by Brian Hart
“Why’d you come up here?” Tartan said.
“They hung Nitz and beat Burheim to death.”
“Who?”
“The fucking mob. Hired shit heels.”
“Who hired em?”
“Couldn’t say for sure, but I’m leaning toward Boyerton and his partners. Stevedores pitched in. Got lively with all the fucking baboonery.”
“I’d guess most of the Harbor pitched in on those two.”
“We’ll let it rest, and when we go back we’ll stand them down.” He brushed the crushed leaves and mud from his pants. “Help me with these fucking animals, would you?”
They unloaded the packs, and Tartan brushed down the horses and watered them and staked them behind the shack. He got bit when he tried to help the injured horse, so he left the stob where it was. The wind began to blow from the east; storms were imminent. Tartan went back to the garden, and Bellhouse pulled up a stump and opened a bottle and watched him.
“If you had another shovel, I might help.”
“There ain’t no more shovels.”
“Then I’ll set here and get drunk.” Bellhouse looked around to the dark forest. “Hell of a place this is.”
“Not much to it.”
“How’d you know the man that lived here?”
“Cousin.”
“But you’re an orphan.”
“So I can’t have a cousin?”
“Have whatever you want. You’re like the Indians with all your cousins. Everybody a cousin. I’m probably your cousin.”
“No fuckin relation.”
“That hurts.” Bottle swash and cringe. “If you’d left it alone for another week or so, these woods would’ve swallowed all of this. You’d never know it was here.”
“There’s potatoes in this garden.”
“I brought a few pounds of Fortneau’s finest stew meat. Puppy steaks. You got a pan?”
“Sure.”
The wind brought in the rain, and soon they were indoors with the woodstove. Bellhouse told his story about stabbing his old friend Julius Beddington in the neck with a farrier’s file.
“Stuck him with the rat-tail and the blood shot into my open mouth and gagged me and I was puking up everything from the bottom of my fucking boots while Julius bled out.”
Tartan obediently bobbed his head, smiled, and waited. “You couldn’t a done anything for Nitz and Burheim, then?”
“Nah. Had to let it play. I get in the middle, and I’d be with them. It wasn’t like they were fine or smart or worth fucking saving, either one.”
“They were boys, is all.”
“Hardly. Those two were born full-grown in a downpour and died too stupid to get out of the rain.” Bellhouse began nibbling at the loose skin hanging off his thumbs and fingers, as was his habit.
Tartan opened the stove and pitched in another mossy hunk of hemlock. “If it’s gonna be a real fight over our hall, I don’t see how we’d win. There’s not ten of us that work or even really give a shit about who pays what regardless. Do you care about gruntin away for eight versus ten or twelve hours in a day? I think not.”
“You might be wrong about that.”
“Well, I don’t see the upside of starting a war with the mills. Let the labor unions do it, and we’ll work the angles off em, just like now.”
“We are the labor union.”
“The fuck we are. Sailor’s union. We’re less for labor than the fuckin mills.”
“Watch it.”
“Between the two of us we haven’t worked a wage job for decades.”
“You can’t just wait for these men to straighten themselves out,” Bellhouse said. “We aren’t the only ones telling them what to think. They’ll need someone to lead them, to set them on a course so they’ll get what they deserve.”
“That stray bullet must’ve battered yer senses if you think you’ll lead anything but a raid on a fuckin timber scow.”
Bellhouse turned to face Tartan, and his eyes settled on him, as dead and unnerving as a doll’s. “You have to stir the pot, son, or you’ll only get broth.”
Tartan didn’t know if they were talking about the union fight any longer. His blood was up, and he wanted to test the fence on Bellhouse, see if the injury had shortened his scope, maybe even weakened his knees a little. We’re just dogs in the traces, after all, overtake and trample is the name of the game.
Tartan sweetened his tenor. “Hank, you ever noticed that I don’t tell you stories? Never give you the history of my life, or the big-time adventure I had back then, wherever the fuck I was?”
Bellhouse sucked in a deep breath and then fairly squirmed with anger. “I offer you the recollections, the gathered insights of my days, because you’re a big dumb goon and you require education.”
“I’d say I’m smart enough not to stab my friend with a file and have to tell the story every five minutes to feel better or not forget. I don’t know why you do it. I heard that story a hundred times if I heard it once.”
“You’re drunk.”
“I’m not.”
“Then keep talking and I’ll take you outside and pummel you.”
“You couldn’t.”
“Oh, we’ll see about that.”
Tartan stood and went outside, and in the light from the open door and the pouring rain they fought. Bellhouse did as he said and left Tartan bloody and unconscious in the mud, and in the morning that’s where he woke. He must’ve crawled under the eave, or Hank dragged him there. His head was a ripe melon of pain. Bellhouse and his horses were gone. A note carved in the center of the rotting wood panel of the five-piece door: TRUE STORY.
Duncan Ellstrom
Fourth of July, 1895
Mother stood straight and ready, looking out over the water. She smiled when she caught me staring and I smiled leaving her smiling. I slid my feet back and forth on the polished nailheads of the wharf. Long and jagged slivers were waiting if I took off my shoes. I’d already gotten in trouble for that on the walk in but I liked the mud on my toes. The nailheads were the size of dimes.
The ferry was coming special because it was the Fourth of July. Some of the kids from school were there but I stayed apart from them and threw handfuls of sawdust into the water and watched it drift and spiral and sink. Ben and Joseph McCandliss showed up and no one wanted to play with them either. They were orphans now since their father had been sent to the penitentiary in Seattle. I remembered when my father left me and Mother when I was little. He came back but he still wasn’t around very often. Mother sometimes called him the boarder. Ben and I were both eleven years old and would be in the same class if Ben went to school. Joseph was fourteen and had already, more than once, spent the night in jail. Miss Travois had taken them in but I’d heard they didn’t sleep there, they just did whatever they liked. Wharf boys, we’d all been warned against them.
“We ain’t waitin for the boat,” Ben said to me, climbing up into the lumber cribs to be with his brother. I was too scared to go up there with them so I went back to the water and threw some more sawdust.
It’d been an hour at least already and everyone had cleared off somewhere to sit among the shingle stock. The mill was shut down for the holiday. I’d never seen it like that, and it was like when I saw the dead horse because I’d never seen that either. The doorway was filled with the smell of my father, grease and kerosene and sawdust. He wouldn’t be here today, off working, always. Didn’t see him much but I’d got used to that.
My mother called to me but I stopped my ears with my fingers so I couldn’t hear her. I took one step forward, waited, and then kept going. The blood was pumping in my ears against my fingertips like I was underwater. The mill floor had been swept and I could see the broom marks and where they piled and scooped up the dust. It was cool and silent inside and crammed with machinery. I’d heard the mill sounds for as long as I could remember. It was strange, it being so quiet. I thought: I’m a little machine and when I go silent I’ll be silent and I’
ll be dead.
A driveshaft connected to the ceiling followed the main roof beam the length of the building. Attached to it were flywheels of various sizes, all six-spoked. I counted them twice. Drive belts a foot wide stretched like taffy to the machines below. The wheels on the pony rig were caked with resin and didn’t want to spin when I tried them. I touched a steampipe but it was cold. The boiler was far off, all the way on the other side, visible from the road but not from where I was. Someone was moving around in the back of the building, banging on something. There was the weak light of a lantern climbing up the wall behind the edger. I went forward to hide and put my hand on a flywheel that was taller than me and kind of hugged it and put my feet in the spokes and it felt good in my arms, big and solid, heavy and round and perfect. I scraped my fingernails over the belt and felt so peaceful, so content.
“What’re you doin there, boy?”
I jumped down at the sound of the voice and ran for the door, ran right into my mother’s legs. She had me by the shoulder and led me back to where her bag was and sat me down on a bolt of shingles. And there we stayed. Bored as I’d ever been.
Each time I looked up there were more people. Most of them were families with fathers carrying the burdens of a picnic, but there were bachelors too. Roamers, mill workers, loggers, they filled in the cracks in the crowd and bunched up in knots around bottles and the few lonesome women with no families. I’d never been on a real steamship before, an oceangoer. I’d heard their birdy whistles and watched them move up and down the river but I’d never even touched one up close. The other children at school hadn’t been born in the Harbor so they’d arrived by steamship and knew all about them and how fast they went and how far, to China and everywhere.
My mother was chatting with some of the women she knew from the bakery but I stayed silent and waited and when I saw my chance I snuck back to the water’s edge and threw sawdust and splinters into the murky slick, little boats that didn’t sink as long as I watched them. When the whistle blew I jumped, but I wasn’t the only one, and people laughed. It was just the stupid ferryboat that I’d been on a hundred times. They’d said it would be some other special ship for the Fourth.
Me and my mother were ushered up the gangplank and helped down to the shining deck by the deckhands. They were wearing special white-and-blue uniforms with shiny silver buttons.
“Hello, Mrs. Ellstrom. Welcome aboard, son.”
Yer a dopey dimwit and a slint-faced turd. I silently practiced my insults like I’d sharpen a knife.
Mother chose a place at the stern rail and I watched to see who else would board because not everyone would fit. I’d been getting teased at school and it had made me cagey. Donald Church was the worst and he was in line with his family waiting to board but they were too far back and had to wait. A month ago I’d been different or at least unseen. The story of the ugly duckling told me that it was better before knowing, so maybe it would be better later too. But for now I was scared all the time that someone would yell at me, some older boy like Donald would pick on me.
The lines cast off. People were talking and laughing all around. The whistle blew and I could feel the engine in my feet. Once we were away from the shore I slipped down the rail to look around. The boat was full of women and children. All the loners and Donald and the other complete families were watching us leave. I waved and people waved back, even Donald. Deep water off the rail, below, perilously dark.
“Why’re we goin?” I asked Mother, just to irk her, to get her talking to me.
“You like the Fourth.”
“I guess so.”
“Don’t get in a mood already, and try to stay close. I don’t want to have to spend the whole day looking for you.”
“Will it be cold?”
“Not much colder. There will be wind.”
“Can we see whales? Zeb said his dad took him fishing and they saw whales.”
“Maybe from the beach. We won’t be on the water.” She adjusted her hat and smiled, three small moles on her left cheekbone, a constellation. “I’m glad you and Zeb are friends.”
“Course we’re friends. We’re best friends. I’m smarter than him.”
“Why would you say that?”
“Because I can make him do what I want.”
“That’s not the way you should think of your friends.”
“Why?”
“It’s important to care for people. To be kind.”
“I’m not mean to him. People are mean to me.”
“They’re just teasing. Don’t let them bother you.”
“I don’t care.”
“Of course you don’t.”
“But sometimes I care.”
“They’ll give it up. You’ll see. You just need to outlast them. Don’t let them get under your skin and don’t let them know when they do.”
Easy for her to say. She was pretty, everybody said so. Everybody watched her. She had her hand on my shoulder and I leaned against her and felt the boat roll.
We passed log booms and shacks and slash fires, newly built and painted houses and shops, bright and streaky with colors that seemed to run into the air and leach into the mud.
We docked at the mill pier because that’s where the ferry always stopped. We got off and went along the plank road to the wharf where the real holiday steamers were assembled to take us to the beach. Ribbons and streamers were everywhere. Sleek, shining ships filled the harbor. People crowded the streets. I could smell the bakery even though it was closed. We used to live here when I was a baby. I don’t remember much of that time. Mother was looking off up the hill toward the middle of town where the buildings were biggest. The bakery was too short and low to see with everything else in the way.
There were dozens of children from other schools and I didn’t know any of them by name. My mother pushed me toward them but I spun around and hid behind her stiff muslin skirt. Some of the boys had hats and I wanted one. Mother had her hair up and her plaid blouse was ironed and flat. She carried a canvas bag with our lunch and extra coats. Little girls with braids and white dresses held hands and ran in circles on the wharf.
The ship we were to board was decked in blue bunting like the rest. A band was marching in the streets of town, and after boarding, a band set up in the bow and started right in and the band onshore stopped their song and waited, and then joined in with the band on the boat. We stood at the rail in the stern of the steamer and watched the wake. It was loud with the two streams of music and the wind and everybody talking and crowded and I was ready to get off. The ship was just like the ferry, no different. The wake was just the same, only bigger. We weren’t going any faster. Steel was colder and somehow just as slimy as wood.
“Stop that,” Mother said.
“What?”
“You’re moping.”
“I’m not.”
“You are. There’s a rumor that a ship is beached on the coast.”
“A shipwreck?”
“Yes.”
I thought of pirates and deserted islands, solitary endeavors, days and eventually years surveying an isolated and foreign land, surviving, prospering, escaping heroically, a flash of genius and daring; upon my return a celebration not unlike the Fourth. My mother let me read by the fire before I went to bed and I had the stories in my head always.
Gulls passed through the smoke from the stack. I’d had an apple after breakfast on the way to town earlier but I was hungry again. The mist covered the hills and blocked the openness of the coast. The carts of clamdiggers dotted the shoreline, their shadowy figures working the tide, ebb harvesters. Pelicans and their sagging bags. The grass on Rennie Island was flattened by the wind and the trees all leaned after it, giving needles and leaves, whatever they had. A boy climbed onto the rail and his mother tugged him back down by his pants and gave him a whipping. I wanted to run away but there was nowhere to run.
Mother was speaking to a man in a bowler. It wasn’t anyone that I’d seen before. She t
old me we’d be seeing Dr. Haslett today but it wasn’t him—they wore the same hats is all. We hadn’t seen Dr. Haslett for a long time and I rarely thought of him anymore. This man had a mustache and a big nose and he was big, much bigger than Father. His gray suit didn’t fit him and it was too tight to button over his chest. He smelled strongly of vinegar and his fists hung out of the inadequate sleeves like kneaded dough that had been left on the board to dry out. His mustache was red and black and gray and so was the curly hair sticking out from under his hat. Mother caught me staring and introduced the man as Mr. Tartan, a friend of Mr. Bellhouse’s from the Sailor’s Union. He took my hand in his and squeezed until it hurt and wouldn’t let go. The pressure didn’t increase but it didn’t let up.
“He’s grown tall, hasn’t he?”
“He has,” my mother said.
“Give me my hand back.”
“I’m not holdin you at all, hardly squeezin. Go and take yer own hand.”
“It hurts.”
“Let him be, Lucas.”
The man let me go and I held my hurt hand with my other one.
“I was playin with him, Nell. I wouldn’t a hurt him.”
“You’re scaring him.”
“I wasn’t scared.”
“Ready to piss yer pants, you toughy slint.”
“I wasn’t.”
“It’s all right, Duncan,” Mother said.
“I’m not scared a him.”
He leaned down and spoke: “A folly of youth is what that is.”
The ship chugged on and I turned toward the sea and watched the gulls and thought I saw a seal but wasn’t sure. There had better be whales and sharks too. My hand hurt. We went by Sentinel City with its dock practically halfway across the harbor. No one was there, not a soul. The whole project had been abandoned. The hills were logged to the waterline and plotted for streets and graded for a railroad but none of it ever came. Father had worked there and had helped build the dock. We’d almost moved because he was offered land instead of pay but Mother wouldn’t let him take it. She liked our place and told me Uncle Matius no longer had any claim. I didn’t remember my uncle at all. They said I had a cousin too.