Touch

by Alexi Zentner

  While Pearl, Jeannot, and Franklin dug and the women in the brothel took care of nursing the miners back to health, there was little thought of the saloon owner who had treated my great-uncle so poorly, Dryden Boon. Perhaps had Boon been a more likable man he would have been dug out sooner, but as it stood, his body was only discovered in mid-August, nearly a month after the snow had stopped falling. Nobody could figure out how Boon managed to get outside of his saloon, buried headfirst in the snow, but it was one of the women from the brothel who first saw his boots. More people saw his calves and knees stick into the air as the snow melted around him. After my grandfather, Jeannot, and Franklin dug him out, they put his body on ice in the empty stables behind the blacksmith’s shop with the bodies of the other men—and even a few women—that they had found in the snow, in crude cabins, and in one collapsed tent. They did not know how many others had been swept away by the floods, but in the stables, as the snow continued to melt and the sun returned with the fury of a lover scorned, like it was trying to recapture the winter glory that it had lost, every few hours one of the men had to shovel more ice and snow onto the corpses.

  AS THE SNOW MELTED and settled, men began to return to Sawgamet in a trickle, five or six a day. The snow had been light elsewhere. The miners said that even a few hours’ walk away the ground had been clear since May. Downriver thirty miles, a new gold strike had created the town of Havershand almost overnight, and the men who came to Sawgamet were those who had come to Havershand too late or who did not remember that Sawgamet had seemed on the verge of playing out even before the snows came.

  The runoff from the melt scoured Sawgamet clean, taking whatever gold remained from the ground, removing the abandoned tents and poorly built or half-finished cabins, taking the detritus of the men who had fled, sweeping it into the river. Miners working the banks downriver in Havershand fished out useful bits, picks, shovels, and tin pans.

  When Jeannot tried to return to the mill to gather a few tools, the meltwater turned him away. The water ran so swift and cold down the slope and through the woods that he could not make his way through it for fear that he might be swept away along with the debris that raged along the new-formed river. Ultimately, after waiting for a few days, Jeannot hiked through the snow and up into the hills behind the meadow before coming down from above. Standing on the slope, he could see that the mill had remained untouched, but the melting snow had taken away the ashen remains of their house, it had taken all of the old cabin except for a few logs, and most importantly, the floods had removed the barrel of bones that had been buried in the snow. Alone among the wreckage he found an embarrassingly dry copy of a Bible.

  It was, he and Martine agreed, glancing nervously at the Bible, a message, and they began to believe that Martine’s extended pregnancy—extended beyond reason, beyond the counting that was normal—was part of some punishment for the way in which they had survived the winter. At the brothel, Jeannot went downstairs and knocked on a few doors until he found the room where Xiaobo slept, thinking the Chinaman might have some herbs that would bring about the child’s birth.

  “You should not be sitting, sitting, sitting,” Xiaobo said to Martine. “Look how fat you are. You should be walking if you want this baby to come out.”

  So she walked. Most days Rebecca accompanied Martine on her walks. Franklin kept himself busy. He patched the hole in the roof of the store and spent the mornings tending to customers. In the afternoons he worked with Jeannot to get the sawmill running again. The two of them had partnered on the lumber operations, Franklin providing the gold to hire men, and Jeannot driving the operation.

  Martine did not ask Rebecca to come on her walks, but Rebecca could see that it gave her comfort to have company. Martine was clearly past the time when she should have had her child, and though the Chinaman insisted that the baby would come when it was ready, Martine was anxious. The two pregnant women walked slowly through the woods. The streets of the village, though cleared of snow, were impassable. What had once been dirt ruts with a line of boards for walking was now an impossibility of mud. A mule had sunk into the muck and when the miner had not been able to pull it out—even with a dozen men pulling on ropes—he had to shoot the animal and leave it to rot. That same day, one of the women from the brothel had accidently stepped off the boardwalk, and had been stuck in mud up to her knees until Pearl rescued her.

  They did not always talk on their walks—both women found it difficult to keep their breath with the added weight of their stomachs—but they enjoyed each other’s company. Most days they saw small animals, squirrels and birds, though occasionally, if they were quiet enough, they would come across caribou. One of the days they saw a ram that was inexplicably wandering through the woods instead of up on the mountain.

  They did not stray very far from what was left of the village. My grandmother kept her hand on her stomach, as if that would tell her when the baby was ready to come, and if they were gone for more than an hour or so they would usually hear Jeannot’s voice calling to them, carrying across the air.

  After a few weeks of walking like this, Xiaobo shook his head and gave Martine a thick, foul tea to drink. “Your baby is too happy in there,” he said to Martine, and then he turned to scowl at Rebecca, too. “And where is your baby? You must drink some tea as well.” He passed Rebecca a cup of the tea and she obligingly drank. “Come out,” he said with a mock sternness, speaking to Martine’s stomach.

  Martine tried to force a smile as she drank down the tea. “Perhaps he’s waiting for Rebecca to have her baby so that he’ll have somebody to play with.”

  “He?” Xiaobo lifted his eyebrow.

  “It’s going to be a boy,” Martine said.

  Xiaobo put his hand firmly on Martine’s belly and felt jabs of the baby pushing against the skin. He shook his head. “It’s a girl,” he said to Martine.

  “What about me?” Rebecca asked.

  He straightened and turned away.

  “Wait,” Rebecca said. “Can’t you use your magic to tell me?”

  Xiaobo paused with his hand on the doorknob. “It’s not magic,” he said. “Not the sort of magic that you think of when you are walking through the woods.” Still, he relented and returned to touch Rebecca’s stomach as well. “A boy. Now finish your tea.”

  XIAOBO WAS RIGHT about the herbs, but wrong about which woman would have a boy and who would have a girl. Martine had my father, and despite the extra time that he claimed in my grandmother’s womb, he was no bigger than any baby should be. Rebecca’s daughter, Julia, was small and anxious, rooting fiercely at her mother’s breasts.

  The children grew fat and happy, though they saw little of their fathers: Franklin and Jeannot kept at the mill. They were certain of their new venture. The trees downstream in Havershand did not amount to much, and they thought they could make money by floating wood down the river. They worked logs into lumber and stacked it beside the mill, hiring Pearl and a few other men to join them. Franklin even promised Rebecca that he would build them a house the following summer, once my grandparents replaced the one that had burned down during the winter.

  At the end of September, when Jeannot, Pearl, and Franklin launched the rafts made from the rough-cut lumber, my grandmother, holding my infant father, and Rebecca, holding the baby that was to become my aunt Julia, watched the men take to the river.

  The men lashed the lumber together in the shallows, making large and solid rafts for them to ride to Havershand. Jeannot and Pearl—and Franklin, when he was not in the store—had worked the mill hard, using the daylight for all it was worth. They had hired a few men at first, and then a few more, until they had nearly a dozen men bringing down trees and working them through the saws. With the gold seemingly gone from the ground, Franklin’s ability to pay men cash on the barrel trumped work in the mines. Franklin talked of adding a grindstone to the mill wheel, but for now they focused on cutting. The wood piled as the snow had piled only a few months earlier, and Martine
said that she could not imagine such use for the wood that the men had milled.

  “They don’t have the same trees downstream,” Jeannot said, “but they have men and mines, and they will buy as much lumber as we can bring to them.”

  “And what are you setting aside to build a house?” Martine asked. “I’m not going to spend another winter in the mill.”

  “After we float the wood down the river,” my grandfather promised. “Wood enough for us, for your brother and Rebecca, and money enough for us to buy beddings and whatever else you need for the house to see us through the winter.” He paused, both of them clearly thinking of the way Gregory’s flesh had stuck in their throats. “And food. Money enough so that we won’t go hungry.”

  MY GRANDFATHER HAD BEEN practical about the floods. He had returned to the clearing in the woods, half hoping the golden caribou would be there to guide him again, but whatever magic was still there was only an echo. The only thing left was a small dip in the ground and some antlers. He picked up the antlers and angled them in the sun, but there was not a trace of gold. What he and Martine had left was the mill, and he made use of it. He had no more expectations of sudden wealth, none of the same certainty that he had only a few years before when he had arrived in Sawgamet, but he was sure of his own ability to work.

  I wonder if a different sort of man would have spent the rest of his days trying to find the golden boulder or dangling a hook in the water for a fish with a belly full of gold. Though a different sort of man would have fled after that first night in Sawgamet, gold or no gold, the qallupilluit chasing away any thoughts of riches.

  For my grandfather it seemed as simple as this: He had decided to stay in Sawgamet, and he believed that nothing could drive him away. It did not matter if he was wrong or right. He did not think of the woods in terms of good and evil. He saw the magic as a reality, not as a benevolence or a punishment, and he realized that the only thing he could count on was himself.

  THE RAFTS FLOATED down the river with much more speed than Jeannot had expected. They had taken care to lash the lumber tightly, but still it shifted a little beneath his feet. He was comfortable enough, but wary. More comfortable certainly than Franklin. He could see Franklin on another raft, looking unsure of his footing, but he was glad that his brother-in-law had come along. He knew Franklin would be able to drive a better deal than he himself would. Along with Pearl, he had hired on five of the other men who had been working the mill to help bring the lumber down the river. They had cut long poles to help move the rafts, and each raft was tied to several others, but he hoped they would not encounter much difficulty. As the river turned and he lost view of the banks of the village, he thought that he did not want to be long gone from my grandmother and my father.

  They learned quickly that the river was dangerous; they did not even reach Havershand before they lost their first man. The rafts kept getting caught in eddies and against the banks, each time requiring them to pole hard to get the wood moving again, and it took them three days to float the lumber down the river to Havershand. On the third morning, with no warning, with no sound, with no alarm at all in the night that had passed, they realized that one of the men was missing. It was only when they pulled the rafts from the water in the slow, broad shallows of Havershand that they found his body, swollen and wrinkled, fully dressed and caught among the lashings underneath the cut lumber. His eyes had been eaten clean by the fish.

  Despite the man’s death, Jeannot had found himself captivated by the swirling growth and industry in Havershand. While Franklin saw to the sale of the wood, Jeannot walked through the streets. He stopped in a jury-rigged store that sold goods at prices so inflated that it put even Franklin to shame, and watched a butcher working the skin off a moose. He strolled past a row of tents that served as brothels, the whores lingering outside in the last of the summer heat, each and every one of them equipped with a scale to measure the gold that their customers paid. He saw the stripped-away banks where men dug for gold, and hiked up into the hills above the town where silver had been discovered. From his vista, he could see out over all of Havershand. He saw where the river opened enough for docks, the rough shape of a steamboat being built, and the well-laid lines that the city seemed to be growing upon. He saw men mining, men sawing, men hammering, men walking the streets with a brisk purpose. He saw a creek that emptied into the Sawgamet River and the first signs that somebody had taken it upon himself to build a mill in Havershand. Jeannot also saw the sick, stick, scraggly trees that dotted the slopes, and he knew that as long as men kept coming to Havershand he would be able to earn his living by floating logs down the river.

  They did not linger long in Havershand. By midafternoon they were already walking back to Sawgamet. Two of the men that Jeannot had hired thought about staying in Havershand, but as they talked to the men already working the banks, they decided to return to Sawgamet; gold offered rewards, but cutting trees offered certainty. The hiking was not difficult, and it was made easier by the fullness of their wallets. Franklin bought roasted chicken and bread for all of the men despite the dearness of their cost, and they walked well past supper-time and into the gloaming. They spread their bedrolls on the bank and built a fire, but they had need of neither. Even in the darkness, the temperature stayed such that Pearl said he was grateful of the cooling breeze that pulled off the river.

  BACK WITH MY GRANDMOTHER in Sawgamet, my grandfather saw the village growing again, though not like it had during the boom of gold. Every day men who had taken ships around the coast passed down through Sawgamet on their way to the new goldfields of Havershand, and every day some of them decided to stay and make their way in Sawgamet instead. Some men came the other way, as well, those who had traveled from Quesnellemouthe or further east, and had found the land in Havershand leaner than they expected. Franklin spent time with his ledgers and with the new goods that he paid to bring in, restocking the shelves that had been laid bare by the savagery of the previous winter. He gave Rebecca and my grandmother dispensation to take from the store as they would, encouraging his wife and his sister to lay into the canned fruits, sugar, and any other notions they might want.

  When he was not in the store, he worked the mill with Jeannot. Though the men who came into Sawgamet clamored for wood, Jeannot set aside lumber first for himself and Martine, and then for Franklin and Rebecca. The house that they built for Jeannot and Martine was more modest than the one that had burned to the ground, though they built it with the intention of adding a third story the following summer. Martine insisted that this house be in the village—she did not want to have to worry about another winter cut off from all others, she said—and she said she would barely let the last hammer fall before she planned to shoo the men down the street toward Franklin’s store, so that they could build a house there.

  By Christmas the mud of the streets had frozen into brutal ruts, and the men had to walk carefully so as not to trip. Jeannot and Martine’s house, only a few doors down from Franklin’s and finished just the week before, was ready for a companion; the men had seated the foundation to Franklin’s house early in November, before the ground froze, and Jeannot said that the day after Christmas he and the men would be set to build enough of a house to get Franklin and Rebecca through the winter at least. Franklin did not mind the cabin behind the store, but he had begun to realize how close it was at nights, how little space there was for him and Rebecca to share with the baby. But at least they had no need to worry about food. Franklin and Jeannot—as had every man and woman who had seen the world covered with snow—had set aside more food than was necessary, but still it was reassuring for Franklin see the barrels of dry goods, the canned food.

  And, of course, they need not have worried; spring broke early that year, as though to try and make up for the previous winter’s passion for snow, and the melt, more gentle this time, smoothed the streets of Sawgamet into something passable. A few men, of the type that preferred to work alone, kept at mining claims
that were picked clean, but the tin pans on the shelves of the store stayed neatly stacked. Most men took to homesteading or migrated to the woods, cutting trees for Franklin and Jeannot or working for the new outfit from Havershand. The mosquitoes swarmed in the dimness of the woods with particular vengeance, and more than one man split his skin trying to shoo away the biting insects while holding an ax.

  THE MILL COMPANY MEN from Havershand brought a cook with them, and except for a few nights a week when they would visit the new saloon or the brothel, they mostly stayed in camp. They started with two dozen men and hired more—it seemed like for every man from Sawgamet who cut wood for Jeannot, there were five who cut for the Havershand crew—and the sound of trees falling carried through to the village. Every month, the other company floated huge rafts of uncut logs down toward Havershand.

  Franklin thought that they should send their logs down the river as they accumulated near the mill, but Jeannot argued the wood would be worth more in the fall.

  “Once we saw it and raft it down the river, we’ll be able to name our price. The sawmill downriver will go through all the logs the other company has sent, and when we come in with our boards, men will be feeling the pinch of winter coming. Good wood for building houses is scarce enough in Havershand, and no matter how fast they run their mill, they won’t be able to meet all the need there is for lumber. Besides,” he added, “if we float it down uncut, we’ll have no choice but to sell it to their mill at their prices.”

  While Jeannot kept a crew of ten working in the woods, widening the circle of stumps around the mill, Pearl supervised the cutting, stacking, and stickering of the fresh-cut boards. More men and even a few families trickled in to Sawgamet, keeping Franklin busy in the store. As June wore on, the sun seemed to meet itself, setting and rising so close together that it was difficult to tell if the day ever ended, and during the few hours that they slept, the men who lived in windowless hovels were thankful for the darkness that they cursed throughout the winter. My grandfather did not sleep easily, however, even with the heavy curtains that Martine made for their new bedroom.