Blackwater Ben

by William Durbin

  “She's lucky to have you,” Nell said.

  When Ben got to the boardinghouse, Mrs. Wilson was already packing her first jar of pickles. The kitchen smelled of warm vinegar and dill. “You're late,” she said, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand. “By any chance did Miss Stanish keep you after school?”

  “How'd you know?”

  “Abigail stopped by and told me.”

  “That girl's always snitching on everybody,” Ben said. Abigail Montgomery lived next door, and her mother, Maggie, was Mrs. Wilson's best friend.

  “If you didn't get into trouble, you wouldn't have to worry about people tattling.”

  “I suppose.”

  “No supposing—it's the truth. Wash your hands so you can help me put up the rest of these dills.”

  “Are you gonna tell Pa?”

  “Maybe if I put in a good word, he won't tan your hide when he gets home.”

  “You mean if he gets home.”

  “Don't talk that way. Your father's a hard worker and a good provider.”

  Ben couldn't argue with the fact that Pa worked hard. After cooking all winter in a logging camp, Pa piloted the wanigan, the floating cookshack that followed the loggers on their spring river drive. When he returned to the boardinghouse in June, Pa was almost like a stranger to Ben. In the summer and early fall Pa worked at a local sawmill.

  Before Pa sat down to supper that night, he turned to Ben. “I hear you got into trouble at school.” The two other boarders smiled.

  “Ain't there no secrets in this town?” Ben couldn't believe the news had traveled out to the sawmill.

  “Were you running off at the mouth again?”

  Ben nodded.

  “I've half a mind to take you with me to camp next week.”

  “Are you joshing?” Ben sat up.

  “You ain't learnin’ nothin’ washin’ blackboards.”

  Mrs. Wilson stepped back from the stove and turned toward Pa. “What about Ben finishing school?”

  “I only got one grade to go,” Ben said. “What's the difference if I quit this year or next?”

  “And I could use a cookee,” Pa said. “Twenty-five dollars a month is good money for a boy Ben's age.”

  “Twenty-five dollars for being a cook's helper! That'd be a whole lot better than getting splinters from an old school desk.”

  “You measure an education by more than money,” Mrs. Wilson said.

  “I know,” Ben said. “But you've always told me that life experience is important, too. Just think of all I'd learn about the logging business. And I could be with Pa! Best of all, I'd be outta your hair, Mrs. Wilson. Wouldn't that be dandy if I wasn't bothering you all the time? You'd be able to—”

  “Whoa there.” Pa chuckled. “Take a breath.”

  Mrs. Wilson walked over from the stove and gave Ben a hug. “Don't you ever call yourself a bother, Ben Ward. Looking after you has been one of the joys of my life.”

  “Can I go, Pa?”

  “You promise to be quiet in my cookshack?” Ben smiled and nodded.

  “It's settled, then.”

  At dawn on the following Monday, Pa and Ben rode to the Blackwater Logging Camp on the tote teamster's wagon.

  Mrs. Wilson had taken Ben aside the night before and said, “You send me a letter now and then, so I can keep up on you and your pa. And speaking of Jack—” She paused and touched Ben's shoulder. “Your father may not always show it, but he cares a whole lot about you. The trouble is, having lived through the war and the loss of your mother like he has, he's carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.” Mrs. Wilson looked sad, then forced a smile. “And if Jack gets too crabby, you remind him that he'll catch more flies with honey than vinegar.”

  The air was cold and foggy as Ben and Pa climbed onto the wagon seat. When the teamster clicked to his matched grays, the freight wagon lurched forward, and the load of food barrels and cooking utensils clanked together in back. A chill breeze blew down Ben's neck, and the damp smell of rotting ferns mingled with the fresh straw that lined the wagon box. The trees were bare except for the smoky gold of the tamarack needles and the patches of red oak leaves that stubbornly clung to their branches. The road, which was well graded at first, got rougher as the wagon turned east and headed into a spruce swamp.

  “How far is it to the camp?” Ben asked, his teeth rattling as the wagon bounced over a rock and into a pothole. He squinted into the hazy pink sun that was trying to burn through the fog.

  “ 'Bout thirty-five miles, ain't it?” Pa called to the teamster over the squeaky wagon springs.

  “Yep,” said the teamster, a short fellow who had his cap pulled down over his ears. He was even less talkative than Pa.

  “The road's bumpy in spots,” Pa said to Ben, “but that won't matter once the snow smooths her over and they can haul supplies in by sleigh.”

  “Are we the first wagon to use this road?” Ben watched a stump in the middle nearly scrape the wagon tongue. Freshly cut brush and unlimbed trees were piled on both sides of the trail.

  “I'll bet you made lots of trips already,” Pa said, turning to the driver, “ain't you?”

  “Yep,” the teamster said.

  When they finally arrived at the logging camp, it was almost dark. Ben's jaw dropped. “Nothin's built yet, Pa,” he said.

  “Looks like the cookshack and clerk's office are near done,” Pa said. “And them log piles”—he waved down to the clearing—“show where the bunkhouse, barn, and blacksmith's shop will go.”

  “But where is everybody?” Ben had expected to see a camp full of loggers and teamsters, but the only men in sight were the clerk and the wood butcher.

  “Till later in November there'll only be a couple dozen fellows here building the camp and swamping the roads. The saw crews can't start until the roads and the landing are done.”

  “Do you put up new buildings every year?” Ben said. Bark chips and wood shavings were trampled into the mud, and the air smelled of pine pitch.

  “If the timber is real thick, we can work out of the same site a couple years in a row. Otherwise, we start fresh every season.”

  “You shoulda been here on the day I hauled the cook range in,” the teamster said, stringing together more words than he'd uttered all day and pointing his thumb toward the doorless cookshack. “That was a doozy.”

  “We'd better unload and get some supper ready,” Pa said. “The boys'll be coming in from the woods before too long.”

  “Will I get to help the loggers out at the cut when they start felling trees?” Ben asked. He gazed toward a towering pine stand to the south. “I bet those big ones really crash when they go down.”

  “We'll see,” Pa said, stepping through the doorway. “For now, you'd better fire up the stove the driver brung us.”

  GOSINTAS

  Though working in the woods had been Ben's dream, he soon discovered that cooking, dish washing, carrying water and wood, and doing laundry occupied him from before dawn until after dark. In the slack moments when he might have had a chance to visit the cut, Pa had him mop the floors, fill and clean the kerosene lamps, and organize the supplies in the storeroom. At times Ben got so tired of his chores that he almost wished he'd stayed in school like Mrs. Wilson had wanted.

  On the morning Skip was fired, the cleanup took Ben twice as long as normal. He asked Pa, “You figure on hiring another cookee?”

  “That's up to the push,” Pa said. “It don't matter to me. I fed fifty jacks myself at a camp on Bow String Lake back in ninety-two. The two of us should be able to handle this outfit.”

  Ben did some figuring in his head as he rinsed off the silverware. There were twenty lumberjacks in camp. Once the ice roads were ready for hauling, the push would be hiring another sixty men. “How many loaves of bread will we have to bake when the full crew gets here?” he asked.

  “Two dozen should do it,” Pa said.

  “Every day?”

  “It might take a few m
ore when the teamsters hire on,” Pa said. “Some of them boys are big eaters. Speaking of food… you'd better run our supply order over to the clerk's shack.” He handed Ben a list. “We're low on just about everything.”

  Ben hung up his apron and headed out the door.

  A raven called from the top of a dead birch at the far end of the clearing as Ben walked. The Blackwater Logging Camp was laid out in the shape of a rectangle. The cook-shack stood at the west end, while the clerk's office and bunkhouse lay along the north side. Directly opposite the bunkhouse was the filer's shack and blacksmith's shop. The horse barn stood at the far end, sixty or seventy yards away.

  Ben hated talking to the lumber camp clerk, Wally Lofquist, because Wally always tried to show off how smart he was. The men called Wally the pencil pusher, and a day never passed without him bragging about how he'd graduated from the eighth grade.

  “Morning,” Ben said, “Pa asked me to—”

  “Do you know your gosintas?” the pencil pusher asked.

  Ben frowned. “My gosintas?”

  “Is that all you can do, repeat things? Are you a lumberjack or a parrot?” Wally adjusted the wire-rimmed spectacles on his nose and stared at Ben.

  Ben blinked at the glare off Wally's bald head. Ben felt like saying, Why can't you just take this order and leave me be for once? But he took a deep breath instead. “I'm sorry, but I haven't heard of a gosinta.”

  “Didn't you never go to school?” The pencil pusher tapped his finger on the wooden counter.

  “I finished the sixth grade last spring.”

  “Then you must have learned your gosintas.” Wally put his elbows on the open ledger book and glared at Ben. Everyone in camp had to tolerate the clerk because they were working to get a stake in his book. No one got paid until the pencil pusher signed his time slip.

  Ben shrugged. “Is a gosinta some kind of bird?”

  “It certainly is not.” Wally made a pickle face. “I hope you pay better attention to the work in this here logging camp than you did at your schoolhouse. Anyone with a smidgin of an education knows how many times two gosinta four and three gosinta twelve and the like.”

  “Why, you mean division,” Ben said.

  “Don't get smart with me, boy.”

  Ben decided it would be a waste of time trying to explain that gosintas and division were the same thing.“Here's Pa's order,” he said.

  “Order? If you had an order, why didn't you give it to me? I can't be gabbing with every greenhorned gazebo who happens by. I got work to do.”

  Ben trotted back toward the cookshack, shaking his head. Ben had gotten used to the old-timers calling him greenhorn or gazebo, but the one thing he couldn't adjust to was their crabbiness. Ben had considered Pa a champion grouch until he met Wally Lofquist. Compared to the pencil pusher, Pa was as sweet as shoepack pie.

  THE BULL COOK'S THEORIES

  “Ben Ward?” Pa was calling from the kitchen as he opened the door. “Where in tarnation are you?”

  Pa had a habit of yelling for Ben to come without looking up from his work. “I'm here,” Ben said, running the length of the cookshack.

  “You gotta learn to relax, Jack,” someone said from the bench beside the potbellied stove. Ben recognized the voice of the bull cook, Windy, who was also the camp's general maintenance man. After the loggers left for the day, he usually stopped by for a visit.

  “And you gotta learn to mind your own business,” Pa said. Then he turned to Ben. “What took you so long?”

  “You know how the pencil pusher is,” Ben said.

  Windy nodded. “I never have seen a fellow so contrary as Lofquist.” Since Windy was toothless, his words had a mushy sound to them.

  “And who asked you?” Pa said.

  Pa called Windy Mush Mouth or Noise Box and thought he kept Ben from his work. Windy had a white beard that hung to the middle of his chest, and his shirts were only half buttoned no matter how cold it got. Windy checked every building in camp at least twice each night to stoke up the stoves. He was also the camp alarm clock. Every morning at four he woke up Pa and the push. An hour later he rousted out the teamsters so they could get their horses ready. The rest of the loggers got up around five-thirty.

  Pa didn't like Windy, but Ben looked forward to the bull cook's stories. Windy had been working in the woods since 1848, and he knew the history of pine logging from Maine to Minnesota. Though Windy had been injured in a loading accident and wasn't strong enough to work in the woods, the logging company took care of him, like all their old and injured workers, by assigning him easier jobs.

  “I heard you were tardy getting up this morning, Benny Boy,” Windy said.

  “This boy had a bad case of blanket fever,” Pa said.

  “I stayed up late getting the dishes done,” Ben said.

  “There's never no excuse for loafing,” Pa said. “You're paid to get up and get the grub on the table.”

  “Two new fellows signed on this morning,” Windy said.

  “Any teamsters or top loaders?” Ben asked. The men had been felling trees all month and skidding them to the sides of the roads, but Ben was waiting for the four-horse teams to start hauling logs to the river landing.

  “The ice roads ain't ready for highball logging yet. These boys claim to be loaders, but they look like short stakers to me.”

  “What's a short staker?” Ben asked as he chopped an onion.

  “A short staker works at a camp a few days and then disappears.” Windy hooked his thumbs under his suspenders and assumed his storytelling pose. “He figures the grub is better and the trees are taller down the road. I once knew a fellow who was nicknamed Nineteen 'cause he pulled paychecks from nineteen different outfits in one winter. But the worst sort of short stakers are the wild geese.”

  “How come?”

  “They show up on a Saturday too late to start work but just in time for supper. They get three free meals on Sunday and a hearty breakfast Monday morning, but when it's time to hike to the cut, they're nowhere to be found.”

  Ben dipped Windy a fresh cup of black tea—the jacks called it swamp water—out of the pot that was always brewing on top of the woodstove. “Much obliged,” Windy said. Then he stared at Ben.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “I was just noticing how much you're favoring your pa these days. You've got the same square chin and green eyes, and now that you're filling out, if you parted your hair down the middle and grew a mustache, you could pass as Jack Ward's twin.”

  Ben saw Pa smile behind the counter.

  The bull cook took a swig of tea without checking to see how hot it was, and Ben asked, “Ain't you afraid of burning yourself?”

  “This ole mouth is so tough from gumming moose meat, I could chew hot coals.” Windy ran his thumb and forefinger along his chin. “But come spring I'm getting me some store-bought teeth.”

  Ben smiled. Pa said that Windy had been planning to buy a set of false teeth for years, but he'd never followed through. “How do you know those new jacks ain't steady workers?” Ben asked.

  “If you study men, you learn, Benny Boy,” Windy said. Pa banged some dishes in the kitchen, and Ben got up to help. But Windy kept on talking. “Every jack that comes to the tall timber is either a hider or a seeker.”

  “Every one?” Ben asked from the counter.

  “I pride myself on knowing what makes these jacks tick.” Windy grinned, sunken-cheeked. “The seekers are looking to make their stake. They're tired of life in the city or on the farm, and they're hoping for adventure. But once they sign on as a road monkey and start shoveling road apples, their hopes fade fast.”

  “What about the hiders?” Ben asked.

  “They're running from something.” Windy took a swig of tea. “It might be a bad debt. It might be family trouble. Lots of fellows are even hiding from the law. I once worked at a camp that had three John Johnsons. A name like that is a clear signal you'd best not pry.” Windy paused to rub his crippled
right leg.

  “For some it's women trouble,” the bull cook went on.“Arno's a good example. He was engaged to a lady down in Kansas City, but he got cold feet on his wedding day and ran off. By the time he realized he'd made a mistake, he figured it was too late to turn back. He kept pushing north till he hit the Blackwater Valley, and he's been logging up here for twenty years.”

  “How could a lady ever get over being left at the altar?”

  “I expect she never would,” Windy said. “But it works the other way, too. A man who's jilted by a woman sometimes lands so hard that he takes off for parts unknown. Why, we got one jack here who—”

  “Ben,” Pa snapped, turning to him, “with all your gabbing, have you gone and forgot the dentist's breakfast?”

  “Sorry, Pa,” Ben said, wiping his hands on a towel. Ben was supposed to bring meals to the dentist, Charlie Harrigan. Charlie was called the dentist because he sharpened the teeth on the crosscut saws. He lived alone in a separate shack and stayed up late so he could get the saws ready before the jacks left for the cut in the morning.

  As Ben put Charlie's breakfast together, he couldn't help wondering—was the dentist a hider or a seeker?

  A TRIP TO THE DENTIST

  “Good morning.” Ben tapped on the rough plank door with one fist while he balanced Charlie's breakfast in his other hand.

  “Door's open,” Charlie called.

  Ben stepped inside. Charlie was bent over his wooden saw vise with a file in his hand. Charlie was a thin fellow whose skin was so white and papery that you could see little veins underneath. Though his hair didn't have a trace of gray, his slumped shoulders made him look old. He had a scraggly brown beard, and like the pencil pusher, he wore wire-rimmed glasses. He looked through his glasses when he was sharpening a saw, but he peered over the top when he talked to people.

  Windy claimed that the dentist hadn't taken a bath for twenty-five years, but he didn't seem any dirtier than the other loggers. The yellowed sleeves of his woolen underwear suggested that when his old suit wore out, he just put a new one on over the old one.