A Week From Sunday (23 page)

He nodded. It looked as if he wanted to say more, but he held his tongue. Even though she couldn’t see him clearly, she would have sworn that he gave her a wink before he turned and went into the house.

Returning her gaze to the stars above, one thought raced through her mind.

Adrianna Moore, you brazen hussy. You kissed that man . . . and you liked it.

Chapter 19

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, Gabe parked his battered truck in front of the house. The sun shone brightly, the start of another hot day in the making. As he walked, he whistled, “On the Sunny Side of the Street,” a popular tune that had recently caught on at the Whipsaw.

Adrianna had accepted Quinn’s offer to come visit the lumber mill and, one quick phone call later, plans had been made for Gabe to pick her up in time to arrive at the mill by the lunch hour. She’d risen early to prepare a picnic basket and was waiting anxiously when the Cajun arrived.

“It’s a beautiful mornin’,
n’est-ce pas
?” Gabe greeted her warmly.

“It most certainly is.”

“Then let us be on our way,
mademoiselle,
” he said with a flourish.

The Montville Lumber Company’s mill was located some five miles to the north of Lee’s Point. As Gabe steered the truck in that direction, Adrianna looked out of the open window, the breeze blowing through her hair, and watched as the town quickly melted away into a glorious countryside.

They drove past a few farming plots that clung to the outskirts of the small town, but soon they were passing large swatches of tall pine and oak trees that reached for the sky. Sunlight filtered haphazardly through the high branches, lighting a spot here and there on the needle-carpeted forest floor. Wildflowers sprang up in bunches alongside the road, bright yellows, whites, and reds vying for her attention. Adrianna breathed in deeply, the rich smell of pine filling her senses.

As the trees and flowers sped by in a blur, the truck’s tires crunching over the rough road, Adrianna thought about the choices made by her aunt Madeline in Mississippi. Looking at all that nature had to offer, it was easy to understand why she had forsaken the city life to live out in the country with a man she loved. Maybe she was more like the older woman than she realized.

“Some of these trees are more than two hundred years old,” Gabe said.

“Really?” Adrianna exclaimed. “That’s amazing!”

“I imagine that many of them were here long before the pirate, Jean Lafitte, roamed here, or even before the Indians who once lived in these parts,” he said as his eyes scanned deeply into the woods. “Many of them will certainly be here long after we are gone,
c’est la vérité
.”

“They have more right to be here than we do.”

As Adrianna looked over at the Cajun’s rough profile, she wondered if she should ask him about Quinn’s supposed money troubles. Gabe struck her as a wise man, smart in the ways of the world. Surely, he knew about what was happening at the Whipsaw? Before she could open her mouth to ask, a voice in the back of her head cautioned her. Whatever was wrong,
if
anything was wrong, it was Quinn’s business, not hers. For the next several miles, they rode in silence.

Slowly, signs of the mill began to come into sight. A couple of men stood next to a small truck, one of them looking into surveying equipment. Gabe said they were using a level and a target rod, but she had trouble figuring out what was what. He explained that they were probably either measuring the growth of timber or constructing topographical maps, but he couldn’t be certain which it was.

Soon, a railroad line came out of a break in the woods and ran parallel to the road, running ramrod straight as far as her eye could see.

“We’ll follow that all the way to the mill,” Gabe explained.

With every passing mile, more and more logging activity was visible. Groups of surveyors abounded, many of them looking at maps and pointing in one direction or another. They were now joined by men wielding axes and saws of many shapes and sizes. Other men sat about in clusters, laughing and joking as they ate their lunches. Several waved at Adrianna as the truck passed. Farther on, an enormous log loader stood beside the tracks, its tall crane loading felled trees into a railroad car’s bed as black smoke billowed from its stack.

They had barely passed the loader when a strange sight caught Adrianna’s attention; there was a small clearing where tiny trees had been planted. They were all uniformly spaced; it reminded her of a garden, well tended by a patient hand to yield a large crop. The miniature trees looked strange next to their towering brethren beside them.

“What are those over there?” she asked with a point.

“Those are seedlings.”

“Seedlings?” she echoed.

“They plant these seedlings to take the place of the trees that have been cut down,” Gabe explained. “Too often in the past, loggers have done nothin’ more than taken from the forests. They haven’t given a thought to what they’ve left behind. That ain’t the case here. It’s taken very seriously in these parts.
Les hommes
that work for the forest service go around makin’ sure that what is taken is replenished.”

For the rest of the drive, Adrianna couldn’t get the principle behind reforestation out of her head. Life was really no different; when people are taken, her or Quinn’s parents for example, they leave behind something that will grow in their stead. They were different yet the same; she was honest and true like her father, while Quinn was hardworking like John Henry Baxter before him. The thought made her smile.

Finally, the Montville Lumber Company camp came into view. The road opened wider to reveal several buildings all grouped together. However, one stood out above the others: the mill. It was a large two-story barn with a ramp that led from the ground to an opening on the second floor. Logs were being pulled by a chain through a mechanism that washed them, the force of the water blasting off the bark. One log after another moved up the ramp as if they were in a hurry to be cut into pieces.

“We’ll have to park here and walk,” Gabe said, pulling into a spot.

As Adrianna got out of the truck, she was overwhelmed by the bustle. People and machines were everywhere! All the activity she had seen on the drive eventually ended here at the camp. The train tracks came to a clearing not far from the ramp, and teams of men with levers rolled the logs from the car beds onto the ground with thunderous crashes. From another road, large trucks, their frames straining from the weight of the logs they carried, came steadily. There were even a couple of men using oxen to move logs in preparation for their trip up to the saws. The smell of cut wood was everywhere.

“C’est magnifique, non?”
Gabe commented as he wiped his brow.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Adrianna admitted. All of the fevered work made it hard to follow each step in the process. She wondered how Quinn managed. “What is it that Quinn does?”

“He is at the top of the bull chain,” Gabe said, pointing up at the point where the ramp entered the second floor of the mill. “Each of the logs must pass by him before it makes its way to the saws to be cut. He checks to be sure that each one has been washed properly.”

“Why does it have to be washed?”

“In order to get any bark, leaves, or other debris off,” Gabe answered. “You need to have the wood as clean as it can be so there aren’t any errors with the cuttin’.”

Gabe led the way toward steps up the side of the mill, Adrianna following wide-eyed behind him, picnic basket in hand. The camp was made up entirely of men; she couldn’t spot another woman as far as she could see. Every face she encountered, whether young or old, looked like it had somehow been marked by the hardness of working as a logger. Deep lines of fatigue, rough-looking skin, and grit and grime were written on everyone she saw. Still, smiles abounded, and more than one man tipped his hat to her as she walked past.

At the top of the steps, Gabe stopped and pointed to the rear of the mill below. Adrianna looked down to see many more men loading long planks of cut wood onto railway cars. As they watched, a locomotive blew its piercing whistle and began to roll slowly down the tracks, headed for some unknown destination. She wondered how many homes or businesses originally came from this very spot.

When they entered the mill, Quinn was conferring with a man near the ramp. He was talking animatedly, pointing at one of the logs that had just entered the building. As she looked at him, Adrianna felt a wave of emotion wash over her. Her thoughts raced back to the night before, when their lips had touched, and the strange feelings returned. Just then, Quinn looked over and saw her, and a grin crossed his rugged features. Slapping the other man on the shoulder, he hurried over to join them.

“I was wondering if you were ever going to make it,” he said with a smile.

“What are you talkin’ about,
mon ami
?” Gabe said with a grin of his own. He pointed at his watch as he added, “We are perfectly on time. It is you that are late,
c’est la vérité
!”

“If you’d like,” Adrianna added, “we could just take this lovely picnic I’ve prepared and head back to Lee’s Point. We wouldn’t want to put you out, after all.”

“No, no!” Quinn said, raising his palms in defeat. “I’m hungry enough to eat a bear. I swear . . . if I hadn’t gotten a break for chow soon I would’ve started gnawing on one of these logs!”

Quinn led the way back down the steps, across the railroad tracks, and along a short path that opened into a clearing sparsely populated by medium-sized pine trees. Adrianna spread the blanket she had brought and laid out the food she had prepared, and they all dug in hungrily.

As she ate, Adrianna looked at her surroundings. Through a break in the trees, she could see row after row of large white tents set up in a large clearing. There were a few men milling about, some of them working over small stoves set out in front of their tents.

“What are those tents for?” she asked Quinn.

“They’re set up by the company for the men who traveled for the job.”

“I don’t understand,” she said. “Those men aren’t from around here?”

“Times have been tough around these parts,
ma chérie,
” Gabe explained. “It can be hard work for a man to find a job that lets him care for his family. Some of these men have traveled hundreds of miles for this work. Men from Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma, and other places all come here.”

“It’s good pay,” Quinn added. “It’s hard, backbreaking work, but it gives these men enough money to send some home and put food on the tables of their families. The company understands that, and they do what they can to make it easier.”

“But eventually they all find their way to the Whipsaw,” Gabe laughed. “And give a little of that money back!”

As the two men enjoyed Gabe’s joke, Adrianna’s heart sank ever so slightly at the realization that she had no idea what most of these men were going through, including her two lunch companions. Even during the worst of the depression, her father had managed to keep them living in relative luxury, and they had wanted for nothing. Truthfully, she hadn’t worked for an honest day’s pay her entire life. Seeing the lengths that Quinn had to go to, working two jobs for the long hours that went with them, was humbling. That he was sacrificing so much for Jesse proved to her that he was blessed with great strength.

“While most of these men do this work because they have to,” Gabe said, slapping Quinn playfully on the back, “
mon ami
works here because he has it in his blood, too.”

“Is that true?” Adrianna asked looking up at Quinn.

“I suppose there’s some truth to it,” he conceded. He picked a small pinecone off the ground and juggled it in his hand. “I was just a little boy the first time by father brought me out here to see the mill. From the moment I laid eyes on the place, there was something inside me that wanted to be part of it. I guess I saw it as some kind of an adventure . . . being out in nature, working with other men, feeling like I’d accomplished something. After my first day, there was no going back. Once John Henry knew my intentions, I think he regretted ever bringing me to this place.”

“How long have you been working here?” Adrianna asked.

“I started here when I was about eighteen,” Quinn answered.

“C’est la vérité!”

“Do you think you’ll ever give it up?” Adrianna asked, a part of her instantly regretting asking the question.

Quinn looked at her long and hard for a moment, his eyes searching. When he spoke, his voice was calm but confident. “I can see myself giving up being a logger someday, sure.”

“Really?” Gabe exclaimed.

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned about life from what happened to Jesse, it’s that you never know what lies around the bend in the road.” His choice of words was shocking to Adrianna, and she was sure it showed on her face, but Quinn continued without seeming to notice. “Once I’m able to hand the Whipsaw over to Jesse, things will be different. Then I’ll walk away from this, maybe settle down and start a family.”

At that, Adrianna flushed a deep shade of red.

The rest of the picnic went quickly, and soon it was time for Quinn to return to work. They were walking back across the road toward the mill when he asked Adrianna about playing the piano.