“Of course.”
“I mean by that,” she says, enunciating carefully, “that you mustn’t allow yourself to be distracted by anything else.”
He kneels beside her and speaks gently. “I am quite certain this will work, Mater. If you had seen this man Mr. Atkins, you would have believed him too. You could see it in his eyes. He is not just an engineering genius, he is also a man of conviction.”
His mother pats the back of his hand, before wiping her eyes. “Good,” she says. She picks up her sewing. “I’d better get these buttons finished.”
“Good night, Mater.”
John tiptoes upstairs to his bedroom and spends some moments looking out the window before he retires to bed. It is a warm, sultry evening. Lights burn in some of the windows opposite. A lone carriage passes by below but otherwise Wabash Avenue is silent. The sky looks more purple than black. In the distance, he can see some tiny bobbing lights on the Lake. Chicago is preparing for sleep. And up above the city a new moon is rising, which is the best of omens for a new venture.
1856–1857
1856
THE LAST STIM
THE GROUND WAS soft now that the morning frost had melted. The mulch was a deep, dark brown. Gus picked his way through the undergrowth, following the contours of the land. There was not much up and down. The earth was flat and boggy. Old tree stumps furry with moss were masked by undergrowth. He moved fast, and only occasionally did he feel his boots sink. The river boomed, as if in constant echo, masking every other noise. Where only two weeks ago, sluggish water had moved in silence hemmed in by a layer of ice, there was now a raging torrent. Its downward rush was like a dance of freedom. The long, hard winter was over and spring had arrived. It was time to escape.
At the bend in the river, Gus paused and looked back. As usual, he had been sent ahead to search for possible bottlenecks. Shading his eyes, he saw the first logs in the distance, already beginning to darken the river’s silver gleam. As he watched their approach he was removed, momentarily, from the horror they represented. He saw only the beauty of their onward rush.
It had been the hardest, most exhausting, most wretched four months of his life. He was young, strong and healthy, but he had found himself pushed to the limit. Often, on the verge of collapse, he had kept going, fueled only by stubbornness, a refusal to submit, and a burning ambition for his future in America.
The river’s exuberance this morning inspired him. The sparkling waters thundered down like a train over the tracks, steaming with spit and foam beneath the freight they carried. This misery would soon be over. Never again would he endure a winter like this. Never again would a permanent layer of cold sweat lie like scum between his skin and his shirt. Never again would he suffer from the bouts of diarrhea and colds that lasted for weeks, the nights of confinement in a cramped, stinking, drafty shack, surrounded by the worst kind of American. Never again would his muscles recoil as the ax blade jarred against cold timber first thing in a morning. Never again would he climb to the top of a stack to straighten them up, and have to look over the edge.
A few days ago, one of the old lumbermen pushed him as the cook was handing across his breakfast plate of salt pork, beans and potatoes. He lost most of the food, which made everyone laugh, except Paddy the Irishman. He retaliated with a series of three punches that left the bully gasping in a crouch. Gus did not act out of anger, nor did he feel it. It was the only way, in that world, in which he could seek justice.
He continued to gaze at the logs, at how they shimmied downriver. All roads led to Chicago. Once this drive was over, he would go where they were going. He would make a new life for himself. In Chicago, he would become more American than the lumbermen, as American as if he had been born here. With renewed hope, he shielded his eyes against the glare of the pale March sun. The mass of logs, in the passion of their approach, reminded him of a stim of gigantic fish.
The memory was fresh, of how he’d hide his fear from the other boys, of how his stomach rebelled at the sight of the drop and of how he would close his eyes before taking his turn to jump. That was the only way he could make himself do it. But the fear, always, was more in the anticipation than the act. Once he broke the surface, he forgot how terrifying it had been and he’d find he could hold his breath and swim for longer underwater than anyone else. After the first shock of cold, he would open his eyes. The Holjeån River was clear as glass and, more often than not, he’d see a stim swirling in the shallows, a sight that felt like God’s reward for confronting his fear. He would gaze at the stim for as long as possible before coming up, gasping for breath, amazed. Those stim were the most beautiful things in the world. It wasn’t their brightness and color that affected him most, but their motion. How did they swim without a leader, without bumping one into another, in order and yet without order, as if every little fish were one part of a single body, controlled by a single mind? Ah, the wonder and safety of Småland. How far away that was now.
The logs, suddenly, were upon him at the bend. He cursed himself for daydreaming. There would be trouble. The river here was too narrow, the turn too sharp. Some of the timber in the lead had failed to make the turn and pummeled into the far bank. Within seconds, a curving trail of splayed tree trunks, glistening and upended, marked the line of the river.
He hurried back to alert the others to the bottleneck, and as he did so it crossed his mind that a real stim would never have got stuck.
* * *
The boss was called Jack, he’d been a lumberer all his life, and he let you know it.
“I want you out there, Gussie,” he barked. “Now.”
This came as no surprise. Jack always gave him the dangerous jobs. “You’re the youngest, Gussie” or “You’ve got no aches and pains yet, Gussie” or “You’ve got no wife and kids, Gussie.” He never said, “It’s because you’re a Squarehead, Gussie.” Nor did he tell the other truth, that “Gussie” (his English might be poor but he could hear the insult in “Gussie”) was the only man who could do it. Nobody else had the footing or the eye, the sense of balance and the will. He was only seventeen years old but he had already proved he was as strong as any of Jack’s regulars. He had muscle and they knew it. He could swing the longest ax and pull the heaviest load. He never ducked his share of the work. He suffered from no long-term hacking cough, his shoulders weren’t crabbed, his hands might be blistered from the ax but the fingers were not yet permanently crooked.
“You want to feckin’ kill the boy?” protested Paddy Mohan. “Nobody should go out there, not with logs backed up like that, and not this near to the Falls. It’s feckin’ suicide. Don’t do it, Gus.” Paddy was probably about thirty years old, new to the country too, and the only other outsider. He looked out for Gus, and there was nothing more to it than that, though to hear the filth talked about the two of them you wouldn’t have known.
Jack shoved Paddy backward and told him to shut his mouth. He yelled at Gus, panting and slew-eyed. “Get out there. Now.”
Gus stood his ground. He said he would not do it.
“One rule of my camp, Gussie boy, in case it’s passed you by. Nobody disobeys a fucking order, especially not a kid like you.”
“He just did, didn’t he?” said Paddy, from a distance. “And I tell you this, nobody has the right to send a starvin’ mutt into that mess, never mind a youngster.”
Jack raised his fist. “Stitch it, bog man, or I’ll bust you open.”
“I stop this jam,” said Gus, “you give me one V.”
Jack seized him by the collar, almost throttling him. “I hope my ears are playing tricks, Gussie boy, and I didn’t hear that correct?”
“I do this thing you asking for one V,” he said, right into his face.
Some of the old loggers were sniggering, but they didn’t step forward to say they’d do it. They never did. The boss told them to shut it. Gus was glad he understood so little of what they were saying, though he didn’t care much either. He was sure most Americans
were not like these ones. It was the logging that knocked the sense out of you and turned you into a brute. He had felt it happening to him too, in just a few months. These men had been doing it for years. There was no time to think beyond the next tree, the next break, the next food, the next sleep. Your body worked, and while you watched it work your mind dulled and grew bitter. Yes, he had felt the same, and the feeling was dangerous.
“Don’t you dare do it,” warned Paddy. “Not even for five Vs. It’s feckin’ madness and the boss knows it and I don’t doubt you do too. You’re no brickbrain, boy.”
Gus did not think it was madness. There was risk, and it would be the biggest jam he had ever tried to break on his own, but it was not impossible. And he wanted to show these Americans that while they might be scared to death, the Squarehead wasn’t. Pride, though, wasn’t the most important reason for doing it. His mother needed those five extra dollars. Since his father passed away, it had been up to Gus to keep his mother and sister alive, and he had done it. He was already imagining himself as he handed over the V, and the gratitude that would come into her eyes and how good that would make him feel.
He also knew it was worth holding out. Jack was desperate for those logs to start moving. The early winter freeze had blocked the Great Lakes and cut off supplies to Chicago. It was a fine opportunity to break into the market. But they were already running late, as Jack kept telling them, even before this jam. There would be some very unhappy people downriver, he said, and some very unhappy new customers in Chicago who couldn’t wait any longer for their white pine, no matter how young and green it came in. They were not interested in snowfall or sledways or ice melts down there in Chicago. They neither knew nor cared how the timber arrived, just as long as it did.
Business people in Chicago meant nothing to Gus, but the money he could take back to his mother meant a lot. So he held out for his five dollars. Jack was mostly mouth, as he had worked out by then. He swore at Gus, he called him “the stupidest fuckin’ Squarehead in the state of Michigan,” and then he agreed. Break the logjam and he would be paid an extra five dollars.
* * *
The rock from which Gus decided to start was flattish and aligned with the center of the jam. He laid down the pike pole, stripped off his shirt and handed it to Paddy, who gave him the tin of goose grease. He rubbed it into his chest, arms and legs. He put the shirt back on and told himself to ignore the cold.
“Don’t do it, Gus,” Paddy urged him again. “You don’t need to make of yourself a martyr for this pissproud mob.” He was shouting, to make himself heard against the rush of water.
Gus concentrated on the logs. He scanned them, searching for the spot, willing himself to ignore the bitter wind that whipped across his back. The spray stung like hail. It was a source of pride, how he had learned to steel his mind against cold and pain. There would be no shivering, no distractions; he would allow himself to feel no fear. After all, he told himself, he was not about to climb a log pile. One false move at the top of a log pile, and everything underneath would disappear. It would not be like diving into the Holjeån. From his earliest days, this was what had terrified him most, the thought of slipping from on high when you couldn’t help yourself, the thought of dropping through the air like a stone.
Jack was on the bank now, shouting instructions and pointing, but Gus took no notice of him. He narrowed his eyes against the freezing spray and looked only at the logs, shoving at each other as the water roiled around them. He felt the cold streaming through him and, despite his best intentions, he was afraid. Even if he did not drown out there, he would freeze to death. Paddy was right. This was too dangerous. He should go back.
He prayed for strength, and the moment passed.
He resumed his search for signs, for the spot where they were choking, the destination they were all trying to reach, the point of greatest pressure, the bottleneck. One of the Americans—it was a voice he recognized but did not bother placing—shouted that Gussie boy should get on with it and stop standing there like a Nancy because some of them had real work to do. He spat and drew in a deep breath. His eyes were fixed on a point about twenty yards distant, not quite halfway across the river. He had been watching the way in which the buildup formed, looking for little signs of readjustment and displacement that were the clues he needed. It was not the center he would strike, it was the center’s flank. All he had to do was to find those few logs that were at the heart of everything. Maybe they were stuck beneath a rock or wedged in a sandbank. There was always, in everything, one last point of resistance. This was the trick, and the lesson. Find it, break it, and the rout would begin. He decided where to make the first attempt. If he was wrong, if there was no sign of movement, he would withdraw and choose again. Speed and decisiveness were everything now. If he hit the mark first time around, he planned to be back on this rock in the blink of an eye, collecting his V.
Jack handed him the rope.
“Don’t forget it’s for your waist, Gussie boy,” shouted the same American, “not your neck.”
“One more word out of you, you scum,” retorted Paddy, “and you’ll be taking a swim.”
Jack told them to cut it out. “And hold that fuckin’ rope tight or you’ll be the next.”
To Gus, these words seemed to be coming from a great distance. The water was drumming furiously against the horde of blocked timber. Freedom, he told himself. Break the jam, and freedom would return. The shifting wood creaked and scraped and thudded. He bent down to pick up the pike pole. He weighed it in his numb hands. Raising one foot, then the other, he tested the spikes in his boots for their hold. He unknotted the rope Jack gave him and let it fall away. It would be more of a hindrance than a help. Jack started yelling again but his voice was small and faint and unimportant. He took a deep breath, readied himself and sprang off the flat rock toward the first log. Above the blind percussion of the water, he heard Paddy shout one last time, telling him to “come back in one feckin’ piece.”
* * *
Water was bucketing over the logs; a frost of ice stuck to his legs as his eyes smarted and retracted. He could not feel his feet. No thoughts troubled him. There was only then and there. He was not conscious of who he was or how he got there or how long it had taken or how he fixed the pike pole to hook the handful of logs that were the key to everything. There was only that instant, that instant before everything began to shift and the whole crooked edifice on which he was standing would rumble and creak beneath him; there was just that instant when Gus felt invincible, the master of nature, triumphant. It was only an instant, because the sensation of triumph was caused by the same telltale shift that marked the moment of true danger. But he had done it. He had found the point of least resistance, he had broken it, he had won.
Now he had to get back.
He leapt onto the next log and then the next as he made for the bank. He knew he only had seconds to get there, before the resurgent logs knocked him out or over or under, before they hauled him downriver toward Chicago and crushed him to death.
He abandoned the pike pole. He jumped onto a huge trunk that was already beginning to move away from him, landed badly, and was thrown onto his back. His hands stung. As a wave burst and smothered him like a snowdrift, he swallowed a mouthful of icy water. He gasped in pain. It seemed to burn his throat. His legs were up and in one piece but it made little difference. He was now being driven downriver, logs grinding beneath him as they churned and bumped and tossed him along. He could be trapped between them in an instant. The bank, the bank, he had to reach the bank. He must find his feet and face forward. At least this was a big log, more stable than some of the others, less liable to be knocked sideways.
And by God he managed it; he dropped into a crouch and held fast as his log smashed at a diagonal into a smaller log and mounted it. He was raised up, swinging from side to side, so that for a moment he was held aloft as the two trunks slid onward together, toward the frothing chute of water in the center. And
that was the moment when he first noticed them. It was a roaring, a rumble, a booming, and it was growing stronger. Moving water is sound, he told himself, blind sound. It could not harm you. Until this moment, he had deliberately not thought about the Falls.
But that was where he was being taken. He looked up long enough to glimpse where the water’s horizon vanished into thin air. There wouldn’t be enough time to reach the bank even if he could see a way to do it. Timber was everywhere, slick brown logs fighting, crashing, pounding into each other. The water was silver and freezing. He needed to be a flying fish, like one of those he saw jumping in front of the ship, when they made the crossing to America. He hung on because there was nothing else he could do even though he knew, now, that he was going to die.
He imagined the news being brought to his mother. Paddy would do it, wouldn’t he? He could see his mother’s surprise when he appeared, and then her alarm as she saw his face. “But where’s Gustaf?” she would cry out. Paddy would break the news, and his mother would sit down rigid on her chair and not say a word and hold her apron to her eyes, and she would weep. When his father passed, she wept all night. And now, in less than a year, she would have lost him too. He thought of his sister Ingrid and his uncle Mr. Swanson in Chicago, whom he had been planning to ask for work. Too late for that now.
At least he would never again have to find sleep on a hard bunk in that stinking shack, reeking with the stench of feet and sweat and urine, while he picked lice out of his hair. At least there would be no more blisters on his hands, no aching back and shoulders, no more cuts and bruises. No more of those endless dishes of cold beans and half-cooked potatoes. No more days when time would not stop. No more feeling he was less than human. Yes, at least he would never have to go through any of that ever again. These thoughts took no time. They came to him in a flash, as though he had them all at once.
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