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BACK WITH MY GRANDMOTHER
in Sawgamet, my grandfather saw the village growing again, though not like it had during the boom of gold. Every day men who had taken ships around the coast passed down through Sawgamet on their way to the new goldfields of Havershand, and every day some of them decided to stay and make their way in Sawgamet instead. Some men came the other way, as well, those who had traveled from Quesnellemouthe or further east, and had found the land in Havershand leaner than they expected. Franklin spent time with his ledgers and with the new goods that he paid to bring in, restocking the shelves that had been laid bare by the savagery of the previous winter. He gave Rebecca and my grandmother dispensation to take from the store as they would, encouraging his wife and his sister to lay into the canned fruits, sugar, and any other notions they might want.

When he was not in the store, he worked the mill with Jeannot. Though the men who came into Sawgamet clamored for wood, Jeannot set aside lumber first for himself and Martine, and then for Franklin and Rebecca. The house that they built for Jeannot and Martine was more modest than the one that had burned to the ground, though they built it with the intention of adding a third story the following summer. Martine insisted that this house be in the village—she did not want to have to worry about another winter cut off from all others,
she said—and she said she would barely let the last hammer fall before she planned to shoo the men down the street toward Franklin’s store, so that they could build a house there.

By Christmas the mud of the streets had frozen into brutal ruts, and the men had to walk carefully so as not to trip. Jeannot and Martine’s house, only a few doors down from Franklin’s and finished just the week before, was ready for a companion; the men had seated the foundation to Franklin’s house early in November, before the ground froze, and Jeannot said that the day after Christmas he and the men would be set to build enough of a house to get Franklin and Rebecca through the winter at least. Franklin did not mind the cabin behind the store, but he had begun to realize how close it was at nights, how little space there was for him and Rebecca to share with the baby. But at least they had no need to worry about food. Franklin and Jeannot—as had every man and woman who had seen the world covered with snow—had set aside more food than was necessary, but still it was reassuring for Franklin see the barrels of dry goods, the canned food.

And, of course, they need not have worried; spring broke early that year, as though to try and make up for the previous winter’s passion for snow, and the melt, more gentle this time, smoothed the streets of Sawgamet into something passable. A few men, of the type that preferred to work alone, kept at mining claims that were picked clean, but the tin pans on the shelves of the store stayed neatly stacked. Most men took to homesteading or migrated to the woods, cutting trees for Franklin and Jeannot or working for the new outfit from Havershand. The mosquitoes swarmed in the dimness of the
woods with particular vengeance, and more than one man split his skin trying to shoo away the biting insects while holding an ax.

THE MILL COMPANY MEN
from Havershand brought a cook with them, and except for a few nights a week when they would visit the new saloon or the brothel, they mostly stayed in camp. They started with two dozen men and hired more—it seemed like for every man from Sawgamet who cut wood for Jeannot, there were five who cut for the Havershand crew—and the sound of trees falling carried through to the village. Every month, the other company floated huge rafts of uncut logs down toward Havershand.

Franklin thought that they should send their logs down the river as they accumulated near the mill, but Jeannot argued the wood would be worth more in the fall.

“Once we saw it and raft it down the river, we’ll be able to name our price. The sawmill downriver will go through all the logs the other company has sent, and when we come in with our boards, men will be feeling the pinch of winter coming. Good wood for building houses is scarce enough in Havershand, and no matter how fast they run their mill, they won’t be able to meet all the need there is for lumber. Besides,” he added, “if we float it down uncut, we’ll have no choice but to sell it to their mill at their prices.”

While Jeannot kept a crew of ten working in the woods, widening the circle of stumps around the mill, Pearl supervised the cutting, stacking, and stickering of the fresh-cut boards.
More men and even a few families trickled in to Sawgamet, keeping Franklin busy in the store. As June wore on, the sun seemed to meet itself, setting and rising so close together that it was difficult to tell if the day ever ended, and during the few hours that they slept, the men who lived in windowless hovels were thankful for the darkness that they cursed throughout the winter. My grandfather did not sleep easily, however, even with the heavy curtains that Martine made for their new bedroom.

The logging camp of men from Havershand had swelled to more than two hundred. They had started making the half-hour walk to the village more often, and they had not been content to leave well enough alone. Their foreman, Jonah Feed, had been eating away at Jeannot’s men. He offered higher pay, and bragged of paying cash outright, rather than the combination of pay and credit at Franklin’s store. Feed spoke French with an outsider’s bastard Texas accent, but that had not stopped him from keeping his crews running tight. There were enough holdouts who stayed with my grandfather, though. The Rondeau brothers had run into Feed in town and they told him they were not interested in working for the son-of-a-bitch boss of his that owned the Havershand mill. A few of Feed’s crew had taken exception to the Rondeaus’ comments—six men for the two Rondeau brothers—and Giles Rondeau spent several days laid up in bed.

Feed himself was not supposed to be a terrible fellow, no rougher certainly than my grandfather himself, but the owner—the man behind Feed—seemed to inspire an almost unnatural fear and devotion. Pearl had talked briefly with him
once, had been offered a job, and he told Jeannot that the man carried a stink with him, an unworldly foulness that made it difficult for Pearl to remember even his own name.

AND HERE AGAIN
, my grandfather paused as he had paused when he burned his hand on the stovepipe. He told me the story of the long winter in one push, and I had not said a word. I did not want to interrupt him as I had interrupted my father the winter before, asking him whether or not he missed the float when he was telling Marie and me the story of my parents’ marriage.

“You’d think I would have known,” my grandfather said, but he didn’t really say it to me at all.

In some ways it has been the same for me this past week. I read aloud to my mother as much as I could bear, and I realized that it did not matter if she was listening or not as long as I could fill the silence.

MY GRANDFATHER HAD NOT
much wanted to speak to Feed before, but after the beating that the Rondeau brothers took he thought he had no choice. He rose early that morning, checked the mill, and then whistled for Flaireur. The sun already burned over the mountains, sending a glare off the permanent tops of snow, and Jeannot was pleased when he reached the line of trees. Even the short walk from the village had left him sweating. Flaireur lunged into the thin trickle that passed for
a creek and drank with loud, lapping urgency. Jeannot kept walking, knowing the dog would catch up.

He had thought of taking his rifle, but had decided against it. He was just going to talk. He carried his ax and ate the rest of a muffin that Martine had pressed upon him as he left the house. The ax felt a comfortable weight in his hand, more comfortable than it had been his first few days of cutting in the spring. That winter, though short, had been long on time by the fire with Martine and the baby. He spent a few days working traplines with the old Indian and his young son—who, of course, turned out later to be my uncle Lawrence, Julia’s husband—but he worked the trapline just enough to understand the beauty of the woods in the winter and his own lack of desire for collecting furs. Mostly he slept late. The snow had been light, but the cold had been such that he needed little encouragement from Martine to spend the days inside. When he had started cutting again in the spring, his hands had been pink and tender for the first week or so, until a hardened layer of flesh turned them into something as rough as the wood he took down.

Though the trail was well trampled by the Havershand men, Jeannot did not walk as briskly as was his wont. He occasionally stepped off the trail to move into the woods, thinking he saw the glint of something golden in a clearing. Each time, however, he realized it was simply the sun flitting through the openings in the trees, not the boulder that he and Martine had come across. Flaireur stayed alongside him, tail held high and nose to the ground, but the dog gave no signs of warning. Soon enough, the trail came out along the banks of the Sawgamet, where the trees pulled back to reveal an open gravel sweep of
shoreline. The river was wide and slow, and aside from the incredible swath of forest that might run forever, Jeannot could understand why Feed had picked this spot to stack wood.

He could see men working teams of horses, dragging trees to the shore, stacking and laying them to prepare for the next float down the river. A small gang of men worked taking down trees, expanding the cuts that other men had already made, and Jeannot thought he saw a distant rustle and heard the yells of another crew working further in. Flaireur bounced across the smooth stones of the bank and into the river, dunking his head beneath the water and then shaking it. The spray flashed against the sun, and Jeannot thought for a minute of joining the dog. During the coldest days of winter, when he could stand only a few moments outside and even trying to cut firewood sent a jolt through his hands, he had wished for a day like this, but with the sun’s full fury upon him, Jeannot realized that he now wished for the winter’s return.

As he walked through the tents set along the riverside, he caught the smells of food and remembered talk of camp cooks, a pair of Chinamen. He had not seen a Chinaman himself before coming west, but had seen plenty since, and even though Xiaobo’s baking seemed like some sort of punishment, Jeannot enjoyed the meals that Xiaobo cooked. Martine was happy with the Chinaman instead of having to hire one of the few rough women in town, and my infant father seemed to have taken to him, quieting every time Xiaobo picked him up. There was something off in the man, my grandfather said, some sort of distance or disappointment that Jeannot could not understand, but he did not want to question the happy balance of his household.

He had not passed fully through the camp before he heard his name.

“Vous me cherchez?” Feed asked.

“I can speak English,” my grandfather said, turning around and deciding not to comment on Feed’s poor French. The Texan was younger and taller than Jeannot had thought. He had only seen the foreman from afar, and though the man’s face showed the lines of a man who was used to working, he wore a suit, neat and pressed, like he was going to church rather than into the woods.