The Friends of Meager Fortune (25 page)

Trethewey, Richardson, Nolan, and Curtis were each up an hour before dawn.

Trethewey was a gray-haired black man who had come here from Nova Scotia. He had a picture on the wall of his daughter, whom he had not seen in years, drink or mischief had caused his white wife to flee back to Nova Scotia, so he stayed alone with his great Percherons up at a camp near the Dungarvan. He had by chance received a letter from his wife, a retired teacher at a normal school in Windsor, Nova Scotia. He opened it in excitement only to discover how she cursed him, accused him of terrible things.

“You will never see Milly again,” the letter stated, referring to his daughter.

So he came to work for Jameson on Good Friday.

“You are too old to go up there,” someone said. He had only shrugged.

He had with him a bowl, a cup, and a spoon that he had used since 1915. He did not know this would be his last year to need them.

Richardson had a picture on the wall. It was him as a young man, taken just the day before he lost his left arm. Though
people said his right arm was as strong as two, and did the work of two, it was filled with pain now—his muscles torn and his elbow ruined from hitting the timbers when he lashed the whip forward. He had come in for one reason, to take the largest load down the hill and prove what he could do, though for the last four months he had had visions of his own death.

Nolan had a picture of his Belgians in gold harness at a show and a ribbon on their bridles, to say he had hauled the largest load ever hauled on the river. But that was years ago, in 1933. Now almost no one would hire him. Only Jameson on Good Friday.

Curtis had a map pinned where no picture stood. At twenty-two he was seemingly too young for pictures. He wanted to go down to California. He thought of stagecoach riding in the movies. He thought of himself and Clark Gable drinking in a bar.

“What could you say to Clark Gable?” Tomkins derided him.

“I’d like to know what Mr. Gable could ever say to me,” Curtis replied.

The highest load here this year—one taken by Trethewey atop the Percherons—was about 260 logs, almost the same amount you would put on a skid near the river. It took the men six hours to load it well, and Trethewey went down over the hill almost at dark, and traveled the eight miles alone and then back, not coming to supper until long after lights out and the stove cold.

“You look like a white feller,” they laughed. And he did—even his chest seemed white.

Richardson wanted to do better by fifty logs. He would do so just because he had one arm, and had been teased because of it. That was his single motivation now.

A one-armed rider with the largest load ever drawn across a cut, larger than Nolan’s in 1933. That might make the papers. That might make him forget.

He was going to do it for the McCord girl, who had left him within a day of his losing his arm.

“Don’t you understand—” Nolan said. “You don’t need to haul down any fuckin’ load to prove bravery to her—”

Richardson shrugged and spit his plug.

“No matter.”

If Richardson succeeded, many would hear nothing about it—if he failed, they would only hear that he was dead.

And within ten years every tool they used with such pride would be obsolete, scattered in a forgotten forest, traces and tack and treats for horses, lost forever underfoot. Become the object of ruthless historians like myself.

The next day Stretch (Tomcat) Tomkins stayed out on the flats stamping the timber. His job was ostensibly to mark the timber as Jameson.

The days were lasting a bit longer and the men were working longer hours, and the teamsters were traveling farther. They would come back up the frozen mount, the two sleds white and ghostly with hoarfrost.

Tomkins stayed out until after dark stamping logs. Then he went back to the hovel, feeling quickly for his money and looking suspiciously about. He had money with him, for as a
spy for Estabrook he would tell how far ahead or behind they were—how good the wood was, and when they would get it to the mill. He had been paid $350 extra to play Judas by stamping as many rods of cedar as he could with an E. He hid this stamp down on the flat, and traded the Jameson stamp for it when he got there. Each night walked back to the camp with the Jameson stamp—nothing more than a peavey with the company’s name on the bottom. Each piece of wood he stamped would go to Estabrook’s boom in the spring. But Tomkins was anxious about this—for if anyone caught him, he would be beaten to a pulp. It was perhaps the most deceitful thing to do.

“How would they ever know?” Estabrook had told him smiling, over Christmas holidays when he had invited Tomkins to his house with the caribou racks and the sensation of an old lumber baron’s world having seen better times.

“Don’t worry—just think of yourself as a teamster they treated poorly. And think of yer mom and dad—they should have something as well—”

“Of course,” Tomkins said, “of course.”

After supper he went about his business, looking at no one and thinking of his future. Three hundred and fifty extra dollars was a good amount; two hundred extra promised for his father and a promise in writing of being a teamster for the Estabrook cut next year.

The men played cards and sang—and listened to the horrible wind—until well after nine o’clock. Then slowly, their bodies aching, their entire lives dependent on those bodies, they struggled into bed, and the main lanterns were turned down.

Tomkins thought of porridge with dark brown sugar sprinkling down from the roof as he drifted off to sleep. He thought of his father always angry because he didn’t measure up.

“Porridge,” he thought, “porridge tomorrow morning!”

The trouble with porridge and brown sugar drifting you off to sleep, is sometimes, on occasion, it isn’t brown sugar but flak from the ceiling, and a flue fire has caught in the eves because of the scowling northwest wind, sending those little pieces of flak down upon you. Then you are up and scrambling out the door into the cold arctic air, while men are trying to put out blue flames licking across the ceiling.

“Come, Mr. Tomkins, come,” Meager Fortune was saying. He woke to the sound of hell all about him. Smoke and flame shot out of the bunk above him, and smoke billowed nearby.

Tomkins grabbed at his heavy coat, and lost half his money in the flames. (He had carried it all on him into camp like a child wanting to hide it from and impress the others.)

“My God,” he said, “I have to go back.”

“Never mind that now—what you lose isn’t worth you life,” Nolan said, giving him a cuff.

“How dare you?” Tomkins yelled. “How dare you—I don’t need to take that.”

Once outside he saw Fraser and Gibbs up on the roof kicking at the burning timbers, and Pitman hauling these timbers down into the snow. He sat by himself and watched the men kick and scramble to try to keep their lives intact.

Before twelve that night all of them were outside salvaging what they could, throwing water on the north side of the camp, hollering to bring the horses away from the hovel nearest them because of smoke. Two of the Belgians were blinded and frantic, but the Percherons were brought out without lead and simply ran down along the shine to the gully where they would be brought back at dawn. The other horses were fine, away to the north, and it was there the men took shelter. But Butch stood at the front of the hovel,
his back smoldering, and the smell of burning horse hair powerful. The tend team Gibbs jumped from the cabin roof, ran through the snow with a bucket, and jumped aside a two sled in order to reach his back. The horse grunted when the ice-frozen water splashed over it, and reared, tossing the boy backward and knocking him cold—but the smoldering was done.

Trethewey rushed in to grab the picture of his daughter, and came out with his white hair singed and his huge black chest dotted with sparks that went out in the wind, like stars going out in the sky. Richardson had lost the only picture he had of himself with two good arms.

Tomkins sat on the ground in his bare feet, socks in hand, each foot almost entirely covered in snow, cursing and shivering, and worried.

They had managed to stop the fire—and had enough provisions in the storeroom to continue.

Besides, Innis the portager was supposed to be in with staples and mail this week.

The main thing was the boots—two of the cutters had lost theirs, and Tomkins had been sure his were gone as well, except Meager Fortune rescued them for him. They were singed and looked odd, but they fit.

“Did you get my money,” he whispered, “did you get my money?”

“I didn’t see any money.”

Tomkins searched the snow with his bare hands, looking at Meager and saying, “You stole my money.”

“No one stole your money,” Trethewey said.

But Tomkins kept moving the snow back and forth, looking to see if it had made it out, his lips wet, his face frantic.

“Half of it’s gone,” he said, “I’m down by half.”

And he looked at them all with a curious and weak kind of confiding, nodding first to one and then the other.

“Where would you get all that money?” Curtis asked.

The fire caused the four in Gravellier’s crew to decide this was a sign of providence to go out. They spoke of ghosts and messages, and warnings and signs. They spoke of the death of Dan Auger and how it would haunt them.

“No man should work for Jameson after Auger,” Gravellier said.

Colson, the spokesman for Gravellier’s crew, said he had no reason to stay on a mountain without a place to sleep to bring heavy wood down a hill that would break the back of the horse that stumbled.

The other three with him said the same. Gravellier stood in the center of the black yard as if something or someone had just displeased him.

“I toldum,” he said, “I toldum.”

Then they all went back to the original argument: The road should have gone around. Any true teamster would have known this, and have been safe. It was as if they argued that not going around had caused the flue fire.

Well, the camp was built in a place that caused the flue fire because of the horror of constant wind. They should never have been on the mountain—or at least taken time to construct a safer camp.

Even as they spoke now, the wind blew their clothes and scattered burnt embers upward in a gale, like specters shooting upward out of a circle of hell.

Tomkins did not know what to do, whether to stay or go—though he knew he must stay, for he had taken money, and promised Estabrook he would stay.

He stood in the dark, alone, watching those about him, when a man yelled “yahoo” to them out of the gloom.

It was the portager, Mr. Innis, in on two roans in the dark with letters and provisions. The first they had seen in well over two weeks. Innis had not waited until tomorrow, but had left earlier in the day, for he must tell them of the trouble their boss was in.

As he approached from the long flat, he had seen the flames.

They stood under the tight flare of lantern light and listened to him, while some opened their mail, the horses that hauled him panting and drenched.

He was tall as a ghost with a bent back, and his hands swollen and blackened by years of holding on to the reins. He spoke in his stutter about a death, a murder—and for what—

“A piece of tail,” Innis said.

“Who is with us now?” Colson hollered, feeling very much vindicated. Colson, a small man with a wizened face, always deferred to others about what might be right or wrong, and acted only when others were on his side.

Innis looked at the camp and shook his head. He had seen the flames and thought he might have to bring out some bodies.

“We are not dead yet,” Trethewey said. “We will tie up tents to the cedar here” (he pointed to the old cedar shaped like a cross) “and bring the tarps across to the front of the camp, and work to get it back in order—we’ll be cozy enough.”

“I’m here to warn you,” Innis advised, “I just heard it. You will have a bad blow up here—storm is coming in off St. Lawrence. It will close you down on this here mountain like never before—you might not get off it, and no one will be able to get in for you.”