Beneath the Slashings (Divided Decade Collection)

by Michelle Isenhoff

  “Oh, I forgot!” Grace jumped up and secured her gift beneath Sam’s mattress. Its arrival had completely driven the dance from her mind. She was more eager to meet the young teamster than she let on. By day five of his suit, she had begun to anticipate his arrival each evening, but she’d be dipped before she let Sam—or Gid—know it.

  After another ten minutes, the kettle was scoured to a dull shine. Ivan dismissed her, and Grace hurried to her room. She pulled on clean woolen stockings and dug out the shoes she had not worn since her boots arrived. Then she yanked a hairbrush through her hair and quickly secured the strands in two fresh braids. Finally, after wrapping her cloak snugly around herself once again, she was ready.

  She met Gideon in the chilly mess hall, as they had arranged. She saw with some measure of relief that Sam was there too. Now that it came down to it, she found herself wishing she could retreat to her quiet room with her new book, but Sam smiled encouragingly and she screwed up her courage. “Shall we go?”

  Gideon grinned and offered her his arm, but his self-assurance wavered just outside the bunkhouse door. “Wait here,” he told her.

  “What for?” The evening chill was quickly trickling through her clothing.

  “Well, erm, I never actually told the fellas you were coming,” he hedged. “I have to go in and prepare them.”

  “What!” she screeched, yanking her arm away. “You were going to drag me in there without even—? What if they’re—?” Her cheeks grew warm at the possibilities.

  He read her thoughts and laughed. “Most of them don’t even undress to wash. Relax. They’ll love this idea.” He pushed the door open, releasing dim firelight, a wall of noise, and a host of unpleasant odors. “I’ll only be a minute. Sam, don’t let her get away.”

  Sam grabbed Grace’s arm, but she shoved him aside. “I’m going back to my room.” Her voice sounded unnaturally loud as Gideon’s shouts for attention brought about a hasty silence.

  “Grace, you can’t go. Think what a fool Gid will look without you.”

  “He accomplishes that quite well without my help.” She stomped away.

  The crunch of her footsteps followed her halfway to the van before Sam called out, “Grace, wait! Listen!”

  She paused. A quiet rumble began behind her, low laughter that rose into a hearty cheer. The door burst open and Gideon called out, “Grace, you’re welcome inside!”

  Grinning, Sam ran to retrieve her, and both boys escorted her into the bunkhouse where she was enveloped in a fresh round of cheers and the close, stifling smell of forty men. Screeching fiddle music began, and the empty floor around the camboose came alive with the antics of half a dozen dancers. Another dozen stomped their feet from the wooden bench that circled the room, and Grace was aware of grinning faces in the bunks all around her.

  “Dance with me, Grace!” Gideon exclaimed, tugging her close to the fireplace and whirling her into a jig.

  The dance had no formalities, only the wildly leaping limbs of its participants. The music skittered up and down the scale, driving Grace’s feet with its rhythm. She spun. She hopped. She stomped and panted as she tried to keep up with Gideon’s lead. The motion gave her no time to be angry. Instead she found herself caught up in the joyful abandon that followed an honest week’s work.

  The song ended, and she had barely ten seconds to catch her wind before Fiddlesticks started up again and Squeaky Duval grabbed her by both hands. “Nobody dances like a Frenchman, ma chérie!” he called over the noise. “You will see!” And he whirled her around the camboose once again.

  Half a minute later she was passed off to a little man she’d never met before, only to spin off with Sam, and then Gideon, and then a series of faces she recognized from mess. She was laughing, her braids were flying, and her partners were grinning. It was the most fun she’d had since her arrival.

  Another song ended, and her last partner guided Grace to the wooden bench. “Here, Miss Grace. Take a breath on the deacon seat.” She sank down, still laughing.

  A jack who slid to make room now patted her on the shoulder. “You bring a fair bit of home into the room with you, lass,” he smiled.

  “And where is home, sir?” she panted.

  “In far off Grand Rapids,” he told her, “but it’s always near my heart.” And he pulled a folded paper out of his shirt pocket. A letter, she assumed. It looked worn and slightly damp. “My wife sends one every week.”

  Grace peered closer at the man’s face. It looked familiar. “What’s your name?”

  Fiddlesticks appeared on her other side just then, still holding his fiddle and bow. The scars on his face were bright red with exertion. “That cur there is Doc Thompson,” he broke in, making sawing motions with his bow. “He used to lop off limbs in the war. Now he settles for tree branches.” He let loose with his customary peal of laughter.

  Grace recoiled, but Doc shrugged with a helpless smile. “A man can’t always choose his path, but I assure you, I much prefer trees.”

  “I reckon the poor blokes under your knife would have said the same,” glowered a man in the bunk behind her.

  Fiddlesticks let loose another high-pitched cackle. “And this bloke here has more complaints than a rabbit with no legs. We call him Happy Charlie.”

  She knew his sour look right away.

  “Beg pardon, miss, if I’m not as charmed with this frozen, flea-infested, god-forsaken camp as the rest of these blighters,” Charlie glowered.

  The comment drew hoots and catcalls from all over the room. “Shoot, Charlie, this is close to paradise!” someone teased. “Or are you missing dysentery and minie balls?”

  “Maybe he’d prefer summer’s fever and ague.”

  “Naw, it’s the skeeters he’s missin’. I tell you, this state has ’em big enough to eat a man and pick their teeth with a peavey.”

  This met with humorous approval.

  “Give me a few fleas and bedbugs any day!”

  “Shucks, Dawkins, you ain’t seen nothing,” Fiddlesticks countered, waving his bow in the man’s direction. “Mosquitos back home were so big they drove me right off my farm. One bugger bit my best milk cow and sucked her so dry she never gave another drop. Another one hauled off my mule.”

  The men grinned and exchanged looks. “What’d you do, Sticks?”

  “Shoot,” the fiddler continued, “a man might recover from a few lost animals. But the day they carried off my wife, it was all over. Took three or four of ’em to get her airborne, but they just couldn’t hold on. She tumbled into a nearby lake and the water splashed so high it turned my farm to wetlands. That’s when I started logging. Nigh onto thirty years ago now.”

  Grace knew enough to chuckle along with the men this time.

  “Where’d you get those scars, old man? Mosquito come at you with a battle axe?” It was Silas, squinting at them from the depths of his bunk.

  Squeaky answered for him, “Hees wagon overturned when hees horse spooked. Some barn boss, eh?”

  Laughter met his words. Then someone else called out, “He told me he was bayonetted in the war.”

  “I heard he got tangled in some old wire.”

  Fiddlesticks showed off his yellow teeth. “You boys all heard wrong. I met this kitty cat up in the Maine woods, you see, teeth like sabers and razor-sharp claws. Had these peculiar orange and white stripes—”

  “Shoot, Sticks. It’s a good thing you play that squawk box better’n you tell stories,” someone shouted. “Let’s dance!”

  The fiddle ripped up again, and Grace was ushered back onto the floor. During the next hour, she danced with Gideon, with Sam, and with all the others who had followed the timber to Michigan. At one point, Fiddlesticks handed his fiddle off to Squeaky and swung Grace around the room himself, to the tune of a dozen squalling cats.

  When Grace bowed out to catch her breath, Gideon produced a tattered blue gown. “It’s Al’s turn to be Betsie!” he shouted, and threw it over the head of a pimply-faced teenager. Grace
nearly fell off the seat with laughter when Al curtsied to Gideon and began dancing with the most ridiculous hip-wagging and hair-fluffing she’d ever seen.

  The music died down again, and Fiddlesticks had just launched into an account of how he had once met the Queen of Norway and offered to fry her up a mess of Mississippi catfish when the door swung open and a very displeased-looking foreman loomed against the outside darkness. “Late night, daughter?” he asked cryptically.

  “Pa!” Grace jumped up, surprised at the displeasure on his face.

  “You will come with me, Grace. Now. You too, Sam.”

  Doc spoke up quietly. “We were just having a bit of fun, boss. She’s weren’t a moment in danger.”

  Grace threw the man a grateful look.

  “That’ll do, Doc,” Pa told him. “Carry on.” He escorted his children outside, but the bunkhouse remained solemn behind them.

  Pa led them through the dingle and into the mess hall where he turned on them sternly. “I’d like to know what possessed you to go in there tonight.”

  Grace stared at him, speechless. She couldn’t imagine her error.

  “It was my fault, Pa,” Sam mumbled. “Gideon and I have been trying to convince Grace to relax and have a little fun.”

  “Then I’ll hold the three of you equally guilty.”

  Grace still didn’t understand the problem, and the unfairness of her father’s actions chafed like homespun cloth. “I’d like to know exactly what we did wrong, Pa.”

  His eyes blazed down into hers. “That bunkhouse is the men’s territory, Grace. It belongs to them. Just like they are not allowed to cross the threshold into your quarters, you are not to cross into theirs.”

  “But I was invited. Gideon asked them if I could join the dance, and every last one of them said yes.” She wasn’t completely certain that was true, but she figured he couldn’t prove it false.

  “I don’t care if they begged you. Grace, these aren’t exactly church-goers. They’re coarse and rowdy and reckless. Neither their language nor their stories are fit for a young lady.”

  “But—”

  “You see them at their best behavior, but come spring, most of them will blow every dime they’ve made on whiskey and women. To keep discipline and order in a camp—to keep it in this family—there have to be certain rules. You do not belong in that bunkhouse.”

  Grace planted her feet and glared up at him. The tension and frustration she had lived with for weeks was building like a wall of water behind a flimsy dam. “So you planned for me to be alone and friendless this winter? This was your intention all along?”

  “Of course not. I brought you here so we could be together again.”

  “That hasn’t worked out so well, has it?” she asked. Talking back to Pa was getting easier and easier the more she practiced. Her vision blurred with a rush of tears. “You only brought me here because you feel guilty for leaving us as orphans at Aunt Sally’s. If you’d wanted to be a family, you never would have left three years ago!”

  The cords in Pa’s neck grew taut as he ground out his words. “America was at war, Grace. I had a duty to fulfill.”

  “Your duty was to me and Sam after Mama died. Instead, you left us with Aunt Sally and Uncle Peter so you could go play battle games.”

  Pa slammed his fist down on a table, stunning Grace into silence. “Do you think I liked being part of the killing?” he roared. “That I got some kind of pleasure out of that bloodbath?”

  Sam stood wide-eyed, watching one and then the other.

  Pa raked his hand through his hair. “Lord, it was awful, Grace. Shooting at men who could have been my neighbors. Watching friends waste away with disease. Shunning friendship for fear of losing more loved ones. Listening to the whimpers of the dying all over the battlefield and not being able to do so much as deliver a canteen of water.”

  He turned to her, his face horrible to look at. “I relive it every night, Grace. Do you really think I wanted that?”

  She shrunk away from him. “But you volunteered.”

  “I was going to be drafted!”

  Her courage was draining away like water off a rooftop. “You didn’t have to go,” she whispered.

  He stared at her a moment in disbelief. Then he swore and kicked at a bench, sending it toppling under a table.

  Sam sprang to his father’s side. “Pa—” he began.

  Pa shook him off and paced the length of the room once, twice. At last he turned to his daughter, his face a mask of barely concealed anger. “Go to your room this minute, Grace. You are not to have anything to do with the men under my authority again. Am I understood?”

  “Not even Gid?”

  “GO!” he screamed.

  She ran with hot tears of hurt and resentment bubbling up from some long-buried reservoir. Instead of returning to the van as ordered, she struck out blindly into the woods. She gave no thought to the snow or the darkness or the cold. Indeed, her body radiated heat.

  Her anger drove her deep into the forest where she passed through large tracts laid bare by the lumbermen’s axes. The slashings lay in ghostly, twisted heaps, like pox marks on the face of the land. The wreckage bore mute testament to a world where everything bowed under the cold hand of death: lives, hopes, and relationships. Grace couldn’t see how anything beautiful could ever grow there again.

  She lost all account of time. Perhaps thirty minutes later, perhaps two hours, she ground to a stop in the pitch black shadow of the trees. As her anger cooled, so did her body. Her feet, instead of feeling warm and snug in her boots, were blocks of ice inside flimsy shoes. Her stockings were wet through. She wore no hat, no mittens, no muffler, only a woolen cloak. And she had no idea where she was.

  Around her, she could only distinguish deeper shades in a world of darkness. She peered behind to follow the trail of her own footsteps back to camp, but the ice had crusted in some places; in others, the wind had blown the ground bare. She had left no trail.

  Grace began to shiver. She knew there were wild animals in the forest. Squeaky and Wrong Hand often hunted on Sunday afternoons. Twice they had returned with coyotes, and once they had brought down a bear.

  She glanced around in alarm, her teeth chattering, her body shaking. Every shadow became a monster, every snap of ice the footstep of a predator, but her immediate threat was the piercing cold. Already her fingers, feet, and ears were numb with it. She pulled her cloak up to cover her head and wrapped it snugly around her body, holding it closed around her hands.

  The sweeping branches of a large, nearby spruce offered meager protection. Grace crawled under and tucked her legs up inside her cloak as well. If she could last till morning, someone would realize she was gone and a search party would come looking for her. But how far had she wandered? How long would it take to find her?

  Would anyone find her?

  Grace laid her head upon her knees and wept, overcome with the certainty that only her frozen body would be found.

  Chapter 11

  Grace raised her head from her damp cloak, listening. Her face felt stiff where tears had fallen and frozen. She sat motionless, waiting for the sound to come again, but the night lay silent. Maybe she had imagined it, drifting on the edge of sleep.

  There it was again! A soft tread, like a padded footstep whispering over the ice.

  Terror shattered her drowsiness. Was it a wolf? A coyote? What waited for her behind the veil of branches?

  The step came again, closer now. Grace held her breath, wishing she had refrained from sobbing her despair aloud for every night creature to hear. She shivered violently now, her body convulsing beyond her control. Warmth had begun to spread through her body, deceptive warmth that lured her toward sleep. And toward death.

  A soft guttural sound whispered out of the darkness. A questioning sound. A decidedly human sound, Grace thought, though she could not understand it. “H-hel-lo?” she managed, wondering again if she were dreaming.

  “Who is there?” came a
low voice.

  Grace’s heart leaped with hope. Someone had heard her! Someone had come!

  “I—I—I—” she tried, but her frozen face could not form the words.

  The branches parted, and a dusky form reached in toward her. She felt hands grip her shoulders, draw her out, support her on a nightmarish walk through darkness. The last thing she remembered before warm blackness overcame her was the dreamy image of flames.

  Grace awoke to a soft crackle and the smell of wood smoke. Her body burned, and she cried out with pain.

  “Lie still,” a voice commanded. “Stay under warmth.”

  “I’m on fire,” she gasped.

  “No. Safe. Body very cold. Warm up slowly.”

  Grace bit back another cry of agony. Her hands and feet prickled with pain that shot up her limbs. But she couldn’t be on fire, she realized. She was still shivering.

  Her eyes took in the dim interior of a rustic shelter. She lay on a pallet of furs. The musty coverings were tucked all around her, and a merry fire danced close by.

  “Where am I?” she ground out, shifting position and feeling something hard strike against her side. Something hard and warm.

  “In the wigwam of Swims Like a Loon.”

  A figure she seemed to remember from a dream was silhouetted briefly against the flames. It was an Indian woman with a bent form and long braids. Grace watched the woman knock something out of the coals with a stick and wrap it quickly in a scrap of fur. She drew back in alarm as the woman moved to tuck it beneath the fur robes.

  “A stone,” the woman explained. “Make warm.”

  So that’s what she had bumped against. Grace shifted again, feeling another rock near her feet. The contact made flames of agony lick up her leg once more.

  After that, Grace lay very still, moving only her eyes. They followed the woman about the room as she prepared something in a kettle above the flames that gave off a delicious aroma. Firelight played on the woman’s form and cast her wrinkled face into planes of light and shadow. She didn’t seem very frightening.