The Hero

by Paul Almond

  Eric turned to her. “Well, what do you think?”

  “Need you ask?” She spun happily. “Now all I need is to go back into those wild woods, with its bears and wolves, and deer and moose, and foxes and mink and otters —“

  ”Hold it, hold it!” Eric was delighted at the way his wife couldn’t stop talking. “We’ll do that soon enough.”

  ***

  Not long after they arrived, they settled into a routine, which Rene knew would be so good for Eric. Earle and the hired man went out early to do the milking, having had their cup of tea. Lillian got up even earlier to get the fire going from embers left the night before. Then all would assemble for a hearty breakfast sometime around seven. As in the city, the talk often touched on hardships that everyone was facing.

  “Ida Young, I went over to give her some eggs, poor old soul, and I seen these here letters on the winda’,” Earle was saying. “Her daughters have went off south to America. So her letters, she had to wait till she gets ahold of four cents to buy two stamps. Terble job.”

  “It’s hard all around, Earle dear.” Lil put down his plate of eggs and bacon. She baked twice a week — the fresh loaf sat next to a jug of molasses. Eric had taken Rene down to Ernie Hayes’s store (another relative) a couple of days before, where they’d filled the gallon jug from his puncheon. Rene watched him wind the crank to siphon out the molasses. She wondered at all the items this small store contained: dishes, fence wire, coal oil for lamps, material for clothes, harnesses, groceries in bulk, even caskets!

  Back to the stamps: “Doesn’t anyone get Relief?” Rene asked. “I thought municipalities were supposed to hand out the government money to their needy.”

  “Not a lot starving around here. But byes, times is hard. Old Joseph Aubut back on the Second won’t cash his relief cheque of three dollars a month because a barl of flour costs five. He’s afraid he won’t find the other two.”

  Rene looked shocked. “Could we find two dollars? Eric?”

  “No way of us feedin’ the entire country,” Earle interrupted. “He’s not the only one’d like a barrel of flour.”

  “But no tramps this winter much,” Lil remarked.

  “Any tramp comes to our door,” Earle said, “Old Momma used to give them supper, a good bed, lotsa hot water fer to wash, and send them on their way with a good breakfast. Lil does the same.”

  “A lot of work, those tramps.” Lillian sat to eat her own breakfast. “But the Lord said, the stranger at thy door, it might be Me.” Eric smiled: Lil often improvised the Bible.

  “So they come mostly in the summer?”

  “Land sakes, last summer we had a pile, didn’t we, Earle?”

  “A lotta tramps, a lotta tramps,” breathed Earle. “Lord almighty, yes. Poor fellas too, eh? Not used to work, neither. Seems only the old ones come tramping this way. They have this idea we’re gonna feed them.”

  “And we do,” said Lillian. “Poor fellows.”

  “You do right, Lillian,” Eric added. “It’s all the Lord’s work.”

  Rene was nonetheless pleased that Eric no longer had the strain of seeing those hobos by the railroad tracks. When he ministered to them, he always came home worried that he hadn’t done more.

  Just then there was a knock at the door and in came Stan Wellman, short and slight, his stubby beard hiding a cleft palate. He wore a hand-me-down jacket, well patched, and a leather cap with ear-flaps. Behind him came his wife Bess, straight as an arrow, superb posture, Rene noticed, a wad of tobacco wedged in her cheek and fire in her crossed eyes.

  “Come in, come in,” called Earle. “Come sit fer a bite.”

  Stan stood uncertainly in the door, and Rene saw Lil give him a push. “Thank you kindly, my dear Mr. Earle,” said Bess as they came in. She had the gracious manners of a queen.

  Rene and Eric pulled up extra chairs, so the two sat down for a bite. But it wasn’t long before Stan brought out a small Redpath sugar bag. “Earle, I wonder if ya got any old chews?”

  Rene looked over and discovered small black rolls on the upper window sill. Before he ate, Earle would ball his chewing tobacco and save it.

  “I’ll take and put in a couple, Stan.” Earle went to the window and gave his old chews to Stan.

  “Thank you kindly, Mr. Earle,” Bess said again as she tucked into her bread and molasses. She held out her teacup for Lillian.

  Eric pushed back from the table, having finished. “Well, I’m off to the cabin. See you later, Rene.”

  Soon after they’d arrived, Eric had set about building a log cabin by the forks of the brook, urged on by some mysterious gene harkening back to that first cabin his grandfather had built. Or perhaps he longed for the woods he’d experienced fishing and trekking over the mountains — his fondest memories.

  Their routine became for Rene to walk back to the cabin with a cooked dinner around eleven. But first she stayed to help Lillian with her duties, in spite of protestations. “I don’t know how you get through a day,” she told Lil. “All those chores: make the beds, empty the slops, bake bread, prepare the meals, heat the water, wash everyone’s clothes, clean the house, never-ending!” And in the summer, Lil reminded her, every sunny day she worked in her flower garden, just like Old Momma.

  “Enjoy the morning,” Rene called as Eric went out into the porch to wrap himself up. It was not yet light but he knew his way in the dark.

  “You must have them walls pretty well up?” Earle called. “We drug over good foundation logs last week.”

  “You did, Earle. Thank you. That Silver, he knows his way in the woods.” Once a week, Eric went back where Earle was cutting on his woodlot on the Fourth and returned to the forks with Silver. He’d wrap a chain round the heavier foundation logs and the horse skidded them to the site.

  “Byes tomorrow, I’d best be going to see the station-master. I gotta order a bottle from away for that sick cow.”

  “A bottle of medicine?” asked Rene

  Earle put his finger to his lips: sister Lillian was in the kitchen cooking for Stan and Lil. “No, no, a bottle o’ whiskey. I gotta get Will Byers fer to come and see to that sick cow. Only way he’ll come — a little drink.”

  Eric, heavily dressed, poked his head in. “We still have to send to Ottawa or Montreal for liquor?”

  “Well fer shore.”

  Usually when Rene arrived at Eric’s cabin, they’d eat their lunch and then she’d help with the crosscut saw, slicing through logs for the walls. Now that she was with child, Eric wouldn’t let her do any heavy lifting. “But I’m perfectly all right,” Rene would say.

  “Strong woman,” Earle often commented, “strong as an ox, that Rene.”

  On clear nights, they would frolic and sleep in bedrolls on the flooring of rough boards Joe Hayes had sawn. Nothing Rene loved more than frying trout on Eric’s open fire while he recounted tales of the wild woods, of beavers’ building dams, of lynx howls — such unearthly yells. “Around here, no loons, only a lynx once in a while, but the most fearsome noise you can ever imagine.”

  In the clearing around the cabin, you could see straight up into the sky. The stars, so very bright, thrust their darts of light through the inky blackness to pierce your eyeballs, as Eric would say. Rene had never seen anything like it. “Ever since I met you ten years ago, dear Eric, when you would sit in a cozy London pub and tell me about this, I’ve wanted to come.”

  “And now, you’re here,” murmured Eric. “I’m the luckiest man alive.”

  ***

  Two days before Christmas, Rene put on her snowshoes, hefted up a bunch of shingles with a tump line round her forehead, and picked up the lard pail with their cooked dinner.

  Lillian poked her head out the back door. “You’d best stay, Rene. A storm’s coming. And leave those shingles! A woman in your condition...” Rene glanced up — the clouds did look a bit heavy, bursting with approaching flurries.

  “Oh, I’ll make it in under an hour. It should hold off till then.” Afte
r some six weeks, Rene felt very much a local. She set off up the slanting path behind the house, but when she reached the brow of the hill, the sky did not look promising. She picked up her pace over the flat field and went on round the brow of the Hollow. The first time Eric had taken her, he’d pointed out the shacks on the side hill opposite, and touched on his boyhood romance with a girl from there who had visited him after the war, married and doing well. He pointed out Joe’s mill, which made boxes for the Robins codfish company up in Paspebiac.

  She was pleased Eric had decided to build this cabin. She just wished he hadn’t set himself a deadline of finishing by Christmas Day. Tomorrow was Christmas Eve and all Shigawake went to the service. Before breakfast, she had set out her dress and decided which boots to wear and what jewellery remained after the “accident” with her steamer trunk.

  Eric only had the cabin roof to finish, which should be done by the end of the day — the reason she’d insisted on bringing back that last bunch of shingles. A few days ago, they’d fetched boards for the roof on the sleigh, two small window sashes, and a little potbellied stove, but they’d miscalculated the amount of shingles. She knew how much Eric wanted to finish, and it pleased her to do this one last thing to help.

  Passing the Mill Road, she paused and put down the shingles. With her dance training she had swung back easily, but even so, hurrying made her short of breath, and the going was harder than she expected. She hoisted the twenty-pound pack onto her back again, but as she set off, the expected blizzard swooped down in force. Much sooner than expected. Too soon, in fact.

  C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - F O U R

  An almighty gust almost knocked Rene off her snowshoes. She steadied herself and began beating her way up the grade toward the railway crossing. Down came gusting clouds of sharp snowflakes, stinging her face, growing in intensity. With the wind whipping up the loose snow, she could hardly see the way. She turned to the split-rail cedar fence and followed it. This, she told herself, is just a blizzard, the kind one reads about. I’ll be able to tell the Mater and Leo, but then again, perhaps not — they’d just think that I’d gone mad. Hilda, that’s who she’d write to. And she owed Father John a letter: how well Eric was doing, how the home atmosphere and building his cabin had made him relaxed, happy, and positively charged with energy. Eric was a good letter writer but never prone to commenting on his own health. Father John would be anxious for news, so she made up her mind to write on Boxing Day.

  She was getting pretty good on snowshoes but no trail had been beaten alongside the fence where she now tramped, so each snowshoe sank in the accumulated soft snow. Heavy going. But she told herself: keep pressing on! And before long she got to the fence protecting the railway track. In the tearing east wind, she found the gate, slid it open, shut it, then with only a few feet of visibility, did her best to tramp directly across the tracks and reach the opposite gate, more by guess than by God.

  Seeing only a few feet ahead, she knew what Eric had meant by a whiteout in some of his letters. She remembered hearing that animals worked more by scent — especially the lynx. She shuddered as she recalled Eric’s tale.

  Early one morning after Christmas, Earle had gone into the stable with his lantern. Chores began around six, but the sun didn’t rise till around eight. He had opened the door and right away sensed something wrong with the cattle. Before he could figure it out, some sinewy creature sped past, a chicken in its mouth. He whirled and jammed the door on its neck. It dropped. He grabbed its hind legs and beat its brains out on the heavy beams.

  Rene had timidly brought up the subject on the train coming down. “Eric, are there still lynx around these days?”

  “Well,” Eric had replied, “you sure hear them sometimes. Awful yowls at night. They did see footprints last winter by the brook.”

  Rene shivered. “How big are they?”

  “Like a small lion. Very shy. But savage, and unbelievably strong. You don’t want to meet one — awful hungry in winter.”

  Rene found her excitement at the wilderness diminish. “Cougars, bears, lynxes —”

  “Bears, they always sleep in winter. And no more cougars in the Gaspe.”

  “But lynxes?”

  “Apparently so. I told you about Earle killing one. He was crazy to fight one like that, but little Henry, five at the time, was coming up behind him. The beast could’ve grabbed the child and taken it off to eat. So Earle had every reason. You get bursts of energy sometimes.”

  “So how did it get into the closed barn?”

  “Likely loose boards in the mow; Earle had meant to fix them...”

  Why remember all that now? Being alone like this. And who’s to say no lynx was prowling around, waiting for some juicy woman — Stop! she commanded herself, and wrenched the thought from her mind.

  Just keep to your left, follow the rail fence — don’t try the shorter beaten trail across the open field into that trail in the woods. She snowshoed down to the gully crossed by the Stony Bridge, built by Alford ancestors who cleared their fields of stones. Eric said hayloads rocked precariously, going across.

  Hard going through this loose snow. She stopped, panting, and wondered how long blizzards lasted. A few minutes? Fat chance. Keep going, she told herself, and keep going she did. Cross the gully, up the hill towards the head field. Funny what difference a small rise makes. The load of shingles grew heavier, especially as the wood absorbed the moisture. After a few minutes she stopped and tried leaning against the fence. But no such luck: the tapered tails of the Indian snowshoes made it too awkward. Wearily, she forced herself on.

  A couple of weeks ago Earle had lent her his old wool trousers. Ladies never wore pants here, but then ladies didn’t walk back in the woods with bunches of shingles on their backs either, or with forgotten axes, or warm lunches, or bags of heavy nails. She felt comfortable in them, and warm, too.

  By the time she reached the top of the grade, she was exhausted. Now what should she do? Take a little rest? But somewhere, in her dim memory, she heard Eric saying, no one ever stops in a blizzard, you never let up — they’d just find your frozen body in spring. So by sheer force of will, she trudged on step by step, panting and more alarmed. Impossible to see where she was. Finally the fence ended: only trackless woods ahead. Now what?

  Put this pack of shingles down, you idiot, she told herself over and over. But she kept imagining the look flooding Eric’s face when he saw her arrive carrying it. He wanted so much to finish his cabin by Christmas, and this would make it happen. She’d go to any lengths to help him realize his dream.

  But no trail. If only she’d tried their usual path along the floor of the valley? Too late for that. So what now? She wiped her wet sweaty face with a snowy mitten. Good to rest for a moment. But her active imagination threw up visions of succumbing to fatigue and sinking down — Eric finding her huddled body, frozen stiff — if a lynx hadn’t gotten to it first.

  So on through the woods, go on, try to make for any clearings already logged. But that wind beat at her, the load felt so heavy. Still, she forced herself forward, imagining a fierce cat behind every bushy spruce. Her heart was racing.

  The land must dip soon. Go down, find the brook, unless it’s too snowed over, and follow that. Yes, so thread through the trees, cross that space already logged — Oh! Trip on a buried stump, pick yourself up, hoist the shingles, slog on. But where was that downward slope? Was she just going in a circle? Don’t get yourself frightened, but... well, that lynx WAS seen last fall. Ridiculous to be killed or freeze to death so close to home — and even closer to the cabin. But it had been known to happen; Gaspe was full of such tales.

  Do not give up. Pull yourself together. But so tired. Ah! The land is starting to dip. Steeper and steeper. Go down, get to that brook.

  Down she headed, panting hard. Difficult to see: only a few feet. But less wind under the trees. Steep — oh my yes, very steep. Down this hill on snowshoes? But how? Not something Eric had taught her. The load,
put it down. But no axe to blaze a tree. So how would they ever come back and find the shingles?

  She tripped, fell forward. She and the shingles tumbled over and over down the hill. She struck a tree.

  She lay stunned.

  Lie still. Check. Your tummy? The baby? Seemed all right. Anything broken? Move your arms and legs. She did so. Dancer’s training. She knew how to relax, and fall gracefully. But now, lying here, what a feast for a beast!

  She grinned, then panicked — pick yourself up. Find your snowshoes; fortunately they’d come off — saving her from a twisted or broken ankle. She had rolled a good way down. Wait! Was she close to the cabin? Leaning back, she cupped her hands and yelled the Australian, “Cooo-ee!” which was known for its carrying power. “Eric! Eric, help! Cooo-ee!”

  She listened for an answering call. None. But a wild animal might have heard. And with no snowshoes, she’d never reach the cabin’s safety through this deep snow. Imagining the huge cat bounding toward her, she hurried on hands and knees up the hill, following the marks of her tumble, and found one. Now locate the other. And fast. Again on hands and knees, she headed down, dragging the snowshoe. Awkward, steep. She turned and backed down. Surely any animal would have smelled her by now.

  Ah! There, in the branches of a heavy spruce, she saw the other snowshoe and bunch of shingles.

  By now, covered in snow, Rene became annoyed — with herself for being so foolish as to bring those shingles back, and with Eric for needing them — she crawled on her hands and knees as fast as she could to the bottom. The flakes fell still thickly but without buffeting winds. She forced herself upright, terror clinging, leaned against a tree, and got her snowshoes on, fingers freezing. Doing up the thongs was agony. Wet, cold, exhausted, and afraid, she thought, what a half-wit I’ve been!