Voices in the Night

by Steven Millhauser

  How the Great Contest Got Its Start

  Now, whatever you may say about Paul Bunyan, with his strut and his swagger and his great blue ox that measured forty-two ax handles and a plug of tobacco between the eyes, there was no denying he had his share of family feeling. Paul Bunyan felt duty-bound to visit that no-work all-play brother of his twice a year. That was once after the spring drive when the men rode the logs downriver to the mill and once near the start of the fall season. James Bunyan lived in a run-down house in the middle of whatever was left of the Northeast Woods, up in Maine. Paul would leave things in the hands of Johnny Inkslinger or Little Meery and go on over to the stable and give Babe the Blue Ox a good tickle behind his ears. Then he’d shoulder his ax and head out east. He’d start out fast with those mighty strides of his, one foot splashing down in the middle of Lake Michigan and the other making waves on the shore of Lake Huron, but the closer he got to Maine the slower he moved, cause the last man on earth he wanted to see was that leave-me-be brother of his. Well now, on this visit that I’m going to tell you about, he arrived on a fine September afternoon with the sun shining and the birds chirp-chirping and not a cloud in the sky. He found that joke of a brother of his flat on his back in bed just opening his eyes to take a look around. So there was James Bunyan lying there looking up at his brother Paul standing over him like the biggest pine tree you ever saw, and there was Paul Bunyan looking down at his brother James lying there like a long piece of rope nobody had any use for, and each one thinking he’d rather be standing up to his neck in a swamp with the rain coming down and the water rising than be there looking each other over like two roosters in a henhouse. Not a one of them could think of anything to say. How’s Ma. How’s Pa. That’s good. Paul was just standing there fidgeting and squidgeting and eyeing the books and the apple cores lying all over the bedcovers and a boot on the chair and a shirtsleeve sticking out from under the bed, and he’s burning for his neat bunkhouse with the rows of bunks against the walls and the washbowls with their pitchers all in a row and the boots at the bottoms of the beds. You get up now, Paul says, and I’ll find somethin to eat. But in the kitchen all he could find was the other boot in the sink, a raccoon on the table, and nothing to eat but a bunch of dried-out berries and a jug of sour cider. In the front room his brother and him sat down to talk, but there was no more to talk about than there ever was. Paul told him about the spring drive down the river when Febold Feboldson fell off a log and was picked out of the rapids by the hook of a peavey, and he told him about the good timber to be had out in Oregon, and James listened with a look on his face like a man who can’t make up his mind whether to close his eyes and take a quick nap or open his mouth and take a slow yawn. The more Paul talked, the more James said nothing, till Paul couldn’t stand it no more and said I don’t see how a man can live like this and James said It suits me fine and before you know it Paul was shouting Why don’t you make somethin of yourself instead of lyin around all day like a dog doin nothin and James was saying I’d rather lie around all day like a dog doing nothing than spend my time killing off good trees that weren’t doing anybody a bit of harm and that got Paul so mad he said I can out-run out-jump out-drink and out-shoot you and I can out-chop out-cut out-saw and out-swamp you and James said Maybe you can out-run out-jump out-drink and out-shoot me and maybe you can out-roar out-scream out-howl and out-shout me but there’s one thing you can never do not if you live five hundred years and that’s out-sleep me. Well now, Paul had never heard words the like of that coming out of his brother’s mouth before. And when Paul heard those words coming out of his brother’s mouth like a swarm of angry bees he didn’t know whether to laugh till he cried at the sight of his bony brother challenging him like a man with muscle on him or cry till he laughed at the thought of himself Paul Bunyan taking up a challenge thrown out by that bloodless no-man brother of his. Then he said I can out-bash out-gash out-mash and out-smash you and there’s one other thing I can do more than anyone ever can and that’s out-sleep you. So that was how the Great Sleeping Contest got its start.

  The Biggest Bed That Ever Was

  Well now, first thing Paul Bunyan did when he got back to camp was step into his bunkhouse and give a good look at his bed. That bed of his was so long that when it was morning at one end it was midnight at the other. That bed of his was so wide, Johnny Inkslinger once reached the middle of it riding a fast horse all day. Paul Bunyan took a look at that bed and knew it wasn’t a bad bed as beds go, a little cramped maybe, good enough to lie down in for thirty-nine winks before you jumped back to work, but there were bunks all up and down the other wall with men snoring and grunting and talking in their sleep, and sometimes old Babe would stick his head in through a bunkhouse window and lick Paul awake. What he needed was a bed set off by itself somewhere, a bed where a man could settle in for a good long sleep and turn over any which way he pleased and not wake himself up. The more he thought about it, the more he knew what he had to do. So he hitched up Babe to a supply wagon and headed out to Iowa. You know what they say about Iowa. In Iowa the corn grows so tall it takes one man to see halfway up the stalk and another man to see the rest of the way. In Iowa the corn grows so tall you find hawks and eagles building nests up near the top. They say those Iowa cornstalks grow so wide, the farmers have to hire loggers from the Michigan woods to chop everything down and haul it all off to the silos. They say there’s so much corn growing in Iowa, if you want to lift up your arm to scratch your nose you have to cross over into Nebraska. Now, what Paul did was this. He hired himself out to harvest half the corn in Iowa. He and big Babe tramped right into the middle of that Iowa corn. Paul swung his ax and stalks began falling so fast and hard the ears popped right out of the husks and landed smack in the wagon. Paul hauled the ears over to the silos and loaded up the stalks in the wagon till the sides creaked with the weight of it. He spit out some tobacco juice and headed out of Iowa by way of Nebraska and then Colorado and made it down to Arizona before the tobacco juice hit the ground. He went on over to the Grand Canyon and looked down into it. You know the story of the Grand Canyon. That was back when Paul Bunyan was traveling west and dragged his peavey behind him. The hook of the peavey is what dug up that canyon. Now, what Paul did there on the rim was this. He tipped his wagon over and watched those cornstalks go crashing down. The cornstalks spread out over the canyon bottom and rose halfway up the cliffs. Paul liked what he saw but he wasn’t done yet, not by a long shot. That layer of cornstalks made a pretty good mattress for a man of his size, but it was scratchy as a pack of alley cats. He stood on the rim of the canyon looking down and thinking hard. Just then a big flock of geese came flying over and Paul got himself an idea. He sucked in his breath till his chest looked like a mainsail in a storm. He raised his face to the sky and blew so hard you could see the sun flicker and almost go out. That big breath of his blew all the feathers off those geese. The feathers came floating down nice and soft and settled over the cornstalks. When another flock flew by, Paul puffed himself up and gave another blow. He kept blowing feathers off so many geese, by the time he was done he had himself a thick cover of feathers laying all over the cornstalks like a big quilt you could slip inside of and keep warm. Only thing missing was a pillow. So Paul, he traveled back to camp and ordered some of his boys to buy up five thousand head of good merino sheep. You know those ranches out in Montana and Utah where they have so many sheep you can take off your shoes and walk river to river on sheepback. Well, while his men were off buying up sheep, Paul set about clearing the stumps from fifty acres of logged-off woods. How he did it was this. He walked along and stomped those stumps into the ground one after the other with one stamp of his boot till they were all set even with the dirt. Soon as the boys came back with the sheep, Paul drove every last one of those merinos onto his cleared-off land. He sharpens two axes and sets the handles in the ground with the ax blades facing each other. Then he sets up two more axes with the blades facing each other only lower down. Then what h
e does, he runs the sheep between those double axes so you have strips of fleece dropping off on both sides clean as a whistle. That was the first sheep-shearing machine. He loaded up the sheared-off wool in his wagon and headed back down to the Grand Canyon. He lifted out those strips of wool and laid them down along one end of his goose-feather quilt and had himself a pillow so fine and soft that before he was done, three ringtail cats, two mountain lions, and a mule deer lay curled up on it fast asleep.

  Up in Maine

  While Paul was blowing a storm of feathers down from the sky and running merino sheep through his four-ax shearer, that droopy drag-foot brother of his was spending his time sitting slumped on his backbone in a broke-legged armchair next to a spiderwebby window or leaf-shuffling his sloggy way along a soggy path in the woods with three floppy mufflers wrapped around his stretchy neck and a beat-up book sticking out of his peacoat pocket.

  In Which Paul Shoulders His Ax and Sets Off

  The Great Sleeping Contest was set to begin a good month into the fall season, first night of October at nine sharp. To keep things fair, Paul went and hired up a crew of sleep-checkers to work three-hour shifts keeping an eye on each dead-to-the-world stone-faced snorer. You could twitch in your sleep and you could turn over in your sleep, you could groan in your sleep and moan in your sleep, but if you opened an eye so much as half a crack you were done sleeping. These sleep-checkers were shrewd-eyed rough-living no-nonsense men known for rock-hard character and knife-sharp sight—a couple of keelboatmen who worked the Ohio River, a buffalo hunter from Oklahoma, three Swede farmers from Minnesota, a Kentucky sharpshooter, two trail guides from the high Rockies, a frontiersman from Missouri, a cattle rancher from Texas, two Utah sheep ranchers, a Cheyenne Indian from Colorado, and two fur trappers from Tennessee. After a cookhouse dinner of thick pea soup and spiced ham baked in cider, Paul Bunyan stood up and addressed his shanty boys. He told them he could out-jump out-run out-fight and out-work any man who ever logged the north woods or walked the face of the earth in spiked boots and he was off to prove he could out-sleep out-nap out-snooze and out-doze any man big enough to brag and fool enough to try. Johnny Inkslinger would take over camp operations while he was away. Any trouble and Little Meery and Shot Gunderson would take care of it with four hard fists and a six-foot pike pole. Then Paul Bunyan said goodbye to his men and specially to Johnny Inkslinger and Little Meery and Hot Biscuit Slim and Big Ole the Blacksmith and Febold Feboldson and Shot Gunderson and Sourdough Sam and Shanty Boy and then he went over to the stable and gave old Babe a big hug around the neck and a big tickle behind his blue ears and set off walking with a swing in his stride and his ax over his shoulder. He stamped through forests and along river valleys, took one step over the Missouri River onto the plains of Nebraska, and dusted off his boots in Colorado. First thing he does in Arizona is pluck up a fifty-foot saguaro cactus to comb his beard. Gets to the Grand Canyon two minutes before nine. One minute before nine he’s down on his crackly cornstalk bed. Went and laid himself out on his back and sank into those goose feathers with his feet up against a cliff and his head on his pillowy wallowy wool. He set his ax steel-down in the cornstalks with the hickory handle sticking up beside him, and right at nine sharp he shut his eyes and fell into a mighty sleep.

  In Which James Gets Himself Ready

  The day the Great Sleeping Contest is set to begin, the sun’s going down in Maine and James Bunyan is dragging himself out of bed slower than a one-horned snail in an icehouse. He goes yawning his way into the creaky kitchen and looks around for anything to eat but all he can find is a dead mouse in a cupboard and one stale raisin in a box. He sits down on a three-leg chair at a tilty table with a hungry cat on it and looks at that dried-up raisin like it’s a plate of bear stew served with brown beans baked in molasses. He sets to work slow on that wreck of a raisin and when he’s done he’s so stuffed he just sits there like a dead branch leaning against the side of a barn. He stares at his left hand so long it starts looking like a foot. He stares at his right foot so long it turns into a nose. He figures it’s time to rest up after his exertions, so what he does, he goes back to his room and crawls into bed and stretches out on his bone-bumpy back with his hands behind his bootlace of a neck and his stringy legs crossed at his stalky ankles and looks at the ceiling beams jumpy with shadows thrown up by the candle on the bedside table. He sees blue horses riding over hills. The clock hand on the cracked old clock on the wall crawls over to nine slow as a cat on crutches. James closes his eyes and starts snoring.

  How the Shanty Boys Spent the Night

  Back at the camp the men swamped and felled and limbed from sun-up to noon. They sat on stumps to gulp down sourdough biscuits and black coffee brought over by wagon and went on logging till the sun dropped down. None of it was the same without Paul Bunyan. After the cookhouse dinner they swapped stories round the bunkhouse stoves but they all of them knew they were just sitting there waiting. Paul Bunyan was the no-sleepingest man they’d ever seen. He’d throw himself down on his back and before his head hit the pillow the rest of him would be standing up raring to go. Some said he was bound to come back before midnight, others said he was already back out there chopping in the dark. Little Meery said they ought to get themselves some rest cause he knew in his bones a man like Paul Bunyan wouldn’t be back till next morning. Past midnight there was a crashing noise in Paul Bunyan’s bunkhouse and the men sat up ready to yell out a cheer and dance him a welcome home but it wasn’t anybody there but big Babe, busted out of the stable to knock his head through a bunkhouse window. All next day the men swamped and chopped and sawed but their hearts weren’t in it. That night not a story got told round the bunkhouse stoves. The men stayed flat in their bunks with ears open wide as barn doors and eyes shut tight as friz oysters waiting for Paul Bunyan to come on back from his cornstalk mattress and sheep pillow down there in that faraway canyon under the stars.

  The Long Sleep

  Johnny Inkslinger could push the men hard when he had to. He told them Paul Bunyan was bound to sleep for a week and they ought to stop dreaming about it and get to work. Why, a man like that could sleep two weeks, maybe three. Weeks passed, the first snow came. It snowed so hard you couldn’t see the end of your ax. One day the sun came out, birds sang in the trees. The men drove the logs downriver to the mill and broke camp for the summer. In the fall they hitched the bunkhouses and the cookhouse and the stable to Babe the Blue Ox, who hauled the whole lot of it over hills and across rivers to a fir forest that grew so high the tops of the trees were hinged to let the moon go by. Nights they still talked about Paul Bunyan round the bunkhouse stoves, but it was like telling stories about someone who was long gone and maybe never had been there at all. Remember the winter of the blue snow? Member the time old Paul Bunyan walked across Minnesota and his boot prints were what formed the ten thousand lakes? Member the time Paul Bunyan dug that watering hole for Babe the Blue Ox? That watering hole is Lake Michigan. Then there was the time Paul Bunyan chopped a dog in half by mistake. Put it back together wrong, with two legs up and two legs down. Remember the hodag? The whirling whimpus? In the cold weather the men rose late and stopped work early. Johnny Inkslinger cussed and howled but it was no use at all. Babe was so sad he stayed put in his stable and wouldn’t come out for anything. The men forgot all about him, all except Hot Biscuit Slim, who brought barrels of hotcakes out to the stable every morning. That winter the snow fell for forty-seven days. Snow was so high you had to cut tunnels to get to the trees. The trunks were hard as whetstones. When the axheads dragged against them, the blades got so sharp they could cut a snowflake in half. Some of the new men said they’d heard about Paul Bunyan, but it was so cold their words froze in the air and didn’t thaw out till spring. In the warm weather the men drove the logs downriver to the mill, and when it was over some of the crew went to work in the mill town and didn’t return to camp in the fall. Johnny Inkslinger moved the camp to higher ground that looked out over miles of fresh spr
uce forest. The men cut trails and felled trees and hauled them to the river landings. Snow howled down from black skies. In the warm nights the men sat outside the bunkhouses, spitting tobacco juice into the fire. Some said Paul Bunyan had gone to sleep down there in the Grand Canyon and drowned when the river rose. Some said Paul Bunyan was a story men used to tell at night around the bunkhouse stove.