up the bills. ‘I’ll be your banker until morning, Frank,’ the stranger said firmly to the drunken man. ‘You’ve had enough booze for one evening.’

  “The bartender was furious. ‘Give me that money, Big John,’ he shouted, ‘or I’ll knock your head off.’ Then he picked up a wooden club and leapt over the counter.

  “The stranger called Big John had already pocketed the roll of bills. He was not a big man, really, well under six feet, strong but not overly muscular; he had a round face, which was ruddy from outdoor life, and reddish, disheveled hair. Looked like a woodsman. And he obviously knew the bartender. ‘This is my business, Denny,’ he said, ‘I’m takin’ Frank out of here. He’s too drunk to handle his money right now.’

  “The bartender named Denny sprang forward, aiming a blow at the stranger with his weapon. The stranger ducked and a fist shot forward, making a crunching connection with Denny’s face: it was followed by a battering-ram blow to his stom
ach. The bartender fell, glassy-eyed, to the sawdust-covered floor. The stranger then turned to the drunken lumberjack. ‘Let’s go, Frank.’

  “But Frank had slithered to the floor in a stupor. As if the big lumberjack had been a child, his rescuer picked him up in his arms, tossed the limp body over his shoulder, and made for the door.

  “What astonished me about this scene was not so much the stranger’s unexpected raw strength and quiet courage, but the way the spectators, with ill-concealed glee, had been rooting for him. It didn’t make sense. Free drinks had been jerked from under their noses, so to speak, and to a man they were a thirsty lot.

  “I asked a lumberjack standing beside me who the guy was who had flattened the bartender.

  “The jack stared at me in surprise. ‘That’s Big John Hammond. You don’t know him?’

  “I shook my head. ‘Why is he called Big John? He’s not so big.’

  “‘It ain’t his size.’ The jack looked at me in disgust. ‘He acts big. Talks big too. He’s a preacher—’

  “‘A preacher! I’m not believin’ you.’ For the rest of the evening I sat with three lumberjacks over drinks at a corner table and we talked about John Hammond. They told me that for some years now, Big John had been moving from one logging camp to another in Pennsylvania, New York, and West Virginia, bringing the Word, as he liked to say, to isolated men. Not even blizzards or below-zero weather could stop Big John.”

  Dean ministered again to the fire as I sat there silently, fascinated. by the raw masculinity of the story, both attracted to and repelled by it.

  “In the beginning, no one understood Hammond,” Dean continued. “He had trouble even getting inside logging camps. But soon, even the bosses had to admit that Big John’s visits helped the men, raised morale, enabled them to turn out better work.”

  Dean went on to describe how at each camp, Hammond would first bring to the jacks stacks of secondhand magazines to help supply the camp’s almost nonexistent reading material. He would pray with the victims of accidents—frequently himself getting an injured man to the nearest hospital. Not until he was accepted did Big John begin holding evening services in the bunkhouses.

  At first the lumberjacks had been as suspicious of Hammond’s motives as the camp bosses were. “What’s in it for you?” they had put to Big John. “You sure ain’t preachin’ for nothin’. That jest ain’t human nature.”

  “You’re right about that, boys,” he had replied. “That’s not the human nature any of us is born with. But there’s a different kind of nature waiting for us, much better, let me tell you. You there—” He pointed to one of the oldest jacks in the circle questioning him. “I’ve been watching you. You’re a fine top-loader. How long have you been at this business?”

  “Since I was a boy. Forty-seven winters.”

  “So how much do you have to show for forty-seven years of such hard work?”

  Ruefully, the gray-haired man had turned his pockets inside out. “Nothin’ but this.” In the palm of his hand was an old jackknife.

  “The leeches and bloodsuckers always cleaned you out.” There was sadness in Hammond’s voice. “What kind of life is that, men? So now you have the answer to why I’m here. There’s some mighty good news for you. Not a one of you needs to end up like that.”

  Then, in the simplest terms, he told them about a Carpenter who traveled hot days and cold nights, across wild rocky terrain, through desert winds and dust, to help people caught in thickets of illness and pain, or of poverty, or of hatred, or discouragement and disillusionment, or booze. “He cares enough to find you and rescue you today, wherever you are, whatever you’ve done,” he stressed.

  Big John, knowing well that no mere words would break down the skepticism about his motives, followed through with the kind of action that won the admiration and love of even the roughest lumberjacks. One summer Hammond lived an itinerant life—with a group of loggers, hitching rides on freight trains, wielding a pick for a while in the West Virginia coal mines, joining migratory pickers harvesting peas in Imperial Valley, California, ending up that fall as a deckhand on a boat plying the Columbia River.

  After he had traveled by boxcar with these refugees from logging camps, slept with them in cheap lodging houses, camped with them in the fields, shared their panhandling and meal scraps, Hammond not only understood these rough men, he was as tough as any of them. He learned to use his fists. He could wield an ax. If a crew was shorthanded, he worked side by side with the men at no pay.

  Meanwhile, Dean’s drinking problem had worsened. Neither high resolves nor will power could pull him out of his morass. One bitterly cold January night, he had sought the warmth of a bar before returning home. One drink was all he needed, Dean told himself . . . He was coming down with a cold. Must be influenza, because he was aching all over. A hot toddy would help him shake this off.

  When he came to, he was lying in bed in a strange room and a ruddy-faced man was sitting beside him. A look around told Dean nothing. Underneath the blankets piled atop him, he still had on his long underwear.

  “Where am I?” he muttered.

  The man reached out a calloused hand and gently touched Dean’s forehead. “Take it easy. You’ve had a tough pull. I’m John Hammond and I know who you are because I’ve been through your pockets for identification.”

  Then Dean remembered. All those stories the three lumberjacks had told him that one evening about Big John. But how had he ended up here in this room with him?

  The ruddy man beside him sensed his question. “I found you in the Snake-Room three nights ago and trundled you here in a wheelbarrow. You’ve been mighty sick. Now try and lie still. I’ll get you some hot broth.”

  With Dean propped up against one of his arms, Hammond patiently fed him the broth, one spoonful at a time.

  Dean whispered hoarsely between swallows, “My wife?”

  “Found out about your wife when I went through your pockets. Sent her a message to let her know you’re in my care.” With each sip of the steaming broth, the sick man began to feel stronger. Over and over during the days that followed, the question went through Dean Fleming’s mind: Why would Big John be doing all this for me? The two had never even met before.

  As he began to recover, the old thirst for “just that one drink” gnawed at his vitals. Finally Dean appealed to Big John. “Just one little drink would sure get me on my feet quicker.”

  Hammond shook his head. Then it came out that Dean’s rescuer had more in mind than curing his influenza. Big John intended to see Dean through a drying-up period, cold turkey. The boardinghouse room had been stripped of all clothing except what Big John himself had on his back and the long johns Dean wore in bed. Not even a desperate man was likely to walk into the winter cold in his underwear. If he attempted such an escape, Big John told Dean, he would strip him naked.

  Dean tried every argument. Nothing budged his rescuer. Crazed with thirst one day, Dean threw himself at Hammond. Big John handled him as if he were a small child.

  At different times Dean hated his captor, marveled at him, puzzled about him, then hurled obscenities at that round, ruddy face. None of it affected Big John. He was compassionate about the battle being waged, but like tempered steel in his determination to see it through.

  Unable to bend Hammond, Dean began to ask him questions. Why was he out in the boondocks doing what he was doing?

  Hammond admitted that in the beginning, he had dreamed of having an important city pulpit. Then, while pastoring a small church in Johnstown, his wife had died in childbirth. Angry at God, Hammond had left the church and become a roustabout in and about logging camps. One morning after a wild drinking bout, he awoke in a strange boarding house to find a Bible on the table by his bed. He had not read it in weeks, but something made him pick it up. He turned to a passage in the book of John about another man named John, who roamed the countryside, eating locusts and wild honey.

  Fuzzy-minded as he was, Hammond couldn’t shake off th
e coincidences. His name was John too; he was wandering about the country, eating anything he could find. Suddenly he knew that this was the Lord giving him another chance. He was being called to a new mission—in the logging camps. Like John the Baptist, he would prepare the hearts of the people he met for the coming of a Savior.

  By the time the worst of the drying-out period was over, a bond between Dean Fleming and John Hammond had been forged. Here was a man, Dean recognized, who had found a source of power he had never known existed. Gradually his hunger for this power overcame his thirst for liquor. As Big John’s helper and pupil, Dean witnessed scenes he could never forget . . . Such as that night when Hammond was holding an evening service in the bunkhouse of a logging camp. Outside, the snowdrifts were waist-high. Inside, there was only the dim light from a few hanging lanterns, the air pungent from unwashed bodies and tobacco smoke. The only ventilation was one trap door in the roof.

  A keg turned on its end with a horse blanket thrown over it served as Hammond’s pulpit. The pews were the floor or bunks—dozens of stockinged feet swinging over the edge of the top bunks.

  The jacks began by singing lustily some old Gospel hymns, beginning with “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”

  Big John was just into his sermon when, at the other end of the bunkhouse, a logger began singing drunkenly. The noise made talking or listening impossible.

  Three times Hammond stopped and appealed to the man. Each time the raucous singing would start anew. Entertained by the battle of wit and will, the lumberjacks waited to see how Big John would handle this one.

  After the fourth interruption, the disruptor aimed a punch at Hammond. Big John ducked, grabbed the man, hoisted him above his head, carried him outside and, as the jacks cheered, tossed him headfirst into a snowdrift.