The Place

by Gary Collins

  The only logging interest in the area was thirty-one trackless miles away, and in two days Jack walked every mile of it, overnighting in a hastily built tilt. There were others who were of the same mind who went with him. Hired on to cut saw logs for house construction and timbers for the shipbuilding trade the fishermen-turned-loggers were expected to build their own log cabins.

  Food and other supplies were purchased at the company store and would be deducted from their pay, which was determined by the FBM, or foot board measurement. The timber would all be cut by hand-held axe and bucksaw. The sawmill was equipped to saw the timbers and boards. It was built on the edge of a fast-flowing river and was powered by steam, but it didn’t saw during the winter months. The river that poured over the mill’s dam, which held back the mill’s water supply, flowed into the bay at the end of a deep cove.

  Around the cove was a marl of twenty or so houses. Some of them had been built with lumber, a few with round logs chinked with moss from the forest floor. A few were still in the construction stage. Some of them were squalid. This small lumbering community consisted mainly of loggers and their families who lived and worked there year-round.

  The best timbers needed to supply the mill were in the virgin drokes of spruce, pine, and fir, which grew in profusion on the sylvan ridges miles upriver. Jack and the other fishermen from the outports had arrived early and would have to wait a day or so, after which the company would be ready to move into its winter operation. In the meantime, they helped around the mill yard, without pay, but were fed and shacked up in the mill’s outbuildings at night. This gave Jack ample time in the evening to wander around the small community.

  He didn’t see her the first evening, but she saw him on the second. Standing on the rocky shore among the alders by the river with a slop pail in her hand, the contents of which she had just dumped into the slow current, she spoke to him as bold as you please.

  “Did you use copper punt paint on yer hair?”

  Jack turned toward the voice and didn’t see her at first. Then she emerged from the alders, and he saw her good. She was a beautiful young woman. The girl was what he called tant on legs—slim and tall—with a full complement of flowing, yellowish, almost golden hair, and she sported her womanly curves knowingly.

  “Only if you painted yours from a yeller can.”

  “Naw b’y, I’ve ’eard of women in S’n John’s who paint their ’air, though. Mine is natural enough. Never seen anyone wit’ red ’air before. But then, we never see anything different in this damn place.”

  Jack had rarely heard a woman curse and told her so.

  “Damn? Cursin’? Why, the mill owner, who makes out to be preacher when he gets the callin’ and commands all of us to the mill shed to listen to his bloody pratin’, says damn all the time over an open Bible. Uses the word, and a lot more worse than that one tied on to ’em, outside his church. Everyone around here curses. Don’t see why I can’t say damn. Is it ’cause I’m a woman?”

  “Oh, you are a woman, all right! Don’t much matter to me what you say.” Jack moved closer to her. “Your husband works on the mill, does he?”

  “My hus—I’ll have you know I’m not married. Just turned sixteen, I did. ’Sides, not much of a choice of husbands fer a girl to pick from in this hole in the woods. The man I chooses will take me away from this godawful place. Maybe he will be a redhead! I love red.” The girl was very direct, and she smiled a sly smile at Jack. He had never met a woman like her before.

  He met her again the next evening and led her into a sheltered copse of wood. She willingly lay with him upon a bed of yellowing moss. With red leaves falling upon his back, and she stroking his red mane, he made slow, gentle, and passionate love to the girl with the golden hair. Jack was her first lover. But she was not Jack’s. With her he had committed adultery. Jack was married and had a wife and baby girl waiting for him at home. The baby had her mother’s beauty and her father’s red hair.

  Jack didn’t court the girl in the logging community the next evening. He saw her roaming past the mill and knew she was looking for him. But Jack felt sorry for cheating on his wife, whom he loved dearly, and already wished his cake were dough. The next day he left with the other loggers for the arduous trek into the forest, where he would spend the entire winter logging trees without once coming out to the coast. He never saw the girl with the golden hair again.

  Jack thought fishing was the hardest of vocations, until he went logging. After the first couple days of lugging logs on his shoulders, he was ready to quit. He didn’t realize every man had a shoulder on which he carried loads, and he quickly discovered his. It was the left one, and a tender boil the size of a goose egg soon manifested on it. His hands and neck were covered with thick myrrh, which no amount of scrubbing could clean. He soon gave up trying. There was no point, anyway. The myrrh was a daily scourge of lugging logs. Besides, with the exception of their hands and faces, few of the loggers washed.

  He slept with three other fishermen-loggers in a log shanty they had built in one day. The six-foot vertical log walls were chinched with moss and covered by a lungered, steep-angled roof that was covered with tarpaper. Their four bunks, also built from lungers, were stitched with small fir boughs and were used until the pin-boughs wore off and had to be constructed all over again. They used blankets they brought from home to keep them warm. They cooked on a half-drum of steel converted into a stove, which demanded copious amounts of firewood. The fire was let out at night, and the blankets rarely kept the men warm. Total exhaustion brought sleep despite the cold.

  Mid-April came, and though snow still filled the forested valleys, the strength had gone out of the winter. The logs piled high on the riverbank waited for the annual drive to the mill. Ice had all but gone from the river, which was flowing faster and higher every day. Spring breakup was coming fast. The huge draft horses, driven by their teamsters, plodded out of the forest for a well-deserved summer of rest.

  One spring morning before daylight, in order to get as far down the line as possible before the sun thawed the snow-crusted trail, Jack hitched a ride on a back sled of one of the teamsters. The chains between the sleds clinked and dragged in the snow. The horse’s hoofs frequently shot clumps of snow into the faces of the men on the sleds. And when they cleared the cutting area, as if knowing their days of toil were over for another year, the animals picked up speed. Jack hoped the bay behind the silent mill would be ice-free and that he could catch a lift for home by boat.

  They arrived on the coast at dusk. The bay was still frozen solid, and without spending a night on the mill property, he left with some others to walk home the same way they had come. Walking past the door where the girl with the golden hair lived, he saw a figure in the window lighting a lamp.

  Jack’s hair, which he had not cut all winter, was long and fell upon his shoulders. Subconsciously he pulled his collar up to hide his mane and walked by without looking at the house again. He and the others stepped down over the baddycadders onto the bay ice and headed for the wooded shore opposite and the long walk over the hills to home.

  11

  Like all other fishermen, Jack was indebted to the chandler, who not only controlled the price paid for fish but also owned the only shop in the Place. He lorded a monopoly over every fish that came over the gunnels of every boat, determining the price paid for them as well as the price paid for staple foods and supplies. Though the fishermen’s names were recorded as owing money to him, no matter their harvest, he always assured them they didn’t owe money. They just had to fish for another year to “straighten up the books.” Jack hated owing anything to anyone, and he wanted his page in the chandler’s book “straightened” sooner than later. He went to the chandler’s office a few days after his return from the logging camps.

  The chandler, a short, bald, portly man with large eyes, didn’t want Jack to settle his account. It would mean he would have no control over
his catch. It would also mean the hook he had sunk into Jack’s enterprise would be loosened. Free from his debt to him, Jack could sell his catch to the independent buyers who, more and more, were making the rounds by schooner, trying to get a piece of the fish market.

  The sight of Newfoundland pounds, cold hard cash, in Jack’s hand made the chandler’s mouth water, and since Jack insisted on paying his bill directly, and since he, the chandler of goods, had no real grounds to deny him, he reached out his hand and took most of Jack’s hard-earned money. Jack knew he was overcharged and told him so.

  “If I pays me bill with cash or cod, you’ve still stiffed me, by Christ! If you had to drag the grounds from Tim’s Tooth to Easter Rock to make a livin’ instead of living off the backs of workin’ men, your goddamn pencil wouldn’t be as sharp as it is.”

  “Why, you prick of misery! Who the ’ell do you think yer talkin’ to? Me ol’ man took me out in punt so young I tried to drink water out of the punt’s dell, and he callin’ me a stun young bugger when I spewed the salt water out of me toothless jaws. Thinks I was born a merchant, do ’e?”

  The irate merchant raised himself out of his chair with great difficulty. His big eyes bulged with the effort, and his shirt buttons, trying to contain his belly, scraped against the desk as he stood. Supported by thick hands on top of scrawled papers and stained ledgers, he leaned across the untidy desk and scowled in disgust at Jack before continuing.

  “I’ll have ya know the burn of fish slime on waterpups is no stranger to me. Me father lanced the buggerin’ boils on me tender fingers with a rusty jigger while you were not even a gleam in yer father’s eye. Dropped me over the gunnels, me ol’ man did, when I was no bigger than a rounder, and dangled me baby feet, white as sea spume, making me wriggle me toes so’s to tole squid to the punt. He only laughed all the more when the buggers wrapped their long tanners around me feet, drawin’ blood. I ’members him telling me he’d use me fer lobster bait if I wa’n’t so damn scrawny. I was afraid he’d do it, too. Put me in the bait parlour and lower me down, and laugh when he was doing it.

  “Well, I ain’t scrawny now, am I? It was years afore I clawed me way over the gunnels of the punt and into trap skiffs and then schooners. I’ve wrung more salt water out of me mitts than you’ve sailed over. I used to be one of you. Weaned in a punt, I was.” The chandler finished and sat back. The chair squeaked under him when it took his weight.

  The man’s history didn’t deter Jack. “If you was weaned in a punt like ya says, all the more reason your pencil should be less sharp on our page and treat us fairly.”

  The chandler sighed a great sigh and said quietly, earnestly, “Without even knowing it, you don’t want to be treated fairly. Can’t see that, can ya? You only know authority without question. Lords overseeing serfs. Forever been led, and went willingly like sheep to the safety of a night fold. The red line below yer names on the books is sharp cause ’tis the knife you all know and have come to expect. You all live a beholden life. Only a few, like you, know different. The rest don’t object to it.”

  “Well, I don’t like to be beholden to no man. Especially you, who by your own words used to be one of us. Goddamn hypocrite is wot you are.”

  “And you are an arrogant bastard. Not afraid to talk back to your betters, are ye?”

  “I’m afraid of no man who ever walked in shoe leather, and there is no way in ’ell the likes of you will ever be my better.” Jack turned to leave. He had the doorknob in his hand when the chandler called out to him.

  “How would you like a cash-payin’ job?”

  Jack released the doorknob and turned around but didn’t cross the floor. The chandler had baited the hook and waited for the first tug. Without knowing the job, Jack’s eyes showed interest. He stayed just inside the door and asked:

  “You’re offerin’ me a job? One that pays cash money?”

  “Right now I am merely proposing such a job. I have to find the right man first. One who is hard-nosed, has a thick hide, and knows the value of fish just be the feel of ’em, the slap of ’em fallin’ on the pile, or just be lookin’ at ’em—”

  “Knows fish be the glance, the slap, or touch? The bloody smell of ’em . . . you’re lookin’ fer a damn fish culler!”

  “Aye, that I am. The one who worked the job fer me last year decided not to continue in that respected profession this year.”

  “Respected profession? You must be out off yer ’ead. ’Tis the most hated profession on the coast. Everyone hates the bloody cullers. Goddamn cheats, brown-nosers, backstabbers, every one of ’em.”

  “Watch yer tongue, my young friend! Again you mistake the role of authority. Without the culler, what do you think you fishermen would ship to market? Smatchy fish! Not fit fer a dog to eat, and good only fer the West Indies market. Fish good fer slaves and no one else. Lowest of the grades and fetches the cheapest price. Why, ’tis a wrangle fer us to get fishermen to throw fish from punt to stage by prongin’ ’em through the heads and not through prime flesh. Prong holes are prime ground fer maggots and rust.

  “A good culler sees such a thing right off. He is the man who knows fish better than the men who made ’em. And by determining different prices for different grades, the culler—all at a glance or touch, mind ya—is doing fishermen a great favour. Because of the culler, they make every effort to bring prime fish to market and keeps poor product fer their own simple larders. Prime fish fetches top money. Instead of cursin’ cullers, they should be thankin’ ’em and not malignin’ ’em. ’Tis a most misunderstood and yet most honourable trade.”

  “Despite yer flowery talk, I’ve never met an honourable culler. No matter the women’s hard work on flake, the prime pile is forever the smallest in the eyes of the bloody cullers.”

  Though Jack had sniffed at the bait, he was still not hooked. The chandler decided to sweeten the deal.

  “The thankless and all-important task of culling codfish has fallen on the ears of the most important officials in government. So much attention has been placed on the quality of fish—and therefore the price—that cullers must now be not only legal, but Christian.”

  “Wot do ’e mean by that?”

  “Fish cullers must now sail to St. John’s and stand to a magistrate and sign his name all right and legal. Then place his right hand on God’s own Bible and swear an oath to carry out the duties of his esteemed office fair and proper. They don’t have to take abuse from the fishermen anymore, as they are a limb of the law.”

  “Cash money, did you say?”

  “Cash on the barrel’ead, my boy. You’ll never have to step over a punt’s gunnel again.”

  “Sure money, no matter what?” Jack had taken the bait.

  “Sure money.”

  Jack walked out of the chandler’s office an hour later. Not only was he free of debt, he had signed an agreement under which he would be employed for the season and paid at the end of each month with hard cash.

  Two weeks later, Jack, ready to leave for St. John’s, held his daughter, Emiline, in his arms, revelling in her long red locks and green eyes. He passed his daughter to her pretty young mother, Sophie, hugged and kissed them both one last time, and bade her so long. He loved them both dearly. His daughter reached out and cried for him as he opened the door to leave. He stepped back and gave her another kiss on her tender cheek, ran his hand fondly through her hair, and left.

  Aboard the chandler’s Plunging Star, Jack sailed south to St. John’s, the capital of Newfoundland and the oldest European city in the Americas. Under fair winds and bent sails, the trip took a day and most of the night. All that day Jack stood at the taffrail. The schooner sailed into three outports along her way to deliver supplies to the fishing crews there. Jack didn’t help with the off-loading.

  Jack had not been to St. John’s before. He had never seen electric lights or smelled coal smoke or heard a train whistle, eithe
r. And that night he saw his first harlot, who showed half of a naked leg and most of her buxom chest. She was hanging out of a doorway in a narrow, dimly lit street. Jack was fascinated by her appearance. When she saw his red hair, she beckoned him with a sultry, “Well, if it isn’t a Rufus! Want to see how I trim the sheets, sailor?” He fled from her in panic, slowing down only when her laughter faded behind him.

  He drank his first bottle of controlled beer in a tavern with a sawdust floor, upon which stood a couple spittoons with brown tobacco juice oozing down their pewter sides. Jack drank alone. Not even the Plunging Star’s crew spent time with cullers. The second beer, warm as piss, made him half drunk. Seeing one of the drinkers, who looked like he had never washed or shaved, eying his coins, he left the tavern. He kept a careful watch behind as he walked down the hill toward the harbour. Though he was sure he heard footsteps following him, he saw no one. Reaching the schooner, he climbed the gangway and hurried below deck.

  The next morning he climbed the hills to a street above the one that housed the tavern. Inside the portal of tall double doors, he waited in a dingy, smoke-filled room where people, mostly men, sat upon long wooden stools that resembled pews. There were no empty seats left, so Jack, after informing a woman behind a wicket that he wanted to see the magistrate, leaned against the wall. After an hour, a seat became available, and he sat for two more hours before he was informed by the wicket lady that he could enter the magistrate’s office now. When Jack passed the wicket, she told him sternly to remove his hat. So, hat in hand, he entered the largest, highest room through the largest, tallest door he had ever been in. The door closed behind him like the distant thud of a muzzleloader.