The Camerons

by Robert Crichton

  BLACK TUESDAY—1884

  We Shall Never Forget You

  36 Good Men Gone

  Other banners, other slogans, the little ritual defiance fluttering overhead. Sam liked the “Stand Thegither” banner best, but decided not to offer to help carry it, to save his legs. The message was fairly plain.

  Stand Thegither

  Live Thegither

  Die Thegither

  Triumph Thegither

  Some of the old miners were wearing the tall tile hats that spelled out “DIGNITY” and that had disappeared from most of Scotland years before. Behind the band came the coal tub with its two tons of hand-picked and washed coal that would be presented to Lady Jane Tosh-Mungo at Brumbie Hall, as the ancient accepted fee for the use of the Lady Jane Tosh-Mungo Miners’ Recreation Park, and for the use of the wells and pumps.

  The ritual had been perfected over the years. There would be the presentation of the coals and the gracious reception of the coals, and the canvas on the lawn at Brumbie Hall would be pulled back and there would be the hundred-gallon barrels of the best Scotch ale, festooned in ribbons, and piles of boxes of sweeties for the pithead girls and then the singing of the song by the miners on the lawn:

  Hurray, hurray, for the Pitmungo Laird,

  Lang in Pitmungo may she be spared

  And the miners’ bounty evenly shared

  On Miners’ Freedom Daaaaaaaaay,

  Hurray!

  The bungs would be pulled, the taps would be set, the first ale flow, and the day officially begin. It made Mr. Selkirk sick to his stomach, he said; it destroyed what little impact the defiance might have. Rob Roy wouldn’t attend. But in the end the Laird knew best: the men wanted their ale.

  After the ceremonial toast, the barrels were loaded in a second coal tub and pulled back up to the moor to get the men off the lawn and back where they belonged. Some of the men began to strip themselves of coats and ties before they were even off the lawn.

  “You saw her accept the coals,” Sam said to Ian. “Saw it with your own eyes. That, my friend, is a contract.”

  Ian didn’t answer. If you didn’t trust anyone in the first place, why trust the evidence of your eyes?

  “No, one thing is sure. You can’t take the coal and take the moor as well. That, my boy, is a fact of law. Oh, God,” Sam said. “Look!”

  Even from down on Colliers Walk, a quarter of a mile away, the embarrassment was evident. By long tradition, as they did in church, the Uppies tended to sit together in one part of the moor, with the Doonies in another. They would compete together later in the day, in the Games, but not sit and eat and talk together. Maggie Cameron had chosen a spot where the Uppies sat, and for a space of at least fifty feet around her no one had put down his blankets and lunch baskets. It was a public humiliation. She was alone on an island of green and the green was like an open green wound on the blanketed side of the moor.

  “Spread your things out,” Maggie ordered them.

  “Don’t you worry, they’ll be all about us before this day’s done,” Sam said. “The world goes for winners.”

  She didn’t know what he was talking about.

  * * *

  It was a lunch the like of which they had never had before. A cold roast chicken and a little plump grouse no one had seen her cook. Bottles of lemonade and limeade, the sun striking the bubbles in the bottles like sparks when they hoisted them to their lips. They could see the other families eying them with envy. If they were lucky and good, Pitmungo people got a bottle of carbonated soda or a phosphate on New Year’s Day. Boxes of Kirkcaldy gingerbread—the best in the world, it was said—and hot breads, steaming scones, and bannock smeared with heather honey; lemon meringue pie, the meringue fluffy and white, and then shortbread downed with bottles of orangeade.

  “Who are you trying to impress, Mum?” Sam asked.

  “Everybody. Is there anything wrong with that?”

  “No,” he said, not believing it, and then wondered who the hell he was to be thinking that way after what he had planned for the day.

  Sarah came up, shy and out of place in her band uniform. She was the only girl in the band.

  “You were very good,” her father said, “especially on ‘The Blue Bells of Scotland.’ You stood out above them all, all alone, pure and clear and true.”

  There it was again, Sam thought.

  “The Walter Bones said why didn’t we come and sit with them,” Sarah said.

  “They did? Why don’t they come and sit with us?” her mother said. That was the end of that.

  There was a cheer across the moor. The ale had been reopened and Jemmie—you could always count on Jem for that—went running with the two family pitchers to get in line. When he got back the ale was warm but there was still a froth and the taste was good. All around them the people drank and ate their potato salad and cakes and pie and then they fell back on the cool moor grass and studied the clouds and listened to the hum of life across the moor; and one by one—except for Sam, who had had no ale and just one piece of chicken and some scones and lemonade—they fell asleep, even his mother, asleep beneath the sun.

  At four o’clock, all across the moor the people woke up. There was no special sound or signal; the people simply woke, as if they had a Pitmungo clock in their blood. They got up and put their things away in the baskets and creels to make way for the races, and Mr. Brothcock came trotting up from Brumbie on his horse, looking heavy and regal in his saddle, and behind him in a trap came the prizes from Brumbie Hall for the winners of the races. Although the prizes were donated by Lord and Lady Fyffe, one would never have known it with Brothcock in command. He dispensed the Earl’s treasure with a personal hand.

  * * *

  It went the way it would have been expected to go if anyone had known about Sam. His weeks of training had left him lean and supple where the others were pit-cramped and chunk-muscled. Stones against water. They, full of food and good ale, getting their minds readied for the challenges; Sam’s mind all set and his gut empty.

  The hundred-yard dash was not unexpected. For several years now it had been Sam and Bobbie Begg cheek for chow, but the surprise was how easily Sam had won it, easing away from all of them at the end and barely breathing hard.

  “Gude job running, boy. What’s your name?” Sam told him.

  “Cameron,” Brothcock said to his wife. “Always into some goddamn thing; always doin’ somethin’, usually bad.”

  He held up the ten-shilling note. That drew applause from the crowd.

  “Whole day’s sweat in pit for that, lad. You’re a lucky boy.”

  “Very conscious of that, sir.”

  “See hoo they speak?” he said to his wife. He imitated Sam while pinning the blue ribbon to his shirt.

  “A hero of Pitmungo the now.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Brothcock, sir.” Really pour it on him, Sam thought, fleech it up to him good.

  There was the two-hundred, not often won by the same miner, because the winner of the first sprint was usually too tired to repeat, but Sam took it and then the call went out for the first of the big ones, the traditional Aince Aroon the Muir. A bottle of good Highland single-malt whisky and twenty shillings and, in some years, a ham for the winner. Many of the men stayed out of the sprints waiting for the Aince. It was not an easy run, the Once Around the Moor: clumps of grass, hidden peat holes filled with water, plashy plots of moor where one was suddenly ankle deep in mud.

  “You’re no’ goin’ to try this one, too, man?” someone called. “You’re goin’ to destroy yourself, man; you’re goin’ to run yourself into the moor.”

  Sam smiled.

  There were two threats, little Alex McMillan, running barefoot because his father wouldn’t let him waste shoe leather on a race, and Jemmie.

  “Where the hell is Jem?” Sam called to the family. No one knew; no one had seen him.

  “Can you hold the race until I find my brother, sir?” Sam asked. In case he lost, they might at le
ast keep the title in the family. Jem would be fresh.

  “You run your race and I’ll run the races,” Mr. Brothcock said, and ordered the runners to their marks.

  It wasn’t any contest. Little Alex had been drinking and so Sam glided, working slowly into his second wind until he passed him at the far end of the moor, sprawled in the shade of a Gypsy caravan, vomiting his Miners’ Freedom Day picnic.

  Mr. Brothcock handed him his whisky and his two ten-shilling notes and pinned another blue ribbon on his chest.

  “Getting to be a bit of a habit,” Brothcock said. “Getting to be a bit of a bore.” The superintendent liked to spread his generosity to a larger audience. “I think it might be a good idea for you to sit out an event or two; you look a wee drawn to me.”

  “Oh, no, sir,” Sam said, “I love the jumps.”

  Before the jumps Sam trotted down to the family blanket.

  “Where’s my brother Jem? It’s no fun without my brother.” He took off the blue ribbons and dropped them on the blanket. “Keep an eye on these,” he said to his mother.

  “You’re making yourself kenspeckle,” Maggie said.

  “And these,” Sam added, putting the four ten-shilling notes next to the ribbons and the bottle of Glenlivet. The children from the Uppie families had come from their family picnics and were crowding around the Cameron blanket, wanting to touch the blue ribbons and Sam.

  “You get those, too, for running across the grass?” Maggie said.

  “Just for running across the grass,” Sam said.

  “Where is Sarah is what we want to know,” Gillon said. “She went away when we were napping and hasn’t come back.”

  Sam had no idea, and then the call went out for the jumpers. The plan now was to save energy. Each contestant was allowed three tries, the best of three to count. Sam was going to risk it, take one, give it all he had—break their poor bloody hearts—and stay warm and loose for the next event. In the hap, stap an loup he broke the Pitmungo record.

  The crowd was peculiar. The crowd is supposed to love a winner and up to a point it did, but then the feeling began to change, wanting something else, waiting for S. Cameron to become human and do something wrong; waiting for Sam to fall flat on his square brown face. The jumping events had never been the big ones, but now the crowd for each one grew, becoming unnaturally silent, grumpy in their silence but good-natured about it at the same time, because they considered themselves Scottish sportsmen, the fairest in the world. Still, all that blue on one man’s chest! It was a little hard to take. Andrew grew very excited by it.

  “Pour it on them, Sam! Lay it on them, man. No mercy, Sam. Up the Camerons!”

  Sam had to jog over and put a hand on his mouth.

  The high jump, the standing broad jump, the running broad jump. Mr. Brothcock ceased announcing the winner. He was direct enough about it, say that for Mr. Brothcock.

  “I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” he said, “but you’re making a royal pain in the ass of yourself.”

  “No, I hadn’t noticed, sir.”

  “This is a civic celebration, not a one-man extravaganza.”

  “I was taught to do my best, sir. It’s what we’re taught in the pit, sir. To give your very best.”

  “He’s right, you know,” Mrs. Brothcock said. “Play the game to win or don’t play the game at all.”

  “It’s what my mother always says,” Sam said, and they smiled at one another.

  The call went out for the stane toss, the last event before the Pitmungo Marathon. The one for the big boys. Some of the miners had entered no other event, being too meaty and heavy-muscled for running and jumping. Some of them had been drinking to build up a head of steam for the toss. The area around the tossing pit smelled like the College on pay night. Andy Begg prodded Sam in the chest with his stubby finger.

  “You dinged my boys in the races. And your daddie dinged me at the Gaffer’s Gate.” Sam nodded. “And now I put you on notice, boy. I will be goddamned if his bairn will ding me, too.”

  That drew a roar from the crowd. They wanted their kill; they needed their blood. For a bull of a man, Begg was graceful enough. He got in his spot, he anchored his feet to the moor, he tightened his thick black miner’s belt to bind all his force together, he swung the thirty-six-pound stone back and forth on its steel chain, back and forth until he felt the rhythm of his body come together with the rise and fall of the stone, his face now as red as the moon at harvest time, and let fly. It was a good toss, a nice flight and a good rich plop onto the moor—into the plood, as they say.

  A foot per pound usually was a safe margin for a Pitmungo victory. Fired-up, Andy Begg threw it further.

  “A. Begg, thirty-eight feet three inches,” Brothcock announced. That got the roar. The rest of the men took their turn and fell so far short they dropped out. The contest now was between Sam and Andy Begg.

  Sam passed.

  The boldness of it, the unprecedented arrogance of the man—the boy—silenced the crowd for the moment.

  “Cheekie bastart,” Begg said, not unkindly. He turned to the crowd. “Have you ever seen a crust like it?” The crowd let him know they hadn’t. Sam could see his father coming across the moor to see what the commotion was about. Where in the name of God was Jem?

  Begg’s second toss was even better. Sam passed.

  The moment Begg began his final toss, his rhythm a little finer now, up and back, up and back, in the sound traditional Pitmungo way, the people on the far end of the pit began to scatter. The toss was 39 feet 5 inches, a new Pitmungo record, which Mr. Brothcock, in a voice that could have been heard in Wester Mungo, let the crowd know about.

  Sam picked up the stone and was surprised, as he always was when he first picked it up, to discover the complete deadness of the weight at the end of the chain. He had made his first mistake—he sensed it at once—passing his warm-up turns.

  “Prideful chap,” someone said.

  “Aye, and pride goeth before the fall.” It was the least they said about him.

  He heard it all. He thought he had trained himself to put the crowd out of his mind, but he heard them and it bothered him. He swung the stone back and forth, feeling the weight becoming familiar to him, not so challenging now, and then he began to spin with it, not rock up and down, but twirl around and around, feeling the weight of the stone itself supply its own force, and when he felt all of it was right, neck and shoulders, thighs and butt fusing into one totally concerted effort, he let the stone go. No one had ever thrown the stone that way before.

  Although it was a record that deserved being put down in the Freedom Day record books, no one bothered to place a little flag out on the moor to mark where it fell; it was that far beyond all the rest.

  There wasn’t a cheer and there wasn’t a groan, only a numb silence. It was all out of proportion by then; it was no longer a sporting experience but something that had moved on into some other realm of experience: one man against a town and no one able to stop him. His father was beside him.

  “What’s left?” Gillon said.

  “The Pitmungo Marathon.”

  “Can you win it?”

  “Aye, I’m pretty certain of it.”

  “I’m going to ask you something. Don’t you think you ought to give some other man a chance now?”

  Sam looked down at his feet. The day had taken a hard toll on his only pair of light shoes. They were heavy with mud; he would have to scrape them before the run.

  “I don’t know; I suppose so,” Sam said. He looked up at his father. “But I don’t want to. Can you understand that, Dad? I want to take it all.”

  Gillon didn’t mean to, but he shook his head.

  “Isn’t enough enough?”

  “I don’t know,” Sam said, “I don’t think any of us know when enough is enough.” He looked at his father and they suddenly smiled at one another, one of those startled smiles of recognition that only close friends and close families ever know.

 
; “So I’ll win it, then,” Sam said, and picked up his sweater and began making his way over the moor to where the men were gathering for the start of the Marathon.

  “But God damn Mr. Selkirk, Daddie,” he said. “He’s taken all the fun out of the ribbons. Where’s Jem?”

  * * *

  Gillon went back across the moor and sat down next to Maggie.

  “He’s going to run,” he said. “No way to stop him.”

  “Why shouldn’t he?” She patted the purse where a hundred shillings were already deposited. “That’s what he came to do.”

  He should have known better, Gillon thought. The baskets were packed, all the empty bottles and the food that was left, the pitchers and platters. Sarah should have been there to help.

  “I’m worried about Sarah. She should be here.”

  “I’m not. Sarah will be home. We should go home.” She got up to go but Gillon pulled her down.

  “Oh, no. This is the end of it all. You’d better be here.”

  “What’s the prize?”

  “One gold guinea and a bottle of whisky.”

  “He’ll be a drunk.”

  “He’s going to sell the whisky.”

  “He’ll be rich,” Maggie said.

  People kept coming up to pass the Cameron blanket where Sam’s nine blue ribbons were pinned to the plaid, not in a boastful way but as a method of keeping them. Each ribbon had a circular crest, a cockade of blue with the name of the event printed in gold, and two streamers hanging out below. The bottles of Glenlivet were lined up in a row, and with several silver loving cups that could be kept and displayed by the winner in his house until the next year’s Games. The people passed by but they didn’t stop and sit, the Doonies perhaps feeling the Camerons would resent them now and the Uppies not prepared to make their separate peace. But they still came up and down to see the display, as Sam had said they would.

  “What is that you keep reading?” Gillon finally asked Maggie. “You can’t keep your hands away from it.”

  “Something personal to me.”