Back Roads to Bliss (Saskatchewan Saga Book #6): A Novel (8 page)

Trees for building, trees for burning; Parker Jones opened the draft, and the fire flared to life, roaring up the slim stovepipe and throwing out a blast of heat into the room.

He automatically stirred the beans, replaced the lid, and turned, with the enamel coffeepot in his hand, to the slop pail beside the door. Into it went the remaining dribbles of his morning and noon coffee and, after a vigorous shake, the meager grounds. With more care than usual, he measured new
grounds, dipped water into the pot from a nearby pail, and set the coffeepot on the hottest lid of the stove to boil.

Next, he turned to the open-shelf cupboards, clearly of the handmade variety, and contemplated his crockery, a mismatched conglomeration of castoffs gleaned from the homes of his congregation. He congratulated himself on having washed his dishes earlier in the day and felt something akin to a housewife’s satisfaction in what seemed to be, to his uncritical eyes, a neatly ordered cupboard. No board member should go home shaking his head over the pastor’s disgraceful housekeeping practices, to have his wife look at him with accusing eyes and remind him that the “poor man” needed a wife and was only waiting for the board to do something about it.

Parker figured he would need five cups but could not, for the life of him, match them up with the proper saucers. At last they were set in a neat row on the round oak table that graced the center of the room and was covered with an oilcloth of Molly’s choosing and ordered from the catalog.

Unfortunately, he thought with some regret, there was not so much as a cookie crumb left from the baking Molly had delivered the day before. The men of his board, cold when they arrived, would welcome a cup of hot coffee and would understand his lack of baked goods. Perhaps, sympathizing with his pathetic limitations, they would be spurred on in their avowed plan to enlarge the cabin so that he and Molly could marry.

Parker Jones, not long a pastor, felt himself blessed to have ended up in the Saskatchewan Territory among the good people of Bliss. No better people existed, he was sure, certainly none who would have made him feel more needed, more welcome. They felt keenly their lack of sufficient monetary support and regretted it—Parker existed on the offering that was placed in the basket each week, usually egg and cream money, and some weeks it was pitifully small. But in the fall, when the crops were harvested, the faithful would bring in the tithe. And if the crops were good, so was the tithe. Cash might be sparse, but there would be bushels of garden stuff, shelves of canned
goods, sacks of flour. The enlarged parsonage would need a roomy cellar—he must remember to mention that today; picking up a pencil, he jotted it down.

Feeling at last that things were in order, Parker seated himself in a rocking chair at the stove’s side and picked up his book. A man of medium height, with a shock of dark hair, a sensitive face often grave but capable of breaking into an infectious smile, Parker Jones was clearly a man of good breeding and obvious gentility. He exuded masculinity in the same way a spring crocus exudes sturdiness.

His hands, not accustomed to the plow or harrow, were fitted to the pages of a book.

Regardless of all else—no matter the season, through meals of beans, bannock, rabbit stew, and pancakes, enslaved by the endless feeding of wood into the stove, sidetracked by board meetings, engaged in courting—sermon preparation had first priority. It was as though—when he pledged himself to the ministry—he had taken a vow as solemn as the wedding vow and much like it: for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health . . .

Therefore, the amenities completed and all things prepared for the monthly board meeting, Parker Jones returned to his studies. With the cabin cradled in a blanket of snow and silence, the only sounds now were the popping of the fire and the occasional creak of the hand-me-down rocking chair.

Here, in the backwoods (also termed the bush), in this place rather incongruously called Bliss, an outpost was burgeoning to fruition and vigor, a colony marvelously free of the bondage of the old world. Here, men and women enjoyed opportunity and freedom such as they had never known, gladly paying the price and embracing the struggle. Here, though it seemed a most unlikely reality, dreams came true.

Most of the civilized world thought of Canada as a wilderness. An idyllic wilderness, perhaps, with a charm that beckoned the adventurer, but a wilderness nevertheless. And they
were not far wrong; wilderness it was, for the most part. Such a huge land and so few adventurers.

But that was changing; they were coming. What had begun as a trickle was to become a torrent as men and women—downtrodden, poor, hopeless—turned their shabby shoes and beaten wills westward.

On the frontier, one of the most important figures was the preacher. His presence supplied one of the only antidotes for the loneliness of the isolated lives of the hardworking pioneer. His bodily presence—being there with them—was a tremendous encouragement; his messages, much needed: God loved them; God was with them; they could never get beyond His care. The preacher performed their marriage ceremonies, buried their dead, baptized their believers.

At times revival meetings were announced, and emotion ran high, stirring dry-as-dust spirits and warming the hungry hearts of those needing the strength, the encouragement, the peace offered. Attendance was good; the warning against sin and unrighteousness was powerful, the invitation to turn from such ways was fervent. The Church of England, more formal, popular in larger cities, was not widely popular on the frontier. The rugged, the real, the tried—that was what satisfied.

Education and religion went hand in hand; schools invariably sprang up where churches went. It was a Methodist minister who set into operation a province-wide system of government-controlled primary education. The new Canadians were serious about education; even those whose broken English kept them tongue-tied managed to make themselves understood: There should be schools for the children.

Schools and churches often shared the same building. This was true of the hamlet and community called Bliss.

Bliss was named to honor the first settler in the area, George Bliss; by and large, the people of Bliss were satisfied with it. “What’s in a name?” Herkimer Pinkard had been known to quote philosophically whenever the subject came up, adding,
“That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.”

With no dissenting voice across those first years and no better suggestion, in time “Bliss” became the name of the schoolhouse. And when the church was established, the name seemed particularly suitable, the worshipers maintained.

George Bliss himself had drawn together the first circle of believers. They met in his home, eventually outgrowing that and welcoming the opportunity to conduct services in the schoolhouse. Having become a real congregation, a real church, they contacted a Bible school in the East for a pastor.

Parker Jones was that man.

And to think, he sometimes marveled, that it was here, back of beyond and far, far from the madding crowd, he had met the one girl in the world for him. Walking into the Morrison home, the first place he was to board—the initial arrangement the church had made for a pastor—he had walked directly into Molly herself. And heaven’s gate, and—bliss.

Molly Morrison was a treasure. Vibrant, full of life and love she was, slender as a willow withe, with black hair that tumbled in lively disarray around a face both angelic and magical. Best of all, Molly loved the Lord and loved Him best of all. This arrangement—with him, Parker, being second best—was satisfactory with Parker Jones.

The coffee was burbling, filling the air with fragrance, when the first rig pulled into the yard. Before Parker had welcomed his prospective father-in-law, Angus Morrison, a man of tremendous standing in the community and a worthy father of the matchless Molly, Herkimer Pinkard arrived. Herkimer of the wild orange beard and a gift of coming up with quotations, jokes, bits of choice wisdom or humor from the inspirational to the downright ridiculous. A bachelor, if he wanted a wife, Herkimer had not been able to find one among the few, very few females available on the frontier. “He scares them off or they die laughing” was the opinion of Bliss’s sympathetic populace. Everyone loved him; no one wanted to marry him.
Herkimer managed very well by himself and never complained of his single state.

Stomping the snow from his boots on the porch, coming into the house through the door Parker held open for him, Angus greeted his pastor warmly and handed him a box, his blue Scottish eyes twinkling in his rugged face.

“From the womenfolk of my hoosehold,” he explained unnecessarily, and suddenly Parker’s supper took on possibilities: The fragrance of roast beef wafted enticingly into the room.

“Lift oot the pan and set it in the oven, laddie,” Angus directed. “Those’re the instructions given me. When you’re ready to eat, supper’ll be ready and waiting.”

The others, when they came in, were equally generous. Parker realized, with gratitude warm in his soul, that he should have expected it, might have known, could have counted on it. But then, he reasoned, if he had taken it for granted, he wouldn’t have been so wonderfully surprised, so blessed, so appreciative.

Bly Condon brought butter and eggs; Brother Dinwoody (so called not because of his position or dignity or spirituality but because his name, Adonijah, fractured the speech of anyone trying to pronounce it) proudly set a chocolate cake on the table. And even Herkimer, bachelor though he was and no cook according to all who had occasion to eat his food, brought a jar of fresh, sweet cream—Parker Jones could almost see it swirling in thick, golden richness over a piece of the Dinwoody chocolate cake at suppertime. All these items had been carefully wrapped and arrived unfrozen and savory.

“Lay aside your wraps, gentlemen,” Parker invited, and coats were hung on the nails by the door, overshoes set in a row beneath. Protocol for this procedure was the same in every Bliss home. There was, usually, one entrance: It was a kitchen door and was used for everything and by everyone.

All four turned as one man to the stove, huddling around it and holding out cold hands and rubbing them, until Parker ushered them to chairs around the table.

Cautiously holding the metal handle of the coffeepot with what he had been informed by Victoria Dinwoody—the child who made it—was a hot pad, Parker poured the steaming brew into each cup. Silence reigned as this rite was performed, the men watching, then reaching, then wrapping work-hardened, icy hands around the comfort of the cup. Setting the pot back on the stove, adding water, and recklessly throwing in a few more grounds—sometimes Parker got tired of endless scrimping—he paused, hesitating before sitting down to the table and his own cup.

His eyes went to the Morrison box, as yet divested only of the pot roast, and then sought Angus’s face with an unspoken question.

Angus nodded. “You’ll find oatcakes in the box, laddie.” Gladly Parker dug into the boxed treasures and passed around the plate that bore the treat.

“No doot aboot it,” Angus said, with more than a touch of the accent that had been largely muted for years, “we’ve got to get the mannie a wife.”

The others grinned and nodded and ate and drank and eventually sat sipping as the meeting was called to order.

The minutes of the previous meeting were read.

“Seems, Angus,” Bly Condon said, “you made the same remark about the mannie needing a wife a month ago.”

“He needed her then, and he needs her now,” Angus said, unabashed.

The minutes were approved.

The treasurer’s report was given, briefer and skimpier than ever; with some shuffling of feet and a few chagrined sighs, it was accepted.

“A short horse is soon curried,” Herkimer said thoughtfully. And that about summed it up.

Old business was called for, and the enlarging of the parsonage was discussed.

“We’ll need to time things exactly,” Brother Dinwoody said, having given the plan considerable thought. “We know we
need to start on it as soon as the first chinook blows and the logs are uncovered, in order to get it up and finished before the land dries enough to put in the plow. We all know what that means . . .”

There was silence as the men contemplated the end of the still and quiet season and the burgeoning of the time of sixteen-hour days of hard and unrelenting labor. The long days and short nights would make it possible to reap a crop in the one hundred frost-free days Mother Nature might allot them—if she were in a benign mood. If she were to be capricious, as she so often was, it would be survival only, the tightening of belts and “making do” for another year.

“We can mend harnesses now,” Bly Condon said, “and grease machinery and such things, if we haven’t already done so.” Winter was filled with harness mending, furniture making, whittling, the chopping of wood, busywork to keep a man from going mad, and his wife, housebound with him, the same.

Out came the rough plans, and the men passed them around and could find no improvement to be made in them. Since the logs were already cut, there was no possibility of changing the concept originally decided upon; they simply needed to fix the plan more firmly in their minds and renew their interest and determination. And of course, they assured Parker Jones, a fine, generous cellar would be included.

About to adjourn until the following month, Herkimer remembered that he had mail to distribute, having been to the post office that morning. Parker Jones took the one item addressed to him and looked at it, interest sharpening his eyes. Mail was always a high point and in the winter months was all too often delayed for one reason or another.

“Please excuse me, gentlemen, while I open this.”

“Of course . . . go right ahead; don’t mind us.”

Bly, Angus, Herkimer, and Brother Dinwoody prepared to push themselves back from the table, to put on their heavy garments once again, to pull on their overshoes and leave for
home. Already dark was descending. It would be chore time when they reached their own homesteads.