Beneath the Slashings (Divided Decade Collection)

by Michelle Isenhoff

  Grace pulled away from his supportive grasp. Her defiance nearly sent her tumbling.

  Sam laughed. “You look as tipsy as Uncle Peter’s sow after it broke into the orchard and ate all those fermented apples.”

  She made a face at him, which only made him laugh harder.

  “Take a minute and regain your balance,” Pa told her, “while I ask this fellow for directions.”

  As she waited, Grace looked more closely at her surroundings. Beside her, the river split the town into two halves like a rip in the seam of a shirt. Vessels docked on either side, looking vacant and desolate with their sails tightly furled and seagulls squawking in their rigging. As she watched, a tall-masted schooner, heavily laden with lumber, nosed past the steamship and sailed toward open water. The fragrance of freshly sawn boards trailed in its wake.

  “Grace, keep up.”

  Her father and Sam were moving a dozen yards ahead. She readjusted her bags and trailed them, kicking at a row of naked dandelion stalks growing up through the bare earth. The road was nothing but rutted wagon tracks.

  The town they passed through was gray and dull, like a daguerreotype image, and interspersed with huge, weathered stumps that no one had bothered to remove. She saw no color, no ornamentation, nothing but faded letters painted on storefronts. Manistee was an ugly blister on the heel of the forest.

  “Keep your eyes open for Davison’s Mill,” Pa instructed as they walked. “It handles accounts for the Bear Creek camp. The gentleman said it was down this way.”

  “Pa, what’s it going to be like in camp?” Sam asked, unable to disguise the eagerness in his voice.

  “I reckon it will be a lot like the camps I worked in as a boy—chilly and primitive, but busy, and filled with characters as colorful as Aunt Sally’s throw rugs. The important thing is we’ll all be together.”

  “But what will Grace and I do while you’re in the woods?”

  Grace was wondering the same thing.

  “Haven’t you two been listening to my stories since you were babies? You’ll earn your keep. Sam, I expect you’ll hire on as chore boy, and Grace can help out in the kitchen—where she’ll be warm and safe,” he added when he saw her listening.

  Grace remembered Pa’s lumbering stories well. After Mama died, his adventures were a welcome distraction. She felt so brave on Pa’s lap, and the tales seemed no more real than the ones about castles and dragons. Now she recalled every frightening detail.

  Pa led them to a wide spit of land that stuck out into an inland lake. Grace could see the mouth of the river through the trees to her left. Half a dozen mills populated the peninsula, following the contour of the water. Lumber lay everywhere, stacked in haphazard piles, awaiting shipment to Chicago aboard the fleet of schooners anchored in deep water.

  The shallow lake waters rolled with hundreds of pine logs neatly corralled behind floating booms. Back home, Grace had seen the glut of logs that jammed the Saginaw River each spring—enough to feed the hungry saws all summer and into the next winter’s logging season. She could imagine what this lake looked like in June.

  “There’s Davison’s,” Pa announced. “You kids stay outside while I talk to the fellow in charge.”

  Grace dropped her suitcases onto the hard-packed dirt yard and flexed her stiffened fingers. She breathed deeply of the spicy smell of sawn pine, but it could not mask the odors of the nearby town, the smells of stables and outhouses and garbage that wafted on the breeze off Lake Michigan. Wood smoke trickled across the yard, and she could hear the whine of steam-powered machinery. Mill workers shouted to one another and scurried about their business, but no one paid the slightest attention to two waiting children.

  Sam broke into her thoughts. “Are you going to give Pa the silent treatment forever?”

  Grace scuffed the toe of her shoe across the boards of the porch before answering. “As long as it takes, I suppose.”

  “Until what?”

  “Until he sends me home.”

  “He won’t. He loves you too much.”

  “If he really loved me, he wouldn’t have brought me.”

  “If he didn’t love you, he wouldn’t put up with your shenanigans. Can’t you see how your silence vexes him? He was gone for three years. Now he’s back and you’ve left.”

  It cost her terribly to ignore Pa. She ached for the reassurance and safety of his embrace and for the closeness they once shared. But she could not allow herself to breach the walls she had built. Pa must understand how much she hated his decision.

  “Do you reckon we’re going to have to eat beans every day like Pa did?” she asked, changing the subject. “I don’t fancy beans all that much.”

  Sam blew his breath out in frustration and was about to retort when a mule team pulled abreast of them. A teamster sat on the wagon seat looking half awake, a pipe drooping from one corner of his mouth, the reins dangling from limp fingers. Without warning, a white kitten darted out from under a barrel and streaked across the path.

  Both mules spooked, plunging in their traces. The wagon jostled mightily, and the startled driver jumped to his feet, sputtering a string of curses that reddened Grace’s cheeks. Sam grinned with unabashed pleasure, but Grace watched wide-eyed as the man fought to control his beasts, losing his pipe between oaths.

  “Whoa, Jane, you old she-devil. And you, Tom, blast your eyes! I’m gunna skin ya both and sell yer hides for boot leather!”

  When the team stilled, the driver glanced in their direction, and when he spotted Grace, his eyebrows lifted almost to his hairline. “Beg pardon, miss. I’da cinched my tongue down tighter iffen I knew a lady was listnin’.”

  Grace worried her lip between her teeth and took a step closer to her brother, but Sam felt no alarm in the presence of the strange man. He strode into the road and retrieved the fallen pipe, still grinning widely. “Here you go, mister.”

  The teamster gave it a quick inspection and smiled his gratitude, revealing gaps where his front teeth should have been. “Thank you kindly, boy. This here was my granddaddy’s pipe, and I’d surely hate to see it busted.”

  He clicked to his mules and they trotted down the road, as sedate as the kitten now crouching behind a ferny clump of ragweed. Grace rushed to scoop it up, brushing the warm fur against her cheek. Beneath her fingers, the tiny heart beat a fast staccato.

  “Poor thing,” she murmured, “you’re scared to death! And no wonder. That foul man…” She glared at the wagon disappearing in the distance. “I hope the laborers at the camp aren’t as horrid.”

  Her father stepped outside a moment later. “Fellow named Crumb told me the tote wagon leaves for camp in the morning. We’re to be on it. Meantime, there’s a reputable boardinghouse down near—” He peered at Sam. “Where’s your sister?”

  Sam pointed.

  Grace stepped boldly across the road, kitten in hand. She uttered not a word, but her face spoke plain enough. Pa owed her this much for dragging her to the ends of the earth.

  He must have had the same thought. His face softened. “Bring it along, then,” he said. “Every camp needs a good mouser.”

  For the first time in days, Grace almost smiled.

  Chapter 3

  The wagon jounced over the ruts, nearly tossing its occupants onto the dirt track. Grace feared for her teeth and her eyeballs, lest they rattle out of her head. And the wagon, she was certain, must soon shake all to pieces, flinging barrels of flour, sacks of cornmeal, kegs of salted pork, and one unhappily caged kitten to the wilderness. Grace clung, white-knuckled, to her perch on a wooden packing crate, hoping someone would come back for her if she fell out.

  Pa appeared more comfortable on the bench beside the driver, though he certainly must have felt every bump. Grace secretly thought him handsome in a new flannel shirt and old trousers. He sat straight and tall. In the war, he had risen to the rank of colonel, yet he easily swapped stories with the teamster.

  “Davison’s an old lumberman out of Bangor,” the
driver was saying. “Spent forty years on the Penobscot.”

  “I grew up in the Maine woods myself,” Pa replied.

  “Did you now? I’m a Vermont farm boy, born and raised.”

  “How’d you end up running grub through the Michigan woods?”

  The driver shrugged. “When my folks died, my brother took over the farm. Ain’t been home since. I go where the wind blows me. Reckon I’ll head west one of these days, but for now, this job with Davison fills my belly.”

  Pa nodded. “I met a lot of footloose fellows in the war. Did you serve?”

  “Spent two years in the 14th Vermont. The best and worst days of my life.”

  Grace thought the comment odd, but Pa didn’t seem to. He nodded. “If I could have had soldiering without killing, I probably would have signed up as a lifer. Made a lot of good friends in the ranks. In fact, it was an old messmate who got me this job. You know Israel Jarvis?”

  “Shoot, everyone knows Jarvis. He’s the most recognizable figure in town. Makes such a big target, it’s a wonder his hide ain’t shot full of holes.”

  Pa chuckled.

  “As I was saying,” the driver continued, “Davison moved here half a dozen years ago and set up his mill and a handful of camps on the Manistee River. Bear Creek is his newest.”

  “Is he a fair man, in your opinion?”

  “A hard man, I’d say, but honest.”

  “Can’t ask more of anyone,” Pa replied. “What kind of numbers does he expect to float down the Manistee this year?”

  The men moved into more technical aspects of the business, and Sam crouched behind them, hanging on every word.

  The road wound through a forest deep in thought. Closer to town, the wagon had passed a great deal of cutover land, empty, desolate areas already cleared of lumber. Broken limbs and shattered trunks lay strewn about like casualties of war, cold, gray and skeletal. Slashings, the driver had called them, and Grace had shuttered at the word. But when Bear Creek branched off the Manistee, undefiled forest closed in around them, breathless and expectant, watching to see what they might do.

  Grace stretched her neck to follow the great trunks up, up, up to their ferny tops. The pine wood was ancient and uncluttered, free of the youthful chaos of underbrush, and the wide space calmed her. She wondered if the first day of Creation had felt as serene and untroubled. Only the thickly swarming mosquitos reminded her that she had not, in fact, entered another place and time.

  A cottontail rabbit bounded across their path. They had seen a dozen already, and twice Grace spotted deer. Back home, she had once seen a black bear beside Uncle Peter’s barn. It was a huge, lumbering beast with a massive head and tiny eyes. Fortunately, it had wandered off on its own without causing any damage. Since leaving town, she’d been scanning the forest carefully, but no bruin showed itself.

  After two hours of jostling, Grace heard the step of quick hooves behind them. A horse appeared around a bend pulling a light buggy.

  The teamster glanced behind and steered the wagon tight against the trees to allow the quicker vehicle to pass, but the approaching driver stopped beside them. A boulder of a man with a bushy silver beard leaned out.

  “Nickerson?” he demanded in a voice that thundered like a rockslide.

  Pa looked him over unhurriedly. “You’ve found him.”

  The man’s eyes glared forcefully. “Crumb told me you arrived. I’m Bennett Davison.”

  He thrust a meaty hand over the edge of his buggy and Pa grasped it. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, sir,” Pa told him. “Correspondence only tells you so much about a man.”

  Mr. Davison shifted his eyes to Sam and Grace. “My thoughts exactly.”

  Pa followed his gaze. “I was very clear that I would be bringing my children with me—a boy and a girl. I understand they will be under the care of a Mrs. Mylan, the cook’s wife.”

  Mr. Davison neither confirmed nor denied the statement. Instead, his eyes bored into Pa’s. “Colonel Nickerson,” he said, “if you would ride the rest of the way to the camp with me, there are some items of business we should discuss.”

  “I was under the impression that Israel Jarvis had already begun construction of the camp and would bring me up to speed upon my arrival. Is he—?” Pa let the question hang.

  “Jarvis is on schedule and will meet us at camp. He highly recommended you, therefore I agreed to your inevitable tardiness. However, my last camp boss left my Bear Creek operation in complete disarray. You’ll forgive me if I take an interest in keeping my holdings out of bankruptcy.”

  Pa hesitated, glancing at his children, and Grace suddenly felt the immensity of the forest.

  “Go on, Colonel,” the teamster urged, waving him away. “We’ll be along directly.”

  Grace’s spirit pleaded with her father to stay, warring with the stubbornness that bound her tongue. Pa winked confidently at Sam and stepped into the buggy. Mr. Davison promptly applied the whip. Within seconds they disappeared into the trees ahead, and Pa never knew how her courage wavered.

  But Sam knew. Sam always knew.

  As the wagon jerked into motion, he scooted over to sit beside her. “Pa can’t be with us every second, Gracie. We’ll have to learn to fend for ourselves. We have to be brave.”

  Grace hugged herself and hunched down unhappily in the overcrowded wagon. The only passenger who appeared more miserable than herself was the white kitten that mewed plaintively from a corner of his cage. Grace poked in a finger, but it disregarded her completely.

  Sam chuckled. “I wish we could let him out, but he’d leap to the ground and disappear into the brush before we could say ‘goober peas.’ He was quite a rascal last night in the boarding house.”

  Grace let the faintest trace of a smile touch her lips. The kitten had been comical, pouncing on wiggling fingers and chasing a scrap of cloth across the floor for hours. About sundown, it had dropped into an exhausted slumber only to renew its antics halfway through the night.

  “Prince Albert Edward,” Grace murmured.

  “Prince who?”

  “Prince Albert Edward,” she said, louder. “I’m going to name the kitten Prince Albert Edward.”

  “Bit of a mouthful, isn’t it?” Sam asked dubiously.

  “He’s the son of Victoria, Queen of England,” she explained. “I read an article about him once. He’s said to be perfectly charming but something of a rogue and a vexation to his mother.”

  At this, Sam ducked his head to peer into the kitten’s cage. “Do you hear that, Prince Albert Edward?” he asked. “You’re to be named after ill-behaved royalty.”

  The kitten let out an especially loud yowl.

  Both of the children laughed. “I don’t think he likes it,” Sam quipped, “but it fits.”

  “I’ll call him Bertie for short, just as Queen Victoria does.”

  To keep his sister talking, Sam asked, “Grace, do you remember the kittens that were born in the woodshed? Remember how old Chief would curl up with them at night?”

  She nodded and smiled. “Chief brought them into the house one by one and dropped them in Mama’s basket of clean laundry.”

  Sam chuckled, “Mama chased that poor dog all over the yard with the broom. Then she got so angry at Pa for laughing at her instead of helping that he had to bring her flowers every day for a week before she forgave him. I never saw Pa laugh so hard as he did then.”

  Grace remembered. Mama’s temper could work up to gale force in a matter of minutes. A regular wildcat, Pa had called her.

  “Mama never would let any animals in the house,” she said aloud. It was easier than saying that she still missed Mama or that Pa never laughed like that anymore.

  For the next hour, brother and sister reminisced about the animals they’d known and the days spent growing up on the farm. When the driver announced the camp just ahead, Sam gave his sister a reassuring grin. “Don’t worry, Gracie. We’ll stick together.”

  Grace tested her cramped muscles
and scratched at the rash of bug bites along her face and neck. The light grew brighter as the wagon passed into a clearing and the tired mules wound to a stop. Sam stood gawking with wide, sparkling eyes.

  “Grace, this is like a scene right out of Pa’s old tales!” he yelled.

  Grace rose and forced herself to look, turning in a slow, silent circle, her bottom lip clamped tightly between her teeth.

  The clearing had been slashed out of the woods like a bayonet wound on the leg of a soldier. Fresh stumps still bled pitch. In the center and dominating the camp was a long building made of logs. It was built in two sections, attached in the middle by a covered porch filled with barrels and crates. The roof was poorly fashioned of rough-hewn logs, and the gaps in the walls had been left unchinked.

  Off to one side stood another large structure from which could be heard the bell-like ring of iron striking iron. The smithy. And the stable as well, she assumed, from the chewed up path leading to a second, oversized door. As she watched, a fat, pink hog wandered from behind the building and nosed its way in the stable doorway.

  Only one other building, much smaller than the others, sat by itself at the back of the clearing. Grace took in the whole camp, blinking tears from her eyes.

  A man with thin hair and a walrus mustache exited the main building and began pulling supplies off the wagon. He wore a plain, white, mostly clean apron that covered his clothes from chest to knees. “Johansen! Fiddlesticks!” he called. “Come give to me your hands!” His heavy accent was unfamiliar to Grace, and unconsciously she inched closer to her brother.

  “Kids, this here is the most important man in camp,” the driver announced as the cook approached the wagon. “He’s got a last name long enough to float a barge on, so most folks just call him Ivan. Ivan, meet the new boss’s kids.”

  Ivan jimmied a barrel of flour to the edge of the wagon with a grunt. “Happy I am to know you,” he nodded.

  The clanging sound ceased and two men ambled out the stable doorway, driving out the wandering pig. It squealed in protest and trotted to the edge of the woods where it rooted under a fallen log. On reaching the wagon, the first newcomer, a pleasant-faced man built like an ox, set to work as diligently as the cook and helped to lower the heavy flour barrel to the ground. The second one paused to chit-chat with the driver.