Jeannot was seventeen by then, and he did not think of what the news of gold would do. The hired men left off the beans and flour and rice and salted meat, the pots and pans, the crate of books, the cloth and the barrel of nails outside of Jeannot’s cabin, but they did not return to Quesnellemouthe. Like the hundreds of other men who had jumped at the news of gold, the hired men stayed to seek their fortunes, staking claims and panning for gold on the banks of the river. Every day, dozens more joined the men already there, and soon a colony of tents lined the flat plateau above the river.
Some of the men knew what they were doing, and before my grandfather had even finished unpacking his supplies, a Russian man—the miner looked like he needed to find a strike so that he could buy food, his skin pulled tight against the bones of his face—had already panned out a nugget of gold the size of a bullet. Everywhere Jeannot looked he saw men standing in the water or digging on the banks and up the slope, panning for gold. Though my grandfather was unable to find even a whisper of gold, every hour or so another man would yell in excitement, and those men working nearest to that man would also cheer.
Men continued to stream into Sawgamet in search of gold, and soon enough they began to return to Quesnellemouthe with their bounty and tales of earth so rich with gold that you could not touch the ground without making your fortune. From Quesnellemouthe, the word spread south to Vancouver, and then further south to San Francisco, and from there east to Ottawa and Montreal, to Chicago, New York, and Boston, and it was like an earthquake shook the land, so many feet came stomping through the woods. Women came, too, of course, and one of those was my grandmother, Martine.
THREE
Home Building
THIS MORNING, BEFORE SCHOOL, MARTINE—my middle daughter and my grandmother’s namesake—brought her sums into my study. We went through them together. She had them all correct save one. She has taken to school well, and would be content to sit with a book all day if we let her. I am not sure how much Martine follows after her great-grandmother, but she is my wife’s daughter in every sense. Send Martine into a blueberry stomp in her Communion dress and she’ll come out white and crisp and fit for church.
Marie—my oldest, and named after my sister—takes after me in coloring and in manners: Marie can hardly make it from her bedroom to the hallway without getting herself dirty. And like me—like my father—school seems to itch at her. She reads and does her sums well enough that I cannot argue at her for not doing her work, but she is happier in the woods or playing with the boys down by the river than she is in the schoolhouse or helping her mother in the kitchen. I would like to hope that school is something she will learn to enjoy, as I did, but that remains to be seen: I did well in Edmonton at seminary, but my father refused to return to Vancouver after only one year at school there.
As for the baby, we’ll have to see whom she takes after. She’s named Nathalie, after my mother, though today I would say that her closest relative seems to be a bear with its paw caught in a trap. She is still wailing away downstairs because we would not allow her a second helping of dessert after her supper.
After I checked Martine’s sums, I helped her and her sister get their boots and coats on, hats, mittens, scarves, and then walked them to the schoolhouse. Thankfully, we are past the early-season mud. The ground is hard and frozen. This first snow tonight will stay and give fresh cover to a Sawgamet that I don’t think my grandparents could have imagined when they first settled here.
There’s the sound of the train whistle. The cars will be stacked and chained down with timber. We’ve already had a dozen boys come home in boxes on that train—Tommy Miller was the first, killed at Dieppe—and I worry that the trains will leave Sawgamet and come back with heavy loads. My wife tells me it was the same in Vancouver during our first war in Europe: every train met with trepidation. I spent the bulk of that war overseas. For the first year I was a chaplain’s assistant, and then, after that, a chaplain myself.
The train sits hard beside what people still call the new mill, though the old mill burned down only a few years after my father and sister died, before I left for seminary. The chute and the stairs are still there, and I wonder what a stranger to Sawgamet would make of those orphaned structures, if he would be able to divine their provenance. My father and Pearl built the chute and stairs the summer that my father was sixteen, and sometimes I go out there and sit at the top, reading a book near the charred remains of the old mill and the foreman’s cottage, thinking of who and what are no longer with me.
THAT FIRST MORNING that Jeannot returned, after an uncomfortable breakfast with my stepfather and mother, I followed him out of the village and up to where the mill and the foreman’s cottage stood, where I had so recently lived. We spent a few minutes standing at the top of the chute, but he gave it only a glance, instead staring out over the river. He touched a post on the mill and then closed his eyes for a moment. “No,” he said, and I knew he was not talking to me, “I don’t suppose this will do.”
He had told me to bring my father’s ax, and when I took it with me out of the house, my stepfather seemed to make a point of not looking up from his reading. My mother had glanced at me from where she stood washing dishes, but I did not meet her eyes.
As we walked, Jeannot did not make any motion to carry the ax, his hands occupied with his own rifle, so I held the ax over my shoulder, striving for the certain casualness that a boy nearing eleven can never hope to achieve. I remember wanting my grandfather to think that the ax was something that I often carried, that I was the sort of boy—the sort of man, is what I really thought—who belonged out in the cuts. He had not said where we were going or why he wanted me to bring the ax. I think he had become so used to his own company that it did not occur to him that he needed to explain. He simply said to my mother, “I think I’ll go for a walk now and take Stephen with me,” and that was enough.
I followed him to the mill, and then further out into the woods. Jeannot stayed a few steps ahead of me. He did not turn around to check on me, but he kept his gait slow enough that I was able to keep pace. He walked away from the cuts, into the woods and toward the meadow that led to more woods and braided creeks and rivers where men trapped during the winter. As we continued to head uphill and in the direction where I knew the real climbing began, the weight of the ax started to hurt my shoulder, and I envied the loose manner in which Jeannot carried his rifle.
He asked me a little bit after my mother, how she and my father came to be married, but as I started the story, we stepped out into the clearing and I realized that Jeannot’s attention was occupied with something else. The mountains seemed suddenly to be on top of us; I felt dizzy at their closeness and height. A chickadee swooped low and fast in front of us, and Jeannot stopped in his tracks. I was so intent on the mountains that I almost stepped into him.
Jeannot shifted the rifle up from where it dangled in his hands and pressed it against his shoulder. There was something urgent in my grandfather’s movements, and I wished that I had my own rifle—or rather, my father’s rifle—with me, but all I could do was hold the ax in front of me.
I could see my grandfather’s head move back and forth, looking for something. I took one hand off the ax long enough to touch his back. “What is it?” I whispered.
Jeannot glanced back at me and said, very quietly, “The mountains. They’re too close.”
I almost laughed. That morning had been full of uncertainty: my grandfather returning to Sawgamet after an absence of thirty years, the tension between him and my new stepfather, a walk through the woods in search of something that Jeannot felt no need to explain, and now this. My chest started to pound with urgency. I was thinking of all of the things that might lurk—the dangers of the woods: bears and wolves—but I had not expected it to be something as innocuous as the mountains that always loomed above. The mountains appeared close, but the morning light always changed the way things looked, the sun bouncing off the scree and dirt where the trees g
ave out against the angle of the slope.
Jeannot kept the rifle to his shoulder and surveyed the meadow, but then, slowly, he lowered the gun. “Nothing, I suppose,” he said, but then, at the sound of dirt underfoot, he pulled it to his shoulder again and swung around, nearly hitting me in the head with the barrel.
“Easy, there, Jeannot,” the man said, stepping out of the trees.
“Uncle Lawrence,” I said.
He smiled at me and gave a little wink. His rifle was safely hanging on a strap over his shoulder, and though he was shirtless, I noticed a thick sheen of sweat on his forehead. He was an Indian, and his skin, normally dark, had begun to take on the even deeper color that came with the summer’s sun. “Why don’t you lower that rifle, Jeannot?” he said, though he did not appear ill at ease from having the gun pointed at him.
I reached out solicitously and put my hand on the barrel of my grandfather’s rifle to push it away, but I needn’t have bothered. Jeannot was already lowering the muzzle to point at the ground.
“Lawrence?” my grandfather said. He blinked slowly and let out a breath that I could hear. “Horace’s boy? You were just a little one, Stephen’s age, when I left.” Lawrence nodded and then Jeannot stared at me for a moment. “Did you call him your uncle?”
“It’s been a while, Jeannot. Things change,” Lawrence said. He reached out and tousled my hair, though he knew it was something I did not like. “Julia and I are married. Franklin’s girl. We have a girl of our own, too. Virginia.”
Jeannot smiled and then extended his hand to the Indian. “Well, I guess you’re family, then. Sorry. I didn’t mean to give you a fright with the rifle. You know how it gets out here.”
“Seeing things?”
Jeannot laughed and pointed back to the mountains. “They seemed so close, like they’d been dragged in during our time in the woods. Thought maybe an ijirait was near.”
Lawrence shook his head. “A shape-shifter wouldn’t come upon you with the boy like this,” he said, motioning to me. “Only when you’re alone.” He stepped around Jeannot and then me and out into the sunlight. “Besides, my father liked to say that they aren’t always going to bring harm. Sometimes they carry a message that you need to hear.”
“That’s not what your father said when he first told me about ijirait,” Jeannot said. “But perhaps he’s seeing things differently now.”
Lawrence stared at my grandfather, his eyes flashing red from the sun, and then he shook his head. “No more. He went over more than fifteen years now. Before this one,” he said, pointing to me, “was a thought. But yes, he started seeing things a little differently. What with the way things change, with the new, he said, the old couldn’t stay the same, and he began to think that the old ways might have changed as well.”
“So I shouldn’t worry anymore if I encounter an ijirait?”
Lawrence grinned. “Well now, that’s not exactly what I said. But if you do encounter one you’ll know because you’ll quickly forget about it. Or”—and he grinned again, but this time in a less friendly manner—“they might bring you a message.”
Jeannot laughed. “Well, that’s not particularly helpful,” he said. “But I’ll keep what you said in mind. A message, huh?”
“A message,” Lawrence agreed.
As we watched Lawrence tromp off across the clearing and disappear into the woods, Jeannot turned to me and said, “Ijiraits are evil beings no matter what Lawrence says of it.” He swung his rifle back onto his shoulder. “Let’s head out ourselves.”
DURING THE LAST FEW WEEKS, as my mother has wasted away, there were times when the house felt like it was closing in on me. I left others to sit with my mother—my aunt Julia, Virginia, my stepfather, my wife—so I could take to the woods like I had as a child. Sometimes I, too, felt like I was seeing things. Except that I wasn’t seeing the places where the trees became dark and dangerous, where monsters lurked, but rather I was seeing where all those places no longer existed.
On one of the walks, my eldest daughter came with me. I told her about Xiaobo, the Chinese miner turned servant to my great-aunt Rebecca and great-uncle Franklin. I told her how half of his body had been burned: the right half a mass of knotted scars, the left half as unblemished as fresh snow. We walked near Rebecca and Franklin’s house and I pointed to a tree behind the house. I told my daughter how my father had fallen out of the tree and broken his arm, how Xiaobo had set the bone. My father said that Xiaobo’s scarred hand felt hot and burning, as if it were still engulfed in flame, while the other hand felt cool and calming as springwater.
“This tree?” my daughter asked. “This is the one he fell out of?” I nodded and helped her reach the lowest branch, pushed her feet as she hoisted herself up, but even as I did so, I realized that I was wrong. The tree was too low to the ground; it was certainly no older than I was.
The tree my father climbed and fell from had been cut down decades ago. But it did not matter to my daughter. To her, this was my father’s tree, and as I watched her lower herself until she hung from the tree, for at least a moment the tree was my father’s tree.
Sawgamet has changed. The darkness driven away. But, I tell my daughters, there are still parts of the forest that remain secret, places where the mountains can loom close upon us, where shape-shifters fly past us in the dark.
MY GRANDFATHER AND I veered away from the mountain, taking a loping circle around the village, always staying in the woods. As we walked, my grandfather told stories, telling me how after he left Sawgamet he went as far east as he could go, past Montreal and toward Halifax, lobstering and then working as crew on a fishing boat for a season, nearly dying from hunger he was so seasick. “May I never go to sea again,” he said, holding his hand up. He told me how he worked his way west again, across the plains and mountains, laying track and cutting tunnels on new rail lines, before finally coming back to Sawgamet.
“Why now?” I asked.
Jeannot took a few more steps and then walked over to a small creek. He knelt down and cupped his hands in the water, drinking twice before finally rocking back onto his heels and looking at me.
“The woods,” he said, and then he trailed off. “The woods,” Jeannot said again, but as his voice started to go silent a second time, I nodded as if I understood, and then he stood up fully. “Sometimes the woods ask things of a man.”
There was a small natural clearing where we had stopped, a large plateau of rock and grasses, starting only a few feet away from the creek. Jeannot stared at it and I remained silent. Finally he let out a sigh and then leaned against a tree, still surveying the clearing.
“I killed a man. Did you know that?”
I stayed quiet. I had not known that, and I did not know what to say. But no answer seemed necessary. Once again I wondered if my grandfather was talking to me or to someone else.
“Actually, I killed him twice.”
“Twice?” The sound of my voice startled me.
“The first time he wouldn’t stay dead, but when I killed him the second time, I made sure to keep the bones and carry them with me.” He laughed, a short, barking laugh like a wolf’s howl. I thought of the shape-shifter, the ijirait, and the idea thrilled me that my grandfather might be one, that he might be able to transform into a wolf. I imagined some sort of wrenching change, skin buckling, my grandfather turned into a brutish, menacing animal with stained teeth. But no transformation took place.
“Have you got them with you now?” I eyed the odd bulges of his pockets, but could see no way for him to be carrying a man’s skeleton.
“It’s funny how little the bones of a man weigh,” he said. “Kept bound in cloth, they’ve been the only thing constant that I’ve carried with me these past thirty years.” He was silent for a moment and then he glanced over at me. “No. I don’t have them with me anymore. Sounds odd, I suppose, but I can’t know how much you’ll understand at this age, Stephen. So I’ll tell you this: I kept his bones because it was the only way I coul
d make sure that he stayed dead. Turns out he was a man, after all. But I was afraid to let those bones out of my possession; afraid he would come back here and come after your father. And then it was time, and I knew it didn’t matter anymore. I knew I could put the bones to rest in the ground, that I couldn’t protect your father anymore. The woods and the river claim their own in the end.”
He took a step into the clearing. I heard some echo of a soft voice float through the air. I realized that we had circled up and around the village. We were past my stepfather’s church, but not quite on the trail that led to the cuts. A ten-minute walk or less from my house if done straight and true.
“And how did you know it was time,” I asked, “that you could bury the bones?”
“Your grandmother,” Jeannot said. “She came to me in a dream. Said to be done with it, to bury the bones, to come find you.” He turned to look at me, and I realized that he had tears in his eyes. “She didn’t tell me about your sister, Stephen, didn’t tell me about my son.”
“A dream?”
“Sometimes it’s as simple as that,” he said. He wiped at his eyes with his fingers, and then he leaned his rifle against a tree. “This will do,” he pronounced.
“For what?”
“For a home site. I’ll need a place to sleep come winter.”
“You’re staying?” I asked.
“I mean to,” Jeannot said, “at least for a while. There’s two ways of seeing your grandmother. One’s in you,” he said, and he looked hard into my face. “You look her grandson more than you look mine. You’re ten? Eleven? So that might still change, but for now it’s one way for me to see a piece of what I lost.” He stopped talking a moment and then patted me gently on the cheek. “You know, there was once a time when I didn’t care if I ever came back. I didn’t care if I ever saw your father again.”
He stared at me expectantly, and I did not know what to say.
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