Measure of Katie Calloway, The: A Novel

by Serena B. Miller

  Robert watched Katie enter the cookhouse, his daughter on her hip and his son in tow as she chatted easily with them about the cookies she had baked just that afternoon.

  If only she were free to watch the children for him—but her duties were too heavy as it was. Somehow he would muddle through, he supposed. He just hoped his children wouldn’t be too damaged by the experience.

  Robert saw the bunkhouse through different eyes tonight—his seven-year-old son’s. The boy sat scrunched up against him on the deacon’s bench in the dim light. Although Robert had been raised in lumber camps, he realized that this was the first time Thomas had even been in one. From the time he was three until today, Thomas had been raised almost entirely by women.

  He noticed that his son was holding his finger pressed beneath his nose.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked.

  Thomas motioned for him to lean down so he could whisper, “It stinks in here.”

  “You get used to it after a while.”

  “I want to go home.”

  “I know.”

  It was not going to be easy having his children with him. He had known they would need tending to physically, but he hadn’t realized he would have to deal with homesickness too.

  At the men’s request, Henri rosined up his bow and began to play a jaunty shanty boy song. The men joined in, more noise than melody. Ernie began playing a rhythm with a pair of spoons. It was a cheerful thing, but Thomas pressed even closer to his side.

  Robert felt a flicker of irritation. It was just music, for crying out loud. Why was his son shrinking back? Then Inkslinger, sober-faced and lanky, began doing a jig in the middle of the floor. His body seemed to be made of two different parts—the legs, which were dancing like they had a life of their own, and the upper half, which Inkslinger held as rigid as his expression.

  Thomas pointed. “What is that man doing?”

  “It’s called step dancing,” Robert said. “It’s something shanty boys like to do.”

  Robert went to put another log on the fire and noticed that Thomas watched him with worried eyes as though afraid his father would bolt out the door.

  And suddenly, he knew that Sarah, regardless of her reasons, had done the right thing in bringing the children to him.

  Back on the deacon’s bench, with little Thomas tucked beneath his arm, he once again tried to see the scene through his son’s eyes. Skypilot sat at the grindstone, sharpening his axe. Cletus was busy whittling out a tiny mouse, turning it this way and that as he carved. Henri was sitting at the end of the deacon’s bench, sawing away on his fiddle. Ernie was playing the spoons. Inkslinger was making the floorboards groan beneath his heavy boots. Several men were lying in their beds, squinting in the dim light at orange-colored dime novels and dog-eared Police Gazettes. Blackie and Sam were across the room, sprawled easily on the deacon’s bench, grinning at the carryings-on in the middle of the room.

  Robert checked his watch. It was nine o’clock. “Time to hit the sack,” he yelled over the sound of the fiddle.

  The song ended. The fiddler hung his instrument on a peg in the wall. Skypilot blew on the freshly sharpened blade and polished it with a couple swipes on his sleeve.

  “You got a story for us, Skypilot?” Blackie called after everyone had crawled into bed and the last lamp was extinguished. “You being a preacher and all. I betcha you got stories.”

  “Sure,” Skypilot said. “What kind of story do you want?”

  “Something to help us sleep good!” Sam growled. “None of that hellfire stuff you preachers like to scare people with.”

  “When have I ever said anything about hellfire?” Skypilot asked.

  “You haven’t,” Sam admitted. “And you better not. Talkin’ about hell gives me gas.”

  “Everything gives you gas,” Ernie pointed out.

  “I’m serious.” Sam scowled. “I got a delicate stomach.”

  The men hooted at the idea of Sam’s delicate stomach, which put the man in such a foul mood, he climbed into his lower bunk and hung an extra blanket from the top in such a way that it made a wall between himself and the rest of the men. It was obvious to Robert that the effort of toting Sarah all the way here in the wagon had frazzled Sam’s nerves to the breaking point. He sympathized.

  “You got any stories about men like us’n?” Cletus said. “’Bout men who cut down trees?”

  “Maybe I could tell you about the Sidonians,” Skypilot said.

  “What about the Sid . . . Side—what was that word?” Ernie asked.

  “The Sidonians. They were famous woodcutters.”

  Everyone got still. A good storyteller was a prize indeed, and they especially loved stories about men like themselves.

  Skypilot sat up and draped his legs over his bunk. “The great Israelite king, David—”

  “I heard o’ him,” Cletus said.

  “Of course you have. Everyone’s heard of David.” Ernie smacked his brother on the back of the head. “Now shush.”

  “David wanted to build a temple for God, but God wouldn’t let him because David was a man of war. God told him it would be his son, Solomon, who would get to build the temple.”

  “I been to war,” a new man—an Irish immigrant named O’Neal—added.

  “A lot of us have,” Tinker pointed out. “You ain’t nothin’ special.”

  “Even though David wasn’t allowed to build the temple,” Skypilot continued, “he began to gather together all the building materials because he said that Solomon was too young and would need all the help he could get.”

  “That’s a good father.” Ernie nodded. “Helping out that way.”

  “That’s true,” Skypilot said. “Especially since David would never live to see the temple built, and he knew it.”

  “Kind of like me clearing a farm of tree stumps and planting an orchard,” Inkslinger said. “I might not get to taste the fruit of it, but my six daughters will.”

  “You got six women in your house?” Tinker asked with wonder.

  “Seven, counting my wife,” Inkslinger corrected.

  Tinker shook his head sorrowfully. “No wonder you head for the woods every chance you get!”

  “Let the man get on with his story,” Blackie said. “What about them Sid—Sido—”

  “Sidonians,” Skypilot continued. “They were the best tree cutters in the world. And they had giant cedars to cut—as big as our pine. Solomon paid Hiram, their king, to take the cedar logs down the river to the sea. They put the logs together in big rafts and then floated them where Solomon was building the temple.”

  “Even after Solomon’s daddy had gotten all the stuff together?” Cletus said.

  “I think Solomon had bigger ideas than his father.”

  “Like my oldest girl,” Inkslinger said. “Can’t keep her in the kitchen. Always working on something. She was putting together a small windmill right before I left. Said she’d seen it in a book about some Dutch people overseas.”

  “Windmill?” Klaas Jansen, another new man, spoke up. “We haff windmills back home. Dey work fine.”

  “Let the man get back to his story.” Ernie was getting impatient. “So when did Solomon live?”

  “About three thousand years ago.”

  There was silence in the bunkhouse as everyone digested this.

  “There’s been people cutting down trees that long?” Blackie asked.

  “Pretty much the same way we do now,” Skypilot said. “Things haven’t changed all that much—even in three thousand years.”

  “How about that,” Blackie said with wonder. “We even float logs to the mills in rafts just like they did.”

  “Four-thirty,” Sam called out from behind his blanket, where he was still pouting. “It’ll come soon enough. Quit your yappin’!”

  “I wonder what kind of axes them men had,” Cletus said. “I wonder if any of ’em had a Kelly Handmade. That’s the best axe ever.”

  A murmur of agreement followed Cl
etus’s statement.

  “I don’t think they had Kelly Handmades three thousand years ago, Cletus,” Skypilot said. “But I’m sure those loggers would have appreciated one.”

  “Quit your yappin’!” Sam threatened. “Or I’ll shut all of you up by myself.”

  As Robert pulled the covers around Thomas, his son turned and gave him a hug with his skinny little arms. “’Night, Papa.”

  “Good night, son.”

  Robert lay there, listening to his son’s even breathing, thinking about the elderly king David trying to gather materials together for his son. Things hadn’t changed all that much. In a way, that was what he was struggling to do. Thomas was at that age where he was all knobby knees and big eyes and he held his father’s heart in his fist—just like his little sister. What kind of a legacy would he be leaving for Thomas and Betsy? The timber wouldn’t last forever, and then what?

  Moon Song was restless as they made their pallets on the wooden floor of the cookhouse. Her fidgeting upset the baby. As Moon Song walked the floor with the fussy infant in her arms, Katie noticed that she kept pacing from window to window, looking out.

  “What’s wrong, Moon Song?” Katie asked. “What are you looking for?”

  “La fumée,” Moon Song said. “Je sens l’odeur de la fumée.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “La fumée!”

  It was impossible. Moon Song knew no English, and Katie didn’t know a word of French or Menominee. Katie had no intention of trotting over to the men’s bunkhouse at this late hour just to roust Henri out of his bunk to translate for her.

  But the girl’s restlessness, combined with the hard floor cushioned only by blankets, made it difficult to sleep.

  She remembered the layers of the soft, downy feather mattresses in her bedroom at Fallen Oaks before the war. The house slaves had fluffed and aired them periodically—as though she were some sort of European princess. Did she wish she could go back to the prewar days of being waited on hand and foot by people she owned? Frankly, she would rather sleep on a rock. She had hated it even back then.

  “Is Mr. Foster’s sister staying long?” Ned asked from his nest of blankets beside her.

  “I hope not. This floor is miserable. I don’t know how Moon Song stands it every night. I’m going to ask Tinker if he’ll make her a little bed for the cabin.”

  Moon Song continued to pace the floor like a caged animal. It made Katie nervous. The girl had never done that before. Was there something, or someone, out there? Was there any chance that Harlan was waiting outside, and Moon Song, more attuned to danger than she, sensed it?

  “What is it, Moon Song?” Fear laced Katie’s voice. “What are you looking for?”

  Moon Song stopped dead and pointed out a westward-facing window.

  There was no moon and no stars out. No lanterns were lit anywhere in the camp. The night was so dark that Moon Song was barely a shadow standing at the window. It would be impossible to see anything moving around outside.

  But Katie looked outside anyway—and saw the thing that was agitating Moon Song. It was a glowing reddish-orange line in the distance, a tiny, flickering light against the dark sky.

  As she watched, the distant light grew a fraction larger.

  Her breath stopped as it dawned on her what that light meant. She had seen it once before—as General Sherman had burned his way across Georgia. There was a forest fire, and unless she missed her guess, it was coming straight at them.

  17

  Where the flames in torrents flashing,

  through the fields and forest ’round,

  and the trees like thunder crashing

  in great numbers on the ground.

  “The McDonald Family”

  —1800s shanty song

  She ran straight for the Gabriel horn, flung open the door, and began to blow. The sound of that horn was loud enough to wake the dead—which was what all of them would be if she didn’t sound the alarm. She kept blowing the horn over and over.

  Where could they go? What should they do? How could they get away?

  The horn frightened the baby, and it set up a howl. The men stumbled out of the bunkhouse in various stages of undress, some barefoot and carrying axes, some carrying their boots, hopping about on one foot then the other, putting them on.

  “What’s wrong?” Robert was the first to reach her. Thomas, big eyed, was at his father’s side, clinging to his belt.

  She pointed to the horizon.

  When he saw the ominous glow in the distance, he groaned as though someone had thrust a knife through him. “Wildfire!” he shouted to the men.

  There was a clamor as they all scanned the western sky.

  “What’s the plan, Foster?” Skypilot asked.

  That’s what Katie wanted to know too.

  “I’m taking the children, and I’m getting out of here.” Sarah’s voice shook as she stood on the fringes of the group, clutching a shawl around her shoulders. “I’m going back to Bay City where it’s safe. I can drive that wagon myself, if someone will help me get it hitched up.”

  “I can’t let you do that,” Robert said. “If the fire comes this way, you won’t make it back.”

  “Yes, I will.”

  “A wildfire can travel faster than a horse can run, Sarah. Even if you made it to Saginaw or Bay City, they’re both built of wood and sawdust. If the fire reaches them, they’ll go up in flames.”

  “What will we do?” Sarah grabbed him and started shaking him, her eyes wide with fear. “What will we do?”

  The glow was getting bigger, and the one safe place, the waters of Lake Huron, upon which Bay City lay, was two days away over a bad road. They didn’t have two days.

  “We could set a backfire,” Tinker said. “Burn everything between here and the fire.”

  “We can’t stop a fire that size, no matter what we do,” Robert said. “Sam, Mose, let the horses and mules out of the barn to fend for themselves. We’ll head to that inland lake in the uncut section east of here.”

  “That lake isn’t big enough,” Sam pointed out. “When those pines catch fire, they’ll fall right in on top of us.”

  “Not if we’re in the middle,” Robert said.

  “Do you happen to have a boat I don’t know about?” Jigger said. “One that’ll hold all of us? Tinker ain’t even started building the wannigan for the spring drive yet.”

  “Bring your tools and head to the lake. If you have caulked boots, wear them.”

  As the men rushed to the bunkhouse to get their axes and saws, Robert grabbed Katie by both arms and stared intently into her face. “That lake we went to last Sunday—do you remember how to get there?”

  “Yes!”

  “Grab as many blankets as you can carry and head there as fast as you can. Don’t change clothes. Don’t stop for anything.” He turned away from her. “Sarah!” he yelled. “Take Betsy and follow Katie!”

  For the first time since she had seen the fire on the horizon, Katie realized that she was standing among the men, barefoot and wearing nothing but a nightgown.

  “Go put your shoes on, woman!” Jigger shouted as he hurried past her. “And don’t you dare take the time to get dressed and flounced up. If we don’t get into that lake, and into it in a hurry, nothing else is gonna matter.”

  “What about my chickens and the piglets?” she asked.

  “If the fire comes, they won’t make it,” Jigger said. “And neither will you if you try to drag them along with you. Hurry, woman!”

  Moon Song stood staring at the glowing horizon, her baby secure in the back sling, her moccasins on her feet.

  Katie grabbed Ned’s hand, and together they ran into the cook shanty, where both donned their shoes and Katie grabbed an armload of blankets and stuffed them into an empty flour sack, wondering what Robert intended her to do with them. She also lit a lantern. They would need it to keep from stumbling over roots and rocks as they made their way to the lake.

&nbs
p; “Do we have to leave our animals behind?” Ned asked.

  “Yes, but we can open their cages and give them a chance. Come help me.”

  As Katie and Ned shooed the chickens out and let the piglets run free, she could hardly believe that she was, once again, letting her livestock loose to fend for themselves. Would she ever have any peace?

  The camp descended into sheer chaos. Frightened mules and horses ran through the camp. Loggers loaded with peaveys, saws, and axes rushed toward the inland lake. Sarah, hair streaming, with Betsy hanging onto her, was running in the opposite direction.

  Skypilot, axe in hand, pulled Betsy away from Robert’s sister and hefted the child onto his broad shoulders. “Sarah,” he said. “This way!”

  “I’m going to Bay City!” she screamed. “Where it’s safe!”

  Skypilot calmly grabbed the woman and started leading her toward the woods. Katie saw Thomas still holding onto his father’s belt, sticking to him like a burr, as Robert shouted orders.

  Tethered in the back of the cook shanty was Katie’s precious cow, and she could not make herself leave it behind. She jerked the stake out of the ground and with Ned close beside her began to hurry toward the lake as fast as the cow would go.

  She had no idea what Robert’s plan was once they got there, but she knew that getting to the water was their only chance. Both she and Ned were adequate swimmers. Cows could swim if they had to. The Shorthorn might have a chance if it would just . . . walk . . . faster!

  She jerked on the rope, and the cow followed at a leisurely pace. The bell around its neck tinkled with every lumbering step—the cheerful, homely sound unreal against the backdrop of danger. She put the rope over her shoulder and leaned into it, straining against it, willing the complacent cow to hurry.

  Cletus ran by. As he passed her, he smacked the Shorthorn on the haunches. “Git!” he yelled.

  The cow, surprised, bellowed and bolted forward. Katie ran a few steps to keep up with it.