Malcolm nodded. More to himself than to Rose. His younger brothers had resented his coming back from the war. They were afraid he’d want to take over again where he’d left off. There had been arguments. No, there had been fights.
“But you wanted to get away, too, didn’t you?” Malcolm asked. “Didn’t you say that Whitecourt was no way and no place to start a marriage?”
There was a long silence.
“Did we ever love each other?” Rose asked in a whisper.
“We have three children,” Malcolm answered. He remembered that they had drifted toward each other as a consequence of who they were and where they lived—leftovers from a pioneer society and a war he had somehow survived, but the poison of which he would always, like so many others, carry with him.
A second scarecrow was erected, with shouts of childish fanfare at the other end of the garden. It seemed to wave longingly at its faraway partner. Amelia ran over to receive her mother’s approval. Her brothers sauntered along behind.
The conversation on the bench was over. The routines of life and work often had a way of displacing more important things.
“Those scarecrows look like they’ll do an even better job than last year’s.” Rose smiled at Amelia.
Amelia accepted the compliment, and then looked over at her father. He was sitting quietly with her mother, on the little bench by the door of their little house. He had seen the scarecrows and the work of his children but made no comment. He appeared to be far away.
7
The first spruce Malcolm chose was not one of the biggest. Still, it landed with an impressive and satisfying “whump!” when he and Cyril felled it. Its spiky crown was heavy with ripening cones.
“This is an experiment,” Malcolm warned Jack and Cyril. “We need to find out what we can manage.”
It was already well into summer. Jack had noticed the days getting shorter and the nights cooler. His hand was finally healed, and his broken arm was usable again. He didn’t talk about the pain that still shot through it from time to time when he tried to do too much. For the last few days, he had traded jobs with Cyril, and alternated between cutting and skidding firewood logs. He imagined that the days went faster that way.
They’d felled the spruce into the slope of what they’d begun to call their spruce valley. Even so, it was the biggest job of the summer to wrestle a sixteen-foot log they’d cut from it down to the house. To say that they were ready for supper, when they finally dragged that first log to a stop beside the shed, would have been an understatement.
“That’s not firewood, is it?” Amelia stated as much as asked. She’d watched Jack and Cyril lean into the ropes as they came within sight of the house.
“It’s an experiment,” Cyril said cryptically.
“We’re going to see if we can make boards,” Jack explained. “We might use them to make shelves.”
“For garden stuff,” Cyril added, waving an arm toward all the things that were now growing there.
“We’ll show you after supper, won’t we?” Jack asked, looking over at his dad for confirmation.
Malcolm had just hung the crosscut saw under the eaves of the shed, and tested its teeth with his thumb. “We’ll see,” he said. “It’s an experiment.” Then he added, “All we have is the crosscut saw.”
Neither Jack nor Cyril heard the last part. They were just eager to try something new. They were going to make something other than firewood. For all those reasons, supper was rushed, and they raced back out to continue the experiment.
Some of the poplar logs were stacked to become a platform, onto which the whole family helped wrestle the first experimental spruce log. Malcolm wedged it to keep it from rolling, and then asked for a volunteer to go on top.
“Just try to cut straight down the middle,” Malcolm advised. “And you’ll have to cut on the up as well as on the down stroke.”
It was some time before Jack and Cyril managed to even make a cut deep enough to hide the width of the saw blade. It didn’t take much longer for Jack, who was on top, to claim that his back was sore, or for Cyril to complain that sawdust kept falling into his eyes.
“It doesn’t look like you’re cutting very straight,” was Amelia’s contribution to the sawyer’s dialogue. “Shelves are supposed to be flat.”
At about the time Jack suggested to Cyril that they should trade places, Rose came out to offer them all a tea break. No one declined.
“It’s called a crosscut because it cuts across the grain of the wood,” Malcolm explained to Jack and Cyril. “The teeth are wrong for cutting along the grain. And it won’t let you cut straight.”
“You can fix it, though, can’t you?” Cyril asked, blowing across his tea to cool it. He was still young enough to believe that his dad could fix anything.
“But then it wouldn’t be a crosscut saw anymore. And we still need it for that.” Malcolm looked over at the firewood logs. “We still need another cord or more.”
And with that, the boys’ eagerness seemed to vanish. They finished their tea and decided to walk down to the river. Amelia knew better than to ask when the shelves would be ready. Malcolm hung the crosscut saw back under the eaves of the shed, ready for the next day. The spruce log still straddled the firewood. They had at least proved they were capable of dragging large logs out of the bush.
Jack and Cyril were skipping stones out onto the river, when their father quietly came up behind them. “The one who can skip a stone the farthest will win,” Malcolm offered.
“Win what?” Cyril wondered.
“Well, you’ll both win something. One stone each,” Malcolm challenged. Then he tried not to laugh as they scoured the gravel for a stone of a shape and size to meet their standards.
They were all surprised when Cyril’s stone proved to be the most aerodynamic, or his arm the strongest.
“What did I win?” Cyril asked through a wide grin.
“Well,” Malcolm said diplomatically, looking over at Jack, “Jack gets to use my rifle and shoot that deer if it comes back to raid the garden. And you, Cyril, will get to do a lot of work by paddling up to Hinton with me.”
“What?! When?” Cyril shouted in surprise and grinned even more.
“How many deer can I shoot?” Jack asked.
“That will depend on how straight you are with the six bullets I give you,” Malcolm answered. “As for when, that will depend on the firewood,” he continued, looking at the two of them.
“Why?” was Rose’s question, when the boys came racing up the hill with their news.
“We only have one canoe. The little one,” Jack explained. He knew the loss of the big canoe would preclude any trip up to Hinton with furs and for supplies next spring. He also knew that spruce trees and his dad’s musings about a scow might have something to do with it. He felt his left arm. He didn’t mind not winning the prize of going on a hard, cold trip up to Hinton. He would have his dad’s big rifle.
8
Summer seemed to race along after the rock-skipping contest.
“More than two hundred firewood logs,” Amelia announced at supper one evening. She’d been watching and keeping track of the boys’ activities with the firewood from her chores in the garden.
“We’re just stockpiling them so Dad and Cyril can get away soon,” Jack said. He knew he’d be the one to do the bucking and splitting of the firewood while they were gone. He also hoped a deer might be enticed by the garden so he could do some hunting.
“There’s plenty to keep us all busy,” Malcolm said. “One more day and we’ll be on our way,” he continued, looking over at Cyril. “You can help me with the canoe this evening and check for leaks.”
The next day, Jack and Cyril dragged in ten more of the biggest logs of summer, while several new patches on the canoe cured in the sun. They’d left the biggest firewood logs until the last
as a challenge, knowing it would take two on the rope to drag each of them down to the house.
“A week, maybe ten days, depending on Cyril’s paddling and what we find along the river,” Malcolm informed everyone, as they had their evening meal outside. He and Cyril had taken the canoe down to the river, ready for an early departure.
Jack had spent that time sharpening the buck saw. Rose and Amelia had checked the potatoes for Colorado beetles. They’d seen signs a few days before.
Cyril and Malcolm were gone by the time the other three got up in the morning. They’d left in darkness and in silence, but everyone knew when they left.
By midsummer, the Athabasca River is usually at its lowest rate of flow. The run-off from the high glacial valleys is over and, until the fall rains begin, travel upstream is at its easiest. With less flow, there are more exposed gravel bars to allow for easier lining and tracking where the current is too strong.
“How far will we get today, Dad?” Cyril asked, before they had reached the first bend. He was in the bow of the little canoe, and doing his best to prove that he was capable of the job.
“That will depend on the river as much as on us,” was the reply that really didn’t answer anything. “Just keep it steady and pull hard when I call for it.”
Pulling hard seemed to be a frequent command.
Cyril had always been jealous of his older brother, who seemed to get all the exciting things to do, while he had to stay back and be the so-called man of the house. Jack had warned Cyril he’d get his turn soon enough, that he wouldn’t like it, and that the return trip after meeting up with Harley was the only fun part.
It didn’t take Cyril long to appreciate what Jack had meant. Pulling upstream soon became tedious, monotonous, and hard work. And, even in midsummer, the river was icy cold if you had to wade in it for very long, or very often.
Malcolm had never really noticed, or maybe never paid any attention to such details, but his boys were of the wiry sort. Cyril, especially. They were tough enough, but that toughness had usually only been tested in short bursts in their chores around the house. By mid-day, Cyril’s lips were blue and his teeth were chattering, despite the summer heat. Malcolm concluded that their tea breaks would have to be a bit longer than he had intended. Cyril seemed glad for their break on an island or large gravel bar. The fire and the sun revived his spirits, and the tea and biscuits did the same for his energy. These moments also gave Malcolm a chance to really look at the river valley after the flood. The islands looked like they had been scoured. Trees had been uprooted in one place, only to be deposited in jumbles farther downstream. But it was the riverbanks, especially on the sharp bends, where there had been lots of erosion. Even Cyril noticed. His appraisal was that the river looked messy.
“It will probably be really interesting if, and when, we get to where it was dammed,” Malcolm said, as they set off for their afternoon push.
They paddled in silence. Talking slowed their pace. “We’ll have time to talk when it’s too dark to paddle,” Malcolm had warned, when Cyril eased off to ask one question too many.
Camp for their first night was on a grassy shelf above a riverbend. They’d pulled in early according to Malcolm, in order to ease Cyril into their voyageur routines.
“This is hard work,” Cyril admitted, as he began to sip on his tea after a meal of stew. “This canoeing, I mean.”
Malcolm nodded. “It’ll make a man out of you,” he added. And, almost as soon as he’d said it, he wished he hadn’t, and tried to think of another topic. He’d noticed his boys. He’d noticed the subtle ways in which Jack had changed over the last year. He knew Jack’s running away was probably a part of all that. Confusion about things and not knowing how those things happen, or why, and then not knowing what might happen next, or why, can make you think about running away from it all. What Jack didn’t know, and what he was probably learning, was that he couldn’t run away from what he was supposed to be.
It made Malcolm think back to when he was a boy, and the oldest in the family. He remembered being called the man of the house, without knowing what the implications might be. He remembered hating his father for dying and leaving him with responsibilities for which he’d not been prepared. He’d been about Jack’s age, he remembered.
“Jack says he’s a man,” Cyril said. Said it while waiting for his dad to say something. He wasn’t sure what. They’d seldom talked about anything serious, just the two of them.
“Well, he’s older than you.”
“He pees funny sometimes. He showed me. White stuff.”
Malcolm stared into the fire. It brought back some of the memories of Whitecourt, of school, and of boyhood friends. It had seemed to be part of growing up, to be good and bad at the same time. And maybe that was why there had been secrets and laughter, and boys being men, and men being boys, and nobody knowing or explaining where one ended and the other began.
“I guess it happens,” Malcolm said after a while, offering Cyril some more tea. “Maybe that’s something we should talk about some time.”
They sat in silence as Cyril’s tiredness and the glow of the fire started him dozing. The beans for the next day, sitting in the coals, were bubbling. The canoe was turned over near the fire, so they could sleep with their heads under it and with their feet to the fire. Cyril was soon asleep. It took Malcolm a while longer.
9
On the second day out, there were other signs on the river. Things related to the flood and what it had done.
The first sign was visible from a distance. Big heavy birds circled in places along both shores. But not like Jack’s eagles back home. These were black and circled low to the ground. The targets of these birds soon became obvious if not visible. It was the sickly-sweet smell of flesh rotting in the sunlight.
“We must be getting close to where the blockage happened,” Malcolm said. “Those animals didn’t know what was happening, and didn’t have time to get up to higher ground.”
“I guess this wouldn’t be a good place to camp or get water from the river, would it?” Cyril asked. Then he spotted what must have been the body of a big deer or an elk, caught up in some debris and bloated to twice its normal size. The cold water had slowed its decay. Cyril’s response was one of silence. He had never seen so much waste or destruction.
“Those birds can smell things like that from miles away,” Malcolm said. “Or maybe they simply followed the wolves and coyotes. They probably got here first.”
They paddled in silence for most of the day. Cyril had some natural curiosity, but not enough to want to examine any of the things the birds were feeding on.
Malcolm also noticed things. From time to time, there was a log that had obviously been a part of a house or cabin.
“Dad, is that a hat?” Cyril had been looking up higher among the trees. A circular kind of thing, stuck or impaled on a tree branch, had caught his attention. He missed a stroke as he pointed with his paddle.
There were no birds or anything close by but, under the circumstances, such a distinctly human article seemed to warrant a closer look. Especially when, as they got closer, Malcolm thought he recognized it.
“Harley’s hat.” He said quietly, almost reverently. “The man I meet up with in the spring to go up to Hinton to trade furs. Jack must have talked about him.”
Cyril nodded. “Is he dead somewhere?” Cyril asked quietly. He looked for circling birds.
“That hat could have floated here from anywhere upstream,” Malcolm said as he looked around. They’d beached their canoe on an almost sandy shore. It didn’t seem likely they’d find anything, but they circled around the tree that had held the hat, just to be sure. Malcolm felt obligated to do that much. He didn’t, however, share his darker thoughts with Cyril.
Finally, he placed the hat in their canoe to continue their adventure. “I never saw Harley without that hat,”
Malcolm said as he pushed off and got in. He looked intently at the western riverbank for the next several miles. He also wondered if the cabin logs might have been part of the mystery.
They stopped for the night at the mouth of a small creek. Cyril didn’t ask why. He did wonder if he might try the creek for some fish, though. “Once we’re set up, that is,” he stated, looking to his dad for directions.
Malcolm didn’t say anything. But once the canoe was out, the fire started, and the firewood gathered for the night, he reached into his pack and pulled out the fine line that he used for trout. “There should be some grubs under that big log,” he said, pointing.
The rationale for stopping was logical for two reasons. The fishing was good, as Cyril discovered. Malcolm talked about the other reason while the trout were cooking by the fire.
“I used to see it from back here on the river,” Malcolm said. “There’s a hill by the shore up ahead that isn’t there anymore. And it’s too late to deal with today.”
“What do you mean?” Cyril was wide-eyed.
“There’s a sharp bend in the river about a half-mile ahead, with a big ridge of gravel beside it. Fast water, too.”
“You think that’s where the river got dammed up?” Cyril sounded more than a bit excited at maybe seeing the cause of the unusual flooding that summer.
Malcolm nodded. “It was a hard bend to get by. Only one channel. Deep and swift.”
Cyril understood. He nodded, too. He knew that you needed to see what you were doing and where you were going on the Athabasca. You needed to have enough time in daylight to do things. He didn’t know whether to be apprehensive or excited. In any case, it seemed to make the fish he’d caught taste that much better.
It also seemed to make the morning come more quickly. Or maybe that was because he was tired enough to sleep soundly, despite the discomfort of the ground beneath him.
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