Touch

by Alexi Zentner

  The logging camp of men from Havershand had swelled to more than two hundred. They had started making the half-hour walk to the village more often, and they had not been content to leave well enough alone. Their foreman, Jonah Feed, had been eating away at Jeannot’s men. He offered higher pay, and bragged of paying cash outright, rather than the combination of pay and credit at Franklin’s store. Feed spoke French with an outsider’s bastard Texas accent, but that had not stopped him from keeping his crews running tight. There were enough holdouts who stayed with my grandfather, though. The Rondeau brothers had run into Feed in town and they told him they were not interested in working for the son-of-a-bitch boss of his that owned the Havershand mill. A few of Feed’s crew had taken exception to the Rondeaus’ comments—six men for the two Rondeau brothers—and Giles Rondeau spent several days laid up in bed.

  Feed himself was not supposed to be a terrible fellow, no rougher certainly than my grandfather himself, but the owner—the man behind Feed—seemed to inspire an almost unnatural fear and devotion. Pearl had talked briefly with him once, had been offered a job, and he told Jeannot that the man carried a stink with him, an unworldly foulness that made it difficult for Pearl to remember even his own name.

  AND HERE AGAIN, my grandfather paused as he had paused when he burned his hand on the stovepipe. He told me the story of the long winter in one push, and I had not said a word. I did not want to interrupt him as I had interrupted my father the winter before, asking him whether or not he missed the float when he was telling Marie and me the story of my parents’ marriage.

  “You’d think I would have known,” my grandfather said, but he didn’t really say it to me at all.

  In some ways it has been the same for me this past week. I read aloud to my mother as much as I could bear, and I realized that it did not matter if she was listening or not as long as I could fill the silence.

  MY GRANDFATHER HAD NOT much wanted to speak to Feed before, but after the beating that the Rondeau brothers took he thought he had no choice. He rose early that morning, checked the mill, and then whistled for Flaireur. The sun already burned over the mountains, sending a glare off the permanent tops of snow, and Jeannot was pleased when he reached the line of trees. Even the short walk from the village had left him sweating. Flaireur lunged into the thin trickle that passed for a creek and drank with loud, lapping urgency. Jeannot kept walking, knowing the dog would catch up.

  He had thought of taking his rifle, but had decided against it. He was just going to talk. He carried his ax and ate the rest of a muffin that Martine had pressed upon him as he left the house. The ax felt a comfortable weight in his hand, more comfortable than it had been his first few days of cutting in the spring. That winter, though short, had been long on time by the fire with Martine and the baby. He spent a few days working traplines with the old Indian and his young son—who, of course, turned out later to be my uncle Lawrence, Julia’s husband—but he worked the trapline just enough to understand the beauty of the woods in the winter and his own lack of desire for collecting furs. Mostly he slept late. The snow had been light, but the cold had been such that he needed little encouragement from Martine to spend the days inside. When he had started cutting again in the spring, his hands had been pink and tender for the first week or so, until a hardened layer of flesh turned them into something as rough as the wood he took down.

  Though the trail was well trampled by the Havershand men, Jeannot did not walk as briskly as was his wont. He occasionally stepped off the trail to move into the woods, thinking he saw the glint of something golden in a clearing. Each time, however, he realized it was simply the sun flitting through the openings in the trees, not the boulder that he and Martine had come across. Flaireur stayed alongside him, tail held high and nose to the ground, but the dog gave no signs of warning. Soon enough, the trail came out along the banks of the Sawgamet, where the trees pulled back to reveal an open gravel sweep of shoreline. The river was wide and slow, and aside from the incredible swath of forest that might run forever, Jeannot could understand why Feed had picked this spot to stack wood.

  He could see men working teams of horses, dragging trees to the shore, stacking and laying them to prepare for the next float down the river. A small gang of men worked taking down trees, expanding the cuts that other men had already made, and Jeannot thought he saw a distant rustle and heard the yells of another crew working further in. Flaireur bounced across the smooth stones of the bank and into the river, dunking his head beneath the water and then shaking it. The spray flashed against the sun, and Jeannot thought for a minute of joining the dog. During the coldest days of winter, when he could stand only a few moments outside and even trying to cut firewood sent a jolt through his hands, he had wished for a day like this, but with the sun’s full fury upon him, Jeannot realized that he now wished for the winter’s return.

  As he walked through the tents set along the riverside, he caught the smells of food and remembered talk of camp cooks, a pair of Chinamen. He had not seen a Chinaman himself before coming west, but had seen plenty since, and even though Xiaobo’s baking seemed like some sort of punishment, Jeannot enjoyed the meals that Xiaobo cooked. Martine was happy with the Chinaman instead of having to hire one of the few rough women in town, and my infant father seemed to have taken to him, quieting every time Xiaobo picked him up. There was something off in the man, my grandfather said, some sort of distance or disappointment that Jeannot could not understand, but he did not want to question the happy balance of his household.

  He had not passed fully through the camp before he heard his name.

  “Vous me cherchez?” Feed asked.

  “I can speak English,” my grandfather said, turning around and deciding not to comment on Feed’s poor French. The Texan was younger and taller than Jeannot had thought. He had only seen the foreman from afar, and though the man’s face showed the lines of a man who was used to working, he wore a suit, neat and pressed, like he was going to church rather than into the woods.

  “Good,” Feed said, “because my French isn’t the best thing about me. I’ve been expecting you,” he said. “He told me you would come.”

  “Who?”

  “My boss.”

  My grandfather glanced over toward the water. Flaireur stood on the banks watching the current, and then, for no reason that Jeannot could see, the dog lunged into the river and snapped at something beneath the surface. “A few of your boys laid out two of my men yesterday,” Jeannot said.

  “You’ll have to talk to the boss.”

  “Aren’t you the foreman?” my grandfather asked.

  My grandfather told me that he was not sure if he smelled the rotting meat first or if he felt the man’s appearance behind him, but he turned to see a tall menace standing beside him. When he saw the sunken cheeks, the deep grooves of hunger, he stumbled backward, trying to get away from this ghost. The man opened his mouth, and though he had the same voice and face of Gregory, he spoke with a clear, quick French that showed no hint of Russian. “I’ve been waiting to see you,” he said to Jeannot.

  My grandfather held the ax in front of him like a talisman, and he felt Flaireur lean wet and shaking against his leg.

  Gregory turned to Feed and the Texan’s body suddenly drooped, hanging in the air like an oversized marionette. My grandfather said that he thought he could see a dull glaze pass over Feed’s eyes, and when Gregory motioned at the man with his hand, Feed loped away toward the crews of men taking down trees, his body lurching awfully across the ground.

  Gregory turned back to my grandfather with no apparent hurry. “I see that Flaireur made it through the winter just fine,” Gregory said, his voice slow and supple.

  Again, Jeannot caught a whiff of the rotten meat smell and he felt himself begin to gag, the taste of the miner’s flesh rising in his throat. He blinked away a few tears and then forced himself to look at Gregory. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We didn’t have a choice.”

  “That�
�s an ugly dog you’ve got there,” Gregory said, like he had not heard Jeannot.

  Jeannot reached down and touched Flaireur’s head, remembering the wet softness of the ax swinging into Gregory’s head, the bloody mess of carving his body. Flaireur’s rough hair matted under his fingertips. Despite his swim, the dog still panted in the heat of the day. “What do you need?” Jeannot said. And then, almost as if he were in prayer, “What can I do?”

  “I can’t sleep. Do you know that?” Gregory turned his head to look out over the water. “I haven’t been able to sleep since you killed me. You didn’t even bury my bones.” He took a step forward and then reached out to put his hands on the handle of the ax. My grandfather could not move. He could only watch as Gregory pulled the ax from his hands. The Russian was oddly gentle with the ax, like it was something alive, something that needed to be cradled. And then, with a sudden, stunning violence, Gregory reared back and swung the ax, slamming it into the top of Flaireur’s skull.

  There was no slowness, no moment of impact, just a before and after: Flaireur standing next to my grandfather, and then the dog’s carcass lying heavily on the ground.

  Gregory pulled the ax from Flaireur’s head and then, slowly, placed the handle back into my grandfather’s hands. “You should have killed the dog. And you should have buried my bones. It’s the least you could have done.”

  He turned away, took a few steps, and then stopped to look back at my grandfather. “Ax, and then fire,” he said, and then he disappeared inside one of the canvas tents.

  MY GRANDFATHER SAID that he did not look behind him as he walked into the woods, though that is the only part of his story that I found difficult to believe. Even at eleven, as he told me this story, I knew enough, had seen enough, to believe that ghosts and monsters lived in the woods, to believe in the wehtiko, but I could not imagine having the will to resist looking back. And yet, if any man could have done so, it would have been my grandfather. I am not that sort of man. I am the sort of man who always looks back, which may be why I’m so well suited to life leading a church. But my grandfather. If my grandfather had been Orpheus he still would not have looked behind him.

  My grandfather stopped along the path by the creek to clean some of the blood and hair from his leg, and then he washed the blood and gore from the blade of the ax. He wanted to go tell Martine of encountering Gregory, but he knew that he had little time. Ax and fire. Flaireur dead and to be mourned later, but for now he had to see to the wood before it was set ablaze by this unholy creature.

  “We’re floating the wood tomorrow. Whatever we’ve got is going to Havershand in the morning. Have the men stack it up,” he told Pearl.

  They helped the men carry the planks down to the banks of the river, stacking them in neat piles so they would be ready for morning. Franklin spoke of building a chute to send the wood sliding down, but Jeannot shook him off and bent his back to the task of getting the wood by the water. They finished before supper, the lumber piled high just past the tents of a group of American miners scratching futilely in the dirt and rock, and Jeannot told his men to be ready to go soon after dawn.

  During dinner, Jeannot was quiet. He told Martine that Flaireur had been swept away in the river. He ate little, though this meal contained no meat. Though my grandmother’s eyes were red from crying over the dog, she watched him, and my grandfather could see that she had questions she wanted to ask. He wanted to tell her, wanted to say that it would be fine, but he thought there was no reason to tell her. He would float the wood and then he would search downriver until he found Gregory’s bones. He would give the man a proper burial. It would all be settled then. The Russian was right. He could at least have done that.

  That night, Martine slept with a heavy breath, but Jeannot could not sleep. He kept thinking of the cruel thinness in Gregory’s cheeks, the way light cut through them, as if he had continued to starve even in death. He thought of how Gregory had materialized from the snow, as if he were a creature from the woods, and then my grandfather rose from the bed and looked out through the curtains. He saw a glow from the riverbanks and struggled to make out the sound of the voices that called through the darkness. And then he realized. He pulled on his pants and shirt and sat heavily on the bed to lace his boots.

  “What is it?” My grandmother’s voice was slurred with sleep.

  “Fire,” he said. “It’ll be the wood we’ve stacked along the river. You go back to sleep. I’ll take care of what needs taking care of,” he said.

  Martine sat up. Her voice came through with less haze. “Jeannot? What are you doing?”

  “I’m going to try to get the fire out,” he said as he pulled on the boots. “Past that, we’ll see,” he said, like he might do anything other than try to find Gregory’s bones.

  My grandfather ran down the steps, his boots hitting the wood loudly. As he stopped to take the bucket from the kitchen and pull his rifle from the shelf, Xiaobo poked his head out of his room. The Chinaman did not say anything, but he looked carefully at the rifle in Jeannot’s hands.

  “Stay with Martine and the baby,” my grandfather said.

  Even out the door he could smell the smoke, the acrid, familiar tinge of heat and ash. He heard shouts in English and French and in other languages that he did not recognize, but they were all saying the same thing. The orange glow of the flames hovered beneath the stars, and even in his running Jeannot was able to recognize the strange, hellish beauty of the fire.

  More than a dozen men were already in a bucket line by the time my grandfather reached the fire. Each bucket of water seemed like a woefully small impediment against the devouring of the fire, but Jeannot directed the men who came running after him to form a second line. He stood at the front, bearing the brunt of the flames. He could feel his hands begin to blister and even his eyebrows seemed to be on fire. He glanced over and saw that Pearl was at the front of the other line. Something seared the back of his neck, and he realized it was the barrel of the rifle pressed up against his flesh. Jeannot slid the strap off his shoulder and tossed the rifle to the side.

  “The river,” my grandfather heard someone shout behind him. He turned to see the priest yelling. “We’ve got to push the wood into the river,” Father Hugo yelled.

  Jeannot threw the bucket of water he was holding onto the fire, and then another and another, before he realized the priest was right. “Grab what you can to push,” he yelled. “Into the water.”

  The men followed his lead, picking up branches or what pieces of lumber were not burning, and used them as prods and levers, pushing at the inferno. As the men strained, the piled lumber started to break; what had seemed a singular institution showed itself to be individual logs burning and glowing against the darkness of the night. As the wood fell into the river, the water hissed against the heat, but a smear of burning water moved with the current, a slick of oil spreading.

  Jeannot heard a few men shout with surprise at the evidence of arson, but he paid no mind, frantically pushing what remained on the shore toward the river. His only surprise was that Gregory’s ghost had done such a poor job of starting the fire. They would be able to salvage at least half the wood, he thought as he tumbled more lumber into the water. Though the branch that he was using had caught fire, and he could feel the heat against his hands, he did not stop until all of the burning wood was in the river.

  The cool water felt like a salve against his hands and on his arms, his face. He touched his fingers gingerly to the backs of his hands, the blisters already forming on the tender flesh. The same men who had helped to fight the fire waded out in the water with him, trying to bring as much of the swirling, floating, half-charred wood back to the shore as they could. Even in the darkness of the night, there was enough light from the moon and the stars to see wood floating down the Sawgamet, out of reach.

  “Some of it might catch along the banks or get caught up in eddies,” Pearl said to Jeannot. “We’ll get it in the morning, and we’ve managed to keep
enough of it here. The priest was right to tell us to drop the buckets.”

  “Well enough that he thought of it,” my grandfather said. “I’d have kept pissing to put out hell otherwise. We’d be still with the buckets.”

  Pearl paused and leaned down to splash some water on his face. “I can feel patches already gone from my beard,” he said.

  Despite himself, my grandfather laughed. “You were already ugly before the fire. This can’t have made it worse.”

  Pearl smiled and took a few steps to grab a piece of wood. He reached for another and then stacked one on top of the other. “You see, Jeannot, this is why the men like working for you. You show us such respect.” He started pulling the lumber to shore and then stopped. His gaze went past my grandfather’s face. He raised his hand and pointed toward the village. “Jeannot.”

  Jeannot turned. It took him a moment to understand what he was seeing. He thought that it might be some sort of echo, something burned into his eyes from standing so close to the fire, but then the image resolved itself. He could see the same orange, flickering, jumping glow from the village. The men around him stopped what they were doing and looked toward the village as well. As he heard distant shouts, Jeannot realized that he had been wrong about what Gregory intended to burn.

  MY GRANDFATHER RAN PAST the tents and the Americans who had been watching the men fishing for lumber in the river. Running down the street, he pushed his way past a few women standing in front of the brothel, and then started screaming for Martine. He could feel the heat and the smoke still in his lungs, the ache of his hands.

  He stopped in front of the house, almost as though he wanted to marvel at the flames. The porch was completely engulfed, the roof already shot through with fire. The crackling heat seemed to come in waves toward the street. On the second floor, from the window of his and Martine’s bedroom, the glass was already broken, fire licking out the sill and up the siding. He heard his name from someone beside him.