by Ann Treacy
Martin knew what the last year had felt like with his own mother so withdrawn from him.
Mr. Perry said, “Now he’s just a man with a plan, like many. Meehan already bought up Connor’s old place.”
Martin knew that name from Cora’s diary. The Connors . . . homesteaders too . . . Mother was lonely until Mister Connor got a new wife. Maybe it was time for their old place to go, too. There was much to think about. He longed to take Samson’s horse out of his pocket. It had already become something of a habit to rub it between his fingers. But he didn’t want to explain about his encounter with the Gypsies to Mr. Perry. He would tell Pa all about that day; Pa didn’t share Aunt Ida’s crazy fear. And Pa would love seeing the perfectly proportioned miniature horse. It was sculpted from some unknown wood, the last possible color that brown could be before it’s actually black. It fit in his palm, but there was no mistaking the powerful neck and chest. Deft turns from someone’s knife suggested a snip of color between the nostrils and subtly articulated shoulder and hip lines from the flank. If only he could carve like that. He had tried carving horses, but they always had legs as straight as chair legs.
In town the general store manager agreed to help Martin find a ride in the direction of the logging camp. Martin accepted the man’s offer to unload a freight wagon in trade for dinner and two bits worth of hard candy, Lilly’s favorite. It was the first time he had thought to bring her anything. It felt like something Dan would have done. Martin remembered Dan’s easy way with Lilly, always picking her up and swinging her around. He wondered if Mr. Perry had brought candy to Cora Gunnarsson, who died so long ago before she even had a chance to live.
Martin spent two days and nights with a teamster who delivered him eleven miles from Pa’s logging camp. He set out on foot and arrived at the camp before five o’clock. The logging foreman who greeted him looked happy that he had come.
“Your pa is the best farrier this company ever saw.” The little man swung his powerful arms as he walked briskly through the camp. “Damn drunk Irishman driving those teams of oxen didn’t know what he was doing. Now, boy, the doctor says this can go either way. It might be your pa heals all right. And it might be he stoves up good.” He shook his head. “Still can’t hardly picture Jacob lame.”
The short man managed to walk so fast that Martin, exhausted, had trouble keeping up. But he wasn’t too tired to mistake the stench of the camp’s winter garbage piles that were ripening everywhere in the warm sun.
“Visit with you will do him a world of good. He’s in here.”
Pa lay in a small square building made from the abundant pines of the area. The log walls were roughly hewn, and the slab floor was swept but had never been scrubbed. Martin had walked all day without stumbling, but the sight of Pa’s yellow, waxy skin made him miss a step. He approached the cot slowly, not knowing what to say.
“He’s on laudanum, boy. It helps him rest proper.”
“Thank you. I’ll just sit with him a while.” The little man left, and Martin unpacked the sack of bed linens Ma sent. Presently he became aware of his father’s eyes on him.
“Martin.”
“Hi, Pa.” Martin stood formally, his cap in his hand. Pa looked awful—but not dead. Anything was better than dead. As they spoke Pa sounded like himself. At least at first.
“You’ve grown,” he whispered.
“It’s just been a few weeks.”
“Isn’t this something?” Jacob gestured toward his legs with his large hands.
“Wasn’t your fault, Pa. You’re always warning me about the horses, and how this can happen when a chain snaps. We were lucky.”
Pa shook his head in disbelief. “Lucky.”
“Pa, you’re gonna mend fine. You always told me, ‘What doesn’t kill, hardens.’”
“I don’t know as that applies to bones.”
Martin caught sight of a large dressing with pink drainage. “Leg break open, Pa?”
“Bones stuck straight out,” Jacob said. “Doctor had quite a time with them. Won’t let me go home for a good while.”
“That’s what the telegram said. That’s why I came, to see you and to bring the horses home.”
For a flash, Pa looked alarmed. But like milk vanishing in coffee, his concern was quickly swallowed by pain.
“You know I can handle them. You can’t hire them out here anyway with the ice gone. Better we have them at the farm than pay for their keep here.”
Pa squeezed his eyes shut. “The farm.”
“Don’t worry.” The words sounded false as soon as Martin whispered them.
“I was so happy to be home on my folks’ place.” Pa’s hands went limp on his stomach.
Martin snatched back his own hand from reaching out to cover Pa’s. He was about to say they could sell the farm or explain about Mr. Meehan finding a buyer. But Pa didn’t hear Martin try to interrupt him. He didn’t hear Martin when he said, “We can always go back home.”
“I might not be able to work.”
The injury did look like it could change Pa’s life. Martin hadn’t thought about that. Farming was one thing, but what if Pa couldn’t work out next winter as a farrier?
“I knew the farm was never right for Dan. But you, I thought you would love the land.” Pa rested a minute.
Love the land? Pa didn’t know how much Martin missed Stillwater.
“Farming is hard work, digging and inching across the dirt.” Pa’s whisper became even quieter. “But then one day you plunge your hands into a sack of seeds . . . the best moment. Like holding tiny specks of the future. I thought you would see farming with my eyes.”
They had never spoken like this. Martin stood silent, wondering what else Pa would reveal. He scoffed at what he had been thinking on the trip here: that Pa would be sitting up in bed with a bandage on his leg, that Martin would tell him about home and the crazy meeting with the Gypsies. The laudanum made Pa say those things about loving farming, but the parts about Dan . . . he didn’t like being compared to his brother. His older, perfect, fun-loving brother.
But no more came. Martin stayed in the little shed, checking throughout the night that Pa was still breathing.
In the morning Martin ate breakfast with the men in the mess tent. He visited a time with the horses, Finn and Marshall, then returned to Pa’s bunk and found the doctor there. Dr. Castleman wanted Pa to remain sedated. He promised to remind Pa in the days ahead that Martin had visited.
The doctor’s last words stayed with Martin during the two days it took to get back to the farm. “You’re just burning daylight here; your pa won’t remember anything you talk about anyway.” But Martin was quite certain he would never forget.
4 July 1864
Mother prepares more for Father’s leaving than for the coming baby. She knits socks and sews new shirts even though he promises to be home before winter.
—C. Louise Gunnarsson
Chapter 11
Having skidded logs all winter, Finn and Marshall were restless at first with the lazy pace of just pulling an empty wagon. Martin needed a heavy hand to restrain the horses as they started the trip back to the farm—his prison all winter. He tried not to think about the truth that now, instead of one, he had two parents who needed him desperately.
What had Pa said? I knew the farm was never right for Dan. But you, I thought you would love the land. Pa was right about Dan, but why would he think of Martin as a man of the land? Martin thought back and tried to remember things about Dan so he wouldn’t forget. His brother was ambidextrous; he wrote the left half of a line with his left hand, then switched the pencil to his right to finish. He had the nicest singing voice in the family. Dan was always focused on the world around him, always going, always testing and teasing.
In the last of the light Martin retied the grazing horses near spots of fresh grass. He stretched out under the wagon when darkness fully came. He played in his mind how fun it would be if Stan or Chet were along, or even Samson. Then he told
himself the truth. His mind had turned to Samson first. It was hard to believe they had met only weeks ago, so much had happened. He’d try to find Samson tomorrow after school—but no. That was the one good thing about Pa’s accident: he wouldn’t be going back to school now. He’d have to find some work to do. His family’s survival depended on him.
By the time Martin arrived home the following night, he ached to climb the ladder to his loft bed but figured his mother might have waited up for him.
Ma sat at the table in a dim pool of light, her limp hands doing nothing. Absolutely nothing. She used to rock the churn with her foot, stitching in hand, while she recited sums with Lilly.
“Ma?”
She didn’t say a word but stood and folded her hands in front of her apron, a question in her eyes.
“Pa’s gonna be fine. I saw him twice. Talked with him.” Martin didn’t bother to mention that Pa objected to his taking the horses and that he had left with the animals while Pa was heavily dosed. “He sent the horses back with me.”
“And down the line?” Ma whispered.
“I’ll bring you back when I go get him.” Martin hadn’t asked the doctor when, so he invented: “In just a month or so.”
“Perhaps . . . he could recover better, in the long term, I mean . . . if we were back in town.”
How Martin used to long to hear those very words.
Ma looked as if she expected Martin to be pleased. “Stillwater. We could go back to Stillwater.”
“What made you think of this?” he asked wearily.
“It’s not like we don’t have options. Mr. Meehan could arrange it at the bank.”
Martin’s heart started pounding. “You spoke to him about Pa?”
“We need to pay over eight hundred dollars by this fall.”
“Maybe we don’t have to pay it all off this year,” Martin said.
“Mr. Meehan says it’s best. Where will that kind of money come from?”
Martin had no idea. He found himself saying, “I could get a job.”
“Where can you earn that much? Mr. Meehan can arrange it so we keep a little money if we let go now.”
“Meehan! Money!” Martin had to struggle not to raise his voice to his mother. And he had to struggle not to accept the offer that she dangled. Before noon tomorrow he could have the family neatly packed back into the wagon and on their way home. It was so tempting. Just what he had wanted. But what he said was, “More than money, Pa needs this place. Everyone died on him here forty years back. He needs to see life around this place.”
Martha walked around her son and pulled a tin plate of food for him from the back of the stove, then filled a hand basin with hot water from the reservoir.
“Or,” Martin paused, slicing into a potato, “the money could come from farming. This is a farm. I guess this is what we do now.” Like it or not.
“What do you know about farming?”
“Mr. Perry can tell me what I need to do. Every step.”
“But what if there’s no rain this year. Or too much rain. Or locusts or . . . anything.” Martin knew that Ma’s agricultural knowledge was limited to Bible references.
He remembered the farm sale. “Ma, this place is worth more than we would get from Meehan. These buildings Grandpa built aren’t much, but the fields are good. Mr. Perry said that the timber that’s not logged off—we’ve got good conifers and hardwood—is worth more than we owe. We could go back to Stillwater and I could work, but we don’t have a house to go back to, and Meehan’s money wouldn’t buy us one.”
With effort Martin lowered his voice. He didn’t want to wake up Lilly or Aunt Ida. He and his mother agreed that for the time being they would stay put for Pa. For one year. It was no different from what Martin had secretly promised himself: to give the farm exactly one year. Only now he would be working it alone.
After eating he went to the hayloft. As restless as the horses on a cold morning, he picked up Cora’s diary to read before turning down the lantern.
17 July 1864
I was left alone with my friend March while Mother and Father went to the Koch funeral. We children must not attend for it was a case of diphtheria. And they will keep well back from the man whose family, his wife and three children, awoke two days ago, became ill, and died before sunset. I entertained March by playing store. We set up barrels in the barn, upside down, so that a small pile of stones atop one resembled a keg brimming with crackers. To imitate a barrel of flour, we used sand. March was very happy with the game, pretending to sell the cat and kittens as livestock.
21 July 1864
I play school in my doll’s house to escape the afternoon heat. I dream that one day we will have a wooden school building instead of Stornsteen’s old dugout with the sod front. Mother says idleness is the devil’s workshop. Even though it is summer she has set me to learn four-syllable words: consecutive/longevity/sentimental/benefactor/incorporate/investigate.
Chapter 12
“There’s just enough blue sky yonder for a pair of Dutchman’s britches.” Aunt Ida’s prediction the next morning meant that only a stingy Dutchman could sew pants from the tiny patch of blue sky, but it also meant the day would clear. Aunt Ida went on, “I was out with my spade while you were away. It’ll soon be time to start on the garden out back. That was a big one in its day.”
Ma was serving coffee, eggs, and fried bread. She didn’t respond, so Aunt Ida prodded. “What do you reckon to plant, Martha? That garden ain’t been worked in so many years, the weeds will grow so big we won’t even have to bend to grub them out.” She poked Martin’s shoulder with a finger as hard as an oak clothespin. “But that soil has been worked. You can always tell soil that was once worked. We’ll have plenty for us, maybe even vegetables to sell in town.”
Silently, Ma took her seat at the table.
“The garden is something we can do ourselves,” Aunt Ida continued. “Even without Jacob’s help. We’ll do a huge garden right well before he ever gets back.”
On and on she talked. Then, as clearly as warm breath vanishes in cold air, Martin’s annoyance with Aunt Ida evaporated. He realized what she was doing. Elderly and frail as she was, she was trying to hold together their fractured family any way she could.
Ma studied the inside of her coffee cup, then poured one of her patent medicines into it. No one questioned Martin when he lifted the lunch pail off the dry sink and said good-bye, as if this were a usual morning.
He was tempted to ride Finn but had no intention of going to school and didn’t want to draw his mother’s attention to that fact. Not yet. He left on foot and followed the road to Perry’s rail fence, then cut through the fields.
Mr. Perry answered his porch door, then stood far back as if welcoming Martin inside were an everyday occurrence. “Come in, boy, come in. You’ve come to tell me about Jacob. Sit down, sit down.”
The house consisted of one large square room with a central stove and bedrooms off the far end. Mr. Perry poured steaming coffee into noisy tin cups. There were three chairs around the table and Martin wondered if he were sitting in the chair that Pa used growing up. “Pa’s fine,” he felt obliged to say, though that wasn’t the reason why he had come.
“Well, go on, boy,” Mr. Perry urged.
“He can’t be moved for a while or even get up. They’re taking pretty good care of him at the camp.”
“Sounds like Jacob will be fine then. That’s a relief.”
Martin filled him in on the plan to bring Ma as soon as Pa could travel. “But that’s not the only reason I came,” Martin said.
“Oh?”
“I need to know what to do.”
Mr. Perry looked confused.
“It’s spring. Can you tell me what to do at the farm? What crops to get planted? Everything?”
“Whoa. So . . . you’re planning to do it all yourself?” Mr. Perry eyed him. “If you’d been born to it, I might say you’re almost ready to do a man’s work.”
“I c
an learn.”
“Farming’s like any job. It takes both knowledge and desire. I can see you’re short on one and long on the other.” Mr. Perry studied him. “With my health I reckon I can’t be of much help except talking.” He took more coffee and dropped a huge slug of sugar into his cup. “So we might as well get started. There’s an old stone boat over on your place, still in pretty good condition. I saw it last year. It’s a sledge for hauling rocks off the fields.” A flash of worry crossed the old man’s face. “It won’t do to just put traces on it though. I’ll loan you a chain and you’ll use it, never mind the accident.”
“I have Pa’s tools—some slip hooks and grab hooks. He taught me sense around horses; I won’t try to get them to pull too much.”
Mr. Perry nodded his approval. “Some of your fields haven’t been used in a while. Should grow good. Clean off the rocks, and you’ll do all right. The plow for that place is in my barn. It’s in good condition. Your horses will do fine with that plow. After plowing you’ll do it all again with the spike tooth harrow to break up the chunks and snag out roots.” He studied Martin’s shoulders. “Only problem is a boy your size can’t hardly manage rocks alone.”
“I’ll get help.”
“Your pa won’t like your ma doing such work.”
“Not Ma, no. I have a friend from school,” Martin said, thinking of Samson. It wasn’t really a lie since Samson was a friend, sort of. Wherever he was. And they had met on a day he should have been in school.
Mr. Perry raised an eyebrow. “What boy around here isn’t gonna be busy with his own place?”
“He’s a visiting boy. Just visiting, doesn’t have a place near here and really wants the work.”
“Get those stones out now, and you’ll be plowing soon enough. It’s a mighty late spring so far.” Mr. Perry sweetened the last of the coffee. “And your ma, what does she think of you handling the farm by yourself?”