Kaidenberg's Best Sons

by Jason Heit

  Bernhard opened his jacket, nestled the child closer to his chest, then wrapped his jacket around the bundle. Gazing at his small, sick daughter, he whispered, “God, protect them.” He looked over to Frank and caught him staring back. The boy was still weak, but there was more than a little grit in him. He’d be a tough one someday. “Let them feel the lines, boy,” Bernhard said, and Frank nodded.

  Whiskey and Flu

  Whiskey and Flu

  Whiskey and Flu

  Whiskey and Flu

  Whiskey and Flu

  Whiskey and Flu

  Whiskey and Flu

  A Death in the Family

  1919

  Peter pulled on his end of the misery whip and the saw’s teeth chewed through the giant Douglas Fir. He breathed in the sweet rainforest air as the saw travelled away from him and out on his return stroke. Deliberate. Disciplined. After the scaffolding and the undercut had been made, this was the routine. Just him and the kid, Henry, on opposite ends of the two-man saw. The kid, hidden from him behind the wall of tree. Their language unspoken – a vibration echoing through 12 feet of steel, meaning pull. The steel hummed through the wood. A smooth rhythm interrupted only by the need to place a pair of wedges to keep the saw moving. Around him, the other men chopped and sawed and the forest fell by their will.

  It’s here that Peter’s mind can rest quietly. Free from the echoes of all the thoughts that haunted him in Kaidenberg and travelled with him those years he worked the Grand Trunk, stretching the railway west through the Yellowhead Pass. Yet, sometimes through the emptiness a picture of Katherine will shine through. Now, some ten years since he left home, there are only two pictures of her that remain: Katherine of the Steppe, 14 years old, with flowers in her dark hair skipping through the tall grass of the cherry orchard, her hands cupped hiding a secret she has to share with him; and, Katherine of Kaidenberg, as he last saw her, a mother with a child in her arms, her dark hair up, her sun-kissed face wearing a look of sad contentment. If he’s lucky he’ll be visited by the first memory. The second is a bad omen. With it comes other pictures; pictures of Katherine’s deceased husband, Frank Weran. Frank growling and wild-eyed with his fist aimed straight for Peter’s jaw; Frank, in the snow, broken and begging for help; and, lastly, Nels’s bare hands cupped over Frank’s mouth and nose, pressing tight, smothering the life from him.

  But, for the most part, there’s just a hollowness in his thoughts – memories pulled out by the roots. Everything else is action and words: eat; sleep; work; send money home; fish. And there is the forest, green, etching patterns in his mind as the feeble sunlight passes through rain-soaked moss and the bristled arms of these wooden giants.

  Then, there’s the kid, Henry, a brawny, 18-year-old with a widowed mother and pair of younger sisters in Vancouver. His eagerness reminds Peter of his brother Joseph at that age. Except where Joseph was eager to get married and do all the things married people do, Henry’s hungry for adventure. Eager to prove himself to all the other men because the war in Europe was done before it was his turn to fight, and eager to send money home to his family. The kid’s a good one. He’s respectful. He doesn’t call Peter, “Fritz”, “Jerry”, or “The Hun”, not like the others. It doesn’t happen as much any more, but Peter had more than his share of it during the Great War. More than once he’d been told how he didn’t deserve to be making good money when Canadian boys were in the trenches dying for pennies in their pockets. In this sort of company, he was nothing but an outsider, a deviant, Canada’s great enemy. There were times during those years when he wondered if he’d been better off in one of those camps for Germans, like the one where his friend Karl Ziegler was taken. They would’ve put him there if his birth certificate hadn’t been issued by the Russian Empire. But it’s better now that the war is over. Better too that Canada and Britain won.

  This tree will be the last of the day. The last of the week for that matter. Later, the men will leave camp and travel the five miles to the town of Alberni. They’ll eat and drink like machines. Some will play cards, others will pay for a fuck, and more will fight. Peter has done all three, but he’ll settle for a good meal and a game of cards tonight. He’s always been a reluctant fighter; as for sex, he’s only ever paid for what he knows. He lost whatever handsomeness he’d possessed the night Frank Weran knocked out half his teeth. Since then, love has never been in the cards. In the morning, Peter will wake and go to church. In the afternoon, he’ll fish the river. He will return to camp early Monday morning and the routine will start again.

  The signal came and Peter and Henry hurried away from the tree as Cormac Gallagher, the crew’s veteran lead topper, and Thomas Spence, the crew boss, pulled on a pair of line hooks that Cormac had rigged to the tree. The tree – half a tree, really, with its top already fallen – cracked somewhere deep in its core. Pop. The sound echoed through the forest. The tree was a tower. Five hundred years old.

  “I love that sound,” old Spence said.

  “Uh huh,” Peter said, under his breath.

  Then, pop-pop-pop, the vertebrae of the tree broke and its massive body tilted away from them. For a moment, the tree held firm, like an arm-wrestler down but not out, then gravity’s invisible hand reached up and pulled the tree to the forest floor. Boom. The ground around the men shook.

  Henry flashed Peter a proud smile.

  “Not so bad.” Peter clapped Henry on the shoulder. The men walked carefully, like hunters coming upon their prey, as they returned to the fallen tree.

  Later, the lumberjacks rode the supply wagons down the skid road back to camp. Five wagons each with nearly a dozen of them packed in like sardines as a late afternoon rain poured down on them. The March air was cool. Peter sat knees to chest with his back against the side boards of the wagon box. Henry was next to him. Cormac crouched at the back of the wagon, his long limbs and lean frame acting as a kind of end gate. He looked over to the latest recruit, Logan MacNair, and a mischievous grin shone upon his face. “I’m goin’ to drink you under the table, MacNair.”

  MacNair was the newest topper on the crew and had become a minor distraction to Cormac since his arrival. MacNair was a war veteran, an RFC flyer who had been shot down and taken prisoner by the Germans. His story had captivated Cormac when they had met in the Alberni Hotel, and it was Cormac who had suggested to Logan that he come and try his hand at topping the giants. Since then, the two men were often busy trying to best each other in whatever pursuit they could think up.

  MacNair peered at Cormac for a moment before sticking his head into his jacket. He revealed himself seconds later puffing on a cigarette. He passed the cigarette to Cormac, who took a pull and passed it back to MacNair. “I can’t allow it, Gallagher. There’s a lass in town I’m promised to, and I ain’t one to break a promise.”

  Cormac huffed. “I’ve seen your girl; she’s nothin’ but a tart.”

  MacNair shook his head. “Not mine. She’s an angel with emerald eyes and hair dark as night.” He smiled and took another pull from the cigarette.

  “You think you can mend her broken ways,” Cormac continued.

  “Aye, ye don’t marry for money when ye can borrow it cheaper.”

  Cormac smiled at him. “Good enough, then.” He looked around to the other men and his gaze set on Henry, who was telling Spence how he’d jump at the chance to top a big fir. “Kid,” Cormac called out to Henry.

  Henry turned to Cormac.

  “You want be a topper?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then you gotta drink like a topper.”

  “Looks to me like his mother only just took him off the teat,” MacNair teased.

  Cormac laughed.

  “I can drink,” Henry said.

  MacNair pressed his cigarette out on the wagon floor. “Ye drink like a virgin, kid. Nothing to be worried about though, we’re all sure yer one of
those too.”

  The wagon filled with laughter.

  “Leave him alone, MacNair,” Peter said.

  “Come on, Smiles,” Cormac said. “It’s only a bit of fun. Why you got to be so Holy Joe serious all the time?”

  “I don’t mind, Peter,” Henry said.

  Peter shook his head.

  “That’s it, kid. Don’t be putting yer trust in the Hun. He’d likely stick an axe in yer back –”

  Peter burst towards MacNair. “You bastard.” He reached for MacNair’s shirt collar and cocked his fist ready to punch. It happened so quick that no one had a chance to stop him. A picture of Frank Weran falling to the ground, his spine snapped like a fallen tree, flashed in Peter’s mind and stopped him from letting loose his punch. Henry pulled Peter away from MacNair, but MacNair swung at Peter, grazing his chin before Spence and another faller grabbed MacNair and stuffed him back in his spot.

  “Enough,” Spence shouted. “The war is over. Act like it.”

  The rain let up to a fine mist as the wagon rolled to a stop in front of a small two-room building that functioned as the main office; next to it stood the camp’s mess hall with room enough for 100 men. And further along, past the rail siding and the steam donkey, were the bunkhouses. Peter was the last off the wagon. He followed the others toward the lean silhouette standing to the left of the setting sun that was Leahy, the owner of the operation. Leahy was a decent enough man in Peter’s eyes. He’d given him a job when others had refused. Yet Leahy had a showiness about him that Peter didn’t have much need for, and this ritual of appearing at the end of the week to distribute the men’s hard-earned wages was part of it.

  Peter fell in line behind Henry as the second wagon arrived and the rest of the crew joined the queue. At the front, Leahy handed the men their wages in small brown envelopes with whatever correspondence they might’ve received in the post. The line moved at a shuffling pace and from its mouth gurgled a spattering of thank yous.

  Peter took his wages and nodded his thanks to Mr. Leahy.

  “Wait a second,” Leahy said. “You got a letter.” Leahy shuffled through a bundle of letters he kept in his breast pocket and found the one addressed to Peter Eberle. He pressed it close to his bespectacled face then held it out to Peter. “Krautberg, Saskatchewan,” frowned Leahy.

  Peter took the letter without a word and walked away from the crowd toward the cover of the mess hall’s overhang. The pit of his stomach dropped half an inch when he flipped the envelope and read his brother’s name, Joseph. He’d hoped it might be from his cousin, Katherine.

  The last correspondence he’d had from home arrived after Christmas. Actually, the New Year had already been well established when he’d received the Christmas letters, as there had been all sorts of delays with the mail in the wake of the flu outbreak. Both Joseph and Katherine had written to him. Katherine had written with news of her family. The children were healthy. Elisabetha had enjoyed her first season at the country school, while her son, Frank, continued to be heavy-hearted following the violent attack on Bernhard the previous summer. Although it seemed Frank was beginning to show signs of improvement. Possibly because Bernhard had begun to take on more of the farm work as the dizzy spells lessened and became more manageable. Yet, Peter couldn’t help find another story between the lines – a maimed and frustrated husband with a weakness for booze. And, to add to matters, she was pregnant again. It would only be her third, but with Bernhard’s temperament it would be a test. Peter feared for the family’s circumstances and had been sending money to Joseph to give to Katherine ever since he’d learned of Bernhard’s condition. He didn’t risk sending it to Katherine and Bernhard directly in case Bernhard were to discover it. Peter knew he’d take offense at this charity. Kaidenberg folk were a stubborn, pride-filled lot.

  Joseph’s letter had followed Katherine’s and, like her, Joseph had included updates on his family – Margaret and the children. However, Joseph’s letter had included a sliver of information about folk in nearby Crane Hills contracting the flu. Joseph hadn’t included any more details, leaving Peter to worry and pray that it was not an outbreak of the Spanish flu that seemed to be everywhere in the world. Peter had written back to Joseph and Katherine asking them both for news and this was his first response.

  Peter’s heart raced as he considered what news the letter might contain. Were Margaret and the children well? He said a silent prayer and unfolded the slip of paper.

  February 11th, 1919

  My Dear Peter, I write to you with a heavy heart. Today, I received your letter of January 7th and I must relate to you the terrible news that your fears of the flu were well founded. The flu has taken our cousin, Katherine. I am sorry, Brother, I know you were very close to her long ago. It has been a difficult time in Kaidenberg. Katherine was not the only one of us lost. Ludwig Gerien and Teresa Weran, Katherine’s sister-in-law, also passed and many are still recovering. You must forgive me for not writing to you earlier. Katherine passed in late November, then Margaret took ill and the children too. It saved me for last. Thank God, none of us were taken, I wouldn’t know what to do had I lost Margaret or any of the children. It pains me to think of it.

  As for Frank and Elisabetha, well, Bernhard took them straight to cousin Nels’s to be raised there. We are all grateful that Bernhard had the soundness of mind to know his limits and ask for help. I’m told it’s hard for him to take care of himself no less two young children, although Frank will be turning 10 this spring. My God, 10 years. It’s hard not to think of that trip to Battleford. I think of it most in the winter or when I pick up an axe. I pray for you, Peter. Must this be your penance? To wield the axe every day, so not to forget your sins? Please, stop. I think it’s time you come home and be with your people. And meet the nephews and niece you’ve never seen. Steven, John, and Helen.

  Your brother, Joseph.

  P.S. I gave Nels the money you sent for Katherine and the family. He accepted it, kindly, and asked me to send you his greetings and thanks. He is still a rock, although I fear he’s showing cracks.

  Peter slumped to the ground as tears rolled from his eyes. Katherine dead. The baby too? It must be. “No,” he mumbled. “No.” Joseph must’ve gotten it wrong. He would’ve known if Katherine had died. In his guts, he would’ve known. How did this happen? She was still young. Now he’d never see her again. Not even on the other side. He’d be lucky to make purgatory for his sins: for his part in killing Frank, and for the women he’d had, the camp followers and prostitutes. All those times, he’d imagined it was Katherine in his arms. He’d tainted his memory of her with his lustful mind. It made him sick to think of it.

  Peter fell to his knees and started to gag. His stomach found the back of his throat. He heaved and a thin line of liquid poured from his mouth; he coughed, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

  Henry came to Peter’s side. “What is it?”

  Peter wagged his head. No. He lurched and heaved again, a dry retching.

  Henry lowered down next to him. “Peter?”

  “Stay away.” He coughed, and spat.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Peter turned to Henry. “Go!”

  Henry froze, staring at the miserable creature next to him.

  “Leave me!”

  Spence grabbed Henry by the shoulder and pulled him away from Peter. “Leave him,” he told Henry. “Just leave him.”

  “He’s lost someone,” Henry said. “Hasn’t he?”

  Spence nodded.

  -

  Peter didn’t go to town that night. He stayed alone in the bunkhouse and stared at his brother’s letter illuminated by the flickering lamplight: ‘…your fears of the flu were well founded. The flu has taken our cousin, Katherine.’ And wept.

  Then something in him shifted, and he rose from his seat on the bottom bunk and crossed the room. He punched the wall, hitting an unfor
giving wooden beam. “Scheisse!” he growled. Shaking his fist in pain, he returned to the lamplight to examine his hand. Yes, his middle finger was broken. Peter pressed the bone of his finger back into place and wrapped his hand in a handkerchief. The pain was sharp at first, then it softened to a dull throbbing pulse that calmed Peter’s racing mind. He poured himself a whiskey and downed it quickly.

  On Sunday morning, Peter woke to the same dull pain pulsing from his finger and down through his right hand. He rolled out of bed and set his bare, calloused feet on the cold wood floor. On the night table by his bed he found a cold dinner someone had left for him. He unwrapped the butcher paper and discovered a heap of cold beef and boiled potatoes. He fetched the knife he carried in a sheath on his belt and dug into the beef, eager to fill the hollowness in his gut. His thoughts were simple. Divisible. He needed to ease his hunger and tolerate the pain.

  With his hunger gone, his mind began to clear. Katherine was dead. God had cheated her and everyone she loved. Her poor children had no mother. The boy, Frank, was a true orphan now; Elisabetha might as well be.

  Peter looked at the clock on the wall. Half past seven. It was early enough that if he started now he could walk to town in time for Mass. Instead, he grabbed his fishing rod and lures and a sack of apples and walked to his fishing spot on the Somass River. There was no one else on the river as he fixed a lure to his line and cast with his injured hand; the pain making him clench his jaw.

  The air was still cool and steamy when Henry arrived, an hour or more later. Bleary-eyed, Henry nodded to Peter and took his place down river from him. The men fished quietly together for several hours, until the March sun peeked through the high tree tops and warmed their backs.