Barkskins (39 page)

Sash was the shortest man; he always talked in a monotone about his homeplace and large numbers of dead kin, mostly drowned. “Then next spring Sis slipped on the riverbank and drowned,” said Sash. “Drownin's in our family.”

“You'll be next,” said someone, sotto voce, and Jinot shuddered. Now it would happen.

Sam Keyo and his sons, Ted and Stinking Tom, left their farm and came to the woods every winter for the hard cash. Sam left the laborious agricultural work to the sons while he scoured the woods with his dogs, and claimed the first year on his land he had shot ninety-five deer and eighteen bears, trapped eleven wolves, six catamounts and a “tremenjous large sortment of varmints.” He was one of several Indian haters in the camp and Jinot stayed clear of him.

His son Ted spent his Sundays hunting for spruce gum and knurls. A crazy-grained knurl brought fifty cents in town and made a superior maul head that would never split. Brother Tom had enough energy after a hard week's work to set traps in the dark on Saturday night and run the line the next afternoon. He stank more than anyone in the camp, a kind of bitter animal musk from his traps.

One who worked silently was Op den Ool, who kept to himself in the back of the ox hovel, where he had a straw bed. The oxen were his company. At the end of the day he picked ice from their hairy legs then massaged them with a liniment he mixed himself of healing herbs, bear grease and crushed ocher-red pigment. Anyone could recognize his red-legged animals from half a mile away.

•  •  •

They all knew that river work was the most dangerous; there were countless wooden crosses along the banks. That was why the boss gave the water work to the Indians. “Walk the river after ever drive and you'll find Indans floatin in the backwaters. They drown just as good as white men.”

Hernias, sprains, broken arms and legs, smashed patellas were part of the work, and the possibility of a mangling death rode on all the men's shoulders even as they defied death with flourishes. The young men had style and they knew it, swaggering about in their pants chopped off below the knee, red shirts and jaunty hats. “A short life and a grieving song,” said Byers after Sash's foot was caught between logs rolling off the landing and into the river, where he followed the rest of his family into the water. They recovered his body the next day, fitted him into two flour barrels and buried him.

“Guess he's got enough biscuit dust now,” said Byers, for Sash had been famous for polishing off the biscuits, and when they thrust his legs into the first barrel a floury rain fell from the staves onto the wet pants, mixing with the blood seeping from his crushed legs. Franceway sang a grieving song and the lonely fall of his voice was as much for all of them as for Sash.

•  •  •

After the cut Marchand sorted his rivermen. The most important were the dead-water men, who worked the logs like fractious cows with twenty-foot-long pike poles. Most men wrangled hung-up sticks with a swinging bitch, a handle with an irritatingly movable dog on the business end that gave enough leverage to shift the log. All day they were running and jumping, riding the bucking logs, moving so quickly they seemed to dance on river foam, shifting to keep their balance, even in fast water. “You,” said Marchand, pointing at Jinot and jabbing his thumb in the direction of the bateaux.

The dark river was flecked with rotten ice, rocks studding its course glistening like fresh-mined coal. The current frothed and boiled, standing waves at the head of a rock and a quiet lozenge of still water at the tail, where, in the old days before the rivers carried millions of bobbing, colliding logs, big salmon would lie.

All day and into the night, their legs festooned with bloodsuckers, the watermen fended off logs trying for the shore, a shore as deep in mire as a hog yard, mud that gave no purchase to a straining man. Days in the icy water caused chilblains, swollen and redly itching legs that swelled and blistered; some men could not bear to sit by the fire for the pain.

Yet twice, despite their labor, the river logs knitted together, bobbing and rising, a huge wooden knot forming to block the river, which began to back up and flood the land. Farmers ran down to the shore shouting that their hay meadows were ruined. Twenty men attacked the first jam, prying and separating logs that seemed to grow into each other. Minutes changed to hours and suddenly a quiver trembled through the mass and the men ran like squirrels for the shore, turned and looked back at what they had escaped: thousands of logs shooting downstream, picking up speed, riding up on each other, hissing with the speed of the current, acres of pine forest on the ride. But the second jam was a killer and they all saw it.

The day was overcast and dark grey. Marchand hoped for rain, a good hard rain that would lift the water level. The rain held off and the difficulty came right where they knew it would. A granite ledge like the backbone of the world ran halfway across the river, plunged underground leaving an opening of two or three rods, then rose again on the other side of the river. The logs had to go through the central channel. The ledge was no problem at high water; logs glided over it with grace. In low water the trick was to have good men standing on each side ready with their pike poles, and more men in the bateaux to guide logs into the narrow passage. Jinot Sel was in one of the three bateaux. Downriver he saw James Ketchum and Franceway standing up to their knees in water herding strays. The orderly procession of logs slowed and almost stopped as tenders upstream jabbed at bunching troublemakers. Onshore, Tom Keyo saw one slightly crooked log, a good forty-footer, elbow its way into a crowd.

“Lookit, that's a bad one, you see it?” he said.

As he spoke the men upstream shoved scores of hustling logs out into the faster current and these swallowed up the troublemaker.

“Goddamn!” yelled Tom Keyo, with no regard for Marchand's rule about swearing. A great batch of logs reached the ledge all at once, and among them was the crooked stick, which hung itself on the ledge. The rest of the logs began to pile up on Old Crooked, as they were already calling it, like sheep struggling through brush to escape a pack of wolves.

“All hands and the cook!” someone screamed.

Higher and higher the logs rose on each other's backs, a vast sheaf of wheat for giants, covering the ledge and forcing Franceway and James Ketchum toward the shore. So high did the logs stack that a few top ones began, of their own volition, to roll down into the central current.

Marchand was dancing with frustration. “From the top, roll 'em in from the top,” he shouted, unaware of the crooked key log at the bottom holding the main bunch in place. A dozen men scrambled high and began rolling logs down into the current. But the central jam did not move and new sticks continued to build up. Franceway put down his pike pole and ran for his ax. He shouted at Marchand, who didn't hear him, “There's a key down there, crooked ol son of a goddamn jeezly bitch key!” Gripping his ax he ran out onto the ledge toward the jam, got into the hung-up bunch at the bottom and spied the ill-shaped jam maker. It was crisscrossed by half a dozen big stems and he beckoned to James Ketchum to come help him chop down to the problem.

“Marchand!” screamed Byers over the roar of water, “you got a key hung on the ledge.” Marchand nodded. A few of the men on top came to the lower level and began prying at logs. Franceway and Ketchum chopped their way down to the bad log and began to cut into its crooked bend. Crackling sounds came from it and Ketchum shouted “Run!” suiting his action to the words. But Franceway lifted his arms and smote the bent devil a final blow. It broke, the jam quivered and immediately began to haul. Logs gushed over the edge. Jinot, in his bateau above the jam, saw a thirty-foot log rear up at the top of the releasing pile and plunge down like a falling arrow, striking Franceway square in the center of his back. Men onshore heard the crack. Franceway folded backward like a sheet of paper, his heels came past his ears and now a butcher's package of meat, he went under the grind. Jinot opened his jaws to scream but his throat was paralyzed. In that moment his childhood ended.

•  •  •

The workday lasted until after sunset, the long summer light slowly giving way to darkness, and Jinot bereft, weeping in rasps and chokes, crept under the bateau to lie beside Franceway's empty place. He did not sleep but wept and rolled back and forth. It was the first of many sleepless nights. Trying to get past the misery he worked. He cut trees with a surety and rapidity that made him difficult as a chopping partner. He always volunteered for the spring drives and people up and down the rivers recognized his fluid, quick-footed style. “Jinot!” they called. “Jinot Sel.” And waved.

He worked for Marchand again for two years, then, like his brothers, moved on to different camps, different rivers. He went home in the summers and chopped the winter's firewood for Beatrix and Kuntaw—eighty cords to keep the old house warm, sometimes also for Francis-Outger, who lived nearby. It was good when Josime or Amboise was there and they sawed, chopped and split in comradely fashion. He went fishing with Kuntaw and Francis-Outger's young son, Édouard-Outger. Once Beatrix made a picnic with roast chicken and potatoes cooked in hot coals. Another year Kuntaw and Beatrix went to the mudflats and came back with a bushel basket of clams, which Kuntaw cooked Mi'kmaw style smothered in seaweed. Jinot helped Elise by lifting great boiling kettles off the fire when she put up vegetables and fruit for the winter, gleaming purple beets in their glass prisons on the cellar shelves alongside varicolored jars of blueberries, peas, beans, applesauce, pickled eggs, and pear halves. Then came the morning when he'd had enough of domesticity, packed his turkey and set off for Bangor and the hiring bosses. If Josime or Amboise was at home, this itch to leave was infectious and they went the distance together. Sometimes they hired out together and hiring bosses fought to get them; it was well known the Sel brothers were the best in the woods.

The years slid by distinguished only by accidents, injuries, wildfire and strange events. Then, around the time of the new century, for some unclear reason, they again began to work at different camps. Once more Jinot joined Marchand, by mistake, as he had come late to Bangor and the best camps already had their quotas of men. Marchand's camp was as rough and primitive as in the old days, but he was cutting in the Allagash watershed, where Jinot had not been. The trees were some of the best remaining white pine, and he wondered how Marchand had come by such a choice woodlot. He slept under a bateau rather than in the bunkhouse, thinking of Franceway in their young days. How would it have been now, with both of them close to thirty winters? He would always think of Franceway when he slept under a boat.

Someone called his name in a hoarse voice.

“Jinot! Jinot! Wake!” His heart leapt. He had been dreaming of him. It was not Franceway, it never would be Franceway again, but his half brother Francis-Outger, holding a lantern in his left hand and shaking Jinot's knee with the other.

“Get up! Come. Now.”

“What? What?”

“Mother is dead. Kuntaw wants you to come. I told Marchand. He cursed me hell to breakfast—a bad-swearin man. Josime rode to tell Amboise. You come. Now!”

•  •  •

Beatrix was buried in the plot that Outger had laid out behind the house. The judge read the will directly after the funeral as the family was at hand. Beatrix had left the house, furniture and property to Elise in gratitude for her care and in atonement for sending her to a miserable marriage when she was a girl. All her books she left to Dr. Mukhtar. The secret pine woodlot she owned in northern Maine, a property of forty thousand acres, went to her sons, Francis-Outger and Josime. To Kuntaw she left two of the five horses they kept, a red English wool blanket he had always liked and a letter. He opened and read the letter of only a few sentences, gave a short laugh and turned silent. Beatrix had made him laugh once again, and once again she had puzzled him. He said he would go back to Canada. Jinot and Amboise each received a small package. Amboise pulled away the paper and found a small watercolor Beatrix had painted depicting Elise, himself and Jinot sitting on a bench under the apple tree. He had a very faint memory that long ago she had sat them in a row and made a drawing in her red sketchbook. He had never seen this painting. There was a small deerskin sock containing five gold pieces. Mopping his eyes and putting his inheritance carefully in his breast pocket he said he would go to New Brunswick for the drive that was barely under way. Jinot opened his own package—it was a familiar stuffed toy horse, four inches tall, that Beatrix had made for him the day after Tonny brought them there. And he, too, had a deerskin pouch of coins. A folded paper written in her unsteady hand said, “Remember me.” How could it be otherwise?

That evening Amboise said to Jinot, “You come my camp end of July and we talk where to go. I got some ideas. But first go find Marchand and git your pay. I can tell you got some trouble, not just Mother's death—better come work.”

•  •  •

Marchand said, “I shouldn't give you nothin. You left me in the lurch, just walk off like that middle of the night.” But he paid him and Jinot found himself with nearly two hundred dollars in his pocket as well as Beatrix's coins. Yet his heart was sore with the loss of Beatrix. He had loved her since the day she lifted him onto the chair and called him
snoezepoes.
He had loved the little stuffed horse with its yarn mane and painted eyes; it had been lost, and it seemed he was holding his childhood again. He put it with his other precious memento—Franceway's tiny songbook, two or three reminder words for many songs. He could feel Beatrix's warm closeness, could hear Franceway's beloved voice.

This last day at the Penobscot house he stuffed his pack basket with clothing, a crooked knife, flint, extra moccasins as if he were going on a long journey. He came into the kitchen for the last time. Elise was sitting at the table writing a list of chores. She looked up at him.