The Measure of Katie Calloway,: A Novel (14 page)

“I never agreed with what Harlan did.”

“It were his daddy, missus, who done that to my family.”

“I hated what I saw at Fallen Oaks, Mose.”

“We knowed. You were only a girl child yourself. You did what you could.”

“I did nothing.”

“That’s true. You did nothing when you seen me ready to run. You didn’t call the foreman. You didn’t tell your husband. And that lemonade and food tasted mighty good. Took me a long way. I was up in South Carolina before I got a chance to eat again.”

Tears came to her eyes. At least she had done one thing right in her life. “I’m so sorry for everything, Mose.”

“Wasn’t none of your doing. We knowed that. We was scared when we heard the master was bringing home some uppity Northern woman—didn’t know what you would be—but we felt sorry for you when we saw you. Little scrap of a thing. We could tell you didn’t know what you had gotten into.”

“Harlan was a smooth talker.”

“He never smooth-talked me. Saved his smooth talk for white folk.”

“I ran away too, Mose. No one here knows where I came from.” Katie glanced at Jigger’s door, making certain the old man wasn’t listening. “I lied to the boss about being a widow.”

“I figured so.” Mose’s voice was soft with concern. “Mister Calloway hurt you too?”

“Yes.”

“I sorry for you, missus.”

She thought of the stripes on the man’s back, ones that her husband had put there while she did nothing to stop it except cry. Dear Lord, she didn’t deserve Mose’s sympathy.

“Please don’t tell Mr. Foster. I’m afraid he’ll fire me—or contact Harlan and tell him where I am.”

“I still scared of that husband of yours.” Mose smiled. “Don’t worry. I never laid eyes on you before, missus.” Kindness fairly emanated from him—it always had. Katie marveled that he had even a drop of it in him after all he’d endured. “I best be getting on back to my team. You be all right now?”

“Yes, Mose. Thank you.”

She watched him go, comforted by his promise. Mose knew how to keep a secret. All of Harlan’s servants had.

“You ever hear where that Violet got to, missus?” He stopped right before he reached the door. “I’d surely like to find her.”

Katie froze. He wanted to find Violet? That was far too risky—for both of them. As of a month ago, Violet was caring for an elderly woman a few miles from Fallen Oaks. If Mose went looking for her—if word got out that he had found out her whereabouts from Katie—Harlan wouldn’t rest until he had beat the information out of Mose, and no one in the county would help.

“No. I don’t know where Violet is.” She hated herself for the lie. But she had to protect herself and Ned—and Mose. “I’m sorry.”

There must have been something in her voice. Mose gave her a long look before he turned and went out the door.

Well—she was wide awake now, and afraid that once she did manage to get back to sleep, nothing would ever awaken her again. She might as well get a head start on tomorrow morning’s preparations. There was enough dry bread left over from yesterday to make into a nice bread pudding and she had plenty of raisins. She could make a thick glaze for the bread pudding.

With all her heart, she wished she had a cow and chickens and hogs so that she could
really
show the men what she could do. Fresh eggs would be wonderful, and with a good cow, she could make fresh butter instead of that nasty stuff the men ate.

As she began her preparations, Katie felt a slight dizziness. She grabbed hold of the worktable and waited for the feeling to pass. Then she sat down and began peeling potatoes. There was far too much work to accomplish before four-thirty for her to coddle herself.

12

A beetle-browed bully he war ’n mean,

an’ as dirty a fighter as ever war seen.

“Camp Thirteen on the Manistee”
—1800s shanty song

October 11, 1867

There was heavy frost on the ground when Robert stepped out of the bunkhouse. It was apparently going to be an early winter. Soon, if this weather held, it would be possible to coat the tote roads with ice and begin sliding the logs out of the woods.

The thing a lumberman dreamed of was a long, cold winter. Sometimes they had to leave tree stumps behind as high as a man’s head when the snow piled up and axe men worked while standing on top of three or more feet of snow.

The thing a lumberman most dreaded, next to wildfire, was a mild winter with mushy roads and Michigan swamps swallowing up the logs they were trying to drag to the river. Give him twenty-degrees-below-zero temperatures instead of warm winter weather any day.

He was in high good spirits as he entered the cookhouse. The first thing that struck him was the interesting smells wafting from the kitchen. Katie had evidently made something new. The table was covered with heaping bowls and platters. Katie and Jigger had outdone themselves and he was grateful. This morning, with a full crew, the camp would roar into production. It was fitting that the table be groaning with food.

At the far end, Skypilot was buttering a biscuit. He glanced up at him and grinned, then went back to the serious business of getting enough fuel in his stomach to get through the next few hours.

Katie, neatly dressed, flitted around filling cups, dishing up more fried potatoes from the stove top, checking on something she seemed to be concerned about in the oven. She was a pretty thing, with her flushed cheeks and her red hair curling around her face from so many hours standing over the stove.

He saw a lot of admiring masculine eyes turned toward her as she conscientiously went about her work. A woman as pretty as Katie would turn heads in the middle of a crowd in Bay City, but out here in the wilderness she was quite a jewel. Strangely enough, she seemed to be oblivious of her beauty.

She could probably collect at least a dozen serious marriage proposals on the strength of her cooking alone.

It was an unhappy thought. And a surprising one. What could it possibly matter to him, aside from how it might impact the camp, what romantic interests the woman might develop? He had only known her the biggest part of five days.

Moon Song appeared. She was still emaciated, but she was a different person from the ragged woman he had seen yesterday. Her face was clean, her hair neatly braided. She was wearing a long-sleeved, high-necked blue flannel nightgown, but she wore it proudly. Some red flannel material had been wound into a sort of papoose carrier, and when she turned, he saw a tiny face framed by the red material, gazing out at the room with bright, curious eyes.

At that moment, Katie came toward the table bearing a giant pan of something that smelled heavenly.

“Bread pudding,” she announced.

She set it down in the middle of the table with a flourish, and the ones nearest it began to spoon the delicious-smelling mixture onto their plates. It had been years since he had tasted bread pudding. He was hoping there would still be some left for him—when he noticed Katie sway. She was deathly pale. As she started to slump toward the floor, he jumped up and caught her.

“When was the last time you ate? Katie!” She felt rough hands shaking her. “Talk to me!”

The insistent voice annoyed her. Someone was expecting her to answer questions, but she didn’t want to. She wanted to sleep. She was shaken again, and she realized that she was lying on something very hard.

Somehow she had ended up on her own worktable, and approximately thirty pairs of concerned eyes were staring down at her. The most worried were those of her boss, Robert Foster.

The last thing she remembered was serving breakfast.

“When did you last eat?” Robert again asked. Then he uttered something so improper she could have died from embarrassment. “Are you pregnant, Katie?”

The curiosity in the sea of eyes surrounding her intensified. Pregnant? Obviously, her boss didn’t know with whom he was dealing. Not that it was any of his, or anyone else’s, business.

She struggled to sit up. “I’m not . . . with child.”

“Did you sleep at all last night?” Robert helped her to a sitting position. “Jigger said you were in here banging around from midnight on.”

“I was worried about getting breakfast for so many and I couldn’t sleep, so I cooked,” she said. “I—I think I might have eaten something yesterday morning. Sometimes when I get too busy, I forget.”

“You always did, missus,” Mose mumbled, to her horror.

“Here.” Robert didn’t notice Mose’s comment. He had dished up a bowl of bread pudding and was poking a spoonful of it at her mouth. “Eat.”

Hoping to pull Robert’s attention away from Mose’s remark, she obediently opened her mouth. It was humiliating having so many men watching, but she was afraid Robert wouldn’t stop insisting until the bowl was empty.

She desperately wanted to escape into the privacy of her cabin. Robert should never have asked her if she was pregnant in front of all these men. Decent women didn’t talk about such things!

“Are you feeling better?” Robert asked.

She swallowed another mouthful and nodded.

“Good. We need to get to work. Jigger, keep an eye on her. I’ve got to go.”

“I only got one good arm, boss,” Jigger whined. “And I didn’t get a lick of sleep with her making noise in here all night.”

Robert blew out a breath of frustration. “Ned?”

“Yes, sir.” The boy said. “I’ll watch her.”

“I’m fine,” Katie insisted. “I’ve eaten now and I’m fine.”

“I hope that’s true.” Robert’s voice was harsh. “I need a cook, not an invalid.”

Katie bristled. She had thrown everything she had into this—and he seemed angry at her for fainting. It wasn’t as though she had meant to.

“Go on back to the bunkhouse, boys, and get your tools. I’ll be outside in a minute.”

The men reluctantly tromped out, obviously hating to miss a good show.

“You have to feed yourself, woman,” Robert said. “Will you try to remember that?”

“Yes.”

“And one more thing. Evidently Jigger hasn’t bothered to tell you this yet”—he cast an irritated glance at the old cook—“but camp cooks take a nap in the afternoon to make up for getting up in the middle of the night. You’ll do that too from now on.”

“A nap?” She hadn’t napped since infancy.

“Doctor’s orders.” He closed his eyes and grimaced. “I mean—boss’s orders.”

She watched as he walked out the door. What an odd combination he was. One moment angry and gruff, the next minute filled with compassion. She hadn’t figured him out yet—but she would. If she was to keep her job, she would have to.

“Timberrrr!”

The call went out as the behemoth hovered for a few moments, quivering, and then lost the battle against gravity and went crashing down into the clearing. Unlike the other types of forests, there was no underbrush in these ancient woods. The giant pines had blocked the sun from the earth and left such a thick carpet of pine needles that few things sprouted beneath them.

Once the trees were cut and sunlight was allowed to saturate the ground, all sorts of seeds, long dormant, would stir into life. It was a sight that never failed to interest him—the variety of plant life that waited beneath the centuries of old pine needles, ready to spring up, gasping for air.

After he finished here, he would sell the land to some farmer who would clear stumps and plant crops. The population of Michigan was growing and the people would need all the crops they could get.

Thinking about this made him a little less uneasy about the fact that he and his men were cutting down trees that had taken centuries to grow. Timber like this was irreplaceable in even their great-grandchildren’s lifetimes. But the giant trees seemed to be everywhere.
Inexhaustible
was the word bandied about when lumbermen spoke about the millions of standing pine in the Saginaw Valley. More sawmills went into production every year as more lumber camps set up. He doubted the forests of Michigan were inexhaustible, but he hoped they would at least last his lifetime.

Of course there were those who complained that the Michigan soil was too thin for farming. There were a few who even believed that the lumbering should cease—but that was not his concern. His job was to get the trees out.

Ernie and Cletus set to work chopping off the limbs of the fallen tree, while the axe team started notching the next one. He inspected the tree that was on the ground. It was at least 5 feet in diameter, 150 feet tall, and as straight as an arrow.

“Timberrrr!”

Another tree came crashing down on the south side of the clearing. The work was progressing well.

The discarded pine limbs would be left where they lay and become as dry as tinder. There was always the danger that lightning might strike amidst a tangle of discarded boughs and start a forest fire. He worried that if something like that happened, the fire wouldn’t stop until it reached one of the great lakes that bordered the state.

But there was nothing he could do about it except hope it didn’t happen. Lightning and fire were things he had to leave in the hands of the Almighty. It was all he could do to keep the camp running. Lord willing, there would be no fires this season.

Today was the culmination of months of preparation. Everywhere he looked there were skilled men busy with their assigned tasks—a small battalion of woodsmen. It was like being in the army again, with all of the camaraderie but none of the bloodshed.

He breathed deeply of the autumn air as multiple axes rang out and men’s voices shouted out to one another.

“Timberrrr!”

Another giant crashed to the forest floor. Its massive weight bounced against the solid ground, causing the very earth beneath his feet to tremble.

This army of loggers working beneath his command was steadily advancing upon an unresisting enemy of standing timber. He was proud of what they were accomplishing.

If he could just keep himself from dwelling on the past, he might have a future.