What It Takes to Be Human

by Marilyn Bowering

  “How could I, how could I!” she’d sobbed. Sadly, accepting this sadness for the truth it revealed, I understood that once more, in the fullness of time, in the blink of an eye, there’d been a substitution.

  My father finishes the revival meeting call-to-Jesus and half a dozen come forward. I believe I’ve seen some of them here before. He walks among them, lays his plaster-etched hands on their heads; some quiver under his hands, and some fall to their knees—axed by the Almighty’s power, he says; but it has nothing to do with me or my life because it has nothing to do with being human. Maureen—for a time—was human, and what I’d felt with her was all I require of a “heavenly” origin.

  It is time to go. I slip from the pew. My feet stand in sunlight at the door. My nose lifts at the fresh air. I hear the bracing call of birds. My father’s voice rings out from behind me: Repent, whore of Babylon, yea I say unto you, Repent! I glance back—foolish as Lot’s wife: His fingers point at me, and I run.

  Part III: More Events of My Sad Life—Continued

  It took a few weeks to get used to procedures in this situation so different from home. For one thing, no matter how far up the hills you’d climb, chasing after the log scalers or out cutting wood, you’d not see anything but trees. I’d never imagined anything like these giants hundreds of years old and so wide around at the base it could take six men to encircle them. The dominant trees varied according to geography. Where it was wet, to the west, you’d have hemlock. The top of these trees (when they were small enough that you could see them) bent in a gentle question mark; mature trees could be three hundred feet tall. On a windswept bluff you’d find Sitka spruce, stiff and unyielding as buildings in the fiercest of gales. These trees, too, were immense. Although there were many red cedar, we did not take them, finding that they died down from the tops and were virtually useless once felled. We were happy to leave them to the Indians who used them for their canoes and other purposes. Nearer the east coast were the yew, and the magnificent Douglas fir, also, like the hemlock, a giant. Wherever there’d been fire or logging, alder sprang up, almost, so it seemed, overnight.

  Once on a single hillside I counted six types of trees. The knowledge I had of wood from my years of working with John Weller making furniture made me a valuable employee. I was often called upon for advice. The foreman appeared to like me and once I talked to the bosses about the possible uses to which the wood we weren’t yet harvesting could be put.

  I saw a future before me. I saw myself with my own company. I made sketches of the furniture I would build. I wrote to Peggy Moffat and asked that she wait for me.

  Although in many places the thick undergrowth made walking in the forest difficult, there were many good trails. In places where the forest hadn’t been too badly disturbed and the fallen logs had been left to rot, I picked mushrooms and brought them back to the camp to cook. I wrote to my mother and enclosed varieties of fungi that I couldn’t identify and asked her to inquire about them through the Reverend Duncan to the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh. I envisioned a relationship with the botanists—I could make a contribution to science through my observations and collections of the many unfamiliar plants I saw.

  My new friend, Frank, one of the timber cruisers, showed me where to look for elderberries and huckleberries and I began to acquire a woodsman’s knowledge of wild foods. As the days went by, I discovered trails that led eastwards through towering rhododendron bushes, and came out on headlands of Garry oak and arbutus. One Sunday Frank and I packed a lunch and walked all the way to the eastern shore. Frank brought his gun for fear of bear and cougar, but we only saw deer and forest birds such as grouse and woodpecker. I had my first look at the sea. We walked along a beach threaded through with eroded sandstone in strange formations, some of which appeared like flattened mushrooms, others making shallow bowls in which the water collected and warmed. In some areas volcanic conglomerate was scattered among the other beach stones and shells, and all along the banks ran the variegated marks of glaciation. I envisioned my prospects as a geologist.

  The landscape was, to me, a book; the forest and sea and sky the education I had never thought to acquire. From where we stood and where we walked we could see how the glaciers had scooped out hollows in between islands which then rose like the humps on the back of the giant sea serpent said, by the Indians, to live in these waters.

  Such a creature, as I’d heard from my aunties at home, inhabited our Scottish lochs.

  I was in an ecstasy of sorts. The world was spread out before me for my delectation. All things were possible.

  I wrote again to Peggy Moffat, and she replied.

  Near the end of the summer, I was taken from my forest work to assist the labourers completing a road along the east coast of the island. The work, considered by the government to be urgent, was temporary. In the fall I was to return to my former situation. The lumber bosses had spoken to me about my possible advancement after I’d given them a preliminary catalogue of tree species in the area. I’d also planned, with Frank, to open a furniture shop in the town of Duncan during the wet winter months when there was likely to be little work in the forest.

  The road-crew camp of ten men was sited near a river mouth. My tent mate was a man I knew slightly from the several times I’d gone with Frank to the nearest hotel for a drink. Frank himself had headed north to a job cruising timber that he expected to last only a couple of months. He’d left his rifle and a few other belongings with me to look after for him. The only other man I knew was Kennedy, but since he was one of the spreaders, we saw little of each other. Mostly I was on my own. I had no particular friends among the crew, but we all got along well enough. I fell into a routine. All day I loaded gravel into horse-drawn carts that were driven along to where the spreaders did their work. My hands blistered and peeled from the shovel, and then the skin turned hard as horn. In the evenings I swam at the river mouth, invigorated by the cold water. After supper, I’d walk the beach and watch the mist roll in and blur the facing shoreline. I might have been standing on the strand at my own Cramond, staring into the fog that shrouded the Firth of Forth and the Fife coast.

  I’d never handled a firearm before, so Frank had told me to practise with his gun until I’d saved enough to buy one of my own. I needed to learn so I could hunt with him in the autumn. Once or twice, after my swim, I thought about taking some shots at the seals that surfaced to see what I was up to, but I couldn’t bring myself to pull the trigger. They were doing no harm. It was me who’d intruded on them. Several times I set up tin cans for target practice, but I felt awkward with the gun, I didn’t take to it, and hoped I could make myself useful to Frank in other ways.

  It was there, on the beach, that I found the stray. She was shorthaired, short-eared and brindled—a mutt if I’d ever seen one—and her tail curled under her belly. She wore no collar or rope around her neck and followed me into the camp. I’d already determined to call her Nellie. MacKenzie, the foreman, was glad enough to have her around to chase off the cougars that occasionally came near, but he warned me that if the bitch caused any trouble, he’d have to shoot her. I took care to keep her always with me.

  So things went until I returned later than usual one evening to find Kennedy just leaving my tent. I thought, at first, that he’d been in there talking to Joe, my tent mate, but the tent was empty and I could tell by the look of things that Kennedy had read my letters.

  Although I was pleased with the prospects in my new life, I missed the people I’d left behind—my mother and grandfather, my friends, even the Reverend Duncan with his sermons. Of real talk there was little in the camp, unless you counted Kennedy’s Fenian rants. He liked to throw his weight around, as the Irish do, especially when he’d taken a drink. I couldn’t bear to think he’d touched my letters from Peggy.

  “Kennedy,” I said, going up to where he sat by the fire laughing with the other men, “you were in my tent just now.”

  “Is that so, Macaulay? I must have mad
e a mistake. These tents look all the same in the dark.” He winked at the others. “Just like women, eh? Ain’t it hard to tell them apart? You know, Peggy’s one of my favourite names. It’s a whore’s name, ain’t it?”

  I jumped at him. He was on the far side of the fire and had his knife out by the time I reached him. His knife slashed my arm and I rolled through the flames, burning my hand badly.

  Before I could find my feet, MacKenzie, the foreman, was there and the watching men had pulled me and Kennedy apart.

  “What’s this about? I’ll have no fighting here,” MacKenzie said. He looked disgustedly at the two of us.

  “He started it,” Kennedy said. “He jumped me.”

  “Is that true, Macaulay?”

  “He’s been reading my letters.”

  “You’re here to work. There’ll be no more of this, you hear me?” He caught sight of my scorched and bleeding arm. “Let me see.” I showed him. “Give me the knife, Kennedy,” he said, and he held his hand out to the Irishman. I hoped Kennedy would refuse, for then MacKenzie would have cause to dismiss him.

  “Ah, never mind, boss,” Kennedy said, “we were having a bit of fun, that’s all. The Scotchman here doesn’t know when his leg’s being pulled.”

  “The knife?” MacKenzie said. Kennedy rolled his eyes but handed over the weapon. “I’ll keep this from now on,” MacKenzie said, and left us.

  In the morning, I found Nellie sick outside my tent. From the mess nearby I could see she’d been fed meat with glass in it. I said nothing about it, as she didn’t appear to have taken enough to do her harm and aside from a scratched throat and mouth she was fine. I kept her even closer to my side from that point on.

  Because of the damage to my arm, MacKenzie put me on general duties around the camp. I carried water and cut firewood, and assisted the cook in various ways. I kept the camp clean. I fully expected to return to the gravel pit, but my arm because of the previous damage to it was slow to heal. One day when I was down on the beach, I heard a commotion and ran back to camp. A cougar had sprung from a tree onto the back of the teamster who was watering the horses at lunchtime. MacKenzie, who was nearby, grabbed his gun and shot it, saving the man’s life, but the man was badly injured.

  Men started to mutter about “bad luck.” MacKenzie appointed Kennedy as the new teamster and sent everyone back to work.

  Another week went by. Watching Kennedy whip the horses to make them go faster, and neglecting their grooming and feeding, bothered me, but I figured that MacKenzie would see what was happening soon enough, and I let it be. Nellie had learned to stay out of Kennedy’s way and I no longer feared for her. There’d been no repetition of the incident in the tent.

  I received a letter from the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh inviting me to submit my specimens. Frank sent word that he’d heard of a place we could rent for a small sum in town to begin our furniture work. A carpenter whose wife had died and who’d decided to return home was willing to sell his tools for almost nothing. Peggy wrote that she’d booked her passage. Her mother had finished her wedding dress. I determined to work extra time so I could start to save for our house.

  I admit I was tired. I agree that my arm hurt and I was fed up with camp work. I do not admit that I said anything to MacKenzie like people said I did. I hadn’t realized that MacKenzie was under pressure regarding the road and that my lack of fitness for heavy work had caused a problem. So it was a surprise to me when he came into my tent before breakfast and said I could have my time. Nellie had followed him in and he bent down to pat her.

  “What’s that?” I said, struggling out of my bedroll. I couldn’t understand.

  “We can’t keep you on, Alan, not with an arm like that.” I stood up. I was still in my underwear. The wretched arm was swollen and red and scarred. Hot shame flooded through me. I had to stop myself from hiding the arm behind my back.

  “You can’t mean it! You can’t do this to me!”

  MacKenzie gripped me by the shoulder. “I can’t afford charity cases, Alan. We’ll take you back once that arm is better.”

  He left the tent and I shouted after him, “I’ll see you in hell, first, you bastard!”

  When I joined the others for breakfast, no one spoke to me. They kept their eyes on their plates. I finished eating, then I stood up and said to MacKenzie, “You’d better keep an eye on those horses before Kennedy kills them,” then I picked up Frank’s rifle and took the dog and went to the beach.

  Kennedy drove the others to the gravel pit, picked up and delivered several loads of gravel and then returned to camp. The spreaders were working close to the camp that day, as that part of the road was nearly finished.

  I went up and packed my gear. Kennedy walked through the tents singing a Fenian song to which he’d changed the words. No one else was there at the time but the cook, and he was too far away to hear.

  God be praised that I met her

  Be life long or short

  I shall never forget her

  We may have great men

  but will never have better

  to f—— Fenian men

  than bold Peggy Moffat.

  I gritted my teeth. I finished my packing and went back to the beach for Nellie and the gun that I’d left behind. From the top of the bank I saw Kennedy making his way, carrying Frank’s gun, along the beach. He pointed it out to sea at what I thought were several seals in the water, then he turned and pointed it back at me. Nellie growled and ran at him, but he kicked out at her with his foot and she backed off.

  I slid straight down the slope. He sang on, then sighted along the barrel and pulled the trigger. That was the first shot. I kept running. I could see now that what I’d thought were seals were the humps of some large creature in the water. I caught a glimpse of a long slender head, then the creature rolled over and sank.

  I wrestled the gun from Kennedy. I could smell the drink on him. He didn’t put up much of a fight. He sank onto the stones laughing. I stood over him, breathing hard. Nellie came to my heel. “Good dog,” I said. Blood coloured the sea. I felt I was at a turning. That the next thing that happened to me would change my life, for better or worse. I cursed Liam Kennedy. A wave of darkness washed over me and I wished for the first time since I’d come to this country that I’d killed myself that day in Cramond as I’d meant to. From behind me I heard a shout. It was MacKenzie. I swung round, the gun in my arms, my bad hand on the trigger, and the weapon went off. That was the second shot. MacKenzie staggered and fell. I ran up to him, dropped the gun and ran on up to the road, shouting for help. Men came running. “I’ve killed him!” I shouted, then I fell to my knees and sobbed. I did not know it at the time, but Kennedy had sneaked back along the river and up to the horses. So when the others arrived, they saw him arrive from that direction.

  Every word that Kennedy said in court about me was a lie.

  ELEVEN

  August 8 and following, 1941

  Alan Macaulay is innocent! He never meant to shoot MacKenzie! That he did appalled him! His enemy, Kennedy, told lies to ensure his conviction! I know this to be the truth, because I’ve seen it from the inside! I must pore over the court records and see what went wrong in the trial and make a case to present to Dr. Frank. After that, we’ll take it to the Governor General and ask for a pardon….

  I want to get to it at once, but suddenly, I’m busy. It’s not just the continuing work in the rabbitry and my other notes for Dr. Frank that I must catch up on before I do anything else, but that Dr. Frank sits down with us for a cup of coffee in the evening after dinner in the cafeteria. Tom smiles at him and says good evening.

  “I see progress here, boys,” Dr. Frank says to me and Bob and Tom. (Winchell isn’t here. The sharpened bolt he’d shown me had been discovered. He no longer works in the carpentry shop where there is opportunity for him to acquire tools. He toils in the laundry with the Chinese pressing shirts and white uniforms. He follows their schedule. Winchell is in his element. Some of the Ch
inese are Communists, and all are united in their opposition to Japan. He has organized a Marx study session—not popular with everyone—in morning tea break and he’s made contact with a prominent CCF politician who’s promised to raise the plight of the inmate laundry workers in the legislature. All this he whispers to Bob and me—and Tom—at night. There is a great deal going on of which Dr. Frank is ignorant.) Dr. Frank drinks his coffee and says, “Attendant Signet tells me that the two of you, Bob and Sandy, are doing good work with Tom here.” We accept the compliment, and Bob explains his theory of Tom’s willingness to take direct orders. I tell Dr. Frank that as long as Tom is set a straightforward task, such as hooking a defined area of his rug using only one colour, he can do it. What Tom cannot do is take on more than one job—such as hooking loops and changing colours. Not only that, I inform him, but Tom has modified my ship design into a trireme. He’s added mermaids and rocks. I say to Dr. Frank, “You know, sir, I believe that Tom is portraying an episode from The Odyssey in that rug. Perhaps if he were given more artistic outlets…? Or if someone could ask what that episode means to him? Someone as well versed in mythology as Tom seems to be?”

  “You’re not showing off again, are you, Sandy?” Dr. Frank says. I must appear shocked—I’ve said what I said in good faith—because he holds up his hands in apology. “Just checking, son,” he says. He wipes coffee from his lips with a napkin and sits back looking lost.

  I wonder when he’s last eaten. His skin is sallow. Yellow folds hang from his jaw, and lap onto his bow tie. Handfuls of skin hang from his upper arms. God knows why he’s wearing a short-sleeved shirt—he must know what he looks like! His clothes fit so loosely that he’s begun to look like a clown. Should I tell him? Somebody should—appearances will be important to the new Board.