by William Bell
I know that my parents felt the same. Before Lucas left our house, my father shook his hand firmly and my mother asked him to give her his address and phone number.
“Maybe I’ll call you sometime,” she said.
We got to the airport in lots of time for his flight but he asked us not to wait with him. He shook hands with Jen and me and limped through the security doors and disappeared.
Jen and I were silent for most of the way home. I was thinking—like a historian already, I guess—how one person’s actions can ripple through the years and affect so many others, and how most of the time the results of what we do can’t be predicted or known. A long, long time before, a lonely old man had buried a document box on his farm by the shore of the Grand River. The box lay in the earth for more than 150 years, until its discovery forged a chain of events that drew another old man from Mississippi to the same farm so that he could make a new connection to his daughter and her family. I was the link between the two men. One of them I admired; the other, who should have been closer to me because he was my grandfather, I didn’t. Pawpine had never given up, but Lucas had. He had let hatred wrestle him down and defeat him. But in coming all the way from Natchez, maybe he had begun to stand up again.
Appendix
Author’s Note
With the exception of people and events taken from the historical record, this is a work of fiction. Any resemblance between my characters and real persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Richard Pierpoint did exist and ended his days on the homestead he and a friend had cleared from the bush on the banks of the Grand River at present-day Fergus, Ontario. I have tried to render his story accurately, but took one small liberty: as far as I know, he didn’t bury anything on his farm.
Acknowledgements
As always, thanks are due to John Pearce, who kept the faith when I had almost lost it; to Ting-xing Ye for encouragement and for help with the manuscript; to my children, Dylan, Megan and Brendan, for reading and responding to the early drafts.
I appreciate the assistance of Wayne Allen, history teacher at Orillia Collegiate, Ian Easterbrook and Bonnie Callan, archivists at the Wellington County Museum and Archives, and the support of the Ontario Arts Council.
I first heard of Richard Pierpoint (alias Pawpine) from the song “Pawpine” written by James Gordon of the folk band Tamarack. It can be found on the CD “On the Grand” (FE1421CD), copyright Folk Era Productions, Inc.
Copyright © William Bell 1998
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Doubleday Canada trade paperback edition published 1998
Seal Books edition published January 2001
eISBN: 978-0-385-67409-6
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“South on 61” copyright © William Bell and Dylan Bell, printed with permission. All rights reserved.
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