The Pioneer

by Paul Almond

  Another round of banging. Hannah called from her room, “Poppa, Poppa, someone’s at the door!”

  He crossed into the back porch, lifted the bolt and flung the door open.

  There, beard encrusted with ice, eyebrows white from hoarfrost, gaunt, looking half starved, stood his youngest son, Jim.

  A wild whoop of welcome burst out of him. In a gesture so unlike him he flung open his arms, wrapped them round Jim, hugging him with all his might. Who cared if the wind blew through the open door and froze the house. The Prodigal had returned.

  Chapter Twelve: Spring 1854

  “So, Uncle Jim, how’s it feel to be back here, away from all them pretty girls in the city?” John Alford, now fifteen, was driving a picket into the ground with a heavy mallet. “You miss all that?”

  Old James was bent over, sharpening another picket with his axe while his son Jim and their neighbour’s son, Sam Nelson, carried a heavy rail over to the next panel. All around them in the damp cedar woods this hot spring day, snow was dripping. Sam and Jim had hung their coats on cut-off branches nearby while they slogged through the deep slush, working about ten feet back from the still frozen brook. They were running this fence along the boundary line between James and the Nelsons’, using rails floated down the brook last spring when it flooded. Below, the brook ran a couple of hundred yards down to the great pond formed by Manderson’s dam. Their own cattle and Nelsons’ would drink down there.

  “Well, John, m’boy,” Jim said, “powerful pile of girls to be had up there. But if I was you, I wouldn’t want any one of them.”

  His father looked up. The first hint — rejected love, just what Catherine had guessed. Jim and Sam dropped the rail onto its slot between two pickets to complete a panel. The old man felt gratified to have them all working together as a family once again. Much earlier, Janey’s baby brother, Joey, had been cured, of course, like others Catherine had seen to. Jim’s arrival had given James such a surge of elation and helped ease his pain over the continued failure of the school. He and Catherine even made love two nights in a row, a thing they had not done for years. Jim’s first day back, Catherine had made sure her son did nothing but rest after his trek home. They all needed a rest actually, for that first night, James had broken out the rum, a thing he rarely did, though he kept a stash in readiness.

  “But lots of work to be had up there?” Sam Nelson asked. In his early thirties, brawny, he stood panting for a moment before going for another heavy rail to place at the bottom of the next panel. “We’ll need all o’ yez on this one, I guess. Bring the peavey, John.”

  James put down his axe and crossed to help with the next rail. The four heaved up the great log, well over a foot thick.

  “Well Sam, I could say the same about jobs,” panted Jim. “Lots of jobs, but none you’d be happy doing.” They dropped the log in place. John grabbed a picket and Jim hammered it into the ground.

  “There must’ve been something ye liked about the big city,” John asked his uncle, holding the picket straight.

  “Best thing I liked was the leaving of it.”

  Good to hear, thought James. No worry now about the farm going on. Maybe now, he could focus on getting that school built.

  “That’s good,” John said. “Never had no hankering to go myself, so I’m glad I won’t be missing out.” He stood back and surveyed the fence as Jim slogged through drifts to the next rail. “Terble pile o’ snow fell this winter.”

  “How so?” Jim said. “Never seen much in Montreal.”

  “Oh no? Here she came down all winter. Must be a lot different so far inland.”

  “Yes, byes,” Sam countered, “gonna be a terble rush o’ water when this here brook goes.”

  “Did ya get any logs cut this winter, Poppa? We gonna be floating some down when she breaks?”

  James shook his head. Back cutting, James confessed he wasn’t as agile around the stumps and brushwood as before. In fact, he’d taken a couple of nasty falls, without letting on he’d been hurt. Next winter, he said he’d leave the logging to the others.

  “These damn rails are sure heavy in the spring,” Sam grunted. “Maybe we should’a left them dry till midsummer.”

  “Maybe,” James said, “but you’ll be pasturing your cattle here soon as they’re outta the barn in the next weeks, and mine too.” Great for grazing, the lush ground of the Hollow produced excellent grasses and hay, and of course all the water the cattle needed.

  “Your father’s been doing some persuasive talking while you was gone, Jim.” Sam picked up the next heavy rail with the others.

  “Just leave it lie!” James didn’t want to spoil the fun of them all working together.

  “Don’t let it lie—I want to know what my father’s been up to.”

  “Foolish ideas, if you ask me,” Sam blurted out. “Everyone’s talking. Seems he wants to build some damn fool school — excuse me, Mr. Alford — but you Protestants are getting yer dander up, I heard. Most everyone is against it, anyway.”

  “I heard the talk too,” John put in. “Most farmers, they don’t see the need. Me, I’m even in two minds myself.”

  “You’re what!” Jim went for another rail while James stayed sharpening a picket.

  “Well, my grandfather here taught me all I need to know,” John replied, “and fun it was, most of the time. He learned me arithmetic, and reading and writing, and I don’t see no reason for a lot more.”

  “What about children that don’t have parents to teach them?” Jim asked, eyeing Sam and John. “Lots of farmers don’t even know how to read or write themselves.”

  “Well that’s true, for sure,” Sam said. “My poppa don’t.”

  “And look how many children around Shegouac need schooling,” Jim went on. “My sister Mariah, she’s got three would go, sister Ann’s got two, Mary Jane two. And Sam, what about your sister-in-law, Sarah Nelson, over there?” He pointed. “She’s got five.”

  “They’re Catholic,” James repeated grimly.

  “Catholics,” John echoed, “they’re against it, too.”

  “Catholics don’t go to Protestant schools on the Coast.” The old man wished the subject would go away. “They count on their own system.”

  “Poppa, once you got that there school built, just watch them all come.”

  “All the parents, they say, what’s good enough for us is good enough for the kids.” Sam stooped to take a drink of water. “What about how to grow wheat? What about how to birth a cow, what if the young pigs are born too early? A fella’s got so much to learn about farming — who’s got time for rubbish like reading old books? That never did no one no good.”

  Jim was stooping to pick up another rail, but he stopped and stood up, hands on hips. “All right, you fellas, listen. You know, I worked on building some bloody great bridge across that St. Lawrence, a sonofabitch of a river, must’ve been over a mile wide from where we started. And every day, from morning till night, I worked —”

  “And what d’ya think we do here?” snapped Sam.

  “I know that, Sam,” Jim replied calmly. “But we’re working for ourselves, here. And our own work is different each day. There, I just carried buckets o’ gravel up and down ladders, up and down, I don’t wish that on the worst ox in Creation. And let me tell you, one day some fellow came and told us all we’d have to stop for the spring thaw. Clean-shaven he was, big bushy sideburns, all dressed nice in a black suit. If you’d have checked his hands, they be smooth like a woman’s. Now of course, he’d have his own problems — different sorts, I’ve no doubt. But no carrying buckets up and down ladders for him, no sir. And you know what made the difference?”

  James watched. His son, having been to the big city, had gotten a real authority, holding forth like a man twice his age. Amazing what one trip could do to a person.

  “Easy to see,” John said. “He was rich, and you’re poor.”

  “Right you are, John. But why was he rich, and why was I poor? He didn’t st
art out rich. Probably started like me, but what made the difference? Education. He got to a big university, that’s what. And how? Some good school first. And he got himself a piece of paper that said he was an engineer. Or whatever it said, I don’t care. But he stood up there on the lip of the pit, talking down to us, very nice too. And we stood and listened beside our buckets of gravel, before we came up to get our last pay. That convinced me.”

  James thought: better said than even I could’ve spoken. Quite a son!

  Sam shook his head and sighed. “Well, Jim, I guess, maybe, you made a point! Yes sir.”

  “And maybe,” John added, “maybe I’d be for a school now, too, though it don’t matter what I think.”

  “Oh yes it does,” Jim said. “We all got to talk, we all got to help Poppa get his school.”

  James broke into a grin. What a clear-headed and strong-willed advocate he now had! But how could one young nineteen year old, with city learning or no, ever change these toughened settlers firmly planted on their soil of Shegouac?

  Chapter Thirteen

  A few days later, Jim watched his father sit back, satisfied. “Damn fine potatoes, don’t know how they weathered this winter with all that snow.” James rose and clumped over to his seat by the window to look out at the spring storm shaking trees and lashing the window with ferocious rain. “But I’ll be glad to see the end of this salt pork and eat some good fresh cod.”

  “They’ll be putting the boats out any day now, I s’pect,” Jim said. “Though I don’t know how those fellas go out so early. You’d never catch me being a fisherman. Specially with these spring storms.”

  “Those potatoes, Poppa,” Hannah said, “they’re all thanks to Jim, you know.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, when we finally got you to enlarge that root cellar last summer, Jim made sure he put in those wide shelves off the ground. Made all the difference, eh Momma?”

  “Yes dear,” Catherine replied, “our Jim’s very clever, but we must be careful not to overdo it. Might get a swelled head, specially since he’s been to the big city!”

  “Aw Momma, you know I’d —” Jim was interrupted by the back door bursting open.

  Ann’s husband, Will Young, came rushing in, breathless and wet from the rain. “Byes, we was at the top of the brook hill and we saw this here great rush of water coming down, took away the bridge!”

  “They’re gonna be cut off!” Hannah cried. “Port Daniel’s cut off.”

  “There’s three kids on the bridge! It’s hangin’ by a thread, they can’t get off.”

  Jim leapt up, followed by his father. Without saying a word, they threw on coats and tore out, followed by the womenfolk. “Grab a couple of axes,” James hollered, “and a coil o’ rope.”

  Jim detoured, grabbed the implements his father wanted, and tore down the hill in the downpour, James following as fast as his old legs could travel.

  What a sight greeted them: the brook ice had indeed broken, high up above the Manderson dam — might even have taken the dam with it, Jim thought. The patchwork bridge had swung downstream, just held on one side. Three forms — they looked like girls — were hanging on for dear life, with no way to leap across that violent river, or make it back to the other side. Jim had never seen the brook in such flood before.

  Slipping on the ice patches, he and Will ran as fast as they could, but before they arrived, the bridge broke off and started to lurch down over the shelves of rocks the fifty or more feet as the current bore it into the stormy sea. Jim’s heart froze as he saw one form swept into the water — “It’s a Skene girl,” Will yelled. They raced to reach the turbulent current where now the floating fragment had passed them and then tumbled out onto the waves, half floating, half submerged.

  The girl, whom now Jim could see was Christy, maybe nine, bobbed to the surface where the immense thrust of the current met the sea, the wind churning the waves.

  Right away, Will plunged into the surf, wading out as fast as he could, while Jim kept his eyes upon the broken part of the bridge with its two occupants. One form he now saw was Margie Skene, hanging onto her smaller sister, Agnes, about seven. “What’ll we do?” he yelled over the uproar of the ferocious storm that only the spring could bring to the Gaspé.

  Panting, James gasped to Jim, “Get this rope onto it, and we’ll haul her back.”

  “But it’s sinking out there!”

  “Might hold. What’s Will doing — he can’t swim neither.”

  Jim saw Will was up to his chest in waves which knocked him about, but he still headed for Christy only a few feet beyond. From her thrashing, Jim could see she was just managing to keep herself afloat. But with those heavy clothes, she’d soon go under.

  Beyond Christy, the broken flooring of the bridge and its railing looked as if it were sinking. “Poppa, it’s too deep out that far.” Then Jim spotted a floating log roiling with the flotsam and jetsam brought down by the flood. If he could just get on it. “I’ll grab me that log.” No time for doubts, no time for anything but action.

  His father was fastening the rope round his waist. “Watch she don’t roll, me son. Hang on tight.”

  The fragment of bridge was drifting further out on the brook’s surge. Quickly, rope round his waist, Jim strode into the waves. The shock of its icy wrath struck him like a club, and he almost crumpled. Lord, was it cold! He kept wading deeper. Soon up to his waist, he could hardly feel his feet, slipping and tripping on the rocky bottom. Get out of that coat, he realized, it’ll pull you down. He threw it off, kept going, waves striking his face, washing over him, driving that childhood fear of drowning into his very bones.

  Slow going through the deep water, and he saw the log drifting away. Freezing, he put aside his fear and launched himself out into the waves as he’d seen swimmers do, kicking his legs hard, sweeping his arms forward so that somehow he reached the log. But now, get onto it? Every time his icy hands grabbed a stub of limb, the log rolled.

  “Hurry up,” he heard Margie shriek. He looked. The fragment of bridge was slowly going under. The two girls would drown for sure.

  Kicking, he managed to get both his arms over the log, and with that purchase, swung the log so that he could drive it out to them by the thrust of his legs. But the wind and rain in his face slowed him so that he made little headway.

  Fatigue set in. Through the rain he saw the girls up to their waists in the freezing bay. That bridge was going down. What should he do? He couldn’t swim...

  Or could he? He’d gotten to the log — so try! But through these waves, heavy boots, no strength left and ten feet to go — he’d drown for sure. He pushed off from the log, gasping and choking, forcing himself to try and swim to the floating fragment.

  On shore, James watched in horror. Behind him, down the hill came Hannah with some blankets, and a sleigh with two more neighbours. Out of the corner of his eye, James saw that Will had grabbed the thrashing Christy and was half floating, half struggling back to shore with her. Looked like he would make it. But his son — was he actually trying to swim? In a sea that brooked no swimming? The waves, though not exceptionally high, were choppy, breaking over him: Jim would drown, too.

  Unaccountably, James felt at one with him, felt that same ice, that same numbness overcoming him, as many years before, he had struggled to get to shore with a rope round his waist too, tugging a crucial survival bag.

  How ironic to have made it himself, and then to have his son and heir succumb to the same waves that he himself had beaten. He roared in anguish as he saw Jim go down, and stay down. James felt himself out there with him in the depths, trying to unloose his survival bag, snagged on some rock along the bottom. He had been numb with cold, worn out, as only those icy waters can make you in just a few seconds and — more frightening still — how they took away any will to survive. Jim, he prayed, don’t give up the fight Jim, only a few more feet!

  Then his son popped up. “Swim, Jim, swim,” James cried hoarsely; others yelled
their encouragement through the drenching rain.

  “Will’s made it. He’s made it!” Thomas Byers cried as he left his sleigh to wrap Will and the half-drowned Christy in blankets that Hannah had ready. “I’ll be taking them right up to Catherine,” he shouted, “you stay for Jim and the girls. Look, James Travers got here, he’ll take care o’ you fellas — I’m off.”

  James was hardly aware of anything: not Hannah helping the bundled forms into the sleigh, nor Hannah calling out as Jim closed in on the girls. “He’s going to make it, Poppa. He’s swimming!”

  But a good way from shore, Jim had no idea that he would make it. Numb from head to toe, buried in waves, gulping air whenever he got the chance, he reached out and grabbed onto a spar of pine, floating between him and the girls. “Jim, we’re going down!” Margie shrieked.

  And going down they were, water up to their necks. Mostly submerged, the waterlogged bridge was sinking. In seconds they’d both be gone.

  Margie’s cry made Jim fight even harder, but he just had no more strength left, paralyzed by the frigid water. He kicked, hefted, got to the spar, swung it toward the girls.

  He tried to yell, “use the float,” but couldn’t, he was choking, he couldn’t breathe — just trust that they would know, and yes, as a wave broke over him, he just saw Margie lunge and grab her kid sister, hauling her into the sea as she groped for the spar. They somehow made it and hung on. Jim got his arm around one of them and then felt a tug at his waist — the rope, the others were pulling. Margie, with youthful strength and tenacity, had locked herself round the spar. “Pull,” she shrieked out, “pull hard!”

  As the rope tugged him shoreward, Jim felt his hands slipping off, so numb. Choking, he gasped, “Wait! Don’t!”

  “No, no, pull,” Margie yelled. With waning strength Jim wrestled for a better hold. But the waves and the current were winning. Agnes was slipping out of his grasp. In a panic, she flailed her arms and legs, unaware she was drowning them both.

  The team on shore kept pulling hard, Jim couldn’t yell again, and down he went with Agnes. Into the black waters, finished.