Grist

by Linda Little

  Then Sander’s voice moved away. The farmers who had been excited by the prospect of a fight at first had stepped back quickly, embarrassed by the flood of passion. When the kicking began, two moved in to pull Sander away.

  But Sander kept hollering. “Go! Take what you want! Take a horse. Take what you want, just get out! Go! Get off this place. Don’t come back. Leave me alone, God damn you!”

  Ewan did not remember climbing to his feet. Perhaps he had been helped. He remembered the smear of blood along the sleeve of his shirt, the filthy ochre pool at the cuff with a trail up to his bloody nose. He remembered the way his hands shook when he held them under the water from the pump. He remembered the cold black rage he carried with his flour sack through every room of the house. He picked up and discarded ten items for each one he stuffed into the sack. His father’s two books he took. Socks, a string of sausages, a shirt, a pencil. Blasphemous. Scatter-brained. Lazy as a mat. No head for machinery or numbers or anything at all. A tin bowl. Cheese. Three candles. He stuffed two saddlebags full of tools from the workshop, passed through the stable, chose Billy, the strongest horse, handfuls of oats. Idiot. Brute. Couldn’t run a wheelbarrow—see him try a mill. Useless. He saddled up, flung his luggage aboard under a hasty loop of rope, up and gone. Hell-bent for leather.

  Ewan finally reined in the horse and slid down out of the saddle, the gelding lathered and heaving beside him. The poor animal’s load hung askew—sacks and saddlebags, a shovel handle stuck out at a ludicrous angle. A shovel. What did Ewan want with a shovel? What did he own that needed shovelling? After thirty years, he had nothing but a sack of tools, a horse, a small bundle of clothes and less money than a girl would pin into her hem on a journey to Boston. He took the load apart and re-packed it properly, pitching the shovel into the woods. They continued westward on the road, both walking now, farther west than Ewan had ever been. The bridge of Ewan’s nose carried the crack of impact and a bruise stained his jaw. His knuckles ached with the memory of his few flailing punches.

  When night descended Ewan led the horse off the road and they slept in the woods, but exhaustion offered no refuge. The moment sleep overtook him a horrible drowning nightmare crashed over him, the waves swelling up behind him and he couldn’t catch hold of anything. The water tore him back and held him under and just as his lungs were about to explode he was thrown up again. He grabbed at the bank but again he was dragged over and away, his fingers raking over tree roots and stones, leaving streaks of blood. Water everywhere pressing and hauling until he sputtered awake gulping damp fall air and listening to his heart hammer. Before dawn he fed his horse a handful of oats and they continued on until they came to the road’s end, the island’s rocky edge. Here, at the edge of the known world, a pier pointed into the choppy waters of the strait towards the mainland of Nova Scotia. In the distance he could see the ferryman making his way towards him.

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  FOR SEVERAL DAYS THEY TRAVELLED WEST, EWAN FEELING a fugitive, hunted, simply unable to stop. He would ride, then walk, then ride again. Prosperous farms, forges, tanneries, labourers’ houses, manufacturing businesses, churches, schools, woods, streams and roads. He turned away from towns and villages; he chose narrow trails that climbed hills with thin soil and scrubby trees. He tried to find some order in his thoughts but his head felt empty. He could feel the contours of it, a bowl of nothing but axioms and articles. When two or more forces act upon a body, in such a way as to destroy the operation of each other, there is then said to be an equilibrium of forces. Soon his sparse supplies would be gone. He must form a plan of some sort. Non-elastic bodies are those which not only change their forms, when struck, but remain permanently altered in this particular. He met a brook and followed it northward in the declining light of the evening. The brook widened suddenly into a millpond. Indeed, there up ahead a raggedy sawmill listed into the bank. Although the air carried the scent of fresh sawdust, he could see no activity anywhere. Ewan unburdened the horse and let him drink while he looked around thinking he might find a bed of sawdust for the night. Then, in the slanting rays of the day’s end, Ewan saw the shadows. It was a mirage, surely. But no, as he approached the shapes gained solidity. Millstones—just lying there in the grass by the pond, out of the way of spring high water. “Ah,” he said, surprising himself with the sound of his own voice. “Ah, stones.” He knelt by them, his hand drawn to the pattern, settling his fingertips into the grooves, following the stitching from the eye to the skirt. He hooked his arm through the eye and held the stone firm. Just like in the dream, waves of dread crashed and tugged but he held fast, hugging the immovable stone. Even as the darkness of the evening thickened, he could not let go.

  WHEN MERTON PICKED HIS WAY DOWN THE PATH FROM HIS CABIN IN the morning to check the water level he spotted the horse and then saw the man sleeping on the hard millstone. Outside—with the relative comfort of the mill just across the yard. Merton picked up a pebble and tossed it onto the stone near the sleeper’s ear.

  Ewan struggled upright, groggy from thin, fitful sleep. He hobbled a few feet but his right leg, numb and cold from lying motionless on the granite, threatened to give way. His right arm had gone wooden and when he rubbed it he felt the pattern the stones had set into his flesh. The two men regarded each other.

  “Morning,” Merton said, gruff and wary, then shuffled over to the brow where he bent and splashed water on his face. Behind him the little mill leaned into the bank. It was a lazy-looking affair, a lonely, neglected shack. A couple of dozen logs floated in the millpond. When Merton stood, massaging his left temple carefully, he turned and struggled to bring Ewan into focus. “Don’t suppose ye’ve got the day to spare, to cant a few logs?”

  Ewan did not know what to say that did not lay bare all that had been taken from him. Here he stood, a vagabond at worst, a common day labourer at best. Ewan had worked for wages before, when the opportunity arose. Good work for good money. But this sudden necessity for it appalled him. His answering the offer set his indigence before another human being—acknowledged it, established it.

  “Supper and a bed—ye and yer horse too—and fifty cents. I’m not a rich man.”

  Ewan did not reply because he could not round up the simple necessary words and drive them through the desert of his mouth into the air.

  “Sixty cents then. And breakfast in the bargain. Ye can cant a few logs, I suppose?”

  “I’ve got the millers’ trade,” he managed.

  “That so?” Merton turned towards the mill, quick to take this as a yes. “Ye can set yer horse up there.”

  Everything about the little mill had the air of making do, of a lick and a promise, of minimum requirements. So Ewan was surprised when he flicked his thumb alongside the saw blade testing its edge and found it keen. He looked around for a peavey and found one tossed in the corner. He corralled the logs in from the pond to the brow and one by one set them on the carriage where Merton pinched them snug with the dogs. Once Ewan had a few ahead he darted to the far side of the saw and hauled the sawn lumber away to stack it on the small square of land Merton referred to as the yard. The harder he worked the more tension he drew down through his arms and out of his body. Bark and slabs from the previous job had been left where they fell. While Merton squared his logs Ewan began hauling the pile away. When he caught up with this task he took a bucksaw down off its peg and began sawing the slabs into stove wood, the seesaw work lulling him. Then back to the millpond to cant another log. In this way Ewan kept his body moving and straining all day, his mind tricked into stasis.

  “Ye can climb around and shut the sluice gate, I suppose?”

  Ewan looked around him searching for what had gone awry. The angle of the sun had sharpened but there were at least two hours of good daylight left. Merton disengaged the blade, turned and hung his leather apron on a nail. Ewan did not question the order, simply shimmied out along the dam until he could drop the gate that diverted the water flow and halted
the waterwheel.

  “Come up to the house, now. I’m drier than Lucifer’s coal dust.”

  Merton’s cabin was small but tight, built of sawn beams and planks, a strong stone chimney and two grimy glass-paned windows. The floor was rough wood sanded smooth by foot traffic in paths around the table, the filthy cook stove and the bed at the far end of the cabin. There was also a small stand with a washtub, two chairs, a shelf and a row of clothes hooks, mostly empty. The cabin smelled of indolence, of bedclothes gone too long without airing, of damp wool and pork fat. The sweet tint of rum in the air was overpowered by the stale heaviness of over-indulgence. The only freshness rose from the sawdust that settled over coats and trousers, hair and eyelashes, carried in the nostrils

  Supper was boiled potatoes and salt pork. As for dinner conversation, Ewan could not have asked for better. Merton asked no questions, exhibited no curiosity. As soon as they finished Ewan washed their plates and forks and the potato pot, although with the ring of scum encrusted in a collar around the top of the pot he gathered this was not part of the general domestic routine.

  When the clean pot was set on the table Merton spoke. “There now. There’s no need for ye to be running off in the morning. There’s another great pile of logs across the dam to be sawn once we finish up with those in the pond.”

  Ewan watched the man light a lamp in the gathering gloom, its sooty chimney almost opaque. He watched the man measuring the silence, then peering up at him from under spiky greying eyebrows that made Ewan think of a great horned owl, Merton’s eyes fixed on his in a gaze halfway between a challenge and a question. Obviously Ewan had nowhere else to be.

  “Alright,” Ewan said, looking away in shame.

  Long after Merton blew out the lamp and went to bed Ewan sat at the table in the dark. He held his head in his hands and repeated the Lord’s Prayer over and over, not audibly but not quite to himself either. The mindless familiarity of the chant offered little comfort but remaining upright meant he didn’t have to lie down on a pile of straw in the corner like a dog. And it meant he didn’t have to close his eyes and dream the rushing torrent of water into his lungs. Exhausted from labour and worry, he eventually pried off his boots, lowered his body to the floor and drew his blanket around him. Twice he woke gasping for air and wet with sweat, his heart crashing wild like an anvil falling down stairs. Finally, he crept out of his nest, pulled on his boots, and scrabbled out the door and over the road. The stars and the moon gave off what light was to be had and Ewan picked his way along the path. Tingling anxiety mounted and he realized, quite to his astonishment and shame, that he was afraid to find the millstones gone. Washed away in the night. A ton of Scottish granite was going nowhere but as he descended the slope his pulse quickened and his breathing grew shallow, anxiety mounting towards panic. His eyes scanned for the circle of black in the grasses as he groped his way towards the spot, reached out, ah yes. His palms found the surface; he fit his fingers into the grooves. He sat a moment while his body returned to normal, while his anxiety flattened and slipped sideways into a profound embarrassment. Even with no one to witness the depth of his emotion, shame lapped over him. As soon as first light allowed the grey of the granite to ease across the stone and the path to separate itself from the obstacles on it, Ewan got to his feet and hurried back up the slope. He tended the horses in the stable. Merton had a fine-looking young mare of his own. Pride, he’d called her. A few scrawny hens rousted on a rafter overhead but he could find no cow or pig on the place. There would be no sweet milk to lighten their porridge.

  Ewan clanked the stove lid when he lit the fire. He was careful to clatter the kettle a few extra times, set the frying pan down flat with declaration, but Merton only turned over on his tick, moaned and pulled his blanket over his head. Ewan liked to be ready to work as soon as he could see. When he was a boy his mother was driven to fury by morning laziness and set upon occupied beds with a switch. One morning when he had given in to the warm pillowy comfort surrounding him and drifted back to sleep he was reawakened by her heavy footfall on the top step. In desperation he rolled from beneath the covers and sank to his knees on the cold floor clasping his hands, closing his eyes in feigned prayer, sure she could not attack him in communion with God. She set about his head and back with the switch, laying into him until welts crisscrossed his back like a herring net. “In daylight you pray with your hands laden, you scamp, you idler. Pretend to give thanks while you spit God’s good daylight back in His face!”

  Ewan filled the water bucket, the wood box, and split a bundle of kindling while he waited for the porridge to boil up. There wasn’t so much as a heel of bread that he could find in the house. When Merton finally found his boots he sat into the table with a fresh mug of tea warming his hands and a bowl of hot oatmeal. He lifted an eyebrow in Ewan’s direction.

  “If ye weren’t so ugly ye’d be as good as a woman.”

  “Aye, and what would you be good as?”

  There was no further conversation over breakfast.

  “THAT’S JOUDREY’S PILE THERE NOW,” MERTON SAID AT DINNERTIME. “The rest is mine.” It was clear enough that Merton was amazed and delighted to see the fine stack of deal in the yard, bark carted away and slabs cut and piled. Here he was the boss of such a fine establishment that he impressed himself. “John Peter’s got a pile of logs up the hill. I didn’t know when I’d get to them but we could start in after dinner.”

  Dinner was fried potatoes and eggs. They sawed all afternoon. Supper was potatoes and a bit of cheese.

  “I’m not sleeping on the floor like a dog. Some of that lumber in the stable could make a loft there.”

  Merton shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “What’s this, now?”

  “There’s time yet before bed.”

  Before Merton’s eyes Ewan raised a loft in one end of the cabin above Merton’s bed. “Hold this,” he said to Merton as he set the header in place. He hammered the decking boards down and fashioned a quick ladder from scraps. He swept sawdust and scraps off the floor and dumped them into the stove, carried the tools back to the barn and climbed up to bed.

  The next evening Ewan fashioned himself a rough mattress of boughs and straw. The next evening he took a few coins down to the nearest neighbours’ for a cake of lye soap, a small sack of flour, and a bowl of yeast. Cunningham was their name. He arranged with the woman to fetch over a bottle of milk for them every few days, and perhaps a bit of butter. He put one of Merton’s delinquent-looking chickens in the stewpot. He set bread to rise before he went to bed. The next morning when he ventured out to inspect Merton’s patch of oats he tripped over a cabbage in the grass and so discovered the vegetable garden. In the mornings between dawn and when Merton made his way down to the mill Ewan weeded and hoed. He scrubbed the windows and every washable surface in the cabin. He shovelled sawdust into a cart and hauled it away, shovelled up bark and debris until space opened up that Merton had forgotten existed. Every morning Ewan knelt by the millstones on the stream bank, leaned his body into them. Sometimes he could get through the night now with the drowning nightmare visiting him only once. Maybe twice. He slept for several hours at a stretch.

  On Sunday morning Ewan lay in his bunk with his hands behind his head, the roof boards slanting above him, and waited for dawn light to flood the cabin through the now-sparkling windows. He rose and washed his face and shaved with warm water. He poured the last of the sweet milk over his porridge. Merton snorted in his sleep, grunted and resumed a low snore. After tending to the horses Ewan took a flask of tea down to the pond. He sat on the millstone staring at nothing. He missed his brother, his mill, his predictable life, so powerfully his lungs ached. The leaves at the tops of the trees had begun to redden and the crops would be coming off the fields all over the province. Sander would never get all the harvest work done without him. Who knew what a mess he would make of it. Sander would have to send for him. Sander needed him.

  Merton eventually hauled himself out of bed and
, finding himself alone in the cabin, brewed himself a pot of strong tea. Bread and butter waited for him on the table. His cabin glistened, a loft had been built, there was soup on the back of the stove, wood box and water bucket filled, and the animals tended. The garden was hoed. A week’s worth of lumber had been sawn in two days and the mill looked in better shape than it ever had. It was true that Merton had to learn to duck his head so as to avoid the loft floor, but the header beam was proving a diligent teacher. It was true the man clattered the stove lids with a little too much insistence way too early in the mornings. It was true that Merton himself was drawn into more work than he would normally like and that he felt the ache of over-taxed muscles. But Ewan knew what to do without being told. He worked by daylight and lamplight for nothing and still he craned his neck looking for more. Indeed Merton could see the desperation in his labour and since someone had to benefit from the man’s need it might as well be him as anyone.

  It being Sunday and the indisputable day of rest, today there seemed no downside to having the young man at all. Merton gathered up his trouting rod and wandered downstream to the most propitious of the fish pools. He dug up several fat worms, impaled one on his hook and snuggled down on the bank in the September sunshine, completely content. As he waited for his prey he contemplated his newfound fortune. And plotted how best to keep the goose laying the golden eggs. That afternoon Merton sat on the stable doorstep whistling and gutting two fat trout. The barn cat sat at a safe distance, just out of kicking range, howling with impatience. Merton flicked a fish head on the tip of his knife, catapulting it in a high arc and sending the cat into an athletic back flip snatching the treat in midair. He laughed through his stained teeth, sat and watched her gnawing at the gills with feral greed. Ewan appeared over the rise and Merton waved him over.