The Other Nineteenth Century

by Avram Davidson

  And rather than go around the familiar scene and ask for a job, she being then poor, as all might know, why, she did what seemed to her a sensible scene: she headed for the source of the money, in that distant state. The idea came in a flash as she read the newsitem,

  BORSKI PERSISTS IN O & B BID

  Bill G. Borski, grandson of a Pomeranian pig-farmer, says he will continue his attempts to take over the Olauson—Blenner—hassett lumber interests in

  Mary headed West. An old American tradition. Scarcely had she entered the state where the Mill was and had occasion to speak her family name—cashing a small traveller’s check in a small roadside restaurant—when old plaid-shirt and bib over-hauls had spoken it himself. She hadn’t even seen him there till then. “Blenn-der-hassett,” he’d said, she not knowing if the mispronunciation were a trick of the old man’s speech or a part of the local accent. “Say, you must be Old B. B’s daughter.” God, he’d looked old, old as time. Probably was. There may have been, for all she knew, a thousand such old-timers. Okay, getting-used-to-it-time had just begun.

  “Granddaughter,” said she.

  He looked at her through his cataract glasses. “I knowed dold B. B.,” he said, in his oddly-parted speech.

  If Mary knew nothing of her father, what did she know of her grandfather? “Oh, what kind of a man was he?” She wanted to know—

  “He was, a nold, sund of a bitch.” Well, now she knew. “An dold O. O. He was another.” The veteran said these things without malice, or, for that matter, without affection.

  As good an introduction as another.

  As for …

  Here is the picture. Mary got out of her car at Olauson, Blennerhassett (“O & B”), and walked around here and there before asking directions to the main office, and by and by she found herself facing a pile of logs, rough and barky and even clotted with earth: there was a heavy-set man, no kid, taking his ease. Suddenly she was aware of another man, tall, business-suit. Not looking at her, looking at the workingman at ease. What it was, hard to define but making her happy the look was not being looked at her; exactly at this moment the burly man lounging became aware of the looker and the look. Perhaps he did not altogether go into a minor convulsion. Almost, though. Work resumed immediately for him. The man in the business suit turned. He saw Mary. He looked: and there was more in this look than the looks she was used to getting from men. Did he know who she was? Because at once she knew that she knew who he was. They had never met. But a hundred years of history connected them.

  “Mr. Victor Blennerhassett Olauson?”

  “I’m Vic Olauson, yes. Miss Blennerhassett?”

  “Mary Blennerhassett.”

  They took, rather than shook, hands. She said, “Can you give me a job?”

  “The union would say no. But as a partner, you—”

  All around the life of the lumber mill went on, the saws screaming in one key and the little locomotive engines in another; and so it had gone on here for a century. “A partner? Oh, I thought I was a stockholder.”

  “In The Olauson and Blennerhassett Corporation, Miss Blennerhassett, you are a stockholder. But in Olauson, Blennerhassett, and Company, Miss Blennerhassett, you’re a partner.”

  It wasn’t that first day that she told him how she had “mortgaged” everything to get Flick out of his immense trouble. Or who Flick was … or had been … anyway … It wasn’t that first day that she first heard aloud the name of Borski.

  The old-timers are talking about the mill. That time of day, early afternoon, mostly it is just the old-timers at the bar, each one with his one shot, little water back.

  “Startin t’cut hem-lock, I hear.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Whut I say.” By their tones they might have been invited not alone to cut it, but to drink it.

  Someone else, a not-so-old-timer: “What’s the matter with that?”

  “Whut’s the matter with it?”

  Old-timers turn, ready to turn belligerent. Not-so-old-timer not so ready to turn anything, not even away. Says, “Long’s the mill keeps open … cut something … if Borski …” The bar no longer serves even sandwiches. Just whatever packaged snacks are in the racks and jars: jerky, Polish sausage, pigs’ feet, cheese crackers. Chips, corn chips.

  “They been bringin in cottonwood and turnin it in t‘chips fr the Japnese trade. The Japnese, they bring the chips back in bulk nen they grine d’m up, make plywood’r paperboard,” it is explained. Mouths are compressed, heads shaken.

  An old-timer says that when O. O. was alive, mill wouldn’t a bothered cuttin no hemlock, no fir, no cottonwood. “Cedarn pine, pinen cedar. Nuth nelse. Nuth nelse. Cream o’ th’ fawr’st. Nowdays … nowdays … all Japnese trade … all japnese trade … . Japnese buyin horse-chessnut?, mill’ll cut horse-chessnut.”

  “Cut it metric, too,” someone says, low-voiced. At this ultimate degradation, all sigh.

  “Say, I did-dunt know the Japnese were buyin horse-chessnut.”

  An old-timer has been watching this last old-timer for a while. Makes up his mind. “Say, ‘n’ I use ta see you sawin at Number 3 Mill, old O. O. still ‘live?”

  “Drine kill.”

  The first old-timer says he coulda swore he’d seen the second old-timer sawin at Number Three Mill, time old O. O. was alive. Second has had a chance to think it over, says, Some, he sawed at Number 3. But mostly he worked in the dryin kiln. He says, “I hear old B. B.’s daughter workin in thoffice now.”

  “No kiddin.”

  “What I hear.”

  “Granddaughter,” says someone.

  And someone, someone else, no old-timer at all but a younger man nursing a beer, says he hears that she. Is hot stuff. That she don’t care what she does, or who she does it with. And an old-timer asks, Ain’t they all that way anymore? Some of them declare loudly that they sure are. But some, those who’ve got their own granddaughters, grunt. Look away. One says, again, Say, he didn’t know the Japnese were buying horse-chestnut. And it is explained to him that this was just made up as a for-instance. And then someone asks, “So you think the mill will maybe close?”

  “I didn’t say the mill will maybe close!”

  “You think maybe Borski will take over?”

  “I didn’t say Borski will maybe take over!”

  “He’s trying to go where Vic is.”

  “Yeah, well you can only go so far with Vic, y’ know.”

  “I know it. But does Borski?”

  The younger man nursing the beer says that he doesn’t give a shit, his brother’s got a foreman’s job in Oregon and can get him a job scaling anytime either of them want to. But he orders no second beer.

  And a very old-timer, whose mind had drifted away, observes it come drifting back. Waits. The bartender meanwhile speaks up. “From what I hear,” he says, “you don’t want to count O. & B. out too fast. Whut I hear, they been down buhfore. But they never been out.” And others say, No no. Been down before but never been out, that’s true, they say. That used to be true of even old O. O. even in the old country, is what someone says. And someone else begins to chuckle. “‘Yust yerk it up and down,’” he says, in a sing-song. “What old O. O. used to say when the watchamacallit would stuck, by the donkey-engine; ‘Yust yerk it up and down,’ he’d say. Haw haw!”

  And now the very old-timer says, “Plenny pinen cedar on th’ P’nin-s’la.”

  Ah, they all say, On the Peninsula … .

  Ah … .

  As always in the office, Mary cannot keep her eyes off the cofounders. “Oh what a pair of robber-barons!” she says.

  “Oh, no, Miss Blennerhassett. They were just competent businessmen. According to the standards of the day.” Says Victor (“Vic”) B. Olauson.

  “Oh? And wouldn’t you say the same is true of Borski?”

  Well, no, he wouldn’t. Not “just.” It may have been competent of Borski to go secretly to Japan for business instead of waiting for the Japanese buyers to come over here. But
it was in violation of the gentlemen’s agreement between Borski and O-B not to cut each other’s throat. Vic Olauson, you would at first be taking him for thirty. Then fifty. Or maybe vice versa. He was actually forty. Borski, he said, was willing to do anything, promise anything, so long as it would unbalance an adversary. Then he’d push—They had to watch out for Borski.

  Borski (Mary was thinking as she got gasoline early one morning), Borski held proxies, was trying to hold more. Borski held O—B’s paper. And was trying to hold more. Borski—

  “Borski,” said a voice. It was no thought-voice, it was a real, live, voice-voice. Someone had come up alongside her. The woman who owned the gas station. Her name? Forgotten.

  “What about him,” the name came suddenly, “Laurella?”

  “None a my business,” said Laurella, a weather-beaten person who had certainly slaughtered, gutted, scalded home-farm hogs before ever she had ten candles to her cake; well, if it’s none of your business why mention it, shrilled Mary’s voice. Though it was only a thought-voice. “But I hear Borski’s goen to th’ P’nin’s’la. And I seen fr myself that Prue Jensen rollin drunk over by the bar; early start what I mean. Tell Vic, ‘f you like.”

  Mary, puzzled, thought best to say nought but, “Thanks, Laur’.”

  “You bet.”

  In the office. “Who’s Prue Jensen?”

  “Pruett Jensen?” Victor had his faults. But asking, Why? instead of first answering, this wasn’t one of them. “He’s the caretaker, the guard, at the Peninsula.” Having said this, then he asked, “Why?” Was told Why.

  Nothing flickered on that long flat face, dark secret-keeping face with its odd blue eyes. “‘Going to the Peninsula,’ hey. Well, maybe a good place for him to go. Guess I’ll go, too.”

  “And me.” His eyes looked at her. “I’m a stockholder,” she said. “And a partner. And, oh, damn it! I’m a grandchild, even if not a grandson!”

  And he said, “Yes.”

  But they said nothing to anyone as they got into his car and drove off. It was beautiful going there, and beautiful when gotten there. Now and then Vic pointed out where a narrow-gauge railroad line had been, and where oxen had once skidded vasty logs. The rocks and rills, the woods and templed hills, she could see for herself: they were beautiful.

  “Jensen wasn’t due to get drunk for another two weeks, at which time we would have relieved him. If he’s drunk this early and if Borski’s going to the Peninsula this early, then Jensen’s drunk because Borski got him drunk. Him. Or his men. Or his women.—I’ll have to get out and open the lock. Be a minute.” The lock was on a chain and the chain was on the gate of a tall chain-mesh fence which came from the woods on one side of the road and entered the woods again on the other. There was a faint smell of balsam. She asked about the lock? About Borski’s getting in?

  Victor clicked his tongue. “Fence has mostly a moral effect. Pirate loggers know that Breaking and Entry’s a more serious charge. Fence keeps out bikers and it keeps out poachers who want to jacklight deer and picnickers in cars who won’t put out fires … like that. But this is a peninsula, you know, and it’s surrounded on the other three sides by the lake and we never attempted to fence off the whole lakeshore or shoreline. Anybody can land in a boat and it’s the caretaker’s job to keep ‘em off or send’em back. Guess his job is now vacant.” No curse. No anger. Guess his job is now vacant.

  And, oh it was beautiful on the Peninsula! Huge pine. Immense cedar. The smell of balsam stronger. Place even had its own rivers! Time vanished. Suddenly—“Well, there’s the caretaker’s house. We have to get out of the car now. This is as far as the road goes. It’s a good house, too, and rent and utilities free. Well. His choice.”

  The foot path wound on and on through the forest as though in a fairy tale; and Mary, reflecting, remembered that not everything which took place in those old Teutonic tales was merry and bright; and that an awful lot of Grimm was … well … grim. “What does Borski want here. Hm?”

  Path skirted giant roots. “To spy out the land. Of course he’s been over it by plane and helicopter and he’s got mosaic photographs and he probably knows by expert analysis how many board feet of how many kinds of wood down to the last tooth-pick inch. But oh, there’s nothing like seeing for yourself, is there, you forest-destroying, family-breaking, union-busting creep, Borski.” Then they saw him.

  At least she guessed it was. Who else?

  The forest path went straight and it led straight up to a great rock and there was a man standing on top of the great rock. She said that it looked dangerous. Victor said that it was dangerous.

  … and as they got quite close, he said in a low voice that they were not to make any noise. In her own mind Mary marveled at Vic’s concern for the enemy’s safety (the enemy had his back to them). But then—no! From somewhere Vic got a stick, a tree-branch it was, was it for a cudgel? Was he going to sneak up and bludgeon—? The man on the big rock never moved, as Vic began to walk around the rock to his right, dragging the branch after him. It was a long time, or so it seemed, before he returned. Still dragging it. He’d changed his mind, then. Well.

  But how had Borski not noticed Vic circling the vast stone? Well, if Vic had stuck close to it, and it was, vast … .

  Vic began to sing; Vic began to sing! What was it, the song? Not a single word could she make out, and it seemed awfully off-tune. He didn’t even seem to want to face her and sort of bent down a bit with his damned stick and began to scratch the soil; was he printing something? Awfully odd letters; were the letters, was the song, even in English? Borski moved.

  Borski of course turned around and looked down at them. Borski—there wasn’t really another word for it—Borski snorted. He smiled, but only on one side of his face. He wasn’t one of nature’s noblemen. And then he moved to the far side of the rock and vanished from sight. Maybe he had a folding ladder. Maybe there were steps in the rock. What happened next? Next they heard his feet on gravel. He came into sight. Suddenly turned around and peered back behind him. As though he’d heard something. Not the singing. Something else.

  It was inexplicable but yet it was funny: the way Borski suddenly began acting like a spooked old maid in an old movie: the way Borski put his hands straight up at right angles to his arms which he’d put straight out in front of him: the way Borski began to say, “Oooo oooo oooo.” The way Borski’s eyes began to bulge: all that was funny. It was funny for just a second or two, then Borski began to scream and that was not funny, and next Borski started to turn and run away on tottery rubbery legs: not funny. Then Borski, still screaming and moving in slow motion, was heard to lose control of his bowels. What came around the rock was about four or five times the size of a naked man; and the head and mouth were anyway disproportionately huge, and it came on in a sort of shambling lope, and it took hold of Borski and shoved Borski into its mouth head first and got him in up to the waist and began to bite and chew, and it kept on shambling and loping and biting and chewing, and it kept on shoving Borski into its mouth, and it vanished around the other side of the rock.

  Olauson watched calmly. She fell against him and he got a hold of her and she said, “Save me. Save me.” Again, just like in an old movie. “Don’t let it get me; don’t let it get me,” she said.

  “Oh it won’t get us. Why I drew the circle and then those runes. My grandfather said—”

  She sort of melted into him. “What was it? What is it?”

  “Well, Miss Blennerhassett. The Indians call it the wendigo, but my grandfather said it was a troll. My grandfather was a very competent businessman and he had this method, you know, from the old country, and—”

  She had control of herself. “Can we just get out of here, real quick, right now, right now?” She was pressing, pressing against him.

  He nodded. “Yes. But it’s gone, you know. That’s all it ever wants, and it gets it and it goes. So just let me rub out the circle and the runes.”

  They walked away, and it was sh
e who set the pace—pretty fast—did the Peninsula woods seem less safe now? Safer? Was this the real reason why their grandfathers hadn’t wanted them cut and why their fathers hadn’t even wanted them to pass out of family hands? The breeze was clean and the odor of the balsam was very strong. But she began to tremble; she hadn’t trembled, really, before; but she was trembling now. “There’s the house,” Vic Olauson said. “And the car.” What was he made of? Was he made of ice? There was the car, there was the house, there—

  “I want you, I want you,” she said.

  He had bent over to open the car door. He turned. “What?”

  “You and I. There—there—in the house. Together. In bed—”

  He straightened, pulled the car door open. Gestured to her. “No, no, Miss Blennerhassett,” he said. “I am a married man.”

  AFTERWORD TO “THE PENINSULA”

  During his last years, Avram lived in the Pacific Northwest, much of the time in and around Bremerton, Washington. This tale grew out of his stay in those heavily wooded hills and waterways, and out of his always perceptive ear for regional dialects. It was my very great pleasure to use this story in Amazing Stories during my editorship of that venerable magazine.

  —George H. Scithers

  SUMMON THE WATCH!

  If you want to see New York as New York used to look, there is no point in looking around Manhattan, the only place which practices autocannibalism as a matter of policy. The few—the very few—blocks of old buildings which survive on Minuit’s island have, for the most part, become slums. Old New York, however, does survive, but in the sister borough.